the anthropology of east europe review: central europe, eastern europe and eurasia volume 17, number, 1, spring, 2002 editors robert rotenberg eva huseby-darvas nancy ries barbara west matti bunzl laszlo kurti contents editor's notes: ................................................................................................................................................................ 3 barbara a. west (university ofthe pacific) the little girl, the girl to whom 'it' happened, natural pregnancy, saint mary's bed ....... 4 bitone, eszter gera (balastya, hungary) (translated by s'ra kaiser, ed. by brent holt) the 'na tural childbirth' movement in russia: self-representation strategies .................... ii ekaterina be)ooussova childbirth definitions and childbirth experience .................................................................................. 19 hana haskova czech academy of sciences re-theorizing emancipation: remembering and rethin'king 'gender equality' in eastern european \vomanist thought ............................................................................................................................... 27 jessica harvey pennsylvania state university gender in a performative depiction in tadeusz roze\vicz's drama white marriage: on the basis of judith butler's theoretical text.. .................................................................................................. 41 lilianna dorak jagiellonian university the embodied solution of 'the woman qijestion' in post-revolutionary russia .................... 49 ioulia gradskova, moscow state lomonosov university suicide in post-socialist countries: examples from hungary and belarus .............................. 55 jeffrey alyn smith debrecen university cinderellas of europe: waste, food, a~ti cleanliness in postsocialist politics ..................... 67 zsuzsa gille, university of iljinois, urbana-champaign a western body for the russian woman: shaping gender identity in modern women's magazines ........................................................................................ , .............................................................................. 75 olga kalacheva european university at st. petersburg transformations in embodied lifecourses: hungarian women in the 1990s ............................... 79 barb west university of the pacific the interpretation of female bodies as a projection of identity: the orient, the balkans, or something else? ..................................................................................................................................................... 87 simona cupic odeljenje za istoriju umetnosti j i page: 2 j please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($is/yr. for full-time faculty and professionals, $1o/yr for students andpart-time faculty; european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($20), or additional copies ofthis special issue ($20) to the managing editor: the web page for the anthropology ofeast europe review/east european anthropology group contains links to most ofthe previously published articles. it can be found at this url: http://condor.depaul.edilj-rrotenbe/aeer/ robert rotenberg, anthropology, depaul university, 990 w. fullerton ave, chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 773/325·7460; fax 773/325·4761; email: rrotenbe@depauledu. eva huseby-darvas (eeag), behavioral science dept,university ofmichigan, dearborn, mi 48128 email: evdarvas@umich.edu. barbara west, (eeag) university of the pacific, email: bwest@uop.edu nancy ries (soyuz), anthropology, colgate university, hamilton, ny 13346; email: nries@mail.colgate.edu. matti bunzl, (eeag), department of anthropology, university of illinois at urbana­ champaign, 1 09 davenport hall, 607 s. matthews, urbana, il 61801; email: bunzl@uiuc.edu. laszlo kllrti, (eeag), film editor, political science, university ofmisko1c, misko1c, h­ 3515, hungary; email: lkurti@helkajif.hu. © depaul university 2002 issn: 1054-4720 2002 dues are now due! please send in your dues if you have not already done so. the last year for which your dues were paid is provided on the mailing label. send a check made out to eeag to robert rotenberg at the address above. editor anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 1 editor sarah d. phillips guest editors hilary pilkington anton popov robert rotenberg, web editor contents editor’s notes………….……………………………………………………………………………….5 sarah d. phillips, indiana university call for papers……………………………………….……………………………………….....…….6 special issue: “cultural production and transmission of ethnic tolerance and prejudice” guest editors’ introduction: cultural production and transmission of ethnic tolerance and prejudice…….…………………………………………………….…….7 hilary pilkington and anton popov, university of warwick tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others…………………………………………………………………...……...……….22 jelena obradović, university of birmingham multi-ethnic society in georgia: a pre-condition for xenophobia or an arena for cultural dialogue?...................................................................................................................37 marina elbakidze, caucasus institute for peace, democracy and development both war and peace in the ‘country of the soul’: the young people of abkhazia on war, tradition, and independence…………………………..…...…...……51 guzel sabirova, ul’ianovsk state university xenophobic attitudes and new russian patriotism: a case study of youth in krasnodar territory………………………………………………………………………………69 elena omel’chenko and natal’ia goncharova, ul’ianovsk state university anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 2 the highs and lows of ethno-cultural diversity: young people’s experiences of chalga culture in bulgaria……………………………………...……......85 apostol apostolov, university of birmingham youth, media, and subculture in post-conflict societies…………....……..……….98 benjamin perasović, ivo pilar institute of social sciences book review stalinslav broucek and richard jerabek, eds., lidova kultura: narodopisna encyklopedie cech, moravy a slezska………………………………………………………...114 (zdenek salzmann, northern arizona university) cover photos by guzel sabirova photo 1: abkhazian mountain scene photo 2: lykhny, abkhazia. village monument for victims of the georgian-abkhazian war 1992-1993. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 3 please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($20/yr. for full-time faculty and professional, $10/yr. for students and part-time faculty; european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($20), or additional copies of a back issue ($20) to the managing editor or manage your subscription online at https://www.paypal.com/. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 4 the web page for the anthropology of east europe review/east european anthropology group contains a link to most of the previously published articles. it can be found at: http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/ editor-in-chief: sarah d. phillips, anthropology of east europe review, indiana university, department of anthropology, student building 130, 701 east kirkwood avenue, bloomington, in 47405, phone: +1-812-855-0216, fax: +1-812-855-4358, email: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com web editor: robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore avenue chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 312/325-7460; fax: 312/3257452; email: rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu. © indiana university 2008 issn: 1054-4720 http://las1.depaul.edu/aeer/� mailto:anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com� mailto:rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu� marina elbakidze, caucasus institute for peace, democracy and development microsoft word document2 editor’s notes: barbara a. west (university of the pacific) during the east europe subsection meeting during the aaas in washington dc last fall, somebody suggested that aeer should start focusing each issue on a particular theme. this is what i’ve tried to do in this issue. the theme this issue is the body. the inspiration for this theme came from the second meeting of the fifth regional seminar on gender and culture at central european university, budapest, in march 2002. i attended that seminar and, along with several authors in this issue, presented work that focused on east and central european bodies during some historical period. we would like to thank susan zimmerman, susan bandy, and jasmina lukic for all their help and support in organizing and putting on that seminar. in addition to the overarching theme of the body, several other threads tie some of these essays together. first, i wanted to highlight the voices of people from this region, even if their work is not anthropology, strictly speaking. so i’ve begun the issue with a series of short essays by a hungarian ethnographer about her own bodily experiences and the meanings attributed to these bodily experiences in her world. i thank sara kaiser for working so closely with this writer to bring us her material. in addition to this local ethnography, i have also included work from some of anthropology’s cognate disciplines in poland, serbia, the czech republic, and russia. in these analyses from polish drama, serbian art history, russian history, and czech and russian sociology, i found that many of the concerns addressed by anthropologists were likewise highlighted. for example, dorak explores the concept of gender as a performance both inside and outside the theatre, as well as the problem with the idea of ‘feminism’ in poland. cupic problematizes the concept of ‘orientalism’ in the serbian context in ways that inform not only her own work in art history, but also that of anybody interested in the representation of ‘serbianness’ in any context. gradskova’s work on gender equality in post-revolutionary russia, as she rightly addresses in her introduction and conclusion, is extremely important for setting the stage for us to understand contemporary relations between women and men, representation and experience, politics and domesticity in that country. finally, the sociological work from haskova and kalacheva also certainly fits into the general paradigm of work done currently by some anthropologists. the second set of themes i’ve identified amongst these papers allow me to group the papers into meaningful units of two or three papers. i begin the issue with three works (gera, belooussova, haskova) that explore childbirth and the relationship between bodies, technology, and medical authority during different time periods in hungary, russia, and the czech republic. the next group of three papers (harvey, dorak, gradskova) all explore some of the difficulties in both analyzing and even defining gender equality in the region. the next grouping of two papers (smith, gille) focus primarily on experiences of embodiment in postsocialist hungary, although smith also works comparatively with material from belarus. the two papers in the next group (kalacheva, west) look at the production of gender ideologies in women’s magazines in the postsocialist period in russia and hungary. finally, cupic’s paper seems to stand alone in this issue. yet, at the same time, her concern with deconstructing the accepted conceptualization of ‘orientalism’ is similar to harvey’s concern with establishing a definition of ‘womanism,’ belooussova’s concern with the concept of what is ‘natural’ in russia, and gille’s concern with ‘europe” as a meaningful term in hungary. all four papers seek to establish working definitions of western jargon that are more appropriate for the history, politics, and societies of east and central europe. finally, i want to announce here that anybody working on research concerned with food in east-central europe should keep aeer in mind. krista harper and i are editing a special issue on this topic next spring and would like to see work from as many different countries in the region, and as many time periods, as possible. please send your inquiries by february 1, 2003 to me at bwest@uop.edu or krista at kharper@anthro.umass.edu. we look forward to working with a large number of people working on food. jen typewritten text 3 sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 98 conference report anthropology of professions in russia: new and traditional occupations in changing russia: social anthropological approach saratov, russia september 29-30, 2005 pavel romanov saratov state technical university, saratov, russia the conference “anthropology of professions in russia: new and traditional occupations in changing russia: social anthropological approach” has taken place on the 29-30 september 2005 in saratov, russia. the conference was supported by the russian foundation for humanities and organized by the center of social policy and gender studies in collaboration with the research of professions network of esa, the department of social anthropology and social work at the saratov state technical university and russian sociological society. this event was a second forum on anthropology of professions, the first one has taken place a year ago in moscow, at the institute of sociology. the conference programme was consisted of as five sessions: “the main approaches in anthropology of professions”, “business and the local economies”, “medical systems and healing practices in contemporary society”, “anthropology of professions”, “professionalization of control and care”. thirty participants have discussed such issues as politics of professional identity, professionalization of work, institutionalization of new professions, power of professionals, everyday life of working place, rites and traditions, folklore, inside life of the communities of the professionals. president of russian sociological society and member of executive committee of esa dr.valery mansurov (institute of sociology, moscow) has greeted participants and talked about the contemporary trends in sociology of professions, he also presented a paper on medical professionals in today’s russia. dr.pavel romanov from the organizers of the conference presented a paper on the main principles and challenges of anthropological and ethnographical studies of professions, application of ethnographical methods in studying of contemporary russia’ society, labor relations in the working place, power and communication in everyday life practices of occupational groups. irina nazarova from european university at stpetersburg reported on superstitious rules in modern professions. several papers were devoted to healing practices in urban and rural contexts of contemporary russia. rural economies were discussed in the presentations by dr.aimar ventsel (estonian literature museum, tarty, estonia), dr.ilya shteinberg (centre “socium”, saratov, russia) and alexander manuilov (center for anthropological research, krasnodar, russia). dr.natalia pushkareva (institute of ethnology and anthropology, moscow) raised an issue of women’s career in academy. a special attention was paid to the issues of professionalization of social work and foster parenting, development of regional scientific communities. the papers based on ethnographical research were especially on interest of conference participants. history, subversion and low-intensity conflict in the soviet union. volume 21, number 2 history, subversion and low-intensity conflict in the soviet union.1 robert owen krikorian, harvard university © 2003 robert owen krikorian all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. during the last years of the soviet union, a lowintensity conflict erupted between armenians and azerbaijanis over the region of nagornokarabakh. the conflict began in february 1988, shortly after the armenian majority in nagornokarabakh called for unification with the armenian ssr. it escalated dramatically within weeks in the wake of the anti-armenian pogrom in sumgait, azerbaijan. from this time until the collapse of the soviet union in 1991, armenia and nagorno-karabakh were unofficially in an effective state of war against both baku and moscow. the massacre at sumgait, and subsequent pogroms in other azerbaijani cities, such as baku and kirovabad brought back to the armenians painful historical memories of genocide, massacre and deportation. these historical memories were then used to legitimize the formation of armenian volunteer units to defend karabagh. sumgait essentially nullified a tacit social contract between the armenian people and the soviet government, in which armenian loyalty to the soviet state was exchanged for soviet guarantees of the physical safety of armenians. this understanding was based on a reading of history formulated by the soviet state and articulated by soviet armenian intellectuals, in which russia/ussr appeared as the only credible force capable of preventing the destruction of the armenian people. after sumgait, the “grand narrative” of armenian history was reinterpreted by intellectuals, and increasingly by the population at large, which led to a fundamental rethinking of armenia’s position within the soviet union. both the social contract and the armed resistance that resulted from its nullification were conditioned in large measure by the instrumental use of armenian history. history and armed response one focal point of public discussion was the nineteenth century armenian liberation movement, which developed in both the ottoman and russian empires. the romanticized image of the nineteenth century liberation movement freedom fighter, known as a fedayee, was appropriated by those engaged in the current armed struggle.2 although the communist party was hesitant to promote symbols and images associated with a nationalist past in armenia, the image of the armenian freedom fighter did not carry an anti-soviet or anti-russian connotation, as did the image of the basmachi in central asia, and was allowed to uneasily coexist alongside more ideologically pure figures. instead, for armenian communists, the fedayee could be viewed as a symbol of a noble but unsuccessful revolt against turkish oppression. this could be ideologically reconciled with soviet power in armenia by arguing that the vision of a safe and secure armenia only came to fruition under the banner of communism. mention of national independence for armenia was conveniently missing from the soviet narrative. the formation of armed units of volunteers in armenia and karabagh in spring 1988 took place as a reaction to sumgait. as soon as people overcame their shock at the turn of events in azerbaijan, they became aware of the need to prevent future massacres. there was a feeling among many people that soviet central authorities were unwilling or unable to prevent violence against armenians and that the dangerous step of arming themselves was a better alternative than facing death at the hands of the azerbaijani turks. recalling past victimization and the lack of organized resistance during the 1915 genocide in the ottoman empire, armenians opted for selfdefense. one volunteer drew a direct connection between the 1915 genocide and the events in azerbaijan. he stated that when he was a child jen typewritten text 57 volume 21, number 2 and learned about the genocide, he promised himself that were an analogous situation ever to develop, he would be morally obliged to pick up arms to defend his people and prevent a repetition of history. to him, as well as many others, the pogrom in sumgait and atrocities elsewhere in azerbaijan were indeed analogous to the genocide perpetrated by the ottoman turks. in the beginning of this spontaneous mobilization, the armed groups that sprung up throughout armenia and nagorno-karabakh were unorganized, ill equipped, poorly trained, and illegal under soviet law. the nucleus of these units was the many armenian veterans of the soviet armed forces and particularly veterans of the war in afghanistan. although not tied together by any central command structure, they followed a fairly consistent pattern of development. a local leader would usually organize between ten and twenty of his friends and acquaintances into a unit, known as a jogat, or company. they would undergo rudimentary military training, if they had had none previously, before heading off to border regions of armenia and karabagh to protect the local civilian populations from attack. as the armed units were being formed in 1988, there was a simultaneous increase in the prominence of historical symbolism. banners, pins, buttons, audiocassettes of pre-soviet patriotic and revolutionary songs, and photographs of the turn-of-the-century armenian freedom fighters were produced and sold in abundance. the main venue for the sale and distribution of these items was the regular mass meetings that had been taking place since february 1988. these items appeared on the market quickly because they did not require either sophisticated technology to produce nor much intellectual effort. people with access to photo processing paper or those with access to local facilities, which manufactured the ubiquitous soviet pins and buttons, could produce thousands of copies of an item without too much difficulty. the appearance of such items seems to have been spontaneous and not part of any larger, preplanned agenda. whatever the provenance of these photographs and pins, the reproduction and distribution of paraphernalia with historical motifs was greeted with enthusiasm from the public and soon entered into wider distribution. photographs of fedayees were displayed in many homes and sales were particularly brisk at erevan state university. the fact that these items made their way into shops and stores owned and operated by the state could be an indication of the inability or unwillingness of the state to police its own employees, or of the existence of alternative networks of distribution; although most likely it was the result of a combination of these and other factors. literacy and resistance mass-circulation newspapers were an important vehicle for the transmission of information and ideas. among the new ideas being circulated throughout armenian society were those related to history and its impact on current developments. armenians traced many of the problems then confronting their country back to history, including but not limited to the karabagh conflict. for example, it was common knowledge among armenians that the borders of the armenian ssr were the result of the 1920 sovietization of armenia. what most soviet armenians had not learned in school, but seemed to know anyway, was that the sovietization of armenia was not the result of an expressed desire of the armenian working class to become communist as previously taught, but in fact was made possible through an alliance of bolsheviks and kemalist turks. this “revelation,” which historians in the diaspora had known about for years, led to questions regarding the legitimacy of soviet rule in armenia. articles on history appeared even in the most seemingly unlikely of newspapers, such as dzayn orinats‘[voice of law], the official organ of the armenian lawyers association. many of these articles were explicit as to the importance of learning from the lessons of the liberation movement. for example, in an article which appeared in dzayn orinats’ (28 november 1990)dedicated to the activities of a revolutionary intellectual and freedom fighter, the editor noted: “today, as the republic of armenia, under its own flag, moves towards free existence, we must bring forth from the fog of forgetfulness all those who lived and fought for free armenia.” even more explicit was the series of articles published in october 1989 in khorhrdayin hayastan [soviet armenia], entitled “life dedicated to the liberation of the fatherland,” which highlighted the activities of five prominent fedayees. the editor opened the jen typewritten text 58 volume 21, number 2 series by stressing the importance of the past. referring to the hamidian massacres of the 1890s and the resulting self-defense battles, he wrote, “the people continued the struggle for the right to exist. the fundamental strength of that struggle was the fedayees. each fact of their bright lives and of the struggle must become the property of us all, must aid in the work of providing patriotic education to the current generation.” this emphasis on the didactic use of historical knowledge would be stressed repeatedly by historians and non-historians alike as a tool to accomplish a shifting political agenda. initially, history was used to confront moscow and baku over karabagh, but eventually it turned into a tool for state building, as armenians gradually moved towards the reestablishment of an independent republic. within months of the beginning of the karabagh conflict, the press was running almost daily articles about the fedayees and the liberation movement. public interest in the liberation movement remained high throughout the 1988-1991 period and continued into the post-soviet period. many articles were factual, with little or no commentary, appearing to let history speak for itself. but the very act of publishing these articles was sending a powerful message of resistance that did not need commentary for soviet armenian readers. they were accustomed to reading between the lines and drawing their own conclusions without the help of the state or its appointed guardians. historians and the search for a usable past as time passed and soviet control over armenia continued to weaken, historians began to prepare monographs, as an up-surge in publishing historical literature related to the liberation movement took place. large print-runs of works on the liberation movement, featuring photographs of armed freedom fighters, were especially prized by volunteers and their supporters. the images of fedayees, sporting mustaches and beards, and equipped with bandoleers and rifles were used as models for the volunteers. historians began to argue that although the liberation movement ultimately proved unsuccessful, for reasons external more than internal to the movement, it nonetheless demonstrated that armenians could stand up for themselves and should do so again. this example of defiance of state authority was one that resonated among the volunteers. for example, according to historians the southern region of the country only remained within the borders of soviet armenia because of the military efforts of garegin nzhdeh, who resisted soviet and azerbaijani attempts to incorporate the region into soviet azerbaijan, sparing it the fate of nakhichevan and nagornokarabakh. the lesson drawn was one of defense for the preservation of armenian land, no matter the odds. history as validation intellectual and public criticism of soviet historians became more pronounced as the falsifications of soviet historiography were exposed, but the situation was complex, as there were few historians who had not made accommodations to the soviet state. even more complicated was the fact that just as historians had falsified history in the past, many of these same historians were denouncing the soviet system and engaging in revisionism. but in the confusing twilight days of soviet power in armenia, events moved quickly and opinions and attitudes shifted accordingly. the received tradition of the liberation movement provided a very strong sense of validation to those engaged in the armed struggle. long forgotten military and patriotic songs, some dating from the middle ages, were collected and published by the institute of archeology and ethnography of the armenian ssr academy of sciences, in the volume armenian popular military songs. the editor of this volume of songs argued: the praise and glorification of patriotic and gallant individuals is an artistic means of reflecting reality, which was widely practiced both in the old as well as in the new military songs. traditions have continued, and in each historical period have been reflected according to demand in each ethno-historical environment. the meaning behind this quote was evident to most readers. it was intended to demonstrate that the continuity of the armenian military tradition over many centuries was established through the medium of martial ballads, thus linking past and present in an unending continuum. jen typewritten text 59 volume 21, number 2 the soviet authorities in erevan, however, did not accept this historical revisionism, or rather the undoing of soviet revisionism, without a fight. from the beginning of the movement, until about mid-1990, when the communists were removed from power in armenia, operatives of the kgb would present themselves at the archives on a weekly basis, seeking information on researchers and their topics. they would photocopy the sign-in log and question the directors and their staffs at length about what each researcher was engaged in. they also warned the staffs not to allow people access to documents on the liberation movement, among other topics. initially, fear of state reprisals acted as a strong incentive for archive officials to accommodate the kgb, but gradually fear was replaced by disdain as political events of such unprecedented proportions overshadowed any potential threat emanating from the archives. the staffs of the archives eventually ignored these threats and provided access to researchers. a more routine and less ominous example was provided by the case of the abovementioned book on military songs. the text was heavily edited by the censor at the publishing house of the armenian academy of sciences. the censor emphasized in a secret report to the armenian communist party central committee’s section on scientific and educational institutions: in response to your question, we announce that after receiving at the publisher’s the book manuscript of “military songs of the armenian people,” edited by a. s. ghaziyan, it has been reviewed several times, and serious changes have been inserted into its structure, especially in the introductory article…the introductory essay was edited down, shortened and turned from 184 pages to 71 pages. the report continues, stating that “the analyses of songs dedicated to unit commanders dro, nzhdeh, gevorg chaush and others have been removed. in the notes of the book, primary sources on the publication of military songs during the soviet era were cited.” gradually, however, as private publishing houses were established and the state monopoly was broken, it grew easier to publish works independently and the censor was circumvented.i another way around the censor was the use of diaspora sources. at the beginning of the democratic movement in armenia, there were thousands of diaspora armenian students studying in educational institutions, mostly in erevan. these students were provided with a free education by the soviet government, and many armenians from places as far away as india, syria, lebanon, argentina, france and the us took advantage of this opportunity to live and study in their homeland. the students received a free education, while the soviet government was able to showcase the supposed achievements of socialism in soviet armenia. the intent was that these students would return to their countries of residence upon completion of their education and act as promoters of soviet interests in the diaspora. many of these students brought with them historical works banned in soviet armenia but readily available in the diaspora. they shared these items with their soviet armenian colleagues, and a brisk trade in books soon developed. fairly often, these works would find their way to the used bookstores of erevan, where historians and others without direct access to such material would immediately purchase them. one second-hand bookstore manager requested certain titles from me prior to a trip to the us in 1990, while many historian colleagues at erevan state university would compile lists of books that they had heard about but not actually seen. reissues of works long known in the armenian diaspora but banned in the homeland were also published. most prominent was hay heghapokhakani mĕ hishataknerĕ, the multivolume memoirs of ruben ter-minasyan, a legendary fighter and prolific author, who was responsible for many of the operations that took place on the disputed territory of nakhichevan during the period of the first independent republic (1918-1920). they were published without added editorial content, allowing the words of ruben to speak for themselves: those names which i have remembered and those which i have forgotten represent that generation, with its sacrifice, its revolutionary fervor, its moral rectitude, which was born only once in our lifetime and which the world did not see a second time. jen typewritten text 60 volume 21, number 2 these memoirs provided examples of the fedayee ethos, spanning many decades from the 1890s until the 1920s; of particular interest was his description of the duties and responsibilities of a freedom fighter. ruben pasha’s activities in the armenian liberation movement were frequently cited by activists as examples to be emulated in the current struggle. the volunteers identified with the fedayees and used them as models, both inwardly in terms of the ideals of the fedayees, and outwardly in terms of appearance and public persona. some of the fighters themselves adopted the noms de guerre of famous fedayees, while many others swore an oath to defend their land until death, thus emulating the turn of the century slogan of the fedayees, “freedom or death.” throughout the 1988-1991 period, the volunteer movement grew from a collection of disparate and uncoordinated units, each pursuing whatever course it thought best, into a more cohesive and disciplined nucleus of the future national army. these illegal armed formations had grown into powerful symbols of popular resistance and were viewed by the population as the only real guarantor of armenian physical inviolability. part of the success in transforming these companies into proper military units was due to their sense of professional and national responsibility. in turn, this responsibility was based on an understanding and appreciation of their received history, which initially was passed on orally from generation to generation during the soviet period, and later, through the efforts of historians and other intellectuals. the lessons of history that were passed on to the volunteers were that without their sacrifice, the future of the armenian nation could not be assured. there were numerous historical precedents to justify such attitudes, and almost every volunteer had heard stories from the genocide about how the armenian male population was drafted into the ottoman army and then disarmed, leaving the women, children and elderly without the means of self-defense. a particular perception of history, especially modern armenian history, led large segments of the armenian population of the armenian ssr and the nagorno-karabakh autonomous region to collectively conclude after the massacre at sumgait that armed struggle was a necessary action to prevent the repetition of deportation and massacre. some observers have argued that it would have been impossible for the armenians to defeat the azerbaijanis without outside assistance, but this does not take into account certain intangible aspects such as motivation. one of the reasons for armenian battlefield victories in the nagorno-karabakh conflict was the higher level of morale and motivation among the armenian troops. the esprit de corps among those engaged in armed struggle was due in part to their conviction that they were pursuing a just cause, legitimized by armenian history. historical memory of relations with turks and azerbaijanis led them to conclude that taking up arms was an alternative to the repetition of a history, which included deportation, massacre and genocide. historical memory of the armenian liberation movement served another, possibly more important, purpose. the liberation movement symbolized armenian self-reliance. it was one of the first instances in the modern history of the armenians of relying on their own resources and not waiting for outside intervention to alleviate their situation. although it had ended in defeat, it nonetheless was held responsible for saving countless armenian lives and preventing the destruction of the entire nation during the genocide. this historical lesson of self-reliance was applied in the case of nagorno-karabakh, and resulted in an armed resistance movement that contributed to the overthrow of soviet power in armenia. although soviet power was removed from armenia through the democratic practice of free elections, nonetheless, the presence of armed volunteers ready to protect the armenians’ newly won freedoms acted as a powerful symbolic force. the volunteers also served to delegitimize soviet power in armenia. the fact that the armenian population found it necessary to defend themselves in the absence of credible protection from their own soviet government struck a heavily blow at the credibility of the regime. this credibility was even further undermined by the unwillingness or inability of the soviet government to prevent the formation of such units. the success of these units further enhanced their image among the population, with a corresponding decrease in respect for the power of the central government. the justification of armenian inclusion in the soviet union, namely physical jen typewritten text 61 volume 21, number 2 inviolability, was shattered by the events in sumgait, baku and elsewhere. with the decision to take up arms and organize self-defense units came the re-appraisal of armenia’s place in the soviet union. memories of an oppressive ottoman regime, which armed and trained kurdish bandits, who then attacked armenians, were easily revived and applied to the current situation. the soviet regime in armenia never recovered its legitimacy, and as discussion continued unabated, the inexorable process of de-sovietization, even while armenia was still technically part of the soviet union, moved ahead. references arshakyan, andranik. 1993. mah chimatsyal` mah mah imatsyal` anmahut‘yun [unconscious death is merely death, conscious death is immortality]. erevan. bayburdyan, v. 1989. hay-k‘rdakan haraberut’yunnere osmanyan kaysrut’yunum [armenian-kurdish relations in the ottoman empire]. erevan: hayastan. dashtents, khachik. 1984. ranchparneri kanchĕ [call of tillers of the soil]. erevan: sovetakan grogh. gevorkean, vardan. 1991. lernahayastani herosamardĕ (1919-1921) [the heroic battle of mountainous armenia (19191921)]. erevan: azat khosk. gevorkyan, h. 1991. dro: kensagrakan husher vkayut‘yunner [biographical memoirs and testimonies]. erevan: azat khosk. ghaziyan, a. ed. 1989. hay zhoghovrdakan razmi ev zinvori erger [armenian popular military songs]. erevan: khsh ga hr. hambaryan, a. 1990. 1915 t‘. arevmtahayeri kotoratsnerĕ ev ink‘napashtpanakan marterĕ [the massacres and selfdefense battles of the western armenians in 1915]. erevan: gitelik‘. ------. 1999. azatagrakan sharzhumnerĕ arevmtyan hayastanum (1898-1908 t‘. t‘.) [liberation movements in western armenia (1898-1908)]. erevan: gaa. 1990. hay kamavorner [armenian volunteers]. erevan: arevik. hovakimyan, vagharshak. 1988. dzhvarin tariner [painful years]. erevan: hayastan. hovannisyan, gh. 1987. sasunĕ bots‘eri mej (1915-1916) [sasun in flames (19151916)]. erevan: hayastan. ishkhanyan, r. 1991. bats‘arman orenk‘ĕ errord uzhi: hodvatsner [the law of excluding the third force]. erevan: azat khosk. kostandyan, emma. 2000. mkrtich khrimyan: hasaakan-k‘aghak‘akan gortsuneut‘yunĕ [mkrtich khrimyan: social-political activities]. erevan. lazean, gabriel. 1991. hayastan ev hay datĕ: hayevrus haraberut’yunneru luysin tak [armenia and the armenian cause: in light of armeno-russian relations]. erevan: adana. manukyan, aram. 1990. husher [memoirs]. erevan: arevelk. movsesova, irina and aida hovnanyan. 1992. bak‘vi jarderĕ: pashtonakan p‘astat‘ght‘er, akanatesneri vkayut‘yunner ev ayl nyut‘er 1990 t‘. hunvari 13-19-i ōghbergakan iradardzut‘yunneri veraberyalanhrazhesht meknabanut‘yunnerov [the baku massacres: official documents, eyewitness testimony and other materials relating to the tragic events of january 13-19, 1990 with essential commentary]. erevan: narekatsi. poghosyan, h., ed. 1990. van-vaspurakani herosamartĕ 75 [the heroic battle of van vaspurakan 75]. erevan: hayastan. poghosyan, stepan. 1990. pant‘uizmĕ erek ev aysor [pan-turkism yesterday and today]. erevan.-----. 1990. indz bah tvek‘ [give me a shovel]. erevan: nb-press, 1990. ruben, 1990. hay heghapokhakani mĕ hishataknerĕ [the memoirs of an armenian revolutionary]. erevan: adana. jen typewritten text 62 volume 21, number 2 sahakyan, ruben. 1964. soveta-t‘urk‘akan haraberut‘yunneri patmut‘yan hakagitakan lusabanumě zhamanakakits‘ t‘urk‘ patmagrut‘yan mej [the anti-scientific explanation of the history of soviet-turkish relations in contemporary turkish historiography]. erevan endnotes. 1. this essay is part of a larger project entitled “the re-appropriation of the past: history and politics in soviet armenia, 19881991,” which explores the role of historical narratives in the de-legitimization of soviet power in armenia during glastnost. it is based on extensive fieldwork as well as archival research and interviews. 2. the world fedayee is derived from the turkish/persian, and means one who sacrifices himself for a cause, and contains overtones of devotion and dedication. 3. tatevosyan, editor of garun, claimed that the armenian censor would often work with him so that articles would be acceptable for publication. he often had meetings with the censor in order to ascertain what degree of change would be required for an important article to be printed. jen typewritten text 63 christmas foodways and ritual in northern germany: distinctions east and west of the former border volume 21, number 1 christmas foodways and ritual in northern germany: distinctions east and west of the former border susan mazur-stommen, california polytechnic/pomona © 2003 susan mazur-stommen all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. geographically close, but separated by forty-five years of political difference, the regions of northern germany bordering the baltic give evidence of how rapidly discontinuities in traditional foodways can appear within a generation or two. having lived for over a year near hamburg during the 1980s as an exchange student, and later, for a year in the eastern area as a fulbright recipient in rostock, i am in the position to be able to compare christmas foods and rituals on both sides of the former wall, before and after 1989. in this essay, i focus on the food and beverages prepared and served between christmas eve (heiligabend) and new year’s eve (silvester) in this region, drawing on field notes, memory, personal photos, and my collection of german language cookbooks from either side of the wall. moving from west to east, and forward in time from 1984 to 2000, i will start with my favorite tradition of northern germany, the serving of bockwurst und kartoffelsalat as the daytime meal on christmas eve. this is one i have adapted for my own family, to the dismay of my cologne-born and bred husband, who (half-jokingly he claims) calls it “lazy.” christmas eve in contemporary germany is one of the liveliest days during the season, and yet, due to its semi-secular nature, (shops are open half-day); there is work to do before society shuts down for the remainder of the holiday. homemakers, preparing for the evening’s big meal and bescherung (present-giving) are only too happy to dish up such an easy meal. in addition, the simplicity of sausage and potatoes marks a conscious break from the more elaborate meals to follow. of interest to the casual observer, christmas eve, regarded as the most important day of the season by many germans, is also a day when their rules of hospitality are at their most relaxed. in contrast to the united states, where much of the holiday season is celebrated with work-related parties and large get-togethers of relative strangers, germans tend to withdraw into the circle of family and close friends at this time, especially in the former gdr.1 christmas eve, then, is a time for last gatherings in kneipen (pubs) with friends after the main meal has been consumed (the younger generation especially). following this night out, the holiday spirit descends with hushing solemnity, and most non-family activities are suspended for a week. the main meal of christmas eve provides one of our first points of departure between west and east. in the west, three holiday meals can be comfortably interchanged on the high moments of christmas day and new year’s: 1. roast goose with red cabbage (rotkohl) and potato dumplings (knoedel in the south, kloesse in the north). generally, the goose is stuffed with vegetables rather than the bread stuffing more familiar to americans.2 east germans of my acquaintance were simultaneously horrified and fascinated at the thought of dampened bread crumbs forced into the inner cavity of poultry and then consumed. 2. “blue” carp, poached in vinegar and served with horseradish and sweet whipped cream, boiled salt potatoes garnished with parsley, and butter. carp is popular across germany, but blue carp seems to be limited to the north. the town of reinfeld, where i lived in 1984, had a functioning carp pond that was part of a former abbey dating to the early middle ages – when a craze for carp farming swept central and eastern europe. reinfeld was the heart of ‘carp country’ and people came from miles around for the fish. 3. raclette – a swiss import, like a mixed grill (see photo below). an alternative to fondue, found more often further south. jen typewritten text 27 volume21, number 1 raclette is a semi-hard cheese3 that is sliced and then melted over sliced, boiled potatoes, cured meats (ham, salami, and prosciutto) in the little grill by using small spatulas. the concoction is then scraped out with the scraper, and garnished with pickles, tomatoes, and onions, as well as sauces. the name raclette both applies to the apparatus and the method. the origin myth of raclette is that swiss goatherds would melt their cheese on hot stones and then scrape it off. in the west, any of these meals can be served on any day, with some preference for goose on christmas eve, and carp or raclette for new year’s eve.4 in contrast, east germany does not appear to have this triad of meals, but switched from roast goose to roast duck in the main christmas day meal. perhaps this reflects more trying economic circumstances, or possibly a polish influence. however, it could also be a traditional preference -prior to world war ii, mecklenburg and pomerania were famous for the quality of the poultry, and an old mecklenburg cookbook shows five duck entrees and only four goose recipes.5 another deviation between east and west has been in the popularity of the feuerzangen-bowle. like most of europe, there is a tradition of hot wine drunk in winter (glogg in scandinavia, gluhwein in germany, mulled wine in the united kingdom), and a popular variant on this involves a copper kettle, red wine, spirits, citrus fruit, and sugar all set ablaze to celebrate the new year. one set of instructions for its preparation reads: to prepare a feuerzangenbowle you need red wine, rum, oranges or orange juice, lemons or lemon juice, cinnamon and cloves. variations are naturally possible. add the juice of the lemons and oranges to the red wine in the kettle – then add spices. heat the mixture, but not to boiling. as an alternative, peels can be used instead of juice, and then removed after heating. now comes the exciting moment – balanced over the kettle on a pair of fireplace tongs (feuerzangen) is the zuckerhut (a cone of hard packed sugar approximately 7” high). high proof rum is poured over the sugar. all lights in the room should be dimmed to provide the appropriate atmosphere. then the rum-soaked sugar is set alight. the flames leap up and the sugar drips into the spiced wine. continue adding hot run until the sugar cone is fully melted. (www.silvestergruesse.de, my translation) another website gives more precise measurements (for those who wish to try this at home): "for eight people” four bottles of dry red wine one bottle of rum (54%) two whole lemons and oranges per person three cinnamon sticks 3-4 whole cloves 1 250 gm zuckerhut this tradition is connected with the book of the same name by alexander spoerl, later made into a beloved film in 1944 starring heinz rühmann.6 according to my husband, feuerzangenbowle in the west has been left to the province of elderly celebrants and burschenschaften (student fraternities with mainly conservative-toreactionary political views), but in the east it is a hip activity among the younger generation, similar to the recent ironic consumption of fondue in the united states. overall, differences in holiday food preparation and ritual between east and west in northern germany can be summed up as follows: 1. ritual – the eastern half has only one ‘traditional’ meal that all of my informants recognized as appropriate to christmas. this is in opposition to the west where there were four distinct menus that could fall on any of three separate days. the eastern half experienced regular shortages with respect to basic food items like meat, much less exotic or imported items, thus they are less likely to have incorporated them into extravagant, multi-course dinners as emphasized by max inzinger (germany’s most famous television chef). additionally, they would have less of a need to contrast such high occasion feasting with the conscious consumption of simpler food, like bockwurst und kartoffelsalat. 2. public versus private much has been made of the gdr ‘niche’ society, wherein members withdrew to safe spaces, away from the intrusive gaze of public authority. this trend is also seen jen typewritten text 28 volume21, number 1 in the greater focus on family in the east. while citizens of both halves of germany typically celebrate within the family circle to a (possibly) greater degree than in the united states, the western half, with greater personal autonomy and anonymity, produces more articulated sets of relations. thus, we also see a more complicated negotiation of public versus private relationships in western germany. 3. variety due to the lack of foreign currency, the exigencies of the centralized, planned economy, and the ideology of the german democratic republic, there was less trade in food items, less borrowing from other cuisines, and resistance to new ‘memes’ in food (such as nouvelle cuisine). many differences in tradition are due to experiences marked by geopolitical differences during the cold war – with the western side borrowing from the south (switzerland, austria, and bavaria) and the eastern side borrowing from warsaw pact neighbors, particularly poland. linguistic inventions for food items also support this assertion one example of this being the adoption of the term grillete for ‘hamburger’ that in the cold war period had american overtones. in addition, many people in the east remain unfamiliar with new world food items a decade after unification. avocados go unused, though they are for sale in the supermarkets. one informant, having been given an avocado, told me later she “didn’t know how to eat it, or what it is for, so i bit right into it.” corn is treated as a garnish on pizza and salads, acting as one of sidney mintz’s “fringe” items, rather than as the “core” item as elsewhere. some elderly germans associate it with pig food, and being forced to eat it during the war. chilies are unknown, and the spiciest pepper one is likely to encounter is the bell pepper (often mistakenly used to give a ‘mexican’ flavor to food, which cumin would do much better). tomatoes are grown, eaten, and appreciated, but haven't entered german vernacular cooking to the same degree as they have other european cuisines. three exceptions to the lack of familiarity with new world foods are potatoes, kurbisse (pumpkin), and turkeys -puten (hen) and truthahn (tom). potatoes are, of course, the defining german beilage, or ‘side dish.’ turkeys are not common as whole birds, but are available by ordering them through the local butcher. as for pumpkin, it is occasionally pureed and served in a soup with speck, or bacon, sprinkled on top (and more rarely served as a roast vegetable); but i have glimpsed a tantalizing lead as to the origins of classic american pumpkin pie. it may have originated as a pastry for the duke of brandenburg’s wedding in the late 16th century, an event of high glamour and fame, that may have well been encountered by the puritans in holland and then brought to the new world where it vanished from european tables for centuries. pastries made from pumpkin, squash, or sweet potato (common variants in the united states) are not present in contemporary german baking, however. the long shadow of feudalism, that lay over northeastern europe on into the twentieth century, and the centralized economies that followed it, were macro-regional factors that stymied the expansion of new world food items into the area far longer than was the case elsewhere in europe. i believe that residents of the former german democratic republic have not yet completed their encounter with the ‘second agricultural revolution.’ notes 1 extravagant office parties were just making their presence known in hamburg 1999-2000. a media center, and hub of german ‘new industry.’ it is doubtful that they have continued to penetrate the consciousness of the average german in the wake of the technology sector’s collapse in march of 2000. 2 die gute deutsche kueche, max inzinger, who even offers a christmas menu with both goose and carp. 3 available in some parts of the united states at trader joe’s, an aldi subsidiary. 4 the publisher of the website www.silvestergruesse.de suggests that “for new year’s poultry is off the menu due to the old folk belief that its wings will make luck fly away before the new year!” 5 mecklenburgische kochbuch, originally published in 1868 and reissued in facsimile 1981 by the veb hirstorff verlag rostock. 6 one website suggests that the film is a fascistic homage, and that “public viewing of the film should be stopped” (www.cityinfonetz.de/tagblatt/kino/themen/bowl e.php). jen typewritten text 29 some notes on socialism and postsocialism: voices from within theodora eliza văcărescu university of bucharest, bucharest © 2004 theodora eliza văcărescu all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. [l]ike postcolonial studies, the orientation i am advocating would give voice to the ‘natives’ [my emphasis] as analysts of their own condition. although it is not clear who would be the franz fanon of this corpus, his or her forerunners surely include the east european dissidents and other scholars people like rudolph bahro, pavel câmpeanu, györgy konrád, jános kornai, istván rév, jadwiga staniszkis and iván szelény whose writing spurred us to seek an understanding of socialism different from that offered by cold war categories, even if we now perceive deficiencies in their view of it. yet for both postsocialist and postcolonial studies, as anthropologists we ought to [my emphasis] insist on broadening the category of ‘native’ to incorporate the understandings of people who have less privileged positions in their societies than do those i have just mentioned. (katherine verdery, 2002: 20) we are living in romania, and this is taking almost all of our time. (contemporary romanian saying) introduction although i had a strong feeling of orientalization when i first came across the passage i placed as an opening to my paper, i later realized that, beside the many things with which i would deeply disagree, there is one important thing verdery points out very appropriately: the idea that the voices of the people (those not speaking from the ‘privileged positions’ that verdery mentions) who have been living and still live in postsocialism should be more often heard. my position is quite different from that of verdery’s. i am a ‘native,’ in this respect, and my ‘situatedness,’ although not assigning me an objective voice, seems to follow the orientation that verdery advocates. there has been a lot written on post-socialism in central and eastern europe. this topic has been dealt with inside-out; one may almost have the feeling that there is nothing more to talk about. both ‘western’ and ‘eastern’1 scholars have studied post-socialism from many vantage points: economically, socially, politically, culturally, etc. monographs and ethnographies of the central and eastern european countries have been undertaken. debates over the ‘right,’ or objective ‘voice’ in these studies and experiences emerged. as a ‘native’ (whatever this might amount to), i believe that the experience of post-socialism should also be considered from the point of view of the people who have lived these almost fifteen years in post-socialism. what is their lived experience? what is their vocabulary vis-à-vis post-socialism, or whatever they call this? how do they relate to 1 since there are significant problems when categorizing the world into the west and the east, for these are not mere geographical areas, but much more complex cultural, historical, religious, and even economic constructs, i will, for this paper, use inverted commas for both terms and their derivatives. jen typewritten text 84 this period? how do they understand postsocialism? i recently had the chance to meet and have lengthy discussions with several post-socialist and post-colonialist researchers from the ‘east’ and from the ‘west.’ and during one such discussion, i realized that what lacked was a ‘view from within.’ what does 1989 mean for large mass of the romanian people?2 what is their discourse about the events of december 1989? how do they relate to these events? do they identify with the ‘revolution’ – capital r? how do they perceive and re-present their lives during the communist regime (both represent and represent, as a way of retelling and reinterpreting the communist period through the lens of the decade that elapsed since the fall of communism)? how do they understand and relate to the official discourse of the ‘transition’ and democracy? how do they see their lives and the lives of their children in the newly established democracy? for my study i used oral history interviews3 with elderly people living in romania. most of the interviewees were born and raised before world war ii, witnessed the changes brought about by the end of the war and the installation of communism, lived most of their lives in the communist period, witnessed yet other changes in december 1989, from communism to an alleged democracy, and are living now in the so-called ‘transition.’4 the 2 i do not mean to essentialize, there is no such thing as “romanians,” but basing my study on oral-history, i might hint at some realities characteristic to the romanian people. 3 the interviews had been undertaken by the students of the university of bucharest in the period 2001-2003 for a course in structures of communication. the course is held by professor zoltán rostás, ph.d., and aims at building an oral history archive on several topics. 4 i agree with katherine verdery (1996), michal buchowski (2001 and 2004) and others with respect to the excessive use of the term ‘transition’ for describing the passing of the post-socialism countries to something that no one can actually say what it is, since the conviction that the anticipated capitalism, market economy, and democracy may interviewees come from different social strata, different educational backgrounds, and different regions of romania; they are both women and men and had a wide range of occupations. thus, their views on communism and post-communism are different, but there can be found several themes common to most of them. chronologically, the three most important themes that emerged from the interviews are: the communist period filtered through the experience of the fifteen years of ‘transition,’ the ‘revolution’ – capital r and the way ‘ordinary’ people perceive and relate to it, and the post-communist period labeled ‘transition’ by virtually all the interviewees.5 the communist period revisited based on the interviews, and not claiming universality, romanians’ view and relationship with the communist period are mixed and not clearly defined. on the one hand, following the surface level of the official discourse and especially the anticommunist discourse of the early 1990’s, they reject and demonize communism. on the other hand, in the interviews, they gradually come back to it, at a more personal level and they start making comparisons with their own lives ‘before’ and ‘after’ and their rejection starts losing its initial vehemence. the theme that emerged very strongly from the interviews is one of the disaster brought about by the installation of communism. this theme appears in virtually all the interviews and is related to the way in which communism (often described as a russian invasion and emphasized as such) destroyed people’s lives by confiscating properties and land, eliminating undesirable individuals from prove to be mistaken. i therefore consider ‘transformation’ a better choice. 5 i use ‘communism’/ ‘communist’ and ‘postcommunism’/ ‘post-communist’ because the other term, ‘socialism’/ ‘socialist,’ and ‘post-socialism’/ ‘post-socialist’ commonly used in the ‘western’ discourse is virtually absent from the romanian public and private discourses. the interviewees never used the latter, but they heavily used the former. jen typewritten text 85 educational institutions (high-schools, universities etc.), and from public offices, and the lack or shortage of basic products and services. what is very interesting with respect to the most important discontents of the interviewees is the fact that censorship and the prohibition of free speech do not appear as salient dissatisfactions. this can, of course, be explained by the fact that people under communism developed strategies of survival, i.e. learnt how to comply with the system and only those issues that constituted a direct threat to their lives were considered salient and thus were remembered. collectivization, as a hugely traumatic experience, is present in all interviews with people who lived at that time in the countryside. the extremely tormenting nature of this act is underlined also by the fact that the interviewees were actually children at that time and collectivization was something that affected more their parents and families and only indirectly themselves. however, their memory of collectivization is very strong and the story of the way communism took their land and other related properties (domestic animals, utensils, etc.) occupies a great part in the economy of the interviews. the general feeling towards collectivization, shared by virtually all the respondents, is one of anger and helplessness. they could not understand why they and their families had to renounce their land and properties, why they had to suffer and endure terrible hardships in order to keep their properties a little longer, why they were persecuted for protecting their families. the collectivization was the greatest evil done by the communists. to take away one’s life long earnings? to share your possessions with all the lazy and the poor? why was i guilty that my father worked hard and bought land? sheer luck that he had died four years before and he hadn’t lived to see this! […] i was crying over his bed and he encouraged me: ‘don’t cry, marin, i am not going to die now. when i die, stalin will die too!’ and stalin did die the same night. i was crying for my father’s death and i was happy stalin died […] they [the communists] took everything from us in ’59. land, cattle, tools, they took it all. they left us poor. they took our land up to the entrance of the house. whom to complain to? who would listen? when i heard that they were coming with the registrations for joining the collective, i left for the woods. i was in hiding for two months in the woods, until the militia [the communist police] caught us and made us sign. they beat us, they threatened they would make us rot in jail if we opposed the communist party. (interview with ion antonescu [85 years] in zoltán rostás and sorin stoica, 2003: 284-285) when the germans left, the russians came and the communist era started and the collectivization started and they [the parents] did not want to enter the collective. and for six or seven years they had to comply with the quotas, with many terrible hardships… they had to pay for the land they owned – grains, money… but they resisted as much as they could, hoping that things would work out and they would keep the property. but finally they had to give up the land and to enter the collective and there was nothing left of the land. they didn’t have a yard anymore, all that was left was the house… but they preferred to do this when they did not have a choice anymore, and because they refused to enter the collective from the very beginning, they were kicked out of the education system. and they spent eight years without a salary, without any means of supporting themselves. then they gave in, in order to be reintegrated into education. (interview with silvia nedelea [77 years] in zoltán rostás and theodora-eliza văcărescu, 2005) jen typewritten text 86 and then, when they [the parents of the interviewee] left, the communists demolished their house and took their land […] in ‘47-’48, after the elections, the communists came to explain and convince the peasants to enter the collective. they made them pay quotas and if you couldn’t pay, the quotas added up and you were automatically forced to enter the collective. if you had a pig you had to pay, and it was the same with everything, with the vineyard, for example. if you had a cow, you had to pay a quota of milk, the same with the pig and if you couldn’t pay, because the quotas were very high, you would lose the cow or the pig. (interview with victoria mateuţ [72 years] in rostás and stoica, 2003: 215-218) the communist regime considered a wide range of people as ‘undesirable individuals.’ these were, of course, the former leading class (members of the parties that were in power before communism, public and military officials, western european and american embassies’ personnel, etc.) and the people who opposed the regime (this meant anything from direct opposition to refusing to enter the collective) and their relatives and families. however, beside these people, many other categories of people who were less visibly disturbing to the regime fell under the stigma ‘undesirable and dangerous:’ intellectuals, people who owned private businesses, farmers who owned land. these people, besides being dispossessed (land and houses, including animals, furniture, books, etc.), had to suffer from expulsion from schools, universities, and working places (for a more detailed study, see an analysis of ‘the second circle of suffering’ in theodora-eliza văcărescu, 2003: 7-45). my husband had many problems because he was not a party member. when they had reorganizations of personnel,6 they used to fire him 6 in romanian ‘restructurări,’ meaning dismissing personnel. according to a certain article, but then they would hire him back, according to another article, because my husband was highly appreciated and they needed capable people as well. it was more difficult for me, because once they fired me because of my background [the respondent’s parents were schoolteachers – who were considered intellectuals –, thus she did not have the required ‘healthy’ origin], i did not have the courage to go back for a few months, even years… (interview with silvia nedelea in rostás and văcărescu, 2005) the difficulties of living under communism consisted also in the continuous lack of basic products and services: food, electricity, and heating were scarce and often rationed. however, even if this topic is one of the most widely known facts of life under communism, it was surprising to find that it was not among the first things the interviewees mentioned about life in communism. as it is natural to assume, people developed surviving strategies in this respect as well, they learnt how to live with these shortages and to find other ways of procuring the necessary means for survival (this is referred to in some studies as the ‘second’ or ‘unofficial economy’ – nancy ries, 1997; caroline humphrey, 2002). this does not necessarily mean that they ‘collaborated’ with the system (in this sense, all the romanians who survived communism can be said to have collaborated with the system), but only that they managed to trick the system and to obtain what they needed. this fact is also reflected in the discourse; the complex set of relations and means whereby people managed to satisfy their basic needs was very well summed up by only one verb – ‘a se descurca’ (approximately ‘to manage,’ or rather ‘to manage to survive’), used very often as an answer to the question ‘how are you’ instead of the common ‘i am fine.’ it is still used, but it also acquired a negative connotation, related to the ‘not-so-legal’ and based on ‘relations’ grounds, rather than on an open, right, and fair way of succeeding in life. jen typewritten text 87 we used to stay in lines for hours for a morsel of food, weighed for every gram, proportionally with the number of people in the family. we used to go back home with only one kilo, or three quarters or even half a kilo of bread […] i used to calculate how much money per day i could spend, so that it would last the whole week. i used to go to the market with only 10 lei and to buy half a kilo of tomatoes, or a kilo of potatoes or one cabbage. still, we didn’t starve to death! i remember that, in order to have heating over the winter, an uncle from my husband’s side once brought us a carriage of wood from somewhere and i used to make the fire weighing the wood, in order to last more. (interview with silvia nedelea in rostás and văcărescu, 2005) the revolution the revolution appears in the interviews as a corner stone, many things are weighed against it, people refer to the events of their private lives in relation to the revolution, they often say “after the revolution” even when the things they talk about have nothing to do with the change of the system. however, it is interesting to notice that the correspondent “before the revolution” is far less used, instead they use “during the time of ceauşescu” or “during communism.” this aspect is actually extremely telling for the entire mythology built around the revolution, a mythology rooted more in the public and official discourse than in the actual lives and experiences of the romanian people. commonly referred to as ‘the revolution of december 1989’ or ‘the overthrow of the communist regime,’ or, more recently, ‘the events of december 1989,’ the revolution was experienced in different ways by romanians. although the public discourse constructed it as an outcome of the wish of the people, as a sudden breakthrough in which all romanians took part, if not actively, at least at the level of belief and hope, more than a decade after the revolution, many romanians seem rather weary with respect to the supposedly popular movement of december 1989. the revolution itself is thus minimized and its outcome is weighed against their own wellbeing before and after. the first thing that the respondents mentioned when they were asked about their opinion of the revolution is the reference to the killing of the ceauşescu couple. the revolution itself is defined by the act of the murder of the two dictators, who were considered the symbol of the communist regime. moreover, the fact that the killing of ceauşescu became a symbol of the revolution and even a symbol of ‘democratic’ romania, is also reflected in the language. many interviewees refer to ceauşescu by the word ‘împuşcatul’ (‘the shot-one’) as in ‘during the time of the shotone,’ instead of ‘during the time of ceauşescu.’ however, virtually all the interviewees disagree with the decision to kill the two dictators, but they do this for different reasons. some simply consider it a barbaric act that should not have taken place, especially around christmas; others think ceauşescu was not guilty of anything, they even regret losing him and the things they gained during his rule. i wouldn’t want to talk to you about how it was, about what happened during those days of the last decade of december and the first days of january 1990. my consciousness as a christian is burdened with the shooting of the two in the christmas day and it is very clear to me that i have no reason to regret the fall of communism. i regret, though, that it took blood on asphalt, because – without being a convinced conservative, or educated in the conservative spirit – we wallowed in the “honey” of ovations while the berlin wall was falling! we were the last ones and we remained – in a wrongly conceived transition – tributary to communist teachings. (interview with oltea suceveanu [67 years] in rostás and văcărescu) during the revolution i was here, in mangalia. i heard from time to time jen typewritten text 88 loud shouting and booing, but there was no big deal here. some went to bucharest. some who died were innocent, some were guilty. the same with ceauşescu. he was not that bad. he gave us an apartment, he gave us a gas cylinder, he gave us everything we needed. but he did not have faith. if he had had faith, he would have still been alive. (interview with elena brehoiescu [65 years] in rostás and văcărescu, 2005) for many romanians the revolution – capital r was something that went on very close and, at the same time, far from them, they knew about what was going on, but it was not something they directly participated in, in many instances not even at the level of a common consciousness. the public discourse constructed a ‘tv revolution,’ a ‘live revolution’ and a people of ‘couchrevolutionaries,’ a people that participated in the revolution in front of the tv sets from their homes. i went to these friends of ours and i told them that doru [her husband] was not at home, that i didn’t know what was going on, what to do. and they told me: ‘don’t go anywhere, don’t worry. look, on the tv they said it’s a revolution.’ ceauşescu was talking and then they started to shoot. and i said: ‘i have to get some bread, because doru will get home and he will be hungry.’ i went out. i run into doru and then we both stayed home until ceauşescu left, and then we went out to see what was happening on this side by the scala cafeteria. doru said we should go back, but i wanted to go on the other side, at patria, to see what was going on there […] then we came home and we heard gunshots. i called doru who told me to get under the table immediately. they were firing from somewhere very close. the electricity went off and i was terribly scared. in about one hour doru calmed me down and told me to continue to bake the cake. we watched television the entire night, day and night. (interview with elena ionescu [84 years] in rostás and văcărescu, 2005) post-communism and ‘transition’ the predominant feeling expressed by the respondents with respect to the last fifteen years is disappointment and angriness. following the official discourse, they describe the period of time they are living in with such words as ‘transition,’ ‘democracy,’ ‘capitalism,’ ‘freedom,’ but all these concepts are two-layered. on the first level they can be interpreted as positive aspects of the postcommunist period, but, at the second level of meaning, they are all used in a negative and critical way. thus, ‘transition’ is a period of instability and chaos, ‘democracy’ and ‘capitalism’ are ‘western’ imports that cannot function in the romanian landscape, ‘freedom’ is understood in the sense that everybody can do whatever they want, without any sense of responsibility and care for the others. the respondents reconstruct and reinterpret the communist period through their personal experience of the fifteen years that elapsed from the ‘overthrow’ of communism and, since they consider their living standards to have been worse during the last period, they criticize the newly established regime for its inability to ensure wellbeing and security for the people. therefore, the moment the respondents start talking about their presentday lives, they start condemning the poverty they have to live in and the corruption of the ruling class, thus finding ‘good sides’ of communism. this is not to say that romanians regret the end of the communist regime (although many explicitly expressed this regret) or that they would like to go back to it, it is just that many interviewees expressed their profound dissatisfaction with the present state of affairs in romania and also with their own life standard. during the time of ceauşescu there weren’t so many people without work, if you wanted to work, you would find something. now, you can starve to death, if you are not a sleek. jen typewritten text 89 everybody’s steeling, they only care for themselves and for their fortunes and they do nothing for this country. all those that i spoke with live a bad and poor life. when i meet old people like me in the park and i talk to them, they say we had a better life during the time of ceauşescu. (interview with elena buculei [87 years] in rostás and văcărescu, 2005) the regime established in 1990 made several attempts to repair some of the wrongs done by the communists. one such attempt is the law on retrocession, which, supposedly, ensured the return of the properties to the people who owned land and real estate that was confiscated by the communists. the process of giving back the properties was a very difficult one and, since in many cases was deficiently managed, lead to an even deeper dissatisfaction of the people and thus to the failure of these endeavors. consequently, the people felt that they cannot trust the ‘democratic’ system, just as they could not trust the ‘communist’ system. moreover, since their expectations were even greater this time, they feel even more betrayed and cheated by the newly established class of leaders. now, after the revolution, i started to go to law courts to get back my parents’ land. but in ten years i only got back ten hectares and above all that, they gave me land where they wanted to, not where it was our land before. whom to argue with? where to go to? if you don’t know anybody, nobody takes you into consideration! we thought we would get back what was stolen from us, but these people rob us even more… (interview with silvia nedelea in rostás and văcărescu, 2005) after the revolution they gave us back our land, but it was for nothing, it was in vain, because we are old now, we cannot work the land anymore… cristea, my husband, is dead, we do not have the means to work on the land because it is very expensive to pay for trucks, to pay for… and you cannot work with horses, we do not even have horses. (interview with ioana rotaru [82 years] in rostás and văcărescu, 2005) conclusion romanians’ relationship with their communist past and their post-communist present is neither uniform nor clearly defined. both periods are doubly constructed: first, through the period itself and the events specific to each period, and second, through the experience of the other period. thus, the communist period is first seen as the period when they were dispossessed of their properties, they were persecuted for being ‘enemies of the state,’ they had to endure many hardships and shortages. but at a closer scrutiny and after the comparison with the post-communist period, many respondents reconstruct in the same discourse a communist period that was bearable and even desirable. the ‘transition’ period is also constructed on two layers: initially according to what happened and referring first and foremost to the revolution – capital r and the instauration of a long-wanted democracy. then it is reconstructed as a period of instability and insecurity, of corruption of the ruling class, and extreme poverty of the people. references cited: buchowski, michał. 2001. rethinking transformation. an anthropological perspective on post-socialism. poznan: wydawnictwo humaniora. buchowski, michał. 2004. “between stigmatization and resistance: a creation of ‘victimized groups’ identity in poland” in enikö magyari vincze and petruţa mândruţ (eds.), performing identities. renegotiating socio-cultural identities in the post-socialist eastern europe. cluj-napoca: editura fundaţiei pentru studii europene. humphrey, caroline. 2002. the unmaking of soviet life. everyday economies after socialism. ithaca & london: cornell university press. jen typewritten text 90 ries, nancy. 1997. russian talk: culture and conversation during perestroika. ithaca: cornell university press. rostás, zoltán and sorin stoica (eds.). 2003. istorie la firul ierbii. documente social orale. bucureşti: tritonic. zoltán rostás and theodora-eliza văcărescu (eds.). 2005. cealaltă jumătate a istoriei. recuperări sociale orale. cluj-napoca: limes. văcărescu, theodora-eliza. 2003. “women and/ in the communist political prisons. the first and the second circle of suffering: romania 1947-1965,” romanian journal of society and politics, vol 3, no. 1/2003, pp. 745. katherine verdery. 1996. what was socialism and what comes next?. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. verdery, katherine. 2002. “whither postsocialism?” in c. m. hann (ed.), postsocialism. ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. london and new york: routledge, p. 15-21. jen typewritten text 91 microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 15 new modes of capitalist domination: transnational space between turkey and moldova1 hülya demirdirek university of victoria, bc canada istanbul is a metropolis which has more than one centre. located on the european and asian shores of the bosphorus, the two parts of the city are connected by two suspension bridges. the ferries, however, are the moving core of the city both in practice and in the generally perceived image of istanbul. attractive to traders and tourists alike, this perpetuum mobile of a city accommodates transnational activities in which particular nationalities typically tend to congregate in certain districts. the fall of the socialist regimes in eastern europe and the former soviet union resulted in one particularly intense period of activity. during fieldwork in moldova i was told about istanbul from the perspective of gagauz temporary migrants in the late 1990s. their narratives described the laleli neighbourhood as if it were ‘downtown istanbul’. such a perception is rather telling: just as they are untroubled by the marginality of this local district, so they do not see the implications of their fringe status in the production process. in this article i argue that through such a particular understanding of their environment and themselves these migrant labourers become part of the field which creates new restrictive social space. the performance of their labour is predicated upon transnational fields under neoliberal conditions (cf. comaroff and comaroff 2002). here i explore one dimension or manifestation of neoliberalism, namely the individualization of inequalities through the reconfiguring of gender, class and ethnic belonging (clarke 2004, maskovsky and kingfisher 2001). the inequalities referred to here exist in a restrictive social field in which labourers have no means of changing their position. by exploring the conditions of labour in this transnational field it is possible to see how inclusion comes about and at the same time how new forms of domination emerge. the aforementioned ‘downtown istanbul’ offers an ideal starting-point for my analysis of transnational encounters. on a major street in the laleli district, as in many other neighbourhoods, a young man is selling fruits on a wheeled wooden carriage. when asked the price of grapes he replies in fluent turkish ‘dört milyon’ – four million. a large woman wearing sweatpants approaches and asks ‘vinograd kacha?’, meaning ‘what is the price of the grapes?’. the sentence is constructed in turkish, but she uses the russian word for ‘grape’. the young street-vendor replies ‘dva million’ in broken russian. this scene is only surprising to those of us who do not expect that in order to be an effective merchant in laleli, a turkish person selling fruit would have to know russian. we know that many large cities have their ethnic enclaves and transnational commercial space. yet it was not until the late nineties that turkey began to participate in this type of transnational encounter. in the early 1980s, laleli was a site for arabic-speaking tourist-related commercial activities, but only in the 1990s, as a result of the disintegration of the soviet union, was it transformed into a prominent market for mutual transnational trade (keyder 1999). unlike the transactions of the previous socalled ‘suitcase commerce’ in outdoor markets of the early and mid-nineties, laleli now houses stores selling consumer goods – mainly clothes and shoes – priced in euros (yükseker 2004). walking crisscross through the local streets, one sees a mix of hotels, offices for import and export companies, agencies that specialize in travel to and from the former soviet union (fsu) and eastern and central europe, as well as small bazaars – some of which operate for only six months a year during the presence of circular migrants from the fsu countries and eastern and central europe. the existence of such markets serves as a useful reminder of the conditions of the transnational social field. these markets, which exist because both the buyers and sellers come from abroad, exemplify an opening that was available to foreign commercial activities. were it not for the involvement of these foreign buyers and sellers, the turkish economy despite its highly developed adaptability might not have been able to accommodate such cyclical markets in view of the high level of unemployment in turkey. indeed, while such markets can thrive on the margins, the way the domestic labour market affects immigration and the presence of migrant workers are much more visible issues in the public discourse. another such opening is the overwhelming presence of russian-speaking female shop assistants in most of the laleli stores. along the streets, female shop assistants, many with bleached blonde hair and brightly coloured clothes, can typically be seen sitting in front of a woman’s clothing shop or a perfume shop. when they try to attract the attention of a female passer-by they usually address them in russian, assuming that the anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 16 potential customer is a russian speaker. this district has turned into a transnational postsocialist enclave and offers a portal on the wider dynamics of permanent, temporary and circular migration. a diverse spectrum of male and female migrant labourers can be found here. in terms of their income level, the women workers range from domestics at one end of the scale to madams (who manage and organize sex labour services) at the other. most of these persons are speakers of russian (either as a lingua franca of the fsu and some eastern and central european peoples and/or as their native tongue). as for turkish speakers, most of the stores, restaurants, and cafes are owned and operated by turkish men, many of whom also speak some russian that they have picked up through their interactions with russian speakers. owing to its reputation as a kind of ‘red light district’, many turkish women are deterred from shopping in this part of town. as a result of these transformations, laleli is now a multi-currencied, bilingual transnational space that connects not only istanbul to formerly socialist states, but peoples of formerly socialist states to each other. further up from the main roads that connect laleli to the neighbouring aksaray, pockets of open space are used to park minibuses and large vans bearing moldovan, ukrainian or russian number plates. lists of destinations written in cyrillic on cardboard can be seen affixed to the back doors of these vehicles. these vans transport various goods between migrant labourers and their families back home in the former socialist republics. this service is not only cheap compared to other ways of shipping goods, it is also rather special due to the flexibility that it offers in terms of packaging and timing. of the many vans, three parked together on one street corner have inscribed upon them the names of towns and villages in southern moldova – a region predominantly inhabited by the gagauz2. although it was a very different setting, this corner of istanbul – which i came to refer to as home to an ‘informal courier service’ – became an extension of my fieldwork site in moldova. gagauz domestics and other temporary migrants come to this part of town for shopping and to this particular corner to send their parcels home. here they meet other temporary migrants from moldova. when they talk to each other they are the persons from particular towns and villages. what is underlined in these encounters is their ethnic and/or place-bound identities and not their positions as temporary illegal workers. this meeting point reflects some of the conditions of life at home and in turkey for the gagauz domestic workers. they speak gagauz, russian and turkish and very seldom moldovan. they are the citizens of the republic of moldova who for this reason may need to travel to the turkish capital ankara in order to renew their passports or resolve their moldovarelated bureaucratic problems. they see themselves as responsible mothers, daughters and wives who strive to help their family survive. unlike in the past, their children need more money for higher education; what is more, irrespective of their age, they all want better clothing in accordance with the newer consumption patterns; medical care of any ill person in the family also requires money since there is no longer a socialist welfare state to fully cover such expenses, and so on. most of the time referred to as the poorest country in europe by the european union, moldova is a prime example of the difficulties associated with political and economic transition in eastern and central europe. the gagauz of southern moldova have been particularly harshly affected by these conditions. in view of their turkic language skills, geographical proximity and the demand for their services as domestics, gagauz women frequently choose to travel to work in istanbul – in common with many other citizens of the fsu – so as to be able to satisfy their families’ aforementioned needs. these women enter the country illegally on 3-month tourist visas and travel back and forth to moldova every six months in order to avoid fines or they develop alternative counter-strategies, e.g. by letting themselves be deported and returning with a new passport etc. they have been doing this for anywhere from 2 – 6 years, earning wages that range from $400 to $800 a month. compared to the formal salaries earned in moldova, this is a rather attractive amount. although domestic work is a very common source of income, additional non-commodified sexual labour and commodified sexual encounters also generate a good deal of the remittances sent back to moldova. here i am only concentrating on domestic labour. the transnational movements that i describe here could best be approached and understood through an analysis that juxtaposes gender, citizenship and class (anderson 2000, constable 1997, parreñas 2001). in order to map the moral order and economic logic of transnational circuits it is necessary to develop a theoretical framework that accommodates the changing symbolic and moral significance of migratory labour and its demand and supply. the point here is to recognize that the economic processes have to be understood in conjunction with moral economic norms such as perceptions of entitlements, rights and responsibilities in production, exchange and consumption as well as the larger ideological justifications imposed by neoliberal policies. here i support the arguments that the social and the cultural anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 17 are not external to the market and that consideration of the interplay between gender, class and ethnicity can help us to better understand the social and economic processes through which new social strata are formed and others redefined (clarke 2004, harvey 2005, parreñas 2001). an appreciation of the forces of labour supply and demand is essential in order to fully understand illegal transnational labour markets. the new migrant domestic workers from former soviet countries supply turkish families not only with domestic labour, but also function as image markers for the lifestyle and identity turkish families seek (demirdirek & keough 2004). the lifestyles of the wealthy turkish employers of these domestics – their identities as progressive and modern and hence their desires to have an employee with a professional work ethic – actually help to create a new stratum of underclass in turkey different to that of the ‘indigenous’ turkish underclasses. key influencing factors here are the onslaught of new forms of capitalist processes in neoliberalism and new identities, coupled with a discourse on ‘rights’ associated particularly with the european union. turks who employ moldovan/gagauz domestics often assert their preference for domestics or nannies from moldova because they are perceived as more civilized and european than their turkish counterparts, who are considered to be of a lower-class ‘villager’ (köylü) culture. many employers would claim that workers from moldova are preferable because they are educated and honest compared to the turks who would take up such jobs. as a result of the enormous social gap between the potential employers (the middle and upper-middle classes) and the lower classes that can supply domestic labourers, the late 1990s and early 2000s saw a demand for others to fill such positions in the large turkish cities. at the same time, domestic work is allowed greater visibility and is acknowledged as skilled labour. in fact, its performance by these ‘professionals becomes a marker of modernity for the turkish household’ (demirdirek & keough 2004). the presence of such migrant domestics in the house, and their different relationship with the turkish families compared to previous domestics, marks these families and their members as modern ones who offer ‘rights’ and ‘benefits’ to their professional employees. these employers saw their employees more as professionals with some specialized knowledge that helped them to fulfil their duties. the talents of eastern european employees lie not only in their education and consequent ability to learn quickly, but also, and importantly, in their professional work ethic. several employers attributed the better work ethic of moldovans and other migrant domestics from the fsu and eastern europe – compared to local turkish workers – to their superior education. they describe migrant domestics as different from locals in their ‘manners’, in what they wear, and they mention that those who have worked in turkey before often come with references. the employers find these individuals responsible, industrious and 'trustworthy'. according to the employers, foreign workers are better at performing their duties than turks are. they feel there should be open borders and international labour should be legalized. believing in ‘free market’ principles, they want to be able to hire the best person for the job – no matter what their citizenship. they insist that their preference has to do with skills, and that they are not discriminating against turkish workers. if they could find a turkish worker who did the work equally well, they would hire them (demirdirek & keough 2004). gagauz domestics know the reasons why they are preferred to their turkish counterparts. narratives of gagauz domestics reveal a number of common elements with respect to their turkish employers. however, it has to be kept in mind that these narratives stem from various experiences that are heavily dependent upon the class, gender, and ethnic positions and values of the employers as well as by the success of a particular combination of personalities (i.e. the employer and the employee). especially when caring for children, gagauz domestics describe the way their employers, the parents of the children, treat them as unprofessional. as a result – and this is confirmed by employment agencies – gagauz avoid jobs that require taking care of children from toddler to school age. a common problem voiced by women of various ages is that children are allowed to disrespect domestics. given the domestic’s position in a particular home as a working person, their lack of language skills in standard turkish and in some cases their rural background, the children – if not the parents – feel able to ignore the fact that the domestic is an adult who deserves respect from younger individuals and should be treated as a professional hired to do specialist tasks in the household. ironically, then, while the employers feel they want these individuals because of their professionalism, it may be the case that in practice they do not treat the domestic as a professional. the domestics complain that turkish parents expect the domestic to parent, yet they allow the children's abusive behaviour. domestics also commonly object to the turkish family’s failure to appreciate them as individuals with subjective experiences. for example, maria, a mother of four, recounted this scene: one day, when she saw her employer – a lawyer and mother of two – coming anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 18 home and hugging her two children, she got tears in her eyes because she had not talked to her own children back in moldova for two weeks. rather than asking her what was wrong, her employer scolded her for showing a ‘sour’ face. the distance that turkish employers expect from their employees can be seen here too. employers want to see the domestic only as a professional (even though in practice, they may not treat them as such). this means not acknowledging that the domestics are mothers themselves, far away from their children. there are several interesting contradictions here in terms of the points that i am making in this paper. the employers want gagauz domestics because they are perceived as having similar values and being ‘closer’ in some ways to their turkish employers in terms of education and professional attitude, yet this very professionalism requires of them a respectful ‘distance’ from their employers. it is precisely this professionalism that they say is lacking in turkish domestics. for instance, employers themselves sometimes assert that they prefer to hire turks for some tasks, especially for cooking, but that it is difficult to find live-in work because turkish employees have families nearby and want to return to them in the evening. live-in domestic work is also acknowledged to be much more demanding. it would be hard to find a turkish person who would work as a live-in domestic for the wages that they pay their moldovan domestic workers. what they might instead be faced with is accountability for the international gap between rich and poor. yet this understanding is elided with the employers’ notions that international free market capitalism, with open borders and competition, will correctly balance supply and demand, determine prices and establish a situation where the best worker gets the job and the best wage. such insight is also obscured by the swallowing back of maria’s tears, by the hiding of her positionality as a displaced illegal worker far away from her children. still, it may not be entirely appropriate to see these practices as calculated manipulations of psychological states associated with ‘class conflict’. rather, the practices of the upper middle class turks (lately referred to as ‘white turks’) and migrant domestics are not only manipulative acts, but also genuine and complex indicators of the contradictions involved with ‘modernity’ in turkey today and how the transnational space that has been opened up interacts with it (demirdirek and keough 2004). the ambiguous class position of migrant domestics through these international encounters eases the national and international tensions of competing class moralities while facilitating the redrawing of class distinctions. this may be coupled with another ambiguous position created as a consequence of movements in transnational social space – namely, that of small turkish entrepreneurs in moldova. for me, the latter is significant because it shows the presence of more than one form of ‘opening’ or ‘newer set of relations’ in the market. furthermore, such a position is also illustrative of the redrawing of class (sub)divisions as a result of the structural transformations taking place within the transnational field. postsocialist conditions, which led to the loss of financial and social security for citizens of the postsocialist countries, opened up new channels of financial gain for people in the neighbouring countries and created fresh opportunities e.g. in the service sector for locals and foreign citizens alike. in a phenomenon similar to that claimed in ‘developing countries’, an area of brokerage has opened up through the establishment of such a service sector. the moldovan capital, chisinau, serves as a base for turkish businessmen running large and small companies. the owners of small companies can be seen as marginal entrepreneurs. they seek business success in moldova by operating between the turkish state and the moldovan business world. in contrast to the poor but highly thought-of gagauz domestics in turkey, these turkish men – while they may be financially well off – are reputed to have little ‘general culture and cultivation’ by moldovan standards. they possess turkish notions of modernity and progress that are similar to those of the employers of domestics described earlier. they regard themselves as modern representatives of the new turkey created with the neoliberal export-oriented policies of the 1980s and they talk about ‘teaching moldovans how to do business the right way’. they attribute backwardness to the old socialist system and at times to the rather ‘outmoded’ practices of the gagauz business community. ironically, however, good business practices for them include some of the very informal or illegal networking and business transactions that they claim are ‘backward’ in moldova. informal transactions might include participating in a range of activities such as procuring construction materials and labour for the restoration of buildings, arranging security for vips, organizing venues for sexual encounters, providing raw materials for the preparation of culturally appropriate food for representatives of the turkish state and so on. these practices become an informal site of brokerage superimposed upon the businessmen's already existing petty commodity and service dealings. initially dependent on moldovan and gagauz intermediaries, these entrepreneurs anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 19 themselves become culturally and economically liminal brokers. such new encounters and long-term relationships between gagauz and turks dismantle some of the existing distinctions between urban and rural identities and between class positions and contribute to the formation of new social layers and interest groups in moldova and turkey. one of the most visible manifestations of how these turkish men transgress their masculinity to some degree is the shortand long-term relationships which they enter into with female moldovan citizens. although such turkish men do not all belong to the same subculture, their gendered position conventionally entails a particular common code of honour that they actually challenge. by way of illustration, although they make distinctions between women who can be married and others with whom they ‘can have fun’, many of them end up marrying the women whom they classify in the former category. in some cases their wives end up becoming their business partners and play an integral role in running the business within the transnational context. through their wives and business circles these (lower) middle-class urban turks experience and actively engage in class encounters that would otherwise not occur. the turkish businessmen in moldova, the turkish employers of domestic workers in turkey and even, in some senses, the domestic workers too legitimate themselves in terms of ‘free market capitalism’. yet all of them operate in a context where the informal economy is part of capitalist (not just postsocialist) business practice. these transnational interactions have local effects on nation, class and gender. the creation of transnational social space thus has to be seen as transforming the networks of relations between places (appadurai 1996) and facilitating the emergence of new types of social relations (here between moldovans and turks in different settings: business and home) as well as new forms of power (capitalist, neoliberal and patriarchal), some of which give rise to contradictory outcomes. while the new employment opportunities may be beneficial to domestics, their citizenship position and illegality offer no security. in terms of their position in the ‘process of production’, they are the furthest from being able to exercise control over their marginal position – yet this does not translate into a corresponding class consciousness. this paper sought to highlight points for further exploration in the context of the multilayered connections between class, gender and ethnicity, particularly as they pertain to the relations that have developed between moldova and turkey in the transnational field. i consider the legacy of socialism as well as the prevalence of nationalist and neoliberal discourses to be structurally limiting elements influencing the conformity, agency and contestation produced in this field. male turkish entrepreneurs provide a convenient source of brokerage by smoothing over incompatibilities and also opening up new spheres of activity between moldova and turkey. their survival as businessmen is predicated on the way in which they transgress class, gender and ethnic categories. in a similar vein, the implications of the social role played by gagauz domestics in the production process are inevitably predicated on their migrancy. yet although they cannot change the reality of being hired as domestic labourers, they can still claim to be morally superior to their employers. gagauz labour migrants compensate for their social inequality in the labour market by explaining the social segmentation along individualized (i.e. by attributing inequalities to an employer’s individual characteristics or personality traits) or in some cases ethnicized lines (i.e. by drawing on turkish and gagauz cultural differences to account for incompatibilities between employers and domestics). one might think of these explanations as predictable coping mechanisms for migrants faced with a new environment. in this article, however, i argued that these understandings of social reality that specifically manifest themselves in the transnational field are fed by neoliberal cultural regimes. this transnational field reveals a new articulation of the mode of domination and hence illustrates the meeting of postsocialist ideas about capitalism with the new ideological jargon of neoliberalism in turkey. notes 1 in the easa workshop that was the point of departure for the majority of the papers in this special issue, leyla keough and i gave a paper entitled ‘maids of education, entrepreneurs of margin: class and gender between moldova and turkey’. in order to accommodate more papers in the workshop we combined our insights from our respective fieldworks in moldova and turkey. having focused on gagauz domestics and motherhood in a separate paper given at a workshop of the max planck institute for social anthropology in halle, germany, leyla keough developed her analysis further and offered very fruitful conclusions in anthropological quarterly (2006). the present article is an amalgam of my section of that paper (although in parts we refined the ideas and formulations together) as well as descriptions and analysis that i used in a paper given at the american anthropological association’s 2005 annual meeting in washington, d.c. entitled ‘postsocialist transnational space and neoliberal contradictions’ as part of the session on ‘regimes of power: the contours of neoliberalism’. i benefited from initial discussions with leyla keough through anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 20 communication over the internet during our work on writing a paper together and later from the comments of catherine kingfisher on an earlier draft of the aaa paper as well as from lale yalçın-heckmann on this version. 2the gagauz are a turkic-speaking christian minority whose population numbers around 150,000 in moldova. my connection to gagauz female migrants in turkey arose through my initial doctoral research on the gagauz struggle for autonomy. since 1995 i have witnessed the movements of gagauz persons between moldova and turkey. references anderson, b. 2000 doing the dirty work?: the global politics of domestic labour. london and new york: zed books. appadurai, a. 1996 modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. constable, n. 1997 maid to order in hong kong: an ethnography of filipina workers. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. comaroff, j. and j. comaroff. 2002 millennial capitalism: first thoughts on a second coming. public culture 12(2): 291-343. clarke, j. 2004 changing welfare, changing states: new directions in social policy. london: sage. demirdirek, h. and l. keough. 2004 maids of education, entrepreneurs of margin: class and gender between moldova and turkey. paper presented at workshop: ‘encounters of the post-socialist kind: the movement of goods and identities within and beyond the former socialist world’, easa biennial conference, vienna. harvey, d. 2005 a brief history of neoliberalism. oxford: oxford university press. keough, l. j. 2006 globalizing postsocialism: mobile mothers and neoliberalism on the margins of europe. anthropological quarterly 79(3): 431461. keyder, ç. (ed.) 1999 istanbul: between the global and the local. lanham md: rowman & littlefield publishers. maskovsky, j. and c. kingfisher. 2001 introduction to special issue on global capitalism, neoliberal policy and poverty. urban anthropology and studies of cultural systems and world economic development 30(2-3): 105-121. miller, d. 2001 the dialectics of shopping. chicago: university of chicago press. parreñas, r. s. 2001 servants of globalization: women, migration and domestic work. stanford: stanford university press. yükseker, d. 2004 trust and gender in a transnational market: the public culture of laleli, istanbul. public culture 16(1): 47-65. 19 childbirth definitions and childbirth experience hana haskova czech academy ofsciences this article is dedicated to changes that have occurred in czech obstetrics over the past decade. the debate about czech obstetrics has been opened in the media particularly by women's organizations in the second half of 1990s. these organizations opened the debate especially on the issue of mother's experience of childbirth and put it opposite to medical experience. both these approaches medical and mother's experience­ are today considered relevant and media give space to debates between parents, medical authorities and women's organizations about the image of czech obstetrics. as a result, these debates have el1ioyed more media success than other efforts of women's organizations, which have not received much press. mothers' experience of childbirth became more visible because of the disruption of the institutional, psychological, and media silence on one hand. on the other hand, the debate also entails the efforts of midwives who are striving to achieve their former professional autonomy. although this article is dedicated especially to topical, social, and medical changes in czech obstetrics, the fact that permanent medical as well as social changes in childbirth practice depend on medical knowledge, fashion, ethics, and other social circumstances will pervade the text. sources of data with respect to my theoretical background, i will draw on social-constructivist approaches applied in the field of medial sociology, and especially the part of medical sociology labeled by strauss and sokolowska as sociology "about," not "for" medicine. according to them, sociology "about medicine" concentrates on changes in the medical practice while sociology "for medicine" concentrates on the influence of life events on the incidence and development of illness (v odakova 1994: 86). empirically, i will build upon 25 non­ structured qualitative interviews with obstetricians, midwives, and leaders of women's organizations who deal with the issue of czech obstetrics. in the case of obstetricians and midwives i focused also on the reported changes in the obstetrics practice in their own workplace. i also examined narratives of women concerning their experience of childbirth published on czech web site for parents (www.rodina.cz); an overview of thematically related czech media articles since 1960s; medical as well as sociological statistics based on questionnaires examining the obstetrics practice in individual maternity wards in the czech republic ("porodnice 2000"); and data from quantitative representative attitudinal survey of mothers with children up to 1 year of age ("matley 2000"), offrrst-time pregnant women ("tehotne zeny 2000"), and of obstetricians ("porodnici 2000") concerning the current state of czech obstetrics conducted in 2000 by open society fund foundation and stem. childbirth as a socially dependent variable as well as a social factor a birth is a significant life and family event that influences intra-personal, interpersonal, and socially significant facts. childbirth and especially the first birth in the life of women and men influences their social and economic status, roles, relations to each other as well as to other relatives and non-relatives, carrier plans, division oflabor between family members, and other important life affairs. the significance ofchildbirth, its course and results are also to a certain extent influenced by the sociocultural context (jordan 1997; chapman 1986; georges 1997; kitzinger 1997; vangennep 1997]). depending on actual differences in time and space, different people have been considered responsible for conducting a childbirth, different spaces have been considered as the right ones for a childbirth, different preferences in conducting a childbirth have occurred as well as changes in other social aspects that influence a conduct of a childbirth, such as position of a child in a society or the system of heredity. this was very well expressed, for example, in leavitt's article (1987), which vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 19 ..--------~~========----~http:www.rodina.cz 20 analyzed a debate among obstetricians of complicated birth cases in medical journals at the beginning of l880s. according to her study, at that time in western christian space, priests and fathers of infants were still present in the same room as the laboring women during complicated birth and made decisions about what interventions could be provided by the obstetrician-surgeon. besides the impact of christian morality (which saw an infant as sinless and opposite to sinful women in situations where decisions had to be made concerning the health of laboring women and the health of infant) on the conduct of complicated childbirth, she pointed out also a tendency to make decisions to protect the frrstborn with greater effort than other infants. but there have been also significant differences in conducting birth within the western christian space. in england, the life of an infant was valued less than on the continent. this resulted in practicing craniotomy (destruction of fetus due to the perforation of the fetus' head) more often than in continental obstetrics, while symphysiotomy (which could led to permanent harm of the mother) or caesarian section (which, in the middle of 19th century, still resulted in the mother's death in half of the cases) were performed in england less than on the continent (leavitt 1987; zeman and dolezal 2000). although one might be tempted to say that these shifts in focus either on a mother or an infant seem to be in the distant past in the european cultural space, the reality does not confrrm this proposition. the question of the priority of protecting either the infant or the mother has once again gained prominence in the context of increasing the number of in-vitro surgeries, and especially the question of to what extent the morbidity of a mother is acceptable in order to protect the life and health of a fetus. moreover, according to the interviews with czech obstetricians and midwives, they connect a shift in focus from the infant to the mother to such current changes in czech obstetrics in 1990s as the opening media discussion about psycho-socio-physiological childbirth experiences ofmothers themselves, the pluralization of healthcare practices, and the reduction of routine use of some techniques such as cardiotocographs. 1 they also spoke of the trend toward de­ medicalization of childbirth that has actually been implemented or is being implemented vigorously in some czech maternity wards, and of the strategic masking of other wards' strong reliance on technology in order to improve the psychological comfort of mothers while at the same time preserving the medicalized approach to childbirth. scientific knowledge as a social construction the fact of actual de-medicalization or masking of medicalized childbirth practices as well as the appearance of the maternity wards must be understood within the period's wider social context. while the previous trend of childbirth medicalizaiion fell within the framework of the success ofbio-medicine and the natural sciences prevalent at the beginning of the 20th century, which celebrated its greatest victories especially after the second w orid war, the concept of de­ medicalization of the childbirth, which some experts and a part of general public are trying to implement, was developed as a reaction to this medicalization and with a wave of criticism of acute bio-medicine. this occurred especially in countries where universal preventative pregnancy checks have been already introduced to women and technical devices became a standard part of maternity wards and labor rooms. these conditions contributed, on the one hand, to the formulation of a concept of a risky pregnancy and childbirth and acute biomedicine became a certain guarantee of safety of pathological pregnancies and childbirth. on the other hand, though, these technological developments also contributed to the definition of a great majority of pregnancies and childbirths as low risk. this occurred at a time of shaping societies, which ulrich beck [1992] calls risky. in these societies, based on their recognition of some side effects of technologies as products of modern western positive science, the optimistic trust in modern society as "society of securities" came under attack, along with the criticism of modernist understanding of science. the idea of cumulative science has been problematized and in the 1960s was replaced by kuhn (1997) with an understanding of science occurring in paradigmatic shifts. emphasis was newly placed on the fact that decisions of scientists who produce and later confrrm the influential definitions of reality are themselves influenced by social, political, and economic contexts. from these positions, science as a neutral institution "revealing" rather "co-creating" truth has been problematized. to be concrete, in the freld of the sociology of medicine, it became possible to view vol. 20, no. 1 2002, page: 20 21 r processes whereby expert professional commissions defme the limits of truth and thus, also the border between orthodox and alternative medicine with respect to the exercise of power. consequently, they also define which practices will be implemented and which not. to be even more concrete, in obstetrics, this involves, for example, the issue of water-birth. the question is: can professionals "allow it" for mothers? will it not be too dangerous for mothers or infants? will it be useful? in the course of the second half of 1980s, this also involved the issue of rooming-in (the possibility for mothers and infants to stay together in one room after the birth, not divided into separate maternity and infant wards). nowadays, rooming-in is promoted as a mainstream in the czech republic.2 the previous fear of infection transferred from the mother to the infant was replaced by a fear ofpsychological and physiological damage caused by the separation of the mother and the infant after the birth. (this previous fear of infection emerged especially in the 19th century, when due to an imperfect knowledge of sterilization, seption, and antiseption, thousands of women and infants were killed in hospitals where dissection was performed). a similar course of criticism of a certain practice may be documented on the issue of breastfeeding. while artificial nourishment prior to the 1970s was seen as a way to rescue mothers from their biological obligations, it was labeled as insufficient for the baby in comparison to breastfeeding in the 1970s. in addition to these changes, the presence of a close person (usually the father ofthe child) during labor was newly promoted during 1990s. because of the previous prevailing fear of infection that could be transferred from the father to mother or infant, fathers could not even visit their partners in the puerperium wards after the birth. after the formulation of the psychological risks of separation of mothers from people close to them, which was said to support mothers' weak position and uncertainty and cold behavior of a hospital personal towards them, fathers were admitted to the puerperium wards and after that to puerperium rooms during visiting hours. nowadays, they are admitted not only to some puerperium single rooms for whole 24 hours, but even to labor rooms (according to the survey "porodnice 2000"). similarly, the risks oflabor during which a woman stays in positions other than the prone one are being slowly replaced with the formulation of the risks of the prone labor position. in addition, episiotomies were performed increasingly from the beginning of 20th century up to 1980s in the czech republic, when it was routinely performed during almost every birth, even spontaneous and low risk childbirth. however, nowadays it is becoming restricted (according to the surveys "porodnice 2000" and "porodnici 2000") to only 15-20% of all childbirth in some czech maternity hospitals. it started to be considered unnecessary in most cases, or, even more drastically, as a mutilation of the female body if performed routinely. furthermore, there have been changes with respect to the once popular cardiotocographs, which later came under strong criticism in the cases of its use during low risk childbirth. it seems that this development of the introduction of a practice, its spreading to most childbirth cases, and the subsequent criticism of its too frequent use is partly caused by a tendency to routinize medical activities in a hospital and partly by permanent changes in the medical fashion (both on the professional and lay side). routinization, which is so common in hospitals, certainly simplifies the provision of healthcare for the medical staff. in addition, it protects medical staff against accusations of failures. according to interviews with doctors, once a certain practice to reduce a kind of risk of complicated childbirth is proven helpful, it starts to be practiced routinely in most childbirths. this is the case because it is easier to accuse somebody of forgetting to do something than of doing unnecessary and therefore harmful acts in the case of childbirth. also, it has to be added, that the division between complicated and uncomplicated childbirth is also to some extent a matter of social construction, as is the defmition of childbirth and its risks. according to beck [1992], contemporary societies have become full of uncertainties and risks. but the risks are not primarily a reaction to impulses coming from the external world but are constructed on the consequences of technological interference. they are primarily constructed on the borderline between expert specializations. they are never pure facts but have their own theoretical and normative components. they are defmed on a causal basis using a scientific rhetoric, since the industrial society is based on specialization and trust in scientific rationality, argumentation, and logic. at the same time, vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 21 however, they are fed by exemplary examples, which take the form of tragic narratives. in view of the fact that they are mostly defined in statistical figures (for example, how many times the likelihood of an instrumental childbirth increases during childbirth in the prone position or when applying epidural anesthesia), the risks may be made more dramatic, amplified, or downplayed according to the intention ofthe speaker. from this point of view, we may view various social definitions of childbirth that clash in a rhetorical battle in professional and popular science fields while finding practical use in various maternity wards. these defmitions of childbirth either construct childbirth as a risky bodily matter which must be technically and medically supported, or as a "natural" matter, the risks of which consist rather in iatrogenic side effects of medical interference with the natural bodily course of childbirth. adherents to this second definition of childbirth and the de-medicalization of medical care teach women to be active actors of their childbirth, to react to the demands of their own bodies with learnt physiological techniques, and not to be consumers of medical care. the negative side effects of medical and technical interference with the physiological process of childbirth are defmed mostly as "a spiral" of medical interference, one such incident causing another for example, using cardiotocographs is connected to the prone position oflaboring women.3 the prone position is believed to increase the number of instrumentally completed childbirths. during instrumentally completed childbirths (except the caesarian section), episiotomy must be performed (harvey 1992; odent 1995; podalova, hohlova, maly 1999; wagner 2000). as it is obvious from the lines above, although the critique of the modern understanding and shaping of the external world has also brought the construction of its risks, these risks are defmed using the language of the criticized modem science because then, and only then, could it be accepted both by the expert and the general public as sufficiently relevant. there have to emerge other experts who would refuse the old conception of childbirth practice, formulate it as risky, and offer a new conception that would be presented as solving the existing problems. because of that, according to beck (1992), this critique rather than being a refusal of modem science and its techniques is their transcendence, an expression of the contemplation of modernization and modem science from its own positions. midwives struggle for professional autonomy it is clear that the tendency toward de­ medicalization of childbirth was hailed by czech midwives, who by law have a restricted ability to apply medication, and their more independent work is narrowed down only to non-complicated spontaneous childbirths where they use primarily the knowledge ofphysiology and psychology. a portion of them has related the support of this trend to the battle for recognition of their professional autonomy, which they lost at the beginning of the 1960s. at that time, the separate position of a midwife was abolished and in connection with this, we saw a terminological and expert transformation of midwives to "women's nurses," who thus lost their autonomous position in cases of non-complicated spontaneous childbirth and became doctor's assistants, as interviews with midwives and doctors revealed. the struggle of czech midwives will not be easy, although there is the example of some western european countries, where the best bio­ medical results of natal care and the lowest values of maternal and perinatal mortality are recorded and where midwives conduct a majority of spontaneous childbirths at the same time, whether at clinics in case of sweden or at home in case of netherlands. in addition, czech midwives defme the results of the demanded achievement of their professional autonomy as the achievement of greater flexibility and plurality of childbirth care, the mitigation of the hospital organizational hierarchy pyramid, the transfer of collective responsibility of the team involving doctor and nurse to an individual, and a decrease in fmancial cost of the childbirth care. their struggle will not be easy also because some obstetricians see their efforts as a breach of the medical monopoly, that is, the established hierarchy of positions. moreover, czech midwives have become associated with two different professional organizations, but only one of them supports publicly the idea of professional autonomy in conducting childbirth. thus these midwives supporting the idea of professional autonomy do not know the degree to which their struggle is supported by other czech midwives, who are members of the other professional organization or who are not members of any midwife professional organization at all. definitely not all czech midwives support the idea of the growth of their professional autonomy. on the one hand, it would vol. 20, no, 1 2002, page: 22 23 r probably bring the growth of public recognition of midwifery and the growth of the financial rewards of their work. but on the other hand, the autonomy would also bring the growth of direct responsibility of each midwife for the whole process of conducting of a childbirth, for which they are often not lead in hospitals. towards civic society despite what has been written above in this article, changes in czech obstetrics did not occur during 1990s only under the pressure of differences in opinion among professionals, but also under the pressure of general public. in view of the fact that childbirth is an important event and an emotional experience in the life of a woman and the entire family, it has always been the subject of private narratives and the transfer of experience among women. it has, however, become part of the public media debate only after 1989 to greater extent. largely, this is an outcome of the activities ofwomen's ngos dedicated to the issue of childbirth, which could not have been established before 1989 due to political-legislative reasons. in the context of obstetrics, the women's ngos that have to be mentioned are the women's movement "movement for active childbirth" and the association "aperio," both of which were established toward the end of the 1990s as split­ offs from one of the programs of the "open society fund foundation." in cooperation with other women's organizations, such as "gender studies foundation" and the publishing house "one woman press," and professional organizations such as "czech association of midwives," their members managed to bring the issue to the attention of the media and to organize an international conference and several discussions and seminars with representatives of the professional and general public in the field of obstetrics (thanks to the fmancial support received from the open society fund foundation whose goal is to support the development of civic society). furthermore, translations of several foreign books on the preparation of women for childbirth and a selection of obstetrics practice were published. the most important publication, though, was the "guide on czech maternity wards." the guide is to serve mothers when selecting the hospital in which to give birth and offers an overview of services, obstetrics instruments, and preferred practices ofbirth conduct in each czech maternity ward as described by the management of these maternity wards. it also includes commentaries of mothers who gave birth in each particular maternity ward over the course of the last year. it must be noted that immediately after 1989 the attention of the media was turned to other aspects of the sociopolitical and economic transformation, which were considered and publicly even explicitly defined as socially more pressing than the issue of obstetrics or other issues concerning the female population, such as the position of women in society and on the labor market, or the degree of women's participation in decision-making etc. on the other hand, it must be stressed that the media coverage of civic initiatives concerning motherhood and pregnancy were one of the most successful presentations of the activities of women's ngos in the second half of the 1990s. the press given to the issue of childbirth was friendly to their activities, while media coverage was not very friendly to women's civic initiatives in general, especially during the first half of 1990s. success of the ngos dealing with childbirth and motherhood came despite the fact that they were often established later than other ngos. the first women's ngos emerged in the year 1990 (cenruikova, haskova, krizkova, linkova, marikova 2000: 34) but ngos dedicated to obstetrics were not established until the end of 1990s. this relative success in the media of women's civic associations dealing with motherhood and pregnancy may be attributed to the continued gender contract, which defines certain spheres of human life as male and others as female. while issues such as women's participation in politics, gender discrimination on the labor market, etc. have come to be associated with feminism, which at the beginning of 1990s was denigrated by repeatedly describing feminism only in a militant or caricatured way (of unacceptable fight between men and women) and nowadays it is only slowly increasing the number of articles with description of feminism based at least on some real knowledge about it, issues of motherhood, pregnancy, and birth were not labeled in this way. although demands concerning the reduction of paternalistic attitudes of medical personnel toward patients have been articulated in western europe since the 1960s, in the context of formation self-help, self-care, and patient movements, entrance of clinical psychologist to hospitals and growing of costs for medical care, in the czech republic the first signals of these vol. 20, no. 1 2002, page: 23 24 changes in healthcare came approximately twenty years later. as was already suggested, only today are they supported publicly. this is possible only thanks to the change in the political regime. to be concrete, in obstetrics, we have seen a move away from the enforcement of changes strictly "from the top" and a crucial turn in the perception of the mother with respect to her ability to participate in decisions concerning the manner in which she will give birth to her children. but it has to be stated that according to the survey "tehotne zeny 2000" and "matky 2000," it is in particular women with secondary and tertiary education, women who take care to gain information about childbirth through reading, and women with a previous experience of childbirth who actually participate most actively in decision making about the way they give birth to their child.4 also, the degree of consent with women's participation in the implementation of changes in obstetrics varies greatly among professionals. it reflects the long-term absence of civic participation in this sphere. this was already pointed out by heitlinger (1987), who in the 1980s conducted a comparative survey of obstetrics and motherhood in the then czechoslovak socialist republic and great britain as representatives of the western and eastern blocs. she postulated that the influence of civic society (the effects of the activities of interest associations and other civic initiatives) on the manner in which childbirth care is provided is one of the typical features of western european healthcare systems, in opposition to the absence of such initiatives within the socialist organization of healthcare. according to her analysis of documents, in western europe ­ unlike the former czechoslovak socialist republic there were public debates about the continuous reform concerning the provision ofchildbirth care not only among the professionals but also the general public dealing with obstetrics. attitudes toward male and female obstetricians when talking about the stronger participation of women in the implementation of changes in the provision of childbirth care, we mean primarily women among the general public dealing with obstetrics. on the other hand, the firmly anchored gendered structure of obstetrics must be emphasized. in the hier~rchy of doctor-midwife­ woman in labor, the greatest legal responsibility for the course of the childbirth in this surgery field is still born (according to the survey "porodnice 2000") by men-doctors in two-thirds of cases. due to the gender stereotypes that are still firmly embedded in the minds of czech men and women, the competencies of female professionals are considered lesser, even within the framework of this specifically women's issue birth. this belittling comes not only from male colleagues who predominate in this field but also from the public. but it has to be stated that these attitudes towards male and female doctors that still prevail, especially in the field of obstetrics, which is considered to be a surgery field, do not apply to gynecology practitioners, where the proportion of female doctors is not as low as in obstetrics. a certain portion of women do feel more comfortable attending a female, not a male gynecologist. female obstetricians are considered to be less equipped both in nature and abilities required for the management of complicated or operative childbirth cases (in addition to the physical capabilities, this concerns the ability to make fast decisions and display "strong nerves"), and also in characteristics that are attributed to obstetricians conducting de-medicalized spontaneous childbirth. in addition to the openness to new non­ conservative procedures, male doctors are also attributed greater professional self-confidence, often related to practicing de-medicalized childbirth. these characteristics attributed to men or women function as gender stereotypes. thus, they are considered to be unchanging, a part of the natural makeup of men and women. consequently, the social and organizational conditioning of these characteristics is not questioned and they are not subject to corrections in the face ofone's own life experience. summary and conclusion by way of summarizing and concluding, it should be underscored that definitions of childbirth and obstetric practice change over time and space based on social, political, economic, and cultural contexts, and especially based on the medical paradigm, fashion and, ethics. the description and explication of the changes in obstetrics in contemporary czech society provided herein suggests that especially over the last decade we have seen de-medicalization and differentiation of childbirth care under the strong influence of social transformation. it is primarily women in labor who profit from these changes because there is vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 24 nothing to suggest that the risks of childbirth, as defmed by biomedicine, have increased with these changes while psychological support seems to be improving. this conclusion, however, may be counteracted by the fact that (according to the survey "porodnice 2000") thus far not even one fourth ofczech mothers whose childbirth was spontaneous had the possibility in the year 2000 to select their childbirth position, although the choice of position during childbirth correlated strongly with the general satisfaction of the mother during childbirth. these facts weaken the idea of a general large-scale shift in the czech obstetrics practice towards a greater participation of women in labor in the determination of the manner in which they will give birth in cases that are uncomplicated and spontaneous. nevertheless, we have seen significant and real changes in obstetrics on the local level and the debate has opened up on the national level. it may be summarized then that the current state of obstetrics in the czech republic is starting to look different from the one described by heitlinger (1987) in the 1980s. clearly, we have seen: 1) opening of the maternity wards to the public; 2) opening up of a dialogue between professionals and the general public on the form ofczech obstetrics in the czech media and on concrete childbirth in everyday medical practice; 3) a gradual shift from the paternalistic attitude of healthcare personnel toward women in labor to a greater freedom of women in labor to participate in determining the course of their labor; and 4) inclusion of the issue of quality of childbirth care in the agenda of issues addressed within the network of newly created women's ngos and professional organizations. according to interviews with obstetricians and midwives, the proponents of the actively conducted medical childbirth predominant in czech society perceive the current changes in obstetrics primarily as the commercialization of medical care. their opponents pushing for de­ medicalization of childbirth define this change as a consequence of the psychologization of childbirth, and position themselves in the role of those who take into account the psychological experience of women during childbirth, something bio-medicine disregards. both sides, however, talk about individuation and pluralization of health care, which they understand as one of the main features of the current trend in healthcare in general. no matter what form the already mentioned 25 individuation of care at individual workplaces takes, czech healthcare professionals define their current practice against the constructed "former" type of care which is characterized as routine and standardized by both sides. although in interviews doctors have reflected upon the changes in the direction of individualization and de-medicalization since the beginning of the 1980s, when rooming-in was introduced in czech maternity wards for the first time, it is true that on the general level they associate these changes with the 1990s. implicitly but also explicitly they make a connection with the general societal change, which also takes the form of greater individuation and the possibility of free personal choice. these changes reflected in the differentiation of the manner in which childbirth may be conducted may be viewed within the wider context of demographic, political, economic, and social changes supporting the creation and free activities of civic associations and professional groups just as competition between maternity wards. this competition occurs under the pressure of economic liberalization and a dramatic fall in the birthrates, because in the 1990s it became officially possible to select one's own doctor, which has indirectly lead to competition between maternity wards fighting for financial survival in the context of a dramatic fall in childbirth. the perception of this post-1989 change, however, must again be counteracted by the fact that before november 1989, there was certain differentiation in childbirth care hidden behind the facade ofuniforrnity. nevertheless, it may be claimed that after 1989 the processes of change have become visible and their dynamic, nature, and ways in which they are legitimized have changed. references beck, u. 1992 risk society: towards a new modernity (theory, culture, and society series). london: sage publication. cerrnakova, m.; haskova, h.; krizkova, a.; linkova, m; marikova, h. 2000 relations and changes of gender differences in the czech society in the 90's. prague: institute of sociology of academy of sciences of the czech republic. r i~~.__________----vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 25 26 chapman, e.m. 1986 the social construction of birth and the effects of culturally induced birth factors. coventry: university of warwick. georges, e. 1997 fetal ultrasound imaging and the production of authoritative knowledge in greece. in: childbirth and authoritative knowledge. david-floyd, r.e., sargent, c.f. (eds.). berkeley: university of california press. pp. 91­ 112. harvey, j. 1992 behind the medical masklmedical technology and medical power. coventry: university of warwick. heitlinger, a. 1987 reproduction, medicine and the socialist state. new york: s1. martin's press. jordan, b. 1997 authoritative knowledge and its construction. in: childbirth and authoritative knowledge. david-floyd, r.e., sargent, c.f. (eds.). berkeley: university of california press. pp.55-79. kitzinger, s. 1997 authoritative touch in childbirth: a cross-cultural approach. in: childbirth and authoritative knowledge. david-floyd, r.e., sargent, c.f. (eds.). berkeley: university of california press. pp. 209-232. kuhn, t.s. 1997 struktura vedeckych revoluci. praha: oikoymenh. leavitt, j.w. 1987 the growth of medical authority: technology and morals in turn-of-the­ century obstetrics. medical anthropology quarterly 1 :231-255. odent, m. 1995 znovuzrozeny porod. praha: argo. podalova s., hohlova s., maly z. 1999 srovnani bezpecnosti vertikalni a horizontalni porodni polohy. ceska gynekologie 2: 100-102. vodakova, a., ed. 1994 socialni deviace, sociologie nemoci a mediciny. praha: slon. van gennep, a. 1997 prechodove ritualy. praha: nln. wagner, m. 2000 porod pro pristi tisicileti ve stredni evrope. porodni asistentka 9:15-18. zeman, z., dolezal, a. 2000 pravni odpovednost a pravni vztahy v porodnictvi. praha: galen. 1 according to interviews with obstetricians, cardiotocographs are believed to increase indirectly the number of caesarean sections while its outputs are believed to be interpreted more frequently as a bad condition of a fetus than it really is. 2 in some other post-communist countries the situation is not the same in this case; rooming-in is not mainstream but rather the exception there. 3 older cardiotocographs which were connected to the prone position of laboring woman are being nowadays replaced by much more expensive new kinds of cardiotocographs that are smaller in size and because of that can also be used in different body positions. 4 variable "degree of interest in gaining information through reading" and variable "degree of level of education of a mother" correlate together on the one hand but the variable "degree of interest in gaining information through reading" cannot be filtered out by the variable "degree of level of education of a mother" while explaining participation of woman in decision concerning the conditions of her childbirth. 5 while at the beginning of 1980s were 15 live births per 1000 inhabitants, in the second half of 1990s it did not exceed 9 live births per 1000 inhabitants. vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 26 microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 2 brain drain, bogus asylum seekers, and babies: conflicting discourses of mobility and fertility in bulgaria and the european union kristen ghodsee, bowdoin college © 2002 kristen ghodsee all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the collapse of communism in bulgaria was initially uneventful. bulgaria had none of the wide-scale violence and chaos that characterized the transitions of the other balkan states. what followed, however, was a drastic contraction of the economy from which the country has still not recovered; the standard of living for most bulgarians today is significantly lower than that in 1989. these economic hardships, combined with the newly gained right to travel, have precipitated a wave of bulgarian emigration. scientists, professionals, students, and bulgarians with relatives abroad are just some of those who have left in search of opportunity and a better life in the west. in this essay i will examine the conflicting debates that attempt to explain bulgarian emigration after the fall of communism. in the longer version of this paper, i look in depth at discourse production in bulgaria, the european union, and several western european countries.1 in this article, however, i am presenting a summary of my more detailed arguments.2 although no one doubts that bulgarians have left the country, just who these bulgarians are and where they have gone is a more complicated and contentious question. bulgarian emigration has been characterized in vastly dissimilar ways, depending on which government or organization is discussing the issue. from the bulgarian perspective, these émigrés are “the best and the brightest,” the most educated and entrepreneurial. both politicians and bulgarian media bemoan the loss of their educated young people – a phenomenon characterized as “brain drain.” the concept of “brain drain” refers to the loss of the skilled nationals of one country through emigration to another country, with skill usually being measured by the attainment of formal educational qualifications. brain drain has conventionally been characterized as a negative phenomenon because states that have invested in the education and training of their nationals do not reap the benefits of these investments. alternatively, “brain gain” is the term used to refer to the receiving countries that take advantage of this skilled labor, which has been educated at the expense of another country’s taxpayers. for the western european countries to which they immigrate, however, bulgarians are often lumped in the popular imagination with their former yugoslav balkan neighbors and are characterized as economic refugees, bogus asylum seekers, and “trafficked humans.” even worse, on the popular level, balkan immigrants in general are often viewed as being undesirables: freeloaders, thugs, drug pushers, and prostitutes who are alleged to be responsible for increasing crime rates in west european countries. consequently, the immigration issue has become a political tinderbox, and many extreme right-wing parties in western europe have successfully gained or solidified power by pandering to popular fears about immigrants. officially, however, the european union and many individual country governments are pro-immigration. indeed, many west european nations that have both aging populations and perceived skills shortages in key industries are eager to recruit young, qualified bulgarians. in this paper i will examine the multiple and overlapping discourses on migration from southeastern europe in the context of the demographic crises in both the sending and receiving countries. i argue that many of these migration discourses obscure the most important underlying issue of demographic decline: fertility. discussions about migration are conducted in lieu of conversations about the social, political, and economic reasons why women in both eastern and western european countries are not having children. both in bulgaria and in the current 15 eu member states, migration is either a safety valve or a temporary measure that allows governments to avoid making difficult and unpopular decisions regarding necessary social and economic reforms. jen typewritten text 13 volume 20, number 2 conclusions about these measures, however, are not definitive. scholars who are bound by traditional disciplinary concerns view the causes and effects of migration through their own theoretical lenses: demographers are preoccupied with population increases and declines; economists with labor shortages; and political scientists with voting patterns’. i am primarily concerned with the discussions on bulgarian migration produced by politicians, international organizations, and national and international media. this paper illustrates the manner in which bulgarian migration is talked about, by whom, and for what possible underlying political and material interests. bulgarians have constructed a “truth” about brain drain, just as the united nations has constructed a “truth” about shrinking and aging populations. similarly, in western europe, the media and right-wing politicians are creating “truths” about bogus asylum seekers and economic refugees “flooding” into the continent. to examine the complicated and conflicting debates on migration, i conducted official interviews with representatives of the austrian, swiss, german, bosnian, croatian, and bulgarian embassies in washington dc in june and july 2002. i was also in personal contact with representatives of the british embassy in the united states, the british home office, the international organization for migration (iom), the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco), and the international labor organization (ilo). my data are also derived from discourse analysis of official reports and documents of the european union, the united nations-population division, the iom, and the individual german, swiss, british, and bulgarian governments. articles and letters in the german, british and bulgarian press were also considered. i use excerpts from the media to demonstrate general tendencies, recognizing that the media is very diverse and that right-leaning papers are apt to have very different perspectives than left-leaning papers. finally, i draw on 15 months of fieldwork conducted in bulgaria between 1999 and 2000, a short visit in 2001 immediately after bulgaria’s removal from the schengen black list, and my extensive network of bulgarian friends and colleagues working both in the country and abroad. from a theoretical perspective, it is important to examine how these different discourses shape perspectives of bulgarian migrants in order to understand the political and economic interests that may lie behind the creation and perpetuation of certain truths. on a practical level, however, it is also necessary to look at how these differing discourses may affect the motivations and actions of migrants themselves. perceptions of brain-drainers versus those of bogus political asylum seekers will influence attitudes toward bulgarian immigrants in western europe, as well as the ways in which bulgarians construct their own identities abroad. this is particularly important because bulgaria eventually hopes to join the european union. the “free movement of people” issue is one the strongest areas of contention among the existing eu 15 member states and the accession candidates. many of the roots of these disagreements lie within differing perceptions of who immigrants are and what they bring to the receiving countries. the view from bulgaria in 2000, bulgaria had a negative natural growth rate of -0.7 percent (world bank 2000) and a total fertility rate of 1.1 children per woman (us census bureau 2000). with replacement fertility being 2.1 children per woman, bulgaria is characterized by what demographers call “lowest low fertility” (lesthaeghe and surkyn 2002), and had the lowest fertility rate of any european country between 1995 and 1997 (lesthaeghe 2000). bulgaria’s population stood at 7.9 million in 2001 (national statistical institute 2002), and united nations (2000) projections state that by 2050 this figure will shrink by 31 percent – the second steepest decline in all of europe. more importantly, the un estimates that the percentage of the bulgarian population over 65 will increase from 16 percent in 2000 to 30 percent in 2050. adding to the problem of lower fertility is the exodus of bulgarians from the country. estimates range from 500,000 to 800,000 – higher and lower figures are cited depending on who is talking about the emigration problem. the demographic makeup of the émigrés – even simple statistics on the percentage of male and female migrants – is also unknown. the haziness of the data allows the government and the media considerable leeway in telling their stories about “brain drain.” from the 2000 age/sex pyramids, however, there does appear to be a sizable section of the 25-39-years-old cohort “missing”; consequently, it is often assumed that many of those who left bulgaria in the 1990s were young people looking for better opportunities abroad. in this context, the bulgarian press and government understandably have been obsessed with emigration, particularly with what has been characterized as the bulgarian brain drain. from jen typewritten text 14 volume 20, number 2 the early 1990s, when the media was first liberalized, journalists in bulgaria have discussed the emigration issue. emigration has been construed as one form of protest against sitting bulgarian governments – “voting with your feet.” in the early transition period (1990 and 1991) one researcher (gancheva 1992) found that bulgarian media were more preoccupied with emigration in general and were paying little attention to the many scientists and scholars leaving bulgaria. by the late 1990s, however, and especially between 2000 and 2002, stories of the brain drain filled the national media; and politicians began bemoaning the defection of so many of bulgaria’s best and brightest.3 bulgaria has also been recognized as a country rich in information technology (it) professionals. because bulgaria was the comecon country profiled to design the commuter systems for the soviet space and defense programs, bulgarians are highly skilled and have a reputation of being among the world’s best hackers. stories in both the local and international press, particularly during the peak of the dot.com period in the united states, celebrated the international desirability of bulgarian high tech workers.4 one representative article began: “moves by countries like germany to attract cheap foreign computer experts are good news for bulgarian it whizzkids” and ended with “but the brain drain is hitting the impoverished country just when it needs them most.”5 a july 2002 story by radio free europe/radio liberty reported that even the czech republic was targeting skilled bulgarians for a pilot program welcoming professional immigrants.6 while it may be true that many skilled bulgarians have left the country and that more advanced countries have actively recruited from bulgaria for highly educated workers, the actual extent of the problem is very difficult to gauge and is surely overly exaggerated. according to beleva and kotzeva (2001), of the 6,005 scientists in bulgaria who lost their jobs between 1989 and 1996, only 600 emigrated. furthermore, it appears that highly skilled emigrants (i.e., those with tertiary degrees) do not constitute more than ten percent of the total emigration from bulgaria between 1989 and 2001. the fact that 90 percent of the people who have left bulgaria are not “highly skilled” is masked in many ways by the constant attention that bulgarian media and politicians devote to brain drain. gätcher (2002), in an ilo study on bulgarian emigration, also challenges the idea of brain drain. he found that the overwhelming majority of those who left the country between 1988 and 1993 were ethnic turks who took the opportunity to return to turkey. furthermore, in his study he argues that the percentage of bulgarians in the labor force with a tertiary education has actually increased between 1992 and 1997 and that bulgaria’s figure is higher than that of austria, hungary, the czech republic, or slovenia. in 1999, bulgaria also had more working-age physicians per one million inhabitants than most other countries in the region, including germany. in terms of academic employment, there was a large percentage decrease in the aggregate. breaking the numbers down by degree, however, revealed interesting differences. according to gätcher, the employment of ph.d.s increased by 66.5 percent between 1985 and 1999 (from 1,016 to 1,581), while more than 25 percent of the job losses in academia were among those without an advanced degree (from 16,288 to 12,053 for the same period). the author concluded: overall, the data make it impossible to evade the conclusion that “brain drain” is far too big a word to describe what has been happening in bulgaria. there has been a trickle of highly qualified emigrants, no more, and even cumulatively it is not big enough to make any difference at all. (p. 18) if “brain drain” is defined by the emigration of those with tertiary degrees, the severity of the phenomenon is further complicated by the high number of bulgarian youth who leave their country to study and obtain their bachelor’s degrees abroad. since the costs of their higher education are paid for privately or by scholarships from foreign states, these bulgarians are not classical examples of a brain drain in which the home state has “invested” in their education. instead, they represent a perhaps more significant phenomenon – a youth drain. indeed, in many of the articles and public discussions of the brain drain in bulgaria, the youthfulness of the emigrants is particularly emphasized. these are young, able-bodied bulgarians of reproductive age who are striking out for better fortunes in the west, and thus exacerbating the demographic problem. the constant attention to the brain drain and the emigration of the young allows the media and the politicians to externalize the blame for a deteriorating standard of living in the country. those who have gone abroad are convenient scapegoats for the economic woes of those left behind, even while remittances from émigrés may jen typewritten text 15 volume 20, number 2 be the sole source of support for pensioners left wanting by the social security system. they are also held responsible for the collapse of the bulgarian industry and science, as well as the erosion of bulgaria’s previous preeminence in sports and high culture. the shrinking of the bulgarian population, the lack of foreign investment, and the disappearance of social safety nets are only a few of the problems placed at the feet of the brain-drainers. the view from the eu the united nations population division (2000) estimates significant population declines for most of the european union countries. for the eu as a whole, the un projects that the population will begin decreasing in 2005, and that the union stands to lose between 40 and 45 million people. this loss would be equivalent to the combined 2000 population of the eu’s seven smallest members (austria, finland, denmark, ireland, luxembourg, sweden and portugal). eurostat (1999) estimates more optimistically that the overall population of the eu 15 will not begin to decline until 2026, owing to higher projected birth rates in some member states. even so, the losses for individual eu countries such as italy, spain, and greece are worrying trends. the un predicts that these countries will lose 28 percent, 24 percent, and 23 percent of their populations, respectively, by 2050 (un 2000). the total fertility ratio for the eu 15 stood at 1.5 children per woman in the period 1990-1995 – well below replacement level, although this number hides significant variations among member states (un 2000). more importantly, many european countries are aging at unprecedented rates. life expectancy at birth rose from an average of 67.0 years in the 1950-1955 period to 76.5 years in 1990-1995. meanwhile, the proportion of the population age 65 or older increased from 9.5 percent of the total in 1950 to 15.5 in 1995, and could increase to as much as 22.4 percent by 2025. the lower birth rates and greater life expectancy of the elderly mean that countries such as italy may have to raise retirement ages to 75 or more in order to keep current pension schemes viable. the demographic “crisis” has led the u.n. to examine the possibility of “replacement migration” for western europe. replacement migration posits that increasing the number of immigrants can solve demographic shortfalls. although it is controversial in many individual countries of the european union, the un’s study of replacement migration has coincided with calls from european capitalists to increase migration to rectify perceived skills shortages (salt 1992). particularly in the information technology and medical sectors, individual eu countries are passing new laws to actively encourage the immigration of skilled professionals. this may have been in response to an eu brain drain to the united states: many highly skilled european workers preferred to work in america where salaries were higher and hierarchies less rigid, especially during the dot.com boom of the late 1990s. european employers often believed that the united states’ looser immigration laws (and particularly the h1b visa program for skilled workers) gave their north atlantic ally an unfair competitive advantage. in this context, the european commission (ec) has openly advocated for increasing avenues for legal immigration to the eu (commission of the european communities 2000, 2001). politically, the european commission has as its ultimate agenda the preservation and integration of the existing eu 15. with a large and diverse constituency divided into euroskeptics and europhiles across so many countries, the commission is surely aware that some of its strongest support originates with members of the european business community, who see great economic advantages in the common market. the future prospects of european corporations – particularly in the face of fierce american competition for markets – are intimately tied up with the survival of the eu, just as the sustainability of the eu is dependent on support from the economic elites. the loosening of immigration laws to allow for increases in foreign labor at the europe-wide level is a policy that will greatly benefit these elites in both the long and short run. on the other hand, the commission cannot be seen as being too soft on the immigration issue, especially since there is growing resistance to the union from large populations within the member states. the rise of right-wing parties is only one example of this discontent. calls for the coordination of immigration and asylum policies across europe in order to shut out economic refugees also can be seen as a move to appease these interests. the practice of limiting immigration from bulgaria for all but the very highly skilled, despite its europe agreement, is supported by a perception that constructs bulgaria as a country of potential immigrants who would all move west if given the chance. although numerous studies have found the majority of bulgarians are unlikely to emigrate (iom 1997, undp 1999), the notion that they will jen typewritten text 16 volume 20, number 2 also reinforces the practices that have kept bulgaria on the schengen black list until 2001. even after bulgarians could travel freely to western europe, fears that bulgarian tourists would be seeking illegal work have led to strict rules on how much money potential tourists must have before they are allowed to cross the border. west european perceptions of bulgarians as potential asylum seekers and refugees are a stark contrast to the bulgarian image of the emigrant as a brain-drainer. the view from individual western european countries from the brief discussion above, it is apparent that, on the surface, the european commission is in favor of economic immigration, at least as evidenced by its public discourse. this stance, however, has been dogged by controversy in many of the individual eu member states. politicians in all west european countries have taken note of the electoral successes of extreme anti-immigration parties in austria, france, and the netherlands. political backlash against immigration, and even against the expansion of the existing union, has complicated the immigration issue for many states. xenophobia in europe has been on the rise, and high domestic unemployment rates have led many to challenge claims about skills shortages. furthermore, right-wing arguments claiming that the state takes better care of asylum seekers than of their own citizens find eager sympathizers among the socially disenfranchised. because of the perceived necessity of foreigners on the one hand, and the sometimes-violent opposition of west european publics on the other, immigrants are also discursively constructed into two distinct types in the national imagination: the “highly skilled” and the “refugees, asylum seekers and illegals.” unfortunately for bulgarians, most western europeans tend to lump them together with bosnian and kosovo albanian muslims or conflate all of bulgaria with its roma minority – populations that have increasingly become demonized in the western european press as refugees and criminals. once again, the perceptions of bulgarians in individual western european countries are quite contrary to their own perceptions of the “brain-drainers.” a youth drain: another truth about replacement migration and fertility? underlying debates on migration both in bulgaria and west european countries is the crucial issue of fertility, most succinctly captured in the times headline: “breed or die out.”7 the entire debate about migration is couched in terms of a demographic crisis because women in the wealthy nations of the world have not had enough babies in the last 20 or 30 years. coleman (2001) has shown that just a small increase in fertility rates in europe could significantly mitigate the worst consequences of aging and declining populations, albeit in the long term. ultimately, only increasing fertility rates (or increasing mortality rates among the elderly) will solve the demographic problems of europe. many scholars (e.g., coleman 2001, lesthaeghe 2000, lesthaeghe and surkyn 2002, un 2000, shaw 2001) agree that increasing the number of immigrants is only a short-term measure that may temporarily prevent the raising of retirement ages but will ultimately result in a very contentious erosion of european ethnic majorities in host nations. this solution is accepted, however, because increases in fertility rates will take at least 20 years to have an effect. public debates about the brain drain in bulgaria and the need for replacement migration in western europe obscure the underlying issue of fertility rates and the demographic decline that characterizes european countries in both east and west. because policies that will increase european fertility rates are expensive and take many years to “bear fruit,” sitting governments have few incentives to implement them, particularly in open, democratic political systems where governments are only in office for several years. in other words, supporting women and families does not have an immediate pay-off for politicians concerned with reelection in the short term. immigration, on the other hand, does. all parties on the political spectrum can use the immigration issue to bolster support for their causes. in western europe, the right can win votes by championing the cause of the working classes against immigration. meanwhile, left and center parties can welcome foreign workers and gain the support of european corporations. in bulgaria, politicians can either scapegoat brain-drainers as a way of deflecting criticism of their own economic policies, or gain ballots by promising to bring young bulgarians home. the “problem” with pronatalism in both eastern and western europe is that it is not just a matter of sending women back to the home in order to have more babies. in fact, the biggest challenge in most european countries is the aging population: there are fewer working people to support the increasing number of pensioners. in order to maintain the social security system for the elderly without having to raise retirement ages too jen typewritten text 17 volume 20, number 2 drastically, european women have to be encouraged to enter the labor force. increasing the labor participation rate of women (and of men over the age of 50) is one of the most effective options that current governments have to shore up their pension schemes. more women in the workplace, however, might translate into even fewer babies unless there are family friendly policies in place to help support women in their efforts to combine work and family duties. countries such as france and sweden that have family friendly policies already in place still maintain near replacement, or replacement level, birth rates, despite high female labor force participation (coleman 2001). furthermore, de rose and racioppi (2001) and mcdonald (2001) have also determined that countries with lower levels of gender equality have lower birth rates. thus, policies that support women’s equality may also be effective ways to encourage women to have more children. family support programs such as child allowances, longer paid maternity leaves, or subsidized kindergartens, however, would require large transfers from the state budget and long-term commitments by politicians. private enterprises concerned about short-term profitability would be unlikely to contribute to these programs. consequently, such strategies would mean an increase in the welfare state precisely at the historical moment where the hegemony of neoliberal economic thought advocates the dismantling of such states. furthermore, these family support programs would drain budgets already increasingly burdened by a larger number of pensioners and would likely require the raising of retirement ages in most countries. given the growing number of older voting constituents, politicians will be highly unlikely to antagonize those nearing retirement. in bulgaria, this situation is further complicated by the conditionalities of world bank and international monetary fund loans that severely constrain public spending. given the political difficulties in supporting pro-natalist policies, however, it is understandable that migration would become such a hot political issue. in bulgaria, both politicians and the media stress that brain-drainers are young and qualified. images of successful bulgarians abroad are invariably pictures of young people in their 20s and 30s. the high profile of the brain drain in bulgaria may reflect not only a preoccupation with the skilled workers that bulgaria has lost, but also a vilification of the youth who have abandoned their country and their “responsibilities” to the older generation. in western europe, too, the term “highly skilled” may act in some ways as a synonym for “young.” “highly skilled” is often determined by the attainment of university degrees, and eu countries are making it increasingly easier for students who gain their degrees in western europe to stay and work after graduation. although both of these assertions are impossible to support either way, it is important to examine how different discussions on migration might be infused with multiple layers of meaning beneath the obvious surface. as far as bulgaria is concerned, in the short term the situation will remain dire. birthrates will likely continue to fall, and young bulgarians will likely continue to find their way abroad. ironically, the images and stories of successful brain-drainers in the bulgarian media may actually encourage more youth to leave the country in search of better lives in western europe and north america. if the public believes that the best and brightest bulgarians go abroad, ambitious youth will feel compelled to leave the country in search of validation. the attitudes of western europeans will also continue to be influenced by discourses that construct balkan immigrants as undesirable refugees and asylum seekers. these negative stereotypes may become a disincentive to “highly skilled” bulgarians for living and working in western europe. instead, young bulgarians will look farther afield to the united states and canada, where north americans are generally less familiar with their country, let alone know that it is in the balkans. of course, discussions of demographic decline are far more complicated and nuanced than presented here; demographers debate these issues with much greater knowledge and sophistication. my intent in this paper is merely to outline the trajectory of the debate and to examine how these phenomena enter the public discourse. this paper represents the beginnings of a more in-depth study on the discursive interactions between discussion of migration and fertility in the bulgarian and west european contexts. the arguments expressed in this essay should not be considered definitive conclusions, but rather preliminary hypotheses that can help shape questions for future research. references beleva, iskra and mariana kotzeva 2001. “skilled labour migration from developing countries: study on bulgaria.” international labour office. department of international development. december 2001. bogdanov, b. 2000. “basic statistical indicators, characterizing the social development in bulgaria.” united nations economic commission for europe. geneva, june 27, 2000. jen typewritten text 18 volume 20, number 2 coleman, d.a. 2001. “‘replacement migration’, or why everyone’s going to have to live in korea: a fable for our times from the united nations.” (april 11, 2001). commission of the european communities 2000“communication from the commission to the council and the european parliament on a community immigration policy.” brussels, 22.11.2000 com (2000) 757 final. commission of the european communities 2001“communication from the commission to the council and the european parliament on an open method of coordination for the community immigration policy.” brussels, 11.7.2001 com (2001) 387 final. “czech republic: immigration plan hopes to attract kazakhs, croats, bulgarians.” 2002 rferl, http://www.online.bg (july 20, 2002). de rose, alessandra, and filomena racioppi 2001. “explaining voluntary low fertility in europe.” genus, lvii 1 (january-march 2001). eurostat 1999. “eurostat working paper on national and regional population trends in the european union.” 3/1999/e/n 8, (1999), 39. gancheva, vyara 1992. “brain drain in the perspectives of opinion and science policy.” roste technical report #14. http://www.unesco.org. gatcher, a. 2002. “the ambiguities of emigration: bulgaria since 1988.” international migration papers 39. geneva: international labour office, international migration branch. gove, michael 2001. “breed or die out.” the times (london). (november 15, 2001). international organization for migration 1997profiles and motives of potential migrants from bulgaria. budapest, april 1997. lesthaeghe, ron 2000. “europe’s demography issues: fertility, household formation and replacement migration.” paper for un expert group meeting on policy responses to population decline and ageing, interuniversity papers in demography, interface demography. vrije universiteit brussel, 10/16-18, 2001. lesthaeghe, r., and j. surkyn 2002. “new forms of household formation in central and eastern europe: are they related to newly emerging value orientations?” interuniversity papers in demography, interface demography. vrije universiteit brussel, january 17, 2001. mcdonald, p. 2001. “gender equity in theories of fertility transition.” population and development review 26(3): 427-440. national statistical institute 2002statistical yearbook. sofia: nsi. salt, john 1992. “migration processes among the highly skilled in europe.” international migration review 26(2): 484-505. sergueva, vessela 2000. “bulgaria faces brain drain as computer boffins head west.” agence france presse (august 2, 2000). shaw, c. 2001. “united kingdom population trends in the 21st century.” population trends, 103. tchalakov, ivan 1992. external migration among bulgarian scientists in the beginning of the 1990s.” roste technical report #14. (1992), http://www.unesco.org. u.s. census bureau 2000.“international database summary demographic data for bulgaria.” http://www.census.gov/cgibin/ipc/idsum?cty=bu. united nations development program 1999.national human development report, bulgaria 1999, volume ii: bulgarian people’s aspirations. sofia: undp. united nations, population division 2000.“replacement migration: is it a solution to declining and aging populations?” new york: un department of economic and social affairs (march 21, 2000). world bank 2000.“bulgaria at a glance.” http://www.worldbank.org/data/ (access date september 5, 2001) notes 1ghodsee, kristen, “mobility in bulgaria and the european union: brain drain, bogus asylum seekers, replacement migration, and fertility,” ees occasional paper no. 70, washington, dc: woodrow wilson center, november 2002. 2 i would like to thank martin sletzinger and the eastern european studies program at the woodrow wilson center for generously funding this research. special thanks to sabina crisen and meredith knepp for their encouragement and support during my time there, and especially to sabina for her help with the preparation of this essay. i am also very grateful to the efforts of irena crncevic and laura freschi who assisted with the background research for this project. 3 for example, “bulgaria faces brain drain,” agence france presse (august 3, 2000); james derleth, “behind bulgaria’s troubles: exodus of the educated,” christian science monitor (february 2, 1997); “more than a half of the bulgarians would send their children abroad,” http://www.news.bg (january 29, 2001); plamen velikov, “to stay or not to stay is the eastern question,” sofia echo (march 3, 2001); “we’re advised against brain drain,” standartnews (may 30, 2001). 4 for example, “bulgaria-germany-computer programmers,” bulgarian press agency (bta) (august 9, 2000); “bulgariascientists,” bulgarian press agency (bta) (october 8, 1999); “bulgaria vows to restore high-tech industry,” reuters (july 23, 1998); elisaveta konstantinova, “bulgaria drafted to fight bug,” the australian (july 7, 1998);veselin toshkov, “east european nation fights to hold onto high-tech workers,” associated press (march 4, 2001). jen typewritten text 19 volume 20, number 2 5 vessela sergueva, “bulgaria faces brain drain as computer boffins head west,” agence france presse (august 2, 2000). 6 “czech republic: immigration plan hopes to attract kazakhs, croats, bulgarians,” rferl, http://www.online.bg (july 20, 2002). 7 michael gove, “breed or die out,” the times (london), (november 15, 2001). jen typewritten text 20 microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 21 ‘nothing has changed, it just turned illegal’: discourses for the justification of illegal trade and immigration in the moldovan republic monica heintz university of paris x-nanterre this article envisages the movements of goods and people from the point of view of their real and perceived legal status. it explores the multifaceted reasons and complex arguments used to support legally condemnable activities such as illegal trade and illegal migration. i focus on a moldovan village situated on the border with ukraine and present the villagers’ discourses for justifying these illegal activities in the context of the severe economic shortage and lack of employment opportunities in the area. the main reasons invoked for justifying continued involvement in economic transactions that became illegal when the ussr collapsed are economic rationality and the tradition of trade between the ex-soviet republics. as far as labour migration is concerned, discourses for justifying illegal migration are largely absent; the findings of the study indicate that it is not the illegality of labour migration that concerns potential migrants, but only its feasibility and resulting benefits. however, when it comes to the moral dimension of the (illegal) activities in which migrants engage, discourses of justification are produced – not only for officials or the anthropologist, but also for fellow villagers. they need to be persuaded that the standards of morality within the village are distinct from the standards of morality outside the village and that the movement of people and goods should not fall under the jurisdiction of the former. in the first part of this article i will discuss the economic, political and social circumstances that have led to labour migration and cross-frontier trade in the republic of moldova since 1991 and consider the various migration destinations and legal status available to moldovans. in the second part of the article i will seek to interpret the discourses generated by migrants and their families to justify illegal migration and trade to the community (and the anthropologist). 1. why and how do moldovans migrate? the national bureau of statistics of the republic of moldova estimates that around 0.5 million of the republic’s 4.35 million citizens are working abroad. they represent as much as 35% of the total active population, which is put at 1.35 million (anuarul statistic 2003). independent mass media make references to one million labour migrants, more than half the active population of the republic and 25% of the total population. it has been estimated that the income sent back to moldova by migrant labourers solely through western union money transfers is already three times the level of the state budget. the difference between official state figures and the figures published by independent media regarding the number of migrants is not only attributable to the different political positions that they seek to advance. most trade and migration is illegal and thus escapes the control of the state. although precise statistics on the scale of this phenomenon are lacking, migration is considered to be the most important and visible feature of social life in the country and it is the hottest topic of daily debate. the causes of migration the social and economic changes that affected the newly born republic of moldova after 1991 were common to most ex-soviet republics. union structures were dismantled following the disintegration of the ussr and the newly emerging countries had to build democratic institutions from scratch in an economic and political environment heavily influenced by the soviet legacy. certain political and historical circumstances – namely economic dependence on russia due to transnistria’s breakaway and patterns of employment during the socialist period – aggravated the consequences of the collapse of the ussr in moldova, resulting in massive unemployment and disproportionate poverty given the county's natural and geographical assets. the predecessor of the republic of moldova, the moldovan soviet socialist republic (mssr), came about at the end of the second world war from the unification of two territories: the moldovan autonomous soviet socialist republic (better known by the name of transnistria, the left bank of the dniestr river), a republic created in 1924 and functioning within the ukrainian soviet socialist republic, and a much larger territory, commonly known as bessarabia (the right bank of the dniestr river), which was part of romania before wwii. the bessarabian region, newly incorporated into the ussr, underwent extensive purges of the cultural and economic elites in the 1940s and remained distrusted throughout the socialist period. during this anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 22 time political elites were recruited from the transnistrian part of the republic and all the main industry was built there. the right bank was used largely for agricultural production and light industry (agro-industry and textiles). in general, the moldovan ssr was tasked with producing cereals and wine for the ussr economy. in june 1990, following a national resurrection movement claiming language rights for the titular nation in the republic, the moldovans (romanians), the republic declared its sovereignty within the ussr (fruntasu 2003). in response to the roumanophone movement, the russophone left bank of the dniestr declared its secession from the right bank in september 1990 and formed the dniestrian moldovan republic (transnistria), a political entity which to this day is still not recognised internationally. although officially part of the republic of moldova (independent since august 1991), transnistria has its own government, currency, political structures (troebst 2003; troebst 2004) and, most notably, does not share its economic assets with moldova. a war between the two banks of the river in 1992 accentuated the disintegration of the economy. the republic of moldova has few industrial structures, no sources of energy and gas, and after fifteen years of independence it is still economically dependent on the russian federation (which provides these energy resources). meanwhile, several ussr enterprises situated on the territory of moldova were withdrawn at the beginning of the 1990s when the soviet union collapsed. the remaining enterprises went through restructuring as in all former socialist states. the result is that today only 12% of the employed population works in industry, with as much as 43% employed in agriculture and 45% in the tertiary sector (anuarul statistic 2003). on further analysis of these figures according to the age of the employed population, their ethnic belonging and rural/urban residence, certain patterns of employment emerge that explain the current exodus of the workforce. in the mssr collective farms, kolkhozy, were formed in 1949 and the entire adult rural population (except for some specialists) was taken to work in the fields. by the 1970s agriculture was mechanised and there was no need to bring up younger generations on the farms. the young rural population from the right bank of the dniestr was drawn into light industry. following the restructuring of industry after 1991, it was the younger generation that was left unemployed. in 1992 decollectivisation began (a process that ended in 1999) and land was redistributed among those who were or had been active in the kolkhoz, i.e. the older generations. younger generations were left without town jobs and without other means of subsistence. those with a higher education generally moved to the capital city chisinau, home to 20% of the republic’s total population, where they started small businesses or began to work in the tertiary sector. many small businesses involve cross-border trade between moldova and the neighbouring countries, especially within the csi. it is estimated that 70% of national gdp derives from export and import activities at the borders. businesses that would generate jobs and income are more difficult to start in the rural milieu, where information, connections and entrepreneurial savoir faire are lacking. peasants sell their produce in the towns on an individual basis at an insignificant profit and few consider crossing frontiers with their products because of the high cost of bribing the border police.iii new small farms have been set up in villages, pooling the land of several owners. yet they are few in number and have not been encouraged by the government (led by the party of communists since february 2001), which prefers to maintain larger kolkhoz-type farm structures. not surprisingly, independent farmers and small collective farms are led by men with anti-communist leanings; they make an ideological statement with their involvement in independent farming and their refusal to go to work in russia. for the rural population (representing 61% of the total moldovan population) with no expertise in independent farming and no ideological position to uphold, the only source of work and income appears to be abroad. this would explain why men and women aged 18 to 45-50, with some work experience in factories, can imagine trying labour migration to various destinations that reportedly offer earnings prospects. migrant destinations and the question of legality the destination for migration is primarily linked to a migrant’s ability to reach it and only secondarily to the attraction that it exercises on a migrant. migration towards the west is therefore preferable to migration towards the east, but since the former is more difficult the number of east-ward migrants greatly exceeds the number of west-ward migrants. the length of stay in the host country is also directly proportional to the difficulty of reaching it: migrants do not venture to return to moldova if they are unsure of their ability to return to the host country afterwards. consequently, the life of the families left behind takes on a different pace depending on whether or not the members engaged in migration return home on a regular basis. the first destination for work is russia (the cities of moscow and saint petersburg), where the monthly wage can be as high as 200-250 dollars. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 23 since the republic of moldova is a member of the commonwealth of independent states, the weak successor to the ussr, its citizens had the right to circulate freely in ex-soviet space in 2003-2004. however, in another legacy of the politics of control of the soviet union, foreign citizens are required to register within three days of arrival. registration costs one hundred dollars for a three-month stay in russia and does not give the right to work. given the average monthly wage in moldova of fifty dollars (a wage that few have the opportunity to earn), not many moldovan citizens are willing to pay the registration fee. consequently, after spending three days in russia most moldovans stay on illegally and almost all of them work illegally. work in russia is facilitated by their knowledge of russian, a state language during the soviet era, and by the ussr integration policy that familiarised moldovans with russia.iv the feeling of still belonging to the ussr continues to be nurtured in moldova through material culture, e.g. by keeping the former soviet passports and bringing various newspapers and magazines back from moscow. it is also fostered by the russian minority that denies the changes that took place after 1989 by refusing to learn and speak the state language or to identify with the moldovan state. furthermore, the nostalgia for bolshevitav led many citizens to vote for the return of the communist party with its pro-ussr programme in the 2001 elections.vi however, few have experience of actually travelling in russia before they need to seek work abroad. moldovan men are easily spotted as foreigners in large russian metropoles, suggesting that their former soviet identity does not help to disguise their contemporary appearance as the ‘foreigner’. often the police catch them and fine them, i.e. they extract money from them in exchange for not denouncing their illegal residence status in russia.vii staying in russia is risky – their illegal status confines workers to their place of employment (where they also live) and prevents them from walking on the street during the day.viii travelling freely back and forth between russia and moldova is possible due to the id card (no record is kept of border crossings) and the low (cis-protectedix) travel prices. this enables rural inhabitants to leave quite spontaneously for russia when there is less work to do in their households and they lack cash. relatively few labour migrants go to russia for periods longer than a few months in a row because immigrants aged 18 to 50 have children at home and households to keep. work opportunities in russia may also not be continuous. work in russia is not entirely disruptive for family life since migrating members are able to return on a regular basis. it is also less disruptive for community life because the connection between villagers is kept up when several villagers work in the same russian town and communicate news from home to each other or their families. however, no reconstitution of the community abroad is possible due to the illegal status that restricts moldovans to their workplaces (those working in construction tend to live on the building site; those who take care of older people or children live with the host families) and because the size of the cities in which they work obliges them to live miles apart. the second and most sought-after destination is of course western europe. this is because the earnings are higher, ranging from 800 to 1000 euros per month. western europe is the destination for longer-term migration because of the difficulty of access and hence it requires careful planning. schengen visas are almost inaccessible to potential labour migrants, who are easily spotted by the european embassies in chisinau and refused visas. the solution often lies in paying for extremely expensive visas, costing around two thousand euros, which some travel agencies organise illegally.x italy is the western european country with the largest moldovan population, with the most popular employment there being caring for the elderly (especially among female migrants). such jobs finally seem to have been accepted by italian officials, because after 2-3 years some moldovans are able to obtain papers enabling them to travel back and forth to moldova. in addition to the appealing similarity of the italian and romanian languages, italy is a common destination because of the channels opened by the first immigrants and certainly also because of a more indulgent attitude on the part of the carabinieri. for those who do not succeed in legalising their status, temporary returns are not foreseen and a definitive return is dictated simply by eventual deportation from the western state. in the case of western european destinations family networks function best, while for russian destinations neighbourhood ties seem to suffice for spreading information about job opportunities and ways of coping with the border guards and local police. labour migration to western europe is facilitated in the western part of the republic of moldova by the fact that many moldovans can travel with romanian passports.xi romanian legislation allows former citizens of romania and their descendents to regain romanian citizenship. until 2002 a residence requirement on the territory of romania made it difficult for moldovans living further away from the moldovan/romanian border to regain romanian citizenship. obtaining romanian passports has become more difficult over the years as romania has had to come into line with european anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 24 union regulations in preparation for its eu integration, yet this has also made their acquisition more tempting (marin 2006). economic disparities have appeared between regions: villages close to the romanian border are richer than those close to the ukrainian frontier due to the availability of work in the west as opposed to opportunities in the east (tall new houses are material proof of this). romanian passports permit travel twice a year for three months at a time within countries that have signed the schengen agreement, albeit without the right to work. the constraint of having to return every three months for a three-month period is easily circumvented by bribing the border police to change the return date – a bribe my romanian informants put at one hundred euros, a reasonable amount to spend when working within the european union. for romanian passport holders, travelling to the west becomes as spontaneous and need-oriented as travelling to russia for moldovan passport holders.xii money brought back to the republic of moldova is mainly used for building houses. when new needs arise, such as for decorating a room or bathroom, one member of the family leaves again to work until the necessary amount of money has been earned. as one middle-aged woman complained, this process never stops because new needs or new ambitions always arise. yet as a younger male migrant explained to me, while he was still young enough to be active he could not retire and live on what he had earned because he was certain that sometime in the future he would again experience a lack, possibly at a stage in his life when he would not be able to get work so easily. what pushes villagers to migrate, therefore, are not just needs and ambitions, but also certain ideas about life and work. despite the advantages of working in the west, the long-term absence is more disruptive for family life and in many cases several years of absence cause the destruction of the family. often, those working in the west do not go back to their home village, but upon return settle in chisinau. many migrate permanently, establishing new families abroad or migrating with their entire nuclear families. children of permanently migrating families are often taken care of by grandparents until they reach school age, before following their parents abroad. the migration destination has the capacity to fashion a certain identity and civic attitude, despite the weak link existing between the host country and the migrant due to her/his illegal status. consequently, newspapers often present migrant labour in western europe as able to generate a european identity for moldovans, notwithstanding whether the migrants travel on moldovan or romanian passports (i.e. more or less legally). such a european identity manifests itself when they are back in moldova through the desire for integration into the european union, voting for pro-european parties and against the communists and increased participation in public life. this sympathy for the west is borne of practical considerations: western european countries offer better living and working conditions than moldova or russia. lack of access to information about living standards in the european union prompts many to regard conditions in russia as the best there could be (inasmuch as they are the best that they have witnessed or heard about) and hence cooperation with russia is viewed as the most desirable political position. travelling and working in western europe opens up fresh perspectives and renders other identifications attractive. migrants to the west return to moldova with different notions of public life (for instance, with new expectations regarding the protective role of the state, the freedom of mass media) and with visions of desirable futures that differ from those of migrants to the east (heintz 2007). 2. discourses of justification for illegal and/or immoral actions in 2003/2004 i conducted eight months of fieldwork in satu vechi, a rural community of some 3,000 inhabitants situated on the moldovan/ukrainian border. in august 2004 i tried to measure the scale of the migration phenomenon based on a sample of 75 households drawn from the same neighbourhood. the survey revealed that 22 households (30%) had at least one migrant labourer away working at the time of my interview, a total of 30 workers out of almost 300 inhabitants (10%). of these, 26 migrant workers were working in russia, one in turkey, one in the czech republic, two in italy (one was there temporarily on a romanian passport, the other had not returned for the past three years because his status there was illegal). if the population included in the sample between the ages of 18 and 45 is regarded as capable of working (many have medical problems for which they receive pensions), almost one third had gone to work abroad. relatively speaking, this is a village considered to have been impacted less by migration than others, and it would be impossible to extrapolate or estimate the extent of the national migration phenomenon from this sample. at the local level, though, the number of emigrants significantly influences village life in that it imposes unusual family arrangements: children have to be brought up by aunts and uncles or great-aunts and -uncles, siblings are divided between several households, grandparents are separated while one grandparent takes residence in the children’s house to look after the grandchildren while the other continues taking care of the farm etc. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 25 it is hardly any wonder, then, that labour migration is a topic of lively interest and discussion in the village. most conversations turn around those who work abroad, when they will return to pay a visit, whether the (nuclear) family can still hold together when the husband/father or wife/mother is away, what jobs could be found and how much they bring in, including many anecdotes linked to the illegal nature of their employment. while politics is almost taboo in the village, most people still being afraid to openly criticise the government, nobody hesitates to talk about the tricks employed to get around the border police or the local russian or faraway italian police. however, migrants avoid being precise about the type of jobs they do abroad and the conditions in which they live, unless specifically asked to do so. in general, they present themselves as hard workers, living in better conditions and with greater dignity than their family left behind at home – except for occasional accounts of being on the run.xiii i will discuss below, firstly, the (lack of) discourses used to justify the illegal aspects of migration and, secondly, the strategies for justifying immoral activities. the lack of justification provided for illegal activities direct discourses for justifying illegal migration are lacking; people do not believe that there is anything to justify in front of a fellow villager or anthropologist because they do not consider that there is anything wrong with what they are doing. what are the reasons for this absence? the first reason for this lack of a need for justification is simply the scale of immigration, which reassures both migrants and their families that what they are doing is ‘normal’.xiv we have seen the large (estimated) figures for the scale of migration. it should be borne in mind that during the soviet period just what was politically dangerous was never known exactly, but by not standing out from the crowd and by doing the same things as everyone else one could stay on the safe side.xv in the village labour migration is ‘normal’: it is travelling far away to find a job if none is available closer to home. the second reason is a lack of responsibility in the face of abstract laws governing migration and labour. as most interviewees put it, why was a moldovan allowed to work in russia until 1991 but not now? in their eyes, this is just a matter of politics – of which they are the victims. faced with this perceived injustice, the potential migrant chooses not to shoulder any responsibility. it is easy to make comparisons with the soviet period and conclude that it cannot be fundamentally wrong to work in russia. the same reasoning applies to work in western europe if a moldovan compares himself with a latvian or an estonian, similarly former soviet citizens. as people who consider themselves hardworking, moldovans do not feel guilty about the illegality of their work and their sole concern is with not being caught, since this costs them money. this lack of concern was obvious to me when people i scarcely knew but who had learnt that i was a european union citizen did not hesitate to tell me about their illegal work in the eu and their ways of tricking the police there, without fearing that i would have a negative opinion about this. they would also openly declare their desire to obtain a romanian passport so as to travel more easily to their destination. in romania the intelligentsia used to condemn romanian illegal workers for endangering their possibility to circulate freely in europe through their disrespect of travel conditions. consequently, labour migrants from romania show a greater awareness of the illegality of their work and are more careful in their discourse, at least in front of strangers. in my previous work in romania in 1999/2000 and again in 2003/2004, i heard many discourses of justification for illegal trade and immigration from romanians (heintz 2006: 156). they were a response to the accusations of the independent press and the government, which continuously criticised these illegal actions for compromising romania’s prospects of european integration.xvi the independent press in moldova, on the other hand, displays sympathy towards labour migrants and uses their departure to reproach the government’s lack of efficiency in implementing economic change. the ‘blame the victim’ position is not popular. the third reason for the absence of justifications has to do with the fact that migration is seen as the last solution, one which is embraced out of despair rather than rational reasoning. a young divorced woman, who works in saint petersburg in order to save money for building a house, told me that she would like to be able to go to italy, despite the danger of being caught and deported and not allowed to travel abroad for a number of years. she explained that if she worked there for two years and earned as much as she could in russia in ten years, she would not need to travel abroad any more and could do without a passport. the important thing for her is to get enough money to build a house. in 2003 newspapers were full of scandalised reports concerning young moldovan women who, after they were caught and imprisoned while working illegally in italy, declared to moldovan journalists that they preferred their life in detention to their life in moldova. (this could again be taken as a strong criticism of the policies of the government in power.) anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 26 single or divorced women as well as those who have experienced domestic violence are especially willing to take the risk of migrating to italy or turkey because the life they leave behind and their status in the rural community are not attractive. rural communities remain traditional in their way of judging broken families and condemn single women, despite the increased number of divorces and second marriages among the younger generation (many due precisely to labour migration). returning home, these women do not resettle in the village but generally seek refuge in towns. all these reasons ‘naturalise’ the illegality of migration, which becomes acceptable and fails to trigger the shame associated with the fact of being caught by the police or sent to prison that is usually felt in traditional moldovan society. justifications become unnecessary as the moldovan unemployed are presented as victims of historical circumstances, not particularly bound to the legal frame of any state since no state provides them with the expected social or employment security – an idea of entitlement that is a typical socialist legacy (heintz 2006: 93). justifications of “immoral” activities while the illegality of work abroad is not judged by locals, there are ample discussions and comments within the community about what types of jobs young women hold in southern european countries (a question less often formulated for those who work in russia). publicly, these concerns are expressed in collective paternalistic terms (along the lines of ‘why are our beautiful girls obliged to go to italy?’) and they are often rhetorically linked to demographic rather than moral anxieties. there is plenty of first-hand evidence from the village that many female villagers have engaged in prostitution abroad, a condemnable activity by local standards. if no need is felt to justify illegal trade and immigration (at least the lack of justifications would suggest this is the case), there is secrecy and a need for justification in private circles with respect to what would be regarded in the village as ‘immoral’ activities. are migrants involved in activities disapproved of as 'immoral' rejected by the community, or are there justifications for their actions powerful enough to enable them to gain acceptance from the community? having becoming involved in such activities abroad, many young women – fearing rejection from the community – do not dare to return to the village but settle further away in towns. their families, however, remain in the village and have to justify their daughters’ behaviour and also explain why they maintain relationships with them. one of my closest informants recounted how her daughter (who has now gone to russia) had been trapped and forced into prostitution in turkey a few years before and explained how she had invented (or the daughter had invented for her) a story in which the daughter had escaped with the aid of a benevolent turk without prostituting herself. this story is quite telling of the shame that such an activity might entail. similar stories of forcibly trafficked young women were used to explain how and why the daughters of the village ended up in prostitution. most ‘lost daughters’ involved in prostitution were forgiven by their parents who accepted them back into their home, but their stories are not forgotten and i collected a few of them myself unsolicited from their parents. it might be that these parents (mothers) thought that i already knew their daughters’ stories from somewhere else and they tried to avoid its negative reflections on their families by dissociating themselves from their daughters. they both condemned the daughters’ actions and explained their reasons for forgiving them. keeping one’s reputation in the village is important, especially as one grows older. the fact that all these women were presented as innocent victims may be challenged as being nothing more than a justification strategy. however, the village of satu vechi was special in that one of its residents was an efficient female trafficker who had helped women from several neighbouring villages to get work as prostitutes in turkey for almost ten years. the female trafficker (in her late twenties at the time of the interview) prided herself on being the first woman to have left for turkey ten years earlier and the one who had been able to facilitate the departure of other girls afterwards. she told me that her business was to arrange visas for young girls who wanted to work abroad, and hence she felt that many women owed her a great deal. thus she had her own justification strategy, but could the villagers even accept the justification of a trafficker? in the village the female trafficker was ironically said to have returned from turkey because she was too old (she was 28) and nobody wanted her sexual offers any longer. yet despite this irony and comments such as ‘many mothers hate her’ (as a close female informant expressed it), most families kept good relations with the trafficker and her family. the reason for this is that relations within and outside the village are considered distinct, as is the type of logic governing them. on the other hand, adultery that is uncovered in the village could lead to a break in relations. for instance, a case of adultery that occurred three or four years before my fieldtrip was recounted to me by five different individuals from different households despite my lack of close involvement with the families of the adulterous anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 27 couple, thus showing that collective memory acted as a gatekeeper for immoral behaviour in the village. ‘forgetting’ to pay back borrowed money could also lead to a break-up in relations between households – but not the fact of being trafficked or the act of trafficking human beings. discourses of justification tend to separate the realm of local moral laws from what happens abroad, suggesting that actions taking place abroad – which is defined as being not within the borders of the republic of moldova – are somehow exceptional and should not be judged according to local standards. the case of the woman trafficker plainly shows that the strategy used for accepting migrants who had been involved in what is perceived as an immoral activity abroad (notably prostitution) is one of dissociation of the two worlds of home and abroad. this is done through discourses of justification that emphasise the exceptional character of life abroad and the lack of agency with which emigrants are endowed. the exercise of will is somehow seen as being impossible in circumstances that are unknown and unintelligible to villagers. conclusion in this article i reviewed some of the reasons for and conditions of labour migration from the republic of moldova in the light of laws regulating migration. it was shown that the issue of illegality is discussed not in moral terms but uniquely in terms of the constraints and risks it entails. while there is no need to justify to the community or the anthropologist why one migrates illegally, it remains important to justify how and why one engages abroad in ‘immoral’ activities such as prostitution. the strategy used in these discourses of justification is to present the conditions of migrants abroad as being so incommensurably different (and difficult) that local standards of morality could hardly apply. the morality of the village should be put to one side and local judgments should not be applied to villagers’ actions abroad. notes iii in the frontier village where i have done fieldwork there is a tradition of growing vegetables to be sold in ukraine, where prices are higher; people mainly complain about the new border regulations that prevent this trade from being as profitable as it used to be. although they continue crossing to ukraine for commercial sale of the produce in the town over the dniestr, this tradition is gradually fading away. iv russia is not considered to be ‘abroad’ (zagranitsa in russian) because russia and moldova used to belong to the same state in the past and also because there are material objects that keep russia in this category today: the ‘passport for going abroad’ is not needed for trips to russia (an id card suffices), and 0.5 million moldovan inhabitants had old soviet passports until the end of 2003, when the passport regime finally changed and moldovan passports became compulsory for all moldovan citizens. v a play on words equating the bolshevik life with a good life, dolce vita. vi one middle-aged educated woman in the moldovan village, who had never worked in russia, once revised her ussr discourse of belonging by saying ‘here, in our country, in the ussr, sorry, russia’. vii one migrant woman and her family back home expressed their pride that she was never stopped by the police because she was elegant and ‘looked like a russian’. viii the degrees of risk are discussed in the village before people make their choices. moscow is said to be more dangerous than st. petersburg, where the police check ids more often. ix an airfare of 60 euros was offered for chisinaumoscow-chisinau in 2003, contrasting with 300 euros for chisinau-vienna-chisinau (a shorter journey). x many travel agencies only obtain visas for slovenia; the labour migrants are left at the frontier with italy and have to cross the border on foot at night. xi 300,000-500,000 moldovan citizens are said to possess romanian passports. the figures are not accurate because many of those who have regained romanian passports are no longer moldovan residents. xii this is also similar to the behaviour of the rural population from romania working in the west. xiii if asked, one will recount how he spent a winter's night in a tree out of fear that a russian policeman might take his money; others might tell how they have been tricked over payments; another woman will explain how she hides the money she has earned in the bus seat because she is thoroughly searched at the border, only to recover it days later from the driver. xiv the word ‘normal’ is frequently used to mean ‘the usual state of things’ and often has a pejorative connotation. xv in soviet times, dissidents, those standing out of the crowd, were considered somehow abnormal (yurchak 1997). anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 28 xvi we would note that this concern with illegality is linked to practical rather than moral judgements. references anuarul statistic al republicii moldova 2003 chisinau. fruntasu, i. 2003 o istorie etnopolitica a basarabiei. chisinau: editura cartier. heintz, m. 2006 be european, recycle yourself! the changing work ethic in romania. münster: lit. heintz, m. 2007 introducere: statul si cetatenia moldoveneasca. in stat slab, cetatenie incerta. heintz, m., ed. bucureşti: curtea veche. marin, v. 2006 300 000 de moldoveni vor cetăţenia română. adevărul 5 octombrie 2006. troebst, s. 200 ‘we are transnistrians!’ post-soviet identity management in the dniester valley. ab imperio. theory and history of nationalism and empire in the post soviet space 4(t. 1): 437466. troebst, s. 2004 the ‘transnistrian moldovan republic’: from conflict-driven state-building to statedriven nation-building. european yearbook of minority issues 2, 2002/3:5-30. yurchak, a. 1997 the cynical reason of late capitalism: power, pretence and the anekdot. public culture 9: 161-188. microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 62 open forum public duties and private obligations: networking and personalisation of relations in ukraine alexander tymczuk university of oslo, norway introduction1 the use of personal networks for gaining access to scarce goods during soviet times is well documented in ethnographical studies. in this paper i show the continuity of such practices in post-soviet ukraine, as people still use their personal networks to get better quality service and spend less time in encounters with an impersonal bureaucracy. further, when such network links to bureaucratic services are missing, relations with an official can be personalised by giving some kind of personal gift. by personalisation of relations i thus mean the effort to expand one’s personal network in places where it does not exist, by commencing reciprocal relationships. being in a reciprocal relationship means that the official must render a service not only according to his or her professional duties, but also according to personal obligations. the ethnographical data presented here was gathered in lviv in western ukraine during a five-month period of fieldwork in 2004. the main locations of the study were a city bazaar and a local ngo that combats trafficking in women. in addition, i conducted informal interviews and had conversations with informants and friends in my own network. i had more or less frequent contact with about 45 informants, mostly employed in the private sector and living in the city. ten informants, however, lived in rural areas, and our encounters were more sporadic. legacies of the soviet system for the framework of this analysis i draw on two interconnected features of the soviet system: the specific distinction between public and private, and the institution of blat. during the soviet period public space was controlled by an omnipresent state, and characterised by suspiciousness, humiliation and never-ending queues. political repression and chronic scarcity of goods thus resulted in an elevation of the 'inside' and the private realm as a source of friendship and trust, and also as a means of obtaining scarce resources by the use of blator network connections. this system of blat-favours, so eloquently described by alena ledeneva (1998), enabled people to find a way around structural constraints and formal procedures of allocation in the soviet 'economy of shortage'. blat relations therefore transcended the public/private boundary by draining resources from the official centralized distribution system into an informal system of distribution based on personal networks. if we now turn to the contemporary ukraine, and more specifically to lviv, we can ask if and to what extent these soviet legacies are present. is a strong separation between public and private prevalent in the everyday life of my informants? do my informants still arrange things by blat? as ledeneva asserts, blat was a specific feature of the soviet system. what happened to this institution after the demise of the soviet union in 1991? did blat relations lose their central position in society and vanish along with the command economy? the reforms of the post-soviet transition undermined one crucial condition for the functioning of blat; the 'economy of shortage' was replaced by functioning markets for goods and capital. however, whereas there was a scarcity of goods during soviet times, the 'object' of scarcity after 1991 is money. as one of my informants put it: “before we had money, but there was nothing to buy. now you can buy anything you want, but we don’t have any money to buy it with”. in post-soviet ukraine the competition is not for scarce resources, but rather for access to money. further, the bureaucratic system and public services are still characterised by long queues and officials’ total lack of empathy towards clients. thus, networking and blat-favours are still important means of making informal arrangements when formal ones fail or are limited. svoi versus chuzhyj an excellent illustration of the continued elevation of the private sphere, as opposed to the public, is the much-used anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 63 distinction between svoi and chuzhyj.2 svoi means 'ours' or 'one’s own', but not only in a strict sense of private property. svoi is also used to describe relations of familiarity and friendship, and even extended to communities of people, imagined or real, who share one’s beliefs, profession and so on (busel 2001). chuzhyj means 'alien', 'strange', or 'foreign', in the sense of property not belonging to oneself, people with other beliefs, aspirations and interests than oneself, or in the sense of a foreign geographical origin, such as nationality (ibid). svoi is used about anything that is 'inside' and not harmful, as opposed to that which is chuzhyj, or 'outside' and threatening3; the trusted and intimate circle of close friends and family as opposed to strangers; the homemade samohonka (moonshine) as opposed to horilka4 (brand spirits bought in stores); or food made from homegrown vegetables or domestic animals in contrast to food that is bought in stores and potentially dangerous since you do not know what kinds of raw material have been used. the distinction between svoi and chuzhyj and their usage on different levels is well exemplified in the conceptualisation of food. as already noted, everything homemade or homegrown is svoi, as opposed to food bought in the store or at the bazaar. the food offered at the bazaar is bought only with great cautiousness, because the vendors allegedly lie unscrupulously about the quality of their products, and may even dilute milk with water or honey with sugar, or even worse, sell mushrooms from radioactive contaminated areas. on a higher level, however, food sold at the bazaar, and ukrainian-produced food in general, is regarded as being more svoi than imported food. as one informant explained, “our [ukrainian] food is all natural, grown in our nutritious black soil. you see, abroad they stuff their food with lots of chemicals. you never know what you are really eating there”. whenever my main informant roman5 poured out the last drops from another of his bottles of homemade wine and told me to take some more of his wife’s homemade varenyky, even though i was already full two portions ago, he smiled and said with a fatherly assurance: 'don’t be afraid! it is all svoe!' the chuzhyj category contains images like 'strangers' and the 'neighbour'. on the most experience-near level, chuzhi are people you do not know, and who therefore cannot be trusted. further, neighbours are still regarded to some degree as being the 'other', not because they are potential informers as could be the case in soviet times, but because of their physical proximity. by neighbours i not only mean people living next to each other, but i am using the term in a more expansive sense. fellow citizens pressing against you on a packed tram or in a neverending queue at the post office may also be an irritation because of their physical proximity. one way of evading such irritations is by seeking some personal link to public services. when people interact with chuzhi, especially persons with whom they have some kind of business, such as a shop assistant in a public store, or a bureaucrat at the communal office, they tend to have an attitude of indifference, or outright rudeness. i saw this indifference in roman’s treatment of his customers as well, even though he runs a private enterprise selling compacts discs and dvd films at the bazaar, and is dependent on sales to get an income. roman explained this behaviour as a consequence of experience. he knows that a lot of people will ask about prices and different artists and films, without even thinking of buying anything. standing in his stall from early morning till late in the afternoon in the freezing cold, he saves his efforts and concentrates on keeping warm and mingling with his colleagues on neighbouring stalls. interactions with svoi, on the other hand, are characterised by mutual trust and affection. as an ukrainian proverb goes, ”one’s own shirt is closer to the body” (своя сорочка ближче тіла). this does not only apply to close friends and family, but also to an extended group of people you know. for instance, by keeping to one or two regular stores, you can get to know the shop assistants, and establish a quasipersonal relationship with them. these shop assistants will tell you which cheese has gone out of date, which sausages taste best and even let you buy on tick. such information and favours are seldom given by clerks you have never seen before, at least this is what many of my informants think. roman, too, has his postijni klijenty (regular customers) and he takes extra care of them and often puts aside new or much sought-after discs for them. he does not even know some of these regular customers by name, just by face. next i will give a short description of some different kinds of positively valuated categories in my informants’ networks; family, friends and kumy are all regarded as svoi; colleagues and neighbours are two somewhat anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 64 mixed groups of svoi and chuzhyj; while acquaintances belong to an ambiguous group that is neither svoi nor chuzhyj. family family constitutes the foundation of personal networks, and is the archetype of svoi. while family members may not necessarily socialise as frequently as friends, they are regarded as an invaluable source of moral and material support, which can be mobilised in difficult situations. some of my informants even used the terms brat (brother) and sestra (sister) in an extended manner to include cousins and other relatives in their own generation, showing the affectionate quality of family relations. friends and kumy friends are a multifaceted category and hold a special place in personal networks; some of my informants quite consciously graded their friends according to intimacy and trust. the closest friendship relations are normally those formalised in the kumstvo institution. kumstvo is a close and valued triangular relationship between the godfather (khrestnyj tato), the godmother (khrestna mama) and the parents of a child. thus, while khrestnyj tato and khrestna mama are links between the child and its godparents, kumstvo links the child’s parents and the godparents. the godmother is chosen from the mother’s network, while the godfather is chosen from the father’s network. the kumstvo institution not only formalises relationships, but most often strengthens them as well. the bonds between kumy are often represented as just as strong as bonds within the closest family. as an old ukrainian saying goes: 'kum should treat kuma as his own sister' (panasenko 2004:250). the relationship thus implies a moral obligation. kumy should help out, not only concerning the child that binds them, but also as mutual help within the triangular relationship. colleagues and neighbours colleagues and neighbours are somewhat mixed groups when it comes to placing them within a svoi/chuzhyj distinction. my informants considered colleagues and neighbours who are also good friends to be svoi. others would at best be described as znajomi (acquaintances), i.e. neither svoi nor chuzhi, and some, with whom one had a strained relationship, were even regarded as chuzhi. acquaintances znajomi, or acquaintances, is a somewhat ambiguous category, placed between friends and strangers. they are neither really friends, nor really strangers, and the term is often used about friends of friends, and former and current colleagues that are not regard as being close. this ambiguity can to some degree be seen in the way acquaintances are addressed. friends call each other by their first names, and sometimes the more affectionate diminutive forms, like romchyk or romko for roman. strangers often call each other by first name and po-batkovi, i.e. the patronymic. acquaintances, however, can be addressed with either of these two forms, i.e. first name with or without patronymic. social distance is also expressed in the use of vy and ty, both meaning 'you'. vy is the polite form, and is used when addressing strangers and acquaintances of older age. ty is used among friends and to address younger people. to address a stranger as ty is regarded as rude and nekulturno (uncultured). further, friends greet each other with the informal form pryvit (hello, hi), while strangers greet each other with the more formal dobryj denj (good day). acquaintances use either of the two forms. confirming network ties – celebrating roman the salesman one way that svoi-ties are confirmed and strengthened is in social happenings, where friends and family members come together to consume food and drink. during my fieldwork roman turned 39 years old, and i was invited to a 'small gathering of friends' as roman called it, to mark the occasion. the host and their guests sat round the kitchen table, which was laden with various small dishes. roman opened a bottle of horilka and a bottle of red wine, and filled the empty glasses. his father picked up his glass of horilka and proposed a toast, and the rest of the company followed suit by raising their glasses. he said some affectionate words in his son’s honour and wished him happiness, prosperity and a kind wife. he ended the short speech by saying 'za tebe' ('for you'), and the others joined him and repeated 'for you'. whenever all the guests were gathered in the kitchen, roman would pour alcohol into every glass, and someone would make a toast, either to honour roman, his wife nadia or his parents. the hosts and guest would then empty their glasses in one swallow. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 65 alcohol is almost omnipresent in the everyday life of my informants. it is an indivisible part of a whole variety of occasions, like celebrations and sociability among friends. it is also a liquid to which a great symbolic importance is attached. alcohol is most often consumed with svoi, and friendship is confirmed by the ritual of drinking. the emphasis on occasions is important, because the morality of drinking is closely connected to the occasion for drinking. or more precisely, drinking without a proper occasion is considered negative, and mostly associated with drunks and alcoholics. as one of my informants said, “if you drink without an occasion, you are an alcoholic. so you make an occasion”. in everyday life, there are so many ritualised celebrations that the need to make up an occasion is seldom necessary. in a parliamentary hearing on a new law to fight alcoholism in the ukraine, deputy yevhen hirnyk said, “during the decade under kuchma’s rule, a paradoxical situation has taken form, where there are more celebrations in a year than there are days. and all these celebrations and dates are in some way or another marked, starting with birthdays” (hirnyk 2005). such occasions are celebrated according to some standard unwritten 'rules', which give them the appearance of a ritual. in the same way as at roman’s birthday, all participants sit around the table, which is covered with different zakusky (hors d’oeuvres or snacks), plates, glasses for wine, beer, juice or kompot (a homemade refreshing drink made by boiling dried berries and fruits), smaller glasses for horilka, and forks. the participants thus form a circle facing each other, with food and drinks in the centre. the male host, in our case roman, or one of the male guests, takes the responsibility for filling into the empty glasses. then one of the participants, sometimes the host or sometimes a guest, picks up the glass filled with alcohol, looks at the others present while holding the glass over the table and proposes a toast. the others follow by picking up their glasses, and the initiator of the toast says some words, either praising the hosts, the person whose birthday it is, his or her parents, the bride and groom and so on. the toast is often ended by 'za tebe' or 'za vas', i.e. 'to you' in the singular and plural respectively, or simply 'na zdorovya' ('to health'). the other participants repeat 'to you' or 'to health', the glasses are either slightly lowered as an explicit greeting towards the others or clinked together over the table, and everyone drinks up. the third toast is reserved for a general toast, 'to love', and the last toast is often facetiously made 'to the horse' ('na konya'), when it is time to ride home safely. as mary douglas points out, “drinking is essentially a social act, performed in a recognized social context” (1987:4). in our case, the ritualised social act of drinking has a great symbolic value in that it confirms friendships. when friends sit around the same table, sharing food and drinks, the social bonds connecting them are confirmed every time a toast is made in honour of their friends. these bonds are made explicitly visible by bringing the glasses together over the table. just as a handshake or a kiss on the cheek is a symbolic transcendence of the boundary between the self and the other, bringing glasses of alcohol together marks the communion of drinking. the focal point is therefore friendship and togetherness, symbolised by the act of drinking. to use erving goffman’s (1959) terminology, drinking is fundamentally a backstage or private activity. alcohol is consumed with friends, in an atmosphere in which everyone can relax and be themselves. alcohol can even be said to make people more 'themselves' than they otherwise would be, since it is an elixir that to a certain degree relaxes the need of 'presentation of self', and rather makes possible a legitimate expression of emotions that are not usually shown in sober interactions. drinking is therefore an activity mostly performed among svoi. janine wedel writes about the same kind of drinking patterns in poland: “drinking vodka together signifies intimacy and recognition as swoj człowiek” (1986:27). the use of personal networks—finding a doctor working at the bazaar is far from relaxing. sometimes there are no customers at all, and roman complains about the slow sale. at other times, especially on saturdays and sundays, there are too many people by the small stall, so roman has to keep an eye on the discs as well as answer any questions. perhaps not surprisingly, roman has high blood pressure. he has been troubled by this for some time, and his wife finally talked him into seeing a doctor. she called her kuma maria, who has a friend that works as a cardiologist at a public hospital in lviv. maria made an appointment with the doctor on roman’s behalf. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 66 the next day roman went to the hospital to be examined. he had already prepared a black plastic bag with a box of assorted chocolates, and a $10 note that he slipped under the plastic of the box. he told me he had entered the cardiologist’s office, and introduced himself as coming 'from maria'. the doctor took his blood pressure, and a nurse took a cardiogram. he slipped a 5 hryvny note into the nurse’s pocket as she went out. after the nurse had left the room he placed the plastic bag on the doctor’s desk, and said it was 'something sweet'. the doctor thanked him, without investigating its contents any further, and then led him to another room where he was to take an ekg test. in the corridor roman asked the doctor how much he should give the person doing the test. the doctor said 20 hryvny was enough. after the ekg he had an ultrasound test, and popped 20 hryvny in a pocket there as well. i have had experiences with public ukrainian hospitals myself, like when i was studying ukrainian language in lviv, and ate too much chuzhyj food in local restaurants. the most striking impression that sticks in my mind is of the endless queues of people, waiting by badly marked doors. roman thus avoided queuing for different examinations by seeing a doctor he has a 'relation' to (in this case, a friend of his kuma). the doctor guided him past the queues without giving the waiting patients any explanation, thereby saving roman hours of queuing, which meant he did not have to be away from the bazaar for too long. if we look more closely at this case, the most prominent feature is how roman used his personal network in interaction with a public service that is supposed to be equally available to all citizens. my informants explained such behaviour from a perspective of getting a good treatment: “you just can’t trust any doctor to do a good job”. this was not just some unfounded prejudice against one category of professionals, but rather expressed as a negative conception of public employees in general, based on prior experience. the rationale behind such actions is therefore to get the most out of an insufficient healthcare system, by ensuring better quality of the service and spending less time. the key words are quality and time, both objects of scarcity in the everyday life of my informants. in encounters with impersonal medical care, my informants often felt deprived of both. by finding a personal link to a public service, for instance a friend of a friend, they could ensure that they would be regarded as being a bit more svoi than chuzhyj, and treated accordingly. i received different answers when i asked my informants why they gave money to doctors, when according to ukrainian law healthcare should be free of charge. the most frequent answer was the low wages doctors receive, and the moral responsibility to give a sign of gratitude. some informants pointed to the fact that they might need the services of the same doctor in the future. when i asked an informant why he did not just shake the doctor’s hand, say 'thank you' and leave, he answered with a question: “and what if you need to see that same doctor again, do you think he will give you good treatment?” such actions as described above do have many similarities with the soviet phenomenon of blat. roman used his personal network to obtain a 'scarce' good, i.e. quality and non-time consuming healthcare. however, informants did not use the term blat to describe such actions, and some rather called it poznajomstvo (by acquaintance), a term that is interchangeable with blat, but not so negatively loaded. there seems to be, however, an aspect of what ledeneva calls 'misrecognition' in my informants’ conceptualisation of their own actions. while they regarded their own actions as something quite normal and moral, they often expressed dissatisfaction and annoyance with being passed in line at public offices, by people who are 'led' by an employee. their own actions were thus regarded as moral, while the same kind of actions which assisted others were seen as immoral. i will further claim that the mentality of arranging things by searching for personal links can be found in other situations as well, more specifically, in situations where such links are absent and therefore need to be created. the next case shows what can be done if the link to a public service is lacking, i.e. how my informants personalise relations with strangers by giving gifts. personalisation of relations—fixing the central heating roman and nadia’s apartment is heated by a central heating system, run and maintained by a communal office called zhek. the heating is switched on in mid-october, and switched off in mid-april. during winter temperatures can fall to 25 degrees below zero, so the central heating is a necessity. occasional power failures which anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 67 are quite common during the winter can leave the radiators cold for hours and days, and sometimes the radiators stops warming completely, caused by too much air in the system or by the fact that they are clogged up. this happened to the radiator in roman and nadia’s bedroom. it just did not warm up, and when the outdoor temperature started to drop, the bedroom was almost impossible to use. nadia therefore went to the zhek to write a complaint, so that it could be fixed. some days later two men from the office came to the apartment, looked at the radiator in question, confirmed that it was not working, and left saying there was nothing they could do about it. roman told me that if they did not contact the head engineer, the problem would probably not be solved until next summer. but since they did not know anyone who worked in that office, or anyone that knew someone who did, they decided to buy the head engineer a bottle of cognac. i went with roman to one of the numerous alkomarkets, and after some consideration he chose a rather exclusive imported cognac that came in rather decorous packaging. he put the cognac in a black plastic bag, and the next day nadia went to the head engineer. she told me he was just on his way out, and she had introduced herself and the problem with the radiator. he said he would look into the case. she then placed the plastic bag on his desk, saying it was 'something for coffee'. the head engineer tried to refuse, but nadia insisted, and he said he would do his best, but could not promise anything. “now he will remember us when he takes a nip of the cognac with his coffee”, said roman, quite hopeful of a good outcome for the problem. after some days three men came and installed valves in all the radiators, so as to remove the air. roman gave them 20 hryvny for the work. this did not make any difference, however; the radiator was still cold. roman and nadia were told that the problem was probably located in the main tube, and that it could not be fixed until spring when the central heating would be switched off. how can we compare this case with the previous case? first, the price of the cognac was about $10, i.e. equivalent to the sum that roman gave to the doctor he consulted. second, the reason for both transfers was to 'speed things up' and get it done properly. in this last case we see how roman clearly expressed that public employees are not to be trusted to do an adequate job. third, the transfer was made before the service was completed, and the transfer was done discreetly and without any prior agreement as to its size. the contents of the plastic bag were not examined, with nadia saying it was something to consume, exactly the same as what roman told the cardiologist when he gave her the box of chocolates. exactly what and how much it cost were not discussed. in contrast to the doctor who did not resist the transfer, the head engineer did not want to take the plastic bag at all. i will argue, however, that the transfer made in this last case is quite different from the transfer in the previous case. first of all, there is the obvious fact of the different quality of the objects transferred, i.e. a bottle of cognac as opposed to money. further, whereas the transaction in the previous case were regarded as an act of gratitude or payment for a service, roman and nadia did not know what would be the outcome of giving cognac to the head engineer. in other words, whereas the execution of the service in the previous case was already agreed upon when the transfers took place, nadia gave the bottle of cognac without knowing whether any execution of any service whatsoever would result from it. this point is important, because alcohol is sometimes also used as a direct means of payment, especially in the countryside. i will argue, however, that the bottle of cognac given in this specific case was not a form of payment, nor a sign of gratitude, but rather an effort to personalise relations with the head engineer, and thereby be treated more as a sort of svoi than as a chuzhyj. whereas a relationship of svoi, or quasi-svoi if you prefer, had already been established before the transaction took place in the previous case, by finding a necessary personal link, such a relationship had to be created in this last case. this was done by forcing a reciprocal debt on the head engineer. so, while the transfer in the previous case was more of an unofficial payment for a service, the transfer in this last case can be regarded as a gift. referring to this last transfer as a gift needs to be explained, since it is not an obvious case of gift-giving. in contrast to market exchange and barter, where transactions are carried out between free and equal agents, who are willing to sacrifice something they have to gain something that the other possesses, this transaction was a case of forced reciprocity. thus, the value of the bottle of cognac was never mentioned; in fact, the contents of the plastic bag anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 68 was not even described or taken out to be evaluated. the head engineer did not take part in any bargaining, and he was not acting as a free agent, in the sense that he could not pull out of the transfer, even if he tried to. it was thus an attack on the receiver’s freedom by creating a debtor (bourdieu 1996:80). secondly, and more importantly, there was no explicit deal agreed upon that the cognac was to be payment for a service. the link between the bottle of cognac and the service was implicit, but not confirmed. if we use gregory’s model for gifts and commodities (1982), where gifts are inalienable objects transacted by non-aliens, and commodities are alienable objects transacted by aliens, we see from roman’s statement that the gift, or rather the identity of himself and nadia, were intended to be inalienable, since the head engineer would remember them 'when he takes a nip of the cognac'. however, since the transactors were aliens, their social distance should imply that this transfer actually was a commodity-exchange. but here is my point: a gift was given to a person who was alien (chuzhyj) to personalise relations with him, that is, shorten the social distance, and thereby make him more of a non-alien (svoi). as marshall sahlins puts it, “if friends make gifts, gifts make friends” (1988:186). the gift, far from being altruistic, was used instrumentally to make a connection, and thereby to achieve something. why did roman and nadia not just give the head engineer $10 as roman did in his consultation with the cardiologist? the value of the cognac was about the same, so why go to the trouble of buying a gift? roman said he never considered giving money instead of the cognac. it would have been inappropriate, he told me. why would it have been inappropriate? why was it more appropriate to give money to the cardiologist? i think the inappropriateness of giving money in this last case is connected to a fact already mentioned. in the former case, a 'deal' had already been settled before the transfer was made, through the mediation of a common personal link, whereas in the latter case the aim was to get the very 'deal' in place. the bottle of cognac was therefore a substitute for the personal links used in the former case. whereas the $10 to the cardiologist was a payment for a service, or an immediate settlement of a reciprocal debt, the bottle of cognac to the head engineer was an invitation into a quasi-personal relationship, where the reciprocal settlement would be personal attention from the head engineer, ensuring that a service would be satisfactorily carried out. roman’s statement that money would have been inappropriate must therefore be seen in a context that the transfer was not any payment for a service, but rather an invitation to an execution of a service with a personal touch. personalisation of relations by giving alcohol a bottle of cognac as a gift to create a relationship is not incidental. it is what i would call an exceptionally inalienable gift, since the giver’s identity not only clings to the given object, but is also 'consumed' in the gulp. i do not mean 'consumed' in a metaphorical 'the wine is the blood'-sense, but rather in a more mundane and dull sense of use-value. objects that have a use-value make exceptionally inalienable gifts, because they are often and actively 'consumed', rather than being stuffed away in the garage, and therefore are more successful in reminding the receiver of who gave it. nadia and roman thereby forced the head engineer into a reciprocal debt, which meant that they would 'haunt' him every time he fancied consuming some of the precious drops. a bottle of cognac makes an exceptionally inalienable gift in another sense as well, by having a strong symbolic value, more specifically of sociability and friendship. whereas an exclusive stapler or a box of folders, both indispensable to any diligent bureaucrat, would please the professional role of an official, a bottle of alcohol delights the private role of that same official. as described earlier, the act of social drinking marks the boundary of svoi and chuzhyj symbolically, since a person drinks with his or her friends. the head engineer was therefore pulled out of his official and 'front region' role as a state employee and into a personal and 'backstage' relation with nadia and roman. as erving goffman notes, “by invoking a backstage style, individuals can transform any region into a backstage” (1959:130). this was done in a discreet manner so that the head engineer would not be offended. goffman calls this 'putting out feelers': in many kinds of social interaction, unofficial communication provides a way in which one team can extend a definite but noncompromising invitation to the other, requesting that social distance and formality be increased or decreased, or that both teams shift the interaction to one involving the performance of a new set of roles (1959:188; my emphasis). anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 69 the head engineer tried to stay in the 'front region' by rejecting the gift, but nadia’s persistence forced him into accepting her definition of the situation as 'backstage'. he was now responsible for fixing the central heating not only according to his professional duties, but also had a personal obligation to help out. janine wedel argues along the same line when it comes to alcohol, “vodka facilitates the transformation from an official to an unofficial situation. ...vodka promotes the privatization of public roles” (1986:29). i thus argue that quasi-personal relations can be created in meetings between bureaucrat and citizen, where values of the personal sphere, such as friendship and generosity, are transferred into the public sphere of bureaucracy by the act of gift-giving. in our case this occurred by giving alcohol, a kind of gift which even on a symbolic level underlines the private dimension. bureaucrats are people too, with their own personal networks; they enjoy a glass of cognac in the company of good friends, and are not just programmed robots carrying out their public duties. the line between the public and the private, or the almost coinciding line between the formal and the informal, is therefore not absolute. an official can move between the public sphere of official duties and the private sphere of personal obligations without compromising either too much. networking or corruption? networking and the personalisation of relations, as presented in these cases, balance on a thin line between legitimacy/illegitimacy and morality/immorality. public services, such as medical examinations or fixing the central heating, are, according to democratic principles, mainly distributed by queuing. by mobilising network links, and personalising relations where such links do not exist, my informants jumped the queue, and got access to 'scarce goods' that were distributed according to social distance. getting access to a public service by using one’s personal relationships or giving gifts is questionable from the perspective of democratic values and bureaucratic professionalism. such interactions between officials and citizens transcend the boundary between the public and the private, and therefore move in the fringes where ugly corruption lurks. if we employ a formalistic definition of corruption, the acts in the cases will thus be categorised as corrupt, since the officials’ actions deviated from the formal duties of their public roles. the bureaucrats prioritised private obligations or concerns instead of public duties. subjectively, however, the acts were not valued as immoral or illegitimate, and according to an 'anthropological perspective' on corruption, which takes 'the native’s point of view', the acts would not necessarily be analysed as corrupt. efforts to delimitate gifts and bribes, blat and corruption are plentiful both in academia and in ukrainian public discourse.6 when a theoretical perspective or a popular point of view has managed to capture the 'creature', it slips away before our eyes when lifted to a more general level. i therefore avoid going into such a battle of definitions and demarcations, and rather note that different acts seem to be valued according to context, personal perspective, degree of involvement, and so on. the main concern when you need medical healthcare or to have your central heating fixed is not whether your actions can be defined as corrupt or not. if a call to a friend or a bottle of cognac gets the job done, any discourse on corruption seems quite irrelevant. notes 1this paper is based on findings published in tymczuk 2005. 2svoi (своі) is the plural and nominative case of svij (свій), and chuzhyj (чужий) is a masculine singular in the nominative case. 3this 'inside'/'outside' metaphorical distinction was distorted with the chernobyl nuclear disaster, as the threatening 'outside', represented by the soviet state apparatus, invaded the private sphere with radioactive contamination (petyna 2002:73). 4while my informants in the city only drank horilka, the informants in the countryside drank either horilka or samohonka. the informants in the countryside claimed that bottles of horilka sometimes contain illegally made spirits, sometimes even containing lethal methanol. samohonka, on the other hand, has the quality guarantee of being svoi, and is therefore safe to consume (not considering terrible hangovers and hazardous drink-driving). 5all persons are fictional, although all data are based on actual events. 6see tymczuk 2005 for some examples. references bourdieu, p. 1996. symbolsk makt. artikler i utvalg. oslo: pax forlag as. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 70 busel, v. t. 2001. velekyj tulmachnyj slovnyk suchasnoji ukrajins'koji movy. kyiv: irpin'. douglas, m. 1987. "introduction," in constructive drinking. perspectives on drink from anthropology. edited by m. douglas. cambridge: cambridge university press. goffman, e. 1959. the presentation of self in everyday life. london: penguin books. gregory. 1982. gifts and commodities. london: academic press. hirnyk, y. 2005. 72nd session of the ukrainian parliament, 21st january. ledeneva, a. 1998. russia's economy of favours. blat, networking and informal exchange. cambridge: cambridge university press. panasenko, t. m. 2004. ukrajins'ki prysliv'ya i prykazky. kharkiv: folio. petryna, a. 2002. life exposed. biological citizens after chernobyl. princeton: princeton university press. sahlins, m. 1988. stone age economics. london: routledge. tymczuk, a. 2005. public duties and private obligations. networking and personalisation of relations in ukraine, master thesis, university of oslo. available at www.duo.uio.no/publ/sai/2005/29265/t ymczuk.pdf. wedel, j. 1986. the private poland. an anthropologist’s look at everyday life. new york: facts on file publications. allen typewritten text © 2006 alexander tymczuk all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. rethinking development templates:women and microcredit in post-socialist southeastern europe volume 21, number 2 rethinking development templates:women and microcredit in post-socialist southeastern europe kristen ghodsee, bowdoin college © 2003 kristen ghodsee all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. since their fabled inception in bangladesh with the grameen bank in 1976, microcredit banks and projects have multiplied and taken root across the globe. today, microcredit is one of the most successful programs in the economic development toolkit of bilateral and multilateral aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations working with the world’s poor. national projects directly aimed at alleviating women’s poverty also rely quite heavily on microcredit schemes; the smaller loan sizes allow women with no collateral to become borrowers for the first time. since the collapse of communism in 1989, the countries of southeastern europe have also experienced an influx of microcredit banks and projects, many specifically aimed at the region’s women. in the post-socialist context, however, these microcredit banks have met with far less success than similar projects in the developing world. ethnography and participantobservation are particularly useful in the study of microcredit schemes, since understanding the successes and failures of these programs depends very much on understanding the lived experiences of those seeking and utilizing the loans. unfortunately, microcredit institutions are most often examined through the lens of economics, finance, or through a more policyoriented, development framework. in this brief paper, i will discuss some of the possible challenges facing microcredit schemes in countries with relatively recent histories of communism, and argue for a more ethnographic examination of microcredit schemes and their social, political and economic impacts on the participants. what is microcredit? according to the microcredit summit campaign, “microcredit is programs extending small loans, and other financial services such as savings, to very poor people for self-employment projects that generate income, allowing them to care for themselves and their families.”1 although microcredit is used universally to extend loans to both sexes, it is women who generally tend to be the focus of microcredit efforts. the microcredit summit campaign explicitly builds into its nine-year effort of reaching 100 million poor families a focus on “especially the women of those families.” although there are a variety of different forms microcredit projects can take, in general microcredit banks extend small amounts of capital to groups of poor women. these women form small groups, usually of four or five, that are not related to each other by blood. all of the members of the group are responsible for the repayment of the loan which is usually given to one member of the group at a time. one of the greatest successes of microcredit schemes is the high level of repayment by borrowers. furthermore, microcredit schemes are highly sustainable since there is usually a small percentage of interest tacked on to the microloan allowing the bank to expand and serve more people. microcredit banks also tend to employ local loan officers which creates employment and encourages local capacity building. finally, microcredit has been hailed as a success throughout the development establishment because of its real ability to increase their living standards of many of the most disenfranchised people in developing societies: women. in bangladesh, where microcredit began, there were certain structural conditions which allowed for its almost immediate success among the rural poor.2 professor muhammad yunnus who was in charge of the rural economics program at the university of chittagong in the mid-1970s, began the grameen bank as an action research project after careful study of the conditions of the poor in the villages near the university. yunnus recognized that the only sources of credit for the most disenfranchised members of society were money lenders. these money lenders preyed upon the jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 65 volume 21, number 2 downtrodden with exorbitant interest rates. many poor women and men were forced to borrow from the money lenders because there were no other options available; banks lent money in larger sums and then only with secured collateral. the introduction of microcredit banks was a vast improvement for those who had already come to rely upon the money lenders. the important point here is that the poor in bangladesh were already accustomed to seeking credit to meet their basic needs, and to paying a certain “fee” for the use of the money lent in the form of interest. the grameen bank did not introduce the concept of lending and borrowing in the villages, it just created a new organizational structure which allowed a new kind of institutional money lender (the grameen bank) to extend credit at lower interest rates and without the ugly brutality of coerced repayments. although similar conditions did exist in other countries, the reliance of the rural poor on money lenders to meet their basic needs was far from universal. these conditions certainly did not exist in former communist countries where any kind of lending was severely frowned upon. marx himself was disdainful of money. in 1844, he wrote, “since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses all things, it is the general confounding and confusing of all things — the world upside-down — the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities,” and that “it is the common whore, the common procurer of people and nations.”3 societies built upon the foundations of marxist philosophy were similarly skeptical of currency. the little credit that was made available was done through the state owned banks and then at fixed and almost insignificant interest rates.4 these historical conditions would be particularly significant in the post-socialist period when microcredit schemes were transplanted to southeastern european countries. another goal of the original grameen bank was to deal with high levels of rural unemployment in bangladesh through a strategy of self-employment for the poor. micro-loans were made available to help men and women start micro-enterprises such as selling prepared street foods or market vending. these microenterprises could employ many people in the “informal” economy under economic conditions when the formal economy could not provide enough jobs. this is a fairly typical scenario in many developing countries, and microcredit has been very successful in helping individual men and women in providing for their own basic needs through self-employment. even in socalled developed countries, microcredit has been celebrated as a way to help the poor help themselves by allowing them to start their own small businesses. once again, however, the situation was very different in socialist nations. the state guaranteed employment for all, particularly in rural areas where agriculture was co-operatized and peasants were given salaries, pensions and paid vacations. in bulgaria, rural populations continued to support the socialist system even after global communism had collapsed in 1989, and were instrumental in reelecting the bulgarian socialist party to power immediately after the ‘changes’ (creed 1998). thus, the concept of self-employment to meet basic needs would be a very foreign concept to southeastern european rural populations used to the largess of the communist state. microcredit schemes aimed at helping the rural poor by promoting self-employment in the post-socialist period would inevitably meet resistance. microcredit schemes are usually accompanied by micro-entrepreneurship training programs which teach the poor essential business skills. these kinds of training projects were especially important in developing countries where there were high levels of illiteracy and innumeracy. again, however, these programs built upon existing cultural traditions of market trading. micro-entrepreneurship training was not about teaching women how to be traders, but about teaching women how to be better traders. communism’s focus on manufacturing and its centralization of the means of production meant that those who engaged in trading activities were severely ostracized during the socialist period. micro-entrepreneurship training then would have little of a cultural based upon which to build. despite this, microcredit and microentrepreneurship programs have multiplied throughout central and eastern europe since 1989. because microcredit had been so successful in both the “first” and “third” world contexts, aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations assumed that they would be able to replicate their impressive accomplishments in the post-socialist context. this, however, has not universally been the case. jen typewritten text 66 volume 21, number 2 how microcredit works in the discussion that follows, i focus specifically on microcredit programs for women, although there are numerous projects which focus on both genders. women who borrow from microcredit banks either use the money to meet immediate basic needs or invest in some small income-generating project that will allow them to pay the money back after having made a profit. these profits are then used to pay for meeting basic needs or saved and put to use productively in some further income-generating scheme. a typical example of a microcredit scheme is the “social entrepreneurship center” in plovdiv, bulgaria, funded by the european union’s phare access program: the goal of the project is providing opportunity to unemployed women to integrate in new economic conditions through training on starting their own business as an active strategy for living standard increase [sic]5 support for women’s entrepreneurship picks up where microcredit schemes leave off. once women have enough capital to move beyond meeting basic needs, they need to be given the training and encouragement to start their own businesses. the hope is that these businesses will be sustainable and will realize a continuous stream of profits that will allow the woman to meet her basic needs, reinvest in her business, and eventually be able to consume nonessential goods and luxury items. in other words, these kinds of projects help women become good entrepreneurs (i.e. capitalists), so that they can support themselves, and ultimately “get ahead” (i.e. become consumers). the united states peace corp is an avid promoter of projects and activities supporting women’s entrepreneurship throughout central and eastern europe. one example of peace corps activities aimed at women was a business leadership camps organized for 15 to 18-yearold girls in lithuania which “…focused on selfesteem, skills and careers, goal setting, and entrepreneurial attitudes” in order to “…help the women more effectively participate in a market economy.”6 similar projects to encourage women’s entrepreneurship can be found throughout southeastern europe sponsored by the european union, the unites states agency for international development, the open society institute and a multitude of both local and international women’s ngos. despite this activity, a study for the microcredit summit campaign (cheston and kuhn 2002) found that women in eastern europe “lag far behind” women in other parts of the world in microcredit participation. recent usaid “gender assessments” have also found that women are far less likely than men to take advantage of microcredit in bulgaria (nails and arnold 2001) and romania (rosenberg and arnold 2002). in romania, the authors found that although women owned or managed approximately 44 percent of all romanian businesses, they only accounted for 2.7 percent of the total amount of money loaned (loan value) in 1999. the study suggests that low levels of lending to women may indicate “a reluctance of women to borrow money,” and recommends further research on the issue. in bulgaria, there are at least twelve different sources for microlending7 and here too, women consistently borrow less than men. even when programs are specifically targeted to women, many women are reluctant to participate even if loan amounts are relatively small. although there has been an increase in women owned and managed businesses in recent years, there is little evidence to demonstrate that this activity has been a result of microcredit schemes. overall, microcredit in the region has met with questionable success. opportunity international is an organization which promotes microcredit around the world. while the vast majority of its clients are in the developing world, it also coordinates local microcredit programs in russia, poland, romania, bulgaria, macedonia, albania, montenegro, and croatia. the organization’s regional director for eastern europe has recognized that eastern europe presents particular challenges for the expansion of microcredit services. in a 1998 interview, ken vander weele explained, on a micro-entrepreneur level, i think we've had to face lots of psychological barriers. people who grew up in the communist system viewed private business negatively, as a sort of black market activity.... we've run into a lot of resistance to group lending in certain countries…8 opportunity international’s country director for russia expressed a similar opinion jen typewritten text 67 volume 21, number 2 about the legacies of socialism on people’s attitude toward micro-lending and the kinds of business opportunities it promotes: [p]eople are still very resistant to the idea that trading is valuable at all, compared to manufacturing. coming from this part of the world where everyone was working in the factories, that was considered to be something you aspired to and trade was dirty.... it has been a real mental barrier for people to get over that, and be able, both as clients to engage in trade, and as board members and staff to really want to support those people.9 while this aversion to trading and the affinity for manufacturing are certainly part of the problem facing microcredit programs in southeastern europe, there are other issues that have remained unexplored. basic needs versus rights and entitlements the first part of this problem may be the very definition of basic needs. in the prototypical developing country context women needed credit to meet the most basic needs of food, water and shelter. these were things that the state had never provided, but that the marketization of the economy after the onset of development had often reduced in supply (goulet and hudson 1971; mende 1972; boserup 1970). these women never had jobs in the formal economy, few of them had educations, and many were illiterate. despite this, development practitioners found that women were very resourceful with small loans and that they most often used the profits they realized to increase the welfare of their families. at slightly higher levels, women used the profits of microcredit to access the fruits of modernization: medicines, fertilizers, seed varieties, electricity, education, etc. these were “needs” newly created by development through the importation of western technologies and western ideas about universal education and “modern” living. microentrepreneurship allowed women to have access to the benefits of a modernizing economy for the first time. in these circumstances, microcredit was a truly revolutionary strategy for empowering women and incorporating them into the formal, developing economy. the problem with this model in southeastern europe is multifaceted. in the third world, the “needs” were often imported by “successful” development projects, and modeled for the poor by national elites through the socalled “demonstration effect.” microcredit and entrepreneurship helped poor women to meet those needs. in the socialist context, however, these “needs” already existed (at least rhetorically) as the basic rights and entitlements of the communist citizen. in other words, the introduction of “modern” technologies and institutions in most socialist countries (i.e. universal education, western medicine and health care, modernized agriculture, heating, electricity, etc.) was intimately bound up with the idea that it was the communist state’s responsibility to provide them without cost to society. the communist state legitimated its existence through the provision of these goods and services to all citizens (verdery 1993). indeed, one of the greatest achievements of the communist countries was the high level of human development that they achieved. this was one of the core marxist criticisms leveled at capitalism, that socialist citizens may not have been “free,” but they were certainly not hungry, uneducated or unhealthy. in the post-socialist period, these rights and entitlements have all but disappeared. the collapse of the communist states has relegated these “rights” to the status of “needs” for the first time in the history of many of these countries. this, for example, means that these countries never had electricity without it being provided free as a public good by the state.10 in the first or third world context, where for the most part these things were always constructed as needs (although even capitalist states have granted many social entitlements at different historical periods), programs and projects to support women’s “self-help” in regards to meeting these needs are more likely to be successful because there are few alternatives. in the southeastern european context, however, microcredit and women’s entrepreneurship projects will be less easily implemented because women may not have fundamentally accepted that it is their responsibility to meet these needs in the first place. women in southeastern europe might have incentives to work for consumer items or to save money to travel abroad, but many may be resistant to the idea of taking loans to start businesses to make money to pay for the very same things they once had without cost, especially if they are expected to pay interest on the money they borrow (which can be as high as jen typewritten text 68 volume 21, number 2 26 percent). studies have confirmed that women are less likely to start their own business (undp 2000), and the fact that women in southeastern europe are still more likely to vote for leftleaning or outright communist parties demonstrates a gendered resistance to capitalism (jalusic and antic 2000). projects aimed at alleviating women’s poverty based on microcredit or entrepreneurship programs fail to realize that southeastern european women may prefer to put their energies into finding political solutions to their rapidly declining standards of living rather than participate in a system with which they fundamentally disagree. testimonies of success perhaps one of the most interesting examples of the tension between microcredit programs and women’s political goals are the kinds of evidence used to promote microcredit and micro-entrepreneurship to women: the testimonies of successful “businesswomen.” these testimonies follow a similar pattern with examples of heroic women who have overcome adversity with a little help from microcredit. they usually start with a reference to the women’s experience in the aftermath of the collapse of communism, as demonstrated in the following three examples: when communism collapsed, tsvetanka, her husband, her daughter, and her son-in-law lost their jobs in state-owned factories. with four adults and a baby to feed, they moved to their summer house, although it was winter and the house was unheated. their fear of the future soon gave way to the conviction that they could take charge of their lives.11 ella chikuraeva and her three children are refugees from azerbaijan. when they arrived in arzamas, russia they knew no one and had nothing – they could barely earn enough to buy bread. when ella first heard about the opportunity international program in arzamas, she thought it couldn’t possibly be true.12 maria mitkovska worked for 20 years in the computer center of the state-run steel factory that eventually closed after being privatized. before the factory closed, she and many of her colleagues even worked for a while without being paid a salary. macedonian women like maria have struggled to make a way for themselves amid the economic and political upheaval created by the breakup of the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia in 1991.13 in each case, the end of communism was a definitive break with prior conditions either due to the loss of a state job or because of migration and displacement. little judgment is made of the past, but there is an implicit assumption that the “old ways” are gone and are now somehow irretrievable. each women then realizes that she must provide for her family – there is usually an epiphany wherein the woman then sees the entrepreneurial light. maria realized that her only [my emphasis] hope for an income was to leave the steel factory and to start her own business. she now sells clothing in an outdoor stall at a shopping center in skopje. the fact that maria went from being a computer engineer to a street vendor selling clothing is somehow irrelevant to the “success story.” furthermore, the idea that engaging in business is the only option women like maria belies the idea that these eastern european countries are at least theoretically democracies where more socially oriented governments could be voted back into power. similarly, in the testimony of the azerbaijani woman who has become a “successful vendor” of foodstuffs in the central market, there is a photo of her standing above her son who is seated and smiling in a chair. the caption reads “ella chikuraeva’s success in her food business has allowed her to pay for the necessary medicine for her son emin.” there is no discussion of the fact that less than 13 years ago “necessary medicine” would be provided for free by the state and that the physical welfare of children would not depend on their mother’s ability to “regulate her cash flow and select products that really sell.” again, the possible political solution to ms. chikuraeva’s plight is erased by her supposed accomplishments as a micro-entrepreneur. these kinds of personal stories of loan recipients are of course very selective and promoted in order to encourage others to engage with microcredit programs in the region. a very valuable project would include the testimonies of those who participate in self-employment schemes and continue to work for a more political solution to the problems of poverty in southeastern europe. an ethnography of the jen typewritten text 69 volume 21, number 2 microcredit groups and their understanding of the concepts of micro-entrepreneurship in the post-socialist context would surely shed light on the complex dance of women’s political beliefs and economic realities. only through an detailed understanding of how small loans in southeastern europe are borrowed, invested and returned, can microcredit schemes hope to reach a higher level of success while responding to the unique needs of women in the region. it is the detailed study of culture that is necessary to make microcredit programs less of a development template carelessly applied to eastern europe from the developing world and more of an actual strategy to help women survive the economic hardships of post-socialism. references boserup, e. 1970. women’s role in economic development. new york: st, martin’s press. cheston, s. and l. kuhn. 2002. “empowering women through microfinance,” working paper for microcredit summit +5 program at: http://www.microfinance gateway .org /highlight_mcs.htm, access date june 3, 2003. creed, g. 1998. domesticating revolution: from socialist reform to ambivalent transition in a bulgarian village. university park, pennsylvania: pennsylvania state university press. goulet, d. and m. hudson 1971. the myth of aid. new york: iodc n. america. jalusic, v. and antic, m. 2000. “prospects for gender equality policies in central and eastern europe” soco project paper no. 70 vienna. mende, t. (1972) from aid to recolonization, new york: pantheon, 1972. nails, d. and j. arnold 2001. gender assessment and plan for action for usaid/bulgaria, washington dc: widtech, july 2001 rosenberg, r. and j. arnold. 2002. gender assessment and plan for action for usaid/romania, washington dc: widtech, february 2002. united nations development program. 2000. 1999 human development report: bulgaria sofia, bulgaria: undp. verdery, k. 1993. what was socialism and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. endnotes 1 from the microcredit summit website at www.microcreditsummit.org/involve/page1.h tm, access date june 1, 2003. 2 for more history and information on the grameen bank, please visit their website at www.grameen-info.org 3 karl marx, “the power of money” 1844, available online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ 1844/manuscripts/power.htm 4 in bulgaria, loans were given to individuals in order to purchase their own homes and flats from the state. the interest rates were usually close to one or two percent. 5 from the ngo resource center website at www.ngorc.net/en/programs/pred/default.htm l. access date april 18, 2003 6 lynette andresen, “lithuanian campers learn about business leadership” in the exhange: peace corps’ women in development newsletter, spring/summer 2000, volume no. 33 7 for instance, the nachala cooperative, the resource center foundation, caresback – bulgaria, the phare program, catholic relief services, the bulgarian-american enterprise fund, national network for micro-funding, etc. 8 interview with ken vander weele in “countdown 2005: the newsletter of the microcredit summit campaign,” volume 1, issue 4, may/june 1998. 9 interview with stacy schrader in “countdown 2005: the newsletter of the microcredit summit campaign,” volume 1, issue 4, may/june 1998. 10 of course, the provision of these services in practice by the communist government was less than perfect. power and water outages were endemic in both rural and urban jen typewritten text 70 volume 21, number 2 areas, and the quality of these services was rarely consistent. 11 from the opportunity international “meet our clients” web page at www.opportunity.org/successstories.europe.h tml 12 from the women’s opportunity fund “eastern europe” web page at www.womensopportunityfund.org/pages/con tent_meet_europe.html 13 “success in macedonia” from progress, the women’s opportunity fund newsletter, fall 2000 jen typewritten text 71 sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 76 chemical weapons and transnational community: a history of the fox cities-kurgan sister city program katherine metzo university of north carolina, charlotte a paradox of the end of the cold war is that the peace american and soviet citizens long strived for has actually brought with it increased instability for some. cold war “securityscapes” required the creation of towns to produce, manage, and store the weapons that were instruments of the mutually assured destruction policies of the us and ussr (gusterson 2004, 1998). at the end of the cold war, these two countries and an anxious global community faced the question of what to do with nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. the chemical weapons convention and other documents focused on what to do with the weapons, to the exclusion of considering the socio-economic and health-related impacts on local communities. in this article i focus on the village of shchuchye and an international partnership between two sister cities that is building a local, participatory model of development. as a signatory of the chemical weapons convention, russia has pledged to destroy their stockpiles of chemical weapons by 2012 (extended from the original 2009 deadline). one of the many challenges facing russia in this transformative period is the high costs of construction for chemical weapons destruction facilities and economic security in the surrounding communities. russia’s economy lacks stability, with the majority of households combining subsistence, pensions, wages and side work in an informal mixed economy (for examples see burawoy et al 2000, caldwell 2004, crate 2003, humphrey 2002, metzo 2001, and pesmen 2000). burawoy (2001) refers to this process in which subsistence and economic multitasking have become the norm, as economic involution. this article centers on one rural area that has the added burden of being center stage in russia’s efforts to eliminate its stockpile of chemical weapons. shchuchye is located in kurgan oblast133 and while it housed less than 15% of russia’s chemical weapons in the soviet era, it will be responsible for the destruction of approximately 80% of russia’s chemical weapons stores (russian munitions agency 2003). the united states pledged financial support for the construction of the facility, but the community was expected to play host to this increased burden without socio-economic guarantees from the russian government. contrary to what one might expect under such circumstances, shchuchye residents were actively involved in development planning. their participation in what were essentially international negotiations between the us and russia were facilitated and enhanced by the participation of us and russian members of the fox cities-kurgan sister city program. the cities of kurgan, russia and appleton and the “fox cities” from wisconsin had been active sister city partners since the early 1990’s. here, i sketch out the history of the fox cities-kurgan sister city program focusing in greater depth on the transnational activities that have propelled this program into the international development spotlight since 1998. i examine the formation and evolution of the fox cities-kurgan relationship because it makes a particularly interesting case study and a potential model for overcoming the typical problems of western aid to russia (creed and wedel 1997). unlike programs that discursively re-create russia as “third world,” and dictate how money must be spent, the fox cities-kurgan sister city program demonstrates how locally embedded, socially responsible involvement can be achieved by a transnational community. development and post-socialism throughout the twentieth century, development has been wedded to a modernization discourse. the west has set itself as the benchmark for “progress” toward which others nations ought to aspire (escobar 1995). international aid has tended to be framed in terms of problem-solving where, as part of the justification for aid, the recipient country is portrayed as underdeveloped, though this representation and the identification of the problem to be solved rarely incorporates local input (escobar 1995, ferguson 1994). as escobar (1995:41) writes: “problems were continually identified, and client categories brought into existence. development proceeded by creating ‘abnormalities’ . . . which it would later treat and reform.” problem identification focused narrowly on a single project, such as a highway, or in this case a chemical weapons destruction facility, to the neglect of related socioeconomic concerns (see ferguson 1994 for an example). russia’s position within the global economy shifted from a socialist donor nation to a postanthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 77 socialist, recipient nation, creating additional development tensions. “the russian threat is no longer seen to be a well disciplined ‘evil empire’ but a poverty stricken, chaotic state that cannot defend its old sphere of influence and which threatens to spew nuclear materials among the second tier nations and to sub-national terrorists, as it struggles to reorient itself” (gusterson 1998:2). no longer a superpower, russia’s economic future was now tied to the decisions of first world donor nations. leaders and scholars involved in soviet era development, however, still held advanced degrees, had many years of direct experience with administering aid in “third world” countries and often lamented their loss of autonomy (creed and wedel 1997). one bulgarian specialist states, “’the imf gives us money but says “this is exactly what you have to do with it.” not what we want or need, but what they say. is this democracy? what kind of help is this?’” (creed and wedel 1997:255). within their criticism of the west they point out the authoritarian way in which aid is distributed to fledgling democracies, who are left out of the planning process. the resulting lack of trust and the perception of western condescension dismantle the “suggestive power” of aid as “help” for those less fortunate (creed and wedel 1997:254). while participatory models of development have been gradually emerging since the 1950s (see tax 1958) and renewed calls have been put forth to engage in “locally meaningful modalities of participation” (clark 2002:135), aid to russia has been an outright rejection of local expertise and community participation. wedel (1998:7) identifies three stages of east-west relations in the transfer of aid to eastern europe and russia. initially there is a euphoria wedel terms “triumphalism,” which is inevitably followed by disappointments created by the disconnect between donor and recipient nations, a stage she calls “disillusionment.” finally, as each side begins to understand the needs and motivations of the other, a final stage of “adjustment” occurs. russia has arguably been the least successful in adjusting to the reality of donor-recipient relationships and translating that into widely beneficial assistance. caldwell’s (2004) ethnographic study of a soup kitchen in moscow suggests a second source of tension between state, citizen, and international donors. soup kitchen recipients received aid based on demonstrated need, including a hot meal and sometimes packaged foods to take home. some of the elderly recipients who were born and raised within the soviet union see the aid, “as an appropriate return on the work they provided to the soviet state during their younger days” (ibid: 90). the source of the assistance (the us or eu, public or private donors) is less important than the fact that social support in their retirement is an entitlement that they have earned through years of service. in this sense, aid is seen as closing the loop left open by the collapse of the socialist planned economy, completing a cycle of reciprocity between state and citizen. it is within this complex socio-political terrain that a nascent partnership emerged between the two communities of the fox cities-kurgan sister city program to assist a third community, shchuchye. this partnership avoids some of the shortfalls highlighted in creed and wedel’s (1997, also wedel 1998) research. as laypersons, exchange participants are not entrenched within the historical neoliberal development discourse. rather, they start from the premise that they are not so very different from one another, a notion fostered by the idea of sister city programs. why sister cities? sister city programs have not been examined as a serious topic of inquiry by social scientists to date (zelinsky 1991). inquiry into sister city relationships and socio-economic development may seem unnecessary, given that many of the links are between cities of similar socio-economic status. in cases, where wealthier cities are matched with poorer cities, the aid that is provided tends to be sporadic and not part of ongoing and structured planning. further, with most programs linkages tend to be strongest between individuals and rarely are entire communities invested in the outcomes of exchange activities. but when sister city programs are engaged in systematic development initiatives and international diplomacy, it is worth our attention. sister cities generally come together through a formal match process, such as the service provided by sister cities international (sci), in order to promote cultural sensitivity and peace through education and experience with others. typically, school children become pen pals, mayors visit to meet their counterparts, choirs and theater groups give performances, and in some cases, cities in affluent countries provide limited forms of material aid to cities in less affluent countries, such as medical supplies, food, and disaster relief. sci calls itself a “citizen diplomacy network” and the scope of opportunities they outline on their website are far broader than the understanding that most people have of sister city arrangements (sci n.d.). the fox cities-kurgan sister city program illustrates this kind of action and diplomacy. though anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 78 the group itself, like most, is small, the response on the part of both communities to the planned construction of a chemical weapons destruction facility in kurgan oblast demonstrates a different model for understanding the potential role of sister cities as diplomatic networks. what follows is a brief history of the program and its transformation into a community development project. the formation of the fox-cities-kurgan sister city program (fckscp) like many of the sister city relationships that were established between russian and american cities in the period of glasnost, the fckscp began as a peace initiative in the mid-1980’s, aimed at raising cultural awareness. originally, appleton was working on a match with piatigorsk, russia. in 1990, on appleton’s third try, sci successfully matched appleton, wisconsin, a city of about 70,000 with kurgan, a city of over 350,000. neighboring towns in wisconsin expressed interest in the sister city match throughout the process and quickly the towns of kimberly, neenah, and menasha officially became part of the partnership, leading to the revised name, fox cities-kurgan sister city program. kurgan is the capital of kurgan oblast, a region long renowned for its production of dairy products, mirroring wisconsin’s reputation as “america’s dairyland” (ustiuzhanin and bukreev 1993). like many cities in the trans-urals region of russia, kurgan was founded during the 19th century and was originally populated by workers on the transsiberian railroad and political dissidents who stayed on after their exile ended. though the rural areas are primarily agricultural, urban areas like the city of kurgan are centers of heavy industry. during the soviet period, kurgan produced tanks, buses, and steel bridges. as part of military strategy during world war ii, the soviet government relocated much of its heavy industry to the east of the ural mountains. the population increased rapidly during and immediately after wwii as a result of the development of this industrial base. because of these militarily sensitive industries, kurgan was a “closed city,” meaning foreign visitors were not allowed until after perestroika began in the mid-1980s. industry has slowed, but successful factories thrive because of foreign investment. learning to interact with their new partners was not easy for either side of the fox cities-kurgan exchange. after a request for basic medical supplies from the kurgan side, the fox cities communities arranged for a us air force plane to take a load of donated medical supplies to kurgan. the donated supplies did not fill the plane so, based on news reports of food shortages, the fox cities members decided to accept additional donations of food. in the end, kurgan residents received several tons of valuable medical supplies including pain relievers, bandages, and other single use supplies as well as food supplies that included hundreds of bottles of salad dressing. this seemingly innocent act caused tensions within the fragile, young relationship in part because the russians had no idea how to use the salad dressing. many in kurgan interpreted this mistake as an example of the west “dumping” unwanted, unhealthy, or even expired products on their russian partners. food shortages were not felt as acutely as was represented in the media because many kurganites had maintained or intensified the use of their dacha (garden) plots for food production, a common strategy throughout russia (see caldwell 2004, zavisca 2003, crate 2003, metzo 2001). the fact that people were not starving made the perceived insult seem even more condescending. tensions created by early mis-steps eased as appleton and kurgan initiated exchanges between kurgan state pedagogical institute (now kurgan state university) and lawrence university (and later between ksu and fox valley technical college, as well). the student and teacher exchanges continue to be one of the strongest programs. american exchange students have often returned to kurgan as teachers. during the first three years, 62 kurgan delegations visited the fox cities and 61 fox cities delegations visited kurgan. annually, an average of seven delegations from each side of the atlantic visit their counterparts. as a result of these frequent and often repeat visits, several strong relationships and partnerships have emerged. notably, the medical exchanges between a consortium of fox cities physicians and physicians in kurgan have resulted in the remodeling of a maternity hospital on an american model and the construction of a primary care clinic. chemical weapons and the cooperative threat reduction program just as the program was getting off the ground, the soviet union collapsed and “it appeared that ‘peace had broken out’ with russia” (fckscp, n.d.). as a consequence of communism’s collapse in eastern europe, interest in russia declined as did enrollments in the slavic department at lawrence university, the foundation for the semester and yearlong student and teacher exchanges. nevertheless, exchanges continued and the core membership of the fox cities group remained undaunted. by the mid 1990’s however, a new threat to the people of kurgan oblast emerged. with assistance from usaid, anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 79 russia was in the planning stages for a chemical weapons destruction facility134 near the village of shchuchye. russia signed the chemical weapons convention in january 1993 and ratified it in november 1997. the sections concerning the disposal of chemical weapons can be found in the “verification annex.” briefly, the convention requires that all countries with chemical weapons declare the location of storage facilities along with inventory of scheduled and unscheduled chemicals (part iv [a], a). countries also need to develop a general plan for the destruction of chemical weapons. this plan must include, “plans and programmes for training personnel for the operation of destruction facilities” and, “any issues which could adversely impact on the national destruction programme” (part iv [a], a, 6). these two components are particularly important when we examine the case of shchuchye and the fckscp. until the early 1990’s, the plavony chemical weapons stockpile, containing oneseventh of russia’s stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, was kept secret even from local residents in shchuchye, located approximately ten kilometers from the site. the plavony facility houses 5440 tons of organophosphate nerve agents, including sarin, soman, vx-gas, and phosgene (rma 2003). with the drafting of the chemical weapons convention, discussion shifted to the destruction of this and other stockpiles in the us and russia. under the cwc, destruction of chemical weapons means irreversibly converting chemicals into a form that is unsuitable for use in chemical weapons (iv [a], c, 12). shchuchye itself is a small town of 10,000 residents, approximately ten kilometers from the border with kazakstan. it is also only 200 kilometers from the mayak nuclear facility near cheliabinsk, where a long history of dumping radioactive waste into adjacent rivers and disasters has resulted in high atmospheric pollution (see peterson 1993). this geographic position, the planned destruction facility, as well as the volume of weapons grade chemicals makes shchuchye the number two security priority in russia’s elimination of chemical and biological weapons (rma 2003). including the surrounding administrative region of 2858 square kilometers, there are approximately 29,000 residents near the plavony facility. these residents in the past depended upon the defense industry and centralized agriculture for employment, but today, because of the collapse of the economy, only 3250 of 6250 eligible work age adults have jobs (zaikov 2003). galina vepreva, a local leader in shchuchye, explains that due to radiation levels produced at mayak facilities, the local community has a high level of congenital defects among newborns. parents, however, seldom report this, as their children would be taken from them and sent to special schools. (fckscp, 1998b). shchuchye region is considered a high risk area for illegal activity because of the high level of unemployment, poverty, and accompanying health problems and nutritional deficiencies. the security risks at this facility were highlighted during a visit to the stockpile in 2000 by a delegation of russian and american political leaders, including senator richard lugar (r-in), who demonstrated the ease with which weapons could be smuggled out of the area by placing an artillery shell with sarin gas in his briefcase (see: http://lugar.senate.gov/photos/nunnlugar.html). just before the final public meetings on the chemical weapons destruction facility in shchuchye in july 1997, hundreds of local citizens protested outside the meetings with signs that read, “no construction without social guarantees” (ecobridge 1998:2). upon learning of the existence of this stockpile and the plans for the construction of a us-funded destruction facility, which at that time was expected to cost six hundred million dollars, russian and amercian sister city program members reached out to each other. for local residents as well as for members of the fckscp it was clear that reducing incentives for smuggling by meeting the socio-economic needs of the population was one way to help ensure the security of the facility. the united states was not planning on funding any projects “outside the fence,” that is outside the walls of the weapons facility itself. maintenance and improvements to local infrastructure near the facility was to be the exclusive financial responsibility of the russian ministry of defense. both russian and american citizens feared that the necessary money would not be invested into the local community. capacity building and “security through stability” fox cities residents felt a moral obligation to help their counterparts in kurgan oblast obtain the necessary financial, technical and social support, but they questioned precisely what their role should be in the process. one of their greatest fears was “about the potential failure of this endeavor if the pentagon does not fully investigate all the concerns surrounding it, and consider previously unaddressed issues” (kfcscp 1998a). they knew that their kurgan partners had the knowledge and skill base to answer questions about socio-economic concerns and health status. ultimately, the fox cities group went anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 80 ahead with two tracks, including a “federal” track to link resource persons together, including members of congress, non-governmental organizations, and local kurgan and shchuchye leaders, such as galina vepreva, a retiree who became director of the ngofunded center for community development in shchuchye. the “local” track worked on establishing special programs in kurgan oblast to support the cooperative threat reduction program. these projects were primarily grant-driven and included the construction of a primary care clinic in shchuchye, opened in 2001. an early attempt at “capacity building” in kurgan oblast came in the guise of the partnership in community development which was jointly created by fckscp members, international green cross, eco bridge, and other ngos committed to environmental and social concerns that arise out of weapons reduction initiatives. this working group devised a five-tiered plan for developing local leadership and meeting the basic social needs of the area. the first tier is to continue the existing sister city relationship with the fox cites as well as create new ties with communities in the us, which are also in the process of chemical weapons disposal, such as tooele, utah. the second tier is “leadership development” which includes training other community leaders, like galina vepreva, to design and carry out community development projects, which is the third tier. mini-grants would be provided for projects ranging from recycling programs to park renovation to opinion surveys. the goal of tiers two and three is to empower the local community and to teach people planning and implementation skills as well as conflict resolution skills and other community development tools. the fourth tier is that, “decisions on the fate of shchuchye and kurgan region should not only be made in moscow, but in close cooperation with local leaders” (ecobridge 1998:5). the final tier is health and medical partnership projects which would be specifically headed by the fox cities-kurgan sister city program because of their demonstrated leadership in this area prior to 1997. united health of wisconsin, which took the lead on assessing the health status of local residents, identified two main foci: maternal-child health issues and emergency medical services. in relation to the second objective, local kurgan doctors have developed a “needs list” of urgent medical supplies. in 2003, the activities of the fckscp reached a climax. in january, money that had been held up in the us congress for the construction of the chemical weapons destruction facility in shchuchye was finally released. the revised estimate of the costs of the facility is 880 million dollars, a 32% increase from the original estimate. in october 2003, the fckscp sponsored an international conference in appleton, wisconsin called “security through stability: international community partnerships.” one of the goals of the conference was realized as the participating sister city programs formed a non-profit corporation centered in la crosse, wisconsin, called “communities for international development, inc.,” to provide a structure for collaboration and resource development to support future work between the u.s. and russian partners (world services of lacross 2003). the coalition of sister city programs takes as its mission improving the quality of life in cities near nuclear and chemical weapons facilities in the former soviet union (world services of lacross 2003). the conference report cites the example set by fckscp as a model program for this initiative. in addition to airlifts of supplies, doctors from the two areas have been traveling back and forth to learn about each other’s daily practice and community needs. as a result of these exchanges, the director of maternity hospital #1 in kurgan received a grant to modify facilities and created several family birthing rooms on the model of american maternity hospitals. since its opening in december 2001, more than 2,300 patients have been treated at the shchuchye primary clinic (fckscp n.d.). mikhail gorbachev (2003) served as the keynote speaker of the october 2003 conference. his opening night speech set the stage for the event, but i mention it here, at the end of this account, because it raises an underlying concern with development as a practice to be carried out in a former superpower. he acknowledged his role and that of his predecessors and us counterparts in perpetuating the arms race that served as the basis of the cold war. the emphasis on weapons elimination, particularly aided by a former enemy and the attendant shift in focus on the alleviation of poverty is no easy task. “rebuilding our thinking, changing our thinking, is particularly difficult in our country, a country that went through many hardships during the mongol domination, during the many years of serfdom and slavery and then during the years of the communist system where there was total control of even the thoughts and not just of the economic and social developments” (gorbachev 2003:1). historical legacies make it difficult for the two sides to work together and they have not taken full advantage of “opportunities” created by the end of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 81 the cold war. at the same time, gorbachev suggests that citizens must take a leading role in change. he remarks that universal development models are inappropriate as they ignore ethnic and regional diversity, suggesting an explanation for variability in post-socialist socio-economic status and raising a gentle critique of us-led development, which has treated russia as both homogeneous and third world. “i say that [universal development models are] a utopia not unlike the communist utopia, the utopia that [we] were trying to impose to make people happy and maybe the new utopia is even worse” (gorbachev 2003:8). finally, he reinforces his message by calling on potential donors to attend to the local specificities—community needs, infrastructure, health, character, and culture. trans local/trans national communities anthropology has long sought out meaningful ways of improving local participation in the development process (tax 1958, chambers 1983). the experience of the fckscp suggests that grassroots development is strengthened by the personal relationships of this unique type of transnational community. members of the program suggest that the personal relationships built up and sustained by cultural exchanges and small, grassroots development projects creates a level of accountability on both sides that is not common in traditional development models. this accountability is due in part to the existence of relationships prior to the initiation of international aid. it is not uncommon for kurgan and fox cities residents to talk about these relationships using kinship terms, as hosts become siblings or cousins to their guests of similar status and students in homestays become “children” to local “parents.” participation in the shchuchye project was urgent, yet the ongoing discussion between fictive kin about local needs for kurgan meant that this iteration of participatory development was in many ways tied more organically to the local community. clark (2002:123) notes that international aid, as a process of globalization, overvalues, “universal and technical criteria and undervalues local values, persons, and consequences, reducing local cultures to depoliticized remnants of local music, dances, foods, and design motifs.” this critique echoes related discussions (escobar 1995, ferguson 1994) about how the overvaluation of the technical leads to the neglect of social considerations and secondary impacts of specific forms of technical assistance. international assistance based on the transnational partnership outlined here played a crucial role in activities both “inside” and “outside” the fence. lobbying efforts on both sides were aimed at ensuring the safe and timely construction of the weapons destruction facility with attention to the socio-economic needs of the community. what made the lobbying efforts of this partnership unique was their ability to incorporate local values and individual strengths into the development process. the nongovernmental agencies with whom fckscp partnered in the us were driven by issues but lacked local connections while the sister city partners perceived shchuchye as an extension of their own communities. thus, the sister city model is more culturally sustainable in the sense that this partnership has integrated “locally meaningful modalities of participation” (clark 2002) that were lacking in many of the other types of aid projects going on in eastern europe and russia in the early 1990s (creed and wedel 1997). the sister cities model affords participants with a wider range of possibilities for action than seem possible under conventional project-based aid relationships. the relationship that local residents in shchuchye have to the state parallels the “biological citizenship” that defines citizen-state relations in post-chernobyl ukraine (petryna 2002). petryna (2002:6) describes this type of citizenship claim as, “a massive demand for but selective access to a form of social welfare based on medical, scientific, and legal criteria that both acknowledge biological injury and compensate for it.” in this case, each citizen makes a claim that can be documented, but a distrust of the government along with uncertain results leads citizens to simultaneously seek out other remedies (see also phillips 2002). chernobyl was an international disaster that garnered global media attention, while the illnesses that plague shchuchye residents are the result of more chronic neglect on the part of the government. parents often fail to report congenital defects in their children in fear that the government will take the children away (fckscp 1998b). thus, the appeal shchuchye residents make to the government is collective rather than individual. individual relationships to the state are based on a historical relationship to the soviet state in which the actor has faithfully carried out his or her duties and obligations and feels entitled to the rewards and social guarantees that were linked to this historical relationship, particularly in light of contemporary socio-economic hardships (see haney 2002 and caldwell 2004). thus far, i have focused on the potential advantages of the sister city partnership. as successful as this sister city model has been in valuing and facilitating local participation on local terms, the relationships remain unbalanced. on the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 82 one hand, by identifying and cultivating the expertise of kurgan and shchuchye specialists and teachers the result is a participatory development where locals feel empowered and their contributions are valued. the “help” is more genuine than some of the failed efforts described by others (creed and wedel 1997) because needs were identified locally, then matched with strengths of community leaders in the us and russia. nevertheless, financing comes from the west, setting up an imbalance. returning to mauss’ theory of the gift, there is no such thing as a free gift. charity makes the receiver subordinate to the giver. “the unreciprocated gift still makes the person who has accepted it inferior, particularly when it has been accepted with not thought of returning it” (mauss 1990:65). gifts of charity can quickly reveal the ineptitude of the giver, as in the case of airlifting salad dressing into siberia. members of the kurgan side of the exchange were not shy in pointing out this faux pas to their american counterparts. both sides persisted in developing this partnership. if the goal is to establish a long-term relationship with counterparts in another part of the world to build cultural understanding, participants must become more adept at interpreting each others' cultures and mediating misunderstandings. at an individual level, participants built up their relationships through somewhat regular visits and the exchange of small gifts of hospitality and friendship. the larger gifts of aid became more appropriate to locally identified needs over time, but the imbalance remains. as the receiver of charity and aid, shchuchye and kurgan residents have accrued an unrepayable debt. one might argue, as members of the fckscp do, that the resulting security provides a global service in the form of protection against the theft and use of weapons of mass destruction. what has motivated fox cities residents to act is their empathy, even pity, for the poverty and hardship they see in kurgan and shchuchye. they see the residents of kurgan as members of a shared community, making the moral impulse more pressing. in a way, this partnership, which began as a peace initiative, had come full circle, but now they built and expanded their transnational community on the foundation of am imminent global threat. the core group of members involved in planning on both sides is relatively small, though exchanges and projects include much larger numbers of people. this raises the concern of how the sister city program itself will be affected as the chemical weapons destruction facility is built. if participation and success are dependent upon the empathy of americans, what happens as compassion fatigue sets in? will the personal relationships created through a decade of exchanges help the fckscp build and maintain a sustainable development model or will this “toxic community building”135 process deteriorate the foundations of the sister city partnership? in other words, how long does charity persist before imbalance undermines the relationships established through exchange? the next several years will provide some answers to these questions. in the meantime, it is noteworthy that the sister city program successfully facilitated linkages between other actors in the development field. the depth of experience on both sides supported the effective communication of goals and priorities, as kurgan residents had learned to be assertive and precise in their requests and fox cities residents had learned to be less ethnocentric, listening rather than thinking they had the answers by virtue of their economic superiority. conclusion paradoxically, peace has brought decreased stability to residents shchuchye. not only were local residents facing economic chaos and increasing reliance on diverse livelihood strategies, they were confronted with the betrayal of the state which now put them at risk of terrorist threats and continued environmental hazards. this community has benefited from the efforts of a partnership between the fox cities in wisconsin and kurgan, russia. the kind of grassroots model developed by members of the sister city project has avoided (after some growing pains) many of the problems that have plagued western development efforts in the former eastern bloc (wedel 1998, creed and wedel 1997). participation has drawn on the work of community leaders like vepreva in shchuchye and physicians and teachers in both russia and the united states to create meaningful and effective ways to meet the social, health, and to a lesser extent, economic needs of the shchuchye population. while this development model is not easily replicable, the experience of the fckscp suggests that ngos might partner with existing exchange programs to build participatory models on the foundation of preexisting relationships in order to broaden overall participation and strengthen accountability within the international aid community. notes 133 an administrative area similar to a state. 134 the facility is commonly referenced as a “destruction” facility, but according to the information on the russian munitions agency website and other sources, the technology is a twoanthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 83 step “neutralization” technology that creates nonthreatening gas and a “salt brick” by product. 135 this is a term hugh gusterson coined in discussing an earlier draft of this paper. references burawoy, michael. 2001. transition without transformation: russia's involutionary road to capitalism. east european politics and societies 15(2): 269-290. burawoy, michael with pavel krotov and tatyana lytkina. 2000. involution and destitution in capitalist russia. ethnography 1(1): 43-65. caldwell, melissa. 2004. not by bread alone: social support in the new russia. berkeley: university of california press. chambers, robert. 1983. rural development: putting the last first. harlow, uk: longman. clark, gracia. 2002. culturally sustainable development in economic development: an anthropological approach. jeffrey h. cohen and norbert dannhaeuser, eds. walnut creek, ca: altamira press. pages 123-136. crate, susan. 2003. viliui sakha post-soviet adaptation: a subarctic test of netting’s smallholder theory.human ecology, 31(4). creed, gerald w. and janine r. wedel. 1997. second thoughts from the second world: interpreting aid in post-communist eastern europe. human organization. 56(3):253264. ecobridge environmental programs (ecobridge). 1998. “us-russian partnership in community development for kurgan oblast” working draft of white paper. escobar, arturo. 1995. encountering development: the making and unmaking of the third world. princeton, nj: princeton university press. ferguson, james. 1994. the anti-politics machine: “development,” depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in lesotho. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. fox cities-kurgan sister city program (fckscp). n.d. http://www.foxcitieskurgan.org (accessed 1/23/2004). --1998a. february minutes --1998b. april minutes gorbachev, mikhail. 2003. keynote speech at “security through stability: international community partnerships” october 1. 2003 (text available online at: http://www.securitythroughstability.org/pres entations/gorbachev_address.pdf ) gusterson, hugh. 1998. re-imagining russian nuclear weapons scientists. anthropology of east europe review 16(1): 1-6. --1999. nuclear weapons and the other in the western imagination. cultural anthropology. 14(1): 111-143. --2004. people of the bomb: portraits of america’s nuclear complex. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. haney, lynne. 2002. inventing the needy: gender and the politics of welfare in hungary. berkeley: university of california press. humphrey, caroline. 2002. the unmaking of soviet life: everyday economies after socialism. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. mauss, marcel. 1990 (1950). the gift: the form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. london: routledge. metzo, katherine r. 2001. adapting capitalism: household plots, forest resources, and moonlighting in post-soviet siberia. geojournal 55: 549-556. pesman, dale. 2000. russia and soul. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. petryna, adriana. 2002. life exposed: biological citizens after chernobyl. princeton, nj: princeton university press. phillips, sarah drue. 2002. “half-lives and healthy bodies: discourses on ‘contaminated’ foods and healing in post-chernobyl ukraine” in food and foodways 10(1-2): 27-53. sister cities international (sci). 2001. http://www.sister-cities.org. last accessed: december 2003 tax, sol. 1958. the fox project. human organization. 17:17-19. ustiuzhanin, g. p. and bukreev, a. i. 1993. kurganskaia oblast’. kurgan: parus-m. wedel, janine r. 1998. collision and collusion: the strange case of western aid to eastern http://www.foxcitieskurgan.org/� anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 84 europe, 1989-1998. new york: st. martin’s press. world services of la cross, inc. 2003. “security through stability” international community partnerships conference final conference report (available at: http://www.securitythroughstability.org/pres entations/conference_summary_final.pdf) zavisca, jane. 2003. contesting capitalism at the post-soviet dacha: the meaning of food cultivation for urban russians. slavic review 62 (4):786-810. zelinsky, wilbur. 1991. the twinning of the world: sister cities in geographic and historical perspective. annals of the association of american geographers. 81(1): 1-31. acknowledgements this paper would not exist were it not for the opportunity i had to teach in kurgan as part of one of the fox cities-kurgan sister city program and for that i thank charles lauter and george smalley. i presented an earlier version of this paper at the american association for the advancement of slavic studies in boston ma in december 2003. i am grateful to hugh gusterson for his insightful comments on that early draft, which, after a long break, i have decided to revisit here. i am also indebted to members of the fox cities side for ongoing discussions about the sister city program. all flaws and errors remain my own http://www.securitythroughstability.org/presentations/conference_summary_fina� http://www.securitythroughstability.org/presentations/conference_summary_fina� the highs and lows of ethno-cultural diversity: young people’s experiences of chalga culture in bulgaria anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 99 kaleidoscopic odessa: history and place in contemporary ukraine. by tanya richardson. toronto: university of toronto press, 2008. 280 pp. notes. bibliography. index. paper. reviewer: jennifer carroll university of washington tanya richardson has produced a fascinating and thought-provoking work. as an ethnography of a particular place, kaleidoscopic odessa succeeds in showing how spatial geographies can be incorporated into theories of identity. richardson suggests that questions of location may be given priority over questions of identity in order to unravel the ways in which concepts of place, history, and the self are mutually constituted. richardson takes the city of odessa as her subject for its diverse political and cultural history and for its legacy as a frontier town along multiple borders. residents describe odessa as a truly unique place because of its culture, its history, its cosmopolitanism, and all the ways in which it is thought to be ‘un-ukrainian.’ this sense of uniqueness, richardson argues, is typical of borderlands and “can be considered [typically] ukrainian if ukraine is understood spatially – or territorially – as a multiethnic borderland” (p. 6). richardson provides detailed, ethnographic vignettes that reveal the presence of contradictory histories and narratives, each hinging upon a continuity of place within odessa. these personal accounts are placed in juxtaposition with one another in order to reveal how personal identity can be rooted in irreconcilable histories, how coherency can be formed out of the seemingly incoherent. in chapter one, richardson lays the theoretical groundwork for her analysis. she aims to disrupt linear constructs of time and history, to ground the past and the present in the performance of place. in her account, place and identity are understood as mutually constituted. she argues that the idea of odessa as a unique place is produced and reproduced through the engagement of multiple and contradictory histories rooted in the landscape of the city, itself. richardson borrows the metaphor of a kaleidoscope to illustrate how the multiple, overlapping geographies of odessa constantly make some things visible and others invisible through a seemingly unlimited series of historical constellations. chapters two and three explore the mechanisms of cultural transmission in the context of independent ukraine’s efforts to build a national identity. through her rich ethnographic narratives of high school students in history class and of the elderly sharing their life stories, richardson reveals how multiple, contradictory histories are passed through kinship and family relations, generating a distinct uncertainty and ambivalence with which young people approach national histories. the life stories of elderly odessans are based on varied personal experiences colored by privilege, prejudice, and violence throughout their lifetimes. richardson articulates how these frameworks for viewing the self as a product of such histories may be resistant to new discourses of ukrainian statehood. furthermore, though the classroom has been a favorite place to look for the disciplining of national subjects, richardson argues that textbooks alone cannot explain the success of nationalizing efforts. in the context of multiple historicities, uncertainty about historical narratives undermines the state’s attempt to generate a new understanding of ukrainian statehood in odessa. chapters four and five address the phenomenological aspects of place in odessa. moldovanka, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, is the subject of chapter four. richardson illustrates how this area has become a symbol for the city in which it is located through literature, architecture, use of public space, and the designations of high and low culture. chapter five follows a social group of self-proclaimed historians who make their way through the streets on foot seeking historical relevance in the most mundane structures of the city. richardson argues that these walking practices allow for the city to be experienced as well as known, forming continuities between historical narratives and notions of odessan identity. finally, richardson concludes her analysis in chapter six with an exploration into the role that imagined landscapes of cosmopolitanism and provincialism play in situating odessa within the contexts of nation and empire. richardson shows how histories are constructed in local museums, historical collections, and city tours highlighting ethnic heritage. each of these efforts seeks to promote particular histories and obscure others, revealing “the friction encountered when different localities and regions are ‘soldered together’ as part of a nation” (p. 206). throughout the book, richardson’s ethnographic narratives provide a rich, complex background for her engagement with odessa and ukraine as borderlands. her argument that history and identity must be considered in anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 100 conjunction with place is persuasive, and her presentation of multiple, contradictory historicities in the text illustrates the fundamental interconnectedness of the two. richardson’s voice in kaleidoscopic odessa is bold and authoritative. this is, in many ways, a strength of her writing; however, this tone occasionally creates a false sense of detachment between herself and the odessans captured in her text. the need to contextualize these relationships and her position within them is not always acknowledged. she does speak with affection, for example, about her friend evgeny, a vendor at the old horse market whom she accompanied to his stall every saturday (p. 132), but, unfortunately, moments like this are not typical. the story of richardson’s personal involvement is not wholly absent, but the book lacks a level of self-reflexivity that could have made the text more grounded. a reader who appreciates the beautifully wrought ethnographic material in this book will be left with many unanswered questions about richardson, herself. nevertheless, this book is quite an achievement. richardson wields an impressive array of social theory, pulling together concepts of history, memory, place and space, hegemony, resistance, and identity, in order to render an analysis that is as illuminating as it is eloquent. richardson makes a valuable contribution not only to the study of eastern europe and ukraine, but also to ongoing discussions and theoretical debates about history, place, and nationalism. furthermore, this book would make an excellent offering for university classrooms. it is exemplary not only as an ethnography of history and place but as evidence of the profound ideas that anthropological analysis is capable of producing. introduction to special issue: global socialisms and postsocialisms anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: nst4@pitt.edu introduction to special issue: global socialisms and postsocialisms1 narcis tulbure, university of pittsburgh everywhere there is something to overcome or to bridge: disorder, death, meaninglessness. everything is a transition, a bridge whose ends are lost in infinity, beside which all the bridges of this earth are only children’s toys, pale symbols. and all our hope lies on the other side. ivo andrić (1992: 27) ordering a diversity of forms as a field of variation does not in itself induce any theory of process, of possible mechanisms that generate this range of form – though it does cry out for such theories. if not to comparative insights, where might an analyst turn for ideas? fredrik barth (1999: 86) socialism and postsocialism the 2009 soyuz symposium was dedicated to “global socialisms and postsocialisms.” the organizers intended to focus discussions on the orders, configurations, and processes emerging from or among former socialist areas of the world in order to “understand the flow of people, objects, concepts, and linguistic and cultural forms among and out of socialist and postsocialist states, rather than simply into them from “the west.” 2 while some of the presentations and discussions drew on examples from outside eastern europe and the former soviet union, most of the contributions stayed within the “traditional” focus area of soyuz, the research network for postsocialist studies. participants in the symposium encouraged us to rethink socialism and postsocialism as global, international, or transnational formations, to reconsider the continuities and contrasts between the two periods, as well as to imagine new frameworks for comparative research. most importantly, such an approach shifts analytic attention from the socialist past and the transformations after socialism’s collapse to the ideological constructs and knowledge practices emerging under socialism but continuing to structure our contemporary worldviews and academic practices. the theoretical turn suggested by this year’s theme appears more important when realizing the boundedness of classical models of socialism made visible by the passing of time. based on fieldwork in the few areas open to ethnographic research in the soviet bloc but engaging some of the theoretical constructs of native scholars (kornai 1980, 1992; konrád and szelényi 1979; câmpeanu 1980), theorizations of socialism incorporated the politics of knowledge during the cold war. scholarship on the socialist societies of eastern europe and the soviet union had been structured by the “three worlds” conceptualization of the globe after anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 3 1950: “the first world” (generically, “the west”) – dominated by science and utilitarian thinking, was to be studied primarily by the theoretical social sciences (economics, political science, sociology), “the second world” (most of the totalitarian socialist states) – dominated by ideology, was to be approached by area studies (such as sovietology), while “the third world” (africa and other parts of the underdeveloped world) – the world of culture, was left to the idiographic and a-theoretical anthropology (pletch 1981:578). as the cold war prompted a growing interest in eastern europe and the soviet union, american anthropology transgressed this academic division of work between the disciplines concerned with the third and the second world. while the anthropology of east europe emerged as a quasi-autonomous subfield at the time, 3 the tense international relations and the influence of the cold war – not only a political confrontation, but “also [a] form of knowledge and a cognitive organization of the world” (verdery 1996:4), meant that western scholars doing research in the area did not enjoy full freedom of movement or of choosing one’s object of study (verdery 2004). as katherine verdery points out, the cold war influenced her (and others’) choice of topics of research, of overall approach, or of the level of reality to be addressed. the cold war was responsible for the almost obsessive interest in the socialist state and the politicaleconomic processes constituting it, as well as for the more superficial understanding of social meanings, personal experiences, and values. this aspect was subsequently criticized and remedied by more recent evaluations of postsocialist ethnographic experiences (dudwick and desoto 2000; lampland 2000). at the same time, the constant engagement with politicaleconomic categories facilitated not only a more theoretical understanding of the systemic traits of socialism but also set the ground for further critiques of capitalism (verdery 1996: 9) conceptualized in relation (opposition) with the socialist system. what theoretical models of socialism were not able to do was to set “actually existing socialisms” in a more comparative perspective or to render the multiple relations between socialism and postsocialism open to reflection. although explaining quite profoundly the workings of socialism in the soviet bloc, anthropological theorizations based on ethnographic research in eastern europe and the former soviet union are less helpful in explaining the persistence of socialist societies such as cuba, the cohabitation between political communism and market economy in china, or the revitalization of socialist movements in latin america. where such theories could still prove useful – something emphasized by several presenters at the 2009 soyuz symposium, is in showing how the former cold war politics of knowledge are resilient and continue to shape our perspectives on the world we live in. the blooming of ethnographies of eastern europe after the collapse of state socialism was due not only to the revitalization of the local anthropological schools 4 but also to an increased interest of western anthropologists in the area. many researchers conceived eastern europe (and the former communist bloc more generally) as a “laboratory” (kubálková 1992; kurti 1996, 2000) where epochal social and political changes associated with the “second great transformation” (burawoy 2000) could be studied closely. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 4 emerging as an analytic category soon after the end of socialism and used by many social scientists as an alternative to the teleological notion of transition, postsocialism has been transformed by the interaction between academic practice and fieldwork encounters, becoming itself an ethnographic object. 5 used initially adjectivally (“postsocialist”) or to denote a particular period of time, postsocialism later stood either for the diversity of social formations emerging after socialism or for a particular style of doing ethnographic work. this ethnographic style was more attentive to meanings, values and local experiences (focusing on themes like memory, consumption, identity, nationalism, etc.) often in reaction to the political-economic approaches that characterized previous scholarship on socialism. thus, postsocialism incorporated all the ambiguity inherent in processes of social change and made room for approaches bringing “micro-level insights into particular processes of transformation” (hann 2002:xii) socialism and the cold war episteme continued to exert their influence over eastern european studies not only through the biographies of the senior anthropologists of the area, the lasting institutional structures meant to support the study of “the second world” in american academia, or the (still) influential theoretical foundations laid before 1989. as it happened under socialism (kurti 1999), ethnographers and anthropologists of eastern europe had to negotiate and continuously reflect on their relationships with informants and friends (dudwick and de soto 2000; herzfeld 2000; lampland 2000). indeed, the focus of ethnography was not so much the nature of the state–subjects relations (ries 2000) but mainly the understanding of transformations taking place in the personal and social lives of eastern europeans and citizens of the former soviet union (herzfeld 2000:220). under such circumstances, the ethics and responsibilities of research came to the fore of ethnographers’ concerns (dudwick and de soto 2000:6; herzfeld 2000:228, 231). as anthropologists of former socialist societies seemed less inclined to understand politics as a series of abstract and institutionalized processes and were more attentive to the reconstitutions of moral orders or local understandings of politics (lampland 2000:209-210), this theoretical shift had multiple and profound implications for the ethnographic practices in the region. in conceptual terms, the category of transition was deconstructed and replaced by the more nuanced and non-teleological postsocialism (ries 2000; dudwick and de soto 2000; hann 2002; lampland 2000). at the same time, as local understandings of broader political processes became of primary concern for anthropologists, it also became important how ethnographers managed a genuine dialogue with people rather than speaking for them (ries 2000:x) and how they shed light on the way people represent their own agency in shifting historical contexts (ries 2000:x; wolfe 2000:210). such ethnographic concerns were premised, according to michael herzfeld (2000), on the creation and maintenance of intimacy with one’s informants. this implied not only a more prominent role of conversation as a privileged way of creating intimacy, but also becoming aware of the multiple responsibilities of the ethnographer towards informants. this was even more true in the case of local ethnographers (herzfeld 2000:223). the topical concerns of postsocialist ethnographers stimulated the reconfiguration of writing styles, textual anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 5 registers, and representational techniques employed by anthropologists, resulting in new genres in the literature on eastern europe and the former soviet union such as ethnographic reporting the “article-length descriptions of social processes produced by analyzing a handful of sites or episodes” (wolfe 2000:207). the emphasis on experience and the reconfiguration of values in the ethnographies of postsocialism (dudwick and de soto 2000; herzfeld 2000; lampland 2000; wolfe 2002; burawoy and verdery 1998) or approaches developed in other social sciences (roeder 1999:755; fish 1999) went in a totally opposite direction from earlier schematic representations of the fall of the socialist system. even the most theoretically focused ethnographers known for their concern with political processes and/or working through political economic models progressively oriented themselves towards constitutions of local life-worlds and the filtering of macro-political processes through everyday life interactions and experiences (burawoy and verdery 1998; lampland 2000; hann 2002; hayden 2002b; verdery 2002). the reflection on renewing research agendas, appropriate levels of analysis and the positionality of ethnographers gave most of these scholars the opportunity to re-conceptualize knowledge and politics, revealing the mutually constitutive relations between the two categories (verdery 2002; wolfe 2000; kurti 2000; lampland 2000). postsocialism and postcolonialism the fragmentation of knowledge that postsocialism stood for has been reversed by the recent search for more systematic approaches. critics of the concept of postsocialism have already argued that its usefulness in describing the current historical period has reached its limits (sampson 2002), that it was improperly used conveying a teleological direction of change (kenneth mcgill in chivens et al. 2005) or was never actually relevant for the entirety of eastern europe (andrew gilbert in chivens et al. 2005). they have also called for the approach of postsocialism as an ethnographic category (elizabeth dunn in chivens et al. 2005) being experienced and narrated by the subjects of our ethnographies (thomas chivens in chivens et al. 2005) and used in strategically different ways by western scholars and eastern subjects (michal buchowski in chivens et al. 2005). the analysis of postsocialism in its global dimensions creates the premise for the simultaneous analysis of the turn to autarchy (and nationalism) in many former socialist societies and their subsequent conjunction with world-wide political and economic processes. whereas socialism was characterized by rational redistribution by the political center as the dominant (if not unique) logic of power (verdery 1996), the diverging pathways out of socialism cry out for theoretical perspectives that would make the comparisons between them both possible and useful. this comparative potential of postsocialism used as a historical category has been linked to two research strategies. on the one hand, comparisons between the trajectories of various postsocialist countries can facilitate the understanding of “the heritage of actually existing socialism” (humphrey 2002a:12), of the distinct ways people make sense of their socialist anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 6 experiences, as well as of the diverse ideologies and political imaginaries emerging in these regions (e.g. europeanism, eurasianism) and facilitating new projects of power and the control over resources. on the other hand, a comparison with the postcolonial condition an approach progressively gaining currency in “post-cold war studies” creates the conditions for a more nuanced and profound understanding of the “practices of domination” in various historical and political regimes (verdery 2002b:17). this can facilitate a rewarding inclusion of the postsocialist paradigm into “comparative studies of imperialism and colonialism, postimperialism or political anthropology more generally” (humphrey 2002a:12). the two types of comparisons outlined above should be seen as overlapping rather than mutually exclusive. a thematic number of africa dedicated to african socialisms and postsocialisms, “[sought] theoretically to break the mould of soviet-centrism that characterizes much of the literature on postsocialism and to invite other scholars to include african countries in comparative analysis” (pitcher and askew 2006:5). according to the two authors, the impact of the collapse of socialism in 1989/1991 on african formerly socialist states was no less profound than on their east european counterparts and the acknowledgement of that impact calls for a more attentive exploration of the interconnections or parallels between postsocialisms on the two continents. furthermore, the fact that neoliberal ideologies and their institutional promoters globally (the imf, the world bank, the ifc) were active agencies and shaped postsocialist opportunities on both continents, further strengthens arguments for comparative analysis and support claims that the socialist legacies are not the only defining features of the postsocialist condition. postsocialism, which first emerged as a complex category glossing over a diversity of socio-political transformations and historical experiences or as the symbol of a specific mode of (re)integration into the global system has recently mutated into a generous theoretical category that creates numerous opportunities for comparison and calls for overcoming academic and regional parochialism. the comparison with various postcolonial contexts and the forms of knowledge emergent there (such as postcolonial studies or subaltern history) is not accidental. the diminishing explanatory power of earlier theoretical models and the reorientation of area studies more generally (guyer 2004) have stimulated anthropologists of eastern europe to look for alternative conceptual developments or for models based on trans-regional comparisons. the postsocialism– postcolonialism parallel has gone beyond the stage of an implicit comparison and has been proposed as an explicit research strategy by numerous anthropologists and social scientists (lampland 2000; verdery 2002b; hayden 2002a, 2002b; hann 2002; chari and verdery 2009). 6 the similarities between postsocialist and postcolonial studies are multiple: importance of history and historical anthropological approaches (verdery 2002b; hayden 2002a), pronounced interdisciplinarity and the transgression of national boundaries by academic communities and agendas (verdery 2002b), and the preoccupation with giving “voice” to the natives and their concerns (verdery 2002b; hayden 2002a:213). ethnographers of eastern europe were further encouraged to pursue such a comparative path in order to unmask the “practices of domination” (verdery 2002b; lampland 2000; chari and verdery 2009), to understand representations of the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 7 west and the forms of knowledge supporting them (tishkov 1998; verdery 2002b), to approach critically the politics of knowledge in contemporary eastern europe and the unbalanced systems of knowledge production in east and west (lampland 2000), or to understand better the historicity of colonialism and the significance of postcolonial studies themselves (hayden 2002a, 2002b). similarly, katherine verdery argued that postsocialism could be used to ground comparative studies of historical routes out of empire (2002b:16). as postcolonial studies could be viewed as part of the global order structured by the cold war (verdery 2002b:18; chari and verdery 2009:21), the parallel between postsocialism and postcolonialism is not only possible but necessary for understanding the practices of dominance around the world. the opening up of postsocialist studies as a multi-disciplinary field of investigation and the awaited contribution of “native” scholars from eastern europe are some of the other conditions necessary for the consolidation of the field. at the same time, the integration of postsocialist and postcolonial studies can illuminate the political constitution of “the west” itself. such a comparison can illustrate “how not just the colonies but the existence of socialism itself affected the constitution and becoming of “the west,” often simultaneously with processes involving the colonies, postcolonies, and neo-colonies” (verdery 2002b:17). furthermore, anthropologists were encouraged to focus on postsocialist/postcolonial forms of knowledge and their contemporary reconfiguration. the ongoing legacy of the cold war on our knowledge practices cannot only render comparable the various colonial practices of domination in the multiple “souths” across the globe, but also can reveal the various “eastern,” socialist, and colonial representations of the “west.” to those goals, historical anthropology is able to uncover the situated notions of history, time, and space, and the multiple technologies producing the contemporary “varieties of modernity” (verdery 2002b:19). europeanization and colonialism focusing on different historical processes, yet in connection to some of the previous arguments, the postcolonial turn in postsocialist studies sheds a different light on current projects of re-integration or “return to” europe undergone by many of the eastern countries. thus, steven sampson’s argument about the “cultural boundary” between the west and the balkans (2004), matti bunzl’s “neo-colonial subjectification” of the easterners through mundane embodied practices of ordinary people (2000), or józsef böröcz’s treatment of the “eastern enlargement” of the european union (eu) in terms of “empire” and “colonialism” (2000; 2001) are good examples of a new focus in anthropology. europeanization had taken place in eastern europe even before the accession within the eu, many times being a distinct process from that of eu integration. from a different perspective, europe itself (for which the eu often stands metonymically) had been an ideological object long debated and longed for in “the east.” katherine verdery argued that europe had long been a “master symbol” of romanian politics (1991) while susan gal has shown how europe functioned like a “symbolic counter of identity” anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 8 in hungary (1991). the emotional involvement with european categories is confirmed even by quantitative analyses of political scientists (linden and pohlman 2003). local adaptations of and responses to eu-induced cultural-political processes are able to expose the ideologically dominant constructions of europe. thus, michael herzfeld has argued convincingly that the examination of the current european project can shed light on a second type of colonialism, one whose subjects are regions and countries within europe itself, “a more insidious western colonialism, one that is primarily engaged today in the international politics of cultural distinction” (asad et al.:714). similarly, contributors to the roundtable on “provocations of european ethnography” have argued that the study of processes of europeanization taking place in eastern europe can create the premises for a critique of europe’s fundamental identity categories and for a “culturally based critique of liberal capitalist democracy” (katherine verdery in asad et al. 1997:716). furthermore, deconstructing categories such as “the west,” “liberal democracy” or “capitalism” offers a good basis for “questioning the nature of socialism, its representation, or its transformation” (katherine verdery in asad et al. 1997:717). the critical analysis of europe and its strategies of power offers ethnographers the opportunity for self-reflection on the practices of anthropology that are many times complicit with colonial and national projects. as michael herzfeld put it, we can “take europe as an object of comparison with anthropology,” that is, “to use the highly accessible history of what is, after all, a historically european-driven cultural activity to flush out some of the assumptions it shares with nationalism and colonialism, both of which, if not quite as uniquely european as some commentators have argued, are engaged in extremely self-conscious processes of classification and control” (asad et al.:715). even with the development of an apparently new political construct such as the european union, if one is to get at its underlying cultural logic and not to fall into the essentialist trap (similar to that of nation-building processes) then one should try to put it into a comparative framework. comparisons between various colonial projects, between the multiple processes taking place in local arenas where the european project is realized, between reactions to europeanization at its margins, or between academic practices and their objects of investigation promise to mediate a more distanced perspective and to facilitate awareness of the essentializing representations of anthropology, nationalism, and colonialism. the cold war legacies premised on the assumption that we are still living the political and cognitive consequences of the cold war, most of the theoretically productive strategies outlined in the sections above have been pursued by several of the presenters and were debated collectively during the roundtable at the end of the 2009 soyuz symposium. participants agreed that the persistence of the cognitive frames elaborated under socialism on both sides of the iron curtain has not yet been consistently analyzed and is still little understood. coming to terms with such cold war legacies is becoming aware of the politics of knowledge involved by our scholarly enterprises. this means not only replacing a dated three worlds ideology with a more integrated anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 9 perspective on the world (chari and verdery 2009:19) but also understanding the perpetuation of forms of knowledge and practice that we experience every day. game theory, for instance, has grown in the political context after wwii into one of the dominant paradigms of the social sciences being used to model everything from macroeconomic theories to labor union negotiations, and to explain things as diverse as international relations and audit practices in academic institutions. anthropologists and other social scientists sharing a similar worldview are the ones called to understand the practical consequences of such modes of thinking that have been routinized silently over the last decades into many realms of social life. from a different perspective, the global ambitions of an anthropology claiming to incorporate and explain postcolonial studies prompt legitimate questions about the agents of this disciplinary transformation. who are the ones promoting the postsocialist-postcolonial comparison and how are they situated in between “western” academia and “eastern” areas of study? how does this differ from the case of postcolonialism? how will anthropology itself be transformed by the global engagement with the cold war strategies of domination? the last question promises to generate a particularly fruitful reflection. whereas the birth of anthropology was associated with colonial projects almost all over the world, the anthropology of socialism was from the beginning a critical reflection on the constitution of power on both sides of the iron curtain. the anthropology of global postsocialism(s) promises to recapture the stream of critical anthropology engaging technologies of power that were generated, experimented with or renewed in the former socialist regions of the world. this represents a rather important turn towards theory and overarching political-economic processes that comes to recuperate the general perspective neglected with the emphasis on localism in the early ethnographies of postsocialism. either postulating the existence of a world of global processes or claiming that the overarching reality is a product of social imagination (but not less real for that matter) giving a specific shape to localized interactions, the ethnography of global postsocialisms tries to come to terms with the entanglements and relations making up worldwide processes. the theoretical implications of this disciplinary shift of attention must be put under scrutiny themselves: how are categories of anthropological investigation being produced? how are they used and by whom? how do they travel and get adopted by other area specialists and the “natives” of our ethnographies? as elizabeth dunn (chivens et al. 2005) has anecdotally described the “great chain of being in anthropology,” until recently, everything said about papua new guinea used to apply everywhere, whereas anything said about eastern europe and china used to apply only to those areas. 7 the current turn in the anthropology of socialism and postsocialism towards global processes and post-cold war comparisons might be a good moment to question such symbolic hierarchies of power within the discipline and to contribute something substantial to the ongoing reinvention of anthropology. the contributions to the special issue anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 10 the articles gathered in this special issue speak to each other in numerous ways in spite of the diversity of topics, methodologies and periods addressed, as well as the varied theoretical concerns. the transgression of the (by now) narrow confines of the traditional focus of soyuz (postsocialist societies in eastern europe and the former soviet union) by the incorporation of perspectives from sociology, history, and comparative literature, and the engagement of themes pertaining to african and international socialist movements or to postcolonial contexts, are several of the notable accomplishments of this year’s symposium. in the first article of the collection, maxim matusevich contextualizes the rise of racial intolerance in post-soviet russia by making an excellent historical analysis of the changing attitudes towards african students in the soviet union from the 1950-60s to the political transformations during perestroika. coming to universities in the ussr in increasing numbers after the revival of socialist internationalism by soviet leaders during the post-stalin thaw, students of african origin challenged the popular ideas about race through their cultural representations and mundane practices. the initial enthusiasm towards african exoticism and forms of artistic expression turned into anxiety and intolerance with the worsening economic prospects and the competition for resources during the last years of the soviet union. soviet citizens’ cultural encounters with african students played into and illustrate well the support for socialist internationalism during the early postcolonial period and the subsequent withdrawal from africa (as well as from other international engagements) of soviet leaders before the demise of socialism in the 1980-90s. matusevich’s excellent analysis should be complemented by comparative studies of the relations between other socialist strongholds (eastern europe, contemporary china) and the postcolonial regions pursuing a socialist path. referring roughly to the same period, rossen djagalov’s contribution is an excellent example of historically informed and theoretically minded analysis of the role of the cold war in structuring politics and knowledge both before and after 1989/1991. working with the example of howard fast, the american best-selling novelist who found himself a victim of mccarthy’s anti-communist campaign, djagalov reveals the ideological effects of the iron curtain both in the united states and within the soviet bloc. as for many other leftist scholars in the west, howard fast’s actions and situatedness were constitutive of the operational principles of left wing literary apparatuses that mediated (through selective translations and interpretation) the communication between the two sides of the curtain: canonization, excommunication, membrane effect, and monopoly effect. the example of howard fast’s trajectory illustrates the fractures appearing in the “world republic of leftist letters” in the second half of the last century as well as the continuing legacy of the ideological perception of leftist culture in the west. during the cold war, the two ideological blocs produced not mirror images but rather partial knowledge and distorted representations of each other. djagalov’s effort helps us not only to understand the role of soviet cultural politics but also to reevaluate the complicity of western scholarly and literary establishments (such as the coalition of slavic studies and eastern anti-communist dissidents) in perpetuating distorted representations of each other. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 11 moving westwards but staying focused on the regional processes constituting socialism during the same period, emanuela grama adopts and adapts a research strategy with great results in the fields of postcolonial and subaltern studies. based on extensive archival research and interviews with experts, grama describes the disputes between architects and archaeologists during the 1950-60s romania over the modalities of uncovering, displaying, and preserving the ruins of the medieval old court of bucharest. she treats these disciplinary discourses as competing technologies for the production of social reality as well as for the spatial and visual realization of a teleological conception of history premised on the doctrine of dialectical materialism. that is, “the past” and “the future” were separated and displayed through distinct historical artifacts and architectural forms while “the present” was only a transitional phase towards the socialist future. although both disciplines were initially legitimated by regional ideologies and political processes affecting most of the socialist bloc in eastern europe, they were soon instrumentalized towards national goals. they provided the valuable means of and entered the competition for the allocation of resources by the political center that had characterized the socialist exercise of power in eastern europe. the preservation of the old court ruins at the time has left the field of urban intervention open until today perpetuating some of the disputes of the time that are reconsidered under postsocialism. focusing on the postsocialist period, victor shnirelman deftly renders visible the flexibility and local adaptability of eurasianism both as a discourse on identity and as a political ideology. postsocialism did not bring the demise of grand narratives in the former soviet union, as some might imagine. the revival of eurasianism facilitates the imagining of regional identities and commonalities after socialist internationalism lost currency during the years of perestroika. a highly polyphonic discourse, eurasianism has been promoted during the last three decades both by the soviet leaders – trying to replace an eroding all-embracing ideology based on class with one based on commonalities of culture and history, and by the leaders of the succeeding republics in power struggles within their own polities or the space of the former soviet union. eurasianism is currently adapted locally and used for the promotion of diverse political and intellectual agendas: nationalist, regionalist, economic, or geopolitical. the varieties of the eurasianist discourse are constructed in opposition to each other and to what is seen as the imperialist agenda behind russian eurasianism. while nationalists usually pursue radical versions of the ideology, policy makers tend to favor moderate versions of it, liberal politicians being the ones who articulate the most consistent criticisms of eurasianism. shnirelman’s article raises challenging questions about the diversity of the postcolonial contexts and the refashioning of colonial ideologies by national elites urging us to take advantage of the postsocialistpostcolonial comparison. discussing about the same period of time, ekaterina melnikova untangles the process of local identity creation in the region of karelia, which was incorporated into the soviet union after its wars with finland during the 1940s. as the region experienced the quasi-replacement of the population (through the forced migration of former finnish inhabitants and the repopulation with migrants from the neighboring soviet republics), local histories about the identity of the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 12 region and its former inhabitants were supplied by the frontier guards. they were based on rumors about former finnish-karelian inhabitants returning at night to repossess their dwellings that were feeding the anxieties of the new inhabitants of the region. official histories, textbooks, and schools offered no information about the past. with the demise of the soviet union, the circulation across the finnish-karelian border of persons, objects, and memories stirs the dilemmas of identity of both the current inhabitants and the returning finns. local and regional identities are articulated around old artifacts attesting the finnish presence before the war (old buildings, gravestones, furniture, or magazines) and discourses of continuity and preservation. in the process, new forms of co-ownership and relations with the past are forged as current inhabitants consider themselves “keepers” of finnish heritage while returning finns engage in “nostalgia tourism.” moving to another postsocialist context, elana resnik focuses on the practices through which bulgarian roma associate with different transnational publics in order to position themselves within bulgarian society and the european union. shifting between associations with india or with african american culture, bulgarian roma position themselves in alternating public spheres: either one firmly situated within bulgarian history or a postsocialist one with global outreach. such practices of association are mediated by the consumption of images of global circulation around which transnational public spheres are created. postsocialism can thus be analyzed through the continuously produced transnational affiliations where contexts are permanently transgressed and indexed in the formation of consuming publics. key for the ethnographer is not any of the specific images being consumed but rather following the process itself through which marginal subjects reposition themselves within local histories. in the process, the consumption of global images re-signifies and re-contextualizes the very histories in which roma try to position themselves in a meaningful way. in an exemplary study, david kideckel illustrates felicitously the virtues of genuine comparisons between postcolonial and postsocialist political processes. based on extensive fieldwork and intimate knowledge of romania and the indian state of kerala, kideckel compares the citizenship concepts and discourses in the two countries crafted in various forms of public protests. political activism manifest in “contentious performances” (tilly 2004) (protests, meetings, demonstrations, etc.) both create and reflect the distinct conceptions of citizenship in a postcolonial and postsocialist milieu. while in kerala public protests are more vibrant, rightsfocused, system challenging and based on larger social coalitions, romanian activism usually takes the form of fragmented protests that are grievance-based, issue specific and directed more towards temporary bargains than long-term political rights. variations in the forms and aims of activism are accounted for by both the recent histories of political protest in each of the countries and by the different degrees of political inclusion within the global economy. what unites the postcolonial and the postsocialist polities is that some of the main causes and audiences of the public protests are located “off-shore from the state,” political activism being often directed against expanding neoliberal processes. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 13 addressing romania’s present incorporation into the global financial capitalism, narcis tulbure focuses on the cultural mediation of the regulatory practices pertaining to mutual funds. adopted as technologies of value production and for the decentralized allocation of investment capital within the economy after the end of socialism, mutual funds were at the center of some of the most notorious financial scandals and political protests during the postsocialist period. their ambiguous functioning and widely mediated collapses raise challenging questions not only about meanings of money and the social constitution of value, but also about the new property arrangements emerging in the postsocialist era. thus, the initial institutionalization of mutual funds in romania during the mid-1990s followed the american model characterized by the collective ownership and mutual action of the investors participating in the venture. this institutional form is currently being replaced with a pan-european model for mutual funds where ownership and control are attributed to the asset management companies while investors are turned into consumers of financial products. the uneasy changes in institutional forms and regulatory practices are mediated by the ongoing disputes over the defaulted funds and by the shifting conceptions of ownership, risk and values witnessed in romania. the untangling of the disputes over the regulations in romania bring to light the tensions within some of the basic categories of contemporary financial capitalism (too easily taken for granted in the west) and the complications created by the transferability of institutional forms and norms across cultural contexts. the soyuz symposium this year ended with an instructive discussion about the future of the organization and about the most challenging themes of research lying ahead. while many of the arguments were either in favor of comparing various (post)socialist formations around the world or of engaging the modalities of knowledge/power emerging during the cold war that are still shaping our scholarly practices, the response to these pressing questions remained only tentative. what the presentations at the symposium and the articles gathered in this special issue leave us with is the awareness of the global and international dimension of both socialism and postsocialism. this turn in perspective can help us recapture a more integrated theoretical perspective on some of the most important historical processes of the twentieth century. finally, the diverse group of scholars and students present at the symposium and publishing in this issue, made up of people from the east and the west, traveling easily between regions of the world, educational systems, and academic disciplines, are a good reason for optimism with regards to both the continuation of the challenging debates initiated by soyuz and the questioning of the localism that seemed to characterize early postsocialist studies. notes 1 i would like to thank sarah phillips for the wonderful opportunity to guest edit this special issue. my gratitude is also extended to doug rogers, mike mcgovern, sean brotherton, erik harms, and susanna fioratta, the organizers of this year’s soyuz symposium. the quality of the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 14 presentations and discussions in new haven has made the editing process a pleasant and rewarding experience. 2 the quotation comes from the call for papers launched before the 2009 soyuz symposium. for more details on the program of the symposium and a summary of all the presentations access: http://www.uvm.edu/~soyuz/frameset.html. 3 ethnology was subsisting in east european academia by pursuing essentially non-political topics of research. its loss of prestige in comparison with the american socio-cultural anthropology is being decried by some of the scholars of the region even today (michal buchowski in chivens et al. 2005). 4 the papers gathered in the collective volume by dorle drackle, iain r. edgar and thomas k. schippers (2003) make a useful presentation of the re-emerging anthropological schools in the east european countries. the lack of transnational comparisons and the still underdeveloped communication between the members of different national schools are their main weaknesses, according to the editors. 5 an excellent discussion about the transformations in the meanings and uses of postsocialism took place at a panel on “non-postsocialism: socialism, presentness, and the naming of the past” organized by thomas chivens and kenneth b mcgill at the 2005 annual meetings of the american anthropological association (chivens et al. 2005). 6 for scholars of comparative politics, the parallel between the postsocialist transition and the democratization processes happening earlier in latin america has been a commonplace and, occasionally, a reason for dispute after 1989. see bunce (1995) and karl and schmitter (1995) for an excellent scholarly exchange of arguments and criticism on this issue. 7 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berkeley: university of california press. _____. 1996. what was socialism and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. _____. 2002a. anthropology of socialist societies. in international encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences. n. smelser and p.b. baltes, eds. amsterdam: pergamon press. _____. 2002b. whither postsocialism? in postsocialism: ideals, ideologies, and practices in eurasia. c. hann, ed. pp. 15-28. london and new york: routledge. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 18 _____. 2004. anthropological adventures with romania’s wizard of oz, 1973-1989. focaal: european journal of anthropology 43:134-145. wolfe, thomas c. 2000. culture and communities in the anthropology of eastern europe and the former soviet union. annual review of anthropology 29:195-216. tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 88 serbia, betwixt and between: culture, politics and images of the west1 andrei simic university of southern california u sumi vuci , na drumu turci. (wolves in the woods, turks on the road.) serbian aphorism during the midyears of the tito regime, a narrative film appeared entitled "nesto izmedju" (something in between). at that time, the title's reference was to the yugoslav balancing act between the eastern block and the west. however, as the scenario reveals, its significance was not only political, but also cultural. with particular reference to the serbs, this was not at all a new phenomenon, but one dating from at least the first decades of the nineteenth century (cf. andric et al. 1967). perhaps more than other peoples of former yugoslavia, the serbs have long been suspended politically, ideologically, and emotionally between the perceived affluence, power, prestige, and "modernity" of the west, on the one hand, and a profound emotional attachment to their own folkways, the cultural heritage of byzantium, especially the orthodox faith, and a persistent, almost mystical sense of kinship to russia, on the other. nevertheless, the realities of the east and the west have been filtered through the prism of an idealized and romanticized view of both, as well as by fragmented and decontextualized perceptions of the outside world on the part of ordinary people, who, for the most part, have had little opportunity to travel abroad. as bogdan denitch (1994:134) has commented, there are "masses of east europeans seeking to become just like their idealized [my italics] versions of western europeans or americans." in this discussion, the term "east" will be employed in a specific and limited sense in respect to the serbs, that is, not with specific reference to geographical regions or societies outside of serbia, but rather to a reflexive, selfreferential nationalist ideology, an ideology which rests heavily on a mythologized popular history and the celebration of indigenous culture and traditions, however these may be defined. "west," on the other hand, will specifically designate western europe and america, and the cultural and social characteristics commonly associated with them. thus, it is in the context of this opposition that i will address the profound political and cultural divisions, which characterize contemporary serbian society, with particular emphasis on the ubiquitous influence of the various manifestations of western european, and especially american popular culture. it is probably no exaggeration to assert that western popular culture is the single most visible expression of the aspirations of those in serbia who yearn for inclusion in the west. in contrast, and in at least equal numbers, are those who passionately defend native serbian traditions and national political and cultural autonomy. almost a decade ago during the milosevic era, gordy (1999:103-164), in his study of the "culture of power" in serbia, noted the strong correlation between cultural and political affiliation. from a clearly pro-western perspective, he negatively stereotyped and contrasted those whom he labeled as "traditionalists" and "nationalists" with those whom he characterized as espousing "western values and democracy." with reference to culture, he associated the former with a genre of popular national music (turbofolk), which enjoyed considerable support on the part of the milosevic regime, and the latter with young, western-oriented rock musicians. and today, little has changed in terms of the gulf separating these two segments of serbian society. the influential role played by western popular culture in serbia is not at all unique, but simply one example among many others which can be cited throughout the world. the acculturative power of western popular culture has been treated in great detail by sardar and davis (2002:104) who cite the hamburger as a "seductive novelty" symbolic of the way that "america is taking over the lives of ordinary people in the rest of the world and shrinking their cultural space." similarly, postman (1986: vii-viii), in his discussion of huxley's brave new world, points to the insidious nature of popular culture. he attributes its "tyranny" to its ability to provide amusement and pleasure. in a somewhat parallel analysis, bayles (1994:10) explains that it is the very popularity of popular culture which "makes it part of everyday life in a way that high anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 89 culture almost never is." thus, its pervasive and insinuative nature renders popular culture a potent and extremely manipulative vehicle for the assertion of western and american economic and political values. for instance, kolker (2002:xv) points to the role of film as "part of the world of politics," and notes that governments support filmmakers as a means to "express their national cultures to the world" however, american cinema in particular is far more, and at the same time far less, than simply an expression of national culture; it is the purveyor of fantasies and partial truths about our society, and as a consequence, it simultaneously creates unrealizable desires, envy, and dissatisfaction with indigenous ways of life. its far-reaching and profound influence is exemplified by the number of people in former yugoslavia who have, over the years, explained to me that their surprisingly fluent and colloquial knowledge of english was largely derived from viewing american films and television shows. nevertheless, as the following discussion will indicate, popular culture encompasses far more than the media, although it is the media, which constitute the chief conduits for diffusing other aspects of western popular culture. western popular culture and serbia as a preface to this discussion, understanding the difference between popular culture and folk culture in respect to serbia is essential. while the perceptual boundaries between these two terms and genres in english are rather imprecise, in the case of serbocroatian,2 the distinction is quite clear. in serbocroatian the nearest equivalent of "folk" is narodno, a lexeme that carries a rather different meaning than its english gloss. that which is narodno is by definition an attribute of the "nation," i.e., the ethnic group. thus, for instance, in serbia when one refers to narodna muzika ("national music"), the reference is to music which is regarded as quintessentially serbian, be it "folk" in the american sense or any one of a number of commercially produced genres. in contrast, popular culture will be defined here as any complex of mass-consumed cultural traits which are predominately commercially produced or derived, and are of more or less immediate foreign origin, that is, of a so recent derivation that they have not yet been fully integrated into national culture and accepted as typically "serbian," as have been, for instance, many long-synchronized greek, turkish, russian, austrian, and hungarian borrowings. among many serbs there is a strong correlation between a predilection for western popular culture and the rejection of serbian national traditions because of the latter's association with what is regarded as "primitive," "archaic," or "provincial." it is the very foreignness of western popular culture which so many find attractive, that is, its association with a world outside of serbia, a world perceived to be prestigious, powerful, and affluent in opposition to serbian "balkan backwardness" (balkanska zaostalost). this phenomenon was expressed to me in very direct and simple terms by the curator of a belgrade museum (2007): there is a big problem with american culture here. many of the young, especially the better educated, feel isolated, and by consuming american popular culture they feel part of the larger world. but, perhaps what they don't understand is that this can have negative political and economic consequences for our country. [my translation] schiller, in his book, culture inc. (1989:30), defines popular culture in commercial terms as a product of "cultural industries." citing a 1982 unesco study, he refers to "cultural goods and services which are produced, reproduced, stored or distributed on industrial and commercial lines...." these include: publishing, the press, film, radio, television, photography, recording, software production, and other aspects of the information industry. extrapolating from shiller's discussion, popular culture can be characterized not only as a commercially produced product, but as one created and disseminated by economic and cultural elites vertically from the top down. in contrast, socalled "pure" or grass-roots folk culture is generally understood as springing from the experience of ordinary people, and often spanning a number of generations with little or no specific knowledge regarding its creators or origins. however, in serbia this distinction is not entirely apt since some forms of national culture are in fact commercially produced, for instance, so-called komponovana narodna muzika ("composed national music") (cf. simic 1976). what is significant about composed national music is that it is culturally reflexive in that it evokes a sense of regional and national affiliation and identity. on a more elite level, anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 90 such highly professional ensembles such as belgrade's kolo and branko krsmanovic revivalistic folkloric music and dance troupes can be mentioned. in contrast to inward-directed national traditions, western popular culture implicitly and explicitly draws attention to the world outside of serbia, what serbs sometimes refer to as "the white world" (beli svet). in this sense, popular culture references, propagates, and glamorizes a particular western life style and its associated values (cf. simic 2002). for the most part, these representations project an image of individualism, freedom, youth, excitement, luxury, hedonism, and materialism. however, they also showcase crime, violence, and sexual promiscuity. but above all else, they extol the principle of a life devoted to pleasure. these messages are disseminated both directly and indirectly in a variety of appealing ways: through films, television, computer networks, advertising, fashions, sports, fast food, the print media, radio, and music. other related, but somewhat different aspects of western culture and life styles are communicated by the activities of agencies of foreign governments and ngos, as well as by evangelical christian and mormon missionaries, who were in increasing evidence during my most recent stays in serbia. what is promulgated both implicitly and explicitly by these messages and activities is the idea that these pleasurable things can be obtained through accepting and implementing the concepts of democracy and free markets as defined by the west, in essence, by becoming part of the west. in other words, the subtext is an economic and political one. the power of these representations is underscored by postman (1986: vii-viii) who warns that it is not orwell's "dark vision of big brother which will subjugate us, but rather huxley's prophetic vision in brave new world of people controlled by the "inflicting of pleasure." the serbian cultural landscape john steinbeck (1962:5) in his american odyssey, travels with charley, describes how he wandered about america with his dog charley in an old pickup truck in search of those "small diagnostic truths" which are the "foundations of the larger truth." and in serbia, such "small diagnostic truths" give ample testament to the profound and widespread influence of western popular culture. these often seemingly trivial indicators are especially evident in belgrade; in fact, they are so pervasive that i will only focus on a select few, which i regard as symptomatic. as is the case in most contemporary cities, graffiti are an inescapable feature of belgrade's urban landscape. these fall into several basic categories: popular culture themes, profanity, personal messages, support for sports teams, and political slogans, among others. the fact that many of these graffiti are in english is an indicator of how many of the young are familiar with american popular culture: i don't give a fuck if i get caught aleksa rules we are of hell lunatics disco league in clear contrast, almost all political graffiti were written in serbian and in cyrillic characters,3 and were predominately nationalistic in character as the following examples demonstrate: seselj srpski junak ("seselj serhian hero"--vojislav seselj is an alleged war criminal in the custody of the hague tribunal, and the titular head of the serbian radical party) ne u nato ("no to nato") srpsk1 vuko var ("serbian vukovar"--the city of vukovar was besieged by the serbs and severely damaged in 1991 during the yugoslav civil wars; it is now part of croatia) velika srbija (greater serbia) clinton u hag (clinton to the hague) eu necemo biti robovi ("eu we won't be slaves") in contrast, a clearly western anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 91 orientation is reflected by the t-shirts sported by young beigradians who crowd the city's downtown thoroughfares into the late evening hours. however, in many cases, this may simply represent a taste for novelty and a desire to appear modern and stylish. however, even if this is true, it does not negate the fact that the statements and symbols displayed clearly signaled a yearning or a predilection for western, particularly american, things and values. it is indicative that most of the logos which i observed were in english, for example: florida road gang palm trees with cars break out i am the american dream play hard surprisingly, considering the fact that in the spring of 1999 the united states and nato had bombed serbia for 78 days, and destruction from this assault is still visible in downtown belgrade, a number of young people were observed wearing t-shirts emblazoned with the american flag. seemingly contradictory were tshirts with images of che guevara, as well as a bigger-than-life poster of che displayed at a popular outdoor cafe on belgrade's main promenade, kneza mihailova street. however, what was conspicuously lacking from public view were t-shirts with images of alleged war criminals ratko mladic and radovan karadzic, even though these were readily available from street vendors. since both men continue to garner considerable support as "national heroes," one explanation for this is that these images were not regarded as chic by the style-obsessed youth. the streets of belgrade exhibit a profusion of posters affixed to walls, fences, lampposts, trashcans, and on almost any other available object. these evidence a surprising variety of topics, among others: support for political candidates of all persuasions; announcements of rock, jazz, and other musical events; advertisements for businesses; and invitations to academic lectures and museum exhibits. however, of particular note is that these posters also constitute a major medium for the public expression of nationalist sentiments and rhetoric as the following examples illustrate: ostani srbin, p151 cirilicom ("remain a serb, write in cyrillic"--a reaction to the increased use of the latin alphabet, particularly in the public sphere) predaja kosova l metohije velaizdaja ("the surrender of kosovo and metohija a great betrayal") za boga i srpstvo 2007 vidovdanski mars ("for god and serbdom 2007 st. vitus day march"--) (an invitation to a commemoration of the battle of kosovo, 1389) sabor na ravnoj gori 13 maj, 2007 ("assembly on ravna gora, may 13, 2007"-this poster displayed a large picture of general draza mihailovic, the leader of the serbian royalist guerrilla forces, the chetniks, during world war ii.)i if one were only to take note of the content of tv and radio broadcasts, the brand names of products for sale, dress styles, the preponderance of cds by western artists displayed in music stores, the crowds in mcdonalds restaurants, and a myriad of other small indicators such as restaurant menus offering pina coladas and tequila sunrises, one might be easily convinced that local traditions have been totally overwhelmed. to some extent this is true, especially in belgrade where the young, educated, and relatively affluent are particularly attracted to the western styles and products. however, to obtain these things requires money, and often, considerable sacrifice. in this regard, it is significant that a disproportionate amount of wealth is concentrated in belgrade, and to a lesser extent in novi sad. for instance, it is estimated that approximately 200,000 people in belgrade may anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 92 be considered by local standards to be affluent. this represents about ten percent of the city's population, a sufficient number to maintain an impressive facade of western prosperity, a facade that is most visible in central belgrade. however, as one moves away from the center and out of the city toward the east and south, the landscape takes on an increasingly impoverished and non-western appearance, and it is here that life assumes a more traditional balkan aura.5 persistent elements of national culture do in fact continue to coexist in what might be defined as enclaves or cultural interspaces throughout serbia, and provide potent symbols for nationalist political movements. in terms of the great tradition, the resurgence of the serbian orthodox church is perhaps the most widespread and visible example of the public expression of national identity. new churches are being constructed not only throughout the provinces, but also in belgrade; public-school children are now receiving optional religious instruction, the patron saint's day of belgrade (ascension day-spasovdan) is now celebrated with a traditional religious procession (litija) through downtown belgrade with military officers carrying icons; and prominent clergy are now actively participating in public political discourse (particularly in respect to the crisis regarding the status of kosovo). the growing influence of the serbian orthodox church6 is testified to by the strong negative response it has generated among some anti-nationalist, pro-western elements. for example, local representatives of the helsinki committee, women in black, and the youth initiative for human rights have condemned the resurgence of orthodoxy, which they regard as resulting in the loss of secular society. their views were recently cited in an article in the american srbobran of november 19-20, 2007 (a translation from the november 22, 2007 issue of politika): the secular society is an achievement of the modern age and an affirmation of the secular values it is a needed condition for preserving and strengthening the democratic movement. this will occur with the expelling of christian education from the schools, the suspending of religious ritual from public establishments.... the presence of the president or premier at the liturgy, the celebration of municipal or school slavas [saints days], city processions, and other public displays of religious expression have imperiled our citizens. such statements fail to take into account the deeply ingrained tie between orthodoxy and serbian national identity. nor does it recognize the secular role of the serbian orthodoxy as a marker of ethnicity, which for many is largely devoid of any religious or supernatural meaning. even during the tito era of official atheism, several party members told me that, even though they were nonbelievers, they regularly donated small sums of money to the serbian orthodox church because "the church has always defended our national traditions." in this regard, comparisons can be made to a similar role played by religion is such places as northern ireland and lebanon where religious boundaries are also ethnic boundaries. as hammel (1969:196) once observed in respect to social and cultural change, "the maps in people's heads are the last thing to go." similarly, as i commented in a previous essay (simic 2002:138), "nationalism and ethnicity [in serbia] can be conceptualized as a multistranded world view which contextualizes and encompasses a wide range of life's ordinary and extraordinary concerns." in other words, this corpus of beliefs and assumptions tends to shape, either consciously or subliminally; the way people view themselves, others, and their social environment. thus, it can be argued that even those serbs who are the most pro-western and anti-nationalist, are in fact responding to deeply felt emotions regarding their own identity. in an article appearing in the june 7, 2007 edition of politika, djordje vukadinovic, chief editor of nova srpska politicka misao (new serbian political thought), comments about the unusually large number of educated serbs who "cultivate an almost pathological antipathy toward their own country and a hate toward everything which carries the serbian denominator." for instance, he describes a friend who kept "a little american flag which he intended to wave" in anticipation that american troops would enter belgrade in 1999. according to vukadinovic, such people express a certainty that the serbs are responsible for the wars in former yugoslavia, and that milosevic is accountable for the sanctions against serbia, the bombardment by nato], turbofolk music, and the spread of criminality throughout the society. furthermore, he asserts that they support the anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 93 separation of montenegro, have nothing against the independence of kosovo, and express a "great understanding for the justified aspirations [for autonomy or independence] of the people of vojvodina." the author explains that these attitudes stem from a wide variety of factors including the mental and physical inertia of recent times, and the derived tendency to view the world in terms of black and white. thus, it follows that if the milosevic regime is perceived as synonymous with evil, therefore, all that is associated with its opposite is comprehended as essentially good. vukadinovic also comments "national sovereignty and patriotism are generally no longer in style." another factor to which he attributes significance is the lingering influence of the socialist period when "old national sentiments were for decades to a greater or lesser extent repressed." regarding former yugoslavia, vukadinovic cites those whom he labels "incurable yugonostalgists,"7 that is, those who "cannot come to terms with the fact that yugoslavia no longer exists, and who can no longer go shopping in trieste with the red passport with which they were able to travel about the entire world." while vukadinovic only briefly mentions the role of economics as a factor in generating anti-serbian sentiments, it is clear that either directly or indirectly, materialism plays a very significant role in this phenomenon. as has been the case in eastern europe in general since the fall of communism, there has been a rapid spread of western-style consumerism in serbia, which in turn has created heightened expectations regarding material well being. however, because of the disintegration of yugoslavia, the ensuing civil wars, western sanctions, and the military aggression by nato, these expectations have been realized by only a relatively small minority in serbia. significantly, those who are among the most affluent also appear to be among those who are the most supportive of the west, probably out of fear that political or other expressions of nationalism will further alienate the west, and thus endanger their privileged positions. in contrast, based on my conversations and interviews over the past six years with hundreds of people from all walks of life in serbia, there are also those who blame western influence and pro-western political movements for their economic difficulties, the decline in public services, and the loss of amenities which they had enjoyed under socialism. in a satirical response to djordje vukadinovic's depiction of an "archetypical antiserb serb," ljubisa rajic, professor at the philosophical faculty of the university of belgrade, commented in an article in politika (2007~-june 22) that such a person surely could not be shown empirically to even exist. rajic then proceeds to describe an archetypal counterpart of vukadinovic’s "imaginary friend": my friend is not an intellectual... he comes from the mountains.... he belongs to the young modern generation and, therefore, cultivates respect for older people and does not compete with them; he knows who reaps and who makes burek and jogourt. for him life was better under milosevic. . he knows that the macedonians are really south serbs. . . this friend of mind is a hybrid between the radical and nationalist oriented parties.8 [my translation] rajic's satirical article, which occupies an entire page, reflects the disdain and indifference which many serbs have expressed to me regarding the rhetoric and political platforms of the extreme fringes of both the pro-western anti-nationalists, on the one hand, and the ultra-nationalists, on the other. however, there is considerable hostility and antipathy toward political parties and politicians in general. this was borne out by a survey conducted by the center for free elections and democracy in the summer of 2007 which showed an approval rating of 14% for president boris tadic, the highest received by any politician (politika 2007--july 7). the rolling stones and the second coming the rolling stones are like the second coming (statement of a young taxi driver regarding the rolling stones concert in belgrade). from time to time, there are highly visible events, which showcase and reify certain values, predispositions, or trends in a society. one such event was a concert given by the rolling stones in belgrade on the evening of july 14 of 2007. this concert generated a seemingly unwarranted amount of publicity and commentary. of particular note was an article by jelena koprivica and vladimir djurdjic appearing in the july 15 issue of politika entitled anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 94 "srbija u ritmu rokenrola" (serbia in the rhythm of rock and roll). this commentary covered two-thirds of the front page and was accompanied by a color photograph of the rolling stones, which extended from one side of the page to the other. the article's content was very explicit about the transcendent meaning this concert held for many: we are no longer on the margin of cultural events in europe. we have dreamed that like some in london, new york, and paris we would be able to choose what concerts we would attend. at last, we can enjoy being able to choose. "[my translation] the importance attributed to this event was manifested by the magnitude of the preparations at the concert site at the confluence of the danube and sava rivers directly across from belgrade. a temporary "small town" was created on a 4000 square-meter field to house the approximately 500 workers who were erecting three "enormous, identical red, white, and blue stages 30 meters high.” in addition, a temporary restaurant was built to feed these workers. there were also ten pavilions (satori), four of which were for the exclusive use of the stones, and in one of which the members of the band could play billiards. at the then exchange rate of approximately 60 dinars to the us dollar, ordinary tickets ranged in price from about $50 to $75, and vip tickets $425 (politika 2007, july 14). when one considers that most salaries at that time fell within the $300 to $400 a month range, the whole extravaganza was disproportionately expensive for a poor, economically depressed society. however, this seeming incongruity was explained in the following way by jovan gajic (2007), commenting on an earlier summer concert in the vojvodina town of indjija by the american rock group, the red hot chili peppers: the arrivals of well-known musicians from abroad in our country are not ordinary entertainment happenings, and for a part of our public they hold a much wider significance.... for that public they are an affirmation that serbia is slowly but surely becoming part of the developed world which is ready to share its values and... modern life style. [my translation] however, gajic (2007), recalling the political support under milosevic for turbofolk culture, and noting the current support by westleaning serbian and montenegrin politicians for rock groups such as the peppers and rolling stones, he warns that this, too, threatens to divide the population. significantly, the article is subtitled, "is one part of the cultural elite trying to construct a new cultural identity so as to create a clear distance between the 'old time' and the 'new time'?" [my translation]. however, it would be mistaken to regard this divide in musical taste as an entirely new phenomenon, although today it surely carries far greater political and social significance than at an earlier time. during my field work in belgrade in 1968-1969, i observed that the urban workingclass, rural migrants to the city, and villagers expressed an almost universal preference for national music, while professionals and intellectuals generally shunned contemporary national music in favor of jazz, western-style hits, "old city songs,9 and the classics (simic 1973:128) in evaluating the significance of musical predilections, it should be kept in mind that it is not so much the innate character of the music per se that is the determining factor, but rather the images and identities that any particular form evokes. and after all is said and done, the chili peppers and the stones are celebrities, and as such, have significant economic and political power, albeit indirect and largely persuasive. as sardar and davies (2004: 24) have commented, "celebrities encode values and ideas that are projected on the globe and serve to enhance the power of empire....” this contention regarding the transcendent meaning attributed to celebrities, is reflected in the following commentary in the july 15, 2007 issue of politika: the rolling stones long ago went beyond the framework of a rock group; they are an idea, a principle, a motto for life. [my translation] however, those who adulate the rolling stones and other manifestations of western culture are probably a minority, albeit a large one, composed, for the most part, though not exclusively, of young, better educated urbanites. furthermore, if my conversations with several young adults who were among the approximately 150,000 spectators who attended the red hot anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 95 chili peppers concert in indjija are any indicator, at least some people attended the event simply out of a desire for excitement and novelty, rather than as an expression of a pro-western political orientation. for instance, a university student, who had attended the stones concert, recounted that she was also among the approximately 60,000 fans present at a concert by nationalist ceca raznjatovic in belgrade a few years earlier. 10 at this event, the crowd, as if with one voice, shouted nationalist slogans and tributes to alleged war criminal, arkan. this was audible from the terrace of our apartment over a mile away. the point is that the cultural and political gulf in contemporary serbia not only polarizes the population as a whole, but is also evidenced by the divided sentiments and ambivalence expressed by many individuals as well. culture and politics while there is no absolute correlation between a predilection for western popular culture and an anti-nationalist political orientation, nevertheless, it is safe to venture that those who vehemently support pro-western political parties will also be more likely to evidence a strong attraction for western popular culture. and similarly, while there appears to be a correlation between nationalism and an antipathy toward western culture, this linkage is far from absolute. among the many people from all walks of life with whom i have spoken over the past several years, a significant number voiced both nationalist sentiments as well as an attraction to western popular culture and the perceived comforts and pleasures which they associated with it. one can speculate that this latter group is probably well represented in the approximately one-fourth of the electorate which voted for neither pro-western boris tadic nor for ultra-nationalist tomislav nikolic in the first round of presidential elections on january 20, 2008. with approximately 54% of those eligible voting in the january 20 elections, tadic received 35% and nikolic 39% of the total ballots cast (new york times 2008, january 21). however, there was no clear correlation between urban voters and support for either tadic's serbian democratic party or nikolic's serbian radical party. given the widespread highly visible public expressions of western culture and influence in belgrade and novi sad, one might have predicted greater urban support for tadic's democratic party. however, the results show an almost evenly divided electorate; in belgrade tadic received 39.28% of the vote and nikolic 40.28%, and in novi sad, tadic garnered 41.48% and nikolic 38.33% (politika 2008, january 23). commentary in the serbian media prior to the run-off elections of february 3 clearly portrayed this contest as one between west and east, and the "new" versus the "old." for example, in the january 31 edition the of the protadic belgrade newspaper danas, 11 there appeared eleven articles which directly or indirectly supported his candidacy. in these commentaries it was alleged, among other accusations, that a victory for tomislav nikolic would be a victory for the kosovo albanians who would immediately declare independence; that nikolic would return serbia to the politics of slobodan milosevic, and that a vote for nikolic was a vote for "conflict, hate, sanctions, and isolation." in contrast, tadic was lauded for leading serbia into europe, i.e., eventual membership in the eu, while nikolic and the radicals were characterized in terms of "retrograde ideas leading the country backwards in the opposite direction from civilized currents." the cultural aspects of this election were evident at a rally held in a belgrade sports stadium attended by 25,000 supporters of nikolic. at this event turbofolk entertainment was provided, a song praising bosnian serb fugitive from the hague tribunal, radovan karadzic, was performed, and t-shirts with images of karadzic and alleged war criminal general ratko mladic were sold. nikolic 's prorussian orientation was underscored when a “large screen showed an heroic report of his visit to moscow where, accompanied by the brother of mr. milosevic, he met with russia’s next president, dimitri medvedev).” (bilevsky 2008b) the results of the runoff presidential elections of february 3 further revealed the extent of the political and cultural divide in serbia, with pro-western boris tadic receiving 51 percent and ultra-nationalist tomislav nikolic 47 percent, with the remaining ballots ruled invalid (bilefski 2008c). whatever other factors may have energized tadic’ supporters, years of exposure to american media and other expressions of western popular culture surely must have played a significant role. what rothstein (2002:19) has noted about capitalism can also be asserted specifically about popular culture, that is, it "seduces through sheer force of anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 96 marketing and sheer promise of pleasure." postscript this essay was written before the declaration of independence by kosovo, an event that will surely alter the balance of political support in serbia. endnotes i fieldwork in serbia during the summers of 2002, 2005, 2006, 2007 was financed in part by grants from irex (international research and exchange board); the center for visual anthropology, university of southern california; and faculty development awards, university of southern california. while this study is largely the result of research in serbia between 2002 and 2007, it also reflects the findings of numerous sojourns in former yugoslavia dating from 1968. 2 i employed the previously accepted term "serbo-croatian" since the word narodno carries exactly the same meaning in the now officially designated serbian, croatian, and bosnian languages. 3 i have rendered these graffiti in latin letters (latinica) even though they were written in cyrillic script (cirilica). the cyrillic alphabet constitutes a significant marker of ethnic identity among the serbs, who, like other eastern orthodox slavs, traditionally employ cyrillic characters in contrast to the roman catholic croats and bosnian muslims, who employ latin script almost exclusively. 4 ravna gora is a mountainous area in western serbia where draza mihailovic's chetnik resistance forces first established their headquarters in may, 1941. mihailovic was executed by tito's post-war communist government as an alleged traitor and collaborator with the axis occupation forces. since the breakup of yugoslavia, he has been rehabilitated and publicly lauded by many as a "serbian hero." 5 poverty in the southern regions of serbia is often characterized by the aphorism sto juznije, sto tuznjie (“the more southern, the more unhappy”). 6 probably the most visible symbol of the resurgence of the serbian orthodox church is the construction in belgrade of the largest orthodox church in the balkans, the memorial church of st. sava. its dedication to st. sava, the patron of serbia, plainly underscores its nationalist significance. 7 regarding what appears to be a widespread nostalgia for former yugoslavia, dan bilefski (2008a) describes this phenomenon in slovenia, the former yugoslav republic where one would least expect it to appear. 8 rajic employs the terms radikal and narodnjacki. the first refers to seselj's and nikolic's serbian radical party, and the latter to premier kostunica' s democratic party of serbia and other smaller traditionalist parties. the word narodnjacki can be glossed as "populist." 9 old city songs (stare gradske pesme) have their origin in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century urban centers in serbia, especially belgrade and novi sad (which until the close of world war i was part of austriahungary). in many ways they resemble the romantic ballads of both hungary and russia during this same period. 10 ceca raznjatovic is the widow of assassinated alleged war criminal arkan raznjatovic, and one of the leading exponents of turbofolk music. 11 a number of people with whom i spoke attributed political significance to the fact that danas is printed in latin rather than cyrillic script. references american srbobran. 2007, december 19-20. "a mold that doesn’t exist anywhere” andric, nada et al 1967. beograd u xix veku (belgrade in the xix century). belgrade: muzej grada beograda. bayles,martha. 1994. hole in our soul: the loss of beauty and meaning american popular music. new york: the free press. bilefski, dan. 2008a. "oh, yugoslavia! how they long for your firm embrace.” new york times. january 30. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 97 2008b. "divisive serbian vote offers stark choice of east and west." new york times, january 21. 2008c. "pro-west incumbent wins serbia's presidential runoff." new york times, february 4, 2008. danas, 2008, january 31. "hronika" (chronicle)- http/iwww.danas.co.yu/200080 131/ hronika 1.html denitch, bogdan. 1994. ethnic nationailism: the tragic death of yugoslavia. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. gajic, jovan. 2007. "pepersima protiv cece (the peppers against ceca). politika, july 9. gordy, eric d. 1999. the culture of power in serbia: nationalism and the destruction of alternatives university park: the pennsylvania state university press. hammel, eugene a. 1969. "economic change, social mobility, and kinship in serbia." southwestern journal of anthropology~ 25:188-197. kolker, robert. 2002. film, form, and culture. new york: mcgraw-hill. koprivnica, jelena and vladimir djurdjic. 2007. "srbija u riimu rekenrola." (serbia in the rhythm of rock and roll). new york times, 2008, january 21. "serbs vote for president: close runoff expected." january 22. "serbia east or west presidential runoff expected." politika. 2007, july 7. "najpopularniji tadic" (the most popular tadic). july 14. "crvena bina ceka rolingstonse" (a red stage awaits the rolling stones), pg. 17. july 15. "vera u cudo" (the belief in a miracle). 2008, july 23. "kako je nikolic izgubio novi sad, a tadic beograd” (how nikolic lost novi sad, and tadic belgrade). postman, neil. 1986. amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of show business. new york: penguin books. rajic, ljubisa. 2007. "slatke male demokrate" (sweet little democrats). politika, june 22. rothstein, edward. 2002. "damning (yet desiring) mickey and the big mac." new york times, march 2:17-19. sardar, ziauddin and merryl wyn davis. 2002. why do people hate america? new york: the disinformation coinpaiiy, ltd. 2004. american terminator: myths, movies and global power. new york: the disinformation company, ltd. schiller, herbert i. 1989. culture inc: the corporate takeover of public expression. new york: oxford university press. simic, andrei. 1973. the peasant urbanites: a study of rural-urban mobility in serbia. new york: seminar press. 1976. "country 'n’ western yugoslav style: contemporary folk music as a mirror of social sentiment." journal of popular culture l0 (1): 156-166. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 98 2002. yugoslavia: ideologies, genuine and spurious. the anthropology of east europe review 20 (2): 135-146. steinbeck, john. 1962. travels with charley. the curtis publishing company. vukadinovic, djordje. 2007. "slatka mala okupacija pod lupom" (a sweet little occupation under the magnifying glass). politika june 6. sarah d the anthropology of east europe review: central europe, eastern europe and eurasia volume 24, number 1 spring 2006 1 editors krista harper julie hemment robert rotenberg, web editor contents editors’ introduction: “anthropology of eastern europe: filling the gaps in global attention?”……………………………………………………………………………………….4 krista harper and julie hemment, university of massachusetts, amherst call for papers.................................................................................................................................................................5 symposium: “bessarabian borderlands: one region, two states, multiple ethnicities” guest editor’s note……………………………………………………………………………………………………6 deema kaneff, max planck institute for social anthropology, halle, germany & monica heintz, university of paris xnanterre economic and trade borders: the case of the reni 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rates. institutional subscriptions to the review cost $50/yr.; we offer discounted rates for some international libraries). additional copies of a back issue are available ($20). editors-in-chief: krista harper and julie hemment, anthropology of east europe review, department of anthropology, university of massachusetts, amherst, ma 01003. phone: +1-413/545-2221; fax: +1-413/545-9494; e-mail: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com web editor: robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore ave, chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 312/325-7460; fax 312/325-7452; email: rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu. © university of massachusetts, amherst 2010 issn: 1054-4720 http://www.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/� food, gender and representation volume 21, number 1 food, gender and representation margarita jankauskait, vilnius university © 2003 margarita jankauskait all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. meanings attached to food cover an unbelievably wide spectrum of human existence. food is life and death, profanity and sacredness, an intoxicating aphrodisiac and an addiction, abjection. food refers to material and spiritual experience, embodies the most covert fantasies, fears, and passions. it signifies interaction, mutual bonds, and communality but at the same time is a sign of division. it transgresses the outside/inside body limits, but serves as a signifier of clean/defiled, own/alien, me/other that also has gender connotations. as a cultural signifier food carries different weight in constructing the values of masculinity and femininity, everyday experiences of men and women, and performs different roles in the process of their representation and self–representation. food also occupies a peculiar place in art. the aim of this article is to analyze how modern lithuanian women artists use food to express feminine identity, what meanings they attach to it and how, in polemics with cultural stereotypes, feminine identity is articulated in their oeuvre. in their book female fetish, lorraine gamman and merja makinen thoroughly analyze the correlation between food and concepts of femininity in western civilization. they notice that “traditionally, our culture constructed masculinity as he who fucks, femininity as she who cooks” (gamman & makinen 1995:159). this vivid phrase aptly marks out the difference between the meanings of femininity and masculinity characteristic to modern culture, in psychoanalytical terminology described as a dichotomy between the oral and genital phases. they also could be understood as two different periods of psychophysical development or as two different psychic states that could be experienced at any period in life. analyzing the structure of the great mother archetype, erich neumann discerned two inherently connected aspects (positive and negative) that are revealed in genital and oral symbolism in dreams, fantasies and artistic creation. the scientist notes that, contrary to the misogynic evaluation of feminine genitalia in western civilization, accentuation of genitalia in pictures of the goddess was a sign of her disposition. on the other hand, oral images depicted by the mouth cavity embodied the destructive aspect of the deity as sowing death (devouring), as well as regressive states (neumann 1996:122-123). in modern western culture the image of woman has lost its ambivalence. it was formerly split into the good (nonsexual) and the bad (erotic) images. the ideal of the christian madonna propagating denial of erotic satisfaction turned maternity into a melancholy and ecstatic performance of a father’s will. according to kristeva, “if a woman is not a virgin, a nun, and chaste, but has orgasms and gives birth, her only means of gaining access to the symbolic paternal order is by engaging in an endless struggle between the orgasmic maternal body and the symbolic prohibition – a struggle that will take the form of guilt and mortification, and culminate in masochistic jouissance” (kristeva 1986:147). demanding the renouncement any genital satisfaction hidden in a mother’s body, patriarchal culture offered a woman an alternative model of identity full of oral connotations. the goddess’ vagina that gave birth to the richness of the world was replaced with nourishing breasts that provided care but were devoid of the power to procreate. the gendering of eating and love rituals, closely connected in western culture, acquired connotations of power and hierarchy. particularly vivid symbolism of breasts, autoeroticism that manifested itself through pleasure delivered by food, and other oral symbols, according to neumann, referred to infantile states of mind (нойманн 1998:45-46) that in our culture are unambiguously related to normative femininity. gamman and makinen accurately disclose that the feminine body in western civilization is not only turned into a fetish and reduced to the breast motif, but is identified with food. the feminine body, irksomely related by means of mass media to food products, becomes a product itself. a woman is jen typewritten text 73 anthropology of east europe review ‘consumed’ like food; she is seduced by food (as a man is seduced by pornographic images). in advertisements her image is closely connected with gourmet experiences that surpass sexual experiences but at the same time emerge as a menace to the ideal, graceful femininity (gamman, makinen 1995). food in western culture has become an inseparable part of modern feminine identity, taken on unconsciously. to be a woman means to consume, to be consumed and to constantly fight off her extra weight. therefore to be a woman also means to create using food and food motifs. with regard to the oeuvre of lithuanian women artists, i see not only the heights of culinary art, but also the day-to-day practices. in lithuania the kitchen still remains on the list of feminine duties. even while writing this article i am sitting in my kitchen and keeping an eye on lunch boiling on the stove. maybe this is why metaphors of table ‘rituals,’ moldings of food products and the products themselves are becoming a very eloquent part of feminine self– expression. recollecting traditions of rococo, women artists create witty porcelain sets– delicacies (dalia laučkaitė–jakimavičienė’s a sweet set, 1983, živilė barzdukaitė’s a set with bananas, 1994) and crochet yarn ‘broth’ (virginija gvazdaitytė–degenienė’s broth, 2000) to re-create rituals of the table. the composition by lina jonikienė, lunch (1998), presents wide possibilities for interpretation. a napkin and a saucer made from photo material (that also raise associations with needlework in a frame) are served together with a metal fork and knife. at first sight it may seem that such a reconstruction of a household ‘ritual’ is mainly aimed at denying the stereotypical demarcation lines between the official/private, masculine/feminine spheres that already are anchored in our culture, by transferring the everyday kitchen reality into an exposition hall. but the author’s intentions go far beyond the breaking of the ‘high’ art rules by manipulating household appliances. the suggestiveness of the image is based on color and texture contrasts that are achieved by the use of opposite metal and red tones, ‘cold’ material quality of metal tableware, photo paper and cotton yarn. the motif of bright, ripened berries does not only reveal the gourmet aspects of the kitchen motif but also expresses cultural layers of femininity. here, red fruit serve not as a simple filler of a plate. they encircle, delineate the main ‘delicacy’ – a photo image of a woman’s navel, singled out in the center of the witty work. the semiotic and compositional centers of the work concur. circular forms are inserted into a quadrangle plane like a mandala, and frame up the center of a woman’s body, in mythological tradition very often linked with a womb, i.e., with the center of cosmic transformation – the conception of fetus. the navel zone symbolizes the unity of body–vessel, and is identified with a womb, fertility, and the potential of generation and creativity. but in the consumer society a woman’s body is deprived of all connotations of majesty. it is materialized, reduced, turned into a fetish. patriarchal culture cannot perceive the polymorphous eroticism of a woman. therefore jonikienė ‘sets’ the table for a hannibal feast (lunch) and ironically visualizes the suggestion of our culture to consume a woman’s body in parts, bit by bit. loreta švaikauskienė is also interested in the problem of feminine identity in patriarchal culture. in her composition baroque in lithuania, the accent is laid not on the importance of food in the conception of femininity, but on the correlations between nourishment and sexual rituals that reveal themselves in the de-signified image of a woman advocated by our culture. the artist ‘crochets’ (fuses) a chic bikini and a body from the disposable white plastic tableware. like feminine accessories that hang in the windows of underwear boutiques, they unambiguously articulate consumer values. here, an almost sacred symbolism of white is drastically contrasted with the purpose of disposable tableware, when a consumer is encouraged to waste away, do not treasure. in a westerner’s mind, a smart bikini and body ‘shells’ function as a metonymy of a woman and, as a package of a product, are meant only to attract the eye of potential buyer (viewer, consumer). the artist makes an ironic comment recreating cultural layers of femininity that are formed emphasizing hunger (psychological infantilism), but not the richness, or maturity. plastic, hollow laces that remind one of mousse that cannot satisfy one’s hunger, but that do encourage erotic fantasies, consumer passions, a yearning for something that does not and cannot exist. imitating a fetishistic, de-humanized, ‘dead’ (nature morte) vocabulary that the modern society uses for self-perception and self-expression, švaikauskienė also reveals how it serves patriarchal values of reduced, materialized femininity. apart from metaphors of kitchen, table and consumerism (eating) rituals, lithuanian women artists employ other means of expression to articulate feminine experience. here one can jen typewritten text 74 anthropology of east europe review mention a use of food itself. fat, honey, chocolate, coffee and spaghetti notably enrich the traditional arsenal of artistic media and provide the possibilities for expanding alternative methods of feminine talking. by employing the aesthetic, plastic, or sensory (odor) features of food and integrating meanings that culture attaches to food products, women artists disclaim the hegemony of sight–logos and ‘the pure art’ and open ways for alternative talking. based on the opposition of sight and touch, the modern lithuanian art hierarchy had developed (and sometimes still exhibits) clear gender connotations. here, the ‘real’ art based on the embodiment of pure idea (especially painting) was considered a masculine domain, whereas the applied arts (textiles in particular) belonged to ‘feminine crafts,’ which had to be content in a far more modest place in the cultural margins. but existing on the outskirts of hierarchy and therefore experiencing less pressure from the ideologized censorship, these arts became a propitious field for experiments and accumulation of marginalized feminine experience. therefore, in the long run, the search for the means to pertain to a particular perception of existence led lithuanian women artists to the denial of ‘pure’ practices of image creation and to enriched interpretations of a work of art utilizing the aspects of touch, taste/smell (i.e. belonging to the kitchen, as opposed to the official sphere). alma bartkevičiūtė (don’t hang macaroni, 1999) employed spaghetti to convey her ironic attitude towards the traditional norms of femininity. the lithuanian saying ‘don’t hang macaroni’ has certain gender connotations: it denotes the act of courting when sweet talk and seductive promises are used to lull a girl’s vigilance and to attain the desired result. therefore the intention of the artist to crochet spaghetti doilies and to hang them in a gallery leads to a witty, manifold deconstruction and reconstruction of gender values. first of all, the artist destroys the stereotype of feminine passivity – here the active agent hanging macaroni is a woman who does not comply with what is expected of her. at the same time, materializing the popular expression (by taking away the power of word-logos) and legitimizing feminine duties (making spaghetti and crocheting doilies) in the artistic (official, masculine) space, the artist immediately directs the viewer toward the field of feminine meanings. eglė bogdanienė (tablecloth for a coffee table, 1998, figure 1) uses food products, such as finely ground coffee, not for irony or playfulness but to express meditative moods. ephemeral ornaments of the tablecloth strewn from fragrant grains capture the flow of time. a multitude of stylized forms emerging from the black nonexistence is dispersed into white obscurity. echoing the birth of the buddhist sand mandala, the author turns the unforgettably fragrant, day-today feminine ritual of coffee drinking into a sacred ritual, the creation of the cosmic order. eglė rakauskaitė’s chocolate crucifixes, 1995 (a four meter length decorative panel made of 2042 chocolate figures of the crucifix), on the contrary, de-sanctifies patriarchal christian icons and turns them into domesticated, sweet attributes of everyday reality. here, the boundaries between the official/private, the sacred/profane, and the indistinct demarcation line between death and life are destroyed. in her other works, eglė rakauskaitė also uses food as a medium to capture existential transformations. in the video installation in fat, 1995, the naked body of the artist was dipped into melted animal fat (the symbol of death). the whole scene was filmed in fragments and synchronically shown on three monitors recreating the impression of the body’s integrity. video technologies were inventively used to formulate the field of the work’s meanings, when the integrity of a woman’s body was fragmented and recreated anew. an equally significant role was attributed to food, i.e. the natural property of fat to harden was used to convey the main idea of the work – the opposition between death and life. hot and transparent fat revealed the contours of the woman’s silhouette, but cooling off and thickening it hid or buried the body like a mist. the hardened mass concealed the body, substituting the imperative of sight into the dimension of premonition, sensation, and imagination. during the action the mode of existence underwent a certain transformation: the social environment was rejected and the artist’s body entered into the primeval, direct, bodily relationship with the nearest material medium, the physical environment. the body was not simply immersed into another substance, it admitted a part of that substance into itself. therefore ‘me’ was created not by the means of isolation, abjection, but by the means of fusion, apparent symbiosis with the maternal body. the yearning for such a symbiosis is particularly vivid in the video installation in honey 1996. the camera captures the body of the artist coiled in the embryo pose and rhythmically turning in a vessel full of honey. floating in the sweet, viscous mass it evokes the senses of humidity, viscosity, and mucous quality that are jen typewritten text 75 anthropology of east europe review usually associated with feminine physiology, evokes sensuous feelings, and suggestively conveys preverbal experiences of primary consciousness. the meanings of the image are unambiguously associated with maternity but they also destroy cultural stereotypes that reduce a woman’s sexuality to an infantile oral stage. contrary to the demands of de-sexualized maternity standards, rakauskaitė’s plastic interpretations declare vitality that is sensuous, corporeal, sexual, and unaffected by cultural prohibitions. the artist’s body, coiled like an embryo and turning in a compact vessel, and at the same time suggesting the content of her own womb, embodies the heterogeneity of the woman/mother space where the strict borderline between inside/outside, self/other is deleted. in modern western culture, where most people never encounter the real menace of famine but are threatened by overproduction and obesity, food loses its sacred connotations and is more and more often associated with profane (often immoderate) consumerism. but the substance that transgresses the outside/inside borderline of a human body stands as a poly-semantic medium that permits the articulation of experiences of the ‘in-between’ states. this attitude is further confirmed by the oeuvre of modern lithuanian women artists who seek to overcome the dichotomies of binary thinking and to visualize the heterogeneity of feminine identity. food in their oeuvre becomes not only a means to deny stereotypical values of masculinity and femininity, but also to provide the possibilities for creating a distinctive vocabulary of ‘feminine talking.’ references cited gamman, lorraine, and makinen, merja, 1995, female fetishism. new york: new york university. kristeva, julia, 1986, women’s time, in the kristeva reader, toril moi (ed.). new york: columbia university press,. 187– 213. neumann, erich, 1996, the great mother. new york: routledge. нойманн, эpик, 1998, происхождение и развитие сознания. релф–бук, ваклер. figure 1 jen typewritten text 76 review of jennifer patico consumption and social change in a post-soviet middle class anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 consumption and social change in a post-soviet middle class. by jennifer patico. washington: woodrow wilson center press; stanford: stanford university press, 2008. isbn: 08047-6169-8. neringa klumbytė, miami university what do the price of bananas or a rushing mercedes tell us about post-soviet citizens and social change? asking such questions, jennifer patico takes us on a journey through the social, material, and moral landscape of st. petersburg. her major informants—the teachers from two schools—tell stories about their experiences and lives in the city during the financial crisis of 1998–99. the main questions in the book concern changing relations of persons to objects; transforming perceptions of self; conceptualizations of value, social difference, dignity, and respect; interconnections between the moral and the material; and relations between consumption and social change. the book starts with the premise that consumption is central to post-soviet middle-class identity. consumption is also an important window into post-soviet transformations. in the early 1980s teachers were considered part of the ―mass intelligentsia,‖ along with doctors, engineers, and cultural workers (p. 62). teachers shared a similar, relatively ―dignified,‖ ―middle-class‖ lifestyle even if their salaries were lower than the elites’ earnings (p. 63). their middle-class identity was interconnected with the values of productive labor, education, professionalism, and culturedness. in post-soviet st. petersburg most teachers experience downward mobility and disintegration of their former middle-class identities. the values of productive labor, education, professionalism, and culturedness still inform teachers’ actions and deliberations. consumption, however, increasingly becomes central to perceptions of self and the other. minimization of consumption and suppression of desires signal teachers’ social insignificance. patico notes that teachers perceive their relative material impoverishment as an assault on their very personhood, in an intimate and embodied way (p. 168). they expect material standards of living and social or moral attributes such as culturedness and professionalism to be fundamentally interconnected, and even reflections of one another (p. 76). this way they transform themselves into the new post-soviet middle-class and articulate new social and moral values of those in the ―middle.‖ teachers’ everyday experiences are a lens to post-soviet historical and geopolitical transformations. people use racially inflected terms of ―development‖ and ―civilization‖ both to decry and to laugh about some of the things they find most stressful and humiliating about postsoviet life (p. 137). like in soviet times they invoke ―western‖ standards as superior and complain about the ―uncivilized‖ russian state of things. as patico shows, although ―west‖ and ―europe‖ in general are interconnected with positive values and the notion of civilization, food anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 259 purchases show a different relation to western or european goods. most food from europe is considered to be of lower quality and not as safe as domestic products. like the cargo cults, as patico claims, post-soviet consumer practices are the product of a shifting awareness of the world outside russia and the changing structures of power and privilege (p.137). to get sick from the ―foreign products‖ is to experience the global order of things. russians, thus, feel like ―white people‖ subjected to ―african conditions‖ by outside as well as local powers. the author notes that during her subsequent visit in 2003, life looked a bit more normal for the teachers, which was connected not only with consumer improvements, but also with a process of normalization that has dulled their earlier lives of social critique and made those critiques less convincing (p. 216). the author reminds us that although russia is increasingly integrated into the global market with supermarkets and foreign shops, this should not be taken as a sign of russia’s westernization. consumption and social change in a post-soviet middle class resonates with other studies on russia and eastern europe. here, however, we do not meet suffering individuals lamenting about their hard life, but rather a thrifty middle class in the making. although teachers express negativity towards the post-soviet social life as well as their changing social status and increasing inequalities, they eagerly embrace new opportunities and strive to change their lives. patico’s study is an important contribution to our understanding of post-soviet subjectivity and personhood, consumption, and social change. the author’s exploration of how social change occurs at the level of people’s emotions, through the feelings of dignity, social worth, and respect, and through the mundane practices of shopping and socializing, are relevant for understanding social history beyond post-soviet contexts. moreover, through the exploration of minute details of teachers’ everyday lives, the book tells a broader story about global neoliberal transformations. anthropology of europe and community re-studies: proposal for a new concerted research initiative peter skalnik, university ofpardubice community studies and re-studies have been a 2000). what is the point in multiplying the hallmark of sociocultural anthropology for literature on europe, this time by several decades of the 20 th century. they anthropologists? the answer is simple: were, however, criticized for their lack of anthropologists study themes and aspects that representativeness and low degree of the related disciplines do not or cannot study. comparability (bell and newby 1971; maho the anthropological method par excellence, 1974; mihailescu 1977; skalnik 1982). this i.e. long-term fieldwork, is usually not used paper intends to rehabilitate the community by sociologists or historians unless they in studies with a special emphasis on re-studies fact tum into anthropologists. the legitimacy because they appear to me as the best and authority of the contribution of the anthropology can offer to the understanding fieldwork approach is obvious. of europe, both in the historical perspective anthropologists gain reliable but also very i and in the present time when the european rich data where the related disciplines come union expands towards the east and south­ out only with too sober statistics or sources. east of the continent. after a review of re­ irural sociology, a discipline that today seems studies thus far undertaken in europe and to be dying out together with the peasant elsewhere, i shall characterize the intricacies phenomenon (mendras 1967), was for a while of a particular re-study which a team of more active than anthropology. under the j colleagues and students under my leadership influence of the chicago school, sociologists undertook recently in eastern bohemia in the worked in various northern american and czech republic (2002-2004). then in the european settings. actually, the study of the ithird part of the paper i argue for a sustained peasantry in developing areas such as latin new wave of comparative re-studies which america was at one time undertaken by both would reveal the trends of development in the sociologists and anthropologists. robert ieuropean and non-european smaller redfield, who pioneered the folk-life studies settlements or urban areas at the beginning of along the rural-urban continuum, was the third millennium. to an extent tllls appropriated by both sociologists and contribution reflects the general concern of ianthropologists. it was also redfield who anthropology with community as a theoretical came first with a re-study of one of the problem, because we continue weighing the villages he studied in mexico in the 1930s importance of approaches and wondering i(redfield and villa rojas 1934, redfield about the explanatory power of reflection in 1950)1. a new aspect emerged when his first comparison with scientific analysis (cf. mexican community study, of the maya bradfield 1973; skalnik 1981). village of tepoztlan (redfield 1930), was i i. first, let us look at anthropology as a critically re-studied by a younger colleague tool for a better understanding of the (lewis 1951). it appeared that redfield's european continent (and the world at large). i as anthropologists, we know that philosophers, historians, and sociologists have j redfield, however, was not the very first to undertake analyzed europe from their respective a re-study of an american community. the lynds who i methodological standpoints. thus europe published their path-finding study of an american town (lynd and lynd 1929) returned soon to 'middletown' seems to exist and work as an idea, as a and did their own re-study there (lynd and lynd 1937). function of various historical moments, or as a rightly, the authors of a book evaluating community inetwork of social characteristics (cf. articles studies 'wtote that "middletown is for the sociologist of from the journal ethnologia europaea the community what durkheim's suicide is for collected in niedermiiller and stocklund sociology as a whole" (bell and newby 1971: 82). 178 image of tepoztl<in as an isolated, fairly homogeneous, and well-functioning village community contrasted with lewis's portrait of a village full of individualism and tension combined with envy, fear, and lack of trust. although lewis quoted extensively from redfield, he found redfield's analysis 'schematic' and 'unreal.' the explanation of such incongruence is to be related to the personal factor so typical for social science research methodolob'y. but it is also to be explained by lewis's broader scope of research which included interpersonal relations, power structure, and land tenure questions. according to wierzbicki, redfield's folk-urban continuum (redfield 1955) must have been responsible for his obsessive search for tradition and the failure to account for contrasts and conflicts in tepotztlan (wierzbicki 1982: 197; cf. lewis 1953). of course, the re-studies undertaken by a colleague from a generation or two later cannot be built along similar lines. the interests and emphases differ, and the task of contrasting the two social situations seems to be easier if one is primarily interested in methodology. redfield's own re-study of chan kom had to struggle with the discrepancy of methodology. while the first monograph, written in the early 1930s, uses traditional ethnographic method including description of material and spiritual culture, the re-study, undertaken only 17 years later, concentrates on the mechanisms of change, explanation of their absorption by the villagers, and their view of the changes. redfield used the same informants whom he knew in the 1930s, but he elaborates more on method and thereby in effect "corrects" inadequacies of the original study. malinowski's revolutionizing data collected in the trobriand islands in western melanesia durinq: world war i (malinowski 1922) were submitted to re-studies many years after his death. one of the re-studies was carried out by annette weiner who found out that, not surprisingly, malinowski suffered from a male-centered bias. she discovered that women and their activities were equally if not more important for the cohesion of the kiriwina society than the enterprising seafaring men described by malinowski in his first monograph (weiner 1976). while for redfield the main source of change in mexico was coming from the cities, in the case of the historically first community re­ study in the world, that of the southern polish village of maszkienice (then part ofaustria), carried out by the ethnographer franciszek bujak (bujak 1901,1915), it was migration to america that brought about change. of course, this influence is also of the urban kind because the level of development in the united states was accompanied by, if not due to, the higher level ofurbanization there. wierzbicki, who discussed both polish and mexican re-studies, shows that there is considerable similarity between the two rural and peasant situations (wierzbicki 1982: 196). however, it seems that mexican villagers, especially their pro-development leaders, felt the potential for the destruction of their 'traditional' way of life more than the maszkienice peasants. redfield's bias in favor of the 'little tradition' may have been responsible as well for the fear of spoiling the tradition. therefore, he welcomed the incorporation of urban lifestyles into the value system and ethos inherited from the past. ill bujak's case, there emerged a cultural gap that could not be bridged: the have-been poles from maszkienice contrasted what they called 'american work' with 'polish work' where the former was 'good for bulls' while the latter for peasant humans. wierzbicki cites three other monographic re­ studies of polish villages which all raised serious methodological problems. let us look at two of them. the village ofdobrzeii wielki, studied comprehensively by nowakowski (1960) was soon studied again by olszewska (1969). it could hardly be called a proper re-study because the time gap was too short and the scope too different. the re-study was dealing with only some aspects of the community and if the data from the original monograph were referred to it was done only to support the views of the re­ studier. wierzbicki calls this case "two complementary monographs" without seeing 179 in them really a re-study twin. wierzbicki himself undertook a re-study of zmiqca fifty years after bujak worked there in the beginning of the 20th century (bujak 1903; wierzbicki 1963). bujak was accused of a positivist approach because he wrote an inventory of village life. therefore wierzbicki concentrated on only two main problems of social change that occurred during the period just preceding his re-study: the growth of egalitarianism in interpersonal relations and the growth of national consciousness among the villagers. however, while these two processes guided the inquiry, wierzbicki did not allow his monograph to become unrelated to bujak's work. at the same time wierzbicki used the up-to-date methodology without slavishly following the then-outdated methods of bujak. the zmiqca re-study remains till this very day one of the best examples of the method. another famous student of communities, this time in ireland, was conrad arensberg, who considered himself a social anthropologist when executing his pioneering study of irish countrymen in county clare (arens berg 1937). however he was labeled a sociologist for his comparative work on the research of communities in the same country and county which he executed with solon kimball at practically the same time (arensberg and kimball 1968, 2002). arensberg was inspired by his teacher at harvard, the social anthropologist w. lloyd warner whose first book was about the australian aborigines (warner 1929) and later became famous for his study of what became dubbed as the yankee city (warner 1963). in effect it was a long-term and collective research project concerning newburyport in new england, u.s.a. (warner et al. 1941-1959) which still remains unsurpassed among community studies for its breadth and scope. warner was eager to test his methods developed in australia on european data. he chose ireland, and after surveying all twenty-six irish counties settled for county clare on the central-western edge of the island. warner and arensberg started their research in 1932, but warner, who had duties back home, was soon replaced by solon kimball, who also worked with warner in the yankee city project. the two, arensberg and kimball, worked for two years in rural clare and then moved to the capital of the county, ennis. the ennis study was never completed because of the outbreak of war, but the ennis data were added to the rural research volume in the second edition of family and community in ireland (arensberg and kimball 1968). this famous volume inspired the french anthropologist robert cresswell, who produced a large volume some thirty years after arensberg and kimball (cresswell 1969). still later, fox did an original study of a small island off donegal (fox 1978). another study in a celtic environment was carried out by edgar morin, in the breton village of plozevet which he dubbed plodemet (morin 1967). there he sparked off the establishment of a youth club and speculated that generation gap replaced class struggle. however, the myth of modernity versus tradition exploded once morin left the village. his book was not well received; he and his creation of youth culture were not remembered (maho 1982: 224). the same happened to maho who also knew plozevet from earlier times. when he arrived there after some years he was not recognized by the fonner informant in whose house he used to stay. initially maho also got friendly with one particular neighbor not realizing that another neighbor was a sworn enemy of the fonner. the entry into the village by way of particular informants may mar one's fieldwork irreparably. the researcher also may fail to recognize the social divisions if he or she happens to be friendly with the most willing villager. that villager may be the least suitable ifhe is rejected by all (i.e. a local vagrant or a local strongman whom many fear and hate). the european mediterranean has been the area most frequented by american, british, and dutch anthropologists and sociologists, who worked in various communities known for their attractive landscape and climate. some of them became anthropological classics. the first and perhaps most classical 180 has been banfield's the moral basis ofa backward society (1956). the south italian village ofmontegrano was presented as a case of 'amoral familism,' responsible for conservatism and poverty. there are no voluntary associations to speak of in the village, no esprit de corps. nothing is done to resolve considerable community problems there. banfield found the folk explanations: desperate poverty leading to non-action, ignorance, no collaboration between gentry and the peasants, disunity among the 'oppressed,' distrust ofthe state, fatalism. but in fact, according to banfield, it is the concentration on family that should improve its position at the cost of the other families. communal interests are thus ignored. the rather static and hopeless image of montegrano has attracted criticism by other non-italian mediterraneanists, john davis and johan galtung. they suggested that banfield suffered from 'communocentrism,' believing that the path towards modernity leads via village associations. instead, argues galtung, it is regional cooperation that is needed. according to him, montegrano is opposed to change because of' amoral village-ism.' actually, continued galtung, the above­ mentioned folk explanations were dismissed by banfield too facilely because they may be valid, for example the class antagonisms in the village. according to davis, banfield failed to study the long history of class relations in southern italy (davis 1970; galtung 1971; cf. silverman 1968). this was done properly by lopreato in his research on the effects on emigration on the south italian village of franza around 1960 (lopreato 1967). there were other well-known studies such as people ofthe sierra (pitt-rivers 1954) or village in the vaucluse (wylie 1957). the latter suffered from naivety and little insight of the researcher who came from a quite different cultural background. as maho describes it, wylie came to the locality peage du roussillon with the "american idea of the 'community'" which "would welcome him with open arms" and provide him voluntarily with data about its social life. then he returned 20 years later and was barely recognized and often rejected. when he insisted, he was told to his astonishment that he was duped and lot of information about conflicts and divisions within community remained hidden from him. therefore he decided not to do his intended re-study in the village (maho 1982: 224). there was also another school of rural sociology and ethnography in europe, that of romania. the school of dimitrie gusti and henri stahl managed to do re-studies of two villages, rouncou and dragu~ (the latter even three times, cf. stah11972). both villages, studied before the war and after it when socialist influence prevailed, showed "the decisive influence of the global society" but also that "with each restudy one is faced with a quite different social 'problematique'" (stahl 1982: 240). stahl stresses that repeating the same analysis schema would be a mistake; rather it is important to understand "how the social changes that occurred are in fact a social solution of a problem with its roots going well beyond the village" (stahl 1982: 240). unfortunately, none of the studies undertaken by american anthropologists in romania were re-studies (the team of john cole and the research in transylvania by verdery). to an extent salzmann's study of czech-speaking villages in romanian banat (salzmarm 1983) could be viewed as a re­ study of the research undertaken by a team of czech ethnographers in the 1960s (scheufler and skalnikova 1962; skalnikova and scheufler 1963; jech et a1. 1992). in east-central europe, with the major exception of poland mentioned above, re­ studies of communities have thus far been fairly rare. what is instead taking place are either repeated visits to the studied communities-thus adding new knowledge to the basic data from the major initial research (salzmann and scheufler 1974, 1986; salzmann 1995; skalnik 1979, 1993}-or comparative research of communities in one or more regions (kandert 1969,2004; skalnik 1982, 1986). skalnik compared three pairs of communities, of which he personally studied four (two in slovakia and two in the caucasus) and used data on the remaining two, tret and st-felix in northern italy, 181 contained in cole and wolf (1972). salzmann did his research in the southern bohemian community of koffi<lrov intermittently during his teaching-free time, revised the data for the second edition, and finally went to the village after the "velvet revolution." skalmk worked in 1970-76 in the northern slovak community of sunava comparing two neighboring villages which eventually merged and he came back repeatedly after 1990 (skalmk 2001). kandert did his initial research of a central slovak community of sihla in the late 1960s and then returned in 1994 while also embarking upon comparative research in another two communities not far away. in hungary, the initial research in varsill1y by bodrogi and his team, led in the field by sarkill1y (bodrogi 1978; hollos and maday 1983), paralleled by the study ofhann in tazlar (hann 1980) which is currently being repeated in both localities by the same researchers, this time in coordination (sarkany 2005; hann and sarkill1y 2004). ii. when the re-study of dolm roven in eastern bohemia (120 kilometers east of prague) began in 2002 i and my team had no intention of copying the 'analysis schema' of the pre-war monograph by the rural sociologist karel galla (galla 1939). it was, however, evident that my choice to work in dolm roven was not haphazard. by the year 2000 there were in the czech republic few villages studied in the past by either rural sociologists or anthropologists/ nationographers (narodopisci) as communities. out of those very few, dolni roven was closest to pardubice, my new university. besides, galla's study was evidently the best as dolm roven was studied by him in much detail, the size of the book exceeding 400 pages. the other community studies are of much smaller size and detail (chotek 1912; galla 1936 and 1937; salzmann 1974, 1995). when making the proposal to carry out this re-study, i wanted first of all to capture the village commune as it was or at least as it presented itself at the beginning of the 21 st century to researchers who had been trained in completely different theoretical thinking (i.e. in social anthropology) than in that prevailing in the 1930s, i.e. some 70 years earlier (rural sociology). the changes and the contrast with the fairly distant past would come out by themselves to those who would bother to read both galla and books and articles by the members of our team. but of course some themes do occur in both the original research and in the re-study. by comparing data relating to these common themes one can grasp more explicitly the changes even ifthe very processes whereby they happened would not be easily visible or known. for example, galla's monograph quite justifiably spent quite a few pages on the description of agriculture (90 pages out of360 of the total text, i.e. one fourth). dolm roven in the time of his research was a "predolninantly agricultural village" in which 295 out of 577 economically active persons were engaged in agriculture (galla 1939: 58). additional reasons for studying precisely dolm roven were the facts that the village was studied by galla because it was a stronghold of agrarianism of the udd:al famil;? and the village was considered successful evidence for the modernized traditional ideology that the basis of the nation is land and agriculture which feeds the whole population of the country. dolni roven (the original village, much smaller than today's commune, which besides dolm roven proper comprises homi roven, komarov and litetiny), was considered an exemplary village in the pre-wwii period, boasting all up to date public amenities (paved road, 2 the udrial family, landowners in dolni roven for five hundred years, have given the community several generations of leaders, the most famous but also last being frantisek udrial 1866-1938 and vaclav udrzal (1870-1938). the former was elected member of the vienna reichstag between 1897 and 1918, then member of the czechoslovak parliament until his death. he was one ofthe leaders of the agrarian party (founded 1904), in 1922 renamed as republican party of the agricultural and smallholder pedple. this party was the strongest czech-speaking party in pre-war czechoslovakia. udrzal was czechoslovak minister of defense during the 1920s and finally served as prime minister (1929-1932). his brother vaclav was the founder of czech cooperative movement. 182 electricity, telephone, pipe-bome water, modem schools, commune office, and sokol gymnastics building). unlike galla, for me the main motivation for the re-study at the tum of the 21 st century has been the opposite: i wanted to study a commune in which the potential for agriculture ceases to be important and that has hardly kept any of the attributes of excellence that it enjoyed before wwii. in other words, the purpose of the present research is to reveal what has stepped into the place of agriculture as the leading raison d 'etre of rural existence and what keeps people living in the village today when there is nobody powerful keeping a protective eye over it. one could suppose that it would be fairly logical to live in a village if one has found employment there. but this is the case of a mere 30 percent of the economically active. a full two thirds of economically active roven residents have to travel outside of the village in order to eam their living. but they continue living in the village. if one continues searching for rational reasons for continued living in the village, one could put forward the ownership of a house and adjacent land inherited from ancestors. but that does not explain why people do not sell these and move to pardubice, holice, or more remote urban centers. actually there are two reasons behind the relative stability of residence, or even a very slow increase in roven population. one is the rural character of living combined with the availability of all modem amenities. the other is the relatively lower cost of living in the village even if one does not own a house and rents instead. that means that what is most ~mportant for people is the character of living 111 the countryside, which attracts them to residence in the village. the quantitative research showed that roven residents trust that their village has a reasonably good prospect for the future. tills contrasts with the much less optimistic, almost gloomy, prospect the same people ascribe to the czech republic as a whole. however when people were asked what they do expect from membership in the european union, their opinion was optimistic for the czech republic but less enthusiastic as far as roven is concemed. galla did not ask these questions in the 1930s. the age-old structure of land tenure and the decisively a!:,'ticultural character of the community were not questioned at that time. nobody could envisage expropriations, the egalitarian character of the post-war economic development, nor could galla or his respondents predict the war and the post-war communist industrialization and the marginalization of roven in both the regional and national frameworks. if the roven inhabitants today believe in a political center­ left orientation (the social democratic and socialist program is supported by almost 44 percent of them) it contrasts with galla's finding a predominantly agrarian orientation of the villagers (cf. subrt 2004). the most ~nfluential political force in the village today is the people's party also known as the christian democratic union, which at the moment holds 8 out of 15 seats in the communal representation. this contrasts with the pre-war dominance of the republican or agrarian party. as to national and regional politics, roven dwellers are much less politically motivated, which can be demonstrated by low election participation and if they go to the polls they appear ~ndecided as to which party to support (cf. rechkova 2005). thus we have to face the fact of an enormous shift from an agricultural, highly productive but stratified pre-war conununity to a basically egalitarian post-war community with predominantly outside industrial employment. another aspect that is quite different today from the pre-war era, when galla carried out his rural sociological study, is the non­ agricultural enterprise in the village. whereas before the war, by far most employment within the community was assured by agriculture and related activities, it is petty production, repair, and wholesale and retail commerce that dominate today. mutual help has diminished and is ever more of a monetary type (e.g. neighbors and friends helping out for remuneration during the planting of seedlings for a commercial vegetable farmer). 183 l____________~~_ wwii and the forty years of communist rule that followed did not destroy the community ethos in roven; rather it seems that this ethos was strengthened through the collective self­ help construction activities of the communist times. the voluntary firemen, at least in two composite parts of roven, intensified their cultural activities after the social regimentation of the communist period ended (cf. salanda 2004). before ww ii, this kind of intensity of communal life was almost entirely in the hands of those who organized theater and musical perfornlances in the village (cf. vaiikova 2005). it would be unjust to dismiss the communal character of life in doln! roven of the post-communist period, but one has to admit that the contents and form of the community have changed considerably. there are many more organized community activities than before the war, when it was more spontaneous and public. today people spend far more time at home or in their garden and much less time with neighbors outdoors. the importance of the private sphere (house and garden) has . increased and seems to be comparable with the meaning ofprivacy in the city (it is almost equally high). only relatives and good friends or neighbors visit each other at home, the rest of unorganized contact is limited to the pub and daily errands. iii. the importance of comparative research of communities by way of re-studies is not easy to be overestimated. the detailed knowledge, which anthropologists and . sociologists of communities gain through their particular research methods, serve their societies and the international sphere. for these studies reveal what is really happening on the ground, both institutionally and among the people of the studied community. in that sense they complement statistical and demographic knowledge, they are an indispensable supplement for macro­ economic and macro-political analyses. the usual complaints that community studies are not representative of a region or country are weak because the wealth of detail, if replicated by a number of such studies per given territory, is not matched by any other data sets. besides, these studies are based on relationships rather than cool objectification. the point is that anthropologists generate their data from long-term residence with the researched collectivity and the testimonies from such prolonged rapport between the researcher and the researched guarantees a depth of information and its reliability. i! complemented by quantitative data obtamed from sociological questionnaires and interviews, the picture is indeed not only very detailed but also both inter-subjective and objective. re-studies, as they were thus far undertaken and as i tried to characterize them in part i of this essay, are an even more welcome tool for gaining our knowledge of face-to-face communities, for they supply the decision makers and the broader public with time­ depth perspective thus depicting various communities as they change while passing through various external economic, political, and cultural climates. the veracity of the data is enhanced by critical re-studies by other than the original researchers but also,ifundertaken by the same researcher(s), as it was done by the lynds, redfield, or sarkany. these re­ studies can be critical by the virtue of the fact that the researcher(s) try to supplement the originally collected data, make up for the missing sections, etc. for these obvious reasons, i would like to propose here an all-european and eventually worldwide concerted project of re-studies, starting from central europe where the first re-studies took place. as the new wave of re­ studies would catch on, re-studies of some well-known anthropological monographs undertaken by american and british researchers in europe should follow. finally, but perhaps concurrently, some anthropologically or sociologically famous communities worldwide should be re-studied. this major initiative would bring in data that will not only be rich for each re-studied community but also provide us with comparative material for an all-european and worldwide explanation of processes that have happened as part of the transition from 184 agrarian isolation towards modernity, integration, and globalization. in the czech republic, after the dolni roven re-study come two communities: sfmy a~d komarov (the south bohemian commumty, by chance carrying the same name as the komarov village, since 1976 part of expanded dolni roven). this does not mean that further monitoring of dolni roven should be discontinued. on the contrary, the vicinity of the university of par dub ice which carried out the re-study of dolni roven, makes possible continuous research of developments and changes in the village. however, s{my, also studied by galla in the 1930s, is well suited for a re-study as it is a small village (450 inhabitants in 2001) some fifty kilometers to the west-northwest of pardubice. salanda (2005), who carried out a preliminary survey there, registered a 50 percent drop in population in 70 years. from a prosperous, . exemplary cooperative village of the 1930s, it has now lost momentum and its inhabitants are skeptical about prospects for the future. however, the economic and social influence of the presently-undertaken constmction of motorway d 11 nearby might resuscitate this decaying community. the southern bohemian village ofkomarov, on the other hand, had its heyday some 150 years ago when it was a prosperous farming village. during the communist era (1948­ 1989) when salzmann (with scheufler's library and archival inquiries) carried out his resea;ch there, the village was eventually economically incorporated into a larger unit and lost its official identity. the agricultural cooperati\'e that was fairly successful during the 1970s and 1980s, survived the first wave of deregulations after the velvet revolution (salzm;nn 1995). however, we have no idea about further developments in komarov after most czech cooperatives dissolved and were transfomled into limited liability companies or had their property bought by private companies, some of them foreign. one wonders whether its decline continued in the later 1990s and beyond. a bit more complicated is the case of siroky dill which is situated on the bohemian­ moravian divide near the town of po lick a (some 50 km southeast of pardubice). the founder of modern czech nationography (narodopis) karel chotek wrote a longer. paper on this village (chotek 1912). dunng the early 1970s a team of communist nationographers from the institute of ethnography and folklore of the czechoslovak academy of sciences returned to siroky dill in order to study a 'socialist village.' however, their methods were antiquated as was most of the communist era narodopis (cf. lozoviuk 2005; skalnik 200sc), and they happened to study the pre­ communist past (topics such as the ram­ beheading festival, craft production, folklore awareness, the only quasi-anthropological theme being the selection of marriage partners). moreover, this research was not completed. starting from 2003, a new re­ study is being undertaken by a team of pardubice students of social anthropology under the leadership ofbohuslav sa1anda, the youngest member of the team of the 1970s. it is too early to draw any conclusions from this re-study. the norwegian anthropologist haldis haukanes studied two czech village communities (one south bohemian and one south moravian) during the process of post­ communist transfonnation. to submit her study (haukanes 2004) to the scmtiny of a follow-up re-study by a czech researcher or a team could prove to be a thrilling enterprise. in slovakia the social worker iva smakalova carried out an interesting monographic study of the protestant gentry village of horne jaseno (today called turcianske jaseno since it was merged with dolne jaseno situated few hundred meters to the west). unaware ofthe holistic functionalism of her days she called it presciently integral village, not knowing either about the comprehensive anthropological studies of communities in europe that were then just started in ireland by the harvard team led by lloyd warner (smakalova 1936). i visited the village on easter 2004 and discussed a future re-study with the village mayor and pastor (both 185 1_____________s~t__~ women, which is fascinating in this community offew hundred inhabitants). the protestant (lutheran) creed very much preserved village endogamy, and kinship strengthened by religion seems to continue to be the main organizing principle there. my own research in sunava (originally the adjacent villages of nima sunava and vysna sunava) started during the politically uneasy first half of the 1970s (skalnik 1979) and continued after the fall of communism in the 1990s (skalnik 1993). both villages with their agricultural cooperatives merged under the central czechoslovak government's pressure in 1974, but the cooperative has survived under changed conditions to this very day, mainly thanks to a high degree of specialization. however, the post-1998 stringent economic measures of the central­ right slovak government have imprinted themselves in this village at the foot of the mountains with increasing acuteness. much depends on the survival and development of nearby industries since specialized agriculture no longer offers employment to many. whereas the first years of the demise of communist rule were marked by inertia, later years are likely to tell the story of adjustment to new conditions. but this will have to be studied in the field. in both the czech and slovak cases, accession to the european union is bound to bring innovations, both in job creation and development of new branches (highly specialized industry employment, tourist services, and new vistas in agriculture as well). other possibilities for community re-studies in slovakia could be the village of sihla in central slovakia studied by kandert in the late 1960s (kandert 2004) and perhaps latky where he worked in the 1980s. also suitable candidates for re-study are the two south­ central villages of sebechleby (studied by a team of nationographers of the socialist village pranda 1984; kandert 1988), and cerovo, studied by chotek in a traditional way 100 years ago (chotek 1906). sihla, according to kandert who returned to this village briefly in 1994 (2004: 246), lost most of its population within thirty years (from 435 in 1961 to some 150 in 1994) and it would be fascinating to find out what has caused such a demographic demise. kandert (2004: 247) mentioned an impoverished cooperative (founded only in 1984!) and only one person interested in privatized agriculture. the reasons will perhaps be much more complex. sebechleby was an 'exemplary' socialist cooperative village and it would be very interesting if inertia wins over rupture or the other way around. in poland, where several strings of ethnographic, anthropological, and sociological re-studies took place from the end of 19th century, new re-studies should bring a very rich harvest. the two above­ mentioned quasi-parallel studies ofdobrzen wielki in the opole region are an opportunity for tracing changes from the communist period until 'late post-communism.' if undertaken they could create a possibility for comparison with a nearby case study of dziekanowice (buchowski 1997) and research by british social anthropologists hann and pine in little poland (malopolska). the famous re-study of the village of zmi'lca (wierzbicki 1963) could be repeated after another 50 years. i have already mentioned the current re­ studies ofvarsany and tazlar in hungary. however, the most famous community study of the neprajz type was that by fel and hofer in atany carried out in the 1940s and early 1950s (feland hofer 1969). i believe that a re-study of atany could be a real challenge for the new generation of hungarian social and cultural anthropologists. elsewhere in central europe i would suggest that obernberg am brenner, studied by pospisil since the 1960s (pospisil 1995) is ripe for continuation. i discussed this possibility with leopold pospisil some years ago when i visited him in the village and he welcomed the idea. thus it is a question of deciding whether to study topics not touched by pospisil or to "check" those areas analyzed so meticulously in his two monographs. i do not doubt that other villages or urban communities studied earlier by overseas 186 anthropologists in germany, hungary, serbia (cf. halpern 1957), romania (cole 1977; kideckel1993; verdery 1983), and bulgaria (sanders 1949) would be very suitable for re­ studies. what i suggest here is to start with a few re-studies and gradually expand the scope all over europe and beyond. beyond central europe there are several clusters of european communities with high potential for rewarding re-study. some of them are famous monographs, others are case study handbooks published in the u.s. in uniform fonnat by holt, rinehart, and winston, and waveland press. i have mentioned above the arensberg and kimball research in the irish county of clare. today, it seems highly appropriate to submit rural and urban clare to another re-study which would show the booming ireland far away from dublin. there where rural life is not completely dead.3 meanwhile the introduction to the third edition of family and community in ireland has raised questions of the methodology used by the harvard team. there is a potential tension between the foreign­ conceiyed original research and the future re­ study. which should primarily be carried out by irish anthropologists and sociologists. the next region that had been studied fairly intensiyely by both anthropologists and sociologists is great britain (cf. bell and newby 1971: 137-146). there are classical studies such as frankenberg's village on the border (frankenberg 1957) or family and kinship in east london by wilmot and jones (1957) which both deserve to be re-shldied. further north we could name the monograph by fox (1978) of the tiny island of tory. the most classical area of community studies mostly carried out by non-natives is the mediterranean, from spain to greece. starting from people ofthe sierra by pitt-rivers and ending with friedl's vassilika, there is string 3 a fieldtrip that i undertook with a colleague in clare in 2002 showed reasonable potential for such a restudy both because people who remembered pre-war ireland were still around to render their reading of the changes, and some of their descendants continued in rural activities including farming. of monographs that beg for re-study by native anthropologists (and sociologists). in meeting colleagues from these countries i have gained an impression that they were not altogether enthusiastic for the approaches and interpretations of foreign anthropologists. therefore it would be intriguing to read findings by local anthropologists who have the advantage of life-long experience of living within the societies of which the re-studied communities form a part. this said, i trust it would be equally thrilling to carry out re­ study of the classical community 'home sociology' by lis6n-tolosana (1966) or gross's study of bonagente carried out in 1957-1958 (gross 1974). portugal stands somewhat apart from this mediterranean mosaic. dias (1948), cutileiro (1971), and pina-cabral (1986), to name the most important authors, were all native ethnographers who studied home communities. the latter two, however, were trained in the british social anthropological tradition. no doubt, enough time has elapsed since these studies were executed so that well­ prepared re-studies4 would be an adequate response to the inquisitive queries about the changes that are supposed to have taken place since the country became member of the european union almost twenty years ago. similarly, the netherlands is a country with a long tradition of community studies, both sociological and anthropological, predominantly carried out by dutch researchers themselves. however, foreign anthropologists produced good monographs, such as the sassenheim social health shldy by gadourek (1956) or other dutch communities studied by baron, brunt, and verrips. perhaps 4 in 2001 i visited two sites in southem alentejo where jose cutileiro worked in the 1960s. the idea was to check about the feasibility of a re-study with special emphasis on political culture. the romantic looking hill community of reguengos de monsaraz became a ghost town where nobody lives anymore and where people come to work to serve the tourists who come there to buy souvenirs, eat, or even spend a night in a hotel there. i was discouraged by this drastic change and finally decided to study a community that had not been studied before. 187 a through re-study of sassenheim near leiden after fifty years could prove rewarding. europe's northern and eastern regions were less studied holistically with the help of the community study method. the monographic study of workers ofnizhnyi tagil carried out by a group of soviet researchers in the 1960s (krupianskaya 1968) could be a challenge for those modem russian anthropologists who would attempt are-study. conclusion while urging early 21 st_century anthropologists to give priority to make a new and concerted thrust towards community re­ studies, i at the same time argue strongly for the decisive role of "native" researchers in this proposed new wave. the new re-studies should symbolize the repossession of the terrain by home ethnographers. surely, foreign researchers could and should be involved in these re-studies as well, but i would contend that they should not dominate and especially should not impose their viewpoints as the only correct ones. the re­ studies will create conditions for time-depth comparisons. thus the often-repeated accusation of presentism in anthropological community studies would be removed. similarly, the thickening network of community studies and re-studies within europe and elsewhere in the world should create conditions that would increase the representativeness ofthese studies. however, even if this does not satisfy the critics of community studies and if the methodology used by various researchers would not be unified and enhancing comparison, the very fact of rich detailed studies of social fields limited in size should make these studies an 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(eds.), theories and methods in rural community studies pp. 193-221. oxford: pergamon press. wilmott, p. and young, m. 1957. family and kinship in east london. london: routledge and kegan paul. wilson, m. and mafeje, a. 1972. langa. a study of social groups in an african township. cape town: oxford university press. wylie, l. 1957. village in the vaucluse. london: oxford university press. 193 a trinity of siberian easter-season meals sharon hudgins, northeastern illinois university introduction after the breakup of the soviet union in late 1991, a number of major social, political, and economic changes began to occur in the newly established russian federation, the largest successor state to the former union of soviet socialist republics. democratic elections were held, many restrictions on foreign travel and on religious institutions were lifted, and both a market economy and a free press began to develop. a new class of relatively wealthy business-people (legitimate and otherwise) soon emerged, with plenty of russian rubles (and foreign hard currency) to spend at home and abroad. an increasing number of russians started traveling to countries that had previously been off-limits to all but a few select citizens of the soviet union. a wide variety of imported consumer goods--including foodstuffs that russians had never tasted before--began appearing on the dusty shelves of former state stores and in the open-air markets of every sizable city. church attendance rose dramatically, and the public observance of religious holidays was renewed throughout the country. many of these factors also began to have an effect, directly or indirectly, on the gastronomy of russia. russians who traveled abroad discovered new kinds of foods that had been unavailable in the soviet union. eating in spanish or french or greek restaurants, they encountered new dishes and different ways in which meals could be served. those who were interested in cooking brought back foreign recipes and new culinary ideas when they returned to russia. and at home, even those russians who never traveled to other countries could now purchase a wide range of new food products imported from a large number of nations around the world. with the increase of interest in religion, and the concomitant public observance of russian orthodox religious holidays, many culinary customs associated with these holidays were also resurrected. during much of the communist era, when religious practices were often actively discouraged by the government, special foods that were traditionally eaten on russian orthodox holidays were prepared, sometimes surreptitiously, by far fewer cooks than in earlier tsarist times. in many families, culinary-religious traditions were not passed on from one generation to the next, and many personal recipes for dishes with religious significance were lost when women of the older generation passed away. in the 1990s, however, after seven decades of relative dormancy, interest in these holiday foods began to increase as more and more russians began returning to the religious practices of their ancestors--or, if they were already believers, now more openly practiced their religion and followed the culinary traditions associated with it. this paper focuses on three very different types of meals that i ate (and, in one case, also cooked) in irkutsk, siberia, during a specific period of time in the spring of 1994, corresponding to pre-lenten carnival, lent, and orthodox easter sunday. each meal illustrates several aspects of the changes that were occurring in the society and economy of eastern siberia during the early post-soviet period. maslenitsa: festival food in irkutsk after several long months of siberian winter, march brought not only a gradually perceptible lengthening of the daylight hours, but also the festival of maslenitsa, the seven-day "butter week" celebration that immediately precedes the seven-week fasting period leading up to easter. maslenitsa itself is a secular festival--equivalent to shrovetide in britain, fasching (fasnacht, fasnet) in germanic countries, and carnival or mardi gras in many latin countries. all of these festivals date from pagan times, when people gathered during the spring equinox to chase away the evil spirits of winter, to make offerings to the sun, to celebrate the regeneration of life, and to welcome the return of warmer weather. in the christian era, russian maslenitsa evolved into a period of last-minute merrymaking the week before lent--a culinary orgy during which people devoured huge quantities of circular bliny (yeast-raised pancakes, golden rounds symbolizing the sun), drenched in melted butter or smothered in sour cream. the name of the festival comes from maslo, the russian word for "butter" (and "oil"), in reference to the richest food consumed during the week before the beginning of the great fast, when believers abstained from eating meat, fish, eggs, animal fats, and dairy products for the next seven weeks. russian orthodox fasting guidelines also traditionally proscribed the consumption of meat during maslenitsa, which only reinforced people's desire to fill up on rich dairy foods during that time, before all animal products were prohibited during the great fast of lent and holy week. the maslenitsa celebration i attended in irkutsk on forgiveness sunday in march, 1994, was the first major public observance of that festival within memory of the middle-aged russians i knew in the city. throngs filled the public square in front of the municipal sports stadium downtown, where the main events were being held. hundreds of people in fur hats and fur coats, their breath forming clouds of condensation in the frosty air, milled about in front of an outdoor stage that had been set up on the square. over the stage, a row of huge animal masks made of red-painted papier-mâché perched above big signs advertising furniture, clothing, sports events, and investment companies. folk dancers in colorful costumes from different parts of eastern siberia performed to live and recorded music, while jesters and clowns worked the crowd. handsome horses, with rows of brass bells on their harnesses, provided pony rides for the kids and pulled sleighs full of revelers. and towering over the multitude was a giant effigy of maslenitsa--the old witch of winter herself--constructed of paper, cloth, and wood, her grotesque form covered with long red ribbons and straw streamers that rustled like whispered warnings in the chilly wind. opposite the stage, a long row of gaily decorated food stalls provided portable sustenance for the merrymakers. children and adults wandered from one display of food to the next, dividing their attention between the wares being hawked and the entertainers on stage--their ears tuned to the sounds of celebration, their noses turned toward the aromas of freshly cooked foods. at one stall, a hefty woman in a karakul-lamb coat cooked bliny on a tiny, four-burner, white-enameled gas stove that looked like it belonged in a museum of early twentieth-century kitchen appliances. fresh from the skillet, the hot bliny were slathered with butter, sour cream, or jam, then handed to the customers on squares of hand-cut paper, while the vendor totaled up the bills on a wooden abacus. nearby, aluminum trays full of extra bliny, folded into quarters, awaited re-heating on the stove. and still other trays held bliny rolled into cones and filled with sweetened pastry cream. women wrapped in floral-printed shawls sold the most extensive array of baked goods i had ever seen in irkutsk: sweet and savory pastries, small rolls and buns, giant cookies and gooey layer cakes, all displayed on folding tables set up in the snow. other food stalls offered meat products traditionally prohibited by russian orthodox fasting guidelines during maslenitsa week: skewers of shashlik grilled over hot coals, small meatballs and large rissoles, savory buns with bits of fried bacon on top, cylinders of bread dough with a forcemeat filling. one vendor sold shiny boxes of commercially made candies. another stood stoically beside several cardboard boxes of unwrapped chocolate ice cream cones, with no fear of their melting in the frigid air. from the back of a truck, a woman handed out hot pizzas baked in a portable oven. and all this festive fare was washed down with cans of coca-cola for the kids, cups of hot tea for the women, and shots of vodka for the men. suddenly, at 2:30 in the afternoon on that snowy square in irkutsk, a big bonfire was set ablaze at the foot of the maslenitsa witch, and five minutes later all that remained of the frightening figure was a pile of harmless ashes. that entire day, the sky had been gray and cloudy, the weather cold and windy. but just after the witch's effigy burned to the ground, the clouds suddenly broke, the sun came out, and the snow began to melt, as if cued by god himself. march 13, that maslenitsa sunday, was the first day the temperature rose above freezing in irkutsk that year--once again confirming the ancient siberians' belief that banishing the barren witch of winter brings the onset of fertile spring. palm sunday weekend: a spanish meal in siberia the night before palm sunday, my husband and i had hosted a large dinner party at our apartment in irkutsk, for several of our russian and american colleagues from the university where we taught. for that special occasion, we wanted to serve a meal composed of dishes that none of our guests were likely to have eaten before. as always in irkutsk, however, the ingredients available that time of year at the city's cavernous central market established the culinary parameters within which we could plan our menu. but our own knowledge of several foreign cuisines, coupled with the seasonal products and new imported goods that were finding their way into siberia's emerging market economy, made it possible for us to construct a spanish menu featuring a range of dishes from different regions of spain--even if it did take two weeks of diligent shopping to assemble all the ingredients needed for the dinner. despite the spanish theme, i wanted to serve for dessert a traditional russian easter paskha, a cheesecake-like pudding chock full of ingredients forbidden during lent: tvorog (a type of fresh white curd cheese), butter, egg yolks, and sour cream, the mixture sweetened with sugar and enhanced with vanilla, grated lemon zest, candied orange peel, and raisins soaked in brandy. a paskha is customarily formed in a pasochnitsa, a tall, four-sided wooden or plastic mold shaped like a truncated pyramid, or simply made in a ceramic or plastic flower pot if a special paskha mold is unavailable. but i had to improvise with the only mold i could find that spring, a 2.5-liter black plastic bucket. i poked holes in the bottom of the container, lined it with cheesecloth, packed the paskha mixture into it, placed a weight on top to compress the cheesy mass, and put the paskha into the refrigerator overnight, to let any liquid drain out through the holes. then, on the day of the dinner party, i inverted the paskha onto a serving plate, carefully slipped off the bucket, and decorated the cylinder of cheesecake with dark raisins, golden sultanas, and toasted almonds, forming flowers on one side of the paskha and the cyrillic letters "xb"--for "khristos voskrese" ("christ is risen")--on the other. the guests arrived at our apartment that evening not knowing what to expect for dinner. i presented each of them with a menu, in spanish, listing all the dishes we planned to serve, along with a russian easter card on which i had written, in english, the recipe for the dessert that night. lacking an appropriate spanish sherry for the aperitif, we began the meal with the only dry alcoholic beverages i could find in irkutsk, russian champagne and bulgarian white wine. these accompanied a selection of hot and cold spanish tapas: slices of spanish chorizo sausage and russian aged yellow cheese; fresh mushrooms sauteed in turkish olive oil with garlic and ham; galician-style squid seasoned with onions, sweet red peppers, paprika, olive oil, and lemon juice; baked white fish, served cold, garnished with onions, lemon, and fresh cilantro; a pseudo-romesco sauce richly flavored with dried chipotle peppers that i'd brought from the united states; ensalada rusa, the spanish version of russian potato salad, bound with garlic mayonnaise; and plenty of fresh, chewy, yeasty flatbread, much like flatbreads i'd eaten in the eastern part of spain. after we had finished these tapas, i ladeled out bowls of cold andalucian gazpacho, showing our guests how to sprinkle the top of their soup with herb-seasoned croutons and finely chopped bell peppers, cucumbers, and onions. although none of these spanish-inspired dishes were familiar to the six russians seated at the table, they were at least familiar with the sequence in which the courses were being served, equating the spanish tapas with their own zakuski. (russian zakuski were originally served as beforeor between-meal tidbits, eaten with drinks, like spanish tapas, while standing up--but now they are customarily served as a kind of multi-dish first course of the meal itself, eaten as hors d'oeuvres at the table.) similarly, the serving of a soup course after the hors d'oeuvres and before the main dish was in keeping with the way that contemporary russians sometimes sequence the courses of a meal (if the meal is served in courses at all). and the idea of a cold soup for that course did not seem "foreign" to the russians (as cold soups do to many americans), because russian cuisine includes a number of cold soups made from beets, fruits, berries, and a wide variety of other ingredients. but tomato-based andalucian gazpacho was a revelation to our russian guests, who liked it so much they asked, rather sheepishly, if they could have second helpings of it. the main course was catalan-style pollo con vino tinto--american chicken leg quarters braised in hungarian red wine with local russian onions, garlic, and mushrooms, and slivers of danish ham--accompanied by a valencian-style rice cooked in israeli chicken stock with raisins, dried apricots, and walnuts from the caucasus. with this course we served a red-wine sangria, redolent of oranges and lemons steeped in brandy and mixed with a dry, fruity hungarian red wine. that spanish-style sangria turned out to be a special treat for the siberians, who all said they'd never tasted anything like it before. but dessert was the biggest surprise of all. to a chorus of delighted exclamations from all the guests, i placed the paskha in the center of the table for everyone to see before i scooped it into servings. but it was my turn to be surprised: none of the russians knew what it was. when i explained that paskha was a traditional russian easter dessert, dating back centuries into russian history, they all looked at me with blank faces. i went on to say that paskha is normally served with kulich--a tall, cylindrical, cardamomor saffron-scented, yeast bread, with white icing drizzled over its dome-like top. but only three of the russians were even vaguely aware of what a kulich was, even though several bakeries in irkutsk were selling kulichi that spring. as i explained the significance of these traditional easter desserts, i couldn't help but note to myself the irony of an american from texas introducing these sophisticated, highly educated, middle-aged russians to the easter foods that had once been well known to their own christian ancestors. i spooned the creamy paskha into individual dessert bowls and--continuing the iberian theme--surrounded each portion with a pool of spanish orange custard sauce, while my husband poured out more white wine and champagne. and three hours after sitting down to that spanish dinner, we all genially concluded the meal with glasses of osborne veterano spanish brandy (from a single bottle we'd found in the market the day before)--a familiar taste of spain that i certainly had never expected to experience while living in siberia. easter sunday: a siberian fusion-food feast the following saturday, the day before easter, i spent most of the day dyeing easter eggs to decorate our apartment and give as gifts to our friends. like most people in siberia, i had to improvise with whatever materials were at hand: onion skins tied onto some of the eggs with jute twine, strands of colored cotton yarn wrapped around other eggs, and a dye bath made of chopped beets boiled in water with vinegar, salt, and a touch o volume 21, number 1 a trinity of siberian easter-season meals sharon hudgins © sharon hudgins all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors after the breakup of the soviet union in late 1991, a number of major social, political, and economic changes began to occur in the newly established russian federation, the largest successor state to the former union of soviet socialist republics. democratic elections were held, many restrictions on foreign travel and on religious institutions were lifted, and both a market economy and a free press began to develop. a new class of relatively wealthy business-people (legitimate and otherwise) soon emerged, with plenty of russian rubles (and foreign hard currency) to spend at home and abroad. an increasing number of russians started traveling to countries that had previously been off-limits to all but a few select citizens of the soviet union. a wide variety of imported consumer goods--including foodstuffs that russians had never tasted before--began appearing on the dusty shelves of former state stores and in the open-air markets of every sizable city. church attendance rose dramatically, and the public observance of religious holidays was renewed throughout the country. many of these factors also began to have an effect, directly or indirectly, on the gastronomy of russia. russians who traveled abroad discovered new kinds of foods that had been unavailable in the soviet union. eating in spanish or french or greek restaurants, they encountered new dishes and different ways in which meals could be served. those who were interested in cooking brought back foreign recipes and new culinary ideas when they returned to russia. and at home, even those russians who never traveled to other countries could now purchase a wide range of new food products imported from a large number of nations around the world.1 with the increase of interest in religion, and the concomitant public observance of russian orthodox religious holidays, many culinary customs associated with these holidays were also resurrected. during much of the communist era, when religious practices were often actively discouraged by the government, special foods that were traditionally eaten on russian orthodox holidays were prepared, sometimes surreptitiously, by far fewer cooks than in earlier tsarist times. in many families, culinary-religious traditions were not passed on from one generation to the next, and many personal recipes for dishes with religious significance were lost when women of the older generation passed away.2 in the 1990s, however, after seven decades of relative dormancy, interest in these holiday foods began to increase as more and more russians began returning to the religious practices of their ancestors--or, if they were already believers, now more openly practiced their religion and followed the culinary traditions associated with it.3 this paper focuses on three very different types of meals that i ate (and, in one case, also cooked) in irkutsk, siberia, during a specific period of time in the spring of 1994, corresponding to pre-lenten carnival, lent, and orthodox easter sunday. each meal illustrates several aspects of the changes that were occurring in the society and economy of eastern siberia during the early post-soviet period. maslenitsa: festival food in irkutsk after several long months of siberian winter, march brought not only a gradually perceptible lengthening of the daylight hours, but also the festival of maslenitsa, the seven-day "butter week" celebration that immediately precedes the seven-week fasting period leading up to easter.4 maslenitsa itself is a secular festival--equivalent to shrovetide in britain, fasching (fasnacht, fasnet) in germanic countries, and carnival or mardi gras in many latin countries. all of these festivals date from pagan times, when people gathered during the spring equinox to chase away the evil spirits of winter, to make offerings to the sun, to celebrate the regeneration of life, and to welcome the return of warmer weather. in the christian era, russian maslenitsa evolved into a period of last-minute merrymaking the week before lent--a culinary orgy during which people devoured huge jen typewritten text 17 volume 21, number 1 quantities of circular bliny (yeast-raised pancakes, golden rounds symbolizing the sun), drenched in melted butter or smothered in sour cream.5 the name of the festival comes from maslo, the russian word for "butter" (and "oil"), in reference to the richest food consumed during the week before the beginning of the great fast, when believers abstained from eating meat, fish, eggs, animal fats, and dairy products for the next seven weeks. russian orthodox fasting guidelines also traditionally proscribed the consumption of meat during maslenitsa, which only reinforced people's desire to fill up on rich dairy foods during that time, before all animal products were prohibited during the great fast of lent and holy week.6 the maslenitsa celebration i attended in irkutsk on forgiveness sunday in march, 1994, was the first major public observance of that festival within memory of the middle-aged russians i knew in the city. throngs filled the public square in front of the municipal sports stadium downtown, where the main events were being held. hundreds of people in fur hats and fur coats, their breath forming clouds of condensation in the frosty air, milled about in front of an outdoor stage that had been set up on the square. over the stage, a row of huge animal masks made of red-painted papier-mâché perched above big signs advertising furniture, clothing, sports events, and investment companies. folk dancers in colorful costumes from different parts of eastern siberia performed to live and recorded music, while jesters and clowns worked the crowd. handsome horses, with rows of brass bells on their harnesses, provided pony rides for the kids and pulled sleighs full of revelers. and towering over the multitude was a giant effigy of maslenitsa--the old witch of winter herself--constructed of paper, cloth, and wood, her grotesque form covered with long red ribbons and straw streamers that rustled like whispered warnings in the chilly wind. opposite the stage, a long row of gaily decorated food stalls provided portable sustenance for the merrymakers. children and adults wandered from one display of food to the next, dividing their attention between the wares being hawked and the entertainers on stage--their ears tuned to the sounds of celebration, their noses turned toward the aromas of freshly cooked foods. at one stall, a hefty woman in a karakul-lamb coat cooked bliny on a tiny, fourburner, white-enameled gas stove that looked like it belonged in a museum of early twentiethcentury kitchen appliances. fresh from the skillet, the hot bliny were slathered with butter, sour cream, or jam, then handed to the customers on squares of hand-cut paper, while the vendor totaled up the bills on a wooden abacus. nearby, aluminum trays full of extra bliny, folded into quarters, awaited re-heating on the stove. and still other trays held bliny rolled into cones and filled with sweetened pastry cream. women wrapped in floral-printed shawls sold the most extensive array of baked goods i had ever seen in irkutsk: sweet and savory pastries, small rolls and buns, giant cookies and gooey layer cakes, all displayed on folding tables set up in the snow. other food stalls offered meat products traditionally prohibited by russian orthodox fasting guidelines during maslenitsa week: skewers of shashlik grilled over hot coals, small meatballs and large rissoles, savory buns with bits of fried bacon on top, cylinders of bread dough with a forcemeat filling. one vendor sold shiny boxes of commercially made candies. another stood stoically beside several cardboard boxes of unwrapped chocolate ice cream cones, with no fear of their melting in the frigid air. from the back of a truck, a woman handed out hot pizzas baked in a portable oven. and all this festive fare was washed down with cans of coca-cola for the kids, cups of hot tea for the women, and shots of vodka for the men. suddenly, at 2:30 in the afternoon on that snowy square in irkutsk, a big bonfire was set ablaze at the foot of the maslenitsa witch, and five minutes later all that remained of the frightening figure was a pile of harmless ashes. that entire day, the sky had been gray and cloudy, the weather cold and windy. but just after the witch's effigy burned to the ground, the clouds suddenly broke, the sun came out, and the snow began to melt, as if cued by god himself. march 13, that maslenitsa sunday, was the first day the temperature rose above freezing in irkutsk that year--once again confirming the ancient siberians' belief that banishing the barren witch of winter brings the onset of fertile spring. palm sunday weekend: a spanish meal in siberia the night before palm sunday, my husband and i had hosted a large dinner party at our apartment in irkutsk, for several of our russian and american colleagues from the university where we taught. for that special occasion, we wanted to serve a meal composed jen typewritten text 18 volume 21, number 1 of dishes that none of our guests were likely to have eaten before. as always in irkutsk, however, the ingredients available that time of year at the city's cavernous central market established the culinary parameters within which we could plan our menu. but our own knowledge of several foreign cuisines, coupled with the seasonal products and new imported goods that were finding their way into siberia's emerging market economy, made it possible for us to construct a spanish menu featuring a range of dishes from different regions of spain--even if it did take two weeks of diligent shopping to assemble all the ingredients needed for the dinner. despite the spanish theme, i wanted to serve for dessert a traditional russian easter paskha, a cheesecake-like pudding chock full of ingredients forbidden during lent: tvorog (a type of fresh white curd cheese), butter, egg yolks, and sour cream, the mixture sweetened with sugar and enhanced with vanilla, grated lemon zest, candied orange peel, and raisins soaked in brandy.7 a paskha is customarily formed in a pasochnitsa, a tall, four-sided wooden or plastic mold shaped like a truncated pyramid, or simply made in a ceramic or plastic flower pot if a special paskha mold is unavailable. but i had to improvise with the only mold i could find that spring, a 2.5-liter black plastic bucket. i poked holes in the bottom of the container, lined it with cheesecloth, packed the paskha mixture into it, placed a weight on top to compress the cheesy mass, and put the paskha into the refrigerator overnight, to let any liquid drain out through the holes. then, on the day of the dinner party, i inverted the paskha onto a serving plate, carefully slipped off the bucket, and decorated the cylinder of cheesecake with dark raisins, golden sultanas, and toasted almonds, forming flowers on one side of the paskha and the cyrillic letters "xb"--for "khristos voskrese" ("christ is risen")--on the other.8 the guests arrived at our apartment that evening not knowing what to expect for dinner. i presented each of them with a menu, in spanish, listing all the dishes we planned to serve, along with a russian easter card on which i had written, in english, the recipe for the dessert that night. lacking an appropriate spanish sherry for the aperitif, we began the meal with the only dry alcoholic beverages i could find in irkutsk, russian champagne and bulgarian white wine. these accompanied a selection of hot and cold spanish tapas: slices of spanish chorizo sausage and russian aged yellow cheese; fresh mushrooms sauteed in turkish olive oil with garlic and ham; galicianstyle squid seasoned with onions, sweet red peppers, paprika, olive oil, and lemon juice; baked white fish, served cold, garnished with onions, lemon, and fresh cilantro; a pseudoromesco sauce richly flavored with dried chipotle peppers that i'd brought from the united states; ensalada rusa, the spanish version of russian potato salad, bound with garlic mayonnaise; and plenty of fresh, chewy, yeasty flatbread, much like flatbreads i'd eaten in the eastern part of spain. after we had finished these tapas, i ladeled out bowls of cold andalucian gazpacho, showing our guests how to sprinkle the top of their soup with herbseasoned croutons and finely chopped bell peppers, cucumbers, and onions. although none of these spanishinspired dishes were familiar to the six russians seated at the table, they were at least familiar with the sequence in which the courses were being served, equating the spanish tapas with their own zakuski. (russian zakuski were originally served as beforeor between-meal tidbits, eaten with drinks, like spanish tapas, while standing up--but now they are customarily served as a kind of multi-dish first course of the meal itself, eaten as hors d'oeuvres at the table.) similarly, the serving of a soup course after the hors d'oeuvres and before the main dish was in keeping with the way that contemporary russians sometimes sequence the courses of a meal (if the meal is served in courses at all). and the idea of a cold soup for that course did not seem "foreign" to the russians (as cold soups do to many americans), because russian cuisine includes a number of cold soups made from beets, fruits, berries, and a wide variety of other ingredients. but tomato-based andalucian gazpacho was a revelation to our russian guests, who liked it so much they asked, rather sheepishly, if they could have second helpings of it. the main course was catalan-style pollo con vino tinto--american chicken leg quarters braised in hungarian red wine with local russian onions, garlic, and mushrooms, and slivers of danish ham--accompanied by a valencian-style rice cooked in israeli chicken stock with raisins, dried apricots, and walnuts from the caucasus. with this course we served a red-wine sangria, redolent of oranges and lemons steeped in brandy and mixed with a dry, fruity hungarian red wine. that spanish-style sangria turned out to be a special treat for the jen typewritten text 19 volume 21, number 1 siberians, who all said they'd never tasted anything like it before. but dessert was the biggest surprise of all. to a chorus of delighted exclamations from all the guests, i placed the paskha in the center of the table for everyone to see before i scooped it into servings. but it was my turn to be surprised: none of the russians knew what it was. when i explained that paskha was a traditional russian easter dessert, dating back centuries into russian history, they all looked at me with blank faces. i went on to say that paskha is normally served with kulich--a tall, cylindrical, cardamomor saffron-scented, yeast bread, with white icing drizzled over its dome-like top. but only three of the russians were even vaguely aware of what a kulich was, even though several bakeries in irkutsk were selling kulichi that spring.9 as i explained the significance of these traditional easter desserts, i couldn't help but note to myself the irony of an american from texas introducing these sophisticated, highly educated, middleaged russians to the easter foods that had once been well known to their own christian ancestors. i spooned the creamy paskha into individual dessert bowls and--continuing the iberian theme--surrounded each portion with a pool of spanish orange custard sauce, while my husband poured out more white wine and champagne.10 and three hours after sitting down to that spanish dinner, we all genially concluded the meal with glasses of osborne veterano spanish brandy (from a single bottle we'd found in the market the day before)--a familiar taste of spain that i certainly had never expected to experience while living in siberia. easter sunday: a siberian fusion-food feast the following saturday, the day before easter, i spent most of the day dyeing easter eggs to decorate our apartment and give as gifts to our friends. like most people in siberia, i had to improvise with whatever materials were at hand: onion skins tied onto some of the eggs with jute twine, strands of colored cotton yarn wrapped around other eggs, and a dye bath made of chopped beets boiled in water with vinegar, salt, and a touch of vodka for mordant. by the end of the day, i had bowls full of beautiful eggs, in colors ranging from various shades of brown to rose pink to bright red, with abstract designs printed on them by the onion skins and the yarn. a few minutes after i took some of the easter eggs to our russian neighbors, the babushka from next door presented me with two large duck eggs dyed a subtle beige color, with motifs like rice grains speckling the entire surface of the shells. at eleven o'clock that saturday night, my husband and i squeezed into a small car with our russian friends gennadi and natalia and their teenage daughter, iulia, to drive to the eighteenth-century znamensky convent church for the easter midnight service. the most important festival on the religious calendar, easter is celebrated at orthodox churches all over russia with a magnificent divine liturgy lasting several hours, culminating in the annual revelation of christ's resurrection. and afterward, at the homes of millions of believers, no expense has been spared for the special easter meal that breaks the long lenten fast--actually or only symbolically--a feast unequaled during the rest of the year.11 inside the church, in a small anteroom adjacent to the sanctuary, long boards set up on sawhorses and covered with white cloth served as temporary tables for the kulichi and baskets of eggs that had been brought to the church to be blessed. fifty or sixty kulichi of several sizes filled the tables, with more kulichi sitting in the deep window recesses of the room's thick stone walls. some of the kulichi were baked in the traditional tall cylindrical shape, but most were wider and shorter, made in fluted brioche pans. their rounded tops were decorated in a variety of ways: one was crowned with a cross made out of dough; another had "xb" traced on it with colored sugar granules; and many had white icing drizzled over the domes. stuck into the top of each was a tall, ivory-colored, pencil-thin, lighted taper, the cumulative candlelight casting flickering shadows like fitful spirits against the plain plaster walls. easter eggs surrounded many of the kulichi, and more eggs were displayed separately on plates and in glass jars. most of the eggs were medium brown, their color imparted by onion skins; only a few had been dyed with commercials colors--a yellow one here, a turquoise one there, standing out from the others like painted ladies at a prayer meeting. i was surprised there were no paskhi, however, because in many parts of russia paskhi are brought to the church along with the kulichi and dyed eggs, to be blessed before the traditional easter feast.12 gennadi and natalia had invited us and three other american colleagues to easter dinner at their home the next day. at one o'clock in the afternoon, with gifts of vodka and easter eggs in jen typewritten text 20 volume 21, number 1 hand, we arrived at their small apartment in a typical soviet-era highrise building that looked much like the ugly, crumbling, gray apartment building where we ourselves lived. but i was pleasantly surprised when i walked through their front door. gennadi and natalia's home was so strikingly stylish in decor that it could have been located in northern europe instead of southern siberia. boldly colored modern art hung on the white walls, some of the paintings done by gennadi himself. the tiny living room was almost filled by a divan and matching chair covered with a black-and-white zebra-striped cotton fabric. a black, upright, jugendstil-era german piano stood at one end of the room, while the remaining space was taken up by two tables pushed together to accommodate the eight of us gathered for the easter feast. on a small serving cart in the corner, a ukrainian easter bread, baked in a bundt pan and decorated with white icing and colored sugar sprinkles, sat on a cake plate covered with bright green paper cut to resemble grass, surrounded by several dyed easter eggs. three small candles stuck into the bread symbolized the holy trinity, and one large candle in the center signified the resurrection. never had i seen a russian dinner table set so beautifully. dainty white cloths had been spread over the surface. pretty pink-and-silver japanese porcelain plates defined each place setting, along with silver-plated flatware, pastel paper napkins, and the most extensive array of stemmed wine glasses i had ever encountered in a russian home: heavy cut-crystal sherry glasses from eastern europe, modern balloon-shaped red-wine glasses, and black-stemmed champagne flutes from france. (natalia was the only russian i knew who served champagne in flutes.) handmade, tulip-shaped place cards--cut from bright green, orange, and pink paper-indicated where each guest should sit. a crystal vase of silk daffodils graced the center of the table--the first time i had seen any flowers, real or silk, on a dinner table in a russian home. and a basket of five hand-painted, lacquered wooden eggs--each one a gift for a guest-completed the artistic table setting. competing for space on that elegant easter table were bottles of russian champagne, imported white wine, and vodka (both domestic and foreign), as well as the first-course zakuski that natalia brought out from the kitchen. gennadi began the festive midday meal with a formal champagne toast, after which we slowly drank the bubbly brew on empty stomachs as we savored the sunshine streaming through the picture window, warming our skin while the wine worked its wonders within. next came sherry glasses topped up with locally produced baikalskaia vodka, the smoothest vodka i had ever tasted. already giddy from these potent aperitifs, none of us refused a glass of imported lemon-flavored vodka, which we all proclaimed to be the best fruit-flavored vodka we had ever drunk. by that time, natalia was insisting that we eat some of the zakuski set out on the table: a large whole baked salmon, served cold, garnished with pickled green peppers and swimming in a red sea of lecho (the slavic rendition of french ratatouille); "herring in a coat," a cold appetizer from the baltic, made of salted herring fillets layered with sliced boiled potatoes and beets, all nestled beneath a mantle of mixed mayonnaise and sour cream; and a platter piled high with small rounds of flat pastry, each topped with mushrooms and red kidney beans combined with a thick sauce of pureed garlic, walnuts, tomatoes, and sour cream--a georgian specialty baked by siberian gennadi, and one of the most delectable zakuski that i ate during my entire stay in irkutsk. soon after we began nibbling on those hors d'oeuvres, gennadi and natalia suggested that we all drink a round of bloody marys, "russian-style." gennadi filled each balloon glass halfway with tomato juice, sprinkled in some salt and pepper, then placed a dinner knife at a 45-degree angle into the glass and slowly poured vodka down the knife blade until the clear liquor floated in a half-inch layer on top of the tomato juice. we all sipped this concoction as if it were another of the cold foods among the zakuski spread, as we complemented our hosts on their culinary accomplishments. perhaps we were too effusive in our praise, however, because when we finished those potent cocktails, gennadi insisted that--purely for purposes of comparison--we drink another round of bloody marys, this time "maryland-style." none of the five americans at the table knew what he was talking about. but who were we to refuse balloon glasses half-filled with a mixture of vodka and tomato juice, with chopped fresh cilantro on top? (cilantro? the style in maryland?) by that point, none of us was sober enough to dispute gennadi's assertion that these gargantuan cocktails had to be drunk the russian way, in one draw. once again russian reality had outpaced my expectations: never before in my life had i envisioned starting an easter dinner chug-a-lugging bloody marys in siberia. jen typewritten text 21 volume 21, number 1 my husband and i knew that all those delicious dishes on the table were merely a prelude to the main course. but our american colleagues--who had never been invited to a russian home for such a feast--ate and drank their fill of all the zakuski, with no notion of what was to come. so they were genuinely surprised when natalia brought out the next course: german-style beef rouladen, pounded pieces of flank steak with julienned carrots and pickled cucumbers rolled up inside, braised in the oven. the rouladen were accompanied somewhat incongruously by commercial shrimp chips from vietnam and crunchy potato sticks, like crinkle-cut french fries, from korea. as that multi-course easter meal progressed, i reflected that it might well prefigure the urban siberian cuisine of the future: a fusion of east and west, asia and europe, the old and the new, as forgotten recipes are resurrected, as a wider range of foodstuffs is imported into russia, and as more russians become acquainted with the cooking of other countries (through travel, cookbooks, culinary magazines, and foreign television shows).13 for the dessert course, natalia completely changed the table settings, once again demonstrating her flair for design. modern black, white, and gold porcelain chargers supported dessert plates dished up with molded pink gelatin topped with banana slices and slabs of rich russian vanilla ice cream. (for a moment i felt as if i'd been transported back to the america of my childhood in the 1950s, when such gaudily colored gelatin desserts were de rigueur at church socials and school cafeterias.) as if all this bounty were not sufficient to celebrate the resurrection of christ, natalia also passed around her own sweet ukrainian easter bread, as well as three desserts baked by gennadi's mother: a traditional russian kulich, hers crowned with raspberries; light, fluffy meringue cookies, made with the many egg whites left over from baking the kulich; and a large, rectangular, richly flavored blackberry pie, with lattice-work pastry on top. gennadi offered us snifters of remy martin cognac to complete the meal, but none of us was willing to waste such a treasure on our overloaded palates. so-six hours after we had arrived for that midday feast--we all sat around the table and finished off the remaining bottles of champagne and white wine, as the sky darkened outside, and natalia lighted the candles in the brass sconces on the piano, and iulia entertained us with selections from borodin and bach, ending with a rousing rendition of a scott joplin rag. conclusion these descriptions of three very different springtime meals in early post-soviet siberia illustrate a number of factors about foods in that region of russia at that particular time: (1) the kinds of commercially prepared foods, both traditional and modern, sold at maslenitsa, a municipally sponsored public street festival, recently revived in the post-soviet era, which is directly related to the religious season of lent that defines the dates of maslenitsa on the secular calendar; (2) the range of domestic and imported food products available in a major siberian city (irkutsk, population 650,000) in 1994; (3) the ways in which we (americans) were able to use ingredients available in siberia to produce a relatively authentic-tasting meal featuring dishes from another country and another climate (spain) half a world away; (4) the fact that some russians, whose ancestors were practicing christians, are no longer aware of the particular foods, such as paskha and kulich, that have traditionally been associated with easter, the most important religious feast day of the year; and (5) the ways in which a cosmopolitan, well-educated siberian couple combined the ingredients available to them, and their own knowledge of local and foreign cuisines, to produce an eclectic easter feast that incorporated culinary elements, both traditional and modern, from many parts of the world. although the optimism of the early post-soviet period has waned considerably as a result of subsequent economic, social, and political difficulties in the russian federation, i think it is reasonable to predict that russians' exposure to new food products, new prepared dishes, a wider range (and better quality) of cookware, tableware, and kitchen appliances, and different ways of constructing and serving the components of a meal--all may have at least some effect on the palates and culinary habits of those russians who are open to new ideas and experiences, and who are willing to experiment with the new, imported ingredients available to them. if the economic woes of the past few years prove to be only temporary, then the foodways of some russians may eventually be influenced even more--and in some cases, changed--by the increased importation of foods from all over the world, by the culinary experiences of foreign travel, by foods seen on foreign television shows broadcast in russia, and by the publication of more cookbooks and jen typewritten text 22 volume 21, number 1 culinary articles about cuisines from countries beyond the borders of the russian federation. acknowledgements portions of this paper are excerpted from the chapter on "feasts and festivals" in the other side of russia: a slice of life in siberia and the russian far east, by sharon hudgins (texas a & m university press, 2003). the author lived in asian russia from august 1993 until january 1995, where she taught at far eastern state university in vladivostok and irkutsk state university in irkutsk, while also doing culinary research in those parts of russia. references cited balzer, marjorie mandelstam, ed., 1992, russian traditional culture: religion, gender, and customary law. armonk, new york: m. e. sharpe. von bremzen, anya, and john welchman, 1990, please to the table: the russian cookbook. new york: workman. chamberlain, lesley, 1983, the food and cooking of russia. london: allen lane, 1982. reprint. penguin books. the domostroi: rules for russian households in the time of ivan the terrible, 1994, carolyn johnston pouncy, ed. and trans. ithaca, ny: cornell. glants, musya, and joyce toomre, eds., 1997, food in russian history and culture. bloomington, in: indiana. goldstein, darra, 1983, a la russe: a cookbook of russian hospitality. new york: random house. hudgins, sharon, 2003, the other side of russia: a slice of life in siberia and the russian far east. college station, tx: texas a & m. -----------, 1991: spanien: kueche, land und menschen. weil der stadt: haedecke verlag. hudgins, tom, 1997, onions with no bottoms and chickens with no tops: shopping for food in the emerging market economy of siberia and the russian far east, in food on the move: proceedings of the oxford symposium on food and cookery 1996, harlan walker, ed. totnes, uk: prospect, pp. 157-176. ivanits, linda j., 1989, russian folk belief. armonk, new york: m. e. sharpe. ivashkevich, n. p., 1990 paskhal'nyi stol: traditsii, obychai, kulinarnye retsepty [the easter table: traditions, customs, culinary recipes]. leningrad: smart. kengis, r. p., 1985, domashnee prigotovlenie tortov, pirozhnykh, pechen'ia, prianikov, pirogov [home preparation of tortes, small baked goods, pastries, gingerbreads, pies]. moscow: agropromizdat. kniga o vkusnoi i zdorovoi pishche [book about tasty and healthy food], 1955, moscow: pishchepromizdat. kovalev, n. i., 1984, rasskazy o russkoi kukhne [tales of the russian kitchen]. moscow: ekonomika. kukhnia narodov rossii: puteshestvie po uralu [cooking of the people of russia: a journey along the urals], 1993. st. petersburg: kvadrat. liakhovskaia, l., 1993, sekrety domashnego konditera [secrets of the domestic pastry-cook]. moscow: ekonomika. liakhovskaia, l., 1993, entsiklopediia pravoslavnoi obriadovoi kukhni: prazdniki, traditsii, obychi, obriady [encyclopedia of orthodox ceremonial cuisine: festivals, traditions, customs, rites]. st. petersburg: interlast. morozov, a. t., et al., 1993, kulinarnye retsepty [culinary recipes]. moscow: ekonomika. papashvily, helen, and george papashvily, with the editors of time-life books, 1969. russian cooking. time-life foods of the world. new york: timelife books. jen typewritten text 23 volume 21, number 1 russian traditional culture in siberia, 1991, soviet anthropology & archeology 29(4). russkaia obriadovaia kukhnia [russian ritual cookery]. 1991. moscow: kooperativa “repetitor.” sacharow, alla, 1993, classic russian cuisine. ursula zilinsky and courtney searls-ridge, trans. new york: arcade. starostina, l. a., and m. n. vechtomova, 1986, bliuda iz tvoroga [dishes made from fresh cheese], moscow: ekonomika. stechishin, savella, 1984, traditional ukrainian cookery. winnipeg, canada: trident. the russian cook book, 1924, princess alexandre gagarine, trans. london: william heinemann ltd. toomre, joyce, 1992, classic russian cooking: elena molokhovets' a gift to young housewives. joyce toomre, . bloomington, in: indiana. volokh, anne, with mavis manus, 1983, the art of russian cuisine. new york: macmillan. voth, norma jost, 1990, mennonte foods & folkways from south russia, volume i. intercourse, pa: good books. -----------, 1994, mennonite foods & folkways from south russia, volume ii. intercourse, pa: good books notes 1 see onions with no bottoms and chickens with no tops: shopping for food in the emerging market economy of siberia and the russian far east, by tom hudgins, in food on the move: proceedings of the oxford symposium on food and cookery 1996, pp. 157-176. 2 this is not to imply that all of these religious culinary traditions were dormant or lost during the soviet era. many older women still prepared certain traditional dishes for important holidays such as christmas and easter. but these practices were less widespread than before the communists came to power in 1917. in the soviet union, many adherents of christian religions (russian orthodox and others) kept their beliefs hidden from colleagues and friends, fearing reprisals from the state if their religious affiliation were discovered. hence, many of them also refrained from preparing and eating foods traditionally associated with christian holidays--or, if they did prepare foods such as paskha and kulich (associated with easter), they did not make a point of their religious significance. on the other hand, russian orthodox emigre communities around the world have maintained their religious culinary traditions, often as an important part of their russian identity, passing these traditions on from one generation to the next. 3 this paper focuses on culinary traditions associated with the russian orthodox church, which is by far the dominant religion in the russian federation. members of other christian churches in russia (e.g., roman catholic, lutheran, baptist), as well as adherents to judaism, buddhism, and islam in russia, have their own culinary traditions associated with particular religious holidays. 4 in the russian orthodox church, the period of lent is preceded by the secular festival of maslenitsa, which begins after vespers on meat fare sunday, the last day on which meat can be eaten before easter, eight weeks away. maslenitsa lasts for one week, until after vespers on the following sunday, known as forgiveness sunday. the seven-week great fast then begins, during which all animal products, including fish, are proscribed, except on annunciation day and palm sunday, when fish may be eaten, and on lazarus saturday (the day before palm sunday), when caviar may be consumed--these exceptions permitted as a foretaste of the resurrection. good friday is the strictest fast day of the year, with no food eaten at all. 5 russian bliny are medium-thin, yeast-raised pancakes, about 5 to 7 inches in diameter, made with buckwheat flour, wheat flour, or a combination of the two. they can be topped with many kinds of garnishes, including melted butter, sour cream, curd cheese, smoked or pickled fish, caviar, chopped hard-boiled eggs, mushrooms, chopped green onions, syrups, jams, and preserves. 6 russian orthodox fasting guidelines are meant to assist believers in their spiritual growth and, in the case of the great fast of lent and holy week, to prepare for paskha (easter), the greatest feast day (both spiritually and materially) on the church calendar. jen typewritten text 24 volume 21, number 1 7 there are many versions of russian paskha, both cooked and uncooked. in classic russian cuisine, pp. 233-239, alla sacharow provides recipes for fourteen different variations of paskha. many cooks have their own favorite recipe for this dish, often an old family recipe from which they never deviate. i have a siberian friend, born in irkutsk and raised farther north in iakutsk, who remembers her grandmother decorating their annual easter paskha with grains of millet colored with natural vegetable dyes (beets, berries, etc.). when making paskha, her grandmother always wore clean clothes and covered her head with a kerchief. she also believed that a woman having her menstrual period should never be allowed to make the family's paskha, because the paskha would spoil. 8 the russian easter cheesecake paskha should not be confused with the ukrainian easter cakelike bread called paska (note the different spellings; the words mean "easter" in russian and ukrainian respectively). ukrainian paska is a fat round loaf made from a yeast-raised dough often studded with raisins, which is shaped somewhat like italian panettone and usually topped with symbolic decorations made of dough, much like greek easter breads. (other ukrainian paski look almost identical to the slimmer russian easter bread kulich, which is a traditional accompaniment to the creamy paskha cheesecake in russia. see footnote number 9.) however, in some parts of central and eastern ukraine, where the ethnic russian and ethnic ukrainian communities overlap geographically, some ukrainians also call an easter cheesecake paska (note spelling again), the same term they use for their own ukrainian yeast-raised loaf-two very different types of foods. see norma jost voth's descriptions of different types of ukrainian easter paska in mennonite foods & folkways from south russia, vol. i, pp. 96-102, as well as paska and other easter foods in vol. ii, pp. 113-129. 9 tall, cylindrical kulichi, with their puffy, mushroom-shaped tops and drizzles of white icing are unmistakably phallic in appearance--a visual reference to the regeneration of life every springtime. (certain easter breads in france and italy also share this same anatomical form.) not surprisingly, there are a number of superstitions surrounding the preparation and baking of kulichi. in earlier times, large quantities of kulich were baked for easter, and women competed with their friends, relatives, and neighbors to see who could make the biggest, tallest, lightest, and puffiest kulichi--surely also a not-too-subtle reflection on the manliness of their husbands, given the suggestive shape of kulichi. (i have a recipe for kulich, published in 1924, that calls for 10 pounds of flour and 100 egg yolks, with the dough kneaded by hand for 1-1/2 hours.) the dough must also rise three times--not only a method of producing the tender, light texture desired, but also a symbolic reference to the holy trinity. the dough was often made on good friday, and the girls in the family stayed up all night with it, singing hymns while it was rising. it was considered bad luck if the kulich dough did not rise properly, or if the loaves fell during baking. so the women said a prayer and crossed themselves before putting the loaves into the oven, and they forbade any loud noises or disturbances in the house that might cause the kulichi to collapse. when the kulichi came out of the oven, some people placed them on their sides on a down pillow covered with a kitchen cloth and rotated the kulichi occasionally while they cooled, to keep them from collapsing. yet descriptions of this practice fly in the face of an old russian superstition which holds that a pillow on the table is a bad omen (perhaps because the dead are laid out on a table, too, with a pillow under their heads). could this custom for cooling kulichi have a double meaning: death (the pillow) and resurrection (the risen kulich)? perhaps as a way around this, another cook suggests letting the kulichi cool, on their sides, in a little hammock made by stretching a kitchen towel between two chairs. interestingly, i have soviet-era cookbooks published in russia in the second half of the twentieth century that contain recipes for kulich (with no reference to its easter or religious significance), but do not have any recipes for paskha (probably because the name of this dish means "easter")--although some do have recipes for paskha-like dishes that are not identified by that specific name. on the other hand, i also have russian cookbooks published in the late gorbachev-era and the early postsoviet period that do give recipes for (and have photographs or drawings of) both paskha and kulich, with explanations of their significance for the easter table. and i have three cookbooks, published in russia in 1990, 1991, and 1993, solely on the topic of russian orthodox ceremonial foods. (see bibliography.) 10 in russian households, paskha is always served with kulich (unlike the way i served it at jen typewritten text 25 volume 21, number 1 our spanish meal). first, the dome of the kulich is sliced off, horizontally, and set aside. then 1/2-inch-thick rounds are sliced off the kulich by cutting it horizontally, from the top down, and the dome is placed back on top of the remaining bread to keep it fresh. the paskha is either spread on the piece of kulich or served separately on the same dessert plate with a slice of kulich. 11 the only other holiday feast that rivals easter is the meal eaten on new year's eve, the most important secular holiday of the year, which is celebrated by many more russians than those who observe easter. 12 many sources depict, verbally or pictorially, paskhi, kulichi, and colored eggs taken to russian orthodox churches on holy saturday evening to be blessed by the priest. in some orthodox churches, believers take an entire easter basket of foods that will later be eaten to break the great fast of lent and holy week. these may include, according to local customs, not only paskha, kulich, and hard-boiled eggs (often dyed red, or ornately decorated with folk art motifs), but also butter (sometimes molded into the shape of a paschal lamb), bread, salt, horseradish, sausages, ham, and other meats--all carried to church in a basket used only for these blessed foods, covered with an ornately embroidered cloth used only for this purpose at easter-time. 13 in the soviet union, cookbooks were published about the cuisines of the various republics, and some of the ethnic groups, that made up the u. s. s. r., as well as recipe books about the cuisines of the eastern and central european countries allied with the soviet union. (my own collection of cookbooks published in the soviet union and in the russian federation of the early post-soviet period includes books on the cooking of the caucasus, estonia, belorussia, the kuban region, rumania, moldavia, czechoslovakia, uzbekistan, the tartar people, and the buriat people.) since citizens of the soviet union could travel more easily to the warsaw pact countries than to other countries of the world, they were much more familiar with the foods of eastern europe, the caucasus, and in some cases central asia, than they were with the cuisines of western europe, north and south america, and many asian countries. after the collapse of the soviet union, however--and along with the influence of the internet--there has been more opportunity for people living in the russian federation to access information, including culinary information, about countries throughout the world. and within russia itself, more cookbooks about foreign cuisines are being published (some are translations from books published in other countries), as well as culinary magazines such as the glitzy gastronom and the more down-home priiatnogo appetita! jen typewritten text 26 por.~ography, primitives, and postsocialist slovakia james quin, national university ofireland at maynooth introduction the commodified sexual body is a particularly interesting site for the examination of changes associated with postsocialist transition. in asking about the significance of bodies, katherine verdery tells us of an answer offered to her by jean and john comaroff in a personal communication: they [the comaroffs] suggest that changes in the global economy have made the body (as raw labor power) the only salable commodity that everyone has, and that advances in the process of its commodification (the sale of organs and sexual services, the marketing of smiles, etc.) place it at the forefront of capitalist development. (verdery 1999: 135, n. 13) not only has commodification of the sexual body been at the forefront of capitalist development, but it also offers a way of thinking about postsocialist transition, as suggested by sascha goluboff (2002) in saying that prostitution is a key metaphor for postsocialist transfonnation. in this article, i want to suggest that gay pornography produced in slovakia might offer some insight into the postsocialist transfonnations of images of slovak primitiveness. such pornographic images can be read as a queering of traditional and more recent figurations of slovaks as primitives and of slovakia itself as a primitive place, offering instead a more postmodern image of flexibility and lack of fixity. relationships between sexuality and nationalism have been the subj ect of much recent discussion and can be traced back to the influence of george mosse's groundbreaking work, nationalism and sexuality: middle-class morality and sexual nonns in modem europe (1985). mosse traces the ways in which middle-class ideas of morality and purity developed into sexual nonns which were appropriated by nationalist politics. in particular, he traces the association between these sexual nonns and the rise of nazism in germany. mosse demonstrates how the effeminacy of the homosexual was seen as contrasting with a nationalist ideology of manliness and thereby posed a threat to that manliness and its role in the nationalizing project. mosse (1985: 11) discusses "the masturbator's presumed passion for secrecy" and points out the ways in which the love of secrecy and the practice of vice not only made men and women outsiders in respectable society but was a danger to the security of the state. at a time when conspiracy theories of history were popular, the masturbator was viewed as a readymade conspirator against the state. (mosse 1985: 11) this argument can easily be extended to other periods when conspiracy theories were popular, for instance, during the cold war when the "(american) national political identification of homosexuality with domestic subversion" figured gay sexuality as "an alien presence, an unnatural because un-american practice" (edelman 1996: 158). a similar situation prevailed in the soviet union and its satellites at the same time, as laurie essig points out: in stalinist russia, the pervert was never a patriot. queers were fascists, fascists were queers. good citizens ­ always straight must control, punish, and eventually eliminate treasonous desires. (essig 1999: 5) the fear of penetration from outside, and of undermining from within, is focused on figurations of the body of the homosexual, the national concern being to maintain state! bodily continence in the face of a threatened laxity of statelbody boundaries. the fear in nationalist ideologies is of being "buggered." 99 this national concern with continence and the maintenance of hard borders may cause difficulties for projects, such as postsocialist transition, which imply the necessity of an openness to change, a willingness to be flexible. slovakia's nationalism after the end of the communist party regime in 1989 certainly seemed to partake of this hard­ bordered and often belligerent attitude in its antagonism towards domestic ethnic minorities and towards some of its near neighbors. changes of government since 1998 have tempered that image and paved the way for slovakia to become a member of the european union in 2004. in this article, i will examine first of all the ways in which a small-time professional pornographer in slovakia produces his material, giving an ethnographic account of his production process. in particular, i look at the ways in which he constructs particular ideas of slovakness and primitiveness in what are primarily export materials. i will follow that with a discussion of the ways in which different figurations of slovak primitiveness have evolved since the nineteenth century. starting with the romantic peasant of the nationalist movement, i trace the way in which the idea of primitiveness changes from being one of the peasant as untouched repository of tradition to the more recent manifestation of slovaks as nationalist thugs. i then consider the ways in which this image has been queered in recent times and compare this to the image of the slovak primitive as produced by the pornographer. making pornography pet'ko was a small-time professional pornographer capitalizing on the interest of distributors from western european countries and north america in pornography originating in eastern european countries. apart from pornography, he also made advertisements for slovak television stations. he had trained as a professional cameraman and saw pornography as a perfectly viable way of making a living, one that was far more lucrative than the advertising business. pet'ko told me he made contact with his models through internet chat rooms, but straight chat rooms, not gay ones. online, he said, he tells the boys that he is interested in photographing them naked and makes an arrangement to meet them. if he thinks they are suitable, he often goes ahead with videoing them more or less on the spot. an empty field or a patch of forest was all that was needed to provide an undisturbed location for his videoing, though if the weather was bad, he would use an indoor location, either his own flat in bratislava or a hotel in a local town. when i asked him about his models, pet'ko repeatedly used the adjective primitivny (primitive) to describe the type of men he preferred. he tends to video the type of boys he personally likes and these boys, he said, have primitivny qualities. they are a bit rough and imperfect, maybe even a bit stupid. he does not want them to have the good looks of fashion models or the perfect bodies of gym­ trained athletes. what he liked, he said, were those who look quite ordinary, those who might have a large nose, or bushy eyebrows, or some other feature that made them primitivny. in this sense, primitivny described men who were ordinary, usual, or common: a kind of "guy-next-door" look. it also describes men who contrast with the "cultivated" look of men in mainly american and western european videos, whose muscled and toned bodies are more evidently the product of the gym and the beauty parlor, and often the product of deliberate cultivation by porn company directors who invest heavily in developing the bodies of their models. the most important thing for pet'ko was that they have a good penis. it did not have to be particularly big, but it should not have any deformity or kink. a small penis, he said, can be made to seem larger but you can do nothing with a deformed one. pet'ko told me that he only uses straight boys and never gays. he said this was because straight boys are much better at getting and maintaining an erection than gays who are always worried about how they look on camera. he also had a preference for boys 100 from outside bratislava. the amount of money he offered for videoing might not seem a lot to someone living and working in the capital, but to someone from outside bratislava, it often represented half or more than half of what they might earn in a month, he said. country boys, he added, were less likely to pay attention to, or quibble with, the details of the contract they signed than the better-educated and street-smart city boys from bratislava. in this sense, primitivny described men who were naive, simple, even stupid, gross or unintelligent. pet'ko himself emphasized the stupidity of these men. most of them, he said, are doing it only for the money: to pay a mobile phone bill, or buy a new pair of jeans or trainers. they have no idea of making a career out of porn modeling. everything was only short­ term with them, he said. they had no sense of a goal or wanting to achieve something, no sense of investing in their own future. on the other hand, he claimed that he himself was working hard towards the future, reinvesting his money in his operation. he had recently bought new digital video cameras which allowed him to use the images as stills, and he was investing in new computer software and hardware which would allow him to do more of the work himself and cut down his use of expensive facilities houses. in their stupidity, these men could not see the opportunities that were open to them, opportunities that pet'ko was happy to take advantage of. even in this short account ofpet'ko's operation, it is possible to see something of pet'ko's invention of himself. it would be possible to view pet'ko simply as an opportunist, almost a scavenger. he does not waste money advertising for models and going through interviews or casting sessions. he makes contact at no cost to himself through internet chat rooms, and almost always videos the men he meets regardless of looks or any other criteria for suitability. the primitivny quality on which he laid so much emphasis might well be seen as making a virtue out of a necessity. though the money he offers is not insubstantial, most of the time it is not enough to attract good-looking or well-built young men, especially those from the city who might well know the scale of values in the local sex-business economy. in decrying the primitivny country men for their lack of interest in investing in the future, pet'ko glosses over his own lack of interest in investing in them. he offers only short-term once-off contracts (though he does retain certain rights to act on their behalf), and has no interest in extending himself to the promotion of a "stable" of porn models in the way that larger porn companies do. even his reinvestment in his own operation might be seen less as investment than as cutting costs. the digital video cameras that allowed him to obtain high quality stills from video images are a way of avoiding the cost of having to take still photographs on location with the extra time and money that involves. the new computer equipment meant that he could do more work from home, reducing his reliance on costly facilities houses. using outdoor locations also cuts down on the expense of rental for studios or other indoor locations, as well as reducing the need for expensive lighting equipment and the additional cost of time in setting up lighting for individual shots. whilst one might look at pet'ko's operation as opportunistic, it can also be seen as a flexible response to an uncertain situation. his lack of investment in a "stable" of models meant that he would not be encumbered with on-going commitments if business took a tum for the worst. likewise, his investment in his own equipment and facilities meant that he was a self-sufficient video producer, capable of doing almost all the production and postproduction work by himself~ thereby allowing him to offer potential clients a one­ stop shop for all video needs. he also demonstrated his ability to tum even the most primitivny of models into something one might want to watch, an ability which reflected both his professionalism and his knowledge of the market. through his directions, his use of magazine porn, and his editing, he turned reluctant, unsexy young men into porn performers. most important of all, pet'ko was well aware that image is vital. the accounts he gave of himself and his work 101 during our interviews gave the impression of a professional operator in charge of a slick operation which can almost magically transform primitivny slovak men into pom models. i asked pet'ko if i could view some of his material with him, and, on the day i went to visit him at his flat in the petrzalka suburb of bratislava, i was accompanied by our mutual friend robo. when pet'ko arrived to meet us at the bus stop, he was not in a good humor. he was waving a piece of paper which tumed out to be an e-mail from a pom distribution company in san francisco to which he had sent his latest video offering, masturbating boys. it seemed that they were not interested in what he was offering but, since pet'ko's english was not very good, he wanted me to translate the e-mail for him. the distributors in san francisco said they liked the material but were unsure what he was offering. they did not distribute anyone else's material, only their own. they were only interested in material in which models had sex with each other and not the kind of solo masturbation scenes in pet'ko's video. perhaps most frustrating for pet'ko, they referred to the poor quality of the video he had sent them. annoyed at the imputation of unprofessional and low-quality material, he called the americans kokoty (pricks) and shouted: "don't they know that this is only sample material? do they think i'm stupid enough to send them good quality material?" we made our way to his apartment which was typical of the panetak pre-fabricated blocks in petrzalka: a single room with a kitchen and bathroom, tastefully if sparsely decorated. while robo and i sat down on the couch, pet'ko brought some mineral water and glasses, and a large bar of chocolate which remained unopened. returning to a calmer, camper tone of voice, he announced that first we would have the entertainment and then i would help him write a response to the san francisco e-mail. the first video he put on was the same as the one he had sent to san francisco. in the middle of the screen, the name of his company flashed every couple of seconds. he said that this was a way of ensuring that no one pirated his sample videos since it was almost impossible to remove the flashing title. he ejected the cassette and put on another, the same material as the first but this time markedly better quality and without the flashing title. i asked if it would be possible to see the material as he videoed it, without any postproduction editing or dubbing. he said he could show me that, but thought that surely i wanted to see the finished product. i said i did, but that i also wanted to be able to see the difference between what he shot on location and what he finally produced. so he changed the cassette again. this time we got a version which had been copied directly from the original tapes and had been left uncut and with original location sound. we had been watching this tape for only a few minutes when robo announced that he did not find it at all sexy. we were watching a young man masturbating beside a bush near the top of a hill beyond which a television mast was barely visible in the distance. apart from the sound of the wind buffeting the microphone, there were only occasional words of direction from pet'ko behind the camera. pet'ko told robo this was not supposed to look sexy, adding that it was "james' idea" to watch the uncut version. robo said it was not just that, but that he did not find guys masturbating very sexy, that he preferred something with a bit more action. out of deference to robo, we fast-forwarded a little, pet'ko telling us that this guy went on a bit long before taking his pants down because he could not get an erection. pet'ko said he did not like his models to take their clothes off entirely and that he liked the viewer to be able to see some articles of clothing in each shot. this, he claimed, made it look a bit more realistic and natural, not like they were only models. he added that this also helped to hide things you did not want shown, like a bruise or cuts, or an ugly scar or tattoo. another scene was in a room that pet'ko told us was downstairs from his own apartment. the downstairs apartment was up for rent and pet'ko had a set of keys for it, as he wanted to buy the apartment. the owners, however, 102 were adamant they only wanted to rent it out, and pet'ko thought this was incredibly stupid, especially since he was willing to pay more than the market price and it had already been up for rent for some time without attracting any offers. the scene showed a young­ looking blonde-haired guy in a short-sleeved blue silk shirt. we watched for a while as he massaged the crotch ofhis pants which he slowly opened and pulled down to reveal white underpants. he continued massaging his crotch then pulled them down too to reveal a still limp penis. coincidental with his own . directions on the video, pet'ko told us that this guy had been unable to get an erection and that he finally had to give him some porn magazines in order to provide him with some stimulation. the magazines were clearly visible in some of the shots, and pet'ko pointed out that these shots were edited out of the final version so no one would see the boy looking at the porn. several of the scenes were located in forests. one of these scenes was set in a forest near trnava and in it a young man approached a car which had a rug thrown over the bonnet, lifted up his t-shirt and began to play with his nipples. pet'ko let out a long sigh, saying that this guy was just fantastic. evidently roma, pet'ko said this might appeal to a german audience who would think the young man was turkish. on the video, there was little of the direction from behind camera which was usual in the other scenes, and pet'ko told us the young man did all of it without any direction from him. as the young man pulled down his shorts, pet'ko was loudly smacking his lips. he fast-forwarded through the scene promising us a climax like none we had ever seen before. sure enough, the young man's ejaculation came out in long streams rather than short spurts. still licking his lips, pet'ko rewound the tape and played the ejaculation again. we watched as the young man pulled up his shorts and looked around, as if there might be someone watching, and then strolled off out of sight into the forest. robo commented that this was much more realistic than some of the other scenes where the young men looked into the camera, claiming that looking into the camera spoiled the fantasy. pet'ko answered that he was talking rubbish and that any man would like it when a nice boy looked at him. the next scene had pet'ko bouncing up and down with excitement. set in another forest, it showed a young man with a shaved head wearing jeans and a black t-shirt. he was lying on the ground trying to massage an average-looking penis into an erection. robo said straight out that it looked like the young man was having trouble getting it hard, and pet'ko admitted that the boy was a bit shy and had taken a while to get an erection. the next shot showed the boy looking down to his right where we could plainly see an open porn magazine. pet'ko said he always carried a few magazines with him in the car for just such an eventuality, reminding us that any shots showing the magazines would be edited out of the final version. we watched as the young man battered away at a half-hard penis and finally managed an unspectacular ejaculation with a lot of grunting. pet'ko said this boy was fantastic, but robo, laughing, said there was nothing in it to impress him. pet'ko let out a mock-horror gasp at the next scene which, apparently, had been shot by another cameraman who, pet'ko claimed, had no idea what he was doing because he was straight. the scene had been shot in the downstairs apartment and showed a rather ordinary young man with a shaved head who, when he took off his t-shirt, revealed a bit of a paunch. still gasping in horror, pet'ko stammered out that this model was only twenty and already he had a belly like a fifty­ year-old. apart from the ugly model, pet'ko pointed out a number ofbad camera angles which, he said, meant that the entire piece could not be used and was a waste of good money. the following scene, videoed by the same cameraman, also induced horror in pet'ko and he finally decided we had looked at enough videos. pet'ko asked me if i would kindly act as secretary while he dictated what he wanted to write to the american distributors. as i sat at the computer, pet'ko put on a cd of music he 103 had created for himself on the computer using a new piece of software. the music had been dubbed over the visuals on the final version of his masturbating boys video. in the end, the message sent to the american distributors pointed out that the material they had been sent was intended only as a sample and that it was low quality to avoid any possibility of piracy as he had had experiences with unscrupulous distributors before. if they were not interested in the solo masturbation videos, he could make one with couples or group scenes using whichever young men from the masturbating boys video they wanted. they could then distribute this video under their own label, or he could act as an agent on behalf ofthe boys if the american firm wanted to use them to make a video of their own. throughout this account, it is clear that pet'ko knows what image he wants to achieve and, even where his raw materials (the video images from his locations) are imperfect, he knows how to achieve the desired product. his models' difficulties in achieving and maintaining an erection are glossed over with the assistance of magazine pornography which makes no appearance in the final video. the images used in the final video, then, accord with pet'ko's vision of young men able to achieve and maintain erections unproblematically. likewise, their actions during the performances are not spontaneous but the result of direction from pet'ko himself. pet'ko's directions have the effect of making the men reproduce typical actions and poses from porn videos and probably not dissimilar from what they were looking at in the magazines that pet'ko supplied them with. these directions were later elided by dubbing music over the edited images, which, along with judicious editing out of any sign of the magazines, gives the impression of spontaneity. the fact that models keep some clothes on during the videoing allows him to disguise the unwanted images of scars, tattoos or bruises, giving all the bodies an appearance of a perfection they do not have. without the use of purpose-built sets, location lighting, or even make-up, what pet'ko achieves through the production and postproduction process is no different from what is achieved by any filmmaker. the effect, in the fmal edited video, is one of ordinary-looking young men masturbating unproblematically in ordinary­ looking locations such as forests and bedrooms. yet what pet'ko had achieved was also exotic. by eliding difficulties and showing ordinary locations peopled by ordinary young men, pet'ko is creating an especially exotic image of slovakia and of slovak men, the kind of exotic image which is typical fare in the gay porn market. pet'ko was not trying to create anything particularly innovative or unusual: he is largely reproducing the kind of images that are common in the gay porn market, though adding a certain amount of additional sales potential by emphasizing the slovak nature ofthe video. this is added to by the fact that his original letter to the san francisco company was headed with the word slovakia in such a way that no reader could be uncertain either about the country of origin of the material or the idea that the material was, in some way, a representation of slovakia. in this, however, pet'ko is trying to capitalize on the fact that, through the 1990s, a great deal of interest had been generated in porn originating in eastern european countries, and the fact that there was a ready market for this material in america and western europe, a market where the name slovakia was not unknown. queering i want to suggest here that pet'ko is doing something queer, or, rather, that he is queering something. i am using the word queer here as it is used in queer theory: if queer culture has reclaimed "queer" as an adjective that contrasts with the relative respectability of "gay" and "lesbian," then queer theory could be seen as mobilizing "queer" as a verb that unsettles assumptions about sexed and sexual being and doing. in theory, queer is perpetually at odds with the normal, the norm, whether that is dominant 104 -heterosexuality or gay/lesbian identity. it is definitively eccentric, abnormal (spargo 1999: 39-40). emerging from a burgeoning of gay and lesbian cultural studies and from new types of i activism in response to aids in the 1980s, queer theory's embrace of a pejorative term marked a radical change in the perception of i power politics. queer theory makes extensive i use of elements of derridean deconstruction, and of foucauldian analysis of the discursive construction of sexuality. the discursive i construction of sexuality has been taken up by queer theorists such as judith butler, eve kosofsky-sedgwick and d. a. miller who i argue that identity (and sexual identity in particular) is not essentialist but is produced in a material reality which itself is mediated through discourse. thus, identity is a simulation, and, for butler for instance, gender is perfonnative. i i queer theory, then, participates in a troubling of accepted values and ofapparently natural distinctions. queer theory queers the issues with which it engages, undermining apparently stable categories and insisting on the simulated and perfonnative aspects of i identity. the appropriation of the pejorative term "queer" is part of this queering, an appropriation that acts both to remind the reader of homophobic prejudice and to suggest a form of criticism that uses a pejorative signifier of transgressive desire and sexual instability as a metaphor to describe a category that goes beyond categories (sim 1998: 345). in disrupting accepted ideas about categories, queering raises questions about the proper relations between things, about the very distinctions between proper and improper, propriety and impropriety, appropriate and inappropriate. in doing this, it disrupts the proprietorial relations between things, troubling notions of ownership and possession. queering is about appropriation, or reappropriation, or even misappropriation. mixing these two senses of the proper and the proprietorial, queering can be seen as inappropriation, as a form of interference, of parasitism. it can be seen as conducting raids on the strongholds of everyday life by undermining them, tunneling inside them, turning them inside out. it creates new and troublesome juxtapositions between things, demonstrating possibilities and flexibilities, just as it weakens the bases of what is solid, fixed, and rigid. queering is bending the rules rather than breaking or remaking them, bringing out the flexibility that is masked by the appearance of rigidity. indeed, playing with appearances is central to queering. being something, or having an identity, is made troublesome by the possibilities created by giving the appearance of something, of passing as something, or parodying, citing, or reiterating something. queering is "fucking with" something. queer theory might seem a long way from the realities of life in postsocialist slovakia and yet queer was a word i heard often. the word most commonly used to refer to the men who go to public places (such as parks, forests, public toilets) looking for sex was huzeranti. buzerant (pi. buzeranti) may be translated into english as 'queer', 'faggot', 'homo', or 'bugger'. it carries the same pejorative sense in slovak as these nouns carry in english, though in slovak, use of the word huzerant also extends to contexts where, in english, we might be more likely to use, for instance, 'troublemaker'. used in reference to each other by men who frequent public sex sites, buzerant loses most of its pejorative sense and becomes somewhat more affectionate. pet'ko used these sites as locations for his videos and i conducted interviews with him at these sites on a few occasions. we would wander around with pet'ko giving out in his mildly camp manner because there were not enough buzeranti there (by which he meant queers), but he also frequently warned me against bringing my wallet, or any money or jewellery when visiting such sites as they were frequented by buzeranti (by which he meant troublemakers). these latter buzeranti were often young men posing as sexually available who might be more inclined to rob you or beat you up than to have sex with you. 105 the use of buzeranti in these twin senses reflects the meanings of the verb buzerovat' from which the noun buzerant is derived. where buzerovat' appears in slovak-english dictionaries, it is usually translated as 'to ride'. this translation corresponds with the english passive use ofthe verb 'to ride' whereby one might be 'ridden' with guilt, or 'ridden' with anxiety, for instance. buzerovat' has a number of synonyms, in particular obt'aiovat' and suiovat'. obt'aiovat' may be translated as 'to accost', 'annoy', 'intrude', 'molest', 'tease', 'trouble' or 'worry'; obt'aiovatel'translates as 'molester', and obt'aiujuci as 'meddlesome'. suzovat' may be translated as 'to affect', 'badger', 'harass', 'lacerate', 'obsess', 'rack', or 'vex'. these senses correspond closely to the troublesome nature of the english "queering." slovaks as primitives so what is it that pet'ko is queering in his videos? i want to suggest that what he is queering is the very notion ofprimitivny which he used so often in describing the kind of men he wanted to video. to understand this a little better, i want to examine briefly ideas about slovak primitiveness that have been used at various times, both before and since the fall of the communist party regime in 1989. many romantic nationalist movements of nineteenth-century europe sang the praises of the idealized peasant, and the slovak movement of the time was no different. the movement was led by ~udovit stur (1815­ 1856) who was born into a country that was known only as the upper provinces of hungary, as it already had been for hundreds of years. increasing magyarization, accompanied by political and cultural oppression in the 1830s and 1840s, provided the impetus for slovak cultural renewal, and, as a student, stur became involved in organizations promoting slovak language and culture. he codified one of the dialects of slovak and his new language was soon accepted as "the" slovak language,and became the basis for a national movement against increasing hungarian oppression. this new language was used by many of the poets in the group around stur to write poetry expressive of the simplicity of an idealized slovak peasant life. stur and his associates (sturovci or sturites) took the opportunity of the revolutionary year of 1848 to try and push forward their nationalist aims. with backing from austria, they joined slav fighters against hungary, but met with little success. as a result of his involvement, stur was kept under surveillance for the rest of his life. according to wallace (1976), stllr "took to writing slavdom and the world of the future, which was really a testament of despair. for the slovaks he saw no prospect within the habsburg empire and their only hope lay in an ultimate link with russia" (68). though he died at the age of forty-one in a hunting accident, stur had become the father of the slovak language and forefather of the slovak nation. he was buried at modra just outside what is now bratislava. the sturite romantic image presents the slovak peasant as primitive in the sense of being "virgin," unsullied by centuries of domination and oppression. in important ways, this pristine state ofthe peasant has been maintained over centuries by living in remote mountain villages, remote from the penetration ofthe non-slav hungarians. thus, the tatra mountains become something of a national romantic symbol, emphasizing this remoteness and persistence. the romantic image of the peasant is also a figuring of slovakia and of the slovak nation which, like the peasant, has remained unsullied by domination, maintaining its essential integrity and now ready for awakening. the slovak nation, then, was embodied in these imagined romanticized peasants and their peasant lifestyle. however, despite the development of a national language and the beginnings of a national movement, hungarian domination continued until the establislunent of the first czechoslovak republic in 1918. while the establishment of czechoslovakia represented some independence for slovakia, slovaks began to feel increasingly dominated by czechs. czechs and slovaks had been 106 i i brought together in a cormnon cause against austro-hungary, yet the fraternal relations were never entirely balanced. czechs considered slovaks not simply as "brothers" but as "little brothers," an attitude that reflected the czech sense of superiority and which developed into an antagonistic relation which continued up to and even after the break-up of czechoslovakia in 1993. ladislav holy quotes from karel kalal, writing in 1905, on this "brotherhood": the czech is the elder and the slovak the younger brother. the younger brother is usually inclined to believe that the elder aims in his advice only at his own advantage. he rejects your helping hand, he kicks you...and what about you, elder brother? your duty is to look after the younger brother even more carefully, to make sure that when alone he will not lose his way or drown. (kalal cited in holy 1996: 104) holy's concern is with the development of the idea of the czech nation and he details the ways in which czechs developed their image of themselves and their nation largely through a sense of difference from slovaks. thus, the image of the healthy slovak lad in his folk costume correlates not only with an image of an exotic other but also with an image of youth and connotes a more general image of the young slovak as against the old czech nation. (holy 1996: 104) this image of the "healthy slovak lad" is derived from the sturite nationalist romantic peasant image but, here, slovaks are imagined by czechs as "people without history" (see wolf 1982) in a primitivization or infantilization of the "little brothers." the image of the slovak peasant lad comes to embody an unalterable essence which defies czech efforts at civilizing it. slovak inexperience and the inclination toward authoritarianism, embodied in this image of the slovak lad, were then used to justify the application of czech paternalism, and resistance to that paternalism could be construed not just as ungrateful but also as typical. as holy puts it: "slovak" frequently evokes the image of the well-built lad in folk costume ­ wide white trousers, a wide leather belt with strong brass buckles, and a short linen shir1 which leaves his bare stomach exposed brandishing an ornamental long-handled axe and singing a mournful folk-song. this image is the creation of a whole range of artists, filmmakers, and journalists, many of them slovaks, aimed at demonstrating their appreciation of ordinary slovak folk. however, among czechs it perpetuates the belief that if it were not for their own civilizing efforts, the slovaks would still be walking around with their bellybuttons exposed. in this imagery, the slovak is an exotic other living in a traditional and picturesque mountain village, and slovakia is an exotic and unspoiled wild country epitomised by the rocky mountains of the high tatra, slivovitz, and ethnic dishes made of sheep cheese. (holy 1996: 103) the antagonism of slovaks towards this brand of czech paternalism continued throughout the first czechoslovak republic. right-wing nationalist parties in slovakia, such as the hsr:s party of catholic priest andrej hlinka capitalized on the perceptions of mistreatme~t by the czechs at the same time as they drew their voting strength from the rural areas of slovakia. however, czech fears of the slovak inclination towards authoritarianism seemed to be confirmed by the declaration of slovak independence in march 1939 which led to the imposition of the nazi protectorate of bohemia-moravia in the czech lands. the wartime fascist regime in slovakia seemed to emphasize the thuggish nature of the peasant image, at once traitorous and welcoming of authoritarianism. even under the communist party regimes from 1948, the antagonism between czechs and slovaks continued with 107 constant slovak pressure for proper pridham notes that, in international relations, federalization which, despite several efforts, "the tenn 'pariah states' is more or less was never achieved. the propagation of the interchangeable with 'rogue states'" (pridham "new socialist man" under the communist 2001: 69). a key part ofpridham's definition party regimes emphasized the easternness of of pariah states is the issue of national image. the sturite peasant ideal, though giving quite a he notes, for instance, that "rightly or different twist to the actuality of slovak wrongly, slovakia was perceived abroad as peasant life. under communism, slovakia was being more at fault [in the split-up of resolutely eastern-facing, participating in the czechoslovakia], as the home-wrecker in the authoritarianism to which slovaks were prone velvet divorce" (85). in this figuration, the according to the earlier czech models. body politic and the politician's body become interestingly, both alexander dubcek, who interchangeable. meciar was proud of his led the efforts to change communism from background as a boxer, and this pugilism, within, and gustav husak, who replaced added to by his anti-democratic tactics, dubcek and oversaw the period of engendered an image of him, as a slovak, as "normalization" which lasted up until the end being a bully, an image that was easily of 1989, were both slovaks. devolved onto slovakia itself which then the end of the communist party regime in 1989 and the subsequent elections polarized the arguments between czechs and slovaks. the antagonistic relations between vladimir becomes a "home-wrecker," a rogue or pariah state. meciar's appearance and behavior during election campaigns compounded this image: meciar, leader of the largest slovak political in the election campaign meciar, like party, and vaclav klaus, leader of the largest a mountain of flesh, held the anabolic­ czech party, increased thc likelihood of a filled american body building world split. meciar's lack of compromise in his champion 111 his anns, opened dealings with klaus may have seemed the incomplete motorway sections only way forward for slovak nationalism, but accompanied by film stars like a it was also an indication of things to come. super-bull, and chopped wood on perhaps not surprisingly, meciar's position as television like a woodcutter until he father of the slovak republic after 1993 gave broke the axe's handle. (zajac 1999: him a new arrogance, and his authoritarianism 300) grew over the following years. having refused to bend in his dealings with klaus, meciar was not about to bend in dealing with anyone else either. national continence could only be maintained by a refusal to bend, a refusal to have the newly independent nation bow to demands either from ethnic minorities (particularly hungarians and roma) within this image of the bull-necked bully has clear resonances with kalal's depiction of the slovak "younger brother" quoted above and zajac extends it to the competing images of "old nation" and "young state" which resonates clearly with earlier czech figurations of slovaks: slovakia, or from others outside slovakia the rhetorical figure of the "young (particularly the european union). thus, state" became an institutional excuse having successfully opened negotiations with for every problem of state offices the european union (eu) and the north from the bad performance of a clerk at atlantic treaty organization (nato), a post office counter to governmental meciar's anti-democratic actions and instructions that diplomats should increasing authoritarianism resulted in both improve the slovak republic's organizations suspending negotiations with reputation by serving sausages at slovakia, and slovakia became a "pariah" receptions. in this context, to be state. young means "adolescent," "pubertal" and "immature." someone who can 108 ------------------............... not control himself. someone who throws his arms about, behaves like a bull in a china shop. who has spots of awakened sexuality on his face. someone who easily gets stressed and even more easily offends. it is not a young, blushing "blossoming girl," but a clumsy fighter, who overestimates his strength and learns a hard lesson, a "lout," who gets drunk for the first time in a pub, mixes his drinks and the next morning has the first hangover of his life ... but this biological metaphor does not work in today's highly structured world of labels. at home it leads to the inability to deal with basic institutional problems, abroad it led to negative promotion, oscillating between the position of a pupil asking for praise from his teacher and a tearaway who throws stones through the classroom windows and complains that no-one likes him. (zajac 1999: 290-1) the bully image gained currency not just within the government but on the streets as well. the sense that the country was deteriorating under the meciar regimes was added to by increasing violent crime and "gangsterism" on the streets. slovak "gangsters" go by a variety of names and nicknames, one of which is hlavohrud. this translates directly into english as 'head-chest' though we might render it better as 'no-neck' or 'bullneck.' it describes the almost unifonn appearance of the bodies of these men as a shaven head attached to a thick-set muscular body in such a way that they appear not to have any neck at all, just a head stuck on a chest. the bullish image of slovakia did not go unchallenged. in his article, zajac notes the way in which the boxer image promoted by meciar was contrasted in the 1998 election campaign with the marathon runner image of the opposition leader, mikulas dzurinda, emphasizing the differences between autocrats and democrats, between symbols of roughness and endurance. zajac also wryly points out what both leaders have in common: "success in sports, high performance in a field that is more understandable for people than politics" (301). in the election campaign of september 2002, when there appeared to be a real chance that meciar would return to power, attempts continued to try to undermine the bullish image of slovakia. queer primitives the slovenska demokraticka a krest'anska unia (or sdku: the slovak democratic and christian union), the party of out-going prime minister mikulas dzurinda, took modra je dobra (blue is good) as its slogan for the 2002 election campaign, though no one seemed to be quite sure what the slogan meant. the sdku started its official campaign a month before polling day in the town of modra (blue) just outside bratislava where they released five thousand blue balloons, ran competitions and provided entertainment, and ended the day by painting the house in which i3udovit' stur had died blue. as a piece of political theater, painting smr's house blue caused no small amount of outrage, and bewildered many onlookers and commentators who asked if such a national monument was a suitable requisite for political campaigning. for most, it was an entirely inappropriate thing to do, almost a desecration of national property: an inappropriation of still. yet, in symbolic terms, it can be seen as an attempt to shift away from sturite nationalism towards entry into the european union and nato. in the wake of the revolution of 1848, still had believed that the only hope for slovak nationalism lay in russia to the east and in a unified slav opposition to austria-hungary. (the slovak word rychod translates as 'east', 'sunrise' and 'exit'.) in 2002, many now felt that this view to the east had been thoroughly discredited by successive communist party regimes from 1948 to 1989, and by the authoritarianism of the meciar regimes. looked at in this way, what the sdku were attempting in repainting smr's house blue was nothing less than a symbolic reorientation of stur and slovakia from east to west, from red to blue, from the red flag of communism to 109 ,41 r the blue flag of the european union. turning stur blue was also an attempt to reorient the sturite romantic imagining of the slovak peasant, turning it from a drunken, home­ wrecking slav to a sober, cooperative european. it was an effort to show how inappropriate the ideals of nineteenth-century romantic nationalism were to the early twenty-first century situation of slovakia within europe, corresponding with european notions of nationalism as anachronistic. similar efforts at undermining the bullying peasant image can be seen in the writings of slovak novelist peter pist'anek. the central male characters in his novels are depictions of uncouth hlavohrud types which pist'anek satirizes: probably the most popular of the writers to emerge after the changes was peter pist'anek, the target of whose satire is constantly one variant or other of sturite easternizing. the grotesque, the slapstick parody gangster novel, rivers of babylon (1991), tells of the postcommunist rise to riches of a muscular, uneducated, greedy bully of a country boy. although this country boy is of magyar background and balkan name, racz, he embodies the upper hungarian peasant sweetly besung by stur and loudly bemoaned as a stinking sot by (anti-sturite) launer. .. the eponymous slovak peasant of the title of mlady done (young done, 1993) constitutes an even more grotesque satirical embodiment of the stur ideal than racz. (pynsent 1999: 18) pist'anek's satirizing of the contemporary manifestation of the sturite peasant also begs the question of what it means to be a man in contemporary slovak society, and this question is taken up by the so-called "genitalist" school of writers which sprang up in pist'anek's wake: two things characterize the genitalists, an ironization of male genitalia and an explicit concern in their fiction with modern theory, especially french varieties ... furthermore, the genitalist may not mention genitals at all. female genitalia constituted a "daring" topos of the 1980s and early 1990s. the genitalists' concern with male genitalia manifests the impact of feminism (they ironize maleness, and, indeed, male insecurity faced with feminism); they probably also ironize the "phallicity" of slovakness. (pynsent 1999: 22) the ironization of phalli city can be considered as another extension of efforts to deal with manifestations of the slovak peasant, in particular, to undermine and subvert such manifestations, and we can see a further extension of this in what i suggest pet'ko is doing with his primitivny young men in his videos. perhaps the most significant part ofpet'ko's images ofprimitivny slovak men has to do with the sense that he produces them as an advertisement. this is not just an advertisement about slovakia, but an advertisement to fantasize about these young men's sex. in the images that are presented to the viewer, these young slovak men are depicted not as sexually continent but as incontinent: ordinary-looking young men are presented as masturbating in forests, on the sides ofhills, in rooms, on the bonnet of cars. in fact, it seems as if they are masturbating everywhere and anywhere. in addition, these young men are ordinary-looking enough to give the impression that it is all slovak men who are like this. despite claiming that some of the men were downright ugly, pet'ko included them all in the final video on the assumption that someone might fmd them attractive and therefore purchase the material. these men are not particularly handsome, or well-built, and most of them have very average penises, thus adding to the fantasy that this is not studio-based, that these are not "cultivated" models, that, in fact, they are just slovaks. yet it remains a fantasy, one that is created primarily in pet'ko's postproduction 110 -----processes, and this play between fantasy and the reality has queer aspects. pet'ko's particular enj oyment of the skinhead he had videoed, and his contrasting horror of the skinhead videoed by another cameraman, seems to me to indicate the ways in which pet'ko reveled in the possibility of undermining, of fucking with, the image of the hlavohrud. there is nothing particularly new in queering the skinhead image. murray healey's work (1996) gives an interesting account of the ways in which the skinhead image has been appropriated by gays. following the theories of performativity developed by butler, and the ways in which drag has been exemplified as a form of perfonnativity, the appropriation by gays of the skinhead image is seen as an example of queer theory in practice. the fact that gay men "pass" as skinheads undermines the notion that all straight men are straight. that is, if a skinhead who appears to be straight is in fact gay, then, chances are, there are other skinheads and straight men who are not straight either. (these ideas have not gone unchallenged even among queer theorists: the relations between "passing" and racial oppression in particular are hotly debated. see lloyd (1999) for one discussion of this.) leo bersani demonstrates that a similar fear of "passing·' is behind the american debate on gays in the military and the compromise policy that was reached: perhaps the most serious danger in gay marines being open about their gayness is that they might begin, like some of their gay civilian brothers, to play at being marines. not that they would make fun of the marines. on the contrary: they may find ways of being so marine-like that they will no longer be "real" marines... what passes for the real thing self-destructs from within its theatricalized replication. the imaginary negates the real to which it purportedly adheres. in imagining what he presumably already is (both gay and a marine), the gay marine may learn the invaluable 111 lesson that identity is not serious (as if what he is imitating never existed before it was imitated). (bersani 1995: 17-18) bersani develops this ar6'1lment with reference to d. a. miller (1992) who argues that there is a difference between the macho straight male body (as "the body that can fuck you, fuck you over") and the gym-body of gay male culture, and goes on to add: even the most macho gay image tends to modify cultural fantasy about the male body if only by suspending the main response that the annored (macho straight male) body seems developed to induce: if this is still the body that can fuck you, etc., it is no longer ~ quite the contrary ~ the body you don't fuck with. (miller 1992: 31) pet'ko's production ofprimitivny young slovak men does something similar. pecko remakes the continent and impenetrable body of the primitivny peasant as a flexible and ambi6'1l0us body. yet these are not presented as images of gay men: they might be gay men passing as straight, or straight men passing as gay. what matters is the ambif,'1lity, the fact that they are not essentialized as one thing or another. the fact that he advertises his video as being from slovakia emphasizes the representative nature of the material: it is intended to show what slovakia is like. yet his use of t)l)ical romantic, touristic locations is an inappropriation of these sites, an inappropriation that plays with the traditional romantic significance of rurality in images of slovak peasants. the locations and even the men may appear stereotypical, but what they are doing and how it is presented are not only not stereotypical but also undennine the very meaning of the stereotypical images, rendering them useless. significantly, in his offer of services to the american distribution company, pet'ko does not limit his or their options but offers the widest range of possibilities, demonstrating his openness to negotiation: he is willing to offer whatever they want to buy, and both his products and his young men share this ... --~~ ----------~~~----........................... ------~--------------------­ flexibility. on the other hand, pet'ko's reaction to the e-mail he received from san francisco showed that he was not willing to suffer the possibility of being treated as ifhe were in some way primitive as a producer. in particular, he found the accusation that his material was poor quality offensive, since he prided himself on the up-to-date technology he used in his productions. in his e-mail back to them, he seemed keen to emphasize the flexibility of his services but also to make the americans aware that he was not about to be exploited or manipulated. ifhe was queering primitive images of slovaks, presenting the body you don't fuck with as at least offering flexible possibilities, he was also keen to present himself, as a slovak, as someone who was not to be fucked with at the same time as offering flexibility. he puts into circulation images of men without fixed identities, images that are flexible because ambiguous. conclusion in her work on the political uses of dead bodies, katherine verdery demonstrates the ways in which the traumatic dislocation of the end of communist party regimes required the reordering of meaningful worlds (verdery 1999). this reordering is often accomplished through the manipulation of dead bodies, through the movements of statues embodying particular histories or through the movements of dead bodies, disinterred and reinterred. the circulations of dead bodies that she describes are attempts to fix a new order of things, primarily by establishing dead bodies in new national genealogical orders. yet, in important ways, it is less the fixing of these bodies in a new order than their adaptability and ambiguity that is useful. the fact that they can be resignified in particular ways to suit particular needs makes their ambiguity apparent. and this has resonances with areas of contemporary critical thinking in relation to postsocialism and identity. elsewhere, verdery discusses the "fuzzy" nature of property which undermines commonly-held notions of property (1999a) and a similar concern about the "fuzziness" of citizenship and ofborders can be seen in fowler (2002) and batt (2002). dunn (1999) shows the ways in which notions of communist inflexibility are undermined by workers' i1exible practices in a polish factory. such f1exibility is not unique to postsocialist transition: it has resonances with the kind of flexibility martin (1994) sees in contemporary american society, and the kind of flexibility that is associated with contemporary postmodern theories of identity. zygmunt bauman, for instance, sees the lack of fixed identity as a strategy in postmodern life: and so the snag is no longer how to discover, invent, construct, assemble (even buy) an identity, but how to prevent it from sticking. well­ constructed and durable identity turns from an asset into a liability. the hub of postmodern life strategy is not identity building, but the avoidance of fixation. (bauman quoted in miles 2001: 96) likewise, colwell (1996), discussing the work of deleuze and butler sees the maintenance of fluidity as a way of subverting the categories of subject positions and the essentializing forms of the politics of the self. pet'ko uses images of young slovak men that give the appearance of romantic peasants of the sturite type, even locating them in the same kind of rural environment praised by the sturovci. yet the images he produces are far from being stereotypical of the kind of essentialized slovak peasant that became other to the czech self. indeed, what he produces are images of de-essentialized young men. pet'ko, in demonstrating the ambiguity of his models and the f1exibility of his production operation, queers older ideas of slovak primitiveness, and resists new attempts to primitivize or to impose primitiveness. references cited: batt, judy. 2002. "'fuzzy statehood' versus hard borders: the impact ofeu enlargement on romania and yugoslavia" working paper 46/02, esrc "one europe or several?" programme, sussex european institute, university of sussex, www.one-curope.ac.uk 112 http:www.one-curope.ac.uk i i bersani, leo. 1995. homos. london: harvard university press. i burawoy, michael and katherine verdery ~ (eds.) 1999. uncertain transition: ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world, london: rowman & littlefield publishers. colwell, c. 1996. "discipline and control: butler and deleuze on individuality and dividuality," philosophy today, spring 1996. ~ dunn, elizabeth. 1999. "slick salesmen and simple people: negotiated capitalism in a privatized polish firm." in: burawoy and verdery, eds. (pp. 125-50). edelman, lee. 1994. homographesis: essays in gay literary and cultural theory. london: routledge. essig, laurie. 1999. queer in russia: a story of sex, self, and the other. london: duke university press. fowler, brigid. 2002. "fuzzing citizenship, nationalising political space: a framework for interpreting the hungarian 'status law' as a new fonn of kin-state policy in central and eastem europe" working paper 40/02, esrc "one europe or several?" programme, sussex european institute, university of sussex, www.one-europe.ac. uk goluboff, sascha. 2002. "prostitution: a key metaphor of post-socialist transformation." new directions in post-socialist studies 20(2): 9-12. healey, murray. 1996. gay skins: class, masculinity, and queer appropriation. london: cassell academic. holy, ladislav. 1996. the little czech and the great czech nation: national identity and the post-communist transformation. cambridge studies in social and cultural anthropology, cambridge: cambridge university press. kollar, miro (ed.) 1999. scepticism and hope: sixteen contemporary slovak essays. bratislava: kalligram. lloyd, moya. 1999. "performativity, parody, politics" in: vikki bell (ed.) performativity and belonging, london: sage publications (vol. 16, no.2 of theory, culture & society). martin, emily. 1994. flexible bodies: the role of immunity in american culture from the days of polio to the age of aids. boston: beacon press. miles, steven. 2001. social theory in the real world, london: sage publications. miller, d. a. 1992. bringing out roland barthes. oxford: university of california press. mosse, george. 1985. nationalism and sexuality: middle-class morality and sexual norms in modem europe. madison: university of wisconsin press. pridham, geoffrey. 2001. "uneasy democratizations: pariah regimes, political conditionality and rebom transitions in central and eastem europe," democratization, 8 (4lwinter 2001) 65-94. pynsent, robert b. 1999. "what about the slovaks," in: kollar, ed. (pp. 9-25). sim, stuart (ed.) 1998. the leon critical dictionary of postmodem thought. cambridge: icon books. spargo, tamsin. 1999. foucault and queer theory. cambridge: icon books. verdery, katherine. 1999a. the political lives of dead bodies: reburial and post socialist change. chichester, west sussex: columbia university press. --1999b. "fuzzy property: rights, power and identity in transylvania's decollectivization" in: burawoy and verdery (1999). wallace, william. 1977. czechoslovakia, 'nations ofthe world' series, london: e. benn. wolf, eric. 1982. europe and the people without history. berkeley: university of california press. zajac, peter. 1999. "the language of the time: ten years after," trans. sharon milosova. in: kollar (ed.) (pp. 289-303). 113 http:www.one-europe.ac microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 2 between tragedy and reality: armenian women’s labor migration in the post-soviet period armine ishkanian © 2002 armine ishkanian all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in armenia, as elsewhere in the former soviet union, women – who had entered the working world in vast numbers after sovietization and enjoyed the benefits of a socio-economic safety net have suffered most from the difficult economic transition. currently, they constitute nearly 70% of the unemployed and when they are employed, women’s wages are generally 50% less than men’s earnings (gyuzalyan 2000: 36).1 despite the harsh economic conditions that have characterized postsoviet life, however, women did not turn to labor migration as a survival strategy until 1997. instead, in the early post-soviet years men were more likely than women to travel abroad as wage laborers. this practice is called “khopan” [working abroad] and in the traditional pattern of khopan migration, men would travel to work abroad leaving their wives to tend to the children and home.2 . in the armenian model of kinship, where the mother is “idealized” and seen as “sacred,” she is considered to be the hearth (odjakh), pillar (syun), or lamp/light (jrak) of the family.3 the current pattern of women’s khopan migration, which supplements rather than supplants male khopan migration, upsets the traditional family structure and the division of labor within the household. in this paper, which is based on fieldwork i conducted in los angeles and san francisco from august 2000 – july 2001 with armenian female labor migrants, i examine the narratives of migrants and the public discourses surrounding women’s labor migration in the post-soviet period.4 first, by studying the responses and accommodations of these women, some of whom i had met in the “original” field site, to the global economic forces, i examine the continued reliance on traditional cultural ideologies (e.g., sacred motherhood) and moralities for representing oneself and making sense of one’s experiences in a transnational and constantly shifting context. second, by examining the public discourses surrounding migration, i demonstrate how these discourses, which often refer to the same cultural understandings and ideologies migrants use to construct their narratives, ignore the voices and experiences of migrant women. in this context, women’s migration becomes the currency in a complex set of exchanges regarding the impact of globalization on armenian society and culture. theoretical perspectives economists who examine labor migration often argue that migration is caused by the “pushpull” of economic scarcity and opportunity (w.r. bohning and m.l. shloeter-paredes 1994, brochmann 1993). in this scenario, the citizens of poorer/developing countries are pushed out by the lack of jobs and they are drawn/pulled into richer countries that need their labor. the most avid supporters of the “push-pull” theory are the rational choice theorists who explain migration as being caused by people rationally choosing to increase their income by exploiting the wage differentials between sending and receiving countries. these scholars tend to ignore the cultural narratives, logics, and rationalities (cultural, economic, and political) that support and “normalize” migration. michael burawoy argues that this perspective of the global economy and migration leads to the objectification of global forces and the belief that these forces are both natural and inevitable. he advocates ethnography as an alternative means for examining how global forces are resisted, avoided, and negotiated in specific locations (2000: 29). he argues that in order to avoid postmodern pastiches or fragmented vignettes, it is important to ground the ethnography in local historical and cultural traditions (2000). similar to buroway, aihwa ong argues that our cultural insights and our attention to everyday practices and the relations of power can illuminate how the operations of globalization are translated into cultural logics that inform behavior, identities, and relationships. she argues that, since our focus, as anthropologists, is primarily on human agency and imagination, we pay attention to how subjects are shaped by structures of power and how they jen typewritten text 23 volume 20, number 2 respond to these structures in culturally specific ways (1999: 22). she adds, “whereas globalization has been analyzed as consisting of flows of capital, information, and populations, it is now imperative to also tease out the rationalities (political, economic, cultural) that shape migration, relocation, and all transnational processes” (1999: 3). in writing about the rationalities that shape migration, saskia sassen, contends that migrations “do not just happen” (1998: 116). on the contrary, she argues, they are only one outcome or one tendency in a more general dynamic of change that has come about as a result of the economic restructuring in the last twenty years which has led to the decline of the manufacturing-dominated industrial post-war complex and the rise of a new, service –dominated economic complex that depends on and thrives off of the labor of low wage workers from the developing world (1998: 154). anthropologists and sociologists have begun to examine the motivations and rationalities of migrants and how these migrants contest, manipulate, and accommodate the impact of the global through reliance on local interpretations, cultural ideologies, and strategies (george 2000, hondagneu-sotelo 2001, kohpahl 1998, parrenas 2001, salzinger 1991). in these accounts, the migrants are seen as active agents who are aware of economic limitations, opportunities, and strategies. in armenia, where migration is a response to growing post-soviet poverty and hopelessness, permanent or temporary migrations do not “just happen”; there is a process of rationalization that accompanies the “normalization” of labor migration as an acceptable survival strategy/life option as i discuss in the next section. migrants’ experiences and narratives talin was one of my key informants in armenia. i had met her in yerevan during my first field season in 1993. during my later dissertation fieldwork (1996-97) i often found it useful to discuss my findings and observations with her since she seemed to be aware of discourses and trends that i missed. in 1996 she had a high-ranking research position in a museum and later that year she was promoted to an administrative post in the museum. but despite her education and professional achievements, she only earned 15,000 drams a month ($30 usd) and was often paid only once every threefour months. in the early post-soviet years talin lived off of money sent by relatives living in the us. as inflation continued to grow in armenia, the dollar lost its value, and while $100 was a great deal of money in 1993, it was barely enough to survive on in the late 1990s as prices for food, utilities, and common necessities had significantly increased. to supplement the remittances they received from abroad, in 1997, talin and her husband grigor began renting their three-room home (quite large by armenian standards) to some foreign ngo workers. they earned $400 us a month and were able to live quite well on this sum. after some unfortunate events related with her husband’s family, talin and grigor were forced to sell their home in 1998 and to buy a smaller home in a less prestigious neighborhood. with the money left over from the sale of their home, they bought a booth and set up a shop in the underground metro passage in the parekamutyun station. they worked at the booth for a few months, but felt ashamed of the work they were doing, so they ended up leasing their booth to a butcher who paid them in kind by providing them with meat and sausages. following the booth fiasco, talin and grigor created an ngo in 1999 that would provide artistic and cultural outings and experiences for orphans. they applied to the soros and eurasia foundations for support, but both proposals were rejected. when all these local survival strategies failed, talin decided to come and work in the us. in june 2000 she was awarded a three-month us tourist visa and she arrived in los angeles in august. she bought her ticket with money that they had saved from the sale of their home. talin stayed with relatives until she found work, which she did after only being in the us for two weeks. prior to beginning her job, talin and i had many conversations about why she had decided to migrate and during one of these she said, when women return to armenia from having worked abroad, they never tell you the real things that happened to them. they might tell their husbands, but never anyone else since they are often ashamed of what they did there. i am not talking about the prostitution, but just even regular work such as cleaning and taking care of an old person is shameful. the women want to save face so they avoid telling people about how they cleaned toilets. this then drives more people to go since they hear about how you can earn $1000 $1500 a month and then they don’t care about what they have to do to earn this, since this is more money than they can earn in a year in armenia! they think, like i did, “i’ll just go and work for a while and who cares what i do, no one knows me there.” that is why people who would never dream of working in a restaurant in armenia are happy to find such jobs in the us. the shameful aspect isn’t there. no one knows you and no one cares. it is different here [in armenia]. jen typewritten text 24 volume 20, number 2 you are always concerned with what people will think so even if you are desperate, you don’t take just any job. talin was hired by a russian-jewish couple to take care of their 3-year-old daughter. as a live-in nanny, she moved in with the spirovs and was paid $800 a month. her duties included caring for the spirov’s younger daughter, doing light cleaning around the house, and preparing meals. after a few months of working for the spirovs, talin started giving piano lessons to their older daughter for $15/hour. she was quite content with the situation and often spoke about how lucky she was. she said, at least i am in a good family. they have been very kind to me and they buy me certain things that i like to eat, even when they don’t eat those same things. i can’t complain. even though this is so far from what i did in armenia, i feel no shame in it. i am proud that i am supporting my family back home. and i am doing it honestly. talin’s story reflects two key issues that exist in all the narratives i collected: 1) the women are working for the “good of their families” and 2) the work they engage in is honest and/or clean. when the migrants talk about themselves, the stories are always about how they have met with hardships and worked hard to overcome them. these hardships include a) getting a visa to come to the us, b) finding a good job, and c) enduring the difficulties of the job. most of the women feel that their greatest achievement is that they are able to send money to their families in armenia. for example, lena, a migrant who worked at a large hotel south of oakland, said, i feel so independent now. i can work and make money and i feel powerful every time i go to the western union office and money to my mother and kids. they know i am thinking about them. what else is there than children in this world? so what if my hands are cracked from all the chemicals i deal with. i don’t let myself see or feel that pain. i focus on what i am accomplishing. it wasn’t always like this you know. i once had a decent job as a teacher, but now, i still can hold my head up high. i am doing decent, clean work, not selling myself like the women who go into prostitution in the emirates. the domestic work is justified or made sense of by the fact that while women are working as servants to others, they have not really diverged from the tasks or duties they complete at home as mothers– that is cleaning, cooking, washing, and nurturing/caring for the children and their parents or in-laws. the women describe their work as “clean” (makoor) 5 even though their jobs required them to work with “dirt” (human excrement and garbage) on a daily basis. they often contrast the work they do to the “dirty” (keghtot) work done by the women who have been forced into prostitution in dubai or elsewhere in the middle east. in this context, “dirty” work is not that which involves the handling of fecal matter or garbage, which in other contexts are considered “dirty” or “polluting,”6 but rather refers to sex work. as lena, whom i quoted earlier, said, “i am doing decent, clean work, not selling myself like the women who go into prostitution in the emirates,” another woman i interviewed explained, the work with the elderly is pretty tough. you have to have a great deal of patience to survive it. they [the elderly patients] are cranky, dirty, and they smell bad. but if you can think of the future and what your work is doing for your family you get through it. but i don’t know how the women who go work as prostitutes do it. how do they survive? at least i have kept my honor. but they, they have lost everything. there are limits to what i would do for money and that [prostitution] is one of the things i would never do (anna). by explaining all actions in the narrative trope of sacred motherhood and emphasizing the difference between their “clean” work and the “dirty” work of prostitutes, the women seek to justify and make sense of their “non-traditional” behavior and their fragmented lives. they insist that they are sacrificing themselves for the sake of their children and that even though the work they do (e.g., housekeeping, babysitting) is considered “shameful” in armenia, their motivations cleanse the work and protect their status as the sacred/moral mother. women’s labor migration -a tragic consequence of globalization or a pragmatic post-soviet survival strategy? in the last ten, years numerous survival strategies have arisen in the post-soviet sphere, including working in the ngo sector, engaging in various types of trade/market activities, and migrating to the west. as women’s labor migration has increased so have the public discussions and debates over what this migration will mean for the nation (azg), the state (bedootyoon), and the future generations (apaga seroontneruh). on one end of the spectrum are scholars such as sociologist and political activist lyudmila harutyunyan,7 who argue that armenians should not “emotionalize” the issue of migration and that migration should be seen as a “normal” adaptation to the global economy. harutyunyan contends that one of the positive effects of migration is the, jen typewritten text 25 volume 20, number 2 obtaining [of] considerable material resources by the population of armenia, in the form of remittances sent by forced migrants from abroad to their families. it is thanks to emigration that a great number of families have been able to survive during such a difficult period (2001: 62). she supports her claims by pointing out that remittances from armenian’s abroad have accounted for a significant portion of armenia’s gdp in recent years (67) and that on average armenians in the diaspora send around $350 million us dollars annually to family and friends in the homeland.8 although harutyunyan recognizes migration as a survival strategy, she goes on to argue that because of the “radical-liberal” policies the government relied on in the early 1990s that supposed that the market would balance the migration flows, the political and socio-economic consequences of labor migration are only now being recognized and addressed. she contends that although labor migration was encouraged, directly or indirectly by government officials in the early post-soviet years, the unrelenting out-flow of human and entrepreneurial resources is fast becoming a “serious negative phenomena” (67). on the other end of the spectrum are scholars, such as armenian sociologist meline harutunian,9 who take the argument much further than l. harutyunyan and suggest that migration is not simply leading a loss of human and entrepreneurial resources, but that migration threatens the survival of the armenian nation. among other problems currently facing armenia, the issue of emigration is stands out by its very destructive nature and serious causes… in this difficult stage for our country, women largely strengthen the sustainability and moral image of the armenian family, and consequently, of armenian statehood. however, emigration has its own negative impact on institution of the family. separated families have emerged. departing husbands establish new families and do not come back. grandparents raise children alone when their mothers leave. young women avoid marriage as they sense there is only a meager future for their families (m. harutunian 2001: 46 47). [my emphasis] m. harutunian’s argument is informed by and speaks to the discourses about gender roles and the nation. the following excerpt is from the1998 united nations development program (undp) human development report titled, the role of the state. it provides an example of official political discourse about the family and the role of women within the family in armenia. …family has been more than just a basic societal unit. in armenian national mentality, it has traditionally been perceived as being of the highest value in its capacity as an intermediary, situated in between the individual and the state. in the absence of statehood, the concept of “nation-as-a-family,” a sui generis “familism,” has evolved in armenian society. the core and the unifying power of these ideas has traditionally been the armenian woman, whose role is unique and decisive in the national history and culture. a history replete with war, invasion, massacre, genocide, and natural disasters shaped the armenian family into a basic unit for viability and selfpreservation (17). [my emphasis] the important points in the above paragraph include, first, how the family has become a substitute for the state since armenia has been stateless for many centuries, and, second, that women play a major role within the family and nation (family writ large). stephanie platz suggests that armenians conceive of traditional kinship as being an enduring model that is distinctly and uniquely armenian and that kinship is a central part of what it means to be “armenian” (2000: 118). susan pattie also contends that in negotiating outside changes, the armenian family has changed and continues to change, but the strong value its members place upon it remains (1997: 143). m. harutunian describes migration as a threat to the nation because it opens the way for the “introduction of european values and institutions that are foreign to armenians” and which “devalue national [armenian] culture” (2001: 46). for armenians, this fear of disrupted family and cultural reproduction is often represented in the trope of genocide. the memory of the armenian genocide of 1915 at the hands of the ottoman turks is such a critical part of armenian national and cultural identity, that it shapes multiple discourses and interpretations of events. the current migration from armenia is referred to by many in armenia and in the diaspora as the “white genocide” (spitak chartuh). as one of my informants said, “what the turks did not do, we are doing to ourselves by fleeing the homeland.” conclusion an examination of the public discourses surrounding migration demonstrates how women’s labor migration while understood and explained by the women as a survival strategy, has become the currency in a complex set of exchanges regarding the impact of economic globalization and the postsoviet transition in armenia. in some intellectual jen typewritten text 26 volume 20, number 2 circles in armenia, there is a tendency to regard the impact of globalization as one in which global (i.e., western, american, or european) values and cultural ideologies will destroy, absorb, or “devalue” local cultural ideologies, values, and beliefs (harutunian 2001: 46). as renato rosaldo and jonathan inda point out, however, discourses of cultural imperialism that view globalization as the imposition and dominance of western culture over the rest of the world fail to adequately capture what is going on in the world (2002: 25). they suggest that while the center (i.e., west) to periphery (i.e., developing world) flow is certainly a crucial component of globalization, it is not the only thing that globalization is about. on the contrary, they argue, peoples of the periphery do not simply absorb the ideologies, values, and life-style position embedded in the western imports, rather they customize and interpret them according to local conditions, cultural ideologies, and values. finally, whether women’s labor migration is described and understood by public figures and scholars in armenia as a “normal” survival strategy or “white genocide,” it is important to recognize that migrants adapt, negotiate, and accommodate the effects of economic and cultural globalization. they do not abandon their worldviews, values, morals, and beliefs when they migrate; rather, these become the anchors that tie them to a particular place, a society, a community, a history, and a culture. therefore, what emerges is not so much a loss of culture, but rather a dislocation or decentering in which the migrant women, who are the bearers, vehicles, and representatives of the these values and cultural ideologies (e.g., sacred motherhood), attempt to hold onto and preserve them outside the traditional boundaries of the home/hearth. there is the hope that these values and ideologies will remain untouched by the life-journey of the women who traverse conceptual and real spaces and that all will return to “normal” upon their eventual return to the homeland and/or reunion with their families wherever that may be.10 references böhning, w.r. and m.l. shloeter-paredes. 1994. aid in place of migration? selected contributions to an ilo-unhcr meeting. geneva: international labor office. brochmann, grete. 1993. middle east avenue: female migration from sri lanka to the gulf. boulder, co: westview press. burawoy, michael. 2000. “introduction: reaching for the global.” global ethnography:forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world. ed. michael burawoy et. al. berkeley, ca: university of california press, pp. 1 – 40. douglas, mary. 1984. purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. london: routledge. george, sheba. 2000. “’dirty nurses’ and ‘men who play’: gender and class in transnational migration.” global ethnography: forces, connections, and imaginations in a postmodern world. ed. michael buroway et. al. berkeley, ca: university of california press, pp. 144-174. gyuzalyan, hayk. 2000. “zpaghvatzootyan genderayin aspektuh” (the gender aspect of employment.) at the doorstep to the xxi century journal, pp. 35-37. harutunian, meline. 2001. “emigration processes in giumry the woman's perspective.” the millennium generation: gender studies. ed. anahit haroutunian and elizabeth winship. yerevan, armenia: united nations development program office armenia, pp. 4547. harutyunyan, lyudmila. 2001. “minorities in the former soviet union: some fundamental legal and political issues” in minorities and tolerance: central and eastern europe & the nis. ed. sabine a.-m. crisen. washington, dc: woodrow wilson international center for scholars, pp. 61-70. hondagneu-sotelo, pierrette. 2001. doméstica: immigrant workers cleaning and caring in the shadows of affluence. berkeley: university of california press. kohpahl, gabriele. 1998. voices of guatemalan women in los angeles: understanding their immigration (latino communities: emerging voices—political, social, cultural, and legal issues). new york: garland publishing. ong, aihwa. 1999. flexible citizenship: the cultural logics of transnationality. durham, nc: duke university press, parrenas, rhacel salazar. 2001.servants of globalization: women, migration and domestic work. palo alto: stanford university press. pattie, susan. p. 1997. faith in history: armenians rebuilding community. washington, dc: smithsonian institution press. jen typewritten text 27 volume 20, number 2 platz, stephanie.2000. “the shape of national time: daily life, history, and identity during armenia’s transition to independence, 19911994.” altering states: ethnographies of transition in eastern europe and the former soviet union ed. daphne berdahl, matti bunzl and martha lampland. ann arbor: university of michigan press, pp. 114-238. rosaldo, renato and jonathan xavier inda. 2002. the anthropology of globalization. malden, ma: blackwell publishers, inc. salzinger, leslie. 1991. “a maid by any other name: the transformation of ‘dirty work’ by central american immigrants.” ethnography unbound: power and resistance in the modern metropolis. ed. michael burawoy et. al. berkeley, ca: university of california press, pp. 139 – 160. sassen, saskia. 1998. globalization and its discontents: essays on the new mobility of people and money. new york: the new press. united nations development program. 1998. armenia human development report: the role of the state. yerevan, armenia: un press, 1998. zeitlian, sona. 1992. hai knoj teruh hai heghapoghagan sharzhman metch (the role of armenian women in the armenian revolutionary movement.) in armenian. los angeles: hraztan sarkis zeitlian publications. notes this article is based on fieldwork conducted in armenia in 1999 and 2000 and in san francisco and los angeles in 2000 – 2001. i would like to thank the national research council, and the international research and exchange board, for their generous support that allowed me to conduct research in armenia and khachig tölölyan and sascha goluboff for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. 1 according to armenian sociologist hayk gyuzalyan the average monthly salary for women in armenia is 10, 000 drams ($20 us) compared to the 22, 000 ($44) men earn. 2 i am grateful to khachig tölölyan for pointing out how the origin of the term is also an indication of how migration patterns are established. the term “khopan” means barren land, and it entered the armenian migration lexicon in 1957-9, when nikita khrushchev invested huge sums in the development of hitherto barren but potentially fertile agricultural lands in kazakhstan, and insisted that each non-central asian republic send ‘volunteer’ laborers to the region. according to residents i interviewed in the villages of horom and anooshavan (1993) khopan migration of men occurred during the agricultural slow seasons and was a way in which men could earn supplemental income. the term is now used to describe any form of labor migration. 3 “sacred motherhood” refers to the armenian belief dating from armenia’s pre-christian past when the primary deity in the pantheon was anahit, the goddess of fertility, morality, and maternity. sona zeitlian writes, “anahit was supposed to be a morally pure, virtuous goddess who nurtured her worshippers, provided them with guidance, and comforted them in their times of need” (viii). she maintains that the belief in anahit demonstrates the importance of the “mother” role in ancient armenia. she claims that even after armenia adopted christianity as the state religion in 301 c.e. and became more patriarchal, the importance of anahit continued as the beliefs related to anahit were transferred onto the symbol of the virgin mary (astvatazin). she adds, like anahit, the mother of the armenian family is the keeper and embodiment of the sacred light because of her willingness to sacrifice her own needs and desires, to dedicate herself completely to her family and to be loyal and virtuous (viii). as the lamp of the family (jrak), zeitlian contends, the mother becomes the light for the future of the armenian people. 4 for a longer discussion of these issues please see, ishkanian, armine. “mobile motherhood: armenian women’s labor migration in the post-soviet period .” in diaspora: a journal of transnational studies, forthcoming. 5 “makoor” also means honest and sexually clean, neat, tidy, and pure. 6 mary douglas argues, “our ideas of dirt express symbolic systems and the difference between pollution jen typewritten text 28 volume 20, number 2 behavior in one part of the world and another is only a matter of detail…. dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. where there is dirt there is system. dirt is the byproduct of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.”(35). if we apply douglas’ system of classifying “dirt” and differentiating it from “purity” in this context, then “dirt” refers to sex work and “purity” refers to housework and caring for others (children or adults). 7 harutyunyan is the president of the armenian democratic forum ngo and the co-director of the center for regional integration and conflict resolution. 8 in 1998, this figure represented almost nineteen percent of the gdp ($1.85 billion) in armenia. 9 “haroutounian,” variously spelled, is a very common surname in armenia. in this article i have chosen to use two different spellings of the name because these are the spellings preferred by each of the authors. 10 i use “and/or” because increasingly many temporary labor migrants, especially those with grown children, choose to remain in the us and begin the process of becoming legal residents in order to facilitate the emigration of the children to the us. since this is a very costly and long legal process, only those women who have adult children resort to this strategy. most of the of the women who have children younger than age eighteen tend to return to armenia after a year or two of working in the us. immigrant run employment agencies (e.g., worldwide) in los angeles are now beginning to offer immigration services to the labor migrants. jen typewritten text 29 microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 54 innocence lost: cinematic representations of 1960s consumption for 1990s hungary1 krisztina fehérváry duke university, durham nc in 1997, a hungarian musical comedy called csinibaba2 overcame competition from hollywood blockbusters to break box-office records domestically.3 young people flocked to the film in record numbers and bought the cd of pop songs, several of which became subsequent hits. on the surface, the subject matter of this overwhelmingly successful musical comedy was rather dark and melancholy—a coming-of-age tale set in the post-stalinist 1960s. much like the internationally-acclaimed hungarian film time stands still (gothar 1982), csinibaba focuses on the experiences of 1960s teenage youth, their interactions with authority figures, and the ways their subjectivities are shaped by their relationship to the western music, pop culture and commodities frowned upon by the state. however, in time stands still, released in the early 1980s, the hallmarks of 1960s western youth culture, such as rock-n-roll, blue-jeans, and long hair are appropriated and redeployed in the hungarian context as a way of symbolizing rebellion against an oppressive and invasive political system,4 and yearnings for, as herbert eagle has suggested, a life allowing for uncompromised passions (sensual, ethical, religious) (eagle 1989). the pull of the west here lies less in the attractions of its dubious pleasures (phillip morris cigarettes and cocacola), than as an alternative to the stultifying future these teens confront in the lives of the defeated adults around them. in stark contrast, csinibaba, released in the postsocialist 1990s, avoids any overt reference to the political repression and malaise of the era. instead, it draws upon communist-era caricatures, popular songs, and slogans to depict a silly and colorful world, where the figures of authority are harmless buffoons and fashionablydressed youth hanging out in cafes, dreaming of coca-cola and niagara falls. in an interview, tímár claims this is the world he remembers when he was an eleven-year-old boy, tagging along with his older sisters and their musician boyfriends experimenting with rock-n-roll (balogh 1997). in his film, 1960s youth were preoccupied with recreating western fashions, pop music and consumer culture. the era was indeed characterized by a longing to get out of hungary, but less to escape the prevailing sense of ennui and hopelessness than in order to experience “the real thing.”5 csinibaba's focus on consumption in the sixties might be analyzed as plausible historical revisionism, since it offers a perspective on how the socialist state’s increased attention to providing consumer goods in the 1960s might have affected everyday life. nonetheless, it is clearly not a candidate for what robert rosenstone calls the “new history film”—or a film which is “more serious about extracting meaning from the encounter with the past than with entertaining audiences or making profit for investors” (rosenstone, 1995:7). on the contrary, movie reviewers accused the director, tímár, of setting out to prove that hungarians were capable of making a film which would appeal enough to movie-goers to turn a profit. in fact, this film makes little attempt to provide an accurate revision of the past. it is instead an example of the widespread phenomenon in the former socialist countries known as “socialist nostalgia,” in which artifacts from the socialist period are recontextualized in the postsocialist present in numerous ways and for a diversity of reasons, but never as representations of oppressive political power. formerly potent symbols of power such as busts of lenin are mocked, rendered harmless, or redeployed as “style.” now-obsolete consumer goods become mnemonic of everyday life under socialism, and pop culture references evoke shared memories and practices. in this article, i will discuss the particular ways csinibaba evokes and satisfies the “desire for [past] desire” (stewart 1993) so common in practices of socialist nostalgia throughout the former socialist world—a wistful sense of loss of an imaginary in which it was still possible to conceive of the west as a utopia (see bach 2002; berdahl 1999: boym 2001; nadkarni and shevchenko 2004; veenis 1999). csinibaba’s cinematic representation of the past is, of course, only conceivable from the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 55 perspective of the post-socialist present—a present where western consumer goods and indeed the west itself have been disenchanted and are now part of the banal and often bitter experience of the free market economy.6 but i also address a central agenda of the film, intentional or not, that is not properly nostalgic at all. this agenda concerns its target audience, the primary movie-going population in hungary—youth between the ages of 13 and 25, most of whom had very little direct experience with state-socialist constraints and even less memory of them. here, i understand the film and its reception by youth as illuminating a matter of intense significance in hungarian life: the experience of consumption and the continuing identification of consumer goods with western or socialist bloc stereotypes. for an older generation, this formulation of the past as an era of innocent expectation, forged through perceptions of western consumer goods, reflected their understanding of the post-socialist 1990s as an end to childhood and an awakening to the harsh realities of an adult world. but for its primarily youthful audience, this reconstruction of the consumerism of the past, and with it the lifestyles of their parents, proved enormously attractive. i argue, then, that the film participates in a postsocialist project replacing old images of state socialism and its subjects with new ones more in accord with the criteria of value most salient in a neoliberal capitalist world. these criteria, internalized particularly by younger generations, tie value on an international stage to the degree to which countries and their populations are identified with the modern, fashionable and technologically-sophisticated material worlds circulating in the mass media and materialized in local space via consumer goods. * * * on the surface, csinibaba’s success came through the commercialization of socialist nostalgia, resurrecting the wealth of jokes and stereotypes engendered by the old regime (which the postsocialist era had not been able to replicate) and reminding viewers of the “safety” within the oppressiveness of the old order. the film’s minimal plot line revolves around the characters’ frantic preparations to enter a new nation-wide, televised, talent competition. during a time when travel to western capitalist countries was prohibited, the overwhelming attraction of the contest is that the winner will represent hungary in competition in helsinki— which “counts” as the west. although the vaudevillian slap-stick of these preparations is amusing, the audience—young and old— laughed uproariously at familiar stereotypes from the old regime which were once lampooned in cabarets. these include the female functionary in uniform, like a silly tram conductor and a humorless, masculine party apparatchik; the young pioneer dressed in infantilizing boys’ school shorts and red bandanna; factory workers making off with tools and materials under their shirts; and the film’s central character, the housing block warden, full of self-importance as he broadcasts the day’s propaganda over the courtyard loudspeaker. movie-goers of tímár’s generation (aged 45-50 in the mid-1990s), who themselves came of age during the 1960s, generally found the film entertaining and a relief from the hungarian cinematic tradition of making dark and depressing art films. yet, the film’s blithe treatment of what many remember as indeed a dark and oppressive time sat uneasily for some. as the 48-year-old actor playing the housing block warden put it in an interview: “i was young then too. of course i have many nice memories...but if i think about it, like hell would anyone want to go through that time again” (filmstudio interview 1997). in the end, the film was not for the generation who lived through the period it depicts, despite tímár’s denials that he set out to make a film which would be popular with youth. csinibaba features a new crop of contemporary actors, many of the same generation as the movie-going public. tímár’s signature use of camera techniques and fast editing readily appealed to a generation raised on mtv but alien to an older generation.7 the music drew on pop-hits from the 1960s, but these were remixed for modern tastes by contemporary pop stars— capitalizing on the 1990s fashion for retro. csinibaba’s appeal to contemporary youth extended beyond its modern form and entertainment value, into the particular ways the film played on nostalgia for the state-socialist era. its portrayal of 1960s youth as active participants in modern consumer culture performed a corrective function for 1990s teens and twenty-somethings. youth embraced this reconstructed narrative of their (recent) ancestral past as one far preferable for their sense of self than the one they had been subject to by their elders and western discourse. furthermore, they were able to identify with the experiences of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 56 1960s youth as depicted during the socialist era as remarkably similar to their own. the very possibility of this construction, however, lies in the symbolic value of everyday material culture within the socialist system. during the socialist period, the intense politicization of consumption had far-reaching consequences not just for how hungarians understood the regime and their relationship to it, but for the particular ways they idealized capitalist systems.8 as i have argued elsewhere (fehervary 2005), in the context of the state’s utopian promises, on the one hand, and the populace’s increasing exposure to images of the west and western consumer goods on the other, the cold war opposition between communist and capitalist systems become embodied in their respective products. in accord with state-socialist ideology, its mass production emphasized quantity over quality in an effort to make goods available to everyone in society. however, the perceived “inferior” quality of these products— in comparison to western products—came to stand for the inferiority of the socialist system itself, as well as the state’s negligent and even “inhumane” treatment of its subjects. select western products, on the other hand, were encountered out of context and valued as powerful icons of a different world. the properties of these goods, carefully designed, it seemed, either to make people’s lives easier or to provide entertainment and pleasure, were understood as not just evidence of a better production system, but iconic of a more natural and humane political system, one valuing human dignity.9 after 1989, the geo-political basis for this dichotomy disappeared, as hungary “joined” a european sphere. yet, just as the disparity in standards of living did not vanish overnight, so too have identifications with the ex-socialist state lingered on.10 for both eastern europeans and western onlookers, consumer goods (their consumption more than their production) became a primary means of producing and consequently indexing stereotypical images about places and their populations. in the 1990s, hungarian youth were particularly defensive about the prevailing international “image” of the former soviet bloc states, one for which the color gray had long served as the “ur” metaphor. after 1989-91, the postsocialist citizenry continued to be identified with inferior, cheap products, lack of style, and an ignorance of modern commodities and technology.11 a 22-year-old i knew in the steel town of dunaújváros could barely contain her indignation while telling me the story of a friend of hers working as an au pair in france, whose host family thought they had to show her how to use a vcr. regardless of what the family intended by this gesture (were they merely showing her how to use their particular vcr?), it speaks volumes that these young women experienced the incident as degrading and insulting. in csinibaba, tímár uses the ploy of an adolescent perspective to avoid references to political oppression, deliberately leaving out red stars and signs of a soviet military presence. the existential suffering of the era is often mocked— trivializing what for many was a time of concrete hardship, fear and misery. in the factory scene, the 6-to-7 day workweek of the period is nowhere in evidence; instead, on pay-day besotted workers stumble around singing “i'm feeling a little melancholy today...” as a lament over their miserable wages, and thus, their lack of buying power. though this pop song from the 1960s was considered overly light-hearted for the time, it became a smash hit in its reworked form in 1997. during two other scenes, youth viewing the movie are as oblivious to references to the more ominous dimensions of the period as their screen counterparts seem to be. one film critic noticed at a showing that when the housing block warden is broadcasting the day’s lottery numbers and can’t bring himself to report the last two digits: “56,” the audience did not get the reference to the revolution of 1956, long a taboo subject for the socialist regime (szárnyas 1997). to 1990s youth, the warden appeared as a bumbling and irksome, but ultimately harmless, authority figure—strolling around his little domain in an attempt to keep order. they did not recognize what their elders would have, that his leather hat marks him as a retired member of the state secret police. 12 thus, youthful movie-goers did not have to be “burdened” with reminders of a suffering they never experienced and no longer wanted to hear about. once framed as noble and even heroic by western commentators, after 1989 the political suffering and oppression endured by state socialist citizens suddenly became transformed into a stigma and fused with the shame of poverty. csinibaba is able to reinscribe this “suffering” in contemporary terms of consumerism, as oppression is eliminated and the “tragedy” becomes the teen protagonists inability to get ahold of western brand name anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 57 consumer goods and experience “the west” for themselves. thus, the press-releases for csinibaba missed the point when they suggested the film’s appeal would come from making fun of a 1960s populace “fed on potato-dumplings, who think that helsinki is practically america.”13 facilitating this kind of mockery is certainly a factor in the popularity of socialist nostalgia generally, as a mode of distancing oneself from the past. but in csinibaba, a bigger draw for 1990s youth was the film’s construction not just of characters but of an entire popular culture that was the opposite of the soviet bloc stereotype— of gray, uniform and shabby goods in equally gray, uniform and shabby shops, and of socialist consumers committing the unpardonable sin of being ignorant of popular culture and brandname commodities. instead, the film’s teen characters are portrayed as savvy and hip, and conversational in the qualities and merits of western goods and consumer culture. while they are prevented from participating in this culture directly, they make do with available substitutes in their construction of self. some of these, such as bambi sodas and cool sunglasses, are the new non-essential products distributed by a state attempting to assuage the consumer desires of its populace.14 despite their material divide from the west, nothing about these hipsters suggests that they are not full co-evals of their western counterparts. they sport the latest hairstyles and dress fashions, do the twist, and even practice a kind of celebrity worship characteristic of mass culture. the teenage angst of these csinibaba youth stems from knowing the difference between their own material culture and that of an unreachable west. their desire to get out, to leave the country, is not motivated by ideals of political freedom, but by their critical awareness of consuming simulacra. when the “real thing” does enter their world, it is an event. in a critical scene, most of the youthful cast sits in an outdoor cafe, chatting, posing in sunglasses and drinking their bambi sodas.15 an older man, sitting alone, pulls out a pack of cigarettes and everyone turns to stare in open admiration: “look, american cigs!” sixties-style electric guitar riffs replace paulanka-like ballads as he lights a cigarette, and a table of girls emit a collective sigh as he is enveloped in smoke: “american cigarettes, how manly!” a youth cries, “wow, they're chesterfields!” “the aroma!” sighs another, “they say they have cocaine in them.” the third youth, slightly nerdy, chimes in, “no, it’s opium! cocaine is in coca-cola!” here, unlike the tame bambi sodas and local cigarettes, the western “real thing” can offer pleasures along a different dimension. the process of discussing this scene with a friend who was in her early 20s in 1968 sparked a vivid memory of her first sip of cocacola. a college boyfriend had managed to smuggle a bottle into the country, and served tiny portions in champagne glasses. the bottle had such a distinctive shape, and they all thought they would experience some kind of hallucinogenic effect. nothing happened, but she liked it anyway, and still buys it. many western commodities that found their way into hungary at the time served as icons of another, magical world, but the state’s moral censorship of certain commodities as “decadent and corrupting” only reinforced the perception of their enhanced quality. given the defensiveness of 1990s youth to presumed slight derived from their association with socialism, it is not surprising that they would embrace csinibaba's reconstructed narrative of their (recent) ancestral past as one of relative material prosperity and vitality. instead of having to identify with a tragic history marked as deficient or “lacking” in relation to europe in terms of material prosperity, they could now identify with the stylish consumerism of their parent’s generation. as some friends in their mid-20s said to me after seeing the movie, “our parent’s really had class and style back then!” this, in turn, had the effect of reinscribing their subjective experience as consumers in the present. it had the capacity to liberate them from the subject position forced upon them by dominant imagery of naive, provincial eastern bloc shoppers, and allowed them to imagine themselves as consuming based upon generational experience and confident taste. it is in such examples of socialist nostalgia that the specter of social class in postsocialist relations is most clear. the reinvigorated salience of class and family background in the local hungarian context becomes inseparable from people’s perceptions of their own value based upon hungary’s uncertain position in a global hierarchy of nation-states—now a part of europe with a european history, now relegated to the impoverished and excluded “second-class” nation states. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 58 despite the abundance of western goods which have circulated in hungary since 1989 and the advertising wars which coke waged with pepsi to gain prominence in hungarian refrigerators, youth in the 1990s could nonetheless identify with the experience of their youthful on-screen counterparts. like those counterparts, 1990s youth were also completely unconcerned with the political situation except as it might impinge on their lives in the form of parents or other authority-figures.16 they too were preoccupied with western brand-name commodities, and found that they were often beyond reach—though for financial rather than geopolitical reasons. finally, they too saw these commodities as representative of a “good life” which is taken for granted in western europe and the united states, the criteria for “normalcy” they feel they are denied because of their unfortunate status as hungarian citizens (see fehérváry 2002).17 the film, with its coming-of-age theme, replayed commonplace narratives of the regime change in 1990s hungary. these discourses described the transition as a passage from youthful idealism to adult confrontation with reality, from life described as soft and safe to one that is hard and unprotected – in short, the passage from innocence to experience.18 in an interview, director tímár said his intention was to depict “the entire country in adolescence” during the 1960s (karacsony 1997). this move is comparable to how hungarians in the 1990s thought of the “naive” ways people once conceptualized life in the west.19 from the perspective of today’s disenchantment, the statesocialist era was a time when “the west” was still an enchanted place, a symbol of possibility, a way out of “this life.”20 as many analyses of nostalgia in general and postsocialist nostalgia in particular note, this is not a longing for a specific past, but a longing for a kind of longing, a kind of fantasizing, that was possible in the past. the pleasures or comfort provided by such a fantasy are no longer possible with present knowledge and experience. an older generation might remember the joys of goods from the west and how they evoked a different world—indeed constructed an image of a world—that has been shattered by postsocialist experience. in discussions about the movie, even a 24-year-old acquaintance could remember a time marked as “special” by the occasion of a banana, or how excited she and other kids were at school when a friend got a western youth magazine with foldout posters of pop bands. after 1989, however, particularly for youth, it was no longer acceptable to demonstrate such appreciation for western goods; in fact, discursive norms for distancing oneself from the backwardness of socialism required normalizing such goods, even if they were expensive (rausig 1998; fehérváry 2002). csinibaba recaptures this longing for “the west,” while simultaneously marking this “west” as the product of fantasy. one scene depicting a showing of fellini’s dolce vita epitomizes this confusion of mass cultural image for reality: when screen goddess anita ekberg beckons from the fountain, the men in the theater rush the screen to try to join her, pulling it down as the image disintegrates and they all have to go home. csinibaba ends with the loss of innocence, a bittersweet awakening to the impossibility of escape and the realities of the here-and-now. one of the main characters—a sensitive young man who forms a rock band for the competition—is overjoyed when he begins to receive letters from a girlfriend who defected with her family to canada four years before. “oh attila” the letters croon, “i’m standing near niagara falls, imagining you were here with me. you drinking a coca-cola, me drinking a pepsi. love, katinka.” “is this a dream?” he asks rhetorically, “her and me, drinking coca-cola and pepsi?” by the film’s end, he has discovered that the competition has been rigged all along. “we couldn’t leave something as important as that to chance, could we?” asks the housing block warden. and, it turns out, the letters from the west were a dream—or at least a fantasy. they were written by a lovely girl he’s been ignoring in his focus on getting out; after she tells him the truth, he cries impetuously, “i'm going anyway!” to this, she replies with the indulgent amusement of an adult for a child, “oh, attila, all that is just silly dreaming” (su-subolondsag). in the film, only chesterfield cigarettes, a jazz record and an italian movie enter the otherwise closed-off world the characters live in. no voice of experience from outside disrupts the characters’ imagined longing for the west and the sense of possibility it offers. perhaps there was no need to include such a voice in the film’s narrative. by the mid-1990s, any romantic notion of the west had been replaced with a much more pragmatic one, especially by youth. it was and continues to be a place to go and work, often in semi-legal and undignified ways, in order to make enough cash to come back, anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 59 secure an apartment, and attempt to construct a miniature dolce vita at home. conclusion like many other so-called “nostalgia” practices in the 1990s,21 csinibaba counters perceptions of socialist consumer society as dowdy and cheap, instead reconstructing it as fashion-savvy and quality-conscious. in so doing, it serves up a material culture history of the socialist period that, instead of being marked as an aberration or abject compared to that of western europe, runs parallel to a normalized western capitalist trajectory. such projects, while seemingly empowering, also reinforce the legitimacy of neoliberal capitalism and the consumption-based classes and identities it produces. notes 1this article is an expanded version of a paper of the same name i presented to the annual meetings of the american anthropological association in philadelphia in 1998, in a panel organized by marko zivkovic. it contains material that has since been elaborated theoretically and ethnographically elsewhere (fehervary 2005), though not in relation to this film. since this paper was first written, numerous articles on socialist nostalgia, particularly regarding the phenomenon in unified germany, have been published. among the most notable are (in chronological order) for germany: berdahl (1999), betts (2000), ten-dyke (2001), bach (2002), boyer (2006). maya nadkarni and olga shevchenko (2004) provide an overarching analysis of the category, comparing the cases of hungary and russia. i am grateful to matthew s. hull, eric karchmer, jennie burnet, and david altshuler for their thoughtful comments. 2 csinibaba (1997), directed by péter tímár, was based on a novella written by gyula márton entitled bambi szalmaszállal (bambi-soda with a straw). the literal translation of csinibaba is pretty baby, but english-language press releases of the film use the name “dollybirds.” 3csinibaba was by far the highest grossing domestic film of 1997, but also topped the list of domestic films for the decade. in 1997, it ranked 3rd in box-office receipts of all films shown in hungary, besting hollywood blockbusters “men in black” and the rerelease of “star wars,” but behind “jurassic park: lost world,” and “101 dalmatians.” as with most domestic films, csinibaba was only shown on 14 screens, compared to the 20-25 screens allocated for american films. figures from annuario statistico del cinema europeo, media salles, 1998 edition. //www.mediasalles.it/pdffile/ungheria.pdf. accessed 4/20/06. 4see svede (2000) for a similar use of western youth culture by young latvians in the 1960s. 5interview with péter tímár: “characteristic of the 1960s was a society-wide longing to escape/get-away, people’s inner loneliness/solitude, which they attempted to dissolve with heightened emotional lives – while the era's pop songs hummed their simple lyrics. now we know that we lived in the shadow of a dark dictatorship, but at the time, fewer were aware of it.” (balogh 1997) 6i use the term “the west” for what hungarians designate by that term, i.e., a conglomerate image of most of the countries of western europe and usually the united states. 7these include such techniques as recording the dialogue first, then having the cast act out the scenes with the sound slowed to half-speed. when the film is sped up to real-time dialogue speed, it creates a strangely languid and sometimes doddering movement. these, tímár claims, were “necessary because i didn't want to represent the past realistically but rather wanted to convey the atmosphere of the time” (dobaykiss 1997). 8as verdery points out, state-socialist regimes “paradoxically made consumption a problem” (2002:27). “[e]ven as the regimes prevented people from consuming by not making goods available, they insisted that under socialism the standard of living would constantly improve... moreover, socialist ideology presented consumption as a ‘right’” (verdery 2002:28). 9for an elaboration of this analysis of the political logic of state socialist material culture, see ch. 6 of my dissertation (fehervary 2005). see also humphrey (2002:44-46) for the soviet case. 10this was less true in the soviet union, as caroline humphrey points out. there, socialist produced goods were at times marked as “ours” and contrasted with suspect foreign goods (humphrey 2002:54). 11see also berdahl (1999) for the phenomenon in germany; but also liechty (2003) for similar sentiments among a nepalese middle class. 12the film and its varied reception allowed many middle-aged hungarians, slightly younger than tímár’s generation, to comment on this disjucture. born during the period depicted, and anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 60 over a decade into the socialist rule, this generation was often clueless about the regime’s past atrocities – though not of its everyday restrictions. like the film’s protagonists, a friend in her 30s commented on how her parents and society at large had never told her about such things as the revolution of 1956, and only knew it vaguely as a counterrevolution. 13objectív filmstúdio and mafilm rt. press release. no date. 14as verdery writes, “acquiring objects [not produced by the state] became a way of constituting your selfhood against a deeply unpopular regime” (1996:29). the flip side of this argument is that people wanted to distance themselves from identification with socialism in part because of the shame of inferior quality (and quantity) of socialist goods (see fehérváry 2005 ch.6). 15bambi was the hungarian state socialist soda brand, one revived in the 1990s as part of socialist nostalgia but under a new western corporate ownership. its appearance here, then, can be read by youth as a contexting of their current experience of consuming bambi projected back into it’s “authentic” context, a socialist past they did not themselves experience. 16in fact, the generational differences in the film play on contemporary generational conflicts, as an older generation are pictured as the “proletarian” stereotype (see milosz 195x): dowdy, short and stocky characters in mismatched outfits or rumpled uniforms. 17if, in fact, the director intended for his narrative of a bye-gone era to be an allegorical commentary on contemporary experience, he would be following a well-respected tradition in hungarian cinematic history. 18this opposition between a nostalgic vision of state-socialism and contemporary capitalism also has a gendered dimension. see éva federmayer's analysis of how gendered metaphors (particularly hard vs. soft) are used to describe the contemporary hungarian socio-political context (federmayer 1997). 19see also berdahl (1999) and ten-dyke (2001), among others, for the east german experience after 1989 of having been “doof” or stupid when it came to consumer goods. 20of course, this is a nostalgia any youth can relate to, regardless of a connection to the west: the inevitable loss of the experience of goods as simple pleasures, uncomplicated by adult knowledge of cost, status implications and the like. 21hungarian cultural elites – film makers, artists, historians, museum curators, magazine editors and even advertisers – have taken advantage of the contemporary “retro” genre to craft this more palatable history according to the dictates of capitalist “taste.” references bach, jonathan. 2002. “the taste remains”: consumption, (n)ostalgia, and the production of east germany. public culture 14(3): 545:556 balogh gyula. 1997. álom a kamaszkorról. magyar hírlap. 09.02.96 berdahl, daphne. 1999. ‘(n)ostalgie’ for the present: memory, longing, and east german things. ethnos v. 64(2)192211. betts, paul. 2000. the twilight of the idols: east german memory and material culture. the journal of modern history 72 (september): 731-765 boyer, dominic. 2006. ostalgie and the politics of the future in eastern germany. public culture 18(2):361-381 boym, svetlana. 2001. the future of nostalgia. basic books: new york dobay-kiss gábor. 1997. “miböl lett a csinibaba? beszélgetés tímár péter filmrendezôvel.” pesti müsor. #8 eagle, herbert. 1989. “color and meaning in time stands still.” cross currents: a yearbook of central european culture. v.8 federmayer, éva. 1997. black mother and cyborg existence: reading octavia butler's dawn. in women and men in east european transition. cluj, july 23-28, 1996 conference proceedings publication, cluj napoca: editura fundatiei pentru studii europene. 247250. fehérváry, krisztina. 2002. american kitchens, luxury bathrooms and the search for a ‘normal’ life in post-socialist hungary. ethnos 67(3):369-400. — 2005. in search of the normal: material culture and middle-class fashioning in a hungarian steel town, 1950-1997. ph.d. dissertation, the university of chicago, dept. of anthropology. filmstudio. 1997. “interjú gálvölgyi jánossal, aki mostanáig várt elsô filmszerepére, de most a fôszerepet játssza.” anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 61 filmstudio interview. humphrey, caroline. 2002. the unmaking of soviet life: everyday economies after socialism. ithaca: cornell university press karacsony agnes.1996. kamasz korha. kurir. aug. 24. milosz, czeslaw. 1990 [1953]. the captive mind. new york: vintage international ed. nadkarni, maya. 2002. ‘csak a szépre emlékszem’ [i only remember the beautiful]: consuming nostalgia in postsocialist hungary. paper presented at the soyuz symposium of postsocialist cultural studies: new directions in post-socialist studies, university of michigan, ann arbor. february 23, 2002. nadkarni, maya and olga shevchenko. 2004. the politics of nostalgia: the case for comparative analysis of post-socialist practices. ab imperio 2: 487-519 rosenstone, robert. 1995. visions of the past: the challenge of film to our idea of history. cambridge: harvard university press stewart, susan. 1993. on longing: narratives of the miniature, the gigantic, the souvenir, the collection. durham: duke university press svede, mark allen. 2000. all you need is lovebeads: latvia’s hippies undress for success. in style and socialism: modernity and material culture in post-war eastern europe. edited by susan reid and david crowley. oxford: berg szárnyas gábor. 1997. “posztreál, avagy milyen a csini-mozi?” élet és îrodalom, march 14. ten-dyke, elizabeth a. 2001. tulips in december: space, time and consumption before and after the end of german socialism. german history 19(2):253-276 veenis, milena. 1999. consumption in east germany: the seduction and betrayal of things. journal of material culture. 4(1): 79-112 verdery, katherine. 1996. what was socialism, and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. allen typewritten text © 2006 krisztina fehérváry all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 51 transylvanian dancing in the final hour wayne b. kraft eastern washington university transylvania is the region of present-day romania bounded by the sweeping arc of the carpathian mountains. over several centuries, the hungarians, romanians, gypsies, saxons, jews and other peoples of transylvania developed particularly rich village traditions, living side by side. the relative isolation of transylvania and its rural character promoted the survival of village traditions far into the 20th century. [1] but the wars and political upheavals also wrought their share of damage to older ways of life. and the pop cultures of the west gradually penetrated to the youth of the villages. [2] there were also substantial changes in the demography of transylvania, and a couple of these should be mentioned at the outset. transylvania lost its jewish inhabitants in the course of the holocaust. [3] then, beginning in 1978, the west german government paid a head price to romania to buy the saxons free, and romania’s german-speaking population began a large-scale immigration to federal republic of germany. [4] although the jewish community vanished and the german cultural community was faced with collapse, romanians, hungarians, and gypsies remained. romania promoted some shifts of populations within transylvania, especially to enhance the “romanianization” of areas where, for reasons of location and/or size, the hungarian-speaking population seemed to pose a threat to the regime. in the decades when pop music and dancing was taking over the villages, a more modest movement in the opposite direction was occurring. in the early 1980s, the study of hungarian and transylvanian dancing was on the threshold of becoming an international phenomenon. american dancers gathered in the summer on the east and west coasts for week-long workshops taught by the best among hungary’s first generation of dancers of the so-called táncház or ‘dance-house’ movement. [5] the táncház movement brings village dancing to urban dancers—both as a strictly social dance activity and as the foundation for ensemble performance. the dancing of the hungarians, romanians and gypsies of transylvania came to be taught in hungary and abroad, chiefly by researchers from hungary. [6] although the hungarian dancing of transylvania is the focus of this article, the following observations are likely to apply mutatis mutandi to romanian and gypsy traditions as well. there are a couple of reasons that the phenomenon of village dancing in transylvania should be of interest beyond the relatively small universe of táncház dancers and performing groups. after the fall of totalitarianism in romania at the end of 1989, the villages of transylvania finally became accessible to outsiders. the táncház movement was, thus, able to come full circle, returning to the villages of its origin. the past fifteen years or so have been a moment of special grace, allowing surviving elder dancers to participate in the teaching of their cultural heritage to young dancers both local and international. moreover, this enterprise is the more intense for the circumstance that these dance traditions are quite complex with a high degree of improvisation. the following sections of this article consider, first, the táncház or ‘dance-house’ movement; second, the role of improvisation in hungarian and transylvanian peasant dancing; and, third, the status of village traditions today. the táncház movement reminiscences, centering on the beginning of the táncház movement in the early 1970s, show it to have been, like so many a youth movement, a counter-cultural alternative to the established order. in an era of international communism, the táncház movement was a way of being essentially hungarian. at the same time, participants assumed habits of dress and appearance that made them look much like the hippie generation in north america and western europe. they contemplated going “back to nature.” certainly, the dance culture of the peasants was one way of returning to origins. [7] the immediate appeal of village dancing must also have had much to do with its being an intensely social experience. [8] men’s dances are competitive in spirit. the dances for couples make for close contact between partners. the male leads richly figured dances with the sort of dynamic, aggressive partnering that is familiar to americans from our various swing dance traditions. the cycle of dances from a given village may easily last over half an hour, proceeding from slow tempos to very quick tempos. the time between dance cycles is for drinking, singing and all other forms of conviviality. yet it was not an easy matter to turn hungarian dancing into something of a youth movement. for one thing, virtuoso traditions require long study, and that presupposes strong commitment. for another thing, it was hard to gain access to source materials. above all, the moment had to be right. official attempts to promote traditional allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text © 2004 wayne b. kraft all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 52 wayne b. kraft the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 hungarian dance and music with youth failed to take hold in the 1950s and 1960s. and then, in the early 1970s, folk traditions were embraced with an anti-establishment fervor that, while far from blatant, must have been clear to anyone who looked closely. the realm of hungarian cultures divides itself into the hungarians living within hungary’s borders and the ethnic hungarians living beyond the borders, chiefly in present-day slovakia, romania, serbia and croatia. [9] the dismemberment of historical hungary is a legacy of world war i and the treaty of trianon. bearing in mind that one generalizes at considerable peril, it is probably safe to say that the village dance traditions of hungary had largely vanished by the 1970s and needed to be revived from archival materials. [10] the traditions of areas beyond hungary’s borders needed to be studied and preserved, but they were very difficult of access, in large measure because neighboring countries were inclined to isolate and oppress their hungarian minorities. in an earlier era, bartók and kodály had pioneered the collection of audio materials in the villages. [11] in midcentury, legendary collectors like györgy martin brought field recordings and film to the hungarian academy of sciences. [12] another pivotal figure, sándor tímár, was instrumental in establishing the táncház movement. [13] and the táncház movement, in turn, supplied a cohort of young, dedicated dancers and musicians who were inspired to undertake cloak-and-dagger missions into the villages of neighboring counties to continue learning the traditions. [14] in the first wave, archival film, pioneer researchers, and living informants furnished the source material for the dance-house. in the second wave, the first dance-house dancers themselves began to teach new generations in hungary and abroad. [15] in the táncház movement, the traditions of transylvania have been accorded a special role. [16] the hungarian minority there is relatively large and is spread over several folk cultural regions. within those folk cultural regions, each village has—or, at one time, had—its own dance and music dialect. this adds up to a great number of individual traditions—each of which is, or at least one time was, highly complex with a very large inventory of possible dance figures. scholars explain the wealth and persistence of traditions in transylvania by pointing out that romania remained more agrarian, less urbanized, more isolated than, say, hungary. transylvanian culture remained relatively unaffected by the turkish conquest of hungary and the balkans. romanians, hungarians, gypsies, saxons and jews lived in mixed villages or in close proximity. although each ethnic group maintained its own dance and music traditions, it is evident that they influenced one another profoundly as they evolved side by side. [17] the process of researching the many individual village traditions began even before the táncház movement and seems to have proceeded ever more intensely over the past two decades. in the first phases of the táncház movement, teachers tended to synthesize related village dances into a sort of “generic” regional dance. [18] in other cases, they chose one particular village’s tradition as the ideal representative of a regional type. [19] in subsequent phases, however, there emerged a tenacious commitment to research and teach the traditions of as many individual villages as possible. the sheer wealth of material appears to be adequate for lifetimes of documentation and study. [20] improvisation in transylvanian dancing inasmuch as transylvanian village traditions usually have a large inventory of dance figures, much depends on how those figures are put to use. an essential feature of the dancing is its highly “improvisational” quality. [21] hungarian and transylvanian village dancing does not have, so to speak, a fixed “text.” there is no prescribed sequence of figures. in men’s dancing, a man dances his own figures in his own preferred order, fitting his choices at least somewhat to the spirit and the impulse of the moment. when couples dance, they likewise assemble their own individual dance in keeping with the village’s tradition. [22] three aspects of improvisation deserve special discussion. first, improvisation is, so to speak, the fundamental mode of creativity and performance in traditional cultures where all artistic forms are based in variations within a tradition’s stylistic inventory. an embroidered peasant blouse or jacket, for instance, will not be identical to any other. but it will clearly bear the stylistic imprint of place and time. villagers in traditional dress may appear to be wearing a sort of uniform, but, on closer inspection, each garment is unique. [23] second, improvisation is a received skill, passed down from one generation of practitioners to another. traditional musicians learn “by ear.” post-traditional musicians learn from sheet music. like musicians, dancers are able to improvise within a tradition because they have assimilated both the “grammar” and the “vocabulary” of the dance, that is, both the units of expression and the rules for organizing them. [24] third, the survival of a high degree of improvisation is rare in modern times. improvisation became impoverished in western european regional ethnic dancing relatively early on. the southern german ländler dance forms, for instance, appear to have been improvised when settlers took them to transylvania in the 18th century where they retained their free character. but those dances soon took on a fixed form in a fixed sequence of figures in bavaria and austria. [25] transylvanian dancing in the final hour 53 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 hungary and, especially, transylvania offer not only a singular richness of dance and music traditions. they also provide insight into how improvisation once functioned in european dancing as it has until fairly recently in other traditional art forms. although survivals of improvised dance forms are not unknown in western europe, they are relatively rare and the inventory of figures is often very small. improvisational discretion may, thus, be limited to the timing of the sequence of a handful of figures (e.g., norwegian pols or swedish polska), whereas in “nonimprovisational” dancing the sequence of figures is fixed to the length of melody units (e.g., swedish hambo, various forms of schottische). [26] the status of village traditions today what is left of the old village traditions today? the impulse to explore this question is all the stronger because transylvanian traditions are the focus of special interest beyond transylvania. this outside interest is due partly to the special character of the dance and music, partly due to the circumstance that some hungarians have come to see transylvanian hungarians as bearing a hungarian identity more ancient, more authentic, more essential than their own. many students of hungarian dancing seem to have a temperamental preference for transylvanian dancing. both hungarian and transylvanian dancing mix layers of older dance forms with relatively new dance forms. [27] if dances from hungary require a lot of jumping and leaping about, transylvanian dancing seems to flow more elegantly and to allow more intimacy in partnering. [28] if transylvanian music sometimes has a more melancholy tone, it may also strike the listener as more compelling, more passsionate. [29] students of dancing can visit some transylvanian villages where there is still at least a remnant of a village band and where elder dance informants can still show their dance. these musicians and dancers often suffered under the repressive strategies of the romanian government in the years leading up to 1989. [30] during the totalitarian regime, the interest in hungarians beyond hungary’s borders was tied to concerns for human rights. and many urban hungarians also came to see in the survivals of transylvanian hungarian dance and music a sort of confirmation or validation of their own cultural identities. [31] the last fifty years have brought changes to life in rural romania which are analogous to those which occurred significantly earlier in most other areas of europe: a transition from traditional village culture toward a posttraditional culture with more “westernized” features. among the ethnically hungarian villagers of transylvania, various political, economic and social forces have tended to retard this process even further. the end of the long era of totalitarianism over a decade ago has occasioned new challenges and opportunities for the hungarian minority in the villages. the fate of the traditions of the hungarian villagers in transylvania is inseparable from their status as an ethnic minority in romania. the pressures on minorities within romania, even after the change of 1989, tend somewhat to discourage identification with the minority culture but also, in many ways, to reinforce identification. adherence to traditions in music and dance was, in many a case, an assertion of identity and an act of defiance. as such, it was often punished. on the other hand, some hungarians are said to have tried to avoid oppression by becoming relatively “assimilated,” even by becoming “more romanian than the romanians.” [32] hungarians, romanians and others are always conscious of social and ethnic tension. this has created a complex framework of identity and change as people in the villages struggle with political tension, with economic challenge, and with the other anxieties attendant to life in changing world. villagers seek to establish themselves within the evolving political and economic realities. hungarians, in particular, seek to express a sense of identity which they have long been obliged to suppress. the issue of determining which transylvanians are hungarians is not altogether unproblematic. on the first order, hungarians are people whose first language is hungarian. but this definition would include many individuals who identify themselves as gypsies and/or are so seen by other hungarian speakers. [33] and social factors like mixed marriages and employment choices may ultimately facilitate or cause a shift of identity. another facet of hungarian identity is determined by religious confession; another still, by a shared cultural heritage. in terms of transylvanian village life, this shared cultural heritage resides principally in the traditions of any given community. how can any given village tradition be regarded as “hungarian” in view of the fact that any given dance cycle is unique to a particular village? what allows us to identify infinitely varying forms as “hungarian”? for purposes of sustaining a hungarian identity, it does not seem to matter that those traditions vary from village to village and from region to region. what matters is that they are perceived as belonging to the hungarian community and not, say, to romanians or gypsies. moreover, the hungarians in any given village are likely to claim that their dance and music are more genuinely hungarian than that of neighboring villages. the dancing of the hungarians in the neighboring villages is, they often confide, “really romanian.” [34] indeed, among those village traditions in which hungarians invest their sense of identity, dance and music seem to be the most vital. up until the change of 54 wayne b. kraft the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 governments in romania in 1989, the ceausescu regime employed many strategies to isolate ethnic hungarians in their villages and to thwart the study of their village traditions. access to ethnically hungarian villages was generally forbidden to outsiders. research into the dance and music traditions of this region was carried on largely as an act of defiance through surreptitious excursions into the villages. many village musicians were reportedly forbidden to play their music ever again. the use of the hungarian language was suppressed in education, in the press and in other forms of community and public life. after 1989, transylvanian villages were opened to visitors from europe, asia and the americas who are devoted to the study of transylvanian music and dance traditions. at least in this special sense, the dispersion of transylvanian dancing has run full circle. [35] individual villages host week-long dance and music “camps,” usually taught by professional dance teachers with the participation of village musicians and dance informants. [36] a critical challenge is posed by the circumstance that the older generations of village musicians and dancers have dwindled close to vanishing, just as the intense activity of outsiders has helped to redirect the interest of villagers and their urban neighbors toward their own local traditions. a great many villages now have “dance ensembles”—gypsy, hungarian and/or romanian. it is clear that the revived dance forms are a mark of village identity and ethnic pride. [37] the last manifestations of the “living” music and dance culture are in their “final hour.” [38] in some places, the oldest surviving “traditional” musicians and dancers are still participating in the transfer of their art forms to a young generation. the dance is no longer deeply imbedded in the life of the entire community. weddings, for example, are celebrated to electronic “disco” music. [39] the resurgence within the younger generation occurs chiefly in the context of village dance ensembles. [40] in this sense, the culture has become a “post-traditional” one, in which traditions are honored by conscious efforts at conservation and revival. the dance and music traditions have to some extent bypassed the middle generations. dancers and musicians in the oldest and youngest generations are, in many cases, the principal focus of interest, for at least some of the youngest are inspired to learn the forms from their surviving elders. [41] moreover, the state of things for dancers and musicians is by no means the same. there are a large number of village dance groups, but since there are relatively few young village musicians, there is grave concern about a loss of continuity in the music forms. [42] the traditional peasant culture is waning to the vanishing point even as it is being discovered and conserved by schooled musicians and dancers and by an international urban following. [43] especially since 1990, a critical transition from traditional culture to postraditional has been underway with local participation as well as participation from all over hungarian-speaking territories and abroad. the living traditions are truly in their final hour, and we are living in the moment after the glory. yet many of the dance and music forms have entered a new mode of transmission and existence. let us allow a young, university-bound informant from the village of vajdaszentivány in southeast transylvania the final word. my wife, ildikó kalapács, and i interviewed etelka bálint in summer 2000. ildikó: do you think that such a small community as vadjaszentivány is able to say, “this is important to me, but i won’t accept that”? and thus choose among options, maybe ten or twenty years from now when they see that not everything is good that comes from the west? not everything is positive? etelka: it’s possible that that will come to pass, and it’s possible precisely because there is already an organized dance and music camp here. it will strengthen this awareness in people. they will see that the people who come here, these throngs of people, come here expressly to learn a dance that seems so simple to them, one that they perhaps regarded as valueless at the outset. so this will gain strength in us and, whether consciously or unconsciously, we’re going to hold onto it because we regard it as something valuable. and then we’ll know how to choose between mcdonalds and folk dance, between different places of entertainment. [44] endnotes 1 this paper is based on the endowed lecture with the same title that i gave at the invitation of the selma jeanne cohen fund for international scholarship on dance on november 1, 2003, at the annual conference of the fulbright association in washington dc. 2 on my very first evening in a transylvanian village in 1993, my wife and i were able to spend a few hours with the fiddler, istván kávés szabó, “hunchback pisti,” of szék. the young teenagers of the street seemed to use the occasion of our visit—nothing goes unnoticed in a village—as a pretext for occupying one of pisti’s two rooms and watching television. pisti played us tune after tune from the extraordinarily rich tradition of szék. the teenagers in the other room watched a pop music festival broadcast from brassow, looking back toward us from time to time as if mildly curious that we had come half way around the world to hear music that was not in the center of their interest. one house, two cultures. “hunchback pisti” died in the spring of 1999. korniss (1998:140) has a portrait of istván szabó taken at the age of 63 in his home in 1997. transylvanian dancing in the final hour 55 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 the musical culture of szék—until recently the model for the “dance-house” revival—is said now to include electronic amplification and keyboard synthesizers. in summer 2000, we talked with a woman who had recently had her hair cut short and who had set aside the kerchief and traditional dress of szék in favor of modern dress. she said that since szék was one of the last villages to abandon more traditional ways of life, it would probably be one of the last villages to begin a revival. i shall write the names of villages in their hungarian form, for the perspective of this paper is that of someone who has specialized in hungarian village culture and dancing. 3 ioanid (2000:289) is not able to give figures for transylvania as a whole but notes that as “a consequence of the wartime changes in borders, 150,000 of the original [jewish] population ended up under hungarian sovereignty in northern translyvania, deported in 1944 to concentration camps and extermination centers in the greater reich; nearly all of these—130,000—perished before the war’s end.” 4 gündisch (1998:236). there was another surge of emigration in 1990 and 1991 (gündisch 1998:246). the extent to which the transylvanian saxon culture collapsed is measured by gündisch (1998:247): “ende 1996 zählte die evangelische kirche in rumänien weniger als 20 000 seelen. etwa in dieser größenordnung ist die zahl der mitte der neunziger jahre noch in rumänien lebenden siebenbürger sachsen anzusetzen. dabei fällt neben der im vergleich zu früher starken geographischen streuung die ungünstige altersstruktur ins auge—der überwiegende teil der siebenbürgisch-sächsischen bevölkerung ist älter als 60.” 5 i attended the first barátság hungarian music and dance camp in the mendocino woodlands of northern california in 1982 (after serious hungarian content had been included in a mixed camp the year before). it was taught by lászló diószegi, assisted by éva kiss. the east coast symposium was founded in 1978. 6 the romanian dancing of bonchida on the transylvanian heath, by way of example, was widely taught in hungary and abroad in the early 1980s. after the gypsy band from szászcsávás burst into international awareness in 1992 with its quintana harmonia mundi recording (qui 403072), the dancing from that community came to be taught widely. the szászcsávás band has toured in the united states several times. 7 bodor (1981) chronicles the first decade of the táncház movement with copious photographs in an anthology with text in both hungarian and english. kürti (2001), as may be read from its subtitle, gives an extended analysis of “transylvania in the hungarian imagination” in which the táncház movement and its attachment to the peasant culture of transylvania plays a featured role. see especially chapters four and six. 8 sebő’s reminiscence (1994:92) shows the first táncház in may 1972 to have been a happy sort of accident, planned as a social diversion for dance ensemble members: “az első táncház 1972. május 6-án jött létre a liszt ferenc téri könyvklubban. szervezői a bihari táncegyüttes tagjai voltak, akik a másik hasonló típusú amatőr táncegyüttes tagjai számára (bartók, vasas, vadrózsák) kellemes, zártkörű klubestet szerveztek. az elképzelés az volt, hogy a színpadra koreografált néptáncokat ezúttal a saját szórakozásukra, társastánc módjára használják fel. a zenét a sebő együttes szolgáltattta. az este olyan jól sikerült, hogy folytatni kellett, még hozzá hamarosan a zártkörűség feloldásával, az utca embere számára is megközelíthetően.” 9 see, for example, balassa (1989) and felföldi and pesovár (1997). 10 kodály’s librettist for háry jános, béla paulini, founded the gyöngyösbokréta (‘pearly bouquet’) movement in 1931 in an effort to breath new life into traditions of folk song and dance that were already dying out in hungary (eősze 1982:79). see also kürti 2001. 11 their collecting began before world war i and continued even through the war. eősze (1981:156) shows kodály dancing at a peasant wedding in 1966, less than half a year before his death on march 6, 1967. 12 according to andrásfalvy (1993:41), “a magyar néptánckutatásnak döntő korszaka volt 1951-től a 60-as évek végéig tartó időszak, amiben—annak idején—martin györgynek vezető szerepe volt. ez idő alatt gyűlt össze az a táncfilmés magnetofonszalag mennyiség és minőség, ami meghatározta a magyar tánckutatást. a 60-as évek után magyarországon alig lehetett már eleven gyakorlatban néptáncot felvenni. az a generáció, amelyik még a gyöngyösbokréta idején kicsit felelevenítette saját hagyományos táncéletét, már nem állhatott a kamera elé, azt már csak néhány idős ember képviselte. 1961ben kiterjedhetett ez a táncgyűjtés erdélyre, ami döntő táncanyagot hozott a magyar tánckincs megítéléséhez. 13 as the táncház movement began, tímár formed the bartók ensemble. he has remained an influential teacher in the movement and became director of the hungarian state folk ensemble. 14 as kürti (2001:150) notes, “by the start of the 1980s, youth from hungary flocked to transylvania in increasing numbers.” i held a fulbright research grant for hungary in 1986–87, and my sponsors were lászló diószegi and ágnes gaug, directors of the gutenberg (now válaszút) ensemble. lászló diószegi who had danced in the early days with tímár in the bartók ensemble told me in 1987 that the romanian border officials maintained a long list of individuals they prohibited from entering transylvania. 56 wayne b. kraft the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 he no longer dared to cross into transylvania, for fear that the next time would end up being his last time. all visitors to hungarian villages in that era have adventurous stories to tell. for background, see kürti (2001:156). 15 among the dancers of that generation are lászló diószegi and ágnes gaug, zoltán zsuráfszki and zsuzsanna vincze, zoltán farkas and ildikó tóth, as well as ferenc sára and zoltán nagy. 16 the dances from szék had a defining role at the very beginning of the movement when ferenc novák had just completed his ethnographic master’s thesis on that tradition (kürti 2001:140). see also kürti (2001:148). 17 see, for example, martin (1988:63): “in transylvania, hungarians, rumainians and saxons, keeping their own particular features, yet in mutual interaction, developed an extremely rich and wonderful peasant culture, which could not have arisen if one nation only had lived there, or would not have become so colourful. the ethnic multiplicity, the articulation of the landscape and undisturbed development largely contributed to the survival of the multi-coloured character. …there are many small villages in the mezőség, with no more than a few hundred inhabitants each, where hungarians and rumanians, and sometimes even gypsies live together. in some of them they have kept apart, in others their culture has become part of a melting pot. it is just about impossible to discern what is particular to each nation.” 18 i am thinking of examples like the dances from dunántúl (transdanubia). 19 the dance from magyarpalatka, for example, as the representative dance from the mezőség (transylvanian heath). 20 a footnote to martin and pesovár (1998:542) lists a total number of meters of archival film that triples the account given in 1979: “az mta zenetudományi intézet archívumai 1998-ban mintegy 350 000 méter filmen, melynek egyharmada hangosítható, kb. 30 000 táncfolyamatot őriznek a kárpát-medence 1200 településéből.” before the use of video tape and vhs-playback became widespread, laban notation seemed to be the most effective way of recording dance material. ágoston (1980) provides a sort of primer in laban notation for folk dancers and other sources rely heavily on its use. 21 martin (1988:12): “the most important stylistic feature of the dance within the carpathians is thus the unusually large amount of personal improvisation. hence its extraordinary richness in spite of the small number of types of dances, and hence its own particular hue in the european context, distinguishing it from the dance world of western europe and of the balkans.” see also martin (1980:12–14). 22 see kraft (1989) for a more comprehensive discussion of improvisation in hungarian dancing (conceived during the 1989 national endowment for the humanities summer seminar “the oral tradition in literature” under the direction of john miles foley at the university of missouri at columbia). 23 a pair of levi’s 501 jeans, by contrast, is a “text.” it is always put together in exactly the same way. levi’s jeans may smack of the american west, but they are thoroughly international at the same time. westerners may look like rugged individuals, but each piece of clothing they wear exists in countless identical versions. one accessible source on hungarian peasant costumes is gáborján (1988), although i cannot find that she has emphasized the improvisational quality. gáborján does note the responsiveness of peasant costume to prevailing fashions and to the availability of new materials (5–15). i can relate an amusing adaptation of double-breasted men’s jackets. i have a felted wool jacket from csíkszentdomokos which was originally single-breasted. someone simply added an (asymmetric) row of buttons to make it appear to be double-breasted—a solution that i have noted on other pieces of clothing as well. 24 the use of language as a conceptual framework and metaphor for dance was elaborated at least as long as a hundred years ago. see zorn (1905:16) and, for hungarian traditions, martin and pesovár (1961:3–4). 25 goldschmidt (1966:109): “die tanzform des ländlers muß schon am ende des 17. jahrhundertrs voll entwickelt gewesen sein. einen beweis dafür sieht r. wolfram in der tatsache, daß er bei österreichsichen siedlern in rumänien und in der slowakei, deren vorfahren schon um 1735 und 1775 dort einwanderten, einen älteren typus des ländlers vorfand, dessen figuren mit den bekannten bayrisch-österreichischen im wesentlichen übereinstimmten, jedoch viel freier verwendet wurden. in diesen freien, doch stilgebundenen ländlern—bezeichnenderweise auch immer noch ‘deutsche’ genannt—machte jeder ‘was ihm beliebte und wann es ihm beliebte’. das freie umwerben des mädchens durch den burschen, das den uns bekannten ländlern fehlt, war bei den alten noch bekannt.” 26 for norwegian and swedish traditions, respectively, see, for instance, bakka (1978) and folkdanser (1975). 27 martin (1988 and elsewhere) discusses the layers present in traditions from various parts of the hungarian cultural realm. some forms are shown to be distant reflexes of medieval and renaissance dancing. moreover, martin (1988:6) asserts: “historical descriptions, a brief mention here and there, and illustrations showing dancers give an even more fragmentary picture of the history of hungarian dances than musical notation which can be decoded with relative precision and which has survived in far greater quantities than descriptions of dances. living folk-dances are therefore the primary sources of dance history. transylvanian dancing in the final hour 57 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 28 jumping dances and figures are prominent in the danube and tisza regions of hungary proper—not so much in transylvania. 29 especially older slow dance forms like the széki lassú and the mezőségi akasztós (see martin and pesovár 1998:568). 30 the story of márton maneszes of magyarszovát, for instance, was told in a documentary done by duna tv in the mid-1990s that i have seen but could not verify before publication. he related his story to me in person in summer 1995. other musicians like sándor fodor of the kalotaszeg region report having come to a sort of accommodation with the local police that spared them. 31 see, for example, kürti (2001:163–164). 32 in september 1995, we were able to meet with a group of hungarian villagers beyond the carpathians in romanian moldavia. the moldavian hungarians have been the most isolated and had not been allowed to learn to read or write nor to worship in their mother tongue. in advance of our meeting, it had been reported that some people from hungary had tried to deliver a caror truckload of books to hungarians in moldavia. they had been intercepted by romanians and soundly thrashed. like many other hungarians in romania at that time, they lived in fear. they explained that they were happy to meet with outsiders on videotape so that their story could be told if they subsequently vanished. but the condition of our meeting was that we left the village, drove several miles down the highway, crossed a marsh and climbed a hill to the edge of a wood, away from all watchers. on the way out of the village, the women bent down in the vehicle so that they would not be seen by other villagers. most of their fellow villagers were also hungarian, but that did not mean that they could be trusted. our recent communications with our friends there indicate that anxieties have somewhat diminished. 33 in 1993, my wife and i spent an afternoon with a gypsy musician in méra. as the music culture of his district waned, he had acquired a second career as a chimney sweep. at one point he said approximately the following: “the hungarians consider me a gypsy, but i never learned the gypsy language. i grew up here among these hungarians and i’ve always spoken hungarian. what kind of gypsy am i? the romanians say that romania has only romanians. to them i am officially neither a gypsy nor a hungarian. but it is clear that i’m not a romanian either. i’m sixty-three years old. i’d like to know who i am before i die.” we saw him again in august 1995. he died less than a year after that second meeting. 34 a village informant in szék, for instance, told me in 1993 that the dancing of the other hungarians in the surrounding transylvanian heath was really romanian. an informant in kalotaszentkirály told me in 2000 that the local kalotaszeg dance form is hungarian; the widely taught form of the kalotaszeg dance from méra is really romanian. 35 the return to the villages is certain to have brought some happy surprises with it. zoltán nagy reported to me in 1995 that he had recently shown the classic archival footage of bonchida dancing to some villagers, secure in the belief that no living villagers knew the dance forms any longer. someone in the small audience said, “that’s me! and that other couple is…” 36 there are, at present, about a dozen such camps throughout the summer all across transylvania and into romanian moldavia. in some villages, like vajdaszentivány, the workshops teach the village’s own dancing. in other villages, the site of the camp is at odds with the material being taught. in válaszút in 1995, for instance, the dancing of neighboring bonchida and somewhat more distant magyarszovát was taught. the kalotaszeg camp was sited in kalotaszentkirály in the earliest 1990s because that village had a suitable infrastructure (and has since developed a role in village tourism). for nearly a decade, the kalotaszeg dancing of méra was taught in kalotaszentkirály and even the youth of that village was learning a form of a different sub-dialect (and watershed) than their own. villagers show some competitive spirit with regard to their local dance, and i have heard villagers comment on the circumstance that they teach their own villages dance whereas some other village has to use an outsider from the city to teach its youth. 37 in summer 2000, i saw a “festival of a dozen villages” in vajdaszentivány that, in the event, turned out to have performing groups from fourteen or so villages. the ensembles represented hungarians, romanians and gypsies. 38 i first heard this expression from lászló diószegi in 1987. in 1997–98, the fonó budai zeneház sponsored a final hour project (utolsó óra program) with the support of the zenetudományi intézet of the hungarian academy of sciences. they archived hours of recordings from each of more than a dozen village ensembles and issued for each ensemble a selection on cd under the fonó series, új pátria. 39 as informants explained, for example, in gyimesközéplok in summer 2000, a wedding is a social occasion that is embedded in a network of reciprocal obligations. once the change from traditional music to pop music occurred, village usage had passed a point of no return. a couple who might have wanted a more “traditional” wedding celebration was prevented from choosing traditional music and dancing by the obligation to provide guests what they expected. 40 i encountered youth dance ensembles or dance groups in several villages (kalotaszentkirály, méra, 58 wayne b. kraft the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 vajdaszentivány, for instance) in 2000. it is likely that a substantial number of villages throughout transylvania now have such groups. 41 i attended a village party in csíkszentdomokos in 1995. at the center of attention were two sets of grandfathers with their grandsons. one of the old men danced a couple of men’s dances, then encouraged the younger generation to dance. the grandsons had become dancers in a semi-professional ensemble in csíkszereda. (the grandmothers were also present, but gender roles accorded them less prominence than their husbands.) i had very few opportunities to see small children dancing. during the week-long camp in vajdaszentivány in 2000, a romanian father, whose wife happens to be hungarian, often danced with his young daughter at the evening dance-house. this father-daughter moment was particularly beautiful, but one which i fear may be rather rare. 42 i expect that this concern is expressed in a great many villages. i remember specific occasions in vajdaszentivány and gyimesközéplok in summer 2000. 43 in many a village, the dance informants seemed to be in their seventies in 1995 and 2000. these elder dance informants typically have bad hips or knees and other effects of age. they suffer considerable pain and move with a certain stiffness. but they dance with an amazing energy and elegance, and their faces betray no inconsiderable joy. 44 ildikó: gondolod, hogy képes egy ilyen kis közösség, mint vajdaszentivány, arra, hogy azt mondja, nekem ez fontos, viszont én ezt nem fogadom el, és így, így szelektál, így talán tíz-húsz év múlva, amikor látják, hogy nem minden jó, ami nyugatról jön. nem minden pozitív. etelka: lehetséges lesz ez, és pedig azért lesz lehetséges, mert az itt van már egy megszervezett táncés zenetábor, ez fogja erősíteni az emberekben ezt a tudatot. fogják látni, hogy azok az emberek, akik eljönnek ide, ez a rengeteg embercsoport, azért jön el, hogy egy olyan, számukra egyszerűnek tűnő táncot tanuljon meg, amit talán kezdetben értéktelennek tartott. tehát ez megerősödik bennünk, és hol tudatosan, hol tudattalanul, fogunk tudni választani mcdonalds és néptánc között, meg különböző szórakozóhelyek között. references ágoston, lányi 1980 néptáncolvasókönyv. 2nd ed. budapest: zeneműkiadó. andrásfalvy, bertalan 1993 “visszatekintés az 1950-es és 60-as évek néptánc gyűjtéseire.” in: martin györgy emlékezete. ed. by lászló felföldi. budapest: magyar művelődési intézet. pp. 41–47. bakka, egil 1978 norske dansetradisjonar. oslo: det norske samlaget. bodor, ferenc, ed. 1981 nomád nemzedék: ifjúság és népművészet magyarországon 1970–1980. budapest: népmúvelési intézet. eősze, lászló 1981 zoltán kodály: his life in pictures and documents. 2nd ed. trans. by barna balogh and gyula gulyás. budapest: corvina. [orig.: kodály zoltán élete képekben és dokumentumokban. budapest: zeneműkiadó, 1971.] felföldi, lászló, and ernő pesovár, eds. 1997 a magyar nép és nemzetiségeinek tánchagyománya. 2nd ed. budapest: planétás. gáborján 1988 hungarian peasant costumes. 2nd ed. trans. by mária kresz. new york: püski. [orig.: magyar népviseletek. budapest: corvina, [1988?] goldschmidt, aenne 1966 handbuch des deutschen volkstanzes: systematische darstellung der gebräuchlichen deutschen volkstänze, textband. berlin (east): henschelverlag kunst und gesellschaft; rpt. wilhelmshaven: heinrichshofen, 1974. gündisch, konrad 1998 siebenbürgen und die siebenbürger sachsen. studienbücher der stiftung ostdeutscher kulturrat, band 8. münchen: langen müller. ioadnid, radu 2000 the holocaust in romania: the destruction of jews and gypsies under the antonescu regime, 1940–1944. chicago: ivan r. dee. korniss, péter 1998 leltár: erdélyi képek 1968–1998. budapest: officina nova. kraft, wayne b. 1989 “improvisation in hungarian ethnic dancing: an analog to oral verse composition.” oral tradition, 4/3(1989):273–315. kürti, lászló 2001 the remote borderland: transylvania in the hungarian imagination. albany: state university of new york. martin, györgy 1980 “a kárpát-medence népeinek tánckultúrája.” in: magyar néptánchagyományok. ed. by lajos lelkes. budapest: zeneműkiadó. pp. 11–15. 1988 hungarian folk dances. 2nd ed. trans. by rudolf fischer. new york: püski. [orig.: transylvanian dancing in the final hour 59 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 a magyar nép táncai. budapest: corvinia, 1974.] martin, györgy, and ernő pesovár. 1961 “a structural analysis of the hungarian folk dance (a metholdological sketch).” acta ethnographica (separatum), 10:1–2. 1998 “tánc.” in: a magyar folklór. ed. by vilmos voigt. budapest: osiris. pp. 540–602. sebő, ferenc 1994 népzenei olvasókönyv. budapest: magyar művelődési intézet. svenska folkdanser 1975 2 vols. rpt. falun: svenska ungdomsringen för bygdekultur. zorn, friedrich albert 1905 grammar of the art of dancing: theoretical and practical lessons in the arts of dancing and dance writing (choreography). ed. by alfonso josephs sheafe. trans. by benjamin p. coates; rpt. new york: burt franklin, 1970. [orig.: grammatik der tanzkunst. leipzig: j. j. weber, 1887.] microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 4 editors’ notes krista harper & julie hemment university of massachusetts, amherst as editors, we are happy to celebrate the twenty-fifth volume of the anthropology of east europe review by taking stock of the shifting terrain of anthropological research on central and eastern europe and eurasia. cracking open our archives (see back issues on our website), it is fascinating to read the early work of now wellknown scholars: an early course syllabus from kathryn verdery here, an essay from chris hann there. when the journal was founded in 1982, it was a small newsletter with book reviews and conference announcements for researchers working in the region. in those early years, u.s.based scholars had much more limited access to research sites in eastern europe, and few contributors to the journal worked in the soviet union. many of the analyses appearing on the pages of the journal were published as open letter exchanges between scholars. at that moment, a key topic of debate in the pages of the newsletter was how anthropologists should place themselves and their knowledge within the world of cold war academia and the broader national discourse on the region as part of the soviet union’s “evil empire.” by 1989, the newsletter transformed into a journal under the editorship of sam beck and david kideckel. that year’s issue included articles exploring the resurgence of nationalism in austria (rotenberg and desoto, 1989, aeer 8) and hungarian peasants’ ambivalent feelings about their country’s entry into the capitalist system (lampland, 1989, aeer 8). in 1990, the journal published its first full-length article on the anthropology of the soviet union. the increasing volume of research in the region was reflected in the increasing number of articles in the issues published in the following 15 years, and the geographic range of the journal expanded through its partnership with soyuz, the postcommunist cultural studies network. and yet… one sees throughout the history of the journal a focus on a key underlying theme: the cultural consequences of rapid social, political, and economic change. in his 1983 essay on the role of eastern european anthropology, david kideckel wrote: in eastern europeanist anthropology our struggle is largely one to define basic meanings… we ought to make "actually existing socialism," i.e. the current social systems as they really operate, our chief concern. (aeer 3(1)) elaborating on the need to provide a “pig’s eye” perspective on everyday life under state socialism and to give ethnographic description priority, kideckel continues: while this would recognize the difficult base at which most european states set out on their path to development and the many successes and achievements along the way; so it would also consider the manner by which these processes have gone awry and the often large human costs of the process. (ibid) kideckel was, of course, writing of state socialism as a development process, but his words strike a special chord with those of us now working on those aspects of social life that have been once again transformed by neoliberal policies and postsocialist development processes—cultural processes fraught with new, unintended consequences and often very large human costs. like kideckel, we argue that anthropology’s primary contribution to knowledge about the region remains its attentiveness to participants’ interpretations of the world and their situated practices, and at times, taking the “pig’s eye” view of larger scale processes such as globalization, neoliberalism, and europeanization. this issue's "symposium" on microprocesses of post-socialist transformation offers this kind of contextualized understanding of broader processes. we would like to extend our thanks to our guest editors, hülya demirdirek (university of victoria) and lale yalçınheckmann (max planck institute for social anthropology), for assembling such a rich and textured collection of articles for this special issue. these papers, which originated as contributions to a panel discussion at the european association of social anthropologists (easa) conference 2004, focus on what the editors call the “microprocesses” of postsocialist transformation. their introduction, “encounters of the postsocialist kind” leads the collection and lays out the key issues that the articles explore. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 5 in our open forum this edition, we include three compelling articles from the region. hana horakova contributes to discussions of european identity formation, from the vantage point of one czech village. drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the rural area of dolní roveň in the czech republic, horakova examines the relationship between reconfigurations of rural lifestyles and the project of european unification. vlado kotnik’s article offers us insights from the slopes, and explores the role of (alpine) skiing in slovenian culture and society. examining its historical and contemporary status, he suggests that we understand the current popularity of downhill skiing in slovenia in terms of the broader issue of national identity formation. finally, alex skalska analyzes the rise of radical rightand leftwing parties in the polish government, drawing from extensive field research with political activists in silesia. finally, we would like to announce that our term as editors of aeer is nearing its close next year. we have greatly enjoyed our tenure as co-editors, and we feel honored to have followed in the footsteps of our colleagues who served as editors before us: william lockwood, sam beck, david kideckel, robert rotenberg, and barb west. hosting the journal at umass and having access to our contributors' most current research on the region have been wonderful experiences for us. we are now looking to pass the baton to a new editorial team. if you are interested in taking on the role of editor, or have suggestions as to colleagues who might be, please contact us. we would like to extend our warm thanks to robert rotenberg for his ongoing work maintaining the aeer website at de paul university. we are grateful to the center for public policy and administration (cppa) at the university of massachusetts for providing the resources for research and editorial assistance and to the department of anthropology for providing overhead support for the journal. finally, we would like to extend a very special thanks to lisa hilt, whose enthusiastic assistance and careful and thorough eye has ensured the smooth running of the journal these past two years, and who is now moving on as she graduates from the umass center for public policy and administration. we know that she will accomplish great things in the field of international public policy, and we send her our very best wishes. call for papers fall 2007 anthropology of east europe review we invite you to submit articles on current research projects for the “open forum” of our fall 2007 issue. we are also seeking submissions of syllabi or essays on teaching related to the anthropology of eastern europe and eurasia. papers should be no more than 7,000 words (including endnotes and references). please send your electronic submissions as a microsoft word .doc file to: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 61 reviving moldova: social and political dimensions of contemporary folkloric performances jennifer r. cash indiana university on any given day, casual visitors and long-term residents alike will easily encounter “folkloric” music and dance in moldova’s capital city of chişinău. whether you go to a restaurant, turn on the television or radio, attend a concert at the national palace, take a stroll past the stages erected in the main square for free public performances during any major holiday, participate in a celebration hosted by a local company or union for its workers, or attend an elementary-school function, chances are you will witness dances like the horă and bătută, or the singing of a doină. [1] folkloric forms of music and dance are by no means the only genres available in the republic of moldova, and folk performers jostle for public attention with locally and internationally produced pop-rock, opera, classical music, ballet, ballroom dancing, and jazz dance. each genre has its devotees, and pop-rock especially dominates the airwaves here, as elsewhere. this diversity in available music and dance styles makes it difficult to assign a particular social importance to the folk genres in moldova. yet that is exactly what i propose to do in this article. in keeping with the general theme of this issue of the anthropology of east europe review, this article [2] has three broad goals. first, it introduces the basic criteria that distinguish folk music and dance from other locally available styles, and provides a general guide to the finer distinctions that local specialists make regarding subtypes of folkloric performance and authenticity. second, it places folk music and dance within moldova’s recent social history, especially emphasizing issues related to state sovereignty, national identity, and ethnic relations. third, it examines a particular question—when is folkloric performance political?—in the context of my own research with members of the self-described “folkloric movement” in moldova. as an american anthropologist, i find the claims that members of this movement make regarding the apolitical and antipolitical nature of their work very challenging; therefore this article demonstrates several ways in which i have tried to ascertain what it means for folkloric music and dance in moldova to be or not be “political.” taken together, i hope the three foci of this article provide a useful introduction to folkloric performance in moldova that also speaks more broadly to the centrality of music and dance in the social life, ethnographic study, and general understanding of post-socialist eastern europe. folk music and dance in the republic of moldova for an american, the prominence of folkloric performances in everyday life in moldova stands out as a significant “social fact” worth further investigation. the most general criteria will distinguish folkloric performance for the least knowledgeable of observers. first, folkloric performers wear distinctive costumes. in moldova, as might be expected, classical orchestras perform in tuxedos and black dresses, ballet dancers wear tutus and tights, opera singers wear evening dresses and character costumes, and pop-rock musicians perform in street clothes, veering towards evening and party-wear. in moldova, people commonly scrutinize costumes as an indicator of the relative authenticity of a folkloric performance, but commonalities across folkloric costuming make the genre identifiable even for a relatively uninformed newcomer. folk musicians and dancers can usually be distinguished by the embroidered white shirts worn by both men and women. other costume pieces convey varying commitments to authenticity among performers. the women’s shirts are slightly flounced at the shoulders, scoop-necked, and have embroidery descending in vertical rows down the front of the chest as well as the length of the sleeve, and are worn tucked into a darker-colored skirt of any number of styles. handloomed, long, narrow, wraparound skirts, especially black or dark blue, interspersed with vertical lines of dark red and blue, are considered the most “authentic.” the most “inauthentic” skirts are circle-skirts cut to the knee or even above, decorated with large, bright patterns of sunflowers, grapes, or geometric motifs usually found in locally woven carpets. men’s shirts fall below their hips. they have subtler embroidery, usually limited to the neck and chest area, and in the most “authentic” costuming are worn belted over white pants. less authentic costuming for men involves black pants. other articles of clothing frequently worn during folkloric performances—including sheerling vests and pig-skin moccasins for men and women, and black lambskin capes and sheepskin hats for men—further help a casual viewer or listener to identify “folklore” by sight alone. ordinary citizens no longer wear these “national costumes,” and they are usually publicly displayed only in museums and during performances of folk music and dance (see also worldmark encyclopedia 1998:254). allen typewritten text © 2004 jennifer r. cash all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text 62 jennifer r. cash the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 distinctive instrumentation, rhythms, lyrics, and steps further define folkloric music and dance in moldova. while local ethnographers, folklorists, and performers spend their professional lives learning to identify and reproduce these distinctive elements, a non-specialist will also quickly perceive certain patterns. [3] for example, combinations of violin, clarinet, double bass, and xylophone dominate folk music; alternatively, flutes and ocarinas appear together. rhythms from the first combination of instruments tend to be fast, their phrases repeat, and the overall effect is of a rollicking, slightly jazzy, exuberant and accented rhythm; the second set of combinations yields music that inevitably starts slow and plaintive, and often stays that way, although it too tends to get faster. music of the first type often accompanies dancing, but singing (except in “shouts” done while dancing) is performed by unaccompanied soloists. singers deliver obviously ironic commentaries or plaintive, reflective melodies. dancing usually involves equal numbers of men and women, and though they may sometimes break into pairs, the tendency is toward round-dances. a lead dancer frequently shouts to the others, and they respond. like the music, dances tend to start out slow, and get increasingly faster. their rhythm is simple, but insistent, and—as locals like to say—it has temperament. to an outsider, moldova’s folklore signals the existence of a distinct local aesthetic system. folklore’s public visibility further suggests that these aesthetic values are not simply elements of a forgotten past. instead, performers and consumers of folklore are busily confronting and re-confronting the past and the values they associate with it every time they engage with a folkloric performance. but what are the actual mechanics involved in these confrontations with the past? who performs and consumes folklore, and why? what is the social meaning of folklore in moldova? during 2001, i conducted nine months of fieldwork in the republic of moldova, building on three months of preliminary research undertaken between 1999 and 2000. i worked with local ethnographers, folklorists, performers, teachers, ensemble directors, ministry officials, and a host of other specialists to learn how the repertoires of children’s folkloric ensembles were created, performed, and judged. i wanted to know, first and foremost, whether traditional materials from each of the country’s several ethnic groups entered ensemble repertoires. or, did these repertoires systematically include only one or a few group’s traditions, while excluding those from other groups? the overarching goal was to study the changing shape of national identity and ethnic relations in the context of post-socialism and new state-building initiatives. following the existing literature on nationalism, folkloric performances suggested themselves as a potentially significant platform for launching representations of “national” culture and identity into the public sphere (gellner 1983; herzfeld 1987; hobsbawm and ranger 1983; shay 2002; smith 1991). i wanted to know whether specialists used their creative work, especially their pedagogical work with children, to support the government’s recent attempts to promote moldova’s identity as a “multi-ethnic” state. on their part, the specialists i worked with took great pains to teach me how to distinguish “authentic” folklore from its “inauthentic” representations. my informants accepted me as an “ethnographer,” but found it difficult to teach me to recognize, classify, and distinguish the many sub-categories of folklore in the same ways that they do. i have no specialized training in music or dance, and was largely innocent of most local customs and traditions before i saw them performed on-stage. as a primary research method, “participant-observation” led me into a study of the debates between specialists about “authenticity” long before i had many experiences of my own that my informants would recognize as “authentic.” specifically, i did not know the traditions of local villages through personal experience. my response to this predicament in cultural translation is to show how the problem of defining folklore as a performance genre reflects and encapsulates key features of local social systems and experiences. specifically, moldova’s folkloric genres reflect the country’s soviet legacy and its place in a broader east european culture area. soviet legacies the most significant legacy of soviet rule in moldova relates to the question of national identity. in fact, at least five over-lapping questions regarding the ideal connections between culture and politics continue to dominate political discussions both locally and internationally. 1) should moldova exist as an independent country? 2) should moldova unite with romania? 3) is the majority of the population “romanian”? 4) is there a “moldovan” identity that is not simply “romanian”? 5) should the state’s boundaries and/or local structures of governance be changed to better represent ethnic, regional, or other interests? on the one hand, these questions represent the general dilemmas faced by any nationalizing state (brubaker 1996). the debate over the distinctiveness of “moldovan” identity, however, is rooted in divergent interpretations of key historical and demographic facts. the republic of moldova gained independence as the soviet union collapsed in 1991, maintaining political boundaries first established in 1940. in 1940, the soviet union gained control of bessarabia from romania as part of the agreements outlined in the molotov-ribbentrop pact. by joining bessarabia’s six counties with six counties already formed in the moldavian autonomous soviet reviving moldova 63 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 socialist republic (massr), the soviet union formed a new political unit: the moldavian soviet socialist republic (mssr) (king 2000:94). the mssr and today’s republic of moldova united two pieces of land—bessarabia and transnistria—that had never before been administered as a single political unit. bessarabia, which stretches between the prut and dneister rivers, was part of the medieval principality of moldova that became a vassal state of the ottoman empire in the 1500s. in 1812, the ottoman empire ceded bessarabia, but not the rest of moldova (which would later become part of modern romania), to the russian empire where it maintained some political autonomy as a guberniia. in 1917, bessarabia united with the kingdom of romania, and the soviet union disputed the legitimacy of this union throughout the inter-war period. the other part of the republic of moldova, currently referred to as transnistria because it lies on the eastern bank of the dneister river, had no political identity separate from ukraine until 1924 when the soviet union carved 7, 516 square kilometers out of the ukrainian ssr to form the moldavian autonomous soviet socialist republic (king 2000:52). when transnistria’s six counties were combined with bessarabia in 1940, the rest of the massr was dissolved into ukraine. because moldova’s borders have changed so often, and because the borders set in 1924 and 1940 so clearly manipulated local politics in favor of soviet interests (see bruchis 1984 for a detailed account), the state itself often seems illegitimate. since 1991, the legitimacy of post-soviet moldova’s borders has been heavily questioned in word and deed. strong pro-romanian sentiments in the early 1990s caused international observers to expect moldova to re-unify with romania. at the same time, local fears of unification with romania helped spark two violent conflicts. in a development that kaufman (1996) refers to as “spiraling,” fearful masses in transnistria and among the gagauz in the south began to support a few political elites who were primarily concerned with “outbidding” each other for power. to leverage an advantage over their opponents, these elites played on ethnically localized fears of language extinction, political domination, and—especially—job prospects for individuals who did not speak the official language. in 1990, the central government in chişinău, dominated by members of the popular front, sent armed volunteers into transnistria and among the gagauz to quell separatist activity, resulting in violent conflicts in the two regions between 1990 and 1992. the conflict with the gagauz was officially resolved in 1994 by creating a semi-autonomous region, gagauz yeri, that has the right to secede if moldova’s borders change. the conflict with transnistria, however, has not been resolved. in 1996 it declared itself a sovereign and independent republic, and since then the dneister republic has functioned as an independent but unrecognized state. recent attempts to reintegrate transnistria have focused on the possibility of federalizing moldova. while the international community clearly supports this initiative, it is difficult to gauge public support for any changes in the state’s basic form or function. debates over moldova’s national identity also focus on the topic of ethnicity. the primary question in these debates is whether moldova’s population consists of a majority of “romanians.” moldova is clearly a multi-ethnic state. the last census conducted in moldova in 1989, reveals that the population of just under 4.5 million is 64.5% moldovan, 13.8% ukrainian, 13.0% russian, 3.5% gagauz, 2.0% jewish, 1.5% bulgarian, and 1.7% other (encyclopedia britannica 1997:670). the majority of the population (nearly 2/3) has long been identified as “moldovan.” [4] the category refers primarily to language (as reflected by the census), but also references a regional and rural identity rooted in the history of the medieval moldovan state, and is considered distinct from the more “modern” and “urban” dimensions of romanian national identity. soviet language and nationalities policies capitalized on the pre-existing and local sense of distinctiveness to “create” a moldovan language and nation that legitimated bessarabia’s 1940 annexation (king 1995). since the moldovan and romanian languages are now widely recognized as identical (dyer 1996), however, it is not clear whether moldova’s majority is best described as “romanian,” “moldovan,” or something else. since the 1980s, moldova’s citizenry has been exploring the potential political and social effects of acknowledging the linguistic, cultural, and historical affinities of “moldovans” with “romanians.” legislation enacted by successive governments reflects these explorations: there have been ongoing changes in the naming of official and state languages—not only should “romanian” be locally referred to as “moldovan,” but what status it should have, and what status russian should have—as well as regular shifts in the country’s relationship to romania, and moldova’s willingness to engage in cultural and educational exchanges. in many respects, the republic of moldova can be considered a “second romanian state” (gondek 1997). but as pro-romanian sentiments and interest in unification have faded over the past decade, international observers have wondered if romanian-speakers and other ethnic groups in moldova actually share a common identity that has yet to be articulated. survey research conducted immediately after independence indicates that members of moldova’s ethnic groups do share many common political aspirations that citizens of romania do not share (crowther 1991, 1997, 1998). this little researched question about the commonalities between moldova’s ethnic groups helped draw me to the study of folkloric performance as a form of cultural education. 64 jennifer r. cash the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 regardless of whether one judges a state’s legitimacy on historical or ethnic criteria, moldova’s claim to its current territory and citizens is inherently weak. this seeming mismatch between nation and state is an immediate consequence of the soviet union’s system of distributing power along ethnic lines, and more particularly, by doing so unevenly (suny 1995). soviet nationalities policies divided peoples along ethnic (usually linguistic) lines into “nations,” “nationalities,” “ethnic groups,” “ethnic minorities.” the categories reflect real differences in population size (nations have a minimum of 80,000–100,000 members, while the other groups have smaller populations) (simon 1991:14). these divisions initially helped bring conceptual order into the tremendous diversity of languages, religions, cultural practices, and historical experiences exhibited by the soviet union’s population (hirsch 1997). yet these categories were also used to distribute political power and cultural rights to national groups through the administrative divisions of union republics, autonomous republics, oblasts, and okrugs. each administrative division functioned something like a “nation-state” for a particular nationality (the “titular nationality”); local administrative organs were supposed to help the titular nationality develop a soviet and socialist identity, and thus supported the development of “national” cadres through such activities as native language education, scholarship, and publishing. moldovans were the titular nationality in the mssr, and romanian-speakers now prefer to imagine independent moldova as essentially a “romanian” state. for their part, other ethnic groups resist the “romanianization” of the state and are even unwilling to be defined as “minorities” because this term, in its soviet usage, implies that they lack the right to self-definition (socor 1994:23). since moldova has maintained its independence despite the weakness of its national identity, one might expect to find a variety of nation-building projects being initiated. in particular, one might expect to find the state encouraging projects to build a multi-ethnic national identity in accord with its official policy orientations to support multiethnicity (see king 2000:170; neukirch 1999:52–53). soviet legacies in folkloric performance in approaching folkloric ensembles and their performances from the vantage point of moldova’s national politics, i initially asked questions related to the process of identity formation. i asked about how folkloric ensembles resolve the question of “moldovan” national identity. are the “moldovans” portrayed on-stage romanians only, or do they fully represent the multi-ethnic citizenry of the new state? i saw the directors of folkloric ensembles as an example of the intellectuals who figure so prominently in the literature on nationalism. their work in teaching traditions to children struck me as an example of the processes involved in “imagining” a nation (anderson 1996), elaborating an “ethnic core” into a nation (smith 1991), or cultivating “wild” culture into national (“garden”) varieties (gellner 1983:50–52). in another article (cash 2002), i describe how ensemble directors presented their work to me. early in my fieldwork, i was encouraged to work with folcloric and etno-folcloric ensembles which are considered especially “authentic;” i was discouraged from working with popular ensembles. [5] from an american perspective, each of these ensemble types performs folklore, but from the perspective of specialists in moldova, the differing degrees of authenticity manifest by each ensemble type carry political significance. as my informants explained, popular ensembles existed throughout the soviet era, and were in fact, a medium for disseminating soviet ideologies and propaganda. from their perspective, the stylized “folklore” contained in the costumes, repertoires, and stage styles of popular ensembles is decidedly inauthentic because it is largely composed and designed to promote political messages about inter-ethnic friendship. in contrast, i was told that folcloric and etno-folcloric ensembles had both emerged in the 1980s as part of a “folkloric movement” that coincided with the national movement, and sought to uncover, document, and publicly reveal the variety and richness of local customs and culture that had been “covered up” by soviet practices. today, these two types of “authentic” ensembles continue to distinguish themselves from popular ensembles on the basis of how repertoires are created and performed. they also claim to perform “national” folklore without political messages. when a self-consciously authentic ensemble performs, it seeks to re-create the whole of village life. the stringent standards for authenticity established by the folkloric movement insist that ensembles collect their repertoires from one or a few villages. costumes should also come from these villages when at all possible, although “good” reproductions are also acceptable. in the strictest interpretations of authenticity, songs and dances are performed as part of a dramatization of the ritual or event in which they would “naturally” occur. thus, instead of merely performing a series of individualized songs and dances, an authentic ensemble re-enacts a wedding, village dance party, children’s games, new year’s caroling, or one of many rites and rituals defined and studied by professional folklorists and ethnographers. because they re-create villages instead of portraying ethnic groups, authentic ensembles claim that they present non-political representations of national culture and identity. although strict, the guidelines for authenticity present a number of problems for actual performances. for example, how do you adequately condense a three-day wedding reviving moldova 65 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 celebration for a twenty-minute stage presentation? should costumes be standardized for the whole ensemble, or should they reflect the individuality or socio-economic differences found among real villagers? should children be limited to performing as children, or can they take on adult roles? what are the limits of acceptability in placing rituals on-stage? for example, can a mother’s funerary lamentations be performed, or are they significantly more “private” than lullabies or weddings? despite the sometimes heated debates among specialists over the best ways to implement the generally-agreed upon standards for authenticity, folcloric and etno-folcloric ensembles succeed in transmitting to their audiences a definition of culture as the property and product of villages. the standards for authenticity in folkloric performances do not fully succeed, however, in removing commentaries on ethnic qualities and relations from the stage. instead, actual collecting practices, and the fixed associations of “authentic” culture with rural areas minimally influenced by industrialization or trade serve to limit the number of ethnic groups that can meet the supposedly neutral performance criteria. for example, moldova’s russian and jewish populations have historically lived in cities: by definition then, they seem to have no authentic traditions. the gagauz on the other hand, do live in villages, but particular aspects of their clothing and customs mark any claims they advance to having “authentic” culture as suspect: local specialists pointed out to me, for example, that even the oldest examples of clothing from gagauz villages are made from manufactured cloth and mimics more “urban” styles. these same specialists also emphasized that almost all gagauz traditions are so similar to romanian traditions that they seem to be borrowings or translations. as a result of these standards, “authentic” folklore in moldova corresponds very nearly with the folklore of romanian-speakers, and—when performed on stage—promotes a vision of moldova as being culturally romanian. [6] thus, folkloric performances advance an argument about national identity that supports the politics of pro-romanianism, even when claiming political neutrality. political dimensions of folklore between my original research question and my informants’ description of their success in over-turning the politicization of folklore, lurks an important question. can we say with any concreteness whether and how folkloric performances are “political”? in addition to the literature on nationalism that regularly cites the political functions of folklore (see above), recent reviews of research on dance (reed 1998) and cultural production more generally (mahon 2000) indicate an intense interest on the part of anthropologists in linking performance and media to questions of power. in case after case, the history of a particular dance or other performance style reveals local patterns of power and protest, resistance and complicity, and moments in which these patterns are reproduced or effectively transformed. several key works especially link dance with the politics of nationalism by focusing on the role of state institutions and ideologies in the creation of “national” dance forms (reed 1998:511). while these works validate my own approach in the short run, they also provide the grounds for a general critique of our common assumptions about the “political” aspects of music, dance, and other performative genres. reed and mahon, for example, urge further study of audience reception and spectatorship, noting that most research has tended to over-focus on performers and the creation of performed products. in other words, how “political” is a performance that is not perceived as such by its audience? case studies of music and dance in eastern europe since the 1980s also point to the limits of usefulness provided by existing paradigms for researching the connections between performance and politics. maners (1995), for example, discovers the limited utility of equating “politics” with state interest and investment in the arts. he finds that by 1987 when he began his fieldwork in bosnia-herzegovina, the socialist state in yugoslavia had influenced the social context of creating, performing, and observing dance to such an extent that folkloric dances are thoroughly politicized regardless of their actual ideological content. he therefore suggests turning away from an explicit question of the “political” nature of dance, and instead extending appadurai’s (1986, cited in maners) notion of the “social life of things” to dances. with this approach, maners examines how folkloric dances in bosnia-herzegovina become commodified, and then—as commodities—have “social lives.” maners applies a broad definition of commodification that would certainly apply to moldova, and it is tempting to pursue his analytical lead. i will not do so, however, for two reasons. first, i began my research with an explicit interest in the state, and thus organized my research to investigate the institutionalized “chains of command” linking the state to folkloric ensembles. consequently, my data lends itself to a “producercentered” analysis. second, i want to fully engage with my informants’ own presentation of their professional activities. my informants tend to insist that “authentic” folkloric performances are “pure” cultural products, free of social, political, and economic taints or constraints. since they themselves frame their activities in opposition to “political” and “politicized” forms of dance and music, i think it is important to understand what such assertions mean, and why they “make sense” in post-socialist society. when folklorists, ethnographers, and performers in moldova claim to be apolitical, and even anti-politi66 jennifer r. cash the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 cal, they point to broader changes in the roles of art and culture, and of artists and intellectuals, in post-socialist eastern europe. the claims my informants make regarding the apolitical nature of “authentic” folklore can best be understood by remembering that intellectuals and artists—producers of culture—were assigned a special role in the development of socialist societies in eastern europe and the soviet union. at a minimum, artistic work was supposed to convey the socialist values articulated by the communist party to the masses. as an educational and ideological tool of the party, art and artists were subject to censorship by political authorities. by the same token, culture producers were assumed to command political authority, attention, and power. some authors (e.g., konrád and szelényi 1979) even suggest that the relationship between the state and intellectuals that one expects in capitalist societies was reversed under socialism. instead of the “intellectual” being defined in opposition to the state, and living “outside” state influence and power, intellectuals were, in fact, in charge of the socialist state. miklós haraszti (1987) argues that artists too, were at the “heart of power” in socialist eastern europe. under socialism, “intellectual activity and the structure of the state were like muscles and bones in an indivisible, organic unity” (haraszti 1987:18). art, he argues, is not necessarily an expression of freedom; it can exist and flourish under authoritarian systems, as revealed by the activities of “state artists” in socialist countries. not only did these artists become complicit in their own censorship, but they were also social planners. haraszti’s description of artists and intellectuals during the last years of state socialism suggests a complete politicization of society. in the socialist context, we are told that it is absurd to try to distinguish levels of individual or collective political activity; even art belonged to the state and created the state. accounts of the “song to romania” festival which had a large percentage of folkloric performances provide a good illustration of how (to date) scholars have had little success teasing out patterns of political resistance in socialist-era performances (giurchescu 1987; radulescu 1997); by and large, they can only identify patterns of complicity. indeed, kürti (2001) demonstrates how the hungarian state and its institutions sought to incorporate the folkloric táncház (dance-house) movement in the mid1970s, dampening its potential as a vehicle for political opposition merely by making it a state-supported activity. perhaps ironically, the táncház cultural agenda eventually impacted hungary’s relations with romania and other communist states, but the basic pattern of the state’s political structures absorbing, containing, and controlling performance holds in kürti’s analysis of life in socialist hungary as well. in other words, for their analyses of the political dimensions of performance to be meaningful, scholars of music and dance in eastern europe must first ask: when is cultural production not under state control? “authentic” folkloric performances in moldova initially suggest one of these zones outside the control of the socialist state. members of moldova’s folkloric movement see their professional work as a rejection of the soviet insistence that artistic and cultural works should serve to develop socialist values. they reject at least some of the specifically soviet models of fusing culture with politics. the recent focus on creating authentic folkloric ensembles, and festivals and competitions in which they compete, is certainly a reactionary discourse. but how do we understand it? have moldova’s “authentic” folkloric ensembles really succeeded in breaking the connection between performance and politics? i attempt to answer these questions by approaching the political dimensions of contemporary folklore in moldova from several directions. first, i examine the institutional organization of folkloric ensembles relative to the state. this approach asks what degree of control the state has over folkloric ensembles and their activities. second, i consider the political implications of genre. in other words, how are folkloric performance genres defined in relation to other performance genres, and can their activities be tracked or standardized by the state? third, i ask about the relation between performers and their audiences. specifically, are audiences able to accurately gauge the political intentions of folkloric performances? each of these three approaches reveals that “authentic” folklore is a specialist’s domain. without substantial knowledge concerning the criteria for authenticity, the ethnographic commitment and experience of individual ensemble directors, and the motivations for an ensemble’s appearance at a particular event, audiences lose the ability to decipher the full political intent of a folkloric ensemble’s performance. thus in the end, we must ask whether the performers’ intent really matters in assigning political and social significance to performances of folkloric music and dance. organization of arts and culture in the (post)-soviet state the majority of performers and performance ensembles in moldova, including folklore, are institutionally organized, overseen, and financed by the ministry of culture. performers are divided into amateurs and professionals. this division does not correspond exactly with an age-level division between children and adults; therefore from the very outset my specific interest in children’s ensembles requires a conceptual re-organization of performance activities relative to the state. specifically, the ministry of culture oversees both professional and amateur perreviving moldova 67 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 formance activity, but the ministry of education is also involved in the performance activities of children. thus all the children’s folkloric ensembles i studied were organized by one of these two ministries. a few children’s ensembles are sponsored by private businesses, mainly for employees’ children. during the soviet period, these ensembles were ultimately under state supervision, but since privatization, this is no longer true. there are also a handful of children’s ensembles operating out of privately owned dance companies, and a very few professional folkloric performers have significant opportunities for employment outside of the state sector. for the most part, however, folkloric performers rely on state infrastructure and funding for their continued existence. thus although none of my informants recounted recent examples of overt censorship or artistic direction in their professional activities from ministry staff, the potential for top-down direction, even in repertoire creation, remains as a powerful soviet legacy. the local and national governments are organized as parallel structures, so that each judeţ (county) has organs analogous to those of the national government. instead of a ministry of culture, each county has a department of culture; instead of a ministry of education, it has a department of education; and so on. at the same time, there is a high degree of administrative centralization and top-down management. that is, all local government and administrative organs are also supervised by the national government. in accord with governmental structure and electoral procedures, even local culture houses, schools, and their employees may ultimately be affected by the ideological orientation of the majority party. the ministry of culture organizes children’s ensembles through its art schools and culture houses. local administrations have departments of culture, which are directly responsible for the culture houses as well as local libraries. the local departments of culture are overseen by both the ministry of culture and the local administration. the ministry of education organizes children’s ensembles through schools and the former pioneer houses (now called “creative centers”), of which there are forty in the country along with a national palace of creativity. whether organized within the systems administered by the ministry of culture or the ministry of education, individual folkloric ensembles have a similar relation to the state, as well as local government. the major difference is that the ministry of education’s national palace of creativity (which sponsors folkloric groups) has no direct equivalent within the ministry of culture. the national center for folk creation (centru naţional de creaţie populară), primarily sustains adult activities, and does not sponsor any ensembles. it has organizational connections to children’s ensembles only through the adults who work with children, and in this capacity the center offers seminars, workshops, and is a general source of expertise on the folkarts in moldova (see fig. 1 next page). politics of genre what the above description and accompanying diagrams should demonstrate is that folkloric performance is organized and sustained at a number of points in moldovan society. the majority is through state institutions. folkloric genres abound in children’s extra-curricular activities, but the state supports them primarily as performative, not ideological, experiences. the state lacks definitions and other criteria with which to control folklore, except as a generalized performance genre. otherwise, the development of repertoires, criteria for performance, and structure of the relationship between performers and audience, depends on the working relationships established between ensemble directors and the “experts” in the national organizations. for students of the soviet union, the lack of overt politics and ideology in moldova’s performing arts may come as a surprise. in fact, this factor supports the argument advanced by local specialists that the “folkloric movement” of the 1980s, and the recent creation of folcloric and etno-folcloric ensembles, has effectively deideologized folklore. all told, the ministry of culture estimates that in the year 2000, 1,479 performance groups existed for children, and that some 20,000 children participated in these groups (table 1). the director of the national center for folk creation estimates that each judeţ has at least 300 ensembles (paladi 2001). this figure, which includes adults’ and children’s ensembles of all genres, means that nearly 3,300 performance groups are active in a country with a population of some 4 million people. out of 1,479 children’s groups, how many were folkloric ensembles? county total number of groups total participants taraclia 58 866 bălţi 274 3,715 edineţi 210 2,835 soroca 136 1,457 chişinău 101 2,116 ungheni 102 1,184 orhei 173 2,281 lăpuşna 165 2,072 tighina 75 668 cahul 65 816 uta găgăuzia 53 859 city of chişinău 67 1,140 totals 1,479 20,009 figures compiled by v. melnic, june 2001. table 1. children’s artistic formations, all genres 68 jennifer r. cash the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 fi gu re 1 . o rg an iz at io n of f ol kl or ic e ns em bl es th ro ug h th e m in ist ri es o f c ul tu re a nd e du ca tio n reviving moldova 69 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 the data are not available, but officials at the ministry of culture claim that the majority of these groups have a folklorically-oriented repertoire. these data include eleven types of “artistic formation.” the five most frequently represented are folcloric and etnofolcloric formations, fanfare (marching or brass bands), popular music orchestras, popular dance groups, and choirs. only choirs are not usually considered “folkloric” groups. [7] the remaining ensemble types are folkloric theater, popular theater, youth theater, puppet theater, ballroom dancing, and “light” (pop-rock) music ensembles (fig. 2). as these data indicate, there are many varieties of folklore being taught to and performed by children in moldova, but the varieties are not rigorously defined or tracked by the state. what is important (to the state) is the number of performing groups and performers, not the genres performed. the geographical-administrative distribution of performance is also recorded. it is not possible to get separate figures for the number of ensembles organized within the ministry of culture and the ministry of education. nor is it possible to calculate the predominance of “ethnic” ensembles either by the ethnic composition of individuals in performing groups, the languages used in instruction, or the ethnic-provenance of the repertoire. the above data from the ministry of culture were evidently collected to document the relative development of amateur arts in relation to professional arts. genre categories are implicitly known, but do not appear as separate statistics. the categories reveal that music, dance, and theater are considered distinct performance categories, so more specific genres are defined first by how they combine music, dance, and drama. secondly, genres are defined by their relative reliance on “folk,” “modern,” or “universal” repertoires. again, i was unable to obtain official definitions for these categories. since the state’s official categories fail to comprehensively delineate the characteristics of each genre, specialists rely on their “common knowledge” to further record, categorize, identify, and count individual performers and performance groups. included in this common knowledge is that the “folk” genres dominate amateur performance, although no official and overarching category of “folk” performance exists to facilitate the actual documentation of these genres. yet another problem of officially identifying and counting “folk” performers arises from the fact that the generally recognized subgenres of folkloric performance—folcloric, etno-folcloric, and popular—span the meanings of folk, ethnic, popular, mass, and national. as with narodnyi (national) theater in soviet russia, folkloric ensembles in moldova can be variously conceived as an amateur activity, or as promoters of national culture. for example, in writing about amateur theater in the first decades of the soviet union, lynn mally (2000) recounts the debate over the russian adjective to be used as a description of non-professional theater. she also recounts that narodnyi became increasingly used after the 1930s, but that it carried in it a debate over how “national” the repertoire of an amateur theater should be. was “national” theater to stick to a national (i.e., not russian) language, to folkloric motifs, to works written by “national” playwrights, or to some other criteria? mally’s research focuses on amateur theater in russia, not in the national republics. nevertheless, the categories of theater named above suggest the presence of a similar debate in moldova: we find popular (i.e., folkloric or mass or amateur) theater, as well as folcloric and “youth.” indeed, a contact at the ministry of education explained that a drama group described as doing teatru popular may be doing ordinary drama (as amateurs, therefore popular) or they may be doing folk theater (i.e., traditional forms of oratory and dramatic events linked to specific holidays). although specialists know these differences exist, they are not recorded in statistical data, making it difficult to discern how many “folk” theaters actually exist. ministry and other state officials can only arrive at relative calculations of folkloric activity if they have direct knowledge of the actual repertoires and styles of many performers. the implicit knowledge shared by performers and officials regarding meaningful ways to classify folklore as well as how to navigate the state’s official categories for performing arts reflects several decades of ongoing “political” negotiations. reviving moldova (the folkloric movement and festivals) the specialists i interacted with most often, however, repeatedly called my attention to the victory over politics represented by the system of festivals and competitions established by the “folkloric movement” of the past twenty years. as table 2 (pages 71–72) shows, multiple folkloric festivals and competitions have been started during the past twenty, and especially thirteen, years. popular ensembles rarely participate in these events because the judging rewards authenticity, leaving a performance venue open exclusively for self-consciously “authentic” performances of folklore. the careful collecting activities of local ethnographers and folklorists enable moldova’s villages to come to life on stage, depicting an idealized range of ritual activities, traditional practices, and local forms of dance and music that are not (or were not) entangled with and tainted by socialist ideology and state power structures. the existence of this festival system is taken as evidence that culture has been successfully freed from ideology and politics. this is so despite the fact that the festivals themselves, along with the participants and judges, are still heavily organized and supported by the state. 70 jennifer r. cash the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 fi gu re 2 . p er fo rm an ce c at eg or ie s a nd g en re s reviving moldova 71 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 ta bl e 2. a p ar tia l l ist o f f ol kl or ic f es tiv al s fe st iv al pa rt ic ip an t d at e fr eq ue nc y ed iti on fi rs t o rg an iz er o th er lo ca tio n o th er a ge (f or 2 00 1, o r ed iti on sp on so rs d es ig na tio ns a pp ro xi m at e) la v at ra h or el or * c hi ld re n m ar ch 4 , 2 00 1 a nn ua l 8t h 19 94 c ity o f c hi şin ău , c hi şin ău *m un ic ip al an d yo ut h (g al a) d ep t. of s ci en ce , *f ol kl or e, yo ut h, a nd s po rt b ro ad ly d efi ne d li oa ră , l io ar ă, a ll ag es m ar ch 1 8, 2 00 1 d ep ar tm en t o f v ill ag e, *c ou nt y (f es tiv al o f c ul tu re , c ah ul c ou nt y *s pr in g tr ad iti on s sp ri ng c us to m s) * c ah ul c ou nt y d um in ic a la f lo ri i* c hi ld re n a nn ua l 5t h or 6 th 19 96 /7 c ity o f c hi şin ău , h os t: en se m bl e c hi şin ău *m un ic ip al an d yo ut h d ep t. of s ci en ce , “m oş te ni to ri i” *e as te r/ sp ri ng yo ut h, a nd s po rt fr om s ch oo l # 11 tr ad iti on s d um in ic a la f lo ri i* c hi ld re n a pr il 6– 8, 2 00 1 a nn ua l 5t h 19 97 en se m bl e di re ct or m in ist ri es o f m ul tip le *i nt er na tio na l an d yo ut h of “m oş te ni to ri i” ed uc at io n an d vi lla ge s, *e as te r/ sp ri ng ro m s ch oo l # 11 c ul tu re , a nd c ity c ah ul c ou nt y tr ad iti on s of c hi şin ău “p en tr u ti ne , d oa m ne ” c hi ld re n a nn ua l 5t h or 6 th 19 96 /7 c ity o f c hi şin ău , c hi şin ău *m un ic ip al an d yo ut h d ep t. of s ci en ce , *e as te r s on gs yo ut h, a nd s po rt fe st iv al o f e as te r s on gs c hi ld re n la st h el d in 2 00 0 bi -a nn ua l 3r d ed (2 00 2) 1 99 8 n at io na l p al ac e *r ep ub lic -w id e an d yo ut h fo r t he c re at iv ity *e as te r s on gs of c hi ld re n an d a do le sc en ts fe st iv al fo lc lo ri c* c hi ld re n a pr il– m ay , 2 00 1 bi -a nn ua l 7t h 19 89 n at io na l p al ac e c ou nt y m ul tip le : *r ep ub lic -w id e an d yo ut h fo r t he c re at iv ity de pa rt m en ts g al a co nc er t i n *f ol kl or e of c hi ld re n of in st ru ct io n c hi şin ău ; 3 an d a do le sc en ts re gi on al se m i fin al s; fir st -r ou nd co m pe tit io ns in ev er y co un ty -s ea t “n uf ar ul a lb ” a du lts ju ne 2 6– a nn ua l 7t h 19 95 d ep ar tm en t o f n at io na l c en te r f or *i nt er na tio na l (a lte rn at es y ea rly ju ly 2 , 2 00 1 c ul tu re , c ah ul fo lk c re at io n *f ol kl or e be tw ee n ad ul ts c ou nt y 72 jennifer r. cash the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 ta bl e 2. a p ar tia l l ist o f f ol kl or ic f es tiv al s ( c on tin ue d) fe st iv al pa rt ic ip an t d at e fr eq ue nc y ed iti on fi rs t o rg an iz er o th er lo ca tio n o th er a ge (f or 2 00 1, o r ed iti on sp on so rs d es ig na tio ns a pp ro xi m at e) “m ar ia d ra ga n” a du lts ju ly 2 0– 22 n at io na l c en te r f or *f ol ks on g fo lk c re at io n (u nv er ifi ed ) fe st iv al fo lc lo ri c* c hi ld re n c ity d ay , a nn ua l 6t h 19 96 c ity o f c hi şin ău , c hi şin ău *i nt er na tio na l an d yo ut h o ct ob er d ep t. of s ci en ce , *f ol kda nc e yo ut h, a nd s po rt la v at ra h or el or * a du lts n ov em be r a nn ua l n at io na l c en te r f or m ul tip le : *r ep ub lic -w id e (a nd y ou th ) fo lk c re at io n g al a co nc er t i n *f ol kda nc e c hi şin ău ; 3 re gi on al se m i fin al s; fir st -r ou nd co m pe tit io ns in ev er y co un ty -s ea t “t am ar a c io ba nu ”* a ll ag es ; s ep ar at e n ov em be r 1 2– bi -a nn ua l 7t h 19 89 m us ic ia ns ’ u ni on m in ist ry o f c ul tu re c hi şin ău *r ep ub lic -w id es co m pe tit io ns fo r 22 , 2 00 1 *f ol kso ng ch ild re n an d *i nd iv id ua l ad ul ts pe rf or m er s, no t en se m bl es fe st iv al th at a lte rn at es a ll ag es ; s ep ar at e n ov em be r bi -a nn ua l m us ic ia ns ’ u ni on c hi şin ău *r ep ub lic -w id e w ith t am ar a c io ba nu co m pe tit io ns fo r *i nd iv id ua l (n am e un ve ri fie d) ch ild re n an d pe rf or m er s, no t ad ul ts en se m bl es “s ă tr ăi ţi, să în flo riţ i” c hi ld re n d ec 2 5– ja n 14 a nn ua l 10 th 19 92 c ity o f c hi şin ău , c hi şin ău *m un ic ip al an d yo ut h d ep t. of s ci en ce , *w in te r t ra di tio ns yo ut h, a nd s po rt fe st iv al o f c hr ist m as c hi ld re n la st h el d in 2 00 0 bi -a nn ua l n at io na l p al ac e c ou nt y de pa rt m en ts m ul tip le : *r ep ub lic -w id e an d n ew y ea r’s an d yo ut h fo r t he c re at iv ity of i ns tr uc tio n g al a c on ce rt in *w in te r t ra di tio ns c us to m s of c hi ld re n c hi şin ău ; 3 an d a do le sc en ts re gi on al se m i fin al s; fir st -r ou nd co m pe tit io ns in ev er y co un ty -s ea t reviving moldova 73 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 difficulty of “reading” a performance outside of the festival circuit when one steps away from the perspective of ensemble directors, festival judges, and the host of other specialists who instructed me in the criteria of authentic folklore, it is even more difficult to ascertain how “free” culture really is from politics or ideology. considering the prevalence of public folkloric performances described in this article’s very first paragraph this is an important question to ask. the following examples illustrate the difficulty of interpreting the political intentions of folkloric ensembles when they perform for the public. indeed, although the abovelisted festivals are open to the public, they are not widely promoted as entertainment, and rarely draw a substantial audience beyond the performers themselves. one might ask, for example, how organizers choose to include a folkloric group in a public spectacle, or why ensemble directors accept performance invitations. at a certain level, neither organizers nor ensemble directors issue and accept invitations to perform with an intention to signify special relationships between performed folklore and audience. for example, one ensemble director had his group perform for the communist party’s celebration of lenin’s birthday in 2001. the group is officially designated as a popular dance group, but since its director is a specialist and well-known authority on folkloric dance at the national center for folk creation, i was directed to observe his “hobby” ensemble as an example of authentic folklore. based on the position as an authority on folklore held by the director of this ensemble, and his involvement in encouraging the performance of authentic folklore, one would not expect his ensemble to have performed for the communist party. for many citizens, the party’s electoral victory in 2001 was threatening. it signaled a return to soviet-era ideology and practice regarding ethnic and national relations: the denial that moldovans were culturally, historically, and/or linguistically romanian, and the establishment of russian as the acceptable language for public use. for my informants, the soviet period also referenced the institutionalized practice of stylizing and hybridizing folklore. thus several ensemble directors i knew kept a close eye on how communist-organized public events incorporated folklore. so why did this ensemble perform for the communist party?—it paid. the same ensemble also performed on april 25, 2001 on an occasion that seemed to be honoring a certain kind of worker in one of the capital’s neighborhoods. neither the director nor his performers knew what the occasion was, and did not seem particularly bothered that they did not know why they had been asked to perform. perhaps the celebration seemed innocuous enough, or perhaps the economics of performance precluded too close a scrutiny of the surrounding politics of the occasion. other ensemble directors also have their groups perform on occasions that they do not entirely understand or support. for example, moştenitorii, a group based in chişinău, performed at the “folkloric festival” in august 2001 which accompanied the celebration of gagauz yeri’s independence. in this case, the group performed because the invitation came from the director’s friends—another ensemble director and a member of gagauzia’s local department of culture. even then, the gagauz ensemble director who helped invite moştenitorii did not expect the ensemble to actually come because he knows the ensemble’s director does not support the formation of gagauz yeri as an autonomous region. moştenitorii also performed on doctor’s day. like the unknown celebration of april 25, this celebration was organized by the administration of one of chişinău’s districts. it is clearly a celebration carried-over from the soviet period, but, like women’s day, is considered a basically innocuous holiday. the ensemble director’s wife does work in the medical profession, but his immediate reason for having his ensemble perform was—again—that an acquaintance in the local administration had asked. on other occasions, ensemble directors are told by their superiors to “show up” for a performance. thus the appearance of a folkloric ensemble at a public or semi-public celebration does not represent a transparent support for the occasion being celebrated, or the common political values of ensemble directors with those who invite them. the participation of children can certainly not be taken as evidence of their, or their parents’, agreement or support of the celebration. in other instances, however, ensemble directors very much support the occasions for which they perform. moştenitorii’s appearance at the annual commemoration of ştefan cel mare’s death is one such example. ştefan cel mare (1457–1504) unified the medieval principality of moldova, and since the late 1980s, if not before, he has become a symbol of the romanian-ness of moldovans. ştefan cel mare also represents the legitimacy of an independent moldovan state, a fact reflected in the capital’s landscape with its major thoroughfare named for the former ruler, and a monument to him located at the entrance of the central park so as to gaze toward the city’s main cathedral, bell tower, and arc of triumph. consequently, the commemoration of ştefan cel mare’s death is also a commemoration of the romanian-ness of the moldovan people, their desire for independence, and the legitimacy of a moldovan state. the director of moştenitorii shares these values, and performed with the other adults in his ensemble as an act of personal commemoration. yet how might a spectator know that this ensemble’s director supports romanian identity and moldovan sov74 jennifer r. cash the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 ereignty, but does not support gagauz autonomy within moldova? how can a spectator distinguish folklore that is performed as a gesture of friendship and collegiality from folklore that is performed as a form of political allegiance? when can a spectator excuse an ensemble’s complicity in promoting the communist party because it performed out of economic necessity? in truth, only detailed knowledge about an ensemble director’s personal politics and particular position within a dispersed network of patronage and personal relationships can reveal the full political intent of any single folkloric performance. conclusion the public visibility of folkloric performance genres in moldova provides a window onto the subtle politics of culture and national identity in this small country. once, while riding to a festival with a well-known ethno-musicologist, i asked why there were so many folk singers. andrei tamăzlacaru paused for a long while before softly voicing his hypothesis: because moldova is such a small country, people are crowded, and lift their voices to define themselves. as always, tamăzlacaru offered a poetic interpretation to a question i had imagined primarily in historical, political, and economic terms. i would have suggested that it had something to do with the state providing training and employment opportunities for so many individuals, but clearly my answer only explains how people become publicly visible and recognized as “singers.” it does not explain why they would sing in the first place. continual probing reveals that even the most “authentic” folkloric performances in moldova are still entangled in a variety of forms of national politics. exercises in dis-entangling these forms of political activity are critical for further understanding the local system of constraints that individuals repeatedly encounter. these constraints effectively politicize an individual’s actions, positioning him or her relative to the state’s dominant perspective on ethnic relations and national identity, as well as a host of other social issues. at the same time, the emergence of selfconsciously “authentic” folklore in moldova also reflects a counter-discourse in which individuals deny the state’s claim to the products of their labor and creativity. the successive developments in folkloric categories and activities reflect both discourse and counter-discourse on the proper relationship between state, society, and individuals in creative activities. endnotes 1 horă is a round-dance with many varieties, and a basic step pattern that corresponds (in principle) with two steps forward and one backwards; batută is a dance that does not travel, but involves beating the feet in a rapid and strong rhythm. in principle, only men are considered physically capable of dancing batută, but women who can keep a “manly” rhythm are well-appreciated by their audiences. doină refers to songs involving “themes of love, nature, longing, sorrow, and grief ” (apan 2000:878) that can also be performed as instrumental pieces without lyrics, especially on flute. romanian ethno-musicologists consider the genre uniquely romanian. each of these three genres has equivalents in romania, a fact that supports the assertion that the majority populations of moldova and romania share a common culture, as well as language. thus even the identification and documentation of local folklore have political implications, as will become clear when moldova’s historical context is further discussed. 2 the research reflected in this article was supported by the international research and exchanges board (irex) with an individual advanced research opportunity (iaro) grant for doctoral research in 2001, as well as summer pre-dissertation field research grants from three sources at indiana university: the department of anthropology (1999, 2000), the office of international programs (2000), and the russian and east european institute (1999). i gratefully acknowledge the support of these institutions, and claim full responsibility for the ideas presented here. 3 readers interested in a more technical and historical discussion of local music and dance may wish to consult the entry for “moldova” in the new grove dictionary of music and musicians (2001:890–897) or valeriu apan’s entry for “romania” in the garland encyclopedia of world music (2000:868–889). apan details characteristics for each of romania’s major regions; while he does not include bessarabia, his discussions of music and dance in moldavia ring broadly true for the republic of moldova. explicit comparative research between romania and the republic of moldova only became possible in the 1990s (beissinger 1993:5), meaning that a comprehensive and balanced assessment of cultural similarities and differences will take some time to emerge. in the meantime, foreign scholars should approach all presentations of music, dance, and other traditions in moldova with the awareness that existing studies usually highlight features that make the local culture of ethnic moldovans seem either more or less similar to ukrainian, russian, and romanian cultures. 4 throughout this paper i generally use the term “romanian-speakers” to refer to members of the “moldovan” ethnic group. i do this to emphasize that “moldovan” ethnic identity is established first and foremost through language. the language can be called either “moldovan” or “romanian,” but—as will soon become clear—the choice of one term over the other, like the choice to refer to people who claim this language as their native tongue reviving moldova 75 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 as “moldovans” or “romanians,” has political implications. whatever their position on identity politics, however, most people in moldova will concede that there are minimal linguistic differences between the moldovan language and literary standard romanian. thus it seems most precise and least political to use the phrase “romanianspeaker” when speaking simply of demographic patterns and trends. i prefer to reserve the use of “romanian” and “moldovan” for situations that require a nuanced discussion of individual political orientations among members of moldova’s majority ethnic group. 5 i use romanian terminology for each of these ensemble types. folcloric and etno-folcloric ensembles differ by whether the ensemble performs traditions collected from its home village (etno-folcloric) or performs traditions collected in another village (folcloric). in either case, these ensembles must be able to document the source of any material they perform. in russian, popular ensembles are referred to as narodnyi (national). 6 the participation of a handful of gagauz and bulgarian ensembles in folkloric festivals and competitions complicates this analysis. in my dissertation, i discuss how the criteria for “authentic” folklore subsume the ethnic dimensions of gagauz and bulgarian folklore under a more general emphasis on village identity; i also discuss how minority traditions, especially those of the gagauz, can be rendered as variants of “moldovan” or “romanian” traditions (cash 2004). 7 the “folkloric” quality of choirs is an interesting discussion. local specialists generally consider choirs non-folkloric for two reasons. first, choirs do not seem to have been organized in villages before the soviet period. they are therefore not “traditional” from a village-based perspective. secondly, choirs do not necessarily sing folkloric pieces. they may sing religious or world musics, for example. when they do sing folklore, the pieces are usually composed. thus, even choirs with folkloric repertoires stand a good chance of being considered inauthentic. nevertheless, there are individual choirs respected for their authentic performance of folklore. references anderson, benedict 1991 (1983) imagined communities: reflections on the origins and spread of nationalism. new york: verso. apan, valeriu 2000 “romania.” in the garland encyclopedia of world music, vol. 8. timothy rice, james porter, and charles goertzen, eds. new york: garland publishing. beissinger, margaret 1993 “folklore in romania and moldova.” american folklore society news vol. 22, no. 2, april:3–5. brubaker, rogers 1996 nationalism reframed: nationhood and the national question in the new europe. cambridge: cambridge university press. bruchis, michael 1984 nations, nationalities, people: a study of the nationalities policy of the communist party in soviet moldavia. boulder: east european monographs. cash, jennifer r. 2002 “after the folkloric movement: traditional life in post-socialist moldova.” anthropology of east europe review vol. 20, no. 2:83–89. 2004 in search of an authentic nation: folkloric ensembles, ethnography, and ethnicity in the republic of moldova. ph.d. dissertation, indiana university. crowther, william 1991 exploring political culture: a comparative analysis of romania and moldova. report submitted to the national council for soviet and east european research on surveys conducted in 1991. 1997 “the construction of moldovan national consciousness.” in kurti, laszlo and juliet langman, eds. beyond borders: remaking cultural identities in the new east and central europe. boulder: westview press. 1998 ethnic politics and the post-communist transition in moldova. nationalities papers, vol. 26, no. 1. dyer, donald 1996 “the making of the moldavian language.” in studies in moldovan: the history, language, and contemporary politics of the people of moldova. donald dyer, ed. boulder: east european monographs. encyclopedia britannica 1997 “moldova.” in britannica world data. chicago: encyclopedia britannica. gellner, ernest 1983 nations and nationalism. ithaca: cornell university press. giurchescu, anca 1987 “the national festival ‘song to romania’: manipulation of symbols in the political discourse.” in symbols of power: the esthetics of political legitimation in the soviet union and 76 jennifer r. cash the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 eastern europe. claes arvidsson and lars erik blomqvist, eds. stockholm: almqvist and wiksell international. gondek, michael 1997 one nation, two states: the transition from the moldovan soviet socialist republic to the independent republic of moldova and the politics of language. m.a. thesis, providence college, rhode island. haraszti, miklós 1987 (1983) the velvet prison: artists under state socialism. katalin and stephen landesmann, trans. new york: basic books. herzfeld, michael 1987 anthropology through the looking-glass: critical ethnography 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dance.” annual review of anthropology (27):503–32. shay, anthony 2002 choreographic politics: state folk dance companies, representation, and power. middletown, ct: wesleyan university press. simon, gerhard 1991 (1986) nationalism and policy toward the nationalities in the soviet union: from totalitarian dictatorship to post-stalinist society. karen and oswald forster, trans. boulder: westview press. smith, anthony 1991 national identity. reno: university of nevada press. socor, vladimir 1994 “gagauz autonomy: a precedent for eastern europe?” rfe/rfl research report vol. 3, no. 3, august 26:20–28. suny, ronald g. 1995 “state, civil society, and ethnic cultural consolidation in the ussr: the roots of the national question.” in the soviet system: from crisis to collapse. alexander dallin and g.w. lapidus, eds. boulder: westview. worldmark encyclopedia 1998 “moldovans.” in worldmark encyclopedia of cultures and daily life. vol. 4, europe. timothy gall, ed. detroit: gale. ethnic identity, language attitudes, and the reception of culture among students of sorbian schools leoš šatava, institute of ethnology, charles university © 2005 leoš šatava all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. “language choice in the case of bilingual youngsters will probably provide a more accurate guide to the state of vitality of the endangered language than statistics on language ability.” gruffudd 2000: 177; paraphrased by williams 2000: 37 background the (lusatian) sorbs are one of the smallest slavonic ethnic groups (comprising ca. 4050,000 persons) and live in lusatia (die lausitz in german) in the eastern part of germany, close to the border with the czech republic and poland, around the towns of bautzen (budyšin in sorbian) and cottbus (chośebuz). in the 6th century ad, slavonic tribes referred to as “surbi” in the chronicle of 631, settled in lusatia. in the 10th century, german nobility subdued the sorbs and the german language and culture started to exert a strong influence on them. between the 14th century and the year 1635, lusatia was part of the lands of the crown of bohemia. the 19th century saw a successful sorbian revival as well as growing germanizing pressure. after the two world wars, attempts were made (unsuccessfully) to create an independent lusatia or to annex it to czechoslovakia (respectively). in the former socialist gdr, for the first time the sorbs acquired distinctive cultural rights, including a number of national institutions, a school network, and media; concurrently, however, in this show window of “leninist national policy,” assimilation continued. under the new democratic conditions since 1990 and since the turn of the millennium in particular, endeavors to revitalize the ethnic consciousness of the sorbs and their language have emerged and have been growing stronger. in terms of ethnic consciousness, there are between 40,000 and 50,000 sorbs today. however, only about half can speak sorbian and out of this group only for about 10,000 persons is sorbian the language of everyday life. sorbian is, moreover, divided into two standard varieties – upper sorbian, the more vigorous variety spoken in the south (with about 20,000 speakers as maximum), and lower sorbian, the fading variety (ca. 6,000 persons) of the northern part of lusatia. the only territory in which the sorbs are still a majority and where the sorbian language is the means of everyday communication (and medium of instruction in some schools) is the “catholic region” (as against predominantly protestant lusatia) situated in upper lusatia, northwest of bautzen/budyšin. most activists striving to maintain the continuity of slavonic consciousness, language, and culture in lusatia come from this region. the constitutions of both saxony and brandenburg guarantee to the sorbs their cultural rights, which are dealt with in greater detail within other laws and implementary regulations. in my numerous questionnaire investigations conducted at the sorbian schools in upper lusatia between 1996 and 2001, i concentrated mainly on the ethnic identity of the respondents, their choice of the code and domains of use of either sorbian or german, jen typewritten text 151 their attitudes to both languages, and on acceptance of sorbian identity among young sorbs aged 11 to 19. i focused attention on the sorbian grammar school (henceforth only sgs), which is situated in bautzen/budyšin, the main urban center of the region. it is the only sorbianmedium secondary school and includes grades five to twelve. to make the findings generally applicable, parallel investigations were conducted in higher grades of sorbian middle schools (henceforth only smss; in saxony these schools include grades five to ten) in the localities of crostwitz/chrósćicy, ralbitz/ ralbicy, panschwitzkuckau/pančicy-kukow, räckelwitz/worklecy, radibor/radwor, and bautzen/budyšin. the following text brings together a number of conclusions that are valid for the young sorbian population as a whole.1 with respect to the declared (ethnic) identity, the use of the sorbian language, the reception of sorbian culture, and attitudes of the students of the sgs and smss, some fundamental assumptions were confirmed: 1) concerning self-identification as well as other levels of identity under discussion, sorbian young people do not make one homogeneous whole.2 2) substantial differences exist between respondents according to their age, sex, and place of origin. 3) compared to the students of the sorbian middle schools, the students of the sgs 1 the following text is an extract of the conclusions drawn in the sociolinguistic work entitled “sprachverhalten und ethnische identität. sorbische schüler um die jahrtausendwende” (šatava 2005). this book contains a great number of statistical data, tables and diagrams. it will be published in march 2005. on the texts the author had published about the given topics earlier, see literature/bibliography. cf. the outcomes of the questionnaire survey carried out at the sms ralbitz/ralbicy conducted by the students themselves, in: smoła and wićaz 1998: 58. 2 in this context, pursuing the rate of the standard deviation was particularly important. have, on average, displayed a slightly higher rate of positive attitudes to some sorbian phenomena. the findings presented here may be further specified within several broad topics: a. sorbian ethnic awareness in their views of their identity, the astudents3 of sorbian schools were not unanimous. only about one-third of the students identified themselves either clearly or exceptionally as sorbs. although, on average, sorbian identity seems to rate slightly higher than the german one,4 a large group identifies with the designation of “german” as well as with other levels of identity, such as regional and others. only very few students, however, identify with the ethnonym slavic. national awareness seems to spring from tradition rather than from conscious argument. sorbian ethnic awareness of the a-students, therefore, tends to decline, and so does its strict delimitation, in comparison with their parents’ generation (šatava 1998b). in this sense we can speak about light-identity.5 3 at the time of the surveys, the sorbian school system was divided into a-type classes (with sorbianlanguage instruction in the majority of school subjects) and b-type classes (sorbian as one school subject only; most students are of german origin). since the school year 2001-02, the strict division between a-and b-classes has been replaced with the new model of common bilingual education. 4 “ha ... te němske je za nas přeco tajki synonym za ‚cuze’, ‚njeznate’ ... před kotrymž so ty poprawom tež takle tróšku bojiš.” [“and ... the german is always for us a synonym for ‚alien’, ‚unknown’ ...something you, actually, fear a bit, too.”]; a female source (* 1974), recorded in april 1996. cf. graphs of the semantic differentiation test on the relationship to the sorbian and german languages in šatava 1997a: 127–128. 5 a similar situation was found, for example, among the rhaetians in switzerland (arquint 1998: 21). jen typewritten text 152 the catholic region6 is the area of the highest degree of both the (sorbian) young people’s ethnic awareness and their language loyalty. the situation there is, however, quite complicated. the hypothesis that the degree of the sorbian factor will be higher among students from its core area in crostwitz/ chrósćicy and ralbitz/ralbicy than among students from the fringes in panschwitz-kuckau/pančicy-kukow and radwor/radibor has not been confirmed, despite hints to the contrary. to analyze this, however, is quite complicated, especially when comparing the individual schools. among other aspects, we should consider the fact that in crostwitz/ chrósćicy and ralbitz/ralbicy there were only a-classes at the time the survey was conducted and among their students were children who would probably have attended b-classes had they lived in another locality. we should also allow for the fact that while e.g. in the crostwitz/chrósćicy region the use of sorbian has been a matter of fact, momentous and, therefore less “conscious,”7 in the same situation in radibor/radwor a considerably greater “sorbian awareness” is necessary. generally speaking, the extent of sorbian identity and the use of the sorbian language should not be overestimated, not even in the heartland of the so far sorbianspeaking area – the strong impact of language erosion and the decrease in selfidentification with the “sorbian” are already visible here as well.8 6 “the catholic region” (in contrast to the predominantly lutheran rest of lusatia) is situated approximately between the towns of bautzen (budyšin in sorbian), kamenz (kamjenc) and hoyerswerda (wojerecy). only in this area with ca. 15,000 inhabitants, is the sorbian speaking population the majority (ca. two thirds; in some villages even 80–90 percent), and the sorbian language is the medium of everyday communication of all generations. it is also only here, that the a-schools (see note 3) with sorbian as the medium of instruction) exist. 7 in crostwitz/chrósćicy, the “sorbian bastion,” for example, there is no branch office of the national umbrella organization domowina (sic!). 8 today’s situation of the catholic parishes has even been compared to that of the almost fully assimilated in bautzen/budyšin and in the protestant area in particular the level of “sorbian factors” appears to be slightly lower. we are more likely to guess only to what extent this situation is due to a lower degree of endogamy in the respondents’ family backgrounds and to what degree it is due to the predominantly german milieu of bautzen/ budyšin. respondents from the protestant area, which has been almost fully germanized, are hard to compare; it is obvious that in their case the living family tradition of speaking sorbian and the enrollment at the sgs are themselves the declarations of the attitude. the b-students, on the other hand, emphasize their “german identity;” yet a certain part of them feel connected with the sorbian traditions, no doubt because of the partly sorbian background of the parents. when comparing the a-students of the sgs and the smss, the degree of (declared) sorbian ethnic awareness of the respondents from the sgs is considerably higher while the degree of their “german” identity is a little lower. it is especially the rise in the declared sorbian identity and attitude to the language in higher forms/grades of the sgs that shows this fact clearly. b. sorbian language attitude and language use in considering this aspect, differentiation is important as well. for a relatively large number of the a-students, sorbian is still the language of everyday communication (together with a lesser or greater degree of german, of course). yet, they have grave shortcomings in sorbian word formation, and their spelling competency is on a very low level.9 regarding the use of the sorbian protestant part of upper lusatia 50 to 70 years ago (grojlich 1998: 21). 9 it is a paradox that a great number of a-students are not able to spell the name of their native village correctly. here are several examples: korzace (= kozarcy); ralbic, ralbitzy (= ralbicy). mistakes in the names of the villages can also be frequently found in road signs bearing the name of the place at the entrance to the village, e.g. smjerdzácá instead of jen typewritten text 153 language, the same concepts apply as for the sorbian awareness; it means that it is rather a tradition (family, local) than a conscious “program.” some of the b-students are also able to communicate actively in sorbian – they are most frequently students from all-sorbian or mixed families. on average, knowledge of the sorbian language for the majority of the b-students is quite weak and mostly passive (sometimes even deliberately so). in this context it is very commendable that they often overestimate their own sorbian competence. as far as the sex of the respondents is concerned, it is conspicuous that it is the girls who develop a closer relation to the sorbian language and declare more interest in its maintenance;10 in comparison to the boys, they are also greater “consumers” of the sorbian media (šatava 1998b.) this may be linked to the head start girls have during their adolescence or to the possible impact of the traditionally “female” role oriented to the parents’ house and the like. to compare the sgs students and those of the smss in the field of language seems quite difficult. as far as the comparison of the declared use of sorbian in individual language domains is concerned, no fundamental differences between the findings from the schools were detected. although the relationship to sorbian was declared at the sgs in a greater degree, at some village schools – namely in crostwitz/chrósćicy (pawlikec 2001) – a much “more sorbian” milieu has, so far, been offered than at the sgs. c. sorbian culture enculturation and the active use of culture, or let us say its role in the lives of astudents, appears to be a relatively weak phenomenon. the young people feel a part of the international scene and prefer correct smjerdźaca, or at bus stops, e.g. kocarcy instead of correct kozarcy, and the like. 10 similar findings were given for wales (lewis 1975: 123 and baker 1992: 120). contemporary (pop) music (mostly english), computers, or sport to traditional “national” cultural activities. obviously, there are also relatively fewer such cultural activities, such as limited radio broadcasts and a small number of sorbian books, magazines, and music projects. among the b-students, “sorbian” culture plays almost no role; on the contrary, it is often rejected and denigrated. despite certain differences in the reception of sorbian culture (and active participation in it) discovered when comparing students of the sgs and those of the smss, it is extremely difficult to draw conclusions of general validity from them. the results of the questionnaire survey confirm great heterogeneity of sorbian students with respect to their ethnic identity, relationship to the language, and reception of sorbian culture. generally speaking, in spite of some positive cases, their feelings of belonging (and being active) among the sorbs tend towards indifference. this phenomenon has two levels: firstly there is the objective level, i.e. the position of sorbs as a minority group in germany and in lusatia, as well as the particular, everyday personal and social living conditions of each individual. the second level is the subjective one, dependent on the will and wishes of the people themselves. which of the two levels will be stronger and which will be weaker in their impact can hardly be determined. when compared to the pupils in the lower grades/ forms, sorbian adolescents seem to experience a natural “crisis of (ethnic) identity,” which is most acutely felt between the ages of 15 and 17.11 they do not want to stand out, be different from the others, and they often cling to german identifiers. many imitate german young people12 and the global (largely anglo-american) cultural behavior; 11 a similar finding for wales (baker 1992: 132; gruffudd 1998: 210). 12 although the german language competence of the young generation is higher than that of their parents’… jen typewritten text 154 they also increasingly distance themselves from sorbian culture, which now appears “unnecessary” (“stary čapor”), “boring,” not “cool” enough, or “fajn” enough (fine). one 22-year old woman stated it this way: to je runje tutón čas mjez 14 a 20…zo maš ty…to serbske tež syte…ty maš to syte te serbske słyšeć a to chceš ty poprawom won…to němske ma něšto… wabi…po 20 so jen… najhusćišo wurajtwał jo… na tej młodźinje jen’ to widźi, zo…to najwažniše je cool być…k tomu tež słuša, zo jen…prawe klamoty ma, zo jen prawu hudźbu poska a pon tež, zo jen němsce powěda… it is just the time between 14 and 20… when you are…already fed up with the sorbian …you are fed up with hearing the sorbian and you actually want away… the german has something … it draws you … after twenty one has … mostly calmed down after a stormy youth… in the young people one can see that … it is most important to be cool …and to it also belongs that one …has the right clothes, that one listens to the right music and that one also speaks german. (taperecorded in april 1996) the situation in other minority groups of europe – e.g. in wales (gruffudd 1997: 225; 1998: 213) – is often similar. at about the age of 20 or later, due to various factors such as greater maturity, a sorbian partner, and others, this attitude can change again to the benefit of sorbian.13 13on the question of “language choice” see bottbodenhausen 1997: 70 (cf. baker 1992: 131–132; gruffudd 1998: 210). similar to lusatia, young people in wales frequently “choose” the language according to a particular situation, the dominant language of the group or a particular person (gruffudd 1998: 213). according to gruffudd 1997: 224, young people in wales consider the welsh language a more adequate medium in contact with old people and children rather than in peer communication. to sum up, we can say that the a-students of the smss and the sgs consciously identify with their sorbian background, language, and culture only to a small degree. instead, these students subconsciously seem to adopt certain routines or stereotyped identities which, in case of changed living conditions (e.g. moving from a largely sorbian-speaking village to a germanspeaking neighborhood), can easily shift in the direction of german and german consciousness. in such cases, the sorbian identity plays only its role as a family cultural tradition.14 the fact of a lessened ethnic consciousness, a relatively blurred relationship to the sorbian language (and its use), and also limited reception of sorbian culture among sorbian young people should be taken as a warning signal.15 ethnic delimitation of the sorbs is not sharp today. only seldom do they declare themselves as an ethnic group, a nation; most often they refer to themselves by means of the ethnonym (sorbs) or a people. similar to many other minority ethnic groups, it is the language that is their main differentiating factor (elle 1992a).16 when speaking about lusatia, we should make careful distinctions. in the whole of lower lusatia and in the predominant part of the territory of upper lusatia, a language shift occurred about fifty years ago. the young generation of sorbian ethnic origin is almost fully assimilated in those parts.17 the 14 in simpler terms, it can be compared to the attitude of us citizens (italian americans, czech americans and others) to their ethnic background. 15 this fact is particularly alarming because the sgs is the only institution offering education to the future intelligentsia (proto-elite) of slavonic lusatia. 16 when the language principle prevails – cf. e.g. the gaels (glaser 2002: 10-11), in a greater degree the friulians, the occitans and others – it is often difficult to speak about an ethnic group. 17 the situation in greek macedonia, for example, is a comparable one. macedonian is spoken by persons over 65; among speakers aged 50-60 both codes can be encountered, while persons between 35 and 50 have a fragmentary or only passive knowledge of macedonian, and young people have been almost fully grecofied (schmieger 1998: 142). jen typewritten text 155 situation in the heartland, i.e. in the catholic triangle between bautzen/budyšin, kamenz/ kamjenc and wittichenau/kulow, and to some extent also in a specific case of the town of bautzen/ budyšin, is different.18 sorbian ethnic consciousness is still alive there, undoubtedly more so than among another minority ethnic group in germany, such as the northern frisians (holander 1988:2; cf. steensen 1994: 26-28). a rapid shift towards german, which occurred in the protestant parts of upper lusatia and in lower lusatia in the 1940s and 1950s,19 is not as likely to occur in the catholic parts. nevertheless, the sorbianspeaking milieu, still relatively intact, is exposed to serious erosion, especially on the fringes. the percentage of only germanspeaking or mixed families has been rising. important warning signals point to a considerable weakening of sorbian selfidentification and the will to use sorbian actively (and pass it on to younger generations also in many genuinely sorbian or so far largely sorbian families). the proportion of sorbian young people affected by these facts can only be roughly estimated; the reality may be near 50%.20 findings and conclusions from bilingual wales (gruffudd 1997: 222)21 concerning the majority of adolescents aged 16–17 who hesitate about the question of their language and ethnic belonging can, most probably, be 18 particularly due to the concentration of intelligentsia, the presence of the sorbs is still perceivable though there may be less than 5 % of the town’s population. 19 similar examples of the break in passing the language on to the next generation in most families within a few years only came about in brittany in the 1960s or in gaeltacht, the last irish gaelic-speaking parts of ireland in the 1980s. 20 “demographic and statistical questionnaire survey among the catholic sorbs,” a project of dr. martin walde from the sorbian institute in bautzen/budyšin, will bring more concrete information; see the published part of the survey: walde 2004. 21 the author speaks about the approximately 20% of young people who orient to welsh, 20% who orient to english, and 60% who are “undecided” in the question of language. applied to lusatia as well. the present day efforts to revitalize the sorbian language and consciousness should, therefore, concentrate on winning the hesitant “grey zone” of the students over to the sorbian side. only in passing sorbian and sorbian consciousness on to other generations is there a chance for the further existence of sorbian (i.e. also sorbian-speaking) lusatia. in order to achieve this aim, greater readiness for action22 of the younger generation is, therefore, a sine qua non. some conclusions about the present trends ensue from the above facts: – with respect to age: numerous data seem to confirm that in comparison with the lower age group, many young sorbs undergo a significant crisis of identity in adolescence (particularly between 15 and 16, i.e. approximately in the 9th and 10th grades). – with respect to the sex of the respondents: in general, it is girls who seem to maintain a slightly higher degree of sorbian ethnic identity and a higher level of the relationship to the sorbian language; among the female students of the sgs this is more distinct than among the female students of the smss.23 – with respect to ethnic (self)consciousness: on the one hand quite high values of the sorbian factors found among the students from the catholic region seem to be the outcome of identifying with the sorbian; on the other hand, they are the mark of inertia of the family milieu rather than a conscious attitude resulting from deliberation. the level of ethnic (self)consciousness of young sorbs from rural parts is often lower than that of astudents from bautzen/budyšin, brought up largely in a german-speaking milieu.24 22 ajzen 1988; quoted in baker 1992: 13. 23 according to the findings, the ideal type of “the most sorbian” person among sorbian youth was a female student of the sgs, aged 12-14, coming from a traditional endogamous sorbian family living in the catholic heartland and commuting home daily. 24 “budyscy dwurěčni wotrostli … wjesni so boja … imitěruja, zo su němcy … nochcedźa być hinaši …” jen typewritten text 156 – with respect to intergeneration shift: compared to their parents, the feeling of double identity of the present-day young generation seems to grow stronger, and the significance of “sorbian factors” in the sense of “language intimacy” (haugen 1972: 325) seems to grow weaker. – with respect to the comparison of data on the respondents from the sgs and smss: on average, data indicate a higher level of (declared) sorbian ethnic identity, a stronger relationship to sorbian (as against a weaker relationship to german), and general concern for the maintenance of sorbian phenomena among the a-students of the sgs. this is also partly true for the reception of the (official) sorbian culture. the latter relates to the fact that the sgs is the only institution providing education to the most talented students (generally speaking), and despite all reservations (šatava 1998a: 11) sgs is the main venue of the (ethnic-oriented) education of the sorbian proto-intelligentsia. in addition, a certain “national elitism” ought to be taken into account regarding the enrollment in the sgs itself, and it may explain the emphasis in education towards sorbian awareness in this secondary education institution. conclusion in lusatia, this comparatively complex view of the issue under discussion brought a number of new findings, precisely documented and statistically analyzed. for those who know well the everyday situation of lusatian diglossia, many of the findings could have been anticipated; other results, however, may have been unexpected. with respect to the young generation of (upper lusatian) sorbs, the data given by the sorbian schools’ students themselves, which are, moreover, statistically valuable, are [“those who come from bautzen/budyšin have grown up bilingually… those from the villages are afraid …they imitate being german …they don’t want to be different …”]; a female source (b. 1974), taperecorded in april 1996. available here for the first time. the data show, for instance, on which levels and in which domains the position of sorbian is weak and on which level it is, by contrast, (perhaps unexpectedly) high. if the abovecited idea holds, that the language use of young people from ethnic-language minority groups is a “litmus test” of the vitality of their language (gruffudd 2000: 177), then the documented findings are even more important. many of the data collected, however, do not concern the level of the language only; on the contrary, they also indicate the level of ethnic identity, an overall interest in sorbian phenomena, the desire to participate in their maintenance, and other facts. in this context it is necessary to emphasize significant attitudes generally inherent in the way of thinking of young people: e.g. spontaneity, creativity (real or imaginary), independence, efforts at self-expression, and antiauthoritarian tendencies (gruffudd 1997: 225, 2000: 178). in the course of the (national) education these attitudes should be taken into greater consideration than they have been so far (šatava – in press). the collected, analyzed, and interpreted information can become a valuable basis for practical measures within language planning, which has not developed very much in lusatia yet. in a number of minority groups’ regions, language planning has already brought indispensable (and sometimes even outstanding) results in maintaining languages threatened with assimilation, and saving the ethnic identity of their speakers. frequently, language planning has also become the hub of efforts concerning revitalization tendencies and the general direction of the targeted ethniclanguage community. references cited: ajzen, icek. 1988. attitudes, personality and behaviour. milton keynes: open university press. arquint, romedi. 1998. entwicklung und praktische wirksamkeit gesetzlichen jen typewritten text 157 regelungen für die rätoromanen in der schweiz (the development and practical force of legal regulations concerning the rhaetians in switzerland). minderheitengesetze, domowina-information, märz: 14– 21. baker, colin. 1992. attitudes and language. clevedon: multilingual matters. bott-bodenhausen, karin. 1997. sprachverfolgung in der ns-zeit: sorbische zeitzeugen berichten (language persecution in the nazi times: sorbian witnesses report). lětopis 44 (special issue). elle, ludwig. 1992. die sorbische sprache als komponente der ethnizität der sorben (the sorbian language as a component of ethnic identity of the sorbs). lětopis 39(1): 123–127. glaser, konstanze. 2002. essentialism and relativism in gaelic and sorbian language revival discourses. electronic document, http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/celtic/poileasaidh/s eminarwebversion2.html. grojlich, marko. 1998. mjez horami a holu (between the hills and the heath). budyšin: domowina. gruffudd, heini. 1997. language conflict and young people: mass media and threatened languages. in: language minorities and minority languages in the changing europe. brunon synak and tomasz wicherkiewicz, eds. pp. 213–226. gdańsk: wydawnictwo uniwersytetu gdańskiego. —— 1998. young people’s use of welsh: the influence of home and community. contemporary wales, 10: 200–218. —— 2000. planning for the use of welsh by young people. in: language revitalization: policy and planning in wales. colin h. williams, ed. pp. 173–207. cardiff: university of wales press. haugen, einar. 1972. the ecology of language. stanford: stanford university press. holander, reimer kay. 1998. 75 – a přeco hišće młode (75 years old, and yet young). serbske nowiny, june 12: 2. lewis, e. glyn. 1975. attitude to language among bilingual children and adults in wales. international journal of the sociology of language, 4: 103–125. pawlikec, božena. 2001. zamóža hišće serbsce myslić (they can still think in sorbian). interview with leoš šatava, serbske nowiny, july 4: 3. šatava, leoš. 1996. što wabi šulerjow na serbski gymnazij (what attracts students to the sorbian grammar school). serbske nowiny/předźenak, december 13: 2. —— 1997a. recepcija serbskeje rěče a kultury mjez šulerjemi serbskeho gymnazija w budyšinje (the recipience of sorbian language and culture among the students of the sorbian grammar school in bautzen/budyšin). rozhlad 47(4):122–128 [diagram in rozhlad 47(5)]. —— 1997b. wužiwanje serbšćiny a recepcija serbskeje kultury pola a-šulerjow serbskeho gymnazija (the use of sorbian and the recipience of sorbian culture among a-students of the sorbian grammar school). serbske nowiny/předźenak, may 9: 2. —— 1998a. serbska rěč w młódšej generaciji (sorbian in the young generation). serbska šula 51(1–2):7–12. —— 1998b. mjezygeneraciska rěčna změna we zwisku z wužiwanjom serbšćiny (intergenerational language shift concerning the use of sorbian). rozhlad 48(10):376–381. —— 1998c. recepcija medijow mjez ašulerjemi serbskeho gymnazija w budyšinje (recipience of media among a-students of the sorbian grammar school in bautzen/ budyšin). serbska šula 51(10):170–174; (11):197–201. —— 1998e. domény užití lužické srbštiny u žáků a-tříd lužickosrbského gymnázia v budyšíně (domains of the use of sorbian jen typewritten text 158 of students of a-grades of the sorbian grammar school in bautzen/budyšin). in: práce z dějin slavistiky a českojinoslovanských vztahů xx. pp. 135–142. praha: univerzita karlova. —— 1999. ethnic identity and language/culture attitudes among students of the sorbian grammar school in bautzen/ budyšin. lětopis, 46(1):78–103. —— 2000. zachowanje a rewitalizacija identity a rěče etniskich mjeńšin: aktualne trendy a prócowanja (the maintenance and revitalisation of identity and language of ethnic minority groups: latest trends and endeavours). bautzen/budyšin: sorbisches institut/serbski institut. —— 2002. spracheinstellung und kulturerfahrung: zur ethnischen identität von schülern der sorbischen mittelschulen (language attitudes and recipience of culture: on ethnic identity of students of sorbian middle schools), lětopis, 49(1):60– 82; (2):45–73. —— 2003. sprachverhalten und ethnische identität: sorbische schüler um die jahrtausendwende (language maintenance and ethnic identity: sorbian students at the turn of the new millennium). bautzen: domowina verlag. —— in press etniska identita a poćah k serbšćinje w młodej generaciji (ethnic identity and the attitude to sorbian among the young generation). budyšin: rěčny centrum witaj. schmieger, roland. 1998. the situation of the macedonian language in greece: sociolinguistic analysis. international journal of the sociology of language, (131):122–155. smoła, měrko and wićaz, frank. 1998. němsce rěčacy serbja? (german-speaking sorbs?) in: štóž so praša – tójšto zhoni (he who asks, learns a lot), serbska protyka 1999. alfons frencl, ed. p. 58. budyšin: ludowe nakładnistwo domowina. steensen, thomas. 1994. wer sind die friesen? (who are the frisians?). bräist/bredstedt: nordfriisk instituut. walde, martin. 2004. demographischstatistische betrachtungen in oberlausitzer gemeindeverband „am klosterwasser” (demographic and statistical research in the adminiatrative unit named “am klosterwasser” in upper lusatia), lětopis, 51(1):3–27. williams, colin h. 2000. on recognition, resolution and revitalization. in: language revitalization: policy and planning in wales. colin h. williams, ed. pp. 1–47. cardiff: university of wales press. jen typewritten text 159 editor’s notes anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 1 editor’s notes sarah d. phillips, indiana university with this fall 2009 issue (volume 27, no. 2) of anthropology of east europe review we are delighted to launch our new open access format through open journal systems and iuscholarworks. aeer has evolved considerably since its inception in the early 1980s as a newsletter for anthropologists working in eastern europe and the soviet union. around 1989, under the leadership of editors sam beck and david kideckel, the newsletter transformed into a print journal with articles and book reviews. robert rotenberg added a journal website in the mid-1990s that offers archives of most back issues with a two year moving wall. throughout these transformations aeer has been dedicated to publishing the most current, field-based research and promoting especially the work of junior scholars, graduate students, and foreign anthropologists who may have less access to the world of u.s. academic publishing. the journal, with its accessible format and quick turnaround, is an excellent venue for giving current research on the region broad exposure. these opportunities will be enhanced further through open journal systems (ojs), which makes the journal content freely available to anyone, anywhere, via the internet. open access promises to exponentially increase the journal’s readership and visibility, among other advantages. for example, through ojs the journal’s content will be searchable and indexable by various search engines and indexing services, thus giving the journal content much greater exposure. ojs helps generate statistics regarding the utilization/popularity of the journal in general, and of individual articles; this could be very useful information for contributors. via ojs we will be able to streamline the submission and editorial review process through a central workflow system. crucially, ojs also serves as a permanent institutional repository for all the new and past aeer content, thus providing an extremely reliable preservation mechanism. over time we hope to add all or most of the back issues of aeer into this institutional repository. i would like to emphasize that although ojs is based at indiana university, the journal and its future are in no way permanently tied to indiana. to the contrary, open access offers precisely the kind of flexibility required by a journal such as aeer, which historically has changed editorships approximately every three years. the iuscholarworks library staff has generously agreed to maintain aeer via ojs eternally; since everything is digital there is no need for the editor(s) to be affiliated with or located at a particular institution. indeed, thanks to ojs the journal can more easily migrate from institution to institution as the editorship changes. this is a truly exciting time for aeer staff, readers, and contributors. i am extremely grateful for the support and input of many of the journal’s former editors and other colleagues associated with the journal, especially julie hemment, krista harper, david kideckel, robert rotenberg, neringa klumbyte, and barb west. instrumental in launching this open access initiative have been jennifer laherty and sherri michaels at the indiana university libraries, as well as rachel eyermann, my editorial assistant. many thanks to you all. as the journal transitions to an open access platform we welcome your feedback. please direct comments, suggestions, and concerns to sarah d. phillips, editor-in-chief, at anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com. aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 77 broadcasting ethnonational exclusion and inclusion: two musicians in two croatias dickie wallace department of anthropology, university of massachusetts, amherst marko perković thompson and franci blasković are two well-known and very different croatian musicians who could not be more different from one another. i am using their pop personalities to tell tales of two very different parts of croatian social and political life as mass-mediated by producers of radio programming. i have been researching electronic media in croatia since 1999, mapping out the nation-state as a mediascape and how that mediascape makes up a part of world media. my methods have been ethnographic and, as much as possible, i have been trying to consider the perspective of the people actually producing these media. to tell this tale of two musicians, i am using ethnographic research carried out in the small croatian cities of knin and pula, each a regional center of their regions, the kninska krajina, where thompson is from, and the istrian peninsula, home of blasković. this article began as an aside: as is so often true when writing in the field, i was finding recurring scrawls literally and figuratively in the margins of my notes, scrawls that eventually seemed to work their way towards the center of my page. that is, this is side-information that initially seems like superfluous data, no more than a peripheral wink and only recorded for the sake of an allegiance to an idea of immersion and thick description that i read of as an undergraduate. however, these “ethnographic particulars” (abu-lughod 1992), these details, find their way out of the footnotes and into the main body of the text, these ethnographic details becoming my foci—which, speaking of winks, was what geertz (1973) was getting at in delving into ethnographic details and “thick description.” in this case, these particulars are the stories of these two very different musicians, stories that interrelate with the media producers with whom i have worked, particulars that i can unpack to give a deeper meaning to two regions of croatia and the people who “produce locality” via mass media. as barry dornfeld (1998) has emphasized in his ethnographic work concerning documentary filmmakers for an american public television series, if we are going to look at media producers, we also have to take the time to see these producers as consumers of media as well. while this may seem simple enough, many studies of media production have seemed to overlook the idea that those producers, those “gatekeepers,” “agenda-setters,” and “framers” of news and media products are people who consume media, in fact, they may even be fans. and, as fans, their choices can sway a listening public towards liking or disliking a certain entertainment or in an ideological direction, simply by creating or limiting the availability of certain sounds or ideas in a given listening area krajina/“borderzone” studying journalistic practices in a relatively new and postwar nation-state, i have necessarily delved into on-going suppositions and re-imaginings of what it means to be a croatian national and statist entity. throughout croatia, these ideas have varied: in the capital, zagreb, for example, state power is centralized and the croatian state-as-nationality is something now seen as almost as a fait accompli. other areas, however, are much more “borderzone.” istria’s pula and the krajina’s knin are good examples of this, but in different ways. on the one hand, the kninska krajina is a place where ethnicity is still an important question and a reason for possible discrimination and even violence based on ethnic prejudices between serbs and croats. as an area that was once primarily populated by serbs, yet designated as croatian territory during yugoslavia, it has been politically and militarily contested on-goingly. today croats demonstrate a need to shore up their croatian sovereignty, especially in the face of an again increasing serb population. the istrian peninsula was also a place of ethnic passions, but the most volatile of these are well in the past, dating to the years following the second world war when tito’s yugoslavia and successive italian governments were vying for this area, part of what historically known as the julian march, or in croatian, “julijska krajina,” in empires past. today very many people of the region are stressing neither an exclusively italian or croatian identity, but instead asserting their own identity “istrian.” thus, both knin and pula are regional capitals of “krajina” regions, or “borderzones.” these places provide the backdrop for the stories of the two musicians upon whom this paper focuses. thompson and knin when i was first conducting ethnographic fieldwork at radio and television stations in 2000, i don’t remember allen typewritten text © 2004 dickie wallace all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 78 dickie wallace the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 hearing about either marko perković thompson or franci blasković. both singers had their followings, thompson’s was nationwide and blasković’s, more locally to istria. they were not on my radar screen however, because my singular visit to pula was brief and not focused on finding the particulars—it was more like a surveyor’s junket for finding a few patterns and points of comparison with other places in the country where i had spent time. and my time in knin was limited to typical hasty stopovers between the coast and zagreb—i had heard people sometimes complain that any time in that backwater town was too much time. one friend rather uncharitably told me that those people in the kninska krajina were “crazy wolf fuckers”; another referred to the area as the croatia’s “wild east” because they were still burdened with their ethnic hatreds and “without culture, so far from europe.” in the summer of 2002, however, on my way from the beautiful dalmatian coast back to the greater urbanity of zagreb, curiosity got the best of me and i decided to visit radio knin, the largest radio station in this sparsely populated and relatively media-scarce region. radio knin is a part of the state’s croatian radio and television (hrvatski radio i televizija, hrt) and i had first heard of the station spoken about with disparaging tones from people at other hrt radio stations (most notably at a station claiming to operate in the black). some hrt journalists were telling me that radio knin had been an ideological gambit of the former president franjo tuđman and a waste of time and a drain on the hrt resources. a radio knin had existed in the town since the late 1950s with mostly serb-speakers on air and it had persisted as a wholly serb station during the 1991–1995 serb rebellion from croatia which was, in 1991, trying to break free of serb-dominated yugoslav control. when croatian forces took back the kninska krajina region on 6 august 1995, one of the first things the government did was re-establish radio knin, but this time under the name hrvatski radio knin—croatian radio knin, within the hrt system. by the evening of the 7th of august, a few technicians and journalists from the nearest hrt stations on the coast, split and zadar, had a broadcast system up and running, limited to few hours of local programming and then carrying hrt’s zagreb-based or split-based signal otherwise. today radio knin broadcasts seventeen or eighteen hours a day and it remains decidedly hrvatski. this was apparent to me in my first five minutes at the station in 2002 as i waited for some of the journalists to figure out what to do with this american anthropologist who had called saying he wanted to visit the station. on je antropolog? no, sto je od ovog o folkloru? i sat on a couch in the newsroom/main office and realized i was seeing some of the croatian state symbols that i had come to expect on the walls of an hrt office, but this was mixed with much more catholic iconography than usual—a crucifix, the blessed virgin, pictures of the pope, and so on. i also noticed at that time that the largest poster on the wall was promoting an upcoming concert for the singer thompson at the stadium in split, but i did not think much more about it beyond scribbling something in my fieldnotes as i killed that inevitably awkward first five minutes in a new fieldsite. in winter 2003 i had returned, having decided to settle in knin for a few months in order to learn more about mass media in this back-of-beyond borderzone area with what would turn out to be the less-than-overwhelming consent of the radio knin staffers. during that awkward sitting around in the office hoping to revive the brief rapport i had established the summer before—ok, vratio se, no zasto? i dokad?—i again was looking at the wall hangings. in trying to make innocuous, yet inquisitive conversation about this pop culture figure about whom i had just read something in the news, i asked a journalist about the thompson poster, which was still the largest thing on the wall. i was quickly told that, “nije to nista, samo nesto glupo. it’s nothing, something stupid.” he said he didn’t know why someone would have put that up. come to find out that thompson has been somewhat popular for the past decade, but for the past few years he has been one of the biggest drawing musical acts in croatia. around knin, many croats see him as a local hero, having been born in čavoglava in the krajina region. marko perković-thompson had been a soldier early in the homeland war and then had gained a strong following as a rock singer dressed in his army uniform with gun in hand and known for his fiercely patriotic/nationalistic and quasi-religious songs. in just the past two or three years, however, his celebrity has surged to new heights. his cd from 2002, e moj naroda, “o my people,” displays him wearing his trademark cross of st. benedict in front of a sort of st. elmo’s kind of glowing scene that at once evokes a kind of earthly primordialism and a halo-like look of catholic iconograpy. e moj naroda, which could also be translated as “o my nation,” has been one of the biggest best sellers in croatia in recent years. a radio knin journalist who began relating the thompson story for me told that the very person saying that thompson was stupid might have been the one who had put the poster up in the first place. i quickly found out that thompson’s name is loaded with value judgments and my “innocuous question” was far from it. it seems, in the town of knin, which had been the serb capital during the 1991–1995 serb krajina republic, besides ethnonational population shifts (serbs fled en masse, croats came in), two new other distinct social groups came to town following the croatian re-taking. on the one hand, two musicians in two croatias 79 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 a strong croatian military presence was now garrisoned in this contested town. with this part of the population, soldiers and their families, thompson was “one of theirs” as a former soldier and singer of pro-croat and rightwing lyrics. on the other hand, a large international aide organization presence arose in order to assist displaced people, work on de-mining projects and help rebuild the war-damaged area. amongst this community, if they had heard of thompson (some people would not have, because they knew little about the people they were serving), they would know thompson as “that nationalist singer” and scowl at his popularity. i therefore came to realize that my asking about thompson was serving as my inadvertent and clumsy cultural litmus test. i, as that test’s administrator and so clearly a foreigner and thus associated with the international aide community, was predisposing a negative answer with regards to thompson. radio knin journalists knew how the international aide community members often saw the world in black-and-white and realized that anyone praising thompson would be looked down upon. while i was trying to look at the thompson phenomenon with nuances and not just with kneejerks, i can see thompson’s dubious nationalist reputation as at least somewhat deserved. thompson’s first hit, released during the war was “bojna čavoglave” (“the berets of čavoglava”). the song praised his comrades-in-arms defending croatia from the serbs; it opened with the slogan of these croat volunteers, “za dom spremni” (“for the homeland, ready”). ustaše fascists used the phrase as a salute during the second world war when croatia was nominally independent, but was actually a nazi puppet state. for this reason, while some consider the slogan a simple patriotic phrase, others consider it, especially when coupled with a fascist salute, the croatian equivalent of the nazi’s “sieg heil.” a decade on, thompson’s fans attend his increasingly popular concerts sometimes wearing a mixture of catholic, ustaše and nazi symbols. indeed in the winter of 2003, when i was just arriving to start fieldwork, the croatian handball team had won the world championship and a celebration was to be held in zagreb’s jelačić square. the championship team members apparently requested that thompson play at this celebration concert and, true to form, thompson began his performance with “za dom spremni,” prompting many fans to respond with fascist salutes. another controversy occurred in september 2002 surrounding the split concert promoted in radio knin’s poster. slavko lozina, a district court judge in split who was presiding over the case of eight alleged war criminals who had served as prison guards in a croatian military prison, attended that concert that evening and made no effort to hide his enthusiasm for thompson’s nationalistic message. the trial was in progress at that time, causing many to speculate about that judge’s partiality to croatian soldiery. indeed, the trial ended in acquittals two months later. despite my attempts to subtly find out who put up the poster and who likes thompson at radio knin, i have never directly found out. the more nationalistic radio knin people knew full well that the ngo people, if they had heard of thompson, were usually dismissive of, or disgusted with, thompson and his ilk. i believe that, because i seemed to be at least initially categorized with western international aide workers, everyone at radio knin told me, when i asked, that thompson’s songs were simplistic and that somebody else must have put up that poster, that they had not. one person’s brother had gone to that concert in split, but he claimed that this brother had gone more out of curiosity, “not as a fan, but to see the event and see what the people would look like.” he was “shit” i was told and “wouldn’t be around in two years, because he has no talent.” radio knin was playing his music because “people like him, so we have to play him.” after asking everyone in the small radio station about him, i had effectively “saturated” my fieldsite—everyone knew i was interested in thompson, so now i, indeed, did seem like one of those international aide workers disapproving of thompson by my too-frequent questions, so i stopped asking. of course, as an ethnographer, i was learning by observation, not just questions. and i very obviously heard thompson frequently during my time listening to, and in the studios of, radio knin. music programming at the station was the work of music editors who had about 2,500 cds at their disposal. not having songs as files on the computer, they had to manually carry stacks of cds and printed-out playlists from the music room to the soundboard every day. one of the music editors had been “ethnically cleansed” from her hometown in serb-controlled western bosnia and was clearly partial to thompson’s strong croatia message. another music editor, who was low in station hierarchy and the one person at the station married to a serb, played the music resignedly, saying that that was what people want to hear. journalists doing magazine-like issues programming often directly and indirectly selected music. sometimes this would be done simply by telling the tech at the board what they wanted to hear. a music editor also told me, however, that she would choose music according to who was on-air. therefore, one journalist/announcer often had certain favorite songs by john lennon (i.e., the borderless idealism of “imagine”), followed by thompson’s none-toosubtle irredentist lyrics. [1] also, when time had to be filled or one of the music editors did not have music prepared, technicians running the soundboard would very often choose discs or would grab 80 dickie wallace the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 from whatever was at hand. needless to say, thompson’s cds, particularly the then-current e moj naroda, were often within arm’s reach. beyond the regular airplay thompson’s songs had as part of radio knin’s pop music programming, the strains of one immediately recognizable song could be heard every hour or two because of an advertisement for a store in nearby strmica just across the bosnia-hercegovina border. the shop owner was a croat who saw strmica as an extension of croatian territory more than as bosnia-hercegovinan and he had asked for thompson’s ideologically loaded “iza devet sela” to be the beginning and the background music in the radio spot. thus the words, “daleko, daleko, iza devet sela…” (“far, far, from nine villages…”), [2] metonymically signaled that the lyrics that would follow, in the background of the radio knin advertisement, would be metaphors warning of the dangers of communism and calling for the strength of croatia. effectively, the song signaled to croats, particularly bosnian croats, that the owner was catholic and croat and deserving of their support. any serbs knew, if they had not known already, that this was a claim to croatian territory, a broadcast marking of knin, the kninska krajina and even parts of herecegovina as croatian. [3] pula and thompson by contrast, on istria, thompson had much more difficulty finding airtime. he performed a concert in the coastal city of pula in 2002, but i was told this with a measure of disgust very early on in my fieldwork in the city, the place where i relocated to in late spring 2003 after my time in knin. istria provided a very different kind of “borderzone” for my research that sometimes felt like it was on the other side of the world from knin. far from being a “sore spot” like knin, pula is considered a desirable place to be. telling friends in zagreb that i would be on istria prompted some to write down the name of a favorite restaurant or “a village that you just have to see!” istria is the peninsula jutting into the upper adriatic that makes up the northwest corner of croatia. the region’s north is bordered by slovenia and just beyond slovenia’s narrow corridor to the sea lies the italian city of trieste. the entire peninsula is thus much closer to trieste than it is the croatian capital of zagreb. istrian culture today reflects this proximity to italy and its strategic place by the sea. peripheral to the central economic and political power of zagreb and with borders that have changed five times in just the last century, istria is another krajina or “borderzone,” part of what was known as the julian march or “julijska krajina.” as a region celebrating its diversity and border status, istria seemed to be an antidote for the “kninska krajina,” a place where croatian identity was not treated exclusive of all other identities. instead, i saw the scars of the second world war’s battles between italian fascists and yugoslav partisans as having healed in a positive way, albeit within a yugoslav, then croatian statist framework. [4] on istria people actually were willing to claim a regional and non-statist istrian identity that was built on a hybrid identity, incorporating italian and even some german background into its distinctiveness as a region. pula is the undisputed economic and cultural center of istria. known as pola in italian, it is a bilingual and multicultural city, according to its signposts and most of its residents. fieldwork at pula’s two radio stations, the staterun radio pula and the private radio maestral, led me to see the city as espousing an idea of “unity in diversity.” both radio stations have italian departments producing news and programming in italian. and at radio maestral, many of the djs and journalists made it a point to tell me how they had been playing serb music since the station’s founding in 1996, playing belgrade bands that had been opposed to the war. for this reason i was actually somewhat surprised to hear that thompson had performed in pula. his concert was held on the edge of the city on the grounds of a bus company whose owner was described to me as “a big herzegovinan gangster type” who liked thompson. dana, a director at radio maestral, pula’s leading independent station (that is, privately financed, not receiving government/ public funding) told me that thompson’s manager wanted to advertise with maestral but they had refused to take their money, asking the manager if he had any idea what kind of station maestral was. “we couldn’t do a thompson spot because we’d have a backlash from our listeners,” she said. over 3,000 people attended the thompson concert anyway. she said that she realized that there were enough refugees from the war regions and serb-occupied bosnia still living on istria and they would be into what she referred to as “that garbage.” another radio maestral dj told me with an ironic smile that “tolerant” istrians had difficulty tolerating “intolerant” bosnian croats. franci blašković much more to dana’s taste was an istrian musician, franci blašković, who was described to me “as our frank zappa.” franci was an istrian institution, fronting his band gori uši winnetou (“hello, winnetou”) and various jam sessions for over two decades, putting out albums like istra ti materina (“motherfuckin’ istria”) and ich bin, du bist, und amen (“i am, you are, and amen”). his most recent album, etnocid (“ethnocide”) was released with only 333 copies for no other reason, apparently, than because that seemed like a good number. franci has played almost exclusively two musicians in two croatias 81 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 on istria over the past two decades, only playing art-music festivals in slovenia, budapest, and western europe occasionally. for a long time, he had refused to play any concert “preko učka,” that is, off the istrian peninsula in croatia over the učka mountains that mark the geographic and symbolic border between istria and the rest of croatia. his sixteen-year ban, i have been told, occurred because he was happier in istria and had a dislike for the “crazy hrvati.” he finally played the zagreb club mocvara in late 2002. [5] at the two pula radio stations where i conducted my fieldwork in 2003, the above-mentioned independent radio maestral and the state system’s hrt radio pula, most journalists and technicians refer to him as franci. he is their local fixture, a part of what they claim to be proud of in what makes pula, pula. accepting a last minute invitation, i attended franci’s come-one, come-all 2003 easter morning concert in kanfanar, a quaint interior istria village, along with an hrt radio pula journalist and her boyfriend. an easter morning rock concert? i reckoned “why not?” in a place where i had only been living for two weeks i would not be able to do any useful ethnographic fieldwork very easily on such an important family-oriented and rather somber day of religious observance, would i? as it turned out, easter was a watershed for my research in pula. sitting on a wall in the village square, sometimes dancing, and one time running to the pub across the street to bring back a round, i saw more than a dozen people from or at least associated with both radio maestral and from radio pula. i came to know them on a social basis, seeing who knows who and who can dance and who cannot (but tries anyway). the concert also helped establish me as someone more than that odd antropolog who had been hanging around the newsroom and as more of a social being. set deliberately on easter, franci’s annual performance has become an irreverent tradition “in place of mass” because of what he considers an increasing croatian catholicization and with it, increasing hypocrisy. rocking in a courtyard off the village square and with young and old dancing and singing, the highlight of the concert is always the song “addio pola,” “goodbye pula,” sung in an italian-croatian-german mix, or what is also described as “istrian.” more than one radio person described the song, a ballad about an italian prostitute, as “our anthem,” because the song evokes a sense of place for radio maestral and radio pula journalists because franci sings “our language.” franci’s wife, arinka šegando-blašković, and poet danijel načinović wrote the lyrics to “addio pola.” i met načinović, an istrian poet well-known in pula cultural circles, at a press conference for the promotion of a particularly istrian book, mate belota’s tijesma zemlja, from the late 1930s. the book was being introduced to grade school curriculum across croatia as representing istrian within a ministry of education initiative to have various regional cultures being read by all croatian schoolchildren. [6] while talking about istrian cultural issues, načinović seemed to speak politically, once for example discussing how, within the context of globalization when croatia “entered europe,” istria needed to be doing so “with a strong regional identity.” arinka šegando-blašković is a musician in her own right having led a cabaret-type band, tingl-tangl, in the 1980s for which franci blašković was initially the bass player. with arinka, franci has done a weekly radio program off and on for more than a decade, “šjora špija” (“mrs. spy” in italian [“šjora] and croatian [“špija”] slang). arinka takes on various gossipy persona in various dialects that can be heard around and about istria, beginning commentary on weekly events with the words, “som čula…,” “i heard…” and the couple improvises parodies of anyone or anything in the news. most recently franci and arinka were making radio spots to promote ecological awareness on the istrian peninsula, where “šjora spija” would take on the persona various tourists who come to the region. during a conversation one day, various radio maestral people could not stop laughing as they tried to imitate a “šjora spija” take on a serb tourist, saying “kad čes bre doči na more….” as franci also has been famous for his facetiously blasting of touristic development on istria, the irony was particularly acute. it was explained to me that while the piece was having fun at the expense of serb speakers, it was with good humor and that they would never have recorded it to be malicious. “šjora spija” began at radio pula during the war in the early 1990s, but the free reins of their improvisation were too much for the rather autocratic regime of franjo tuđman. with tuđman’s party in control of hrt, “šjora špija” was forced off the air. franci and arinka therefore went to radio maestral, which was just starting out in 1996, helping the new independent station gain an immediate and popular local identity for being counter to tuđmanist ideology. [7] later a disagreement with the then-director of radio maestral, a person known for his prickly personality, led to “šjora špija” leaving maestral. with the end of the tuđman’s regime in croatia’s 2000 elections, the hrt radio pula management that had opposed franci and arinka also ended. a newly appointed director, veteran journalist and accomplished poet, budimir žižović brought “šjora spija” back. this was fitting; it was a way of showing the change in radio pula as it moved away from the nationalist politics of the tuđmanmanipulated hrt. besides, žižović himself had penned a few songs for franci over the years. 82 dickie wallace the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 broadcasting place both radio knin and the radio stations in pula, maestral and hrt pula, broadcast “soundscapes” for their communities and in doing so, they direct their listeners or “frame” their lives. radio knin looks to a strong croatia as knin’s future, to zagreb as its benefactor in its slow postwar recovery and with thompson, the station takes on an integral croatian cause, calling for and representing a powerful croatia that still feels weakened by occupation and does not fully trust the west for its lack of support during the war. he sells and is sold by a virulent croatian and catholic identity, [8] particularly to people who feel displaced and are embracing a national identity that reaches into bosnia-hercegovina and places once inhabited by (then occupied by) a predominantly serb population. thompson stands up for the croat angered by serb aggression and the left-wing politics that once were and have come back—thus thompson is a radio knin favorite. franci, on the other hand, is a longer established regional favorite who has stood for istrian identity and in doing so he has stood up against the right-wing government of the tuđman years. franci’s work embodies a meshed identity that accepts croatian and italian (and even some german and english) together, mixing the words of whatever languages seem fit in his lyrics and, fittingly, radio maestral and radio pula have shared in, and even competed for, franci’s humor and music. while utterly rejecting croatian nationalist politics, he has, in his own way, been a political figure standing for istria in defiance of zagreb’s centralism and croatian integral nationalism. [9] in contributing to an istrian identity, franci provides his fans working in pula radio with material for broadcast and with a symbol for a cosmopolitan and european identity, a west towards which they are gravitating ideologically while remain firmly rooted in their istrian place. while it would be wrong to characterize everyone in the kninska krajina as thompson fans and everyone on istria as franci devotees, their respective relationships to their home communities are telling because they represent and thereby serve to reproduce and reinforce regional identities and ideologies. both are krajina, “borderzone” regions, politically and culturally, where ethnonational identity plays a significant role in local politics and civic life, yet they are in marked contrast to each other—knin looks to be exclusively croatian, while istria looks to be inclusively istrian. local media personalities in these places are fans of music and personalities. they make choices based on their personal likes and dislikes and use these popular figures to signal their beliefs and values in their broadcasts. radio knin marks croatian-ness in its broadcast range with thompson hooks, while the pula radio stations signal their multi-ethnic inclusive istrian ideal with franci’s songs and broadcasts, and in looking at these singers and these singers’ fans as media producers we see the range of the croatian ideological field. endnotes 1 sitting in the studio one day, i saw how a journalist’s musical taste could sometimes hold sway over others at radio knin. a younger music editor doing his afternoon show, had put on a chart-climber from a newly-arrived “euro hits” compilation, the song “beware of the boys,” a techno/banghra song by dj punjabi, an ethnic indian from the british midlands. the clearly “eastern” flavor of the song prompted a senior journalist to come storming in, effectively asking, “what the hell is this?” he was clearly hearing it as sounding akin to bosnian muslim folk and he let it be known that he thought radio knin listeners would not like it. 2 the melody at the beginning of “iza devet sela” is a copy of abba’s 1970s hit, “supertrouper.” on the album thompson notes that the song was “inspired by abba.” radio workers who told me that “thompson was shit” used this as part of their evidence, but i heard this most vehemently argued by people not in knin, but elsewhere. 3 elsewhere (wallace 2003), i have referred to this broadcast marking as an ethnonational “aural flag.” that is, “planting” a radio station is a political act demonstrating sovereignty (or in other cases, resistance) and facilitating communication for a community, while also serving symbolically as an assertion of territory, creating a “soundscape” that claims a landscape to all within in listening range (cf., feld 1990, 1996; tacchi 2002). 4 much of the croatian coast, from istria to kvarner to dalmatia, was in italian hands between the world wars and almost wholly italian controlled leading up to and the start of world war ii. notably, with the victory of tito’s partisans, yugoslav/croatian postwar development occurred with far less input from the italian population, many of whom had been sympathetic to mussolini’s fascists or who were afraid of being seen as such by communists bent on revenge. in other words, istria’s italian population today is a fraction of what it once was and some italians whose families who were displaced might find my characterization of istria as affirmatively multi-cultural as decidedly reflecting a croatian viewpoint—or just plain naïve. through her ethnographic research, pamela ballinger (1996, 2003) shows the narrative constructions of collective identities that resulted from personal trauma generated through the exile of istrian italians. ballinger’s work, based much more on the italian exile perspective, is a marked contrast from my croatian participant observation angle. two musicians in two croatias 83 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 5 for this reason, franci has not been known very well in other parts of croatia. the reader will note that i have not included a “franci and knin” header for a section of this paper; franci was not known to people i talked to in knin. one person was pretty sure he knew the name from some compilation album, but when he searched for it amongst radio knin’s cds, he realized that he must have been thinking of someone else. 6 by comparison, i do not know of any book proposed to represent the kninska krajina region, possibly due to the fact that serbs have been the predominant people of the region. 7 franci has taken stands in favor of free speech over the years. at some of his performances he has taken collections to fund the on-going libel defense of the famously irreverent a satirical croatian weekly, feral tribune, a paper that throughout the 1990s held the strongest anti-tuđman stance and still calls for the investigation of possible war crimes perpetrated by the croatian army. for example, feral tribune was the first paper questioning the behavior of the above-mentioned district court judge at the 2002 thompson concert. 8 american pop culture watchers may find obvious parallels in thompson to crass exploiters of american patriotism like country singer toby keith whose latest album, shock’n y’all played off the bush administration’s attack on iraq. 9 istria is croatia’s one region that has the regional party representation: the istarski demokratski sabor/dieta democratica istriana (istrian democratic assembly) is the one political party with enough support in its region that it passes the threshold required to hold seats in parliament. while largely a symbolic gesture, istrian politicians have on a number of occasions taken steps towards declaring independence from croatia. references abu-lughod, lila 1992 “writing against culture.” in recapturing anthropology. r. fox, ed. santa fe: school of american research. askew, kelly 2002 “introduction.” in the anthropology of media. k. askew & r. wilk. eds. oxford: blackwell. ballinger, pamela 1996 “the istrian esodo: silences and presences in the construction of exodus.” in war, exile, everyday life: cultural perspectives, renata zamrešić kirin & maja povrzanović, eds. zagreb: institute of ethnology & folklore research. 2003 history in exile. memory and identity at the borders of the balkans. princeton, nj: princeton university press. darovec, darko 1998 a brief history of istra. yenchep, australia: ala publications. dornfeld, barry 1998 producing public television, producing public culture. princeton, nj: princeton university press. feld, stephen 1990 sound and sentiment: birds, weeping, poetics, and song in kaluli expression. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. 1996 “waterfalls of song.” in senses of place. s. feld & k. basso. santa fe, n.m.: school of american research press geertz, clifford 1973 the interpretation of culture. new york: basic books. minnich, robert gary 1997 “civil society and the legacy of ethnic cleansing in the southeastern alps. some implications for conflict prevention.” in anthropology of east europe review autumn, vol.15, no. 2. mučalo, marina 2002 radio u hrvatskoj. povisjesno-pravni razvoj radija u hrvaskoj. zagreb: hrvatska politologija. tacchi, jo 2002 “radio texture: between self and others.” in the anthropology of media. k. askew & r. wilk. eds. oxford: blackwell. visković, nikola 2001 “o pokretanju sudskog postupka u slučaju ‘lora’ split.” in dokumenti 1993–2003. zagreb: hrvatski helsinški odbor za ljudska prava. vujević, miroslav 2001 politička i medijska kultura u hrvatskoj. zagreb: školska knjiga. wallace, dickie 2003 “establishing a public sphere in a croatian borderland.” in anthropology of east europe review autumn, vol.21, no. 2. 84 dickie wallace the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 the challenges of socialization in business education: the case of the school of management, st. petersburg state university volume 21, number 2 the challenges of socialization in business education: the case of the school of management, st. petersburg state university irina pshenichnikova, st. petersburg state university © 2003 irina pshenichnikova all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the phenomenon of language socialization has often been the subject of scholarly research, and every new case attempting to achieve its specific goal gives additional insight into this complex subject. this paper reflects upon a pilot study of professional language socialization undertaken amongst undergraduate students at the school of management, st. petersburg state university.1 the author’s teaching experience of giving lectures and seminars, supervising coursepapers, student presentations and discussions has shown that many of the concerns and challenges new students face are determined by a process of socialization adaptation and integration into a new academic environment, new professional settings, new organizational climate and corporate culture. this process has broad implications for educating students, developing future successful managers (adler 1991, trompenaars 1993, kamoche, 2000) and building effective business teams (donnelon 1996). for a growing generation of new “market economy minded” managers in post-soviet russia, this issue is of crucial importance (holden 1992: 95-101; 1998-157, persikova 2002). language as a main tool of the socialization process is used in communication practices of acquiring new knowledge, building new identities and establishing a sense of belonging and social order (leontyev, 1997). e. ochs formulates several trends in studying language socialization among which are “the principles of indexicality, and local and universal culture concerning the indexing and socializing of culturally relevant information through the scope of these practices across human societies” (ochs 1996-409). ochs’ findings can certainly serve as a foundation for further investigation, yet this pilot study had two initial goals: to determine the main characteristics of language socialization at the school of management, and to define possible ways to overcome obstacles in this process. following e. ochs and b. schieffelin’s statement that “novices in society acquire tacit knowledge of principles of social order and systems of belief through the exposure to and participation in language-mediated interactions” language socialization is examined in this paper in two ways: as “socialization through language and socialization to use language” (ochs and schieffelin 1990-3). the research is based on oral and written discourses of first and second year students: class presentations, course papers and 150 essays entitled “business is my choice” assigned for the course “russian language and communication” (spring semester 2001). the decade of economic and managerial reforms in post-soviet russia have led to the establishment of new colleges and majors in the system of university education. the school of management of st. petersburg state university is one good example. since the first day of its establishment in 1993, the school of management has been characterized by several crucial traits that differentiate it from other faculties and universities providing a business education. these traits influence the socialization process. the school of management was established as the first in-house business school at the oldest russian classical university (st. petersburg state university will celebrate its 280th anniversary in 2004). the innovations taking place in this school are to be coordinated with the academic traditions and practices of the university. the school of management was built in accordance with world educational standards. it has an international advisory board, a close partnership with the hass school of business at the university of california, berkeley and belongs to consortium of north european business schools. it offers and implements a new model of business education following international norms and requirements, which is jen typewritten text 29 volume 21, number 2 not typical for russian universities. students take mid-term exams, fill in evaluation forms for all their courses and take final exams in written form only. the master of international business program is taught in english; it meets the accreditation of the russian federation as well as the community of european management schools and is unique within the russian business education system. the establishment of the school of management itself has been a distinguished project with a proper business plan and effective management (katkalo 2002). 2 during the first 10 years of its history, russian and euro-american systems of business education have been synergistically combined, producing a unique organizational culture at the school of management with a specific means of communication. since language is the basic instrument of translation and delivery of the faculty corporate academic culture, it constitutes the main challenge for the new students. the socialization process takes place in two linguistic channels: russian and english. socialization to use language socialization to use language is determined by the necessity to effectively acquire new knowledge and information encoded in linguistic forms and to adequately present it. students successfully socialize into russian and acquire native business terminology, derived from the soviet period. the essays of the first year students reveal sufficient knowledge of basic managerial and economic concepts. new students describe their plans for the future in terms of прибыль, доход, предпринимательство, управление (profit, entrepreneurship, management). a psycholinguistic associative experiment undertaken by the author in 2001 aimed to check the level of linguistically acquired professional knowledge. first year students were asked to give 3 – 5 words associated in their minds with the word деньги (money). the results showed that 70% of respondents suggested terms connected with their field of study: банк, инвестиции, евро, доллар, прибыль, акции, биржа (bank, investment, euro, dollar, profit, share, stock). these associations are different from those received during the same experiment with nonbusiness people undertaken by karaulov: большие, случайные, тратить, не хватает (big, sudden, to waste, not enough) (karaulov and ufimtseva 1997). the real challenge begins when students study market economy management disciplines in greater depth, when they write course papers, which require them to read english or other foreign language sources, and when they prepare presentations. the key position that the english language occupies in the school of management can be explained by the important role english plays in the educational process. the competitive character of the educational market demands that the academic curriculum of the school of management must reflect the newest trends in a modern management. thus, professors work a lot with international bibliographic sources and databases while designing their courses. they also use their experience of training and teaching abroad in partner universities. a lot of translation is done by the professors due to the lack of proper russian textbooks and case studies in management. moreover, english is the language of today’s global business, influencing local national business systems (crystall 2001), while the realities of the market economy and management are still new to russian economic and managerial discourse and its vocabulary. the language situation causes a lot of problems for students. new knowledge is acquired and encoded in russian through english. the process of learning an extensive terminology in many cases leads to chaotic and unreasonable usages, for example such barbarisms as: хедхантер (headhunter), рекрутер (recruiter), тимбилдинг (team building), акцептировать предложение (to accept an offer). meanwhile, the situation in the school of management reflects the macro language situation in russia. nigel holden describes it as a “language deficiency” and argues that russian is “underdeveloped as a language of management”. it “suffers from semantic voids pertaining to a wide range of market economy concepts and functions” (holden 1998 191). the data from course papers and presentations proves that all levels of the russian language system are influenced by the absorption of management concepts and words from the west. the students as well as the professors meet the challenge of using and integrating english language structures and terminology into their jen typewritten text 30 volume 21, number 2 mother tongue and native communicational practices. the coexistence of transcription and transliteration as two main ways of adapting a foreign word to the graphic and orthographic principles of the russian language leads to doubling the forms of the term, as for instance in these examples: accounting, advisor эккаунтинг, эдвайзер (transcription) and аккаунтинг, адвайзер (transliteration). the competing phonetic variants of pronunciation of soft / hard consonants in a position before the front-row vowel -ereflects the initial stage of integration of a foreign word into the accepting language system (academic grammar of the russian language, 1970; bulanin 1971). for example: management (менеджмент) is pronounced by different people as /мэнэджм’энт м’ен’эджм’энт – м’энэджм’энт/. this process can in its turn be traced in the different ways of spelling a word: brand (бренд – брэнд). the morphemic level of the russian language system also exhibits the influence of english. the different versions of morpheme spellings, as дистибьютер (distributor normative for russian) – дистрибутор (distributor normative for english), and differences in the meaning of morphemes, which are unknown for a russian speaker and thus seem to be the same, as in рекрутинг – рекрутмент (recruiting – recruitment), often become a real puzzle for the students. the vocabulary of the modern russian professional language is thus strongly influenced by english. some of the student course papers examined demonstrate the hardships of a translation process complicated by interlanguage paronymy and homonymy. for instance, in a course paper on marketing and branding, the concept “brand essence” was translated into russian as эссенция бренда which literally means in russian “brand vinegar”, instead of the proper translation квинтэссенция, or simply сущность бренда. in many cases, the obstacle to absorbing and using an english term depends neither upon the level of english or russian proficiency, nor upon the skills of translation. during the soviet period, most of the terms and concepts associated with the market economy and with management thinking and behavior either did not exist or were distorted for ideological reasons (holden 1998). for example, terms such as promotion, merchandising, consulting – промоушн, мерчандайзинг, консалтинг. the case becomes even more complex when an english word (for instance, challenge as испытание or вызов) gets a russian equivalent, the semantic structure of which is diachronically enriched with different connotations (religious for испытание, socio-cultural for вызов),3 which might influence the initial lexical meaning of the english original or prevent the possibilities of translation or paraphrasing.4 the differences between the analytic and synthetic grammar structures of russian and english also cause students a lot of problems. the term marketing communications is usually translated into russian as an attributive word combination маркетинговые коммуникации, using the russian neologism маркетинговые – an adjective derivated from the noun marketing with the russian suffix ов-. one of the examples taken from student course papers shows the tendency of analytical structures to compete with the original russian synthetic grammar structures. the term marketing communications was translated into russian as маркетинг коммуникаций (with genitive plural), which literally means “marketing of communications”, i.e. “communications are being marketed”, instead of the proper meaning “communications of marketing” i.e. used by/in marketing. the same situation happens when both students and professors attempted to translate geert hofstede’s term “power distance” into the russian language (hofstede1991). the author of this paper found the following versions in student papers and presentations: дистанция власти, властная дистанция, дистанция от власти, дистанция до власти. 5 many russian linguists and public figures have negative opinions about the increasing number of anglicisms absorbed by the russian language. this process is sometimes seen as an externally imposed language and mentality change, an invasion into the russian culture (kolesov 2000, kostomarov 2000, savelieva 1999). at the same time, research data from france proves that in spite of the protectionist measures of french language policy, the french business lexicon contains a great number of absorbed english terms, which dominate the french variants (kruchinina 2001). jen typewritten text 31 volume 21, number 2 it is obvious that today’s process of linguistic change in russia can serve as an exciting object for sociolinguistic research. nevertheless, students majoring in business and management often do not see it as a challenge or as fun, but as a serious obstacle in their professional socialization. the situation reveals that the modern russian language is now in the process of developing a new functional style within the existing stylistic system of its literary language. n. holden defines it as “the language of management – a set of linguistic symbols… and incorporating standardized terms and informal elements (such as oblique reference, humor, pretence, etc.), necessary for conceptualization, description and execution of management tasks and sharing of management information” (holden, 1998 – 191). there is an urgent need for a normative dictionary of modern business russian, which would provide proper definitions, demonstrate systems of meanings, possible connotations, orphoephic and grammar characteristics, typical contexts for the key terminology and give recommendations for its proper usage. this task cannot be resolved by existing encyclopedic and bilingual dictionaries. methodologically the barrier of the russian / english language proficiency and proper acquisition of terminological lexicon can be improved in business education if introductory courses on management terminology are included into the curriculum of first year students, and if the level of literacy and professional linguistic competence both in native and foreign languages is increased through the education process. socialization through language socialization through language is another aspect of the socialization of new students in the school of management in st. petersburg state university. while socializing through language, students consciously or subconsciously aim to apprehend the corporate culture of the school of management as well as managerial culture at large. they learn behaviors, value orientations and norms of the professional community that are embedded in the acquired linguistic resources. thus students build their new professional identities. the informal title of the school of management is som, the latin abbreviation of its initial letters. this is widely used in internal communications, on the web-site and in a school newsletter. since their first day at the school, new students learn that they have become students of som. they can join a football team or theatre group, named som’ы. the latin abbreviation som is equal by its letter and sound composition to the russian word сом [som] catfish, which in the russian mind is positively associated with strength, power, big size (dal 1991). thus the first assumption newcomers acquire is that the place where they study is not just a school of management “факультет менеджмента”, but it is the school of management – a big, strong and powerful institution. the latin graphic abbreviation combined with a homophonic form of the russian word with its metaphoric meaning and positive connotations produce a positive image of a leading russian school, which provides business education in accordance with high international standards. the freshmen are proud to be the students of this school, as they state in most of their essays. this creates a sense of belonging and shared corporate values. another challenge of professional socialization through language is determined by the new communication channels, provided by the informational technologies. due to the internet, students are able to communicate with professors by e-mail, which is still unusual in secondary and high schools in russia. the scholarly community at the school of management preserves a certain level of social distance in communication between professors and students. being supported by st. petersburg university’s culture that cultivates russian academic traditions of interpersonal collegial relationships, this social distance at the same time does not diminish at all the spirit of cooperation and mutual respect. status difference requires a certain communication register and proper means of communication between professor and student: вы–forms of address to both participants, first name and patronymic for professor; politeness strategies and etiquette formulas as уважаемый/-ая (starting the message); с уважением …(ending the message); не могли бы вы… (while asking for something). as mentioned by n.petrova and m. bergelson, e-mail and chat communication often reduces the difference between oral and written jen typewritten text 32 volume 21, number 2 forms of speech. the pragmatic tendency to save mental effort and time leads writers to disregard the rules of grammar and orthography (petrova – 1998; bergelson 2002), as well as the usual stylistic constraints. freshmen mostly experience virtual communication from informal chat and e-mail. in the context of collegial email communication, this approach can cause communication conflicts, because messages can sometimes be perceived as impolite and disrespectful towards professors. among the numerous examples are: subjects of messages defined in english as “hello” (when e-mailing a draft of a course-paper), or in russian “от пропавшей подопечной” (from a student who had missed a lot of classes). e-mail addresses derived from first name diminutives are also inappropriate for the academic business communication, for example anechka@......ru or katusha@......ru. once, a message from a student who used the address sun_dragon@......com was nearly deleted by its recipient, because it looked like spam. future sociolinguistic research on this new phenomenon and concrete recommendations and textbooks on emailing in different settings will greatly help to overcome this barrier in professional socialization. e.ochs mentions that many linguistic features of discourse (including both grammatical and conversational structures) “…are culturally organized and as such expressive of local conceptions and theories of the world” (ochs and schieffelin 1990-3). the analyzed data proves that while socializing through language students of the school of management tend to attain a global business culture. a strong desire to belong to it moves students to learn more about leading companies and prominent business people. in their essays, novices describe their plans to become topmanagers in international corporations, or to stay in russia and establish new russian companies, based on socially responsible management, free of criminality and favors (unlike the practices described by ledeneva (1997) and volkov (2002)). two thirds of the essays make reference to responsibility (ответственность) as a key concept of the russian market economy management: «тот, кто выбирает бизнес, возлагает всю ответственность за свое будущее на себя» (the person who chooses business (as a career – i.p.) puts all the responsibility on his/ her own shoulders). this type of organizational behavior is new to russia. during the soviet period people learned the opposite type of behavior. they learned to avoid tasks and to reduce the scope of their business activities to the bare minimum (функциональные обязанности) (naumov – 1994). «кем я буду через 20-30 лет? русским биллом гейтсом или простым маркетологом в мелкой фирме? все это зависит от меня и от моих усилий. но я твердо знаю, что моя работа будет связана с моей страной. после 1990-х годов только от меня и только от всех нас зависит, что будет дальше с нашей страной и с ее бизнесом» (who will i be in 20-30 years? a russian bill gates, or just a marketing specialist in a small firm? everything depends upon me and on my efforts. but i know for sure that my career will be inseparable from my country. since the 1990s, the future of my country and its business has depended upon only me, and on all of us). the inadequate rhetoric and generalizations of the authors notwithstanding, the data in their essays indicates cultural dynamics taking place within russian society (within the russian organizational paradigm studied by a. naumov 1994). younger people do still share the traditional collectivistic values of the national culture, often indexed by pronouns мы (we), наш (our), for example, наша страна; the noun народ (nation). yet at the same time, the texts of the essays reveal the tendency to express new cultural assumptions: an orientation towards achievements and results, to doing versus being, and a controlling rather then adaptive attitude towards the environment. these are all assumptions that are considered by scholars to characterize mostly the us and some west-european cultures (hofstede 1991, trompenaars 1993). socialization into the global business culture is also evidenced by another common linguistic practice, used in 25% of the essays. these texts demonstrate a proper knowledge of russian and international management terminology, but at the same time they contain english words included into the russian text without any translation: …главное здесь это стремление и желание, получение удовольствия и самореализация, ну и mission, конечно. (the most important things here (in a business career jen typewritten text 33 volume 21, number 2 – i.p.) are to strive, to desire, to experience pleasure, self-realization, and mission of course). …я действительно хочу что-то изменить, и здесь моим девизом является американское just go for it. (i do really want to change something (in russia – i.p.), and my motto is the american “just go for it”). мое будущее в бизнесе это работа в компании, идущей по краю передовых разработок или имеющей своим девизом, как apple computers фразу «think different”! (my future in business will be a job in a company that is at the cutting edge, or which has a motto like apple computers’ “think different”). the inclusion of anglicisms into the russian language discourse, to my mind, can be explained by the following reasons. first, it demonstrates students’ assumptions about shared professional knowledge. they might believe that it is not necessary to translate a keyword or phrase which a professor knows for sure, especially if the english original version conveys all the connotations and associations of the encoded concept better than the russian translation (mission миссия, vision видение) due to the reasons discussed in the first part of the paper. secondly, it indicates a sense of belonging in the global business community and indicates corporate values, mentioned in the essays (ibm, apple computers, coca-cola etc.). finally, it illustrates the process of building a new identity according to international managerial cultural assumptions and behavioral practices (think different, just go for it, create your mission). conclusion socialization into the school of management of st. petersburg state university is very challenging for its new students. they have to integrate into a new academic and corporate environment with its specific values and behavioral practices, to successfully perceive new professional knowledge and to present it in effective communication with their classmates and professors by different communication channels. due to the educational standards of the school of management, students have to study and prove their acquired professional skills by often using both russian and english. the competitive advantage of speaking two languages makes the socialization process even more challenging. in these circumstances, language socialization goals and accepted linguistic codes interact and tend to be interdependent. students fulfill local educational and cultural tasks while socializing in russian. socialization into english and through english is the path by which the russian students step into the global world of business and the international professional community. an organizational managerial discourse in the school of management of st.petersburg state university and in many russian companies operating on the international level is characterized by the coexistence of the elements of the russian and american english languages. this coexistance produces a new sub-language that has the potential to develop as a self-sufficient functional variation within the system of literary russian. when incorporated into the curriculum and textbooks as well as into managerial communicative habits in accordance with the norms and standards of russian language, it will fulfill the social, economic and linguistic demands of the new generation of managers in market economy russia. references adler n. (1991) international dimensions of organization behavior. boston: mass. pws-kent. bergelson m. (2002) iazykovyie sapekty virtualnoi kommunikacii./ vestnik mgu. seria 19, linguistics and intercultural communication. 2002 – 1. bulanin l. fonetika sovremennogo russkogo iazyka. l. grammatika russkogo iazyka v dvukh tomakh. (1970). m. crystall d. (2001) anglijskij iazyk kak globalnyj. m. dal v. (1991) tolkovyi slovar' zhivigo velikorusskogo yazyka. m. donnelon a. (1996) team talk. boston: harvard business school press. hofstede g. (1991) culture and organizations: software of the mind. london mcgraw-hill. holden n.j., cooper c., carr j. (1998) dealing with the new russia: management cultures in collision. john wiley &sons ltd, england. jen typewritten text 34 volume 21, number 2 holden n.j. (1992) creating a new russian manager: implications for designing a cultural intervention. /creativity and innovation management. 1(2) 95-101. kamoche k. (2000) developing managers: the functional, the symbolic, the sacred and the profane. /international journal of human resource management. issue: july, 2000. karaulov y. (1996) tipy kommunikativnogo povedenia nositelia yazyka v situatsii lingvisticheskogo eksperimenta. / etnokulturnaia spetsifika yazykovogo soznania. m.. katkalo, v. (2002) fakultet menedgmenta spbgu: rezultaty pervyh desyati let. / vestnik spbgu 1-2002. kolesov v. (2000) zhizn' proiskhodit ot slova. s.petersburg. kostomarov v. (2000) yazykovoi vkus epokhi. m. kruchinina a. (2001) anglitsizmy vo frantsuzskom ekonomicheskom diskurse. / tekst i diskurs: problemy ekonomichesko diskursa. st. petersburg. ledeneva a. (1997) the russian economy of favors: blat and networking. ithaca: cornell university press. leontiev a. (1997) obschenie i deiatelnost' obschenia. m. naumov a. (1994) hofstidovo izmerenie rossii. /menedzhment, 1994 – 1. ochs e. (1996) linguistic resources for socializing humanity. /rethinking linguistic relativity. eds. by j.gumperz ans s.levinson. cambridge university press. ochs e. (1990) language socialization across cultures. eds. by b. schieffelin and e.ochs. cambridge university press. persikova t. (2002) mezhkulturnaia kommunikatsia i korporativnaia kultura. m. petrova n. (1998). russkii internet kak otkrytoie folklornoie soobschestvo. internet publication //http://www.visualtech.ru/vculture/folk lor/folklor.html savelieva e. (999) ekologia russkogo slova. m. trompenaars. f. (1993) riding the waves of culture. london. ufimtseva n. (1996) russkie: opyt escho odnogo samopoznania. etnokulturnaia spetsifika yazykovogo soznania. m. volkov v. (2002) silovoie predprinimatelstvo. spb. endnotes 1 i would like to thank my students who inspired me to write this paper demonstrating the numerous examples of language socialization and who presented their essays for my fieldwork. a special thank you goes to nancy ries (colgate university) for her encouragement and valuable comments on the first version of this paper. 2 by 2002 enrollment at the school of management was 1300 students (compared to 33 in 1993). 3 бросить вызов, вызвать на дуэль (in 19th century russian); also вызов мировой буржуазии – in soviet political discourse. 4 the case of the word challenge is of special linguistic interest. the phonemic composition of the word is different from the russian language sound system, thus it prevents direct absorption. the russian word вызов suggested by mass media discourse does not coordinate fully with the semantic volume and content of the original. as a result, usage of the english word is restricted to professional managerial and student slang, where challenge is sometimes used even as a masculine noun (это был такой челендж! – it was such a challenge!) 5 i believe that these variants also demonstrate attempts to transform and adapt this foreign methodological concept to native russian cultural assumptions and attitudes towards power by linguistic spatial means (от, до + noun – object genitive). compare with the folklore proverb “ до бога jen typewritten text 35 volume 21, number 2 высоко, до царя далеко” (god is too up high, and the tsar is too far from the people). jen typewritten text 36 elana resnick anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: elanares@umich.edu transnational affiliations, local articulations: consumption and romani publics in bulgaria1 elana resnick, university of michigan introduction combating the entrenched position of roma as bulgaria‘s stigmatized underclass, romani activists in sofia seek to affiliate the romani population with internationally recognized entities outside of the nation‘s borders: in particular, with the united states via african american movements (from the civil rights movement of mlk to hip-hop), and with south asia as an ostensible homeland for the european romani diaspora. this paper examines how different transnational affiliations constitute—and are constituted by—the ways in which romani activists align themselves in a global sphere, shifting affiliations among the bulgarian state, the european union, the united states, and india. by analyzing publics in terms of consumption, i examine how people forge affiliations vis-à-vis the consumption of certain ―objects,‖ including political models/concepts (e.g., american civil rights) and media forms (e.g., indian films, hip-hop music). publics and media, foundationally, have been studied in conjunction with each other, and we can look to benedict anderson‘s focus on the newspaper as an entrée point into thinking about transnational socialist and postsocialist processes (1983). although the type of consumption to which i refer—that of hip-hop music, american models of civil rights, and indian cinema—are not consumed in private, like the archetypal newspaper of anderson‘s analysis, these cultural forms still function as mediating objects that are consumed in processes of public making and affiliation formation. people form ties with each other through their relationships—and awareness of their relationships—to mediating cultural ―objects.‖ this type of mediation becomes significant in studying postsocialist spaces, which have undergone tumultuous political and economic transitions. examining such mediations can elucidate how changing economic and political processes map onto, and intersect with, transnational developments. looking at romani activists‘ consumption of certain objects, including film, music, and political models, allows us to better understand the ways in which transnational processes are part of everyday life in contemporary postsocialist bulgaria. however, the transnational aspects of postsocialism(s) are not distinctly tied to a specific postsocialist moment or clearly bounded temporal transition (i.e., from socialism to capitalism), but are part of a broader historical trajectory. transnational associations and practices are deeply entrenched in the historical contingencies in which they have developed and taken root. thus, transnationalism is by no means a marker of the postsocialist period. rather, it is a phenomenon anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 102 that can be useful for examining historical processes through a new lens, with multiple and diverse factors. by looking at postsocialism(s) in terms of transnationalism we, expectedly, rehistoricize the period we have so problematically deemed ―postsocialism‖ but also redefine and re-historicize ―transnationalism‖ as well. in this paper i focus on the ways in which cultural objects are consumed with two consequences: 1) people relate to these objects, whether they be film, music, or models of desegregation, in ways that can be used ―to challenge existing social hierarchies‖ (larkin 2008:195); and 2) people relate to each other through their individual relationships to—and consumption of—the same mediating objects (195). through their connections to certain cultural objects and to other people vis-à-vis those objects, romani activists forge transnational affiliations and agentively form new kinds of publics. a brief history of bulgaria/india relations in the summer of 2008 i visited ivana 2 , a romani activist who has been involved with education issues in bulgaria for the past decade. during a sunday afternoon visit, we ate lunch and then rested on the sofas in her living room and watched bulgarian-language tv. soon an image of a market came on the screen. ivana remarked, ―it‘s an asian market, like the ones in india.‖ i remembered that she had visited india a few years prior. when i asked her about the roots of her interest in india, she explained that during socialism indian films were imported into bulgaria because they were less expensive than ―western‖ movies and ―were not made by the west.‖ she explained that during this period many romani people named their children after characters in the indian films. when i asked her why she thought this occurred, she explained: the language was similar—i liked to hear it because the indian language sounded like roma language. i even learned that three words in one of the old indian languages, urdu, are the same as in the roma language—cross, priest, and i forget the other one…besides the language also the practices were similar— marriage and philosophy of life. there are roma all throughout europe, from all castes—they showed the words and practices of all. ivana‘s remarks align with those of many romani activists in bulgaria who look to india as the site of their diasporic roots, often drawing links between romani and sanskrit (and hindi) in attempts to create a public, based on indo-european linguistic affiliation. however, india has an important role for non-romani bulgarians as well, in being one of the socialist allies in ―the east‖ and a major exporter of films to bulgaria during socialism. given this contextual background, studying bulgarian romani activists‘ affiliations with india can shed light on the relationship between the bulgarian state and certain romani populations. in this vein, looking to india provides a historical framework for roma that functions not only to anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 103 categorize them as a ―legitimate‖ diaspora, but also, more implicitly, ties the roma to bulgarian history, mass culture, and changing public spheres. connections between bulgaria and india can be traced back to the 19 th century. the account of georgi stoikov rakovski (which was dedicated to todor zhivkov) written by veselin traikov, a prominent bulgarian scholar and biographer, and the indian scholar g. mukerjee refers to the 19 th century bulgarian revolutionary hero as ―a great son of bulgaria and a great friend of india‖ (1987). georgi rakovski, one of bulgaria‘s most famous revolutionary heroes, founded the bulgarian revolutionary central committee in 1869 and spent his life organizing resistance movements against the ottoman rule. 3 in mukerjee‘s introduction to the text, he claims that rakovski ―was the first bulgarian to draw attention to the beauty of samskrit [sanskrit] literature and affinity between the old bulgarian language and samskrit [sanskrit]‖ (1987:1-2). rakovski spent time trying to discover ―his distant kinsman in hindustan,‖ drawing on ―parallels in mythology, legend, folklore of ancient india and contemporary bulgaria‖ to show that bulgarians and indians were of the same family (2). when rakovski was only eighteen-years-old he claimed that ―we must search for our ancient past in india and nowhere else‖ (5). it becomes clear that rakovski understood india to be related through tradition, mythology and, most notably, language, to modern-day bulgaria (5). interestingly, these articulations of ties between bulgaria and india seem remarkably similar to claims made by romani activists and scholars who emphasize india as the romani homeland; both discourses focus on linguistic links to sanskrit. according to many scholars of romani language and culture, language does in fact provide the best evidence of the indic origins of roma. analyses of the details of romani migration are most clearly evidenced in changes of lexical items and grammar (fraser 1992, matras 2004). hypotheses of roma‘s diasporic history based on language practice and change has ―precedents in european philology,‖ which may explain why similar links between bulgarian and sanskrit (like romanes and sanskrit) were being made in the 19 th century (friedman 1984, lemon 2000). non-romani philologists made links between language purity and cultural identity, and even took such measures as ―puffing up‖ romani vocabulary lists with sanskrit or hindi words or ―replac[ing] lexical items having obscure indic etymologies with words having better known ones‖ (lemon 2000:98, friedman 1984, hubschmannova 1995). romani links with india are both part of a certain type of romani history, focusing on linguistic (and cultural) diasporic legitimacy, but are also part of a broader european linguistic phenomenon (friedman 1984, lemon 2000). thus, we can interpret these connections between roma and india as a means of legitimating romani language and ethnicity as part of a valid indic diaspora, but also as a way in which roma become part of a wider european linguistic trend, of which they are just one european example. this becomes even more clear when we looks at similarities between the styles of the accounts of bulgaria/india and roma/india connections, which both draw on notions of indian greatness. for example, vania de gila (kochanowski), the latvian romani activist and scholar, writes: anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 104 so don‘t forget this socio-historical fact: even the lowest people had, at one period, their time of grandeur—a period of splendor. so had doms. you see that even if we were doms, our origin would still be india. that is why the declaration of 1977 by uno that we have nothing in common with india—neither language, nor history, nor culture, is wrong and unjust!… if i say that roma belong to the highest caste of india, that is not because we are proud or we are ‗racists‘, but because it is the historical fact… (1995:25). here, the tone is similar to that used in accounts of bulgaria‘s relationship to india; rakovski considered indian philosophy to be ―the highest achievement of mankind‖ and ―the cradle of enlightenment‖ (mukerjee 1987:5). these bulgarian/indian and romani/indian relationships are not only based on linguistic or cultural evidence, but also on an aspirational relationship that is founded on conceptions of the great land of india, a place to which people desire to tie themselves. thus, not only are bulgarians and roma reconfigured in such comparisons vis-à-vis a similar mediating ―object‖ (i.e., india), but india itself becomes defined and redefined by its relationship to the groups that identify with it. bulgarian state socialism and india links with india were not only drawn in the 19 th century but also in the 20 th century, during socialism, as publics started to take on new forms in relation to the popularization and accessibility of certain types of cultural objects, including indian films. in girish mishra‘s 1985 new delhi-published account of bulgarian/indian relations, he claims that bulgaria and india‘s close relationship has been proven through similarities in the languages of the two countries (although he doesn‘t state which languages), archaeological evidence, and similarities between indian and bulgarian folksongs. he even addresses the role of the roma in making this link more pertinent, and claims: ―it is said that hundreds of years ago gypsies travelled from india to bulgaria and carried indian music and folk dances‖ (1985:45). he explains that india/bulgaria trade relations improved after the 1944 socialist revolution in bulgaria and the 1947 independence movement in india. due to these momentous historical shifts india became both an important source of material goods, like metal and spices, and a major exporter of media, including hindi films, to socialist bulgaria. echoing this historical reasoning, bulgarian film scholar dina iordanova explains that indian films played a prominent role in bulgaria during her own childhood, much more than any american films or ―soviet war films‖ of the time (2006:126). iordanova explains that many bulgarians thought indian films resonated with the romani population because ―these films‘ melodramatics, dragged-on plots and lavish music, dance and costumes were fully in line with what we thought was the gypsy taste‖ (127). it becomes apparent that indian films were popular among many bulgarians, but may have had a particular and well-known appeal among romani audiences as well. that said, it is important to note that the popularity of indian films anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 105 during socialism was not specific to bulgaria or bulgarian roma, but part of larger (transnational) socialist cultural and economic structures. in socialist romania, for example, indian movies also gained a prominent position in popular culture, and in the decades following the fall of socialism became ―inextricably linked with memories of communism‖ (bradeanu and thomas 2006:141). media scholars bradeanu and thomas, highlighting the popularity of indian movies with romani populations, cite a romanian newspaper that describes the 1980s visit of the indian actor, raj kapoor, in romania and states that, ―he was ‗almost lynched by his coloured fans‘‖ (143). another newspaper quotes an ―anonymous rom‖ as saying, ―‗we enjoy indian films as they feature people who are dark-skinned like us and therefore closer to us‘‖ (143). this media representation positions roma as both part of a romanian, socialist public—in which hindi films are enthusiastically consumed—but also deeply different in citing how they ―almost lynch‖ the indian movie star. this popular-news account of romani indian film consumption posits the image of a public sphere in which roma are a part but also marks the roma as outsiders, uncivilized ‗others‘ who do not acclaim the indian star but instead react to him violently. by deeming romani and indian stars both ―coloured,‖ these newspapers home in on one specific quality with which roma may align with indians: skin color. instead of focusing on anything of more substance, these newspapers focus on skin color and violence, thereby using a potentially positive, integrative moment between romanians and roma as a sign of disjuncture; as close as roma get to becoming part of a romanian public, they will never really be part of it. even if they watch the same movies, the roma will ―almost lynch‖ the movie star when face-toface with him. this media discourse positions the roma as the existential ‗other,‘ potentially near to, but inevitably outside of, the socialist public sphere. publics, counterpublics, and consumption in his work on publics and counterpublics, michael warner claims that as long as the public sphere exists as a space of the unmarked (i.e., the white male), ―disembodied‖ minoritized subjects manage to find their way into the public sphere by ―carry[ing] their unrecuperated positivity into consumption‖ (2002:168). whereas the public sphere doesn‘t allow for differentiation, capitalism allows for an ―endlessly differentiated subject‖ (168). using the bulgarian case, i focus on how identification with the contemporary public sphere, when intersected with consumption, is disrupted in potentially productive ways (183). according to warner, a public is created through a type of mediation; a public becomes such by its relation to certain ―objects.‖ he explains that ―something becomes a public only through its availability for subjective identification‖ (175). using warner‘s emphasis on identification (and hence also alienation) in the public sphere, i bring in daniel miller‘s work on consumption to shed light on the ways in which consumption not only allows for a certain type of counterpublic reembodiment, but also provides a framework through which groups, like the roma, construct— and are constructed by—overlapping and changing publics. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 106 through their consumption of indian films, roma locate themselves in two overlapping, intersecting, and changing publics: that of an indic diaspora and that of bulgarian society. daniel miller claims that ―consumption is a major factor in the potential return of culture to human values‖ (1987:192). miller draws on nancy munn‘s ethnographic account of gawa fame, in which she explicates how canoes are materializations that facilitate externalization into the world. according to munn, the canoe becomes both the vehicle for, and representation of, the movement of the body outwards, to other islands, and symbolically into a wider world (munn 1986). miller explains that material forms are connected to processes of both objectification and self-creation, processes of ―externalization and sublation,‖ objectifying the self for the purposes of extension into the world (1987:62). as seen in the case of romani associations with both an indian homeland and a bulgarian public vis-à-vis indian films, this process consists of forging a ―relationship between two societies, and not merely the internal workings of one‖ (62). in line with miller who explains that appropriation ―consists of the transmutation of goods, through consumption activities, into potentially inalienable culture‖ (215), i focus on the ways in which romani people consume popular media—whether it be indian films or african american culture—in ways that tie them to bulgarian publics of mass consumption but also make this public culture inalienable and particular to romani activism and social life. moving away from newspaper depictions of the relationship between roma and indian films, focusing instead on ethnographic examples from many romani people‘s points of view, it becomes evident that through their consumption of hindi films, roma can become part of a bulgarian socialist public. in referencing these films, bulgarian romani activists evoke a history of indian film consumption that draws on nostalgia for a socialist past. a great deal of writing about roma locates their history in flash points, jumping from india to slavery to the holocaust to postsocialist poverty. however, roma are often missing in accounts of ―socialist nostalgia‖; instead roma get tied to ―antistate and antimodern nostalgia,‖ including nostalgia for india (lemon 2000:42-43). these two tropes—of (1) socialist nostalgia (as discussed in many theories of postsocialism) and (2) romani nostalgia for india—need to be reformulated because india, as evoked through socialist-era hindi films, is already tied to socialism in many people‘s imaginations. therefore, when romani activists nostalgically reference indian films, they do so partly because of romani/indian links but also as a metonymic means of evoking nostalgia for socialism and a socialist public sphere. ********** these connections with india also resonated with the ways in which romani bulgarians referenced links with india through linguistic or bodily evidence. in 2003, i traveled with ivana to visit her husband‘s family in a large romani ghetto on the outskirts of sofia. we sat down to eat a small snack of salad and fried potatoes at her friend‘s restaurant and listened to the music coming from the wedding in the adjacent catering hall. suddenly, ivana‘s friend—with her baby on her lap—started laughing. i looked up from my plate and saw the baby, wrist adorned with anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 107 gold bracelets, twisting her arm in the air to the rhythm of the music. ivana exclaimed: ―see, she is indian! it is in the blood! look at her dancing. it is indian dance.‖ ivana then drew attention to the mother and remarked on her facial features: ―see, she is so beautiful, she looks indian.‖ later, when we arrived back at ivana‘s apartment in downtown sofia, i noticed that she had a statue of the hindu goddess, kali, believed to be the ―black‖ romani goddess, on her mantle and she explained to me that many romani activists in bulgaria have such statues in their homes. as many roma referenced ―indianness,‖ they often did so through appropriating materializations of it—in the statues of hindu goddesses, movements of the body and physical features, as well as through ties to the land of india as a physical site for pan-romani activist gatherings. ivana evoked a romanticized and aesthetic notion of indian beauty and dance, with the symbols of indianness being in the blood and part of the body. as i inferred from ivana‘s words, the romani child who danced was a catalyst for ivana to evoke the indian heritage of the roma. the child, not even able to talk yet, becomes a symbol of the ―pure,‖ ―natural‖ connection between roma and indian roots. these connections are also taken up in institutionalized forms, such as romani conferences in india, as well as in material consumable goods like the statues of kali that adorn many romani homes. with this ethnographic and historical context in mind, and by knowing about ivana‘s relationship to indian cinema, her focus on the baby‘s dancing seems tied to the dancing she often watched in the hindi films that she found so appealing. her focus on the child‘s body is at once an assertion of naturalized, bodily connections between roma and india as it also evokes indian movies, music, and dancing. ivana‘s focus on the visual aspect of the child‘s dancing resonates with her interest in the visuality of indian culture. although many bulgarians understand the visual aspects of indian films to be aesthetically exotic, they also regard them as intimately familiar. similarly, ivana describes the baby‘s dancing as both beautifully exotic but also firmly rooted in the romani body. just as indian films under socialism (in east europe) often served to maintain a certain order among communist subjects (with socially conservative plotlines) but also had the potential to be subversive, in evoking places far outside of east europe‘s socialist borders, romani consumption of indian films in bulgaria seems to have a similarly dual function (bradeanu and thomas 2006:143). the films show scenes that are pleasingly similar to romani traditions and kinship rules, family relations, and language, but they also provide a means outside of the bulgarian state with which both discriminated against and politically active roma seek to affiliate. this urge to seek ties outside of bulgaria‘s borders must be understood against the background of the complicated relationship between roma and the bulgarian state. following the socialist takeover of 1944, roma temporarily became part of a soviet model, in which they were considered an ethnic community within bulgaria with equal rights and their own ethnic ―national‖ identity (marushiakova and popov 1997:34-35). in this period, ―gypsies‖ were considered a nationality and a ―gypsy intelligentsia‖ was organized with help from the communist leadership. however, these romani initiatives changed significantly in the 1950s when the socialist goal was the cultural effacement of minority groups and ―complete anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 108 assimilation into the ‗bulgarian socialist nation‘‖ (35). muslim roma were forcibly renamed with bulgarian names, replacing their turkish-arabic ones, and nomadic roma were settled and forced to undertake permanent jobs, in the hope of turning them into full-fledged socialist citizens. socialist leaders were worried that the romani population might join the large turkish, muslim minority and ―make it too big and dangerous‖ (37). based in the fear that roma were especially susceptible to ―western influence,‖ socialist officials tried ―to create loyal supporters and instruments for communist ideology among gypsies‖ (39). until the 1970s ―gypsies‖ were still called ―minorities‖ in official documents, but in 1974 ―they disappeared from all statistic data‖ and ―euphemisms were usually used, such as ‗bulgarian citizens of gypsy origin,‘ and the word minority was considered to be politically wrong‖ (marushiakova and popov 1997:40). descriptions in local newspapers began to refer to the roma as ―swarthy citizens‖ and ―children who cannot speak bulgarian‖ (40). under socialist assimilation practices, the romani language was outlawed and some romani activists were imprisoned for advocating its public usage. language, thus, becomes an important way that roma were both acknowledged and discriminated against, during socialism and up through the present day. it is with this history in mind that we might interpret the ways in which some romani activists i interviewed focused on linguistic links between romani and hindi in relation to the formation of publics. in a long conversation with boyan (in 2003), a romani activist with whom i worked and who had taken it upon himself to learn romani language and history, he referenced the sanskrit origins of romani and drew attention to links with india. he explained: after one thousand years the roma had preserved the indian roots of their language. the main words are of sanskrit root. roma language is without written memory and is oral communication. the language is romanes…in english it is ―man.‖ in romanes it is ―manush.‖ in sanskrit it is ―manu.‖ it is an indo-european language; the jewish language is not indo-european. i asked him: it [the ―jewish language‖] is more like arabic? he replied: yes, maybe. it is not a european language. addressing links between india and roma often led to discussing the connections between roma and their ―indo-european‖ language roots. in the above case such links become the substance for european, not indian, identification. thus, by linking romanes to a history beyond socialist assimilation, boyan legitimates romanes as not only a ―real‖ language of a certain diaspora but as a quintessentially european phenomenon. in a country that has consistently focused on its relation to the orient, to the turks, and the ottoman empire, a sense of authentically european roots holds a great deal of cultural capital — and it is this sense of a european public, based on relation to a specific kind of linguistic heritage, that boyan invokes. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 109 american democracy: from civil rights to hip-hop in 2003, i first traveled to bulgaria where i worked at a romani educational desegregation organization, edag, which was founded and run by mihail, boyan, and maria, three english-speaking, romani activists in their mid-20s. the office of edag was minimally furnished. the only wall decoration was a poster of martin luther king, jr. with the words i have a dream above his head. on my first day in the office, mihail walked in and pointed to the poster of mlk and asked, ―oh do you know that guy? he‘s my best friend!‖ while i first believed, simply, that mihail, maria, and boyan thought of martin luther king, jr. as an inspiration for their own work, i soon realized that associations with blackness shifted, depending on context and how money was involved. when an american civil rights lawyer visited sofia to talk about the situation of roma vis-à-vis blacks in pre-civil rights america, many romani organizations in the area were bothered by the amount of funding and attention given to this lawyer who clearly knew little about the romani situation. the question of why he and his wife stayed at the ritziest hotel in sofia and had a private limousine drive her and their grandson around while he conducted his tour puzzled many romani activists, like mihail, who wondered if the lawyer‘s speaking engagements were merely a ploy for a free vacation. mihail began calling the american attorney ―my friend,‖ signaling the same register he used when first referring to mlk. given his references to the lawyer‘s extravagant accommodation and ignorance of the romani situation, mihail‘s invocation of friendship seemed sarcastic, suggesting a more ambiguous relationship with both the american attorney and— through association—mlk. although mihail adopted martin luther king, jr. as a figurative role model, putting his poster up on the wall, he was not as willing to accept the american model being hoisted onto the work that he was conducting from a grassroots level. when it became clear that the visiting attorney‘s role was to discuss the american situation of the 1950s and 60s as generically comparable to the current situation of bulgarian roma in 2003, many romani activists deemed this type of modeling problematic. but, these problems were not addressed directly; instead, maria and mihail dealt with them through discourses of moralization revolving around the money spent on the attorney‘s visit, claiming that the money could have been better allocated to bulgarian grassroots organizations. underlying these references to the money spent on the american attorney‘s trip is the idea that money indexes some kind of ―corruption‖ of the activist sphere. mihail and maria implicitly create a moral code of activism—good activism should not be equated with making money and doing moral activist work should not include staying in fancy hotels or being chauffeured in a limousine. they believed that the activist sphere should not be about profit and in that specific sphere, influenced by international donors and american models, funding can easily become the basis for corruption. for roma, who have historically been commodified— through tropes of the wandering gypsy in canonized literature, in disney movies, in popular fashion trends, commodification vis-à-vis the activist sphere is seen as a new instantiation of a anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 110 broader phenomenon. the american lawyer‘s visit placed roma into the role of capital to be commodified and then corrupted for (personal) gain. this focus on money was not just ideological and moral but also practical. since an american-based international organization was the primary donor for the lawyer‘s visit but also had partial control over edag‘s annual budget, mihail, maria, and boyan interpreted the money spent on his visit as effectively diminishing their own organizational funding. integral to this moral framework of activism is the role of the united states and western europe as primary financial donors, contributing funds to roma in bulgaria in their efforts of postsocialist democratization. this involves a bundling process, in which ideological emphases on ―western‖ democracy are bundled together with the pragmatics of capitalism that come along with them. the donors that provide funding to the bulgarian romani ngo sector, a context that has never dealt with such a quick influx of funding, are simultaneously imposing ideals of moral, non-corrupt democracy on the ngo sphere. this leads to contradictions: on one hand, many romani activists take up ―democratic‖ ideals of purification—that activism should be ethically sound and solely altruistic. however, these same activists are also caught up in a newlycapitalizing system in which people, especially roma, need jobs. alas, the easiest place for many roma to find employment in the new economic system is in this emerging, internationallyfunded ngo sector. thus, we see how democratization efforts and international funding bring with them contradictions between ideologies of pure activism and pragmatic capitalist-based needs for employment. it is important to see that what is going on in bulgaria with romani activists is not specific to romani activism, but part of a larger phenomenon regarding ―newly-capitalizing‖ and ―newly-democratizing‖ east european countries. associations with african americans are not particular to roma but are being imposed by american funders as part of a variety of democratization projects. the fact that many of these initiatives target roma tells just as much about the way the bulgarian state has dealt with minorities, like roma, in the past as it does about the particulars of romani activism and public making. 4 thus, what emerges is both a story about romani activism but also an insightful lens into the relationships between political and financial institutional entities—the united states, western european donors, private funders— and newly democratizing east european states. during this time, many romani activists i knew were not just associating with american blacks in terms of political movements, but were also listening to hip-hop lyrics from american rappers. on slow days at edag i often spent time with mihail, sitting around in the office. he would signal that work time was over when he‘d turn on the office‘s boom-box cd player. he would play music for me, ranging from ―traditional‖ romani music, to bulgarian pop music, to bulgarian rap in an effort to expose me to music he assumed i hadn‘t heard before. like many romani youth, mihail listened to bulgarian rap music ―for fun‖—the lyrics of which typically only mentioned roma through negative stereotypes—but when listening to american rap music, he listened seriously to the words as though they were meditations on his own life. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 111 during one of our meetings, mihail recalled some of the site-visits he had made to monitor the success of pilot educational desegregation projects throughout bulgaria. he told me about the children who were part of the desegregation initiatives: their dreams told their level of segregation. some say when you ask, ‗what will you be?‘ they say, ‗oh i will be a fireman‘ or ‗oh i will be doctor.‘ this means they have been integrated in some way. the ones that are very segregated won‘t say this. they will say, ‗i will drive a horse, like my father does.‘ it‘s like that song by ice – what‘s his name – ice t, ‗i want to be a mother-fuckin‘ hustler‘ – see i must say something funny, this is very difficult. we need to laugh. mihail often articulated serious statements and then metadiscursively drew attention to his joking register in order to deal with what he termed ―difficult‖ things to say; he did so by referencing african american rap music lyrics. this shifting of registers was common to our conversations about his relation to discrimination and the gypsy ―ghetto.‖ serious talks often became opportunities for him to cite rap lyrics or ask me to teach him what he called american ―ghetto‖ terms. he asked me what kind of slang black people used in america. i taught him how to greet friends, saying, ―what up b?‖ he said, ―oh i know, b. it‘s like brother what up bro?‖ he explained: ―it‘s like all black men are brothers—we are all brothers.‖ invoking kinship with his ―black brothers,‖ mihail signals a connection beyond associating just with american ―hipness‖; he draws attention to a deeper comparison, rooted in a sense of fraternity. when mihail spoke about hip-hop he often referenced the ―bling‖ of american rappers and the money of hip-hop stardom in conjunction with references to hip-hop‘s allusions to racial discrimination, violence, and police profiling. he shifted seamlessly between talking about the serious issues of ghetto-ization and discrimination addressed in political american rap lyrics and the romanticized vision of ―black america‖ he interpreted from commercialized hip-hop music. unlike the money spent on the american lawyer‘s visit, the money mihail associated with hiphop was not morally problematic but part of what he aspired to in american blackness. in the realm of music, economic gain and ―sincere‖ discussions of discrimination were not mutually exclusive. again, we see roma placing themselves as part of a larger public—one of blackness, rooted in african american experience as interpreted from media sources. however, these romani activists also link themselves, in a warnerian way, to those others who are also listening to american hip-hop music. just as warner focuses on the idea of publics as forming vis-à-vis a mediating object to which different people relate and through which they then relate to each other (as an abstract public), roma are forming a public with those people in europe, america, and elsewhere who also listen to hip-hop. however, i argue that mihail‘s consumption is notably different. mihail uses consumable media as a means of articulating fraternity with another minority group, utilizing what is globally ―hip‖ to reposition himself within both bulgarian and global contexts. in a shift toward what warner terms a ―counterpublic,‖ his anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 112 consumption is a form of re-embodiment. warner claims that the public sphere is not simply ―corrupted by its articulation with consumption‖ but rather ―sustains a counterpublicity that cuts against the self-contradictions of the bourgeois public sphere‖ (2002:183). like the counterpublicity that warner addresses, romani consumption practices of hip-hop ―retain their link to a body‖ by claiming ―an imaginary uniqueness promised in commodities but canceled in the public sphere proper‖ (184). in such romani practices of consumption, like mihail‘s, which focus on lyrics in ways that are not just about alienated consumption but entail a kind of singularization 5 or millerian appropriation, roma associate with other, similar listeners, and african americans on the bases of both political subjugation, ghetto-ization, discrimination and also economic aspiration. conclusions talking with romani activists in bulgaria elucidated an interesting point about publics that warner doesn‘t address: how it is that a public forms by agentive choice? rather than taking for granted that certain mediating forces/objects exist to which people orient themselves and by which they form abstract relations with others, as warner suggests, many romani activists focus on the individual‘s and group‘s agency in forming affiliations. even when they are relating to mediating objects, forming associations with an indian homeland, a bulgarian socialist public, or an american/african american public sphere, many romani activists are well-aware and conscious of these practices of affiliation as well as their social and political implications. for example, in the summer of 2008, i sat with boyan at an outdoor café in sofia and spoke about how our lives had changed in the five years since we had met in 2003. he was now a lawyer, working on business issues with a private firm and no longer involved with romani activism. theorizing about the situation of roma in bulgaria, he explained that roma need a ―real collective, a sense of being roma.‖ i asked him how he thought that could happen. he explained that it would take a lot of time. then we began speaking about india: e: how important is india to a sense of roma collectivity? b: not very important at all. we are european, not indian. e: but could it be important as a homeland, like israel for the jews? b: well it‘s very different. the roma were not roma in india. they formed as a group once they reached europe. the jews always knew they had a homeland—it said so in the bible but the roma were not roma until after they traveled and by then they were already in europe. also, india is third world. they could not want us. they have enough of their own problems. there are indians all over the world—they do not have an interest in us. we cannot help them. e: but do roma have an interest in india? anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 113 b: well once something changes, maybe. but they do not care about us—they have enough problems. boyan‘s claims to india resonated with those of maria. one afternoon shortly after i arrived in bulgaria that summer, maria and i were sitting at her house drinking beer and eating walnuts from her in-laws‘ farm. as i explained my research project, telling her that i was looking at how romani activists were affiliating both with african americans and india, maria shared her opinion: even if their roots came from india, roma can‘t rely on india…they know they come from india but india is so broken with different castes. it [india] is so poor, i don‘t find it of much importance. we don‘t need to go into the past so much as we need to go into the future—these are different ways to cope with our lives…. others try so hard but all they know is that we come from india…we need more—to know how exactly we came from there. boyan claims that india is not a homeland for roma, and in doing so emphasizes roma‘s deep-rooted ties to europe, but also suggests that linking up with india is neither strategic nor practical. he explains that india has too many problems to care about roma but when asked if roma care about india he says that ―well once something changes, maybe,‖ implying that if india‘s conditions change perhaps ties between roma and india would make more sense. thus, creation and acknowledgement of a public(s) is not just about relating to certain mediating forms—like language, film, or history—but also about the desire to become a kind of ―public‖ in the first place (and thus be linked to certain mediating objects). for boyan, it must first be feasible and strategic in order for ties with india to be seriously pursued. similarly, maria claims that india is too poor to be of any use. like boyan, she also focuses on the pragmatics of india/roma ties, pointing to the ambiguity of this link altogether. thus, it becomes clear that transnational associations are context-bound and pragmatically utilized. by looking at globalization in a socialist and postsocialist framework, we are better able to see the ways in which transnational resources have developed historically and, in response to changing political and social structures, used differently, with various purposes and shifting significance. therefore, while consumption may play a role in public formation and affiliation making, it is a process deeply governed by individual and collective agency. forming publics and affiliating with groups is often looked at as a process in which the final outcomes— the public being formed, the materials being consumed—are primary. however, these bulgarian romani examples illustrate quite the opposite; rather, the processes by which publics are formed are equally—or more—salient than the final results. by examining how discussions and practices of affiliation address the significance and use-value of different associations, as well as how metadiscourses about public-formations highlight conscious awareness of such processes, anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 114 we can see how publics are not just abstractly formed but agentively, strategically, and purposefully created, articulated, and embodied. notes 1 research for this paper (three months in 2003 and one month in 2008) was generously funded by haverford college‘s center for peace and global citizenship (2003), the university of michigan center for russian and east european studies, the university of michigan rackham graduate school, and the foreign language and area studies fellowship program (2008). i am greatly indebted to my friends in sofia who consistently inspired me and analyzed their own experiences with me over the course of the past six years. i am grateful to alaina lemon, krisztina fehérváry, and judith irvine for their close readings of this paper and for providing helpful insights and tremendous support. i would also like to thank the faculty of the university of michigan‘s department of anthropology, including kelly askew, webb keane, matthew hull, bruce mannheim, barbra meek, and damani partridge for their comments on various instantiations and discussions of this paper. my gratitude goes to the faculty and students of the university of michigan linguistic anthropology lab, the graduate workshop on european studies, the romani studies reading group, and my friends and colleagues in the michigan anthropology program who have provided extensive feedback, great advice, and moral support throughout the development of this paper. lastly, i thank adrienne resnick for her fine-tuned attention to detail and narcis tulbure, as guest editor of aeer, for his thoughtful and provocative comments on many versions of this paper. all errors are my own. 2 please note that all names and identifying information have been changed, in order to maintain the anonymity of the people and groups with whom i work. 3 rakovski‘s relationship to bulgaria was a complex one. he spent most of his life living outside bulgaria and began organizing a resistance movement among bulgarian emigrants in romania. 4 this is a topic of future work and unfortunately could not be explored in this paper. 5 here i refer to igor kopytoff‘s work on the way in which certain commodities can become singularized. he explains that we interpret ―texts‖ in a ―process of initial withdrawal from a given original social setting… commoditization, followed by increasing singularization (that is decommoditization) in the new setting, with the possibility of later recommoditization‖ (1986:65). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 115 references cited anderson, benedict. 1983 (2006 edition). imagined communities. london and new york: verso. bradeanu, adina and thomas, rosie. 2006. indian summer, romanian winter. south asian popular culture, 4:2. pp. 141-146. fraser, angus. 2002. the gypsies. oxford: blackwell. friedman, victor. 1984. linguistics, nationalism, and literary languages: a balkan perspective. purdue university linguistics group and interdepartmental program in linguistics, april 1984. hubschmannova, milena. 1995 trial and error in written romani on the pages of romani periodicals. in romani in contact: the history, structure, and sociology of a language. yaron matras ed. pp. 189-205. amsterdam: benjamins. iordanova, dina with contributions from juan goytisolo, ambassador k. gàjendra singh, rada ei, asuman suner, viola shafik and p.a. skantze., 2006 indian cinema‘s global reach. south asian popular culture, 4:2. pp. 113-140. kochanowski., vania de gila. 1995. romani language standardization. journal of the gypsy lore society 5/2, august, 1995. pp. 97-108. kopytoff, igor. 1986. the social biography of things. in the social life of things. arjun appadurai, ed. cambridge: cambridge university press. larkin, brian. 2008. signal and noise. durham: duke university press. lemon, alaina. 2000. between two fires: gypsy performance and romani memory from pushkin to postsocialism. durham: duke university press. marushiakova, elena and vesselin popov. 1997. gypsies (roma) in bulgaria. frankfurt: peter lang. matras, yaron. 2004. the role of language in mystifying and demystifying gypsy identity. in the role of the romanies. nicholas saul and susan tebbutt, eds. pp.53-78. liverpool: liverpool university press. miller, daniel. 1987. material culture and mass consumption. oxford: blackwell. mishra, girish. 1985. bulgaria, a trusted friend of india. new delhi: patriot publishers. munn, nancy. 1986. the fame of gawa. durham and london: duke university press. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 116 traikov, veselin and g. mukerjee. 1987 georgi stoikov rakovski. new delhi: northern book centre. warner, michael. 2002. publics and counterpublics. cambridge: zone books. aeer.indb 7 the last dance lászló kürti university of miskolc, hungary in this article i analyze one area that has for a long time interested anthropologists: the way in which dancing and dancing rituals—part of traditional life-ways—change and eventually disappear. i utilize here the terms “dance” and “dancing” principally to mean not only biologically or psychologically (emotionally?) motivated and combined corporeality and events in society but, together with foucault, rather as discursively constituted and agency-transformed entities that individuals think and live with in their culture. recent studies have shown that dance and dancing, in fact movement systems in general, form an integral part of the cultural territory within which the human body is structured and manipulated (farnell 1999, 2003). for my purpose, however, i view both dance and dancing, here to entail not only structured movement systems and body representations but activities in specific kinetic and space-time dimensions that are culturally controlled, negotiated and constructed. [1] dance, thus, is not only a formal body language, as bloch has argued earlier (bloch 1989), but a politically formalized system that is part of the controlling mechanism of authority. [2] in fact, it is often one of the most revered legitimating forces of authority in uneven power relations. at the same time, dance and dancing activity could be a source of as well as a force for resistance against such legitimacy (howard 2001). i use here dance to mean a single form of a specific movement system, and dancing as a referent reserved for social events that include various dances. at times, we find that a single dance may be a source of conflict between individuals and the state, or between various ethnic groups. an individual dance may or may not symbolize an ethnic or national group, and dance events could also become a source contestation between majority and minority ethnic relations. it is a tautological comment that the body is culturally understood, constructed and monitored by individuals and groups but one of the least discussed but, to my mind, most important aspect of the body is its conditioning and the way in which it is anchored to the discursive practices between the state and individuals. [3] the body both a source and an object of control has not been addressed by anthropologists studying hungary or hungarian dance. even though marcel mauss has made a rather innocent incursion into hungarian ethnographic studies, the idea of the technique du corps has not, we must admit, gained a sure footing in the anthropological study of dance. with regard to romania, anthropologists have faired exceptionally well: folkloric representations (kligman 1977, 1988), reproduction, sexuality and gender relations (kligman 1998; roman 2003), and political forms of funerals and reburials (verdery 1999) are monographic themes privileging the body, both collective and individual. however, the use and representation of the body in dances and dance events in hungarian minority culture in romania, especially as a source of power discourse, has not, we must admit, been attempted by anthropologists. [4] therefore in this analysis i consider questions of what happens when the state defines the dance event, what, if any, are the differences when it is not the state, or the romanian majority, but the elite of the minority who defines it. for scholars it is intriguing to ask how symbolic representations, such as dance and dancing, follows various socioeconomic transformations from world war ii, the various romanian dictatorships to the multi-party democracy in romania. under ceausescu ethnic dance events were tightly controlled and monitored by the watchful eyes of the state; in fact the secret police were entrusted with watching and reporting on all such events. most aspects of minority national identity were scrutinized as musicians were requested to offer their repertoire to bureaucrats; many were fined if it contained songs and tunes deemed unfit for “public consumption.” but under the democratic climate such state control has subsided considerably and even though those laws concerning minority language and culture were passed, they leave a lot to be desired as far as their actual implementation on the local level. case 1: (1982) it was an uncomfortably hot saturday afternoon and we were waiting outside the protestant church for the wedding party to appear. the church bells just started and at the same time the four-man gypsy orchestra started to play dance tunes. as men and women poured out of the church one-by-one, they shook the hand of the priest. in front of the church there was a fairly large space combining parts of the churchyard. everyone gathered there in a large circle and it was easy to observe how men and women, young and the elderly, all stuck to their own gender and generations separated not wholly unlike that of the formation inside the church. as soon as there were enough people the young lads with the ritual staff in their hands stood around the newlyweds as if they were ready the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text © 2004 lászló kürti all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 8 lászló kürti to protect them should something unexpected happen. in zsobok, dancing started as a natural continuation of the church wedding. middle-aged couples immediately started to dance the local version of the couple csárdás. older ones did the same but a bit slower and in a more takeit-easy manner. unmarried youth formed a large circle, hands hooked behind their backs and danced the circlecsárdás, a form that is not well-known in the region. during the dancing men and women would start yelling spicy, rhymed couplets. many of these calls (csujogatás in local parlance) have double meanings: depending on who does it to whom and with what kind of stress on certain words the poems could turn sexually explicit (kürti 2003). men do not shy away from yelling openly obscene verses as [5] good friends egg each other to call dirtier and spicier ones. as the dance goes faster and faster, more and more people join in and soon the entire crowd is whirling in front of the church. meanwhile the young couple and their ritual masters of ceremony visit the priest to sign the marriage documents. this is the time when gifts of food, wine and a few embroidered pieces of clothes are also offered to the local minister and his family. in addition, the minister and his family are invited to the evening dinner. the dance may last 15–20 minutes. sometimes people ask the musicians to play a favored dance tune, sometimes they also sing a few verses that others may join in freely. drinking is not forbidden and there are several young lads whose roles include carrying bottles of brandy offering them to both dancers and onlookers. dancers and onlookers would perform high-pitched dance-calls (csujogatás), an aspect of the wedding rite that is perhaps the most humorous as well as sexually explicit. some of the calls center on bawdy behavior, sexual prowess, and even mock some characteristics of the priest and his wife. calls and dancing end abruptly when the best man stops the musicians by announcing the closing of the dancing; he then leads the whole group to the house of the wife for the “asking for the bride” ritual (menyasszony kikérő). the dance-calls become even saucier, more open and many are obviously aimed at increasing fertility. in a little while, the entire square is emptied. case 2: (1998) it was my third full day in following the making of hollowed, syrupy oven-baked cakes (kűrtőskalács, perec), the killing of calves, pigs and numberless chickens, fixing up the local cultural center, and the making of the ornamented wooden staff (vőfélypálca) young men carry throughout the wedding procession. all aspects seemed smooth and running well. we were standing in front of the local protestant church, hearing well the last lines of the drawn-out and solemn hymns, waiting for the crowds to pour into the street. cameras were readied and a perfect place was selected by standing on a large rock placed as a reinforcement of a ditch built to drain water during spring flash-floods. as the beautifully carved church door opened the priest exited first standing halfway in the doorway allowing enough place for the people to pass by him. as the joyous crowd exited the priest shook hands with everyone. the entire crowd waited for the newlyweds, their ritual co-parents and the ceremonial masters (vőfély, násznagy) to arrive. everyone was laughing and a few men were holding bottles in their hands. they contained a mixture of home made plum-brandy and mass-produced alcohol bought for the occasion. young men immediately began to light cigarettes, and young women, many dressed in reconstructed but extremely flashy dresses, hooked their arms and stood in a large semi-circle. the three-man band consisting of an accordion, saxophone, and a small drum, was also waiting on the street—they never go to the church ceremony—and started to play some popular music that had nothing to do with local flavor. the crowd waited for about twenty minutes when all the participants exited the church. at this point a usual ritual took place: the newlyweds and their best men, together with the parents, entered the pastor’s home that was also the rectory, and took care of the official signing ceremony. all the while, the entire group outside just talked and listened to the musicians playing quietly. an occasional holler or two by a few drunken men were heard but all in all it was a surprisingly uneventful quiet event. a little later the young couple came out and the bride was immediately escorted by her best-man to a car and taken to her family home. this ritual escape is a continuation of a former tradition: after the church wedding the entire procession goes to the wife’s parents’ house where a mock battle takes place. when this was done the wedding crowd proceeded to her house in a rather quiet way. there was no dancing and not a single dance call to be heard. traditional dances and dance events the dance occasions described, both connected to wedding rituals in a hungarian community in the kalotaszeg region of transylvania, romania, highlight the turning point in traditional dance events as they are fundamentally altered by ideological considerations that are not of the same vintage. [6] since i have discussed my fieldwork in the transylvanian village of zsobok (jebuc in romania) in my book (kürti 2001a) here i will only summarize what i have written earlier on this settlement and what is necessary to understand the changing contexts of dance events. i have conducted research in this region since 1982, a date i first entered hungarian villages in the transylvanian part of romania. i was struck, as i am sure many of my compatriots and tourists were, by the still visible signs of the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 9 the last dance folk costumes, the uniformed religious life—they almost all belong the protestant faith—ornamented and colorful as the ethnographic descriptions make them to be. [7] the presence of the buffaloes was novel to me, women still used the small meandering stream to wash clothing by hand, and there were vibrant customs and dance performances attached to birth, baptismal, funerals and weddings. women and men carried large gift-baskets filled with delicious oven-baked cakes (termőág), a “tree of plenty” that traditionally women carried on their heads. [8] however, i was looking in vain for the ornate ox-drawn coaches (ökrösszekér) traditionally used to carry the bride’s dowry to her new home together with the joyous and singing members of her extended family. as i was assured the “cooperative consumed the oxen” (“a kollektív megette az ökröket”), a clear reference to the obvious collectivization by the state which resulted in families losing all their draft animals. but still the whole region has been mentioned for its eccentric and showy dances, especially the bachelor’s dance, the frightening climb on the bride’s tree during the wedding ceremony (menyasszony fára mászás), and the rite of “bathing the groom.” [9] these were truly fascinating aspects of a rural complex that anthropologists are so keen to observe and record. i was eager to witness them but hungarian villagers were equally eager to report their slow death since the 1950s onward. such was the context of the presence of the past in the present when i first lived in zsobok. the village is a protestant rural settlement in the county of salaj, northeastern transylvania in romania. zsobok is situated 6–7 miles away from the major high-way connecting cluj and huedin, and even the train stop is half an hour walk distance away from the center of the village. surrounded by gently rolling hills that once provided ample grazing for sheep, cows and buffaloes, the settlement has been part of a region known in history and ethnography as kalotaszeg in hungarian or calata in romania. roughly this territory stretches along the number one highway connecting huedin and cluj with about two dozen settlements on both sides of the road. the population is mixed but there are strictly hungarian and romanian hamlets and a few inhabited by the gypsy-roma. in its immediate vicinity there are several hungarian settlements (for the sake of clarity here i use their romanian names) bicalat, saula and two mixed villages with romanian majority (stana, farnas). in the minds of the residents, zsobok is somewhat isolated from the neighboring villages and received paved road and telephone only in the early-to-mid 1990s. zsobok and its vicinity has been elevated into the limelight of hungarian ethnographic studies since the late nineteenth century by a certain group of elites who found its “archaic folk culture” to represent the very essence of hungarian cultural history and identity. such ideologically charged discovery of the region and its population leave a lot to be desired. residents are proud to claim that their village has always been a small, single-street hamlet with mostly hungarian (magyar) speakers. in their mental map they separate their village into three equal sections: upper-end, lower-end and a side-street named after the alder-tree (alszeg, felszeg, egellő). throughout its recorded history, its population reached a little more than 600 inhabitants, but by the 1960s, when industrial jobs forced many to leave, this decreased to below 400. from the early twentieth century records it is obvious that a few jewish and gypsy residents were always part of the village inter-ethnic make-up. occasionally one or two romanian (formerly referred to as oláh in hungarian parlance) families occupied the position of sheepherders in the village. according to elders gypsies were entrusted with herding pigs and romanians were always employed as shepherds. [10] these few families added to the local flavor but offered minimal possibilities for interethnic mingling. the jewish families all disappeared during the mayhem between 1941 and 1944, a period that has been referred to variously as the “hungarian times” by hungarians and as the “fascist hungarian terror” by the romanians. as workers and farm laborers, gypsy and romanian families did not stay too long in the settlement; their huts and houses were always placed on the outskirt of the village. intermarriage was almost unknown during the twentieth century. [11] however, there is at least one family considered by denizens to be of romanian origin but residents do take pride in possessing an ethnic “wholeness,” in other words an ethnically “pure” village. in hungarian the word pure (tiszta) refers to cleanliness, wholeness and purity but also means special (as in tiszta szoba, a room in the house kept neat at all times to receive visitors). [12] agriculture and animal herding were the two most important sources of making a living. but throughout the centuries, large-scale animal herding (mostly sheep, cattle, buffalo, and goat), coupled with that of already rocky hillsides did result in extreme soil erosion making wheat and vegetable farming less and less viable. already after the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, amber mining, a cement factory and the railroad took most of the men away leaving agriculture to women. [13] this did not change considerably after stalinist reorganization; land and animals were collectivized into state cooperatives, a pattern wellknown throughout the entire soviet bloc. with the establishment of farming cooperatives women and the elderly remained in the village as part of the collective’s labor force. almost the entire male population, however, found jobs in nearby industries: the cement factory of aghires, the railroad company, and various factories in the regional center, huedin, a town that saw an astronomical rise in population as the influx of laborers intensified during the the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 10 lászló kürti 1960s. for men to be a socialist worker was expressed by the word novétázik (commuter, from romanian nav’evtă), a reference to their constant commuting way of life. they spent precious hours on trains and buses traveling to and from work, and as a natural consequence they had very little time for family life and to upkeep friendship. this resulted in even more losses of population as families began to move to cluj and zalau. since only a small elementary school functioned locally, youth were also required to go to school in these cities. migration, coupled with the traditionally low birth-rate characteristic to hungarian protestant families in romania, resulted in a situation that gave an eerie feeling to anyone entering the village on a regular day of the week. the local school was rather still, the two streets of the village completely empty, and the households were kept up entirely by elderly women. at least this is how i remember entering zsobok the first time in the early 1980s. my impression was not that different in 1992, the year i started to live there. closed shutters on windows, tall grass and lifeless courtyards signaled that there were many abandoned homesteads. once i started to live there i realized that life has a rhythm of its own in zsobok. at daybreak whistles indicated that animals, mostly sheep, goat, cattle and buffalo, were going to the hills led by either a gypsy or a romanian herder. this was followed by women both young and old heading to the fields carrying suitable tools together with small baskets of food and jugs of water. only on weekends, when families returned from the cities and children from the boarding schools, did the village start to look more like a real living place. women were baking bread and cakes in the outdoor fireplaces (kemence in hungarian), many feverishly slaughtering chickens. men tended the house or worked on the machinery while children were playing on the streets. at springtime, after lambs were separated and the flocks of sheep were split into organized pasturing units (turma), slaughtering took on an especially cruel choreography as hundreds of lambs were sold and slaughtered. [14] but before easter and before christmas men traditionally slaughtered pigs (disznóvágás), family celebrations that were extremely jubilant times for the extended kin to gather and visit each other. name-days were still held and baptisms and confirmations also provided joyous opportunities for relatives to feast. a more solemn daily cycle was adhered to as people dressed up and went to church on sundays. both during the morning and late afternoon services the small and nicely redecorated and recently restored protestant church was filled by the inhabitants. the elderly generally stayed home to take care of the house and to cook, their service was the one during the latter part of the day. in zsobok, like in its immediate vicinity in cluj and salaj counties, dance events were connected to rites of passage and not to tourism. together with the various work occasions such as grain harvest, grape harvest, sheep-counting and sheep-milking (juhmérés), dances were also held at baptisms and weddings. in winter, the three sections of the village organized their own dances on weekends. at winter during the evenings women and girls were gathering to make embroidery, an important economic activity for maidens to complete their dowries. only at certain nights men were allowed to visit the spinning houses (fonóház, or varróház). at this time, however, dancing was not the highlight of the events though a “few turns were made” to singing. mostly jokes and stories made the rounds but games were also fashionable. during carnival time (farsang) special masked groups visited each spinning house and danced with the girls and tried to outwit them. there were no specific dances at this time—aside from the highly erotic fox-dance (rókatánc)— but everyone danced the fashionable couple’s dance, the csárdás, of which a medium tempo and its faster variation (ugrálós) was known. the other dance well-known in the region is the bachelor’s dance, the legényes (literally the “bachelor’s”), or figurás (the “figure”) as referred by the locals. [15] this dance form is age and gender-specific for young men of the same age group bond together and ritual male friendship help men to keep close to their age cohorts. these friendships made in their early years (kom, komja, keresztkoma, sógorkoma) then followed men throughout their adult and elderly years. [16] those from the same age-group do tend to learn similar dance steps and code of ethics. formerly, dances and balls were also made by youngsters belonging to the same age-group. rituals, such as erecting a may-pole and eastern-sprinkling, were always organized by such age groups together. with such a small community as zsobok, ritual friendships and god-parenthood do criss-cross kinship and descent resulting in large extended family network that often involved 60–80 people. boys and girls are also made to go through the protestant church age ritual (konfirmáció, confirmation) that gives them an even closer sense of belonging to the same generation. in the village community of former times, children were socialized into the proper code of conduct that includes dancing as well. during holiday seasons, christmas, easter and the harvest (both grain as well as grape) time, organized “dancing of the small ones” (kistánc) was put up, an event mimicking that of the bachelors’ (nagytánc) but led and controlled by the village teachers or the parents. young men belonging to an age-group often learned dances communally from each other. most communal work occasions ended with a dance in the barn or in someone’s house. at wintertime the women’s spinning houses (fonóház, varróház) provided the place for socializing to which young men were allowed to visit once their the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 11 the last dance work was done. aside from these, special dance-houses, those selected and decorated strictly for that purpose, were the single most important occasion for youth during the entire winter season to hold dances regularly. the activity and organization of these regular weekend dances were entrusted to the three officials: the master (gazda), and the two bailiffs (pandúr). [17] these were older bachelors, but still unmarried, who were selected for their trustworthiness, honesty and honorable status in the village. their tasks included the upkeep of the dance-house, the hiring of the musicians for the whole season, and inviting the eligible young men and women. their office also involved especially the keeping of order during dances and making sure that guests are treated properly. in addition, women were required to provide food and men to bring alcohol. in the dance-house, the master may order everyone to stand in a circle and ask the young men to start the evening by introducing the bachelor’s dance. at other occasions they would start immediately with the popular couples’ dances, both the local versions and the more recent arrivals (tango, waltz). the bachelor’s dance is a fancy and highly acrobatic form of dancing requiring stamina and a repertoire of steps (figures) that each dancer may combine at will when performing. before world war ii, young men would wear spurs on their boots when performing the bachelor’s dance. this made it even more difficult to execute the jumping and the fancy legwork (lábfacsaró, cifrázás). older descriptions often describe it as a group dance where dozens of men stand in a circle each performing his own figures. young women would ornament the performance by dancing their own “shuffle” (csoszogós), a form that was peppered with dance-calls. one by one each man would enter the center of the dance area and show off his skills and excellence in dancing. by so doing this dance has become a competitive dance form and no-one with knowledge of this movement system wanted to be left out. men attempted to outdo each other and for this reason invented steps that were hard to copy. a description from the early 1940s presents the performance as follows: the bachelor’s dance of kalotaszeg is a good example of competitive dance. the performer stands alone, and around him, in a tight circle, forms the ‘circle of judges,’ others who know the dance just as well. the space is limited; thus the dancer’s movements are also limited somewhat. in this way the dance is composed of small and delicate, but at the same time, speedy footwork. this is accompanied by the rhythmical finger snapping (molnár 1947:343). in order to be competitive, men did not shy away from utilizing steps they learned from an older more experienced dancer and added them to their own repertoire or changed them at will. it was even to their advantage to invent some figures that elevated them in the eyes of the locals to the level of an eccentric or noted bachelor. there were some figures that were taught to a group of lads that later became known as the “figure of so-and-so.” these have often been remembered and passed down from generation to generation as “the steps of uncle steve,” “the leg-twist of pál varga,” or even [the figures of mr.] kalló’s,” or “kosztán’s.” one favored way for men to proceed to the center, or alternately in front of the musicians, was by performing a charleston-looking step. i heard this strut referred to as “ducking” (kacsázás), a symbolic term recalling perhaps the swaying of the duck’s body. at the same time, they usually started strange, but fast finger-snapping with both hands, as they say “to pick up the rhythm” (felveszi a ritmust). [18] during dancing onlookers, especially fellow youth, critically judge the performer’s upright posture, seriousness, willingness to dance, and even openly and loudly make comments if these do not follow the popular criteria for strength and power associated with masculinity. if one loses the rhythm or cannot keep the fast pace one hears comments such as “he is too young, he is too weak to dance this dance.” other critical words often are framed with descent and cultural legacy in mind. a phrase such as “he does not have his father’s legs” (nem az apja lába) is a serious judgment about one’s ability of not being capable to live up to his ancestor’s skills, not following the proper way as he was taught. older men would comment on the performance of the younger ones sarcastically: “you have to put your feet where they belong,” or “you have two feet, use them.” this involves the proper execution of figures with both legs successively. it is not enough to introduce a new step or a combination of new figures. the dancer should be able to execute it properly with both legs. the dance performance itself had to be brief and fast, ending abruptly. in describing this quality the locals would say that the bachelor’s dance is best when performed “short and fancy,” or “brief and eccentric” (kurtán és furcsán). if one performed the dance too long they would make comments believed to be really embarrassing to dancers: “why is he repeating himself so much, doesn’t he know anything else.” or, “he thinks that he is the only one here who knows how to dance, he is too full of himself.” the eccentric and showy figures and especially the shockingly abrupt ending of the dance sometimes elicited a few laughs, and mostly some nodding or comments such as “yes that is how you do it. right on.” [19] strange as it may sound, but good dancers are rarely, if ever, given praise in public for their excellent performance. in contrast, negative criticism is immediately forthcoming: “he is not well,” or “maybe he is losing it.” as i wrote in an earlier note on the performance: it is considered a great insult to criticize a dancer like this: “‘he dances more with his hands than with his legs.’ the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 12 lászló kürti this kind of remark generally is aimed at dancers whose hand movements and gestures overpower the rest of their actions: for example, moving the arms too far from the body, slapping and clapping too loudly” (kürti 1983b:11). these are mild but noticeable verbalizations of public humiliation of a dancer who did not live up to the expectation of a masculine code of conduct. performing the bachelor’s dance, and possessing the strength and body for it, is always at the nexus of the ritual and identity. as marc augé puts it: “ritual activity combines the two notions of otherness and identity; it aims at stabilizing the ever-problematic relations between people” (1999:57). naturally, not all men are knowledgeable in dancing the bachelor’s dance. not many achieve fame and recognition in the community for his excellent dancing skills, body carriage and stamina, let alone outside of it. in conversations it is often stressed that men are supposed to behave as expected, or at least must make every effort to live up to that idealized standard of code and manly behavior. performing the bachelor’s dance well is an obvious proof for this. masculinity has often been juxtaposed with the ability of excessive libido and drinking but not drunkenness. [20] men and women often told humorous stories about drunken men attempting to perform the bachelor’s dance while falling on their face. but the fact that one does not even try to behave according to this code was tantamount to the loss of virility and honor. “why are you a bachelor, if you do not know how to perform the bachelor’s dance,” commented a villager when we were discussing the art of dancing. this is why men felt, and many interviewees admitted to this, the need to prove themselves in front of the community even though their art only consisted of a few well-known figures and steps. “if you have will and power,” argued one elderly man in his seventies, “you must reveal it.” this is why men go to the extremes to improve their skills learning special figures from each other, sometimes even from fellow bachelors from neighboring villages. they are searching for showy steps and many new combinations are improvised in order not to repeat themselves during the dance performance. thus, both will and power are connected to the notion of fanciness or eccentricity, categories that all accumulate into having the physical and mental state for dancing as well as the qualities of manliness. what marcus has written on eccentricity fits well with the perceived knowledge and having the qualities of the bachelor’s dance: “eccentricity is thus constitutive of received myth of power and wealth” (1995:48). therefore, being a good figurás-dancer is obviously connected to the possibility of one’s excellence in work, household tasks and leading an honorable family life. what stuart has written with regard to honor in the mediterranean context that “what matters is the possession of a well-developed sense of honor” (1994:47) is close to the code surrounding the bachelor’s dance. honor thus is connected to diverse elements that range from being a trusted friend, a knowledgeable worker with various tasks around the animals, the house and the field. a man once boasted to me that all night he danced during the evening and, without any sleep, and in the morning he went with his friends to work on meadow gathering hay. “bachelors at night, bachelors at day,” has been the favored local slogan for such youthful behavior. traditionally, there were many occasions for men to perform the bachelor’s dance: in front of the church at weddings immediately after the religious ceremony finished, and during the wedding procession when the best man invited individual families to the wedding. both occasions were serious: the air was filled with solemnity and a heightened sense of ceremonialism. all eyes were on the dancers as they were made the center of attention for a short while. knowing this well, all men who dared to perform the dance had to dress properly for the occasions. since the 1960s, boots and the baggy breeches and the ornamented jackets were slowly giving away to regular dark suits, white shirts and black shoes as the required dress for men. in front of the church only a few men dared to dance, but according to their admissions, they feverishly practiced the days before to polish their art. families went to great length to hire a local best man for the wedding who was known as the “dancing best man” (táncos vőfély) or the “whistler best man” (füttyös vőfély), a reference to his masterful ability in dancing and singing. customarily, the best man together with the brides man and groomsman (násznagy) proceeded noisily with the musicians to each house and ceremoniously invited the whole family to the wedding. [21] in front of each house musicians would play the tune requested by the best man who would then perform the bachelor’s dance for a brief period. it was a tiring task and only a few could manage successfully. opposing the bachelor’s dance, there is only one form of traditional dance for couples, a general term for which is the well-known csárdás. it is not fantastically exciting to watch as most of it is limited to couples holding each other and turning together in close proximity. there are minor variations within the kalotaszeg region but all in all most dances for men and women are of medium and fast tempi with a fairly small repertoire of steps and figures. the way zsobok couples dance in pairs faithfully resembles what bernard lortat-jacobs writes in sardinian chronicles (1995:10) about age differences in local dance style: “whereas the older people elegantly strut along with a most perfect economy of movement, the young dancers always enjoy leaping about and especially love the passu altu, which enables them to show off their youthful vigor.” this is not that different when men lined up in front of the gypsy musicians ready to engage in the highly acrobatic, the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 13 the last dance fast bachelor’s dance. young men always danced longer by using vigorous and fancy footwork (a beloved native term to describe this) and older ones performed few sequences perhaps closing their repertoire with a surprising or funny final move. during the state socialist period—a period that witnessed fundamental societal change, collectivization of agriculture and massive industrialization—ritual events in the kalotaszeg region slowly transformed rituals of former times into a recreational activity and symbolic gift-giving. individual dancing was slowly transformed into a privileged art form of a selected few. only some learned how to execute it properly, and thus it was elevated into the realm of a folkloric remnant of an extinct culture—the terrain of avid ethnomusicologists and national researchers. in this climate, traditional-looking dancing was foisted into the pedagogical curricula of state education. it became a prerogative of children’s ensembles to be watched on the stage but not to be performed by the community as a whole. thus, stage dancing became a state controlled invention through which village youth, no matter where from, had shared in the ideology of being a good citizen of the socialist romanian state. what is clear here is that the stage art industry became preoccupied with the seemingly endless production of new ideas, performers, and settings. it is simply sufficient to look at such a newly-invented stage performances of folk dances both for home consumption and for the fashionable world-music scene. at present, romania engages in this construction of national imagery just as much as hungary does; bulgaria and countries of the former yugoslavia are no exceptions either. what is questionable in this transformation is that while the state and multi-national corporations sponsor such megaproductions, on the village level we may witness the complete abandonment of the once famous and characteristic art forms together with the family-centered way of life. what happened to the bachelor’s dance is a sad story that should have been made part of the unesco list of “endangered cultural heritage”; similarly it could have been shown on the “disappearing world” series. the political reconstruction of the family, as kligman suggests (1998), was truly a fundamental aspect of socialist transformation. however, while this is certainly true for other regimes as well, what was fundamental to romania was the deterioration of life, both public and private. with the state actively pursuing an unrealistic dream of communist utopia, poverty, misery and social tension were the order of the day in romania. this was especially so since 1965 when nicolae ceausescu came to power. hungarian families, similarly to the german and jewish ones, experienced a double burden: not only to fulfill the desired plans of a megalomaniac ruler, but to maintain their minority identity and culture or face extinction. as soon as young men were required to leave their community a long process of homelessness, value reorientation and breakdown of individual identity had started. boys were separated form the household since they entered vocational schools at the age of fourteen, living often in boarding-schools in the cities only visiting their families at weekends and holidays. this, too, happened with young women but much lower rate since most hungarian girls only entered high-schools at an alarmingly low rate opting instead for work in the local state farms. as a natural consequence, opportunities to automatically learn household tasks, animal husbandry and farming were diminishing prospects for young men. together with this, knowledge about local traditions, rituals, songs and dances had also decreased considerably. boys returning from the cities slowly started to switch to the industrial city life, and as their circle of friends increased in the cities and workplaces former local friendships were abandoned. customs, such as easter sprinkling, christmas and new year dances, were becoming individual hobbies instead of a communal celebration of an age-group. by the late 1970s, the sole form of village entertainment was the omnipotent disco together with that of state-controlled television. during the last two decades of state socialism private dances were illegalized as permits were not readily available reserved only for weddings. however, these too were becoming a source of conflict between the romanian state and the hungarian minority and thus weddings had to be held at the communal cultural center. not having will, time and occasions for learning the art of dancing also resulted in the loss of corporeal qualities once associated with the bachelor’s dance. dancing had become such a minor and meaningless activity that the village’s name was never mentioned in the region as a “dancing-village.” [22] not having a sizable group, young men could not really perform their coming-of-age ritual in front of their parents, women and their coevals. the bachelor’s dance slowly lost its meaning and significance. one man explains the reason for this: “we did not have the willpower to dance anymore.” and another remarks: “we were too much involved with making a living, we were too tired, and nobody was home to organize dances.” more and more, young men were viewed by the village society as losing complete control over their bodies. they have not been associated anymore with the youthful bravado and masculine stamina needed for the bachelor’s dance. even the dance music itself, played by famous gypsy bands from nearby settlements, had been forgotten. one of the last persons who knew the bachelor’s dance was istván gál máté (1898–1992), who was also the last mayor in the village before stalinism was established. at age 90 he was only a shadow of his former self, but still got up and performed several figures to show the steps of the real the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 14 lászló kürti bachelor’s dance. during the early to the mid-1990s, when i was living in the settlement, seventyand eighty-year-old men could reminisce about dancing the bachelor’s dance after they returned from the war and the soviet gulags. this is how one of them remembered: it was in 1948 when the last great christmas dance was held. five of us got up to perform the bachelor’s dance. we had the musicians from váralmás [a small town about 20 miles away] who played the music. first all five of us walked around snapping our fingers and clapping our hands, and slowly one by one we all performed our figures. that was the last dance that me and my buddies performed together since then i have not taught anyone from the younger generation a single figure. no one asked me to teach them. [23] what is obvious from this is that controlling the body, and its various techniques, is paramount to the education of citizens deemed useful and acceptable by the state. dances and dance events, thus, always have strange, often contradictory relationships with regimes and state. monolithic and dictatorial regimes are constantly on alert to controlling expressive culture especially if that culture belongs to a minority group. this is what happened throughout the first half of the twentieth century in romania. márta belényesy produced a marvelous small monograph describing how the romanian state curbed dancing activities of the hungarian minority in romania: “during the 1920s, throughout transylvania romanian policy banned the hungarian csárdás. in bukovina the system was more open but forced the population to dance the traditional romanian hora and the sarba.” (belényesy 1958:51). obviously, there are some dances which regimes always prefer and dancing activities that are essential to their legitimation. [24] at least this is what the stalinist state, and the fascist one before it, attempted to do when various ministries were deciding on the ideological contents and forms of artistic activities. cultural events were politically charged, similarly to nationalistic rallies and festivities. folk festivals and cultural gatherings were filled with official rhetoric and symbolism extolling the virtues of the state and its leaders. the soviet model was fairly simple, and followed throughout the entire soviet bloc: refashion local and regional dances into an acceptable dance form that does not have the feeling and symbolism of the national. thus, regional forms of dances with specific character, were either elevated into the expected national dance style or, alternately, deemed unfit for public consumption. in most eastern european states and the soviet union such directives led to enormous transformations in dances, both on the stage and in the local settings where dance was an important element of the expressive culture (cf. doi 2002). village dance forms were reconceptualized as broken or simplistic fragments of high-culture ballet. for this reason soviet propagandistic ballet was seen as the prime revolutionary body language to refashion the individuality and collective ethnicity anchored to distant folkloric performances. new songs, themes, costumes and dramatization went hand in hand with the ruling ideology to mobilize the masses to support the revolution (souritz 1990:320–321). such an ideologically charged milieu did achieve its purpose: throughout the entire soviet bloc dance became a political force of the acceptable stage art while local dancing in communities was devalued as primitive, often as old fashioned recreation of a class unfit to build communism. thus, the creation of a new official culture was in order in which peasants were required to follow cultural policies made for industrial workers and working-class urbanites. all this was made in the name of socialist progress and modernization where village dances and dancing events slowly became the preserves of folk dance ensembles. but village groups, imitating the state and a few official amateur ensembles, started to look like carbon copies of each other with authenticity and local flavors were becoming more and more oxymoronic. in eastern europe, the backward and wretched states of europe to utilize two well-known phrases (kürti 1997), the prevalence of the peasantry has received numerous analyses by historians and ethnographers. the rise of the national states all privileged that social class without regard to their exploited and often misconceived place in the agrarian economies. in hungary and romania, for instance, the making of the national movements during the twentieth century show great differences the way in which economic backwardness and social cleavage influenced the rise of the new nation-states. [25] regardless of their differences, the two states were remarkably similar in one aspect: the objectification of the peasant, their bodies and culture. peasant bodies became objects of official displays during folkloric festivals where villagers of various regions were made to perform dances and sing songs in their best sunday’s costumes. such obvious places of official pageantries, immersed as they were in socialist realist ideology, simply did not allow dances reflecting on the life-ways of a by-gone era. but this did not entail the actual representation of life in the rural areas especially not the regime’s attempt to forcefully eradicate peasant life-ways. on the contrary, socialist realism did not reveal events and behavior as it really was, but, on the contrary, how it was supposed to be. anangnost describes this drive with reference to chinese socialism rather nicely: as a cultural code, socialist realism transcends its usual characterization as a mere protocol for art and literature and itself becomes a part of lived reality. the representation of society as it is desired to be, rather than as it really is, becomes a means to magically affect one’s the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 15 the last dance sense of reality. it invites one to participate in the play of appearances, which for the moment becomes the reality (1994:147). ­ rural workers rarely, if ever, put up such shows locally; their own festivities were not staged for intellectuals and tourists but included celebrations of harvests, religious holidays or rites of passage of various kinds (birth, baptism, wedding, funeral). as soon as, however, their elevation into the limelight of national culture was achieved, these events became part of the official culture as colorful spectacles representing wishful realities. in romania, such an elevation took an extreme form. it was called the “cinterea romaniei” (song to romania), a nation-wide festivals and folklore competitions. these pompous local, regional and national festivities ranked villages ethnographically into acceptable and proper clusters. groups, performers, singers and musicians were judged by experts, from various institutions in bucharest, as to their level of authenticity, artistic merit and socially redeeming features. schools, industrial firms, and agricultural cooperatives were urged to participate in these events to achieve fame and recognition. most did and a few were recognized. in hungarian communities in the kalotaszeg region, teachers were forced to create performing groups and to enter local and regional festivals and dance contests. suddenly, old costumes were polished or fabricated anew and if there was none, they were invented. similarly, dances and agricultural rituals were choreographed to reveal artistic flavor and characteristics. at times, teachers went to great lengths to stage something “exciting” and “new.” as one local teacher told me, “we could not afford to go to the festival every year with the same program.” thus, new forms were invented or copied from elsewhere. teachers also watched, however, that their programs did not replicate similar staged performances that were popular between 1933 and 1944, a folkloristic pageantry created under a different ideological banner by the hungarian state into which most transylvanian hungarians were also made to participate. [26] as far as the socialist state, and in fact as far as the pro-democratic countries of eastern and central europe, are concerned the human body is a proper image of the world (barkan 1975), but not quite just that: it is a proper image of the state as it is perceived. since the state is a nation state and since, at least the early 1980s, nationality has created the idea about the reunification of the hungarian nation, transylvanian dance and folklore enjoy an immense popularity in hungary. hungarian state and national celebrations profusely mix transylvanian peasant regional dress, music and dance as organically part of hungarian cultural imagery. producing a valid and acceptable national imagery is not a joke: regimes spend enormous sums to offer a sanitized and colorful folklore for both home and international consumption (kürti 2001). in this nationalist imagery transylvanian hungarians and their cultural products fit neatly as the state is bent on producing a valid and acceptable hungarianness. transylvanian dance, and through it hungarian transylvanian cultural history, is at the heart of this political mythmaking and ideological kinetics of contemporary nation-state ideology. this is by no means unique to hungary alone as similar mechanisms of elevating past greatness are wellknown in modern day politics elsewhere as well (herzfeld 1987; nurth 1987). after 1989, both romania and hungary enjoyed a small but intense period of international fame. the former has been hailed for its brief civil war during christmas of 1989, the latter for its peaceful, or to use the famous expression “velvet,” revolution. both processes have been studied and analyzed in detail and i do not want to consider them here. it will suffice to mention, however briefly, that in both countries the 1990s witnessed similar socio-economic processes; single-party rule gave way to multi-party representative governments, as private property has become the rule rather than an exception, and the states started to limit their presence in all aspects in civic, religious, and cultural life. obviously there are differences between the way in which hungary and romania conduct their economic, financial and international businesses. but even in inter-ethnic relations the two states are rather similar: in romania it is the hungarian minority, in hungary the gypsy-roma population which seem to be a source of headache for the regimes. romania has enjoyed enormous international reputation in rekindling its dracula cult by making it into a touristic theme (kürti 2000a), but for the hungarians living in romania tourism has been of a different vintage. most of the travels back and forth between hungary and romania have been part of either visiting the relatives or as an ever growing mass of cultural tourism. this latter included a fair share of adventure seekers ready to experience the wilderness of the harghita mountains learned from school textbooks mainly through the novels of józsef nyíró and áron tamási, and the various transylvanian regions with hungarian native populations there. included in this was also the curiosity to witness the rapid transformation following the disappearance of the hated ceausescu-clan and its nepotistic version of state communism. changes were plenty. aside from the usual touristic venues, hungarians now started to flock in increasing numbers to those settlements where visible transformations fundamentally altered daily life. these have often made the headlines in hungary’s newspapers and television news. since the early-1990s, the transformations in the small settlement of zsobok has managed to make headlines in both regional as well as in national, at times even internathe anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 16 lászló kürti tional, media. this rise to stardom was facilitated by the eager spirit and energetic tempo dictated by the village’s new leaders—a husband and wife team, both protestant ministers—to create a model religious settlement. in the spirit of revival the couple decided to completely renovate the small church and the parish house, a feat that mobilized local craftsmen and villagers. the new church was completed in 1992, and on october 15 it started services. it was a communal work and nobody received any money for it. since then the beautifully carved ceiling (kazettás menyezet) has been the center of attention: both tourists from hungary and those from the west are offered a tour even though the church itself is not of great age since it was completely rebuilt after the 1876 and 1908 fires. the next construction project was to build a paved road with hired hands. with their connections in germany and switzerland, help was on its way: machinery and technological know-how came to aid locals in this new herculean task. nearby village communities viewed all this with disbelief. their feeling, however, soon turned to jealousy as in the spring of 1994 the village received a paved road. [27] expenses were met in a curious way: zsobok women were required to pay with their embroideries. those who could not were asked to pay in cash. [28] the next project was the formation of a local cooperative. following the romanian land reform law of 1991, [29] the villagers in zsobok were able to take back their collectivized land. in a few days time the entire collective farm was dismantled and all the animals were divided according to the original number of animals that were collectivized in the early 1960s. the original enthusiasm, however, soon turned sour as villagers realized that they were completely left on their own unaided by the romanian state. the solution offered itself: to organize and create a mutual assistance cooperative. machinery, fertilizer and seed were given by the protestant brethren in the west. in return, women did more embroidery. at first it seemed like a wonderful dream come true: the cooperative produced well and individuals started to feel the benefit of organized farming. soon, however, serious conflicts emerged as some families objected to the strict use of machinery and the uneven allocation of cultivated land monitored by the church leadership. the local engineer, who dared to object, was dismissed and a relative of the leadership was called in to replace him. not letting go of the momentum, the leadership invented a new plan: to build an orphanage and boarding school, called bethesda, on the property immediately next to the church. again the bulk of the work, from stonemasonry to woodworking, was performed by locals, young and old, men and women. but the strenuous work tempo achieved its aim: by the fall of 1994, the bethesda home and protestant-school had begun receiving children and started teaching. in 1996, the bethesda orphanage, school and kindergarten were working in full swing. from this time, that name slowly became synonymous with zsobok and outsiders often used them interchangeably. in order to provide the children with daily bread the next large-scale project was the completion of the flour-mill. this was an understandable choice. bread had been brought to the village from elsewhere and was a constant source of tension between locals and the bakery because of the low quality of bread produced. the transylvanian protestant church also agreed to the building of an old-age home in the nearby visit of sfaras, a project that was also entrusted to the bethesda community. with all this economic rejuvenation life seemed to return to a place doomed to become a deserted no-man’s land. the settlement was a village where the kindergarten was closed in 1990 due to the lack of children and in the grade-school only four grades could be taught. by 1995, the school yard was noisy with children and teachers had to be hired to meet the increasing demand. with all these changes protestant ideology has entered into all spheres of educational, political and cultural life. now, boys and girls are encouraged to dress in native dress during confirmation ritual, an attempt to revitalize local fashion to be used at some key moments in life when such clothing has obviously become part of museum collections. youth are now encouraged to attend regular church services and lead a modest life as prescribed by the church leadership. as the result, church attendance has been on the rise, an increase due also to the presence of the school children at the orphanage. in addition, the revitalized village started to become a center of religious life (and politics) of the transylvanian protestant church. protestant women and youth conferences have been regularly organized events there. but local leadership was not only controlling political and economic life. in the 1998 issue of the transylvanian protestant calendar (erdélyi református naptár) a one-page of text appeared with the title “order is the soul of all things: some important information of the ways of protestant communities.” the “order” reads like a code of morals and is structured in nine paragraphs offering a thesis-like summary what proper protestants must and must not do. [30] among the most important ones are the sanctity of sunday and sunday worship; during lent all revelry is forbidden including weddings, baptisms, and christenings; individuals who committed suicide will not be buried by the church; those living an improper life must follow the code of penitence as specified; godparents must swear that they will educate their godchildren properly; and other restrictions concerning religiousness. however, what is rather striking is the fact that this code specifies that former folk customs had to be abandoned. these included: playing card games and drinking alcohol during wakes, organizing a dinner-dance during a baptismal feast, the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 17 the last dance and having a wedding lasting two days. moreover the code specifies that: at weddings people should not take part in the procession with wine bottles in their hands, singing to the gypsy music, and executing dance-calls. what should be avoided at any cost is dancing after the church ceremony in front of the church while waiting for the bride. [31] this code, however, was not only a printed message as the two preachers constantly referred to it during their sermons. as has been customary in their sermons, both the husband and wife took great pleasures in convincing locals about the virtues of religious upbringing, regular church attendance, and the faithful following the new testament. their sunday services have been exceptionally long lasting an hour-and-half or even two hours long services were not unknown. this was voiced to me by several informants as they complained about such a prolonged church service. yet the leadership did not stop there. in 1994, a young couple had decided to open a small private store and a tavern in the village since the availability of groceries and alcohol was fairly limited. [32] initially, the store itself was not a source of conflict but soon the sermons were directed towards the proprietors as the place turned into a local disco for village youth. at this time the targets were both the owners and the youngsters themselves—of course implied were the parents as well—who all participated collectively in “sinful” and “aimless” activity. the conflict reached its apex when the proprietor received a letter from the priest to close his store down. since that did not happen, relationship between the establishment and the family simply stopped. according to one family member this is a disgrace and the whole village is shamed by having such a priest who is constantly trying to control local economic processes. in his words, “we are burning with shame” because of this extreme religious control. [33] another, even more serious conflict, arose from the fact that the religious leaders were fairly obvious about controlling production and the economic resources in the village. following the disbanding of the local state farm, land and animals were returned to their rightful owners. as it was customary, villagers originally established a separate sheep collective for the three sections but engaged in family farming on their land. soon, however, problems arose. with the lack of shepherds, as well as enough households to keep separate sheep collectives (turma) villagers opted for having only a single large collective for grazing and milking sheep. with a general well-being on the increase, cows became more widespread and acceptable by most people, and sheep and goat were less prestigious animals to keep. this was not new, earlier wealthier families also opted for buffaloes and cows, but now the change to the larger animals was widespread. [34] in addition, with the supervision of the local priests one large sheep-collective was also formed and a farming collective membership encouraged. most villagers opted for membership in the farming cooperative for two reasons only: first, machinery, seeds and fertilizers were owned by the cooperative, and second, it became obvious soon that family farming was not a viable alternative anymore. all this despite the fact that most people in the entire region abhorred the idea of being in cooperative farming again. in many ways the new construction plans brought salvation to the villagers they otherwise could not even imagine. a small village was saved from becoming, if not extinct altogether, certainly much smaller, marginal and poverty-ridden. the religious leaders, who were invited by the community, together with their local supporters, embarked on a plan which made zsobok an ideal community. this was also a community with ideals. but they brought not only positive steps but consequently wrought havoc as well. for the leaders recognition was not far away. this came, however, not from the romanian but the neighboring hungarian state. in late 1998, the husband and wife team received the newly created prize for minorities from the prime-minister of hungary. [35] ironically, when villagers today only reminisce about their old time dancing and naughty weddingcelebrations, the school-dance group—taught by teachers invited from the outside—is involved with learning steps and songs that once were characteristic of their region often taught by teachers from hungary. perhaps one explanation for this fundamentalism in ideals and actions must come from the repoliticized nature of hungarian religion and social life with which romania deals with since the early 1990s. [36] with the elevation of lászló tőkés, the pastor inciting a popular protest in romania in 1989, into the national and in fact international limelight, all hungarian minority politics has received a religious edge. at the same time, all matters deemed religious before have an enormous political overtone. the fusing of the religious and the political makes sense once we see how the new national identity-making have coalesced in hungary and romania allowing religious leaders to take an active part in political life. [37] another explanation could stress the fact that religious fundamentalism has become an accepted force and since 1989 it has been allowed to surface. with this in mind, it is easier to see why a young protestant couple would make protestantism not only part of villagers’ religious belief but the very cornerstone of the totality of their existence. conclusion in conclusion, i must argue that in the community described above there were two processes at work which contributed to the decline of dancing and dance activities in the past fifty years of the twentieth century. the first was a slow intricate development that took minority and the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 18 lászló kürti majority groups by surprise: the making of the socialist nation-state of romania. following world war ii, romania experienced a shift from a monarchic pseudo-feudalism to a soviet-led domination of hard-core stalinism. in this transformation rural areas were extremely hard hit. as the country was bent on industrializing, following the single-party rule in establishing communism, agriculture experienced a downturn in production and technological evolution. this was not that different from that of other eastern european states experiencing a massive flight of men into industries and contemporaneous with that process was the femininization of poverty and agriculture. in zsobok, similar to other small hamlets in transylvania, depopulation, lack of investment funds, and mismanaged agricultural policies were the causes of enormous economic backwardness. this urban-rural divide added more hardships to the already mounting minority hungarian and majority romanian friction. in this socioeconomic pressure-cooker, villagers were slowly abandoning ancestral life-ways that connected them to agricultural cycles and rites of passage. at first, with modernization and technological development, dancing as an activity took on a more up-to-date look in its form and content. village musicians, mostly gypsies, started to play “modern” instruments: the accordion, drum, saxophone, guitar, and electric organ. by the 1980s, electrified musical instruments, microphones and amplification yielded a sound that was more like distorted popular rock music. balls and dances originally organized for age-group gatherings were fading out only to be replaced by discos with such a modern sound. by the late 1980s, there were no more gypsy musicians invited to play at weddings from nearby settlements as custom would have it. with such a distorted modernization, young men—many of whom became mechanics, truck drivers, and factory workers in distant cities only visiting their homes on weekends—did not favor, let alone learn dances deemed old-fashioned in their eyes. consequently, older men would not dare perform solo in public anymore feeling ridiculed by the younger generations. by the 1980s, there were no more “bachelors” left who could perform the onceso-famous bachelor’s dance. the other process i have analyzed has been equally questionable to say the least. following the collapse of the muchhated ceausescu regime in romania, ethnonational politics has suddenly reinvigorated hungarian minority identity. in economic, religious and cultural matters transylvanian hungarians found themselves engulfed in a new political milieu. with the emergence of new concerns, reinstatement of former religious schools, reprivatization of collectivized land, and formation of a new ethnonational political party, hungarianness received a hitherto unknown political edge. from 1990, all settlements with hungarian population formed a local cell of the leading national party, the rmdsz (udmr in romanian). politics now has fused interchangeably with economic development and national cultural matters. new leaders came to the fore and hungarian settlements have begun to create an oppositional national culture against the romanian state. this re-making of nationality on the local level has witnessed enormous strides in the small village introduced here. the religious leaders transformed the marginal and backward hamlet into a dream come true: a paved road, telephone service, a flour mill, a religious school, an orphanage, and a privately-owned but collectively organized farming cooperative. however, there was a price to be paid for all this. the new protestant spirit pervaded not only the economic and religious spheres but manifested itself in the cultural and educational ones as well. a definite call was made to abandon all practices deemed unfit for a pious and modest protestant community. this effort did not fall on deaf ears as denizens followed their leaders’ advice and in the process they were forced to give up some traditions. in no time, collective dancing in the church-yard and amusing dance-calls during the wedding procession had ceased to exist. what all this really seems to support is that peasants, whatever this term really entails (shanin 1990), are a real enigma to the state and the elites, [38] especially, if these are also peasants who speak a different language, belong to a church other than the state’s own, and identify with a national community across the border. malcolm crick states that: “human action is a semantic fabric, so any social investigation must be a conceptual inquiry” (1976:96). similarly, anthropologists have long believed “that dance can be an important tool in the analysis of society. if that is so, it is not peripheral, but central to the study of society and the education of its citizens” (brinson 1985:213). the continual validity of these statements should certainly be demonstrated by scholars in various disciplines. moreover, and this is what i want to stress here, adequate attention should also be given to the way in which the state performs this task according to overt or muted ideological aims. thus, state, society and citizens are engaged in interlocking negotiations and constructions that may or may not support harmony or progress. this is what the transylvanian case amply illustrates here. one of the most important aspects of modern european states is how to inculcate political messages in citizens in order to make them faithful subjects of both the state and the nation and, at the same time, how they live up to the expected level of “europeanness.” songs, dance, rituals, and clothing are all part of the official trappings through which national celebrations and folkloric events achieve their aims to both subjugate and coerce citizens giving them the feeling that they participate in events that offer plenty of possibilities for joy, fun and recreation. in this process, as the story of the bachelor’s dance demonstrates, some local traditions face their own death. in the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 19 the last dance the fall of 2003, all new states entering the european union were keen in pushing for an extension of the eu constitution to include christianity as well as minority rights and culture. politicians and church leaders, party officials and minority advocates from romania and hungary were involved with presenting an “objective” and “sound” claim for the pros and cons. obviously, the case presented here offers a partial explanation why these neighborly democratic nation-states in the heart of europe do not quite agree on aspects of religion, education and minority culture. endnotes 1 sally ann ness has written that “dance is, for some powerful reasons, the most shallowly interpreted art form in the contemporary united states” (1992:2). i am well aware of the fact that dance scholarship has experienced an invaluable boost in its theoretical orientation in recent years (cf. for example, farnell 2003; morris 1998; washabaugh 1998). here, however, i cannot really enter into detailed discussion as to where it is heading to, especially in light of the post-modern turn. it could be a novel departure, however, to reveal some of the similarities and key differences between the us and european anthropological understandings of dance. 2 i find it interesting that within the new departures in body and movement studies (farnell 1999, 2003), the political questions in general, and bloch in particular do not figure at all. 3 there have been a plethora of recent attempts to describe the body—its use, symbolism and politicization—in various historical and cultural settings, see for example, butchart (1998); costlow, sandler, and vowles (1993); featherstone, hepworth, and turner (1991); feher (1989); ryan and gordon (1994); zito and barlow (1994). however, there are few studies analyzing the body with regard to dance and movement. 4 here i do not wish to review dance research as has been produced in hungary in the past decades. i have done that elsewhere (kürti 2002, 1999) and here i refer to only a few english-language analyses that may aid the reader. 5 dance and wedding calls are shouted verses, mostly in paired couplets, that end with a high-pitched, rhythmic nonsense syllables shriek. most calls have banal messages, but could be changed to their shocking opposite. denizens of the village call this latter category “dirty-ones.” some may also have magical messages having to do with preserving health, prosperity and fecundity. for texts and analysis of both kinds, see kürti (2003). 6 traditional dance events go hand in hand with traditional dance descriptions offered by indigenous scholars and in contrast their adversaries, the other indigenous scholars, the romanian researchers (kürti 1999, 2002). in order to progress with caution i am not eager to describe the specifics of hungarian dancing and how they “belong” to the functionalist categories of hungarian “dance culture,” for i have done that elsewhere in more detail and more critically (kürti 1983a, 1983b, 1987, 1994, 1996). 7 among the forty or so villages in the region only two adhere to the roman catholic faith the rest being all protestant. protestantism in the hungarian speaking areas is a special form known as the reformed church, a mixture of calvinism and lutheranism. for the region see kürti (2000b). 8 this gift-basket—“the branch of creation” as it is referred to literally by locals—is a large branch completely surrounded by sweets. cakes and small cookies are hung on the branches in addition to ribbons and scarves. even in the 1950s, these baskets were carried by women on their heads on their way to the site of a wedding celebration. since the early 1960s, the baskets grew enormously in size making it impossible for one person to balance it on the top of one’s head. for a description of the wedding and its many-fold variations within the kalotaszeg region see vasas and salamon (1986). 9 in most villages of the region both rituals have been known. in zsobok, only the tree-climb ritual—during which colorful scarves must be brought down by a bachelor from the groom’s party in order to continue with the bride’s farewell—survived. elders, however, still recall these as highlights of wedding rites during their youth. 10 this labor segmentation based on ethnicity started with the onslaught of industrialization when men left the village and migrant herders took their jobs mostly tending animals. but already in the early 20th century popular memory mentions only the presence of romananian shepherds. in nearby villages, however, sheepherding was a regular profession for hungarian families. i have summarized classic hungarian ethnohistorical studies on sheepherding in this region see kürti (1987). for a recent survey see szabó (2002). 11 church records are conscpicously silent about intermarriages. locals only mention one, possibly two marriages between hungarians and romanians. obviously, there were youngsters who married outside their ethnicity but most of these marriage rituals did not take place in the village. 12 a medical doctor living in the village during the early 1940s remarked about the contradictory conditions characteristic of poor families with an inclination toward extravagant lifestyle. she was, for example, appalled by the sight of dirt and the unkept rooms and, at the same time, the plenty of beautiful embroidery and colorful pottery on the walls (g. czimmer 1944:10–11). 13 already during the late 19th century, a chalk-pit (gypsum, or calcium sulphate) was opened in the vicinity the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 20 lászló kürti and also a mine for the low-quality amber that was found. although both were mined during the first decades of the twentieth century giving jobs for a few dozen men neither, however, became viable industries. 14 working rituals connected to sheepherding in this region of transylvania are described in kürti (1987) and szabó (2002). for comparative studies on sheepherding elsewhere in europe see campbell (1979), kavanagh (1994), and schweizer (1988). 15 i have described the bachelor’s dance, its structure and local characteristics earlier (kürti 1983b). 16 godparenthood and ritual brotherhood is a complex and intricate network that fundamentally effects kinship and social organization in europe. a detailed discussion of this would require a separate treatment on its own but for an insightful english-language analysis of a similar, but not identical system among hungarians in transylvania, see vincze (1977). 17 these native terms are obviously heavily loaded words that may mean different things in different contexts. the gazda for instance, may refer to a master, head of the household, landlord, proprietor, owner, and so on. 18 according to some historians (burt 1998:68), the charleston-type of move first appeared in europe in 1925 originally introduced by the famous african-american dancer, josephine baker, during her first performances in paris. in light of the fact that katherine dunham also found this step in folk dances in haiti (burt 1998:70), one should view such introduction-theory with caution. 19 special and ornate closing figures of bachelor’s dances are remembered for generations. a few have been passed down to sons and grandsons as well. such funny closing figures include shoving one hand between the legs from behind, simulating a penis; salutation like in the military; or performing difficult moves such as jumping up high and then immediately kneeling to the ground. 20 connected to this as well is the belief that young men show their best masculine characteristic when they have plenty of sexual experiences with women. the fairly open relationships in the small village community, however, prove it beyond the shadow of doubt that most of the youthful talk about having many lovers is part of men’s folkloric wishful thinking. 21 there are some early descriptions of traditional village weddings from this region, see gyarmathy (1896), and jankó (1993). 22 this label has a curious history. it first refers to the native knowledge that prestigious and excellent dancers are known to live in the village. secondly, a “dancing-village” label was attached to those transylvanian communities who in the late 1930s and early 1940s entered into the national competition and participated in the pearly bouquet movement. 23 interview with sándor bódizs 1992, 1994, 1998. ­ 24 see the discussion on historical ballet and choreographic works by mark franko (1993:4). ­ 25 the comparison of the two neighbouring states is not without its benefits as i have tried to show in my book (kürti 2001a). for another, though rather different, attempt see barkey (2000). 26 this was the pearly bouquet folkloristic movement that i have discussed elsewhere in more detail (kürti 2001a, 2002). 27 the organic connection between religious fundamentalism and the construction projects may be seen in the small english-language brochure published locally: “the visitor who arrives to the village on the newly built road, before he can be amazed at what people have built, first meets the stone on which is written: “soli deo gloria” and also the words of the scripture: “in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths” (prov. 3:6). 28 in this context it should be mentioned that the region of kalotaszeg has been known for its ornateness in embroideries and woodcarving. the local saying illustrates this well but it does also reflect gender division of labor as well: “men do woodcarving, women embroidery.” at present, the famous zsobok embroidery is not the colorful needlework so well known in kalotaszeg but the completely white fine needlework. 29 decollectivization has received a fairly large share in the anthropological attention of post-communist eastern europe. for recent analyses on the transylvanian situation see cartwright (2000a, 2000b). 30 i am in no way representing this case as a judgment of all protestant communities or how ministers attempt to control and regulate traditional practices. it is also far from me to argue that all protestant leaders behave in such a strict manner. i have known others who have themselves enjoyed village traditions as they were and never attempted to influence the way in which locals organized their rituals and dances. 31 the code of morals was printed by the editors of the transylvanian protestant calendar (kolozsvár: erdélyi református egyházkerület, 1998, 28). the calendar is published yearly by the transylvanian protestant bishopry, with the assistance of the protestant college of theology in kolozsvár. 32 this is not to say that there is no home-made alcohol available. there is and plenty of it. however, household comsumption is one thing, and visiting the local tavern and disco is quite another because for young people, meeting and carousing had largely stopped once they finished school. 33 the word “burning” here is also a reference to sad previous events in the community’s history: the village the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 21 the last dance was burned completely to the ground in 1876, 1908, and 1911 due to carelessness as well as the straw used for roofs. since then there is the saying in the village: “burned like zsobok three times in its history.” 34 interestingly, kavanagh (1994:127) also describes this shift in central spain among cattle and goat herders following the country’s admittance into the european community. 35 the ceremony, with a picture of the leaders and the prime-minister, did make the headlines in hungary’s dailies, see, népszabadság, 1998, december 19, p. 5. it should be added here that viktor orbán, prime-minister of hungary between 1998 and 2002, is also a devout protestant. 36 for the connection between religion and the emergence of new nation-states see the chapters in wolf (1991). 37 for those interested in the political role of the protestant leaders in hungarian national politics i recommend pungur (1994, 1999). 38 monique nuijten (2003:196), in the 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kecskemét: emmaus. roman, denise 2003 fragmented identities: popular culture, sex, and everyday life in postcommunist romania. lanham: lexington books. ryan, michael, and avery gordon, eds. 1991 body politics: disease, desire and the family. boulder: westview. schweizer, peter 1988 ­ shepherds, workers, intellectuals. culture and center-periphery relationships in a sardinian village. stockholm: stockholm studies in social anthropology. shanin, theodor 1990 defining peasants. oxford: basil blackwell. souritz, elizabeth 1990 soviet choreographers in the 1920s. durham: duke university press. stewart, frank henderson 1994 honor. chicago: university of chicago press. szabó, a. töhötöm 2002 ­ közösség és intézmény. stratégiák a lónai hagyományos gazdálkodásban (community and institution: strategies in the traditional economy of lóna). kolozsvár. vasas, samu, and anikó salamon 1986 kalotaszegi ünnepek. budapest: gondolat. verdery, katherine 1999 ­ the political lives of dead bodies. reburial and postsocialist change. new york: columbia university press. vincze, lajos 1976 “kinship terms and address in a hungarian speaking peasant community in romania.” ethnology xvii, 101–117. washabaugh, william, ed. 1998 the passion of music and dance. body, gender and sexuality. oxford: berg. wolf, eric, ed. 1991 religious regimes and state-formation. albany: state university of new york press. zito, angela, and tani e. barlow, eds. 1994 body, subject and power in china. chicago: university of chicago press. the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 2 new directions in postsocialist studies melissa l. caldwell harvard university © 2002 melissa l. caldwell all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the articles in this issue of aeer bring together a selection of the presentations given at the 2002 annual soyuz symposium at the university of michigan, on february 22-23, 2002. the symposium’s theme, “new directions in postsocialist studies,” inspired panelists, discussants, and members of the audience to reflect on current research topics, changing methodologies, and enduring questions in the rapidly changing field of postsocialist studies. the authors of the papers presented here engage with these themes by drawing on their research in field sites located throughout the postsocialist world, including a paper on nicaragua. the inclusion of this paper further pushed participants to think critically about the analytical and ethnographic parameters of “postsocialism” as well as the extent of the soviet sphere of influence. these articles are complemented by three additional articles that were submitted separately. together, these soyuz and non-soyuz articles deal with such diverse topics as the invention and performance of tradition, migration, employment issues, discourses about the body and the person, identity negotiations, consumption, social relations, and the character of the postsocialist moment. taken both collectively and comparatively, they offer insight into a set of themes that are of concern not only to ethnographers of postsocialism, but also to anthropologists working in other areas of the world. a common thread in the papers by sascha goluboff, kristen ghodsee, armine ishkanian, jonathan larson, and pál nyíri and joana breidenbach is the realm of work. their papers raise questions about how citizens in postsocialist states understand and value different forms of labor; the nature of professionalism and vocation in changing labor markets; the choices that people make in finding “suitable” work; and how they present themselves and others as workers, citizens, and persons. a theme that links armine ishkanian’s paper with those by karen kapustapofahl, ilka thiessen, and nita luci is that of the position of women. their papers point to concerns about women’s efforts to make sense of and accommodate changes in the local, national, and global political and economic systems in which they live; their understandings of what it means to be a woman, feminine, or feminist in today’s social world; the extent to which women are social agents or objectified subjects; and how women mediate their relationships with other women, members of their family, men, and the state. issues of identity and categories of personhood also emerge in the papers by jen typewritten text 5 volume 20, number 2 jonathan larson and pál nyíri and joana breidenbach; while bradley tatar, nita luci, and ilka thiessen share similar interests in locating identity discourses in the physical bodies of individuals. another related set of themes that emerges most vividly in the papers by jennifer cash, tristra newyear, andrei vinogradov, and anna sokolina is that of the link between identity and local cultural forms. in particular, these authors address questions about the processes by which cultural practices and artifacts are created, contested, and naturalized as indigenous products with local and “traditional” significance; who possesses the “expert knowledge” that creates these traditions and determines their validity; and the ways in which these traditions are commodified for both internal and external consumption. the articles begin with sascha goluboff’s incisive discussant’s comments from the soyuz symposium. drawing from her own fieldwork in the moscow choral synagogue, goluboff uses the metaphor of prostitution to link the papers by ishkanian and ghodsee and to introduce a discussion about the literal and symbolic dangers and opportunities presented by labor migration from east to west. she suggests that the metaphor of prostitution offers a space for thinking about the responsibilities and obligations that link migrants with their families and homelands. in her article, kristen ghodsee explores the discursive construction and contestation of migration trends in southeastern europe. drawing from her research on the phenomenon of “brain drain” of educated and skilled bulgarians to the west, ghodsee suggests that discourses about migration divert attention from more pressing concerns with fertility and demographic decline. armine ishkanian also considers public and personal discourses about labor migration by focusing on the experiences of armenian female labor migrants. by considering armenians’ moral categories of appropriate female behavior and responsibility, as well as the practical aspect of labor migration as a survival strategy, ishkanian argues that armenian female labor migrants have become the vehicles through which issues of economic globalization and the armenian experience with postsocialism are articulated. bradley tatar examines nicaragua’s shift from socialist partner of the soviet union to capitalist ally of the united states of america. tatar argues that it is through religious discourses about the body that nicaraguans navigate these larger political and economic transformations and provide cultural legitimation for the capitalist political order. in his article, jonathan larson describes a workshop on curriculum vitae writing that he attended in slovakia. through an analysis of the linguistic genres of representation that participants learned in this workshop, larson argues that practices of selfdefinition and self-identification illuminate how new notions of personhood, and particularly national persons, are articulated. pál nyíri and joana breidenbach present material from their ethnographic study of a group of soviet physicists. by exploring the social world inhabited by soviet scientists who engaged in cuttingedge research at a time of intellectual decline in other disciplines, nyíri and breidenbach argue that these jen typewritten text 6 volume 20, number 2 researchers’ choice of physics as a profession was influenced by the belief that physics offered an acceptable living and an officially sanctioned exemption from ideological make-believe. ilka thiessen takes up the issue of personhood through a study of the bodily discourses that young female engineers in macedonia invoked during the period of the yugoslav conflict. through an ethnographic case study of a body sculpting salon in skopje, thiessen suggests that these young women contest the ways they are presented in the western media through the physical management of their bodies. the theme of gendered selves and experiences continues in karen kapusta-pofahl’s article, which addresses how members of a czech women’s organization rework the concept of “feminism” as a reaction to foreign (primarily western) discourses about feminism. kapusta-pofahl suggests that it is through these negotiations that the members of this organization assert both the uniqueness of their experiences and their equality to western feminists. in her article, nita luci investigates sexual violence in kosova and suggests that violent acts such as rape are embedded within a larger system of political discourses that create gendered and ethnic subjects. luci argues that as forms of violence and domination become embodied by both men and women, they become aspects of daily practice. jennifer cash draws from her fieldwork on children’s folkloric groups in the republic of moldova to analyze the values and meanings that are conveyed through performances by folkloric ensembles. by examining the criteria that jurors identify and use when judging at folklore festivals, cash suggests that debates over authenticity and aesthetics reveal moldovans’ efforts to distance themselves from a soviet identity and past by creating a set of moldovan traditions. anna sokolina continues the discussion of the visual representations through which identities are articulated by examining changes in russian architectural trends. through a description of recent changes in moscow architecture, sokolina argues that a critical understanding of the physical topography of postsocialist society offers insight into the social and political lives of russian citizens. in her article, tristra newyear develops the topic of the commodification of cultural symbols through a biography of a buriat instrument maker. newyear suggests that it was through his eclectic career history that this artisan was able simultaneously to appropriate and criticize soviet ideals and standards for folk culture; at the same time, this artisan has contributed to new formations of musical culture in postsoviet non-russian communities. andrei vinogradov also raises questions about the revival of “traditional” practices by examining shamanism in southern siberia. through a description of different forms of shamanism in this region, vinogradov identifies three sets of distinctive identities and their corresponding practices. finally, these last three articles, while not part of the soyuz symposium, nevertheless complement the preceding papers. in his article, gerald creed turns to the topic of consumption and presents jen typewritten text 7 volume 20, number 2 an alternative reading of consumer practices. through a critical interrogation of how bulgarians consume “in the breach” when they are faced by practical concerns with everyday survival that take precedence over the purchase of consumer goods, creed suggests a rethinking of analytical configurations of socialist and capitalist economic practices. andrei simić pursues another line of analytical critique through an investigation of ethno-nationalism among south slavs. by considering the phenomenon of western popular culture in yugoslavia, simić criticizes prevailing ideologies of nationalism and marxism and offers possibilities for a new way of understanding these processes. in the last article, petteri laihonen explores the issue of preferential treatment given to hungarians living in other countries and the complications these practices have generated in hungary’s relations with romania and slovakia. laihonen argues that attention to these dynamics will inform current discussions about the problems inherent to definitions of nation and citizen in europe more generally. jen typewritten text 8 cuisine and cultural identity in balkans volume 21, number 1 cuisine and cultural identity in balkans cristina bradatan, pennsylvania state university © 2003 cristina bradatan all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. during the last decade or so, the existence of a balkan cultural identity has been hotly debated in books, articles, conferences, and other scholarly practices. it has been argued that the cuisine, supposedly common throughout the balkan peninsula, might be a form through which this cultural identity manifests itself. using statistical data regarding the diet components over the last 20 years, this paper attempts to evaluate how valid the notion of a common balkan cuisine is. there are two hypotheses i am trying to test: 1) there is a commonly shared diet structure in balkan area, and 2) people consume similar quantities of basic food. although these hypotheses are considerably weaker than that of the existence of a “balkan cuisine”, it seems to me that they are the means of doing the most of the available data. the conclusions will point to the fact that, if “balkan cuisine” means what people eat in this region on a daily basis, then there is a very limited specificity and coherence of food consumption in balkan countries. is there such a thing as a “balkan” region? there is a generally human, permanent need for grouping things together in order to understand them. it is a truism to say that this need manifests itself in the study of eastern europe, too. the 1990’s political changes in the communist block ruled out the nicely packed idea of a world divided into east and west, communist and capitalist, centralized and freemarket economies. there is no longer a clear-cut manner of grouping together the former communist countries: some of them are now rich and became part of the european union, whereas others are still poor and hardly surviving the transition to a free-market system. so some other ways of grouping these countries were to be employed. this must be one of the reasons why former “eastern europe” was replaced by “central europe” and “balkan region” or “southeastern europe”. the idea of central europe, directly related to the former habsburg empire, is relatively old, but was resurrected in the 1970s (among others, by czeslaw milosz and milan kundera) in an attempt to make people aware of the significant differences between eastern europe, on one hand, and ussr, on the other hand. the “balkan” nations seem to share only the fate of having been, for some hundred years, vassals of the ottoman empire, and renown as a “barbarous” region especially during the balkan war at the beginning of the 20th century. although it is not always obvious which nations are belonging to which region, and most of the balkan countries refuse to be considered balkan, there is an almost generally accepted idea that albania, yugoslavia, bulgaria, romania and greece belong to the balkan region. some studies have also included hungary in this region (todorova, 1997), although in the case of hungary there are good reasons to consider it as part of central europe. the inclusion of greece in the same group with some former communist countries makes the discussion about the balkans particularly interesting: greece was never part of the communist block, so, its “likeness” to the other countries from the region could only be a result of having been part of the ottoman empire. on the other hand, it would be problematic to affirm that fifty years of completely different historical courses did not affect the alleged resemblance between greece and the former communist countries from balkan peninsula. how can one argue for the existence of a balkan identity? kiossev (2002) claims that there are at least two ways to prove that there is still a strong identity of the balkan region: racial traits and cuisine. a balkan person traveling abroad, kiossev said, knows that he/she can relatively easy recognize another balkan person in the street precisely because of the facial traits and body movements, commonly shared by most balkan people. cuisine is another shared characteristic in the balkans: dinning in a greek restaurant means dinning “at home”, only there you will get the food that are used to, if sometimes under a different name (kiossev: jen typewritten text 43 volume21, number 1 167). according to kiossev, the balkan cuisine descends from an ottomanized persian cuisine. “its ‘natural’ borders (which coincide neither with the former empires not with the contemporary nation states) can be drawn somewhere around zagreb, where it abuts the mid-european front of chocolate cakes, sugary salads, and milky potages, while to the south, at rijeka, it shades into the dalmatian/mediterranean cuisine of frutti di mare, pizzas, and spaghetti” (kiossev: 172). one of the cooking specialties pointing to a relationship between balkan and persian cuisine is, to give only one example, the use of yogurt in meat-based meals in both cuisines, meat marinated in yogurt being one of the famous meals in the ancient persian cuisine (goody: 127) and minced meat wrapped in cabbage (sarmale or sarmi) with yogurt is one of the favorite christmas meals in balkan area. a “national cuisine” is, strictly speaking, a selfcontradiction: people’s ways of cooking transgress borders and are not limited by the language or extended to an entire country. there are only “regional cuisines” (mintz: 114), and a region might be part of a certain country or, on the contrary, might include territories belonging to more than one country. this seems to be the case with the balkan cuisine. the persistence of similar cooking tastes all over balkan peninsula, despite the existence of very different political regimes and levels of development, with low contacts among people from different countries of the region, could be a result of the particular conservative characteristics of eating habits and of a low pressure toward change. a “cuisine” is determined by the type of ingredients used, the order of the meals and the etiquette of eating (goody: 151), so it is a social institution that does not change easily. the components of a cuisine are learnt of very early in life, through direct experience, and this is why our eating habits are conservative parts of our personality. some new things might be added, some of the existing things might be changed by interaction with people having other habits (etiquette of eating, for example), but our tastes will always define a “good” or “bad” meal in terms of what we learnt early in our lives. on the other hand, the society’s pressure toward changing food habits is low in regions where the population is homogeneous and the majority of people eat at home. this was the case with the communist countries from balkan area until ’90. nowadays such a thing might seem somehow strange, but before the 1990s even such renowned tourist destinations as prague and budapest exhibited a very small number of restaurants. “dinning out” was an almost unknown experience to most of the eastern europeans. although some of the communist leaders thought that dining out would have had beneficial effects as the national expenses on food would have gone down1, people continued to eat home-cooked food. and at home women (because domestic cooking in europe was historically woman’s job, she is in charge with preparing the food) cooked what they learnt from their mothers and, in their turn, their mothers cooked what they learned from their mothers and so on. data and methods it appears that the idea of a common balkan cuisine makes sense from several points of view. however, it is hard to really test such a hypothesis: namely, that people from a certain region share in a similar cuisine. in eastern europe there have been few surveys focusing only on the diet, although the surveys attempting to estimate the income usually have a section containing questions dedicated to the food consumption. “cuisine” is a complex concept that includes not only ingredients used in cooking, along with ways of cooking, but also “etiquettes of eating”. for simplicity reasons, i will in the following consider the ingredients as the most important determinants of a cuisine without taking into account the other components. there are two hypotheses i am trying to test: 1) there is a commonly shared diet structure in balkan area, and 2) people consume similar quantities of basic food. although these hypotheses are considerably weaker than that of the existence of a “balkan cuisine”, it seems to me that they are the means of doing the most of the available data. the data are provided by the fao (food and agriculture organization for united states) for 1980-2000. i will focus here on meat, vegetables and sugar consumption, as well on the number of calories consumed daily. in the group of balkan countries i included: bulgaria, greece, albania, romania, and yugoslavia. i have compared this group of countries with hungary and with the europe’s average. i have chosen hungary in an attempt to highlight that the similarities in food consumption in balkan peninsula are not only jen typewritten text 44 volume21, number 1 the result of a geographic proximity: hungary is also close to two of the balkan countries (romania and yugoslavia) and still it has a very different cuisine. for all the analyses i have used two distinct spans of time: 1980-1989 and 1990-2000. these periods of time are socially and politically very different for most of the countries from the region. on the other hand, if the political changes in the 1990s affected strongly the diet of the people living in the region (because either of the poverty, or of the increasing opportunities of being in contact with people with other tastes) the comparison (1990-2000 as against 19801989) would express these changes. however, one problem remains unsolved: the composition of yugoslavia is different during the two periods of time.2 i used data for all countries from europe, without ussr and former ussr republics. i also excluded czechoslovakia (and, for 1990-2000, slovakia and czech republic) because the country disappeared after 1992 and i could not take into account these political changes by using the 1989 as the split point. as far as the methods are concerned, i used hierarchical cluster analysis, which permits to cluster the cases by using one or more variables as grouping variables. basically, this method measures how large is the distance between each two cases (i used the euclidean distance as a measure for distance). then, it groups together within a cluster those cases for which the distance is the smallest, measuring then the distance between these first level clusters (groups). finally, it groups together the clusters that are the closest. these are the second level groups. the method continues until all groups are linked. results and interpretations i have token into account five basic components of the diet: average annual consumption of meat, pork meat, vegetables, animal fat and sweeteners. the proportion of animal fat and sweeteners in daily diet are good indicators of the diet profile, so populations with a similar diet have to exhibit similar proportions of these two components. i have compared all the countries in europe using these two variables in order to see whether the balkan countries are somehow different. the results are presented in figure 1 and figure 2.3 looking at the figure 1 (1980-1989) and figure 2 (1990-2000), the balkan countries (greece, romania, albania, bulgaria, yugoslavia) are grouped of the left side of the “europe” point (average consumption in europe), which shows that there are strong similarities between the diets in these countries in comparison with other parts of europe. hungary is located very far away (especially because of the high consumption of animal fat), but the mediterranean countries (spain, portugal and italy) are in the same part of the graph with the balkan countries. this is an indication that, at least from the point of view of the animal fat and sweeteners used in cooking, the balkan cuisine is not far away from the mediterranean one. there are no significant changes between 1980-1989 and 1990-2000 in terms of average diet composition of balkan countries relative to other european countries, although the political and social situation changed dramatically between these two decades. the balkan countries still group together in the left low side of the average european consumption of animal fat and sweeteners during 1980-1989 as well as after 1990. only yugoslavia decreased strongly the consumption of sweeteners, but this might be a result of the changing territory after 1990. at least from a visual inspection of the graphs, it seems that there is a certain consistency in the consumption of animal fat and sweeteners consumption among the balkan countries, although there are no signs that the balkan diet is radically different than the mediterranean one. the hierarchical cluster analysis4 shows similar results (appendix 1), although the first level clusters are not connecting balkan countries together, but balkan and mediterranean countries. for example, based upon this analysis, it seems that romania, greece and spain are close to each other in terms of animal fat and sweeteners consumption (this is a level 1 cluster and only a third level cluster group together all balkan and mediterranean countries). this result reinforces the idea that balkan and mediterranean diet cannot be distinguished from each other by only taking into account the consumption of animal fat and sweets. the consumption of meat is important in european diet, although the non-animal food historically dominated the european cooking: until the middle decades of the nineteenth century, grains continued to dominate the european diet (except in the case of a small jen typewritten text 45 volume21, number 1 privileged elite). economically, they might absorb as much as 90 per cent of a family’s food budget; calorically their role was decisive as well, normally accounting for between two-thirds and three-quarters of the total, and in any case no less than half. (montanari: 152). nowadays, the non-animal consumption is still the most important source of the daily calories in any world population. the consumption of vegetarian food might be measured either as proportion of average daily calories intake (calories from vegetables versus calories from animal products) or as a total average consumption per year. figure 3 uses the first way of measuring (% calories from non animal food) for balkan countries in comparison with the average european and hungary consumption5. yugoslavia has a pattern of consumption more similar with hungary than with the other balkan countries, with more than 40% of the calories provided by animal products. on the other hand, greece has a much higher average daily calorie intake than the other countries, which might be an indication of the relatively richness of the country in comparison with the other balkan countries. an analysis carried out with hierarchical cluster method (with grouping variables being the number of calories from animal products 1980-1989 and 1990-2000) shows that bulgaria, romania and greece belongs to the same first level cluster, but they are relatively distant from albania and yugoslavia (appendix 2). in the interpretation of these results it should take into account that the data are aggregated at a national level and, sometimes, the average might have a very different meaning from one country to another because of the inequalities within the countries compared. for example, in a country with strong inequalities, where most of the people are extremely poor, and some of them are very rich, with no “middle class”, the term “average person” does not have a precise meaning. in these cases (and most of the former eastern countries are in this category), it is preferable to compare the extremes – the richest 10% from one country with the richest 10% from another country and, similarly, the poorest 10%. unfortunately, there are no data available for such a comparison. as far as the meat as an animal product is concerned, this has not been, historically speaking, an important part of the mediterranean cuisine (montanari: 74). on the other hand, such countries as romania with a still large proportion of religious population, it is expected to have low levels of meat consumption because of the long periods of fast. so, i expected the balkan as well as mediterranean countries to have similar levels of meat consumption. however, an analysis carried on by using the yearly consumption of meat and pork meat does not show the existence of any relationships between the balkan countries: they did not belong to the same group, no matter whether the grouping variable is meat consumption during 1980-1989 and 1990-2000 or pork meat during the same periods of time. pork meat is a popular option among the balkan people especially during holidays (christmas, new year), but it does not seem to be consumed in similar quantities all over balkan peninsula. conclusions so, is there any such thing as a distinctively balkan cuisine? if we look at what people in the balkan region eat on a daily basis, things are difficult to interpret. there is, indeed, a similar pattern as far as the ingredients used among the people living in balkan area are concerned, which pattern is not only a result of the geographical proximity (because, as we have seen, hungarians, for example, do not share the same diet characteristics with serbs and romanians). however, the mediterranean countries diet has a similar structure with the balkan ones and it is hard to distinguish between the two cuisines. on the other hand, calories intake as well as meat consumption varies among the balkan countries, which weakens the idea of a common and specific cuisine in the peninsula. if we talk about “haute cuisine”, the cuisine to be enjoyed in restaurants, there is some truth in claiming the existence of a balkan cuisine. sarmale, baklava, musaka, white cheese (feta), halva, maybe under different names, but with similar tastes are some of the balkan meals being usually served in a greek, romanian or bulgarian restaurant, in new york or in any other big city, and they are recognized6 as parts of the “balkan cuisine”. they are rather refined and sophisticated dishes, not eaten in the balkans on an ordinary day, and it is hard to argue that such special meals, similar indeed all over the jen typewritten text 46 volume21, number 1 peninsula, can create and are part of a common cultural identity. references cited goody, jack, 1982, cooking, cuisine and class. a study in comparative sociology. cambridge, uk: cambridge. kiossev, a., 2002, “the dark intimacy: maps, identities, acts of identifications”, in ed. d.i. bjelić, o. savić. balkan as metaphor. between globalization and fragmentation. cambridge, ma: mit. mennel, s., murcott, a., van otterloo, a.h., 1993, the sociology of food. eating diet and culture. london: sage. mintz, sidney w., 1996, tasting food, tasting freedom. boston: beacon. montanari, massimo, 1994, the culture of food. oxford, uk: blackwell. smil, vaclav, 1989, coronary heart disease, diet, and western mortality. population and development review 15(3): 399423. todorova, maria, 1997, imagining the balkans. oxford, uk: oxford. wood, roy c., 1995, the sociology of meal. edinburgh : edinburgh university press 1 at a given moment the romanian communist leader, ceaucescu, got the idea of building immense supermarkets – cantinas – where people were supposed to purchase prepared food; these places were popularly called “famine’s circuses” because the food to be served there would be of a poor quality. fortunately enough, he did not have time to finish his project. 2 usually, only serbia is considered part of the balkan area. however, some studies included in balkan peninsula croatia as well as bosnia herzegovina. unfortunately, there are no data available for serbia only, so i used the data for whole yugoslavia, even if this would introduce some bias in results 3 the figures present the average yearly consumption of animal fat and sweeteners for 1980-1989 and 1990-2000. the yearly trend brings similar conclusion, but the figure would look too “busy” if i would picture the yearly trends. 4 for this analysis, i used as grouping variables: average animal fat consumption 1980-1989, animal fat consumption 19902000, average sweeteners consumption 19801989 and average sweeteners consumption 1990-2000. the variables were rescaled on a 0-1 scale. 5 the figures in top of the columns represent the average daily calorie intake. jen typewritten text 47 microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 25 of gloss, glitter and lipstick: fashion, femininity and wealth in post-socialist urban bulgaria elitza ranova rice university “the girl” she doesn’t allow anyone to see her without makeup. personalized for her, hell is a place without a single mirror, but with tons of men, who fail to turn after her, and tons of women, who have the same tube top. her role models have measures 90-60-90 centimeters and a fine skin. it’s very important that everyone notices from what kind of car she gets off and on what model cell phone she smss and composes jingles. she reads a lot: magazines about fashion and beauty, and love novels. “titanic” is in the top-ten of her favorite movies. if the average woman uses three kilos of lipstick for the span of her life, the girl uses at least six. she repeatedly tells her mother on the phone that she hasn’t been born to wash a man’s socks. flirts habitually. studies foreign languages in order to know what to say if someone asks her ‘voulez-vous couchez avec moi.’ from the men in her life, she demands huge bouquets of red roses, candle light dinners and their check books. if the movie of her life has a happy ending, it is cocktails, receptions and charity dinners. if the ending is sad, her husband beats her, she washes his socks and sends her daughter to modeling classes. style: tight fitting jeans with embroideries, shiny threads and sequin, ankle-boots with needle-point heels, short skirts and tank-tops, a small purse and large earrings, perfect makeup, died hair, nail polish with dots, stars or stripes; top achievement: paola apsi (an expensive boutique in sofia). (…) conversations: strictly about consumption; men, cosmetics, who with whom, cellulite, liposuction, silicon implants. (…) united colors an alternative young person who manages to find his or her proper place and to be satisfied by life in the present. practices one of the free professions and several foreign languages with ease. independent without rubbing this in your eyes, ears, and nose. on a weekend, takes a casual trip to bansko (a bulgarian ski resort) or madrid. in possession of designer furniture and designer juice extractor (noblesse oblige). works on several projects simultaneously but keeps workaholism under control. balances between eastern philosophies, western technologies and national identity. avoids the popular tourist routes and well-traveled life paths. changes drastically his life course every three years because boredom is worse than a hair in the soup. capable of creating problems only to assure that he is not bored.uses his imagination actively and usually profits well from doing it. from time to time allows himself to be a snob.his last will is to spread his ashes over the indian ocean. style: beneton, sysley, gap, dkny, levy’s engineered jeans, invisible makeup, old school running shoes. (…) conversation: media, books, theater, technology, internet, politics, sport. _________________________________________ in april 2002, the new lifestyle magazine edno appeared on the bulgarian media market. its first issue contained the article “civil society,” from which (with abbreviations) come the above excerpts (droumeva 2002). the purpose of the text is to describe “the most widely represented urban species, for which style matters.” in addition to the two listed above, it includes three more “species:” “the artist,” “the civil servant,” and “the yuppie.” “civil society” illustrates the way in which “fashion others” are used locally to define and redefine identities, whether in terms of gender or of socioeconomic status. the article also suggests the possibility of drawing a map of these contemporary fashion relations that corresponds to local variations in status and values. in this paper, i will argue that the women, who self-identify with the “united colors” group, support androgynous dress and self-styling as a rejection of traditional women’s roles and the dominant post-socialist image of wealth that is associated with the ostentatiousness and criminality of the bulgarian nouveaux riches. i pay close attention to dress and to the ways in which self-definition and groupdefinition is carried out through taste and life-style choices. as i will show at the end, an activist engagement with women’s issues is not a part of this position in part because the new ideas of womanhood and femininity have not brought about a radical change in sentiment. the “united colors” model rethinks women’s public presence more anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 26 radically than it does the emotional dynamic in the privacy of relationships. at the time i came across the “civil society” article, i had been conducting fieldwork among the magazine’s staff for months. when i read the article, i quickly recognized that “united colors” represents the group i study. the people who self-identify with it are characterized by high levels of education, relatively high incomes, and similar views and opinions. this group includes the people, who make the magazine, their intended readers and the larger social segment to which they belong. based on this article, my informants emerge as different from the “civil servant,” who stands for the older generation of bulgarians now living on small salaries and pensions with little prospects for the future; from the “artist,” who is a “nervous, dark type” that “insists on being intellectual and despises luxury;” and from the “yuppie,” “who’s been taught to exude freshness, fresh breath, and a perfectly calculated smile” and whose main interest is “corporate gossip” (droumeva 2002). the female informants from the “united colors” category spend much time and effort discussing the women from whom they find it most necessary to differentiate themselves: on one hand, the wealthy kept women, mutressa (mutressi, pl.) and the stars of the popular pop-folk genre chalga,1 and, on the other, their less-wealthy counterparts, “the average women,” as one informant referred to them. “the girl” represents a composite image of these two groups characterized by similar taste in fashion and cosmetics and by a belief that women find fulfillment chiefly through men and through the family rather than through professional careers and personal development. the female members of the “united colors” group embody an alternative to this ideal through style. in contrast to the “tight fitting jeans, ankle-boots with needle-point heels, short skirts and tank-tops” considered characteristic of “the girl,” they prefer “invisible makeup,” “old school running shoes” and clothing that is asexual and sporty. the stylistic preferences of the “united colors” group also reflect an insistence on a liberal ideal of wealth as a marker of merit and on its redemption from the postsocialist association between affluence and criminality. to an image of women, who chase the checkbooks of men, who have become wealthy illegally, they oppose the image of women, who “work on several projects simultaneously” and finance their trips to bansko or madrid alone. editorial board meetings, photo-shoots with members of the magazine’s staff as well as freelancers, events such as concerts, casual and formal interviews with staff writers and freelancers, all proved to be valuable sources of insight and personal connections for this ongoing project. the line of investigation in this paper relates style to attitudes and ideas, and corresponds to a well-established understanding in the social sciences that taste is not a trivial matter of personal preference but that it provides means to express and negotiate social identities and worldviews (cf. ash and wilson 1992, miller 1998). pierre bourdieu’s pioneering study of taste in france is the best known demonstration of the existence of a relationship between aesthetic preferences and socioeconomic circumstances. in bulgaria as well, class and status are intertwined with taste as differentiating factors in the social space. the ideas of the “united colors” group about femininity, beauty, and gender roles are in conflict with the dominant model in bulgaria. the end of socialism brought about a turn to patriarchal gender relations in much of eastern europe. since 1989, bulgaria witnessed a revitalization of the ideal of traditional female beauty, sexualization of the female body and relegation of women to the sphere of domesticity. with variations in intensity and content, this general model dominates the attitudes of both the wealthy mutressi and chalga stars and of “average women.” money, women and style the first years after 1989 brought to bulgaria widespread deprivation and poverty. in the murky waters of the transition, well-connected members of the nomenklatura, supported by the physical muscle of sportsmen, and wrestlers in particular, and in the company of players from the gray socialist economy, accumulated significant wealth in semi-legal or outright illegal dealings and through organized crime. racketeering, masked as insurance business, smuggling, drug trade and prostitution are some of the well known sources of this wealth. the nouveaux riches and the members of their entourage are generally referred to as mutri (mutra, sg.) or ugly faces, a word that conjures the stereotypical image of a man with a short hair and a thick neck, dressed in a brand-name jump suit, leather shoes, and adorned with heavy golden chains. this stereotype refers to the members of the lower ranks in the hierarchy of criminal groups because they were most visible. today, the economic situation of many has improved, even though the standard of living in bulgaria remains one of the lowest among the new anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 27 and prospective members of the european union. according to a recent study, the average income in the country is higher only than romania’s and is six times lower than that in the czech republic (mircheva 2006). more than 49 percent of the population still lives below or just above the poverty line (dnevnik 2006). the minimum salary in bulgaria is 140 bgn per month ($86) and the average is about 300 bgn ($200) (mediapool 2005). the capital sofia and a couple of other large cities, such as varna and plovdiv, provide significantly better employment opportunities than the rest of the country. sofia, especially, is the center of attraction for young well-educated men and women because of the quality of the job market and because of its status as a cultural and political center with a vibrant art and entertainment life. the headquarters of many international companies are located in sofia and offer professional opportunities and attractive pay. gradually, the wealth of many of the underground bosses is being laundered and enters legitimate businesses. the image of the stereotypical mutra has also largely disappeared from the public space, and has been replaced by new displays of wealth as the jump suits have been traded in for business suits. nevertheless, bulgarians continue to witness the violent settling of debts and conflicts between organized crime bosses. between 1995 and 2005, 50 murders for show took place revealing the forceful struggles between organized crime groups (netinfo 2005). the image of the mutressa, the beautiful wife or lover of a mutra, has not changed significantly over the years. according to the popular stereotype, a murtessa has a slim body that struts with a swing on high heels; carefully styled hair that reveals the many hours spent at the hairdresser’s studio; and sexy attire that may include tight pants and deep-cut or see-through blouses. many of the elements listed as preferred by the “the girl” and, by implication, by mutressi are still popular: the jeans with embroideries, the “shiny threads and sequins, ankle-boots with needle-point heels, short skirts and tank-tops, a small purse and large earrings, perfect make up, dyed hair, nail polish” (droumeva 2002). in 2005, these were modified in accordance with a style that fashion experts would describe as a mix between the “military” and “ethnic” looks that enjoyed global popularity this season. variations of this style can bee seen in images from recent issues of magazines like vogue and in videos from the seasonal reviews in world fashion centers such as milan, paris and new york. in bulgaria, women favored brown blouses embroidered with golden sequins, tinsel or other shiny threads creating the impression of traditional ethnic designs. matching pants visually accentuated the upper part of the leg. a final touch was added by an array of accessories: richly decorated belts that hang low on the hips and large necklaces and earrings in matching colors. the local bulgarian variation reworks the main characteristics of the military-ethnic look to emphasize the body and sex appeal and foregoes the more subdued alternatives of the style. some manage to dress from head to toe in up-to-date outfits. since it requires a significant financial investment, this opportunity is most accessible to the affluent, among them mutressi and chalga stars. chalga is the most successful bulgarian musical genre that enjoys little social prestige but generates enormous popularity and profits. it is the heir of the so-called wedding music, which during socialism entertained guests at many a dinner table and family celebrations, and offered a folk music alternative to the sanitized version of folklore sanctioned by the socialist state (buchanan 1996). like its predecessor, chalga blends folk music from bulgaria as well as from other peoples in the balkans, like serbs,2 turks, greeks, and roma, with pop and rock elements.3 in the first years of the transition, the lyrics were more openly sexual and indiscrete than most of the music that is produced today. the stars of this genre are predominantly women with impeccable appearance styled according to the general characteristics outlined above. as one informant, an established human resource trainer for an international company, put it: “kitsch and lots of money, this is what makes mutressi and chalga stars alike.” other women, who live on far more modest budgets, do what one of my informants did: buy a single accessory, in this particular case, a brown leather purse with strips of fur attached to it, or a couple of garments, which allow them to pay homage to the style without buying an entire outfit. for the low income women, open air markets such as zhensnkia pazar and ilientsi in sofia offer cheap imports from turkey.4 the same kinds of goods at approximately the same or higher prices can also be found in many of the small shops located in garages under living blocks or in modest pavilions off the main streets. for the few rich bulgarians, the glittery vitoshka street in sofia offers high-end garments and accessories. still others forego the items in the fashionable trend entirely but adhere to similar anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 28 principles of dress and appearance: hair carefully styled, nails polished, lipstick inevitable. their clothes have a line and color that are not associated strongly with the current fashion and survive the changes of seasonal trends. nevertheless, the garments accentuate women’s femininity and bodily forms in a way that is similar to the looks of the “military-ethnic” style adherents. some of my informants from this and previous research belong to this category. many are well-educated and have jobs that pay salaries about or higher than the average for the country. what separates the women from this category from the women from the “united colors” group is their meticulous attention to appearance, an attraction to a certain amount of glamour in their looks, and a preference for garments that draw attention to the body. the ideal of beauty that emphasizes femininity has been especially noticeable in the beginning of each of my visits to sofia, a sentiment documented in my notes: when i am in bulgaria, i find that my wardrobe changes (in comparison with the united states). the slack jeans, plain t-shirts, and my running shoes fall out of favor. the adjustment usually takes a few days. on tuesday, i walked down ivan assen and passed well made-up women, garments carefully chosen; the fashion of the season clearly discernible in most appearances. my clothes dedicated to comfort more than fashion made me feel out of place in the first few days and now have been traded off for a dress and platform shoes. a short green skirt, black deep cut tank top, linen shorts with an elegant line: all of these have risen back from the bottom of my “favorites” list to the top even in the cases when i have no occasion to put additional effort in my appearance. the underlined femininity in women’s looks makes me conform to an unspoken standard. an emphasis on traditional femininity became apparent in the first years after 1989. studies of gender relations in eastern europe have established the existence of a post-socialist patriarchal turn that relegates women to a sphere of domesticity and privacy rather than to the public sphere (cf. einhorn 1993, marody and gizapoleszczuk 2000, and todorova 1993). this constitutes a change from the peculiar role of women under socialism that is well summed up in the idea of the “double burden.” socialism brought women into the domain of wage work and posed on them demands for participation in the state economy similar to those of men. however, domestic work and care for the children remained women’s responsibility. a main source of support in managing the double burden of house work and employment was the state. kovács and varadi (2000) point out that during socialism female wage workers depended less on their spouses or other relatives for help with child rearing, personal education and even entertainment than they did on the state. with the demise of the socialist support structures, many working class women were left in a particularly vulnerable position. western scholars and feminists saw the end of socialism as an opportunity for women’s liberation and the emergence of a strong feminist movement (einhorn 1993, watson 1997). however, instead of embracing feminist thought, many eastern europeans returned to traditional ideas of femininity prioritizing innate differences between the sexes and the cultivation of attractive personal appearance. in this context, care for the self and a “re-sexualization” of the socialist asexual female body is combined with aspiration to the standards of conventional gender roles. one of the first examples of this attitude in the bulgarian context was brought to my attention during the preliminary stages of fieldwork. on a warm summer evening, i was dining in the company of several bulgarians, when one of the women brought up a book that she had recently read. in the following discussion, both the young woman and her husband defended the book’s thesis that there are inherent differences in the hardwiring of women’s and men’s brains that make them think differently and be better suited for certain kinds of jobs. the woman, who i will call iskra to protect her anonymity, said that her work for a trade company has forced her to develop personal qualities that she thinks are typically masculine such as decisiveness, quick reactions, and problem solving. she saw this as a positive change but was dissatisfied because it made her feel less feminine and less attractive. to regain her self-confidence, she said that she frequently shops in the cosmetic stores close to the office where she works. she said, “when i buy a lipstick or a new eye shadow and put them on, that makes me happy. makes me feel more celebratory, more like a woman and helps me get back in a role that fits me better.” despite the financial difficulties of the young family, iskra’s appearance is always well maintained. her hair is dyed in a shiny black color. it is long, blow dried and styled to form large curls that frame her white skin and green eyes accentuated with pearl eye shadows. a bright lipstick is inevitable as well as shoes with heels. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 29 this appearance reflects the ideal of beauty to which she subscribes. iskra and a common friend, whom i will call natalia, have frequently criticized me for not being feminine enough. in many conversations, they expressed desire to see me with more make up, in skirts, and in heels saying that if i invested more care into my appearance, i would notice a significant difference in the way i would look and feel. natalia’s concern finally convinced me to let her take me shopping and help me select a deep red lipstick and a set of purple shadows that can create the “smoky eyes” look. also during a pilot study, i had met another friend of iskra and natalia’s, whom i will call boriana. at the time boriana was undergoing a personal crisis caused by an anxiety that at 26 she still was not married. similar was natalia’s sentiment, who had a stable relationship but was not married to her partner. i found the intensity of their emotion surprising considering that many of my acquaintances in the united states and in bulgaria at the same age are also single or live with their partners without marriage. however, i was able to relate better after talking to iskra and learning that being married and having a child gives her a sense of accomplishment and self-worth that she did not think she could receive from a job. in fact, having left the trade company to be a stayat-home mom for a year, she said that this was the happiest time of her life and that she was not eager to return to the job market. she would like to find a job that is interesting and pays well (to increase her chances she has signed up as a distance learning master’s student in business management) but her priority in life was her family and home. when discussing potential employment abroad, iskra explained that she would not even consider it, because that would mean either being apart from her family or asking her husband to make a compromise with his job, despite the fact that he earns as much as she does. it became apparent that for iskra, natalia and boriana as well as their friends, all of whom are well-educated and with good jobs, the family precedes professional development in order of importance and is the chief source of a sense of accomplishment. united colors the attitudes to style and accomplishment of the women from the “united colors” group are diametrically opposed to those outlined above. their preferred fashion styles are marked by an intentional impression of “carelessness.” they generally avoid tight fitting clothes, layered makeup, and the overall impression of glamour. they favor short hairdos or loose, lightly styled hair in natural colors and prefer running shoes over high-heels, tee-shirts over low-cut blouses, and regular jeans over tight fitting pants. the dominant fashion trend is influenced by an updated interpretation of the late twentieth century. for example, in fashion are variations of 1980s sports tops. they come in solid colors and feature a zipper in the front and three stripes in a contrasting color on the sleeves. the 1980s influence is discernable as well in the preferred hair styles with contrasting layer lengths: bangs and fine layers on top over a single long layer on the bottom. on warmer days, casual boots give way to sport shoes in a style typical of airwalks or the retro 1970s look that lately has been popular in the united states as well. if vision correction glasses are in order, both men and women give preferences to styles with thick dark frames suggestive of decades passed, the 1960s and 1970s. many buy their clothes at second-hand stores, especially at the few shops owned by young people that belong to the group and cater to its tastes. the garments are imported almost exclusively from western european and north american countries. in addition, some obtain their clothing through travel or in expensive local shops for sports gear or snowboarding and surfing fashion. generally, the bulgarian market offers a more limited selection of the styles preferred by these women or at higher prices, compared to the garments in the fashionable mainstream styles. beyond their fashion taste, the young people, who belong to the group, are united by similar lifestyles, music preferences and hangout places. most of them are between 22 and 35 years old, have a bachelor’s degree, and are competent in at least one foreign language. they receive incomes above the average with salaries above 500 bgn ($300) per month. some are self-employed or belong to the free professions: journalists, artists, and web and graphic designers, among others. my informants live in sofia, but my travel in the country indicates that similar cliques exist in other large bulgarian cities. the existence of particular hang-out places for people from this group was made apparent to me when in several unrelated interviews, informants referred to “the crowd from shishman” as a shortcut to describe the particular segment of urbanites. shishman is a well-known street in downtown sofia. like many central side streets, it is crowded by pedestrians, cars parked on the sidewalks, and children that pour out of two school buildings straight onto the street during anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 30 breaks. movement is further hindered by the people going in and out from the small stores or standing in line in front of klekshops, establishments located in buildings’ basements and conducting their business through window openings at the level of pedestrians’ feet.5 the street is also home of the three establishments, klub 703, bilkova apteka and blaze, whose regular clientele constitutes the “shishman crowd” mentioned by informants. klub 703 is the quietest among them and with the most distinguished clientele. here one can come across people who are older, wealthier, and more orderly. it is frequented by local stars such as the actresses tzetana maneva and vessela kazakova, the singer doni, and the tv host and producer georgi toshev, one of the creators of edno but no longer associated with the magazine. blaze and bilkova apteka are by comparison noisier, rowdier and patronized by a less distinguished and younger crowd. quoting from my notes, in bilkova apteka, little black lamps reflect their lights off the red walls. the bar, lined with mirrors reflects more red light and draws one’s gaze to the heart of the place. at night, the seats along the bar, along the counters lining the walls, and in the side room with pillows on the floor: all are taken. people chat standing in the middle, letting others pass if pushed aside by arms and elbows. a large crowd for a week night. people eye every newcomer. many talk first to one group of people, then switch to another: regulars, who know each other. against the (fashion) current the comments and personal appearance of the women from the “united colors” group reveal support for a position on women’s place in society that is unconventional in the local context. they distance themselves from a sense of female accomplishment as dependent on men, either as a source of financial well-being or as a source of personal fulfillment through the family. specifically, they oppose the lifestyles and fashion of wealthy kept women, on one hand, and of “the average bulgarian woman,” on the other. one of the main objections against mutressi is based on the perception that their clothing is “tacky,” “kitschy,” and “lacks individuality.” a staff member of the magazine edno, whom i will name hristina, presented her objections to the fashion and imagined lifestyles of mutressi while having coffee in a crowded sofia confectionary. with hair casually pulled back in a loose pony tail, wide jeans, a loose gray sweater, and only a hint of make up applied with an eye pencil, hristina’s appearance would be considered “unfeminine” by women like iskra and natalia. according to hristina: “the mutressi definitely wear clothing that is more revealing and has lots of lace, flounce, bright colors… i mean a style that i call pseudo-luxury. they always wear something shiny, so you can see them from afar. to be stylish doesn’t always mean to be visible from a 100 km distance. actually, it is just the opposite. they might buy armani just because it says it’s armani, but not because they appreciate the clothing. (…) take the sunny beach resort (it’s run almost entirely by mutri): pseudo-luxury made with a lot of money but absolutely no taste.” one of the reasons why mutressi’s clothing is qualified as “pseudo-luxury” falls in line with common criticism against the nouveaux riches: they can afford expensive garments, like an armani suit, but they lack the attitude to style that would allow them to dress with taste. according to my informants, one of the markers of good taste is the ability to use clothing to express one’s individuality. they appreciate looks that reveal a particular concept, position or attitude. as hrsitina put it: “(mutressi’s clothing) is like an assembly line, without any search for individuality or anything like it. they all look the same. for me clothing is to some extent a search for individuality. this is one of the ways in which one can express individuality but these women just don’t have it.” as this quote demonstrates, the lack of position or “individuality” in dress is seen as a reflection of personal deficiency. specifically, it denotes the lack of a particular attitude to style and femininity that is valued by hristina and her friends. another female informant, an established magazine writer, whom i will refer to as nadia, described her friends and the kinds of people she enjoys being around as “curious, open to things that happen outside of bulgaria, always looking for something new and enthusiastic.” for her, respect is due to people who are passionate about what they do, regardless of whether they are a “telecommunications engineer, an artist or a baker.” like hristina, nadia pointed out that wealth alone does not constitute success and that it matters how affluence has been achieved. this image is very different from the image of mutressa depicted by hristina: anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 31 if you think about it, the hairstylist, solarium, fitness, manicure, you see the maintenance of the physique is absolutely mandatory for a mutressa since in any case women like her have a lot of money and a lot of free time. but because they are empty headed, the only thing that they know how to do is spend their entire days in gyms and beauty parlors etc. they have made a cult out of taking care for the body, but that’s all. mutressi are seen as lacking the internal drive to develop themselves, to learn and to grow. instead they are perceived as immersed in an obsessive and vacuous care for appearance. hristina, nadia and other women that i have talked to insist that success for a woman means something more than a comfortable life and even access to luxury. there is nothing wrong with wealth per se, but it is problematic when it does not reflect one’s personal abilities and hard work, regardless of whether the person is a man or a woman. wealth is considered to be the appropriate reward for personal merit. here is an example of hristina’s comments on this: … a girl that is not particularly smart, and there are a lot of girls like that, who only want money. there is an entire group of people who consider themselves successful only if they have money (…) and since the easiest way to have money is to find a wealthy lover and to get what you need, they do it to show to the world that they are successful. i think mutressi are like that too: they don’t have any goals in life, they are not asking themselves what is it that i want to do and what is it that i can do, but they simply say, ‘i want money, and i want the entire world to know that i have them.’ that’s why it matters to them what kind of car they ride in, because when you get off, everyone will see. thus, in hristina’s eyes, a woman who “finds a wealthy lover” is not successful, but a woman who does what she “wants to do” and what she “can do,” i.e. seeks personal and professional development based on her interests and abilities, can be considered successful. in the vision of female success as outlined by my informants from the “united colors” group, one recognizes a liberal ideal of wealth as reflecting one’s personal merit, including abilities, education and good taste. viktoria, an established journalist, a common acquaintance of hristina and nadia, expressed this sentiment most clearly when discussing why many people from her generation have been unable to raise above the poverty of the transition years. her words also reveal a sense of pride from her own accomplishments: “there are poor people, but i think that they don’t have the desire, will, enthusiasm, to take care of themselves (…) there are others that when you tell them, ‘okay, so you are looking for a job. then open the newspaper, make a phone call, go to an interview, do something.’ and they get upset and tell you ‘but you don’t know how it is. it’s not as easy as you think. it’s easy for you to say.’ no it’s not easy for me to say. i’ve been there, i’ve done that. i’ve seen that movie. but i didn’t give up and made something of myself.” several of my informants said that even though they receive comparatively high incomes, they find themselves unable to save. however, they did not consider this particularly bothersome and even spoke with some pride about their spending habits. victoria explained that initially she was worried that compared to older people she might appear wasteful, but then realized that she had a good justification to dispose of her money freely. according to her, “spending a lot and not saving for the future means that you are confident in your abilities and know that you will be able to earn as much if not more in the future.” this statement reveals not only a belief in the financial reward for personal merit, but also conviction that viktoria, as a woman, can secure a high income in the future based on her abilities as a professional. the idea that a successful woman is not that much different from a successful man is reflected by the androgynous aesthetic styles preferred by the “united colors” group. this position suggests a redefinition of wealth that contrasts with the image of the mutra, as the dominant symbols of postsocialist wealth gained through criminal activities, and of the mutressi as dependant on it for their financial well-being. the “united colors” women also seek to distance themselves from what hristina described as the “average woman,” perceived as an example of dependence on men and the family for personal accomplishment. the expression refers, on one hand, to women who face significant financial difficulties, as hrsitina put it, “women who earn 150 bgn a month and think only how to meet basic needs,” and, on the other hand, to women with incomes as high as those of my informants, anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 32 but not as high as a mutressa’s. both of these groups are seen as prioritizing the family and children at the expense of personal development. while the figure of the mutressa is permeated by implicit references to looks and sexual attraction as a way to get and keep a desirable man, the image of the average woman is associated with an almost claustrophobic care for the family that deprives her from personal pleasures and opportunities. for the moment, this is the average woman in bulgaria. (…) she only thinks about her children. the average man also only goes to work and brings money home to provide for the children and so on. it seems that this is somehow programmed in bulgarians, to give everything for their children. and perhaps there is too much of an emphasis on the material things. (…) i mean people’s lives are just limited. i don’t blame them for that. nadia commented that she feels no internal need to have to child, not even a social obligation. she said that she wasn’t ready to give up her current lifestyle: “i mean to have a kid would mean to change my life entirely. and my job too. we had an editor, who had a child and came to work from 10 to 6. this just doesn’t work for me.” nadia frequently works on weekends, until late at night and sometimes all night. “that would mean no more red bull, no coffee, no cigarettes… i might have a kid if i could afford a babysitter, but since i can’t, i am not even considering it at this point.” these statements reveal a perspective on the sacrifice of parents and on personal comfort that is new. many bulgarian parents are willing to undergo significant personal hardship and deprivation for their children. the trend dates back to a pre-modern dependence between the generations and coincides with a socialist ideal of mothers’ and wives’ self-sacrifice. mira marody and anna giza-poleszczuk (2000) point out with respect to poland that officially sanctioned sentiment conceived of women’s personal fulfillment as the result of self-sacrifice for the good of others, i.e. the state or the family. while this analysis refers to another socialist country, my preliminary research indicates that their general conclusion can also be applied to socialist bulgaria. hristina and the other young women like her reject this ideal and oppose it with an image of the woman as an individual, who puts her own needs and personal development first. in their eyes, self-sacrifice for children doesn’t have a moral oriole but appears as a deprived and “limited” way of life. according to nadia, the ideal relationship would be that in which both the husband and the wife have their own spheres of expression, each pursuing his or her independent professional goals. housework is to be divided according to preferences: “each does what he or she cares most to be done. i hate dirty bathrooms, so i would regularly clean that. i don’t like to wash dishes, and i don’t mind when they pile up in the sink. if my boyfriend minds that, then he would wash them.” as evident in this quote, nadia imagines desirable family life as one in which men and women have similar obligations and rights and no clearly defined male and female domains of work. nevertheless, nadia makes a specific distinction between the kinds of responsibilities between a man and woman in a relationship and those between men and women in general. a further elaboration of her ideal for a relationship reveals the traces of traditional femininity and suggests a hesitation for an embrace of radical feminism. this may explain in part why an openly critical, political and feminist engagement with women’s issues is nearly absent from discussions with my female informants from this group. nadia says that sometimes she dreams of “being a princess.” i dream that a man would fall in love with me, because he finds me so beautiful. i wouldn’t have to do anything, just be there and be admired. he is to fight life on my behalf, face all bad things that might happen. i mean when the woman is alone she copes with everything, no problem, but when she is in the company of her man, he treats her like a princess and takes responsibility for everything. she has her own career and her own field of work and everything, and she is not like that when she deals with other men. but when she is with her man, things are different. he must spoil her. this reveals an apparent contradiction between nadia’s views of women’s role in the public space and that in the privacy of the relationship. and while it doesn’t undermine her belief in women’s proper realization as professionals and independent individuals, it suggests the kernel of traditional femininity, of being a passive “princess,” at the core of her sensitivity. other women pursue the image of the princess in their polished looks and (“pseudo-luxurious”) dress; nadia doesn’t. wide jeans, running shoes and “invisible make up” are the mainstays of her appearance. but the androgynous woman is a new overlay over the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 33 nucleus of traditional sensibilities that are inculcated in the family and that presently flourish in bulgarian society. new ideas of women’s independence have not yet penetrated too deep, neither in the attitudes of those who support them, nor in the bulgarian society as a whole. the sporty, baggy and asexual clothes stand for one aspect of the beliefs of nadia and women like her: the female public presence. deeper inside and in private, they pay homage to a traditional emotional dynamic in the relationship, in which the woman is passive, fragile and being “spoiled.” this takes shape in nadia’s expectation that, for example, “men hail the taxi and pay the bill” even if the bank account is shared: an expectation for symbolic references to traditional gender relations that make the recipient feel feminine in the traditional sense of the word. conclusion in a cultural context dominated by a vision of women’s fulfillment as achievable chiefly through relationships with men, either as wealthy husbands and lovers or more commonly as heads of the family and fathers, the ideas and values of the “united colors” group constitute an alternative. their views set them apart, and their alternative dress serves as a visual marker of ideas. the renegotiation of femininity that they propose is mitigated by the persistence of ideas of traditional expressions of femininity in private and by an adherence to a conventional emotional dynamic in relationships. nevertheless, women from the “united colors” group embody one possible current of thought and lifestyle which impacts local definitions of good taste, wealth and womanhood. iskra would not be as anxious about the role her job was placing her in, if she did not see examples of what can happen to women like nadia and hristina, who are drawn into frightening androgynous zones of female empowerment. the “united colors” group serves as a “fashion other,” against which other groups may define themselves, and provides an alternative option for selfidentification of young bulgarian women. notes 1 chalga enjoys large popularity as evidenced by the existence of two specialized tv channels, a number of magazines about the industry, and enormous profits. according to a special issue about chalga of the magazine edno, sociological research indicates that between 45% and 70% of bulgarians favor the genre (peev 2005:37). one of its biggest stars, azis, is the only bulgarian performer, whose individual concert attracted enough fens to fill up the national stadium vassil levski (peev 2005). still, chalga stars and the news about them are conspicuously absent from the programs of the state television and radio stations as well as from the pages of newspapers that target readers of high social standing. chalga still has not received the recognition of entertainment in good taste. 2 serbia has its own parallel of (and perhaps an inspiration for) the bulgarian chalga known as turbo folk. 3 some fans distinguish chalga from pop-folk based on fine differences in style and music. usually, as pop-folk are classified songs and performers that deemed to be of more refined quality. a sample from the discussions on whether this distinction can be made and, if so, on what grounds can be found in web-forums, for example http://forum.mp3bg.com/index.php?showtopic=1740 (accessed 222-2006). 4 for more details on the suitcase trade, through which some of these goods are imported see konstantinov 1996 5 one needs to klechi or squat in front of them to get served, hence this slang name. references ash, j. and e. wilson, eds. 1992. chic thrills: a fashion reader. berkeley, university of california press. bourdieu, p. 1984. distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. trans. by richard nice. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. buchanan, d. 1996. “wedding musicians, political transformations, and national consciousness in bulgaria.” in retuning culture: musical changes in central and eastern europe. m. slobin (ed.). durham, duke up: 200-230. dnevnik 2006. “more than half of bulgarians enter the eu with less than 80 euros a month.” in dnevnik. january 23. sofia. droumeva, e. 2002. “civil societies.” in edno, 1(1):94-98. einhorn, b. 1993. cindarella goes to the market: citizenship, gender and women's movements in east central europe. london, verso. konstantinov, y. 1996. “patterns of reinterpretation: trader-tourism in the balkans (bulgaria) as a picaresque metaphorical enactment of posttotalitarianism,” american ethnologist 23(4): 762-782. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 34 marody, m. and a. giza-poleszczuk 2000. “changing images of identity in poland: from the self-sacrificing to the self-investing woman?” in reproducing gender: politics, publics and everyday life after socialism. s. gal and g. kligman (eds.). princeton, nj, princeton university press. mediapool. 2005. “corruption continues to be a risk for investors in bulgaria.” april, 20, 2005. electronic document, http://www.mediapool.bg/show/?storyid=9994 2&srcpos=89, accessed on march 11, 2006. miller, d. 1998. “why some things matter.” in material cultures: why some things matter (d. miller, ed.), pp. 3-21. london: university college press. mircheva, n. 2006. “the bulgarian is six times poorer than the czech.” in standart, january 9. sofia. netinfo. 2005. “a chronicle of public killings and assassinations for the period 1995-2005.” electronic document, http://news.netinfo.bg/index.phtml?tid=40&oi d=769870, accessed on october 17, 2005. peev, t. 2005. “popfolk forever.” in edno 3(37):52. todorova, m. 1993. "the bulgarian case: women's issues or feminist issues?" gender politics and post-communism: reflections from eastern europe and the former soviet union. n. funk and m. mueller (ed.). new york, routledge: 30-39. watson, p. 1997. “(anti)feminism after communism.” in who's afraid of feminism. a. oakley and j. mitchell (eds.). london, hamish hamilton: 144-161. allen typewritten text © 2006 elitza ranova all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 99 conference report oral history and (post)socialist societies freiburg, germany november 3-5, 2005 anselma gallimat university of newcastle, uk the conference ‘oral history and (post)socialist societies’ took place in the conference house wiesneck by freiburg, germany, between 3rd and 5th november 2005. the conference was organised by anke stephan from the university of munich and julia obertreis from the university of freiburg and sponsored by the zeit stiftung and the fritz thyssen stiftung. conference languages were german and english and the organisers arranged simultaneous translation which was appreciated by all attendants. the conference aimed at presenting the wide spectrum of current oral history research and at exploring a number of specific methodological questions. its overall question was how oral history could contribute to the study of socialist and postsocialist situations. anke stephan and julia obertreis opened the discussions on thursday with an overview of current oral history projects and particular methodological questions which anke stephan summarised as the following: the question of interviewing techniques and analysis, memory in research and the construction of identity. these issues were recurrent themes which linked all five panels. each panel consisted of five paper presentations, a commentary and discussion. the papers addressed a wide range of issues drawing on research in a number of central european countries and the former soviet union. the first session on thursday concerned the ‘political transition, construction of identity and current debates about the past’. on friday two parallel sessions took place, one focusing on ‘the legacy of emancipation “from above”: female experience and gender in socialism and postsocialism’ and the other on ‘competing histories: public and private remembering, regional and national identities’. during the afternoon participants considered the question of ‘victims and perpetrators: experiences in repressive systems’. saturday was dedicated to the topic of ‘everyday life in socialism – lee-ways in dictatorships’. this was followed by a summary provided by the two organisers and the final discussion. the key-note address by alexander von plato opened the conference by asking for a comparison between dealing with the nationalsocialist past in germany and dealing with the stalinist past in the former soviet union. von plato pointed out that the particular interest of oral history was the subjective reworking of such transitions since human experience was about establishing coherence. there is no ‘zero hour’ in people’s heads, von plato reminded the participants. he then raised a number of questions which foreshadowed the following discussions: the question of generation and generational self-perception; the question of continuity and rupture in transitions and their meaning for processes of transformation; the question of comparability of different ways of ‘re-working’ a difficult past. sidonia grama then presented the first paper on ‘features of the collective memory of the romanian revolution from december 1989’. her paper was concerned with the development of collective memory exploring how testimonies of the revolution had changed during the 15 years since the event. this she related to methodological questions, asking what kind of stories might be triggered by the interview situation. kobi kabalek then presented his research on ‘young eastern german’s perceptions of national socialism’ exploring how different historical events, exposure to different teachings about national socialism and family background might affect young people’s narratives about this period. his paper followed the question of collective memory by looking at history and the relation between vernacular narratives about historical times and personal memories. christien musse explored ‘processes of identity formation in elderly people in leipzig and the legacy of the gdr’ looking at recurrent themes and stories which furthered communal identity and a sense of coherence for her interviewees in eastern germany. meike wulf’s paper on ‘history and counter-memories in post-soviet estonia’ brought the questions of memory, history and identity together. wulf explored life-story interviews with estonian anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 100 historians looking in particular at the individual presentation of history, the existence of counternarratives due to surveillance, and national identity. the commentary provided by ulrike jureit raised a number of questions concerning the issues discussed. she asked, for example, about the appropriate time to research biographical memories, reminding the participants that events will be evaluated in light of later experiences. this, she argued, meant that ‘fresh memories’ were not necessarily more authentic than events that were later recalled. she highlighted the fact that historical ruptures needed to be portrayed as meaningful in order to support the formation of personal identity. jureit also asked about the important relation between collective and individual memory, another point that was discussed repeatedly during the next days. topics mentioned during the ensuing discussion included the following: the significance of generations and age-cohorts for particular kinds of memory and related identity, the role of gender in this respect, and the interview situation as introduced by grama. the panel on gender in (post)socialism followed one of these issues by considering women’s memory and experience in particular. julia gradskova discussed how women’s stories about beauty during maternity could help us understand soviet social history with regard to the 1930-1960s. she argued that personal memory is influenced by collective practices of remembering and showed how these stories revealed discourses about motherhood and the ‘equality of looks,’ whilst pointing to considerable differentiation within the ‘soviet generation’, a fact that is often overlooked. oksana kis explored the role of ethnicity and historical experience in women’s perceptions of the soviet regime in the ukraine. her paper considered two factors which are important in the postsocialist context, but focused on female informants. anna tikhmorova considered how clothes and their consumption served as a form of distinction in 19601980, comparing the opinions and habits of educated women in the gdr and the soviet union. both papers included a comparative perspective and related to the question of regional variations in the experiences of socialism. michaela potancokova then discussed how slovak women talk about their experiences of childbearing under state socialism. her paper was aptly titled: ‘reproductive histories’ relating these personal stories to aspects of soviet social history. dilyana ivanova followed this theme by looking at women’s social role in her paper entitled, ‘observations on the changes of women’s social roles in one industrial community in bulgaria’. her paper introduced a historical comparison of socialist and postsocialist times. the commentary by natalie stegman queried two papers’ conclusion that women’s stories often subverted official narratives. she asked whether this might be due to the interview setting and a lack of anthropological distance: alternatively, she asked, whether there were indeed particular female traditions of telling which enabled alternative memories. she also queried the selected topics of the papers, which clearly focused on women’s domains. stegman raised the important point of whether women’s memories were always gendered or whether they sometimes might not be and encouraged further studies of the impact of official versions of gender on individuals’ experiences. the parallel panel on public and private remembering opened with silvija kavcic’s paper on ‘collective and private memories of slovenian survivors of the women’s concentration camp in ravensbrueck’. her paper illustrated how masternarratives in socialist slovenia formed individual accounts about life in the concentration camp. kavcic also briefly discussed whether and how recent revisions of history in slovenia may have impacted personal narratives. ekaterina melnikova went on to talk about the adaptations of russian migrants in the formerly finish territory of karelia. her paper showed vividly how russian and finnish histories intertwine in the karelian landscape, facilitating the development of social ties between the two nations here. volha shatalava followed by discussing how ‘oral history (is used) as a resource in the construction of national history and identity in belarussia’. her paper started with the argument that belorussia is often considered to lack national identity and to orient itself toward russia. her exploration of life-stories therefore focused on indicators of identity and the presentation and evaluation of soviet union time in memory. marianne kamp continued this theme of the relation between local culture and socialist structures with regard to uzbeks’ experiences of collectivisation. her paper, entitled ‘uzbek and socialist lives on the collective farm’, considered how uzbek cultural traditions intertwine with the socialist organisation of life on collectively organised farms. kamp’s presentation proved the great impact of local culture and history on socialist structures and on the individual experience of socialism. eva maeder then presented the life-history of a women belonging to a particular religious group of ‘old believers’ in the baikal discussing ‘religious identity’. her detailed analysis highlighted how the narrator draws heavily on biblical stories and christian myth to present and explain aspects of her life. the paper thus highlighted another resource that can be used in the construction of individual life-stories. daniela koleva then anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 101 provided a thoughtful commentary which raised a number of important questions: whether oral history in (post)socialism is about ‘giving voice,’ asking the participants to reflect upon whose voice they listen to and encouraging the participants to challenge hegemonic discourses; who remembers and who has the right to memory; the shape of the past in the present. during the discussion alexander von plato picked up this discussion and insisted that studies of recent history should also take the longer historical perspective into account. another important topic of the discussion was the question of whether socialist discourses were challenged by counter-narratives, or rather adapted in locally meaningful ways. the following panel on ‘victims and perpetrators’ began with anselma gallinat’s paper on ‘life-stories in interviews and in interaction,’ which explored how former political prisoners of the gdr present their life-stories in different social contexts. her paper argued that the standard ‘victim and survivor story’ is restrictive, leading to problems in situations where the story might be contested by listeners. alexey golubev moved the question of trauma from the personal to the communal level in his discussion of the ‘re-membering and reevaluating of shameful experiences relating to collaboration with the secret police in the post-war soviet union’. golubev argued that such experiences could be considered as ‘historical trauma’ and explored four strategies of dealing with such trauma. smaranda vultur stayed with the secret police, considering the texts written by the securitate and the more recent oral testimonies of victims. her paper enquired into the potential for comparison between these two fundamentally different yet related texts. james mark then moved to examine the perpetrator’s perspective by exploring how communist party members explained their lives. he drew on material from poland, hungary and czecheslovakia, exploring a range of question with regard to the relation between master-narratives and individual accounts, looking at how the individual narrator dealt with negative experiences of socialism in this context, for example. mark also highlighted apparent differences between the three countries. patricie hanzlova explored ‘czech germans’ oral histories in czecheslovakia’ with regard to the time after the second world war and the communist era. her paper discussed how germanness is socially produced and then expressed in individual narratives, looking at the role of events, practices, social networks and institutional structures. hanzlova related her analysis to the wider official and historical discourse during socialism and after. the commentary by mary beth stein drew the different themes together with a focus on a central methodological question: the interviews’ orality. whilst the last panel showed what kind of socialist and local traditions underpin (post)socialist experiences and discourses, stein now asked what kind of postsocialist realities might underpin these narrations. this led to a discussion about the performance of life-stories in different contexts and the question of whether there is something like a more or less fixed individual meta-narrative. the panel on ‘everyday life in socialism and lee-ways’ opened with simina radu-bucurenci’s contribution, which explored how people talked about queuing in narratives about the 1980s in bucharest. her discussion showed how these narratives provide information about social life and about aspects of the narrators’ identity with regard to gender, profession and age. jana noskova then talked about the dissidents’ ghetto as the everyday life of a particular group of people in the czech republic and explored ‘the social construction’ of this reality. she highlighted several aspects, such as dissidents’ isolation from the wider society but also their community, which led to the ghetto’s ‘ambivalent character’. kirsti joesalu’s paper concerned the ‘right to happiness’ and explored memories of everyday life in soviet and post-soviet estonia. joesalu used both biographical interviews and written stories to investigate how the soviet idea of equality is presented as the question of happiness in individual accounts. tamas kanyo then returned the discussion to autonomous groups, exploring civil society in the hungarian republic. focusing on two particular groups, he showed how the younger generation was lacking a ‘capital of anxiety’ which was prevalent amongst the older generation. he also explored the control mechanism in place within the groups and some factors leading their dissolution. blanka koffer dealt with yet another particular group; her paper examined the socialist everyday experience of work in the arts and humanities, focusing on the ethnology in the gdr. koffer’s paper explored instances of decision-making in individual narratives with regard to the role of master-narratives and eigensinn [one’s own will]. her discussion related to the question of analysis with regard to the use of techniques such as discourse analysis, network analysis and the comparison of open interviews. dorothee wierling’s commentary considered the questions raised by these papers with regard to a theoretical point about narrative. she highlighted the notion of narrative scripts. according to her analysis, there are always several scripts, particularly so in socialism. a single script can never accommodate all the experiences of an individual – this requires several scripts. wierling pointed to the different levels on which historical narratives function: anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 102 personal memories, collective memories of the narrative community and official master-narratives (historical politics). wierling then urged the attendees to move beyond dominant scripts in their interviews using topically centred life-stories. the final address by obertreis and stephan provided a summary of some of the main points that had been raised during the conference. stephan began by considering the value of oral history research for history, arguing that it facilitated insights into topics such as social life and the everyday. she also reviewed the importance of context for narrative, showing how some papers considered the immediate narrative context whilst others explored the wider discourses that impinge upon individual stories. stephan then considered structures of communication, arguing that these become visible in oral histories and are of great importance in the (post)socialist context. obertreis followed on from there, highlighting the question of the particular character of orality in this context which manifests itself in the close relation between official and inofficial/counter discourses. obertreis asked whether this is indeed an overarching phenomenon. she also raised the question of the other close relation, the one between socialist and postsocialist discourses. it seemed that evaluations in post-socialism are often based on turning socialist categories on their head, whilst structures and themes such as the ‘collective’ prevailed as points of reference. obertreis returned to the topic of the interview highlighting how some discussants had combined interviews with ethnography to highlight the context-dependency of narratives. the ensuing discussion explored a number of contentious points. there was the question of whether oral history could serve research into factual information. in this respect the difference and relation between history and memory was debated. a further point was the extent to which official socialist discourses may impact past and present selfperception and worldviews. a discussant also noted quite rightly that we ought to take care that we do not to implant our own stereotypes onto the research setting, which remains a danger in the strongly politicised context of (post)socialism. obertreis also correctly highlighted the fact that the discussants, who came from a large number of different countries, had found a shared scholarly language to exchange and debate their views. the conference also benefited from its inter-disciplinary audience, which allowed a range of perspectives on methodology in oral history and narrative theory, and from the mix of experience: young scholars, postgraduate students and renowned academics who contributed equally to the discussions. microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 2 selling oneself, selling the nation: translating slovaks for the eyes of europe jonathan larson university of michigan © 2002 jonathan larson all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. an important element of post-1989 projects of “transitioning” eastern europe is socialization to new, western-oriented practices and the construction of new kinds of persons. such practices might include learning how to consume “appropriately” (berdahl 1999), engaging in new forms of political participation (verdery 1996), reorienting how one conducts scientific research (replika: hungarian social science quarterly 1996), and taking up new ways of conducting business (wedel 1998). as i intend to demonstrate, it also demands particular skills of representation, of understanding oneself as a certain kind of subject and projecting a corresponding appropriate image into interactions with others. moreover, learning such skills is as much about resituating one’s national identity as it is one’s person. in june 2001 i attended a workshop in writing curriculum vitaes that a slovak ngo held in the public library of the city of martin. one stated reason for such a session was the new economy of post-socialist east central europe: the existence of new kinds of employers, foreign and domestic, and the requirement they allegedly have of new linguistic genres for how employment seekers should represent themselves on the job market. using tools of linguistic anthropology, i will analyze this instruction in writing a cv on two semiotic and pragmatic levels. first, in the act of representation described in this paper, it is supposed to translate “eastern european” personhood into “western” terms. the cv is a textual object that should facilitate new practices of the labor market particularly through semiosis, representing persons and even the nation iconically to diverse audiences. however, the construction of new individual subjects cannot occur without a realignment of the social relations in which those subjects are embedded. the cv thus acts in a second way of representing those social relations. it constructs new kinds of personhood through referential, pragmatic, and metapragmatic rearrangements of the individual’s relations to past events and other actors. western-style cvs are supposed to “map” and “translate” both slovak individuals and the nation into terms that western investors or slovak adherents to neo-liberal ideologies can comprehend. this act is an important part of creating faith and trust, critical components of these ideologies. anthropologist elizabeth dunn has called the production of other types of texts, accounts and audits, “‘rituals of verification,‘ tools that produce comfort (for investors, the polity, or the market) rather than critique" (dunn 1999:43). the nationed-ness of those who engage with slovak cvs is also critical to this paper. the new cv, as discursively constructed in the workshop, represents a neoliberal performance of an embedded nation. my claim here is identical to one that michael kennedy has made about businessmen in poland: their espousal of (neo)liberal ideology constructs the nation while it avoids naming it, and does so in terms of individual behavior. increased efficiency of individual workplace behavior is not only supposed to enrich oneself, but also the nation (kennedy 1999). while in this paper i am not able to explore in great depth such a link between slovak attitudes toward work and the nation, i can note here that a program i viewed on slovak national television in the summer of 2000 argued in exactly these terms. in the discursive case study of this paper, marketing oneself is marketing the nation; mapping and translating slovak personhood into western terms helps the individual actor in the labor marketplace while it contributes to an image of a slovak nation as mappable, translatable, and ultimately worthy of trust in investment. i do not have time to go into issues of reception and uptake, but point out situated terms in which slovak persons, and the nation, jen typewritten text 37 volume 20, number 2 are currently constructed discursively in relation to europe, america, and the west. the instructor of the workshop, whom i will call páni migašová, opened by citing the need for such a session because most secondary schools still teach methods of cv writing that are old in comparison to developed (“rozvinuté“) countries. a first important lesson is that in today’s era “everything is based on advertising” (všetko je založené na reklame). her statement creates a vocabulary to articulate this new genre. this new metalanguage of the cv in slovakia that refers to advertising is one that indexes changes in social fields such as business, in notions of meritocracy, and in local ideologies of language that impart knowledge of english with social capital. first, páni migašová advertised and described the event as a “trening” or “workshop,” a new class of educational event grounded in neo-liberalism. it is up to the guests to “sell themselves” on the job market. one has to learn how to “evaluate oneself as a product” (zhodnotiť sam seba ako produkt). everything is a competition in which all have an equal chance, but only the best are taken. writing a cv is a skill of “advertising” (reklama) and “selfpresentation” (sebapresentácia) that is democratically available to all (cf. benakova 2000:4). second, knowledge of english is crucial social capital. the“trening“ and its corresponding brochure made heavy use of english vocabulary even alongside slovak equivalents: “fact sheet,” “job objective,” and “cover letter.” more particularly, the brochure provided mock cvs in english of americans in ohio and connecticut as samples, followed by slovak equivalents. the logic of this presentation is clear: one should learn how to translate the life experience of a slovak into american or “western” terms. english catalyzes this process. this frame of neo-liberalism sets terms for a subsequent reconfiguration of slovakia and slovaks in time and space. páni migašová advised the group not to write whether one is from a “robotnická rodina” (working-class family). this reference to an important piece of personal data in the socialist era showed how the instructor sought to construct the new cv and the new capitalist man in relation to the past. páni migašová’s recommendation reflects ideologies of the new labor order. one’s social affiliations of age cohort, place, and family background no longer visibly matter on the cv. they no longer matter because of how ideologies of the transition reorganize space and time in the creation of new national bodies and their subjects. the world outside of slovakia does not evaluate potential employees by such criteria, and that world is the world that slovakia will become. in similar fashion, the instructor asserted that “vonku vo svete” (outside in the world) one’s education is an on-going process. therefore participants should dedicate space on their cvs to education, as “that era is also coming to slovakia” (táto doba pride aj na slovensko). “outside” or “the west” represents an evolutionary point in time that slovakia is soon to reach. this particular construction of space also collapses it: as the sample cvs in the brochure are all american (courtesy of the peace corps employee who assisted its construction), “outside” and “the west” melts into “america.” the form that one uses for the cv also figures in this reconfiguration of national space. cvs (under socialism as well) contain a pressure toward standardization of form to facilitate standardized translation of subjects for decisions in human resources. thus, while páni migašová told participants of the workshop that the cv is supposed to reflect an individual’s unique abilities, the means for the construction of this textual representation themselves draw on preexisting texts (bauman and briggs 1990; silverstein and urban 1996). organization of information in the cv follows guidelines of captions, sequence, and syntactic and lexical presentation that others have used and that a reader expects to see: these characteristics are what make a cv recognizable as a cv. as i have already demonstrated, the workshop suggests that the text artifacts of the genre of the cv in which slovak authors should embed their own textual representations of self are american. thus, slovaks translate these representations of themselves into american textual regimes as they are supposed to sort slovak subjectivities into american categories of personhood, in turn re-contextualized as “slovak.” the presentation of how to write a cv that i discuss here also standardized the national and transnational communities of expertise in which these texts circulate. the categories that the brochure posits as examples of workplaces are “administration,” “management,” and “communication.” to speak to the community of “administration,” one should use in the cv verbs such as “monitor,” “lead,” “coordinate,” “organize,” and “be in the know.” for “management” one should use “coordinate,” “direct,” “motivate,” “organize,” and “plan.” the jen typewritten text 38 volume 20, number 2 construction of these communities based on occupational divisions of labor, and the creation of labels for the skills that such communities desire standardizes networks of labor and language use. neither differences between slovak, american, and “western” administrators, managers, advertising agents, etc. are supposed to exist nor are differences among them within respective national bodies. another way the new cv semiotically and pragmatically reorganizes space and time is in terms of more immediate social relations. páni migašová noted in the attempts of workshop participants to construct their own cvs that they paid too much attention to “wheres” and “whens” and not enough to “whats.” i argue that many “whats” of claimed accomplishments depend more than “wheres” or “whens” on the positionality and cultural background of the observer. making individual, agentive claims about “whats” is only possible by erasing the social relations that were a part of those events. páni migašová asked students questions such as “what were your responsibilities?” “what leading positions have you held?” “did your employer take any of your suggestions?” “everything that you do” can go into your cv, including temporary work, clubs, and professional associations. this career should be linearly mappable and predictable. the workshop’s brochure opens with a remark of how the cv itself “speaks” like an advertisement: “’invite me to an interview because i am worth your investment of time in me. on the basis of what i have demonstrated in the past, i am a prospective employee for your company into the future” (benakova 2000:4). this predictability, of course, turns on notions of transparency and human agency, that the individual really is representable on paper in her own words, and that an individual’s lifecourse is subject to acts of will. thus, one should build into the cv a list of tasks approached and completed: “recommendation and implementation of an educational program for new employees of the organization” “creation and introduction of a new system of communication for the firm with computer networking” (benakova 2000:13) these tasks appear as events isolated in time and space from ongoing social processes and actors. the separation is a pure heuristic (although not posited as such) that is both subjective and embedded in specific cultural assumptions about individual agency: the individual author of the cv makes claims on the boundedness and resolution of these tasks that only certain notions of factuality can support. in sum, the training session constructed a new basis for personhood semiotically in a variety of ways. first, it grounded the cv as an agent of a new era, a meritocratic age in which individuals must aggressively sell themselves. english is an important resource for translating “eastern” personhood into “western” terms. the new cv makes a break with socialism in content and form. it reconfigures in national time and space both social relations and the position of the individual in social action. it justifies neo-liberal ideologies of transparency that claim that individuals, and therefore societies, can be mapped and translated in standardized, western terms. it thereby seeks to instill both slovaks and western investors with a faith that slovakia is in fact on a path to joining europe or the “normal” countries. these last comments of course beg further questions of what is made transparent or perhaps obfuscated, to whom, and with what consequences. how are current social relations and persons really not as represented in the form of the cv discussed here and what problems or opportunities does this disjuncture present? this paper did not consider such questions of reception. i have tried instead to locate one particular discursive construction of personhood and the nation within a broader trend of processes in post-socialist europe. if some aspects of this discourse do not sound particularly unique to that milieu, that is partly my goal. in an anthropological tradition of “familiarizing the foreign” and “de-familiarizing the familiar,” i seek to throw the analyst’s gaze back upon the west, and raise questions of who or what constructs the categories that are a model for “integrating” eastern europe. note thanks to terry woronov, alaina lemon, and the seminar “monographs in the ethnography of speaking,” fall 2001 at the university of michigan for early feedback. the author thanks as well the participants of the soyuz symposium for their comments, many of which helped with work on a longer version of this paper that has been submitted for publication to the journal of linguistic anthropology. the longer version includes comparative images of cvs that may be of interest to readers of this shorter, conference piece. jen typewritten text 39 volume 20, number 2 references bauman, richard, and charles l. briggs 1990. poetics and performance as critical perspectives on language and social life. annual review of anthropology 19:5988. beňaková, nora 2000. ako napisať životopis a sprievodný líst. bratislava: saiascts. berdahl, daphne 1999. where the world ended: re-unification and identity in the german borderland. berkeley, ca: university of california press. dunn, elizabeth 1999. accounting for change: accounting, finance,and changing methods of economic regulation in postsocialist eastern europe: unpublished manuscript. kennedy, michael d. 1999. the labilities of liberalism and nationalism after communism: polish businessmen in the articulation of the nation. in intellectuals and the articulation of the nation. r. g. suny and m. d. kennedy, eds. pp. 345-378. ann arbor: university of michigan press. replika: hungarian social science quarterly 1996 colonization or partnership? eastern europe and western social sciences. silverstein, michael, and greg urban 1996. natural histories of discourse. chicago: university of chicago press. verdery, katherine 1996.what was socialism, and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. wedel, janine r. 1998. collision and collusion: the strange case of western aid to eastern europe, 1989-1998. new york: st. martin's press. jen typewritten text 40 sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 96 book review the minority of minorites: the human and political rights of gypsies in hungary [kisebbségek kisebbsége: a magyarországi cigányok emberi és politikai jogai]. neményi mária and szalai júlia, editors, 2005. budapest: új mandátum könyvkiadó. pp. 584. (paper). david boromisza-habashi university of massachusetts, amherst a few years ago, while working as a volunteer at a roma ngo operating in budapest, hungary i developed a keen sense of a paradox that stifled the enthusiasm of my roma and non-roma coworkers. regardless of how many illustrious sponsors our ngo managed to convince of the worthiness of our cause (to create and run an office that would circulate information about funding opportunities available to roma communities) we felt entirely convinced that our efforts are not likely to put a dent in the massive social disadvantage of those we were serving. our feeling of collective insecurity was not an isolated phenomenon but a common experience among roma activists who i came into contact with in the course of my work. the sixteen studies in this hefty volume, edited by two of hungary’s most influential sociologists, help readers fathom the social, institutional and political dynamics that perpetuate the disadvantage of hungarian roma and discourage activism that seeks to serve their emancipation. but the volume is designed to do more than describe the social relations creating disadvantage. the authors share a dual political commitment. on the one hand, they characterize the social relations they are describing as a relationship between oppressors and oppressed. a strong critical voice characterizes this book from the first pages of the introductory essay written by a leading roma radical, zsigó jenő, a political figure who has been a seminal actor in the roma radical movement since its inception during the last years of hungarian state socialism. the title of zsigó’s essay sets the agenda of minority of minorities: “to unearth and identify the direct system of oppressions” (p. 7). on the other hand, most contributors seem to endorse the argument that another principal political aim of critical social research ought to be to provide roma intellectuals with a vocabulary that will allow them to voice the collective concerns of the roma in hungary. this twofold political commitment lends this volume its uniqueness among the wealth of hungarian sociological and anthropological scholarship on the roma and their plight. cultural anthropologists may take an interest in minority of minorities because the contributors provide fine-grained sociological analyses of structural properties of hungarian society that impede the realization of the human and political rights of the roma and effective roma representation in general. the volume is organized into three parts. the six studies in the first part discuss the interaction of hungarian roma and state institutions. szalai júlia examines the hungarian welfare system that enables local self-governments to use the system as a disciplinary device against impoverished roma. by creating a distinction between those in need due to ‘external circumstance’ and ‘irresponsible’ subjects the bureaucratic system of self-governments favor the non-roma who can provide paperwork of previous employment and lost possessions, whereas the chronically unemployed and dispossessed roma are unable to impress bureaucrats and thus receive either minimal benefits or fall out of the welfare system entirely. in two separate studies, lukács györgy róbert and tardos katalin show how employment programs sponsored by the hungarian state, international ngos and the eu fail to benefit unemployed roma by not providing them with the means for upward mobility. neményi mária engages the discrimination against hungarian roma in the healthcare system and finds that whereas healthcare professionals treat the non-roma as individual cases they perceive the roma in an ethnic frame and thus relate to them in a more critical and often insulting manner. zolnay jános exposes the contradiction at the heart of the hungarian liberal education policy: a decentralized educational system cannot accommodate the directives of the ministry of education that call for the desegregation of hungarian classrooms and the unconditional inclusion of roma students. coauthored by kende anna and neményi mária, the final study in the first part of the book explores how roma students end up in special education classes in spite of standardized anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 97 testing. although roma students do well on these tests, educational consultants often advise roma parents to send them to special education classes where the majority of the students are already roma because of the perception that roma children cannot do well in classes where the majority of the students are non-roma, and roma parents don’t have the means to support their children well enough to keep up with non-roma peers. part two of the volume discusses representations of roma across a variety of public discourses. dupcsik csaba establishes a typology of hungarian academic approaches to the roma based on past studies’ political and methodological dimensions. terestyéni tamás surveys high school history and social studies textbooks and concludes that roma related content reinforces anti-roma sentiments instead of dismantling them. in the study that contains the most praise for the status quo, messing vera commends hungarian media for their recent tendency toward providing a balanced view of political controversies that play out between roma and non-roma. erős ferenc argues for the reformulation of the basic assumptions of social psychological research on prejudice in order to gauge anti-roma and anti-semitic attitudes that hide behind the façade of political correctness. kende anna’s study analyzes roma university students’ career narratives and concludes that students’ career choices are shaped by their families’ attitudes toward roma identity and education. the last part of this volume examines the relationship between the roma and hungarian political establishment. majtényi balázs and majtényi györgy claim it is up to the hungarian government whether the roma will identify against the majority population in the light of past atrocities or with it as a minority population of equal rights. wizner balázs proffers a sobering overview of hungarian fiscal policy that instead of channeling money to roma initiatives spends billions of forints on misconceived government programs. molnár emília introduces the reader to the history of roma mobilization in the town of békés and shows how the lively roma public sphere of the town is dominated by roma political figures socialized within the assimilationist discourse of state socialism. burka viktória, vida judith and wizner balázs examine another heritage of state socialism that survived the 1989 regime change, a tendency among the roma of szalakóta, hungary to use external funding for the benefit of small interest groups and not to build stronger communal political alliances. finally, vajda róza notes a positive shift in the political discourse of hungarian roma and non-roma decision-makers from integrationist political ideals toward the recognition of and a need for autonomous roma political voices. the strength of minority of minorities, the detailed analyses of the structural disadvantage of the roma, also becomes its weakness. the image of the roma as social agents presented by the authors is a static one, a portrait of hungarian roma locked in the reluctant but stifling embrace of the state and the majority society. in this portrait, human behavior appears to be pre-determined to the degree that any sense of roma agency suddenly seems an illusion to the reader. the authors address only a few instances of local manifestations of roma agency and when they do they never fail to point out that these isolated efforts for emancipation mainly feed into existing structures. while being aware that the volume’s express intention is to unearth oppressive structures i was hoping that this politically committed volume would also inform its audience about successful strategies of penetrating and subverting existing structures of power. it is true that the volume marks a significant departure from academic discourses of roma otherness and it does provide glimpses of roma using existing structures to their own benefit. nevertheless, the volume left me with a desire for scholarly accounts of roma agency, and especially the type of agency built on what vermeersch (2005) calls the cognitive turn in roma activism, a turn away from essentialist views of roma cultural identity toward the strategic, situational use of roma identity for the political purpose of roma emancipation. the excellent scholarship in minority of minorities sets the stage for anthropological studies of roma agency by showing what activists who strive for the emancipation of the roma are up against. reference vermeersch, peter. 2005. marginality, advocacy, and the ambiguities of multiculturalism: notes on romani activism in central europe. global studies in culture and power 12, 451-478. microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 81 refugees as harbingers of political change in serbia1 andrei simić university of southern california the recent wars of secession in former yugoslavia have resulted in the most massive movement of refugees in europe since world war ii. of all of the republics of former yugoslavia, it was in serbia and montenegro (then still united in the rump federal republic of yugoslavia) that the largest number took refuge. a census conducted in april through june of 1996 showed that there were 537,939 refugees in serbia and 28,338 in montenegro (united nations high commissioner for refugees (1996:16). in 1997, the ministry of information of the republic of serbia estimated that there were about 490,000 refugees in serbia; of these, 185,000 were from the bosnian and croatian federation,2 49,000 were from republika srpska, and 256,000 were from croatia, the vast majority of whom were serbs (62-63). while a number of refugees have returned to their homes, moved to republika srpska, migrated abroad, or simply are no longer counted, others have been added to their ranks by the more recent exodus of serbs, romi, gorani, turks, and others from kosovo metohija3 subsequent to the nato attack on serbia in 1999. current estimates judge the number of refugees and other displaced persons in serbia to be between 500,000 and 600,000 (professor dušan drljača, ethnographic institute, serbian academy of sciences and arts and miodrag božović, ministry for diaspora, belgrade: personal communications, june 2006). these refugees followed in the footsteps of those who had fled to serbia from kosovo, bosniahercegovina, and croatia during and following world war ii, and with whom they shared similar experiences, and to whom many were connected by ties of kinship and other personal relationships. regardless of the approximate nature of the above-cited figures, the number of refugees is surely quite large and very significant given serbia’s population (without kosovo metohija) of less than 8,000,000.4 the presence of hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons in an economically depressed and politically unstable country evokes a number of questions related to the internal stability of serbia, the direction of political change, and the ramifications for serbian relations with america and the west. in this essay, i will focus on these and other related topics as viewed through the eyes of serbian refugees i interviewed, and with many of whom i interacted informally on numerous occasions in purely social settings during the summers of 2002, 2005, and 2006. the impressions gained from these contacts were further strengthened by the many conversations i had with academics, journalists, and government officials,5 as well as with friends, relatives, and people whom i met spontaneously in the course of everyday life. in addition, i regularly reviewed the serbian press (politika, večernje novosti, danas, vesti and blic) for reports and commentaries related to this study. in doing so, i sought to become familiar with sources which were contributing to the views of my informants, as well as to those of the serbian public in general. the sample for this study consisted of 81 refugees living in belgrade and in indjija and kikinda (in vojvodina). of these, 34 were from bosnia-hercegovina, 41 from croatia (lika, kordun, and slavonia) 4 from kosovo, and 2 from sandžak. in addition, 17 serbian returnees (povratnici) in two families were visited in 2002 and 2005 in the village of kolarić in the kordun region of croatia. also, in 2002, a croatian returnee was serendipitously interviewed in the village of drenov klanac in the croatian province of lika (croatia), a village which we thought to be totally depopulated at that time. informants were located in a number of ways: through my wife’s and my own relatives who were themselves refugees, at a refugee camp in belgrade, through introductions by friends, and as the result of fortuitous meetings. even though the sample is neither random nor significantly large, the extrapolation of the results to a much larger population seems justified by the unusually high degree of unanimity of responses. also, i believe that the respondents were extremely open in describing their experiences and expressing their views because my wife and i were perceived primarily as “serbs from america,” rather than as generic americans. moreover, a number of informants were contacted during all three summers, and their responses were not only consistent over anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 82 time, but also exhibited a strengthening of the views originally expressed. based on the narratives of those interviewed, it is clear that they had arrived at their opinions and concomitant political views in a number of mutually strengthening and reaffirming ways. the basic foundation of their political orientation is undoubtedly their own negative experiences during and following the recent civil wars. these experiences are perceptually frozen in time, and are told and retold with an immediacy as if they had occurred yesterday. at the same time, they are also generalized within the context of serbian history as a whole. thus, their personal sagas are not simply understood as a series of unique events, but rather are linked conceptually to their own parents’ experiences and even to those of distant, sometimes apocryphal ancestors. in this regard, analogies were particularly drawn to the persecution of the serbs by croats and bosnian moslems during ww ii in the pro-nazi independent state of croatia (nezavisna država hrvatska). it is significant that refugees, although resettled in many different locations, nevertheless have maintained intense networks of communication and personal contact with others from their places of origin. these networks have the effect of creating a kind of consensus of belief and opinion. this phenomenon has also been noted by svrdlin among serbian refugees from the hercegovinian village of žitomislić6 (2004: 243): in 1992, our villagers dispersed in all directions.... to belgrade and other cities....what they had in common was the need to learn as much as possible about each other....thus, from the very beginning, they knew everything about each other....they spent their last money for telephone calls, and for travel to find out how others were getting along. (my translation) another profound influence is the media. opinions are continually validated and strengthened by reports and commentaries on radio, television, and especially in the press. of particular impact is the reporting of what may be termed “major reaffirmative events.” one example, which caused widespread indignation and commentary in serbia, was the failure of serbian president boris tadić, who had attended the july 11, 2005 commemoration in srebrenica of the tenth anniversary of the alleged serbian massacre of moslems, to attend on the following day the commemoration in bratunac of serbian victims of convicted moslem war criminal, naser orić. tadić further inflamed public opinion by sending a wreath with an inscription in latin characters rather than in the serbian cyrillic alphabet (cf. politika 7/9, 7/11, and 7/13/2005). directly related to the events in srebrenica, and even more negatively perceived as anti-serbian bias, was the decision of the hague tribunal to sentence naser orić, a man whom the serbs have accused of responsibility for the destruction of more than 100 serbian villages and the killing of several thousand serbian peasants in the countryside around srebrenica, to only two years imprisonment, he was released for time served, and received a hero’s welcome on his return to sarajevo (politika 7/1/2006a). while such highly publicized occurrences have an immediate, dramatic impact on the political consciousness of both refugees and the serbian public in general, a myriad of less sensational reports appearing almost daily in the press have a similar, though cumulative effect. for refugees, news related to their places of origin is of particular interest, and very influential in forming their largely negative decisions about repatriation. for instance, there is frequent mention in the press of difficulties and discrimination which serbs are encountering in croatia, and the bosnian federation. similarly, articles appear with even greater frequency regarding violence against serbs and the destruction of serbian churches and other property in kosovo metohija. refugees and political change there are strong indications that while serbian public opinion is sharply divided between those favorably oriented toward the west and those who are often labeled as traditionalists or ultra-nationalists,7 the latter group has been steadily gaining ground over the past several years. for instance, on june 25, 2005, in a poll conducted by belgrade tv, 63% of respondents expressed opposition to president boris tadić’s “implicit recognition of serbia’s guilt” by attending the commemoration of the srebrenica massacre. more recently, a poll of 2,000 respondents taken in may, 2006 by medijum galop showed a strong shift in favor of the nationalistic, anti-western srpska radikalna stranka (srs) which received support from 40.2% of those polled in contrast to president tadić’s demokratska stranka which garnered anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 83 only 21.1% (politika 6/9/2006a). this same survey also identified tomislav nikolić of the srs as serbia’s most popular politician. moreover, there are strong indications that political apathy among voters may result in the srs winning 50% of parliamentary seats, which is described in politika (6/10/2006b) as a “mandate.” the participants in this study have clearly articulated opinions very similar to those of that segment of the serbian population which supports the srs and other anti-western parties. furthermore, many serbs with whom i spoke who are not supporters of the srs, while voicing many of the same resentments against the west and the current serbian leadership, nevertheless favored reconciliation with europe and america, believing that only in this way could a more normal and prosperous life be achieved. the widespread antagonism which i observed among serbs toward america and the west was frequently expressed in feelings of betrayal by former allies on whose side the serbs fought in two world wars, and whom they had previously idealized. this persuasion is continually substantiated and reinforced by events which are reported on an almost daily basis in the media. in the following discussion, i will attempt to identify and contextualize these influences. it should be noted that the viewpoints which i attribute to my informants represent for the most part a general consensus except when statements and/or opinions are ascribed to specific individuals. america as an abstraction anti-american stereotypes were quite abstract since few of the informants had any significant contact with americans, and only a few had any working knowledge of english. only four informants had visited the united states for brief visits with relatives. however, refugee children were studying english as their preferred foreign language. significantly, a distinction was made between american foreign policy and leadership, on the one hand, and “ordinary americans” (obični amerikanci), on the other. american popular culture still held considerable appeal among the young, and contributed to a romanticized vision of american life. there was also a widely held belief that america was a land of comfort and opportunity. in contrast to these positive images, a number of informants stated that life in america focused exclusively on money, and that people had little time for “social life and friends.” several commented that america really didn’t have a true democracy because “the rich were in control of everything.” the breakup of yugoslavia there was unanimity that america and germany were largely responsible for the breakup of yugoslavia and the resultant civil wars. as one former officer in the yugoslav national army, a veteran of the war in bosnia, stated: “we stood by america in two wars, and now the americans have turned their backs on us. we serbs had won the wars in croatia, bosnia, and kosovo, and america and nato deprived us of our victory. i cannot understand why america supported the croats and bošnjaci [bosnian slav moslems] who were the former allies of the nazis.” various explanations were offered for the west’s role in the dissolution of former yugoslavia and the nato’s attack on serbia. perhaps the most frequent comment was that “america wanted to turn the balkans into a colony to exploit its natural resources and secure a source of cheap labor.” a closely related accusation was that the west planned to establish military bases in the balkans to assure the flow of oil from the middle east and to oppose russia. several informants held that the west regarded eastern orthodoxy as an impediment to its hegemony in europe. similarly, there were comments that the roman catholic church was complicit in the attacks against the serbs. as one informant explained: “the catholic church has great influence in the west; we orthodox serbs have no one to turn to except greece and russia, and although they are our best friends, they have not yet been able to help us.” as evidence that the west is anti-orthodox, the perceived “unwillingness” of unmik and kfor to stop the destruction by albanians of serbian orthodox churches and monasteries in kosovo metohija was cited. there was a unanimous rejection of the idea that nato had attacked serbia out of humanitarian concerns because of alleged ethnic cleansing and war crimes committed by the serbs. as one bosnian refugee stated, “if this had been true, after the fall of milošević, whom the west blamed for all these so-called crimes, american policy toward the serbs should have changed, but it didn’t.” my informants, who, like many other serbs, avidly follow world events, were profoundly angered by what they perceived as “the continued demonization of the serbs and the distortion of events in former yugoslavia by the western media.” anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 84 international criminal tribunal for former yugoslavia (icty) as was the case with virtually all serbs with whom i spoke regardless of their political affiliation, my informants were unanimous in their belief that the icty was established by the west to punish the serbs. the previously mentioned case of naser orić served to emphatically reinforce this conviction. on the same page in politika (7/2/2006b) as the report of orić’s release, a list was published of 86 individuals from serbia, montenegro, republika srpska, and republika srpska krajina who had been indicted by the tribunal. this is only one of the frequent articles in the serbian press which in one way or another condemn the icty for unjustly and disproportionately prosecuting the serbs. speaking of what he termed the “alleged court” (tobožnji sud), an elderly bosnian refugee characterized the hague tribunal in terms of an old folk aphorism probably dating from turkish times: kadija tuži, kadija sudi (“the cadi prosecutes, the cadi judges”). as a young woman who had fled from croatia expressed it: “it is not really the specific individuals whom the tribunal wants to put on trial, but the whole serbian nation.” among the most despised and vilified persons mentioned by my informants was carla del ponte (chief prosecutor of the icty), who has often been depicted in grotesque caricatures by the serbian press. in contrast to the loathing manifested for carla del ponte, universal admiration was expressed for ratko mladić, who remains a hero not only in the eyes of refugees (especially those from bosnia), but also in those of many other serbs as well. mladić is a frequent topic of conversation, and a number of different theories about him were expressed. to mention but a few: “mladić is now the commandant of a russian military school; “our ratko has been given a new identity by the russians”; “ he is living in greece where he has many friends who support him”; “mladić has had plastic surgery, and freely walks about belgrade”; “mladić has a guard of 400, the inner circle of which is instructed to kill him rather than allow him to be captured”; and “the americans are afraid to capture him because it would bring about the downfall of their puppet in belgrade [president tadić].” these tales clearly express pride in the fact that mladić has so far escaped all efforts of the west to find him, and thus thwarted the hague tribunal. in comparison to mladić, former bosnian serb leader radovan karadžić is less frequently mentioned and eulogized. this is perhaps because mladić is far more often mentioned in the press, and appears to be the one most actively sought by the icty. moreover, his surrender is most closely tied to the receipt of american economic aid and the establishment of closer relations by the european union with serbia. in the case of milošević, there was a great deal of ambivalence. only a few described him as a “hero.” nevertheless, he was not regarded as a war criminal nor believed to be responsible for the civil wars in former yugoslavia. however, the majority did accuse him of corruption and crimes in serbia, and asserted that he should have stood trial in belgrade. the greatest anger expressed toward him was because of his withdrawal of military and other support for the bosnian and croatian serbs, and the signing of the dayton accord. like former premier zoran djindjić and president boris tadić, he was accused of being a tool of washington. with reference to this, a refugee from croatia expressed succinctly what i had heard in varying forms from many others: “by orders from the americans, milošević was kidnapped and sent to the hague by djindjić to gain political and personal advantage from germany and america. we all know that milošević was in the service of the united states, and when he was of no further use, the americans betrayed him.”8 repatriation professor dušan drljaĉa (ethnographic institute of the serbian academy) holds that relatively few refugees have returned to their places of origin. for instance, he estimates that although the croats claim that as many as 80,000 serbs have been repatriated to croatia, in fact no more than 20,000 have done so (person communication, june, 2006). in an interview reported in politika (2006, june 17), serbian orthodox metropolitan jovan of zagreb and ljubljana, estimated that 300,000 serbs had fled croatia, for the most part, to serbia. he claims that so few of these have returned that soon there will be “more [orthodox] churches than believers.” these contentions regarding the small number of returnees are born out by the predominantly negative responses of my informants regarding repatriation to either croatia or bosnia. although a number had made visits to their former homes, none were at the time of this study considering a permanent return. the bosnian serbs expressed somewhat anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 85 greater negativity than did those from croatia. when questioned about the bosnian federation, several remarked that they “could never live with moslems again.” the four informants from kosovo metohija and the two from sandžak emphatically stated that they would never return under the present circumstances due to the uncertainty about the eventual fate of these two provinces. the two informants from the sandžak9 were a young married couple who might be categorized as “anticipatory refugees.” they related that their serbian neighbors in sandžak were feeling increasing pressure from local slav moslems, who constitute a majority, and that many people were selling their land and leaving. they have advised their parents to make no investments in their farms, and to leave as soon as possible.” milenko is a middle-aged refugee from knin, who now owns a successful small business in belgrade. his views closely reflected those of other refugees from croatia: i am religious and have god’s love (božja ljubav) for all nationalities, but i have more for some than for others. there is a great deal of pressure against serbs who return to croatia. although there are agreements about compensation and the return of property, the croatian bureaucracy does everything possible to prevent this happening. i have bad feelings toward croats, especially those from the dalmatian hinterland [dalmatinska zagora] and hercegovina. they are the descendants of serbs converted to catholicism; they are the worst of all. i have a real problem with catholics. milan is a serb from lika who occasionally visits his native village. in spite of his intention to live permanently in belgrade, he is nevertheless reluctant to completely break ties with his ancestral home: my two brothers and i are refugees from drenov klanac. the croats destroyed almost all the houses in our village10 and desecrated our [orthodox] church. i will never live in croatia again. i have been offered money to rebuild the family home, but if i build anything, it will only be a small vacation cottage (vikendica). our church is being repaired,11 but serbs only return for a few days in august to celebrate the village slava (patron saint’s day). similar to those from croatia, refugees from what is now the bosnian federation expressed little desire to repatriate. moreover, many were doubtful about moving to republika srpska because of indications that there were intentions by the “occupying powers” to eventually abolish it as an independent entity and to integrate it seamlessly into the bosnian federation. statements and measures attributed to paddy ashdown, who was until recently the un high representative for bosniahercegovina, have reinforced this fear.12 for instance, to mention but one of a series of “antiserbian” actions taken by the high representative, in december of 2004, ashdown ordered that facilities of the army of republika srpska be placed under the control of nato, and then be transferred to the jurisdiction of the ministry of defense of the bosnian federation (vesti, december 12, 2004). more recently, on june 29, 2006, the parliament of the european union in strasbourg passed a nonbinding resolution regarding constitutional reform in bosnia-hercegovina which held that bosnia’s duel entities should be eliminated (politika, june 30, 2006). personal communications from informants’ relatives and others who have returned to bosnia, as well as numerous articles in the press about the difficulties experienced by returnees have made a profound impact. for instance, it was reported in politika (6/12/06) that the government of the bosnian federation is taking no initiative in the restoration of destroyed serbian housing, and that in the kanton of livanjsko polje 800 serbian houses and 150 apartments still await repair. the article further states that of a prewar serbian population of 12,500, only 4,600 have returned because of discrimination by the local government (kantonska vlada) which is dominated by croats (politika , 6/12/06). this assertion is further documented by baroš, who writes the following based on her recent field work in the same region (2005:106): people are still waiting for houses to be considered for repair. agricultural machinery is a rarity....cash income is not even imaginable. the obtaining of pensions is a difficult and slow process, and one cannot even dream of employment. (my translation) anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 86 baroš also observes what several of my informants also mentioned, that is, returnees would be an ethnic minority in areas where they were previously a majority, and that they would be living under the political domination of their former enemies (105-106). as a refugee from sarajevo explained: i spent all but the first ten years of my life in sarajevo. i read recently that not only was sarajevo becoming an almost exclusively moslem city,13 but that islamic fundamentalism there was on the rise. i could never live under those conditions. my cousin has for years tried to recover title to her house in sarajevo with no success; they simply don’t want us back. refugees from both croatia and bosnia cited the lack of economic opportunities and discrimination against serbs in employment as major barriers to return. for instance, the two families previously mentioned who had returned to the village of kolarić in croatia, are still depending largely on subsistence agriculture more than five years later, even though the adults have extensive education, training, and experience in other occupations. they attribute this situation to discrimination against serbs. several informants have called attention to sporadic reports of physical attacks and other aggressive acts against serbian returnees in croatia and the bosnian federation. moreover, there are also reports of conflict and occasional violence between croats and moslems, especially in hercegovina’s most important city, mostar, a city which remains a socially and spatially divided community. all this suggests a lack of stability and security, further discouraging repatriation. thus, it is clear that the majority of serbian refugees from croatia and bosnia-hercegovina are highly unlikely to return to their original homes in the foreseeable future. in the case of kosovo, if the province gains independence from serbia, it is even more unlikely that many refugees will ever return. “democracy and free markets” saša, who arrived in belgrade with his young wife and infant son during the first months of the war in bosnia, expressed sentiments which i had heard repeatedly in one form or another from refugees and other serbs from all walks of life: i thought that after the wars, and with the end of the milošević regime, things would be better, and we would get help from america, but this has never happened. the truth is that the west only wants to humiliate us and reduce us to poverty. nothing has changed for most of us. my srbijanci [serbs from serbia proper] friends and neighbors are no better off than i am. sometimes i see americans around belgrade. some of them are evangelicals; we certainly don’t need them. people have told me that they offer food to poor people to attend their meetings. this is an insult. saša’s viewpoint was expressed by others in a variety of ways. a common refrain was that the west’s concept of “democracy and free markets” was a fraud, and simply a “propaganda” device to impose “colonial” domination and to exploit the serbs. for example, consider the statement of momčilo, a university-educated, former engineer from osijek (croatia): what has happened to our economy is a crime. corrupt politicians, gangsters, and dishonest businessmen have enriched themselves while the rest of us have nothing and no hope. you see these guys in their big cars and in expensive restaurants; they don’t care about us at all. foreign interests are buying up our industries and resources at bargain prices. i can’t tell you how good things were before [under socialism]. we had cheap vacations, free health care and education, our jobs were secure, and the cost of housing and heating was very low.14 now, i work as a cab driver, and make about 20,000 dinars a month [a little less than $300] for more than 60 hours work a week. this is not much when you consider that my electric bill in winter is over 4,000 dinars [about $60 us]. a retired professor of history, who fled hercegovina as a child with his parents during world war ii, vociferously denounced “privatization” as a “weapon of war against serbia.” referring to a page in the june 9, 2006 edition of politika, he commented with considerable emotion: see what is happening! every week there are announcements of public auctions of assets which belong to our society [društveni sektor]. i ask you, who is it that has the money to buy these? not our anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 87 people. foreigners and foreign corporations are the ones who are buying them at bargain prices (za bagatelu ). first, nato bombed our factories, and now what is left is being stolen. sometimes they simply close down enterprises after taking all they can from them. thousands of workers are without jobs. do you wonder why the streets are full of young people at all times of the day? the reason is that they have no work. even university graduates wait for years for a job. while i blame america and the west for this, i place even more blame on our leaders who have betrayed us. i keep hearing about free markets and democracy. what kind of democracy is it when those with money rule everything? the topic of democracy was raised a number of times, especially by refugees from bosnia. there was a general consensus that what had been imposed by the west in bosnia under the guise of democracy was a fraud. a former policeman from velika kladuša expressed what was a common view: democracy in bosnia is a joke. elections don’t make a democracy, especially when elected officials in republika srpska are thrown out of office because ashdown [the former un high representative] doesn’t like their views. for the same reason, he has closed radio and tv stations. i ask you, what kind of democracy is it when they are trying to force us to live in a country with people whom we don’t like, and where we will be a minority among our enemies? [reference is made here to fears that republika srpska will be abolished and integrated into the bosnian federation] there was an unmistakably high level of cynicism about the possibility of “real democracy” ever taking root in serbia, not only the part of my informants, but also among many other serbs with whom i spoke. echoing what banfield (l958) wrote almost a half century ago about political attitudes in southern italy, my informants voiced opposition to those in power without expressing positive sentiments about any of those who might replace them. almost without exception, there was an overarching conviction that it was not possible to negotiate one’s way in serbian society without personal connections (veze).thus, what i had observed in yugoslavia during the l970s and l980s, still appears to be largely true today, that is, there persists a pervasive belief that impersonal institutions are incapable of meeting even the most basic needs of everyday life (cf. simic l983). paradoxically, even those who voiced the most outspoken support for a western-style democracy in serbia expressed doubt about the possibility of it ever being achieved. such views were further strengthened by what was seen as the hypocrisy of american rhetoric about the creation of democratic institutions in eastern europe. addressing this, a serbian academic with whom i spoke at length pointed to ”american interference” in serbian elections (as well as in the recent ukrainian orange revolution) through surrogate ngos and the infusion of money to support candidates perceived as favorable to the west. he claimed that “millions of dollars were spent to influence the outcome of the september 2000 yugoslav elections.” although i believe this to probably be true, the accuracy of this contention is not nearly as significant as the fact that such beliefs about the united states are very widely held. implications it can be argued that it would be very problematic to predict the direction of political change in serbia based on a sample of 81 informants; consultations with a dozen or so academics, journalists, and bureaucrats; and casual conversations with friends and people randomly encountered in the conduct of everyday life. however, there is solid evidence, such as the medijum galop poll cited earlier, that these views are representative of a large segment of the serbian population. it is also significant that the increase in support for the serbian radical party has been a repeated subject of discussion on the pages of politika, a newspaper widely regarded “as pro-western.” in a meeting with tony blair in london on june 27, 2006, serbian prime minister vojislav koštunica is reported to have warned that “serbia might break its ties with the west unless the international community takes a more conciliatory approach to its claims to kosovo and to serbia’s failure to arrest the war crimes suspect ratko mladić” (international harold tribune 2006, 6/29). one can only surmise that his statement reflects koštunica’s understanding of the hardening mood of the serbian public and the resurgence of serbian nationalism. what is suggested by the title of this essay is that serbian refugees constitute a kind of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 88 weather vane pointing in the direction of the winds of political change. notes 1 field work in serbia during the summers of 2002 and 2005 was made possible by shortterm travel grants from irex and faculty development research awards, university of southern california. in 2005, financial support was received from the center for visual anthropology, university of southern california. research during the summer of 2006 was supported by a faculty development research award, university of southern california. 2 on november 21, 1995, the dayton agreement established two semi-autonomous entities in bosnia-hercegovina: a moslem and croat federation with approximately 51% of the territory and republika srpska with 49%. “moslem” in this case refers to slav moslems known in serbo-croatian as bošnjaci. henceforth in this paper, the moslem and croat federation will simply be referred to as “the bosnian federation.” 3 throughout this paper, i have used the more precise term “kosovo metohija,” which is sometimes contracted to “kosmet.” metohija is derived from the greek word “tó metóxion” (“land belonging to a religious institution.”) the significance of this for the serbs is that metohija is the site of over a thousand serbian medieval churches, monasteries, and other places of religious significance. 4 as reported in danas (2002, june 21), the 2002 census of the population serbia proper (excluding kosovo) was 7,478,820. 5 among many others, i would particularly like to thank the following persons for their aid and cogent observations: professor dr. dušan drljača, etnografski institut, srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti; dr. slobodan naumović, etnografsko odeljenje, filozofski fakultet, beogradski univerzitet; dragica danon and dr. radovan kalabić, (predsednik), matica iseljenika srbije; miodrag božović, pomoćnik ministra, and aleksandar čotrić, zamenik ministra, ministarstvo za dijasporu; dr. slobodan mileusnić (now deceased), direktor muzeja srpske pravoslavne crkve; milenko drašković, journalist, radio belgrade; dusko petričić, journalist, rtv serbia; dragomir brajković, journalist/filmmaker, radio beograd; petar djurić, writer and retired tv producer; milovan mravčević, predsednik, udruženje za zaštitu prava na nepokretninu (association for the protection of property rights); života ivanović, journalist, tanjug; and in particular my wife, dr. maria budisavljević-oparnica simić, who participated in all aspects of my field research in serbia. 6 in other places, including the yugoslav census, the village is referred to in the plural as žitomislići. 7 gordy (l999: 57) has characterized the traditionalists and nationalists as “older, rural, and less educated voters who do not welcome change in the social order.” while this may have been true in the late 1990s, today, those supporting the serbian radical party represent a far more diverse population. 8 former yugoslav president, slobodan milošević, after being held for three months without trial on allegations of corruption and abuse of power while in office, was kidnapped from a belgrade prison on june 28, 2001. this was in defiance of an injunction issued by the yugoslav constitutional court. former prime minister zoran djindjić is believed to have engineered milošević’s transfer to the hague. the mention of germany in this informant’s statement refers to the fact that djindjić had lived and studied in germany, and it is widely held that djindjić had closely allied himself with the germans, and was a close friend of former chancellor schroeder (cf. prentice 2002:13). on march 11, 2003, djindjić was assassinated in belgrade. 9 sandžak is an area in southwestern serbia, north of kosovo metohija on the border of and extending into montenegro. the province has a slav moslem majority who are increasingly identifying with bosnian moslems. there has been a recent report of the appearance of an islamic fundamentalist sect there (cf. politika 2006, june 10c). 10 in 2002, 2005, and 2006, we visited drenov klanac. in 2002, there were almost no returnees. one exception was a middle-aged croatian woman who spent only the weekends there, repairing her house. she recounted that, at first, the serbs destroyed the croatian houses, then later, the village was occupied by the croats who destroyed the serbian houses and desecrated the orthodox church. 11 the croatian ministry of renewal and finance reportedly agreed to cofinance with the serbian orthodox church the renovation of 25 orthodox churches. however, according to the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 89 serbian metropolitan of zagreb and ljubljana jovan, this number “has been reduced to five” (politika, 2006, june 17). many serbs believe that the croats are supporting some highly visible projects and making public gestures of reconciliation with serbian refugees simply to enhance their chances of joining the eu. among other such examples can be mentioned the reopening of the museum of the serbian orthodox church in zagreb. 12 the l995 dayton accord designated a high representative with almost unlimited powers to implement the civilian and political aspects of the peace agreement. ashdown has argued that such powers are “essential to bosnia’s recent progress,” and draws a comparison to germany and japan after wwii, declaring that “states that suffer long wars need a firm hand to help them return to normal’ (as quoted in the new york times 2005, november 5). 13 this contention is confirmed by a report in politika (6/16/06) citing a warning by the croatian democratic union (hrvatska demokratska zajednica) that “sarajevo is assuming the appearance of an exclusively moslem city in which croats are treated as second-class citizens.” 14 idealization of former yugoslavia is so common, especially as people remember it during the 70s and early 80s, that the term jugonostalgija has come into popular usage. references banfield, edward c. 1958. the moral basis of a backward society. glencoe: the free press. baroš, sladjana. 2005. “stavovi srba povratnika o etničkom identitetu srba i hrvata.” (attitudes of serbian returnees regarding the ethnic identity of serbs and croats). glasnik etnografskog instituta srpske akademije nauka i umetnosti 53:100-120. danas. 2002, 6/21. “manjine--trećina populacije” (minorities, one third of the population). gordy, eric d. l999. the culture of power in serbia. university park, pennsylvania: the pennsylvania state university press. international herold tribune. 2006, june 29. “serb leader lays claim to kosovo. ministry of information of the republic of serbia. l997. “refugees in yugoslavia in the most difficult legal situation.” belgrade: serbia in the world 66: 6163. new york times. 2005, november 7. “can an iron fist put power in bosnia’s hands?” politika, 2005, july 7. “srebrenički pomeni” (srebrenica memorials). --2005, july 11. “tadićeva nada” (tadic’s hope). --2005, july 13. “dug put do pomirenja” (the long road to reconciliation). --2006, june 9. “javni poziv za učešće na javnim aukcijama: agencija za privatizaciju republike srbije (an open invitation to participate in public auctions: the agency for privatization of the republic of serbia). --2006, june 10(a). “raste popularnost radikala” (the popularity of the radicals grows). --2006, june 10(b). “apatija birača vodi radikale ka vlasti” (apathy of voters leads the radicals toward power). --2006, june 10(c). “sektaši svima smetaju” (sect members bother everyone). --2006, june 16. “ sarajevo muslimanski grad” (sarajevo a moslem city). --2006, june 17. “uskoro više crkava nego vernika” (soon more churches than believers). --2006, july 1(a). “nagrada za zločine” (an award for crimes). --2006, july 1(b). “spisak lica iz srbije, crne gore, republike srpske, i republike srpske krajine koja su optužena pred mkt u hagu (“a list of persons from serbia, montenegro, republika srpska, and republika srpska krajina who are indicted by the mkt in the hague) prentice, eve-ann. 2002. “german invasion.” the spectator, augsut 24, pp. 12-13. simic, andrei. 1983. “urbanization and modernization in yugoslavia: adaptive and maladaptive aspects of traditional culture.” in urban life in mediterranean europe. michael kenny and david i. kertzer, eds. urbana: university of chicago press. pp. 203224. svrdlin, djuro. 2004. žitomislić iz proslošti sela i manastira (žitomislić from the past of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 90 the village and monastery). srpsko sarajevo: zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva. united nations high commissioner for refugees. 1996. census of refugees and other war-affected persons in the federal republic of yugoslavia. belgrade: commissioner for refugees of the republic of serbia. vesti., 2004, december 17. “visoki predstavnik za bih izrekao nove kazne” (the high representative for bosnia and hercegovina has decreed new punishments). allen typewritten text © 2006 andrei simić all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 2 capitalism and socialism as conflicting cultural models in nicaraguan politics bradley tatar, university at albany © 2002 bradley tatar all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in this paper, i argue that the transformation of nicaragua from a socialist ally of the soviet union to a capitalist government allied with the united states was made possible by a fundamental change in the political consciousness of nicaraguan citizens. nicaraguans tend to justify this change of consciousness by appealing to notions of personhood and identity grounded in religious ideas. i use the approach of katherine verdery (1999) to argue that in nicaragua, human bodies are used politically as representations of sacred and profane categories. i conclude that in the case of nicaragua, religious language is employed to express secular political identity, thereby providing cultural legitimation for the capitalist political order. i completed a total of nine months of fieldwork in the city of masaya in central pacific nicaragua [january to may 1997, november 1998 to may 1999]. through interviews, i discovered that nicaraguans employ narrative strategies when they express their political consciousness. the collection of these narratives is the basis for my comparison of sandinista political consciousness and anti-sandinista political consciousness as a means to explain conflicts between the two groups. nicaragua: revolution and counterrevolution on july 19, 1979, the people of nicaragua celebrated in the streets because the regime of anastasio somoza debayle had been overthrown. when nicaragua rejected the somoza regime, the frente sandinista de liberación nacional [fsln or frente sandinista] enjoyed unassailable popularity. the marxist-leninist guerilla cadre of the fsln created a new junta de gobierno in 1979 that was determined to rebuild the devastated country and optimistically backed by the majority of nicaraguans. by 1990, this optimism had completely disappeared (vilas 1990). the nicaraguan economy contracted grimly under the onslaught of the contra war, a guerilla counterrevolution produced by funding and covert intelligence support from the united states (vilas 1991). the united states also tried to isolate nicaragua by imposing an economic embargo, as well as isolation from the imf and other financial institutions. for the average nicaraguan family, life became a struggle to survive. dreams of building a new kind of society evaporated during the época sandinista, the 11 years that the fsln ruled nicaragua. in the presidential elections of 1990, those nicaraguans who had supported the fsln in 1979 voted instead for violeta chamorro, the anti-sandinista candidate (gould 1990; vilas 1991). with her financial connections to the united states, chamorro was perceived by voters as the candidate who could bring imf loans and foreign investment to a dying nicaraguan economy (saldomando 1992). nevertheless, the center of conflict in nicaragua continues to be between the marxist sandinistas and the liberals, who are anticommunist and anti-sandinista. within nicaragua, the discourse that has been employed to describe this conflict is centered on religion. many anti-sandinistas claim that the sandinistas repressed religious freedom, replacing religion with communist atheism and worship of the totalitarian state (belli 1985; canales 1992). the sandinistas, on the other hand, bitterly denounce catholic bishops who use their sunday homilies to instruct parishioners to vote against the fsln. most sandinistas view the masses as being easily manipulated by the clergy (fsln, dirección nacional 1990). moreover, sandinistas believe that the revolution of 1979 rekindled the effort to create a secular state, which provided secular education and other social services that were resented by jealous members of the clergy and jen typewritten text 31 volume 20, number 2 the reactionary bourgeoisie (escobar 1984; monroy garcía 1997:208). in contrast, i argue that the underlying conflict is not between a religious worldview and a secular worldview. instead, it is a clash between persons who have incompatible ideas about the role of the state. those who believe that the market is the basis of economic and social progress are believers in capitalism, and hence anti-sandinistas. the pro-sandinista viewpoint, by contrast, includes those who believe that the state should shelter and protect the people from the influence of the market economy. the sandinistas have a statist viewpoint that portrays the state and not the market as the agent of social progress and economic growth. sandinista political consciousness and regime formation during my fieldwork in masaya, nicaragua, i have found that people who identify themselves as sandinistas are people who propose that the capitalist world-system is harmful to nicaragua, and that the state should intervene to protect nicaraguans from market forces. reflecting on the sandinista government that ruled from 1979-1990, one sandinista offered a representative view: “we were all poor, but nobody went hungry. children had shoes. education and health care were free.” the sandinista state was actively supported by a large group of people who believed in the value of the activist state, a state that intervenes to protect its citizens from harmful market forces. this belief is the most important component of sandinista identity. sandinismo is a type of dependency theory. dependency theory and world-systems theory both portray the nation-state as an organization that carries out functions of labor control and connects local populations to global circuits of unequal resource exchange (cardoso 1982:114; brenner 1982:56; wallerstein 1975). according to david lehmann (1990), dependency theory synthesizes nationalism and marxism and so bridges the long-standing opposition between the two perspectives. in latin america more generally, dependency theory identifies the world-economy as the mechanism of oppression, whereas traditional marxism in latin america portrays a ruling class or foreign power as the oppressor (lehmann 1990). the conceptual model of oppression had an enormous impact on the type of state that developed when the fsln came to power in 1979. the sandinistas’ goal was not to create a socialist economy, which was regarded as “impossible” in a situation of third world underdevelopment (harris 1985:41; monroy garcía 1997: 208). instead, the sandinista government attempted to improve nicaragua's insertion into the capitalist world-economy through capital-intensive and technologyintensive investment (biondi-morra 1993; enríquez 1991; ryan 1995; spalding 1994). specific groups of producers were targeted to receive special credit packages, expedited access to foreign exchange, and other incentives (spalding 1994). the structuralist approach associated with raúl prebisch (prebisch 1984) is closer to the economic model used by the sandinista government than any socialist model. nevertheless, the sandinista government also stipulated production quotas and guaranteed prices for products, thereby insulating both state and private enterprises from market signals (ryan 1995; spalding 1994). workers were protected from market forces by subsidies for basic foodstuffs, health care, and education (ryan 1995). transition: statist “socialism” to postsocialist capitalism the electoral defeats of the fsln in 1990, 1996, and in 2001, indicated that most nicaraguans rejected the sandinista model of how the world economy operates. the idea that the government is the intermediary between the community and the world economy has been replaced by a widespread belief that individuals enter markets directly to compete freely with each other for employment or commodities. in this conceptual universe, state intervention in market mechanisms is unnecessary and undesirable. the transition from the socialist period to the post-socialist period in nicaragua was made possible by a shift in the popular imagination away from a state-centered view of the relationship between society and economy and toward a market-centered view. many people who voted for anti-sandinista president arnoldo alemán did not like or trust him but nonetheless believed that his free-market economics would be less harmful to nicaragua than would a returning sandinista government (barnes 1996). this stance reflects the normal ideology of a capitalist government, which is that market economies are self-regulating and should jen typewritten text 32 volume 20, number 2 not be subject to political interference (hamilton 1982; held 1990:33). anti-sandinistas portray the government as “evil” and the market as “good.” what is powerful about this discourse is its ability to use religious terminologies of morality, although it is in fact a discourse about state and market. the discourse of the "free market" draws upon religious representations of the human body, and of the relationship between body and soul, to construct a sense of personhood and identity that is explicitly anti-socialist. hence the post-1990 capitalist order is not legitimated by explicit ideology as much as it is by what bourdieu has called “doxa”— that is, subconscious ideas and attitudes of which the individual is only partially aware (bourdieu 1985). such unconsciously held ideas can profoundly influence people who do not adhere to any systematic or self-conscious system of religious beliefs (spiro 1982). this is illustrated by the case of chico prado. chico is a typical anti-sandinista who portrays his political identity in religious terms, although at the time that i interviewed him, he neither participated in regular religious practice nor supported the antisandinista liberal party [partido liberal constitucionalista]. consciousness of an anti-sandinista proletarian chico prado offered the following testimony to illustrate why he and many other masayans became anti-sandinistas. chico spends every day working in his native city of masaya. he works for a cable television company by walking door-to-door to collect payments from customers and soliciting new clients. chico claims that although he does not support liberal president arnoldo alemán, he is also opposed to the frente sandinista. he traces his stance back to the 1980s, when the sandinistas ruled the country and all able-bodied men were drafted into the sandinista popular army. the poorly trained, poorly equipped conscripts were sent into the jungles of the atlantic region to fight against the u.s.-backed contra forces. chico was assigned to a combat unit that was commanded by a cuban army officer who vowed to show his men that it was foolish to believe in god. chico recalled that the commander once said to the men, “ask god for bread.” when one man obliged, the commander laughed and said, “god can’t give you anything. now ask me for bread.” another man then asked him for bread, and he handed out bread and said, “so, you had better forget about ‘god,’ because only i can give you bread!" the commander further told the men, “if your parents are against the revolution, then you must be ready to kill your own parents.” chico reportedly informed the commander that he was an evil man who could never make chico kill his parents: “if my parents gave me life, then how could i kill them for your meaningless revolution?” in response, the commander labeled chico a “counterrevolutionary” and had him imprisoned in a metal tube that was submerged in the soil. because the tube was narrow, chico could not move around in it; nor was he allowed to come out of the tube, not even to defecate. chico nearly died. after six months in the tube, however, chico was taken to a military hospital where he was revived with food and vitamins. when he finally returned to his army unit, he confronted the cuban commander. chico remembered that he told the other man, “i survived because of he who is in heaven!” the commander dismissed his assertion and claimed that chico survived only because his army buddies had surreptitiously given him food and water. although i questioned chico as to the accuracy of his story, he insisted that his story was completely true. this story certainly offers the truest portrayal of those moral categories that make chico anti-socialist in his convictions. drawing on the religious imagery of christ's burial and resurrection, chico intends his powerful story of suffering to demonstrate that the sandinistas and their cuban allies are totalitarian atheists whose purpose is to desecrate the sacred. according to katherine verdery (1999), the interment and treatment of human bodies, whether living or dead, is a way of projecting cosmic categories of sacred and profane onto the political order. the confrontation between chico and the cuban commander begins with a conflict over the origin of bread. clearly, the conflict as it is represented is a clash between a materialist, marxist worldview, and a religious idea about the source of bread. nevertheless, it is also a discourse about the nature of the state. this aspect of the story is most evident when the focus moves from the origin of bread to the nature of the family. chico's story portrays cubans and sandinistas as persons who fetishize the state, thereby violating the sacred familial relationship between parents and children. what is the connection between bread and the family? jen typewritten text 33 volume 20, number 2 in chico’s mind, food comes from god. however, human beings receive god’s bread through the mechanism of the market. chico’s story presents an argument through analogy, that just as the family is sacred and must be kept inviolate from state interference, so should the market also be kept inviolate. chico’s narrative portrays the state as a profanity that must not be allowed to intervene in either family or market, because god's bounty is naturally and normally distributed to each family unit by the market. in contrast, for the cuban commander, the revolutionary state apparatus is indispensable for integrating both the mode of production and the family unit. in reality, chico and the commander were not fighting about god or religion but about the nature of the state. in a given social encounter, chico may need to position himself by way of an imagined relationship to the state. the relationship with the state is one of many factors that can determine how social actors envision their locations in social space (bourdieu 1985; brubaker and cooper 2000). in my conversation with chico, he communicated his understanding of the social space in which he lived and defined his present identity through his remembrance of a marxist government that ceased to exist more than a decade ago. disappearing corpses and the fall of sandinismo the época sandinista from 1979 to 1990 produced a situation in which nicaraguans were forced to define their identity as either for or against the sandinista state. verdery's perspective on the use of dead bodies to symbolize the political order can be used to understand the stories through which people in the barrio of monimbó describe their antisandinista identity formation. during the contra war of the 1980s, the military conscription program caused terrible anti-sandinista bitterness. young sons were dying in a war that few people wanted. the narrators of these stories maintain that the sandinista government did not even return the bodies of the fallen soldiers to their parents, which would have made christian burials for the deceased possible. instead, coffins were delivered to the bereaved parents who were given strict orders not to open the coffins before burial. in these narratives, the parents disobey, prying open the lids to reveal that they do not contain bodies, but only stones or wooden logs. these stories are normally told about “a friend of a friend” and are not generally firsthand accounts. the narrators are making a statement about the sandinista government, which is portrayed as violating the most basic tenets of the christian religion. the treatment of the conscripted soldier's body is described in a manner that portrays sandinismo as a repugnant form of marxist materialism that can only recognize the human body either as a source of labor power or as cannon fodder (conferencia episcopal nicaragüense 2001 [1983]). conclusion the capitalist political order that has predominated in nicaragua since 1990 is bolstered by a variety of symbolic representations, many of which are religious in nature. these religious representations are used to denote a secular social relationship between the individual and the state. the key term, “individual,” is represented as a subunit of the social categories “market” and “family,” which are employed to denote the category of “sacred” as that which should not be profaned by “the state.” hence, the ideology of the capitalist political order is constructed on a separation between state and market that is naturalized by religious imagery. references barnes, william a. 1997 comparando democracias incompletas: polarización política, la dinámica de las campañas electorales y la asistencia electoral en nicaragua y el salvador. estudios centroamericanos 587 september, year lii: 869-899. belli, humberto 1985 breaking faith: the sandinista revolution and its impact on freedom and the christian faith in nicaragua. westchester, illinois: the puebla institute/crossway books. biondi-morra, brizio n. 1993 hungry dreams: the failure of food policy in revolutionary nicaragua, 1979-1990. ithaca and london: cornell university press. bourdieu, pierre 1985 the social space and the genesis of groups. theory and society 14(6):723-744. brenner, robert 1982 the origins of capitalist development: a critique of neosmithian marxism. in introduction to the sociology of “developing societies.” hamza alavi and teodor jen typewritten text 34 volume 20, number 2 shanin, editors. pp. 54-71. new york, ny: monthly review press. brubaker, rogers and frederick cooper 2000 beyond “identity.” theory and society 29(1):1-47. canales, carlos h. 1992 injusticia sandinista: carcel y servicio. managua: impresiones carqui. cardoso, fernando henrique 1982 dependency and development in latin america. in introduction to the sociology of “developing societies.” hamza alavi and teodor shanin, editors. pp. 112127. new york, ny: monthly review press. conferencia episcopal nicaragüense 2001 [1983] carta de la conferencia episcopal nicaragüense en relación con el servicio militar patriático. la prensa. sunday, september16, 2001. edition no. 22493. http://www-ni.laprensa.com.ni/archivo/ 2001/septiembre/16/politica/politica-20 010916-02.html [visited on february 9, 2002] enríquez, laura j. 1991 harvesting change: labor and agrarian reform in nicaragua, 1979-1990. chapel hill and london: the university of north carolina press. escobar, josé b. 1984 ideario sandinista. third edition. managua: departamento de propaganda y educación política del fsln. fsln, dirección nacional 1990 [1980] se manipula la fe para crear reacción política. barricada, tuesday, october 7, 1980. in sandinistas: key documents/documentos claves. dennis gilbert and david block, editors. pp. 239-242. ithaca, ny: latin american studies program, cornell university. gould, jeffrey l. 1990 notes on peasant consciousness and revolutionary politics in nicaragua 1955-1990. radical history review 48: 65-87. hamilton, nora 1982 the limits of state autonomy: post revolutionary mexico. princeton, nj: princeton university press. harris, richard l. 1985 the economic transformation and industrial development of nicaragua. in nicaragua, a revolution under siege. richard l. harris and carlos m. vilas, eds. pp. 36-87. london: zed books, ltd. held, david 1990 political theory and the modern state: essays on state, power and democracy. palo alto, ca: stanford university press. lehmann, david 1990 democracy and development in latin america: economics, politics and religion in the post-war period. philadelphia, pa: temple university press. monroy garcía, juan josé 1997 tendencias ideológico-políticas del frente sandinista de liberación nacional (fsln), 1975-1990. méxico, df: unam. prebisch, raúl 1984 hacer frente a la crisis en el marco de una política de reactivación económica. in deuda y soberania. aldo ferrer, raúl prebisch and celso furtado, editors. pp. 7-26. buenos aires: el cid editor/fundación para la democracia en la argentina. ryan, phil 1995 the fall and rise of the market in sandinista nicaragua. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. saldomando, angel 1992 el retorno de la aid. managua: ediciones cries. spiro, melford e. 1982 collective representations and mental representations in religious symbol systems. in on symbols in anthropology: other realities, volume three. jacques maquet, ed. pp. 45-72. malibu, ca: undena publications. spalding, rose j. 1994 capitalists and revolution in nicaragua: opposition and accommodation 1979-1993. chapel hill and london: the university of north carolina press. verdery, katherine 1999 the political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change. new york: columbia u. press. vilas, carlos m. 1990 what went wrong. nacla report on the americas xxiv(1): 10-18. jen typewritten text 35 volume 20, number 2 1991 nicaragua: a revolution that fell from the grace of the people. in socialist register 1991, communist regimes: the aftermath. ralph miliband and leo panitch, eds. pp. 302-321. london: the merlin press. wallerstein, immanuel 1975 class-formation in the capitalist world-economy. politics and society 5(3): 367-375. jen typewritten text 36 correspondence: a response to brana mijatović andrei simić university of southern california an article by brana mijatović, “(com)passionately political: music of djordje balašević,” appeared in the spring 2004 issue of this journal. in it, she described, in some detail, the significance of yugoslav/serbian pop singer djordje balašević, with particular reference to the recent crises in former yugoslavia and serbia. more accurately, this essay constitutes a not even thinly veiled political polemic. in this sense, this work can be seen as emblematic of a widespread but far from universal view expressed by a significant number of young, largely urban, and educated serbs deeply influenced by their strong attraction to the west and its perceived affluence and glamor. for them, most of serbia’s current problems are attributed to milošević, traditionalism, and nationalism. like them, the author conveniently fails, even in passing, to consider other explanations and antecedents for the numerous tragedies that have characterized the recent history of former yugoslavia. in this paper, mijatović leaves little doubt that she is expressing her own ideological position through the vehicle of balašević, a position that is most clearly postulated in a single paragraph (p. 94). here she cites a litany of sins entirely attributable to the milošević regime: the suppression of political opposition, fraudulent elections, the destruction of independent media, responsibility for the [civil] wars in yugoslavia, and economic ruin and poverty, among others. while milošević can be faulted in many ways, the assertion of his overwhelming responsibility for serbia’s woes can be disputed by a considerable body of evidence. however, due to the lack of space provided here, i will deal only with the economy, and very briefly. it can be argued that measures taken by the milošević regime in respect to the economy during that period when he was in power were not the cause of the impoverishment of serbia, but were, for the most part, responsive to an externally imposed crisis. for instance, yugoslavia’s heavy borrowing from the west, beginning as early as the late 1960’s, established conditions for the destruction of the country’s socialist economic system. as has been the case with other debtor nations, the international monetary fund and the world bank demanded that the yugoslavs undertake disastrous reforms, which included massive cuts in social spending and the closing of industries regarded as “unprofitable.” this, in turn, resulted in massive unemployment, which was only temporarily mitigated by the exodus of guest workers to germany. this all occurred before milošević came to power. similarly, the economic war waged by the united states against the former yugoslavia from the 1980’s onwards only intensified the destruction of yugoslavia’s unique form of socialism. the unambiguous goal of this campaign was the imposition of a so-called free-market economy and the opening up of yugoslavia for the exploitation of its resources and the creation of a cheap labor pool. serbia and montenegro, the two republics in which socialism was most deeply entrenched, became the primary targets of western hostility. the final blow to the economy of what has been termed “rump yugoslavia” were the sanctions instigated by the united states and several other western countries during the yugoslav civil wars. thus, it is no surprise that during this period, as well as at present, “the gray market” cited by mijatović has flourished. it is disturbing enough that many opinion makers and academics in our country, to say nothing of the american media in general, have so uncritically and unambiguously demonized milošević and the serbs as wholly responsible for the tragedies in former yugoslavia. however, it is even more remarkable that mijatović lauds balašević for having produced “cathartic effects by enabling his audience to experience deeply felt and yet often repressed emotions of grief, guilt, and shame” (p. 101). by this, the author implicitly calls upon the reader to embrace the concept of unique serbian responsibility for the disasters that have characterized the past fourteen years in the history of yugoslavia. such a single-dimensional view, excluding other alternatives, contributes little to our understanding of the origins of these conflicts and the uses and misuses of power. jen typewritten text 99 estonian food production volume 21, number 1 estonian food production stuart thorne, university of surrey © 2003 stuart thorne all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. from the 13th to mid-19th centuries, most estonians had no right to own land and were subjected to serfdom by successive foreign landlords. although land was allocated to liberated serfs from the 1860s, it was insufficient and many effectively remained serfs until the land reforms of the newly independent republic in 1919 (pullerits 1927:106). the total number of farms in private ownership in estonia by 1927 was 30,820, with a total area of 519,000 ha (pullerits 1927:109) and an average area of 16.8ha. before the land reform law of 1919 (passed by the constituent assembly october 10th 1919), most of the land had been owned by a very few landowners. in 1994, three years after the end of the soviet occupation, there were 10,153 private farms with a total area of 251,800 ha, (officially, there were none in 1990), but the government policy of returning land to its pre-war owners resulted in the number and area of privately-owned farms exceeding the pre-war figures, both by number and by total area by 1998 (statistical office of estonia 2000) (table 1). between 1919 and 1939, estonia became a major exporter of agricultural products to western europe. butter in particular was a major export; 11,000,000 kg in 1936, of which 58% was exported to britain and 39% to germany (ministry of agriculture 1937:25). (in 1921, butter exports had only amounted to 128,000kg (pullerits 1927:121)) it was also reported that “estonian bacon has found a good market in great britain” (granö 1930:57). the quality of estonian food was commended by ungern-sternberg (1939), but, no doubt, she ate only the best. the commencement of hostilities in 1939 put a sudden end to this thriving agricultural trade and the subsequent soviet occupation ensured that a true international market could not be resumed until the 1990s, although estonia acquired a reputation in the soviet union as a supplier of good quality food products. in the 1990s, estonian food and agricultural exports were unable to recover their pre-war status; 50 years of the soviet union left their mark on quality and western europe already had a surplus of many commodities. rural food processing manufacturing of agricultural products in estonia is highly dependent on small, rural enterprises (table 2) (thorne and kuusik 2000). these, however, continue to have serious technical and economic problems. banks in estonia have often been unwilling to finance small businesses, preferring to invest in larger enterprises, which are perceived as being safer investments. when loans were available to small enterprises, interest rates throughout the 1990s were prohibitively high. the concept of venture capital has not been widely exploited in estonia. marketing of rural food products has only recently become more than direct selling at a very local level, and a few marketing consortia have recently been established (thorne 1999). only now is capital becoming more freely available, with loans in euros and at european rates. technical difficulties affect the rural food industry, too. in 1991, there was no official rural food industry, and therefore little legislation to control it. indeed, with all industry owned by the state and the state being the only customer, there was considered to be no need for food legislation or consumer protection. with the development of a free economy and a westward-looking government, the need arose for western-style food legislation, the impetus for this being enhanced by pending estonian membership in the european union. a new estonian food law was introduced in 1999 (government of estonia 1999). many small rural food enterprises lack the technical ability or finance to comply with the new requirements immediately and many seem likely to cease to trade. this may represent an improvement in food safety, but it will cause deterioration of well-being in the countryside. the rural food industry in estonia not only makes a significant contribution to the national economy, but often plays a major role in rural life as the major or only employer in rural communities. encouragement of rural entrepreneurship is appreciated as necessary by the estonian government (viik 1998:89) and an eu funded phare project has helped encourage jen typewritten text 169 volume 21, number 1 entrepreneurship in the estonian baltic islands of saaremaa and hiiumaa and the southern counties of võru and põlva (thorne and kuusik 2000). the rural population the population of estonia at the 1922 census was 1,107,059 (estonian statistical office 1922); in 1998 it was 1,453,800. however, during this period, the russian population of estonia increased from 91,000 to 409,000; the number of estonians increased only by 39,000 (statistical office of estonia 1998:56). increase in the estonian population was constrained by considerable emigration before and during the 2nd world war and by the subsequent maltreatment and deportation of the population by the soviet authorities, though numbers of losses from these causes remain unrecorded. the area of estonia was reduced by 2331 km2 by the acquisition of petserimaa in the se by russia. the increase of 350,000 in the total population between 1922 and 1998 has been compensated by a similar increase in the urban population1, so that the rural population density has hardly changed (18.3 per km2 in 1922; 17.9 per km2 in 1998) while the overall population density has increased from 23.3 per km2 to 32.1 per km2. the increase in the russian population of estonia has been largely in tallinn and in narva on the ne border with russia; the rural population has remained almost entirely estonian. the number of persons working in agricultural production has fallen considerably since the first estonian republic. the official statistics (pullerits 1927:86, statistical office of estonia 2001) are illustrated in table 1. these figures, however, are misleading. one third of the 1927 agricultural workers are recorded as working, unpaid, on their family farms. the 1989 figures are near the demise of the soviet union, when there was officially no unemployment; collective farms were wildly over-endowed with labor to ensure that this was so. nevertheless, there has undoubtedly been a considerable increase in the efficiency of estonian agriculture, to the extent that rural unemployment in some areas is now a significant social problem (raime 1998:98). estonia has a well-developed regional policy, dating from as early as 1989, one aim of which is to help rural regions develop to eliminate the differences between urban and rural areas (ministry of internal affairs 1998). estonian food production estonian agriculture in the past decade has been in a phase of adjustment from a command economy, in which it was a major supplier to the soviet union, to a free economy, in which it must compete for markets. in the soviet union, all production was bought by the state; there was no incentive to improve quality and no need for marketing. these, and financial management, are skills which have had to be acquired. some food products, such as processed meat and canned fish, continued to be produced for the russian market after independence, but this market has largely collapsed since 1998, with serious consequences for the food manufacturing industry (table 3). however, some food manufacturers have emerged from this disaster to manufacture successfully improved products for the domestic and, potentially, export markets. cereal production has long been a major agricultural area in estonia. immediately before the first world war, total cereal production was 400,000 tonnes per annum and passed 500,000 tonnes per annum by 1925 (pullerits 1927:114). at the end of the soviet era, it was again about ½ million tonnes (statistical office of estonia 1998). a major change has been a reduction in production of rye and a corresponding increase in wheat production since the second world war; typical of eastern europe, where white bread is the preference of affluence. much of the total increase in cereal production has been barley, mostly for livestock feed. since 1991, commercial potato and milk production has decreased with the loss of the soviet market. beef cattle and pig meat production have remained high, but sheep have almost disappeared since the second world war, although their re-introduction is now being encouraged. production of some major agricultural products since 1914 is summarised in table 4. imports and exports of food products after independence in 1991, russia remained the major export market for estonia for most of the decade, in spite of the deterioration of the russian economy. many food products were designed for the russian (former soviet) market; the major exports being fish, meat and milk products, beverages and sugar confectionery (table 5) (maadvere 1998:51). imports, however, are mostly those demanded by an increasinglyaffluent urban population: superior meat products, beverages (coffee, tea and particularly international alcoholic drinks), and confectionery. jen typewritten text 170 volume 21, number 1 a large proportion of these superior imports were consumed in harju county. it is noteworthy that, in 1999, mean gross wages in harju county (in which tallinn is located) were 60% greater than the mean for the rest of the country (eek 5544 per month compared with eek 3461 per month,)2 this difference is particularly significant when, as in estonia, incomes are generally low, 40% of total personal income is spent purchasing foodstuffs and only 2% on eating out; the demand for imported foods is largely confined to the capital. rural dwellers largely rely still on traditional foods. export of staple food products and import of sophisticated food products has resulted in a curious trading pattern (statistical office of estonia 1998, 1998a) (table 6); exports generally head eastwards and imports come from the west; this situation was even more obvious before the collapse of the russian economy in the late 1990s; in 1998, 50% of estonian food and food products was to russia. this collapse, though it had serious financial consequences for the estonian economy at the time, was perhaps a benefit in that it forced estonia to look for more stable and selective markets. this imbalance of trade has resulted in a worsening balance of trade in agricultural products; in credit until 1994, there is now a deficit of some eur 120 million (table 7). it is unfortunate that this deficit is largely attributable to the affluence of the capital and that its perceived benefits are unavailable to most of the rural population. food shopping and consumption an important aspect of food in estonia is the large quantity produced on household plots; 194kg per head in 1997 (statistical office of estonia 1998b). although much of this domestic production is potatoes, significant quantities of other crops are grown (table 8). if it were assumed that the population of tallinn (415,000) did not grow produce, then that for the rest of the population would rise to 272 kg per head for the rest of the population. this corresponds to 750g per head per day; a very significant contribution to the diet. a survey in 1998 of the shopping habits of 800 consumers in rural estonia revealed that appreciable numbers of respondents did not buy many products because they produced their own. table 9 (thorne and kuusik 2000) lists the percentages of respondents who bought products “rarely or never because they produced their own.” sixty percent of respondents grew all their own potatoes and over 30% their own cabbage. more surprisingly, 20% kept chickens and were selfsufficient in eggs and 15% produced all their own fresh meat. conclusions estonia between the wars rapidly developed a thriving rural economy that had not been possible under a repressive tsarist regime and developed an expanding export market to western europe. this, of course, was stopped by the soviet occupation of the country, although estonia was able to achieve the status of a major producer of high-quality food within the soviet union itself. with the coming of the second independence, estonia again developed rapidly; certainly more rapidly than its neighbors, helped by earlier contacts with finland and access to finnish television. the infrastructure of a modern food industry was missing, however, and this limited exports to the west, leaving russia as the major export market for food. the collapse of the russian economy in 1998 brought a sudden reduction in exports of poor quality food to russia and bankruptcy to several estonian manufacturers of meat, fish and dairy products. another barrier to trade has been the high import tariffs imposed by russia, which were only reduced in 2000. the collapse of the russian market may be no bad thing for estonia in the long run. manufacturers have been forced to develop better quality products, which will be acceptable in the west and suppliers have been forced – often with great success – to manufacture their own superior products. membership in the european union will once again provide estonia with an export market, but at the price of bankruptcy of more of the less able food manufacturers and considerable rural hardship. it seems unlikely that estonia will be able to compete in most areas of mainstream agriculture and food processing. rural manufacturers will have to find new products and new markets; the rural tourist industry, which is beginning to thrive, will be a major market for rural food products. many large food producers and manufacturers have received considerable overseas capital investment and, indeed, have come into foreign ownership. these companies are wellplaced to compete in europe. most smaller companies have not had the benefit of great investment and it seems likely that they will have to adopt niche markets for the tourist trade and speciality products and to form marketing consortia in order to thrive. jen typewritten text 171 volume 21, number 1 references cited estonian statistical office, 1922, population census of estonia 1922, government printing office: tallinn. government of estonia, 1999, food act, passed on 25 february 1999(rt* i 1999, 30, 415), entered into force 1 january 2000, government printing office: tallinn. granö, j.g., 1930, eesti, j. and p. parikas: tallinn. maadvere, e., 1998, agricultural markets, agriculture and rural development, overview 1997, ministry of agriculture: tallinn. ministry of agriculture, 1937,, estonian dairy industry, tallinn. ministry of internal affairs,n.d., regional policy in estonia,: tallinn. pullerits, a, 1927, the estonian year book 1927, central bureau of statistics of estonia: tallinn. raime, s., 1998, social problems in rural areas, agriculture and rural development, overview 1997, ministry of agriculture: tallinn. statistical office of estonia, 1998, statistical yearbook of estonia 1998, tallinn. statistical office of estonia, 1998a, põllumajandus arvudes 1995-1997, tallinn. statistical office of estonia, 1998b, põllumandus 1997, tallinn. statistical office of estonia, 2001, statistical yearbook of estonia 2001, tallinn. statistical office of estonia, 2000, statistical year book of estonia 2000, tallinn. thorne, s., 1999, quality in food production and marketing in estonia, phare project no 95/pp/10, final report, roehampton institute: london. thorne, s.n. & s. kuusik, 2000, quality in food production and marketing in estonia (cd rom), university of surrey roehampton: london. thorne, s.n. & s. kuusik, 2000 rural food production in estonia, proceedings of the 5th nordic baltic conference in regional science, pärnu 1998, warsaw technical university press: warsaw. ungern-sternberg, irina, 1939, estonia: at russia’s baltic gate, national geographic magazine, 76(6), 803-834. viik, j., 1998, development of rural areas – establishing pre-conditions for entrepreneurship, agriculture and rural development, overview 1997, ministry of agriculture: tallinn. 1 the total population of the 4 largest cities, tallinn, pärnu, tartu and narva, increased from 235,629 in 1927 to 642,775 in 1998. 2 statistical office of estonia, http://www.stat.ee/wwwstat/content/i_s_pa_mk/ 2.html jen typewritten text 172 volume 21, number 1 tables table 1: estonians employed in agriculture, 1927-2000 1927 1989 1996 2000 total employed (1000s) 625 837 645 609 employed in agriculture (1000s) 422 151 60 42 % of total employed in farming 67.5 18.0 9.3 6.9 table 2: number and area of privately-owned farms in estonia, 1927 to 2000. fig 1 0 20000 40000 60000 1927 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 n o of f ar m s. to ta l a re a (1 00 h a) no of farms total area 100 ha jen typewritten text 173 volume 21, number 1 table 3: size and number of estonian food manufacturing companies, 1998. fig 2 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 1 to 4 5 to 9 10 t o 19 20 t o 29 30 t o 49 50 t o 99 > 99 no. of employees n o of c om pa ni es figure 4: production of some major agricultural commodities, 1914 to 2000. fig 3 0 200 400 600 800 r ye w he at b ar le y o at s po ta to es m ilk c at tle sh ee p pi gs10 00 t on ne s of 1 00 0 h ea d of c at tle 1914 1924 1994 1997 2000 jen typewritten text 174 volume 21, number 1 figure 5: exports and imports of agricultural commodities and food products, 2000. fig 4 0 40 80 120 m ea t & f is h fr ui t & v eg et ab le s d ai ry p ro du ct s c er ea ls c on fe ct io ne ry b ev er ag es o th er f oo ds m ill io ns e ur o exports imports figure 6: trade in food and agricultural products by major trading partner, 2000 fig 5 0 20 40 60 la tv ia n et he rla nd s li th ua ni a u kr ai ne g er m an y fi nl an d d en m ar k r us si a s w ed en u ni te d s ta te s u ni te d k in gd om m ill io n eu ro exports imports jen typewritten text 175 volume 21, number 1 figure 7: trade deficit in food and agricultural products, 1995 to 2000. fig 6 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 d ef ic it m ill io ns e ur o figure 8: domestic production of fruits and vegetables other than potatoes, 1998. fig 7 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 cabbages red beet carrots tomatoes cucumbers blueberries apples & pears plums cherries currants gooseberries raspberries strawberries kg /h ea d of p op ul at io n jen typewritten text 176 volume 21, number 1 figure 9: percentage of consumers who produce their own rather than purchase, by item. fig 8 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 potatoes c abbage fruit juice eggs lettuce fresh m eat tom atoes c ucum bers a pples m ilk sm oked b utter c hickens % jen typewritten text 177 “same people, same system”: change and gender in a moravian toy factory ben hill passmore, university system of maryland © 2005 ben hill passmore all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. introduction in the czech republic, they have an old saying, “st. martin arrives on a white horse.” it was november 11th, st. martin’s day, and it had in fact arrived on a white horse in the form of half a foot of wet snow. lucka, my research assistant, and i had trudged through it after a twenty-minute ride on a tram full of quiet commuters that morning. we were due at “moravian toys,” a small toy company in the brno suburb of bohunice, at 7:30 in the morning. when we entered the front door of the company we were greeted by the usual empty lobby and dark corridors heading off into the factory. the “receptionist,” a man in his fifties, was hidden away in a small unobvious room off of the lobby. from earlier visits, we knew to lean our head in and let him know that we had arrived. some days this was greeted with a grunt of recognition and nothing more; today he decided to phone our department destination and make them come and escort us in. he had nothing further to say to us after the call and we waited only a few minutes for a woman from the design department to arrive and lead us into the company. the design department could not have provided a greater contrast to the dark empty spaces we had already passed through. the room we were ushered into was smaller and occupied by several women working hard on the projects being rushed to completion before christmas. it was brightly lit and after our outside experience, remarkably warm and dry. an electric kettle was sitting in one corner next to an unmarked bottle which, as we knew from earlier experience, contained strong homemade slivovice. we settled in and began an interview after warm greetings all around, comments on the weather and coffee for the two of us. this interview began in this little corner of the company which buzzed with activity — unlike much of the company, which seemed empty and quiet even at the peak of their busiest season. the activity was, as one of the designers put it, “the same, the same as we did before, the job has not changed,” but she also wanted to make it clear that society had changed radically since the 1989 “velvet revolution.” how this was possible— how work could remain the same as the rest of society was turned on its head — was not a question to which those i interviewed had immediate answers. they suggested that their company was just different and maybe better than many, that their leaders had found ways to make it work in the new country. this intrigued and troubled me. had i, in fact, traveled thousands of miles (the last several through the snow in leaky boots) to somehow arrive at the only company where things had not changed after 1989? or worse still, were my understandings of czech society simply wrong: had change been less dramatic than i had understood? this paper has several purposes. it will describe some of the general changes that have impacted women in czech society. it will describe some of the dynamics occurring in the workplace and how these impact women. finally, it will try to answer this question of how and why things could jen typewritten text 114 seem to remain the same, or more accurately, why women in this company would argue that they were the same. fieldwork and factory this article is the result of ethnographic fieldwork that took place in 2002 and 2003 in the city of brno in the czech republic, and specifically at a company that i will refer to as moravian toys. the material discussed here is a subset of the material collected during the fieldwork. forty employees were interviewed at moravian toys and most of the material in this article is drawn from those interviews. in addition, survey and additional interview data from other portions of the project are included, as is a variety of government and other reference material. moravian toys is a company that produces lines of plush toys, puppets, and some clothing. it is and has been among the largest manufacturers of these products in the czech republic. founded in 1909, the company is organized as a cooperative and currently employs approximately 400 people. the cooperative organization is typical of the smallest businesses in the czech republic. the union of czech and moravian cooperatives (svaz českých a moravských výrobních družstev) reports that of their approximately 350 members only 20 employ more than 250 workers. the cooperative organization in the czech republic is a pattern that dates to the late nineteenth century, and apparently has been viewed with some suspicion in both the communist period and during the postcommunist period. one informant suggested that they were viewed as too private for the communists and are viewed as a bit too socialist for the era of private enterprise. this company, however, operates in essentially the same fashion as a joint stock company with four individuals holding the majority of shares and 73 other employees as members of the cooperative. the current management has been with the company for many years, including the production manager with over 22 years at the company and the general director who headed the company for a period in the 1980s as well. moravian toys was restored to the heirs of the 1948 owners as restitution for seizure by the communists. the members of the cooperative pooled their resources and were able to purchase the company from the heirs, although shares in the company became concentrated in fewer hands than had previously been the case. following 1989, toys saw demand for their products in the czechoslovakian, and later the czech market, virtually disappear. they were fortunate because they had, by virtue of their status as a cooperative company, a set of established contacts in germany and austria which were not mediated by the čsr export agency. they established their renewed business through these contacts and the czech market eventually recovered to some extent. they are currently running three production lines of toys and clothing with the majority going for export markets. as is typical of garment and other textile related companies in the region, moravian toys’ workforce is almost entirely made up of women. most line-workers have what is referred to as an “odborná škola” (technical/vocational high school) diploma with managers and professional staff universally having college degrees. the estimated average age of employees working at the main factory site is over 40, and the majority are either married or divorced. in this setting, it is, perhaps, not surprising that the discussion often turned to the nature of gender relations in the late transition czech republic. women problems women have borne the brunt of the negative changes that have happened (in the workplace) since 1989. women have clung to outdated privileges which the communists gave them and some of them use them to take advantage of the current workplace. jen typewritten text 115 these quotes are drawn from one czech couple’s (hours-long) argument begun over dinner one evening. it was a typical reaction to what turned out to be a question that aroused great passion. the opinions also captured what seemed to be the typical range of opinion on changes in the czech workplace as seen through the lens of traditional gender conceptions. despite forty years of concerted effort by the communists to improve the position of women, these ideas seem to have had a minimal effect. although legal protections and work rules are strong, they do not appear to be effectively enforced in most cases and are circumvented relatively easily in others. in some instances, the rules designed to protect women were manipulated to disadvantage them. a number of women to whom i spoke discussed failures to achieve promotions or even find a position because their employers feared they would become pregnant and cost the company time, production, and money while on maternity leave. one younger woman stated: if you apply for the job you have fewer chances if you are “just married” because the employers are expecting you to have babies soon. that is why my cousin had not the wedding and her graduation party at the same day as she planned. she is still single, living with her boyfriend, earning silly money as a medical assistant at the university and trying to put some money by for the time they decide to have a family. maternity leave in the czech republic is generous and jobs are guaranteed upon the end of the leave. the argument was made by one human resources manager that the rules were simply unrealistic today, that companies were hanging on by a very thin margin and they could not temporarily replace important positions. there is some reason to believe that this is merely one small part of a broader trend to reassert the primacy of men in czech society. in part, this is simply a recognition that women had not advanced to a position equal to men as the communists might have claimed. although they had achieved an improved economic position and many benefits such as maternity leave, that are frequently used as a yardstick of change, these benefits had been imposed by a system now generally viewed as illegitimate and they were not accompanied by ideological change. this theme, the erosion of women’s position, has been a common one in postcommunist societies particularly in such areas as repro-ductive rights (gal and kligman 2000, verdery 1997) or job security (scott et al. 1997). other evidence suggests this broader theme. the female half of the couple quoted at the start of this section complained of her failure to receive a promotion at work. she had been with the company for several years and was passed over for promotion in favor of a junior male colleague. the explanation she was given was that after 3 years of marriage she would certainly be pregnant soon. she stated with exasperation, “i don’t want to get pregnant; we are not going to have children.” her employer stated simply that he did not believe her, that all women wanted children, but that she could retain her current position. she argued to me that he was simply discriminating against her because she was a woman. another woman spoke bitterly about being forced to stay on maternity leave despite wanting to return to work. her husband was not allowed by his employer to take his legally available leave to take his turn at childcare. his boss was reported to have said that the wife should take of the children and he would be fired if he tried to take leave. an indication that this attitude is widespread came in the summer of 2004 when hana marvanova, a freedom union deputy in parliament, resigned because she had just given birth and the parliament has no child care center. czech commentators argued about what message this was delivering to jen typewritten text 116 the society, some arguing she was doing the right thing and others that she had sent a strong message to average women that they should not return to work (prague post 2003). the maternity leave issue was not the only one raised although most seemed to concern children and childcare. for example, women were generally allowed to leave somewhat earlier from work than their male counterparts. this was basically to fill the need to provide after-school care for the children. male informants, including the male half of the couple quoted at the beginning of this section, argued that this was routinely taken advantage of by women. this assertion outraged female informants. beyond the broader issue of overall gender equity in czech work, several smaller issues emerged. there was a growing awareness and a hearty skepticism about the issue of sexual harassment. although information about this problem was widely available and the government had made a concerted push in recent years to raise public awareness, the general attitude of both men and women was that it is not a problem. in fact, i was asked a number of times to confirm that american women had simply invented the idea for their own benefit (which i did not, of course, do). this attitude is promoted in the tabloid press which routinely ran stories of sexual harassment, generally focusing on the abuse of claims. czech law regarding the rights of women, sexual harassment and crimes primarily perpetrated against women is still evolving rapidly. sexual harassment has been recognized since 2000, when it was added to the legal code. prior to 2004, no specific definition was available to allow enforcement in any but the most egregious of cases. in march of 2004, the chamber of deputies passed an amendment to the code which defined sexual harassment in both direct and indirect forms. for the first time, this created a legal basis for challenging such practices as refusal to hire or promote women of child-bearing age. however, one should not forget that despite these advances the belief that one can secure any sort of effective remedy through the czech courts remains very low in many segments of czech culture (united nations 2003, o’connor 2004, griger 2004). these issues suggest the perceived appropriate relationships between men and women in the workplace. a number of times informants replied that this job or that job were simply men’s work or women’s work. when challenged on the issue, the reply often made reference to the perceived greater aptitude of men at, for example, mechanical tasks or women for sewing. in other instances, it was simply stated that men and women were just right for certain positions. one informant for example stated that, of course, a receptionist is always a woman; “who wants to see a man do that job?” the issue of men’s and women’s work also gave rise to a discussion of women’s and men’s workplaces. women’s workplaces were described as being less coarse than men’s but routinely more intrusive. the women in the workplace, it was asserted, were likely to involve themselves in each other’s lives regardless of the wishes of those involved. men’s workplaces were described as being typified by horseplay, crude humor, and (even today) a tendency to drink in the workplace. interestingly, and perhaps tellingly for the validity of these stereotypes, the only worksite drinking that i did was exclusively with groups of women workers (including a 7:30 a.m. shot of potent plum brandy slivovice with our tea). in a broad sense, the changing economic arrangements in czech society have worked against women in the workplace. this is in part because of the costs of child care, maternity leave, and other benefits now at least partially fall on struggling companies, but more significantly because attitudes and ideology have not changed significantly over time. in short, gender equity has ceased to be a priority in czech society. gendered spaces are common within enterprises and jen typewritten text 117 prevailing beliefs about the nature of these spaces serves to maintain a level of segregation. women are allowed to advance in areas where they are perceived to have aptitude, but are effectively restricted in others. segmentation of the labor market one of the most striking changes to workforces during the nineties, impacting men and women alike, was the dramatic change in the size and nature of workforces at individual enterprises. this was the case at moravian toys. with a major reduction in the mid-1990s and continuing smaller scale reductions to the present, toys has reduced its staff considerably, from over 1,500 to 400 today. they also reduced the proportion of workers who work in the actual central production facilities, a change that has had particular impact in the textile industry. the loss of these jobs during the nineties was also accompanied by an increasing segmentation of the existing workforce at the turn of the 21st century. these shifts mirror changes that occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s as the first world moved from so-called “fordist” production to “flexible production” regimes (see harvey 1989 and vallas 1993 for discussion). the economies of the developed capitalist world eliminated large numbers of manufacturing positions and workers found themselves in increasing numbers in the service sector. the labor market divided into primary and secondary sectors, which both damaged the position of labor in the first world and created a powerful “pull” for immigration into these societies. the surge in positions in the secondary labor market in advanced capitalist societies created a demand for low status individuals who would fill positions that confer little in the way of social status or hope of wage increases over time. employers were restricted in their ability to raise wages in order to avoid upsetting social relationships defined by position within the primary labor market. for much the same reason, these positions have little social prestige associated with them and are generally regarded as the least desirable employment available (piore 1973). this process is now underway within the labor market of the czech republic and the impact is evident at moravian toys. this segmentation was recognized as a longterm trend by management, if not always in clear terms, and became a major focus of their pre-eu planning. this was also the case at a number of other enterprises where directors spoke of the need to find labor that conformed to the basic characteristics of the secondary labor market. in each case, a supply of labor had to be located which could be defined as being other than part of the primary labor market. in the u.s. and western europe, these low status jobs are filled by three categories of individuals: immigrants, adolescents, and, to a lesser extent, women. each of these groups could safely be established as laboring outside the mainstream system of social reward. within the czech republic’s private sector, business leaders argued that the solution to this has been to employ part-time, immigrant or young employees. many companies in the brno area have successfully begun using immigrant ukrainian, russian, and polish labor in its manufacturing positions. moravian toys has established the practice of using female workers who remain at home and do what is essentially “piecework.” as an example, one general director explained the growth of immigrant labor at his company in the following way, it is difficult to find on the market good people even with high unemployment in brno… we have sixty percent foreign workers (in blue collar positions) because it is hard to find people who are willing to work in an intensive working process … and sometimes they (the foreign worker) are willing to work for money that a czech doesn’t want to work for. he believes this problem has arisen because, jen typewritten text 118 in the communist time, before 1990, the working class was the only power in society. and the intelligentsia, the educated (they) took as half-enemies. this tendency, which was on this side, turned to the other side and it needs to be somewhere in between…everyone sees the problem that training high schools … are not sufficiently on the market and moreover there is not interest to put children in these schools. it is a social problem. in this we see the essential elements of the secondary labor market: immigrant labor, lower wages, and reduced social status of a type of labor. the status of this type of work is further reduced through its association with russian and ukrainian immigrants, who are often associated with criminality in czech society. where many companies have had to create avenues for accessing low-prestige workers, moravian toys has built upon an existing system dating from the socialist period but redefined to meet the challenges of the current economic scene. the system relies on the discursive return to the traditional status of women in czech society. during the communist period, the company was in the practice of hiring large numbers of women recently graduated from technical training programs and schools. these workers would then either work in their own homes or in the factory complex assembling pre-cut cloth into finished toys, clothing, and other products. this was, and remains, the most labor-intensive part of the company’s production process. it was not uncommon for many of these young women to marry and have children within a few years of beginning work at the company. after their maternity leave was completed, some returned to work at the factory but many became more or less permanently “home sewers.” this home-based option allowed these mothers to maintain their legally required employment but with essentially unlimited time for child care. they were also a pool of available labor for the stop and start rhythms of state socialist productions. the standard career path at moravian toys included some time working from home. over 90% of the women interviewed at moravian toys had worked for a time as “home sewers,” including the current director of human resources. today, this pattern persists in an outwardly similar form, but with some important differences. new employees are now usually hired to do work in the home before they have any opportunity to move to the factory. indeed, the numbers of opportunities to do so are extremely limited, with most positions occupied by older employees who began with moravian toys in the eighties or early nineties. of the more than forty workers interviewed at the factory only two were under the age of 35. of these two, one began work in 1993 and one in 1999. both had worked at home for some time before moving to the factory and both expressed considerable happiness at working in the factory. this is despite arduous daily commutes from locations considerably outside brno. over 200 women currently work at home in this fashion assembling pre-cut goods. this suggests that it is no longer an effective route to more career oriented and higher paying positions in the company. organization of payment for work has also changed for these women. workers now only work when needed and as production demands. although technically paid an hourly wage, they are in fact doing so-called “piecework.” for example, a woman may receive an assignment of 15 large toys that must be assembled. for this she is paid for the number of hours that the company standard indicates it will take to assemble these toys. in this case, it might be 3 paid hours at 5 toys per hour. this does not typically amount to a salary that is competitive with workers at the factory, but as many home sewers live in villages outside of brno (where it is considerably less expensive than in the city) it is considered adequate by management and the factory workers. jen typewritten text 119 this source of secondary market labor is characterized here by the redefinition of an existing system. it retains the appearance of the old system, but marginalizes the participants. they are a key part of the production but enjoy considerably reduced prestige and opportunity than did their predecessors. however, this is obscured to some extent by the continued linkage of this system with the perceived traditional gender roles suitable for women. we find that though the tasks remain the same, the nature of the place for these women in these positions has changed dramatically. when probed on this issue, most admit it has changed but all claim that some fundamental core of “sameness” remains. “same people, same system” was a common refrain. the question remains why maintain this position despite considerable change, most of which has harmed women’s positions? legitimacy, participation and “honesty” as i interviewed her, eva was surrounded by a pack of large stuffed white bears. she was the junior sewing room worker at the age of 24 and her work area was set at the end of a row of more than a dozen more senior co-workers. the bears were her current project and as i sat with her one morning she related their purpose. the bears were part of a project that had come to the factory only a few weeks before. the design had been pushed rapidly through the design department, and the materials had been prepared only the week before in the cutting room on the second floor. the faux bear pelts and stuffing had climbed the stairs to the third floor sewing room and arrived for eva’s sewing two days earlier. she recounted all of this and then the ultimate destination of the stuffed animal at the nuremburg toy fair where it was to be an important part of a german company (to whom moravian toys were a subcontractor) line of toys. although eva was probably the least important worker on the floor (possibly in the building), because of her youth and lack of seniority in the lowest status work area, she was fully aware of the details and importance of the toy she was assembling. eva was far from alone; virtually all toys employees displayed a remarkable grasp of the intricacies of the company’s business. this was striking and raised the question, “why would this be the case?” the answer lies in the quest by enterprises’ management for legitimacy in the eyes of their workers and the management goal of their engagement within the firm. these two concepts were keys in providing a conceptual framework for the changes that surrounded the initial privatization of enterprises and remain useful for benchmarking how industry is proceeding with continued change. in this case the patterns of ownership and management are those that arose from the crisis in legitimacy that ended communist rule in czechoslovakia. legitimacy here simply refers to the socially established correctness of a particular idea or process. little opposition existed to the idea of private ownership in the czech republic in the early nineties precisely because the former system’s legitimacy had collapsed (mareš 1995). however, the specifics of legitimizing privatization and private industry had to be established, and owners and managers who had seen 1989 could not afford to ignore the need to establish the legitimacy of their new positions. the criteria for legitimacy was described during privatization as follows, “privatization means a radical increase in the rationality and effectiveness of society’s economic and social systems” (mareš 1995:55), and: “all of them – either workers or managers – asked only whether the new employers would be able to manage the company towards prosperity and a growth in wages (improved economic rationality of the enterprise)” (mareš 1995:55). this pattern was found to be basically the same in a number of enterprises studied at the time (mareš and musil 1994). the criteria of legitimacy were initially established as success and economic prosperity. this belief remains a powerful jen typewritten text 120 one among the managers and workers at toys. participation, which is not synonymous with engagement, was also seen as a key component for successful privatization. it is also rather difficult to define. clearly, every employee participates in the business of the company. this participation may be limited and adversarial or committed and supportive. the “good worker” in the early nineties had “the duty to work well…to keep and make the most of the working hours…and to obey superiors” (musil 1995:39), and 90% of the respondents (workers as well as managers) assume that responsibility for the overall stability and prosperity of the enterprise is to be born exclusively or almost exclusively by top management and owners (musil 1995:35). at toys, significant effort has been made to encourage the internalization of the strategic viewpoint of management to achieve something beyond this; “engagement” with the company is the new goal. this has to some extent been successful at toys. at that company the management has helped to create legitimacy for itself and its programs through raising employee participation to a new level. this new level of participation is full engagement by employees with the enterprise as, at least rhetorically, those responsible for the success or failure of the company. it has also necessitated the agreement by workers and managers on an implicit set of norms that workers feel the right and responsibility to enforce, at least through obvious resistance when they are violated. this has been necessary because of failure by the company owners and managers to achieve the desired levels of wage prosperity and enterprise economic security. instead, these ultimately legitimating ends have been deferred into the future and an interim normative legitimacy has come into being. this internalization of norms is largely expressed through the ideals voiced by management with reference to issues seen in the broader society. these ideals can be summed up in the idea of “honesty” or “fairness.” managers and workers at every level have expressed a desire for people at all levels within the company to work and behave honestly. one designer at toys described her husband’s dishonest boss. he had failed to pay his employees for two months. she reported that her husband and others accepted that this was because the company simply lacked the money to pay them. they then discovered he was building himself a large villa in a suburb of the city. this proved, in her mind and to his employees, that he was fundamentally dishonest. the dishonesty was not directly related to the company’s failure but to the belief that the owner was lying about the success of the business. a group supervisor at toys describes a good employee as one who has “honesty to quality” and is “just and fair to others.” the head of human resources at another company described a “good worker” of the early 21st century as, what you are looking for in an employee is … (someone) who works fair, who is proactive, who is open-minded and flexible, and also skilled. it is not enough to be skilled .. (one) must also be fair and loyal. finally, the need for “honesty with company materials,” that is the elimination of theft and casual destruction, was repeated in virtually every interview. one manager explained how this could be achieved, it is the management who influences most the employees and management should be ideal in a way. this sets a good example and if this sets a good example, there’s a high probability others will be influenced and follow the good example. to work “fair” or “honest” incorporates a number of behaviors. first, it means to be a team member and work for the group. the worker should recognize his or her jen typewritten text 121 subordinate position but the manager must treat all of the workers evenhandedly. this was repeatedly contrasted with the communist period when favoritism and political promotion were ubiquitous. second, it means accepting the basic hardships, whether one is a manager or a worker. if the company has no money, the managers should not be displaying wealth or receiving promotion. this “lead by example” idea is also believed to be a key component in reducing theft. the argument was advanced that, on the whole, czech society is not an honest one. during a group interview, the question arose as to whether i knew czech immigrants and whether they were as honest as other people in the united states. my reply was that they seemed to be. this was greeted with a response that all the honest people must have left the czech republic. the individual workers, managers, and owners owe it to each other and the future success of the company to be committed to honesty as a group. only in this way, they argued, could the enterprise succeed. same system, same people what does this mean? how have these efforts to pull workers into the system and maintain engagement with them helped the company? what is the linkage between this engagement and broader social shifts in which women face increasing difficulties? the short answer seems to be that the factory has been effectively recreated as a place where it is perceived that a new postcommunist moral economy is in operation. the workgroups have become increasingly atomized as “surplus” labor has been lost and this, in combination with the long tenure of the women in these groups, has created extremely tight and potentially exclusive networks. the careful attention to honesty and internal transparency by managers has allowed these managers to access the social capital potential of the networks of women workers in the factory, and use this to reinforce the legitimacy of their leadership and its policies. they have established a legitimate new organization which, managers and workers argue, can fit into the new czech republic and into the new europe. this has been accomplished by management’s surrendering a certain level of rhetorical control to achieve consent and engagement from their workers. these concessions are almost entirely in the areas of “openness,” internal transparency of operation, and “honesty” in a number of forms. seemingly small concessions, they are important because of their perceived absence in the broader society and the threat to the economic position of women. the women workers have consented to a new and typically late-capitalist organization of work, what burawoy (1979) called a “factory regime,” in exchange for these concessions. more than that, they have actively engaged in this new system, trying to make it work with apparently serious resolve. the conditions women face outside the company — a country perceived to be unjust in general and particularly towards women — have created an environment where the inherent injustices in the new society dwarf the apparently minor injustices in the workplace. this new factory system is economically unequal, but it is an acceptable exchange for being part of something that works economically and morally. whether this support and engagement continues when the new economic realities begin to tell remains a question for the future. by any objective measure, the workplace has changed dramatically. the responses to the contrary described in the first section of this article are for this reason puzzling. these answers are explicable through an understanding of the maintenance and adaptation of existing systems to meet new needs. the use of a work system at toys that had always taken advantage of existing gender roles to mobilize labor was easily adapted to the new circumstance. the perceived declining position of women in the country as a whole is contrasted with the “fair deal” one can expect at the factory. this drives a set of relationships that rely jen typewritten text 122 heavily on the social capital expressed through “trust” and “honesty” discourses that have allowed the company to effectively maintain and adapt its production to the new circumstances of the post-privatization world. the “same system” is not an economic or industrial one, but instead a moral one, which is perceived to have been overlaid over the factory system. references cited: berger, peter and thomas luckman. 1985. the social construction of reality. new york: penguin books. burawoy, michael. 1979. manufacturing consent: changes in the labor process under monopoly capitalism. chicago: university of chicago press. ——. 1985. the politics of production: factory regimes under capitalism and socialism. london: verso press. gal, susan and gail kligman. 2000. reproducing gender: politics, publics and everyday life after socialism. princeton, nj: princeton university press. grigar, kay. 2004. chamber of deputies pushes through sexual harassment amendment. (http://www.radio.cz/en/article/49461). january 15, 2004. harvey, david. 1989. the condition of post-modernity. oxford: blackwell. mareš, petr. 1995. legitimacy. in: social consequences of change in ownership: two case studies in industrial enterprises in the czech republic– spring 1993, (pp. 53-70); brno, czech republic: masarykova univerzita. musil, libor. 1995. participation. in: social consequences of change in ownership: two case studies in industrial enterprises in the czech republic– spring 1993, (pp. 26-52); brno, czech republic: masarykova univerzita. o’connor, coilin. 2004. sexual harassment finally enshrined in czech law. (http://www.radio.cz/en/article/51443). march 8, 2004. offe, g. 1989 disorganized capitalism: contemporary transformations of work and politics. cambridge, ma: mit press. piore, michael. 1973. notes for a theory of labor market stratification. in: labor market segmentation. m reich, r. edwards, and d. gordon, eds. lexington, ma: heath and company. prague post. 2003. postview: flawed system pressures women. september 25, 2003. scott, j., c. kaplan and d. keats. 1997. transitions, environments and translations: feminisms in international politics. rout ledge, new york city. united nations. 2003. the world’s women 2000: trends and statistics. social and demographic statistics branch. new york: united nations publications vallas, steven. 1993. power in the workplace: the politics of production at at&t. albany, ny: suny press. verdery, katherine. 1997. what was socialism and what comes next? princeton, nj: princeton university press. jen typewritten text 123 ambivalent traditions: transforming gender symbols and food practices in the czech republic volume 21, number 1 ambivalent traditions: transforming gender symbols and food practices in the czech republic haldis haukanes, university of bergen © 2003 haldis haukanes all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. introduction: from shortage to plenty studies of consumption are often focused upon individual identity and particularly on individuals’ production of selves by the means of relating to a market of goods and services. focusing on consumption involves not only an examination of individual consumers vis-à-vis the market, however. it also involves considerations of relations between individuals, groups and the nation and, not least, relations between family members. changes in consumption patterns, resources and practices have to be negotiated within families. this paper will deal will familyand gender-related consumption issues, examined with regards to changes in dietary regimes in post-communist czech republic, where an economy of plenty, with many new choices and alternatives, has replaced the socialist economy of shortage. scarcity was a key experience of daily life of actually existing/lived socialism – although it varied, in time and degree, between countries. the czech agricultural sector was among the more efficient in the comecon union, so there was – for most of the socialist period no real shortage of food among czech and slovak people. but certain types of scarcity nevertheless prevailed; southern fruit were scarce all year, fresh fruit and vegetables were difficult to find during winter time and quality meat seldom found its way to the butcher’s block. such types of food were scarce, and those that were more readily available were still limited by lack of choice. after the opening of czech markets to the global economy, czech consumers have been faced with a number of new products to choose among, and are confronted continually with dietary ideas from a range of different culinary cultures, through media newspapers, magazines and televisionshows – as well as through advertising. the question, then, is: to what extent and how do people change their daily consumption practices and their everyday diet? to what extent do new ideas influence the way people think about their own food? the changes that people make are not only dependent on an abundance of alternatives or on financial resources, but must also be seen in relation to questions of identity involving ideas about the modern and the traditional, about the czech and the non-czech. not least, people’s dietary choices must be seen in relation to wider issues of kinship, gender and generation, including the continuous process of negotiating taste and individual preferences within each family. background since 1990 i have been working on problems of the post-communist transformation in czech villages; in my research, daily life issues, agriculture and the production of food has been a main focus (haukanes 1993, 1999).1 last year i carried out a more specific research project on food, consumption and health, in connection with which i conducted in-depth interviews with twenty-four women, mostly from the working or lower-middle classes, all of whom were responsible for the preparation of food for their families. eleven of the women live in the town of plzen and the thirteen remaining live in different small villages in south bohemia, scattered over an area with a radius of about five kilometers2. before i met the women i interviewed, they had all filled out a form where they had noted down one week’s “food-work”: the meals that they had prepared, what they had been cooking and for whom. the interviews proceeded partly as a deeper probing of the information given on the form, and partly as an “organized” conversation on core topics such as food and gender, food and national identity, and food and pollution. changes in the diet were explicitly addressed in all the interviews. jen typewritten text 77 volume21, number 1 my knowledge of today’s consumption patterns, diet and preferences is most developed in relation to the countryside. interviewing urban women has given me a limited but interesting, body of comparative material. one important difference between the rural and the urban relates to the production of foodstuffs and the extensive subsistence farming practiced in czech villages3. subsistence farming, which provides a seasonal abundance of various products, demands a greater expenditure of time spent on food-work from villagers than from town people4. when comparing meal structures and patterns of consumption, however, there are no clear indications that urban and rural women cook very differently. the difference is not so much between the rural and the urban as between generations: the younger women – both in villages and in towns – are more likely to be inclined to substitute traditional cooking with lighter and more “modern” dishes. this indicates a change in consumption patterns which is also explicitly identified by many of my informants; and which i have observed in practice in some of the village homes that i have visited and observed during the last decade. below i shall examine these changes and the challenges they bring to families and individuals through focusing on a key example, namely the dumpling, and its changing symbolic and nutritional place in the czech kitchen during the last decade. before i move on to the dumplings, let me say a few words about changes in consumption practices during communism as i know it from the south bohemian countryside. scarcity and lack of choice in shops did not mean that the diet did not change in this period. when talking to older/middle-aged people about the diet of their youth, they give a picture that is quite different from the meatcentred and rather heavy diet i met when i first came to south bohemia in 1990 (meat served for lunch almost everyday, including a bouillonbased soup as a starter, and often a piece of meat or some sausages for supper as well). the prewar and early post-war diet was, for “ordinary people” at least, a much simpler one. according to older villagers i have talked to, meat as a main dish was in many families served only on sundays, and the everyday lunch often consisted of potatoor milk-based dishes or a soup only. what is thought of as traditional czech food today dishes such as dumplings served with meat and gravy, or pork with dumplings and sauerkraut – was for many people sunday food in former times. their status has changed from sunday food to everyday food, but they are nevertheless thought of as national classics klasika (see also ulehlová-tilschová 1945:557ff). dumplings – between national pride and unhealthy old -fashionedness food is an important symbol of group identity and an important marker of boundaries; it can signify youth culture or class identity (bourdieu 1984), or it can be a metaphor for a particular nation and a signifier of ethnic community (see for example bell and valentine 1997). in the czech kitchen, dumplings appear to have a special status. during my first stay in the south bohemian countryside (1990/91) i encountered many people who had never met a foreigner before, at least not one from norway. the first questions i received were likely to be the following: do you like our food? have you tasted dumplings? do you have dumplings in norway too? thereby indicating that dumplings are typically czech; they represent something special that is not found in all other countries. dumplings have a special symbolic status in themselves, but they are also special because of the fact that they are part of dishes thought of as czech classics. wheat flour dumplings (houskové knedlíky) belong to what most people consider to be the national czech food veproknedlo-zelo , i.e. pork with sauerkraut and dumplings5. dumplings served with gravy and well-cooked meat, be it beef, pork, game or – mostly in villages – rabbit, represent another combination which is typical of the czech cuisine. meat and dumpling based dishes are not only associated with the traditional and czech, they are also associated with a certain kind of masculinity involving notions of male strength. men, and in particular manual labourers, are believed to need lots of meat, and in particular to love meat prepared traditionally and served with dumplings. “men need meat;” “they want meat with sauce and dumplings;” “men like a proper piece of meat – if there’s no meat there’s no lunch;” “men are demanding when it comes to food, they want meat with dumplings and nothing else. these are typical comments on food and gender that i’ve heard from czech women as they discuss their male relatives’ food preferences, and which i met during the interviews too. on the other hand “women like jen typewritten text 78 volume21, number 1 salads and pasta;” “women like sweets;” or even – “women are more modest, they eat what is on the table and don’t have special demands.”6 in the homes of the women i interviewed, the division of labor was traditional. this means that the women were responsible for the cooking as well as most of the other household tasks, something that corresponds with my former experiences at the bohemian and moravian countryside as well as with recent statistical data on gender and labour in the czech republic (see friedlanderova and tucek 2001). most czech women whom i have met have high standards when it comes to caring for their families, and these include serving them the food that they like the best. there are expectations involved both from the wider community and from the woman’s family. women, at least those over about 35 years’ old, are expected to know how to make the traditional meals. but these meals, and in particular the dumplings-meat-andgravy dishes, are considered time-consuming and complicated to make. i don’t know how many times i’ve observed or heard mention made of unsuccessful dumplings spoiling a meal and/or having to be substituted in a hurry with potatoes or bread. when during interviews i asked the women whether they knew how to make knedlíky, some of the younger urban women said that they didn’t know how to make them and told me that they bought ready-made ones if, once in a while, they did decide to serve them. in most cases this information was conveyed in a slightly embarrassed voice, however, as if these women had revealed a shameful secret to me. others rejected totally the notion of buying knedlíky. as one middle-aged woman said, “if i serve bought ones, they (her husband and grown-up son) recognize it immediately.” “that’s not it” (to neni vono). i have also come across cases where the lack of ability to prepare dumplings takes on a symbolic value far beyond the context of everyday meals. for example, an urban woman, now sixty years old, told me about her very difficult marriage and about her husband’s dislike of her ways of behaving. she said: “when he couldn’t find anything else to complain about, he blamed me for not serving him dumplings.” her inability to serve the proper food was thus made a key symbol for their whole relationship and for her “failures” as a spouse in particular. the marriage ended in divorce. the traditional mid-day meal is the main meal of the day in czech homes and is of the kind that in modern vocabulary could be called slow-food, particularly when it comes to sauces and soups made “from scratch.” when asking my informants how much time they spend on cooking each day, most of them said that cooking lunch takes them from one to two hours, at weekends even more (for general statistics, see friedlanderova and tucek 2001: 102-103).7 as mentioned earlier, there seems to be a slight difference between generations, with the younger spending somewhat less time on cooking than the older ones. the younger women are also inclined to substitute some of the rather heavy traditional dishes with lighter and faster-made ones. several of them said that they seldom made gravy-meat and dumpling-dishes, for example, but rather made more use of pasta, salads and poultry. this is, i believe, a countrywide tendency; the czech diet is moving, although slowly, towards a lighter and “faster” one. the consumption of red meat is on the decline; in many cases it is being substituted with poultry8. a tendency to eat more vegetables, particularly in the form of salads, is also visible both in private homes and in public venues (although the average amount of vegetables consumed a year is still far below the amount consumed in western european countries (zelená zprava 2000)). many canteens at work places will now offer a choice between main courses, of which one may be a vegetarian, or they will serve big “multi-vegetable salads,” in contrast to the small cups with grated carrots, turnips or cucumber that followed the meal in former days. a certain move away from the klasika can be thus observed, in particular in the homes of younger couples. traditional food has gained a more ambiguous status in many people’s minds. some mention their klasika with pride, as a national symbol of which they can be proud. one urban working-class woman, when asked what she understood by the expression “pravé ćeské jídlo (real czech food) answered this: “ the best food in the world.” she then went on to list off her favorite dishes, of which the first was vepro-knedlo-zelo.” the czech artist jirí cernicky, when participating in an international art event called “food art” (staged in norway in the summer 2000), piled praises on the dumpling: “there are so many different types of dumplings,” cernicky wrote, “…offering artists of the kitchen such creativity which hotdogjen typewritten text 79 volume21, number 1 makers would only dream of. dumplings might be one of the challenges of czech cuisine to the world” (cernicky 2000). representing the traditional czech diet per se, knedlíky might also be interpreted in a less favorable light. knedlíky, as the epitome of czech national food, served together with meat and sauce, fits into the image of the czech cuisine as a rather heavy and not particularly healthy one. this problematic health aspect was mentioned by many of my informants. for instance, when i asked her about her notions of czech food, a young woman from plzen answered this: “heavy food, of which there’s a lot” and added; “i never make such food.” others were less rejecting, but admitted that they reckoned it was too heavy. as one women said: “well, it’s heavy, but it’s ours” (je tezké, ale je naše). the warnings against traditional czech cooking are not new. during communism, the hygienic control of canteens in workplaces and at schools controlled not only levels of bacteria and cleanliness; it also controlled the menu. for health reasons, canteens were not allowed to serve knedlíky and sauce based dishes more than twice a week.9 after 1989, these health arguments have been utterly emphasised and moreover, they have been embedded in a discourse that has to do with lifestyle and is connected to ideas about the modern and western. during my first stays in the countryside i heard many people saying: “we should eat more like you do, in the west, more fish, vegetables and fruit.” ten years later this “should” had become reality, at least for some people, a reality that was often presented as a choice of lifestyle and a deliberate break with the traditional. in connection with bse being discovered in the czech republic last year, the general director of eurest (international company running canteens in workplaces) answered this when asked by a newspaper whether czech classics will be pushed out of the menu due to people’s fear of bovine meat: “rajská (tomato-sauce) and koprivá (dillsauce)10 where there is bovine meat has already disappeared from many people’s diet. in addition these kinds of dishes are getting unfashionable and it does not happen that for example a manager order such food for his lunch” (pravské noviny 26.10.02). mariana, a young married village woman of 26 whom i interviewed last summer, demonstrated the same “managerial” attitude, distancing herself completely from traditional cooking and talking about the czech specialties with disgust. when, a few weeks after the interview, she invited me to a birthday party, she served me delicate homemade snack and sandwiches; “no dumplings here”, she said, with reference to our earlier conversation about traditions and food. many younger women like to experiment with new dishes and boast of their capability to do so, and –most importantly have husbands who fancy new kinds of food and who are willing to abandon traditional cooking. in a few cases, it is actually the husband who demands that such changes be maid. one reason for mariana to avoid classical gravy-anddumpling dishes is that her husband, due to the bse scandal in europe, will not eat beef. eva, an urban woman of thirty-seven, told me that she had cooked traditionally the first years of after she married (she married right before communism fell): gravies and dumplings and a lot of pork meat. after 1989 her husband started to practice bodybuilding and demanded a different diet including chicken, rice and pasta, but no dumplings. this resulted in the whole family changing their diet. now divorced, she and her daughter still stick to the body-builder’s low-fat diet, and she cannot imagine going back to a more traditional one. more common than these two cases, are the ones where the woman would really like to change their family’s diet, but their husbands or their fathers want to have “real czech food” with a proper piece of meat for each meal. “if it was up to me i would have a lot more vegetables on the menu, but he doesn’t want this kind of food, he prefers the traditional..…” or, as a young married woman living with her parents once complained: “my father cannot imagine a diet without knedlíky, but i don’t want to cook them anymore!” concluding remarks patterns of consumption are changing. in some cases the change involves a devaluation of the traditional czech cooking and sometimes also czech cuisine in general. in terms of gender and food symbolism, a feminization of the diet can be observed; the “male” gravy, meat, and dumplings-dishes are rarely seen at the tables of the younger generation, while the more “feminine” salads, pasta, and poultry-based dishes are common. this is not a straightforward and one-directional process, however. food is a potent symbol of national identity as well as jen typewritten text 80 volume21, number 1 gender-relations, and changes in patterns of consumption involve ambivalences, conflicts, and feelings of national pride and shame. changes have to be negotiated within the minimal unit of consumption, and the winner in this process often seems to be the man. this does not mean that all men reject the new, quite the contrary. ideals of masculinity are in transition too, meaning that a number of men identify with a “modern” way of living and prefer a lighter and faster kind of diet. but dietary changes, and “feminization” of the diet in particular, are in most cases dependant of the male family members’ approval, while the responsibility of caring for the family through food still rests primarily with the woman. references cited bell, d. and valentine, g., 1997, consuming geographies, we are what we eat. london: routledge. bourdieu, pierre, 1984, distinction. london: routledge and kegan-paul ltd. cernicky, jirí, 2000, food art, places and between, issued by flaggruten, norway. dvoráková-janu, vera, 1999, lidé a jídlo, praha, isvnakladatelství friedlanderová, h. and tucek, m. reši na prahu nového tisícileti. praha: slon. haukanes, haldis, 1993, managing ones' lives in a turbulent world -some experiences from a czech village, anthropological journal on european cultures 2/1. ----------, 1999, grand dramas – ordinary lives: state, locality and person in post-communist czech society. doctoral thesis, dept. of social anthropology, university of bergen, norway. ----------, 2001, women as nurturers. food, risk and ideals of care in the czech republic, in haldis haukanes, women after communism: ideal images and real lives. skriftserien no. 12., centre for women’s and gender research, university of bergen lien, bjørkum and bye, kjøtt, 1998, holdninger og endring, (meat, changes in attitudes and consumption), sifo report no.4 úhlelová – tilschová, m., 1945, ćeská strava lidová. praha zelená zprava, 2000, report on the state of czech agriculture from the czech ministry of agriculture. notes 1 i conducted fieldwork in south bohemia in 1990/91, in south moravia in 1993, in south moravia and south bohemia in 1995 and in south bohemia and plzen in 2001. 2 all of the interviewees were married and all had children, grown up or small. only two of the women had husbands who regularly took part in the cooking. the youngest woman interviewed was twenty-five, the oldest sixty-seven. 3 while only one of the urban women interviewed had a substantial supply from her own production, all the village women had access to home grown vegetables, fruit and some meat, either from their own or parents’ production. 4 for more details about this subsistence farming see haukanes 1999, 2001 and dvoráková 1999). 5 the classic study “ ćeská strava lidová ” from 1945 mentions vepro-knedlo-zelo as a national dish (see ulehlovátilschová 1945). when during interviews i asked women what was typical for the czech kitchen, some said, “well dumplings and what belongs to them.” the majority immediately responded vepro-knedlozelo, and added a few more things such as gravy with meat or schnitzels. another specialty often mentioned was the fruit-dumplings (ovocné knedlíky), which are ball-shaped dumplings containing a piece of fruit or some berries inside, be it a plum, an apricot, or strawberries. 6 this tendency to associate maleness with meat and with “traditional food” is demonstrated in studies from other european countries too (see lien, bjørkum and bye 1998) 7 not all of them prepared lunch everyday, since both they and their spouses had lunch at work while the kids had theirs at school. 8 see report from the czech minister of agriculture skot – hovrzí maso (may 2002) 9 in fact, this rule is still valid, but according to the cooks i know the control is less strict and does not include privately run canteens and restaurants. jen typewritten text 81 volume21, number 1 10 both classical meat, dumplings, and gravy dishes jen typewritten text 82 the highs and lows of ethno-cultural diversity: young people’s experiences of chalga culture in bulgaria anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 101 nature protests: the end of ecology in slovakia. by edward snajdr. seattle and london: university of washington press, 2008. xiii, 242 pp. notes. references. index. paper. reviewed by: amy samuelson university of wisconsin-milwaukee drawing on both ethnographic and archival research, edward snajdr gives a fascinating account of environmental activism in slovakia from the last decade of the communist period through the mid1990s. he explores how nature activists united diverse people and interests in challenging the communist regime, and traces these same activists’ inability to adapt their message to the rapidly changing conditions of post-socialism. in examining the wide variety of newly emerging environmental groups in slovakia, he concludes that in an era of image politics it may no longer be possible for ecology to unify diverse groups. this valuable contribution to the growing scholarship on the environment in post-socialist east europe will appeal not only to scholars of this region but to anyone interested in the changing dynamics of environmental activism. the first half of the book examines how slovak nature activists shaped environmentalism into a message challenging socialism, in the process becoming key actors in the velvet revolution. snajdr uses arun agrawal’s concept of environmentality to describe the socialist regime’s control of both nature and citizens through the politics of normalization. while the regime both hid environmental problems from the public and restricted the activities of most groups, it ironically allowed conservation organizations to exist and eventually thrive. by 1972, these conservation groups had formed the slovak union of nature and landscape protection (szopk), the only organization in slovakia that maintained independence from the communist party. drawing extensively on firsthand interviews with activists, snajdr details the shift within szopk from activities such as bird watching and mushroom picking to the renovation of traditional buildings in rural areas. with this shift, snajdr argues, conservationists expanded their focus to include not only the protection of nature but the protection of slovak identity. throughout the 1970s and 1980s, szopk membership grew in both number and diversity, attracting dissident writers with its encouragement of open debate. in 1987, the group published an extensive, well-researched report detailing environmental problems in bratislava. while the regime tried to discredit the report, the citizens of bratislava recognized the environmental problems as real, and szopk became both an enemy of the state and an advocate for the people. the group gave rise to the public against violence civic movement, which took power from the regime in 1989. the second half of the book focuses on environmentalism after 1989, in particular the rapid decline of support for szopk and the emergence of new environmental groups. snajdr explains the former in part as the failure of the group to change its message to fit the rapidly changing, and increasingly nationalist, political landscape. for example, szopk’s fight against the gabčíkovo dam illustrates their failure to recognize that the dam was no longer a symbol of socialism but a symbol of slovak identity. moreover, with concerns such as the split from the czech republic taking center stage, environmental concerns seemed less urgent to many. such difficulties led to splintering within both szopk and the newly formed green party. next, using ethnographic evidence from his 1993-1995 fieldwork among new environmental ngos, including anarchist and nationalist groups, snajdr explains that without the communist state as a clear target, environmentalism has become plural and fragmented. in slovakia and elsewhere, he argues, ecology has been professionalized, disconnected from local practices, and even exploited to serve capitalist or nationalist ends, rendering it incapable of uniting diverse groups. the emergence of image politics and a tendency to focus on single issues such as nuclear testing and animal rights have prevented the emergence of a coherent environmental message since 1989, leading snajdr to purport that a postecological age has arrived. one of the strengths of snajdr’s work involves his use of environmentality to describe the changing relationships between government power and local cultural and political practices in the context of environmental concerns. while agrawal (environmentality: technologies of government and the making of subjects, 2005) focuses on how northern indian forest councils used technologies of government to make citizens into environmental subjects, snajdr’s application of environmentality to socialist as well as post-socialist slovakia uses the anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 102 concept in a richer, more dynamic way. by focusing on environmental activists, snajdr draws explicit attention to the ways that government practices can be resisted, most successfully in the case of szopk and the removal of the communist regime. moreover, by examining environmental politics in a rapidly changing society, he shows what happens when environmentalities fluctuate. additional research could push this approach even further by examining in more depth, for example, the relationship between environmental policies, activists, and the non-activist slovaks whose lives and villages are affected by the construction of dams and other projects. snajdr persuasively argues that slovakia’s shift from a communist environmentality to multiple post-socialist environmentalities has led to a postecological condition in slovakia. while he offers a few examples of similar shifts elsewhere in east europe and beyond, additional comparative research would help to assess his suggestion that the postecological age is a global phenomenon and that 1989 marks its beginning. snajdr’s work gives other researchers a productive framework for continuing to examine the dynamics of environmental activism in different contexts. as slovakia represents the clearest example of environmentalism’s role in the downfall of communism, further comparison with the dynamics of environmentalism in post-socialist countries in which environmental activists played a lesser role, if any, in these events would be especially compelling. by weaving together historical and ethnographic data and examining environmental activism in its larger social and political context, snajdr gives a compelling account of environmentalism in slovakia both during communism and in the first years of post-socialism. the book gives readers not only an understanding of the changing face of environmental activism in slovakia, but a starting point for thinking about such shifts worldwide. microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 29 crossing borders, shifting identities: transnationalisation, ‘materialisation’, and commoditisation of greek ethnicity in post-soviet russia anton popov university of warwick on thursday, 9th november 2000, the krasnodar greek national-cultural organisation (society) held its usual weekly meeting. what was unusual was that the office was full of people; it was too small to accommodate all those who had turned out that evening and the overflow had to stand in a dark corridor. it was obvious that they were waiting for something. when i entered the office the chairperson of the society was speaking on the telephone; he was quite nervous, even annoyed. he almost shouted into the telephone: ‘yes, we are waiting for him! he promised to be here by 6.30…’ listening to conversations in the room, i realised that the office was overcrowded because the people were all waiting for their passports to be returned from the greek consulate in moscow, complete with visas. since 1999, when the greek general consulate in novorossiisk had stopped issuing visas, people from southern russia and the north caucasus had had to apply for greek visas in moscow. the crowd at the meeting was very upset over this inconvenience and people were complaining to the chairperson. he replied that from 2001 onwards they would once again be able to obtain their visas from the novorossiisk consulate. moreover, it would even be possible to apply for greek citizenship there (everyone called it ‘dual citizenship’, meaning that they were planning to retain their russian passports as well). the people were very pleased to hear this and, although their passports did not arrive that evening, many went home in a better mood. when the meeting was almost over, an old man and two women in their late thirties entered the room. the old man asked the chairperson: is it possible to join your society? chairperson: possible for whom? old man: here are my daughter and daughter-inlaw – they want to join. chairperson: but who are you? the old man’s daughter: well, i am the daughter… old man: [my] surname is popandopulo.xvii chairperson: no. i mean: are you greeks? … [i ask] this because if you then [want to] apply for ‘dual citizenship’, only greeks can obtain it. you, popandopulo, what [ethnicity] is recorded in your passport? are you a greek? old man: ‘russian’ is recorded there, but i have the birth certificates (metriki) of my parents [and my] grandfather which show that they were greeks. and my daughter can prove that she is a greek by these certificates. well, as for my daughter-in-law, there is my son… the old man’s daughter-in-law: yes, first of all, my husband has to… chairperson: okay. the old man’s daughter: where should we write our names and how much shall we pay for membership? … (fieldwork diary, 9th november 2000, krasnodar) this story from my fieldwork diary offers a snapshot of practices among former soviet greeks who, since the fall of the iron curtain, have become involved in transnational migration between russia and greece as they deal with the nation-state’s attempts to regulate their cross-border movement. the focus of this article is on the impact that bureaucratic regulations governing transnational migration – covering matters such as passports, visas, invitation letters and documents proving the national/ethnic identity of citizens – have on identity construction among the greeks of russia. the article also examines how the meanings of citizenship, national and ethnic identity are changed and reinterpreted by people crossing national borders in the shifting conditions of the post-soviet era. the article draws on fieldwork research conducted in 2000-2003 among the so-called ‘pontic’ greek population of the two north caucasian provinces of the russian federation – krasnodar krai and the republic of adyghea.xviii the main fieldwork sites were the town of vitiazevo and the village of gaverdovskii, which are the largest settlements of concentrated greek populations in krasnodar krai and adyghea respectively. i also extended my ethnographic investigation to study greek nationalcultural organisations in the provincial capitals of krasnodar and maykop and to interview officers in the greek general consulate in novorossiisk. some interviews and observations were recorded when i visited my informants’ families in the village of severskaia and the town of gelendzhik in krasnodar krai and the village (aul) of bzhedugkhabl’ in adyghea.xix anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 30 identity can be understood as the site of interplay between structure and agency, discourse and practices, ideology and subjectivity. the identities of individual actors are manifested in their practices (including their discursive practices of representation) when they act strategically in order to achieve particular practical outcomes (wodak et al. 1999: 29-32). bourdieu refers to such embodiment and encoding of social structures in individuals’ actions as the actor’s ‘habitus’ (bourdieu 1992: 5256). applying this concept to the study of everyday nationalism in greek macedonia, karakasidou points out that the appropriation of national identity by individuals indicates their sense of habitus (karakasidou 2000: 423). in this article attention is paid to the role which nation-states as institutionalised structures play in the production of transnational identities. perhaps it is too early to speak about the world of globalisation and transnationalism as a ‘postnational’ world (appadurai 1996: 21). rather, as sørensen (1998: 262) notes, the transnational space becomes a contested space which contains several national and bi-national identities. even in the world of globalisation, the nation-state has not lost its capacity to construct the subjectivity of its citizens. however, it has ceased to be the sole source of legitimate identification. although transnational communities exist in, and as, a transnational circuit (rouse 2002), they rarely identify themselves as transnationals and continue to speak about their attachment to particular nations, ethnicities, places and countries (sørensen 1998: 244). transnational migrants do not lose their sense of belonging to territorialised nations because they, perhaps more than anyone else, are aware of the nation-state’s desire to control its territory and the movement of people across its borders. being subject to state policies of naturalisation or living illegally in a ‘host’ country, transnationals routinely deal with the nation-state, while their national, ethnic and cultural identities are constantly being renegotiated. thus sørensen argues that transnational migration has not eroded the nation-state (ibid.: 262). to a certain degree it may even be asserted that the space of the nation-state has expanded as transnational practices and identities continue to be shaped by state policies and identity politics of both the ‘home’ and ‘host’ nations. consequently, although this article is not concerned specifically with greek immigration policy or russian emigration laws, it will also map state regulation of cross-border migration and consular practices concerning the migration of greeks from the russian federation to greece. visa regulations and citizenship provisions for ‘repatriated’ greeks since the outbreak of recent mass migration of greeks from the former soviet union in the late 1980s to mid-1990s, the policy of greece towards these migrants has been determined by the history of relations between the greek nation-state and its diaspora and by political processes within the country, as well as by the increasing influence of the european union on contemporary greek foreign policy. the general trend in this policy can be defined as facilitation of the resettlement of greek migrants, thereby highlighting the peculiarity of greek nationalism (fakiolas and king 1996: 177). since the foundation of the independent greek state in 1830, greek national identity has been based on a combination of two different principles: 1) the ‘civic model’ of the nation as a state and people who live in its territory, and 2) the ‘ethnic model’, which represents the greek nation as a community of ethnic greeks. the latter principle assumes a greek-ness based on cultural and ‘blood’ bonds as the essence of the greek nation. the governmental department founded in 1984 for ‘diaspora hellenism’ reflects this principle of national identity at the institutional level (hirschon 1999: 164-170). the greek state sees greek diasporas as its potential citizens.xx therefore, the greek state treated the former ‘soviet’ greeks who intended to migrate to greece as ‘repatriates’ from the greek diaspora and facilitated their entry into the country and their naturalisation (fakiolas and king 1996: 186; mestheneos 2002: 180). greek consulates in the former soviet republics suddenly found themselves on the front line of this repatriation. until recently they issued socalled ‘repatriation visas’, which enabled migrants to enter greece and apply for greek citizenship within a year of visa issue. initially, these visas were only issued by the greek embassy in moscow; in 2000, however, it was evident that the general consulate of greece which had been opened in novorossiisk had issued over 8,000 ‘repatriation visas’ by the late 1990s. at the same time greek officials turned a blind eye to those migrants who entered the country on ‘tourist’ visas but overstayed them.xxi furthermore, the greek ministry of foreign affairs provides these migrants with an opportunity to apply for ‘repatriation visas’ once they are within greek territory. in 1990 the same ministry formed the national foundation for the reception and resettlement of repatriated greeks, which offered a service facilitating the adaptation of repatriates through the organisation of language courses, employment and housing opportunities on their behalf (kokkinos 1991: 395). this service, known anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 31 among migrants as ‘the programme’ (programma), became one of the main channels of resettlement for greeks from the former soviet union. currently, greek policy towards the former soviet greek diaspora is starting to move towards keeping this ‘greek diaspora’ in their present place of residence and preventing a mass return to the ‘homeland’. this policy is inspired by the difficulties which returnees have experienced in adaptation. such a mass influx of immigrants within a very short period caught both the society and infrastructure of greece unprepared and the adaptation measures became a burden on the country’s economy. another reason behind the frosty welcome given to greeks from the post-soviet space is that greece, as a member of the eu, has to follow european immigration regulations restricting the entry of migrants into ‘fortress europe’ (fakiolas and king 1996: 186). in practice, this new policy was implemented by abolishing ‘repatriation visas’ in 2000. now, greek consulates in the russian federation are entitled to issue greek passports to returnees who can become greek citizens without an actual ‘return’ – resettlement – to greece.xxii this policy has been implemented since 2001, and it was initially welcomed with enthusiasm by russian greeks as an opportunity to hold ‘dual citizenship’ – as illustrated by my fieldwork observation cited above. however, the procedure for obtaining greek citizenship is becoming longer and more complicated. it is assumed that an average future greek citizen has to display his/her cultural and ethnic affiliation with greece, which requires quite substantial knowledge of greek national history and the contemporary political situation in the country as well as some fluency in modern greek. the greek origin of the applicant has to be proved by documents showing the greek ethnicity of the citizenship-seeker or of at least one of his/her parents. a personal interview with the applicant in the consulate is also part of this procedure. as one of the officers in the novorossiisk consulate implied, the purpose of these interviews is to prove ‘the greek mentality’ of the applicant, which can include his/her knowledge of greek cuisine, folklore and traditions. the questions asked during these interviews are designed to check an interviewee’s expertise in the ‘history, culture, language and politics’ of the greek nation-state. however, as the same consulate’s officer admitted, these questions are often irrelevant to the cultural and historical background of the ‘pontic greek’ population in southern russia. local greeks sometimes fail their interviews because they cannot name the president of greece or the mayor of athens and they are unable to identify traditional greek dishes, especially if such questions are asked in modern greek rather than in their native pontic dialect or turkishxxiii – or indeed russian, since that is the only language spoken by the majority of greeks in this region. finally, the official greek approach to the ‘repatriation’ of caucasian greeks depends on the ‘strategic’ national interests of greece and the sociopolitical situation in the country. thus, those repatriates who joined the ‘programme’ were settled in several ‘resettlement centres’, all of which were situated in northern greece in the provinces of macedonia and thrace (kokkinos 1991: 395).xxiv since these northern provinces became part of greek national territory in 1912, the greek state has used different waves of ‘repatriates’ (the first were those greeks who arrived from asia minor after the transfer of populations in 1923) in order to create a ‘buffer zone’ against external threats and increase the greek element in this border region where the local population has a significant proportion of ethnic minorities (slavo-macedonians, vlachs, pomaks and turks) (voutira 1997: 118). the procedure of ‘repatriation’ and the granting of greek citizenship becomes easier before elections to the national parliament of greece. the greek socialist party (pasok), which formed the national government between 1981 and 2004 – the period of mass immigration of greeks from the ussr –, saw ‘soviet repatriates’ as potential political supporters. some of my informants expressed the view that the greek government softened the ‘repatriation’ regime from time to time and announced certain tax and credit privileges for ‘soviet’ immigrants just before elections in order to attract the votes of these ‘new citizens’.xxv ‘materialisation’ of greek ethnic and national identities via the bureaucracy of emigration the greek ethnicity of potential ‘repatriates’ is an essential factor in the entire process of their migration to the ‘homeland’. indeed, the greek-ness of migrants has to be proved by documentation. yet in actual fact their greek ethnicity is partly constructed as a bureaucratic concept during the process of obtaining greek visas and citizenship. in order to receive ‘repatriation visas’ and/or greek citizenship, an applicant has to prove his/her connections with the greek nation. the most solid evidence of belonging to the greek nation was greek citizenship acquired under the treaty of lausanne (1923) in the 1920s-30s by many greek refugees who fled to russia from the ottoman empire before and during wwi. this is why the greeks who were persecuted for possessing foreign anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 32 passports and sent into exile in central asia during the stalinist period (in 1942, 1944 and 1949) became the first and most significant wave of ‘returnees’ (voutira 1991: 412). however, most of these repatriates were the children and grandchildren of genuine greek citizens who had died or were too old to emigrate at the time. as a consequence, their descendants have to show evidence of their family ties with greek nationals and sometimes make archival inquires in the greek ministry of foreign affairs on their way to the ‘homeland’. the following quotation from an interview with semen, who was born in exile in north kazakstan, illustrates the smooth naturalisation of those ‘repatriates’ who managed to prove their genealogical ties with greek nationals: personally, i didn’t have [any difficulties with documents], because [the documents] of my father, grandfather, his sister were in the archive [of] the greek embassy. question: [were they] greek subjects? answer: [they were] greek subjects. [they had passports of] the kingdom of hellenes and i had no problems… if you wanted to receive [greek citizenship] you went to moscow, at that time, it was only in moscow. if your documents were there in the [embassy] archive, you were given all the documents for the greek passport at once. this is what happened with my family…we arrived in greece with these documents, went to the police station and they gave us internal greek passports. and we became entitled to all rights as natives… (semen, born 1955, severskaia).xxvi those migrants who have no greek citizens among their ancestors, like the majority of the vitiazevo and gaverdovsk greeks, have to bring socalled ‘additional papers’ as evidence of their greekness. these are soviet documents with their ‘nationality’ record, such as the birth certificates of their parents, an internal passport or even a soviet army service card (voennyi bilet). birth certificates of parents are especially important documents for those who have a record of russian nationality in their soviet passport, which was usual for children of the numerous mixed marriages. the ‘soviet passport’ was used as an internal id in the post-soviet russian federation until january 2004, when it had to be completely replaced by a new internal ‘russian’ passport. however, it is such an important document for the issue of greek ‘repatriation’ that the general consulate of greece in novorossiisk has urged russian greeks to keep their ‘old’ passport even after receiving new documentation in order to prove their greek origin, because the new internal passport provides no record of ethnicity (‘vnimanie!!!’ 2002: 1). the role of the ‘soviet’ passport is in no sense less important for the return journey ‘home’ than for migration to the ‘homeland’. thus, caucasian greeks who overstay their ‘tourist visas’ working in greece use the greek ‘nationality’ record in their ‘soviet’ passports on their way home to avoid fines at border checkpoints. the importance of the greek ethnicity record in economic migrants’ passports was graphically explained by il’ia, who was once a chairperson of a greek national-cultural association in russia but has been living in greece since 1999: any citizen of the russian federation, not only greeks, can take a ‘tourist visa’… he is treated as a tourist in greece. and it is useless to shout that your mum, dad, grandpa or grandma [were greeks]. the only advantage is that when you leave [greece] if you overstay [your visa] they do not fine you because you are greek… thank god, there is still a record of [‘nationality’] in the soviet passport (il’ia, born 1967, novorossiisk). some migrants have to acquire greek surnames first and start their trip to the ‘homeland’ afterwards. in fact, many greeks from southern russia have russian surnames, while the majority of greek family names from transcaucasia look turkic or muslim.xxviithese russian-like or turkish-like surnames may undermine the greek-ness of ‘repatriates’ in the eyes of immigration clerks and lessen the chances of obtaining greek citizenship. even il’ia, who has a russified surname which is quite common among ethnic russians, encountered difficulties proving his greek ethnicity to greek immigration authorities despite his reputation as one of the founders of the greek revivalist movement in the former soviet union: i waited two and half years for my citizenship… quite simply, they [the greek ministry of foreign affairs] saw [my surname is] georgiev, well: ‘what is your relation to greeks?’ it is not recorded on my mother’s birth certificate that she is greek. she was born in kabardinka (a greek village in krasnodar krai – ap) but they did not mention [‘nationality’] in the 1930s when this certificate was issued… well, her parents’ [surname] was aleksandrov. who were they? in greece, it was decided that they could not be greeks. that’s all…[finally, i proved my greek origin] when i brought ‘additional papers’. the soviet army service card is an ‘additional factor’, because it is usually given at anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 33 age sixteen and it has the record of [your] ‘nationality’. so it is a very important document… (il’ia, born 1967, gelendzhik). hellenisation of family names is part of the broader cultural process taking place among caucasian greeks, namely the rediscovery of their greek identity. this new greek identity has proven to be different to the previous soviet one. it came about in a situation where new ethnic and national boundaries were being drawn in previously uninterrupted soviet space and at a time when the post-soviet caucasus and black sea regions were becoming less isolated from neighbouring areas of the balkans and the middle east. adjusting to such shifts in national borders, people had to change their identities and they did this quite literally by changing their names and ethnicity in their identification documents. for instance, the children of russian fathers and greek mothers insisted on putting their greek ‘nationality’ into their ‘soviet’ passports in order to be ‘true’ greeks, despite their russian or ukrainian surnames and the ‘tradition’ of inheriting the ethnicity of the father.xxviii the power of documented ethnicity is so strong that it could overwhelm individual self-identification. during the most recent demographic census (october 2002), for example, one of my informants declared his ethnicity to be russian (as recorded in his passport) in spite of his clearly greek surname, his active participation in the local greek society and the recognition of his greek-ness by his colleagues and neighbours: question: how did you answer the question about your ‘nationality’ (natsional’nost’) in the forms for the [demographic] census?) answer: of course, i answered ‘russian’ in accordance with my passport (kak po pasportu). (vadim, born 1954 (o.e.), gaverdovskii). thus, greek ethnicity needs to be proven by bureaucratic documents in order to be considered sufficient for obtaining greek nationality. indeed, without such documents ethnic identity is seen as something incomplete and even in danger.xxix in the soviet and post-soviet contexts, as well as in the practice of greek consulates, it is not enough to have self-identification or to be identified by others as a member of a certain ethnic group; what counts as true identity for officialdom needs to be fixed, to be based in some sense on material proof. thus, ethnic identity is materialised in the form of ethnicity records in documents of different sorts and constitutes an integral part of the post-soviet individual as a subject of state bureaucracy.xxx greek-ness as a commodity the ‘materialisation’ of greek identity in documents makes it, in some respects, the precursor of the ‘commoditisation’ of documented greekness.xxxi indeed, documents proving greek origin are seen as the equivalent of hard currency, convertible into the valuable emblem of greek citizenship, which also takes a quite material shape − the greek national passport. this passport enables the holder to be a migrant to greece and at the end of the day brings wealth. it also supplies people with a feeling of security in the uncertain russian environment. in fact, greek nationality is acquired via financial transactions which vary from the payment of consulate fees for ‘repatriation’ or ‘tourist’ visas to the bribery of different official institutions for lacking but desperately needed ‘additional papers’. for instance, the church marriage certificate of parents is included in the list of documents required for issuing ‘repatriation visas’. church marriages were very rare during the soviet period, and if they did take place it was unlikely that any certificates would be issued at the time. consequently, greeks seeking to emigrate to greece had to pay substantial sums to russian orthodox priests in local churches for these certificates, even if their parents were never married in church: there was a standard list of documents for repatriation. first of all, it was the birth certificate, then, the birth certificate of parents, the marriage certificate of parents, plus, there were absolutely stupid documents such as the church marriage certificate of parents and [your certificate of] baptism in [orthodox christianity] question: but people couldn’t have such documents, could they? answer: as a matter of fact, nobody had these. it was your problem to get these [certificates] by paying bribes. how many priests became fatter in russia because of this?! they should send a telegram of thanks to the president of greece (denis, born 1970 (o.e.), novorossiisk). the other side of such commoditisation of greek identity is the fear that documents proving greek-ness can be faked and greek identity can be purchased by non-greeks. this can devalue one’s documented greek-ness and undermine greek people’s social and economic positions, achieved via the conversion of credible and well-documented greek ethnicity into valuable european passports and imagined easy access to stable western currencies. such fears are probably justified. numerous cases in which non-greeks obtained ‘repatriation visas’ through the general consulate in novorossiisk were investigated by the greek ministry of foreign affairs in 1999-2000. during the time of this investigation the novorossiisk consulate stopped issuing visas and greeks from all south russian and anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 34 north caucasian regions had to go to the greek embassy in moscow in order to get their visas. this made the trip to greece more expensive and timeconsuming. but all such inconveniences seem to pale in importance next to the damage done to the trust which had grown up between the local greek communities and the consulate. relationships between the consulate and local greek nationalcultural societies, for example, first cooled and then became increasingly hostile. the deputy chairperson of the vitiazevo greek organisation mentioned this distrust in relations between the consulate and greek societies in his interview: there are many chechens of ‘greek extraction’ now in greece… [the greek consul] let many of the chechens and armenians in for some token of appreciation. they are caught there and asked: ‘where did you [get your visa] from?’ − ‘from the novorossiisk consulate…’ and they started to check [the consul’s work]. the investigator came here from there. they invited [the chairman of our greek society] to come, to the consulate… and the investigator questioned him there… but he [the chairman] told them: ‘you had better question your own people. this is all their business. we didn’t send anyone [who were not greeks to greece]’ (andrei, born 1950 (o.e.), vitiazevo). finally, attention should be paid to the role which regional xenophobic discourses play in greeks’ perception of the threat to their ‘right’ to migrate to greece. although the ministry’s investigation highlighted some instances of corruption among the consulate clerks, the local greeks’ fear that their ‘privileged’ greek-ness could be adulterated also reveals local xenophobic attitudes towards migrants from other north-caucasian regions and transcaucasia. in fact, the stereotype of these migrants as people engaged in criminal and/or commerce-oriented activities is widespread in postsoviet russia and particularly sharply articulated in krasnodar krai and the republic of adyghea (savva and savva 2002: 73-74). the legacy of communist ideology is still powerful and commerce is seen as shameful and parasitical.xxxii the word spekuliant (profiteer) remains the scornful name for private traders everywhere in the post-soviet space (humphrey 2002: 59). the ability of migrants to buy and sell everything at a profit is exaggerated in xenophobic hate speech, where the asserted threat is that strangers (migrants are usually assumed to be ethnically different from the locals) will buy up the local land or,xxxiii as in the greek case, obtain greek identity through bribery. the emigration business of greek nationalcultural societies the greek national-cultural societies established throughout post-soviet space since the early 1990s in those towns and villages with substantial greek populations take an active part in the management of greek migration to and from greece. the aforementioned dispute between greek national-cultural organisations and the greek consulate is a reflection of their rivalry for control over the movement of caucasian greeks between greece and russia. in this competition, greek ethnicity is employed by both sides as an instrument through which to impose this control and as a commodity for use in the accumulation of social and economic capital. the greek organisations in russia maintain the ideology of pan-hellenism which represents greece as the historic homeland and the cultural centre for the greek diasporas all over the world. at the same time, because it is critical for the construction of ethnic and national identities among former soviet greeks, the connection with greece has always been important for the economic survival of the greek cultural revivalist movement throughout the former ussr. financial and material support for cultural projects run by greek organisations in the former soviet union has been provided by governmental institutions working with the greek diaspora as well as by non-governmental pontic cultural associations in greece. teachers and textbooks for modern greek language classes and illustrated handbooks on pontic folklore have been sent from greece to the greek societies in russia. humanitarian aid directed from greece to support the needy greek population in the former soviet union is also distributed through the network of these organisations. this cross-border collaboration at the institutional level has gone hand-in-hand with the reestablishment of contacts with relatives who emigrated to greece before wwii and their descendants at the individual level. this greek renaissance has been accompanied at both levels by economic activities which vary from petty shuttle trade and seasonal labour performed by soviet greeks in greece while visiting their relatives to the establishment of joint venture enterprises (sovmestnye predpriiatia) with business partners from greece by the leaders of greek national-cultural organisations. a similar process is documented by georgios agelopoulos (this issue) among the ‘krasiot’-greeks in postsocialist bulgaria in their relations with their relatives from ‘nea-krasia’ across the border in greece. in the case of the bulgarian greeks, due to certain structural reasons (bulgarian and greek state policies and the size of anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 35 the diaspora populations) as well as the limited exchange value of greek ethnicity at the level of individual actions, the initial euphoria of the ‘revival’ soon died out and cross-border relations between ‘krasiot’ communities have become institutionalised and state-controlled. in southern russia, the greek revival movement apparently continues to play an important role in the economic, political and cultural activities of the local greek population. the relative success of the greek identity revival in russia (commoditisation of this identity might be seen as one of ‘side effects’ and indicators of this success) cannot be attributed solely to the importance of greek ethnicity for navigation of the transnational circuit by former soviet greeks that has been outlined in previous sections of this article. the local context in which meanings of greek ethnicity are (re-)produced and (re-)interpreted also has to be taken into account. it seems that, as in the case of the ‘failure’ of the greek revival in bulgaria, the analysis of its sustainability in russia also reveals the process of identity construction as a complex intersection of structure and agency. at the structural level, the legacy of soviet ethno-federalism and institutionalised forms of individual ethnic self-identifications of citizens might be partly responsible for the growth of ethnonationalist movement in the post-soviet period (brubaker 1996: 30-31). greek identity was, for instance, enhanced by the bolsheviks’ policy of ‘indigenisation’ (korenizatsia) through establishment of the greek national district (raion) in krasnodar krai in the 1930s. subsequently, greeks victimised by stalinist repression and exile as an ‘unreliable people’ were forced to take their ethnicity (and, indeed, nationality) seriously. the effect of ethnicity records in soviet internal passports on the process of identity construction and representation among the post-soviet greek population has been already discussed in this article. this essentialist understanding of ethnicity was interwoven into the social fabric of the soviet union and after the dismantling of the ideological monopoly of the communist party ethno-nationalist movements became the most visible political force in the postsoviet space as well as in many postsocialist societies of eastern europe (verdery 1996: 83). the increasing influence exerted by ethnic (national-cultural) organisations on the everyday life of local communities also highlights the significant role that the issues of ethnicity and nation play in the process of the (re-)construction of postsocialist social identities. in the russian federation, ethno-national organisations have also often been viewed by the state in an essentialist way as ethnic communities themselves (osipov 2004: 60). the state tries to control and manipulate them in order to secure the governing of the country which, since the collapse of the soviet union, has been increasingly divided into ethnic and regional entities. in a situation where former soviet political and social institutions have disappeared or become weak, national-cultural organisations are delegated certain rights and obligations to engage with the populations that they represent. the greek national-cultural societies working in vitiazevo and gaverdovskii, for example, are involved in providing social services to the local population, including community welfare and public security, and sustaining so-called ‘traditional’ culture as well as the physical and ‘moral’ health of the locals. they take part in consultative meetings organised by regional and local authorities on a regular basis. the leaders of these organisations act as mediators in disputes between greeks and representatives of other groups. as legal entities (iuridicheskie litsa), greek organisations even run their own businesses. however, they justify these economic activities by the moral imperative of work in the interest of the whole community; this community is assumed to be a predominantly greek one. in the conditions of contemporary russia, where institutionalised ethnic organisations often become a mediator in relationships between citizens and the state, individual actors develop strategies which enable them to use their ethnic origin as an additional, but sometimes vital, social and economic resource. in vitiazevo, for example, taxi drivers who were ethnically greek but not formal members of the local greek ‘society’ asked the leader of this organisation to bring his influence to bear on the district authorities and help protect locals from the cavalier actions of the traffic police when they were working outside the town’s borders. the involvement of greek revivalist organisations in the transnational migration of the former soviet greeks is a good illustration of bourdieu’s idea that ‘practical classifications (bourdieu sees ethnicity as one such classification – ap) are always subordinated to practical functions and oriented towards the production of social effects’ (bourdieu 1991: 220). in southern russia local greeks find it ‘practical’ to use greek nationalcultural organisations – which constitute a semicontrolled and state-manipulated form of post-soviet ‘civil society’xxxiv – in their cross-border movement to greece. the greek organisations have become channels for the transnational flow of ideas and goods as well as people. the management of this movement is now the most important part of these societies’ activities. using established contacts with governmental agencies and pontic associations, the anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 36 local greek societies regularly send children to summer camps in greece and enlist their young members into the student exchange programmes for enrolment at greek universities. the greek nationalcultural organisations also help people with visas and transportation to greece. by assisting with migration to greece, the greek national-cultural organisations gain both social and economic capital. in the early and mid-1990s the greek societies in southern russia were commissioned by the greek embassy in moscow to collect the passports of those local greeks who wished to obtain visas for visits to the country. migrants who applied for visas through these societies had to pay additional money to the greek organisations as reimbursement for transportation and other expenses along with the visa fee. this mediating service proved to be quite a profitable business, which significantly improved the financial situation of greek non-governmental and noncommercial organisations. since the general consulate was opened in novorossiisk greeks from krasnodar krai and adyghea have applied directly to this office for visas. as a consequence, the visa business of local greek organisations has declined in these regions. however, it still remains important for the greek organisations in stavropol’ krai and the north caucasian autonomous republics, which are remote from both the greek embassy in moscow and the consulate in novorossiisk. sometimes, visa issues overshadow other (social and cultural) activities on the agenda of the greek societies. this leads to rumours and suspicions within the greek revivalist movement that some organisations are ‘trading’ greek ethnicity to outsiders.xxxv on the contrary, the local greek societies in vitiazevo and gaverdovskii emphasise the social importance of their involvement in migration activities. for example, they play the role of mediators between the local greek population and greek tourist firms which organise a regular coach service between southern russia and greece.xxxvi they keep in touch with the owners of these firms, inform local greeks about the coach schedules and reserve seats on board for them. on the way back to russia, the greek organisations also collect parcels sent by emigrant greeks to their relatives. these societies distribute visa application forms among locals who intend to visit greece and help them to fill out these forms correctly. in so doing, as the deputy chairperson of the vitiazevo greek society insisted, they further the public interests of their communities without any financial benefit to themselves: here we only fill out applications for receiving tourist visas…quite simply, if they [the local greeks] fill out this application in the consulate, they are charged two hundred and fifty roubles for each application. because [the consulate clerks] complete these applications on their behalf. we lighten this burden on our citizens, we do all this free of charge. (question: these applications have to be made in greek, don’t they?) yes, we fill them in greek and in latin (sic). we do all this… so, we lighten the burden on our people (andrei, born 1950 (o.e.), vitiazevo). even if the local greek national-cultural organisations do not make money from the assistance they give to migrants, they undeniably increase their political influence on the local community by providing facilities for transnational migration – a service which is vitally important for the economic survival of the russian greeks. as the following quotations from interviews demonstrate, the greek societies’ help with migration to, and contacts with, greece is often seen by the local greeks as their most valuable activity, although facilitating the ‘repatriation’ of the ‘greek diaspora’ is never mentioned in the official programmes of the greek national-cultural associations. question: i am interested in the [greek] society. what do they do? what are their main activities? answer: there are activities… from time to time they help people, they send children to greece, for example. such things as visas, well, they help with these things. question: have you ever turned to them? answer: i turned to them once. it was when i sent my passport for a [greek] visa through this society… (gavriil, born 1957 (o.e.), gaverdovskii). question: have you ever been in contact with the [greek] society? answer: i went to greece via this society two years ago. they helped and gave me money to pay visa expenses… (question: well, what are their [the greek society’s] other activities?) i don’t know. ask them what their duties are, what they do (lazar, born 1923, vitiazevo). question: do you know what the [greek] society is doing here? answer: no, i don’t know. i haven’t a clue [what they are doing]. probably, if someone needs some documents, he [the chairman of the society] helps to prepare them. question: what sort of documents [are you talking about]? anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 37 answer: for example, if [someone] goes to work [in greece], [or] people go there for permanent residence (na postoiannoe mesto zhitel’stvo), [the chairman] helps to organise all these… (iosif, born 1929, gaverdovskii). this close familiarity of the greek societies with greece and migration issues makes these organisations popular among people who plan to make the journey to greece. the educational programmes put on by the greek organisations, such as lessons in modern greek, are viewed as useful for cultural adaptation in the ‘historical homeland’. the members of ethnically mixed families, or people with a russian ethnicity record in their ‘soviet’ passports, see their enrolment in greek national-cultural organisations as a public declaration of their selfidentification with greeks. they might also suppose membership of a greek society to be a first and necessary step on their way to greece. perhaps the members of popandopulo’s family introduced at the beginning of this article were about to start their own transnational circuit. although they had a recorded russian ‘nationality’, they possessed a proper (pontic) greek surname, valuable documents that could prove their greek genealogy and were prepared to pay for their membership of the greek society. conclusion the informants’ experience of dealing with citizenship and immigration regimes demonstrates that the ethnic and national identities of greek transnational migrants are constantly being negotiated and contested in the course of their migration to greece. the greek-ness of the repatriates is shaped by the immigration bureaucracy; it is also instrumentally employed in the migrants’ cross-border economic activities. passing through official immigration procedures, this greek ethnicity is manifested in the form of different documents, and is sometimes seen as a commodity by people involved in transnational migration. the formal requirements of citizenship and visa regimes are fulfilled or overcome by the greek migrants using informal approaches and connections which include local greek organisations, friends and family. participating in the transnational circuit, the migrants customise and reinterpret meanings of citizenship and nationality in such a way that they can more or less successfully adapt to, and utilise for their own benefits, new regimes of international frontiers which have been emerging since the collapse of the soviet union and with the enlargement of the european union. the outcomes migrants anticipate from their actions are deeply rooted in their structural positioning by the nationstate as ‘diaspora’, ‘repatriates’ and descendants of greek nationals, etc. thus the ‘national order of things’ (malkki 1996: 441) is reproduced but also customised and shifted through the practices of transnational migrants. acknowledgments i would like to thank hülya demirdirek and lale yalçın-heckmann, who invited me to contribute to this special issue, for their encouraging and very helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. my thanks are also due to georgios agelopoulos, whose useful comments on the first draft of the article helped me to develop and clarify my arguments. the data presented here were gathered and analysed in the course of work on my doctoral thesis, and i am therefore extremely grateful to my phd supervisors, hilary pilkington and elizabeth edginton. all remaining deficiencies in this article are of course my own responsibility. notes xvii for the sake of anonymity, all the surnames which i use in this article have been changed. popandopulo is one of the most common and stereotypical surnames among (former) soviet (pontic) greeks. the actual surname of this old man also sounds typically pontic greek. xviii in the western academic tradition, the greek population of the former ussr is defined as ‘pontic greeks’ (see for example the [special issue of the] journal of refugee studies 1991) on account of its history as a group originating from the pontos. the pontos (or pontus), a region on the south-eastern coast of the black sea, stretches from the turkish city of sinop eastwards to batumi in georgia and is separated from inland anatolia by the pontic alps (bryer 1991: 316). such historical and geographic identification developed during the twentieth century among those greeks from the pontos who resettled in greece in the course of its population exchange with turkey in 1923. as i have written elsewhere, this pontic identity was ‘imported’ to russia only recently, when the soviet greeks started their transnational circuit and their national-cultural organisations established contacts with the pontic cultural clubs in greece (see popov 2003). xix the data gathered in the course of this fieldwork constituted part of the empirical foundation of my doctoral thesis on the cultural production of identity as ‘transnational locals’ among greeks in southern russia. xx the ethnic model of the nation was fully employed anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 38 in order to fulfil the conditions of the treaty of lausanne (1923) when almost all ethnic greeks resettled in greece in the course of the population exchange with turkey. however, the definition of ethnic greek-ness was not all that clear at the time. during the ottoman period the population of the empire was divided into religious millets based on different confessions (muslim, greek orthodox, armenian-gregorian and jewish). this millet system shaped the social identity of the imperial population according to a social hierarchy based on religion, whilst often ignoring existing ethnic differences. consequently, those who arrived in greece from turkey in the course of the population exchange included people practicing orthodox christianity and classified by the ottoman administration as rumgreeks, but who were turkish speakers. xxi according to official statistical data, as of 1999 over 34 percent of all repatriated greeks from the former ussr – or 49,139 persons – had outstayed their ‘tourist’ visas (upourgeio makedhonias-thrakis geniki grammateia palinnostounton omegenon 1999). xxii a significant amendment to the new regulations on the obtaining of citizenship by ‘soviet repatriates’ has been made for those former soviet greeks who had ‘repatriation visas’ in their passports but did not apply for greek citizenship within a year. these people are entitled to submit their documents for greek citizenship on the territory of greece, although free entry visas may be issued to them only after interviews in greek consulates (‘vnimanie!!!’ 2002: 1). xxiii turkish is a mother tongue for most recent greek migrants from georgia, where their ancestors resettled in the nineteenth century from eastern anatolia (mainly from the erzurum paşalık of the ottoman empire) (kolesov 1997: 91). the mass migration of georgian greeks to greece and russia in the 1990s was partly determined by a sense of ethnic alienation and socio-economic degradation that greeks experienced as a ‘non-titular nationality’ in conditions of growing ethno-nationalism in the newly independent georgia. the majority of my gaverdovsk informants were born in georgia and they speak turkish as well as russian. local greeks in vitiazevo, for the most part a locally-born population, are russian-speaking, although elderly and middle-aged people also know the pontic greek dialect. the core of the greek population of vitiazevo is composed of descendants of migrants from the pontos, i.e. from the vilayet of trebizond in the ottoman empire, who emigrated to russia in the second half of the nineteenth century. xxiv in 1999 about 75 per cent of all ‘repatriates’ from the former soviet union, i.e. 106,347 people, lived in the northern greek provinces of macedonia and thrace (upourgeio makedhonias-thrakis geniki grammateia palinnostounton omegenon 1999). xxv the decree issued by the ministry of internal affairs granting ‘repatriates’ from the former ussr the opportunity to receive housing credits was released on the eve of the parliamentary elections in april 2000. the opposition party ‘nea democratia’ accused pasok of buying more than 100,000 votes from the ‘repatriates’ through this edict and thereby securing its victory in the elections (‘pravaia pechat’ gretsii’ 2000: 1). at the same time, the ‘greek diaspora’ in the post-soviet space was well informed about the political situation in greece via the local greek newspapers which published pro-pasok articles (see for instance ‘simitis-karamanlis 1:1’ 2002: 4). xxvi informants are referred to by their pseudonym (that is, their changed given name), year of birth and the name of the place where the interviews or conversations were recorded. during my fieldwork i did not always ask my informants’ exact year of birth and, indeed, it was not always ethical to make such enquiries. in these cases i make my own estimate of the informant’s age. in this article such estimates are indicated as ‘o.e.’ (‘own estimate’). xxvii in the nineteenth century, those greek migrants from the ottoman empire who became subjects of the russian empire were usually recorded in official documents under surnames in which the russian endings -ov/ev or -in were added to their ottoman/turkish family name or to their orthodox father’s name. xxviii the rather ‘traditional’ view of ‘nationality’ as a sort of patrilineal phenomenon could affect the official practices of recording ethnicity in internal soviet passports. in 1953, for instance, vera (born 1937), a circassian greek from the aul of bzhedugkhabl’ (adyghea) whose mother was russian, had not been permitted by the local police office to choose her mother’s ethnicity for the record in her internal passport. however, her son, whose father is russian with a ukrainian surname, pointed out his greek ‘nationality’ when he received his passport in the late 1980s, while his brother retained his father’s russian ethnicity. xxix the absence of an ethnicity specification in the new russian passport has provoked a heated discussion in the media and political circles, as well as among the broader population of the country. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 39 heavy criticism of this passport reform has come from the ethnic intelligentsia who assess the abolition of ‘nationality’ in new passports as a step towards the cultural and ethnic assimilation of minorities (see for example khatazhukov 2004). russian nationalists also see the disappearance of the ethnicity record from passports as an indication of a conspiracy against russia which threatens the existence of the russian people (russkii narod) itself. finally, the former ministry of federal affairs, national and migration policy challenges the passport reform, suggesting that without a ‘nationality’ in the passport it becomes difficult to control interethnic relations in the country (kuznetsova 2001: 4). xxx the identification of an individual via documents which he/she possesses is, probably, one of the most powerful legacies of the soviet past. as humphrey points out, ‘a fully integrated russian person’ has to get a range of papers which guarantee his/her rights and entitlements in society. deprivation of one or another document is seen as a loss of official status which can threaten ‘the unraveling of the whole edifice, that is, descent into the wilderness of having no entitlements at all’ (humphrey 2002: 26-27). xxxi from the perspective of social anthropology, a commodity is a universal phenomenon which exists via transactions involving the exchange of things. a thing becomes a commodity if ‘it has use value and can be exchanged in a discrete transaction for a counterpart’ (kopytoff 1986: 68-69). such exchanges can be direct or indirect, that is, achieved by means of money. xxxii as kaneff shows in the context of the bulgarian village as it survives postsocialist transformations, those involved in the new market economy which contradicts the ideologically promoted collective ‘production’ of the cooperative during socialism – see their market activities as a dramatic loss of the individual’s social status and generally a shameful activity (kaneff 2002: 40). xxxiii until recently the land-use legislative system adopted in krasnodar krai restricted the regional property market to local dwellers only, justifying discriminatory practices towards migrants as measures to protect the ‘kuban’ land from being sold to ‘foreigners’. elsewhere i analyse in greater detail how greek migrants deal with the regional regulation of property relations (popov 2003: 355). xxxiv recently, anthropologists have criticised civil society debates as being ‘too narrowly circumscribed by modern western models of liberal-individualism’ (hann 1996: 3). critics have pointed out that civil society institutions – which have been perceived by apologists of the ‘transition theory’ as a necessary instrument and product of a working ‘democracy’ and market-oriented economy and as a counterbalance to the state – do not work well and sometimes have opposite effects and characteristics in the non-western context, including postsocialist societies (hann 2006: 153-176, hann and dunn 1996, kalb 2002, layton 2006, mandel 2002). as a form of post-soviet civil society, the ethnic ngos which i observed during my field research in southern russia similarly do not always conform to the theory. the greek organisations in vitiazevo and gaverdovskii which are involved in such collective projects as church building or the support of elderly and young members of the communities are viewed by locals as defenders of the moral values of communal solidarity – which is often associated with the soviet era – in the face of the increasing atomisation of post-soviet society. although these organisations develop some strategies of resistance to the ethno-nationalism of the regional regimes in both kranodar krai and adyghea, they owe their very existence to a significant extent to the state which regards controllable ethnic organisations of citizens as part of its ‘nationality policy’ (osipov 2004). moreover, national-cultural organisations in both provinces use and reproduce xenophobic discourses and ethnic discrimination practices when they employ regional migration and nationality policy to their own ends in the competition with other groups over political and economic resources. xxxv in may and july 2002 leaders of the greek national-cultural organisations of the northcaucasian region voiced strong criticism of the general consulate's visa-issuing policy during meetings of the russian association of greek public organisations (agoor). at the same meetings some chairmen of greek societies from stavropol’ krai were accused of reducing the functions of their organisations to visa affairs and of supporting the general consulate (‘zasedanie prizidiuma soveta agoor’ 2002: 3). xxxvi these tourist firms were founded and are run by greeks who emigrated from the former soviet union. the cheapest way of travelling from the northern caucasus to greece is by coach. in 2002 the cost of a one-way coach ticket was $120, whereas the price of a return flight to salonica from anapa or krasnodar was $400. the itinerary of these services runs through cities and towns in the region with a significant greek population. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 40 references appadurai, a. 1996 modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. bourdieu, p. 1991 language and symbolic power. cambridge: polity press. bourdieu, p. 1992 the logic of practice. cambridge: polity press. brubaker, r. 1996 nationalism reframed: nationhood and the national question in the new europe. cambridge: cambridge university press. bryer, a. 1991 the pontic greeks before the diaspora. journal of refugee studies 4 (4):315-334. fakiolas, 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(critical discourse analysis series). edinburgh: edinburgh university press. protecting the young and sending of the dead: old belief and the politics of “religious revival” in the russian urals volume 21, number 2 protecting the young and sending of the dead: old belief and the politics of “religious revival” in the russian urals douglas j. rogers, university of michigan © 2003 douglas j. rogers all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. as in many colonial and postcolonial contexts, religious change in the postsocialist world provides a useful lens through which to understand transforming power relations and to look for emerging forms of personhood. in this paper, i describe and analyze one significant aspect of post-soviet religious change in sepych, a rural town in the russian urals settled by priestless old believers in the late seventeenth century. in the twentieth century, sepych was a thriving merchant town, still later a successful state farm, and most recently home to a struggling post-soviet agricultural enterprise.1 russian old belief, if it ever was the unified movement of protest against patriarch nikon’s seventeenth-century church reforms that it has often been described as, quickly fragmented into many “concords,” and there are two primary concords in sepych. the first group is the priestless pomortsy who, variously negotiating with tsarist and soviet campaigns against religion, have predominated in sepych since its founding. surviving religious manuscripts, collected by soviet scholars, tell us that there was a schism in sepych and the surrounding region in 1888, and the two resulting groups came to be called maksimovskie and demenskie (see e.g. pozdeeva et. al. 1994). both maksimovskie and demenskie abjured priests, churches, and most sacraments, and their religious services in sepych have long been held in private homes. characteristic of both groups has been a generational divide: religion was only practiced by elders who joined after retirement and usually after the death of a spouse, at which point they adopted a set of strict monastically-inspired taboos on social and economic exchange. in the absence of an ordained clergy or hierarchy, lay “spiritual fathers”—and in the soviet period increasingly and very significantly “spiritual mothers”—led these groups of priestless old believers. the second relevant group of old believers is the priestly belokrinitsy, who built a new church in sepych during the 1990s. these priestly old believers, as their name implies, accept priests, the full orthodox regime of sacraments, and have a worldwide hierarchy of male clerics. with the building of the church, many priestless old believers in sepych, along with some soviet-era atheists, “converted” from the town’s native priestless old belief to belokrinitsy priestly old belief. the new church slowly changed religious life in sepych, but the situation throughout the 1990s was more complex than the term “conversion” implies. not many people attended religious services on a regular basis, but religious baptisms and funerals slowly became standard and, for most, important rituals. however, distinct and solid camps of townspeople, some defending priestless old belief, others preferring the newer priestly old belief, did not emerge. religious identifications did not correlate well with any of the other axes of social distinction in sepych. a few families stuck firmly, even resolutely, to one or another group, but even for this minority, religious differences had no import for their other relationships or social ties. related to this, i think, there was also no developed rhetoric of conversion: even those who had been baptized into the church often claimed that they hadn’t really changed affiliation, and did not describe the experience in life or identity-changing ways, as might be expected from the comparative literature on religious revival or conversion. rather, in 2001, the town was suspended between the priestless old belief of earlier periods and the new priestly old belief along the fault line of life stages. most people preferred the church and the new priest for baptism, but choose the old women—the spiritual mothers— when it came to funerals, to sending the dead off to the other world. in order to explore the significance of this divide, i discuss baptisms and funerals in turn. jen typewritten text 37 volume 21, number 2 the clergy associated with the new church, who visited only once a month, viewed baptism in large part as a sign of affiliation with the only authentic version of christianity—their belokrinitsy old belief—and therefore as providing salvation. townspeople in sepych, however, tended to view baptism rather differently, primarily as a means of acquiring a guardian angel and hence protection in this world, protection against, as i was told on various occasions, sickness, lighting, early death, and so on. “a baptized person is a protected person,” i was often told. in the early 1990s, as townspeople were attracted to new possibilities for religious expression, sepych’s two spiritual mothers—one maksimovskie, one demenskie— did a brisk business in baptisms. however, as the church building slowly grew in sepych, and clergy began to appear in town on a monthly basis, townspeople began to wait for the priest to show up in order to request baptism. the church’s outdoor summer baptism ceremonies were often held for 20, 30, or even 40 people at a time, and attracted many more onlookers and family members. most of these newly baptized townspeople did not attend the church on a regular basis—it is usually only a group of old women, the new priests’ first converts, who attend the church services. in contrast to the assertively public baptisms, funerals continued to be held at home, and family members of the deceased summoned one of sepych’s three groups of old women— belokrinitsy, maksimovskie, or demenskie—to come to their houses and pray the appropriate canons on the day of the funeral and, sometimes, the nine-day, forty-day, and one year commemorations of death. it was often the same families who had their children baptized in the church who summoned the priestless old believers for funerals, especially if the person who died had not joined the church or if it was unclear whether he or she had been baptized at all. moreover, even on those occasions when families summoned representatives from the church, they did not invite the priest to perform the funeral services, and did not wish that he were available. in fact, a belokrinitsy priest had not, as of 2002, yet officiated at a funeral in sepych, despite baptizing several hundred townspeople. it was, rather, either the priestless old women or the old women of the church community themselves (without their priest) who performed the funeral services. the old women from the church functioned at funerals, that is, essentially as a third “priestless” religious group in sepych. in order to explain this configuration of religious practices, it helps to consider what powers were motivating them, in particular how the church came to stand in the center of sepych in the first place. the church emerged in town from a particularly “transitional” conjuncture of modes of social power, precisely in the hinge between the accumulation of people so characteristic of socialist-era patronage networks and the still-emerging significance of accumulating capital. the belokrinitsy, with their worldwide fundraising network and considerable business profits from selling books, icons, and other devotional items, clearly outstripped the priestless old believer spiritual mothers in the capital department, and they have built churches throughout much of russia. at the same time, they would not have expanded into sepych had they not skillfully plugged into the patronage of the leadership of now-privatized state farm sepych. the director of the farm and his brigade leaders endorsed the project, and it was they who organized the labor and materials to build the church at far below cost. the farm leadership cast the church-building project in the 1990s as “society work” by and for the people of sepych, and this categorization spurred many townspeople to identify the new church in the same vein as the state farm’s many projects on behalf of townspeople in the past—housing, paved roads, a new kindergarten—all of them the result of the leadership’s plan-bargaining skills and higher-level party contacts, and all of them understood, like the church, as good for the people of sepych as a moral community. the belokrinitsy, through their association with the leadership of the nowprivatized farm, the corresponding identification of the church-building project as public “society work,” their closer association with the new forms of capital accumulation, and in general their status as powerful outsiders, gradually cornered the discourse on religious expertise associated with the activities of this world. the priests’ frequent assertions that the remaining maksimovskie and demenskie old women no longer knew what they were doing, and thus were unable to provide complete or effective baptisms, became widely shared in town over the course of the 1990s. when i asked people why they chose the priest over the spiritual mothers for baptism, i was almost without exception told jen typewritten text 38 volume 21, number 2 that the priest was more effective, more knowledgeable, and that the old women frequently made mistakes. religious change thus took on a very gendered dimension, and the assertively masculine face of the priest became associated with effective protection in matters of this world that townspeople understood the rituals of baptism to confer. this world became a much riskier place in 1990s russia, and the church is only one of the ways in which the privatized farm underwrote material and symbolic ways to manage that risk. the priests’ expertise did not extend to funerals. in talking to families who arranged funerals, it became clear to me that it was at least as important that old women be summoned for a funeral as it was which old women—demenskie, maksimovskie, or belokrinitsy. although families did in general attempt to match the group of old women they invited with the deceased’s baptismal affiliation, no one ever questioned the expertise of the old women in sending off the dead in the way that was so common in discussions of baptism. why not? many of the old women still practiced, or at least were thought by townspeople to practice, the set of taboos on social and economic exchange historically associated with elders in the maksimovskie and demenskie groups. they ate separately from those who were not religiously active, did not eat food purchased in stores, and observed strict fasts. indeed, those who invited the old women to sing the funeral canons brought upon themselves a considerable amount of preparation in order to orchestrate the separate dietary requirements for feeding and hosting the old women. the old women represented, that is, both in the abstract and in the concrete organization of a funeral day, a symbolic withdrawal from worldly social relations. this withdrawal made them ideal conduits for accomplishing effectively the purpose of funeral services: sending the dead off to the other world. so, whereas the priests’ associations with the new, distinctively postsocialist powers of this world helped them both build a church and corner the discourse on the rituals of baptism that provided protection in this world, priestless old women were still thought by townspeople to be the most effective at sending souls off to the other world. this story and analysis are interesting beyond sepych and beyond the postsocialist context for several reasons. sepych in the 1990s presents a case of religious transformation intertwined with political economic change that is not routed through subjectivity or personhood. the shape of this reconfiguration is intriguing because one of the major themes in the recent anthropology of religion has been attention to religions transformations in the context of european colonial expansion, a theme that has led anthropologists again and again to missionaries and conversion, usually protestant, sometimes catholic (e.g. comaroff and comaroff 1991; van der veer 1996). the arguments of this strain of theorizing usually follow one or another version of “weber on wheels.” they combine the protestant ethic thesis with one or another theory of power to explore the inculcation of new religious ethics, subjectivities, or forms of agency in colonized populations, ethics and agencies suited to join and/or domesticate the new sets of political and economic relations in which colonized peoples found themselves. so where does this leave us in the postsocialist world? although it is only one corner of a broader field, sepych does seem to present something quite different. despite the undeniable significance of the church-building project—it was the only non-private construction in town since 1991, and was built when the privatized farm was bankrupt and people were becoming nothing but poorer—the church was not a laboratory for new kinds of selfhood or personhood in dialog with new political economic circumstances. on my reading of the coming of the belokrinitsy, the involvement of the farm leadership, and the rituals of baptism, the church offered one way to symbolically mitigate “transition,” rather than to engage, transform, or domesticate it on the terrain of personhood. then again, perhaps this is entirely appropriate, and to look for analogs in the industrial capitalism of the colonial era is unhelpful. to consider baptism as a symbolic form of risk management—as the developed rhetoric of protection suggests—may be entirely fitting, given the nature of modern “risk societies” in general (beck 1992) and the postsocialist context in particular, where all manner of actors have gone from a system with no concept of liability to soaring liability and risk all around (cf. verdery forthcoming). maybe, in this case, we don’t need weber to explain the configuration of religious and political economic change. jen typewritten text 39 volume 21, number 2 references beck, u. 1992. the risk society: toward a new modernity. london: sage. comaroff, j. and j.l. comaroff. 1991. of revelation and revolution: christianity and consciousness in south africa. chicago: university of chicago press. pozdeeva, i.v. et. al. 1994. rukopisi verkhokam’ia xv-xx vv. moscow: tsimeliia. van der veer, p. 1996. conversion to modernities: the globalization of christianity. london: routledge verdery, k. forthcoming. unmaking socialist property. cornell: cornell university press. endnote 1. for useful comments on the argument here, i am grateful to irina kulikova, valerie kivelson, natalia litvina, katherine verdery, and the 2002-3 fellows of the institute for the humanities at the university of michigan. field research in russia during 2000-1 was supported by grants from the german marshall fund of the united states, the international dissertation field research fellowship of the social science research council with funds provided by the andrew w. mellon foundation; the international research and exchanges board (irex) with funds provided by the united states department of state, which administers the title viii program; and the fulbright-hays doctoral dissertation research abroad fellowship, administered by the united states department of education. none of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed. jen typewritten text 40 eurasia: a migration and modification of the idea in the turkic world anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: shnirv@mail.ru to make a bridge: eurasian discourse in the post-soviet world victor a. shnirelman, institute of ethnology and anthropology, moscow introduction eurasianism was long viewed as an exclusively “russian imperial ideology.” yet as this ideology gains popularity throughout the post-soviet region, both within and beyond russia, nowadays, russian ideologists have lost the monopoly over eurasianism. the eurasian constructs and rhetoric are extensively and beneficially used by some non-russian native intellectuals and politicians for the construction of a new ethno-political reality. sometimes they are searching for a desired place for their own ethnic groups within the multi-cultural environment of contemporary russia; other times they seek new all-embracing alliances on the basis of an imagined common cultural history. at the same time, native eurasian constructs usually reject the russian-style neo-eurasianism as a “new imperialism.” mainly, the eurasian idea is characterized by its connections with anti-globalism and anti-westernist movements although it sometimes addresses human rights issues as well. moreover, new eurasian projects get into lively and, by no means, easy dialogue with each other. thus, the eurasian cultural-political concept that was developed in a particular environment and was aimed at a distinct political goal is being revised and re-interpreted by radically different actors, pursuing very different goals. for example, the eurasian rhetoric, metaphors, and mythologies are appreciated and exploited by non-russian nationalists no less skillfully and effectively than their russian counterparts. to put it otherwise, while providing freedom of speech for the formerly “silent groups,” the postmodern framework makes the contemporary political discourse highly polyphonic. it is well known that post-colonial ideologies, nourished by their colonial heritage, eagerly accommodate this rhetoric, filled with new content though, in order to use its ideological mechanisms for their own purposes. my ambition is to study why, how, and in what contexts the “alien ideology” proves to be compatible with local nationalisms as well as what its goals are. the eurasian project began with russian emigrants who believed that the rise of ethnonational movements represented a threat to the integrity of the russian empire. while associating a threat of disintegration with ethno-cultural and religious particularism, the eurasianists wanted to marginalize undesired regional identities (pan-turkism, pan-iranism, pan-finnism, and the like) and to replace them with an all-embracing eurasian identity that could unite all the peoples of russia in a single entity. this idea was first formulated in the early twentieth century by prince nikolai trubetskoi in his well-known article “pan-eurasian nationalism” (trubetskoi 1927). from the very beginning, eurasianism proved to be highly contradictory and included political and cultural ideas that could hardly be compatible in practical terms. for example, it anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 69 declared an equality of peoples and stood for the protection of ethnic cultures. however, those cultures were provided with only a provincial status and were deprived of any political and educational basis. resisting the forces of imperialism and globalization, eurasianism promoted isolationism (autarchy) and suggested a one party system, führerism and ideocracy as the political ideal. it aspired to consolidate a society on the basis of a cultural-historical unity rather than an adherence to democracy. finally, one of the core ideas of this movement was the conversion of all people to russian orthodoxy which, in the long run, demanded the elimination of religious pluralism in russia. the eurasian theory, however, permitted various interpretations and could thus be effectively exploited by various nationalisms. this had already become clear during the 1920s and 1930s when some non-russian nationalists treated it as a new manifestation of “russian imperialism,” while others attempted to accomodate its arguments for their own benefits (shnirelman 2001). all those debates remained a certain exotic emigrant heritage until the late 1980s when eurasianism suddenly proved to be in high demand and began to affect real politics. over the last twenty years the eurasian ideas were extensively discussed by the political and intellectual elites both in russia and in certain post-soviet countries (and even in turkey) (laruelle 2008). whereas during the 1920s and 1930s most non-russian nationalist thinkers treated eurasianism negatively, in post-soviet times their heirs found that, by re-interpreting, it could be used as a strong argument in favor of their own projects. today, it is obvious that a revival of eurasianism was affected by various political factors. its expansion was launched by the communist leaders themselves at the time, when the days of the former communist ideology were already numbered, and soviet unity was rapidly disintegrating. in those last years of perestroika soviet authorities made incredible efforts to arrest this process of erosion. it was at that time that they recalled eurasianism. an article with a positive coverage of it came out in the last issue of the well-known journal communist before it changed its title to reflect democratization (isaev 1991). in this environment, eurasianism was expected to be a new, all-embracing ideology that would be able to rescue the integrity of the ussr through an appeal to cultural-historical rather than marxist (class struggle) arguments. to put it differently, an emphasis has been made on those ideological tools that have beneficially served many different nationalist movements throughout the years. yet, it was too late to save the ussr from collapse, and the desired allsoviet nationalism never materialized. instead, as we will see further on, cultural-historical arguments were highly appreciated by various post-soviet nationalisms both within and beyond russia. they used eurasianism instrumentally; that is, each of them borrowed from its rich and variable heritage those elements that might perfectly serve a desired goal. indeed, eurasianism provided arguments for the construction of a great many different regional alliances aimed towards particular ends. one could find there arguments supporting economic integration that helped separate states to survive in the world of high competition or a maintenance of former cultural space that helped to avoid cultural isolation and degradation. additionally, one could find the aspirations of ethnic minorities to escape assimilation through anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 70 referencing their historical role in the creation of great eurasian empires. at the same time, eurasianism contained the idea of a center of gravity that was able to unite and integrate neighboring cultures and civilizations. in the post-soviet period, this idea was also met with enthusiasm because it allowed certain states to claim the role of a regional power that might serve as such a center of gravity. thus, the eurasian idea not only united but also divided as it perpetuated the belief in some forms of hierarchy in societies and states. all of these subtle nuances of eurasianism deserve special attention and accordingly, will be discussed later in this article. as the idea of the slavic-turkic alliance makes up the core of the neo-eurasian discourse, i will focus on the turkic varieties of neo-eurasianism. i will also discuss its ukrainian varieties, although only briefly as they have been analyzed in depth elsewhere (shnirelman 2009). a special approach towards eurasianism in the north caucasus will also be examined. additionally, i will analyze the armenian and tajik responses to turkic eurasianism. different interests – different eurasianisms today, an ambivalent attitude towards eurasianism can be observed throughout most of what is called eurasia. there are often opposite views of eurasianism that develop in a very tense dialogue. local varieties of eurasianism usually attract conservative politicians and intellectuals, as well as ultra-nationalists. liberals are fascinated with eurasianism much more rarely and usually treat it as an unacceptable conservative doctrine. in any case, original eurasian ideas are carefully selected and re-interpreted before they are used for desired political projects. by the twenty-first century, four distinct attitudes towards eurasianism had manifested themselves in ukraine. the democrats criticized it as “imperial ideology,” radical nationalists developed their own version of eurasianism based on the ukrainianized “imperial ideology,” and policy-makers developed a moderate ukrainian version of eurasianism. radical nationalists, who manifested anti-western attitudes and lacked any substantial support, became friends with the russian neo-eurasians, although this alliance did not last for long. the radicals mostly appreciated irrational geopolitical eurasian ideas, whereas the policy-makers favored the more pragmatic economic aspect of eurasianism. thus, the ukrainian case demonstrates that people who are less involved in the practical political process are more open to utopian ideas that play on human emotions. and those involved in real policy-making manifest more moderate views; it is this group that sometimes uses eurasian ideas as an instrument to further their own political designs. economic eurasianism president nursultan nazarbaev of kazakhstan is an excellent example of support for a pragmatic eurasian project aimed at real political and economic gains. while avoiding theoretical speculations, in 1994 he suggested a program of economic cooperation and anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 71 integration (“eurasian union”) in the post-soviet world. in particular, he meant joint citizenship and freedom of movement as well as common governmental structures, similar to those of the european union (kozlov 1994; portnikov 1994; also see laruelle 2008:177). these ideas were discussed at a conference in almaty in september 1994 whose participants were mainly politicians, rather than scholars, from russia and kazakhstan. they recognized the necessity of economic cooperation that might serve for a rapprochement of neighboring countries without any violation of their political sovereignty. they also declared that, “a disintegration of the eurasian territory contradicts the cosmic-social laws of human development” (prazauskas 1995). while suggesting economic cooperation and military security, nazarbaev emphasized the preservation of the originality of kazakh culture. yet his project was structured basically as a solution to political and economic problems that spoiled relationships with russia, namely the treaty on the caspian sea, the customs treaty, the “russian issue,” and other similar ones (kozlov 1998). his project also addressed such issues as human rights, visa regulations, the free movement of citizens, a common currency, a unified system of defense, cooperative activity in the ecological sphere, coordinated politics in culture, science and education, and the introduction of supranational administrative bodies. russian would serve as the official language, and a new capital like kazan‟ or samara, had to be situated somewhere between europe and asia (nazarbaev 1994). nazarbaev viewed the eurasian union as consisting of “equal independent states.” to be sure, his version of eurasia lacked any orthodox christian basis. instead, he called islam and christianity “two wings of kazakhstan spirituality.” that meant that religion had to play an important symbolic role aimed at a relaxation of interethnic tensions within the state (nazarbaev 1995). official kazakh ideology relies upon the image of kazakhstan as the center of the turkic world that makes up a “bridge between cultures.” thus, it is the kazakhs who are represented as the “genuine eurasian people” and this provides them with symbolic prestige. in nazarbaev‟s view, kazakhstan is the “epicenter of the world” (nazarbaev 2001), and its new capital, astana, is situated “in the heart of eurasia” (nazarbaev 2005). these ideas are shared by many kazakh scholars and have become part of official kazakh educational curriculum. as a result, according to marlène laruelle, kazakh eurasianism proves to be a manifestation of the kazakh nationalism (laruelle 2008:178-179, 182-187). however, nazarbaev‟s ideas display some degree of inconsistency. on the one hand, he declares that the state has to champion the interests of the “kazakh nation,” while, on the other, the state must support a “formation of the political civic kazakhstan nation” (nazarbaev 1999:53, 186-187). it seems that this double-dealing is endemic to eurasianism. at the same time, the opposition in kazakhstan related to eurasianism differently and treated it as a manifestation of “russian imperialism.” yet even amongst some of nazarbaev‟s opponents there was a dream of a kazakh variety of eurasianism, including cultural fundamentalism, elitism, ideocracy and a priority of the nation over the individual (nurpeisova 1995). turning to uzbekistan we see that its president, islam karimov, is highly suspicious towards russian eurasianism and envies the diplomatic relations of nazarbaev. yet karimov anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 72 does not fail to emphasize the beneficial geographical location of uzbekistan at the crossroad between east and west and puts his own plan forward to build a “eurasian economic and cultural bridge” (karimov 1992:37). in his view, it is uzbekistan that must play the role of the bridge between asia and europe and his disagreement with nazarbaev is caused by this competition for leadership in central asia. in russia they were also reserved towards the nazarbaev‟s plans, in part due to a similar reason: president yeltsin feared nazarbaev‟s popularity. yet the uzbek elite shared nazarbaev‟s main idea: they desired to bring about modernization with the help of western technologies but without sacrificing their “cultural originality” (arapov and umanskii 1992). during the soviet period, in kyrgyzstan like in other central asian republics, asia was given rather negative media coverage and was portrayed as the third world associated with poverty, backwardness, illiteracy and disease. people did not want to come back to that sort of asia. instead, they are more open to european values and standards of living and that is why many local intellectuals put an emphasis on the intermediate place of their country between east and west. they prefer to identify central asia with a separate civilization, even creating the phrase “central asian europe.” at the same time, the term “eurasian civilization” is less popular. despite the fact that the idea of “eurasian civilization” has not enjoyed widespread popularity, there are many potential uses of eurasian identity. some kyrgyz writers refer to eurasian unity as a way to secure cultural relationships with russia (pustynnikov 2000; elibaeva 1999). and some uzbek intellectuals referred to the “europeanness” of central asia introduced there during the soviet period (mirza-akhmedova 1999). thus, eurasianism meets rather ambivalent attitudes in central asia. to be sure, local elites reject russian eurasianism, accusing it of “new imperialism.” yet they appreciate modernization based on the western technologiesproviding this does not spoil local identities and cultural traditions. it is this amalgamation that is called “eurasianism” in central asia nowadays. geopolitical eurasianism there is a special kind of eurasianism in contemporary azerbaijan. in contrast to what their neighbors think of the “turkic-slavic rapprochement,” local analysts worry mostly about the geopolitical role of the caspian region, which, in their view, is at the core of the confrontation between the west and the east. they appreciate geopolitical categories that were introduced to russia by alexander dugin, and discuss a struggle between tellurocracy and tallasocracy, land and sea, eurasianism and atlanticism as if it were “based on the fundamental law of geopolitics.” it is significant that, in their view, the “heart of eurasia” is in the caspian region whose center is azerbaijan rather than russia or kazakhstan. here is a “junction of civilizations” where “three great superethnoses: turkic, slavic and aryan-iranian” as well as two worlds (christian and muslim) have been in contact for centuries. from this perspective, the caspian region is a “key to domination over a center of heartland” from which one can rule over anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 73 the world. yet it is oil and gas resources rather than any spiritual values and weltanschauung that are the point of fierce struggle. in the face of these demands, the armenian-azeri conflict deserves no special attention (darabadi 2003; aliev 2005). this case demonstrates perfectly well how irrational arguments (centered on the geographic imperative) could be used to gain rational political goals (an aspiration to upgrade the role of azerbaijan in the contemporary world). towards the slavic-turkic alliance intellectuals and political leaders of the ethnically non-russian regions of the russian federation also demonstrate varying attitudes towards eurasianism as demonstrated by the constituent congress of the turkic peoples of the russian federation held in the fall of 1995. its leaders stood for peoples‟ friendship and cooperation, and stated that the turkic peoples were active participants in the creation of the eurasian civilization. the chair of the congress, altai writer b. bediurov, claimed that “we are the russian turks, and russia is our motherland.” he maintained that the turks were the true eurasians, “genuine patriots of the ussr and russia,” and they could not but support an idea of the turkic-slavic alliance. he depicted russia as the only eurasian state in the world. it was important for him to emphasize that people of the turkic background participated in the development of the russian culture and that, over centuries of common life, the “russian-turkic superethnos” was shaped based on common spiritual values associated with islam, christianity, buddhism, judaism and even ancient tengrianism (bediurov 1993; 1998). in february 1996 in moscow there was a conference devoted to the 1450th anniversary of the turkic kaganate as the first turkic state. the celebration was initiated by the leaders of the republic of altai, bashkortostan, tatarstan and the republic of sakha (yakutiia). they emphasized that the russian state was the legitimate heir of all the preceding political bodies in eurasia beginning with the turkic kaganate. the turks were presented as active participants in the state-building in this territory. therefore, one had to throw away the ridiculous practice of depicting the turkic peoples as a threat to the slavic-christian world. the then president of the republic of sakha (yakutiia), mikhail nikolaev underlined that the turkic kaganate was the “first eurasian empire” whose traditions were further developed by the golden horde and subsequently inherited by russia. he agreed with the criticism of asian political tradition for its despotism, violation of human rights, and careless attitude towards human life. yet he also pointed to more attractive eurasian ideas, namely “equality of cultures, mentalities, spiritual world, and historical creativity.” he expressed the idea that “a cultural unity of the people was based on their geographical and ethnographic integrity.” therefore, he was proud that the indigenous ethnic groups of the republic of sakha maintained their traditional economics. additionally, he viewed democracy as the people‟s right for sovereignty rather than viewing democracy within a general framework of human rights. his speech lacked any references to human rights and freedom. instead, he spoke of the “mighty state” and the “strong authority” (nikolaev 1996). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 74 this approach was shared by the yakut writer n. luginov, who believed that the eurasian territory was only fit for an imperial political arrangement (luginov 1998). yet another native political activist who constructed a “civilization of the sakha people” viewed the yakuts as inborn democrats (tumusov 1998). many turkic intellectuals value a “strong rule” (i.e. security) and are attracted to the image of empire. they believe that ethnic cultures and languages have better chances to survive within an empire rather than in a nation-state viewed as an ethnonational entity. they share an essentialist view of ethnos and treat empire as a rich mosaic of “closed ethnic systems” or an “organic union of the eurasian peoples with similar mentality” (for example, see aliev 1998). the “peoples‟ [collective] rights” are more important for them than individual “human rights,” an idea that corresponds perfectly to original conception of eurasianism. thus, political and social dimensions of eurasia, rather than economic considerations are more important for many numerically-small turkic peoples. leaders of certain siberian turkic peoples (sakha-yakuts, altaians) associate eurasia with the “slavic-turkic union” and claim that all the eurasian peoples share some basic values. it is easier for them to develop this image due to their non-muslim religious identity as orthodox christians or shamanists. the tatarstan ambivalence and bashkortostan alarms tatarstan occupies a special place in the eurasian discourse. on the one hand, it is emphasized that tatarstan is situated at the juncture of various cultures and peoples, east and west (shaimiev 1994). yet the tenets of eurasian messianism, russocentrism, etatism and “imperialism” are not well-liked (tagirov i. 1996; tagirov e. 1996; usmanov 1996; makhmutov 1995, 1996). instead, an emphasis is put on “human rights” and an organic approach together with a “symphonic person” characteristic for the eurasian ideology is rejected. the tatar elites are more concerned with the building of genuine democracy and civil society. yet some tatar intellectuals aspired to provide the tatar people with a special place within the eurasian realm, and appreciated nazarbaev‟s suggestion to make kazan‟ a capital of the future eurasian union (likhachev 1996:8; zakiev 1996:39; makhmutov 1995:13). some tatar authors argued that the turks rather than the russians were the “true eurasian people.” they emphasized a combination of european and muslim cultures characteristic for the turkic world, especially as in turkey and tatarstan, and the tatars were presented as the “main link of the turkic world” (mukhametdinov 1996a, 1996b). being the heirs of the jadids, the tatar intellectuals argue that they are more prepared for democracy than the russians with their “great power” ideas. at the same time, they find a positive element in the eurasian heritage, namely a way to promote integration at the basis of civil society. however they share a form of ethnic essentialism, claiming that every ethnic group had to be provided with its own statehood. while establishing close relationships between civilization and religion, some tatar authors do not believe in any slavic-turkic or orthodox-muslim amalgamation (khakim 1993:63-64). besides, they criticize the federal authorities who openly anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 75 support the russian orthodox church, of violating the religious equality and balance. rafael khakim characterized russian eurasianism with its aspiration to secure the territorial integrity of the ussr or of the russian empire and to restore state mightiness as gains that come at the expense of a reconciliation of the peoples. he viewed empire as a strict authoritarian political system rather than a “symphony of the peoples.” he stood against conservatism and cultural fundamentalism and for a real cultural and religious equality because the tatars, according to him, appreciated modernization and european values (khakim 1997, no. 1:34-63, no. 11:31-35). basically, khakim reproduced the ideas of the moderate wing of the tatar public center (tpc), which was very influential in the early 1990s. initially, tpc, on the one hand, associated the tatars with the “turkic” and “islamic” civilizations, and, on the other, recognized the importance of western values. thus, the tatars were provided the role of mediators between east and west. the more radical “ittifak” movement shared this approach as well. yet, in the fall of 1993, the leadership of tpc had been won by tatar radicals who opposed the “latincatholic” west to the “turkic-finnic-ugric-slavic” eurasia with its “orthodox-islamic” mentality. soon they changed their minds and emphasized the peculiarity of “turkic-islamic values” whereas the “russian [essence]” became identified with the western “social-pragmatic way of life.” but this approach was unable to secure tatar unity because it created divisions between muslim and christian tatars (iskhakov 1997:178-183, 186). since that time, debates between secular and religious nationalists in tatarstan have continued. religious activists believe that unity must be based on islam. their opponents put an emphasis on economic unity and included the christian tatars (kriashens and nagaibaks) who had no room in the islamic umma (iskhakov 1997:185-186; mukhametshin 2002:134-140; khakim 1997). during the 1990s, the tatar nationalists either utterly rejected the “eurasian project” or accepted it with reservations. they stood for a true equality of ethnic groups and rejected anti-westernism. yet in the early 2000s, tatarstan authorities began to support the eurasian idea of a cultural synthesis and harmonyincluding the idea of the “slavic-turkic union.” khakim shifted in this direction as well: “the tatars equally value secular and religious [spheres], european and asiatic cultures; they see no barriers between west and east because the tatar civilization is an open system that organically combines all of that” (khakim 2004:44). there are more radical views in tatarstan as well. a leader of “ittifak,” fauziia bairamova views eurasia as the tatar legacy alone: “eurasia is ancient tataria,” which was once united by the chinggis khan empire and the golden horde. she believes that this concept of the past might encourage a current struggle for independence (bairamova 2007). thus, there is great variability in tatarstan both in the evaluation of eurasianism and in the very understanding of its principles. the most influential scholars and politicians are reserved about these issues because they find a threat of authoritarianism contained within their discourse. they support modernization, democracy and rapprochement with europe. yet some of them want to view tatarstan as a bridge between east and west and emphasize the special role of kazan in the inter-civilizational dialogue. at the same time, they reject many other eurasian ideas as “russian imperialism.” there has also been a certain, evolving dynamic which moved anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 76 from a negative view of eurasianism in the late 1990s to a positive evaluation of its moderate variety pre-adapted to turkic interests in the beginning of the 2000s. in bashkortostan local intellectuals are displeased with the “russian idea” and the privileged position of russian orthodoxy. they are also irritated that certain russian politicians and intellectuals construct a negative image of local leaders and minority peoples who aspire to maintain their cultural originality. at the same time, they reject a eurocentric approach that negates the asiatic side of russia. therefore, they put an emphasis on the eurasian “doublefaced” russia, its “multi-ethnic, multi-confessional and multi-cultural nature” and want politicians to respect that perspective. thus, the notions of “eurasianism,” “common house,” and “russian nation” prove to have the same content. globalization is presented as the major threat to be resisted a struggle that requires the cooperation of the eurasian peoples and states. to put it differently, eurasianism is a right to be different a right that is challenged by the trend to homogeneity within the state and globalization in the international sphere. the unique location of the republic of bashkortostan situated “at the juncture of europe and asia” and connected with its future economic progress, has also been underlined (rezoliutsiia 2002). thus, while discussing the eurasian project, turkic authors seek to provide their peoples with an equal position in the russian society. the tatar intellectuals go even further and want to win leadership of the turkic world. to achieve that, they refer to the turkic roots of the russian political arrangement. yet in this field they compete with their neighbors, in particular with the bashkirs. at the same time, whereas some turkic leaders appreciate authoritarian rule and empire, many tatar intellectuals reject these eurasian ideas and support modernization and democratic principles. hence, the former share the anti-western views of the russian nationalists, while the latter orient themselves to europe and its values. their only common ground, which determines their positive attitude towards eurasianism, is an aspiration to use it against assimilation and to articulate their right to be different. in this respect, eurasianism proves to be one of the main anti-globalization ideologies in the region. security eurasianism in the northern caucasus intellectuals were alarmed by an increase in tensions between neighboring ethnic groups. as a result, some of them began to develop concepts stressing the unity and friendship of local peoples. in this context, eurasianism was viewed as an ideology that might relax interethnic strife, arrest hostility and unify people. a project of the “caucasian super-ethnos,” or “caucasian civilization” that emphasized cultural unity and common roots had to meet this demand (ktsoeva 1994; abdulatipov 1995). it referred to the would-be common ethnicity of all the indigenous peoples of the northern caucasus. it also pointed to “common cultural-psychological features” as if those were characteristic of all native people regardless of their linguistic affiliation or religion. caucasus was presented as the “second eurasia,” an image meant to arrest separatism and to prevent the northern caucasus from breaking away from russia (davidovich 1998, 2000). at the same time, intellectuals were competing with each other anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 77 for a higher status of their own ethnic groups within the “caucasian civilization” some of them wanted to privilege the adyghes, others – the turks, still others – the dagestanis or the vainakhs. kabardian historian k. kh. unezhev called the caucasus “the second [after russia] eurasian civilization.” he argued that, like russia, the caucasus was a cultural bridge between east and west, yet it had to be identified with neither russia, nor east, nor west. indeed, the “first eurasia” was dominated by a particular ethnic body and was built up by force, but the second one was shaped “naturally,” without any aggression. the “first eurasia” suffered from irreconcilable conflicts, while, within the second, various peoples developed similar traditions. he concluded that the “caucasian eurasianism was a cultural, geographical, economic and historic unity.” as a result, he claimed that, in fact, the caucasus, rather than russia, was the “first eurasia” (unezhev 1997:18-19). moreover, unezhev wanted to provide the adyghes with a special place within the “caucasian civilization.” he argued that they have both shaped a “particular cultural type” based on the adyghe etiquette and also invented their own ancient writing system (unezhev 1997:21, 29-30). some other authors depict the caucasus as a special civilization, a natural bridge between the muslim and the christian worlds. it is the caucasus that is fated to effectively hold back the tides of “atlantic civilization” (usmanov 1997:378-379). thus, the caucasian eurasianism also manifests anti-westernist and anti-atlanticist tendencies. hence, the project of “caucasian eurasianism” was aimed mostly at peace-keeping as its advocates believed that cultural unity might provide a basis for social cohesion, thus relaxing internal discords. additionally, it manifested an anti-globalist stance and an aspiration to secure “authentic” cultures and identities. collective peoples‟ rights were valued over those of the individual. at the same time, the caucasus was opposed to the idea of russia as possessing a more prestigious civilization. yet the project proved unable to relax tensions and hostility in the caucasus in either symbolical or practical terms. moreover, the project was used, on the one hand, for the consolidation of culturally related peoples, yet on the other, for their isolation from other north caucasians and for constructing a hierarchy of peoples according to their alleged “status.” “turkic peril” and tajik-armenian response as we already know, the turkic factor plays an important role in many neo-eurasian projects. this is no accident as turkic peoples have good historical reasons to claim eurasia. this was strengthened by their fast demographic growth noted already during the 1970s and 1980s. during the late 1980s, the people‟s front of azerbaijan treated the ussr as a muslimchristian and turkic-slavic union. it applauded the breaking away of the baltic republics because that increased muslim and turkic influence in society. the leaders of the movement viewed the turkic-slavic alliance as a transitory period, which would lead to the domination of the turks and muslims in the state (kherischi 1990). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 78 the assembly of the turkic peoples organized a conference in almaty in december 1991 where participants from kazakhstan, azerbaijan and tatarstan supported the construction of a unified turkistan (“great turan”) in the former ussr‟s territory. some tatar journalists reminded the audience that for centuries this territory provided a space for large states where various languages (turkic, persian, and russian) dominated in different periods. they believed that this needed to continue and that the western view of the “nation” was inappropriate here. they were happy to say “good-bye” to the baltic republics, ukraine, belarus, moldova and the south caucasus, whose departure demarcated the borders of the coming turkic-russian eurasia (dzhanguzhin, musaliev 1992). yet those plans did not materialize. armenian and tajik intellectuals were alarmed by the idea of the slavic-turkic union. in armenia they assumed that the “eurasian union” would be dominated by the “asian element” because the european breakaway republics declined to enter it. some armenian authors believed in a pan-turkic conspiracy that masked a turan with eurasian face. as a result, some authors suggested restoring a “christian alliance” rather than a eurasian one. others pointed to close relationships between the “aryan peoples,” which paved the way for a rapprochement with iran despite the religious differences between armenia and iran. at the same time, those authors did not fail to represent armenia as neither a european, nor an eastern nation, but as a bridge between west and east (muradyan, manukyan 1997). thus, a nationalization of the eurasian idea took place here as well. certain muscovite scholars of tajik backgrounds were also alarmed by the idea of the slavic-turkic alliance. they pointed to ancient relationships between the slavs and the “aryaniranian world,” where the tajik ethnogenesis was rooted, and suggested revising the view of eurasia in accordance with this understanding. for them, asia should be identified with the eastiranian world rather than with the turks. they argued that this strategy might strengthen russia whereas an alliance with the turks would doom her to degenerate into provincialism (shukurov and shukurov 1996). this approach is shared by the renowned tajik academician n. negmatov, who identifies the “eurasian values” with “iranian-slavic ones” and calls for an iranian-slavic alliance. his eurasianism is based on an indo-european foundation that lacks any involvement with the turks (negmatov 1997:324-327). however, eurasianism is less popular in contemporary tajikistan. instead, tajiks discuss the idea of “aryan civilization,” which serves to improve their relationships with iran, pakistan and india (bakhovadinov and dodikhudoev 2005:148-149). tensions between armenians and tajiks, on the one hand, and their turkic neighbors, on the other, rooted in soviet times, have led to open hostility. therefore, armenian and tajik intellectuals are constructing alliances in their own way, which ironically blend eurasianism with “aryanism.” yet, while seeking alliances with iran, armenians downplay the religious aspects of such an alliance, while, in contrast, some tajiks stress the “islamic-aryan civilization.” the armenian and tajik “eurasianism” focuses on the idea of security, understood as defense from the “turkic assault.” anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 79 conclusions thus, an analysis of the expansion of eurasianism to various ethno-national environments leads us to the following conclusions. first, one can distinguish between different kinds of eurasianism within almost every single ethno-national community. some of them are more radical and others are more moderate. for example, the moderate variety is cultivated and exploited by the policy-makers, who usually demonstrate a more pragmatic approach. by contrast, political outsiders and, partly, public intellectuals develop more radical ideas. second, eurasianism is by no means constructed as a consistent ideology. usually people make their choice and select what aspects of eurasianism they consider more appropriate for their goals. thus, non-russian ethnic groups mostly appreciate the democratic elements of the eurasian project, namely a political equality of ethnic groups regardless of their size and political leverage, and also a combination of modernization with the maintenance of native languages, cultures, and identity. here, an idea of any privileges for the russian orthodoxy is entirely rejected. third, a regional variability expresses itself in the specific elements chosen as useful eurasian heritage: economic cooperation and integration in certain cis countries; an ethnopolitical equality – in the middle volga region and siberia; an inter-ethnic peace – in the northern caucasus; and security – in armenia and tajikistan. hence, “economic eurasianism” dominates in some new post-soviet states (in central asia and, until recently, in ukraine) where people appreciate modernization based on western technologies, provided it does not spoil local authenticity. turkic ethnic groups in the russian hinterland mostly value “political eurasianism.” those in the northern caucasus, armenia and tajikistan are developing an “eurasianism of security.” for their part, certain azerbaijani scholars are constructing “geopolitical eurasianism” to provide their country with prestige in the world community. finally, many professionals (especially in the arts and literature) appreciate a form of “cultural eurasianism” aimed at the maintenance of a common cultural space that was shaped during soviet times. fourth, there is regional variability in the understanding of democracy. members of the elite in bashkortostan, sakha-yakutia, altai and the northern caucasus emphasize collective ethnic rights, while in tatarstan human rights have higher priority. respectively, empire is viewed by the former as a “symphony of peoples” and by the latter as a strict authoritarian structure. fifth, in some regions an evolution of the attitude towards eurasianism is observed: a shift from earlier suspicions or complete rejection to later assimilation of its moderate version adapted to given ethno-national environments (in tatarstan). sixth, despite eurasian declarations of ethno-cultural equality, in some regions (northern caucasus, middle volga region, the southern urals) there is a symbolic struggle for leadership in the eurasian community of peoples. moreover, the eurasian idea is used by some turkic leaders to claim political domination in eurasia or its particular regions. for example, there is a anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 80 competition between kazakhstan and uzbekistan, tatarstan and bashkortostan for the symbolic place as the “bridge between europe and asia.” some tatar intellectuals want to provide the tatars with a hegemonic position within the eurasian space as the “main link within the turkic world.” seventh, there is a struggle for membership in the alliance with the slavs (russians); an idea of slavic-turkic alliance is popular among the turks, yet the armenians and the tajiks are oriented to an alliance on anti-turkic bases. furthermore, eurasianism is sometimes used as a psychological escape it helps the central asian states distance themselves from the negative image of asia and to identify themselves with the west and its values (modernization, literacy, secularism). yet, everywhere (with the exception of tatarstan) this by no means arrests the development of anti-globalist and anti-western stances that are embedded in the eurasian ideology. finally, what seems especially attractive in eurasianism is that it lets one claim the position of a bridge that unites and reconciles different cultural worlds. in this context, the former periphery obtains a prestigious centrality, and a border draws people closer to each other rather than dividing them. as caroline humphrey notes, “eurasia offers above all an escape from their peripherality, obscurity and insignificance” (humphrey 2002). paradoxically, contrary to what the original ideologues of eurasianism expected, contemporary eurasianism is on good terms with local nationalisms that modify it in various ways for their own goals. notes *** this is an extended version of the paper delivered at the soyuz annual symposium “global socialisms and postsocialisms,” held at 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(the limits of eurasia: what they should be?) in evraziiskii proekt: real‟nosti, problemy, kontseptsii (eurasian project: realities, http://www1.ku-eichstaett.de/zimos/forum/inhaltruss11.html anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 85 problems, concepts). n. n. beliakov and v. a. petrov, eds. p. 39. moscow: klub “realisty.” correspondence: reply to chris hann michał buchowski, university of poznań and europe-university viadrina, frankfurt/oder professor chris hann has published several books and articles on central and eastern europe. no wonder that i have referred to them, particularly those concerned with poland that i picked as an exemplary case of a vaguely defined ‘socialist and postsocialist studies.’ in his reply he offers a straightforward discussion, but regretfully he relapses into an ad personam style that i did not use at all. i have a hunch that this is so because he has misread most of my arguments. i could have reduced my response to a few points, but will, after reflection, offer a more thorough discussion. first, i did not say that western anthropological production on cee is wrong, dire, or insignificant. on the contrary, i consider it valuable and inspiring. i just attempted to examine the relationship between different traditions in anthropological studies of the so-called socialist and postsocialist societies, the fact that these traditions hardly overlap, and that certain hierarchies of knowledge exist. professor hann reads it as an assault on the work of western anthropologists in general, and his own work in particular. his understanding is simply inaccurate. second, at no point did i blame anybody personally or collectively for the existing state of affairs. i merely described this phenomenon and tried to analyze its causes. third, i did not have the nerve to impose any orthodoxy. chris hann’s reply, on the other hand, is brimming with advice on what ceeans should do in order to become ‘western-style’ anthropologists. his is an openly patronizing style that, frankly, does not fit my image of professor hann as a sensitive and prominent scholar. there is a thin, although extremely important, line between critical polemicising and scorning. fourth, being even more condescending, professor hann wages a bold attack both on my ceean colleagues and on myself by calling us ‘intellectual pyrotechnicians,’ our fieldwork shallow, and our anthropology unsophisticated. at this point i should follow the ultimate postmodernist advice (as well as jacques chirac’s) and fall silent. however, i hold the work of chris hann in high esteem, therefore i will elaborate further. i am convinced that our friendship will survive simply because we discuss issues, not persons. ad.1. definitely, i did not blame anybody for the ‘hierarchies of languages’ that privileges english. this is beyond our control and the only thing that we, nonnative speakers of english can do is to do our best to communicate on the international bazaar of scholars by excelling in our proficiency in this modern lingua franca. also, our english-speaking fellowanthropologists have been helping us to meet a plea of chris hann: “please try to arrange for editing by a native speaker.” i, in turn, have a plea to foreign scholars who adorn their texts with words and phrases in local vernaculars: please try to arrange to have them reviewed be a native speakers because frequently, they are rendered incorrectly. ad.2. the invention of any field of study means that it is defined in scholarly and other discourses. in support of this, let me cite a statement from the book edited by chris hann: “postsocialism is certainly a construct of the academy.” and, as caroline humphrey goes to say further, “it is not ours alone, and it does correspond to certain historical conditions ‘out there’” (2001: 12). in other words, i share the view that in cee, and elsewhere, there live real people in real societies with real histories. however, i also recognize the fact that our images of these places and people are shaped by our concepts. anthropological insights are among those that inform these representations, and are helpful in deconstructing the commonsensical and the obvious, and in constructing more nuanced pictures of the world, thus providing both jen typewritten text 198 more ‘deorientalized’ and ‘deoccidentalized’ interpretations of human practices. sound anthropological accounts of cee (written by both ‘westerners’ and non-westerners!) have also fulfilled this objective. ad.3. by writing about the disproportion in citations, references made and ideas referred to between western and eastern ethnographic monographs, particularly in western anthropologists’ publications, i am not blaming their authors for this state of affairs. having stated this, i tried to tackle the following issue: how did it happen that the two scholarly discourses do not really overlap? on the one hand, this supports my above argument that in scholarly discourses we actually create different realities because we happen to live in different societies, and are all individuals with our own life trajectories. when chris hann went to the south-eastern mountains in poland in the 1970s, he created an image of the community there that was generated from his interests shaped during his academic education in the uk. the two students he mentions got interested in different issues not because the reality there was different, but because their conceptual categories and research interests were differently shaped. on the other hand, my arguments, and chris hann’s observations, confirm that such a split in perspectives still exists, and that it is a matter of concern for all those who would like to combine traditions – and inspect them for the constructions that they all are. i assume that we all should work towards this end. professor hann, in turns, states that he and his western peers have ‘always already’ had it right!? the argument that in mid1980s, while in cambridge, i was interested in rationality and shamanism and discussed them with ernest gellner and stephen hughes-jones seems to me entirely beside the point. i could easily retort that chris hann was not interested in the issues i studied then. ad.4. i cannot find any assertion in any of my texts that “the mpi in halle… is discriminating against cee scholars and privileging the work of westerners.” perhaps one can read between the lines of my aeer text that virtually all scholars in the volume on postsocialism published as proceedings from the conference held at mpi in halle are westerners – if so, that was definitely not my intention. this volume was just one in the series of publications that illustrate my point about the predominance of ‘westerners’ in writings on cee. the statistics i provided are, i think, sound. again, i do not hold chris hann or the entire western anthropological academia responsible for this. i tried to answer a simple question: why? many answers are possible i merely indicated a few paths in which our inquiries might go, but i have searched for the reasons on both sides of this mental iron curtain that is but gradually melting. ad.5. of course, training phd students is vital for any discipline. no doubt, the institute co-headed by chris hann is well funded and functioning in this respect. at this point, chris hann is turning very personal in his arguments; answering them, i cannot help doing the same. he writes that long-lasting fieldwork is the divide between ‘western’ and ‘eastern’ kinds of anthropology. he may be right, but in this perspective, local scholars’ ethnographies are feeble. definitely, there are researchers who have done much better fieldwork than i have ever done. however, i wonder what makes professor hann so certain that my fieldwork materials, collected during my sixth-months stay in the community, and intermittent research i have conducted for ten years, is thin. what makes him so sure that any fieldwork done in a manner different from his is less insightful? chris hann also suggests that i complain about not being included into the volume on postsocialism. i have no clue why he says so. i find the book in question competent and useful, and i use it as an example when illustrating the point that in western anthropological publications, non-western authors (not me personally!) have been all but absent. jen typewritten text 199 ad.6. it is true that i did my fieldwork in the community that speaks more or less the same language i learned at home and at school, and it facilitates my understanding of this people’s narratives. for chris hann, this is evidently a vice. i could argue that apart from their spoken language, these people were as alien to me as any other in any other community i ever entered for the first time, ‘somewhere, anywhere,’ as hann writes. his view of anthropology is not universal and in many corners of the world anthropologists are also advised to study at home, and there are fields of research that in point of fact exclude such an immersion in one community as hann advocates. anthropology today is nothing if not diversified and follows multiple tracks. fieldwork is one of the issues that i tried to raise by indicating that ‘we, ceeans’ should constantly rethink our practices and meet high standards of decent scholarship without any further adjectives like ‘western,’ ‘eastern,’ or ‘hallean.’ chris hann eagerly admits it, but at the same time leaves his own position intact or even presents it as the touchstone. indeed, i am an advocate of the ‘anthropologization’ of the cee ethnoanthropological or anthro-ethnological enterprise. professor hann states that: “even though much has changed in recent years, including new forms of fieldwork by cee scholars, it seems premature to speak of full disciplinary convergence.” for him convergence means adjustment of others to his own standards. he seems to tell us: ‘you will transform into full-fledged anthropologist only after you have done things the way i do it.’ this is not exactly what i understand by convergence of any intellectual traditions. ad.7. it is not my foremost desire to be so widely read and to compete on the markets. i do not think about anthropology in terms of contest, rivalry, and ‘sectors in the market.’ these are neo-liberal terms, otherwise scorned by chris hann, that clearly frame some western anthropological thinking, but (luckily) still did not invade many of my cee colleagues. i also did not complain that western voices are louder. let me repeat, i merely said that in western studies on cee, one can hardly find anthropological ideas, much less theories, produced by local anthropologists and that western scholars refer almost solely to other ‘westerners’ as theoretically entitled. the same, although reversed, applies to the majority of scholars who are based in the east and study postsocialist societies. chris hann says that in order to become proper anthropologists we should go abroad first – with hopes that this experience would enable us to do in-depth studies in our own countries. i beg to disagree. ad.8. i for one do not dare to issue prescriptions for proper science. visits to academic institutions seem to me equally important as fieldwork, but chris hann suggest that it is a flaw in my and my colleagues’ professional careers. i have indeed accepted several such invitations, and i believe it was an enriching experience both for me, my foreign colleagues, and the students. ad.9. professor hann continues his lecture on proper anthropology and this time gives us a ‘cultural hero story’ to be followed, namely yuli konstantinov. i am unsure that this is entirely correct, especially towards the colleague thus named. after reading points 6-9 of chris hann’s reply, the reader can get an impression that anyone coming from cee has to do what people in mpi in halle do in order to be awarded the noble title of an anthropologist. as anonymous students that hann quotes authoritatively say, we would have done better to keep with teaching folklore. perhaps professor hann needs to tell us quite simply: how much homework do we ceeans still have to do before we become ‘us?’ reference cited: humpherey, caroline. 2001. does the category “postsocialist” still make sense? in: c.m. hann, (ed.), postsocialism, pp. 1215. new york: routledge. jen typewritten text 200 11 the 'natural childbffith' movement in russia: self-representation strategies ekaterina belooussova "natural childbirth"(nc) is the tenn referring to a special system of ideological and practical attitudes concerning birth management and baby care. i this system may be regarded as an alternative to shared patterns of medical care and baby rearing. the ideology of "natural childbirth", or "conscious childbirth", supposes that giving birth is a very special spiritual experience which demands both parents' personal responsibility that cannot be shared with the authoritative institutions such as maternity care units. nc activists suggest that the parents should be prepared for the childbirth physically and spiritually by means of a series of c~rtain techniques and practices. as for the delivery, the common point is that the mother, the father, and the baby are equal participants in the process. the other principal point is the necessity to avoid any kind of medical intervention and to integrate labor pain in one's consciousness to provide the baby the most comfortable physical and psychical conditions to be born. according to r. davis-floyd, american nc discourse is attempting to mediate the oppositions between dominant (technocratic) and alternative (holistic) models ofmedicine (davis­ floyd 1992:155). the american concept ofnc is associated with the name of grandy dick read (dick read 1933; dick read 1984; dick read 1997) and implies laboring without pain-killers and certain sympathy towards holistic values. in russian tradition, those who identify themselves with the nc movement sound considerably engaged by what r. davis-floyd calls the holistic model of medicine. it is important that while american nc is supposed to occur in a hospital and allows medical intervention in general, the strong point of its typical russian proponents is homebirth and waterbirth. the following words are ascribed to the "father" of russian nc movement, igor charkovsky: "i remember her [midwife] citing his words: 'let the soviet woman give birth anywhere any place would be better than a maternity hospital'" (katia). in this article i concentrate on the nc community's self-representation and self­ description, which makes it necessary to discuss specifically russian connotations of "being natural." the increasing popularity of such a marginal movement as nc is to a large extent caused by reactions to the situation in russian state maternity hospitals. during the soviet period no private hospitals existed, and now there are only a few of them, mostly in big cities, and they are unaffordable for the majority of russian population. as the interviews i conducted during my work on hospital birth in russia have revealed, women's rights are roughly violated in state hospitals, at all possible levels. most of the women express their strong disappointment with the violent separation ofmothers from their newborn babies, ignoring their opinion while making decisions on the methods of treatment, prohibition to meet their husbands and relatives, abusive medical intervention into the process of birth, rude treatment, and bad conditions. here are some references to these human rights violations typical of russian state maternity system: they told me nothing about my baby all the doors were closed, you couldn't get info from anyone (tania). they bring him [baby] swaddled, and there is no possibility even to have a look at him naked, you can't see if he is clean, and what he looks like, and if he is taken care of (sveta). through all my life, when i asked what medicine am i taking, they used to answer me in a rude manner. therefore, i became already kind of allergic to hospitals, and this time [at the maternity hospital] i tried not to ask questions at all (anonymous). there were only two days in a week, when they allowed relatives to visit us, and only at definite hours. you had to shout out of the ward window (angelina). my husband was standing under the window at the moment, and when my daughter was born, he shouted: "who was born?" and they shouted him back that he had a daughter (nina). vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 11 they just deceived me. they said: "don't worry, we won't prick you anywhere," because i had already asked them not to [perfonn an amniotomy]. < ... > the woman doctor said: "see my hands, i have nothing in them, i only got to have a look." and there she pricked me for an amniotomy (asya). they [maternity hospital medical stuff] take us for pigs. they didn't care a damn. i mean, they treat us like cattle (lyudmila). the russian version of waterbirth appeared in the early 1980s: the first four water deliveries took place in spring 1980 in moscow and were arranged as an experiment (irina martynova 5:2). this technique got to be known abroad as "the russian method." in comparison, the first reported waterbirth in america took place in the fall of 1981, that is 1.5 years later (ray 1985: 117 -119; rei 1985:40-41). igor charkovsky, the dissident childbirth assistant, is traditionally considered to be the pioneer of the movement. he had a number of successors, who used to work with him personally, and who are now the main agents of the waterbirth tradition in russia. the nc movement meets certain obstacles because the authorities had prescribed bearing children in the state maternity hospitals since the beginning of the soviet period. thus, the tradition of having babies born in maternity hospitals is much older than in america. it is necessary to say that while in most american states direct-entry midwifery is officially permitted, in russia it is completely prohibited. however, nowadays a number ofnc educational and preparatory centers are functioning in russian cities. for example, in moscow about 15 registered nc centers are practicing. these centers are officially permitted by the state in spite of their nonconformist approach to the birth management. officially, these centers are functioning as preparatory only, but in fact the instructors of some centers also illegally assist in home deliveries. there are also a number of unregistered independent nc assistants. both employed and independent nc assistants identify themselves as "spiritual midwives." this tenn was borrowed from an american "farm midwife," ina may gaskin's book "spiritual midwifery," translated into russian and published by "akva" nc center in 1986 (gaskin 1977; gaskin 1986). currently, there are several branches ofnc movement, each one possessing its own interpretation ofbirth management and its own ideological preferences. the american concept ofnc reflects a general cultural tendency to identify the female body with primordial nature as opposed to the male body viewed as a "perfect machine." robbie davis floyd deconstructs this shared perception of male/female bodies: "the male body is metaphorized as a better machine than the female body, because in fonn and function it is more machine-like more consistent and predictable, less subject to the vagaries of nature (i.e., more cultural and therefore 'better'), and consequently less likely to break down" (davis-floyd, robbie 1992:52). correspondingly, in the american feminist movement, including the struggle for nc, as well as in scholarly analyses of the topic, any kind of medical intervention into the process of childbirth is described as "male practice/malpractice. ,,2 in the russian cultural context, the term "nc" has been considerably alienated from its american feminist connotations. traditionally in russia, the vast majority of physicians in general and ob-gyns in particular were women. that's why the opposition "male practitioner vs. female patient" is not equally relevant in the russian case. significantly, in many stories about him, charkovsky looks quite a phallic figure, and this image has mostly positive connotations. according to one of these stories, charkovsky was accused of sexual harassment while practicing in the united states. the episode is described as a false accusation, a misunderstanding, or as a plot of american technocrats serving the interests of medical businesses. in charkovsky's remarks, a strong male perspective is obvious: once, for instance, he referred to women as to sheep supposed to obey their shepherd: "women are unable to think and they don't want to understand anything. they behave like does and act in accordance with ancient instincts, which come from the animals. they don't even know why they can't catch such easy things. that's why a man has to prepare everything in advance ... however men do nothing, while women behave like a flock..." (akva: 24). thus, although later in the history ofnc movement women took over midwifery practice and the female line inside the community won out, originally this movement did not sound like any kind of struggle for women's rights par excellence. in russian nc discourse, female identity is considered not in political perspective but rather in the context of a new age paradigm that regards vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 12 sexual intercourse, conception, and childbirth as a complex holistic experience of a woman and a family as a whole. from this point of view, medical intervention is harmful as it destroys the woman's sexual identity and her spiritual experience in the course of such an important process and event as childbirth. referring to one ofher own hospital childbirth experiences, "spiritual midwife" marina dadasheva said: "in fact, all those medical inspections of women after birth, you know ...they do check them, but they don't care at all about their femininity, their sensitivity, the birth canal. .. the body of a woman is rather sensitive, but when they start to turn your core out with all those metallic tools ..." the other context relevant for the nc discourse both in american and russian cultures is the following opposition: "natural" patterns for health care vs. utilitarian approaches to it. the commonplace of all anti-medical discourses is that medical theory and practice have developed from nature-centered attitudes to the culturally constructed "human interests." here is a typical reference to contemporary medicine as "unnatural" in the context of childbirth: "gradually, it [medicine] left behind its original natural entity and became more and more artificial .. birth assistance finally stopped seeing childbirth as a natural process, and started seeing pregnancy as an illness and childbirth as a dangerous operation (ilya). one of the main meanings of the russian word "jestestvennyj" ("natural") is "normal," "typical," "accepted," "straight," as opposed to "unnatural," "abnormal," "odd," and consequently, "wrong." the adjective "normal'nyj" ("normal") is often used as well to gain higher status for the nc ideology. another basic meaning of the word 'jestestvennyj" is "related to nature," "essentially belonging to nature," "primordial" as opposed to "artificial," "culturally constructed," "invented by mankind." by using this word, the nc movement appeals to nature as to an authoritative instance. as far as the russian language is concerned, the russoist concept "l'homme nature 1" was mostly translated as "jestestvennyj chelovek," and that is why this word sounds quite natural in the context of the dichotomy "naturavcultural" and in the context of "back-to-nature" discourses. there are also some contextual meanings of the word "natural." "spiritual midwife" tatiana sargunas says: "by normal women we mean those who have been trained in special spiritual midwifery centers and taught to give birth in 13 natural way and, preferably, in natural settings" (sargunas). here we find the word "natural" used in two different meanings. "in a natural way" means without medical intervention. "natural settings" in this context means "waterbirth." significantly, waterbirth proponents, referring to nc history in russia, assert that the idea of waterbirth preceded the idea of homebirth. one of the first enthusiasts of the nc movement in russia believes that people started practicing homebirth because it was impossible to arrange waterbirth in hospital settings: "first of all, the idea appeared to give birth in water ~ well, there was charkovsky and his crowd. as hospitals provide no possibility to give birth in water, they naturally came to the idea of home birth" (ilya). thus, the ideology of the russian nc movement presupposes not only that waterbirth is natural, but also that it is the most natural way to give birth. charkovsky claims: "properly proceeded birthgiving in water is totally a natural act, based on nature" (charkovsky a). male­ midwife oleg tutin asserts in his interviews to the "speed-info" newspaper: "they [parents] often practice waterbirth this is more natural and softer for the baby" (podkolodny b). he also said, "some people prefer waterbirth, for women fmd it more natural, and they are quite right" (podkolodnya). the opponents of the waterbirth ideology try to prove that this thesis is logically incorrect. dr. ailamazian, professor of saint-petersburg state university, says: "among the mammals only whales, dolphins and hippopotami give birth in water, that is the species spending most time in water and well adapted in it. but this is not true as far as a man is concerned. from this point of view we can rather call waterbirth "unnatural" (ajlamazjan). however even some opponents of waterbirth ideology consider waterbirth to be "closer to nature." they say that our contemporaries have changed too much since they were natural people," and that now they probably need some more "unnatural" settings to give birth in. a woman, who had preferred to give birth at home but in bed, says: "that's why we left the bathtub we just didn't want to prevent our child from having this [gravitation] shock. because it is disputable whether it is good or bad. maybe, people have left their original natural condition so far behind, that probably it's better to experience this shock nowadays" (lyubov). vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 13 14 nevertheless, the activists of the waterbirth movement suggest that it is contemporary human nature rather than the way of giving birth that is to be changed by means of a special set of attitudes toward body and health. xenia ryndich, the director of the former "family ecology" center, said: "birth finally became so problematic, because contemporary civilized woman lost those qualities that she was supposed to have as a woman. it is necessary to return a woman into her natural condition" (rebenok rozhdaetsja 1992). a midwife, irina martynova, comments on the very first waterbirth that took place in moscow in 1980: "we congratulated the new mom and each other with the completion ofour experiment though i don't like this word actually. it would be better to call it return to natural birth w~thout medical intervention (martynova 5:2). irma regards this particular moment, the first waterbirth, as the beginning of the return to nature in spite of the fact that unmedicated homebirths had been already practiced in moscow by a certain group of people. referring to them, irina said: they already had a feeling, that there was something wrong about our medicine, but it was not completely clear yet what was wrong with it in particular. some of them tried to give birth at home on their owns, without the doctors' assistance. but not in water yet. <...> having come along with these people we found out that they had a strong desire to deliver their children "in natural way," though they had neither methods worked out for such births nor the experts who could help in preparation to and assistance in such birth (martynova 5:2). in an attempt to provide waterbirth with the necessary authoritative background, the proponents of waterbirth appeal to human ancestors of different historical periods that are supposed to be "truly natural." first of all, they refer to some ancient exotic cultures. the newspaper article about charkovsky reads: he found some historical witnesses about waterbirth practiced in ancient egypt to make the delivery easier. to say more, in one of the manuscripts charkovsky found the information that in the pharaohs' times there was a ritual of waterbirth that the future priests' mothers were prescribed to follow (vasinsky 1994). charkovsky appears here as a warlock, a sorcerer, capable of reading old egyptian manuscripts, though he is far from being an egyptologist. second, and most important, is the idea of all life on earth as originating in water. thus, the ~riginal human ancestors, "truly natural" beings, hved and gave birth in water. many species were, according to charkovsky, pushed from water to the land by certain monsters, and thus the fear of water had been imprinted in human (and many other animals') ancestors' mind. however, the breaking of taboos can help the brain to recollect its ancient programs, which can provide the human being with certain inhuman abilities bodily, spiritual, and intellectual. the symbol of waterbirth, the totem and protector of the waterbirth community, is a dolphin. it is a live reminiscence of the lost paradise. according to charkovsky, pregnant women and women in birth should help their babies to establish telepathic contacts with the dolphins. being connected to dolphins and through them to the natural world in general, a human being is supposed to gain a powerful source ofenergy and knowledge as well as to get rid of herlhis essential fear of water. here is charkovsky's comment on human-dolphin contacts: water rearing of the children could have opened new perspectives in human evolution. establishing telepathic contacts with the dolphins and their powerful bioenergy, relying on their help in birth, communication and friendship that is the way to create a new man with a higher physical and probably even higher spiritual abilities (charkovsky b). thus the very important goal of waterbirth is a certain contribution to human evolution, that is, the creation of a new generation ofpeople, or as charkovsky puts it, a "new race." he says: "prenatal training is not only important for physical exercising but it also helps to open the inner vision, the 'third eye,' that is the abilities, now called 'para-normal'" (akva: 16-17). in addition, "these abilities have to become a norm, but now they still look like something supernatural" (akva: 27). in the waterbirth community, beliefs are common about waterbabies as superpeople. "spiritual midwife" daria streltsova claims that waterbirth was used in antiquity in order to provoke special abilities in children who were supposed to form the elite and to fulfil some vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 14 15 special mission: "they have some special abilities, waterbabies... waterbirth used to be practiced long ago not for everybody, but for the babies supposed to know more than ordinary people ­ like, you know, pharaohs ... " now that waterbirth has become "normal," the shared (hospital) way of birth is automatically interpreted as a wrong way. consequently, children born in a hospital are considered to be subnormal as opposed to "vodnye deti" ("waterbabies"). the article about "spiritual midwife" marina dadasheva reads: charkovsky and his successors regard children born in maternity hospitals as disabled, even if the doctors say they are healthy. and if we compare "land-" and "waterbabies," we will see that it is true. "waterbabies" can swim from the very beginning, learn to stay and walk several months before the common babies can do it, they rarely get ill, and they have rapid intellectual development and strong artistic abilities (korovina 1993). according to charkovsky's theory, the extraordinary abilities of waterbabies were supposed to be used for the defense and development of the "natural" conditions in the world, for establishing a new, ecological world order. first of all, the people of this new generation have a mission to protect the earth from ruin in case the world war begins. charkovsky says: "these beings have a very strong feeling of the world around, they feel, when some malpractice against the planet earth is taking place and experience pain" (akva: 14). also, "such children have a stronger energy, stronger psychical and physical abilities. if the "atomic reaction" starts, and these programs will be accepted by many people, these children will be able to conquer the arms race. that's why creation of a new race is considered to be so extremely important" (akva: 38). the other side of this task is restoring the cosmic unity of the world, of the ruined "natural" connections, establishing a special "ecological" and "holistic" reception of the world and attitude toward the world.3 charkovsky says: "entering the world should be extremely gentle, harmonious, humanistic, incorporated into the natural connections" (charkovsky a). the article about "spiritual midwife" marina dadasheva reads: "the man was born, and at the same moment he received as a gift all the world, the sky, and the earth. happy is the man who keeps the feeling of inviolable connection with everything in the sky and on the earth" (korovina 1993). marina dadasheva herself comments on this issue: "it's important to communicate with the cosmos, with the earth, and with nature during pregnancy." there is a series of certain techniques, supposed to help the members of the waterbirth community to achieve some special condition so that pregnant women and the babies both inside and outside were able to freely communicate with the cosmos. these techniques include meditation, yoga, wet rebirthing, and winter diving, among others. the human body is considered to be cosmically oriented and axiologically heterogeneous, having some "special" organs intended for cosmic communication. thus charkovsky calls the womb the "resonator of cosmic communication" (akva: 33). tatiana sargunas refers to the placenta as "the cosmic aerial;" irina martynova calls it "an energy generator." nc instructor from "pearl" nc center, svetlana abramova, interprets a pregnant woman's picture as a "cosmic" vision of the placenta and regards this image as the woman's insight: we were picturing childbirth. a very beautiful meditation one of the girls had, the last time, it was gorgeous. she used to be a silent one, one of those who never told anything, no lively images, nothing. and all of a sudden she came out with something really special. shine, cosmic space, stars, and at the same time a baby was being born so beautiful it was .. .it must have been an image of the placenta. she compared the placenta to a multicolored aster, kind of. one of the most important practices in waterbirth is the so-called "lotus birth" ritual. ideally, the cord is not cut off within the 24 hours after the birth, so that some energy cycle can be completed. as a result of this practice, the child is supposed to receive some proper amount of cosmic energy through the placenta. the latter is regarded as a certain channel through which the energy is transferred from the universe. in practice, this ritual is considered to be hard to perform and therefore it is reduced to several hours. irina martynova comments on this custom: "our ancestors, slavs, practiced waterbirth. they used to cut the cord at the sumise. the placenta ­ it's an energy generator, you know, and they were solar people ... but we certainly have to conform to our life, to our conditions." in general, ritual operations with the placenta are intended for "proper" redistribution of material and energy in the universe. the traditional vol. 20, no. 1 2002, page: 15 i 16 russian ritual ofburying the placenta is still most typical for nc proponents. one of the women who had the experience of burying the placenta, refers to the belief that the placenta must be buried, according to the gender of the baby, under one of the trees that have symbolic gender meanings in russian culture: "in fact, you must bury it, the placenta, you know. a boy's one under an oak, a girl's under a birch" (natalia). the other nc enthusiast refers to a magic function of burying the siblings' placentas together: "we buried the placenta. just buried it in a park, and that was all. vasya's we buried in the kuskovsky park, and anyutka's at the same place. now they will become friends" (ekaterina). some parents prefer to eat their baby's placenta in communion. this ritual provides the opportunity to keep the renmants of birth inside the family and is supposed to restore physical and "energetic" balance of the parents after childbirth. the following account illustrates this attitude: and, as far as eating placenta is concerned ... we actually ate ours. and when we were told i've been told that it happens before the birth i was positively against that. but we fmally did it, and my husband also took part in it quite easily, although he is a vegetarian. dasha ["spiritual midwife"] recommends to eat it after hard labor, just because it contains microelements that help to recover. (svetlana) the exclusive cases of eating "alien" placentas are described as an improper and harmful act because it contradicts the ideas of preserving the family unity and of the sacred meaning of the placenta. therefore, the husband of a nc activist disapproves her habit of eating the placentas of women whom she assisted in childbirth: "she, actually, started to eat all those [other women's] placentas, like ordinary meat, which one probably should not do" (ilya). one more ritual way to integrate the placenta "properly" into the "cosmos" is its full annihilation. a russian american woman, a university professor, not involved in the nc community, describes the recycling of the placenta in ritual terms: what did you do with the placenta? it is quite important, you know. if your midwife has not taken care of it, she must be a bad midwife, she should have taken it with her. they have to take it to the hospital [after homebirth], and there are those special yellow bags there, which are cremated in a special oven so that nothing remains, absolutely nothing (maya, personal communication). thus, the meaning of the term "natural" makes it possible to see humankind in the universal perspective involving the realm of animals, plants, the whole earth and, fmally, cosmic space. in addition to its physical representation, "cosmos" acquires transpersonal and metaphysical connotations (interaction of elements and energies, material, and spirit etc.). here, one of the most important motives is restoring balance, harmony, and reintegration of the whole world. this topic also has psychological and social perspectives, as applied to personal integrity and to the field of human interactions. the proponents of water birth ideology suggest restoring some particular kinds of the "forcibly ruined" connections by means of "ideal birth" such as the connection between body, mind, and spirit inside a person, or links between the members of the family. "spiritual midwife" katia ivanova says: i have two daughters masha and dasha. i gave birth to masha in a maternity hospital, and to dasha on my own. and now when i feel sick, when i have a headache or i am just worried masha, the one born in a maternity hospital, behaves badly, as i am unable to properly react to her behavior. but dasha, a home one, she feels my pain and feels sorry for me. our souls are not separated from each other. that's because i have been with her at the most terrible hour she ever had the first hour of her life. and after that i also didn't leave her. our biological fields remained united. i didn't betray her, and now she doesn't betray me. that's a psychological issue. in a maternity hospital the baby is born, while at home thefamily is (lyskov 1992). "spiritual midwife" marina dadasheva says: "it simultaneously became obvious to me that the birth is a sexual process, rather than the process of separation from the male principle, from the husband, from the baby, from thefami/y." consequently, the activists of waterbirth regard their coming into the profession as a certain spiritual path and their own activity as a heavenly vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 16 17 nusslon. irina martynova comments on this issue: "i appeared to be able to understand what the god wanted me to do. he led me toward the gentle, natural birth, and i was able to hear it" (martynova 10:3). marina dadasheva explains her professional and spiritual choice this way: "in several days i understood that this was my path, and all my family went that path and started to prepare. <...> and we promised that we just came into this thing and that we will work." this kind of midwives' self-positioning additionally supports the already existing legends about miraculous events that accompanied their activity. correspondingly, "spiritual midwives" become an object ofworship and even a cause of pious trembling inside the nc community. we have observed now a certain number of meanings and contexts most typical of the word "natural" as a self-reference used by the proponents ofne. in addition to two basic meanings ("normal" and "related to nature") it has acquired some very specific implications, only relevant for nc-related oral talks and self­ representation narratives, such as "no medicine homebirth" and "waterbirth." in all those meanings and contexts the same self­ representation strategy is reflected. to put it in terms of the general binary opposition (common vs. alternative attitudes and patterns), the word "natural" is used for a marked member of the opposition, though it would be certainly more natural to use it as a neuter member. in other words, to declare some new attitudes as natural, one has to start with declaring common and shared ones as unnatural. using this strategy in the basic self-reference already, a marginal and challenging movement attempts to gain authoritative status. references ajlamazjan, eduard. n.d. "rody v vode." "raduga" active birth center's web site. http://www.raduga­ birth.spb.ruirus/menu51 statl.html. [ajlamazjan, eduard. "waterbirth."] akva. 1992. akva: besedy s igorem charkovskim. rasskazy 0 rodakh v vode. sargunas tatjana, sargunas alexej, eds. moscow: t -oko. [akva: talks with igor charkovsky. waterbirth stories.] • belousova,lekaterina. 1999. "predstavlenija i verovanija, svjazannye s rozhdeniem rebenka: sovremennaja gorodskaja kul'tura." ph.d. diss., institute for the advanced studies in the humanities, russian state university for the humanities, moscow. [belooussova, ekaterina. "ideas and beliefs conceming childbirth: contemporary russian urban culture."] charkovsky, igor (a). n.d. "rozhdenie v vodnoj srede." igor charkovsky's web site http://charkovsky.chat.ruiframes.htm. [charkovsky, igor. "childbirth in water environment. "] n.d. "obshchenie s del'finami." igor charkovsky's web site http://charkovsky. chat.rul frames.htm. [charkovsky, igor. "human-dolphin communication. "] corea, gena. 1985. the hidden malpractice. new york: harper and row. davis-floyd, robbie. 1992. birth as an american rite ofpassage. berkeley los angeles london: university of california press. davis-floyd, robbie and davis, elizabeth. 1996. "intuition as authoritative knowledge in midwifery and homebirth." in the social production of authoritative knowledge in childbirth, a special edition of the medical anthropology quarterly, robbie davis­ floyd and carolyn sargent, eds. 10(2):237-269. dick read, grantly. 1933. natural childbirth. london: heinemann. dick read, grandy. 1984. childbirth without fear: the original approach to natural childbirth. new york: harper and row. dik rid, grantli. 1997. rody bez strakha: original 'nyj podkhod kjestestvennomu rozhdeniju rebenka. spb. moscow kharkov ­ minsk: piter. [russian translation of: dick read, grandy. 1984.] vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 17 http://charkovsky http://charkovsky.chat.ruiframes.htm http://www.raduga 18 gaskin, aina mei. 1986. dukhovnoe akusherstvo. moscow: akva. [russian translation of: gaskin, ina may. 1977.] gaskin, ina may. 1977. spiritual midwifery. summertown, tenn.: the book publishing company, 1 ed. korovina, olga. 1993. "akva-marina snova v penni: sobytie dlja dvoikh." znakhar·. no.4. [korovina, olga. "akva-marina is back to perm: event for two."] lyskov, aleksandr. 1992. "kak babushki rozhali." speed­ info. no.7. [lyskov, aleksandr. "how grannies gave birth."] martynova, irina. n.d. "istorija vodnykh rodov v rossii." pts. 1-9. mailing list rozhdenie bez nasi/ija. podorova. ksenija, ed. http://birth.ft.inc.ru.no. 1-77. 12.21.1999 05.22.2001. [irina martynova. "the history of water birth in russia." mailing list birth without violence]. mendelsohn, robert. 1981. male [mal}practice: how doctors manipulate women. chicago: contemporary books. podkolodny fjodor. 1992 (a). "polovoj akt vo vremja rodov." speed-info. no.6. [podkolodny fjodor. "sexual intercourse during labor."] 1992 (b). "rozhdennye v orgazme." speed-info. no.7. [podkolodny fjodor. "born in orgasm."] ray, sondra. 1985. ideal birth. berkeley: celestial arts. "rebenok rozhdaetsja". 1992. "rebenok rozhdaetsja": roundtable. moskovskij komsomolets. 11.06.1992. ["the baby is being bom."] rei sondra, 1985. ideal'noe rozhdenie. abbreviated translation by m[ihail] t[runov]. moscow. [russian translation of: ray, sondra. 1985.] sargunas, ta1jana. n.d. "rasshirennye sostojanija soznanija v rodakh: putevoditel'." sargunas-akva­ center web site http://www.geocities.comlheartlandjpine s/1860/indexl.html. [sargunas, tatjana. "extended states of consciousness in labor: a guide."] vasinsky, aleksandr. 1994. "kreshchenie po charkovskomu." izvestija. no. 161. 08.24.1994. [vasinsky, aleksandr. "the baptism according to charkovsky. "] i this article is a part of my larger project "natural childbirth movement in russia: the anthropological perspective" supported by research support scheme grant (rss no.: 99712000). the research is based on the materials of my own field research in 2000-2001 in moscow and st.-petersburg, such as participant observation materials as well as the interviews conducted with "spiritual midwives" (15 interviews) and with people having experienced nc (40 interviews). these were in depth interviews conducted at the interviewee's place or at the nc preparatory school, in a free-flowing style. before that, in 1995-1999, working at my dissertation (belousova 1999), i have interviewed another group that consisted of 70 women who had experienced hospital childbirth (st.-petersburg, moscow, russian community in the estonian cities tartu and tallinn). for this article, i also use books and journals published by nc centers, as well as newspaper articles devoted to nc and the relevant materials on the russian web. where the quotation has no reference to a certain work, the interviews from my personal archive are cited. i thank all my informants for sharing their experience and deliberations. 2 c£ the pun in the title of a book by dr. robert mendelsohn, an advocate for women's right to manage their bodies and health: male [mal}practice: how doctors manipulate women. (mendelsohn 1981); c£ also the title of the book by gena corea: the hidden malpractice (corea 1985). 3 cf. commentaries on how the concept "connections" is used in american midwives' narratives: davis-floyd, robbie and davis, elizabeth. 1996, esp. pp. 246-248. vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 18 j http://www.geocities.comlheartlandjpine http:http://birth.ft.inc.ru.no anthropology of east europe review sakha pop music-a celebration of consuming l aimar ventsel estonian literary museum, tartu, estonia in this paper 1 am going to discuss how commercial pop music and consumption, especially buying clothes, are related among youths in sakha, in the eastern part of the russian siberia. i explore how consumerism in sakha is affected by local show business and why music matters in channelling trends of buying consumer items like clothes, tapes and so forth. 1 want to show that being stylish and trendy is linked in this context to personal prestige and one's position in the larger social context. in 2000 and 200 i 1 spent 14 months in the largest russian region-republic of sakha (yakutia) in eastern siberia. 1 went there as a doctoral student of the max planck-institute for social anthropology in halle (saale) to do research on changing property relations in the postsocialist transition society. but as it happens on long period fieldwork, one has plenty of time to learn about other spheres of the local life as well. since 1 have always been interested in music, i was eager to see what the local music culture looked like. by the time i met local dj-s, artists and promoters, made friends in the music scene, and visited many local clubs and other music involved events. i think, out of routine i always took notes and after returning from the field work, i possessed a solid amount offield notes about the sakha music culture. these notes and my observations are the source for this article. the republic of sakha is the largest subject of the russian federation covering more than 3,000,000 square kilometres. it is located in the eastern part of the country, belonging regionally to the far east. the former yakut autonomous socialist soviet republic, contemporary sakha declared its sovereignty in 1991 and changed its name to the republic of sakha. the population of the republic of sakha is quite small, reaching only one million. approximately 55% of these are people called russians (descendents of incomers and incomers from the european part of russia). the titular ethnic group, the turkic speaking sakha, make up about 35% of the population. the rest are indigenous minorities, the so called small peoples of the north, including such groups as evenki, even, yukagir and dolgan. population density is low, and most people are scattered over the vast territory (pakhomov 1999, tichotsky, 2000). therefore, the capital yakutsk and industrial towns like mirnyi and neringri, where population density is high, are important centers for local social life. in fact, yakutsk is the centre of every kind of cultural and social life for sakha. in yakutsk reside the national government, main theatres, national tv and radio, and main clubs. in russia, the republic of sakha is known as the region that produces 99% of russian diamonds (tichotsky 2000), but the wealth from this is distributed unequally. southern and western russian-dominated industrial towns are wealthier; people receive higher wages and have more social guarantees. the sakha people and indigenous minorities, who live mainly in rural areas, in smaller non-industrial towns or in the capital yakutsk, have smaller incomes on the average, with the exception of the so-called 'new sakha' (sanga sakha in sakha or novye yakllt)' in russian) . these 'new sakha' are mostly people working for governmental structures, big state companies. or they are businessmen. the population is also divided along ethnic lines, with most of the indigenous population adverse to the ne\\'comers who have better jobs and wages. this informal ethnic enmity has been decreasing in recen t years along with the improvement of the general standard of living. however, in the cultural sense and in the contex t of the republic of sakha we can stil l speak about two separate communities, centred on their own language media, music, books and schools (see ventsel2004a, ventsei2004b). consumerism and urban culture in general have rarely been researched in the russian context. especially in siberia. there are some \\orks that discuss music culture in russian cities. but they are limited to the metropolises of western russia (cushman 1995; pilkington 1994: pilkington 1999). nevertheless, new generations of scholars. working in siberia and interested in music (\'entsel 2004a), sports games (krist 2004) and other aspects of urban life are emerging. unfortunately. consumption has not been a topic of srudies conducted among the indigenous and newcomer populations to the east of the ural mountains. however, this is not comparable \\ith studies on popular culture in other regions of the \\·orld. so­ called urban studies, linking music , consuming and volume 24, no.2 page 35 anthropology of east europe review identity with each other have gained attention since the publication of works of the birmingham-based centre of cross-cultural studies (see hall and jefferson 1986). many theoretical works in urban studies have focused on music-linking it with resistance , consuming, ethnicity and identity (burke 1978; cawelti 1990; connell and gibson 2003; frith 1996; fuller 1998). in time, solid data has been accumulated on youth in urban environments and their lifestyle related to music, consuming, and politics based on studies in africa, asia, europe, and america (e.g. akindes 2002; brusila 2002; bryson 1996; chye and konk 1996; friedman and weiner 1999; toop 1992). history of sakha popular music sakha and non-sakha people have always had music as part of their culture. not only is the main national epos of sakha, olonkho, performed by singing, music as a leisure activity, entertainment, and accompaniment to rituals has always been present in the region (safronov 2000; vinokurova 1994). in the soviet union, the state declared great interest and provided support for maintaining and developing the culture of the "backward" groups that also included the siberian indigenous peoples. this policy was applied by establishing village and town clubsso-called houses of culture-and organising folklore practicing groups, teams of national sport, arts and groups engaged in handicraft. not only the sakha, but all minority groups had such groups in their villages and often more than one group focused on singing and dancing the folk songs and dances in their own language. during the soviet period, imitating russians and other ethnic groups of the state, the sakha established and developed their own popular music culture. since the 1960s. sakha have had their own light music, similar to the entertainment music of the period. the artists­ arkadii alekseev, pter tobomkov, marina popovaare still remembered and loved today. to describe this kind of music, the russian term estrada has been used. less is known about the evenki, yukagir etc. estrada music and i doubt that there were ever any serious attempts to create light music in indigenous minority languages. the main obstacle was and is, to my opinion, the fact that most non-sakha groups in the region switched to sakha or russian language after the introduction of compulsory school education. in western sakha, sakha language was in general used among all ethnic groups centuries ago already (see ventsel 2005 :chapter 8). in addition, there was always entertainment music produced by the local, rapidly increasing russian population in the russian language. these artists recorded their songs at the local radio station while there were only a few records with the sakha entertainment music released during the soviet time. thus, the native pop music was consumed mainly at live concerts or via the local radio and only a small portion of the music circulated among people on tapes and cassettes reproduced at homes. the collapse of the soviet union changed this. bars, clubs and discos mushroomed out of nowhere and within a decade established a permanent place in people's lives. music became more important and visible. while there were new social spaces to consume it in, there were also other reasons for this. with the appearance of a private economy, private radio stations were established . most of these played only russian and western music, but in 1996 the radio station of victoria sakhalyy was established, playing mainly sakha music with the whole program mn in the sakha language. another radio station that plays much sakha music, especially older music, is the local state-owned radio nvk. with the appearance of places to consume music and numerous radio channels to transfer music, more musicians appeared. in fact, music became for young rural artists and musicians a means to leave their villages and set a foot in yakutsk, as i have discussed in a previous article (ventsel 2004b). in time, various music styles developed, targeting different groups among the local population. the abovementioned estrada is a music style based on the melodies of the 1960s and 1970s dance music and is often performed by mature singers for the overwhelmingly "older" audience. rock is another music genre practiced in sakha. the first sakha rock group, dapsy, was established in the 1970s. they have maintained their leading position but the number of sakha rock groups has multiplied since the 1980s. rock music could be roughly divided into two types. there is chris rea­ like dance rock music, popular among all age groups. then there is the so-called shamanic rock, like pink floyd and led zeppelin-influenced progressive rock with elements of sakha traditional music (folk melodies, use of mouth harps and other traditional instmments) and wearing stylised sakha folk costumes onstage (tsolbon, aital). the shamanic rock is more appreciated among older students and sakha intellectuals and is also known in russian metropolises like moscow and st petersburg and even abroad among world music circuits. the "youthful" part of sakha music is popsa which means in russian , "pop music." volume 24, no.2 page 36 anthrop%!!,y of east europe reviell' pops a is the average disco-pop, influenced by similar russian and wcstern music. the salicncc of this cheap computer-produccd music has increased since mtv launched its russian programme wherc more than half of the music played is russian. activc in the popsa-style are both male (igor) and female (varia ammanatova) solo artists and boy (x-up) and girl groups (maxima). popsa artists tend to be youngcr than estrada and rock artists, and their main audience is tcenagers and young adults, and in cities mainly high school pupils and university students. the tv prescntations of these artists are colourful and trcndy, imitating russian pop stars and forcign artists from the mtv. the fourth music genre in sakha is folk music. folk musicians arc not only those who are active at villagc houscs of culture, but there are also many academically educated artists, espccially singers who. among other styles. perform traditional music. folk music is evcn morc in dcmand abroad than at home and. therefore. established folk musicians travel a lot, visiting folk music festivals all over the world. onc particularity of the sakha music is the lack of strict limits bctween genres. not only do the best artists perform in all styles and can be very succcssful in this (valia romanova, saina), but in the sakha music scenc there is no polarisation bctween rock and pop music, likc we see in the west. thereforc, the audiences of artists can overlap-just as adults or seniors can enjoy the pcrformancc of a disco singer so can young people visit estrada concerts or drop in on a folk or rock fcstival. along with the increase of the salience of music for listeners and artists, local music industry dcveloped. in the sovict period almost all sakha singers and musicians were cultural workers working in theatres or houses of culture. their music was subordinated to a planned industry as any other field of soviet life. thus, all artists had a new program every year, approved by the council of arts (khudosestvennyi soviet in russian) of their company, the plan determining how many concerts and tours with completely new content or repeating parts of old programs they were obliged or allow cd to perform. according to these annual programs. the theatre or club financed the artists, paying the salary and for costumes, travel costs, costs of thc background band, etc. recording facilities were scarce. as my inforn1ants told me, in yakutsk during the soviet era there were very few possibilities to record music-only in provisional studios of local theatres or in the radio station. after the collapse of socialism. non-state­ owned music business slowly emergcd. whcn i conducted my fieldwork in 2000-2001 in the republic of sakha, a remarkable number of singers and musicians still worked for the theatre of light entertainmcnt (teatr estrada), although they were no longer strictly tied to a program and perform cd much outside of their theatre jobs. but there were many musicians who either worked somcwhere else (one guitarist i kncw was a sccuri ty guard in the hotel and a police officer, one singer worked also as a journalist, and so forth) to earn extra moncy to finance their music career or who tried to cam money only by performing. also. many indepcndent promoters and producers appeared who organised concerts and tried to earn money with this. and, last but not least, therc was a record company ouoraan records (duoracl/1 'echo' in sakha)-that since 1998, issues all kinds of sakha music from old communist songs to upcoming pop artists. the ceo of thc rccord company pyc)kka p6try6p (his sakha name) or petka petro\' (russian) told me that he established the company out of necessity: he is a singer himself and had real difficulties with recording and publishing his music. during my fieldwork the sakha music business changed due to thc appearance of one young man-eduard 'edik' gavrilo\. he used to work for russian mtv in mosco\\ and decided to use his experience in sakha music business. first, he started to produce expensi\'e and colourful videos for the songs and artists he wanted to promote. while before his time the a\ erage sakha music vidco showed the artist either in studio or in nature performing his or her song with a minimum movement, he introduced a more "ad\'anced" approach of producing videos. by chance. i \\as able to attend the prescntation of the first of such videos, a song '0201' (,luck' in sakha) by yaria ammanatova. this video was full of effects and fashionably dressed youths in the background. edik started to produce \ideos for young artists and groups he wanted to promote. to make glamorous videos he cooperated \\"ith \\ell known and talented stylists, photographers. fashion dcsigners and computcr graphics designers. it \\as easy, because in yakutsk the graphics artists. stylists and so forth did not ha\e many opportunities to excrcise their art: local ty did not need so many specialists of this kind: the fe\\ local youth magazines were black and \\hite with poor quality, and graphics design for sakha enterprises was functional only. thus, music "ideos quickly bccame not only a source of extra income but also volume 24, no.2 page 37 anthropology of east europe review means for artistic expression for the local young creative elite. edik's attempt to start making music videos was also supported by developments in the local television station. although there was no private tv in sakha during my fieldwork period, the state television nvk tv initiated many programs that were oriented to the youth. both in the sakha and russian languages, there were youth programmes that invited well-known artists to be interviewed. these programmes also reported on the main youth-related cultural events, such as festivals or big concerts. beside artists, fashion designers were often invited to the programmes and fashion itself was often discussed in these shows. as a musical interlude, hosts of these programs played music videos and when attractive sakha music videos appeared, they reccived massive airplay. young sakha elite and fashion in terms of the young sakha elite i want to mention the fact that when the musical scene in yakutsk was overwhelmingly ethnically divided and most clubs were either for the cthnic sakha or the russian, people who produced music and music videos were ethnically mixed groups. as i mentioned in the previous section, people from many professions were involved with the musical scene. these people, of both sexes, were the ones that filled vip-zones on public events and the line between the common audience and thc 'special persons' can be one marker signifying that one belongs to the local elite. in addition, local elite included people whose life and work was covered by the press and who had access to closed parties organised occasionally by promotcrs or politicians. these parties were famous in the whole republic because of their exclusivity. however, having attended a few of these events (due the fact that i was a foreigner and a dj) i did not find any big differences compared to parties of the so-called common people, only that most guests were well­ known artists, musicians, tv and radio people and so on. being part of the local elite brought also the obligation to be exclusively and well-dressed in public. in an earlier article (ventsel 2004b) i argue that although sakha artists often appeared in public well-dressed and in the company of local wealthy business people, in fact they actually lived sparsely, in small overcrowded apartments with their parents and spent all their money on new stage costumes and playbacks. many local vips did not lead a significantly better life. even edik, who was one of the top promoters and event organisers in the country, lived in a small one-room flat he shared with his sister. however, all these young people did everything to create the impression of being the 'rich and beautiful' of the numerous soap operas broadcasted daily on russian tv. they spent a big part of their income on clothes to constantly look up-to-date fashion-wise. during my fieldwork in yakutsk and in a few other cities, small shops for western top brands like mexx, colors of benettoll, diesel, dr. martens and others were opened, where all prices were one-fourth to one-third higher than in western europe for similar models. and after the shops were opened, it was common for young journalists, musicians, photographers, etc. to spend one-third of their monthly salary on a new mexx shirt or rare and fashionable sneakers. this consumer rush did not stop with that. there are many sakha students living in metropolises, especially in moscow, and they were asked to buy clothes and accessories like sunglasses not available in yakutsk itself. being well-dressed signifies many important things. first of all, it signals the person's wealth. and indeed, most of the young sakha elite can afford more than their "average" co-citizens. thus, for them spending time in expensive cafes, clubs or restaurants is more affordable than for the wider population. and since dressing well is a sign of wealth it shows by itself a higher status, making investing into clothes an obligation in the name of prestige. fashion consciousness is also a sign of social status (or as one my informants told me, 'i have to spend much money on clothes, otherwise people won't believe that i am a journalist. '). it shows that a person possesses know-how, the newest information about trends in the "outside world" and has access to commodities not available in every shop. as the quote of my informant proves, dressing well is linked to prestige. it is impossible to be part of the local elite if one dresses incorrectly. in time i noticed that there are quite strict rules about what signifies "nice clothes." for instance, women were extremely reluctant to show themselves at festive events in jeans, arguing that nice tailor-made trousers or a longer skirt are necessary. in the summer, when i turned up in so-called casual wear to all festive events, i was the only one wearing short pants and every other man was wearing long expensive jeans or even suits. i noticed that people who ignore such dress code-like a few artists i met-are often described as "vulgar," "strange," or even "rude." so there was peer pressure to follow the dress code as a sign of social coherence. volume 24, no, 2 page 38 anthropology afeast europe review appearance of pop stars, prestige and consumption since eduard "edik" gavrilov started producing music videos, the looks of artists, dancers and background staff in those clips changed radically. edik supported mostly young popsa artists, and young people were the target group for his productions. edik was not merely a calmly calculating businessman; he told me a few times that, for instance, videos are for him also a challenge as products of art and his organisational skills. but edik also learned at mtv that music videos are first of all means to promote music and attract an audience. to do that, he had to bring in not only new technical effects but pay more attention to the artists' dress. good examples of the changes in video aesthetics are two videos­ "naraana," by the artist igor, and "eder saas," (,youth in sakha') by the successful boy group xupp. in both videos all participants were dressed according to the hippest fashion of the season. as is the case with hip-hop culture (toop 1992), sakha music videos set and spread fashion standards and formulated what was seen as proper clothing for the season. i will elaborate on this below. another purpose of the music video in sakha is to reach wider acceptance among the audience for the music by showing that artists are the same kind of young consumption-interested persons as listeners. for producers, this means that listeners identify themselves with artists and are more eager to spend their money on cassettes and concert entrance fees. but it means also that many listeners try to dress themselves as their icons, i.e. it motivates people from the audience to buy clothes, shoes and accessories. these two sides of dealing with fashion go together. buying new clothes is not the privilege of the local young elite only. all young people in the republic want to buy new clothes and dress according to the latest fashion . in sakha, i was very surprised to observe that, even in the remotest settlements, young people constantly renewed their wardrobe and spent huge sums of their own and their parents' money on the latest fashions. to clarify what is so amazing in buying clothes, the reader must understand that the further away a village is from the capital, the higher the prices, and lower the people's income. in 2000/200 i the average adult's income per month in villages on the coast of the arctic ocean was less than usd 100, compared to approximately usd 150-200 in yakutsk, but the prices in villages were two to three times higher than in yakutsk [ventsel, 2005 #926]. despite the fact that they had less money and fewer clothes brought by traders that were not only more expensive but also of poorer quality, village youth expressed the same passion for new fashionable items . moreover, it was an unwritten law in any settlement i visited to go out of the house only when dressed according to the season's fashion . for example, i often saw girls washing carpets on the boat bridge dressed as if they were going to a disco. when the weather got warmer during the first spring days in may, young people put on their best clothes and took walks on river banks or main streets of villages to chat with friends and, of course, to show themselves off. in yakutsk and other cities, orientation to current fashion was of course easier, due the cheaper prices, more available goods and because of better access to information, through tv and journals, but just as intense. i would argue that following current trends and dressing up was even more visible in yakutsk. one reason for this was that most young students in the town originated from villages , and were now in town without the supervision of their families, more eager to spend money on new clothes. this newfound freedom far away from home gave the students also another freedom: the freedom to party, meaning visiting clubs, bars and open-air eventswhich in tum brought newcomers to a social environment where trendy dress was linked to prestige. so that there were additional pressures to consume. i have already mentioned that artists as public persons were trendsetters for these young people. sakha artists were overwhelmingly people of rural background who came to yakutsk either to study or to start their musician ' s career. and the fact that they had become famous meant that they had managed to climb up the social ladder. for young students, who were not in a high socially valued position, artists personified the fac t that raising one's social status from the rural girl or boy to a beloved and respected singer or musician is possible, in general that it was possible to join the local young elite. one way to raise one' s social status was to show attention to changes of fashion, and that one can afford it. moreover, looking good was necessary to contact people from the elite and eventually be admitted to their circuits . there was always the possibility of meeting a singer, musician, promoter or photographer from one's home district or even home village and to establish or renew contact with that person. but to be befriended by someone belonging to the local elite one also needed to "look right" (vygliadil pravilno in russian), as one of my informants put it. volume 24, no.2 page 39 anthropology of east europe review when a newcomer started to move around in the club and bar scene, he discovered that to be respected he needed some "know how" about proper dressing and behaviour. being dressed in "country style" brought low prestige, less attention from the opposite sex, fewer friends, etc. as a friend told me, "country youths, when they come to the city, are easily distinguishable. but they learn soon how to dress and be smart." they start buying clothes and accessories, first cheap chinese products sold on local markets, and when possible, they move on to western original brands available in boutiques. in the situation where apparel was directly linked to social prestige, wearing the right "clothes" became important. the clothing public persons wore had much weight by channelling the consumption habits of young people. in videos and tv shows youths could see current trends and find inspiration for updating their own wardrobe. for singers, fashion designers, musicians, journalists and other people of the local elite, tv shows, concerts and music videos were a means to demonstrate their sophistication in current fashion trends and confirm their social status. thus, there is pressure in all social groups from top to bottom to look fashionable. the local elite were forced to spend much money on expensive clothes to show and confirm their social status; young people tried to copy them at any cost to have higher prestige among their peers, but also to have a chance to socialize with the local elite and be accepted to their midst. discussion the question of what makes people consume and what choices people make when consuming is, and has always been, one of the central topics in urban and subculture studies. adorno and horkheimer (2001) were convinced that all habits are created and manipulated by the "culture industry" and that the individualism in the post-war world is just an illusion that facilitates the capitalist in selling goods. scholars from the birmingham school challenge this view by opposing popular culture to the mass culture and saying that the first reflects people ' s choices by choosing from commodities available what they like and need. having individual tastes, different social groups create their own aesthetic and dress code that gives them subcultural identity (hall and jefferson 1986). in this paper i do not discuss consumption on the subcultural level but instead on the mainstream level. however, the nature of the process is similar to that in a subculture: young people in the republic of sakha consumed certain clothes, footwear and accessories following the group taste that linked them to other people in their peer group. young people copied the style of their idols and the prestigious. i have travelled throughout russia and noticed that there are regional fashions where trends were slightly different in every region and big city. moreover, the difference in what is fashionable was often a matter of discussion on the local level. in sakha, in newspapers or on tv, there are often interviews with students who have studied in other regions of russia or even abroad. and the question always present in these interviews was "what is in fashion there? what do young people wear in moscow, new york, vadivostok and other cities?" young people were well aware that in other regions people do have a different notion of "trendy." for example, i read an interview with a young female student who studied in vladivostok. to the question about current fashion in vladivostok, she said that the youth fashion there was much more conservative, i.e. it was not common to wear dr. martens boots that were very popular at that time among young girls in sakha. in this sense, the local fashion of russian regions is a matter of group choice, and people in the region are well aware about the existence of "other fashions." one topic in urban studies is the role of media in affecting people's strategies of consumption. already gramsci (1999) noted the importance of the press manipulating peoples' opinion. gramsci was interested in how the ruling class spreads its morals and world view, while in urban studies the importance of media is discussed from the perspective of how media creates common identities and how these identities enforce people to consume certain commodities. dick hebdidge argues that the "style" of youth subcultures is also created in the media space by creating and spreading "codes" which recipients "decode" and adapt into their identity (1979). the same pattern works when we discuss consumption habits of sakha youths. media-tv programs and music videosare encoded by the artists but also by promoters, stylists, photographers, designers and other people involved in the production process. these mediums present to youths a blueprint of how a fashion conscious person must dress herself when she wants to be 'up to date,' i.e. among the respected. i argue that copying fashion from what they see on stage and on tv, young people decode it through the prism of prestige because being dressed "properly" can make people (at least mentally) feel close to the elite. this is how hebdige links "source" and volume 24, no.2 page 40 anthropology of east europe review "receiver": there must be a meaningful message that is transferred, but it does not mean that both sides understand signals in completely the same way. in the larger context, knowing how to dress not only makes a person respected in the disco circuit. it gives a person a good chance to become one of the young elite by getting the attention of promoters, journalists or other people, and ending up at one of the closed insider parties. in yakutsk and especially in smaller settlements, everyone .knows somebody of the young elite or someone who knows somebody from the circuits of the elite. another important thing is that fashion conscious dressing also signals to friends, co­ students and others that one has established a relationship with the elite. thus, friedman's statement that consumption is driven by fantasy (1995: 168-169) is only partly true. fantasy, undoubtedly, played a large role in motivating young people to spend huge amounts of their income on clothes; the fantasy being one of being part of the urban scene and at the top of it. but friedman is right, stating that consumption is linked to power (1995:l72). according to bourdieu's concept of taste, the right clothes and the knowledge of how to choose them are also cultural capital. this cultural capital can, on the one hand, symbolise a person's affiliation with the local young elite. on the other hand, clothes can provide someone from the average audience not only prestige among the peer group but also access to the elite circuit. simon frith says in his classic writing that music is leisure, entertainment. in another work he states that music is an aesthetic activity that creates a common identity among the audience. but music is also a commodity, an object of consumption. moreover, development of music has created a complex form of consumption where music is only one and sometimes the less important commodity. bloom (1990) argues that there are many aspects that form a mass culture. there are forms of mass media that developed through the technical progress and that were able to raise and channel in people the desire to consume. there must also be production to satisfy that desire and the urban consuming audience. in sakha there were both media and audience, and chinese and western industry took care of providing commodities to consume. identity is based on shared taste not only in subcultures (hebdidge 1979; willis 1990), as i have shown above . the common identity of the sakha mainstream audience is based also on shared taste and a concept of prestige. time and development of means of communication, and heavy movement of young people between the cit)' and villages brought urban commercial mass culture to rural settlements, creating in this wayan overwhelmingly widespread youth identity. all these aspects together formed a larger mass culture in the rural and urban settlements of the republic ofsakha. conclusion the collapse of the soviet union brought many changes. on the one hand, for many people it meant a decrease in the standard of living. for other people it meant the opening up of possibilities to consume all these commodities that were unavailable before. with the development of privatization, new clubs, shops, bars, private radio stations and magazines have been opened. these changes in people's lives reached even the remotest regions of russia, siberian towns and villages. consuming has become an important part of the life of young people in the republic of sakha. in this paper i showed that being fashion conscious and spending a lot of money on clothes. footwear and accessories is an activity with social implications. in the situation where financial resources are quite limited, consuming for social reasons can become especially important. i sho\\ed that fashionable clothes can convey many things: social position, a strategy to increase one' s social position, and support to one's identity. in the context of sakha i demonstrated ho\\ music and visual expressions of music in yarious forn1s of media can play a central role 111 channc lling consumption and setting standards. notes ithis paper is based on data collected during my doctoral fieldwork in sakha between 2000 and 2001 and funded by the max planck institute of social anthropology, halle!saale. a ls o. i am \ cry grateful to the estonian literary \luseum fo r supporting and encouraging me to continue working 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"the culture industry: enlightement as mass deception," in media and cultural studies . keyworks. edited by m. g. durham and d. m. kellner, pp. 71-101. malden, oxford: blackwell. krist, s. 2004. where going back is a step forward: the re-traditionalising of sport games in post-soviet buriatiia. sibirica 4: 104-115. pakhomov, e. a. 1999. respublika sakha (yakutia). administrativno-territorialnoe delenie na janvaria 1999 goda. yakutsk: nipk sakhapoligrafizdat. pilkington, h. 1994. russia's youth and its culture. a nation's constructors and constructed. london and new yark: routledge. -1999. "reconfiguring "the west"," in looking west? cultural globalization and russian youth cultures. edited by h. pilkington, e. omel'chenko, m. flynn, u. bliudina, and e. starkova, pp. 165-200. university park, pennsylvania: the pennsylvania state university press. safronov, f. g. editor. 2000. entsiklopediia iakutii. vo!' tom 1. moskva: 000 "sakha sirin entsiklopediiata". tichotsky, 1. 2000. russia's diamond colony. the republic of sakha. amsterdam: harwood academic publishers. toop, d. 1992. rap attack. african jive bis global hiphop. munchen: wilhelm heyne verlag. ventsel, a. 2004a. "sakha pop music and ethnicity," in properties of culture ­ culture as property. pathways to reform in post-soviet siberia, vol. 2. edited by e. kasten, pp. 67-86. berlin: dietrich reimer verlag. -2004b. stars without money: sakha ethnic music business, upward mobility and friendship. sibirica 4:88-103. volume 24, no.2 page 42 anthropology of east europe review ventscl, a. 2005. reindeer, rodina and reciprocity: kinship and property rc!ations ill a siberian village. halle studies in the anthropology of eurasia., vol. 7. berlin: lit verlag. vinokurova, u. a. 1994. ska:c 0 narode sakha. yakutsk: bichik. willis, p. 1990. common culiure. symholic ,mrk at play in everyday cultures of the young. milton keynes: open university press. volume 24, no.2 page 43 ii microsoft word table of contents and intro formatted.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 3 editors’ notes krista harper & julie hemment university of massachusetts, amherst this issue of the anthropology of east europe review presents a symposium on “roma and gadje,” featuring the latest research on the critical issue of interethnic relations between roma (“gypsies”) and non-roma (gadje, in romani) throughout the region. a glance at news headlines from the past six months reveals the timeliness of this research. consider the following news stories: • november 2007: the italian government issues an emergency decree facilitating the expulsion of romanian citizens, with only limited procedural protections. the decree was passed in response to a murder case in which a romanian roma man was a suspect. human rights activists charge that the decree targets romani (gypsy) eu citizens and opens the door to racial profiling and expulsions in the eu. (“italy expels eu citizens; concerns rise about 'vendettas,'” deutsche welle, nov. 4, 2007, accessed online at http://www.dwworld.de/dw/article/0,2144,2863244,00.html) • november 2007: a group of czech romani women hold a photo exhibition, “the world as seen by victims of sterilization,” at the romani women’s rights conference in stockholm, sweden (“roma in the czech republic” online news digest, http://romove.radio.cz/en/article/21710 ) • february 2008: the christian science monitor publishes an article on the rise of the “magyar garda” right-wing militia movement in hungary (woodward, “hungary's anti-roma militia grows,” feb. 13, 2008, csm, accessed at http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0213/p07s02woeu.html) the range of issues concerned in these headlines shows that research on roma and nonroma relationships can no longer be limited to the realm of folklore or “ethnic minority policy”—it must be placed within broader discussions of europeanization, human rights, social inclusion, and neoliberalism in postsocialist societies. the articles in this issue’s symposium take this broader view, reexamining archives to uncover hidden histories of the holocaust, using ethnography to explore newly ethnicized configurations of state, civil sector, and religion. in our open forum section this issue, we present jana kopelentova rehak’s article “czech political prisoners: remembering, relatedness, reconciliation.” this article presents personal narratives of men and women who survived czechoslovak communist forced labor camps in the 1950s. rehak’s account focuses on the ways subjects are reconstituting themselves, making sense of social suffering and discovering their own resilience after 1989. barbara cellarius and jennifer patico contribute book reviews to this issue. cellarius reviews the edited volume ethnography of protected areas: endangered habitats – endangered, edited by peter simoni%. patico reviews dreaming of a mailorder husband: russian-american internet romance, by ericka johnson. we would like to extend our warm thanks to robert rotenberg for his ongoing work maintaining the aeer website at de paul university and to our editorial assistant carrie bernstein. we are grateful to the center for public policy and administration (cppa) at the university of massachusetts for providing the resources for research and editorial assistance and to the department of anthropology for providing overhead support for the journal. finally, one of our priorities this year has been our subscription drive. to that end, we’d like to encourage you all to speak to your libraries to subscribe and make aeer available for your students. we thank you for your ongoing support as subscribers and readers of our journal! anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 4 editors-in-chief: krista harper and julie hemment, anthropology of east europe review, department of anthropology, university of massachusetts, amherst, ma 01003. phone: +1-413/545-2221; fax: +1-413/545-9494; e-mail: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com web editor: robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore ave, chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 312/325-7460; fax 312/325-7452; email: rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu. © university of massachusetts, amherst 2008 issn: 1054-4720 please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($20/yr. for full-time faculty and professionals, $10/yr for students and part-time faculty; european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($20), or additional copies of a back issue ($20) to the managing editors. call for papers for the anthropology of east europe review we invite you to submit proposals for symposia, papers for the open forum, conference reports, book reviews, and syllabi from courses related to the anthropology of eastern europe and eurasia please submit articles of between 2500-7000 words in length, including footnotes, etc. please ensure that authors have permissions for any photos or pictures accompanying their articles and include your affiliation. please send your electronic submissions as a microsoft word .doc file to: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com anthropology or f;)st leurope review consuming the west but becoming third world:food imports and the experience of russianness jennifer pafico, haverford college in contemporary st. petersburg, one can hardly help but notice how often all things "european" and "western" are heraldcd for thcir stylishness, dependable quality, and prestige value. shop windows and the billboards that line city avenues promote their wares from furniture to electronics to cigarettes by highlighting their connection with (often, their origination from) the u.s., italy, sweden, germany, or simply a generic "europe." in conversation, people describe apartment renovation projects (remont) as either cosmetic and inexpensive or thoroughgoing, high­ quality, expensive, and "eurostandard" (evrostandart). yet when it comes to foodstuffs, many speakers are at least as likely to discuss the merits of domestic production over european and american analogues. likewise, food companies­ including some based outside of russia 1 ­ frequently center their advertising and marketing campaigns around recognizably russian places and pasts, such as the scenes of simple and hearty village life used to sell "sweet mila" milk and the imperial balls and pushkin-esque gun duels portrayed in commercials for "rossiia" chocolate. (the slogan for this last product plays on a classic trope of russia's national identity: "rossiia­ shchedraia dusha," or "russia generous soul."). for anyone who has spent much time in russian homes, enjoying borshch or cabbage soup (shchi), buckwheat kasha or black bread, vinegre/ and "olivier" salads, and endless cups of tea, it may come as no great surprise that food should be singled out for association with homey tradition and an essential sort of russianness. "this is a purely russian dish ... take some more! don't be shy!" are among the encouragements and admonitions a foreign visitor is likely to hear in a russian kitchen. certainly there, as elsewhere in the world, cooking and cuisine can become powerful vehicles for nostalgia and for the maintenance of identities conceived as national or "traditional" (e.g., appadurai 1988, leitch 2000, west 2002) perhaps especially in the face of perceived threats to cultural continuity, such as the marketization that has so transformed russian life in recent years.2 yet having examined this issue within the wider context of an ethnography of consumer practice and ideology in post-soviet st. petersburg (1998-99), i have found that such an explanation cannot account very well for the ways in which people's opinions about food imports reflect their more generalized ambivalence about the far­ reaching changes wrought in thei i' i ives since the collapse of the ussr; nor does it shed sufficicnt light on the full range of concrete concerns that factor into people's evaluations offood commodities. given the scarcity of consumer goods that prevailed in the soviet union, the problem of choice itself is in some ways a novel one. that is, there is a new need to develop dependable criteria for idcntification of those commodities, from among a wide range of largely unfamiliar options, which represent an optimal combination of quality, prestige, and affordability. many people assume that labels and even brands cannot always be trusted to provide assurance of consistency. in this context, careful consumcr decision-making partly depends upon reference to the countries in which specific items have been manufactured, for these are held to be relatively good predictors of quality and other characteristics. the logics according to which urbanites differentiate among food products say much about how those actors construct a sense of what it means to be russian in a globalizing world. however, as we shall see, the choice of russian­ made foods over imports should not necessarily be read as symbolically equivalent to a defense of "russian tradition" against external forces of change. rather, as i will show, at play are considerably more complex "geographical knowledges" (cook and crang 1996: 132), that is, local understandings of the origins and paths food products take through the global economy (appadurai 1986). i have explored these issues ethnographically from the particular social perspective of st. petersburg public schoolteachers, drawing upon twelve months of participant-observation in schools, homes, and more public settings as well as intensive, semi­ directed interviews. as public employees, russian teachers (most of whom are women) have been hit particularly hard by drops in state funding and by the market fluctuations of the post-soviet era. typically, their incomes have shrunk substantially since the collapse of the ussr: both in terms of their absolute buying power and in comparison with the more el ite professionals, entrepreneurs and racketeers who have prospered and become infamously conspicuous consumers during the vol. 17, no.1 2003. page: 31 anthropology or east europe re\ ic\\ same decade.' a frustrating mix of expanded consumer opportunities, rising prices and decreasing social supports has undermined teachers' senses of themselves as respectable, "cultured" (kul 'turnyc) representati ves of a (once relatively secure, if not wealthy or terribly prestigious) "mass intelligentsia" (sch lapentokh 1999; patico 2001a, n.d.). yet, even in the first months of the 1998 financial crisis with its concomitant hardships, few expressed much nostalgia for the enforced stability provided by socialism per sc. on the contrary, even the most financially strapped among them tended to view the changes as improvements over soviet shops' drab uniformity and the constant shortages and endless queues once endured by citizens. remembering the earliest floods of imported goods to st. petersburg in the early 1990s, the teachers recalled an initial rush to try as many novelties as possible, especially all kinds of unfamiliar foods. these included brand-name items that quickly became famous, such as snickers candy bars and folgers coffee; there were also exotic fruits and vegetables never before seen in the soviet union, such as kiwi. many of the "new" items were not, strictly speaking, new to the local diet. what was new was the wide availability of familiar foods such as apples, cheeses and sausages from places as geographically and ( once) politically distant as the u.s., britain, the netherlands, and china. these foods may, of course, differ in taste and appearance both from previously accustomed soviet products and contemporary russian ones. more importantly, those material differences are sometimes taken up and given special kinds of significance, following particular logics that i describe in the remainder of this paper. it is worth noting that while my ethnographic research included accompanying teachers on grocery shopping trips, i draw here less on my direct observations oftheir purchases than on our conversations, in interviews and in less formal contexts, about domestic and imported foods and their respective merits. for in any given instance, the choice of one food product over another was likely to be explained away as a straightforward matter of finding the cheapest item of decent quality available; but our more abstract, hypothetical conversations drew out some of the ways in which "quality" itself is understood and predicted. some teachers described the sudden influx of imports in the early-mid 1990s as a kind of revelatory experience. seeing all those bright and attractive new foods, garments, appliances, and packagings had provoked a shift in their perceptions of the progress and positioning of russia itself: the soviet union had been further "behind" the rest of the world than they had previously imagined. such new visions had finally showed them what "normal life"lifc in the "west," as opposed to soviet life was really supposed to be like. shortly, however, the novelty wore off, and as people gained experience they began to compare imports unfavorably with more familiar, less expensive, locally produced goods. this was particularly the case with domestic foodstuffs, which many people quickly concluded to be healthier, fresher and tastier on the whole than imported ones (caldwell 2002, humphrey 1995, patico 200 i a). but as the following story illustrates, practical logics for interpreting goods' quality have not relied solely or even primarily on assumptions about the inherent superiority of russian products, but also on ideas about how and why particular goods end up in st. petersburg markets. elizaveta, a middle school english teacher, was trying to describe how she generally decided what to purchase, given the diversity of products now available locally. she mentioned various warnings she had heard, either through the media or from acquaintances, about allergenic food additives and preservatives said to be found mainly in imported products. this threat had become particularly real to her when a student became quite ill and missed school for some time. elizaveta was told that the source of the girl's illness was due to an allergy to imported foods. when i asked for more details, such as whether the allergy had been to particular brands or ingredients, elizaveta said she had been too shy to ask she had heard only that the hospital's diagnosis was "imported foods." she did not appear to doubt the diagnosis, however, seemingly willing to suspect imported products on principle. yet as she went on, her explanation revealed a more complicated reasoning, as she clarified that the goods russia received from the u.s. were not, as far as she knew, necessarily the best of what that country had to offer to its own citizens. it was specifically the exports to russia that were problematic. high quality imported foods were fine, but they were very expensive; and there were others, cheaper ones, of very low quality: people said these were "for negroes." when i inquired as to her choice of that particular phrase, elizaveta recalled soviet-era propaganda about the capitalist west, which included the claim that giving low quality, even harmful foods to blacks was a form of systematic racism voj. 17, no.1 2003, page: 32 anthropology of east furope rcvie\\ perpetrated in the u.s. t finally, she complained that russia had become a ''third world" country­ an evaluation whose significance i shall return to consider below. foods from the u.s. and western europe were not the only culprits, however. american companies' goods could be deemed the safer bets when compared to suspiciously inexpensive domestic items or with foods from, for example, china. teacher nastia declared that cheap chewing gums from china were bad for one's health­ better to buy "orbit" brand.5 she observed with frustration and some disdain that "all 'normal' countries have already refused [i.e., kept outl" such putatively low-quality, unhealthy asian imports.6 another woman, a teacher's friend who had recently traveled to italy, commented 011 how tasty the orbit chewing gum on sale there had been compared to the orbit available in s1. petersburg. she concluded with a laugh that "our orbit must be made in poland or somewhere'" production in a fellow former social ist, less "western" country provided a plausible (if humorous) explanation here, in and of itself, for the observed difference in quality.! still, foods produced in russia quite often were described as simply tastier than any imports. one man asserted that in that sense, he was "on the side of domestic" foods, though he claimed not to espouse the view that "nash produkt" ("our food product") should be bought for its own sake. "if our analogue [to an imported product] is good, i'll buy it; but if not, why bother with patriotism?" this attitude was rather typical in that people did not portray buying domestic as the right thing to do for the national economy or as a matter of national integrity. notably, they referred to commodities (including foods) produced in russia as rossiiskoe (russianr) and occasionally, rather anachronistically, as sovetskoe (soviet). more common in informal conversation were the somewhat vaguer yet more proprietary nashe ("ours") and otechestvennoe. i translate the latter here as "domestic," though it could be rendered as "native" and derives literally from "fatherland." as i heard the term used in the consumer context, however, it seemed so mundane as to be rather value-neutral; that is, people applied it without appearing to care particularly about domestic production as an issue ofpolitics and patriotism per se. instead, they described the superior healthfulness and tastiness of milk from the nearby petmol plant and chocolate from thc trusted krupskaia factory of s1. petersburg.'! apples and othcr produce from nearby cooperative farms might not look as attractive as the shiny, flawless fruits that came from abroad, but they were said to have more flavor and werc assumed to bc fresher. and while one did not know exactly when and how an imported, packaged roll-up cake (rulet) had been made, local bakely stands carried breads and sweets that one could assume to have been baked in s1. petersburg the day before. according to this kind of logic, domestic goods, especially cheap items transported to s1. petersburg from other towns and cities, could fall under suspicion or derision almost as easily as imports. there were particular things to watch out for. some shoppers tried consciously to avoid consuming harmful preservatives and additives. imports, again, were especially but not exclusively implicated, due to the technological complexity of vacuum-packed and other packaged foods as well as the fact of their having been transported long distances. prime suspects included imported polu{ahrikaty (literally: "half-made" or half­ assembled) food products as well as their more recently introduced, domestic counterparts, including frozen cutlets, pclmeni (meat dumplings), and soup mixes. a crucial question was that of expiration dates. for instance, when several teachers discussed groceries to be purchased for a teachers' party, one woman who had been delegated to buy packaged torts asked for direction: "should i get those ones, those imported ones?" to which her superior immediately cried. "only don't get those! they're expired!" another man theorized that the reason why goods were so inexpensive at the market at sennaia ploshchad', reputed as one of the cheapest shopping areas in the city, was that foods were being sold there past their expiration dates. while a shopper could, of course, examine the expiration date to avoid problems, false expiration labels notoriously were pasted over earlier, authentic ones.lf) explanations circulated that were based on a conception of russia's falling status within a global hierarchy of producers and consumers. teacher dima noted that when the imports had begun pouring into russia, "the west" had sent over the expired goods that had gone uneaten at home. kseniia similarly complained that "europe 'throws goods out' here, as to the third world," a problem she had seen discussed in russian newspapers. importantly, in the common parlance of the soviet era, it was the state apparatus that "threw ouc (vybrosili, vykydivali) goods to the shops for people to buy. as caroline humphrey puts it, the phrase reflected people's awareness that these goods were vol. 17. no.1 2003. page: 33 anthropology or east europe review not really bought by choice, hut allocated . .. at some level [people] realised that they were at the receiving end of a state­ planned system of distribution ... [and] that shops and markets were lmver-priority parts oj/he same system as the specially distributed packages of luxuries to officials and the nameless, closely curtained buildings that contained foreign-currency stores. (1995:4 7) (emphasis added) ifin the soviet era an inscrutable and resented "they" controlled the distribution of goods, wealthy countries exporting their least wanted commodities to russia clearly represent one ofthe new, post-soviet "thems."11 that a person should describe contemporary market relations using the old notion of "throwing out" attests to the feeling that a new locus of authority or judgment ~ not some invisible hand ~ is releasing these goods to russia's poorer consumers, having assessed their place within a broader set of priorities. "third world," as elizaveta and her colleagues used the term, referred to a lack of economic development and perhaps even of cultural sophistication (the notion of how "civilized" a country was); "food for negroes," meanwhile, called up troubling tales of purposeful racial discrimination in the west. such comparisons expressed the injustice that even well-educated, ostensibly "cultured" russians such as schoolteachers were being reduced to a shameful kind of poverty. sub-standard food products evoked the humiliation ofwhat the teachers perceived to be their subordinate and increasingly exploited position vis-a-vis the world's more privileged populations. stale cakes and tasteless gum appeared, then, as reflections of the speakers' own inferiority, as they imagined it might be seen through the eyes of powerful others. in this sense, each of those questionable items spoke loudly to consumers about the state of things in russia in general, and about the well­ bring of one's own family in particular. it was precisely in falling prey to low-quality imports from places like the u.s. that were also known to produce better things that a shopper was most likely to wonder ruefully whether she really was becoming part of the "third world." by making smart consumer choices, people strove to insulate themselves as well as possible from the ignominy of russia's weak position in the global economy. whatever sentimental value people attached to russian cooking and cuisine in other contexts, the more salient concern as they interpreted and negotiated their options in the post-soviet marketplace was for a more satisfactory, "civilized" and "eurostandard" lifestyle ~ which, ironically enough, could sometimes be achieved most effectively by "siding with the domestic." acknowledgements the research on which this article is based was supported in part by a grant from the international research and exchanges board (irex), with funds provided by the national endowment for the humanities, the us department of state, and the us information agency. additional research and write-up support was provided by a peo scholar award and a dean's dissertation write-up fellowship, new york university. none of the above organizations are responsible for views expressed here, but i thank them for their generous support. my heal1felt thanks also go to all those who read and commented upon this material at one time or another, particularly susan rogers, melissa caldwell, fred myers, and darra goldstein. references cited appadurai, arjun, 1986, introduction: commodities and the politics of value in the social life of things: commoditi~s in cultural perspective. arjun appadurai, ed. new york: cambridge university press. pp. 1-63. ---------., 1988, how to make a national cuisine: cookbooks in contemporary india, comparative studies in society and history 30(1): 3-24. ---------., 1990, disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy, public culture 2(2): 1-24. blakely, allison, 1986 russia and the negro: blacks in russian history and thought. washington, d.c.: howard university press. caldwell, melissa, 2002, the taste of nationalism: food politics in postsocialist moscow. ethnos 67(3): 295­ 319. ---------., forthcoming. not by bread alone: social security in the new russia. university of california press. cook, ian and philip crang, 1996, the world on a plate: culinary culture, displacement and geographical knowledges, journal of material culture 1(2): 13 1-153. vol. 17, no.1 20m, page: 34 .. anthropology of east eur0pc revic\\ hannerz, ulf, 1996, transnational connections: culture, people, places. new york: routledge. howes, david, 1996, introduction: commodities and culturall3orders. in cross-cultural consumption: global markets, local realities. david howes, ed. new york: routledge. pp. 1-16. humphrey, caroline, 1995, crcating a culture of disillusionment: consumption in moscow, a chronicle of changing times, in worlds apart: modernity through the prism of the local daniel miller, ed. new york: routledge. pp. 43-68. lemon, alaina, 2000, between two fires: gypsy performance and romani memory from pushkin to postsocialism. durham: duke university press. leitch, al ison, 2000 the social life of lardo: slow food in fast times. the asia pacific journal of anthropology 1 (i): 103-118. miller, daniel, 1994 modernity an ethnographic approach: dualism and mass consumption in trinidad. oxford: berg. ---------., 1997 capitalism: an ethnographic approach. oxford: berg. patico, jennifer, 2000, "new russian" sightings and the question of social difference in st. petersburg. the anthropology of east europe review 18(2): 73-78. ---------., 2001a, consumption and logics of social difference in post-soviet russia. ph.d. dissertation presented to the department of anthropology, new york university. ---------., 2001 b, "globalization in the postsocialist marketplace: consumer readings of difference and development in urban russia." kroeber anthropological society papers 86: 127-42. ---------., n.d. "perestroika of values: everyday life and social change in russia's consumer society." unpublished manuscript. patico, jennifer, and melissa caldwell, 2002, consumers exiting socialism: ethnographic perspectives on daily life in post-communist europe. ethnos 67(3): 295-294. ries, nancy, 2002, "honest" bandits and "warped people:" russian narratives about money, corruption, and moral decay. in ethnography in unstable places. carol greenhouse, kay warren, and elizabeth mertz, eds. durham: duke university press. pp. 276-315. shlapentokh, vladimir, 1999, social inequality in post-communist russia: the attitudes of the political elite and the masses (1991­ 1998). europe-asia studies. 51(7): 1167­ 1181. stryker, rachael and jennifer patico, 2002, the paradoxes of progress: globalization and postsocialist cultures. kroeber anthropological papers 86: 1-8. watson, james l., ed., 1997, golden arches east: mcdonald's in east asia. stanford, ca: stanford university press. west, barbara, 2002, life course change for hungarian women during the transition from a production-oriented to a consumer-oriented society. paper prepared for the annual meetings of the american anthropological association, new orleans. 1 for example, in 1998-99 a frequently run television commercial for twix candy bars (a mars product) included a prominent reference to russian cultural icon alexander pushkin, and cadbury named a line of candy bars after historic russian towns. 2 on related issues of globalized consumption as a site of cultural innovation and of new articulations of , 'local" identity, sec, for example, appadurai 1990; miller 1994,1997; hannerz 1996; howes 1996; watson 1997. for discussions of how recent anthropological work on globalization and consumption pertain to the post-soviet scene, see stryker and patico 2002 and patico and caldwell 2002. 3 the official salaries (including base pay, or stavka, plus salary for additional hours or responsibilities) of most teachers i knew were in the range of 1000 rubles per month in 1998-99; vol. 17, no.1 2003, page: 35 anthropology of east europe rc:view ii they received only very small raises for the spring 1999 semester. meanwhile, due to the ruble depreciation that began in mid-august 1998. the value of the same salary dropped from approximately u.s. $167 (august 1998) to about $42 in (early 1999). the correspondence of prices to exchange rates varied: prices for somc food products, especially those that werc state regulated such as bread, rose significantly but morc slowly than the ruble depreciated; others, especially imported products, rose at equivalent or even higher rates. in january 1999, 1000 rubles was roughly equivalent to both the average monthly per capita income in st. petersburg and the official per person subsistence minimum as calculated by the city government (nevskoe vremia 7/1/99). however, some teachers, especially english languagc teachers, earned higher monthly incomes by maintaining a busy schedule of private lessons. 4 on representations of race, ethnicity and culture in russia, sec lemon's analysis of rom a identity and performance (2000); and regarding the significance of the "negro" in russian and soviet history, see blakely 1986. for a full discussion of thc interconnected discourses of"civilization," national identity, and "culturedness" (kul'turnost') in consumption, see patico 2001 a, n.d. s orbit is a product of the chicago-based wrigley company. 6 notably, my informants' critiques generally did not dwell spccifically on the apparent ineffectiveness of state regulations and monitoring standards in ensuring reasonable food quality and safety. as a rule, they put little stock in consumer protection agencics, at least when it came to lodging official complaints about unsatisfactory purchases; they assumed nothing would come of it and that it would be a waste of time. 7 according to the wrigley company's website, it operates fourteen factories around the world, including four in europe. in addition, it opened a new plant in novgorod in june 1999, hoping that local production would make it less vulnerable to the effects of fluctuations in the ruble's value (the st. petersburg times 6/29/99). the conversation recounted above took place during the same year, in scptember 1999. 8 note that "russian" here refers not to ethnic russians (as the adjective russkii refers to the nation in the sense of a group with common history, culture, language, etc.) but to the russian nation-state (the adjective rossiiskii might modify, for example, citizenship, the army, or any kind of national institution). 9 somc teachcrs and their relatives, like majl~ other people in st. petersburg, have dachas olltsj":~ of the city where they (or more likely, their retiree: parents) grow producc (cucumbers, potatoes, etc. i and collect wild berries and mushrooms. for the most part, teachers found that their time (which could be spent, instead, in tutoring for pay) and travcl expenses were dear enough that they chose not to invest much in cultivation of their dacha gardens; it made more sense to buy produce in the city. still, they did value home-grown produce, particularly because they knew exactly how and where it had been produced (dacha spots were dcscribed as "ecologically clean (chisto)." while urbanites' nostalgic romanticizations of life in the countryside are undoubtedly rclevant in these evaluations (see caldwell forthcoming), i did not find foodstuff's as commodities to bc very strongly identified with russian culture and heritage per se. rather, as described above, international frames of "civilization," progress, and privilege seemed at least as important. 10 nancy ries (2002) provides apocryphal evidence ofthis actually happening in urban russia: "a friend explained one of his friends' frozen food business: he imports expired product from europe and has his employees restamp the boxes with new expiration dates; this man pays off the state inspection agents at the border so as to import his inventory without problems." ii the local nouveaux riches could also be described this way; see patico 200 ja. vol. 17, no.1 2003, page: 36 postsocialism, or what? domestication of power and ideology in slovenia irena šumi institute for ethnic studies, ljubljana © 2004 irena šumi all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. prologue1 the entire field of postsocialism studies2 is organized, implicitly or explicitly, around the idea that the times of global flourishing of (very diverse) absolutist regimes commonly denominated as socialist, and their rather thespian demise in europe after 1989, represent social turbulences of such magnitude that they must have had profound, easily discernible, and mutually comparable impact on the societies in question. political singularities such as the creation of numerous new nation-states, the emergence of thousands of kilometers of new international borders, and radical changes of political systems within the newly created and delineated state formations no doubt held promise of societal situations so exceptional and in so much 1 i have to thank many colleagues for inspiring exchange and instigations for this article, and a book project on provincialism that is planned within the hesp reset project postcolony and postsocialism contexts in social scientific writing and teaching. my thanks goes to all the colleagues in the project, but especially to martin berishaj, michal buchowski, duška knežević hočevar, jasmina husanović, ivan panović, hannah starman, sari wastell, daniel wildcat, and nancy ries. special thanks goes to drago braco rotar and taja kramberger with whom i spent long hours debating the issues of the very elusive slovenian genius loci. their eruditism, and incisive analytical insights were of great help. 2 see footnote #1, page 3 of this issue. structural flux as to offer unique and unprecedented insights into human sociality. the epistemological shortcomings of large portions of this enterprise were detailed at the beginning of our hesp reset project3 and need not be rehearsed again; in the final instance, many of them can be attributed simply to the more pragmatic and mundane aspects of the ontology of a very specific global industry that we call social sciences. instead, i would like in the following to briefly outline a different possible view of life in a postsocialism state such as slovenia that does not give quite so much credence to the unique, decisive, or even fatal impact of political, formal, and ideological structures of power such as (post)socialist governance, formal democracy, capitalism, international alliances and formations (european union, nato) etc. rather, i would like to test the hypothesis that these structures can be, at least at certain very prominent levels of communal life, totally domesticated and absorbed into the local web of social relations that are much more enduring than political regimes, and are best represented and observable in what i shall tentatively call ‘mentality dispositives’ (after the examples and usages in rotar 1998; 2004). i am well aware that the term could be associated with certain less fortunate episodes in the history of social science in 3 the project’s homepage is at http://www.inv.si/hesp/; project description and main theses can be found at http://www.inv.si/hesp/project.htm. jen typewritten text 76 general, and in (colonial) anthropology in particular, from generalized guesses at ‘national character’ down to the rather numinously unfathomable notion of ‘culture.’ i am not saying that all slovenians possess a special national character, nor that, say, all slovenians have a kardinerian basic personality structure. but i would venture to say that a national community like slovenia is organized along certain very persistent patterns of (self)perceptions, actions, and modes of building of societal networks that are much more enduring than any single model of social organization superimposed by political and ideological power. i would also guess that this type of communality is everything but exclusively slovenian and not at all confined to postsocialism contexts, but perhaps nowadays especially worthy of social scientific attention as a model enclave of parochialism that demonstrates surprising abilities of resistance to ideological, legal, and economic, commercial and other currents commonly referred to as globalization. in an interview for the serbian based blic news (nikolić 2003), the renown slovenian sociologist rastko močnik commented on the serbian translation of his book entitled ‘3 theories’ (1999). among other things, he states: in the introduction to the serbian edition of “3 theories,” i have radically changed my theories on ideology, nation and institution. we no longer live in nations, we only think that we do, and we sometimes harbor ill feelings about this type of community. it is my thesis that the dominant discourses introduce a type of community that can be called identity-based. this is why i tend to write about the nation much more favorably than i used to, because a nation is still a form of a pluralist collectivity, whereas identity communities no longer maintain an internal pluralism. rather, they are folkloristic communities with a strong ideology and marginalization drive, prone to exclude all that remains outside their ideology. it is clear from močnik’s further clarifications that he does not confine the emergence of ‘identity communities’ to post-socialist contexts; on the contrary, he goes on to enumerate, as ideologues or political proponents of such communities whose discourses he subjects to his analysis, people like dimitrij rupel (the then, and the actual slovenian minister of foreign affairs) and george w. bush alike. having all but said that precisely such ‘identity community’ is an enduring type of social organization among slovenians, i am almost tempted to say that it must have been a slovenian invention in the first place; such a conclusion would certainly well represent the specific slant that anything in such an ‘identity community’ is subjected to once it is filtered through the appropriate mentality dispositives. the latter have both official and unofficial expressions. the former are manifest in all forms of public discourse, from media to literature, from science to arts, and structured as recounting an elevated, tragic, deep history of the nation: slovenia is small (but beautiful!); slovenians are less than two million, and throughout history on the very verge of extinction (not in the least because of genocidal inclinations of their germanic and romance neighbors); have always been subjugated by foreign powers (as one of my informants, a middle-rank state official put it, ‘slovenians cannot do without a vienna or a belgrade, so now it is brussels – no big difference here’4) and are therefore unduly timid and servile, especially in the international political arena; and above all, 4 from interviews conducted with state officials and bureaucrats within the research project entitled processes of ethnic differentiation in slovenia: confronting the perceptions (procesi etničnega razlikovanja v sloveniji: soočenje percepcij). at: institute for ethnic studies, ljubljana (financier: ministry of education, science and sports of slovenia, 2001 – 2004; project no. j5-3543-0507-01.) jen typewritten text 77 slovenians had their ‘national substance’ (a thing basically pseudobiological, but mostly discernible through moral degradation) threatened for centuries (depending on the political inclination of the speaker, the recent most perilous influences would be either communists or catholics; but universally, people from the balkans and their sloppiness, immigrants, the roma, etc.). let me repeat, these are not marginally held stereotypes, but obstinate leitmotifs in any manner of public speech. on the unofficial level, outside public speech, these same messages are conveyed in a manner of ritual yammering (very reminiscent of ‘litanies and lamentations’ that were described by ries, 1997: 83-125, in russia during the 1980s) that serves both as a suitable entrée into any conversation, and as substance of many heated debates on slovenianess. a most striking feature of these verbalizations is that virtually every person has a set of elaborate diagnoses about life in slovenia (politics is corrupt, as it always was, before it was the communists, now it is the liberals; yes, it is horrible and oppressive to live here, it is suffocating; yes, slovenians are petty and mediocre, every accomplishment, talent, idea is suppressed; yes, slovenians are horrible racists and xenophobes; yes, it is them gypsies and foreigners and muslims that are destroying it for us); a palette of romanticist beliefs (but we are so few; many wanted to exterminate us, but we are persistent; slovenians should be more proud of their nation and country; slovenian women should give birth to more children), but invariably only one conclusion: nothing can be done. it is probably surprising for any outside observer just how frequent and verging on obsessive are debates on these themes in any social setting in slovenia. the discourse is saturated with an air of urgency and tragedy; this is probably why the notion of political correctness is nonexistent and deemed, at best, a hypocritical maneuver to obscure the truth: a right-wing party mp’s statement that slovenian romas are ‘a population that has strayed into a certain bad civilizational form of behavior’5 is widely read as both selfevidently true and exemplarily restrained in its formulation. a (female) journalist does not hesitate to accuse one of the ministers of ‘hiding behind a woman’s back’ because he would not see her personally, but directed her to his (female) pr person6 and the readership would sooner think of this turn of phrase as a heart warming allusion to the sacred treasure of folk proverbs than any kind of chauvinism. the debates on the european union membership rarely if ever address the benefits and costs; the allpervasive topic about the eu in political speeches, presidential addresses, and tv round tables is invariably the hypothetical danger of imminent ‘loss of slovenian identity’ in the eu. this obsession with ‘slovenianess’ and ‘identity’ is perhaps the key diagnostic element of an ‘identity community’ in močnik’s sense, and presently the most prominent mentality dispositive through which all other themes are domesticated in slovenia. but močnik’s reorganizing thought on contemporary communityforming can also be interpreted as saying that especially in the vast, multidisciplinary field of studies of postsocialism and “transitology,” the prevailing theoretical thinking on nation-building may have been caught in a very misleading conceptual and terminological traditionalism. what was universally seen as a process of ‘retrograde’ falling back to a 19th century type of nationalism in postsocialism europe may in fact have been a novel process of community forming based on radically homogenizing ideologies. as močnik suggests in the above statement, ‘nationalism’ as the designation of postsocialism processes is a clear misnomer, 5 janez drobnič, quoted in media watch online by the peace institute, ljubljana, at: http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:7ago8aimf 2aj:mediawatch.mirovniinstitut.si/bilten/seznam/19/mjezik/+civilizacijsk o&hl=sl. 6 daily delo, 19 feb 2004, p. 16. jen typewritten text 78 as both civil and ‘ethnic’ state-building nationalisms of europe’s past were inclusive, ecumenical (and in some cases, all the way down to imperial) in nature, seeking to translate the impassable, ethnic difference into a soft, transient, cultural difference (cf. šumi 2003). the ‘old’ nationalisms thus sought to unify local histories, linguistic, and cultural repertoires by interpreting them as signs of essential sameness by means of invention of national histories, languages, and culture, and/or by civil ideologies of egalitarianism. the new, post-1989 ‘nationalisms’ (that močnik, for one, does not confine to postsocialism), on the other hand, take a reverse course: rather than a process of unification and leveling out of differences, it is one of purging out everything and everyone that is not conforming to what is seen as very stable identities crystallizing from deep histories. a postsocialism state such as slovenia can therefore be said to base its ideologies of commonality on (a single) ‘folkloristic’ identity that is increasingly impervious to, and openly hostile towards, recruitment or exchange of personnel, to use the classical barthian term. as i shall try to show below, this easily observable parochialization is in slovenia widely seen as the goal of ‘national independence’ finally reached, and a natural state of communal existence that both includes and subsumes ‘capitalism’ and ‘democracy’ – and the social memory on the recent past. the latter two are not seen as a novelty, but rather as a return to a soberedup communal existence after socialism. memories of socialist yugoslavia as fun to briefly illustrate this point, i should now like to turn to (seemingly) more lighthearted aspects of slovenian community and state building, as they are reflected in the memories of the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia (1945 – 1992). a prominent feature of this public memory is in striking opposition to the events that usually come to mind when yugoslavia is mentioned: the socalled ‘interethnic’ warring, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and genocide, the despotic regimes of tudjman and milošević, etc; it is even in striking opposition to the notions of ‘socialist regime,’ communist dictatorship, and economic backwardness that inform both the official capitalist-liberal ideology and commonsensical public notions on ‘socialism’ worldwide. this feature is, simply put, humor; or rather, the fact that in large portions of public memory in slovenia nowadays, yugoslavia seems to have been about a whale of (bitter) fun. in its 23 december, 2002 issue, the slovenian weekly mladina published an article entitled ‘historic tourism: sfry for repeating students. a tourist guide of a nonexisting country.’7 the article brought a detailed digest of a book by dejan novačević (2002) whose work is reported to be inspired by an internet project dedicated to the compilation of a ‘lexicon of yu mythology.’8 both the website and the book are written in the sardonic manner of a matter-of-fact sourcebook that organize ludicrously fashioned ‘information.’ both are attempting to reveal history as personal memory, and are dedicated to ‘the preservation of cultural heritage of sfry,’ as the mladina article informs the slovenian audience. commenting on their work, the authors of the webpage, and the book insist on a make-believe perspective and thus see themselves as ‘writing in diaspora’ from yugoslavia – a country that, as novačević initially advises his readers, ‘is best visited in the time period of the 1970’s. the tourist guide is systemized into several headings. in the chapter on culture, subheading film, the reader is informed that 7 zgodovinski turizem. sfrj za ponavljalce. turistični vodnik po neobstoječi državi. – the term repetent in slovenian designates a pupil who flunks school and has to repeat the year; thus the book that the article reports on is meant for those who failed to ‘graduate’ from yugoslavia ‘in the first term’, that is to say, who have not actually experienced it. 8 leksion yu mitologije. this webpage can still be found at http://www.geocities.com/yu_leksikon/svipojmo vi1.htm. jen typewritten text 79 the most characteristic genre of the yugoslav film production is the so-called ‘partisan movie’ which evolved into ‘partisan film school’ – the term partisans being a well-domesticated abbreviation for the wwii communist resistance movement in yugoslavia. the film that is most representative of the school is battle of the neretva river (bitka na neretvi) in which the director, veljko bulajić, ‘transposed the boundaries of film genres as he introduced into the realism of a war epopee narration the elements of thriller and science fiction.’ this description seeks to comment on the way the yugoslav socialist filmography incorporated the perpetuation of wwii trauma that permeated all official discourses in yugoslavia: the communist anti-fascist resistance under tito was an obsessive, and obsessively compulsory, theme on all levels of public discourse through which the regime sought its legitimation. it was no doubt also an aspect of the tito cult and an expensive indulgence to the marshal’s own cinematic interests and aspirations, as the aforementioned battle of the neretva featured top international film stars such as yul brynner and richard burton, the latter portraying tito himself. in an illustrative reference to benefit the ‘repeaters,’ the tourist guide cites “saving private ryan” as a recent example of partisan movie genre. the wwii trauma perpetuation in yugoslav public discourses is also reflected in the guide’s population and demography chapter. aside from peasants (seljaci), yugoslavia is populated by yugoslavs, a people that became extinct in the last decade of the past century; members of other, smaller nations that ‘are very sensitive’ and are therefore best referred to as ‘nationalities’; but above all, the most numerous population are the krauts (švabe): ‘these are very bad indeed, as they tend to kill off wounded partisans.’ under no circumstance are they to be confused with germans, however: ‘the people of yugoslavia have a completely different attitude towards germans … as they are highly respected, especially their monetary unit called “marka”. the distinct expression of respect of the local population for germans is the motto zimmer frei that is, as a welcoming sign, posted on every house from koper to the skadrsko lake.’ (hrastar 2002: 57) this comment on the tourist industry along the adriatic coast in the socialist times has several specific subheadings in the guide. mladina in its report chose an excerpt that describes a specific aspect of german-loving attitude, and relates to sexual practices in yugoslavia: “statistically speaking, love in sfry is a most prevalent occupation of the so-called galebi9 (ger. bumsenexperten), inhabitants of the seaside regions, especially dalmatia. …” (cited in hrastar 2002: 58). the galebi are males that seek to upgrade the tourist attractions of the adriatic coast and are easily spotted as they sport a distinct professional attire: a golden chain with a pendant depicting the wearer’s astrological sign; a massive silver bracelet with a plate bearing the wearer’s name in italicized inscription; white trousers and a floralpattern shirt, unbuttoned; a tattoo depicting a stylized anchor, and the acronym ‘jla’ or, even better, jvm – the former standing for jugoslavenska ljudska armija (yugoslav people’s army), and the latter for jugoslavenska vojna milicija (yugoslav military militia). two additional paraphernalia are required: a very long and carefully manicured fingernail of one of the little fingers; and a gold-plated ring with a large black stone, the meteorite. this ring serves as the principal ‘contact facilitator’ with the target vacationing german female population, as the luring verbal formula that is used with it goes: ‘schau, schau, mein schmuck aus himmel mit ein meteorit kommen.’10 9 ‘sea-gulls’. 10 “look, look, my jewel coming from heaven with meteorit.” author’s note: the grammar errors are translations from the german and intentional. jen typewritten text 80 the mladina article brings several other highly entertaining translated passages from the tourist guide; on the popularity of yearly eurovision song contests where local tv hosts impressed the public with their command of foreign languages (‘neezerlans sree pointz’, ‘be’ibah troa pooan’11); on the chief economic production field of yugoslavia, the so-called newly composed folk music ‘performed on traditional musical instruments (dallape, yamaha, fenderstratocaster)’ that …concentrate on basic metaphysical questions, especially theodicy (… “why, o mother, do i have to suffer so?”), but do not ignore individual scientific disciplines, e.g. comparative sociology (“my village is more beautiful than paris!”) or psychiatry (“i would so like to make out, but my mother wouldn’t let me”). (cited in hraster 2002: 58) the readers’ comment page at mladina’s web page12 is replete with expressions of a warmest welcome to the article. one of the readers says that ‘you have to be just the right age to grasp the point. there is so much truth in all this, my eyes got misty.’ another does not admit to nostalgia, but ‘…did i have a laugh!’ yet another reader reports having ‘nearly died laughing.’ still another reader is more eloquent: cool!!!! i did so laugh. the best article in mladina ever. i don’t feel nostalgic, but, it is a comedy from start to finish. we were such a crazy country, i couldn’t stop laughing. a less humorously disposed reader kept it short: yuga was one sheer stupidity in which for 50 years, 20 million 11 ‘netherlands, three points; pays bas, trois points.’ 12 http://www.mladina.si/tednik/2002251/clanek/sfr j/. people stepped out from the world of reason. the notion that ‘yuga’ was a lot of fun essentially says that in socialism, we have all lived in a world that was basically unreal and unrealistic, childish, free of responsibility; an enchanted world, a carefree grace period before the present times of adulthood and seriousness. that the new times did away with laughable recitals of utopian values which are increasingly replaced by solid, material valuables is, on the other hand, widely seen as but a necessary and logical aspect of the event of overarching importance: national independence. the nation has, perforce of circumstances, assumed a somewhat latent existence throughout socialism, but has resumed its natural pre-wwii course in 1992. the new ideologically protected values such as capitalism, democracy and, as of late, membership in the european union and nato, are seen as bringing (back) harsh life, threat of poverty and ruthless competition, the same old, unfair, and corrupt power game, albeit with a new name, and a renewed threat to the ‘national essence’ (eu and nato) in a historical series of similar such threats. in this vein, mladina’s readers expressed the particular slovenian variety of ‘yugonostalgia’: one of embitterment over five decades lost; novačević’s naïve humor and literary manière are seen as a distinctly nonslovenian, balkanian, sentimental if also mocking, irrational way of reminiscing – if, of course, also entertaining. brief flash: the political arena slovenian national exclusivism with respect to other parts of the socialist federation has a particular history of reinvention within post1990 political discourse. when the united anti-regime coalition (demos) took over the government in 1990, they must have shared this mladina’s last quoted reader’s standpoint. in order to communicate the absurdity of the yugoslav federation, and the imminent slovenian ‘return to europe,’ a specific adverb was invented to describe the jen typewritten text 81 pro-european, pro-western social evolutional goals of slovenians that implied a strong contrast to everything exyugoslavian, outdated, backward, and socialist: the word, sounding pretty impossible in slovenian from every grammatical point of view, was ‘civilizational’ (civlizacijski, -a, -o). ‘civilizational’ and its counter-concept, ‘non-civilizational,’ had an equivalent in the then political planning of secession: the idea of an ‘asymmetric’ federation played on the notion of things slovenian, national, progressive, indeed ‘civilizational,’ which also had a gradation: ‘civilizational’, and the superlative, ‘general(ly) civilizational’ (občecivilizacijski, -a, -o). this newspeak was used, for instance, by the presidential candidate in 1990, dr jože pučnik, in his tv campaign, who declared that time in the rest of yugoslavia […] is moving at a different pace than in slovenia. […] we have to follow our own general civilizational imperatives or face a fate of national extinction.13 the adjective ‘civilizational’ has since become widely used to denote anything perceived non-slovenian and non-cultured, its explanatory powers all but exhausted. this goes to suggest that an accomplished ‘identity community’ is one whose ‘development’ is seen by its members as completed (hence its exclusivist, internally non-pluralist organization), and its space and time of development, as well as inclusion and equalization, saturated and set right – a history set straight and resumed rather than ended, to play on a fukuyaman note. the academic arena postsocialism is hardly a term used in any manner of public discourse; same goes, not surprisingly, also for social sciences in slovenia. among several hundred research projects in social science and the humanities that the national ministry in charge of 13 rtv slovenia, 5 april 1992, special broadcast elections 1990. financing research has backed in the last odd decade, not a single one has postsocialism in its title.14 quite substantial funding, however, goes to projects that, predictably, incorporate ‘slovenian identity’ in their titles. this is hardly surprising, as the ‘slovenian national question’ commonly translated into english as ‘ethnic studies’ as a problem field in social science boasts a tradition of no less than eight decades. the primary, if not the exclusive objects of study have always been, and still are on one hand, the ‘autochthonous’ hungarian and italian national minorities in slovenia, and on the other, the slovenian minority populations in italy, austria, and hungary. more recently, in 1991, the status of the slovenians in the successor states of former yugoslavia was also defined as an object of study. occasionally, the romany issues, and the recently politically acute question of the ‘old-austrian minority’ are also touched upon. only very recently did the so-called ‘new minorities’ enter this repertoire, the syntagm standing for people originating from various republics of former yugoslavia, members and offspring of a labor immigration that began during the 1960’s. these people, while citizens of slovenia, are now perceived as sufficiently culturally different, numerous, and organized as groups to fit the same constitutional provisions on preservation of cultural diversity. the steadily growing transient and permanent immigration from the far and near east, africa, former socialist countries of europe etc. is summarily ignored as ephemeral precisely because it is felt that there is no constitutional or legal compartment befitting them. it is clear from this repertoire that in the research on the ‘slovenian national and nationalities’ (= national minorities) issues,’ only those groups that are firmly established, historical, indigenous, not to say 14 the lists of financed projects can be found at the ministry's webpage at http://www.mszs.si/slo/znanost/rezultati_javnih_ razpisov.asp; there are links to archive pages for several fiscal years back. jen typewritten text 82 primordial, qualify as relevant – following closely those that are at the same time legally recognized by the slovenian state in its founding legal documents. both academic and political discourse thus equate the scientific problem field of ethnic studies with that of legally recognized national minorities in slovenia. aside from the name of the field, assimilated were also its outer symptoms: in a manner akin to a caricature, the terminology of the anglophone analytical thesaurus was made synonymous with the extant slovenian glossary. thus for instance, ‘ethnic group’ (or even ‘ethnos/ethnie’); ‘ethnic boundaries,’ and ‘ethnic identity’ got to mean ‘national minority,’ ‘(unjust) state border,’ and ‘national consciousness,’ and are extensively used synonymously. pointing out these conceptual errors is received, in the true perspective of a provincial mentality dispositive, not as an honest professional intervention, but an immoral imposition, as it is invariably read as an attack on slovenianess. to conclude the above three hasty examples of provincial mentality dispositives in slovenia are but an excerpt of a possible path of analysis still contemplated. as hinted above, no cause-consequence type of history, and no speculation about the pivotal role of formal structures such as socialism or postsocialism can really explain the persistence, much less the contents, of the provincial habitus: those practical level, seemingly invincible, mentality dispositives that can absorb, domesticate, and transubstantiate with so much vitality. it may indeed be what anthropology in its romanticist golden years of colonial flourish termed, with a characteristically commonsensical and characteristically numinous word, as ‘culture.’ the mystery of culture can of course be unveiled with the aid of many conceptual tools, either as transgenerational mechanisms, as a system of beliefs, as function of complex systems, as discourse, habitus, social memory etc.; but a possibly worthy exercise would be to initially ask, who are the people – or rather, who do they need to be – who populate this social space, and who interiorize, perpetuate, and communicate its meanings. references cited: hrastar, mateja. 2002. zgodovinski turizem. sfrj za ponavljalce. turistični vodnik po neobstoječi državi (historic tourism: sfry for repeating students. a tourist guide of a non-existing country) in mladina, 23, december, no. 51-2, pp. 56 and 58. nikolić, vera. 2003. močnik: beograd je bio i ostao jedina metropola na prostoru balkana [belgrade was and remains the only metropolis on the balkans]. interview with rastko močnik, in: blic news online, http://www.blicnews.com/no164/2intervju/i ntervju1.htm. jen typewritten text 83 preliminary reflections on the challenges of rethinking postcolonial and post-socialist realities daniel r. wildcat haskell indian nations university, lawrence © 2004 daniel r. wildcat all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. foundational issues all of the following is offered as a euchee (yuchi) indigenous person: as such it represents my thinking, and a good number of other indigenous north american scholars’ ideas about the challenges native people have teaching about a history (colonial, in this case) and contemporary reality which in many cases remains burdened with this past what one might call a living colonial legacy.1 it remains to be seen to what extent indigenous thinking on so-called “postcolonial” issues arising from experiences in the americas and north america in particular are applicable to colonial experiences in other parts of the world. of course, the same concern goes tenfold in considering the relevance of the following remarks to postsocialism2 realities.3 i look forward to comments, criticisms, and good discussions about all of the following. i offer the following thoughts honestly if not always clearly or concisely. and most importantly, i do not worry about being corrected i hope for it, if i am mistaken. 1 with respect to colonial and post-colonial history in america, i count the works of vine deloria, jr. and ward churchill as informing and representative of views very close although not identical to my own . i could also count the work of colleagues cornel pewewardy and michael yellowbird as complimentary to my analysis. see especially deloria, vine jr. 1969 and 1973, churchill, ward 1998 and 2002. 2 see footnote #1, page 3 of this issue. 3 in order to understand where my position on this point comes from see deloria, 1973 and deloria, vine jr. and wildcat, daniel, 2001. colonialism and other grand concepts colonialism as a political-economic construct or idea is easily defined in objectivist or absolutist terms.4 i am not a nominalist, but the problem remains that we conveniently use terms like state, capitalism, socialism, colonialism, and now globalization because they in some very meaningful ways converge or conform to socially constructed and reproduced realities we humans experience. of course, these concepts and their attendant institutions, cultural features (in the broadest sense), behaviors, and practices are results of a past history, present experience and, interestingly, future expectations, goals or visions.5 it is not surprising that human endeavors, when conceptualized as fundamentally shaped by past, present, and future realities (if you will), are easily and mistakenly thought of in terms of a linear logic, the roots of which are found in the 4 nearly all standard english dictionaries define colonialism as the political and/or economic control over a land/place by a foreign nation/power. even admitting a post-modernist theory of control by mass media or communications, it seems the political economic relations continue drive mass or pop culture media and technology. 5 i take this claim as essentially ontological in character – regardless of how extended or truncated one’s view of history, but see no necessity, as will become quite clear, for linear logic or structure, as will to be imposed on time as experience. jen typewritten text 92 fundamentally enlightenment idea of progress.6 problems with this logic notwithstanding, the crucial and most costly error to human dignity and the health of the planet came when it was presumed that the “universal” truths found within the western tradition were the truth; consequently, it only remained for those possessing the truth to share it with others so that “the others” could be enlightened and free also. of course, sharing quickly became imposition, and objection to imposition of the truth or euphemistic equivalents progress, enlightenment, civilization, industrialization, etc. could not, and unfortunately in too many places on the planet still cannot be tolerated. protests by those unwilling to be put immediately on the right road or path of progress were inevitably met with violence and forces of destruction; protests by natives, and defense of longstanding cultures and their supporting institutions were interpreted as ex post facto demonstrations of the natives’ the others’ primitive and uncivilized “backwardness.” states and empires as well as the ideological systems supporting such institutions certainly existed before 1500, but what appears unique about the emergence of european colonial activities over the next 500 years was the extent to which european colonial enterprises were supported in part by a surprisingly wellformed and unique western worldview (sale 1991). sale does a good job characterizing its main features, e.g., materialism, humanism, a fearful view of nature and, of course, natives. what i would add as a critical feature of this 6 the mistakes of thinking of history as the unfolding of a linear logic are demonstrated throughout deloria’s work and in the postmodernist theorizing of michel foucault, see 1977, discipline and punish, surveiller et punir. naissance de la prison. trans. by alan sheridan. new york: pantheon and “of other spaces (1967), heterotopias” at http://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucau lt.heterotopia.en.html western worldview is the way in which numerous colonizers came to understand or at least rationalize their actions as part of what kant later called a “universal” history, and hegel philosophized as “world-historical” moments. welcome to the metaphysical foundation of modernity. the shared and seldom questioned assumption of modern, i.e., western, political/ economic ideas and conceptual models is the linear temporal conception of history. the problem, as deloria pointed out thirty years ago, is that “manifest destiny” is more than a godly injunction. in the consciousness of western humankind, self-confidence about the moral necessity of ushering in whatever was deemed as “next” became justification in the grandest and most abstract moral sense for all manner of practical atrocities against peoples and places across the globe. when god or history, and ideally both, are on your side, the license peoples, states, and armies invoke is frightening. it might be valuable to seriously consider how we think and talk about history once we discard the mistaken notion that a person, people, party, or state can possess such a truth. although i could not disagree more with anthony o’hear’s conclusion in after progress: finding the old way forward (1999), i do appreciate the fact that he raises a very critical question for post-colonial and post-socialist thinkers: where do we go, so to speak, after progress? at this point most academics expect me to take a postmodernist turn they will be disappointed. i prefer to take an unmodernist or non-postmodernist indigenous turn: one neither forward nor backward along some abstract time-line, but a return to a spatial conception of history. our human experience certainly exists on/in a time-space continuum i do not deny that; however, if we begin with the phenomenal world and our human (social and collective) experiences we can think of history as a function of space or place. a spatial conception of history suggests we must “ground” our thinking about history in the environments and landscapes from which experiences emerge. the spatial conception of history i advocate is not a refutation of the jen typewritten text 93 significance of time; a spatial history merely suggests that when one asks, “what time is it?” it is reasonable to respond by asking, “where?” i am not advocating an old-fashioned environmental determinism but rather what geographers salter and hobbs (2002) would identify as environmental possibilism. the key here is to develop a set of conceptual tools that grasp the bioand culturaldiversity of the planet and begin to move rapidly away from two of the most dangerous and deeply rooted ideas in the modern western worldview: first, the notion that a single “tradition” – that the western tradition or socalled western civilization emerging from one relatively small place on the planet can possess the knowledge by which all peoples and places can be objectively judged and evaluated along some universal time-line of “progress” or development; and second, the modern mythology/methodology that conceptually separates culture from nature. on this point there may well be agreement that these two beliefs have contributed significantly to postcolony and postsocialism problems. within a spatial conception of history one no longer searches for the one right path or model, but rather expects sustainable democratic futures to be emergent from peoples and places. in other words, knowledges are understood as residing in the symbiotic relationships between peoples and places. this interaction is what i choose to call the nature/culture nexus or more precisely, the nexus between particular environments and particular peoples and their “history” (deloria and wildcat 2001). in the americas, indigenous scholars tend to speak of the postcolonial period as one requiring de-colonization. a recent american indian studies conference was entitled ‘decolonizing american indian studies.’7 the 7 the conference, entitled decolonizing american indian studies, was sponsored by the center on institutional cooperation and american indian intent of the decolonization discourse in the americas is clear move beyond and outside of the worldview and conceptual framework of the colonizers: a worldview generally regarded as western or eurocentric. while this recognition is a necessary first step, it very quickly indicates where the real work lies in the construction and/or reconstruction of different worldviews and modes of analysis, ones that liberate the colonized (and let us not forget the colonizers) from the “traps” that preclude real successes in extending respect and human dignity through social institutions. while i do find postmodernist critiques of the west and modernity useful, they generally do not go beyond negativities; in some cases they end up in a silly form of nihilism and at worst a very dangerous form with respect to power. we can keep some of the useful insights regarding postmodern critiques regarding gender and technology, to name but two, and reject many of the postmodernist conclusions. so where do we go from here? the following are several issues i would ask readers to critically evaluate again i wonder to what extent they shed light on postsocialism issues. ontology exploring non-modernist paradigms i would suggest we think of a continuum between two extremes (see figure 1); at one end is what i will call the western scientistic view of reality, and at the other end an indigenous native american view of reality. the trap this continuum allows one to avoid is john dewey’s either/or fallacy. analytic systems thrive on dichotomies or dualisms. the problem is that the simplifications such dichotomizing produces often get mistaken for reality itself. as i constantly remind theorists, our models, concepts, and theories are not reality as silly as it seems to have to say this it seems often forgotten. the world is indeed made up of “things” but is also made up of processes and relationships which, while studies consortium. it was held at the newberry library, chicago, il, on september 19-20, 2003. jen typewritten text 94 not dissectible or necessarily discreet, are quite real. __________________________________________________________________________ figure 1 ontology western indigenous <----------------------------------------------------------------------------------->. material atomism phenomenal relations reality fundamentally consists of things vs. reality fundamentally consists of relations __________________________________________________________________________ modernist western epistemology seems deeply rooted in the aristotelian job of developing categories into which the “things” of the world can be placed. reality consists of objects, known objectively. copernicus, galileo, and newton verified the existence of a mechanical dimension to the physical world, although they never excluded the existence of other dimensions. of course, the on-going debates about the scientific status of the social sciences the divide between the so-called “hard” sciences and “soft” sciences is a function of the extent to which reality itself is exclusively identified with universal physical laws that explain the mechanical features of the newtonian clock-work universe. in contrast to the dominant western view of reality, the great many indigenous peoples (across many places and cultures in north america) i have had the good fortune to work with seem less attentive to “things” than to the relations or relationships and consequently the processes they are part of. this point is important since reality is not easily categorized as objective or subjective when one begins with the view of what one stands within. there is a marvelous anecdote that has been carried down by first nations peoples of canada about a tribal elder called to a provincial court to testify on a natural resource issue. the story goes this way. the elder is sworn in to testify and is asked to “tell the truth and nothing but the truth.” the elder is quiet for a long time and he is asked if he understands the question. the elder nods yes, and announces to the judge he cannot do what is asked of him. the judge asks why? the elder replies, “you asked me to tell ‘the truth and nothing but the truth,’ and i cannot do that. i can only tell you what i know.” this anecdote speaks volumes about the kind of humility with which one ought to approach the topic of the “truth.” it follows from this illustration that native thinkers such as the individual above are prone to be suspicious and rightly so of those with the truth. what does this have to do with new approaches to teaching postcolonial and postsocialism realities? possibly it suggests that we think of conceptual tools and practices that allow us to understand these realities in their unique features features best appreciated holistically. finally, i often hear indigenous persons, especially educators, speak of “walking in two worlds.” i understand their point but i think they are mis-speaking. if you try to walk in two worlds, you will become schizophrenic! we human beings walk in one world but not the neatly categorized reality conceived by the modern western thought; rather, it is a complex multi-dimensional world a diverse world from which diverse experiences and worldviews emerge. simply because reality is not reducible does not mean we cannot speak jen typewritten text 95 about it we can, but with humility and considerable circumspection. epistemology the epistemic approach to knowledge to facilitate a comparative approach to the construction of knowledge, i think of a westindigenous epistemological continuum that looks roughly like this (see figure 2): __________________________________________________________________________ figure 2 epistemology western indigenous <--------------------------------------------------------------------------------> reductionistic holistic _________________________________________________________________________________ the western tradition seems fascinated with knowing as reducing: socio-biology shows the extent to which some will go to reduce the “social” to the discreet parts or particles of our existence. i am not encouraged by e. o. wilson’s view of an integrated science of humankind and nature; his view of consiliance operates at the level of the newest reductionism the genetic level (wilson 1998). minus the technology to look at very little things and very distant things, many indigenous elders i have worked with constantly display insight regarding the features of their, let us say, local ecological reality. although the term is terribly trivialized, many tribal elders appear to be primarily holistic thinkers. comanche leader and activist ladonna harris states her comanche tribal tradition possesses four "r’s" of education: relations, respect, reciprocities, and responsibility.1 because many indigenous traditions seem to put great emphasis on attentiveness and awareness of the many relations/relationships 1 living in an intertribal setting at haskell indian nations university, i am amazed at how often i have heard tribal elders express very similar views and, more importantly, conduct themselves in a manner consistent with what harris calls the four “‘r’s”. i heard harris make her summary at a conference hosted by the university of kansas and haskell indian nations university entitled indian leaders conference: red power and tribal politics during september 14-16, 2000. we humans are immersed in for our very existence, knowledge seems centered on processes and powers. in contrast to the western ideal of knowledge inhering in the ability to put every thing in its proper place and make clear distinctions between objects, north american indigenous knowledges seem to focus on the way the borders/boundaries of such alleged categories are permeable. it makes little sense in many indigenous worldviews to make strict separation between religion and science, fact and belief, economy and ethics, poetics and manufacture, and wealth and mental health. when i suggest there is an epistemic approach to knowledge i merely mean that once one makes certain conclusions or commitments regarding the world or reality and what we can know about it, we have precluded knowing things outside the given conceptual box we are working within, e.g. you can never demonstrate to a so-called “methodological individualist” that society or social powers are real. it seems to me that at this level postcolony and postsocialism researchers share a common and not inconsequential challenge how does one move outside the modern conceptual box in order to think differently about societies and new solutions to fundamental problems. in native north american worldviews, neat dichotomies as those listed above are virtually non-existent. knowing seems in the modern worldviews to be mostly about control and jen typewritten text 96 categories, while in non-modernist, tribal worldviews, knowing is mostly identified with acknowledgement of complexity, processes, and relationships. of course all humans possess both kinds of knowledge to some degree but for comparative purposes, the continuum between both kinds of knowledge is useful to think about. methodology experiment vs. experience lastly, a continuum between modern western and tribal methodologies for knowing might look something like this (see figure 3): _________________________________________________________________________________ figure 3 ways of knowing western indigenous <------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> dissective ethnomethodologies experimentalism experience: trial and error _________________________________________________________________________________ here i put a premium on exploring critically, and reflecting on the experiential dimension of the problem(s) we are addressing. this is why i have said biography and, equally important, family, clan, tribal, and community histories are good, albeit often difficult starting places when indigenous people begin to understand the colonial and postcolonial histories in which they are immersed. experience, as every parent knows, cannot be completely controlled for even our children. maybe this explains why we constantly work around or avoid experiences in modern scientistic methodologies. experience makes things too messy for our science. unfortunately, the world can be a messy place. where we go from here: what we teach in postcolonial discourses, i am an advocate of indigenization as opposed to decolonization. decolonization is essentially a reactive process and rightly so: its point of departure is colonization. but reaction can go many directions and take many forms. more importantly, the discourse often falls into a critical stance shaped by the “reality” it seeks to critique accepting the conceptual reality that may be the very problem, e.g., legal-rational and politicaleconomic discourses that preclude thinking about history in very different ways. i have no idea how an indigenization process might play out in postsocialist or “de-socialist” discourses. nevertheless, in the americas the outright persecution and frontal attacks on native knowledge and ways of knowing, e.g., the “total institution,” and resocialization project of the off-reservation boarding schools has left many indigenous scholars looking for ways to see where our own cultures might lead us. given the attempt to take our histories and cultures away from us, some native people in the americas today are reclaiming, returning, reconstructing, and creating indigenous ways of living for implementation today. in this sense a sense of theft by one people from another in the most existential manner imaginable, i wonder if there is anything comparable in the postsocialist situations around the world. countless dangers inhere in this approach and here too there my be cultural and ethnic parallels in postsocialist environments: return conceptualized temporally, romanticism, ethnocentric chauvinism/nationalism, and more concern with re-fighting old battles than moving on to new futures. we need imagination or visions that allow students to recognize that before we come up with the answer(s), we jen typewritten text 97 7 must have confidence that we are indeed asking the right questions. i think we are off to a good start. i am leaning more and more towards thinking about history “ecologically” like my ancestors did for generations as one useful tool. how shall we live and what does “history” teach us good questions we should not take lightly. references cited: churchill, ward. 1998. a little matter of genocide: holocaust and denial in the americas 1492 to the present. san francisco: city lights books. churchill, ward. 2002. struggle for the land: native north american resistance to genocide, ecocide, and colonization. san francisco: city lights publishers. deloria, vine jr. 1969. custer died for your sins. new york: macmillan. deloria, vine jr. 1973. god is red. new york: grosset & dunlap. deloria, vine, jr. and daniel wildcat. 2001, power and place: indian education in america. golden, co: fulcrum. dewey, john. 1960 [1929]. the quest for certainty. newyork: capricorn books. o’hear, anthony. 1999. after progress: finding the old way forward. new york: bloomsbury publishing. sale, kirkpatrick. 1991. the conquest of paradise. new york: alfred a. knopf. jen typewritten text 98 editor anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 5 editor’s notes sarah d. phillips indiana university i am delighted to be taking up the reins of the editorship of the anthropology of east europe review, and i extend a heartfelt thanks to outgoing editors krista harper and julie hemment for presenting me with this opportunity. during their editorship of the journal krista and julie set a high standard, having helped push the scholarship of eastern europe ahead in exciting ways. they have left some big shoes to fill, and i thank them for making my transition into the journal such a smooth one. i also am grateful to the department of anthropology and the russian and east european institute at indiana university for their support in moving the aeer’s home to bloomington, and for providing for editorial assistance. abigail rich, a graduate student in anthropology at indiana who has research interests in dance in romania, joins me at the journal as editorial assistant. i would like to acknowledge and thank also robert rotenberg, who continues to maintain the aeer website at depaul university. in their introduction to the spring 2008 issue (vol. 26, no. 2), krista harper and julie hemment stated that they “…have envisioned the journal as an important bridge between anthropologists from north america, eastern europe and russia, western europe, and beyond” (p. 3). they have conceptualized the journal as a venue for showcasing fresh, up-to-date research, and as playing a key role in establishing a diverse community of scholars who focus on the region. i share these commitments, which will continue to inform the journal’s core mission under my editorship. these principles--the foregrounding of cutting-edge research, and highlighting collaborative research endeavors, particularly those involving scholars from the region-very much undergird this special issue on “cultural production and transmission of ethnic tolerance and prejudice,” organized and guest edited by hilary pilkington and anton popov. as principal investigator and project manager of the rime (releasing indigenous multiculturalism through education) project, the guest editors have put together a fascinating collection of papers on young people’s experiences of ethnic conflict and of living in multiethnic societies. pilkington and popov’s insightful introduction situates the papers in a provocative synthesis of theoretical and methodological questions related to multiculturalism, ethnic tolerance and intolerance, “balkanist” discourse, and others. the papers are remarkable for their breadth of scope, thematically and geographically. they will be of particular interest to scholars and students interested in youth cultures, constructions of ethnicity and ethnic difference, and dynamics of xenophobia and tolerance. other key themes include sports, music, and civil society. i look forward to working with cordula gdaniec and eszter gantner, who are slated to guest edit a special issue in spring 2009 on “cultural diversity between staging and everyday practices: managing cultural diversity in cities in eastern europe.” the journal also welcomes article submissions to the “open forum” sections of the spring 2009 and fall 2009 issues (see the call for papers below). thanks to you, our subscribers, contributors, and readers, for making the journal possible! anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 6 call for papers spring 2009 and fall 2009 issues of the anthropology of east europe review the editor solicits articles and conference review essays for the spring 2009 and fall 2009 issues’ “open forum,” “reviews,” and “teaching” sections. papers should be no more than 2,500-6,000 words (including endnotes and references) and conference reviews should be 300-800 words in length. please send electronic submissions as a microsoft word .doc (or as an .rtf file) to: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com papers and reviews for spring 2009 should be received no later than march 15, 2009. papers and reviews for fall 2009 should be received no later than august 15, 2009. sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 4 aeer spring 2006 issue “anthropology of east europe: filling the gaps in global attention?” krista harper and julie hemment university of masshachusetts, amherst while surfing the web earlier this month, we stumbled upon the website of “gap—global attention profiles,” a project of harvard law professor ethan zuckerman (see his website at http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/ezuckerman/). professor zuckerman has developed a method of mapping the countries of the world according to the daily news coverage of prominent news media outlets such as the new york times, reuters news service, and the bbc news. countries garnering more than 3.2% of the news coverage in a day are shaded red, while countries accounting for less than 0.3% of news coverage are shaded violet. as one might expect, recent profiles feature the united states, canada, the united kingdom, iraq, japan, and china in deep red. in contrast, most of the countries of africa, latin america, and central and eastern europe consistently appear in violet, regardless of population size. according to zuckerman, consumers of the mass media are likely to suffer from a deficiency of information about many countries in the world: a gap is analagous to the ingredients and health information on food packaging. when you eat potato chips, it's worth knowing that you're not ingesting much vitamin c. eat nothing but potato chips and you're likely to end up catching scurvy. (zuckerman, http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/ezuckerman/faq.html) zuckerman offers a contemporary illustration of some of the consequences of such a deficiency: immediately post 9/11, much of the world discovered that it was suffering from an information deficiency concerning central asia. for a brief interval, there was a great deal of media interest in afghanistan and surrounding nations... afghanistan still receives media attention, but media attention is radically reduced in the other countries in central asia. this raises the disturbing question: "is our media paying enough attention to central asia?" (zuckerman, http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu/ezuckerman/faq.html) anthropology is a discipline with a unique commitment to filling in the gaps left by the deficiencies of the corporate media. anthropologists work in virtually every corner of the globe, including those countries that appear regularly in the daily news. the strength of our discipline, however, can be measured in our dedication to presenting the everyday realities of people living in parts of the world that almost never appear in the headlines. bessarabia is one such area of the world. we would like to extend our thanks to our guest editors, deema kaneff (of the max planck institute for social anthropology in halle, germany) and monica heintz (of university of paris xnanterre), for pulling together such a terrific set of articles on this region. they examine bessarabia as a borderland area undergoing formidable political and economic transformations. their introduction to the collection leads the volume, and lays out key issues of transboundary economic activity, migration, national histories and ethnic identities. as announced last time, as in-coming editors, we made the decision to devote space in each issue to an open forum. this rubric enables us to maintain one of the special features of aeer – its ability to provide a swift turnover and a forum for new research. in our open forum this time, we include a series of compelling articles. tracie wilson examines shifting meanings of environmentalism in poland, by examining attitudes towards science among environmental activists. drawing on ethnographic research and interviews, wilson’s article reveals high levels of ambivalence about scientific knowledge. here, science, though strategically invoked, is widely regarded as a tool of private interests. narcis tulbure’s article explores the topic of nostalgia, by examining changing practices of social drinking in romania. via the concept of liminal nostalgia, the author examines the ways individuals negotiate shifts in status during the postsocialist period. katherine metzo's article examines a sister cities program between two towns deeply shaped by the cold war: kurgan, a siberian city that is home to a stockpile of soviet-era chemical weapons, and the fox cities in anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 5 wisconsin, onetime home of the staunchly anticommunist senator joseph mccarthy. in our review section, anselma gallimat contributes a report from the conference, ‘oral history and (post)socialist societies.” the conference, which took place in freiburg, germany, 3-5 november 2005, focused on the contributions of this methodology to the study of postsocialist states. pavel romanov offers a report on “the anthropology of professions in russia,” a conference held in saratov, russia, in september 2005. daniel burland reviews czech anthropologist hana červinková's ethnography of soldiers and officers in the czech army as it moved to a smaller, professional model. dávid boromisza-habashi contributes a review of a recent hungarian-language book edited by mária neményi and júlia szalai and featuring some of the top researchers on the social realities of hungary's romani (gypsy) ethnic minority. under our teaching rubric, sarah phillips reflects on a new seminar course she designed that took chernobyl as a case study. in her article, she discusses some of the different challenges she has encountered in attempting to teach the anthropology of postsocialism. detailing the pedagogical advantages that this focus enabled, she makes a strong case for the power of teaching anthropology via case study. we thank robert rotenberg for his ongoing work maintaining the aeer website at de paul university. we offer our gratitude to lisa hilt for her outstanding work assisting us with journal correspondence, administration, editing, production, and distribution throughout the school year. special thanks go to the center for public policy and administration (cppa) at the university of massachusetts for providing the resources for research and editorial assistance and to the department of anthropology for providing overhead support for the journal. call for papers fall 2006 issue of the anthropology of east europe review the editors solicit articles and conference review essays for the fall 2006 issue’s “open forum,” “reviews,” and “teaching” sections. papers should be no more than 2,500-6,000 words (including endnotes and references) and conference reviews should be 300-800 words in length. please send electronic submissions as a microsoft word .doc (or as an .rtf file) to: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com papers and reviews should be received no later than august 15, 2006. mailto:anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com� sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 85 drinking and nostalgia: social imagination in postsocialist romania narcis s. tulbure department of anthropology, university of pittsburgh “and like this they drank... they drank because life was like this [difficult]. and they drank because the stress was high and society made them drink. and it was harmony...” g.f.136 "i mean they… the world twisted, the world turned piggish." g.b. 137 this paper stems from my previous work on social drinking and nostalgia in postsocialist romania. my aim is to understand the way experiences and practices constitutive of individual and collective forms of self-understanding in socialism are retrospectively valued at present, as well as to account for social drinking as a particular object of nostalgia. in this sense, i try to understand the way the discourse about the past is constitutive of the present condition of those articulating it. at an analytical level, i understand liminal nostalgia as being a constitutive form of social imagination, that is, being a more or less collective phenomenon based on a shared register of symbols and rhetorical tactics, employed by strategizing social actors and productive of novel senses of social identity. at the same time, i treat liminal nostalgia as a particular form of social imagination through which meaning is created, practices are resignified and positions are renegotiated during periods of epochal change. in this sense, i try to conceptualize and typify nostalgia in postsocialist rural romania, its connection with the social context in which it appears, as well as the temporal orientation it mediates. i hold that nostalgia, as a particular form of discourse on the past, is indicative of the more intimate connections between imagination and power relations in which social agents are enmeshed. at the same time, i argue that a focus on drinking and nostalgia in rural romania is illustrative of the way the state is discursively reconfigured at the local level during the postsocialist period. a burgeoning literature, too extensive to be reviewed here,138 elaborates on memory and nostalgia after the collapse of socialism, during the postcolonial period, with policies of intensive modernization in diverse parts of the world, and even with the multifaceted process of europeanization. i relate critically and selectively to the abovementioned literature, arguing that it is only partially useful in interpreting the phenomenology of nostalgia in contemporary eastern europe. thus, while i draw on michael herzfeld’s (1997) and jon p mitchell’s (2002) understanding of structural nostalgia as a powerful rhetorical device, as an idealized representation of the past being strategically deployed in the present by various social actors engaged in complex games of power, i also emphasize the primordial role of “modern”139 apprehensions of time and historicity in the generation of what i call liminal nostalgia. in that sense, i was influenced by approaches to nostalgia emphasizing “modern” understandings of temporality and historicity, as well as those taking nostalgia as a form of social imagination, the play with lateral possibilities and the longing “for what might have been,” all providing means of accommodating various teleologies of social change (boym 2001; appadurai 1996; fritzsche 2002). i use the concept of liminal nostalgia in order to describe a particular positioning in periods of disruptive social change by which social actors negotiate their place in changing fields of power, the novel temporal horizons that often undermine previous senses of purposefulness, as well as novel forms of social experience. by liminal i indicate that postsocialist nostalgia is associated with an acute sense of change in contemporary romania. i draw here on nancy ries’ flexible appropriation of the theory of the ritual process from victor turner (1995) and its use to interpret perestroika as a macro ritual involving the entire soviet society (ries 1997:161-188). although my analogy with ries’ interpretation is a limited one,140 i find particularly insightful her use of the concept of liminality for describing a period of radical social change when the anthropologist can witness the proliferation of narratives about the past and moral discourses, the enforcement of cultural dichotomies and stereotypes, the rediscovery of religious identities and even ethnic nationalism, the promotion of archaic gender identities and patriarchal values, as well as the fetishization of authority and mystical leaders (ries 1997:161-188). at the same time, i do not share ries’ pessimism regarding the inhibition of rational discourse and action by the proliferation of moral discourses. i rather consider that the moral evaluation of the present through the lens of an idealized anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 86 representation of the past can be a very practical form of action, as michael herzfeld (1997) has brilliantly showed. along the same lines, in contemporary romania, liminal nostalgia can be understood simultaneously as a symbolic correspondent of radical political and economic transformations, as a narrative recuperation of past experiences and practices, and as a form of positioning in present circumstances. such an understanding makes possible the interpretation of the paradoxical situation produced by the postsocialist social changes: the combination of a positive orientation toward the future expressed as a relative commitment to the westernizing reforms coupled with nostalgia for the imagined security and the ethos of reciprocity characteristic of the socialist past. the informalization of alcohol in postsocialism alcohol has been an important object of state regulation for modern romania. during socialism, alcohol production, distribution and consumption were subject to a large number of laws, decrees and regulations; the overall approach to alcohol was subsumed under state policies aimed at creating a communist new man. local agents reacted in various ways to the policies regarding alcohol complying, interpreting, appropriating or subverting them, as well as taking advantage of the ambivalent position of state agents and bureaucrats. in postsocialist romania, the majority of socialist laws were abrogated while new ones were adopted, fundamentally transforming the political economy of alcohol. the state presents itself as the protector of free markets endorsing most of the european union legislation with regards to alcohol. at the same time, the selective enforcement of state regulations in the field of alcohol is a constant source of corruption and private arrangements evading the state. postsocialist reforms undertaken during the 1990s have completely changed the conditions for the circulation of alcohol. restrictive socialist regulations regarding the consumption of alcohol in public places, at work, or imposing time schedules for the commercialization of alcohol were dismantled and the newly adopted ones are not effectively enforced. as part of the measures aimed at transforming the command economy into a functioning market economy, laws were promoted that allowed for the privatization of state owned facilities for the production and distribution of alcohol, and the establishment of new private enterprises. adapting or simply endorsing most of the european union (eu) directives regarding fiscal policies and commercial laws or the regulations regarding alcohol, successive romanian governments introduced and gradually increased the euro denominated excise taxes for alcohol and alcoholic beverages.141 measures aimed at preventing tax evasion and for increasing transparency and accountability in the process of alcohol tax collection involve special techniques for the marking of alcohol based products, specific procedures for the authorization of production installations, detailed conditions and documents for the delivery of alcohol, or the setting up of special control teams formed of state representatives. more recently, state laws address the claiming of intellectual property rights and commercial rights for the production and commercialization of ‘”traditional” beverages (the popular palincǎ, ţuicǎ, or rachiu) or newly created ones (such as horincǎ or romagnac) inside the eu, as well as the registration and compliance with eu quality standards of romanian vineyards. the ambiguities in some of the newly adopted laws and regulations, the corruption of various state representatives and bureaucrats as well as the high level of excise and value added taxes for a cash poor market are just some of the conditions facilitating the illegal production and distribution of alcoholic beverages. tax evasion involves a set of practices shared by most actors in the field, from the large scale, highly visible, state of the art producers of alcohol to the low profile, frequently unregistered “bathtub”142 producers of alcoholic beverages. however, the allocation of responsibility is not even. the central government, and associations of the most important producers and distributors of alcohol (garant, vinrom), blame small scale producers and local level state officials for the alarming dimensions of the illegal production of alcohol and the tax evasion it generates, as well as for the social effects of increased alcohol consumption in impoverished urban neighborhoods, provincial towns and villages. the association between political parties and alcohol moguls became more transparent before the general elections of 2000. the temporary introduction of a state monopoly over the distribution of alcohol, presented by the central government as essential for controlling illegal production and tax evasion, proved highly advantageous for the most significant producers who would have had a secure market for a certain production under the arrangement. the monopoly was finally dismantled when the eu determined that this impeded free competition. however, the episode gave the media the opportunity to analyze the corruption phenomena associated with the alcohol market and to present numerous cases of political candidates supported with money from the alcohol industry during the elections.143 the web of informal relationships becomes even clearer if, along with josiah mcheyman and alan smart, “we view illegal practices not as a anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 87 category of abnormal behavior, and especially not as the subculture of a stigmatized group, but rather as an option, a resource, that diverse groups use at varied times” (1999:13). although involved in acts of corruption, government representatives discursively allocated illegality to smaller and anonymous alcohol distilleries and local level bureaucrats who take advantage of the general state of poverty of the consumers. in so doing, they reify the state as the agent meant to fight corruption. the large producers and distributors associated themselves with such a discourse as they would be the only ones benefiting from the state monopoly. the claims of legality, transparency, competition and the use of audit-prone technologies (secure bottling and standardized distilling installations) can be taken as correlative, yet equally powerful discursive strategies. drinking and nostalgia after socialism the people that seem most affected by longing and nostalgic recollections of past sociality are those that took part in the socialist policies of industrialization, urbanization, or mass commuting between villages and towns in provincial romania. in their memories, social drinking is almost always associated with stories about their experiences at work, their commuting to the nearest town, their exchanges involving goods and services that were scarce in the socialist command economy, as well as their struggles to make ends meet for their families. mundane experiences as the ones mentioned above were always the most important in setting social boundaries between “alcoholics”144 and “worthy” men, between villagers and town people, between those that belonged and those that did not belong to the community. for the consumers of cheap spirits and beers in southern romania i interviewed, the longing for past relationships and reciprocity constructed around social drinking is based on vivid memories that convey a strong sense of the materiality of those practices. my interlocutors mentioned the smell and taste of particular drinks, the shapes of bottles, and the smell of the air in the village tavern. although various categories of individuals (including women and children) adopted similar consumption patterns during the 1990s, the most important group still comprises middle-aged to old men, former workers in state factories or on collective farms during socialism. the majority of these men are unemployed or retired as a result of the radical economic and social changes experienced in the last decades. living on small retirement or unemployment benefits and looking after small plots of land received after de-collectivization, they now "stay all the time in the tavern and pray to god to provide rain," as one of the most diligent young villagers ironically put it. for most of them, the “better” times in the past are not only a symbolic, but, in many respects, a powerfully real referent. their frequent recourse to idealized memories is not only an empty form of social poetics to be “filled” in and made meaningful contextually. most of them had jobs, secure revenues and in more or less foreseeable life trajectories. the shortages of the command economy could be dealt with by taking part in a sphere of consumption and exchange, a male dominated realm, one in which the consumption of alcohol lubricated the exchange of services and goods many of them stolen or “taken” from state enterprises. faced with the hardships of the present, many of these men remember a time when they had friends they could rely upon for getting what they needed, and when the reciprocal nature of such relationships was reproduced through the common consumption of alcohol. it was also a time when, as distinct, women and children knew their place, almost never drank and entered the tavern only in exceptional situations. the particular relationship with the remembered past, the proximity and lived character of the experiences recollected by people i discussed with, make concepts like herzfeld’s “structural nostalgia,” (1997:109-138) or mitchell’s somewhat less inspired “strategic nostalgia,” (2002:121-146) as well as appadurai’s understanding of ersatz nostalgia (1996:75-79) ultimately unfit for the analysis of the narratives of my informants. examples like the ones above necessitate the creation of novel concepts to explore the phenomenology of contemporary nostalgia in eastern europe. i suggest that the concept of liminal nostalgia introduced above can capture the dialectics between the remembrance of real social experiences and their idealization by selective recollection and deployment in nostalgic discourses. at the same time, it is by extrapolating the real referent to the totality of social relations that the people i describe reproduce metonymically a set of lived experiences that reify the structure of a perfect world, one dominated by reciprocity, however imperfect it was in reality. the concept of liminal nostalgia is centered on the idea that what drives the dialectic play between lived experience and social imagination is the longing for what could have been better, the sense of irretrievable loss that is the counterpart of the teleology of social change and economic improvement consecrated by the various ideologies of transition. at the same time, the mandatory reading of transition as progress or improvement, consecrated by state discourses, has a counterbalance in the loss of status and resources that anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 88 was experienced by the group of people i worked with most closely. the social changes of the 1990s have consecrated new situations and patterns of alcohol consumption. during the first years after the fall of socialism, caracal (a small provincial town in which i conducted fieldwork) and the neighboring villages were flooded by highly potent home made beverages brought from the hilly regions of vâlcea and argeş. the number of cazane (small stills for the distillation of alcohol) and the home production of ţuicǎ (plum brandy) have plummeted as well. after a few years, very cheap illegally produced spirits became the most frequently consumed beverages in the cash poor local economies such as that of olt county. this was supported by the spread of informal credit relations between consumers and the owners of shops and bars. ironically, some of the most important forms of alcohol circulation in socialism, home brewing and moonshine production, which were intimately connected to the second economy at the time, were undermined and replaced by the practices of the newly emergent informal economy in the postsocialist period.145 new categories of individuals, including women and children, who were not frequent drinkers during socialism (or not as visible as the men), became more prominent consumers of alcoholic beverages. while the former instances of drink (celebration of holidays or rites of passage, mourning ceremonies, commensality, conspicuous consumption, treating one for a service or even paying in drinks) have mostly survived the social changes after 1989, some have been adapted and other new ones have appeared. new religious holidays have been invented and old ones revived; at the same time, alcohol has become an essential ingredient in what can be seen as a "new work contract" between owners of land and daily workers. this latter practice is symbolically connected with the interwar system of reciprocal work on the land in which the drink of ţuicǎ was an essential ingredient (kideckel 1985), as well as with the exchange of goods and services on alcohol as part of the second economy during socialism. after de-collectivization alcohol, consumed during work, became part of a daily payment in an asymmetrical and more impersonal relationship than those mediated in the past.146 these phenomena are repeatedly lamented and constitute motives for negative moral evaluations of the social situation at present (as well as oblique protests towards their contemporaneous condition) by the people with whom i worked most closely. the bars that opened during the postsocialist period continue to be, "generous arenas for social interaction" (herzfeld 1985:51), like the old state owned mat that they have replaced. the criteria for the constitution of identity and local power relations, however, have changed from one period to another. the former idiom of local respectability during socialism, based on hard work and formal positions of power, continues to play a role, albeit diminished. at the same time, new sources of symbolic capital and new criteria of manhood shape the construction and reproduction of temporary power hierarchies in the bar: real or imaginary performances in acts of theft, sporting events, fights, or demonstrations of the capacity to drink as much as possible. the picture is more complex at present due to the prominence of groups of young men, many of them unemployed and consequently spending large periods of time in the bar. constructive drinking (douglas 1987) is connected to practices of conspicuous consumption and competitive drinking, and in “rituals” where alcohol consumption and story telling147 are essential ingredients in the negotiation of identity. drink can help one cross the boundaries of community and group and help in the creation of a ""we" established or assumed" (pesmen 2001:181). important aspects, such as ending up on the upper or the lower side of the hierarchy, depends on the game of association in the bar. at the same time, men aged fifty or older, among whom the former worker commuters are a prominent group, no longer seem to be able or willing to keep up with the “rigors” of a more playful and fluid reality. while older people have lost their main source of prestige and income, a job in town or at the local tractor farm, younger people are not willing to stick to old drinking patterns or social hierarchies and this makes youth the target towards which the frustration of most of the old people is channeled. during the socialist period, social drinking was the privilege of mature men and was constituted as sphere of relative autonomy from the family and the rest of the village. drinking with their fellow villagers or workers was subject to a special ethos; one had to know how, when, with whom and especially for what he was drinking. moderate drinking was seen as “normal,” the sign of a healthy man, and local narratives always associated it with hard work and respectability. as long as one worked (as was the case for most of the men during the socialist period), was able to take care of one’s family and did not make a fool of oneself, one was expected to drink as much as one could. without exception, each of the former worker commuters i interviewed decried the "foolishness" and the "degradation" of youth. they told me that during the old times, only "the old men gathered at mat,148 unlike now, when every imp (tot boracu') enters the tavern." then, they used to chat anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 89 about "important things, about agriculture," while the "youth today only barely if ever (mai tango, aşa)" addresses such issues. according to my interlocutors, youth have literally "crowded (au năvălit) the bars" after 1989, taking advantage of the fact that "they have found free tables and chairs," left by the elders. they are impolite, they do not offer their chairs to their elders, "they rob your pockets" sometimes and, even "enter the bar embracing their girlfriends which they brought in", something that one never did before. the older men i spoke to believed that most young men must steal if they can afford to drink daily, since few of them are employed. as one informant put it, as "people went foolish (s-a prostit lumea)," the youth had "democracy entering their heads," and acted like "people with no head at all." consequently, most of the older people and former commuters prefer to visit the bar during the day, or during times when youth are not usually present; alternatively, they take their glasses and bottles of brandy to drink outside. to the former gender segregation of the tavern world (which was mostly spatial), a new one is added, based on age (which is mostly temporal). other people, including many old former commuters, prefer to buy cheap brandy, vodka or liqueur and drink at home. although encouraged by their families to stay away from the watchful eyes of their fellow villagers, this practice is not necessarily helping them; drinking outside of the group and community and escaping their social control can easily turn one into an alcoholic. this phenomenon was confirmed to me by several barkeepers, who are knowledgeable of the consumption patterns of their customers and neighbors; they presented their practices in a different light than the elders did themselves. the discursive reconfiguration of the state exploring the ambiguities related to alcohol policies and their enforcement, it is possible to illustrate the duality of the actions of most of the actors involved in the political economy of alcohol in contemporary romania. on the one hand, state officials, although promoting the rhetoric of accountability and free market initiative, get involved in acts of corruption and activities of the informal economy. excuses for not being always able to enforce the standards they set are always linked to general poverty and the disruptions created by the economic transition. on the other hand, although aware of the state devised discourse of corruption and accountability, consumers of cheap beverages produced in the informal sector subvert it through their practices of consumption and exchange. at the same time, i suggest that by reproducing the discourse on corruption, as well as a critical evaluation of the present mediated by an idealized representation of the past, consumers enmeshed in the informal economy of alcohol naturalize the state making it a constant presence and referent in their lives. overall, the inhabitants of caracal and the neighboring villages hold that alcohol consumption has increased during the postsocialist period and drinking has become more visible. while this claim is hard to assess due to the lack of reliable data, especially for the socialist period, those who are familiar with southern romania will likely agree with it. media lamentations, echoed to a certain extent by governmental organizations and the main organizations of alcohol producers and distributors, blame increased consumption of poor quality highgrade spirits for numerous health and social ills; they consecrate poverty as the ultimate (and most important) cause for this type of consumption. while poverty, unemployment, and the lack of a sense of purpose brought about by the social and political changes provide favorable conditions for excessive drinking, and although the high level of taxes in a cash poor local economy make illegally produced alcohol an appealing option, the whole picture is more complex. it can be said that the most important actors active in the field of alcohol production, distribution and consumption (from large scale to “bathtub distillers,” wholesale distributors, owners of shops and bars retailing alcohol, consumers and the state) are connected at a symbolic level, sharing a sphere of “cultural intimacy” (herzfeld 1997: 3) and the nostalgic positioning towards an idealized past. for the majority of the consumers among whom i conducted research, the object of nostalgia takes the form of a past sphere of consumption and exchange, a reciprocal, more or less autonomous and self-regulating sphere associated with the second economy during socialism, in which the exchange of goods and services outside the official channels and social drinking were the main ingredients. exploring the repertoire constitutive of liminal nostalgia shared by those involved in the social biography of alcohol (kopytoff 1992), one can interpret their paradoxical, ambivalent positions. on the one hand, the second economy is appreciated for having made the socialist command economy more flexible and for having been an arena for the display of sociality and reciprocity, a sphere of relative autonomy from the state where a weak sense of entrepreneurship could manifest during the socialist past. on the other hand, the contemporary informal economy is usually condemned for having a corrosive effect on attempts to create an ideally anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 90 lawful, transparent and self-regulating market economy, the state to be attained at the “end” of transition. this position, when assumed by higher authorities and state representatives, can be considered conceptually ambiguous, especially by somebody aware that many of the current informal practices have both a symbolic and a pragmatic referent in the socialist second economy. furthermore, although many central government officials are involved in acts of corruption related to the alcohol industry, responsibility is seen to lie with small (sometimes anonymous) producers and local bureaucrats, and ultimately attributed to poverty and the disruptive effects of reforms. such discursive practices have the effect of reifying the state as the agent meant to restore order and to fight poverty, and consecrate a fictitious divide between state and society. the most important producers and distributors of alcoholic beverages subscribe to a similar vision, since playing the card of legality and accountability seems to be the profitable option. at the same time, the owners of shops and bars in provincial areas find themselves more or less “voluntary prisoners” of a system of relationships in which they sell alcohol on credit, sometimes by the glass, to some of their fellow villagers or inhabitants of the same urban neighborhoods. granted initially as a personal favor to a narrow circle of friends, informal credit became widespread and a sine qua non condition for commercial survival. as one bar keeper confessed, "they [the customers] already think it is normal to give them [on debt], that it is their right to give them, and if you tell them [that you won't give them] they get angry, they feel offended". such retailers are aware of legal practices, but feel that regulations are unfairly strict and taxes are unrealistically high in a cash-poor local economy. at the same time, they are aware that high-level politicians do not conform to the immaculate selfimage they put forward. the most talkative of them can describe in detail the workings of a system of relationships in which they sell alcohol on credit to their customers, are granted informal credit (in the absence of accessible bank loans) by the alcohol wholesale distributors, who are in turn credited by the alcohol producers. at the other end of the “chain of weaknesses” are the large-scale distilleries and breweries that rely on numerous tax exemptions and fiscal credit granted by corrupt politicians. illegal and unreported products play an important role as some of the actors in the chain described above conduct more than half of their trade off the books.149 a nostalgic positioning as the one i explore in this paper plays an important part in shaping present consumption and makes more easily understandable the informalization of the political economy of alcohol. continuing to drink as one did during old times, when everybody had a job and a substantial income, and when social drinking was a privileged arena for masculinity is a way of dealing with the hardship of the present condition. continuing to drink despite one’s poor economic circumstances is a way of showing that "you still have a face for the public," as one bar keeper noted. from a different perspective, providing drinks on credit to their fellow villagers is conceived as a sort of moral obligation for the newly established owners of shops and bars (patroni), since commerce is still stigmatized and considered as a sort of non-work.150 since villagers talk about buying on credit as a sort of favor extended to the new owner of bars, that allows them to enrich themselves, informal credit is a way in which the new patroni can reciprocate the initial favor. finally, the focus on liminal nostalgia allows one to understand how the state is experienced and discursively reconfigured at the local level.151 the frustration of living in an uncertain world as opposed to the past that was organized around a certain morality is evoked with pathos by one of my interviewees: “now the situation is more knotty. before you were sure you had a job. as i’ve told you: they [state representatives] took you of the streets and gave you a job. now you do nothing wrong, no mistake at all, no violation, but they fire you.” such laments provide consistent alibis for excessive drinking and signify that current drinking practices are attempts to temporarily reconstitute a sphere that offered security, reliability and meaning during socialism. furthermore, people comment on their daily encounters with corrupted clerks and bureaucrats and are aware that neither they nor high level politicians are immaculate. even more than that, people lament that today’s bureaucrats are rapacious and interested in personal gain, as opposed to the ones in socialism whose unlawful conduct allowed things to be favorably arranged for everybody. the discourse on corruption and public responsibility, initiated by politicians and the international organizations, is brought to and sustained at local level by the media. people are aware that alcohol gotten on credit is of dubious origin, as its price152 barely covers the production and distribution costs and cannot cover the excise and other taxes. contrasted with the ideologies of transparency and accountability, the staffing of the state with rapacious bureaucrats creates room for moral ambivalence and makes “too much obedience to the law […] silly,” as herzfeld put it (1997:5). maybe more important than the justifications of petty illegalities at the local level is the way criticism addressed to politicians and bureaucrats using the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 91 idiom of corruption and accountability consecrates the standard of an impersonal and transparent state apparatus. in the very act of accusing state representatives of misconduct and corruption, the state is reified and naturalized as a permanent fixture in people’s lives, as the agent meant to combat corruption, to fight poverty, to conduct reforms and, ultimately, to reconstitute the coordinates of a past order in reference to which the present can be perceived as a fall. concluding remarks this paper explores the connections between social drinking and nostalgia in postsocialist southern romania. i treat nostalgia as a form of social imagination through which meaning is created, practices are refashioned and power positions are renegotiated during periods of epochal social change. i also hold that in the case of contemporary romania, liminal nostalgia can be understood simultaneously as a symbolic correspondent of radical political and economic transformations and as a form of positioning in present circumstances and towards renewed expectations. the concept i prefer to use is indebted to previous approaches to nostalgia mentioned in the first part of the paper: it recognizes the longing for an idealized (past) sphere of sociality, but it underlines the existence of a real referent for nostalgic recollections, one that may be idealized in time, and stresses the primordial role of “modern” apprehensions of time and historicity in its constitution. liminal nostalgia appears in a period of radical transformation that may be viewed as a period of liminality (ries 1997), of intense renegotiation of the bases for identification and social stratification, a period that is “no longer here, but not yet there.” it is an attempt to reconstitute a sense of “moral” direction, to recreate a sense of purposefulness and to narrate disruptive social changes for those whose mundane experiences contradict the teleologies of progress and improvement consecrated by the various ideologies of transition. i consider that postsocialist nostalgia is a form of resistance to the manichean vision of the world essential for the teleology of transition, one that opposes what was old/communist/bad to what is supposed to be new/capitalist/good, expressed by people for whom the social changes of the 1990s meant the loss of material and symbolic security. finally, although by using the term liminal i indicate that postsocialist nostalgia in southern romania is associated with an acute sense of change, i do not want to create the expectation that it is necessarily a short term, transient phenomenon. as the generalized sense of transition and liminality becomes intertwined with the process of europeanization, nostalgic discourse could be expected to adapt, to transform and ultimately to find a more resilient place in the rhetorical repertoire of those adversely affected by the integration into the european union – peasants, farmers, or retired people. similar phenomena associated with the integration into the european union of other “peripheral” countries such as greece and malta, excellently analyzed by michael herzfeld and jon mitchell, substantiate such an informed guess and call for renewed approaches to nostalgia as both object of study and powerful lens into processes of profound social change. notes 136 the quote come from an interview i took in 2003 to gf, former chief of personnel at the train carts factory in caracal, the town in which i conduct research, and was meant to describe social drinking during the socialist period. 137 in romanian: "adică ăştia… s-a răsucit lumea, s-a porcit lumea." commenting the decision of postsocialist local authorities to approve the construction of a bar next to the monument erected in the memory of local heroes fallen in world war one in the center of the one of the villages in which i conducted research, one of the old villagers concludes that the world has turned upside down and is empty of moral values. i took the interview during one of my brief returns to the village in the summer of 2004. 138 svetlana boym’s the future of nostalgia (2002) is an excellent review of the history of nostalgia as an object for the medical, literary or academic discourses, as well as a brilliant illustration of the ways nostalgia can be refashioned and used for the interpretation of postsocialist phenomena. other authors on whose writings i do not elaborate here but were important sources of inspiration for my work are daphne berdahl (1999), antoinette burton (2001), and stathis gourgouris (1996). 139 i am aware of the danger of reifying categories such as “modern” versus “non-modern” and my argument is not that the inhabitants of contemporary southern romania are modern as opposed to what they might have been several decades ago. i find it useful to employ the category of the “modern” for conceptual clarity, as well as for the accuracy of citations, when discussing a conception of linear time and progress(ion) towards the future. in the case of my informants, i do not attempt to place them in or out of modernity, but i argue that the modernization policies of the socialist state consecrated such a “modern” apprehension of time and an expectation of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 92 progress and improvement in the area in which i study. 140 i do not describe the process of profound social change associated with the exit from form socialism, or what is called “transition,” as a ritual in as much as the future is open, the finality of this transformation is unclear, the results for various social groups even more so, and there is no other similar historical process to which we can compare it analytically. furthermore, while nancy ries’ book describes historical processes happening in the recent past, my account describes more contemporaneous events and discourses whose interpretation can be at most tentative for the time being. 141 promoting a uniform legislation and system of taxation in the fields of alcohol and alcoholic beverages for the member states or the acceding countries is an important objective for the european union. considered an important component of the social and cultural identity of any country, the taxation of alcohol is a good indicator of the degree of integration for the eu as a supra-national organization, as well as for each member state in the common institutional structure of the eu (lubkin 1996). 142 the low quality – low price spirits are usually called “bathtub produced spirits” (băuturi făcute-n cadă) to denote the poor hygienic conditions under which they are made. the same category of beverages is called “genocide” (genocid) in an attempt to reveal their effect on the health of their consumers. 143 the romanian edition of the economic weekly capital has published a number of articles analyzing the relationship between the most important romanian producers of alcohol and alcoholic beverages and the various political parties. see adrian halpert, manuela preoteasa, carol popa, vasile damian, “money from distilleries drain into the electoral campaign [banii din distilerii se scurg spre campania electorala],” capital, no. 47, november 23, 2000, “alcohol magnates support 100 candidates [magnatii alcoolului sustin 100 de candidati],” capital, no. 47, november 23, 2000, or laurentiu gheorghe, “6.000 billion lei a year for alcohol mafia [6.000 miliarde lei pe an pentru mafia alcoolului],” capital, no. 40, october 4, 2001 for a good analysis of the phenomenon. other daily newspapers or weeklies such as adevărul, evenimentul zilei, românia liberă or academia caţavencu also documented the unlawful relationships. 144 here “alcoholic” refers to a social category bearing a powerful stigma among the people i interviewed and is only remotely connected to the medicalized category. in this context, it is rather a moral category condemning the lack of control and “manliness” of the person that was seen inebriate, unbalanced or prone to wandering in the streets at improper hours. 145 i rely here on the comprehensive review of the literature on the second economy realized by steven l. sampson (1987: 120-136). i understand the concept of second economy as referring to a set of activities that were “unplanned, unregulated, unreported, privatized, and/or illegal” (sampson: 124) in socialism. for a similar analysis of informal economy i rely on the work of alejandro portes (1994: 426-448). i subscribe to a definition of the informal sector of the economy as encompassing “those actions of economic agents that fail to adhere to the established institutional rules or are denied their protection” produced by edgar l feige and reproduced by portes. the underground economy is seen as a set of activities subsuming those of the illegal, unreported, unrecorded and informal economy (portes: 428). 146 the relations between landowners and daily laborers are not completely impersonal being usually based on mutual knowledge and a certain amount of trust. however, they are “thinner” than the reciprocal relations before collectivization, which usually duplicated stronger relations of kinship, friendship or patronage. 147 assuming the structural analogy between social events (action) and narrative structure, herzfeld described how meaning can be "conveyed through actual performance" (xiv) in the shepherds community of the cretan villages. at the same time, narration replace immediate action in conveying meaning during the interactions in the coffeehouse, when "the story does what otherwise the actions have to do for themselves (herzfeld 1985: 141). 148 the name of every village tavern during the socialist period. 149 for a more detailed historical analysis of the practices of selling alcohol on debt in the region i describe here see daniel lǎţea, the parody of abstractedness, 2002. 150 when discussing commerce and the new entrepreneurs in the village, many of the consumers rhetorically ask “what does this mean … not doing any work?” 151 akhil gupta provides an exemplary analysis of the way the state is produced at the local level by the discourse of corruption and accountability in contemporary india (gupta: 375-402). 152 a bottle of spirits may be bought for approx. usd 0.30. references anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 93 appadurai, arjun. 1992. introduction: commodities and the politics of value. in the social life of things: commodities in cultural perspective. arjun appadurai, ed. pp. 3-63. new york: cambridge university press. --1996 modernity at large. cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis and london: university of minnesota press. berdahl, daphne. 1999. where the world ended: reunification and identity in the german borderland. berkeley: california university press. boym, svetlana. 2001. the future of nostalgia. new york: basic books. burton, antoinette. 2001. india, inc.? nostalgia, memory and the empire of things. in british culture and the end of empire. stuart ward, ed. pp. 217-32. manchester: manchester university press. confino, alon and peter fritzsche, eds. 2002. the work of memory. new directions in the study of german society and culture. urbana and chicago: university of illinois press. douglas, mary. 1987. constructive drinking: perspectives on drink from anthropology. cambridge and new york: cambridge university press. gourgouris, stathis. 1996. the phantasms of writing, ii. nostalgia for utopia – the idolatries of seferis. in dream nation: enlightenment, colonization, and the institution of modern greece. stanford: stanford university press. gupta, akhil. 1995. blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state. american ethnologist 22 (2): 375-402. herzfeld, michael. 1985. the poetics of manhood: contest and identity in a cretan village. princeton, nj: princeton university press. --1997 cultural intimacy: social poetics in the nation-state. new york and london: routledge. kideckel, david a. 1985. drinking up: alcohol, class and social change in rural romania. east european quarterly. 18 (4): 431-46. kopytoff, igor. 1992. the cultural biography of things: commoditization as process. in the social life of things. arjun appadurai, ed. pp. 64-91. new york: cambridge university press. lǎţea, daniel. 2002. the parody of abstractedness: informal credit, time and space in southern romania. ma thesis. budapest: central european university. lubkin, gregory p. 1996. is europe's glass halffull or half-empty? the taxation of alcohol and the development of a european identity. http://www.jeanmonnetprogram.org/papers/ 96/ 9607ind.html. mcc heyman, josiah and alan smart. 1999. states and illegal practices: an overview. in states and illegal practices. josiah mcc heyman, ed. pp. 1-24. oxford and new york: berg publishers. mitchell, jon p. 2002. ambivalent europeans: ritual memory and the public sphere in malta. london and new york: routledge. pesmen, dale. 2000. russia and soul: an exploration. ithaca and london: cornell university press. portes, alejandro. 1995. the informal economy and its paradoxes. in the handbook of economic sociology. neil j. smelser and richard swedberg, eds. princeton: princeton university press. pp. 426-448. ries, nancy. 1997. russian talk: culture and conversation during perestroika. ithaca and london: cornell university press. sampson, steven l. 1987. the second economy of the soviet union and eastern europe. annals of the american academy of political and social science. 493: 120-136. turner, victor. 1995 [1969]. the ritual process: structure and anti-structure. new york: aldine de gruyter. http://www.jeanmonnetprogram.org/papers/96/� http://www.jeanmonnetprogram.org/papers/96/� microsoft word document5 volume 20, number 1 the little girl, the girl to whom ‘it’ happened, natural pregnancy, saint mary’s bed bitóné, eszter gera balástya, hungary (translated by sára kaiser, ed. by brent holt) © 2002 sára kaiser all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the little girl1 i always liked to listen to old people’s narratives about beliefs, customs, superstitions, and illnesses and their treatment. now that i belong to the older generation, i try to compare the stories i once heard – and later experienced – with today’s life style, customs, and civilized methods of healing. in our grandmothers’ time the lives of little girls were full of secrets. my grandma, and later my father, would warn me often when women were talking among themselves, “don’t eavesdrop,” they would say, “it’s not for you,” or, “go and play, it is not proper for a little girl to be in the way.” much later, when i turned fourteen, i came to understand what those women had been talking about. i wish i could have listened to them then, not only for myself but also for all other girls of my age. it will forever remain a mystery why menstruation was such a shame, such a secret, when it is such a natural part of life. why so much secrecy? after all, it is an essential part of womanhood, of women’s health, reproduction, and the make-up of family life. why did mothers conceal this fact of life from their daughters? why didn’t they teach them at the appropriate time? as a result, the first appearance of the menstrual blood brought a deadly terror to those girls. i experienced this fright myself. although i had a mother and even a sister who was ten years older than i, regardless, they did not prepare me for this unavoidable event. i had seen that my sister would sometimes wash something while hiding behind the haystack in the stable. she kept me always at bay with some excuse so that i never saw what she was washing and the laundered items were never anywhere to be found. if i asked my mother about my sister’s irregular wash, she refused to answer. “it’s not nice for a little girl to be so curious,” she answered. “it’s your sister’s business; don’t meddle in adults’ affairs.” when one day my stomach was hurting badly and i noticed bloodstains i thought the end was near. i didn’t say a word to anyone even though i wanted to say farewell before i died. the fright was heightened when i learned that an ambulance had taken our neighbor to the hospital because her stomach was bleeding. her husband was given no hope that she would recover. i thought to myself, if she dies and she is such a big, strong woman, then how could such a tiny thing as me survive all this? these thoughts haunted my mind all day long. at night i was afraid to fall asleep. all i could think was that the blood had come out of her mouth and mine came from somewhere else. i cried so hard that my mom began questioning me. i had to tell her the horrible news that i was going to die. mom was astonished when she finally rooted out the “cause” of my impending death. she then comforted me and told me that she has the same trouble, as does my sister, and that it is not lethal. she said it would occur every month and that’s why it’s known as the monthly trouble. she then kissed me and told me that now i was a big girl. she instructed me endlessly; i should be cautious that no one should notice it, after all this was something to be ashamed of. it was then that i understood my sister’s secret laundering operations. in the mid-thirties (i was already a “big girl” by then) cotton batting was used only for application on wounds; it was unknown to those of us who lived out on farms. we used old rags folded up and layered instead of cotton batting when menstruating. my mother bought white, thick flannel material and cut it into pieces 30 cm by 30 cm. we then hemmed them and sewed laces jen typewritten text 4 volume 20, number 1 to the opposite ends and tied them between our thighs and around our waists. this was called the ‘főkötő’ [headwear/main tie]. we replaced this piece of cloth as often as necessary. it was much more tasteful than using those dirty rags. it was fairly difficult to wash them entirely clean due to a strict creed which held that if you washed the főkötő in too much water then your bleeding would be plentiful as well; not only would the “bad” blood go away, but the living blood as well. we had to be careful that no male member of the family, or any person outside of the family, would see our underwear when we washed it. as time went by i came to learn more and more expressions for this “lethal disease”, as i had earlier thought of it: “she can’t go to the ball because she has to celebrate”; “her panties turned red”; “she was hit by the red car”; “the red pentecost”; “wearing red slippers”; “lucretia is sick”; “she’d got her trouble”; “the monthly trouble”; “the monthly thing”; “the monthly cleansing”; “the monthly tidying up”. of course there were superstitions, beliefs, and taboos surrounding menses, just like for other things in the old days. for instance, if a girl touches her face with the clothes stained by the blood of the first menstruation her face will remain unblemished even during pregnancy. during menses a woman was not supposed to can fruit or pickle foods because it would cause the foods to go bad. it was also advised that she should avoid making noodles or kneading bread. it was also improper to go to church; if she did then she shouldn’t go close to the altar of the virgin mary because of her impurity. it was prohibited to visit a woman after childbirth while she lay in confinement because her baby’s face would become scarred and blemished. if she forgot this rule or went and visited out of ignorance, then she was required to make good the error by a means that was utterly disgusting. any woman who lay in confinement was obliged to ask her female visitors, “are you ‘like that’?” if the visitor answered ‘yes’, then for the sake of the child she had to wash a piece of her blood-covered underwear at home, then carry the water to the child’s house and bathe him in it. afterwards, she had to sponge the baby with the same underwear that she wore while menstruating while saying, “i am impure like your mother; be as pure as the angels.” there was another custom. if the time came for a woman to marry and she did not want to marry a widower, then what she could do to avoid such a husband, was to water the foot of a rosebush with her menstrual blood in the morning. if this were done in the afternoon then she would have a widower as a husband. if there was no rose bush at her home she might go to the neighbor’s, but this was a very risky act. some believed that if a young woman wanted to get a particular young man she could make a special cake into whose filling she would add a few drops of her menstrual blood. she might add some marks or a little extra sugar on top of those pieces of pastry or cake to make certain that the desired young man, and not someone else, would eat those pieces. its effectiveness was sworn by. that is why it is said, “this young man was fed,” if he becomes attached to that woman. in my grandmothers’ time a great majority of women did not wear underwear. those who did had them made with an open bottom. these were called “open” underwear. it was said that they were made that way so they could easily squat down to pee without having to pull their skirts up all the way. once, when my mother was old, i found the courage to ask her about those days when they did not wear underwear, or used the open ones, and how they took care of themselves when they got their monthly bleeding. my mom, the poor thing, said to me angrily, “you know, my girl, we just put on our shoddiest underskirt underneath and from time to time adjusted it as needed. but don’t ask me about these old things.” the girl to whom “it” happened i believe that if mothers had told their daughters when they got their menses regularly it meant that they were able to conceive and give birth, then there would have been far fewer single mothers, or as they used to say, girls to whom “it” happened. these single mothers had a lot of ridicule coming to them: “her apron had a hole” or “her apron caught fire”; “she donned her mother’s slippers”; “her hair went curly”; “she drank from the well”; “got done up”; “lost the virgin wreath”; “the nonsmoked sausage gave her a stomach ache”; “the dressmaker shred her skirt”; or “she gazed at the stars from beneath a bush”. some girls intentionally became pregnant so as to acquire a husband and would even take the badmouthing that came with it. even if the young man married her, life usually wound up being miserable for her anyway. her mother-in-law would argue, “you seduced my son, you brought a child out of wedlock into our honorable house. jen typewritten text 5 volume 20, number 1 perhaps it’s not even my son who fathered this child.” in the old days fathers were not held responsible by the law, making marriage difficult if even possible. if the boy was decent and married her, she could not wear a wreath on her head [for the wedding]; if she did people would speak poorly of her because only virgin girls were worthy of wearing it. those girls with no chance of marrying did everything they could to drive away [abort] the embryo. women tried different methods of abortion because in those times there was no contraception. there were quack female doctors who were willing to perform abortions in exchange for a large sum. this process was known as “de-budding”, “doing the tidying up”, “doing away”, “scraping the dirt road”, or “making an angel”. to rid themselves of the unwanted child the pregnant woman drank various herbal teas that made her throw up, or put as many hot bricks on her stomach as she could bear. sometimes the bleeding began, sometimes it didn’t. they took hot baths or steam baths, drank quinine mixed in elderberry tea, or the woman poked herself with a goose feather, a knitting needle or a crocheting hook, often with very sad consequences. the last resort was to seek the assistance of a midwife who kept a shiny, metal key called the ‘womb key’. with this key she opened the mouth of the uterus; success was certain, the bleeding began. i know from hearsay that this procedure was incredibly painful and very dangerous, not to mention expensive. if one didn’t have the money then she would have to give the midwife her earrings, rings or other valuables to serve as payment. the midwife took no responsibility, her first condition being that after the procedure she would deny knowing the girl; she would deny everything. many married women turned to her for help if they wished to have no more children. the midwife treated them with the same method. her parting words would be, “if all turns out well then you are lucky; if you die, peace on your dust. i have never known you and have never met you.” natural pregnancy pregnancy that occurred within a proper marriage had its own set of names and was surrounded by superstitions believed by some and still held by a few. some euphemisms for the pregnant woman were: “she’s in another condition”; “expectant”; “the holy spirit occupies her”; “the stork is nesting on the chimney”; “her husband threw his hat at her”; “the front of the house is getting rounded”; or “she grew out of her clothes”. some held that a pregnancy must not be kept to oneself in secret because the child will be mute. you must not lean against the kiln with your stomach for your birth will be painful. you must not sit on a water can for your child will have a big head. you must not let your legs dangle for your child will be good-for-nothing. the pregnant woman must be careful not to see anything ugly, such as a crippled man or child because then her own child will be disfigured or be similar to the thing she had looked at. if something startles her or if someone frightens her she must not touch her face with her hands or her child will have a birth mark right where she had touched her face. in particular, the pregnant woman should neither marvel at dogs, nor cats, nor monkeys, nor caress any of them; if she does then her child will be as hairy as those animals. there was one pregnant woman who carried three cloves of garlic in a little bag worn around her neck so she would not have a freak child. a pregnant woman must not look at a dead person; her child will be pale. there are regions where pregnant women wear their blouses inside out during their pregnancy. i also hear that if a pregnant woman was scared it was suggested that she pee. if a pregnant woman combs her hair in bed, her child will be short lived. if a pregnant woman steals fruit or squash, in that case her child will be bald. if the pregnant woman eats a lot of strawberries then the child will be hairy. the expectant should not look at a dead animal’s eyes because her child will have eye trouble or might even be blind. she should not step on a frog for her child will be stillborn. she should not say anything bad toward another pregnant woman or her child will have trouble learning to walk. if she chops wood on the threshold her child will be hunchbacked. these assumptions are curious (i heard these from my grandmother, no less): if a little hat is sown into the bride’s dress then she would have a boy first; sew in a little apron and she would have a baby girl. during coitus, the man must wear a hat so as to have a boy, or during intercourse the woman must keep her mouth shut and the man must hold a tobacco pipe in his teeth. it will also be a boy if the pregnant woman hides the husband’s underwear under her pillow until birth. you should eat a whole piece of bread if you wish to have a baby boy. if you find a button you will have a boy, if you find a needle you will jen typewritten text 6 volume 20, number 1 have a girl. if the pregnant woman’s apron has a hole burned in it then if the hole is oblong in shape it will be a boy, if it is round then it will be a girl. if the mother turns to her left side after giving birth then her second child will be a boy. if she gives birth to a girl she’ll need to turn the straw mattress over, or a rooster must be butchered so that the baby girl will be attractive and the next child will be a boy. a pregnant woman was very disappointed if her face became liver spotted. according to folk beliefs, such spotting of the face indicated the birth of a girl. if the pregnant woman found a mother who had had a girl and had not disposed yet of the placenta she would ask for a piece of that placenta and smear it on her face until the placenta went bad. of course, the spots remained even for awhile after birth. if a girl were born they would put holy water, pieces of holy candle, and a prayer book into the mother’s bed so the girl would be religious. they would also put tobacco and brandy in the bed so she would marry. if a boy were born they would put potato, onion, and pieces of bread into the bed so his wife would be a good woman; in addition they would include a small, carved ax and a fragment of a saw so he would be hardworking. the newborn baby would stay with the mother because until the child was baptized, usually when seven or eight days old, he was still a pagan and his mother’s prayers would defend him from bad spirits and witches. if the child were very weak when he was born the midwife would give him a christian name so that he wouldn’t die without one. this was known as a midwife baptism. a child that wasn’t baptized could not be removed from the birth room or yet placed in a crib. the feet of the child’s crib or bed could not face the door as the dead were removed from the house in their coffin with feet outward. it was prohibited to pour out the child’s bath water after sunset. during the day it would have to be poured out where no hen could drink from it to prevent the child’s face from being covered with scars. they would have to avoid raindrops on his diapers, clothes and bedding to prevent his face from being covered with freckles. his face could not be wiped with a diaper, even a clean one, or he would have sores about the mouth. if his clothes were left outside at night then that night the child would not be able to sleep. some women have a difficult time while pregnant: nausea, vomiting, sensitivity to smell, etc. every expectant mother tried just about anything to make this period bearable, and sometimes they took the advice of old women. they ate dried plums; they soaked the petal of a lily in brandy and ate the petal or drank the liquid at the full moon. they put chalk dust into their water and drank it, or fetched water from the wells of three neighbors, mixed these, and drank it. well, nausea goes away eventually. some patiently endured it with hopes of bearing a daughter with long, beautiful hair. there was some useful advice about infertility as well. about the infertile woman it was said that her blood did not match her husband’s. to avoid problems with infertility it was suggested to put the placenta of a woman who has had her first child into one’s bath, or to drink brandy in which dried and pulverized placenta had been mixed. if the infertile woman eats a dried umbilical cord she will become pregnant. if the infertile woman spits into the well on christmas night she will get pregnant, or she may take a bunny into her lap, caress it, and if the bunny remains she will become pregnant. a woman wanting a child should walk with a cross to church festivals. she should go to church regularly and light a candle at the altar or at the portrait of saint anna. a picture of saint anna should be kept under her pillow. saint mary’s bed before going into labor the woman had already agreed with her mother or mother-in-law whether to give birth in bed or on the ground like they did in the old days. i only know stories told to me by my grandmother, who would be 134 years old if she were alive, about women who gave birth while squatting or standing. she gave birth to my father in the cornfields. she stopped hoeing, gave birth, then put the child into her apron and the hoe across her shoulder and walked home. the bed in which the pregnant woman gave birth was dubbed saint mary’s bed. they sprinkled saint mary’s bed and also the future mother with holy water and doused the expectant with smoke from a holy candle so that the birth would come to a successful conclusion. even in 1932 in the area of szeged, while the expectant lay in bed they would lock the door, darken the room, and place the holy candle at the window. this served the purpose of keeping bad spirits away. the holy candle was lit so saint mary would find the mother in labor. jen typewritten text 7 volume 20, number 1 it is interesting that in our area (csongrád county) the husband wasn’t allowed to see the woman give birth. he usually sat outside the door on a stool and listened to his wife’s plaintive moaning. if the midwife or any of the attending old women needed something they would shout to him, “bring cold water! bring hot water! fetch a towel but stay where you are, don’t peek.” they did not want the woman to be seen giving birth, dirty and untidy, by their husbands. when the mother and the newborn were clean and tidy then the midwife or one of the old women would tell him, “come on in now, have a look at what you made.” it seemed to be a requirement, especially by the old, that this be said. if she gave birth in a stable or pen then straw would be taken from the animals and she would be made to lie on this bed of straw with the blanket of a tired horse to cover her. in such cases she would take her place in saint mary’s bed following the birth. they would put straw on the bed and cover it with only a sheet. lying on straw was uncomfortable but the mother had to bear it because her child would be lazy and good-fornothing if the mother laid in a soft, comfortable bed. i remember occasions when women on the farms would remove all the bedding from the bed and lay straw in its place [for the birth]. once the mother was washed clean and dressed up [following the birth] the bed would be tidied up again. midwives prohibited giving birth in a stable. sometimes the female relatives would deceive the midwife and only inform her of the birth after it had already taken place. [if birth had been given in the stable] the mother would carry the newborn into the house in her apron saying as she crossed the threshold with her left foot, “i have brought the fortune in hopes that no harm will come to him.” then she would bathe the baby and lay him in the clean bed on sheepskin so that his hair might be curly. when the midwife arrived with her complaints of not being properly advised the women would yammer, “oh dear, this child came so quickly we didn’t have time to inform you.” for eliminating labor pains they would place the woman’s engagement scarf [a scarf given to young girls by their mothers, used for courtship] or the tablecloth used for christmas dinner on her stomach. or they would pour holy water into a glass, then dip rosemary or a lily in it and sanctify the laboring mother’s stomach with the sign of the cross. every house had rosemary or lilies, especially when there was a young woman living there. they would dry it for winter storage. if an extended labor brought the mother to suffer immensely then either her mother or mother-in-law would go and get the lash of little god. this was a wild plant that grew one meter tall, a kind of weed (i don’t know its official name) that could be found by the road or in meadows. the straight stem of this climbing plant was covered all over with tiny, yellow flowers that looked as if they were glued onto the plant. they believed that this plant could chase away bad spirits and they would stroke the mother’s stomach crosswise with it. how it got its name, i don’t know, but every child knew that you mustn’t break the lash of little god neither with a stick or by hand. if one did dare do such a thing his or her hands would dry right off. the mother in labor, from the beginning to the end, would keep her eyes shut so her child wouldn’t have bulging eyes. if she gave birth in bed then she would hold on to the bed tight, raising her arms above herself as if she had wings so that when the angels walked by they might mediate between saint mary and the suffering mother and they would implore the former to eliminate the mother’s pain. often, the late departure of the placenta, or the so-called “other,” would result in serious complications. sometimes they only noticed the problem if the mother was bleeding heavily and the blood smelled foul. first they would try to remove it through home remedies. they would put a hot chamomile compress, or hot bricks, or salt on the mother’s stomach. they would make her drink brandy with tea made from a white flower, or cut a lock of hair from a virgin and burn it, dousing the mother with the smoke. they turned to the midwife only when they’d run out of home remedies. if the midwife thought there were some sort of infection, then she would call for the doctor. sometimes the mistake was made of not alerting the midwife to the birth; often these cases would end with death. often they would bury the placenta at the west corner of the house so the child would be calm. if the mother didn’t want to have more children then the placenta would be burned and its ashes mixed into the husband’s drink and the husband made to drink it without his knowledge. if the husband knew about the concoction when he drank it then it would have no effect. in some jen typewritten text 8 volume 20, number 1 places the placenta was dug into the manure heap with the belief that the harvest would be better. it was believed that if a child were born in the caul he would be very lucky, so they would be very careful with the caul. even today it is still said here in the szeged area when someone’s life path looks successful, “he must have been born in a caul.” even in the 1930s the women on farms would stay in bed for six weeks after giving birth. regardless of how strong and healthy the mother might be, she would have to stay in bed so her child would not be sickly. so that bad spirits would not harm her, they would never leave the woman in confinement alone. if no one could stay with her they would stick a pocketknife into the doorpost and hang garlic on the door handle. throughout the six weeks relatives would bring fine soups, fried chicken, cake, and wine. sometimes there would be enough food for the whole family to eat plentifully for days. there would be days when she would receive food from many people; no matter if she excused herself by saying she had just had lunch she would still have to take a bite from each dish. otherwise the feelings of the person who brought dinner would be hurt and she would curse, “be your child as begrudging toward you as you have been toward this food.” young mothers were afraid that their stomach would remain big after birth, so they would tie their stomach tight with a towel even in confinement. some even wore this uncomfortable stomach tie for one or two months to regain their pretty figures. if the mother bled a lot it made her extremely weak; some were more hemophilic than others. the duration and quantity of the menstruation blood was an indicator. some women menstruated for only three days, others for six to seven days with stomach and waist pains. the latter would be concerned about birthing, and their concern was well founded as all mothers and mothers-in-law believed in old superstitions and herbal medicines and sometimes only called for the midwife or doctor when it was too late. they would put various cold and hot compresses on the bleeding mother’s stomach, or would make her eat bread crust dipped in brandy or the tea made from some root or other. they would watch while the mother grew weaker and weaker from losing so much blood. sometimes the poor thing would live four to five weeks. if the mother died from losing so much blood they would say that it was the lord’s wish. but if the lord wanted to take the mother, why did he leave this tiny innocent creature behind? 1 bitóné, eszter gera is a female writer of peasant background. she was born in 1922 on a hungarian ‘tanya’ [farmstead] in the szeged region. she received her elementary school education in bal stya and made her living by working with the land. she was never trained formally as a writer. she began writing poems when she was a young girl but later burned all her notes and writings. eszter gera kept her writing ambitions secret from her husband and they remained a secret until 1975 when the director of the local culture house encouraged her to submit her papers to various ethnographic journals. her monograph, entitled ‘régi paraszt életünkre emlékezem’ [remembering our old peasant life] was published in 2000 in hungarian. the stories of the little girl, the girl to whom ‘it’ happened, and natural pregnancy were not included in this book. her writing endeavors have come to a close with the recent publication of a collection of poems, ‘járom az utamat mindig fájó szívvel’ [my path is taken always with an aching heart]. she lives in a three-generational family house in the village of balástya. jen typewritten text 9 anti-semitism in postcommunist central and eastern europe hannah starman institute for ethnic studies, ljubljana © 2004 hannah starman all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. introduction 1 a number of high-profile gatherings on antisemitism have been organized in europe over the past two years.2 with some variations in focus, they all addressed the wave of anti-jewish incidents that spread across the european union member states in recent years, reaching its climax in the spring of 2002 when several synagogues and other jewish institutions in paris, brussels, berlin, and london were burned, jewish cemeteries profaned, and individual jews attacked.3 the european monitoring centre on racism and xenophobia (eumc) commissioned three reports on antisemitism in europe in the past two years: manifestations of anti-semitism in the eu 2002-2003;perceptions of anti-semitism in the european union;4 and evaluation of available data on anti-semitism in the 10 candidate countries of eastern and central 1 i would like to thank dr irena šumi for a thorough reading of the first draft of this article. 2 the osce conference on anti-semitism was held in vienna in june 2003 and in berlin in april 2004. the european commission organized a seminar on anti-semitism in europe in brussels in february 2004, and the un conference on anti-semitism was held in june 2004, to name just a few. 3 for a list of anti-semitic incidents (with links to full accounts) see http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/shart. jhtml?itemno=169625&contrassid=2&subcontr assid=15&sbsubcontrassid=0&listsrc=y. 4 both reports are available at the eumc website: http://eumc.eu.int/eumc/index.php. europe,5 relying mainly on data gathered by several research centers that monitor antisemitism around the world, maintain databases of anti-jewish incidents, and publish studies and country reports.6 judging by the findings of the controversial7 eumc report on manifestations of antisemitism in the eu 2002-2003, anti-jewish incidents in western europe have been connected to extreme nationalist and fundamentalist response to the israelpalestinian conflict and committed predominantly by “disaffected young 5 šumi, irena and hannah starman (2004) evaluation of available data on anti-semitism in the 10 candidate countries of eastern and central europe : eumc report. ljubljana: inv. 6 for example, the stephen roth institute for the study of contemporary anti-semitism and racism at tel aviv university, the coordination forum for countering antisemitism, the vidal sassoon international center for the study of anti-semitism, zentrum für anti-semitismusforschung technische universität berlin, la ligue internationale contre le racisme et l’antisémitisme, and others. 7 the eumc was at the center of controversy when it was accused by european jewish leaders of trying to shelve an original report which pointed to young muslims and pro-palestinian groups as the main perpetrators of the attacks. the report that was finally published concludes that “the largest group of the perpetrators of antisemitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white europeans,” and adds that “a further source of anti-semitism in some countries was young muslims of north african or asian extraction.” jen typewritten text 65 muslims” of north african or palestinian origin (eumc 2004: 20). the volatile mix of anti-jewish and anti-israeli hostility transmitted through new means of communication such as the internet8 has become known in the wider media as the ‘new anti-semitism’ and has gained enough currency to claim several monographs9 and numerous articles to its name.10 anti-jewish incidents perpetrated in western european countries such as belgium, france, the netherlands, germany, and great britain have attracted considerable attention and raised great concerns, both because of the unprecedented violence of the attacks, and the shift of public perception of their perpetrators from neo-nazi skinheads to young muslim immigrants. as noted above, the responses of national public authorities, international organizations such as the osce, and of the european commission have been swift.11 8 a special osce meeting explored the relationship between racist, xenophobic, and anti-semitic propaganda on the internet, and hate crimes (paris, june 2004). 9 chesler, phyllis (2003). the new anti-semitism: the current crisis and what we must do about it. san francisco: jossey-bass; iganski, paul and barry a kosmin (2003). the new antisemitism?: debating judeophobia in 21stcentury britain. london: profile; foxman, abraham (2003) never again? the threat of the new anti-semitism. san francisco: harper; taguieff, pierre-andré (2004). rising from the muck: the new anti-semitism in eu. chicago: ivan r. dee publisher (original title: la nouvelle judéophobie); drad, raphaël (2001). sous le signe de sion : l’antisémitisme nouveau est arrivé. paris : michalon ; goldnadel, gilles william (2001). le nouveau bréviaire de la haine. paris : ramsay; finkielkraut, alain (2003). au nom de l’autre : réflexions sur l’antisémitisme qui vient. paris : gallimard ; attal, sylvain, 2004, la plaie : enquête sur le nouvel antisémitisme. paris : editions denoël. 10 see also a discussion on new anti-semitism in the eumc report manifestations … (pp. 24-25). 11 the hessian cdu politician martin hohmann was promptly expelled from his parliamentary group for his anti-semitic remarks in november 2003. jürgen mölleman, deputy chairman of the the situation in central and eastern europe is different in several regards that i propose to discuss in this article. in contrast to western europe, where the holocaust has been incorporated into public conscience and has thus delineated the contours of acceptable public discourse about the jews, the collapse of communism in an “area basically devoid of democratic traditions and traditions of tolerance and pluralism” (braham 1994: 9) has engendered a fierce xenophobic, nationalist reaction, which endorsed anti-semitic pronouncements as an acceptable feature of public discourse. it is important to note that those who promote anti-jewish discourse would not recognize their pronouncements as anti-semitic, which has led to what volovici called a “paradoxical situation” (1994: 4) of “antisemitism without jews and without antisemites” (cornea 1993). another notable difference between antisemitism such as it was displayed in recent years in western europe and that of the former communist europe is that the latter’s sometimes vehement anti-jewish rhetoric, and the absence of any political correctness with regard to jews and the holocaust, seldom translates into overt and violent manifestations of anti-semitism (braham 1994). instead, anti-semitic and anti-jewish remarks are used in various contexts, ranging from political (‘unmasking’ political opponents as jewish, for example) to economic, ideological, national, theological, etc. (volovici 1994). the break with communism in eastern europe in many cases produced “a specific reinvention of anti-semitism without jews in which jews remain categorically alien, a threat” (luthar and šumi 2004: 30). as yehuda bauer put it, “the non-existent jews have become a liberal free democratic party (fdp), was forced to resign after voicing anti-semitic remarks in august 2002. in december 2001, an international spat has developed over disparaging comments about israel ("that shitty little country israel"), allegedly made by the french ambassador to london at a private dinner party, to give just a few examples. jen typewritten text 66 major issue in public discourse” (bauer 1992: 8). in some fringes of domestic politics, jews were openly held responsible for both communism and the hardships caused by its collapse (unemployment, decline of living standards, etc; see braham 1994). the latter sentiment was further exacerbated in some cases by the debates connected to the restitution of jewish property (levin 1998; karadjova 2004), while the former often figured prominently in propaganda campaigns of extremist parties that incorporated “traditional anti-semitic and jewish-conspirational themes” focusing on the communist-jewish linkage (braham 1994:11), but also on capitalist-jewish linkage that culminated in the concept of globalization as the ‘new jewish world order’ (vago 2002). furthermore, manifestations of anti-semitism generally intertwined distortions or denial of the holocaust, and various efforts at deflection of responsibility for the local persecution of jews (luthar and šumi 2004; shafir 2002; braham 1994), as well as ‘history cleansing’ (braham 1994; vago 2002). last but not least, central and east european countries’ heritage of anti-zionism and criticism of israel (sekelj 1997) lent itself nicely to a channelling of anti-semitism to virulent criticism of israel.12 legacies of communism and patterns of anti-semitism in postcommunist central and eastern europe among the many legacies of communism in central and eastern europe that have been studied in the abundant literature on postsocialism, two are of particular importance for the subject under scrutiny here: the 12 the best approach to distinguish between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of israel that i have come across was proposed by the former swedish deputy prime minister per ahlmark who said: “the line is crossed when people begin to use anti-semitic terminology to describe israel’s actions” (quoted in yair sheleg, “a campaign of hatred,” in ha’aretz, may 5, 2002). legacy of organized or systematic forgetting and deflective negationism of the holocaust, and the legacy of anti-zionism/antiisraelism.13 the “state-organised forgetting” (shafir 2002: 4) that marked the former communist regimes’ uptake on the holocaust was characterized by “de-judiazation of the atrocities perpetrated by the nazis and/or their local emulators or official elites” (shafir 2002: 4). as peter novick (1999) persuasively claimed, de-judaization of the holocaust was also present in the postwwii united states where it was employed to achieve two immediate and closely linked political goals: the fight against communism, and rehabilitation of germany. both foreign policy priorities rested on a conceptualization of wwii that represented the nazi atrocities as an inherent aberration of totalitarian regimes, and ignored the specificity of the nazi assault against european jewry. the purpose of this conceptual move was to pave the way for germany’s rehabilitation by essentially representing it as a victim of totalitarianism, equivalent to that practiced in the soviet union (i.e. communism). the treatment of the holocaust in communist central and eastern europe was also subject to serious political consideration, albeit with a different spin to it. it was characterized by two main features: on the one hand, the jewish victims were denied their jewishness and were aggregated in the count of local victims, and on the other hand, local perpetrators were conveniently assimilated to the ‘nazi aggressor.’ jewish victims were thus incorporated in the general category of victims of fascism (deák 1994: 118), while the own-nation participation in the persecution of jews was minimized (represented as insignificant and marginal) and externalized (transferred to members of other nations, namely germans). michael shafir (2002) offers several examples of 13 authors mostly use the terms anti-zionism and anti-israelism interchangeably. jen typewritten text 67 both. boris tepulchowski’s book history of the great patriotic war (1941-1945) which passes as representative of post-stalinist soviet historiography, for example, provides a telling illustration of the former: referring to the gas chambers in auschwitz, maidanek, and treblinka, the author never once mentions that they were constructed mainly to physically eliminate the jews; instead, he wrote that six million “polish citizens” had been murdered by the nazis (vidal-naquet 1995). similarly, the monument that was erected at auschwitz in the 1960’s carries the inscription “four million people suffered and died here at the hands of the nazi murderers between 1940 and 1945.” jews were subsumed under other nationalities, and – due to the polish term for jews14 – came last on the alphabetically ordered list (steinlauf 1996). the example of the jedwabne massacre15 of 1,600 jews killed by their polish neighbors in july 1941 (gross 2001) provides an eloquent illustration of the deflection of guilt to the nazis. although the facts of the massacre were not unknown in the first decade of poland’s communist rule (fox 2001) and reports that some of the jedwabne perpetrators had been put to trial and even convicted in 1949 and 1953, the monument that was erected on site by the communist authorities in the 1960’s claimed that “jews were burnt alive by the gestapo and hitlerite gendarmerie” (fox 2001: 90).16 both the denial of the victims’ jewish identity and minimization/externalisation of responsibility for their persecution helped the communist leaders to consolidate 14 żydzi in polish. 15 for the first full account of the massacre that triggered the longest and the most important debate on the holocaust in postcommunist poland see gross (2001); for an account of the debate see michlic (2002). 16 it was not until 2001 that the polish president aleksander kwasniewski officially apologized for the part played by poles in the 1941 pogrom and unveiled a new monument: its inscription remembers those who died, but refrains from naming their murderers. communism as a bulwark against fascism, and represent their countries as the only true victims of the fascist aggression. istván deák’s remarks (1994: 111) on the situation in hungary could apply across the board in central and eastern europe: “world war ii was officially remembered as the era when ‘communists and other progressive elements’ had struggled against, or became the victims of, ‘hitlerite and horthyte fascism.’ somehow, there seemed to have been no jews among these heroes and victims; instead, all were ‘anti-fascist hungarians.’” considering the fact that the great majority of jews perished in the territories of central and eastern europe and that their annihilation was also “made possible by crimes initiated and committed at the order of nazi-allied authorities; by those initiated and perpetrated by local fascists; or by collaboration, indeed the effective participation in their perpetration by individuals from among the populations conquered by the reich” (shafir 2002: 24), coming to terms with the wwii past was a particularly delicate issue in the postcommunist period. according to shafir’s typology of deflective negationism which characterized both the communist and the post-communist era, the guilt for the holocaust was either deflected onto the nazis (as the jedwabne case illustrates) or a nation other than one’s own, to the non-representative and marginal ‘fringe’ that committed ‘aberrations’ “in the country’s otherwise spotless history of relations with the jews” (shafir 2002: 37), or to the jews themselves. the example of romanian communist historians’ treatment of the massacre of some 8,000-12,000 jews carried out in iaşi in late june 1941 by local authorities, the romanian army, members of the iron guard, and the ss (shafir 2002) is significant. these historians either deflect the responsibility to the nazis (minei 1978: 26; quoted in shafir 2002), or claim that only “some stray romanian soldiers” (karetki and covaci 1978: 75, quoted by shafir 2002: 37), “some legionnaires and jen typewritten text 68 other declassed elements” (simion 1979: 132, quoted in shafir 2002: 37) had joined the perpetrators “at their own initiative” (karetki and covaci 1978: 75, quoted in shafir 2002: 37), and “organized a pogrom in iaşi over the head of the romanian authorities, which has practically lost control over the town” (simion 1979: 132, quoted in shafir 2002: 37). examples of deflections to the ‘fringe’ are abundant (braham 1994) and are on the increase since the collapse of communism, especially in countries that sought to rehabilitate national leaders who collaborated with the nazi germany in the war against the soviet union, namely marshal jean antonescu in romania (eskenasy 1994; ioanid 1994), father josef tiso in slovakia (meštan 2000), and admiral miklos horthy in hungary (deák 1994). the guilt for the holocaust is frequently attributed to the jews themselves, and this particular type of deflection features an array of anti-semitic affirmations. although the deicidal justification according to which the holocaust was the price that the deicidal people had to pay for having crucified christ (meštan 2000) has not yet lost its currency, the most widespread arguments blaming the jews for the holocaust are grounded in conspiracy theories that vary in sophistication and ingenuity. a hungarian publisher of mein kampf, aron monus, for example, argued in his book les secrets de l’empire nietzschéen17 (1992) that the jews paid hitler to carry out the holocaust, portraying hitler as a zionist agent who worked towards the creation of the state of israel.18 similarly, arvéd grébert’s contribution to the volume an attempt at a political profile of jozef tiso (1992) argued that the international jewry and the zionists supported hitler and provoked the war in order to bring about the establishment of the jewish state (quoted in shafir 2002: 43). a 17 translated as conspiracy: the empire of nietzsche. 18 a variant of this claim would have adolf eichmann pass for a zionist agent. variation on that theme claims that zionism prevented assimilation, the failure of which in turn provoked the holocaust (meštan 2000). another cluster of conspiracy-type arguments focuses on the claim that jews forced hitler into self-defense by boycotting german goods, and driving towards the war that hitler desperately sought to avoid (vidal-naquet 1995), or that it was jewish disloyalty and even aggression that triggered a defensive response. shafir (2002) quotes several examples of the latter from romania, including the argument that antonescu’s punitive measures were triggered by the alleged jewish support for the soviet occupation forces in bessarabia and northern bukovina in 1940, and the claim that the aforementioned iaşi pogrom was a reaction to jewish disloyalty vis-à-vis romanian and german forces.19 similarly, the slovak national uprising that started on 29 august 1944 (it was crushed by the nazis in october), and in which some jews participated,20 was quoted as jewish aggression that provoked their deportation (meštan 2000). the postcommunist modulation of the argument of jewish antagonism and disloyalty to the ‘host nations’ rests on the widespread identification of jews with communism. this claim is “used to deny responsibility for national failures and crimes during the fascist period, the war, and the communist period which followed it” (volovici 1994: 8). the equation jews = bolsheviks not only pertained to the jews who began to appear in public functions, in politics, in the military and in the secret services after the war,21 but also to the “alleged jewish culpability for the misdoing 19 allegedly, jews signalled to enemy planes and spied for the soviets. 20 given that the internment in slovakian camps started on 26 march 1942, thus before the uprising, jewish participation in the uprising could hardly have been massive (hilberg 2003). 21 their ranks were subsequently purged of jews, but this fact does not change the extent and the intensity of this belief. jen typewritten text 69 and disasters of the communist regimes” (volovici, 1994:8). marxism was and continues to be presented as “a ‘jewish’ ideology, emanating from judaism as a tool to rule the world and enslave other nations” (volovici 1994: 8). the allegation that the jews who rose to higher echelons of the communist regimes and its security forces in the first years after the war used the repressive apparatus at their disposal to take revenge against the local population22 is especially well-suited for vilification of the jews because it puts a more immediate and personable spin on the issue. last, but not least, jews were sometimes accused of executing their own annihilation. in his infamous book the wasteland of historic reality (1989), franjo tudjman, the first president of independent croatia, went a step further by claiming that the jews imprisoned in the jasenovac concentration camp in croatia during wwii assisted the ustasha in perpetrating the holocaust: “in the jasenovac camp the management was in the hands of the jews;” quoting a witness, vojislav prnjatovic, he wrote that the jews “managed to grab all the more important jobs in the prisoners hierarchy,” concluding that “the jew remains the jew, even in the jasenovac camp … selfishness, craftiness, unreliability, stinginess, deceit, are their main characteristics” (tudjman 1989: 160, 172-3; sekelj 1997). furthermore, tudjman claimed that the jasenovac concentration camp in which several hundred thousand jews, roma, and serbs were killed, was a “myth” blown out of proportion to castigate the croatian nation (shafir 2002). meštan (2000: 188) quotes other examples of similar claims, for example, the one put forth by gabriel hoffman in a 1998 article for the slovakian zmena, where the author ‘revealed’ that the sereì forced labor camp was run by a certain “hauptobersturmführer zimmermann” who was no one else than “the dreaded simon wiesenthal” who 22 for a compassionate account of jewish revenge against the germans in occupied poland see sack 1993. allegedly ordered the murders of jews suspected of collaboration with the nazis. the legacy of organized or systematic forgetting of the holocaust, coupled with post-1989 efforts to rehabilitate the nationalist leaders who collaborated with the nazis or came to terms with the dark patches of the national wwii pasts, produced patterns of anti-semitism that range from minimalization and/or externalization of the atrocities committed, deflections of responsibility to comparative trivialization,23 and outright denial of the holocaust. the communist legacy of anti-zionism and antiisraelism dates back to the 1967 six-day war when all the members of the warsaw pact (with the exception of romania) broke off diplomatic relations with israel in protest against ‘israel’s imperialist policies towards the arab states.’ since the communist ideology “as a matter of principle rejected anti-semitism” (fatran 2002), anti-zionism and anti-israelism became a convenient disguise for anti-semitism during the communist rule. poland’s thinly disguised ‘anti-zionist’ campaign of 1967-1968 (stola 2000), which resulted in the in the forced exodus of most of the remaining jews left in the country, some 15,000 to 20,000 people, is a telling example of anti-zionism that was used as a pretext for anti-semitic measures. although anti-zionism and anti-israelism had the status of official communist foreign policy doctrine, the sources of its ideations were clearly rooted in ‘old anti-semitic’ imagery, except that the jew was replaced by the collective incarnation – israel.24 a 23 shafir (2002: 60) defines comparative trivialization as the “willful distortion of the record and of the significance of the holocaust, either through the ‘humanisation’ of its local record in comparison with atrocities committed by the nazis, or through comparing the record of the holocaust itself with experiences of massive suffering endured by local populations or by mankind at large at one point or another in recorded history.” 24 for a discussion of anti-zionism, antiisraelism and new anti-semitism, see klug (2003). jen typewritten text 70 new element is thus added to the ‘classical’ conspiracy theories, that of “the malign and dominant role of israel in present day conspiracy scenarios, especially in the work of the mossad” (volovici 1994: 4). with the collapse of communism, anti-semitism soared, while seriously biased and uninformed media reporting on the israelipalestinian conflict, and the official antizionist and anti-israeli pronouncements remained unchallenged. anti-semitism, anti-zionism, and treatment of the holocaust in contemporary slovenia: some remarks as the head of the institute for ethnic studies’ task force for jewish studies and anti-semitism, i was invited to accompany the slovenian minister of foreign affairs, dr dimitrij rupel, to the organization for security and co-operation in europe (osce) conference on anti-semitism that was hosted by the german ministry of foreign affairs in berlin on 28-29 april 2004. dr rupel delivered a speech that assured his high-ranking audience that no violent anti-semitic acts by authorities or by the media have been reported in slovenia. there has also been no court case or charge for a criminal act connected with antisemitism. it has to be stressed that cases of radical, classical negation of the holocaust are not detectable in slovenian public discourses. slovenian public school textbooks present the holocaust adequately.25 after his presentation, the minister told me that he did not deem it necessary to consult me on the content of his speech because he had judged that slovenia was not immediately concerned with the issues discussed at the conference. he substantiated his observation with the 25 address by dr dimitrij rupel, minister of foreign affairs of the republic of slovenia, at the berlin osce conference on anti-semitism. http://www.osce.org/events/conferences/antisemitism2004/. statement of popular belief that the existence of a small and relatively well assimilated jewish community precludes anti-semitism. dr rupel’s statement at the conference and his above-reported comment are significant to the extent that they reveal the scope of understanding of anti-semitism in central and eastern europe in general, and in slovenia in particular. the narrow definition of anti-semitism as violent anti-semitic acts followed by criminal charges, radical holocaust denial, and inadequate treatment of the holocaust in textbooks, underpins the belief that anything short of burning synagogues or assaulting jews in the streets does not qualify as anti-semitism. given that there are no synagogues in slovenia26 and that slovenian jews have not retained any external sign that would make them recognizable as such, even the narrow definition of anti-semitism cannot apply, because the jewish identity of the hypothetical victim would be simply dismissed as irrelevant or even doubted. in contrast to the situation in many other central and east european countries, where the ‘unmasking’ of political opponents has been an effective tool of political battle, slovenia’s jews have always been ‘masked’ as non-jews and their jewishness unrecognized or ignored. public display of jewish ancestry of public figures is discouraged in slovenia and, even when prominent people of jewish origin publicly acknowledge their ancestry, their declarations are ignored or dismissed as irrelevant (luthar and šumi 2004: 42). this is because of the deeply rooted belief that slovenia as a notoriously “ethnically homogenous” country is entirely devoid of jews, corroborated by the persuasion that jewishness and slovenianess are mutually exclusive. therefore, even slovenians who 26 there is an old synagogue in maribor that is today used as a cultural center, but does not function as a place of worship, and there is a prayer room in ljubljana, located in an office complex that bears no outside signs of jewish presence. jen typewritten text 71 are halachically27 jewish themselves often perceive their family genealogy as either belonging to such a distant past as to have no impact on their lives, or a datum that does not at all affect their “ethnicity.” although it can sometimes be made into an item of exotic personal charm, it is in turn likely to be perceived as a pretentious ‘monkeyshine.’ this range of postures testifies to the fact that the obliteration of the memory of the jews after the deportations in 1944 has been thorough,28 but also that the externalization of jews has been consistent: the jews of prekmurje were thus considered primarily hungarians, and the jews from the gorenjska region were assimilated to germans. conversely, non-jewish slovenians have very little or no notion at all about jewishness and what constitutes it, as well as about other ‘things jewish.’ an average slovenian would thus very likely consider, as did the slovenian minister of foreign affairs, that jews and everything related to them – especially antisemitism – are so remote from slovenian concerns they are not even worth addressing. the following example illustrates that: i participated in a lunch organized by a foreign ambassador to slovenia, during which a slovenian official had to be reminded by his foreign counterpart that his statement “we do not need the jews, we have gorenjci,”29 intended to dissipate any concern about antisemitism in slovenia, was itself antisemitic. the narrow definition of antisemitism is thus coupled with a ‘natural’ proficiency in manipulating jewish stereotypes that is considered neither antisemitic nor politically incorrect by the 27 according to the jewish law. 28 the synagogue in murska sobota was leveled by the communist authorities in 1954; the jewish cemetery was left to decay, but remnants of the gravestones were later arranged into a memorial park; and the jewish cemetery in beltinci also disappeared. 29 gorenjci are the inhabitants of the gorenjska region, represented in the popular culture as particularly stingy. speakers. the fact that the majority of central and east european states, including slovenia, do not have any specific legislation that would even allow prosecution on grounds of anti-semitism30 (and therefore precludes any charges connected to anti-semitism that are always cited as a proof of its absence), is as telling as is the singularly unfortunate wording of dr rupel’s observation to that effect (“there is no specific anti-semitic legislation in slovenia”31). furthermore, the treatment of the holocaust that is considered adequate in public schooling follows the strategies of denial, deflection, and comparative trivialization described above. as is the case of several other central and east european states, slovenia has some dark chapters in its wwii history to deal with; however, all official or otherwise influential discourses had so far opted for a defensive, deflective approach to the matter. despite the fact that the slovenian homeguard movement was molded after the nazi party and therefore explicitly anti-semitic, featuring slogans like “jews are out to enslave the world,” and “the [communist] partisans were drugged and sold to jews in order to […] destroy the slovenian nation” (quoted in luthar and šumi 2004: 40), the defenders of slovenian collaboration both downplay the antisemitic component and trivialize what happened to slovenian jews by comparing the holocaust to the post-war atrocities committed by the communists. last but not least, the media reporting on the israel-palestinian conflict that the ies’s task force for jewish studies and antisemitism has been monitoring very closely over the past year, has been extremely biased against israel, and contains statements and expressions of opinion that are clearly anti-israeli, even anti-semitic: vilifying israel, comparing it to nazi 30 see šumi, irena and hannah starman, evaluation of available data on anti-semitism in the 10 candidate countries of eastern and central europe : eumc report. ljubljana: inv, 2004. 31.address by dr dimitrij rupel. jen typewritten text 72 germany,32 openly glorifying palestinian suicide bombers,33 etc. very limited knowledge of the holocaust, of the establishment of the state of israel, and the genealogy of the israel-palestinian conflict even among students of international relations and history34 combined with the traditionally anti-israeli media reporting add to the negative appraisal of the jews that can take the direction of various conspiracytheories, especially when coupled with esoteric, new age anti-semitism that has 32 see for example, zlobec, jaša, 2004, ostre sence dolgih nožev (sharp shadows of the long knives) in mladina, no. 44. 33 numerous articles by the daily delo correspondent in jerusalem, barbara šurk, depict palestinian suicide bombers as national heroes, liberators of their nations, justified in their actions, etc. the recent illness and death of yasser arafat led to a climax of journalistic lyricism that is familiar to the slovenian audience from the times of marshal tito’s dying, endless speculations about his health, and his eventual death on 4 may 1980. tormented eulogies written to commemorate yasser arafat’s life and achievements have included such poetic rambles as: “over the last two weeks we [journalists] counted his [arafat’s] last hours only to see him like a smiling ghost, in the dusty cloud rising from the debris of the israeli destruction, rise his index and his middle finger into the letter v, as we were walking to his funeral” (šurk, barbara, smo danes lahko vsi palestinci (can we all be palestinians today?) in delo, 12 november .2004, p. 1.). the aggregate number of articles devoted to the middle east conflict in three major daily newspapers rarely surpasses 15 per week. during the weeks of arafat’s illness and his death, the number rose to an average of 50, reaching its peak in the week of november 7-13 when 64 articles were devoted to yasser arafat alone. 34 i had the privilege to observe the level of acquaintance with the subject when i guest lectured at several faculties in ljubljana. during one of the lectures on the holocaust and the creation of the state of israel, one of the students had a sudden illumination that the creation of israel happened only three years after the holocaust! been gaining ground in slovenia since its independence in 1991.35 conclusion this brief review of anti-semitism in central and eastern europe hopefully demonstrated the existence of some general trends that partly stem from the common communist legacy, and partly from the postcommunist national (and distinctly nationalist) projects. despite the apparent commonalities that can be perceived at the level of public discourse however, the analysis of anti-semitism in the region begs several questions that will need to be addressed, both within the project postcolony and post-socialism contexts in social scientific writing and teaching and within the ongoing research dealing specifically with anti-semitism in the area: given the disparities in the wwii experience, the collective memory of the jews, jewish presence in the countries today, to name just a few, to what extent is it analytically productive to treat central and eastern europe as one bloc? where do ideations of jews come from in environments like slovenia, where the jewish presence is systematically misapprehended? what are the hypothetical scenarios of possible change of these ideations? the answer to the first question is a categorical ‘no.’ this simple comparative perspective can serve as a starting set of hypotheses for the forthcoming research on jews and anti-semitism, but is not in itself fruitful, because it is not analytical. the post-colony and post-socialism contexts in social scientific writing and teaching project’s main aim is thus a rethinking of the assumptions on which these comparative claims rest, namely the existence of a relatively homogenous habitat called postsocialist context. with regards to antisemitism in the region, the most often-cited 35 it is featured, for instance, in the widely read monthly aura magazine, namely in the form of translations from the swiss zeitenschrift famous for its conspiratory analysis of world politics, especially in the middle east. jen typewritten text 73 exception to the patterns of anti-jewish attitudes is the example of bulgaria, where all of the jews were saved during the holocaust (todorov 1999), but also the above-sketched example of slovenia indicates that a study of attitudes towards jews needs to go beyond an analysis of political and media discoursers and explore how these discourses are translated into people’s intimate understandings and ideations of jews. the ongoing research project, based at the ies, is thus based on two hypotheses: that jews in the slovenian territory have been marked by their physical absence, but that this ‘cryptic presence’ (luthar and šumi 2004) did not preclude the every-day formation of ethnic ideation and differentiation at all levels of public in a manner akin to what paul lendvai (1971) termed ‘anti-semitism without jews.’ the project draws its primary empirical evidence in support of these hypotheses from a fieldwork research that consists of gathering testimonies from three groups of informants: jews who are nowadays citizens/residents of slovenia and who have survived the holocaust, and their offspring; ‘neighbors,’ witnesses, rescuers, and bystanders who in different ways remember the persecution of jews in their immediate vicinity; people whose personal and family genealogies include jewish ancestors, but who relate very differently to this ‘ancestral complex.’ one of the main aims that the project seeks to achieve is to determine the ways in which the attitude towards jews and everything deemed jewish functions as a component of ethnic declarations in the relations that are based in construction of impassable, ethnic differentiations on the one hand, and the relations of passable, cultural difference on the other (šumi 2000) in contemporary slovenia. references cited: bauer, yehuda. 1992. on the applicability of definitions: antisemitism in present day europe in international seminar on antisemitism in post-totalitarian europe. prague, 22-24 may 1992: non-published. braham, randolph l. 1994. anti-semitism and the holocaust in the politics of east central europe in braham, randolph l. (ed.) anti-semitism and the treatment of the holocaust in postcommunist eastern europe. new york: columbia university press, 1-30. cornea, andreai. 1993. les deux paradoxes de l’antisémitisme en roumanie (two paradoxes of anti-semitism in romania) in gresh, alain (ed.), a l’est, les nationalismes contre la démocratie ? (in the east, nationalisms against democracy ?) brussels : editions complexe. levin, itamar. 1998. the last chapter of the holocaust? the struggle over the restitution of jewish property in europe. jerusalem: jewish agency for israel in cooperation with the world jewish restitution organization. deák, istván. 1994. anti-semitism and the treatment of the holocaust in hungary n anti-semitism and the treatment of the holocaust in postcommunist eastern europe, ed. r. l. braham, 99–124. new york: columbia university press. eskenasy, victor. 1994. the holocaust and romanian historiography: communist and neo-communist revisionism in braham, randolph, l. (ed.) the tragedy of romanian jewry, 173-236. new york: columbia university press. fatran, gila. 2002. anti-semitism in slovakia’s political development: the viability of anti-semitic manifestations in anti-semitism at the end of the 20th century, pp. 125-137. bratislava: museum of jewish culture. fox, frank. 2001. a skeleton in poland’s closet: the jedwabne massacre in east european jewish affairs 31, no 1:77-94. gross, jan, t. 2001. neighbours: the destruction of the jewish community in jedwabne, poland. princeton and oxford: princeton university press. hilberg, raul. 2003. the destruction of the european jews (3rd edition). new haven: yale university press. ioanid, radu. 1994. anti-semitism and the treatment of the holocaust in postcommunist jen typewritten text 74 romania in anti-semitism and the treatment of the holocaust in postcommunist eastern europe, ed. r. l. braham, 159–181. new york: columbia university press. klug, brian. 2003. the collective jew: israel and the new antisemitism in patterns of prejudice, vol. 37, no. 2. internet edition: www.palaestina.ch/e/report/klug.pdf. lendvai, paul. 1971. anti-semitism without jews: communist eastern europe. garden city, n.y.: doubleday. luthar, oto and irena šumi. 2004. living in metaphor: jews and anti-semitism in slovenia in moskovich, wolf, luthar, oto and irena šumi (eds.) jews and anti-semitism in the balkans. jerusalem, ljubljana: hebrew university of jerusalem, založba zrcsazu, 29-48. karadjova, mariana. 1994. restitution of jewish property in eastern europe in moskovich, wolf, luthar, oto and irena šumi (eds.) jews and anti-semitism in the balkans. jerusalem, ljubljana: hebrew university of jerusalem, založba zrc-sazu, 137-147. meštan, pavol. 2000. anti-semitism in slovak politics (1989-1999). bratislava: museum of jewish culture. joanna michlic. 2002. coming to terms with the "dark past": the polish debate about the jedwabne massacre. jerusalem: the vidal sassoon international center for the study of antisemitism, the hebrew university of jerusalem. internet edition: http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/actatxt1.html. monus, aron. 1992. les secrets de l’empire nietzschéen. (secrets of the nitzschean empire). santon, isle of man: interseas editions. novick, peter. 1999. the holocaust in the american life, boston and new york: houghton mifflin company. sekelj, laslo. 1997. antisemitism and jewish identity in serbia after the 1991 collapse of the yugoslav state in analysis of current trends in antisemitism, acta no. 12. jerusalem: the vidal sassoon international center for the study of antisemitism, the hebrew university of jerusalem. internet edition: http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/actatxt1.html. shafir, michael. 2002. between denial and “comparative trivialization”: holocaust negationism in post-communist east central europe. analysis of current trends in antisemitism, acta no. 19. jerusalem: the vidal sassoon international center for the study of antisemitism, the hebrew university of jerusalem. steinlauf, michael c. 1996. poland in wyman, d. s. (ed.) the world reacts to the holocaust, pp. 81-155. baltimore and london: johns hopkins university press. stola, dariusz. 2000. kampania antysyjonistyczna w polsce 1967-1968. warsaw: isp pan. english paper the antizionist campaign in poland 1967-1968 is available online: www.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/pdf/02_stola.pdf. šumi, irena. 2000. kultura, etničnost, mejnost. (culture, ethnicity, boundary). ljubljana : založba zrc-sazu and institute of ethnic studies. todorov, tzvetan. 1999. la fragilité du bien: le sauvetage des juifs bulgares. (the fragility of goodness: why bulgaria’s jews survived the holocaust). paris : albin michel. tudjman, franjo. 1989. bespuca povijesne zbiljnosti: rasprava o povijesti i filozofiji zlosilja (wastelands of historical reality: discussions on history and philosophy of aggression and violence). zagreb: matica hrvatska. vago, rafael. 2002. anti-semitism and politics in post-communist central and eastern europe in anti-semitism at the end of the 20th century. bratislava: museum of jewish culture. vidal-naquet, pierre. 1995. les assassins de la mémoire. (assassins of memory). paris : seuil. volovici, leon. 1994. antisemitism in postcommunist eastern europe: a marginal or central issue? acta occassional papers, no. 5. jerusalem: vidal sasoon international center for the study of antisemitism, hebrew university of jerusalem. internet edition: http://sicsa.huji.ac.il/5leon.htm jen typewritten text 75 tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 65 who is responsible for our health? changing concepts of state and the individual in post-soviet ukraine maryna bazylevych state university of new york at albany in this article i examine contestations in the transforming health care system of ukraine, which have gained momentum in the past few years of destabilized political process in the country.1 perhaps the most prominent health care discourse that has captured public attention is the shift of responsibility for one’s health away from the state and onto the individual. analysis of the debates that surround ukrainian health care can help us map the dynamics of post-socialist scripts on the roles of the state and the individual. this article will explore the ways in which the national health care policies contribute to spatalization of the state (ferguson and gupta 2002) by focusing on some of the discourses engaged by the current government and their interaction with people working in the biomedical sector. the dynamics of the concept of responsibility are central to this discussion and will guide the article. in the midst of political debates, the current state administration has sought to move the country towards european integration. the ukrainian ministry of health is promoting reforms that emulate the western european model of health care ideology, delivery and financing. these attempts at transformations aim to align the ukrainian health care system with western standards and thus assist the country’s efforts to gain eu membership. the route pursued here is one of restructuring the crisis-ridden centralized soviet health care model that is operating in ukraine today and implementing more market-driven mechanisms. among the most significant proposed policies are the implementation of national health insurance, a new focus on primary health care institutions as opposed to the current trend of (over-) spatalization, and the legalization of a fee-for-service system in contrast to the current dominance of informal exchanges (polishchuk 2005). although these ideas may sound promising on paper, very little has been done by way of officially adopting the new policies and initiating their implementation. methods and research setting the article draws on ethnographic fieldwork research i conducted in central and western ukraine during 2006 – 2008. i use data from key participants’ interviews, life histories and focus groups. my broader research project focuses on the transformations in the ukrainian health care system, changing meanings of medical professionalism and morality, and their interactions with gender categories. for the purposes of this paper, i scrutinize the national policies and trends in health care, as they are understood by the most immediately engaged parties, such as health care administrators and physicians. this population group is centrally located in the debates surrounding the shifting roles of the state and the individual in the ukrainian health care system. through the eyes of these insiders of the health care system, i will track local understandings of the unfolding socioeconomic, political and institutional transformations and the meanings attached to them to unpack the concepts of rights and responsibilities. the participants for this study were recruited from different positions and institutions in the health care system, including health care administrators (head physicians, municipal authorities), established physicians in statesponsored clinics and some private facilities, and primary providers, including pediatricians. i focused on a broader range of variation among health care professionals to capture a variety of voices, including the older generation of providers trained in the soviet union and younger physicians who made their professional choice after ukrainian independence (i.e. post1991). the data were collected in the capital city of kyiv (pop. 2.8 million), as well as the central ukrainian city of vinnytsia (pop. 350,400) to compare center-periphery dynamics in the medical profession. today, ukraine continues to use the hierarchical and centralized soviet health care model mandated by the ministry of health. the constitution of ukraine appoints legal responsibility for ensuring free and universally accessible health care to the state: anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 66 the state creates conditions for effective medical service accessible to all citizens. state and communal health protection institutions provide medical care free of charge; the existing network of such institutions shall not be reduced (constitution of ukraine 1996. article 49. official english translation). the ukrainian health care system has inherited systemic problems, which have been magnified in the post-socialist years of general economic and political crisis (ponomarenko 1999). currently, only about 4% of the ukrainian gdp is spent annually on health care (bezrukov 2003), compared to the 8% recommended by the world health organization. ukraine currently experiences a mortality crisis with average life expectancy 73 years for females and 67 years for males, which is on average 11.76 years less than in western european countries. ukraine’s population has fallen by five million since independence, with fertility rates one of the lowest in europe. deaths from cardiovascular diseases have increased by 40%, and communicable diseases are also on the rise (lekhan et al. 2004, who in ukraine statistics). the country’s socioeconomic crisis has created an environment in which health problems flourish. in the context of skyrocketing prices on pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, equipment, energy and utility costs, “free” and “accessible” health care is essentially substituted by the informal fee-for-service system. the financial burden falls first and foremost on the patients. the lowest-income layer contributes a disproportionately large portion of their income towards their health care (ponomarenko 1999). the informal payments for medical services are ubiquitous, but because of their shadowy nature, they are not well researched. ex-minister of health dr. mykola polishchuk and the ukrainian national academy of medical sciences (2005) estimate that over 50% of all health care financing originates from unofficial and quasi-formal payments. patients may incur any of the following informal costs: purchase of medications and supplies; payments to the physician or the surgery team; payments to nurses or sanitary workers; and miscellaneous fees to speed up access to scarce resources and services (thompson and witter 2000:172). it is hard to over-emphasize the discontent of the local population. the health care administrators, physicians and patients alike screamed from the pages of newspapers, interview tapes, and television screens that health care was not accessible to all, did not always offer high quality services, and lacked advanced technology, medications and supplies. i now turn to a discussion of the proposed direction of health care reforms and changing understandings of the individual and state rights and responsibilities that accompany them. i then explore how these discourses are re-negotiated by the insiders of the health care system on the ground. analysis of competing narratives about the roles of individuals and the state illuminate the process of spatalization and provide context for understanding the difficult reform process in post-socialist health care. post-socialist politics of health care although people in ukraine are disillusioned by inconsistent and prolonged health care reforms, most long for changes, be it a national health care insurance or other reforms. public opinion polls indicate that in 2004 as many as 75% of the population expressed dissatisfaction with the work of the health care system (polishchuk 2005). perhaps, just as many would express dissatisfaction with the reform process if they were polled about it. drafts of laws that address reforms in health care have gone through four readings in the course of the past five years, and are still being debated. the two-faced nature of the current health care system frustrates most physicians and patients, who want to make the rules of the game clear: “i believe that a person must clearly know what he or she will receive truly free of charge …and what he or she will have to pay for” (interview with halyna, 2007). another respondent agrees, the first problem that we need to solve is figuring out what “free” health care really looks like. medicine for which nobody pays…here is the root of the problem! they [the state] want everything to be all right without anyone paying for health care. in addition, they want to have all the supplies and medications to spare, high salary for the physicians, and keeping everybody satisfied… all of this on the background of free health care! (interview with sergiy, 2007). anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 67 president v. yushchenko’s administration developed a “road-map” of health care development for the next ten years (surzhik 2006). the general direction of the reforms is towards decentralization of the system, bringing in private capital from the general population and employers, implementing open market principles in the health care system, and generally aligning ukrainian medical care with the european union standards. according to the ukrainian ministry of health (2005), the reform packet prioritizes structural reorganization of health care with a principal focus on primary health care providers (family physicians); a switch from centralized health care delivery and management to contractbased health care; increased health care financing; the harmonization of state promises with the financial abilities of the health care system; the implementation of a quality control system; conducting more active policy making in human resources; and better regulation of the pharmaceutical sector. the allocation of responsibility for one’s health is prominent in discussion of health care reforms. people are about to be officially asked to pay for something that has been framed as the fundamental “human right” for a period of almost a century. it will dramatically change the idea of the state and its roles. although informal payments have been in circulation for a long time, their illegal nature still allows for a space in the minds of people that health care must be free, and they blame their physicians and the bureaucracy for this discrepancy with the ideal. now, people are being asked to part with this image and to move from universally free care to only a minimum health care provision (sheiman 2000). even the most ardent supporters of health care reforms insist on at least the basic medical help being free and accessible for the population: “medical services need to be fee-based, and medical help needs to be free! … we need to have a guaranteed minimum of health care provision” (interview with lev, 2007) political unrest permeates ukrainian society. because health care is sponsored by the state, it is especially influenced by sways in political power. in the past five years, at least four ministers of health tried their hand at running the biomedical field. none of them made much headway (bobrov 2006). respondents were confident that “fish starts rotting from the head,” and that political fighting of different lobbying groups and attempts to gain control over the million-dollar funds were at the root of the problem. as one informant who has worked in the municipal health care administration for over ten years stated: the question is: who will control the prospective national insurance funds? it may be the governmental structures … or private parties… it is clear that we are talking about billions of dollars… as of today, i believe it has to be the governmental structure that would control the insurance funds, because there is no honest private capital at this point of accumulation of wealth in ukraine. here we currently have fordism… “don’t ask me where i got my first million!” the attitude to money is, to say the least, unscrupulous, and we cannot give the new capitalists access to another source of money at this point (interview with leonid, 2007). other respondents were even harsher in arguing that a fight for power and money is to blame for the ineffective attempts of the reforms. a young physician in the beginning of his medical career pointed out: i see no light in the end of this tunnel. it is deadly silent here [about the reforms]. the fight for power is ongoing. the cabinet of ministers – president president – cabinet of ministers… it makes me sick to my stomach…if you had asked me two years ago, when yushchenko and the orange revolution [happened], i would have told you – oh! now we are talking! now everything will finally move from the dead point. now we will get things going (rus. “сейчас прогреем и поедем”)!2 aha…see, there is no light anywhere… anywhere… everything is falling down. destruction, disarray, disorder… and nobody to rescue what remains… (interview with oleg, 2007). health care is a fruitful field for political parties to use in their programs as good “pr,” yet none of the political forces in ukraine today offers a realistic and clear-cut health care policy plan. the statements are mostly demagogical (skrypnyk 2006). no matter what anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 68 reforms will eventually take root in ukraine, they are bound to meet some degree of social resistance, because their direction is towards shifting the responsibility for health onto the individuals and away from the state. none of the political parties are interested in unpopular statements, and withdrawal of free health care provided by the state is not popular, because a large portion of the population is impoverished and relies on at least a minimum of statesponsored resources. in addition, hardly any work is being done on promoting the health care system reforms among the population. instead, the suggestions to implement health insurance are often understood by the public as an attempt to get access to their hard-earned money. what the population sees is less health care for more money. thus, political parties see meddling in health care programs as political suicide (andrusiv 2006, commentary). additionally, there is resistance to reform on the part of those officials who have found a lucrative niche, and those who are afraid of losing their positions in a new health care system. some medical workers (mostly medical doctors) may also resist the proposed reforms, for they have already established their clientele and receive regular informal income at the cost of the state, which provides free room and board for patients, free utilities, and labor of the supporting staff (interview with vsevolod, 2006). i argue that these processes could be understood through an examination of the changing concepts of state and individual and their social roles. changing concepts of state and individual: theoretical considerations there are competing public discourses in ukraine and other post-socialist states on the role of the individual in improving his or her own health status. some of the more salient tendencies can be loosely divided into those that emphasize the responsibility of the individual in managing her or his health, and those that bestow the responsibility on the state and critique its failure to fulfill its constitutional promises. discourses emanating from the current “eu hopeful” ukrainian state administration emphasize the responsibility of the individual and urge ukrainians to protect their health through the following material and non-material actions: healthier lifestyle (exercising, cutting down on alcohol and tobacco, eating healthy); seeking out health insurance opportunities; and making more sensible use of the existing health care resources. most of the interviewed health care providers emphasized this approach at least to a degree. current scholarship that focuses on health care reforms in post-socialist societies (apanasenko 2006, musiy 2006, pyrig 2006, polishchuk 2005, barr et al. 1996, cockerham 1999) also promotes this discourse on individual responsibility. “state dependency” (cockerham 1999) theory offers some of the most critical arguments within this discourse. it explains unhealthy behaviors on the part of large number of ukrainians as rooted in their soviet past, when their health care choices were made for them by the authoritative state. “state dependency” theory claims that by inertia, many ukrainians do not attempt to provide for their health independently and do not follow a healthy lifestyle because they expect to have state support when they need it. contrary to cockerham’s state dependency theory (1999), apanasenko (2007) argues that this attitude towards health is not so much about dependence on the state, but rather about (mal) adjustment to new values when the established expectations are clashing with new realities. according to him, less than 1% of the ukrainian population is currently in the “safe health zone,” while twenty years ago at least 20% of the ukrainian population fell under this category. state dependency alone, therefore, cannot account for continuing deterioration of the public health indicators. still, this personal responsibility-focused approach does not account for structural obstacles to leading a healthful life. such theories emphasizing healthier lifestyles ignore larger social structures that may be responsible for poor health indicators, such as the informal commercialization of health care and problems of access to it by the newly formed social classes (baer 2003). public discourses that ascribe responsibility for the nation’s health to the state focus on the constitutional promises and the state’s failure to meet them. people are all too aware that more often than not they will be asked to pay for their medications, supplies, and consultations. conflicts with health care professionals flourish, and the medical workers simply cannot deliver the promises of the state, while approximately 19% of the population is below the poverty line. my interviewees jokingly quoted a famous soviet joke: “порятунок потопаючих – справа рук самих потопаючих” anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 69 (rescue of the drowning victims is the responsibility of the drowning victims). exminister of health polishchuk (2005) argued that the level and quality of health care services accounts only for 10-15% of the population’s health indicators, while lifestyle, income, environment, education and genetic factors contribute 85-90%. some of my interviewees immediately identified this statement as an attempt of the state agencies to avoid responsibility (interview with halyna, 2007). no wonder that a popular ukrainian joke re-named the ministry of health into “a ministry without health” (ukr. міністерство без охорони здоров’я) or “ministry of burying alive” (ukr. міністерство здравопоховання) (podolyan 2006). the clash of these salient discourses demonstrates the current complex renegotiation of state and individual roles in health care. administrators, providers and users of the health care system are searching for new ways to spatialize the ukrainian state. i argue that health care polemics in ukraine can at least in part be explained by the conflict between the ways in which the state wishes to project its roles and the ways in which the individuals imagine the state. granted, the state is not a solid unified body, but rather a collection of competing agendas and influences. i borrow the concept of state spatialization from ferguson and gupta (2002), who argue that states are not merely bureaucratic entities, but they also function to produce symbolic and culturally determined images in order to be represented in a particular desired way. a series of “metaphors” are offered to the population as a toolkit, with which one could conceptualize the state: “through specific sets of metaphors and practices, states represent themselves as reified entities with particular spatial properties…by doing so, they help to secure their legitimacy, to naturalize their authority, and to represent themselves as superior to, and encompassing of, other institutions and centers of power” (ferguson and gupta 2002:982). everyday practices make such metaphors routine and easily recognizable. thus, states are constructed and use sets of images and practices to confirm their authority and legitimacy. free access to health care has been formulated as a fundamental right of the ukrainians, and it has become a part of routine expectations of the state role. free health care is a powerful image that has an important role in securing legitimacy and authority of the state. inefficient health care transformations concern not only reformulation of the health care structure and financing, but also ideology, or the metaphors in which the state is imagined. the players involved in discussions about health care reforms are struggling to piece together a new image of the state that would be socially acceptable, effective and improved compared to the current inefficient system. there is no single image in which the state is spatialized; it is rather a dynamic, negotiated set of images and practices. this process is especially bold and profound in the current sociopolitical and historical context in ukraine. rethinking the ideology of health care morality and responsibility through physicians’ eyes how are these dynamics negotiated on the ground, by physicians working within these new discourses on rights and responsibilities in the context of changing social relations? in what ways do physicians navigate the tangled health care system and how do they understand their current roles and responsibilities? local mass media often accuses ukrainian physicians of low professionalism, immorality, and bribe taking (barr et al. 1996). despite the complicated and conflicted relationships with the patients, i found that many ukrainian physicians managed to strike a relatively comfortable living according to local economic standards. although official wages of ukrainian physicians are not high, they often represent a fraction of their unofficial income, such as patients’ informal payments, second jobs in private clinics and pharmaceutical companies. these informal and semi-formal earnings often constitute the bulk of physicians’ actual incomes (kornai 2001). because it is a state job, the medical profession also has the advantage of being one of the few stable professions in the extremely unstable postsocialist world. it is therefore reasonable to suggest that the ukrainian biomedical profession may be more prestigious and lucrative than the current scholarship shows (navarro 1977, reskin and roos 1990), even though the newly accrued prestige may be achieved through somewhat questionable routes. responsibility and formulations of morality are being reconstructed, and are especially illuminating in the case of physicians due to their precarious role as middle-men and middle-women between the state and the patients. anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 70 michele rivkin-fish (2005) discusses these new income venues and the consequent renegotiation of doctor-patient relationships. she argues that soviet physicians utilized the ideology of medicalization to assert their authority and to broaden their limited socioeconomic status. acquaintance relations and informal exchanges served to facilitate work and were based on an ideology of moral obligation rather than personal enrichment. with post-socialist changes, physicians are rethinking the meaning of professionalism, and now accept monetary payments in lieu of other forms of gratitude. a term used to indicate informal payment is “лiвак” (ukr.) meaning “left,” unofficial, unaccounted for. sufficient income was repeatedly mentioned as a crucial aspect of physicians’ professional dignity. when prompted to discuss the motivation behind his work, one young physician who has not been able yet to find a lucrative employment niche commented, “how can we talk about prestige, higher purpose of medicine, doctors’ call to help people?! decent level of income is my main motivation at this point. there could be no other under the circumstances!” (interview with sergiy, 2007). this informant quickly and accurately identified the idealized discourse of the enlightened and dignified medical profession and ridiculed it. he felt that presenting an ideal picture of the medical profession was a slap in the face to young specialists who are struggling to make ends meet. sufficient or “decent” income was repeatedly equated with respect and a sign of professional achievement rather than a sign of corruption of lack of morale. the concept of what it means to be a good doctor now constitutes a changed set of values, and includes “decent” income as one of the major expectations. this illustrates physicians’ engagement with broader social phenomena, such as the formation of a new social contract between doctors and patients, and a renegotiation of their rights and responsibilities in the context of reorganization of social classes and marketizations. in my larger project, i demonstrate that these changes in biomedical morality are influences by competing discourses that carry both socialist and new post-socialist rationalities that inform material and nonmaterial aspects of the medical work. in this article, i would like to emphasize the shift in understanding the rights and obligations on the part of both physicians and patients, understandings that are circumscribed by new social relations unleashed by the open market and poorly regulated capitalism in ukraine. rights versus obligations despite the seeming status quo of the ukrainian health care system where the constitution froze it in a socialist limbo, a multitude of changes has long been under way. the ukrainian biomedical field is reorienting itself towards a different set of values, along with the rest of the post-socialist society. the ways in which biomedicine is practiced are transforming, and the former focus on citizens’ obligations is now changing towards a closer look at the individual rights. soviet medical students were trained to work with each patient with a degree of freedom in making their professional decisions. an ideal physician was imagined as responsible and enlightened, and the work as a creative process. “medicine is an art. no two patients are the same” (interview with lev, 2007). in contrast, the western-style medicine towards which ukraine is striving, focuses on democratic principles: attending to the rights of the patients. this type of medical work follows standardized protocols, or “standards of care.” these are the algorithms of diagnostic procedures, treatments, and medication schedules. the root of the difference is in the means of reaching the final goal: soviet physicians were encouraged to save or improve the health of the patient in whatever ways they deemed the best or possible, while western physicians have had to maneuver within the frames of medical protocols (interview with lev, 2007). currently, such standards of care are being introduced in ukraine, but they are not strictly enforced. my informants considered the protocols unrealistic given the economic situation. the protocols require a certain level of technology and specific medication schedules among other things, which are far from accessible to the majority of clinics and patients. hospital administrations do not control whether the protocols are followed (especially if the treatment results are acceptable), and the current standards of care carry only a declarative value. many respondents felt that the most appropriate way to approach the patient was to work within his or her financial abilities, and design the treatment course in a way that would not bankrupt the patient’s support network. yet, it is a high order to fill – since the health care anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 71 facility and the particular physician can be held responsible for not following the protocols in case of outside investigation. the uncertainty in health care makes it difficult for the physicians and patients to navigate the system. the current ambiguity of the use of medical protocols in ukraine illustrates a new type of “bioethics” (muller 1994) in this post-socialist setting, a bioethics that has been formulated in terms of “medical morality” (fox and swazey 1984). the ukrainian health care system is not financially or ideologically prepared for the westernized focus on individual rights. these are still being actively negotiated and experimented with. meanwhile, physicians are attempting to reconcile their own ambitions, material limitations, new professional regulations, and the overarching ideas of what is right and wrong. generating (and generations of) moralities the changing locus of responsibility in matters of health care is especially clearly illuminated by the intergenerational differences within the biomedical field. though with many exceptions, in general, older physicians trained in the soviet union had a more critical assessment of the current developments in the field compared to the younger generation of doctors graduating in post-socialist ukraine. however, this division is quite rough with plenty of older respondents actively involved in the new earning strategies, and younger respondents unable to conform and longing for the predictable order of the soviet times. many older physicians were convinced that the ukrainian health care was staying afloat only thanks to the efforts of the older generation. an older respondent with many years of medical work under his belt quoted voltaire to jokingly characterize some of the younger doctors’ work ethics: “physician must entertain the patient while nature is curing him” (interview with vsevolod, 2007). it is also younger physicians who often take second and third jobs to supplement their incomes, which are sometimes unrelated to medicine (it technologies, sales, etc.), since, unlike their older counterparts, they are still working on establishing their reputation and loyal clientele. this routine does not aid their professional growth and undermines the patients’ trust, since patients may suspect their doctors as being negligent and collaborating with the pharmaceutical companies rather than genuinely attending to their health. ukrainian medical publications and respondents’ narratives accuse the mass media of nonobjective portrayal of medical workers. they feel like scapegoats of the system trapped between the patient and the state and unable to satisfy the expectations of either one: …everyday … one can hear a massive amount of unreasonable charges against physicians, complaints about their incompetence, inattentiveness, carelessness, corruption, and other big and small deadly sins… at the same time, we hardly get to hear about the miserable situation in health care facilities, lack of equipment, horrendous conditions of work, life and income of the medical workers… (musiy 2006). younger respondents emphasized the lack of incentive to pursue improvement of their professional qualifications. this young physician without established clientele who works in the military sector was sarcastic about his professional future: doctors receive the same salary as janitors, so how can he enjoy life? what good will come of taking the qualification exams (ukr. “здавати категорію”)? five or ten hryvnia3 bonus to the salary (laughs)? then again, if you take the qualification improvement course (ukr. “курси”), at your own expense, you will get another five hryvnias (continues to laugh) (interview with sergiy, 2007). morality quandaries were often framed in relation to “decency” and “order.” older, and especially already retired physicians, understood the informal payments as bribery, i.e. indecent disorderly behavior. in contrast, practicing medical doctors considered the informal payments as an important marker of their professional success and respect. the attitudes of physicians towards the activities of their hospital managers were ambiguous. hospital administrators are in position to make especially good money via unofficial sources, such as regular fees from subordinate administrators (pyramidal “tribute” schemes at their workplaces were reported by many informants); payments for hiring new anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 72 employees; or a portion of revenue from the hospital store, pharmacy, cafeteria, etc. while some respondents commented that they would have done the same, others frowned upon the ways in which administrators managed their workplaces. popular press and professional medical publications call some of the more unscrupulous head physicians “feudal warlords” who hire and fire their employees at will (musiy 2006). in contrast to the evaluation of work of the head physicians, head accountants, administration and other health care officials, nearly all informants viewed the work of their more established practicing physicianscolleagues as “moral.” they argued that despite the popular rumors, there were more patients who did not tip the doctor than those who did. this is especially relevant for younger physicians who have not yet established their clientele, or for physicians in urgent care who have only brief contact with each patient. that is why, the respondents argue: physicians are trying their best to work their way to the patient in order to “milk” at least a couple of hryvnias out of him or her, because they have got to live on something! … because everybody takes this money, because the physician needs a place to live, needs to provide for the family, needs everything like other people do, needs to live… this money is not for luxury, not for chic! (interview with sergiy, 2007). my informants specifically tried to rebuff rumors that the patients will not be helped if they do not pay extra. this female physician who has worked in the emergency hospital for all of her decade-long career, emphasized: if the emergency brigade delivers a patient with a stroke, a physician will hustle and provide the necessary treatment regardless of the money. how can we wait for the money? this is our job. no matter what, a physician … does his or her work… we take care of the homeless… we, maryna, provide free health care to two categories of patients: the homeless and the government [employees]! yes, yes, the hospital will provide them with free medications! (laughs) yet, what kinds of medications do we have? the most primitive ones, but they do not care, they get hospitalized and treated. in order not to spend 200 – 500 hryvnias, they will agree to be treated with the lowest quality of drugs, just so that they do not have to pay! (ukr. “на халяву”) (interview with halyna, 2007). although the informal economy could presumably improve the experiences of individual patients, it draws upon the resources of the population without making positive infrastructural changes (thompson and witter 2000: 186). informal payments are ever-present, yet not official (grodeland et al. 1998). we witness shifting ideas about the contract between medical workers, patients and the state. the health care sector remains a statesponsored project in post-socialist ukraine, yet despite this association, the participants of the system often work on the assumption that the state as such has already retreated from this space. the problems of the health care are left untackeled, while the providers and their administrators scramble to continue to make income and do meaningful work. elizabeth dunn (2008) discusses similar processes in georgia: via her analysis of the canned food industry and its current retreat into domestic sphere, dunn shows how some “social spaces remain uncolonized, unpenetrated and largely abandoned” in post-socialist contexts. though initially these “stateless spaces” are created by withdrawal of the soviet regime, they subsequently continue to grow and expand by the disregard of the new state. the rules by which the ukrainian health care system is called to operate have shown to be incompatible with current structural and infrastructural arrangements. continuing imposition of these rules in an effort to push a certain image of the state creates double standards and backfires. conclusions this article has addressed transformations in ukrainian health care and the debates surrounding them. as the population decreases and its health indicators are dramatically worsening, the health care system is under special scrutiny. the ukrainian pursuit of eu membership informs the restructuring of the health care sector. currently, ukraine continues anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 73 to rely on the soviet model of health care delivery, which is centralized and hierarchical. however, state planning of health care delivery is in sharp contrast to the market economy in other sectors of the ukrainian economy. the ideology of health care is changing, and the roles of the physician, the state, and the patient are currently being re-negotiated. this process is complicated by the incongruence between the ukrainian law and everyday practices in medical facilities. according to the constitution, health care must be free and accessible to all; however, medical facilities are unable to provide such care and increasingly rely on the informal economy. multiple moral codes are currently operating in the ukrainian health care system, where the ideas of right and wrong and state-citizen obligations and responsibilities are now being re-negotiated. this feeds conflicts between physicians, patients, and the state. what was once considered immoral comes to be not only socially acceptable, but formative in the construction of new ideas of professional success. this conflict is especially prominent when examining the differing views on morality held by different generations of those participating in the health care field. the health care reform “road-map” prioritizes decentralization of the system, introducing private capital from population and employers, implementing the principles of the open market within the health care system, and in general aligning the ukrainian medical care with european union standards. however, there has been no headway in the actual designing and implementing of the reforms. health care could be a fruitful field for winning the voters’ loyalty, yet none of the political forces in ukraine today offers a clear-cut health policy plan. no matter what reforms will eventually take place in ukraine, they are bound to meet some degree of resistance, because the direction of the reforms is towards shifting the responsibility for health onto individuals and away from the state. the political parties are wary of such unpopular statements. significantly, health care reforms are being stalled by the political deadlocks between different lobbying groups that are trying to gain control over the million-dollar medical industry. this paper has argued that health care polemics in ukraine can at least in part be explained by conflicts between the ways in which the state wishes to project its role and the ways in which citizens imagine it. using ferguson and gupta’s (2002) theory of state spatialization, i have argued that in the ukrainian society where free health care is formulated as one of the basic rights, radical reforms could be a major blow to legitimacy and authority of the state, for we are dealing not only with the reformulation of the health care structure and financing, but also ideology the metaphors in which the state is imagined. spatialization of the state is a dynamic process, and competing public discourses that emphasize varying degrees of individual and state responsibility inform health care transformations. these processes point to the changing ideas about the roles of the state and the individual in ukraine. endnotes 1this article is based on data collected during dissertation fieldwork research in central ukraine in 20072008, and was supported with a wenner-gren foundation dissertation fieldwork grant, a national science foundation doctoral dissertation improvement grant, a benevolent award and a university of albany dissertation fellowship award. parts of this paper were presented at the 2007 association for the study of nationalities convention (“nation, community, and the state”) at columbia university. 2 both ukrainian and russian are spoken in ukraine. some words are included with their corresponding translations to indicate the terms and concepts that do not have clear parallels in the english language, but are important for understanding the context (such as cultural idioms or occupational slang words). i designate ukrainian and russian words/phrases by the indicators “ukr.” and “rus.” 3 the hryvnia (uah) is the ukrainian currency. in may 2009 the official currency exchange rate is currently 1 usd to 7.7 uah, according to the national bank of ukraine. however, the exchange rate is not stable and fluctuates. in the last few years it went from 1 usd to 4.5 uah to 5.5 uah, 7 uah, 10 uah and now back to around 8 uah. references andrusiv, m. 2006 “my ego teriaem,” ili nekotoryie razmyshlenia po povodu “natsionalnogo plana deistviy v interesah zdorovia naroda ukrainy.” mezhdunarodnyi obshchestvenno politicheskiy ezhenedelnik zerkalo anthropology of east europe volume 27, no. 1 page 74 nedeli. 8 (587). electronic document, http://www.zerkalo nedeli.com/nn/show/587/52730/ accessed in march 2006. apanasenko, g. 2007 pochemy vymiraiut vostochnyie slaviane? zerkalo nedeli 1 (630). electronic document, http://www.zerkalonedeli.com/ie/show/ 630/55548/, accessed in jan. 2007. baer, hans a. 2003 the work of andrew weil and deepak chopra – two holistic health/new age gurus: a critique of the holistic health/new age movements. medical anthropology quarterly 17(2):233-250. barr, d., and m. field. 1996 the current state of health care in the former soviet union: implications for health care policy and reforms. american journal of public health 86:307-312. bezrukov, v. 2003 long-term care in developing countries. ten case studies. world health organization. geneva and jdc-brookdale institute the who collaborating centre for health and long-term care policy and research. edited by brodsky, j., j. habib and m. hirschfeld. bobrov, o. 2006 reformofrenia. zerkalo nedeli 35(614). electronic document, http://www.zerkalo nedeli.com/nn/show/614/54478/ , accessed in sept. 2006. cockerham, w. 1999 health and social change in russia and eastern europe. new york: routledge. constitution of ukraine. 1996 chapter ii: human and citizens' rights, freedoms and duties. article 49. electronic 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anthropology, bioethics, and medicine: a provocative trilogy. medical anthropology quarterly 8(4):448-467. musiy, o. 2006 analiz stanu zahystu prav ta interesiv medychnyh pratsivnykiv v ukraiyni. electronic document. http://experts.in.ua/analytics/document1 8666.shtml, accessed in dec. 2006. national bank of ukraine. http://www.bank.gov.ua/engl/default. htm. electronic resource. accessed on may 6th, 2009. navarro, vicente. 1977 social security and medicine in the ussr: a marxist critique. lexington, ma: lexington. http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/587/52730/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/587/52730/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/ie/show/630/55548/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/ie/show/630/55548/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/614/54478/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/614/54478/� http://www.rada.gov.ua/const/conengl.h� http://www.rada.gov.ua/const/conengl.h� http://experts.in.ua/analytics/document18666.shtml� 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transitional economies: implications for health sector reform. international journal of health planning and management 15:169-187. the world bank. ukraine poverty assessment: poverty and inequality in the growing economy. electronic document, http://go.worldbank.org/huljz3a1s1. accessed on march 3rd, 2007. world health organization. countries. ukraine. electronic document. http://www.euro.who.int/ukraine/20080 123_1 accessed on may 6th, 2009. http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/622/55027/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/622/55027/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/627/55367/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/627/55367/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/588/52810/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/588/52810/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/628/55408/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/628/55408/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/622/55026/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/622/55026/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/627/55354/� http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/627/55354/� http://go.worldbank.org/huljz3a1s1� http://www.euro.who.int/ukraine/20080123_1� http://www.euro.who.int/ukraine/20080123_1� “probing the limits of internationalism: african students confront soviet ritual” anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: matusema@shu.edu probing the limits of internationalism: african students confront soviet ritual1 maxim matusevich, seton hall university as this article is being revised for final submission to the editor a small cohort of human rights organizations in russia are preparing to stage a ―march against hatred‖ in st. petersburg. 2 the event organizers hope to attract public attention to the scourge of racial bigotry and xenophobia afflicting post-soviet russia, an epidemic of hatred that has left in its wake dozens of innocent victims – from african students, subjected to physical assaults and harassment in the streets of russian cities, to russia‘s own ethnic minorities, openly abused and publicly humiliated, to murdered human rights activists and scholars. a recent study conducted among africans residing in moscow has revealed the staggering dimensions of the problem: almost sixty percent of those polled had experienced racially-motivated violence. 3 neither the russian government nor the general public seem to be prepared to so much as acknowledge this unfolding crisis of race relations in a country that in a not-so-distant past used to stake its international reputation on a vociferous campaign against racism. it is reasonable to expect that the march in st. petersburg, planned by such groups as the african union of russia and a veteran human rights organization memorial, will attract scant media attention inside russia. if previous protests of this kind are any indication the turnout for the march will be pitifully low and its participants and their message are likely to be met with indifference, if not mockery, from the passers-by. after decades of antiracist and anti-imperialist propaganda during the soviet rule, post-socialist russia and its citizens exhibit little taste for internationalist and egalitarian causes. the purpose of this article is to contextualize the rise of racial intolerance in post-soviet russia by examining some of its historical and cultural roots. i argue that the ideas of race and racial difference entertained by many modern-day russians were formed to a large extent through their encounters with and official and popular representations of africans residing in the soviet union, most of them young men who, from 1957 onwards, traveled to the ussr to pursue affordable higher education. their presence amidst the soviet society and their interaction with both the soviet system and soviet citizens would make a profound impact on the common perceptions of racial difference still resonating across the former soviet spaces. the khrushchevian “thaw” and the 1957 youth festival following nikita khrushchev‘s ascent to power in the post-stalin soviet union, at first just a few and eventually hundreds and even thousands of young africans began to take advantage of generous educational scholarships extended to them by the soviet government. the arrangement, much trumpeted by soviet media and its foreign mouthpieces, was essentially a anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 20 pragmatic one. the soviet union sought to attract african students as a way of enhancing its standing and popularity in the third world at a time when many third world nations were undergoing the rapid process of decolonization. africans hungered for access to free education and, as one former african student in the ussr put it, were prepared to receive it ―even under the ocean.‖ 4 african students traveling and residing in the soviet union of the 1960s-1980s found themselves in a country that bore little resemblance to the soviet russia of its heady postrevolutionary days. much of the early revolutionary fervor had been spent and, under stalin‘s reign of terror, the soviet union acquired some unmistakable characteristics of conservative statism; i.e., the pragmatic interests of the soviet state, and not necessarily communist ideology, informed its international behavior. there was no let up in soviet antiracist and anticolonial propaganda, but it had grown ossified and streamlined to represent the official soviet line in an ongoing cold war bickering with the west; and thus not necessarily reflecting the popular mood in the country. in a similar vein, the soviets continued to pay lip service to the ideals of multiethnic coexistence and ethnic and racial equality that had so impressed the pre-war black ―pilgrims;‖ yet the war experience had deepened russian nationalism and made soviet officialdom ever more apprehensive of ethnic particularisms (estonian, ukrainian, chechen, jewish, etc.), a trend that would extend into the post-stalin period. 5 it is no coincidence that during the last ten years of his life stalin launched a series of ethnic purges (some of them genocidal in nature) against such soviet minority groups as the chechens, the ingush, the crimean tartars, and eventually the jews. the internationalist ideals of the 1920s increasingly lost their luster as stalin turned his ire against ―rootless cosmopolites,‖ many of them bearing distinctly jewish surnames. 6 stalin‘s last years were marked by intense official chauvinism and xenophobia and, as a result, the country‘s deepening isolation from the outside world. the tyrant‘s death in 1953, followed by the rise of nikita khrushchev and his subsequent denunciation of stalinism at the 20 th party congress in 1956 softened the rigidity of soviet society. in the aftermath of khrushchev‘s revelations the country entered a relatively short period of the so-called ―thaw,‖ which, in contrast with the years of stalinism, was a time of cultural and political awakening and relative openness. 7 it was under these transformed circumstances that soviet citizens were treated to a remarkable spectacle – the appearance amidst moscow‘s drabness of a colorful cast of exotic characters, the international delegates of the 1957 youth festival. the young muscovites were euphoric. almost fifty years later, apollon davidson, the doyen of soviet african studies, still remembered the cultural and emotional shock of the festival. davidson, like other soviet students of africa, had never been to the continent and had limited contact with foreigners. and now, over 30,000 foreign youngsters had poured into moscow and for the first time in decades soviet citizens found themselves face-to-face with the representatives of the world ordinarily closed to them. 8 for davidson and his friends the experience of this new openness was nothing short of ―surreal, fantastic.‖ 9 by many accounts, african delegates enjoyed wide (and wild) popularity during the festival. the hotel reserved for anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 21 african delegations quickly turned into a vibrant social spot, ―the liveliest place‖ in town, with soviet youngsters (especially girls) crowding its entrance in hope of getting acquainted with the exotic newcomers. 10 urban folklore circulated the wild tales of russian girls throwing themselves at the exotic looking delegates. the rumors, undoubtedly greatly exaggerated, cast the festival as a veritable extravaganza of interracial love. yet the gathering did excite soviet citizens, unaccustomed to such close, not to mention intimate, contacts with foreigners, pushing the most adventurous towards behaviors both risky and risqué. one of festival‘s unintended consequences was the appearance of a generation of bi-racial ―festival kids,‖ whose presence amidst the soviet populace would serve as a continuous reminder of that 1957 summer of love in moscow. 11 indeed, love was very much in the air. ―africa is shaped like a heart,‖ serenaded poet evgenii dolmatovsky, another contemporary and observer of the festival. 12 soviet authorities had planned the festival to showcase soviet values but the event overwhelmed them and produced some long-lasting and quite surprising ramifications. in august of 1957 millions of soviet citizens received their first exposure to the lifestyles, mannerisms, aesthetics, cultural expressions, and political debates that contrasted most sharply with the soviet everyday. 13 the effects of the festival would linger on for decades; it provided an opening through which western ideas and art forms began to seep into the soviet society. 14 africans, so visible during the festival, would soon begin to arrive in the country in large numbers. they came to study but, in an ironic role reversal, they ended up educating the soviets; they introduced the population steeped in parochialism to modern aesthetics, new art forms, and the liberation political discourse. institutional initiatives and the arrival of african students the 1957 youth festival also rejuvenated the study of africa in the ussr. after the grim decades of stalinist isolationism the soviet union now looked for friends in the developing world where the nations emerging from colonial dependency seemed perfect candidates for just such a friendship. this was the point emphasized by w.e.b. du bois during his 1958 conversation with nikita khrushchev, when du bois argued for the creation within the soviet academy of sciences of ―an institute for the study of pan-african history, sociology, ethnography, anthropology and all cognate studies.‖ 15 du bois‘ argument must have convinced the ebullient khrushchev; in july 1959, the communist party‘s central committee adopted a special resolution provisioning for the creation of a research institute of african studies (later to be known as the africa institute). 16 and less than a year later another party resolution of 5 february 1960 stipulated the founding of a new university to train ―the national cadres for the countries of asia, africa, and latin america.‖ friendship university, also known as lumumba university, would emerge as the flagship institution of higher learning, catering to the needs of third world students and thus to the needs of soviet foreign policy. 17 as these institutional initiatives were being finalized african students began to trickle into the ussr. as of january 1, 1959, there were only seven students from sub-saharan africa anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 22 officially enrolled in soviet institutions of higher learning. 18 however, between 1960 and 1961 the number of african students in the ussr increased almost ten-fold, from 72 to over 500, eventually reaching some 5,000 by the end of the decade. 19 by 1990, on the eve of soviet collapse, the number of africans in the country would rise to 30,000 or about 24% of the total body of foreign students. 20 their entrance into the soviet society proceeded under circumstances vastly different from those that had accompanied the arrival of the black pilgrims of the 1920s1930s. 21 they saw in the soviet union less of a ―promised land‖ of racial equality and more of an educational opportunity of choice. few of these students were committed marxists. in fact, there is some evidence that even those of them who arrived with the backing of foreign communist parties or their front organizations often lacked the appropriate ideological credentials or at least failed to put them to good use once in the ussr. 22 as a result and in stark contrast to the black travelers of the pre-war decades, african students of the 1960s and 1970s were less inclined to give the soviets ―the benefit of the doubt.‖ where the african-americans of the 1920s-1930s, on a tour away from jim crow america, put much faith in soviet rhetoric and rationalized the many soviet deficiencies as a necessary corollary to the ―newness‖ of the socialist experiment, the new arrivals proved to be far less sanguine about the soviets. many of them also arrived from places steeped in political activism, charged with the energy released by the process of decolonization. they brought into the midst of soviet society the very revolutionary fervor and liberation ethos that had marked soviet russia‘s entry into the world some forty years earlier. african students challenge and subvert soviet ritual accounts by african students in the late-soviet union are replete with complaints about drab lifestyles, everyday regimentation, substandard dorm accommodation, spying (real or imagined) by soviet fellow students, etc. 23 upon his arrival in moscow in 1959, an east african student everest mulekezi was quick to discover that he had to share his 14‘ by 16‘ dorm room with three other students, two of whom were ―hand-picked‖ russians. his hopes for a hot bath after a long and arduous journey were also dashed – hot water was only available once a week, on wednesdays from five to eleven o‘clock in the evening. 24 despite the prevailing climate of complacency and the general timidity of their soviet peers, africans protested vociferously against poor living conditions, racist incidents, restrictions on travel within the ussr, restrictions on dating russian girls, and restrictions on forming national and ethnic student associations. as early as march 1960, african students in moscow petitioned the soviet government to curb the expressions of crude racism by soviet citizens. 25 on another occasion, two african students refused to be part of a long established soviet practice – an annual dispatch of thousands of soviet students to work in the countryside during the harvest. the objectors from chad and morocco argued (unconvincingly and probably mockingly) that in their cultures men under 25 years old were not allowed to work in the fields but rather had a special obligation ―to engage in leisure activities.‖ 26 at about the same time four african anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 23 students (theophilus okonkwo of nigeria, andrew richard amar and stanley omar okullo of uganda, and michel ayieh of togo) were expelled from moscow state university for defying an administrative ban on the black african students‘ union. their expulsion and subsequent departure from the country received wide coverage in the western press. the students publicly accused university officials of suppressing the union as well as of imposing severe restrictions on the circulation of ―books and jazz records.‖ okonkwo, amar, and ayieh challenged the soviet authorities in a biting ―open letter:‖ for the soviet leaders to pose before the world as champions of oppressed africa while they oppress millions in their own country and their satellites is hypocrisy at its worst. 27 the death of a ghanaian student in moscow, in december 1963, which his friends suspected to have been a homicide, occasioned an exceptionally angry reaction among african students in the ussr. 28 they staged a protest march on the kremlin demanding a ―bill of rights‖ for african students in the country (the first unauthorized demonstration in the soviet union since the fall of trotsky in 1927 (!)). 29 the press was also raging back home: ―…why did our students… protest in moscow recently?‖ exclaimed a particularly incensed african observer. ―was it not because… our boys had been insulted and attacked on trams, on the streets, in restaurants, in most public places? could it be that our students have grown tired of the hypocrisy of communism and the soviet system?‖ 30 more trouble brewed in 1964 and 1965, with african students in the ussr frequently reporting racist attacks, fights with soviet youngsters, and even feeling compelled to ―carry knives for protection.‖ 31 komsomol officials at moscow state university (mgu) grudgingly acknowledged several instances of scandalous behavior exhibited by soviet students but also argued that africans and other foreigners at mgu had a limited understanding of the selfless and romantic nature of soviet young men, many of whom preferred the hardship of toil in remote siberia to the pleasures of moscow high life. one wonders if it was the ―romantic nature of soviet young men‖ that fueled the passions of one youthful geography major who threatened to ―lynch‖ an african student married to his russian fellow student. or was it a disagreement over their respective work ethics that led another mgu freshman to call upon his african roommate to ―pack up his stuff and go back to mali‖? 32 in may 1965, the soviet authorities tacitly linked the african student community in the country with the idea of political subversion when they expelled a black american diplomat, norris d. garnett, for ―conducting anti-soviet work among students from african countries.‖ 33 garnett‘s departure from the scene hardly had the desired long-term effect. just a few years later, 800 african students went on a week-long strike, this time in kiev, in protest against the expulsion of a 23-year-old czechoslovakian woman for marrying a nigerian fellow-student. that same year a nigerian student sleeping in his dorm room in the city of lvov (l‘viv) was attacked by ―a drunken russian with a chisel.‖ the attacker was reportedly incensed by the nigerian‘s successes with russian and ukrainian girls. the incident quickly turned into a major fight anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 24 involving other nigerian students who had come to the rescue of their compatriot, and as a result three of them were expelled ―for attacking and beating up a soviet citizen.‖ 34 discrimination or alleged discrimination aside, the students‘ resentment, it was noted, stemmed from ―the sole fact of their living in a communist country.‖ 35 once in the soviet union, africans, ―even self-proclaimed leftists,‖ had to reconcile ―the obvious discrepancies between what is said and what actually exists.‖ and what ―actually existed‖ in the moscow of 1960s and 1970s were ―the crowded living conditions, lack of privacy, monotonous diet, inadequate sanitary facilities, and the overall drabness of life.‖ 36 a former african student at moscow state university, writing about his experiences there, maintained that of all foreign students in the soviet union, africans were most upset by russia‘s depressed style of living: no cars, no cafés, no good clothes or good food, nothing to buy or inspect in the stores, no splash of color to relieve moscow‘s damp gray. nothing but shortages and restrictions. no opportunity to let go normally, breathe easily, and enjoy some harmless student fun. not a trace of the civilized pleasures of paris – or even dakar. 37 by expressing their displeasure with the soviet status quo (something that few of their soviet peers dared to do) and by challenging it through their ―foreign‖ lifestyles and cosmopolitan aesthetics some african students became the de facto conduits of dissent. they had more freedom of expression and travel (and quite often more money) than their hosts and many of them arrived from postcolonial settings reverberating with spirited political debates. 38 everest mulekezi remembered intense political discussions he used to hold in his dorm room with some of his russian friends who were absolutely flabbergasted by the openness and nonchalance with which everest and his fellow africans discussed politically sensitive matters. from a soviet perspective, everest, by encouraging his russian friends to question authority and read the western press, clearly acted as an agent of political subversion. by introducing them to jazz he effectively subverted soviet cultural values. it was in the course of one such ―sedition session‖ that a russian friend of mulekezi‘s ―buried his face in his hands‖ and conceded the truth of the african‘s argument: ―it is true we‘re not free… i am not free to read what westerners read. i am not free to visit the west or even travel in my own country without a permit.‖ 39 african students in moscow articulate ideas manifestly out-of-sync with soviet sensibilities in the pages of russian journal, andrea lee‘s perceptive memoir of her time in russia. lee records, for example, an intense conversation she had in a smoke-filled moscow kitchen with a stern-looking eritrean student: ―in my five years in russia, i‘ve come to hate everything about the soviet system. life here is a misery of repression – you yourselves know it… the soviet union has educated me, though not in a way it intended.‖ 40 performing foreignness, performing blackness, performing freedom anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 25 it is not that every african student in the ussr embarked on a collision course with the soviet system. yet being an african in the soviet union also meant that one performed ―foreignness‖ on a day-to-day basis. being black additionally implied an almost automatic association with a number of political and cultural modern phenomena that taxed soviet sensibilities. i am specifically referring here to: a) anti-racist and anti-colonial movements with their strong liberation (and often implicitly religious) message; and b) cultural production associated with black roots and containing an unmistakable anti-authoritarian message. the liberal wing of soviet intelligentsia sometimes embraced the officially sanctioned liberation ―causes‖ for reasons that had little to do with soviet foreign policy. africa‘s struggle for emancipation and freedom evoked some all-too-understandable sympathies among those whose own freedoms were significantly restricted. having visited west africa in the late 1950s the bard of the soviet ―thaw‖ yevgenii yevtushenko penned a series of emotionally-charged and ideologically ambiguous poems. the poet exoticized africa but also mused on a supposed commonality of fate between the savannah (africa) and the taiga (russia): savannah, i‘m the taiga i‘m endless like you i‘m a mystery for you and you‘re a mystery for me… your sons desire for you freedom eternal and towards them i‘m filled with love enormous like the pine trees of my land... 41 on its surface the poem reads as yet another evocation of empathy with african aspirations toward emancipation. indeed, over the years the soviet regime labored to domesticate and appropriate african anti-colonial movements or to claim a kind of ideological kinship to the civil rights movement in the u.s., the movement epitomized by a charismatic baptist minister – by no means a ―natural ally‖ of the ussr. 42 yet the very discussion of civil and human rights in the context of the soviet everyday, characterized by its notorious rigidity and the routine of heavy-handed state and party intervention in the lives of soviet citizens, planted the seeds of dissent. that is why yevtushenko‘s ode to african freedom composed at the time when hopes were running high for a long-lasting post-stalin liberalization of soviet society can also be read as a hymn to freedom – african and russian. in this respect it is significant that one of the first public expressions of dissent in brezhnev‘s soviet union was occasioned by african events. in 1968, andrei amal‘rik, the dissident author of the visionary will the soviet union survive until 1984?, breached a major taboo when he and his wife picketed the british embassy in moscow carrying signs reading ―gowon kills children‖ and ―wilson, don‘t help gowon.‖ 43 this unsanctioned protest was an ingenious act of political defiance. it was the soviet union, not anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 26 britain, that since 1967 had been providing the crucial military aid to the federalist regime of general gowon fighting a bloody civil war against secessionist biafra. probably the most visible aspect of africa‘s subversive challenge to soviet values could be observed in the countercultural prominence of the types of artistic expression usually associated with african/black cultural tradition. living in moscow in the early 1960s andrew amar noted the russian students‘ fascination with jazz music as well as their awareness of its historical roots: one of the things which often brought us together with the russian students was listening to modern jazz music. large numbers of them appreciated the better kind of jazz and also realized and acknowledged that it had developed from the folk music of the african people. 44 with its strong emphasis on improvisation and free spontaneous expression jazz (just as rock music later) provided for a special kind of camaraderie between its listeners that knew no borders and/or ideological divides. jazz as an art form then was bound to run afoul of soviet authorities, the fact duly noted by the observant amar: it was really the popularity that this type of music gained among russian students, thus bringing them into close contact and friendship with american and african students, that really decided the soviet authorities to condemn this kind of music. 45 early soviet commentators saw in jazz the worst manifestations of western decadence. they also fumed over the ―jungle‖ and ―uncivilized‖ roots of the music. when it came to criticizing jazz, gloves came off and the soviet critics of the ―music of grossness‖ reinforced their arguments with the most nauseous racist stereotypes. maxim gorky wrote a devastating essay ―on the music of the gross,‖ which in effect evoked the worst racial stereotypes common in the west. gorky explicitly links jazz to unbridled sexuality of its performers. for gorky, jazz is a symptom of decay and sexual degeneracy, a logical final step in the man‘s descent into spiritual abyss (obesity and homosexuality being the intermediary stages). in subjecting jazz to his searing critique, the great proletarian author faced an obvious dilemma: how does one reconcile one‘s rejection of this ―degenerate‖ music with the feelings of solidarity with and sympathy for its purveyors – the oppressed american blacks? gorky‘s answer bears all the trademarks of lenin‘s creative dialectic. ―american negroes,‖ he intones, ―undoubtedly laugh in their sleeves to see how their white masters are evolving toward a savagery which they themselves are leaving behind.‖ in one sentence gorky recognizes the ―savagery‖ of black people and also provides an ideologically sound, if rather ridiculous, rationalization for the spread of jazz music. 46 africa and africans thus occupied a highly ambiguous place in the soviet everyday. while over the years the soviet state and its ideologues exerted considerable effort in ―bringing anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 27 africa into the fold,‖ the reality of african presence in the ussr was far more multi-layered and complex. as a propaganda weapon africa often jammed and even backfired, and as the soviet collapse loomed closer the idea of africa was playing at least partially a subversive role to the soviet status quo. it is noteworthy then that african themes came to feature prominently in the soviet countercultural production, especially towards the late-soviet period. in 1988, millions of soviet citizens flocked to the movie theaters to see what would become a classic perestroika film assa. 47 by employing a grotesque but poignant pop-cultural symbolism the film exposed to national scrutiny the debility of late-soviet society. the movie‘s main character, an artsy and non-conformist ―boy bananan‖ (played by a countercultural icon sergey bugaev, also commonly known to his peers under a nickname afrika) turns himself into a protagonist of change. 48 bananan‘s youth and lightness of being, his alternative lifestyle, his penchant for hippie-esque outfits, and his eventual tragic end in the hands of mature and business-like men (men of establishment no doubt) combined to put forward a quixotic vision of life in stark contrast to the moribund soviet status quo. set to the throbbing soundtrack ―we wait for changes‖ by an underground rock star viktor tsoi, assa offered both an exposé of and a challenge to the soviet everyday. the very name ―boy bananan‖ evokes the image of an exotic and forbidden (or at least not readily available in the empty-shelved soviet stores) tropical fruit, while the stage name of the actor himself, ―africa,‖ makes the alien quality of the main character even more pronounced, as does the appearance of bananan‘s best friend – a black-skinned russian. for the makers of this popular movie africa obviously presented a point of reference so out of tune with daily soviet experience, so remote and strange as to endow the bearer of such moniker with a distinctive dissident aura. the idea of africa and africa‘s foreignness finds use in another celebrated and paradigmchanging perestroika film – vassily pichul‘s little vera (1989). there is a scene in the movie that never failed to elicit puzzled chuckles from the soviet audience. we see a typical shabby soviet flat and a little black boy glued to a television screen watching a popular russian cartoon. at some point the cartoon characters, three vicious looking but highly likable pirates, break into a light-hearted song about africa: little kids, no matter what you do, don‘t even think of going to africa for walks. africa is dangerous, africa is horrible…. 49 the irony of the scene that shows a black russian child consuming a cultural production that treats africa as an exotic, dangerous, and slightly ridiculous unknown could not fail to register with the viewers. the black boy‘s outward appearance made his absorption in the cartoon highly humorous. yet the significance of this brief cinematic encounter with africa went beyond a anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 28 passing movie moment. little vera gives us a glimpse of popular soviet imagery of africa and alerts the viewer to africa‘s presence in late-soviet public and cultural domains. yes, africa is a somewhat unknown quality but not entirely so. the little boy in the movie didn‘t just materialize out of thin air amidst the clutter of soviet domestic life (even if some of the viewers conclude that to have been the case) – his mother is white, hence the father had to be of african descent. his precise identity is left to our imagination – a foreign sailor, an african student, a romantic guerilla type on training in the ussr, or maybe even a visiting black american musician (partisans of soviet counterculture worshipped louis armstrong, jimi hendrix, bob marley, and others). it is probably not a coincidence that a cult classic like assa utilized an idea of africa and africanness in its treatment of the contemporary soviet condition. such contrasting imagery fleshed out the essentials of soviet experience – its profound isolationism, the drabness of the mundane, the lack of color, and even the notoriously forbidding russian climate. african students in the ussr routinely collided with the state and challenged by word and deed its values. they had demarcated for themselves a separate cultural and ideological space within the soviet domain, an impressive achievement of free will, beyond the wildest dreams of most soviet citizens. for many a soviet citizen then africa encapsulated the world outside soviet ritual, differing from it in almost every respect. and for this very reason africa and africans became early targets for the xenophobic propaganda campaigns of the late-soviet period. popular images of africanness and racist backlash during perestroika at the time of mikhail gorbachev‘s rise to power in 1985, the soviets had long since solidified their bona fide credentials as the supporters of african decolonization and liberation struggles. the soviet union participated (with varying degrees of success) in a number of african development and industrial projects. african students became a common sight on most large soviet campuses where many of them enjoyed a degree of popularity among the student body. besides, a new generation of soviet children of partial african ancestry began to enter soviet public life. for most soviet citizens africa remained distant and strange but it had found its permanent if marginal space in the soviet popular imagination and within the official cultural and political discourse. the post-1985 reforms ushered in a period of thorough reevaluation of soviet values and commitments, which also affected both the officially-sanctioned and popular attitudes towards africa and africans. by exposing the structural deficiencies of the soviet system perestroika also invited an increasingly open and progressively critical discussion of the special place the ussr had come to occupy within the international community. 50 with the cold war on the wane, many of the country‘s economic shortcomings were now blamed on its external commitments. for too long, argued the avatars of perestroika, the ussr had undermined its own economic base by channeling aid to third world nations. the implication of such argument was all too obvious: the third world had been ―sponging‖ on the ussr and thus degrading the quality of life for its anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 29 citizens. 51 even before the onset of reforms folks in the streets had been grumbling about ―too much aid to africans‖ or lamenting the privileges (foreigners received much higher stipends – 90 rubles per month vs. an average of 30 rubles allotted to soviet students) bestowed upon african and other visitors at, presumably, their expense. 52 as early as 1963, professors from moscow and leningrad reported some of their soviet students complaining bitterly about the preferential treatment allotted to africans at their colleges: ―they are studying at our expense and eating our bread, of course it‘s unfair.‖ 53 popular and popularly accepted images of africa and african lifestyles long present in the soviet cultural tradition fed the growing paranoia. it was exactly the frequent representation of africa as a place of carefree existence, where people (and cute cartoonish animals) care little to none about ―tomorrow‖ that turned africa into a ready scapegoat for widespread discontent. several generations of soviet kids, for example, grew up to the lovely tune ―chunga changa‖ from a famous cartoon. in the cartoon, a racially diverse group of adorable and playful youngsters enjoy a problem-free life on a tropical (read: african) island, far away from the drudgery and cold of the north. in a lighthearted song they celebrate the obvious benefits of this easy way of life: chunga-changa, the sky is blue chunga-changa, the summer‘s all year round chunga-changa, we live so merry chunga-changa, we sing little songs oh, what a miracle island, miracle island it‘s so easy to live here it‘s so easy to live here, chunga-changa we are happy munching on coconuts and bananas munching on coconuts and bananas, chunga-changa 54 a very similar theme can be found in another popular cartoon the lion cub and the turtle, where several charming characters of unmistakably african animals celebrate life in the sun without work. sings the lion cub: all i do is lie in the sun and move my ears i just lie and lie and move my ears such ―orientalist‖ representations of africa and life in the tropics in general did not have to be intentionally demeaning. more likely they reflected the generally benign views of ―southern countries,‖ widely held by soviet citizens and just slightly touched by certain condescension and anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 30 paternalism. however, adverse economic circumstances expedited a not-so-illogical transition from paternalism to distaste to outright hostility toward ―third world leeches.‖ a surge in anti-third world sentiments accompanied the new revelations about the alleged ―sources‖ of soviet underdevelopment. the soviet union, the public was led to believe, could not afford supporting dependents in the faraway exotic locations. and africans, the most visible representatives of the developing world in soviet public spaces, now had to bear the brunt of what became a spontaneous campaign of denunciation of soviet assistance abroad. african residents in the soviet union at the time reported a rise in the number of racist incidents as well as mounting difficulties in maintaining government scholarships to continue their education in the country. 55 in a series of letters to west africa, charles adade, a ghanaian residing in leningrad, depicted a rather gloomy fate of the african in gorbachev‘s russia. according to adade, a sense of desperation and insecurity permeated the lives of african students in the country of dying socialism. prior to perestroika, he suggested, african students had been in a privileged class of their own. their stipends were high, their lodgings were free, and what is more important, they were allowed to travel twice a year to western europe, a privilege effectively denied to their soviet peers. an african bringing three pairs of jeans, a stereo, and a few t-shirts to moscow from his european vacation could easily fetch himself sufficient rubles for a comfortable living for a semester. 56 the neat arrangement was ended by a combination of skyrocketing inflation and new regulations that imposed heavy financial burdens on foreign students in the soviet union, but not before it had produced a widely spread envy, resentment and racial hatred amongst the general population. glasnost lifted the floodgates to prejudice and crude racism and let loose the virtual anti-black hysteria. and many africans blamed gorbachev‘s ―revolution‖ for not feeling safe in the streets and public places of the soviet cities. a nigerian journalism student at kazan university wrote to a moscow newspaper: ―one day i decided to have my lunch in nearby café. as soon as i opened the door, i was met with jeers and cat-calls by young girls sitting around a table, laughing and cracking unfriendly jokes about me…‖ 57 the enterprising nigerians soon learned to play curious mind games to save their skin during the growing number of unfriendly encounters. one of them, for example, when approached by a group of hoodlums, pretended to be an american black. the trick worked as the toughs abandoned their original belligerent intentions and ―immediately simulated keen interest and began to ask questions about steve wonder, michael jackson, etc.‖ 58 the ploy, however, was not 100% fail proof and between may and august of 1990 at least four nigerian students were severely beaten up and one allegedly killed in moscow on grounds raging from ―being a monkey‖ to dating russian girls. 59 considering the growing public paranoia about hiv-aids, for any african to approach a russian girl was increasingly becoming a risky proposition. by the late 1980s the soviet public had grown panicky about the alleged aids epidemic in the country. lacking much understanding of the disease soviet citizens found themselves exposed to a media barrage of materials on aids, many of them of scientifically dubious content. publications dealing with aids routinely portrayed africans as primary transmitters of the virus (the first victim to have anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 31 died was reported by leningradskaya pravda as having had her ―first sexual contact with africans ten years ago‖). another newspaper ran a featured story about an infected ukrainian baby whose mother had ―had an affair with an african.‖ 60 adade‘s letters are distinct in their bitterness about the ―unethical manner in which soviet media, in collaboration with soviet doctors and politicians are handling the anti-aids campaign.‖ a fellow african student complained: ―as a result of a deliberate racist campaign, we are now being called spid (spid is a russian abbreviation for aids) on the streets by soviet youngsters.‖ soviet street folklore, with its characteristic sexual undertone, tied together the much professed (and mocked) ―love‖ of the soviet officialdom for the developing world and the appearance of the disease in russia. a popular joke provided ―alternative‖ transliterations for the original russian spid (aids) wherein the term was variously interpreted either as sotsialnoe posledstvie internatsionalnoj druzby (social consequence of international friendship) or spetsialny podarok inostrannyh druzej (special gift from foreign friends). africans residing in the soviet union were far from amused though; the joke encapsulated the growing popular dissatisfaction with the regime, which ―wasted precious resources‖ on people who (in the words of one populist politician) ―have just descended from the palm tree.‖ africans were rapidly becoming visible scapegoats for the soviet medical, economic and political disasters. 61 while the soviet-style paternalism, that permeated the pre-perestroika publications on africa, was being gradually toned down, so was the concern for the continent. africans residing in russia on the eve of the soviet collapse noted on many occasions that coverage of africa was reduced to simplistic and highly stereotypical catalogues of its bane and woes. in the media, the very word ―africa‖ was often supplanted by cherny kontinent (black continent), the place of danger and wasted opportunities, and a proverbial black hole devouring scant soviet resources. 62 the stage was being set for the soviet union‘s withdrawal from africa as it was for the debilitating wave of racism and xenophobia soon to sweep across the post-soviet spaces. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 32 notes 1 parts of this article have appeared in maxim matusevich, ―an exotic subversive: africa, africans, and the soviet everyday,‖ race & class, vol. 49, no. 2 (april 2008), pp. 59-81 as well as in maxim matusevich, ―journeys of hope: african diaspora and the soviet society,‖ african diaspora, vol. 1, nos. 1-2 (december 2008), pp. 53-85. i would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to rossen djagalov of yale university for generously sharing with me some of his findings in moscow archival collections. 2 see the organization‘s website: http://www.protivnenavisti.ru/ (accessed on 26 october 2009). 3 ―africans ‗under siege‘ in moscow,‖ bbc broadcast, 31 august 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8230158.stm (accessed on 5 october 2009). 4 john akaan, ―nigerian students and the communist countries‖, unpublished paper-memoir, nigerian institute of international affairs (niia) collection, n. d., p. 6. 5 on the evolution of russian nationalism after stalin, see yitzhak m. brudny, reinventing russia: russian nationalism and the soviet state, 1953-1991, cambridge, mass.: harvard university press, 2000. 6 on stalin‘s anti-semitism and anti-jewish campaigns during the post-war period, see gennadi kostyrchenko, out of the red shadows: anti-semitism in stalin’s russia, new york: prometheus books, 1995. also see jonathan brent and vladimir naumov, stalin’s last crime: the plot against the jewish doctors, 1948-1953, new york: harpers perennial, 2004. 7 for an exhaustive study of khrushchev‘s role in this transition, see william taubman, khrushchev: the man and his era, new york: w.w. norton, 2003. 8 ―youngsters fill moscow for fete,‖ the new york times (28 july 1957). 9 for more on the festival and its impact on muscovites, see this recent memoir: a.b. davidson and l.v. ivanova, moskovskaya afrika [africa in moscow], moscow: teatral‘niy institut, 2003, pp. 7-25. 10 ibid., pp. 9-10. also see ―2-week revelry in moscow ends,‖ the new york times (12 august 1957). 11 kristin roth-ey, ―‘loose girls‘ on the loose?: sex, propaganda and the 1957 youth festival,‖ in melanie ilič, susan e. reid and lynne attwood, eds., women in the khrushchev era, new york: palgrave macmillan, 2004, pp. 75-95. 12 russian state archive of new history (rgani), department of culture at cc cpsu, f. 5, op. 55, ex. 103 (january 1964 – july 1965). http://www.protivnenavisti.ru/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8230158.stm anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 33 13 for a comprehensive overview of the festival‘s impact on soviet society see the recently published pia koivunen, ―the 1957 moscow youth festival: propagating a new, peaceful image of the soviet union,‖ in melanie ilic and jeremy smith, eds., soviet state and society under nikita khrushchev, london: routledge, 2009, pp. 46-65. 14 this argument has been recently made in yale richmond, cultural exchange and the cold war, university park, penn.: the pennsylvania state university press, 2003. 15 see w.e.b. du bois, the autobiography of w.e.b. du bois: a soliloquy on viewing my life from the last decade of its first century, london: oxford university press, 2007, p. 18-19. 16 s.v. mazov, sozdanie instituta afriki [the creation of africa institute], vostok, no. 1 (1998), pp. 80-88. 17 tsentr khranenia sovremennoj dokumentatsii (tskhsd), f. 4, op. 16, d. 783, l. 13 and d. 806, l. 19, 21. for more archival references, see mazov, sozdanie instituta afriki. 18 rgaspi, ―spravka o kolichestve studentov-inostrantsev iz kap i kol stran, obuchayushihsya v vuzah sssr na 1 yanvarya 1959 [a note on the numbers of foreign students from capitalist and colonial countries on study in the ussr as of 1 january 1958]‖ f. 1m, op. 46, d. 248, list 12. 19 these numbers come from o.m. gorbatov and l. ia. cherkasski, sotrudnichestvo sssr so stranami arabskogo vostoka i afriki [cooperation between the ussr and the countries of arab east and africa], moscow: nauka, 1973 – also quoted in hessler, ―death of an african student in moscow.‖ 20 gribanova, v.v. and n.a. zherlitsyna, ―podgotovka studentov iz afrikanskikh stran v vuzah rossii‖ [training of african students at russian universities]. publications of africa institute, http://www.inafran.ru/ru/content/view/77/51/ (accessed june 17, 2008). 21 see, for example, the following memoir accounts of such sojourns: mckay, a long way from home, new york: lee furman, inc., 1937; langston hughes, i wonder as i wander: an autobiographical journey, new york: hill & wang, 1994; homer smith, black man in red russia: a memoir, chicago, ill.: johnson publishing company, 1964; robert robinson, black on red: my 44 years inside the soviet union, washington, dc: acropolis books, 1988; harry haywood, black bolshevik: autobiography of an afro-american communist, chicago, ill.: liberator press, 1978; and william l. patterson, the man who cried genocide: an autobiography, new york: international publishers, 1971. 22 a typical example was that of a young somali student abdulhamid mohammed hussein, who having arrived in moscow with references from italian communists proceeded to wreak havoc with soviet and university authorities by engaging in a series of domestic disturbances and public scandals. his story was only one of many; see s.v. mazov, afrikanskie studenty v moskve v god afriki [african students in moscow in the year of africa], vostok, vol. 3 (may-june 1999), pp. 91-93. http://www.inafran.ru/ru/content/view/77/51/ anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 34 23 see, for example, olabisi ajala, an african abroad (london: jarolds, 1963); andrew richard amar, an african in moscow (london, ampersand, 1963); jan carew, moscow is not my mecca (london: secker & warburg, 1964); andrea lee, russian journal (new york: random house, 1981); nicholas nyangira, ―africans don‘t go to russia to be brainwashed, the new york times magazine (16 may 1965), p. 64; s. omor okullo, ―a negro‘s life in russia— beatings, insults, segregation,‖ u.s. news and world report, vol. xlix, no. 5 (1 august 1963), pp. 59-60; william anti-taylor, moscow diary, london: robert hale, 1967; etc. 24 everest mulekezi, ―i was a student at moscow state,‖ the readers digest, vol. 79, no. 471 (1961), pp. 99-104. 25 tskhsd, f. 5, op. 35, d. 149, l. 42, 44. for more on this and similar incidents, see mazov, afriknaskie studenty v moskve. also see ―the plight of our students in the ussr‖, west african pilot (3 february 1964). 26 rgaspi, ―doklad o provedenii letnego otdyha studentov udn vo vremya letnih kanikul 1961 goda [a report on the summer vacation by udn students during the summer break of 1961],‖ f. 1m, op. 46, d. 295 (1961). 27 ―africans did russians in by rioting,‖ the chicago defender (28 december 1963); also see ―africans embarrass reds,‖ the christian science monitor (18 february 1964). 28 an exhaustive study of this episode is found in julie hessler, ―death of an african student in moscow,‖ cahiers du monde russe, vol. 47, nos. 1-2 (2006). 29 ―students demand ‗bill of rights‘,‖ west african pilot (30 december 1963). 30 sunny odulana, ―our students in moscow,‖ west african pilot (2 january 1964). 31 see ―red race relations,‖ the washington post (5 january 1964); ―africans carry knives for protection in ussr,‖ chicago daily defender (11 may 1964); ―soviet-african student fighting reaches kremlin,‖ the washington post (28 january 1965); ―african students trying anew to leave russia,‖ the washington post (4 april 1965); ―kenya students tell why they left ussr,‖ chicago daily defender (8 april 1965). 32 rgaspi, ―spravki ob internatsionalnom vospitanii v mgu [notes on international education at mgu],‖ f. 1, op. 39. d. 127, lists 9-10, 87 (1964). 33 see ―‖u.s. diplomat ordered to leave soviet union,‖ chicago daily defender (12 may 1965); ―soviet ousts u.s. cultural aide as inciter of african students,‖ the new york times (12 may 1965); also ―expelled negro diplomat calls soviet charges ridiculous,‖ the washington post (17 june 1965). 34 ―africans studying in russia allege discrimination,‖ the christian science monitor (11 november 1975); also see ―kiev strike settled,‖ africa diary, vol. 15, no. 49 (3-9 december 1975), pp. 7703-7704. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 35 35 ―the plight of our students in the ussr,‖ west african pilot (3 february 1964). 36 ibid. 37 george feifer, ―the red and the black: racism in moscow,‖ reporter (2 january 1964), p. 27. 38 amar, p. 19. 39 everest mulekezi, ―i was a student at moscow state,‖ the reader’s digest, vol. 79, no. 471 (1961), pp. 99-104. 40 lee, p. 152. 41 ―savannah and taiga,‖ in yevgenii yevtushenko, vzmah ruki [an outstretched hand] (moscow: molodaya gvardia, 1962), pp. 58-59. [translation mine] 42 martin luther king, jr., with his christian gospel and gandhi-inspired tactics of civil disobedience, had to be inconvenient for the soviets. they far more preferred such firebrand radicals as dr. angela davis, whose famous 1971-72 trial occasioned a massive propaganda campaign of support by the soviet union. [see, for example, numerous commentaries and cartoons about the trial in issues of krokodil for 1971-72. a typical one depicts a plucky davis holding her head high in front of a racist judge. the sleeve of the judge‘s robe is in fact an executioner‘s ax ready to drop on the courageous black communist . [krokodil, no. 5 (february 1972), p. 10] but even angela davis inspired more than a sense of solidarity in the hearts of soviet intelligentsia. in 1978, a leading soviet nuclear physicist sergei polikanov was expelled from the communist party after having made a statement to western reporters protesting restrictions on travel abroad. ―it was easier to fight for the freedom of angela davis than for our own freedom,‖ announced polikanov and… predictably got into trouble. [―soviet physicist who complained of travel curb is ousted by party,‖ the new york times (28 march 1978)] 43 henry kamm, ―portrait of a dissenter,‖ preface to andrei amal‘rik, will the soviet union survive until 1984? (new york: harper & row, 1970), p. xiii. 44 amar, p. 63. 45 ibid., p. 63. 46 all quotes in this paragraph come from s. frederick starr, red and hot: the fate of jazz in the soviet union, 1917-1991 (new york: limelight editions, 1994), p. 91. 47 film assa, dir. sergey soloviev (mosfilm, 1988). 48 see louis grachos, afrika (los angeles, cal.: university of southern california fisher gallery, 1991). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 36 49 the lyrics of the song come from a popular children‘s poem. see kornei chukovskii, doktor aibolit [doctor dolittle] (moscow: detskaiia literatura, 1961). 50 see mikhail gorbachev, perestroika (new york: harper & row, 1988). 51 l.z. zevin and e.l simonov, ―pomosh‘ i ekonomicheskoe sotrudnichestvo sssr s razvivayushimisia stranami: uroki, problemy i perspektivy,‖ [assistance and economic cooperation between the ussr and developing countries: lessons, problems, and perspectives] narody azii i afriki, no. 2 (1990), pp. 5-17. 52 see mulekezi, ―i was a student at moscow state‖; also see william anti-taylor, ―red bias: african lament,‖ the christian science monitor (5 november 1963). 53 rgaspi, ―stenogramma soveshania prepodavatelej vuzov g. moskvy, leningrada i t.d. [minutes of the meeting of college teachers from moscow, leningrad, etc.]‖ f. 1, op. 46, d. 339 (23 april 1963). 54 composer v. shainskii [translation mine] 55 see charles quist-adade, in the shadows of the kremlin and the white house: africa's media image from communism to post-communism (lanham, md.: university press of america, 2001). 56 charles adade, ―sense of insecurity,‖ west africa (march 16-22, 1992), pp. 482-483. 57 quoted in adade, ―russian roughshod‖, west africa (july 9-15, 1990), p. 2056. 58 ibid. 59 charles adade, ―black bashing,‖ west africa (october 8-14, 1990), p. 2606. 60 charles adade, ―targets of aids-phobia‖, west africa (january 14-20, 1991), pp. 8-9. 61 quoted in ibid. also see the discussion in the niia-rias dialogue: a report, lagos: nigerian institute of international affairs, 1997, p. 105. 62 see examples of such publications in charles quist-adade, ―after the cold war: the exsoviet media and africa‖, race and class, vol. 32, no. 2 (october/november 1993), pp. 86-95. references cited 2009 africans ―under siege‖ in moscow, broadcast, 31 august 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8230158.stm (accessed on 5 october 2009). in oneminute world news. united kingdom of great britain: bbc. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8230158.stm anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 37 ajala, olabisi. 1963. an african abroad. london: jarolds. amar, andrew richard. 1963. an african in moscow. london: ampersand. anti-taylor, william. 1967. moscow diary. london: robert hale. brent, jonathan, and vladimir naumov. 2004. stalin‘s last crime: the plot against the jewish doctors, 1948-1953. new york: harpers perennial. brudny, yitzhak m. 2000. reinventing russia: russian nationalism and the soviet state, 19531991. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. carew, jan. 1964. moscow is not my mecca. london: secker & warburg. chukovskii, kornei. 1961. doktor aibolit [doctor dolittle]. moscow: detskaiia literatura. davidson, a.b., and l.v. ivanova. 2003. moskovskaya afrika [africa in moscow]. moscow: teatral‘niy institut. dubois, william edward burghardt. 2007. the autobiography of w.e.b. du bois: a soliloquy on viewing my life from the last decade of its first century. london: oxford university press. feifer, george. 1964. the red and the black: racism in moscow, reporter. gorbachev, mikhail. 1988. perestroika. new york: harper & row. gorbatov, o.m., and l. ia. cherkasski. 1973. sotrudnichestvo sssr so stranami arabskogo vostoka i afriki [cooperation between the ussr and the countries of arab east and africa]. moscow: nauka. grachos, louis. 1991. afrika. los angeles, cal.: university of southern california fisher gallery. gribanova, v.v., and n.a. zherlitsyna. podgotovka studentov iz afrikanskikh stran v vuzah rossii [training of african students at russian universities]. in publications of africa institute, vol. 2008. haywood, harry. 1978. black bolshevik: autobiography of an afro-american communist. chicago, ill.: liberator press. hessler, julie. 2006. death of an african student in moscow. cahiers du monde russe 47(1-2). hughes, langston. 1994. i wonder as i wander: an autobiographical journey. new york: hill & wang. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 38 kamm, henry. 1970. portrait of a dissenter. in will the soviet union survive until 1984? a. amal‘rik, ed. pp. xiii. new york: harper & row. koivunen, pia. 2009. the 1957 moscow youth festival: propagating a new, peaceful image of the soviet union. in soviet state and society under nikita khrushchev. m. ilic and j. smith, eds. pp. 46-65. london: routledge. kostyrchenko, gennadi. 1995. out of the red shadows: anti-semitism in stalin‘s russia. new york: prometheus books. lee, andrea. 1981. russian journal. new york: random house. matusevich, maxim. 2008. an exotic subversive: africa, africans, and the soviet everyday. race & class 49(2):59-81. _____. 2008. journeys of hope: african diaspora and the soviet society. african diaspora 1(102):53-85. mazov, s.v. 1999. afrikanskie studenty v moskve v god afriki [african students in moscow in the year of africa], vostok 3:89-103. _____. 1998. sozdanie instituta afriki [the creation of africa institute]. vostok 1:80-88. mckay, claude. 1937. a long way from home. new york: lee furman, inc. mulekezi, everest. 1961. i was a student at moscow state. in the readers digest. pp. 99-104, vol. 79. nyangira, nicholas. 1965. africans don‘t go to russia to be brainwashed. in the new york times magazine. pp. 64. okullo, s. omor. 1963. a negro‘s life in russia-beatings, insults, segregation. in u.s. news and world report. pp. 59-60, vol. 5. patterson, william l. 1971. the man who cried genocide: an autobiography. new york: international publishers. quist-adade, charles. 1993. after the cold war: the ex-soviet media and africa. race and class 32(2):86-95. _____. 2001. in the shadows of the kremlin and the white house: africa‘s media image from communism to post-communism. lanham, md.: university press of america. richmond, yale. 2003. cultural exchange and the cold war. university park, penn.: the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 39 pennsylvania state university press. robinson, robert. 1988. black on red: my 44 years inside the soviet union. washington, dc: acropolis books. roth-ey, kristin. 2004. loose girls on the loose?: sex, propaganda and the 1957 youth festival. in women in the khrushchev era. m. ilic, s.e. reid, and l. attwood, eds. pp. 75-95. new york: palgrave macmillan. smith, homer. 1964. black man in red russia: a memoir. chicago, ill.: johnson publishing company. starr, s. frederick. 1994. red and hot: the fate of jazz in the soviet union, 1917-1991. new york: limelight editions. taubman, william. 2003. khrushchev: the man and his era. new york: w.w. norton. yevtushenko, yevgenii. 1962. savannah and taiga. in vzmah ruki [an outstretched hand]. y. yevtushenko, ed. pp. 58-59. moscow: molodaya gvardia. zevin, l.z., and e.l simonov. 1990. pomosh‘ i ekonomicheskoe sotrudnichestvo sssr s razvivayushimisia stranami: uroki, problemy i perspektivy [assistance and economic cooperation between the ussr and developing countries: lessons, problems, and perspectives]. narody azii i afriki (2):5-17. correspondence: a response to andrei simić brana mijatović ucla i wrote a dissertation on the topic of music and politics in serbia, and there i discuss at length the complexities and issues involved in the demise of former yugoslavia, including intranational, international, and economic causes of the problems. i also lived under the milošević regime for several years before coming to the united states, and thus experienced many of the things i wrote about. however, in such a short article it was not possible to address all the complexities and issues involved in “our understanding of the origins of these conflicts,” nor was it the intention to do so. my article was about the way a popular musician had responded to the crisis and how it resonated with a certain segment of the population of serbia. it was not about the history of conflict in the former yugoslavia. furthermore, the editors explicitly asked me to limit my discussion of politics to the bare minimum, since this special volume was on music and dance. thus, the few historical facts i did mention were intended to serve as a context for the issues that balašević critiques in his songs. professor simic seriously misunderstands an important matter that i want to clarify here. milošević was the leader of serbia and, however you want to look at it, is responsible in great part (as i say in the text, he was “one of the key entities” not “the only one”) for what happened, as a result of his decisions, on the national and international levels, and on the social and the economic levels. the serbs, as a nation, however, do not bare the same responsibility, and this was what this article tried to bring to the foreground. it was neither my intention nor my explicit wish to “call upon the reader to embrace the concept of unique serbian responsibility for the disasters that have characterized the past fourteen years in the history of yugoslavia.” quite the opposite. my hope was that this article would show the extent and range of serbian critical attitudes towards the wars and the government, ones that were very different from those reported in many western media, where serbs, on the whole, were described as completely unaware of what was going on, completely supportive of the wars, and completely uncritical of the decisions milošević made over the years. the issue of responsibility was actually important for many people who lived in the country at that time, and opening up a discussion on that topic, as well as providing a range of questions and opinions, did not automatically exclude the responsibility of others [outside serbia] for what happened. these discussions illustrated the political self-awareness of ordinary citizens, and that is one important fact i wanted to emphasize. i also mentioned the complexity of that subject and illustrated this with several different views. i concluded that balašević’s song encourages a rethinking of personal engagement with political activism, which is, in my opinion, a worthwhile aspiration for a mature, politically aware individual in any society. this response strikes me as a transparent attempt to discredit someone with political views different from its author. i wonder who was the template for such uninformed and inaccurate comments about my thoughts, ideas, and motivations on a variety of subjects, including, most remarkably, “the west” and the tradition. while milošević himself used this approach in serbia whenever he came across opinions he didn't like, in this country such tactics serve only to undermine the writer’s intent and credibility. jen typewritten text 100 sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 103 reflections on teaching anthropology through the case study* sarah d. phillips department of anthropology, indiana university, bloomington cultural anthropology is a field of study with a rich history and a copious toolbox of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. a major challenge, i find, of teaching courses in cultural anthropology is simultaneously conveying the diversity and richness of the field historically and in the present; doing justice to the specific foci of the particular course; and engaging students in the learning process in meaningful and, i daresay, personally transformative ways. i begin this short article with a brief discussion of the major challenges i have encountered teaching undergraduate and graduate anthropology courses, and offer some examples of what i have found to be potentially successful strategies for addressing them. i then describe in some detail a seminar course i recently taught, “chernobyl: legacies of a meltdown,” to argue for the potential of single event or topics-focused seminar courses to achieve a range of important instructional goals. general challenges of teaching anthropology courses for undergraduates and graduates present their own particular challenges. at large institutions such as indiana university, bloomington (iub), undergraduate courses are often big lecture courses populated by students who may or may not be (initially!) excited about anthropology. one elementary challenge is to adequately engage those students who are taking cultural anthropology merely to fulfill a university division requirement. in large survey courses it is also easy to overwhelm students, who may feel disoriented by the enormous range of topics covered in the discipline of anthropology (and in course lectures). finally, especially in today’s unfortunate atmosphere of conflict, mistrust, and cultural essentialism, instructors must be careful how we present the “culture” concept, lest the notion of “cultural difference” fuel prejudice and ethnocentrism among students. in my undergraduate teaching, i find the best way to simultaneously address these issues is to offer students a range of hands-on research and writing exercises. these activities allow students to carry out participant observation, surveys, and personal interviews in order to apply anthropological concepts to their own lives as they explore issues of gender, ritual, cultural stereotypes, narratives, and others. mini-fieldwork projects can give class discussions a meaningful and manageable focus, and they allow students to begin interpreting the seemingly mundane aspects of their everyday lives in an anthropological fashion. seminars for graduates offer a separate set of challenges. many graduates are already working towards a specific thesis topic and may resist material that they believe does not quite speak to their own interests. my graduate seminars frequently include students from other disciplines, many of whom are looking to incorporate anthropological research methods and theories into their own work. this often leads to interesting and challenging discussions of varying disciplinary traditions. to complicate matters, as the discipline of cultural anthropology grows and the literature expands, it becomes difficult to “cover it all.” this means that earlier works and discussions of historical intellectual trends often do not find their way into anthropology courses. the move away from grand narratives, i think, has contributed to the tendency to neglect or inadequately engage the work of the disciplinary predecessors in some courses. i believe students being trained in anthropology (undergraduate majors and graduates) should be provided with a good sense of anthropology’s rich intellectual history, not merely to criticize our forebears (though such critiques are certainly necessary), but rather to engage students in the rich history of ideas that has shaped the contemporary discipline of anthropology. in my teaching, i am beginning to rethink the traditional timeline approach—students tend to see “old” theories as merely irrelevant, rather than trying to understand the motivations (and contributions) of these approaches. one student has suggested the following appealing approach for future seminars: advanced seminars might be designed to encourage students to “excavate” recent articles in anthropology journals for theoretical influences. this would allow students to engage with cutting edge work being published in the top journals today, and simultaneously require them to seek out how new ideas might be rooted in and/or reactive to a range of previous approaches and historical influences. i hoped to do similar work by teaching a new book last semester (spring ’05) in my joint undergraduate/graduate seminar course, “anthropology of russia and east europe”—alexia bloch and laurel kendall’s the museum at the end of the world: encounters in the russian far east anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 104 (2004). in this hybrid ethnography/travel book, the authors document their 1998 travels along the route of the original jesup north pacific expedition of the early 1900s, as they interweave discussions of history, methodology, culture change, and culture work. teaching works such as these is as an opportunity to introduce students to the work of the early russian ethnographers (bogoras-tan, jochelson), franz boas, and others, while helping them critically engage the history of anthropological research of native peoples of siberia. this course (“anthropology of russia and east europe”) is an example of the sometimesfraught joint undergraduate/graduate seminar, a format that poses its own set of pedagogical challenges. how is one to address the intellectual concerns of the graduates without intimidating or losing the undergraduates in the process? how to ensure that students at both levels (and from diverse disciplinary backgrounds) contribute to and benefit from the course in ways that help them reach their own learning goals? finally, a question relevant to teaching any anthropology course: how can we engender an appreciation of anthropology’s diverse approaches to understanding human life in a way that is comprehensive yet focused and meaningful to students? anthropology through the case study: the example of chernobyl these were questions that fifteen students and i struggled with in a seminar course during fall semester 2004 entitled “chernobyl: legacies of a meltdown.” my motivation for proposing this course was straightforward: i wanted to design a course that would introduce students to the rich field of cultural anthropology (and related disciplines) through the lens of a single, yet multi-faceted event. i had carried out research on chernobyl effects in ukraine during the 1990s, allowing me the opportunity to bring my own fieldwork experience to the course. i was familiar with the large body of literature on chernobyl, work that covered vast disciplinary, methodological, and theoretical ground. chernobyl, in short, seemed to present something for everyone. although i did not know in advance which students would sign up for this new course, i predicted that area studies students affiliated with indiana university’s russian and east european institute (reei) would be interested, as well as students seeking degrees at the university’s school of public and environmental affairs (spea). i began designing a course that would be compelling to students from these disciplinary backgrounds, and that would, i hoped, introduce students with little or no background in cultural anthropology to the seemingly boundless potential of this discipline to lend insights into human and technological tragedies such as chernobyl. in accordance with these goals, i tried to create a course that would offer students an integrated view of chernobyl and other ecological and technological disasters. the course would cover the important environmental aspects of such events, but also other ways in which calamities such as chernobyl reverberate locally and globally with persons and societies. i planned to take students through the rich field of cultural anthropology by highlighting anthropological ways of understanding the far-reaching and intersecting environmental, political, social, and health effects of chernobyl locally and globally. we would interweave discussions of policy and international law with considerations of ethics, risk, social entitlements, subjective experiences of health and disease, and others. i envisioned a course that would utilize anthropological approaches to studying complex events such as chernobyl via unique literatures and media sources that highlight local, humanistic interpretations of the disaster while placing the accident’s effects in a dynamic, multidisciplinary, global context. going beyond chernobyl as an environmental case study, we would examine the symbolic uses of the accident, local interpretations of nuclear catastrophe, and chernobyl as an example of various globalizing forces. as expected, many of the fifteen students who joined the seminar had area studies and policy interests, but a range of other majors was also represented. two phd students were pursuing a degree in anthropology; a third was studying applied health sciences, with a minor in anthropology. three students were pursuing joint ma degrees in reei and spea. undergraduate students were majors in the following disciplines: history (with a focus on russia), communication and culture (specializing in film), general studies, theater, biology, anthropology, spea and international studies, and environmental science. the format of the seminar allowed me to introduce anthropological approaches and theories through the example of chernobyl, while also allowing students to connect readings and discussions with their particular disciplinary interests. during the course of the semester, students and i were able to explore in some depth the following anthropological approaches and bodies of literature: medical anthropology, anthropology of development, diasporas and migration studies, nationalism, ethnicity and identity, nostalgia and constructions of “home,” environmental and ecological anthropology, anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 105 symbolic anthropology, popular culture, the anthropology of risk, political anthropology, economic anthropology, the anthropology of performance, and the anthropology of food. readings for the course were varied, representing practically every point on the academic and popular literature spectrum. students read policy reports, newspaper and other popular articles, classic anthropological literature, new ethnographic works, literary criticism, novels, plays, and poetry. a range of ethnographic and documentary videos complemented the course, as well as slides from my own fieldwork. exposure to such diverse materials gave students an idea of the richness of cultural anthropology and provided them the opportunity to connect with those approaches that spoke most directly to their own experiences and scholarly interests. over the course of the semester, i found that students became more invested and excited as they were given more responsibility for the course. students were asked to choose another environmental issue in the region about which they gained some expertise that they then shared with the class (nuclear testing in semipalatinsk, kazakhstan; the ignalina nuclear power station in lithuania; oil shale in estonia; and others). online discussion forums outside class time on a range of issues also bolstered student interaction with the course material and with each other. in order to encourage students to further engage the material and to allow them to pursue their own interests in their respective fields, i designed a range of writing projects for completion during the semester. two short essay assignments presented students with a choice: they could pursue a “traditional” essay question, or choose a more creative approach to synthesizing their ideas. this strategy produced a range of insightful and artistic projects, including a chernobyl fairy tale, a screenplay set in chernobyl, an article on chernobyl in the “alien times” newspaper (making the familiar, strange), and several book reviews. students were also assigned a final research paper, for which they were expected to research in depth some aspect of chernobyl or a related topic. class presentations on these topics allowed students to teach each other about their library research, and several graduate students incorporated their preliminary thesis research into these projects. students with expertise in languages other that english (in this case russian, estonian, and lithuanian) were encouraged to use foreign language sources in their library research. many of the students got caught up in current events in ukraine, especially the tumultuous presidential elections of fall/winter 2004 and the ensuing “orange revolution.” we began to devote the first fifteen minutes of each seminar to a discussion of these unfolding events. as a result of their active participation in these discussions, many non-area specialist students became more invested in learning about the region. in fact, during summer 2005 one undergraduate student, paul scott thacker, traveled to chernobyl (and kiev, where i was doing research), to collect information for a senior thesis on chernobyl and human rights. he shot rare video footage inside the chernobyl “exclusion zone” that he has agreed to let me use for instructional purposes in future seminars. he created a web “blog” of his journals that will be engaging and educational for students. organizing a seminar around a key event such as chernobyl allowed the students and me to benefit from the expertise of a range of scholars at indiana university. we were fortunate to host several guest speakers during the semester. this served to complement the anthropological approaches that students were learning about with perspectives from other disciplines. mike snow of the iub physics department gave a fascinating account of what went wrong at the chernobyl nuclear power plant to cause the 1986 disaster. jerry hennefeld of the iu-south bend physics department discussed research he carried out with immigrants to ohio from the chernobyl zones in belarus. he described the physical effects of radiation exposure while highlighting the difficulties of determining individual doses. matt auer, from iu’s school of public and environmental affairs, gave students an overview of environmental issues in contemporary central and eastern europe, and stressed the implications of eu accession for the environment. finally, steve raymer from journalism at iub shared his experiences of covering chernobyl for national geographic’s “chernobyl: one year later” issue in 1987, and discussed the difficulties western journalists faced in the soviet union in general. students also designed a virtual interview with natalya preobrazhenska, an environmental activist in kyiv, about chernobyl and the growth of the green movement in ukraine. as a culmination of the seminar, students and i are creating a course web site, which will help us share the successes of our seminar with other instructors and students. the web site will also serve as an informational resource on chernobyl’s social, political, economic, and health effects. we are including bibliographies, links to relevant sites, translations of little known research and creative works on chernobyl, and students’ own writings from the course. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 106 when i began designing the chernobyl seminar, the idea of constructing a course around a single event was admittedly daunting. colleagues continuously asked me, “will there be enough material for a sixteen week course on chernobyl?” even i had my doubts, but in the end students and i found ourselves scrambling to manage the wealth of disciplinary literatures on chernobyl, and to follow up on the many leads and new avenues for inquiry that our studies of chernobyl sparked. students began to connect the issues surrounding chernobyl (the politics of risk and blame, health inequalities, secrecy and corruption, social welfare debates, disability politics, human-technology interactions, environmental movements, the symbolism of illness, and many others) to other social issues, to other disciplinary approaches, and to their own lives. anthropology through the case study is a teaching strategy that i will continue to pursue, since i have found it an effective way to simultaneously focus, diversify, and enliven student learning about approaches to understanding humans and our lifeways. note: for a copy of the course syllabus for “chernobyl: legacies of a meltdown,” please send a request to the author at sadphill@indiana.edu. notes * this article will appear (in russian) in a forthcoming issue of forum for anthropology and culture (antropologicheskii forum) as part of a discussion on “teaching anthropology and cultural history.” photo: paul scott thacker, a recent graduate of indiana university who took phillips's chernobyl seminar, on a tour of chernobyl during summer 2005. mailto:sadphill@indiana.edu� sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 94 book review playing soldiers in bohemia: an ethnography of nato membership hana červinková. (2006). prague: set out. daniel burland university of massachusetts, amherst hana červinková’s playing soldiers in bohemia is an ethnographic study of the czech military’s entry into nato. it draws upon červinková’s fieldwork carried out from february, 2001 to june, 2002 on czech military bases and at other sites in the czech republic. in 2001, the czech ministry of defense initiated a campaign to reform the massive war machine left over from the days of the cold war. the new military would be small, specialized, and useful to nato. the author caught the czech military at a fascinating time of transition before the new czech military was fully established and operational and before the old czech military was fully dismantled. she documents the tensions (the generation gap) between old and young officers. she notes the frustrations expressed by members of the czech republic’s last group of drafted soldiers. a responsible archivist, she focuses mainly on the disappearing rather than the emerging military culture. červinková’s work does, however, more than document the end of a particular military subculture. playing soldiers provides great insight into the larger issue of state formation. the author is aware that she worked in a “blurred stage” where the czech military was suspended in a state of both “post-” and “pre-.” she is able to show the new czech military in its awkward first stage before its violent purpose and its mercenary submission to the ends of nato could be covered up by state discourse. chapter one documents the initial failure of czech military reformers to institute a new image of an idealized “professional soldier.” this initiative pushed against a long-established cultural current, for the traditional image of the military in the czech imagination was, rather, that of “the good soldier švejk ,” the eponymous hero of the anti-war novel by jaroslav hašek. unlike other anti-war novels of the 1920s and1930s, the good soldier švejk did not depict the great war as a terrible yet grand tragedy. švejk never takes seriously the cruel and absurd system that would send him to war. švejk bumbles, but there is something subversive in his bumbling. ultimately, his antics show those committed to the system that oppresses him to be the greater fools. švejk has provided a model for passive resistance to the czech people and particularly to the czech conscript soldier. within the paradigm of “švejkism,” the professional soldier becomes reminiscent of the stiff, militaristic straight-men of hašek‘s novel. chapters two and three show passive resistance in operation among old-guard officers and enlisted conscripts, respectively. červinková organizes chapter two around an anomaly: the czech military had no distinguished record to defend; yet the officer corps did not welcome military reform. as the author notes, the czechoslovakian military has “submissively observed the course of foreign invasions from their barracks.” the old-guard officers nonetheless felt nostalgia for the cold war era. while it is true that the old guard must have seen its status threatened by the arrival of young, educated, english-speaking officers, červinková credits the “dinosaurs” with understanding, and motives beyond mere defensiveness. the old guard saw that the professionalization and democratization of their military amounted to a mere change of masters, the soviet union for nato and the united states. in a liminal phase characterized by obsolescent equipment, poor discipline, no enemy, and no coherent strategy, the old guard officers indulge in nostalgia. they reserve criticism for a future that only their successors idealize. chapter three documents the experience of the last men to serve as conscripts. many began service with a willing attitude, hoping to experience a meaningful rite-of-passage. the czech republic had already committed to the concept of a small professional army. the conscripts who had joined to become men were ignored by a distracted military hierarchy or at best used only for domestic tasks such as cleaning or cooking. determined to experience a rite of passage, and using the little material available to them, the conscripts make a cult out of enduring the wasted year. around the ordeal of time wasted, they invent ceremonies and construct a hierarchy. they willfully rebuild the experience that history tried to deny them. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 95 in chapter four, červinková analyzes the feeling of the old guard officers for the old days. the author is a sensitive archivist, and she wisely gives much space in this chapter for her subjects to speak for themselves. the results are sometimes touching. one officer speaks of his glory days in the following terms: you probably don’t think so when you look around and you are so young, but i think my job was beautiful and i loved it. i looked forward to coming to work every single day, because i loved planes and here i could touch them all day long. as we learn that this officer-mechanic was being pushed out of his air force (for lack of formal education), the reader is reminded not of švejk, but of the horse of orwell’s animal farm. using benjamin’s concept of mimetic attachment, červinková depicts the old guard air force officers behaving and becoming like their aging and obsolescent aircraft. yet červinková never allows the reader to forget that the beloved aircraft were machines of death, and that the officers of whom she writes so beautifully were privileged agents of active collaboration with an occupying power. chapter five describes the awkward treatment by civic authorities of a socialist-era monument to war dead (the national monument in prague). the ambiguous attitude toward this monument on the part of the state resulted from the radical change underway in the space between civil society, state, and the military. the government was in the process of creating an elite fighting force capable of rapid deployment. yet the government wanted this new military to be separated as much as possible in the public consciousness from the actual violent acts of war. much of the author’s ethnography focuses on how members of the czech military imagined reality to themselves during a period of great change. using the theoretical paradigm of liminality, červinková reveals a contest between competing state discourses. neither the military nor the public had yet accepted the ministry of defense’s version of events. in this liminal period, the fantasies and nostalgia of old-guard soldiers contained a sophisticated critique of what was to come. the czech military did become democratic and professional, but the transformation did not mean an end to militarism. it is true that a massive war machine became significantly smaller, but it also became more deployable. the old military was designed (ostensibly) for self-defense, but the new military is designed to be a flesh-and-blood offering to the will of nato and the united states. conscription came to an end, only to be replaced by a system of mercenary volunteerism. červinková’s work is an insightful study of the chaotic space between two militarisms, and in this space resides the calculated betrayal of the ideals of the velvet revolution. červinková frames her observations in such a way that the reader is never allowed to forget the violent purpose of the military. for this reason, although writing an ethnography of a peacetime military, červinková nonetheless succeeds in creating an insightful and compelling contribution to the anthropology of war. editors barbara a. west, managing editor eva lluseby-darvas nallcy ries robert rotenberg, jveb editor please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group to the managing editor. prices: u5$20iyr. for individual subscription, u5$30 for institutional subscriptions, or u5$1 0 for additional copies ofthis or any issue. the web page for the anthropology ofeast europe reviewleast european anthropology group contains links to most ofthe previously published articles. it can be found at this url: http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/ managing editor: barbara a west, school ofinternational studies, university of the pacific. stockton, ca 95211 usa. phone: 209-946-3181; fax: 209-946-3265. email: bwest@pacific.edu. web editor: robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore ave, chicago, il 60614 usa. phone: 312/325-7460; fax 312/325-7452; email: rrotenbe@depaul.edu. new editors as of fall 2005: krista harper and julie hemment, dept. of anthropology, machmer hau215, university of massachusetts amherst, amherst, ma 01 003 usa phone: 413-545-2221; fax: 413-545-9494; email: kharper@anthro.umass.edu or jhemment@anthro.umass.edu. ©aeer 2005 issn: 1054-4720 this is my farewell issue as the managing editor of the anthropology of east europe review. therefore, i would like to take this opportunity to thank bob rotenberg, the guest editors and authors with whom i've worked, and the loyal individual and institutional subscribers who have made it possible for me to produce this journal for the past two years. it has been a wonderful experience! i've made the decision to give up the position not because i am tired of the work of editing the journal or managing the organization's finances, but rather because i am leaving academia altogether, at least for the time being. my partner and i are following our hearts by moving to melbourne, australia. at this point i don't know in which direction my next career path will lead me, but i do know that the skills i've acquired as an anthropologist and an academic will serve me well no matter what. i also know that i'm leaving both aeer and the eeag in very professional hands. krista harper and julie hemment have been active in the organization for many years and krista has served as a guest editor of one of our most popular special issues, the spring 2003 issue on food and foodways. all the best, 'barb 'west mailto:jhemment@anthro.umass.edu mailto:kharper@anthro.umass.edu mailto:rrotenbe@depaul.edu mailto:bwest@pacific.edu http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer contents list of contributors ................................................................................................................................................... 3 guest editors' notes special issue on ethnographies of czechs, slovaks, and sorbs ............ .4 timothy mccajor hall, university of california at san diego, and rosie read, university of glasgow section i: social change and civil society measuring perceptions of "corruption" in czech society .................................................................... 10 raymond lune, university of california at berkeley social atomization and structural violence in the transition from socialism .................. 30 david karjanen, university of california at san diego "only a dead fish flows with the stream": ngo formalization, anarchofeminism, and the power of informal associations ........................................................................................................................ 38 karen kapusta-pofahl, university of minnesota, hana haskova, academy of sciences of the czech republic, marta kolarova, academy of sciences of the czech republic section ii: issues of gender and sexuality old entitlements and new dependencies: f amil y versus state in the czech republic ........ 53 rebecca nash, the henley centre, london "a dirty crab eating a wa y at the breast': the stigma of cancer in post-socialist czech republic ............................................................................................................................................................................ 63 denise kozikowski, university of california at los angeles planned parenthood behind the curtain: population policy and sterilization of romani women in communist czechoslov akia, 1972-1989 ........................................................................................ 79 vera sokolova, charles university pornography, primitives and postsocialist slov akia ............................................................................ 99 lames quin, national university oflrcland at maynooth "same people, same system": change and gender in a moravian toy factory ....................... 114 ben hill passmore, university system of maryland section iii: ethnic minorities "talking nicely": the bio-politics of social work in the ostra va roma community .......... 124 krista hegburg, columbia university czechs in bosnia and herzegovina and their social activities ...................................................... 136 zdenek uherek and katei'ina plochova, institute of ethnology of the academy of sciences of the czech republic ethnic identity, language attitudes, and the reception of culture among students of sorbian schools ......................................................................................................................................................... 15i leos satava, institute of ethnology, charles university section iv: memory, history, and the ethnographic present telling lives. autobiography and history after socialism ............................................................. 160 haldis haukanes, university of bergen memory, space and time perceptions in a postsocialist village of southern slov akia .. 169 davide torscllo, university of lecce, italy anthropology of europe and community re-studies: proposal for a new concerted research initiative .................................................................................................................................................. 178 peter skalnik, university of par dub ice 2 correspondence: reply to michal buchowski... .................................................................. 194 chris hann, the max planck institute correspondence: reply to chris hank ................................................................... .. ........... 198 michal buchowski, university of poznan and europe-university viadrina, frankfurtioder list uf contributors timothy mccajor hall (mccajor@ post.harvard.edu) received his phd in psychological anthropology from uc san diego in 2003. he will complete his md at ucsd in june 2005, and will then be a post-doctoral fellow at the center on aging at the university of chicago and norc. hana haskova (hana.haskova@soc.cas.cz) is a phd candidate in sociology at charles university. since 2002, she has been a lecturer at charles university in prague, and a coordinator of the czech research team on the international research project "enlargement, gender and governance: the civic and political participation and representation of women in eu candidate countries. " haldis haukanes (haldis.haukanes@ skok.uib.no) holds a phd in social anthropology from the university of bergen, norway, and is currently acting head of the centre for women's and gender research, university of bergen. krista hegburg (kmh55@columbia.edu) is a phd candidate in sociocultural anthropology at columbia univcrsity. raymond june (rjune@alumni.uchicago.edu) is a phd candidate at the university of california at berkeley. karen kapusta-pofahl (kapu0004@umn.edu) is a phd candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the university of minnesota. david karjanen (dkarjane@weber.ucsd.edu) received his phd in anthropology from the university of michigan in 2003, he is currently a postdoctoral scholar at the center for comparative immigration studies, uc san diego. marta koi<irova (marta.kolarova@soc.cas.cz) is a phd candidate in sociology at charles university in prague. she works as a researcher at the institute of sociology, academy of science ofthe czech republic. denise kozikowski (dkozjsimon@ verizon.net) received her phd in folklore!ethnomedicine from the university of california, los angeles in 2005. rebecca nash (rebecca.nash@ blueyonder.co.uk) after completing her phd in sociocultural anthropology at the university of virginia (2003), she worked as a rescarch associate in social medicine at imperial college. she is currently a strategic futures consultant at london-based henley centre. ben hill passmore (passmore@usmd.edu) received his phd from southem methodist university. he is currently the director of policy research for the university system of maryland. katai'ina plochova (plochova@eu.cas.cz) received her ma in cultural studies from charles university, where she is currently a phd student in the department of ethnology. she is also a researcher in the institute of ethnology, academy ofs~iences of the czech republic. james quin (jmquin@eircom.net) is a phd candidate in anthropology at the national university of ireland, maynooth. rosie read (rosieread@hotmail.com) is a research fellow at the department of central and east european studies at glasgow university. her documentary film, darnall, was awarded the student prize at the 6th g6ltingen inlemational ethnographic film festival, gennany, in 2002. leos satava (leos.satava@ff.cuni.cz; isatava@tiscali.cz) received his phd from the institute of ethnology, charles university faculty of arts and philosophy, prague, where he is professor of ethnology. peter skalnik (skalnik@mail.upce.cz) is senior lecturer in social anthropology at the department of social sciences, university of par dub ice. he is vice-president of the international union of anthropological and ethnological sciences (2003-2008). he publishes in czech as petr skalnik. vera sokolova (vera.sokolova@volny.cz) received her phd in history from the university of washington. she is assistant professor of history and chair of the department of gender studies at charles university in prague. more infom1ation at w'ww.fhs.cuni.czlgender davide torsello (dtorsello@yahoo.it) obtained his phd at the max planck institute for social anthropology. zdenek uherek (uherek@eu.cas.cz) received his phd from the department of ethnology, charles university. he is head of the department of ethnic studies in institute of ethnology, academy of sciences of the czech republic, and external lecturer at charles university, and at university of west bohemia in pizen. 3 mailto:uherek@eu.cas.cz mailto:dtorsello@yahoo.it mailto:vera.sokolova@volny.cz mailto:skalnik@mail.upce.cz mailto:isatava@tiscali.cz mailto:leos.satava@ff.cuni.cz mailto:rosieread@hotmail.com mailto:jmquin@eircom.net mailto:plochova@eu.cas.cz mailto:passmore@usmd.edu http:blueyonder.co.uk http:verizon.net mailto:marta.kolarova@soc.cas.cz mailto:dkarjane@weber.ucsd.edu mailto:kapu0004@umn.edu mailto:rjune@alumni.uchicago.edu mailto:kmh55@columbia.edu http:skok.uib.no mailto:hana.haskova@soc.cas.cz http:post.harvard.edu as a consequence of the winter war of 1939-40 and the continuation war of 1941-44 between finland and the soviet union, finland eventually ceded areas in karelia: the territory of karelian isthmus with the city viipury (vyborg) and the gulf of viiupury, anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: melek@eu.spb.ru global postsocialism on a local scale: the soviet migrants at karelia and their past1 ekaterina melnikova, european university at saint petersburg introduction the question “what is postsocialism?” has remained vital and becomes more intriguing as the ussr – the emblem of socialism – recedes into the past. yet what we still have in hand is confidence in the fact that something once happened having global effects on international relations as well as on the ordinary people whose daily lives have changed. caroline humphrey argued that the category “postsocialism” rests on three general assumptions: there can never be a sudden and total emptying of all social phenomena and their replacement by other ways of life; „actually existing socialism‟ was a deeply pervasive phenomenon, existing not only as practices but also as public and covert ideologies and contestations; and, „actually existing socialism‟ had a certain foundational unity, derived in its public ideology from marx and in its dominant political practice from lenin (hann 2002:12). hence the term postsocialism serves as an explanatory category that allows for conceptualizing the aspects of contemporary social reality in diachronic terms, as the aftermath of the past. the parallels with postcolonial studies that katherine verdery emphasized (hann 2002:12–21) are founded on this argument as well. grasping a bakhtinian concept, olga sosnina and nikolai ssorin-chaikov point out this way of using the term and treat postsocialism as a “chronotope” that defines space in temporal terms (sosnina and ssorin-chaikov 2009:209). it is from this point of view that the areas from eastern europe to vladivostok as well as china, cuba and other societies that experienced socialism in their past or even present can be enveloped as “the basic unity of the field of investigation” (hann 2002:12). yet the comparison of all these postsocialist societies is limited. a certain foundational unity of vernacular socialisms and even some degree of unity of their practices and veiled ideologies does not ensure the unity of the contexts in which they fell away across these societies, as well as the particular reasons that called forth those falls. even less so does it imply the unity of the vernacular postsocialisms that no longer are formally tied either by a common ideology or by a common legislative model. it is evident enough that neither transformed completely all at once. but the discussion of “postsocialism” still makes sense if we assume rather radical and rapid change in all the former socialist societies. moreover, the popular debates about the degree to which today‟s russia is far from the soviet model in terms of its policy and economy imply that “postsocialism” as a fact of social imagination is not equal to “postsocialism” as a certain regime. it seems very effective to divide anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 87 both understandings. in the first case we deal with the concept that arose in a particular time and within a particular milieu for interpretation of the visible transformations. it was used both by politicians and journalists, scholars and to some extent by “ordinary people” in response to changes in their lifestyles as well as public discourses about those lifestyles. in the second case the term “postsocialism” refers to a particular social order, and a political and economic regime which is “already not socialism,” which no longer relies on marxist ideology, certain forms of power relations, and an economy of “centralized planning.” in other words it is not socialism as we understand it. following this division we could ask the question about the extent to which postsocialism in all the former socialist societies is actually postsocialism; that is, whether the regime and social relationship after the declared fall of socialism are already not socialistic. the “imagined postsocialism” is about the change (no matter in what direction) as it was noticed by the people. the “actual postsocialism” is about the results of the alterations in the socialist societies. in this paper i am focusing on the first case. i am addressing the question of the tangibility of postsocialism for ordinary people: in what spheres of life did people experience the transformations? materials in this paper originate from a tiny region that entered the ussr only in the 1940s. most of the present-day locals of this region moved here in the post-war years from different parts of the soviet union. they were mostly rural people – kolkhozniki (kolkhoz workers/farmers), partly – workers at local industry, or employees at local administration, schools, and human services. historical background as a consequence of the winter war of 1939-40 and of the continuation war of 1941-44 between finland and the soviet union, finland eventually ceded areas in karelia to the ussr: the territory of the karelian isthmus containing the city of viipury (vyborg) and the gulf of viiupury; the northern and western ladoga coasts containing the cities of kakkisalmi/kegsgolm (priozersk), sortavala, and suojarvi; and some other territories as well. under the terms of the armistices, all the finnish inhabitants had to leave the territory, leaving all the constructions undamaged. the finnish population of this area – about 410,000 people – was almost entirely evacuated into finland (komulainen 2003; laine 2005:25-27) and the department of migration of the council of ministers of the ussr initiated a recruiting campaign in order to settle the new lands. 2 the majority of the former finnish districts were included in the karelian autonomous republic, whose administrative status was simultaneously changed into a union one. from 1944 till 1956 it functioned as the karelo-finskaia ssr. 3 only the territories most closely situated to leningrad entered the leningrad district of rsfsr. this paper focuses on materials dealing with the events that took place in the karelian republic. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: melek@eu.spb.ru figure 1: ladoga karelia and karelian isthmus the official recruiting plans in karelia were fully realized neither in 1940 nor in the postwar years. the number of people returning home during the first year after arrival was extremely high and accounted for more than 50 percent of all the migrants. in august 1945 the total population in the former finnish karelia was 27,645 people, 15,288 of whom were rural people formed into collective farms (laine 2005:35). they came from the byelorussian and the ukrainian republics, the chuvash and the mordovian autonomous republics, and from about ten anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 89 other regions of russia. those who moved to this area and did not leave at a later time form the category on which this paper focuses further. the migrants who moved to the former finnish karelia were of different genders, ages, places of origin, social statuses, and professions. they spoke different languages and had different levels of literacy. these were mostly young families with children. russian was not the native language for those who came from ukraine, belarus, the mordovian and chuvash autonomous republics, and the ingrian villages of the leningrad district. even in 1951 the inspectors of the people‟s commissariat of popular education pointed out that children in the new districts experienced difficulties in school due to their poor knowledge of russian (narkompros kfssr 1951a:8, 1951b: 3, 5). migrants had little in common; they usually came under their own volition rather than as part of the whole village or collective farm. after arrival they were taken to different places. as a rule the local administration brought people from the same regions to the same kolkhoz. this way, collective farms like “red chuvashia” or “byelorussian” became the constructed, institutionalized fact of the local landscape. even if the origin of the dwellers was not evident from the place-name, the migrants were clearly aware of the “chuvashian”, “mordovian”, “ukrainian”, “vologodskii” or other regional affiliation of local collective farms (melnikova 2005:71–74, 2007). this method of settling the region served as the first instrument in making order out of the chaos of new relations in new places. the migrants utilized the division between the people from the same area who inhabited particular spaces in karelian districts as a tool to accommodate the very new landscape and to define their own place within it. the nicknames of compatriots were supplemented with a set of stereotypes concerning behavior, speech, rituals, and appearance. 4 “having little in common” was another uniting idea for all the migrants. though all postwar karelia became the target of a huge migration influx, this was only a former finnish area where no autochthonous population remained. 5 nobody was “local” and nobody could call the region her or his fatherland. the dwellers were different and the awareness of that fact provided migrants with the frontiers of their community in karelia. post-war situation: information available the act of annexation of the karelian territories did not receive any official interpretation. the events of the 1940s were treated in the newspapers and historical books not as a war but rather as the successful fight of the karelo-finskii narod (karelian-finnish people) for natsionalnaia gosudarstvennost (the national state status). this rhetoric obscured the interaction of the two states for the land, as it portrayed only one actor–the karelian-finnish people who entered the “powerful and happy family of the peoples of the soviet union”. 6 the term “karelian-finnish people” was constructed at the same time as the creation of the kareliananthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 90 finnish union republic in 1940, and disappeared with its re-organization into the karelian autonomous republic in 1956. formally the new districts were part of the karelian republic. this meant that all the local schools used the same formal rulings, educational instructions, programs and schoolbooks as all over karelia. in the beginning of the 1950s, regional education was partly assigned to regional institutions. such freedom is evident in the programs of literature but not those of history. all the history textbooks that were in use in karelian schools until the middle of the 1960s were prepared in moscow. this was primarily the case of the “history of the ussr” by pankratova and of a similar text by shestakov, but there were other editions as well. as early as 1965, the first history school textbook dealing with karelia was published (afanasieva et al. 1965). but even in that edition the information concerning the history of the new districts was very limited. on page 138 it reads: the governments of imperialistic states decided to try the strength and power of our country. with such a goal they set finland against the soviet union, they supported and encouraged the plans of the finnish fascists to occupy the northern-western regions of the ussr. in 1939 the imperialists succeeded in unleashing the war against the soviet union [afanasieva et al. 1965:138]. this interpretation is far from the actual facts of the region‟s local history. those who studied at post-war schools could not receive information concerning the area they lived in. in spite of the fact that even during the 1940s and the 1950s the government formally supported kraevedenie (the practice of local history), its development was entirely cut off by the repression of local historians and centralization of the activity of the museums (berdinskikh 2003:509-510; sobolev 2000). this paper pays attention to the distribution of official information concerning the history of the region in order to make the post-war situation in the area more clear. people who arrived in karelia knew little about the local history. but traces of the former inhabitants would have been evident. those fleeing for finland left behind houses and other buildings, utensils, clothes, and furniture. the finnish population had little time to evacuate (laine 2005:24-26) and a lot of belongings were left behind. according to the reports of the nkvd officers in 1941, a high number of the finnish books and newspapers were found in sortavala district and were in use among the soviet migrants. 7 finnish inscriptions on the walls and fences were also described in the report (raikom kp(b) 1941:15). it is safe to assert that the new settlers must have exhibited some curiosity concerning the former inhabitants of the region. the official sources such as newspapers, books and school classes could not provide the migrants with relevant information. the frontier guards who were quartered in the area should have fulfilled the principal role in the distribution of knowledge about the land. the territory of the former finnish karelia almost entirely was within the official frontier zone. this implied the prohibition for any person to enter the territory without special permission from the nkvd. frontier officers actively anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 91 participated in the daily life of migrants. they gave lectures in village reading rooms (raikom kp(b) 1946:50), spoke to school children, and took some schools under their patronage (izotov 2008:56). the lifestyle of the migrants to the former finnish lands was also heavily affected by the heroic literature about frontier guards (ilukha 2008). this was seen most prominently in the textbooks of karelia, as this was a bordering republic. the regional schools stressed the development of a sense of every-day vigilance and “protective-defensive reflexes” (ilukha 2008:208). taking into account an active role of the frontier soldiers in the instruction of the migrants i argue that the migrants took general information concerning the land from the stories of the soldiers rather from any other sources. that information entered the space of local rumors and hearsay it was distributed orally through daily talks between the neighbors and relatives. rumors the only data currently available concerning the rumors among the migrants are contemporary interviews with local people. such data was collected at the beginning of the 2000s and certainly cannot be interpreted as evidence of the rumors circulating in the middle of the 20 th century. yet it is evidence of the narrative experiences of the migrants. through analysis of these interviews we can define common topics and principal rhetorical strategies. among them are various descriptions of the communication with the finns in the first post-war years. and even if the design and intentions of such tales could be repeatedly reformulated during the last decades and are dependent on the context of the interview, the common motives are unlikely to have been formulated recently. they obviously are not the immediate outcomes of the conversation since they are repeated from person to person. the stories about the finns are some of the favorite topics of discussion engaged by the migrants. almost all of the locals, regardless of gender, age and social status, tell a story featuring a finn who secretly crosses the border after the war. there is a group of stories whose main intention is to present the fear of the first post-war years: people were afraid of finns who could come back, burn the houses, kill new dwellers, etc. “the finns even slaughtered entire families at hutora. 8 they came here. well, to the hutora in sovkhozy. and you know, one house is far from another house there. they would come to their houses, they would sit and slaughter in the night – and that‟s all, and went away” (granitsa i ludi:229). all the interviewees acknowledge the existence of such rumors in the past. some of them tend to illustrate the fear of those who moved to the region with examples of “real incidents;” others only refer to such cases, while still other people are convinced that such the stories are lies and confess they were not afraid of the finns. the last strategy demonstrates the general conclusion: rumors about the “dangerous finns” were widespread among the soviet dwellers. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 92 when telling about the first years after their arrival, people usually reiterate that they came to the “others‟ territory” and anticipated the return of the finns. they connect their own anxieties with the awareness of potential finnish claims to the land. certainly we were afraid. well, she [the mother] said that… “is it worth it to develop the soil?” and the finns had the soil – just sand… and there were no fences, nothing. and she said: “well, maybe we‟ll live here one year and the finns will come, will turn us out.” and somehow lived in such a… felt that suddenly, that suddenly they will turn us out [granitsa i ludi:221]. another common idea across such recollections is about the former owners who missed their fatherland and came to their houses just to catch a glimpse of it. one of the narratives is about the finn who crossed the border, came to his old house and showed the hidden food and other things to a new owner. the topic is also related to a very popular story about the treasures hidden by the finns before the evacuation. one of the most dramatic variations on the topic is about the finn who came to his former house to die there: he spoke to the russian owner letting her know that he was going to die by morning, went to the shed and was found dead at dawn (granitsa i ludi:241–243). the reality of such incidents is hardly verifiable. the available materials concerning the violation of the frontiers are limited. the cases of illegal crossing of the border could have happened during the 1940-50s but all the examples known from the formal documents concern the 1950s and involve either finns who came to the soviet karelia escaping from some penalties in finland, or “red finns” who were in search of work in the ussr (makurov 1999:228–232, 255–262). no case of arrest of a former karelian inhabitant was indicated. the territory was very close to the border and after the war it was heavily guarded. it is obvious that the violation of the border could not have occurred on a mass scale. yet the frontier soldiers could provide such rumors through special instructions and daily communication with arriving people. the fears and rumors about the finns who secretly visited their houses could be very probable during the 1940-50s. they also were likely to become the “common knowledge” of the migrants – the knowledge that was shared by the migrants and was sufficiently local to distinguish them from the other karelian population. the hearsay about the finns – either dangerous or missing their homeland – served for marking the landscape as “finnish,” providing it with some historical “depth” in the view of new dwellers. it became the primary source of the information about the past of the land. what comes next? the advent of postsocialism in this region was much more evident than elsewhere in provincial russia. as it made up a territorial borderland, almost all the former finnish lands we closed for foreigners during the soviet time. the federal law no. 4730-i from april 4, 1993 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 93 reduced the frontier zone to only five kilometers; 9 this measure has made visiting the area de facto possible. after the borders were “opened,” the multitude of the former finnish dwellers, their descendants and relatives had the opportunity to visit their fatherland. the pilgrimage to the region was of a substantial scale during the 1990s and decreased only recently. 10 during the same years it became a significant resource for those who had been living on the territory since the 1940s; “nostalgia tourism” provided locals with some opportunities for home business and cross-border cooperation. those who had cars served as taxi-drivers and local guides; they met the buses from finland and took the tourists around the area looking for their old houses or just searching for the places where those houses were once located. many such migrants 11 were still living in the finnish buildings and this led to communication between the new and the former owners. the visits became regular and the cross-border relations entered the sphere of the family life of the migrants. the finns took some presents with them and invited their new friends to be their guests in finland. the migrants also did their best to be cordial hosts. cross-border marriages have also become more frequent in the era of postsocialism. the finnish presence is also apparent in the religious revival at the beginning of the 1990s. the protestant communes that were supported mostly by finnish organizations started their activity in karelia as early as the end of the 1980s. the majority of the old generation locals visited religious meetings in the chapels. joint russian-finnish activity also played a significant role in the sphere of the local economy, cultural affairs, and other areas of community life. during the 1990s, the region reoriented itself toward multiple forms of cooperation with finland. the orientation of the bordering region to the neighboring state is a conspicuous phenomenon. in the case of the former finnish karelia it was the past of the landscape that was used as the primary background for all the joint initiatives. the creation of ties between the families of the former and the new dwellers was based on a form of “co-ownership” of the old wooden houses. local historians consulted finnish colleagues concerning the development of the region (granitsa i ludi:400). regional administrations initiated joint projects in the sphere of culture in order to emphasize the finnish and karelian past of the land. the intensification of the cross-border relations created a new framework for folklore about the finns that was likely to be spread much earlier than 1990s. compassion towards those who had to leave their houses because of the war, as well as the stories about contacts with the finns who secretly crossed the border – all tales which occupy a central role in the memories of the migrants, became part of a broader tendency to incorporate the “finnish history” into the local history of the community and the life histories of its members. local cemeteries illustrate how the uses of the “finnish past” are transformed in a new context. migrants to the region used the finnish graveyards, entirely covering them with new tombs. the old graves often seemed ownerless and old memorials were thrown off. at least since the beginning of 2000s, however, the tendency to incorporate the finnish graves into the commemorating practices of the migrants has become visible. locals look after the old finnish anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 94 tombs in the same way as they usually do with the burial places of their relatives and familiars: they stop at the grave, strew cereal grains, and say traditional memorial words. at the time of observation i found several cases when the family burial places of the migrants include finnish gravestones. figure 2: the burial place of a migrant family. the gravestone in the foreground and the white cross were erected by soviet-era residents. two gravestones in the background are old finnish tombstones. photo by pekka hakamies.12 contemporary memorials erected during the 1990s and afterwards also emphasize the connection between the former and new locals: the monuments to the soviet and finnish victims of the latest wars stand side by side. they sometimes bear bilingual inscriptions addressed to both finnish and russian-speaking people. the inclusion of the finnish past of the land into the local and into residents‟ life histories is evident in the way the migrants keep and present the “reliquae” (relics) left over from the prewar inhabitants. plates and dishes found in the abandoned houses, books, post-cards and the very houses, tiled stoves, etc. are carefully kept and displayed prominently. all these objects are demonstrated to the visitors as traces of the past and also as evidence of the proper care of it. 13 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 95 figure 3: a monument in melnikovo, leningrad region (former raisala), to the memory of the local people who died here in 1939-1940 and 1941-1944. it was erected in 1992 on the territory of the former finnish cemetery. the inscription in finnish on the left side of the memorial reads: “the old cemetery of raisala parish. the place, where you stand, is holy.” photo by pekka hakamies. figure 4: the same monument in melnikovo (raisala). the inscription in russian also reads: “the place, where you stand, is holy.” photo by pekka hakamies. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 96 the changes that were generated by the opening of the borders not only provided migrants with material and symbolic resources, but also revived the complex issue of the acquisition of the territory, an issue that remained important for them. through the accommodation of the “finnish past” as a part of the migrants‟ own past, migrants tend to interpret the land as a “heritage” and even as a “gift” of the former hosts into the hands of the new ones. they consider themselves the keepers of finnish heritage rather than its actual owners. in their encounters with tourists from finland they personally meet those whose heritage they keep and have the opportunity to present the remnants of the patrimony they cared for. the history of the country-house designed by lars sonk is a picturesque example. at the beginning of 20th century it was constructed according to the plan of the famous finnish architect lars sonk for his cousin in kurkijoki. at the beginning of the 21st century one of the local families received the ruins of the house to use it for firewood. instead of doing that, they started the reconstruction and finally the house received official status of cultural and historical heritage and its owner was officially registered as khranitel (rus. keeper). now the house is one of the most popular places of “nostalgia pilgrimage” and also serves as a hotel. conclusions the lifestyles of local people in the territory of the former finnish karelia have changed since the mid 1990s. the tiny region on the border of russia was touched by the global postsocialist processes and the transformations in the area came along with a broader change in state policy. the degree to which the situation that came after the fall of the soviet union was actually postsocialist, that is, “already not socialist,” remains in question. but the reality of the “postsocialism” as a new era for local dwellers is beyond doubt. the shift from the past to the present is marked for them by new relations with the finnish neighbors who suddenly became relatives and predecessors. the multitude of legal changes from the end of the 1980s until the end of the 1990s could be interpreted as key acts in transforming the former soviet society into a postsocialist one. it is evident that the federal law from april 4, 1993, which reduced the frontier zone and opened it for the finnish tourists, would not have such far-reaching consequences if the other fields of social life had not changed. but the changes in the other spheres of life were not nearly as visible for locals as compared to this one. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 97 notes 1 the paper is prepared within the project supported by kone foundation. it is based on the materials of two projects: “building new russia? something old, something new and something borrowed” (2001-2003) and my individual project on “accommodating an alien past: the soviet migrants at the territory of the former finnish karelia” (2008-2009). in addition to archival and published materials, the projects draw on interviews with the soviet migrants, collected in 2001-2003 and in 2008. the results of these research projects were initially published in the volume granitsa i ludi (2005). 2 for more details on the history of the settlement and development of the “new districts” in karelia see: balashov 1998; laine 2005; smirnova 2006; stepakov and balashov 2001; verigin 2005. 3 this formal detail is picturesque in terms of the ethnic politics of the soviet government in the1940-50s. the appearance of the term “finskaia” in the name of the republic was motivated by the joining of the former finnish districts. yet the lands entered the ussr without people neither finns nor anybody else. the first part of the republic‟s name – karelo(karelian) was far from reality already on the eve of the war. by the data of the census of 1939 only 23.1 percent of the population in kassr named themselves as karels (verigin 2005:180). thus the creation of karelo-finskaia ssr broke one of the official rules compiled by stalin: the union republic was to have more than 50 percent population of so-called titulnaia natsia (the title nation). another broken rule referred to the population figures, which in kfssr was twice less than required. regardless of all these deviations, the new union republic was created in order to objectify the results of the winter war. 4 for more details see: melnikova 2007. 5 the finnish population of this area was evacuated almost totally. nearly 3,000 people fell under soviet occupation but all of them with relatively few exceptions used their opportunity in the peace treaty to move to finland after the war (laine 2005: 27). 6 see for example the report of the chairman of the council of ministers of karelo-finskaia ssr valdemar virolainen in 1947 (prizyv 1947:2). 7 the last remark seems strange if we take into account that the incomers did not speak finnish. yet some karelians who resettled from other regions of karelia could supposedly read finnish. 8 “hutora” is a specific system of settlements that was spread among the finnish population. hutor consisted of one or a few houses, often far remote one from another. such a lifestyle was entirely different from that usual to the majority of the migrants who came from the southern parts of russia, ukraine or belarus where this system had never been in use. 9 the terms of the federal law were later confirmed by the decree of the president of the republic of karelia (the decree no. 238 from october 10, 2001). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 98 10 the significance of this type of tourism is also evident from the fact that the general-lieutenant a. zabrodin gave a special interview to helsingin sanomat – one of finland‟s central newspapers – concerning the changes of the rules of the frontier zone which was mostly focused on the effects of new regulations on the so-called “nostalgia tourism” (helsingin sanomat 2007, january 16). 11 i continue to use this term to make sense between old and new dwellers. yet it is certainly not the most appropriate one for those who came to karelia in 1940-50s, who buried their relatives in local cemeteries, brought up children and grandchildren here and refer to this locale as their homeland. 12 i would like to acknowledge dr. pekka hakamies for the photographs and the opportunity to use the materials of the project “building new russia? something old, something new and something borrowed.” 13 see also: melnikova 2009. references cited androsova, tatiana. 2007. economic interests in soviet-finnish relations. in the flexible frontier: change and continuity in finnish-russian relations. aleksanteri series, maria lähteenmäki, ed. p.127–144. helsinki: aleksanteri institute. balashov evgeniy. 1998. karelskii peresheek. zemlia neizvedannaia (karelian isthmus. terra incognita). st. petersburg: novoe vremia, 1998. berdinskikh viktor. 2003. uezdnye istoriki: russkaia provintsialnaia istoriographia (uezd historians: russian provincial historiography). moscow: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. granitsa i ludi. 2005. granitsa i ludi: vospominanija sovetskikh pereselentsev priladozskoi karelii (the border and the people: recollections of the soviet migrants in ladoga karelia), e. a. melnikova, ed. st. petersburg: european university at st. petersburg. hann, chris, and humphrey, caroline, and verdery, katherine. 2002. introduction: postsocialism as a topic of anthropological investigation. in postsocialism: ideals, ideologies, and practices in eurasia, chris hann, ed. p. 1–28. london: routledge helsingin sanomat. 2007. 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leninsko-stalinskoi natsionalnoi politiki (triumph of lenin-stalin national politics) prizyv, october 9:2. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 100 raikom kp(b). 1941. sortavala district party committee. national archive of the republic of karelia, petrozavodsk. f. 225, op. 1. d.1/4. _____. 1946. sortavala district party committee. national archive of the republic of karelia, petrozavodsk. f. 225, op. 4, d. 8/114. smirnova elena. 2006. zaselenie i osvoenie novykh rajonov karelo-finskoi ssr v 1940-e gody (settlement and development of new districts of karean-finnish ssr in the 1940s). ph.d. dissertation, department of history, petrozavodsk state university. sobolev v. 2000. akademija nauk i kraevedcheskoe dvizenie (academy of sciences and local history movement). vestnik ran 70(6): 535-541. sosnina, olga, and ssorin-chaikov, nikolai. 2009. postsocializm kak chronotop: postsovetskaia publika na vystavke “dary vozdyam” (postsocialism as a chronotope: the postsoviet visitors at the exhibition of gifts to soviet leaders”). neprikosnovennyi zapas 2(64):207–226. stepakov viktor, and balashov evgeniy. 2001. v “novykh rajonakh”. iz istorii osvoenija karelskogo peresheika 1940-1941, 1944-1950 (in “new districts”. from history of the development of karelian isthmus 1940-41, 1944-50). st. petersburg: nordmedizdat. verigin sergey. 2005. zaselenie i osvoenie byvshikh finskikh territorii priladozija posle okonchanija zimnei voiny (settlement and development of the former finnish ladoga territories after the end of the winter war ). in sortavalskii istoricheskii sbornik. vyp. 1. p. 177–189. petrozavodsk: petrozavodsk state university. microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 42 the coca-cola kashkaval network: βelonging and business in the postsocialist balkans1 georgios agelopoulos university of macedonia, thessaloniki the winter of 1991 1992 was a time of significant political changes in the balkans. as a result of these changes, the former socialist balkan states (albania, bulgaria, rumania)xxxvii experienced a sudden opening of their borders. for the first time since wwii the citizens of these countries were completely free to travel abroad without any direct official or indirect unofficial restrictions. the same applied to citizens of “the west”xxxviii, who were able for the first time in the last forty years to enter these countries almost without restrictions. it is true that this freedom of movement did not last long for the citizens of former socialist countries. however, it is justifiable to assert that it is far easier to travel between these countries and the eu states today than it was pre-1991. with the exception of refugees from the former yugoslavia seeking asylum in other countries and the illegal migration of people coming from se europe, little research has been carried out on the impact that this freedom of contact has had on balkan societies. in the majority of cases, reports in the international press and the views of certain politicians tend to confirm what verdery calls the “deep freeze theory”,xxxix alternatively known as “the heavy lid theory”. briefly speaking, this popular model of explanation claims that from the moment socialist regimes collapsed, previously existing socioeconomic relationships and structures were taken “out of the deep freeze” and were free to develop. this is a model used not only to explain the rise of nationalist movements in the area, but also to justify phenomena such as the recent significant presence of italian companies in tirana and the strong presence of greek companies in sofia. the work of a. brzezinski (1998), g. kennan (1993) and r. kaplan (1994) can be classified as supporting such an explanatory model. as pointed out by pearson, this model is totally ahistorical (pearson 1995: 76). in my opinion, it is more than ahistorical, it is of a metaphysical nature. what such an explanation presupposes is the possibility of a break in history which amounts to a gap that lasted forty-five years. according to such claims, balkan societies somehow managed to remain unchanged during this forty-five-year period, and when socialism collapsed they then returned to the situation that existed before wwii. the discourse of the deep freeze theory is based on a mentality similar to that of balkanism in todorova’s terms (todorova 1997). balkanism and the deep freeze theory formulate symbolically powerful constructions (“the balkans”) with supposedly eternal characteristics not influenced by historical changes. furthermore, both are the product of scholars who “valorise eastern europe as foreign and distanced from the rest of the world” (kurti 1996: 13) and especially from the west. finally, both approaches establish political and ethnic correctness as a precondition for scholars working in the area (kurti 1996: 15). my aim is to argue against simplistic and ahistorical explanations such as the above-mentioned models. in my opinion, the situation is far more complex and perplexing and involves a revaluation and reconstruction of past relationships by those involved in the present. in order to ethnographically illustrate my argument i will refer to the case of the krasiotes population living in greece and bulgaria. thus, this article will hopefully contribute towards fulfilling one of the tasks of postsocialist ethnography as suggested by hann, humphrey and verdery: to point out the self-representations emerging after the collapse of socialism on both sides of the border dividing former socialist and capitalist societies (hann, humphrey and verdery, 2002: 21). my data are based on fieldwork conducted in greek macedonia and in the bulgarian black sea coast in 1991 1992 and in 1996.xl since 1996 i have been following further developments from greece. the krasiotes population of greece and bulgariaxli rila is a town on the black sea coast of bulgaria. until the beginning of the twentieth century rila was predominantly a greek town, called krasia, with a total population of more than 4,000 people. more than 2/3 of its population were greeks who called themselves krasiotes greeks, the rest of the population being turks and bulgarians. until 1926 a great number of greeks lived in southern bulgaria (sometime known as anatoliki romilia, eastern rumelia) and in the bulgarian black sea coast, from sozopol to the south to burgas to the north. precise numbers cannot be provided due to the flexibility and ambiguity of national identification in the southern anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 43 balkans.xlii furthermore, the majority of data regarding the distribution of populations in the area during that period are not considered to be reliable (pearson 1983). estimations of the number of greeks living in what was eastern rumelia vary from 40,000 to 150,000 people. according to the official bulgarian statistics, the 1920 census showed the presence of 42,074 greeks in bulgaria (mancev 1992: 33). the krasiotes were included in this number. the greeks of rila (krasia) were engaged in trade, wine production and fishery. they were a bourgeois population clearly distinct from the other rural populations of the same region. as a result of the re-arrangement of borders between the balkan states following the balkan wars, some populations found themselves living in a foreign national state. the balkan wars were followed by massive exchanges of populations between the balkan states. population transfer seemed to many despairing politicians during that period to be the most definitive, or the most drastic, solution to the abiding minority problem (pearson 1983: 139). various treaties were signed to control all these population exchanges. based on the agreements of the treaty of neuilly signed in 1919, a total number of 46,000 greeks came from the northern part of bulgaria to greek macedonia, and 92,000 bulgarians (i.e. macedonians with bulgarian national affiliations) moved from greek macedonia to bulgaria. the exchange of populations between greece and bulgaria was never completed. this was due to the nature of the treaty which made clear that the departure of the "minority" population was not compulsory. in any case, it was not possible for such an exchange of population to be completed for the very simple reason that there were no clear and absolute criteria to define who was greek and who was bulgarian. groups of people who defined themselves as greeks at that time remained inside bulgaria; the same happened with the macedonian supporters of the bulgarian exarchatexliii in western greek macedonia. in the immediate post-wwii decades, the bulgarian greeks and the macedonians of greece were gradually assimilated or forced to migrate, usually outside europe. some krasiotes families had already been living in greece since 1903, but the final decision to move to greece was taken sometime during the spring of 1925. as was the case with the kostilides community of greeks from bulgaria studied by danforth, the pressure applied by the bulgarian authorities to leave bulgaria could no longer be resisted (danforth 1989: 134). it should be noted that the krasiotes were allowed to sell their land and houses before leaving bulgaria. in actuality, the krasiotes community was divided in 1925. almost 70 75% of krasiotes decided to leave their homeland. some families preferred to stay in rila. according to the treaty of neuilly, the nuclear family was officially recognised as the migration unit but the right to migrate was recognised for every person who was older than eighteen years old. therefore, it happened that some brothers and sisters were separated because one preferred to remain in rila while the other migrated to greece. during my visit to rila in the summer of 1992 i had the chance to talk with some members of the krasiotes community and discuss the reasons for their choice. briefly speaking, those who preferred to remain in rila justify their decision on the basis of existing kinship ties with non-greek families, their political affiliations and/or because of various personal reasons. three hundred and sixty families (i.e. households) arrived in greece, with 288 of them settling in a village in central greek macedonia. the process of establishing the community in its new settlement was similar to the one reported in the relevant bibliography (eddy 1931, pentzopoulos 1962). this village was later named nea krasia (new krasia). although the majority of the population of the village was composed of krasiotes, a number of other populations were also settled there. these were pontic greeks who arrived during the twenties in the village as refugees from the caucasus, thrakiotes greeks who came almost at the same time as refugees from the european part of turkey, sarakatsans and macedonians of greek national consciousness (“graikomani”) who used to live in the area. soon after their establishment in greece, the krasiotes revived their tradition of wine production and wine trading, and after wwii nea krasia consequently became one of the most rapidly developing and wealthy villages of central greek macedonia. the present-day population of the village is about 4,000 persons. as already explained, a number of families from krasiotes preferred to stay in their bulgarian homelands rather than move to greece during the twenties. relationships between the krasiotes of rila and the krasiotes of nea krasia were sustained through the use of various strategies. during the period 1926 – 1939 relations were based on written correspondence, but actual visits were rare due to financial difficulties. reading the letters of those relatives who remained in rila was something of a ritual. from 1940 to the late fifties relations were almost non-existant due to wwii, the greek civil war (1946 – 1949) and the cold war. from the early sixties, visits developed gradually. exchanges of anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 44 visits between brothers, sisters and first cousins were usually celebrated with great joy.xliv the krasiotes who preferred to stay in rila (about 100 families) were gradually influenced by an assimilation process initiated by the bulgarian state authorities. the elderly still speak and write greek. those aged between 45 and 50 are, even today, more or less able to understand greek, but they cannot speak it fluently. until very recently the youth had limited communication skills in greek. during 1991, as a result of the political changes in bulgaria, relations between the krasiotes of rila and the krasiotes of nea krasia intensified and visits became more frequent than ever before. brothers and sisters who separated in 1926 had reached their mid-eighties in 1991. their children (first cousins) were usually in their fifties. the most crucial point in this revival of relationships between the krasiotes of rila and the krasiotes of nea krasia was the so-called “food supplies mission”, as the villagers refer to it. the food supplies mission during the winter of 1990 1991, bulgaria faced a significant lack of essential supplies. the centrally organised distribution system was collapsing, but free market networks were not developed enough to cope with demand, especially in the urban centres.xlv the greek orthodox church and local authorities organised an appeal to collect food, medicine and clothes and donate them to the bulgarian orthodox church and the bulgarian local authorities. the whole process was given a lot of publicity by the greek media. the krasiotes of nea krasia were particularly anxious about the situation of their kin in rila. i was told that an elderly krasiotes came up with the idea of the food supplies mission one day in a krasiotes coffee shop. basically, it involved the collection of food supplies for donation to the krasiotes families of rila. the idea was discussed at the local administration council of nea krasia and a committee was founded to supervise the collection of donations. negotiations took place between the local authorities of nea krasia, the greek foreign affairs ministry, the bulgarian consulate of thessaloniki, the local authorities of rila and the greek consulate of plovid. everyone was very positively disposed towards this idea and soon special permits were awarded and specific arrangements made in order to allow the food supplies mission to proceed. meanwhile, the committee in nea krasia publicised the matter outside the village and asked some thessaloniki-based companies where many krasiotes worked to contribute cash or goods. bearing in mind the circumstances in the village it was a tremendous effort, and the outcome was successful. in about four weeks 17 tons of food supplies (mainly flour, sugar, salt, rice, coffee, pasta, canned food, biscuits, chocolates and pickles) were collected. in addition, medical supplies worth the equivalent of € 1,300 were collected (1991 prices). members of the committee prepared about 400 parcels. the organising committee tried to ensure that all parcels contained more or less the same goods. the medical supplies were packed separately and prepared for the local hospital in rila. the day when the parcels were finally loaded onto a lorry was described to me as “one of the most important days in the village’s history”. the two village priests were there and many villagers helped with the loading. the local authorities had also arranged for the entire process to be filmed. a lorry and two vans transferred the goods to rila. the committee and representatives from the local administration council undertook the task of completing the food supplies mission. in rila, the committee personally supervised the distribution of parcels so that every family received one, irrespective of their national background. the local authorities of rila honoured them and talks were held between the representatives of the nea krasia local administration council and the mayor's council of rila. revived relationships and postsocialist markets the food supplies mission signalled a turning point in relations between the krasiotes of nea krasia and the krasiotes of rila. already existing contacts were further intensified, and three new forms of relationship emerged: working in nea krasia on an illegal basis, business co-operation, and tourism. language barriers did not exist among the older generations and the middle-aged. the first type of relationship was the least common. particularly during the summer months, some krasiotes from rila came to nea krasia, stayed with their relatives and worked at the same time. they did semi-skilled jobs such as painting houses or repairing cars. they were paid almost 75% of the wage that a greek worker was paid for the same job. it must be pointed out that during that period different segments of the population of bulgaria followed different survival strategies (konstantinov, kressel, thuen 1998: 731).xlvi seasonal migration was obviously the most easily available survival strategy for the descendants of the krasiotes families of rila. unfortunately for them, the labour market of nea krasia was limited as the albanian illegal migrants were a cheaper labour force always available to the villagers. during the summer of 1991 – 1992 i was able to find less than 20 such cases of rila krasiotes working in nea krasia. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 45 the exchange of visits became so frequent that during the period from august 1991 to september 1992 there was an average of one coach every month going up and down between nea krasia and rila. a really interesting case is that of the travel agency owned by one krasiotes inhabitant from rila. he organised trips between nea krasia and rila. the increasing demand led him to organise his own travel agency. his advanced knowledge of the customs bureaucracy allowed him to hire a coach. for more than a year he organised monthly trips between greece and bulgaria. his customers were krasiotes from rila visiting their kin in nea krasia. at the same time, he was transferring krasiotes from nea krasia to rila to visit their kin and stay for holidays. during the summer of 1992 the football team of nea krasia organised a trip to rila. the team players, their families, and everyone else who wanted to participate were expected to pay 29,000 drc (the equivalent of € 90) for transportation and seven days b&b accommodation in one of the most luxurious hotels on the bulgarian black sea coast. two large coaches of krasiotes villagers travelled with the football team. later during that summer, one more trip was organised, this time with three coaches altogether. similar trips were also organised during the summers of 1993, 1994 and 1995, albeit by different travel agencies. the number of summer trips began to decrease after 1995. business cooperations were the most common type of relationship. they flourished gradually, beginning a few months after the food supplies mission. this case is certainly not an exception in the postsocialist eastern european context. petty trade networks between former socialist and western european societies have been developing since the early nineties. however, the number of relevant studies is limited. as far as greece is concerned, voutira (1991) and michalopoulou et.al. (1998) briefly discuss some aspects of this phenomenon in their analysis of migration and development. among the most well documented studies of petty trade transnational networks conducted by sociologists and anthropologists,xlvii it is worth mentioning hann and beller-hann’s (1992) analysis of turkishgeorgian (hence former soviet) border trading, kostantinov and his colleagues’ studies of roma trade tourism in the southern balkans and especially bulgaria (1991, 1998), thuen’s similar analysis (1999), kennedy and gianoplus (1994) as well as sword’s (1999) project examining tourist petty trade in poland, wallace’s paper on petty-trade open markets in postsocialist countries (1999), sik’s paper (1997) on informal foreign traders in hungary and zhurzehenko’s (2004) study of trade on the ukrainian-russian border. in the case of rila and nea krasia, business cooperations always grew up between people who addressed one another using the idiom of kinship. in the majority of instances these people referred to each other as cousins (“xadelfia”). i am aware that most of them were actually “second” cousins.xlviii the greek party provided modest start-up capital for such businesses (200,000 drc, the equivalent of € 600 at 1992 prices).xlix the bulgarian cousin used his private carl or a small van to transfer to bulgaria goods that were difficult to find on the market at that time (mainly canned coca cola, candies, women's tights, condoms and brandy). after two or three such trips the bulgarian cousin was able to pay back his greek cousin, usually in dm. on their way from bulgaria to greece the bulgarian cousins loaded their vehicles with anything that could be sold in greece. it is rather doubtful that this transportation of goods was conducted legally.li during the 1992 – 1995 period the most successful trade network between rila and nea krasia was in the hands of a forty-five year old bulgarian from rila who specialised in transferring kashkaval cheeselii from bulgaria to greece and coca-cola from greece to bulgaria. business soon expanded to include other kinds of activities such as mixed tourist enterprises in rila (cafés, bars, etc.) and the clothes trade. i recall the case of a middle-aged bulgarian of krasiotes origin living in rila who specialised in trading in prophylactics. he owned a large shop inside rila where all the cupboards were full of greek-produced prophylactics. in just two years he controlled the prophylactics trade in all the bulgarian black sea resorts and used to call himself “the emperor of prophylactics” (“capota tsar”). as time passed, the bulgarian economy became more integrated into world markets and thus petty trade networks and other kinds of small business cooperations involving persons from rila and nea krasia gradually ceased to exist. the last of the petty trade networks, as far as i know, operated until 1999. most small-scale business was replaced by well organised trade agreements between the two countries. many of those initially involved in the petty trade networks were forced to change their occupation. the situation today confirms sampson’s model of post-postsocialist elite configuration (sampson 2002: 300).liii “many of the initial group have left the scene, some pensioned off, others retreating into local business or failing in business” (ibid.). in the case of rila, a small number of former petty traders become business brokers. greek companies investing in bulgaria or doing business with bulgarian companies were in need of people who could speak both bulgarian and greek, who had an understanding of both markets and who preferably anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 46 held bulgarian citizenship. such companies recruited the most successful of the former petty traders and offered them competitively high salaries.liv the current lifestyle of these people resembles the habits of a special kind of postsocialist elite called “the cell phone and mercedes people” or “akuli” (sharks) in other parts of bulgaria (giordano and kostova 2002: 87).lv over the last few years these individuals have left rila and settled in burgas, plovid and sofia, disassociating themselves from the greek cultural background of rila. their success, however, continues to rely on a “beat-the-system/bend-therules” (morawska 1999: 360) mentality which was dominant in the petty trade networks. it is interesting to note that the krasiotes network was not considered morally ambiguous as happened with other petty trade networks in eastern europe (see for example konstantinov et. al. 1998, sik 1997, thuen 1999). this is due to the fact that krasiotes greeks had a bourgeois habitus from the pre-socialist period. as already mentioned they were mainly traders and wine producers and trading was highly valued among them. on another level, this “revival” of relationships between the two parts of what used to be one community bore fruit quite quickly. the krasiotes of rila organised their own society and sought to set up a greek language school in rila. the society, which was called the “bulgarian-greek friendship society”, opened a greek language school during the summer of 1991 1992. the school targeted the younger generation, i.e. people who understood greek but were unable to express themselves fluently and found it very difficult to write greek. due to a lack of funds the krasiotes of rila did not continue their courses. i was also informed that the greek state authorities were resistant to such a development. greek diplomats were afraid that the opening of greek language schools in bulgaria would complicate the good relations that existed between the two countries. given the state of international relations in the balkans, the existence of such a minority school was considered by some diplomats i talked with as a possible threat. the krasiotes of nea krasia expressed a clear interest in “helping their brothers”, as they put it. they repeatedly asked me to mention in my work this “revival of greek identity”, as they called it, among the krasiotes of rila. just to what extent this was a reality will be explored below.lvi according to one of the members of the committee which organised the food supplies mission “the relationships between the krasiotes of the two countries will continue in the future, even when first cousins are dead”. in general, the revival of relationships helped to recall and highlight the special identity of the krasiotes population. how this was perceived in the village of nea krasia was not a straightforward matter. the challenge of self-representation on both sides of the border what is crucial to note is that those who most clearly stressed the significance of the “revived” relationship were members of families where both spouses were of krasiotes background. as already mentioned, the krasiotes population of nea krasia lives in a village alongside four other populations which were originally culturally different from them. the krasiotes of nea krasia created their own neighbourhood, and relationships with the other populations in the village were for a long time socially controlled. the fact that the krasiotes had their own neighbourhood did not just contribute to the preservation of a separate sense of belonging, but actively encouraged the strengthening of their existence as a defined population category. certainly, this case is not a unique one. similar phenomena have been observed by other anthropologists working in greek macedonialvii as well as by anthropologists working on refugee populations in different parts of the world. for example, in her study of hutu refugees in tanzania, malkki discovered that the concentration of refugees in separate settlements encouraged the development of a distinctive historical and political identity (malkki 1990) . relations between the krasiotes and the other populations in the village went through various stages. as happened in other areas of greek macedonia, all these populations competed over the same local resources such as land, water, stateprovided funds and loans, and control over the local authorities (ladas 1932, salamone 1987, lafazani 1991, gounaris 1995, karakasidou 1997). these populations gradually came into closer contact, established mixed marriages and assimilated with one another.lviii since the mid-fifties intermarriages became more common. since the late eighties the majority of couples in nea krasia have been composed of spouses from different population categories. this is not simply an important demographic change. most significant is that the development of marital exchanges is not perceived as having created a situation where the strongest population categories have assimilated the others (agelopoulos 1997). one reason for this may be the fact that all the population categories of the village ceased to be endogamic (ibid.). a similar process of assimilation took place among the krasiotes of rila to the extent that in 1991 it was not possible to find anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 47 more than 20 families where both spouses had krasiotes parents. paradoxically, even among the small number of families of nea krasia where both spouses were of krasiotes background, some did not contribute to the food supplies mission. that was due to their political affiliations. members of krasiotes families who did not support the chairperson of the local administration council of nea krasia did not contribute to the collection of food supplies. one krasiotes who was in favour of the food mission told me: “it was a shame, they didn’t give a single packet of rice because they wanted the chairperson to fail”. on the other hand, members of pontic or mixed families who politically supported the chairperson encouraged and contributed to the food supplies mission for “humanitarian reasons”, as they claimed. the success of the food supplies mission provided the chairperson and his party members with an important symbolic capital exchangeable in the local political context. finally, financial co-operation was often independent of feelings towards the revived relationships. a number of business cooperations were established among the krasiotes of rila and their kin in nea krasia who belonged to mixed families. if this was the situation, then who were those involved in the petty trade networks? attempting to discover the “pure” krasiotes among them, i.e. persons having both parents of krasiotes origin, will lead into an ethnographic deadlock. an alternative understanding of modes of belonging in postsocialist societies is necessary. konstantinov and his colleagues’ remark that “one of the most striking features of transitional realities is the ambiguity of boundaries at multiple levels” (1998: 738) is particularly useful in explaining the situation. existing identities and kinship relationships have been actively reconstructed since 1991 in order to fit the needs of those seeking to be involved in them. the politicisation of ethnicity and the stress on ethnic identity as a basis for political action in post-socialist bulgaria,lix as well as the financial advantages of doing business with greece, were the main reasons for the attempted revival of krasiotes identity in rila. these people in rila did nothing more than to make use of whatever cultural mechanisms were available to them in order to articulate the organisation of their origin. this origin became important to them inside the context in which they lived. many of the strategies that they applied originate from the socialist shortage economy (verdery 1993) which produced what it is often called homo sovieticus. the nea krasia krasiotes had different reasons for becoming involved in the petty trade network. in my opinion, financial advantage was the least important of these. humanitarian feelings and romantic ideas influenced by greek nationalism are also to be taken into account in order to understand the motives of the nea krasia krasiotes. many nea krasia krasiotes stressed, for example, that “greeks in bulgaria have been abandoned by the greek state.” however, it was mainly due to their wish to keep a part of their identity that they co-operated with their bulgarian “cousins”. the need to sustain a notion of a krasiotes identity exists due to the extended amalgamation of the various population categories of nea krasia. in so doing, most of them stressed their krasiotes background and partially neglected the other identities available to them. it must also be taken into account that local politics played an important role in this process. as already mentioned, the supporters of the chairperson of the local administration council actively supported closer relations between nea krasia and rila. it is important to note that this “revival” of relationships drastically changed perceptions among the nea krasia krasiotes regarding who their "cousins" were in rila. in the pre-1989 period the krasiotes in nea krasia thought of the krasiotes of rila as “their other half”. their limited relationship made it easier for such a romantic approach to survive. since the development of business networks the krasiotes of nea krasia have come to think that the rila krasiotes are bulgarians wishing to made a better living in their country. the bulgarians of rila do not reject that part of their origins which connects them with the krasiotes greeks. in our discussions many of them explained to me that they felt bulgarian and greek at the same time. however, they are certainly far from being the “pure greek krasiotes” of the past. in the eyes of the krasiotes of nea krasia, the “revival” of relationships between themselves and the krasiotes of rila proved that the krasiotes no longer exist in the way they used to before the exchange of populations in the twenties. the need to overcome this situation was the reason why the nea krasia krasiotes encouraged me to write “about the revival of the krasiotes identity”. postsocialist encounters in the balkans l. kurti pointed out that “the fashioning of eastern europe as an intellectual space is a curious blend of fact, fiction and political demagogy” (kurti 1996: 11). part of this demagogy is the claim that the roots of present-day social developments in the balkans are to be sought primarily in social, cultural and ethnic relations of the distant past (verdery 1993: 184). the anthropology of eastern europe has only recently escaped from this context (hann 1994). we have, at least partly, to accept m. todorova's comment that we have not been critical enough of anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 48 approaches such as the “deep freeze theory” or the “balkanisation” model. two or three years after the 1990 changes in bulgaria and the establishment of the free flow of goods and people between greece and bulgaria the deep freeze theory could have been used to explain the revival of relationships between rila and nea krasia. however, the situation over the last decade does not support the continued relevance of the deep freeze theory: petty trade networks between cousins do not exist any more, the greek language school and greek society in rila closed down in 1994, seasonal workers from rila disappeared after 1996 and even tourist visits are decreasing. the most active of the former petty traders from rila have been accommodated in the new postsocialist elites engaged in transnational business in the balkans. their relatives in nea krasia ceased to be engaged in cross-border trade networks. some of them do not wish to discuss this issue due to the fact that the trading was not ‘fully legal’. others do not wish to remember these activities because ultimately they did not lead to the ‘revival’ of krasiotes identity. in his paper on the pontic greeks of the north caucasus included in this volume popov argues that “identity can be understood as the site of interplay between structure and agency”. diasporas seem to follow different directions as far as the reconstruction of their identity and their relationships with the national centre are concerned. in the case of the rila and nea krasia a number of reasons contributed to the failure of the revival of relationships and identities. on the structural level, it is worth mentioning the reluctant policies of the greek and bulgarian states and the small size of the krasiotes population. on the level of agency i have already pointed out that ultimately the krasiotes of rila found more efficient ways to accommodate themselves in postsocialist bulgarian society than through the revival of their greekness.lx an understanding of present-day social developments in the balkans should obviously take into account the history of the region. yet it must also take into serious consideration the re-evaluation and re-construction of past relationships by those living in the present. the case of the krasiotes population indicates that it is useful to understand the development or alleged revival of relationships as a complex and dynamic process. such an insight often requires a critical appraisal of our own methodological tools and analytical categories. notes 1 i am grateful to deema kaneff, dimitra gefoumadianou, elefteria deltsou, aigli brouskou and the editors of this special issue for their comments. 2 the case of the former yugoslavia is different. yugoslavia had always been a country with, more or less, open borders. 3 the term “the west” in this article is used according to the meaning given to it in the balkans. it refers to those who have been the most important others for the people of the former socialist countries of the balkans. in other words, it denotes the european countries with no experience of socialism regimes (pearson 1983: 6, wolff 1994, todorova 1997). in that sense, countries such as austria, greece and finland belong to “the west”. 4 k. verdery uses the term “deep freeze theory” in her work (verdery 1993: 182) and pearson also uses similar expressions (pearson 1995: 76). 5 my first visit to rila as a tourist took place in 1979. the 1996 fieldwork was conducted in co-operation with elefteria deltsou and aigli brouskou. 6 the words “rila”, “nea krasia” and “krasiotes” are pseudonyms. however, the population i refer to does use a specific name to define its identity. 7 the question of national mobility, flexibility and ambiguity of national identification in the southern balkans has attracted the attention of both anthropologists and historians working on the region (agelopoulos 1995, gounaris 1995, vermeulen 1984, danforth 1995, karakasidou 1997, vereni 2000, cowan 2001). 8 the bulgarian exarchate was the first national bulgarian institution established in the late nineteenth century. it started as a separate orthodox church but soon developed into a national movement. 9 a similar phenomenon was the case of the kostilides that danforth studied. the kostilides regularly visited their homeland in bulgaria (danforth 1989: 149-150). 10 see popov and todorova 1997. 11 for example, the muslim populations of bulgaria intensified farming while the roma turned their attention to trade. 12 economists focusing on small business entrepreneurship have also examined aspects of the relationship between petty trade and transnational networks. see for example aidis and van praag 2004, dallago 1997, scase 2000, smallbone and welter 2001. xlviii the greek bilateral kinship terminology makes a anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 49 distinction between “first” cousins (offspring of brothers/sisters) and “second” cousins (offspring of first cousins). “first” cousins are close relatives and are expected to support one another. in the case of “second” cousin relationships, it is important to bear in mind schneider’s distinction between the person as a relative and the relative as a person (1968). xlix konstantinov et. al. (1998: 731) argues that the initial capital required in order to establish a petty trade network between istanbul and bulgaria in the mid-nineties was about 400 dm. at 1995 prices this amount is roughly the same as the 200,000 drc. capital used by krasiotes. similarly, in their study of albanian migrants living in thessaloniki, lamprianidis and lymperaki (2001: 230) explain that albanians engaged in petty trade between northern greece and southern albania in the mid-nineties used to buy goods of about 200,000 drc. value. l the generic pronoun (“he/his”) is not accidental. all the “cousins” i came to know were men. li informality is a structural characteristic of transaction systems in eastern europe. see morawska 1999, böröcz 2000, creed 2002, humphrey 2001, ledeneva 1998, scase 2000, wallace 1999, smallbone and welter 2001 for a critical overview of postsocialist economic habitus. lii kashkaval is a kind of mature, salty yellow cheese. liii for a similar analysis of elite configuration in russia during the last decade see kryshtanovskaya and white 2005. liv creed explains the structural importance of networking in the bulgarian economy and argues that “networks remain essential for success in bulgarian capitalism” (creed 2002: 63). see chevalier 2001, creed 1998 and kaneff 2002 for an ethnographic approach to market structures in bulgaria. see böröcz 2000, higley and lengyel 2001, humphrey 2002, ledeneva 1998, morawska 1999, mokrzycki 1996, kryshtanovskaya and white 2005 for an overall analysis of business structures and elites in postsocialist eastern europe. lv see also dallago’s (1997) similar analysis of members of the “elite” in bulgaria. lvi for a detailed analysis see agelopoulos 1997. lvii see brown 1997, cowan 1990 and 1997, danforth 1995, drettas 1977, lafazani 1991. lviii for a detailed analysis see agelopoulos 1997. lix see kertikov 1992b, vassilev 2001, stamatov 2000, ragaru 2001 for an analysis of national and ethnic reconstruction in postsocialist bulgaria. on the case of the greeks of bulgaria see valtchinova 1999. lx this failure is also documented in the work of valtchinova (1999), who examines the greeks of bulgaria. makris (2003) also presents a similar case of ‘identity revival’ failure in his work on the greeks of sudan. references agelopoulos, g. --1995 perceptions, construction and definition of greek national identity in late nineteenth early twentieth century macedonia. balkan studies (36)2:247 263. --1997 from bulgarievo to nea krasia, from the ‘two settlements’ to the ‘one village’: community formation, collective identities and the role of the individual. in the development of a greek macedonian cultural identity. p. mackridge and e. yannakakis, eds. pp. 133 – 151. new york: berg. aidis, r. and m. van praag 2004 illegal entrepreneurship experience. tinbergen institute discissuion paper ti2004105/3, amsterdam. böröcz, j. 2000 informality rules. east european politics and society (14)2:348-380. brown, 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the significance of borders in the east european transition. international journal of urban and regional research (23)4:739 750. todorova, m. 1997 imagining the balkans. oxford: oxford university press. valtchinova, g. 1999 greeks in bulgaria. in communities and identities (ii). krasteva a., ed. pp. 163 – 175. ravena: laterza editore. vassilev, v.r. 2001 post-communist bulgaria’s ethnopolitics. the global review of ethnopolitics (1):37 53. verdery, k. 1993 ethnic relations, economies of shortage, and the transition in eastern europe. in socialism: ideals, ideologies and local practice. hann, c., ed. pp. 172-186. london: routledge. vereni, p. 2000 os ellin makedonas: autobiography, memory and national identity in western greek macedonia in macedonia. in the politics of identity and difference. cowan, j., ed. pp. 47 – 67. london: pluto press. vermeulen, h. 1984 greek cultural dominance among the orthodox population of macedonia during the last period of ottoman rule. in cultural dominance in the mediterranean area. block, a. and driessen, h., eds. pp. 225 – 255. amsterdam: katholieke universiteit nijmegen. voutira, e. 1991 pontic greeks today: migrants or refugees? journal of refugee studies (4)4:400 420. wallace, c. et al. 1999 investing in social capital: the case of small-scale, cross-border traders in postcommunist central europe. international journal of urban and regional research (23)4:751 – 770. wolff, l. 1994 inventing eastern europe: the map of civilisation on the mind of the enlightenment. stanford: stanford university press. zhurzehenko, t. 2004 cross-border cooperation and transformation of regional identities in the ukrainian-russian borderlands. nationalities papers (32)2:497 518. “i don’t boast about it, but i’m the most widely read author of this century”: howard fast and international leftist literary culture, ca anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: rossen.djagalov@yale.edu “i don’t boast about it, but i’m the most widely read author of this century”: howard fast and international leftist literary culture, ca. mid-twentieth century rossen djagalov, yale university when deming brown, at the time a professor on the faculty of university of michigan’s slavic department, visited the soviet union in 1956, he noticed that the name of an obscure american writer, howard fast, seemed to be on the lips of everybody he talked to (brown 1962: 282). that fast should achieve such a status in the soviet union seemed to brown so fascinating, that he subsequently devoted a whole chapter of his book soviet attitudes toward american writing (1962) to fast’s reception in the ussr. brown was hardly the only american slavicist curious about the soviet obsession with fast: in a later study, a decade of euphoria: western literature in post-stalin russia, 1954-1964 (1977), maurice friedberg wrote extensively about fast’s disappearance from soviet bookshelves after his break with the party in 1957. like many members of the american communist party, fast was so distraught by the crimes of stalinism revealed in khrushchev’s secret speech and the subsequent invasion of hungary that he gave up his party membership. unlike most cp members who left silently, however, fast did so after making number of anti-soviet public statements, which were never forgiven. despite the high visibility of this break, post-thaw soviet intelligentsia never forgave him his role as a “friend of the soviet union” imposed upon the soviet reading public. to take one representative utterance by the émigré poet, critic, and scholar anatoly liberman, howard fast, and dyson carter “were read almost only in the ussr” (liberman 2003). in an otherwise atypically sympathetic preface to his translation of fast’s memoir being red, nikolai anastas’ev writes of fast’s “appointment” in the soviet union “to the position of the foremost contemporary american writer” (anastas’ev 2001). these and other statements i heard about fast while in moscow all assume symbiosis and collaboration between him and the soviet literary establishment. there is much truth in what western slavicists and members of (post-)soviet intelligentsia had to say about howard fast’s peculiar relationship to the stalinist ussr. in at least one sense, however, they are factually wrong: moscow did not, and could not, invent howard fast’s status as one of america’s most popular contemporary writers. he was not only one of the most widely read writers in the u.s. in the 1940s but also one of america’s most popular contemporary writers worldwide. another, deeper problem plagues those assertions and the whole discourse on fast’s (or any other contemporary international leftist writer’s) relationship with the stalinist soviet union. they typically originate as a response to the question whether fast was used by soviet propaganda. the trouble here is not so much with the answer (of course, he was!) but with the question itself, and more specifically, with its anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 41 underlying ideological assumptions. the interpretative monopoly on soviet culture enjoyed in the united states since the 1950s by the cold-war coalition between american slavicists and soviet-bloc literary émigrés ensured that howard fast’s relationship with the soviet union would be used against him. after all, fast was an heir to the earlier generation of american leftists who had been translating, publishing, and reviewing soviet culture for the broader american public throughout the 1930s. though perennially riven by the external crises, the dogmatization and stunning reversals of stalinist policies, those cultural formations of the american left continued to dominate the translation and interpretation of soviet literature until they were suppressed during the mccarthy era, clearing the way for the rise of the slavicistémigré coalition, whose role in constructing our present understanding of the soviet project has yet to be fully evaluated. following a similar, anti-regime logic, the oppositional section of the (now former) soviet-bloc intelligentsia, declared, and continues to declare, writers such as howard fast guilty by association with the soviet regime. developed over the years of its discursive and other struggles with that regime, the oppositional intelligentsia’s cultural authority in the eyes of elite reading publics—both during state socialism and now—and its tendency to mechanically put minuses where official propaganda had once put pluses have practically precluded a more objective reception and study of leftist writers from outside the bloc. this paper represents less of a call for howard fast’s literary rehabilitation—he was a writer of popular, politically engaged novels with few pretentions to literary immortality in the first place—than an attempt to reframe the discourse on him and other non-soviet leftist writers. thus, instead of asking the worn-out but still dominant question, “did the soviet union use them and how?” it will ask the more open-ended, and hopefully, more interesting questions: “what was it like to be at the interface of their national literary culture, the soviet literary authorities and their broader international readership? what were the hierarchies in this relationship? how were they mediated?” to approach these issues in the first place we need an understanding of mid-twentiethcentury international leftist literary culture, with its cultural formations, institutions, networks, and readership, which is as forgotten today as fast himself. only such a rigorously internationalist and archivally-informed perspective can help us challenge the familiar verities about western leftists as unproblematic and unquestioning loyalists of the stalinist soviet union. in turn, howard fast’s bright, decade-long trajectory through the world republic of leftist letters will help illuminate its domestic structures and international networks. in particular, using pascale casanova’s method of delineating the cultural formations and institutions responsible for the reception of foreign literature in france (casanova 2004), this paper will turn fast’s role as a mediator between local american and broader international leftist culture into a vantage point on several operational principles of the interaction among the national leftist translating-interpreting apparatuses: canonization, excommunication, membrane effect, and monopoly effect. these principles, originating in what one of the members of that republic, pablo neruda, would call “the pyramidal politics of the stalin era” (neruda 1976: 176) became the reason for the republic’s eventual demise. indeed, once outside the predictable logic of the cold war and in the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 42 context of an international history of mid-twentieth-century left, the figure of howard fast becomes a case study of the way soviet policies caused the fault-lines and the ultimate fracturing of the global leftist culture. howard fast: a short biography since this most widely read of mid-twentieth-century american writers has not been honored with a biography (except for frank campenni’s 1971 unpublished dissertation), let me offer selectively some biographical details that will help account for howard fast’s puzzling status between fame and obscurity. born into a new york working-class jewish family in 1914, he published his first novel at the age of 18. as a proletarian writer and part of the cultural formations of the popular front, especially the john reed clubs, he was somewhat unusual in working in the genre of the historical novel. 1 true fame came to him a little later, in the first half of the 1940s, owing to several historical novels he had published over an extremely prolific halfdecade: conceived in liberty (1939), the last frontier (1941), the unvanquished (1942), citizen tom pain (1943), and freedom road (1944). it was the sequence of these novels that brought chester eisinger to conclude that howard fast was the “foremost among the american proletarian writers of the 1940s” (eisinger 1963: 92). even if the qualification “proletarian” were removed, the statement would still hold. fast’s romance with the leading publishing houses, literary institutions such as reader’s club and the book-of-the-month club, the new york times, saturday review of literature and other prominent review sites ensured that his fiction reached the widest possible readership (campenni 1971: 114-271). as it was commissioned by the u.s. army for soldiers fighting abroad, citizen tom paine, for example, appeared in a printing far greater than possible for commercial publishers. most of these novels of the period were staged on broadway soon after their publication even though it was not until 1960 that hollywood (or more specifically, stanley kubrick) brought one of his novels, the 1951 spartacus, to a much wider audience and four academy awards. however, with the onset of mccarthyism in the late 1940s, fast’s literary and political existence became increasingly precarious. an active member of the cp usa since 1943, and a frequent contributor to its main political newspaper (daily worker) and the literary magazine closest to it (masses and mainstream), fast inevitably became a victim of mccarthyism. upon refusing to name names in a 1948 hearing about the committee for the assistance of spanish refugees held by the house un-american activities committee, he was sentenced to a threemonth prison term, which he served in 1950. together with john howard lawson, dashiell hammet, lilian hellman, dorothy parker, albert maltz, and other, less well-known american novelists and screenwriters, he was then officially placed on the hollywood blacklist. 2 in his autobiography being red, fast vividly illustrates the literary consequences of his political persecution: publishers, who had previously fought for his novels, now rejected them curtly; his efforts at self-publication (his blue heron press) found no adequate channels of distribution; when his books did make it to the reader, few critics, let alone literary institutions anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 43 such as the book-of-the-month club, would compromise their reputation with them. on top of it all, edgar hoover issued an order to remove his books from american public libraries. the keenly felt assault on his own person accounts for the turn to the present in fast’s novels of the period: clarkton (1947), the passion of sacco and vanzetti (1953), silas timberman (1954), and lola gregg (1956) all tell stories of the persecution of the american left. even if his public break with the communist party in 1956-57 lifted the official and unofficial restrictions on his publishing activities, the genuine popularity he had enjoyed a decade earlier never fully returned to him. he continued to publish prolifically, but frequently under pseudonyms, and certainly without the readership he had once enjoyed. thus, maurice friedberg’s astonishment at howard fast’s popularity in the ussr reflects not only late stalinist cultural policies but a parallel erasure of the tradition of the proletarian novel in the united states and of howard fast’s stature as one of the most widely read american writers of the 1940s. moreover, his subsequent reputation in the post-stalinist ussr, perpetuated by the oppositional soviet intelligentsia, actually belies the genuinely positive reception he enjoyed among soviet readership in the late stalin era (brown 1962: 282; grimberg 2009). the novels distinguished themselves against the background of soviet novels of the postwar period, with a mastery of suspense and fast-paced action, which had never been the forte of soviet (or russian, for that matter) literature. while understandably political, fast’s novels were spared the repetitive formulas of the soviet socialist realism of the late 1940s: they emplot the development of political consciousness in more diverse ways than their soviet counterparts; no wise and elderly party person nurtures the positive hero (clark 1984); and at a time when late stalinist literature came to be shaped by the doctrine of “conflictlessness,” fast’s mastery of drama and suspense left few readers doubt. finally—and fast could hardly help this—soviet readers approached his books as, among other things, ethnographic sources on contemporary american life. in the absence of non-censored information on the u.s., geographically curious soviet citizens satisfied their interest through literature. indeed, the thinness of late stalinist print culture and the severity of censorship were turning soviet readers into consummate bricoleurs. like most studies of american leftist cultural producers of the 1930s and 1940s, campenni’s dissertation locates howard fast firmly in the national, american context. the possible reasons for this sparseness of the international references are many and varied: scholarly (the dissertation was written long before the “transnational turn” in american studies), pragmatic (there are objective difficulties in conducting international scholarship), and political. after all, as efforts to rehabilitate a popular-front literary culture permanently disrupted by literary mccarthyism, such studies seek to avoid its chief charge, namely, that “kremlin gold had kept running it all” (denning, 1997: xviii), by understating the internationalism of the leftist writers. similarly, by viewing fast purely in light of another national literary field—that of soviet letters—american slavicists such as friedberg and brown succeed in presenting him as a soviet invention. with the benefit of archival access and the ability to operate without the ideological mandate with which american slavic studies was charged during the cold war, we can now anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 44 revisit the charge that the soviet union kept the international leftist literary culture of the 1940s and 1950s “running.” in its more literal form, namely, that the ussr had financed the leftist writers supportive of it, this accusation is not born out by the facts. not being a signatory to the geneva copyright convention until the mid-1970s, the soviet union did not pay royalties to the foreign writers its publishing houses and magazines brought out. naturally, such a policy upset many a foreign writer and complaints about it constituted a major part of their correspondence with the foreign section of the soviet writers’ union. on rare occasions, after much pleading, some of them, whose loyalty was of particular value to the writers’ union, did receive wire transfers in hard currency, though their amount was pitiably small compared to the royalties they received from american or other international publishers. 3 indeed, except for the moneys that came to him with the award of the 1953 stalin peace prize, howard fast never received royalties for any of the 2.5 million copies of books published in the soviet union. if anything, his cp membership proved enormously costly, not only in terms of the donations he voluntarily made to the cp usa but also in the currency of his domestic literary reputation. 4 yet even if we take the idea of “kremlin gold” more figuratively, as signifying the prestige soviet literary bureaucrats would bestow to foreign cultural producers, both domestically and internationally, we could still hardly account for howard fast’s rise in international leftist literary culture (or the very existence of that culture, for that matter) to moscow’s instructions or practices. in comparison to other international publishers, the soviet literary establishment (a complex consisting of the culture division of cp ussr, the soviet writers’ union, individual publishing houses and literary magazines) came to consecrate howard fast relatively late. his first publication in the ussr came in 1949, by which time his novels had already become best-sellers in a number of countries outside the soviet bloc: argentina, czechoslovakia, france, denmark, the netherlands, and bulgaria. to be sure, his works came out of leftist publishing houses in buenos aires, prague, paris, copenhagen, amsterdam, and sofia, and reached primarily a leftist readership. paris, of course, stands out in this sequence: more than any other translation, it was fast’s translation and reception in what pascale casanova calls the world capital of letters that ensured his subsequent international popularization (casanova 2004: 87-103). a 1953 photograph from the twentieth anniversary of his literary career features a world map with flags to indicate the cities, where his books had been published. together, these flags constitute a veritable archipelago of international leftist print culture. a poster just above the map boldly proclaims that fast’s novels have been published in 59 languages, a number that soon would grow to 80. even if he may have been exaggerating when he made the claim to have been the most widely read author of the century (fast 1957: 10), at the time he made it, it was quite plausible. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 45 figure 1: howard fast: people’s writer for twenty years. courtesy of the university of pennsylvania rare books library. canonization what the soviet union could and did do for a writer of howard fast’s credentials— genuine popularity at home and abroad, political commitment, and a prison sentence to show for it—was to include him in its official framework of literary internationalism. the first instance that i have been able to find of such inclusion for fast in that framework was his mention (as buard (sic!) fast) in the projected invitee list of leftist western writers at the international stalingrad conference of writers from the people’s democracies. the conference was planned for the summer of 1948 with the dual aims of consolidating the soviet-bloc literary space and reuniting the international popular-front literary coalition of the 1930s, disrupted by the moscow show trials, the stalin-hitler pact, and finally and most drastically by the near-complete breakdown of literary exchanges during the second world war (anon. 1948). that the event did not take place was probably due to the world congress of intellectuals for peace organized at the same time (and with a similar purpose and cast of characters) at the initiative of the polish and french communist parties in wrocław, poland. that congress was to be the founding of the partisans for peace, probably the foremost among the several international mass organization in the earliest and sharpest phase of the cold war, through which the soviet union attempted to appeal to the publics outside of the bloc: the world federation of democratic youth, the world federation of trade unions, the world federation of women and others. atop the partisans for peace movement, in a typical stalinist fashion, was the world peace council. unlike the anti-fascist international association of writers for the defense of culture of the late 1930s, the peace council was not specifically a literary organization. rather, its first, most important congresses (wrocław 1948, paris-prague 1949, warsaw 1950, vienna 1952) and its initiatives brought together internationally famous writers, scholars (mostly physicists, wielding a new prestige after the atomic bomb), and other public figures all over the world sympathetic to the soviet cause. however, the peace movement’s organizers repeatedly emphasized its origins in the earlier international association of writers for the defense of anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 46 culture. the continuity was reinforced by the presence of many of the veterans of the popularfront struggles for culture among the council members: anna seghers, johannes becher, georg lukacs, louis aragon, ilya ehrenburg, jose bergamin, emi siao, nazim hikmet, paul robeson, pablo picasso, diego rivera, pablo neruda, and jorge amado. such a genealogy aimed to lend the prestige of the anti-fascist movement of yesterday to the anti-imperialist, or in practice, antiamerican movement of that later time (behrends 2008). 5 during the wrocław congress, the stridently anti-american tone of the soviet delegation and its chairman alexander fadeev, head of the soviet writers’ union, set a veritable tradition of not only alienating the more moderate members but also embarrassed the more moderate delegates to the congress, who had hoped for a more ecumenical coalition of all progressive forces. that the polish organizers succeeded in toning down the harshness of the soviet delegation and thus saved the congress speaks to the limits of soviet influence and the ultimately contested nature of such spaces (shore 2006: 271273). at a time when borders were closing and nations were undergoing symbolic purification campaigns, whether of the mccarthyist or anti-cosmopolitan variety, attendance at these congresses and especially membership in the world peace council assured participants’ ability to cross the iron curtain, and hence, their cosmopolitan status. an additional form of consecration, awarded by the council was the peace prize, awarded between 1950 and 1957. that was, however, overshadowed by and frequently confused with the soviet-awarded international prize for strengthening peace, which first bore stalin’s name and after 1956— lenin’s. fast won the latter in 1953, the same year as the chilean poet pablo neruda and the polish novelist leon kruczkowski. both awards, whose recipients frequently overlapped as many of them were drawn from among the council members themselves, were intended and functioned as the international socialist alternative to the nobel prize. indicating the immense ideological hopes the soviet authorities and wpc participants placed on literature, half of the recipients of both peace prizes were writers. the canonical status accorded by the soviet union to a narrow circle of writers such as howard fast belied the sheer paucity of literary exchanges between soviet and foreign writers and literary institutions in the first post-war decade. in comparison to the 1930s, the foreign correspondence deposited in the archive of the foreign section of the writers’ union and the cross-border travel of leftist writers during the post-war decade shrank enormously. similarly, the symbolic prestige accorded to the writers, who were members of the world peace council, disguised the real attenuation of leftist literary culture on their side of the iron curtain. the central literary consequence of that decline was the relegation of that literary culture’s dominant genre—the worldwide proletarian novel (denning 2004: 51-72)—to a peripheral status in different national literary fields. excommunication anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 47 as another ultimately destructive literary strategy introduced into the international literary movement by the soviet cultural authorities, excommunication was just the opposite to canonization. after fast was himself excommunicated in 1957, he wrote an exposé, the naked god: the writer and the communist party, in which he describes the incredible trauma that process and the accompanying party campaign caused to many a leftist writer. depending on the strength of an excommunication in non-socialist societies, and the extent to which critics and readers were willing to follow it, it deprived the author of part of her readership and some publication and distribution outlets. fast’s own excommunication stood out mainly in its international scope, which placed it almost on a par with andre gide’s in 1936. in this sense, it is almost ironic that howard fast’s unusual popularity in the ussr was a product of a series of excommunications passed in the soviet union against the major literary figures of the american popular front such as john dos passos, upton sinclair, john steinbeck, richard wright, or ernest hemingway. dos passos had been proscribed for his romance with trotskyism and the outspoken anti-soviet public statements he made, especially in the wake of his friend jose robles’s execution by communists during the spanish civil war. further translation and publication of his books in the soviet union immediately ceased and library copies were destroyed, removed, and rendered unavailable to readers, as was the practice with purged soviet authors. sinclair and steinbeck, widely published in the ussr during the popularfront years, were excommunicated during the anti-american campaign of the late 1940s. the last soviet article on sinclair that doomed him to unpublishability for the rest of the late stalinist period was entitled, “wall street’s cosmopolitan lackey,” while “let’s stand up to the preacher of hatred” announced steinbeck’s effective ban. richard wright, whose native son was translated to wide acclaim in the soviet union in 1939, had, as raisa orlova put it, also “gone over to the side of reaction.” 6 ernest hemingway, well-received by soviet readers in the 1930s, and after his literary comeback in 1955—by far the most popular foreign writer in the ussr—was in the interim rendered unpublishable (without being officially excommunicated: he had made no official anti-soviet statements) owing to some “anti-soviet” episodes in his spanish civil war novel for whom the bell tolls. with few other leading contemporary american novelists on the left to choose from, howard fast was the best soviet publishers and magazines could find. with the gradual sovietization of eastern and central europe, the power of literary excommunication came to extend to the whole soviet bloc. indeed, the records of the fast case in the cultural section of the soviet cp’s archive ended with a directive to the soviet writers’ union that it mobilize the writers of china, bulgaria and romania to expose fast as a renegade in public statements (various 1956-57). (because of the events of 1956, poland, originally named on the list, was subsequently deleted while hungary was never mentioned.) a note in the archive of anna seghers, the then-president of the east german writers’ union, lists the american authors “not recommended for publication in the soviet union” (seghers, n.d.). the meaning of such notes becomes apparent upon examination of the catalogs of the major eastern european state libraries: like many soviet writers purged or simply thrust into official disgrace anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 48 during stalinism, ernest hemingway, john dos passos, and upton sinclair began their return to eastern european bookstores in the mid-1950s, only after they first received their literary rehabilitations in the soviet union. the effectiveness of soviet literary excommunications outside of the second world was a much more uncertain matter and depended on the relative influence of the cp in that particular society and the authority of the soviet cp over that particular cp. in the post-stalin years both of these factors steadily declined in importance. the very significant drop in worldwide publication of fast’s novels between 1956 and 1958, however, speaks to the pervasive, if not absolute, effectiveness of international excommunication. and while many more western writers had yet to publicly part ways with the soviet union, fast was probably the last of the prominent western literary “renegades.” subsequent excommunication by the soviet union was never accompanied by such a virulent international campaign of defamation. membrane effect while excommunications depleted the ranks and caused major controversies in the world republic of leftist letters, the more general rift between western leftist readers and their soviet counterparts was caused by the literary iron curtain, for whose descent soviet cultural authorities bear much of the responsibility. their extreme caution and conservatism in allowing foreign culture to the ussr is best illustrated by a list produced by glavlit (the major censorship institution) of the 270 writers foreign writers of all periods and geographical place, ranging from aristophanes to pablo neruda, who were allowed for publication without a censorship permit (omel’chenko 1948). in other words, the publication of any authors of fiction, poetry, and drama not on that list would mean engaging in the kind of bureaucratic struggle that only the hardiest soviet publishers would be prepared to take on. even though howard fast’s name, like the name of any other living american writer for that matter, was missing from that list—to be added a little later—the list’s logic helps explain fast’s near-monopoly status as the contemporary american writer in the ussr and most sovietbloc countries. both that list and fast’s place in it are two fascinating consequences of the iron curtain’s reduced permeability, or what i shall call the “membrane effect.” when only a fraction of the cultural production from one state is allowed to enter another, in the eyes of cultural consumers in the latter, that fraction achieves a truly representative status. the underlying principles of the process apply to other fields such as scholarship and borders other than those between ideological blocs: for example, when deconstruction and other species of poststructuralist theories from france penetrated the american academic field, they became synonymous with french cultural theory, while most other theoretical developments in france remained largely untranslated, and hence, unknown in the u.s. the effect, however, becomes most visible at times when national and ideological borders are least penetrable to foreign cultural production, such as the early cold war. consequently, the representative power of writers who for some reason penetrate the membrane is immensely magnified. in the post-war anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 49 period, the works of only five living american writers were published: howard fast, albert maltz, alexander saxton, lloyd brown, and sinclair lewis. 7 sinclair lewis may have been something of an exception in this line-up: his status in the ussr at the time was suspect, but his novel kingsblood royal served as a much-needed illustration of the racism in the south. alexander saxton and lloyd brown were minor writers in the u.s. and certainly remained so in the soviet union, where their novels, the great midland and iron city, respectively, were published in relatively small printings. albert maltz was another matter: from the late 1930s, when his first translations in russian appeared, to 1954, 750,000 copies of his books were published in seven languages of the soviet union. however, it was howard fast who dwarfed them all in number of publications and copies during the decade of his soviet literary life: between 1949 and 1957, 2,500,000 copies of his books came out in twelve soviet languages. in the absence of any alternatives, he became the representative contemporary american writer in the soviet union. to a less dramatic extent, the membrane effect shaped the reception of other western literatures in the late stalinist ussr (and since all other soviet-bloc writers’ unions and publishers were to one degree or another taking their cue from their senior partner). foreign writers friendly to the soviet union came to represent the whole of their contemporary national literature. as far as the soviet reader was concerned, of all major national literatures, the membrane separating her from american literature was the least permeable, producing a “minor canon” of contemporary american literature in the soviet union, which even the most orthodox among the american communist readers would not have recognized. given the strength of the communist movement in france and the larger number of writers with communist sympathies there, for example, the membrane between french and soviet literary fields was more permeable as it had been during the popular-front years. for this reason, contemporary french literature as available to soviet readers bore much greater resemblance to french literature in france. as literature supplied the common text that sustained the global leftist community and the aesthetic forms in terms of which it imagined and represented itself, the production of such minor canons effectively meant a fracturing of that community. monopoly effect most importantly, howard fast was not merely a function of the membrane separating american and soviet culture. he became a significant factor in its very permeability. despite the near-consensus in scholarship about the unilateralness of late stalinist cultural policies, nonsoviet cultural mediators such as fast himself were in a position to shape the flow of cultural production (soviet or american) that could pass through that membrane. that role i shall call the “monopoly effect.” at its most basic, the effect meant that the soviet union relied heavily on his expert advice with regard to american letters. it was fast’s advice, for example, that added alexander saxton to the very short list of living american writers publishable in the soviet union (fadeev 1948). unlike fast, however, saxton never achieved much popularity or reached anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 50 a broader audience at home, let alone abroad. that such an obscure author should receive a captive soviet audience was entirely thanks to fast’s recommendation. fast also drew up the list of american writers to be invited to the second soviet writers’ congress in 1954, which he himself was unable to attend after being denied an american passport. the role of the monopolist did not exhaust itself to occasional consultations on contemporary american literature: to a surprising extent people like howard fast actively interfered with soviet publication practices, usually in the direction of synchronizing them with their national literary fields. in a letter to alexander fadeev, the chairman of the soviet writers’ union, fast offers a blistering critique of r. samarin’s article “miles americanus,” which appeared in the third issue for 1949 of the english version of soviet literature (the magazine into which international literature had been very tellingly transformed in 1946). part of the antiamerican campaign in soviet literary criticism at the time, the piece upset fast with its dismissal of committed american leftists such as stephen vincent bennett, john hersey, and bill mauldin as confused or unreliable political chameleons. indeed, samarin’s was the kind of article that most offended foreign sympathizers of the soviet union: that it was “stupid and ill-informed,” as fast justly calls it, was only half the problem; that such a text could come out of the moscow they trusted was nothing short of embarrassing. fast wrote to that effect to fadeev and other soviet cultural officials, who in turn instructed the editor of soviet literature “to correct the mistake by giving a correct evaluation of mr. bennett’s work and of the public position held by mr. hersey and mr. maudlin” (ibid.). in addition to confronting the excesses of soviet antiamericanism and in the process, assuming the role of a peripheral censor of soviet publishers, fast participated in shaping soviet literature’s reception in the u.s. while not a russian speaker, he wrote the introductions—and thus played a role in their american reception—to a number of soviet novels published in the u.s. during the height of the cold war. far from playing the role of senior partners in their correspondence with him, leading bureaucrats of the soviet writers’ union such as boris polevoi had been writing appeasing, sometimes fawning, letters well before the crisis of 1956-57, when they desperately tried to persuade him to remain in the movement (polevoi 1956-57). prominent party functionaries within the division of culture of the soviet cp were so concerned about the prospect of his defection that they personally edited polevoi’s letters to fast multiple times before those could be sent out (ibid.). probably the most remarkable illustration of the political power fast’s monopolist status gave him, however, came earlier, when he delivered the american communist party’s official charge of anti-semitism against its soviet counterpart during the paris peace congress in 1949 (fast 1990: 217-218). fast may not be the most prominent case of the monopoly effect, especially as this kind of editing of soviet cultural production from outside of the ussr reached its climax after he had left that world republic of leftist letters. louis aragon, for example, was notorious for his monopolization of post-war french-soviet literary relations. the publishing house he ran (editeurs français réunis) enjoyed exclusive rights over the translation and publication of soviet literature in france, and his prolific prefaces and reviews to a significant extent determined the http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=editeurs_fran%c3%a7ais_r%c3%a9unis&action=edit&redlink=1 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 51 french reception of a given soviet book, which often diverged from official soviet evaluations. although greatly limited in his publishing decisions by the offerings of soviet cultural bureaucrats, aragon often exasperated them with his unorthodox choices. he also exercised a powerful influence over what kind of french (and through the colonies, african) literature appeared in the soviet union, especially from the mid-1950s on, often aggressively meddling in soviet publication practices, vetoing the publication of some french author in favor of another, and repeatedly securing the russian translation of his wife’s (the writer elsa triolet) novels over the opposition of soviet cultural bureaucrats (graevskaia et al 1959). the list of such monopolists could easily be extended beyond france and the u.s. to all societies with leftist movements and leftist culture. pablo neruda occupied the same position with respect to chilean (or more broadly, latin american) cultural ties with the ussr; jorge amado maintained the soviet-brazilian connection; katherine susan pritchard was in charge of the soviet-australian one; and mulk raj anand enjoyed exclusive rights over the soviet union’s literary relationship with india. the leading turkish poet nazim hikmet, a resident of moscow from 1950 on, after a decade and a half spent in turkish prisons, was the soviet union’s chief liaison with his national literary culture. the more limited the soviet cultural ties with a particular county, the more independent the role of the monopolist. soviet literary exchanges with other socialist states, especially in the early years of sovietization, were, too, mediated by such “monopolists.” in bulgaria, for example, that role was played by lyudmil stoyanov, a veteran of the 1935 paris writers’ congress for the defense of culture and a long-time correspondent of the foreign section of the soviet writers’ union, who served as chairman of the bulgarian writers’ union in the late 1940s. the new german democratic republic may have been atypical in having a very large number of cultural mediators between east german and soviet literary fields: johannes becher, anna segers, alfred kurella, willie bredel, and others, who had all proven their loyalty and steadfastness during the literary and other struggles of the 1930s and many of whom had actually lived as anti-fascist exiles in the ussr. their sheer number diluted the monopoly effect. the structural power vested in the figure of the monopolist introduced an unfortunate hierarchy in his domestic literary field. in the soviet bloc, the monopolist often assumed the role of a major functionary, sometimes that of the chair of the writers’ union (such as seghers or stoyanov) or minister of culture (becher). the prestige and bureaucratic authority granted to the monopolists upset leftist cultural producers denied this kind of access, as testified by one of the editors of mainstream and masses, joseph starobin: howard became in the cp the oracle on every issue from negro rights to socialist realism; he ran for office on tickets that weren’t his own, and headed every conceivable committee … he won many prizes, was photographed with the happy children of beaming—and temporary—consular officials at the un cocktail parties, and accepted the invitations to write on every conceivable subject or anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 52 distant magazines whose editors cabled him as though he were a world power (starobin 1957: 42-56). however we interpret starobin’s embittered remark, the soviet practice of granting monopoly rights on literary relations to the soviet union to one or a very small number of writers from a particular foreign country proved enormously costly in the long run. while the soviet cultural bureaucrats never enjoyed the kind of control they would have wanted over who participated in the world republic of letters, what kind of cultural production was came out of it, and how it was consumed, they did succeed in introducing into it certain pyramidal organizational forms. stemming from the stalinist practice of concentrating authority of particular fields in the hands of a single person (gorky in literature, lysenko in biology, academician marr in linguistics), those forms helped reduce the vast majority of the members of leftist literary formations to mediated, second-hand relationships with soviet-bloc or international leftist culture. this practice was one of the reasons why the generation of leftist cultural producers that grew up in this period and came of age in the late 1950s and 1960s was much more ignorant of, and less interested in, that culture. to many western cultural producers of that new generation, the soviet union became a little bit of an embarrassment: they neither wanted to speak out in its defense, opening themselves to all lines of attack by domestic anti-communists; nor did they particularly want to join the latter’s anti-soviet cold-war rhetoric. keeping silence vis-à-vis the soviet union became the preferred way of navigating the scylla and charybdis of the discursive cold war. it was this silence that assured the interpretative monopoly of the coalition between western slavicists and the growing number of east european émigrés, and the anti-soviet dissidents from which the latter had emerged. the interpretative work performed by that coalition was produced in the process of its discursive struggle with the ideological institutions of the state socialism. a meaningful critique of that work can never be based on evoking the language those institutions employed against that coalition. at best, it represents the latter’s inverted image; it worst, it is made up of half-truths and smearing. an additional difficulty in launching such a critique lies in the unquestionable contribution of western slavic studies to our understanding of russian and eastern european cultures, the insurmountable trauma experienced by generations of east european émigrés from vladimir nabokov to milan kundera driven out of their native countries, and the undeniable civil courage of dissidents who chose to “live in truth” despite the enormous cost of that kind of living. these must be always acknowledged and born in mind. yet only such a thoroughgoing critique will reveal the origins of some discursive problems plaguing the post-socialist world and its scholars where the interpretative power of that coalition has been the greatest: a narrow and elite understanding of human rights (often limited to freedom of speech), underdeveloped discourse on economic justice and equality (seen as the province of the soviet state), and more generally, a thoroughgoing conflation of the underlying ideological impetus behind socialism with the historic experience and actual regimes of state socialism. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 53 acknowledgments this article was made possible by the generous readings and extensive comments of katerina clark, michael denning, and narcis tulbure and an ssrc fellowship that allowed me to visit archives in moscow, berlin, and philadelphia. notes 1 the john reed club was established by the staff of the new masses literary magazine in 1929 to support the work of leftist writers. it quickly developed into a nationwide network of approximately 30 chapters. as a response to the popular front movement of the time, in 1936 they were dissolved into the larger antifascist american artists’ congress. 2 it is telling that the main legislative act in the field of culture to be passed during mccarthyism concerned the film industry. while the anti-communist campaign swept through the american literary field as well, authorities devoted far more attention to hollywood. in the soviet union, as we will see, literature was the art form that the party and the different sections of intelligentsia considered of greater ideological value. 3 the records of theodore dreiser’s haggling with the international literature magazine can be found in both the russian state archive for literature and the arts (f. 1397, op. 1, ex. 832) and in the folder correspondence with the soviet writers’ union in dreiser’s personal archive at university of pennsylvania rare book library. 4 the soviet union’s main form of repayment, to which only the most loyal and well-known foreign writers were entitled, was an invitation to visit the country. to the best of my knowledge, after erskine caldwell’s visit to the ussr in 1941, no other american writer was treated to such an invitation until the second congress of the soviet writers’ union (1954). 5 since the movement was not really co-optable, by the logic of the cold war, the cia resorted to mimicry, creating the peace movement’s anti-soviet doppelgänger, the congress of cultural freedom, where international writers also took center stage. 6 see v. gallant’s “kosmopolitstvuiushchii lakei wall-strita.” leningradskaia pravda 18.05.1949; m. polikanov’s “otpor propovedniku nenavisti.” pravda 14.9.1948; r. orlova, “vospitanie landsknekhtov,” novyi mir, 3(1948), p. 202-203. for more information on soviet reception of american literature of the period, refer to chapter 7 “from wwii to 1955” of brown 1962. 7 among the other american writers published in this period, one should note theodore dreiser, who had died in 1945, months after joining the communist party, only to be promptly canonized by the soviet literary authorities. in terms of numbers of copies published and sold by an american author in the ussr over this period, he was surpassed only by jack london, who together with o. henry, had been a perennial favorite of the soviet readership. the remaining group of american writers published over this period—bret harte, mark twain, walt whitman, and harriet beecher stowe—were safely in the nineteenth century and provided a sense of cultural stability. for more detailed information on soviet publishing practices of american literature, see brown 1954 and 1962. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 54 references cited anastas’ev, n. 2001. preface to being red by howard fast. druzhba narodov 10(october 2001). viewed online at http://magazines.russ.ru/druzhba/2001/10/fast.html. [in russian] anonymous. 1948. documents about the preparation of an international congress of writers form the people’s democracies in stalingrad, 1948. foreign section of the soviet writers’ union. f. 631, op. 14, еx. 74, l. 31. russian state archive for literature and the arts, moscow. [in russian] behrends, j. 2008. people’s friendship as anti-americanism: ilya ehrenburg’s journalism and the stalinist conception of europe. in europe in the eastern bloc: imagining and discourse (1945-91). pp. 125-144. cologne: 2008. [in german] brown, g. and d. 1954. a guide to soviet translations of american literature. new york: columbia university press brown, d. 1962. soviet attitudes toward american writing. princeton: princeton university press. campenni, f. 1971. citizen howard fast: a critical biography. phd dissertation, department of english, university of wisconsin. casanova, p. 2004. the world republic of letters. cambridge, ma: hup. clark, k. 1984. the soviet novel: history as ritual. chicago: university of chicago press. denning, m. 1997. the cultural front: the laboring of american culture in the twentieth century. london: verso. _____. 2004. proletarian novel. in culture in the age of the three worlds. pp. 51-72. london: verso. eisinger, c. 1963. fiction of the forties. chicago: university of chicago press. fadeev, a. 1948. correspondence with howard fast. foreign section of the soviet writers’ union. f. 631, op, 14, ex. 1156, l. 1-23. russian state archive for literature and the arts, moscow. [in russian] fast, h. 1957. interview with martin agronsky, broadcast by nbc-tv from 3:30 pm to 4 pm on october 13, 1957. howard fast’s fbi file #100-327116-140. university of pennsylvania rare book and manuscript library, philadelphia. _____. 1990 being red. boston, houghton mufflin company: 1990. http://magazines.russ.ru/druzhba/2001/10/fast.html anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 55 friedberg, m. 1977. a decade of euphoria: western literature in post-stalin russia, 1954-1964. bloomington: indiana university press. graevskaia, o., g. zhukov and d. polikarpov. 1959. report on louis aragon and elsa triollet’s visit to moscow, may 1959. division of culture, central committee of the soviet communist party, op. 36, ех. 92, l. 70-78. russian state archive for the newest history, moscow. [in russian] lieberman, a. 2003. books sent to the journal. new journal 232(2003). viewed online at http://magazines.russ.ru/nj/2003/2321/lib.html. [in russian] neruda, pablo. 1976. memoirs. tr. from spanish by h. martin. new york: farrar, strauss and giroux. omel’chenko, k. 1948. a note regarding the import of print production into the soviet union. division of agitation and propaganda. all-russian communist party (bolshevik). f. 17, op. 132, ех. 75, l. 94-97. russian state archive for socio-political history, moscow. [in russian] polevoi, b. 1956-57. correspondence. division of culture, central committee of the soviet communist party. f. 5, op. 36, еx. 39, l. 1-41. russian state archive for newest history, moscow. [in russian] seghers a. n.d. anna seghers archiv. folder 21, 17. german academy of the arts. german academy of the arts: berlin. [in german] shore, m. 2006. caviar and ashes: a warsaw generation’s life and death in marxism, 19181968. new haven: yale university press. starobin, joseph. 1957. more comment. mainstream 2(april 1957): 42-56. various. 1956-57. on howard fast’s renegation. division of culture of the central committee of the soviet communist party. f. 5, op. 36, ex. 39, l. 40. russian state archive for newest history, moscow. [in russian] http://magazines.russ.ru/nj/2003/2321/lib.html anthropology of east europe revieh' editors krista harper julie hemment robert rotenberg, web editor lale yalpn-heckma1l11, guest editor hiilya demirdirek, guest editor contents editors' introdcction ........................................................................................................................................................... 4 krista harper and julie hemment. uni\ersity of mas,achusetts. amherst call for papers ......................................................................................................................................................................... 5 anthropology of east europe revie\\ symposium: "encounters of the postsocialist kind: the movement of goods and identities within and beyond the former socialist world" guest editors' ii':troductlon: encol'i\'ters of the postsocialist kind: the movement of goods and identities within a~d beyond the former socialist world ....................................................6 lale yal<;m-heckmann. max planck institute for social anthropology. halle/saale. germany and hulya demirdirek. uni\'ersity of victoria. bc canada new modes of capitalist domina t10~: transi\iat10i\ial space between turkey a0.'d moldov a ..... . ............................. ]5 hulya demirdirek. university of victoria. bc canada 'nothing has changed. it just tlrned illegal': discourses for the jl'stificatio~ of illegal trade and immigration in the moldovai\' repcblic .....................................................................2] monica heintz. university of paris x-~anterre crossing borders. shifting identities: transna tloi\'alisa tlo~. 'materialisa tlon·. and commodltisation of greek ethnicity in post-soviet rcssia..... ..... anton popov. university of warwick ............................. 29 the coca-cola kashka val ~etwork: belonging and bljsii\'ess ii\' the postsocialist balkans ..................................42 georgios agelopoulos. cnivw,ity of \1acedonia. thcssaloniki equipment a,\[) changing outdoor ccltcre ii\' the czech repcblic .............................................53 toma; k\'asnicka. lancaster cni\ersity from 'public to 'private' \1arkets 10,1 postsocialist mongolia ..... . ..................................64 morten a. pedersen. university of copenhagen 1'i\stable objects corpses. checkpoi0.'ts and 'chessboard borders' in the ferghana valley................ .... ........ ..............................72 madcleine rce\'cs. cni\ c[',ity of camhridgc coi\'tested identity: ei\'col''\ters with kazak diaspora retl'r:\i:\'g to kazakstan ...................85 meltem sancak.. \1ax planck. institute for social anthropology. halie/saale. german) & uni\'ersity 01' zurich. switzerland volume 25, no.1 page 1 · anthropology of east ellrope revieh' open forum slovenia and its natlo1\al winter pastime: in pursuit of an anthropology of alpi1\e s kll1\g , """" '"'''''''''''' ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.,,,,.,,,,,,,,,,,,.,,.,, ...95 vlado kotnik. institute for anthropological research. ljubljana veering toward radicalism: a case study 01\ the increase of the popular support for organized radical move~1ents in pola"fd ", .. " ."."""".,., ", """"''', , ............ , ................. , .......................... 105 alexsandra skalska. de paul university the local and the global: in search of european identity in the czech local commuf\lty ......... , ... ,... hana horakova. university of pardubice & university of hradec kralo\c. czech republic .. ... , ........ , .... , .............. 112 volume 25. no. i page 2 pie" ($2t eut rev the" group http:/. edi • del +1­ we no em anthropologv ofeast europe review « .. ···· ..........95 please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($20iyr. for full-time faculty and professionals, $1olyr for students and part-time faculty; european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutiollal subscriptions to the lor review ($20), or additional copies ofa back issue ($20) to the managillg editors. ···· .. ·..·........ 105 the web page for the anthropology ofeast europe reviewleast europea1l a1lthropology group contains links to most of the previously published articles. it can be found at this url: ····.· ........... 112 http://lasl.depaul.edu/aeer/ editors-in-chief: krista harper and julie hemment, anthropology of east europe review, department of anthropology, university of massachusetts, amherst. yla 01003. phone: +1-413/545-2221; fax: + 1-413/545-9494; e-mail: anthroeasteuropereview@ gmail.com web editor: robert rotenberg. international studies program, depaul university. 2320 north kenmore ave, chicago. illinois, 60614. phone: 312/325-7460; fax 312/325-7452; email: rrotenbe@wppost.depauledu. © university of massachusetts. amherst 2007 issk: 1054-4720 volume 25. no.1 page 3 mailto:rrotenbe@wppost.depauledu http:gmail.com http://lasl.depaul.edu/aeer aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 25 from banning to commodity incorporation: binding, bonding, and banding in eastern european music jeffrey alyn smith university of debrecen the political and economic changes across eastern europe have resulted in significant changes in music and culture since 1989. by tracing the changes in music over time we can better understand the significance of politics and economics in eastern europe since music is linked to politics and economics and a central component of culture too often ignored by social scientists. rarely is attention drawn to the use of music in propaganda, film, cultural events, and everyday life. also, music has often been treated in isolation from everyday life, politics, and economics—particularly in music criticism (see carducci 1990). it is my intention here to show how the study of music can help us understand political persuasion and advertising, cultural hegemony and counter-culture, consumerism and creativity, in eastern europe. using a few brief examples from hungary (with supporting research from belarus, ukraine, and russia), as well as three key concepts to describe changes in music binding, banding, and bonding i will show how music is appropriated by the state to persuade its subjects to embrace the political economy. the significant changes in eastern europe show a period of relatively heavy censorship (socialism), to an explosion of expression (post-socialism) to a new period of incorporation and commodification of music (capitalist-consumerism). under socialism music was banned, tolerated, or promoted across eastern europe and asia depending on how best it served the interests of the various socialist states. in a highly fetished manner music was ideological and could be used to promote socialism. at the same time dangerous music was banned and some musicians became de facto dissidents (haraszti 1987). in hungary, some music was tolerated because it was thought to be neither dangerous nor beneficial; it was thus commodified within the dual economy, and thus rendered beneficial to the state in an ironic way. after socialism, music’s pandora’s box (and all other forms of discourse) was opened and people used many ways to express themselves and listen to others—only some formed bands, night clubs and cafes, but many went out to listen and talk (ries 1997). by the late 1990s this plethora of discourse and musical expression was silenced again through the mechanisms and techniques of commodity incorporation. in this article i will offer a brief history of state music in eastern europe in a broad perspective from socialism to capitalism or more accurately a consumer culture and political economy showing the role of music in historic changes (szemere 2001). i conclude with the current discourses of young people living in a hegemonic corporate state which advocates consumerism, yet restricts consumption through high prices, taxes, and low wages. in this environment young people pirate music off the internet, engage in black market trading, and lament the state of music and culture today. conversations about the death of music proliferate and give locals a sense of shared solidarity and dissatisfaction in the new musical hegemony. although i have had many conversations and interviews with professional and semi-professional musicians i focus here on the political economy and consumer culture of post socialist eastern europe supplementing my observations and analysis with interview material from young people in debrecen, hungary. [1] in order to understand the changing nature of music making and consumption in eastern europe we must think about how to make sense of the changes. for this i employ a number of key concepts—binding, bonding, banding, incorporation and commodity fetishism. binding is a concept taken from michael urban and gregory bateson’s concepts of the double bind or catch-22 situation (urban 1985; bateson 1968). banding and bonding are suggestive concepts from mark slobin’s subcultural sounds: micromusics of the west. binding simply put is a when someone is encircled, restrained, obliged to do something they otherwise wouldn’t do. binding is a way of forcing people to do what they would not normally or naturally do; it is in the weberian sense a form of power. it is more than simply a bind, a difficult or annoying situation, it is a mechanism of power used to manipulate people, influence, persuade, and control them. complete control is impossible, but the attempt to control music is a sign that music is one significant site for contesting political, economic, and cultural hegemony. binding is not the same as double binding, it is not a catch-22 situation, but could lead to double bind relationships and thus might explain many seemingly non-rational or irrational behaviors observable within the field of music in eastern europe. bonding simply put is a link, a connection, a union of people caught in a bind, a kind of fictive kinship or friendship between people who form an informal group to escape a feeling of bondage. banding then is a set of musicians who form a formal group or “band” to make allen typewritten text © 2004 jefferey alyn smith all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. allen typewritten text 26 jeffrey alyn smith the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 money, to get prestige, social status, or seek other material rewards and therefore make a formal or informal contract to provide a service to patrons or clients. my argument put simply is this: in eastern europe musicians are used to promote the hegemonic political economy and culture by the techniques of binding and banding. the state uses musicians to attempt to maintain the status quo through persuasive performances which if unmasked look surprisingly like propaganda. the state here includes the government, corporations, and institutions of society (what we call civil society). for those people who see through state sponsored music, i.e., see it as propaganda, they respond with a number of strategies for producing alternative discourses, which include bonding techniques, and include playing music for music’s sake without the intention to seek material or social status rewards as much as for “spiritual” rewards. their music may or may not contain explicit political messages, criticism of the economic system or culture, but often contains an implicit critique or alternative worldview. in the context of post-socialist consumerism the activity of playing music at home or in a small pub might signify a kind of hidden resistance or refusal to simply consume the music produced by the state, to remain passive consumers, or to remain silent. the opposition between state sponsored music and amateur musicians and their supporters is sharply contrasted at times in private discourses and academic writing; however the sharp division is hard to maintain if one observes the behavior of people. music is never completely passively consumed: state sponsored music is often influential on amateur musicians, people get songs stuck in their heads playing fragments of these tunes over and over in their minds, and people sing in the shower, dance, talk about, and search out music. however the stereotype persists of a hegemonic pop music industry, which dominates and silences people’s own music: folk music, amateur music, alternative rock, folk dance, acoustic instrumentals, etc. to understand the process and practice of interaction between the state apparatus and the people who inhabit it we can turn to dick hebdige’s concepts of ideological and commodity incorporation (hebdige 1979). hebdige argued that the capitalist state incorporates and uses any anti-state music in two ways: it demonizes anti-state discourses as dangerous, immoral, or evil, and at the same time turns recorded music into a commodity and distributes it en masse as long as it generates a profit. in eastern europe, the communist state used a similar technique of banning, tolerating or promoting music, but fared much worse than their capitalist counterparts at neutralizing the effects of anti-state music. but hebdige’s theory is a bit shallow since this process of incorporation works both ways. active consumers of state music use the music on radio, tv, in pubs, shopping malls, on cd or the internet as the raw materials for their own music, anti-state discourses, social symbols and the like. they demonize pop idols, parody, rework, or reinterpret pop songs, form satirical dance moves, and simultaneously search out spaces to play music outside the state apparatus, plundering sheet music, folk music archives, joining folk dance classes or groups, in effect bonding outside the state’s hegemonic control. this is a dynamic, ever shifting, ever contested process of incorporation and escape. simply put music is about a power struggle over the meaning of life. music, meaning, and commodity fetishism. in eastern europe, as well as in many parts of the world, music is fetished; that is, it has a mystical power which is transferred to the possessor of the music in descending order from the composer to the musicians to the listener, consumer, radiating outward. this power is often referred to short hand as “cool.” it may confer upon the musicians or consumers such powers as sexual powers of seduction, insights into the deeper meaning of life, or producing envy, desire, jealousy, awe, etc. this kind of fetished power originates in the musicians’ ability to evoke moods, feelings, poetics, compact narratives, dance rhythms, cautionary tales, political messages, or social critique. but a musician’s cool is dependent upon creativity, improvisation, and beauty without perfection, confidence, grace under pressure, generosity, deep insight into what is important, the ability to find deep meaning in lyrics, a kind of interpretive ability. in the socialist period many forms of music and art were censored in an attempt to elevate the leading role of the party in the process of engineering souls, the creation of a new socialist man. this process involved banning, toleration and promotion of certain musics, arts, and their creators. part of the result of censorship was the elevation of certain artists to an almost martyr-like status of cool. with the end of socialism and a new form of censorship based on market principles the meaning of music and the way in which it has become fetished has significantly changed. where once the meaning of lyrics were highly valued as communication and dissemination of anti-state messages in a period of harsh censorship through circumlocution, metaphor, and other methods of speaking and reading “between the lines,” now lyrics have become devalued as meaningless and unimportant. part of the process has involved the rise of commodity fetishism with the advent of capitalist values imported into eastern europe through the international trade in cd recordings, the black market, and internet connections. much of the music found today in eastern europe comes from production and distribution networks located in england and america where the primary language is binding, bonding, and banding in eastern european music 27 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 english, although there is also a great interest in latin american music. even if the consumer has mastered english (or spanish) the full meaning of the text eludes the listener. as an example, blues music has been highly valued and popular across eastern europe since the mid 1970s when english rock bands and blues influenced groups arrived via records and radio to then communist countries—much of the meaning of the words were lost on the audiences who sometimes puzzled over texts, connotations, and meanings of the words. new meanings were thus generated, as no source of authentic anglo-africanamerican interpretive strategy was available. often words were simply ignored or thought to be gibberish, a trick of voice, and a kind of scat signifying nothing. what was valued was the exotic sound and rhythms, the transgressive feeling of listening and possessing forbidden, dangerous objects. the music itself was fetishized as something mystical, magical, and precious. this movement and act of creating wholly new meanings out of smuggled sounds generated a mentality and consumer orientation that thrives today, although the initial interest in blues, jazz, dixieland, and rock ’n’ roll has waned. today rap, hiphop, and soul are more popular and important to young people, while the previous generations hold onto the music that emerged during their teenage years: folk music and folk dance, dixieland, jazz, rock ’n’ roll, blues, anglosaxon blues, punk, etc. often most of this music is “silent” without linguistic meanings, but full of semiotic content. one solution of course is not to learn the language of the imported music but simply to copy the music note for note, either through sheet music or by intense listening and analysis to recordings, and then write lyrics in the local language imagining what the song might be about, how it makes the author feel, etc. some produce translations of songs such as hobo blues band’s interpretations of tom waits, the doors, allen ginsberg’s poetry set to rolling stones-style blues and rock forms. [2] in the 1990s there was a shift in popular music from blues, rock and punk to disco, techno, hip-hop, and rap. with techno, there was little need to think much about lyrics; however (and most ironically), rap is often lyric-centered. many people listen to euro-american rap enthusiastically with little idea of the lyrical content. other groups like belga parody african american rap and hip-hop styles making fun of hungarian imitators and hungarian nationalists, asking “why don’t the world listen to hunrap?” the answer is obvious: no one else understands the words and hungarian rap isn’t fetished like african american rap music is around the world. more than 80% of all music bought, listened to, stolen, and/or consumed in eastern europe comes from england and america. there is a virtual monopoly on music in eastern europe despite the efforts of the nation-states of eastern europe to protect local music. what could be more threatening to the nation-state than to have its population singing, humming, and dancing to the beat of a different drummer? this is thought to be the americanization of europe putting changes into a nationalist language of invasion, and erasure of local ethnic symbols and styles, but this is not purely ethnic despite the fact that the 2003 european mtv music awards went to americans, except for robbie williams (british—thus european). what is more obvious to me is a process of globalization, which marx called capitalism (marx 1978), where the means and modes of production, as well as corporate offices are located in america, while third world workers are paid pennies to copy the music on to cheap plastic cds sold at astronomically high prices in places like hungary or “reasonable” price levels on the black market in modern shopping centers in belarus and on the streets of kiev in the ukraine. on the black market the fetishized american and british music is stolen, copied, and sold so that profits stay in the country and in the hands of black marketers. music, socialism, and national socialism: a brief history of binding. as i have argued elsewhere (smith 2002), socialism and nationalism, among other things, were characterized by social relations and authority structures, which i call patron-client relations, diarchy, and double binds. this is when to sole sources of authority are invested with absolute authority and subjects are asked to do two completely opposite things—a double bind or as orwell put it “doublethink” (orwell 1948). double binds lead to corruption or particularly eastern european kinds of patron-client relations. the musical culture of eastern europe has been totalitarian for a long time now. it is an all or nothing proposition. like the famous dictum “if you’re not with us then you are against us,” music must support the government or else it is subversive. there is little art for art sake anymore; it is not for personal enjoyment; it must be productive. art and music, as imagined in people’s minds, must be about individual expression, cultural creativity, and spiritual enlightenment. but in the 20th century, music also became a tool for political and economic power. it was not only co-opted by the nation-state for political purposes (classical european music and folk music), but also used to make money and thus enhance economic power. music simultaneously must be political and economic and yet also be a non-political, non-economic activity, non-religious, purely spiritual thing. music thus is popularly seen as schizophrenic—lyrical, yet not text dependent, political yet apolitical, money making, but not profit oriented, a hobby and a profession, a high art and yet a folk medium, international and yet nationalistic, etc. 28 jeffrey alyn smith the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 the national socialist states of the mid 20th century and the socialist states of the late 20th century tried to ban, tolerate, and promote music as they thought would benefit them irregardless of popular desire and economic profitability. they saw music in a nearly purely political way. did it advance the cause of national socialism or socialism or did it waste time and energy that could be devoted to “better purposes?” as has been reported many times before many artists, writers, musicians, performers, were ruined under these regimes. by banning music the government in effect created a desire to resist, a kind of advertising, which thus promoted forbidden things. it promoted a kind of dual personality a public persona and a hidden one. musicians developed this mode of music making where a band would play in public for money or protection by playing state-supported and approved music and after hours play in secret, music, which bonded the people together against the state. the musicians themselves were caught in a bind of playing music for the state and thus making a living, surviving, or staying out of trouble, yet playing music in secret or in less public places for enjoyment or other creative cultural desires coming from european traditions. this tension of accommodation between state desires and popular desires was a constant struggle for musicians and audiences for over 50 years. the state supported and promoted music that was ideologically correct while tolerating some music, which appeared non-threatening, at the same time arresting and imprisoning musicians and audiences which operated in a hidden economy of social relations and meaning making. from national socialism to socialism the state’s support of ideology and music shifted in content, but not form or practice. with the fall of socialism restrictions were lifted and the hidden economy took to the streets and public places where people expressed themselves like never before. music, jokes, conversations and commodities were made available and consumed, enjoyed and celebrated, encouraged and supported. but after a brief period of relative freedom (and a window of opportunity) capitalist forces pursued a relentless campaign of incorporation and silencing of competing voices and commodities—and thus alternative music. music in the 1990s was amateur, perhaps low quality, with poor equipment, training, and performance abilities, yet it was a kind of folk music by and for the people. it didn’t matter what the genre was, jazz, rock, tanchaz, or blues, what mattered was that it was free of state control. it was popular if it was an expression of individuality and inner feelings. many small pubs and clubs opened up and a diverse set of musicians would play to a wide range of audiences for little or no money. of course, selling tickets made money, but most money came from the sale of drinks and cigarettes. little money was made by musicians; a lot more money was made by recently privatized record companies, pubs, clubs, culture houses, and the like. people who had previously been the custodians of socialist property got their newly privatized properties cheap through patron-client wheeling and dealing. previously socialist properties, socialist party headquarters, communist youth league centers, socialist sport centers and the like were privatized and used to hold small amateur music concerts, discos, and other cultural events often featuring a great diversity of organizers, audiences, and performers. the patrons however were almost universally those who had been brokers in the dual economy of patron-client relations that mingled the formal socialist property and production with the hidden black economy of informal use rights. [3] one of the most significant developments across eastern europe is the dominance of western, i.e., english-american music in the form of commodities—cd recordings or bands or singers imitating western styles. musicians and audiences alike fetishize western music, and prestige and profits are dependent on delivering mtv quality music. the privatized state properties have been appropriated for the dissemination of high quality (i.e., high tech) commodities—cds, hi-fi home entertainment systems, sound systems, light shows, music videos, and so on. musically the products are quite bland, over produced, and lacking innovation. western music making, production and performance, has become the standard upon which almost everything is evaluated and marketed, as one music professor from debrecen put it: “hungary is built on a culture of shame, depression, unwritten rules of village life, even in the city; all of this affects music, because if you are not the best why bother trying, you have to be a genius or you are nothing, but there is a new music culture of producing garbage pop music which is about money, quick money rather than a creative progression of ideas and emotions, techniques and application. people don’t listen to music anymore, it’s background music and people don’t play music anymore, it’s all about money. this is a degeneration of the entire culture, which can be seen in music too; where people lose contact; they hide in their boxes (apartments) and don’t talk like neighbors used to. people are too materialistic, they want to hear perfect pop music so simple no one could make a mistake playing it, but it has no feeling, no life, and no spirit. it is safe, but mechanical, it has no human feeling and energy in it. and music is part of the eastern european mentality of patron-client favoritism; you have to know someone who knows someone to get a job or a concert; this corruption leads to the death of music as art, rather than as business.” although my neighbor norbert is a highly trained professional (playing and teaching classical music), he binding, bonding, and banding in eastern european music 29 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 articulates a point of view, which is often echoed by many younger residents of hungary as well as students, amateurs, and consumers in belarus, romania, and the ukraine. consultant/ informants often cite a few alternatives, such as the hungarian-slovakian group ghymes, serbia’s nosmoking orchestra, and the work of leningrad, quimby, goran bregovic, slobo horo, boban markovic, and lesser known groups; yet most of the tv, radio, discos, nightclubs, and pubs are flooded with the sounds of western pop music and their local imitators. most groups form in order to make money—banding—while few musicians have the time, energy, and space to bond through music playing at parties or in small pubs. most of the musicians and audiences are caught in a bind of wanting to play and listen to music and the need to make money in a new “capitalist-consumerist” culture and political economy. the post-socialist political economy in hungary requires people to work more than ever to pay the everrising cost of living, the high tax rates (at more than 40% income tax, 12–25% vat), and licensing fees, rents, and other expenses. everyone must try to maximize profits by producing the cheapest music sold at the highest price or get out of business. this means that most pubs, clubs and discos play western pop music, most bands play cover songs of mtv hits. this means that consumers try to download and copy the most widely circulated music on tv, radio, and the internet. djs get copies of cds and play them for money at university, high school, and disco parties—usually pirated pop music. all of this in effect means the silencing of amateur music, folk music, classical music, writing, playing, improvisation, and creativity in favor of marketing, business, profits, and the lowest common denominator. in this sense capitalism has brought equality, but not freedom. certainly you are free to play any music you want, but only if you have the time and money to do so. you need a place, instruments, and other basic needs like food, shelter, clothing, heat, water, etc. certainly you are free to listen to any music you want to, but only if you have the money to buy cds, concert tickets, or internet access and a cd writer. most people lack the resources to support local music. voices of the next generation: in the section that follows i quote extensively from a set of interviews conducted in the fall semester 2003 at debrecen university with students. they articulate in their own words the trends that i have outlined above. i have tried not to edit out or condense their comments because i wish to convey the feeling and the dynamics of how they talk about music, what is at stake for them. you may read their words as evidence for the above analysis or see what follows as an alternative to master narrative techniques and/ or rock criticism and music press interviews. what my consultant/informants lament is the loss of culture—not the loss of “traditional” culture, but the loss of a dynamic creative process—culture—through globalization, which favors consumer culture over organic culture. although i quote here students 20–25 years of age, i have found that many people of various ages (17–50 years old) hold similar views. as a participant-observer i have performed in local bands, at weekend parties, on local tv, at backyard bar-b-qs, at weekend cottages, in clubs, pubs, and bars, with local musicians in hungary (1995–1997, 2001–2004) as well as in belarus (2000–2001, 2004). i have conducted a series of interviews over a long period of time from the 1990s to the present (2004) with musicians and audiences, neighbors and friends, students and teachers. [4] over and over again i have heard similar conversations, stories, comments, and laments. a psychology student, zsuzsa, said, “people listen to pop techno and other artificial music because they have never heard real music, played on real instruments. the music of today, this new century of music is preprogrammed computer music recorded on digital technology and released to the radio and played everywhere. it makes me angry! the lyrics are so simple and uninteresting. they are about nothing.” when i asked who listens to this music my consultant/informants had a hard time giving an answer. another student ildiko said, “no one really listens to that music, it’s like background, you can dance to it, sort of…at the disco, but you can’t really listen to it.” another katalin explained, “people are too lazy to try to find good music or real music; people stopped learning how to play instruments and have taken to images and computer programs. you don’t need to do anything to find this music it just comes to you everywhere you go it follows you and you can’t shake it.” when asked why they don’t like techno music one woman julika responded, “it isn’t good, there is no melody, no lyrics, no song. what makes a good song is like what makes a good movie. there are few good movies anymore mostly hollywood films which are tragedies with a happy ending; they have closure, but good lyrics tell a story, evoke a situation or a set of complex feelings without closure so you want to hear them again.” another woman szilvia said, “they have multiple melody lines or rhythms so they are complex; one instrument playing off the other with changes and movements. you want to listen to it over and over again, to the music, to hear one instrument then the other and how they play off each other. you hear something new each time.” one informant gabi summarized and elaborated on what music is and what it should be: “you have these lyrics which draw you into the drama or story or feeling and there is no ending to the story no resolution of the problem so you don’t think ok i heard 30 jeffrey alyn smith the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 that before, i know what it sounds like, i know how it ends…so this new music which young people listen to is just a generational thing where it is new so it’s their music, the music of the 21st century, but it is just fed to them and they don’t think about it; they just accept it; it is part of their identity, but i can’t listen to it. even though it plays everywhere, i don’t listen to it; it’s this background noise… it’s just noise. it has this same beat; the computer-generated drum, which is the same beat as a heart or similar, but not like a human heart really, which misses a beat and changes with your emotion. but you know it is simple and repetitive and the lyrics are too simple like ‘let’s party, hey, ok. let’s go!’ and other stupid things…they have no depth, no poetry, no emotion really, nothing real about it; really it’s like robot music for robots.” good music is like poetry, the lyrics are rhythmic, but more importantly they are evocative, they are not spelled out; they use euphemistic language, they evoke ideas and situations, events and characters. they are not prosaic as much as poetic; they are condensed and yet leave room for multiple interpretations; they are inspirational in giving thought and feelings that the writer perhaps never intended, but with new music and new films everything is spelled out and shown to you; you no longer have the room to imagine what the story is about or the music. mtv provides images which kill the creativity of imagining the story or situation, but here you go…see this is the setting; this is the story; this is the way it looks…it makes the listener, the audience lazy, it crams them full of other people’s ideas then nothing but a beat and a few repeating shouts or exaltations to dance, have sex, take drugs, anything but living in the real world. music takes you away from your problems lets you think about something else it allows you to think about another time and place. the pop and techno music isn’t without its fans, but few people i have talked to like this music (about 10%). those who like pop music were unable or unwilling to talk about what they liked about it, why they liked it. most pop and techno fans, when asked said, “it’s really good, i don’t know, i just like it.” one woman said, “i don’t really care, i just want to dance and not think about it.” ironically, hungarians seem to be the most articulate about things they don’t like. so i asked about what music people listen to, and most said it is music, which is put out on the internet, they down load it and listen to it; if they like it then they make a copy of it. the answers were not about genre, style, particular artists, or periods as much as what is accessible and also alternative to that which is promulgated by the state. often this music is not played on the radio, sold in shops, or shown in video form on tv. they say things like “why buy it or copy it? it’s everywhere. you don’t need to get a copy; it plays all the time, everywhere i go.” one psychology student zsolt said to me that the ritual life of hungarians seems to be disappearing—connecting music and ritual. “the ritual of today is shopping. it is something people dress up for and plan as an activity for the family instead of going to church…they go shopping, instead of playing music they go shopping, it is a special time. so folk music was the sound and rhythm of ritual and now we have this techno music and canned music at the shopping mall, we go shopping to it. the disco plays the same music, it is where we go shopping for girls or boys, to meet.” another zsuzsa interrupts and says “but who can afford to buy music? we download it from the internet and make a copy on cd.” a young man tamas breaks in, “we want to go to concerts with local bands but there is no place to hear this music. people play punk rock in garages but there is no room for live music, no space for amateur music. we can’t afford instruments or a place to play.” he went on to say that he is trying to learn to play bass guitar with a band, but isn’t very good since he just started. another woman veronika starts in after a brief silence, “i think this is why young people are taking an interest in folk dance classes, even though there was a period of about 10 years when it was dead. the problem is that there is no cultural center where you can get music and dance lessons if there is you have to pay which means working a lot then you have no time and energy.” tamas chimes in: “you need to work too much to get enough money to rent a place or get instruments so there is only time and energy left to watch tv or listen to the radio because this takes less time, energy, and money.” another student eva says, “you make money to buy computers and cd writers and spend time downloading music rather than making it yourself. it’s like a drug because you buy something or download it from the internet and you feel good for a while then the effect wears off and you want more, it’s a vicious circle. it’s the new religion—shopping. it is a kind of communion where you connect to people through a common activity everyone is shopping together yet isolated. like the internet brings people together yet keeps them separate. they are all doing the same thing yet not really together with each other.” the first student veronika continues, “music is also like sports, you join a club because you want to play then they ask you are you serious about it and serious means forming a professional group to make money. love of music isn’t enough, you have to have goals and the goal in life now is about making money. so it’s like this with music if you play music for music’s sake or for fun or whatever because you want to be creative this is not enough. people say you are wasting your time unless you have a plan to make money making music. it makes everything into one big work without time to enjoy binding, bonding, and banding in eastern european music 31 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 life. you get married stop spending time with friends stop spending time on hobbies and get down to working and having children and then hope you are still young and full of energy so when you retire you can enjoy life, but then your life is over and you haven’t lived yet. in debrecen the cultural center used to be a place where you could go and learn music, they had instruments and teachers and dance and art classes and so on and now you have to pay, but the cultural center is gone. they knocked it down and there is nothing now.” the young man learning bass, tamas says to this, “you can go see one good band a year maybe, but nothing else. there was a place in nyiregyhaza where you could go one night a week and there were local bands from high schools and the university but it closed because there wasn’t a big enough audience. there are no good concerts on the weekends because all the students leave the city and go home and there aren’t enough people left in the city to support a real music club.” the first psychology student zsolt said, “the ritual life is almost non-existent now and there is all this commercial music made for money, but i think there was a time when all the folk music and folk dancing was gone and no one wanted to do it they wanted all this flashy stuff they could buy, but now they can’t afford it the price is too high and everyone wants to be a star or give up, but then lately people have come back to folk music and folk dance because there is more meaning in it, more community and solidarity in doing things together rather than just shopping. it is making a comeback because consumerism is so empty. it is such bad quality, it has no quality; it’s worse than bad; it’s completely empty. music and dance change you, there is a ritual in it; you become a different person and place yourself in a different time and space, you forget yourself and your daily life and all your troubles and it’s like a drug in that way you lose your mind and yet unlike drugs, it isn’t bad for you.” in another group of students i found similar laments this time with a group of biology students. one ph.d. student csilla said similar things as the psychology studens quoted above: “but there are some people who don’t listen to music and don’t dance; they hear music on the radio or tv or whatever and yet they don’t listen to music, it requires active attention and letting yourself go not something simply in the background. professional music is like that, it’s background music; music you don’t really listen to very much with boring lyrics and the same music. there are people who are mega stars and on tv all the time, but their music is totally forgettable. you don’t really miss it when it’s not on. you don’t seek it out. it is just stuff that comes to you over the radio and on tv. it’s in the free concerts in the summer and on the radio at the shopping center. there is not much new music in the sense of something that really sounds different. there are these bands boy bands and girl bands which have people who can’t sing, but the managers are so good that they make a lot of money on boring tunes sung by people who can’t sing; they have that look and they make tons of money. they don’t even sing in concert they just move around a bit on stage and lip sync. there is no band; it’s just a cd with the music composed by someone else, on computer, and copied onto disc.” i asked, “who buys this music?” “i don’t know how they make money on this music. i guess the radio stations buy the music and the tv and the shopping malls and so on, but no one buys the cds really. i don’t know anyone who buys it. if someone has it then it’s downloaded on to cd from the internet, but they get on talk shows and stuff so i guess the tv buys the music and that’s how they make a lot of money. maybe it’s people who don’t really listen to music; well it isn’t really music is it? they just buy it to be cool. you know teenagers who get money from their parents and buy this stuff it’s like a status symbol. they buy it and show off and then forget about it and follow the next thing. it is popular because it isn’t hungarian yet it is hungarian. it’s about showing that you are modern and part of the west, because after communism anything western was good and everything here was shit. although people are starting to see that it isn’t true there was this belief and everyone rejected hungarian music and folk dances, but now there are underground bands that play a combination of different styles together a blend of hungarian folk music and punk or something with some disco influences with gypsy and turkish drumming you know like from the balkan peninsula. it is like blues and folk music and so on. but it’s still hard to find; you have to have friends who know this music; you can’t find it on the radio or in the shops. they don’t get marketed. the corporations and media still focus on the music of the 1990s where bands and musicians just copied western music and translated the lyrics or made a rough copy of the same words, the same sounds, and the music was the same only now you could understand the lyrics. but it was basically a copy, a bad copy, but there wasn’t anything else.” another biology student miklos said, “there was a time when you couldn’t really hear anything new or different; it was simply what the star makers wanted you to hear and listen to. and the there was no choice really because they control the media. they dictate the musical taste; it’s like a dictatorship. we had all this freedom to do what we wanted to after communism and it turned out we didn’t want anything. we were lazy and just wanted to relax and buy things; get the things we missed out on. things from the west, but then we just stopped 32 jeffrey alyn smith the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 trying to do anything; it was easy. you just turn on the radio and there is all these different kinds of music from all over the world. we just eat it up and the folk music seemed so bland for a while because we were so used to it we heard it all too many times.” i quote these young people at length because i want to draw attention to their words. they emphasize the loss of local, organic music, and culture. they articulate “anger” over the loss of “real” music, played on “real instruments.” they see a kind of “dictatorship” over their needs, thoughts, and desires. they see a “star system” of mass production by “star makers.” they see consumerism as a kind of substitute for “spiritual solidarity” ritual and religion, morals and art. what is being promulgated by the state is “empty”—mass-produced and disseminated via a complex modern media machine. they lament the loss of time and opportunity to engage in a meaningful life of creativity, but also the freedom to live an exciting life before they are forced into the world of work, family, and responsibility. growing up means getting “serious” and being serious is about making money. as one person, who is no longer studying, put it: “nobody asks me if i’m happy. they just want to know how much money i’m making.” consumerism, for the people i spoke with in hungary, is dangerous because it makes them “lazy,” unthinking, and artificially satisfied with what is available. consumerism thus articulated is an invisible agent, which so articulated deflects blame away from consumers and places blame on others—the state, teenagers, the media, club owners, etc. but it is also the people who lament, as much as a privileged or ruling elite, who are to blame for political and economic changes in eastern europe. as miklos said, in the quote above, “they control the media,” but “we are lazy” and “just eat it up.” conclusion in capitalism, as milton friedman theorizes it, you are free from ideological and economic totalitarianism (friedman 1968). but in reality, what gets effectively banned is anything, which does not make a profit. while small scale amateur music is tolerated, as long as it stays at home and in the backyard, at low volumes, and doesn’t lead to people thinking too much about their predicament—gross inequality, environmental destruction, globalization, the loss of organic cultural creativity, alienation of labor and genuine social relations, etc.—then fine, no problem for the state. what gets promoted is a kind of pop music for profits—capitalist-consumerist music—the overproduction of plastic cds, dvd concerts, and expensive sheet music booklets. recently i noticed that it is possible to use both sides of a cd, so why is it then that so many cd albums that are over 70 minutes long are double-cds and cost twice the price? could it be that capitalism’s logic is not about freedom, democracy, or choice but about maximizing profits through the creation of desire and the masking of social and ecological costs? wouldn’t it be more logical to promote local music through concerts than producing large quantities of high priced and non-recyclable plastic discs? although some young people in eastern europe have turned from pop music to folk music forms and folk dance classes, most corporations buy, promote, and use pop music to sell other products through advertising, muzak, and high volume sound systems which encourage audiences to consume more beverages than talk to each other in public social spaces—town squares, pubs, festivals, etc. if the regimes of the late 20th century eastern europe were engaged in silencing music or appropriating it for ideological purposes then what has changed is the way this is done in the 21st century post socialist era. alternative musics and discourses are silenced by high volume pop music, on music tv programs, which feature a constant stream of advertising—pop cds, fashions, mobile phones, etc. in pubs and hypermarkets where one must shout to be heard in conversations, and in a continuing set of patronclient relations, which determines who can perform and where, music is appropriated for political and economic purposes—continuing patron-client relations and promoting consumer oriented profits. high costs for music making limit personal choices: what to listen to, whether to learn to play an instrument, the ability to play with others, how to share music with others, whether to write original melodies and lyrics or copy pop music styles and do cover songs. folk music is in danger of extinction for similar reasons, it has been appropriated by nationalists, silenced by commodity fetishism, made unavailable by high prices on traditional instruments such as balalaikas, bag pipes, lutes, cimbaloms, hand drums, etc, and banned by local “noise-level” ordinances. in conclusion i wish to point out that music as an art form is in danger of being commodified “to death” across eastern europe. at the same time people blame others for being too lazy to resist, while justifying their own inaction because the situation is “impossible,”—“a vicious circle.” i tried briefly here to show how music is political, how it involved a process of banning, tolerating and supporting as well as binding, banding, and bonding, how it was appropriated and commodified, fetished and ultimately attacked as something uncontrollable by state forces, because it was free. and yet the struggle continues despite the process of capitalistic incorporation. because music is used by the state in propaganda, advertising, and profit oriented production people respond by valuing music for pleasure. simultaneously people are caught in a double bind either one makes and consumes profit binding, bonding, and banding in eastern european music 33 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 oriented music or fails economically. either one devotes all their time and energy in banding or makes less music, poor quality music in bonding. it’s an all or nothing proposition. with the domination of pop music people are reacting more and more against corporate music as the multinationals engage more and more in saturation marketing and copyright protection measures. people try evading corporate control and high prices by circulating cd copies much like the hidden economy of goods and services under socialism. what might become fetishized again are homegrown sounds and music circulated on home copied cds while plundering the formal economy for the raw materials and services. every day i meet new people who are making folk music for no other reason than it is fun, it is liberating; it is creative and thus human. more and more i talk to people who are sick of corporate sponsored music and instead join folk dance groups, sing in schools, and churches. i see people who play music, record music, and circulate music through a network of friends and neighbors. this sounds surprisingly familiar in an era that has been labeled “post” socialist as people reconstitute a dual economy of consumer capitalism and black-market gift-giving economic activities around music. while there is a lot more to be said about music, such as performance, creativity, meaning, socio-cultural-psychological matrixes, and so on, i am limited here due to time and space constraints. instead i would like to suggest that more critically oriented, insightful, multidisciplinary, and thorough research and attention be given to music and ethnomusicology. additionally, besides documenting changes, endangered indigenous music, survival strategies, revivalist movements, opinion polls, and music criticism— usually promotional in nature—we should look at how social science and the humanities might facilitate interventions in local cultural productions and their support (or lack of support) that values ordinary people’s interests and desires rather than global corporate capital’s interests and profit making agenda. we need to engage in encouraging creativity in universities and cultural centers that can effectively counter globalization and the destruction of local cultural traditions and their evolution. endnotes 1 my fieldwork in eastern europe in the area of music and dance has tended to focus on everyday life and popular opinion based on conversations and interviews with consumers, supporters, organizers, as well as professional and semi-professional musicians. i focus here on the political economy and consumer culture of post socialist eastern europe supplementing my observations and analysis with interview material from young people in debrecen, hungary. my research includes extensive interviews with musicians and students in minsk, belarus; however, i am unable to quote at length from transcripts due to the culture of fear regarding tape recorders, note taking, and the watchful eyes of the kgb. i have not undertaken an extensive review of the literature in the field; however, students and scholars of eastern europe might find the following research and publications suggestive for the study of music and dance in eastern europe building on innovations and insights developed in the west. these were influential to my research and analysis: attali 1989, slobin 1993, on dance and gender; mcrobbie 1991, cowan 1990, the semiotics of popular culture; chambers 1986, mass movements and mass protest through music; garofalo 1992, street performance; harrison-pepper 1990, pirate radio and music; hind and mosco 1985, music television; kaplan 1987, goodwin 1992, race, identity, politics, hip-hop and rap; gilroy 1987, hebdige 1987. for an idea of how to study consumerism, home production, audience response, and interplay between mass culture and amateur creativity see willis 1990. for a history and political significance of imported musical styles and local imitators in eastern europe a good place to begin would be kosztolányi 2000; ryback 1990; starr 1983; ramet 1994; szemere 2001. for roma/gypsy music and culture see lemon 2000; stewart 1988, 1989, 1997; sarósi 1978; and foneseca 1995. although the suggested reading above is far from exhaustive it represents an intellectual break from the ethnomusicological tradition for studying ethnic music, folk music, and dance in isolation (nettl 1983). since the postmodern turn in anthropology and the advent of cultural studies in england many researchers have sought out multidisciplinary perspectives for studying interrelations between music, dance, creativity, capitalism/communism/post-socialist changes, consumerism, and politics. for an excellent overview, suggested theories and methods and general understanding of this movement toward multidisciplinary and multi-sited research and politics, see slobin 1993, 1992/1987. for the relationship between dance and state sponsored music, see shay 2002. for a general introduction to the study of central and eastern european music see, slobin 1996. for folklore and the study of traditional music under socialism see porter 1995. 2 like many white anglo-american audiences before, lines from blues songs have no clear meaning for consultant/informants in eastern europe—“goofer dust all around your bed/ you wake up and find your own self dead”…“i gotta black cat bone and a mojo too, little johnny cockeroo gonna jump and mess with you.” the significance of the lyrics are lost and new ones must be created or simply ignored as “meaningless gibberish” (interview with g. starikov, minsk 2004). lost is the 34 jeffrey alyn smith the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 cultural and religious meaning of these lines as part of the black atlantic diasporic fusion of many years and diverse cultures mingled together through the colonial period (hebdige 1987; thompson 1983). similarly once this music arrives to eastern europe, blues has little sense of narrative, evocation, religious meaning, poetic humor, etc. (calt 1973). the blues as a form becomes a new kind of classical music written down note for note on sheet music like mozart, beethoven, bartok, etc. (interview with g. starikov, minsk 2004). blues becomes fetishized as twentieth century classical music for a generation of listeners and musicians now middle-aged—fixed, frozen and readymade. lost is the dominance of a percussive performance style, multiple meters, overlapping call and response, improvisation and the evocation of social imperfections contrasted with implied criteria for perfect living through complex offbeat phrasing of the lyrics. while musicians and audiences might sing the lyrics to songs the meaning of the text is lost on them. what is important is that the blues symbolizes for them something “other” exotic, mysterious, exciting, and thus new. 3 it is not surprising then that in the city of debrecen (hungary) that the socialist party headquarters’ “private club” was turned into one of the most profitable night clubs in the city and that the new owner is also a regular local tv personality. it is not surprising that the same individual is engaged in running summer camps for kids, which had once been “owned” and operated by the communist youth league. it is not surprising that many former communist youth league organizers are now being elected to local government offices and/or management positions in civil society. former communists are going into business including the music business. in minsk (belarus) the kgb and local militia (police) are still paid bribes or given favorable treatment for not investigating possible violations of city and national legal codes in the operations of nightclubs where musicians perform. in hungary there was a transition from socialism to consumerism not capitalism as such, but rather business and marketing, where as in belarus we can see the opposite a nation still mired in a communist style political economy and culture including music making and consumption. 4 i have conducted a great deal of research regarding music, dance, and political economy in the past since my honors thesis research in london on the connection between social movements, social networking, underground clubs, squatting, and thatcherism (1988) (smith 1989). i followed up with my interests in music and song writing conducting research in santa cruz, california for a graduate seminar in ethnomusicology with john schechter at the music department. further research was conducted on how children learn to dance to tv programs when unattended through imitation and experimentation for olga nájera-ramirez’s anthropology of dance seminar; also a research project focusing on underground “anarchist” cafes, fanzines, and pirate radio in santa cruz california 1992. unfortunately, i was highly discouraged from pursuing research on music, dance, and popular culture and their connection to ethnicity and nationalism, political economy, culture and revolution in eastern europe by the anthropology department at ucsc (1991–1995). this was before steven feld, donald brenneis, and mark slobin came to ucsc when the climate and interests of the department changed toward encouraging new approaches in ethnomusicology and dance. instead i was forced to abandon formal ethnomusicological research and alternatively focused on other equally interesting developments in black market economics, informal relations, moonlighting, disengagement, apathy, conversation, laments, jokes, patron-client relations and double bind theory. despite myself (trying to please my own and my department’s interests), i ended up talking a lot about music and playing music with friends in hungary and belarus. since they knew i was a musician i was asked to play and discuss american folk music and music in general. i thank them sharing their thoughts, hospitality, and music, but also for demanding i pursue my interest in music and dance. references attali, jacques 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bulgaria volume 21, number 2 death and the desecrated: monuments of the socialist past in post1989 bulgaria nikolai voukov, central european university, budapest © 2003 nikolai voukov all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the end of socialism as state ideology touched deeply ingrained mechanisms of social expression and representation and, together with the changed attitude to the legacy of the socialist past, led to deep transformations in the notions of sacred places, ritual sites, death and the sacred. monuments of the socialist epoch were among those sites of public memory, which bore most directly these shifts in representation, and their fate as destroyed, desecrated, neglected or fallen into oblivion presents an important episode in the history of the post-1989 period. the proper treatment and interpretation of the socialist monuments was a key public issue in all the countries of the eastern europe after 1989 and, with varying intensity, has remained important in the following years. among the primary problems postsocialist societies faced were how to reintegrate those former emblems of power into the new social and political context and how to acquire distance from the past without losing the memory of it. the ways socialist monuments were treated varied--they were destroyed and dismantled, reshaped and expelled from the central places they occupied, sent to museums and storehouses, secretly stolen at night, sold as metal scraps or remolded into other forms and symbolic representations. parallel to these efforts ran attempts to reinstall them and to reconstitute their former symbolic potential. contracts for preserving cultural legacy, declarations in support of particular monuments, attempts to organize rituals and ceremonies in the way they were performed before 1989 and campaigns for cleaning monuments on memorial days and anniversaries were the usual counteractive measures taken in monuments' support. in their turn, these acts were responded to with declarations condemning "re-communization processes" and with strikes and protests against the reinstalation and renovation of monuments. in most of these monumental dramas there is a thick network of political implications and motives related to dealing with monuments during this period. the relation of monuments as specific representations of death to politics is twofold--monuments depend on politics to reinterpret them and reinscribe them with new meanings and monuments help to understand and shape politics in a particular way. however, although being very closely intertwined with problems related to politics, the manner in which monuments are treated has yet another aspect, to which i would like to pay closer attention in the current text. this aspect concerns the perception and interpretation of death and the sacred, and the reconfiguration of the special meanings that death gained during socialism. it is a problem of reshaping the memory of those whose figures stood behind the representative bodies of monuments, as well as of how societies construct the sacred and how they manage to deal with sites and images, which they previously considered as possessing sacred dimensions. this aspect has been pointed out by verdery, but it remains largely dependent on the political interpretation of the sacred, which she had chosen as a focus. although insisting on the sacred component of every authority, she sees the sacralization of socialist regimes as determined mainly by their position of power and on their role as "guardians of secular values, especially the scientific laws of historical progress." in my view, the sacred component in the socialist power of representation is determined largely by the specific utilizations of death and on the role of death in the constitution of the sacred. this perspective helps us better understand desecration as dependent not wholly on the form and the extent of changing monuments' original standing, but on the very attempt of treating a monument as excluded from the realm of sacredness. by "desecration" in the current text, i mean the undoing of the symbolic jen typewritten text 49 volume 21, number 2 network, which has attributed a halo of sacredness to sites used for signifying and representing death. in spite of the specific overtones, which the term "desecration" has acquired in the public debates after 1989, and despite its frequent use as a label of condemnation against iconoclasts, i have used it in an attempt to address its core meaning of standing outside and against the forms, which the sacred has taken in a given community. desecration is to be understood as an act of dissociating a particular object or locus from the powerful resource provided by the realm of the sacred; a subversive act of annihilating the halo of protection around it, and of expelling it into the sphere of the profane. in order to be able to see this specific transformation we need to take a step backwards-taking the construction of sacredness in the socialist system of representation as a launching point for the events and processes that took place after 1989. the socialist notion of sacred bodies and immortal heroism had several important aspects. first of all, it was an all-encompassing discourse of special dead bodies, which formed a pantheon of heroes and martyrs to the communist idea. the elements of this heroic cult included the notion of death by exploitation in an unfair battle; the special condition of heroic bodies in battle who overcome great odds; and the notion of sacrifice as the ultimate and worthiest goal to be pursued in hero's life. all these elements found overt expression in the inscriptions and verses on monuments and heroic plaques to the communist sacred dead, in the sculptural representations of heroes, and in the inclusions of monuments in socialist rituals, art, and propaganda materials. monuments appeared as certain pedestals to immortality, which represented, in a sacrilized form, personal fates and collective experience in an unbreakable continuity between death and life. the infusing of these representations with sacredness was especially emphasized in the sober ceremonies that took place around monuments -with their special occasions and symbolic locations, with the blurring of mourning and celebratory overtones in them, with the pilgrimages and sacred routes, which they initiated and established. every aspect of world war ii partisan and communist underground activity or any sober event related to communist experience was commemorated and considered sacred. the extreme division of space into the smallest details to reference the narrative of heroic death paralleled with an ultimate intention to confirm and to exhibit death by creating and referring to heroes’ remains, death places and memorial inscriptions. almost by necessity, exhibition places surrounded memorial complexes and alleys of immortals regularly formed the path to memorials and monumental ensembles. they served to provoke gratitude and respect to the gift of dead heroes, whose daring acts obliged others to follow closely in their footsteps and to try to be worthy of their example. after the collapse of the socialist ideology in 1989, this strongly sacrilized discourse started to wither away dramatically. not only did the pantheon of heroes and the consistency of the communist heroic cult crumble down under the new perspective of distancing from the socialist past, but the whole notion of sacrifice was disclaimed and considered as a mere tool of the striving to achieve symbolic power. heroes and emblems of the regime could not be considered as worth commemorating anymore, since the validity of the ideas they gave their lives for had lost its legitimizing ground. heroes were not "immortal" anymore, but untrue and thus vulnerable: it was not a feeling of gratitude, which one could address to them, but rather of offense, retribution and disrespect. monuments as chief representations of this particular discourse of the sacred were primary objects of these new attitudes. already in the first months after the changes, they turned into a major focus of public discussions and debates, of protests and demands for replacement. covering with denigrating labels, partial dismantling or destruction, threatened almost any monument and memorial built in the socialist period. sometimes even those not closely related to the socialist ideological realm were targeted. it is impossible to go through all the various cases and curious examples of the treatment of socialist monuments, even only in bulgaria: they are numerous and often need a closer and detailed approach to understand properly the meanings of the symbolic acts and strange utilizations, which monuments underwent. what is important is that in all these cases we can see an emphasized impulse to “inspect” the sacredness of death and to question the ways it was interpreted in before1989. whether related to the monuments of the soviet army, to the dead in world war ii, to the brotherly mounds of socialist heroes, or to jen typewritten text 50 volume 21, number 2 partisan and antifascist resistance in the country, the chief issue addressed was what a monument actually stands for: what was the validity of the death represented and what may be considered desecrated with the monument's preservation or destruction. for some of the monuments in which the representation was clearly an ideological emblem, such as those of lenin, marx and engels, the association with the moment and the meaning of death was a relatively scarce one. their destruction or swift replacement was rarely obstructed by a troubling memory to the dead; rather, the actions undertaken against monumental representations were guided by the impulse to revert the everlasting vitality of those figures-emblems. however, the case of the monuments of some prominent communist figures who had taken active part in the construction of socialism in post-1945 bulgaria was different. the fate of their monuments varied from removal to towns' margins, replacement, and possible subsequent reinstallations. for example, after the changes of 1989, the monument of the prominent leader of bulgarian communist party, g. dimitrov, in the central square of dimitrovgrad, was deconstructed and, together with its pedestal, was removed to a distant park. in 1997, it was reinstalled out of "fears" that the town might lose its identity without a monument to its emblematic founder. in shumen, dimitrov's monument in front of the military school was replaced by a rocket, while in kurdjali, proposals were made to replace dimitrov's sculptured figure with a monument to the medieval bulgarian king simeon the great. in the bulgarian capital, the mausoleum of dimitrov was for a whole decade an object of attacks and protests, ending eventually in its destruction in 1999 and to the effacement of all the traces of its presence. in a different group of monuments we can look to are those dedicated to the soviet army, built in several larger towns in the country. the one in sofia, for example, was the focus of ardent debates and skirmishes for years. regularly covered with graffiti and subsequently cleaned, protested against or protected by live chains of people, it managed to preserve its place in one of the central squares of the bulgarian capital. in the numerous debates throughout the years, the interpretation of what the monument represented varied widely. it was considered a symbol of enslavement throughout the years of socialism, a memorial sign to the war dead, an element of the recent history currently emptied of powerful meanings and merely a reminder of the curiosities of the socialist past, etc. the fact that no soviet soldier was killed in bulgarian territory in the last months of world war ii was used to interpret the monument as dedicated to the ordinary soldier in general, or as a controversial sign of the thousands of victims of the communist regime. the alterations in the meanings of death and the inability to come to an ultimate conclusion about the limits of representation determined the monument's fate and contribute to its continued survival. if, for the monuments of the soviet army, one could interpret death as having insufficient "facticity" to deserve commemoration, there was a realm of death, whose 'real presence' could not be questioned, and the debates concentrated rather on the legitimacy of commemorating the dead. such was the case with the monuments dedicated to the participants in the partisan and the antifascist movement in the 1920s through the 1940s in bulgaria. the memory of these people was shaped in a particular way by the socialist regime and was used as a significant legitimization pillar for its ideological discourse. in the post-1989 period, there was thus real difficulty with how to interpret their death and how to treat the monuments to those who sacrificed themselves as anti-fascists. their sacrifice was not easy to bracket and any attempt to clear a monumental site from its ideological associations had the shading of a desecration act and of claiming validity to the ideas these people fought against. in numerous cases, it was particularly the inherent sacredness of death, which appeared to protect such monumental sites and prevented iconoclastic accusations against them. quite often, proposals to remove or reshape such monuments were even interpreted as a second murder of the heroes, as a troubling sacrilege to the bones of the dead. an especially telling example of such critical points in commemorating the dead was the decision of the mikhailovgrad (currently montana) municipality in 1993 to turn the monument to h. mikhailov and other dead in the 1923 september uprising into a monument to the prominent figures of nineteenth-century bulgarian enlightenment. the plan was to change the grandiose memorial dedicated to the jen typewritten text 51 volume 21, number 2 heroes of the uprising--claimed by communist historiography to have been the first antifascist uprising in the world--into a monument to the dead for mother bulgaria. the municipal authorities suggested the figure of h. mikhailov to be preserved in the historical museum and his deadly remains to be buried according to the will of his heirs. the replacement of the sculpted figures and the inscriptions on the monuments to the september uprising in montana with new ones, this time referring to figures belonging "only" to the national pantheon, was considered a vandal's act by a large part of the town population. protectors of the monument guarded it day and night and 10,000 signatures were collected in favor of its preservation. a similar wave of reactions occurred when the municipality of pleven sought to build a monument to the unknown soldier at the place of the brotherly mound created during the socialist period. the idea was to a great extent a compromise aiming to avoid the destruction of one of the symbols of the communist regime in the town. but at the same time, it was thought to be itself a desecration against the monument, which commemorated more than 200 antifascists who died in the period of 1923-1944. the intention to replace the monument provoked protests on behalf of antifascist organizations and ordinary citizens, and for the time being its replacement has been cancelled. destroying or reshaping monuments reassigns new identity to places and suppresses and deconstructs meanings previously associated with commemorative forms. the treatment of socialist monuments described here applied attitudes and techniques of representation, which were considered unthinkable in the preceding epoch. in most cases it was a matter of reshaping the symbolic space in order both to remind and to refuse reminding and also a way to dissociate death from the already unsacred symbols. in attempts to solve this dilemma, most of the socialist monuments in bulgaria underwent long and curious metamorphoses. they were replaced by monuments to freedom,8 to national heroes, or to all the heroes of a particular region; wrapped in artistic installations, etc. apart from the constant threat of complete destruction, the monument to the soviet army in plovdiv faced the possibility of being replaced by a monument to the bulgarian national hero v. levski, by a church, by a large bottle of coca-cola, or by a metal sphere, symbolizing the sun. the mausoleum of dimitrov in sofia was to become alternatively a museum for the history of socialism, a basement for preserving the national treasury, an open space for theater and opera performances, or an immense sundial to measure the time after the fall of socialism as state ideology. a frequent solution to some monuments was to exhibit them in museums of totalitarian art or in park alleys of former immortals. many of these initiatives were frequently guided by the idea that they might somehow protect the legacy of the recent history, or that modifications might facilitate the preservation of the memorial character of such sites. whatever the intentions, however, they were generally regarded as insulting the memory of the dead, and organized attempts were made to obstruct the realizations of such projects. the treatment of socialist monuments and of the dead, which they represented, has contributed in a crucial way to the shaping of postsocialist identities. from the perspective of those who sided with the need to destruct or reshape them with respect to the changed social and cultural environment, it was a matter of destroying idols, of clearing the public space from traces of offending reminiscences to communist idolatry. it was thought to be a necessary act as long as it symbolized in a very articulate way the willingness to change and the eagerness to distance the new society from its recent past. destroying monuments to the dead meant destroying the power's embodiment in idols and refusing to pay respect to those whose sacrifice paved the path to the legitimization of the socialist regime. it was, in a way, reducing the powerful location of death in monuments and seeing them mainly as fossilized representations, which were already emptied of their meaning after the collapse of socialism. the position of those who refused to accept any change in the monuments of the socialist past was radically different and found its justification mostly in the "reality" of death present in those sites of memory. for them, to destroy a monument meant to attack overtly the sacredness of death and thus to bring pollution and danger into sites, where death has found refuge and exercised protection. in their view, these acts should not be labeled as idoloclasm, but rather as iconoclasm; and those willing to reshape monuments were nothing but "vandals" who not merely aimed to destroy sites and monumental objects, but were "desecrating" public memory and acting sacrilegiously against death. jen typewritten text 52 volume 21, number 2 the public debates about monuments in the period after 1989 testify to two major discourses on the notion of sacred death inherited from the socialist period. the first one regarded death as a "construction" of the socialist regime-developed as such owing to a set of clearly outlined intentions to achieve and preserve symbolic power--subject to possible changes and interpretations when the demystification of socialist techniques and their deconstruction became possible. the other discourse insisted on the "facticity" of death, on its natural becoming as a fact in the modern history of the country, as a set of "illuminating" points, which do not, cannot, and should not, be changed and treated in any way different from their heroic meaning. in this position, death had to remain untouched and unchanged as initially represented in monuments. it was seen not so much as a product of a certain historical interpretation, nor as a reality possible mainly under a particular ideological discourse, but rather as a reality out of time--true and eternal in itself. as such, the action against it could not be termed in other way but as "desecration." the irreconcilable nature of these two understandings of the formerly considered sacred death can be traced in the entire post-1989 discourse on the legacy of the socialist past. it is exactly this contradiction, which destined the problematic identity of the socialist monuments in bulgaria after 1989--as protecting or polluting, worth preserving or worth destroying. references aries, p., 1977. l'homme devant la mort. paris: seuille. bloch, m., and j. parry, eds.,1982. death and the regeneration of life. cambridge: cambridge university press. bynum, c. w., 1995. the resurrection of the body in western christianity. new york: columbia university press. gamboni, d. 1997. the destruction of art-iconoclasm and vandalism since the french revolution. new haven and london: yale university press. geary, p., 1994. phantoms of remembrance: memory and oblivion at the end of the first millenium. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. geary, p., 1995. living with the dead in the middle ages. ithaca: cornell university press. gradev, v. 1992. le mausolée de dimitrov. communications 55: 77-88. james, b. 1997. fencing in the past: budapest statue park museum. media, culture and society, may. hertz, r., 1960 [1907]. a contribution to the study of the collective representation of death. in: death and the right hand, aberdeen (originally published as contribution à une étude sur la représentation collective de la mort. in: année sociologique 10, 1907: 48-137). huntington, r. and p. metcalf, 1991. celebrations of death: the anthropology of mortuary ritual. cambridge: cambridge university press. kosellek, r. 1997. les monuments aux morts, lieux de l'identité des survivants. in: kosellek, r., l'expérience de l'historie, paris: gallimard, seuil, pp. 131-160. lane, ch. 1981. the rites of rulers: ritual in industrial society--the soviet case. cambridge: cambridge university press. lowenthal, d. 1985. changing the past. in: lowenthal, d., the past is a foreign country. cambridge: cambridge university press, 263-362. rubin, m. 1992. desecration of the host: the birth of an accusation. in: studies in church history, oxford, 29: 169-185. verdery, k. 1999. the political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change. new york: columbia university press. vukov, n. 2002a. the destruction of dimitrov's mausoleum in sofia: the 'incoincidence' between memory and its referents. in: ioan, a., ed., places of memory, bucharest. vukov, n. 2002b. death and vitality in the monuments of the socialist past in eastern europe. in: new europe college regional program yearbook, bucharest. jen typewritten text 53 volume 21, number 2 yampolsky, m. 1995. in the shadow of monuments. in: condee, n. ed., soviet hieroglyphics. bloomington: indiana univeristy press. young, j. 1993. the texture of memory-holocaust memorials and meaning. new haven and london: yale university press. endnotes 1. about dead bodies as symbols of political order, cf. especially k. verdery's pathbreaking book (1999). 2. see verdery 1999: 37. 3. the anthropological and historical literature on death and the constitution of the sacred is too extensive to be encompassed here, and i would mention only the works of aries 1977, bloch and parry 1982, bynum 1995, geary 1994, geary 1995, hertz 1960 [1907], huntington and metcalf 1991. 4. about the specific relationship between the sacred and the desecrated, i have depended chiefly on the interpretations of m. eliade, r. girard, and m. douglas. the historical development of the notion of desecration is paid thorough attention in the works of m. rubin (1992) and d. lowenthal (1985). 5. about the specific relationship between death and life in socialist monuments, see vukov 2002b. 6. a detailed analysis of the characteristic aspects of socialist rituals is provided in lane 1981. 7. dimitrov's embalmed body was taken out of the mausoleum in 1991 and cremated. see about the various transformations and destruction of dimitrov's mausoleumin gradev 1992 and vukov 2002a. 8. see for example the monument to the soviet army in pleven, which was taken down in 1991 and was replaced in 1998 by a newly built monument to freedom. 9. see for example the plan for a museum of the totalitarian art at the former housemonument of the bulgarian communist party on the peak of buzludzha; or of an alley of fallen monuments in dimitrovgrad. 10. an example in this respect is the brotherly mound in plovdiv, considered as one of the most prominent monuments of communist heroic representations. in 1997, after protests were raised against its preservation, a suggestion was made to reconstruct it according to its "initial" idea, i.e., not as a communist pantheon, but as a memorial complex of all who died for freedom from the plovdiv region. 11. about the major aspects of monumental representations of death as shaping the identities of the living, see especially kosellek 1997and young 1993. 12. an explicit example of fighting pollution and unsacred death is the reconstitution of the crypt on the peak of okolchitsa, associated with one of the most sublime moments of nineteenth-century bulgarian history. according to the wish of the people from the town of vratsa the red star, which stayed on the peak for about 42 years, was destroyed and the cross of the national fighters in the russian-turkish war was reinstalled after the original project. 13. destroying a monument and replacing it with a new one is, as m. yampolski observes, a twofold symbol of victory. firstly, it is a privilege of the victors to represent their ideals, and secondly the new monument stands as a trace of what is vanquished and already absent (yampolsky 1995: 100; james 1997: 5). 14. note the specific meaning of the word "vandal," initially outlining limits of exclusion from the civilized community. about the historical roots of iconoclasm in the acts of striking against a sacred prototype, see gamboni 1997: 13-18. jen typewritten text 54 the highs and lows of ethno-cultural diversity: young people’s experiences of chalga culture in bulgaria anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 103 the new bosnian mosaic: identities, memories and moral claims in a postwar society. ed. xavier bougarel, elissa helms and ger duijzings. burlington, vt: ashgate publishing company, 2007. xix, 332 pp. bibliography. index. maps. figures. list of acronyms. list of contributors. acknowledgments. pronunciation guide. $124.95, cloth. reviewed by: peter locke princeton university the new bosnian mosaic is a timely, smart, and substantive anthropological intervention into dominant approaches to post-war bosniaherzegovina. the volume assembles twelve studies of bosnian politics, economies, and social relations after dayton—by ivana maček, anders stefansson, ioannis armakolas, hannes grandits, torsten kolind, stef jansen, isabelle delpla, kimberley coles, larisa jašarević, and the editors themselves— all firmly grounded in long-term fieldwork. the editors mobilize the thick, empirical grit of ethnographic evidence to challenge taken-for-granted orthodoxies about bosnia and to illuminate the fluid, complicated, and open-ended sociocultural realities that such orthodoxies tend to mask. this is anthropological storytelling and analysis at its most relevant and effective—bringing complexity and doubt into public debates in a way that opens up new possibilities for both future research and for policymaking—and as such the volume merits attention across disciplines and regional specializations. the editors use the 35-page introduction— an accomplishment, in itself, of analysis, synthesis, and literature review—to contextualize the essays that follow: they provide a succinct and useful recent history of the region, as well an engaging summary of the ethnological and anthropological work done by local and foreign scholars during the yugoslav/socialist period. more importantly, they make the case for the necessity and timeliness of a “bottom-up” approach to contemporary bosniaherzegovina, highlighting the ways that a literature dominated by “legal scholars and political scientists” has produced an “overemphasis on institutional and electoral issues,” as well as a reductive framing of the messy realities of post-war society in terms of ethnic dimensions and the “legal categories set forth in the [dayton] peace agreement” (13). by attending to the on-the-ground flux of current conflicts and solidarities, the essays draw our attention to a wide range of other categories—such as “urbanity and rurality, gender, generation, class and occupation” (2)—that make a difference both in everyday struggles and in the success or failure of international policies. in a context of scarcity and the injustices and inequalities of a rapidly transforming economy— accompanied by the continuing evisceration of social welfare measures and the state-citizen relationships familiar to those who came of age in the socialist period—the contributors explore how competition for “housing, jobs and collapsing public services is expressed through strong moral categories,” opposing, for example, “cultured” city-dwellers to “primitive” papci (peasants) and displaced persons, those who left to those who stayed, veterans’ groups to a multitude of civilian victim associations (20). contemporary bosnia-herzegovina, the editors observe, is a place of “unyielding moral claims,” which, while “still largely informed by wartime roles and experiences,” also exhibit key continuities with pre-war social processes—and exceed “ethnicity” and “transition”-based explanations. we need to make room for the unexpected, thinking of current social realities less in terms of repair, reconciliation, and restoration and more in terms of transformation and creativity, attending to the ways “new normative frameworks, new forms of governmentality and new allocations of power and wealth” emerge in the wake of war and amidst the fraught and deeply contested encroachment of contemporary capitalist economic forms (35). the book is divided into three sections, each of which martials ethnographic evidence to pull the rug out from under one of the reductive approaches that has dominated public understanding of and intervention in bosnia-herzegovina. the first section tackles ethnicity; the second, collective memory and “ancient hatreds;” and the third, theories attempting to understand bosnia in terms of advances and setbacks along a linear “transition” from authoritarian socialism to free-market democracy. in the first section, for example, maček chronicles sarajevans’ struggles to survive and make sense of their condition during the siege, showing how their negotiation of “normality” in dire circumstances included—but went well beyond—coming to grips with the ethnicization of politics and violence. and anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 104 kolind, observing interethnic relations in the mixed croat-muslim town of stolac in herzegovina, demonstrates how “nationalist discourses do not completely permeate everyday life, and there is some space left for alternative identifications and interactions at the local level” (138). in the second section, the authors firmly locate practices of memory within present-day contests over the shape of bosnia’s future. duijzings examines the tense politics of memory around the srebrenica massacre, on both serb and muslim sides, in eastern bosnia. bougarel shows how the post-war cult of the šehid (martyr) among muslims reflects both “specific interpretations and memories of the war, as well as new social divides and normative hierarchies within the muslim community” (191). and jansen skilfully deploys the detailed story of a single conversation among old friends in the northeastern town of tuzla to combat the “sterile simplification” that comes with assuming the overriding importance of national identities in the way that people remember and evaluate their own and others’ wartime experiences (194). the final section takes up the consequences of “top-down” approaches to post-war recovery and state building through a set of trenchant critiques. delpla, to begin with, explores bosnian attitudes toward the international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia (icty) to highlight the disconnect between international and local notions of justice, and helms draws attention to the constraints and hard choices facing women as they navigate the deeply gendered world of bosnian politics and civil society. coles targets the “exclusion of bosnians from an imagined european-ness” (257) by international officials living and working in bosnia. and jašarević, examining the everyday re-valuation of exchange relationships and forms of work taking place at the arizona “black market” near brčko, shows the woeful inadequacy of pat theories of economic transition from socialism to capitalism. taken together, the introduction and the essays offer a much-needed new perspective on bosnia-herzegovina—refreshingly grounded in ethnographic research and commendably distrustful of the dominant narratives into which bosnia has thus far been slotted. it deserves to be read not only by students of the region, but also by those interested in post socialism, post-war governance and humanitarianism, and the sociocultural impacts of war. the highs and lows of ethno-cultural diversity: young people’s experiences of chalga culture in bulgaria anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 105 ceska venice siroky dul. written by bohuslav salanda. 173 pp. kolin nezavisle centrum pro studium politiky, 2008. isbn 978-80-86879-14-7. reviewed by: zdenek salzmann northern arizona university most of the czech ethnographic literature has dealt with the minutiae of bohemian and moravian folk cultures. village studies and comprehensive works have been relatively few and far between, but in recent years the situation has begun to change. of particular importance is the three-volume ethnographic encyclopaedia of the folk culture of bohemia, moravia, and silesia that appeared in 2007; on a much smaller scale, one should welcome the village study here being reviewed. ceska vesnice siroky dul [the czech village whose name means “a wise valley”] is a slender book with only 111 pages of text, but it contains a surprising amount of interesting information. a welcome bonus to salanda’s choice of siroky dul is the fact that a well-known czech ethnographer, karel chotek (1881-1967), described this village in 1915. although only 28 pages long, chotek’s study is rich in data, covering not only various facets of the material culture but also family life, life cycle, oral folklore and expressions of folk art. using the two sources, one can appreciate the changes that have taken place in siroky dul during the past hundred years. siroky dul, a submontane-type village, is located about 6 km (4 miles) northwest of policka, a small town in eastern bohemia. first mentioned as early as the 12th century, siroky dul reached its largest size in 1880, when it had 660 inhabitants. by mid-2008, however, it had shrunk to 378 people. between the introductory and concluding chapters, the author has divided the text into eight chapters. in several chapters he writes about two parts of the village, separated from each other by a small woods and an elevation of some 320 feet, as well as a creek that at one time separated the village into two manorial estates, and, until the present, by two denominational affiliations – catholic and protestant. this partition of the village, interestingly enough, had administrative and economic repercussions: when unified agricultural cooperation was forced on the village in 1957 by the communist government, siroky dul –despite its small size— ended up with two cooperatives. this rather anomalous situation changed in 1972, when the two cooperatives merged. all of these matters are discussed by the author and supported by quotations from still-living participants in these events. in the chapter “local political culture,” salanda reports on some of the activities of a former head of the local administration: for example, inviting for a visit the descendants of former villagers who had left for america. (a local register of births, marriages, and deaths reveals that between 1800 and 1910 a full 135 people from the village had emigrated to the united states.) over the years some of the seasonal ceremonies have been discontinued, for example, carnival rounds. other ceremonies have been observed until fairly recently – for example, the socalled burning of the witches (which continued under communism under the unobjectionable designation flame of peace). still others continue to be observed—for example, the end-of-october village fair with its many outside visitors, some from as far away as slovakia. of particular interest are the contributions of the members of the village’s voluntary fire brigade. at one time they organized masked balls, and today they are still very active in amateur theatre performances and in certain sports, for example volleyball and nohejbal (a game with volleyball rules but with the ball kicked over the net). the remaining pages of the book contain notes (pp. 119-124), bibliography (pp. 125-128), captions for the photographic illustrations (pp. 129130), ground plans for two selected farmhouses (pp. 136-139), a german abstract (pp. 140-144), and 57 photographs (17 black-and-white and 40 in color). the subjects of the illustrative photos range from views of the village as a whole part, private farming activities, activities under the unified agricultural cooperative, architectural styles of selected village buildings, voluntary fire-fighters performing in sports and as actors, to instances of practical public joking (for example, a sign proclaiming that the twelfth fiveyear plan is being fulfilled at 141.5 percent –making fun of the profusion of bombastic economic slogans during the communist era). to sum up: this handsome book is a useful contribution to our understanding of life in bohemian villages – in this case a very small village but atypical in many respects. a note and references anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 106 the only czech village study in english is one written by the present reviewer (salzmann). broucek, stanislav, and richard jerabek, eds. 2007. lidova kultura: narodopisna encyklopedie cech, moravy a slezska. praha: mlada fronta. vol. 1: biograficka cast, 284 pp.; vol. 2: vena cast a-n, 634 pp; vol. 3: vecna cast o-z, pp. 643-1298. chotek, karel. [1915]. siroky dul: narodopisna monografie ceske vesnice. praha: prazska akciova tiskarna. 28 pp. salzmann, zdenek, and vladimir scheufler. 1986. komarov: a czech farming village. 2nd, enlarged edition. project heights, il: waveland press. x = 166 pp. old entitlements and new dependencies: family versus state in the czech republic rebecca nash, the henley centre, london © 2005 rebecca nash all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. introduction in 1995 the czech government put in place a multi-tiered system of social “support” (podpora) and “care” (péče) for low-income families. these new terms denoted reform of “socialist paternalism” and previous redistributive family awards and benefits for all families. social policy makers introduced these terms and simultaneously placed greater emphasis in policy documents on individual responsibility. yet while new policy language suggests a radical change in relations between the state and families, for many czechs, family life during the socialist era was not characterized by wholesale reliance on the state but by what i call a productive dependence. in this paper i argue that ethnographic studies of welfare reform in east central europe must take into account how socialistera ideologies of family life inform people’s experiences with new family policies. i draw on ethnographic work in family offices and the collection of family histories to demonstrate that post-1989 expectations of families to tend to themselves did not represent a break from the socialist era. well-established ‘go-it-alone’ values had the effect of complementing and reinforcing new state ethics of self-care. autonomy had already been established through notions of work for the family set in opposition to the state. inversely, more recent engagements with meansand income-tested policies often elicited strong criticisms of what was cast as utter, and unfamiliar, dependencies. on the one hand autonomy and individual responsibility framed stories of socialist-era family activities. yet on the other, dependence on society and the state, and perceived unwillingness to provide for one’s own, emerged during my fieldwork discussions as contemporary trends and, paradoxically, as the product of “postpaternalistic” family policy. i took care of myself, no one helped me czechs do not remember life during the socialist era as a time of taking indiscriminately and freely from the state, and they recognized social distinctions between claims categories. receipt of certain services was connected to familial roles and relations. although family benefits were “universal/ across-the-board” (plošné), children were the primary beneficiaries. as one family policymaker explained, “it didn’t matter if the family was wealthy or poor, each child had a nárok to the benefit—they were only differentiated according to age. if the child was young he received more, if he was older he received less.” in some cases, such as the child benefits, a nárok was interpreted as a natural “right” (právo). klára pittnerová, a resident in a home for mothers where i did fieldwork, defined a nárok as “something (něco) that belongs to you.” during the socialist era, across-theboard family policy did the claiming for czech households. today, clients in the local support and care offices must do their own claiming by filing a request (žádost; to claim: požadovat). today, a nárok is the state’s verification that a client’s claim is jen typewritten text 53 justified. the nárok is no longer promised to all, it is no longer an inherent right; although, those who “take” benefits, such as klára, believed that postsocialist benefits were “theirs.” as automatic as socialist-era nároks might first appear, they were in practice contingent on family circumstances and, in the views of some, left up to arbitrary bureaucratic decisions.1 mrs. heroldová was married but childless when she applied for an apartment, so she did not have a nárok to move from her one-room basement apartment to the three-plus-one apartment where she and her family still lived in 2000. she and her husband waited for two and a half years, from 1975 to 1978, for their apartment, and by that time they had one young son and were expecting a second baby. awards from the state were not guaranteed. when a claimant qualified for benefits on paper and in propaganda, they were more successful at having their requests filled when they had personal connections and contacts in their respective national committees. and even within the seemingly wide parameters of an across-the-board family policy, distinctions developed between recipient categories. when i began my fieldwork, i presumed that across-the-board family awards and distrust of the state had led czechs not to differentiate between those receiving state funds. i carelessly asked family members what kinds of “support” (podpora) they previously received and was surprised to hear them insist, “nothing,” absolutely nothing—they never received support. on the one hand, this denial of having ever been “supported” by the socialist state may be due in part to the recoding of past experiences in light of newer ideologies of individual responsibility. today the most basic tier of income-based funding for families is called “support,” and although the majority of households were eligible for it in 2000, it required the filing of complex 1 and, as milada bartošová’s (1978) history of social policy makes clear, socialist family policy had income-based criteria in place until 1968. paperwork and verification of deservingness. some of those eligible did not bother. this suggests that stories of the socialist era were being mediated by growing contact with and awareness of dependent persons in the present. on the other hand, however, distrust and anger toward the previous regime were remembered well. that state had mythologized its generosity while keeping czechs and slovaks at low standards of living. czechs did not feel that they had been especially helped by the state; rather, they had had to help themselves. my questions about socialist-era state “support” evoked memories and stories of not having been supported. grandmother vodrážková (kateřina) responded to my questions sharply, “i didn’t get any support from the state; i had to work for myself.” she had a hard life and identified neither the socialist nor the postsocialist eras as easier to live through. yet in her recollections of state provisions for families, she saw herself as less dependent than some and as self-sufficient. she explained that “support” was not for “normal” czech families, but for those she called “the unpowerful.” given the distrust of “the powerful” (politicians, bureaucrats) during the socialist era, the unpowerful should not be interpreted here as undeserving or immoral. most czechs would probably agree that grandmother vodrážková herself was unpowerful. she moved to prague from moravia in the earlyto-mid 1950s, escaping what other family members implied was an abusive marriage and raising a child on her own by taking a series of labor-intensive jobs. her acquisition of an apartment was thanks to a family member (uncle pavel) tied in to influential administrators at her national committee office. she did not think of the apartment and subsequent child benefits for her son ondřej as “support,” but as earned through hard work—and deserved because she had looked out for herself and done what needed to be done to get by. jen typewritten text 54 although mrs. boudová and her husband obtained a large sum of money from the state in 1970 to build their family home, she also emphasized how hard she worked. “i seldom got anything for free,” she recalled bitterly; [that loan] was all the state did for us, and building that house was absolute madness because there was nothing….when we collected material it was unbelievable, because beforehand i had to call around prague for building material and when i learned that someone had what we needed i got into the car and went there with money or some documents [showing what the materials were for]. my husband went to the site where we were building, where the truck we had was parked; he started it and drove to where i was waiting. he got there about an hour after me. during that time, i had tried to hold on to the cement or whatever (laugh)…and before he arrived he would get stopped [by authorities] and questioned as to what he was doing. transportation could not be counted on—that is why we bought a truck. we were glad that we had our own things (že jsme zvládli svý vlastní věci). so that’s how we collected our materials….it was quite a sight…. mrs. boudová described the building of her home in prague much in the way that cottage owners depicted gathering and accumulating materials for weekend building and chores in the country. her case demonstrates, moreover, that despite qualifying for a sizeable loan and (unlike many) accumulating enough resources to build a freestanding, “family house” (rodinný domek) in prague, she felt that she had not been supported by the state. mrs. boudová was resentful because of how much energy she and her husband put into the project. in fact, as the example of the transport of building materials reveals, mrs. boudová and her husband’s interactions with state authorities as regards the construction of their home were more of an obstacle than a support. it is important to note that “support” as a benefits category existed only minimally during the socialist era, and formal legislation for state social support was not passed until 1995. rather, the socialist state denied that material differences between households were a social problem to be addressed. “classic social work” with, or “care” (péče) for, at-risk children and a negligible amount of institutional aid for single mothers made official networks for the disadvantaged nearly invisible and structurally insignificant. the director of the prague home for mothers, jitka králová, explained to me her own frustration with the system of social support during the early 1970s, when she went through a painful divorce. “i work in this field because i personally and privately experience-ed what it is like to have a divorce and be isolated with a child. it was such a negative experience, so i said, i will study social work. i don’t want anyone to go through what i went through,” she told me. indeed, support for the “unpowerful” was almost non-existent, and a set of class distinctions based on familial resources operated during the socialist era. the few homes for mothers with children (and without families on which to lean) established during that period were the result of careful maneuvering on the part of few individuals, like jitka, who were outraged by the absence of care for struggling parents and families. the mothers in the homes fell into the “unpowerful” category to which grandmother vodrážková referred. because she had an apartment and a somewhat influential family member, however, grandmother vodrážková as a single mother did not categorize herself as unpowerful and state supported. although all families with children qualified for universal benefits and various other state distributions, one supported oneself rather than relying on the state. parents with children were simultaneously entitled and left to their own devices. jen typewritten text 55 we can see that universal “family benefits” (přídavky) and “care” services (péče) operated according to a system of “relative merit” (gal and kligman 2000:77) during the socialist era in czechoslovakia, much like the manifold range of unstigmatized and stigmatized public provisions in western states: “universal cash transfers that make no distinctions within the relevant population of recipients have often been, in the history of western welfare, less stigmatizing than aid for which recipients must reach some criterion of minimum income or ill health” (gal and kligman 2000:77). in their memories and reflections on the universalized system, czechs categorize certain receiving persons as needier than others when they did not have personal resources (the “unpowerful”); while benefits designated for children and mothers—and housing allotments in mrs. boudová and grandmother vodrážková’s cases—were taken for granted and deserved when family members were thought to be looking out for themselves and turning to one another. recalling their experiences building a home and raising children during the socialist era, these two and others like them remembered their efforts to make do. “no one helped me, i had to do it all myself,” they insisted. family versus state it is useful to study some of the czech publications written from the early-to-mid 1990s about what women’s lives were like during the socialist era; these publications contribute to ideologies of the family. the value of family to czech women often surfaced in response to the derogatory coverage of western feminism in larger cities like prague and brno and as an explanation by leading czech gender studies scholars for why czech women were different from “western” women and why it was inappropriate to apply feminist concepts (patriarchy, the subordination of women at home and work) to the czech setting (see nash 2002). this literature was one of the principle academic outlets evoking a family versus state opposition in the immediate post-1989 period. this literature also unmasked the shortcomings of socialist-era gender ideologies. here i focus on the work of three scholars who, particularly in the early-to-mid 1990s, were called on most frequently in public settings (media, academia, international women’s conferences) to represent “czech women.” these are sociologist marie čermáková, philosopher hana havelková, and former dissident and sociologist jiřina šiklová. much like the family history interviews, their writing turns to past experiences when explaining social relations in the present. these publications join examples of “unsupportive” family care in making the point that a particular ethic of self-interest as regards family life, one which these authors claim is not familiar to western feminists, opposed the efforts of a homogenizing socialist state. in all of these cases, czechs draw on the family as the site of individuality and self-realization. havelková interprets “patriarchy” as the control of women by men, and as a guiding concern of feminism in the united states and western europe. but she rejects “the separation of women’s problems from the problems of the citizen” (1993b:89) in the czech case. patriarchy, she explains, should not be understood as “paternalism.” while havelková admits that paternalistic state supervision harmed czechs throughout the previous era, in homes and households men and women lived as one. thus challenging “patriarchal” control in the postsocialist era was uncalled for because men and women were accustomed to being equally subordinated by the communist party and the state. they had acted as partners to fight and resist this external influence, or “common enemy” (see čermáková 1995:82). “it was the family, or rather the household, where many people put to use their inventive potential and their desire to do things their own way, without having to observe some official regulation” (havelková 1993a:68). havelková reminded her readers that the identification of women as separate or unlike men was more antagonistic and, she jen typewritten text 56 suggested, could cause more harm than good in the early stages of social trans-formation. for this reason, and also because of the range of formal benefits families were once automatically entitled to, šiklová wrote that in the early 1990s “[m]arriage and family are still the most attractive option for women” (1993:73). although the socialist state had denied the pursuit of individual interests, moral subjectivity and a sense of what was right and wrong developed among family and close friends (havelková 1993a:68) and family was “the last bastion of personal freedom” (havelková 1993b:92). havelková and šiklová were reluctant to identify differences between men and women in the family, but they wrote often in the early 1990s about the gendered realities of czech politics. both agreed political activity was corrupt and that the communist party had been thought of as a male domain. unlike “western feminists,” then, czech women did not perceive of political engagement as a way to improve their lives but as something to be avoided (šiklová 1993; čermáková 1995:77). for example, šiklová writes “women in socialism never allowed themselves to be manipulated to the extent that men did, which i regard as fortunate. women took refuge in their ‘double burden,’ in motherhood and in care for young children” (1993:79). šiklová might seem to be contradicting havelková’s insistence that, because they were united in a common dislike of the regime, czechs did not recognize gendered oppositions between men and women. but both authors agree that family was a site of resistance. it was the “one free institution” (despite the state’s engagement in family policy) and these gender studies scholars turned to the socialist period to inform their readers that marriage, having children, and family activities were a source of identity building and not women’s “subordination”—what had also been a keyword in socialist propaganda. in the words of sociologists of the family ivo možný and ladislav rabušic, marriage during the socialist era, unlike politics and the economy, was “perhaps the only free market even before the institution of a market economy” (1999:101). throughout their writing, havelková, šiklová, and čermáková challenge what they understand to be a western feminist preoccupation with earning the “right” to work outside the home. these authors did not conceive of work as the realization of individuality, they said, because women had been forced to work by the socialist state. in her research throughout the 1990s, čermáková paid close attention to women’s inequality, discrimination in the workplace, and inequity in women’s wages and access to education. still, she reasons that these imbalances should be attributed to women’s preference for family over work and their willingness to sacrifice for the good of society (1995:76-77). since the czech economic downturn in 1997 and rising unemployment in the late 1990s and 2000, the work of these gender studies scholars has grown more critical of women’s unequal position in public and private in the czech republic, what they consider to be offensive images of women in advertising, and the harmfulness of minimal political representation by women. younger generations of gender studies students and writers, moreover, freely use words like “patriarchy,” even calling themselves “feminists” (feministky). in the early 1990s, however, havelková, šiklová and čermáková drew on memories of the socialist era to counteract what they understood as the imperialistic framework and inappropriateness of western feminism. and within their writing, we can identify the narrative construction of family as a safe haven, “islands” as the head of a foster care ngo described them, and as a unique site of individuality during the socialist era. there is much to be learned from discussions of family life during the socialist era—particularly these understandings of family as a source of women’s identity rather than the source of women’s oppression and subordination. the personal jen typewritten text 57 value of the family to many czechs, and its necessity for material security, underscores similarities between socialist and capitalist family ideologies, particularly ideas about the stigma of dependence on public services. i now address the ways in which principles conceived of as “socialist” transformed into postsocialist categories of productive and unproductive dependency. family and 1989: ending the free market, beginning socialism in the prague “care” office where i conducted fieldwork, benefits accountants often explained to “claimants” (žadatelky) that there were limits on what the state would provide. for example, if a female client would not reveal the father of her child(ren) she was informed that a “fictive child support” of 1,000 crowns would be deducted from her living minimum benefits. if the client protested that the deduction would result in no living minimum funds, the benefits accountant responded, “that is your problem” (to je váš problem). a stress on “your” (váš) indicated that the client needed to look after herself and pursue the father’s financial contribution (rather than the state’s). only after the father refused to pay or had been unsuccessfully sought after by the mother, court, and police would the state make up the difference in monthly income. to give another example, if a client forgot a document or necessary verification (of residence, pregnancy, other state benefits received) she heard, “that is your mistake” (to je vaše chyba) or, “it’s your issue to handle” (to je vaše věc). the state was no longer “ours” (náš) to plunder; family concerns were “yours” (váš). this meaningful shift in focus from “our state” to “your family” suggests that postsocialist family ideologies have moved from an emphasis on communal to individual/family units. the state no longer declares itself supreme caretaker; rather, czechs must look out for themselves and their families. as i have sought to demonstrate at greater length in my dissertation, however, this is something that family members were doing throughout the socialist era. be it in the form of weekend retreats, household construction, ingenious support networks, or defining one’s identity and self-worth through family relations, family members never presumed otherwise. for this reason, i argue, many narratives of self-sufficiency—such as the gender studies work outlined earlier—complemented the state’s withdrawal of public responsibility for family well-being after 1989. prior official rhetorics of intimacy between the state and family, many argued, was never achieved or made significant as czechs maneuvered their lives and worked to retain a distinction between their households, on one hand, and work and political influence on the other. czechs responded critically to capitalist family policies toward lower-class czechs as if those policies were creating a socialist lower class. this was a socialism never realized during the socialist era because, in the post-1989 era, the state generously redistributed public resources and actually cared for (needier) families with children. state administrators and more materially secure family members interpreted those who were “taking” as over-supported by new provisions. if one were to presume that czechs had faith in the prior redistributive ideology these criticisms might be surprising. yet my informants, particularly older czechs, were often quick to emphasize their sacrifice and self-care during the socialist era. new dependencies were perceived through denials that they were dependent in the past. contemporary disparagement of those who “take” suggests rather that the socialist experience often led czechs to believe that they could not count on the state as some do today. this perception of reliance on the state is, moreover, shaping the development of class distinctions which builds on the previous category of “unpowerful.” while all czechs are “dependent” in some combined form (on the family, on the state, on both), productive dependents stigmatize those whom they jen typewritten text 58 perceive as unproductive for both drawing on the state and, seemingly, not working. why work when you can live off of benefits? most czechs receive public funds from the state in some form. given the legacy of the role of social policy in everyday life and an abiding social safety net, i believe it is more useful to interpret new czech recipient categories in terms of a manifold range of relationships between individuals, households, and the state, rather than as a binary between the self-reliant and the disadvantaged. nevertheless, an opposition is developing in the czech republic between those who are “self-sufficient” (sám za sebe) and those who are not (in czech, sociální slabší, the socially weaker, or unpowerful as grandmother vodrážková put it). unless themselves recipients, many of the families in prague with whom i worked were unfamiliar with elaborate benefits criteria. when i inquired about who czechs felt the state should be aiding, most agreed, “the socially weakest need help from the state;” “the state should help poor mothers;” “i don’t know how [the weakest] manage, the state should help them.” but in their responses, my interviewees also established restrictions on how much the state could and should do for the growing numbers of poor. the conditions of public care for the poor were informed by understandings of whether or not those who “take” also work. if not, responses sounded a line familiar to american ears when czechs argued, “it’s better to make people contribute to society, to work, than to pay them support,” or “the social network is too plentiful.” nowhere was the expectation that benefits recipients should work—and the moral evaluation of those who did not—more evident than among employees within the “social network” itself (the benefits accountants, family court judges, social workers in the home for mothers). these employees, almost all of whom were women, administered the new incomeand means-tested criteria and commented openly about their effects. in the case of the benefits office, clients’ employment status structured employees’ willingness or refusal to seek greater funding on their behalf. when clients lived under the living minimum and still worked, were on parental leave, or had no luck finding work through an “unemployment office” (pracák) they usually had a claim to financial aid, and the accountants processed the application and authorized the distribution of benefits. accountants were often saddened when someone hovered just above the living minimum and remained ineligible. for example, when a seemingly deserving client left with no further benefits in hand, the accountants would explain delicately, “má smůlu:” “she is down on her luck.” if a client was unemployed and had not registered at a pracák he or she was not eligible for further state benefits. the client might, however, be able to negotiate a “onetime-only” award (jednorázovka) or, alternately, an in-kind benefit. if one’s fate was uncertain, benefits accountants might explain that “the commission” would have to rule on the case. in matter of fact, “the commission” consisted of the office’s three benefits accountants and their director flipping through files, drinking tea, and complaining about so-and-so’s last-minute application for benefits. “it’s always the same,” they told me. “right before the school year begins, and just before christmas, they come in and say, ‘we don’t have money for books and shoes, or we don’t have money for christmas.’” final decisions were thus attributed to this anonymous body, “the commission,” suggesting that the clients’ requests, rights, and needs had been taken into account and treated fairly and objectively. the system appeared structured and inflexible on paper, but like the earlier socialist era, post-1989 offices were maneuverable and subject to personal connections, inter-office cooperation and competition, and employees’ mood swings. jen typewritten text 59 when a client needed to stay at home to take care of children, she was often asked why she did not go to work and leave the child with a grandparent. or, why not get the child’s father, grandparents, or other family members to work so that there were more funds for the household? when clients were out of earshot the benefits accountants and social workers asked sarcastically, “why work when you can live off of benefits?” after a consultation with an unemployed father seeking custody of his children, social worker nina looked at me, exasperated, “there isn’t an obligation today to go to work” (není dneska povinnost jít do práce). the responsibility for unemployment rested on both the client and the state’s shoulders. the client lacked the willingness to work, but the state no longer forced him or her to work in the first place. the director of the home for mothers, jitka, lamented over incompatible trends—desire for material goods combined with what she interpreted as a reluctance to work— developing in the residents she oversaw, but she blamed post-1989 social policies for allowing people to count on the state without taking care of themselves. there was a “cost in the lack of freedom” during the socialist era, but with a nostalgic tone she recalled that certain things like apartments and employment had been guaranteed and, she suggested, helped one tolerate life under a totalitarian regime. too much freedom and the continued availability of funds for the poor today, though, have produced an inexplicable group living on support. czechs had new freedoms to take, claim, and demand. jitka said, the state would prefer to pay social benefits and social support than motivate people to earn their own money and take themselves to some better place. the mothers here used to work themselves toward better lives; now those on support (na podpoře) are increasing. i don’t know how it exactly works elsewhere, but here there’s no time limit. people are on support forever, their whole lives. i simply don’t understand. jitka did not confine the socialist-era work ethic to family domains exclusively. she contrasted previous requirements to work outside of the home to reduced expectations of today’s unemployed. czechs were supported and cared for by the home previously, but it was never for long (three years maximum) and the socialist system did not allow for the upholding of unproductive persons. she did not miss the socialist era, but had greater respect for the work ethic associated with it. i didn’t agree with communism. but at the same time i wanted to live here. or at least i had to live here. no one could get out. so we tried to improve ourselves and stand on our own legs. and there were no exceptions—after school there was no way to get out of work. a person was obliged. both social worker nina and jitka mentioned that the “obligation” (povinnost) to work during the socialist era had been replaced by the right not to work—and a state that too easily allowed clients and the residents they worked with to expect many kinds of aid without working. these critical reflections and comments imply that the state was enabling new forms of dependency. some felt that wages were too low for working to seem necessary or beneficial. as one man put it, “if people had decent wages, they would not come in” to the state offices to file for their benefits and support supplements. at the ministry of labor and social affairs, policymaker novák made the point that, actually, the state was giving too much—the amount of care benefits were too close to wages so “why work?” in his opinion, benefits accountants were overworked and undervalued, so they processed paperwork without fully evaluating applicants’ resources and needs and, then, justifying distribution. time for the concerns of families—both in public and jen typewritten text 60 private settings—was too limited. the system was flexible enough to cut back on automatic awards, but employees were not able to maximize its potential and to take the circumstances of each life into account because they were overwhelmed. “a person isn’t poor because he doesn’t have money,” novák explained, rather he is poor because he got in to a situation whereby he doesn’t have money. lack of money is only one indicator of poverty. and if we give him money, we don’t eliminate the poverty. we only make him dependent (závislým)…. there are a number of barriers on the system, one of which is the opinion that the living minimum is too high, and that it is contributing to the problem. novák’s ideal use of the system of support and care by the social workers (toward whom, by the way, he was quite sympathetic) would be to pay closer attention to the unique conditions of individual persons and households. in a lengthier version of this project, i demonstrate that benefits accountants were in fact alert to possible non-financial care resources, frequently calling on or inquiring about extended family members who might assist clients. moreover, “the commission” tried to take advantage of the flexibility offered by policies. as an author and mentor of state texts and research studies novák felt that the expansion of individualized treatment of clientele, more thorough examinations of claims, and subsequent denial of care, were justified. others found primary fault in those who were being “cared for” by the state. one of the full-time “doorkeepers” (vrátná), mrs. jedličková, at the home for mothers was astonished by the lifestyles of the home’s residents. we often chatted in her office as she buzzed residents in, admitted and signed in authorized guests, and connected phone calls to the upstairs living units from her switch-board. although similar homes for mothers were founded throughout czechoslovakia from the 1960s onward, mrs. jedličková considered theirs an indicator of the inconceivable claims czechs made on state resources. “this kind of institution didn’t exist before,” she said. “if you went to a social worker and said, ‘my husband doesn’t give me money’ she would say ‘go to work for yourself.’ people should work; before you had to have a stamp in your national identification card (občanka) that said you worked.” the vrátnás in the home were retired women, usually in their late fifties and mid-sixties, and they worked as door minders to supplement their pensions. they led “triple burden” lives, caring for husbands, grown children who often still lived at home, and grandchildren, while also working outside the home beyond retirement age. like most of the benefits accountants, then, these women were older than the “socially weaker” clients they worked around. while recognizing the difficult family lives the residents came from, older state employees struggled to understand how mothers could stay at home all day, even after the completion of maternity leave. this vrátná, for one, insisted that she had not wanted to stay at home when she had little children. she “wanted to go to work.” conclusion czechs refer to past systems of social provisions when making sense of current reform, tortuous filing procedures, and differences between the self-sufficient and “the socially weak.” entitlement claims span a broad section of the population. yet in recalling their experiences with the socialist state, people such as grandmother vodrážková and mrs. boudová distanced themselves from today’s poorer classes of czechs by insisting that they never drew on support and care. they took care of themselves; they never got anything for free. family and gender studies narratives of sacrifice, hard work, and self-sustenance refigure the trajectory of postsocialist transition by contrasting state narratives of state-family relations (these latter narratives often trace the state’s retreat from enabling jen typewritten text 61 passivity—characterizing literature on the socialist era—and a movement toward engen-dering responsibility in the present through policy). instead of witnessing a radical break from state paternalism and civic laziness, the stories told by individual family members affirmed continued belief in, and value for, the family and individual responsibility—and ongoing perceived independence from public provisions. czechs who have moved further outside of state oversight (those who carried the state versus family opposition to the postsocialist period) viewed those struggling to make ends meet as generating individual and family dependence on the state not matched by individual effort (what i refer to in my dissertation as a productive dependency (nash 2003)). the socialist state did not pay significant attention to the “unpowerful” (i.e., the socialist-era “socially weaker”). today those who draw on the state are accused of creating their own struggle to survive and of perpetuating dependencies never before seen. living minimum criteria and support eligibility mark expanding gaps and differences among czech families and generations. care benefits were meant to serve as a safety net for those unable to protect themselves in an unfamiliar economic environment. within the system itself, administrators experienced the benefits as obstacles to care for the self and family, which older generations would otherwise have passed along. it is important to examine closely when czechs evoke an ideology of independence from the state—and an opposition of state versus family outlined by leading czech gender studies scholars—which signifies an ability to turn to family as productive dependents and not the state (fully) in the postsocialist era. socialism shared a discourse of individual interest now complementing ideologies of responsibility, but the growth of class differences among families suggests the creation of altogether new dependencies. references cited: bartošová, milada et al. 1978. populační politika v čssr 1945-1975. výzkumná práce (pracovištĕ praha), řada b, č. 76. bratislava: československy výzkumný ústav práce a sociálních vĕcí. čermáková, marie. 1995. women and family—the czech version of development and chances for improvement. in: family, women, and employment in central-eastern europe. barbara łobodzińska, ed. westport, connecticut: greenwood press. pp. 75-85. gal, susan and gail kligman. 2000. the politics of gender after socialism: a comparative-historical essay. princeton: princeton university press. havelková, hana. 1993a. a few prefeminist thoughts. in: gender politics and post-communism: reflections from eastern europe and the former soviet union. nanette funk and magda mueller, eds. new york: routledge. pp. 62-73. ——1993b “patriarchy” in czech society. hypatia 8(4):89-96. možný ivo and ladislav rabušic.1999. the czech family, the marriage market, and the reproductive climate. in: ten years of rebuilding capitalism: czech society after 1989. jiří večerník and petr matĕjů, eds. prague: academia. pp. 94-112. nash, rebecca. 2002. exhaustion from explanation: reading czech gender studies in the 1990s. european journal of women’s studies 9(3):291-309. —— 2003. restating the family: kinship and care in the czech republic. ph.d. thesis university of virginia. šiklová, jiřina. 1993. are women in central and eastern europe conservative? in: gender politics and post-communism: reflections from eastern europe and the former soviet union. nanette funk and magda mueller, eds. new york: routledge. pp. 74-83. jen typewritten text 62 aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 93 (com)passionately political: music of djordje balasević brana mijatovic university of california, los angeles until very recently, politics has been regarded as pertaining to the domain of reason, as opposed to emotion, and the domain of public, as opposed to private life. the very term politics was usually defined as the science of political government—involving political principles, methods and strategies—thus strongly connoting the cognitive, as opposed to the emotional behavior. however, such binary oppositions—private and public, emotions and reason—are increasingly seen as having blurred boundaries, which sheds a new light on previously isolated phenomena. today researchers in humanities are coming to accept the idea that “emotions are important in all phases of political action, by all types of political actors, across a variety of institutional arenas.” (goodwin et al. 2001:16) this kind of a paradigm shift is particularly valuable when exploring the relationship between music and politics. instead of trying to describe the cultural work music does as if it is affecting only the cognitive, “rational” side of our being, we could begin to talk about the way emotions and cognitions interact in our experience of music. and, in turn, how such experience of music can shape our ideas and actions in the world we live in. especially in times of political and social crisis, it is interesting to observe how, through music, political issues can transcend their relation to principles, methods and strategy—essentially, issues of power—and become inquiries into what it means to be human. one of the powerful examples of the ways such cultural work can be done through music is the work of singer/ songwriter djordje balasević. his songs, sold-out series of concerts, and performances throughout the 1990s delivered a powerful critique of war and the regime-imposed societal problems, representing a direct challenge to the official ideology. they exposed the regime’s rhetoric regarding war, nationalism, oppression, and destruction of the country in ways that ranged from nostalgic and reflective to piercingly ironic. his concerts have been described as “public purgatories,” (janjatović 2001:22), serving as a place where the “normal people” congregated amid the madhouse of surreal everyday life. and yet, few of his fans would call his songs “political.” instead of providing generalized political messages and invoking standard patriotic images of flags, brave warriors, or glorious nation, he approached political issues in the same way he approached any other topic he sang about: from a personal perspective, through poetic metaphors and emphatic understanding. the psychological impact of his songs went far beyond what political slogans could have achieved. i will argue that the reason his songs resonated so deeply with, and inspired political action for, so many people in former yugoslavia, regardless of their nationality, lies in providing a space for collectively expressing deeply felt emotions through dealing with political issues from a thoughtful, engaged and a (com)passionate personal perspective. djordje balasević appeared on the former yugoslav pop music scene in the late 1970s and instantly became a hit maker. his popularity grew quickly and in 1979 he had eight successive sold-out concerts in the concert hall dorn sindikata in belgrade. and concerts in cities and towns all over the former yugoslavia (janjatović 2001:23). it was then that he established a tradition of giving long monologues on current topics at his concerts. during the 1980s he kept composing, creating a series of hit songs with each new album and performing extensively. beginning with the four concerts in fall of 1982 balasević began a tradition of performing annually in the then-largest concert space in belgrade, the sava centar concert hall (3678 seats). janjatović states that it was primarily because of his audience, whose number increased each year, that a series of new year’s concerts in this venue lasted for two decades and resulted in over one hundred belgrade performances (janjatović 2001:23). this was unparalleled for any singer in the former yugoslavia. balasević’s enormous popularity throughout the former yugoslavia during the 1980s and among people of widely different social status and musical taste—from housewives, students, and factory workers, to university professors—ensured a certain kind of widespread respectability and likeability that not many singers/ songwriters could claim. furthermore, he is probably the only singer/songwriter in yugoslavia who had poems written about him, by such prominent cultural figures from former yugoslavia as ismet sarajlić (bosnia) and rade serbedžija (croatia). describing his style, balasević stressed the importance of narrative: “each song has a story, a point, a plot. so, if you hear the third verse, you are interested to hear what happened in the first verse. it is not [just about] a refrain that repeats incessantly” (stanić 2002 http://wwxv.blic. co.yu/ 20112002_blicnews/index.htm). his unique blend allen typewritten text © 2004 brana mijatovic all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 94 brana mijatovic the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 of “the charm and wit of the people from vojvodina [the autonomous province of serbia, bordering with hungary]…with melancholy and nostalgic stories of the good old times and characters that are no longer” (simić 1999:90), ensured that during the 1980s he became a household name. it was the narrative quality of the songs, their unique topics, and a range of music styles he employed—from chanson, rock, pop, blues, reggae, hungarian cardasz, etc.—that distinguished his music from the mainstream pop in yugoslavia. of his enormously large opus, space permits me to concentrate only on four examples that would illustrate the variety of ways in which songs of djordje balasević were “(com)passionately political.” i will examine the songs in which he broached the topics previously few had the courage to address this openly: actions of the regime [most prominently in songs “sloboda-ne”( 1992), “legeʹda o gedi gluperdi” (1998)]; the collective responsibility [in “krivi smo mi” (1993)]; and the war [in “čovek sa mesecom u očima” (1993)]. the regime of slobodan milosević, which came to power in serbia after the break-up of the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia in 1989, was one of the key entities responsible for the wars in the former yugoslavia, and for suppressing the true oppositional political forces within serbia. it engineered fraudulent elections through which milosević remained in power for repeated terms, it continuously attempted to destroy independent media, and it used military forces against civilians in peaceful demonstrations against the regime. this regime brought poverty, one of the highest rates of hyper-inflation in world history (approximately 120,000 percent by the end of december 1993, for an annual level in the quadrillions), [1] and years of economic sanctions and cultural isolation from the rest of the international community to millions of serbian people. the sanctions also reduced opportunities for legitimate functioning of the economy, thus opening up a space for the “gray economy” and illegal activities which escalated into organized crime with the tacit support of the government. most ordinary citizens felt defeated and powerless. it was within such social climate that balasević’s work as musician, storyteller and entertainer became an important part of cultural resistance. “slobodane, freedom-no” (“slobodane, sloboda-ne!”) during the 1992 demonstrations against milosević’s politics at the belgrade terazije square, balasević’s song “sloboda-ne” (recorded in 1992) was broadcast from large speakers, summarizing all the important points of the demonstrations. the song “sloboda-ne” plays with the richness of associations based on the fact that the name “slobòdan,” when accentuated differently (slóbodan) means ‘to be free.” thus the song’s title and the refrain both utilize this to ironically point to the contrast between the actions of the person whose name is slobodan mi1osević with what his name means. further, when it is accentuated as “slobòdane,” you are addressing a person. but when it is accentuated with a slight break before the last syllable—“sloboda-ne”— it means that there is no freedom, but can also be taken to mean a “no” to slobodan milosević. in its first appearance, the word “slobodane” is a direct address to milosević, while the immediate second repetition is a repetition with a difference: through the use of rhythm and accentuation it changes to “freedomno.” this strategy also builds up on the popularity and the widespread use of songs that in the past directly addressed the former yugoslav president josip broz tito. however, here, a supposed address to a loved president quickly turns to a sharp critique, all contained in just one word: excerpts from the song: “sloboda-ne” […] gledam skupštinu ii’ šta je to već bife “proleće” u petrovac na mlavi. ej, gledam one tužne kese di baš meni da se dese da mi takve glave delaju o glavi? […] a tv dnevnik, ko kormilo, okreću spodobe vrlo podobne sve će se, kažu, srediti istina će pobediti […] uz tv dnevnik je sve više gnevnih a sve manje vernika dnevnika “istina će pobediti,” znam, tek ćes se ondak jediti slobodane! sloboda-ne! nemoj nas više braniti, brate brigom ćes nas sa’raniti “freedom-no” […] i watched the parliament session or was it bar “prolece” in petrovac na mlavi* i watched those sad losers why did they happen to me music of djordje balasević 95 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 why is it that such people are deciding my destiny? […] and tv dnevnik* as a steering wheel the ghastly creatures are turning they say everything will be all right the truth will win. […] there are more and more of those who are furious with dnevnik and less and less dnevnik believers “the truth will win” yes, and then you’ll really be angry. slobodane! freedom-no! don’t protect us anymore your concern will bury us all. *reference to kafana (hick bar). the first verse i cite describes the behavior of serbian politicians in parliament (whose sessions were broadcast on national television at that time), which increasingly began looking like the behavior of drunks in a hick bar, and a widespread shock and disgust of majority of people with such behavior of their political representatives. while asking “why are those people deciding my destiny?” balasević is actually voicing the opinion of many, and thus providing an important point for identification for his audience. the second cited verse cited here exposes the main news tv program on the state television rts, dnevnik, which during the 1990s became a loudspeaker for milosević. the metaphor of a steering wheel goes along with the metaphor of the sinking ship from a verse not mentioned here. one of the often repeated sentences was “the truth will win,” implying that all actions of the regime, however they looked like now, are actually righteous and it is only a matter of time when that is recognized by everyone. the third verse speaks about the rising dissatisfaction with the news program, i.e., with rising anger against the regime, and if the slogan “the truth will win” really comes true, then the one who will be angry about it will actually be slobodan milosević. but it is the refrain, which begins with “slobodane,” that powerfully plays with milosević’s name. while in its first appearance it is a call to milosević, in its second appearance it becomes a mockery: “freedom? no!” musically, the song underlines these critiques by a masterful use of irony in combining stylistic references to french chanson love song in interplay with serbian genre of newly-composed folk music. this particular stylistic and genre combination plays upon well-understood cultural meanings: the vocal melodic structure reminiscent of a french chanson love song as an indication that the irony is taking place (the incongruity of the romantic mood that the melody evokes and the words that critique the social and political situation); and the serbian newly-composed folk music melodic style, orchestration, ornamentation, rhythm, and harmonization, as an indication of what and who the target is. (the musicians of the serbian newlycomposed folk music genre were at that time very vocal in their support of milosević; thus the whole genre became identified with the milosević regime and his supporters.) the sound of the accordion acts as a signifier of both the french chanson and the newly-composed folk music (henceforth ncfm), and switching between those two styles is indicated by particular rhythmic and melodic gestures. the effect that is achieved by such combination is both comical and illustrative of the lyrics so that it strengthens their impact. for instance, the first appearance of the ncfm musical codes coincides with the statement that links the parliament sessions with socializing in a hick bar. knowing that the ncfm’s primary performance venues are just such bars, evokes a number of associations such as drunken atmosphere, shouting, breaking glasses, which adds an additional layer to imagining just what those parliament sessions looked like. the ironic barb in the lyrics “don’t protect us anymore, your concern is going to bury us all,” unmasks milosević’s rhetoric that there is no war, and that he is only protecting the serbs in croatia and bosnia. the melodic, rhythmic and harmonic gestures indicating newly-composed folk music are the characteristic phrasing in the accordion, the bass line, the sa-sa rhythm, hijaz scale and the harmonic modulation up a half-step in the middle of the song. the singer also imitates a vocal style of ncfm singing near the end of song. in addition, the song features a clarinet solo recognizable as the ncfm style in its use of characteristic improvisational melodic turns. even though the tone with which milosević is addressed and described in this 1992 song indicates that at this time he was perceived as a serious political figure and a force to be reckoned with, this song was the first to criticize milosević, and to point to specific instances of the rhetoric manipulation. in 1992 such public criticism of milosević represented an important step towards a budding public awareness of the regime’s media manipulations and the effects of the regime’s politics. the small but significant moment at a concert performance served to symbolically portray hope that the change of the political situation is possible. at some point during the clarinet solo in the style of ncfm, the singer turns to the clarinet player and interrupts his performance by shouting at him to stop. this act 96 brana mijatovic the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 was symbolic of the power to bring to an end, even if just within a concert situation, at least the soundtrack of the regime if not the regime’s film noir and its director himself. “it is our fault” (“krivi smo mi”) in his constant re-examination and re-evaluation of the contemporary events and situations, balasević was brutally honest even in regard to himself. in the song “krivi smo mi” (“it is our fault”) (1993), he answered the question he posed in the song “sloboda-ne” regarding the people who in the 1990s became the ruling elite: “why did such losers happen to me, why is it that such people are deciding my destiny?” the song “it is our fault” opens the question of the individual and the collective responsibility of the serbian people for the state that contemporary politics was in and for what had happened. it addresses the position of all those who did not support those in power but did not stand in their way either. the fault, according to this song, rests with those who kept quiet and stepped aside, letting the “invasion of the primitives,” as the lyrics of his song declare, happen. “krivi smo mi” nisu krivi primitivci što su pokupili mast korov nikne gdi god stigne ma svaka njima čast krivi smo mi … nemoj stari moj krivi smo mi što smo ih pustili ma šta su znali generali i brkati majori jedino da viču “pali” ali nisu najgori knivi smo mi ni svi ti silni infantilni što su puške sanjali ne ne derane krivi smo mi što smo se sklanjali putuj evropo nemoj više cekati na nas na pitaj mnogo dospećeš i ti na rdjav glas putuj planeto, super smo se družili nama je lepo, taman kako smo zaslužili nisu krvici depresivci, lujke i psihopate što su rušili pa sada nama nude lopate krivi smo mi nisu krivi sedativi što ih nisu sputali sorry matori krivi smo mi koji smo ćutali “it is our fault” it is not the fault of the primitives the weed grows where it can kudos to them it is our fault … my dear fellow, it is our fault that we let them what do the generals and the majors know but to shout “fire”; they are not the worst it is our fault nor those all infantile people who dreamt about rifles no, no, my friend it is our fault, for stepping aside. farewell, europe, don’t wait for us anymore don’t ask too much or you may also get in trouble farewell, planet/world, we had a great time together we are fine, just as we deserved the fault is not with the depressives, lunatics and psychos who destroyed and are now offering us shovels it is our fault it is not the fault of the sedatives for not restraining them sorry, my friend it is the fault of us who remained silent. this song became a hit in the concert season 1993/1994, during the time of highest inflation, poverty, and the rage of wars. beyond balasević’s personal self-recrimination, it was a call to understand what happened and how it happened and what the part of ordinary people was in it. thus in 1993 balasević tackled a topic that resurfaced in the public discourse only years later, in the polemics regarding the issue of the collective guilt and collective responsibility for wars in the former yugoslavia. the issue of the collective responsibility is fraught with contradictions. the questions that were troubling those serbians who addressed this issue involved the scope of the criminal, political, and moral responsibility. they asked: does the responsibility lie both with those who voted for milosević without an awareness of the political consequences his rule would bring (before the wars began) and with those who backed milosević after his nationalmusic of djordje balasević 97 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 ist propaganda? is the responsibility shared among those who did the crimes and those who did not prevent the crimes? two conflicting perspectives on this topic will illustrate the complexity of this subject. sonja biserko asked: “if we collectively take pride in the success of our basketball players, for which we have no individual credits, are we entitled to reject the feeling of guilt for our ‘ethnic’ crimes, in which we have not individually participated?’ (bogdanović, 2002 http://www.helsinki.org.yu/confront_ detail.php?lang=en&idgnrc=693). the following is an illustration of a very personal dilemma of what the collective responsibility means for ordinary citizens who did resist the regime in various ways and were yet on many occasions critiqued for misjudgments and loss of momentum in their struggles. gordana radosević comments: we who have stayed behind [i.e., who did not emigrate abroad], who remained here, did not have even a brief respite. so our occasionally wrong assessments and losses of momentum in the “continual struggle” are permitted. perhaps we would like, for a change, to live normally to think about ordinary things, instead of racking our brain with thoughts like: why we stayed here to carry the burden of history, did we not elect representatives in the state institutions and ministries to do that? (bogdanović, 2002, http://www.heisinki.org.yu/confront_ detail. php?lang=en&idgnrc693) while probably one of the most realistic views on that topic is offered by srdja popović, an otpor activist, who differentiates between three kinds of responsibilities— criminal, moral and historic-political. for most people this question involves a combination of a deep rooted and often unconscious sense of guilt, shame and grief. and with this song, through including himself in it, by being open and honest with his own thoughts and feelings on the subject, balasević opened up a space for reflecting on those emotions. thus, while far from having a clear message on how one could have resisted the “invasion of the primitives,” the song “it is our fault” encourages re-thinking of personal engagement with political activism. instead of relying on the state institutions and ministries one is encouraged to speak up and take a stand before it comes to the decisions of generals and majors. the self-critique in this song is underlined with prominent electric guitar solos and standard rock drum patterns. the verses are accentuated by a rhythm pattern on the electric guitar and bass moving through the standard harmonic progression tonic-subdominant-dominant-tonic. however, the musical impact of the song lies in the vocal part. the main points of the song—it is our fault, and the reasons why all this is our fault—are musically accentuated in such way as to achieve the strongest impression. in its first appearance in each verse the “our” in “it is our fault” (“mi” in “krivi smo mi”) not only falls on the first beat in the measure, which has the strongest accent, but is also left to ring in the air by being the only word in that measure. the reasons for “our fault,” situated at the end of every verse (“it is our fault that we let them,” “it is our fault for stepping aside,” it is our fault for being silent;” in serbian, pustili, sklanjali, ćutali have been accentuated and left to ring in the air in the same manner, thus ensuring that those will be the words that stayed with the listener. “a man with a moon in his eyes” (“čovek sa mesecom u očima”) one of the perhaps most powerful anti-war songs written in serbia is balasevic’s “čovek sa mesecom u očima” (“a man with a moon in his eyes”), composed in 1993. it exposes the glamorization of war by extreme nationalists through the compelling narrative from the point of view of a person who went to war and came back. by broaching the topic of war from this perspective, balasević achieves an extremely powerful effect. a man in his song speaks of the reality of war he personally experienced, and it is his memories that make the listeners evaluate what the war actually entails and what it takes away on the human level, in the material, spiritual and psychological spheres. “čovek sa mesecom u očima” sumoran i nem, jablan gromom razvaljen zagledan u čašu preduboku bio mi je stran i na izgled normalan al’ tad mu spazih odraz meseca u oku. on me oslovi “pa kako idu poslovi” “ma idu,” progundjah, “sve u vrazjeg vraga” na to on planu naprasno odmeri me sablasno “nemate vi pojma braćo draga!” “ne znaš ti sta znači ubiti grad ne znaš ti bauke kaljavih rovova ne znaš ti šta znači spavati sad kad sklopim oči ništa osim tih krovova “kad sklopim oči nebom naidju mobe zamirišu gostinjske sobe nebom svadba odzvanja “kad sklopim oči nebom promiču lica zatreperi roj tamburica 98 brana mijatovic the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 dunav sedef odranja “zverko ludila što si se probudila crni ti je princ poljubac dao al’ neću se stideti što boga neću videti jer to i nije bog kojeg sam znao “ne znaš ti nema oslobodjenih svaku mi tišinu granata prošara spašen je taj prvi pogodjeni a svi su drugi večni taoci košmara “kad sklopim oči nebom promiču ladje zvona, lavež, komsijske svadje, miris svežeg oranja ali kada svane vetri s reke zacvile znam to tuže vodene vile dunav tamjan odranja “a man with a moon in his eyes” gloomy and silent, like a tree cracked by lightning peering deep into his glass he was alien to me, but seemingly fine but then i noticed a reflection of the moon in his eyes. he addressed me with “how is it going?” “oh, it’s going,” i mumbled “all the way to hell” to that he exploded and gave me an eerie look “you’ve no idea, my dear fellows!” “you’ve no idea what it means to slay a town you don’t know the demons of muddy trenches you don’t know what it’s like to try to sleep now when i close my eyes nothing but those roofs when i close my eyes i see farmers working together i smell the flowers of the old guest rooms sounds of wedding echo across the sky “when i close my eyes i see faces a flock of guitars flutters the danube washes over mother of pearl. “the beast of madness, why did you wake up kissed by a black prince but i will not be ashamed that i won’t see god since that is not the god i used toknow. “you don’t know, but there are no “liberated” each of my silences is shattered by a grenade the ones who fall are saved and the rest are eternal hostages of nightmares “when i close my eyes ships sail across the sky the bells, the barking dogs, the neighbors’ voices the smell of freshly plowed fields but when it dawns the winds cry from the river i know, this is the water fairies’ keening danube washes the frankincense* away. *frankincense is most commonly associated in the former yugoslavia with the ceremonies of burial. the narrative strategy of this song evolves from the short introduction of the dialogue between a man who went to war and the narrator who did not, to a monologue detailing the horrible elements that are part of war. the narrator lets the man speak in his own words and re-live his own memories. particularly poignant is the contrast between memories of war and the memories of happier times. through the remembrance of particular textures (mud) and sounds (bomb detonation), memories of war come alive in the details that unmask the nationalistic propaganda of “liberation” of the cities. through the remembrance of particular smells (“of fresh plowed earth”) and sounds (“bells, dog barks,” sound of the orchestra playing), memories of ordinary life take on a quality of precious events. the song raises the awareness that it is precisely those pleasures of normal, everyday life that are destroyed for both those in the war zones and for those who live elsewhere but who went to war. the wordless singing of the female choir is at the end of the song revealed to be the “water fairies’ keening” for this loss and all that had happened. the dramatic tension usually ascribed to the workings of harmony is achieved in this song by the combination of a simple harmonic structure and the nuances of textural and dynamic layering. it is the dynamic and textural crescendo (addition of instruments and densification of texture), and not harmonic complexity that gradually intensifies as the story develops. at the start of the song, when the singer is relating their meeting, the vocals are accompanied only by soft sounds of the piano, the keyboard and the violins. when the man begins to relate his experiences from the war the acoustic guitar joins in, accentuating the intimacy of the encounter. as the recounting of the memories reaches the nostalgic remembrance of the times before the war, the dynamic and textural crescendo reaches its peak in the addition of the electric guitar, the drums and a choir. but it is the setting up of the climax of the refrain by the particular rhythm at the words “when i close my eyes nothing except these rooftops” and “and all others are the eternal hostages of nightmares” on the dominant chord that provides the heightening of the dramatic moment. music of djordje balasević 99 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 that it is the nostalgic references to the past that serve as the moment of highest emotional release in this song testifies to the productive significance of nostalgia. the term nostalgia was coined in the 17th century from greek words for return and sorrow, in a medical thesis for purposes of explaining a medical condition felt by people in exile. this pathological meaning of the term endured for two centuries and carried mostly negative connotations, such as pining for irretrievable youth (immanuel kant), a separation of man from his ideal (goethe), and pathological psychiatric diagnoses such as inadaptability and maternal deprivation (vromen 1986:60). however, while today nostalgia is in many cases viewed as a non-productive activity of daydreaming, yearning for an irrecoverable past, i argue that nostalgia evoked through this and some other balasević songs has a productive dimension. following maurice halbwachs’ understanding of nostalgia as a “reconstruction of the past based on the point of view of the present and constituted with elements of the present” (vromen 1986:61), i contend that the re-structuring of past experiences produces an emancipating and an empowering effect. the freedom of selective emphasizing of positive experiences from the past as that which is remembered when engaged in nostalgic process can generate an enlarged vision of the world. it can create “an entirely different vantage point which allows the discovery of aspects overlooked or missed in the haste of the moment and in the heat of the action,” and can also allow for “fairer judgments of [situations or] persons in one’s past” (vromen 1986:62). the recall of the past, then, does not necessarily represent an obstacle to the necessities of present action, but can rather provide an impetus for it. “one discovers one’s debt towards people, and one may regret not having recognized it at the time it was incurred,” and be moved to action to correct this (vromen 1986:62). in the context of this song, the critique of the war is that much more powerful in that the description of the horrors of the war is contrasted with remembrance of the happiness of the times before. while on an intellectual level it is a reminder of everything that wars destroy, on the emotional level nostalgia here creates an opening for expressing grief. the cathartic cleansing that occurs while listening to this song releases the pent-up grief about the war, feelings that were not ordinarily expressed amid the chaotic circumstances of everyday life in former yugoslavia. “the legend of geda the stupid” (“lege’da o gedi gluperdi”) while the song sloboda-ne in 1992 represented an important step in exposing the regime rhetorics and in a way also appealing to the president to stop the madness of wars and destruction, the song “legend of geda the stupid” performed for the first time in january of 1998, utilized allegory and humor to speak of the unspeakable—the nearness of milosević’s downfall. this song had an enormous social impact in changing the people’s attitude towards the regime from fear to courage and it reached its peak of popularity in the months and weeks before the september 2000 elections which toppled the milosević regime. the story is supposedly about a man named geda, who is mocked and critiqued by various members his family, who balasević “performs” using different voices. the beginning of the song is similar to the balasević’s older very popular song about a successful gambler, “boža zvani pub” (”boža the jack”). however, in this version, geda is portrayed as a loser who gambled his whole land away. since the words for “land” and “country” are synonyms in serbian, the first few sentences were enough for the audience to understand that the song was actually about slobodan milosević. all the humorous anecdotes about geda, funny in and of themselves, have a deeper meaning since they refer to milosević’s actions, his rhetoric, and attitudes about and towards serbia, the wars, and the church. the lyrics are foregrounded and interpreted in the manner of a dramatic monologue with music accompaniment in the style of harlem burlesque. however, while the subject matter of the lyrics is of primary importance, it is the rhythmic and alliterative effects and the harmony that provide an important fusion of elements that lead to this song’s success. while only the refrain of this song is actually sung, the syncopated rhythm and the harmonic progression that underlie the entire performance, significantly contribute to the humorous effect achieved by the lyrics. alliteration of “gedo gluperdo” (geda the stupid) intensifies this effect. the refrain is sung by a whole band which, along with the words “and everybody says” before the refrain, serves to encourage audience to join. excerpt from the song: “legenda o gedi gluperdi” ovo je priča koju vrlo nerado pričam to je priča o antihristu jednom, i raspikući gedi, takozvanom, što je silnu zemlju nasledio od pokojnog teče, i sve spisko bilo je tih slučajova vec i ranije da je neko zemlju potrošio i razbuco al da je neko našu zemlju razbuco to još nismo doživljavali gedo, gluperdo svu si zemijo proćerdo 100 brana mijatovic the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 sve si spisko sram te bio gedo, bekrijo jednom geda (jedva) išo u crkvu al’ i tu se bruko grdno joj, sramote i belaja, istero ga otac-paja jer je naglas podrigivo gedo gluperdo jednom zgodom geda išo da pravi mostić pa pričkino palac daskom siso ga, da smanji otok, i smišljo da mi bolje potok zatrpamo časkom jednom davno geda išo u bijoskop… tužni ruski ratni film ga dirno, svojski sav uplakan rece ženi: eto vidiš, da je meni ratova i vojski! gedo, gluperdo… jednom tako geda išo na zivce jedio komšiluk redom i sad, ko je lud najposle? da li geda il’ mi što se natežemo s gedom? “the legend of geda the stupid” this is a story i don’t like to tell it is a story about an antichrist and a spendthrift called geda, who inherited huge piece of land from a late uncle* and lost everything. there were cases like this before that someone lost and ruined their land but that someone ruined our land we never experienced that gedo, you stupid you gambled away the whole land you lost everything…shame on you gedo you drunkard once geda (reluctantly) went to church and even there behaved badly oh, what a shame, father paja threw him out since he was burping loudly. gedo, you stupid once geda was making a bridge and hurt his thumb with a two by four and while he was hurting, he contemplated that it would be better to actually drain the river and long time ago geda went to the movies a sad russian war movie touched him deeply and all in tears he said to his wife: “see, if only i had wars and armies”** gedo, you stupid… once geda was irritating everyone aggravated the whole neighborhood but who is crazy here? is it geda or us, who are playing a push-and-pull with geda? *the uncle is a reference to josip broz tito, the late communist president of socialist federal republic of yugoslavia. the avuncular relation is evoked since milosević had belonged to the communist party before 1989 when he formed the new party. **balasević performs this line in an imitation of milosević’s characteristic voice. from january 1998, when it was first performed at a concert, to october 5th 2000, when milosević was finally ousted from power, this song was performed at numerous anti-regime demonstrations all over serbia and it always evoked strong audience response and the feelings of empowerment. thus, what was initially conceived as a joke in the end encouraged a life-changing attitude by transforming fear, through laughter, to courage: laughter has a dual function: it liberates from fear the one who produces it but causes” fear and humiliation” in those towards whom it is directed… dead serious dictators, gazing toward etemity and surrounded by flunkies, cannot stand laughter… laughter is punishment. created to humiliate, it must make those it refers to feel uncomfortable (bergson, as quoted in corrigan 1971:202). laughing at the oppressor makes the oppressor more than uncomfortable, it weakens its legitimacy and dignity. in the context of milosević’s acts of repression in serbia, laughter created by listening and participating in this song empowered people and reduced their fear of him. in revealing the incongruity of his supposed emotional reaction to the russian movie as an inspiration for wars, balasević pointed his ironic arrow at milosević’s rhetoric and his morals, but also at his outdated communist ideals. music of djordje balasević 101 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 and in creating the beginning of the song in the mirror image of his older, non-political song, balasević created a relatively safe place for its public performances, while at the same time providing almost conspiracy-like moments of recognition among those who disliked the regime. it replaced feelings of personal isolation with those of collective understanding, showing the people they were not alone and isolated, spreading the word that power was shifting, and that the end of the regime was near. conclusion djordje balasević is no longer only an entertainer. he is an institution and a code of recognition between people. in the sad times that are (hopefully) behind us, he was for many a symbol of resistance not only to an oppressive politics but primarily to a state of mind that could, simplified to the extreme, be called “intolerance” (savić 2002 http://www.balasevic.org/arhiva/stampa/05022002 com/). djordje balasević is one of the rare authors on the domestic music scene who, on the one hand, created not just his personal style…but a true personal genre, and on the other hand, throughout the whole career grew and matured, magically managing to continually…educate his audience. actually, he is probably the only one who did this continually (pančić, 2000 http://www.oaza.co.yu/ muzika/djole/tekstovi/intervjui/vreme.htm). by addressing the contemporary political issues in an original, (com)passionate and personal manner, in these and many other songs created during the 1990s, balasević produced cathartic effects by enabling his audience to experience deeply felt and yet often repressed emotions of grief, guilt, and shame. at the same time, his masterful use of irony and allegory succeeded in turning the fear of the dictator to courage, thus assisting in creating the right circumstances that led to political change. endnote 1 according to the u.s. department of state report on serbian economic policy and trade practices at http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/erc/economics/trade_reports/1993/serbia_montenegro.html references bogdanović, srboljub 2002 “polemics: collectively innocent,” nin, 31 october 2002. also at http:// www.helsinki.org.yu/confront_detail. php?lang=en&idgnrc=693 (last accessed february 2003). corrigan, robert w. 1971 comedy: a critical anthology. boston: houghton mifflin company. goodwin, jeff, james m. jasper, and francesca polletta (eds.) 2001 passionate politics: emotions and social movements. chicago: university of chicago press. grujić, nada 2000 “intervju sa balasevićem: kako je opevan završni čin hvatanja” blic intervju, 09. oktobar, 2000 http://www.blic.co.yu/arhiva/200010-09/strane/intervju.htm (last accessed february 2003). janjatović, petar 2001 ilustrovana ex-yu rock enciklopedija (1960–2000) dopunjeno izdanje. novi sad: autorsko izdanje petar janjatović. pančić, teofil 2000 “pun tanjir djuveča,” vreme, 03.06.2000 http://www.oaza.co.yu/muzika/djole/tekstovi/intervjui/vreme.htm (last accessed april 2003). savić, dejan 2002 “pričra o srcu koje bubnja večni tam-tam otpora” (02/05 2002) in http://www.balasevic. org/arhiva/stampa/05022002_com/ (last accessed october 2002). simić, vojislav 1999 “development of jazz and light music in our country,” new sound. international magazine for music, 13. belgrade, union of yugoslav composers’ organizations: 86–92. stanić, rade 2002 “intervju sa balasevicem.” blic news. november, 20. 2002. http://wwxv.blic.co.yu/20 112002_blicnews/index.htm (last accessed november 2002). stankovic, radmila 2001 “svi smo mi jugonostalgičari: intervju sa goranom sultanovićem” (“we are all yugo-nostalgic: an interview with goran sultanovic”) http://news.beograd.com/srpski/clanci_i_misljenja/stankovic/010618_svi_ smo_mi_jugonostalgicari.html 18.06.2001. (last accessed december 2002). stankovic, simonida 2002 “intervju sa balasevicem povodom njegove nove ploce: samo sam hteo da budem normalan” at http://blic.co.yu on 02.01.2002 http://www.blic.co.yu/arhiva/200l-12-31/ strane/kultura.htm#1 (last accessed may 2002). 102 brana mijatovic the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 turnšek, milan 1999 “intervju: djordje balasević,” somborske novine, at http://www.somborske.co.yu/ n2412.html (last accessed august 2002) vasović-mekina, svetlana 2000 “neću da pevam dok tuku klince,” vreme, 07/01/2000 http://www.balasevic.org/arhiva/ stampa/ol0700/index.htm (last accessed may 2003) vromen, suzanne 1986 “maurice halbwachs and the concept of nostalgia,” in knowledge and society. studies in the sociology of culture past and present: a research annual. editors henrika kuklick and elizabeth long. volume 6, greenwich, connecticut and london, england: jai press inc: 55–66. drink, drank, drunk: a social-political grammar of russian drinking practices in a colonial context volume 21, number 2 drink, drank, drunk: a social-political grammar of russian drinking practices in a colonial context david koester, university of alaska fairbanks © 2003 david koester all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the study of everyday life, like everything else in anthropology, is complicated by the consideration of a variety of cultural perspectives. in history, the concept of the everyday was introduced in distinction from the study of important political events and the activities of elites. in ethnological research, on the other hand, it was originally taken to mean the unmarked, unritualized activities –that is, not holidays or specially marked events—that make up the daily life of a society. drinking practices in russia disturb the coherence of this ethnological notion of the everyday precisely because the power of drinking plays upon the boundaries between the special occasion and everyday life. drink marks special occasions. drinking is a part of daily life. daily life is thus filled with special occasions and it is the power of special occasions to draw together people across social boundaries such as ethnicity and political hierarchy that plays into the colonial effects of drinking that i will describe. social effect in drinking a complex of social, symbolic and psychophysiological mechanisms make drink, drinking and drunkenness powerful and nearly unavoidable aspects of social life in much of russian society. the aim of this paper is to understand the amplifications of alcohol ritual practices that have taken place in indigenous communities of kamchatka by examining the ritual, symbolic, and social mechanisms that contribute to the social valuation of drinking and the self-reproduction of drinking as a practice. in brief, drinking is a socially powerful and powerfully social practice that facilitates the expression of honor, respect, friendship, obligation and group membership as well as insult and exclusion. it does this in a number of ritualized and ceremonialized forms that create and reinforce the meaning and power of drink and drunkenness. it has thus not only a physiological component but a large sociological component that is reinforced by all of the social occasions–birthdays, deaths, holidays, visits, etc.–that call into play the power of respect, honor, friendship and enmity. although i am speaking primarily of drinking as i have seen and experienced it in rural russia, many aspects of the analysis may apply to ritualized alcohol use in other places in the world, particularly in the north. much of the power of drinking comes from multiple and seemingly contradictory moral valuations that are attached to it. on the one hand, drunkenness, particularly in the eyes of the sober, is considered a failing and a weakness, a social and personal ill. on the other hand, inebriation, especially for certain occasions, is highly approved. it is considered a true form of celebration, an indexical sign of social equality and an expression of mutual sociability. many russians hold these opposite moral views of drinking and drunkenness simultaneously. in fact, the contradiction is a powerful component of the social force that urges people to drink. like the potential energy of a physics experiment, the two sides of the moral divide between drunkenness and sobriety are the social potential energy for a system that generates status and forms social bonds. i take in this analysis the perspective, common in anthropology along lines deriving from durkheim and radcliffe-brown, to van gennep, victor turner , ortner and ardener and in social philosophy from j. l. austin to pierre bourdieu and judith butler (austin 1962; bourdieu and thompson 1991; butler 1997; durkheim 1965; turner 1977; van gennep 1960) that ritual and performative speech are social actions that can clarify or elaborate the meaning of social relations, redefining past ones, establishing immediate ones and creating entirely new and variably durable ones. jen typewritten text 41 volume 21, number 2 status in the drinking ritual – an ethnographic example my aim in this paper is to examine the place of status in russian drinking practices and ideology and then the implications when those status relations are brought into an interethnic relation with the power asymmetry of colonial rule. the rituals associated with drinking in russia invoke honor, trust, friendship, hospitality and group solidarity and differentiation. the ethos of drinking tradition was brought along as russians encountered various peoples across the continent. on the way, it was picked up and given particular cultural inflection in each situation of encounter. new meanings were added with the advent of the soviet government, as productivity became a key gauge of personal and group status. for the purposes of this essay, i will be describing not the specificities of historical encounters, but the impact of ideal typical values in relation to russia’s colonial history in kamchatka. analysis of actual attitudes at various times would require an extended historical treatment; my aim here is only to deal with the principles and discuss their implications in the specific ethnographic context of kamchatka that i know well. i thus want to begin my description of social values in the practice of drinking with an example that will illustrate many of the principles of the drinking ritual. in 1993 i was invited to a birthday party at the home of an itelmen friend, “shura,” who lived alone with her daughter but who had a regular russian boyfriend, who i will call here, misha. misha did not live with shura, because he had a wife, who also lived in the village. at the time he was teaching athletics at the village school, and was involved in various kinds of semi-illicit trade, including alcohol. when i arrived at the party it was well under way. misha hailed me and immediately began talking about my shtrafnaia, the extra drink that i was to drink for coming late, after the drinking had already begun. this component of the practice illustrates one of the ways in which some of the practices are targeted toward a goal of inebriation; i was to catch up. it also recognized the implicit social order of the drinking group. the performance of a mock “fine,” mimicking larger society and its social rules, contributes to the metaphorical ritual creation of the drinking group’s social order. i took a seat within the oval shaped group; as a rule, drinking of this kind takes place with participants facing each other, an added mechanism of focused attention and social cohesion. drinking of alcohol takes place in the context of the broader social practice of “sitting” that dale pesmen has thoroughly described; sitting is also practiced around the drinking of tea (pesmen 2000). there were about 12 people, more and less at various moments, and conversation broke into neighboring subgroups. the group maintained its focal orientation for toasts. misha, as male host, took the role of filling everyone’s glasses. it is at the moment of pouring that anyone with any reluctance to drink feels the force of what mauss called “the obligation to receive.” mauss, in his essay on the gift, distinguished clearly between three types of obligation that can be invoked when exchange takes place: the obligation to receive, the obligation to give and, what has become the famous part of his analysis, the obligation to repay (mauss 1967:10-12). much of the ensociating power of drinking ritual is associated with the obligation to receive. when drinking as a guest, one can honor one’s host, or the person being honored by accepting drink. i showed a little reluctance and misha reacted immediately, saying that i needed to honor shura on her birthday. here the obligation to receive is doubly overdetermined. on the one hand, the group has accepted the occasion of the birthday as suitable for drinking and by seeking to enter the party, my acceptance would be implicit. to refuse to drink would be to insult the group. at the same time, the occasion was centered around a particular individual, as occasions often are, and refusing to drink could also be construed as an insult to the honored individual. i was still relatively early in my fieldwork and did not realize yet the impossibility of drinking along at every occasion to which i, as an interesting foreigner, would be invited. so i acquiesced, at least at first, to all the pouring. toasts were made honoring the birthday celebrant, her mother and then a variety of group-oriented values, such as friendship. after the party i visited a friend who was a cousin of shura and likewise of itelmen heritage. she did not, however, attend the party. she explained that she and shura along with others, were once close friends and a drinking circle. they drank together and shared conversation and personal information in confidence. such “secrets”—statements that are intended to circulate only within a defined group of people—give drinking circles the character of secret societies (simmel 1964:345-376). jen typewritten text 42 volume 21, number 2 drinking is thought to and indeed does encourage free speaking within the drinking group (pesmen 2000). there is a trust that things said within the drinking circle will not be shared with outside others if to do so would have negative (embarrassing) consequences for the members of the circle. this “reciprocal confidence,” as simmel called it (1964:345), works to give the group its identity and maintain it. to leave the group would be to threaten that those confidences shared could leak out. this in fact was why my friend lydia no longer attended shura’s parties. the drinking of shura and others in the group had become too frequent and heavy for lydia and she pulled out. they saw her then as threatening and told things about her personal life to others, including about her heavy drinking with them. lydia felt betrayed, shura mistrusted lydia and they were no longer on speaking terms. lydia said that she hated to go to those parties where there was so much drinking but it was clear also that there was now a deep mistrust on both sides and the consequence was total isolation from the drinking group. many of the features of drinking as a social phenomenon are illustrated in this example. • drinking practices foster the formation and maintenance of a drinking group. they create what sartre called “bonds of interiority” (sartre 1976:52) – shared sentiments within the group. • drinking also produces bonds of exteriority (sartre 1976:65). that is, groups are defined not only by the internal connections among members, but also by the groups and individuals who are excluded or outside. the group maintains a structure of inclusion and exclusion. • drinking practices invoke and produce honor or more generally lower and higher status. • in the ritual itself, status is acknowledged and honor is established and maintained in the obligation to receive, • and in the ritualized, yet sincere, praise and honor associated with toasting. the obligation to give and the making of an occasion the obligation to give, that is, to offer drink or initiate drinking, is, unlike the obligation to receive, contingent. drinking, in order not to be mere alcoholism, must be motivated, it demands that there be an occasion. public holidays, celebrations, birthdays, funerals, weddings, graduations, and so on are all suitable occasions for drinking. visiting too can be made into an occasion. the act of bringing out the bottle itself already carries the message from the host: "i consider you a guest," or "this meeting is a special occasion." when an individual or group attempts to assemble others for drinking they invariably designate an occasion, no matter how slight: “we have not seen each other for such a long time,” “it’s a holiday…tomorrow,” ”the dinner i cooked tonight came out so well that i think we should drink,” “ivan here is depressed because he got a low grade,” “igor is celebrating because he got a high grade,” and so on. sometimes the creation of the occasion is done with humor or irony as in one case when i was invited to join some people who were drinking on the occasion of the birthday of one of the participant’s distant cousins. the cousin lived in far off central siberia and had not been seen by the participant in over 25 years, and she wasn’t certain that she had the day right. drinking, drunkenness and group formation the paradox of drinking is that although its rituals can bestow honor on both guest and host, there is nevertheless dishonor in drunkenness, the carefully recognized measure of which contributes to the formation of bonds of friendship in the drinking circle. creation of an occasion is related to this idea because getting drunk without purpose is not considered "respectable." people with whom i have spoken all over kamchatka regularly use the epithet, "they are drunks" or "he/she is a drunk" as a statement that marks or performs lower status, lack of respect (uvazhenie). it can refer to the imputation that accused drunks drink without sufficient occasion and therefore drink too frequently. they drink to a point of drunkenness and are therefore both of weak character and are unreliable. such statements are an important jen typewritten text 43 volume 21, number 2 part of boundary creation in the formation of a drinking circle. one gets drunk with individuals one trusts, with people one is sure will not criticize one for having been drunk. the circle of drinking is tight because when everyone participates equally, becoming fully drunk in a cycle of drinking, no one can fairly accuse others in the group of being a drunk without equally reflecting on him or her self. much of the social pressure for drinking in any particular drinking session comes from this sense that one must show that one shares in the status leveling of the drinking circle and will not betray the drunken trust. a simple people the calibrated lowering of status that is a consequence of the negative image of drunkenness is also associated with a broader dimension. the practice of drinking to become inebriated is a mark of being "simple," prostoi. pesmen has described this idea as associated with peasant life. it means not cultured (kul’turny) in the sense of haute culture but rather living a simple lifestyle and using simple technology, being hospitable, generous, peaceable and unpretentious (pesmen 2000:91). the term was used on a couple of occasions to explain russian drinking practices to me. volodya, for example, a russian man who had lived in kamchatka for over thirty years, explained russian drinking in relation to russians’ simplicity. the explanation was prompted by my hesitancy to accept another drink. he said, "excuse us, you don't look down on us because we drink? don't look down on us because we drink. we are a simple people (prostoi narod). are your people simple like us?" volodya was speaking nationally of the vast peasant culture of traditional russia and of russians in contrast to urban europeans. to refuse to drink in this context would be to admit to having pretensions of being better. in saying this he looked over toward his itelmen wife, including her in his "we." for him, there is no significant difference between itelmens and simple russians in the fundamentals of ways of life. both people live simply, and part of living simply is sharing and enjoying drink with friends. here again, an inside group is being referenced in contrast to an outside other, the cosmopolitan or complex others, who would look down on peasant drinking. of course, prostoi also refers to the relative lack of immediate consequences that come from drinking to drunkenness in village society. if one is not on a rigid business schedule, if one does not keep to institutionalized time discipline, as some people in small villages need not, then periods of incapacity in productive activities are not consistently negatively marked. they are noted in the contrast between prostoi and urbane, are accepted as a part of the positive value of simplicity. drinking is thus recognized as both bad and good – status lowering but good if you prefer the connotations of that lower status. it is therefore part of the complex that binds the group together under the regard of wider society (or particular individuals). the positive symbols of rural life and independence from authority tie simple people together in opposition to urban complexity. drinking at the frontier: interethnic dimensions of drinking it is at this point that we can begin to analyze the interethnic dimensions of drinking practices. russians in both petropavlovsk and small villages of kamchatka often say that native peoples of the north are drunkards (pianitsi). the idea of simplicity, like the myth of the laziness of the colonized, as memmi describes it, comes to be taken up by all: “willfully created and spread by the colonizer, this mythical and degrading portrait ends up by being accepted and lived with to a certain extent by the colonized” (1965:87). an ideology that was accepted by the russian peasantry as well as russia’s elites, the idea of simplicity would have required a double leap of status pretensions for indigenous peoples to refuse when offered drink. simplicity thus has an important meaning in interethnic drinking contexts. when a russian desires to drink in a non-russian community s/he needs others to legitimate the drinking. since drinking as a general phenomenon can lower one's status, the russian visitor wants not to be in a position of being looked down upon in the community. if, as in the colonial situation, the russian is in a higher political position, the locals would not want to risk insulting him by not drinking with him, thereby suggesting that they were in some jen typewritten text 44 volume 21, number 2 sense superior. in both popular and russian scientific theory it was thought that the peoples of the north were at a lower level of culture than russians (grant 1995; slezkine 1994). this scale of ethnic status could be construed (in arguments for drinking) as the same scale that ranks people as simple. all native peoples, then, were to be at least as simple as russians and therefore in a position to accept drink. to refuse would be to refuse to recognize their station, their cultural status. in my next example, the acquiescence to drink on the part of father and son came at least in part from a sense of their position in the strata of russian society. i knew one young man, lyonya, who sold alcohol in an itelmen village, kovran. he was married to an itelmen woman and traveled from their home in the city petropavlovsk to kovran with luggage full of samogon and vodka to sell. he would stay with his father in-law, kolya, who lived with one son, nestor, in his forties. whenever lyonya came to town it was known that kolya and his son would be drunk for days. lyonya, would sometimes invite me to visit and would inevitably invite me to drink with them. he maintained control by drinking somewhat less than his in-laws and but encouraging them to drink up. his father-in-law was respected for his absolute policy of not drinking grain alcohol (spirt), he would only drink vodka. nestor, once told me that he did not respect his brother-in-law. lyonya, he said, always brought drink and would encourage them to drink when he came. the form of encouragement was not merely a gift of bottles, but pouring drinks in celebration of his arrival. as hosts, the in-laws were expected to drink, and the truth is that at some level they did enjoy the drink at first. the interethnic dimension of this drinking group was evident in lyonya’s attitude toward them. he spoke demeaningly of them because they drank heavily, even though at every drinking binge, he too would end up drunk. though as a son-in-law he would have had as great as possible an opportunity to get past ethnic stereotypes of his in-laws, he nevertheless blamed their drinking on their ethnicity and drew conclusions about other itelmens from them. kolya and his son understood lyonya’s attitude but both were entirely unpretentious and would not have presumed to reject their kinship ties, nor their obligations to be hospitable and receive in order to refuse to drink. they spoke begrudgingly of the drinking as an inevitable consequence of lyonya’s visit. at the same time, nestor told me once, as if defending himself from the charge, that he was not an alcoholic, he just loved to drink. lyonya was over a foot taller than his in-laws. he had to drink substantially more than they to have an equivalent blood alcohol content, yet he always ended up thoroughly plastered and it was clear that drinking with his in-laws was founded at least in part on his need to drink. drinking up, drinking down lyonya was engaged in a form of drinking-to-drunkenness that i think of as drinking down. in order not to see oneself as an alcoholic, one needs to drink with a group. he felt confident that he could coerce his in-laws to drink because, in his mind, he knew their people, and what he knew was that they could not control their drinking. he could thus count on them to fulfill his need for drinking partners. the obligation to receive felt by kolya and nestor was complex. on the one hand, lyonya was an in-law and he was, in their house, a legitimate guest. and moreover, as nestor told me, they enjoyed drinking (or at least used to). on the other hand, there is a larger social issue that i saw at play in numerous social circumstances, including that of misha, mentioned earlier, where shy itelmens did not feel comfortable refusing russians who might take offense. this uncertainty founded on the power differential in society has a long history that is most often alluded to with reference to the stalinist repressions. when these patterns of drinking are placed in the context of interethnic contact, as it happened throughout the expansion of the russian empire, their power to reproduce themselves leads to what has been perceived by many as the intentional causing of native peoples to drink. while there were undeniably cases in the history of russian imperialism in which native peoples were encouraged or even forced to drink, there need not have been a systematic attempt to turn the native population to alcohol in order for that to come about. instead, i would argue that russians brought drinking to their boundaries as one of their boundary mechanisms. by its power to make social groups, it was recognized as a social tool. it was on the frontier that russians encountered unknown others with whom they could speak in the common language of "drinking together. " because of the colonial power differential, native peoples were particularly ill positioned to refuse. jen typewritten text 45 volume 21, number 2 the other half of colonized consciousness is reflected in modes of resistance, some of which can equally serve to reproduce the system. it has been widely noted in the ethnographic literature on russia that drinking was an important means for getting things done. one could share a drink with someone who offered a service or controlled a resource one needed and coerce that key individual into fulfilling the need. this was true at the specific level of particular needs, but i also saw that some itelmens i knew engaged in what could be seen as drinking up. max weber argued that one of the reasons that bureaucracies, despite their impersonal nature, could be durably popular forms of social administration and hierarchy was that people at the bottom could, if unhappy, skip levels to make their appeals known (weber 1978). a professional dancer i knew from the village of kovran, kornil, had become a drinking partner of the head of the district administration (raion) in tigil, nearly 100 km away. kornil saw his relationship as useful, as an insider, friendship connection. the problem with drinking up in the case of cultural or ethnic revitalization movements is that to drink to the point of total inebriation is often to circumvent the forms of thinking that make sentiments into political action. the regional administrator was as likely to be able to talk activists like kornil out of their positions in a situation of drinking as the other way around. to conclude this brief survey, it is my contention that the status and power in russian drinking patterns has social, political implications in the asymmetric power situations of interethnic encounters in minority indigenous communities. the obligation to receive in the form of accepting a drink was heightened by the legacy of threat and violence against those who resist or stand out and by the assumption of colonized status. the idea that indigenous peoples were by nature simple people had positive, noble savage connotations, but also meant that the presumption was that they would accept drinking as part of their lower status on the cultural scale. the contingency in the obligation to give, the need to create an occasion for drinking, no matter how serious or playful, reached into a world that was not defined in itelmen social life. the occasions of encompassing russian-then-soviet-then-russian society penetrated itelmen social life in a way that their occasions could not in reverse. references austin, j. l. 1962 how to do things with words. cambridge: harvard university press. bourdieu, pierre, and john b. thompson 1991. language and symbolic power. g. raymond and m. adamson, transl. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. butler, judith. 1997. excitable speech: a politics of the performative. new york: routledge. durkheim, émile. 1965. the elementary forms of the religious life. j. w. swain, transl. new york: free press. grant, bruce. 1995. in the soviet house of culture. princeton: princeton university press. mauss, marcel 1967. the gift. i. cunnison, transl. new york: w. w. norton & company. memmi, albert 1965. the colonizer and the colonized. boston: beacon press. pesmen, dale 2000. russia and soul : an exploration. ithaca, n.y.: cornell university press. sartre, jean paul 1976. critique of dialectical reason i, theory of practical ensembles. h. barnes, transl. london: new left books. simmel, georg 1964. the sociology of georg simmel. k. h. wolff, transl. new york: free press. slezkine, yuri 1994. arctic mirrors: russia and the small peoples of the north. ithaca: cornell university press. turner, victor 1977. the ritual process: structure and anti-structure. ithaca: cornell university press. van gennep, arnold 1960. the rites of passage. m. b. v. a. g. l. caffee, transl. chicago: university of chicago press. weber, max 1978. economy and society. berkeley: university of california press. jen typewritten text 46 microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 13 aerobics and self-asserting discourses: mapping the gendered body in post-socialist romania petruţa mîndruţ babeş-bolyai university, cluj napoca, romania “the body necessarily plays a significant role in times of social, cultural or political crisis. in a revolution, the established body ideal is one of the first things to be overturned or redefined in favour of a more ideologically appropriate replacement,” wrote reischer and koo (reischer and koo, 2004:308). in romania, in the years following the demise of communism, freedom was mostly experienced on the site of the body: food, warmth, sexuality,1 freedom of movement, a new body. almost immediately, the market was flooded with no longer censored images of the body: sexy, fit, naked bodies, i.e. western bodies.2 while the romanian editions of well known women’s magazines (elle, cosmopolitan) only came in a few years later, in the early nineties the readers could choose among previously existing publications such as femeia (woman), femeia modernă (modern woman) and newly born timpul femeilor în ţara bărbaţilor (the time of women in the land of men) or, later on, avantaje (advantages). what all these had in common was the urgency of filling a gap in romanian women’s education; “how to” kind of advice in such magazines ranged from dressing up to quitting the job (for a better one, of course) or partner (similar reason). women had to learn a lot of new things, practises, tips, and strategies of self-management in order to be successful in these novel contexts. in 2006, passing by a street news stall, one can take a quick glance at romanian vips smiling on the cover of glossy women’s magazines (the ultimate model of success seem to be tv moderators and news presenters) and western movie stars or fashionable singers in the case of local editions of international brands; all are peacefully neighbouring images of naked, tanned, alluring bodies on the cover of sexy publications. the first visual difference among these publications seems to reside in the quality of the paper: low-priced romanian magazines have poor quality, matte and spongy paper, compared to the glossy, cardboard covers of more expensive publications. sixteen years after the revolution, although images of naked bodies (on tv, in the movies, in the ads, on the cover of most publications) have become common, romanian mentality still preserves soma-phobic undertones and a certain tabooing of the subject; the body is not an issue, not in the public debate, nor in academics. moreover, it is regarded as a frivolous and superficial topic; certainly not suited for a respectable university lecture, conference or publication. unlike gender studies, body studies are still to be legitimised in romanian academe. even in established western socio-cultural disciplines, the body is but a recent acquisition. still, ever since it entered the stage a few decades ago, it has enjoyed an intense focus. in the seventies, mary douglas was pioneering the field of body studies through her famous analogy between the physical and the social body, arguing that “there is a continual exchange of meanings between the two kinds of bodily experience so that each reinforces the categories of the other. […]the social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. the physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society” (douglas 1996:69). douglas envisions the physical body as “a microcosm of society, facing the centre of power, contracting and expanding its claims in direct accordance with the increase and relaxation of social pressures” (douglas 1996:77). consequently, the body can be read as a “cultural text, giving material expression to the cultural values, preoccupations and anxieties of a culture.”3 moving beyond a static vision on the body, as mere text to be deciphered or imprinted upon, chris shilling projects it as a “multidimensional medium for constituting the society: a source, a locus and a way of positioning individuals inside the society” (shilling 2003:208). the body is to be seen as “a material phenomenon which shapes, as well as being shaped by, its social environment. the body is central to our ability to ‘make a difference,’ to intervene in, or to exercise agency in the world, and our bodily emotions, preferences, sensory capacities and actions are a fundamental source of ‘social forms’” (shilling 2003:iv). in short, the body is designed as “an active, transformative, and dynamic expression of the self” (waaler loland 2000:112). anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 14 congruent with this perspective, erving goffman considered the body a mediator between the self-identity of the individual and his/her social identity, acknowledging a degree of independence in the management of one’s corporeality. “the management of the body is central to the maintenance of encounters, social roles and social relations, and also mediates the relationship between an individual’s self-identity and their social identity.” the body is seen as a resource that can be “managed in a variety of ways in order to construct a particular version of the self” (shilling 2003:66). in goffman’s approach, the body is the property of the individual who has the capacity of controlling and monitoring his/her own bodily performances in social interactions; individuals perform their identities through the body. as waaler loland puts it, “the body represents a personal resource; it reflects self-image through symbols. we can manipulate our bodies according to the norms and values to which we subscribe. prevailing cultural or sub-cultural norms and values are encoded in bodily conformity and, thus, in ideals for bodily appearance” (waaler loland 2000:114). more recently, susan bordo also took up the metaphor of “reading the body;” according to her, the body is “a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical commitments of a culture are inscribed and reinforced through the concrete language of the body” (bordo 1997:91). on the premise that “personal body management is intimately connected with the management of the larger social body through consumer culture,” she argued that eating disorders affecting consumer society are just a symptom and constituent part of its functioning (bordo 1993:199). in the last decades, social constructionist ideas have become conventional knowledge in most socio-cultural disciplines. according to these, bodies are produced by the prevalent discourse(s) and as such they are created, inscribed and managed according to the norms of this/these discourse(s). sandra lee bartky writes about “disciplinary practises” that are “part of a process by which the ideal body of femininity–and hence the feminine body-subject–is constructed; in doing this, they produce a ‘practised and subjected’ body, i.e., a body on which an inferior status has been inscribed” (lee bartky 1997:139). moreover, “the technologies of femininity are taken up and practised by women against the background of a pervasive sense of bodily deficiency. this accounts for what is often their compulsive or even ritualistic character” (lee bartky 1997:139). many strands of feminism do in fact argue that in contemporary society, “women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies is ‘structural’ […] not accidental, but rather built into a social value system that evaluates the ‘real’ woman as always in need of bodily change, repair, and improvement” (waaler loland 2000:118). as such, physical exercising is not a neutral activity, but can and should be read as “normalizing technique for the embodiment of feminine values” (maguire and mansfield 1998:134). in late modernity, the body is spoken of as more and more a phenomenon expressing the personal identity of the individual. jean claude kauffman argues that “the body has become an essential identifying tool which explains the extremely personal character of the decisions regarding it.”4 personal identity and body come to represent “reflexively organized projects that have to be chosen out of a complex plurality of options, without any moral guidance” (shilling 2003:157). in his turn, david le breton underlies the link between social and self identity, as mediated by the body, which is considered “a surface of projection where one can put in place the fragments of the sense of personal identity, divided by the social rhythms. by placing in order and in significance of the self, through a body whom he dissociates and transforms into a screen, the individual acts symbolically upon the surrounding universe. he seeks his subject unity, organizing signs, trying to produce an identity and to make himself socially recognizable.”5 in short, the body has become the hero of post-modernity; in the age of loose, flexible, fluid relations and identities, the body nourishes an illusion of stability, through anchoring the self in the concreteness of its fleshiness. the individual is no longer a body, but the owner of one. there is still an illusion, though. the body itself has become fluid, fragmented, unstable, ever since it has been stamped as “perfectible.” perfecting one’s body has become a moral duty in the post-modern order of things. the messages emanating from the body bear moral connotations. “developing and displaying an ideal body type thus signals one’s cooperative participation in a culturally meaningful system of values” (reischer and koo 2004:303). bordo asserts that “the firm, developed body has become a symbol of correct attitude,” expressing “willpower, energy, control over infantile impulse, the ability to ‘shape your life’” (bordo, 1993: 195). anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 15 in fact, all these concur at obscuring the blunt truth that the body is fated to age, alter, decay and eventually die. body-projects may be perfectible, but never perfected. moreover, consumer culture does not hold a monopoly on the body. totalitarian regimes also envision the body as a basic tool in managing and controlling their subjects. even though the body was in a sense rediscovered in romania after 1989, it was there during communism also. communism, like any other totalitarian regime, entailed the enforcement of a special biopolitics. controlling and monitoring individual bodies (food, warmth, and intimacy were all “rationalized”) aimed at managing the social body at large. this biopolitics has also brought about an obsession with eugenics, with young and beautiful bodies, with sport and hygiene as guarantee of a healthy life for the individual, i.e. more efficient and useful. the idea of sports related to health was not foreign to propaganda; as early as 1969, women were recommended to exercise: “women who exercise are healthier and happier, modern woman exercises! beauty and health are in your own hands!”6 during communism, romania experienced a special kind of “sexual equality:” gender was erased as a socially relevant category, and men and women were to be moulded into “socialist citizens.” the de jure equality between the sexes denied women de facto their sexuality, while transforming their reproductive capacity into a national project. the body, especially the female one, was reified by the communist regime in order to serve the interests of the state, represented by the party. the communist reading of the feminist command “personal is political” was more than cynical. soliciting women’s full commitment, energy, labour and reproductive capacity, the real intentions of the communist party were in fact to control the private life of individuals, their most intimate behaviours, feelings, affects, and intentions. the reproductive role of women was coded in terms of nationalism; woman-the-mother becomes not only a symbol of the communist hardworking and self-sacrificing hero, but also a symbol of mother-nation. the ideological discourse intermingles with the political one. woman’s body becomes the body of the nation as the sexual reproduction entails reproducing the (socialist) nation. paradoxically, sexuality itself is expurgated of any hedonistic dimensions. femininity was to be strictly circumscribed socially and politically: women should be first and foremost fully committed citizens of the socialist state. but, on the other hand, reminiscences of traditional femininity were preserved and added to the portrait of this “new” woman: besides her duties as worker, mother, wife, and citizen, woman had a special intrinsic duty of being “feminine” and beautiful. this was also translated as a social responsibility: co-workers, colleagues, friends and family should enjoy woman’s pleasant appearance. after 1989 and the downfall of communism, one might as well argue that consumerist slogans such as “every woman wants and has to be beautiful” (in a largely broadcasted tv commercial for a hair-removing device, in the early nineties) found indeed a fertile soil in romanian mentality. what did change, however, was, on the one hand, feminine beauty became more body-focused: beauty is not anymore about visiting the hairdresser and the manicurist twice a week, but also about achieving a firm, toned, slim (in a word, sexy) body. on the other hand, in the new consumer society feminine beauty tends to be less and less of a “civic” duty, a commonly shared social asset, but became a personal resource, an end in itself, with hedonist undertones. moreover, all those new practises and technologies women have started to embark on can be read, according to nicolaescu, as “a kind of discipline requisite for women’s participation in public life. it can also be understood as a rite de passage which marks their movement from the private sphere of the home to public spheres, such as the office,” while during communism, this passage requested “the opposite action of suppressing all sexual difference, all traces of feminine sex appeal” (nicolaescu 2001:78). how then should we frame the experiences of women—former socialist citizens—in a new world with novel and conflicting values and projections of femininity? what happens to women’s bodies after communism and what can the practise of aerobics tell us about this experience? it is only commonsensical to note that women’s bodies did not transform over night as in fairytales. even though the slender, young, sexy body quickly became the norm, mature, saggy, tired women could not do much about it. mădălina nicolaescu argues that these “residual bodies” came to be associated with the no longer desirable feminine ideal of the past; they were characterized by “their lack of refinement and polish, of the feminine stylization of their bodies, a lack that is further read as a kind of un-gendering. the women’s ungainly bodies are scapegoated as anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 16 embodiments of the homogenizing and instrumentalizing practises of the previous regime, practises that are thought to have been so invasive as to erase the ‘natural’ distinctions between the sexes” (nicolaescu 2001:49). the decaying bodies of older women came to signify the poor state of the romanian economy in transition. as nicolaescu asserts, “the former plump, sagging bodies, aging early with overwork and lack of care are held responsible for women’s vulnerable socio-economic position. these bodies are often represented as battered, abused and humiliated. maternal, aging bodies are read as an epitome of whatever we dislike about postcommunist romania. they signify backwardness, lack of basic skills, inefficiency, disorganization, poverty, squalor and hopelessness” (nicolaescu 2001:82). while most women found themselves trapped in a socio-cultural imaginary that blamed them for all possible faults, some categories of women jumped at the opportunity. they saw the unexpected chance lying ahead of them. their willingness to accept the new challenges was easily translated into the fervour of transforming their bodies to conform to new norms and ideals. this fervour “connotes a departure from the attitudes and practises that have inscribed the socialist body. the practical advice on clothing and cosmetics in women’s magazines, the body technologies disseminated are perceived as forms of initiating romanian women into new social and cultural practises” which hold the promise of a better future (nicolaescu 2001:52). as nicolaescu notes, “the perfection of the models’ bodies is read as an inscription of the perfection of the western system, as an effect of the economic and cultural practises of the more advanced countries” (nicolaescu 2001:76). buying into new images of femininity and feminine embodiment also meant registering for a new, western lifestyle. from the very beginning, conforming to the new norms and models was tantamount to wishing for a better life and displaying the attitude of a winner. in the everincreasing number of women’s magazines on the market, “women are encouraged to be more assertive, self-confident and open to change. the new type of attractive woman combines an incessant concern with the way she looks, a consumerist passion for shopping with an openness to change: women have to be dynamic, get involved in a large number of projects and look upon change as a continuous challenge” (nicolaescu 2001:58). whoever was unwilling or unable to put up with the new challenges was out of the game, and women’s bodies were the first battleground. writing about how consumer society has affected women’s bodies in korea, kim taeyon argues that women, formerly projected as “anchors of traditional culture, ideology and self-identity,” have turned into “the most visible symbols of foreign influence, their bodies adorned with the emblems of capitalist consumption and altered to more closely resemble the foreign construction of beauty” (taeyon 2003:97-8). moreover, with the advent of capitalist society, women “became more important as consumers than as factory workers, shifting the utility of their bodies from national labour production to national consumption, becoming, in effect, what bryan s. turner (1996) calls the capitalist body” (taeyon 2003:102). this mutation translates into specific practises and strategies with regard to the female body. as taeyon explains, “women have become extraordinarily visible in korea, free to be observed and appreciated in any public space. beauty has become the new standard of a woman’s value, and korean women have gone through great lengths to enhance or create this beauty by reshaping their physical bodies” (taeyon 2003:103). while most of these do apply to the romanian case also, we should nevertheless be aware of the risks of overgeneralization. not all women choose (if this is a fortunate term at all) to participate in these transformations as actors; some remain mere spectators. as nicolaescu emphasizes, “the liberating message of the magazines, the encouragement that women should be ‘selfish,’ should dedicate themselves to the care of their bodies and the pursuit of the narcissistic pleasures can only hold good for a restricted number of women” (nicolaescu 2001:80-1). in other words, “the new body discourses are at the same time sources of social exclusion. for an increasingly large number of women the prospects of a deliverance from the abject of the past are dwindling day by day” (nicolaescu 2001:60). for women in their forties and fifties, there are hardly any models in women’s magazines, which only portray young, sexy women, who seem completely unaware of the difficulties of day by day living in romania. in a collective interview i took in 2003, one of my respondents put it like this: “if you take a look on the street, the great majority of women carry the same bags, lengthening their hands and shuffling their feet.” her own self-image translated roughly the idea of gender inscriptions anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 17 on the body: “without two bags in my hands, i feel naked.” in other words, she associated failure to conform to her roles as mother and family provider with the embarrassment of nakedness. thus, for some women, their responsibilities and duties are much more internalized than the narcissistic pleasure of taking care of one’s body; indeed, their gender roles are literally inscribed on their tired, overworked bodies. moreover, these women usually foster a more traditional type of femininity, centred on motherhood and family, as opposed to the overt sexual reading of femininity in consumer culture. "presenting an entirely new metaphor for sport, aerobics fits neatly into the shift toward modernity that has distinguished the late twentieth century" (spielvogel 2003:49). laura spielvogel, writing about aerobics in japan, argues that the popularity of this activity in the last two decades “marks out a new age concerning sport, leisure and consume,” as symptom of “general social changes associated with economic growth” and as part of a “broader set of practises of consume” (spielvogel 2003:45). aerobics, traditionally associated with women, has, nevertheless, a rather ambiguous nature, pertaining to heterogeneous elements, such as discipline, endurance, will (associated with sports), fun, satisfaction, relaxation (as part of leisure) and also pervasive norms of the consumer society (the desire for a slender body). the common link is the body and the desire of altering it. “aerobics is explicitly linked with cosmetic benefits. it is designed to appeal to people’s dissatisfaction with, or concern for, bodily appearance” (waaler loland 2000:113). concern for the body has become a prerequisite of postmodernity, translated into conforming to prevailing norms and rules about the appearance, use and transformation of bodies. almost always, this entails “internalization of embarrassment about bodies that do not conform to social norms” (maguire and mansfield 1998:121). moreover, “the achievement of a slimmer body is an outward sign of self-discipline” in a society which values the correct management of desire (maguire and mansfield 1998:113). in contemporary consumer culture, one of the prevalent cultural images that permeate and structure our sense of identity, ‘the body beautiful,’ “is status enhancing and brings with it the perception of youth, health, happiness, heterosexual attractiveness and longevity” (maguire and mansfield 1998:114). as taeyon, citing rosenberg, puts it, “a woman’s body itself becomes a site of global culture, signifying her elite status as a member of the cosmopolitan—and overwhelmingly western—global community by participating in the main activity of global culture: consumption of global products” (taeyon 2003:98). 7 this article is based on an anthropological research project focused on women who practise aerobics in cluj and grew out of my general interest with representations of the female body and femininity in post-socialist romania, as they emerge through women’s accounts and narratives. the fieldwork took place between november 2002 and may 2003 and included observation in two aerobics clubs in cluj (both are medium-price locations, one of them being located in the building of the former children’s palace during communism), as well as a series of semi-structured interviews with women attending these clubs.8 although not intended, the sample proved quite homogenous, most of my respondents being young (24-38), educated (at least faculty level) and belonging to higher socio-economic groups (lawyer, engineer, pr manager, bar owner, doctors, etc.). this could in fact explain the unexpected similarity in their narratives. the interviews touched upon general details (the history of their experience with aerobics, the frequency of their workout sessions, other related body practises, such as diet, jogging, etc.), as well as personal narratives about aerobics, which all my informants decided to frame as a strongly selfmotivating discourse. as it happened, they all had a long experience with practising aerobics, from 3 to 15 years (in one particular case). the initiation usually follows a common pattern: more often than not, the subjects were strongly “recommended” by a friend, mother or close relative to “do something” about their look. raluca and timea both started to work out as teenagers, almost ten years ago. in raluca’s case, it was her aunt who, upon looking very critically at her said: “raluca, you’ve started to gain weight, you should do something!, and gave her the advice of starting to exercise. raluca admits: “it was that period when i started to gain some feminine shapes, to develop large hips, and i was just growing and growing chaotically.” timea recalls being a “normal” teenager, but her friends were much thinner than her and obsessed with diets and losing weight. so she started to practise aerobics quite intensively (four times a week) until she reached their weight, and then just tried to maintain herself at that point. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 18 another important scenario is having a good-looking friend who practises aerobics and strongly recommends it or invites the subject to join the classes. dorina used to be “very thin, even skinny, with no muscles whatsoever on my body,” so she decided to work out in order to tone her body. magda is a special case.9 in her forties, she is a sport-addict: athletics, five years of karate and, on top of it, aerobics. “to maintain myself, i do aerobics four times a week, two times bodybuilding, three times jogging, and also yoga. i have been practising sports all of my life, so i have to sweat somewhere, to work out real hard. but i do enjoy it”. there are a lot of women practising aerobics. there are even more who have started, but soon enough gave it up. it appears that only some women manage to “negotiate” this new practise into the daily schedule made up of all the other duties and activities (quite many and timeconsuming, in the case of romanian women). there is a strong causal relationship between regularizing this practise and the chances of continuing it. all my respondents were very firm about it: you have to stick to it! moreover, unlike a regular hobby, it is not aerobics that is negotiated with the other activities, but the other way around. for raluca, it has become a routine: every tuesday, wednesday and thursday i go to aerobics and everybody knows this. it is something that is part of my life. you just don’t go to aerobics according to your schedule, but you do your schedule according to aerobics, otherwise… it also requires a lot of strength and will. it is very easy to give in to “i just don’t feel like it today, so i’ll skip it just this time”: “sometimes it is really tough, i have a headache or my stomach aches, or it rains, it is not always nice and sunny.” “will” seems to be a magic word for most of my informants. for raluca it is always a personal challenge: “i feel like if don’t do it, i am a coward and a weak person. what, am i that weak to not be able to stand up and go jogging? so i say to my self: i ate like a pig, i have to go jogging.” she is merciless to those women who cannot find the time and will to take care of themselves: “there is no such thing as ‘i can’t’, it is a lousy excuse. if you, as a woman, can’t afford to do something for yourself and feel good… well, any normal [sic!] woman…” i found it extremely interesting that all my informants felt the need to “code” this practise by comparing and associating it with a “legitimate” social institution. none of them was thinking about it as a hobby, as something pertaining to leisure, relaxation, superficiality. a highly educated, bank officer repeatedly told me that she considers aerobics her greatest achievement. coding aerobics and awarding it a stable, un-negotiable place in their life obviously helps them to hold on to this practise and to construct a legitimising discourse for it. thus, aerobics seems to gain a new social signification and to be more easily “negotiated” with the other sex roles. “i go to aerobics just as i go to work, it’s in my schedule,” says dorina. one of the two clubs i have observed is actually a special case. being located in the former communist children’s palace, it is being run by a middle-aged, very demanding and authoritative woman, whom all my informants call “the missis” (doamna, in romanian, which is the very same term used by pupils in traditional rural schools for their teacher). this appellative also explains such assertions as: “it is quite like in primary school, you have to motivate your absence.” the atmosphere in this place is very special. although the clientele is made up of highly educated women (usually doctors or professionals) in their thirties or forties, “women with career and ambition” (in ioana’s words), the missis treats them roughly, criticising and yelling at them; she demands obedience and discipline. she has to know in advance when her “girls” are going on vacation, if they are ill or are going to miss a class. also, she doesn’t tolerate them being late. on the other hand, she utters a kind of mobilizing “emancipated” discourse: a woman has to take care of herself, to be beautiful, to look good, and from time to time leave her kids with her husband to come to aerobics. laundry can wait for an hour, nothing happens. modern woman has to take care of herself. leave the kitchen and the kids to your husband. he does however want his wife beautiful, nice, slim… but this requires some sacrifices from him. the general environment is a very “feminine” one: after class, in the locker room, the “girls” exchange recipes, diet tricks, buy cosmetics (from avon sales ladies), clothes, silver jewellery (or any other products that one of them brings in). on woman’s day (8th of march), they all go out together (the missis also) and celebrate. many women who would like to join her class (for having a good reputation in terms of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 19 “results”) give up quickly because they cannot cope with her authoritative style: “i won’t let missis tell me what to do!” those who can get over it, usually stick to her for years. magda came to appreciate her methods: “i feel like in high school when she admonishes us like that, for being late, or for mistaking the steps. sometimes it gets to my nerves, but other times it makes me feel younger. nobody else does it anymore. it gives you the thrill you had back in school.” after all, aerobics is also about discipline and hard work. the idea of doing something collectively seems to be very important, too. if she misses a class, ioana feels guilty for betraying the “team.” timea, on the other hand, values the fact that “everybody is doing the same thing. it is like going to church, when you go in and there are a hundred people and everybody is praying. and it creates a kind of a ritual, a bond; everybody is doing the same thing without knowing each other.” she uses this particular comparison because she doesn’t develop special relationships with her colleagues, whom she hardly knows: “you go in five minutes in advance, change, jump, exercise, change back and leave, good bye.” they seem to take off their “civil” identities along with their clothes, and just relate to each other as women who share a common passion for working out. dorina underlined this aspect in saying that “here we are all the same, whether outside one may be a doctor, or a professor…” doing something collectively also implies other emotions, besides feeling as part of a team, such as the one mentioned by raluca: embarrassment. “it’s like in a choir, where everybody is singing and you’re the one silent.” you cannot give it up or just rest in the middle of the exercise. “it’s a matter of challenge: if she can do it, why couldn’t i? you gnash your teeth and keep up.” comparison is always there. timea compares herself to the trainer: “every time i want to stop and i feel all sweaty and tired, i look at her and i say to myself: ‘god, this woman is forty and she keeps jumping here like this’ and i cannot stop.” the discourse about aerobics is not only about the self, but also about the other. these women, who practise aerobics in rather medium-tolow price locations, compare themselves extensively to “those women” who attend fancier and more expensive clubs. the difference is translated not only in nicer outfits, but also in different motivations: they just go there in order to look good for their partner, to get tanned, because this is the fashion, to go to the sauna, which is also fashionable, and they buy a very expensive subscription and enter the spa at 4 p.m. and get out at 9 p.m. and have everything done to them. they’re young girls… and i bet they don’t pay with their own money. all my respondents despised “those women”, not only for not sharing their sport ethos, but also for being dependent upon a man: “i could never understand those women who struggle themselves, go to sports, solarium, massage, all of it, and then get married and put on twenty kilos. ‘i already have a husband, i can eat!’” the “other” clubs are not only extremely expensive, but also superficial in terms of actual training: “those places where a lot of wealthy women go, dressed up in the latest fashion, and one talks on the mobile phone, the other drinks mineral water, and another just walks around.” these are places frequented by wealthy, snobbish people: “there are these individuals who just carry their bag around…they go to fancy clubs just to be seen there, and to be able to say ‘i work out,’ not necessarily to do it.” unlike “those” women, for my respondents the very idea of asserting their independence through practising aerobics is highly valued. being able to subtract a few hours weekly from their duties as mothers and wives is in itself a declaration of independence: “to have one hour just for me.” this translates as quality time spent with one’s self, but not entirely in a selfish manner. by taking care of themselves, women can perform better outside the class. as haravon collins puts it, “aerobics can be a site at which women refuel themselves to better fit into a society in which they need to be ‘nice, civilized people,’ and have control over their physical and mental selves (haravon collins 2002:91). even though she doesn’t have a family, raluca still needs a time just for herself, away from daily routine: you can cut yourself loose from all the daily problems and worries. you just focus on exercises and stop thinking about it. when i’m there, for an hour, i do not think of anything else but those movements, what leg should i stretch and things like that. during that hour my mind is emptied of anything else, personal problems, job, anything…and there’s also anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 20 that pleasant feeling after working out, a pleasant tiredness, that you still feel after you’ve finished… “i can not be without it. my husband respects that. and if it were to be another husband, he would have to respect it, also. and, anyway, what would i do during that hour, if not aerobics, wash some more dishes?” asks rhetorically magda. “at least i know i do something for me, for my health.” this is also symptomatic for women always used to do things for others: the “guilty” pleasure of doing something for one’s self. “there’s something about it, you know, like when you were little and you were building a house from blankets, it was something just for you. perhaps, who knows, going to aerobics when you already have a family is something you do just for yourself,” says raluca. dorina agrees: “if you go there, you leave everything behind and just take care of yourself. after one hour you feel relaxed and fulfilled that you’ve done something for yourself.” all my informants have strongly emphasized the idea of an intense satisfaction associated with practising aerobics: “aerobics is my greatest achievement. nothing in the world could make me give it up,” says ioana. this feeling is largely explained as harmony between spirit and body, inner peace and calm, constructing a sense of being at ease with one’s body. raluca feels “like you’re in heaven, at least that’s how i feel. every time i walk out of the gym, it’s like flying, there’s no gravity, and i feel so …light.” most of my informants seem to agree to a certain dualistic view on the body: they have a body and a soul, and they relate to this body as something outside their inner soul. but, nevertheless, these are strongly interconnected, as timea puts it: “i say that in order to feel good psychically, you have to look good physically, so it is normal that you have to have some equilibrium between the psyche and the physic to feel as harmonious as possible.” the general idea most of my respondents agreed to was that one has a body and one has to cope with it. as raluca notes: “a woman should never forget that she has a body and she has to take care of it as much as possible, or at least to get used to the idea that, look, this is what i do for me, for my body.” timea admits to having a certain bodyproject, but without going into details: “you have a body, and you have an idea of what you like, and this makes you go to aerobics.” it seems that the relationship with one’s body usually takes the form of a partnership, which can be enhanced by practising aerobics. timea argues that: “i like to have a relation of friendship with my body, meaning that i give it what it needs and it helps me to feel good, like a partnership. by practising sports, i think that i take care of my body.” raluca sees it as a symbiosis: “my relationship with my body is a kind of symbiosis, i feel perfectly its reactions, i can feel when i’m catching a cold, getting the fever…we tolerate each other, well, no, we help each other…” even more, she agrees that practising aerobics has ameliorated this symbiosis: “since i have been doing aerobics, we get along better…i’m at ease with myself.” harmony is also at stake, as defined by timea: “i see it as a whole: i have a soul and a body, and so i have to work out my body.” it seems that, at least in subtext, all these discourses about the body come to the same point: women have a naturally “uneasy” relationship with their bodies; they cannot escape it, though. you have to work (out) hard to improve this status quo, to come to make peace with your body, to establish a harmony between body and soul. “feeling good” about one’s self is crucial. raluca admits: i used to think that this ‘feeling good about yourself’ stuff is just american bullshit. but it really is very important to feel good about you. it gives you confidence; if you don’t feel good with yourself, you feel good with somebody else, and this is already dependence. it’s like i would only feel good if my partner worshipped me and looked at me with admiration. if you feel good with yourself, you have greater chances of living your life in a sane mind. “satisfaction with one’s bodily appearance is positively related to satisfaction with one’s self” writes waaler loland (waaler loland 2000:113). most of my informants tended to equate ‘feeling good’ with ‘looking good’. although they acknowledge the pervasiveness of certain (“western”) norms about how the female body should look, they do however wrap their own subjecting to this norm in the frame of a strong discourse of personal independence. asserting independence and a personal goal seems extremely important for these young women. in timea’s words: “as i see it, i do it for me, not to show off because i look good or to find a nice man because i have a great body. and i bet i will do it even after marriage, because otherwise i wouldn’t feel good.” raluca says something very similar: “when i go to sport, i feel like i am in anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 21 control, independent, i do what i do for me.” she also acknowledges this practise to be a feature of urban life: perhaps a rural woman would never understand and would think of it as something futile, another tiring burden. not to mention that in the country there isn’t such madness about the body, the obsession with looks, with clothes. down there things are simpler: you’ve gained some weight, nothing happens. although not openly admitting to having a personal body project, all my respondents were willing to share at least an “impersonal” image of the ideal body. in timea’s vision, “the ideal nowadays is a bit athletic, but not too much, tall, large shoulders, long legs, big breasts. that’s it. of course, you cannot just put on big breasts. what anyone can do is work out one’s muscles, to have a fit body, not a loose flesh on it.” one also has to be feminine, so the ideal should be a combination of feminine features (slim and delicate) and sporty body (athletic looks). gender is the limit: “a woman should never be too muscular.” we witness the vogue of a body ideal which morse defines as “condensation of contradictions: thin and muscular, hard and curvaceous, it suggests power and yet a slender boyishness” (haravon collins, 2002: 86). these women also seem to hold on to a rather traditional view on femininity. for dorina, a woman is feminine by the way she walks; she should have a certain distinction, elegance in gestures and posture, be delicate and thin (“a neat foot and a nice head”). as maguire and mansfield argue, “slenderness speaks of femininity” (maguire and mansfield 1998:113). magda likes muscles, and has rational arguments for it: “only the muscles can resist in time. a worked out, muscled tummy will be preserved over 30. otherwise, it tends to get saggy, unfortunately. especially after you give birth, it is such a satisfaction to see that your tummy looks just as good as before.” for mature women, having a nice body might mean also changing their clothing style: “i love looking good in a short dress. it is almost like you get the courage to try on something more modern. you see the others and think: okay, let’s try.” the younger respondents seem to be aware of the influence of consumer culture, in terms of body ideal and bodily norms. as timea puts it very bluntly, femininity in romania is very much physical, the physic is more and more important.” in raluca’s view, “there is a real competition for looking good, which you have to join, willy-nilly. you just cannot go out in the city and everybody is looking good, and you look like an elephant. it’s nice to walk on the street in a pretty, wavy dress and to feel good about your looks. as david le breton argues, “body practises are situated at the crossroads where the anthropological necessity of fighting the fragmentation experienced in the self meets with the play of signs (forms, shape, youth, health), that gives a decisive social supplement to any physical activity of choice.”10 the discourse about body norms tends to attain a highly moralizing tone: “if you don’t dress well, if you don’t have a proper attitude, you might as well be smart, educated, you can have as many degrees, but you will have a ten times harder job at opening doors. if you look good, you have an advantage upon the person in front of you.” in fact, they only give voice to a well known reality, in which, when it comes to women, employers prefer good-looking, young employees, over those more qualified, but less attractive. in the words of reischer and koo, “the body and its appearance are a prime site for negotiating women’s position in a complex web of social meaning and value” (reischer and koo 2004:313). leslea haravon collins, writing about reconciling feminism with aerobics, suggests that, since the subjects experience a corporeal fragmentation in everyday life, aerobics, through its repetitive character, can be perceived as a means of rediscovering, appropriating and integrating the body: “starting from a place for fragmentation and alienation from the body, as these women do, any form of movement that is enjoyable or even possible is an improvement in and a step toward bodily integration” (harravon collins 2002:98). emphasizing discursively issues like “feeling good”, “spiritual harmony”, “the soul”, “independence”, these women actually avoid openly discussing their corporeal identity and matters pertaining to the body. these seem to remain sensitive topics even for women obviously engaged in a body project. i suggest that the rhetoric of “having one hour just for myself” that emerges redundantly in their narratives dissimulates in fact the intimate relation with one’s body. subjects of a postsocialist gender regime, women experience this particular bond as something new and not yet internalised, which is denied to them in other social locations. as such, they choose to construct a feminine space–and a discourse–in which experiencing an intimate integration with one’s anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 22 own body can be “naturalized” and lived unproblematically. this is a space in which exercising a degree of independence, including the relation with the self and the body, is highly valued. my first temptation, in trying to understand these women’s self-mobilizing discourses against the background of feebly renegotiating gender roles and identities in post-socialist romania, was to contend that these particular discourses can indeed be read as a form of empowerment, of rhetorical exercise of power and agency, undertaken by a category traditionally constructed as passive and undemanding, women. but this optimistic vision would only obscure the fact, pointed out by most critics, that “the sense of agency created by detailing technologies of beauty–how to make up, to diet, to discipline their bodies–is further undermined by the normalizing power that the ideal images have” (nicolaescu 2001:79). theberge argues that in sport, women “can experience their bodies as strong and powerful and free from male domination… […] and women’s sporting practise can challenge gender inequality by challenging sexual stereotypes and patriarchal control of women’s bodies.” but aerobics can be quite contradictory; on one hand, it “encourages women to experience their bodies as strong;” on the other hand it does not necessarily “challenge sexual stereotypes” (haravon collins 2002:90). one can argue that, more often than not, in aerobics, the female body remains “the site at which women, consciously or not, accept the meanings that circulate in popular cultural about ideal beauty… [serving] as a site of inscription, a billboard for the dominant cultural meanings that the female body is to have in postmodernity”11. critics have also argued that “even if the ideal aerobics body is seen as a healthy body, it shares the same discursive framework as the anorexic body. in both ‘practises,’ the body can be seen as alien, confinement and alienation, out of control, and in need of discipline. aerobicizers can be seen as subjected to normalizing selfmanagement (waaler loland 2000:114). as moya loyd puts it, aerobics is “interlocked in the feminine aesthetics. aerobics is considered to be the one practise of feminization that contributes to women’s sense of identity” (maguire and mansfield 1998:114). the preliminary aim of this article was that of “mapping” the gendered female body of postsocialist romania by means of examining a particular practise, aerobics, that speaks not only about the body and body practises, but also about gender, about consumer culture and, more important, about their intersections. i have started out with goffman’s approach that the body could be understood as a mediator between the selfidentity of the individual and his/her social identity, thus being designed as “an active, transformative, and dynamic expression of the self” (waaler loland 2000:112). particularly in consumer culture, the body is more and more employed as “a personal resource” to be manipulated “according to the norms and values to which we subscribe” (waaler loland 2000:114). moreover, not only can the body be read as an epitome of the desires, values, anxieties of a culture, according to douglas’s capital work, it can also be approached as an insight upon modern individual’s moral stance. “developing and displaying an ideal body type thus signals one’s cooperative participation in a culturally meaningful system of values” (reischer and koo, 2004: 303), the body becoming, in bordo’s terms “a symbol of correct attitude” (bordo 1993:195). in postsocialist romania, the body–the female one per excellentiam–became a powerful signifying tool, marking the break with the communist past and the onset of a new age. the body was not only the locus of enjoying the fresh sense of freedom, but also the symbol of a new, better life, and the marker of the individual’s commitment to such a life. the image of the “western” female body (sexy, tanned, and slim) became, for both romanian men and women, the epitome of western culture and of a desirable lifestyle. everyone was yearning for a clean, neat break from the communist recent past. this break was embodied in the difference between the slack, fleshy, neglected body of the communist woman, wearing a bad perm and a poor make up, and the fit, slender, sexy body of the “modern” woman. “change” seemed to be the magic word of the new consumer culture, as quintessence of its dynamic nature, as opposed to the inert, congealed status quo of communist period: new things, new clothes, new bodies, and most of all, new identities. this dynamic interplay of identities set in motion by the transition to consumerism in romania was thoroughly examined by mette nordahl svendsen in an article based on fieldwork conducted in bucharest in 1996. there, she sets out to examine “how processes of relocating oneself in a changing world are reflected in body practises and investments in one's looks […] in a society with new possibilities of consumption” (nordahl anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 23 svendsen 1996:1). she constructs a framework of gender identities available for women in postsocialist romania: the beautiful independent woman, the young, pretty girl and the sacrificing married woman. as a westerner, she is struck by the fact that gender seems to be an overwhelmingly important variable in romanian social life. women are at great pains to emphasize gender differences, and their own bodies are a good place to do that. her respondents “are extremely conscious of being women and of having to behave and think in a specifically feminine way. they believe that different rules apply to them than to men. no matter if explicitly articulated or not, it is inherent in virtually everything they do and say” (nordahl svendsen 1996:2-3). one of the strategies of marking off gender difference is through engaging in specific “feminine” activities, where beauty and beauty work is perceived as an essential one. “beauty operates as a moral imperative, as a defining feature of femininity, as a dream and a necessity” (nordahl svendsen 1996:5). as i have argued in this article, beauty has always belonged to “womanliness” in romania; even during communism, women were encouraged to display a careful, smart, “feminine’ appearance, a task considered part of her sex roles and a kind of civic duty. after communism, we have witnessed a “privatisation” of woman’s beauty; women entered the consumer culture both as subjects and objects. they are not only potential buyers/consumers, but have also discovered their own appearance as social capital. as mette nordahl svendsen has noticed, “external qualities are taken as a sign of inner qualities and social position. the body is regarded as a primary marker of social identity. a person's looks are used as an indicator of social position and education and as an instrument for improving one's social position” (nordahl svendsen 1996:6). if acceptance of one’s natural body seems to be the norm among western women, for whom investing time, money and energy in beauty is regarded as a sign of dependency and weakness, the situation is different in postcomunist romania. as striking as it might sound for any western feminist, “in a society in which women experience their daily lives as a struggle to accomplish their duties at home and to make ends meet financially, spending money and time on one's body has become a symbol of being a "winner": the supreme woman who masters her own life” (nordahl svendsen 1996:8). as nordahl svendsen has pertinently noticed, contemporary romania witnesses a proliferation of identities and models for women: “the beautiful independent woman,” “the good wife,” “the responsible mother,” and “the hardworking woman in charge of her family” (nordahl svendsen 1996:12). the problem for women resides in the difficulty of having to reconcile some or all of these identities at once. having “one hour just for myself” is a possible strategy in this permanent struggle. if, and only if, practising aerobics twice a week carries the potential of letting women “off the hook” with regard to their too many responsibilities and duties and allows them to enjoy time with themselves (and their bodies), my optimistic conclusion is half justified. alternatively, this practise remains just another instance of the “disciplining” of women and their bodies, menacing to revert to something similar to the communist “triple burden” on women. notes 1one of the first political decisions of the new government was to get rid of the 1966 abortionbanning law. 2 as a matter of fact, a few years after the revolution, women’s magazines still published only images of foreign women, mostly supermodels and actresses. 3 susan benson, in kathryn woodward ed. (1999) identity and difference, london: the open university and sage, p. 128. 4 kaufmann, jean-claude, trupuri de femei – priviri de bărbaţi. sociologia sânilor goi [women’s bodies – men’s glances. sociology of nude breasts], bucureşti: nemira, 1998: 11 5 david le breton, antropologia corpului şi modernitatea [anthropology of the body and modernity], timişoara: amarcord, 2002, p. 170. 6 olteanu cristina liana, elena-simona gheonea, valentin gheonea femeile în românia comunistă. studii de istorie socială [women in communist romania. studies in social history], bucureşti: politeia – snspa, 2003, p. 142. 7 “a young woman can literally embody signs of global status by buying brand name international goods that affect her ‘atmosphere’: her appearance, her smell, the feel of her skin. communication occurs through the adorned body embedded in the international circuit of commodity signs” (taeyon, 2003: 98). 8 i have not practised aerobics myself. nevertheless, my own physical appearance (being young, tall and rather thin) proved an important research tool, since my respondents tended to anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 24 assume i was familiar with the experience of working out and/or dieting. in fact, a considerable body of feminist writings draws attention to the importance of embodiment in anthropological research and to the process of mutual labeling between researcher and researched. 9 she is in fact the only one who practised aerobics during communism, at hotel belvedere. 10 david le breton, op. cit., p. 161. 11 a. balsamo, technologies of the gendered body: reading cyborg women, durham, nc: duke university press, 1996, p. 78. references bordo, susan. 1993. unbearable weight: feminism, western culture, and the body, berkeley: university of california press. bordo, susan. 1997. “the body and the reproduction of femininity”, in katie conboy, nadia medina, sarah stanbury (eds.) writing on the body. female embodiment and feminist theory, new york: columbia university press. douglas, mary. 1996. natural symbols. explorations in cosmology, london & new york: routledge. edwards, elise. 2003. “bodies in motion: contemplating work, leisure, and late capitalism in japanese fitness clubs”, anthropological quarterly, 76.1. ginsberg, laura. 2000 “the hard work of working out. defining leisure, health, and beauty in a japanese fitness club”, journal of sport & social issues, volume 24, no. 3, august 2000. haravon collins, leslea. 2002 “working out the contradictions. feminism and aerobics”, in journal of sport & social issues, volume 26, no. 1, february 2002. kalacheva olga. 2002. “a western body for the russian woman: shaping gender identity in modern women’s magazines”, anthropology of east europe review, vol. 20, no. 1. lee bartky, sandra. 1997. “foucault, femininity and patriarchal power”, in katie conboy, nadia medina, sarah stanbury (eds.) writing on the body. female embodiment and feminist theory, new york: columbia university press. maguire joseph, louise mansfield. 1998. “’nobody’s perfect’: women, aerobics, and the body beautiful”, sociology of sport journal, no. 15, pp. 109-37. nicolaescu mădălina. 2001. fashioning global identities: romanian women in the postsocialist transition, bucureşti: editura universităţii din bucureşti. reischer erica, kathryn s. koo. 2004. “the body beautiful: symbolism and agency in the social world”, annual review of anthropology, no. 33, pp. 297-317. shilling, chris. 2003. the body and social theory, london, thousand oaks, new delhi: sage publications. spielvogel, laura. 2003. working out in japan: shaping the female body in tokyo fitness clubs, durham and london: duke university press. svendsen nordhal mette. 1996. “the postcommunist body: beauty and aerobics in romania”, anthropology of east europe review, vol. 14, no. 1. taeyon kim. 2003. “neo-confucian body techniques: women’s bodies in korea’s consumer society”, body & society, vol. 9 (2): 97-113. waaler loland nina. 2000. “the art of concealment in a culture of display: aerobicizing women’s and men’s experience and use of their own bodies”, sociology of sport journal, no. 17, pp. 111-29. west barb. 2002. “transformations in embodied lifecourses: hungarian women in the 1990s”, anthropology of east europe review, vol. 20, no. 1. allen typewritten text © 2006 petruţa mîndruţ all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the political and social life of food in socialist poland volume 21, number 1 the political and social life of food in socialist poland kathy burrell, de montfort university © 2003 kathy burrell all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. while food is increasingly recognized as being an important component of personal identity (scholliers, 2001), its consumption can also be a deeply political experience. during the period of socialist rule in eastern europe, food, like most aspects of everyday life, took on a newly significant role both for individuals and society collectively. popular experiences of food inevitably touched upon the wider context of tension between the government and the individual, and the struggle between state control and personal autonomy. in poland, where political opposition was the most successful, everyday food exchanges worked simultaneously to create spheres of small-scale social networks, enabling people to survive under the regime, as if living outside of it. collected memories, however, also reveal that despite shortages, food was still enjoyed for its own sake, remaining an integral part of traditions and celebrations. this article is based on a pilot study for a planned future project investigating memories of ‘everyday life’ in socialist poland. four indepth interviews were undertaken with people who migrated to britain from poland in the 1980s and early 1990s, based on their experiences of living under the socialist regime. during the socialist era in poland there were many occasions when food became closely linked to the changing political fortunes of the state. food, as with other elements of consumption (crowley 2000), was subject to governmental regulation in theory the state had a monopoly on production and distribution, in addition to controlling food prices. furthermore, state propaganda campaigns in the early years of the regime demonstrated that the new society of workers was expected to take an active and ‘noble’ role in the provision of food for the nation. as aulich and sylvestrova (1999:159) illustrate in their research into political posters in eastern europe, agricultural laborers throughout the eastern bloc were carefully depicted as ‘the force capable of liberating the people from hunger.’ in poland, as elsewhere, the ability of the regime to provide for its people rested on the promise of food for all. food in poland, however, later provided a rallying point for workers’ disillusionment with the state, with food price rises triggering important riots in 1970, 1976 and 1980, played out as economic protest, but simultaneously galvanizing an increasingly politicized popular opposition. not only was the regime failing at home, but international media images of long queues, particularly in the early 1980s, helped to cement western convictions that communism was not succeeding. politically, therefore, it can be argued that food played an integral part in the rise and fall of socialism in poland. food was used in both internal and external representations of the regime, and was in a sense at the heart of its decline: no other issue showed the juxtaposition between early promises and later failures in quite the same way. it is interesting, however, that these specific political aspects of food do not feature in the collected testimonies. memories of food instead focus on the everyday arena of shortages and queuing, surviving through alternative networks of supplies, and food for special occasions. accounts relating to food address politics only indirectly, but nevertheless hint that no aspect of everyday life under the regime could escape political meaning at some level. as slavenka drakulic (1992) argues in her work on the everyday lives of women in the eastern bloc, food in socialist poland has to be understood in an entirely different context to food in western europe: through a culture of need rather than ‘like.’ it is no surprise, therefore, that the collected accounts illustrate early memories of food shortages and the need to queue for food. as one man remembered: jen typewritten text 189 volume21, number 1 queues were always under communists. in the ‘50s and the ‘60s when i was young i remember my mother and father going to a different town to buy a piece of butter, the butter was available twenty five miles from the place, and then of course there was a queue for the butter. (polish man, 2002, emigrated to britain in 1983) queuing for food, in fact, remained an integral part of life throughout the regime. as another man recalled: there was always food shortages, i remember there was always propaganda after the war. i remember many times queuing in a shop when i was a small boy to buy sugar, to buy salt, to stock….it was the late ‘70s and ‘80s. i think it was like when people had more money, there were increasing salaries and people wanted to buy more goods. the queues were terrible. when [my daughter] was born i remember i used to go on saturday morning to buy sausages and meat, we had coupons so people could buy, i don’t know, two and a half kilos of meat per month per person. i was like queuing from six o’clock in the morning on saturdays ‘til one o’clock or two o’clock to buy meat. sometimes i queued for butter like i was going to work and i just stopped because there was a queue to buy butter …. each saturday i was queuing for meat, and occasionally i was queuing for cheese and butter. (polish man, 2003, emigrated to britain in 1987) much of the existing literature on queuing emphasizes the negative aspects of food shortages and associated queuing. zinoviev (cited in ledeneva 1998:91), for example, referring to queuing in the soviet union, argues that faced with the need to queue for goods, “you must always be in a state of confusion, anger, and ready for all sorts of unpleasantness.” in her research into russia, humphrey (1995) also draws out the vexations and inconveniences of queuing for food. the interviews, however, paint a more complex picture of the queuing culture in poland and the significance of the meanings and sentiments surrounding it. one woman, for example, became visibly unsettled when recounting her memories of seeing mothers queuing for milk: “oh, this is no good. sorry. when i see mother with two small children, and one bottle of milk. and it was one bottle one mother. it was [19]82, ‘83” (polish woman, 2002, emigrated to britain in the early 1990s). indeed, all four respondents demonstrated what drakulic (1992:20) has argued: within the context of food shortages providing food for the family becomes an activity heavily invested with emotion – as she puts it, food equals love. this is made particularly clear in accounts of queuing for food for children: i remember queuing with my wife one day, all day, trying to buy grapefruits, and we bought as many grapefruits as it was enough for the kids for the entire winter. it took us one day, we got god knows how many kilos, because of course it was rationing, so you cannot buy as many as you want, so two kilos or three kilos each. we managed to go five rounds each, which means twenty kilos or whatever. and this was enough for the kids to have one grapefruit a day for the end of winter. (polish man, 2002) similarly, jancar (1978) and wedel (1986) draw out the negative gendered aspects of queuing, asserting that as women were predominantly responsible for the household, they suffered disproportionately from the queuing culture, shouldering a ‘double shift’ under the regime. while obviously taken from a very small sample, the evidence from the collected interviews, however, points to a much greater degree of shared responsibility for queuing between genders; women might queue more generally throughout the week, but men were perhaps more likely to join long queues at the weekends. rather than focusing on the inconvenient and divisive nature of queuing, the accounts actually depict it as an embedded cultural phenomenon that enabled extended social contact. for example, one man recounted how he used his time queuing as an opportunity to discuss politics, while another recalled: it was a huge social system, queuing societies and discussion clubs developed, and a beautiful system of reserving places in queues. you stood in one queue and said, sorry i’ll be back in ten minutes, and then go to another queue and reserve a place in another queue, and then you come back. so it was a huge social life around these queues as well. of course, a lot of fighting and arguments, but it was a huge complex jen typewritten text 190 volume21, number 1 cultural structure, the queue. (polish man, 2002) in the context of a regime that aimed, albeit unsuccessfully, to limit collective social autonomy, the queue offered an unregulated arena for open discussion. as crowley and reid (2002:15) have argued, “the queue outside the shop produced forms of sociality that might be coded to demonstrate the existence of values and a close-knit solidarity in spite of the alienating effects of socialism.” while not overtly political in nature in itself, queuing for food carried with it the potential for political engagement. possible political connotations of queuing were further touched upon in one interview in particular. all of the respondents agreed that food shortages were not usually responsible for the longest queues; these were typically for toilet paper, a much more mundane shortage that, as one man noted, was in danger of being used by the international media to misrepresent and exaggerate the gravity of shortages in poland: “the most spectacular queues that were photographed by foreigners were actually for toilet paper, because they were of incredible length and they dispersed very quickly, because toilet paper could be sold very quickly” (polish man 2002). food was even politicized in popular culture. this same man recounted a joke about the food situation in poland in the early 1980s, weighing up the problems of a weak economy against the benefits of a more relaxed political culture: there is a joke. poland in the ‘80s it was a poor country in physical terms. a person had to queue twice for food all night, and my personal record for queuing was for two weeks in front of a shop for a washing machine, one member of my family had to be in front of that shop. on the other hand it was relative freedom of speech. “you know that one of the polish dogs in the ‘80s got so fed up with the fact that there was no food he decided to escape to czechoslovakia, and right on the border he met another dog, escaping from czechoslovakia to poland. and he asked, ‘what the hell are you doing? why are you going to poland, it is such a poor country you can’t even find a sausage’. ‘ok’, he said’ ‘that’s right, but at least you can bark’.” so in other words poland was to some extent an exception. it was repressed but political repression was mild. perhaps the price to pay was low economy. (polish man, 2002) the overwhelming message to be drawn from the interviews, however, is that food shortages were not an insurmountable obstacle in everyday life. one man asserted that despite the shortages, “it was a system under which you could live, and you could enjoy life to some extent, in a different way” (polish man 2002). another argued that the shortages often only applied to luxuries: “there were food shortages in the sense that the basic things were there, there was bread, butter, but there was not any imported goods like oranges, bananas, peaches” (polish man 2003). furthermore, the collected accounts place the conditions in socialist poland into their historical perspective. difficulty in obtaining food was not a new phenomenon, and as such did not bring with it any problems not already successfully negotiated by earlier generations. as drakulic (1992: 14-15) observes about her own mother, first hand experiences of wartime hardship had a significant impact on the perception of subsequent living standards: ‘she experienced world war two and ever since, like most of the people in eastern europe, she behaves as if it never ended. maybe this is why they are never really surprised that even forty years afterwards there is a lack of sugar, oil, coffee or flour’. in the context of war, living conditions under communism could be considered an improvement. in fact, for poland, where food shortages are hardly without an historical precedent, coping in adversity has entered the national narrative of struggle and survival: but it was like that for us, it was like normal living. you have to understand in poland it was for the whole history it was always war, every twenty years there was a war or uprising, so people from a historical point of view, they learn how to simply survive. one way or another they had to survive, so they were adapting to it, and tying to find the way how to go around sometimes, like how to organize things. (polish woman, 2003, emigrated to britain in 1988) surviving under partitions, occupations and in war is an integral part of the polish national heritage (davies 1984), and therefore it is not jen typewritten text 191 volume21, number 1 surprising that coping under the socialist regime does not stand out as remarkable. the collected testimonies also demonstrate that unpredictable conditions simply demanded special, tailor-made strategies. one woman, for example, recounted how she relied on having her children with her to gain advantages in the queues: i didn’t queue because it is a tradition that old persons and the mother with the small children or babies are put first. so if there was something and i could take [my daughter] in my arms, then i could skip the queue, and people were putting me at the front, especially if you have a baby in your arms, so then you can go first. (polish woman, 2003) as janine wedel (1986:49) has demonstrated in her research into socialist poland in the late 1970s and early 1980s, shortages necessitated a culture of being ready to purchase goods whenever and wherever they were available: “everybody shops all the time. people constantly look in store windows to see what can be had and ask those standing in line what they are waiting for.” one man confirmed that, “there was a psychosis that whenever something appeared in the shops people queued to buy it whatever it was, even if people didn’t need something” (polish man 2003). this need to be flexible even stretched to working hours: “you were working in an office and somebody arrives saying there are sausages in the shops next to you. office deserts, nobody is in the office, everyday has gone to queue” (polish man 2002). in fact, as the following account illustrates, survival strategies penetrated even the most banal aspects of everyday life: you had to be prepared to buy things wherever you found them, taking an opportunity, so it was a common thing that everyone in the ‘80s was walking around the streets with a long piece of string in your pocket, because if you have a long piece of string and it happened that toilet paper was delivered to the shop, you could immediately buy twenty, fifty rolls, put it on the string and carry it like that, so the piece of string was a normal piece of equipment for everyone. (polish man, 2002) only experience of an alternative system highlighted the highly specialized nature of survival developed under socialism. in this case, migration to britain required the learning of a new set of household skills: when i arrived here for me it was reasonably difficult to adjust, but for my wife it was a nightmare. the skills of running a household were completely different from poland and here. my wife was proud of being very good in queuing, she knew in which queue to queue, when to queue, where to find goods and so on. when she arrived here and found out that she can find everything but she has to economize, she can buy this but she can’t buy that and so on, it took her a lot of time to adjust …. she got very depressed here because she couldn’t use her queuing skills, and instead of that she was looking that she spend more money on food than the neighbors. so you need completely different skills to survive in this society. (polish man, 2002) surviving, of course did not revolve purely around queuing. as one woman put it, “when we didn’t have [the children] we didn’t queue, because we didn’t bother, simply” (polish woman 2003). sufficient mechanisms existed in society to provide an alternative to queuing as the only way of obtaining necessary goods. in a similar way to the operation of ‘blat’ in russia, polish people were able to draw on a wide array of social networks and informal exchanges to sustain adequate lifestyles, both supplementing and in some cases replacing formal state controlled exchanges. as ledeneva (1998:1) illustrates, ‘blat’ – ‘the use of personal networks and informal contacts to obtain goods and services in short supply and to find a way around formal procedures’ – played a central role in strategies of survival under socialism. in poland, as wedel (1986) observes, 'blat' translated into 'załatwionie' arranging and acquiring goods through informal means something equally integral to everyday life, as the collected testimonies show. firstly, the accounts offer clear evidence of ‘payment in kind’ arrangements. as ledeneva (1998:39-47) argues, these fell short of bribery and corruption, but were undoubtedly outside the official sphere of the state. one woman disclosed that her position as a doctor had made queuing unnecessary, as she simply jen typewritten text 192 volume21, number 1 traded medicine and her professional knowledge for provisions: i never never [queued] because i didn’t have any time, i worked as a doctor. i had too many people who i gave them a better life, and they gave me a better life. the people working in the shop, i go to him and i give him too much, when i was a doctor. that was no good, but it was very important for me because i had no time. when i had nothing i ate nothing. but that situation was no good for me because it was illegal. but it was friendly, the system was not legal but it was friendly. (polish woman, 2002) while she clearly had mixed emotions about using her position as a doctor to obtain food, the stress placed on the friendly nature of these exchanges is significant, illustrating the pivotal role of personal friendships and contacts in independent survival. other accounts reveal that similar bartering practices were widespread, a normal part of life that despite being conducted in veiled language, were recognized, understood and accepted: if you had somebody working in a good shop you were super privileged. i remember adverts in the press like “i am selling meat in a shop, i am looking for accommodation.” everybody knew what it was all about. she was not supposed to pay for her accommodation, because she had a good access to meat. it was a typical advert. (polish man, 2002) furthermore, as the following extract confirms, it was also usual to utilize local contacts and networks for more straightforward purchasing practices. living in a farming area, for example, ensured that this family always had a steady provision of meat because of the failure to collectivize all polish farms: we had more on the table than usual, because we were surrounded with the small villages where everywhere there were small farms. so they were having these piglets, small pigs, somewhere they hadn’t been counted. so those people were bringing them to the town… so that was quite cheap. i used to buy one quarter of the animal, and that was very fresh because they were bringing them on the same day they killed them. (polish woman, 2003) in fact, as wedel (1986:61) argues, within this culture of taking advantage of whomever or whatever was available to secure goods, the boundaries between legal and illegal exchanges were not necessarily clear or even important: “i had assumed that legal and illegal activities were well-defined, yet poles themselves were often unable to explain the lines of demarcation between the two.” significantly, however, there was a strong element of pride attached to managing to acquire items outside of state control. as verdery (cited in humphrey 1995:56) argues, “organized shortage made procuring something – anything – a major triumph.” there is almost a sense that by deliberately incorporating so much that was beyond the regime’s realm of influence into everyday routines, people were able to play out their own small-scale resistance movements, very similar to those that verdery (cited in humphrey 1995) asserts were created by popular consumption. as the following testimony shows, state controls were unable to permeate long established social support networks, destroy the mutual trust and co-operation underpinning them, or quash popular creativity and resourcefulness: i remember one thing, [my daughter] had her first communion and i invited many people for a party. that was at a time of food shortages, and i had a table full of food there, there was no place to put anything more. q: where did this food come from? a few things i was getting from shops, sausages or something. i told you meat i was getting from farms. i learned how to do ham, i was preparing this myself, i was getting it from somebody who was smoking it, and i had my own ham which was really brilliant. even now i am doing my own paté, or i bake some meat to get a ham taste. i used to prepare a lot of things like that. sometimes i was buying things that were available, and you do something from that. if you don’t have something you always work it out from whatever you have. and also when it is a more difficult time, the people are more friendly and it is a bigger operation with others. i had a lot of friends, if somebody had something i didn’t have, and i needed to have it because i was giving a party or something, they were jen typewritten text 193 volume21, number 1 giving me and i was giving them, and we shared things. (polish woman, 2003) memories of food in socialist poland, however, do not entirely revolve around implicit narratives of struggles with the regime; food is remembered just as much for its celebratory connotations as for its shortages. as the above testimony reveals, special occasions were not undermined by a lack of food, but rather reinforced by the sheer effort expended to ensure their continuation. even everyday food is remembered positively: “there was not any exotic fruit or anything like that so mum used to fry onion, slice onion and fry it, and have it with bread or something. i remember i ate bread with lard; it was very popular, with sugar or salt, freshly baked” (polish man 2003). interestingly, while the shops could be empty during the year, provisions were always available for easter and christmas: “special traditions there was always things, shops were supplied specially for christmas and easter, you could buy things, oranges” (polish man, 2003). given the centrality of these religious celebrations to representations of national identity in poland, this was most likely an attempt to avert mass public unrest. furthermore, the collected testimonies illustrate that food provided by the state for certain occasions was well received: any notion of personal resistance did not prevent a pragmatic embracing of whatever food was available. as the same man remembered, the summer camps organised each year were openly used for the practical purposes of ‘fattening up’ the children: “i used to go to this holiday camp, it was like the time when the children had to gain weight in the holidays, so they were weighed before, and were weighed after, and they recorded it, who was gaining more weight” (polish man, 2003). as the following account of gifts presented at state parties reveals, even within the context of shortages, memories of food can be both positive and evocative: when i was young i used to go to such parties, and the presents were sweets, or sometimes very small toys, and i remember there were always oranges there. i remember we never had an orange all year, but we always each of us had an orange for christmas. i remember ‘til now the scent of the orange, because when you opened this box it was usually the size of a shoebox, it was like a chocolate there, an orange, some nuts, some biscuits, all different things that you really didn’t have during the year. (polish woman, 2003) to conclude, food in socialist poland has to be contextualized through the wider culture of political control and reduced social autonomy. under the socialist regime the consumption of food could not escape political connotations, whether it was through official propaganda, or the need and desire to find an alternative to state provision. perhaps more significant, however, is the assertion that everyday life continued almost unhindered by the food mismanagement of the regime. even when something as fundamental as food supplies were threatened, life carried on. these interviews have demonstrated that choices in socialist poland, food orientated and otherwise, did not necessarily have to polarize between supporting the state or mobilizing against it. lives could be lived in two different spheres, through official institutions and, simultaneously, informal networks and contacts, perhaps facilitated by a comparatively relaxed political culture. patterns and experiences of food consumption offer an important example of this duality in everyday life, illuminating the course of daily interactions both within the official sphere of the state, and outside of it. references cited aulich, j. and sylvestrova, m. 1999, political posters in central and eastern europe 1945-95. manchester: manchester university press. crowley, d., 2000, warsaw’s shops: stalinism and the thaw, in reid, s.e. and crowley, d. (eds.), style and socialism: modernity and material culture in postwar eastern europe. oxford: berg, 2548. crowley, d. and reid, s., 2002, sites of everyday life in the eastern bloc, in reid, s.e. and crowley, d. (eds.), socialist spaces: sites of everyday life in the eastern bloc. oxford: berg, 1-22. davies, n. 1984. heart of europe: a short history of poland. oxford: oxford university press. drakulic, s., 1992, how we survived communism and even laughed. london: hutchinson. jen typewritten text 194 volume21, number 1 humphrey, c., 1995, creating a culture of disillusionment: consumption in moscow, a chronicle of changing times, in miller, d. (ed.), worlds apart: modernity through the prism of the local. london: routledge, 43-68. jancar, b.w., 1978, women under communism. baltimore: john hopkins university press. ledeneva, a.v., 1998, russia’s economy of favours: blat, networking and informal exchanges. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. scholliers, p., 2001, meals, food narratives and sentiments of belonging in past and present, in scholliers, p. (ed.), food, drink and identity: cooking, eating and drinking in europe since the middle ages. oxford: berg, 3-22. wedel, j., 1986, the private poland: an anthropological look at everyday life. new york: facts on file publications. jen typewritten text 195 microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 99 book review the red riviera kristen ghodsee (2005) durham and london: duke university press oriol pi-sunyer university of massachusetts, amherst while reviewing the red riviera i learned that bulgaria was slated to join the eu in about a year and this made me wonder what repercussions might be in store for ghodsee’s black sea resorts. what will happen as money and tourists flow eastward? tropes of ageless tranquility to the contrary, change has always formed part of the tourism picture, and it is hard to imagine a global business with comparable sensitivity to upheavals, natural or man-made. what is unusual is to find a full-length tourism monograph devoted to change and to the social price this has exacted. kristen ghodsee’s study is many things, but above all it is a detailed account of the bulgarian tourist sector during the era of state socialism and the country’s far-from-painless insertion into global capitalism. what gives the book ethnographic depth is the way that the social and personal costs of this shift are explained through the voices and stories of ghodsee’s informants. in the same manner, we come to understand how those at the receiving end of these tectonic changes learned to modulate their behavior and, in some cases, their attitude. as she writes in a first chapter aptly titled “shattered windows, broken lives,” no one predicted the events of 1989. “after almost half a century of cold war that had brought the world to the brink of total nuclear annihilation, the enemy just disappeared.” but, of course, the people remained, and this is part of their story. we learn a great deal about mechanisms of survival, particularly about the mobilization of networks and the deployment of cultural capital. the closer ghodsee comes to her informants, the clearer it becomes that this journey also chronicles the ethnographer’s effort to comprehend, cerebrally and psychologically, the impact of a massive collapse. the book consists of an introduction and five chapters. in chapters 1 and 2 the author discusses the specific historical circumstances surrounding the development of tourism, and how this permitted some women to acquire very considerable cultural capital. acquisition took a variety of forms, but the most valuable elements proved to be work experience, control of foreign languages, and degrees from prestigious universities. many of ghodsee’s informants accumulated these non-material assets under socialism and later managed to use them to their advantage when tourism emerged as one of the country’s most dynamic economic sectors. chapter 3 examines tourism policy under socialism and links it to marxist-leninist doctrine, particularly the definition of leisure as part of the productive process. a concrete result was general and substantial experience with vacations: before 1989, about half of bulgaria’s hotel capacity was reserved for domestic tourists. in chapter 4, ominously titled “to the wolves: tourism and economic transformation,” the focus shifts to a consideration of the price and pain of postsocialist restructuring and privatization, a process that lent itself to the emergence of mafias and shady “domestic investors.” chapter 5, “feminism-by-design” is less about tourism than about the role and place of feminism and foreign ngos in present-day bulgaria. these latter could be likened to colonial outposts, “distributorships for western ideas about gender.” the argument goes much deeper, an appeal to allow bulgarian women to define their own priorities, and chart their own ways. in brief, this is the composition of the book. two master themes articulate it: the changes in bulgarian society following the dismantling of socialism, and the role of women in the managerial and service structures of tourism before and after this change. by the measures in use at the time, the tourist industry worked quite well under socialism. it generated significant amounts of hard currency from westerners during the peak season, and at other times met the vacation needs of bulgarians and “fraternal visitors” from other socialist societies. the whole system, political and economic, of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 100 which the tourism sector formed a part, was predicated on a straightforward formula: the communist state owned everything and no one had access to private economic capital. the opposite was true of cultural capital. the communist state had, as one of its core ideological goals the “uplifting” of the workers and peasants, and the imparting of cultural capital evenly among the population. (p. 104) as part of its conceptual bargain the state provided access to education, credentials, and other skills. as ghodsee notes, as early as 1977, 22 percent of those between the ages of twenty and twenty-four were enrolled in institutions of higher learning—a percentage greater than that found in the uk, switzerland, or austria. these figures are relevant for understanding future developments. it has been argued that state socialism inevitably led to the infantilization of both men and women, but skills, education, and even substantial exposure to “bourgeois” or “high” culture, would seem to argue that this was not the whole story. it is certainly correct that the state was “paternalistic,” and no less true that many of the prestige jobs in socialist bulgaria went to men. tourism, however, was both a prestigious profession and one staffed virtually top to bottom by women. only as a result of such educational opportunities would the author have encountered a “remarkably qualified... waitress” with “the equivalent of a master’s degree in english philology” and knowledge of four languages besides her own. ghodsee very rightly insists that one should not globalize experience, male or female, but that gender certainly matters. while the vast majority of the population, male and female, was initially negatively impacted by privatization, some suffered more than others. in ghodsee’s words, here is where gender enters the argument in fascinating ways. cultural capital was allocated to socialist subjects along specific gendered lines. women like desi the waitress were concentrated in the universities, where they got a more general education, whereas men like desi’s husband were concentrated in the more technical colleges, where they learned skills specific to the communist command economy. (p. 107). the husband in question is now out of work because there is no demand for his engineering skills. unemployment is not the only problem: the whole moral order has changed drastically: every speeding ticket or other traffic violation can be avoided with a ‘special fee’ paid in cash directly to the officer. an envelope of banknotes will guarantee every application for a government license or permit. (p. 125). tourism is a relatively bright spot because the black sea beaches continue to attract visitors; it was also one of the first sectors to experience privatization, with mixed results. the red riviera is not a depressing book, even if it has been necessary to count the costs of a transition that many observers now believe was inevitable. it is basically an ethnography for our times, times when systems are put to the test and many people live in the midst of uncertainty. this does not only happen in former socialist states. allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text © 2006 kristen ghodsee all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 91 ideology of consumption in soviet union: from asceticism to the legitimating of consumer goods olga gurova european university at st. petersburg, russia this article explores mass discourse on consumption and official attitudes about consumer goods (mostly clothes) in the soviet union from 1917 up to the beginning of the 1980s. on the basis of media discourse analysis the historical epoch was split into four periods according to the changes of dominant frames in official ideology of consumption in soviet culture. in the 1917-20s, the frame of everyday asceticism and critics of pre-revolutionary patterns of consumption such as philistinism and conspicuous consumption dominated. in the second part of the 1930s the idea of "cultureness" ("kulturnost") was raised, and the possessing of material goods was rehabilitated. in the 1950-60s the imitation of western consumer patterns was critiqued by the soviet authorities. in the 1970s the idea of dematerialization (“razveschestvlenie”) of everyday life became of current importance. in this article it is demonstrated that the ideology of consumption was not consistent and homogeneous during the whole soviet era, it was changing as a result of political, cultural, economics and everyday life transformations. the concept of ideology in this research the concept of ideology is defined according to tradition, begun by karl marx and friedrich engels in their paper called "the german ideology" (1956a). they consider ideology as a set of ideas, which aims to promote and to preserve the existing social order. according to these philosophers, individuals who comprise the ruling class define the particular historical epoch, and the thought of the ruling class becomes dominant at a certain time. marx and engels do not use the category of "ideology" itself, they rather discuss "false consciousness" or "illusions", and use these categories in the meaning similar to that of ideology. so, ideology according to them can be considered as a set of illusory thoughts of the ruling class, which relate to the existing social order and to the ways of its organization. such illusions as a set of thoughts legitimize relations of domination/subordination in society, and those who are in a subordinate position usually passively accept them. the ideas of marx and engels inspired the other concepts of ideology, some of which were developed by scholars of the frankfurt school. for example, theodor adorno and max horkheimer examine ideology in the context of the critique of mass culture and the media (2002). they consider ideology as false consciousness and as a false view of social reality, which the establishment imposes upon people via the media, with the aim of preserving the existing social order and power relations. roland barthes, who also analyzed the media and mass culture, points out the link between ideology and myth, and considers ideology to be meanings which are ascribed to different cultural objects (clothes, images, words) by the mass media (barthes 2000). according to barthes, ideology uses the bodies of "innocent" cultural objects to give them particular meaning. similarly to marx, engels, adorno and horkheimer, barthes considers ideology to be a negative phenomenon, or a phenomenon with negative functions such as the representation of reality in a false way according to the will of the ruling class with the purpose of promoting the existing social order of domination and subordination. some concepts of ideology in sociology refuse to treat ideology as a false picture of social reality and understand it as a reality in itself. they also refuse to understand ideology as a part of public consciousness, considering it rather to be a collective unconsciousness. for example, louis althusser considers ideology in that manner, and defines it as a set of representations of social and cultural reality, a set of concepts, ideas, myths and images of reality, which form people’s understanding, estimating and experiencing the real conditions of their existence (althusser 2000). in this article, ideology will be treated as a set of dominant discourses, which contains ideas about consumerism, attitudes toward consumption and consumer practices represented in the soviet media. these discourses circulate through various forms of cultural production, or cultural artifacts (magazines, newspapers, tv, cinema, material objects), which promote particular ideas, values, beliefs and everyday practices. this paper focuses on the ideas and concepts which contain information about attitudes toward clothes, fashion, and everyday consumer practices in the soviet union from anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 92 1917 to the 1980s. these ideas and concepts are part of official discourse: on the one hand, they construct social reality, and, on the other hand, they represent it. four main periods in the ideology of consumption were defined on the basis of media discourse analysis. revolutionary doctrine of taste and everyday asceticism, the 1920s the revolution of 1917 brought essential political, social and cultural changes, and stimulated the reconstruction of everyday life. clothing and appearance were under the special care of the new authorities, and this attention can be considered as a component of a nation-building policy. the reconstruction of everyday life according to the revolutionary doctrine of taste was called "life-building" (zhiznestroenie). the revolutionary doctrine of taste was in many respects based on the theory of commodity fetishism offered by karl marx, and particularly on his statement that under capitalism the cult of consumer goods transforms the relationships between people into the relationships of things (marx & engels 1956b:593). marx critically mentions that material goods function as symbols of social status and prestige in capitalist society, and, hence, the social importance of a person is replaced with the social meaning of things. socialism, as compared to capitalism, is also aimed at the abundance of goods; however, in opposite to capitalism, the person should be free from the oppression of consumer goods. it means that s/he has to avoid estimating people on the basis of the material objects they possess (zhilina & frolova 1969:40). objects should be treated as friends to the person that allows overcoming the obsession with them (marx & engels 1956b:593). in post-revolutionary times, clothes, their quantity, qualities and attitudes toward them were paid special attention in the context of the reconstruction of everyday life. svetlana boym mentions that the category "thing" (vesch’) had negative connotations in revolutionary discourse (boym 1994). ideologists criticized things as a source of consumerism-like obsession. they actively condemned the individual desire to obtain more things than is necessary in the functional sense. to have a lot of things, especially those produced and obtained before the revolution, meant to be loyal to the reactionary past, and to the values of the old world. according to the revolutionary doctrine of taste, clothes had to be functional and rational, that is why the ideology of consumption in the 1920s can be called the ideology of everyday asceticism. material goods were not to be consumed for the sake of goods themselves. considering the use of things, if coziness was created for the sake of coziness itself, it was regarded as a sign of narrowmindedness and philistinism (zhilina & frolova 1969:41). after the revolution, attitudes toward material things assumed criticism of conspicuous consumption, of false beauty and their function to symbolize the social status. as one article in the journal rabotnitsa put it, "have you ever been in the bolshoy theatre? in the first row you can see ladies with make-up wearing furs. chinchilla, arctic fox and other expensive furs. this competition by furs, jewelries stems from prerevolutionary times. to show the richness and profits! before, in pre-revolutionary times people were regarded in this way" (lyn 1926:15). here, the author clearly communicates a critical attitude toward clothes and their function as a symbol of social status. according to revolutionary ideology, clothes were not supposed to differentiate between people, they were supposed to provide a person with warmth, protect them from the cold, but they were not supposed to represent wealth. this last fact was very important in a state where "everybody is equal" according to ideology. it was declared that “ the revolution had destroyed the privileges of chinchillas” (lyn 1926:15), therefore the competition by means of clothes was very much criticized. such idealistic attitudes supposed that in socialist society, the prices of clothes should be reasonable enough to make them accessible to everyone. it was mentioned that soviet fashion should be simple, convenient, easily made, cheap, available to working class women, and it was emphasized that clothes should meet the requirements of a primarily functional device (ob odezhdah 1924:30-31). this citation shows one more time all the mentioned requirements for clothes: they had to be functional; they were not supposed to differentiate between people. furthermore, it clearly shows a key distinction between "our" fashion and the fashion of others, in this case, those who represent pre-revolutionary bourgeois society: post-revolutionary discourse on fashion and taste was constructed around the opposition between revolutionary and pre-revolutionary bourgeois societies, where the latter was critiqued. one more noticeable thing is the use of the word fashion with quotation marks– "fashion" in media discourse of that time. this fact is important, because it helps to reconstruct the official view of fashion as something frivolous anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 93 and even worthless. in 1923 women who followed fashion were described in very derogatory terms, for example as "wretches" (negodnitsy): "ah, fashion addicted girls, you are wretches … working women spit on you from the seventh floor" (step. k-na 1927:30-31). according to the ideology, fashion addiction had to be excluded from the life style of working class women. the sarcastic tone of the statement above and the haughty attitude of working women toward fashion addicts, as well as the opposition between working women and fashion addicted girls shows the negative attitude to fashion, which was promoted in official culture of the 1920s. the functional attitude towards fashion and clothes was reflected in the experiments of soviet fashion designers aleksandra ekster, lubov’ popova, and varvara stepanova. with the aim of achieving the aesthetic transformation of everyday life according to soviet ideas, the designers put regime-friendly symbols such as sickles and hammers, tractors, screws, airplanes and pioneers on material objects such as fabrics or dishes. the quality of such prints and pictures, made on fabric (agittekstil’) was not very good; however, they were easily identified, and in this way they propagandized new social order in a simple way. such practices concerned with material objects promoted the socialization of one’s taste as well as symbolic attribution of material culture by the new authorities. the beauty of the body was under the influence of the idea of functionality as well as fashion; otherwise, beauty was criticized and regarded as a bourgeois phenomenon, a «deceit» or a «scab» on one’s body. one article, entitled "young working class girls build a new life" gives the following example of such attitudes: working class girls were asked whether they thought it was a good habit to use powder and other cosmetics. they provided the radical answer: "do not use any types of cosmetics. it spoils the face” (yunye 1924:13). finally, the girls decided: "when the cultural level of women increases, all cosmetics will be logically liquidated" (ilyina 1927:15-16). however, at least one type of beauty was legitimate in soviet culture, which is "natural beauty": as one author put it, "we, communists and komsomols, vote for a natural beauty, a graceful body. for the natural beauty, instead of an artificial one" (lyn 1926:15). natural beauty was opposed to artificial beauty, which was considered to be a form of cheating, because it hid the true essence of a person, or his or her inner personality. in contrast to the bourgeois artificial beauty, soviet beauty was associated with ideas of "naturalness" and "health" and not with cosmetics and makeup. thus, clothes and personal appearance came under special scrutiny between 1917-1920s. the main ideas which defined them were functionality and usefulness, instead of social differentiation or the demonstration of status. according to the marxist idea of materiality determining human consciousness, the reconstruction of everyday life had a significant political value and nation-building meaning in the soviet culture. the ideology of kulturnost’ and the legitimization of consumption in the 1930-50s by the middle of the 1930s, the ideology of consumption had significantly changed. sociologists and historians found reasons for such a transformation in the so-called "great retreat", which referred to the changes in ideological orientation from bolshevik era social experimentation to the conservative ideals of the stalin epoch (timasheff 1946). the reference to conservative ideals in this case is understood as the reassessment of bolshevik ideology of 1920s, of the anti-consumer approach to material goods, clothes and fashion, and the transition from aesthetic puritanism to tolerance toward elements of ex-bourgeois lifestyle with its glamour, luxury, coziness and pleasures. historian vera dunham offers an analytical explanation of such transformations (dunham 1976). she speaks about the so-called "the big deal", which was made between the authorities and the soviet middle class. during the stalin period, even in the most difficult times, the official power was supported not only by the means of terror. power was based on the secret contract between the party and soviet middle class. dunham supposes that the middle class required a stable life filled with consumer goods, and luxury and leisure in exchange for their support of the state policy. therefore, postrevolutionary vanguard experiments were stopped in the 1930s, and the life patterns and values of the russian educated class of mid-nineteenth century replaced the ideas of the radical bolshevists’ reconstruction of daily life (gronow 1997, timasheff 1946, volkov 2000). the speech of joseph stalin was in a sense a discursive marker of this "conservative turn". in 1935 stalin stated: "some people think that socialism can be strengthened by achieving the material equality of people on the basis of a poor life. it’s not true. this is the petty-bourgeois view of socialism. actually, socialism can win only on the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 94 basis of the high efficiency of labor, which is higher than the one under capitalism, and on the basis of the abundance of products and consumer goods, and on the basis of rich cultural life of each member of our society” (rech 1935:3-4). soviet discourse on consumption and everyday life at that time was structured in accordance with the three key categories resulting from the logic of this statement. first of them was "equality", the second one was "abundance", and the third one was "cultural life". stalin declared the orientation to the prosperous, cultural and cheerful life. this important structural 'turn" meant the ascendance of the ideology of "cultureness" (kulturnost’), or the orientation toward relatively high standards of individual consumption. in the context of this transformation of values, material goods were permitted to appear in the daily life of the soviet people. they even became subject to consumer worship. the category of "consumer" more and more often accompanied the category "soviet man" in mass media texts. such expressions as "this good will have a success in consumer market" or "according to the consumers needs" became popular in official discourse. negative connotations towards consumption started to disappear from the discourse during the second part of the 1930s. attitudes toward consumption were changing; the media, mostly newspapers, in the 1930s became a source of so-called "consumer pornography" as historians have put it (fitzpatrick 1999:90). articles about fashion shows, exhibitions of fabrics, and the quality of consumer goods appeared again and again. they gave information about shops, which were overfilled with different types of consumer goods, capable of satisfying the most exacting consumer tastes. "consumer pornography" was depicted as consumer goods, which expose themselves "for show" and, thus, construct the consumer as a fetishist. the following question can be raised: were all these consumer goods actually available for purchase in shops or was it just an illusion and discursive frame? such a question is valid indeed, because historians have proven that the consumer market was poor (osokina 1997). thus, consumer pornography as well as consumer fetishism emerged on the pages of soviet magazines and newspapers mostly, but not in real life. despite shortages, the idea of the soviet man as a consumer took its legitimate place in the mass discourse in the 1930s. in the context of the ideology of kulturnost’, a lot of consumer values such as coziness were rehabilitated. pleasures of a cozy home came again to life and became an echo of pre-revolutionary bourgeois life (buchli 2000). the rehabilitation of consumer goods in discourse called for the necessity of rethinking and rewriting the meanings ascribed to them before. philistinism and its values, which, according to official point of view, had already been liquidated, now were recreated in "secondary" petty-bourgeois culture of stalin’s times (boym 1994). british anthropologist victor buchli in his book "an archeology of socialism" gives an example on how the attitudes to sofa were changing according to marxist doctrine from the 1920s to the 1930s (buchli 2000:56-57). according to this doctrine, as it is known, material conditions define human consciousness. what is important, is not the object itself but the cultural interpretation of the material object. thus, for example, the sofa as a thing itself did not represent petty-bourgeois values. the value of a sofa is determined by its use: if the soviet worker uses a sofa to sleep on, this does not allow us to consider it to be a petty bourgeois object, as it was considered in the 1920s. buchli explained such a shift in interpretation of things as a transition from a denotative model of understanding things, which was characteristic of lenin’s culture, to the contextual model of stalin’s culture. in the first case it was easy to manipulate the values attributed to things. the focus on denotative attributes, and the judgments made on the basis of the difference between proletarian and a petty-bourgeois attitude to consumer goods were peculiarities of the first post-revolutionary decade. the shift to the contextual model provided a justification for further increasing the quantity of material objects. attitudes toward fashion were also changing: while in the 1920s, journals were filled with the critique of fashion, in the second half of the 1930s the ideology changed to a more positive way of talking about it: "our requirement of beauty in clothes is growing. my style is simple, but it is beautiful in my point of view. we can look beautiful, because we have taste and follow fashion" (rabonitsa 1937:15). these citations from the letters of girls from a village shows the emergence of such categories as "beauty", "style", "taste" or "fashion", and the positive way of talking about them became important, not only for city girls. the change in attitude toward fashion is also proven by the opening of fashion houses in cities with the aim anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 95 "to create the style of soviet costume" (yakub 1936:18-19). thus, in the 1930s, the discourse on consumption became more intensive than in the previous period, and what is more important, it gained a positive meaning. the reassessment of revolutionary values and the shift to "pettybourgeois" values such as coziness, beauty and comfort accompanied with the re-evaluation of the anti-consumer approach to material goods, and the shift from aesthetic purism to the tolerance toward "bourgeois life" with its glamour, luxury and pleasures. the ideology of soviet taste, 1950-60s changes in ideology during the second half of the twentieth century concerned the political, economic and social spheres as well as the cultural domain. this period was characterized by the intensification of cultural contacts between soviet russia and the west. the "turn to the west" was related to the twentieth congress of the communist party in 1956. beginning in the 1950s, economic and cultural networks between the soviet union and foreign countries started to be rebuilt. due to the international festival of youth and students, the moscow film festival and other international events such as international exhibitions, "crowds" of foreigners had the chance to come to russia. international contacts promoted cultural and commodity exchange, which was carried out at the level of state institutions as well as in daily life. the idea "everything is for the person" can be considered a principal discursive frame of the 1960s. thus, if in the 1930s, the lifestyle dominating the discourse was borrowed from the lifestyle of the pre-revolutionary educated class, the post-war period can be characterized by the domination of western values, at least, in relation to consumption. the soviet middle class consumed life-style patterns taken from post-war american middle class. what were those patterns like? those ideals included financial security, the "suburban dream" a private house in the suburbs of a city. in the ussr, people did not dream of private houses; the dream was rather to have a separate apartment instead of rooms in communal apartments (kommunalka). with the separate apartment, a soviet man could obtain not only a private space but also a place to keep their clothes. consumer goods became more available in shops, and these changes became possible due to the transformations of structural conditions as well as those of values: the possession of consumer goods in general was no longer looked upon negatively. on the contrary, a person who lived as an ascetic, in an empty apartment without any domestic appliances was considered to be strange (zhilina, frolova 1969:42). the dominant discursive concept, which determined the attitude to things in the 1960s, was the concept of soviet taste. to quote from some sources, "what is necessary today is taste" (mertsalova 1964:30). "making the taste is one of the most important forms of struggle for the rising of soviet socialist culture, for cultural growth of all soviet people" (zhukov 1954:159). the actualization of the concept of taste had at least two meanings. on the one hand, the category of taste supposed the rise of individualization in choosing clothes, so a soviet person was socialized to be conscious of their appearance. on the other hand, taste played an important role in regulating consumer behavior and choosing things to wear, no matter if they corresponded to soviet style or not. taste thus regulated the "irrational consumer behavior" of the soviet man (buchli 2000:139). taste formed a common symbolic space for different social groups in soviet culture. it functioned as a means for the symbolic design of the life style for such groups. it also functioned as a boundary for the whole nation, because those clothes soviet people wore or the furniture they had in their apartments had to represent the values of socialist culture according to official ideology. in this sense fashion played a role in nation building in soviet society. the question of how to recognize good taste and how to form it was arising regularly on the pages of newspapers and magazines: "what are the attributes of good taste?". the answer was: "good taste represents a combination of simplicity and a sense of proportion". "too much is bad" (kantor 1963:26) – this was a quintessence of the idea of soviet taste. the rise of the idea of soviet taste can be explained as a reaction to ideological competition with america and other so-called "bourgeois" countries, to the penetration of patterns of western culture and fashion, and to the distribution of consumer-type values in the daily life of soviet people. if we consider soviet discourse on fashion and clothes, it is possible to find out, that this discourse is built around the opposition of the soviet lifestyle versus bourgeois or capitalist lifestyle at this time. such discourse became more intense when western fashion appeared on the streets of soviet cities. the struggle to influence the taste of soviet youth was manifest in the campaign against the youth subculture styliagi. the well-known soviet writer lev anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 96 kassil’ wrote in 1958: why are our notorious 'styliagi' and so-called 'fify' so ridiculous? the problem is not that they strongly desire to follow western fashion, or that they are two years behind the times and look like parisian dandies looked last year… the critical point is not only in the length of jacket, in the extreme narrowness of the trousers or skirts or, on the contrary, on the vast breadth of their bell-bottom trousers! god save them… the point is not with their style. the problem is that such lad or girl tries to look like a foreigner on our streets. they have a special manner of speech with some «imported glamour», which they have adopted from the movies, which were not duplicated into russian language. they develop a special weakened gait as if they passed all the world around on the ribbed soles of their shoes, saw everything, that is why everything is boring for them, and they have got tired … good taste is a true, truthful taste. it calls everyone to be oneself, to remain honest in words and deeds (kassil’ 1958:2526). however, not everyone could take advantages of such opportunity to be in fashion: styliagi were declared “out of moral” and 'driven from the streets" as a result of the campaign against western style appearance. public opinion considered the desire to be different in clothes or appearance to be vulgar. in a.golybina's tendentious book "the art of dressing beautifully" which is really a discussion of the position of styliagi in soviet culture, the author states: "some soviet young boys and girls create a ridiculous style when they uncritically follow the last achievements of western fashions. instead of wearing clothes which are recommended by soviet fashion houses, they copy western style costumes, frequently exaggerating them" (golybina 1974:242-243). in the context of the critique of the western life style, the concept of soviet beauty in clothes was raised: the democracy of our public life does not leave any opportunity for tasteless luxury, senseless ornamentation, or the desire of making visible 'richness'. our society rejects such an understanding of 'beauty' which was born during the development of capitalist attitudes, when the word 'beautiful' meant 'expensive'. today it is necessary to distinguish between authentic beauty and artificial 'prettiness', and to struggle against petty-bourgeois worship for the expensive things that are often deprived of authentic beauty (kantor 1963:15). thus, in the official discourse of the 1950-60s, the concept of soviet taste was dominating. this frame was developed in the context of an ideological competition with america and the western life style as well as with vestiges of the previous stalin era "secondary philistinism". these features of everyday life in the 1950-60s became preconditions for the "dematerialization' campaign in the late soviet times. the ideology of de-materialization, 1970s according to many historians, from the end of the 1960s to the 1970s when leonid brezhnev was at the helm, the state made a socalled "little deal" with the soviet middle class. this deal was called "little" in opposition to "the big deal", proposed by vera dunham in her book in stalin’s time. what is understood by "the little deal", is the agreement between the ruling party and the middle class, which was made in the second part of the 1930s. according to dunham, the social order, which existed in those times, was supported not only by means of terror. the soviet middle class supported the authorities in exchange for financial security and a good life (dunham 1976). the meaning of this deal was to maintain the stability of the existing social order. the deal assumed that the authorities provided differential wages, legitimated the establishment and turned a blind eye toward the shadow economy and informal economic practices (millar 1985; buchli 2000). in the context of "the little deal" and the relative stabilization of life there were double standards in relation to consumer goods. on the one hand, the main frame in official discourse was the frame of "de-materialization". according to the idea of dematerialization, the individual in socialist society was free of commodity fetishism and not dependent on things. on the other hand, in his speech at the twenty-fifth party congress, leonid brezhnev spoke about the increased supply of consumer goods and the growth of the ideological, ethical and cultural consciousness of people in the soviet union. this statement allowed consumer goods to appear in the everyday life of soviet people because the negative connotations associated with the volume of consumer goods on shops’ shelves, one’s apartment or wardrobe were officially removed from official discourse, and shifted to personal attitudes. it is important to emphasize anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 97 that attention has been moved to the person's attitudes toward material objects: the person him/herself should be conscious about them. as a matter of fact, the aim of the soviet state was to create a socialist post-materialistic world in which there would be plenty of consumer goods, but they would not have any excessive significance for the person. the soviet person was not supposed to be obsessed with or adoring of things, rather, he should look upon them in a functional way. to use a semiotic interpretation, it was supposed that the material object as a signifier should be equal to the importance of the material object as signified. in the 1960s the motto "nothing superfluous" became popular; it corresponded to the ideology of dematerialization and was very actual in the context of the growth of materialistic attitudes, which was observed in those times. it resulted in a new wave of development of philistinism and consumerism. as a consequence of such trends, the state turned back to the promotion of the idea of dematerialization. however, the ideology of dematerialization started to disappear by the end of the 1970s, because of the visible contradiction between ideological statements and rising demand for consumer goods, especially those made outside the soviet union. between 1970s1980s, official discourse was full of contemporary-sounding categories such as "the culture of consumption" and "consumerism", and until the middle of the 1980s it was reoriented from socialist values to the values of new materialism of post-socialist russia. conclusion in this paper the question of the ideological context of the history of consumption in soviet culture was discussed. "ideology" was understood as a system of concepts, ideas, myths and images by means of which people understand, estimate and experience real conditions of their existence. such an approach to ideology allowed investigating a structural context of daily life of soviet people and a context of their attitudes toward things. on the basis of discourse analysis, four main stages were defined. in the 1917-20s, the ideology of everyday asceticism and revolutionary reorganization of life dominated. in the 1930s, the idea of kulturnost’ prevailed, which promoted rehabilitation of coziness and consumer values. in the 1950-60s, ideological opposition between soviet union and the west got special attention, which resulted in the development of the idea of soviet taste. the discourse of the 1970s was built around the frame of dematerialization. thus, in this article it was shown, that the ideology of consumption, which regulated the attitudes toward consumer goods, was not monolithic during the whole period, and the official attitudes toward clothes and consumption were different in different periods of soviet history. such transformations were complex combinations of changes in politics, economics, culture and daily life. references adorno t.w. and horkheimer m. 2002. dialectic of enlightenment. philosophical fragments. stanford: stanfor university press. althusser l. 2000. ideology interpellates individuals as subjects. in/ identity: a reader, p. du gay et al. (ed.) london: sage. p.31–38. barthes r. 2000. mythologies. london: vintage. boym s. 1994. common places. mythologies of everyday life in russia. cambridge: harvard university press. buchli v. 2000. an archeology of socialism. oxford. dunham v.s. 1976. in stalin’s time. middleclass values in soviet fiction. cambridge: cambridge university press. fitzpatrick s. 1999. everyday stalinism. ordinary life in extraordinary times: soviet russia in the 1930s. new york: oxford university press. golybina a. 1974. vkus i moda (taste and fashion). мoscow. gronow j. 1997. the sociology of taste. london, newyork: routledge. ilyna m. 1927. v chem krasota (what is beauty), rabotnitsa. № 37. с, 15–16. kantor k. 1963. kultura v bytu (culture in the byt). moscow, 1963, p. 26. kassil’ l. 1958. devushka so vkusom (girl who has taste), rabotnitsa. №3, p. 25-26. lyn i. 1926. v chem krasota (what is beauty), rabotnitsa. № 27. p. 15. marx k. and engels f. 1956a. nemetskaia ideologia (the german ideology). moscow: politizdat. marx k. and engels f. 1956b. iz rannih proizvedenii (from earlier works). moscow: politizdat. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 98 mertsalova m. 1964. chto cherezchur, to ploho (too much is too bad), rabotnitsa. № 11, p. 30. millar j. 1985. the little deal: brezhnev’s contribution to acquisition socialism, slavic review. №44, p. 694-706. ob odezhde i modah (on clothes and fashions), rabotnitsa. 1924. № 3, p. 30–31. osokina e. 1997. za fasadom stalinskogo izobilija: raspredelenie i rynok v snabzhenii naseleniia v gody industrializatsii, 1927-1941 (behind the façade of stalin’s abundance: distribution and market supply in times of industrialization, 1927–1941). мoscow: rosspen. rabotnitsa. 1937. № 5, p. 19. rech’ tovarischa stalina na pervom vsesouznom soveschanii stakhanovtsev (comrade stalin’s speech on the first all-soviet union meeting of stakhanovites), rabotnitsa. 1935. № 20, p. 3–4. step. k-na 1923. rabotnitsa. № 12, p. 36–37. timasheff n. 1946. the great retreat: the growth and decline of communism in russia. new york. volkov v. 2000. the concept of kulturnost': notes on the stalinist civilizing process" in stalinism: new directions. s. fitzpatrick (ed.). london, new york: routledge, p. 210-230. yakub e. 1936. o novom sovetskom kostume, rabotnitsa. № 1, p. 18–19. yunye rabotnitsy stroiat novyi byt (young workers woman build a new byt), rabotnitsa. 1924. № 2. p. 13. zhilina l., frolova t. 1969. problemy potreblenia i vospitania lichnosti (problems of consumption and socialization of personality). moscow. zhukov n. 1954. vospitanie vkusa. zametki hudozhnika (socialization of taste. artist’s notes), novyi mir. № 10, p. 159-179. allen typewritten text © 2006 olga gurova all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 53 equipment and changing outdoor culture in the czech republic tomáš kvasnička lancaster university the popularity of outdoor fashion contemplating the dense jungle of czech outdoor pursuits, active holiday destinations (around the country and worldwide) and the antithetical urban pavement of czech cities and towns, a well-trained eye can easily discern a rather strong inclination towards outdoor fashion. not only in the streets and on mountains, paths, crags and river banks, but also in transitional places – buses, trains, gas and railway stations, pubs and beer gardens –, a recognisable and ever-growing proportion of czechs are wearing fashion artefacts produced by the outdoor industry. trekking sandals, outdoor1 shorts or pants with a chequered motif on the knees, t-shirts with outdoor sports motifs and rucksacks give visual expression to large portions of czech bodies in summertime. as the season moves towards autumn and winter, these items are increasingly replaced by hiking boots and fleece or soft-shell2 jackets. in my experience, outdoor fashion seems to be more popular in the centre of prague than in the prime english outdoor honeypot town of ambleside in the lake district. an epitomic dress code of the czech outdoor enthusiast seems to be both solidifying and diffusing into general dressing habits. whether worn for pragmatic reasons or for the sake of "bourdieu’s distinction" (1984) or, most likely, a combination of both, the current scale of the use of outdoor equipment and garments is the most evident expression of the ongoing transformation of czech outdoor culture. this culture, nowadays labelled in the czech language by the englishsounding substantive outdoor, is not only changing its expressive face; the position of outdoor pursuits is in fact changing within the field of sporting activities as well as within society as a whole. above all, their popularity is growing. outdoor is hip nowadays.3 as a result, the ideologies, images and practices of outdoor pursuits which became established over the last 150 years are undergoing another wave of changes. both the change in and the growing popularity of outdoor in the czech republic could be interpreted as a consequence of a number of social processes. these range from the postsocialist transformations of time and work-leisure relations to a shift towards publicly promoted individualist and meritocratic values. the international success of outdoor activities has certainly contributed to the czech trend. at the one end of the spectrum general participation is fostered by the increasing popularity of active lifestyles. at the other end as voluntary risk-taking in extreme sports loses its former stigma (vanreusel & renson 1982; lyng 1990) and as vertigo imagery penetrates popular culture the “quest for adrenaline” is attracting more and more people (le breton 2000). the popularity of outdoor is a sign that the czech republic is undergoing what henning eichberg (1998) calls a "green wave". the pendulum of leisure preferences has swung towards nature-based activities. this article addresses the interconnections between czech outdoor practices, ideas and material culture. it outlines the evolution of the field from its really-existing-socialist4 to its postsocialist form. more specifically, i show that the core members of the czech outdoor sphere who catered to its material culture before 1989 initiated its postsocialist metamorphosis. they have played an integral role in setting the values and styles of both the reallyexisting-socialist and postsocialist forms of outdoor culture. the two historic forms of the outdoor sphere are often viewed as a dichotomous pair. yet in fact it was the skills generated by petty enthusiast producers of equipment during late really existing socialism that made possible full expression of the postsocialist characteristics of the outdoor field. equipment – its production, distribution and usage – played a symptomatic role in the metamorphosis of the czech culture of outdoor pursuits.5 i first briefly describe the evolution of the tradition of outdoor pursuits into outdoor with respect to the ideologies and values in play. i then examine the relationship between outdoor pursuits and equipment and discuss how this relates to developments that began within the czech outdoor sphere in the 1980s. during the late period of really existing socialism a specific mode of the culture of outdoor pursuits appeared. it resulted in quasiresistant, rather egalitarian and collective qualities, on the one hand, and practices of closed membership, on the other. these qualities are explained as a consequence of a specific economic mode of the provision of equipment through semi-legal, smallbatch bricolage-like production distributed on a semibarter basis, for the most part among acquaintances. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 54 the czech tradition of outdoor pursuits romanticism and patriotism the tradition of outdoor pursuits in the czech lands6 was conceived under the influence of romantism (sýkora 1986, novotný 1989) and the patriotic values of the nineteenth-century national awakening, which interpreted the czech landscape and countryside together with their inhabitants as an authentic source for the reestablishment of national values (cílek et. al. 2004). hence, the patriotic inclination towards outdoors developed relatively early on. it was originally enacted in the activities of the sokol movement. sokol, founded by czech patriots along the lines of the german turnverein, concentrated mainly on gymnastic exercises that aimed to strengthen the awakening czech nation. soon, however, sokol introduced marches, trips and outings to the countryside and places of historic or geographic importance as part of its programme (waic & kössl 1996; nolte 2003). simultaneously, inspired by the german romantic movement, a novel understanding of nature connected with direct sensual experience (erlebnis) started to spread through the czech lands. apart from fostering patriotism, it created an ideological basis for the emerging rambling and hiking movement termed turistika7 in the czech language. turistika was therefore conceived as physical locomotion which combined kinaesthetic enjoyment with cognitive cultural (e.g. patriotic) activities. czech-ness was expressed through “knowing your country” being in the landscape suffused with patriotic values. strengthened by direct competition with the hiking movement in neighbouring germanspeaking regions on the fringes of the czech lands (judson 2002), such a concept of outdoor pursuits gained dominance. it proved to be so influential that the emerging outdoor sports movement developed in tandem with it. on the one hand, although competitive and performance-based forms of cycletouring, kayak/whitewater touring, ski-touring and mountaineering8 emerged within the sporting clubs, unions and associations, these bodies organised the “softer” turistika version of outdoor pursuits collaterally with kčt 9 (sýkora 1986: 33-36). on the other hand, regardless of its doubts about the utility of sports for turistika (boháček 1938), the kčt organised many sporting (mainly kayak and skiing) competitions (walter 1938; teklý 1938; král 1988). czechoslovakia was created after world war one as a result of the treaty of versailles. in the circumstances of the first national state of czechs and slovaks, progressive industrialisation and rising living standards (regardless of economic crises), the kčt and sports organisations extended their activities and expanded in size. after all, during the inter-war years the “great outdoors” was so popular throughout europe that the term “outdoor craze” became common currency elsewhere (walker 1985). the system of outdoor activities (waic’s & kössl’s term, 1996) founded in the romantic tradition of appreciation of nature and patriotism was already established. most outdoor pursuits, and first and foremost turistika, were delimited by this framework. collectivism and performance after the 1948 communist putsch and again in 1957 the socialist regime made attempts to dissolve and reorganise the structure of official bodies responsible for outdoor pursuits. the system of outdoor activities, while it survived, was not only reshaped organisationally but also reframed ideologically. to a certain extent, the content of the activities was altered as well. during the 1950s and 1960s socialist turistika came to be defined as the most versatile and universal of the dimensions of the socialist system of physical exercise/education. partly as a concession to the regime, it was depicted as contributing greatly to the rearing of socialist man (khandl 1978:101-104) by ”focusing on the education process, enforcement of the rules of a united (physical) education system and a communist ideology” (král 1988: 37). in fact, turistika was the only socialist physical activity that developed a theory about its content (khandl 1985). it was defined as a combination of physical locomotion with a cultural educative component supposedly infused with socialist ideology. turistika was supposed to further socialist political ideology. yet this was decreasingly the case. especially after the defeat of the prague spring in 1968, the majority of czechs and slovaks stopped taking much interest in the political process. during the normalisation period the regime did indeed cleverly exploit the growing political apathy. all that was required of citizens were modest expressions of loyalty accompanied by small concessions to the truth (havel 1985; šiklová 1990). most people played the game to the extent demanded by the regime; yet at the same they withdrew into their private lives (možný 1991). the popularity of czech second housing (chataření), a highly cherished leisure of the normalisation period and the pure expression of a normalised quiet life, started to take off (bren 2002). participation in sports created a residual public sphere in which it was possible to engage without compromise, without making substantial concessions to the regime. overall, outdoor activities, whether organised or not, whether sport-, ramblingor camping-oriented, provided an anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 55 almost exclusive opportunity to retreat from the dull political reality of really existing socialism in a collective and associative manner (waic & kössl 1996). during the decades of state socialism outdoor pursuits increasingly came under competitionand performance-oriented influences. akin to the soviet model of turistika (see adělung 1951), long-distance marches and point-counting competitions started to be organised. tourists were classified according to their rambling/cycling/climbing performance and given prizes and badges (see kasalický 1956; hlaváček 1956; 1963; král 1988: 98-108). during the 1970s the new breed of lifestyle sports trickled into czechoslovakia: windsurfing, rafting, freestyle skiing, hang-gliding and paragliding began to gain popularity. in everyday understanding they provided the thrills and challenges missing in really-existingsocialist reality. these developments, together with the wave of technological innovations in equipment, led to a greater stress on sporting performance, technique and style. since then equipment has come to the fore. egalitarianism egalitarianism has a long and strong tradition in the czech lands (filipcová 1993: 39). it originated in the plebeian and egalitarian spirit of the nineteenth-century czech national renascence/awakening, which was anti-austrian (i.e. directed against the political institutions of the former austro-hungarian empire), anti-aristocratic and antielitist. due to these qualities, the whole way of life in the newly created post-wwi czechoslovakia had a considerably more plebeian and egalitarian character than in the rest of central europe, where longstanding traditions of ruling-class lifestyles existed (linhart 1988: 275-276). after world war two, the czechoslovak state-socialist regime utilised this antielitist and egalitarian spirit in political and economic measures. czechoslovakia became the country with the greatest levelling through income redistribution (machonin 1969, 1970). both labour and leisure were organised according to the soviet doctrine of collectivism. with respect to outdoor pursuits, romantic egalitarianism influenced both the spirit of the backto-nature movement and the attitudes of the czech bourgeoisie towards signifying their position through their use of leisure. this had contributed to the fact that in the first half of the 20th century the outdoor movement took the form of a toned-down mass movement. during state socialism, the egalitarian attitude supported by the official doctrine of collectivism continually expressed itself in outdoor activities. clubs offered a welcome leisure alternative and consequently attracted a wide membership. they managed to accumulate significant resources both through official state support for sports and through alternative channels. entry costs into activities were kept low, even in so-called middle-class sports, since significant portions of the equipment were the property of the clubs. the enthusiasts’ time was cheap because it was partially diverted from their occupational working hours. outdoor club culture was strong and thriving. it provided a much-needed alternative to the widespread withdrawal into family and private lives. in fact, as i have already noted, it could be claimed that sports and outdoor pursuits functioned as a residual non-politicised and non-policed public sphere in which people could socialise (see also riordan 1987: 390). the evolution of the outdoor individualism aside from the international influence of the growing world-wide interest in outdoor pursuits, the values and norms of czech outdoor pursuits contributed to their popularity in the latter stages of really existing socialism. during the late 1980s they provided a ground for the gradual evolution into the cluster of activities later labelled outdoor. nonetheless, during the 1990s the postsocialist transformation of czech society stressed a quite different quality individualism. outdoor activities are an embodied form of the romanticist idea of the individual wanting to experience and express novel sentiments. the notion that outdoor pursuits enrich the personality and cultivate virtues constitutes the moral axiom of outdoor cultures. hence they have always stressed the importance of individual virtues such as courage, perseverance and self-confidence. in czechoslovakia older-style outdoor activities certainly cultivated these individualist virtues, yet their ideological makeup was above all patriotic and collectivist. in contrast to this, newer forms of outdoor activities that appeared with the inflow of lifestyle sports are perceived as an expression of the individualist existential condition framed by risk, adventure, flow and speed (see lyng 1990; le breton 2000; midol & broyer 1995; csikszentmihalyi 1990). the individualist ethos of the czech postsocialist 1990s brought these values and the possibility of their active fostering to the forefront. participation in outdoor pursuits is becoming more and more individual-based and individualist-driven. this has been encouraged by a shift in the social organisation of time. the hurried pace of life makes anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 56 the leisure-time synchronisation of large numbers of people unimaginable. today, the evolving outdoor still exists under the influence of surviving notions of egalitarianism and collectivism. these qualities, however, collide with the neo-liberal ethos of the 1990s, which strongly favours individualism. this can be exemplified by the changing role of climbing clubs. the climbing elders used to initiate climbing novices into the practices and values within the structure of the club. while this still happens on rare occasions, most newcomers nowadays learn the activity in indoor centres. climbing-wise, they associate only with a small number of their peers. they organise into clubs mostly in order to obtain a climbing permit from čhs10 that grants them legal access to the crags. my description of the dynamics at work between these opposing values that have propelled a shift from the older form of outdoor pursuits towards outdoor would be incomplete without addressing the role played by equipment. thus, before i turn my attention towards the question of the influence of outdoor trade on the values of the culture of outdoor pursuits, i shall describe the relationship of its members to their equipment in more general terms. the relationship to equipment arguably, outdoor pursuits could not exist without equipment. the associated activities and sensations and the spaces in which they are undertaken would scarcely be accessible without it. moreover, aside from the thrilling or pleasurable kinaesthesis, the well-being and indeed the lives of the participants often depend on their equipment. in order to theorise this fundamental importance attached to equipment, i shall first make a short detour to a concept carried over from ecological psychology. i shall then go on to describe the trend towards commercialisation of the production and distribution of equipment. the paramount role played by equipment in outdoor pursuits can be theoretically approached by borrowing a concept from ecological psychology. indeed, the increasing aptness of this concept to the description of outdoor pursuits mirrors the evolution of ideas that ground outdoor practice. the body/mind dichotomy is dissolving. equipment, rather then patriotic ideology, enters as a mediating element. expressed in the relevant theoretical vocabulary, outdoor equipment provides affordances for outdoor pursuits. dissolving the persisting dualism of subject and object, the concept of affordances was originally developed as a means of describing the relationality of the individual’s perception and his/her direct environment (gibson 1986 [1979]). affordances establish what actions are possible and what the consequences of these actions are (heft 1989: 3). to put it more directly and in perceptual terms: [i]nformation (from perception of ambient arrays) specifies directly the possible actions in a particular setting: it specifies what an object or surface affords an actor, and what is perceived is therefore an “affordance” (michael and still 1992: 872) yet it was noted by harry heft that the concept could provide a valuable alternative theoretical vocabulary for describing the relationship between bodies and places. neither the environment nor the participant body serve as a sole affordance. they are both mediated by the technology of the equipment (see michael 2001a, 2001b, 1996: 150). precisely in this sense, outdoor equipment establishes what locomotive actions are possible in which spaces (taskscapes). the equipment is therefore not peripheral to the activities it is central to them. moreover, it could be argued that the move towards the individualist and existential framing of outdoor activities coincided with a shift in some people’s attention from the broad space of kinaesthetic involvement to the very interface between bodies and places. outdoor pursuit artefacts (gear, equipment and garments) can therefore play the role of an object which both expresses the existentialist relation of the outdoor enthusiast towards the activity and marks belonging to the culture of outdoor pursuits (see for example pfister 2001; mitchell 1983; donnelly & young 1988: 12930 for the latter). the use of outdoor equipment and garments has always oscillated between pragmatic and expressive consumption. such expressive consumption takes various forms: it is a combination of differing intensities of positional consumption and intensities of the existential relationship that outdoor participants have with the equipment they use. until the last quarter of the previous century, however, members of outdoor movements tended to wear uniform attire which was often seen as unaesthetic (see walker 1985; holt 1987). additionally, a wellworn outfit used to be a sign of a devoted outdoor enthusiast (mitchell 1983: 29, 123). aesthetically driven consumption was often discouraged. historically, outdoor enthusiasts have been persuaded to show off through their skills rather than their equipment (see pfister 2001: 92). nonetheless, the aesthetically conscious production and consumption of outdoor equipment and garments have a long tradition that intensified throughout the 1970s. the interchange with fashion has been influential (lipovetsky (2002 [1987]) and the influence on general dressing habits quite strong (parsons & rose anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 57 2003, with regard to fleece and waterproof tops, booth 1999 on surfing fashion). at the same time as elements of outdoor equipment and fashion penetrated the realm of outdoor activities, growing proliferation, specialisation and extremisation brought more exacting technological requirements. this, in turn, intensified the trend towards professionalisation of production and distribution. it is certainly true that in their humble beginnings the equipment and garments used in outdoor pursuits were adopted from gear produced for a variety of purposes, modified or possibly even self-produced. yet, as has been shown in the case of bicycles, skis and mountaineering equipment (ritchie 1999; pfister 2001; parsons & rose 2003), commercial production and distribution with the resulting birth of numerous manufacturing enterprises started relatively early on. outdoor pursuits, in common with many other enthusiast leisure cultures, can therefore be termed commodityintensive leisure (yoder 1997). from bricolage production to outdoor trade so far, i have attempted to present the values and ideologies that have played an important role in the evolution of the czech culture of outdoor pursuits. i have established the centrality of outdoor equipment to outdoor pursuits and pointed out the trend towards commercial production and distribution of increasingly technologised equipment. this should help me to address the peculiar fate of a commodityoriented subculture (see wheaton 2000 for the term) in really existing socialism. i will point to the general characteristics of the really-existing-socialist consumer society: time-extensiveness and the social organisation of ownership. these had consequences for the production and distribution of outdoor equipment through unofficial networks of core outdoor enthusiasts. the czechoslovakia of really existing socialism in the 1980s was a particular form of consumer and leisure society. as ivo možný observed: in the west consumer society was discussed eagerly; we on the other hand have in fact accomplished it [during state socialist czechoslovakia] (1991: 18). yet there was almost no possibility of accumulating financial capital during this era (other than through creeping expropriation of the state on the basis of networks of families and acquaintances). consequently, everything had to be consumed (možný 1991: 18). family acquaintances or friends had to be mobilised in order to acquire goods for consumption on semi-official markets because the official one was not able to supply them. the particular conditions of the centrally controlled czechoslovak economy encouraged the appearance of institutions that served as an alternative to the provision of commodities by the market (see musil 1992: 8-9; možný 1991; filipcová 1993). nepotism, familism, the grey market and networks of acquaintances were the means of distribution for scarce goods. equipment shopping was not immune: some outdoor equipment (such as bicycles, skis, hiking boots) had to be acquired through queuing or intensive networking on the official market. other categories of equipment were produced by sportsmen themselves. during the 1980s a number of outdoor enthusiasts started small-batch semi-legal manufacturing (followed by barter and semi-legal sales).11 such petty enthusiast production12 catered to substantial portions of equipment needs in the outdoor sphere. as climber josef šimůnek notes: 100% or maybe 99.99% of folks have had clothing which they made by themselves. the jackets were first cut off larysa, then made from bonekan13 the sleeping bags were stuffed with down around people’s bathrooms. everybody had to do it like this then. every climber who wanted to go to the mountains had to obtain kit. my friend bouda had made his own tent. i have to say that it was one of the best i have ever slept in; he made it in his kitchen. … most of the rucksacks were sewn at home. i had my ice axes, hammers and ice weaponry produced in an engineering factory; i had also my crampons' quickreleases made there.14 sometimes it took a couple of years to obtain all the necessary kit15, but since there was no other option people had to live with the situation and accept this peculiarity of socialist-era consumer society. the specific leisure society of really existing socialism cultivated a time-extensive orientation towards lifestyle and leisure. the means of acquiring consumption items were quite different from western societies. when outdoor sportsmen attempted to satisfy their consumption needs they had to rely on petty enthusiast production, mutual self-provision, barter and smuggling. the fact that obtaining any kind of outdoor kit meant investing a vast amount of time was not a problem for one simple reason: there was still plenty of time for the lifestyle because czechoslovakia was a time-extensive society. time simply mattered less. during the period after the prague spring, when the regime attempted to undo any reform changes and restore order, history seemed to stand still. people retreated from the political and public spheres and invested what they had saved in their families, circles of friends and leisure activities. the really-existing-socialist organisation of labour hampered professionalism and personal intiative at anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 58 work (havel 1985: 62). additionally, a rather relaxed stance grew up towards societal property. using state property as a personal resource became a favorite economic strategy. the maxim "whoever does not steal [from the state], steals from his/her family" gained broad acceptence. many people therefore managed to turn substantial portions of their wage labour time to their own advantage, hence saving their personal time resources. paradoxically, the overall effect of these circumstances contributed to the ease and speed with which the distribution of outdoor equipment after 1989 followed market principles. consumers were used to investing vast amounts of time and effort in obtaining goods to which they felt a special commitment. in a sense every outdoor enthusiast was an outdoor equipment expert by virtue of necessity. in the years after the revolution of 1989 people were still accustomed to sacrificing their time and knowledge on the purchase of equipment. they did not hesitate to: get on a blue [intercity line] bus and look for some [lady] who was making jackets… in the countryside … and they did this in july, even though they needed the jackets in winter.16 even today outdoor participants are still willing to make sacrifices to acquire their kit: normally [people buy equipment] with their surplus money after they secure food, a video-recorder and a car, but these people have totally different preferences. they sometimes literally starve just so they can buy hiking boots, and then when they have them, they start to save for their new gore-tex jacket.17 while the commitment to goods continued, it started to take on a different guise – one shaped by the rules of the consumer market. the economic practice of late really existing socialism was already replete with various forms of grey-market entrepreneurship. moreover, for the first time in decades the economic reforms of the late 1980s allowed small private entreprises to operate. the year 1989 was welcomed by many as an opportunity and challenge to become self-reliant and provide for themselves through their craftsmanship and tradesmanship. this spirit released the “vast capital of formerly un-used individual initiative” into startup entrepreneurial activities (večerník 1998: 25). former enthusiast producers realised that they possessed a store of know-how with regard to scarce products. under the new economic conditions it made sense to capitalise on this expertise. the rapid and enthusiastic establishment of the market for equipment and services relating to outdoor activities started to dissolve the old spirit of outdoor activities based on a feeling of community and camaraderie that had influenced the nature of social institutions in the outdoor sphere. the time-extensive collective forms of outdoor practice, weekend club excursions by bus, collective work on club-owned cottages and clubrooms and individual volunteer work started to seem less sensible in the new hurried and individualist times. on the other hand, the entrepreneurial drive mobilised the extensive knowhow of outdoor equipment producers, who had hitherto worked mostly under semi-legal and semiprivate conditions.18 stanislav šilhán, one of the many outdoor enthusiasts who had started his own business, remarked on post-revolutionary entrepreneurial enthusiasm: after the revolution [of 1989], many of the climbers thought that it was ideal to have their own small business. the childish assumption that a small store or company would run smoothly gave the feeling of freedom with which mountaineering/climbing is connected (šilhán in růžička 2001: 26) the views of many newly-born outdoor businessmen on the nature of the emerging outdoor equipment market might have been naive. however, only through the legalised entrepreneurship of producers and retailers could the almost endless demand for outdoor equipment whether of imported or of domestic production begin to be satisfied. many of the early outdoor trade participants note that they just shovelled products towards the tills, where customers were happy to pay for them. the czech female mountaineer soňa boštíková comments on this: in relation to retailing: …our friends who are running their own stores say that until 1997 it was totally incredible. it was a goldmine; there was such a hunger for any outdoor equipment goods on the czech market. … the stores started to spring up like mushrooms after rain… we know that in the period before 1997 people [were so eager to] shop for equipment because for so many years they had been unable to find such things in the stores.19 thus, the transition from the really-existingsocialist system of equipment provision to the current one of commodification was a smooth one. czech society in general happily indulged in "shopping away" the bottleneck of suppressed consumer aspirations. outdoor enthusiasts were no different. the commitment to equipment was reinforced by the increasing lack of spare time to waste on “hunting” for kit. market distribution of equipment both among consumers and producers or retailers was warmly welcomed. during this period the market principle, which enabled the shortage of equipment to be "consumed away", clearly showed its functional anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 59 superiority. arguably, this enabled the system of outdoor activities to acquire a robustness that could not have been achieved in the really-existing-socialist mode. yet the newly invented czech outdoor market would probably never have gained such broad popularity had it not also expressed the new individualist ethos of postsocialism. the outdoor would not currently be so pervasive if the intensified application of the principle of positional consumption did not allow for perfect expression of individual success. wearing outdoor clothes in the czech republic is hip nowadays: you can say that the outdoor image is cool (relaxed) and people like it when they look cool. so even a manager who buys them (outdoor clothes) wears a tshirt and pants and looks cool.20 as the latest phenomenon in the sphere of outdoor pursuits, outdoor is embedded in the traditions of czech outdoor activities. yet its growing preponderance is the result of its compatibility with the postsocialist individualist and meritocratic ethos. as georg simmel noted a hundred years ago in a similar context relating to the popularisation of alpine outdoor pursuits, the spirit of an era can leave its trace not only in the material world but also in the world of ideas ([1895] 1991: 96). during the 1990s the market showed itself to be a much more effective mechanism of equipment provision than really-existing-socialist semi-private production and distribulxition through networks of acquaintances. commodification ended the equipment shortage and thus enabled the full expression of outdoor, that is by its nature an equipment-intensive and commodity-oriented activity. while outdoor bears certain individualist qualities which make it suitable for enacting the postsocialist individualist ideology in sport, dialectically the hurried and individualist character of the present shapes the outdoor by its demands. under the pressure of commodification and the incorporation of the outdoor into the logic of consumer society, developments which were paradoxically promoted by core adherents of outdoor pursuits (turned outdoor entrepreneurs), its values are changing. czech outdoor is gradually being transformed into an individual, expenditure-intensive, commodified activity. conclusions after the revolution of 1989 petty enthusiast producers of equipment used their manufacturing and distribution know-how and started their own small businesses. the networks of acquaintances that constituted the core of the former outdoor culture created the basis for current outdoor trade. hence, a rather paradoxical situation arises inasmuch as those actors that are most deeply socialised into the older egalitarian collective form of the culture are at the same time prime actors in shifting its patterns towards commodified and semi-privatised, yet open leisure forms. it might seem that such a constellation would cause a conflict between oppositional residual communal qualities of the socialist era and the present expressive individualist drive behind the change in outdoor. yet it should be noted that enthusiast leisure cultures have quite a strong ability to negotiate between the stresses to which they are subject. consequently, they often embody contradictory values (bishop & hogget 1986: 129). as i have tried to show, the culture of outdoor pursuits is a historic product of mutually influencing practices, ideas and material culture. in response to various social processes, equipment became increasingly important to outdoor pursuits over recent decades. in the czech case it has played a decisive role in the evolution of outdoor out of the reallyexisting-socialist outdoor sphere. the state socialist history of bricolage equipment production and distribution has given way to the consumption of commodities. it would be a mistake, however, to deem outdoor pursuits less or more worthwhile because of this change. notes 1 the english-sounding term outdoor is currently used as a noun and adjective in the czech language. there is no correct english alternative that would cover all the dimensions of its content. when the word outdoor is employed in italics in this article, it signifies its nascent english-sounding use in the czech language. all other terms in italics are untranslated czech terms and names of organisations. 2 a fabric for the outmost layer of outdoor clothing that affords a compromise between comfort and water / wind resistance. 3 in this respect it might be interesting to compare the czech republic to other central european countries. according to a czech outdoor equipment tradesman, outdoor as the czechs practice it does not exist in poland or hungary (recorded interview with j. dupal, july 09, 2004, l. pravda march 15, 2006). this might be documented by the online wikipedia: there is no entry under “outdoor” in hungarian, in polish the entry refers to outdoor advertising, and in slovak there is no separate entry although the term is mentioned under the entry “turistika”. only the german and czech "wikis" have “outdoor” defined as a cluster of outdoor activities [accessed on 23.03.06 and 05.11.06]. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 60 4 in this article the term "really existing socialism" (and its adjective "really-existing-socialist") refers to the period between the 1970s and 1989. it acknowledges the fact that the state socialist regime did not fulfil many of its socialist ideals. yet it is used here for the purposes of periodisation rather than as a theoretical concept. in similar fashion, the term “postsocialism” refers to the period after 1989. 5 most of the empirical material presented here was gathered for my ma thesis that dealt with the phenomenon of czech outdoor in more general terms (kvasnička 2003). the main argument of this article and some supporting information are based on my phd work that attempts to dissect the “economy of outdoor equipment” during the rapid czech transformation. 6 this terms refers here to bohemia, moravia and part of silesia. 7 in this essay, the signified of the concept of turistika will be addressed by the term turistika (in italics). derivative terms touring and tourist (in italics) will also be used. 8 the czech terms for these activities are derivatives of turistika: cykloturistika, vodní turistika, lyžařská turistika and vysokohorská turistika. 9 kčt (the club of czech tourists, klub českých turistů), one of the oldest and strongest turistika bodies. 10 czech mountaineering union, český horolezecký svaz. 11 recorded interviews with p. polanecký, july 16, 2003 and s. boštíková & j. šimůnek, may 7, 2003. 12 i am using abercombie and longhurst’s term (1998) here. all enthusiast groups might be seen as producers of cultural artefacts (bishop and hogget 1986). petty producers are those enthusiasts who have professionalised their hobby activity by entering into a market 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for commodity intensive serious leisure. journal of leisure research (29)4:407-429. microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 2 living in truth: physics as a way of life pál nyíri and joana breidenbach, university of oxford © 2002 pal nyiri and joana breidenbach all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. what does it mean to live in truth? putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating. – milan kunderai the figure of the physicist has a particular fascination for the popular imagination, and the figure of the soviet physicist carries connotations of james bond-ian villainy or, for the more highbrow, a technocratic elite that benefited from a good education provided by an oppressive society. in this ethnographic study of a group of physicists centered around one of the leading figures of soviet theoretical physics, vladimir gribov (1930-1997), we wanted to explore the ethos and habitus of soviet scientists who worked at the cutting edge of quantum field theory, plasma physics, nuclear and elementary particle research at a time when mediocrity or decay (by international measures) ruled in many other fields of science, art, and industry.ii we argue that in the group we studied, the choice of physics as a profession was influenced less by the benefits of belonging to the technological elite in itself than by the belief that physics offered both a tolerable living and an officially sanctioned exemption from ideological makebelieve. the physicists of the group we studied neither lived in ivory towers nor were willing accomplices in the state’s nuclear project. instead they created a non-state social space in which lifestyle and values were substantially influenced by their belief in physical truth. window to freedom the fate of theoretical physicists of gribov’s immediate postwar generation was shaped by a totalitarian state that needed them in order to modernize and assert itself but was deeply suspicious of and hostile to their intellect – a state that offered them optimal working conditions, and at the same time wiretapped and killed them. physics was in the 20th century what biotechnology and computer science is to young people today. after the war, nuclear physics in particular attracted young people around the world as not just the key to powerful weapons and unlimited energy but also the answer to fundamental questions about the structure of the universe. until the late sixties, faith in progress was as strong a driving force in the soviet union as it was in the west, and physics was seen as the central means to that end. here in particular, countless talented young people studied it. why? to begin with, physics had a solid institutional basis. right after their takeover, the bolsheviks decided that physics, which had lagged far behind the west in imperial russia, should be at the cutting edge of scientific research. natural sciences were to revolutionize the forces of production. as civil war raged across the land in 1918, abram ioffe, wilhelm roentgen’s student in göttingen, opened the petrograd physico-technical institute, the first of many research institutes to be founded in the coming years. after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, physics in the soviet union gained additional momentum. a nuclear project was created, huge secret research installations and important “open” institutes sprang up across the country, and a generation of outstanding scientists matured and catapulted soviet physics to a premier position on the world stage.iii for instance, lev landau was the key figure among the leningrad theoreticians. inspired by the cosmopolitan scientific community he had experienced in niels bohr‘s milieu in copenhagen, he designed a system of physics education consisting of seminars, textbooks, and examinations. charismatic, provocative, and uncompromising, landau created a unique intellectual microclimate that attracted and strongly influenced many disciples and coworkers.iv when gribov’s generation entered university, the cold war had just started, and physicists were in urgent need. their salaries were increased fourfold, and ample research jen typewritten text 43 volume 20, number 2 funding made available (gorelik 2000:133-134). more physicists were inducted into the academy of sciences, which meant faster access to a bearable flat or a dacha and special food deliveries. yet salaries stagnated under khrushchev, and an average physicist in the seventies earned less than the bus driver that took him to his institute. families of physicists, like everyone else, spent considerable energy in order to satisfy their basic needs, not to mention obtaining luxuries. nevertheless, it was not just the euphoria for science and privileges that made young people study physics after world war ii; it was also the restrictive intellectual climate of the soviet union. the post-stalinist generation of physicists who had come of age in the last war years lived in a society that denied them opportunities to express the horrors they had experienced under stalin. to critically minded people physics offered a rare ideology-free niche in which one was officially allowed, even compelled, to search for the truth. in the thirties and forties, physics had faced attempts of ideological cleansing. relativity and quantum mechanics had to be defended from “philosophers’” accusations that they were “bourgeois” and “idealistic” theories. most of the key physicists in leningrad, moscow, and kharkov were arrested in the purges of 1938-39. in 1948, the threat of a massive attack on physics arose again, as plans were made for a congress at which leading physicists were to be denounced for ideological mistakes. if the congress had taken place, the fate of soviet physics may well have mirrored that of soviet genetics: stalin’s protégé, the agricultural “scientist” trofim lysenko had just succeeded in having genetics banned in the soviet union (gorelik 2000:162-163). two days before the physics congress was due to begin, however, it was cancelled. lavrentii beriia, the chief of the secret service, had learned just in time that work on the bomb was based on the “bourgeois” theories that were heading for damnation. according to an anecdote recorded by gorelik, stalin responded with the words, “let them go. we can always shoot them later.” landau called this the first case of nuclear deterrence in history.v despite such threats, ideology had little impact on physics. although textbook passages about the heisenberg uncertainty principle proclaimed that the principle’s interpretation should follow lenin’s thought, only a score of opportunists and mediocre scientists were actually impressed with the attacks on “idealism.” boris altshuler, today a professor of theoretical physics at princeton, recalls his decision to study physics in the sixties: “career choices in the soviet union were obviously limited. many careers either didn’t exist or offered no intellectual freedom. the natural sciences were the only profession that secured relative independence both in intellectual and economic terms.” consequently, many of those who had actually wanted to pursue other professions also ended up in physics. when lev okun, who today divides his time between the institute of theoretical and experimental physics (itep) in moscow and cern in geneva, finished secondary school in 1947, he wanted to study literature: my friend and i went to moscow university, to the department of philology…and we wanted to talk to the dean. but before that, a professor [appeared] in this position [bent forward], and he opened the door as if a god was there, and he was very frightened and humiliated.… and my friend and i looked at each other, and we turned back and never entered this building again.… i never saw anybody [in physics] who behaved like this. the desire for freedom played a role in prompting many of the most talented students to specialize in theoretical physics in their senior years of study. experimentalists were vulnerable to material conditions, whereas the only thing theoreticians needed to work was their brains. in the country in which they lived, this was a big advantage: landau performed the calculations for his theory of the shock wave in prison; later, physicists who did not find jobs in science could work at home. not until the seventies was the soviet union’s lag in computerization felt in theoretical physics. while work on projects related to bombs and nuclear power stations was expected, outside that obligation physicists enjoyed wideranging freedoms and little pressure to achieve quick results. boris altshuler describes the informal work style of theoreticians at the leningrad institute for nuclear physics in gatchina, where he worked between 1978 and 1989, in this way: we had no particular obligations. we didn’t have to teach, and we were basically free to decide what we wanted to work on. people in the u.s. can’t imagine that kind of freedom. here, you spend a lot of your time writing jen typewritten text 44 volume 20, number 2 applications for grants that you may or may not get. in leningrad, if you wanted to switch from solid-state to particle physics, no problem: all you had to do is perhaps move to another group. from the beginning, soviet ideology had supported a close relationship between research and industry. science was to serve the people, not be confined to ivory towers. yet in practice, the economy was unsuited to make use of most scientific innovations. nonetheless, arguing that advances in physics are often based on unexpected discoveries, physicists generally succeeded in convincing the leadership to let them conduct the research they wanted. gribov’s circle after the war, the exhausted soviet people experienced a few years that were free from the campaigns and nightly arrests of the thirties. soon, however, the respite was over, particularly for jews. in the twenties and early thirties, jews, along with the rest of the disenfranchised populations of russia – peasants and workers – gained access to education and upward mobility. some of landau’s students, including isaak pomeranchuk and leonid piatigorskii, came from shtetls. in 1937, however, stalin’s nationalities policy made a clean break with pluralism. later, war propaganda used russian nationalism to raise morale, and after the victory, it took on a new life as a tool of oppression. the campaign against “deference to western bourgeois science” (gorelik and kozhevnikov 1999) launched in 1947, was linked to the massive antisemitic campaigns of stalin’s last years. most of gribov’s university friends were convinced atheists, but according to their identity documents, they were jews. gerasim eliashberg, who belonged to the circle, notes that “in 195052, the cruelties of the late thirties appeared to repeat themselves. those who were older had already developed a system of survival…and were very closed to outsiders. but it took us freshmen a while to realize that we had to be, too … our little group enabled us to survive and to stay human.” [a]s a jew i wouldn’t get the permission to specialize in nuclear physics. so in my second year at the university i made a cynical decision. i went to the komsomol leader. after the guy had understood what it was about, he said: “there is this tito clique at the university. write an article unmasking them for the wall newspaper.” and i did. but then volodia gribov and his friend lionia altshuler came along…and said, “do something like this one more time and we won’t say hello to you again.” tania altshuler, later lionia’s wife and who today teaches physics in new jersey, was one of the friends. “we had a toast,” she recalls. “we used to say: ‘to it!’ and that stood for ‘to (stalin’s) kicking the bucket.’” gribov graduated from the university in 1953. the ministry of middle machine-building – soviet-speak for the ministry of nuclear energy – assigned him to teach at a school in the town of rzhev, kalinin province. but, in a textbook case of bureaucratic absurdity, he succeeded in exchanging that post for one at an evening school for workers in the rzhevka neighborhood of leningrad’s kalinin district. during the day, gribov went to seminars at the physicotechnical institute. “volodia was very good,” recalls karen ter-martirossian, today at itep, “and i encouraged him to sit for landau’s theoretical minimum,” a unique examination that only 43 candidates passed. landau was not just a top physicist who got the 1962 nobel prize for his theory of superconductivity and whose nine-volume course of theoretical physics remains a standard text worldwide; he was also an electrifying personality whose impulsive habitus stood in contrast with the conformism of soviet society. at the seminars, he was always ready for battle, initiating wild brainstorming sessions during which everyone interrupted and chased everyone else from the blackboard. often offensive and brusque, he demanded the kind of uncompromising search for truth from his students that drove his own quest. he preferred to work at home, on the couch in his study. lying there, he received fellow physicists, and when he tired of them he simply turned to the wall (see landau-drobantseva 1999). in the 1960s, gribov’s seminars became to the physicists of the “new” leningrad school what landau’s had been to his own generation. volodia anisovich, a physicist at lnpi, recalls his first meeting with gribov towards the end of his student years: there are some ten people and someone is talking, and i even understand what he is saying. suddenly a man with black hair and a sharp narrow face jumps up and says something, and i see that i understand nothing. i am even a bit irritated: everything has been fine, why did he have to jump up! suddenly a second man…jumps up, a bit older and starts arguing…volodia [gribov] and karen [termartirossian]. after this a total mess sets in. the jen typewritten text 45 volume 20, number 2 presenter disappears, volodia and karen shout at each other, pick up pieces of chalk, write something. at the end, volodia is left alone at the blackboard, explaining something.… i have understood nothing of the whole thing…so i go home. landau and gribov were alike in another way. both “felt” physics as a unity. yuri dokshitzer, today a professor at the université paris vi, describes gribov’s approach to physics in this way: he had a profound knowledge and skill in using mathematical methods in physics. however…what mattered most was…“a picture.” he would approach the problem from different angles, abstracting its essential features and illustrating them with the help of simplified models and analogues from different branches of physics. people unfamiliar with his style were often confused…some felt they were being cheated: a couple of chalk drawings, a strain of hand-waving arguments, and – here you are: that’s the answer? such listeners were not aware that…for gribov it went without saying that the receiving party is capable of reproducing the necessary mathematical calculations (dokshitzer 1998:x). “i am not smarter, i just think more,” gribov once said (dokshitzer 1998:x). while he became one of the most important theoretical physicists of the 20th century, particularly in the area of particle interactions at high energies, it was not only his knowledge of inorganic matter that impressed those who met him. he questioned conventionally convenient political views both in science and in politics. in the early sixties, gribov upset fellow soviet intellectuals with the question of whether it had not been lenin, rather than just stalin, who had perverted the socialist idea. a bit later he contradicted the consensus among the intelligentsia at the time that communism and capitalism would eventually converge, and he claimed that the united states had irreversibly overtaken the soviet union. as changing jobs was a difficult procedure requiring multiple permissions, a group of physicists would normally work together for many years. once one had a job, material rewards associated with performance were limited, there was no pressure to publish, and teachers did not expect quick results from their doctoral students. the work routine of theoreticians was based on intensive thinking (i.e., the couch) and continuous dialogue with colleagues (the seminar). problems presented at seminars were jointly scrutinized from all possible perspectives. ideas about “hot” topics were thus rapidly shared, and the thinking of each individual built on that of the many. theoreticians congregated around leaders who, in the post-war period, included landau, pomeranchuk, gribov, as well as igor tamm at the physics institute of the academy of sciences (fian) in moscow and nikolai bogoliubov, head of the joint institute for nuclear research (jinr) in dubna. senior scholars were relatively free to choose their students and co-workers, because apart from the informal discrimination of jewish applicants, there were no standard hiring criteria or procedures. and while scientific discussions took place in a completely egalitarian and communitarian spirit, with everyone allowed to criticize, students rarely questioned the scientific authority of their teachers. this mixture of authoritarian structure and communitarian devotion resulted in a critical mass of creative thinkers able to keep the debate at a consistently high level. physics as a lifestyle the leningrad physicists around gribov and the “moscow lenigradians” at the landau institute and itep shared more than a style of thinking and working: they also comprised communities of lifestyle and values. physics was for them far more than a profession: it was a vocation and a way of life. when they were not at the institute, the theoreticians worked at home, thinking, smoking, and talking: “making physics,” as gribov’s second wife julia nyiri, herself a physicist, called it. summer and winter schools of theoretical physics were orgies of undiluted physics-making. events of the leningrad physico-technical institute (later the lnpi) took place in the countryside holiday homes of the academy of sciences. yuri dokshitzer, whose father had made him suffer through a rigorous musical education, played songs by okudzhava, vysotskii, and galich on his guitar. alexei kaidalov from itep sang.vi the lifestyle of physics-making was punctuated by mountaineering and kayak trips and flavored by samizdat copies of poetry by mandelshtam, solzhenitsyn’s prose, or agatha christie and irving stone novels bought during trips to the west. physicists’ flats housed readings by actors and concerts by bards bulat okudzhava and vladimir vysotskii, members of an emerging jen typewritten text 46 volume 20, number 2 alternative to the totalitarian uniformity of culture. the struggle for truth intellectual exchanges were of a particular intensity. otherwise a mild man, gribov could be harsh when he felt that someone was not honestly trying to get an answer. intense curiosity and belief in the meaningfulness of one’s work, enjoyment of the creative process for its own sake, and a sensual pleasure in being able to express a piece of physical reality in a clear form – all these may be particularly characteristic of theoretical physicists anywhere. but western physicists too found the intellectual intensity of the exchanges that went on in the leningrad school fascinating. partly, the explanation lay in the oppressive nature of soviet society, which gave any niche culture a particular intensity. whereas any questioning of an official statement to the outside was dangerous, discussions in the “inner circle” were endless and passionate. “how could brains seized by fear and ideological pressure at the same time think independently and creatively in their professional fields? apparently the matter is that work was salvation, a sort of internal emigration,” writes evgenii feinberg (1999:69). in addition, there were simply fewer material distractions. as vitalii ginzburg put it, “work and science was everything to us: a perfume and even a narcotic” (shapiro 2001). moreover, the search for truth in physics carried a broader meaning. it was the defense of a moral stand against falsehood that could not be publicly displayed in other domains of soviet life. independently of each other, both evgenii feinberg and gerasim eliashberg said the same sentence: “physics was the only way to maintain one’s human integrity.” a third physicist, yurii petrov, a close friend of gribov’s, emphasized: “numbers cannot lie.” the rationality and objectivity of “pure science” offered natural scientists a way out of irrationality and ideological license. on the one hand, the political views of leaders of schools in physics influenced their students and co-workers. on the other hand, they attracted students and co-workers with similar views. until the mid-thirties, landau had held revolutionary views. he appreciated the soviet government’s promotion of rationality and science and its anti-clericalism. as late as in 1935, he published an article in izvestiia arguing that socialism was better suited for the development of science than capitalism (gorelik 1995:200-202). but a year in prison in 1938 changed landau from supporter to opponent. ordered to calculate energy transfer processes important for the making of the bomb, he worked on them only because he was forced to. as he received stalin prizes in 1949 and 1953 and the title “hero of socialist labor” in 1954, he called himself a “learned slave” (ilizarov 1999) and advised friends to “use all your strength to avoid getting into the thick of the nuclear business” (gorelik 2000:239-241). as soon as stalin was dead, landau announced: “he is gone, i am no longer afraid of him. and i am not going to work on this [the hydrogen bomb] any more” (khalatnikov 1994). such views were highly unusual at a time when most physicists were not only convinced that the world needed a nuclear counterweight to the united states, but were also more generally entertaining new hopes of a “true” socialism under khrushchev (feinberg 1999:52-53, shapiro 2001, gorelik 2000:239241). andrei sakharov, one of the fathers of the h-bomb, wrote: “on the one hand i was excited by the possibility to make excellent physics. on the other hand i…was innerly convinced that this work was necessary.… i felt that i was a soldier in this scientific-technological [war]” (sakharov 1996[1990]:142). to some extent, then, the trauma that began in 1937 had brought about a change in the relative political positions of the two great physical schools vis-à-vis the regime. the “moscow school” that had originated from tamm’s teacher leonid mandelshtam, as well as other moscow-based scholarly traditions identified with such names as vernadskii, papaleksi, and andronov, included many scientists who had been part of the pre-bolshevik liberal elite (holloway 1994:30). these scholars had met the soviet regime with apprehension (e.g. andreev 1998:248-286), while those of the ioffe school were finally enjoying the social mobility they had been deprived of in imperial russia and were not too concerned with the demise of the old cultural elite. after the stalinist purges, however, the ex-leftists of the ioffe school became irreconcilable critics of the regime. as evgenii feinberg recalls, he and his fian colleagues igor tamm, vitalii ginzburg, and andrei sakharov, like most soviet citizens, cried at the news of stalin’s death and continued to see him as a great statesman until khrushchev’s speech at the twentieth congress of the cpsu. for landau and many of his students, by contrast, jen typewritten text 47 volume 20, number 2 march 5, 1953 brought the granting of a cherished wish. to say that landau’s circle was more open in opposing the regime than tamm’s and was therefore treated worse would be too simplistic. all of the “moscow” physicists just mentioned had lost relatives in the purges and had come close to being arrested themselves, and they fully appreciated how physics as a discipline had nearly escaped extinction. members of both schools had courageously defended mandelshtam and other physicists under attack before stalin’s death (gorelik 1995:248). leontovich, a mandelshtam student, was opposed to work on the bomb (gorelik 1995:242); tamm spearheaded the unseating of lysenko from his throne as the tsar of biological sciences, thus making possible the rehabilitation of genetics (ilizarov 1998); and sakharov became the best-known dissident of the soviet union. nonetheless, the landau circle and the apparat developed an irreconcilable distrust of each other. although landau never risked public confrontation after 1938, his outrageously antisoviet private statements earned him a systematic effort to isolate him from foreign scientists and reduce his domestic influence (ilizarov 1999). the mistrust that characterized the relations between the power holders and the scientists they needed but whose work they could hardly control remained unchanged until the perestroika. ella ryndina, an experimental physicist and landau’s niece, always had a pillow on the telephone to muffle the sounds picked up by the bug. everyone knew to speak openly only during outdoors walks. one physicist who was giving an enthusiastic account of his trip to the west, added, for the ears of the spies: “but to think of it that they have to live under capitalism!”vii as division head in gatchina, gribov should actually have been a party member. but he was reluctant to join, and among the 70 physicists on his staff there were just four or five members. this was unusual, even taking into account that physicists generally had very low party membership rates, that rates among theoreticians were even lower than among experimentalists, and that itep in moscow and lnpi in leningrad had lower rates than other research institutes. only some 10% of around 2,000 scientists in gatchina were in the party. so low were these rates that some of the leaders themselves grew concerned. lev okun recalls that pomeranchuk, who was not a party member, repeatedly tried to persuade him to join. “he said, ‘look, there are no party members in our department, that’s bad, and for the benefit of others could you do this?’ and i would tell him, ‘please go ahead, and i will follow you.’” viii within the division, there was an intuitive understanding. “pomeranchuk,” ioffe recalls, “used to come to my room and ask, ‘have you read this morning’s pravda?’ ‘yes,’ i would say. ‘aha! and did you notice anything in particular?’ ‘the article about the meeting of the party committee in this and this province.’ ‘aha! what about it?’ ‘the order in which the members of the politburo were listed.’ ‘aha!’ and that was the end of the conversation. both of us understood that the order of the names pointed to some shift in the power configuration in the party leadership.” ix few soviet physicists became open dissidents like andrei sakharov or yuri orlov. “most of us were dissidents at heart and in the kitchen, but public resistance was more infrequent than with the biologists, who were being hindered in their work,” says ilya roizen, a student of vitalii ginzburg.x very few physicists were directly confronted with the choice between professional renown and human integrity that every artist or academic in the humanities had to face. they admired sakharov’s courage but saw that political engagement barred one from the practice of really good science. even theoreticians, who continued thinking under arrest and in camps, could not produce consequential work under persecution. “i understood that i had to choose between doing science and fighting with the kgb and the government.… i thought that my first obligation is to do physics as well as i can,” says okun. there were subtle ways to resist. every now and then physicists would be requested to sign a state-sponsored letter of solidarity or protest. those who did not want to often disappeared for a few days. when the president of the academy of sciences, the physicist a. p. aleksandrov, was asked to criticize sakharov in an official letter, he had supposedly gone on an extended drinking binge and was “unfortunately” unavailable. the three fortresses not all theoretical physicists had strained ties with the powerholders. because the moscow school around tamm, which was seen as more conciliatory than landau’s circle, certainly did not enjoy the trust of officials, jen typewritten text 48 volume 20, number 2 nikolai bogoliubov, a pioneer in the theory of superconductivity and in field theory, was built up as the official great soviet theoretician beginning in the fifties. while relations between the landau and tamm schools were generally good, those between landau and bogoliubov deteriorated in the sixties to such an extent that pomeranchuk spoke of three fortresses of soviet theoretical physics: dubna, fian, and the alliance of itep in moscow, and the physico-technical institute in leningrad (later the leningrad institute of nuclear physics).xi landau appreciated bogoliubov’s own work but reacted sharply to his scientific compromises and political maneuvers.xii bogoliubov surrounded himself with mediocre but politicaly opportune physicists. allegations that they were unfairly hoarding titles and occupying key positions spread rapidly. bogoliubov himself was, in addition to his position in dubna, director of the institute for theoretical physics in kiev, academician secretary of the division of mathematics of the academy of sciences, and division head at the academy’s institute for mathematics. who ended up in which school was often a matter of serendipity, but physicists educated in one school often found it hard to feel at home in the other. in contrast to the egalitarian style of landau’s school, the bogoliubov school was strongly hierarchical. volodia anisovich came to the protvino accelerator, which was run by logunov, a bogoliubov student and member of the party’s central committee, from the physico-technical institute in leningrad. he recalls his outrage over one incident: when i moved to protvino i thought that all this talk about the difference was nonsense…but after about 10 years i firmly decided that i didn’t want to be in protvino. i discovered, at a seminar, an…error in a work coauthored by logunov…. somehow the seminar immediately ended…. next day, logunov called me into his huge office.… everything was civil, i explained to him, he understood. and immediately i was given a huge bonus by the standards of the times. my jaw dropped.… my…idea was converted into a sum of money. contacts with the west soviet physicists suffered from the limits on contacts with their western colleagues. until the mid-thirties, they had regularly published in foreign journals, but then contacts became sparser and broke down almost completely during world war ii, a state that lasted until the mid-fifties. with the exception of that period, soviet physicists did have access to the main periodicals such as physics review, but even the short delay with which they arrived could be frustrating. “in the early ’50s we used to calculate how much we are delayed by because of being separated from world science,”says novozhilov.xiii contacts became possible once again in 1959, the first time a rochester conference, a major physics meeting, took place in the ussr. soviet physicists were gradually allowed to go abroad again. but some remained nevyiezdnye, a term that could roughly be rendered as “unabroadable.” gribov, for example, was not allowed to go abroad for a long time despite the fact that several conferences in the west were devoted to the “gribov copies” in the seventies.xiv “in 1968, i wanted to invite alexei anselm from gribov’s team to london,” recalls the british physicist elliot leader. “the usual reply to invitations was: ‘thank you very much for inviting professor x. unfortunately, he is unable to go, but we will send professor y.’ that was someone politically correct.” the first time that everyone invited to a major conference in the west was actually allowed to attend was in 1988. but, says lev okun, “maybe the lack of communication with the west was in a certain sense a blessing, because it gave originality to what we did. many serious things were first done in russia, like regge calculus by volodia [gribov], cp violation by itep people and landau. these were trend-setting to the west.” three soviet physics journals were translated into english in the united states; but by the time the scientific community was convinced of the correctness an idea and all officials had approved it, the same idea may already have appeared in the west. with the collapse of the soviet union, the symbiosis of theoretical physicists and totalitarian regime ended. military budgets shrank; in the academy’s institutes, cables fall from ceilings and paint from the walls. one can no longer live on an institute salary; there is no money for periodicals; and under president putin, publishing is once again regulated. in the unlit corridors of itep, and on the wooded alleys of chernogolovka and gatchina, one still encounters physicists of the old guard, but most of them are visitors from abroad. gribov, too, spent most of the time before his death in 1997 in such places as princeton and bonn. jen typewritten text 49 volume 20, number 2 discussion the theoretical physicists we discussed in this paper created ethical norms, lifestyles, and discourses that were different from the soviet mainstream. on the outside, they adapted to the logics of ideological license and of the economy of scarcity, but inside of the community, that logic was ridiculed and its adherents ostracized. there the ruling values were those of the disinterested intellectual, of the contextindependent beauty of the physical world, and of the egalitarian community of an intellectual elite. today, former members of that community, both those still in russia and those now abroad, express a strong nostalgia for the lifestyle and intellectual intensity of soviet physics. but their nostalgia is not couched in the terms of nostalgia encountered in other realms of post-soviet society. on the contrary, they emphasize the exceptional nature of their group, maintaining that it had been able to live by the values it had due to a unique confluence of circumstances and personal choices. the totalitarian environment was neither necessary nor sufficient to foster “intellectual cooperation (…) imagination and hard work in close alliance by high standards of honesty, directness, and concern for truth,” in john passmore’s description of science at its best.xv outside physics, other sciences were not spared overt political intervention in the choice of research problems. the external limits placed on freedom by the system, the misery of dictatorship, and missing alternative intellectual and sensual distractions were only some factors among many that determined the intensity of intellectual interaction within the community of theoretical physicists described here. indeed, the elitist-egalitarian nature of science, the role of the “central figures” and the lifestyle of physics in western europe in the first half of the 20th century was little different from the soviet union. but post-war science in the west was forced to adapt to democratic institutions, lost its positivistic appeal, and had to compete with other professions for the recruitment of the best brains. scientists, whose enterprise was elitist by nature, had to accept the constraints of democratic institutions that then dealt with their ideas. the dynamics of research were impacted by the time constraints and election terms of various university and granting bodies that wanted to see results in the short term. the soviet union, meanwhile, maintained a system of top physics research that was free of these constraints. paradoxically, beyond defense needs, problem choice in physics was free from obvious interference and the need to show “results.” and, partly due to the lack of credibility of public social scientists, natural scientists could maintain their reputation as the engineers of human progress much longer. references andreev, a. f., ed.-in-chief. 1998. kapitsa, tamm, semenov v ocherkakh i pis’makh [kapitza, tamm, semenov in essays and letters]. moscow: vagrius – priroda. dokshitzer, yu. l. 1998. “v. n. gribov, 1930-1997,” in a. v. smilga, ed., continuous advances in qcd 1998. singapore: world scientific, pp. xv-xxi. elkana, yehuda. 1972. “the epistemology of opposition to science,” in scientists and their responsibility. william r. shea and beat sitter, eds. pp. 171-188. canton, mass.: watson publishing international. feinberg, e. l. 1999. epokha i lichnost’. fiziki. (time and personality. physicists.) moscow: nauka. gorelik, gennadij e. 1995. “meine antisowjetische tätigkeit”: russische physiker unter stalin. braunschweig and wiesbaden: vieweg. gorelik, gennadii. 2000. andrei sakharov: nauka i svoboda [science and freedom]. moscow and izhevsk: rkhd. gorelik, gennady e., and victor y. frenkel. 1993. matvei petrovich bronstein and the soviet theoretical physics in the thirties. basle: birkhaeuser. gorelik, g. e., and a. b. kozhevnikov. 1999. “chto spaslo sovetskuiu fiziku ot lysenkovaniia” [what saved soviet physics from lysenkoisation?] http://www.nature.ru:8609/db/msg.html?mid=1178346&uri=i ndex.html hall, karl. 1999. purely practical revolutionaries: a history of stalinist theoretical physics. ph. d. dissertation, history of science, harvard university. holloway, david. 1994. stalin and the bomb: the soviet union and atomic energry 1939-1956. new haven, conn.: yale university press. ilizarov, s. s. 1998. “partapparat protiv tamma” [the party apparat against tamm], in kapitsa, tamm, semenov v ocherkakh i pis’makh. a. f. andreev, ed. pp. 339-350. moscow: vagrius – priroda. 1999. “‘ya nizveden do urovnya ‘uchenovo raba’…’ (atomnyi proyekt – landau –tsk kpss)” [“i am being degraded to the level of a ‘learned slave’…” (the nuclear project – landau – the central committee of the cpsu), in proceedings of the international symposium science and society: history of the soviet atomic project (40s and 50s), v. 2, ye. p. velikhov, editor-in-chief. pp. 245-254. moscow: izdat. jen typewritten text 50 volume 20, number 2 izvestiia tsk kpss. 1991. “lev landau: god v tiur’me” [lev landau: a year in prison] , (3)134-157. khalatnikov, i. m. 1989. landau : the physicist and the man: recollections of l d landau. new york: pergamon press. _______. 1994. “ego net, ia ego bol’she ne boius. i ia bol’she zanimatsia etim delom ne budu” [he is gone, i am no longer afraid of him. and i am not going to work on this any more], khimiia i zhiz’, 1, 37-40. kundera, milan. 1985. the unbearable lightness of being. michael henry hein, trans. london: faber and faber. landau-drobantseva, kora. 1999. akademik landau: kak my zhili [academician landau: the way we lived]. moscow: zakharov-ast. livanova, a. 1980. landau : a great physicist and teacher. oxford: pergamon press. sakharov, a. d. 1996. vospominaniya [reminiscences] v. 1. moscow: prava cheloveka, 1996. [new york: izdatel’stvo imeni chekhova, 1990] shapiro, vladimir. 2001. “neogranichennaya otvetstvennost’” [unlimited liability], okna (israel), 12 april 2001, 14-15. notes i the unbearable lightness of being. translated by michael henry heim. london: faber and faber, 1985, p. 109. ii the paper rests chiefly on some 20 interviews with ex-soviet theoretical physicists in russia, the united states, germany, and france. we would particularly like to thank julia nyíri, semion gershtein, liudmila kolesnikova, ilia roizen, evgenii feinberg, and yurii petrov for not only talking to us, but also providing us with further contacts and resource material. iii several studies have been written on the early history of soviet physics and on the soviet nuclear project, including, in addition to those in russian, gorelik and frenkel 1993, gorelik 1995, holloway 1994, hall 1999. iv see e.g. khalatnikov 1989, livanova 1980, also gorelik 1995. v see gorelik 2000:162-164. vi interview with a. belavin, chernogolovka, 1 june 2001. vii interview with s. s. gershtein, moscow, june 2001. viii interview with l. okun, moscow, 3 june 2001. ix interview with b. l. ioffe, moscow, june 2001. x interview with ilya roizen, moscow, june 2001. xi interview with ya. i. azimov, st. petersburg, 7 may 2001. xii interview with s. s. gershtein, moscow, june 2001. xiii interview with yu. v. novozhilov. st. petersburg, 7 may 2001. xiv l. n. lipatov, energiia-impul’s 9-10 (june) 1998 (novosibirsk). xv science and its critics, 1972, quoted in yehuda elkana, “the epistemology of opposition to science,”in william r. shea and beat sitter, eds., scientists and their responsibility. watson publishing international: 1989, pp. 171-188. jen typewritten text 51 guest editors’ notes: irena šumi and hannah starman institute for ethnic studies, ljubljana this compilation of eleven short articles is the work of the members of the open society institute sponsored hesp reset project entitled postcolony and postsocialism1 contexts in social scientific writing and teaching. our work on the project began in august 2003, and will continue until the end of september 2006. it brings together a group of nineteen junior university teachers from ten countries in southeastern europe (albania, bosnia, bulgaria, croatia, kosova, macedonia, romania, serbia, and slovenia) and one from moldova, and a group of seven resource persons from poland, slovenia, the united kingdom and the united states. we would like to first express our gratitude to the editors of the aeer for hosting us, and to thank all the contributors for their fine work. the articles present various themes that our project members jointly study and debate in order to reach critical, and hopefully also novel perspectives on how social sciences analyze and interpret the realities of life in what is commonly categorized as postcolony and postsocialism contexts. in doing so, the authors featured in this issue of aeer either address the re-thinking exercise directly (buchowski, šumi, vacarescu, wildcat) or choose to do so through critical presentations of their own research. this in itself takes quite a span: from war trauma and misogyny in post-war bosnia 1 as a group of scholars, we decided to use the noun form of these words wherever possible for reasons of analytical correctness: once you name something postcolonial or postsocialist, you tag it, while e.g. ‘postsocialism context’ refers to a political reality that does not necessarily assume that phenomena under investigation are per se ‘postsocialist.’ in other words, the adjective form describes the situation as objective whereas the noun expresses the distance from such objectifying practices. (husanović); the rather convulsive state of affairs in romology in europe and slovenia (janko-spreizer); the ideologies of nation and its demographic perseverance in slovenia (knežević-hočevar); perceptions of literary postmodernism in contemporary romania (mihalache); dilemmas of reconciliation of cultural and ethnic difference in macedonia (muhić); philosophical views on romanian folklore and its representations inside and outside the romanian public (popoveniuc); to antisemitism in the ten new members/ candidate states of the european union (starman). what may not be readily observable from the pieces presented is to what degree we have, within our project, profited from excercising our rather ambitious goal of paralleling rather than directly comparing two vast (and ever increasing) bodies of social scientific production on postcolony and postsocialism respectivelly. as we wrote in our project’s plan (http://www.inv.si/hesp/project.htm), the production of both post-colony and post-socialism social science can ... be seen as analogous and structurally comparable for a number of reasons: both base their respective problem fields in a singular, global political process; both organise their perspective, and position their points of view, along a clear, although differently conceptualised, contrast between (western) metropolises and (non-western) peripheries; both employ, and produce, generalisations on a global scale. we hope that the issue provides a pleasant and informative read. jen typewritten text 4 microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 44 contentious discourses surrounding supermarkets in post-soviet bishkek aisalkyn botoeva central european university, kyrgyzstan the 24th of march 2005 will probably remain in kyrgyzstan inhabitants’ memories as the most shocking day in the history of the capital city. by various estimations, around 10,000 people went to the main square to protest against the president of 15 years and against the results of the recently held parliamentary elections. the protest started with a peaceful demonstration, but rapidly took the form of an angry crowd breaking into the government house. right after the attack on the government house, the president was reported to have disappeared from the building, and later from the country. he has not shown himself to the public since that day. foreign and local journalists later reported that he settled in moscow with his family. the opposition that came into power after the attack on the government house demanded that he resign from the position of the presidency. the night of the march 24th was marked by unprecedented events, including the looting of the biggest supermarkets. interestingly, it was specifically supermarkets, which became the main target of massive lootings, along with the destruction and burning of some of the buildings. mass media sources variously depicted the events of the 24th of march: some viewed these events as a revolution that succeeded in overthrowing akaev’s regime; others were claiming that the massive protest and lootings showed the poor level of education and political awareness of kyrgyzstani citizens. the massive upheaval challenged people’s minds and was food for gossip and various assumptions on political issues, the lootings, and their organizers. prior to starting my fieldwork, i had already been exposed to these talks through virtual forums and news on the internet. talks, reflections, and assumptions seemed to get tossed around from one extreme to the other. some assumed that the lootings were organized by the oppositional forces, while others claimed that it was akaev’s initiative in order to make black pr for the opposition. the lootings made me look at the economic institution of supermarkets from another angle—their politicized essence. this paper focuses on discourses surrounding new shopping places in bishkek. on the one hand, according to liberals and government officials, supermarkets represent the height of freedom, civilization and choice (fleetwood 2005). on the other side of the discourse are scholars who argue that “fascination with consumption reinforces social inequalities and encourages social disappointment with political changes” (zentai nd:2). the empirical findings of my research present similar contentious debates regarding bishkek supermarkets: (1) they brought civilization and modernization into the infrastructure of the city; but (2) they reveal growing social inequality. supermarkets were depicted as advantageous and beneficial by mass media sources, politicians and later by bishkek habitants. along with their civilizing mission, bishkek supermarkets turned out to symbolize social inequality, and also demonstrate to the wide poor public that they are excluded from the circles of more affluent citizens through their shopping experiences. bishkek supermarkets are indeed extensively politicized in nature, i.e. most of them are largely monopolized by the clique of politicians. and the economic success of politicians involved in the institutionalization of supermarkets has provoked contentious public debate. massive lootings of supermarkets in the aftermath of the political upheaval in bishkek in march 2005 became evidence of widespread negative public perception. these contestations suggest that new economic institutions in the postsocialist world raise large political disputes. the fieldwork for this paper was conducted in april 2005, two weeks after the political upheaval and massive lootings. the research was based on qualitative methods, and engaged collection of newspaper articles (1990-2005) and in-depth interviews with ten respondents. establishment of supermarkets it is important to clarify what kind of shopping places are considered to be supermarkets in bishkek. similar to shopping malls as discussed by miller (1998), supermarkets can be distinguished from other kinds of trading places by several characteristics. first of all, supermarkets occupy separate buildings with various sections. large anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 45 supermarkets such as beta, goin, dordoi plaza and silkway, which this work will discuss the most, are large, three to four story buildings. bishkek supermarkets present a curious case as they resemble western department stores or malls, due to their division into sections that are rented by autonomous retailers. for example, dordoi plaza and silkway, which are owned by local entrepreneurs, are divided into many sections, so that each retailer has multiple roles crossing the whole prolific range of traders as described by humphrey (as cited in verdery 1999:7), that of supplier, manager, and seller. they are also similar to malls because they function not only as shopping places, but also as places for entertainment. thus, plaza hosts a cafe and a playground for kids, while silkway is a venue for billiard rooms, a cinema, and a restaurant. another similar trait of plaza and silkway to western-style malls is in their circuit of ownership. when describing the work of malls in britain, miller et al claimed that the managerial circuit consisted of three main sets of actors. the first is the owners, usually property companies or institutional investors. the second set of actors is the managers, who are usually acting as agents of the owners. then, finally, there are the retailers leasing space in malls (1998:42). in contrast to silkway and plaza, two other big supermarkets, beta and goin, owned by turkish and chinese companies respectively, operate as one single unit, with their managerial staff and workers employed by the administration and their commodities imported from turkey and china. all four shopping centres were indeed novelties, as they presented commodities and services never experienced before by soviet people. fancy men’s and women’s clothes, advanced technical equipment, office and home furniture, beauty care products, and food of all kinds were all in one place! soviet shops never had such conveniences as security guards, public bathrooms, cafes, and billiard and cinema rooms. these all seemed a wonderland for people who were used to a deficiency of goods and traditional long lines at soviet shops. regardless of their similarity to western-style malls and department stores in their operation, these shopping places continue to be peculiarly called supermarkets by both owners and bishkek habitants. following the general pattern of public reference, i shall use the word ‘supermarket’ in regard to these novel shopping places. according to the report of local newspaper akipress (2000, no.5), in 1997 the first supermarket “europe” opened its doors “to affluent ambassadors, employees of international organizations and representatives of highest echelons of the nomenclatura” (ibid:24). as indicated in akipress, “europe” was built with the credit of usd 400,000 from the european bank for reconstruction and development. this supermarket was the first to introduce a large variety of imported goods, discount cards for regular customers, and high-level services. “europe,” however, did not attain wide popularity among habitants of bishkek, since its consumer niche mainly consisted of wealthy foreigners and kyrgyz elite. in 1998, the second supermarket “eridan” was opened and ready to deliver novel commodities and services. according to akipress (1998, no.1718:7), this supermarket was owned by daniyar usenov—deputy of the legislative assembly and a member of the tax committee under the assembly. “eridan” became the main competitor for “europe,” and they both became successful in the market, as their yearly trade turnover in 1998 equaled usd 2 million (akipress 2000, no.5:3). two years after its opening, “eridan” was sold by usenov to his colleague—the deputy baibolov (vecherniy bishkek, 5th of january, 1999). after the emergence of the above-mentioned two supermarkets, such shopping places mushroomed at a rapid pace. by the year 2005, there were around 20 small and big supermarkets registered in the national statistical committee. i would argue that the mushrooming of supermarkets was related, but not restricted to, expanding foreign direct investment. foreign direct investment and the establishment of a free market economy with its inseparable constituents: liberalization, stabilization, and privatisation, named “the holy trinity of policies” (rutland, 2001:5), paved the way for the emergence of malls and supermarkets in bishkek. the year 2000 was marked by the opening of the biggest supermarket in bishkek—beta-stores, owned by a turkish company. it was opened in a reconstructed formerly state-owned building, located downtown, on the main avenue of the city, chui. according to the store’s web-site,1 beta-stores can be identified as a hypermarket due to its retail trade area of 4,000 square meters, warehouses of 400 square meters, parking area of 1,000 square meters and other facilities. the opening ceremony of beta-stores attained wide public interest and media coverage. the most well known newspaper, vecherniy bishkek, called this supermarket an “oasis situated in the heart of the capital” (vecherniy bishkek 2000, july 10:3). in line with zentai’s (nd:3) remark about malls in budapest, supermarkets in bishkek became anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 46 of “primary importance in public policy agenda.” thus, opening ceremonies of supermarkets were usually accompanied by speeches from prominent political figures. the opening of beta-stores, for instance, was honored by the visits of the wellknown kyrgyz writer and the ambassador of kyrgyzstan in belgium, chingiz aitmatov, along with the president of kyrgyzstan, askar akaev. vechernyi bishkek described this pompous event as follows, “aitmatov noted the high significance of the supermarket, and said, ‘trade has always been an indicator of civilization. today we are adopting the new level of civilization with the help of the owner of beta-stores and his faithful commitment to the development of trade in kyrgyzstan’” (vechernyi bishkek 2000, july 10:3). while aitmatov’s words seem to be aimed at rationalizing the state’s cooperation with foreign entrepreneurs, president akaev’s words were too illusory. he called the owner of the supermarket a “wizard whose magic is revealed through this supermarket, which resembles a palace” (vechernyi bishkek, 2000, july 10:3). the active participation of prominent politicians in the opening ceremonies does not solely indicate the primary economic importance that was given to supermarkets. it also shows that supermarkets were not “without political dimension” (matejowsky 2002). bishkek supermarkets were viewed as enterprises worth large investments. moreover, some politicians gained material profits through the establishment of supermarkets. the growing number of these shopping places demonstrated the success of the regime and those in power by showing the economic development of the city. besides their ownership of most private enterprises, politicians have also become key figures in the whole process of the modernization of cities. humphrey’s (2002) findings provide a good illustration of key roles played by political figures in the economic sector. politicians are involved in the reconstruction of cities through their regulations of market principles. while discussing the development of moscow as a metropolitan city, humphrey emphasizes the crucial role of state officials in city planning. she describes the role of the city mayor iurii luzhkov as having the authority to make decisions on the transformation of the city, where much attention is paid to the development of expensive shops and vast malls. according to humphrey, “the showpiece shopping complexes are not banished to the outskirts but consciously constructed to make harmonious ensembles with potent architectural symbols of russian history in the centre” (humphrey 2002:196). in line with humphrey’s observations in moscow, kyrgyz politicians became the key figures in the whole process of implementing a market economy—the number one issue in the public policy agenda. those in power thus monopolized the newly emerging commercial sphere that played a crucial role in developing the country’s economy. the active participation of politicians in the establishment of supermarkets and wide mass media coverage should have played their role in the formation of public’s attitude towards these economic institutions. but what are these attitudes? how do kyrgyzstani citizens view supermarkets? these questions are to be addressed in the following sections. supermarkets symbolizing civilization and modernization of the city the centre of bishkek city has been transformed in its appearance in the last several years. the appearance of bigger supermarkets made its significant contribution to these changes. walking down the main avenue of chui, one’s eyes will unintentionally be caught on the several story building of dordoi plaza shopping centre. bright colors, big windows and modern façades of the building look attractive in front of greyish blocks of houses that remain from the soviet era. at the entrance of the building flashy posters advertise the latest movies on the screen. having entered the building, customers bump into several guys in dark blue uniforms, ceremoniously holding their hands on portable radio transmitters—these are security guards. the first floor of dordoi plaza is occupied by many small boutiques selling bourgeois, lancome, avon cosmetics, levi’s jeans and glitzy jewellery. standing on the escalator that leads to the second floor, one gets to hear children’s voices coming from the playground, which is usually packed, since parents from the neighbouring blocks bring their kids regardless of their shopping intentions. thus, the playground that is meant to keep kids busy while their parents are shopping has in fact become a place of entertainment for young visitors. the second floor hosts many other boutiques with brand clothes, collections of french wine, furs and coats. there is also a little café, the menu of which mostly includes “european” cuisine. music playing on the background and the well-thought design of dordoi plaza’s interior add to all the pleasures of consumers who are considered to satisfy their exigent shopping desires here. the growing number of supermarkets in the city seems to prove their increasing popularity among anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 47 people. however, from interviews and daily observations, i can say that supermarkets have not become conventional shopping places for the majority of bishkek habitants yet. despite this fact, respondents considered supermarkets to be carriers of “civilization” and “modernization” processes. according to the respondents, the buildings of supermarkets indicate urbanization of the city, development of small and medium businesses and economic growth. in the aftermath of the political upheaval in march and lootings of supermarkets, forums and chats were flourishing with hot issues. members were expressing their concerns about lootings and destructions of the buildings, complaining that the city has become more like a “big village now.” i find parallels between these concerns and chodak’s (1973:256) idea that “modernization is a special, important instance of the development of societies, an instance where conscientious efforts are made to achieve higher chosen standards” (as cited in sztompka 1993:132). most of the respondents, did indeed believe that supermarkets became indicators of modernization and were steps towards higher standards in the sphere of trade. moreover, in one of his interviews former president akaev blamed marauders for “killing the motor engine of the capital city’s economy through the destruction of small and medium businesses.”2 this statement demonstrates that supermarkets became the main pillars in the sphere of developing private business that was believed to make the city more “modern” and “civilized.” aisulu, a 48-year old doctor, while sharing her first experience of visiting a bishkek supermarket said it brought only joy and delight: “i’d been to the us and had a clear idea of what a supermarket is like. when i first went to ‘eridan’… i was so … i could not help admiring that we finally have the same thing as abroad. and also when we were young students, we had trips to socialist countries like poland and czechoslovakia, and there we used to see their shops. we always had a dream of having such shops here, in our country.” aisulu also expressed her preference for supermarkets, due to the “aesthetic pleasure from their interiors and the nice packaging of goods.” when amina, a 21-year old officemanager, was asked about the supermarkets’ functions, she said they became meeting points and also places to hang around for many youngsters. for amina, the advantages were also in services, fresh food products, and in the customer’s right to return defective goods. as customers, respondents pointed out some practicalities, such as clean, comfortable, and safe environments that guarantee high quality service, a large variety and control over commodities, and chances to return deficient goods. these were the main criteria upon which they based their judgments. judgments have also been based on the comparison with local bazaars, which definitely lacked all the notions of “civilized consumption.” it could be seen from the interviews that the public in bishkek generally considers supermarkets to be beneficial. according to respondents, the budget of the government benefits from the supermarkets because of the taxes. interviewees also admitted a contribution of supermarkets to the architectural design of the city. they all considered supermarkets to boost the image of bishkek, thus indicating urbanization and gradual modernization processes. kerim, a 48-year old scientist at the national academy of sciences, noted that “supermarkets are the next stage of civilization that trade succeeded to achieve.” he considered the emergence and establishment of supermarkets as a natural way of economic development. the claim about supermarkets bringing in the notion of civilization and modernity were further shared by most of the respondents, regardless of their shopping behaviour: “just look at those beautiful buildings of big supermarkets like plaza and beta… don’t they show a civilization?” says aisulu. amina concurs that, “supermarkets are the step towards modernity of our little mountainous country” (amina, 21-year old female). tatiana, a 47 year-old worker at city hall, comments that, “even though i personally do not visit supermarkets often, i think they are the image of our city. they present a new culture of consumption. because people do not merely consume… but they get to adopt a new culture… somewhat urban culture.” doolosbek, a 53-year old director of the local cinema, expressed his hope that there will be even more supermarkets in the city, “thus creating normal competitive conditions among them.” according to this respondent, the further development of supermarkets will signify a fullfledged market economy, which in turn makes the country prosper. he highlighted that supermarkets are the image of the city, because of their modern architecture and their contribution to the economic development. drawing from the results of the interviews it is possible to distinguish the use-value of supermarkets. (table 1 presents the use-value i.e., their practicalities.) the consideration of the usevalues is important in explaining respondents’ anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 48 appreciation of supermarkets regardless of their shopping experiences. the use-values of supermarkets may serve as indicators of urbanization, capitalism and democratisation, which all in turn are described as components of the modernization process by sztompka (1993:128). besides the practicalities, respondents also mentioned a new consumer culture that is being cultivated by supermarkets. as aisulu said, “it turned out that shopping may be fun!” if in soviet times, shopping was mostly stressful and tiring, now it has become fun, exciting, amusing process. places of consumption do not only serve a function of delivering food products, clothes and other necessary goods as they used to before, but they also have various other functions, entertainment being the main one. special discounts and small presents to customers aim at stimulating customers to purchase more and more. these all dramatically differ from what state-owned, soviet shops could propose. respondents often referred to “western standards” and “the west” while talking about civilization and modernization processes. oftentimes, respondents pointed at specific material objects sold in supermarkets, which in their understanding were “western.” melis, a 42 year-old government employee notes, “in the 1980s one of our colleagues traveled to some capitalist country. and guess what he brought to everyone of us at work as small gifts—disposable plastic cups! i still remember those red, plastic cups that we perceived as items of luxury. and now, i can buy tons of such disposable cups at any supermarket here!” melis’ comments are indicative of fehervary’s (2002:369) discussion of postsocialist hungarian citizens’ perception of western goods, “[they] became displaced metonyms of another world, as the opposition between the state-socialist system and the capitalist system became embodied in their products.” gradually, all the products that were novel to bishkek shoppers came to be associated with the west. the availability of such commodities in local supermarkets was the indicator of westernization, i.e. civilization and modernization. as sztompka (1993:132) states, historical definitions of modernization are synonymous with westernization or americanization. as an example he quotes shmuel eisenstadt, “historically, modernization is the process of change towards those types of social, economic and political systems that have developed in western europe and north america…” (1966b:1 as cited in sztompka 1993:132). thus, client-oriented supermarkets as products of the market economy and capitalism have been largely accepted as carriers of modernization process. however, the “civilizing mission” of supermarkets did not turn out to be the end result. respondent’s appreciation of supermarkets turned out to be only one side of the coin. bishkek supermarkets are a good case for illustrating how new shopping places, when implemented in a postsoviet milieu, may raise contentious debates. i further suggest that the contentious nature of supermarkets has been largely influenced by their politicisation. the findings showed that the association of supermarkets with the wealthy west and civilization is engaged with other associations, such as social inequality. western splendor in the middle of a glaring poverty it turns out that only a small percentage of the population can enjoy the fruits of capitalism that are being represented by “civilized” and “modern” supermarkets. despite the general consensus of respondents about the advantages of supermarkets, not all of them considered these stores as attainable. some respondents did not hide the fact that their irregular shopping in supermarkets and preference for bazaars are conditioned by their low material status. 55-year old dmitryi, who works at the ministry of culture, confessed that he does not shop in supermarkets due to significantly higher prices. he tried to rationalize his preference of bazaars over supermarkets, stating that customers perhaps prefer supermarkets out of mere prestige: “if one drives a mercedes, then it’s not proper to go and shop at the bazaar. whereas for normal people like us there is not much difference in commodities sold in supermarkets and bazaars, you know. they [the supermarkets] take the same thing as in bazaars, wrap it nicely, and put up a tag with a price as long as a telephone number.” dmitryi’s opinion regarding higher prices in supermarkets was shared by other respondents. according to aisulu, bishkek supermarkets are still not affordable for many social strata. she pointed out several reasons for inaccessibility of supermarkets: “the living standard of people is very low, and prices in supermarkets are higher than in bazaars anyway, because at supermarkets the cost of the rent and other services is included in the price of a commodity.” irregular supermarket shopper, mariya (43year old, economist), noted the disadvantages of supermarkets as follows, “supermarkets are simply anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 49 not for our lives. they are more for the rich.” her first experience of shopping in a supermarket was in 1997, when she went with her husband “just to see what they’ve got.” as she later said: “we were astonished by the variety of wines and chocolates there, and we even bought something, since it was new year’s eve. but frankly, i didn’t want to go back to supermarkets after my first experience.” what discouraged mariya from visiting supermarkets after her first experience were the high prices. to follow the general reflections of the interviewees, it can be concluded that the main disadvantages that raise most public concern are high prices unaffordable for most social groups. the results of interviews show that bishkek supermarkets still are far from diffusion and extension from serving luxury highend niches, to being mass merchandisers. in this way, they become as aisulu notes, an “inducement of a beautiful life.” according to the national statistics committee’s data, the average wage of a person in the republic for the year 2005 equalled 2569 soms per month (approximately usd 62). it should be noted that the average salaries provided by national statistics committee represent the range of wages in governmental organizations. in the business sector, and also in international nonprofit organizations workers may earn much more, starting from usd 100 to usd 1500 and more. but the percentage of workers in these sectors is very small, approximately 15% of the population. according to the report of governmental committee on migration and labor in kyrgyzstan, in february 2006 there were 101,000 registered unemployed people in the country. at the same time, the average price for a pair of jeans in local supermarkets is 1500 soms (approximately usd 36), average price for a pair of shoes is 2000 soms (approximately usd 48), whereas at the bazaar, a pair of chinese (considered lower quality and lower status) manufactured jeans is available at the price of 500 soms (approximately usd 12). while supermarket prices may be affordable for those who earn several hundred dollars per month, for 85% (according to the national statistics committee) of the population living below the line of poverty, such shoes and jeans can only remain an unreachable dream. as zentai (nd:18) claimed in reference to budapest malls, these new shopping places “actually generate and reinforce social inequalities, many times dividing society into the binary haves and have-nots.” bishkek supermarkets, similar to budapest malls, lead to the bifurcation of consumers. the continued nonaffordability of commodities in supermarkets is doubly negative due to the display of inaccessible things for the poor. surely, increasing social inequality is not a direct cause of mushrooming supermarkets. however, i believe that supermarkets do explicate and demonstrate what is unreachable by many. such a situation fuels contentious discourses around these economic institutions. shopping malls and supermarkets in a western country would not arouse such contentious public reflections due to a higher living standard and accessibility by wider social cohorts. however, in bishkek it was impossible to avoid contentious debates, where “western splendour” and “western glamour”3 increasingly confront the poor with their glitzy appearances in the middle of a glaring poverty. furthermore, supermarkets symbolize unequal distribution of wealth that is largely believed to have developed after the collapse of the soviet system. while in soviet times social inequality was present, it was not as apparent as it is in the transition period, when a large portion of society remains in a disadvantaged situation in comparison to a small group of elite, and is not promised any “common wealth” as under the socialist regime. thus, it should not be surprising to see increasing public discontent with the new regime, who in fact gained power through establishing new economic institutions. politicised nature of supermarkets while discussing the emergence of shopping malls in budapest, zentai (nd:2) claims that “fascination with consumption reinforces social inequalities and encourages social disappointment with political changes.” moreover, her claim supports my point that new economic institutions in the postsocialist world raise large political disputes. zentai’s argument is indeed a good illustration of the contentious political discourses surrounding supermarkets: “the dream world of consumption frequently turns into a political nightmare: political regimes legitimize themselves through erroneous promises of expanding consumption” (zentai nd: 2). politicization here should be understood as an active involvement of political agents in the establishment of supermarkets. drawing from rutland’s theory (2001) on the two waves of business formation in transition countries, there are two discernable categories of agents. important actors connected to the shopping malls as producers represent the first wave, whereas, the second wave mostly involves retailers who lease space in shopping malls. obviously, social judgments were different on the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 50 agents of these two waves who stood at the forefront of institutionalizing supermarkets. one might wonder how the public receives information about the owners. local newspapers have always been one of the main sources of getting information about the ‘big fish’ in the sea of private business. there were many articles, which evidenced that most of the supermarkets are owned by the local politicians, i.e. by the elite: “one of the first supermarkets in bishkek “eridan”, which was opened by the deputy of the legislative assembly usenov, was sold to his colleague baibolov” (vecherniy bishkek, 5th of january, 1999); and “many people know erkin muratov, the former leader of the communist party of kyrgyzstan, who further continued his career as a governor of issyk-kul region in the republic. the last year he stopped his work in the state, and became an entrepreneur and succeeded in founding a new trading complex. the owner claims that he could build this huge shopping place, with the help of credits, which he is going to pay back in 7 years” (vecherniy bishkek, august 16th, 1999). when asked whether they know the owners of any particular supermarket, respondents showed their high ‘knowledge’ on that matter. thus, tatiana listed the names of supermarket owners: “well, i know that plaza belongs to salymbekov. he somehow managed to accumulate the capital for the construction of such a huge building. the chain of ‘narodnyi’ supermarkets belongs to akaev as well as silkway does.” she confessed that, having heard that narodnyi supermarkets belongs to president akaev’s family, she refused to shop there for a while, although she later continued shopping there due to the convenience and proximity to her house. similar to tatiana, each respondent knew the owners of bigger supermarkets by name. it should not be surprising due to the wide media coverage. in addition, the owners themselves, from the very beginning of supermarket establishment, did not seem to try to keep their businesses a secret. furthermore, the small size of the city and its relatively small population with extensive kinship and friendship ties affect the immediate spread of such news. one might ubiquitously hear people talking about the owner of a newly opened dance club or a casino. thus, supermarkets send an explicit message of who are the proprietors and beneficiaries. ironically, the owners of supermarkets are often negatively viewed by public, even though they are the founders of economic institutions that are claimed to bring civilization and modernity. thus, while interviewees expressed their sorrow about looted and destroyed supermarkets, they were not sympathetic towards supermarket owners, and did not consider them to be victims of the lootings. aisulu, for instance, expressed her sorrow towards retailers “who were renting sections in large supermarkets and who really earned their starting capital and made their living by selling goods.” however, when it came to the owners, aisulu said, “the owners still have their buildings, destroyed or burned, and they can renovate them and continue to rip off the renters.” kerim also expressed his concern about retailers in supermarkets and apathy towards the owners’ fate as he said, “the owners’ buildings remained, and they will recover their losses from rents and sales, while most of the renters are in a disadvantaged position. my heart was tearing apart, when i saw one woman, a retailer in one of the supermarkets on tv… she was crying and complaining about her inability to return the credit now.” interestingly, though the lootings were widely acknowledged among local habitants to be shocking, immoral and unexpected event, few felt sorrow to the owners. i believe that public indifference to the owners’ loss from the lootings has been influenced by a durable discontent with the political regime, with the politicians and their unrestrained intervention into private business. respondents shared their idea that it is impossible to be involved in the wave of private business without being a politician or at least having connections. as melis notes, “of course, there are entrepreneurs who earned their money by hard work in commerce. but most of them do have access to the officials anyway.” mariya comments that, “a big business has to involve both big money and useful ties.” kamilla further remarks, “in russian, there is such a word like krysha [literally translated as a ‘roof’, here meaning useful connections], so you gotta have a krysha if you want to rent a building in a better part of the city. for instance salymbekov, the owner of plaza, he had a lot of money and also good connections.” all of these reflections apparently point to the link between politics and economic institutions. dmitryi (55-year old, worker of the ministry of culture) even claimed that “money-politicssupermarkets” is a kind of logical chain, and as an example pointed to the euroasia supermarket that belonged to shailieva (governor of issyk-kul oblast in kyrgyzstan). shailieva, one of the few prominent female politicians, also used to be known as the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 51 owner of the euroasia supermarket in the center of the city. the case of bishkek supermarkets is indeed a good illustration of szelenyi’s (eyal et al 1998) theory on newly created capitalisms in transitional countries. supermarkets seem to exemplify his claim that former and new politicians are actively involved in building private businesses. as szelenyi argued, a small group of politicians which possesses high social capital is in an advantageous situation; their social capital4 enables them to become beneficiaries of unfair privatisation. according to borocz (2000:351), in the early nineties, former state-socialist managers’ informal social networks with the state authorities became “such a crucial feature of the transformation” that the structure of their informal ties has determined the organization of most economic organizations. informality within the state system in kyrgyzstan could probably be identified as “bourgeois order” in borocz’s terms, where an “essentially malign form of informality plagued the highest levels of government and big business” (2000:348-349). as reflecting borocz’s claims, the kyrgyz state is oftentimes claimed to be over-corrupted, and people do not get surprised when another supermarket is opened by a local politician or another public building is sold to the private hands of a deputy’s relatives. newly emerging entrepreneurs who could open a supermarket in bishkek were mostly state officials, and state officials acquire prestige, and profitable social connections. state officials can start businesses because they reconvert their social capital into material capital. in this case, power is money. as szelenyi claims “the main beneficiaries of market transition are the ‘direct producers’ and a class of new entrepreneurs is emerging from among them” (1995:3). former communists and party leaders are the ones who benefit from market economy and the majority of current companies, firm owners are those who had both been involved in politics and those who had informal connections with them before and after the fall of socialism: “on the highest levels of economic management there was substantial change in personnel—but most of the current key players of the economy were already in some decision making positions before the fall of communism” (szelenyi 1995:5). szelenyi claims that post-communist society can be best described as a unique social structure within which social capital is the main source of power, prestige and privilege. he argues that “possession of economic capital places actors only in the middle of the social hierarchy, and the conversion of former social capital into private wealth is more the exception than the rule” (1998:6). thus, most of the newly opened supermarkets were owned by local entrepreneurs, namely by the ‘elite,’ people who either formerly worked in the state, or are currently working as deputies, ministers, etc. they privatize formerly state-owned buildings, purchased lands closer to the downtown and get long-time credits without interest rates. it is their informal ties that enable them to maximize profits. drawing from the results of the interviews, it can be seen that there is a general agreement that the owners of supermarkets are either politicians or those who have political connections and personal ties. thus, supermarkets are viewed as products of the unfair and corrupt political regime, and often seen with resentment. explication of the beautiful life of the rich through physical objects, not surprisingly, provokes public anger and dissatisfaction with the political regime, which is recognized as being responsible for growing social inequality. bishkek supermarkets suggest that in transitioning countries that are characterized by their high social inequality and low living standards, the commercial sphere becomes a tool of enrichment for the upper niche. for this reason, supermarkets became embodiments of the prosperity of the state officials, their unrestrained authority and power, and unequal access to capital goods and property, by which the political cliques turned out to be the large proprietors. conclusion this study explored contentious discourses surrounding supermarkets that were viewed to be both carriers of modernization and civilization and at the same time embodiments of social inequality. while conducting the fieldwork, and more generally from the very beginning of the establishment of supermarkets, i observed a general acceptance of these new shopping places. the respondents agreed that they are proud of having such modern buildings, which decorate the architecture of the city and boost its image in the eyes of local dwellers and foreigners. these convenient facilities with all kinds of services have never been experienced by the local consumers in soviet shops. thus, not surprisingly, all of the respondents, regardless of their economic status and the regularity of their supermarket shopping, expressed their appreciation of the “civilizing mission” of supermarkets. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 52 despite the general appreciation of supermarkets, most of the respondents agreed that these are not conventional places to shop and are rather representations of unreachable wealth, luxury and beautiful life. those who shop at bazaars do not choose them out of mere preference, but rather out of economic necessity. the political symbolism of supermarkets lends a bitter flavour to people’s perceptions of this economic institution. bishkek supermarkets turned out to symbolize social inequality, and demonstrate to the wide poor public that they are separated out from more affluent citizens through their shopping experiences. while supermarkets do not exactly cut the society in two, they still serve as a front between the relatively affluent group and the rest. i say front, because it is in supermarkets, more than anywhere else that the interests, abilities and social statuses of the poor and the wealthy clash. notes 1 web-site of beta-stores, http://www.betastores.elcat.kg/pages/1e.htm, retrieved on december 20, 2004. 2 source: http://www.gazeta.kg/ view.php?i=11515, retrieved april 2, 2005. 3 these expressions were borrowed from the interviewees 4 that is, in this case, their social networks and ties. references anikin.a. bez pomyvki ne vhodit’. in vecherniy bishkek, 1999, august 16. appadurai, arjun. 1996. modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. benliyan a. dorogo i serdito. in vecherniy bishkek, 1999, may 17. bodnar, judit. 2001. fin de millenaire budapest. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. borocz, joszef 2000. informality rules. in east european politics and societies. berkeley, ca: university of california press. burawoy, michael and verdery, katherine. 1999. uncertain transition: ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world. united states of america: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. cohen, jeffrey and dannhaeuser (eds.). 2002. economic development: an anthropological approach. usa: altamaria press. eyal, gil and szelenyi, ivan and townsley eleanor. 1998. making capitalism without capitalists: class formation and elite struggles in post-communist central europe. united kingdom: verso. fehervary, 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postsocialism. ed. mandel, ruth and humphrey, caroline. oxford, uk: berg. rutland, peter (ed.). 2001. business and the state in contemporary russia. united states of america: westview press. sorokina z. tsum kak barometrs torgovli. in vechernyi bishkek, 1997, nov 28: 8. stark, david. 1996. recombinant property in east european capitalism. american journal of sociology. 101 (4): 993-1027. stiglitz, joseph. 2002. globalization and its discontents. london: ny, penguin, pp. 3-88. szelenyi, ivan. 1995. the rise of managerialism: the “new class” after the fall of communism. discussion paper for the collegium budapest: institute for advanced study. sztompka, piotr. 1993. the sociology of social change. oxfordshire: marston lindsay ross international. tuzov a. put’ v narodnyi supermarket. in vecherniy bishkek, 2000, july 10. weatherspoon, dave and reardon, thomas. 2003. development policy review 21 (3). the rise of supermarkets in africa: implications for agrifood systems and the rural poor. winterstein, stephen. 1999. the market for central asian legitimacy. orbis vol. 43, issue 3. academic search premier. zentai, violetta. no date. encircling cities and encapsulating fantasies: social debates on shopping mall culture in hungary. in unpublished manuscript. table 1. use-values for customers good service large variety of commodities chances to return deficient goods safety standards control of the quality of goods comfortable and clean environment territorial proximity to home or a working place places to hang out meeting points use-values for the city contribute to the landscape of the city with: modern architecture -decorated interior use-values for the government support the implementation of the market economy create competitive environment among shopping places, thus lowering the prices contribute to the development of small and medium private businesses reinforce gradual economic development of the city allen typewritten text © 2006 aisalkyn botoeva all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 6 guest editors’ introduction encounters of the postsocialist kind: the movement of goods and identities within and beyond the former socialist world lale yalçın-heckmann max planck institute for social anthropology, halle/saale, germany & hülya demirdirek university of victoria, bc canada the focus of this special issue had been central to a panel with the same title which we organized within the european association of social anthropology (easa) biannual conference in vienna in 2004. some of the authors included here were part of that panel while others were recruited subsequently. our point of departure was to follow in the footsteps of the ethnographic approach that is critical of transitology and to explore the microprocesses of postsocialist transformations from an anthropological perspective (cf. burawoy and verdery 1999; hann, humphrey and verdery 2002). although we share most of the criticisms put forward by these authors to the effect that transitology, path dependency and shock therapy theories and models do not adequately explain the uncertainties and ambiguities of transition – especially at the level of micro-processes – we sought to encourage all the participants to think beyond these ambiguities and uncertainties to see whether they could discern any structures emerging a decade and a half after the end of socialism. this critical approach is certainly shared by others who recommend going beyond the concept of “postsocialism” and suggest looking for common structures and processes as well as other parallels with developments elsewhere in the world (peters 2006; hann 2006). the essays in this issue are intended to provide illustrations of this critical anthropological approach to postsocialism, remaining aware of the tensions associated with continued usage of the term but at the same time evaluating its usefulness critically. another point of emphasis that we highlight in the anthropology of postsocialism – with a focus on micro-processes – is the concern with everyday life, encounters of various types and face-to-face relations. the essays in this special issue are concerned not only with encounters between members of the former socialist systems and people, goods and systems from the non-socialist world, the west, market economies and capitalist democracies; they also consider encounters with their own societies, their local fellow citizens, their former soviet ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’. hence, the common question posed by the contributions here is not only how people encounter, react to and adjust to the new market conditions in this period of – prolonged – exit, but also how they encounter the conditions, people and objects of the former ‘ours’ – in other words, encounters between people who were part of the same social and economic space and everyday life. markets and the mobility of goods and persons are the main areas of encounter that we explore in this issue. these seem to have changed crucially after the dissolution of the socialist system. socialist markets involved the delivery of goods and movement of people across huge distances, of course primarily within the socialist space, but they were centrally organized and controlled more or less closely, depending mainly on the type of goods. furthermore, the peripheral or central positionality of the receiver and the supplier necessitated clear rules and norms, which in turn could be circumvented in equally well-defined ways. the emergence of postsocialist markets brings new types of encounters, risk taking and knowledge and new forms of relationships between the former and new participants in these markets. not only are the goods themselves new, they are also differently accessed and distributed, sometimes requiring new routes and destinations. in “path dependency” models already established networks, shared values and interests are givens that shape the institutional framework for determining social and economic action (burawoy and verdery 1999: 6). articles in this issue show that paths in space could have a particular significance that differs from the paths assumed in “path dependency” arguments. although transnational movements in the aftermath of socialism may have modified the experience of national borders, geographical proximity might also have influenced the direction of social and economic exchange. the existence of direct borders between various nation states has implications as is clearly illustrated by several of the papers here for barter relationships, anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 7 power brokerage, infrastructures and administrative structures. paths in space, as don kalb contends, can coincide with the geopolitical interests of the particular political powers in promoting certain outcomes in countries with shared borders, as with the case of western interest in poland even before the dissolution of the socialist regime (kalb 2002: 328). indeed, exploration of the spatial linkages illustrated in the ethnographic accounts contained in these articles enables us to identify intermediary and micro-level formations, such as humanitarian aid trips and the shuttle trade between greece and bulgaria discussed here by georgios agelopoulos. moreover, the type and nature of such spatial linkages can influence the process of incorporation into larger-scale formations, e.g. whether the movement of goods and people becomes part of capitalist flows and the degree to which they become part of them. as discussed by michael burawoy and katherine verdery (1999: 2), innovation is only one possible response to unstable transition conditions; other possible outcomes are reversions to or ruptures in the previous spatial linkages. the distances may still be as vast as in the former system, but journeys are often more cumbersome and risky even if alternative routes and strategies have proliferated. lale yalçın-heckmann’s own research illustrates just what we mean by these new encounters with the old. azerbaijanis had participated in vegetable trading within the former soviet union since the late 1980s (derlugian 2005: 150-154; humphrey 2002: 90-93). this was due to the opening up of market opportunities and the availability of state-supported infrastructure for the transportation of certain fruits and vegetables to markets in russia. yalçın-heckmann’s informants from a small rural settlement in western azerbaijan, known for its vegetable production, report having taken persimmon (karalok), eggplants, cucumbers and even tomatoes to russian markets as far away as moscow and st. petersburg (the then leningrad), at the time by train or on lorries. towards the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, when the entire economic and political system was not only becoming more liberal but was also breaking down, some risk-hardened and entrepreneurial villagers and village ‘elites’ (primarily those in administrative and technical positions of kolkhoz and sovkhoz structures) apparently took other kinds of products (primarily alcohol) – with much higher risks but also huge profits – to far-away russian markets, again transported by train. all of this trade seems to have been organized through the use of still functioning ‘private links’ based on friendship, kinship and patronage between state employees (border guards, railway officers and administrators of the sovkhozrun wine factory) and individuals who were able to offer them goods, services, money or favours. this period is remembered as being a time of ‘rip-offs’ when many such entrepreneurs – who knew exactly with whom it would be possible to cooperate – made ‘loads of money’. this is something that yalçınheckmann was able to observe on wedding videos made in those years, when money – hundreds of rubles in notes – was symbolically showered over the heads of the bride and the groom at weddings. the border regime between azerbaijan and the surrounding republics started to change significantly during the early 1990s; first, in 1991, came the independence of one southern caucasian republic after the other; then, the borders became contested due to wars within and between some of these new republics. now that tensions have calmed down (even if only through ceasefire agreements), the border to the north of azerbaijan has become a ‘difficult’ one, as travelers say, because of the politically unsettled situation in chechnya, dagestan and ingushetia – all within the new russian federation. those traveling by train via derbend or on the motorway through georgia and then vladikavkaz need to organize connections and personal contacts at many more international control posts, checkpoints etc. over which it is not always clear who has authority or power and whether those stopping the vehicles are doing so on a formal or ‘informal’ basis (warlords, bandits etc.). hence the conveyance of goods, especially vegetables in need of rapid transportation, has become risky, complex and costly. even so, the appeal of markets in moscow and st. petersburg is stronger and continues to draw more and more people. many young men with some education but no job are willing to take the risk if they know how to organize the transportation and of course have the necessary trade links and know-how in moscow. the economic difficulties at home, lack of jobs, rising consumption pressures as well as the urge and imagination to escape declining modernity – i.e. what they see as the deterioration in the social, material and cultural services and infrastructure in their localities – all contribute to this strong desire to engage in such trade. while the possibilities for selling goods and making healthy profits continue to be alluring to many men and some women too, the trade has become transnational, relations international, their identities that of non-citizen and their encounters multinational and racialised. trajectories the papers in this issue seek to explore questions such as these: to what degree are new types of knowledge necessary in new markets and new market relations? what sorts of values and norms are anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 8 being created, reshaped or challenged through these new encounters within and beyond the postsocialist markets? how are new identities, relationships and communities created through the goods exchanged, encounters made and connections established or redefined? in tackling the above questions most of the papers here historically contextualize the mobility discussed in their ethnographic accounts. the common pattern that emerges – whether from people’s recollections of legal and structural arrangements under socialism, the history of an object or narratives of mobility after the fall of the socialist regimes – the common pattern has been to engage in intensive, short-term, opportunistic and hectic activity, often involving performative creativity yet hardly sustainable through time. it manifests itself in recently ‘rediscovered’ and revived ethnic identities, the formation of new diasporas, the exchange of goods and objects, new trade routes and new means of making money. the markets or shuttle trade (as in the case of mongolia discussed by morten pedersen and between greece and bulgaria discussed by agelopoulos in this issue) disappear as they are subsumed by larger capitalist flows. migration flows tend to take place in more formalized structures and to be subject to stricter controls, as in the moldovan, north caucasian and central asian examples discussed here (demirdirek, heintz, popov and sancak). despite such institutionalization and integration into transnational circuits the interdependence between the formal and informal prevails. in some instances we see that the informal serves the needs of the formal and the legal (as in the case of turkish bureaucratic circles using dubious moldovan connections in order to promote economic and political relations, see demirdirek in this issue) or the institutionalized needs its ‘other’ (as in the case of the mongolian drunkard market serving as an ‘alter-ego’ for the other market, see pedersen in this issue). all this does not mean that formalization and institutionalization is a smooth process. the power differentials as well as the contested nature and overlap between private and state-run interests circumvent this process of formalization. the processes which affect the flow of migration and the return of diasporas evolve in a similar manner. the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors have usually been quite powerful when borders are first opened, as in the case of kazakh migrants coming from china (sancak), the krasnodar pontic greeks migrating to greece (popov), and krasiotes greeks migrating to bulgaria (agelopoulos, all in this issue). elsewhere in the world, just as mexico, for example, embraces its migrant population’s interests in the usa as a way of obtaining support for nationalist ends at home, the established nation states open their arms to diasporic populations either without realizing the consequences or with a short-term trajectory.i as the process of restructuring legal and political institutions and regimes continues, the constellation and contestation of power and influence in national and international polities become visible. anton popov’s paper, for example, illustrates how eu membership dictates adopting stricter visa regulations for countries with a shared cultural heritage, as in the case of greece welcoming greek diaspora populations worldwide. continuity is a leitmotif throughout all the papers, with ruptures experienced as both devastating and liberating. ideas about trade – whether embodied in the legacy of communist notions of ‘speculantee’ (see reeves and popov) or in the socialist practices surrounding outdoor activities which promote the commoditization of leisure activity in the new capitalist market (see kvasnička, all in this issue) – all remind us of the interplay between past and present. particular forms of continuity, especially the way in which mongolia’s markets operated differently compared to the rest of the socialist landscape (see pedersen in this issue), might tempt us to echo the contentious question of whether the socialist system could be understood as state capitalism (cliff 1974; haynes 2002; resnick and wolff 2002). the dominant role of the state in controlling the production and distribution of goods which are also produced for and within the capitalist system leads us to ask this question. in his contribution on outdoor cultures in the czech republic, tomáš kvasnička asserts that outdoor equipment had to be produced by individual consumers and outdoor enthusiasts themselves since the state did not allow access to capitalist markets. yet it was precisely these skills and tastes acquired through individual production that enabled the same enthusiasts – who practiced outdoor sports in collective structures – to become the first successful entrepreneurs in the postsocialist market economy. by taking into account the existence of these discrepancies and the cohabitation of capitalist and socialist formations within the old and new systems, we might be able to better uncover the role played by agency and structural limitations in the incorporation of such petty entrepreneurship into global markets. going beyond these general trajectories of the contributions included in this issue, we have grouped the more specific themes dealt with under the two headings of ‘markets’ and ‘mobility’. i. markets one emerging issue here can be described as the creativity and force of markets. the question anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 9 which monica heintz and tomáš kvasnička explore in their contributions is: is there such a strong urge to consume and if so, why? why does heintz’s moldovan woman informant tell her that she is ready to take the risk of being deported from italy and then having her passport taken away for the next three years if she can only go there for some time to earn enough money to build her house? this compelling question leads us to reconsider whether this urge should be explained as an attempt to make up for the consumption deficit throughout the socialist years. alternatively, is it simply the same process as in other non-socialist but economically less developed parts of the world, i.e. the desire to consume and to be free – and a member of the free market system – through consumption (cf. berdahl 2005; rausing 2002)? or, as is the case elsewhere in the industrial world, does consumption become an expression of identity (c.f. miller 1987)? kvasnička explores how certain ideas and patterns of consumption are intricately related to lifestyles and how they could fit, change and re-mould themselves according to major ideological and political/economic changes. he looks at outdoor activities and the ‘culture of outdoors’ and traces how these changed from their origins in romantic national periods through the socialist years and into the postsocialist period. by illustrating how the production of, access to and organization of the equipment used functioned in the socialist era, he is able to track both the continuities and discontinuities. he offers an original analysis of the success enjoyed by small-scale producers of outdoor equipment, who followed communal and egalitarian principles under the socialist regime but had no difficulty converting into producers of the now fashionable outdoor lifestyle products under the new capitalist system, hence promoting individualist and meritocratic values through the consumption of outdoor fashion. morten pedersen, who is also fascinated by the process of how markets transform goods and people, studies urban markets in mongolia and finds them to have specific qualities that differentiate them from those in other postsocialist countries. the mongolian people were excluded from markets not only under the socialist regime but also in the presocialist period, when the country was under the colonial rule of the manchu empire. this exercised complete control over the various sections of the population, not allowing them to engage in trade and exchange relations through markets. nevertheless, the mongolians still had a market existence in prerevolutionary times, although these markets were at the fluid borders between nomadic and sedentary groups. pedersen initially examines the emergence and functioning of the first large black market which came into being on the outskirts of ulaanbaatar soon after independence. this was famous for its seemingly total lack of organization, despite apparently having some implicit structures of power and influence. he indicates that even as this market became increasingly formalised throughout the 1990s, a second black market was opened in the capital – this time still more orderly and organised – and became the busiest and largest. even if both of these markets are black markets, and hence disdained by the new rich, customers praised the second market for its order and cleanliness. the sellers, however, measured the two black markets by another criterion: for them, the new market was ‘private’ and under the control of many influential people – akin to a mafia – , whereas the first market was seen as having been ‘public’, more or less accessible to everyone; one trader described this as everyone being able to “do what they wanted themselves. no one was eating us from behind.” in his discussion pedersen draws attention to the existence of the ‘private’ in the ‘public’, i.e. the greater equality offered by the older market through the entrepreneurial (private) freedom which guaranteed everyone the opportunity to do what they liked. while discussing the creativity and formation of markets pedersen also touches on the relationship between gender and markets. he shows how the creativity of the market allows for different values and significances to be attached to different goods which are sold on the market; furthermore, the selling of these goods is classified according to gender and social background. if a young woman from a middle-class background starts selling vodka on the market, for instance, this is approached with ambivalence even if she herself may be deriving personal satisfaction and pleasure from her trade. the story of this young woman is also quite revealing when it comes to the emergence of ‘vendor corporations’ and ‘collectives’, which organise themselves so as to monopolise access to as well as the selling and prices of certain commodities in the ‘private’ black market; these systems are not genderneutral but nor are they gender-exclusive. in addition to the gendering of commodity and trade roles, madeleine reeves argues in her contribution that the movement of bodies across borders is gendered too. in her discussion of bordercrossing activities on the uzbek-tajik border in the farghana valley, reeves tells us how uzbek women were horrified by the idea that they might be bodysearched by kyrgyz border guards and how they tried to avoid this ‘gendered remapping of territorial transgression’. the second group of themes, which we turn to below, has to do with the (interconnected) mobility anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 10 and migration of goods and people. reflecting on the increased scale of trade and new migrations, heintz writes that remittances from migrants living abroad are put at three times the level of the state budget in moldova. another such striking example was the market in sadakhlo, which formed part of the local illegal informal economy and existed throughout the 1990s until about 2006 on the border between georgia and armenia. the then armenian finance minister is quoted as saying in 2001 that traders at this market alone ‘were doing business worth between 300 and 400 million us dollars a year – equivalent to armenia’s entire budget revenue.”ii hülya demirdirek describes how 70% of the working-age female population of a gagauz village in moldova is abroad, primarily in turkey. hence we are talking about transactions and movements of goods and people on a massive scale that cannot be ignored. the scale of trade and migration has in fact become part of local models of ‘normality’. in her discussion of how the local villagers justify ‘illegal’ migration, i.e. migration to other countries without the legally required and obtained documents, heintz argues that the scale of such migration causes the phenomenon to be viewed as part of ‘normality’, requiring no specific justification or moral judgment. ii. mobility all the contributions to this issue relate to the fact that these are new states with new borders. in anton popov’s discussion of the pontic greeks’ efforts to acquire documents to migrate to greece, the state is imagined as an obstacle and limiting factor which people try to surmount and circumvent in order to migrate. this differs from attitudes and imaginations that envisage the state as a provider and polity commanding loyalty. how can we explain this kind of encounter with the state? is it because of soviet legacies that the state is perceived as a foreign and distant body – especially when personified in apparatchiks, rayon leaders or customs officers – which should best be avoided? or is it that people have given up on the state and no longer have the same expectations? popov links such ideas on the changing nature of the state to changing citizenship regimes and new identity constructions. his discussion brings out the way in which migration and the positioning of the state are interlinked. in popov’s paper migrants move through transnational space and this movement has an impact on the ethnic or civic character of the state. popov uses the term transnational migration for the kind of movement that he is describing between the north caucasus and greece, and demirdirek joins him in defining the social space created between moldova and turkey through the movement of turks and gagauz as transnational space (see also glick schiller 2004). can the exploration of transnational space that grew out of migration movements in other regions of the world help us to understand the phenomenon of migration in the former soviet space? popov argues, for instance, that transnational pontic greeks in his area of research (krasnodar), in common with examples from other transnationalism studies, hardly think of themselves as ‘transnational’ and underline ‘their attachment to particular territorialized nations’ because they ‘routinely deal with the nation-state’ as illegals in another country (e.g. greece in popov’s case), ‘while their national, ethnic and cultural identities are constantly being renegotiated.’ hence he correctly stresses that the nation-state continues to be a point of reference even if the space and movement have become transnational. madeleine reeves’ contribution also examines the movement of people and objects across former soviet borders. in her analysis of the movement of objects across borderlands, reeves is concerned with ‘the way objects are used to navigate postsocialist transformations’. she points out the disjunction between how things circulate and how people think they should circulate. underlining the border regimes’ inherent character of promoting closure when in fact openness is needed for the national and local societies and economies, she looks at a region with multiple international boundaries. the boundaries in this region have gained new political meaning, especially due to international security concerns as well as the economic and political realities after the dissolution of the former soviet union. in former times these had few local or economic functions, since the soviet state could implement infrastructural measures and policies such as building canals across the republics’ borders. the contemporary visa regimes affect people’s daily lives and mobility. encounters with the law are often experienced as encounters with corrupt – albeit thankfully so, for practical purposes – border officials. reeves talks about the discursive navigation of these tensions, where gossip, jokes and daily opinions regarding one’s own and the other’s polities, border regimes and economies are exchanged. people are also concerned about material goods, their quality and movement, and they feel that their wealth is being siphoned off at the borders. she claims, however, that there is a difference between notions about the flow and movement of goods and those concerning the movement of dead bodies. “the unburied corpse is…a multiply unstable object – polluting and tormented, collapsing social relations until harmony can be restored in the act of burial.” with her case studies of transporting live and dead anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 11 bodies, she shows how local people develop strategies for creating space for action and interconnecting across otherwise impassable borders, and she illustrates where these strategies fail and how the failure is interpreted. reeves points out that above and beyond open accusations of ethnic and national discrimination and confrontation, one could attribute the impassibility of borders to their multiple historical and social meanings and practices; what is more, to some actors they are simply illegitimate since they hinder access to ancestral burial ground. such are the ways of encountering the state… the movement of people and goods across new borderlands is inherently linked to the production and assertion of new identities – a theme that is central to some of the contributions in this issue. the authors ask how these new encounters and opportunities for travel, immigration and trade affect the creation of new identities. popov asserts, for instance, the state has some agency here as it develops techniques for documenting and manipulating identities in order to permit or deny travel and immigration. yet agency also accrues to individuals who ‘discover’ their long forgotten or publicly ‘unused’ ethnic identities, as they develop strategies for acquiring and documenting these ethnic identities. this can even lead to a commoditization of these documented identities in which some documents are devalued as they are forged or ‘bought’ in order to immigrate to greece and hence become a fake proof of authentic ethnic belonging. furthermore, ethnic organizations seem to have taken up the role of mediators in these encounters between visa applicants and greek immigration bureaucracy by filling out forms for applicants, providing them with information about the procedures or about coach firms traveling between greece and russia, hence arousing suspicions that they are ‘trading’ in ethnic identity in exchange for the membership fees that they require for these and other services. georgios agelopoulos also talks about ‘the revival of greek identity’ through contacts between the krasiotes, a community which was divided between bulgaria and greece. agelopoulos sees this stress on ‘revival’ as being linked rather closely to specific factors – for instance, it was particularly evident among families where both parents were krasiotes (of which there were few) and among those living in a historically developed community on the greek side. however, the extent, nature and probably the reciprocal quality of these contacts as well as the gradual improvement in the bulgarian economy all seem to have contributed to the fading of the greek identity revival and, in fact, a decline in relations of all kinds. as agelopoulos describes it, people changed their ideas about their ‘cousins’ in bulgaria. new identities are also produced in encounters with new diasporas: the contributions by anton popov and meltem sancak discuss the repatriation of ‘potential citizens’ from among diasporas. here, encounters between the ‘homeland populations’ and the others, the ‘diasporas’, have the potential both to convert the repatriated diaspora into citizens and challenge concepts of citizenship and notions of belonging and identity. both sancak and popov show how policies aimed at encouraging the return of repatriates could result in a backlash of sentiment for national belonging. sancak describes the repatriation of kazaks from different parts of the world (but mostly from china) and their settlement in a specific locality. in this process, where newcomers are integrated into and adjust themselves to a new country, albeit with co-nationals, any discontent with or challenge to the existing social, economic and political conditions seems to be articulated in discursive strategies along the lines of “are you a real kazak?” sancak argues that neither the origins of the newcomers nor their ‘status’ as kazaks was in question. rather, ‘how kazaks should be’ was the issue at stake. traits like hospitality, traditions such as ornamenting the house with handmade felt carpets and decorated chests, or islamic customs like not drinking alcohol and having separate graveyards for muslims and people from other religions could all become objects and arenas of contestation for this question of ‘how’. hence tradition, language, attire and even cleanliness standards in housekeeping could all be objectified in order to challenge the right to belong. this links interestingly with the point raised by reeves, who cites similar tensions between persons from two different ethnic groups (uzbeks and tajiks) and notes how the frustration about the lack of cooperation between uzbek border guards and tajik passengers was attributed to uzbek/tajik incompatibility by her informants. reeves sees this as a questioning of the legitimacy of the border, rather than simply as ethnic confrontation. faced with inequalities of wealth, status, differences in language and the difficulties of securing their livelihood, the kazaks in sancak’s study use similar discursive strategies of ‘othering’ (e.g. kazaks from china criticize local kazaks on the grounds that ‘they have become like russians’, while local kazaks reproach those arriving from china for being ‘backward’) despite the fact that the conflicting groups are of the same ethnicity. sancak concludes that even shared histories of suppression and a common national background and ideology, normally part of the conceptual bundle that goes with being an ‘imagined community’ (anderson 1983), may not ensure smooth co-existence. sharing day-to-day life and social space opens up as much of a potential for anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 12 fission and differentiation as it does for convergence and assimilation. agelopoulos, who looks at the different phases of relations between krasiotes greeks living in greece and bulgaria, presents another account of encountering diasporas. the difference between the diaspora and ‘homeland’ encounters in agelopoulos’ account and those described by popov is that the former are between communities from neighbouring countries. the contacts and relationships have been organized around and embedded in historical and personal relationships in the form of divided families. while the pontic population described here by popov was being deported from the north caucasus during stalin’s repression, the krasiotes community discussed by agelopoulos could at least correspond through letters in the period 1926-1939 despite being split between greece and bulgaria. visits again became possible among the latter from the early sixties onwards. they intensified after 1991 and especially during bulgaria’s economic and infrastructural crisis; a ‘food supplies mission’ with humanitarian aid was then organized from greece for the diaspora in bulgaria. this humanitarian aid – organized at the grassroots level but certainly enjoying institutional backing – gave rise to further kinds of contacts and encounters: illegal seasonal work, business and tourism. the first of these was quite rare and usually organized through personal links. tourism occurred on a reciprocal basis, with people visiting in both directions (i.e. unlike the north caucasus pontic relationships). business partnerships also drew on some form of kinship link, and they ideally took place between ‘cousins’. eventually, these business connections seem to have become more institutionalized and formalized. the incorporation of bulgaria into the world market and capitalist economy led to a decrease in and ultimately the demise of petty trade. the difference compared to the pontic case can thus also be attributed to structural disparities between the countries in question, i.e. the gulf between greece and the north caucasus is huge compared to that between greece and bulgaria. hence, physical proximity and neighbourly relations are not the only important factors in the maintenance or decline of contacts and exchanges. hülya demirdirek highlights how the ethnic consciousness of the gagauz-moldovan temporary migrants and their tendency to see themselves and their employers in a more individualized manner obscure the social inequalities originating from class distinctions. she argues migration and newly created transnational space facilitate relations between the members of different classes who would not otherwise encounter each other if they were to be in the same national space. in the case of universityeducated rural gagauz women, these relations are manifested in their employment as domestics by upper middle-class turks. occupying such a role, being employed by ‘free-market-oriented, modern turks’, is made possible as a result of migration and neoliberal trends. in the case of male turkish entrepreneurs in moldova, the meeting of different classes gives rise to a transgression of moral boundaries: a rural/urban turkish lower middle-class and gagauz/moldovan middle class substratum is created with an amalgamation of both sets of values. being part of new transnational circuits, the members of this new substratum may be a potential source of influence on economic and political affairs. the different attitudes towards migration to western europe show both similarities and differences between the new and old ideas about migration. heintz’s contribution includes comparative points about how migratory movements arouse ambivalent feelings and opinions regarding migrants and their reasons for migrating. in romania, once the prospects of joining the european union became stronger, illegal migration started to be publicly criticized by intellectuals and the national press for endangering romania’s chances of full integration into the eu and for conveying an unfavourable image of romania to the west. in moldova, on the other hand, illegal migration seems to have the support of at least the independent media since it is seen as an outcome of unsuccessful government policies and the inefficiency of economic changes. hence it was possible to instrumentalize migrants, heintz argues, for the purposes of criticizing or praising government policies. here again we can see a similarity to the public debates about labour migration from southern european countries and turkey to germany, france, switzerland, austria and the benelux countries in the sixties and seventies. although the labour migrants were at the time coming from economically weaker countries, the individual migrants still had to justify individually to their hosts why they had migrated – can there ever be a universal scale for judging who is economically deprived? furthermore, they had to justify why they should stay on in the countries of migration even if – according to some – they had accumulated enough to ‘return’. that migration is a process which changes people’s perceptions, orientations and social worlds throughout the period of seeking and performing jobs abroad is a sociological insight that needs to be acknowledged in the migration process from former socialist countries as well. finally, the mobility of goods in trade and persons in migration has given rise to new notions of anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 13 illegality and new moralities. how should and could a village community in moldova cope with and explain prostitution and trafficking for the purposes of prostitution, heintz asks. she argues that moral concepts are re-negotiated and attributed different values for behaviour occurring ‘abroad’ in opposition to the ‘moral behaviour’ expected within the village, as if the dissociation of home and abroad enables members of the community to maintain different moral systems. in a way, her example is a classic illustration of how immoral behaviour has to be imagined as being located outside the community. this is typical of all sociality: any community would want to envisage itself as a moral community, especially if there is an imagined contrast between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft in the weberian sense. the rural community described by heintz could be seen as imagining itself as a gemeinschaft, where immorality needs to be excluded as pertaining to the society outside, the ‘othered’ gesellschaft, where different norms and social rules are thought to exist. such an observation can serve as yet another reminder of the scope for comparing mobility and economic/political restructuring in the former socialist countries to other parts of the world and/or for using other frameworks such as postcoloniality. however, without denying the need to be open to such perspectives, it is important to remind ourselves that anthropology is a cumulative knowledgeproducing enterprise. it is the intensive focus on postsocialism that has brought us to the current point of desiring other frameworks. anthropologists have never agreed on the status of comparison or its desirability, yet most of us compare. whether it is done implicitly being informed by description or explicitly by putting two or more objects of study beside each other -, we need to think about other places and other experiences. the articles in this issue identify elements of continuity and rupture in the legacy of socialism. yet they also bring out processes of integration into larger markets, as can be seen elsewhere in the world. if the authors included here had avoided using ‘postsocialism’ as a temporal and qualitative category, would this have changed their analytical choices and conclusions? it is not a matter of changing the labelling, but rather of using newer modes of contextualizing and conceptual tools to arrive at fresh analytical perspectives. notes i this is of course typical of all state-led and stateplanned migrations; it is a fallacy to think that migratory movement can be fully controlled and anticipated. ii this was reported in the caucasus reporting service, an electronic news report prepared by the institute for war and peace in london. the news item written by karin ter-saakian and lela iremashvili was entitled “armenian-georgian market losing its role”, report no. 240, july 1, 2004. http://www.iwpr.net/?p=crs&s=f&o=160232&apc_st ate=henicrs2004 accessed on 19.03.07 for more on sadakhlo see also yalçın-heckmann, forthcoming. references anderson, b. 1983 imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso editions. berdahl, d. 2005 the spirit of capitalism and the boundaries of citizenship in post-wall germany. comparative studies in society and history 47(2):235-251. burawoy, m. and k. verdery 1999 introduction. in uncertain transition: ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world. m. burawoy and k. verdery, eds. pp. 118. oxford: rowman & littlefield. cliff, t. 1974 state capitalism in russia. london: pluto press. derlugian, g. 2005 bourdieu’s secret admirer in the caucasus: a world-system biography, chicago and london: the university of chicago press. glick schiller, n. 2004 transnationality. in a companion to the anthropology of politics. d. nugent and j. vincent eds. pp. 448-467. oxford: blackwell. hann, c. 2006 introduction: faith, power, and civility after socialism. in the postsocialist religious question: faith and power in central asia and east-central europe. c. hann and the ‘civil religion’ group. pp. 1-26. berlin: lit verlag. hann, c., c. humphrey and k. verdery 2002 introduction: postsocialism as a topic of anthropological investigation. in postsocialism: ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. c.m. hann, ed. pp. 1-28. london: routledge. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 14 haynes, m. 2002 russia: class and power, 1917-2000. london and sydney: bookmarks. humphrey, c. 2002 the unmaking of soviet life: everyday economies after socialism. ithaca [ny]: cornell university press. kalb, d. 2002 afterword: globalism and postsocialist prospects. in postsocialism: ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. c.m hann, ed. pp. 317334. london: routledge. mandel, r. and c. humphrey (eds.) 2002 markets and moralities: ethnographies of postsocialism. oxford & new york: berg publishers. miller, d. 1987 material culture and mass consumption. oxford: blackwell. peters, p.e. 2006 beyond embeddedness: a challenge raised by a comparison of the struggles over land in african and post-socialist countries. in, changing properties of property. f. von bendabeckmann, k. von benda-beckmann, and m.g. wiber, eds. pp. 84-105. new york & oxford: berghahn books. rausing, s. 2002 re-constructing the ‘normal’: identity and the consumption of western goods in estonia. in markets and moralities: ethnographies of postsocialism. r. mandel and c. humphrey, eds. pp. 127-142. oxford & new york: berg publishers. resnick, s. a. and wolff, r. d. 2002 class theory and history: capitalism and communism in the u.s.s.r. new york & london: routledge. yalçın-heckmann, l. (forthcoming) openings and closures: citizenship regimes, markets, and borders in the caucasus. in, caucasus paradigms: anthropologies, histories, and the making of a world area. b. grant and l. yalçın-heckmann, eds. halle studies in the anthropology of eurasia, münster: lit verlag. anthropology ofeast europe review the local and the global: in search of european identity in the czech local community hana horakowi university ofpardubice & university ofhradec kralove, czech republic as commonly described, europe is a rich mosaic of cultures comprising a broad range of political cultures, languages and diverse histories. cultural and historical pluralism creates worries and tensions among european countries that can be 'pacified' by means of increasing political and economic interconnectedness. but in addition to these, is there anything else that functions as a unifying principle for europeanness? is it just a levcl of political and economic unification or are there other processes, any by-products which can possibly bring about cohesion among the european countries? to facilitate the contemporary process of the european unification. there have been many attempts to identify common cultural denominators which might serve both as a basis to define common europeanness, and as an exclusionary principle supporting arbitrary decision-making concerning further enlargement. there is a perennial dispute concerning europe based on the civic project and that of europe as a domain of cultural exclusivitv. on the one hand. primordialists debate european l;nity in terms of its cultural and religious roots stemming from a common ludeo-christian base. these attitudes simply neglect the numerous populations found in contemporary europe, other religious denominations than those mentioned, or those who rank among atheist communities; one should remember that they represent real people who are already part of europe, who live here and cannot be wiped out from a virtual map of europe through wishful thinking of european ideologists. politicians and administrators. on the other hand, for modernists contemplating europe as a whole, european identity is an active process in the making. it takes place through a series of encounters. dialogues and negotiations that are related to the 'outcome', i.e. european identity. europe is an unfinished business, no one knows i'ts final trajectory. identity is seen as a long-term process. necessary to be separated ti'om wishful thinking: the existence of european community cannot be envisaged. such a relational identity does not assume an existence of a ready-made european community, rather it concentrates on reconfiguration and redefining processes that can be called common europe. so, rather than studying a specific region i intend to focus on a problem, and how this problem (i.e. reeonfiguration and redefinition of rural lifestyle) is related to the idea of redefining europe a, a whole. research in dolni roveii my research drew on the latc'! anthropological cuncepts of culture reflected by an empirical study conducted in the rural area of doh roven in the czech l<.epublic. the focus was on the relationship between global and local trend, ir. culture. i.e. 'glocalization' (l<.obertson 199:;, emphasis was placed on generational gender. and local (village) contexts of the data collected in the course of a two-year's fieldwork. the final outcome was a comparative analysis of global and loc';}; factors in the culture of the village. the research \\ a' also motivated by cris shore~s book building ellro/,( (2002) which examines the project of constructing ,j european identity within the eu institutions unde: the provocati ve slogan 'europe has been created now we must create the europeans. ~ using culture (by elites) as a tool for forging a sense of cohesiull and belonging is as old as the strategy deployed d; nationstates builders. can such a strategy lead to a 'pcople~s' europe? the research in the rural environment of dolnf l<.oven explored the shift from the local cultural arena towards the global one. the assumption \\as that the village has been in the process of losing features of a former rural community due w globalising tendencies and of becoming, as a semi­ autonomous formation, a part of a much wider. interconnected world. a typical rural population with its typical rural lifestyle no longer remains the terrain for folklore studies: these phenomena belong to a disappearing world. however, this is not at all a ne\\ phenomenon and needless to say -the anthropologist's role here is not to rescue a vanishing culture or to reveal the 'noble savage' in a rural area. but rather. by studying issues concerning the relationship between global and local culture, one can contribute to the process of redefining europe in the making. this necessitated a profound analysis of the reconfiguration and redefinition of the rural lifestyle. volume 25. ko. 1 page 112 anthropology ofeast europe review the main interest was to study everyday life of the local people: patterns of leisure, ways of popular entertainent, and community activities. i examined villagers' relationship to various forms of culture, while noting both continuity in their interests from the (pre)socialist times till nowand discontinuity. i placed particular emphasis on popular culture as a representative of the global phenomena in the contemporary socio-cultural rural environment as opposed to the other forms of local manifestations of culture, namely high, folk or national, and 'european'. why popular culture in particular? it is indisputable that popular culture has developed on a world scale, providing a new way to understand 'the meaning of life' (fiske 1989, storey 1997). so far. its expansionism has been unprecedented: it has managed to replace folk culture, it is aiming to conquer and/or take over high culture or at least it is seriously threatening its position. it seems as if popular culture is a success story. what is the role and mission of popular culture within a common european culture? can popular culture serve as a basis for europeanness? popular culture represents a certain sphere of changing social realities which has been, to a certain extent, penetrating life in the above mentioned rural area in the czech republic. so far, it has addressed nearly all the layers of the local population whose many members have internalized its various texts and practices. the multi-faceted products of popular culture have merged with the residues of folk and national culture , they have even been challenging the scarce manifestations of high culture that occur in this rural area. doln! roven is semi-autonomous field with both inner and outer influences, characterized by urbanisation, changes in technology and social institutions. the socio-cultural transition indicates a remarkable shift from a traditional rural commune to a more open society. before, the village was based on rustic philosophy the relation to land as a cornerstone of rural identity. in the past, land initiated love, respect and patriotic feelings for a native village, region, country and nation. thus, a village was a reservoir of national commonality and cohesion. folk culture as a typical representative of rural culture is either disappearing or is being absorbed by mass or popular culture. the village is thus 'croded' by elements of europeanization and globalization the village is no more a bounded island of national and/or folk culture. some examples of socio-cultural change in the village within social institutions concerned the daily press, radio . post-office. telegraph, railway and bus transport. theatre. public lectures. knowledge and education, a wide range of community activities. travels of villagers, countrymen's regular visits from abroad all brought new ideas, experience and values, and thus led to a thickening of the network of relations between doln! roven and the world." (galla 1939: 350). many of these were internalized by the villagers to become part of quazi-rural lifestyle. salient traditional rural features such as solidarity, kinship network and face-to-face relationships were replaced by atomisation, anonymity and closedness. a divide between urban and rural seemed fluid (novotna 2004). it is necessary to stress that in rural areas a certain distinction persists, to some degree, between the people of the cities (civitas as it was rooted in classical antiquity, equaling civilisation) and those of the rural areas (rus). the former represented 'civility' displaying the wealth, manners and cultural attainments of the urban dweller. whereas those of the countryside lacked these virtues (thornton 1988: 21-22). what is today's roven like? its agrarian sphere, once the most salient characteristics of the rural environment, is almost irrelevant. of 58.9 per cent of the economically active inhabitants, there are only 2.7 per cent farmers, that is 1.5 per cent of all respondents of a 2004 sociological survey (skalnfk 2004). moreover, this figure does not say whether farming is their major subsistence activity. community life , once the reservoir of immense village activities organizing balls, concerts, dancing parties, puppet theatre, sports activities etc. was extremely rich. these activities were developed both by temporary and permanent organisations. among them, the most important were two: voluntary firemen brigades and sokol (falcon) members, founded in 1905. the firemen (founded in 1879) who organized most village events, were also among the traditional participants of rcligious holidays. it was the firemen who mark the most fluid continuity from the past to the present. the local firemen brigades (there are four, as there are four parts of the village-municipality) not only put out fires (which are scarce) but, above all, work as major village organisers of cultural life: balls, masquarade parade, children's day, witch-burning etc. such events are manifestations of predominantly folk and popular culture, accompanied by brass bands, folk or country music . global culture and its impact of roveners doln! roven is a site of multi-layered social reality: there are many layers between local and global that are constantly overlapping and reacting to one another. the local level is examined in relation to national and/or international level: apparently, the former is viewed as different from national the volume 25, no. i page 113 = anrhropo{ogy of east europe review national seems less important for both the creators and consumers of local cultural events. the present era, sometimes called the information age or post-industrial age, makes huge demands on people, incomparable with the past. the emphasis is put on performance, education, good career l and success. a society of education and knowledge is being debated in public. due to the influx of global culture, diverse forms of imported entertainment (texts and practices) are on the increase this is in sharp contrast with the above mentioned requirement of the present time. how do the roveners deal with such a schizophrenic situation? the results of this research indicate that they respond to the global challenge of knowledge rather the other way round. active forms of gaining knowledge and the ambition to achieve better education is subdued by the massive attack of passive entertainement, largely in terms of popular culture." within the printed media, there is a prevalence of tabloids and popular magazines. on tv people prefer commercial channels, while watching both imported and domestic soapies and sitcoms, quiz shows, talkshows with popular celebrities. in their houses and flats. mainstream pop music steamrollers other genres, often working as background music . there are two public libraries in the village but the number of registered readers is very low: 32 readers of 1850 inhabitants3. moreover, the number has been decreasing dramatically since 1989. the libraries offer quite cheap internet services but the villagers show little interest. on the whole, manifestations of high and national culture are sporadic, sustained by a small groups of enthusiasts strong individualities. moreover, they are increasingly absorbed or replaced by mass and popular culture. the village has been witnessing the values that are typical of urban lifestyle: a need to go on holiday is in sharp contrast to the mythical image of rural life as an oasis of happiness and peace. another value, individualism, is on increase as well people tend to care just for themselves and their houses or gardens. many of them are not willing to participate in the communal life. there are some spells of activities that show a high degree of continuity with the past, both socialist and before 1948 (a shift in the scope and functions of cultural activities from the past to the present). these are predominantly carried out by the above mentioned firemen brigades, and also a very active pensioners' club. these organisations, however, tend to appeal mainly to the middle-aged people and elderly generation. nonetheless, they prove an existence of a very active, relatively self­ contained cultural community. though a number of producers does not exceed the number of consumers. the representation of active people is quite high. perhaps, the desire to participate in public life stems from a nostalgy of the old socialist times when euphoria of the 'communism-building' prevailed. '! inter-generation difference the younger generation shows more aspects of cultural discontinuity while carrying more signs of urban, european, global culture more atomisation, individualism, preference of consumerism, passivity, and an overall retreat into the private. also, national distinction among people is largely shaped by the differences between generations. among the contemporary youths, there is little or none, perhaps due to internationalized pop culture and increased mobility (in terms of the offers for job/study exchange programmes). my research has revealed a relatively paradoxical situation: the democratisation of culture has brought about a certain fragmentation and separation of cultural production into the groups differentiated by generation. in the past, cultural events were attended by a large proportion of the rural population at present, cultural performances have become phenomena rigidly oriented toward a specific age grouping. there are, however some cross-generational events, namely balls, masquerade parades. witch burnings, etc. eu cultural politics the recent eu resolution aims to cement the relationship and loyalty between europe and the member states with something denser, or more 'solid ' than just through bureacracy. common political goals and economic interests, that is the awareness of common european culture and identity (europeanness). however. our relationship to a supranational entity such as the european union is political and/or economic rather than cultural. hence, the european dilemma is as follows: political and economic interconnectedness versus cultural and historical diversity. since the 1980s. european integration is seen as a cultural process: culture is to serve as a political instrument for furthering that construction process (shore 2002: i). but what role culture actually plays in the process of european integration, is difficult to say. nor is it clear how european culture might be nurtured and diffused. and what actually constitutes european culture? the way the european elite perceives the term culture is similar to the view of anthropologists. the focus , that is on language, historical memories, myths of ethnic descent etc. however, these aspects tend to divide rather than unite fellow europeans. and as there are serious deficiences in the cultural field there are sceptical voices forecasting a failure in creating european culture and identity. as a. d. smith (1992) indicates, europe is a utopian dream of volume 25. ko. 1 page 114 ____________~__7.­ anthropology ofeast europe review intellectuals and idealists with little chance of mobilising mass consciousness. while the existence of the eu is undeniable, homo europaeus as a new type of political subject is missing. europe's main cultural deficit its demos ­ is missing. as jean monett (1978) stated, the term 'homme europeen marks a transnational, postnational political agent who will disconnect a parochial link with his local community or nation. according to this highly modernist vision, such an actor will become an uprooted cosmopolitan who will also be in the opposition to the other be that african, asian, american, or muslim. self­ evidently, cultural racism and xenophobia will be an inevitable corollary. so far, there is no european identity or awareness that could compete with nationalism or ethnicity, or at least local identities, and which could offer an alternative base for cohesion and solidarity. cultural factors such as shared history, historical memory, religion, language, myths are instrumental in separating europe. therefore, they cannot become the basis for unity. to put it differently, the grand vision of the eu legislators referring to this overarching, unified europe is not a vision shared by most europeans. on the contrary, people stay rather indifferent or even unfriendly towards the idea of unification. european integration has remained in the realm of elite ideology, condemned by the masses. if we see europe as fluid space with shifting boundaries and uncertain content, as an imagined geographical formation, emerging in people's minds, ideas and beliefs, the major question raised is: can a european identity by created? if europe is a cultural construct, we have to ask who constructs it and for what purposes. is it possible to create it by social engineering? despite criticism of the explanatory power of economic forces, there is little approval of the fact that nations operate independently from economic variables. 5 economism still seems to remain powerful among both instrumentalists and constructi vists. cultural integration can take place in two ways. it can be either a spontaneous, dynamic transition to integration which, according to the neofunctionalist approach, will pay well, or it can take an active form through intervention which supports the european idea by means of advertising campaigns to strengthen european identity, european values and its cultural heritage. so, europeanness can be viewed as either a subconscious process or deliberate intention. the former view represents something like the air we breathe, or a process one cannot stop. commonly, we are not aware of it unless there is a danger of being suffocated. however, a quesion remains: can self-awareness alone bring europe into being? the latter is being created within the eu institutions, and pushed forward by the new europeanized elite all round the member states at all levels of public administration. for these power elites, 'achieving' europeanization is something like an implementation task: they advocate it and try to show initiative . ernie conceptualisation of the process of europeanisation by focusing on the 'native's point of view', one must raise a quesion on how cultural dimensions of eu enlargement are viewed by people in specific locales. in terms of cultural europe, are there any initiatives coming from the bottom any commonalities, anything that really shapes the 'taste' of europeans? examining the attained level of europeanness with the assistence of pragmatic appproaches through the research of everyday life ­ is complicated by the issue of who is more european, where is the norm, or a fixed point. thus, the aim of anthropology of europe, i.e. seeking differences and commonalities, must be based on research of genuine relations, not just wishes. a researcher must not build his/her hypotheses on the assumption that the relationship to europe is automatically given. the villagers i spoke to during my research have little awareness of eu cultural initiatives. however, when it comes to the relationship between the local firemen and their european identity, their alleged parochialism breaks down when they are eager to compete with other european firemen brigades. the eu is predominantly viewed as an economic entity 'where money is sitting, perhaps where it is going: as one informant put it? please quote: in the former case the idea is how to drain money from the eu and those who are capable of doing that are highly appreciated.6 the villagers tend to perceive europe as an economic and political entity, swayed by the problems that may refer either to ' the others in europe' -such as the recent decline of the european constitution by the netherlands and france, or the issues that may interfere directly with their existing lifestyles e.g. adapting themselves to different european norms and regulations that infringe their everyday life. hence, they view europe as cratos powel without demos but it seems to be not their concern. in conclusion, contemporary debates in anthropology over the concepts of identity, nation­ building and europeanisation seem very far away from these villagers everyday life, even in popularizing formats. they simply do not share the alleged cultural deficit, vividly reflected in the volume 25, no, i page 115 -------------------_.__._­ = anthropology ofeast europe review absence of a european public by the european elites and scholars. notes 1 in the czech (since the split of the country in 1993) and czechoslovak past. the term career had a negative connotation but over time, this has changed and the term has gained a new, more positive meanmg. 2 the term passive is not to indicate that consumers of popular culture are only passive, hopeless individuals who are manipulated by the ruling class of society, as was proposed by the frankfurt school in the past. rather. the assumption is that the target group 'consumes' cultural products in an active and creative way. which makes space for a potential change and motivation to reach it. as fiske (1989) puts it, what matters. instead of the very cultural artefact, is the process by which cultural products are consumed. 3 what is interesting is that among the registered readers there are no men and just five children, the rest is formed hy the middle-aged and elderly women who prefer cheap romances. -' people took part in so-called selfhelp activities (akce z) building of a collective out-door swimming pool, a playground. etc. they were also much keener on associating in community life. 5 national identites as a result of diverse historical experience support the widespread notion of hig and small nations, sustained within the eu, for instance. (> this concerns even those who are able to outwit the eu institutions, which can be viewed as one of the reminders of the socialist era and national ideology under socialism when it was a common strategy to fool the state with the aim to ensure a better living standard, or just for fun, to prove that it is possible. references boonzaier. emile and sharp, john (cds.) 1988 south african keywords. cape town: david philip. fiske, john 1989 understanding popular culture. london: unwin hyman. galla, karel 1939 dolnf raven. sociologicky obraz ceskc vesnice. praha: spolek pece 0 blaho venkova. hall t. e. 1989 beyond culture. new york: anchor books. monnet, jean 1978 memoirs. mayne r.. trans. london: collins. novotmi. hana 2004 'globalnf versus lokalnf: podfl glomlnf kultury na kultufc lobilnfho spolecenstvc in dolnf roven: polocas vyzkumu. p. skalnfk, ed. pp. 179 207. pardubice: univerzita pardubice. robertson. roland 1995 'glocalization: time space and homogeneity heterogeneity.' in global modernities. m. featherstone, s. lash and r. robertson, eds. london: sage. shore. cris 2002 building europe: the cultural politics of european integration, first puhlished in 2000. london and new york: routledge. skalnfk, petr (cd.) 2004 dolnf roven: polocas vyzkumuldolnf rovel1: research at half-time. scientific papers of the university of pardubice, series c, supplement 8. pardubice: univerzita pardubice. skalnfk. petr (ed.) 2005 socialnf antropologie ohce dolnf roven. scientific papers of the university of pardubice, series c. supplement 13. pardubice: univerzita pardubice. smith, anthony d. 1993 'a europe of nations or the nation of europe?' journal of peace research, 30(2): 129 35. storey, john 1997 an introduction to cultural theory and popular culture. london: prentice-hall. thornton, robert and ramphele. mampela 1988 'the quest for community'. in south african keywords. the uses and abuses of political concepts. boonzaier, e. and sharp, j., eds. pp. 29-39. cape town: david philip. volume 25, no.1 page 116 aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 85 the challenges of applied ethnology in croatia tvrtko zebec institute of ethnology and folklore research, zagreb, croatia the tradition of folklore festivals in croatia has roots in the festivals of peasant culture from the end of the 1920s and the second part of the 1930s, when the cultural, educational and charitable association peasant harmony with its populist ideology attempted to inspire self-confidence in peasants, gradually enlighten them, and introduce them to the national political life. back then already, peasant culture festival expert juries consisted of intellectuals— ethnographers, folklorists, musicologists and musicians. giving advice and recommendations, they created cultural policy at that time and tried to shape national identity by promoting peasant, old, domestic culture but from their urban point of view. [1] since that model of showing earlier native place traditions became entrenched as being successful, it has been expected that experts at the festivals evaluate the programs and the quality of the performances by the individual groups. unlike the then-dominant evolutionary view of the development of folk music—from oj-singing as the most simple (and, thus, oldest form) to the most highly developed major key part singing—the uniform source of croatian dance has not been so easy to establish. because of its broad dissemination and simplicity, the kolo circledance is accepted as a general symbol of national unity and community, while particular dances such as the drmeš, staro sito, dučec, poskočica and potkolo are regarded as being specificities according to regional diversities (ceribašić 1998:121). couple dances—the polka, valcer, mazurka, čardaš, šotiš, tango, fokstrot and the like—were not readily accepted by professionals since they showed the influence of urban and non-croatian centres, and even when they were performed at festivals as an exception to the rule, they were not favourably evaluated. the analysis of the repertoires of groups that appeared long after the first peasant harmony festivals—at the international folklore festival in zagreb (from 1966 onwards)—shows that these dances, apart from at the first few festivals, were rarely seen on the stages of the festival right up until the 1980s (sremac 1978:109). dance gradually penetrated the singing festivals of peasant culture from the mid-1930s. after world war ii, it was increasingly represented on festival stages. on the one hand, dance became more significant in relation to the older music tradition because of its dynamic nature (marošević 1988:83). on the other, due to the fact that socialist society suppressed the national and the specifically local, while promoting the supraregional and supranational, dance became the sole area in which any contact whatsoever was permitted with the features of the old and the domestic (ceribašić 1988:184). this non-verbal form became the most appropriate means of communication under socialism, since, according to the ruling ideology of that time, traditional singing or presentation of particular customs (unavoidably linked with the roman catholic calendar), as had been customary at peasant culture festivals between the two world wars, placed too much emphasis on peasant, national and traditional religious culture. for different ideological reasons, stage presentation of folk music and, particularly, dance, developed throughout the world after world war ii. it was recognised in that international context as one of the ways that, by promotion of national culture at festivals that often had a competitive character, one could also promote understanding between peoples and cultures (buckland 2002:71). professional juries evaluate the authentic and representative nature of the individual stage presentations. one could not say that they are of one mind as regards a uniform definition of authenticity. still, a dominant view is imposed in public by which the best are proclaimed and distinguished. thus, the basic idea of such competitive festivals is brought into question. the basic problem lies in the multifold interests and power concealed in the conception of authenticity, which is experienced in various ways by those who participate in the festivals in any way whatsoever, so that instead of better understanding, there are feelings of doubt, confusion and jealousy (buckland 2002:71–74). although no festivals with a marked competitive character are held in croatia, the very idea of public performance at reviews and festivals is, in essence, competitive. even when the members of the professional juries are against the idea of proclaiming the best, particularly on the principle of first, second, and third place, the participants themselves expect and demand public comments on and evaluations of their performances. the “best” folk groups are selected at small local or regional reviews and they represent their district or region at the larger countywide festivals. the groups that will perform at the largest regional and state festivals are selected at these local reviews. a performance at the international folklore festival held in zagreb is regarded as proof that an individual group has met the most important criteria of allen typewritten text © 2004 tvrtko zebec all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 86 tvrtko zebec the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 authenticity. the hierarchies of the festivals were set by the peasant harmony organization back in the period between the two world wars. after performances at local and regional reviews, they invited their branches to the largest review, the festival of croatian peasant culture in zagreb, as the national and political centre. that festival tradition has been revived and continued from 1966 onwards, since which time the international folklore festival in zagreb has been considered to be croatia’s most respected festival, within the circle of people engaged in this form of creativity. accordingly, that is, since the holding of the peasant harmony festivals, the “regional festivals offer a somewhat different picture than the representative zagreb festival. the large number of local events made it impossible for professionals to review the programs ahead of time, so that there are elements here that did not have entry to the festival in zagreb. dances and songs of the newer tradition are performed, despite the efforts of experts that identical programme objectives are also implemented here…the professionals selected the groups and repertoire here, too, and each selected group was obliged to meet in the finest detail the demands of the professionals” (sremac 1978:105) [emphasis t.z.]. [2] after world war ii, a more prominent place in the expert juries at important folklore festivals was given to individual ethnochoreologists/choreographers, along with other ethnologists, ethnomusicologists and folklorists. even today, there is a tendency to follow the model of folklore festival expert committees. from the 1990s it has become common in the city of zagreb and in several neighbouring counties for the jury to consist of three members—one music expert, one expert for traditional costumes, and one for the dance. fellow ethnomusicologists from the institute of ethnology and folklore research usually comment on music, ethnologists from the ethnographic museum or local museums observe traditional costumes, and the dance is commented on by ethnochoreologists. in the event that any of these experts is unable to come, long-time and experienced musicians or leaders from the lado professional folk dance ensemble, or from the amateur folk ensembles, are invited to attend in their place. as soon as the festival ends, it is the task of the jury to comment on individual performances and make suggestions to the end of “improved” progress, each member of the jury from his/her aspect. subsequently, they have to hand in the same, written, evaluations to the organiser of the festival, who then copies and sends them to all the groups that performed at the festival. although the comments of jury members can be similar from the expert viewpoint, they can also be very different, which of course depends on the views and attitudes of individual members. the contemporary kermis on the stage as a member of the jury, i observed the local folklore festival in velika gorica, a town near zagreb, in may 2000. the festival brings together about ten folklore groups from surrounding areas. the group whose performance inspired this paper fosters a highly characteristic singing style. their repertoire is extremely rich—ranging from lots of traditional, very archaic songs that are sung around st. george’s day or at harvest-time, to wedding songs and popular church songs that also maintain traditional singing style in their melodics and style of performance. the traditional costumes that the singers wear for their performances are taken care of in great detail, and attention is also paid to the musical accompaniment. for the several past years, the art director of the group has been a former dancer of the lado professional ensemble, who repeatedly emphasized that he decided to lead this group precisely because he wanted to preserve their characteristic singing style. i was delighted by their performance at that local festival. for the first time in my “professional life” i witnessed a group successfully presenting a contemporary kermis—a kermis that is going on to this day at feasts, patron-saint feast days of certain towns and villages. this is how i evaluated the contemporariness: several older women and men were dressed in contemporary, everyday clothes, while they sang in their traditional, characteristic way, a song to st. roch (rocco)—a non-traditional composition by a highly regarded and esteemed composer. that composer has been a long-time leader of a women’s vocal group ladarice (a part of lado ensemble), who has been taking note of popular songs, completing and interpreting them for several decades, and then composing completely new songs, that, according to their melodics, rhythm and style, greatly resemble traditional songs. the ladarice perform most of his compositions at the regional krapina festival of songs in the local kajkavian dialect. the drmeš dance (croatian folk dance) and the polka, “naturalized” about a hundred years ago, were incorporated in the performance in a traditional way, as they are performed at present in the majority of dance events in that area, just as was done in the recent and most distant past. i expressed particular satisfaction in evaluation of this performance because they “created an extraordinarily good impression of the contemporary nature of the kermis in their representation. i had not previously witnessed such an attempt and that is why i especially liked this approach. if one takes into consideration the selection of contemporary composed songs from the krapina festival, the contemporariness can be noticed as much in the black clothes of several women as in the music…the idea and the challenges of applied ethnology in croatia 87 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 its implementation are worth attention, and could be an interesting move forward in opening up stage representations to new ideas and approaches. (why should we always have to look at the attempts to show the oldest attainable layer of folklore, when we also live it in our own way today?) according to that logic, the performers were very authentic in their performance!” (zebec 2000:2) quite by chance on that occasion, one of the members of the jury for evaluation of the music was the composer’s brother, who was quite sceptical about the performance, precisely because his brother’s composition was performed, and he also expressed his concern as to whether they had asked for the permission to perform it. since the leader of that folk group is a former lado dancer, a good friend of the composer in question, every doubt about the performance without permission was rejected. according to one of the older members of the group, during that year, the year 2000, the group was somewhat more dedicated to practising church popular songs. their intention was to sing at their traditional kermis on st. bartholomew’s day. their leader did not know any of the songs dedicated to st. bartholomew, but he taught them the mentioned song to st. roch. members of the group knew that they could not sing the song for st. roch at st. bartholomew’s kermis, so they suggested to the leader to incorporate the learnt song in a staged representation of the kermis. the main kermis in their village is on st. bartholomew’s day, but it is a custom to go to kermis fairs in other villages—for example to the famous croatian shrine of marija bistrica. in addition, many women from their village, and traditionally whole families made pledges in the church of st. roch (august 16) in a nearby village, where they used to go on a pilgrimage in horse-drawn carts in the past, but travel by car in present times. that was also the reason why the idea of the staged representation of the kermis of st. roch seemed close to them and they felt it to be their own. referring to the authorship of the song, the comment of the singers/dancers in the group was as follows: “how could the composer hold against us the fact that we performed his composition, when he came to us many times, taking notes of the songs that we sang to him. i guess we can perform one of his compositions in return!” a year later, in september 2001, during the vinkovačke jeseni–vinkovci autumn folklore festival that brings together groups at the national level, this group performed the same act. after i came to the open stage where the main performance was being held that evening, members of the group called me in agitation and confusion, asking me what they should do since the crew from croatian television, who were filming the entire festival, warned them at the dress rehearsal that no one was allowed to go on stage in everyday clothes and perform without traditional costumes. their leader raised his objections and, since i supported them, they decided that they would not give up on their idea. during their performance, a fellow ethnologist, the tv producer, my colleague from university who was sitting next to me in the audience, did not hide his indisposition and anger because of such a performance. he immediately said that their performance would not be shown in the later broadcast of the event—that he would simply cut it out from the programme. he cited everyday clothes as one of his reasons and as another—the fact that they performed a composition by a contemporary composer. in answering the question of why he did not like the performance, he answered that it was very inarticulate and unclear. dominant attitudes and objections two or three weeks after the vinkovci autumn festival, when experts in the field of ethnology, folklore research, anthropology, ethnomusicology and ethnochoreology, who mostly study folklore festivals or simply observe them, met at the public panel about the zagreb international folklore festival. the art director of the festival presented her concept and view of the festival, and, among other, the subject under discussion was the performance of the representation of the contemporary kermis. based on her ten-year experience in organization of thematic folklore festivals, the director of the zagreb festival stated that she has reached the conclusion that the best solution was to ask the groups to perform representative, old, domestic folklore. contemporary representations should be avoided, because that would open a pandora’s box of inappropriate folklore performances, and it would be difficult to put an end to the new “invented” performances. the quite often emphasized negative attitude of experts, ethnologists and folklorists, was in the background of their views about lado dancers as choreographers, creating choreographies on the basis of their superficial knowledge, acquired in the lado ensemble or at short-term workshops on the folk dance of certain regions, and not according to sound folklore material. various views were expressed by the fellow experts during the panel discussion. they ranged from the acceptance of the attitude about the need for presenting the old and domestic, to the question on whether the creativity of the individual and the need to express individual, but also collective, identity should be suppressed. an established, experienced ethnomusicologist, a professor and a member of the academy, pointed out that 100 years ago there had also been compositions that were, with time, accepted as being “folk” (traditional), and that he felt that the per88 tvrtko zebec the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 formers shouldn’t be suppressed: “we shouldn’t be afraid, because as experts, we can always say when we feel that the border of the appropriate has been crossed, and react in appropriate way.” the fact is that our sense of the borders of the “appropriate” is very personal and individual, and how much this attitude will be imposed as a model or a rule, which others also have to respect, depends on the position of the individual. in the announcements of the vinkovci autumn festival, it was emphasized several times that the festival in question is the largest national festival of original folklore. in the later broadcast of that festival, the performance of the group with the contemporary representation of the kermis was left out. it is likely that the expert panel concerning the zagreb international folklore festival was sufficient confirmation for the tv producer to stick to his views and simply leave out that single performance from the broadcast. by doing so, his expert evaluation publicly belittled and degraded the contemporary staged representation of the kermis and indicated to the leader and the members of that group, as well as to everyone who watched that festival live and noticed the omission of that act in the tv broadcast, that such performances were not welcome at the vinkovci autumn, the largest national original folk festival. due to the power of the media, his decision has also superseded the decision of the experts who had chosen that group to perform at the festival. the traditional festival model has continued, with the most attention being paid to the product, that is, what is shown and performed. the focus here is on the model itself rather than on the style of the performance. not much heed is given to who is performing something, and why. apart from the exceptionally pronounced wish of the performers to appear at any price at the zagreb festival, the leading festival in the land, their perception of folklore is largely marginalized and/or conditioned by the concept of authenticity. thanks to that conception “with time they learnt what the experts were expecting of them and what type of festival programme was preferred” (vitez 2001:176). to perform at the zagreb festival and on the “small screen,” they are prepared to accept all the advice given and to fulfil all the conditions, even if they have to learn something that is no longer the vital tissue of their culture, but, according to notations, was so several decades ago. however, that does not mean that they do not recognize themselves in programmes selected in this way. to the contrary, they frequently accept them and thus themselves participate in the construction of authenticity and “manage to shape their own specific performance within it,” with it becoming “a contemporary aesthetic conception and contemporary practice which leans on conceived, former practice.” still, there is no doubt that their role in this process is not the decisive one (ceribašić 1998:196–197). it is obvious that what counts today is concept of authenticity (originality) at the level of application and practice (vitez 2001:176). this has emerged in the application of ethnology “as a simplified instruction for recognition of the content of traditional culture that is desirable for nurture and presentation at festivals” (ibid.). that concept has been subjected to considerable criticism over the past three decades but has, nevertheless, endured, and has not been shown to be so worthless from the point of theory as it might seem. in her criticism, naila ceribašić, too (1998:195), has sought for the reasons of the survival of the originality canon. as a social fact, it “makes up the foundation of the discourse on contemporary festivals—perhaps because it can offer sanctuary to fragmented identities with its stability, unchanging nature, purity and collectivity, helping in the building of the grand ideas of national or state unity, or even because it can make the engagement of professional experts really essential with its elusiveness and fictional elements.” by prescribing originality, experts and organizers can thus participate in showing quite non-binding local and regional identity, just as they consciously or unconsciously can be participants in the creation of the ethnomyth (rihtman-auguštin 2001). in that way, they also share accountability for the social, political, aesthetic, cultural and even economic consequences (buckland 2002:75–76). however, standards in the world of music are somewhat different. immediately after the emergence within the framework of popular music of the world music genre, which takes its models from traditional music from all parts of the world, the international folklore festival was promoting that mode of music expression in croatia. it was recognized as providing an opportunity that urban young people, too, accept forms of national, traditional music adapted to suit the taste of contemporary consumers. that was also a way of attracting to the events and concerts of the festival the young urban public, to whom these artists and music were familiar and very acceptable. it seems that this time, in keeping with mainstream trends—after the first earlier attempts as part of the ideas of the peasant harmony organization to find forms of national culture that would unite the urban and peasant populations—a spontaneous acceptance by young urban dwellers of new expressions of traditional, peasant music took place during the 1980s. however, the background to the interest of young people in world music was not the desire to shape a common national entity and awareness, since that had long existed; rather, this was a search for their own roots and heightened awareness of the search for a healthy life, a return to nature of sorts. it was also, quite probably, a search for the exotic which, in relation the challenges of applied ethnology in croatia 89 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 to the ideas of the universal contemporary music of our “global village,” can still be found in the specifics of ethnic cultures and traditions. the symbols that had in their time carried the burden of the exclusively elevated objectives of national homogenisation “descended” to the level of contemporary everyday life, and in that way also became indicators of cultural complexity (rihtman-auguštin 2001:17; frykman 1995). [3] despite the top-flight attainments of the specialist events of the festival, which require studious work and comments from which the broad public can learn a lot about the diversity and richness of traditional culture, primarily as seen through the eyes of experts, it is obvious that the concept of authenticity has still not undergone any fundamental changes. the part of cultural complexity shown in the form of modern music expression should not be a counterpoise to the customary, “sterile” performances of folk groups and proof of the contemporary nature of the festival. instead, re-examination of the entrenched canons of authenticity and practical application of scholarly deliberation could ease the contentiousness between scholarship and its application in practice. in other words, to whatever extent the unforgettable youth of the older members of the folk groups is reconstructed on stage, the common experience for the younger generation is singing, dancing, and playing, which is more important to them from the aspect of entertainment and travel than pride in their own village culture and the need to preserve it (dubinskas 1982:113). today’s performers are far more participants in contemporary cultural processes and experience dance in their everyday, personal lives “as teenagers who live in that town today,” than they are aware of the transmission of tradition which once lived in some first existence (nahachewsky 2001:24–25). the analysis carried out by nahachewsky on the examples of the morris dances in great britain and the salonsko kolo dance in croatia and in chile lead to his conclusion that changes and adaptation occur in life, resulting in what was regarded in the past as a second existence, having today the features of the first existence of folklore. a question imposes itself in connection with the example given above of a stage presentation of a saint’s day fête event: is it exclusively the older stratum of tradition that can be representative, or can the ways in which own identity is shaped also encompass quite new artistic attainments? in defining folk music, grozdana marošević claimed that the non-existence of awareness of an author is not a crucial standard for locating music content as a part of folklore. according to her, time is the crucial element in judging whether music content is folklore, or, in other words, how long these contents have existed as folklore, and whether they have become tradition. “new music contents which are folkloristic by their performing characteristics, but which have not (yet) become a part of tradition, are not regarded by the majority of people as being folk music” (marošević 1988:78). however, the conception of authenticity, tradition and heritage cannot be interpreted exclusively as a remnant of the past in the present. also involved are the ways in which one’s own source is defined and felt, and how one’s own identity is built. other factors are the notions, conceptions and feelings about how our forebears lived, which can collide with the reality of their way of life (ceribašić 1998:215). there is also the matter of the need of the performers publicly to show the feelings that they had been obliged to conceal for political reasons. namely, everyone who is at least vaguely familiar with the half-century long rule of the communist regime in which the croatian roman catholics lived, similarly to believers of other denominations in the former socialist yugoslavia (along with many other nations under communist regimes), clearly understands that the wish for ultimate freedom in public confession of one’s faith contributed to direct and public expression on stage of this long-suppressed religious identity of the individual and of the community, within the framework of folklore representations. so the subject of presentation at festivals need not necessarily be exclusively a product. along with what is performed, one should also look at how it is performed, and who performs it. one should not ignore the notions held about this by the performers, notions they regard as being important. taking all those components into account, it is easier, on the basis of their mutual permeation, to penetrate deeper into the social and cultural sense and significance of a performance. this does not call into question the traditional shaping of the programmes of groups that present native place tradition, which must undoubtedly continue to be the core and main content and sense of festivals. instead, an effort is being made to point to the unnecessary exclusivity of representative nature standards. a host of examples and questions the analysis and interpretation of a performance by the folk-dance group from the village of oriovac (near the town of slavonski brod) at the international folklore festival in zagreb in 1992—within the existing conception of authenticity (to remain consistent)—showed the desire during the time of war (1991–1992) to stress national unity and to be a symbol of resistance towards the aggressor. at the same time, it also revealed tensions in the political sense—the attitude towards the national centre of political power, and the resentment at its ineffectiveness in defending srijem, slavonia, and oriovac, too, against the attacks (zebec 1998:152–156). [4] 90 tvrtko zebec the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 analysis of another example—the performance by inhabitants of the village of jarmina at the vinkovci autumn festival in 1995—in a different, arranged form, in an authored choreography, also showed the problems of contemporary life among people who had already lived for 50 years (in the third generation) in slavonia—in the eastern part of croatia, preserving and displaying the identity of their place of origin in western croatia (zebec 1998:156–162). they were not sufficiently self-confident and skilful themselves to put on stage the dances of their old native region, adhering to the conception of authenticity, but they felt the need publicly to express their “old” regional identity, since they had felt like second-class citizens in their “new” community, under a half-century of pressure from the regime and new surroundings. they engaged a female choreographer from their earlier home to conceive the dances and songs as a memento of the region from which they came. their feelings were intensified, which perhaps also gave an additional stimulus for emphasising their old identity, by the fact that during the war (1991–1992) they suddenly were obliged to move because of the situation and many of them, as displaced persons from jarmina, were accommodated with their kinfolk in the zagorje region, from where they moved during world war ii. they felt the need finally and in public to present themselves in the guise of their old homeland and show that they were as worthy as the even older settlers in slavonia. a folk group of croatians from srijemska mitrovica (from eastern srijem, in serbia) performed at the vinkovci autumn festival in 2001. they showed the heritage of srijem. the performers wore costumes that they themselves had reconstructed according to the models that some of their parents had owned in the period between the two world wars. this was the type of costume worn in croatian posavina, which could not be regarded as representing srijem according to the existing canons on authenticity. someone objected along these lines after the performance, but the question arises as to why they chose the costume that served as the model for reconstruction. it should be born in mind here that the singing, charity and drama societies of the citizens of mitrovica, along with people from the other towns at that time, were divided along national lines, and that the croatians took costumes from croatia as their national symbols. so it is probable that the selected model had survived in someone family heritage. is that any reason to ignore those circumstances in the lives of the performers and their awareness of identity, insisting now they don costume which would have more to say to others (largely to experts) about srijem as their broad native region? [5] a croatian married couple from eastern srijem driven out of slankamen during the 1990s are aware of the important role played by folklore activities in their inclusion in the social life of gradina in podravina (in croatia), to which they moved. in addition, they are conscious of the integrational potential inherent in presentation of diverse folklore: that man from srijem practises not only the local but also the dances of the broad region at the local folklore society, including those from dalmatia (there are people in the area who are descendants of dalmatian settlers), while he also learns dances typical to other parts of slavonia and to voyvodina, for performance at the slavonian folklore festival. his efforts in presentation of the folklore of the population that is heterogeneous in origin, speech and traditions seems to be a targeted move, which will help both in incorporating the people from srijem in the reception society and in the multicultural environment in which they live (čapo žmegač 2002:105). the reasons cited in these few examples seem to provide sufficient rationale for expanding the existing festival canons. an endless number of examples could be given, since each group that wants to perform has valid reasons in the background for wanting to do so. it is up to the experts to try to understand them. final remarks instead of a conclusion, several remarks and questions occur to me. from the critical perspective, many expert evaluations and decisions—the ones from the past and the ones that are contemporary—can be characterized as the views of individual experts who are in a position at a particular moment to exercise the duty of, for example, art director of a certain festival, or tv producer. depending on the moment and the position, that is, the power of these individuals, their opinion is more or less imposed on the expert and cultural, and consequently, social public. this is how certain stereotypes are formed, which are perpetuated within the profession and public opinion, and are accepted by the common man—who reacts with great sensitivity and adapts to the ruling social and political conditions. that is why it is necessary in discussions on authenticity to ask whose authenticity is in question (bakka 2002:69). how is it that our individual and/or collective authority can be imposed on others, and how much “stronger” is this than the individual idea of a choreographer or the needs of a particular folklore group that had recognized and accepted the idea of an individual for expression of a particular identity? do we have an exclusive right as experts to impose our views, or should we be more sensitive in recognizing the needs that the observed groups express (see davies 2001:15)? the challenges of applied ethnology in croatia 91 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 professionalism is sought and emphasized. however, a profession is not in itself an institution that cannot be submitted to criticism—it is, in fact, the representation of the experts themselves, who sometimes err in evaluating the relationship of their own professionalism and their own discoursive practice (guillory 1993:59). [6] the unquestionable stance of the profession is, in fact, a one-sided experiencing of interaction. according to the first described example, time will show how possible it will be to accept the authorship of an individual, a composer, as being collective—will the song to st. roch be accepted with time in that village, owing to the staged representation? and is this at all important? can one “invented and inarticulate” staged presentation be representative for a particular community during a particular period of social and political life? endnotes 1 written works on folklore festivals in croatia include sremac 1978; dubinskas 1982; marošević 1988; ceribašić 1992. analysing folk music practices and cultural policy, naila ceribašić (1998) wrote at length about the festival paradigms in croatia through their history. theresa buckland (2002) also wrote about the series of oppositions built into the folk paradigm framework in some british examples. 2 from my own experience as a member of juries at local and county festivals, i can say that this method of selection at the smaller festivals for groups to perform at the larger ones has largely survived up until the present day. the organizers expect the experts to evaluate the performances and to select the groups for the larger regional festivals. 3 that does not mean that the need for expression of national identity has been lost, nor that it will be lost, since. at the time of the homeland war, the zagreb festival was an expression of resistance to the anti-croatian aggression (vitez 1992; zebec 1998), “while its participants insisted that the festival be held, despite the wartime dangers and other unfavourable circumstances” (vitez 1996:7). thus, national symbols are displayed, either prominently or less so, depending on the current social situation. for example, a sensitivity towards national minorities was shown at the 2003 festival, when the entire theme of the festival was the heritage of croatia’s national minorities. 4 slavonska posavina [the sava river basin] and the surroundings of slavonski brod, even after the many ceasefires signed during the war in 1991 and 1992, were constantly under serbian attack from the southern, bosnian side of the river sava. members of the folklore groups wanted to come at that time and from that region to the festival in zagreb. with their presentation, a special performance of the sung kolo, slavonia at war, prepared for the occasion, they wanted to draw greater public attention to the situation. analysis of the dance event along with the results of a questionnaire handed out to the performers, the participants in that political ritual, showed that the kolo, as one of the very archaic forms of expression, was being adapted to contemporary life and was transmitting up-to-date messages about the war and political reality. 5 something similar could also be said about the croatians who gather at the catholic missions and clubs outside of croatia, in europe, and in americas, australia and new zealand. as emigrants, they have completely different notions about their old homeland, the symbolics are at different levels from those that are entrenched in croatia, their country of origin, while they have few possibilities to engage in folklore that would meet the criteria of the authenticity that has been discussed. 6 following magali scarfatti larson (the rise of professionalism: a sociological analysis. berkeley: university of california press, 1977) john guillory has opened up the larger question of the relation between the professional and the bureaucratic. larson points out that while the profession has always been represented as “the antithesis of bureaucracy,” all professions are now “bureaucratised to a greater or lesser extent,” and further, “in a bureaucratised world, professions can no longer be interpreted as inherently anti-bureaucratic!” (guillory 1993:253) references bakka, egil 2002 “whose dances, whose authenticity.” laszlo felfoldy, theresa buckland (editors). authenticity—whose tradition?, budapest: european folklore institute, 60–69. buckland, theresa jill 2002 “multiple interests and powers: authenticity and the competitive folk dance festival.” laszlo felfoldy, theresa buckland (editors). authenticity—whose tradition?, budapest: european folklore institute, 70–78. ceribašić, naila 1992 “smotre folklora kao oblikovatelji identiteta glazbenofolklornog područja slavonije.” 26. međunarodna smotra folklora, zagreb: koncertna direkcija, 19–25. 1998 folklorna glazbena praksa i kulturna politika: paradigma smotri folklora u hrvatskoj. doctoral dissertation, sveučilište u zagrebu, filozofski fakultet. čapo žmegač, jasna 2002 srijemski hrvati: etnološka studija migracije, identifikacije i interakcije. zagreb: durieux. 92 tvrtko zebec the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 davies, charlotte aull 1999 reflexive ethnography: a guide to researching selves and others. london: routledge. dubinskas, frank a. 1982 “ritual na pozornici: folklorna izvedba kao simbolička akcija.” narodna umjetnost 19:105–118. frykman, jonas 1995 “informalization of national identity.” ethnologia europaea 25:5–15. guillory, john 1993 cultural capital: the problem of literary canon formation. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. marošević, grozdana 1988 “folk music in croatia in the period from 1981–1985.” contributions to the study of contemporary folklore in croatia, zorica rajković (editor), institute of folklore research, special issue 9, zagreb, 75–98. nahachewsky, andriy 2001 “once again: on the concept of ‘second existence folk dance.’” yearbook for traditional music 33:17–28. rihtman-auguštin, dunja 2001 etnologija i etnomit. zagreb: naklada publica. sremac, stjepan 1978 “smotre folklora nekad i danas.” narodna umjetnost 15:97–116. vitez, zorica 1992 26. međunarodna smotra folklora, 25.28.7.1992., zagreb, hrvatska, zorica rajković vitez, željka janeš-benetti, tvrtko zebec (editors), koncertna direkcija zagreb, 5. 1996 30. međunarodna smotra folklora, 17.21.7.1996., zagreb, hrvatska, erika krpan (editor), koncertna direkcija zagreb, 6–7. 2001 “o smotrama folklora,” etnološka tribina 24, 31:176–178. zebec, tvrtko 1998 “dance events as political rituals for expression of identities in croatia in the 1990s.” svanibor pettan (editor), music, politics and war: views from croatia. zagreb, institute of ethnology and folklore research, 151–162. 2000 ocjena programa odraslih skupina (opći dojam i ples), smotra folklora 2000. zajednice kulturno-umjetničkih udruga grada velike gorice, 12. 6. 2000., institut za etnologiju i folkloristiku, mnsc. 1789. aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 37 dancing yourself, dancing for others: performing identity in a transylvanian-romanian folkdance ensemble amy c. mills university of oregon my interest in romanian-transylvanian ensembles started, ironically, when i began learning hungariantransylvanian dances in high school and college. my mother has been an avid international folk dancer [1] since before i was born, and i was always interested in the hobby. when my mother and stepfather became fascinated by transylvanian couple dancing in the early 1990s, i started to learn these dances too. we attended monthly practice sessions and special workshops, to learn couple dances which were categorized under the name “hungarian dancing.” the regular dance events were organized by americans who were not of hungarian extraction and who attended because they loved the dances and music, while special workshops were usually taught by hungarians from budapest. [2] i eventually realized that some of these dances were from romanian and romany communities and that much of what american groups referred to as “hungarian” meant dances from transylvania. i began to wonder why a dance-event in the united states, involving dances from several ethnic groups within the borders of romania, would be called “hungarian dancing.” since i was studying east european history and politics at the time, i questioned whether my dance experiences were being colored by a hungarian nationalist point of view. i noticed that some american dancers in the community were concerned about the situation of hungarians in transylvania, based on what they had been told by the hungarian dance teachers, but i rarely heard about romanian folkways or points of view. my early questions were: why were hungarians from budapest, the capital of hungary, teaching dances from transylvania, a region in romania? what were other transylvanian-romanian and transylvanian-romany dances like? how were they similar to or different from transylvanian-hungarian dances from the same region or village? how did the two populations interact in these villages, particularly in regards to dancing? i learned answers to the first question through several visits to eastern europe, where i learned about a development in hungary called the táncház (dance-house) movement. in budapest and other hungarian cities, i discovered recreational dance events where young, urban hungarians gathered weekly to learn village dances from various regions of transylvania. [3] these groups were similar to the recreational folk dance clubs i had grown up with in the united states, so i was not surprised to discover balkan and greek dance nights also held in budapest. i was thrilled at the sight of so many young people doing folk dancing, since this was a rarity in the united states. it became clear that the táncház movement was the source for the material i learned in “hungarian dancing” clubs in the united states. in the united states, the táncház movement fed into americans’ interest in european “peasant” folk dances, although americans were not always aware that the dances they learned from “real” hungarians had already been filtered through the recreational dance community in hungary. i began to ask myself why the romanians did not have their own urban, recreational dance movement. i had visited one rehearsal of the ensemble someşul-napoca in 1995 and was amazed by how energetic and young the dancers were, but it seemed that their participation as dancers was limited to rehearsals and performances. after some consideration, i realized that i had encountered similar situations in most of the other east european countries which i had visited. this appeared to have been the socialist model of folklore performance. i came to the conclusion that the recreational character of the táncház movement in hungary was the exception rather than the rule in eastern europe. perhaps, i was asking the wrong questions. i started to ask myself why young people became involved in folk dance ensembles, particularly after the end of socialism opened the country to diverse international influences. how is the end of socialist rule affecting how transylvanian-romanian folk dance ensembles present themselves? how does being in a performing group affect how ethnic romanians view their own folklore and how does this affect their sense of identity as romanians? is the survival of some of these ensembles likely to become a tool of the growing nationalist tendencies in romania? does performing local folklore necessarily mean expressing feelings of anti-minority nationalism? folklore and ethnic identity in transylvania in transylvania, folk music and dance are often imbued with political meanings because they are used to delimit the cultural boundaries of the romanian or hungarian nations. since the 19th century, folkloric research in allen typewritten text © 2004 amy c. mills all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 38 amy c. mills the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 transylvania has been used by hungarian and romanian nationalists to assert their conflicting claims to transylvania itself. since hungary lost transylvania to romania in 1919, some hungarian folklorists have expressed their sense of loss by describing the region as the heartland of pure, uncorrupted hungarian folklore. [4] romanian nationalists, on the other hand, have recognized that theirs is a shorter history of elite art and literature, architecture, and political rule, thus they often look to romanian village and rural tradition for pride and legitimacy. under socialism, folklore research and performance was institutionalized across romania in “houses of culture, state ensembles and obligatory competitive festivals which functioned essentially as vehicles for party propaganda and social coercion under the banners and slogans of ‘worker’ emancipation and national pride” (buckley 1994:32–3). [5] socialist regimes throughout eastern europe saw folklore presentation as a powerful tool in controlling and influencing their populations. on the one hand, rural populations did not fit into the socialist ideal of a worker’s state, since they worked for themselves. thus, the socialists saw fit to centralize village folklore and recast it as the “people’s” music. by defining it as national folklore, local identities were de-emphasized and all folklore within a state became the heritage of its citizens. folklore organizers through the region were taught that the raison d’être for creating folk ensembles is to preserve and validate folklore; however, in order to present folklore on stage, they were required to change the village dances and music to accord with socialist ideology. the hungarian táncház movement emerged as a challenge to socialist-sponsored folklore because its motivations were more individualized and sometimes nationalist. it started as a group of folklore enthusiasts researching ethnic hungarian dance and music in transylvania but evolved into both an anti-socialist and a pro-hungarian movement. the movement focused on public participation at táncházes, or dance-houses, where young, urban hungarians gathered to learn to dance village dances and play village music. although the movement grew to include dances and music of transylvanian-romanians and roma, its main attraction has been as “a coherent set of ideas offering a sense of national unity and identity to hungarians” (kürti 2001:137) based on preserving the “long-lost hungarian folk music in transylvania” (kürti 2001:143). through this movement, hungarian minority communities in romania came to see hungarian village music and dance as a site of group opposition to the homogenizing, nationalist regime in romania. in contrast, many ethnic romanians relate to folklore as a symbol of village life, thus their response to it depends on how they value their rural roots. despite the patterns of rapid urbanization in romania during and after socialism, many urban romanians’ lives are still intertwined with village life, particularly because of family connections. nevertheless, many urbanites, and villagers who want to appear ‘modern,’ try to distance themselves from village values and habits, often by rejecting local musical and dance traditions in favor of western popular music. some romanians also detest the traditional music and dance because they feel it was forced down their throats by the former regime. why do some romanians continue to be involved in performing folklore after 1989? as a result of the shift from a socialist system to a capitalist one, and from totalitarian rule to a more democratic model, romania’s citizens face a multitude of new situations and challenges in their daily lives. these circumstances create a new milieu in which folklorists and ensemble dancers must reconsider both their individual identities and their motivations for representing village folklore beyond the village context. like most of their neighbors, they find themselves struggling economically while experiencing the sensation that time is speeding up. as romania’s markets are flooded with economic and cultural influences from beyond its borders, new forms of music are competing with folk music for popularity. village life continues to be deeply affected by modernization and urbanization trends, although some of these trends seem to be reversing, due to economic troubles. on a national and regional scale, ethno-nationalist issues are being raised in ways forbidden during socialism, sometimes resulting in violence. at the same time, many romanian citizens profess apathy about politics and distrust of politicians. methodology my research in transylvania occurred during three visits to romania, mostly in the city of cluj-napoca. [6] from september 1997 until august 1998, i lived in cluj, supported by a fulbright fellowship. in the summer of 1999, i returned to transylvania for several weeks to visit friends and renew contacts, and, in the winter of 2002, i spent six weeks in cluj, interviewing dancers and folklore organizers. i began my year in transylvania by contacting zamfir dejeu, the director of the transylvanian-romanian ensemble someşul-napoca. dejeu invited me to attend the ensemble rehearsals and became one of my primary sources for understanding how to navigate the world of folklore performance in cluj. as a folklore researcher, he invited me to accompany him on a number of research trips to transylvanian villages. through dejeu and other contacts, i was able to visit communities throughout transylvania, where i witnessed folk dancing in various settings: at public folklore festivals and private village celebrations, at stage performances by ensembles and outdoor celebrations of national holidays. dancing yourself, dancing for others 39 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 i spent the majority of my time in cluj, where i attended rehearsals of someşul-napoca twice a week and tried to attend to as many hungarian táncház events as i could. as a dancer, i never questioned whether i would participate at these activities by learning the dances myself. my foreign status, as an american, was often mitigated by my identity as a dancer. as non-verbal communication, dancing allowed me to make friends even before i was able to express myself with ease in romanian. were i not already an able dancer, i doubt that i would have been so easily admitted into the inner circles where i was received. when i returned to romania in the winter of 2002, i spent six weeks in cluj, attending rehearsals of three amateur (i.e., unpaid) folk ensembles and interviewing participants. in this article, i focus primarily on the dancers of ensemble someşul-napoca and its director, zamfir dejeu. since my focus in this article is on dancers’ and folklore organizers’ perceptions of their own individual and group identities, i have concentrated mostly on the interviews which i conducted in the winter of 2002. in translating and presenting excerpts from these interviews, i have tried to retain the meaning and flavor of the original romanian in which interviews were conducted. in addition, i have chosen not to cite each quotation—all direct quotations come from the recorded interviews. this study necessarily falls short of offering a full understanding of changing identities in post-1989 transylvanian folk dance ensembles for several reasons. first, i do not have or have access to interview data from before 1989, which would allow me to more accurately understand how the regime change has affected dancers’ self-perceptions. further interviews with dancers and former dancers who were members of ensembles during that period would mitigate these problems. i have tried to remedy this by choosing to focus on several dancers who danced in ensembles both before and after 1989. second, my investigation draws on observations of one amateur dance ensemble in cluj. numerous dancers in someşul-napoca have also belonged to other ensembles in the city, thus i can draw on these experiences as well. while i feel that the dancers’ experiences are representative for cluj, which does not have a professional folk dance ensemble, i cannot speak directly to the experiences of professional ensemble dancers. third, i lack comparable hungarian data, due primarily to my inability to speak hungarian, but also due to time limitations and a concern about how the two ethnic groups might react to my dual participation. i hope to remedy this situation in future research. presenting folk dance in a post-1989 world zamfir dejeu, founder and director of someşul-napoca, first experienced village dance and music styles in the countryside. he remembered his early love for romanian folk music and dance as follows: when i was maybe 4 or 5 years old, i frequently went with my parents to weddings and other village celebrations. i spent the whole time standing near the musicians and dancers. there was this one really good musician who had a nervous tick. he’d play and play on his violin and, from time to time, blink his eye like this (demonstrates). i liked listening to this musician so much that i picked up his tick. my mother had the hardest time, but she finally broke me of the habit! raised in the transylvanian village of valea drăganului, he left for cluj at the age of 14 to pursue higher education, but, unlike many, he never turned his back on his village culture. born in 1944, zamfir dejeu has worked in folklore-related fields for most of his life. while working at the casa creaţiei populare, or the “house of folk creation,” a state-run organization which oversaw the folk performing groups in cluj county, his work entailed visiting troupes from towns and villages and working with them to present their folklore in state-organized festivals and other venues. he proudly explained to me, “i revitalized a lot of folklore. wherever i went, i made [folk dance troupes] and where they existed already, i helped them to perfect themselves, so that they could present themselves honorably at festivals and the like.” while organizing dance groups and folk festivals, dejeu conducted his own research and published several books of music which he collected and transcribed from transylvanian villagers. shortly after 1989, he became a researcher at the romanian academy’s institute of folklore and earned his ph.d. in folklore in 1997. an energetic, driven man who never seems to stop planning his next performance, research trip, or book, dr. dejeu’s day job is working as a professional folklore researcher at the folklore institute; however, he seems to spend at least as much time organizing and directing someşul-napoca, which he founded in 1973. in our interview, i was interested in learning whether dejeu’s motivations for studying folklore and presenting folk dances on stage remained the same as before 1989. when i asked dejeu whether he still worked in folklore for the same reasons, he responded, “because i like it? yes. i’ve always worked in this field. although folklore is my vocation, i have always done it with pleasure. for me, coming to work is a pleasure…i never get tired of folklore.” i asked him why it is important for folklore to be on stage, and he responded that “people want to see it.” i found this answer somewhat problematic, since i had been frequently told that fewer people were attending folk concerts than before 1989. dejeu expanded on this answer, explaining that the people who come are “people who are already lovers of folklore” and that he was interested in presenting 40 amy c. mills the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 something that he also loved. he also perceived himself as a knowledgeable source, who can teach others about folklore. as a field researcher, dejeu felt that he was presenting a more authentic version of transylvanian folk dance and music than other ensembles did. he expressed a sense of local pride as another reason for performing transylvanian folklore: our folklore from the region of cluj is very varied….the most beautiful dances are from the transylvanian plain. the most beautiful and the hardest. the most beautiful songs are those from the apuseni mountains. the best customs are from the someş river valley…in other counties of transylvania, there are only one or two folkloric zones, not nearly as many as there are in cluj county. so, for us, because it’s so diverse and beautiful, we enjoy presenting it. dejeu prepared many of his choreographies, and all of his new ones, from material which he has personally collected, thus he had the opportunity to present dances and music from regions which he deemed the most interesting. one of the dancers in dejeu’s ensemble, adela oneţ mîrza, added another reason why folklorists and choreographers might justify performing village lore in urban settings. she explained that, “everyone wants to preserve his own tradition. with the tendency these days towards globalization and total uniformization, it’s important not to forget who you are, where you come from, and what your roots are.” the implication here is that the city-dwelling populations in romania come from village origins and that they will not know who they are unless they keep these traditions alive. this argument is selective, however, since it does not argue that city people should work in the fields, make their own wine, or live in small communities, all of which are also village ways. rather, this comment expressed the belief that traditional folk music and dance belong even to the urban population, and that a part of their romanianness was expressed in the folklore of their rural relatives or ancestors. her argument implied that if these folk practices are not continued, the romanian population, both urban and rural, will have lost something of its soul. the fear of folklore being “lost” is very real for folklore organizers like zamfir dejeu. this concern is based on the notion that “folklore” and “tradition” refer specifically to the ways and art forms of the peasantry. as a corollary, folklorists in romania, and in much of europe, believe that folklore can be lost, as a result of urbanization and the disappearance of older ways of village life (dundes 1969). in contrast, many american folklorists have argued that folklore cannot die because it is a process rather than a product (ben-amos 1972; ben-amos 1984; pocius 1995). romanian, and indeed most east european, folklorists and folklore organizers rely on a different conception of “tradition.” in their eyes, tradition encompasses the values, customs, and meanings of a particular people, from which it defines itself as a culture and even a nation. based on these different definitions of tradition, folklorists in transylvania feel that the traditional village ways are being lost, as villagers stop practicing them or remembering them. when i asked zamfir dejeu why he started someşulnapoca, he responded that it was “to validate the folklore from the villages.” [7] dejeu expressed a common attitude among folklorists and folklore organizers [8] in transylvania that presenting folklore in performance will teach audiences to value it, and that this, in turn, will help to keep traditions alive. even in the village context, folklore organizers believe that they can revitalize folk traditions by supporting performing groups. dejeu was proud to have started and advised such groups, but he did discuss how villagers themselves might be encouraged to start dancing and playing music again for their own enjoyment. in contrast, the hungarian táncház movement offers an approach to “keeping folklore alive” which emphasizes social dancing rather than performance. dances and music are done in new contexts and imbued with new meanings in both approaches. the táncház approach, however, provides a recreational setting for urban people, in which they attempt to recreate select aspects of the village context. while staged performances of folk music and dance are a part of the movement, the emphasis is on communal dance events. when staged performances do occur, orgnaizers like to invite several of the “real” folk to sing, dance, or play music and show the city people what the “authentic” lore is like. both the ensemble and the táncház approach are similar in that both ignore the possibilities of revitalizing dance and music events in the village context itself. it will be interesting to follow the results of each approach over a longer period of time, in terms of who dances, how the dances change, and how the contexts and meanings of these dances change. considering that much of the romanians’ activities to “keep traditions alive” meant organizing performing groups, it is valid to ask what qualified as living folklore. is it “alive” if it is performed onstage, but few people dance it in the village context? is it the same folklore if it is danced in the city setting, where people dance it for different reasons? i asked zamfir dejeu whether he felt these traditions changed when they get to the city, and he explained that they did, but “even if you can’t necessarily dance in the original style, it’s close.” although he argued that the “real” folklore is that which comes from the villages, it appeared that maintaining the dances in their contexts was less important to him than the fact that they continue to be danced by somebody. dancing yourself, dancing for others 41 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 dejeu asserted proudly that romanian folklore can still be studied because it still exists in its village forms, thus it should be collected and performed. he boasted, “[our folklore] is still alive. it’s still alive in people’s memories. the folklore is still oral, it isn’t all just written, like it is in the west, for instance. if you want to present folklore there, you have to learn it from books. here, you don’t have to read, you have to go to the villages and film it.” fieldwork is a central part of dejeu’s work, and this has affected his emphasis on authenticity. he believed that many other ensembles were not as responsible about what they present as he was because they do not present dances based on original research in villages. both during and after socialism, ensembles such as someşul-napoca played public roles in presenting folk dance and music to audiences in romania and beyond. since 1989, choreographers and folklore organizers enjoy new freedom to structure their performances as they see fit, and the choices which they are making exhibit values they wish to instill in their audiences. they continue to send the socialist era message that folk dance and music are part of a romanian heritage which must be protected. on the other hand, they assert that individuality and personal creativity play a vital part in these traditions. these new decisions about staging and choreography are affected by audience demand, and all this is happening in a time when audiences for folklore performances are shrinking. in order to understand how folk dance performances have changed since 1989, it is necessary to consider how they were structured during socialist rule in romania. the key emphasis for ensembles in all regions of romania was upon standardization. in transylvania, this meant that traditionally improvisational couple dances were performed by a large number of couples dancing exactly the same steps at the same time. many of the choreographies involved two or three lines of couples, facing the audience, with the better dancers in the front line. choreographies included other geometric configurations, such as diagonal lines or circles, but even in these cases, the vision was of a collective of dancers moving in unison. in transylvanian choreographies, the women and men would sometimes separate, with all the men doing a series of jumping and slapping moves and all the women doing innumerable turns. romi bucur, a former dancer in someşul-napoca, remembered that the choreography did not differ much in the eight or more ensembles he danced with: during ceauşescu’s time, all the ensembles had exactly the same mode of operation. the same technique, the same choreography. of course, the staging differed, with some different steps, so that one ensemble wouldn’t look like another…i think that this was a mode of thinking modeled off russian ensembles…i think it is a model for showing communism. everyone will be the same. everyone will do the exact same thing equally…we all work the same, shoulder to shoulder…on the other hand, now it’s changed and every person is an individual and does what he thinks and what he believes is right, instead of doing the same as his neighbor does. romi’s analysis emphasizes how the style of performance presents a system of values, albeit indirectly. during the socialist period, village styles of dancing were modified to remove any emphasis on individuality. the public presentation of folklore also became a tool in the regime’s attempt to turn peasants into proletariat. in being put on stage, and sometimes on television, these dances became the patrimony of not only the villages from which they came but of the entire romanian population (rice 1994; silverman 1989). zamfir dejeu pointed out that it was difficult to oppose the standardization after cîntarea româniei. in his own ensemble, dr. dejeu tried to create choreographies according to his own standards—with improvisational themes and individualized dancing; however, he found that his ensemble never won first place at the festivals. he explaind, “i tried to do something like this, but i wasn’t successful because at festivals there was always a competition, and when i used improvisation, we didn’t get first place. those who did the choreographies got first place.” he explained to me that, in his heart, he always opposed this standardization because “folklore should remain diverse, varied, not something you do the same everyday.” his position was doubly complicated, as an employee of state institutions like the casa creaţiei populare, where he was supposed to supervise village formaţii. he argued that “with my group, i also did like those from bucharest because i didn’t have any other option. i didn’t have any success otherwise. but, i left the villagers alone to improvise, like at a village dance.” although he gave in to the pressure from the central government dictates when choreographing for his ensemble, dejeu used his position to maintain what he felt was “authentic” by imposing these choreographic style on village groups. since 1989, dejeu has taken advantage of the relative creative freedom of the new, less-centralized political climate to break out of the mold of uniform dance choreographies. his innovations have moved in two main directions. first, he has tried to put more improvisational characteristics into his choreographies. this is easier for him to do with his own ensemble than for some ensemble leaders because he has drawn on his own original research for his choreographies: “the choreography is that which i receive from the village, what i have on film. it’s done freely. i want for the dances to be danced freely.” dejeu’s newest choreography, for example, was a suite of dances from the village of fărău, which dejeu was excited 42 amy c. mills the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 about because it shows a complex rhythmic relationship between the dance and the music. he bragged that he uses material that is more difficult to learn because it is more authentic and has not been simplified for the ensemble. despite his emphasis on improvisational dancing, the new fărău choreography was not entirely free-form. the steps were set, and different couples are told which of several sequences of moves to interchange. occasionally, a man came forward by himself to show off some fancy moves, but these were also determined beforehand. this staging was supposed to invoke the feeling of a village dance, where everyone is doing something differently, but the underlying level of choreography is still there. dejeu explained that this effect is not only so that the staging will not look chaotic but also that it has a basis in village dancing. he said, “i want to alternate free dancing with choreography, in the sense that everyone does one or two steps together. that is for the stage effect, but there are also moments in villages where 2 or 3 dancers feel the need to dance the same steps together, and to see who does them more beautifully.” in these new choreographies, dejeu has put a stronger emphasis on designing the choreography based on how dancing was done in village life. dejeu’s second innovation in staging folk dance and music was his introduction of a new form of performance which brings villagers onstage together with his ensemble to dance and play in a celebration-like atmosphere. from his field research, he has scouted out village bands (tarafuri) and dancers whom he believes are exceptionally good. in these performances, which were billed as “someşulnapoca and its invited guests,” his ensemble sat on stage at a table filled with food and drink, as if at a village event. ensemble choreographies alternated with performances by the village bands, who played while a few couples from the same region demonstrated their local dances. in this context, individual creativity was encouraged. not only the villagers danced improvisationally, but also the ensemble dancers were encouraged to get up and improvise to the music. sometimes, audience members even came onstage to join the party. dejeu told me that his impetus in creating such performances was to bring the village social dance atmosphere to the stage. he said, “we have to bring the public’s attention to the fact that the real folklore is what we are presenting.” he spoke about how these performances have a positive role in protecting authentic folklore because they preserve the sense of celebration and the individualized, improvisational character of the dances—invoking two things which were missing or scarce in the socialist period in romania: individuality and food. he believed that having the villagers and the ensemble members dance together “…makes a combination which has a positive role in keeping the authenticity.” these changes in how zamfir dejeu’s folklore performances are structured reflect a number of value conflicts that romanian citizens are currently facing. with the decrease in the number of ensembles, the surviving ensembles must consider how to continue their own tenuous existence. the loss of most governmental subsidies throws these groups into a competitive system, where they must weather new market mechanisms in order to gain funding. many ensemble leaders are reacting negatively to the new system, realizing that the repressive socialist system gave more support to cultural organizations than the new system does. also, while the cîntarea româniei festivals encouraged competition, the criteria by which groups were judged was centrally determined and uniform. after 1989, being competitive means more than being the best; it means presenting something novel and creative. dancing ourselves while dancing for others the ensemble someşul-napoca was founded in 1973 by zamfir dejeu, through the support of the şcoala populară de artă, or folk school of the arts, in cluj. the name of the ensemble announces to all that this is a romanian performing group. someşul is the romanian name for the river which flows through cluj, while napoca is the name for the roman town which stood approximately where cluj is. [9] this second reference implies agreement with a romanian nationalist reading of transylvania’s history. everyone who currently dances with someşul-napoca self-identified as romanian. there is more diversity in the ensemble’s orchestra, which sometimes includes romany (gypsy) musicians. looking at who dances in someşul-napoca demonstrates some basic aspects of the identity and identification which the group reinforces. first, it is an amateur ensemble, which means that the dancers are unpaid. the dancers are all fairly young, ranging from 14–35. unlike student ensembles or ensembles affiliated with factories, someşul-napoca is neither age or occupation-bounded. the ensemble is composed of people from a great variety of backgrounds and occupations. in 1997–98, there were many high school and university students and factory workers in the group, as well as several villagers, [10] two computer technicians, a pharmacist, and a school teacher. the dancers felt that they all belong to the same middle class, despite their different occupations. most of the dancers were born and raised in cluj or other transylvanian towns, but a few grew up in villages and moved to cluj to pursue better education and work opportunities. gender balance is often an issue in the ensemble, as there tend to be more women than men. on my last visit, in winter 2002, this was unexpectedly reversed and almost all of the beginner dancers were male. i was not able to dancing yourself, dancing for others 43 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 ascertain why more women get involved than men, or why this situation had changed. unlike in the united states, it is not a stigma in romania for men to dance, thus another working explanation needs to be found. because the ensemble does mostly couple dances, this gender imbalance can cause conflict and competition, usually between the girls who do not yet have dance partners. in order to discuss how being in a performing group affects multiple aspects of identity, i will consider why these young people chose to participate in folk dance ensembles after 1989. there are many reasons why they might not want to be involved. many people in their parents’ generation despise folklore because they feel it was coopted by the communist party and forced on them. meanwhile, the younger generation has many new activities to select from that seem more cosmopolitan and western. in someşul-napoca, neither of these issues strongly affected the decisions of the dancers to join a romanian folk dance ensemble. most of the dancers i interviewed had been exposed to folk music while they were young. some grew up in villages where folk music and dance were still popular at community and family celebrations. others had relatives who either played folk music or danced in an ensemble or smaller troupe. many dancers joined the ensemble because a friend or relative encouraged them to come. ensemble director zamfir dejeu explained this phenomenon by making reference to village life: “in villages, there is this criterion of the neighborhood. a group of people living on a street hold a dance at so-and-so’s place. in uncle ioan’s barn…here [in cluj], it is a criterion of friendship. because the city is so big, the members of the ensemble are all friends. and each person brings in someone else.” personal connections are not the only avenues for new dancers to join the ensemble. occasionally, dejeu will put an advertisement in the newspaper, inviting interested people to attend rehearsals and try it out. in 2002, the ensemble’s rehearsal director, lucian marian, visited a few high schools to advertise the group. in children’s groups, parents often make their children attend, either for exercise or because the parents were themselves dancers. both before and after 1989, some young people have joined ensembles because it gives them an opportunity to travel. before 1989, belonging to a dance group was one of few ways to leave romania. some took this opportunity to emigrate. since 1989, ensembles are free from government control in deciding their itineraries, but members are limited by the same western countries that welcomed them as “defectors” 13 years before. entry visas have become increasingly difficult to get, as east europeans have flocked to western europe, the united states, and canada to look for better wages. nowadays, some young folks join dance ensembles because they seek an opportunity to emigrate in search of work. several dancers in someşul-napoca commented that people who join only for this reason usually do not become good dancers. on the other hand, dedicated dancers also find travel an attractive advantage of belonging to an ensemble. carmen camelia rusu was attracted to join someşul-napoca partly because the group tours frequently: “i saw that there are many tours abroad, and the possibility to see the world. but, seeing the world didn’t attract me as much as the chance to dance, to sing, and to meet with other peoples. to watch how they dance, see what their costumes look like, and listen to their music.” ensembles also offer a community of potential friends who share an interest. dancer marcel mîrza told me that he dances now for the same reasons that he started. “in the first place, i dance because i love it. for me, dancing doesn’t just mean the dancing itself. it also means the chance to get together with people who share in the same passion for folk dancing.” as they become part of the ensemble, dancers find other motivations for their involvement. adela oneţ mîrza told me that she gets a thrill from being on stage, “you begin to like the feelings and emotion of it. at a certain point, you begin to long for performances.” camelia valued the opportunity to perform because it shows the audiences how she feels. when [i] dance for so many people, i sometimes want to transmit to them what i am feeling. i don’t know if i can, maybe with my smile or my dancing. i hope to send a message [to them] to never forget folk dance. to not forget it because, in many countries, they’re losing the traditions, but in romania, it is still being preserved. her belief that folklore is dying in the villages and is not being passed on to the young people was a common concern for the dancers. by performing, camelia believed that she could help to carry on the tradition and convince others to do so as well. most dancers keep dancing because they love how it feels. dancing allowed romulus ‘romi’ bucur to forget about his daily life and attain a different level of awareness. he told me, “i live the dance. there is a small place where i go and i feel wonderful. i completely disconnect, even if i can still see around me. that’s where i enjoy myself. i forget everything, total disconnection.” marcel explained, “frequently, i felt like folk dancing was my refuge. a place where i found a break from daily stress and where i could seek refuge after a hard day.” romi added that dancing “became like a drug. like food. i had to do more and more of it, and the more i did it, the more i liked it. i couldn’t live anymore without dancing.” contrary to my expectations, nobody explicitly said that they joined the ensemble because it made them feel more romanian. some dancers did express a pride in presenting what they felt was their romanian heritage; however, this 44 amy c. mills the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 feeling does not appear to have been a motivating factor for dancing. rather, i would argue that participation in the ensemble subtly reinforced and altered existing ethnic identification. while i have considered the question of who joins the ensemble, i find that the question of who does not join is equally fruitful in understanding how the ensemble presents itself to the public, and how this affects dancers’ self-perception. in our interviews, i asked dancers who is allowed to join the ensemble, and whether criteria like age, gender, and nationality mattered. many times, i was told that “anyone can come,” but this response was tempered when i asked who actually does join. issues like social class or previous experience did not seem to be an issue. dancers agreed that both beginners and experienced dancers are equally welcome, as are people from any occupation. on the other hand, when we discussed age and ethnicity, it became apparent that the open-door policy included several unspoken assumptions. the concept of “self-selection” was how most dancers explained the process of deciding who did and did not join. they explained that the doors are open, and anyone can attend rehearsals, without asking permission. indeed, i never saw any person turned away from the rehearsals. several dancers differentiated between who could attend rehearsals and who would be allowed to perform with the group. marcel mîrza argues that people who are not meant to dance figure it out for themselves: “there aren’t any restrictions. anyone can come. the selection process is natural. namely, the door is open—anyone can come, but at the point where someone realizes that he doesn’t like it…he doesn’t come anymore…self-elimination.” the idea of self-selection made the ensemble appear open-minded while masking certain societal expectations. when asked about age limitations, most dancers responded similarly. as adela put it, “as far as age, there’s no limit. nobody says that you can come only if you’re between 20 and 25. you come whenever you want. but not all ages come to dance.” camelia’s comments showed a dissonance between what people say they believe and how they judge others. she said, “it seems that age doesn’t matter…i am 33 years old, i am still dancing. but it is good to have younger people, because it’s not the same thing to put an 18-year-old next to a 30-year-old…in the long run, it matters whether someone is young. if someone’s young, it’s not a problem.” when i asked both dancers and folklore organizers which ethnicities were allowed to join, it became clear that both someşul-napoca and mărţişorul are considered ensembles for romanians. again, dancers argued that all ethnicities are welcome. camelia rusu explained: it doesn’t matter. well, they would have to dance romanian dances, but…nationality doesn’t matter. for us, it doesn’t matter if he’s german or hungarian or…if a hungarian would come and say, “sir, i want to learn romanian dances,” nobody would have anything against it. he would be received in the ensemble. we even had a hungarian in the orchestra. so, it’s not a problem. nationality doesn’t matter here. nationality does matter, however. camelia’s response establishes that whoever joins the ensemble must understand that it is a romanian ensemble that does romanian dances. she focused on the possibility of specifically a hungarian coming to join the group. when i asked about nationality or ethnicity, dancers usually interpreted this a question about hungarian-romanian relations, an issue which is more visible in the public eye than relations with the roma or saxon minorities. despite the open-door policy, everyone pointed out that no non-romanians participate as dancers. there was some question of whether any hungarians or gypsies had ever been members of someşul-napoca, but nobody remembers such a thing. some dancers in someşul-napoca argued that hungarians have their own groups to join. marcel mîrza asserted that this was a natural development. maybe hungarians or germans or gypsies might come. it is absolutely not a problem, but think about it. that person feels connected to his own nation’s folklore. i think they don’t come for this reason…hungarians prefer to go and dance at a hungarian ensemble. this situation seems natural to me. it’s not forced. similarly, marcel feels that it is normal for him to prefer to do romanian dances because he is romanian. his insistence on the normalcy of this situation indicates that he feels it is voluntary segregation, from both groups’ point of view. since both romanian ensembles and hungarian táncházes present themselves as ethnic institutions, it is not surprising that there is little crossover. many of the dancers tried to explain why they believe that hungarians choose to dance separately. romi bucur considered that hungarians are similar to other minorities in europe, who feel culturally threatened. as a minority in romania, it’s normal that…they want to hold onto their religion and their folklore with their teeth…they want to stand their ground, as minorities. it’s a basic tenet for international minorities to try to…hold onto their ethnic identity. a hungarian wouldn’t go and dance in a romanian ensemble…nor would a romanian go to a hungarian ensemble. that’s the rule. the rule of ethnicities. romi’s argument essentializes the relationship between ethnic minorities and the states they live in, arguing that they keep themselves separate as part of a natural “rule of ethnicities.” he implicitly rejects the possibility of mixed ensembles, where the dances of multiple ethnicities are performed. in fact, such ensembles were common during dancing yourself, dancing for others 45 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 socialism in yugoslavia, where the variety of ethnic groups made it a useful socialist policy to emphasize the diversity of the country while homogenizing the mode of presentation. this philosophy of “bratstvo i edinstvo,” meaning brotherhood and unity, clearly did not survive; however, yugoslavia’s experiences do not rule out the possibility of multi-ethnic dance groups in transylvania. adela argued that each group wants to protect its own tradition. through folklore, she contended, people can remember where they come from and who they are, which is important so that they do not lose their identity. her argument assumes a static ethno-national identity, which folk ensembles play a role in reinforcing. far from intending this as an intolerant nationalist argument, however, adela pointed out that such variety in folklore is a good thing because it is more interesting. several cultural difficulties between romanians and hungarians emerged in these discussions about ethnic segregation. dancers generally argued that they would accept hungarians into the group, if they wished to join. camelia felt that both groups would be accepting and helpful, if dancers decided to cross ethnic lines; “so, it’s their choice. we accept them. if they want to learn romanian dances, we accept them. and if we wanted to go and learn hungarian dancing, they would teach us.” romi was more pessimistic. if i were to go to a hungarian ensemble, i think that there are few people who would make an effort to help me…they would speak only hungarian, so that i couldn’t understand. if a hungarian were to come to a romanian ensemble, he would be allowed to come. romanians are much more easy-going and sociable. on the other hand, they still wouldn’t help him integrate…but it would never happen because neither one nor the other would try. there are two common stereotypes at work here. first, romi commented that hungarians would not be helpful because they would refuse to speak romanian to him. second, he argued that romanians are a more open people. the first stereotype reflects the flashpoint which is language policy in transylvania. many hungarian political issues center on the right to use hungarian (shafir 1994), [11] while romanian politicians argue that hungarians should use romanian because it is the state language. many ordinary romanians feel as camelia did, that the fault lies with the hungarians, they isolate themselves. understand? nobody isolates them. romanians have always been an open people… perhaps you’ve heard in hungary, or even here in romania, that the hungarians have problems. that they are marginalized, that romanians marginalize them. but no, dear. we let them speak their language, it doesn’t bother us at all. but the problem is that they should have some common sense. if there’s four of us and two of them, they should speak romanian, right? so everyone can understand. because we do this. we don’t hide to talk. we speak in front of them and so that they can understand…but they don’t want us to understand what they’re saying. that’s the problem. as a member of the majority population in romania, camelia has a common response to the linguistic code switching of the minority. she explained to me that she is not so bothered when the hungarians she works with speak in hungarian, but that other co-workers get upset. she did not mention that romanians do not have the option to speak in a language which the hungarians will not understand, since most hungarians speak romanian. thus, romanians do not have to work as hard to talk to hungarians as hungarians do to talk to romanians. despite being aware of major ethnic political issues like language use, some dancers argued that the relationship between ethnicities depends on individual and community attitudes. when i asked romi whether there was a sense of separatism between hungarians and romanians, he responded, separatism? but that is only in certain circles. for example, you can enter a social circle in which they will welcome you…you can go places where they say, ‘welcome. come in.’ and they will teach you. they won’t speak a different language around you. they will try to speak romanian. or you can enter a social circle in which they don’t pay attention to you and will only speak in hungarian, so that you won’t understand…it depends on the circle which you enter, and how they think there. everything depends on a person’s mentality. in frata, there are hungarians and romanians, and there are those who get along very well, and there are those who curse that someone is hungarian or that someone else in romanian. that’s how people are in rural communities. with these statements, romi has allowed the possibility of open-minded hungarians and proud, standoffish romanians, as well as the other way around. he mentioned frata, [12] the rural community in which he grew up, as an example of how ordinary romanians and hungarians choose to get along. camelia, who is from the same region, expressed a similar thought. i’ll say this, amy…when there are two ethnicities in the same country, like in yugoslavia. there, the government was at fault. it wasn’t the ordinary people. the ordinary people get along…the ordinary person is not to blame for not getting along with his neighbor. because we get along with all our neighbors. that’s what we believe. camelia’s words eerily echoed the sentiments of the bosnian villagers in the multi-ethnic community described in tone bringa’s being muslim the bosnian way. bringa writes, “i was told by muslims and croats alike that ‘we always lived together and got along well; what is 46 amy c. mills the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 happening now has been created by something stronger than us’” (bringa 1995:4). this community was later torn apart by the war, and neighbor was indeed turned against neighbor. perhaps both romi’s and camelia’s insistence that ethnic relations depend on individuals is related to their upbringing in communities that are small enough for everyone to know one another. certainly, in cities like cluj, some romanians and some hungarians socialize and try get along; however, others take advantage of the larger population size by ignoring one another and interacting primarily within separate ethnic spheres. romi’s and camelia’s comments expressed the idea that villagers may recognize ethnic differences, but that the good of the community rests on being able to bridge these differences. a similar idea is expressed in both ivo andrić’s historical novel, the bridge on the drina and katherine verdery’s ethnography transylvanian villagers. verdery found that the german and romanian neighbors in the southern transylvanian village of binţinţi profess that they get along, while maintaining ethnic stereotypes about one another (verdery 1983). andrić presented a fictionalized version of bosnian history through stories about one small town, where different ethnic groups sometimes work together to survive and sometimes work against one another, especially when their religious and cultural identities are manipulated by outside powers (andrić 1959). camelia reflected this experience when she argued that governments are to blame, not ordinary people. unfortunately, she did not express a sense that ordinary people can go against governments and refuse to be used in their political games. nor did she mention that some “ordinary people” support these divisionary tactics and elect those who are in government. dancers in the ensemble want to see themselves as open-minded about ethnic issues, although how they express this attitude demonstrates an awareness that their ensemble has an agenda to strengthen romanian identification in its participants, as well as its audiences. while in transylvania, i asked myself whether focusing on the dancers’ ethno-national identity as romanians meant ignoring other identities. for instance, ensemble leaders like zamfir dejeu emphasized that the repertoires of their groups reflect their local pride as transylvanians. i wanted to know whether dancers felt that their regional identities were more important than their ethnonational affiliations. some dancers expressed a sense of local pride, both at community levels and as transylvanians. camelia rusu admired the dances from her region, the transylvanian plain, which she feels are the most difficult and beautiful. adela oneţ mîrza told me that, although she had never performed in another town, she would be proud to be from cluj and to show what the dancers from cluj could do. being transylvanian was often expressed in opposition to being from moldavia or wallachia. when i asked them why their ensemble has mostly transylvanian material, dancers and folklore organizers alike echoed camelia’s words: “because we are from transylvania, we prefer to stay in transylvania and to dance all the dances which they dance in transylvania.” she felt that these dances express the transylvanian soul. despite these expressions of regional pride, i did not find what perhaps i had hoped for: a sense of solidarity with hungarians from transylvania by virtue of being from the same region and sharing similar folklore traditions. on the other hand, some dancers were adamant that they wanted to have a positive relationship with their hungarian neighbors. camelia argued that her upbringing taught her to be tolerant. i want to get along with everyone, on principle. even with the gypsies. i don’t make a difference between who is gypsy, who is romanian, who is hungarian, who is german. because all nations, to me, they’re people and they’re all the same. that’s what i’ve been taught, to respect everyone, and i can’t be another way. other dancers emphasized that hungarians and romanians will attend one another’s performances, but they have separate ensembles because this allows them to maintain their respective traditions. camelia explained that this kind of ethnic pride does not have to be exclusionary, asking “what characterizes a people more than its folk music?” the sense of ethnic segregation did not keep ensemble members from being interested in hungarian folklore. marcel told me that, were he living in hungary and could not find a few romanians to create an ensemble, he would be interested in learning hungarian dances. both zamfir dejeu and neluţu cocian were impressed by the hungarian táncház movement and the effects that it has had on bringing young people in to learn folk dancing. dancers expressed the most openly nationalist pride when they spoke about performing in other countries. “i feel pride to be a dancer from romania,” romi told me, “you feel quite proud and you try to show everything you can of what your country has. it’s like a competition. …you try to show the citizens of other countries that these are your dances. that this is your flag which is waving.” performing abroad has given dancers an opportunity to be proud of being romanian, at a time when the economy is not thriving and many other romanian citizens want to leave the country. they have found joy in their folk heritage, as adela explained: “you try to show them something beautiful, something romanian that is beautiful, for there you don’t dance only from your own region. you dance a little caluş, banat, oaş, everything. so, you dance dances from romania.” this kind of national identification focuses dancing yourself, dancing for others 47 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 on romania’s relationship vis-à-vis other countries, not the ethno-national relationship between romanians and romania’s minority populations. when zamfir dejeu takes his ensemble to other countries, he tries to have dances from the entire country because “when we go abroad, we represent romania. we don’t just represent transylvania. thus, we have to know dances from other regions.” conclusions throughout this paper, i have analyzed and interpreted my data from the recent anthropological and folklore theoretical perspectives that individuals and communities are in a constant process of negotiating their identities on multiple levels. in fairness, i should point out that my subjects often do not share this concept of identity. thus, in a sense, i am using one academic tradition to analyze the adherents of another. folklorists in eastern europe, like zamfir dejeu, believe that “folklore” and “tradition” denote limited resources which need to be preserved and presented to the public in order for them to be valued. in addition, both folklore organizers and dancers expressed the belief that romanian folklore is naturally a part of who they are as romanians. this concept of the naturalness of ethno-national identity underlies much of how they explained their regional, ethnic, and national identities. nevertheless, changes in external circumstances, such as the political, economic, and social upheavals following the anti-communist revolution in 1989, have clearly affected the manner in which folklore is presented, and thus, in how folklorists and folk dancers perform their values and identities. the new freedoms in post-socialist romania have allowed choreographers to reassert the idea of personal individuality which was repressed by the socialist system. as dejeu pointed out, this individuality was a part of the dances and music in their village contexts, thus his choreographies also hark back to a pre-communist ethos. this sense of returning to romanians’ roots reflects both a fear of losing the village folklore and lifestyle and a view towards the future. on the one hand, both the choreographers and the dancers talk about preserving the folklore and keeping it alive. they believe that learning folk dances in an ensemble and presenting them to the general public are an effective way to do this. on the other hand, they are aware that romania seeks to become part of wider european culture. the drive to join a united europe, via the european union, presents a possible threat of losing that individuality so recently gained. in this case, the concern is about losing cultural individuality as romanians. perhaps for this reason, folklore organizers like zamfir dejeu show a renewed interest in defining what it is to be transylvanian or romanian culturally. by dancing in a consciously romanian ensemble, dancers reinforce their own self-identifications as ethnic romanian, while simultaneously expressing pride in their transylvanian-ness. their ideological emphasis on the ensemble’s open-door policy belies the subtle reality that ensemble members do not feel that hungarians belong there. they explain this as a natural consequence of both ethnicities’ wish to preserve their respective traditions. this manifests itself in conscious mutual segregation in romanian ensembles and hungarian táncházes. dancers from rural backgrounds challenge this argument, however, when they explain that romanians and hungarians can maintain ethnic diversity even in small communities where they share the same musicians and, sometimes, the same dance events. while romanian ensemble members are seemingly oblivious of their privileges as the ethnic majority, they are painfully aware of the challenges of getting along with their non-romanian neighbors. as did the villagers in tone bringa’s bosnian village, they blame inter-ethnic strife on politicians and the government, ignoring the subtler forms of distancing in their own lives. nevertheless, the notion of having an open-door policy, as well as several dancers’ insistence that good relations depend on ordinary people, present some positive possibilities for greater interethnic harmony between hungarians and romanians. does the renewed emphasis, by both dancers and folklore organizers, on authentic village folklore mean that romanians are seeking a return to past values? i do not believe that this is quite what is occurring. i argue that, by removing the dances from the village context and placing them in the ensemble context, village value systems are mixed with urban and post-socialist value systems. the ensembles are presenting an idealized version of rural life, in which romanians are supposed to recognize that village values still have a place in their lives. this rural nostalgia is not designed to convince people to return to the villages but to keep the village ethos alive by appreciating the beautiful parts of it. endnotes 1 generally, “international folk dancing,” as it exists in the united states, is composed of dances from european countries, with a smattering of dances from other regions of the world. 2 although hungarian folklorists studied village dances from transylvania, much of the village research and teaching in hungary and abroad was done by members of various folk ensembles from budapest. while most of the workshops i attended were taught by these dancers, some of the dance teaching at táncházes, or recreational dance 48 amy c. mills the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 clubs, in hungary is done by dancers who are not ensemble members but recreational dancers who themselves learned in these táncházes. 3 by ‘recreational,’ i mean that the events were held for the sake of socializing and having fun, not for performance or ritual purposes. 4 this is another subject about which i would like to do more research. apparently, hungarian politicians had an epiphany after trianon that transylvania, which had usually been considered a backwater, had a rich rural heritage which they could use to legitimize claims to the region (kürti 2001). 5 as i will discuss later, the people who worked within these institutions to promote folklore did not consider everything they did as propaganda. 6 “cluj-napoca” is the official name of the town, which is also situated in cluj county. the “napoca” part is actually the name of a roman town which existed in approximately the same place. this was appended to the city’s name in the 1980s as part of ceauşescu’s romanianizing policies. it essentially argues that the ancestors of the romanians were in transylvania first. see historical section for details. 7 his response in romanian was: “de ce ansamblu am înfiinţat...cu scopul de a valorifica folclorul de la sate.” 8 i differentiate between these in a way similar to the american division between academic folklore and public folklore, although, in romania, folklorists—people who do research in folklore—can also be folklore organizers. dejeu is a good example of this combination. 9 in fact, the official name of the town is cluj-napoca. the second name was added as a part of ceauşescu’s nationalization policy. 10 by “villagers,” i mean that, in addition to dancers who come from villages but now live in cluj, there were some who lived in nearby villages and commuted to rehearsals. 11 such issues include the fight for a hungarian language university. 12 romi is actually from the smaller village of oaş, which is locally administered by frata. we were in frata when we conducted the interview. references anderson, benedict 1983 imagined communities. london: verso publishing. andrić, ivo 1977 (1959) the bridge on the drina. chicago: university of chicago press. ben-amos, dan 1972 “toward a definition of folklore in context.” in paredes, americo & richard bauman. toward new perspectives in folklore. american folklore society bibliographical and special series, 23. austin: university of texas press, pp. 3–15. 1984 “the seven strands of tradition: varieties in its meaning in american folklore studies,” journal of folklore research 21(2/3):97–131. bringa, tone 1995 being muslim the bosnian way: identity and community in a central bosnian village. princeton, nj: princeton university press. buckley, ann 1994 “professional musicians, dancing and patronage: continuity and change in a transylvanian community,” the world of music: journal of the international institute for traditional music 36(3):31–48. cowan, jane k. 1990 dance and the body politic in northern greece. princeton, nj: princeton university press. creed, gerald w. 1998 domesticating revolution: from socialist reform to ambivalent transition in a bulgarian village. university park, pa: pennsylvania state university press. danforth, loring m. 1995 the macedonian conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world. princeton, nj: princeton university press. dundes, alan 1969 “the devolutionary premise in folklore theory,” journal of the folklore institute 6:5–19. freedman, diane c. 1990 “gender identity and dance style in rural transylvania,” east european quarterly 23(4):419–430. frigyesi, judit 1996 “the aesthetic of the hungarian revival movement,” in slobin, mark, ed. retuning culture: musical changes in central and eastern europe. durham and london: duke university press, pp. 54–75. gallagher, tom 1995 romania after ceauşescu: the politics of intolerance. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. dancing yourself, dancing for others 49 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 glassie, henry 1995 “tradition,” journal of american folklore 108(430):395–412. handler, richard and jocelyn linnekin 1984 “tradition: genuine or spurious.” journal of american folklore 97(85):273–290. kligman, gail 1988 the wedding of the dead: ritual, politics, and popular culture in transylvania. berkeley: university of california press. 1998 the politics of duplicity: controlling reproduction in ceausescu’s romania. berkeley: university of california press. kürti, lászló 2001 the remote borderland: transylvania in the hungarian imagination. albany: state university of new york press. nixon, paul 1998 sociality—music—dance: human figurations in a transylvanian valley. gothenburg: novum grafiska ab. pocius, gerald l. 1995 “art,” journal of american folklore 108(430):413–31. rice, timothy 1994 may it fill your soul: experiencing bulgarian music. chicago: university of chicago press. shafir, michael 1994 “ethnic tension runs high in romania,” rfe/rl research report 3 aug 19, 1994:24– 32. silverman, carol 1989 “reconstructing folklore: media and cultural policy in eastern europe.” communication vol. 11:141–160. 1992 “the contemporary bulgarian village wedding: the 1970s.” indiana slavic studies 6:240–251. sugarman, jane c. 1997 engendering song: singing and subjectivity at prespa albanian weddings. chicago: university of chicago press. verdery, katherine 1983 transylvanian villagers: three centuries of political, economic, and ethnic change. berkeley: university of california press. 1993 “nationalism and national sentiment in post-socialist romania,” slavic review 52(2):179–203. 1996 what was socialism, and what comes next? princeton, nj: princeton university press. 1999 “fuzzy property: rights, power, and identity in transylvania’s decollectivization.” in uncertain transition: ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world. lanham, md: rowman and littlefield publishers, inc. white, george w. 1999 “transylvania: hungarian, romanian, or neither?” in herb, guntram h. and david h. kaplan. nested identities: nationalism, territory, and scale. lanham: rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. mapping the kingdom of plastic bags: the topography of fairytale cynicism in chelnochovsk-na-dniestre, ukraine volume 21, number 2 mapping the kingdom of plastic bags: the topography of fairytale cynicism in chelnochovsk-na-dniestre, ukraine diana r. blank, university of california at berkeley © 2003 diana m. blank all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. i am speaking with dima about how life has changed since the end of the soviet regime in the southwestern ukrainian town of chelnochovskna-dniestre.1 here’s how he punctuates our conversation: “you can say now that you don’t like the president.” in an afterthought that follows quickly on the heels of this thought, he adds: “you can’t say that you don’t like the mayor, but you can say that you don’t like the president.” earlier in our conversation, dima had referred to the mayor as “marquis karabas.” when i failed to understand the reference, he had said: “don’t you remember, from the fairytale ‘puss in boots’?” and he recited: “whose forest is that? marquis karabas’. whose fields are those? marquis karabas’. whose house is that? marquis karabas’.”2 dima’s account of the state of things in chelnochovsk-na-dniestre, ukraine, one of many brilliant emic analyses i have been treated to on the topic, certainly seems to concur with that of those scholars of eastern europe (burawoy 2001, humphrey 1991, verdery 1996) who would regard the postsocialist distribution of power in the region as dispersed among more or less independently functioning fiefdoms. in this case, the rapacious lord of the land fabulized by dima is the mayor of the town, mykola mykolaivich kruchko, whose political career in chelnochovsk-na-dniestre does indeed seem to amount in large part to a consolidation of power carried out through a claiming and grasping up of places on the landscape, for as far as the eye can see. during his second re-election campaign in the spring of 2002, in a seeming caricature of soviet iconography, and one that was taken to a degree that perhaps only stalin enjoyed in his lifetime, a banner adorned by a much-largerthan-life-sized hand-painted image of kruchko’s face could be seen physically draping his power across the main road into the city. during the same campaign, an equally oversized image of the mayor’s head went up on the town’s house of culture, and scaled-down versions of this poster could be seen mounted in shop windows and taxicabs throughout the town. the banner was removed after the elections, but the gargantuan poster has remained, along with many of its more diminutive counterparts. but kruchko’s power, of course, extends far beyond the iconographic. since his rise to power in the early 1990s—and his influence in the town gained official stature in 1994, when kruchko won his first of three bids for mayor—kruchko has come to own numerous enterprises, including (but not nearly limited to) “kru-tika,” a factory and firm producing a number of items, but most notably, tiles for paving sidewalks; at least one gas station located on the edge of town; chelnochovsk’s principal hotel; and the most luxurious and popular restaurant in the town. the restaurant is officially registered under his (estranged) wife’s name, and the hotel is said to be registered under the name of his mistress, but kruchko makes no bones about being the proprietor of these highprofile and prestigious local landmarks. in choosing a name for his restaurant, for example, he did not mince words, entitling it—in a flourish that legitimizes his own entitlement and places him in the context of a long line of newly legitimated (or legitimated anew) monarchs— “nikolai dvorets” (nicholas palace). these are the sites that everyone knows of, but a walk through the city streets is likely take one—beknownst or unbeknownst to the walker—past numerous others. walking to the city bus station one day, for instance, i approached a veterinary kiosk and got close enough to notice the kru-tika name on it. kruchko’s appropriation of territory also takes more camouflaged, if not exactly subtle, forms. those small entrepreneurs in the town with whom i had established a relationship of trust acknowledged to me—obliquely and yet unequivocally—that they regularly paid tithes to jen typewritten text 23 volume 21, number 2 the mayor, and that they fully understood that should these tithes cease, their business would be brought to a halt, as well. these same entrepreneurs also made it clear that the mayor himself had reprimanded them for the eyesore that the sidewalks in front of their shops presented (sidewalks whose paving dated back to the last soviet-era restoration), and commanded them to tile the area in front of their business. this demand has been made on those who rent their shops, as well as those who own them, and of course, the town’s only tile concession is krutika. in the spring of this year, the town’s taxi stops—theretofore simply designated nonprivatized stopping spots on the local landscape—were summarily auctioned off by “the city.” nothing was built there, nothing produced. these particular points along the lay of the land in chelnochovsk simply and suddenly became, in the spring of 2002, the private property of particular individuals. by the time the taxi drivers and the other residents of the town learned of the auction, the new owners had already laid claims to the deed. these new owners, mykola mykolaivich’s son (also named mykola mykolaivich), and three other men closely associated with the kruchko family and commonly recognized as “banditi” (mafia) would heretofore collect dues from the local taxi drivers for granting them the privilege of stopping there. the kruchko family, it is commonly recognized, profited (at least) twice off of this auction. but let us to turn to a place on the landscape incontrovertibly occupied by the “marquis karabas,” one that marks his power perhaps more conspicuously than any other: his restaurant nikolai dvorets. the scene, then, is a wedding, and the moments are captured on a video cassette that was sent to me recently by the bride and groom. the wedding took place in august of 2002 in the newly renovated restaurant owned by mykola mykolaivich kruchko, on the momentous day that the restaurant reopened after renovations. in one scene from this tape, we find kruchko risen from his place at the table in his own, eponymous palace, to toast the young couple. he stands in front of the shiny replica of the david he has installed in his newly renovated restaurant. (amusingly, kruchko’s head happens to be level with the david’s loins—a coincidence, no doubt, but a suggestive one, given that kruchko is widely reputed to have lustily helped himself to more than pieces of land.) he hails the young couple as follows: dear lenochka, vadim. esteemed parents. esteemed guests. chelnochovchanye. those who have traveled here, who grew up here and lived here. those who live here. i’m very pleased that the city of chelnochovsk-na-dniestre has…its place in the difficult hierarchy of government life. i’m doubly pleased to be able to work with such a wonderful person—our lenochka…[he speaks of lena’s beauty and intelligence, and wishes the couple a bright future together]….i want you to make your parents happy, and to be the pride of our chelnochovsk-na-dniestre. after all, it is (this city) that raised you: our streets, our “pizza”(café) our other establishments, our (nightclub) “zero,” in short, our establishments, our city hall, which has made of you such a serious woman. let’s drink “gor’ko” to the young couple. kruchko’s wishes to the couple are bracketed by his telling metaphorical mappings, which—among other things—collapse geography and power, beginning by locating chelnochovsk’s place as within the hierarchy of government life and ending by appropriating the glory of—and even the credit for—this occasion through the trope of cityscape. his speech abides by wedding convention in overtly celebrating the couple of the day, but yields to political rhetoric that places a rather unconventional demand on the couple: be the pride of the city. and if the bride and groom are to be the pride of the city, he suggests, it is because they have wended their way to this momentous event via the streets of the town, whose landmarks culminate in the mayor’s office itself. if kruchko can be found staking his own claims to power through the idiom of landscape, he has others do his bidding for him as well, others who can sketch even more fictitious allegorical geographies. here at vadim and lena’s wedding, for instance, he has the master of ceremonies (his employee at nikolai dvorets), who sets the scene for the occasion in a fairytale land. in a segment that appears earlier on this tape, the bride and groom—having descended the grand staircase in nikolai dvorets—stand before the assembled guests, and the master of ceremonies addresses the crowd: jen typewritten text 24 volume 21, number 2 you know, when i first set eyes on this beautiful couple, on these guys, an old, old, fairytale immediately came to mind. and i’d like to take you all by the hand and lead you into this beautiful, magical land called love. in our kingdom, in our state, lived a beautiful queen. one day, she fell to daydreaming, and thought: how happy i would be if i had a little girl with lips scarlet as blood, a face white as freshly fallen snow, with hair black as ebony. that’s what the queen thought, and probably the good fairies heard her wish. because her wish came true. and the parents…named her a beautiful name: lena. the years went by. the girl grew up and turned into a beautiful woman. but her heart slept. and only the kiss of a handsome prince could wake her. and such a prince came along. he was not a foreigner to her. he lived, and was born, here in our city… the master of ceremonies’ transcendental metaphors transmogrify into concrete references, grounding the lofty qualities they represent in a local landscape that is at once physical and political. the formulaic geography of the standard russian fairytale opening—“in some kingdom, in some government”—is subtly redrawn here as the transcendental myth gets located in “our” kingdom, “our” government. lest that “gosudarstvo” be understood to signify “state,” the setting is quickly localized. the prince/groom is of local provenance, having spent his whole life in “our city.” this touch not only diverges from the traditional telling of the tale, in which the prince who wakes sleeping beauty comes from a foreign land, but elides certain details of the real-life situation: lena was born and raised in the town of potoki, on the other side of the bridge of friendship, and now has, therefore, moldovan citizenship. (she is, in fact, employed in the mayor’s office illegally, registered under the name of a woman with ukrainian citizenship). the official and unofficial hurdles that the couple had to clear in order to actually get married—as a result of the new gravity accorded to this place on the map where the dniester separates chelnochovsk from potoki—made their lives a post-soviet bureaucratic nightmare for months prior to this evening. and yet, nonetheless, potoki is unanimously understood in chelnochovsk as inevitably here, the inescapable other half to the inescapable chelnochovsk-na-dniestre. also left out of the story is the fact that the couple is counting the days until they are issued the documents that will allow them to leave chelnochovsk for germany. all of a sudden, in the space of this speech, the inbred nature of chelnochovsk, the valley that has hermetically sealed in those who haven’t managed to escape it, becomes enchanted. on the outskirts of vinnitsa, on our way back to chelnochovsk, after running two red lights because dima simply has failed to notice them from the angle at which they are hung, we come to a stop before a third one, waiting for the right of way. the traffic light consists of the usual red, yellow, and green lights descending vertically, but the green light at the bottom is flanked by two other green lights, forming a row of lights joined to the standard column in an upside-down t formation. this structure is hung high over the right side of the road, so that it is virtually invisible to the driver of any vehicle on the road. borya, sitting in the passenger seat and craning his neck to make out the signal, wonders out loud about the logic of such a roadside installation. the question touches off a brief but telling lesson in political history. “what do you want?” is dima’s response. “our ancestors were…” here he pauses for a long moment. “who were those nomads who wandered on the land in the time long before kievan rus?” he asks. “istorik!” he remarks, mocking himself, a history teacher turned auto-parts dealer searching the recesses of his memory for the proper name of his national forebears. finally he finds it: “skify,” the scythians. “do you know the story of the scythians?” he asks, and embarks on his own telling of it: the romans came. they wanted to conquer the territory, and so they had to fight the scythians. so they set an appointment to meet at a field and do battle. the scythians showed up, but while they were waiting for the battle to begin, they caught sight of a herd of wild boar. they wanted to eat them, so they forgot about the battle, and set off after the boar. the romans understood whom they were dealing with, so they went off, and left the scythians alone. they put up a few fortresses in the crimean, and went back to rome. we continue on the highway back, its two lanes merging into one at certain segments, before dividing again into two as it cuts through the empty beauty of the fields of the podolia, jen typewritten text 25 volume 21, number 2 many of which lie barren. (“nothing grows here,” dima remarks. nobody cares.”) a few kilometers before we reach chelnochovsk, a 600-series mercedes passes us. “he’s come to congratulate kolya (mykola mykolaivich kruchko),” dima says, and seeing our quizzical glances, he adds, “well, where else could he be going, driving a 600-series mercedes with kiev plates in this direction? to vindichany, you think?” not five minutes have passed before a toyota land cruiser whizzes past us in the other direction. “there goes burchuk,” dima says, referring to a high-profile legislative candidate favored by kruchko, and later disqualified by the regional election commission for filing an inaccurate financial report, “that’s his car.” “proyikhav po syolam,” he says, switching to a russian satirically sprinkled with ukrainian words, “he drove through the villages. gave out newspaper to the grannies. the grannies had something to wrap their eggs in. they voted for him, our skify did. such is our country.” dima’s political commentary begins at a traffic light on an urban periphery, and wends its circuitous route through the scythian steppes—a detour of more than two thousand years—before it comes to a halt back in the present in a nearby village marked by popular manipulation and unquestioned poverty (both of material conditions and of political imagination to hold out for better than a newspaper bribe). in so doing, it collapses history, politics, and space into an amorality play, endowing local and contemporary hopelessness with fartherreaching, national and primordial roots that are inseparable from the land itself. dima’s social commentary is a deeply cynical origin myth in which power and powerlessness are scanned on and embedded in the landscape. alexei yurchak has argued that during the period of late socialism, cynicism was rooted in an understanding of official ideological representation as inconsistent with lived experience. the result was the cultivation of a “pretense misrecognition” that allowed the soviet subject to navigate the incongruities of the system and of his own participation in it. this pretense misrecognition frequently yielded to joking interactions that released “repression anxiety” by channeling it into “winks of recognition” of this very incongruousness (yurchak 1997). notably, for yurchak, this cynicism of the “normal” late socialist subject did not entail a complete refutation of soviet ideals, but rather, a reflection on the considerable gap between those ideals and reality (yurchak 2003). according to yurchak, the central role of this ridicule in addressing the “social incongruous” was supplanted in the late 1980s by the “analytic discourse of glasnost” (yurchak 1997). and yet, in post-soviet chelnochovskna-dniestre—where an ideological vacuum remains in the space where official soviet representations once stood, a space that has been filled by the logic of truisms identifying power with might—ridicule flourishes. the arbitrary and self-serving nature of the distribution of power in the town is so thinly whitewashed that the violence underlying it shows plainly through. in fact, the cloaking of the self-interested workings of power in chelnochovsk, with mykola mykolaivich kruchko at the helm, is so patently fictive that one often finds it articulated in a genre that no functioning adult is expected to take at face value—that of fairytale. chelnochovchanye tend to respond in an idiom that bears much of the humor found in its soviet counterpart, but little of the equivocality: a cynicism of mythic dimensions. this discursive genre—a kind of anti-fairytale of a disenchanted land—is mythic in both senses of the word: it assumes the form of a metaphysical legend and the narrative it imparts is unverifiable. in her conversations with perestroika-era muscovites, nancy ries identified a “conventional inventory of generic forms, images, themes, and figurative devices” through which people converted their acts of persistence in the face of the “complete disintegration” of ordinary life into magically heroic narratives that she terms “fairytales” (ries 1997). in post-soviet chelnochovsk, one finds a slightly different story—one in which the trope of the fairytale mocks the very possibility of the heroic or the magical. this idiom expresses a sense of powerlessness perceived as so inherent to contemporary life in the town that it is mapped onto the landscape. with dima at the wheel, we have almost completed our journey back from vinnitsa. we have already passed the sign demarcating the city limits, and are making our way down into the valley of chelnochovsk-nadniestre. out here, on the elevated outskirts of the town, dima shifts his chin toward a hill at our left. he says he’s proposed to anya, his wife, that they buy that piece of land up there and build a house to live in. “anya would be queen jen typewritten text 26 volume 21, number 2 of the mountain,” he says. “like the princess on the pea (na goroshine), only she’d be princess on the mountain (na gore). there, she’d be the most authoritative (samaya krutaya) in the town. there’s nothing cooler (kruchshe) than that in chelnochovsk. (he’s playing on words here, of course, with “krutoi” simultaneously signifying both steep and authoritative. borya joins in: “but she wants to be in the center (of the town). she wants to be in the kirov (factory) neighborhood.” dima counters: “she wants to be “na birzhe,” on the ‘exchange’. we’ll have to pitch a tent there.” he is referring to the political, social, and symbolic center of the town, triangulated by the city hall on one corner, the billiard hall on another, and the “pizza,” (the most popular café, where much of the high and low drama of the town gets played out) across the street. the birzha is formed by the nexus of those landmarks, and at one particular spot on the sidewalk, one can see—at any hour—a congregation of “krutiye,” the authoritative men in the town associated—marginally or more than marginally—with the shady activities inseparable from power. we continue our descent into the city. as we pull into the center of town, dima is moved again to poetry: “kingdom of plastic bags!” he declares chelnochovsk, with ironic emotion. “we have ‘american beauty’ here everyday. the dance of the plastic bags! then, as he parks the car in front of the auto-parts store he co-owns with two other men from the town he cries out, “hello, my motherland!” dima’s inverted fairytales are perhaps extraordinarily eloquent, but they are, nevertheless, couched in a genre to which many chelnochovchanye repeatedly turn, to express a sense of place that perhaps cannot be expressed without great subtlety of humor. the absurdity of official fairytales is time and again parodied as obscenity, in ingenious spontaneous riffs on the genre that invert the attribution of enchantment to the valley of chelnochovsk-na-dniestre. if the master of ceremonies’ speech went through the motions of endowing the mayor with a power of mythic dimensions—a power that cannot be uprooted from the very land itself—other chelnochovchanye can be found to endow cynicism itself with mythic dimensions, sketching an iconography of the absurd that begins to account for how it feels to live in chelnochovsk-na-dniestre, ukraine. i would conclude with just one more such vivid representation, and let it have the last word. the scene is the following: i am at a devishnik, an all-female party at dima and anya’s house to celebrate the their daughter’s seventh birthday. the guest of honor has long ago gone to bed, and the women still sit at the table, drinking, telling stories and jokes, toasting. one of the women pronounces a toast. it’s a toast about the end of the world, and it goes something like this: the end of the world is coming to chelnochovsk. a black cloud hangs over the city. it moves toward the big tent (restaurant). bak! the big tent is no more. it moves toward nikolai dvorets. bak! nikolai dvorets is no more. it moves toward our window. it peers in, and we are sitting here cozily at the table, drinking. so i’d like to drink to this: that no matter what happens, even the end of the world, we don’t give a fuck. references bilaniuk, laada. 2002 . gender, language attitudes, and language status in ukraine. language in society 32(1). burawoy, michael. 2001. transition without transformation: russia’s involutionary road to capitalism. east european politics and societies 15( 2):269-290. golbert, rebecca. 2001. language, nation, and state-building in ukraine: the jewish response. in: language, ethnicity, and the state. vol. 2 (minority languages in eastern europe post-1989). c. c. o'reilly, ed. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. humphrey, caroline. 1991. icebergs, barter, and the mafia in provincial russia. anthropology today 7:8-13. ries, nancy. 1997. russian talk: conversation and culture during perestroika. ithaca: cornell university press. verdery, katherine. 1996. what was socialism, and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. yurchak, alexei. 1997. the cynical reason of late capitalism: power, pretense, and the anekdot. public culture 9(2):161188. jen typewritten text 27 volume 21, number 2 yurchak, alexei. 2003. soviet hegemony of form: everything was forever, until it was no more. comparative studies in society and history 45(3). endnotes 1. out of concern for those living in the town, i have changed the names of many of the people and places mentioned here, including the name of the paper’s main character—the town itself. by any name, however, “chelnochovsk-na-dniestre,” remains a very real place in the world, and its place in the world is of profound importance for those whose lives are located there. i could not, therefore, seek to disguise the terrain on which “chelnochovsk” is lived. rather, since this paper is about mappings in and of the city of chelnochovsk-na-dniestre, i will begin by placing the town on the map in a rather conventional (if approximate) fashion. chelnochovsk is located in the southwest of ukraine, at the intersection of a geographical and political border where the dniester river divides ukraine from moldova. the bridge of friendship, which has long connected chelnochovsk to its other half, the moldovan town of potoki, and which was so nonchalantly permeable and during the soviet period, is now choked with the social and economic charge of international crossings. this paper moves on to present other maps—visual and verbal—that would appear less conventional; it aims, however, to explore some of the conventions located in those maps. 2. the verbal exchanges on which this paper is based were carried out either in standard russian, or in a highly russified ukrainian (or, more accurately in this case, a slightly ukrainianized russian) often called surzhyk. for more extended discussions of contemporary linguistic negotiations in ukraine, see bilaniuk 2002 and golbert 2001 jen typewritten text 28 microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 71 an ethics of hope: working on the self in contemporary moscow jarrett zigon postdoctoral research fellow, max planck institute for social anthropology in this article i would like to discuss two ethical tactics used by some contemporary muscovites for working on themselves. these two tactics are prayer/talking with oneself and suffering. while doing fieldwork between 2002 and 2005 with practicing artists and russian orthodox christians living in moscow, these two tactics came up again and again in the course of interviews and conversations about how individuals deal with and work-through ethical dilemmas in their lives. it became clear to me that the best way to understand one aspect of the moral conceptualizations of these contemporary muscovites was to consider these ethical tactics of prayer/talking with oneself and suffering as performances of moral self-analysis and improvement. as such, these ethical tactics constitute a primary component of what i call in this article an ethics of hope. an ethics of hope because an ethics of hope centers on the self, i will begin with a brief description of it as a working on oneself. aleksandra vladimirovna, a 51 year-old orthodox christian and university professor, put it to me in the simplest terms one day as we spoke about the perceived rise of ethical dilemmas and moral breakdowns in postsoviet russia: “if you want to overcome, you will overcome. you should fight yourself, not other people. you should reform (ispravlyat’sya) yourself not other people.” this echoed what i was told many times—since you cannot change other people, it is only possible to work on or reform yourself. but how is this done? one of the most common responses was to have a goal or an idea of what you want to become. dima, a musician and hiv/aids activist in his mid-thirties, explained it to me like this: dima it is not that i think about it all the time or i devote a large part of my life to it, but i try not to forget myself in a way. you know? sometimes it doesn’t happen, sometimes it is just desperate attempts, and sometimes it does happen and then i am happy because it proves in principle i can do it. but controlling yourself for the sake of controlling yourself is also a stupid thing. you got to have an idea. i believe that you have to have an idea about the things you do, not all the things, but at least the major things, like why you do one thing or the other. jarrett do you mean some kind of plan for your life? dima kind of like a purpose, however stupid that sounds. i don’t want to judge anyone or anything, but some people just live like animals. they get carried away by instincts and then they forget about everything. because, you know, a lot of things we are doing are not worth it. you can either develop yourself or you can stay in the same situation and you can, you know, just float. this is what i don’t want for myself. when i asked dima if what he meant was some kind of plan for his life i had in mind the kind of ethical theories of the aristotelian tradition. in his distinction between ethics and morality, ricoeur characterizes the ethics of this tradition as the “aim of an accomplished life” (1992:170). or as macintyre has put it in his modern, narrative-based explication of aristotle: “the good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is” (1981:204). this assumption of mine, i believe, clearly influenced how dima continued. but i discovered as we spoke further that dima did not have in mind as great and overwhelming a project as macintyre does. rather, what dima is concerned about is being the type of person who does this and not that. what “this” is depends on two contingencies. the first is the kind of idea one has of oneself. that is, an idea of the kind of person one is or hopes to be. as dima put it, “you got to have an idea. i believe that you have to have an idea about the things you do, not all the things, but at least the major things, like anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 72 why you do one thing or the other.” the second contingency is deciding in which particular moments and contexts this idea can be successfully accomplished. thus for example, dima told me he doesn’t cheat on his wife. “i’m not the kind of person who does that. i don’t want to do that. but sometimes it is difficult. you know, there are these women in my office and sometimes they dress, you know, not as they should in that environment, and it makes it very difficult for me. i’m not saying i sleep with them, but, you know, it could happen, even though i don’t want it to.” the virtuous good life may be the ideal for macintyre, but as can be seen in the words of this muscovite musician, it is far from reality. what is more consistent with the lived lives of the people with whom i spoke is the attempt and sometimes failure to be the kind of person they want to be. that is to say, the attempt to be the kind of person who does this and not that. this is a tortuous life of little projects, not the virtuous life of the good person seeking the internal goods to some tradition of practice. this is a life of small, personal and usually private (unknown or unnoticed by others) victories. a life, in most cases, whose only reward is a good night’s sleep. this is a life of a kind of person who usually chooses one project at a time, often for no other reason than to feel like they are a better person than they were before. this, then, is an ethics of hope. what are some examples of these small projects of an ethics of hope? for aleksandra vladimirovna the project is not to be so quickly offended by other’s words: “if someone says something bad about me and i get hurt, then i think it is my fault because i was hurt, it was my sin. and then i somehow fix a time. for how long should i feel hurt? half an hour, maybe? that is good, last time it was a whole hour. congratulations! i focus on myself, so i am doing better all the time. so the fight is against yourself. against yourself!” or for grigorii, an orthodox seminary student in his late-twenties, the project is to control his anger: “i try to heal myself from anger. i struggle with it. if you want to take your own experience of spiritual life you can choose any passion and try to struggle with it. choose only one thing, because it is impossible to struggle with all the passions together. the easiest thing to struggle with is anger because it is the most common passion—it is the result of man’s sin. it is also the worst passion because when a person is angry he cannot behave properly.” these are not the world-altering personal projects so many moral philosophers would have us undertake. rather, as can be seen, the muscovites with whom i spoke tend to work on themselves little by little, project by project, self-perceived weakness by self-perceived weakness. it is not quite right to say that this is an ethics that aims at an accomplished life. instead, i think it makes more sense to say that this is an ethics that aims at a better life, that is, a life more livable, both for oneself and for others. this is what i mean by an ethics of hope. we still must consider how the muscovites with whom i spoke go about working on themselves with these little projects. a good model for thinking about this is foucault’s technologies of the self. foucault defines technologies of the self as that “which permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality”(1988:18). as such, foucault sees technologies of the self as one of the main components of and for a morally constituted individual. as kharkhordin shows in his indispensable study of practices of individualization in soviet russia, foucault’s notion of technologies of the self is particularly apt for considering such practices in russia (1999). in discussing the stoic roots of modern technologies of the self, foucault considers two aspects of askesis, or mastering oneself, that become central to the task: melete and gymnasia. while melete is a kind of meditation or what foucault calls “an imaginary experience that trains thought,” gymnasia “is a training in a real situation, even if it’s been artificially induced” (1988:37). foucault describes these as the two poles—of training in thought and training in reality—of the task of caring for the self. in what follows i will consider how some of the practices of those with whom i spoke can best be considered as instances of the two poles of melete and gymnasia. prayer and talking with oneself when people first started telling me that they pray in order to resolve an ethical dilemma, i naively assumed they meant one of the liturgical prayers or the lord’s prayer. but as i heard from more and more people that prayer is anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 73 an important aspect of resolving questions of acting-in-the-moment, i began to ask how they pray. the answer was at once interesting and quite simple: what i will call prayer in the moment is a call for help or advice. grigorii put it to me like this: “the first thing when something happens to you is to pray and to ask for god’s advice. if you don’t know how to behave then you pray and then suddenly you will get an answer . . . i pray, i don’t consult any people at all. i don’t share my problems. and you can pray for some time and then all of a sudden you get this idea yes, that is it, that is the way to do it. sometimes you don’t quite understand but you keep praying. there are circumstances that lead you and you say, i rely on you and i don’t consult any people and if you are in prayer he will show you.” another example was told to me by aleksandra vladimirovna: i pray and ask the lord to help me. this is the best solution. i can give you an example. either every week or twice a month i go to the country to visit my aunt and i go by train. once i came to the station and there was a large line for tickets and if i would have bought a ticket i would have missed the train, and so i just got onto the train. if you have to pay a fine for this on the train, then often you can just pay something like twenty rubles to the official and they are satisfied and they go on their way. but if you say well i want a receipt or something then you have to pay much more. many people just give twenty rubles and they are quite happy. i didn’t know what to do, so i prayed to the lord to help me. and then i thought of the situation and i decided i was ready to pay to go to see my aunt. and then i also thought that if no inspector comes by then i will give the money that i saved to some charity or something. but i also didn’t want to feel embarrassed if the inspector came by. i don’t know how, but i didn’t have to be embarrassed by inspectors, i didn’t have to decide whether to pay the bribe of twenty rubles or to pay the fine, which is much more. i decided, ok i will pay the fine, this is the best, but fortunately i didn’t have to face this situation. no one came, so i took the money and gave it to someone, some beggar or church or something. because i thought that this was not my money any more, this is how i solved it for myself. so god helped me in two ways, you see. he helped me decide what to do with the money and he also saved me from the embarrassment. prayer in the moment, then, can be seen as a form of communication; a communicative relationship between oneself and god so as to resolve an issue. the issue at hand is often very particular and localized—for example, whether or not to pay the bribe to the train conductor, or in grigorii’s case, to help him control his anger, on the metro for instance. in short, prayer in the moment is a form of communicative sociality through which the person who prays seeks advice from god so as to resolve a very particularized issue or dilemma. bishop kallistos ware describes prayer for the orthodox as “a living relationship between persons” (2001:106-7). in the catholic tradition saint teresa of avila describes mental prayer, a form of prayer very similar to what i call prayer in the moment, as “simply a friendly intercourse and frequent solitary conversation with” god (1957[1565]:63). as such, prayer in the moment can be conceived of as a communicative relationship between the person who prays and god. but this is not a relationship of equals. rather, this is a relationship between advisee and advisor; between he who cannot act and he who always acts properly; between he who does not know and he who always knows. saint teresa’s description of friendly intercourse is interesting in comparison to eleonore stump’s defense of petitionary prayer in which she argues that “god must work through the intermediary of prayer, rather than doing everything on his own initiative, for man’s sake. prayer acts as a kind of buffer between man and god. by safeguarding the weaker member of the relation from the dangers of overwhelming domination and overwhelming spoiling, it helps to promote and preserve a close relationship between an omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good person and a fallible, finite, imperfect person” (stump 1979:90). for stump, then, as indeed i think we can assume it is for teresa, the friendship between god and humans is marked by what descartes called infinity, and what levinas calls in replacing god with the other, the curvature of intersubjectivity. as keane suggests, the communicative relationship of prayer reflects the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 74 underlying assumption about the relationship between its human speaker and its divine addressee (1997:55)—it seems superfluous to add that the relationship between humans and god in the orthodox christian tradition is one of great inequality. but prayer in the moment is more than simply a buffer in the infinite gap between god and humans. for in its performativity, prayer in the moment is a calling within of god. unlike the american fad of asking “what would jesus do,” prayer in the moment enacts a communion with god himself. or as ware would put it, prayer in the moment allows for the ingoddedness or the deification of the praying individual (2001:109). olya, a practicing orthodox christian and school teacher in her late-twenties, once told me, “when i pray i can feel that i am not alone. i can feel him inside me telling me what to do.” when i asked how she knew it was god telling her what to do and not her own or some other voice, she responded that it is clear when god talks, “there is never any question.” aleksandra vladimirovna agrees. “god is good, very good. his advice, well let’s just say it is more clear, more obvious than human advice. it’s always very simple. it is pure.” prayer in the moment, then, is both a relationship to oneself and to god. the distinction is brought about by the obvious gap between the “purity” of god and the fallibility of oneself. it is this gap that allows the space for prayer in the moment to be a tactic for working on oneself. for it is in this gap located within oneself that the person finds a space in which moral self-improvement becomes possible. the present-not-quite-moral and the hoped-for-moral are intimately connected in the imminence of oneself. this proximity allows for an ethics of hope. prayer in the moment, then, is a particular style of prayer that differs from other, more formal styles of prayer that may be linked, oftentimes officially, with liturgy or other forms of sacred space or time. typically what i call prayer in the moment is referred to as petitionary prayer, that is, prayer that expresses a request to god. i would like to make a finer distinction, however, and suggest that prayer in the moment, while certainly an instance of petitionary prayer, is more definitely linked to specific moments of ethical dilemma. prayer in the moment, then, is that which is done in moments of ethical hesitation, confusion or pause. as olya told me, “whenever i don’t know what to do i pray.” there is nothing surprising about this pragmatic use of prayer, for it seems quite common both cross-culturally and within the orthodox tradition. for example, gladys reichard in her detailed monograph on navaho prayer shows how it is often used for such things as warding off evil and allowing for the influx of good or for preserving and maintaining health (1944); joel robbins shows how the urapmin of papua new guinea use prayer as an apology or a peace offering between agonistic individuals or parties (2001: 907); saint teresa of avila writes that what she calls mental prayer “is the means by which all may be repaired again” (1957[1565]:62); and the anonymous peasant in the way of a pilgrim tells us that only with prayer is it “possible to do good” (1978:17). i was told about a similar ethical tactic by some of the non-orthodox with whom i spoke. when i asked them how they go about deciding how to act in difficult ethical situations—that is to say, in those moments when they need to step away from the world and think over how to be and how to act—several of my interlocutors told me about a process that centers on talking with themselves. thus, for example, anna, a poet in her late-twenties, told me the following: “sometimes i just don’t know what to do and i have to ask myself, what should i do?” or, “it’s funny, you know, sometimes i even find myself having a conversation with myself.” these kinds of remarks were not uncommon. consider how the wife of a well known musical conductor in his early-seventies, igor sergeevich, described him when he is deciding how he should resolve a difficult issue in their lives. when a [moral] problem arises, and it does from time to time, he is a very cautious person. sometimes he does not sleep the whole night. i look at him and he just thinks if i act this way how will it effect this person or that person. sometimes i even hear him talking aloud to himself . . . i’ve never seen such a person before who will think about everyone. he is like a very keen rabbi, who says i will sit and read this very wise book for an answer. he is like this very keen rabbi. both anna and igor sergeevich, then, talk with themselves as a tactic for ethical decision-making. although prayer and talking with oneself are clearly not the same act, they are however both speech-acts that are performed by anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 75 one person and which are not directed to any other human person. and yet as the metaphor of talking with oneself as sitting to read a “very wise book” suggests, these speech-acts are doing something. what they are doing is providing these persons with a tactic to work through a particular ethical dilemma at hand, come up with a response, and enact it. both of these tactics, prayer in the moment and talking with oneself, are ways in which these persons can creatively engage with the ethical moment so as to not only resolve the ethical dilemma but also to train themselves so that such a dilemma may not be so problematic in the future. prayer in the moment and talking with oneself are ways, then, for these persons not only to engage the ethical moment, but also to engage themselves. they allow them, in the words of aleksandra vladimirovna, to reform themselves. invoking heidegger’s philosophy of language, william e. connolly argues that language when creatively used to work-through ethical moments has the potential to alter the socio-historiccultural world “in a small or large way,” and in so doing, “marks both creativity in thinking and the politics of becoming” (2002:71). similarly, it is possible to think of these ethical speech-acts of prayer in the moment and talking with oneself as a process of working on the self. it is because of this creative participation in the possibilities of becoming that we can say that both prayer in the moment and talking with oneself better helps us understand levinas’ claim that language is the first ethical gesture, and as such, are vital to an ethics of hope. to return then to foucault. foucault describes the greek practice of melete as “imagining the articulation of possible events to test how you would react” (1988:36) if and when that event occurs. i would like to end this section by suggesting that both prayer in the moment and talking with oneself are particular styles of melete. the difference, however, is that these two ethical speech-acts are not focused upon an imagined possible event, but upon the hoped-for resolution to an actually existing, indeed, a present-at-hand ethical dilemma. i think it is important to make this distinction between the imagined and the hoped-for, since neither prayer in the moment nor talking with oneself takes the form of a particular imagined and projected anticipatory future. rather, they are more often performed as a calling for help in the form of a plea or a question. these ethical speech-acts, then, are not imagined futures, but rather are illocutionary performances of hope. as such, prayer in the moment and talking with oneself express the desire to act appropriately and calls forth the ability to do so. therefore, they are not simply exercises for training the future self, but are also tactics for enabling a hoped-for self right now in the present-at-hand ethical dilemma. as ethical speech-acts that call forth the possibility of enacting rightly, a possibility that can then, hopefully, be sustained in the future, prayer in the moment and talking with oneself are examples of the type of technique of the self foucault called melete. suffering as moral training i have suggested that prayer in the moment and talking with oneself are instances of foucault’s technology of melete. as such they not only help individuals in particular moments of moral indecision but also provide a creative moment for working on the self. in this section i would like to move on to the other extreme of what foucault calls the two poles of the technologies of the self gymnasia. foucault analyzes in detail two instances of gymnasia in the forms of the disclosure of the self that were utilized by the early christians namely, exomologesis and exagoreusis. while foucault shows that in western christianity the form of exagoreusis, which most famously manifested itself in the form of confession, became dominant, kharkhordin convincingly argues that exomologesis, which is the “dramatic expression of the situation of the penitent as sinner which makes manifest his status as sinner” (1988:48), remained “as the doctrinally central church practice for erasing sins in orthodox russia” (kharkhordin 1999:227). as the orthodox church clearly states in a recent publication on christian ethics, “suffering cures the damaged soul of the sinner” (2000:19). in fact, kharkhordin goes on to show that not only did this practice remain dominant in orthodox russia, but it was wholeheartedly adopted by the bolsheviks “to such an unprecedented degree” that it transcended the religious realm and “was displaced to new locales” that included networks of friends and individuals’ perceptions of themselves and their behavior (1999:359). that influence remains today in the self perceptions and behavior of the muscovites with whom i spoke. the first time i met irina, a 26 year-old theater actress, i asked her how she reacts when she realizes she has done something she considers inappropriate or has hurt someone else anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 76 in someway. as she responded by telling me that “my first reaction is that i feel very bad on the inside and even physically. and i don’t know what to do at this time, i have absolutely no idea,” i noticed irina’s physical reaction to my question more than her verbal answer. as she was telling me that she feels very bad and that she even feels physical pain she was actually hitting herself in the head with a knocking motion and beating herself on the chest. occasionally she slapped the table with such force that i, at least in my memory of it, felt startled and jumped in my seat. i wondered to myself: why the physicality? why the allusion to punishment? as i gradually came to know irina more i told myself that this, no doubt related to her profession as an actress, was simply an idiosyncrasy of hers. about a month later i was meeting with grigorii, a young man of twenty-six who is currently a seminary student, whose temperament and personality are quite different from irina’s. while irina is excitable and apt to go off on long monologues concerning any range of subjects, from art to mysticism, from her grandmother to her sex life, grigorii is sober and tended to answer as concisely as possible only the specific questions i posed. once, while answering one of my questions in his usual manner he, as if his body was suddenly infiltrated by irina, began hitting himself in both his head and chest. i was surprised not only because this was so unlike the grigorii i had come to know but i immediately realized that perhaps there was something more to this physicality than i had earlier suspected. eventually i came to realize that these expressions of physicality were more than articulations of determination or even punishment, but rather were “dramatic expression[s] of the situation of the penitent as sinner which makes manifest his status as sinner.” that is to say, these expressions of physicality were public, bodily gestures of suffering. for it became quite clear that suffering in some form or another is a common way for those with whom i spoke to react when they realize they have acted, and for some even thought, in an inappropriate manner according to their own expectations. in other words, just as it has been argued that suffering helps constitute the social world (kleinman, das, lock 1997:xxiv), i would like to suggest that for those with whom i spoke suffering helps constitute their particular personal moral world, which is the foundation for each of their particular way of being-in-the-social-world. there is, of course, a long tradition of invoking suffering as a definitive trope of russianness. if this did not begin with dostoevsky, then he is certainly responsible for its development as a moral category. as he put it in his diary of a writer, “i think that the most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the russian people is the need for suffering, everpresent and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything” (quoted in ries 1997:83). this romantic vision of the suffering russian has persisted ever since. even in contemporary ethnographies we find this vision perpetuated— suggesting if not the moral superiority of the sufferer then certainly the status of a social victim. indeed, from this status and by means of a romantic circle, the one who suffers is identified with, because we are told she herself identifies herself with, the russian soul or the powerlessness rendered eternal through the “distinctive russian speech genre” of litany (e.g., ries 1997; pesmen 2000). i too in my conversations with muscovites heard much that suggested the personal suffering of those with whom i spoke. but not once did anyone make reference to the eternal suffering of the russian soul or the unquenchable need to suffer everywhere and always. rather, what i found, and in fact i don’t think we should find this very surprising, is that most people’s moral suffering comes as the result of particular and well-defined instances of, in most cases, their own moral transgressions. i agree with pesmen when she says that for russians “conscience (sovest’) [is] the epitome of suffering” (2000:54). but while she focuses on the suffering conscience as empathy, which i certainly agree does occur, here i want to consider this suffering as selfgenerated. as such, the suffering conscience is indeed a “kind of centered moral evaluation aimed at self-improvement” (2000:54), but one that begins not in the other, but in oneself. let’s return to irina and the answer she gave to my question: “my first reaction is that i feel very bad on the inside and even physically. and i don’t know what to do at this time, i have absolutely no idea.” i would like to slow down and consider her answer and the two implications found within it. the first thing i would like to point out is what i have been discussing so far, the physicality of the suffering. irina feels “very bad on the inside.” this expression of internal pain was echoed by several others. for example, dima told me if he does “something wrong from my own point of view or from my inner self point of view, first of all, i don’t know, it’s really anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 77 painful. it’s really painful.” and larisa, a woman in her late-twenties who recently attempted to become a practicing member of the orthodox church but eventually gave up this path, said that when “i realize i did something wrong i usually undergo some internal torture. i cannot even sleep sometimes because i think, oh i hurt that person.” in each case, and others, it was reported to me that a recognition of one’s own moral transgression leads to a feeling of inner pain. but as has been pointed out several times since wittgenstein, pain “in this rendering, is not that inexpressible something that destroys communication or marks an exit from one’s existence in language. instead, it makes a claim asking for acknowledgment, which may be given or denied. in either case, it is not a referential statement that is simply pointing to an inner object” (das 1997:70). similarly, i would like to argue that in this case the suffering pain is a selfimposed strategy for working through a moral transgression. in fact, i would suggest it is not the acknowledgment by others of the suffering pain of those who make this claim that is at stake (unless of course you are the other against whom the transgression has been perpetrated, but that is not our concern here). rather, i suggest that expressions like “feeling very bad,” “painful,” and “torture” are utilized to indicate a process of self-analysis that is hoped to lead to selfimprovement. irina, dima and larisa may or may not actually feel bad with torturous pain. the actual existence of internal pain is not at question here. what is at question is the ability to use culturally meaningful language words that suggest internal suffering/pain—to communicate to others that they recognize their inappropriate behavior (and sometimes thought) in some particular past act-moment. in doing so, they accomplish two things. first, they hope to create a social space in which they can find a haven from others who may be interested in applying repercussions and/or retribution on to them for their (mis)behavior. this social space is of course temporally limited in that others generally expect to see results from the internal pain/suffering of the transgressor in the form of an apology or something of the like. it is with this that we see the pragmatic use of language in social situations in which one needs to “buy time” so to work-through particular details of the questioned act-moment. second, this pragmatic use of language also helps create a personal space in which the transgressor—in this case irina, dima or larisa—can work through the details of the act-moment in question. in this personal space such questions as: what happened? how did i act? could i have done this differently? and so on, can be addressed so as not only to figure out how to make amends for the particular transgression—if this is indeed the goal—but more importantly how to prevent it from happening again in the future. in this way, i suggest, we should think of claims of suffering not as indexing an actually existing pain such as a suffering soul. rather, claims of suffering are better thought of, similar to prayer in the moment and talking with oneself, as an illocutionary performance that calls forth the context of moral self-improvement. the second part of irina’s response was that while suffering the internal pain she doesn’t “know what to do at this time, i have absolutely no idea.” this notion was also echoed by others. for example, olya told me that she feels “like i’m overwhelmed with tiredness and i can’t deal with the world around me.” this brings to mind ricoeur’s definition of suffering as “the reduction, even the destruction, of the capacity for acting, of being-able-to-act” (1992:190). because this notion of suffering as the inability to act suggests passivity i would, however, disagree on this point and suggest instead that the inability to act is itself an act it has been suggested that suffering is the opposite of responsibility (fredriksson and eriksson 2003:144). while i neither intend nor support discourses of responsibility in moral philosophy, i will, however, suggest that suffering as i have been describing it and as it is experienced by those muscovites with whom i spoke is by its very nature of reducing the ability to act a morally responsible tactic. that is to say, the strategy of suffering as a way of stepping away from the social world—or what i have described above as creating both a social and personal space for working through transgression—is a responsible act in the sense of responsible’s latin origin of responsum or an answer or reply. for the stepping away of suffering—the beingunable-to-actness of suffering—is indeed a reply of the transgressor to his act. that is to say, the reply, the responsibility if you will, consists in working on oneself in such a way so as to prevent the future occurrence of the behavior. talal asad has argued convincingly against the notion of responsibility as a predominant moral concept in claiming that “acts anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 78 can have an ethical significance without necessarily having to be interpreted in terms of ‘answerability’” (2003:94). although what i have just said may seem to contradict what asad argues, i do not think it does. for it seems to me that asad is making his claim against the philosophical view that responsibility holds for actors in terms of both causality and obligation. in other words, according to the view with which both asad and myself disagree, an actor is responsible for her actions, in the first place, because she is, if not the immediate cause, then certainly the primary cause of the action, and in the second place, as the cause of the action, the actor is held in obligation to some moral standard bearer (e.g., god, the moral law, internal conscience). but it is precisely this view held by so many in and outside of moral philosophy today that impedes us from thinking of ethical acts in any other way than as somehow related to moral rules or laws that are, as most would argue, known rationally. when i suggest that the suffering of my muscovite informants is a responsible act in the sense of an answer or reply to their transgression, i hope to move away from this connection of responsibility with cause and obligation, and instead consider responsibility as the acting person’s reply not to himself, the other, god or any other standard bearer of morality, but rather to the act itself. as an enacted event-in-the-world, the act must be replied to. indeed, the actor may not be the only one who does reply. in this sense, we can also think of several others who may or may not be intimately connected to the act as also responsible, that is, answerable to the act. whoever may reply, the actual performer of the act is in the primary position of replying. not, however, a reply as punishment or retribution, but a reply of correcting oneself. as susan wolf puts it, this notion of responsibility consists of the ability to correct or improve oneself so as to go on living sanely-in-the-world (1987:60). in this way, and in this way only, can we say that the suffering transgressor is taking responsibility for his act. otherwise, responsibility does not enter the picture. but what is clear in the picture i am trying to present here is that the trope of suffering or internal pain is a culturally endorsed rhetorical tactic implemented by those who recognize that they have transgressed their own moral expectations. as such, suffering, as a reply to the transgression, creates the social and personal possibility of stepping away from the social world in order to work through a process of self-improvement that renders the possibility of repeating the same transgression in the future unlikely. for repetition is always possible. indeed, for many with whom i spoke, repetition of the unacceptable behavior or thought is expected and the suffering of internal pain is considered one of the primary ways to prevent or limit it. let me go back to what dima was telling me earlier and allow him to finish his thought. “so if i do something wrong from my own point of view or from my inner self point of view, first of all, i don’t know, it’s really painful. it’s really painful. and sometimes it gets me really depressed. i’m kind of helpless about many things. i just do something and then i regret it and then maybe i do it again and then i regret it again and it continues like this until the moment when i can stop doing it.” when i asked him what makes possible this moment of stopping, dima told me that it comes about when he becomes aware of the repetition. “when i become aware that i keep feeling this way (in pain) every time i do it again, then it is easy to stop. i can just stop doing it.” by means of the repetition of the transgressive act so too is the internal pain of suffering repeated. this repetition indicates a process of coming to know oneself in the sense of coming-to-realizeyourself-as-one-who-does-this. as caruth argues for traumatic repetition, “in its delayed appearance and its belated address, [repetition] cannot be linked only to what is known, but also to what remains unknown in our very actions and our language” (1996:4). however, for many of the muscovites with whom i spoke, repetition eventually does bring forth the unknown into the known, and in doing so allows the transgressor to realize that “i did do this” but “i don’t want to be the kind of person who does it again.” it is in this way that repetition of both the act and the consequent suffering can be considered as a primary technology of self-improvement for those with whom i spoke. freud found it interesting that repetition seemed to be a kind of fate. but for many muscovites with whom i spoke there is little hesitation in speaking of this repetition as a kind of fate that teaches a lesson in life. for some consider the repetition of transgressions as a lesson given to oneself; a lesson on how to become a particular kind of person who does not do this or that. consider the following from anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 79 olya, who is both a practicing orthodox believer and a school teacher: olya and of course i think about my future, because if i behave bad this time, i will have the same situation in the future until i find the right solution. until i discover the proper way to act i will experience the same situation throughout my life. jarrett so you are saying that if you don’t act properly in a situation now, it will happen again and again until you learn how to act properly? olya yes. that is right. jarrett and why do you think this happens? olya in order to teach us how to live life properly. jarrett is it god who repeats these situations? olya yes i think. jarrett so you think god is very concerned about having each of us learn how to live a proper life? olya yes. he is like a teacher in school. for example, if i see a student has made many mistakes, then i show him the correct way to do it and give it to him again to see if he can do it himself . . . if we do something wrong and we are not taught how to do it correctly, then we will repeat and repeat and there will be no sense in our life, just repeating our mistakes. anna, a poet who claims to be an atheist, makes a very similar claim concerning the role of god or some other hand of fate in repetition. “i don’t know who, maybe god, maybe not, but someone or something helps you and shows you how you should act. that bad event was a lesson. and some of these events are quite mysterious because they repeat themselves and then you realize that someone is trying to teach you a lesson and you cannot afford to forget this and to repeat your mistakes with other people later.” repetition, then, despite the mysteriousness of its source—fate, god or nonconsciously self-enacted—is a lesson or an exercise for self-improvement. because so many people invoked the experience of repetition in terms of a repeating of not only the act but also the consequent suffering, it seems clear that while suffering calls forth or allows for the stepping away from the social world that one needs to create the space and the time for selfimprovement, we can think of repetition as a tactic for prolonging this suffering, and thus the stepping away of self development. repetition, in this way of thinking, goes hand in hand with suffering. for the two are inseparable in that suffering without repetition may be too easily forgotten or dismissed, and thus ineffective in its moral function, while repetition might simply go unnoticed, or perhaps be unnecessary, without the moral need to suffer. as an example of what foucault called gymnasia, suffering through repetition can be considered a primary tactic for my muscovite interlocutors to work on themselves and create themselves as the kind of person they hope to be. when i asked olya if it were possible that one wouldn’t recognize that they were going through this process of suffering and repetition, she replied that “he will recognize it one day. i think that is for sure. how could it be otherwise?” suffering and repetition, then, are vital aspects of the ethics of hope that i have been trying to describe here. for it is with this attitude expressed by olya that nearly everyone with whom i spoke regarded working on themselves it may take time, in fact it may take a lifetime, but eventually one learns to become the kind of person who does this but not that. that is, eventually one learns to be the person they hope to become. conclusion although there is little doubt among those with whom i spoke that with enough work they all can become the kind of person who does this but not that, i need to reinforce the minute scale of the project. that is to say, the particular and personal nature of the one-project-at-a-time. as i said at the beginning of this article, to become the kind of person who does this and not that is to live a tortuous life of little projects, a life that consists of small, personal and usually private victories. this kind of ethics differs from the ethics of an accomplished life for there is no resting point; there is no endpoint. rather, the ethics of little projects that i have tried to describe here is better thought of as an ethics of hope, that is, an ethics of becoming. in this way, we can see why it is so important for the people with whom i spoke to implement the ethical tactics of prayer/talking with oneself and suffering. for in doing so, they have found manageable and realistic ways to work on or anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 80 reform themselves so as to try to become the kind of person they hope to be. and in this way they have found ways to experience the wellknown russian saying: hope dies last (nadezhda umiraet poslednei). references anonymous. 1978. the way of a pilgrim. helen bacovcin, tran. new york: doubleday. asad, talal. 2003. formations of the secular: christianity, islam, modernity. stanford: stanford university press. caruth, cathy. 1996. unclaimed experience: trauma, narrative, and history. baltimore: the johns hopkins university press. connolly, william e. 2002. neuropolitics: thinking, culture, speed. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. das, veena. 1997. “language and body: transactions in the construction of pain,” in social suffering. kleinman, arthur, v. das, and m. lock, eds. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. foucault, michel. 1988. “technologies of the self” in technologies of the self: a seminar with michel foucault. luther h. martin, h. gutman, p. hutton, eds. amherst: the university of massachusetts press. fredriksson, lennart and katie eriksson. 2003. “the ethics of the caring conversation,” in nursing ethics, 10(2). keane, webb. 1997. “religious language,” in annual review of anthropology. vol. 26. kharkhordin, oleg. 1999. the collective and the individual in russia: a study of practices. berkeley: university of california press. kleinman, arthur, v. das, and m. lock (eds.). 1997. social suffering. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. macintyre, alasdair. 1981. after virtue. notre dame: university of notre dame press. pesmen, dale. 2000. russia and soul. ithaca: cornell university press. reichard, gladys a. 1944. prayer: the compulsive word. new york: j. j. augustin publisher. ricoeur, paul. 1992. oneself as another. chicago: the university of chicago press. ries, nancy. 1997. russian talk: culture and conversation during perestroika. ithaca: cornell university press. robbins, joel. 2001. “god is nothing but talk: modernity, language, and prayer in a papua new guinea society,” in american anthropologist 103(4). russian orthodox church. 2000. “khristianskaya etika i svetskoe pravo,” in osnovy sotsial’noi kontseptsii russkoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi. moskva. saint teresa of avila. 1957[1565]. the life of saint teresa of avila by herself. london: penguin books. stump, eleonore. 1979. “petitionary prayer,” in american philosophical quarterly, vol. 16, no. 2. ware, bishop kallistos. 2001. the orthodox way, crestwood, new york: st. vladimir’s seminary press wolf, susan. 1987. “sanity and the metaphysics of responsibility,” in responsibility, character, and the emotions: new essays in moral psychology. f. schoeman, ed., cambridge: cambridge university press. allen typewritten text © 2006 jarrett zigon all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 6 introduction bessarabian borderlands: one region, two states, multiple ethnicities d. kaneff max planck institute for social anthropology, halle, germany & m. heintz university of paris xnanterre in may 2003, the governor from odessa, accompanied by an entourage of other officials, visited a village situated in the most southern part of odessa province, near the district capital of reni on the danube river, ukraine. the occasion for the gathering of officials was the opening of the gas pipeline in the district. the governor began his speech in russian with the statement ‘people ask where is the reniiski raion. and the answer is at the end of ukraine, almost in romania!’. he then briefly paused and as an afterthought added ‘sorry, shall i speak in russian or ukrainian?’. the loud chorus from the largely village audience confirmed that he should continue in russian, while one man, leaned over to his neighbour and in good humour ridiculed the futility of giving the speech in any other language. in these opening moments of the speech public acknowledgement was made of the geoadministrative periphery of this southernmost tip of ukraine. language too was highlighted as a sensitive issue – a bone of particular contention in the traditionally russian speaking odessa region where inhabitants feel marginalised in the new ukraine state that has failed to acknowledge russian as the nation’s second official language. the audience (ethnic moldovans, bulgarians, gagauz, russians and ukrainians), perhaps more than the officials, appreciated russian as the only common language between them in this ethnically mixed region. political and economic reform across eastern europe and the former soviet union was accompanied by the dismantling/establishing of borders and the emergence of new nation states. bessarabia, the region we are looking at in this volume, was until recently a part of the soviet union, with an internal border extending across two states the ukrainian ssr and the moldovan ssr. this internal border became an international border after 1991, following proclamations of independence by the two republics. at the same time, the strictly regulated border in the west established in 1944 between romania and soviet union was relaxed after 1989, but is being reinforced again, in preparation for the admittance of romania to the european union due to take place in 2007. while the rise of new borders and nation-states are changes to be reckoned with in the region, this collection of articles also considers other boundaries that prove equally significant: boundaries of a historical, ethnic or economic nature, which delineate the area along different configurations. the crosscutting of political borders and ethnic and economic boundaries results in a shifting map of spaces and identities. while in some contexts the historically denoted region of bessarabia is the significant unit, on other occasions the smaller unit of ‘village’ is the point of reference (be it a moldovan, bulgarian, gagauz or ethnically mixed village). on other occasions, citizenship in the new nation-state is of central importance.1 in this paper we consider borders in the most broad sense, that is, as both literal (ie actual geographical) borders and conceptual (socio-cultural) boundaries2. bessarabia is a site of multiple borders and boundaries which ‘delimit what is to be included and excluded’ (rösler & wendl 1999: 2). thus ‘borderlands represent a juncture between the literal and conceptual’ borders (rösler & wendl: 226). in fact an important theme of the papers in this collection is that in order to understand this particular borderland region, we need to look at literal borders and conceptual boundaries as complementary processes that sometimes reinforce each other, sometimes subvert each other. underlying this focus on the complementary relationship between literal borders and conceptual boundaries is the recognition that such places are always areas of contested power (wilson & donnan 1998: 10 & 26), a point highlighted by the changing configuration of both borders and boundaries in bessarabia. while it is clear that literal borders have changed over time, as various powers exerting influence over the area have either expanded or contracted their spheres of influence, conceptual boundaries, based on ethnicity and shared history, have remained more constant anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 7 (although they too have changed). what is required is an exploration of how the construction and dismantling of state borders intersects with the formation and dissolving of conceptual boundaries (pelkmans, in press; berdahl 1999). the aim of this collection is more modest: the papers that follow suggest that both boundaries and borders are being re-valued and used as a resource, particularly at such times of economic uncertainty.3 this volume consists of a collection of essays that were originally presented at a workshop convened in march 2005 at the max planck institute for social anthropology in halle4. many of the participants were local scholars working on the region from a variety of academic backgrounds: history, sociology and ethnology. but in every case the authors look at boundaries or borders in the context of the new nation-states and economic hardship. the first paper takes a historical perspective of economic relations in the region (samkhvalov & samkhvalov) while the second focuses on one type of economic activity cross border trading (polese). migration based on ethnic/historical alliances is presented as a response to present difficulties (ganchev and demirdirek), while other authors (anastasova and boneva) identify the reverse process – an inward retreat by locals that rejects the integrating nationalising policies of the new states. in the following section we look at the history of bessarabia. our intention is not to give a detailed or exhaustive record of the region’s past, but to highlight the main borders and boundaries that exist in present day bessarabia and identify their historical source. this allows us, in the section after, to look at how locals negotiate daily with these different borders and boundaries, calling on them in a variety of enterprising ways and using them to their advantage in the difficult economic situations. in the conclusion we return to our wider concern: boundaries and borders as a strategic resource which varies in different contexts, where sometimes the nation-state, sometimes the region and sometimes the local village provide the guiding framework for local activities.5 state borders and local boundaries bessarabia can be thought of as an ‘institutionalised’ borderland, in the sense that it has always been located in a peripheral position with respect to centres of political and often also economic power. in understanding the present position of bessarabia as both a local ‘centre’ (for people living in the area) and a periphery (economically and politically, also an administrative/geographical periphery in the case of ukraine), it is necessary to highlight a number of historical moments in the locality’s past. the bessarabian region lies between the prut, the danube and the nistru rivers, covering the vast part of what is now moldova as well as the southwestern most part of ukraine (south of odessa to the romanian border see map below). the regional name ‘bessarabia’ began its geopolitical existence in 1812, with the incorporation of the eastern part of the romanian principality of moldova into the russian empire following the russianturkish war of 1806-12. previously the term had been used to designate only the southern part of bessarabia that had belonged to the romanian principality of wallachia in the 14th century (hence the name ‘bessarabia’, which is derived from ‘besarab’, the name of the ruling dynasty of wallachia). bessarabia was the target of large population influx from the mid-18th century onwards. before this it was sparsely settled by romanians and from the end of the 17th century also by russian old believers escaping religious persecution in other parts of the russian empire). as part of the russian empire, the zone became the home to different groups: bulgarians escaping repression from the ottoman empire, gagauz, germans, poles and jews. the new settlers were encouraged to settle by the granting of free land allotments (gitelman, 1995). anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 8 precisely because of the peripheral character of the region – located at the margins of the ottoman and russian empires, it was a crossroad and frequently a battlefield – the place attracted those seeking religious and ethnic freedoms. in 1856, in the aftermath of the crimean war, russia lost the two most southern districts of bessarabia to the principality of moldova, which united three years later with the principality of wallachia to form the kingdom of romania. but such an alliance was relatively short lived with the russian empire regaining the lost territory following the russianturkish war in 1878. it remained a russian gubernia (province) until 1918 when the entire bessarabian area became once more subsumed by the romanian kingdom. this was confirmed by the treaty of paris in 1919, but never officially recognised by the ussr (livezeanu, 1995; king, 2000; fruntasu, 2003). in the 20th century, the region was passed back and forth a number of times between the ussr and romania. in 1940 the ussr used the guarantees given by the ribbentrop-molotov pact of non-aggression with germany to occupy the region. in 1941, romania used its new alliance with germany to take it back. finally in 1944, the ussr used its victory over germany to incorporate the region into the soviet empire where it remained for almost 50 years. romania renounced further claims to the region. bessarabia was thus incorporated relatively late into the ussr, in 1944. it missed out on the benefits of industrialisation that other parts of the ussr experienced after world war i, and the region entered the soviet union devastated by war and particularly underdeveloped. severe famine (194647) and stalin’s deportations (several waves between 1941 and 1949) further disseminated the area. further, entry into the ussr split the territory into two: the southern part was incorporated into the existing ukrainian soviet socialist republic, the northern and central parts, together with a strip of land situation between nistru and nipru (the region of transnistria), made up the moldovian soviet socialist republic. this split between the two new soviet republics was nominal in the sense that the border between them was internal (and not physically intrusive). but the incorporation of the region into the soviet union had far reaching implications. as new soviet citizens, the inhabitants received passports which recorded, amongst other information, their membership in an official nationality6. safeguard mechanisms were established to protect national minorities through administrative subunits (hirsch 2005:160), but immediately after the war, ‘enemy-nationals’, such as the bulgarians, were in a particularly difficult position. one local response was to play up soviet citizenship rather than nationality. the presence of internal borders didn’t hinder travel across the soviet union for work, education or leisure activities. for example, during the 1980s, it was not uncommon for rural inhabitants from bessarabia – often entire families – to move to kazakstan or other central asian republics for work migration7. others in the region fondly recall their holidays in crimea or other more distant locations in the ussr, or their five years spent in one or another city while gaining a tertiary education. of course travel across international borders, for example to some of the historical homelands (especially those countries not part of the socialist block), was much more difficult. in the same way that national identity was always ultimately subsumed to a soviet one, so the ussr was far more than a collection of nation-states. soviet national republics were ultimately valued as parts of a larger political, economic and administrative whole. the region was incorporated through a set of overarching economic, social and cultural policies, which transformed the area in fundamental ways. it enabled the continuation of exchange. indeed, in many respects it increased exchange, for example educational and economic exchanges across the inner ‘border’ between the moldovan and ukrainian parts of the soviet union. it also opened up the region to the far reaches of the empire (especially at the port sites, see samkhvalov & samkhvalov). economic integration became evident through common policies that resulted in the specialisation of production and division of labour. this shaped the development of economic activities not only between the two republics but across the ussr, drawing all soviet republics into relations of mutual dependency. after 1991 a process of devolution meant the dismantling of the ussr, which had been a centralised union with a common language, a common monetary currency, and integrated economic/political policies. this dismantling was essentially the reverse of the supranationalism being built up as the eu. the region, once well integrated into the ussr, is now divided between two independent states – moldova and ukraine. two new capitals, chisinau and kiev, are trying to replace moscow as national centres of political and administrative power. previously ‘internal’ movement within the ussr has now been ‘internationalized’ (brubaker 1992:269). the degree of economic integration of the region into the ussr became abundantly clear after 1991, when the economic dependency of the two new republics on anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 9 moscow, on each, and on other republics, posed a significant hurdle to independence. as we note below, both republics, but especially moldova, remain intricately dependent on areas now outside the new nation-state. the newly established republics of ukraine and moldova promoted their titular nations through a variety of legislative acts, including the declaration of ukrainian and (firstly romanian and then) moldovan respectively as their only state languages. at the same time, they introduced policies that promoted other ethnic groups as minorities. despite moves to independence and the official replacement of the russian language in administrative activities, russian remains the language of everyday interethnic communication in bessarabia. further, the path towards moldovan independence was less smooth than for ukraine (although the latter also has its problems). claims to independence by moldovans, who are romanian speakers, triggered anxiety amongst other ethnic groups. the response, sometimes involving outright conflict, included claims to autonomy by gagauz (in the gagauz autonomous region – see demirdirek) and in transnistria. as two separate countries belonging to the commonwealth of independent states, ukraine and moldova legally uphold free exchange relations and facilities for the movement of people within the limits of international regulations. however, there has been some flux. for example, the western and southern border between the newly dissected bessarabia and romania, which was well guarded during soviet times, was relaxed in 1990. it has been reinforced more recently with the anticipated extenson of the eu frontier, due to romania’s imminent ascension to the european union8. although both new independent states have ambitions to join the eu, this is unlikely to take place in the near future and for now they remain outside ‘europe’. bessarabia remains a peripheral and marginal region. with respect to the ukrainian part, the region is geographically as well as politically and administratively distant from kieva fact openly acknowledged by officials, as evident in the anecdote with which we began this introduction. bessarabian ukraine is also an economic periphery; the region has spiralled into decline, having received little support from kiev in its bid to maintain the international activities of its ports. moldovan bessarabia is also a periphery, due to its continued economic and political dependency on moscow (to a lesser extent this is also evident in ukraine and in many of the other former soviet republics). moldovan marginality is indicated, for example, in the fact that the headquarters of the most important moldovan businesses are not situated in moldova, but in russia; in the fact that the embassies of most foreign states on which many moldovans depend are not situated in chisinau, but in bucharest (an estimated 15-20% of the population are engaged in migration); and in the fact that the vast majority of the new moldovan elites have been formed in romania in the past fifteen years. new citizenship rights are also a factor to consider. during the soviet period, citizenship was granted to all residents on soviet territory. the national identity of each individual was recognised and featured in the soviet passport there was no differentiation in this respect between nationals from the titular nation of any soviet republic and its coresident nationals. however, declarations of independence have been followed by different policies for defining citizenship belonging. unlike the situation in estonia, where citizenship was initially granted exclusively to ethnic estonians and the large russian minority became stateless, in the republic of moldova all residents were entitled to moldovan citizenship, regardless of their ethnic belonging, length of stay in the country or knowledge of moldovan/romanian (kolsto, 2002). a similar situation exists in ukraine. nevertheless, the imposition of a new state language and the enforcement of a new nation state project has left non-titular ethnic groups in both countries suddenly marginalized. this has increasedto echo the movement of titular nations their ethnic awareness.9 language remains a key issue in this context. for example, in moldova ethnic minorities have not, to date, adopted the state language, despite the state’s offer of free moldovan language classes and an initial ruling that state employees must learn the language within five years (an obligation never enforced). the ‘minorities’, who form 22% of moldova’s population, prefer to use russian in the public sphere.10 at the same time, minority status grants bulgarians, gagauz, moldovans in ukraine, and ukrainians in moldova special access and claims to their historical ‘homelands’. here we find it useful to draw on brubaker (1996), who identifies three important factors at play in eastern european nationalisms: the ‘nationalizing state’ (which has the project of building a nation state and state loyalties), ‘national minorities populations’ (which are historically situated on the territory of the nationalizing state but do not belong to the majority ethnic group) and ‘national homelands’ (neighbouring countries to which national minorities could refer as ‘their’ nation state). the dynamics between these three factors determine the shape of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 10 most nationalist manifestations in eastern europe. he further suggests that national minorities can ‘alleviate’ the pressure (for example, of linguistic homogenisation) coming from the nationalising state by maintaining their links with their homeland (1996). what is particular to bessarabia is that most minority groups have not been created by a shift of borders, but by voluntary settlers who come from countries that do not share borders with ukraine and moldova. in turn, this means that present migration and special access claims take on a particular form. for example, gagauz ukraines choose to migrate to turkey rather than any other country, because they say that their language skills make these places easier when seeking employment abroad. such relations with their historical ‘homeland’ (in some cases dormant for many decades) are now being activated, partly as a strategic response to bessarabian marginality and economic decline. an example is from the ethnic bulgarian village of nagorna (7 km from the moldovan border in ukraine): kaneff learnt that the family of one of the nagorna school teachers, who has worked and lives in moldova since the 1980s, was applying for a bulgarian passport. the family did not intend to live in bulgaria; they simply realized that access to a bulgarian passport would open doors in terms of migration and work in europe (bulgaria is due to become an eu member in 2007). similarly, heintz conducted a survey in the moldovan village of satu vechi11 and found that from a sample of 100 households, five contained members who held a romanian passport. of those, two spontaneously claimed that they needed the passport only for travelling to the eu for the purposes of car trafficking and not for asserting their romanian identity. two of the papers in this collection look precisely at how different ethnic groups in bessarabia are using their minority status and links with another ‘homeland’ in order to alleviate their economic situations. such migration enables educational advantages (bessarabian bulgarians in bulgaria – see ganchev) or work opportunities (moldovan gagauz – see demirdirek). marginalisation through the attribution of ‘ethnic minority’ status gives non-titular ethnic groups minority status ‘at home’ and an opportunity to connect with the original/historical homeland. this serves to strengthen regional, bessarabian links, despite the fact that the area is now divided by an international border. ties based on marriage, kinship and the practice of common rituals means that ethnic groups maintain links across the border. the bulgarian schoolteacher mentioned above, for example, travels at least once a month to visit her bulgarian sister and family in what is now a town across the border in moldova. in turn the ‘moldovan’ (bulgarian) nephews spend the entire summer holidays with their aunt and grandmother in nagorna. birthdays, christmas and new year and a variety of other occasions bring the extended family together. educational connections, based on people knowing each other during the soviet period when they studied together (many in ukraine bessarabia obtained their university educations in chisinau rather than the more geographically distant odessa) provide close alliances between people now living ‘across the border’. at the same time there has been an increased population flow for reasons of trade (see, for example, polese). in many cases, such crossborder connections render the new nation-states ‘irrelevant’ through the mobilization of shared histories that temporally refer to pre-1991 times and the common use of the russian language. everyday border activities take place in russian, the only common language across the two nations and between the different ethnic groups. the new state border is not undermined deliberately; rather there is a practical necessity for communication between kin and economic traders across the border. exchanges based on shared history and economic activity often bypass the new international border. both new states try to re-focus their minority populations through educational policies that attempt to mould a new generation of citizens who can speak moldovan or ukrainian. also, through a variety of state sponsored ceremonies (such as national holidays) which help to draw the periphery away from the border and refocus citizens inward to the centres of power. to some extent the legacies of soviet policy, which designated the moldovan part of bessarabia agricultural, while encouraging industry in the ukrainian sector (largely because of the location of the ports of reni and ismaiil) also strengthen new divisions in the area (see samkhvalov& samkhvalov) between the countries. a trip to southern odessa province through the border zone, attests to assymetrical tendencies: the poorer moldovans sell agricultural produce on the roadside to passing (ukrainian) motorists. ethnicity in the region occurs in a distinct way, and many villages remain predominantly monoethnic. regional mix, however, is evident when considering a set of villages. for example, the district of reni in ukraine comprises 7 villages: one ethnically bulgarian, one gagauz and five moldovan. this arrangement of predominantly monoethnic villages in districts made up of villages of various ethnicities has been retained over the past two centuries. various arrangements that maintained the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 11 ethnic continuity of the villages are discussed by a number of authors in this volume (see especially boneva). for the last 50 years, russian has served as the common language between all ethnic groups. thus, within each village the local ethnic language is maintained (bulgarian, moldovan etc), while russian serves as the language of communication across ethnic boundaries. the picture is further complicated by the fact that even neighbouring villages, which belong to the same ethnic group, display variations in language and ritual practices. this provides a potential source of local differentiation and means that in some contexts even ethnicity does not serve the purposes of regional unification. thus while ethnic ties across the new border between different minority groups are reinforced in some contexts, in others internal differentiation within each ethnic group is prominent. in ukraine, kaneff noted this at christmas, which was celebrated on different dates and by different rituals not only by villages of different ethnicities but also by the same ethnicity. in nagorna, for example, christmas was celebrated on the 7th january. in a neighbouring moldovan village, it was celebrated on the 25th december, while in yet another of the neighbouring moldovan villages it was celebrated on both dates! therefore, some rituals do not subject the local population to the state centre as much as maintain local differences between communities in the district. in many respects bessarabia displays many of the characteristics of a ‘typical’ borderland as both peripheral to the state centre and with unique local cultural and shared economic relations with the other border communities (donnan & wilson 1999: 5). what we have tried to emphasise in this section is the complicated intersection across literal borders and conceptual boundaries. these have a long history in bessarabia and are changing all the time. the present ‘unity’ of the region is based also on this shared history of resettlement and migration by different ethnic populations during the 18th and 19th centuries – people who have lived together in the region since. under the influence of various powers– ottoman, russian, romanian, soviet – these settlers have witnessed the coming and going of many state borders, especially in the last century. local ethnic boundaries based on language, religion, rituals and economic exchange cross-cut literal borders: sometimes reinforcing them, sometimes rendering them irrelevant. yet ethnic boundaries too are configured differently in different contexts: sometimes creating differentiation between members of the same ethnic group, sometimes aligning them together with respect to another ethnic group. the overall resulting picture is of local communities that can be temporarily aggregated along different principles (ethnic, economic, linguistic and history) to serve the interests of the moment. the papers in the volume encourage us to examine how borders and boundaries are exploited locally. they provide examples of when exactly borders and boundaries are unifying and when they are fragmenting forces. resourceful borders in this section we look at how the everyday negotiation of borders and boundaries plays an instrumental role in the way bessarabians cope with the present difficult economic situation in the region. in so doing, we highlight particular themes in the papers, which essentially can be grouped into three topics: economic trade (samkhvalov & samkhvalov and polese), migration (ganchev and demirdirek) and retreat to the local (boneva and anastassova). all papers focus on either international, regional or village community borders/boundaries. donnan & wilson (1999: 87) view borders and their ‘unique locational ambiguity’ as a ‘resource,’ which those living in the vicinity can exploit. this seems equally true in our extended understandings of borders that include boundaries. the fact that bessarabians now live in two states, but one historically defined region, and the multiple identities to which they have access is based on a long history of changing states and borders. it is also based on the effects of boundaries – minority status, fluency in various languages. especially in difficult economic times local people use their multiple identities and minority status (and different combinations of these identities), to develop strategies of survival. for example, an ethnic bulgarian in the ukraine state may be geographically, linguistically and ethnically marginalized from kiev, but has official recognition as a member of a national minority group and a historical homeland (bulgaria). he may have russian language skills and perhaps also networks of friends/family in moldova (and therefore with possible exploitable connections to romania). such connections provide a potential resource in dealings with the state, in defining identities and negotiating strategies designed to cope with economic hardship. some of these ‘resources’ come with official state backing – eg the privileges (and constraints) associated with minority status. formal recognition is achieved through state support of various programmes that encourage local contacts with the historical homeland and through the provision of funding for the establishment of local museums that publicly display ethnic/historical origins. other anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 12 resources are founded in informal networks that compete with the state apparatus (eg cross border trading). as others have noted (eg. wilson & donnan 1998: 10, 21), the mobilization of connections that traverse state borders are not necessarily about the deliberate subversion of the new states. nevertheless, this may be a consequence, for many of these connections transcend the limits of the state and underline its weak position. when an area is peripheral in geographical and administrative terms, the citizens in this area are often disadvantaged; political and economic resources controlled by the state centre may be harder to access. minority groups are often structurally in a more distant position to the capital (eg through language disadvantages), adding to the difficulties of accessing resources. the situation is even more dire in a postsocialist context where wide ranging reforms have dismantled previous structures while new markets and political stability have yet to be guaranteed. two of the following papers deal specifically with economic activity: samkhvalov & samkhvalov take a historical perspective of large scale economic developments, showing the fluctuating fortunes of reni and regional-national tensions in local attempts to engage in large scale cross-border trading. polese focuses on small scale informal economic activity across the ukrainemoldovan border. borderlands, samkhvalov & samkhvalov remind us, need not always be economically peripheral regions. indeed, bessarabia, or more specifically the district of reni, was a privileged area during the ussr; it was a crucial strategic transport node connecting soviet union to its international trading partners. in this sense the region was incorporated into the economic complex of the ussr through strong economic ties that not only provided economic wealth and stability, but helped maintain regional unity. the collapse of the soviet union has brought about a decline in the international importance of this region through the running down of infrastructure and lost business for the port. the region’s present decline in status from a main international transit site during soviet times to a rural backwater with little international activity is occurring despite local leadership attempts to boost local economic developments through cross border cooperative ventures. one of the reasons for failure, samkhvalov & samkhvalov suggest, is the lack of support for such ventures at the national level. the newly created independent ukraine perceives such expressions of local unity as a threat to its integrity. local and national interests are not always aligned. in this sense, samkhvalov & samkhvalov alert us to local-national tensions when regions attempt to assert initiative and a degree of autonomy in trading (see also anastassova). according to samkhvalov & samkhvalov, informal and undocumented small-scale trading is an important form of cross border activity with a long history that still thrives in the region. this is the central theme of polese’s paper on traders who move daily between chisinau and odessa by train. polese shows how the inequalities in economic conditions between moldova and odessa, draws moldovan traders to relatively abundant and cheap goods in odessa. polese reminds us that much like the border between moldova and ukraine, which is so flexible it is experienced differently whether onen travels by train or car, trade and ‘corruption’ can also be ambiguously interpreted. the boundary between illegal and legal activity is frequently unclear. indeed local, petty trading activities benefit not only those directly engaged in the activity; political/economic elite and customs officials are also beneficeries. for polese, the big loser is the state, or at least those state organs, which suffer income loss through unregulated trading. when states are unable to provide economic security for their citizens, undocumented and often illegal cross border trading becomes a local necessity. cross border trading is a response to inequalities and shortages between two sides of the border. a more permanent response is migration. in his paper, ganchev reminds us of the importance of minority status, which opens up possibilities of temporary or permanent migration through educational opportunities. his focus is on bessarabian bulgarians who exploit their ethnic connections in order to continue their higher education outside ukraine, in bulgaria. ganchev does not look at the economic side of this migration (although we assume it to be an important dimension of students’ motivation), but what is clear is that during the period of study, the visitors’ identity as ‘bessarabian bulgarians’ (distinct from a bulgarian identity) was reinforced, even strengthened, through a variety of practices for example, speaking russian amongst themselves rather than bulgarian. in this way ganchev shows us how a local bessarabian identity is reasserted in a ‘foreign’ context. the theme of the reproduction of a local bessarabian identity through interaction with the historical ‘homeland’ is also the theme of demirdirek’s paper on moldovan gagauz. she looks at the crossing of both literal borders and conceptual boundaries (through travel to turkey and entertaining turks in moldova) as a way in which gagauz reformulated their sense of collectivity. much as in anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 13 ganchev’s bulgarian example, the importance of language as the source of collective struggle and identity is highlighted in perpetuating the bessarabian community with respect to the historical ‘homeland’. also much like the bulgarian case, demirdirek shows how gagauz, with privileged access as a ‘minority’ in moldova, exploit new educational and employment opportunities provided by another state (turkey). a reverse strategy that looks ‘inward’ is the theme of the final two papers in the collection. here, the question of maintenance and continuity as a response to external pressure is addressed. as opposed to the two previous papers which look at emigration and crossing of international borders as a way to deal with present hardships in the region, here the opposite strategy is evident: turning away from the outside (and centres of nation-state power) to focus inwards. boneva’s historical account looks at two (ethnically bulgarian) villages in moldova and addresses the question of how they have maintained their identity over almost two centuries. she attributes continuity to the maintenance of various practices (language, particular naming systems and so on) and suggests that these practices have survived over many generations largely as a result of local responses to outsider policies. the russian empire showed tolerance towards the settlers (until the 1860s) and after this locals were still able to avoid integration through non-engagment (eg by not attending or being unable to afford to go to school). the big changes came only after bessarabia’s inclusion into the soviet union after world war ii, when free and compulsory educational programmes led to a gradual break up of endogamy. agricultural reforms and modernisation were also relatively effective in integrating the region into the ussr. this however, did not bring about massive changes locally, since educated villagers moved out of rural areas. meanwhile those who remained behind in rural bessarabia were able to retain their distinguishing practices through a degree of isolation12. only now, after over 100 years of isolation from their ‘homeland’, has there been a moldovan recognition of rights of ethnic minorities. this has enabled the flourishing of local schools teaching minority languages. in short, it seems that despite the state apparatus (especially education) which has been instrumental in attempts to incorporate the region into wider structures, local autonomy and ethnic markers/differences have been maintained through a variety of mechanisms despite pressures from the outside. anastassova furthers this theme of regional autonomy and inward focus. she describes a multiethnic village in bessarabia (with a majority population of russian old believers) at a historical moment when appeals to bessarabian identity were particularly vocal and strong. anastassova shows us how claims to a bessarabian identity represent both a retreat and rejection of outside reforms that were taking place in ukraine in the 1990s. the ‘retreat’ to ‘bessarabianness’ was a way to create a sanctuary in a world perceived as disintegrating and dangerous, where chaos and disorder reigned as a result of the gathering moment of postsocialist reforms. the path of local order and economic success was directed by the head of the village cooperative, who refused to engage in wider reforms, but continued to offer villagers all the benefits of the previous socialist system: protection, welfare, leadership and discipline. his all pervading authority steered the village to economic stability and social security at a time when other areas experienced decline and chaos. a retreat to ‘bessarabia’ was a strategy as well as response to the wider external crisis. in her paper, anastassova thus speaks to the relationship between local and national, showing how external reforms can bring about a regional reaction that is not always in line with national policy (something that samkhvalov & samkhvalov also show). the papers reveal the ambiguous yet numerous resources that bessarabians can draw on: most have access to more than one state and more than one identity. the liminal position that allows them to negotiate across various borders and boundaries gives them a set of possible ‘resources’ that can be used strategically. the playing field, however, is not equal: different ethnic groups within the region have unequal access to political and administrative (if not also economic) powers. thus despite the vast outnumbering of moldovans in the reni district in ukraine, bulgarians appear more prominent in local administration. bulgarians themselves attributed this fact to their more efficient language skills. they claim to speak better russian than the gagauz or moldovans (because of the greater similarity between the bulgarian and russian languages). hence, they learn the language with greater ease and fluency than their moldovan or gagauz neighbours who speak with an accent.13 this gave bulgarians a greater political advantage during soviet times and continues to do so in the present, since russian is still informally the dominant language while similarities with ukraine still provide an advantage. in theory, with ukrainian now the official state language, ethnic ukrainians have the upper hand, as do native moldovan speakers in moldova.14 in short, different ethnic groups have anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 14 different access to resources and power in the region at different moments in time. a regional bessarabian identity that crosscuts two nation-states and local village identities (and minority rights that gives privileged access to more distant historical ‘homelands’) are part of the everyday resources available to these borderland people and by which they negotiate their daily lives. conclusion: strong ethnicities and histories, weak states? postsocialist reforms, the rise of new independent states and restrictions relating to the new eu border all influence the particular relations that are being played out between the periphery and the centre in bessarabia, between ‘border people and their political core’ (wilson & donnan 1998: 21). in conclusion, we underline a few tendencies concerning the strategic use of borders and boundaries. if borders and boundaries are a resource to be used strategically, then in bessarabia, the power of this resource resides in its ambiguity. there is, firstly, the ambiguity of the ‘political core’. the incorporation of the region into the soviet union after world war ii gave the zone a clear ‘political core’. however today, the situation is more complex and it is apparent that there is no one ‘centre’. competing loyalties, multiple identities and the historically based connections tying the region to various powers at various periods in the past mean that there is no one centre of economic and political domination15. rather, the people of the region have a wide set of connections with a variety of centres: kiev, chisinau, moscow, sofia, bucharest as well as odessa. the new national capitals pose alternative links to moscow and odessa but their pull is, if anything, weaker for reasons of language, past connections and networks, and because of the economic opportunities offered to labour migrants in moscow. the historical ‘homelands’ of bulgaria, romania and turkey are also attractive with their promise of education, employment and better opportunities in a setting that is not totally foreign. economic activities, once incorporated the area into the soviet union, have unravelled, adding to the region’s marginality. now lacking in international importance, economic activity appears to reinforce regional bessarabian unity, often at the expense of the new international border between moldova and ukraine. this is largely achieved through informal trading activities. economic marginalisation and decline is also evident in migration patterns; people are often forced to look beyond the nation-state. often undocumented migration, which flouts state authority and law, serves to reinforce bessarabian regional unity through migration to historical homelands (bulgaria, romania, turkey). indeed local villagers openly express disregard for the international border between moldova and ukraine; for example, they have been known to swap passports, or borrow a friend’s, when they wish to cross the border to visit family/relatives and their own is not at hand. boundaries created by rituals and spoken languages serve to both fragment the region into its constituent village units, and bind it into a presented whole. often, differing social practices within the same ethnic group fragment the region into village ‘units’. for example, communities express their uniqueness through particular versions of the same practice (different dialects, times to celebrate christmas and so on). a display of unity (on the basis of ethnicity) often occurs through group presentations to outsiders – to state officials and visiting dignitaries from the historical homelands. minority status -a prerequisite for eu membership grants a particular way for local people to be accepted and disciplined into the nation-state. at the same time, it grants them legitimate access to alternate (historically rooted) homelands. government policies that sponsor ‘minorities’ are implemented in parallel with programmes of integration through the educational system and forced imposition of the nation’s single language policies in public spaces. in the context of strong ethnic/historical links and in a time of globalisation and eu supranationalism, it seems particularly difficult for the new states (moldova or ukraine) to establish themselves. how can state borders be strengthened in the face of transnational movements and expressions of loyalties that are connected to long and emotionally loaded histories that play to identities of origin? or in the face of breakaway groups who make claims to autonomy, such as transnistria? what the following papers suggest is that the new moldovan and ukraine states have not, to date, been particularly successful in creating strong borders. nor have they been outstandingly successful in capturing their citizens’ loyalties. notes 1 the use of the term ‘bessarabia’ is unproblematic in present day ukraine but disputed by others in the region, notably in the former moldovan ssr (where the term is avoided because it is taken to refer to the romanian kingdom between the two world wars). we use this term because it is unproblematic for the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 15 local communities studied by the researchers in this volume (as well as to many scholars outside moldova). 2 or to use donnan and wilson’s terminology (1998: 26), we are looking at both symbolic and state boundaries. to distinguish between the two in this introduction, we use literal boundaries to refer to actual state ‘borders’, while conceptual ones are denoted as ‘boundaries’. when speaking of conceptual boundaries, we are not looking at the symbolic significance of the geographical state boundaries, but at other markers such as ethnicity or language, which, with the rise of the new postsocialist states, need to be considered alongside these physical/literal boundaries. 3 verdery showed that in romania in times of scarcity people access resources through local ethnic connections (1996). in the same way papers in this collection indicate that the play on ethnicity is important, although the cases here indicate that connections along ethnic lines are more likely to be international rather than local. for instance ethnic gagauz in moldova will get economic help from turkey rather than from ethnic gagauz in ukrainian bessarabia (see paper by demirdirek). 4 these papers constitute only a part of those presented at the workshop we convened, titled: emerging citizenship and contested identities between the dniester, prut and danube rivers. we regret that a. prigarin was unable to provide his paper for publication in this volume. the other papers on the topic of citizenship are brought together in an edited volume by m. heintz, in preparation under the title “weak state, uncertain citizenship: moldova”. 5 we thank m. pelkmans for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this paper. 6 hirsch (2005: 324) shows how these all important nationality categories had lasting impact as a ‘rallying point’ in post 1991 events, including in the emergence of the new republics. 7 in the village of nagorna, ukraine, kaneff noted that 12 families had gone as work migrants to kazakstan in the late 1970s and early 1980s and remained there for a decade, compelled to return only after 1991. 8 citizens of the republic of moldova, who presently enjoy open access to romania, will see the introduction of the romanian visa regime in january 2007. 9 this increase in ethnic awareness is not a specificity of the bessarabian region but widespread throughout the former ussr territory since the 1980s. however, it is exacerbated by the lack of power and the lack of legitimacy of the emerging states (neither moldova nor ukraine have a tradition of independence). the situation is more dramatic in moldova than in ukraine, evident by the example of the separatist region of transnistria, de facto independent while de jure part of the republic of moldova (troebst, 2003). at the beginning of the 1990s, transnistria, the strip of land east of the nistru river, parted with moldova on the grounds of ethnicity. inhabited by 60% russophones (ukrainians and russians), transnistria protested the moldovan movement of “national awakening” that ultimately led to the constitution of independent moldova. researchers suggest that ethnic conflict was an excuse for a power struggle between communist elites (troebst, 2004). 10 indeed the party of communists of moldova won the 2001 elections campaigning on the reintroduction of russian as state language and received considerable support from ethnic minorities. the question here is clearly not simply one of ethnicity, since russians constitute only 5% of the moldovan population (cf 2004 census). it is much more a question of historical and social alliances and perhaps also cognitive effort and convenience (it is not easy for a gagauz, native speaker of a turkish language to learn romanian, a latin langauge, after having obtained his/her education in russian, a slavic language, also written in cyrillics). the head of the department for ethnic minorities, one of the rare russophones speaking romanian, narrated the problems she was facing when trying to convince her 9 year old daughter of the need to learn romanian. her daughter refused to learn moldovan on the grounds that “all her aquintances knew russian”. this situation continued until they made a trip to romania (where the mother was conducting business) and the child faced the romanians’ ignorance of her native russian language. her mother convinced her child to learn romanian, not because moldovans spoke this language, but because romanians did not speak any other! 11 not the real name of the village. 12 reviewing two hundred years of bessarabian history, fruntasu emphasises the fact that local communities retreated inwards and that this retreat impeded the creation of a larger (regional, national) identity, even in cases when forging an identity was on the agenda of the state in power (fruntasu, 2003). this ressembles the circumstances of 19th century france when regions such as ariège resisted their integration into the french state, despite the fact that there were no historical quarrels or ethnic conflicts that would have questioned france‘s authority over the area (weber, 1976). 13 personal communication, kaneff, 2003. 14 inequalities in language skills has wide ranging implications: kaneff witnessed the daily exclusion of anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 16 villagers as a result of government policy that sponsors one language officially (ukrainian). for example, in the municipal council, villagers sign legal documents (everything from marriage certificates to land title deeds) without fully knowing what they are signing, since the documents are in ukrainian and no translations are available. 15 ‘…border people have identities which are shifting and multiple, in ways which are multivocal and multilocal…’ (donnan & wilson 1999: 64). references berdhal, d. 1999. where the world ended : reunification and identity in the german borderland, berkeley: university of california press brubaker, w.r., 1992. ‘citizenship struggles in soviet succeessor states’, in international migration review, vol:26, no. 2:269-291. brubaker, w. r. 1996. nationalism reframed : nationhood and the national question in the new europe, cambridge university press donnan, h. & wilson, t.m. 1999, borders. frontiers of identity, nation and state. oxford: berg. donnan, h. & haller, d. 2000, ‘liminal no more. the relevance of borderland studies’ in ethnologia europaea (issue on borders and borderlands, d. haller and h. donnan, eds), vol. 30, no. 2:7-22. fruntasu, i. 2003. o istorie etnopolitica a basarabiei. chisinau and bucuresti: carter gitelman, z. 1985. a century of ambivalence:the jews of russia and the soviet union, 1881 to the present, new york:yivo institute for jewish research hirsch, f., 2005. empire of nations. ethnographic knowledge and the making of the soviet union, ithaca & london: cornell university press. king, c. 2000. the moldovans. romania, russia and the politics of culture. stanford: hoover institution press kolsto, p. ed. 2002. national integration and violent conflict in post-soviet societies: the cases of estonia and moldova, rowman and littlefield livezeanu, i. 1995. cultural politics in greater romania: regionalism, nation building, and ethnic struggle, 1918-1930, ithaca: cornell university press martin, t. 2001. the affirmative action empire: nations and nationalism in the soviet union, 1923-1939, ithaca: cornell university press pelkmans, m. in press defending the border: politics, religion, and modernity in the georgian borderlands. ithaca: cornell university press. troebst, s. 2003. “we are transnistrians!” postsoviet identity management in the dniester valley. ab imperio 1/2003 troebst, s. 2004. ‘the ‘transnistrian moldovan republic’: from conflict-driven state building to statedriven nation-building’. in european yearbook of minority issues vol. 2, 2002/3, koninklijke: brill, pp. 5-30 verdery, k. 1996what was socialism and what comes next?, princeton university press weber, e. 1976. peasants into frenchmen: the modernization of rural france 1870-1914. stanford: stanford university press http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=where� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=the� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=world� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=ended� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=re-unification� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=re-unification� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=and� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=identity� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=in� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=the� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=german� http://vzopc4.gbv.de:8080/db=6/set=741/ttl=4/mat=/nomat=t/clk?ikt=1016&trm=borderland� http://abimperio.net/scgi-bin/aishow.pl?state=showa&idart=653&idlang=1&code=� http://abimperio.net/scgi-bin/aishow.pl?state=showa&idart=653&idlang=1&code=� http://abimperio.net/scgi-bin/aishow.pl?state=showa&idart=653&idlang=1&code=� tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 76 the guest at the dining table: economic transitions and the reshaping of hospitality—reflections from batumi and odessa* abel polese university of edinburgh nashe delo predlozhit, vashe delo otkazatsya (rus. our task is to propose, yours to refuse) stumari ghvitsaa (georgian, a guest comes from god) ne stesnyaysya, a to ostaneshsya golodny (rus. do not be shy or you’ll stay hungry) november 8, 2005. vasilevka, odessa oblast’, saint dmitri’s day. a team of around 15 academics is invited to join a dining company outside the main church, where the locals have covered two 15-meter long tables with all the food one could imagine. a few steps away, on an improvised cooking-fire, cooking pots of one meter in diameter are used to prepare soup, meat and any other kind of food. on the tables all sorts of wines are offered; the wine is produced locally and stored in mineral water bottles. the feast of saint dimitri is the apogee of food consumption in the village and will feed the locals for several days after its end. however, after the meal, some local women ask those who came from far away to take with them one or two bottles of wine and possibly some food. “there [in the city] everything is chemical,” they say. “take our food, it is homemade and genuine, good for your health.” the city-countryside contrast invoked above and the association of the city with artificial food, and the countryside with “genuine food” seems to suggest that changes in practices of food and alcohol consumption mirror a strong social and economical change in eastern europe. i propose to explore these changes through the lens of hospitality, defined here as a positive attitude towards strangers that generates relationships of dependence and potential reciprocity between the guest and the host. following the approach that objects are not what they are but what they come to be (thompson 1991), i intend to explore the changing role food and drinks have in different situations and the different value they are given according to the spatial context. looking at the social and cultural practices related to food consumption, and comparing them in different contexts, i suggest that it is possible to gain insight into other social practices such as the relationship with the other, with time and with local social habits. the kind of food offered, the way hosts are invited to the dining table, the amount of time spent in the kitchen, and the relationship with homemade food—all these variables permit us to feel a transition in eastern europe that, from public spaces, spreads to private ones and affect lifestyles and styles of consumerism (see mesnil and michailescu 1998, and polese 2008). these transitions are increasingly visible when comparing urban and rural contexts. from 2003 to 2008 i had the chance to experience different kinds of hospitality in a number of post-socialist regions, from chisinau to ulan-ude, in both urban and rural settings, and compare my information with colleagues’ and informants’ opinions. this gave me a basis for comparison and prompted my further interest when, during my stay in odessa, i happened to experience several different kinds of hospitality behaviour. i was based in odessa for almost two years between 2003 and 2006 and as i began to identify some patterns of hospitality in the city, i started collecting ethnographic material. most of it was through participant observation and informal interviews, sometimes during a dinner or just as a reflection with some informants. during my stay i had the chance to exchange opinions with other colleagues working in the region (and i am grateful to deema kaneff and tanya richardson) and on several occasions i visited the provinces, spending time in small towns. this gave me enough insight to start thinking comparatively about the differences in hospitality and the influence of urban culture on hospitality practices. in the summer of 2005 i had the chance to do some fieldwork in georgia related to a project on hospitality on the black sea, and i became increasingly fascinated with the way hospitality was lived in that country. in particular i concentrated on the coastal region and visited poti and batumi, as urban centres, anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 77 stopping in several small settlements between the two cities. once based in batumi, i felt an atmosphere similar to the one i was used to in odessa. the city, capital of the ajara autonomous republic, is the main georgian port and an important intermediate port of call for those sailing on the black sea. thanks to their strategic location, both odessa and batumi cities enjoy an economic welfare that is not found elsewhere nearby, but they are still in regions that are less developed than the rest of the country. they have a high level of migration, and constant populations exchanges from the countryside to the rich urban areas, which makes the urban-rural contrast easier to notice. starting from the fact that food and drinks seem to have a different meaning in different contexts and they can be used to build up alliance and trust networks, i would suggest that a fast economic transition is urging a number of people to renegotiate the complex rituals linked with hospitality. more specifically, i find that people are proposing a re-elaborated version of local cultures in which traditional rituals become simplified. this, in turn, sheds some light on the ways in which, in urban cultures, hospitality practices developed over time get renegotiated, in terms of quality of food, quantity of time spent in cooking, and the perception of who is a stranger. ultimately this may lead to the homemade food vs. supermarket food “dilemma.” the relationship between homemade and store-bought is ambiguous: on the one hand, homemade food represents genuineness, time and devotion invested into a social relationship; however supermarket food, in some manifestations, as symbol of modernity, can also be well valued in an elaborate code that mixes homemade and processed food. the main point of this article is that hospitality rituals, although surviving marketization and modernization, have gone through a simplification process. this process of simplification is visible to different extents in urban and rural settings, but also in the two different regions analysed. while necessary to the perpetuation of social life and the creation of personal networks, these rituals have been brought into question and challenged by the economic transition. this, in turn, has led to the simplification of some aspects of the rituals, even as attempts are made to keep their core substance unaltered. in this respect food and drinks, the way they are lived and their consumption, is strongly dependent on the economic settings. if we drew a continuum we could see at one extreme the situation in which ample time is available, and thus the cost of labour is very low, and it is possible to make the investments necessary to get fresh food (grow poultry, go fishing, prepare the food at home, produce homemade wine). on the other extreme of the continuum, the economic opportunity of an hour of labour is so high that one prefers to work the maximum amount of time and buy all the food in a supermarket. an intermediate situation may be having time to do shopping in a bazaar, or visiting friends and relatives in rural areas to get homemade food to be prepared at home. those behaviours are indicative of an economics that is explorable through food and drinks, for people, no matter how busy they are, tend at least to preserve the basic meaning of such rituals and their socio-economic functions. what’s so special about eating? what all that food means to understand the current meaning of food and drinks in batumi and odessa one needs to explore the social relationship with food and drinks over the past years. while during the soviet period access to basic products was not a major problem, finding some specialised products was a matter of skills and risk. contributing to this was a situation where the production of luxury goods was extremely specialised. in riga it was possible to buy the most famous chocolate of the ussr. people traveling to and from kiev had a chance to buy a kiev cake, in odessa visitors would try so secure a bottle of champagne of frantsuskii bulvar, and in moldova a bottle of belyi aist cognac (brandy) or homemade wine. visiting the south of ukraine it was possible to buy fresh fruits in spring or summer, in the caucasus a visitor would buy dried fruits, and in the far east it was possible to buy “red fish” (trout or salmon dried and salted) or seledka (pickled herring). such specialised goods were imbued with two kinds of prestige: one was given by the brand, well known throughout the country, and the other from the alleged quality of the product that was genuine and thus appreciated. although their meaning was different, homemade and shop goods could both to some extent be used for a token of thanks or informal payment, for instance when thanking someone for a service. little distinction was made between homemade and purchased goods as “substitutes” for money anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 78 (and perhaps for one another), a situation that changed with the introduction of free market economies (see below). because of the high amount of forced savings in the soviet union, investing one’s time in the production of goods revealed itself to be a good strategy. apart from cash, one could start up a series of exchanges and barter with neighbours and friends that allowed people to acquire desirable things that were not necessarily on the market. this also encouraged some leisure time practical activities. after the working day one could devote time to a social life and to “hobbies” like alcohol production so that in some cases goods as a commodity might replace money. producing alcohol, collecting mushrooms or repairing clothes could be bartered with other services or goods, while developing networks of trust among different segments of the population. in addition, since time represented a widely available commodity, it was possible to prepare and exchange homemade food and goods, a practice that sometimes proved advantageous to buying them. odessa and batumi were in a unique position. on the one hand their climate allowed people to take advantage of natural resources: both regions produce good vineyards and the soil is adequate to grow vegetables and fruits, at least some months of the year. they were, and are, also relatively close to other countries like moldova or armenia, which facilitates exchanges of different products. finally, they were two important ports and most shipments to moscow passed through one of those two cities (where, incidentally, a decent amount of goods disappeared on the way). an initial change was introduced by the opening up of the countries in the early 1990s, for products became available on the market after an initial transition period, and choice widened rapidly, including western foods. the symbolic meaning of these western foods was such that they were sometimes bought for their origins rather than their quality (which was indeed dubious, according to jennifer patico (2002)). however, according to several informants, a number of local brands remained competitive with western food. going on a business trip to odessa it was almost a moral obligation to come back with a bottle of shampanskoe (champagne) from frantsuzski bulvar, the name of the street where the factory is located. from chisinau everybody was expected to bring back a bottle of cricova, and in georgia wine was one of the national attractions, with bottles of saperavi highly requested. while those goods were available in a limited quantity, there were a number of things that could be bought more easily from the locals themselves, like homemade wine, nalivka or nastoika (herbal and berry alcoholic drinks). as a result, during soviet times daily consumption and social relations tended to be based primarily on homemade alcohol and food. marketization, introduced recently, has divided the population into at least two categories: those who have enough money to buy in a supermarket (where less time is spent) and those who have enough time to buy at the bazaar (where goods are cheaper). time is not a commodity that everybody has, homemade food and supermarket food are no longer perfect substitutes for one another as they were in the past. homemade food is cheaper and allegedly more genuine, but it costs more time, whether in terms of time taken to prepare it or to visit the person who prepared it instead of going to the supermarket. supermarket food is likely to be more expensive or, at the very least, less “genuine” because it is not homemade, but it saves you much time. since in urban areas wages have risen much faster than in the countryside, those whose urban dwellers whose earnings are rapidly growing prefer to have less time but more money at their disposal, which enables them to simply buy what they exchanged or bartered before. with leisure time one can buy extra working hours and thus extra earnings, and alcohol or food can be quickly bought in a supermarket. market laws therefore influence hospitality and food consumption, and the way food in hospitality rituals is used nowadays mirrors local customs while also unveiling the symbolic meaning of things used to construct alliances. in particular the growing gap between city and countryside can induce us to reflect on the compromises that urban constraints pose, which prompt people to renegotiate in order to accommodate tradition and conciliate it with a working life. in the next sections, i explore two main themes in two regions, odessa and batumi: 1) the rituals associated to hospitality; and 2) the ways different people can be perceived as strangers and potential guests. in these two regions i have experienced hospitality and gathered information on hospitality related attitudes, both in the countryside and urban context, to “taste” the way economic anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 79 development, marketization and urbanization have reshaped cultural practices and alliance building in post-soviet territories. what is hospitality? whilst is it accepted that hospitality rituals exist and are widely performed around the globe, the motivations for extending hospitality and engaging in hospitality practices at all seem only partially explored. starting from a question a colleague asked some years ago, posed as the “enigma of the gift” (gerard 1998) i would introduce the “enigma of hospitality”: why does a person decide, apparently spontaneously, to offer hospitality to a stranger? how is this person going to choose the object of his or her hospitality? and finally, how is this person going to select the kind of hospitality to be offered? hospitality, just like gift exchange, may be regarded, from a maussian perspective, as a social fact (1924) in which, although the formal obligations and forms of engaging in giving and taking rituals with foreigners can change across cultures, its substance seems quite stable. a gift, for mauss, is a fundamental structure of the relationship between people in a society, which always retains an element of its giver and involves three obligations: the obligation to give, to receive, and to reciprocate. whilst giving and receiving are quite straightforward as concepts, some questions may arise about reciprocating. there is a tendency in anthropology to consider host-guest exchanges as binding and leading to a continuation of the relationship by causing new obligations (lashley 2000), performing moral authority (selwyn 2000) or confirming control of the other (erb 2000). it has also been suggested that the host may expect to become a guest in the future and thus does what others should do with him like in the article ‘la table sens dessus dessous’ [a very broad translation would be: discovering what is really under the host’s table] in which mesnil and mihailescu (1998) suggest that some attitudes to strangers might reflect the host’s perceptions of the expectations he would have were he to became a guest (though they will be, most likely, deceived). i would suggest that hospitality, and its rituals, aliment the already intense flow of informal economies and exchanges, though not necessarily in a direct way. in a long term perspective, in which the guest and the host are likely to engage in a lasting relationship, hospitality’s rationale may lay behind the fact that such a relationship is supposed to strengthen social ties and boost trust networks among individuals (heatherington 2001; herzfeld 1998; yang 1994). this can go further and generate a kind of favour exchange relationship destined to last (ledeneva 1998; lonkila 1997) or a more disengaged one in which commodities, money and favours are a way to pay back a “favour” (patico 2002; polese 2008b). however, there might be cases in which reciprocity may not apply, or might not even be expected, as when a host coming from far away is received and honoured and no continuation of the relationship is expected. what would push someone to give with no gain expected? if we go beyond a materialistic conception of reciprocity, there are a number of ways hospitality can be reciprocated. it would become otherwise impossible to explain why some hosts may be ready to indebt themselves to provide their guests with the best of the best, be this a chicken or some sugar in places where this is a luxury (cole 2006). in addition one might need to explain the aggressive manner in which hospitality can be manifested, becoming “hellspitality” (“you looked at it, it means you want to eat it!”) and obliging the guest to roll away, rather than walk away, from the dinner table (zanca 2003). what is the gain of forcing guests to accept more food than they can swallow? if we recall the idea of the “indian gift” by parry (1986) hospitality can be considered something that enriches the host morally, before his neighbours, his guest, or god, for the fact of having acted generously. hospitality can thus be seen as cathartic or as a moral obligation of the host, who is supposed to share with the one who has less (and the guest, once outside his home, definitely has less). only by taking complete care of the guest may the host present himself as respectable and respectful and fulfil his moral obligations. in addition, if a person is perceived as a prestigious guest in a particular setting, hosting this person will become a source of prestige for the household that hosted him or her, so that receiving guests might increase the respectability and reputation of the house and thus of its occupants (cole 2006, visser 1991, zanca 2003). a guest also brings news and stories from the outside world, which is a way to break up the local routine, and is thus appreciated (cole 2006). it may ultimately transform unknown people into friends (selwyn 2000). all this suggests that reciprocity may be anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 80 achieved in several different ways and that the border between social relationships and money (or commodity-) motivated exchanges is more blurred than is generally acknowledged (patico 2002, polese 2008b, raheja 1988, williams 2005). in my study on hospitality to strangers on the black sea i have suggested some reasons why one might want to be generous to strangers (polese 2006: 115); the next sections add to this by providing further evidence on practices and expectations of hospitality. while a religious component is certainly present, i had the impression that hospitality was more socially than a religiously motivated, being prompted by the following factors: 1) curiosity: this may also mean that the obligation to reciprocate is respected—the guest can offer some information, anecdotes and stories to the host. 2) human fellow-feelings: the basic principle that, if someone is in trouble, that person should be helped. 3) limits of social welfare: in areas where the state is absent or too busy to take care of its citizens, citizens tend to interact more and create informal structures to make up for failure of formal ones. this applies also to the stranger, once he or she enters the circle. 4) the idea that hospitality is honourable behaviour: this will boost the respectfulness of the host, both in his or her own eyes and in the eyes of others. 5) the perception that a stranger’s visit is a gift that produces trust and reciprocity: like in the ‘indian gift’ (parry 1996), the fact that the stranger accepts the host’s gifts creates a relationship of trust and (potential) reciprocity in such a context food (and drinks) comes to assume a symbolic meaning of primary importance, as anthropologists from van gennep on have acknowledged. food becomes thus not the aim but the means to construct alliances and create dependence relationships (menner, murcott, and van otterloo 1992). the typology of food offered, the way it is prepared and presented, and the time devoted to the guest all become indicators of the perception of the guest, his or her potential prestige, and the gains the guest is expected to bring to the household or at least to the host. the next sections will explore how social and cultural practices are negotiated and adapted to specific contexts, as well as the ways in which economic development and marketization impact such practices. in line with this, time devoted to the guest depends on the prestige a guest will bring and consequently the food offered will be chosen accordingly. in addition, the opening up of these formerly soviet countries (ukraine and georgia) means that a much wider range and variety of food and drinks are available, so that imported and domestic foods today are systematically combined in various contexts so to provide the perfect combination for a given situation. even though the substance of hospitality rituals has been altered, it becomes all the more important to preserve them, since they function as a starting point for further economic exchanges. to explore these nuances, i offer stories of my own personal experiences as the beneficiary of hospitality rituals, as well as the hospitality stories told me by friends, colleagues, and others. who is a guest? who is a stranger? there are places where hospitality enwraps you from the very moment you cross the border of a country, like i experienced in batumi, where people seem ready to share with the guest whatever they have. as one informant (a french traveller) reported: i stopped being a vegetarian when travelling in the former ussr. you know, a westerner, easy to spot, hiking around in the mountains is pretty much an attraction. you are walking in the mountains and they see a foreigner…they look nearby and they see mutton…so on their right they have a foreigner and on their left mutton…the natural consequence is a mutton barbecue. and you cannot refuse that meat ‘because you are a vegetarian’ (personal communication, translated by the author from french) i once was invited for a dinner in batumi and, after a number of courses (i do not dare to count them!), while collapsing on my chair, incredibly the man of the house started looking around, asking what else he could offer. such an engaged hospitality is time consuming and thus not possible (or not worth it) to offer to every person you come across. what to do if you do not have anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 81 enough time? the words of a ukrainian friend provide some clues: we went to use an international telephone and the lady asked where we were from. once our status of ‘guest of the country’ was acknowledged, she wanted to act as host but could not close the shop and spend time with us. her choice was to propose to us to come later in the day and she would make us try a real homemade khachapuri [georgian oven baked bread with cheese inside](personal communication, translated by the author from russian). walking in the centre of odessa or batumi it is not likely (though not excludable) that you will be invited into someone’s house; such a scenario is, however, easily possible in the province (countryside). a ukrainian colleague found a very singular way to provide a group of conference speakers (of which i was one) with accommodations in odessa oblast’. we arrived in a small town and went straight to the old believers’ church, whose priest had been previously informed of the imminent arrival of around 20 people. after a few minutes i heard a loud voice from outside: ‘pilgrims have arrived!’ and the local community of old believers come around to pick up two or more ‘pilgrims’ who would be their guest for two nights. hospitality may be considered a full time job by the host. however, under certain conditions this changes and may even be rather reversed, so that the best hospitality is considered to be the most unobtrusive one. in this scenario, the best thing to do when you have guests is to leave them alone as much as they want, not invade their personal space, and act upon the guest’s request, not on one’s (the host’s) own initiative. the same is expected from guests, who should not be a burden to the daily life of their host. time that the host will devote to the guest is one of the main differences between urban and rural settings. in places where time is a cheap commodity, it will be relatively easy to dedicate more time to your guest; this can be performed by a few members of the family, with the working ones joining the company only in the evening. however in an urban context, which usually requires all members of the family to work, this will be lived differently. the host might apologize, or perceive this as natural, but will not be able to spend all his or her time with the guest. where hospitality is a ‘full time job’, if the host is not able to provide the guest with ‘minimal standards’ or if his house is not ‘honourable’, he might then refrain from inviting a guest. hospitality in this case is not perceived as a commodity (i give you my house) but as a service (i give you my house and put myself at your disposal), so that an ‘empty’ house (emptied from the host) is no commodity to be offered to strangers, as a fellow georgian reported. in georgia the house is holy. if your enemy comes into your house you have to treat him like your guest, not your enemy. they may become again your enemy [hopefully not] once they leave your household (personal communication, translated by the author from russian). engaging in a host-guest relationship ultimately depends on two things: the person’s desire to be perceived as a guest, and the perception that locals have of that person. this will eventually determine the number of material contact points the potential guest and host will have. locking oneself up in a hotel room certainly invites less hospitality that walking freely around, especially outside the city centre. likewise, even in the most hospitable cultures, you are more likely to be perceived as a tourist than as a guest if you hang around in some specifically designated ‘tourist areas’. hospitality, once you are perceived as a guest, will concretise as an attitude that people would not direct towards locals. for example, people can smile at you for no reason, or show some interest and stop to talk to you. anton krotov is not an anthropologist but one of the most hardcore hitchhikers in the world. his reflections on travelling are extremely useful to understanding how to enter a host-guest relationship. born in moscow, he should have passed one million kilometres hitchhiked at the time of writing, spending half the year on expeditions to asia or africa and the rest of the time writing books. krotov writes books on how to get free rides not only by car, but also by train, ship, regular buses and even airplanes; he also suggests the easiest way to sleep or eat on a the minimal budget (his principle is ‘spend on the road as much money you would spend at home’). his main advice to get a free ride is to “introduce anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 82 yourself as different, as not from the reality of your potential ‘host’ (driver). win his interest somehow, with a story, an anecdote, a veiled request for help. everybody is good in his heart, you just have to find the way to this person and this person will help you.” i consider this one of the main points underneath any host-guest relationship. your host must become interested in you as a person, in your specific situation, and then will be willing to offer a gift of hospitality. hospitality is not necessarily in the form of a dinner or a home stay. hospitality is everywhere: it can be a smile, information, a small gift or hidden help that you will never discover. once host and guest are interested, and ready, to engage in a relationship of reciprocity, a material point of contact has to be created; then one can begin the negotiations on which will depend the nature and the result of an exchange and its urgency, depending on how long the guest will stay, and how easy it will be for the guest and host to meet again. (however, in places where time is an expensive commodity, contact points with the locals or with neighbours tend to be reduced.) as a general rule, the smaller and the more relaxed the place, the more the potential contact points increase. but in some places it might be much easier than elsewhere, as two russian informants reported: hitchhiking on the side of the road in georgia you will most likely strike the attention of a local driver who will take you home, feed you, and then put you on the next coach to your destination, and there will be no way to refuse his hospitality without offending him (personal communication, translated from russian by the author). we were once hitchhiking from batumi to tbilisi. the police stopped us and asked what we were doing. we explained our aim and itinerary and they listened carefully. then they stopped a car and told the driver (who seemed afraid of the ‘police control’), that we were guests of their country and he had to take care of us and bring us to his final destination. they even said, “we are taking down your license plate number, because we want to be sure that everything will be okay with them” (personal communication). hospitality in batumi, as in a number of other countries, may look almost aggressive. it is quite likely that the visitor can be “hijacked” from his destination and will have to change his plans. once a truck driver who was to take me for 20 km offered to bring me with him to the border with ossetia, a 12 hour drive; another time when travelling in the province i had to insist to be left at my destination and not be “kidnapped” to batumi. in odessa and surrounding areas this never happened: people will be much more reserved and, although you will enjoy genuine generosity once you pass their doorstep, this will be not as easy as in ajara. it seems, thus, that a stranger and the company of a stranger, has a different value in the two regions. step i: entertaining the guest’s belly once perceived as a potential guest, one is likely to be invited to visit a household. the kind of attention the guest will receive and the kind of rituals in which he or she will be engaged are strongly dependent on the cultural context. in the city, where ancestral practices are often modified, coming for dinner means one arrives when the dinner is ready. in contrast, in the countryside one is more likely to be present during part of the food preparation process. if in the countryside homemade food is the rule, the city will be much more variable and time will be a more precious a commodity, whether in terms of time devoted to cooking, to entertaining, or simply spending time together. the man of the house will be expected to entertain ‘his’ guests with tea and conversation. the classic soviet tea is black, and the custom has remained, although green tea is now available. a zavarka, in both odessa and batumi, will be prepared by pouring boiling water into a teapot well filled with tea to brew (tea can be in packets or loose); the brew is then poured into big cups or mugs and warm water is added. this gives each person the possibility to decide how strong to take his or her tea. boiling water will be prepared and poured from a kettle or a samovar into the cups, which are brought from the kitchen or taken out of a glass shelf. a more modern alternative is a mug with a packet of tea and boiling water for each person. the host (family) is meanwhile supposed to entertain their guests and cook at the same time. gender specialization will help out in this. the man (or men) of the house will spend time with the guest and make sure the guest does anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 83 not feel lonely, whereas the women will have a double role of cooking and entertaining. a modern substitute for the host is a television, which sometimes seems to be perceived as part of the family. the guest will be placed in front of a screen with a remote control and told to “relax”. this will allow the host to keep the situation under control while doing other things and periodically entering the room to check that everything is okay. it is not unlikely that more than one generation of women lives in the house and their roles are distinct. the owner of the house must take care of the whole preparation process whereas the other generations are supposed to help out. female hosts younger than the ‘main host’ are supposed to prove their ability to be good wives and thus will help in the preparation, whereas females of the older generations have to make sure that everything is done properly. the guest is hungry. this is a primary assumption and the guest has to eat as much as needed to placate his ravenous hunger. if visiting more than one household, the guest will be pulled into a spiral of endless eating with no possibility to refuse. the only exceptions are national feasts where it is understood that the guest might be visiting several households and will have to eat in each of them. still, the host has to make sure the guest does not leave his household ‘hungry’. eating has two main symbolic meanings. the first one is mutual recognition as host and guest. by offering food the host is making clear that the guest is welcome and is building a relationship of trust. the second symbolic meaning has to do with duty. by feeding the guest the host is also fulfilling his duties; he is creating dependence and gratitude and is proposing himself as a honourable person. it is of no matter that this dependence might never be of use in his life; it is important to know that it exists. provisioning before the guest comes is a must, as long as it is possible. if not, the dinner has to look special somehow: two of us were picked up from the street and invited into a house in batumi. this was a last minute invitation so that purchases for the dinner were already done. the man of the house asked his sons to go for some beer to distinguish the current dinner from the one they would have had without us (personal communication, translated from russian by the author). hospitality rituals come to be renegotiated once lack of time becomes evident. not only is time short in the city, but also the renegotiation of gender roles means that some women now spend less time in the kitchen. once when a woman in odessa invited me to her home for dinner, she produced some farshirovanaya ryba (stuffed fish), joking that she had just prepared it and put into a supermarket box. this is a long and complicated dish to prepare and she was trying to explain in a polite way that her working life allowed no time for preparing such a dinner. food without borders: the dinner as noted above, the main assumption nearly everywhere is that the guest is starving and has to be fed. this can play out in a more or less aggressive way but it will happen and the guest will be invited (or ordered) to eat beyond his or her capacities. the number of dishes in a meal varies and it is incremented according to the guest, his or her importance and the occasion. it might also depend on the family economic possibilities but there is the possibility that the family will indebt itself to provide the best food, a scenario more likely to take place in rural areas. the first distinction that applies is the ‘home-supermarket’ distinction. it is considered much more ‘honourable’ to feed the host with homemade food. the more the process is retrievable to the house the better: a cake has to be home baked, it will be all the more valued if eggs are from the house and vegetables from the garden, or even if the chicken is from the courtyard (or some neighbours have them). in that case the host might insist even more strongly that the guest eat heartily, since the quality of the food is guaranteed: the host ‘knows the chicken that lay those eggs,’ or know that ‘they grow those vegetables with no chemical fertilisers’. a second distinction (mentioned above), the city-countryside juxtaposition, might also morph into a distinction made between ‘developed countries’ versus ‘less developed but more natural ones,’ or simply a local versus nonlocal distinction. the guest will be advised to eat more because ‘it is all ours’, meaning that hosts are consciously offering products that are natural and prepared in a natural way, in contrast to those from the city. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 84 in cities, distinctions are made between bazaars (open-air or covered markets) and supermarkets as sources for food. shopping at the bazaar is more time consuming but quality is unreliable: food can be extremely fresh and made with love but also almost rotten. western style supermarkets are perceived as generally safer and less time consuming, so in the city there might be a tendency to provision there. a general rule might be the following: as long as one has time and is able to tell good meat or vegetables from bad ones, the bazaar is preferred. dishes themselves are hierarchized. there should be a main dish, and a number of side dishes from which one is supposed to start. usually the main dish will consist of meat or fish, but not both. in addition the classic barbecue (shashlik) is made of meat, despite the fact that both batumi and odessa are on the sea. the main host will then guide the guests by indicating the order and hierarchy of dishes to be consumed, but meat will be approached after a number of entrees, like salad, khachapuri (bread) and other vegetables. once the dinner is over the tea ritual will start again but with less fear that the guests will eat too much so that more sweets may be served along with the tea. discovering your limits: drinking as a general rule, eating and drinking are complementary ways to construct alliances, brotherhoods and trust relationships. getting drunk with someone means coming to trust this person, to trust that even in weaker conditions this person will not abuse you, and you are mutually responsible for one another’s safety. there is no rule on when to start drinking, even though one might prefer to drink at the end of the day, after all duties are over. there are numerous exceptions to this rule and the russian saying ‘drink in the morning and you will have the whole day free’ warns the anthropologist that he or she is just as likely to be encouraged to begin drinking at 10am as at 10 pm. however, ‘heavy’ drinking usually is reserved for the evening, at least in the city. in the georgian countryside i was told by one villager, “i have friends who like to fight, and spend time fighting with one another, other friends like to smoke...but i just like getting drunk.” subsequently he sent a younger brother to buy some transparent alcohol (whose origins i dared not ask), bread, tomatoes and cucumbers so we could spend the rest of the afternoon toasting together. this scene seems rather absent in the city, where the guest will be invited to drink mainly as a social occasion or to construct an alliance, during or after dinner, rather than as an alternative way of spending time. on a train to odessa i was approached by a soldier: “excuse me...i do not want to bother you...would you mind drinking with me? my mother gave me a good bottle of cognac but i feel silly drinking alone.” that was perhaps my longest night on a train and an anecdote to be told in future evenings. there is a russian saying, ‘no matter how much vodka you buy, you will have to run to the shop twice anyway.’ this seems to be incredibly true although in the countryside alcohol is stored in bigger quantities and one just has to run ‘twice’ to another room. the availability of products has prompted an elaboration of tastes and several kinds of alcohol may be at the disposal of the guest, who can choose between wine, vodka and cognac, and shampanskoe, nalivka or even beer may be an option. toasting is a complicated ritual and the length of toasts seems correlated with the quantity of alcohol already swallowed. but in my experience post-soviet countries are unique for the fantasy and diversity people have for toasting, wishing all kinds of good to everybody, touching every aspect of people’s life, from health to love to friendship. in ajara i almost passed as impolite several times because toasts are long: the host might start telling a long story or making a long wish, stop, reflect for a while…and start again so that it was not clear to me when one should drink. in odessa toasts might also be elaborate (with the third toast normally to love) but will rarely compare to georgian ones in length. if your glass is full you are supposed to drink, and refilling comes just before the toast. at any given moment, somebody will feel the urgent need to give a toast; people will hurriedly scan all the glasses on the table to spot those that need a refill. sometimes this will mean that they will have to ask the toast-person to hold his toast for a few more seconds to allow time to refill. incidentally, drinking rarely comes alone. the russian expression zakuska means something you can ‘bite’ (zakusivat’) while drinking. it is habit in odessa and batumi to immediately fill your stomach with something to limit the effects of the alcohol. the classic zakuska will be salted cucumber or tomato but anything will do, from bread to fruit juices anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 85 (though i once was told of persons who used vodka as zakuska for vodka), the important thing is to stuff something down your stomach to better withstand alcohol’s short and long term effects. final reflections on hospitality, food and guests following what i have called the “ethylic (al) transition” (meaning the change in production of alcohol) (polese 2008), a hospitality transition is happening in eastern europe, prompting the host to adopt a more disengaged and time saving approach. rituals are being renegotiated and cut shorter, while their modality and meaning seem to remain similar. hospitality rituals thus become affected by a number of factors, including perceptions of neighbours and neighbourhood, conception and perception of time and space, and perception of oneself and the other in socio-economic relationships. in this context, the narrowing of distances has further altered the perception of guests and their importance in many in people’s minds. the dichotomy ‘homemade food vs. factory food’ has acquired new significance and the social meaning of a purchased good lies in conferring social status to the giver and the taker, a distinction that is less visible with homemade alcohol or food. the compromise that the city seems to have found depends on time availability and use of time. recalling the most famous quote ‘time is money’ we can propose that the time devoted to a guest is a loss in economic opportunity, and thus when time becomes a precious commodity the host might be more reticent to spend copious amounts of time on a guest. time is needed to cook homemade food, prepare homemade alcohol, entertain the guest and follow all the traditional rituals that were elaborated in a moment when time was abundant for ordinary people. hospitality rituals become then renegotiated, but their complexity remains. in some contexts the guest will be devoted all possible attention, but in other contexts where time is short the host will have to elaborate a new strategy: showing respect and devotion to the guest without taking too much time from income-related activities. the process of food preparation will be one of the first to be sacrificed, with less complex dishes and more supermarket ingredients. drinking rituals might be reduced or circumscribed to the dinner, when food will help to limit effects of alcohol better than zakuski. finally, the perception of a stranger and the decision of whom is granted status as a guest will also be affected, and the number of times one becomes able to engage in such rituals will 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with food in the czech republic volume 21, number 1 taste and transformation: ethnographic encounters with food in the czech republic ben passmore, southern methodist university and susan racine passmore, independent scholar © 2003 ben passmore and susan racine passmore all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. food is important to czechs. of course, food is important to us all but since we have been doing fieldwork in the czech republic, we have come to see the profundity of the czech love of food. indeed, we have had a hard time avoiding the topic even though our ethnographic interest in the region lies elsewhere. food is life. it is happiness. it is comfort, perhaps for us all. when czechs traditionally fast on christmas eve (štědrý den) they do so in the hope of earning good luck in the upcoming year. such impeding luck is signaled by a vision of a golden pig. food is health, promise, and potential. for czechs, food is something else as well. when baloun, a character in jaroslav hašek’s beloved and anarchistic novel “the good soldier švejk,” whiles away his time in the austrian army during world war i by dreaming of his ever fattening pig back at home, it is a statement of the value of home and hearth. it also reflects what holy (1996) has called the "little czech man" (malý český člověk) tradition (for a detailed discussion of this concept see holy 1996). this little tradition is drawn in opposition to the great tradition – in this case, the war and the political interests of the ruling class. baloun is not concerned with the future of the austro-hungarian empire. his is the little tradition of pigs, home and garden. ‘oh, that was a pig,’ he said with enthusiasm, squeezing švejk’s hand when they parted. ‘i raised it on nothing but potatoes and was amazed myself how well it put on weight. i soaked the hams in brine and, i tell you a nicely roasted piece of pork, taken out the brine and served with cabbage and potato dumplings and sprinkled with cracklings, is the finest treat you can have. and then a lot of beer afterwards. a chap’s so satisfied. and the war’s taken all that away from us.’ (hašek 1973: 416-17) for another example in a very different time, the communist period, one only need turn to the work of the czech author bohumil hrabal. hrabal devotes an entire chapter in his, “cutting it short” (postřižiny) – a vivid recounting of tales of a simpler and more joyful time in village life – to a lovingly rendered account of food preparation and consumption. the tale begins with a pig slaughtering that thrusts the hero into an extended orgy of gluttony. i lay in the feather quilt, and before i fell asleep, i stretched out a hand and touched a shoulder, then i fingered a joint and went dozing off with my fingers on a virginal tenderloin, and dreamed of eating a whole pig. towards morning i woke, i had such a thirst, i went barefoot to fetch a bottle of beer, pulled off the stopper and drank greedily, then i lit the lamp, and holding it in my fingers, i went from one bit of pork to the next, unable to restrain myself from lighting the primus and slicing off two lovely lean schnitzels from the leg. i beat them out thin, salted and peppered them and cooked them in butter in eight minutes flat, all that time, which seemed to an eternity, my mouth was watering, that was what i needed, to eat practically the whole of the two legs, in simple unbreaded schnitzels sprinkled with lemon juice…and now i laid those schnitzels on a plate and ate them greedily, as always i got my nightdress spattered, just as i always spatter my blouse with juice or gravy, because when i eat, i don’t just eat, i guzzle. (hrabal 1993: 22-23) hrabal wrote “cutting it short” and its companion “the little town where time stood still,” (městečko, kde se zastavil čas) during a time in which czech life little resembled that of the carefree and picturesque existence he depicted. indeed, reading these stories today, one could easily miss the subtle satire and the reason why these stories were not published in jen typewritten text 37 volume21, number 1 their entirety until after the velvet revolution of 1989. as josef škvorecký observes, hrabal’s work revealed an earlier, happier pre-communist period in czech history and thus, undermined the archetypes of official political messages. into this thoroughly fictitious world of wishful thinking came – as a ray of light – hrabal’s stories, peopled by unmistakable proletarians who were not necessarily always likeable, by unmistakable middleclass characters though not necessarily unlikeable and by “atypical” intellectuals who discussed e.a. poe or jackson pollock in a tavern over a mug of beer. gone was the determinism, gone was the lifelessness of the cardboard world of the once mandatory “method.” hrabal’s colorful folks were triumphantly alive, they displayed the politically incorrect classlessness of raconteurism, they lived in a universe lighted by fireworks of imagination. (škvorecký 1993: x) indeed, just as švejk and his compatriots display an opposition to the great tradition with their love of village and pig, hrabal’s depictions of desire are underlined with a dissatisfaction with communism. food, in addition to symbolizing life, health, luck and the little czech tradition, is also understood as representative of freedom and, at times, resistance. during the communist period, consumption and consumer goods, defining needs and fulfilling them were charged political issues. thus goods, especially food, became objects of considerable desire. as verdery notes, “capitalism…repeatedly renders desire concrete and specific, and offers specific – if everchanging – goods to satisfy it. socialism, in contrast, aroused desire without focalizing it, and kept it alive by deprivation” (1997: 28). in communist russia, humphey (1995) notes how bread came to represent something almost sacred. the remnants of this period in the czech republic are often seen today. one need only linger a moment or two by a bin of carrots or shelf of fresh meat in the market to see a dramatic upsurge of desire. shortly, a crowd will form and pushing might rapidly ensue even before anyone really knows what the “object of desire” is in full. thus, food connects czechs to their past, to their integrity as a people and serves as a barometer of well being – physically, politically and socially. this is true both in the past and at the present as the nation is on the edge of eu membership. the following vignettes describe a handful of ethnographic moments that illustrate this point. they communicate something of the czech past, present and future through food. in short, they illustrate something of the taste of transformation. televising desire the television program “žena za pultem” (woman behind the counter) was an immense success in its day. during its initial run in the 1970’s, it commonly drew upwards of 80% of the television audience. the lead character, anna, was a communist ideal of cooperation and apoliticality. the actress who played her, jirina svorcova, was an outspoken and well-known communist. she remains so to the present, never having renounced the allegiance that brought her past stardom as have many others. it is on this that the controversy of the recent rebroadcast of the series on a czech commercial network hinged. a czech university colleague, here, asked seriously what we thought would happen when the program aired. he asked in such a tone that it was clear that the program carried a significant emotional weight. we, and a large audience of czechs, tuned in to see the longawaited program. after the first episode, the controversy was something of a mystery. how could a routine drama of this sort be so powerful for so many? subsequent episodes brought into focus an unexpected answer. žena za pultem is set in a grocery store in mid 1970’s prague and it is a window into those times, if a distorted one. lighting on the streets is dim, those with bourgeois affectations are ridiculed, and the store is so overstaffed as to approach absurdity. what is not a reflection of the period, are the mountains and varieties of food available. it is in this that the emotional appeal of the program lies. food is displayed through each episode in a feast of fetishistic imagery. once one has noted these displays, an episode seems more akin to the titillating “sexual education” films of the u.s. 1940’s and 50’s than the serious, but lighthearted, serial it claims to be. in the czech program, the fresh-faced girl behind the butcher jen typewritten text 38 volume21, number 1 counter seems only able to speak to other characters as she nibbles ham from her right hand and dangles fat links of sausages from her left. the opening credits show us wellstocked shelves full of food, and courteous and efficient staff delivering it into the hands of smiling customers. in each scene, in the store, actors compete (usually unsuccessfully) with long lingering shots of food displayed, sliced, and handled. despite fears of some sort of communist groundswell after the airing of žena, the country remained quiet. pornographic images of food apparently having lost some of the power they had when the program first aired. indeed, the food environment to which it refers seems in some way as distant as victorian images of women’s ankles which would have once aroused such feeling. the result is then a picture of the times as some would have had it. a time in which a customer would receive a scolding for asking for thinly sliced cheese, an abundance shared without nonsensical individualism and demand. a time in which desire sated could be found side by side with communist ideals. lucie’s bananas lucie, our friend and research assistant, loves to talk. in a country where few seem to, and fewer still wish to talk more than absolutely required, this is a good thing to find. on no subject is she more likely to wax rhapsodic than on that of bananas. her discourse on bananas began around the christmas season. the subject had turned to consumption and the holiday. susan had wanted to know what it was that fired the consumer imagination of young czechs now that everything is available, if not affordable. lucie pondered the question very briefly and answered, “food, all sorts of different food, and bananas, especially bananas.” she recounted how as a young girl, she and her mother had stood for hours outside of their local store in the hope of bananas. this became something of a christmas ritual each year, as the holiday was the only time when bananas were likely to be available at all. with luck and she said they were usually lucky they were able to acquire a kilogram of bright green cuban bananas each year. she would look forward to this all year, and ration her fruit over the holiday season. she also recounted her amazement as bananas became generally available during the 1990’s. she spoke happily of the size, color, and quality of the newly available fruit. for her, no thing so much represents the material promise of the future than the easy availability of bananas. lucie has since spoken with us about many other issues, but it takes only a half glass of wine or a walk past a potraviny with bananas displayed in the window to return her to the subject. capitalism vs. the home cooked meal (ben gets grilled) during the course of our study in the czech republic, a question was repeatedly asked of me by informants, “can american women cook?” my interlocutors were usually women, although from such diverse positions as textile factory workers, engineers, and city officials. my answers would return to the women i know personally and invariably, my wife. they were often skeptical of my claims that susan and i are highly competent cooks. “did you know that czech women are versatile?” asked one informant. “and much better cooks than american women,” she added to the general agreement of those present. the ability to prepare good traditional czech food is a subject which few of my female informants chose to avoid. at one field site, a small toy factory, the women who work in the “cutting” room insist on knowing my favorite czech foods. they surprise me the next day with řizek (schnitzel), bread, peppers and cake. we then talk about food. they speak with pride of their skills and the importance of cooking for successful marriages. as we talk further, it begins slowly to occur to me that they are not interested in my wife or even in all the american women i know. they are interested in the archetype of the american woman, as seen on tv. can a woman be so pampered, rich and beautiful and keep a home as well? a note of concern enters the conversation, which helps me to understand why they do not want to believe that susan can cook. jen typewritten text 39 volume21, number 1 male informants are more sanguine. one going so far as to tell his wife, marta, during an otherwise pleasant meal with two surprised anthropologists, that it really matters very little to him whether or not she prepares good meals for him. she countered that it matters very much to his mother. she added, after a deeply uncomfortable silence, that her misguided husband is so anxious to leap into a world of cheap, fast and prepared foods (now increasingly available) that he forgets how others may see the roles of wife and mother. the lengthening work day and week leave women with less time for cooking while those of the older generation (as some part of marta herself) appeal to the value of a home-cooked meal as an essential part of well being. she could see that things were changing and was not optimistic for the future. she felt trapped between what she and others saw as her obligation and its increasing societal devaluation indicated by her husband’s attitude. marta suspected that although her obligation had not disappeared, its value had diminished. well-cooked meals are no longer appreciated and, by extension, neither are the women preparing them. cooking european (union) style in the course of our research, we have heard a great deal about the european union. the czech republic is scheduled to enter the union in 2004. from colleagues in the economics faculty at masaryk university, it has been tales of economic prosperity and of the czech republic becoming the next ireland (a noted eu success story). from textile workers and machinists, who make up the majority of our informants, the picture is less rosy. many fear economic and political chaos, but often fail in attempts to articulate any specifics except in one area – food. the eu, it has been explained to us, will outlaw czech national dishes. gulaš (goulash), beer and the annual pig feast are particularly endangered in these machinations. a good gulaš, most will tell you, is an aged gulaš. one should prepare the dish and then store it for several days to achieve the best taste. this, the widely circulated rumor went, would violate eu food safety standards and spell the end of the distinctly czech dish (hungarian versions notwithstanding). far from being a question isolated to the poorest or least educated elements of czech society, the rumor was discussed and viewed with distress even among the elite entrepreneurs of prague. as one informant, the wife of a very wealthy prague businessman told us, her husband did not plan to support expansion of the eu at the price of czech cuisine. she, an eu proponent, was happily bringing him an article from an international news magazine which attempted to dispel such fears. beer is another similarly affected product and one could not choose a more important one to czechs. fears (again of food safety regulations) that the processes used in brewing czech beer will not pass brussels muster are routinely spoken of with genuine anger. rising beer prices are also widely expected, and have led to nightly news stories in which pensioners opine for the good old days when they could enjoy their retirement over a cold pilsner urquell. the situation has become serious enough that česká televize’s european union promotion programs have spent significant time trying to reassure everyone that beer and gulaš will indeed remain on the menu. the annual pig slaughter and feast is another matter. this event, which involves the public slaughter of an animal in many villages, is followed by a feast of sausage, pork and a myriad of decidedly, unvegetarian delicacies. it is an event of such significance traditionally that the month in which it occurs, prosinec (december), in czech is derived from the phrase “to stick a pig.” this, again rumor has it, will violate eu regulations on the slaughter of animals. as one informant put it, “we will just do it in secret, as we did with the nazis.” this is hardly the image that the eu would like to find in a candidate country. the connection of these traditional foods and feasts to the survival of czech culture is a potent one and such fears are symbolic of deeper fears of many czechs. conclusion like the narratives of hrabal and hašek, each of the ethnographic vignettes above includes seeds of the symbolic power of czech food. the television show, žena za pultem, coopts the potency of food to create a fictional jen typewritten text 40 volume21, number 1 marriage of abundance and communist ideals in stark contrast to real life of the time. such dreams of abundance are fulfilled for lucie through capitalism’s promise in the form of bananas. her love and desire for a better future has become focused in fruit. capitalism, though, has not realized its promise for some as it, like communism, threatens the well being of being well fed. for czech women, the capitalist offer of domestic leisure may actually threaten the position within the family enjoyed by their mothers and grandmothers and undermines the value of hearth and home. finally, this history of food becomes a fear of the future. will the advent of the european union bring further domination from a distant power for czechs and their food? food for czechs has been a historical creative disengagement from the unsettling and overpowering movement of great forces. in food, czechs find contentment where it can be plainly seen, fondled and consumed in comfortable private and semi-private spheres of social life. outside of these sphere there is little hope of controlling the forces that have shaped czech history, that of the austro-hungarian empire, nazi occupation, soviet domination. now, however undeservingly, the european union represents a further potential threat. food has remained an area distinctly czech in the face of great change and remains a keystone for the maintenance of czech culture as the nations passes into a new european future. references cited hasek, jaroslav, 1973, the good soldier švejk. london: penguin. holy, ladislav, 1996, the little czech and the great czech nation: national identity and post communist social transformation. cambridge: cambridge. hrabal, bohumil, 1993, the little town where time stood still. london: abacus. humphrey, caroline, 1995, creating a culture of disillusionment: consumption in moscow, a chronicle of changing times. in worlds apart: modernity through the prism of the local. daniel miller, ed. london: routledge. 43-68. škvorecký, josef, 1993, introduction. the little town where time stood still, bohumil hrabal. london: abacus. verdery, katherine, 1997, what was socialism and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. jen typewritten text 41 the anthropology of east europe review: central europe, eastern europe and eurasia volume 178, number, 2, autumn, 2000 editors robert rotenberg nancy ries barbara west eva huseby-darvas matti bunzl laszlo kurt; ninth annual soyuz conference: views from within: the ethnographic perspective on post­ communist culture and society nelson hancock, guest editor nancy ries, issue editor contents editors notes: ................................................................................................................................................................. 4 robert rotenberg depaul university ninth annual soyuz conference:views from within: the ethnographic perspective on post-communist culture and society a note from the guest editor: views from within: ethnographic perspective on post­ communist culture and society .......................................................................................................................... 5 nelson hancock columbia university sovereignty, national identity, and the black market currency exchange in the republic of macedonia .............................................................................................................................................. 7 brian a. shott university ofvirginia gender and ngos in post-soviet armenia ....................................................................................................... 17 annine ishkanian university of cali fomi a, san diego ngos in ukraine: the makings of a "women's space?" ............................................................................. 23 sarah d. phillips university of illinois, urbana-champaign vision impaired: the cultural politics of everyday life in croatia ............................................. 31 daphne winland york university the natural habitat of science: shifting locations of freedom and constraint among migrant russian scientists ................................................................................................................................... 37 amy ninetto university ofvirginia village women in 20th century russia: three generations of change .......................................... 43 david l. ransel indiana university the state of post-soviet aphasia: lacking in the symbolic ............................................................... 53 serguei alex oushakine columbia university/altai state technical university page: 2 narratives of history, nar~t\tives of change: the continuing creation of heritage at the lednice-valtice monument zone .......................................................................................................... ., ... 61 veronica e. aplenc university of pennsylvania tova hojdestrand university of stockholm jennifer patko new york university rachael stryker university of california, berkeley maya nadkami columbia university "i drink, but at least i am clean": notions of body and soul among homeless russians ... 67 "new russian" sightings and the question of social difference in st. petersburg ............... 73 etiinographic solutions to the problems of russian adoptees ....................................................... 79 the "whisky robber": criminality as a moral discourse in post-'89 hungary ....................... ., .. 85 articles constructing the "non-estonian": the policy and politics of ethnic and european integration in estonia............................................................................................................................................. 93 gregory feldman syracuse university who is the 'i' in "i love you"?: the negotiation of gay and lesbian identities in former east berlin, germany ................... ., ........................................................................................................................ 103 heidi minning syracuse university personhood on a plate: gender and food in the construction of proper hungarian barbara a. west university of the pacific consuming modernity, imagining tradition: globalization, nationalism and wedding cynthia werner texas a&m university letters and reviews the persistence of alternatives against all odds: a response to andrei simic, "conventional wisdom and milosevic's serbia: a review essay" (aeer, vol. 17, no. i spring mirjana prosk-dvomic midland, mi karl kaser karl-franzens university of grazl austria katherine r. metzo indiana university women ............................................................................................................................................................................. 117 feasts in post-colonial kazakstan ............................................................................................................... 125 comment on andre simic review of gordy from robert m. hayden and eric d. gordy ...... 135 2000: 87-95) ............................................................................................................, ............................... ., .......................... 137 book review; women who become men: albanian sworn virgins ................................................... 145 political economies of aid and and exchange: book review essay ............................................. 147 vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 2 ___-----.1 page: 3 please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($is/yr. for full-time faculty and professionals, $1o/yr for students andpart-time faculty; european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($20), or additional copies ofthis special issue ($20) to the managing editor: the web page for the anthropology ofeast europe reviewleast european anthropology group contains links to most ofthe previously published articles. it can be :found at this url: hup://lasl.depaul.edulaeer/ robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 990 w. fullerton ave, chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 773/325-7460; fax 773/325-7556; email: rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu. eva huseby-darvas (eeag), behavioral science dept.,university of michigan, dearborn, mi 48128 email: evdarvas@umich.edu. nancy ries (soyuz), anthropology, colgate university, hamilton, ny 13346; email: nries@mail.colgate.edu. barbara west, anthropology, wpc 101, university of the pacific, stockton, ca 95211­ 0001; email: bwest@uop.edu matti bunzl, (eeag), department of anthropology, university of illinois at urbana­ champaign, 1 09 davenport hall, 607 s. matthews, urbana, il 61801; email: bunzl@uiuc.edu. laszlo kiirti, (eeag), film editor, department of political science, eotvos lorand university, egyetem tef. 1-3, 1056 budapest; email: lkurti@helka.iif.hu. © depaul university 200 i issn: 1054-4720 ..................................... vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 3 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: egrama@umich.edu letters, plans, and walls: architects and archaeologists in the 1960s bucharest emanuela grama, university of michigan the letters at the end of december 1962, a copy of a document that was neither dated, nor signed landed on the desk of the then-president of the state committee for architecture and systematization (scac) in bucharest, romania. the original letter had been forwarded by the vice president of the central committee for culture, directly subordinated to the council of ministers, which had received the original document. the text stood as an open accusation against two important institutions within the network of the socialist system of urban planning: 1) the department for historical monuments (direcţia monumentelor istorice, dhm henceforth), and 2) the “project bucharest” institute of architectural design and planning (project bucharest), both subordinated to scac. the letter-writers incriminate the two institutions for having critically endangered a major historical site of bucharest: the ruins of the old court, a location that had been the residence of the princess of wallachia during the 16 th and 17 th centuries. the letter described the situation of the old court‟s ruins, which had been “caught” within, and thus incidentally preserved by, the newer architectural landscape of the area. after the dismantling of the court at the end of the 18th century, the older walls of the princely palace became gradually incorporated into the new buildings erected on the site. the letter came in fact as an immediate reaction to the plans for remodeling union square, one of the major squares of bucharest that neighbored the old court area. the letter accused the architects working for project bucharest of ignorance on the topic of local urban history. the writers proposed instead the establishment of a separate commission that would work under the direct supervision of the socialist state‟s supreme body: the council of ministers. the writers asked that the approach to monument preservation be radically redefined by being taken out from the institutional umbrella of scac and hence of architecture as a disciplinary field. also, the writers requested a special commission that would supervise a “unique museum in the country,” an open archaeological site/historical reservation that differs from other archaeological sites of national importance. in other words, through remaking the old court into a reservation, the museum would have achieved much more visibility among the city‟s institutions and thereby potentially acquire more privileges and resources from the center. obviously, the letter stirred up a hornet‟s nest within the state committee for architecture. as i will show, the response drafted by the latter aimed therefore to restore a political hierarchy and series of alliances potentially threatened by the first letter. this written exchange, mediated by the central committee for culture of the council of ministers as the 7 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 57 direct recipient of both letters, not only concerned a strict access to resources, but also aimed at securing and assigning political legitimacy to certain networks and forms of expertise. these fiery debates over the historical value of the old court site must be set within the wider process of remaking disciplinary and professional boundaries in a newly centralized institutional network of the socialist state. in this network in which the resources distributed by the center became scantier, the various professional groups had to fight harder to assign stronger political meanings to their specific research interests if they wanted to obtain further funding. the struggle over the meanings of the old court—ranging from representing a historical site of national importance for archaeologists, to being dismissed as ruins buried underground by project bucharest‟s architects working on the remodeling of the area—points out the more complex mechanisms of the struggle for resources through diverging disciplinary visions on what the past is and where it can be found. to understand those mechanisms, we must first examine the two operations underway in the middle of the city as interconnected projects. the radical transformation of the city landscape entailed a double process of unearthing the city‟s grounds while building its socialist future. i will first discuss the plan of remodeling bucharest into a socialist capital, to focus then on the reconfiguration of professional and political alliances under way in the background. more specifically, i examine the tense relationship between the architects employed to redesign the urban texture of the city and the archaeologists called upon to produce a (new) history for the same city. i approach the two groups as part of the new socialist regimes of expertise, which were called upon to endorse particular representations of “the past” and “the future.” moreover, we should situate the debates on the aesthetic form and historical meaning of the old court within the broader discussions over the aesthetic options available in the architectural field in a post-socialist realist time. far from being merely technical or professional considerations, those debates were thoroughly saturated with the negotiations of the political moment. a growing body of work on soviet culture and history has been approaching architecture as a particularly relevant domain to analyze the changes in the models of aesthetic representation that accompanied shifts in the internal and external policy of the soviet state. paperny (2002 [1996]) offers a binary analysis of architecture and arts in soviet society, in which culture one expresses the “fluidity” of the soviet avant-garde in the 1920s and a democratic horizontality in architectural vocabulary, while culture two represents the freezing absolutism of stalin‟s epoch, whose hierarchy and authority come to be architecturally represented by the seven stalinist skyscrapers. paperny‟s view is challenged by boris groys, who argues that the tenets of the 1920s avant-gardes directly informed socialist realism, in that “the production of images in socialist realism served above all to depict the utopia of a happy future,” in the form of “a new public with new eyes” that the avant-garde artists always imaged as consumers of their art (2003:22-23). this utopia was soon to be exported abroad. in romania of the early 1950s, under the direct “guidance” of the soviet councilors, architectural expression became a major aesthetic and technological means to represent the future as well as to visually ground a symbolic geography 8 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 58 of the soviet bloc. according to stalin‟s own tenet, any architectural project in the new satellites of the soviet union had to be “national in form and socialist in content.” with the romanian leaders becoming increasingly preoccupied with the application of this principle and the institutionalization of socialist realism in the architectural field, it may seem that the last thing they could think about was the preservation of older buildings and sites—the “architectural monuments.” however, to some specialists, those buildings appeared as possible sources of inspiration for autochthonous searches for stylized expressions of “national content.” the official interest in the historical preservation of architectural monuments had dramatically diminished after stalin‟s death in 1953. no longer having the tenets of socialist realism as the main guiding schema, the architects in the satellite countries became largely confused and maintained this confusion for a number of years. (in romania, for instance, this aesthetic confusion was visible up to the late 1950s [răuţă and heyden 2009].) khrushchev‟s rise to power in 1954 led then to a relative political “thaw” that gradually allowed an assimilation of the architectural modernist forms of the postwar western world into the socialist bloc (popescu 2009). this openness was mostly dictated by economic reasoning, as a (moderate) modernist expression seemed to offer the key to economic efficiency and rapid industrialization expected by the socialist leaders. the shift from socialist realism to modernism was however monitored by the party ideologues, who were wary that a bolder modernist vocabulary would endanger the “socialist architecture” (with the notable exceptions when architects succeeded in “reconciling political loyalty with modernist ideas” (răuţă and heyden 2009:28)). however, architects in the socialist bloc found ways to work around the “directives” given by the political center, especially in a context of more frequent and vibrant dialogues with their western colleagues (popescu 2009). the architecture emerging in romania in the early 1960s illustrates these quests for novel means of expression (see, for instance, the radical modernism of the industrial sector (popescu 2009), or the shift from kvartal to microraion, indexing a new model of imagining collectivity (maxim 2009)). moreover, earlier agendas came to underlie these quests. maxim (2006) points out that the architecture of socialism in the 1950s and 1960s came to be heavily influenced by the interwar tenets of the modernist movement— such as, the focus on standardization and technology, and on the city as the new unit of production—and earlier attempts to adapt those tenets to the local environment. the leaders therefore resisted the investment of much funding in the restoration of old built structures, favoring instead two other interventions in the urban landscape: 1) the development of archaeological excavations, and simultaneously 2) the remodeling of the urban fabric according to the master plan. at the insistence and pressure of a group of specialists, and under the influence of the revival of heritage preservation occurring in the ussr after the second world war, this shift of interest did not mean a full cancellation of the funds channeled into the restoration and preservation of historical buildings. it entailed, however, a significant reduction of funding for an already radically shortened list of the buildings officially recognized as “historical monuments.” 1 moreover, in the post-1953 period, when calls for finding “nationalist forms with 9 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 59 socialist content” shifted to officially encouraged quests for a modernist repertoire, those buildings became relegated to a peripheral zone within the socialist bureaucratic apparatus. however, after 1960, under a systematic policy of distancing from the soviets and searching for national autonomy, the question of history in architecture becomes once again important. we encounter in the period a forced shift to “authenticity” and “national traditions” in architectural design, already increasingly articulated during the last years of dej‟s regime (ioan 1996; popescu 2009; zahariade 2004). under these new circumstances, the preservation of architectural monuments received more attention and the question of their potential political employment reappeared. 2 even though most of those sites carried histories that could not easily fit a purified official historical narrative, there were still some of them that could potentially ground a “national past.” however, such sites represented palimpsests of various kinds—an architectural monument could also hide an archaeological site, and often both of them could be considered historically important and artistically valuable. this was the case with the site of the old court. what does the story of the old court, its emergence out of “nothing,” tell us about the larger political shifts occurring at that time in romania? i suggest that the debates among architects, and then between architects and archaeologists over the forms in which the old court must be preserved and displayed, should be understood through a dichotomous framework that the socialist leaders aimed to endorse, one separating “the past” from “the future” (with “the present” being only a transitory stage towards the socialist future). that is, architecture and archaeology were regarded as two distinct technologies of producing social reality, to validate an institutional and epistemological framework, within which those domains were assigned complementary temporal frameworks and historical spans. this political vision was to be spatially imprinted—in the case that i analyze, onto bucharest‟ urban surface and underground. however, like any form of totality, it ended up being challenged by various institutional actors, who employed the very categories endorsed by the state only to turn them on their head. in fact, the 1962 conflict around the old court, a conflict issued between architects (employed by the state committee for architecture) and archaeologists (working either for the institute of archaeology, or, very likely, for the museum of bucharest), signaled a larger debate. it literally brought to the discussion table of the new leaders (the council of ministers) the following question: how could “the past,” still dormant underground in the center of bucharest in the form of the ruins of the princely palace at the old court, be unearthed in order to coexist spatially with “the future,” depicted under the form of a totally remodeled city center of a “socialist capital?” all that followed, with twisting and tweaking, stretching and turning the ground in a central area of bucharest, with the endless discussions and negotiations amongst and within the two professional groups (the architects working for different institutions in bucharest, carrying distinct visions and interests, and the archaeologists, carrying in turn their own interests) signaled a major conundrum for the socialist leaders. the story of the old court stands as yet one more proof that their attempts at imprinting their political vision onto the urban space, by clearly 0 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 60 separating this space into concentrated sites of the past and widespread spaces of the future, carried at heart the seeds of its own failure. plans and walls the plan for building “the socialist city of the future” had begun to be drafted as early as june 1949, but only in november 1952 was a ministerial decision issued to start “the construction and reconstruction of the cities and the organization of the architectural activity” (zahariade 2003). by setting forth an agenda of bringing radically new urban forms into a city depicted as being like “a spider web of skewed and narrow streets,” a city whose “3/4 of its total surface is currently occupied by hovels,” the political actors of the new regime praised a centralized aesthetics of order that informed the modernist tenets of the socialist architecture (transcripts of the politburo meeting on november 25, 1953, anic). the new architectural dogma focused on extending the city vertically via several-story buildings instead of allowing for the city‟s horizontal development into extraterritorial areas. dismissing earlier plans of modernization of the city as inherent failures of a capitalist order, those politicians regarded the new vertical city as the radical urban form representing the socialist revolution—that is, a total reordering of space that would accompany and enforce that of social and political forms. the party appropriated the discourse of “order” to present it as an intrinsic element of the socialist project. order was to come in the city in multifarious forms— spatially and temporally. everything that was disordered had to be ordered, disciplined, tamed down. under these circumstances, the role of the architects among other categories of local bureaucrats grew significantly, which allowed them to carve out a special niche of expertise that became indispensable to the party. the initial letter, which provoked much ado among the staff of the state commission, came as an unexpected factor of variation into a seemingly well-planned experiment—the socialist remodeling of a major square of bucharest. one of the first reports on the results of the excavations proudly announced that the archaeological digs that simultaneously opened in three central sites of bucharest in 1953 marked the initial phase of a “scientific study of the history of the capital, from the earliest times to these days.” however, the local political apparatus did not envision the digs to remain forever open in central locations in the city. indeed, their first role was to search for possible historical traces that would help elucidate the city‟s origins. but their other role, equally important, was to “clean out” the ground in order to close it down for good and thereby allow for bucharest‟s landscape to be molded into a final and total socialist urban product. such a ground, cleansed of significant material traces of history, was to become the pristine basis for laying out a new urban form representative of the grandiose project of socialist urban planning. given the key role that the remodeling of the city center was to play for the legitimization of the new leadership, how was it then possible that a bunch of archaeologists from the city museum could eventually secure such an exceptional status for a site whose 1 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 61 historical value had been relatively ignored? the area‟s historical importance was resuscitated under the post-1945 new political regime, when the old court came to occupy a central point in the network of archaeological digs opened in the city center. at the end of the 19 th century and beginning of the 20 th , during the peak times of bucharest‟s urban growth, the main economic role of the lipscani area as the city‟s major commercial center partially effaced the historical significance of the grounds onto which it developed—the old court. at the beginning of the 18th century, the ruined walls of the old court were taken down and the ground leveled to leave room for the new oneor two-story houses built by prosperous traders. the largest market of the city (halele centrale, the central market) was later established there, while the site was expanded to form an urban square (later named union square, piaţa unirii). during the interwar debates on city development, the lipscani area and the central market came under scrutiny as the crux of corruption, illegal or petty commerce, immorality, and urban chaos—in other words, everything that the urban elites rejected. not surprisingly, the interwar elites‟ fears and loathing against the city‟s seemingly uncontrollable, chaotic development continued to lay at the core of the master plan, now translated as socialist planning principles. in fact, the urban remodeling of the area represented a project of not only spatial, but also moral ordering, as the architects aimed to do away with the shabby buildings in the area to erect the modernist future of socialism. however, the area‟s historical importance was resuscitated under the post-1945 new political regime, when the old court came to occupy a central point in the network of archaeological digs opened in the city center. the results of the successive excavations—the unearthing of the walls of the court and some rooms of the royal palace—led the archaeologists to lay new claims over the site. i suggest that an argument about a new history of bucharest, to be written on the basis of “pristine” artifacts, played a crucial role in sustaining their case. however, this sole claim would not do, as many other archaeological sites opened in the city‟s center also provided important data for a local history. the case needed then a complementary element—and this was the description (in fact, the making) of the old court as a major feudal site for national history. the first digs that were opened in the center of bucharest in 1953 had explicitly followed the model of the excavations already pursued by the soviet archaeologists in medieval russian towns (ionaşcu 1954: 410). to have a history of feudalism rewritten on the basis of archaeological findings was a crucial political issue all across the soviet bloc in the 1950s. the russian and then soviet archaeologists had attempted to build the field of medieval (or feudal) archaeology as an institutional framework in order to promote the theory of pan-slavism (trigger 1989: 210). by adapting a previous discourse on slavic (linguistic and ethnic) brotherhood that legitimized the russian foreign policy of expansion in europe in the late 19 th century, the soviets sought to resuscitate the myth of slavic kinship in order to ground a socialist transnationalism with the ussr at its core (dolukhanov 1993: 150). they gave a new twist to the “slavic connection” by deeming it a crucial element for proving the ancient pervasiveness of the slavic culture across the central and east european region, a perspective informing all of the 2 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 62 archaeological research pursued in the soviet bloc during the late 1950s and 1960s (curta 2001 and 2005). searching for feudalism and thoroughly documenting it was a key strategy to justify the existence and necessity of the socialist project, according to a marxist historical paradigm. as historian elizabeth brown points out, by incorporating “the feudal mode of production” into their design, [marx and engels] endowed it with seminal significance. their followers came to view the feudal stage as a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of socialism, and socialist scholars and activists sought traces of it throughout the world. [feudalism. (2009). in encyclopædia britannica. retrieved january 17, 2009.] 3 moreover, such a view was called upon to attest to the “superior development” of an early slavic culture in comparison to those emerging in “the west.” archaeology and its findings were then to directly play a part in a cold war competition, rooted in an early modern political geography of separation between the west and east, and employed anew to justify contemporary distributions of global power. apparently then, searching for the feudal origins of the major cities that were to be transformed into the socialist capitals of the new soviet satellites emerged as a key political task for the archaeologists working in the eastern bloc. in romania, the city of bucharest, as the capital of the country and thereby a would-be pinnacle of socialist urban development, was to play the principal role in this operation. according to the first reports on the excavation carried out in the city‟s center, an extremely important issue [was] the expansion of the themes of archaeological research….whereas before august 23, 1944, there had been sporadic archaeological research, only within the domain of the primitive and slaverybased social orders, the popular democratic state gives special attention to archaeological research on the migratory period and the feudal order, as well as to the forging of a strong collective of specialists in feudal archaeology. [şantierul arheologic bucureşti,1954:287] in comparison to the interwar period, when “heritage” had been mostly represented by old built structures, the socialist state of the 1950s began to amass archaeological artifacts in order to create a different form of heritage. the artifacts represented a different kind of materiality, one that was both “new” and often more mobile (being thus able to be inscribed and displayed as state property). in addition to the major operations of nationalization and collectivization, this process of agglomerating artifacts stood as another form of channeling resources to the center—the key strategy by which the communist state aimed to consolidate its power. 3 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 63 archaeologists could enjoy significant institutional support as early as 1951, when the museum of antiquities, “the national authority of the archaeological research during the interwar years,” became included in the newly established institute of history and philosophy of the academy (anghelinu 2003:178). in 1953, the first network of archaeological sites was opened in the central area of bucharest, being first set under the supervision of the institute‟s researchers. as soon as the city museum of bucharest was officially opened in 1958, the current and future archaeological sites as well as the supervision of the archaeological research to be conducted on the area of bucharest were transferred to the museum. (however, the institute of archaeology, as the most powerful institution in the field, remained at the core of a highly centralized system of archaeological research, benefiting from institutional and symbolic privileges throughout the socialist period (anghelinu 2003: 178)). in other words, the establishment of feudal archaeology in romania of the 1960s, far from grounding a history of regional feudalism set under a pan-slavic influence, favored in fact stronger arguments about an earlier emergence of the romanian nation. we come to understand then why the old court offered a great promise to archaeologists and local politicians alike of supplying the material evidence to prove the continuity of the romanian presence in the city from early medieval times until the present day. the image of a medieval bucharest, encapsulating a history that the museum was to promote and protect, became then a pivotal currency for the different groups of specialists working on, under, or with the city‟s territory. this image, a stamp of bucharest of the 17th century, became very popular in many accounts of bucharest‟s history published in the 1960s and 1970s. conclusion the letter that landed on an official desk at the end of 1962 was only the first document of a large correspondence involving all the institutional actors discussed in this paper. the parts reached an agreement in august 1969, when after long debates, the council of ministers officially declared the old court “a historical reservation.” the site became then a concentrated representation of the city‟s past—the place memory of the old bucharest—being advertised as such by the brochures, guides, and scientific reports published by the museum of the city. the museum of the old court was officially opened on january 27, 1972, set under the supervision of the city museum. an increasingly stronger association of the image of a medieval bucharest with the site of the old court played an important role in the tense negotiations over the area between the different factions of archaeologists and architects, formed within or even crossing over disciplinary niches. i suggest that the discovery of (a part of) the original walls of the princely palace buried in the ground contributed significantly to the creation and maintenance of this association. the walls, as signs of a political past of a medieval bucharest, turned out to be a more powerful form of artifact than others. unlike the easy-to-misdate pottery or fleeting coins, the walls offered, through their immobility, a promise of monumentality that further enticed 4 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 64 specialists and larger audiences to envision an old bucharest that was more similar to popular images of (western) medieval towns. those latter images became all the more ubiquitous in architectural journals since the mid 1960s, following the movement on the preservation of historical cities in western europe against modernist urban planning. this movement advocated a rehabilitation of the “historical district” of a city, a district that architecturally represented a palimpsest of the city‟s development around the medieval loci of power (the town hall and the market). this imagery of a unifocal, circularly developing site as the initial core of a future european city was highly embraced by some architects occupying key positions within the professional hierarchies of romania of the 1960s. from an archaeological site of secondary value and through a cunning strategy of employing the discourse of the nation together with some manipulation of the archaeological data, the archaeologists working for the museum of the city of bucharest could then reposition the old court as the historical core of the city. its recently unearthed walls came to be restored and displayed as invaluable material forms encasing the history of the city as a whole. moreover, as the memorandum stated, the old court site could have potentially been even more important than those other archaeological sites. that is, given their remoteness, no museum would have ever been opened in those areas that could teach the “true history of the nation to the working people.” the old court, via its centrality and thereby its accessibility, represented the ideal location for such “a museum of national importance.” if the site had not appeared as such from the beginning, then some of the specialists of the museum invested serious energy, imagination, and political clout into making the old court appear increasingly historically important and “unique” during the 1950s and 1960s. by allegedly setting walls and artifacts within the same historical time—the feudal era of bucharest—the specialists of the museum produced a smooth, uninterrupted historical framework for “their” old court portrayed as the feudal core of the socialist city. this description perfectly fit the socialist state‟s frenzied interest in feudalism, which came to offer the key to inquiries on the origins of the nation as well as of the current socialist state. by portraying the excavations as unique tools for the discovery of the past, archaeology as a method of scientific inquiry became also a political strategy that directly helped the socialist state to carve out a new historical map of the city. this map was perfectly laminated onto the teleological view of history advanced by the doctrine of dialectical materialism, which presented the socialist state as a pinnacle of progress. as such, the re-codification of the past proposed by archaeology enabled the state to retroactively carve out its own history into the urban development of the city, a history perfectly fitting the state‟s current agenda. 4 5 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 65 notes: 1 according to historian andrei pippidi, the official list of historical monuments published in 1955 included a drastically reduced number of sites in comparison to the interwar (unofficial) record of monuments. he mentioned however that, despite the difficult conditions, the architects working for the direction for historical monuments (dhm) managed to pursue a significant number of preservation and renovation projects all across the country. (interview with andrei pippidi, bucharest, june 2008.) 2 see, for instance, the first national congress on historical monuments, organized in 1963 by the department of historical monuments and the institute of history of the academy, where the vice president of the state committee for construction, architecture, and systematization pointed out that “the research of historical monuments must not be a goal, but rather a means for finding more accurate techniques for their preservation.” “sesiunea de comunicări a direcţiei monumentelor istorice,” arhitectura, 82, no.3 (1963), 60. during the period 1960-1963, the specialists of the department conducted complex research in the historical cities in transylvania, thereby acquiring a solid research portfolio. the local architects later relied heavily on this body of research, produced by the specialists in historical restoration and preservation, in order to fight off the more radical plans of systematization of those cities‟ historical centers. for a review of a more systematic approach to historical preservation, see victor bilciurescu, “unele probleme de restaurare a monumentelor istorice,” arhitectura, 80, no.1 (1963), 54-55. 3 brown shows that the problematic tendency of confining a variety of political and social forms of organization existing in a europe of the middle ages under one conceptual umbrella of “feudalism” originated in the historical episteme of the 18 th century. she points out that british and french writers alike were more interested in …the system, the construct, instead of investigating the various social and political relationships found in medieval europe….the writers of the eighteenth century, like those of later times, assigned different meanings to the term féodalité, or, in english, „feodality.‟ some used it to designate a system of government, some to refer to conditions that developed as public power disappeared. by 1800 the construct had been launched and the expression “feudal system” devised; by the mid-nineteenth century the word „feudalism‟ was in use….since the middle of the nineteenth century the concepts of feudalism and the feudal system have dominated the study of the medieval past. 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in central-eastern european anthropology michał buchowski university of poznań and europe-university viadrina, frankfurt/oder © 2004 michal buchowski all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the issue raised in this paper is exceptionally sensitive, since i address, in fact, the mutual relations between the so-called western anthropologists working on ‘postsocialism’ and the anthropologists who work on, but at the same time work and live in, the ‘postsocialist countries’ of central and eastern europe (hereafter cee). a characteristic of the problems discussed here causes me to refer to the scholarly production of the people that i personally know, many of whom i consider friends (and i hope they will still consider me as such afterwards), some of whom i have collaborated with, and among whom several have been helpful to me in one way or the other. i take it for granted that they will read this piece as a preliminary attempt to ponder the issue of the hierarchies of knowledge whose existence is visible and undeniable. this is what i will attempt to show below. therefore, it should be our preliminary task to find out what the historical and political reasons are for their emergence and perpetuation. this kind of undertaking asks for something that bob scholte a long time ago called the ‘anthropology of anthropology.’ we are eager to criticize hegemonic political discourses, unveil works of culture as a mask legitimizing domination in class inequalities, and even deconstruct the ideological character of other academic disciplines’ output. anthropology, as a part of culture and a domain of social practice, can be studied and analyzed in similar terms. this move should enable us to understand conditions structuring the field and creating this pecking order of wisdom. as in any other domain of life in which inequities have surfaced, raising consciousness has been a first step in the process of overcoming them. this should open the field for further communication and an exchange of ideas that should, in turn, contribute to the undermining of stereotypes and gaps. as a matter of fact, this is the thrust of anthropological endeavors. this is the way, i trust my fellow anthropologists, friends and colleagues will read what follows. some ‘patterns of anthropological production’ of western and polish scholars there are quite a few ‘western’ anthropologists who study ‘postsocialism,’ particularly in central and eastern europe. in the case i know best, the polish one, the list includes such names as carole nagengast, elizabeth dunn, deborah cahalen, lisa gurr, elizabeth vann, christie long (neé evans), marysia galbright (all of them american scholars), as well as chris hann, frances pine, edouard conte, françoise bafoil and stefanie peters (western europeans). some of them have, in fact, withdrawn from research, either due to the fact that they have shifted their interests, or opted out of academia to pursue other professional activities. other key figures in the wider central european area include katherine verdery, martha lampland, david kideckel, robert hayden, sam beck, susan gal, gail kligman, gerald creed (all u.s. scholars), michael stewart, deema kaneff, and, again, chris hann (all three jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 5 coming from the uk), don kalb, matijs van den port (both from the netherlands), and steven sampson (sweden). a remarkably distinct area of studies have emerged for eastern germany (e.g. daphne berdahl, uli linke, john borneman, hermine g. de soto), but, paradoxically, research in this area has not always been deemed fully comparable to the other ‘postsocialist’ studies – as if the act of the swallowing of the former gdr whole by its western ‘big brother’ had miraculously erased its communist past. due to the limited space and purposes of this article, i will mainly focus on the ‘polish studies’and, partly, in my more general considerations on ‘central and eastern european studies.’ here i treat research in the area of east germany and the former soviet union as ‘other continents’ and will not address scholarly endeavours there at all. it is remarkable that the majority of anthropological celebrities working on cee are americans, although some are of british descent. surprisingly, there are few recognized authorities coming from continental europe. it seems that central and eastern european ethnography has not really managed to attract, with few exceptions, german, spanish, italian, scandinavian or french anthropologists. of course, there are exceptions – for instance some persons mentioned above – but a certain pattern emerges from the above list. only recently have younger scholars ventured into dracula’s, tito’s, havel’s and wałęsa’s lands, but it will probably take some time for them to establish themselves as internationally recognized personalities. for the time being, however, most scholars have chosen topics and countries that can either be described as: (a) rural communities and working class as well as their poverty, property, gender relations and forms of social organization (civil society); (b) urgent (wars and ethnic cleansing in the former yugoslavia); or – in their view – (c) exotic (roma people, romanian folklore1). usually, these studies 1 reverence to romanian folklore can be witnessed also in anthropological documentaries have been commonly labelled as ‘postsocialist’2 or ‘transitological.’ no matter how diversified in their topics and agenda, western anthropologists do their work according to western scholarship paradigms which may be diversified, but nevertheless comprise a western-defined scholarly paradigm. western anthropological publications on cee show a remarkable shortage of references to local ethnographies, not to mention theories. again, there are exceptions as, for example, katherine verdery outlines very briefly in her project of ‘post-cold war studies:’ [t]he orientation i am advocating would give voice to the “natives” as analysts of their own condition. although it is not yet clear who would be the franz fanon of this corpus, his or her forerunners surely include the eastern european dissidents and other scholars – people like rudolph bahro, pavel câmpeanu, györgi konrád, istván rév, jadwiga staniszkis and iván szelényi – whose writing spurred us to seek an understanding of socialism different from that offered by cold war categories…’ (2001: 20). none among these names is an anthropologist and for verdery discovering an anthropological “fanon” in cee is clearly a on romania. apparently visual anthropologists are fascinated by the richness and exoticism of them. i base this opinion on my experience as a jury in three editions of the ‘astra film festival,’ the biannual event of visual anthropology and documentary film event held in sibiu, romania (2000, 2002, 2004). 2 peter skalnik has paid attention to the interesting feature that in the western academia there is a propensity to call the communist system socialism (or ‘really existing socialism’) and its aftermath ‘postsocialism,’ while in the east an ‘emic’ term applied is rather ‘communism’ and ‘postcommunism.’ he even claims that: “because the common denominator of so-called socialism in cee was the hegemony of communist party elites, the proper terms denominating adequately this hegemony and its aftermath should be communism and or post-communism and their adjectives” (2000:194). jen typewritten text 6 distant dream and maybe as complicated as finding a panchen lama. the body of indigenous scholarly production inherent in her and other western anthropologists’ publications is conspicuously low. references are made mostly to works coming from the fields of history, sociology and political science, but extremely rarely to anthropology or ethnology. let us first consider two examples of research on socialist poland. both of them were carried out in rural communities following, in this respect, a general pattern of anthropological studies in the region under communism. the first book was written by chris hann: a village without solidarity: polish peasants in years of crisis (1985). he made a tremendous effort to include native scholarship into the body of his publication. half of the entries in the selected bibliography are authored by polish scholars, and one third of the whole list covers items published in polish. however, only two among them are ethnographers, some are sociologists and others are historians, political scientists and economists. the other example i know very well is carole nagengast’s interesting monograph, reluctant socialists (1991),3 which, at the same time, emerged as a real attempt at integrating several native scholars’ perspectives into the account. its bibliography covers ten pages and includes circa 220-250 entries. still, even if it shines positively among several similar works in the field, fewer than thirty entries refer to poland-based authors who had the fortune of having their texts published in english, often abroad, since only four publications cited are in polish; there are also some references to national statistics. authors most quoted are historians, some of them political analysts and economists, but very few sociologists; not a single indigenous ethnologist or anthropologist is named. nagengast’s fieldwork was carried out in the 1970s, her arguments were revised at the end of the 3 see for example buchowski 1997 where i implicitly expressed my respect in the title that directly referred to hers and in the polemics with her inspiring arguments in the text. 1980s, and the monograph was published in 1991. one may wonder how is it possible that volkskundists, as they were/are often pejoratively portrayed, were so openly disregarded while at the same time, in common western opinion, they were painstakingly preoccupied with rural communities and folklore, a trait for which they were otherwise scorned. was it a conspiracy, ignorance, or a paradigmatic inconsistency? according to western scholars working at that time in cee, it was certainly the latter, and there is no reason not to trust them. one might expect the 1989 breakthrough to change the existing fissure and advocate partnership. however, the pattern of one-sided theoretical input and confidence shown virtually only to western scholars has proved to be well entrenched and perpetuated. let us consider three very influential anthropological edited volumes. in 1993, a book on socialism was published (hann 1993). none of the contributors comes from the ‘east,’ although some of the authors were migrants or exmigrants from the bloc. the same rule applies to a sequence of other recognized and often cited volumes in which the native point of view is practically nonexistent: uncertain transition (burawoy and verdery 1999), fieldwork dilemmas (de soto and dudwick 2000), altering states (berdahl, bunzl and lampland 2000), and, last but not least, postsocialism (hann 2001) which closed the circle that started in 1993.4 altogether, there are 53 articles in these four volumes, but some scholars feature in several enterprises and have contributed more than once. with one exception, none of the authors is based in a former ‘real socialist’ country, although two originate from there, but have lived and worked for a long time in the west (i.e. igor barsegian and slawomira zbierski-salameh). 4 i have focused on these volumes in order to illustrate the case. of course, there are other anthropological books on cee published in the west that here and there include anthropologists coming from the region, but the pattern i discuss seems to be recurrent (cf. hann 1996). jen typewritten text 7 the only exception is dobrinka kostova who ‘merely’ co-authored a text on bulgarian agriculture with swiss scholar christian giordano in the last book mentioned above. chris hann, the editor of the volume, openly regrets this lack of balance: ‘a […] significant deficiency in our coverage is the absence of “local scholars,” the many who practice some form of anthropological enquiry in their own country, and on whose support and cooperation most external researchers crucially depend […]. [w]e shall endeavour to do better on future occasions’ (hann 2001a: xii). but the fact remains that a dozen years after the polish ‘roundtable revolution,’ no more than a single indigenous author from cee has made it into this exclusive ‘club.’ similarly, in the book series on cee published in the west and edited by cornell university press, not a single scholar coming from the region has ever managed to publish anything – all authors are u.s. based anthropologists. once again one may ask, is this western domination of anthropological study merely an issue of obstacles in the way of the flow of communication, or does it result from a more inherent structural relationship? after all, many ‘eastern’ scholars have proven to be open to anthropological ideas and practice, and ‘compatible’ with western paradigms. i have a hunch that implicit structural obstacles play a role, that the emotional hurdle dividing the former blocs is still in place, and this separation cannot simply be explained by technical barriers. after all, the atlantic is wider than the oder river, but it does not prevent transatlantic cooperation between ‘western’ scholars. meanwhile, there are still difficulties in establishing effective east-west collaboration that would imply a bidirectional exchange of ideas. of course, there have been many attempts to do away with the existing mental border as well as intellectual segregation. for example, a book edited by édouard conte, carole nagengast and this author entitled poland beyond communism (2001) is an interdisciplinary endeavor to present this country’s historically conditioned current transformations that, at the same time, is a purposeful attempt to join forces of scholars coming from poland (7), of polish origin but working in the west (2), the united kingdom (2), france (2) and the usa (3). although published in the west by the university of fribourg press in a series entitled ‘studia ethnographica friburgensia,’ its circulation has been limited due to the fact that the publisher does not operate internationally nor have a worldwide distribution network. another example is a series published in the west, but often directed to a sort of niche public (cf. köstlin et al. 2002). a similar rule also applies to journals that sometimes host editors and authors coming from the nonwestern tier of the euroatlantic zone (cf. anthropological 2003, edited by kiliánová). however, this principle pertains even more harshly to several editorial attempts undertaken by scholars in cee alone. they have tried hard to publish in english but the readership of these volumes is practically limited to their circle of friends and the people they give them to or (very seldom) the sales garnered by carrying them around to international meetings. apparently, they have to rely on this mode of exchange typical for ‘stone age economics’ in a late capitalist environment. i cannot list all these initiatives, but some of them are worth mentioning since they are undertaken notoriously in: zagreb (two ethnological volumes on war in the former yugoslavia, especially cale-feldman et. al. 1993), cluj (cf. anăstăsoaie et.al 2003), prague/pardubice (cf. skalnik 2002), ljubljana/piran (‘mediterranean ethnological school summer school series’ and ‘ethnological contacts series’), budapest (the journal ‘replika’) and poznań (the journal ‘ethnologia polona,’ cf. also posern-zieliński 1999; buchowski 2001). time and time again, western scholars are invited, and do contribute to these native enterprises, but the market for these publications is, for obvious reasons, restricted because they do not happen to be published by reputable major publishers. therefore, a mode of operation of the free market also contributes to the reproduction of hegemonic patterns in a way comparable to the domination of mcdonald’s’ food range jen typewritten text 8 and popularity over scope and recognition of local cuisines. what is, then, the attitude of eastern europeans, particularly poles, towards western anthropological production? quite a few translations have been done, nearly all of them within a domain of general anthropological theory. (i have made a small inquiry among my anthropological friends across the region and this pattern is just about universal.) lévi-strauss, leach, herzfeld, geertz, clifford, appadurai, murphy, kuper – these are the authors that have translation currency in central europe. interestingly enough, ethnographic monographs on overseas countries can be counted on the fingers of one hand. hardly any anthropological monographs on cee have been translated. the exceptions can be easily listed off: a couple of books on nationalism published in the former yugoslavia, and a few edited volumes in local languages that include some articles by western anthropologists. translation policy and market demand is part of the picture. the other aspect, no doubt related to the above one, is the ‘anthropological’ production itself. several polish and other central and eastern european anthropologists eagerly and profusely refer to western theoretical ideas. various conceptual works have been published, but they are often ‘recycled goods’ considering that they frequently address trendy issues invented by ‘continental tyrants’ such as postmodernism, deconstructed ethnicity, globalization, hybridity, transnationlism, media and advertisement. zygmunt bauman, richard rorty, clifford geertz and james clifford, and other anthropological, philosophical and cultural studies savants are cited and recited as in a litany. this preoccupation with theory may be related to a desire to make a ‘postsocialist public’ more informed about world trends in the discipline. however, it leads to an understanding of anthropology as a purely theoretical, almost philosophical enterprise. it appears as a new central european version of cultural studies adorned with anthropological references and jargon. several scholars have assumed that it is enough to reflect on general topics merely in conjectural terms. for them, an anthropologist is like a flaneur wandering in the library and searching for ideas. fieldwork is not an integral part of this project; or, to put it more radically, it need not be at all. it may arise from an implicitly shared postmodernist conviction that ‘reality’ is constructed anyhow, so why bother about it? this leaning also has its roots in the late ‘real socialism’ period when a new generation of anthropologists desperately tried to detach themselves from traditional, ‘socialist’ and volkskundist ethnologists by referring directly to western theories and by escaping traps of crude positivism. it is a paradox that this ‘postmodern/postsocialist’ mode of operation and writing makes it attractive to local publics, but simultaneously hardly corresponds to the practice of anthropology espoused by western academics working on and in cee. theoretical considerations comprise only part of the anthropological routine in poland (and to a certain extent in cee). the other strand takes place somehow independently of the theoretical reflection carried out on an abstract level. several scholars write in a style that perpetuates the volkskundist tradition and are in fact immune to any outside impact. others apply general and/or more particular anthropological theories (e.g. about kinship, alternative medicine, nationalism) to local phenomena and events. new, more ‘westernized’ topics are addressed: dominated groups of varying social status and origin, from religious and ethnic to sexual ones, youth culture, poverty, gender studies, the adaptation of rural communities to structural changes, the transformation of social relations at the grass roots level, border communities, ethnic identities, etc. however, in this kind of research, anthropological works of non-native scholars doing their fieldwork in poland are, in the case of most authors, neglected. again, there are exemptions (cf. warmińska 1999; nowak 2003, buchowski 1997), but i am talking about the mainstream. tentative (shallow) interpretation jen typewritten text 9 how can these phenomena be interpreted at an anthropological grass roots level and through the pragmatics of daily life? no doubt, historically and socially conditioned reasons come into play. language competence may still play a role. some scholars, trained in the milieu in which the knowledge of english was not a priority, have difficulties in getting acquainted with western literature on the subject they themselves study. this insulates them from the impact of ideas and findings written in the modern lingua franca. also, access to western publications can still play a role, although in a contemporary situation it is of secondary significance. more important reasons are both mental and epistemological. on the one hand and in the case of the above mentioned ‘theoreticians,’ it is an inferiority complex, a conviction that cultural/scholarly centers produce valuable and attractive theories that ‘we’ at the ‘periphery’ should learn practically by heart. on the other hand and in the case of ‘empiricists,’ it is a superiority complex that nobody else but ‘us’ can say more about ‘ourselves,’ i.e., our own societies. one of the assets of anthropological insights, for instance an outsider’s view or a ‘view from afar’ on local culture, is denied. central and eastern european ethnologists and/or anthropologists do not seem to be unique in this respect. since the 1960s until today there has been a vibrant discussion on the presence of anglo-saxon anthropologists in the alpine region and the value of their scholarly output. for example, norbert ortmayr wrote a very critical article entitled ‘amerikaner in den alpen’ (1992) and reinhard johler published a text on ‘the idea of “alpine society,” or do we need the americans in the alps’ (1998) [cf. viazzo 2004]. how can this phenomenon be explained on the western side of the barricade? using the same psychological terminology as above, i would call it a double superiority complex. on the one hand, ‘we’ westerners cannot really learn anything from those backward easterners since their paradigm is outdated (both nationalist and positivist at the same time). something that john davies said about southern european countries seems also to apply to a surreptitiously (politically correct) held opinion about the majority of central and eastern european scholarship: ‘a contemporary ethnographer from france and england or america, carrying the very latest lightweight intellectual machine gun in his pack, may be suddenly confronted by a tylorean or frazerian professor appearing like a japanese corporal from the jungle to wage a battle only he knows is still on’ (1977: 4). the only difference between southern and central europe seems to be that until now nobody has in fact ‘waged the battle.’ the only line of battle runs through central and eastern european scholars themselves. in short, most western scholars a priori and implicitly think that their socio-cultural anthropological paradigm is of better quality than any indigenous one. in anthropology there are no exceptions, and i emphasize ‘in anthropology,’ since they occur in philosophy (žižek, erjačevac, not to mention émigrés such as pomian, kolakowski or bauman) sociology (endre sik, hankiss, mokrzycki) and the political sciences (staniszkis, wnuklipiński and others mentioned also by verdery above). think seriously about whether you have ever heard about any anthropological theory coming from cee? yuri bromley’s concept of etnos was concocted for political purposes and for the same reasons it was a propagated hoax! malinowski? yes, but he put forward his ideas eight decades ago, and after all, he belongs to the british tradition. a provisional cultural critique of the east/west relations at some point adam kuper wrote that ‘scholars in eastern european countries tended to share a traditional, nationalist preoccupation with peasant traditions, and their work had little theoretical content or comparative range’ (citation according to prica 2004). first, i wonder how kuper arrived at this without the comprehension of a single eastern european vernacular? second, the nationalist obsession was not the universal feature of cee scholarship and many jen typewritten text 10 anthropologists were well acquainted with western scholarship and theories for decades. the nationalist motive might have some relevance in some newly established nation states (the ukraine, the baltic and former yugoslav republics), but it has not really been the case in poland since the 1970s. the same also applies to theoretical and comparative concerns. much about anthropological theory has been re-produced in central europe; studies in africa, asia and latin america have been carried out by scholars based in poland, but also, as far as i know, in the czech republic and slovenia. besides, as ines prica (2004) remarks, this instant dismissal of ‘nationalist’ ethnologies has led to several quirks of fate. first, nationalist ethnologies, by impeding communist internationalism, contributed to the collapse of the authoritarian regimes in cee, a fact appreciated by nearly all. if this were the case, then, they were not that bad after all. second, in order to diminish ideological impact, western anthropologists insist on ‘basically empirical tasks, which do not happen to be the research of local, and deviated intellectual legacies, but social realities as they are’ (prica 2004). such firmness has led to a certain degree of positivism aimed at the reconstruction of life under socialism and the description of changes at a grass roots level in ‘real communism’ and postsocialism. indeed, the topics tackled seem rather ‘traditional’, i.e., largely focused on rural communities and their transition to the market economy, such as land reform, privatization, and class, gender and labor relations. altogether, western ‘postsocialist studies’ are blamed for not being able to produce any significant anthropological accounts that could have wider theoretical applications and contribute to any theoretical breakthrough, or, they are even reproached for being ‘epistemologically regressive’ (as one can read on the hesp project’s postcolony and postsocialism website5). the essence and irony of all these traits of western anthropological studies on cee is that these were exactly the arguments 5 the cited page of the project can be found at http://www.inv.si/hesp/project.htm. ascribed by western anthropologists to nationalist ethnologies in eastern europe. accused in the recent past of empiricism and traditionalism, polish and other central and eastern european scholars are keen to look to theories that will help them to renounce these pejorative stigmas. no wonder that among ‘anthropologized’ ethnologist intellectual endeavors such as the comparison between postsocialism and postmodernism or postcolonialism are more fashionable than anthropological monographs based on painstaking ethnography. they worked previously in this paradigm, although using intermittent fieldwork methodology, and are still told that they did it wrong! now foreign anthropologists arrive and do something similar, although they write in english and are interested in slightly different issues, and ‘native ethnographers’ are now told that this time it is right! many joined former ‘western’ critiques of ‘nationalist and traditionalist’ ethnology, waged intellectual battles against volkskundists by referring to subtle anthropological theories, and are today taught that those criticized socialist positivists were, at least in a sense, doing proper anthropology. there is a degree of colonial mindset in this predicament. at least three grounds can be specified for this argument. first, local intellectual traditions are dismissed and are not included in the picture. down-to-earth ethnography infused with selective western ideas about the problems addressed is presented as genuine anthropology. i suppose it is, but would it not be much fairer if local scholars’ theories featured in them as worthy re-consideration and rational critique rather than being merely ideologically contaminated, devoid of any scientific value and therefore ignored? second, and related to the first, indigenous anthropologists often acquire the status of the objects of study, regular informants, while their scholarly work does not matter at all. third, and most importantly, in some accounts, the postsocialist period is perceived as a chaotic transitional period, lacking in moral structures. however, it is questionable whether this is the experience of the people on the ground. several arguments jen typewritten text 11 can be given that the lives of cee societies are a never-ending series of major or lesser changes. even if life after 1989 is perceived as less stable than in the past, this does not automatically mean a lack of morality or social vacuum. the latter point leads us to a more fundamental question that i can only touch upon here: in what way, and to what extent, is the field of postsocialist study an invention of western scholarship, including anthropologists? this would be a case similar to orientalism, as defined by edward said (1978). for him orientalism is, first of all, a set of discursive practices through which the west structured the imagined east. orientalism is also “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the orient’ and … ‘the occident’” (said 1978: 2). the orient exists and people live in the region concerned, but the european representation of these people is a typical cultural creation that enables the powerful to legitimize their domination over the subjugated. the hierarchical dichotomy between the occident and the orient and its constant perpetuation proves that a powerful cultural hegemony is at work. discursive hardening permits stronger groups to define weaker groups. it is enough to substitute ‘postsocialism’ for ‘orient’ to realize what i have in mind in this respect. east/west relations and their refraction in the domestic eastern realm since i introduced a metaphor of ‘orientalism,’ let me play on it. western liberal ideology denied socialist ideology in politics, economics and culture. it appears to be a larger culturally embedded pattern that applies equally to the above characteristic of the western anthropological scholarship, located in the centers of knowledge production and eastern, provincial practice of anthropology and/or ethnology. this is a story about relations of power and discourses ossifying. if i am right, then anthropology, despite critical voices towards the quasicolonial situation in the post-socialist countries, partakes in the very same project and contributes to the reproduction of inequalities. is this a case of (semi)orientalization? one can look at this issue through the situation produced at domestic anthropological/ethnological encounters. before i get to them, let me say that in the domain of politics and in public discourses, the way socialist societies were presented in the west was almost invariably negative. the borderline was drawn on the geographic map and the division was clear. the mutual others were ‘spatially incarcerated’ (appadurai). the same applied to eastern ethnologies. however, in fact long before 1989, the situation became more complicated, because many native anthropologists opposed the volkskundists by embracing western ideas. despite this, the region was perceived as ‘anthropologically retarded’ (vide kuper’s opinion). this opinion has been discursively hardened and still holds for many western anthropologists. after 1989, more and more eastern ethnologists have claimed that they are anthropologists, and in several cases it is not just mimicry but a real shift of paradigm. at the same time, the sticker of anthropology has been even more emphatically used as a tool in local fights with legendary volkskundists. the latter have become a symbol of the internal others, impregnated against post-modern western liberalism in the domain of anthropology. is it a sort of domestic orientalism á la anthropologie? instead of conclusion: what can be done? relations between anthropologists from cee and western anthropologists working on cee are not merely multiple and complicated, domestic divisions within national anthropologies also play a role. the subaltern status of scholars living in postsocialist countries in relation to their western colleagues seems to be a fact of life that has various historical, psychological and, last but not least, material grounds (access to grants, equipment, disparities in salaries). it leads to an intellectual domination of the west, the perpetuation of hierarchies of knowledge, and creates a one-way street in the flow of ideas. i jen typewritten text 12 believe that western anthropologists should try harder to overcome the existing borders by involving ‘postsocialist’ scholars and ideas into their projects and discourses. on their part, anthropologists in cee should do their best not to merely embrace abstract anthropological ideas or down-to-earth ethnography. the old dilemma between lofty ideas and traditional ethnography is long passé and there is no need to be torn between the two. a combination of ethnographic detail and theoretical insights can produce an indigenous anthropology that will be recognized by the international interpretive community of scholars. it will ultimately create a well established field of scholarship similar to postcolonial studies exercised by indigenous authors. it seems that in many respects, both in the past and today, ‘we’ anthropologists from cee have not produced the ideas that could attract general anthropological attention, although fifteen years already passed since 1989 (or many more years, if one considers the much longer postcolonial history). hopefully, one day we will be able to produce a scholarship recognized internationally and in mutual dialogue with our colleagues from elsewhere. yes, indeed, we are still waiting for a messiah, for the franz fanon of postsocialism! but will he or she be recognized by western anthropologists? references cited: anăstăsoaie, viorel, csilla könczei, enikő magyari-vincze and ovidiu pecican (eds.). 2003. breaking the wall: representing anthropology and anthropological representations in post-communist eastern europe, cluj: efes. anthropological. 2003. anthropological journal on european cultures, vol. 12 (special issue on ‘communities in transformation: central and eastern europe, ed. by gabriela kiliánová, and co-ed. by oľga danglová and martin kanovský). berdahl, daphnie, matti bunzl and martha lampland (eds.). 2000. altering states: ethnographies of transition in eastern europe and the former soviet union. ann arbor: michigan university press. buchowski, michał. 1997. reluctant capitalists. berlin: centre marc bloch. buchowski, michał. 2001. rethinking transformation: an anthropological perspective on postsocialism, poznań: humaniora. buchowski, michał, édouard conte and carole nagengast (eds.). 2001. poland beyond communism: ‘transition’ in critical perspective. fribourg: fribourg university press. burawoy, michael and katherine verdery (eds.). 1999. uncertain transition. rowman and littlefield: lanham. čale-feldman, lade, ines prica and reana senjković (eds.). 1993. fear, death and resistance: an ethnography of war, croatia 1991-1992. zagreb: institute of ethnography and folklore/matrix croatia. davis, john. 1977. people of the meditteranean: an essay in comparative social anthropology. london: routledge and kegan paul. de soto, hermine g. and nora dudwick (eds.). 2000. fieldwork dilemmas: anthropologists in postsocialist states. madison: university of wisconsin press. hann, chris m. 1985. a village without solidarity. yale: yale university press. hann, chris m. (ed.). 1993. socialism: ideals, ideologies and local practices. london and new york: routledge. hann, chris m. and elizabeth dunn (eds.). 1996. civil society: contesting western models. london and new york: routledge. hann, chris m. (ed.). 2001. postsocialism: ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. london and new york: routledge. johler, reinhard. 1998. l’idea di una ‘alpine society’ overro: perché abbiamo bisogno degli americani nelle alpi?, annali di san michele 11: 159-170. jen typewritten text 13 köstlin, konrad, peter niedermüller and herbert nikitsch (eds.). 2002. die wende als ‘die wende’? orientierungen europäisches ethnologien nach 1989. wien: verlag des instituts für europäische ethnologie. nagengast, carole. 1991. reluctant socialists. boulder, co: westview. nowak, jacek. 2003. zaginiony świat? nazywają ich łemkami. kraków: universitas. ortmayr, norbert. 1992, amerikaner in den alpen. historisch-kulturanthropologische studien über die alpenlänische gesellschaft, in: k. kaser and k. stocker (eds.), clios rache. neue aspekte strukturgeschichtlicher und theoriegeleiteter geschichtsforschung in österreich, pp. 131-150, wien: bohlau. prica, ines. 2004. european anthropology of transition and the status of local intellectual legacies (ms.). a paper presented at the workshop ‘towards and anthropology of europe’ in litomyšl, czech republic, sept. 15, 2004. skalnik, peter (ed.). 2002. a post-communist millennium: the struggles for sociocultural anthropology in central and eastern europe (prague studies in sociocultural anthropology 2), prague: set out. skalnik, peter. 2002a. ‘west meets east or, rather, it finds new exotic lands’, in: p. skalnik (ed.), a post-communist millennium, pp. 185-195. viazzo, pier p. 2004. anthropology and the study of circum-alpine societies (ms.). a paper presented at the workshop ‘towards and anthropology of europe’ in litomyšl, czech republic, sept. 1-5, 2004. warmińska, katarzyna. 1999. tatarzy polscy: tożsamość etniczna i religijna. kraków: universitas. jen typewritten text 14 citizenship discourse, globalization, and protest: anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: kideckel@ccsu.edu citizenship discourse, globalization, and protest: a postsocialist-postcolonial comparison1 david a. kideckel, central connecticut state university introduction: on postsocialist/colonial comparison recent scholarship recognizes important commonalities in postsocialist and postcolonial experience. both moore (2001:114) and chari and verdery (2009: 11) discuss substantive parallels in postcolonial and postsocialist states. such states emerge from common structural conditions deemphasizing local versus metropolitan culture (ibid: 13, young 2003), are burdened with imbalanced, distorted economies (bunce 1999, humphrey 2002, stark and bruszt 1998), struggle with democratization (ceuppens and geschiere 2005, heintz et al 2007), fall occasional prey to compensatory and muscular nationalisms (appadurai 1996, 2006), and have troubled relations with past histories and compromised members (borneman 1997, comaroff and comaroff 2003, petryna 2002). thus postsocialist and postcolonial state political and economic organization and principles of belonging are up for grabs with these uncertainties mapping onto principles and discourses of citizenship, i.e. the way individuals conceive of themselves in relation to their state and in other transnational relationships (ong 1999), respond to changes in state life, and express themselves politically and culturally as members of society. uncertain citizenship, contested histories, and distorted economies often subject postsocialist and postcolonial states to significant activism (young 2003). this paper thus seeks to articulate activist practice with variations in the nature of citizenship conceptions and discourses, offering a window into postsocialist and postcolonial similarity and difference. ethnographically, the essay compares protests and demonstrations in postcolonial kerala state in southwest india 2 and postsocialist east central european romania. as part of their “post” heritages, both states are marked by outpourings of activist demand. such “contentious performances” (tilly 2008), their claims, actions, and symbols, illustrate participant relations to their states and express political and social identities. they are, in other words, manifestations of citizen perceptions and discourses. contentious performances are found in all social systems, past and present. however, postsocialist and postcolonial varieties share a commonality as their ultimate audience, if not proximate causes, relate to events, processes, and relationships off-shore from the state (comaroff and comaroff 2003: 633). globalization and neo-liberal penetration commonly animate postsocialist and postcolonial politics. however, the way by which postsocialist and postcolonial citizens respond to such transformation varies according to the notions of citizenship they bring with them as they run to (or from) the barricades. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 118 (post-)citizenship: a continuum citizenship rights and obligations are “an on-going process, a social practice, and a cultural performance rather than a static category” (berdahl 2005:237). the practice of citizenship in postsocialism/ colonialism is historically influenced by transnational institutions and globalized conditions (ong 1999, sassen 2003). however, actual state societies are still the stage where individuals gain rights and obligations of social membership and enact these via citizen performances as in joining or avoiding organizations, voting or not, and protest and demonstration or apathetic response. the historical and processual nature of citizenship, and the diverse role of the global environment point to important differences between postsocialist (at least of the east central european variety) and postcolonial states for citizenship practice. in the case of kerala and romania citizenship perceptions and discourses grow from the nature and extent of popular participation in the processes by which socialist and colonial systems developed or came apart. this includes the role of elites and masses in the throwing off the socialist or colonial system, the breadth of anti-socialist/colonialist struggle, increasingly by the differential integration of states in the developing global system (gupta and sharma 2006), and the manner by which individuals are related to new capital and institutions (balibar 2004). thus, two diverse forms of citizenship generally contrast postsocialist/colonialist states. i terms these rightsand grievance-based citizenship which are arrayed along a continuum based on: 1) degrees of expectation of the state; 2) the role (actual or desired) of citizen involvement in organizational life; 3) extent of delegitimation of the former socialist/colonial system; and 4) degrees to which the state or global institutions are the manifest focus of individual concern. rights-based citizenship is more often found in postcolonial conditions owing to the extent of popular participation and either or both the integration of elites and “commoners,” in the anticolonial movement, and the tensioned integration of the state in the global environment. in rights-based citizenship, social membership is an active process. people see claims on the state as legitimate right, many engage politically to ensure those rights, or sympathize with those who do (cairó 2001), and largely see global relationships as threat to their rights. even where demands for rights are subverted by postcolonial force as, for example, in indonesia (tsing 2005), the legitimacy of citizenship rights is unquestioned, if unfulfilled. thus in kerala citizenship, 3 people expect state support for their cause, no matter political orientation. they expect the state to meet their physical needs, or today even their right to live and earn apart from the state in a growing private economy. this practice grows from centuries-long activism where people challenged caste inequities, imperial and colonial control, and economic and social inequality. kerala citizens speak often of rights (avakasam) to protest and for proper state response. people of all backgrounds turn out in large numbers in elections. women and low caste groups are active politically. people are connected in a wide range of inter-locking institutions like labor unions, trade associations, political parties, youth groups, and neighborhood associations. the significant exception to this are the two million or so who comprise cyclical anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 119 labor migrants to the arabian gulf. returning to kerala they express degrees of alienation from kerala associations (raluca nahorniac, personal communication). in post-socialist states, such as romania, citizens‟ claims are often “grievance based.” citizens see themselves as supplicants to and claimant groups are often pitted against each other. the demands grievants present are less rights people are likely to achieve than claims they will probably be denied. similarly, grievance-based citizens are organizationally alienated and shy from participation in local groups, though they often address their concerns to international organizations. romania‟s grievance-based citizens issue complaints (plângeri) and demands (revendicări). typically, romanian interest groups often factionalize into competing groups differentiated by small personal or ideological differences. romanians thus feel a sense of isolation and often react to others‟ or even their own concerns with a “why bother?” attitude. command-obey politics fueled grievance-based citizenship and is long-standing in romanian history and culture (see buchowski 2004 for another central european case). this system reached its heights in the years of romanian socialism, culminating in the ceauşescu reign. even in the past when romanians challenged systems of control, as in the revolution of 1848, the peasant rebellion of 1907, and 1920s and 1930s worker restiveness, such movements were often intellectual-based, short-term out-pourings, and narrowly cast. socialism cemented the supplicant, distanced quality of romanians to their state. even 1990s massive worker actions, including the jiu valley miners‟ mineriade (gledhill 2005, kideckel 2008, vasi 2004) were as much in service to national politicians and against administrators as by and for citizen actors. the net effect of these actions produced an angry citizenry, alienated from the state, atomized, and protective of individual interests. citizenship in globalizing, shifting economies postsocialist and postcolonial states are intensely influenced by global forces. they affected the formation of the modern state and its current buffeting in kerala, 4 as well as the formation and unraveling of east central european socialism by world recession, changing technology, and militarism. in recent years this process is intensified by expanding global capital in privatization, in regional integration in developing political and economic institutions, in communication, trade, labor and tourist migrations, and migrant remittances. among global processes characterizing both types of states are: 1) intense privatization; 2) penetration of new business and capital; 3) chronic unemployment and labor migration to areas of global capital concentration; 4) decline of the state in daily life; 5) greater significance of international institutions and relationships; and 6) expansion in global consumables like cell phones, computers, internet services. comparing our two cases, in essence globalization has largely replaced romanian manufacturers with large western capitalized enterprises like siemens, renault, pioneer seeds. as junior partner in the european union, the romanian government is handmaiden to this process. compared to kerala, romania is more integrated into networks of global control, whose anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 120 presence has greatly neutralized globalization as a source of contention. all romanian political parties seem committed to similar relations with external powers, contributing to a diminishing romanian state and growing divide between people and state. romanians, instead of challenging global structures, look to institutions like the eu and its court of human rights, for redress. in turn, its citizens view the romanian state as hopelessly compromised (european commission 2005:17). in kerala globalization proceeds intensively but equivocally, sometime opposed, other times supported by state actors. with exceptions like american infosys or harrisons malayalam, the british exporter of rubber, coffee, and tea, globalization is spearheaded by smaller capital interests. software consulting services, call centers, apparel manufacturers, and commercial enterprises define the new economy compared to that previously based on services, agricultural production and processing, and small-scale manufacturing. kerala government and political parties and leaders also have ambiguous relations to globalization, to which they are both partners and adversaries. as partner, the state and its dominant left coalition supports privatization, turning some enterprises, like keltron counters, manufacturer of electronic gauges, into joint ventures with private capital. similarly, the state enabled development of special economic zones (sez) like the technopark or apparel park, in the trivandrum suburbs. as adversary the kerala state has (unsteadily) maintained the “kerala model of development” 5 and its large-scale redistribution on which so many depend in this region of high unemployment (chakraborty 2009). thus, the uncertain combining of an extensive state sector and galloping privatization give considerable room to students, trade groups, ngos, and unions to demand their rights via protest. 6 globalization is also producing a transnational citizenry in kerala and romania via labor emigration. however, though physically transnational, such individuals‟ role at home influence citizenship processes. labor migrants are by and large politically conservative, and exert large influence by their remittances and in the narratives to others at home (osella and osella 2006). they also bring new consumption items and practices that become mania to some or bête noir to others among the home population (lukose 2005a). furthermore, successful returned migrants typically support privatization and global integration. thus, transnational citizenship locally intensifies shifts in ownership, extends the space between public and private, and pressures relationships and values within their state societies. this is especially more the case in kerala where labor migration is more frequently cyclical and successful returned-migrants often engage in breath-taking conspicuous consumption with mansions from one end of the state to the other. citizenship in romanian and kerala protest postsocialist and postcolonial uncertainties contribute to impressive histories of labor and social protest in romania and kerala (crowley 2004, john 2005, sreedhara menon 1987). though globalized change facilitates conditions for protest and demonstration, citizenship beliefs and orientations shape actual practices and outcomes. romanians, through their grievances and anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 121 in opposition to others, seek improvement in their individual or group‟s position. however, via this strategy, they validate the present system to both themselves and others. romanian protests are restricted in time, space, and audience. they are frequently directed against particular institutions, many in the private sector, but avoid generalized, systemic-wide challenge. given their narrow focus, romanian protest is readily neutralized by state practice, whether legally (bush 1993, 2004), or through inattention, cooptation, or subversion. in contrast, in kerala, persistent ambiguity between public and private sectors constantly galvanizes citizen demands for preservation of rights. though kerala rights-based protest is often single issue, just as frequently it challenges the structure of the transforming state. kerala‟s citizens protest for the long-term. when you speak to people “on the barricades,” they say they protest with optimism (subha prathiksha) and patience (kshema), and will agitate until positive resolution. these discourses thus intensify action, offering little hope of modulation. protests are enacted for diverse reasons. as (contentious) performances, they are evaluated by claims, themes, symbols, participants and audiences (palmer and jankowiak 1997). however, protests are unlike other performances as they engage state and global structures and thus produce and reflect citizenship (cf. holston 2007). protest activities are defined first by claims, whether political, cultural, or economic. 7 political protests are operationalized by political parties and related groups to support or oppose party or government policies or actions. they support one group or challenge another. the nature of political demonstration show the extent to which society‟s basic debates remain open. in post-socialist romania, with globalization largely a fait accompli, few protests are political. competition between political parties is separated from society, with politics enacted by parliamentary maneuver. grievancebased citizenship furthers this by avoiding system-wide critique. in post-colonial kerala a factionalized party environment, ideologically split over globalization, produces continual faceoffs. party factions jockey for power within larger formations, and an electorate split between left and right generates great numbers of demonstrations between party coalitions, many becoming violence. citizen demand for rights plays into this as parties are considered either the source of or threat to rights. thus, the political divide keeps postcolonial contestation front and center. cultural demonstrations are concerned with human rights, identity, religion, discrimination. such issues potentially map on to global questions. recent romanian cultural demonstrations include marches supporting gay rights, protests against destruction of church property, or against biometric passports. 8 in these romanians often contrast their concerns with conditions elsewhere in europe or refer claims to larger european audiences. in kerala i witnessed cultural protests against alcohol abuse and the “alcohol mafia,” against domestic violence, for scientific rationality and opposed to self-styled religious “godmen.” thus cultural protests also exhibit a critical difference. romanians, riven by grievance, seek improved circumstances for themselves or their particular group, while in kerala people address collective concerns about society as a whole. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 122 the biggest globalization-related issue facing postsocialist and postcolonial states concerns the changing weight and meaning of public and private resources (dunn 2004, lukose 2005b, verdery 2003). the public-private shift occurs in changing ownership and employment, in source, cost, and availability of services like education, health care, housing, and transportation, and in oversight of environmental, infrastructural, and social resources. in both romania and kerala these changes provoke extensive demonstrations. economic protests include concerns over treatment of labor (e.g. strikes of kerala gold and agricultural workers and romanian auto and steel workers). others concern privatization of public institutions or declines in safety, quality, costs, and availability of public resources (e.g. marches of travancore titanium and kerala state electric board employees, by romanian electrical and chemical workers and miners, or strikes of kerala doctors and romanian teachers). still others critique the safety, quality, cost, and availability of private services and institutions (e.g. kerala‟s private bus owners demand for a better competitive environment or strikes of bucharest metro workers for better safety equipment and salary increases). numerous economic protests focus on problematic global institutions (e.g. those carried out against the expansion of large, globally-based commercial ventures by the members of the kerala small-scale trader association and in romania by roman truck factory workers, shut out from half their factory by their new owner, renault (sturzoiu 2007)). finally others focus on state failures to honor obligations in transition to the private economy (e.g. kerala junior health inspectors and junior women police constables protesting exclusion from civil service positions and romanian pensioners decrying limits on their pensions). these protests have common elements, but vary in structure and expression due to differences in the degree to which globalization issues are settled and on the basis of citizenship orientations, which reinforce or challenge the state, frame contestation or acceptance, and facilitate or dampen subsequent protest. protests in both romania and kerala exhibit strong repertoires (tilly 2008: 89-90), where clearly defined elements are used repetitively. however, given the more settled postsocialist environment, protests here are more hedged around by state rules while postcolonial protest is more open to addition of new elements. postsocialist protest is more restricted in social groups from which participants derive and in the audiences to which they are directed. postcolonial protest more often seeks the entire state as audience and has more extensive system-transforming goals. both kerala and romanian protests have restricted forms; kerala jatha (march), dharna (sitdown), padayatra (long march) bandh or hartal (general strike), or romanian marș (march), pichet (picketing), and various strikes (greve)-of advisement, the japanese strike with headbands and streamers, or the regular and general strike. however, kerala protests are more innovative, like the tactic of protestors rolling prone (shayana pradikshanam) on the street or wearing sacred coconut bundles (idumuddi) on one's head while on the march. romanian practices are fairly predictable from one picket or march to the next. the greater innovation of kerala thus suggests the less settled postcolonial context. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 123 both romanian and kerala protests claim loss and threat (to jobs, resources, health, environmental well-being) and seek positive outcomes for participants. however, kerala loss is expressed in more generalized terms, compared to romania. in the former people demand that which is threatened as their right but suggest that threat to their rights is threat to all. in romania, however, protestors see their losses as theirs alone, accepting divisions of neo-liberal globalization (ietcu 2006). issues of globalization are also more commonly raised in kerala demonstrations where there are greater degrees of cross-institutional support compared to romania, where protest and demonstration breaks down ecumenical alliance. degree of cross-institutional support is especially telling for protest differences. in romania, protesting groups rarely support others, while in kerala, some issues bring out different organizations, even those diametrically opposed in other contexts. these variations exist despite and because of the historic corporate organization of romanian and kerala society. romanian socialist society was structured in a nested hierarchy of corporate groups where resources were exchanged for political passivity. labor unions, for example, were “transmission belts” for resource delivery (e.g. subsidized housing, vacations) to compliant workers (ockenga 1997). though this structure was largely reproduced after socialism, unions, their federations, and confederations are loosely tied to the political parties and compete for membership and voice. contrasting this, kerala corporate structures developed via centuries of subaltern agitation where people organized from below and put into power the first freely-elected communist government in history (nossiter 1982). 9 left governments headed by the communist party of india-marxist (cpi-m) in coalition with other left parties periodically control the state‟s government. the union movement is strong and virtually the entire economy, public and private, are organized (ramachandran nair 2006). though kerala‟s organizational structure is equally tied to political factions, their history enables escape of institutional cocoons over various issues. comparing the two-month long, daily demonstration of unions and related groups protesting privatization of the kerala state electrical board (kseb) in spring 2008 with romanian demonstrations is instructive. kseb protestors were a varied bunch. virtually all kerala trade union coalitions, left, right, or neutral, and often bitter enemies, protested to stop kseb‟s privatization. though together in this cause, some groups avoided each other in front of kerala's government headquarters, the site of most kerala protests. members of the all india trade union confederation (aituc), allies of the communist party of india, and one of their affiliated unions, the kerala electrical workers federation often engaged in “parallel protest” with the kerala power workers‟ federation/ national trade union initiative, a non-affiliated union group. though political opposites they turned out to march, chant slogans, and leaflet passers-by. representatives of women‟s groups, small trader associations, anti-alcohol protestors, and others also visited the electrical workers with greetings, support, and even contributions. in romania union protests are formalized and require only a predefined number of participating members. representatives of other groups never assist, however. in a protest of bucharest public nursery school teachers about lack of nursery school seats, the issue affected all anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 124 teachers‟ unions. but when i asked people of other unions whether they supported the protesting formation, they said it was not their fight, and the protestors do not support them. similarly, when romanian pensioners organized a retiree coalition in summer 2007 to challenge limits on pension increases, their attempt floundered as different groups demanded special treatment according to past occupational identities. their meeting ended in bitter acrimony. the only recent issue that assembled an ecumenical group was the state-wide teacher protests bringing out all main teacher unions in autumn 2005 and 2007. these concerned teacher pay and perquisites and the size of the state budget devoted to education. however, all my informants, no matter their union affiliations, indicate the strikes were a failure as unity was not maintained and that union leaders gave into the state too easily. education as citizenship and protest education is especially implicated in the changing meaning of and membership in postsocialist and postcolonial states and the globalization-related growth of private over public sectors. this often makes educational issues a source of protest and demonstration. both kerala and romania pride their educational achievements. education figured large in both colonial and socialist society. malayali demands for educational access, facilitated by kerala‟s extensive christian school network, was a basic demand of the equality movement (john 2005). education was also a cornerstone of the kerala model of development, contributing to kerala‟s nearuniversal literacy. in romania, development of education was a major socialist achievement and educational performance along with political trustworthiness combined to enable mobility. however, as schooling expanded, competition for scarce seats in higher education became especially heated. today, education in both postsocialism and postcolonialism is undergoing great change as both are pressured by privatization and related conditions (tikly 2001). public and private education intensely compete. kerala private education was always richly endowed with christian schools. since formation of the modern state, however, christian schools provided an ideological counterweight and challenge to the (leftist) state sector. there is also an intermediate (“stateaided”) sector, where the state pays teacher salaries and school upkeep and private management, largely christian, appoints teachers. given this mixed structure, labor and control issues are especially prevalent in kerala education. teachers have union protections in state and aided schools but are highly exploited in private schools (zacharaiah 2008), a situation which leftist groups challenge. meanwhile curriculum is also contentious as leftist governments seek to develop certain ideological themes and rightists challenge those attempts (lukose 2006). education is so pressured as it is deemed critical for skills for emigration and success abroad or to gain a job in new global sectors of the kerala economy, or in the state employment system (osella and osella 2000, osella and osella 2006). educational results are considerably better in private and aided schools and the students there tend to derive from wealthier social segments. with increased competition, there is a virtual flood of students out of the state system and many anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 125 state schools are on the verge of closing. thus a degree of class struggle is built into kerala educational contentiousness. in romania, too, private education has flourished since socialism‟s end and, private schools from pre-k through university draw many away from the state sector, but offer teachers poorer pay and work conditions. however, many romanian teachers in the state sector also double as private instructors, thereby deflating labor issues. though the importance of education for social mobility has declined as commerce has become the main vehicle for success, competition for seats in supported state institutions and for high school and university degrees is still intense. this has produced scandals about bribing teacher supervisors for better results on high school graduation exams, in purchasing university diplomas, or private institutions offering degrees or programs for which they are not accredited. most important for romanian education are eu-backed reforms ensuring curricular standards and coordination of university educational levels, the so-called bologna process. educational contradictions in both kerala and romania especially motivate anger and protest. however, particular forms, goals, and practices again vary based on citizenship orientations and the kind and level of global integration. kerala education is especially marked by battles between left and right political formations (see endnote 6 on the anti-communist “liberation struggle”), and protests about educational issues were the most prevalent throughout my fieldwork. the most violent and intense protests concerned curriculum and the leftdominated government‟s attempt to provide new historiography in the seventh grade social science text (government of kerala 2008). globalization was a background issue in virtually all kerala educational protests, as demand for success in the global system pressures the state sector in favor of private and aided education (lukose 2006). protests included those against the “single window system,” where the government sought to implement a computerized application and selection system for students entering state or aided high schools, of priests and nuns over government attempts to appropriate management‟s power to select aided school teachers, protests in favor or opposed to the government proposal to increase fees in private professional colleges. the anger expressed by left and right forces at the power and wealth of private schools versus government incursion into education was absolutely electric in these protests. the 2004 kerala student strike, which closed kerala university for three months, reflected many of these essential splits. ritty lukose‟s (2005b) discussion of the strike defined “political” and “civic” opposing forces whose positions reflected the deepening split between state and private sector as sources of livelihood and identity. their antagonism was intensified by the neo-liberal environment making state educational resources and the post-graduate job market much less predictable. the strike was led by the communist student federation of india, and its youth wing, the democratic youth federation of india. it was challenged by the kerala student union, a wing of the right-center indian national congress party, supported by an ad hoc coalition seeking an end to university politics. the proximate issues were a demand for educational subsidies by the “politicals” and withdrawal of the government from educational anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 126 realms, demanded by the “civics.” however, latent issues reflected postcolonial challenges to whole systems, and the critical concern for student rights as citizens. compared to kerala, romanian educational protests are less frequent and less about curriculum and access than about protestors‟ (whether teachers or students) own stakes in the system. thus romanian students strike over conditions at their universities and teachers about their pay, but groups are less up-in-arms about private sector expansion and the diminishing state sector on which they depend. for example, a one day picket and march organized in june 2007 by the spiru haret independent teacher‟s union protested lack of public nursery school (gradinița) places in bucharest for the coming school year. the protestors blamed local authorities for not releasing necessary construction funds (largely provided by eu grants). they said officials expected private kindergartens to pick up the slack. while marching from city hall to the education ministry and on to the prime minister‟s office, the teachers continually contrasted public and private nursery schools with class-based rhetoric, particularly that private tuition is so much greater, many children will be prevented from nursery school altogether. globalization also figured in this and other romanian educational demonstrations, but was viewed equivocally. comparison between romanian defects and europe‟s qualities were constant. the teachers complained that public school over-crowding ignored european standards to romania‟s shame. they discussed how many children without nursery school places were especially needy as their parents worked in italy or spain and they are cared for by grandparents. this, was generally seen positively, and easily remedied by appropriate state action. conclusions: protest and postsocialist and postcolonial identity protests and demonstrations, their symbolism, rhetoric, duration, degree of violence, and breadth of support, are windows into the role citizenship plays in shaping the character of postsocialism and postcolonialism. in both kerala and romania, spurred by globalization, a struggle exists between forces supporting the changeover to the private economy and those whose lives are more dependent on state-based economic resources. though state and private sectors are in dynamic tension, the contest appears less settled in postcolonial than postsocialist states. to a great extent this is a function of history, citizenship practice, and levels of global integration. malayali demand for their rights and kerala‟s global ambiguities keep protests vibrant, ecumenical, and system-challenging. in romania, however, top-down politics, grievance-based citizenship, and greater degrees of global integration shape acceptance of the transformation and a bargaining quality to protest. thus, in kerala, state resource redistribution, the sine qua non of malayali “citizenship rights” continues to be of greater concern than in romania and the redistributionist state is considered either excessively threatened or excessively rapacious. in romania, in contrast, citizens seeking their best deal see state employment more often as supplement or stepping stone to labor in the private sphere and state resources necessary for the moment but likely to be eclipsed later. in kerala people decry or joke about the extent of protest, but when questioned about protestor motives generally laud them. in romania, on the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 127 other hand, observers of protest activities thought protestors excessively self-interested, even if some were believed to have a kernel of legitimacy. by this account postsocialism and postcolonialism exhibit common concern with the bifurcation of public and private, no matter their different cultural substrates, particular integration into global relationships, or histories of protest. but despite this essential convergence, citizens of these two states treat this separation in widely disparate form. the extensive range of performances developing around this fracture in kerala, fueled by demands for citizen rights, implies there is life yet in those groups and institutions committed to the vibrancy of the public sector, to challenging the unfettered growth of neoliberal, globalized capitalism, and galloping privatization. in romania, though socialist practice has it supporters, the public sector is largely compromised and discredited by demands for redress of grievance as protestors seek their best bargain in the new system. further, i am certain this variation will persist, if not deepen. i write during one of the more severe economic downturns since the “great depression.” no doubt the downturn will create additional demands on state systems and subject the privatized economy to greater scrutiny and criticism. one can detect movement of labor migrants back to romania from western europe and to kerala from the arabian gulf. many return without employment, in need of health care, and with rampant family adjustment issues. the downturn also compresses the it sector, in both countries a catalyst for globalization-related growth. in kerala technopark jobs are fewer, private schools teaching computer graphics, medical technology, and related fields have cut back enrollment or gone bankrupt. in romania, the labor market is frozen and credit drying up. in these times we can only expect citizenship-based tendencies to deepen. as stakes over public and private grow sharper and human possibilities restricted, kerala issues will sharpen and protests grow more frequent and violent. romanians, however, are likely to become more atomized, fearful, and bargain-conscious. thus the contemporary crisis of capitalism will truly highlight variation in disparate social systems. postsocialist states, rejecting their past, topdown collectivities, will become more wedded to the global system while postcolonials, reminded of their past subalternity, reject it even further. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 128 notes 1 this research was carried out in 2006, 2007 and throughout 2008 under auspices of the international research and exchanges board with funding provided through the u.s. national endowment for the humanities and title viii, the wenner-gren foundation for anthropological research and the american institute of indian studies with a grant from the national endowment for the humanities. thanks to shaji varkey, gopa kumar, and vineetha menon in kerala, and to vintilă mihailescu, raluca nahorniac, and valeriu antonovici in romania for their assistance. 2 kerala is only postcolonial with a liberal interpretation of state history. comprised of three regions, only the northern third, malabar, was formerly under british colonial administration. the southernmost districts of cochin and travancore were formally ruled by native royalty until 1957, though with great british influence, when they joined with malabar to enter india as kerala state. 3 citizenship (powharan) is rarely used in malayalam. when people define the concept they typically refer to engaging in appropriate behavior as in picking up one's garbage or not being loud in public. 4 the first kerala government after formal integration into the indian state in 1957, was a communist ministry headed by the “malayali lenin,” e.m.s. namboodiripad. as this government promulgated extensive land reform (of often christian landowners) and threatened private church-run educational institutions, it was deposed in a series of violent clashes and demonstrations defined as the “liberation struggle” (vimochana samaram), involving the us central intelligence agency (krishna iyer 1959, moynihan 1978) and echoes in kerala politics to this day. 5 the kmd was promulgated by the state‟s late 1950s communist government. here state resources are directed to the poorest population segments in subsidies for education, housing, health care, etc. the kmd effect thus raised one of the poorest populations in india to health and educational levels comparable to developed societies. the kmd thus became a core aspect of kerala identity (cairó 2001) and even received international acclaim (mckibbin 1995). 6 most recently kerala has witnessed celebrated cases of the coca-cola boycott and protests concerning establishing special economic zones (sez), and over the actions and loan policies of the asian development bank (aiyer 2007). 7 research on romanian and kerala demonstrations was conducted in 2007 and 2008. in seven months of research in kerala (january-july 2008) i inventoried protests and demonstrations mainly in thiruvananthapuram, the kerala capital. in romania we observed and tallied protest activities in 2006 and the summer 2007. 8 these were organized by religious actors who feared 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comparative education 37(2):151-71. tilly, charles. 2008. contentious performances. ny: cambridge university press. tsing, anna lowenhaupt. 2005. friction: an ethnography of global connection. princeton: princeton university press. vasi, ion bogdan. 2004. the fist of the working class: the social movements of jiu valley miners in post-socialist romania. east european politics and societies 18:132-157. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 133 verdery, katherine. 2003. the vanishing hectare: property and value in postsocialist transylvania. ithaca: cornell university press. young, robert j.c. 2003. postcolonialism: a short introduction. ny: oxford university press. zacharaiah, arun. 2008. a study on the conditions of private sector unaided school teachers in certain districts of kerala. iassi: journal of indian social science institutions. anthropology of east europe review editors notes: robert rotenberg depaul university first, i want to thank nelson hancock for organizing the "views from within: ethnographic perspective on post-communist culture and society" papers from last february's soyuz conference in new york. i also want to thank nancy ries for editing this issue and creating a good balance between the topics of the soyuz conference and the regular contributions. andre simic's review of gordy's book last spring engendered spirited responses from bob hayden, miijana prosic-dvornic, joel halpern and eric gordy. the editors are pleased to offer the journal as a forum for debate such as this. i am pleased to welcome barbara west to our group ofd dedicated editors. barb will be pulling together the spring issue. we have several submissions in the folder already, but if you have a paper that you want to share with colleagues please send it to her or to me. thesubscription price of this journal has not changed in the seven years that i have been editor. we remain the best bargain in town. our institutional subscriptions grow every year. still, we are losing money. it takes almost $4000 to publish and mail the jounral. we collect only about $2600 per year in dues and sibscriptions. the rest is made up by depaul university. we need to find a more solid financial footing or risk losing the publication. as we do every year, we will discuss this financial issue at this year's business meeting of the eeag (november 16 at noon at the san francisco hilton during the aaa meetings). a letter from me in december will let you know what we decide. my apologies for being late with putting vol. 16 and 17 on the archive web site. the reformating will be complete in the next two months. on the other hand, the server that made it possible to see who is a member or to find he email addresses of those members who want their addresses available is on the technician's bench awaiting a new hard drtive. vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 4 anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 262 russia on the edge: imagined geographies and postsoviet identity. by edith w. clowes. ithaca and new york: cornell university press, 2011. xviii, 179 pp. index. maps. illustrations. $65.00, hard bound. $24.95 paper. dr. rebecca mitchell miami university the breakup of the soviet union in 1991 sparked heated debate over a thorny question that has haunted public discourse in russia for years: the problem of russian identity. in her latest book, edith clowes examines the ongoing renegotiation of russian identity in post-soviet culture. drawing on a variety of sources ranging from visual (murals in the moscow metro), literary/philosophical (mikhail ryklin, viktor pelevin, tatiana tolstaia, liudmila ulitskaia, aleksandr dugin), film (sergei bodrov’s kavkazskii plennik, aleksei balabanov’s voina) and journalistic reports (anna politkovskaia), clowes argues that a major shift has occurred in the symbolic imagining of russian identity. she claims that “in distinction to soviet identity, which was temporally defined – linked to a vision of the soviet state at the vanguard of history – the post-soviet debate about russian identity has been couched in spatial metaphors of territory and geography” (xi). while the question of space has long troubled russian and soviet policy-makers, clowes’ claim underlines an important shift: unlike in the soviet era, with its teleological emphasis on “historical process”, there is not yet a dominant ideology defining russian identity in the post-soviet context. instead, in the yeltsin and early putin era, a range of voices offered alternate views on what “russia” should be. investigating this discourse, clowes offers an intriguing glimpse into the ongoing process of negotiation through which russian identity is being re-imagined. clowes draws upon post-colonial theory to define what she calls the “imagined geographies” of post-soviet russia: the “conceptual oppositions of center and periphery, center and border, the geopolitical concept of heartland, and familiar geographical axes, juxtaposing east to west and north to south” (2-3). the concepts of center and periphery touch upon both “the geopolitical realia of empire” and russia’s (particularly moscow’s) anxiety that it is itself “nothing more than a hinterland” of other, stronger empires (12). expanding on the ideas of homi bhabha, yuri lotman and merab mamardashvili she argues that russian public intellectuals have, since at least the 1970s, used discourse about the peripheries to create “productive challenges to the self-justifications of the center” situated in moscow (7-9, 171). the study itself is organized in what clowes calls a “point-counterpoint” pattern, juxtaposing differing positions on post-soviet identity. the first chapter, accordingly, focuses upon the problem of the center. moscow, clowes argues, has faced its own identity crisis since the early 1990s. the deconstruction of moscow as a center of power that she traces in late soviet and early post-soviet literary and cultural products provides the basis upon which later chapters builds – having disassembled the symbolic import of the center, competing voices of the periphery emerged with greater strength. the heart of clowes’ literary analysis emerges in chapters two through five. starting with an insightful assessment of both the sources and substance of aleksandr dugin’s call for a new eurasian empire, she then explores how a number of post-soviet anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 263 writers have responded to dugin’s vision. these responses have ranged from viktor pelevin’s literary parodies, mikhail ryklin’s calls for a “neo-westernizer” worldview, and liudmila ulitskaia’s symbolic employment of the ethnically non-russian south as “a site of liberation” for her characters. in each of these case studies, clowes emphasizes the importance of geographical space in defining russian identity. the problem of the “muslim south,” hinted at in the analysis of ulitskaia’s writings serves as the central focus for chapter six. assessing the writings of ryklin and politkovskaia, clowes argues that the “chechen issue” provides the “fulcrum on which the future of russian society turns – either toward a multiethnic civil society that guarantees the rights of all citizens or toward an authoritarian state ruled by ethnic russians” (142). the importance of the conflict in chechnya in defining central boundaries of the contemporary debate over russian identity can scarcely be questioned; this is the moment in clowes’ study when symbolic discourse collides with political reality. clowes uses aleksandr prokhanov’s novel mr. hexogen and aleksei balabanov’s film voina (the war) to demonstrate the process of “sanctifying the russian homeland and demonizing the other” that lies at the basis of nationalist mythmaking in the putin era (153). the explicit connection between the putin government and these cultural definitions of russian identity could have received more detailed treatment however; clowes argues that “the putin administration’s expanded wild zone of power has done a great deal of damage. . . the ‘other south’ of the chechens has been used during the first years of the twenty-first century to rekindle age-old russian xenophobia” (162). while the ongoing tensions with chechnya have certainly been exploited in pro-kremlin media discourse, clowes bases her statement on the claims of liberal dissidents (politkovskaia, ryklin) and cultural products not immediately linked to the putin government. a brief survey of russian media portrayal of the second chechen war in order to demonstrate the precise nature of the “state’s mythmaking balloon” that clowes argues politkovskaia’s journalism “successfully punctured” would have strengthened this part of her analysis. clowes has provided a valuable scholarly service in assessing both the intellectual genealogy and political claims of several important figures in post-soviet russian culture. while the primary target audience for this work is literary scholars, cultural critics, cultural/intellectual historians, political scientists and anthropologists interested in contemporary russian public life will find much of value; graduate students will also gain valuable insight from clowes’ skilled application of post-colonial theory to contemporary literature and film. microsoft word table of contents and intro formatted.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 2 page 1 anthropolgy of east europe review editors krista harper julie hemment robert rotenberg, web editor krista hegberg and yasar abu ghosh, guest editors contents editors’ notes………..................................................................................................................................................................3 krista harper and julie hemment, university of massachusetts, amherst call for papers ..........................................................................................................................................................................4 anthropology of east europe review symposium: “aeer special issue: roma & gadje” guest editors’ introduction……………………………………………… ……….…...……………………………….5 yasar abu ghosh, department of anthropology, charles university, and iris-ehess krista hegburg, department of anthropology, rutgers university the “civilized trap” of modernity and romanian roma, 1918-1934…….…………...…………………........12 susan williams, indiana university romanian romani resistance to genocide in the matrix of the !igan other shannon woodcock, school of historical and european studies, la trobe university, canada……………………....28 hidden history: perceptions of the romani holocaust in romania viewed through contemporary race relations………………………………………………….….………………………………….44 michelle kelso, department of sociology, university of michigan photo-essay: the roma of slovakia ……………………………..……………..…………………………………….62 julie denesha, documentary photographer, merriam, kansaa the politics of the census: of gypsies, roms, and egyptians ………..…..……………………………...…..67 eben friedman, european centre for minority issues, flensburg, germany ethnomusicology and advocacy research: theory in action among romani ngos in ukraine …………………………………………………………..……..….………………....78 adriana helbig, division of musicology, university of illinois, urbana-champaign working with the athenian roma: contemporary research methodologies for a complex field………………………………………………………….……………………….……….…………...84 othon alexandrakis, department of anthropology, rice university resisting eviction: sulukule roma in search of right to space and place…….…………………....96 semra somersan, department of sociology, !stanbul bilgi university süheyla kırca-schroeder, faculty of communication, bahçesehir university anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 2 page 2 reproducing inequalities through reproductive control: the case of romani women from romania…………………………………………………….……………….…………………………………………………108 enik" magyari-vincze, faculty of european studies, babe#-bolyai university the revitalization of diverging rituals: the case of roma and gadje in a transylvanian village…………….….……….……………………………………………………………………………………………....121 lászló fosztó, institute for the study of the problems of national minorities, martin luther university “i must love them with all my heart”: pentecostal mission and the romani other...………….132 johannes ries, institute for ethnology, university of leipzig open forum czech political prisoners: remebering, relatedness, reconciliation…….….……….……………..143 jana kopelentova rehak, loyola college book reviews review of ethnography of protected areas: endangered habitats – endangered cultures (simoni$). ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….......151 reviewer: barbara a. cellarius, wrangell-st. elias national park, alaska review of dreaming of a mail-order husband: russian-american internet romance (johnson)....................................................................................................................................................................................154 reviewer: jennifer patico, georgia state university the web page for the anthropology of east europe review/east european anthropology group contains links to most of the previously published articles. it can be found at this url: http://las1.depaul.edu/aeer/ reckoning with the ‘bosnia troubles’: trauma, witnessing, and politics jasmina husanović university of tuzla, tuzla © 2004 jasmina husanović all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. engaging in a continuous drama of culture, as well as reckoning with the critical traumatic contents of political reality is the state of the balkans.1 the paradoxical (im)possibility of justice is the trouble with the balkans. because in this knot of traumas, cultural crises and political injustices we are repeatedly called to judge, we also find ourselves permanently situated at a site where imagination, memory, and agency may and should coalesce into emancipatory gestures that traverse violent deadlocks of conventional phantasmatic politics. over my discussion in this paper looms a specter of a very particular ‘face’and, i would add, ‘body’ that universalizes the predicament of being violently excluded from the dominant political/symbolic orders, not only in the balkans but also globally – the face of a woman from bosnia exposed to (post)war traumas. this ‘face/body’ is a symptomatic subject of the oxymoronic bosnian political community – she who is hit by the twin crises of trauma and destitution, who is constantly ‘waiting’ (on the waiting list, in the waiting room…) for justice to be enacted – to return home, to have her ‘missing’ found, to see the war 1 this article is dedicated to all mak’s ‘aunties’ and ‘uncles’ at škofja loka (slovenia) summer school 2004 within the hesp regional seminar on postcolonial and post-socialist context in social scientific teaching and writing. criminals punished, to feel safer in her everyday life and more confident about her life prospects, and so forth. she experiences multiple political dislocations and marginalizations finding herself at the end of the chain – if we agree that the balkans embody a paradoxical liminality of europe/modernity; that bosnia has, in many respects, become a dislocated, traumatic kernel of the always-already liminal balkans; and that the ‘face/body’ i use as a point of departure in my metaphorical universalizations of injurious predicaments stands for an exception even within (the dislocated/liminal) bosnia, as an excluded remainder of conventional political registers we find in bosnia, in the balkans, in europe and globally. my ‘face/body’ is truly an alien life inhabiting the earthly political communities of our times. what is her voice, where is her space, how is her politics? this discussion of emancipations and justice relates to the speechless and solitary terrains around her where words and company must be found. to relate this to an insight offered by judith butler, women have always known very well the question of how a collective deals with its vulnerability to violence. […] there is the possibility of appearing impermeable, of repudiating vulnerability itself. there is the possibility of becoming violent. but perhaps there is some other way to jen typewritten text 15 live in such a way that one is neither fearing death, becoming socially dead from fear of being killed, or becoming violent, and killing others, or subjecting them to a life of social death predicated upon the fear of literal death. perhaps this other way to lie requires a world in which collective means are found to protect bodily vulnerability without precisely eradicating it. surely, some norms will be useful for the building of such a world, but they will be norms that no one will own, norms that will have to work not through normalization or racial and ethnic assimilation, but through becoming collective sites of continuous political labor. (butler 2004: 231) casting a look at the symbolic and political constitution of bosnian/balkan realities may prompt us to think of the balkans as a trauma, particularly in relation to sovereign biopolitical fractures that our political bodies/subjectivities struggle within and against. at stake here is a complex dynamics between political community and trauma with regards to the ‘survivors’ and their urge to witness, to speak, and/or to act. however, the interstices of law, literature/art, and politics, when it comes to witnessing trauma and ‘speaking to power’ not only in relation to the war crimes tribunals but also within larger deliberated public spheres in our societies, are poorly researched. this has huge implications for any endeavor to reinvigorate politics and empower agencies dealing with trauma and justice. witness to trauma: beyond the dominant political/symbolic (dis)orders faced with the impossibility of representing the trauma, and yet urged to bear witness to it, we are bound to mark this very impossibility in our speech and through our acts, and seek justice from a radically uncertain ground. the process of encircling trauma instead of gentrifying it produces a space for radical repoliticizations of violent exclusionary political and social deadlocks around us. as jenny edkins succinctly points out, in the circuit between trauma, violence, and political community (which falsely promises wholeness and safety), something may be qualified as traumatic if there is a dramatic gap between our expectations and the event, which produces a new structure of feeling / cognition / subjectivization, experienced as both incredible betrayal and radical helplessness (edkins 2003: 9). (in this sense, the balkans as a ‘mismatch’ or ‘liminality’ uncover its traumatic livability). rather than the causes of trauma, its ‘measurement’ or ‘hierarchialization’, of concern here is the process of reckoning with the trauma through practices of memory, such as remembrance, memorialization, and witnessing. what this implies, as any production of meaning does, is a struggle between a myriad of ways in which we inscribe and reinscribe trauma into various narratives, official or personal, dominant or marginalized (edkins 2003: 15). moreover, the political trauma uncovers a hidden dimension within the interlocking texturing of political community and violence – we are faced with the inherent traumatic dimension of the political which various ideological technologies and disciplines mask, repress, or silence. such an experience of personal, social, cultural, and political fracturings through trauma painfully illustrates the dynamics between biopolitics and gender within the regimes of power, as well as the fact that the experience of being reduced to bare life without political relevance is proximate to women both in times of war as well as of peace, in family as well as in community. political community, like family, is a form of togetherness that regularly produces the subjectivizing formations of powerlessness and betrayal of trust, and turns itself into a prime site of violence and source of danger to our sociality, our political/cultural being (edkins 2003:2-4). considering that these social contexts give meaning to our lives and underpin our identities, when the illusion of certainty, jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 16 security, and safety they provide implodes, we uncover the traumatic kernel and the relationships of power below them – in other words, we face the radical contingency of social and political edifices, as well as of meanings ascribed to ways and forms of life which were previously considered as a given (edkins 2003: 4-5). we feel radically dislocated from the balkans, from bosnia, from what is imposed to us as our ethnic or gender identity or political community. we feel a sense of not belonging to the matrices around us – and the urge to bear witness and testify to this not-belonging which may be universalized to all members of a community/society/state, and to the contingency of political orders around us. this is a political act of such a degree that it can shake up and reshuffle the fundamentals of conventional political registers and matrices. therefore, it is only to be expected that the kinds of witnessing that do shake and reshuffle our quests for social and political transformation are continually resisted and suppressed by those agents and structures, those discursive/practical arrangements, that are themselves threatened by any attempt to undermine and destabilize the patriarchal identitarian exclusionary phantasms embedded in state and family. what i want to emphasize here is the fact that trauma which happens within family as well as within political community is outside the possibility of conventional communication, because the language we have to use belongs to the very community and the very relationships of power that traumatized us in the first place (edkins 2003: 7-8). the paradox of having to witness both inside and outside the vocabulary of power produces a further sense of dislocation, of never fully belonging to a community whose registers of communication and discursive arrangements we cannot use to express or politicize our own experience. often the attempt to witness to trauma brings us back to the position of powerlessness, speechlessness, and renewed betrayal of trust. these are the themes that come back to fore when discussing the delicate interstices between law, trauma, art, and witnessing. the survivors, on the other hand, seek ways of resistance, speaking and acting outside of the institutional registers where the subjection to depoliticizing technologies of power and the circuit between victims and torturers/criminals will be eschewed (edkins 2003: 8-9). contrary to that, the sovereign structures of biopolitical power strive to achieve the normalization of the survivors – the aim is to recover the victims and to include them again into the structures of power and belonging in a way that will gentrify their trauma and make them a harmless part of the reproduction of these sovereign identitarian (be they gender, ethnic…) matrices. also, considering that the concept of trauma always oscillates between victimhood and protest, the overall atmosphere of victimization around us means that sympathy and pity are offered to the survivors in return for their surrender of authentic political voice (edkins 2003: 9). the situation with the women traumatized by the war in bosnia and their attempt to witness to it in politically relevant ways is more than discouraging. it is far from surprising that their experience is that of a person hitting a wall of the waiting room, never proceeding beyond it. what their practices of remembrance, memoralization, and witnessing attest to, embody, but may also challenge is this very dynamic between trauma, violence, and political community in bosnia, as well as in the balkans and universally – after all, reckoning with the trauma in an emancipatory fashion implies the reformulation of identity and community. behind the crises of testimony, whose very structure challenges sovereign power, lays the inevitable routinization and codification of testimony that occurs within the public sphere, where we are faced with three strategies of coping with testimony: mythologization, medicalization, and disappearance (tal 1996:6). mythologization happens when a traumatic event is reduced to a set of controlled and jen typewritten text 17 contained narratives (notions of rescue, redemption, and overcoming in museums, documentaries, and so on); medicalisation perceives testimony as a symptom of an illness (like the post-traumatic stress disorder) and blunts its political edge survivors are treated through various psychiatric and medical practices that aim to rehabilitate them and reinscribe them into social orders of normality; disappearance is a strategy of a refusal to recognize trauma, which undermines the credibility of survivors (tal 1996:6-7). all three strategies are in different degrees present in the complex and regionally-varied interplay of practices of remembering in bosnia. witnessing as a political act that threatens the status quo is always met with an attempt on behalf of dominant political, social, and economic forces to retain control over the interpretation of testimony. after the codification of traumatic events, they are appropriated, whereby appropriation governed by the official practices of sovereignty and identity turns trauma into an acceptable and in many respects, depoliticized, story. on the other side, bearing witness is an aggressive act. it is born out of refusal to bow to outside pressure to revise or repress experience, a decision to embrace conflict rather than conformity, to endure a lifetime of anger and pain rather than to submit to the seductive pull of revision and repression. its goal is change. if survivors retain control over the interpretation of their trauma, they can sometimes force a shift in the social and political structure (tal 1996:7). moreover, this challenge of witnessing does not come only from the survivors of traumatic experience, since there are three distinct ‘levels’ of witnessing: being a witness to the experience itself; being a witness to the testimonies of others, and ‘being a witness to the process of witnessing itself’ (laub 1996:61-75). such an interpretation renders us all witnesses. one of the priorities of any politics of social transformation is to bear witness to sovereign biopolitical traumas through unappropriated and authentic political voices. its transformative potential must (continue to) draw on an ongoing critique and traversal of omnipresent and powerful mythologizing-medicalizing-disappearing strategies that gentrify, codify, and appropriate the bosnian/balkan traumas and thus reproduce the sovereign biopolitical matrices heterocentric/patriarchal, ethnonationalist, and so forth… law, art, and trauma: is there a (legal versus literary) language of witnessing? the conjuncture between law, collective and individual trauma, art, and justice in the balkans is a theoretico-practical knot whose unraveling deserves more serious and active engagement from practitioners and theoreticians. the ever-increasing obviousness of the link between the previous, ongoing and awaiting trials and traumas shows us that we not only need the reestablishment of the law’s monopoly on violence, but also must seek justice, to use shoshana felman’s words here, “not simply as punishment but as a marked symbolic exit from the injuries of a traumatic history: as liberation from violence itself” (felman 2002: 1). histories of political, domestic, and sexual violence (in the balkans and wider) amount to our collective traumas, and they permeate all spheres of deliberated public life in our societies, thus turning into a matter of culture, literature, art, and politics. it is not only the exercise of justice by trial and by law that we use to come to terms with the wounds incurred by the violence in the balkans, although the promise of legal justice remains in many respects a vital response to the traumatic legacies and collective injuries that shape our everyday living to an unprecedented degree (felman 2002: 2-3). how, then, is one to enter this nexus between trial, law and justice, trauma, collective or private, memory, forgetfulness, forgiveness and the repetition of trauma? my argument is that of all the balkan troubles and quandaries, this jen typewritten text 18 one is most crucial and also the one in respect to which we feel most marginalized and disempowered by various regional and global political and symbolic economies. with regards to collective/private traumatic histories and states of injury, “what has to be heard in court is precisely what cannot be articulated in legal language” because the claims to justice go beyond consciousness and cognition and the need to arbitrate and decide on guilt and punishment (felman 2002: 4). the critical legal events in the hague and soon in our own courts (on a presumably much larger scale) represent not only the drama of law but the drama of much larger cultural crisis too; they encircle a critical traumatic content that polarizes “the cultural, the political, the moral and the epistemological crises” of legitimacy and truth amongst our generations (felman 2002: 4-5). in contemporary trials dealing with the public and collective legal record of mass trauma, we see that the two poles they address – private trauma and collective traumakeep reversing into each other, because trials always at the same time not only have a collective echo, calling upon collective identifications and generalizations, but also bring to the public stage and give voice to the ‘bearer of the silence’, the individual traumatized subject (felman 2002: 6-7). the ways in which the law attempts to contain the trauma by framing it through legal-conscious discourse, or how the trauma gives a new jurisprudential dimension to the drama of the law, or how the trauma addressed by the trial transforms the relationship between what is presumed to be private and collective/public trauma, are beyond the scope of this article (see felman 2002 for more elaboration on these topics). i will, therefore, briefly turn to the potentiality of feminism to engender new ways of thinking memory and theorizing trauma – or to the fact of how one can follow in the footsteps of walter benjamin or hannah arendt, arguing with them and beyond them, so as to act as a cultural witness who turns “trauma as experience into insight and whose innovative concepts [can give us] new tools with which to think” our balkan troubles and current times (felman 2002: 8). in addition to this, essential for such witnessing is the dimension of literature as a very specific dimension of meaning correlative to, yet distinct from, the interstices between law and trauma (felman 2002: 8). in any case, the cultural significance of historic trials, like the ones at the international crimes tribunal in the hague, is always accompanied by the complementary dimension of literature and film.2 “the testimony of some literary writers in the face of trauma and in the face of the events of law corroborates and complements the testimony of critics and the thinkers, the theorists of trauma,” because “legal meaning and literary meaning necessarily inform and displace each other” (felman 2002: 8). one can even talk of a literary justice, and not only a legal one, that emerges when literature does justice to the trauma in a way that the law does not or cannot, because literature does justice to the refusal of the trauma to be closed, because it does not gentrify the abyss of the trauma but keeps encircling it and casting a look over it in new and repoliticizing ways. i will extensively quote felman here: literature is a dimension of concrete embodiment and a language of infinitude that, in contrast to the language of the law, encapsulates not closure but precisely what in a given legal case refuses to be closed and cannot be closed. it is to this refusal of the trauma to be closed that literature does justice. the literary writers [can] stand beyond or in the margin of the legal closure, on the brink of the abyss that underlies 2 an example of problematic dealing with trauma in literature are slavenka drakulić’s novels (see references). on the other side, a promising way of tackling trauma is to be found in the films of jasmila žbanić, such as red rubber boots and after, after. jen typewritten text 19 the law, on whose profundity they fix their vision and through whose bottomlessness they reopen the closed legal case. (felman 2002: 8) literature is what sits at the tension between consciousness and unconsciousness, language and silence pertaining to the trauma, because it is constantly engaged with the failure of words; the literary can act as a gaze cast at the trial through a dimension of speechless embodiment, silence, it can encapsulate any site of memory to the trauma where traumatic histories start speaking beyond the limits of speech (felman 2002: 9). not only trials, but also other forms of testimony and bearing witness are at the same time memorable discursive scenes and dramatically physical theatres of justice: testimonial voices always-already relate to the “body of the witness [as] the ultimate site of memory of individual and collective trauma – because trauma makes the body matter and because the body testifying to the trauma” always matters in new ways (felman 2002: 9). how are we to give politically relevant and potentially emancipatory voices to that which cannot be said, to trauma as an identity and a dimension of the real/the political, in a way that traverses the symbolic master-signifiers of balkanization experiences? legal remedies can never fully overcome and subdue a traumatic past simply because trauma refuses closure – this is why practices of remembrance, memoralization, and witnessing, as well as literature and art, continually address the unmastered and unmasterable past seeking the promise of justice. there is no trial that can ever bring closure to our balkan troubles and traumatic histories and presents. from law to art, from an event in law to an event in art, from evidence in law to evidence in art is a movement between two poles of language – a language of abbreviation, limitation, and totalization and a language of infinity, irreducibility of fragments, embodiment, incarnation, embodied incantation or endless rhythmic repetition (felman 2002: 153). in the repoliticization of biopolitical fractures through art, we see the exercise of the testimonial power of a bodily reality and presence of the witness that fractures the totality of facts sought through the law, which fractures and traverses the legal muteness by giving incremental meanings to our silences (felman 2002: 153-4). only together these two modes of coping with mad and nightmarish traumatic history – the literary and the legal language of witnessing engage us in a dialogue with the limits of experience and our liminal subjectivities, with what is incomprehensible, untotalizable, uncontainable, unsayable, impossible to narrate, and yet whose very registration, dramatization, and enactment endows new meanings to the pursuits of justice (felman 2002: 156). perhaps the local processing of the war crimes will make justice ever more seen (rather than just done) than the processing done in the distant hague, because in the perspective of a larger cultural and historic visibility of testimonials we will be able to see jurisprudential drama around the body of the witness as a site of memory (felman 2002: 162). the physical dimension, the witness’s speech, the petrification of her body – these are the moments through which history as injury dramatically and traumatically speaks to us as the audience and impresses itself on our memory (felman 2002: 164). speaking through the explosion of the legal framework, through the moments of its rapture, offers legal and conceptual breakthroughs – it is in these moments in which both art and history speak beyond the legal tool (felman 2002: 165-6). the necessary failures of the trials caused by the legal categories that cannot comprehend collective trauma or translate it into consciousness and cognition through legal tools point to something else – to the events of witnessing, witnesses’ bodies and voices, which have a literary, cultural, and jurisprudential speaking power of a higher order (felman 2002: 166). there are many examples to support this, and a prominent one is one of the proposed jen typewritten text 20 designs for the memorial complex at potočari, srebrenica, which prominently figures in the everyday imagination and was used for the public fundraising campaign in the local media. it offers a vision of postcolonial recuperation of identity and belonging away from sovereign biopolitical matrices, in line with the anthropological depth of mak dizdar’s poetic reconfiguration of modern bosnia.3 in this design a series of embroidered pillows is placed on the grassy mountain slope, which is a scene that evokes bosnian medieval tombs, stećaks (see buturović, 2002, for more details on this). it is important to note that srebrenica women hold a silent public protest on every 11th day in a calendar month, carrying the pillows on which they embroidered the names of their missing. these embroidered pillows, waiting for their missing sleepers, play with the notion of memory as embroidery, and as typically women’s work. the music accompanying the public appeal was the old bosnian folk song sevdalinka “vezak vezla,” which talks about a woman waiting for her beloved whilst embroidering. such memoralization of the experience of trauma is a heretical resistance to the canon – it is an affirmation of the liminal and the defiant tropes in bosnian cultural habitus; it is a response to the injury and violence that traverses the logic and phantasms resulting in trauma. therein lingers the potentiality of a new form of commonality and solidarity at the crossroads between the dead and the living, the missing and the remaining, the excluded and the included, the past and the future, forgetting and remembrance, silence and speech, disappearance and continuance. indeed, responses of this order (with respect to the predicaments of traumatized subjects) instantiate the promise of justice with regards to the cultural drama of liminality, historical injury and not-belonging in politics, and call for a political act of metaphoric universalizations and 3 mak dizdar is one of the most prominent bosnian poets. see references for further reading. identifications with the excluded where identity and community are reformulated. in such interstices between testimony/witnessing and literature/art, together but not only with reference to the law, there is a potential to recast our own speaking and acting power in the overall appeals to justice, by starting out from the face and body as a site of memory and trauma. the space for this is the deliberated public life of our societies at large, where new specific synergies between culture, art, literature and politics should be intensively sought and enacted against the backdrop of our own traumatic historical (im)possibilities of justice. references cited: butler, judith. 2004. undoing gender, new york: routledge. buturović, amila. 2002. stone speaker. medieval tombs, landscape, and bosnian identity in the poetry of mak dizdar, with translations by francis r. jones, hampshire: palgrave. dizdar, mak. 1999. kameni spavač / stone sleeper, translated by francis r. jones, sarajevo: did. drakulić, slavenka. 2004. they would never hurt a fly: war criminals on trial at the hague, london: viking books. drakulić, slavenka. 1999. as if i am not there: a novel about the balkans, london: abacus edkins, jenny. 2003. trauma and the memory of politics, cambridge: cambridge university press. felman, shoshana. 2002. the juridical unconscious: trials and traumas in the twentieth century, cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. laub, dori. 1995. ‘truth and testimony: the process and the struggle’, in cathy caruth (ed.), trauma: explorations in memory, baltimore: john hopkins university press, 61-75. jen typewritten text jen typewritten text tal, kali. 1996. worlds of hurt: reading the literature of trauma, cambridge: cambridge university press. jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 21 jen typewritten text the internationalization of higher education in kyrgyzstan the internationalization of higher education in kyrgyzstan nurgul n. djanaeva international university of kyrgyzstan general notes after kyrgyzstan gained independence, kyrgyzstani higher education was challenged by broad changes in political and economic life, and by the destruction of the ideological values, which used to shape the development of higher education. economic and political processes have affected the entire structure of educational organizations. meanwhile, higher education was also impacted by the internationalization of life throughout the country. the process of the kyrgyz republic's integration into the global system resulted in social demands visible and not very visible, to the higher education sector. in general, higher education in kyrgyzstan was always a part of the bigger soviet system of education. all principles of higher education structurization, its mission and goals, its strategy and main curriculum requirements were centrally developed in moscow, then sent for implementation to the republics. we were a part of a multicultural and multinational educational system and yet this multicultural and multinational educational system was a unified system, based on monopoly on the level of higher education policy development. these particular experiences of living in a big system and its historical legacy left our colleges and universities unprepared for independence. this situation, to a great extent, is influencing the process of our integration into the global educational community of universities, and to a certain extent shapes the process of internationalization as well as its goals. we are currently experiencing revolutionary changes in higher education. factors influencing the current changes include the transition to a market economy, and internationalization of higher education as a part of the "opened doors" policies. many of these changes are due to our efforts and intentions to use international experience to run higher education on the basis of cost effectiveness and our belief in international experience as a highly valuable resource. foreign experience is impacting our development, and foreign specialists are creating our future development plans. for example, "the education and training master plan" of the kyrgyz republic was prepared for the asian development bank by mainly international specialists in consultation with our local specialists. there is strong political support for the internationalization of the higher education sector in the country. for example, several years ago, the president of kyrgyzstan established a special commission for promotion of the science, education and culture. one of this commission's activities included enhancement of international ties of academia and international accreditation of our universities. the law of the kyrgyz republic on education in the section 1, article 3 "principle of organization of education" declares "orientation towards achievements of modern science and to international standards" as one of the basic principles of organization of education. at the moment in kyrgyzstan, internationalization is not only a process of linkages with foreign colleges and networking, but also a process of reshaping our internal higher education structure through the integration of internationalization into the jen typewritten text 131 development of higher education. in other words, internationalization is also functional. internationalization acts at this historical moment as one of the factors for future system development. as the "education and training master plan" of the kyrgyz republic states, "the intended restructuring of kyrgyz higher education in order to reach the world class level in teaching and research also requires major changes in university administration" (6, p. 114) in a more general sense, internationalization supports the integration of the kyrgyz republic into the global economic community. however, this goal is not as recognized in our country as it is in western europe, where educational efforts are supported by the eu and are aimed at supporting european economic integration. another goal of internationalization is the provision of broad opportunities to the citizens of kyrgyz republic to study and work in internationally. when speaking of internationalization, one may include at least two parameters: 1. internationalization of higher education institutions, including not only the components of the higher education system, (curriculum, student body, faculty and staff, administrative behavior, management, etc.), but also changes in that system, (for example, a shift from a single level university education to a dual level system-undergraduate and graduate or the introduction of the credit hour system). 2. internationalization of external relations developing various academic, research, and cultural linkages with foreign higher education institutions. in this case, internationalization may be on a structural level, behavioral level, and service quality level. internationalization has become one of the key indicators of the organizational quality in our university system. therefore, international participation is reported as an achievement, because it means recognition in the international arena. impact of internationalization on higher education: developmental trends analysis of the internationalization of higher education includes study of its sources and its impact on the complex patterns of university life. it is definitely is a challenge to university development and may lead to not so positive shifts. several questions can be postulated: does impact of internationalization on the system of higher education have a positive character? does it include the organizational culture of the universities? is it good for us? what is the future of the internationalization of higher education in kyrgyzstan? can we say that internationalization of higher education institutions occurs autonomously under state control or under public control? who initiates it? who are beneficiaries? who runs it? is it eclectic or systematic? goals and costs of internationalization the main rationale for internationalization is: recognition of our diplomas and degrees abroad; improvement of educational quality; equal partnership on the global level (higher education institutions, scholars, research teams, faculty, students, etc.); equal participation of our higher education institutions in the world educational arena (education, research, debates); participation in the development of the global educators' community; better adjustment to the market economy in a new political and economic environment; learning from the international experience; broad access of kyrgyzstani citizens to the global educational and research opportunities, marketing on the global jen typewritten text 132 level; attraction of foreign students and faculty; learning from the best international experience in expanding democracy in higher education; getting support for the development of democratization of higher education; provision of better opportunities for our citizens in terms of the best world educational standards; and equal employment opportunities outside of the country. current objectives of internationalization first is the process of the developing of human capacity in the area through higher education. the second goal is getting kyrgyzstani universities accredited through prominent international accrediting agencies. further, we need to develop institutional capacity for planning, organization and management of higher education. related to this is setting up institutional linkages with other universities and having the quality of individual courses evaluated by foreign partners. lastly, we are seeking financial assistance for reforms. why do we seek it? we seek internationalization in part because of a desire and need to compare our higher education system with foreign systems. we think that "foreign " is always "better." we need support for our young reforms, taken from abroad. there is a trend toward globalization including the realm of higher education, and we want to participate in it. further, we want other people, countries, and cultures to recognize us as an equal partner. we want to compete on the global arena. at this historical moment, international assistance is a substantial support to our development. it is in human nature to like to travel, to want to go on a human pilgrimage. do we really need it? what is the relation of internationalization to reaching higher education's sustainability when many colleges and universities are being founded and state funding is decreasing? internationalization of higher education exists on the framework of international donor assistance to the country's development. in many cases it includes visiting experts on various issues to the higher education sector for various reasons. i think that it is time to consider sustainability issues of the current directions in higher education and to spend funds and time to develop our own local corps of higher education experts, instead of always inviting foreign experts to do the job for us. we should use our own professionals, who have greater knowledge in the local situation. the reason for saying this is very simple we received credit for the improvement of higher education and a tremendous amount of money was spent on international experts. indirect effects of internationalization: internationalization has produced a wide range of changes in kyrgyz society. one is the support of the human right for the mobility of kyrgyzstan citizens. internationalization has also contributed to the development of civil society in kyrgyzstan, to the development of a global community, and to personal individual development. academic internationalization has resulted in recognition of our professionals and specialists abroad, democratization of decision making within colleges and universities, and decentralization of power. colleges and universities have become independent from the state through the possibility of direct financing of institutional projects by donors, and setting up institutional linkages without approval from state authorities. this contributes to the jen typewritten text 133 future of decentralized system of management in higher education and to the development of the academic freedom through placing faculty in various academic settings abroad, via high valuing of the idea of academic freedom and the process of its implementation. a final indirect effect is the development of integrated new information and communication technologies. beneficiaries of higher education internationalization beneficiaries of higher education internationalization include: kyrgyzstani students and faculty, kyrgyzstani colleges and universities, kyrgyzstani economy, kyrgyzstani civil society, educational quality, foreign colleges and universities, international research, international trade, and globalization. let me examine, for example kyrgyz-european linkages. is there an interest in including central asian higher education institutions into the european credit transfer system and making the system a eurasian one? we hope that the answer is yes, we think that it is better to be ahead of the economic and political processes and to prepare people, organizations, and business to benefit of the social processes. this is a goal of education. for instance, there is increasing trade cooperation among our countries, but higher education is not preparing people to work adequately and to deal professionally in this situation. for example, we could offer better opportunities for trade cooperation by providing more language courses either in a formal or informal educational setting, or by introducing trade law courses. there will be more such examples in the future. internationalization in this case will be definitely of mutual economic interest to kyrgyzstan and to european countries. currently, financial resources for internationalization come from: 1. international assistance (loans, grants) 2. state budget 3. internal revenue of the university 4. special programs, like presidential commission international assistance as a source of internationalization of higher education in kyrgyzstan, international assistance has played a particularly valuable role since higher education's transformation after independence. as the document of the asian development bank (adb) indicated in its report about the education sector in 1996: "the law on education permits the involvement of foreign bodies in the sphere of education and training in kyrgyzstan. a number of donor countries, bilateral and multilateral organizations have executed projects in the field of education and training since independence in 1991. these organizations include both governmental and non-governmental organizations." international assistance has included a number of activities supporting international educational linkages including the tempus program of the european union, the fulbright program of the usa, and others. in the above mentioned report the adb notes that priority areas for international assistance in the transition period are: 1. "provision of support ofsustainable development and appropriate aspects of the current system; assistance with reform processes" 2. "international assistance remains fragmented and many potential synergy effect unexploited as a result" jen typewritten text 134 impact of internationalization on the organizational culture of universities the education and training master plan of the kyrgyz republic, in section iii, "higher education" indicates a strategy of the program as “increasing the quality of teaching and research" (6, p. 111). this area of "increasing the quality of teaching and research" is a main area for the contribution of international experience. areas of internationalization include the following parameters: staff and student mobility; curriculum; financing higher education; faculty and staff development; faculty, staff, and students exchange; research; administration; overnance; accreditation and credit recognition; institutional improvement. it is only due to internationalization that faculty started working in the form of projects, which were not very widely used previously. curriculum: a good example of internationalization is our joint work with san francisco state university in the area of curriculum development for economics courses, which included long-term faculty capacity development. this project was sponsored by the american foundation "eurasia.” at the moment we are working on preparing economics courses to be taught in english, jointly with the dutch amhem and neimegem business school. we hope that it will be one of the first steps towards participation in the european credit transfer system. financing higher education: an analysis was prepared by kyrgyzstani higher education specialists for the asian development bank for financial support of our educational system. financial support is provided to higher education through various channels, including, but not limited to, funding joint projects (academic, research, faculty and staff mobility, capacity development). internationalization in terms of finance doesn't necessarily mean direct or indirect financing of higher education. sometimes, as in the present case, it means internationalization of the colleges' and universities' financing structure. so foreign experience, not money, can improve our system. for example, the development of fundraising in universities is a direct impact of the foreign experience. faculty and staff development: probably this area is the most important area for the future sustainability of the higher education of kyrgyzstan. we highly appreciate all the efforts and finances involved in the support of our teachers and scholars. for future success we need to strengthen this side of internationalization in our country. the president of kyrgyzstan, being himself a scientist, launched a special presidential program supporting young specialists' preparation abroad. part of this trained group will work in institutions of higher education. faculty, staff, and student exchange: research: at the end of the xxth century it is crucial for faculty and scholars to have updated information. open political doors created the possibility for kyrgyz scholars to collaborate with foreign colleagues. there is no doubt about the intellectual capacity of our scholars to contribute to the world research, but there are certainly not enough information channels. not all scholars have open access to information nor are they able to set up valuable contacts. enhancing the information system in international academic exchange is identified in the "education and training master plan" of the kyrgyz republic as an important strategy. step by step, research and faculty contacts are increasing. one of the major obstacles in internationalization of our academic life in higher education is language and available funds. nevertheless, there are certain possibilities in this area. administration. governance: the asian development bank, in its "education and training master plan" of the kyrgyz republic recognized higher education needs for jen typewritten text 135 administrative staff retraining and for capacity building, and acknowledges that we now lack our own internal training resources for this purpose. it suggested training sessions for highand middle-level administrative personnel, organized in kyrgyzstan in cooperation with international agencies, as well as participation in the short-term training abroad (6, p. 114). foreign colleges exibit a strong trend to work strategically. during our process of transforming higher education we can benefit from international experience in terms of learning and implementing the methods and systems of strategic thinking, strategic management, enhancing strategic plan development and university community's participation in this process. so we are close now to other lessons from our foreign colleagues democratization of university life, expanding faculty activities to include broad participation and encouraging the initiation of new processes in higher education. intel-nationalization is now for us a process of developing democratic values, like academic freedom, in the academic life. international experience may help us in the process of faculty and staff empowment, which will be a key element in the strengthening of higher education in the country. our experience in empowering our faculty has revealed a strong resistance to take advantage of initiatives, a major loss of faculty commitment in decision making (due to incredibly small salaries and lack of any benefits), and an inherited tradition to be outside of the process of decision making and planning for the future. speaking about democratization, one should mention a tradition in western education to organize interest groups and lobby at various political levels. as one american scholar writes, "organized interests are playing increasingly influential role in american policy"(3, xii). as indicated in a study of the impact of management systems (see baldridge, policymaking and effective leadership. san francisco: jossey-bass, 1978 ), technical, financial, and political support to internationalization coming from abroad strengthens participation at various levels in the decision making process. the fact that many educational endeavors that received foreign financial and other support are shaped in the form of projects and that the people involved in the project are not, for the most part, top administrators, encouraged people to participate actively in the decision-making process. accreditation and credit recognition: one of the key words when we are talking about higher education in terms of internationalization is accreditation. this is an area where foreign experience and foreign contacts are very valuable but so far are limited. the existing national institutional assessment institutional assessment system of higher education is working, but it seems not to be able to fulfill the demands and needs of the kyrgyzstani citizens, as well as the needs of kyrgyzstani higher education institutions to be recognized for equal opportunities abroad. we have to convince foreign universities, companies, foundations, educators and various organizations that our degrees, diplomas, programs, colleges and universities are of good and high quality by means of international assessment, which is provided by accrediting agencies. certainly, that it is not enough, but we can't influence time and this is only a first step. the usefulness of accreditation is its effect on institutional improvements in higher education. entering the market economy with a destroyed social and economic system gives education, especially higher education, specific tasks for preparing people who are able to build a wealthy country and makes the question about educational outcomes a very critical one. for kyrgyzstan now, it is extremely important to evaluate and to have people jen typewritten text 136 with expertise in the evaluation of educational outcomes. this area of assessment of educational outcomes is an area in which we need to get lessons from abroad. we need international partners, international skills, and international evaluation. it is important for kyrgyzstani higher education educators to participate in higher education assessment discussions. we have a strong tradition in some aspects of educational assessment and we definitely can contribute to the world discussion as well benefit from it. challenges during the internationalization of higher education, we in kyrgyzstan made a lot of changes which now are being reviewed and sometimes we returning to the previous patterns. for example, some universities are shifting back to offering to students a 5-year degree with diploma. it is a bridge. functionally, internationalization is a way of bringing the best experience, to improve public policy concerning internationalization. i would like to share with you some contemporary higher education policy issues on internationalization in kyrgyzstan: • legislation • role of key public officials • policy issues, shaping the future of the internationalization of higher education in kyrgyzstan (5) areas of challenge include: 1. institutional • academic (credit transfers, curriculum development as a response to market demands ) • financial • lack of understanding of the ways, forms, and perspectives of cooperation with the world • difference in approaches both at ontological and epistemological levels. • our limited knowledge about the foreign experience, resources • lack of understanding of the ways, forms, perspectives of cooperation with the world 2. personallanguage 3. wide social levelmacro level • political (recognition between countries, for example india, sweden) • high level of financial and political instability • lack of vision for future external perspectives (at the moment limited trade relations exist between countries and benefits of relations with kyrgyzstan are not visible) • cultural (as a result of this challenge, special training programs in intercultural communication and orientation appeared in the curriculum of various foreign and kyrgyzstani universities, for example otop in the sfsu and an analogous course is being developed in the iuk ) • difference in understanding the key issues of higher education • lack of understanding of higher education problems in the world and in general of higher education development or inter-university cooperation jen typewritten text 137 • limited knowledge of international higher education and agencies supporting higher education cooperation • in kyrgyzstan the process of decision making on internationalization of higher education. (for example, a state agency "goscominvest" which for the state committee for investment is "a principal body responsible for the coordination of international activities in the field of education and training" [6, p. 56]) perspectives speaking about perspectives, we mean perspectives not only in the internal university structure, but also very much in the external relations of colleges and universities. international experience in this sense is really a treasure. we, stepping into the market economy, can benefit from foreign experience in serving its community well, developing a community orientation, fund raising, participation of stakeholders in decision -making, marketing, and careful analysis of the community needs. researchers recognize that it is this area that made american education successful and a leader. this leads, of course, to external assessment of academic and research institutions, like colleges and universities. so we can start developing our assessment tools which will later contribute to better serving the community. one of the key elements of internationalization is internationalization of assessment concepts, tools and processes. we can identify a range of possible perspectives of the internationalization of higher education: • eurasian educational space development • higher education internationalization as a substantial support to the integrative • trends in central asia and eurasia • spin-off effects of internationalization will be quality improvement and quality assurance in higher education • easy credit transfer among higher education institution of the kyrgyz republic and the outside world • growth of self confidence • joint course development (transnational, inter-institutional, etc.) • stable faculty and student mobility flow • participation in the ects • providing of academic courses in english • strong research contacts • strengthening of the internationalization process • improvement of university management • support of democracy building in the kyrgyz republic swot analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) what are the strong sides of internationalization? internationalization has shaped a great deal of our development since independence. shifting to the bachelor's and master's degree programs is one example. internationalization influenced the trend towards the independence of central bodies and the ability to answer to the demands of the economy. what are the weak sides of internationalization? strong dependence on foreign support, tremendous lack of internal resources for internationalization, lack of jen typewritten text 138 human capacity in the development of international ties. it can destroy the advantages of the previous higher educational system if implemented without careful analysis of the needs and mission of kyrgyzstani higher education institutions. lessons learned from abroad: we are not the only educators trying to learn from international experience and get some lessons out of it. i would like to mention the article of the respected scholar, burton r. clark from the university of california at berkley (2, p. 365376). he examines issues of coordination of higher education, control over education, diversity of the forms of organization in the higher education sector, and the university's autonomy. after reading his article i was thinking very seriously about the question many of my colleagues were asking: will the changes impacted by international experience promote success? won't they "deny the grounds on which we have been successful to date" (2, 365)? educators in the usa are concerned with development, whereas we are not very much concerned, although we should be much more concerned by development process that they, due to the severe circumstances that we are facing now and the demands for identification of development strategies. whether or not we realize the need for development, changes are coming rapidly and reflection can help us control and gain success instead of loosing whatever we already have. executive officers need an analytical framework to help them to make wise decisions. for example, we should pose questions such as: what kind of bureaucracy can effectively coordinate mass higher education: centralized or institutionally autonomous? lobbying for higher education is an other area of international experience. it is a tradition in the usa, for example, for "interest groups" to participate in the decision making process. they are part of the policy networks and take part in developing policy networks that determine public policies. looking at the results of our foreign colleagues, we may try to develop "policy communities,” and intervene into the policy-making arena. do we have an infrastructure for that? this is one of several questions now facing us. do we need it? who needs it and why? can we identify private interests, community interests, state interests? what are the benefits of democratization in higher education? american experts consider participation in decisionmaking by many interest groups in higher education development as one of the key factors, which leads to the success of higher education. are we speaking about civil society or education in civil society? are we speaking about the contribution of higher education to the whole value structure, democratization of society via the set up of its "policy domain"(3, xii) or policy networks of the interest groups? we can see how different interests are dealt with so that they work for the benefit of higher education. can american lessons help us in identifying our hidden conflicts, hindering the development of higher education? my question is why, in the usa, do they pay so much attention to this sector? because it is extremely important and we should also take it into consideration. are european experiences more valuable in this sense? it is very close in many aspects to our previous system soviet. issues of academic freedom, which are very much discussed among international educators, and the foreign experience of professors enjoying "a fairly high degree of academic freedom" (2, p. 240), as well as the absence of structural constraints to such experiences, may effect positively the trends of development of the higher education sector in the future. history has shown that only free professors and scholars can produce jen typewritten text 139 socially valuable education and knowledge. there is no doubt that academic freedom is one of the key factors promoting the development of excellent education and advanced knowledge. this is another lesson learned from our international experience. we, educators in kyrgyzstan, after many decades of the totalitarian administrative regime, should use american experience in this area on large scale. p. g. altbach wrote that academic freedom in american universities "is quite free from structural restraints and that external authorities, including both government and college and university trustees, have been overwhelmingly supportive of academic freedom during the past several decades" (2, p. 240-241). policy issues in kyrgyz higher education under the influence of internationalization discussions about evolution in the area of higher education administration focus on centralization versus decentralization (2, 369). extensive research on decision making in the higher education sector, done in western countries, gives us a lot to think about. for example, we can use well developed tools that support the decision making process and a participatory approach, and thus change the whole system of running institutions. matthew j. liberatore, robert l. nydick have illustrated "how the analytical hierarchy process (ahp) can be applied to those situations in higher education where a group must evaluate a large number of alternatives' (2, 593) in other words, educators in the world outside the former soviet union have developed tools to support a shift from a single decision maker to decisions made by committees or groups. conclusion internationalization has many benefits for higher education in kyrgyzstan during its transitional period, but it raises many questions as well. the benefits include entering into the world system of academic research and innovation; increasing the mobility of students, faculty, and staff; participating in international accreditation and credit transfer; revitalizing the nation's economy; democratizing the administration of colleges and universities; broadening our understanding of academic freedom; and learning new approaches to a range of issues and problems, both academic and administrative. however, questions remain as well. we must not be too quick to discard everything about the old system, as parts of it were positive. we have to be wary of relying on external funding and of developing programs that are not sustainable. overall, however, the benefits of internationalization outweigh the questions, particularly since any funding that supports the capacity development of people is indeed sustainableeven if the funding ceases to exist, the ideas remain. and ideas are what higher education is all about, in kyrgyzstan or abroad. jen typewritten text 140 the internationalization of higher education in kyrgyzstan nurgul n. djanaeva�international university of kyrgyzstan anthropology of east europe review 33(1) spring 2015 87 housing the new russia by jane r. zavisca. ithaca and london: cornell university press, 2012. 242 pp. $79.95, hard bound, $26.95 paperback emily curtin, the graduate center at the city university of new york (cuny), phd candidate, department of anthropology housing the new russia by jane r. zavisca investigates the outcomes of the post-soviet russian state’s adoption of a housing regime modeled after the us mortgage system. far from realizing the goals of increasing homeownership and creating a purely market-based system of mortgage crediting, the project has largely been a failure. even after the russian government reintroduced housing subsidies in 2006, most russians continue to face an inaccessible mortgage market and crowded living spaces. zavisca’s monograph opens a new window on a familiar theme in post-socialist studies: the disillusionment with a capitalist economic system whose promises of prosperity have, for many people, failed to materialize. where things went wrong, and what the implications have been for ordinary russians is presented here in a rich historical and ethnographic account. because housing is such a fundamental and multivalent aspect of people’s lives, this book is also a story about kinship, morality, and post-soviet political subjectivities. the first part of the book provides a political and economic history of housing in russia from 1917 onward. here we get a detailed overview of soviet housing policy, including khrushchev’s ambitious 1957 decree promising a separate apartment to each nuclear family within twelve years. zavisca argues that it is this (unfulfilled) promise, more than comparisons with western housing standards, which is the origin of the normative belief that each family deserves a space of its own. despite the fact that most people rent or live within extended family households, the cultural ideal of the “separate apartment” continues to exert a powerful influence on people’s aspirations, their evaluations of larger political and economic structures, and even their decisions concerning marriage and family planning. after socialism, the russian government—with advice and financial backing from the us—attempted to transform the state-owned housing stock into a mortgage market. while the process of privatization meant that residents went from being de facto owners of their apartments to legal ones, those who were still waiting in housing queues when socialism ended were left with neither an apartment nor the financial means to buy one. today apartments are rarely purchased outright, but change hands within families through swapping and inheritance, a situation zavisca describes as a regime of “property without markets” (2012:87). although housing is now privately owned, it is not fully commodified. in practice this means that with the exception of the super-rich, few russians have been able to improve their housing situations through market channels. recognizing that the mortgage market was in need of a push, the russian government intervened in 2006 by introducing a housing subsidy in the form of a baby bonus. intended to stimulate both the mortgage market and the falling birth rate, the bonus, known as maternity capital, is a ten-thousand-dollar housing voucher given to russian women after the birth of a second child. while it is equivalent to over a year’s average wages, maternity capital has not substantially increased the rate of homeownership for young families, and has instead only reinforced the belief that the government should subsidize and manage the housing market. anthropology of east europe review 33(1) spring 2015 88 although zavisca cautions against interpreting this massive social commitment on the part of the russian state as a “retreat from capitalism back to socialism,” maternity capital does seem to complicate notions of “transition,” reform, and social welfare in the era of neoliberalism (2012:70). after having given the reader a sense of the history and political economy of housing under and after socialism, zavisca introduces an ethnographic component in the second half of the book. through interviews with young adults in the central russian city of kaluga, she uncovers some of the cultural reasons for the mortgage market failure. although almost all of her interlocutors were eager to improve their living situations, very few said they would consider taking out a mortgage. not only were the payments too high for most families, but russians, unlike americans, do not typically believe that a mortgage confers ownership. instead, they consider long-term housing loans a type of “debt bondage” (2012:76). further, many felt it was immoral to have to pay interest on a mortgage, since access to housing should be a fundamental social right. as becomes clear through the author’s interviews, the failure of the market to deliver the “separate apartment” casts doubts on the legitimacy of the market economy more generally. ultimately, the significance of housing for young russians extends beyond their dispositions toward state, market, and property. it is also tied up with kinship relations at all levels. unequal property rights within families create tensions and conflicts between siblings vying to inherit an apartment and between young adults and the parents or in-laws with whom they share a living space. young couples’ reproductive patterns are also affected by housing conditions and whether a “separate apartment” can be secured. although the ways people articulated their family planning strategies varied according to their educational levels, the author found that decisions about when and how many children to have were definitively linked to a couple’s housing situation. although it would seem that maternity capital could help improve fertility rates, most of zavisca’s respondents thought the housing voucher was insufficient and too difficult to use in practice. further, many found the very idea of monetary incentives for giving birth to be morally suspect (2012:174). this book focuses on a relatively neglected area of post-socialist studies—the contemporary russian housing regime—and presents a fascinating picture of the cultural barriers militating against the development of a successful mortgage market. in doing so, it joins an important body of literature that deepens our understanding of capitalist economic institutions by studying their export to formerly socialist contexts. however, given the book’s focus on housing and ownership, some may wish that the author had engaged with long-standing conversations on property and privatization within post-socialist anthropology (e.g. alexander 2004, chelcea 2003, dunn 2004, verdery 2003). how do the insights of this study link up to those debates? but that point aside, this book has much to offer and should be appropriate for undergraduates as well as graduate students and other scholars of sociology, anthropology, and urban studies. other works cited: alexander, catherine. 2004. value, relations, and changing bodies: privatisation and property rights in kazakhstan, pp. 251-274. in property in question, k. verdery and c. humphrey, eds. oxford, uk & new york:berg. anthropology of east europe review 33(1) spring 2015 89 chelcea, liviu. 2003. ancestors, domestic groups, and the socialist state: housing nationalization and restitution in romania. comparative studies in society and history 45(4): 714-740. elizabeth dunn. 2004. privatizing poland: baby food, big business, and the remaking of labor. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. verdery, katherine. 2003. the vanishing hectare: property and value in postsocialist transylvania. ithaca: cornell university press. anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 80 the left side of history: world war ii and the unfulfilled promise of communism in eastern europe. by kristen ghodsee. durham and london: duke university press. 2015. 231 pp. illustrations. index. maps. notes: paper. karen kapusta-pofahl, washburn university the left side of history by kristen ghodsee explores the lives of some of the young communist partisans that fought against fascism in the name of socialism during world war ii. it begins with the puzzle of how a street in sofia, bulgaria, came to be named after an englishman during the communist era. the first part of the book focuses on the details of the life of the street’s namesake, officer frank thompson. thompson was a young british solider during world war ii who ghodsee was able to uncover through his personal letters and biographies published in the uk and bulgaria. what emerges is a portrait of a young man who gives up a comfortable life in england to struggle, and eventually die as a socialist partisan in a firefight in the bulgarian countryside. as a young man, thompson becomes enamored by the principles of socialism and, during world war ii, volunteers to assist bulgarian partisans in their attempts to overthrow the nazi-allied bulgarian ruler, king boris iii. ghodsee documents thompson’s short life, then goes on to explore the lives of some of the other partisans that fought fascism in the name of socialism. ghodsee’s book, part life history and part ethnography, shifts from the life of thompson to an examination of the question of anti-communist sentiment in the post-socialist era. this question is of particular relevance in the bulgarian context, where the communist party has managed to garner significant support. given the anti-communism of the 1990s, and the exuberant neoliberalism of the 2000s, it is remarkable that the communist party currently enjoys a surprising amount of popularity throughout the region. this popularity is not without contestation, however, and that tension lives at the heart of ghodsee’s narrative. she paints a particularly sympathetic portrait of the partisans, both bulgarian and british, young idealists who dreamed of a more just world. members of groups who would eventually come to see each other as antagonistic, have once fought together against a common nazi enemy. the puzzle of a british soldier canonized as a hero in communist bulgaria is compelling, particularly in a postcold war framework. the second half of the book consists of an ethnographic narrative of the post-socialist experiences of some of those partisans and others who lived much of their lives during the communist era. ghodsee has a particular gift for ethnographic description. she is most in her element when describing her meetings with women in their 70s and 80s who had grown up in the communist era, some of whom had lived lives of relative privilege as former partisans or professionals. there are chapters about the work of women active in women’s organizations sanctioned by the communist party to garner grassroots support of women’s health initiatives. in rural areas, ghodsee points to the valuable work towards advancing equality that women did as part of the communist party apparatus. through these ethnographic vignettes, she challenges the anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 81 reader to evaluate their actions in light of their commitment to ideals and their impact on women’s lives, and less through their relation to the communist party apparatus. the book’s conclusion juxtaposes the stories of the partisans introduced earlier in the book to that of a monument and a website dedicated to the “victims of communism” in bulgaria. ghodsee challenges the anti-communist impulse by pointing out the war crimes of several of the men listed on the monument in the name of the fascist bulgarian government. with this parting chapter, she treads into waters that have not often been troubled. are actions undertaken in the name of one regime inherently more or less righteous by virtue of their relation to the regime in power? is the idealism of the bulgarian partisans and their british antifascist allies during wwii overridden by the oppression of the totalitarian regimes of stalinism and soviet-style communism? perhaps the most profound sentence in the book comes in the acknowledgements section, “this book is written for all of those people who still believe that some value can come from tilting at windmills” (p. 203). the book does not offer conclusions. rather, the reader is left pondering the implications of the tensions it raises. at its heart, the left side of history is less an academic investigation and more a mosaic of people and events which can serve to further a much needed conversation about the shifting meanings of communism in contemporary eastern europe. it is well suited to be used as an accompaniment to other scholarly works on the region, as a source of inspiration for graduate students and researchers, as well as lay historians, in their quest for new questions to be investigated. art, women and development in central asia: geography, nature, and history art, women and development in central asia: geography, nature, and history orozgan mambetalieva chairman, association of women artists and art critics, kyrgyzstan the sovereign state of the kyrgyz republic was formed on august 31, 1991, when the parliament proclaimed kyrgyzstan an independent, democratic state with its own constitution and an indivisible and independent territory. kyrgyzstan is located in the north-eastern part of central asia, in the heart of the eurasian continent. its territory of 198.5 thousand square km is equal to the combined area of portugal, switzerland, belgium and the netherlands. it stretches 900 km from east to west, and 425 km from north to south. the northernmost part of kyrgyzstan is on the same latitude as rome, and the southernmost end is on a level with the island of sicily. the borders of the republic generally follow natural bordered: mountain ranges and rivers. kyrgyzstan is bordered by china, tajikistan, kazakhstan and uzbekistan. the kyrgyz republic is a country remarkable for its natural beauty. majestic mountain ranges give way to rolling syrts soaring up to 4000 m above sea level. wide valleys and vast lake basins are framed by eternally snow-covered peaks, ridges and mountain ranges images of animals and people from 3-5 thousand years before our era the territory of kyrgyzstan, and all central asia for that matter, is one of the most ancient centres of human civilization. archaeological research has shown that prehistoric man lived in the area during the stone age. the cliff paintings of the saimaly-tash, ravine are a widely known monument of antiquity. these unique paintings depict various animals, hunting scenes, religious ceremonies and aspects of farming. tradition and cultural change women's eyes are attentive, inquisitive, and observant; female hands are hardworking, always tirelessly carrying out some thankless, laborious job. women's soul, which is filled with love, is hopeless, suffering from endless stresses, wars, crises and a deficiency of kindness. all this develops her sense about life, which is drawn in paints, made from strings, embroidered or sculpted from clay. nowadays reality is hard for women-artists, it is not their time. family, life, the education of children this not an easy cart which is always voluntarily pulled by women. women, more than men, aspire to overcome difficulties, especial those of them who have children and family. the transitional period of our time is reflected in fine art. many criteria which served in the near past to mark our estimation of creative work now concede their places to other criteria. we begin to understand that the variety and evaluation of art depend on the various aesthetic tastes of the consumers. artists are compelled to be guided by the tastes and claims of potential buyers. commercial art develops, galleries appear: exhibitions, sales. at the same time it is becoming more difficult to arrange thematic exhibitions devoted to urgent problems, which required attention, without any help. one of the problems facing our updated society is the problem of preservation and development of the best traditions of kyrgyz art. the women of deep antiquity are considered to be the bearers of national traditions. the relation of traditional and modem styles is quite evident in creations of decorative applied art. it is possible to notice two approaches in this kind of art. some jen typewritten text 106 artists aspire to follow ancient technological rules of manufacturing and decoration in their creations. others try to apply new ways, or borrow from painting or diagrams composite courses, creating works only for exhibitions. the yourts always seem a natural continuation of the mountains, white as the tops, like hill domes. and that's why mountain painting seems to be lacking of some crucial thing without it and yourts in an artistic exhibition are not the same, as when they are in the mountains of our native land. an experienced master makes a yourt frame in twenty five days. but it serves for twenty five years. the longevity of this nomad dwelling can be explained by high-level constructive-architectural designs, brought to perfection in the course of many ages in the severe conditions of the highlands and a lack of roads. pulling a yourta together begins with a door-case — bosogo. upon it an open-worked wall, a kerege,is stretched; it consists of separate links-kanat. each kanat is made in a peculiar curve and joined by rawhide leather straps sticks, which when stretched form a diamond-shaped bays — kerege koz. and this is also a pattern made in a similar way as the ornament of the coloured mat which is put behind the kerege. upon this the dome poles are fastened and here male hands are needed to lift the yourta rim — tujunduk. everything is merged in the bent birch rim: the dome lock, the flue, the light window, the solar sign turning to the sun, its ornamented motif. kolomto is a fireplace under tujunduk. it is the organising and logical centre of the yourta and all of life. djuk carpets and quilts, thick felt packages of clothes, pillows — everything that personifies the prosperity of a family is laid together on trunks and rests behind the fireplace, by the back wall just in front of the entrance. the place in front of djuk was called tor and considered to be a place of honour. it was allotted to older honorary guests. to the right of tor was th efemale part of the yourta — epchy djak, to the left — the male part — er djak. harness, all things and articles, necessary for male occupations: cattle breeding, hunting, craft were hung on kerege here.in olden days the artificers in silver in olden days the artificers in silver kumush-usta — were first honoured as people endowed with a peculiar sacred power over fire and iron and then as skilled masters of the favourite adornments jewellery was part and parcel of the national dress of a kyrgyz woman. finger rings (shakek), arm bracelets (bilerik), earrings (iymek) were quite common adornments worn by women. a girl wore a narrow finger ring. a married woman wore a wide one with several thin rims. oval, diamond-shaped, or square buckles were studded with cornelian or corals, and massive, round or flat open-work bracelets were decorated with engraving, niello. all this is clearly seen to be culturally unique, reserving the primordial purity of metal-craft intentionality.earrings were of every earrings were of every description and technique, their forms and designs depending much on the functions of clothes and local traditions. massive earrings were often attached to cloth or temple pendants, tied by laces and worn over the head. earrings were forged and cast, filigree, open work with varied pendants. in the north of kyrgyzia niello was quite common, in the south — studding with corals, mother-of-pearl, and also granulation and filigree. each woman could value the work of the master, who had made her ornaments. and each ornament clearly manifested the fact, that it was made by a true kyrgyz kumush-usta. the kyrgyz topchu-buttons and clasps, were part of the national costume. topchu could be circular and convex, round and oval, they were decorated with grain — shaped jen typewritten text 107 juts, granulation, applied filigree, and niello, inlay with coloured glass, cornelian and corals. buttons were made of silver and were meant not only for buttoning, but also for decorating clothes. that's why they were set much and carefully kept. old things could be thrown away, but not topchu. oral tradition the oldest epic of the kyrgyz people – and among the best tradition of epic creations is "manas.” the millennium of the "manas" epic was held in august 1995. so, a few words on this epic; these words are devoted to the millennium of the "manas" epic. manas is a great part of kyrgyz heritage and a wonderful work, which surprised mankind by being a world-level cultural achievement. this epic is a kind of encyclopaedia of the kyrgyz people and its ancient history. it is a unique monumental epic work of oral art, and its great variety reflects not only the history but all sides of the people's life. the epos manas has more than 500,000 lines. it is 20 times longer than the famous odyssey and iliad put together. manas is not only the historiography of the kyrgyz, but also a work which deeply reflects the scientific views on philosophy, astronomy, history and mathematics of the turkish people. in the epos manas, three generations of heroes are mentioned. the work consists of three parts: manas, semetei and seitek. the epic is united by the main hero, manas. manas's grandfather karakhan was a wise, brave ruler of the kyrgyz tribe. at that time, nobody dared to disturb the quiet and peaceful life of the kyrgyz people. after his death came another time. foreign aggressors began to constantly trouble them. the people suffered and humbly obeyed their tormentors, and those who tried to defend the interests of the people were severely punished. karakhan's children more than once tried to take vengeance on their enemies, but met with defeat. they were driven away to different places. at that time one of karakhan's son, jakyp, was driven with forty families to altai. after many years, a child appeared in jakyp's family — manas. when he was born, it became clear at once: there had appeared a hercules. he was protected by the invisible spirits — black dappled leopard and grey lion. the women who delivered his mother of a child, were surprised with his force and weight. at the age of seven he was able to demonstrate his adroitness, courage and cleverness. when he was twelve, he defeated 700 invaders on his race-horse toruchar. in that battle the well-known baatyr (hero) of the invaders, er kochku, lost his life. then manas defended his people from a group of aggressors led by joloi. he defeated such baatyrs as kaman. jorn, and dongo, but joloi himself ran away. from that time the kyrgyz became widely known. manas became a national hero and leader and brought his people home from altai. after returning home, he married kanykei, the wise and beautiful daughter of buktiar khan. they settled in talas. kanykei was a very clever woman , and manas's associate. she did her best to join the kyrgyz. manas participated in many battles and fought astride his charger akkule, defending his people from foreign invaders. together with his forty fellow warriors including bakai, ajibai, almanbet, chubak, and syrgak, he defeated the very cunning and artful foe alloke. manas also emerged victorious from battles against tukubai, joloi, neskaru. konurbai, madykan and malgun. jen typewritten text 108 manas fought for the freedom, independence, and unity of his people and he cared about the fate of the kyrgyz people and their land. he was a clever, wise and just ruler of the kyrgyz people. socialism after the october revolution, the kyrgyz, along with all the peoples of tsarist russia, joined the soviet union and worked to build a socialist society. as kyrgyz president askar akayev noted at the first kyrgyz universal gathering, it is important to be objective and not portray the socialist era solely in somber colors. this is particularly true for the kyrgyz. during the communist period, the historical lot of the kyrgyz became indisputably better and brighter than it had been in previous times. this assertion is supported by dozens of examples. before the october revolution, the number of kyrgyz was steadily declining, but during the 72 years of soviet rule the kyrgyz population multiplied four times. the kyrgyz converted fully from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle, building hundreds of large towns and villages. thousands of kyrgyz moved to cities, adapting to the knowledge, spiritual values and traditions of other nations. it was under socialism that the kyrgyz language became stylistically defined in written form, becoming the most important means of communication and national expression. changes occurred in daily conditions as well, and in public and cultural life. soviet authority allowed the formerly dispersed kyrgyz tribes to unite within the framework of a single state structure, and concrete steps were taken to establish the kyrgyz as an independent nation. the totalitarian character of the soviet state, however, excluded the possibility of an independent external or internal policy for the republic. national independence and national sovereignty came to the kyrgyz people only with the fall of the soviet union. today the forum of women's non-governmental organizations of kyrgyzstan is one among about 40 organizations; three of these organizations are big ones: the association for support of women artists and art critics of kyrgyzstan, the league of women of the creative initiative and the fund for support of talents. in kyrgyzstan we have more than a hundred organizations of national craftspersons. the mission of the association is to revive the best traditions of national creativity and support the professionalism of women as fine artists, by providing for regular participation in exhibitions. the league professes spiritual freedom, a creative attitude and aspiration towards perfection on the verge of two centuries and two worlds: east and west. the basic purpose of the league is: propagating creativity of the professional artists and the original culture of kyrgyzstan at home and abroad, acquainting our creative intelligentsia and the wider public with the advanced achievements of world culture and including kyrgyz fine art in world art processes. the mission of the fund is preservation of original and centuries-old kyrgyz traditions of artistic creativity. alongside the preservation and development of traditional forms of national creativity, it unites national artists and cultural figures and together with the center develops and elaborates educational programs. jen typewritten text 109 art, women and development in central asia: geography, nature, and history orozgan mambetalieva�chairman, association of women artists and art critics, kyrgyzstan microsoft word table of contents and intro formatted.doc 28 volume 25, no. 2 page 28 romanian romani resistance to genocide in the matrix of the !igan other shannon woodcock la trobe university this article is an exploration of romanian romani resistance to the holocaust in romania through romani engagement with the field of their oppression – the matrix of the !igan other. far from being a simple case of negative stereotypes exaggerated and applied in the form of a name, the name !igan has been used by elite and subaltern ethnic romanians since the 15th century to project a gamut of necessarily paradoxical stereotypical characteristics anxiously articulated as antithetical to romanian ethnonational identity onto the bodies of romani people in romania. this paper traces the historical formation of the !igan other, and how the !igan identity functioned not only to create, maintain and police an economically valuable slave class, but a social class of roma as !igani vital as the internal other against which different romanian social groups articulated their own identities. a discussion of historical sources of romani resistance to slavery, social persecution and genocide in world war ii, must therefore take place through the matrix of the persecution of romani individuals as !igani. indeed, documentary evidence written by roma in the genocide of 1942-45 showcases the relentless discursive strategies that victims used to negotiate the gauntlet of stereotypes (of !igan identity) that everyday romanians wielded to justify the deportation and murder of romani romanians. the purpose of this essay is twofold: to begin reading romani resistance to romanian persecution in the romanian archives, and to draw attention to the importance of the location of interpellation of romani peoples as various kinds of others in societies and times. in this way, i speak about roma as an heterogeneous selfidentifying ethnic group, !igani as the dynamic phantasmatic projection constituted by stereotypes of otherness to and of the modern romanian nation. the word gypsy means radically different things in australia, england and america, so to translate roma or !igan as gypsy erases the specific meaning of the text. reading the matrix of the !igan other as the site for dynamic reproduction, containment and resistance, requires that scholars pay attention to how people identify and name themselves, and how they respond to the names enunciated by others of course selfidentifying romani individuals can also use the word !igan to refer to themselves and others, a reflection of the function of the term !igan as a location for the interaction of historically developed identities. choosing one name or another is itself a political act, and in this paper i choose to not choose for others, but to trace how individuals have claimed their own names as a vital survival strategy. the enslavement of romani communities in romania and the making of !igani romani individuals in romania exist in historical sources as the property of boiers (landowners), state administrators and the clergy, where they are called “!igani.” the first archival evidence of roma in the romanian principality of wallachia is the record of 40 s!la"e (families) given to voivod dan i in 1385 from vladislav i, a serbian landowner.1 until 1699 (when transylvania came under the administration of the hapsburg empire), all roma who entered the romanian principalities of transylvania, wallachia or moldova were captured and made slaves of the state; and after 1699 this practice continued in wallachia and moldova and was modified somewhat in transylvania. the state could retain slaves for their own use, or sell them to boiers or monasteries. slaves were called sclavi, robi, or !igani.2 other ethnic groups were also 1 documenta romaniae historica b, #ara româneasc! i, edited by p.p. panaitescu and damaschin mioc, academia republicii socialiste românia, sec$ia de %tiin$e istorice, bucharest 1966 pp.19-22. 2 the word !igan (plural: !igani) derives from the word tsiganoi which was widely used in the byzantine period to name romani populations that moved west with the ottoman forces. roma have consistently called themselves thus as an ethnic group, and are a heterogeneous dynamic 29 volume 25, no. 2 page 29 slaves, such as a small percentage of tartars, but these groups were freed by the end of the 15th century, and only roma remained slaves.3 the term !igan came to conflate the legal and social position of slaves with ethnic roma. to be a slave was to be considered an ethnic !igan. there was no such thing as a free !igan, or a free rom. romanians did not recognize or interpellate roma as anything other than !igani, sclavi and robi. romani slaves called !igani were vital to the romanian economy, in which they provided the trades of their traditional family groups. the fierari were metalsmiths, making tools and equipment for farming, lautari musicians provided entertainment for village fairs and weddings (for those who could afford them), the ursari entertained with their tamed bears, and other !igani worked as horse trainers and traders, gold panners and goldsmiths (aurari), traders of small items, domestic workers, agricultural laborers and cleaners. though the archives of landowners, clergy and administrators constantly record the actions of their chattel, the vast majority of romanian historiography fails to mention the hundreds of thousands of roma who existed in romanian society as !igani. henri stahl’s famous history and sociology of romanian peasantry and agriculture mentions only once that monasteries “exploited … gypsy [sic] slaves,” while keith hitchins lists the varied roles and the “economic burdens” that were expected of “gypsies [sic] …belonging to” monasteries and landowners, but does not discuss the place of these “social outcasts … foreign in customs, mentality and appearance” in relation to other romanian social groups or beyond these few sentences.4 as with slavery elsewhere, !igani were not a pre-existing community of slaves, but were created in a detailed legal and social system; romanians constituted the !igan as slave within an entire system of racial and social stereotypes to community of groups within that umbrella ethnic term. 3 viorel achim !iganii în istoria româniei editura enciclopedia, bucharest 1998 p.33. 4 quotations taken from henri h. stahl traditional romanian village communities: the transition from the communal to the capitalist mode of production in the danube region translated daniel chirot and holley coulter chirot, cambridge university press, cambridge 1980; p.142 and keith hitchins the romanians 17741866 clarendon press, oxford, 1996; p.72. justify violent enslavement. the pervasive institutional and social stereotyping of the !igan as the lowest social category and requiring enslavement, especially as they played a vital economic role in society, functioned to create a common group within the social hierarchy against which all other social and ethnic groups in the romanian principalities, including the indentured romanian peasants, could articulate themselves as superior (as free, white, christian and, later, european). landowners (when talking to the peasants) and peasants (when talking of themselves) articulated themselves as moral, obedient, and attached to the land – in contrast to the !igani who would supposedly roam the land and refuse to work at all if not for their (thus rationalized) enslavement. the !igan as inferior other used to work the land was a vital identity against which the peasants could articulate themselves as of the land – a differentiation that served not only the esteem of the peasant classes, but also their supervising land owners who benefited from the !igani as the group that all romanian classes could police to the periphery together. as with the constructed stereotypical “sambo” identity in the nineteenth century north american south that stanley elkin describes, so too was the stereotypical !igan considered “docile but irresponsible, loyal but lazy, humble but chronically given to lying and stealing; his behavior was full of infantile silliness and his talk inflated with childish exaggeration.”5 these necessarily contradictory stereotypes functioned as links in a chain, discursively containing any romani individual's actions or physical signification of romani culture.6 romani resistance to slavery was relentless, but as the projection of the !igan other is powered by 5 stanley m. elkins slavery: a problem in american institutional and intellectual life university of chicago press, second edition, chicago and london 1968; p.82. 6 in post-socialist romania the argument that roma is a word !igani created to deliberately associate their supposedly uncivilized ways with the european civilization of romania is a containment of even the right of romani romanians to name themselves. see woodcock “romania and europe: roma, rroma and !igani as sites for the contestation of ethnonational identities” patterns of prejudice issue 5, vo.41 november 2007. 30 volume 25, no. 2 page 30 anxiety of the romanian identity, such as anxiety concerning the ability and right of romanians masters to maintain control of slaves, romani resistance was met with an increased anxiety and an increase in control through a strengthening of the stereotypes of the !igan. slave owners, for example, often incorporated slave acts of resistance into the constitutive discourse of slaves as primitive and lazy and thus requiring control and enslavement. romanian slave owner diaries discursively construct the refusal of slaves to work and running away as characteristics of the stereotypical !igan. in the secul monastery, the clergy had such problems with their !igan slaves repeatedly failing to go to work that they made them sign statements pledging “to cause no trouble to the saints of the monastery through either words or acts of dissembling.”7 the monastery scribes wrote that !igan absenteeism occurred because slaves simply “decided to go somewhere else,” despite the penalties and punishments for this behavior. the question of what kind of evidence of relentless romani resistance these archives thus contain is a question that demands greater theoretical depth and archival breadth than can be undertaken here. what is noteworthy is that the master’s project of making slaves from human beings he bought and sold as property is one in which he engages with the problem of their inability/refusal to labor through the very matrix of constructed !igan identity he has scaffolded with his own anxiety. the !igan identity is heavily invested with and powered by all the anxieties and energies of maintaining a social hierarchy and economic system where a few rule an impoverished many. the tethering of !igan stereotypes to real romani bodies was thus an anxious, fraught, and ambivalent exercise which was as boundless as the possibility of ever totally containing and controlling other individuals, especially those forced to live in slavery. laughter, anxiety and resistance the !igan other was also the site through which subaltern romanian peasant anxieties of class and social status were articulated and subverted. in popular jokes collected by village 7 cicanci o. “aspecte din via$a robilor de la mânâstirea secul în veacurile xviixviii” pp.8190 in vasile ionescu (ed.) than rromano: studii despre rromii anul iii nr 4-5, bucharest, 1999/2000; p.86. schoolteachers in the nineteenth century, for example, romanian peasants presented !igan protagonists in character sketches reconstructing everyday social hierarchies of clergy and landowners against the peasants. in these projections of the !igan other, the !igan protagonist is endowed with the stereotypical characteristics (naïveté, cunning, laziness) that enable them to resist, rebel and gain the upper hand against the same social groups that oppress the peasant (joke-telling) classes. jokes thus trouble the categories of society by playing on the irresolvable tension that stereotypical fixed !igan identities are in fact not fixed, and these jokes are powered by the dynamic desires of other subaltern classes to slip the shackles of their own social interpellation. one joke, for example, places a !igan and a clergyman inside the home of an innocent absent romanian peasant: a !igan and a priest entered the house of a romanian peasant where they had seen smoke coming from the chimney. the fire was burning but there was no one in the house; looking around they discovered a roasted pig on the spit. “oh what a fat piglet!” said the !igan, walking around the fire, “what a fat piglet and there’s no one here to see us!” ”but what kind of thoughts are these, !igan?” asked the priest, who wanted the pig all for himself. “what thoughts do i have, father? my thought would be to leave the spit for your holiness and to get the piglet for myself.” “don’t touch it, !igan, for, i cross my heart, whatever you do to that piglet i am going to do to you!” “oh, then if this is your intention, be careful not to break your promise father!” said the !igan. a second later the !igan stuck his finger under the piglet’s tail and then licked his finger. “now your holiness should do to me that which i did to the piglet!” “phew!” the priest spat, “damn crow, how he tricked me!” 31 volume 25, no. 2 page 31 and he left the house and the pig to the !igan.8 in another joke, the !igan protagonist is invited into the master's house for dinner because the master is in a happy mood: the !igan, when he saw he was being treated like a high guest, that he was welcome at his master’s table, thought the heavens had come down to him and soon he began to think that he was even better than his master! he began to deliver toasts in honor of the master, and in honor of the ‘little masters’ and in the end he even began to talk to his master about various things, as if he was talking to his brother. but at a certain point the master got angry: “listen, damn crow, pay attention, you’ve become too talkative and you almost look down on me, who do you think you’re talking to? some mate of yours from when you were guarding the pigs? do you think we have guarded pigs together?” “oh no!” the !igan answered, “no master, bless you; you have been guarding them all by yourself!”9 in all these jokes, the !igan character connives, survives, and succeeds through acting stupid. part of this projected stupidity is the inability of the !igan to tell a sophisticated lie, he interacts with a raw honesty and plays on not only words and actions, but on telling the truth, laying bare the structures of arbitrary power that lead to him being called to account for his time, his hunger, and his right to speak back to the master. 8 jokes collected in muntenia and moldova, published in the calendar pentru basme, balade, cîntece populare, tradi"iuni, pove#ti, p$c$lituri, ghicitori bucharest, 1877. cited in sabinacornelia stroescu (ed.) snoava popular$ româneasca editur! minerva, bucharest 1975; pp.135-136. 9 cited in stroescu p.157. from gazeta "$ranilor printed in bucharest, distributed in mu"ete"tiarge" 1892-1899. in directly engaging with this role of being called to answer as !igan, the character illuminates the demands of the other social characters – the role of the landowner to demand subservience and work, and the hypocritical behavior of the priest who masks his own desires and dishonesty. in this stark depiction of social relations, the !igan character throws into question any moral or logical reasons for the social hierarchy. the !igan character in every joke is in fact an individual interpellated by his coprotagonists as !igan, and the individual responds by “playing” !igan, by inhabiting the stereotypical identity of being stupid, lazy, conniving and uncivilized as a ruse to achieve his own ends, to avoid work or outwit a priest of dubious intention. in these jokes, the individual named !igan ruptures the totalizing knowledge of the other performed in the stereotype, foregrounding the fear that the other, the !igan, is not “really” as stupid/clumsy/enslaved as the landowners and clergy suppose. in the final joke, the !igan vacates the subject position of !igan and chooses to answer to the absurdly inferior category of pig when the landowner asks “have we guarded the pigs together?” in claiming the most radical position of inferiority and answering that the master has been guarding the pigs by himself, the protagonist steps outside the master-slave relationship that is the site of engagement, leaving the master with the distinct feeling that he alone is the only one who believes that he controls the !igani and that they work for his gain. this short anecdote thrills the audience with the scenario of a !igan who simply forgets to keep up the pretence of performing himself as such, thus collapsing the power of the master through vacating the position of his slave, and leaving unspoken the question of what the !igani are really doing if not answering to the master or the pigs. romanian peasants labored under the socio-economic oppression of landowners and clergy, and thus in these jokes present themselves as the innocent and hard-working bystanders to conflicts between these groups and the projected !igan other. these jokes projected romanian peasant fantasies of resistance onto the !igan other, enabling good romanian peasants to perform and enjoy their displaced critique of their own subject position in social hierarchy as hardworking, honest and of the land. the titillation of the humor was that these jokes also played on the unsettling likelihood that romani individuals interpellated as !igani in everyday life were, like 32 volume 25, no. 2 page 32 the joke-tellers and the fictional protagonists, in fact passing as stereotypical !igani in order to subvert their social position as slaves – a cause for anxiety among romanian peasants for whom slaves remained the one group against which they could articulate themselves as free and honest workers. while we cannot claim to know the conscious choices of romani slaves to resist their enslavement as !igani through slave owner diaries or peasant jokes, these sources index the widespread awareness of anxiety about romani resistance to enslavement as !igani in both boier and peasant romanian society. when roma did resist slavery, slave owners reconfigured and thus contained their actions in stereotypical discourses of the !igan other, specifically as stereotypical !igani – people who could be forced laborers on the land but never people of the land. romanian peasants, oppressed in the same society and stereotyped as naïve and innocent, also used the projected !igan other as slave as the character through which they could embody their own fantasies of resistance and fears about their place in romanian society. romani resistance to romanian persecution could only be fought from within the very matrix in which they existed in the dominant discourse – that of the !igan other – and so this is the location where the historian needs to look for traces of resistance. romani resistance to genocide in world war two when the principalities of wallachia and moldova united in 1859, romanian politicians consecrated romania as a humanist european nation through the “un-enslaving” (dezrobirea) of !igani, after which romani romanians continued to be socially identified and policed as !igani. romanian statesmen consciously educated romanian-speaking peasants as to their ethnonational identity by explaining in theatre and art that the right to european national status was evidenced by precisely their ability to extend unenslavement to !igani. in order to build the modern romanian state, therefore, !igani remained a vital inferior and non-romanian other against which peasants were now asked to articulate their own right to be interpellated as democratic european citizens. after the treaty of trianon (1920) institutionalized romania’s annexation of transylvania, the prime anxieties of romanian ethnic identity were focused on hungarians, jews and communist threats, but significant energy continued to be directed into interpellating and marginalizing !igani as a socioeconomic group.10 as irina livezeanu and maria bucurdeckard have outlined in detail, the anxieties of the enlarged romanian state manifest in the ethnonationalist buffering of social institutions and discourse.11 hungarians were discursively constructed as irredentist threats to romania’s very existence, and traditional anti-semitism meshed with new anxieties about the lack of urban romanian elites and the threat of bolshevism in the east to make life increasingly difficult for the community of more than 700,000 jews in romania.12 romani romanians remained vital to romanian ethnonational identity in the interwar period as stereotypical !igani. considered to be an internal (non-externally aligned) group of nonromanians, !igani were the radical others of ethnic romanians; they were stereotyped as nomadic (in contrast to romanian peasants of the land), and as lazy and immoral. in the same period, however, numerous romani unions were formed that recognized use of the term roma as a rejection of the stereotypical identification of romanian roma as !igani, and they fought to dispel the damaging stereotypical image of roma by forming professional unions, arguing for improved social and living conditions, and through encouraging public performances of mass baptisms.13 the romanian authorities primarily 10 for romanian and hungarian police reports concerning complaints of residents in villages and cities across romania between 1919 and 1944 against !igani as nomadic, dirty, criminal and nonromanian, see the documents collected in lucian nastasa and andrea varga (eds) minoritati ethnoculturale marturii documentare: !iganii din romania (1919-1944) ethnocultural diversity resource center, cluj napoca 2001. 11 see irina livezeanu cultural politics in greater romania: regionalism, nation building & ethnic struggle, 1918-1930 cornell university press, ithaca 1995 and maria bucur eugenics and modernization in interwar romania university of pittsburgh press, pittsburgh 2002. 12 according to the 1930 census, jews constituted 4% of the romanian population with 728 115 individuals. see livezeanu p.10 citing institutul central de statistic! anuarul statistical româniei 1937 #i 1938 pp.58-61. 13 see susan williams “the “civilized trap” of modernity and romanian roma, 1918-1934” in this issue. 33 volume 25, no. 2 page 33 considered these organizations and their public meetings an inconvenience.14 while romanians continued to negatively stereotype roma and police romani communities into a peripheral position in society, they were not targeted by romanian fascist groups as victims of physical violence in the same extreme ways that jews were in the 1930s. it is important to note, however, that the !igan identity to which roma remained tethered in discourse was also increasingly located in biology with the popularization of eugenic discourse. the strengthened perception of ethnic characteristics as biologically inalienable played an important role when romanians decided who to persecute in the holocaust – as even those roma who did not display the symptoms of stereotypical !igan identity could be deported as biologically !igan. violent pro-romanian fascism led by corneliu zelea codreanu and the iron guard gained strength at both elite and subaltern levels of romanian society in the 1930s, to be contained and continued under the dictatorship of ion antonescu in september 1940. hitler supported antonescu, who participated in the invasion of the soviet union and led the campaign to take odessa in june 1941.15 the deportation of approximately 120,000 romanian jews and more than 24,000 romanian roma to transnistria, an annexed zone between the nistru and bug rivers in the ukraine which was under romanian control between august 1941 and january 1944, was at the order of antonescu himself, rather than part of hitler’s “final solution.” i estimate that more than 30,000 romani romanians were deported to transnistria as “!igani” in world war ii.16 antonescu’s intent to destroy parts of the romani community as !igani, through their deportation, forced labor, and murder in transnistria, was implemented by 14 police were primarily concerned about public rallies and crowd control with these organizations. see documents collected in nastasa and varga 2001. 15 for a study of the relationship between antonescu and hitler see dennis deletant hitler's forgotten ally: ion antonescu and his regime, romania 1940-44 palgrave macmillan, new york 2006. 16 this is my estimate counting the 24,000 names listed as deported in convoys and on trains in 1942, and the thousands of recorded redeportations and staggered deportations that continued to occur until late 1944. members of the romanian government, military, and police force. approximately 6,000 romani romanian deportees survived, but many of the roma who found themselves persecuted as !igani fought hard and loud against this forced identification, leaving a clear paper trail in the archives. romani romanians physically resisted deportation from their hometowns, and escaped from ghettoes in transnistria. they also resisted by writing letters to the romanian authorities. these actions of resistance engaged with and contested romanian authority at the site of the !igan other, deconstructing and refuting the stereotypical constructions of !igani as nomadic and dangerous that had been the rhetorical terms applied in the selection of romani victims for deportation. despite the scant nature of studies of the deportations of roma as !igani to transnistria, and the absolute lack of reference thus far to the vast documentation of romani resistance to this persecution, archival sources are rich. my work here draws on files that remain named “!igani deportations” or simply “!igani” in regional and national romanian state archives. the archives holding files related to the deportations include the general inspectorate of the gendarmerie, the military police, the romanian council of ministers, the romanian intelligence service, and local level municipality and gendarmerie archives at every regional office.17 there are also dossiers concerning the romanian deportations held in what are now ukrainian and moldovan archives (in the cities where the transnistrian ghettoes and camps were administered).18 historians viorel 17 it is important to note that in romania, as in other european countries, romani communities interpellated as #igani, zigeuner, cigányok, and other stereotypical identities, were the priority of criminal police and military police units, primarily organized at the local level and in co-ordination with the local government administrations who would use local criminal police forces to deal with any civil complaints or requests of romani communities. 18 many of the holdings of the bucharest and odessa central archives of these organizations are also held at the united states holocaust memorial museum. local archives in cities around romania hold different documents and are rich and easily accessible collections. sources on the pogroms committed against roma by retreating hungarian romanian police, citizens and administrators in 34 volume 25, no. 2 page 34 achim and radu ioanid have cited some of these archival sources. there can no longer be any justification for historians to claim that they do not have sources for the genocide of roma in romania between 1942 and 1944, nor for historians to fail to verify the claims that the aforementioned scholars have made in their published interpretations of the events. antonescu’s order to deport all “nomadic” and all “non-nomadic dangerous !igani” caused confusion among military police throughout the country. “in line with the general order to remove all parasitical and disorderly elements,” it read, “marshall ion antonescu orders – through this act – that all groups of nomadic !igani from the whole country be sent to transnistria.”19 gendarmes identified groups of caldarari, fierari and other romani families who were beginning their summer work season of travel as !igani and deported them to transnistria in convoys traveling on foot.20 the identification of roma who traveled for work as a nomadic group, perceived as a burden to their host community, was an established stereotype.21 these individuals often owned property and animals in villages where their families had lived for generations, and traveled on established routes between markets and fairs with their trades, or working as agricultural laborers, in the summer. their property was nationalized at the time of deportation in many cases, and simply taken over or stolen by romanian inhabitants in other cases.22 transylvania are also available in local transylvanian archives and in the central archives of the romanian intelligence service of 1945 and 1946. 19 regional inspectorate of the gendarmerie at the central national historic arhchives (anic) dosar 258, f.4. 1942, end of may, order from the president of the council of ministers, the military cabinet, to the general inspectorate of the gendarmerie. 20 the romanian gendarmerie were the military police, and had stations at all levels throughout romania and transnistria. 21 for examples from just one archive see the letters to the mayor of cluj napoca held in the archive of the mayor of the municipality in cluj, dosar 20187/1935, f.1-2. 22 deletant wrongly states that the property of roma was not romanianized as it was with jews (2006 p.187). the order from the national center for romanianization to the “general on june 1, 1942, 11,441 romani romanians identified as “nomadic !igani” were assembled across romania and marched on foot under armed guard to transnistria.23 local gendarmes conducted the census of non-nomadic !igani with the first census of “nomadic !igani” in may 1942. the wording of the decree specifically ordered a census of sedentary nomads (especially those who, being non-nomadic, are convicts, recidivists, or have no means of existence or precise occupation from which to live honestly through work, and thus constitute a burden and a danger to public order).24 most gendarmerie branches simply replied, “we don’t have any !igani like this” to the council of ministers. indeed, while nomadic !igani had been identified from among the ethnic roma who were traveling and working seasonally, the concept of non-nomadic !igani did not equate with a pre-existing group that could be easily defined and deported. the council of ministers ordered the general inspectorate of gendarmerie to resolve the lackluster performances of its regional offices, and requested (on july 25, 1942) another census of “all sedentary !igani who have had prior convictions, are recidivists, or live without a means of existence.”25 gendarmerie that still reported they had no such !igani in their administrators of the goods entered in the state patrimony” (commanding local authorities to organize and romanianize the immobile goods of non-nomadic #igan deportees) is even reprinted in viorel achim (ed.) documente privind deportarea !iganilor in transnistria editura enciclopedic!, bucharest, 2004 p.158-160. in my personal experience, the vast majority of cases can be verified by checking local property registries and municipality files named “#igani” in 1942 and 1943. many of the soldiers who returned from the front to find their families deported as #igani also found local romanians now owned their property. 23 the figure is from the government count of nomadic #igani who entered transnistria as a result of these marches. general inspectorate of the gendarmerie, anic (henceforth igj), dosar 126/1942, f.204-205, 203. 24 17 may, 1942 regional inspectorate of the gendarmerie anic, dosar 258, f.6-6v. 25 anic, direc$ia general! a poli$iei (henceforth dgp), dosar 188/1942, f.48-48v. 35 volume 25, no. 2 page 35 jurisdiction received telephone orders again on august 4 of the same year. finally, on august 15, 1942, the general inspectorate of the gendarmerie telephoned every regional branch with the order to return the censuses of “convicted, dangerous, etc. !igani” (emphasis added) by the following day.26 in the archives of the local gendarmerie, there is evidence that this series of requests for longer lists of non-nomadic !igani prompted intense activity and confusion on the ground. it was not simply a matter of deporting everyone of romani ethnicity, certain occupations, or color of skin, though all of these things could signify !igan. there were dark-skinned romani romanians who were, by their behavior, in no way able to be socially considered !igani. likewise, there were non-romani romanians who were disparagingly referred to as “!igani” because of their renowned laziness, dirtiness, and what were considered un-romanian lifestyles; these romanians could not be deported as !igani because they were racially incapable of being !igani. individual groups of gendarmes discussed among themselves how to find the people to fit the category of deportation. in the first place, gendarmes usually trawled prison release lists for anyone they knew as !igan who had been convicted of a crime. although the ethnicity of convicts was not usually recorded, gendarmes worked in their own local communities and knew which families were considered !igani. in the lists they compiled of the sedentary/non-nomadic !igani, the column beside the names of all the family members to be deported was entitled “observations” or “motive for deportation.” the vast majority of those with previous convictions before the law had been in prison for just a few months, or had been fined for petty theft. one man from cernau$i was listed to be deported because he had been “active in a communist organization.”27 in the city of buzau, gendarmes held a morning meeting to discuss how they would identify !igani for deportation, and then set off to explore the “!igan area” around the local market place. they decided to list all !igani who had untidy courtyards for deportation.28 in botosani, the local gendarmes added 155 people “to be 26 anic, dgp, dosar 188/1942, f.211. 27 ushmm, igj reel 23 (collected tables of !igani censuses) doc. 408. 28 prefectura judetul buzau, dosar nr. 26/1942 “privitor pe #igani nomazi” file 39. 6 may, 1942. deported because they don’t have certain means of existence … they go from !igan to !igan to work, then spend all they earn on food and drink.”29 likewise in the city of roman, the column entitled “motives for deportation” included descriptions such as “he sits in the pub all day.”30 in rimnicu s!rat, the chief of the gendarmes, ilie ionescu, had a particular obsession with deporting “!igan” women who lived with men they were not legally married to – referred to as “concubinage.” in response to the pleas of a father whose daughter he had deported, ionescu wrote that she could not return to romania because “she had lived as a concubine with different men, floating between the most dubious of them.”31 major i. peschir, the commander of timi"-torontal gendarmerie in timi"oara, argued for “cleansing the romanian race of !igani,” in line with nationalist intellectual and media discourses of racial hygiene prevalent at the time.32 in one of the bucharest gendarmerie, the census of non-nomadic !igani was entitled “stable !igani who have been convicted of crimes, are recidivist, etc.,” but the list was primarily constituted by romani individuals who were listed as war invalids, children, concubines, workers, lautari (musicians), flower sellers, vagabonds, and even a small shop owner.33 the list of another bucharest gendarmerie uses “dubious occupation” as a catch-all category in the column entitled “motive of deportation.”34 many bucharest gendarmes simply left the “observation/motive for deportation” column blank, or wrote “no occupation.” yet in these very documents from bucharest, the column listing property is often filled with at least a cow or sheep, and regularly with houses. it is clear from that these groups had 29 ushmm, igj dosar/reel 23 p.353 legiunea boto"ani, inspectoratul jandarmerie ia"i. 30 ushmm, igj dosar/reel 23 p.389. 31 ushmm, igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 1148/9. 32 while eugenic arguments had become popular amongst certain academics in the interwar period (see bucur 2000), it was rare for gendarmes to articulate ethnic cleansing in the terms that major peschir did. inspectorate jandarm timistorontal, dosar 27 1942 doc.1. 33 ushmm igj reel 23, dosar 290/1942 “prefectura poli$iei capitalei” doc. 471-474. 34 ushmm igj reel 23, dosar 290/1942 doc. 490. legiune jandarmerie vlasca, inspectoratul jand.bucuresti. 36 volume 25, no. 2 page 36 not been convicted of any crimes, and they lived a sedentary lifestyle in houses with a few animals in the suburbs of bucharest, and therefore they could not technically fit the category “of dubious occupation.” this is until we consider, of course, that simply being interpellated as !igan made the semblance of a respectable romanian lifestyle an unacceptable parody of racial and social organization, powered by the anxiety of romanian ethnonational identity that the !igani other be recognizable as such. the ad hoc application of the concept of non-nomadic !igani shows that the category did not simply refer to a recognizable and pre-identified group. the terms on which such a category was to be applied, on the contrary, were developed in regional variations when local gendarmes responded to pressure from above; they invoked and applied historically developed and contextualized stereotypes of what it meant to be !igan.35 the historical meaning of stereotypes locating nomadism in the !igan body is of course symptomatic of anxiety to control the movement of romani slaves, and had been continually used in discursive construction of !igani since the end of slavery. once in transnistria, romanians deported as !igani were treated differently to romanians deported as jews.36 local police reported that there was no organized labor, and inadequate provision of food, clothing, and shelter for !igani. romani deportees could sometimes visit local villages and search for provisions. the lack of food, labor and shelter for !igani (in comparison with jewish romanian deportees) made such trips all the more vital to survival. in this way, the stereotypical !igan other as nomadic, uncontrollable, and reluctant to work honestly was re-created by the conditions in transnistria. indeed, the gendarmerie of balta reported in 1943 that “!igani … can’t be accommodated, they don’t understand that they need to work for food. they run from the collective (where they have been put) 35 while achim takes the slow response of police as a sign of anti-racism on their parts, i think it is important to study how they decided who to deport and how; very many more romanians implemented antonescu’s decree for genocide – and enthusiastically – than the handful who complained, a tiny minority who risked nothing to resist, even according to the sources achim highlights. 36 see dennis deletant “ghetto experience in golta, transnistria, 1942-1944.” holocaust and genocide studies volume 18, number 1, spring 2004, pp. 1-26 preferring to beg and travel around the villages, and in some places they are stealing. they are very difficult to supervise.”37 as the war progressed, roma who had survived the winter of 1942-3 despite starvation, lack of clothing and housing, and typhus epidemics, were described by the same gendermerie at balta as “aggressive bands of !igani,”38 despite other photographic and oral history evidence that people in these communities were weak, dying, desperate and isolated.39 as one of the romani romanian deportees, luca moldovan, wrote to the governor of odessa in december 1942, “i have a home and land in my town of origin, i was not homeless and i didn’t need to be sent to this region, where i am without a house to stay in while i am stuck here.”40 as the romanian authorities had made nomadic !igani of romani seasonal workers by forcing them to walk to their deaths in transnistria, so too did the decision not to provide roma with food, shelter, and work in transnistria make them homeless, unemployed and impoverished, fulfilling the stereotypical signifiers of the !igan in the process of their (thus justified) murders. there is significant evidence that romani romanian deportees actively engaged with 37 gendarmerie balta bulletin informative rg 25.002 romanian national archives pcm file 78/43 point 10 “!igani.” 34 balta, august 1943 point 12. 39 all transnistrian gendarmerie included reports on the living conditions and labor impact of the deportees in their areas of jurisdiction. the reports can be found in chronological order in both the central bucharest archives and in the local transnistrian gendarmerie archives. for oral histories see michelle kelso’s film hidden sorrows: the persecution of romanian gyspies during wwii (2005), peter weber “eyewitness testimonies as source of a historical analysis of the deportations to transnistria (19411943)” étude balkaniques, no. 4 2004, and %tefan ionescu “the boom of testimonies after communism – the voices of the jewish holocaust survivors in romania 1989-2005” studia hebraica vol. 5 2005. there are also an increasing number of transcribed oral histories of roma survivors available in the ushmm, and at local holocaust studies and romani history ngos in romania. 40 7 december 1942, igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 754. 37 volume 25, no. 2 page 37 stereotypes of being primitive nomadic !igani to escape. between august 6 and 27 of 1942, for example, before the first winter, 209 “!igani” were caught in the commune of razdelnaia, transnistria.41 the police report states that these !igani all had forged travel documents. reports of large-scale organized physical escapes, with and without forged documents, continued throughout the war period, and the archived reports of police officers interrogated for not noticing these movements often state that romani escapees “masqueraded” as vagabonds.42 a !igan, according to the stereotype, departs, wanders, loiters, and even “vagabonds” like a vagabond, but remains !igan, an inalienable identity located in the body. a vagabond, on the other hand, was stereotypically ethnic romanian, and thus not !igan, nor fixed to the state of being a vagabond. the vagabond had much greater social mobility than the !igan, evident in the ways romanian police allowed people they identified as vagabonds to travel without tickets and permits in wartime, as opposed to the restrictions they applied to !igani. romani romanians thus took advantage of the discursive slippage between !igani and vagabonds and performed themselves as ethnic romanian vagabonds in order to escape, highlighting a sophisticated intimacy with strategies for living through interpellation as !igani. roma write back the letters that romani romanian deportees and their families wrote to the romanian authorities requesting the return of their families demonstrate how roma strategically engaged with the stereotypes constitutive of the !igan other through which they were interpellated and deported in 1942. even illiterate romani petitioners identified and employed scribes to write their letters to the ministry of internal affairs, to the general inspectorate of gendarmerie, to local police stations, and directly to antonescu himself. this attests to the understanding romani romanians had of how 41 13 september 1943 romanian national archives, pre"eden$ia consiliului de mini"tri cabinet, dosar 443/1942 doc.209. 42 for references to romani escapes and ‘vagabonding’ see the informative bulletins produced by local gendarmerie in transnistria such as in dosar 78/1943 of the romanian national archives pre"eden$ia consiliului de mini"tri cabinet. bureaucracy worked; often petitioners lodged letters at various ministries in succession, creating a constant stream of investigations of an individual or family case, and enabling the petitioner to avoid arrest himself. ministries forwarded petitions to all relevant police stations to verify claims of property ownership and good standing, and police were required to justify their decisions. the narratives in the letters can be ascertained as dictated by the authors in most cases, as all the letters differ greatly in terms of discourses used, even among letters written in the one hand for multiple people. the discourses employed in the letters reflect the different classes, regional locations and trades of the romani petitioners, but more than these parts, the letters show how different romani people chose to engage with and refute their interpellation as !igani. as an overview statement, romani petitioners all understood that they were being interpellated and persecuted as !igani, though which exact aspect of the negative stereotypical identity was as unclear to deportees as to the police who interpreted the orders for deportations of nomadic/sedentary or dangerous !igani.43 only one out of 68 petitioners argued directly that he was not !igan. the vast majority strategically avoided refuting the very existence of the stereotypical !igan identity, instead focusing on contesting and disproving stereotypical signifiers of !igan identity, such as being non-romanian in ethnicity and citizenship, being irreligious, nomadic, lazy, or criminal in behavior. in this way, petitioners engaged with the very discursive construction within which they were being persecuted, accepting interpellation as !igani in order to attempt to untangle and contest the application of various links within the chain of stereotypes constitutive of the !igan other. this discursive agility was a skill developed through everyday necessity for romani romanians living within romanian society policed as its marginal !igani other, as part of heterogeneous romani community practices and identities. petitioners did not often extrapolate what they considered the reason for their or their families’ deportation, and some did not even mention the fact that they were deported as !igani. 43 note that this is an overview of the letters, representative of the letters i have found. the discourses employed by individuals vary over time and as government decrees regarding deportations change, or awareness of them spreads. 38 volume 25, no. 2 page 38 a common strategy was to state that one’s family was deported because they were of !igan origin, ethnic origin, or “people” (neam), and to follow this statement with a declaration of commitment to the romanian nation, evidenced by a range of factors contradicting stereotypical !igan behavior. one soldier, dumitru neagu, argued that he was “!igan of truly romanian blood,”44 and described his deported nephew as “of !igan origin, romanian nationality, who knows the trade of the commerce of bird selling.”45 ioan stoica, petitioning to bring his parents “back to their natal village where they work and where they gave birth to and raised me” from transnistria where they had been deported “because they were of the !igan people,” signed himself off as a “romanianized !igan of the romanian people, not of the nomadic peoples.”46 indeed, letter writers in december 1942 knew that the first group to be deported had been those declared “nomadic,” and this was a primary distinction repeated in the petitions. constantin mota argued for the repatriation of his wife and three small children after the first wave of deportations by stating that she was “not of the nomadic nation,” but that she owned property.47 the letters demonstrate the inability of romani romanians to access information about top level bureaucratic decisions and to know precisely which stereotypes to refute, and thus simultaneously demonstrate the breadth and nature of stereotypes constitutive of the !igan other that petitioners chose to address. an acting gendarme whose extended family was deported “as !igani,” for example, wrote the following: my father fought in the world war 1916-1918, he has property in crasnica, he had no reason to steal or to live by theft, he lived only by agricultural work. after discussions with the local authorities i think the deportation was an error. please send him home, we are not nomads and don’t live through petty theft, i am a solider active in the military for my fatherland. 44 ushmm, igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 725. 45 ushmm, igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 1166. 46 ushmm, igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 985. 47 ushmm, igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 989. visan dumitru.48 these references to having fought for romania in world war i, owning property, not stealing, and working in agriculture directly contest the stereotypes of the !igan as unwilling to sacrifice for the romanian nation, as homeless, nomadic and criminal, and as not being hard workers in the same way as romanian peasants who work the land. many of the romani families that traveled for work and who were deported as nomadic !igani also employed these discourses in order to refute their persecution on the grounds of being ethnic !igani. for example, the earliest petitions were written in december 1942 by the heads of 14 families deported as nomadic !igani from constan$a. these letters are rare in that they share the same pattern and the same unique simplicity in self-identification as !igani combined with the stereotypes they refute (that they lack religion, national allegiance, property and diligence). the following is an example dictated by ion stefan florea: dear governor together with the ten members of my family i was evacuated from tandarei, ialomita county, because we are !igani. today i ask permission in odessa to go back to my country. sir governor, i fought in the last war, i own property and land in ialomita, i am a worker of the land and i am still eligible to fight for this war, so i ask your permission to return to the village of my birth. our brothers and children have fought for the holy cross and for justice, and in the name of the saints and the cross and of humanity we ask your justice in giving authorization to me and my 10 family members to cross the river nistru. wishing you a long life, ion stefan florea 48 ushmm, igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 1196. 39 volume 25, no. 2 page 39 ion d. paun also petitioned for the return of his family deported as nomadic !igani by stressing the nature of the agricultural work they did, their long history living in the region, and his status as a war veteran: ion d. paun 13 february, 1943. dear minister, on the 15th of september 1942, my family were coming home from agricultural work in tandarei, and were stopped on the road by gendarmes and included in the convoy of nomadic !igani, and deported to cavaliopca, oceacov county, transnistria. this was a mistake, because my family are not nomads, but have lived in ialomita for generations, working as useful and established tradesmen. on the other hand, i cannot work anymore due to injuries from the war, thus please repatriate them, as a passionate people caught up in a momentary mistake, without any cases against them, and known as having only acted for good in society. thanking you, and please receive my respect and trust for this consideration. ion d. paun49 dumitru marin wrote many letters from bucharest throughout the war petitioning for the return of his extended family. his letters are eloquent and mobilize a range of discourses of romanian citizenship and nationalism. he begins the letters with lists of the family members he wants returned, the work they do and the property they own in bucharest, before concluding with a direct contestation of the terms of interpellation and persecution of “!igani”: my relatives are serious people, honest, workers and home owners, not one has any criminal record against them … in this family there were people in whose veins flowed the coagulated blood of the holy greater romania. 49 ushmm igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 905. even though i am of !igan origin, i have lived my whole life a romanian life, and we identified with the obligations and aspirations of the romanian people (neam). no blame, no reproach, against any one of these banished from their property and their beloved country can justify their deportation to a foreign land. i ask you respectfully with all my soul to remember that in the great war there were !igan soldiers of !igan origin and you have seen with how much generosity they gave their blood for our country – because they do not have any other.50 his reference to “greater romania” reflects the anxious interwar identity of united romania, and he is a unique letter writer in making a clear distinction between “!igan” as an “origin” and as a way of life. dumitru marin never clarifies what exactly it means to be “of !igan origin” if one’s blood, citizenship and national allegiance is romanian, but this is exactly the point that he is making; to be of “!igani origin” is to be recognized as the historically articulated !igan other in romania, a group which cannot exist outside of this society. the !igan, that is, does not exist in any other country in the same historically developed and bound context as in romania. marin’s presentation of the participation of “!igani” soldiers in world war i as evidence that !igani were part of the romanian nation and people drew on broader social and state discourses of nation, sacrifice, and masculinity that were emphasized to mobilize troops for world war ii. as troops came home from the eastern front in 1943 and 1944, those romani romanians amongst them who found their families had been deported while they were at the front wrote angry and bewildered letters to the authorities. these soldiers often articulated the injustice of risking their lives for the fatherland, while their families had been deported from their homes. mihai szolosi came home wounded in 1943 and found his mother and four brothers had been sent to transnistria. his letter states that his mother “owned two houses, never went from village to village begging, and 50 dumitru marin, 29 december 1942, ushmm igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 899. 40 volume 25, no. 2 page 40 had never occasioned the intervention of the local authorities in the family.” he requested permission to bring his family back home in order for him to “return to the front knowing my family remain in the land of our forefathers.”51 ravica rafaila wrote that she and her family had been deported because they were “of ethnic origin !igan,” but that this deportation was ”unjust and illegal” as her son-inlaw was “a soldier fighting at the front for the rights of the people and the country.”52 another soldier, ludi calderar, framed his experience in ideological solidarity with the romanian nation in stating that he “fought 17 months against bolshevism at the front” and then arrived home to find his parents deported to transnistria.53 the laws to deport #igani also specified that those without legal marriages were to be treated as if married, highlighting that it was common knowledge that families of romani romanians were often structured outside of the romanian legal system. in the process of deportation, however, police often identified romani women as !igani because they lacked formal marriage certificates, and were thus named “concubines” and considered immoral and promiscuous. romani women named !igan were often deported with their children as unmarried and promiscuous because their partners were in the army, at work, or, tragically, because they were out shopping or seeking medical attention in the same place and time as police were out seeking deportees. one man’s petition for the return of his wife and children included a promise to be legally married upon her return. likewise, vasile and teca covaci from acmariu in alba county refuted their persecution as stereotypical !igani by specifying that their four deported children were legitimate and well-loved. we are roma, and thus legally married and these are all our legitimate children. we are not nomadic roma, we are fierari, with property and a household and we move for work, to earn a living. at the time they were taken we were at work and the children were mistakenly taken with the other roma. we hope that you understand our pain as 51 ushmm igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 1013. 52 ushmm igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 1030. 53 ushmm igj dosar 86/1942-43 (59/1942) doc. 1082. parents remaining without our children, and give permission for them to return.54 the petitioners here refer to themselves as roma, and stress that their familial structure is the same as romanians (marriage, legitimacy). they also stake a claim for the validity of their lifestyle as property owners who travel for work, and replace the term “nomadic !igani” with “nomadic roma.” this discursive attempt to replace the government’s category with their selfidentification as roma and fierari, a respectable tradition within the romani community, is an attempt to superimpose the ordered social hierarchy internal to romani communities onto the romanian stereotypical conflation of all romani groups as !igani. but this discursive shift also tethers romani cultural signifiers to the !igan other. after much paper work and investigation between various regions, the gendarmerie reported that this entire family had been deported to transnistria, and the father (vasile covaci) had escaped, returned to his hometown to make the petition, and continued to live on the run. a search warrant was released for his arrest and he was redeported to transnistria in april 1943. vasile covaci was thus acutely aware of different ways of engaging with and avoiding the romanian authorities. the petitioner chose to stress the discourses of familial legitimacy in the letter, yet knew that he would be treated as a !igan regardless, and hence he lived on the run. the strategies he used to avoid detention while traveling between central and regional ministries and police stations, where he represented his own case, shed light on how romani petitioners used stereotypes of !igani and vagabonds in order to avoid detection as transnistrian escapees. romanian police responses to the attempts of petitioners to refute negative stereotypes, however, highlight the power of the !igan other as a totalizing and fixed identity that recaptures facts and contestations of stereotypes, containing and reconfiguring them in stereotypical discourse to serve the romanian ethnonational self-identity. gendarmes constantly use the words “the !igan” before the names of petitioners, embedding the stereotypical interpellation in their term of address even as they went through the motions of considering the evidence before them. 54 27 january, 1943 ushmm igj dosar 86/194243 (59/1942) doc. 1096. 41 volume 25, no. 2 page 41 the police replies demonstrate the way that the !igan other was located in romani bodies through a vast range of factors, !igani remained !igani regardless of what property they owned or occupation they worked precisely because only ethnic romanians can claim to know the inalienable characteristics of !igan identity. responses to letters such as we have read also included comments that the petitioner was reputed to be friendly with thieves, or spent all their time in the pub, or that their trade was not required in the village – there were other people providing this skill. in these replies the gendarmes showcase the range of facets and thus the function of the !igan other – projected from within the anxieties of everyday discourses of romanian ethnonational identity, the !igan identity can be tethered to bodies through a gamut of contradictory signifiers, in this case mobilized by romanian authorities who openly considered the very fact that they had to respond to these petitions an insult to their important business. this was a project to buttress ethnic romanian masculine authority. in the jokes that peasants told about !igani protagonists, the individuals depicted ‘played’ !igan in order to escape and resist their social place through strategic use of the same stereotypes that were used to police roma into the peripheral social position of !igani. in the responses of romanian gendarmes to the requests for repatriation, the !igan remains !igan, despite the attempts of petitioners to refute specific negative stereotypes, as only the romanian can ‘know’ the !igan other. the construction of knowledge of the !igan as a stable identity is precarious because no romani individual can be fixed across time in a single stereotypical identity, and in this way the anxiety that powers the construction of the !igan as other is the same anxiety that powers knowledge of their escape and thus the refusal of romanians to engage with any contestations of identity in the matrix of the !igan as knowledge. finally, further insights into how romani romanians deported to transnistria articulated their persecution as racial hatred manifest in the name !igan can be found in letters written by the general union of roma to regional police stations in 1947 and 1948. having re-formed after the war, the general union of roma supported the petitions of romani romanian survivors of transnistria who wanted permission to travel home (they were immediately put under state arrest and into forced labor). the union had an office in bucharest, and they responded to the continuing discursive interpellation of roma as “!igani – elements dangerous to public order”55 in language that refused to engage with the traditional stereotypical discursive construction of !igani. for example, one letter stated that “in reference to the stabilization of nomadic roma and other categories of roma who were deported to transnistria due to racial hatred, such as the calderari and spoitori, we ask you to approve their permanent settlement in rimnicu sarat.”56 the union signed their documents with “long live the popular romanian republic” and thus demonstrate an acute awareness of politically expedient political affiliations, but this language of calling racial hatred against roma by its name does not come from romanian socialist party discourse. in fact, the union was disbanded in 1948 with the socialist decree that “co-inhabiting national minorities,” did not include roma as an ethnic group. this window into a post-genocidal romani articulation of what had happened in transnistria as “racial hatred” highlights that a strong network of romani romanians consciously identified the word !igan as an identity projected from within romanian ethnonationalist discourse that was in turn tethered to romani bodies in order to identify and persecute the embodied others of romanian society. the romani romanians at the general union of roma after the war actively rejected the identification of roma as stereotypical !igani even as they answered to their discursive interpellation as such in order to consciously demand a non-racist society. reading romani resistance the history of romani romanian strategic resistance through engagement with the stereotypes of the !igan is as long as the history of romanian state and social persecution of romani peoples. for historians of romani resistance, the word !igan also carries a long history of gadje refusal to recognize that romani individuals and communities have a right to choose their own names, embracing the discursive agility of self 55 in the words of just one policeman from rimnicu sarat, plot. major stafn c. burcea, july 25 1947. buzau. dosar legiunea de jandarmu rm sarat dosar 7/1942-1948 “#igani nomazi” doc. 640. 56 buzau archives dosar “#igani” doc. 726, 25 september 1948. 42 volume 25, no. 2 page 42 identity. regarding the past, scholars need to be aware of how the matrix of the !igan as projected other has been developed and invoked throughout history, and is also the field of engagement and resistance for romani romanians. translating !igan as “gypsy” or “roma” elides, conflates, and erases entire systems of complex meaning, and it is in these choices of self-appellation in historical sources that romani resistance can be read. this article explores romani resistance to persecution through strategic engagement with the field of their oppression, the matrix of the !igan other. the !igan in romania is a historically developed stereotypical matrix that has been used to contain and police romani romanians as internal others to romanian ethnonational identity in different ways. the !igan other has served different purposes in different periods of romanian social and political history, but the word itself as name invokes the gamut of violent meanings that have been used to interpellate romani romanians as slaves, and as victims of genocide, in recent history. the purpose of writing this history of resistance is to explore how romani romanians identified the stereotypes of the !igani other and contested them point by point in discourse that resonated with that used by romanian authorities in various locations, as well as to understand how romanian discourses of the !igan other were wielded by romanian authorities in order to contain the agency of romani individuals. romani petitioners knew not only the discourse that was used to persecute them, but could access and engage with the hierarchical system that produced it. these letters were a strategic part of wider survival strategies that were enacted at the level of the !igan other as the site of persecution. i hope that this article also raises questions about the ways in which european and non-european scholars perpetuate the function of the !igan/roma/gypsy other through our willingness to accept and explain away silence, or scholarship that does not rigorously engage with the available historical sources. i was shocked to find such a wealth of archival sources about roma in the holocaust, including sources written by the victims, and a study of why these sources are still not consulted (such as deletant 2006, see footnote 21) or how they are interpreted through contemporary racist overtones without general outrage, is required. roma were deported to ghettoes and forced to labor, starve and struggle to survive alongside jewish victims of the holocaust. as jews were persecuted under the pejorative stereotypical name jidani (translated by randolph l. braham as “kikes”), roma were persecuted as !igani. scholarly exploration of how groups of victims were identified, racialized and murdered in the holocaust requires that we understand the ways these parallel persecutions functioned for the perpetrators, and functioned uniquely according to the specific historical meaning of these names. references achim, viorel. 1998. #iganii în istoria româniei. bucharest: editura enciclopedic!. achim, viorel. 2004. documente privind deportarea #iganilor in transnistria. bucharest: editura enciclopedic!. bucur, maria. 2002. eugenics and modernization in 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(anul iii nr 4-5): 81-90. deletant, dennis. 2004. ghetto experience in golta, transnistria, 1942-1944. in holocaust and genocide studies. (vol. 18, nr. 1, spring): 1-26. deletant, dennis. 2006. hitler's forgotten ally: ion antonescu and his regime, romania 1940-44. new york: palgrave macmillan. elkins, stanley m. 1968. slavery: a problem in american institutional and intellectual life. chicago and london: university of chicago press. hitchins, keith. 1996. the romanians 1774-1866. oxford: clarendon press. ionescu, %tefan. 2005. the boom of testimonies after communism – the voices of the jewish holocaust survivors in romania 1989-2005. in studia hebraica (vol. 5). kelso, michelle. 2005. hidden sorrows: the persecution of romanian gyspies during wwii. film. livezeanu, irina. 1995. cultural politics in greater romania: regionalism, nation building & ethnic struggle, 1918-1930. ithaca: cornell university press. nastasa, lucian and varga, andrea (eds). 2001. minoritati ethnoculturale marturii documentare: 43 volume 25, no. 2 page 43 #iganii din romania (1919-1944), cluj-napoca: ethnocultural diversity resource center. panaitescu, p.p., and damaschin, mioc. 1966. documenta romaniae historica b, #ara româneasc! i. bucharest: academia republicii socialiste românia. stahl, henri h. 1980. traditional romanian village communities: the transition from the communal to the capitalist mode of production in the danube region. translated by daniel chirot and holley coulter chirot, cambridge: cambridge university press. stroescu, sabina-cornelia (ed.). 1975. snoava popular! româneasca editur!. bucharest: minerva. weber, peter. 2004. eyewitness testimonies as source of a historical analysis of the deportations to transnistria (19411943). in étude balkaniques (no. 4). williams, susan. 2008. the “civilized trap” of modernity and romanian roma, 1918-1934. in this issue of anthropology of east europe review. woodcock, shannon. 2007. romania and europe: roma, rroma and #igani as sites for the contestation of ethnonational identities. in patterns of prejudice (issue 5, vo.41): 493-515. archival sources: this paper cites documents found in the romanian national archives, collections held in regional archives in romania and at the united states holocaust memorial museum. i accessed the materials held at the united stated holocaust museum as the pearl resnick postdoctoral fellow of the museum 2006-2007. nationalist tensions: tradition and modernity in discussions of kyrgyz bride-capture1 volume 21, number 2 nationalist tensions: tradition and modernity in discussions of kyrgyz bride-capture1 ethan wilensky-lanford, reed college © 2003 ethan wilensky-lanford all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. bride kidnapping, or alakachuu, is the single most common form of marriage practice in sections of rural kyrgyzstan. a young woman, typically between the ages of 18 and 22, is tricked or convinced to get into a car with a group of men, who she may or may not know. she is taken to the family home of one of her kidnappers. there, his extended family will be gathered with a collection of gifts. the female and elderly family members attempt to convince the young woman to marry into the family. barring the highly unlikely event of refusal, the bride is pronounced wife that night, as her new mother-in-law ties a ceremonial scarf (jooluk) over her hair. after the marriage is consecrated, the new couple sleeps together. in more conservative homes, the sheets are inspected in the morning to insure that the bride was, indeed, a virgin. if she was not, the bloodless sheets may be hung outside and great shame will fall upon the bride as well as her family. alakachuu stands as a focal point around which nationalist and modernist discourses are organized today. american and european human rights groups speak out against the practice and, indeed, many kyrgyz are opposed to the notion of marriage without full bridal consent. in july of 2002, however, the chief of police in a major city of kyrgyzstan contacted my host family, knowing that i was studying alakachuu. one of the policemen working under him was planning to steal a bride, and he called to inform me of the event. although laws forbid the practice, they are rarely if ever upheld. the nationalist discourse is echoed time and time again across the kyrgyz countryside. men say they steal their women because it is traditional. in bishkek, nostalgia for country life was evident when a young military student told me that he would consider stealing a wife, because it is kyrgyz tradition. in the course of my research, i found that kyrgyz men take pride in planning, carrying out, and talking about the practice. i asked a 35 year-old radio technician named orozbek what happens after a wedding if the woman does not want to be married to the man. orozbek said that different mentalities exist in america and kyrgyzstan, and that the husband wouldn’t be concerned about this, because eventually his wife would be happy and love him. it would become his job in life to make his wife happy, and he would not feel real joy until his whole household felt such joy. on the other side of the coin are the modernists, who would like to see alakachuu go the way of gulag labor and forced collectivization. although there is no question that the tradition of bride-capture predates lenin’s revolution, arzykan momuntaeva, of the coalition for democracy and civil society, says emphatically that the democratization project must include a cessation of alakachuu. she states firmly that none of her sons will participate in bride-stealing. in her opinion, the change must come from parents rather than government. members of the kyrgyz intelligentsia are drawn between the two opposing camps. supporters of president askar akaev who wish to represent kyrgyzstan in a favorable, modern light speak critically of alakachuu, while rural people who seemingly do not have as much of an interest in painting a particular image of kyrgyzstan do not. for example mashakbay, a radio reporter in the small town of talas spoke of alakachuu favorably at first. he said that alakachuu had been part of kyrgyz culture, because kyrgyz had been nomadic. i asked about alakachuu in the context of democracy, and whether the practice had changed since independence. mashakbay’s expressed opinions shifted. he replied that alakachuu is a problem, should be stopped, and is rare. he said that during soviet times, kyrgyz and russian culture became mixed (smeshalos), so alakachuu jen typewritten text 81 volume 21, number 2 became less popular than it had been. he said that it only happens in villages. he seemed to be nervous or defensive at this point, and i felt as though i was talking to a press secretary in akaev’s government. with the advent of democracy, he was saying, alakachuu will cease. in mashakbay’s speech, nationalisttraditionalism was evident. he alluded to presoviet kyrgyz nomadic life with nostalgia. on the other hand, mashakbay reveals a quasidemocratic philosophy that is definitively modern, and pro-akaev (and perhaps inspired by my status as an outsider). notable was a presidential campaign calendar that hung in one corner of the office, projecting five years into the future. askar akaev spells democracy, and democracy equals american-style modernity where alakachuu will be a thing of the past. but traditions die hard. a small-town public university rector defended a traditionalist argument for me that was similar to mashakbay’s opening statement. after telling a story reinforcing notions of central asian moral “wealth” over that found in europe and america, mr. omurbekov said that as a “modern person” he was against alakachuu, but that he believed marriages formed by kidnap are likely to be more successful. his hypothesis for this is that when dating, couples only see each other’s best sides. when they then get married and start a family, there is disappointment when the whole person is revealed. with alakachuu, there is no idealized view, and therefore no subsequent disappointment. here, alakachuu is both defended for practical reasons, and rejected in terms of civility and modernity. if nationalism is associated with bride capture, to be nationalist is to be non-modern. yet, high value is nonetheless placed on the practice. one man said that alakachuu was a very good thing because it allowed decent men who were not attractive to be married. also, it permitted men who couldn’t afford expensive dowries to marry. alakachuu is also often spoken of romantically, as more of an elopement than a kidnap. if an arranged marriage (cirqohsalas) is made by parents when children are very young, and either party doesn’t wish to marry their assigned spouse, they may elope with someone else. elopement often takes the form of alakachuu, in the sense that the young woman is taken from the family without her parent’s permission. women have more agency in kyrgyz marriage patterning than may at first appear. in theory, a potential bride always has the choice of whether to stay and marry her perspective husband or not. these weddings always happen at the groom’s family’s house, so any pressure exerted on the woman comes from males and females alike. in fact, women members of the groom’s family are said to be the most convincing proponents of most unions. elderly women, in particular, are strongly revered and their urgings are forceful. many of the women i interviewed who had been kidnapped said that they would have left, had it not been for the old women. some old women threaten to curse the young women if they leave. the power relation established during this first interaction between bride and mother-in-law is profound. in traditional religious homes, the bride must obey and defer to her in-laws at every moment. the mother-in-law may even select the bride, playing a powerfully agentive role in her son’s marriage. many men stated that they only kidnap women who they already love, or know they will be able to love for life. some women encourage their own kidnapping, by showing favor to particular men, or, in more overt cases, by advertising their availability for marriage. in a small town, for example, i visited the house of a young woman – jazgul with my friend, hamzat. the two were both unmarried and friendly with each other, colleagues at a local university. jazgul stood in an adjacent room and put on make-up, before a stand-up mirror, as hamzat and i drank komus. while she beautified herself, she told us that she was going to be stolen on the 13th of august. she mentioned that the other woman that we had sat with at the concert two weeks before had recently been kidnapped, and that now it was her turn. her friends had supposedly revealed a certain surprise plan to her. she went on to say that she didn’t really care for the man too much, but was not conclusive one way or the other about whether or not she planned to stay and marry. hamzat’s sister, when i told her the story later, said that jazgul was ‘like a fox’, and ‘knows how to get what she wants’. she went on to say that she was certain that jazgul was not going to be kidnapped, and that women routinely lie about such things to raise their prestige in the eyes of potential suitors. in her opinion, jazgul was actually interested in baiting hamzat. jen typewritten text 82 volume 21, number 2 the case of jazgul and hamzat demonstrates a situation where a woman positions herself in the hopes of procuring a particular husband. she calls for hamzat often, but can’t directly initiate marriage. instead she demonstrates her availability for courtship or marriage. she strategizes. although gender equality was a goal throughout the soviet era in kirghizia just as much as it was in russia, women of marrying age do not have the agency of their young male counterparts. nonetheless, as this study shows, they have begun to create a space to address their desires. endnotes 1 this study reflects ethnographic research for my undergraduate thesis carried out during juneaugust of 2001 and 2002 (primarily the latter). during my first summer in kyrgyzstan, i lived with a family in bishkek for three weeks, and for four weeks in tyup, near lake issyk-kul in the eastern part of the country. it was in tyup that two women in their early twenties described alakachuu to me, and although i began preliminary research that summer, my inquiry began in earnest the following summer. in june of 2002, i arrived in the town of talas (pop. 30,000), where i lived with a family for seven weeks. the central generation (i.e. parents) were married by means of bride capture, which i describe in an undergraduate thesis written at reed college (2003). hamzat, who appears in this paper, is the couple’s son. i received extensive help from rusaldan and kishimjan, who are the two elder daughters in the family. kishimjan also served as a translator from kyrgyz at times. in addition to my conversations and observations with the family, i interviewed students, professors, and administrators at the local university, as well as journalists and media employees, nongovernmental organization (ngo) workers, policemen, and friends and relatives of my hosts. after my time in talas, i stayed for three weeks with the family that had hosted me the previous summer in bishkek, and also spoke with them extensively about my research. this research was funded with support from the oregon consortium for asian studies (ocas). jen typewritten text 83 “eating our way back to god”: sacral nutrition and acculturation in the krishna conscious lifestyle volume 21, number 1 “eating our way back to god”: sacral nutrition and acculturation in the krishna conscious lifestyle judit farkas, european institute of food history (ieha) © 2003 judit farkas all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. introduction1 since the late 1980s hungary has become the scene of many different intellectual tendencies; religious and just so-called religious movements have departed, have been brought to the surface and become parts of everyday life. in these spiritual movements, there is a connection between their very different ways of thinking and of dealing with nutrition. diet’s increasing importance in these movements and certain attitudes toward nutrition can be interpreted in opposition to a way of looking at eating as a merely physical, worldly fact or action. it is the community of krishna conscious believers that entirely refuses looking at nutrition as profane action but understands it and practices it in a sacral level.2 krishna consciousness3 as a new religious movement has been brought from india to the west. it belongs to indian vaisnaism, more precisely, the so-called gandija vaisnaism branch. the founder of this branch is csaitanja (1485-1584) who has worked in bengal in the 15th century, who is known as krishna according to the krishna faith. according to his theories, reaching god and liberation can be available for everyone -without any respect to age, sex and caste with singing the name of supreme identity of god and with devotion and love towards god. it started with csaitanja prabhupada, who lived by gaudija vaisnaism; a.c. bhativedanta prabhupada is also the member of the disciples. in 1965, he went to the usa from india and there he founded the iskcon (international society for krishna consciousness). krishna believers want to take over and put into practice not only the religion but also its roots the vaisnava culture, and they never omit to emphasize that krishna consciousness is not a religion but also a lifestyle.4 this movement reached hungary in the 1970s, and it has been operating as a registered temple since 1989 under the name of the community of the hungarian believers of krishna consciousness. the krishna consciousness faith strongly emphasizes its separation from earthly word, but it does not order believers to break away from it totally. a krishna village has been established in hungary where they live relatively isolated but the vast majority of krishna believers live in big cities or in the temples of these cities or even at their own homes. studying the lives of krishna believers who are living in towns is a perfect field for analyzing the introduction of an entirely different culture and lifestyle into the new environment of contemporary hungary. the aim of my research was to find out, on the one hand, how a secular act becomes sacral about religious rules (prabhupada 1990:15) and teaches; and to what extent has this influenced krishna conscious nutrition; are there any basic theories or dogmas for believers to start out? . on the other hand, i have studied the problem of rules and realization, how dietary rules succeeds in practice. vedic culture inevitably revises itself when it is placed into a new surrounding, and its practice undergoes some sort of changes. during my work, the main problem was to find out to what extent changes can be allowed, and how sacralism can be maintained in spite of changes. it is in close relation to the self-controlling attitudes towards the profane world and the way of explanation of the roles, which i will discuss as well. in my paper, i consider the sacral to be something which does not treat nutrition on a physical level, as a bodily need or as the satisfaction of its need; rather, i assign greater significance to nutrition, and look at it as a connection between men and the transcendent that links men to a higher purpose of life, in this case to divinity. sacrality is the typical feature of everyday lives of krishna believers. i limited my jen typewritten text 49 volume21, number 1 studies to the question of nutrition because i wanted to point out the importance of dietary practice. prabhupada himself, who was the founding father of the international society of krishna consciousness, often called this religion a “culinary-religion”. sacral nutrition is a central position in the lives of krishna believers, which shows that they did not only talk about it to please me, but this topic also came up in all of the lectures or teaching i have seen. krishna consciousness distinguishes three needs of the body. these are in connection with the tongue, the stomach and the genitals and they are placed vertically within the body, with the tongue at the top. if someone is able to control the demands of his tongue, then he can restrain the other two. therefore, regulating the tongue in the question of eating is the starting point in the krishna consciousness, and i think it is also a good starting point for understanding the krishna religion. my paper is based on a yearlong participation in ethnological fieldwork, including participant observations and interviews. the community of believers of krishna consciousness emphasizes philosophical descriptions; there is a huge literature on dogmas however, the practice and the acquisition of rules and customs happened by means of orality. however, there are short descriptions of rules in krishna consciousness literature, however my paper does not deal with them. my ethnographical account describes my experiences among krishna believers generally in pécs. it is about what rules and customs they practice or at least of which they have knowledge. sacral nutrition the basic theory of how nutrition becomes sacral is that a krishna believer only allows consuming food that was already offered to krishna. offered food is called praszádam, meaning grace.. consuming food that was offered to the divinity is not only a rule that has to be obeyed. praszádam is the basis of spiritual life, of krishna consciousness, and krishna believers can reach krishna through praszádam. offered food is considered as a sort of spiritual life that has no need for consciousness; it is unconsciously effective with helping the spiritual improvement. therefore, prabhupáda often suggested to the beginner krishna believers to consume more offered food because it quickly purifies the spirit from material pollution. this is a simple method for those who have difficulties with the philosophy at the beginning. after all, nothing can be easier than eating. to understand sacral nutrition, we should make some things clear and become acquainted with the two basic theories of krishna consciousness. krishna religion considers the vedas as its sacred gospel in the interpretation of “prabhupada” and bhagavad-gita5 is the most important of them. sríla prabhupada completed these interpretations with his explanation. this is how the huge literature developed and krishna believers regard it as the collection of their sacred books. they take the content of these books by all means. in this way vedic discipline was inherited through the chain of disciples. “that was the only way to understand the vedic discipline this fact is confirmed by bhagavadgita as well (bg.4.2.). if someone makes efforts to have experiences on his own, he comes to the same conclusion as well, so the best way to accept the doctrines of the vedas is at the beginning.” (prabhupada n.d: x). the other important point is the worldview of krishna consciousness. according to it there is the spiritual world where individual spirits and creatures live together with the supreme being, in their original place. on the other hand, there is the material world where such spirits live captive to illusion and the material and who try to be independent from the divine. men were given higher intelligence in order to accomplish god and get back to krishna and to the spiritual world; this method is written down by krishna in the bhagavad-gita. bhakti yoga is the name of the method by which one can get to krishna. bhakti yoga is the yoga of action and love, and its essence is loving and devoted service given to krishna. in prabhupada’s words “the process of restoring our private relationship with the supreme lord is through doing devoted service” (prabhupada 1996:167). bhakti yoga does not propagate withdrawal or asceticism but the active and loving service given to god. the whole life of a krishna believer is meant to be offered in krishna's service. one unit of this service is cooking to krishna and eating food that was offered to krishna before. devoted service such as doing something for krishna, makes the profane act transcendental. “krishna consciousness means action. all the things we have ought to use on krishna's behalf. that is the process of bhakti yoga. krishna gave us brains jen typewritten text 50 volume21, number 1 and we should use our brains to think of krishna. we were given legs and we should use them to go to krishna's temple. we were given noses and we should use them to smell the flower offered to krishna. and through the process of bhakti yoga we put these senses into krishna's service and all of them became spiritual.” (prabhupada 1996:6-7) if someone follows this method and consume only from offered food, then he is not only purifying his body from its earlier evil reactions; but he makes it resistant towards all the pollution of the material world (bg.3.14. explanation). then it helps him to develop in spiritual life, to clean the body and to create those fine brain-tissues that are believed to lead to clear thinking. (bg.9.26. explanation). krishna-conscious nutrition and the krishna believers' lifestyles are imbued with the complicated system of the vedic rules that help the devoting service. this system is attributed to the vedas, consequently to krishna. “the regulating actions are ordered by the vedas, however the vedas are the direct revelations of the divinity's supreme identity. so the transcendence, which is imbuing everything, is always in present in sacral acts.” bg 3.15.) believers learn rules step by step from their master or from each other. it is not compulsory to know and follow the rules from the moment of converting, but everybody is expected to learn continuously. these rules are not entirely rigorous; they mainly depend on the place where the believers live. monks living in the temple, in the múrtis’6 closest service have the most restricted lives. rules are more relaxed for those have to insert the rules into ordinary circumstances, for example, those who live at home in a non-krishna believer family. there are many stages between these extremes, but most important of all is to live to the best of one's knowledge. of course, it raises the question of relaxing and controlling, a point to which i will return later. regulation covers the whole process of nutrition: from the first step of shopping. krishna believers are allowed to choose only those foods that can be offered to krishna. foods are classified to three so-called binding-powers7 these are: goodness, passion, and ignorance. “foods that are in the quality of goodness make lifetimes longer, clean people's lives, give strength, health, happiness and contentment. such nutritious food is sweet, juicy, fatty and tasty. people living in the binding-power of passion favour foods that are too bitter, too sour, salty, hot, dry or burning. these foods cause pain, depression and illness. those who live in spiritual ignorance enjoy foods that are cooked more than three hours before eating and foods that are tasteless, stale, smelly, rotten, and impure”(bg.17.8-10.).8 foods belonging to the binding-power of passion or ignorance cannot be offered to krishna, who clearly tells people what he accepts. “if somebody offers me a leaf, a flower, fruits, or a drops of water with love and devotion i accept them” (bg.9.26.). having food that belongs to the binding power of goodness is part of devoted service. believers have foods that are desired by krishna and these foods help them to get higher in spiritual level. that means krishna believers do not have food of animal origin except milk.9 adherents do not eat meat or eggs, and they omit to have garlic, onion, and mushrooms from their menu because garlic and onion are associated with passion, and mushrooms with the binding powers of ignorance. they do not drink coffee, black tea and cocoa because of their caffeine-content, and they do not drink alcohol. whatever food they buy must not contain components of animal origin, and they try to get their food from bio-farms. in the farm, they use plants grown in their own garden and milk from their own dairy for cooking. they deliver mainly rare spices by a car to smaller centers. special indian spices are transported from india. raw materials should be fresh and very clean; they do not use rotten vegetables or fruits. if something falls to the ground, it will be washed immediately if it is washable, or it will be thrown away. the question of consciousness in which meals are produced is important. they usually avoid having a food that is made by a person, who is not krishna conscious. the consciousness of the cook has effects on the food and that food mediates that consciousness to people who eat it. therefore, when someone is having food made by a person living without spirit-consciousness, so without krishna consciousness, he is materially polluted, and his spiritual development is held back. cereal meals are especially significant because cereals are best to take over human consciousness. so the best way is to avoid food is made by non-krishna believers, and if it is unavoidable, offering the food can reduce the bad effects of such foods. jen typewritten text 51 volume21, number 1 in cooking, the most important thing is that people have to be clean in physical as well as spiritual level. as we have seen it so far damaged or rotten, in fact unclean materials should be very clean. cleanliness of the kitchen, the dishes and the cook is also essential. they do not cook in serving dishes and do not eat from cooking dishes. moreover, they keep bowls and pots that are used only for cooking in the kitchen, and plates are kept somewhere else. they wash dishes right away after using, even during cooking. the kitchen is cleaned thoroughly before and after usage. the cook has to wash himself before cooking. one has to put on clean clothes and has to wash his hands several times during cooking. if there is no opportunity to have a bath or a shower, cooks have to at least wash their hands. they wash themselves by all means before they make food for the “múrtis” in the temple.10 they are not allowed to go to the toilet during cooking or if it cannot be solved, if cooking takes a long time, for instance in restaurants, or before big festivals, when they make a hundred different foods they have to wash themselves well after going to the toilet. they should not touch their lips or the floor. if this happens, they ought to wash their hands again. women have to have their hair covered. besides avoiding physical pollution, it is important that a believer should not think of himself while he is making the food. if he does he defiles the food. he has to be aware of the fact that he is cooking not for himself but for krishna. therefore they do not taste or smell the meal before offering, and therefore it is important to follow recipes. if they obey the proportions and cooking methods that are perfectly worked out, then there is no need for tasting and thus polluting the food. the cook should speak about krishna or cooking itself, and by doing so he helps people, who will eat that food to be cleaner and more developed spiritually. in this case cooking for them is not simply an action but a meditation. when the meal is ready, the most cardinal step comes, the offering. every raw material or cooked meal that has not been offered to krishna is a material thing, namely bhóga. food becomes spiritual at the moment of offering. to offer food is significant because people get all the things they have from krishna; and not only is the killing of animals considered to be sin, but also destroying plants is believed to have karmic11 consequences. by offering food, actually they are offering it back to krishna, and he takes away the karmic effects of the action. on the other hand, when a believer offers something, he offers not only food but also his devotion in the food, and that is what krishna likes best. it does not mean that anything can be offered, even meat, because krishna was speaking clearly about what he would accept. in spite of this there can be a special situation in which these things cannot be done and then the spiritual master should make a decision. the spiritual master is a prominent person in a believer life, and later on he is gains a chief role in connection with the purifying effect of offered food, so he should be mentioned here. “devotion towards the master is a fundamental part of the bhakti. the guru should not be regarded as an ordinary man, but as the one who is identical with krishna, and should be loved as much as krishna (sb.11.17.27.). “guru is considered to be a mediator between the bakhta and bhagavan” (tóth-soma 1996:323).12 a krishna believer cannot follow krishna directly, he should ask for the guru’s help because there are few people who get instructions directly from krishna. “devotion towards the guru is even more important than to be devoted to krishna because the guru can save the bhakta, even if it makes krishna to be displeased; although, krishna is not able to save the bhakta when his guru is dissatisfied with him” (tóth-soma 1996:323). krishna believers get their names and initiation from their own masters with whom they discuss spiritual problems either personally or by letters, as they are not together all the time and rarely see each other. let us look at the question of offering again: a meal when it is ready should be covered because it gets dirty easily by a glance of either an animal or abhakta who is a non-krishna believer. this rule however is only obeyed in temples. offering is done in presence of the múrti or when there is no múrti, it is done in front of the picture of sríla prabhupada or the master of a believer. in the case of “múrtis” who are initiated in the temple, a brahmana13 always does the offering. a brahmana is a believer who is initiated twice, and he is a servant of an múrti. a believer who is not initiated or initiated just once can offer foods only to his master or prabhupada. where a krishna believer lives together with his non-krishna conscious family, and in their kitchen they cook meat jen typewritten text 52 volume21, number 1 consequently, this kitchen is unclear a “múrti” altar cannot be set up there. when a believer is unable to practice his religion publicly, it is quite enough to say “dear krishna, please accept this food!” without any ceremony. he does the same when there is no way to do the offering properly. if there is no chance to offer food to a “múrti” just to the spiritual master, then it is meant to be similar to offering it to krishna; since the spiritual master can pass on homage to krishna, he works as a mediator between a believer and krishna. where believers live in a community usually the cook is the one who does the offering; in families it is the one who made the food or the husband and sometimes the children, in order to make them familiar with this act. they put small portions from all of the food into special silver or stainless steel bowls reserved especially for krishna and they always put a glass of water beside the food and drinks. they try to make this dish beautiful by decorating it with flowers and arranging the colourful foods neatly. the simplest way of offering is saying the sentence cited above, and singing the hare krishna mantra. to make it more complex they make altars to place in their homes. an altar has three pictures: krishna’s, prabhupada’s and srí csaitanja’s14. offering should be done in front of this altar. they put the divided pieces of food to the altar and fall on their knees before it. during this action they are singing three mantras that belong to prabhupada, csaitanja, and krishna. there is a little bell ringing. they are thinking of krishna and krishna should accept this food, which is offered with love. these divided pieces are left on the altar for about a quarter of an hour. then these bits are taken back to the others. krishna can have the food within ten or fifteen minutes while the believers sing together. the offered food on the altar is called mahápraszádam15, and all the other food becomes praszádam through them. god eats mahápraszádam directly so it has special power and everybody should be given a piece of it. according to their beliefs, god eats the food. krishna as the supreme identity can function with all the parts of the absolute. for example, he can eat with his eyes. all in all, he is pious enough to leave the food as it was. (the word praszádam means grace.) after all that food becomes praszádam, it becomes part of his grace. each part of god's body has the ability of the other senses. even though we are able to see with our eyes, we are unable to eat with them. the senses of god do not work like that because they are infinite. simply by looking at the food, he can eat it” (prabhupada 1996:31). in this sense krishna helps his followers to develop spiritually and eventually to find their way to him. when believers are having meals together they serve foods in the prescribed way. after taking away the food from the altar, they put them into huge stainless steel buckets or plastic bowls only used for portioning out food. everybody has their own set of dishes; a set includes a divided bowl made of stainless steel, a spoon, a fork and a glass. they do not use knifes because they are not needed for indian food. thus, they do not need to use their left hands. using one’s left hand is considered unclean according to hinduism. guests are given plastic bowls and cutlery. everyone sits on the floor, men and women in separate lines, and children sit beside their mothers without respect to sex. in a group of fifteen or twenty, there are three or four people who do the serving. while the others are having their food, they wait and when everybody has finished the meal, they sit down, and the others serve them. concentration on eating should not be disturbed; so one must not stand up while eating. serving is considered to be a devoted service just like eating; so serving and accepting food carry the meaning of loving association with other believers, and both are in krishna's service. at the beginning, there are small portions carefully put on the plates with care as not to mix them. foods should be arranged as beautifully on the plates as they are on the altar because that is also a part of the cleaning effect of the food. those who are serving food have to pay attention to the right order. however, during my research, it did not turn out what is the right order exactly. i have mentioned so far that krishna believers learn their customs from each other or from their masters. cooks usually try to learn their profession in india, or at least from indian people. because they study in different parts of india however, they see different customs, and that is why i heard several equally acceptable orders. the point is that someone who has nothing to do with cooking cannot say the right order.16 when everybody sits during serving, they sing glorifying songs and start to eat together. if there is enough food everyone can ask for seconds, paying attention to leave portions for those who are serving. bhaktas usually recommend to have a drink before eating, and not to drink afterward this rule be jen typewritten text 53 volume21, number 1 not always obeyed, so it is one of the rules that remains in the level of knowledge and theory. following the meal they wash up all the dishes, and when everybody is gone they wash the floor because the place of eating is considered to be unclean when it is not cleaned. the leftover food is considered to be sacred and thus cannot be thrown away to an unclean place. sometimes it is buried or according to my research, they often gave it to farm animals or take it to a place that animals can reach. they think the second solution is best because food accepted by god cleans not only people but also animals. there are so many stories referring to the vedas in which animals eat from the offered food then they rebirth as human beings; they avoid the expected modes of existence and get a chance to find their way back to krishna. nutrition itself is a spiritual life in krishna consciousness for which there is no need for consciousness and therefore it can be accomplished by anybody. eating, consuming sacred food, becomes sacred by eating consciously and devotedly. according to the substance of the religious meaning of physiological acts, it is the fact either of copying god's model or being identified with some cosmic phenomena (eliade 1966:158). in the bhagavad-gita, krishna, as the beginning of all things, let the people who are aiming to get to know him, how to live their lives. consequently, acts and devoted services prescribed by krishna become sacred. in this way the bhagavad-gita justifies and takes every profane act including eating and cooking to a sacral level. “every human experience can be transformed and revised in a transcendental level” (eliade 1966:161). it is the same in connection with food, which is simply a base material without offering. by offering food, it becomes sacred and it is not material any more, but a spiritual food that helps people release from the capture of the material. people who are getting acquainted with krishna consciousness like delicious indian food from the beginning and subsequently become aware of its sacredness. later on they definitely feel the difference between the foods; the offered food is much better for their bodies and their souls as well. in the practice of krishna consciousness they mention the offering as the first ritual they do by themselves. offering and eating offered food changes their attitudes towards eating. they see praszádam as the remains of krishna's food, and according to the offering the food like everything belongs to krishna, and people can enjoy it by krishna's kindness. at first krishna enjoys the food, then people do as well. in the bhakti yoga the offered life means active life, a believer offers his acts to god. in this way all his acts become sacrifices. krishna believers emphasize that giving the food to krishna, which was given by him actually, is a sacrifice. “srí krishna makes it clear that for those who want to develop spiritually and to get rid of the bonds of the material the right foods are exclusively the cleaned remains of the offered food” (explanation of bg.9.26.) as i have previously mentioned, krishna teaches the perfect lifestyle to his followers to understand and to copy him. he is the final purpose of offering. krishna is working continuously so every act should copy him and aim to be like him, in addition to keeping the rules that are given by him and relating them to the basic theories. in this sense doing correct things means doing sacred things. offering food means giving back everything to god that belongs to him and do the same thing that he did and left the benefit of the acts to god. with eliade’s words sacrifice changes into an action and becomes part of the method of keeping cosmic order (eliade 1996: 194). at the same time, they interpret the offering as a thanks giving: thanking god. he gives people what belongs to him. thankful that he is they’re for people to serve him, creating the possibility of arriving back at the spiritual world. therefore thanks-giving recreates the cosmic order, and this creates natural balance and the likelihood that the offering will be part of the cosmic order. in krishna believers' opinion, not to thank the food or to miss the offering is equal to stealing: which means to take what is not ours without saying “thank you,” to god. the offering helps the communication between the sacred and worldly. the offering and consumption of food brings krishna closer to the people and strengthens the relationship between god and the people: “by admitting man to his table, the god became bound to the community in a special relationship.”17 the offering as a sacrifice thus reconstructs cosmic order. believers think of it as a possibility to get back to their original state, so they would be able to go back to krishna in the spiritual world. “the bhaktás get rid of all kind of sins because they only consume the food which they already have jen typewritten text 54 volume21, number 1 offered as sacrifice. others, who only make food for their personal pleasures really are eating the sins” (bg. 3.13.) we have seen that the only edible nourishment for krishna believers is food accepted and fully enjoyed by krishna because what is non-praszádam is unclean. the opposition of clean and unclean is an important element of krishna faith in controlling the purity of the soul. offered food cleans the heart, soul and mind. food which has been tasted before it was offered to krishna, however, is unclean. by their strictest rules, if a non-krishna believer or an animal looks at their food, it becomes unclean. however if a superior clean thing touches an unclean object, the unclean will become clean. therefore, it is good to eat the remains of the spiritual master or eat the food, which was touched by the hand of the guru or by a blessed object. there are possibilities to do these things on feasts, for example in autumn on the govardhan hill festival. the govardhan is a holy hill in india. by the legend, when krishna was seven years old-had lifted up this hill and he was holding it up for days above his family and friends to save them from indra demigod as he tried to destroy them by storm and hailstones. a fragment of the govardhan hill (síla) is kept in the somogyvámos temple. on celebrations, they decorate this piece and they hold a whole day ceremony, lead by the spiritual masters in respect of the síla. like all the celebrations, the govardhan festival also has its washing ceremony (abhiseka). during this ceremony, they put the govardhan-síla on a metal tray and then two or three brahmans sprinkle it with different drinks and rub it with sweets. then they put chains on it, which were made of dried fruit. later these are given to worshippers. then they collect the drinks and the sweets, which were put on the govardhan-síla, and these, will be shared during the communal eating. it is very important that each of them have some. later on, they put the síla on the middle of a “relief map” which is made of sweets. this map shows the govardhan hill and its surroundings. on the ceremonies they dance around this special map, they sing festive songs and in the end the spiritual master distributes the “sweet-map” among the krishna believers. as mentioned earlier, karma is the basis of nutrition. that is why one must not eat off unclean or sinful people's food, and this is also the explanation how you can get superior effects through food. in this case, the sweets are blessed several times. the fragment of the govardhan hill is regarded as sacred; therefore whatever touches it becomes clean. all the food on which the síla was put is transformed into the govardhan hill in india, therefore the food is sacred and on the other hand, because it touched the síla and it all has been offered to krishna it becomes mahapraszádam. the spiritual master is so superior that whatever he touches becomes clean and will have a cleaning effect. therefore, the liquid and the food that touched the síla and what is more were touched by the master's hand help the mental development of the krishna believer. on festivals, they always cook the favourite meal of whom they celebrate. this person could be one of the masters or one of krishna's earthly appearance or krishna himself. if the celebrated person is not in presence, they treat his “múrti” as it was that person. with that custom, they show their love and devotion, the kind of love that is the essence of the bhaktiyoga. the mahapraszádam, which can be given on these celebrations, is another excellent possibility for the development of one's spiritual life. food as the manifestation of the clean and the unclean constitutes a complicated system in hinduism. 18 in hinduism, the caste system strictly makes the difference between clean and unclean, touchable and untouchable. however, this system does not give clear rules concerning leftovers, and if these do exist, they would be even more complicated than the hygienic rules (malamoud 1989: 13). in the krishna consciousness, the material is the bad and has lower ranking than spiritual things, but it becomes sacred as it is offered to krishna. yet the problem of the clean and unclean still exists. this and the hygienic rules, and avoiding unclean things are there in the krishna believers' lives and practice. making the contrasts even bigger the krishna believers do not get these experiences with the nationalization, they have to learn these even if they do not see the system clearly. on the other hand, they have to put what they learn into practice within a different culture. this essay investigates this problem later when i describe how krishna faith adapts itself to hungarian circumstances. despite contradictions and problems, i feel that the contrasts are very important to make in order to better understand the krishna faith and lifestyle. prabhupada says there are three jen typewritten text 55 volume21, number 1 transcendental qualities. these are cleanliness, “giving up,” and grace, where the cleanliness means that krishna believers do not spoil themselves with bad food and habits (syamasundara 1998: 12). according to mary douglas, the best way to understand their eating habits is to connect it with spiritual impurity, and she sees cleanliness as an element of the universe's order (douglass 1966). whatever is against the order makes chaos and all becomes spoiled and unclean. within krishna consciousness the unclean is always opposite to what is krishna conscious, therefore it is not in favour in spiritual life. the unclean is against the order of spiritual life and consequently creates chaos and suffering, and these are equal to the material world, which is the birthplace of the unclean. getting back to krishna is to undo the chaos and re-establish order by making food as clean, loving, and caring as the krishna follower's life has to be. if we take krishna conscious people as an example, we agree with mary douglas that avoiding the unclean has not done by fear or religious terror; it is not negative, but a positive effort. clean things are liked by the gods therefore they lead us to krishna and he decides what he thinks is clean. the contrast of clean and unclean things decides on many details of the krishna follower's life. for example what they can eat and what they cannot eat, and where, how and what they can do. for múrtis who were initiated in temples, only twiceinitiated brahmans can offer. they only deal with the múrtis and are clean superior krishna conscious bhakta. before offering it is better to hide cooked food from unclean glances. practice: sacralism and acculturation in practice, krishna consciousness sticks to the indian vaisnava tradition keeping to the rules allows both the assimilation to god's sanctity and attachment to him (rekai 1998: 69). the disjuncture between specifically indian and contemporary hungarian eating habits creates many problems. in the view of nutrition and krishna consciousness, i assume that local hungarian circumstances are acceptable as long as these do not interfere with the religion’s four basic rules: 1) the prohibition to consume meat and egg, 2) the prohibition to take drugs and ecstatic remedies including the alcoholic drinks, tea and coffee, and cigarettes 3) the prohibition of gambling, 4) the prohibition of extramarital sex. however these rules give a wide interpretation, which shows its comparison with the world. the comparison with the world is an important question in the view of the new religions movements. this decides on the different cultures or, in our subject, on the fate of rules. if we try to categorize the krishna consciousness by one of the two methods of max weber's world-rejection, we will not find it easy. according to weber, there is an active asceticism, which tries to change the world inside the world, makes god to do it as his tool. and there is an ascetic,19 outside the world, who runs away and refuses to do his tasks. as prabhupada influence on the krishna followers, they reject the other kind of yoga because they believe that bhakti-yoga is the only continuous action and the one and only way to get to krishna. among other things, eliade sees the importance of the bhagavad-gita because it shows yoga technique as a way “which helps us to break away from the world while we are still living and working in it...” (eliade 1996a: 196). according to istván kamarás, who did sociological research on hungarian krishna followers, it cannot be decided whether krishna consciousness belongs or can belong to weber's first or second theory (kamarás 1998: 96). krishna consciousnesses is deep within the world and at the same time consciously separate from the world through the method of sacralism, which i believe is very important. dissociation from the world makes everyday life sacral and puts it and the whole krishna conscious lifestyle into opposition with non-krishna conscious societies. the sacrificial life, the opposition of clean and unclean, order and disorder, inside and outside, we and they, all strengthen the dissociation and support what hoppál says: the great world religions have too many theories and formalities, and the semisystem of the religion’s beliefs perhaps most important feature is that in many cultures this subsystem stores the given community's value judgements (pointed out by me) and in many cases in the form of the religions customs and rules (hoppál 1992: 113). very often, these krishna conscious customs and rules seem strange in our culture. these strange, unfamiliar rules, regulations, and prohibitions are different from hungarian practices. krishna believers use two explanations drawn from holy books to give explain regulations. for example, they explain the prohibition of onion eating by jen typewritten text 56 volume21, number 1 saying that the onion belongs to the group of passionate plants and therefore, it must not be offered to krishna. eating onions raises physical passion that would unnecessarily make the monk’s life more difficult because of their commitment to celibacy. it would not make krishna believers' lives easier either because they only have sex in marriage to beget children. the fact that they do not eat from other people's food means that food transmits karma. krishna believers sort the dishes in the kitchen and they connect it with the spiritually and physically unclean. therefore, there are two types of explanations: the idealist and the materialist. mary douglas thinks taking mainly the jewish kosher laws and their explanations of religious materialist explanations as verifications, and specifically of the idealist explanation as primary. in this case, krishna consciousness can easily build into a similar explanation system with the help of the introduction of the new symbolic form. through these examples, we have seen that krishna believers try to give materialist explanations to their rules. krishna faith does not consider itself only as a religion but as a scientific ground, and the foundation is given by the vedas. the believers often emphasize that krishna conscious philosophy is actually a science that gives sufficient explanation. according to a krishna conscious cookery book, nutrition is a “scientific and practical way of culinary” (goura kirtana 1998: 7), and the bhagavad-gita's explanation of prabhupada advises the believers not to eat the kind of food which belongs to the ignorance category because such foods are the cause of infections and illnesses (explanation of bg.17.8.10.) to emphasize the priority of the idealist explanations, the rationalist explanations are given a big place. in my opinion, this is so because krishna consciousness is a foreign and strange thing and therefore this culture tries to connect itself to the dominant explanatory system, which is used here to control peoples’ minds. moreover, it is not only towards them, and about the explanation with they convince themselves. after all, they are thinking in accordance with local cultural models and these basics get them to the “way” to become krishna believers. the authors who examine indian culinary habits always warn about its differences, and the main point in the analysis is the community and the differences between social and political stratification and nutrition. jack goody illustrates his comparison of asian culinary traditions and with a description of chinese, indian and egyptian examples (goody 1982). charles malamoud examines the connection between leftovers and the caste system, establishing that in connection the context of the clean and unclean gives the basic image of social hierarchy (malamoud 1989). according to mary douglas, created views of cleanliness and other ideas in the society work on two levels: one level is about influencing others, and the other level refers to social life (douglas 1966: 3). within these cultures, cuisine-meals and their rules, customs and their dissociation and connection-creates a complicated system that operates as a symbol of the connection between social units. in hungarian krishna faith, all these are not meant to regulate and represent the relationships inside krishna society, but to indicate the contrast with the non-krishna conscious world to show the krishna believers a strong sense of belonging. 20 to consume only clean, already offered food saves believers from the material world's impurity, and assures them of the connection between each other; so they do not make others unclean. for believers living in this world, it is important because they want to introduce and show their krishna consciousness through their actions. they do not have to give up the material world's equipment to do this, but they have to use it in a way that serves krishna. therefore in their view, an indian krishna believer who wears traditional disciple’s garments, lives a simple life, and preaches its importance, but who has a mobile phone and drives a car, is not contradictory. similarly, that is the way a govinda restaurant attains higher value, as we will see later. whether living inside the world or departing from it, krishna believers gradually improve knowledge of correct krishna-conscious lifestyle. the integration of foreign cultures into hungarian life is a problem which raises further interesting questions about the hungarian krishna faith, about krishna believers selfestimation, and about smaller subjects, connected to the sacral nutrition. in connection with the keeping of dietary rules, i experienced radically different ideas during my research. the written sources from the bhagavad-gita emphasise their jen typewritten text 57 volume21, number 1 importance as a sign of dedication to krishna and as the base of spiritual improvement. the founder, prabhupada, also deeply emphasises the rules although what he had taught is that the best way to practice krishna consciousness is to adapt it to place, time, and circumstance. for believers, the rules are not always clear; believers do not equally know them and what they know, they do not practice perfectly yet. the believers who had been in india are presently learning the vaisnava lifestyle, which they are trying to follow; the spiritual masters are gradually teaching it to the hungarian krishna followers. without doubt, these techniques are shown in their practice. the local circumstances inevitably influence the believer’s everyday life and in some places force the usual krishna conscious life to make changes. but, before we discuss it in detail, let us discuss an earlier subject, connecting to the rules the question of supervision: what makes krishna believers adhere to rules? there are certain things that believers do together, where the community takes on the role of supervisor. leaders are continuously given information about the believers' behaviour. however, during interviews there is very little talk about it, because they think self-control is much more important. the believers regard the rules as easy; they think of them as tools which help to practice the krishna consciousness by forcing them to think of krishna all the time. in doing so, they intensify their love for krishna. as a krishna believer said: if somebody does a lot of good for the other, he or she will automatically be devoted to that person. devotion therefore strengthens love and, in the same way the rules which have to be kept because of krishna strengthen the devotion and love towards krishna. this love is what the bhakti-yoga teaches. supervision has another important level: the spiritual level. if someone breaks one of the four basic rules, he will get karmic reaction for it and the reaction will harm his spiritual master. this is possible because when a spiritual master accepts a disciple, at the same time he takes on particular responsibilities. at the initiation, the guru undertakes almost all of his disciple’s sins; if the disciple does anything bad after the initiation, the master will be partially responsible for those actions and will be influenced by them. in the case of eating noninitiated food, the believer will often react by feeling ill. the other, larger part of the negative reaction will be on the spiritual master because krishna holds him responsible for the believer's bad actions because the master has responsibility for his disciple. this result is not is not intended to urge one to displace their own responsibility, but to appreciate the master and to avoid causing him unnecessary problems. the krishna believer takes the traditions of the vaisnava cuisine, which is liked by krishna, as an example to be followed and sticks to it. however, this cooking had to change even in its original home in india due to the politics regarding british colonization and islamic influence (goody 1982: 127). it is unthinkable that the tradition would not change outside its original surroundings, especially when inserted into a totally different culture. this research shows that by now the jews from munkács, a small group isolated from the larger jewish community, do not keep many religious rules. however, they concentrate on their feasts much more than on normal weekday meals. this observation can be used in the case of the krishna believers as well, because it seems that they try to follow the indian model much more carefully during their festivals. the menu includes several kinds of indian food. the meal and numbers of its variations suit the given celebration, or believers cook the celebrated person's favourite meal. the other situation in which believers are very keen on original traditions is in the temple, where they cook for the initiated divine statues according to especially strict rules. however, on other days there are more concessions, partly because believers do not always know the rules properly. everybody keeps to the basic rules; therefore there is not one krishna believer who would eat unoffered food, yet this phenomenon is quite understandable because this particular rule is the easiest: the believer must only say ‘thank you’ to krishna. it is believed that fasting is very important: festive feasting is regular during the calendar year. the eleventh day before and after every full moon is the day of ekedasz fast when they do not eat grain or legumes because on these days sins may enter these foods. krishna believers think of their cookery books as holy books: the recipes are from krishna and therefore cannot be changed. if they were to be changed, krishna would be harmed. so far, my experiences show that there are concessions mainly in the ingredients: fruits and vegetables which do not grow and are hard to get in hungary can be replaced, and believers cook with oil or butter instead of purified butter jen typewritten text 58 volume21, number 1 (ghí). however, it is still forbidden to consume meat, onion, egg, mushrooms, and alcohol, etc., for the four basic rules must be kept. the four basic rules set the trends for any kind of meal because krishna believers do not eat indian food every day, but mainly simple vegetarian food, naturally after the food has been offered to krishna. the bhagavad-gita designates the very spicy and hot food within the passion group, which is responsible for illness and pain (bg.17.8-10). however, cooks realize how heavily indian food lays on the hungarian stomach because hungarians are unaccustomed to such hot and spicy flavors. what is considered mild in india cannot be in the passion group, although the same food might be considered hot by hungarian standards, a paradox that renders uncertain what belongs to the passion group. in the same way the bhagavad-gita states that the foods in the goodness group are healthy, even though these foods contain lots of sugar and spices and often cause stomach problems. they often say if they eat the different food in a proper order they could avoid this problem. yet they hardly care about this order, nor do they know it. though it is true that you cannot serve krishna with an empty stomach, you must not eat too much either, because overloading your stomach means you cannot serve and work well. despite these, the communal eating looks like huge feasts where everybody eats far too much. most of the questions, which seem to present problems even for krishna believers, are connected with the unclean and mainly with leftovers. it would be easy if we could say that what has been offered is clean and that, conversely, what has not been offered is unclean. however, this is not the case. for example if somebody eats praszádam food, the eating itself is sense-satisfaction and therefore unclean. if somebody touches his or her mouth during eating it also becomes unclean. one must not eat another’s food because it is considered unclean. however, it is good to eat what the spiritual master touched --even if he touched it with his mouth-because that has a positive effect on the believer's spiritual development. believers would break the rule of separating serving and cooking dishes if they were not able to keep to it; to avoid waste, they would use fruits that were less fresh in preparing foods like csatni (chutney).21 . touching the ground makes the hands unclean; however, the offered food can be eaten from the ground. there are many more examples, but what seems to be important is that there are rules they have to keep – “making the ‘praszádam’ by the given way is a written rule” (bg.17.8-10 explanation), but other rules can be broken if there is no alternative. now, the question is whether or not they use alternative ingredients or do not keep entirely to the given way of making the praszádam. does the sacralism get hurt? does all it become worldly in the view of the krishna consciousness? does it mean the sacralism is invalid? if we fail to keep sacral rules and therefore make the spiritual development doubtful, can we get to krishna at all? before i would try to answer this question, let us think a bit of the govinda snack bar. here are two ways in which nutrition is important: partly as a symbol of opposition between everything that is not clean and not krishna conscious, things that are krishnaconscious, and outside world or “the other”. and at the same time, this is what connects it the most to this other, how the non-krishna believers accept the indian food most easily and how it makes them the most curious, and why food interests them in the most pleasant way because of the exotic-strange details of the krishna conscious life. these two merge into a complicated system in the network of govinda restaurants, which are run by the krishna believers. this is the same in the govinda snack bar in pécs. 22 in the case of the snack bar, this duality poses other questions that are important because of their sacralism. running the snack bar means that krishna believers have to compromise: to make food suitable for the hungarian taste, they had to cook food that was less spicy. it is impossible to keep the order of eating because the snack bar has a permanent menu and the fast cannot be kept. the leftovers and the clean and unclean make problems. the believers eat up what is left in the restaurants where they only serve offered food, which is supposed to be clean food, but then the question is in this case what means eating into the food: when somebody actually has eaten into that portion is the food the leftover? of course, in the first case the believers do not eat that, but in the second case what they eat is unclean leftover, even though it is praszádam because unclean people have eaten it. while trying to avoid these questions above, we find an explaining principle, which jen typewritten text 59 volume21, number 1 solves the problem, at least for krishna believers: in this way, priority is not given to the rules, but to the way of getting nearer to krishna, the devotion in service and love towards krishna and the action of helping others in so doing. however, what prabhupada wrote is: “to neglect the regulating principles, ruins the devoted service. in this krishna conscious movement there are four basic rules that restrict sexuality, diet, gambling, and drug consumption. a bhakta has to follow these principles with his whole heart, if somebody is neglecting these rules surely will prevent himself from developing” (prabhupada 1990: 35-36). the believers refer to prabhupada in another, already mentioned teaching, in which he emphasizes, in connection with keeping to the rules, that we have to use the possibilities given by the place, time and circumstances. however, we do not have to undertake the impossible. in one sense, keeping to the rules strengthens love towards god. yet at the same time, krishna sees the love and devotion felt for him, which means more to him than thoroughly keeping to the rules even if it is harmful and soulless. on the other hand, spiritual development cannot be the krishna believers’ only important practice. he has to provide this knowledge for other people as well. the point is that the believer has to be able to merge his krishna consciousness into his everyday life, practice it on the right level in the given circumstances, and use his five senses in krishna's service. in this case whoever goes into the snack bar immediately stands in krishna's service as he smells the offered incense stick, or looks at the picture of krishna, listens to the mahámantra from the tape recorder, talks to other krishna believers and above all, eats the offered food, the praszádam, which can be a first step, a spiritual beginning. (let us remember that according to krishna believers prabhupada himself said, if somebody engages the krishna consciousness, he has to eat a lot to start with, and therefore automatically, without knowing it, he becomes clean). in this way, the devoted service perfectly fits into the operation of the govinda network. here the eating could be profane, but because of the rules’ connection to the circumstances – for example the basic rules, to offer the food before it is eaten – the nutrition does not lose its sacral characteristic. so the basic theories are kept in the restaurant's everyday life and just the higher rules are broken, but only for the sake of the big purpose. therefore, the krishna believers still stick to the spiritual level of their everyday life, and they nevertheless live their sacrificial life and are with krishna through their devoted service, which is sorted by their circumstances. summary and further plans in the practice of the krishna consciousness, the sacral nutrition is an action by which the profane loosen up in the sacralism, which is in turn regulated by the gospel. the rules have their sources from god, the actions in krishna's service, and by these, everything has the same purpose, which is getting back to the spiritual world. therefore, the profane nutrition comes up to sacral level where man and god are together. in my opinion the context of the opposition between clean and unclean creates the starting point, which helps the sacred and the profane, and helps the believers to make the distinction between what is liked or disliked by the divinity. in doing this, believers may put themselves into the sacral-profane system and begin to analyse their position in the world. in this way, in a krishna believer's life the ordinary becomes sacred and the sacred becomes ordinary. however, the basis of krishna consciousness originates from the indian vaisnavism, from a greatly differing culture, the separation of clean/unclean, keeping the rules and therefore categorizing what is sacral. religion gives the solution to this problem by putting general aims and krishna's love before of the strictness of the rules. i acknowledge that my essay leaves several questions open. comparing theory and the practice is not easy where both have uncertainties. the hungarian community of krishna believers is an ambitious congregation; they are presently learning the rules of their religion. in my opinion, this state of transition, the stage of formation, is what makes the krishna believer's lives especially interesting for social research. to take the traditional indian lifestyle and mentality into hungarian circumstances gets a distinctive role in the study of the hungarian (western) krishna believers' lives, and researching this new reality's development, its technique, and new forms of socialization it begets. (berger-luckmann, 1998) the krishna conscious diet itself offers new opportunities for research. in my present research i have been analysing this system in hungary and the role krishna believers play in jen typewritten text 60 volume21, number 1 local charity movements by portioning out food and setting up free eating-houses. the krishna faith represents a new trend of vegetarianism. my research poses another question: how does the hungarian krishna conscious community become a part of the vegetarian movement? what is their institutional background, what do they do to support these movements, and what kind of products (meals, ingredients, equipments, cookery books, other literature about nutrition, etc.) do they use? one might also investigate traditional and newly discovered occupations, which are presently in use in the krishna villages, such as dairy farmers, bakers, apiarist, and krishna-conscious chefs. the question is how they adjust themselves with their products on the market, what established trades can learn from them, and how they use all these to present themselves in private and in society. references cited berger, peterluckmann, thomas, 1998, a valóság társadalmi felépítése (the social construction of reality). budapest: jószöveg hiánypótló. douglas, mary, 1966, purity and danger. london: routledge, kegan, and paul. eliade, mircea, 1996, a jóga. európa könyvkiadó budapest. --------, ed., 1987, the encyclopedia of religion. new york: macmillan. goody, jack, 1982, the high and the low: culinary culture in asia and europe, in cooking, cuisine and class. a study in comparative sociology. cambridge, uk: cambridge. goura kirtana das (gyulai gábor), 1998, govinda szakácskönyv. 108 vegetáriánus recept. budapest. hoppál, mihály, 1992, a hiedelemrendszer. in: etnoszemiotika. néprajz egyetemi hallgatóknak 14. debrecen, 108-126. kamarás, istván, 1998, krisnások magyarországon. iskolakultúra budapest. malamoud, charles, 1989, obsevations sur la notion de reste dans le brahmanisme. in: malamoud, charles: cuire le monde. rite et pensée dans l’inde ancienne. paris: la récouverte. prabhupada, a. c. bhaktivedanta, 1989, bhagavad-gítá úgy, ahogy van. the bhaktivedanta book trust h.n.23 --------, n.d., srí isopanisad. the bhaktivedanta book trust h.n. --------, 1990, a tanítások nektárja. the bhaktivedanta book trust h.n. --------, 1996, a tökéletesség útja. the bhaktivedanta book trust h.n. rékai, miklós, 1998, a munkácsi zsidók “terített asztala”. néprajzi tanulmány. osiris kiadó budapest. harikes, n.d., a swami visnupeda é.n.: gopata. a krisna-tudat kézikönyve. h.n. syamasundara, dasa, 1998, sríla praphupada az iscon-ról. bhaktivedanta kulturális és tudományos intézet. tóth-soma, lászló, 1996, a gaudíyavaisnava filozófia. torchlight publishing company. weber, max, 1982, a vallásos világelutasítás irányzatainak és fokozatainak elmélete. in weber, max: a protestáns etika és a kapitalizmus szelleme (the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism). gondolat kiadó budapest. notes 1 i would like to thank the krishna believers especially those from pécs who helped my work a lot. the study was published in hungarian in sors-áldozat-divináció ( éva pócs, ed.), budapest: janus/osiris, 103-136. i rewrote the sanskrit words for the sake of easier understanding. 2 since 1989, the hungarian society of krishna consciousness is registered temple. it is difficult to judge the number of believers, kamarás guesses there are 280-300 monks under training, monks and people of the temple and he thinks the congregation exists of 500-700 people. there are four temples: krishna-valley in somogyvámos, szolnok, debrecen, budapest and there are fifteen proselytizing centers, one of these is in pécs. the krishna believers follow the tradition of the hinduism's vaisnava branch both in dogma and in practice. jen typewritten text 61 volume21, number 1 3 the “krishna-consciousness” itself expresses the divinity, and means the knowledge of the relationship between krishna conscious religion and also the movements. 4 in kamarás istván's survey, for the question, “mit jelent önnek a krishna tudat?” (what does the krishna consciousness mean to you?), lifestyle was the most frequently given answer. kamarás (1998:173). 5 the vedas (“the books of knowledge”) is just a short form, this means the hindu holy books, which can be sorted like that: the four vedas, the one hundred and eight upanisads, the eighteen puranas, the vedanta sutra, the mahabharata and the ramajana. the bhagavadgíta is part of the mahabharata epic, and and it contains the basic theories of the vaisnava philosophy to which the krishna consciousness connects itself. 6 this means the statues of krishna and of his avatars and in the eyes of the krishna believers these are not only statues but also something equal to the divinity. 7 nature's material binding power that binds the soul to the material world. 8 this marks the bhagavad's chapter and verse. 9 in this case the fatty food does not mean the animal fat but the fat in the milk. 10 in somogyvámos temple, the bhaktas cook for the initiated múrtis in a separate kitchen. 11 karma: the reactions of actions, in which the reaction returns to the person who committed the action, usually in the next life. 12 bhakta is a krishna believer who practices the bhakti-yoga, the yoga of love. 13 the krishna believers according to which level they reached in he krishna consciousness will be initiated. with the second initiation they become brahmana, a priest. 14 csaitanja (1486-1534) is the founder of the socalled vaisnava branch of hinduism. the krishna consciousness connects itself to this branch and sees srí csaitanja as krishna's incarnation. 15 maha means big, main. 16 this is the one of the so many versions: rice, bitter vegetables, dal (soup made of pods), szamóza (vegetable filled pastry) or pakora (fried vegetables), szabjik (greens); csatai (very sweet but also hot purée) and finally the sweets. 17 “by letting the people to his table, god is having special relationship with the community” translated by the author. eliade (1987:391) 18 this system is analysed in malamoud (1989). 19 “in the eyes of a worldly ascetic, a mystic's behaviour is sluggish self-satisfaction, and in the eyes of a mystic, a worldly active ascetic's vanity and arrogance interfere with the world's nondivine corrupt practices.” (weber 1982: 344) 20 without doubt, there are differences in the relationships between initiated and un-initiated, monk or believer with a family, disciple and spiritual master. 21 csatni (or chutney) is a very sweet and indeed very hot pureé made of fruits and vegetables. 22 the snack bar in pécs has closed since i started writing this paper. jen typewritten text 62 ecological community: pogroms, peat bogs and the zapust festival anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: euniceb@u.washington.edu ecological community: pogroms, peat bogs and the zapust festival eunice blavascunas, university of washington the social life of natural spaces has changed tremendously with the advent of a liberal economy in postsocialist poland. dozens of new national parks and nature preserves rebranded land and people thought of as backwards into forward-thinking ecological communities whose former peasant agricultural practices lay at the core of preserving rare nature. new nature preserves also set up cultural expectations for the meaning of community. polish nature activists, a loosely bound group of ngo employees, artists, biologists, journalists, photographers, teachers and others, believed that ecological projects within new national parks could unite people around a common ideal to form more civically-minded communities than in the past. within the same time frame of the last 20 years, a new democratic system offered poles the hope that historical truth could be brought to light. this paper examines the way a suppressed historical event has undergone a transformation in tandem with changing ideas of nature and community in northeastern poland. the natural and cultural space that i write of is the biebrza wetland, in northeast poland, established in 1993. the expansive peat bog, the biggest primary marsh of its type in central europe, measures nearly 600 square km, and has been used as a source of village resources for hundreds of years. 1 the park borders villages with traumatic histories of polish on jewish violence during the second world war, brought to light by the princeton scholar, jan gross in his 2001 publication, neighbors: the destruction of the jewish community in jedwabne, a book that sent shock waves through the polish national consciousness for implicating poles in the holocaust, and a book that triggered local elisions in regards to the new national park, including the village stoczek‟s non-involvement in ecological projects. this paper theorizes how the reassignment of “backward” land and people into a “progressive” project of nature protection teases out ecological gaps; that is, how promoting the marsh and rural people as ecological community-based figures tacitly omits the violence gross uncovered and by doing so draws more attention to it via discourses about ecology and community. i write about these experiences and findings on the basis of doctoral research over 15 months from january 2005 to june 2007. in living and traveling in northeast poland i looked at the way the communist and peasant pasts complicate social relations in new national parks. the peasant and communist pasts in poland are rich with historical detail, but to abbreviate for this article, it is important to note that farming was never successfully collectivized during the 45 years of state socialism in poland, leaving a legacy of millions of small farms, most measuring no more than a few hectares. peasant agricultural practices shaped the landscape, including much of the wildlife populations that co-existed with small scale, anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 194 extensive agriculture. in many villages around the biebrza national park nature activists attribute the success or failure of their nature protection efforts to rural people‟s willingness to rally around the figure of the peasant in real and figurative ways. retaining traditional agricultural practices requires activists to convince rural people that joining in ecologically centered projects will benefit rural people‟s cultural status and the marsh ecology. nature activists promote ecological agriculture subsidy programs, ecotourism, fairs, and farmers‟ markets. under structural readjustment pressures farmers with land around the marsh have more often chosen to grow the scale of their farms and abandon older agricultural practices. the european union‟s common agricultural policy subsidizes all farmers, but in western europe, farmers tend to make up around 5% of the population, whereas in poland in 1989, the rural population made up around 40% of the population. international advisory bodies, such as the world bank, instructed poland early on to reduce the number of people in the farming sector, encouraging farmers to compete with one another for efficiencies in scale. today the official farming population includes 18% of the population. as overarching loan and subsidy programs influence competition and growth, several eu programs are aimed at protecting small farms and traditional farming practices around national parks. in the midst of these competing pressures to modernize and hold onto traditions, most villages, at least on an official level, participate with the nature activists to demonstrate a show of support in promoting the national park and the figure of the peasant sustaining the marsh. one of the more interesting responses to this rebranding of land and people was the reinvention of a pre-lenten peasant carnival drawing upon ancient fertility rites. the residents of stoczek (fictive name) had not had a cooperative relationship with nature activists, and many nature activists labeled the festival as xenophobic, drawing upon the village‟s depiction in gross‟ book (the village is not jedwabne, a nearby village). nature activists likened the symbolism of burning mythical creatures dressed in hay to jews trapped in flames while villagers prevented their escape. the idea of community provides a powerful conceptual framework for understanding how the extermination of jews during the second world war and poles‟ complicity in it, taints an otherwise “pristine” space of nature. nature activists promote a vision of community consonant with that in many community-based resource management projects. 2 they believe that rural communities have lived and can continue to live in harmony with nature. resident human populations belong in the newly established national park, where they must continue traditions of scything the reeds and grazing animals to keep the wetland open for avifauna. without scything and grazing, the wetland quickly covers with shrubs and trees, losing its biological importance. rare birds, such as snipes, aquatic warblers and graylag geese will not breed in the biebrza marsh if humans do not manage it as an open wetland. 3 the european union also has a stake in maintaining the openness of the marsh. the birds and habitat directives are the strongest tools the eu has for enforcing global conventions it signed onto, such as ramsar, bern and the world summit and sustainable development. the eu offers rural poles who live next to new national parks opportunities in the way of ecological subsidies to maintain the marsh. but heavily rural anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 195 postsocialist poland has joined the eu in an era of globalized markets of agriculture, a moment recognized as the crisis of the countryside where ecological subsidies compete with opportunities to expand the scale of one‟s farm and eliminate neighbors as competition. big, mechanized agriculture threatens the marsh by way of chemical contamination and the loss of traditional agriculture. thus, nature activists—in convincing rural dwellers to maintain, or in many cases, revive, their peasant-like land practices—recognize the importance of making those practices green, modern, and cosmopolitan. 4 residents in stoczek have acted in response to this distinct conjunction of a globalized market place and pressure to hold onto obsolete practices as they conceive a vision of community in their reinvented festival. for the people in stoczek a reinvented peasant festival, zapust, is a more authentic enactment of peasant-like practices than those being offered in nearby villages. everything is “for show” in places where tourists visit or where ecological subsidies dominate, but residents of stoczek say that the zapust festival is spontaneous, created by and for residents of stoczek. villagers describe their community and its culture as bounded. the festival, they say, can serve a need to work against the economic forces dispersing their community. as a demographic group severely impacted by the eu‟s structural readjustment policies for agriculture, many residents seasonally migrate for work in west european countries in order to modernize the farm, some returning to participate in the festival. the festival helps them feel a point of connection and continuity for an otherwise dispersing collective of families. nature activist often read the festival differently. they conjured the image of an angry mob of polish catholics burning polish jews in barns, perhaps the most vivid example of the violence from gross‟ book. according to nature activists, the festival mocks people who are different, as demonstrated by villagers dressing up like “darkies” or “gypsies” to scorn the bride and groom, played by two male actors. crass humor marks the tone of the festival and nature activists see a notion of community at odds with their own in the festival‟s enactment. where nature activists want villagers to use their traditions to be pro-western and “green,” in the village of stoczek they can only see villagers as “anti-semites” who have not come to terms with their violent past, nor with their eastern nationalism and their conservative, uneducated positions regarding both nature and the truth about their past. jan gross‟ book stands in between these two conceptions, between the ideal of a harmonious peasant community and the history that poles, including those in stoczek, find difficult to confront. violence against jews in the sites of ecology the polish national consciousness “freed” of communist ideology wasn‟t ready to learn of polish complicity in the holocaust when gross published neighbors. 5 as michael steinlauf (1997) has described in his classic work on communist-era memory of the jewish past, the holocaust became marginalized during the communist period and was repressed in public memory. the communist approach to the holocaust in poland was collective amnesia—a way to meet popular needs of forgetting the trauma. thus, the stories of polish-jewish relations before, anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 196 during and after the war have seen much revision in polish historiography following 1989. only recently, since the publication of gross‟ book in 2000, which coincided with the reinvention of the festival, have the pogroms surfaced as a complicating factor in ecological politics. gross‟ book recounts that polish catholic villagers carried out many murders and pogroms against their jewish neighbors in the lomza district two weeks after the outbreak of the russo-german declaration of war in 1941, an isolated set of events, but not entirely uncommon in twentieth century poland (gross 2001: 32-41). the violence in stoczek took place within days of large pogroms in two nearby villages. gross reprinted menachem finkelstajn‟s testimony, one of the few survivors of the pogroms. selections from this testimony not only recount the violence from those days, but also confront the perceived tensions over wealth, and importantly the portrayal of poles, not as victims of nazi aggression, but as perpetrators of a horrible crime, enacted in the space of the marsh: poles and germans continued to torment the jews until they chased them to a swampy little river near the town. jews were ordered there to undress and to get up to their necks in the swamp…from this day on a horrible chain of sufferings and torments began for the jews. poles were the main tormentors, as they mercilessly beat men, women, and children, irrespective of their age… the wild and bloodthirsty mob took it as a holy challenge that history had put upon it—to get rid of the jews. and the desires to take over jewish riches whetted their appetite even more … [gross 2001:34-35, 38] gross‟ account, including the veracity of his historical witnesses, remains highly contested in the national, and especially the local, context. the public voices from the villages, those captured in media accounts, assert that germans either carried out the murders or inspired a few hooligans who possessed the means to kill jews through momentary collaborations with nazis. 6 jewish collaboration with the occupying russians often surfaces in their telling as an explanatory factor for the violence. 7 today, villages in gross‟ book are symbolically associated with anti-jewish violence in poland. even as surveys indicate that polish people by and large do not believe gross‟ account, many people in poland spoke of inhabitants of stoczek as people more capable of committing violent acts than other poles. 8 the stigma lingers with the names of villages, whether poles believe gross or not. my ethnographic linkage between the festival, pogroms and ecological projects began in april 2005 in the library of the biebrza national park headquarters while browsing through park promotional materials. i came across a bright pink brochure with two garish dolls spinning on a wagon wheel. inside were pictures of crowds gathered around burning figures, three men wrapped in twisted bundles of hay, with captions about how these “bears” would fertilize the soil with their ash. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 197 the description and photos heightened my interest, for they did not depict the staid folklore of open-air village museums, present in some other villages in the marsh. clearly the existence of a brochure indicated that somebody official was attempting to present the festival to outside audiences, using the theme of fertility to link the festival to family labor and a peasant economy in the marsh. i did not immediately associate the name with the villages in gross‟ book, which i had read a year earlier. the famous pogroms from the book are often referred to only by the book‟s title village, jedwabne. the park historian, zbigniew, drew the association for me. “you know what happened in stoczek?” he asked suggestively. in the course of zbigniew informing me of the pogrom, i asked him if he might lecture about the jewish past for an american student group i was bringing to the region. this moved zbigniew to detail other acts of anti-jewish violence in the villages outlining the biebrza national park, ones i might not know about. 9 zbigniew‟s descriptions included a village only a few kilometers from the park headquarters. our conversation clearly agitated another employee in the room, but she kept quiet until zbigniew mentioned her village, to which she replied tensely but with polite composure, “you have to understand, polish villagers killed jews because they were rich. during the war people were desperate, starving.” the statement shocked me, but i tried not to react, as i wanted to know more. clearly polish catholics did not murder other polish catholics or orthodox christians who were “rich.” what was interesting was that zbigniew remained silent, and as i paid closer attention to poles‟ excuses for violence against jews i learned that talk about extreme poverty in the marsh was a common theme that often closed further discussion about polish on jewish violence. a pattern of economic neglect by both the socialist-era and post-1989 democratic government necessitated the modernizations away from a “peasant” economy towards economic development, a point that both nature activists and villagers throughout the marsh consistently emphasized, albeit in their own distinct ways. once i began to discuss my interest in stoczek with nature activists i received several negative comments about the festival. arek, an ngo organizer responsible for enrolling the region‟s many villages into one federation that could cooperate with the park, had nothing good to say about stoczek. he insisted that peasant rituals were not worth reviving when they referenced xenophobia and the pogrom. he dissuaded me from going to study the festival, and said that the festival would not tell me anything about ecological politics, as if paternalistically guiding my research away from a sensational topic. “the festival makes fun of people who are different. it marks a kind of primitive aggression,” he told me, “and that‟s all.” he had never attended zapust himself but had a great deal of interaction with mayors and village councils in the biebrza region; he was even convinced that the festival was reinvented as a cover-up for all the negative attention the villages received after gross‟ publication. arek‟s personal encounters in stoczek conditioned his views on the people there. all other village municipalities joined together to coordinate various ecological projects. the federation exchanged information about marsh ecology and kept in touch with the park regarding ecological subsidies and workshops. stoczek was the only uncooperative village, arek stressed. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 198 i found arek‟s comments about his actual experiences with the administrators of stoczek more believable than his literal interpretations of the festival (that villagers meant to remind people of jews burning in barns when they reinvented the festival). i thought arek adopted a position toward the village that was simultaneously aesthetic, moral, and economic. i would not call arek‟s concerns about xenophobia disingenuous. however, the festival was simply in bad taste for arek, whose motivations were not based upon his moral judgment alone. he was eager to see rural communities progress, but within the framework of their participation in conservation projects. a polish ethnologist from the bialystok center for cultural animation, fabian, who nature activists had credited with re-starting the festival in 2001, had nothing but praise for the people in stoczek. “the people from stoczek,” he said, stressing their village identity, “brought back an important tradition and gave it new life.” he wanted me to understand that anyone who suggested that the festival was xenophobic misunderstood the ancient efficacy of the festival and the remarkableness of its survival into the present. he seemed to draw these notions from classical anthropological writings that see ritual as means for creating cohesion amongst a group. those were not roma people, per se, that villagers were making fun of. in fact they were not making fun of other people, but employing transgressive elements to ritually exorcise their own community‟s conflicts. the contemporary version of the festival was intended to meet the needs of people in stoczek, in the here and now, to enable them to play and express themselves while taking pride in a tradition rightfully theirs. during the socialist period, fabian added, the state controlled the display of peasant customs, and distorted them because the customs had to be detached from their religious significance. 10 he commented on the importance of stoczek‟s isolation deep in the marsh for keeping the tradition alive. he sought out village elders who instructed him on how the festival was conducted prior to the second world war when it was last performed. 11 in return stoczek received a small sum to sponsor the festival. nature activists, residents of stoczek, and the polish ethnographer all treated the festival as something historically and specifically unique to the biebrza marsh and the present. if any comparisons were made between this and other festivals they were to the carnivals of rio de janeiro and new orleans rather than a tradition of masking rituals at the heart of european theater, known as mumming. interpretations of community gerald creed (2004) began an important discussion about communities constituted through conflict in his studies of post-socialist mumming rituals in rural bulgaria. in his reexamination of benedict anderson‟s (1983) dictum that the nation is imagined as community, creed argues that conflict is constitutive of community, not in opposition to it. he begins questioning anderson by asking, if the nation can be imagined as a community even when people do not know each other, then what is being invoked in the term community? following raymond williams, creed argues that the term “community” too often carries romantic anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 199 connotations as a “warmly persuasive” term (williams 1976:76). he writes, “community is not just a conceptual tool for delineating social relations but increasingly a culturally specific expectation about the nature of social relations, with consequences for anything conceived in its image” (creed 2004:56-70). thus we expect “communities” to be whole, virtuous, and to manage their conflicts harmoniously. in large modern societies the term nostalgically references a former era, the village community, where neighbors all knew one another and relied on each other for help. a sense of immediacy and locality is wrapped up in the term. atomized, individualized societies require citizens who can act against the coercions of a faceless modern state bureaucracy, as michael watts (2002) suggests. community, for the modern world is conjured as a social relation where citizens participate and reflect upon society as moral community members. yet creed‟s work shows that when people strive for notions of community that are harmonious they often take this to the extreme through excising elements that do not belong. to borrow from creed‟s work, i am arguing that the festival in stoczek, a mumming ritual that includes dressing up and parading in the streets, bands of “gypsies” going door to door to ask for money and sweets, and skits which poke fun of the village itself, is a call for revival in the face of external opposition, both from nature conservationists and that generated from the fallout over gross‟ book. instead of trying to explain the violence of 1941 and the reactions to today‟s public outing of this violence, i seek only to trace the way discourses about community operate. the retelling of the pogrom after 2001 and my study of the festival played upon the invocation of community at three intertwined levels that draw on the aforementioned notions of community: at the national level, where shock, disavowal, breast beating and renouncement marked the reactions to gross‟ book; at the site of stoczek village; and in nature activists‟ imaginings of an ideal rural community. the nation, as i will explain, motivates both villagers and nature activists to revive and reform peasant culture, even as these two groups profess to have other motives. the national community both rejected gross‟ findings and in other cases—mostly at the level of official speeches and intellectual publications—reacted with openness and deep sensitivity. but combined with evidence of what people in other parts of poland said about the villages gross writes about, the result of national attention was an accusing finger pointed at residents of those villages, instead of a self-examination of the nation. the positive polish national image hinges precariously on the notion that poles were victims of nazi aggression who heroically resisted nazis and in many cases helped jews survive the war in a place where anyone assisting a jew could be executed on the spot. the emotion stirred by gross‟ book at the national level makes clear the obvious importance of these pogroms for the polish national image of community. how did the national reaction to gross‟ work reverberate in the imagining of community around the zapust festival, specifically in the way the nature activists condemned the festival, and then in the way the community in stoczek came together for the purposes of the festival? anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 200 in this nationally significant place the nation, in the general sense of the term, lacked information about the festival. the event only possessed meaning at the local and perhaps regional level. it received scant and friendly media attention from the local news and served the needs of people living in stoczek. however, national and regional opposition to the people of stoczek played a large role in how outsiders imagined social relations in stoczek, i.e. “those people in stoczek are part of the national community that we do not want to see as ourselves.” and this imagining of stoczek contributed to discourses about solidarity within the village. external opposition set up internal discourses about the importance of the festival. nature activists had an investment in delimiting the community in stoczek. when villagers open bed and breakfasts (with the central element including food from the farm) or accept subsidies for ecological agriculture, nature activists position them as being in harmony with nature and thus with themselves. conflicting notions of rural people‟s identity in relation to ecology are constantly in motion. are rural people the right type of “peasant” for tourists? or must they be reformed for ecology? rural people today can lay claim to once living in “harmony” with nature and if former practices on the land can be revived for the present—for ecotourism—nature stands a chance of weathering the ecologically destructive storms of a modern world that would fragment human and natural communities. 12 nature is distinctive, as are the humans that co-produced it. ecological culture, or rather the way culture is articulated through ecological discourse, is part of a romantic tradition because it advocates specificity and distinctiveness rather than the universalism of culture, at the state or even international level. distinctive human communities employing family labor shaped bird habitat in the biebrza marshes. but polish nature activists do not sustain a belief in the cohesion of villagers in the biebrza region. villagers are understood as an unruly and unpredictable social force that nature activists hope to reform through their ecological promotions. their promotions mix romantic nature with a globalized notion of ecology. in the process of this external scrutiny, insiders can adopt the appearance of cohesiveness. from the inside, poland and polish villages are understood as contentious, quarrelling, and unable to govern themselves, which is often used as an explanation for why it became so easy to invade poland in the past. however, when the village needs to be presented to the outside, as occurs in ecological promotions, nature activists and rural inhabitants consciously market the village and the “peasantry,” as coherent and mutually supportive. 13 in many popular discourses the market is largely understood as the antithesis of smallscale romantic community (see bauman 2001, agrawal and clarke 2001). in poland a free market is most associated with the european union, hardly a free-market for agriculture, given its wide ranging subsidy programs, but the forces of a globalized market impact polish agriculture as subsidies coerce farmers to produce for the markets that the eu will mediate. this new economy of obsolescence for polish farmers forces residents of stoczek to go abroad for work. the market economy prompts many families to alternate childcare; for example a mother and grandmother will trade six-month cleaning positions in spain or ireland while investing remittances to purchase new farming implements the family needs if they are going to stay in the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 201 game of competitive market farming. farmers no longer need “unproductive” land in the swamp for their new commodity crops and animal husbandry. the land in the park once provided reeds, which people used as roofing until the 1970s. now, aluminum roofs cover houses. also, newer breeds of cows, with more delicate stomachs, do not prefer the grasses growing in the swamp. other sources of income in the new economy of competitive agriculture have made use of the swamp obsolescent. in nature activists‟ discourses, participating in the ecological markets of tourism and other “green” ventures becomes a way to create better communities as inhabitants put on their best public persona and as they spend more time as hosts, becoming the figure that they represent. rural people, who might otherwise be seen as the underclass of society, can transform into generous hosts and the type of people who work with the eu (that is, the progressive and liberal face of the eu, as opposed to the eu that sets out to destroy polish small farmers). when rural people cooperate with national park officials and ngos, they can act responsibly to the biebrza marsh and all the other people and creatures who live there. if “peasants” were always an anathema to progress in modernizing discourses they now appear as the key to that progress (see leonard and kaneff 2002). although nature activists lament the pressures of the market on the ecology of the marsh, in the activists‟ ideal the market—both the one that forces people to go abroad for work and the one that brings ecotourists—is going to create better communities. for one thing, it exposes rural people to “western” values and tastes, and perhaps they will begin to value the quaintness and the integrity of their own cultural and natural heritage. and secondly, the entrepreneurship of ecotourism, when led by a moral ideal of an economy that will protect nature, generates an ethic of ownership. when “backward” people transform into entrepreneurs the forms considered backwards can become assets when directed toward national goals, of which eco-development is clearly one held by those who want to see poland recognized for its commitments to value and integrity, as in its international association with the solidarity movement in the 1980s and in figures such as pope john paul ii. thus, stoczek exists within the same discursive-material space as ecological promotions yet has not or cannot develop as an ecological destination or project area. rituals and exclusions my initial assumption before going to stoczek at festival time was that the uniqueness of the festival in stoczek against the backdrop of gross‟ book and its exclusion from ecological politics would lead to the formation of a different type of community. i thought this community would be a more cohesive one formed not for tourists, but for residents alone, and thus a community with local strategies for affirming the distinctiveness of their tradition. clearly i was both anticipating and affirming a problematic bounded notion of community. i was aware of critiques against “localizing” people, but i was starting with the assumption of a bounded community because the pogrom haunted stoczek (set it apart). 14 i was reacting to gross‟ book anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 202 and the opposition of other poles when i anticipated a bounded community producing a festival solely or primarily for themselves. a vision of community where cultural forces operated on a deeper level than the public sphere of social and political change fit well with the views of the polish ethnologist i mentioned earlier who reignited interest in the festival, and with the residents of stoczek in their more implicit understanding and pronouncements that the festival was “spontaneous” and “just for the people in stoczek.” in the ethnologist‟s view the community in stoczek could thus redeem itself in two ways. stoczek could offer a better peasant festival than in the communist days, and, stoczek could offer a better version of community than in other villages because participation in ecological displays for outsiders had not commercialized the festival. one significant complication stood in the way of the ethnologist‟s and perhaps others‟ celebratory notion of community, and that was the issue of polish on jewish violence. questions of truth, facticity, and authenticity were at stake in the enactment of the festival, even though those topics were never explicit in the festival‟s enactment. zapust‟s detractors saw negative agrarian values of aggressiveness, valor, uncritical fidelity to political and religious leaders and conduct inspired by affect rather than reason, traits ernest gellner (1998) ascribes to romantic agrarian values when trying to sort out how these values associated with the peasantry take shape in new nationalistic contexts. romantic agrarian values in their extreme form under the ideologies of wwii led to the pogrom. nature activists wanted to excise this element of poland‟s rural and national past, a past that also used peasants to serve dangerously nationalistic elements in the society. the new era of a liberal economy and democratic politics enabled nature activists to set up the park, which they conceptualized as a purifying space of nature and culture reinvented for the present. i stood in the middle of two competing views on the value of the festival and thus the virtue of a community living next to newly redefined land made into nature. on the one hand the potential for community cohesion in the festival highlighted the importance of independent truths, such as gross‟ book. only someone from the outside could investigate the trauma of the past. on the other hand, the festival could be construed as symbolizing community truth—not the opposite of what was written in gross‟ book, but an assertion that stoczek in the present had been unfairly saddled with the guilt of a nation, the nation being a more appropriate even level for addressing poland‟s anti-semitic past. i believe that people in stoczek, motivated by the weight of external opposition, were consciously or unconsciously encouraging me to understand their festival as a type of organic prevalence of something uniquely theirs, and thus, something uniquely local, propelling the romantic version of community where they defended their internal forms of dealing with the past. in my role as an anthropologist, i had to stand in the flow of these two powerful claims to truth and community even if i was not inquiring about the pogrom in stoczek. people in stoczek accepted me into their homes and into their festival because they presumed anthropologists studied cultural forms; in other words, the limits of culture, culture as bounded. bounded culture does not threaten people in stoczek, does not point the accusing finger at them because in this anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 203 version of culture, festival participants are organic, unknowing subjects of their own local inheritance so that the festival maintains internal order (traditionally adjusted to the rhythms of nature). i tacitly agreed to this appearance of culture when setting up the research and it allowed me join in the festival. furthermore, a version of culture as peasant in origin rang true with much of east european ethnology, which studied the small details of villages to see how those details supported the larger national project (see hann, sarkany and skalnik 2005). as i attended the festival, including its preparations in the weeks leading up the festival and several subsequent visits over the course several years, what was important for the residents of stoczek was who got to participate in the festival and who was excluded. residents of stoczek constituted the success of the festival on how it revived the community by bringing people back together rather than on how the festival communicated with an outside audience or broke through stereotypes about the village residents. conclusion the pogrom, ecological politics, and the festival lay the ground for interpreting claims to community—who is an insider and who is an outsider, and what one‟s status (as a peasant, urban educated nature activists or u.s. scholar) meant for asserting truth about the past. in the nature activists‟ usage, the community should be a harmonious one based upon its comfort with the past. this ideal works best when nature and culture are timeless, which is one reason stoczek contaminates nature activists‟ ideal of an ecological community. but if stoczek were to at least participate more willingly in ecological projects and openly admit to the past gross writes about, the village might find redemption in the eyes of nature activists. following gerald creed‟s analysis of festivals in bulgaria i am arguing that the festival challenges dominant political discourses threatening the community, such as changes in agriculture that impact the village, as well as gross‟ account. what i am attempting to show is that creating community happens through rupture and dissonance at multiple levels, as if in constant shuffling of what people want out of community. knowing how to live with the dissonance marks the boundaries of community. the community i refer to is not just the residents of stoczek, but the ideal community desired by ecological politics, and the imagined community of the polish nation, for which the 1941 pogroms were an incredibly painful topic when jan gross brought them to light in his book. people fall back on the symbolic resource at their disposal to lay the bounds of their perceived community, which has consequences for how land is thought of as nature and whether or not villagers in stoczek, or in the marsh more generally, will be managers of that nature. i stood at the intersection of two loosely bound yet interacting communities (the village of stoczek and the nature activists). i followed a trace to see what happens in the gaps of ecology, the spaces that cannot be nature and ecology, but are co-produced as an exclusion from ecological projects in an era that affords all kinds of false promises about truth, democracy, and rural development. in this gap, the violent past of polish on jewish violence shares physical and anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 204 psychological space with ecology. i agree with creed that community is constituted through conflict, not only the insider/outsider conflict that in its extreme led to the pogrom, but even between people who cooperate on mutual projects, such as reinventing a festival. at all levels the romantic notion of community is an inescapable one. the romantic notion of community serves ideologies, in the present the ideology of ecological commodification, or ecological projects as an extension of capitalist ideology where the only means for small family farms to survive is in the spectacular form of tourism and museum ecology show pieces. the specter of community is an illusory one, but one in this case based upon real people, real murders, biophysical realities of a changing ecosystem in the marsh, and real needs for entertainment and transgression in a place that seems increasingly obsolete for those who live there. although the term “community” might be a common-sensical way of navigating the world, community, as an artifact of the past and nature, needs further specification to challenge what is hidden from plain view, what is hidden in the reeds of the marsh and threatened to be shaded out by trees, shrubs, and silence. notes 1 the peat bog has traditionally served many functions for village communities, including thatch for roofing, grazing land, peat, heating wood and timbers from the forested area, and hay for cattle. several ecotones, even sand dunes, make up the biebrza marsh. 2 arun agrawal (2005) highlights the role and function of neoliberal policies regarding community leadership and the environment. taking cues from other writers on governance and environment, he traces neoliberalism‟s strategies for eliciting cooperation amongst those subject to former state rule. in such scenarios, the objective is to transform individuals into instruments of their own governance. motivating behaviors occur more and more often through non-state actors, such as ngos. the market serves a greater role than ever in coercing such behaviors. however, there is a much longer history of polish national projects to modernize whereby poles see themselves as an undergrounded, non-state force needing to make strategic alliances with formal governments, while internally organizing. peasants were always essential to polish national causes. for a historical understanding of non-state polish attitudes towards land and the rural underclass, see eile (2000) and kieniewicz (1969). 3 more than 40% of the land in the biebrza national park is privately owned. owners agree to let the park administer their lands. farmers consider the land unproductive for modern agriculture. 4 the term peasant has a long historical trajectory in polish politics and thought. here, i use the term, as nature activists do, to refer to small landholders who produced most of what the household consumed. for a history of the polish peasant in feudal times, see kieniewicz (1969). 5 gross published the book first in polish in 2000 through the borderland‟s publishing house in sejny, poland, and one year later in english with princeton university press. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 205 6 i use the term “public voice” as a way to acknowledge that not everyone in these communities denies the role of villagers in these murders, but that village structures of representation, such as public monuments that still inscribe german fascists as the murderers, and mayors who will not change those monuments, make it difficult to oppose these discourses. 7 villagers believe that jews selected inhabitants who were to be sent to siberian work camps. gross (2001) confirms this discourse in a chapter about the soviet occupation of 1939-1941. 8 for a detailed presentation of polish responses to neighbors, see polonsky and joanna (2003). 9 the polish institute for national remembrance recently published a report following gross‟ book indicating that 22 villages in the region saw polish on jewish murders in 1941. gross writes about the worst triangle of this violence where more than a thousand jews were tortured and killed within the span of a few weeks. http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/3/133/the_jedwabne_case__volume_ii_documents.html (last accessed 21 october 2009). 10 gerald creed (2002) traces ritual decline to the loss of state backing for festivals. deema kaneff (2004) further delineates the differences between rituals and folkloric displays. socialists created a new type of folklore, one that denied the importance of tradition while couching local specificity in nationalist terms on the way to internationalist goals. 11 festival participants frequently argued about the stopping date of the original festival. some recall festival traditions, such as canvassing houses for money and treats, being carried out last in the 1960s. elder residents defend the idea that the original festival ended in the war years and claimed that the festival‟s origins go back hundreds of years. 12 while agrawal‟s (2005) notion of environmentality finds application here, the idea that nature conservation projects are simply a guise for neoliberal agendas, there are many other european intellectual lineages that prefigure the development agendas today. esther kingston mann (1999) has extensively document russian borrowing of western concepts to “advance” the peasantry. specific to poland, an understanding of polish romantic literature is critical to understanding how polish elites imagine the role of the peasantry in advancing the nation. anti-urban, and anticapitalist biases can be found in the literature of mickieiwicz, sienkiewicz, and other romantics and is widely understood as the fundamental component of polish conservative nationalism (see eile 2000). 13 in the nineteenth century, polish gentry and landowners sought to advance the emancipation of the peasantry in a common cause with the emancipation of poland from prussian, austrian and russian rule. polish-speaking peasants acted inconsistently in the polish national cause, sometimes siding with juridical powers against their polish landlords (kieniewicz 1969). 14 hugh raffles (2002) argues that people and places are always extra-local even as they are inscribed as local. places are often constituted at a distance; for example, the amazon rain forest informs international environmental discourses. see also clifford (1997). http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/3/133/the_jedwabne_case__volume_ii_documents.html anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 206 references cited agrawal, arjun. 2005. environmentality: technologies of government and the making of subjects. durham: duke university press. agrawal, arun and clark c. gibson, ed. 2001. communities and the environment: ethnicity, gender, and the state in community-based conservation. new brunswick: rutgers university press. anderson, benedict. 1983. imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso. bauman, zygmunt. 2001. community: seeking safety in an insecure world. cambridge: polity press. clifford, james. 1997. routes: travel and translation in the late twentieth century. cambridge: harvard university press. creed, gerald. 1995. the politics of agriculture: identity and socialist sentiment in bulgaria. slavic review 54(4):843-868. _____. 2002. economic crisis and ritual decline in eastern europe. in postsocialism: ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. c.m. hann, ed. pp. 57-73. london: routledge. _____. 2004. constituted through conflict: images of community (and nation) in bulgarian rural ritual. american anthropologist 106(1): 56-70. eile, stanislaw. 2000. literature and nationalism in partitioned poland 1795-1918. london: palgrave. gellner, ernest, ed. 1998. language and solitude: wittgenstein, malinowski and the habsburg dilemma. cambridge: cambridge university press. gross, jan. 2001. neighbors: the destruction of the jewish community in jedwabne. princeton: princeton university press. hann, chris, mihaly sarkany and peter skalnik, ed. 2005. studying peoples in the people‟s democracies: socialist era anthropology in east-central europe. halle: munster. kaneff, deema. 2004. who owns the past? the politics of time in a „model‟ bulgarian village. new york: berghahn. kearney, michael. 1996. reconceptualizing the peasantry: anthropology in global perspective. boulder: westview press. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 207 kieniewicz, stefan. 1969. the emancipation of the polish peasantry. chicago: university of chicago press. kingston-mann, esther. 1999. in search of the true west: culture, economics, and problems of russian development. princeton: princeton university press. kugelmass, jack. 1995. bloody memories: encountering the past in contemporary poland. cultural anthropology 10(3):279-301. leonard, pamela and deema kaneff, ed. 2002. post-socialist peasant? rural and urban constructions of identity in eastern europe, east asia and the former soviet union. new york: palgrave. nagengast, carol. 1991. reluctant socialists, rural entrepreneurs: class, culture, and the polish state. boulder: westview press. polonsky, antoni and joanna michlic, ed. 2003. the neighbors respond: the controversy over the jedwabne massacre in poland. princeton: princeton university press. raffles, hugh. 2002. in amazonia: a natural history. princeton: princeton university press. steinlauf, michael. 1997. bondage to the dead: poland and the memory of the holocaust. syracuse: syracuse university press. watts, michael. 2002. the sinister political life of community: economies of violence and governable spaces in the niger delta, nigeria. in the seductions of community: emancipations, oppressions, quandaries. gerald creed, ed. pp. 101-142. santa fe: school of american research. williams, raymond. 1976. keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society. new york: oxford university press. microsoft word table of contents and intro formatted.doc 5 volume 25, no. 2 page 5 introduction: roma & gadje krista hegburg, rutgers university yasar abu ghosh, charles university and iris-ehess 1. kana d!as oslavanatar ke letkovica dikas pre "á"i strana tikno údoli"kos, kaj pes duj stranenca rozprostírinen tikne kerore vaj ka#tune verda. dohromady savore éhi bí# héli. éhi odova o rom. savore #aj éhi jek #el he jepa#. katar jon avle? ko len adarde an$as? niko na#"i vakerel katar avle, har has d!ide, he "ak dúj brehy te #aj vakerenas jon #aj penenas so pes akostar djejinelas. jon #aj vakerenas kecivár d!alas o rat ada romengro, kecivár éhas savore jeketane he radinenas pes karde te d!al te "orel. 1. when you go from oslavany to letkovice you see on the right-hand side a little valley, along the two sides of which extend (rows of) little houses and wooden caravans. there are all together twenty dwellings. these are the gypsies. there may be altogether some hundred and fifty (of them). where did they come from? who brought them here? nobody can say where they came from, how they lived, and if only the two banks (of the valley) could speak they would be able to say what happened there. they could say how many times the blood of those gypsies was shed, how many times they were at peace [lit. ‘all together’], and delighted in going thence to steal. – antonín daniel’s description of his hometown, as collected by stuart e. mann1 in 1944, and again in 1947, stuart e. mann published a series of stories he collected and translated in 1933 in collaboration with antonín daniel in the journal of the gypsy lore society.2 mann was a wayfaring british philologist whose interwar travels took him to albania and then czechoslovakia, where he became a lecturer in english at masaryk university in brno and an ethnographer of czech-romani life; daniel was a czech-romani student of his at masaryk’s the editorial collective would like to thank the aeer editors, krista harper and julie hemment, for their assistance in preparing this special issue. we also extend our thanks to carrie bernstein for her work editing and formatting the issue for publication. 1 daniel, antonín, and stuart e. mann (ed.). 1944. “on the gypsies of oslavany: a record of his own people,” journal of the gypsy lore society third series, 23:71-91, pp. 72-3; mann, s. 1947. “two moravian romani folk-tales” jgls third series, 36: 24-36. 2 ne"as, ctibor. 2005. romové na morav! a ve slezsku (1740-1945) (roma in moravia and silesia (1740-1946). brno: matice moravská, 2005. p. 223. philosophy faculty with whom mann had undertaken (and abandoned) a romani-language translation of the new testament book of acts. authorship of the first story, an account of the origins of the so-called “gypsy colony” on the edge of the czechoslovak town of oslavany, was attributed to daniel, its editorship to mann. the second, more folkloric installment assembled tales of journeys out into the world, encounters with older gadje women and enchanted creatures, heroic tasks assigned, near-deaths escaped. alaina lemon has observed that roma “become part of larger historical narratives only through performance,”3 and it was on performative grounds that mann judged daniel’s accounts to be an “original” speech act. as a phonologically faithful “written record in romani of his own people by a gypsy,” mann declared the work to be “a unique achievement,” an assessment echoed by dora e. yates, then secretary of the gypsy lore society, who deemed it a “unique performance.” but when daniel ventured from the folkloric to the historical, asserting the indic origins of roma in 3 lemon, alaina. 2000. between two fires: gypsy performance and romani memory from pushkin to postsocialism. durham: duke university press. p.149. 6 volume 25, no. 2 page 6 his text, the hermeneutic of suspicion that privileged the ethnographer’s voice over his informant’s became clear: mann doubted the veracity of daniel’s “very unreliable” account, noting that it “seems to have been "órdo [stolen, in romanes] out of an encyclopedia or a newspaper.” if the origins of the oslavany colony were in doubt, however, its ends were not. by 1944, the same year mann published the first set of stories, the majority of the bohemian and moravian romani population had been deported to the extermination camps of auschwitz and treblinka; in august of that year the auschwitz gypsy camp where many of them were incarcerated would be liquidated in the gas chambers. in a note appended to daniel’s text, yates excerpts a fragment of a letter, written by daniel to mann (in czech), in which the informant informs the ethnographer of another near-death escape: “the whole oslavany colony was taken to oswiecim [auschwitz],” he wrote, “where they were done to death. only five survived, among them myself, my sister and my mother. my cousin is playing in brno’s opera house.” daniel’s testimony appears in a footnote, subordinate to yates’s estimation of his story as a “specimen of a rare gypsy dialect … [meriting] the attention of all tsiganologues.”4 daniel’s voice, as well as a full accounting of its near silencing, remains circumscribed by the discursive complex of mann’s ethnographic text,5 a dynamic that it is 4 mann, 1947, op cit. 5 other contributions to the journal did directly address the romani holocaust in the immediate postwar period: frédéric max and matéo maximoff, for example, both reported the mass murder of roma in auschwitz, tallying the number of those “cast into those ovens that told no tales,” as the latter put it, while jan molitor and jerzy ficowski detailed the decimation of romani communities in germany and poland respectively. see maximoff, matéo. 1946. “germany and the gypsies: from the gypsy’s point of view,” journal of the gypsy lore society 25: 104-108, p. 105; max, frédéric. 1946. “le sort des tsiganes dans les prisons et les camps de concentration de l’allemagne hitlerienne” (the exit of gypsies from prisons and concentration camps in hitler’s germany), jgls third series, 25:24-34; ficowski, jerzy. 1950. “the polish gypsies of to-day,” jgls, trans. rotblat, józef, third series, 29:92hard not to perceive, mutatis mutandis, in the contemporary scholarly and public debates in the czech republic over the veracity of the oralhistory accounts of the holocaust offered by the remnant czech-romani population.6 these debates are echoed throughout eastern europe – in this issue, we address the specificities of the romanian case – and the similarities of their various local iterations, as well as the manner in which they implicate the disciplines of anthropology and history, were the original impetus for the formation of our interdisciplinary editorial collective. in turn, the role of such debates in the emerging liberal order of postsocialist europe impelled our interest in collecting recent ethnographic accounts (be they historical, anthropological, or from yet another discipline) that situated their analyses in the contemporary processes of transition, with its reconfigurations of local forms of governmentality, and that popular if ambiguous term, ‘europeanization.’ in the past two decades, individuals in governments and civil society in the region have taken up roma either as the “imaginative surface” (to borrow a term from saidiya hartman7) of the woes of postsocialism or 102. see also l’huillier, g. 1948. “reminiscences of the gypsy camp at poitiers,” jgls, third series, 27:36-40, and the epilogue appended by the gypsy lore society to r.a. scott macafie’s 1943 “gypsy persecutions: a survey of a black chapter in european history,” jgls 22(3-4):65-78, reporting the massacre of serbian roma. yates also addressed the range of romani survivor reports in commentary; see her “hitler and the gypsies: the fate of europe’s oldest aryans,” commentary, 8, 1949, 455-459. these sources are rarely fully cited in scholarly and popular ethnographic literature that addresses the romani holocaust (see, for example, clendinnen, inga. 2002. reading the holocaust cambridge: canto; or fonseca, isabel. 1996. bury me standing the gypsies and the journey new york: vintage). 6 for an overview, see abu ghosh, yasar. 1999. “mezi historií a pam%tí: debata o cikánském tábo&e v letech u písku” (between history and memory: the debate about the gypsy camp in lety u písku), ma thesis, charles university. 7 hartman, saidiya v. 2997. scenes of subjection: terror, slavery, and self-making in nineteenth century america new york: oxford university press. p. 7. 7 volume 25, no. 2 page 7 as a romanticized remnant of a bygone past. in eastern european public imaginaries, roma still seem to exist in the shadow of culture – timeless, errant and enchantingly other – while the social worlds they inhabit are circumscribed by their intensifying economic and spatial marginalization and the continued pathologization of their behavior as inadaptable and often criminal. given the extent to which contemporary european liberalism(s) stakes its claims to legitimacy on a politics of recognition that must acknowledge the minority subject (including and particularly that subject’s articulations of suffering8), the persistent othering of roma in the reordering of state and society in eastern europe thus constitutes a privileged site from which to investigate the status of european liberalism as it extends across the continent.9 * this issue brings together a set of interdisciplinary essays that explore these interlocking themes. ranging across the disciplines of history, ethnomusicology, political science, sociology, and communication, as well as anthropology, ethnology and documentary photography, the contributions to this special issue of the anthropology of east europe review reflect what we hope is an emergent conversation that transcends the boundaries of discipline and fosters discussion among bodies of scholarly literature not normally mutually accessible for linguistic reasons. our contributors responded to a call for articles addressing the ways romani individuals and communities negotiate, resist and reproduce the places roma occupy in the social and political contexts of non-romani spheres, and in their responses, three broad concerns emerged. first, the history of roma in europe in the last century, and 8 see povinelli, elizabeth. 2001. “radical worlds: the anthropology of incommensurability and inconceivability,” annual review of anthropology 30: 320-325 9 several recent ethnographies have productively taken up similar issues; a partial accounting would include engebrigtsen, ada l. 2007. exploring gypsiness: power, exchange and interdependence in a transylvanian village new york: berghahn books; lemon, 2000; scheffel, david z. 2005. svinia in black and white: slovak roma and their neighbours peternorough: broadview press; and stewart, michael. 1998. the time of the gypsies westview press. in particular, the absence of the romani holocaust from non-romani narratives both scholarly and ethnonational surfaced as a concern shared by contemporary ethnographers and archivally oriented historians. second, many of our contributors reflected on the entanglements of research and the activism that they as ethnographers (like many of their fellows) were called to by the manifold exclusions experienced by their informants. third, ethnographers concerned with the more traditionally anthropological provinces of ritual, religion, and gender explored how romani counterpublics formed in relation to pentecostalism and family planning are reconfiguring the lifeworlds of roma and gadje alike. the articles in this issue also range across diverse geographical areas: ukraine, turkey, greece, slovakia, macedonia, and romania. romania in particular looms large in this collection, and not merely because the romanian romani community constitutes upwards of seven percent of the romanian citizenry.10 romanian ethnonationalist discourses are perhaps unique in their reliance on the identification and policing of the country’s large romani minority as a strategy for the articulation of majority identity, a state of affairs that has endured through many different political regimes since the nineteenth century. as the nation of romania itself was constituted from the unification governmental of three principalities each holding roma as slaves named “#igani,” romanian nationalism has continued to rely on the discursive threat of internal enemies embodied in roma referred to as #igani. this central taboo at the heart of foundational discourses of the romanian nation reverberates and stimulates anxiety and argument in historical cases such as the holocaust, and in contemporary political and social discussions. thus the multiplicity of complex discourses of the #igani as other in romania makes it a primary site of research into racism and the resistance of victimized communities to persecution, as reflected in the 10 the official figure from the 2002 census, which suggests that 2.5 percent of the romanian population is romani, is widely considered to be inaccurately low. the european romani rights center cites the actual number of roma in romania as between 1.4 and 2.5 million, in the neighborhood of ten percent of the total romanian population. 8 volume 25, no. 2 page 8 number of contributions from the romanian field in this volume. thus the first section of the issue addresses modern romanian romani history and its place in contemporary romanian public imaginary. comprised of essays by two historians, susan williams and shannon woodcock, and sociologist michelle kelso, their essays trace both a history of romanian narratives in which roma shore up ethnonational identity, and the mechanisms through which the romani engagement with non-romani fellow citizens and the romanian state is repeatedly elided. tracking the parallel discourses deployed by gypsiologists enamored with, as katie trumpener puts it, “stereotypical figures of magic and menace,”11 and the discourses of the nationstate deployed by romanian roma in the interwar period, williams traces the anxieties about modernity that accompanied the rise of the interwar biopolitical regime in romania.12 juxtaposing the romantic narratives of stuart mann’s fellow gypsiologists with romani assertions of their rightful place as democratic romanian citizens (often read through the reports of their police monitors), williams offers a stereoscopic view of competing visions of midcentury modern romani identity. woodcock picks up the archival trail where williams leaves off, in the archives of a police apparatus ever more vigilant about the boundaries of the ethnonational romanian community. she tackles the widely unacknowledged history of the deportation of romanian roma through the lens of romani resistance to their persecution by the axis-aligned romanian state. the holocaust, v%ra sokolová writes, is the event that “drew roma into western historical discourse as historical subjects;” 13 11 trumpener, katie. 1992. “the time of the gypsies: a ‘people without history’ in the narratives of the west.” critical inquiry 18(4):843-84. p. 849. 12 bucur, maria. 2001. eugenics and modernization in interwar romania pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press; turda, marius. 2007. “the nation as object: race, blood, and biopolitics in interwar romania.” slavic review 66(3):413-441. 13 sokolová, v%ra. 2002. “a matter of speaking: racism, gender and social deviance in the woodcock’s research on the letters of protest and petition roma addressed to the romanian state highlights that romanian roma wrote themselves in. her piece is not only a call for the inclusion of roma and romanians in our accounts of the paneuropean genocide of jews and roma, but equally a demand historical methodologies attentive to the archival traces of the subaltern to inform holocaust historiography. kelso’s contribution is also concerned with the status of romani voices in accounts of the holocaust. in an essay on the responses of ethnic romanian viewers to her recent documentary film, hidden sorrows: the persecution of romanian gypsies in world war ii,14 kelso chronicles the difficulties that have attended her attempts to integrate the history of the romanian romani holocaust into school curricula as well as larger national-historical narratives of the war years. her film’s interlocutors, ethnic romanian high-school students, reported a range of reactions to wrenching personal accounts of romanian romani holocaust survivors: “i learned,” said one student, “the fact that roma are people, they have a soul the same as others.” from this and other reactions, kelso maps the exclusionary narratives that structure the contemporary romanian public sphere and relegate roma to its margins. spanning the first and second sections of this collection, documentary photographer julie denesha’s photo-essay is a finely observed record of the everyday life and labors of inhabitants of several romani settlements in rural slovakia: a mason’s workmanship, the collecting of wood, the scrubbing of rugs, children at play scattered by the rain. denesha’s long-standing commitment to documenting the spatial marginalization of slovak romani communities15 is implicit here: the verdant backdrop of her photos – fields and forests and politics of the ‘gypsy question’ in communist czechoslovakia, 1945-1989.” ph.d. dissertation, department of history, university of washington. p. 39. 14 for information on ordering copies of the film, please contact michelle kelso at michellekelso@yahoo.com. 15 see, for example, denesha’s photo-essays “killing anastazia,” about the racially motivated murder of slovak romni anastazia bala!ová, or “off the map,” about the isolation of a slovakromani shantytown, at www.juliedenesha.com. 9 volume 25, no. 2 page 9 hills – is a reminder of the settlements’ distance from ethnic slovak communities. her essay visually invokes, moreover, the research findings of the late milena hübschmannová, whose analysis of oral histories taken from slovak romani survivors points to the gap in a historical record that has not addressed the relocation of many romani settlements to their present positions in the ghettoization of roma by the slovak state during the holocaust. 16 the endurance of the romani experience of exclusion that denesha documents, and particularly its resurgence since the eastern european revolutions of 1989, has impelled an explosion of nongovernmental interventions aimed at remedying the socioeconomic and political abjection of roma in the postsocialist order. part and parcel of what fisher calls the “global associational explosion” of ngos that has attended globalization,17 a number of non-state institutions – as various as the world bank, the people in need foundation, or the european romani rights centre, to name but a few – have joined the fray, advocating for roma on issues such as health care, education, and housing, among others. ethnographers, too, have found themselves pulled into advocacy and activism, and the contributors to the second section explore two flexible forms intimately bound up in the liberal reconfiguration of state and society: the census and the non-governmental organization. eben friedman, a political scientist employed by the european centre for minority issues, analyzes the identity politics of the census in macedonia as they have unfolded since the yugoslav period. the rest of the section chronicles ethnographers’ experiences as fieldwork and activism overlapped in their research. othon 16 hübschmannova, milena. 1995. “je opravdu t&eba tolik utrpení? úvahy nad vzpomínkami slovensk'ch rom( na druhou sv%tovou válku.” (is so much suffering possible? notes on the remembrances of slovak roma during the second world war) in: neznám$ holocaust (unknown holocaust) eds. hana fri#tenská, ilona lázni"ková, andrej sulitka. prague: desetiletí v'chovy k lidsk'm práv(m. pp. 71-8. 17 fisher, william f. 1997 “doing good? the politics and antipolitics of ngo practices,” annual review of anthropology 26:439–64. p. 440. alexandrakis, an anthropologist, contributes his reflections on activism on behalf of his informants from the thick of fieldwork in athens; ethnomusicologist adriana helbig documents the complications that attend inhabiting the dual roles of researcher and advocate in ukraine; and semra somersan and süheyla kırca-schroeder, writing from the disciplines of sociology and communication respectively, collaborate on an account of their involvement in the political response of istanbulite roma to municipal attempts to evict them from a neighborhood they have inhabited for generations. taken together, the essays illuminate not only the increasingly close relationship of the ‘non-governmental’ to governmentality in the framework of european union expansion, but also the constitution of new forms of romani political subjectivities arising at the organizational intersections of state, civil society, and the eu. as friedman notes in his essay on the profusion of census categories available to (romani) citizens in macedonia, the terrain of postsocialist ethnicity is fraught by the complicated identity politics the census indexes. through an examination of the evolution of census categories, as well as the ways in which the census has been deployed to map ethnicity from the yugoslav period to the present day, friedman’s essay raises larger questions not only about the terms of the politics of recognition of minority subjects on which eastern european states increasingly stake their liberal projects, but also about the path dependence of liberal forms of recognition on their communist-era forbears. alexandrakis’s missive from the field considers how his ethnographic research among greek roma has been expanded by his engagement with an ngo he co-founded to provide health-care services to his informants. he examines his ngo as a realm in which the intersection of research and advocacy highlights discrepant local interpretations of eu directives, complicating the top-down concept of ‘europeanization.’ helbig, in turn, takes up a similar set of issues regarding the relationship between advocacy and scholarship through an ethnographic account of her involvement in the monitoring of ukrainian election that inadvertently put her at odds with her romani informants’ political projects. by examining the shifting relations of power between ethnographer and informant, she offers a cautionary tale about the 10 volume 25, no. 2 page 10 blurring of boundaries between scholar and activist. in the last article in this section, somersan and kırca-schroeder record the contestations of spatial order in the city of istanbul, as its landscape undergoes reconfiguration by neoliberal and islamist municipal planning. facing eviction from the sulukule quarter where they have lived for centuries, one romani leader with whom somersan and kırca-schroeder worked characterized the process of gentrification as “a renewal not of the housing so much as of the residents.” the response of residents to the threat of their renewal led them to undertake a new form of associational politics that, as the authors point out, has given istanbulite roma a new visibility in turkish politics. in the last section of the issue, we return to romania, with essays from enik) magyarivincze, lászló fosztó, and johannes ries, a trio of anthropologists whose ethnographic engagement with romanian romani communities reveals the diversity of contemporary romani lifeworlds in romania. magyari-vincze takes up the issue exclusion in the register of gender, examining the impact of romanian state family planning practices on romani women. anthropologists studying the stupendous success of pentecostalism elsewhere have termed the movement a “second global culture” that flourishes alongside its secular, neoliberal counterpart (which travels under the sign of globalization);18 fosztó and ries both investigate the new forms of subjectivization that have arisen as this second global culture intersects with local romani (and gadje) worlds. as a group, their sustained ethnographic engagement in romani communities reminds us of the contingency and dynamism of social categories and modes of subjectivization. as magyari-vincze notes, the topic of family planning returns us to an explicitly racialized terrain, since access to birth control, she 18 robbins, joel. 2004. “the globalization of pentecostal and charismatic christianity.” annual review of anthropology 33:117-43. p. 137. robbins is citing jean comaroff’s 1985 study of charismatic chrches in south africa in her body of power, spirit of resistance: the culture and history of a south african people chicago: university of chicago press. found, is used as a from of reproductive control regulating major aspects of the lives of romanian romani women. magyari-vincze relates her fieldwork both within a b%ie&i romani community and with non-romani health-care workers, situating her analysis within the frame of what woodcock notes has long been the field of oppression of romanian roma, the discursive “matrix of the #igan other.” along the way, she uncovers revealing moments reminiscent of a du boisian double consciousness19: one informant explained to her that he “*igan twice,” first due to his ethnic origin and second because he was romanian-born. in his essay detailing the relationship of the romani “born-again self” to the holy spirit and its implications for the wider set of romani and gadje social relations, fosztó demonstrates how an existing repertoire of social and ritual practices can be mobilized to serve the political interests of roma deemed by their more powerful non-romani neighbors to be apolitical. in his transylvanian fieldsite, pentecostal rituals are cast against what is perceived by roma as the biggest threat to their decent existence: their overwhelming abasement and social stigmatization from without. the appropriation of pentecostal ritual conceptions of maintaining an open human heart and a spirit that can fill this heart mesh with an ideal reconfiguration of status whereby roma may hope for a diminishment of the significance of ethnicity and the social hierarchicalization it structures. in ritual practice as communicative practice, roma discover a resource for the construction and mobilization of collective identity around universal idioms of humanity and individuality. fosztó’s research raises questions about how romanian roma exploit the potential to refuse identification (whether positive or negative), an issue that assumes greater import in a world increasingly full of interchangeable identities. finally, ries’s article addresses the manner in which pentecostal discourses stressing love and the pastoral potentiality of its adherents have disrupted the mechanisms of #igani othering in another transylvanian village. as ries’s discussions with non-romani missionaries makes clear, conversion realigns roma into a religiously 19 dubois, w.e.b. 1996. the souls of black folk new york: penguin books. 11 volume 25, no. 2 page 11 denominated social order that, as one missionary put it, requires that he “love them with all [his] heart.” in a detailed examination of the differences between romani converts and their secular fellow roma, ries suggests how and why pentecostalism is embraced by some and rejected by other, thereby offering a nuanced reading of the differences that distinguish romani groups from one another. we conclude this section, and the issue, on this note of rupture and heterogeneity, in the hopes it holds open a space for the pursuit of further inquiry into the figurations of difference through which romani and gadje identities are mutually constituted and that set the terms of much of the scholarly and activist engagement with romani lives. this is a project that, as williams and woodcock demonstrate, demands a historical sensibility attentive to ethnographic interpretation. but it equally requires a host of ethnographic projects attuned to the historical roots of the erasure of those romani voices that are beginning to surface from the footnotes of our and other archives. a note on terminology the complications that accompany the use of the our main term of reference in this issue – roma – have often been noted,20 not least of which is that the heterogeneous populations it names often do not recognize each other as fellow in its nominal embrace. furthermore, the use of the romanilanguage plural roma in english, as friedman notes, runs a risk of exoticizing the people it names – hence his insistence on its englishlanguage translation as “roms” as the appropriate equivalent term in scholarly texts. woodcock also 20 see, for example, acton, thomas. 1974. gypsy politics and social change: the development of ethnic ideology and pressure politics among british gypsies from victorian reformism to romany nationalism london: routledge; trumpener, 1992, 846-7ff3; lemon, 2000; saul, nicholas, and susan tebutt, eds. 2004. the role of the romanies: images and counter-images of ‘gypsies’/romanie in european cultures liverpool: liverpool university press; and willems, wim. 1997. in search of the true gypsy: from enlightenment to final solution portland: frank cass publishers. makes an equally strong case, though, for the untranslatability of the local terms of reference, arguing that the romanian-language #igan, for example, signifies a complex history of interpellation that cannot be adequately rendered in english as gypsy. we have, thus, tried to use local terms of reference throughout the issue whenever possible, in order to index their unique histories of meaning and usage as well as the heterogeneity of romani communities. several of the authors have preserved the gendered distinction in romanes between rom, a male romani individual, and romni, a female romani individual. the term gadje, also used intermittently throughout this issue, is a romanes term referring to non-romani individuals. anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 91 communities in transition: protected nature and local people in eastern and central europe. by saska petrova. farnham: ashgate, 2014. 158 pp. bibliography. index. tanya richardson, wilfrid laurier university despite the european origins of the wilderness idea, european natures have occupied a relatively marginal place in critical social science scholarship on protected areas. at the same time, the chornobyl disaster made contamination the dominant image in popular perceptions about the natural environments of the formerly socialist world. however, a recent wave of scholarship that includes saska petrova’s communities in transition: protected areas and local people in eastern and central europe demonstrates that postsocialist ecologies are about more than just degradation, and that nature protection in central and eastern europe refracts the global history of conservation practice in novel ways. saska petrova’s book is a geographical study of the relationship between local communities and administrators in the pelister national park in macedonia, and in the šumava national park in the czech republic. using evidence from surveys, interviews, regulation, and policy documents, petrova analyzes the ways in which place attachment and the economic opportunities parks provide affect whether residents have positive or negative attitudes about the parks’ existence. petrova argues that contrary to the dominant image of local communities as obstacles, victims or opportunists found in nature conservation literature, people residing near the two parks were pragmatic in their engagement with administrators, and were able to exercise themselves as political subjects. despite residents’ disagreements with managers, and their hazy understanding of managers’ responsibilities, they displayed a strong sense of the park as “home” and never questioned the value of the parks’ ongoing existence. the first five chapters of communities in transition set the stage for the two case studies. these chapters review literatures on the history of nature conservation, the relationships between parks and local communities, and environmental policies during socialism and after its demise. chapter 2 brings together scholarship on the importance of treating communities as complex and differentiated, the significance of place attachment in grasping people’s relationship to protected areas, and the social construction of “wilderness.” chapter 3 situates national parks in a global history of conservation that emerged in the context of colonialism and europeans’ obsession with natural history and hunting. petrova underscores that although “the national park” is a global category, its enactment in particular places takes unique and specific forms as a result of local and regional histories. chapter 4 forms the conceptual core of the book and develops the argument that local residents in the two national parks were neither obstacles, victims, nor opportunists. instead, they engaged pragmatically with administrators in order to improve stewardship over parks’ natural landscapes and to create opportunities for making a living. in chapter 5, the book’s final contextualizing chapter, petrova helpfully reminds the reader of socialism’s paradoxical environmental impacts. on the one hand, centrally planned economies were resource intensive and often highly polluting. on the other hand, they facilitated the conservation of forests – often through the creation of security zones along the iron curtain. anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 92 the impacts of eu environmental policy and broader decentralization initiatives have also been mixed. while eu accession policies helped lower pollution levels and conserve biodiversity, economic liberalization has frequently enabled powerful entrepreneurs to seize resources from conservation areas or to reduce their size. chapters 6 and 7 analyze data about the two case studies that include overviews of park regulation, forest ecologies, and residents’ responses to standard survey questions. whereas communities in macedonia’s pelister national park are mainly composed of self-employed retirees, people residing near the czech republic’s šumava national park are younger and have higher paid employment. nevertheless, in both cases residents not only displayed a high degree of ancestral ties to their region, but also overall support for the existence of the park in spite of disagreements with park managers over how to manage forests. for example, conflicts emerged between local residents and the šumava park administration because of managers’ decision to take a non-interventionist approach to a bark beetle infestation in line with broader european rewilding initiatives. petrova also discusses governance issues such as the way in which the pelister park was able to informally incorporate elements of participatory management despite having an inflexible management structure, a characteristic that she argues is typical in central and eastern european parks. the value of this study lies in the details of the two case studies and in the author’s effort to situate central and eastern european parks in a global history of conservation and in the critical social science literature on protected areas. scholars who study parks in the former socialist world will find material with which to think comparatively about the demographic composition of rural communities, residents’ ideas about forest stewardship, and the degree to which parks afford rural residents economic opportunities through ecotourism. in contrast to stories of antagonism and dispossession that predominate in the political ecology literature on protected areas in the global south, petrova’s material provides examples of how communities for the most part coexist peacefully with parks. however, despite the fact that local people are the focus of petrova’s study, communities are represented in the text primarily in terms of their demographic features (age, employment) or in the form of uncontextualized interview extracts. consequently, because survey data is not supplemented with descriptions of social relationships and interactions, the reader learns very little about the character of residents’ pragmatic engagements with park administrators and landscapes. the author’s goal of situating nature protection in central and east europe in a global, rather than regional, history is to be commended. however, petrova could have devoted more attention to tracing the interconnections between global and regional histories during and after socialism rather than simply juxtaposing them. for example, it would have been interesting to learn about whether soviet models of nature protection were introduced into the czech republic in the socialist period, and if so, how they interacted with pre-war approaches. finally, given petrova’s concern with mapping power relations, more engagement with literatures about the political economy of postsocialist agrarian change (on issues of property relations and informal politics) would have enabled her to provide a more robust explanation for why the relations between these parks and peoples display the dynamics they do. this book will be of interest to scholars conducting research on protected areas, environmental management, and socio-ecological change after the end socialism. anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 81 socialist escapes: breaking away from ideology and everyday routine in eastern europe, 1945 – 1989. eds. cathleen m. giustino, catherine j. plum, and alexander vari. new york: berghahn, 2013. ix, 284 pp. list of figures. preface. bibliography. index. hard bound: paper. petra rethmann, ph.d. mcmaster university socialist escapes: breaking away from ideology and everyday routine in eastern europe, 1945 – 1989 is a rare book. it is rare because amidst a plethora of social sciences and historical literature it does not join a chorus of socialism’s dismissal, and amidst a range of anthropological literature it does not simply investigate socialism’s effects on people’s everyday economic, cultural, and social lives. rather, it seeks to highlight those effects that are usually neglected and negated: the possibility of pleasure and fun of living in the socialist world. it is, in fact, socialist escapes’ ludic emphases, which provide the volume with a light tone, and that—paradoxically—convey a strong sense of normality of living “under socialism.” methodologically, this is achieved by the contributors’ deep immersion in socialist worlds, especially east germany, poland, czechoslovakia, hungary, romania, and bulgaria. building on extensive fieldwork, interviews, and observations, as well as fostering a comparative approach, the contributors to this volume bring discussions of agency and fun into conversation, thus expanding our understandings of both eastern europe and understandings of socialist politics that tend to focus on political power and depression. socialist escapes traces the idea of fun through various practices in eastern europe, including music festivals, nature tourism, increasingly bohemian life-styles that include nudist practices and beach parties, hiking, and the spectacle sports of motorcycle racing and soccer. of particular importance is the fact that the forms of entertainment and leisure investigated in this volume are not necessarily spectacular in the sense of being always visually or physically exciting, but that they provide a measure of freedom and autonomy to those who engage in or with them. for example, across many parts of the east european (and larger) socialist world, hiking, and to some extent mountain climbing, provided a pleasurable exit strategy from the demands of socialist economic and political party life. in fact, as numerous contributors including dabrowski, plum, costache, neuburger, and keck-szajbel convincingly show, the cultural and emotional practices of nature loving became so widespread and popular that individuals, families, and outdoor-oriented organizations and clubs left the more urban world on a regular basis to enjoy what we usually think of as wild and free nature.” in correlation, what seems important here is the fact that some spaces provided a greater degree of autonomy and freedom than others. so, apart from socialism’s infamous “kitchen culture” that marked a private space in which people could often talk with a certain degree of frankness and trust, more public spaces such as motorcycling tracks, soccer stadiums, hotels, music festivals, and chateaux turned into sites where a variety of people and groups could and did experience pleasure and fun. tompkins, giustino, vari, fricke, and poenaru in anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 82 particular trace the ways in which people express desires for diversion and leisure. however, as fricke and poenaru show, cultural practices of leisure also led to the formation of dissident-like (although this may be too strong a word) subcultures that were not always appreciated by their nations’ respective parties. for example, soccer games and motorcycle races marked forms of leisure that removed spectators from the supervision of the state while also offering liberatory spaces away from the holiday resorts and camps organized by socialist parties. together, the volume provides a muchneeded antidote to stereotyped representations of socialism as monotonous, dreary, and dull. if i could express one criticism, it would concern the book’s title, especially the idiom “escapes.” as a term, escapes is too resonant of avoidance, evasion, and elusion. it smacks of holiday and/or getaway. and, of course, this is what many of the volume contributors deal with: people hiking in mountains, attending soccer games, visiting chateaux, etc. at the same time, in relational ways the term also implies that eastern european forms of state socialism producedto paraphrase cathleen giustino —“dull everyday routines of work, school, and home” and, in metaphorical ways, produced a life marked as gray. furthermore, escapes seems to accept an overarching logic that the party controlled “everything,” and that the little autonomy that could be had could only be found in leisurely practices and entertainment. while i do not necessarily doubt the need for leisure, autonomy, or even escape, this need seems to allegedly exist only—or at least more—in and under socialism. as a cultural anthropologist and reviewer with some experience of working in socialist contexts myself, i would finally like to see analyses that transcend the conceptual iron curtain of east and west. this is not the job of the book under review, yet novel analytical routes might be beneficial for the anthropology of europe and beyond. that way, we might also begin to understand concepts such as “socialism” and “escapes” in new light. scholars and students of anthropology, sociology, political science, and eastern european and slavic studies are sure to enjoy this book. pla1~ned parenthood behind the curtaln: population policy and sterilization of romani women in communist czechoslovakia, 1972-1989 vera sokolowi, charles university introduction fulfill in order to be granted permission to undergo the procedure (vestnik mz csr and in 1990, tibora vallkova explained why both vestnik mz ssr 1972). however, based on of her children were in foster-care institutions. this protective law, between 1972 and 1990 she attempted to commit suicide when her romani women were sterilized at ' partner left her after he learned she had been astonishingly high numbers compared to non­ sterilized four years earlier, in 1986. she got romani women. even though there are no 2,000 crowns l for the sterilization, but decisive statistics available, several estimates immediately she gave the money to her social claim that anywhere from 21.2 to 36.6 percent worker as a debt-payment for used children's of all sterilized women were romani, while clothes. now, she is in therapy. one of the roma constituted less than two percent oftibora's sisters was sterilized after she had the overall czechoslovak population had her first child, when she was nineteen. (posluchova and posluch 1989, pellar and her other sister jumped out of a window after andrs 1990).3 since the collapse of the she had been sterilized. "she died," states communist regime in 1989, at least three tibora absent-mindedly (mazalova 1997)? hundred romani women came forward to rumors about sterilization of romani women ~artic~pate 1n various surveys, studies, and in communist czechoslovakia were born in mtervlews. all of them claimed they were the early 1970s. by the end of the decade, the sterilized against their will or with ill­rumors were baptized into a world of informed consent. all of them also claimed legitimate controversy by the ink of dissident that they were offered money for the writers criticizing the czechoslovak "inability procedure. invariably, in their testimonies the to deal with the 'gypsy question'," and women (and roma advocates by their side) medical experts, explaining the politics of accused the "regime" of explicitly targeting encouragement of sterilization among them for sterilization, citing the 1972 "women of gypsy origin" (charta 77 1979; also mohapl and dobesova 1978, kubica et a1. 1978). however, vocalized concerns about 3 statistics concerning the number of sterilized roma the issue remained rare. women vary tremendously. all authors agree that their numbers were "disproportionately high," but there is no in 1972, the health ministries of both federal consensus on how high. the percentages fluctuate by republics of communist czechoslovakia years as well. the statistics of pellar and andrs, for issued a new sterilization law, designed to example, consist of interviews and questionnaires givcn to 156 roma women in slovakia and 123 roma women prevent arbitrary and ill-informed sterilization in the czech republic. of all czechoslovak citizens. the law outlined 4 interes~ingly, one of the very first books published byspecific and strict requirements and t!le first mdependent romani publishing house romani indications that a sterilization applicant had to chib was ilona ferkova's znicila si zivot pro penize­ mosa~d'a peske 0 diivipen anglo love (she destroyed her life for money). the fact-based novel is a story i 2,000 czechoslovak crowns in 1986 represented the about the trauma of sterilization, whose main character, low end of an average monthly salary (and the a young romani woman, "succumbed to the high equivalent of about $40 usd.) financial seduction [of sterilization] and secretly got rid 2 the personal testimonies used throughout this paper of her womanhood." the consequences of the procedure are based on oral interviews with roma women who destroy her lite and marriage. tile publication indicates underwent sterilization (and who wish to remain how important the issue of sterilization is in the anonymous), conducted in summer 1997 by dana collective memory of romani community's (and mazalova. accordingly, the names of the women used especially romani women's) recollections of the in this paper were changed by the author. communist era. 79 sterilization decree as the cornerstone of the practice (gina 1989, mazalova 1997, charta 77 1979). the 1972 law is, however, on paper, strictly ethnicity-neutral. there is no mention of "gypsies" or ethnicity in general, anywhere in the text. there is also no mention of financial compensation for the procedure. this seeming paradox raises some important questions. how did it happen that an ethnically neutral law resulted in an ethnically inscribed practice? and what does the "regime" signify in the women's testimonies? some scholars argue that because "the incidence [of sterilization in communist czechoslovakia] is statistically insignificant" in terms of the total number of procedures, it is not worthy of attention (kirk, livi-bacci and szabady 1976; david and mcintyre 1981; heitlinger 1987). however, given the involuntary nature of many of the procedures and their ethnic aspect, i believe the sterilization practice carries considerable importance for exposing the ways in which discrimination against the roma during the communist regime was carried out. significantly, it further illuminates a critical dimension of the transformation of the "gypsy question" in czechoslovakia from a discourse on ethnicity to a discourse of social deviance and sexuality. moreover, the circumstances surrounding the sterilization practice also hold tremendous potential for uncovering some of the sites where the tensions between the majority czechoslovak population and the romani minority played out in the most striking ways. unlike "czechoslovak" women (meaning ethnically non-roma) who were never paid for sterilization, romani women (legally also czechoslovak citizens) were lured into consent by substantial financial incentives. beta kolarova was 27 years old and had two children when she was persuaded by her social worker that a 10,000 crown compensation for the procedure is too good an offer to pass up (mazalova 1997:38). the calendar said 1990. the leather-jacketed dissidents from charter 77, cheered on by excited crowds, had already seized power at the prague castle, and the five-pronged star above the lion's head on the czech national symbol was replaced by the original royal crown, but the sterilization of romani women was still going on. one is left wondering, why? how was it possible in the first place and why did it continue even after the communist regime, supposedly dictating and controlling all aspects of the society and its actions, was gone? if the policies were born in the hands of the "regime" and executed by the "regime," why did not they also die with the "regime" (cohen 1985, kaplan 1987, matynia 1996)?5 it is clear from the testimonies of the sterilized women, as well as from interviews with and documents written by local doctors and social workers, that much of the initiative to urge, or even pursue romani women to undergo sterilization came from these local offices. despite the official rhetoric of ethnic equality, and contrary to the official assurances that race was a groundless tool for explaining social reality in communist czechoslovakia, these regional workers interpreted the 1972 ethnicity-neutral sterilization decree as a mandate to sterilize romani women and readily escorted them into operating rooms. by analyzing the interpretation and implementation of the official policies by ordinary bureaucrats sitting in local hospitals and offices, this article further promotes the thesis that the commonplace dichotomy between "regime" versus "people" is not a conceptually meaningful framework for understanding social and political practices under east european communism. 5 the most obvious answer lies, of course, in the lag in policy change that comes with any transformation of a regime. the fact that the involuntary sterilization of romani women stopped within a few years of the end of communist rule does seem to be an indication of its connection with a change of the political system. an example of this phenomenon can be seen, for example, in the wake of the 1917 bolshevik revolution in the soviet union (cohen 1985); after the victorious february 1948 coup in czechoslovakia (kaplan 1987); or in other areas of political and social transformations in eastern europe after 1989 (matynia 1996.) 80 i i i by jettisoning that dualism itself a heritage and discusses its various dimensions, ranging of totalitarian conceptions of communist societies one can better see that the locus of • "power" was less embedded in the proclamations of ethnically neutral party decrees than it was situated within the discursive arena of local officials who •• interpreted and implemented laws as they saw fit. focus on low-level officials thus reveals the complicated and dynamic nature of internal social reality that was pulsing behind the seemingly stoic and uniform face of the communist regime. in sum, the "invisibility" • of the discrimination of romani women • resides in the fact that the ethnic target of the sterilization policy was never fully enunciated from above nor fully institutionalized, but was rather always implicitly understood to refer to romani women by local practitioners who inhabited a dual world between "official" • discourse and unofficial racial bias, and thus who were themselves unable to see the racially charged nature of their actions. the • key to unpacking the ethnic dimension of the seemingly impartial social system is, therefore, to explore the intricate relationship • between official rhetoric, institutional • policies, and popular consciousness. these relationships informed each other and together created the mechanisms of social control that enabled the discrimination of czechoslovak • roma to flourish under the guise of social welfare. the article is organized into three main parts. • the first section introduces the genesis of the 1972 sterilization law by situating it in the • context of the transformation of the czechoslovak population policy in the 1970s. the section then goes on to examine the • relationship between czechoslovak perceptions of "gypsy" parenthood and sexuality. the second part ofthe article focuses on the writings of medical professionals, revealing the presence of "enlightened racism" in their argumentation, •• hidden under the rhetoric of health and socio­ economic welfare not only of the roma but the entire country. finally, the third section of the article turns the lens on the inevitably gendered nature of the sterilization practice • from violation to empowerment. i. czechoslovak population policy like all others in the eastem bloc, during the 1970s and 1980s czechoslovak officials nervously watched its slowly and steadily declining birth rate, encouraging its population to have more children. during the late 1960s, countries of eastern europe experienced some of the lowest fertility rates in the world (fischer 1985: 125).6 by 1968, the total fertility rate in slovakia reached its lowest-ever recorded level. in the czech republic, fertility levels resembled the statistics from the 1930s (frejka 1980:69). even though these trends were reversed during the 1970s, all countries of the eastern bloc continued in their effort to promote comprehensive pro-natalist measures (heitlinger 1987:15). the 1972 sterilization law, as an improved version of the initial sterilization regulation passed in 1966, was a part of this effort to refine the czechoslovak population policy into what by the mid-1970s became, according to some western demographers, "the best, most comprehensive pro-natalist population policy in the developed world" (besemeres 1980:263). after the establishment of the czechoslovak population commission in 1957 in the wake of the liberalization of abortion in the country, czechoslovakia engaged in a conscious effort to counter its rapidly falling birth rates. following the lead of the soviet union in 1955, abortion was legalized in czechoslovakia in 1957 and on the whole was considered "neither sinful nor disgraceful" (heitlinger 1985:289). despite that, media pamphlets and educational brochures engaged in pro-natalist rhetoric, "in the interest of the nation," throughout the entire communist period. unlike romania, for example, where the state involvement in reproduction amounted to a virtual abolition of abortion in 6 however, abortions remained legal in all countries of the eastern bloc, with the exception of romania where abortion was made illegal in 1966. nicolae ceaw;escu even ordered a "requirement" for every family to have at least four children. 81 1966, in czechoslovakia the regime enacted incentive-based, "positive" social and medical pro-natalist measures (kligman 1998). in 1964, the regime introduced prolonged maternity leaves, increased family allowances for every additional child in a family, gave preferential treatment in housing based on number of children, made reductions in rent, and encouraged early retirement for mothers (they were entitled up to 35 weeks of paid and three years of unpaid maternity leave, and for every child raised, a mother was entitled to one year off of the mandatory retirement age, set at 60 for women and 65 for men) (heitlinger 1987:243, frejka 1980:69, heitlinger 1985:289). the official recognition of the sexual division oflabor (including parenthood) within the domestic sphere, demonstrated by this entitlement to an early retirement for women who raised children, points to the complex relationship between the regime's paternalistic sexism and its commitment to women's emancipation. by the late 1970s, the czechoslovak government was spending four percent of its annual budget on direct financial benefits awarded to mothers and an additional seven percent on other pro-natalist services and subsidies (david and mcintyre 1981 :222). the new sterilization law then was an integral component of this drive to perfect the pro­ natalist population policy system. in 1989, an influential study, law and modern medicine, summarized the official position on the concept of family and reproduction politics in czechoslovakia during the communist period: the succession of generations is the only means for the preservation of the human family and is, in its way, the primary task of humanity. bearing children is thus the unquestionable duty of parents, regardless of their wishes and plans. even children not wanted [initially] often become children loved. (stepan 1989:153) the czechoslovak civic law, anchored in the 1960 czechoslovak constitution, considered the "establishment of a family and a proper upbringing of children [to be] the purpose of marriage," and "motherhood the most honorable obligation of a woman" (ustava cssr 1960). while the rhetoric of the population policy was consistently both pro­ natalist and free of any explicit ethnic prejudice, the early 1970s witnessed a marked shift in the concern and emphasis of the czechoslovak population policy. since the late 1960s, the state was becoming increasingly focused on what two leading czechoslovak demographers at the time called, "the qualitative aspect of population development" (pavlik and wynnyczuk 1974:320). the so-called normalization period of the early 1970s, following the unsuccessful attempt of political reformers to build "socialism with a human face" during the prague spring of 1968, witnessed an abrupt shift in official discourse, and therefore also in social policy. in the realm of population policy, czechoslovakia was gradually more concerned with the "proper care" of its children than simply with their sheer numbers (david and mcintyre 1981, heitlinger 1987). in other words, the state became increasingly interested in the "quality" of the population and its reproductive practices than the overall "quantity" of the population, a shift that directly targeted the roma as "contaminating" the gene pool through their culture of deviance (berent 1970). in 1968, another prominent demographer pointed out the "cultural disadvantages of children raised in very large families" and noted the headaches revolving around constructing "inordinately" large apartments (kucera 1968). while the main emphasis of the population policy remained loyal to a wide range of medical, economic, and social measures, a 1974 study argued that "education to proper parenthood [as well] must become an integral part of czechoslovak state population policy as a whole" (pavlik and wynnyczuk 1974:320). the most significant turning point for this discursive shift came at the national demographic conference in may 1970. here, for the first time, czechoslovak demographers urged the state to "increase demands for the 82 2 i i qualitative makeup of the population" because "current trends indicate that such a i development is slowing down" (cerny 1970:318). the official treatise from the conference listed as the main source of the i problem "the population explosion of the i gypsy population," in parentheses adding "the growth of inadequately adjustable individuals from gypsy families." at the same time, the document cited "the quantitative decrease of the birth rate" in the country as a cause for serious concern, making it explicit that the i "gypsy" birthrate, was not treated as an integral part of the overall "czechoslovak" birth rate. the demographers then warned that i if this trend [the "explosion of gypsy population"] continues it would "result in the impairment (zhorsem) of the qualitative i composition of the national gene pool ii (genofond) in terms of mental abilities (dusevni schopnosti)" and argued that czechoslovakia should start "utilizing' special methods' for regulating fertility in our healthcare" and attempting to "gradually and objectively merge sociological and genetic categories in the population" (cerny 1970:318-319). gradually, policy focus on "respectability" and "quality" of children, i family environment, and parenting gained full primacy in conjunction with the rise of the rhetoric of social deviance and pathology as both the new conceptualization of the ii population policy and the mechanism of articulating romani difference (olrnrova 1973:l7)? concerned about the quality of the family environment, officials gradually modified the i population policy to provide only limited encouragement to large families, the majority of whom were roma. since 1970, attention was concentrated on stimulating second and third-order births, which were seen as crucial to a population policy seeking to reverse a i 7 thematically, in sheer numbers of studies published in czechoslovakia in the 1970s, the great majority are conccrned with "gypsy" education, followed by studies in "social difference and deviance" (physical anthropology, criminality and justice, and pathological psychology), reflecting the changing trend of the regimc's approach to the "gypsy question." declining feltility rate. in the interest of a "healthy" population, the family allowance was adjusted upward for the first three births, but, in contrast to earlier years, reduced for higher numbers (demografie 1986,1974). in 1978, demographer jin havelka pointed out that the government's present population policy was less concerned with increasing the birthrate than in maintaining it at its current level, while concentrating on issues of "the best possible rearing and education of children" (havelka 1978:31). while the population policy did not engage in any explicit ethnic bias, there is, of course, an implicit judgment present in its statements about the quality of population, proper parenthood, or appropriately sized families. these statements must be read in connection with the officially marketed and popularly reproduced images of a "gypsy" not as an ethnic and cultural subject, but as a socially, mentally, and sexually deviant object. these images, displayed most often in educational and welfare propaganda, drew on exaggerated and caricatured differences in sexual, family, and reproductive patterns between the roma and non-romani czechs and slovaks. the parameters of proper parenthood and sexuality not all citizens were encouraged to reproduce "in the interest of the nation." to the contrary, through a suspiciously similar rhetoric, "in the interest of a healthy population," romani women were actively discouraged from exercising their reproductive rights. the governmental commission for the gypsy population even recommended all national committees to "apply decree no.4/1967-fo issued by the ministry ofjiealth, which allowed an exemption [from paying for birth control] to those women whose use ofbirth control was desirable, but there was a possibility that its use would fail because of monetary issues" (fond poverenictva snr 1968). romani fertility was under a constant attack all throughout the communist period, but the general focus on the "main problems" of the roma shifted substantially over time. while immediately after the war it was the 83 ,... "foreign invasion of gypsies" that troubled the country, in the 1950s society made its reluctant peace with the fact that the roma were a part of the society to stay (haisman 1999). however, at that time the main problem was considered their "nomadic lifestyle" that was in need of violent suppression (davidova 1995, barany 2002).8 in the 1960s and 1970s the focus of the "gypsy question" gradually shifted to considerations of parenthood and sexuality, and with it the romani "excessive" fertility rate. the actual fertility rates vary considerably from source to source. for example, some demographic statistics show an 11.1 percent increase in romani population for 1968 (srb a vomackova 1968:193). ulc claims that "between 1972 and 1981, the population [meaning the czechoslovak population in general] rose by 10.5 percent, while that of the gypsies increased by 23.8 percent" (ulc 1988:317). mazalova's sources indicate that by 1990, "the average number of children of czechoslovak citizens was 2.07 and of the roma 3.5" (mazalova 1997:40). given the arbitrariness of the demographic methods by which the roma were counted, there is no way to find the "correct" or "real" statistics. moreover, given the radically different concept of "family" in romani culture, with extended kin living together, it would not be utterly surprising if some censuses would have counted the same children several times. despite the general alann over the decreasing birthrate in czechoslovakia in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the expert 8 the solution to this "problem" came in the fonn of the 1958 anti-nomadic law (zakon c. 7411958 sb., "0 in'a/em usidleni kocujicic11 osob "; november 11, 1958, (:;tava cssr), which forcefully settled down all roma in czechoslovakia, regardless of their preferred lifestyle. \loreover, a related decree to this law introduced a five­ percent dispersal quota, which mandated that no given community can contain more than five percent of romani residents. the ensuing insensitive break-up of many extended romani families and their traumatic experiences from this period further facilitated hostility and misunderstanding between the romani and non­ romani populations. community expressed its discomfort with the fact that the roma did not fit into this reproductive pattern (heitlinger 1987: 139). while not being synonymous, the overall family values of czechs and slovaks generally coincided and thus the non­ universality of cultural values was not called into question. for example, statistical data from the late 1970s indicated important differences between the desired fertility of czech and slovak women. "virtually no slovak woman desires to be childless," claimed a 1979 sociological study, "and more than one third wishes to have three children." among czech women, almost twice as many as their slovak counterparts wanted only one child. the slovak sociologist maria schvarcova, who conducted the study, enthusiastically recommended the slovak model as the ideal family size for the entire country "which would be sufficient to solve the czechoslovak population problem" (schvarcova 1979).9 in other words, she suggested that one should have many children, but not too many. moreover, since the "czechoslovak population problem" was identified as the low birthrate of the non­ romani czechoslovak population, it was implicit that "gypsies" were not considered an equal component of czechoslovak citizenry. clearly, models of "ideal" family and parenthood patterns were not universally shared among czechs and slovaks, calling into question studies like schvarcova's that claimed to represent "the" czech and "the" slovak culture as stable and fixed entities. nonetheless, the same "natural" confonnity was asked from the roma and their unwillingness to comply with these nonns was seen as a sign of social deviance. 9 since schvarcova's study speaks strictly in czecho­ slovak dichotomy, it would be interesting to know whether, by czech and slovak women, she means women living in each respective republic, or women whom she considered to be ethnically czech and slovak, and whether she included roma women in her study as well. it cannot be completely ruled out, but given the ethnic rhetoric at the time that clearly separated roma women from "czechoslovak" women, it is unlikely that schvarcova steered away from the common pattern. 84 = ii • moreover, romani fertility was rarely burleigh and wippermann 1991; lewy 2000; • mentioned outside of the context ofromani friedlander 1995; zimmermatm 1989).10 "bad" and incompetent parenting. while the without acknowledging the discriminatory roma themselves considered their family • dimension of apartment-distribution practices values to be strict and loving, in popular and coercive settlement of romani families discourse the images of "gypsy parents" were into small apartments that effectively transformed and stereotyped into those of encouraged the roma to have fewer children • negligent and violent drunks and careless and live in single-generational households prostitutes. for example, a widely read without extensive relatives, the media were educational weekly, ucitelske noviny, appalled by the housing conditions of the • reported quite regularly on the problem of roma, which, according to them, were "gypsy parenthood", observing that gypsy "hardly conducive to the preservation of "paternal authority is very loose" and sexual taboos" (vlasta 1119, 1970). and while exclaiming on the behalf ofthe entire society • "in the interest of the future citizens" romani that "[it] is concerned with the lack of children were forcefully removed from their [romani] parental love" (ucitelske noviny parents and placed into foster-care institutions 8/24, 1967). "gypsy parenting" was criticized • to ensure their "proper" upbringing (stewart also from the perspective of substance abuse; 1997:123) the general view of the rest of the as, for example, one article stated that "it is population of this practice seemed to be that not uncommon for [romani] eight-year-olds "[romani] mothers are all too eager to turn to smoke and drink alcohol," but what was their offspring to the care of the state" even worse, they did so "in the presence of (ucitelske noviny 1112,1969). the chief their parents" (svobodne slovo 10120, 1971). public health officer of the czech socialist even miroslav dedic, regarded by many republic complained in a 1970 report that roma as one of the most sympathetic "education leading to planned parenthood is educators, argued that still not successful among the gypsy population" and demanded that it be in their family, gypsy children witness "impressed upon gypsy families that they mostly negative phenomena, such as should have only as many children as they can smoking and drinking of alcohol. the properly take care of' (zpniva vladni komise child listens to improper conversations pro otazky cikanske populace 1970). •• and is a witness to unfit scenes from the adult life. in average gypsy family in a 1975 study about current problems in a warm feeling and word are rather education, social scientists argued that "the exceptions. the preschool must explosion ofthe gypsy population brings with suppress and uproot these it a whole number of negative consequences inappropriate and premature [which] manifest themselves in the decreasing • children's experiences and replace quality of the gypsy population itself, as well them with positive ones . . . (dedic as the population in general, and also in the 1982:36). decreasing social, economic, and cultural level of gypsy families" (smrcka 1974, moreover, as heitlinger, argues, seeking medical care during pregnancy became such a common norm among non-romani women 10 tracy smith, for example, argues that besides romani ii that the non-attendance of romani women at cultural values and their traditional mistrust toward gaje prenatal clinics, stemming from their mistrust (non-romani) medicine, the traumatic experience of the genocidal practices of the holocaust (when along with of non-romani services, was viewed as the mentally and physically handicapped the roma were ii synonymous with deviance, indicating an a prime target of nazi sterilization practices and medical inherent negative predisposition towards the tests), which have survived in and have formed the child (heitlinger 1987:179; smith 1997; romani collective consciousness, is a major factor behind romani women's apprehension toward hospital ii care. ii 85 http:1989).10 vyborny 1958, syfist'ova 1972, podmele, 1971 a 1972). still in 1988, physician komel danas arl:,'ued that "in gypsy families in slovakia there is a rapidly l:,'towing rate of mentally retarded children," which he "proved" by pointing to statistics that claimed that ninety percent of all roma children attended special schools. "and it is terrible," he concluded, "because the mentally retarded grow up and then become fertile l:,'tound (podhoubi) for delinquency" (danas 8/5 1988). while discussing the "problems of difficult­ to-raise gypsy children," and arguing for a stricter approach to romani families, slovak sociologist frantisek olejar refered to soviet scholar anna solojevova's observation that "incorrigible children come from bad families" who cannot, "due to their number of children and/or lack of competence and interest, take adequate care of their offspring." she offered the following conclusion, praised by olejar as a great model to confront the problems of romani parenting in czechoslovakia: we all have to take care of the evil (zlo) in the family. not only teachers, who already have their heads full of problems, but the state, all our organizations. it is inevitable to start with the families, not with the children. (olejar 1972:21) in short, not only romani reproduction but the romani family as an institution were seen as damaging to the socialist enterprise, harmful to the assimilation process, and detrimental to the roma themselves. as presented by this respected author, the roma were seen as the locus of evil of future generations, and the society as a whole was asked to participate in the civilizational process of eradicating this menace through greater surveillance of roma's private lives and choices, and subsequent streamlining of these with the "normal" values of socialist society. ii. reading between the lines: scientific categories of the "gypsy question" among other protective rules, the 1972 sterilization law specifically stated that women could not be sterilized without their explicit written consent and a full medical examination prior to the procedure (vestnik mz cr 1972). however, these regulations did not stop some doctors from by-passing the requirement of patients' personal consent in the interest of, what they believed, was "general" health. discussing her experience with the procedure in an interview twenty years later, ida horvathova recalled that she saw the doctor write into a form that she was "of gypsy origin" and that she had "many children." barbora boganova said she first signed "something" only moments before going under the anesthesia. and regina miiackova disclosed that she was threatened by her social worker that if she did not undergo sterilization all her children would be sent to a foster-care institution (mazalova 1997: 39). the etlmic dimension, though not perceived as such, is the most startling aspect of the local deliberate adjustments of the required procedure. despite the ethnic neutrality ofthe sterilization law itself, it was unequivocally romani women who were identified by regional practitioners as the threat to the "healthy population." the text of the sterilization law at least partially explains why it was possible for local doctors and social workers to view the issue strictly as a medical one. the law includes a "list of medical indications" that an applicant had to qualify for in order to be l:,'tanted permission to undergo the procedure. categories such as "psychopathy with asocial behavior and recurrent criminality;" "severe sexual deviations;" "idiocy and imbecility;" "chronic alcoholism;" "a specific parental pair already having a genetically defective child," etc ... all address legitimate medical conditions. even a condition stipulating, for example, that a woman is eligible for sterilization if she is "medically fit and did not give birth to a genetically defective child yet, if expert tests show that she is most likely predisposed to give birth to a genetically defective child in the future," cannot be attacked on medical grounds. however, the 86 • • • • • ultimate power to precisely define the behavior and condition corresponding to these categories as well as to diagnose a patient with a particular condition or provide the "expert tests," rested in the hands of local medical and social practitioners (vestnik mz ssr 1972). moreover, the casual wording of several suspicious categories, such as "unfit parenthood" and "multiple children" points to the apparent confusion over the distinctions between medical and social discourses in communist czechoslovakia. clearly, social workers did not often need to labor too hard to find the appropriate column to check to satisfy the bureaucratic illusion of competent social health practices. as, for example, ursula heckova revealed: "after my mother's death, my father remarried a czech woman who had five children, like me. when she saw that i got 4,000 [crowns] for sterilization, she went too. but she didn't get a dime" (pellar and andrs 1990). her testimony implies that the application of designed categories and indications for sterilization were left at the discretion of the local staff to determine who qualified as having "many children" and who did not. while these categories seemed to address social and medical differences, they were inseparable from ethnic associations. the crucial question then is what prompted and enabled the doctors and social workers to make the conceptual leap to use the ethnicity­ neutral protective law as an ethnically inscribed punitive law? or to put the question differently, why was "gypsy" almost universally translated as "unhealthy" in czechoslovak social speech? in 1972, the same year the sterilization law was issued, the ministry of labor and social work issued a "methodical handbook for national committee social workers" entitled "care for the socially unadjusted (nepfizpusobemf:) citizens" (metodicka prirucka mpsv 1972:1). the handbook was a compilation of eight theoretical and five empirical articles written by psychologists, sociologists, sexologists, criminologists, lawyers, and physicians, all addressing the problems of"socially abnonnal, pathological and deviant persons. -, the introduction to the volume asserted that the "socialist [effort] to prevent criminality, alcoholism, prostitution, sexual deviance, parasitism, and other negative phenomena cannot consist only of punitive and repressive measures." it argued that to date, care for "socially unadjusted citizens has not been a component of general social politics" and praised the ministry of labor and social work in that it "filled the gap [in social work] by instituting comprehensive care for the socially unadjusted citizens serviced by special social workers social curators" (metodicka pfirucka mpsv 1972:2). in the course of four hundred pages, the articles thoroughly define and explain the "unadjustable" (nepfizpusohitelne) citizens, the underlying causes of their non­ adaptability, their behavior, the circumstances in which they live, and the consequences of their presence for the entire society. the handbook states that there is an "acute interrelationship among the diverse pathological phenomena, such as criminality­ alcohol, criminality-parasitism, parasitism­ alcohol, alcohol-prostitution, prostitution­ parasitism, and so on" and points out that the most important "common denominator of such diverse phenomena of social pathology is precisely their negative social evaluation and their undesirability." according to these studies, "the subjects of these negative phenomena usually constitute a rather small body of deviant, socially not-adapted, persons, problem families, and conflict groups" (metodicka pfirucka mpsv 1972:4­ 5). the study further argues that the reason why "such phenomena still exist in socialist society, which has succeeded in eradicating material inequalities," is that they are the "residue of the previous capitalist regime." allegedly, "pathological conditions," and such behavior, travel from generation to generation: an individual usually prefers the subculture, nonns and values that are closest to him. if a child is raised in a ii 87 pathological subculture, which is in contradiction with the prevailing culture, he [or she] will become delinquent in a similar process in which an eskimo becomes an eskimo. (metodicka pnrucka mpsv 1972:9) the handbook explains that if "deviant behavior is passed within problem families from generation to generation," it then becomes a "social inheritance" that is hard to eradicate from the society (metodicka pnrucka mpsv 1972:11). while czechoslovak society is considered more advanced in fighting pathology than other countries, because the "czechoslovak population is homogenous, socially only mildly stratified, sharing the same culture, which varies only in few insignificant details," it still has to "firmly battle social deviancy" (metodicka pi'irucka mpsv 1972: 19). the book explains to the social curators that most carriers of socially pathological phenomena come from seriously deficient families. many criminals, recidivists, alcoholics, prostitutes, citizens avoiding work and other not­ adjusted citizens grew up in conditions of broken families, families of alcoholics and otherwise not­ adjusted persons, as well as from families with substandard cultural levels. (metodicka pnrucka mpsv 1972:26) after the introduction, the handbook discusses various definitions, diagnoses of diseases, and pathological conditions, often making recourses to theories of psychology, pathological psychology, toxicology, and criminal justice. not a single time is there a mention of "gypsies" anywhere in the four­ hundred-page long text. should there be since it was not about the roma, but about "general delinquency and patholoh'y"? or was it about "gypsies" after all? the rhetoric of this document is a typical example of an obfuscated language that can be understood, interpreted, and implemented in a variety of ways. the comparison of definitions and tellls used in this handbook and definitions and terms used by various physicians, social workers and state administrators to address the "gypsy question" in a plethora of other contexts reveals that they are strikingly similar and often indistinguishable. indeed, the terminology used in the sterilization decree is in many cases identical. the scientific medical and social discourse was so profusely intertwined with rhetoric used in describing the "actual" problems and conditions of the roma that the interpretation of these theories and their subsequent translation to practice was left completely open. since the book makes a specific claim to present "general infolllational material about the fundamental problems of socialization and social non-adaptability designed especially for orientation of social workers and curators," whose work description often dealt with "citizens of gypsy origin," the question about the interchangeability and translatability of these terms in various contexts is crucial to understanding the ways in which discrimination of the roma functioned in the czechoslovak welfare system (metodicka pnrucka mpsv 1972:27). indeed, very different standards were evoked when discussing sexuality and reproduction of the roma on the one hand and of czechs and slovaks on the other. demographers in the early 1970s even pointed to "an unnatural sex­ ratio among gypsies," which might result in problematic sexuality of the roma in general (srb 1971) .11 "gypsy" reproduction and sexuality were defined explicitly in terms of primitiveness, unhealthiness, and ignorance, while "czechoslovak" sexuality was defined in terms of civilization, health, rationality, and progress. for example, one weekly exclaimed that "unabashed promiscuity among [gypsy] ii tile "natural" ratio was that of non-roma czechoslovak population, which consisted of 51.2% women, while the roma had "only" 49.96% women. srb also hinted that "lately there are many mixed maniages ... and a substantial part of the gypsy female population thus disappears from the gypsy population," demonstrating once again the arbitrariness of the definition of a "gypsy." 88 ii ii teenagers and condoned prostitution of gypsy girls with whites are also a norm", while ii expressing distaste over the "fact" that" 13­ year-old [gypsies] have more than a • theoretical know ledge of procreative acts" (ucitelske noviny 1115,1972). • but it was not only the alleged young age of • first sexual encounters of the roma that consternated the "czechoslovak" society. the most appalling and alarming to proper czech and slovak citizens seemed to be the notion of "gypsy inbreeding," which was immediately linked to the vision of an increasing mental •• debility of the society. even the usually sober and pro-romani weekly literarni noviny, reported that the practice of inbreeding among the roma leads to "crowds of thousands who are illiterate ...crowds of inferior individuals, parasites and thieves, prostitutes and children running around naked ..." (literarni noviny 3/5, 1966). ii this juxtaposition combated the "gypsy question" on two fronts: first, it allowed the society to measure the roma against the ii czechs and slovaks in categories that were defined by czech and slovak cultural models, with czech and proper functioning as ii synonyms. second, relegating the difference between czechs and slovaks on the one hand and the roma on the other hand into the realm of sexuality and reproduction equipped the society to articulate its concerns about roma ethnicity without actually referring to ii ethnicity, and thus without the concern of • • being accused of racism. it is not difficult to read between the lines of the decrees in order to see what interpretations were possible when a suggestive wording met with implicit attitudes toward the roma smoldering in • popular consciousness. since the roma were (in official reports, popular jokes, and media images) routinely associated with mentally and socially deviant behavior, even though in theory these categories were free of any mention of ethnic or cultural difference, they were flexible enough to hide social and ethnic ii concerns under a veil of medical science. • in fact, the 1977 health report of the slovak government explicitly urged local establishments to make use of such an option: the unhealthy population of gypsy children is not adequately monitored by the appropriate sectors of regional municipal committees (onv) or by the ministry of health of the ssr and that is the reason why there is no effort being made to find new ways to suppress further unhealthy populations in these families. not even health indications. which could be used as justification for sterilization, are being used. (sekretariat komisie vl<ldy ssr 1977:5) the following example reveals how short the distance between official rhetoric and practice on local levels actually was. the secretary of the municipal committee in jarovnice, a town in eastern slovakia where, between 1971 and 1989, 127 gypsy women out of2024 were sterilized, complained about the mental retardation of parents and the debility or imbecility (oligophreny) of their children. according to her, the "obvious retardation does not have to be measured by any special tests," but is "readily apparent to anybody who sees the way the gypsies live," as well as by the fact that the "children are unable to succeed in regular elementary school." the chairman of the town argued that "gypsy women should be sterilized after the second child, without regard to age." the town council also recolmnended gynecological check-ups of "retarded" romani girls from fourteen years of age. "women who give birth to several mentally retarded or otherwise damaged children should be compulsorily sterilized, regardless of age" (komanicky 1990: 1-2, andrs a pellar 1990). neither the town's representatives nor the medical establishment of the town even attempted to deny the history of the sterilization practice. they believed they did a good deed for the future of their nation. they did not seem to question the legitimacy of their standards of "mental retardation" as a license to sterilize the roma. the question that remains is where 89 ii one should look for the line between "good intentions in the interest of a healthy population" and scientific racism. these sentiments blatantly demonstrate how deeply racism was ingrained in the social fabric of czechoslovak society during the communist regime and how easily it got disseminated as a scientific discourse. "enlightened racism" in the scientific discourse it is impossible to investigate or find a "correct route" of the travel of racially charged sentiments between institutional orders and popular consciousness, most of which did not use any predictable or recognizable racist rhetoric and instead were ciphered in the rhetoric of social pathology and backwardness. one of the most astonishing things about the sterilization decree and related regulations is how extremely vague and ambiguous they were. and yet, there seemed to be a latent, unspoken consensus by local doctors and petty social workers all across the country to decode the ambiguity of the documents in similar ways. the anti-romani sentiments, present in both popular and scientific literature, partially explain why many czechoslovak doctors did not see ethical problems with executing sterilization procedures on romani women. to the contrary, these professionals often took the cause up as their own, seeing themselves as saviors of the nation. a gynecologist from slovakia explained: "here [in slovakia] they multiply like rabbits," adding that when he performed cesarean sections on romani women, he automatically tied their tubes (helsinki human rights watch 1992:23). similarly, a pediatrician from northern bohemia reasoned: "when you see how these gypsies multiply and you see that it is a population of an inferior quality, and when you look at the huge sums that ha[ ve] to be paid for the care of these children, it [the sterilization] is understandable" (helsinki human rights watch 1992:31). in 1975, dr. lin vacek, a chief gynecologist at a hospital in usti nad orlici, sterilized 29 romani women for "socio-economic reasons." he published the results of this practice in a professional medical journal ceskoslovenska gynekologie, where he emphasized the financial advantages of sterilization over governmental spending on the institutional upbringing of romani children. the compensation of 38,800 crowns that the women were paid for the sterilizationl2 was "absolutely insignificant in comparison to the price of 250,000 crowns the state would have to pay for one asylum child, often genetically damaged," vacek explains, implicitly assuming most roma children simply would be born mentally retarded and inevitably end up in a foster-care institution. "evidently, from those families, there were a ton of kids in the homes. we more or less knew that," he added (vacek 1976:622). once romani women were identified as eligible and desirable for sterilization, all that was needed for the legality of the procedure was their consent. libuse balazova wrote in her application as a reason for sterilization "problems with varicose veins;" before the surgery nobody checked if it was true. other women either did not know what they signed or were threatened by their social workers. only eva lilova did not try to camouflage her true reason for undergoing the procedure. without hiding behind a medical condition, she blatantly wrote in: "money." nobody found that alarming or suspicious. even so, just before surgery she ran away with her sister, who was only eighteen at the time. the next day, the social worker brought both of them back and, as a punishment, deducted 2,000 crowns from the promised 10,000 (mazalova 1997:37). one wonders what ever happened to the 1972 sterilization decree that was allegedly designed to increase the protection of applicants' rights. in slovakia, the "rigor" of the decree even prompted the governmental bureau for the questions of the gypsy population to complain about it as too limiting 12 this figure came to 1,338 crowns per person, which equaled a little ovcr one-third of an average monthly salary. 90 ••••••••••••••••••• for their effort to protect the "healthy population": even such parents [meaning mentally retarded ones] cannot be sterilized without their consent. the only legal way to circumvent this problem right now, allowed by §10 of the civil code, is to constitute such a citizen legally incapacitated and [ officially] assibtfl her a social guardian. (sekretariat komisie vlady ssr 1977:6)13 such circumvention, however, provided enough space for dr. vacek. he willingly explained the "simplification" of the consent procedures in his hospital and district. executing the procedure according to the decree was "for these women, perpetually with low iq, impossible," he explains. that was why he created a special form, where the application was filled in by a social worker from the regional welfare office instead of by the woman herself. vacek boasts that his form served as an example for the entire region (vacek 1976:625). significantly, this process made romani women not only sterile, but also mute. like other doctors and social workers, vacek, too, felt that he understood enough about the inherent inferiority of the roma to take the decision into his own hands. he is still proud ofhis method of sterilizing within 48 hours of giving a birth. "otherwise, nobody would be able to chase those women back to the hospital," he argues. "before a woman would 13 § 7 (csr) and § 10 (ssr) of the 1972 sterilization decree state that: applications for sterilization submittcd by minors and persons with limited mental capacity have to be accompanied by a consent of their lcgal guardian (i.e. a state-assigned social worker.) for a person who is/idly legally incapacitated, the entire application is submitted by the legal guardian. in cases when sterilization should be carried out because of mental disea~e, but the person in question is not fully legally incapacitated, the law requires a consent of a guardian assigned for this specific reason by a court, according to § 29 of the civil code. (p.2, emphasis mine) sweat out an application, she would be pregnant again," he nonchalantly remarked, justifying his simplification of the procedures by sterilizing romani women with forced or ill-informed consent (mazalova 1997:40). efficiency, traditionally used as a unit of measurement, was in the hands of doctors like vacek, "magically" transformed into a powerful instrument of control. for doctors like vacek, the issue of sterilization was a strictly medical issue, free of any ethnic dimension. the association of the roma with social and mental deviance became so ingrained in official reports and popular consciousness that even today, more than ten years after the collapse of the communist regime (not to mention during the 1970s and 1980s) the allegation itself, that these procedures might have had racist undertones, seems absurd to many. "we did not force anybody ... we did it decently," insists vacek indignantly (mazalova 1997:40). iii. the gendered nature of romani sterilization romani men are simply missing from the story as told by the documents. they have no voices. they have no bodies. they are not subj ected to the pressure to get sterilized "in the interest of the health ofthe population." they are not being visited by social workers and offered thousands of crowns "in order to help to overcome the adverse living conditions of their families." they are not consulted as husbands, lovers, or fathers. none of the studies, investigations, statistics, or doctors mentioned in the literature is concerned with either men's voices in the story or with men as objects of sterilization procedures. and yet, their absence is significant as well, inviting a new set of questions, concerns, and sites for historical analysis and interpretation (roberts 1999).14 14 the history of sterilization procedures in thc united states, enacted mainly against the african american and latino populations, reveals a similarly gendered story. on the other hand, in india, for example, during the rule of indira gandhi, it was primarily men who were targeted and sterilized by the regime. 91 http:1999).14 ----dr. vacek has already foreshadowed one aspect of the sex-specific sterilization policy: convenience. romani women were simply already there, in the medical establishments, giving births, getting abortions. many of them got sterilized without their knowledge, while undergoing a different medical procedure. a romani woman from slovakia disclosed that she went to get an abortion, and they told me, 'be so kind as to sign here before you go in for the abortion.' so i signed and went in for the abortion. they just gave me the paper to sign, folded it, and put it into an envelope. i didn't know anything. after the procedure, they told me that something went wrong, that they had to repeat the procedure. i was afraid that part of the fetus would stay in me, so they gave me an injection and brought me upstairs to the operating room. after the operation, when i went downstairs ... [the other women] told me that i had been sterilized .... i was shocked. ... now i have a new boyfriend and we want to get married, but i'm shocked because i can't give him any children. (helsinki human rights watch 1992:23) the bodies of romani women were already physically present in the medical establishments. even if it might have been more medically and economically "efficient" and less painful to sterilize men (puchala 1989),15 it seems that socially and politically it was much more convenient to sterilize women. in modem societies, hospitals have been recognized as means of tremendous social control, and the situation in the communist societies was not different in this respect. women's bodies became the canvas on which to paint social deviance. in 1989, drs. posluch 15 puchala argues that male vasectomy is faster, more economic, and has fewer medical repercussions for the male body than ovarian sterilization has for the female body. and posluchova published an academic article in which they arl::,rued, based on "legitimate, scientific" studies, that the rel::,rulation of their [gypsy] reproduction is necessary even in our advanced society, because it concerns citizens who have overwhelmingly negative attitudes toward work ethics and education. they have a high level of criminality, alcoholism and women have a tendency toward promiscuity. significant is also their cultural and social retardation behind the rest of the population. all this leads to the fact that their sexual hie starts very early. young gypsy girls give birth without biological and social readiness for maternity. another negative aspect is their high fertility, ... but many gypsy women don't want to use birth control. (posluchova and posluch 1989:220-223) these authors define sexuality and reproduction solely as a female problem. while their (meaning all roma's) sexual life allegedly starts earlier, it is the woman on whose body this concern is being played out. of course, the authors claim to be concerned with health, hygiene, and social education when they call for "planned parenthood" among the roma. vacek, too, states that "we particularly place great hopes on expanding the number of sterilizations.... into the future, we expect this form of regulation to increase especially among younger women with fewer children" (vacek 1976:625). while one could argue that such statements constitute a "propagation of genocide" and thus could be prosecuted even retroactively under the §259 of the current czech penal code, these professionals were convinced that sterilization was a social and medical, and not an ethnic, issue (trestni provo cr 1995). high romani fertility was, according to these authors, the result of the sexual deviance of romani women. thus if one wanted to control romani reproduction, one had to control the female body. 92 7 active sexual behavior in communist czechoslovakia was confined to the realm of heterosexual marriage. even a woman who deliberately and independently decided to be a single mother officially carried an "illegitimate child" (heitlinger 1987:243). proper womanhood was defined by woman's reproductive ability and her motherhood. however, while a proper woman could not have been defined without being associated with a man, a sexually deviant woman was vested with agency of her own. not only was the concept of monogamy among romani couples implicitly called into question when evoking promiscuity and prostitution of romani women, female sexual deviance clearly could not have been solved through male sterilization. moreover, because of the traditional cultural bond between masculinity, sexuality, and natural parenthood in czechoslovakia, the interference with men's ability to naturally procreate would have resulted in their public emasculation, and hence in a threat to the patriarchal order of the society as a whole. while the romani woman was singled out and overwhelmingly blamed for the high romani fertility rate and her body was targeted as the key to "gypsy planned parenthood," the number of children in the family was often a logical result of existing gender power relations rather than a consequence of ignorance, irrationality, or irresponsibility. in romani culture, as in most east european societies in general, traditional patriarchal gender norms were the prevailing pattern of family and sexual life (heitlinger 1987:243). women were still in subordinate positions in the relationship: the man "took care of the sexual act" and the woman was expected to bear the consequences of his irresponsibility or failure in case of pregnancy (morokvasic 1981: 139). thus, ironically, by becoming pregnant, the romani woman was seen as the locus of the "fertility problem," which in turn could be addressed only through the control and regulation of her body. "it is important to teach gypsy women to ... better plan their population," claimed a member of a regional commission for the questions of the gypsy population in 1970 (kier 1970:215). the ministry of health proclaimed its immense attention to the "care for gypsy woman, mother and child" and reported that it succeeded in getting gypsy women to give birth in institutions "even though many agreed only under the threat of their child support money being withdrawn." however, such a logic and argumentation made it also potentially easy for romani men not to fully comprehend the discriminatory nature of these measures and instead to perceive a potential loss of financial child support as the woman's fault and blame her for it, opening the door to domestic violence or other subordination and abuse. the ministry also complained that "gypsy women refused to take birth control and only in exceptional cases [ doctors] succeeded in implanting intrauterine birth control" (fond poverenictva snr 1968). while it was quite difficult for non-romani czechoslovak women to obtain birth control unless they were married, already had children, and the health practitioners decided it was "good for them," (heitlinger 1979: 186), the commission for gypsy population has recommended since 1967 to all national councils that their social and health care workers should "guarantee the widespread extension of birth control use among gypsy women by any means of urging and health education" (fond poverenictva snr 1968). since many romani women refused birth control based on their cultural beliefs and values (which nobody cared about), often the only perceived means of "urging" and "educating" left to the social and health care workers was women's sterilization. many articles and studies concerned with the romani sterilization indicate that many romani women underwent sterilization voluntarily, attracted to the high financial incentives connected to the procedure (pellar and andrs 1990). the question is, of course, whether consent based on financial incentives offered to a person belonging to the economically weakest segment of the population and living in substandard social 93 conditions can be considered truly voluntary. applying the concept of free choice and agency in this particular way comes close to blaming the victims themselves. however, surprisingly, none of these articles or studies attempts to investigate the potential of the reversal of these policies to empower or even protect romani women. czech psychiatrist radkin hollzak argues that while "some psychiatrists consider a woman after a uterus removal to be healthy, as a psychiatrist i do not consider this a healthy condition. in a psychological self-evaluation, a woman after sterilization is different than before" (stepan 1989:42). while such essentialist interpretations of gender might generally coincide with traditional romani perception of a woman that is based on assumptions of female fertility as the necessary precondition for "nonnal" womanhood, not all romani women felt bound by that tradition. some of them preferred having control over their own bodies, sexuality, and reproduction to considerations ofproper womanhood, whether prescribed by medical authorities or cultural values (strathern 1988).16 being often squeezed between economic difficulties and gender subordination, undergoing sterilization might have been, for at least some of them, one of the few ways available of exercising control over their bodies and lives. margita lakotova, for example, confided that despite her husband's disapproval, she decided to undergo sterilization because "[she] couldn't defend herself against him." she complains that "he just doesn't care [if we have more children] but it's impossible, we can't feed them. we already have three.,,17 these experiences 16 strathern warns against assumptions that women everywhere are the same, that women's speech reveals "a woman's point ofvicw," and that women always speak from the gendcr idcntity of "woman." she urgcs the neccssity of investigating the forms of power and discourse that constitute the frames and contexts in which women enact their choices. 17 oral intcrviews with margita lakotova, prague, august 13, 16, and 24, 1997 (tape-rccorded in the personal archive of the author). challenge the interpretation that romani women have been only silent victims of sterilization practices. this fact does not negate the violation of the many romani women who did not have any control over their bodies or were misinfonned about the procedure. but it suggests that the romani women who have been sterilized (and who constitute the existing statistics), especially those who underwent the procedure in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most likely do not all belong demographically to the same segment of the population and their experiences cannot be universalized. moreover, it points to romani women's ability to transfonn the practices meant to control them to their advantage and to take charge over their own bodies. conclusion the circumstances surrounding the practice of sterilization show how important the regulation of sexuality was in reaffirming lines of ethnic difference between the roma and non-roma in communist czechoslovakia. sterilization among romani women was encouraged by local professionals because cultural means (i.e. education or labor ethic) were seen as ineffective to remedy the problem of "gypsy" deviance. social deviance was allegedly so ingrained in the "gypsy" character that it was essential to cure it through biological means. it does not seem an accident that roma's alleged derelict parenting and careless reproduction were at the core of the concerns with the "gypsy question." before the roma could even start to be civilized, they first had to catch up with the "czechoslovak" model of parenthood and sexuality. at the same time, this tendency also demonstrates that nonnative sexuality, parenthood, and reproduction served not only as a way for the non-roma to control the roma, but also as a self-disciplinary tool for the regulation of the non-romani czechoslovak population's behavior as well. since the discourse on parenthood and sexuality in general was essentially gendered, this aspect logically extended to the issue of sterilization. while sterilization was seen as a 94 http:1988).16 ii possible solution to the "gypsy question" as • such, in reality it was strictly a female issue. in order to regulate the reproduction of the roma, the czechoslovak society had to •• regulate the bodies of romani women. this conceptual link resulted in a gendered notion of romani deviance since romani fertility became a problem of sexually irresponsible • and promiscuous romani women and since other forms of social deviance, such as mental retardation, were born within the woman's body. • while those involved in the sterilization process did not seem to see explicit connection between the politics of ethnicity and ideology of normative sexuality and reproduction, this study demonstrates that such a connection deserves to be seriously considered. the latent consensus of the majority of petty social workers and local doctors to translate the ambiguity of the official medical language into a "discourse on ethnicity," suggests that, contrary to the official rhetoric, racism remained a salient and pervasive feature at the everyday social level of the czechoslovak society during the communist regime. clearly, the country practiced a double standard of citizenship based on ethnic grounds. the meaning of "gypsiness" kept shifting to fit various individual and collective senses of identity, permeating both gender/sexual and raciavethnic matrixes. thus, it seems feasible to argue that the construction of ethnicity in communist czechoslovakia was heavily informed and inextricably linked with the discourse on social deviance and sexuality. moreover, the circumstances of the sterilization practice in postwar ii czechoslovakia show that the communist regime was far from exercising total control over all aspects of the society. in fact, this article demonstrated that there was no such ii clear division between the "regime" and the "people." power could be found at all levels of the society, as "obvious" intentions and ii objectives of various laws and policies were ii transformed and acquired radically different meaning in the hands of those who interpreted and implemented them. official laws may be one, but certainly not the only, site where institutional power was exercised. in fact, low level officials constituted a very important "nexus" in czechoslovakia because they were participants or purveyors of two different discourses popular discourses about the roma "from below" and official discourses on the "gypsy question" "from above" and they thus had the potential of inflicting double harm on the roma by translating one discourse into the other. policies written in the legal code of the regime were not the same as policies as they affected real people. this was because, even if local officials were ordered to follow directives from above, they still had the discursive freedom to interpret and apply laws according to the popular prejudices and stereotypes that inform their attitudes and behavior. this does not mean that local officials were free to do what they wanted or that they were not monitored by their superiors. rather, it means that such officials, simply as interpretive beings, could have (and indeed did) apply policies in ways that more directly related to popular consciousness and culture than according to the ideological straightjacket of the letter of the law. equally importantly, this article asserted that the story of sterilization cannot be written as a simple study in victimology or identity politics. even though the evidence presented so far suggests that with more research the historical narrative will only become increasingly 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articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. as an ethnographer of journalistic practice and ideology, i have been exploring contested public imaginings and ethno-national reconceptualizations taking place in a border zone croatian territory that has been a political flashpoint and the site of military conflicts and occupations. looking at the everyday working lives of mass media people placed at a key point for their community’s consensus-building, this article primarily focuses on the very limited media choices available in the small and impoverished city of knin, the regional capital of the ethno-nationally contested krajina region of croatia, where both croats and serbs historically have vied for political, economic, and symbolic dominance. ethno-national radio in disputed regions the knin broadcast area represents a particular type of media situation that has emerged in the past decade in croatian territory. hrvatski radio knin (hrk) is the one local media institution currently functioning in knin and it appears to have had, as its over-arching purpose and main functioning, the goal of establishing an ethnonational public sphere in its broadcast area. in doing so, hrk thereby plants what i call an “aural flag” that symbolically marks its ethnonational presence in the territory. in setting out to conduct research in knin in late winter of 2003, i was expecting to find some kind of explicitly serb attempt to counteract this croatian claim by responding to croat assertions with parallel mass media or by seeking inclusion in this civic community and public sphere. i anticipated a number of objects to be at stake here. depending on each community’s intentionality, possible outcomes of this contest would be the establishment of either exclusive serb or croat ethno-national control of the region or the building of a pluralistic community, a small-scale civil society where state citizenship may overshadow ethnic and national affiliation. in short, i expected to find dichotomy of sorts, with croats on one side, with media power under a flag firmly planted, and serbs on the other, without. mapping the croatian mediascape in order to understand the emerging croatian mediascape, i have explored these areas outside of croatia’s main cities and media centers, beyond the mainstream of political and economic power in the country. border zones have a gravitational pull on these administrative centers and are essential to the national imagining of the croatian nation and state. as under-settled places of economic depression with unsettled ethno-national issues, knin and the krajina are unresolved problems which could potentially undermine the croatian state’s political aspirations vis-à-vis the european union, nato, and western powers in general. as the movement of croat, serb and bosnian populations continues, their state of flux and de facto inclusion and exclusion from each other’s local civic lives holds croatia back from normalizing as a modern democracy. even as croatia tries to reject its ties to the balkans and all of the instability and so-called primitiveness and tribalisms associated with the region, the ethno-national questions of the local public sphere of small cities like knin remain integral to croatia’s future. this “aural flag” type of radio is one part of the emerging and transitioning croatian mediascape that i have been mapping during my dissertation research. through ethnographic research, i have come to know radio stations and other media in less ethno-nationally contested areas of croatia, namely radio stations in cities understood to be majoritarian “croat”. jen typewritten text 95 volume 21, number 2 as an ethno-nationally contested space, knin creates a problem for a croatian journalistic profession that imagines itself and its nation as being in the process of becoming modern. knin is a sore spot, where the questions of national-statist sovereign drive towards civil society and a so-called free market are far from settled. instead, knin’s economic and political structures and its visions of itself are bifurcated, dependent on zagreb or on contradicting foreign sources. knin has no shared imaginary, its public sphere cannot be a social totality. working with radio knin journalists and with people trying to create other forms of media in knin, i have explored questions of how they see their role in creating and maintaining their ethnonational and/or civic community and the public sphere, how they envision modernity and croatia’s place in the “modern” world, how they see their agency, how they relate to the social systems and institutions within which they work. i have sought to understand how media people in knin see (or do not see) themselves as territorially planted (as “aural flag”), yet also as part of a globalizing and de-territorializing mass media. i have asked about a range of personal journalistic purposes: is journalism primarily a means to a paycheck? does journalism mean an ethnic and national duty to one’s people? or is it a public and civic responsibility to all people living in one’s broadcast range? background: knin and knin’s broadcast media the most recent power swing in the krajina took place in august 1995, when the croatian army took the region back from serb paramilitaries. within less than twenty-four hours of retaking knin, croatian radio & television (hrt)i workers from split and zadar established hrvatski radio knin, which began broadcasting immediately, such was the perceived importance of having a mass media presence in the region. hrk was ostensibly meant to serve its community, mass-mediating a croatian public sphere. however, hrk barely had an audience during its first months of broadcasting as most native croats had fled from far from the transmission range and had not yet returned. for this reason, the primary raison d’etre of croatian radio stations like hrk has been as “aural flags” symbolically laying claim to territory. “krajina” can be translated loosely as “the border region.” historically underpopulated, croats have never fully occupied the area, yet they have seen it as theirs. five hundred years ago, many serb orthodox people, displaced by northward ottoman expansion settled the region and served as a “border guard” for european christendom against the infidels. much later, the multi-ethnic yugoslav state urged more serb in-migration. although formally a part of croatia, it had a majority serb population. as the largest city in the krajina region, knin had a serb-run and serb-language radio station since the early 1960s. in 1991, as croatian president franjo tuđman was declaring croatian national independence from what was considered a serb-controlled yugoslav government, krajina serbs, with yugoslav army help, made their own breakaway from the breakaway croatia. declaring their srpska krajina an independent state, they made knin their capital and began broadcasting not just radio, but also television. croats, who were in the minority, fled the region. meanwhile, serbs fleeing the unfriendly climate of other parts of croatia, as well as muslimor croatiancontrolled areas of bosnia-herzegovina, came to knin and the krajina to occupy abandoned croat homes. serbs controlled the krajina until 1995, when the croatian army took back most of the occupied territories. krajina serbs fled into serb-controlled parts of bosnia, putting up little jen typewritten text 96 volume 21, number 2 resistance, because they knew that belgrade, under international pressure from the dayton peace accords, would do nothing to support them. taking back knin was wildly celebrated throughout croatia. then-president franjo tuđman spoke about national perseverance and millennial destiny beneath a giant croatian flag unfurled atop the hilltop fortress in the center of the city. and, even though knin was virtually a ghost town, a triumphalist hrvatski radio knin broadcast in croatian to the depopulated countryside, a sovereign symbol of the croatian nation-state. soon however, domestic croats resettled the town, some had fled the serb aggression in 1991, and others were looking for some of the economic benefits the government offered (housing in abandoned serb houses, tax breaks, etc.). a large number of the new settlers, however, were not domestic croats, but instead bosnian croat refugees, mostly fleeing ethnically cleansed serb-dominated areas of bosnia. hrk still broadcasts today and the giant flag still flies above the fortress; these are visual and aural reminders that knin is a croatian town where croats hold power. at the same time, hrk gives voice to croats, creating at least a semblance of a croatian public sphere. hrk’s music, news and information creates a forum promoting the social imaginary of a croatian community. all the while, serbs are returning to knin and re-registering their citizenship at municipal offices just down the street from hrk. many only come back for a day or two in order to visit, to set their papers right and to explore the prospects of a resettling, but every month the population grows with serbs who intend to settle there permanently. returning serb refugees are encouraged by western aid and peacekeeping organizations and are forming their own organizations to facilitate resettlement and the rebuilding of their community. the people of hrvatski radio knin while grand speeches in 1995 may have extolled the steadfastness of the croatian people and knin’s central role to the croatian nation, most croats see knin as an exceptionally undesirable place to live. indeed, when i told friends from zagreb that i would be living in knin, they would usually grimace, asking incredulously “why?” for all the trouble in re-establishing a croatian presence in knin, including hrk's start-up, the town still feels like a place in flux with a population still looking for something for better, but not expecting to find it in knin. like much of knin’s population, many hrk personnel are anything but permanent residents. most came from somewhere else to work in knin. the only knin native at hrk said she very much missed zagreb where she had lived as a refugee. jelena had fled knin in 1991 but, encouraged by government incentives and seeing the radio work as an opportunity, she enthusiastically returned in 1996. today her enthusiasm has all but dissipated, as she fears for the future as serbs return. she will not tell me outwardly that serbs are dangerous people, but she does not mask her dislike and fear, worrying about her children’s prospects if they become a minority in what she sees as her homeland, not the serbs’ homeland. another hrk journalist, oliva, also spoke contradictorily, emphasizing the importance of the station to knin and the importance of knin to croatia, but expressing a strong personal dislike for the town. knin’s financial advantages helped her, but she described knin life as deadening and the demographic changes as disturbing. oliva talked about her work’s importance, about creating an objective, yet hopeful, voice in this financially (and psychologically) depressed region, about telling the truth in news reporting, while not letting negatives overwhelm the positives, but she admitted that this was difficult to do. two other hrk employees, vanda and drago, wife and husband, were refugees from northern bosnia, where they had been part of a croatian minority. now they were croatian citizens, and no longer held refugee status. they were resigned to living in knin and did not expect to return to their home city. while still angry about being driven out by serbs, they claimed to harbor no bitterness towards serbs in general when talking to me. however, other people attributed strong anti-serb statements to them and their programming choices indicated, if not active disdain for the serb population, at least a passive non-accommodation of serbs. only one hrk person really spoke of knin as home. ognjen was a young jack-of-alljen typewritten text 97 volume 21, number 2 trades employee engaged to a serb woman with a small baby. after his family moved to knin in 1996 when he was a teenager, ognjen became involved in hrk, helping with music and technical problems, as well as taking on journalistic responsibilities. his situation was particularly interesting because he quietly but steadily opposed most of his colleagues’ nationalistic attitudes, holding to a different sense of “objectivity” and “truth” in his everyday approach to his journalistic duties. despite his nervousness about fatherhood and the romeojuliet context of his relationship with his serb fiancée, ognjen sees the future as bright. hrk reflects a limited spectrum of attitudes and dispositions, in changing circumstances. once an “aural flag” proudly displayed by the croatian government under president franjo tuđman, hrk’s symbolic significance has been devalued, even as its potential importance as a community-builder for croats remains. despite the serb return, hrk has remained resolutely croat. plans to bring in serb programming are unclear or at least not on the immediate horizon. hrk’s director says she is not opposed to having serbs join the station, but she has not received any orders concerning this. nor has she done anything to facilitate it. my questions about serb inclusion appeared to have been interpreted as almost out-of-line, or out-of-the-question. some things the ethnographer is not supposed to ask about. hrvatski radio knin and the serb return hrk’s purpose is being re-evaluated via competing pressures. on the one hand, the current pro-western croatian government wants to appease national feeling by holding strong croatian positions (i.e., support for something like hrk), but on the other hand, the government is pressured by western governments and aid organizations to facilitate the return of serb refugees and build multi-ethnic civil society in the region. as it is currently composed, hrvatski radio knin is an ethnically divisive factor in knin, and decidedly not a civic unifier. adding to the mix is the government’s economic rationalizing at croatian radio & television in zagreb: hrk is money pit. in economically depressed knin, no one can pay for advertising and zagreb almost wholly subsidizes the station. the burgeoning serb presence in and around knin has changed the context in which hrk now broadcasts and endeavors to create a croatian public sphere. the 2000 census put the serb population in the region at slightly over twenty percent, but very many people with whom i have spoken consider this number to be low. in an ethno-politically charged area where a few years ago one’s ethnicity could get one killed, will a serb always tell the croatian census taker that he or she is serb? in any case, even if the 2000 figure was accurate, it is obvious that the number of serb returnees is growing. this creates tension as they try to reclaim their homes where domestic and bosnian croats have now been living for the past seven or eight years. based on my observations of other ethnonationally contested regions of croatia, i was expecting to find at least some nascent plans underway for a “serb radio knin” with possible support from international donors (i.e., osce), who provide support for so-called minority radio.ii however, i was only partially correct. i found no embryonic plans for a serb or a minority radio station during my stay in knin, but ironically, i did find that some international aid organizations expressed a willingness to help support serb or minority media there. an alternative proposal: radio huk? instead of an explicitly serb/“minority” media movement, what i found was a nongovernmental organization, humanosti urbanost kultura (huk, “humanity, urbanity, culture”), founded in the year 2000. huk was actively promoting artistic happenings and awareness of culture and civic-mindedness amongst youth in the city. the nearest bookstore, music shop, or active theatre was more than an hour and half away from this supposed regional center, but huk members have found some success in filling this void by sponsoring concerts, theatrical events, and workshops and even establishing a library in knin. as part of a plan (or perhaps dream) of a multi-media center, one of the leading huk members, the driven and uncompromising igor, has developed an ambitious proposal for a radio station that would serve as an alternative to what huk members saw as the “nationalistic” and “boring” hrvatski radio knin and he was applying to various international agencies for support. igor was from knin and had a serb parent and a croat parent, but had identified as croat in order to stay in the croatian city of split when knin was jen typewritten text 98 volume 21, number 2 serb-occupied. he had worked for the hrt radio split and then came to work for hrk when zagreb’s hrt was founding the station. however he had become embattled with the hrk director and had acrimoniously quit in 1998 (second-handedly, i heard that igor’s obstinacy and other unfavorable characteristics were attributed to his half-serb parentage at this time). igor’s radio station plan reflects his and huk’s vision of good radio – “modern, urban, open, objective, young, multi-cultural”, in other words, “everything that radio knin is not”. significantly, radio huk proponents envision their would-be station as opposite to hrk, but not in the sense of being an opposing minority. that is, it would not be serb minority vs. croatian majority. instead, it would point toward the multi-ethnic backgrounds of some huk members as well as the frustrations of many young people with their opterečenje (burdened) parents’ generation, “burdened” that is, with ethnicity. radio huk as it was initially proposed did not so much purposefully downplay ethnicity, as much as deny its central relevance. unfortunately, this has not been understood very well by the international aid community, which seems only able to recognize the need for minority media, that is serb media, in knin. for this reason, a resistant igor has been pressured to alter huk’s application strategy to foreground how their station would emphasize (serb) minority voices. this has not been easy because some huk members fear that radio huk will be immediately labeled as a serb station. this, they say would be divisive and would implicitly exclude croat participation in the station. in other words, following international aid community diktats could potentially turn radio huk into exclusivist ethno-national radio like hrvatski radio knin. instead, huk members want their station to be inclusive of all young people in the knin community. unfortunately, the wants and needs of the international aid bureaucracies often have to be met before the wants and needs of the communities that they are mandated to serve. not two, but three peoples part of the problem in understanding knin and its (still-forming) public sphere(s) is that its population is not made up of a simple croat vs. serb dichotomy. instead, three distinct populations must be recognized. first, domestic croats, people originally from knin who returned after 1995 or economic or military migrants seeking better opportunities within croatia. the second group consists of serbs, who are slowly but steadily returning. they collectively have a bad name throughout most of croatia, but the militants and provocateurs of the war years are not amongst the returnees because of the particularly unwelcoming atmosphere (including war crimes indictments in some cases). many returning serbs show a mixture of contrition, as well as sadness and anger about what both serb and croat militants did to their community. a third distinct community often overlooked by outsiders consists of bosnian croats who fled serb-occupied parts of bosnia during the war. few of them are still considered refugees, however, since they have become croatian citizens. some have been able to return to their bosnian villages and rebuild their houses there, yet legally live in knin too, very often in the houses that serbs abandoned in 1995. one domestic croat described bosnian croats with strong resentment: “they’re a tribe that doesn’t care about knin” because they stick together doing their “black market trade, collecting welfare, and use their reconstructed village houses in bosnia as summer homes”. some people have pointed out that domestic croats and serbs get along better with each other than either group does with bosnian croats. this might be made more understandable by considering that that domestic croats and returning serbs are in their homeland, but the bosnian croats still feel like expellees who were victimized by serbs. members of these three groups live throughout knin. the social borders between them are by no means impermeable, but markers of distinction do exist. for example, certain café-bars are understood to be bosnian croat or serb and their patrons conform to this designation. the ethnic gap, however, is also a generation gap. that is, the older people keep to their kind more, while the younger people, teens and twenty-somethings, are more likely to have serb, domestic croat and bosnian croat friends. a fairly young high school teacher said that this situation should not be idealized as perfectly peaceful, but that he found this to be the trend. the parents were opterečenje (burdened), while the kids were much less so. jen typewritten text 99 volume 21, number 2 media in knin, in the past, in the future hrk, in this way, has played to the older generation of croats, who are of a more rural and provincial mindset. the proponents of the would-be radio huk meanwhile believe that knin’s younger population is not served by any media. private zagreb-based radio and television stations, which supposedly broadcast to the whole of croatia do not have signals that knin antennae can pick up, so knin is served by only stodgy state broadcasting (hrt) from zagreb and split aside from the tilted and stilted hrk. in a conversation with one young woman, i was trying to sum up her negative description of hrk and asked, “are you saying radio knin is about the past?” and she answered, “yes, and our huk radio would be for the future.” knin’s public sphere, as understood as broadcasting or press concept, is decidedly croatian-dominated. domestic and bosnian croats are still the majority population and, by virtue of their being part of the croatian republic, the state provides the city with hrvatski radio knin. no other print or electronic alternatives exist. with an impermanent population with relatively shallow or recently deracinated roots, however, separate public spheres exist more in habermas’ sense of the 18th and 19th century cafés (i.e., serbs have their cafés, bosnian croats have theirs…). knin remains socially still inchoate, divided yet evolving, all within a croatian framework. whether its public sphere/s development is taking place within (a necessarily croatian) ethno-national framework or statist civil society framework, remains a question. hrk, at this writing, continues as croatian media. it is not rabidly nationalist; it has apparently toned down its rhetoric and its croatian journalists occasionally host serb guests. however, it is definitely not a comfortable place for serbs, nor is it a radio station that a serb or for that matter any one under thirty or forty is likely to regularly tune into to. zagreb’s hrt has sent some subtle signals indicating changes may be in the offing for hrk, but zagreb’s bureaucratic pace does not promise rapid results (also, 2003/2004 elections may see a reversion to a moderate tuđmanist ethno-political landscape again). the would-be radio huk should only be spoken about with the uncertainty of the conditional. at this point the impoverished city of knin could not support a private radio station in so-called free market conditions, so the only chance for huk would be through international funding. however, donors have been pulling up stakes all over croatia. the bulk of aid money first moved on to kosovo, then serbia, and now further east, to afghanistan and iraq, so huk may be asking for too much, too late. additionally, the few donor agencies that do still exist in knin are enthusiastic to support serb minority media, but cannot grasp huk’s attempts to fulfill knin’s greater media needs. one suggestion generated by an international aid office in knin has been to fund minority programming on hrk, but this reflects the office’s unawareness of local media realities: first, that hrk would be somewhat hostile to this proposal; second, huk members, led by the former hrk-employee igor, would reciprocate this animosity; and third, huk sees a need not for ethnic minority media, but for non-ethnically identified media for a younger generation completely separate from the staid and stolid hrt bureaucracy. by way of inclusion this research shows us the usefulness of ethnographic participant observation and the need to contextualize seemingly straightforward issues in history, economics and interpersonal relationships. knin is an economically depressed city in a poor region that has seen war completely destroy its industry and prompt wholesale population changes. knin is divided, but not along simplistic ethno-national lines. therefore simplistic solutions (i.e., international aid community mandates) could exacerbate tensions more than resolve them. as it stands now, hrk and its journalists largely work against this, supporting an exclusivist croatian position and doing little to attract younger listeners. the proposal for radio huk looks to address these community needs, but this is still only an idea on paper that may never be realized because of a lack of funding, as well as obdurate personalities. while finding whole community consensus is chimerical, it is surely important to envision a public sphere that unites people into a social imaginary, and that is inclusive of croats, domestic, bosnian, and serb, young and old. jen typewritten text 100 volume 21, number 2 references appadurai, arjun 1996 modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. askew, kelly 2002 “introduction.” in the anthropology of media. a reader. kelly askew & richard wilk, eds. oxford: blackwell. banjeglav, mirko, ed. 2003 hrvatski helsinški odbor za ljudska prava. dokumenti 1993.-2003. zagreb:hho berdahl, daphne 2000 “introduction.” in altering states. ethnographies of transition in eastern europe and the former soviet union. daphne berdahl, et al., eds. ann arbor: university of michigan press. billig, michael 1995 banal nationalism. london: sage. burawoy, michael & katherine verdery 1999 uncertain transition. ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. crook, tim 1998 international radio journalism. history, theory, practice. london: routledge. ginsburg, faye, lila abu-lughod & brian larkin, eds., 2002 media worlds. anthropology on new terrain. berkeley: university of california press. habermas, jürgen 1989 [1962] the structural transformation of the public sphere. cambridge, ma: massachusetts institute of technology press. johnson, owen 1998 “the media and democracy in eastern europe.” in communicating democracy: the media and political transitions. patrick o’neil, ed. boulder, co & london: lynne rienner. larssen, urban 2002 “diverging ideas of an emerging profession. representing the journalistic community in post-socialist romania”. unpublished paper. mahečić, ida 1999 democratisation of media in croatia: case study of croatian radio and television (hrt). dissertation, sussex european institute, university of sussex. malović, stjepan et al., eds. 1996 uvod u novinarstvo. zagreb: biblioteka press. mučalo, marina 2002 radio u hrvatskoj. povisjesno-pravni razvoj radija u hrvatskoj. zagreb: hrvatska politologija. pedelty, mark 1994 war stories: the culture of foreign correspondents. new york: routledge. rihtman-auguštin, dunja 2001 etnologija i etnomit. zagreb: naklada publica. spitulnik, debra 1993 “anthropology and mass media” in annual review of anthropology. 22:293-315. thompson, john 1995 the media and modernity. stanford, ca: stanford university press. thompson, mark 1994 forging war. the media in serbia, croatia and bosniahercegovina. article 19, international centre against censorship, bath: the bath press. vilović, gordana & stjepan malović 2000 media landscape of croatia: structure and economy of media system. zagreb: hrvatska politologija. endnotes i. a note on the abbreviations and names i am using: hrvatski radio knin is “croatian radio knin” which is part of the state-run network hrvatski radio i televizija (hrt, or “croatian radio and television”). i am usually referring to the station simply as radio knin except when i am trying to emphasize the fact that hrvatski, “croatian”, is used in the station’s name, thus clearly marking the station’s ethno-national orientation. ii that is, minority radio in knin’s situation would mean an international donor would support serbs who are, at this point, still a minority in the region. this would be a bitter paradox for some croats because they were the minority who were driven out in 1991 jen typewritten text 101 volume 21, number 2 and now are afraid of becoming minority again as serbs, who had fled in 1995 return. jen typewritten text 102 anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 266 celebrity and glamour in contemporary russia: shocking chic. eds. helena goscilo and vlad strukov. basees/routledge series on russian and east european studies. series ed. richard sakwa. london: routledge, 2011. xx, 296 pp. bibliography. index. figures. list of contributors. preface. acknowledgments. $155.00, hardback. benjamin m. sutcliffe miami university celebrity and glamour in contemporary russia is a timely volume about a highly visible yet under-examined component of post-1991 culture. the two editors, helena goscilo and vlad strukov, have compiled a set of wide-ranging articles that together comprise a serious contribution to russian cultural studies. goscilo brings to this project her substantial expertise in gender and body studies, while strukov draws on his publications related to film and visual culture. the introduction opens with a discussion of the "re-branding" of russia under vladimir putin, who has replaced the national humiliation of the yeltsin years with a false veneer of stability and prosperity (1). within this context, goscilo and strukov note, glamour and celebrity have become part of the country's rhetoric of excess, strikingly evident in moscow as the center of post-soviet power and prestige. the introduction gives a concise yet theoretically nuanced history of glamour and celebrity in the 1990s-2000s, discussing, among other things, how the new russian emphases on opulence and crime-oriented virility crushed the already demoralized intelligentsia (12-13). the volume's first section deals with glamour and politics, opening with goscilo's discussion of putin's muscular cult of personality. this is the volume's strongest chapter, dissecting how putin's image--whether on tv, souvenir dolls, or even impregnated in chocolate--signals the mythology of a new russia buoyed by inflated national pride and petrodollars. the following article deals with elena baturina, the wife of former moscow mayor yury luzhkov; michelle kuhn sees her as an inspiration for ordinary russian women despite negative feedback from bloggers (57, 62). part two of celebrity and glamour discusses the phenomenally successful mystery author boris akunin (pseudonym of gregory chkhartishvili) as discussed by brian baer and nadezhda korchagina. tatiana mikhailova then outlines the prose of the best-known literary embodiment of glamour: oksana robski, who personifies the fictional representation of excessive wealth in the public eye. mikhailova makes the intriguing but contentious argument that robski is the first russian author to positively compare individuals with their property, a claim ignoring the cult of things under soviet rule as examined by svetlana boym and susan reid (94). the third section examines film, estrada, and media, beginning with stephen norris's survey of how mega-director nikita mikhalkov presents himself as a simultaneously soviet, preanthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 267 1917, and contemporary celebrity. oxana poberejnaia looks at the bizarre neopaganism of mikhail zadornov and how he has skillfully exploited public attention. while her contribution is on solid theoretical footing, the structure of her argument needs much greater clarification, e.g. when she links zardonov's paganism to the notoriously orthodox slavophile movement (131). the following chapter, strukov's discussion of internet celebrities, is somewhat scattered, although this is inevitable given the multitude of topics covered (glamour in on-line advertising, films, blogs, and the cult meme preved, medved). the volume's fourth cluster focuses on gender. olga partan explores the bonds between the celebrity of pop queen alla pugacheva and her daughter, singer kristina orbakaite. the following chapter delves into the campy cross-dressing of the star verka serdiuchka, the betterknown alter ego of russian-speaking ukrainian personality andrei danilko. jeremy morris limns the (often hilarious) depths of gendered, political, and cultural transgression embodied in this anti-glamour diva. the final section of the volume examines two aspects of what it identifies as "moscow snobbery": prolific yet misguided sculptor zurab tsereteli and the capital's new generation of exclusive restaurants (218). goscilo's withering analysis of tsereteli reveals how this celebrity has become, despite his notoriously ugly artworks, a highly visible figure thanks to political patronage. darra goldstein's overview of moscow haute cuisine frames this phenomenon within a brief cultural history of dining in russia, long her area of research. each article concludes with endnotes and a bibliography. the text is clean and only occasionally marred by inconsistencies in capitalization between chapters; a useful index is at the end of the volume. a number of truly memorable images add to celebrity and glamour in contemporary russia: aside from the canonical shirtless putin, there are several dozen photographs and screenshots, ranging from tsereteli's bronze statue of luzhkov to an unforgettable shot of verka serdiuchka during the eurovision contest. the volume is united by a common adherence to western theoretical underpinnings in celebrity and glamour studies (chris rojek's foundational work on celebrity, daniel boorstin's discussion of "pseudo-events" as touchstones for media attention). celebrity and glamour in contemporary russia is, as the editors admit, necessarily selective as it tries to cover a glut of image-conscious stars and scandal-mongers. nonetheless, goscilo, strukov, and the book's contributors have produced a key introduction to a part of culture too long ignored by slavic studies. .-1 memory, space, and time perceptions in a postsocialist village of southern slovakia davide torsello, university ofleece, italy the aim of this paper is to analyze the way social actors perceive time and space in a period of high instability and change. the main thesis is that in conditions of uncertainty and profound transformation, the mental categorization of places and time is a dialectical process linking people to their past. this is done through the use of memory. the past can become an idealized cognitive domain, even when the actors themselves have never directly experienced it. in tum, such idealization leads them to mentally exclude those categories and social facts that belong to a period that is not remembered with pleasure. the past, as reconstructed in the words and through the actions of people, becomes in this way a venue for conveying their present choices, aspirations, and needs. the role of memory in shaping social responses to historical changes has been widely discussed in the anthropological literature (cole and gay 1972; kuchler 1988; tonkin and whitehouse 1995; roseman 1996; sant cassia 1999). several approaches have pointed out that memories are used by people to attribute significance to their past deeds and to reinterpret them in order to make sense out of the present (behar 1986). in this way the past becomes epitomized to conceptualize a present that, in many situations, is difficult to interpret because of instability, uncertainty, or general hardships. another approach looks at the past as an imagined (and often invented) reality, which actors build in their attempt to reconstruct the time-space relationship. in the work of david sutton (1998), the inhabitants of the kalymnos island of the greek dodecanese archipelago make use of analogies and metaphors to attribute meaning to their history and transmit this to their everyday life. this is reflected by the invented tradition of dynamite throwing at easter time, a ritual that islanders trace back to the episode of the "rock war," conducted against the italian soldiers during 169 the second world war. the interesting side of this tradition is that, whereas in the past it was the women who threw stones at the italian soldiers to protect their men from imprisonment, the dynamite throwing is a male-only tradition, which became imbued with ideas of masculinity, honor, and prestige. a somewhat similar analytical approach is provided by maurice bloch (1998), who investigates the different uses of memory among the sadah in yemen, the merina in madagascar, and the bicolanos in the philippines. bloch demonstrates how the two types of memory proposed by the western philosophic tradition (platonic and aristotelian) are never mutually exclusive. platonic thought has proposed the idea of an immanent truth beyond memory, where all actions and human conquests in the form of knowledge do not contribute to increased memory. everything is already imprinted in the mind of the individual from his birth; it is only a matter of revealing this internal memory. on the other hand, aristotle's insistence on the important of experience for penetrating the world of ideas leads to a completely different conception. here memory is external, shaped, and continuously enriched by experience and knowledge, and the world needs to be discovered every day. bloch shows that there is no one way of relating to the past and the future; therefore, these two models of memory cannot be taken as isolated entities. this is because "recalling defines the person in relation to time by invoking, or not invoking, notions of the past interaction with an external word which contains truth and falsehoods, permanent and impermanent elements, which is, or is not, in a state of continual creative dialectical flux" (bloch 1998: 81). in line with this argument, this paper demonstrates that actors, at determinate time and space points, choose what to accept of their past, and convey it in the form of i memories that serve the purpose of their everyday social life. the postsocialist transformation the changes that followed 1989 have been characterized as contradictory, complex, and many-sided in a rich body of social science literature on the problern.! the postsocialist transformation, encompassing overall change, has strongly highlighted the dichotomy between novelty and tradition (or continuity). the opening of new markets, capital investment, and the aggressive invasion of western european and transnational companies have provided enormous benefits to local societies in terms of work opportunities and improvement of infrastructures and of national economies. however, wide sectors of the local population, unable to cope with the transformation, are excluded from these benefits. what is worse, they have been particularly hit by the side effects of capitalist shock therapy. poverty, the dissolution of kinship and community ties, migration, and interethnic turbulence are only some outcomes of the post-1989 era. it is of no surprise if people resort to strategies and decisions that are strongly reminiscent of their close past, but adapted to the changed reality. elsewhere, i have argued that there are two main strategies that proved particularly useful to survive the postsocialist transformation: investment in social and personal networks, and the ambivalence between ideas and actions (torsello 2003a, torsello and pappova 2003). these constitute two strategic lines of conduct in the sense that they are intentional choices and patterns of behavior aimed at a specific goal, that of adapting to the transformation. these social and economic strategies are directed towards diversifying and rendering extremely t1exible the range of responses to uncertain situations and instability. as pine (2003) elegantly argues, since the fall of the berlin wall, time and space have j see hann 2002 for a comprehensive bibliography. become inextricably linked dimensions in central eastern europe. indeed, it would be unjust to state that before it was different. most ethnographies on the socialist and the postsocialist periods have contributed to disprove the idea that socialism was overall a period of stagnation and uniformity (hann 1980; swain 1985; lampland 1995). but the idea that time is presently accelerating and that space has increasingly become "temporalized" (pine 2003: 318) needs due consideration. the opening of new borders after 1989 has accelerated the movement of people, and also put in discussion­ sometimes violently, sometimes peacefully­ the very existence of these borders. however, the temporal and spatial expansion is not only a macro-phenomenon. people who have experienced postsocialism have learned through it to assess what existed under the previous regime, and tlus knowledge is still in the process of formation. having lived under socialism is one of the strengths of the people of central eastern europe, since it has given them the tools to attribute meaning to the still­ hazy present. therefore, one of the ways to understand how people construct the present is to start from the manner in which they recall the past. the village: historical background knil'ova nad vahom (in hungarian vagkiralyfa) is situated in the southwestern part of slovakia, in the fertile and largely agricultural region of the danubian lowland at about 45 krn distance from bratislava, 90 from vienna, and 120 from budapest. it lies on the western bank of the vah river, only four kilometers away from the present administrative and industrial center of sal'a (about 22,000 inllabitants). the village is inhabited by 1531 persons, 723 of whom are economically active. the population is 83.1 percent ethnic hungarian2, 15.5 percent slovak, and 1.4 percent of other ethnic 2 the region where the village is situated constitutes the southern hungarian minority belt of slovakia. the hungarian minority in slovakia constitutes over 500,000 people, making slovakia the second country (after romania) for concentration of hungarian minorities. 170 ---------------------------~i composition (statisticry urad slovenskej republiky 2001). the village belonged historically to the northern territories of the hungarian kingdom. in 1918, after the dissolution ofthe austro-hungarian monarchy, the village became part ofthe newly founded czechoslovak republic. the community belonged to czechoslovakia throughout the socialist period except for the world war ii interval (1938-1945) when hungary occupied a part of the southern slovak territory, including the village region. in 1950, socialist collectivization was begun on the whole czechoslovak territory and the process continued violently until the end of the 1950s, encountering a fierce resistance by village peasants. it was only in 1960 that the socialist cooperative was able to start farming all village land. afterwards, in 1973, a merging of the cooperative transferred the institution's management board from the village to the town of sara, unifying this with four other neighboring cooperatives. the 1960-1970 decade constituted a dynamic period for the region. the steady industrialization and urbanization processes brought into the region a vast inflow of workers from the regions of central slovakia. also, many villagers found employment in the local factory and in other industrial centers in the capital, bratislava. following the end of state socialism (1989) and the peaceful split of czechoslovakia (1993), the village presently belongs to one of the most dynamic and economically active regions of slovakia. the creation of two large industrial plants with foreign capital in the region has counterbalanced the restructuring and downsizing process of the socialist chemical plant, which in the 1970s was the main employer in the village. moreover, in the early 1990s, a number of small, family­ run, enterprises have emerged out of some villagers' desire to create private, productive , spaces. written memory arpad (b. 1939) was a staunch party member who during socialism worked in the town construction company as technician. he comes from a small peasant family that, after the death ofhis father, fragmented its property among four heirs. arpad worked seven years in the cooperative and later found employment in the town factory. he has a brother and a sister living in the village and his father-in-law lives in his neighborhood. none of his village relatives were enthusiastically active in the communist party, but nobody blamed arpad for his ideas. unlike other villagers, who remained relatively isolated after 1989 due to their political ideology, arpad is today a trusted village personality who takes an active part in the community's social and cultural events. arpad is a person trusted by most villagers. he is extremely industrious and talkative and enjoys drinking and chatting in company. one winter afternoon i was lazily spending my fieldwork time in his house. he lives in a two storey house of the cubic, unequivocally socialist shape. i was allowed to take a seat on the first floor, the one where only distinguished guests and family members are let in. comfortably sitting in a socialist-brown armchair, i waited for him. he was frantically rushing from one room to the other bringing me something to "study" (valami amib61 tanulhatsz): a collection of documents tied by a red-white-blue ribbon. they were yellowish papers that contain the past in a mechanically repeating forn1: death, birth, and marriage certificates and sometimes inheritance acts. his eyes shone as he opened the pile of documents and he could not remain silent: "look, look at them, tell me the truth, isn't your saliva dripping? (nezz, nezz rajuk, nem csurog mar a nyaiad?). he explains that he knows what it means to be a "scholar" and therefore he understands my impatience to uncertainty of the last decade and of the initial 3 there are only five such enterprises left today: the enthusiasm with which people embraced the idca ofnoodle factory, a construction company, two agricultural starting private businesses, often without a real enterprises, and a poultry farm. the decrease in number calculation of the costs and risks. (there were 12 in the early i 990s) is testimony to the 171 discover the secrets of the notarily described village past. arpad believes himself to be a careful researcher. he owns hundreds of documents that date back to the 18th century he never revealed to me how he obtained them and a number of elegantly edited volumes (in hungarian) on the period of the hungarian fascist invasion of slovakia. he is very proud of showing me these treasures and he reads them often, judging from the speed with which he is able to find information in them. one day i accidentally entered his garage, thinking that he was working there. i stood astonishingly staring at one wall. like prehistoric graffiti, coal-like black inscriptions pictured on the wall his family genealogy. the symbols were very elementary and his childish handwriting completed the picture. he was a bit embarrassed at my discovery; that was for him an element of disorder (he was always praising the orderly way he stored old treasures), and he shyly admitted, "1 needed a big space to picture out my family tree." the sudden passion for drawing family genealogy is not a feature of arpad alone. 1 came across other villagers who, after 1989, became enthusiastically active in searching the archival documents and diving back into their families' remote past. even at the village elementary school, the call of the past could be heard. the teacher once assigned her pupils to draw their own family trees, which needed to contain at least four generations. 1 myself witnessed this homework: little anna (8 years old) was excited to ask her grandparents about those family members she had never even heard of before. her grandparents praised this initiative, commenting that the time had come when people should not be afraid, but know their past in a proper way. what does this revival of the past mean for the villagers? the answers are multiple. first, one of the most significant achievements of the end of state socialism has been the freedom to openly declare one's family origin. villagers stress that during the previous regime it was the less educated people, "the bottom" of society who came to power and imposed the directives, dictated by the communist party, of public behavior. one could not be openly proud of coming from a wealthy peasant family, as well as of having ancestors who occupied leading offices in the i past (for details see torsello 2003b). the very ownership of land and animals had to be concealed and these were the main parameters i on which in the past people built prestige and trustworthiness. hence, the reacquired freedom to situate one's social origin has been i seen by some as a conquest, which needs to be sanctioned by more profound knowledge about the families' past vicissitudes.4 i the second point, as highlighted by many ethnographic works on postsocialism, is that the profound change of the 1990s has instilled iin people a sense of uncertainty of the present and future. this has led them to seek confrontation with the past, as the only itemporal and spatial dimension they could control. thus, the act of drawing family genealogies has the meaning of seeking back what seems lost, or what people fear may be i lost in the immediate future: the harmony of family and kin ties, the cohesion within the domestic and relative sphere, a place in time i where no great institutional revolution can penetrate and shake the little securities that make up the vagaries of the everyday. this is i visible in two processes: the way in which people perceive space and the way they categorize others. i memory as space perception the central eastern european countries have historically been invested by numerous spatial i changes. there is no single country that did not experience enlarging, shrinking, and resizing of its borders. kingdoms and i civilizations have for millennia occupied this i 4 of course this is not the case for the families who came out of their conditions of poverty and social marginality thanks to socialism. some of these families are today ablc to maintain the privileged statuses that i they gained during socialism, but some remained isolated and suffered more than others from the violence of the postsocialist transformation. i 172 i ---~ ~ part of the european continent, imposing different idioms, creeds, and mentalities. slovakia is a (small) model for this kind of spatial-temporal mobility. within slovakia, one of the youngest eastern european states, its regions have experienced different historical fates during the course of the last century. the region where knil'ova is situated, belonging tothe magyar-speaking regions of southern slovakia, was occupied by hungary and changed its political status in the period 1938-1945. although this short period did not bring significant changes and improvements in the socioeconomic conditions ofthe village, it significantly contributed to the confusion of the geography of the place. toponyms and area names reacquired the tenninology of the austro­ hungarian monarchy, and in a few years the efforts made by the czechoslovak state to reinvent or translate place names seemed lost. then history changed its course again, and not only once. what is the outcome of this stratification in the place-naming process? the most obvious one is the confusion that can still be read in people's interpretation of the space surrounding them. this confusion is, however, not a negative phenomenon: people are not confused about the geography of their living space, they all know what to call this or that area, with a punctuality [sic] that often seems unreal.5 it is a kind of creative confusion, in which the memories relative to the socialist period intertwine with vaguer memories of the pre-socialist period and with knowledge of the place under the hungarian crown (a magyar korona alatt). visiting the land belonging to the village, a newcomer takes in a picture rather common in the southern slovakian rural landscape. one large portion of the cultivated land is undivided and spreads in large patches over 5 i have never met a villager who was not ahle to locate a place on the cadastral map of the community. even old toponyms all seemed clear to them; the question was only whether to use the old (hungarian), or the more recent (slovak) place denominations. the flat, fertile danubian lowland. upon close observation, however, a number of small plots become evident. these privately farmed bits of land have their individual identity, visible due to the different crops cultivated there rather than the almost invisible wooden poles meant to delimit property. the plots extend eastwards, where they become indistinguishable from the inhabited area. westwards, the main road linking two towns suddenly cuts the village land in two definite portions: the private and the cooperative land. while accompanying me along the twisted field paths, one informant, himself a farmer of a plot of land smaller than 1 hectare, was proud to show me the village's cultivated fields. he pointed out to me the land that had belonged to their 'ancestors' (osi fold) and that had given kenyer es munka ('bread and work') to generations of villagers. pa1l6ci diila, zseller birtok, kutya he could name every single part of the fields (hatar). this was done using the old hungarian toponyms which i thought had been forgotten by today's inhabitants. the same informant, confronted with a cadastral map dated 1976 had some difficulty discerning the position of the toponyms, all indicated in slovak and often not coincident with the original hungarian ones. he suggested that the problem was that the cooperative has changed the geography of the place, by merging the private plots and building the central irrigation system and a large animal breeding plant. even though most of the slovak toponyms were simple translations of the original hungarian ones, he insisted that many of the new denominations did not coincide with the old ones. anyhow, he still was able to point out to me exactly the position of the hungarian placenames on the map. i tried to interrogate more villagers on the position of the old toponyms and the reactions were somewhat similar. some knew more or less where the socialist (and sometimes pre­ socialist) slovak toponyms were situated; others did not. interestingly, with the exception of a few slovak families living in 173 i the village, most of them knew the exact positioning of the habsburg denominations. one possible explanation for this accurate knowledge ofthe distant past would be to consider the village as part of the northernmost belt of the hungarian minority. knowledge of the pre-socialist hungarian toponyms would be in relation to the emotional attachment of knil'ova's people to their history and to hungarian culture. however, i reject this view since among those who were able to locate the hungarian place names were families who did not define themselves as hungarians, first of all because they do not speak hungarian at home (torsello 2003a). why should they be concerned to remember old-fashioned names if they are not attentive preservers of the local hungarian culture? the possible answer is that many people want to remember their past; they do not like to be alienated from a portion of their history which, after the demise of state socialism and the privatization of land has become relevant again. this is for a practical reason: old cadastral maps and ownership documents have become crucial tools in the process of land restitution after 1992, and people had the opportunity to be educated on their own past again. as bloch pertinently underlines, once the historical discourse falls on the field of long­ tenn memory,6 then the individual, with his (or her) desires, emotions, and interpretations, comes to the fore (bloch 1998: 82). in this sense the scarce knowledge of the socialist toponyms can be interpreted as a deliberate choice of some villagers to refuse the spatial arrangement that was produced in a period of forced land collectivization, violence, and, not 6 the distinction between short-tenn (or working) and long-tenn memory is of primary importance in the cognitive sciences. stimuli and infonnation are encoded by the human brain in a way that allows the functions of the "limited" capacities of the working memory to chunk and store them. on the other hand, long-tenn memory is responsible for more complex processes s.ueh as those related to judgement, evaluation, and analysis (see d' andrade 1995:42-3). i least, unifonnization of the village's social i and economic features. this cognitive process is extremely selective. it shows the way in which people choose to remember their i present, rather than expressing a simple mechanical product of the uncertainty of the present times. i embodied signs of memory another expression of how village people i choose to remember today has to do with the way people are categorized and addressed on the basis of their past deeds and present i qualities. elsewhere i have argued that values and morality become imbued with the social features of a detenninate historical period and absorb them in sometimes conflictual ways i that allow people diversification of action and ideas (torsello 2003c). for the purpose of this paper it is important to point out that people i make sense of their social world through categorizations and analogies that are structured on the dominant values of the i period in which they live. categories and analogies are the basic tools that the human mind uses to build its i cognitive maps, to make sense of the present. the tricky point is when these categories do not belong to the present, but are instead i reconstructions (not always faithful) of the past. this is what happens when frequent and profound social changes are at stake. i the most evident example is the binary distinction between "peasant" and "proletarian." today some villagers still use i the tenn "peasant" (paraszt), or "son of peasants" (paraszt gyerek) to refer to those with a respected family origin, i.e. those 1 whose ancestors owned land and worked hard on it. the distinction becomes one between families of "peasant" descent, considered as a i positive attribute, and families who were 'proletarian' (proletar). this does not mean that socialism made all people "proletarians," irather that those families who did not have land in pre-socialist times are designated with i i 174 an epithet that originates from the socialist period.7 i asked one informant to explain to me what he meant by "peasant." this is his answer: once all villagers were peasants. however, one has to distinguish: those who had land and worked it with their own forces were the small peasants (h\paraszt). those who employed other work were the rich peasants (gazda). the landless could not be called peasant, even if this is the work they did for all their life. today we know who came from those families who had some land and who didn't. this is why one can distinguish: it is a matter of respect for what our ,ancestors achieved and did. (antal, b.1930) people today tend to evaluate the past retrospectively. building categories such as "peasant" and "proletarian" straightly means that their perception of the past is accompanied by mental models: the former is a mental model of the pre-socialist and the latter of the socialist past. this is done because, as d'andrade (1995) observes, the human mind prefers to adhere to simple models, especially in conditions of high uncertainty and profound changes. however, one should not draw hasty conclusions. it is a matter of fact that today villagers have a critical consideration ofwhat their life was under socialism (especially those who were deprived by the socialist system of the means of production and social status that distinguished their families inthe more distant past). most villagers agree that democracy has, if anything, granted them the right to speak freely and not disclose their family origins. however, social classes have not reemerged out of the ruins of the totalitarian regime. the new prestige is based on different scales of value: personal success, career, 7 of course, the members of the "proletarian" families are not, with very few exceptions, proud of defining themselves as such. interestingly, instead, they show the same propensity to classify the descendants of rich peasant families as "sons ofpeasants." economic wealth, individualism, personal networks, and working mobility. this has little to do with being the son of a rich peasant family. conversely, even though one's family is categorized as "proletarian," one's social position and esteem may be high in the small village society. this is because personal qualities and achievements have come to play their role, too, as a result of the historical change that made the old values and meters of judgment obsolete. then, why do people insist on categories such as "peasant" and "proletarian"? it is, again, a way to give meaning to their past, through simple analogies that condense a whole historical period in a word, a single expression of critique of what the past was (or could be) and what the future ought to be. memory and objects the search for a material thread in village history finds one more concrete example in the custody of objects and utensils that belonged to "traditional" village life. the word "traditional" (hagyomanyos) has never been used by villagers when referring to such objects; it is a mere analytical convention and it is worth noticing that when i asked them to explain when and on which occasions these objects were used, they simply said "long ago" (regen) or "once in the past" (valamikor). these objects have their own material and spatial identity, but they seem to lack a precise temporal dimension, as if all the past epochs had become one. the same villager who shows fervent interest in collecting old documents and in drawing family trees also has an extremely interesting garden. arpad's garden is 7 acres in size. it is, as are all village houses, accompanied by a pantry and a shed, which contain a messy variety of utensils, tools, tins cans, and all kind of objects which may (or may not) be of some use in the garden. among them, covered with dust, are mixed a series of objects that arpad deems as precious as his books. they are things such as an old pair of peasant boots, a plough, a sickle, a scythe, a sack for carrying grain to the mill, a spindle, an old peasant robe made of hemp, and a number of 175 i other tools used in the pre-socialist period by the village peasants. these objects are not stored in windows or kept in the best room of the house, as the books are; they are mixed up with the other tools he uses daily in the field and in his garden. arpad confessed not to be the only one to have such a "folkloristic" collection in the village, and he promised to show me something very impressive one day. over two years after the end ofmy fieldwork i had occasion to visit the village some more times. on one ofthese occasions, arpad excitedly informed me that, with the help of the village mayor and two more families, he had succeeded in organizing the largest exhibition of old tools to be held in kral'ova.8 i was lucky enough to be one of the first visitors. the whole main hall of the culture hall, situated in the village center, was occupied with tables and shelves containing objects, dresses, pictures, postcards, and even some ornaments of the old church. there were more than 400 items, exposed in a simple and sometimes inaccurate way. one could find an old oil lamp, some porcelain plates, and behind the table a plough. the order did not seem to matter; what mattered was that all these objects had been jealously kept by village families who finally had found the courage to expose them publicly. this is the comment of the mayor: we had such an event in socialist times, but the objects were very few and many eventually disappeared. this explains why people then felt reluctant to contribute part of their family histories to the community, even if only for a few days. this time it is different: we collected double what we had expected, and all families came to arrange their own things. this 8 the village had already organized two such events in the past, one in 1982 and another more recently in 1994. for richness of objects, however, they cannot be compared to the one held in 2004. is why there is no apparent order. (david, b. 1949) during the exhibition i took many pictures and all the villagers who attended were eager to call my attention to this or that obj ect, ready to conclude, with a kind of melancholy tone "it was another world" (az mas vilag volt). it looked as, in that moment of open reconciliation with the past, when finally there was nothing to be afraid of in showing off the treasures of the family, the important thing was to become part of that past, even through the use of memories disclosed in the shape of simple, daily objects. conclusion i have listed several aspects of the use of memory to reconstruct and attribute meaning to the past in a postsocialist village. although different, the examples above share a common, basic feature: there is a critical interpretation of the past, and this is used to make sense out of the present. villagers' interest in their ancestors' life histories, their preoccupation with categorizing families in the community, the attachment to old objects and old place-names are all expressions of the need to keep alive the contact with the past. this is, as i indicated, an outcome of the socialist period, and of its ideological censorship and leveling of social differences. however, these memories are not used to divide people; on the contrary, they unite them. history is not used as a device to build social differentiation. in this, one could say that socialism was successful: it eradicated social classes, and made it difficult for them to reappear afterwards. interpreting history is a dialectical process in which actors strive to strike a balance between what is useful for themselves (memories in the shape of family trees) and what is part of the community's present (objects, places). in this sense, bloch's plea for looking at memory as a multiple, diversified, and fluid stream finds full justification. the people of kral'ova needed the postsocialist transformation to become free to explore their past and to build mental models. these models allow them to categorize the 176 past easily and fruitfully. memory is, in this way, not an impetuous stream of events that overlap as in a joycean novel, but the selective use of facts, ideas, and beliefs that are recalled by individuals as soon as the present conditions urge them to do so. the uncertainty of the postsocialist transformation, in slovakia as in all central eastern european countries, has called for an attentive interpretation of the past, as one of the strategic ways in which people can proceed on the ways towards changing and not forgetting the everyday features of their social world. references cited: behar, ruth. 1986. santa maria del monte. the presence of the past in a spanish village. princeton: princeton university press. bloch, maurice. 1998. how we think they think: anthropological approaches to cognition, memory and literacy. boulder: westview colorado press. cole, michael and j. gay. 1972. culture and memory. american anthropologist 74(5): 1066-1084. d'andrade, roy. 1995. the development of cognitive anthropology. cambridge: cambridge university press. hann, chris. 1980. tazhir: a village in hungary. cambridge: cambridge university press. -(ed.) 2002 post socialism. ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. london: routledge. kuchler, susanne. 1988. malangan: objects, sacrifice and the production of memory. american ethnologist, 15(4): 625-637. lampland, martha. 1995. the object of labor. commodification in socialist hungary. chicago: the university of chicago press. pine, frances. 2003. epilogue. in: social networks in movement. time, interaction and interethnic spaces. davide torsello and melinda pappova, eds. pp. 315-322. dunajska streda, slovakia: lilium aurum. roseman, sharon r. 1996. "how we built the road": the politics ofmemory in rural galicia. american ethnologist 23(4): 836­ 860. sant cassia, paul. 1999. tradition, tourism and memory in malta. the journal of the royal anthropological institute 5(2): 247­ 263. statistical office of the slovak republic. census. 2001. population and housing census. bratislava: statistical office of the slovak republic. sutton, david. 1998. memories cast in stone. the relevance of the past in everyday life. oxford: berg. swain, nigel. 1985. collective farms which work? cambridge: cambridge university press. tonkin, elizabeth and harvey whitehouse. 1995. memory and social transmission. anthropology today 11(5): 23-24. torsello, davide. 2003a. trust, property and social change in a southern slovakian village. munster: lit. -2003b. history, trust and property in the relation between villagers and the agricultural cooperative. the case of kiralyfa, southern slovakia.' in: c. m. bann, ed. the postsocialist agrarian question. pp.93-116. munster: lit. -2003c. time, values and social roles in a southern slovakian village'. eastern european countryside, 9(3): 169-184. torsello, davide and melinda pappova, eds. 2003. social networks in movement. time, interaction and interethnic spaces. dunajska streda,slovakia: lilium aurum. 177 “only a dead fish flows with the stream”: ngo formalization, anarchofeminism, and the power of informal associations karen kapusta-pofahl, university of minnesota, hana hašková, academy of sciences of the czech republic, marta kolářová, academy of sciences of the czech republic © 2005 karen kapusta-pofahl, hana hašková, marta kolářová all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. it has become commonplace in the last decade to find the face of contemporary civic participation in much of postsocialist europe represented as that of a nongovernmental organization (ngo), not only by international supranational sponsors of ngo projects but by many scholars of “civil society” as well (see hann 1996, mandel 2002, sampson 1996). the scholarly attention that had accompanied the groundswells of mass public participation that were symbolic of 1989 has shifted to analyses of the ways in which foreign donors, state structures, and supra-national governing bodies have influenced the shape and direction of the so-called nongovernmental sector (sloat 2005, wedel 1998). analyses of these relations from the perspective of gender inequalities, which are also reflected in recent analyses of women’s organizing in the czech republic, have focused on the ways in which women’s participation in civic associations, rather than formal political participation or mass mobilization, is becoming a dominant mode of their participation in public life (gal and kligman 2000a, 2000b; hašková et. al. 2004a, 2004b; ishkanian 2003; kay 2000; lang 1997; sperling 1999). this paper came about as the result of brainstorming by three researchers engaged in these questions from diverse angles on the relationships between increasing formalization of czech women’s and feminist ngos and the activities of lesserstudied informal feminist groups within the context of a lack of wider feminist social movement. in it we would like to offer some thoughts on the contours of czech feminist and women’s organizing in recent years by presenting a case study of an oppositional group of anarchofeminists within the context of increasing pressure on organizations to professionalize and become project-and reform-oriented. in the first section we sketch the landscape of czech women’s organizing and discuss some of the reasons for and consequences of changes in funding and orientation that have accompanied european enlargement. with these issues in mind we then turn to a closer look at the interplay between those women’s and feminist ngos that have become increasingly professionalized and explicitly anti-institutional groups of anarchofeminists. we also offer some thoughts about why the preoccupation with the absence of a massbased czech feminist movement is justified and suggest that the constraints that both formal organizations and oppositional groups face are in part due to this lack. the contours of czech women’s organizing czech women’s organizing after the revolution of 1989 consisted of the creation of small informal groups, largely in urban centers, and made up chiefly of women with higher levels of education. these groups were directed at addressing various social and environmental problems, such as professional associations, humanitarian groups, ecological initiatives, organizations fighting for lesbian or roma women’s rights, hobby groups, groups focusing on motherhood and family life, and groups jen typewritten text 38 studying the position of women in czech society (marksová-tominová 1999; hauser 1995).1 these small, tightly-knit groups relied on voluntary participation and an exchange of skills and know-how among members in service of their agreed upon objectives. as has been the case elsewhere in central and eastern europe, these groups were most often funded through donations from foreign foundations aimed at sponsoring women’s issues or what was usually presented, with or without explicit mention of women’s issues, as “promoting the development of civil society,” or as local offshoots of western “parent” ngos. funding from these sources tended to be in the form of small grants that could be used for a variety of aspects of organizational development and, as such, allowed individual organizations a large degree of flexibility and independence in how they internally allocated the garnered funds (hašková et. al. 2004a). by the late 1990s, however, funding bodies and policies had begun to change. in the late 1990s, concurrent with czech preparations for eu accession, donors that had previously given flexible grants to czech ngos limited the kinds and amounts of funding available to them as they moved their attention away from the sphere of eu influence. for example, donors such as the open society fund have limited the amount of money as well as the range of topics that are available to czech organizations through its grants.2 such donors no longer support 1 several women’s groups were also created in connection with political parties and churches, some of which had comparatively large membership bases. between 1989 and 1990, more than 70 officially registered women’s groups were formed (čermaková et al, 2000). women’s ngos disseminate their ideas to the public either through the media (such as television and radio programs, newspapers, or the internet) or they organize seminars, lectures, workshops, and conferences for the public or selected groups of public (e.g. students, teachers, politicians, media representatives, pr representatives of czech businesses, etc.). less often, they carry out direct action such as public protests or street demonstrations. 2 http://osf.cz/ accessed 12/15/2004 open-ended and flexible uses of money, and although they still offer some support to czech ngos, these organizations are no longer able to rely upon these funds as they had done in the past. instead, organizations are put into competition for a small number of larger grants. large grants are offered especially by the new funding body in the region – the european union. some of these grants need a contribution from the czech state, which also offers smaller (i.e. ministerial-level) grants to ngos. thus, differently from the first half of 1990s, organizations are currently being channelled into competition for a smaller number of larger grants offered in particular by the european union and the czech government. these grants cover a narrow range of gender issues that donors have determined to be of top priority (such as employment discrimination and domestic violence, antitrafficking, promotion of women into politics, and the harmonization of work and family life). they are also being channelled into “development partnerships,” formal networks of registered organizations created with the purpose of carrying out proposed projects.3 the appeal for donors of funding projects rather than organizations is that projects are easily monitored. for example, project proposals and reports can be quantified in terms of concrete outputs, such as the production of recommendations provided to the state or the provision of services in a specific predetermined area, or statistics on the number of people served within the project framework, and so on. further, ngos go through regimented and complex application procedures that document the minute ways in which project funds will be expended. these characteristics make projects transparent and easily evaluated. thus, project-based funding is currently the leading form of funding provided by national, international, 3 eu funds include, for example, daphne, leonardo, structural funds, and european social funds, which include for example the initiative equal and joined program for development, and for pre-accession countries the phare program. jen typewritten text 39 and supranational governing bodies and it is the leading form of funds that women’s and feminist organizations in the czech republic receive. although the conditions and restrictions placed upon ngos by project funders are there ostensibly to regulate the process and discourage corruption and misuse of funds, recent scholarship has shown that the effects of these initiatives go far beyond the level of quality-control to impact the very shape and scope of the ngos themselves. projectbased funding is currently the leading form of funding provided by national, international, and supranational governing bodies (hašková et al. 2004a). project-orientation the increased availability of projectoriented funds coupled with a sharp decrease in organizational support grants has had the effect of pushing ngos toward increasing formalization. by this we mean organizations that are professionalized, that is, they are formal, registered entities with office space that have staff with expertise and skills that are recognized and supported by foreign, state, or european union donors. they are also project-oriented, in that their activities consist of conducting specific projects with clearly defined objectives, budgets and timelines. they are also reform-oriented, in that they work to improve existing legal or institutional structures, or to provide services and gender sensitivity training for different groups of the public that are not provided by state-run facilities, which might be supported by state funds. in concrete terms, this has meant that organizations have come under increasing pressure to conform their activities to donor priorities. while it is certainly true that donors have always influenced ngo development, as documented by the extensive scholarship in the area (see ferguson 1990, fisher 1998, edwards & hulme 1996), the above-stated changes in ngo funding patterns moves beyond the explicit power to determine which organizations are and are not part of any given thematic rubric in any given grant cycle to influence not only the aims but also the structure of recipient ngos. projectorientation brings with it a host of requirements, some explicit and others implicit, that an organization must fulfill in order to be eligible for funding. within the framework of european union-funded project initiatives, for example, in addition to being able to propose a project that falls within a prioritized thematic area, organizations must have the resources to support themselves independently of project funds, they must have staff members with familiarity with computer databases and complicated budgeting and accounting procedures, prior documented experience with project-oriented funds, and be formally registered entities. requirements like these preclude not only informal, unregistered, or radical groups, but also many smaller registered groups from access to many of the funds currently available. the process of increasing project-orientation has influenced the strategies, structures, associations, and successes of many women’s and feminist groups and organizations in significant ways. under this pressure, some women’s and feminist ngos created new positions and organized special meetings specifically for the purpose of communicating and navigating through the bureaucratic labyrinths associated with the new grant application processes. whereas at the beginning of the 1990s most women’s ngos had relied almost exclusively on the donated time of members, this has become almost impossible to do, given the complexity and scope of vast eu funded projects. an ngo’s ability to build capacity and prove competence affects its ability to gain funding, which in turn affects not just the types of projects that it carries out, but in many cases its continued existence as well. this process puts pressure on organizations to professionalize, to reassess their organizational goals, and to realign with donor priorities, in order to gain access to these lucrative funding sources. for example, a member of a well-known women’s ngo explains that whereas in the jen typewritten text 40 beginning their basic operations were supported in a basic way by a group of german foundations, they lost that funding two years ago and were forced to search for new funding. what they discovered was that all of the available funding was in the form of grants dedicated to specific projects and they were forced to tailor their vision and plans to what was called for in the grant applications: then [after they lost funding from the german foundation for operating costs] we had to immediately begin to search and search for grants, which is an extremely difficult activity. this is because when you have a clear vision and structure of what you want to do and you want to carry out a specific activity, then it is almost impossible to survive because grants are always configured a bit differently. each grant is written, the grant has its own character; there is always a definition that you have to fit into. this means that you are then required at that moment, even if you have a clear vision of a certain project, to make the project fit the needs of the funding institution. i consider this a serious problem and it will simply become a bigger problem in the future. as a result of limited funding availability, some organizations have moved toward supported issues and, to greater or lesser degrees, away from others, while some others have shut their doors completely. formal and informal partnerships being a large, formalized ngo has been an advantage in applying for new large funds such as those available through the european union because the conditions attached to these funding sources have also required the formation of new partnerships and associations across disparate organizations and sectors. these few organizations have the resources available to build an extensive consortium of partner organizations, manage them, and finance them throughout the project. one such example is that of a large grant provided by eu funds dedicated to projects that help women more effectively balance work and family life. the structure of this grant was such that it was coordinated by one established ngo who then contracted out tasks to a large number of partner organizations in the ngo, academic, state, trade union, and business sectors (currently 27 partner organizations). the result was that women’s ngos partnered with organizations and businesses in a variety of areas in ways that they might not have done otherwise because the previously available smaller funds did not require (and often due to their smaller size they also did not give the opportunity for) the creation and management of extensive networks of partners. in addition, larger ngos are able to use the requirement to create formal networks within the framework of a project to support organizations that, although registered, do not have the resources or experience to be project coordinators. although the implications of this recent procedure of creating extensive networks of project partnerships have yet to be investigated (our interviews did not address this issue directly), it is possible that this grant structure (i.e. the demanding of intersectoral project networks) could serve to mandate cooperation across interests with the goal of broadening responsibility for gender equality from the domain of women’s ngos to that of larger society. further, once established, such partnerships could provide a mutual exchange of contacts, advice, and information within knowledge-sharing networks. it is also possible, however, that those partnerships may be only “strategic”: hierarchical, temporary project-based partnerships without a mutual ideological standpoint and thus productive closeness, which was the case of at least several contracted organizations within one large eu funded project. another example of an eu-funded project just getting underway, however, indicates a jen typewritten text 41 different picture: one feminist ngo, which focuses on domestic violence from the perspective of gendered power relation, could no longer afford to pay its office rent when their foreign sources of money became diminished and was able to survive only by joining a larger feminist ngo in a successful eu project application. their association with the larger ngo (who could afford to successfully apply for the eu project grant) is based on long-term friendship and mutual support. even though the focus of the large eu project application is different from the focus of the small feminist ngo, currently the ngo has a chance to survive as a formal entity with office space from which to provide (in addition to new tasks) their previously provided public services based on voluntary work and smaller governmental grants. thus, formal networks are sometimes used to ends unanticipated by the donor agencies, in this case, to assist struggling organizations. it is important also to note that some ngo members are truly committed to the expansion of alternative feminist groups and encourage informal cooperation among groups, even those that are critical of ngo activities, in the hope that a wide range of voices will be heard. these ngo members create informal partnerships not for instrumental or project-dictated reasons but out of a sense of solidarity and friendship. while in and of themselves these tactics for acquiring the material needs of an informal group are not remarkable, indeed much has been made of people’s ability to procure goods and services during the socialist era and afterward through networks of family and friends (caldwell 2004, verdery 1996, možný 1991), their deployment within the context of the formalization of the nongovernmental sector suggests that although the national and supranational governing structures strive for transparency within the non-governmental sector and its entities, in the case of these informal support networks, opacity works in ways beneficial to sustaining the variety of civic life. reform-orientation and political contacts not only funding of women’s and feminist groups and organizations has changed during the process of political and socioeconomic transition of the czech republic. due to the pressure of the process of eu enlargement, the czech state was pushed to create governmental offices for promotion and implementation of gender equality, as well as to transpose eu equality directives into the czech legal system. even though the eu was the main force pushing the czech state to adopt these processes, women’s and feminist non-governmental organizations have influenced both the speed of their adoption and the specific forms they have taken by tailoring them to life in the czech republic. as regards the successful strategies used to achieve concrete legislative, structural, and governmental changes, we have found that formally registered and professionalized women’s and feminist ngos have been more successful in influencing policy directions than have their informal or nonprofessionalized colleagues. one of the reasons for this is the fact that these organizations have the resources to follow an issue throughout the drawn-out legislative process. as a member of one such established ngo explains: we submitted a proposal to make changes to maternity leave legislation, so that it would be possible for a parent on leave [who receives a parental allowance] to work at the same time. [but] it was rejected. parliament didn’t accept it, and now, two or three years later, it has finally been accepted. so even when an organization is well off it’s still going to take maybe three years at least before something seems to even get somewhere. and as long as these [women’s] organizations are really based on voluntary work, then, well i admit that our organization has an advantage in that it has some paid employees, so that jen typewritten text 42 we can in some way follow things up…we can afford it. in order to be successful in its lobbying goals, this organization needed to have the capability to devote several years to follow up and permanently try to influence not only public but also preparatory political debates within parliament on the certain issue it wanted to influence, in addition to carrying out their other activities. such dedication, with the aim of reaching organizational as well as lobbying success, requires a sufficient amount of time and personnel, as well as the funds to support it. however, organizations that have been successful in policy reform usually have more than time, staff, and money. they also have personal connections to policy makers and actively participate in decision-making forums in the form of committee membership or governmental advisory positions, which they are put in because of the fact that they represent a formal, registered, and professionalized (officially recognized as expert) non-governmental (and, even better, umbrella) organization. for example, one of the leaders in the area of czech women’s and feminist ngos has been highly successful in achieving important changes over the last few years. she is a representative of an established feminist ngo that emerged soon after the revolution as an informal group of highly educated women who at the time lacked even office space. she is also a member of one of the leading left-wing political parties and has gradually managed to reach the post of government advisor on issues of equal opportunities for men and women. like several other representatives of professionalized women’s and feminist ngos she is also a member of the government council for equal opportunities. she provided us with a specific example of her lobbying success: while the idea did exist even within the department of equal opportunities for men and women at the ministry of labor and social affairs, it was as though no one really wanted to carry it through. when i briefed špidla [the left wing former prime minister] in the spring of 2001 on the “government priorities and procedures for the promotion of equality for men and women” [the czech national action plan for promoting gender equality produced in response to the beijing platform of action, produced annually since 1998] just before it went to the government, i said to him that as long as there isn’t at least one part-time position at each ministry exclusively focusing on equal opportunities then this will go nowhere. i thought though that it was already too late to add that in. and špidla said: ok, so we’ll write that into the resolution, so i sent him an email with a proposal for the formulation and he added it. my guess is that that sped things up by at least 1-2 years. even though the success in influencing legislative and decisive processes by members and organizations from the nongovernmental sector is driven through channels of participation in formal professionalized organizations, in many ways success is also a matter of personalities, personal contacts, and being at the right place at the right time. one member of a women’s ngo describes the strengths and weaknesses of these intersectoral personal contacts in the following way: most of it is about personal contacts and it is a process. it’s not possible to generalize judgments about political partners – who is at which post is what matters… on the whole these active opportunities are always about contacts, and as soon as an employee (governmental officer with whom the ngo member has a personal contact) changes, at that moment you are out, you don’t get jen typewritten text 43 anything. you’re just not in the system. therefore, the combination of needing to be a recognized part of formal structures while at the same time needing to continually cultivate new and foster existing informal inter-sectoral contacts seems to be the reality of successful lobbying for legislative, policy, and structural changes. the establishment of governmental and decisionmaking structures for implementing gender equality at the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the new millennium have strengthened the ability of women’s nongovernmental groups to influence legislative and decision-making processes because new potential partners and arenas have been created for them in the establishment of governmental departments, posts, and committees, which use the knowledge and expertise of women’s ngos and have selectively started to recognize some of them as experts. those newly created partners and arenas are more suitable to formal and professionalized women’s organizations (those recognized as experts by state officials) than informal and smaller women’s groups and thus create additional pressure to professionalize in order to be recognized as legitimate. therefore, this aspect of the process of eu accession has strengthened both the need for inter-sectoral contacts and the professionalization of women’s groups examples of successful lobbying by women’s or feminist ngos, however, are an exception rather than the rule and they depend primarily on the personality that manages to combine the above-mentioned strategies and positions and, of course, on the general constellation on the political scene at the time of the lobbying efforts. most other examples of lobbying mentioned by members of smaller (and topically marginal) women’s non-profit organizations were generally unsuccessful.4 one smaller, 4 for example, women’s ecological non-governmental organization or women’s organization fighting for mother’s rights during childbirth. although very active in lobbying, women’s ngo expressed it in the following way: if i may contribute one experience… we have tried, we have always lobbied actively. that means that we always had to obtain contacts, force ourselves to the committees and various meetings and this always concerned laws that in some way aimed at allowing civic associations to enter proceedings and influence social events. that means not only the women’s question but in general building civic society. so we have never had problems getting ourselves there and saying our opinion but the end-play, which is whether our voice was heard and answered, well, nothing came out of it. once again it has been proven that being a part of decision-making structures, being recognized as an expert, and having enough organizational capacity to carry out the requirements of these tasks are needed once a non-governmental organization determines the goal of legislative and decision-making structural changes they would like to make in order to help czech women. having enough organizational capacity is limited, however, by the available funding. projectoriented funding leads women’s ngos to use a labor force that is paid but limited to projects (in addition to the use of volunteers) and thus is unstable because these employees or volunteers do not have the capacity for long-term lobbying or building inter-sectoral connections. in the transition from “first generation” to “second generation” ngos (sampson 2003), women’s and feminist ngo effectiveness has been focused and intensified in certain areas with significant effect (for example, important legislative changes connected to the harmonization of work and family life and prevention of domestic violence have been made) and weakened in others (i.e. that such interdependent positions make it more jen typewritten text 44 difficult to challenge or bypass existing institutional structures). however, as long as there is no tradition of public support of women’s organizations in the form of participation or philanthropy, and the forms of funding are limited to projects that require staff and expertise, the danger remains that gender equality will come to be perceived within the narrow realms established by funding bodies to the exclusion of marginalized needs and viewpoints. identity in opposition: anarchofeminism at the intersections when the contemporary anarchofeminists arrived on the scene in 2000, they inserted themselves into the dialogue about the pitfalls of ngo professionalization and weighed in on the meanings of gender equality in a way that marks them as singular.5 although they formed ostensibly as a reaction to what they saw as a lack of commitment to gender equality within the anarchist community, the formation of the most recent and explicitly anarchofeminist groups occurred at a point when the trend toward the professionalization of women’s and feminist groups was readily observable. in december 2000, as a result of the desire of a group of women and men involved in the anarchist movements (some were selfproclaimed feminists, others anarchists) to 5 czech anarchofeminism began, as did most other forms of contemporary czech social organizing, in the wake of the political revolution of 1989. although no continuity between membership bases exists, contemporary anarchofeminism has its roots in a small number of female anarchist or anarchofeminist activities that occurred within the anarchist and squatting movements of the 1990s. as is the case in the contemporary movement, independently published magazines (zines) served as a central forum for the expression of their ideas. these short-lived alternatives to mainstream anarchist thought included the zines wicca from 1993 to 1995 and esbat from 1996 to1997, both of which had witchcraft and ecofeminist orientations. while not identifying themselves specifically as anarchofeminist, these groups set the stage for the explicitly anarchoand punk-feminist groups that sprang up in the year 2000, the feminist group of march 8 and the bloody mary zine collective. celebrate international women’s day 2001 (march 8), a day that had been an official state holiday during socialism but that since 1989 had been labeled a communist relic, the informal, unregistered, feminist group of march 8 (feministická skupina 8 března) was formed.6 their goal was not to revive the sentiments of the communist party, but rather to tap into the international effort to fight against injustices perpetrated upon working women throughout the world in a global women’s strike.7 the inaugural event itself consisted of a daylong set of activities aimed at raising awareness of global social injustices and celebrating alternative perspectives. dozens of young people, many with the brightly dyed hair or dreadlocks, piercings, and patches that were (and to a great extent remain) the alternative youth fashion of the time, gathered on a square in central prague to watch a theater performance, listen to music, dance, and eat the free vegan food provided by the group food not bombs, while their children were entertained on an improvised playground. among the musical acts was a performance by two former members of the influential all-female rock group “teeth and nails (zuby nehty),” one of whom was a wellknown feminist and cultural activist. they performed in a white tent in front of a banner that read, “against sexism, against racism, against fascism (proti sexismu, proti rasismu, proti fašismu).” after dark, a 6 they were assisted in hosting the event by the punk feminist zine collective bloody mary, whose members were also invested in the ideas of anarchofeminism. in 2001, after discussion on the ideological directions the group should take after the strike was over, the feminist group of march 8 started the newsletter siren (siréna) and zine direct way (přímá cesta) from a position explicitly within the anarchist movement. in 2004, they decided that the name of the group should reflect the dual positioning of its members as anarchists and feminists who are critical of many aspects of each of these perspectives, as well as their desire for a broader scope of activities beyond that of march 8, reaffirmed their allegiance to the anarchist movement, and renamed themselves the anarchofeminist group (anarchofeministická skupina—afs). we use the acronym afs to refer to both incarnations of this group throughout the text. 7 www.globalwomenstrike.net/ jen typewritten text 45 group of young anarchist women put on a “fire show,” where they twirled and juggled flaming batons. beginning with this inaugural event, it was clear that afs brought with them a host of innovative and unconventional approaches to gender equality and feminist activism in the czech republic. their participatory approach to activism, which was direct and public yet creative, their position that injustices are interlinked, and their anti-institutional stance were not prevalent within established anarchist groups or women’s organizations. anti-institutionalism and strategic associations the bloody mary ‘zine slogan, “only a dead fish flows with the stream,” captures the spirit of the anarchofeminists’ oppositional position. although czech anarchofeminists are critical of gender relations within the wider anarchist movement and advocate a feminist perspective in proposing solutions to gender inequalities, they also take a critical stance toward legislative reform and are skeptical of the ability of what they term “institutional” or “liberal” feminism to create meaningful change. in a leaflet in which they explain the precepts of anarchofeminism and describe the differences between anarchofeminism and institutional feminism, they state: to us, feminism does not mean to reach the highest possible position and prestige, but rather to live our lives fully and to make decisions for ourselves while accepting all consequences. while the important part of liberal feminism is to insert as many women as possible into leading positions in all areas of social and economic life, our goal is to abolish hierarchy itself. privileges are unjust not only in the hands of men but in women’s hand as well. [anarchofeminist group 2004]8 8 www.anarchofeminismus.ecn.cz/ accessed 12/10/2004 the anarchofeminist group (anarchofeministická skupina—afs) is skeptical of reform-oriented activities like those undertaken by formalized women’s and feminist ngos in the czech republic because, anarchofeminists argue, these activities over-emphasize the role of existing institutions in creating equality, put too much priority on what they see as superficial legal reforms, and devote an insufficient amount of attention to needs arising from below (zdola) at the community level (see anarchofeminist group 2004). however, although they are skeptical of the work that ngos carry out, they also argue for continued support of the work of the ngo sector, in particular the provision of services, in the absence of widespread grassroots initiatives. they write, “their work, most of all in the social sphere (women’s shelters (azylové domy), work with victims of domestic violence or trafficking in women), is currently unfortunately irreplaceable because there is very narrow solidarity among people and hardly any cooperation among people exists on the community level” (anarchofeminist group 2004). ngos are thus seen as placeholders standing in for the local selforganization that afs considers a more equitable way to address women’s needs. despite these official sentiments, in daily practice anarchofeminist group members also garner support from select ngos on an informal and strategic basis. the strategic association of anarchofeminist groups such as afs with sympathetic women’s ngos allows them to circumvent some of the dangers of professionalization, which would be unacceptable given their explicitly nonhierarchical and antiinstitutional stance, while providing them with the opportunity to express their views in a wider range of settings. despite their marginalized status (or perhaps because of it) as an informal group whose members are connected through a disperse network of friends and allies, afs draws upon the resources that are accessible through these channels. for example, the musical jen typewritten text 46 equipment for the 2001 event described above was acquired through friends in the alternative music business and the food was provided by a group closely allied with afs through ties from within the anarchist movement. as some of its members work or have worked at such organizations, afs gains needed resources such as space for lectures and group meetings, a forum for selling their zines and publicizing their activities on organization bulletin boards and websites, as well as donations of printing costs and other material necessities through the accessing of members’ personal networks. these networks include contacts within professionalized ngos, thus allowing the group to negotiate for their needs in an informal, non-monetary context.9 although they collect small membership fees and organize benefit concerts, their events are publicized to a wider audience by being displayed in prominent places in material and virtual spaces and the amount of money made by the sale of merchandise or the recruitment of new members is augmented by access to these institutional resources. although informal association with professionalized ngos through individual friendship networks serves some of the material needs of anarchofeminist groups, however, there remains a conflict between their practice of arranging for limited assistance in the form of ngo resources garnered via informal networks and their critical stance toward ngos as institutions. as afs positions itself rhetorically in opposition to hierarchical and institutionalized structures, some members take pains to emphasize that their utilization of ngo resources is not indicative of any sort of formal cooperation with the ngo sector. as one afs member explains: “we do not cooperate with ngos crucially, we have only passive contacts with them, but our magazine is sold in [a prominent 9 this fact also indicates that although they may be increasingly constrained by project-based funding, some feminist ngos also find ways to support radical or critical activism through informal networks. feminist ngo] and we have been allowed to do our lectures there recently, so there is this focused cooperation but it is not wider.” because their ideological position situates them in opposition to ngos, they are careful to avoid anything that might indicate cooptation by institutions. thus, in order to remain loyal to their critical stance, afs cannot participate in anything beyond informal “focused cooperation” with women’s and feminist ngos and thus remains outside the sphere of influence of institutional decision-making processes. multiple injustices anarchofeminist rhetoric strongly advocates a view of social injustice as interlinked rather than hierarchical and this interpretive framework infuses all of their activities and speeches. the notion of intersecting oppressions that must be fought against simultaneously is significantly different from the priority that the mainstream anarchist movement places on anti-capitalist action. as demonstrated by their global women’s strike 2001 slogan of “proti sexismu, proti rasismu, proti fašismu,” afs espouses the framework of multiple oppressions working upon both women and men in ways that are intertwined in anarchofeminist oratory. the feminist notion of fighting patriarchy is placed within this matrix and explained to be a significant part of all people’s lives: at first sight patriarchy seems to have a negative impact exclusively on women, but according to us patriarchy also has a negative impact on men through the inequalities and roles that it creates. we claim then that the struggle against patriarchy is not only a women’s issue, but that it has to go hand in hand with the struggle against the state and capitalism. [afs speech on may day 2002] in their activities, afs tries to raise awareness about the ways in which injustices work together and to draw attention to the existence of patriarchy and jen typewritten text 47 sexism as problems to be faced both inside and outside of the anarchist movement. the zines bloody mary and direct way are aimed at integrating this worldview into czech anarchist, punk, and feminist discourses through a combination of reprinted articles from foreign books and magazines translated into czech and original articles and interviews on a variety of topics.10 the main reason that anarchofeminist groups separated within the anarchist movement was that some female members felt that gender or women’s issues were dismissed as marginal or put off for later (“after the revolution”) within the movement. czech anarchism continued to prioritize worker issues and class struggle and some anarchists claimed that inequalities between men and women were not important. some issues, for instance pornography, had not been addressed by anarchists at all prior to the advent of czech anarchofeminism, while others considered fascism to be a more severe problem than sexism. in other cases, women complained that men did not take them seriously at meetings and that they considered women unable to carry out certain movement activities, such as fighting neo-nazis. as an anti-fascist girl put it, “if there is no gender equality, there won’t be any other equality. many people speak about it devotedly but the reality is different. being overlooked and underestimated is not an exception.” anarchofeminists began to organize because they considered it important to bring gender issues and feminist activities into the movement. according to the writers of bloody mary, the “problem of czech anarchism is also the fact that it is not equal anarchism, but rather still very patriarchal, like all of czech society. women’s spaces are missing” (bloody mary no. 1). among anarchists, most believe that gender equality already exists de facto within the movement, but women’s experiences within the 10 common topics covered include family, pornography, sexuality, men in patriarchy, globalization, anti-fascism, and abortion. movement have shown that while equality may exist in theory and rhetoric, it decidedly does not exist in practice (kolářová 2004). although sexism is often considered something to be eradicated, its position as a tertiary problem whose solution is determined to be dependent on the eradication of core issues prevents activists from integrating an anti-sexist stance, thus limiting the scope of those activities generally considered to be quintessentially anarchist.11 some women did not want to wait any longer for the movement as a whole to address the problem and started to deal with discrimination and sexism directly. according to them, oppression based on gender will not end with the defeat of capitalism, as is often suggested by members of the wider anarchist movement. czech anarchofeminist worldview considers patriarchy and capitalism to be equivalent causes of the exploitation of both women and men and rally against both of them. anarchofeminists try to work within the movement because they see feminism as a part of anarchism and stress that, in the words of one anarchist woman, “those who say otherwise are not anarchists.” public activism and movement maneuvers anarchofeminists often carry out public activism, activities that take place in public venues and are open to a wide range of participants, in order to present and receive support for their goals. events such as the global women’s strike in 2001 demonstrate a desire to present the group’s views in a way that is directly accessible to participation by the general public in ways that lobbying and media interaction are not and are more appealing than traditional anarchist marches and demonstrations to segments of the population that anarchofeminists feel are not adequately 11due to issues raised by anarchofeminists, anarchist publications have begun using both the male and female forms of words (i.e. anarchisti/ky instead of only anarchisti), and debates have begun about the importance of feminism within anarchism as some male anarchists have taken up the cause. jen typewritten text 48 targeted by other existing groups and organizations. for example, in addition to participating in what has become the traditional anarchist may day celebration that includes a demonstration, speeches, a march, and street fights with neo-fascists, afs put flowers on a gravestone in memorial to the history of may day, sang songs, and floated boats draped with banners on the vltava river. their theatrical performance, children’s playground, vegan food, music, and evening fire show are creative in a way that is less often demonstrated within the mainstream anarchist movement (kolářová 2004). afs members express great interest in “communicating with people on the streets” and reaching people who they believe have been marginalized by ngos’ seminars, workshops, and conferences, which are usually attended by intellectuals and those with a university education, media representatives, and members of the government and business sectors, as well as by their services or education targeted to specific target groups.12 one anarchofeminist woman who is also an ngo member expressed her dissatisfaction with the reach of her ngo in this way: i don’t know who the [ngo] wants to come [to the sponsored events], but who i want to come is just normal people, people from the street, if they are interested, because people who usually come to the presentations and the lectures are university students, intellectuals, or academics, which is the higher level of education, and this won’t help to integrate gender studies into normal society, if you can call it normal; i mean, not academic society. i would like these people to come also, because it’s always the same people 12 it is possible that ngo members might take exception to the anarchofeminists’ characterization of ngo activities as elitist. although it is not common, ngos have also “taken to the streets” in demonstrations on various issues. coming here, usually with the same level of education. this activist sees the activities of the ngo of which she is a staff member as reaching only a small segment of the population that holds an elite position in society. she believes that this segment of the population is not representative of the whole and that, in contrast to groups of intellectuals, “normal people” are not best reached through lectures and presentations. however, because activism is contentious terrain within czech society, perhaps due to its association with the obligatory gatherings and shows of support for the socialist government of the past, direct action is not always successful with “normal people” either. while in earlier years members of anarchofeminist groups argued that activities that take place on the streets are the best method for involving “normal people” and stridently criticize what they see as ngos’ lack of direct contact with people outside of privileged circles, in the last year they also have begun to tend toward holding more lectures and seminars than public demonstrations. given that anarchofeminist lectures are held at not only ngos, high schools, and universities, but also night clubs and summer camps, as well as locations outside of major city centers, it is arguable that there could be potential for reaching a wider range of audiences. nevertheless, most lectures are organized by local supporters from the alternative movement in alternative spaces, which thus restricts their potential impact to the likeminded. further, people from outside of the anarchist movement or alternative culture scene might be discouraged from espousing anarchofeminism or participating in anarchofeminist activities because of their alternative look (dreadlocks, piercings, patches) or because they could be seen as too young and too radical. along with this is the fact that in czech society, as elsewhere, the word “anarchism” tends not to be associated with equality but with terrorism, violence and anomie. jen typewritten text 49 anarchofeminist groups also face a lack of resources to widely publicize their activities, and while in the past they could count on the television and print media to give them some free publicity in the form of sensational news reports, media attention has waned. as they are explicitly antiinstitutional and anti-hierarchical, anarchofeminist groups do not have paid employees or activists and instead take part in activism in addition to studying and working, so they cannot dedicate as much time to their activities or expect to have similar outcomes as can organizations with access to sources of project funds. in fact, in the four years of its existence afs has not increased its membership but instead has declined in number. group membership was at its height at the beginning when there was a perceived need in the anarchist movement to start to organize around gender issues.13 without a wider base of support from a movement dedicated to eradicating gender inequality that includes critical, alternative, or even radical action, it appears that informal groups such as afs will continue to be constrained by a lack of resources, limited impact, and potential relative marginalization within the larger social movements of which they may be a part.14 conclusion in offering these preliminary reflections on the pressures czech women’s and feminist organizations are experiencing to formalize and the effect on the proliferation of alternative, critical, or even subversive perspectives outside of its realm, we hope to spark a discussion about the ways in which organizing, particularly organizing around 13 although there are signs that anarchist activists are more aware of gender issues (they have begun to reflect it in their publications), the participation of women in the movement has not increased. generally, the anarchist movement is in decline now and is not gaining many new (including male) activists. 14 it is important to note here that as anarchofeminists do not consider themselves to be a “women’s” group, they likely would not support a movement based on gender identity rather than feminist goals. women, gender, and feminism, continues to transform in the years since the heady days of the velvet revolution. this recent development in the saga of ngo-donor relations has yet to be fully explored, but as we have tried to show, it is a dynamic and forceful player in postsocialist europe, whose effects are far from understood. in this paper, we have outlined some of the trends in czech women’s organizing and argued that changes in funding sources and structures have greatly affected its contours. we have suggested that despite the recent privileging of the formalization of organizations and networks by donor agencies, informal relations and personal connections continue to be crucial to the success of both ngos and informal feminist groups. we would also like to suggest that further explorations of the (non)existence of a czech feminist movement are necessary in order to more fully understand the relationship between organized activity and grassroots support in the postsocialist czech republic. acknowledgements this article is based on the work of marta kolářová, who conducted three years of ethnographic inquiry into the daily lives of members of the czech anti-globalization and anarchofeminist movements from 20012004, including five interviews with members of anarchofeminist groups and an analysis of documents (anarchofeminist magazines, leaflets and speeches) and internet discussions; hana hašková, who, with her colleagues, conducted interviews with five anarchofeminists and six members of ngos in 2004 for the international “enlargement, gender and governance: the civic and political participation and representation of women in eu candidate countries” project funded by grant no. hpse-ct-2002-00115, fifth framework programme, european commission (20022005; see www.qub.ac.uk/egg), and thirty interviews with ngo members in 2003 for the international “constructing supranational political spaces: the european union, eastern enlargement and jen typewritten text 50 women’s agency” project funded by grant no. bcs-0137954, the national science foundation, usa and by grant no. me 594, the kontakt programme of ministry of education, youth and sports, czech republic; and interviews with ten members of one prominent feminist ngo (2001) conducted by karen kapusta-pofahl (see kapusta-pofahl 2002). the authors would like to thank everyone who provided comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. references cited: anarchofeminist group. 2004. institucionální feminismus vs. anarchofeminismus. (institutional feminism vs. anarchofeminism). leaflet. council of europe. 1998. gender mainstreaming: conceptual framework, methodology and presentation of good practice. final report of activities of the group of specialists on mainstreaming (egs-ms). strasbourg: council of europe publishing. caldwell, melissa. 2004. not by bread alone: social support in the new russia. berkeley: university of california press. čermáková, marie, and hana hašková, alena křížková, marcela linková, hana maříková, martina musilová. 2000. relations and changes of gender differences in the czech society in the 90s. prague: institute of sociology of the academy of sciences of the czech republic. edwards, michael and david hulme. 1996. beyond the magic bullet: ngo performance and accountability in the postcold war world. west hartford: kumarian ferguson, james. 1990. the anti-politics machine: “development,” depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in lesotho. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. fisher, julie. 1998. nongovernments: ngos and the political development of the third world. west hartford: kumarian. gal, susan, and gail kligman. 2000a. the politics of gender after socialism. princeton: princeton university press. — 2000b. reproducing gender: politics, publics, and everyday life after socialism. princeton: princeton university press. hann, chris. 1996. introduction: political society and civil anthropology. in: civil society: challenging western models. c. hann and e. dunn, eds. pp. 1-26. london: routledge. — 2002. postsocialism: ideas, ideologies and practices in eurasia. london: routledge. hašková, hana. 2001. historické proměny obrazu ženy (historical changes of women’s images). pp.102-123. in: sociologie z masa a krve (sociology made of flesh and blood). petra kosová, ed. prague: charles university, faculty of social sciences. hašková, hana, and alice červinková, lenka václavíková-helšusová, jana chaloupková, naďa knorre, marta kolářová, alena křížková, martina pachmanová, jana pomahačová, petra rakušanová, věra sokolová, tereza spencerová, kateřina šaldová, martina štěpánová, barbora tupá, hana víznerová. 2004. enlargement, gender and governance: the civic and political participation and representation of women in central and eastern europe – deliverable n.3 country report (czech republic) – mapping women’s campaign for change. unpublished country report; executive summary published at <http://www.qub.ac.uk/egg/>. hašková, hana, and marta kolářová. 2003. women’s non-governmental organizations and women’s groups in leftand rightwing social movements. in: women’s civic and political participation in the czech republic and the role of european union gender equality and accession policies. hana hašková and alena křížková, eds. pp. 45-58. prague: institute of sociology of the academy of sciences of jen typewritten text 51 the czech republic: sociological papers 03:9. hašková, hana, and alena křížková, dagmar lorenz-meyer, lenka simerská. 2004. interrogating women’s collective agency in central and eastern europe. paper presented at the women and gender in contemporary europe conference, new jersey. hauser, eva. 1995. how and why do czech women organize? altos, sopranos and a few discordant voices. canadian women’s studies 16:85-89. ishkanian, armine. 2003. is the personal political? the development of armenia’s ngo sector during the post-soviet period. berkeley program in soviet and post-soviet studies working papers series. kapusta-pofahl, karen. 2002. who would create a czech feminism? challenging assumptions in the process of creating relevant feminisms in the czech republic. anthropology of east europe review 20(2): 61-69. kay, rebecca. 2000. russian women and their organizations: gender, discrimination and grassroots women’s organizations, 1991-1996. basingstoke: macmillan. kolařová, marta. 2004. gender in the czech anarchist movement. czech republic: subverze press. lang, sabine. 1997. the ngoization of feminism. in: transitions, environments, translations: feminisms in international politics. joan w. scott, caren kaplan, and debra keates, eds. pp. 101-120. new york: routledge. mandel, ruth. 2002. seeding civil society. in: postsocialism: ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. c. hann, ed. pp. 279296. london: routledge. možný, ivo. 1991. proč tak snadno (why so easy). slon, praha. sampson, steven. 1996. the social life of projects: importing civil society to albania. in: civil society. c. hann, ed. new york: routledge. — 2003. trouble spots: projects, bandits, and state fragmentation. in: globalization, the state, and violence. j. friedman, ed. altamira press. sloat, amanda. 2005. “the rebirth of civil society: the growth of women’s ngos in central and eastern europe.” european journal of women’s studies (forthcoming). sperling, valerie. 1999. organizing women in contemporary russia: engendering transition. cambridge: cambridge university press. verdery, katherine. 1996. what was socialism, and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. wedel, janine r. 1998. collision and collusion: the strange case of western aid to eastern europe 1989-1998. new york: st. martin’s press. jen typewritten text 52 62 women, rape, and war: the continued trauma of refugees and displaced persons in croatia maria b. olujic, university of zagreb rape has been used as a tactic of terror in many wars (brownmiller 1975, bergman 1974). rape was a weapon of terror as the german hun marched through belgium in world war i; gang rape was part of the orchestrated riots of kristallnacht which marked the beginning of nazi campaigns against the jews. it was a weapon of revenge as the russian army marched to berlin in world war ii, it was used when the japanese raped chinese women in the city of nanking, when the pakistani army battled bangladesh, and when the american g. i.'s made rape in vietnam a "standard operating procedure aimed at terrorizing the population into submission" (bergman 1974: 69). but in these wars, rape did not receive the widespread publicity it has in the on-going war in former yugoslavia. the situation in bosnia-hercegovina and croatia provides a broader socio-cultural context of conflict between different groups of men. acts of rape in this context not only attack women, they also humiliate the husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons of the victims because the demonstrate the men's inability to protect their women. this humiliation is especially intense in the balkans where the honor/shame complex is so strong and female chastity is central to family and community honor (schneider 1971, davis 1977). rape is not only important on individual, familial, community levels but also on the international level because all sides in the conflict use the stories of rape as propaganda for political gain. in addition, governments need to make policy in response to the rapes, regulate treatment of victimized women, access to abortion or adoption, and legal responses to the aggressors. furthermore, war rapes and gender-based violence needs to be defines as a form of torture and as a war crime. the war in former yugoslavia has produced over three million refugees and displaced persons, the majority of whom are women. how many are victims of rape? documentation in the war-torn region and in the on-going conflict is difficult to obtain. however, a report compiled by a fact-finding mission of the european community a year ago (december 1992) stated that 20,000 women have been raped by bosnian serb soldiers as "part of a deliberate pattern of 63 abuse" where "rapes cannot be seen as incidental to the main purposes of the aggression but as serving a strategic purpose in itself"--war rapes are termed as a form of ethnic cleansing or genocide (european community report 1992). many mass rapes in bosnia-hercegovina have occurred in what the bosnian government terms "rape camps" in which the conquered women were forcibly held and raped by serbian soldiers. many women are faced with two cruel fates: either to survive repeated rape and torture or be killed outright. the names and locations of rape camps reflect pre-existing attitudes toward sexuality and courtship but in a cruel new context. rape camps are often situated in former coffee houses and restaurants. their names symbolize both the traditional and the modern. at one end of the spectrum are places called "vilina vlas" ("nymph's hair/tresses") and "kafana sonja" ("coffeehouse sonja"). to a weary traveler in the balkans these names symbolize the traditional, quaint poetic corner or respite, a place of pleasure. the implication is that rather than concentration camps these are brothels where willing women satisfy the desires of the flesh. the symbolism ignores the coercive nature of the camps and contributes to blaming the women for their own victimization. on the other end of the spectrum, places with names such as laser ("laser") and fast food restaurant suggest the modern, western lifestyle to the people from the balkans. such names are correlated with perceived western promiscuity and sexual permissiveness. both types of names suggest sexual license to men who believe that they can do any kind of violently sexual act with impunity. for women, these places are pakano na zemlji ("hell on earth") in many camps, the majority of the female victims have died, either from gunshots, bleeding as a consequence of gang rape, or by suicide motivated by shame. stories of rape have come predominantly from women who were forced by their experience to chose isolation, all have come from divorces women, widows, or unmarried women who do not have to contend with outraged husbands or other family members. this is not surprising in a culture where female and male honor depend on woman's chastity. if a man believes that a woman had sex with another, whether by force or not he must reject to salvage his own male pride. if the woman was lucky and did not get pregnant, she will bury her story inside of her to spare her family the dishonor. anything that forces her to the public will be her further tragedy. such a desperate situation intensifies the traditional gender hierarchy and male/female roles. the traditional gender dichotomy is further intensified in the refugee camps. the women 64 are not only assuming the traditional tasks, they are primary care-givers and "household" managers. they are fulfilling several roles with the ever-present series of losses and traumas. unfortunately, war rape is not the only traumatic and horrific event that a woman in this war is experiencing. the following is an excerpt from asija, a refugee bosnian muslim woman, who has been living in a croatian refugee camp for the last 15 months: i was trying to flee my village with my two small children while the bullets were flying around me. my neighbors were yelling, 'asija, come back, there is no where to go, it is not worth it, come back you can't run away.' because of the flying bullets i couldn't return to my own home, so i ran into my neighbor's house. the serbs came... they yelled at us and said, 'who's in the house? come out!' as we walked out they told us 'put your arms up!'...i had my son with me and my daughter who was ten months old. i held her in one hand and held the other hand up for more than twenty minutes. there were other women and children present. they threatened the thirteen-year-old son of my neighbor's by taking their knives out and by starting to sharpen them. they were yelling that they would kill him, and then they began to slaughter his rabbits in front of him. they were looking for water and towels and his mother turned around. they told her, 'we will rape you. why are you turning around! don't move!' none of us dared to look, dared to move, if you do, they kill you immediately. all around the people were moaning and groaning, they were being massacred and to this day i don't know who they were because we held our hands up and could not look around... after the massacre the women had to bury the dead bodies. asija buried her husband who was 28 years old, her brother-in-law who was 33, her father-in-law who was 63, another brotherin-law, one nephew who was 17 years old, a second nephew who was 23 years old and a third nephew who was 16 years old. while they were burying the bodies the armed serb soldiers were circling around them and saying, "we will kill you as well." we were all in shock. no one was crying, my son who was six-years-old and my baby daughter, saw their family like that...no one even shed a tear. thirteen of us women were 65 burying the massacred bodies for about ten hours-six in front of one house, seven in front of the other house... however, today, asija and the other women in refugee camps are primarily concerned with the existential problems that they face, and not with the psychological and physical trauma or scars left by the war. their main concern is to have their own space, a place they can call home. when i was visiting a coastal hotel that was housing women from the so-called "temporarily occupied villages" from the dalmatian hinterland, they were all sitting in a semidark room on chairs pulled and nailed against the wall and were quietly talking and knitting. (footnote: chairs being nailed to the wall is from the communist regime because this was the way that order was enforced; people were unable to sit in a circle). over two years had passed and they still belonged to nowhere. the solace in which they had known how to live and in how to survive was taken away from them. for them, the present is just a wait. the loneliness and fear of returning to their ruined (devastated) homes and their broken lives is their primary concern. "if we die, what will happen to our bodies?" one woman asked me. (it is the custom in the dalmatian hinterland, as in other parts of the mediterranean, to have ones' funeral clothes all picked out, neatly folded and stored in a hope chest). naturally, they will be buried, but these women have saved in their hope chests along with their wedding dresses, their funeral attires. they were now uneasy and uncertain about their road to death as they waited in the semi-dark hotel hall sitting in chairs and knitting the pieces of their broken lives. they will remain nailed there despite the council of the security and cooperation in geneva, the united nations, and all the bilateral and multilateral negotiations. the importance of home to them cannot be underestimated: one woman told me that they had to "touch the threshold once again" to be sane. loss of home and loss of land is synonymous with the loss of identity throughout the balkans. once the land is lost, the identity and self-esteem are lost. the psychological relationship to the land is a fundamental trait in the whole conscious and subconscious behavior of the balkan peasant. land is considered a sacred thing. the importance of land is seen in the plethora of linguistic terms that differentiate land by its use, size of the field, how the soil is cultivated, and overall quality (olujic, 1991). parts of eastern croatia, called slavonia, including the city of vukovar, have fallen to the serbs. after the fall of vukovar, a song called "do not 66 touch my fields because i will return" has become so popular that it is played during all social occasions, family gatherings, and weddings. many refugee women who never wrote before are now writing poems and short stories. although many are depressed, criticized, and lonely, they find strength to draw out and place meanings in their experiences, especially drawing upon the symbolism from their past, peaceful life. the following verse is an excerpt of a poem written by a refugee woman from vukovar: we have no soil and no grain no one is concerned about our pain we have no longer our beautiful costumes that our grandmothers have woven there are no more young tamburitza men there are no more daughter-in-laws. while the west is referring to the war criminals as "mr. milosevic," or mr. "karadzic," to these old women no one has said "madam." in the western media they became a nameless, faceless group, victims with neither name nor identity. they have lost their self esteem. and yet each one knows herself, her own story, her own personal experience. if they had been perceived as the individuals they were from the beginning, one of them told me, perhaps the west would have been moved to intervene at that time. "if they had seen who we really are in pictures of the war, if they had valued us as people, the world would have much less of a headache with us now," one of them told me. unfortunately, i do not have time here to discuss (for the oral presentation) several important theoretical issues that are surfacing from my research. but it will suffice to say that new forms of gender definitions are emerging from this conflict. i already alluded to the women's barricades of silence which are their strategy for their own survival and protection, but at the same time, they are reinforcing traditional gender ideology. in addition, sexual coercion and gender-based violence, mostly done to women, but also to some men and children is a public ritual of torture which points not only to complete humiliation of the individual, but of the family, community, and an entire nation. furthermore, public violence (i.e., public rituals of torture) is an affirmation of not only male bonding but also of power and dominance. 67 in closing, despite the fact that war and armed conflicts are mostly the cause of an overwhelming number of refugees throughout the world, the international community uses legal definitions of the refugee status based on the concept of individual persecutions. i was urged by several croatian and bosnian social scientists (e.g. cimic, sakic, etc.) to state that it is important to clearly define aggression and war as the cause of exile, and to take political and not only humanitarian initiatives in solving refugee problems, because the basic questions of war and peace, conditions which give rise to a mass exodus of people, need to be addressed. as we are discussing the theoretical, conceptual and practical issue of refugees and displaced persons, at this very moment, forced resettlement or flux and shifts of populations are occurring in bosnia and croatia. in the second week of november, 1993 as i was writing this paper while in croatia, there was a mention in the croatian newspaper (slovodna dalmacija) that a munich paper (süddeutsche zeitung) was going to print the front page of its weekly magazine, using half a liter of blood in its printing ink, donated by eight refugee women in order to highlight the atrocities in bosnia. the weekly was published on 19th of november, 1993. women, rape, and war: the continued trauma of refugees and displaced persons in croatia maria b. olujic, university of zagreb microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 72 unstable objects: corpses, checkpoints and ‘chessboard borders’ in the ferghana valley madeleine reeves university of cambridge this article explores the way in which concerns about the proper functioning of new state boundaries in an area of post-soviet central asia are communicated through stories about objects and their differential ability to ‘flow’ across borders.lxxiii in particular, i seek to make sense of the prevalence of references to corpses, and the kind of ruptured movement that such stories convey. katherine verdery, in her study of the postsocialist reburial of certain ‘politicised corpses’ in east-central europe, has argued that the very materiality of dead bodies is ‘critical to [their] symbolic efficacy’ (verdery 1999: 27) in navigating moments of radical temporal shift and political upheaval. whilst i draw in this article on verdery’s analysis of the symbolic power of bodies-in-motion, my focus is not on the bodies or statues of the ‘famous dead’, important as these have been to the legitimising of new polities in central asia. rather, i am concerned with the way in which, at a much more personal and local level, accounts of struggles to bring corpses to their resting places are used to index changed experiences of mobility and the arbitrary materialisation of the ‘state’ associated with the intensification of a regional border regime since 1999. i argue that in the borderlands of the ferghana valley, corpses, as a particularly unstable kind of object—deceased but not yet at rest; very materially ‘here’ but also already departed; subjects of sacred authority, yet still bound by the vagaries of earthly regulation—serve to condense popular anxieties about the coherence of state law, its alarming tendency to materialise and dissolve, appear and disappear, to get ‘eaten by money’. through this exploration, based on fieldwork between 2003 and 2005, i seek to engage with some of the broader questions raised by this special issue: the way that objects are used to navigate postsocialist transformations; the disjunction between ‘legal’ circulation of goods and people and local assessments of legitimate movement; and the way that new forms of rupture and flow are shaping ideas of community and connection after socialism. materialising borders in the ferghana valley borders are paradoxical locations in the imagination of national space. on the one hand, territorial boundedness is central to the assertion and the representation of the state as sovereign. the contiguous lines and endlessly replicated blocks of colour make the national map as emblematic of the state as flag and anthem. indeed, it is hard for us today to imagine the concept of ‘state’ without a corresponding, finite stretch of territory with an unambiguous linear edge.lxxiv on the other hand, any brief excursion into the state’s geographical margins will remind that the borders of even the most securitised of states are more porous than any map would convey—a porosity, indeed, that is central to the very functioning of the state within a global system (heyman & smart 1999; roitman 2004; van schendel 2005). the cartographic representations of the state that every school-child learns, with their finite edges and clearly graphed blocks of national territory, are thus expressive documents rather than purely descriptive ones. the extent to which the inchoate body of institutions, processes, agents and violence-invoking actions that together constitute ‘the state’ actually are sovereign over a given geographical territory varies enormously. in particular, the degree to which real world borders correspond to, or deviate from, their mapped representation (as finite, contiguous, linear and above all, visible…) is empirically far more contingent than conventional cartography would suggest. for those living in the borderlands of newly nationalising states, and especially in areas where the location of an international boundary is, or has been, historically contested, this divergence between the cartographic division of national space and the everyday experience of ‘border’ is not merely of academic interest. quite how state assertions of ‘territorial integrity’ should translate into the movement of goods and people across the state’s edge is a question on which daily life invites reflection: how to have ‘secure’ borders, which nonetheless allow us freely to trade across them? how to prevent resources from being siphoned out illegally, without this entailing draconian document checks every few kilometres? how to sustain relations with friends and relatives across a border, when transport is increasingly fragmented along national lines? what to do with uncultivated territory, the jurisdiction of which is contested, in a situation of acute land shortage? how, in short, to balance limit and flow, connection and separation, anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 73 inclusion and exclusion? as john and jean comaroff have recently argued (2005:129), ‘the border is a double bind because national prosperity appears to demand, but is also threatened by, both openness and closure’ – an insight no less true for those residing at the state’s edge than for those who write its laws. the area where this research is based is one where this ‘double bind’ has become particularly acute in recent years. central asia’s ferghana valley, where uzbekistan, kyrgyzstan and tajikistan meet in a complex series of international boundaries, is a site where local livelihoods and policies aimed at ‘securitisation’ of the border have increasingly been in tension.lxxv when the region was part of the soviet union, the administrative boundaries between the three union republics were typically only vaguely defined, and of little salience locally (marked, if at all, by roadside signs celebrating ‘harmony, friendship, peace’ [yntymak, dostuk, tynchtyk]). previously part of the kokand khanate, and not demarcated along ‘ethnic’ lines, the cartographic divisions that now mark an international boundary were drawn up in 1924 as part of the ‘nationalterritorial delimitation of central asia’. this demarcation was intended to help propel a ‘backward’ region into soviet modernity by according territorial propriety to weakly-national ‘nations’ (vareikis 1924).lxxvi the boundaries were never envisaged, however, as the borders of independent states.lxxvii subsequent building and resettlement projects and the institutionalisation of social life tended thoroughly to ignore the republican borders – indeed, even to shift them entirely in practice through the leasing of land from collective farms on one side of the border to those on the other. pastoralist kyrgyz populations were resettled into ‘planned villages’ [planovye sela] further down the valley, such that summer migration patterns now traversed the land of the neighbouring republic. reservoirs and canals were built completely ignoring the republican boundary-line (bichsel 2006); tractor stations nominally under the jurisdiction of one republic were built on the land of the neighbouring one (mamaraimov 2006); new tajik mahallas (neighbourhoods) that were subordinate to state farms in the tajik republic were built on the outskirts of villages that were themselves administratively part of the kyrgyz ssr.lxxviii such arrangements, motivated in part by acute water and land shortage and in part by the fact that the delimitation of the 1920s had left several tajik collective farms with minimal room to increase in size, were entirely pragmatic within the context of broader soviet stateformation. it was never assumed, for instance, that a long-term land-lease from one union republic to its neighbour would result in the creation of what are now, juridically, enclaves of one independent state inside another.lxxix yet, with the collapse of the soviet union this has been precisely the result. the borderlands of the ferghana valley have become a cartographic and administrative conundrum, with dozens of villages now situated in such a way that travel along the single road connecting villagers to their nearest source of water, their local bazaar or their place of worship entails the crossing of an international boundary. in many areas, the interspersion of private land plots belonging to villagers of one state with those of its neighbours creates a boundary that is not linear at all – a ‘chessboard border’ [shakmat chek arasy] as it is known locally that tacks forth multiple times between the two jurisdictions. this complex formation, recently likened by the head of kyrgyzstan’s commission on border delimitation to a ‘sieve’ [sito] (alamanov in mamaraimov 2006) has resulted in swathes of so-called ‘contested land’ [talash jer], the jurisdiction of which is indistinct; an increase in local contestation over the ownership and regulation of cross-border canal networks, and the more pervasive transformation of nationally unmarked ‘land’ into politicised ‘territory’ (see figure 1). perhaps most importantly from the perspective of local farmers and traders, it has resulted in a proliferation in the number of low-level state employees – often poorly-trained and poorlypaid – stationed in villages to guard the border and regulate movement across it. uzbekistan currently operates a visa regime with both of its ferghana valley neighbours, and whilst there are agreements in force to allow people who live in one border district [raion] to enter the immediately contiguous district of the neighbouring state for up to five days without a visa, in practice the regulations are complex, ambiguous in their precise specification of who can travel where, and largely irrelevant to local spatial and social imaginaries charted through kinship.lxxx encounters with ‘the law’ are frequently negotiated through appeals to common ethnicity or religion, or trumped through the law-dissolving agency of the bribe. as a result, the border guards and customs officers who notionally guard the border are often perceived by border villagers less as a guarantor of security than as a threat – extracting tribute arbitrarily, sending much of it ‘upwards’ to those higher in the chain of ‘stately’ command. ‘there goes another brick in akaev’s villa’ was the comment from valijon after paying a 50 som [$ 1.20] ‘fine’ to enter a kyrgyz raion where his local residence permit [propiska] should technically have prevented him. cynical banter about the edges of villages having anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 74 been taken over by ‘goats in uniform’ and emotive discussion alike served to probe the great paradox of borderland militarization – quite who was providing ‘security’ to whom? in short, then, the ferghana valley borderlands are an area which have been ‘taken over by [the] thought of the state’ in pierre bourdieu’s evocative idiom (1999: 53), and become central to discursive elaboration in the respective capital cities concerning the state’s proper territorial ‘stretch’. yet they are also an area where the authority and legitimacy of those nominally personating the state are profoundly contested in practice. from the perspective of villagers such as valijon, the border is less the natural territorial correlate of ‘state sovereignty’ than a zone of negotiation, where the divergent claims to authority of law, money, familiarity and locality compete to ‘frame’ the nature of interaction with state personnel and the outcome of the encounter. indexing difference, measuring flow: the efficacy of objects the changing status of these borderlands in domestic politics and public culture has been well documented elsewhere.lxxxi my aim is not to examine the complex of local and international factors that have led, since 1999, to a heightening of border security, or the considerable cross-border tensions that have resulted from such a shift.lxxxii nor does space allow a detailed examination of the contrastive policies towards such issues as market trading, land ownership, media regulation and informal, nongovernmental activity that have led to radically divergent experiences of state control and public space in each of the three valley republics.lxxxiii i am interested, rather, in the way in which the effects of such changes are discursively navigated. often condensed through discursive binaries of the form ‘in kyrgyzstan the state is poor and the people are rich; in uzbekistan the state is rich but the people are poor’ played on through jokes that exaggerate the different presidential styles, or narrated through gossip about high-level corruption, the different political and economic models pursued by the three ferghana valley states are converted into meaningful comparisons, managed through talk. the state of roads, the convertibility of pensions, the cost of meat, the size of garden plots (uchastki) and the availability of corruption-free higher education are just some of the ways in which different state projects are locally indexed. i was frequently struck during fieldwork in 2004-5 by the depth of knowledge about relative costs on either side of the border, and the ability, even of young children, to negotiate and inter-convert three, and sometimes even four quite different currencies (kyrgyz som, uzbek sum, tajik somoni and russian roublelxxxiv). small differences in the cost of petrol on either side of the border, or more substantial variation in the cost of second-hand cars and building materials were the scales through which the relative costs and merits of these different economic paths were measured. this discursive use of objects and their shifting value to measure difference across a border is a commonly-noted feature of border zones, and in no way unique to the ferghana valley. in his ethnography of the georgian-turkish border, for instance, mathijs pelkmans demonstrates how a social boundary was reproduced by georgians, even as the once-closed territorial border was reopened, through the discursive rejection of the ‘cheap and flimsy’ turkish goods which had flooded georgian border markets in the 1990s (pelkmans 2006: 178194)lxxxv. in the ferghana valley, too, material objects were used to mark social boundaries, just as they were used to calibrate the different economic opportunities on either side of the border. yet the kinds of ‘border talk’ occurring in and around batken and sokh during my period of fieldwork suggest that objects were being used to animate other kinds of concern as well. in particular, the troubling sense that wealth was seeping, or being siphoned invisibly out, away from ‘us’ and to distant bank vaults, was often animated through rumours and jokes featuring the most concrete kind of wealth – gold bars, suitcases of dollars, sacks of apricots with opium concealed inside. such stories typically entailed lucrative commodities being whisked, unstopped and unchecked, through a series of central asian border posts in state-registered cars by high-ranking officials who could ‘trump’ the state’s attempts to regulate movement. during the months leading up to the march 2005 overthrow of president akaev in kyrgyzstan, such stories in batken took on almost mythic proportions, weaving in fragments of newspaper stories, opposition slogans and rumours that percolated through from bishkek. such narratives, in their local, batken variant, were more than just commentaries on a presidential ‘clan’ that had sucked the country dry. in their emphasis on the way in which such commodities crossed borders unstopped, they also served as reflections on the differential permeability of the international frontier itself. stateowned cars filled with contraband goods passing unchecked through the state’s own borders acted as a powerful metaphor for the mysterious, invisible flows that had catapulted certain well-connected officials to enormous wealth, even as the ‘state’ itself was plunged in debt.lxxxvi anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 75 corporealities if gold and drugs were used to articulate the borders’ excessive flimsiness to those in positions of power, it was a very different kind of object – the corpse – that was used to communicate their impermeability to ‘proper’ human flows. bodies, more generally, were often invoked in the ferghana valley to talk about the border and the violent practices of stately verification that proliferate along its length. women from sokh, an enclaved administrative district [raion] that is part of uzbekistan but located entirely located within kyrgyzstani territory, used to describe in hushed tones the lengths they went to in crossing the border in order to avoid the risk of body searches from rudely ‘disrespectful’ [hurmatsiz] kyrgyz border guards who would ‘pretend to check for drugs’. kyrgyz newspapers, for their part, would often lament the humiliating strip searches that put up an (ethnicized) ‘iron curtain’ between kyrgyz and uzbek ‘brothers’ in the south of the country.lxxxvii accounts of sexual violation of ‘our women’ by ‘their men’ across the border – the violent, gendered remapping of territorial transgression – were some of the most powerful and emotive modes for relating the violence of the checkpoint.lxxxviii for all the anger that surrounded accounts of violations of living, gendered bodies, it was dead bodies, however, that seemed to have particular salience as symbolic vehicles. as verdery (verdery 1999:27-8) has argued, the very corporeality and polyvalence of the deceased makes them ‘important means of localizing a claim’, and that is perhaps especially true in situations where every moment of delay before burial is recognized to be one of torment [kiinalish] for the deceased. in the ferghana valley, more so than in less observant areas of central asia, the hadithic injunction to bury the deceased within hours of death means that funeral rites acquire enormous salience as indices of distance and connection, as well as of filial piety and relational harmony [yntymak]. the unburied corpse is thus a multiply unstable object – polluting and tormented, collapsing social relations until harmony can be restored in the act of burial. one funeral story that i heard during fieldwork articulated this sense of arbitrary closure with particular force. it stuck in my mind both for the emotion with which it was recounted, and the dramatic context of its narrating, in a stretch of waterless wasteland just inside kyrgyzstan, close to the point where the three republics met. i was travelling between the kyrgyz towns of batken and osh with a group of tajik students from khujand, the city in tajikistan that marks the western end of the ferghana valley. we were being taken to osh, at the other end of the valley, by dastan aka, the eldest brother in the kyrgyz family with whom i lived in batken, and busy father of four. dastan aka was wellconnected and moderately well off, having previously made a good income importing petrol from uzbekistan and selling it at a mark-up of one or two som across the border in batken. dastan aka’s uncle still sells petrol, though neither he, nor dastan himself, does the importing. this has become altogether riskier in the last few years, as customs controls have been stepped up along the stretch of border that he used to ‘run’, with a concomitant rise in bribes. dastan aka still profits from the different regimes of value that the border creates, by ‘ferrying tajiks’, as he puts it, across the unmarked scree and sand that constitute the ‘detour route’ [ob”ezd jol] north of uzbekistan’s sokh enclave. citizens of tajikistan who are not in possession of an uzbek visa (which includes virtually all of those who would be making the journey from khujand) are not permitted to cross the 15 kilometre stretch of the main batkenosh road where it crosses through uzbekistani territory in sokh. as a result, the only way that they can travel west to east through the ferghana valley is along this sandy detour, which traces the length of the soviet-era bürgündü canal, before splitting into a series of unmarked tracks that cross-cut each other in otherwise empty, uncultivated territory for another sixty kilometres. kamaz lorries and soviet jeeps dominate this route, their loads and their quantity a salient reminder that the ‘second economy’ is here a profound misnomer (cf. rasanayagam 2002:108-111, seabright 2000). for this technically non-existent ‘road’, unmarked and unmapped, constitutes one of the main routes east for the distribution of aluminium and base metals to china, uzbek cotton for illegal processing in osh, and afghan opium from tajikistan to osh, bishkek and beyond to russia. humans, too, are a lucrative traffic on this route. dastan aka ferries tajiks along this back-road rather than offering a more conventional taxi service on the tarmac road that crosses sokh because the margins are higher and there is less competition from others in batken. soviet-era zhiguli cars and the more recently imported second-hand audis [innomarki] that are found in batken in roughly equal number would both be liable to run aground on the uneven, rocky surface of the detour route. with his soviet vazik jeep, dastan aka is well positioned to corner the market in ‘ferrying tajiks’ to osh, and since it is at the large, wholesale markets at this eastern end of the valley that the cheapest goods in the region are found, demand typically outstrips supply in transport along anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 76 this route. the tajik students with whom i was travelling were in little doubt that this slow, uncomfortable off-road ride, which added several dozen kilometres to the journey, was nonetheless preferable to the inevitable delays, bribes [pora] and humiliation that would be liable to greet them if they tried to cross sokh without a visa. dastan aka’s intimate, embodied knowledge of the landscape also gave him the edge over those who might try running this route for the first time. he could tell our location from tiny shifts in the landscape, a chink in the canal, a conjunction of rocks. and it was this that made him king of the road, racing through the landscape, syimyk beshikeev singing at full blast on his tape recorder, enjoying the chance to practice the off-road leaps as we in the back covered our eyes to avoid being stung by the dust. dastan aka was conscious that his livelihood depended on knowing this road intimately, just as it did on the absurd rules that made citizens of tajikistan persona non grata in the neighbouring state. every bump of this route was an indignity to them – for him it was a chance to practice freedom. like the shabe traders described by flynn (1997) who ‘run the border’ between nigeria and benin, his livelihood depended on the particular opportunities generated by the productive configuration of gaps and limits that the borders here present to a wellconnected, car-owning batken man. indeed, the normally reserved father of young children seemed to be at his most animated here in the dusty no-man’s land at the unmarked and largely un-policed edge of the state. disgracing the dead: zulaikho’s story the contrast between dastan’s sense of freedom, and the story of entrapment that was related to me along its route by zulaikho, one of the tajik students, could not have been more pronounced. indeed, the very fact that we were making this ‘detour’ to avoid entering an enclave that was, as one of our passengers put it, ‘tajik land since time immemorial’ seemed to incite a proliferation of ‘border talk’.lxxxix unable to put pencil to paper to make jottings of zulaikho’s story during the journey, i took her to a café once we reached osh, and there, slowly readjusting to the delicious motionlessness of land, she recounted her story of the corpse and its journey. the deceased man was the father of a childhood school teacher with whom she was still in close contact. originally from a small tajik village just inside the uzbek ssr, he had moved in his youth to stalinabad (later renamed dushanbe), the then capital of the tajik ssr, initially to study and afterwards to work as a journalist on one of the main tajik-language newspapers. like many of his generation, this aspiring journalist did not see this change of republic as constituting a move ‘abroad’: dushanbe was closer than his ‘own’ capital, tashkent, and was the natural choice for someone wanting to undertake journalism training in tajik. his daughter, zulaikho’s school teacher, had grown up in dushanbe as a member of the post-war tajik intelligentsia, studying in kiev (‘europe’) before returning to her native city to teach. although she had not gone to her father’s village in many years, and identified little with what she saw as a ‘backward region’ [otstalyi raion], she knew that her father’s overwhelming wish, repeated on his deathbed, was that he be buried in his ancestral land, inside what was now independent uzbekistan. so it was, immediately after her father’s death, that she set off with a small group of relatives on the 120 mile journey to the village of her father’s birth. zulaikho told me about her teacher’s journey: so they’d got as far as the post; they were carrying the corpse in their hands since they knew they would have to leave the car [on that side of the post]. they had come all the way from dushanbe in the heat. they were just a few kilometres from his mahalla. and then they were told they can’t enter. can you imagine? all that distance in the heat. so they explain to the border guards that he is from this district [raion], that his fathers were buried in that mahalla, that they were such-and-such a family, all the things his parents had done for the raion. and you know what the border guards said? they were uzbeks, they weren’t even local [oni dazhe ne byli mestnymi].xc they said to that group of relatives who were in mourning, they said, ‘what do we need your corpse for? don’t you think we’ve got enough corpses of our own? [u nas svoikh trupov ne khvatayut, chto-li?] i pressed zulaikho on the meaning of such a response from the border guards. was this a concern about a real lack of room in the burial ground? or perhaps motivated by fear about contamination from a corpse that had been transported all day in the heat? zulaikho dismissed such explanations. it had nothing to do with the paperwork, nor even to do with money, she told me. they knew that they would have to offer money: they were prepared for that. and they were wealthy [sostoyatel’nye], so that ought not to have been a barrier. no, zulaikho continued firmly, this was about something else, about ‘nationality’ [natsional’nost’]. the border guards were uzbek, she repeated, they were doing this to remind that this was the territory of uzbekistan even though tajiks have always lived in this particular region. she continued, anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 77 they said to [my teacher’s relatives], ‘if he is tajik, bury him in tajikistan!’ but tajiks have always lived in [this mahalla]! and her relatives were pleading with those border guards; they tried to get them to call through to some high-up people in the raion. they said to them, ‘be a muslim. all the same you’re a muslim. let’s not have this, ‘you’re [fame.] a tajik, i’m uzbek’. but they just kept on telling them to go back and bury him in dushanbe […] so they ended up taking the corpse all the way back to dushanbe and they buried him there the next day. but that is a disgrace! [pozor]. we have to bury the person the same day, not the next. and there they were going backwards and forwards, trying to get the border guards to listen to them. you know how painful it was that they couldn’t bury him according to custom? really painful […] so you see, in the end [the guards] broached the bounds of nazism when they didn’t let them in. because apart from that everything was in order. they had money with them and everything. zulaikho’s account had something didactic about it, something almost theatrical. at the time, sitting in the café, inscribing what she said, i chided myself for not having a better memory and therefore ending up with a second-order ethnographic artefact – a dramatized reconstruction of a story that had burst out spontaneously during our earlier journey, as we had been tossed along the bumpy detour route around sokh. i was struck by the fact that although she was recounting this in the third person, her account was dotted throughout with a narrative ‘we’, as though she personally had been there accompanying the body back to dushanbe. this, coupled with the dramatic overstatement and the instinctive slippage from this narrative into discussion of other tajik losses – the loss of historic samarkand and bukhara, the assimilation [assimiliatsiia] of tajiks into uzbeks, the closure of tajik schools – left me wondering why it was this message that she was so keen that i take from the story – a narrative of discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, a story of nationalism trumping over other kinds of identification ‘as muslims’, as fellow ‘locals’. part of the answer lies, no doubt, in the postsoviet prevalence in tajikistan of a discourse of loss and historical injustice – one in which zulaikho and her generation would be well versed. accounts of the de-stabilizing consequences of being left with a ‘rump state’ excised from historical centres of tajik culture in present-day uzbekistan are codified in official historiesxci and have received scholarly elaboration from the tajik academy of sciences (masov 1991, 2003). particular instances of ‘discrimination’, such as that encountered by zulaikho’s teacher, could thus be inserted as indicative instances into a much larger, statesanctioned narrative of historic offence [obida]. however, to understand why this refusal of entry was understood to be an instance of nationalism that ‘broached the bounds of nazism’, the pervasiveness of an appropriate ‘narrative slot’ into which it could be inserted is only part of the answer. we also need to bring the question of the borders’ perceived (il)legitimacy into the picture. for what is striking in zulaikho’s narration was that she saw the border guards not as the mere transmitters of official uzbekistani policy towards non-citizens, nor of ‘upholding’ an unjust but externally-derived ‘law’. she didn’t see them, in other words, as merely the last in a chain of command stretching coherently from a capital city to its margins, their authority an instance of more encompassing sovereignty that lies with the state. her accusation, rather, is one of personal, ethnically-based malice, which overrode any coherent relational appeals (to common islamic identity, to shared tajik-uzbek cultural heritage, to money, to respect for the dead…). the ethnicity of the border guards mattered in this encounter – their ‘non-localness’ – precisely because they weren’t interpreted as mere state functionaries dutifully enacting the law, embodying the state’s rational-legal authority. indeed, it is in the border guards’ very refusal to do the ‘cooperative’ thing and accept a bribe to let the body through that they are understood to have demonstrated their true nationalist intent. what is technically an act of legal exclusion based on citizenship can only be made sense of in terms of salient categories of ethnic discrimination. ‘state sovereignty’ here collapses into the fact that ‘we’ are stuck here unable to pay our last respects, whilst a youth with a kalashnikov dictates to us ‘as though’ he were the law, effecting a triple subversion of the proper rules of valley decorum – of the living before the dead, of the young before the old, of the host towards the stranger-guest [meikhmon]. overriding the law: sirens and the impersonation of the state in kyrgyzstan, this symbolic work of the corpse – materialising and rendering explicit the dilemma of openness/closure, security and permeability – has recently found cinematographic elaboration in a realist drama that has striking parallels with zulaikho’s narrative (alykulov 2006). a fictional portrayal of an encounter at a small, rural checkpoint, the drama conveys the absurdity of the contemporary central asian border encounter, in which four kyrgyz labour migrants who are transporting the recently deceased father of one of their number home for burial are refused exit from anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 78 kazakhstan, where they have been working, because the corpse is not in possession of a migration card. denied passage across the bridge where the checkpoint stands because of this minor administrative error, the men are forced to carry the deceased on foot across the freezing river separating the two countries, virtually under the eye of the border guards who refused them exit. the structural and thematic similarities between the realms of local borderland rumour, the popular myths that are animated in newspaper talk and filmic portrayals such as alykulov’s are not, of course, unique to this particular post-soviet context. as begoña aretxaga (2000:46) argues of the way state violence in spain became ‘emplotted’ in local narratives, ‘state violence, especially the kind that circumambulates the law, that transgresses the law from within […] is deeply wrapped in fictional plots and phantasmic images’. akil gupta has shown how in northern india, local commentary upon newspapermediated accounts of official corruption is central to the way in which the ‘state’ comes to be imagined as translocal, despite the always local instantiations through which it is encountered (gupta 1995). similarly, in the south african context, john and jean comaroff have demonstrated the complex intertangling of crime as it is ‘experienced’ and crime as it is narrativised in the post-apartheid state (2004: 801). yet if the slippage between the realms of fact and fiction is in no way unique to this particular post-soviet moment, the recurrence of the corpse-astrope should nonetheless give us pause for reflection. after all, notwithstanding its discursive portrayal in the english-language conflict-studies literature as a zone of considerable ‘danger’, the ferghana valley is not an unusually violent place. stories of bodies and checkpoints were not, therefore, a simple commentary on rising crime or the kind of social breakdown or ‘chaos’ [bardak] that has been deemed to characterise central asia’s urban centres (nazpary 2002). to understand why funerals figure so frequently in discussions of ruptures to cross-border sociality (compare megoran 2002: 131) we need to focus, rather, on the symbolic work that corpses were doing. above all, we need to pay attention to their salience as discursive objects at a time when everyday experiences of the border regime made a mockery of official discourses of ‘control’. as an area that has been progressively securitized and militarised since 1999, the borderlands of the ferghana valley have been the subject of a powerful discourse of security, accompanied by often draconian practices of bodily regulation. local mobility has been transformed by border controls and visa regimes that have materialised a previously largely invisible boundary. the problem is not the presence of borders per se but their unequal and ineffective functioning: the fact that borders ‘dissolve’ to those in positions of stately power, even as they appear in the form of monstrous and irrational limit-points to many who live in their midst. to illustrate, i turn to another fieldwork incident, which i recorded in may 2003 in the town of kara-suu at the eastern end of the ferghana valley, where a 12-metre wide canal marks the boundary between kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan. solih, an uzbek who lives on the kyrgyzstan bank of the canal, made a living at that time by transporting people and goods across the canal-border on a large inflatable tyre [ballonchik]. he saw his (technically illegal) job as a risky but eminently ethical one: an informal route for maintaining cross-border trade at a time when the main passenger bridge between kyrgyzstani kara-suu and its smaller uzbekistani neighbour had been dismantled, making access to the large wholesale bazaar on the kyrgyz side fraught with difficulties for citizens of uzbekistan.xcii (see figure 2). like zulaikho, solih used an account of a disrupted cross-border funeral party to illustrate the obstacles that the border closure had caused to maintaining expected practices of kinship. his narrative began with a conventional contrast between the fates of those ‘who pay’ and those who don’t: for instance, take my father… my father has a sister here, close to the big customs post. she died this year, just at the time they closed the bridge. her relatives are on the uzbek side, and we called them to the funeral. and there, the soldiers, all those lads standing there they wouldn’t let them through. you see, who do they let through? those who give money, who pay. up to three thousand [kyrgyz som] they can make in a day.xciii all those… how to say… soldiers, they are just there on the crossing waiting for people. they’re just making money [prosto dengi delaiut], that’s all. solih’s narrative seemed to suggest that it was all just a matter of ‘money’. yet when i pressed him on this his answer was revealing. the real problem was not so much people paying their way across – after all, he joked, he too, paid his ‘due’ [dolia] to make sure that his small role in the cross-border economy would not be disrupted by the border guards who monitor this section of canal. the problem, rather, was the way in which appeals to a higher stately authority were invoked to make the border completely ‘invisible’ to certain categories of people. solih explained to me in the following way: anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 79 you see, the kind of guy who sits wearing a tiexciv -he needs to get somewhere? there! on the car, on the roof, they attach a siren, they put a flashing light, and he can get about just where he likes. and ordinary people [prostoi narod], what about them? even on foot they can’t get through! that’s humane, is it? […] it’s like a joke [kak anekdot poluchaetsia]. the real threat, in other words, does not lie in the low-level bribe-giving that serves to lubricate social relations in an area of ruptured movement. it derives, rather, from the way that ‘stately authority’ gets invoked to override and ignore the instructions of those who ought to be upholding the ‘law’ at the border: the state ‘trumping’ the state. solih was alert to the performative dimensions of such a claim. his imitation of the portly, tie-wearing official and his image of the removable siren (a symbol, par excellence, of the way that stately authority is able to be turned on and off for personal gain) emphasised the arbitrary nature of cross-border regulation, which disappeared entirely for those successfully able to ‘play’ the state. as though to reinforce this absurd inequality of movement, solih then turned from individual law-subverting officials to the fate of the country as a whole: and what’s their problem with us? are they scared of kirgiziia, or something?! there’s nothing to be scared of from kirgiziia. now, for example, with afghanistan, earlier, there used to be a border [ranshe u nikh byla granitsa]. but now they’ve re-…, re-built bridges, something like eighteen bridges to afghanistan.xcv [mr] and here..? here it’s the opposite. here they are taking them away. we’re probably ‘better’ than afghans?! they probably think so! solih’s discursive linkage of the funeral party, the official who overrides the law, and uzbekistan’s opening of the ‘wrong’ bridges point to the real anxiety that stories of objects-in-motion serve to index. as for zulaikho, the problem is not just that borders are closed, but that they have come to crystallise in the wrong place, between the wrong people, and in so doing have placed a considerable strain on cross-border sociality. border controls here are a performance, solih suggests (one that makes him hesitant even about according the ‘lads on the bridge’ the status of ‘soldier’), because if ensuring protection from flows of drugs, terrorists and weapons were really the objective, why were ‘something like eighteen bridges’ to afghanistan opened in the preceding few months? the narrative structure hints at the reason: it is the very vulnerability of the state to corruption from highranking officials, who appeal to stately authority for personal gain, which fosters this paradoxical situation. for solih this is captured in the ‘jokeworthy’ predicament that whilst relations here, between uzbeks on two sides of a canal, have been disrupted by the vagaries of state control, afghans (the archetypal ‘other’ of popular uzbek discourse, whose movement ‘ought’ to be controlled) have had multiple bridges opened up to them. it is the weakness of the state itself that the cynical sirenwearing, state-invoking, border-crossing official comes to symbolise. conclusion: of crystallizing borders and solid states it is in this context, i believe, that we can return to the significance of the corpse in popular borderland discourse. dead bodies, of course, are very material symbols of social connection, and obstacles in getting them across borders thus speak powerfully of ruptured relationships and severed kinship ties. yet in a setting where daily life reminds that borders are unequally permeable, and where local talk plays on, magnifies, and dramatises this contingency, it is the very instability of corpses that makes them such powerful symbolic vehicles. for a corpse is, on the one hand, the ultimate ‘passive object’. it must be moved and located, and quite how it is emplaced (as deceased relative to whom respect must be paid, as commodity [tovar] that can be let through the border for the appropriate ‘fee’, or as potentially contaminating threat to public health that must be subject to administrative ban) dramatises the variable, and profoundly unequal opportunities that exist for crossing state borders and transporting goods across them. on the other hand, however, for all its materiality the corpse is also a very spectral, absent kind of presence. as michael taussig puts it, in a work alert to the ‘sacred power’ of the dead in fostering fantasies for the state, the corpse is ‘charged like a spring compressed’, collapsing into itself competing temporalities and rationalities (taussig 1997: 167). its ambiguous state raises questions that normally lie just below the surface of everyday consciousness, in the work of rumour, joke and fantasy: questions about the ultimate authority of the ‘law’; about the coherence and stability – or contingency and vulnerability – of the state itself. questions, above all, about the tense, ambivalent relationship between boundedness and connectedness, sovereignty and dependence. i have argued in this article that the particular social, geographical and economic realities of the ferghana valley in the early new-century gave unusual urgency to these questions, making the ‘double bind’ of which anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 80 the comaroffs write not just a theoretical abstraction, but a dilemma on which daily life invites reflection. work patterns, lived geographies, landscape itself recall the attempts by the state to assert its sovereignty over space – just as they bring to mind the real fact of profound social, spatial and economic interdependence. dead bodies, like disappearing gold bars, mythic, tie-wearing officials and state cars that slip unchecked through borders are, i have suggested, one element in the economy of signs through which such shifts get navigated. as a dramatically unstable kind of object – here and not here, sacred yet polluting – corpses may be particularly well-suited to enabling such paradoxes to be apprehended. by exploring how they are used to navigate new forms of (dis-)connection, we may be better positioned to grasp the ambivalence of ‘independence’ and its ruptures in the ferghana valley. notes lxxiii this article is based on research conducted on both sides of the kyrgyzstan-uzbekistan border in the batken and sokh raions [districts] of the ferghana valley in may 2003, and from march 2004 to september 2005, supported by the uk economic and social research council. portions of the argument developed here have been presented in cambridge, madison and ann arbor. i am particularly grateful to nikolai ssorin-chaikov, maja petrović and john heathershaw for insights and conversation that have helped to shape the argument here. all names of informants have been changed. lxxiv it is indicative, for instance, that max weber, in his much-cited definition of the state as ‘a human community which (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of the legitimate physical violence within a certain territory’ (1994 [1919]: 310-311), did not problematise the concept of ‘territory’, even as he subjected the other dependent concepts of ‘force’ and ‘legitimacy’ to rigorous analytical critique. on the ‘pervasive taken-for-grantedness of territoriality among most twentieth-century social theorists’, see brenner, jones and macleod (2003: 2); agnew and corbridge (1995: 78-100). lxxv on the impact of increased border controls in the ferghana valley on cross-border relations, see megoran (2002: 212-256), dolina mira (2004), reeves (2005:73-78). lxxvi thus, for instance, the central executive committee of the rsfsr declared on october 14th 1924 at the start of the national-territorial delimitation that ‘[t]he peoples of turkestan, who formerly under tsarist rule existed as powerless colonial slaves [bespravnykh kolonial’nykh rabov], and who today are free and equal, are building their states through the strengths of their workers. having achieved national liberation [natsional’nogo osvobozhdeniia], and strengthened the foundations of workers’ and peasants’ power, unswervingly developing and broadening their cultural and economic construction, the peoples of turkestan have reached a condition that will allow them to transform the autonomous turkestan soviet socialist republic into mono-ethnic-national states [v gosudarstva natsional’no-odnorodnye]’. nationhood, in this rendering, was a historical achievement, not an enduring historical fact (dzhumanaliev 2003: 185-6). lxxvii for historical analysis of the debates surrounding the territorial delimitation of central asia, see masov (1991), koichiev (2001), haugen (2003), hirsch (2005: 160-186). lxxviii for instance, the village of kök-tash, administratively part of kyrgyzstan, contains within it a tajik neighbourhood [mahalla], somonion, which is administratively part of the neighbouring tajik republic. the two schools in the village, 300 metres apart, operate on different time-zones and celebrate different independence days, though no-one in the village is able to say with any confidence where the territorial border lies – ‘if it’s a tajik house, then it is probably tajikistan’. lxxix it is often assumed (mistakenly) that enclaves were deliberately drawn during the 1920s as part of a policy of ‘divide and rule’ in order to ensure dependence upon moscow (see, e.g., slim 2002). the historical record suggests that the course of events was more complex. early soviet maps indicate a more contiguous border in the ferghana valley than is presently the case. whyte (2001) argues on the basis of early soviet maps that today’s enclaves in southern kyrgyzstan (vorukh, sokh and shahimardan) arose as a result of internal boundary movements from the 1930s onwards – they were not originally drawn as such. see also koichiev (2001: 88-9) and belavin (1928) for illustrations of the original ferghana valley borders. lxxx on the normative acts regulating cross-border movement, see ismailov et al (2005); kiutin (2006). lxxxi on the significance of territorial securitisation to nation-building projects in kyrgyzstan and uzbekistan, see megoran (2002). on declining crossborder trade since 1999, see megoran, raballand and bouyjou (2005). lxxxii for summaries and assessments, see icg (2002), slim (2002), passon and temirkulov (2004), musubaeva and moldosheva (2005). anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 81 lxxxiii for an overview of challenges to regional cooperation, see linn (2005). lxxxiv russian roubles, although not formal tender in central asia, are often the most ‘inter-convertible’ of currencies in this part of the ferghana valley. rates of labour migration to the bazaars and building sites of russia are such that even women and children who have never been to russia will often use the russian rouble as a more ‘stable’ currency than the currency of their own state. lxxxv it is a striking indication of just how socially mediated is the evaluation of commodities and their provenance that in kyrgyzstan, turkish goods, even those sold in market stalls, are seen as being of high quality. in the largest consumer market in bishkek, which is divided into ‘european’ and ‘asian’ sections, the turkish goods are located firmly in the european section. lxxxvi three indicative examples of news stories about borders ‘letting the wrong things through’ that circulated (in modified, rumour-fed way) during my period of research involved gulnora karimova, the daughter of the uzbek president, whisking ‘suitcases of money’ to the middle east for a spending spree (see, e.g. muhammed-mamatov 2003); military vehicles being used to transport opium from afghanistan through central asia to russia (knox 2004), and members of the akaev ‘clan’ being involved in the illegal transportation of large quantities of kyrgyz gold to swiss bank vaults (sydykova 1997 and 2003: 258-304). after the kyrgyz ‘revolution’ that overthrew president akaev in march 2005, the search for smuggled gold and money moved from the realm of gossip and opposition newspaper-talk to state television news. the drama continues to this day. see, for a recent example, kyrgyzskoe zoloto (2005). lxxxvii see, for instance, the striking and provocative photo montage on the front page of bishkek’s main russian-language newspaper at the height of the kyrgyz-uzbek border crisis, in late 1999, with the sub-line ‘at the border they undress you till you are naked just to look at your face’ – a comment, and accompanying image that allude to the ethnic, rather than legal, basis for everyday border discrimination (khamidov 1999: 1). lxxxviii such stories figured, i dare say, on all sides of the border, though the versions i heard most often were narrated by tajik men from sokh during the winter social gatherings [chilu] of neighbourhood men. typically referring to women from nearby sokh mahallas who had been working as hired day labourers [mardikor] on the fields of wealthier kyrgyz farmers across the border, these accounts fused ethnic and sexual slurs with remarks about the fragility of law on the kyrgyz side to articulate a categorical social boundary between ‘us’ and ‘them’. lxxxix a reference to the fact that although sokh is administratively part of uzbekistan, the population identifies itself overwhelmingly as tajik. xc a reference to the fact that the region, although part of uzbekistan, was predominantly inhabited by tajiks. xci see, for instance, the formulations in khaidarov’s university textbook on the history of the tajik people in the twentieth century (khaidarov 2001: 126-8), or the school textbook on the contemporary history of tajikistan (jahonov and tukhtaeva 2002: 27-8), which describes how during the delimitation of 1924, as a result of the actions of ‘pan-turkist’ commissioners, ‘all of the large tajik towns […] went to the uzbek republic’. although some were later ‘returned’, as a result of the formation of a separate tajik republic in 1929, ‘the main centres of tajik culture still remain outside tajikistan in the territory of uzbekistan and they continue to represent an object of territorial discord between these two nations (or republics)’. xcii the closure of the bridge was ostensibly to protect against the spread of sars from one republic to the other. it remained closed, however, far after this particular public health concern had subsided. solih estimated that 10-15,000 people would previously have crossed from uzbekistan to use the kara-suu bazaar. at the time of our interview, he would transport anywhere up to 100 passengers per day on the inflated tyre-tube. 21 around $60 at the time of interview, roughly equal to the official average monthly salary. xciv a reference to a state official, [chinovnik]. dress (suits and ties) and size (big [chong] or fat [semiz]) were often used idiomatically to refer to state officials. xcv a reference to uzbekistan’s (internationally pressured) decision in late 2001 to re-open a bridge with afghanistan as part of the ‘war on terror’. the bridge had been closed since soviet withdrawal from afghanistan over a decade earlier. i have found no evidence to suggest that there are in fact ‘eighteen bridges’ across the uzbek-afghan border, as solih suggests. what is significant, of course, is his perception of multiple bridges having been opened, at the same time that restrictions on movement and trade across the kyrgyz-uzbek border were becoming more severe. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 82 references agnew, j. & corbridge, s. 1995 mastering space: hegemony, territory and international political economy. london: routledge. alykulov, m. 2006 chegara/granitsa. dvd film. bishkek: oy-art productions. aretxaga, b. 2000 a fictional reality: paramilitary death squads and the construction of state terror in spain. in death squad: the anthropology of state terror. j. sluka, ed. pp. 46-69. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. belavin, a.f. 1928 atlas soiuza sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik. primenitel'no k raionam ekonomicheskogo raionirovaniia gosplana sssr. moscow: gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. bichsel, c. 2006 dangerous divisions: irrigation disputes and conflict transformation in the ferghana valley. phd dissertation, university of berne. bourdieu, p. 1999 [1991] rethinking the state: genesis and structure of the bureaucratic field. in state/culture: state formation after the cultural turn. g. steinmetz, ed. pp. 53-75. ithaca: cornell university press. brenner, n. et al. 2003 state space in question. in state/space: a reader. n. brenner et al., eds. pp. 1-26. oxford: blackwell publishing. comaroff, j. & comaroff, j. 2004 criminal obsessions, after foucault: postcoloniality, policing and the metaphysics of disorder. critical inquiry 30 (4): 800-824. comaroff, j & comaroff, j. 2005 naturing the nation: aliens, apocalypse, and the postcolonial state. in sovereign bodies: citizens, migrants and states in the postcolonial world. t. blom hansen & f. stepputat, eds. pp. 122-147. princeton and oxford: princeton university press. dolina mira. 2004 analiz situatsii po perekhodu granits v ferganskoi doline. electronic document, www.vuz.org.kg/download/monitoring.pdf, accessed october 13, 2006. dzhumanliev, a. 2003 kyrgyzskaia gosudarstvennost’ v xx veke. bishkek: national academy of science. flynn, d. 1997 we are the border: identity, exchange and the state along the benin-nigeria border. american ethnologist 24 (2): 311-330. gupta, a. 1995 blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state. american ethnologist 22 (2): 375-402. haugan, a. 2003 the establishment of national republics in soviet central asia. houndmills: palgrave macmillan. heyman, j. & smart, a. 1999 states and illegal practices: an overview. in states and illegal practices. j. heyman, ed. pp. 1-24. oxford and new york: berg. hirsch, f. 2005 empire of nations: ethnographic knowledge and the making of the soviet union. ithaca: cornell university press. international crisis group. 2002 central asia: border disputes and conflict potential. brussels: igc. ismailov, a.t. et al. 2005 putevoditel’. 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unifem. nazpary, j. 2002 post-soviet chaos: violence and dispossession in kazakhstan. london: pluto press. passon, t. & temirkulov, a. 2004 analysis of peace and conflict potential in batken oblast, kyrgyzstan. berlin: analysis, research, consulting. electronic document, www.policy.hu/temirkulov/arc%20gtzreport-kyrgyzstan.pdf, accessed december 10, 2006. pelkmans, m. 2006 defending the border: identity, religion, and modernity in the republic of georgia. ithaca: cornell university press. rasanayagam, m. j. 2002 the moral construction of the state in uzbekistan: its construction within concepts of community and interaction at the local level. phd dissertation, department of social anthropology, university of cambridge. reeves, m. 2005 locating danger: konfliktologiia and the search for fixity in the ferghana valley borderlands. central asian survey 24 (1): 6781. roitman, j. 2004 fiscal disobedience: an ethnography of economic regulation in central africa. princeton: princeton university press. seabright, p. 2000 the vanishing rouble: barter networks and non-monetary transactions in post-soviet societies. cambridge: cambridge university press. slim, r. 2002 the ferghana valley: in the midst of a host of crises. in searching for peace in central and south asia: an overview of conflict prevention and peace-building activities. monique mekenkamp, paul van tongeren and hans van de veen, eds. pp. 489515. boulder, co: lynne rienner. sydykova, z. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 84 1997 zolotoi skandal. in za kulisami demkratii po-kyrgyzskii. bishkek: res publica. sydykova, z. 2003 zoloto kyrgyzstana: pravda i vymysel. in gody ozhidanii i poter’, vremia peremen. bishkek: res publica. taussig, m. 1997 the magic of the state. new york: routledge. van schendel, w. 2005 spaces of engagement: how borderlands, illicit flows and territorial states interlock. in illicit flows and criminal things: states, borders and the other side of globalization. w. van schendel and i. abraham, eds. pp. 38-68. bloomington: indiana university press. vareikis, i. 1924 novyi etap natsional’nogo stroitel’stva v srednei azii. in natsional’no-gosudarstvennoe razmezhevanie srednei azii. i. vareikis and i. zelenskii, eds. pp.39-68. tashkent: sredneaziatskoe gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo. verdery, k. 1999 the political lives of dead bodies. reburial and postsocialist change. new york: columbia university press. weber, m. 1994 [1919] the profession and vocation of politics. in political writings. pp. 309-369. cambridge: cambridge university press. whyte, b. 2001 enclaves of the world. unpublished ms. figure 1: the ‘chess-board’ border between kyrgyzstan and tajikistan (taken from orto-boz village, kyrgyzstan. the cultivated land tacks back and forth between the jurisdictions of the two states. figure 2: solih’s ferry across the sharikhan-sai canal, kara-suu, 2003. note the border fence on the far bank. as you know, i have been busily gathering interviews and other observations related to feminist groups, including femen, in ukr anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 215 two bad words: femen & feminism in independent ukraine jessica zychowicz, university of michigan, usa context “now when people in america think of ukraine they will add femen to their list of vodka, snow, and the orange revolution,” my friend lilya sighed in disappointment, “i’m embarrassed of them.” the ukrainian women’s protest group femen has been described in reports throughout western media over the past three years, including npr, bbc, and the new york times, as a new democratic initiative resonant with the orange revolution. femen’s formula is at once simple and spectacular: scantily clad topless women stage highly theatrical demonstrations to draw attention to various facets of gender inequality in ukraine. for example, in early 2008 they protested sexism in universities by re-enacting x-rated scenes of inequality in the classroom. media reports have seized upon these street protests as the advent of a new kind of feminism. however, this may be an overestimation of the situation and a gross mishandling of the complexity of gender issues and their development over the course of ukraine’s independence. while the group’s leader, anna hutsol, has publicly stated that femen’s main motive is to spotlight the negative impact that sex tourism and prostitution have on ukraine, this message often seems to get overshadowed by photos highlighting the “showier” elements of the group’s nude protest tactics. as distracting as such media reports may come across, hutsol claims that femen’s topless protests are absolutely necessary as the quickest way to draw attention to the exploitation of ukrainian women. towards these ends, the group maintains a broad campaign across russian, ukrainian, and english language social media sites. given the urgency and breadth of their campaign, it hardly comes as a surprise that hutsol hopes to form femen into a parliamentary party by 2013—europe’s “first all-women party.” tracking femen in the media and on their own sites since their formation in 2008, i have observed the creative methods with which the group satirizes symbols tied to post-soviet and post-orange discourse in unexpected ways. i believe that to categorize femen as a simple ricochet of the orange revolution would be to severely limit their story. in thinking best how to research the group, i decided i needed to consult with them and other feminists in ukraine in order to better understand the landscape of their movement in light of broader gendered discourses. through my efforts, i hope to offer a new probing of recurrent issues for feminisms of many stripes, centering my inquiry on questions concerning equality and difference. the following are my initial postfieldwork notes toward a deepening transnational feminist discussion. during summer 2011 i was able to devote six weeks to full-time research in ukraine in the cities of lviv, kyiv, and kharkiv thanks to support from the ann arbor center for the education of women, the u-m center for russian, eurasian, and east european studies and the department for slavic languages and literatures at the university of michigan. i split my time between four weeks in kyiv and two weeks in kharkiv interviewing leaders in the academic, ngo, and social sectors on how they view feminist work in contemporary ukraine; femen’s impact on this work (if any); and in which directions future possibilities for women’s activism might go. i conducted a total of 14 face-to-face interviews with 12 individuals. many of our discussions ended up being informal conversations in which my informants shared information about themselves as both activists and scholars. a few of our conversations also took place in small group settings due to the fact many of the women i spoke with knew each other as colleagues and, in some cases, as members of the same activist groups and/or ngos. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 216 some of the major organizations involved in gender work represented by my informants were: krona, heinrich böll stiftung, salus, alliance, iglyo, la strada, gurt, and the domestic violence awareness campaign “zalyshajsya lyudynoyu.” during my trip i was also very fortunate to meet with gender scholars tamara martsenyuk, maria dmytriyeva, olga plakhotnik, and maria mayerchyk from kyiv-mohiyla and kharkiv universities. a student from kyiv-mohiyla named nadia parfan and her fellow activist, galina yarmanova, were also instrumental in teaching me about their work in “ofenzywa,” a new feminist organization in kyiv formulated with ties to the new left and march 8 th with an emphasis on women’s labor rights. tamara martsenyuk also shared her own work in “ofenzywa” and introduced me to two members of the lgbtq organization “insight” in kyiv. while in kharkiv i also met with tatiana isaieva, the founder and director of a new gender museum funded by the local city administration and the global fund for women. although isaieva was careful to distance her own work from femen’s activities, she did mention anna hutsol as a fellow participant in a leadership training seminar funded by the u.s. state department several years ago. the close ties within gender studies and activism communities in ukraine became a consistent theme across nearly all of the conversations i had this summer. despite the tightly knit nature of gender work in ukraine, at times it was difficult to schedule meetings. one limiting factor to my research was the time of year in which i conducted these interviews. anna hutsol was initially unable to meet with me in july due to a trip to crimea that she had planned for herself and several members of femen. luckily, hutsol and i were eventually able to meet in august in kyiv in the bar-restaurant near maidan nezalezhnosti that she calls her “office” due to the many meetings she holds there with femen’s activists. i owe a great deal to everyone who took the time to discuss femen, feminism, and their own work with me both in person and online. nearly all of the individuals i interviewed indicated growing concerns about how the rhetoric of ukraine’s women’s rights movement would be received by western audiences unfamiliar with the post-soviet context. in an important sense, my respondents’ concerns correlate with the observations that some scholars have pointed out in work on the impact of international ngos on local ukrainian activists in the 1990s (hrycak 2006, phillips 2008). large ngos, mostly funded by the e.u., continue to support the majority of research and social projects on pre-defined notions of “gender” and “women” in ukraine. differentiation, described by sarah d. phillips as a process in which activists and the state prioritize, and respond to, sociopolitical issues within a shifting distribution of needs across varied populations, continues to shape the funding structures of social projects in ukraine. with this dynamic in mind, it may be worth remembering, while some of the activists in phillips’ study were able to position themselves as agents of differentiation, other projects lost funding within a shifting social and economic stratification that privileged western donors’ predefined discourses of need. these privileged discourses were those that tended to table more localized articulations of need for projects that more directly resonated with the priorities of western funding agencies (phillips 2008). in my observations this summer, the efforts of grassroots activist groups like “ofenzywa” and organizations like “insight” in kyiv that work across sectors and utilize social media have introduced fresh dimensions to the potential for women's activism, as well as lgbtq rights, based on more locally-scaled definitions of need. 1 many of the women i spoke with, most notably those from the group “ofenzywa,” emphasized their attempt to delineate the unique concerns of ukrainian women by representing their interests in transnational conversations operating within a federation of ngos and academic institutions. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 217 despite femen’s ability to draw attention to an issue, their global iconicity in media networks has both highlighted and fractured the idea of a cohesive feminist movement in ukraine. as i met with several scholars and activists and asked each of them about femen, their increasingly contradictory stances toward the group made me think more deeply about the reach of femen’s publicity. while our conversations touched upon the “local” in femen’s performances in reference to the national symbolic, i became more interested in how femen interacts with their audience: how they view other feminists and how feminists view them, and in what ways they mobilize artistic convention to canvass for their campaign. with the group’s selffashioning in mind, my research questions centered on the visual and technological cultures femen employs to disseminate their performances to a mass audience. instead of approaching femen as a categorically “feminist” group linked to a “wave” of new activism as i’d begun thinking about them when i first read about their formation in 2008, i started to explore their agency as provocateurs. i mean provocateurs in the sense that femen’s activities almost always reflect a concerted effort to attract attention for the sake of attention. this summer i began to wonder whether in ukraine’s increasingly conservative climate, projects like femen that prioritize visibility by going beyond “acceptable” feminist practices that cohere with 2 nd and 3 rd wave feminist theory might produce valuable tension and expand our expectations of what we think of as feminist action. 2 encountering resistance to the idea that femen might be read as a feminist avant-garde, i asked several ukrainian intellectuals why femen's controversial, topless protests should necessarily compromise the group's integrity as part of a wider movement? to a degree, femen's artistic "spectacle" and very clever use of political parody, combined with their social capital in both street and new media contexts, renders them unprecedented as a protest group in the classical liberal sense. in furthering my project, i ask: what would it mean to stop arguing over whether femen’s members are “good” feminists, and instead, to consider them critically as a performance group with a political constituency? in the following, i examine the implications of approaching femen this way, drawing preliminary conclusions about anna hutsol’s project as an experiment in both political performance and the forging of new leadership styles. i also address the body image at work in femen’s protests as theoretically at odds with notions of female emancipation and how this image might be re-conceptualized as an offshoot of the group’s performance strategy. in considering femen beyond exhibitionism, hutsol’s example may simply be an attempt to form leaders from a new generation while also, perhaps inadvertently, provoking greater pluralism within feminist studies and practices in ukraine. the body question during my fieldwork i conducted interviews with a variety of women who participate in femen and the ukrainian feminist movement at large. in each interview, i broached the question of how to square the fact that nearly all of femen’s active members resemble runway models. indeed, there is substantial debate among ukrainian feminists about the body image being portrayed in femen’s protests. the result of my attempt to find an explanation for femen’s approach led to very little consensus among the ukrainian scholars i spoke with on this issue. some have argued that femen’s strategy deliberately targets the male gaze in an attempt to increase the visibility of feminist issues among those populations least likely to problematize sex tourism. those in support of this view assert that femen employs the female body as a tool for anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 218 resistance, posturing for a consumerist audience the denigrated image of that audience’s consumption (mayerchyk 2010, rubchak 2011, lisyutkina 2011). others argue along the lines of audre lorde from a position familiar to feminist theorists concerned with women of color; that the oppressed cannot dismantle their master’s house with the tools of the master. the “tools of the master” in these approximations identify femen’s idealized sex appeal as a gesture guided by patriarchal hierarchies (gapova and soroka 2011, dmytriyeva 2011). although rhetorically quite close to postcolonial discourse about race, femen’s complicated racial undertones have yet to be directly discussed. and yet, race is a paradigmatic site where a more nuanced view of femen could be made possible. when formulating questions about racialized bodies, the viability of femen’s project becomes even more contingent upon interpretive practices. by one logic, femen’s privileging of a white body ideal as the banner of women’s freedom negates systemic change by excluding all others. to be fair, there is one african-ukrainian member in femen, 3 and although this member does not participate in femen’s street protests, her particular decision may be due to the need to avoid unwanted negative attention and possible assault. also to the group’s credit, last year femen introduced an online “body art” photography campaign in which this member of color and another, very pregnant, activist posed in photographs alongside the now famous activist-personalities, oleksandra and inna shevchenko. by way of social media, these two “alternative” bodies—a black woman and a pregnant woman—entered femen’s aesthetic and extended the group’s discursive potential as an inclusive movement. this initiative may be read as a possible concession to those who criticize the group’s privileging of a singular body image. however, it is also notable that these two participants nonetheless still occupy a posture suggesting sexual desire; both resemble pop stars with striking looks well matched to the group’s attractive coterie. in many ways, femen’s attempt to problematize race through conventional sex appeal only further subjugates the minority position by reinforcing dominant consumerist appetites. although there does remain the possibility that this recent body art initiative could widen to become an inclusive space for all body types, thus far, the campaign’s emphasis on an ideal remains dangerously close to the tokenism displayed toward ethnic minorities and others throughout mainstream media. 4 all the same, even though femen does adopt much of the gender stereotyping prevalent in mainstream marketing, their ultimate incentive seems to trump personal profit and enterprise. in thinking deeply about the body question, i would put forth that the fact femen’s protesters are almost exclusively chic, white women in their early twenties becomes less inimical if we consider how they typecast themselves into role-playing an oppressed female ideal in a theatre of the absurd. it would then follow that the ways in which femen props up their typecast characters in public domains—on the streets and online—politicizes their aesthetic by underscoring the fact that women in general are typecast into certain roles. in other words, femen’s “stagings” in which they juxtapose lithe female bodies with dramatic scenes of violence could be understood as a mimetic technique with high emotional impact through which to convey the power inequalities between genders. no doubt, in asking whether we can understand femen this way, we also risk condoning the group’s reception among those viewers upon whom the subtleties of femen’s project may be lost. it is significant that within their re-enactment of conditions of exploitation, a good portion of femen’s audience seemingly remains blind to the limits of the stage. analyzing comments from their online followers, who are predominantly male, reveals that there are indeed glaring limitations to using the female body as a “transmission of ideas” within a populist anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 219 framework (mayerchyk 2010). in many online forums, the group remains exhibitionist and easily interpreted as a reinforcement of the commercial bias that the only bodies worth putting on display are those belonging to young, lanky blondes. we might ask ourselves, then, why a “display” is necessary at all? it very well may be that femen’s decision to foreground their movement through select bodies furthers the hyper-real elements of performance-parody by ironically propping up a simulacrum of gender ideals in unexpected contexts. it is this framing of the “perfect” female body, held sacred by society, with laughter and shame that makes femen controversial; and perhaps, also lends them a shred of political legitimacy beyond allegations that their actions merely comprise cheap showmanship or reactionary antics. while in kyiv, i was fortunate enough to interview femen’s leader, anna hutsol, about her group and their ideas. anticipating my ambivalence on the issue, when i asked her if women with nonstandard bodies might join femen’s street actions, hutsol replied with an anecdote: there’s an older woman who supports us. she’s 68 and a mother of one of our activists. i was surprised when she came to me and told me, “when my neighbors ask, ‘olga how are you not ashamed?’ i reply them that i am doing something for my country while they just sit on a bench all day and do nothing. i tell them that they are the ones who should be ashamed.” many elderly people give us their support and tell us that if they were younger they would participate in our protests. the idea that older people can’t protest because our protesters have to have a certain beauty only, well, this isn’t true. strong women can’t be timid in ukraine. considering the prejudice that an old body is not as beautiful as at 16; well, there are neighbors, relatives, etc. who think old women can’t yell at protests or involve their grandkids in them. and to face all of this is to face more prejudice than if you are 20, 22, 25, or 26 because at that age you might have nothing to lose. (interview and translation by the author, august 22, 2011) most telling here is not that femen’s leader claims to invite anyone to protest, but that she is concerned with keeping alive the interest to do so. in my interview with her, hutsol identified the factors that exclude non-ideal bodies from her protests as stemming from larger socio-cultural issues in ukraine, rather than the structure of femen itself. the critical edge to this rhetorical strategy preserves femen’s self-positioning as an opposition group, while refusing accountability for their dependence on a sleek public image connected with the exclusive nature of their day-today activities (the group has a pr manager, fan page, and does endorsements). by limiting the “cast” of performers in the show to a slim, trim troupe of 20 or so, hutsol preserves their celebrity status and bolsters their marketability. this in turn personalizes their protests in a way that reinforces their iconicity at the expense of reifying and branding feminism as a product, to be sold rather than accessed in open dialogue. this begs the question: can femen copyright what belongs, or at least should belong, to every woman— that is, feminism? one effect of femen’s controversial and hyper-populist self-positioning within the media has provided a heuristic through which others engaged in gender work in ukraine are now re-investigating the limits and possibilities of the term “feminism” in the ukrainian context. according to maria mayerchyk and olga plakhotnik, the authors of the article that first sparked the controversy over femen in krytyka, these debates are taking place at a crucial breaking point in scholarship. in their view, the heated discussion over femen illustrates a deeper polarization between the left and right within the academy. for those on the far left, femen is doing little anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 220 more than selling their bodies for a profit (there is also speculation the group receives support from clandestine sources). for those on the right, femen denigrates the nation by overturning national symbols and supporting anti-clerical efforts. on both sides the arguments skeptical of femen’s rights to feminism seem to be at base an estimation of losses: lost theoretical cohesion, lost gender equality, and lost interventions in policymaking. despite these estimates, all seem to agree that, on an important level, femen’s sexcharged image is a response to a growing neo-conservative strain in post-socialist society. anna hutsol conveys a similar notion in her reply to the political right: some say we are sexist because they believe the use of a woman’s body is something shameful, forbidden, something that should remain for men’s eyes only. to this i say: this is my body. to me this is not sexism at all, for me, in this way, freedom is no longer forbidden. (interview and translation by the author, august 22, 2011) from hutsol’s perspective, it would seem that the female body constitutes the ultimate litmus test for freedom. embedded within her words is a conundrum between “sexism” and “shame,” illustrating her take on the paradox between public and private ownership over the female body. now familiar territory in feminist theory, this paradox constitutes the core of the debates around femen. this may be why many of the conversations i had about the group returned to the same question that also dominates the critical material on femen to date: “is femen feminist?”as my discussions continued to develop, both with self-identifying feminists and those who reject the term, the idea of labeling femen as “feminist” became less interesting and less relevant. one of the activists from “ofenzywa” i spoke with posed an invaluable rhetorical question: “why do so many of the debates around femen lead to fighting over a marginal title? over who gets to be a ‘feminist’ and who does not?” from a cynic’s standpoint, we might consider gramci’s intellectual and his property in response to this question. the central point here is that intellectuals secure power for themselves by competing for ownership over concepts that maintain cultural hegemony. by the same token, intellectuals are also forced into competition over the ideas that they believe should, for ethical reasons, become hegemonic. perhaps not readily apparent, i think this activist’s observation of competing “feminisms” may positively respond to nuances in the ukrainian context in ways that account for its multiple pasts; perhaps the least complex categories of analysis being post-colonial and post-revolutionary. art, or business and politics anna hutsol’s background in marketing is evident in femen’s media-based format, namely their affinity for social networks, the blogosphere, and savvy documentaries. yet despite her cutting-edge combination of new media and creativity in the name of deeply troubling social issues, during my conversation with her, hutsol admitted to being disengaged with feminist theory, history, and cultural studies— all spaces she associates with “the academy.” it would seem that for femen, engineering the term “feminist” is less of an occupation concerned with the theoretical implications of gender differentiation and equality, than it is a masquerade without a systemic vocabulary. perhaps reason for concern, hutsol’s disregard for openly discussing sexuality and gender with knowledge experts in these areas undermines her intervention in the intellectual work being done in these fields. at the same time, to her credit, hutsol’s leadership anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 221 is something to be admired, even if she is unusual in her approach to feminist practices. at only 27 years old, she has managed to hold her group together in adverse contexts for over three years. at base, her philosophy is democratic. at its most complex, hutsol grapples with leadership, asking how to shape new leaders from within a generation whose experience drastically differs from that of its parents’. by the same token, her publicizing of ukrainian legislation adversely affecting women has also facilitated academic feminisms in ukraine, if only in ironically provoking a call for greater pluralism. for example, femen cooperated with other feminist and gender-rights activist groups “ofenzywa,” “insight” and anarchofeminists to gain access to and protest at the fourth national congress of bioethics on april 10, 2010 in which the national academy of sciences, the ministry of health, and ukrainian church leaders convened to discuss the nation’s pending ban on abortion. nearly all of the women i spoke with cited this particular moment of cooperation between feminist groups as an example of plurality within the women’s rights movement in ukraine. of course, the micro-publics of feminist thought in ukraine that differ due to disparate regional histories and project funding structures present their own challenges to a unified movement (rewakowicz 2009). given these structures, this may partly be why when i asked her about the term feminism, anna hutsol distinguished herself by replying that she is not a feminist in the classical sense: 5 as for feminism, i think this question belongs to researchers and historians. i think i generally agree with those dear people who say that women have rights, for example, that i have a right to protest. whether rights are radical or not radical, justified or unjustified, is a different question altogether. people like myself who say women have the right to do what they want are in a way feminist, slightly so, but feminist. (interview and translation by the author, august 22, 2011) situating herself outside of institutional knowledge, hutsol makes an important claim for her group’s autonomy. perhaps her indifference lends us a new category of analysis in which we might consider what it means for femen to engage by also disengaging. due to the highly sophisticated rhetorical design of femen’s “actions” or “happenings,” i find it valuable to explore femen as hutsol explains them—as somewhere between performance and the market: “i think if you can sell cookies in this way [through mass appeal] why not also push for social issues using the same method? i don’t see anything wrong with that” (hutsol in mayerchyk 2010). at once entertaining and imposing, hutsol’s marketing strategy is indeed novel in that it has held the international media circuit’s attention for so long. femen is now a brand name, despite the fact that very little legislation has changed as the result of their direct action. it is no wonder some have begun asking whether the group lies far enough outside the market not to be swayed by material incentive. however, considering that most of femen’s members are from the educated classes, and the motivations by which some of them, such as oleksandra shevchenko, have given up other job opportunities for femen, indicates the presence of incentives far deeper than mere financial gain (shevchenko was dismissed from her newspaper desk job for protesting with femen). there is speculation that the group receives the majority of its support from a large media group called kp media. yet, when i asked hutsol about funding, she firmly replied that nearly all of femen’s monetary support is donated, many from international “fans,” especially anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 222 among the ukrainian canadian diaspora. in my future research, i would like to learn more about the specific types and sources of support that the group relies on. if not business, then is femen’s experiment one of performance? political performativity? some scholars have recently suggested that femen used to be more rooted in performance art, but that the group’s vision has devolved and become fragmented. although nearly all of femen’s protests dealt with sex tourism in 2008 and 2009, in 2010 they began protesting issues indirectly related to ukrainian women: the chernobyl commemoration, the stoning of a muslim woman, and the japanese earthquake, to name a few. viewing the trajectory of femen’s format, there is also a striking turn in 2010 in which they began outsourcing much of their street-performance actions to textual and photographic representations of “protest” on their blog, facebook, and twitter accounts. ten minute street-performances in real-time were traded for five-second photo ops that the group could frame with comments and disseminate in virtual space. with the rise of femen’s global popularity corresponding directly with the rise of internet use in ukraine, i would suggest that the group has adapted their format to fit the shifting nature of their audience. while it may be true that the diffuse themes of their protest-performances in virtual time have, on the surface, somewhat splintered their original platform, it may still be too early to tell whether this fragmentation will lead to futility. there is also a likely possibility that this shift could re-consolidate femen’s emphasis on ukrainian sex tourism if they are able to conceptually link their performances back to this theme without over-reaching, or over-catering to their now extensive global network. it would seem, then, quite useful to depart from post-soviet political analyses that might classify femen as a liberal social movement; especially twentieth century definitions of protest that tend to view “resistance” as individuals reacting to an ordered structure, as civil society confronting a corrupt state. i hold that studies in transnational feminism would gain methodological ground by doing away with the temptation to contextualize femen’s feminist potential against a monolithic state, the state serving as an allegory for patriarchy. although femen’s political incentives 6 may align with one understanding of protest as resistance, a wider definition of politics could help us account for the more nuanced aspects of the group’s project. it may be more productive to think of femen as partisan only in the sense that their aesthetics constitute their politics. in other words, the group’s ownership over a recognizable set of images and icons signals change in those images’ tension with more dominant institutional structures. in turn, the dominant order being one which expresses itself through aesthetic arrangement; or cultural hegemony that may be undermined by overturning, defacing, or estranging the mainstream images constructed to maintain order (rancière 2010). this is a key distinction from other readings of femen that reverse this relationship and argue the following: that femen’s politics (primarily the criminalization of sex tourism) determine the form of their protests; that carnivalesque performance somehow best fits the post-soviet matrix in which glam-feminism is the only way to draw attention to an issue. as this line of argument goes, the aspects that make femen shocking somehow apportion the logical outcome of an organic east-west social paradox. by contrast, a valuable question at stake in femen’s case may be less about authenticity and more about affiliation. for femen, demonstrated collaboration with the academy, including academic feminism, detracts from their social agency as provocateurs. femen’s parody fosters their indifference. the approach to glam-feminism as an index of organic authenticity falls short, considering that the anti-bourgeois codes in glam-parody are also global signs in a much broader, worldwide anti-capitalist movement. true, there are aspects of femen that localize their glamanthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 223 parody, namely those that highlight the sex trade in ukraine and the paradox of the nation’s soviet-orange-european juncture. in femen’s glam-protest, it may be that the design precedes the outcome in a fine interweave of performance with politics. if it is true that all politics constitute the performativity of an imagined public, then femen’s greatest impact may not be in the issues they target. rather, their discursive intervention may lie more in the hyper-publics they design on the streets and online, with their protest narrative continually modified by participants. in this understanding of the group, the line between fiction and reality is consciously manipulated. in each performance, femen reinforces their overall aesthetic; part of this aesthetic is that their costumes, slogans, and internet postings are all methodically designed to look spontaneous, to appear organic. in every stunt, femen furthers their recognizable sense of humor through a range of genres, characters, and costumes, all the while engaging a set of signature issues in an evolving play on current affairs. meanwhile, the glamorous, sexed-up aspects of femen’s movement serve to broaden their digestibility, both affixing and underlining their longer, more critical, narrative. downplaying their mass-appeal, hutsol notes the deep ideological well embedded in femen’s project: nothing will change if women remain timid and quiet. in principle our ideas, our protests, are full of ideology and philosophy. a philosophy of life. men who are looking for something like a show or a cabaret can go see those, but we’re doing something else. we’re involved in protest. (interview and translation by the author, august 22, 2011) underlining her group’s uniqueness, hutsol is careful to distinguish femen from massentertainment by underscoring their political core. in one sense, considering that much “resistance” during the soviet era took the form of oblique humor (kenney 2002), femen’s play on 20 th century protest icons 7 and ukrainian national symbols cuts against the grain of a solidified national identity. put another way, approaching femen as an avant-garde group that satirizes mass-entertainment (the line between art and protest being blurry) allows for a more global contextualization of their politics. femen’s art being anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, and anti-hegemonic, their topless satire has set the precedent for copycat protests localized in urban centers as disparate as detroit, london, toronto, and moscow. 8 pms: post-maidan syndrome while i was researching femen this august, yulia tymoshenko, ukraine’s first female prime minister and popular leader of the orange revolution, was arrested for not “behaving in court.” the arrest soon led to charges by president yanukovych that tymoshenko had brokered an underhanded gas deal with putin during her time in office. following statements issued by high-level officials in e.u. and u.s. diplomatic missions to ukraine petitioning for more transparency in ukraine’s judicial process, i also watched as femen caught the tailwind of tymoshenko’s press to further their own interpretation of the event. with characteristic timeliness and creativity, anna hutsol criticized the former prime minister’s construction as a martyred opposition leader in a satirical open letter to the ukrainian ministry of justice. the letter’s ambiguous rhetoric diffuses support for tymoshenko’s “false” saintly image as a strategic position reinforced by tymoshenko herself, the ministry, the media, and the public. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 224 mockingly, hutsol’s letter offers tymoshenko a job as a femen activist with compensation commensurate with other activists: a low quality of life in a crumbling dorm room. the document concludes with the proclamation that a lukyanivka prison cell would provide tymoshenko with better care than a life of truly attempting to serve the public good. this clever twist on the letter’s seemingly inviting tone rhetorically foregrounds femen activists as public representatives, offset by the double exposure of tymoshenko as the arch-villain of direct democracy. in line with popular sentiment, hutsol’s letter also implies that tymoshenko is incapable of anything more than agitprop, and it is therefore a stark reply to the west’s coverage of the trial as the persecution of a pre-existing liberal order in ukraine. hutsol’s conflicting characterization of tymoshenko was instantly posted on websites throughout the world and commented on by users within a day of the trial’s commencement. femen’s critical response to the trial, coupled with the range and speed of the letter’s transmission to their global following, illustrates how the group has become a global conduit for information about ukrainian politics for audiences seeking a perspective outside mainstream channels. for thousands of their followers, femen has become a recognized source for reports on ukrainian life and culture, even in cases where the issues at hand may not always directly relate to the struggle for women’s rights. not coincidentally, three weeks into tymoshenko’s trial, two of femen’s members landed in the same prison complex as tymoshenko herself. the group had been indicted on independence day after protesting “censorship” by scything a large flowerbed on official state property. observing all of this up close, i revisited the questions i saw poorly answered in western media: is femen really a post-orange phenomenon? do they constitute some identifiable form of resistance? while i am still not entirely sure how to answer these questions, i feel the need to advocate for alternate approaches to them, approaches that go beyond conventional understandings of protest as a means to an end. perhaps in the case of femen, the crucial power struggle at stake here cannot be articulated within a typology of resistance, but in understanding the modes in which they elude and stoke debate in the interest of retaining their following. in recent months, the group has turned more and more of its attention toward alleviating social apathy and stagnation. hutsol explains this new direction as her response to the ways she thinks complacency weakens society and blinds women by subjugating their interests to nation-building projects. her latest endeavor consists of an abridged reality t.v. series of short videos called “pms: post-maidan syndrome” (livejournal august 18, 2011). as the name suggests, the videos lampoon national anxieties surrounding the orange revolution via anxieties about sex. each video features femen’s leading star activist, oleksandra shevchenko, as she provokes random passersby in kyiv to undress “for their country.” the series includes men and women of all ages, but features a fully-clothed shevchenko in the central role: a celebrity smiling at every moment, even when some of her subjects angrily yell at her for having “prostituted” herself in the name of false values. femen’s street actions in these videos extend their virtual satire into a representation of real life, providing a meta-analysis in which more “traditional” resistance strategies (i.e. social mobilization via marches, petitions, etc.) are discarded for the theatrical, suspended play on their audiences’ expectations that has made femen famous. in order to maximize their opportunities to generate satire through scandal, femen times and shapes their protest-performances with key junctures in the development of ukrainian national identity. in doing so, they draw out the uncomfortable contradictions in attempting to come to terms with a simultaneously post-colonial and post-revolutionary past. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 225 despite the many social stigmas that surround feminism in the ukrainian context, anna hutsol has now amassed an arsenal of social capital with which she is able simultaneously to advocate for human rights and seemingly irrelevant statements with equal ardor. perhaps this ability to retain a constituency is her greatest political achievement to date. 9 and, while femen’s unorthodox tactics may unwittingly bar them from co-operating with other groups, including some lgbtq activists who see femen as a distraction, their intervention in gender activism cannot be ignored. although rushing to label femen “feminist” right away as many media outlets have done—or to reject them outright—would seem to conform to our instincts as feminist thinkers, i think this approach undercuts the more interesting nuances of their story. perhaps we have a lot left to learn from femen as their movement changes and they learn from themselves; continuing to embed their words, their images, and their bodies in history. in conclusion, observing the development of different strands of feminisms in ukraine, some pressing questions with much broader implications remain. has the divide between the academy and grassroots initiatives become greater than the divide between nations in dialogue about women? how well does building iconicity around a social issue translate that issue to a mass audience? are there limits to the performativity of politics, and at which point might the form of a campaign overtake its content? by what ethical standards and negotiations do we attest to the term feminism and is there room for femen? in the coming years, i plan to grapple with and build upon these questions, keeping femen at the forefront of my investigation into feminist discourse and the implications that arise when considering them as a performance group with a political constituency. in the relatively short term, i intend to visit ukraine next march (2012) to observe how femen and other groups like “ofenzywa” mobilize around march 8 th , international women’s day. luck and funds withstanding, i also hope to spend a more extended period of time in kyiv next year interacting with, documenting, and observing femen’s actions as they unfold. with an eye turned toward ukraine’s global context, my ultimate aim is to help sustain a conversation about feminism through the prism of activism that spans both academic disciplines and international borders. 1 “ofenzywa,” a feminist organization with close ties to kyiv-mohiyla academy, was founded in 2011 partly toward the reinvigoration of march 8 th as a political movement. “insight,” also based in kyiv, was founded in 2008 and focuses on sexuality, gender, and transgender education and stigma-reduction projects. 2 olga plakhotnik and maria mayerchyk at the kharkiv center for gender studies characterized femen’s outdoor protests as both an extension of street activism during the orange revolution and an interrogation of the public/private divide in gendered thinking. 3 angelina diash joined femen in 2010. see starr (2010). 4 the online body art campaign features a contest in which viewers may vote for their favorite pair of painted breasts from a set of photographs of femen’s activists. 5 while her ambivalent response to the term feminism might also be read as post-feminist, given the unique history of feminism under socialism, it may be more accurate to consider hutsol’s response as an attempt to highlight her generation’s particular challenge in reclaiming the idea. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 226 6 anna hutsol has openly claimed that femen will register as a party in the 2012 elections, although in my recent interview with her she stated that a “lack of funds” may prevent them from doing so (august 22, 2011). 7 oleksandra shevchenko and two other activists were featured on the cover of a men’s magazine in underwear boasting the icon from the rolling stones’ forty licks tour. the trio posed in a stance identical to the black panthers’ 1972 olympic salute. the costume for most of femen’s protests—a traditional ukrainian flower headdress (vinnichuk) alongside torn jeans, ratty t-shirts, and peace signs—juxtaposes an old symbol of maidenhood with the unbound energy of a “wild child” of the 1960s to challenge, revise, and revive the ukrainian national idea. 8 a russian version of femen sprang up in early 2011, but was publicly denounced by anna hutsol as a right-wing puppet movement in support of putin with no connection to her own group. the russian art group “voyna” has been compared to femen in their artistic approach to politics; however, the ukrainian group “hudrada” might be a closer analog. the new international phenomenon of “slutwalks” also adopts a performative aesthetic-protest in which participants dress in revealing clothing to protest against explaining rape through a woman’s appearance. these marches began on april 3, 2011 in toronto, canada and have spread throughout the world. 9 olga plakhotnik and maria mayerchyk have aptly noted that for femen, “a successful protest is a popular protest” (mayerchyk and plakhotnik 2010). references dmytriyeva, maria. 2011. femen na tli hrudej. krytyka 15(1-2): 20-23. femen livejournal. august 18, 2011. podruky y na poruky. september 1, 2011. pms. accessed september 14, 2011. http://femen.livejournal.com. gapova, elena and yulia soroka. 2011. hola svoboda i tila na drabyni. krytyka 15(3-4): 17-18. hrycak, alexandra. 2006. foundation feminism and the articulation of hybrid feminisms in post-socialist ukraine. east european politics and societies 20(1): 69-100. isaieva, tatiana. 2011. gender museum. accessed september 14, 2011. http://gender.at.ua kenney, padraic. 2002. a carnival of revolution: central europe 1989. princeton: princeton university press. lisyutkina, larisa. 2011. fenomen femen: malyj peresuvnyj vybuxovyj prystrij made in ukraine. krytyka 15(3-4):18-19. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 227 mayerchyk, maria and olga plakhotnik. 2010. radykal’ni femen i novyj zhinochyj aktyvizm. krytyka 11(11-12): 7-10. phillips, sarah d. 2008. women’s social activism in the new ukraine: development and the politics of differentiation. bloomington: indiana university press. rancière, jacques. 2010. dissensus: on politics and aesthetics. london: continuum. rewakowicz, maria g and alexandra hrycak. 2009. feminism, intellectuals, and the formation of micro-publics in postcommunist ukraine. studies in east european thought. 61(4): 309-333. rubchak, marian j. ed. 2011. mapping difference: the many faces of women in contemporary ukraine. new york: berghahn books. starr, terrell. 2010. blacks in ukraine. the crisis magazine. summer: 21-25. 64 anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 a utopia of eurasia: the uses and abuses of a concept – a counter-reply to chris hann alessandro testa, university of vienna this piece contains a counter-reply to “declining europe: a reply to alessandro testa,” which chris hann wrote in response to my article “on eurasia and europe.” my counter-reply is woven together with an extensive review of a long paper containing hann’s more recent article “a concept of eurasia” and the numerous replies that furnish the latter. this paper should therefore be considered as part of a series consisting of: hann’s work about the concept of eurasia until 2016; my aforementioned article; and hann’s counter-reply and his latest article on the subject.1 while i thank chris hann for having engaged with my arguments and provided a reply to my article, i cannot overlook the serious flaws in the line of his argumentation. moreover, since hann’s counter-reply ends with a wish to consider his “a concept of eurasia” as the reference work on the matter, i have undertaken a critical reading of it. what i try to do in this piece is to show why the notion of eurasia as developed and used for his heuristic purposes by chris hann does not stand on its own two feet, as several other scholars also believe (among whom are some of those who were invited to write a reply to “a concept of eurasia”). in fact, in spite of hann’s enthusiasm about his concept of eurasia, there seems to be a lively company of sceptics found in the disciplines of history and social anthropology. “a concept of eurasia” (hann 2016) partly recalibrates and reformulates some of the arguments developed in “towards a maximally inclusive concept of eurasia” (hann 2014a) and in previous papers. it shows a less combative attitude towards trying to make the controversial concept a new theoretical standard in thinking and practising socio-cultural and historical anthropology. it is also less audacious: it seems to be holding its breath, surely because of the strict space constraints of a journal such as current anthropology. in other words, hann’s definitive article about eurasia to date seems to be more modest. as günther schlee has written: “on the whole, hann seems to have been forced to abandon some of his stronger propositions” (schlee 2016: 18), which can also be deduced from some stylistic details. for instance, terms preparing the reader to be exposed to a new grand theory – such as “imperative” and “maximally inclusive” – have been dropped. most of the problems of hann’s earlier formulations have nevertheless remained the same. we find the first one – and perhaps one of the most serious – in the second page of his latest article, where hann, after having introduced the “civilisational interconnectedness” of the eurasian landmass, an interconnectedness intensifying “from roughly 1000 bc,” writes that “eurasia is simply the name for a ʻsupracontinentalʼ unity forged over the past three millennia” and that “recognition of eurasia is no impediment to supplementary spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural categorizations within the larger entity” (hann 2016: 2). here, i will not repeat my position about this alleged “unity,” because it is sufficiently developed in “on eurasia and europe,” and my mind has changed little on the matter since then. i will only highlight that the “jump” hann makes in the new article between “interconnectedness” and “unity” is little justified. it is not only a semantic décalage, but also an ontological one, for it has an evident reifying force. hann seems to acknowledge the problematic 1 testa 2015, hann 2015, hann 2016. for previous works by chris hann about eurasia, cfr. testa 2015 and hann 2016. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 65 nature of asserting the “unity” of eurasia when he writes, a few lines below the aforementioned words, that “this unity must not be exaggerated” (ibid.); the problem is that the word “unity” suggests very little else other than unity, which can hardly be “exaggerated:” either there is unity or there is not (the problematic nature of this “interconnectedness” becoming “unity” is also raised in de pina-cabral 2016: 16 and gingrich 2016: 18 – especially in the latter). other examples can be made of the fact that, in spite of his pouring old wine in new wineskins, the basic flaws maiming hann’s concept of eurasia remain the same, the most important of which is that little historical and empirical evidence is presented about said “civilisational unity.” apart from features and common developments – important as they may be – dating back to prehistoric or ancient times, the silk road,2 the welfare state and the age of real socialism,3 there is little keeping hann’s eurasia united. considering the agricultural revolution and the transformation of the axial ages as more impactful in the cultural developments of the landmass than what happened in the following three thousand years (up until the other “unifying” period of real socialism), it is no wonder that hann goes as far as to state that “at the eurasian level, too, the basic criteria of unity in diversity are met, once one extends the time frame appropriately. it goes without saying that the diversity is greater than in the case of germany or europe, in terms of languages, religions, kinship, cuisine, and all the other things routinely investigated by anthropologists. but these are details” (hann 2016: 24). i will leave it to the readers to decide whether these are only mere details, or whether the aforementioned things are only the details of a broader picture or rather the constitutional yet undervalued elements of the picture, as i am more disposed to believe. it should also be highlighted that hann’s diachronic model in the (very) longue-durée is developed leaning extensively on the paradigm of the “axial age,”4 which is, however, problematic and widely debated (as stressed in gingrich 2016: 15 and schlee 2016: 18).5 extending the time frame makes the picture bigger, no doubt about it, but not necessarily clearer or more convincing, because sometimes the more recent differences are actually those that count the most. stretching the historical time frame in the spasmodic search of continuity and “unity” pretending that cultural differentiation (language, religion, kinship, and other elements that hann deems secondary) is only epiphenomenal is not a very credible intellectual exercise, one which could eventually lead to anti-historical conclusions. the following four pages are devoted to a reprise and development of the chapter “historical, religious, and geographical dimensions” in “on eurasia and europe,” which was meant to show how problematic, from these standpoints, hann’s proposal was and still is. i will add further arguments in response to hann’s reply (hann 2015) and reformulation (hann 2016), which are still not convincing, in my opinion. in so doing, i will also comment upon and use arguments developed by other scholars in their reply to “a concept of eurasia,” because, although formulated 2 in his last article, hann insists a great deal on the silk road and its historical role in “interconnecting” different areas of the landmass. but so did, say, greek philosophy, roman expansion, and christianity, all of which are either omitted or undervalued by chris hann. but is the silk road really so much more important than those and other historical factors of connection and division, contact and contrast, among eurasian peoples? 3 hann’s theorisation about socialism and post-socialism is of course mature, and always acute. for instance, talking comparatively about the “social market” and welfare states, hann offers a provoking and inspiring “revisionist” commentary, again building on polanyi’s former theorization, according to which “the cold war in eurasia, commonly represented as a contest between totalitarian central planning on the one hand and liberal individualist free markets on the other, is thus better seen as a struggle between two variants of socialism, m-l-m [marxist-leninist-maoist] and ʿelectoralʾ” (hann 2016: 5). 4 another enthusiastic supporter of the paradigm of the “axial age” is the economic anthropologist david graeber (graeber 2011). 5 a substantial and rather convincing critique of the notion has recently been offered in assmann 2014. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 66 at different times and independently from one another, both their criticism and mine resonate in many respects. the historical and religious problems are interwoven. they correlate with the periodisation problem of the axial age, which has been mentioned previously. in his last article, in fact, hann talks of the “world religions” (among which is ebraism) “that can be traced back to the axial age” (which here is stretched to include christianity and islam, according to bellah and joas 2012; hann 2016: 4). this is the only conceptual framework used by hann to theorise about religions in eurasia. i had already pointed out the weaknesses of this approach (testa 2015: 66, 78-79), which hann named differently, referring to “abrahamic monotheisms” instead of “world religions” (i will return to this in a moment). hann replied to my critique as follows: “testa also disapproves of my reference to ʻabrahamic monotheisms.ʼ here i can only note that the pope himself (surely an honorary european though admittedly by origin a migrant from the global south) on a recent trip to africa proclaimed that christians and muslims were brothers and sisters” (hann 2015: 90). as far as i know, the bible says that the earth was created by a god a few thousand years ago – a time span that clashes with hann’s periodization about eurasia. so i would not use the pope or any other religious authority as the ultimate source for the history of religions in eurasia – to any extent, cherry-picking the pope’s opinions will not make many anthropologists and historians change their opinion about religions in eurasia. the point here, though, is not my disapproval, but the fact that the paradigm of “abrahamic monotheisms” has been profoundly criticised and abandoned in the most recent scientific (and not theological) scholarship about religion (hughes 2015). there are certainly good reasons, though, for the pope not to abandon it. moreover, i think that hann, in spite of what he wrote in his counter-reply, is very well aware of these problems, because in his 2016 work, he dropped any reference to “abrahamic monotheisms,” which we still find in his works from 2012 and 2014 (hann 2012: 92-93; hann 2014a: 9). another problem hann and i have concerns one of said “world religions:” christianity and the time of its development as a political power and identity catalyser, i.e. the middle ages. here, hann wrote of myself as “an author that evidently considers europeans with an eastern christian background to be at best second class, latching on as latecomers to an identity that, in the narrative that testa endorses, has its ʻcradleʼ in the latin christianity of the middle ages” (hann 2015: 89). this is not true: nowhere can a similar claim be found or deduced in any of my writings. besides accusing me unjustly, hann contradicts himself, because on the one hand he remarks, correctly, how for centuries the term christianitas (which had its centre in rome before the schism) was the most used word for europa (hann 2012: 90), then refuses the obvious consequence of this statement: that the medieval process of european identity construction was, indeed, mainly a matter of western christianity (which is not a “narrative” i endorse, but the conclusion of many scholars, especially historians: chabod 2010 [1961]; delanty 1995; le goff 2003). in the eminent opinion of william jordan: “europe was where latin christians – roman catholic christians – dominated the political and demographic landscape” (jordan 2002: 75), but of course hann is free not to believe in this or in any other well-established historical fact. so, acknowledging or supporting such a historical hypothesis, as i do, has nothing to do with considering today’s “europeans with an eastern christian background to be at best second class.” this is simply a false syllogism. in general, both in hann’s latest article and in hann’s “a concept of eurasia,” there seems to be little space for the consideration of the historical importance of religions. this can be explained with the same argument i used in my previous article: religions and religiously-grounded cultural differences more generally must be “underestimated” because historically (especially between the two “constitutional” events of the latter of hann’s mentioned works: the axial age and socialism) they constituted some of the most powerful factors of inner differentiation within eurasia. in fewer words, his assumption works like a sluice: the less important religion is made, the more “unity” anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 67 emerges from the landmass.6 this could be one of the reasons why, as david wengrow has noted, in hann’s eurasia “the middle east is mostly absent” (wengrow 2016: 20). the european middle ages could be absent for the very same reason, as i already stated before and have stated elsewhere.7 still, the “civilisational” and global historical importance of what scholars commonly refer to as the “middle ages” in europe and in the middle east can hardly be overestimated, let alone overlooked. this serious neglect is also manifest in an earlier piece on eurasia by hann, a chapter published in a reference work, companion to the anthropology of europe (hann 2012), where he writes: “the central narratives of europe were consolidated much later (than in ancient times), following the expansion of christianity. the assemblage uniting the fragmented peoples of eurasia’s western peninsula was known as christianitas, not europa (author’s emphasis). the primary “other” at this (unspecified) time was not the oriental but the pagan. with the coming of the reformation […]” (hann 2012). this is how hann summarises and treats a thousand years of european history between the late-antique and the reformation, i.e., the middle ages – not only hastily and insufficiently, but incorrectly. incorrect is in fact that europe “was known as christianitas, not europa,” for the two terms were interchangeable for centuries, and besides, europa was widely (and probably even commonly) used to describe “eurasia’s western peninsula” as early as in the late early middle ages, which is to say from the eighth century onwards (chabod 2010 [1961]; delanty 1995; jordan 2002; le goff 2003). incorrect, again, is that the “other” was the “pagan”, and not the “oriental.” “pagan” was a derogatory term used mainly to refer to polytheists during early christianity and then to all other non-christian peoples in europe, mainly in northern europe, up to the late middle ages (an “inner other,” just like the jews, the “heretics” and the “witches” later in time).8 the typical european late-medieval “others” were instead the “saracens” (latin “sarraceni” and similar variants in vulgar languages, or “moros” in the once islamic iberian lands), namely the muslim arabs (on these problems the reference work is l’occident médiéval face à l’islam: l’image de l’autre, sénac 2000).9 against them, the western christians took up arms and went to war several times during the late middle ages, namely during the crusades (one of which also turned against the eastern christians, with the sack of constantinople by an army led by the venetians, in 1204). besides, throughout medieval times, all these and other non-christian peoples were also more generally called infidels and “gentiles” by the clergy, the latter term used following the usage that the 6 besides the historical arguments, there are also ethnographic ones: in all the places where i have undertaken intensive ethnographic fieldwork (central italy, 2010-2011, czech republic, 2013-2014, catalonia, 2016-2018), religion is still an important factor in the construction of local and national identities: castelnuovo in italy with its variation of “southern catholicism” (de martino 2015 [1959]); solsona in catalonia for its relatively high number of believers (catholics) and for its being an episcopate in a very small town (circa 9.000 inhabitants); hlinsko v čechách, in the czech republic, where the (alleged) lack of religiosity of its population is often proudly remembered as one of the local (as well as national) characteristics – which is still a manner of using religion for identity purposes. 7 “my conclusion is that either he voluntarily neglects it for the sake of his argument of eurasian strong connectedness (unlike the ancient times, the middle ages has in fact been a long period of great differentiation between europe and asia, as is well known), or he simply underestimates the importance of medieval times” (testa 2015: 64). 8 the question of paganism as a descriptive but also normative category used for different purposes by different authors and social groups throughout western history is a vexata quaestio. a recent assessment of the historiographical debate is in cameron 2010, 15-25. see also testa 2009, dowden 2008, 20-23, and testa 2014. 9 one of the causes of the emergence of this division is that during the entire middle ages and early modern times the “saracens” first, then the ottomans afterwards, were even more aggressively expansionist and “imperialist” than the christian kingdoms, their dominions stretching from the iberian peninsula to persia, the mediterranean islands and, later, up into the balkans and the carpathian mountains. even though one cannot but sympathise with the “liberating” agenda of post-colonial anthropology, notably with edward said’s moral j’accuse, ignoring history for the sake of respecting academic correctness is no solution: affirming that the main “others” during the middle ages – and in some contexts way into the modern era – were the muslim peoples of the southern shores of the mediterranean is no “orientalising” argument, but a historical fact. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 68 jews employed to indicate non-jewish peoples (levy, george-tvrtković, and duclow 2014: 107): so much for hann’s usage of history. as for geography and geopolitics, in “a concept of eurasia” these notions remain as problematic as they were in the previous articles. some of these problems, which i pointed out in my initial response in 2015, have indeed been recognised by others as well: “the question of boundaries remains difficult. although hann hints at recent literature distinguishing between central and peripheral parts of eurasia, it would seem, empirically, that many parts of the continent do not fulfill the criteria set out. kinship organization remains a strong political principle, frequently opposed to the state, in much of the landmass, and in the arid and semiarid regions covering much of eurasia, nomadic forms of political organization have been predominant” (eriksen 2016: 13). using another argument that i had used before (testa 2015: 67, 74), but independently, the same scholar continues: “that socialist hungary had commonalities with social democratic britain is not very surprising; it would be more exciting to read about the commonalities between, say, japan, kazakhstan, and greece” (eriksen 2016: 13). this is a more difficult task, which in fact is avoided by hann, who insists instead in highlighting the painful divergences and inequalities within europe. and today, europe, for hann, means primarily the european union. a critique of the european union can be found in almost all of hann’s writings of the last 10 years. it is no wonder that we find it in both his reply (hann 2015) and his latest reference article (hann 2016). in his last analysis of the european union political project (hann 2016: 22-23), he is probably right in thinking that “it has been aborted” under the pressure of several factors: the selfishness and greed of the northern countries; the originally flawed financial architecture of the union combined with the destabilizing effect of the last financial crisis (2007-2017); mass migration from outside its borders; and the rise of populism, mainly as a reaction to the previously mentioned factors. however, this political failure does not make european history less distinguishable, or “eurasian unity” more plausible. as i said, when talking about contemporary matters, hann tends to overlap europe and european union: “[…] this was a time of crisis in european political economy (focused on the euro), when countless politicians in western europe […] were redrawing the boundaries of europe to exclude russia” (hann 2015: 89), or “here i can only report that, as someone who has lived in different parts of europe throughout his life, i have a very different impression. in spite of all the top-down initiatives and the vast sums that have been invested in promoting a european cultural identity […], what strikes me wherever i go in the macro-region is how very limited this remains in popular consciousness” (hann 2015: 91). on this ground, when accusing me of eurocentrism (hann 2015: 86), he presumes and takes for granted my support for the european union as it is nowadays. this is, again, wrong. nowhere do i state anything of the sort. in other words, not only does hann confuse – intentionally or not – europe with the european union, but he also confuses my claim that european identities exist whereas no eurasian identity does, with proof of my support for the eu. as far as his line of reasoning goes, i could therefore call him a supporter of the sovietnostalgic project of vladimir putin called the eurasian economic union, the only current institution that could be considered, with a great effort of imagination, the eurasian equivalent of the european union. hann is of course very well aware of the problem of the political usages of the notion of eurasia, and especially its appropriation by russian nationalists. he writes, “yet it cannot be denied that the term eurasia has also been used (some say abused) of late by russia, notably by president vladimir putin, who instigated the eurasian economic union in 2011” (hann 2012: 97; hann 2016: 21; hann 2014a: 5); this mild comment is counter-balanced by a more recent one: commenting on the “extreme nationalist doctrines within russia,” hann clarifies that “this notion of eurasia has nothing in common with the concept proposed in this article” (hann 2016: 9).10 so, hann seems to 10 the eurasian economic union, as well as other concepts of eurasia and forms of “eurasianism” are discussed in vinokurov, libman 2012, martínez 2013, and benovska-sabovka 2016. both these texts highlight the political anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 69 be bothered by the association of his eurasia with putin’s eurasia, but so am i by his apodictic association of myself with the eu. in one of the chapters of “a concept of eurasia,” called “beyond atlanticist anthropology” (hann 2016: 7-8), hann articulates a call to decentralising our analytic gaze from (and on) europe, in order to avoid eurocentrism. this is, of course, and again, old wine in a new bottle; it has been the task of post-colonial anthropology for more than thirty years. however, most of the scholars hann cites, the people he engages with daily, the place where he comes from and where he works, and, most importantly, the principles and theories he uses to build his arguments (among which are socialism, the welfare state, cosmopolitanism, and many others), are all or mostly products of european modern history. in other words, hann’s moral and ideological framework relies on a set of notions and paradigms developed and spread in and from europe during the last few centuries. if i am a eurocentric, i certainly am in good company here. alas, much of anthropological science is produced in the west, and a big chunk of it in europe. even the research project about eurasia led by hann, “realising eurasia: civilisation and moral economy in the 21st century,” is supported by the european research council (seventh framework programme, 2014–2019) – not by chinese, russian, or other eurasian financial resources. hann could start “ʻreorientingʼ toward china (frank 1998) or ʻprovincializing europe,ʼ” as he wishes (hann 2016: 7), by proposing, say, to relocate the max planck institute for social anthropology to other areas of eurasia, for example in north korea, or in kyrgyzstan. this would indeed be a unique way to experience the unity of eurasia. as previously stated, hann accuses me of eurocentrism, “which has pernicious effects in many fields and should have no place in anthropology” (hann 2015: 89). here, several clarifications are needed. nowhere in my “on europe and eurasia” (testa 2005) do i talk of what he calls “stomach-turning rhetoric” about “european values” (hann 2015: 92) (he must refer to values like democracy, socialism, and cosmopolitanism); nor do i claim any “uniquely european ʻmiraclesʼ in the past” (ibid.). i do not believe in miracles, but in historical and cultural dynamics, and i do not refuse what is genuinely or even uniquely european just for the sake of political or academic correctness. therefore, calling me eurocentric is not wrong, but it is important to understand what type of eurocentrism i endorse. to this task i devote the following few paragraphs. ideas such as law, the renaissance, enlightenment, capitalism and socialism, and fascism have emerged in europe during its history. this doubtless happened also because of contacts and connections with the near and the far east, the southern shore of the mediterranean, as well as, later, with the cultures of the new world. still, these things, which shaped the modern world for better or for worse, emerged in europe, and not in other areas of the eurasian landmass. hann writes that “the macro-region of western eurasia (i.e. europe) did indeed set the pace economically and politically from the sixteenth century. this spurt had nothing to do with charlemagne, nor with later heroes of the italian renaissance” (hann 2015: 91) in response to my mentioning charlemagne and the italian renaissance (testa 2015). i find this statement an astonishing declaration of an anti-historical attitude. how could europe ever achieve that “pace” economically and politically without the unification and the reforms promoted by charlemagne in the viii and ix centuries, or without the moral, scientific, technical, political, and spiritual renovation brought by the italian renaissance, without which there would have been no sixteenth century political and economic spurt – or rather no sixteenth century as we know it tout court? the historical consequences of the rule of charlemagne and of the italian renaissance can hardly be overestimated at the level of global history. without charlemagne and/or the italian renaissance, there would have been no industrial (or french) revolution or industrialisation, no bourgeoisie or socialism, and therefore no modern times, or contemporary history, as we know it. hann claims to be using history as one of the main epistemological inspirations and methods for his concept of eurasia, but one may wonder what kind of historical knowledge can lead to such gross misconceptions. stratification, of which westerners and europeans are mostly unaware, of the notion of eurasia and the political projects associated with it. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 70 recognizing the primacy or the uniqueness of some “typically” european features does not mean to endorse the primacy of europe, or, worse, justify the horrible things that some of these features have provoked or influenced (colonialism, fascism, etc.). but refusing them would be an exercise in anti-history. instead, what i try to do is to understand them and use them to build a critical eurocentrism, since i believe that escaping from the latter is, for a european, unavoidable anyway. i find it naive and hypocritical to believe that one – anthropologist or not – may simply rip him/herself out of his/her background, like baron munchausen pulling himself out of the mire by his own hair, pretending to become a de-territorialised human being by virtue of reading anthropology articles and spending a few years in some village in a foreign land. moreover, i do not see how eurasia would be any more cosmopolitan than europe, since it also excludes as many lands and peoples as it includes, as i have already argued elsewhere, in spite of hann’s advocacy for “maximal inclusiveness.”11 in any case, no matter how powerful these and other rites of passage into the condition of selfproclaimed cosmopolitans (or rather, eurasians), we remain intellectually or even emotionally (or nostalgically) attached to “european things” like the enlightenment, liberalism or state-socialism, and, precisely, cosmopolitanism. these are the reasons why i have always found the idea of a cosmopolitan “critical ethnocentrism” as developed by italian anthropologist de martino (2002 [1977]), or rather “critical eurocentrism” more fascinating. this, as i write in another paper, could also be called “cosmopolitan eurocentrism, if i am permitted the oxymoron; in other words, a methodological eurocentrism that could go hand in hand with moral cosmopolitanism” (testa 2016c: 373). hann’s opinions and mine also diverge in the “chess game, in which the pieces ʻculture,ʼ ʻcivilisation,ʼ and ʻsocietyʼ have gone through numerous exchanges of geographic and semantic space” (sahlins 1999: 400). hann nicely writes that my treatment of the problem of civilisation “seems unnecessarily confusing, not to say obtuse and contradictory” (hann 2005: 89). i cannot but invite readers to explore it in my 2015 work (testa 2015: 69-73), to see if they find it confusing, obtuse, or contradictory. the authors i base my discussion about the notion of civilisation on in that article are arnason, mauss, huntington, hann himself, and others. i truly hope that the source of my confusion about civilization does not come from the reading of any of said authors. there is no eurasian civilization. hann acknowledges this, and prefers the usage of the term in the plural or in its adjective forms. in global history there are indeed, i think, more or less recognizable european or asian civilzations, but none of them was truly sitting at the conjuncture of the two worlds, or truly representing or reproducing the single (or common) features of all the others. in other words, in spite of hann’s efforts, we are still waiting for eurasian characteristics and aires de famille so ample and unique to embrace the entire landmass, thus making his eurasian civilisation or cluster of civilizations distinguishable. the characteristics hann hypothesizes about and uses in his writings about eurasia are by no means sufficient to make europe less distinguishable, and eurasia more so (some of these characteristics have been already mentioned and commented upon in the previous pages; others are in the following). these last considerations offer me a chance to answer another of hann’s pieces of criticism. in “on europe and eurasia,” i talk of “flagrant and deep cultural differences” (testa 2015: 68) within eurasia. hann is not happy with this opinion of mine, and writes “nowhere in his essay does he tell us what these differences might be” (hann 2015: 90). my reaction to hann’s skepticism is that when something is either empirically or intuitively self-evident, there is no need to theorize or hypothesise about that – a bit like an astronomer hypothesizing that the earth is round. 11 “why claim for an ʻinclusiveʼ approach which, after all, excludes as many areas as it includes?” (testa 2015: 68). this point resonates in several of the replies to hann’s latest article: “in spite of recurrent historical and current empirical contrary examples, hann believes that eurasia is the best source of ideologies and utopias of inclusion. in the globalized world, it is hard to maintain that one single locus or collective subject, no matter how complex it may be, is able to provide universal political answers” (lins ribeiro 2016: 17). anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 71 let me return briefly to three of the characteristics that, in hann’s opinion, make eurasia a distinguishable “family of society” (hann 2016: 2) characterized by “civilizational interconnectedness” (ibid.). in 2014, hann wrote: “the deepest hypothesis of the project is […] one which posits commonalities: in their different ways and styles, each one of these [eurasian] civilisations was founded on moral principles opposed to an ethic of short-term market maximization” (hann 2014b, pages not numbered). this “deepest” hypothesis still underlines and sustains the 2016 article (see especially pp. 4-6), although differently formulated: “the key fact is that a succession of eurasian civilisations developed new combinations of redistribution and exchange, or of state and market [...]. they legitimated these structures through ideals of socio-political inclusion, including the concept of democracy itself” (hann 2016: 4); “at this moment, the need to rediscover polanyi’s notion of the human economy, and through him the original eurasian perspective of aristotle becomes urgent once again” (hann 2016: 6). markets and the illusory homo economicus would be the perversions of other, more authentically eurasian principles, which historically manifested themselves as intellectual or political inventions such as democracy or socialism and were used to tame the “free” market and other exclusive or “disembedding” (hann 2016: 4, commenting on polanyi 1944) modes of political economy. in 2015, i asked rhetorically if it is not true that practically all non-capitalistic societies of the past and the present had or have had such moral principles (testa 2015: 76-77). they would therefore lose all their power of being representative of a truly unique eurasian historical or anthropological pattern. the “deepest hypothesis of the project” might well be true, but it does not work as a decisive argument for supporting any eurasian specificity. these questions resonate in one of the more recent reactions to hann’s “deepest hypothesis:” “i cannot very well see how the values of communality characterize eurasia more than africa, oceania, or the americas” (pina-cabral 2016: 16). hann does not provide an answer to this problem in any of his replies; a problem which weakens hann’s eurasian exceptionalism and consequentially his claim for eurasian “unity;” a problem concerning the “deepest hypothesis” of an ongoing, substantial research project, which should raise many doubts about both the hypothesis and the project. a similar counter-argument can be made about another of hann’s eurasian “specificities:” the welfare state – both in its socialist “eastern” and “western” versions: state socialism and the european variant of keynesian liberalism, which was experimented in several countries and at several times between the second world war and the rise of neoliberalism during the seventies of the last century and afterwards. the welfare state, just like real socialism, has not only not been experimented with and implemented in eurasia only, but in many other countries from australia to south and north america during the twentieth century (cuba being probably the principal counter-example, or at least one that comes to one’s mind immediately). once again, hann’s eurasian exceptionalism and unity seem to sit on no historically exceptional or unique features. as for the reiterated appeal to investigate a “eurasian mental space”, which he evokes in the same terms as in his previous article (hann 2014a, 17; 2016, 8), it will receive no attention here as i believe that it represents a merely speculative construction – in simpler words: no such thing exists under the sun. problems also exist at the methodological and epistemological levels, especially with regard to the kind of disciplinary approaches hann does not consider or use in his heuristic endeavor. in his fight for eurasian exceptionalism against european exceptionalism, hann admittedly follows jack goody’s steps. as with goody, hann’s manner of conducting anthropology is hugely influenced by global history. his grasp of historical and historiographical matters raises questions, though. i have already pointed out some of the curious outcomes of his reading of the history of religions, for example concerning abrahimic religions, or european history, including concerning his treatment of the middle ages, or his opinion that charlemagne and the renaissance did not have important consequences in political and economic matters in modern european history. not surprisingly, he considers jacques le goff a proposer of “narratives of european identities,” a scholar characterised anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 72 by a methodologically “parochial” vision (hann 2015: 89), a view that stridently contrasts with that of most historians, who rightly consider le goff (1924-2014) “one of the most brilliant and influential medievalists” as well as “one of the greatest european historians,” as lisa bitel wrote in her review of the birth of europe (le goff 2003) in the journal of british studies (bitel 2006). here, nevertheless, the real object of hann’s criticism seems not be le goff, and perhaps not even myself; what hann truly dislikes, are the “narratives of european identities.” these are, in hann’s view, mainly a top-down invention of the eurocrats, with little or no social reality at the popular level. another very curious idea. no wonder that in his writings about eurasia we indeed find no reference to scholars such as sharon macdonald, peter niedermüller, lisanne wilken, ullrich kockel, and many others that could be mentioned who have been working extensively on the problem from ethnographic and anthropological perspectives. we only find one reference to chris shore in hann 2014, precisely about a book deconstructing top-down identity policies operated by the eu, which, important as they may be, are only one tile in the mosaic. hann writes, “though he ostensibly aligns himself with eric wolf, marshall sahlins and christoph brumann, it seems to me that testa’s intellectual home may be with these ʻeuropean ethnologistsʼ [“these” does not refer to anybody in the text from which i extract this passage, and seems to be more a derogatory adjective, especially coupled with the quotation marks otherwise inexplicably encircling “european ethnologists”].” he then continues: “in any case, his is a very different anthropological undertaking from that practised at our institute. if the ultimate yardstick for testa is a vivid presence of ̒ the idea of europeʼ in popular culture, this seems hard to reconcile with the materialist realism he espouses earlier in his article” (hann 2015: 91). here i will not even linger on the abstruse idea that studying “the idea of europe” or european identities cannot be coupled with materialist realism – i just wonder what antonio gramsci would have thought of such statement. what strikes me is the evident negative connotation born by european ethnology in hann’s argument, a connotation probably based on the creed that ethnologists are a “lesser version” of economic anthropologists, i.e. scholars unable to produce as good a knowledge as, say, that produced at the max planck institute in halle (i will return to this). of course, hann is free to believe that he practises a superior type of anthropology. but we are also free to disagree. indeed, european ethnology (or the anthropology of europe, for those who still have problems in conceptualising them as different disciplines) is a well-established discipline populated by serious scholars who do not deserve hann’s scorn. elsewhere, hann writes: “there are many excellent reasons for teaching our students more about the rise of complex societies in eurasia over the last four or five millennia, instead of privileging the last four or five centuries and a european notion of modernity” (hann 2015: 91). i couldn’t agree more. but that is primarily the task of archaeologists and historians, and only secondarily of anthropologists. elsewhere in the same article hann writes: “at the halle max planck institute we are socio-cultural anthropologists; almost all our projects, including my personal research, are fieldwork-based” (hann 2015: 89). but can one do fieldwork-based research among the eurasian farmers of the first millennia bc? how does a focus on eurasia “over the last four or five millennia” and a focus on “fieldwork-based research” go together? perhaps the max planck institute in halle hides a time machine in its basement. having been trained as a historian for my ba and ma, and having earned a ph.d. in anthropology (and subsequently having done both textual and archival investigations as well as intensive fieldwork in italy, the czech republic, and catalonia), i find hann’s methodological claims contradictory, but not the epistemological assumptions that move his aims, which are on the contrary transparent and consistent. the fact of privileging the historical-anthropological study of politics and economics on the longue durée over other spheres of social life (religion, languages, art and aesthetics, spare time and alltagskultur, and others) allows hann to pretend to have discovered his black diamond, eurasian unity, which can hardly even be imagined with respect to those other domains. ethnologists and anthropologists study and discuss not only economic structures and patterns, but also narratives, identities, and ways in which people imagine their past, their present, and their anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 73 future. all these things, as i claimed before and as i repeat here, are absent in hann’s theorization about eurasia, a theorization where we can see the effort to highlight structures and patterns, but where the peoples get lost in the process. it is little surprise: since there are no people who consider themselves “eurasians,” there can be no ethnographic grasp of them (when hann writes that “ʻeurasiaʼ has become prominent in public discourse outside the academia” [hann 2016: 1], he does not elaborate further). in hann’s political dream, eurasia exists outside academia, namely in an unspecified “public discourse”, and it is actually europe which lacks popular consistence. what i can report, having myself lived in different parts of europe throughout my life,12 is that this popular consciousness indeed exists, and is more or less historically stratified according to the context, although its observation, study, and interpretation may not be as plain as the eu top-down policies claim or wish. on the other hand, there is no eurasian identity to construct or deconstruct, also because in global history, european and asian societies have often constructed themselves in opposition to each other – we cannot but hope that this will change in the future, but the main object of scientific research cannot be reduced to hopes, or the future. the evidence for this claim of mine (that the notion of europe exists at popular level outside the academia) can be found in almost all my recent publications (testa 2014a, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017a, 2017b, and 2017c). i invite hann to offer evidence of his claim (that the notion of eurasia exists outside the academia). image depiction: europe depicted as a queen in sebastian münsters’ cosmographia, 1570 (werner 2009). in hann’s theorisation about eurasia, the problem of the construction of european identities is dismissed as a mere example of topdown social engineering – mostly with reference to european union policies. processes of european identity construction throughout european history up to our times, which are the object of a rich scholarship, are ignored. i imagine this is because hann considers european ethnology a second-class discipline (hann 2015: 91). the political dream of hann is “a pan-eurasian coming-together of peoples, as a prelude to a true world society” (hann 2015b: n. p.). the main argument in “on eurasia and europe” was that we, as scholars, cannot confuse a political dream with an analytical argument; nor can we try to sell 12 more precisely in italy, france, estonia, germany, czech republic, austria, and spain. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 74 our peers – let alone non-scholars – the former as it were the latter. at least hann has openly questioned whether his “eurasian political-economic unity” shall remain just a utopia or become the prelude to a fussier “world society” based on principles of solidarity, inclusion, and anti-capitalism (hann 2016: 7; similar argument in hann 2014a: 17). it is interesting to see, in the conclusions to two of his most important writings about eurasia, how this postulated unity is projected as a utopian future, instead of being shown to lie back in the past. it is, in the end, hann’s utopian dream that pastes together his puzzled vision of eurasia. as i wrote, one can be sympathetic with this dream. i am, and so are others that may be as critical of hann’s concept of eurasia: gingrich has written that “sharing hann’s sympathies with a priority for these values, however, is not necessarily identical with supporting his notion of ʻeurasiaʼ as a vision” (gingrich 2016: 14); and eriksen, asking whether hann’s eurasia actually adds more to the eurasia of his predecessors: “yet in the end it appears chiefly as a political argument about a need in europe (and north america) to engage with asian countries – especially russia, but also china – in a more equitable way” (eriksen 2016: 12). nevertheless, the main problem pointed out a few lines earlier remains: it is the problem that haunts most of the second half of my “on europe and eurasia” (testa 2015), and which is never fully tackled by hann, even though he is obviously aware of it: “if eurasia is the product of a political utopian dream, why should we consider it as an academic, critical notion [an analytic concept]? and why should we abdicate, on this basis, that of europe?” (testa 2015: 76), an argument which resonates in schlee’s criticism: “statements about the past can be subjected to historical criticism, statements about the present to empirical scrutiny. self-declared “utopias” are immune to all this” (schlee 2016: 18).13 before coming to a conclusion, there is one last issue that i would like to raise in these final pages, an issue which, again, resonates in the work of other colleagues: hann’s arrogant and patronising tone when debating with colleagues, and the meaning of this tone. his arrogance in replying to his peers has actually already been noticed, for instance in relation to an exchange, which also took place in the anthropology of east europe review, between michał buchowski and chris hann (buchowski 2004; hann 2005). hann’s tone in his reply was described by hana červinková as “patronising” and characterised by a “position of superiority” (červinková 2012: 158). in his reply to my article, apart from an accommodating sentence at the very beginning, where hann gives me some credit for my engagement, calling it “erudite” (hann 2015: 89), his rhetoric is, as said, arrogant and patronizing. this is probably due to the irritation of having to reply to a young scholar working from a much lower level of academic seniority. and yet, as i have tried to demonstrate throughout this paper, many of my arguments and critical points resonate in those offered by several other (senior) scholars in their replies to hann’s “a concept of eurasia” (hann 2016), most of which have been formulated differently, independently, and later than mine. nevertheless, in spite of my comments and arguments resonating in theirs, theirs have been cordially welcomed as “rich” (hann 2016: 20), whereas mine (or at least some of mine) are dismissed as “confusing,” if not “obtuse” (hann 2015: 89). maybe this is because, unlike the other respondents in current anthropology, i joined the discussion uninvited? or could it be because of our different academic seniorities? hann’s arrogant and patronising tone has another application in the usage of the adjective “curious” – a usage that i have taken the liberty to reciprocate in this piece. in his reply, he writes that “the selection of texts reviewed by testa is curious” (hann 2015: 92). the following lines in that text are devoted to reminding the reader that all the pieces i used in my article had either been published in places different from where i read and cited them or were “in-house publications of the max planck institute” (ibid.). now, these considerations do not make my selection devoid of any legitimacy, nor do they make it “curious,” for what matters is this: i reviewed all of his pertinent writings, with the exception of a book containing, again, previously published material (which i 13 günther schlee is also very critical of hann’s eurasia. in schlee, 2016, he makes a few very critical points, and he also refers to other works of his where such criticism has been developed further. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 75 mostly engaged). as for the “in-house” publications, they are not “in-house” at all: in fact, they are available for consultation and download on the internet, on the website of the max planck institute for social anthropology in halle,14 and also for free in printed, “take-away” form at the location of the institute, which is a public institution which is obliged to make the results of its research publicly available. the previous considerations lead us to a final and more urgent remark. while reading his counter-reply for the first time, one thing that came to my mind was less the image of a thoughtful scholar – perhaps understandably pinched by the received criticism – than that of a sovereign outraged at my act of lèse-majesté. i was therefore not surprised to read, a few months later, a series of research papers exposing the power relations and the subordinate working conditions of researchers at the max planck institute in halle, which is led by three directors, one of whom is chris hann himself (peacock 2016). in one such paper, julie billaud, a former post-doc at the same institute, does not hesitate to call the academic system at the max planck institute in halle a “kingship,” where sectors or departments are led by a “sovereign director,” a “king,” or a “director-king” (billaud 2016: 124). in light of all this, chris hann’s manners and tone do not cause any surprise: they are those of a “sovereign” at the top of an institutional pyramid, one of the “kings” of the “monarchic” system of the max planck institute in halle (billaud 2016). this also happens in spite of the fact that, as i have tried to demonstrate throughout this paper, the argument of a young scholar like myself coincides with those of more senior scholars with whom hann exchanges willingly, politely, and, one could say, horizontally. the conclusion is that while he seems to advocate more horizontal and inclusive relations in political matters, in academic matters his endeavour leans, on the contrary, toward establishing vertical relations and conforming to – and reproducing – hierarchy. i will close this review article with further remarks on some of the issues discussed in the previous pages. that europa forged its identity during the middle ages and the early modern times, often in opposition to various “others” (the jews, the orthodox christians, the arabs, and more) is no curious opinion of mine, but a well-established historical fact. hann may call this eurocentrism; others call it history. my argument is not to “exclude” from european history the presence of the influence of the “otherised” areas and peoples on the basis of medieval symbolic geographies or other similar curiosities, as hann seems to suspect. far from that: mine is of course no essentialist or orientalising attitude, and as an anthropologist with a background in history, i am only too aware of the huge contributions that other societies and cultures – mainly from the near east – have brought to europe throughout its history – and vice-versa. not to mention the eminently “eurasian” indo-european common heritage, which i do not neglect and which i have discussed in great detail in a recent publication (testa 2016d; hann credits me for my usage of the dumézilian comparative paradigm [hann 2015: 89]). but symbolic geographies sometimes persist in people’s minds, in spite of anthropological calls for cosmopolitanism and openness. and, as anthropologists or historians, we cannot but record and interpret what people think or thought. eurasian geographical unity is a self-evident given, but there is no empirical evidence, historical or ethnographic, that any “unity”, actual or representational, of the peoples living on the landmass (call them societies, cultures, civilizations, or whatever else) has ever existed. the importance of the technological revolutions and the ideological inventions of the third to first millennia bc can hardly be overestimated, no doubt. likewise, the silk road and other ways of trading goods and exchanging ideas have connected the peoples in the different corners of the landmass, as did real socialism, albeit for a shorter time. nevertheless, these unifying elements – some of which are not, moreover, only “eurasian” – are counter-balanced by many other elements of division and differentiation, and in the end they only achieve, in my opinion, to prove a unity that remains purely hypothetical in theory and merely utopian in practice. 14 http://www.eth.mpg.de/3976190/2016. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 76 in conclusion, hann’s reply (hann 2015) to my article (testa 2015) is perhaps effective rhetorically, but weak in content. he points out some flaws in my line of argumentation and offers some rather haphazard considerations, but he also neglects or avoids replying to some of the most important problems raised in my piece. in fact, these problems persist in hann’s last reference work to date about eurasia (hann 2016), an article which is nevertheless better structured, more refined, and in a way more convincing than its predecessors. however, as i have tried to show in this paper, and as pointed out and discussed by other scholars in the replies to his last article, most of the serious problems and flaws that weaken his concept of eurasia remain. sitting on the arguments developed in my original article (testa 2015), then formulated independently by some of the scholars who reacted to hann’s latest article about eurasia (hann 2016), this piece offers 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europa – stier und sternenkranz. von der union mit zeus zum staatenverbund, edited by roland alexander ißler, almut-barbara renger. 241–260. bonn: bonn university press. anthropology of east europe review 30 (2) fall 2012 110 headlines of nation, subtexts of class: working-class populism and the return of the repressed in neoliberal europe. eds. don kalb and gábor halmai. new york and oxford: berghahn books, 2011. viii, 222 pp. bibliography. notes on contributors. index. $70, hard bound. nitzan shoshan, el colegio de méxico, méxico d.f. the strange scarcity of the category of class in current scholarly debates about populist nationalism in today’s europe backgrounds this timely intervention by don kalb and gábor halmai. mindful of the failure of traditional class analysis to account for the successes of right wing nationalism precisely where one expected to find the banner of socialism, and with a view to processes of neoliberal globalization, recent studies of the rise of nationalist populism among the european working classes (and elsewhere) have tended to formulate their explanations in cultural terms, for example as the impact of abstract global forces upon the traditions of local communities, or as the creeping corrosion of intimate frameworks of meaning and cultural coherence. backed by an impressive collection of ethnographic studies, in headlines of nation, subtexts of class kalb and halmai make a strong case that the analysis of class has remained indispensable for understanding the gains of populist nationalism in europe. in order to decipher the current conjuncture between (mostly right wing, as the kalb puts it in his rich introduction to the volume) populism and the european working class, the editors argue, we must pay heed to the broad dispossessions that accompanied processes of neoliberalization across the continent, and which, for those still traumatized by the experience, have become all but impossible to signify in any other form than neo-nationalist politics. this unarticulated displacement of what amounts to class experience onto the fantasy of nation, kalb and hálmai tell us, bears the footprints of neoliberal transnationalization and of the concomitant decline of class-based politics, revealing the double crisis of both labor and popular sovereignty that marks our postfordist moment. on the one hand, then, headlines of nation, subtexts of class belongs with what has by now become an ample literature on the relation between neoliberal global capitalism and populist, often violently racist nationalisms. don kalb, in the introduction, helpfully lays out some of these lineages. on the other hand, the compilation distinguishes itself in its analytical focus on social relations and class experiences, rather than on cultural difference and localized communities. this reorientation of the debate is dutifully born out in all of the eight ethnographic case studies, starting with theodora vetta’s analysis of how the transition from socialist-era industrial self-management to privatized property rights rendered serbian workers vulnerable to the extreme nationalism of the radikali party. looking at romanian nationalism in the city of cluj, norbert petrovici levels a critique of roger brubaker’s cognitivist theory of ethnicity, arguing that the success of ethno-nationalist political entrepreneurs finds its roots in the generation of indigenist networks at the socialist workplace. florin faje examines how football anthropology of east europe review 30 (2) fall 2012 111 fandom in cluj has come to reference an ethnicized political polarization between working class populism and middle class cosmopolitanism. next, eszter bartha analyses the ethnicization of class that accompanied the decline of a once socialist “model” factory in hungary. gábor halmai, also writing on hungary, describes an “ideological chaos” in which a nationalist far right has come to stand for a socially-oriented political alternative to the neoliberal, capitalist excommunists. turning now to western europe, in the following chapter michael blim traces how the industrial decline of the traditionally leftist-dominated marche region in italy has opened the way for a marked shift to the right. jaro stacul explores the conjuncture of regionalist populism and entrepreneurial neoliberalism in the economically transformed landscape of the trentino region in the italian alps. finally, paul gilfillan argues that a younger generation in a deindustrialized mining region of scotland articulates social intimacy as separatist nationalism in response to the perceived class betrayal of the english left. the book helpfully illustrates how the analytical focus on class helps us to move beyond the conventional scholarly separation of east and west and to think critically, too, about the no less conventional distinction between the left and the right. across the continent, and in what are no doubt very different political configurations, historical legacies, and cultural contexts, we find widespread experiences of dispossession among the european working classes, often matched with nostalgic narratives of decline and with a sense of political alienation and resentment. labor seems to maintain a strong hold as an axis of identification, even as class has become increasingly ethnicized. one could have wished for a better geographical distribution of the case studies, which, while intended to hold up an argument about europe in general, in fact focus on relatively few—and repetitive—national contexts. the different contributions, including the introduction, would also have benefitted from more analytical attention to the problems of racism and xenophobia, which have strongly marked european nationalist populisms but which receive passing mentions at best in this book. the most critical lacuna, however, is the absence of a rigorous, informed discussion of the concept of populism itself, as the editors understand it. the brief definition of populism as a rejection of cosmopolitan liberal elites and as a symptom for class dispossession on pages 13-14 does justice neither to the complexity of the concept nor to the controversies that surround it. we find a few more comments in stacul´s contribution (158), but these too are cursory and come too late. still, the insights offered in the detailed ethnographic case studies of headlines of nation, subtexts of class surely appear more relevant than ever against the present economic trouble that, having already devastated certain european economies, is looming over others nearby, and which raises deep anxieties about the prospects of nationalist populism on the continent. students of populist and nationalist movements, of contemporary political cultures, and of post-socialism and post-fordism in europe and beyond it are certain to find this volume innovative and enlightening. microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 2 the life of baldan chimitovich gomboev:using personal narratives to approach buriat post-soviet music tristra newyear, indiana university © 2002 tristra newyear all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in this paper, i present the words of baldan chimitovich gomboev, a 70-year-old buriat instrument maker. i believe that gomboev’s descriptions of his personal aesthetics and of the path he followed to his profession are significant because they provide a detailed view of a past that both fostered and conflicted with his many identities: eastern buriat, educated soviet citizen, and creative individual. gomboev’s words cast an interesting light on standard russian and western ethnographic approaches to non-russian communities, and his example shows the need for closer attention to individual stories and personal details in historical and ethnographic research. buriats belong to a group of mongolic people who live in southern siberia around lake baikal and are originally nomadic animal breeders. beginning in the 17th century, buriats came into contact with, and were later dominated by, russian colonists moving in from the west. in the 19th century, many buriats were forced to quit their nomadic lifestyle and settle down in russian-style villages. buriatia, as a political entity, is officially an autonomous republic of the russian federation. buriats also live in the aginsk autonomous area, which is located near the chinese border to the east in chita province, and in the ust orda autonomous area, located on the western shore of lake baikal in the irkutsk province. ust orda, where gomboev lives, differs greatly in dialect and lifestyle, as well as politics, from other buriat regions. located less than 100 kilometers from the large city of irkutsk, ust orda is also the most russified buriat area. gomboev hails originally from the kizhinga region in the east central part of buriatia, not far from chita province. kizhinga, where buriat identity is still comparatively strong, has produced many successful buriat artists, lamas, and businessmen in the last few decades. buriat culture in the post-soviet era is a hybrid of russian, soviet, and buriat elements that have been assembled by different people in strikingly different ways. through an interesting set of circumstances, i contacted gomboev and asked if i could come visit him in the village of ust ordinsky in order to speak with him about his life. i traveled around lake baikal from ulan ude with two musician friends, one buriat and one mongolian. when we arrived in the small village where gomboev lived, he received us warmly and enthusiastically and eagerly shared his projects, ideas, and dreams about buriat folk orchestras with us. i, for my part, was eagerly on the trail of information about his personal decisions and how he had dealt with soviet power, in particular his dual roles as both its object and its implement. nevertheless, gomboev led the interview doggedly and shaped our conversation with his passionate desire to discuss the details of his creative process. handing me a stack of paper covered in careful hand-writing, he encouraged me to consult his autobiography. he told me that everything i would need to know was in that document. when i returned to the united states and began to examine the materials, however, i was disappointed. the interview, although interesting, had not allowed me to think about gomboev’s life chronologically; and the chronologically organized statement that had given me did not offer insight into gomboev’s eclectic careers as engineer, planner, bureaucrat, and finally creator of folk instruments for minority peoples in soviet russia. as i began to think more carefully about what gomboev had told me, however, i realized that i in fact had much more than i had anticipated. gomboev’s opinions are important, not because they reflect the imprint of history or represent a “typical” buriat response to soviet policy, but because gomboev is exceptional in that he is one of the few people who are reconstructing and creating folk instruments for non-russians in soviet russia. his unusual jen typewritten text 103 volume 20, number 2 career and ideas make him an important element in our understandings of the role of the soviet version of tradition in shaping contemporary buriat culture. nevertheless, gomboev, in both his texts, clearly sets himself against the sovietized instrumental culture, while at the same time borrowing some of its approaches, most notably the concept and techniques of orchestra standardization.i first, i will provide a brief summary of gomboev’s life and career. born in 1932, gomboev was raised in a pastoral nomadic community and did not attend school until world war ii. after finishing a local secondary school, he went to krasnoyarsk to a timber industry institute. after working in remote lumbering areas around the northern baikal, he moved, “for family reasons,” back to his native area and became a teacher. due to illness, he went into urban planning and became a member of his region’s local administration. although gomboev never spoke about this, he somehow began administering a division of the buriat ministry of culture that was responsible for preserving historical monuments; he then started a music research and instrument building workshop in the 1980s in ulan ude. after some time there, he was invited to kalmykia, another mongolic area in russia, to “revive” their traditional orchestra. his successful work in kalmyka was followed by a stay in tuva. finally, the ust orda administration invited him to create instruments for their region, and thus gomboev ended up in ust-ordynsky in the early 1990s. instead of emphasizing his former administrative positions, gomboev discussed his work in kalmykia and tuva enthusiastically, almost to the total exclusion of other parts of his life. he emphasized that his experiences outside of buriatia formed his personal approach to instrument making and his understanding of the nature of ethnic identity as expressed in music: but in order to create something national, you have to…live with that people. and study them, research phonetics and the spoken phonetics of the language, vowels especially, just everything, everything. this research is part of the three stages of development [a musical instrument goes through]. the kalmyks have a khuurii, the buriats have a khuur, mongols have a khuur, everyone’s got their khuur. you would think they arose from the same influence, but they speak in totally different ways. the buriat khuur should speak in buriat. the kalmyk khuur in kalmyk and the mongol one in mongolian. so, that’s why you see now in buriatia, the opposite is happening. everything that was buriat once, i mean we did approach it very thoughtlessly back in the ’50s – they took the russian domraiii…[and] only changed the shape…. and so they ended up with a russian chanzaiv or a buriat domra! but they called it the buriat chanza, and they played and played it, played away until around 1993, when they figured out that it doesn’t speak the buriat language.…so that was it, in the 1990s…it became fashionable here to get rid of everything soviet. so they destroyed the workshop... they went over to mongolian instruments. they said no to the buriat khuur.v thus, gomboev contrasts his own approach – which is based on spoken phonetics, historical research, and technical development – to the “careless” soviet approach, which destroyed “deeply national” qualities and the “language” of the instrument. at the same time, he rejects the equally careless approach of buriat officials who wanted to assert their buriat identity too hastily in the 1990s and threw out the buriat khuur. although gomboev criticizes both approaches to traditional instruments on nationalist grounds, he is not opposed to adapting other nations’ instruments, if proper care is given to their sounds. for instance, he proposes to add the tobshuur, an altaic and oirat instrument, to the buriat orchestra.vi moreover, he believes that, “every buriat family should absolutely have one of these hanging on the wall in front of a beautiful persian carpet, whether they play it or not, as a calling card to show that buriats live here.”vii instruments are more than simply tools for musicians; they are potentially “calling cards,” physical symbols of identity. these symbols, however, are not fixed according to gomboev’s philosophy. they can be created, shifted, and realigned as long as they are aesthetically and spiritually in harmony with the nation’s local dialects and its regional cultures. gomboev also uses other images to invest his instruments with national significance, what he called the “deeply national.” he builds his instruments in the shape of the mönkhiin duhuu, the drop of eternity that, according to gomboev, symbolizes the fact that “wherever there is even the smallest drop of life-giving jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 104 volume 20, number 2 moisture, there’s life.”viii another common shape gomboev that uses for his instruments “represents a flame, doluun in buriat. that means flame. so it’s a new spark in the buriat instrumentarium that turns into a flame, and god grant that this flame never dies.”ix the images of a single drop giving life and a solitary spark giving birth to new fires paint a vivid metaphorical picture of gomboev’s personal desire to revive a culture whose only hope, he seems to imply, lies in a rethinking of traditions and return to nature. nature and contact with natural surroundings is the source of this renaissance. gomboev, in his written statement, discusses how his natural surroundings, which were pointed out to him by his grandmother tsyrma, gave him the initial impulse to make music and art: she was always drawing my attention to the beauty of nature, singing, and birds in any way she could…. this was how, i think, i developed my aesthetic sense. once we were herding our animals along the river kobun. when we sat down to rest on the white sand by the river, my grandma sketched a one-stringed khuur in the sand with a crooked twig…. she explained that if i would drag a bow stretched with hair from a horse’s tail, then that khuur would sing just like me, but without words. i was so excited by that thought that i hardly slept the whole night.x nature is the inspiration and cradle of musical creation, and the source of aesthetic qualities that define and shape national cultures and identities. gomboev, like many other buriat musicians, sees his connection to place and nature as a guiding value in defining buriat culture. at the same time, gomboev’s views are closely bounded by soviet ideas of nation and the buriats’ presumed position in the soviet hierarchy of cultural development. gomboev’s main goal, he states, is to create a complete buriat folk orchestra with the necessary range of timbres and soprano, tenor, and bass versions of all the stringed instruments. while instrumental ensembles have existed in buddhist monasteries in buriatia, secular orchestras are the product of russian and soviet musical ideology. the notion of an orchestra is fundamental to gomboev’s work and dreams. gomboev is also concerned with his educational qualifications and his technical approach to designing and testing his instruments, and he has incorporated his experiences and education as a soviet citizen into his approach to instrument building. this incorporation, while seemingly contradictory to his philosophy about nativism, has, since the 19th century, been a common practice among buriat intellectuals who often feel passionately buriat while remaining russian or soviet patriots. gomboev’s words and instruments are interesting for those studying the history of buriat music, but they also have wider implications for researchers investigating social phenomena in post-soviet russia. after the end of the soviet era, many russian and western researchers searched for previously unheard voices by collecting and interpreting life stories. for instance, elena yarskaya-smirnova and pavel romanov (2001) gathered and discussed the life stories of citizens from samara and saratov in order to examine the impact of stalinist policies on individuals’ identities. in another recent work, sheila fitzpatrick and yuri slezkine (2000) translated and presented a collection of russian women’s words regarding their experiences during the 1917 revolution. nevertheless, little autobiography or life story research has been conducted in non-russian communities or among artists and cultural workers. moreover, the investigation of nonrussian arts and cultures remains focused on a group-centered history and ethnography, despite marjorie mandelstam balzer’s critical point that non-russians often use a wide variety of identities in social negotiations (mandelstam balzer 1999). this approach originates in the early western european and russian ethnographies of non-russians and later imitated by native researchers, albeit usually with more sympathy for traditional life ways. interviews and biographies, however, were sometimes employed in soviet scholars’ discussions of traditional performers, such as research on buriat epic singers.xi these accounts, however, rarely focus on performers’ own descriptions of their creative process and aesthetics, with a few notable exceptions.xii even in the post-soviet era, when researchers have access to a broader variety of sources and ideological freedom, this approach continues. for instance, carole pegg, in her excellent survey of mongolian performance genres, elides the individuality of her interviewees, many of whom certainly must be unusual and innovative members of their communities, and instead uses their words to create and bound a group musical expression (pegg 2001). this view of the relationship jen typewritten text 105 volume 20, number 2 between tradition and creativity can be helpful, and some performers do feel that they are simply expressing tradition. nevertheless, creative figures like gomboev feel that they can play with tradition, despite what cultural authorities or fellow buriats might think. for his part, gomboev consciously presents his personality as innovative and rebellious. while the words of artists like gomboev do present more nuanced ideas about national and spiritual culture, artists simultaneously play another role that is specific to post-soviet non-russian communities. buriats, like many groups after the fall of the soviet union, have been debating the future and form of buriat culture while at the same time struggling to maintain the educational and cultural infrastructure that was developed under soviet power. the number of people involved in the work of creating culture is small and intimately linked; as in a small town, everyone knows everyone else. for instance, a woman who is an actress from the buriat dramatic theater also produced the first compact disk in buriatia and now runs the buriat philharmonic. as there is a small group of intellectuals who are leading cultural discourse, the lives, opinions, and creative works of this group are incredibly important in understanding current discussions and performances of buriat art, tradition, and culture. life stories are like mirrors that reflect how individuals create the past and themselves. in addition, they remind us, the listeners and recorders, that we, too, are telling stories and fashioning new images on their shining surfaces. for too long, meta-narratives that tell tales of progress, objectivity, and the written word have dominated other ways of approaching the past and the moment of describing the past. these reflections, these broad images of fleeting ages, nations, and places, need to be supplemented by detailed portraits and self-portraits of the figures who comprise these reflected communities. references balzer, marjorie mandelstam. 1999. the tenacity of ethnicity: a siberian saga in global perspective. princeton: princeton university press. barankova, e.b. 1974. “individual’ny stil’ i ispolnitel’skoe masterstvo r. k. toronova.” in masterstvo sovremenikh buryatskikh skazitelei. ulan ude: institut obschestvennikh nauk: 18-34. berlinski, p. 1933. mongol’skii pevets i muzikant ul’dzui-lubsan-khurchi. moscow: ogiz-muzgiz. fitzpatrick, sheila and slezkine, yuri, eds. 2000. in the shadow of revolution: life stories of russian women from 1917 to the second world war. princeton: university of princeton press. kara, gyorgy. 1970. chant d’un barde mongol. budapest: akademiai kiado. khokholkov, vladimir. 1994. muzykal’nye instrumenty gornogo altaya. gornoaltaisk: komitet kul’tury pravitel’stva respubliki altaya. linde, charlotte. 1993. life stories: the creation of coherence. new york, oxford: oxford university press. naidakov, v. ts. 1967. muzykal’naya kultura buryatii. ulan ude: buryatskoe knizhnoe izdatel’stvo. pegg, carole. 2001. mongolian music, dance, and oral narrative. seattle: university of washington press. vertkov, k. 1963. atlas muzykal’nikh instrumentov narodov sssr. moscow: gosudarstvennoe muzykal’noe izdatel’stvo. yarskaya-smirnova, elena and romanov, pavel. 2001. “at the margins of memory: provincial identity and soviet power in oral histories, 1940-53.” in provincial landscapes: local dimensions of soviet power. donald j. raleigh, ed. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press: 299-330. notes i for an excellent visual picture of how instruments were transformed and “perfected,” see vertkov 1963. ii a mongolic term for any kind of bowed instrument. iii a traditional russian stringed instrument of turkic origin. iv a plucked stringed instrument played mostly by women. v interview with gomboev, july 2001. jen typewritten text 106 volume 20, number 2 vi for information about the altai tobshuur, see khokholkov 1994. vii interview with gomboev, july 2001. viii interview with gomboev, july 2001. ix interview with gomboev, july 2001. x gomboev’s written statement, 2000. xi see sherkhunaev 1964. xii see, for an excellent and unusual example, baranikova 1974. also see kara 1970. jen typewritten text 107 cultural production and transmission of ethnic tolerance and prejudice: introduction anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 7 cultural production and transmission of ethnic tolerance and prejudice: introduction hilary pilkington and anton popov university of warwick this special issue is a collection of selected papers presented to workshops held under the auspices of the rime (releasing indigenous multiculturalism through education) project. rime is an eu funded project under the european initiative on democracy and human rights programme and brings together ngo and academic partners from bosnia and herzegovina, croatia, serbia, bulgaria, ukraine, russia, georgia, abkhazia, and the uk. the project had two core aims: to facilitate cross-regional ngo networking and sharing of experiences; and to stimulate dialogue between the ngo and academic communities. this special issue collates a number of research-based papers presented to project workshops in order to stimulate this dialogue. these papers focus on young people’s experience of ethnic conflict, postconflict and frozen conflict situations, or of living in multiethnic societies in which the ethnic stereotypes and prejudices of majority groups often go unnoticed and unchallenged. in this introductory article the editorsi set these papers in the wider context of the academic debate to which they seek to contribute. this introduction thus has three aims: to reflect critically on current debates about ‘multiculturalism’; to outline a cultural approach to ‘multiculturalism’ that challenges the reification of particular ‘cultures’ by focusing on the everyday practices of multiethnic living; and to highlight (with examples from the individual papers in this volume) how this approach can help us understand the cultural production and transmission of ethnic tolerance and prejudice among young people. same state, different cultures? models for multi-ethnic societies models for multi-ethnic living are premised on the recognition that societies are racially, ethnically and culturally diverse. they all also share a commitment to balancing the need for a sense of ‘collective belonging’ at state level whilst allowing ethnic and cultural differences to be articulated and respected throughout society. they diverge from one another, arguably, in relation to both their understanding of the primary unit of that diversity (racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, ‘cultural’) and in their identification of the key site of social intervention for the eradication of intolerance. here we provide a brief, critical review of two models of multi-ethnic societies envisaged and implemented in the twentieth century before outlining their common failings and presenting an alternative approach. socialist models of multi-ethnic living we start with the discussion of socialist models because it is these particular ways of envisaging the parallel promotion of ‘national’ and ‘cultural’ difference and political unity that have shaped the experience of the region discussed in this volume. socialist attempts to create the conditions for harmonious multiethnic living have been rooted in the conviction that it is the (capitalist, imperial) state that is ‘guilty’ and that its destruction and replacement by a state structure with a professed supra-ethnic identity, alongside the encouragement of ‘state-free’ cultural production articulating ethnic, linguistic and ‘cultural’ identities, is able to ensure the tolerance of ethnic and cultural difference. this model foundered, we suggest, not because of profound and ancient ‘ethnic hatreds’ but because the supraethnic ideology that sought to supersede ethnic particularisms was built on a universalist philosophy which professed that class locations and solidarities prevailed over all others. this proved to be untrue or, more accurately, untrue for the particular historical and cultural conjuncture in which it was enacted. the internal conflict between the principles of social, economic and political modernisation, on the one hand, and promotion of ethnic diversity and ethno-cultural particularism, on the other, was especially visible in the soviet model of multiculturalism, which might be defined as ethno-territorial federalism. the soviet project of social modernisation was accompanied by the manifestation, promotion and creation of reified cultural differences by the institutionalisation of ethnicity through the implementation of the korenizatsiia (indigenisation) projects in the 1920s (slezkine 1996: 214-225; tishkov 1997: 27-31) and subsequent official ‘affirmative-action’ programmes targeting ‘titular nationalities’ii (see gitelman 1992; martin 2001; suny 1993). the political and administrative structures in the national autonomies were formed in a way anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 8 that reflected the ethnic composition of the region or territory. as a rule, the representatives of titular nationalities predominated among republic or regional officials. the new political classes in the national autonomies were formed by recruiting new members of the communist party predominantly from the titular ethnic groups (suny 1993: 103). as suny states, in the soviet union, ‘[titular] nationality had taken on a new importance as an indicator of membership in the relevant social and cultural community’ (121). the ethnic self-identification of soviet citizens was institutionalised through the organisation of government and administration along ethno-territorial lines and by classifying the population by nationality (brubaker 1996: 30-31). in the final days of the soviet union, the world witnessed ethnonationalism emerging from the legacy of soviet ethno-federalism and the institutionalised personal ethnic identifications of soviet citizens. in brubaker’s words, ‘the soviet institutions of territorial nationhood and personal nationality comprised a ready-made template for claims to sovereignty, when political space expanded under gorbachev’ (24). the soviet nationalities policy and its institutional operationalisation was used to a greater or lesser extent as a template in other socialist countries. the similarities are most evident in the cases of the former yugoslavia and, to a lesser degree, in czechoslovakia; both theses states were constituted as ethnoterritorial federations and thus the principle of ethnic/national difference was ‘constitutionally enshrined’ (verdery 1996: 58). in these countries, therefore, socialism might be said to have naturalised and reinforced ethnic differences although such differences had been present as a political issue in central and south eastern europe since the growth of nationalism in the region in the nineteenth century. in (former) yugoslavia, for example, the institutionalisation of ethno-territorial federalism resulted in the redefinition of religious identities as ethnic and national. thus the ethnic category ‘muslim’ was created for serbo-croat speaking muslims in the federative republic of bosnia-herzegovina and some other areas of yugoslavia (poulton 1993: 39). after the disintegration of the yugoslav state this ethnic category has been transformed into that of ‘bosniak’ (bošnjak); an ethnonyme that has clear reference to the state of bosnia and herzegovina (which is itself a multinational federation) but is used generally only in relation to citizens of bosnia and herzegovina of muslim faith (as well as the muslim population of the sandžak region of serbia, see obradović’s article in this volume). echoes of soviet reification of ethnicity were evident, however, even in non-federated socialist states, like romania and bulgaria, for example in ethnic quotas for party membership (verdery 1996: 86). in bulgaria, moreover, the soviet logic of institutionalised personal ethnic identification was apparent in the compulsory name-changing campaign to which ethnic turks and other muslim minorities were subjected by the communist regime in the 1970s-80s (poulton 1993: 130). the growth of ethnonationalism in the post-soviet space, which coincided with profound transformations in all spheres of life, seems to provide evidence supporting layton’s argument that the salience of ethnicity depends on its political usefulness. this, he suggests, increases in unstable conditions, when people fear the current leadership cannot protect them and respond by returning to their local networks (layton 2006: 135). at the same time, in the former ussr these networks became effective political and economic institutions existing as parallel, and sometimes rival, structures to the state partly because of the successful implementation of the soviet model of multiculturalism (suny 1993: 115). thus, paradoxically, soviet nationalities policy liberated and modernised the ethnically diverse population of russia whilst simultaneously promoting the emergence of bounded ethnic entities based on rather essentialist understandings of ethnicity and culture which have been used subsequently to explain, if not justify, inter-group or inter-community tensions. western models of multi-ethnic living western, post-imperial attempts to address ethnic/racial intolerance focused initially on exposing the ‘scientific’ underpinnings of racism as erroneous and introducing legislation that protected individuals against racist acts. in the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, anti-racism was superseded in many western countries by a more proactive notion of ‘multiculturalism’. multiculturalism differs from anti-racism in that it seeks not only to punish, and ultimately eradicate, racial, ethnic and religious intolerance, but also to promote the positive social and cultural impact of interaction and communication between diverse ‘cultural’ communities (defined, more often than not as ‘ethnic minorities’). thus multiculturalism is rooted in both a recognition of the embeddedness of human experience in anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 9 distinct, culturally-structured worlds (in contrast, for example, to cosmopolitan understandings) whilst recognising that every culture is internally plural and that dialogue between such ‘cultures’ is socially enriching (parekh 2000 cited in abbas 2005: 155). in the post-9/11 context, however, multiculturalism is increasingly interpreted as ‘part of the problem not the solution’ (kundnani 2004: 108) to racism and ethnic discrimination.iii beck goes on to argue that underpinning the multiculturalist vision is the reduction of individuals to mere ‘epiphenomena of their cultures’ (ibid.) this is a concern shared by others who have accused multiculturalism of failing to eliminate the implicit hierarchies of biologically rooted racial doctrines in favour of cosmetically replacing the uncomfortable notion of ‘race’ with that of ‘culture’ or ‘identity’ (abbas 2005: 156; lentin 2001: 98). this has led to calls to replace ‘multiculturalism’ with revised versions of earlier discourses of the empowerment of individuals especially human rights discourses that promote first and foremost the education of individuals as a means of enabling ethnic minorities to challenge the (discriminatory) state. this is indicative of the continued vibrancy of individual liberal (and republican) democracy as alternative ways of envisaging the recognition of ethnic and cultural rights to those political formations (such as multicultural or consociational democracies) that recognise collective cultural rights (smooha 2005: 13). however, as lentin argues, critics of cultural relativism who advocate principles of universal individual human rights as the best means of combating racism and ethnic intolerance are in danger of universalising some purer form of humaneness without questioning the basis of that universal vision which is, in fact, a projection of the white european norms in which it is founded (lentin 2001: 101). in this understanding the ‘problem’ is not inequality or deprivation of ‘minority’ communities but self-imposed cultural barriers between communities that hinder the full participation in british society of ethnic minorities and foster racism (ibid; abbas and akhtar 2005: 134). this political shift draws directly on academic criticism of the concept of multiculturalism; the blair government’s adoption of ‘community cohesion’ as a new social priority, for example, picks up on a key criticism of multiculturalism, that is the claim that it equates cultural diversity with cultural relativism. this critique is summarised by ulrich beck who argues that, ‘the strategy of multiculturalism presupposes collective notions of difference and takes its orientation from more or less homogeneous groups conceived as either similar to or different, but in any case clearly demarcated, from one another and as binding for individual members…well-meaning multiculturalists can easily ally themselves with cultural relativists, thereby giving a free hand to despots who invoke the right to difference…’ (beck 2006: 67). beyond multiculturalism? models for multiethnic living in post-socialist europe such a recognition of universalism as ‘nothing other than a particular that has been universalised’ (bhambra 2006: 36) is central to our theoretical starting point. moreover, we suggest, the experience of post-socialist central, eastern and south eastern europe over the last two decades has provided an important impulse for such theoretical reflection. the collapse of the soviet union and the ethnic conflicts and intense ethnonationalist state-building projects that engulfed parts of the post-socialist world from 1989 initiated a new wave of state-building projects in europe driven by what smooha calls ‘two conflicting organizing principles: democracy for all and ethnonational ascendancy of the majority group’ (smooha 2005: 57). the flip side of these processes has been a myriad of ‘minority nationalisms’ that develop to counter the emergent ethnocratic state. these processes have challenged the notion of multiculturalism on both its political and its academic terrain. politically, as devic argues, the problem with liberal multiculturalism’s assumption that ethnicized culture is the primary basis for political organization of ethnic minorities is that it ‘may inadvertently perpetuate the nationalist, i.e. ethno-centred state building agenda’ (devic 2006: 258). academically, what is often caricatured as the ‘resurgence of nationalism’ in the post-socialist space has encouraged western theorists to work with, rather than reject, ‘nationalism’ and ‘ethnicism’. indicative here is beck’s notion of ‘realistic cosmopolitanism’ (2006: 57), which ‘should not be understood or developed in opposition to universalism, relativism, nationalism and ethnicism but as their summation or synthesis’. these processes have also challenged theorists from the post-socialist region to intervene in the multiculturalism debate. mikhail epshtein seeks to rethink ‘multiculturalism’ for post-socialist russia anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 10 drawing on ‘indigenous’ thinkers such as bakhtin and taking into account both the different patterns of multi-ethnic living in eastern europe as well as different visions of what constitutes a good society. this leads him to elaborate the notion of ‘transculture’ as an alternative to ‘multiculturalism’ (epshtein 1995: 300). like ‘multiculturalism, ‘transculture’ is driven by the impulse to unite different cultures while recognising their multiplicity. unlike ‘multiculturalism’ – which epshtein defines as rooted in the emphasis on the rights and dignity of individuals and as producing a multiplicity of separate and distinct minority cultures which ‘may exist side by side without taking the slightest interest in one another’ (301) – ‘transculture’ is rooted in the russian philosophical tradition that places a premium on wholeness but one which is consciously anti-totalitarian and achieved through a process of moving beyond the limitations of identification with any one culture (298). in this – although by reasserting the notion of ‘totality’ in contrast to beck’s reassertion of the ‘individual’ – he agrees with beck that the prioritization within multiculturalism of cultural (ethnic, racial, religious) collective units condemns society to an eternal dialogue ‘across frontiers’ and falsely portrays ‘the intermingling of boundaries and cultures’ as the exception rather than the rule (beck 2006: 67-8). the next step in this process of retheorization is to challenge the very principles of multiculturalism as the recognition of (respect for, celebration of) ‘others’ and their ‘difference’. žižek’s criticism (1996) of multiculturalism suggests that the other which is respected and celebrated in multiculturalism is the ‘folklorist other’ which is perceived in accordance with the eurocentric values of tolerance, human rights and democracy, but any ‘real other’ which is ‘patriarchal,’ ‘violent,’ and ‘fundamentalist’ is denounced. thus the idea of ‘respect’ for local/other cultures that is central to multiculturalism implies a eurocentric patronising of the other, such that ‘the multiculturalist respect for the other’s specificity is the very form of asserting one’s own superiority’ (44). this position makes bhambra’s (2006: 39) call to move beyond simply hearing the voices of more ‘others’ to challenging the ‘initial paradigm in which there was an “us” and an “other”’ highly pertinent; it resonates strongly with the impulse in the region to challenge ‘the west’s self-definition as the producer of universal rights’ (33). at the same time, however, it begs the question of just how we go about understanding what žižek calls the ‘real other’ and its role in the (re)production of ethnic tolerance and intolerance. amin (2004) also seeks to avoid reification of the ‘other’ by seeing ‘self’ and ‘other’ as mutually constituting identities. he proposes the idea of ‘hospitality’, manifest in the feeling of empathy between mutually dependent identities of ‘host’ and ‘guest’ as a way of understanding our everyday experience of interactions with others in a globalizing world and our need for the stranger as a boundary object (14-16). whilst the experience of socialist and post-socialist europe confirms the resonance of the notion of hospitality across europe, its pertinence as a foundation for tolerance and empathy towards others is also challenged by evidence that ‘hospitality’ is among the virtues to which xenophobes and nationalists appeal when seeking to assign ‘guests’ (meaning ethnic minorities, migrants and other ‘undesirable others’) their place in the ‘host country’. as elbakidze (in this volume) indicates, the peaceful co-existence of different ethnic groups in (post-)soviet georgia is often represented through narratives of hospitality which at the same time paper over the reality of discrimination against minorities and the inequality embedded in host-guest relationships.iv attractive though beck’s ‘cosmopolitan vision’, bhambra’s call to be ‘archivally cosmpolitan’ or epshtein’s state of ‘transculture’ may be, they inhabit an academic space largely untainted by the everyday lives and practices of their imagined subjects. the rime project environment – based on the ngo-academic dialogue described at the outset of this article – in contrast brought our participants repeatedly back to the stark reality of understanding just why, as anthias (2006: 17) puts it, ‘do people with different languages, cultures and ways of life fail to live in harmony?’. in the second part of this article we turn away from the theoretical question of the balance between universalism and particularism that needs to be struck in an increasingly globalized environment to a consideration of the everyday mechanisms and practices that produce, reproduce and/or challenge ethnic (in)tolerance. between state and individual: understanding ethnic (in)tolerance as part of the ‘circuit of culture’ whilst accepting bhambra’s (2006: 37) argument that social theory has been all too ready to address ‘issues of cultural difference, heterogeneity and otherness by assuming anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 11 difference to pre-exist the processes by which it is produced’, we would not envisage this as a problem that is inherent in taking a ‘cultural’ approach. rather, we suggest, it stems from employing a static notion of ‘culture’ that attempts to crudely de-ethnicise ‘ethnicity’ or de-racialize ‘race’ without challenging the assumptions underpinning those boundaries. in the second section of this article, therefore, we draw on a different way of thinking about culture – the ‘circuit of culture’ (hall 1997: 1) to understand ethnic (in)tolerance in eastern europe. this, we suggest is as elsewhere around the world produced, transmitted, reproduced and resisted through the interactions between a range of social and cultural institutions, individual and collective cultural practices. in this section, therefore, we move the terrain of debate to the realm of everyday cultural experiences and practices in the former soviet union, central and eastern europe. in so doing, we attempt to address directly rather than skirt the challenge voiced by žižek (1996) that while it is wrong that ruling elites exploit a popular desire for primordial identities, the expression of such ‘longing’ must not be denied nor the substance, passion and ‘jouissance’ that fill these collective identities. thus the first part of this section argues against an understanding of ethnic solidarities in the region as being repressed and then ‘exploding’ as the state withdrew under the collapse of communism. it does so by tracing the forms and meanings of ethnic association that have developed in postsocialist societies and by asking how this can help us understand both tolerance and intolerance in the region. the second part of the section goes on to consider the role of the west in the construction and reproduction of notions of primordial ethnicity in the postsocialist space and, in particular, the processes by which these discourses – for example of ‘balkanism’ are received, internalised and rearticulated by individuals. civil society and ethnic association: (re)producing ‘primordial’ ethnicities there is perhaps no clearer example of the dangers of universalising the particular than in the understanding of civil society (hann 1996: 18) as ‘a concrete and quantifiable thing’, existing in an institutionalised form. such a ‘hard’ vision of civil society fails to recognise as its constituent parts different forms of social solidarity that do not conform to the ‘universal’ values of tolerance, democracy and liberalism. this is particularly true of collective activity undertaken on the basis of kinship, religion, ethnic and/or national identities, which has been treated largely with suspicion, if not hostility, by political scientists and philosophers writing on civil society.v anthropological research has generated substantial evidence of collective civic activities under communist rule, which might be interpreted, as forms of civil society were a more inclusive approach to be applied. based on the study of official (and thus to a greater or lesser extent party-controlled) associations (sports clubs, voluntary fire brigades, youth associations, professional and amateur art associations, religious organisations, etc.), politically independent organisations (independent trade unions and political parties) and informal social groupings (such as family and interest groups), buchowski (1996: 84) argues that in socialist poland, collective activity took both official and unofficial forms and created ‘the possibility of action and the promotion of private or group interests against the authorities’. moreover, because of the political acceptance and, in some cases, promotion of ethnic associations by the authorities, they occupied a rather public place in society and provide a striking example of how state socialism engendered its own kind of civil society. in dismissing ethnicity, religion or kinship-based forms of social solidarity as primordial, however, apologists of the ‘hard’ definition of civil society fail to identify the real social, economic and political dilemmas that people confront during post-socialist transformation and which they often seek to resolve through ethnic, cultural or national affiliation. furthermore, the exclusive search for liberal and individualist values as indicators of ‘true’ civil society leads universalists to ignore the potential that other forms of social solidarity have for challenging the state’s domination of the ‘public sphere’. we would thus suggest that a relatively broad understanding of civil society be employed along the lines suggested by robert layton (2006: 44) who defines it as ‘the social structures occupying the space between the household and the state that enable people to co-ordinate their management of resources and activities’. such a definition allows us to extend the analysis of civil society to all varieties of social groupings, including those that are based on ethnic identity. this is important to the argument we outline in this article because it allows for the possibility that ethnically based forms of association in postsocialist eastern europe are neither a product anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 12 of the flaring up of ancient hatreds buried and hidden by failed imperial (including socialist) subjugation of ethnic conflict nor purely instrumentally ‘whipped up’ among an unreflexive ‘mass’ by ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ (tishkov 1997: 284). while both these understandings of ethnic association assume the pre-existence of formed and ‘finished’ ethnic identities, we start rather from the position that ethnicity is best viewed as a social construct which can be used strategically by actors for establishing and maintaining social networks, managing economic resources and pursuing political interests. from this vantage point, ‘primordial’ versions of ethnicity promoted by ethnic associations, including in post-socialist societies is a form of ‘strategic essentialism’ meaning that it ‘aims to produce a particular kind of effect’ (gould 2007: 145). thus, as todorova (2004: 181) notes, ‘the real question is not that memory and identity can be manipulated (of course they can), but why does the person hear the message at a particular moment, so that he or she can then say that he or she learned what he or she has always known, and moreover insist that this is part of a collective memory and a collective identity.’vi such a social constructivist understanding of ethnicity has its own challenges; not least the fact that ethnic identities are often understood and expressed by people precisely in primordial terms of blood relationship and cultural rootedness. how and why this should be so is significantly illuminated by the notion of the ‘circuit of culture’, which can help identify both the processes and the institutions that facilitate this. layton (2006: 134) – evoking levistrauss’ notion of ‘bricolage’ – for example, suggests that such ‘folk primordialism’ may be explained by the fact that ethnicities are shaped through the ‘intellectual restructuring of existing cultural themes’ which brings familiarity, plausibility and naturalness to new constructions. thus, the ‘social construction’ of ethnic identities does not mean that they are invented but rather that they are creatively shaped and reshaped from existing ‘traditional’ forms of identity (those related to language, religion, family and gender) often mediated, and sometimes sponsored, by the state (bellerhann and hann 2001: 32). the role of ethnic associations is particularly important here since in the late 1980s and 1990s such ethnic associations became the most salient form of citizens’ selforganisation and mobilisation in pursuit of their political, economic and cultural objectives. as such groups compete for economic and political resources with other groups in their regions they often (re-)produce xenophobic stereotypes and discriminatory practices against ethnic minorities. outlining such a notion of ethnic tolerance and intolerance as – politically and economically contingent pragmatic choices of members of groups, hayden (2002: 160) differentiates between what he calls ‘negative tolerance’ (non-interference) and a liberal, ‘positive’ reading of tolerance (recognition and respect for others’ beliefs and practices). different groups, he suggests, might live side by side for a long period of time both avoiding overt conflict and maintaining distinction and differences from each other. at the same time they may be involved in peaceful competition, which – if the stakes are suddenly lowered or the possible gains from open conflict suddenly increased may quickly turn into violence (ibid). schäuble’s ethnographic study of former combatants in central rural dalmatia provides some empirical evidence of the fact that both traumatising experiences in the past and dismal economic prospects ‘pave the way for ethnic nationalism, and have proved to lower the threshold for violence’ (schäuble 2006: 10). in such intermingled communities while close personal interactions are possible, and often inevitable, groups themselves remain structurally opposed and unmixed. the bosnian institution of komšiluk or neighbourhood to which hayden refers in his study is one instance of such negative tolerance (162). another example might be the situation in the georgian capital tbilisi during the soviet period described by elbakidze (in this volume) when generally tolerant relationships between members of different groups coexisted alongside ethnic stereotypes which conveyed a functional hierarchy of ethnic groups constraining them within a particular professional/social niche in society. such negative tolerance allows both close interactions and even intimacy at the individual level and differentiation and opposition at the group level. therefore the ethnic boundaries in such communities are both blurred and impenetrable. when conditions change, giving way to ethnonationalist ways of representing communities and identities in society, people are ready to accept their ethnic identities as ‘primordial loyalties’ (appadurai 2003: 155) because they have been aware of ethnic differences always. however, when these loyalties are articulated at the personalised level of neighbourhood or workplace interactions, people are often surprised to anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 13 discover ethnic others amongst their neighbours, co-workers and friends. thus former soviet citizens often convey their feelings about the growth of ethnonationalism during the late soviet period in terms of a sudden discovery of the ethnic ‘other’ which they simply failed to notice when they lived together as ‘one soviet people’. appadurai (2003) suggests this sense of ‘betrayal’ having known someone as your ‘brother’ but suddenly seeing them ‘uncovered’, ‘different’, ‘other’ than that which you knew as an explanatory factor for the particular brutality of ethnic conflicts in south eastern europe. this seems to be apposite for ethnic conflict both in the former yugoslavia and the caucasus (including abkhazia). moreover, appadurai’s ‘hypothesis of treachery’, if confirmed, demonstrates a direct connection between the collective identities created, transformed and reified by the state, and individual and group actions leading to ethnic violence and brutality. despite such obvious connections between primordialism and nationalism and the complicity of both in ethnic conflict and violence, ‘primordial’ understandings of ethnicity remain widespread and positively evaluated in post-socialist societies. one possible explanation of this phenomenon is offered by russian ethnologist sergei sokolovski who emphasises the way in which primordialist interpretations of ethnicity were institutionalised within soviet ethno-territorial federalism and embedded in the personal ethnic identification of citizens via both the soviet passport system and affirmative/repressive actions of the state against individuals and groups as representatives of ethnic collectives. consequently, ‘having become part of our reality, institutionalised categorisations and classifications were subsequently rarely questioned and, practically unnoticed, they remain a sort of mechanism of orientation and differentiation; a social topology of the world whose legitimacy is no longer doubted’ (sokolovski 2006: 17). from this perspective ethnicity and citizenship are tightly bound together. the rights of citizens are determined by their ethnicity or, to be precise, by the status of their ethnic group in the country/region defined in primordial terms as the connection between people and territory. almost all the contributions to this special issue provide evidence of the transmission of this primordial vision of ethnicity into the idea of citizenship, whether it is manifested through the kosovo myth in serbia (obradović), the discourse of apsuara in abkhazia (sabirova), or the rhetoric of ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ in georgia (elbakidze). it follows from this that civil society also has a significant ethnic component; if both citizens and the state see ethnicity as the most ‘natural’ form of solidarity, and ethnic visions and divisions of the social world are institutionalised, ethnic association may become the most effective way of defending ‘ordinary’ people’s rights. however, as david anderson notes, while ethnic associations seem to express a defence of the ‘social rights’ of their constituency, these rights ‘may be better understood as rights within a citizenship regime’ (1996: 110). thus the history of the intermingled living of different ethnic groups in the postsocialist space should not be mistaken for ‘multiculturalism’ in its western understanding, i.e. with ‘positive tolerance’ (using hayden’s terminology) at its core. indeed, as gould (2007: 162) argues, in some regions of the world, including the caucasus, the racialised concept of ethnicity, incorporating an essentialist understanding of culture, was imported with the process of modernisation in the twentieth century. this is not to suggest that ethnic groups, or people (narody) did not exist in the caucasus before the twentieth century,vii but that these group/community boundaries were often porous and allowed interaction between and inclusion of individuals from other communities as well as differentiation at the group level. in the caucasus as well as the balkans communities are often based on kin structures and/or belonging to religious denominations (gould 2007; hayden 2002) and thus allow the incorporation of outsiders into particular ‘ethnic’ community through marriage and/or religious conversion.viii thus, it might be argued, the notion of ethnic cultures was not relevant to these regions because communities living next to each other for generations shared many, or in some cases all, ‘cultural traits’. gould (2007: 162) states this even more strongly, arguing that the concept of ‘ethnicity’ (and indeed of ‘race’) which ‘we learn to project onto the most violence-ridden parts of the non-western world is specific and unique to the western modernity’. it follows that western notions of multiculturalism that merely substitute ‘race’ with ‘culture’ without actually undermining the essentialising nature of the former (appiah 2005: 136) as a universal cure from ethnic intolerance may turn out to enhance rather than undermine an ethnicised and racialised vision of the social world. anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 14 positioning the west the construction and reproduction of notions of primordial ethnicity in the post-socialist space cannot be explained without understanding the complicity of the west. indeed, one of the advantages of the ‘circuit of culture’ model outlined above is that it allows not only a means of understanding the role of the west in the original ‘colonial representation’ of ‘the balkans’ (bjelić 2002: 4) or ‘the caucasus’ (grant 2005: 47, shatirishvili 2005: 2) but also the processes by which such discourses are re-mobilised for the presentation of current conflicts, received by people in the region, and re-articulated as a defensive ‘anti-western’ discourse which is itself a central trope of nationalist discourse in post-socialist societies. there is a growing and fascinating literature on the question of ‘balkanism’ (todorova 1997; goldsworthy 1998; bjelić & savić 2002) to which justice cannot be done in this article. we would note here only that this debate goes significantly beyond simply exposing another form of western demonisation of the ‘other’. ‘balkanism’ is rather a form of knowledge production which works both in a similar way to orientalism (said 1997) but also involves distinct representational mechanisms as well as simultaneously presenting itself as a critical study of discourse on the balkans (bjelić 2002: 4-5). an interesting comparison is the emergent discussion of the how the caucasus has been ‘imagined’ within russian imperial and post-imperial discourse. conflict and violence in the history of russo-caucasian relations have been romanticised in russian popular culture since the imperial period and, as grant (2005: 47) argues, for the russian audience the caucasus has become ‘an everyday idiom’ of a zone of violence where russians are ‘ever the noble victim’. the re-mobilisation of these discourses for the presentation of current conflicts is also well documented. as hammond (2005: 139) notes ‘the understanding of yugoslavia as a collection of fractious, malevolent entities was central to the wider discursive recovery of victorian balkanism’. central to this discourse are claims to the presence of ‘ancient ethnic hatreds’ and an unusual ‘savagery’ in the region (142), which have been exploited widely in western media accounts of the conflicts in former yugoslavia. goldsworthy connects this war reporting with historically rooted discursive constructions of ‘the balkans’ thus: ‘the defamiliarizing of accounts of balkan conflicts in the western media – describing ethnic wars as unthinkable elsewhere in europe while supplying gory details of singularly “balkan” butchery to an eager audience – contribute to the perception of the peninsula’s ambiguous, “not-yet” or “never-quite,” europeanness’ (goldsworthy 2002: 29). here too, however, the balkans is not unique; there are clear connections between the ‘image of the balkans’ and the representation of the violence as regional characteristics of the caucasus in the russian cultural and political context. following the chechen war and other so-called ‘ethnic conflicts’, the peoples of the caucasus are often portrayed in russian and world media as, by nature, violent (grant 2005: 39). in the contemporary russian federation, the quasiethnic concepts of ‘caucasians’ (kavkaztsy) or ‘those of caucasian nationality’ (litsa kavkazskoi natsional’nosti) operate extensively within the securitisation discourse of migration policy, creating the image of migrants from this region as both corrupt and culturally alien to the ‘native’, ethnically russian population. in the context of this special issue, however, our interest lies less in the representational level than in the processes by which these discourses are received, internalised and re-articulated by individuals. this is particularly important for understanding young people’s vision of their national or ethnic ‘self’ and ‘others’ described in articles in this issue by obradović, elbakidze, sabirova and omel’chenko & goncharova. we are particularly concerned here with the way in which the critical manifestation of ‘balkinism’ noted above – the very awareness of the ‘balkanising’ mission of the west – shapes post-conflict identities. in former yugoslavia in particular, the demonising of the region, alongside the experience of particularly painful moments such as the nato bombing of serbia in 1999, have left a strong trope of ‘betrayal’ in young people’s minds. illustrative here is the understanding of the historical relationship between serbia and the west by a young serbian intellectual interviewed by volčič as one of profound treachery: ‘europe… yes… the west… has betrayed the serbs… over and over again throughout history’ (volčič 2005: 155). what is really interesting about volčič’s study of the significance of the west as ‘the other’ in shaping serbian national identity among young people today, however, is what it reveals about the complex workings of the ‘circuit of culture’. receiving and reworking balkinist discourse, the young intellectuals anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 15 interviewed by volčič develop a countercritique of the west in which the west is caricatured as spiritually empty but culturally, economically and politically imperialistic (163). in some cases this critical perspective takes the form of appropriating this western ‘othering’ and turning it back on the west through what volčič (167) describes as a rhetorical strategy of ‘self-exoticization’. the qualities ascribed to ‘the balkans’ – barbarity, irrationality, passion – are reappropriated and employed as a declaration of freedom and resistance against western oppression and, literally, sold back to the west in the form of a branded ‘balkan art’. as volčič (171) notes, however, the paradox of this strategy is that, in the very act of unmasking the hegemony of the western social order and negotiating their representations within it, respondents effectively strengthen that order by employing commercial stereotypes of themselves whilst reducing their claims to the ‘difference’ from the west they ascribe to themselves. sites and forms of the (re)production of ethnic (in)tolerance: young people in focus the focus in this special issue on the reproduction of ethnic (in)tolerance among the younger generation reflects one of the original foci of the rime project. in this final section we explain the rationale for the focus on youth as well as some of the methodological and ethical issues that it engenders. we also introduce briefly the particular sites and forms of the (re)production of ethnic (in)tolerance discussed in the contributions to the special issue that follow. it is important to establish that our decision to focus on youth was not rooted in a vision of youth as a symbol of the future or as a ‘blank canvas’ from which to start over following the ‘traumatogenic change’ of the collapse of communism (sztompka 2004: 171). in this, therefore, we fundamentally disagree with sztompka’s vision of the younger generation as ‘saved from the anxieties and uncertainties of oppositional combat, the elation of revolution and the early disappointments of transition’ and as such ‘the carriers of a new culture inoculated against postcommunist trauma’ (sztompka 2004: 193). we see young people, rather, as deeply embedded in these post-socialist contexts and in the articles that follow different aspects of that context and its implications for the production, transmission or resistance of ethnic intolerance are explored. epistemological, methodological and ethical considerations before introducing those contributions, it is worth noting that the theoretical approach we have outlined in this introductory chapter brings with it a clear epistemological standpoint and a series of methodological consequences that are common to the articles that follow. it envisages ethnic (in)tolerance as socially constructed and as profoundly contextually dependent. this implies that its study needs to be conducted in its natural setting, within the cultural contexts (the family, school/college, friendship, or ‘subcultural’ youth group, etc.), in which tolerance and intolerance is produced and reproduced. this does not imply that we see something ‘pure,’ ‘untouched,’ or ‘authentic’ in the articulations of ethnic (in)tolerance that are captured through qualitative research, but that in order to understand the production, transmission and resistance of ethnic (in)tolerance we need to recognise and ‘learn the language of’ its everyday cultural practice. we also need to be able to understand (in)tolerance as part of the whole subjectivities of the agents – in this case young people – who produce and reproduce it. for these reasons, the usefulness of quantitative approaches (reported on, for example, in the articles by perasović and elbakidze) which seek to measure national populations’ sense of ‘nearness’ or ‘distance’ from ethnic ‘others’ is questionable due to its static, descriptive approach and inability to explain the origins or mechanisms of reproducing ethnic (in)tolerance. moreover, from an ethical perspective such research may indeed essentialise, solidify and authenticate ethnic stereotypes. this is not to suggest that qualitative methods are without their failings. amongst rime project participants, practitioners in particular voiced concern about the ‘non-representative’ nature of qualitative studies because of their small-scale, case-study approach as well as the potential for the abuse of such findings by the state and other social institutions (such as the media) for the production and manipulation of ethnic ‘fears’. such concern is natural, legitimate, and real; the ‘circuit of culture’ model discussed above suggests that such research will, inevitably, be received, re-presented and disseminated and become part of the cultural context in which new actors reproduce or resist ethnic (in)tolerance. anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 16 a thematic introduction to the case studies the articles included in this special issue are extremely diverse in terms of the youth experiences they analyse. nonetheless, their contribution to the overall aim of understanding the (re)production of ethnic (in)tolerance might be envisaged in terms of three key connective strands: structural and historical context; cultural sites or mechanisms of the (re)production of (in)tolerance; active engagement of young people. the structural and historical context of young people’s experience is considered by all authors contributing to this special issue, reflecting the awareness that young people growing up in post-communist societies experience a ‘constant feeling of insecurity and existential risk’ (tomanović & ignjatović 2006: 272). however, in the case studies outlined by some authors – sabirova, elbakidze, obradović the underlying ‘trauma’ of ‘transition’ is overlaid by the trauma of war, ethnic conflict and/or displacement. for these young people the world is far removed from sztompka’s (2004: 193) description of it as ‘relatively stable, established, secure, and predictable’. in the contributions by authors to this special issue this experience is dramatically illustrated in the case of abkhazian youth (sabirova); the extent to which young people are exposed to nationalist ideologies and violence has become even more evident since the renewal of intergroup violence in the region during the recent conflict between georgia and russia in august 2008. however, such insecurity is also identified as an explanatory factor in producing intolerance among ‘ethnic majority’ youth in russia (omel’chenko & goncharova) where young people who find themselves without any real place or investment in the new system may become resentful of those with greater opportunity or of those ‘incomers’ who can be easily identified as ‘responsible’ for thwarted opportunities. generational experience is far from homogeneous (pilkington 2006) and as is shown, for example, in the article in this volume by perasović, whilst, in some cases, young people are able and ready to take up the new opportunities produced by rapid social change, other young people may pick up, exaggerate, innovate, rebel and carry forward either ‘regressive’ or new revolutionary responses to ‘trauma’ into the future. central to understanding the responses of young people to structural constraint is the role of social and cultural institutions, which mediate between macro social change and individual experience. here again our starting point is quite different from that of sztompka, whose model for overcoming the trauma of post-socialist change assumes that institutions of ‘socialization’ the family, school, media, political parties, and civil organisations are in place, work effectively and have the trust of (young) citizens. this understanding shares the limitations of all functionalist understandings of youth culture and generational reproduction; this is compounded by the fact that, in postsocialist societies, these institutions are themselves only emergent. as noted above, as these institutions (political parties, churches, educational institutions, etc.) compete for economic and political resources they often (re-)produce xenophobic stereotypes. this process is detailed in elbakidze’s article in this volume, as she discusses the mobilisation of the church and schools that attempt to define and assert the primacy of ‘the majority’ georgian ethnic group by proxy of orthodoxy. other articles consider the particular role of key sites of cultural production and transmission. in the contributions by perasović and obradović, for example, the importance of the role of the media in escalating ‘panic’ but also in silencing subordinate narratives of events or phenomena is discussed. families are also a prime site for the reproduction of nostalgias for the past, and this is discussed in the articles by obradović and sabirova. indeed in these two cases the role of the family in interpreting experience takes on additional significance due to the post-conflict situations in which external sources of information are mistrusted or simply absent. it has been argued frequently that youth in post-socialist societies are civically passive (wallace 2003: 15). in the case studies presented here, however, authors have approached young people not only as passive recipients of the ‘parent culture’ (clarke et al 1976: 15), but have considered a range of cultural spaces in which young people are active and which are jealously guarded by them not only from incursions by the state but to some extent also from an institutionallydefined ‘civil society’ (omel’chenko & pilkington 2006: 547). the political meaning of such cultural engagement may not be writ large, but that does not make it insignificant. apostolov’s discussion in this volume of the meanings of young people’s dancing and listening to chalga music in contemporary bulgaria raises many of these issues. whilst for cultural critics, the phenomenon may be read as evidence of little more than the commercialization and vulgarization of the anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 17 youth scene in bulgaria, it is impossible to ignore the deeper significance of the collective appreciation of a music and dance culture that self-consciously draws on a fusion of a range of indigenous ethnic music. other youth cultural formations such as (sections of) punk culture articulate more directly their engagement with ‘the struggle against prejudice’ (aksyutina 2005: 12) and, as is documented in this volume in perasović’s article, find themselves subject to violence as a consequence. omel’chenko & goncharova, moreover, find evidence that even the perpetrators of ethnically motivated violence – such as skinhead groups – are diverse and fractured groupings incorporating both white power and anti-racist elements (petrova 2006: 189). of course we should not be naïve about the political potential of such cultural activism and we would not go as far as feixa & nilan in declaring that ‘youth cultures have the potential to lead the way in thinking about global conflicts and strategies for resolving them’ (feixa & nilan 2006: 211). as les back (1996) argues, while racially and ethnically mixed youth communities, and the hybrid cultural forms and practices they develop may create cultural spaces in which racism is banished temporarily, they remain subject to hegemonic racist discourse which structures the world outside. thus sztompka (2004: 193) is wrong to see the younger generation’s culture as ‘no longer ambivalent, internally split’ and the nature of this frission and ambivalence is explored in the articles by obradović, omel’chenko & goncharova, perasović and apostolov as they consider the role of either specific forms of popular culture or of everyday cultural practices and speech in articulating and embedding (often unconsciously) notions of ethnic ‘others’. thus, whilst retaining a strong dose of realism, we suggest that it is important that these cultural responses of young people are not dismissed as ‘passive’, ‘consumer’ behaviour but understood as part and parcel of young people’s response to the cultural ‘trauma’ endured as well as their contribution to the reconstitution of the cultural tissue of society. conclusion this introductory article has sought to illustrate how the experience of multi-ethnic co-existence in socialist and post-socialist europe can inform debates about multiculturalism (and what comes after it). this experience, we have suggested, confirms trends in recent theorising, which are critical of the implicit universalisation within multiculturalism of a rather particular european vision of the division and relationship between ‘self’ and ‘other’. indeed, we suggest that this multicultural vision not only positions certain eastern and south eastern european ‘others’ as displaying ‘dangerous’ primordial ethnic belonging but through its conscious promotion (not least as a key criterion for eligibility for membership of the european union) may in fact engender such primordial ties as a politics of resistance. in seeking an alternative way of understanding the complex processes of ethnic co-existence and conflict, however, we do not throw out the ‘cultural’ baby with the ‘multiculturalism’ bathwater. we reject only a static understanding of culture that is used as a superficially de-racialized or de-ethnicised category or metaphor. the experience of the region considered in this special issue, we suggest, shows that ethnic difference is neither stable, fixed nor subject to repression or mobilisation from above. rather it is a lived relationship, which at the individual level is embedded in a multitude of everyday cultural practices and at the societal level expresses itself along a continuum of ethnic co-existence through to ethnic conflict and violence. these practices, we suggest, have to be located in their specific structural and historical contexts. in this we concur with ana devic (2006: 270) that it is essential not to ‘deny or neglect the evidence that before the outbreaks of violence there existed some long-standing forms of multiculture, which could be defined as unstructured multiculturalism, rooted in everyday life and indicating the existence of alternatives to liberal multiculturalism’. such an ‘indigenous multiculturalism’, we suggest, holds the potential for the peaceful coexistence of different groups, or even their functional integration, whilst promoting non-violent competition for economic and political resources as well as containing the possibility of violent ethnic conflict. at the same time the ‘peculiarity’ of experiences of ethnic coexistence in the region should not be reified. we have tried to indicate in this introductory article a range of cultural mechanisms (media representation, popular culture and subcultural affiliation, church, school, family, memory, imagination, intergenerational ties), which connect these individual cultural practices to macro social change. in the individual contributions that follow the workings of these cultural mechanisms are explored in their specific regional and historical contexts. anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 18 notes 1 the editors were the rime project principal investigator and the project manager and thus write from a position of reflecting on the results of the project as a whole. however, it is important that the volume should not be read as representing the collective conclusions of rime project participants but as the individual views of authors shaped not only by their varying academic and practitioner backgrounds but also by their relationship to their research subject. 2 as part of the soviet ethno-territorialization of national identities, the category ‘nation’ (natsiia) became defined in ethno-cultural rather than citizenship terms. this primordialist understanding of a nation as an ethnic collective based on commonality of language, territory, economic life and ‘mentality’ was affirmed in stalin’s early writing on the ‘nationality question’ (tishkov 1997: 29). it was elaborated further via soviet ‘ethnos theory’, which envisaged the nation as the final stage of the evolution of ethnic communities from relatively ‘primitive’ (tribes) to more complex formations (narodnosti). the soviet category ‘nationality’ is a derivative of this primordialist definition of nation and continues to be used in postsoviet russia to indicate ethnic affiliation rather than citizenship. in this volume we, and other authors, use this category when ethnicity-related terminology is translated from the original (e.g. ‘nationalities’, ‘nationality policy’, etc.). 3 this shift in fact pre-dates the event of ‘9/11’; civil unrest during the late summer of 2001 in a number of post-industrial northern cities of england had already led to a retreat from the celebration of multicultural diversity and the re-emergence in government lexicon of ‘assimilationist language’ reminiscent of the sixties (back, keith, khan, shukra & solomos 2002). 4 as this special issue was going to press, a war in south ossetia erupted (august 2008), effectively ‘defrosting’ post-soviet ethnic conflicts in south ossetia and abkhazia. the peaceful coexistence of different ethnic groups in georgia, with or without south ossetia and abkhazia, has been jeopardised once more as both georgia and south ossetia accuse each other of ethnic cleansing during the military phase of the conflict. once again the territory of the nation-state (even where that state is internationally unrecognised) has been depicted as ethnic territory and ‘home’ for a titular nationality, confining non-titular groups to ‘alien others’. 5 for seligman (1995: 212-213), the liberalindividualist or ‘universalist’ vision of civil society, which emphasises the legal equality of individuals and is ensured by ‘a procedurally just or fair process of democratic decisionmaking in the public sphere’, is categorically opposed to the forms of social solidarity underpinned by relationships of kinship and ethnicity, which he sees as primordial and irrational. gellner (1995: 33) also insists on excluding from his definition of civil society ‘traditional’ forms of social organisation (e.g. kinship, religion), which maintain social cohesion and solidarity by ‘a heavy ritual underscoring of social roles and obligations’. 6 however, we would not concur with todorova’s claim (2004: 185) that culture and identity are a wholly ‘individual endeavour’. 7 group divisions or communities in hayden’s sense of the term have existed in the region for centuries, although it might be argued that the meaning of such divisions being armenian, for example has been continuously redefined (gadjiev, kohl and magomedov 2007: 136). 8 in abkhazia some families still remember how their sadz, megrel or turk ancestors became abkhaz (kuznetsova and kuznetsov 2006) and there is ethnographic evidence of similar family histories among other ethnic groups in the region (see for example tabukashvili 2004). references abbas, t. 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(2003) young people in post communist countries: vanguard of change or lost generation?, in: t. horowitz, b. kotik-friedgut & s. hoffman (eds), from pacesetters to dropouts: post-soviet youth in comparative perspective, pp. 3-26 (lanham, new york, oxford: university press of america). žižek, s. (1997) multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism, pp. 28-51. http://wwics.si.edu/topics/pubs/acf2� http://wwics.si.edu/topics/pubs/acf2� same state, different cultures? models for multi-ethnic societies socialist models of multi-ethnic living western models of multi-ethnic living beyond multiculturalism? models for multi-ethnic living in post-socialist europe between state and individual: understanding ethnic (in)tolerance as part of the ‘circuit of culture’ civil society and ethnic association: (re)producing ‘primordial’ ethnicities positioning the west sites and forms of the (re)production of ethnic (in)tolerance: young people in focus epistemological, methodological and ethical considerations a thematic introduction to the case studies conclusion 64 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 reclaiming the personal: oral history in post-socialist europe. ed. natalia khanenko-friesen and gelinada grinchenko. toronto: university of toronto press, 2015. 328 pages. iuliia buyskykh, research institute of ukrainian studies, the centre for applied anthropology, ukraine julia.buj@gmail.com the last few decades in humanities and social sciences revealed that scholars tend to work interdisciplinarily, emphasizing on the value of holistic approaches while researching societies and human interactions. this volume is framed as interdisciplinary research, gathering writings of oral historians, cultural anthropologists and sociologists. therefore, it will be of interest to a wide scholarly audience. cultural anthropology and oral history share two important features. theoretically each discipline aims to make voicelessness vocal, in other words, to give voices to those who are absent from history textbooks and whose lives don’t fit in current national projects and political ideologies. neither oral historians nor cultural anthropologists are interested in revealing the “true” or “objective” past. instead they deal with people’s personal interpretations of the past. methodologically both disciplines use the method of interviewing to record a person’s narration, documenting people’s life experiences. at the same time, anthropological tradition keeps the privacy of informants through the use of pseudonyms or anonymizing study participants completely, while oral historical data is intended for the public record. in addition, anthropology is focused on the context in which interactions occur, the landscape and the everyday which form the bedrock of the conversation between a respondent and a researcher, taking into an account behavior, body language, facial expressions, emotions that follow the conversation. the acknowledgment of the context in which interviews took place and its ‘thick description’ is a distinctive feature of an anthropological research and one that to some extent is lacking in this volume. 65 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 the unifying thread of the book, putting together various authors and their approaches, is an attempt to unchain personal and collective memories from imposed constructions from above: state, published sources, and official historical narratives. the introduction to the book reflects the goal of the editors and authors to unpack and decolonize the “twilight zones” of oral history, by paying attention to its development in central-eastern europe after the fall of communism. it notes the challenges the discipline faces together with the changes in states and national academic systems. the editors also emphasize the importance of scholarly self-reflection while discovering the “multiple socialist pasts”, which means we must ask ourselves how we, as scholars, speak about the past, and to what extent it influences our research. the book consists of four parts, accompanied by short introductions. the first part “from subjects to agents of history: political implications of oral historical research” contains three chapters depicting the political connotations of oral history research in germany, poland, finland and the russian federation. it is opened by alexander von plato’s theoretical article, in which he asserts that there is no single shared collective memory of the past in any european society. this statement is revealed in various regional contexts in the two following articles by anna witeska-młynarczyk and alexey golubev. witeska-młynarczyk’s chapter discusses how the institutional policy of postcommunist poland influences public opinion and frames general knowledge about “victims of the communist regime,” a new category of people, who were repressed during the communist era. being an anthropologist, witeska-młynarczyk grounds her research on two years of fieldwork among the members of the association of former political prisoners in a small polish town. she examines the complex interplay between state-controlled discourses and practices, influenced by the work of the institute of national remembrance, and the everyday life of individuals, drawing on not only her interviews, but also the descriptions of her participant observations obtained from attending gatherings of her study participants. she met them casually and maintained the documents of the association. the most important part of her research is to understand how self-positioning and self-identification 66 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 as national hero / victim of a communist state has been shaped in personal stories of her respondents, and what issues have influenced this understanding (e.g. contemporary polish historiography, official discourse of national suffering during the communist era, the roman catholic church, communication with the association community members, their families’ memories). witeska-młynaczyk argues that those who were silent in communist poland contribute now to a new ideological metanarrative of polish suffering under the communism. this echoes alexey golubev’s research on contradictory multilayered memories of karelian, vepsian, russian finn and russian inhabitants of karelia (russian federation) during the finnish occupation of eastern karelia in 1941-1944. both research cases show how separate individual memories are being substituted by a symbolic collective narrative of suffering, supported from above. the second part, “reclaiming the personal: between the collective vision of history,” highlights the relationships between private and public in personal narratives and raises the question of how the researcher influences the respondent’s storytelling, how the voices of scholars and study participants interact, and how an interview can become a journey from broken and fragmented to holistic self. it opens with the article by yelena rozhdestvenskaya based on thirty in-depth interviews with former ostarbeiters (forced laborers in nazi germany) in pskov oblast, russian federation. she researches the narrative means by which former ostarbeiters reconcile their trauma while constructing their identities as “expert witnesses” of nazi occupation in russia. rozhdestvenskaya calls it “narrative trauma compensation” (79), underlining that the possibility to be heard and to articulate the past gives new meaning to the lives of those people. embracing methods of feminist anthropology and oral history, natalia pushkareva’s research is focused on biographical narratives of female scholars from the russian federation and belarus, who originate from intellectual urban elites and academic families. pushkareva claims that, for a long time, dominant male narrative overshadowed a female perspective of the history of their countries and women’s own lives in this past. this situation has resulted in underestimation by female academics their own achievements and success together with 67 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 the intentions to make them more vocal and visible. rozalia cherepanova, basing her chapter on 132 biographic interviews recorded in chelabinsk, russian federation, emphasizes the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting oral history research and interpreting the interviews. she stresses the necessity of oral history to go beyond its methodological limits and use what cultural anthropology offers, primarily, a respect for the informant’s privacy and taking into an account the context in which interviews take place. at the same time, cherepanova directly compares live trajectories of her respondents with well-known literary characters, like cinderella, oedipus, and “the small people” (139-141, 143) which causes the reader to question whether the respondents themselves were aware of those categories subscribed to them, and whether they would agree with such labels. the third part, “the past differentiated: revisiting the second world war and its aftermath,” strives to bring the “alternative experiences of the war that never reached public mainstream narratives” (147) to a wider academic and public discussion. as the editors indicate, by this chapter they attempt to put on the surface “the other” history of ww ii, which is still partially absent in official mainstream historical narrations of central-eastern europe. marta kurkowska-budzan opens this part, presenting her historical-anthropological research of the anti-communist national underground in poland. she underlines the importance for oral historians to go beyond the limits of the method, and perceive their study participants anthropologically, which means not only as narrators shedding light on the past and telling the story historians need for the reconstruction of the past, but also acknowledging their own vision of this past and their personal experiences and emotions in it. while conducting her research among former combatants of polish national underground, she revealed that in the broader context, the narratives of fighting against communist authorities contradict the stories of civilians, who often suffered from the presence of partisans in their villages, and in some cases experienced as much fear towards them as toward communist officials. therefore, their views on polish underground may sufficiently differ from the view of former partisans and the current political discourse of their glorification. gelinada grinchenko’s research focused on the life stories of two 68 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 ukrainians, currently residing in kyiv, who were children ostarbeiters in nazi germany and experienced forced labor camps. this article can serve as an illustration of the difference between oral history and cultural anthropological approaches: while analyzing meticulously the forms and structures of autobiographic narratives, focusing deeply on general models of storytellers’ self-representations, peculiarities of the articulation of childhood memories, the plots of those stories, this chapter lacks the context of how those interviews were conducted, how the respondents behaved, what emotions they experienced, and what communication was like between a researcher, who was recording an interview, and a storyteller. sometimes, however, anthropologists focusing profoundly on the context and interpreting important data from their fieldnotes, risk turning their research into autoethnography (without declaring it) and therefore missing respondents’ voices. thus, the general idea of the reviewed volume to bring together cultural anthropologists and oral historians for a collaborative work seems to deliver a fruitful and promising perspective for further interdisciplinary, collective research. the fourth part, “locating other memories of late socialism,” contains three research cases that tend to rethink and reevaluate the multidimensional challenges which followed “late socialism” and the fall of communist regimes in eastern europe and the ussr. david curp, based on archival and oral history sources, shows the powerful presence of the roman catholic church in many spheres of life in communist poland and its role in national liberation, civic, and political movements. he demonstrates the interchangeability of national and religious identities in poland and the crucial role of the dominant religion even for those poles who consider themselves secular. additionally, it would have been fruitful to show how this religious homogeneity, which served as a unifying and liberative impetus for the polish nation, simultaneously contributed to the exclusion of “domestic others” from the polish national narrative and religioscape, including greek catholics, orthodox, ukrainians, lemkos, jews, muslims, non-believers, etc. natalia khanenko-friesen’s research on the crossroads of anthropology and history deals with the memories of former peasant workers on collective farms who faced overwhelming changes since the 1990s, and had to adjust to the new realities, which still 69 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 contained a number of soviet social practices. khanenko-friesen calls this process “decollectivization” (231) and claims that decollectivized ukrainian villagers (mostly the generation born after ww ii) are a new agent of ukrainian history whose perspective should be acknowledged both in current political discourse and in historical research. in the volume’s final chapter, irina makhovskaya and irina romanova show the perestroika period and collapse of the ussr from the perspective of belarusian rural dwellers. the research targeted people born between late 1940-s and 1960-s and focused on their strategies of surviving and dealing with “foggy future” during late soviet era and beginnings of independence period. the publishing of such an edited volume is definitely timely. the research cases pull back the curtain from the life stories of those people who were unseen, marginalized and underestimated during the communist era. their life experiences can provide new generations with knowledge to understand the complicity of the political and social challenges we face nowadays. hardly anyone will be able to question that 2014 was a turning point in world history, going far beyond the borders of ukraine, eastern europe or the post-soviet space. we all were forced to face new lines of division, cracks in personal and community life, fluctuations of borders and identities, wars – hybrid and physical, and the consequences of this turbulence. nowadays, in 2020, we need to understand how to handle living in the world which is still animated by the legacies of two world wars; how to comprehend and interpret the new waves of violence and their effects; how can we implement our scholarly visions and tools to create something constructive, not disruptive, and help those who seek to be heard and understood. in this regard, the collaboration of oral historians and cultural anthropologists can be profoundly productive. a number of authors in the book underline the limitations of oral history research, filling in the gaps by scrupulously explaining the historical, political, social, economic, and specific local contexts which surrounds the respondents and their stories. and that is exactly what gives the reader a deeper contextualized view of the qualitative data presented in the volume. as marta kurkowskabudzan concludes: “as a historian working with oral narratives performed in specific personal 70 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 contexts, through the narrators’ experiences, i learned very little. as an anthropologist, i learned so much” (173). the final sentence in rozhdestvenskaya’s article, “the oral history interviews we have recorded in russia have not become public documents of the past, at least not yet” (99), opens up a much broader discussion on methodology and the ethics of research. what can we as scholars do to disseminate our research? how can we implement our findings for the benefit of society? what is the public outcome of our research findings, and more importantly, how can we protect the lives of our study participants while making their stories accessible to a wider audience? hopefully this edited volume will pave the road to new interdisciplinary constructive cooperation, following a new book raising the abovementioned and the other important questions. response to paul manning’s review on the publication “ethnography and folklore of the georgia-chechnya border: images, customs anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 321 response to paul manning’s review of the publication “ethnography and folklore of the georgia-chechnya border: images, customs, myths, and folk tales of the peripheries,” by shorena kurtsikidze and vakhtang chikovani, lincom europa, 2008, 711 pp. isbn: 978-389586-328-8 (hard cover) shorena kurtsikidze & vakhtang chikovani university of california, berkeley in the anthropology of east europe review 28 (1) (spring 2010), professor paul manning wrote a review on the collaborative publication named above. the main purpose of the publication was to “acquaint a wide audience with the traditional culture of christian and muslim highlanders who live on the border of europe and asia in the central part of the caucasus main mountain range.” it was prepared by the advice and support of the late professor alan dundes, former director of the folklore program of the department of anthropology at the university of california, berkeley. the publication intends to aid the reader in better understanding the characteristic features of political, ethnic and cultural processes that are taking place in the geopolitically important region where russian military forces are in constant action, moving in and out of the region, depending on ongoing political situations. 1 the authors would like to point the following facts in connection with the review as some of the comments of the reviewer may create misconceptions about the materials presented in the publication. when discussing the visual anthropology materials from the first section of the publication, paul manning writes as if the materials consist of the pictures taken in the khevsureti province only; he also mentions that the visual materials essentially repeat the photo exhibit curated by the authors at the phoebe a. hearst museum of anthropology, university of california, berkeley, and this exhibit is nothing else but a repetition of photographs from soviet era collections. it seems that the reviewer has not paid attention to the accompanying ethnographic descriptions and titles of the photographs. only 74 of the 158 full-page black and white photographs are taken in the european and asian parts of the khevsureti province; the rest of the 84 pictures – more than half of the entire collection – have been taken during many years of the fieldwork in the neighboring provinces of mtiuleti (36), gudamaqari (36), pshavi (3), and chechnya (3). also, only 48 pictures were exhibited at the phoebe a. hearst museum during march-august 2004; the rest of the 110 pictures and their accompanying texts appeared in this publication for the anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 322 first time. the photographs – with the attached commentaries – that are presented in the publication are valuable historical documents and truly important sources to learn about traditional dwellings, fortifications, sacred buildings, and social and religious institutions of the highlanders. the information “frozen” in these pictures is easily comprehendible even for non-specialists. many examples of folk architecture and artifacts – images of which have been included in this publication – do not exist any more. undoubtedly this adds to a value of these materials. the reviewer indicates that the collector of the myths – translations of which are presented in this publication for the first time – was only one scholar. however, in reality the myths have been collected by several people. the information about one of the main contributors, including his short biography, is given in the publication (pp.681-683). as stated by the reviewer, the authors are misleading the reader by trying to portray the pankisi crisis as a contemporary event. according to him, they needed to do this in order to place the khevsurs (descendants of the last crusaders, according to one of the old hypotheses) and their muslim neighbors – chechens and pankisi kists (among whom jihadists acquired certain influences) in the model of “clashes of civilizations” in order to add their share to the “contemporary folklore and mythology of the war on terror.” this is not true. nowhere did the authors intend to present the pankisi crisis as a present-day event. the authors say clearly in the introduction of the publication – as well as in the notes – the following: “the second part of the book gives particular emphasis to the historical and ethnographic survey of georgia’s pankisi gorge – ethnically and culturally closely connected with the khevsureti province – that few years ago was the area of activities of the islamic extremists and militants” (p. xiii). “this section was written at the time when the pankisi crisis became a center of international attention. it was first published in 2002 as an article in the working paper series of berkeley program in soviet and post-soviet studies. the article is printed here without any significant changes and therefore it reflects tensions of the mentioned period in the region” (p.662). the reviewer enthusiastically criticizes arnold zisserman (1824-97) – the author who considered the khevsurs descendants of the frankish crusaders – and was a russian military historian and a participant of the caucasus wars. the reviewer refers to zisserman as a “least authoritative source” and explains the crusader hypothesis with the author’s romantic ideas. the fact is, however, that zisserman was no bearer of simple romantic ideas. in the process of conducting its wars in the caucasus (1819-1864), tsarist russia used varieties of ideological clichés, among which the idea of protecting the region’s christian population from the muslims was a leading one. the caucasian muslim highlanders responded to russia’s such policies with the “gazawat” – holy war against “infidels.” in this situation it wouldn’t be accidental to declare the georgian highlanders descendants of the crusaders – the highlanders whose homeland was the front line of disseminating christianity in the northern caucasus throughout centuries. 2 in the anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 323 same period, when the russian myth of the khevsur crusaders was created, to support the “divide and govern” practice of the tsarist colonial administration, georgian intellectuals and writers of highland origin (alexandre kazbegi, 1848-93 and vazha pshavela, 18611915) for their part tried to create narratives that would help to secure the peaceful coexistence of the christian and muslim highlanders of the central caucasus. 3 it seems that the reviewer falls among those who consider the “lost crusader theory of khevsur origins” baseless (although no one tries to prove the opposite!) for one more reason: the khevsurs are not “true” christians. such an attitude repeats the point of view that has become a controversial one today. according to this view, the highlanders of georgia – including the khevsurs and other georgian highlanders – could be regarded as christians only nominally. however, the fact is that after the mongol invasions in georgia, from the second half of the 13 th century, the relations between georgia’s mountain and lowland regions changed dramatically; for almost four centuries following the invasions, some of the highland regions continued to exist essentially in the semiautonomous form within the feudal georgian state. as a result, not only did the highlanders’ socio-economic system change but their religious practices underwent changes too. ultimately, a folk version of christianity developed in the remote highland regions. because of the limited contacts with georgia’s lowlands and cultural centers, in the territory of ancient pkhovi – part of which is the khevsureti province – more than 100 christian churches (5 th -17 th centuries) gradually disappeared. 4 they were replaced with lesser-sized buildings in the forms of shrines – “holy crosses” and “holy icons.” peculiar changes took place in the liturgy and other aspects of the highlanders’ religious life. in spite of these processes, the georgian highlanders – specifically the khevsurs – that were immediate neighbors of the northern caucasian muslim highlanders, always regarded themselves as “better” christians compared to the lowland dwellers, as the former were faced with a major task of protecting their ancestors’ religion and the country’s northern borders. accordingly, the material and social culture of the borderland dwellers changed also, and their religious practices acquired some military features. it should be mentioned that soviet scholars added their share in declaring the georgian highlanders as “pagans,” because these researchers were essentially prohibited from seriously studying any manifestations of the christian culture; only the studies of “archaic” and “folk” institutions were allowed. therefore researching presumably ancient layers of the traditional culture was almost an obligatory and prestigious scholarly task. after the collapse of the soviet union the situation gradually changed; many scholars write today about various aspects of the folk christianity of the georgian highlanders. 5 by presenting the traditional culture and contemporary life of the central caucasian highlanders under one cover the authors intended to show the cultural profile of the region, about which the information is scarce for an english-speaking reader. the authors have no doubt that being acquainted with the folk culture of this region will be a unique cultural experience to the reader. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 324 1 the first review of the publication appeared in the journal of folklore research: an international journal of folklore and ethnomusicology (http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/review.php?id=898). 2 m.b. muzhukhoev, medieval religious monuments of the central caucasus (history of the religious beliefs in the 10th-19th centuries), groznyy, chechnya-ingushetia polygraphic union “book,” 1989, pp. 111-146 (in russian); suleiman gumashvili, christianity and the religious practices of the vainakhs, journal “religion,” no. 5-6, june-july 1999, pp. 87-92 (in georgian). 3 kevin tuite, [2008] the banner of xaxmat’is-jvari: vazha-pshavela’s xevsureti, for luigi magarotto’s vazha volume. (http://www.mapageweb.umontreal.ca/tuitekj/caucasus/tuite_vazha+xevsureti.pdf). 4 kakhi tsereteli, christian architecture of the aragvi river gorge, the 2nd conference on the archaeology of the early christianity, ivane javakhishvili 120th anniversary, short content of articles, the archaeological research center of the georgian academy of sciences, tbilisi, 1996, pp. 45-47 (in georgian); kakhi tsereteli, anatori church, research papers of the archaeological research center of the georgian academy of sciences, vol. no. 4, tbilisi, 1999, pp. 78-87 (in georgian). 5 zurab kiknadze, georgian mythology, i.the cross and his people, kutaisi, gelati academy of sciences, 1996 (in georgian); khvtiso mamisimedashvili, christian roots of the “khutsobani” prayer texts, scientific session, 25th anniversary of archaeological expeditions in the georgian highlands, short content of articles, the archaeological research center of the georgian academy of sciences, tbilisi, 1996 (in georgian); old folk hymns glorifying the shrines of holly crosses-icons, collected by zurab kiknadze, ghtiso mamisimedashvili and tristan makhauri,, essays of the department of folklore, vol.2, tbilisi state university, nekeri, 1998 (in georgian; summary in english); andrezes-testaments: religious and mythological legends of the eastern georgian highlands, compiled by zurab kiknadze, ilia chavchavadze state university publishing, tbilisi, 2009 (in georgian; summary in english). the captive and the gift: cultural histories of sovereignty in russia and the caucasus anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 318 the captive and the gift: cultural histories of sovereignty in russia and the caucasus. by bruce grant. ithaca and london: cornell university press, 2009. xxi, 188 pp. glossary. references. index. paper. erik r. scott university of california, berkeley for hundreds of years, the caucasus experienced sustained military conquest by the persian, ottoman, russian, and soviet empires. its dramatically mountainous terrain, its confounding landscape of ethnic and linguistic diversity, and its enduring legacy of divided political and religious loyalties have made the caucasus seem like a veritable fortress for invading armies and imperial administrators. yet, as bruce grant argues in his most recent book, the region has never been as closed or isolated as it might seem. instead, the captive and the gift: cultural histories of sovereignty in russia and the caucasus describes a “remarkably porous caucasus landscape” of mobility and exchange across “borders that are the objects of constant negotiation” (xv). in this book, grant looks broadly at two centuries of symbolic and physical exchange between russia and its restive imperial subjects in the caucasus. taking the body to be a key symbol of sovereign rule, he focuses in particular on the exchange of bodies in russian narratives of caucasian captivity, from pushkin’s “kavkazskii plennik” (“prisoner of the caucasus”) to the present. in his view, russian captivity narratives were not simply the product of russia’s literary imagination. instead, they were “mutually constituted” by local caucasian practices of trading, raiding, hostage-taking, and trafficking in persons (xvii). grant emphasizes the ways that caucasian practices of captivity were central to an ongoing negotiation of sovereignty between the caucasus and russia. russian imperial expansion was never a one-sided conversation, but rather an ongoing dialogue between two separate, if unequal, parties. in the terms of this dialogue, russian imperial sovereignty was presented as a “gift of empire,” albeit one that inhabitants of the caucasus were forced to accept and obligated to offer resources, both real and symbolic, in return (157). grant begins by tracing the genealogy of the captivity narrative, from the ancient myth of prometheus to pushkin’s nineteenth-century tale of a russian aristocrat kidnapped by caucasian highlanders. he convincingly shows how pushkin’s poetry became popular ethnography, inspiring a host of fictional works, films, ballets, and operas. grant argues that pushkin’s basic narrative structure endured because it allowed russians to “emplace” themselves in the landscape of the caucasus and naturalized the violence of russia’s military actions in the region (95). real and imagined russian captives gave the russian public “cause for military expenditures,” a sense of belonging anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 319 among other european imperial powers, and a “self-satisfying narrative” of an imperial enlightenment mission (16-17). although russia’s pursuit of a civilizing mission was not unique, russian expansion in the caucasus had several distinctive features. its new landholdings were contiguous, conquest was often accompanied by intermarriage, and the ancient pedigrees of armenia and georgia raised the issue of what a relatively young russian state could offer in terms of civilization. russian rule was continuously contested, and exchange across the porous and fluid borders of the caucasus was a dynamic but violent process. while russian ethnographers singled out the supposedly isolated gortsy (highlanders) for criticism as brutal enemies of enlightenment, lowlanders as well as highlanders participated in violent economies of theft, raiding, and outlaw resistance. despite russian efforts, sovereignty was rarely stable in the caucasus, and whatever stability existed rested as much upon the russian “arts of persuasion” as it did on the “power of the sword” (156). russian persuasion took the form of economic investments, educational efforts, and displays of power. many of these “gifts” were given unilaterally; nevertheless, russians demanded reciprocity. when none could be found, captivity narratives gave symbolic caucasians a russian prisoner to offer in return. at the same time, actual practices of captivity created important “spaces of encounter” (162). these spaces are arguably open today, even in the divided and uneasy caucasus of the post-soviet period. the captive and the gift is methodologically diverse. while grant’s approach is primarily informed by anthropological studies of gift-giving and exchange from marcel mauss onward, he develops his narrative through a careful reading of mythology, literature, and film, and contextualizes his claims through historical analysis. this multidisciplinary approach is one of the book’s strengths and will surely make it of interest to anthropologists, literary scholars, and historians alike. however, a study this wide-ranging inevitably invites a measure of criticism from specialists within each respective discipline. as an historian, i found myself hoping for a clearer demonstration of the changes that took place over two centuries of russian rule. grant’s emphasis on an enduring captivity narrative emphasizes broad continuities while glossing over some important differences. in particular, the soviet period is treated as a brief chapter between a formative nineteenth century and more contemporary reflections on russia’s imperial legacy. i also found myself wondering about the ultimate significance of what grant calls the “logics of sovereignty” (xv). while the author convincingly shows how empire was framed as a gift that gave meaning to conquerors and imposed obligation on the conquered, did such “logics of sovereignty” drive imperial expansion, or merely serve to justify it after the fact? the book’s subtitle signals grant’s focus on the “cultural histories of sovereignty,” but it would have been interesting to have more consideration of the relationship between narrative forms of conquest and the material, strategic, and geopolitical motives that helped propel russian expansion. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 320 nevertheless, grant’s account of contested sovereignty in the caucasus remains compelling. he should be commended for writing one of the few comprehensive studies of the caucasus in any language, and for doing so in such an engaging manner. his work makes an important contribution to larger debates about empire, while successfully challenging conventional understandings of a complicated region. taylor_book review_free market tuberculosis.docx.docx anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 91 free market tuberculosis: managing epidemics in post-soviet georgia. by erin koch. nashville: vanderbilt university press, 2013. xiv, 231 pp. glossary. notes. bibliography. index. photographs. maps. $27.95, paper. sara taylor, indiana university the global medical community reports that, as of 2011, nearly one third of the world’s population is infected with tuberculosis, and increasingly drug-resistant strains of the disease more commonly referred to as tb result in more than 1.5 million annual deaths. since 1995, the world health organization’s stop tb department has dominated global care initiatives through the implementation of dots (directly observed treatment, short-course) and the stop tb strategy, an approach focused on government commitment to a centralized system of diagnosing, monitoring, and recording active tuberculosis cases. in light of their reports of having successfully treated 51 million people and saved 20 million lives with these methods, few have publicly criticized the who’s global approach to disease management. however, in her book free market tuberculosis: managing epidemics in post-soviet georgia, erin koch provides a comprehensive critique of what she regards as the mixed success of poorly regulated biomedical standardization in the contemporary global health arena. with an ethnographic approach that focuses on the critical perspectives of georgian physicians, scientists, laboratory technicians, and administrators, she evaluates the “efficacy and effects” of the monolithic dots and calls for a serious overhaul of its approach that has become “an unofficial requirement for national tb programs that seek financial and technical support from governments and aid organizations” (2013:6-7). while koch’s monograph is not an epidemiological study, her research nevertheless bridges the gap between the quantitative methods of public health policy experts and the more individualized studies of cultural anthropologists. drawing both from large pools of metadata and her own experience in the region, she demonstrates that in spite of seemingly positive statistics from the who, public health programs which consider only the biomedical components of disease pathologize disease-carriers by focusing on the enforcement of treatment standards rather than addressing the inherent “inequalities that can influence exposure and risk” (2013:9). the inevitable marketization of such treatment strategies also calls into question the ethics of “the role of philanthropy in global health” (2013:23), implying that the interests of the western biomedical establishment may lie more in expanding the international drug market than in the health of developing nations. failure to keep faith with local expertise on the cultural and political aspects of disease, koch warns, might “perpetuate rather than ‘cure’ tuberculosis” in eastern europe (2013:28). by layering insights from participant observation, historical research, and institutional practice, koch’s analysis offers an unprecedented investigation of local knowledge of tb along anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 92 with changes in “knowledge production and service distribution” in georgia (2013:56). in particular, she examines how georgian medical service providers “navigate changes in what counts as ‘expert knowledge’” as their centuries-old holistic diagnostic criteria and residential treatment strategies for tb are pushed aside for regimented sputum-smear bacteriology, supervised drug treatment, and a centralized database of patient statuses and outcomes (2013:7). in her deconstruction of accepted medical practice, koch is able to effectively reveal a source of stagnation in world health practice and boldly diagnose potential causes of the tuberculosis emergency plaguing eastern europe. this perspective proves instructive not only to those studying the effects of disease in post-soviet countries, but also suggests evaluative criteria for epidemiologists and medical anthropologists looking at measures of disease and health throughout the developing world. organized into four chapters followed by a forward-looking conclusion, each section of the book addresses from a different perspective the disparity between the humanitarian goals of many public health programs and the fraught nature of their implementation. as the book progresses, koch systematically dismantles what seem, on the surface, to be thoughtful and reasonable treatment approaches which in fact frequently exacerbate health problems at both the local and national levels. chapter one describes the role of the story of medea, the so-called “mother of medicine” whose mythical origins in western georgia serve as a point of pride for the citizenry who see their country as a historical site of medical innovation. koch demonstrates how the devaluation of local knowledge production weakens doctor-patient relationships and marginalizes the sick through “a narrow view of their disease status vis-à-vis the presence or absence of bacteria” (2013:35). in chapter two, koch describes her visits to several tb hospitals and treatment centers, where clinicians are constantly frustrated by funding-tied obligations to the dots protocols. these issues are further fleshed out in chapter three with accounts of underfunded diagnostic laboratories revealing the long delays associated with the dots method of verifying cases exclusively through bacteriological smears. this diagnostic method is further challenged in chapter four by koch’s description of prison inmates’ practice of buying tb-positive sputum to appear infected and thus be moved to more favorable living quarters while receiving the dots treatment. this practice not only wastes money and resources on non-infected patients, but also increases the likelihood of creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. through these clever juxtapositions of history, personal narrative, and statistical analysis, koch makes a persuasive argument against the “pharmaceuticalized” and market-oriented strategies of health care management that fail to consider the cultural, social, and political aspects of disease. however, she must devote so much space to developing her argument against “managerial” medical care that she spends less time addressing meaningful alternatives to a market approach. though she describes the presence of new social movements that draw on antituberculosis initiatives from georgian history, she goes into little detail about how plans for collective responsibility of disease might be implemented in regions where doctors and nurses frequently work without pay and patients must provide their own food and bedding. nevertheless, koch does acknowledge the difficulty in achieving innovative solutions in a state anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 93 of affairs that relies almost exclusively on international donor aid, and instead of encouraging revolution, focuses her immense energy on thoughtfully and accurately describing the shortfalls of dots while still accepting it as the best of all available alternatives. with luck, her ethnography will encourage those who design the next generation of exportable health care protocols to leave room in their marketing packages for increased physician-feedback and patient personalization. invisibility of women homosexuals anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 83 representation of “lost orientation,” or, lesbianism in georgian print media1 nino kharchilava and nino javakhishvili, tbilisi state university, georgia2 abstract this paper examines how lesbianism is portrayed in georgian media. media representation of lesbianism is presented here as a constructive process. using qualitative and quantitative analysis of articles from georgian print media from 2008 to 2009, we highlight such issues as: the invisibility of women’s sexuality and homosexuality, and the social construction of lesbianism in georgian print media as immoral and dangerous. we find that homophobia in patriarchal georgia often links lesbians to social problems, including drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, and crime. georgian homosexual women are doubly marginalized because of their gender (female) and sexual (lesbian) identity. homosexual issues and relationships are viewed as threatening the interests of patriarchal society. georgian media provides an example of a dominant discourse in society; because it constructs lesbianism as a social problem it thus supports marginalization of homosexuals in general and women homosexuals in particular. in the article we will first explore georgian research data on sexuality, including homosexuality. then, we will discuss the theoretical framework within which we consider homosexuality and its media representation, namely the social constructionist approach to homosexuality, media representation and social problems. we conclude with our results of qualitative and quantitative content analysis of 9 georgian newspapers and magazines3. the newspapers and magazines were selected based on their position in the popular press, their focus on social political issues and entertainment. particular care was made to select publications with high circulation and availability to readers across georgia. the newspapers and magazines have a reasonable price and publish articles for a broad audience. all the newspapers and magazines are spread all over the country. the number of copies issued for newspapers varies from 5,000 to 50,000; while the print run for magazines is larger: from anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 84 40,000 to 70,000. these are considered “true” information providers and the articles are perceived by the audience seriously. through this analysis we will show the ways in which georgian print media marginalizes homosexuals, focusing on lesbians in particular. in her report on lgbt people in georgia, sheila quinn discusses the double gender morale in georgia. according to her, for men, unlike women in georgia engaging in sexual intercourse before or during marriage is unproblematic. according to the same report, for women, participating in a sexual act only for pleasure and not reproduction is regarded as prostitution (quinn, 2007). in a recent study of dating ads (javakhishvili, 2008), women frequently portrayed themselves as “honest,” [patiosani] while men did this very rarely. a focus group discussion on the term revealed that it has different meanings for men and women. for women, “honesty” refers to conduct in sexual relations, while for men, it refers to business relationships and practices. for focus group participants, an honest woman either did not have sex at all, or had it only with her husband. furthermore, in the dating ads, men were more likely to describe themselves in sexual terms while women did not, so as to conform to the norms of the dating market. different sexual norms thus exist in georgian society for men and women and different sexual behavior is expected for them. though men discussed their sexual characteristics more often than women did in dating ads, it was rare overall for either group to refer explicitly to sexuality. sexuality is taboo in general in georgia, but especially so for women (javakhishvili, 2008). recent survey data yields similar results. for example, a 2004 survey in one of the southern regions of georgia showed the following: 98% of respondents think that a woman should remain a virgin until marriage, and only 47% think that a man should not have sexual intercourse before marriage. also, 87% of parents view women’s sexual relations before marriage negatively, while only 2% of respondents think that man should restrain from sexual relations before marriage (sumbadze, tarkhan-mouravi, 2005). another survey showed that 89% of young women and 87% of young men agree with the statement that “a woman should be a virgin when she marries” (mataradze et al., 2002). additionally, 2004 survey results from quinn’s report show that 84% of respondents have negative attitudes towards homosexuality. forty percent of respondents think that lesbianism is a disease [avadmyofoba], 34% regard it as ugly [simaxinje], 20% consider it a sin [codva], and 1% think it is only temporary and will stop in the future (quinn, 2007). thus far, the only research on representation of homosexuality in the georgian media was done by e. aghdgomelashvili (aghdgomelashvili, 2005 and 2007). in her 2005 study, anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 85 she shows that certain myths are proliferated through the media. beginning in 1990, the georgian media began linking homosexuality to aids and prostitution. furthermore, homosexuality is represented as a western fashion, as well as the harbinger of demographic catastrophe. the social constructionist approach: exploring how groups become defined as problems spector and kitsuze define social problems as “the activities of individuals or groups making assertions of grievances and claims with respect to some putative conditions” (best, 1987). the scope of our paper does not aim to find out whether these objective conditions exist. instead, we take our cue from stuart hall (1999) who writes that objective reality exists as only a constructed product and gains its meaning through the process of representation. joan ferrante in her book, sociology: a global perspective, considers the social constructionist approach. she bases her work on the ideas of spector and kitsuze, who write that, “regarding deviance, the constructionist approach focuses on the way specific groups (such as illegal immigrants and homosexuals)…become defined as problems” (ferrante, 2008: 184-185). constructionists examine claims-makers and claims-making activities. claims-makers are people who articulate and promote claims with the intent to convince the targeted audience to accept their claims as true. claims-makers include government officials, advertisers, scientists, professors, and special interest groups. ferrante cites the sociologist joel best to explain: …when constructionists study a process through which a group or behavior is defined as a problem to society, they focus on who makes the claims, whose claims are heard. is there evidence that the claims maker misrepresented or inaccurately characterized the situation? to answer the last question constructionists examine how claims makers characterize a condition. specifically, constructionists pay attention to any labels that claims makers attach to a condition, the examples they use to illustrate the nature of the problem and their orientation toward the problem (describing it, for example as medical, moral, genetic or educational) (ferrante, 2008: 184-185). anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 86 while making claims, a part of society addresses another part. this is a communicative process between claim makers and claimant clients, or those who receive the claims. for spector and kitsuze the content and constituting elements of the claim are the most salient. our study focuses on the content of constituting elements made by georgian media outlets and how these intersect discourses on homosexuality. for stuart hall (1999), culture, of which mass media is a part, is a social construct where social dimensions such as gender, race, and sexuality are shaped. each of these, in turn, is a social construct itself and is shaped by media and other forces. media plays a leading role in the social construction of gender, sexuality, and social problems. media frequently utilizes links with deviant behavior as a way to marginalize particular groups (djakova, trahtenberg, 2003). because homosexuality is not seen as a part of traditional georgian society indeed it is considered a deviation from “traditional wisdom” (hall, 1999: 72) people have few sources of information other than the media. therefore, it is particularly interesting to look at what meanings and definitions media texts offer to their readers. several russian authors (aristarkhova, 1999; erebkina, 2003) have discussed the dynamics of change in the russian media from the soviet era to the end of the twentieth century based on russian youth journals and tv shows. they find that constructions of gender, sexuality, and homosexuality change along with the officially recognized ideology. these studies bolster the idea that homosexuality as well as gender is socially constructed, and that one of the most potent means of social construction is the media, which is itself shaped by other discourses, ideologies, and power structures. the politics of media representation takes place within the frames of dominant ideologies. the media thus produces and establishes images of marginal identities as opposed to merely normative ones (iasaveev, 2004; briant and thompson, 2004). while we understand that the social construction of various issues is a dialogic process and that different audiences react to and interpret media messages in various ways, for the purposes of this study, we restrict ourselves to only the media. in our study, we will show that the ways in which the georgian print media represents homosexuals, and especially lesbians, marginalizes them. as kellner points out, many gay and lesbian theorists have stated that media representations often promote homophobia by presenting negative representations of homosexuality. media culture defines and frames sexuality in ways that marginalize gays and lesbians, and “symbolically annihilate” their lives (kellner, 2009: 6). anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 87 in georgia, lesbians are doubly marginalized because, in addition to their sexual orientation, they are women. the media frequently marginalizes lesbians in georgia by ignoring lesbians as a social group and linking them to social problems. the media constructs these negative images of lesbians chiefly by inviting experts, such as academics, to judge homosexuality. we base our work on the social constructionist approach, which states that both homosexuality and social problems are socially constructed (holstein, 2009). invisible lesbians one of the main ways in which lesbians are marginalized in the georgian media is by ignoring them. lesbians are thus rendered “invisible” to the public. our quantitative content analysis of publications from 2008 and 2009 showed that out of 272 articles about homosexuality, lesbianism was mentioned in only 55, or 20% of the articles. the remaining 80%, explicitly or implicitly addressed only male homosexuality. in the articles that explicitly discussed male homosexuality, gay men were described in humiliating terms such as “blue,” “gay,” and “pederast.4 our analysis showed that, while homosexuality is largely neglected in the georgian press, lesbianism is almost completely ignored. in one of the articles, entitled “gagijebuli qartvelebi da orientaciadakarguli adamianebi” [georgians gone mad and people lost orientation] (kajaia, 2008), one random respondent says: “how can you speak about such themes? on the contrary, we should ignore such people and the less information that leaks about them, the better for our children.” he goes on to say that homosexuality should not concern us “normal” people, reinforcing the idea that ignoring homosexuality is the most effective way to marginalize it. in georgia, the absence of lesbianism from the popular media is complicated by the fact that georgia is traditionally considered a masculine culture (see gadua, 1999; javakhishvili and bregvadze, 2000; javakhishvili and khomeriki, 2003; kutchukhidze, 1999; mataradze et al., 2002). women’s sexuality in georgia is understood only in terms of reproduction and within a traditional, heterosexual family context (javakhishvili, 2008; pkhakadze, 2002). because lesbian relationships cannot reproduce ” although the term “homosexual” encompasses both gays and lesbians, in the georgian media, as in everyday georgian speech, it is used almost exclusively to denote male homosexuality. when asked about the word, most of the georgians immediately think about men, not women. one article, for example, was entitled, “homosexualebi spermas ver chaabareben” [homosexuals can not give their sperm] (koberidze, 2008) thus reinforcing the connotation of homosexuality as male. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 88 biologically and by definition do not involve men, both traditional components of female sexuality are lacking in lesbianism. at the same time, lesbianism is perceived as a less dangerous social problem than that of male homosexuality. as one popular georgian newspaper puts it, “lesbianism does not end with serious results in most cases, because most lesbians remain women. they can have children and a [traditional, heterosexual] family. it is a shame and should be banned, but it is not as dangerous” (goziashvili, 2008).the author of these words, a sociologist, denies lesbians as a social group because, according to him, sooner or later all of them enter heteronormative space and “remain women.” dioli (2006) also thinks that lesbianism is rarely perceived as potential threat by patriarchal society:“in patriarchal terms the world is conceived as phallocentric; a relationship between two women, excluding men, is hardly conceivable or likely to be considered as a serious issue” (dioli, 2006: 145). in her more recent article on the former yugoslavia, dioli writes, yugoslavia was no exception to the repression and domestication of sexuality common to communist systems. a rhetorical emphasis on masculinity stigmatised male homosexuality as an expression of weakness, while a general erasure of female sexuality and pleasure virtually cancelled female homosexuality from the picture. fittingly, the penal code (revised on june 30th 1959) deemed male homosexuality illegal in the whole yugoslavia, but made no reference to female homosexuality” (dioli, 2009: 5). while lesbianism is considered a less serious social problem, it is still largely omitted from popular discourse. constructing lesbianism in the georgian print media now we turn to how lesbianism is constructed in georgian print media and by whom. as we show, lesbianism is linked to social problems such as criminal behavior, drug addiction, and alcoholism – in other words, to deviant behavior. lesbians are also considered threats to national traditions, values, religion, and fecundity. our analysis shows that 80% of the articles that deal with lesbianism consider it in relation to social problems. the remaining 20% are fairly neutral, discussing the lives of famous lesbians and bisexual women, such as frida kahlo. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 89 lesbianism as deviant behavior lesbians are often linked to maniacs, murderers, and sexual predators. in the journal tbiliselebi, an expert sociologist links lesbians to criminality. in the article, “maniaki mokluli qalis tmisgan tilismebs aketebda” [maniac made talismans/charms from murdered women’s hair](giorgadze, 2008) the author discusses the criminal, who was a lesbian. he claims, “she first sexually violated her victims, then cut them with an axe and threw parts of their bodies into the sewage system.” another article from the same journal, “lesbosel qalta ordeni” [order of lesbian women] describes an orgy of 12 satanist lesbians, including sisters who engage in incest and use axes to chop up their victims (lashauri, 2008). the text is not based on a true story, rather, it is constructed as a fairytale. however, it is not explicitly stated whether the story is true or the author’s fantasy. an article in a different newspaper, “chronika,” reports on a student who was sexually assault by her teacher. the focus of the article is on the sexual orientation of the professor (a lesbian) and does not discuss issues of violence or assault. the journalist focuses on homosexual orientation as a main theme and provides his own commentary on the “problem,” writing, “there would be nothing to worry about if the professor were a young man, but she was a lesbian” (goziashvili, 2008). (the article does not see a problem in the violent attack, but rather in lesbianism. violence by a male perpetrator is regarded as normal because it takes place in the frame of heterosexual behavior, whereas the assault by a lesbian represents deviant behavior. in the article “siontan satanisturi rituali chatarda? “[did a satanist ritual take place at the sioni cathedral?] (chubinidze, 2008), the respondent relates how naked women5 orthodox christianity, the most prevalent religion in georgia, regards suicide as a serious sin. dance, have sex, openly proclaim their sexual orientation, and “qadageben” [preach] suicide. each of these components is considered immoral and deviant. first, the women dance naked on the streets, in full view of everybody, and in the tourist center of tbilisi. secondly, the women’s behavior is deviant because it involves an overt, homosexual act. these deviant behaviors are even more dangerous because they occur near the cathedral. thirdly, suicide is linked with lesbianism and satanism. as one newspaper reported, “usually satanists preach suicide; they cut their own veins and then transfuse blood to each other” (chubinidze, 2008). 6 furthermore, satanism is regarded as enemy to the orthodox church, so labeling lesbians as suicidal satanists has an especially dangerous connotation. because of all of these deviant behaviors, social problems are linked to lesbians. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 90 lesbianism as a threat to the nation lesbianism is often conceptualized as a threat to the georgian nation, and it is particularly connected to concerns over demography, religion, national traditions, and corrupting western influences. for example, quite a number of articles concern lindsey lohan. she is portrayed as a lesbian drug addict who has tried to commit suicide,”lesboselma lindsi lohanma tvitmkvleloba scada” [lesbian lindsey lohan tried to commit suicide] (sakhvadze, 2008). the tone of these articles is cynical, and the journalists often refer to not only lohan but to the whole “corrupted west” where homosexuality “became fashionable.” one of the articles about lohan begins, “homosexuality in the usa has become a fashion and has taken root, so that even the most harmless person openly and shamelessly declares her lost orientation” (sakhvadze, 2008). the article above about the satanist ritual in front of the cathedral, which occurred on halloween, also evaluates the lesbians as an anti-state, anti-nation group backed by the “west, and america, more than other countries,” which is seen as opposing the church. the article says: “the statehood of present-day georgia is based on the constitution and an agreement between state and church. therefore, whoever fights against church also fights the state, and his/her place is in prison” (chubinidze, 2008). traditionally, the role of women in maintaining the nation by raising future generations is highly valued in georgia and any deviation from this traditional role by women is a threat to the nation. as dioli puts it: a relational model between same-sex people comprising sexual activity as well as the forming of stable couple and/or family relationships and social networks …becomes highly problematic, because of the crucial role played by women in the building and maintenance of national communities. in this context, the female body does not belong to the woman herself or to an individual man only; on the symbolic level, it is the collective property of the male-led community” (dioli, 2006, p 147). another article plays on fears of conflict between homosexuality and national traditions and values. in the article,”sanam tbilisis tavze cisferi drosha afrialebula” [until a blue flag waves above tbilisi] the author writes, “georgian values, traditions, orthodox christianity, nationhood are threatened not only by saakashvili’s7 government and his foreign masters, but a whole army of pederasts, lesbians and bisexuals with their foreign anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 91 patrons and donors” (khubua, 2009). here, lesbians are explicitly linked with the west and western values that approve of homosexuality; thus, lesbians and the west threaten georgian nationality, traditions, and religion. it has to be noted also, that this article is placed under the newspaper section, titled “devil,8 this same conflict between the west and traditional georgian national values is expressed in the article, “cekvas gvaswavlian” [they teach us how to dance]. after reading the text of the article, the title sounds somewhat cynical, meaning that georgians are taught by foreigners how to dance traditional georgian dances. the journalist describes the religious wedding ceremony of a shavkaniani [blackskinned] couple who dared to perform a georgian dance at their wedding ceremony. xenophobic and racist phrases in the text are followed with fear-mongering homophobic comments, like “the tourist industry will not refuse church weddings for pederasts.” the author continues in a cynical tone, “pederasts and lesbians are so romantic, and love exotic, untouched natural settings” and, “there is no lack of pederasts, lesbians, masochists, and other degenerates!” the author concludes, “we need timeless georgian traditions to save our selfhood and not to adorn silly, fake shows [for tourists]!” (gigauri, 2008 ). lesbians here are portrayed as emotional degenerates and linked with masochists, another group of sexual deviants. the journalist is indignant with the georgian tourist industry, which, in order to attract money, allows its history and ancient traditions to serve foreigners. ” which is one more link of homosexuality with satanism. another article, “how naïve and inexperienced boys are caught in the net by homosexuals,” similarly portrays the west as the source of homosexuality. the author writes, since georgian politicians have tuned towards the west, the number of homosexuals in our country has seriously increased….fortunately, georgian society is healthy and the growth of homosexuality has not changed people’s mindset. attitude to this vicious behavior is strictly negative. why let others set a bad example? trying to be like others always yields bad deplorable results for such small, traditional countries like us…. georgians should take care to increase the population (goziashvili, 2008). the article thus links corrupted behavior with western values and opposes these to traditional, incorruptible georgian values. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 92 another problem linked to lesbianism is demographic, namely, that lesbians do not reproduce biologically, and therefore, population growth decreases. based on census data, the population has been decreasing in georgia; it decreased from 4,794,000 in 1995 to 4,385,000 in 2009 (chelidze, 2010). at the same time, the authors of the articles linking lesbians with demographic problems worry not only about georgia, but about the whole world. one writes that, “the pandemic of homosexuality threatens us with mutation and death….if we, heterosexuals, do not think about the future of human beings, homosexuals will do the same harm as atomic weapons” (lejava, 2009). the author is particularly concerned about the west because it has more gays and lesbians, concluding that “like terrorism, homosexuality now can be considered ‘sexual terrorism’ or a ‘blue plague’9 according to dioli, emphasizing reproduction restricts women’s sexuality. a woman’s body does not belong only to her, but is social property. in a patriarchal society, women can find their place in society only through men, because women are the “territory of men” (dioli, 2006: 148). unmarried or lesbian women do not belong in a patriarchal society. women “can enter society only by signing the marriage contract” (dioli, 2006: 149). dioli elaborates on monique wittig’s ideas on lesbianism. when wittig asks the question “are lesbians women?” by women, she means the subordinate social group as defined by a patriarchal structure. there is a certain feminine model of women in such a society and a woman is a woman only if she fulfills society’s expectations of her. women are subordinated to men, and work in a private sphere where their function is reproduction. lesbians do not fit in such societies (dioli, 2006). in its scale and results” (lejava, 2009). claims-makers the popular media sources quoted in our study are both journalists and experts, including sociologists, psychologists, sexologists, representatives of religious institutions, celebrities, and everyday people. in 63% of the cases where homosexuality were linked to social problems, journalists were the claims-makers. in other words, they constructed lesbianism as a social problem, either through direct claims of their own, by adding homophobic phrases to other claims-makers’ judgments, or by agreeing with the experts. for example, in the article, “did satanist ritual take place at the sioni cathedral?” (chubinidze, 2008) the journalist uses evaluative phrases such as “it is terrible” and “harmless people at first glance.” in other articles, the negative and cynical attitude of the journalists is reflected anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 93 in titles such as “planetis ert-erti kvelaze seqsualuri qalbatoni orientaciashi aiblanda” [one of the most sexual ladies of the planet became lost in her own orientation] and “mteli amerikuli feradi banda ablanduli seqsualuri orientaciit xasaitdeba” [the whole american color gang10 none of the articles in the newspapers and journals studied presented homosexuality in a positive light. it is also interesting that journalists’ negative attitudes towards lesbians are always echoed by others in the articles – experts, researchers, and even passersby are of the same opinion on lesbians and homosexuals. it is incredibly unlikely that everyone in georgia shares this negative view of homosexuality, so we can only assume that all experts and the “random” respondents were selected on purpose and the journalists excluded dissenting opinions. is characterized by lost sexual orientation] (sakhvadze, 2008). conclusion our study has shown that the social construction of lesbianism in the georgian media conforms to the principles of patriarchy and its situational logic. patriarchal gender and sexual norms are taken for granted and, therefore, homosexuality is “illogical,” deviant, and a social problem. lesbians are ignored because they do not fit into the patriarchal paradigm of a woman. this paradigm constructs a woman as one whose function is not only biological, but the ideological and symbolic reproduction of a nation. a woman who does not engage in these reproductions becomes marginalized as a danger to society and is linked with social problems. in patriarchal society, lesbians become doubly marginalized because of their gender and their sexual identity. sara balder’s (2005) research about sexual identities in chile reveals the role of language in marginalization of women and homosexuals. she explains that, “by derogating individuals who do not fall within the inventory of socially acceptable identities in chilean society, this type of language assigns legitimacy only to gender-normative heterosexuals, thereby denying gender and sexual minorities of social power” (balder, 2005: 10). she agrees with scott kiesling, stating that, “heterosexual identities are…displays of power and dominance over women, gay men, and other straight men” (balder, 2005: 10). balder thinks that using such hetero-normative language “reinforces the social structure in which gender and sexually-normative men maintain their dominant role, causing gender and sexual minorities to be marginalized” (balder, 2005:10). balder’s research dovetails nicely with our anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 94 own, showing how the media and language can work to marginalize homosexuality, and also points to topics for future research. notes 1 many thanks to laura linderman and katherine pruess for their editorial assistance with this article. 2 nino javakhishvili is professor of psychology in the faculty of social and political sciences, tbilisi state university (tsu), georgia. she is one of the founders of the gender studies master’s degree programs at the centre of social sciences, tsu and currently teaches there. her research interests are social psychology, gender, and research methods in social sciences. nino kharchilava is a master’s degree student in the gender studies program at tbilisi state university. 3 newspapers: “rezonansi” (5 times a week) “24 saati” (daily) “akhali taoba” (daily) “alia” (three times a week) “asaval-dasavali” (weekly) “chronika”(weekly) magazines: “sarke” (daily) “reitingi” (weekly) “gza” (weekly) “tbiliselebi” (weekly) 4 the term “blue” denotes both color and refers to russian slang that means “homosexual.” “gay” entered the georgian lexicon from english. the term “pederast” comes from russian and technically refers to a specific type of homosexual relations between a young man and an adult man. however in georgian, the term refers to all types of male homosexuality. 5 the article talks about the group of satanists, which consists of both men and women. 6 heavy sin is worse than just sin, for example, cheating might be sin, but suicide is heavy sin, so the believers know that they will be correspondingly differently punished for sin and heavy sin. 7 saakashvili, the current president of georgia, has been president since 2004 and was recently elected for a second term. he is clearly considered a pro-american candidate and supported by the western european countries as well. he aspires to model his presidency after western values. 8 the word-to-word translation means: spit to the devil. the phrase shows negative attitude to all evil forces and is used in colloquial speech. anthropology of east europe 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aiblanda [one of the most sexual ladies of the planet became lost in her own orientation]. alia[newspaper], no. 115, p. 24. sumbadze, n. and tarkhan-mouravi, g. 2005. gender and society in samtskhe-javakheti, georgia. microsoft word document5 volume 20, number 1 re-theorizing emancipation: remembering and rethinking ‘gender equality’ in eastern european womanist thought jessica harvey pennsylvania state university © 2002 jessica harvey all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. “in the conception of emancipation, the pendulum had swung too far toward ‘equality,’ although it is beginning to move toward the counter pole of difference, individuality, and uniqueness….” zuzana kicková and etela farkašová “the emancipation of women: a concept that failed” after the disintegration of the communist system in eastern europe, many people believed that the transition to a capitalist, democratic state would finally bring freedom and prosperity to the region. however, many anthropological and historical studies reveal the ways in which the transition has negatively affected various social groups. women constitute one of the largest groups that have been harmed by the post-communist transformations. immediately following the breakdown of the communist parties, post-communist governments restricted reproductive rights (except in romania) and rescinded progressive maternity policies. unemployment rose throughout the entire region, but disproportionately affected women. additionally, women’s representation in government sharply dropped after 1989. thus, the “woman question” reemerged in eastern europe only to be appropriated by politicians, social leaders, and other groups who sought to cultivate a moral basis for the new sociopolitical system through women’s social status. in response to the many problems that women face in eastern europe, such as high unemployment and low political representation, a multitude of women’s non-governmental organizations have proliferated throughout the region. a small sample of these groups displays the different agendas of each: feminist network of hungary, hungarian women’s foundation (also known as mona), prague mothers, union of romany women, women in black (serbia), the center for women war victims (zagreb), and the women’s rights center (warsaw). in addition to the proliferation of women’s ngos, a multitude of womanist writing has appeared in eastern europe, asserting that women occupy a secondary status and face discrimination in both the public and private spheres. i utilize the term “womanism” to describe those individuals who claim that women are discriminated against in various spheres of life. i choose not to call them feminists because they reject feminism, a platform from which to end male dominance. based on eastern european women’s historical situation and experience with communism, womanism offers a distinctly different line of thought than feminism. although women throughout eastern europe face different problems and different forms of discrimination in the transitional period, many women have a common experience of voicing opposition to gender based discrimination. in this context, i analyze womanist writing throughout eastern europe as a reaction to both discrimination against women in the post-1989 period and as a reaction to the patriarchal state of the communist period. i distinguish womanism from feminism in three ways. first, womanist writing is characterized by a rejection of the category and label of “feminism” and “feminist,” although there are exceptions to this, such as the feminist network of hungary, a westward looking group that asserts hungary’s position as a “western european” nation. along with a rejection of feminism, a distinction is made between the formal women’s movement, represented by the communist parties’ women’s organizations, and an informal, grassroots movement that most womanists assert is nonexistent throughout the jen typewritten text 27 2 region. second, womanist writing stresses that men have not been their oppressors. rather, if men had certain behaviors or characteristics that were detrimental to women, it was believed that a repressive public sphere caused negative behavior. furthermore, womanists give much attention to the idea of universal liberation, stressing that women, men, and children are disadvantaged in society on account of the repressive nature of the public sphere during communism. lastly, womanist writing is essentialist, believing that women and men have socialized differences as well as biopsychological differences, and that for women to be “equal” to men, these differences must be recognized and appreciated rather than comparatively ranked. before discussing womanist theory, it is necessary to recognize the historical situation that has influenced womanists in eastern europe. in what was socialism and what comes next? katherine verdery outlines the zadruga, or “parent-state,” model of socialism. verdery emphasizes that the socialist parent-state was a quasi-familial construction placing the party as the head of the “family.” she asserts that socialism, “went further than most [other political systems] in seeing society not simply as like a family but as itself a family, with the party as parent” (1996:64). verdery believes that an individual’s tie to the state was through dependency on the state, and that the state attempted to erase both class and gender to ensure that dependency. the socialist state structure within which womanism developed accounts for womanism’s unique theoretical approach to gender equality, an approach independent from, albeit influenced by, feminism. to womanists, the state, which can be understood as a patriarch itself, rather than an agent for patriarchy due to its basis on patriarchal values that cannot be reformed without abolishing the state, is the focal point of their writing on oppression and emancipation.1 eastern european womanists’ writings reflect the state’s patriarchal role as breadwinner, provider, and caretaker of its subjects as they theorize and debate emancipation and gender in the post-1989 period. the location of oppression is not men, the family, or the private sphere. on the contrary, the family and the private sphere provided for both men and women an area of independence and safety from the communist state, as expressed in the anti-political writings of konrád and havel.2 emancipation from and independence of the state-patriarch is the central aspect informing womanist writing. thus, we can arguably understand womanism to be a direct criticism of the communist state, as feminism has been to the liberal state. additionally, womanist writing presents the particular way in which women came to embody the socialist nation. women’s increased employment exemplified the state’s focus on and necessity for full employment. additionally, some socialist states appropriated women’s reproductive labor. in the case of poland, the state appeased solidarity—an opposition movement deeply interconnected with the catholic church—by controlling women’s access to abortion, and in romania the state restricted all access to contraception and abortion in an effort to boost the negative birth rate. however, womanist writing also shows the ways in which women opposed the state by controlling their bodies in such restrictive situations. various problems exist in the nature of feminist investigations into the position of women in eastern europe. in how we survived communism and even laughed, slavenka drakulic tells the story of an invitation she received in the early 1990s from an american feminist asking her to write an essay for a book on women in eastern europe. the american feminist, specified as b by drakulic, requests “ ‘a kind of critical theory approach,’ ” to the subject of eastern european “feminist” interventions in the public sphere after 1989. remembering a previous meeting with b in the united states, drakulic writes, b asked me about the position of women in eastern europe after the ‘velvet revolution.’ i also remember a kind of geographical map appearing in my mind: poland, czechoslovakia, east germany, hungary, bulgaria, romania, yugoslavia too – we are talking about perhaps 70 million women there, living in different regions and cultures, speaking different languages, yet all reduced to a common denominator, the system they were living under (1991:123). drakulic’s experience with this american feminist and others points out a salient problem for western feminism as it looks to women within western culture and as it attempts to gage women’s positions in other regions: “women” become a homogenized group with no differential characteristics. this was a particular problem early in second-wave american feminism, which was jen typewritten text 28 3 often criticized as a movement that only spoke to white, middle class women. in the case of eastern europe, language, ethnicity, and many other factors are ignored by western feminists; eastern european women become a uniform group characterized by their experience with communism. although drakulic criticizes western feminism and its tendency to homogenize women as a group, she herself points out in an article titled “in their own words: women of eastern europe,” that there is a describable eastern european, female experience: “[these women whom i spoke with throughout eastern europe] proved that for the past decade i had been right: there are common problems of women living under the same system, and we pinpointed them” (1991:47). like drakulic, i attempt to individualize eastern european women’s voices and present them as subjects who are both influenced by their cultural and national situation, but who speak from personal, individual experience. anastasya posadskaya noted the importance for women from the former soviet union to speak as individuals, claiming, “[f]or decades all we heard about was ‘all soviet peoples,’ this notorious phrase. now when we [women] speak at meetings we speak as individuals, it is very important to have a really personal participation, and an ability to express your own personal concerns” (molyneux 1991:140). a common experience and individual position within a state or region can both be articulated, and it is important to be able to retain individual experience as we draw regional connections. regional connections concerning women and the communist state are important to the overall study of the gendering of modern state forms. eastern european women’s testimonies are informative of the gendered particularities of the socialist state, one of many types of political and economic systems. additionally, these writings help us to recognize and distinguish how gender, as a “primary field within which or by means of which power is articulated” (scott 1986:1069), becomes implicated in comparison to the post-war welfare state. lastly, it is important to note that the majority of the womanist writing i analyze comes from educated, urban women. these women also tend to be of the dominant ethnic group in their country. additionally, these sources are from the early 1990s, primarily between 1991-1993, when socialism was still more fully intact in these countries and still extremely influential on their thinking. dismissing feminism and the formal women’s movement womanist writing clearly distinguishes between a formal women’s movement, sponsored by the communist governments, and a grassroots women’s movement, which never arose during the communist period for reasons such as the basic absence of civil society. the formal women’s movement of the communist period is characterized in womanist writing as an imposed, superficial and disingenuous movement directed from above. additionally, the concept of feminism is dismissed as an ideology, and its position as such links it to the former ideologically focused and manipulating state. many early socialists, like engels, theorized that capitalism, as the root of all oppression, was the obvious oppressor of women too, and believed that capitalism’s abolition would free the whole of society. chris corrin, a western scholar, believed that immediately following the bolshevik revolution genuine, revolutionary attempts were made to enhance women’s social position, but that by the stalinist years when the eastern bloc was formed, gender egalitarianism was no longer the case (corrin 1992:18-19). women were encouraged to enter the workforce and public life in the post-war years. in czechoslovakia, in 1950, women were 38.4% of the total workforce, and by 1960 they were 42.8% of the workforce (dijkstra 1997:120). by 1988, czechoslovakian women made up 46% of the workforce (dijkstra 1997:120). in poland, in 1951, women were 33% of the workforce, by 1970 they were 40% and by 1988 they were 46.8% of the workforce (dijkstra 1997:120). the communist governments also promoted equality in education for both men and women. additionally, abortion laws were liberalized throughout the eastern european countries, except ceaucescu’s romania. some women, such as judit kiss, a hungarian writer, remembered this initial phase of emancipation as good, but note its long-term failure: “a whole new generation of self-conscious and active women emerged on the social scene in the post-war years, for whom working, playing active social roles, enjoying the benefits of social welfare, ‘shaking the whole world’ as the popular song said, was taken for granted” (1991:50). individuals remember early state attempts to promote equality as opportunistic rather than egalitarian, which discredited “women’s liberation” as a concept from its inception in eastern europe. anastasia posadskaya noted in an jen typewritten text 29 4 interview with maxine molyneux that the socialist state’s “commitment to equality has always existed. but it was absolutely formal and absolutely instrumental, it was not a commitment on behalf of women as such but was pursued only to achieve other goals, economic or demographic” (molyneux 1991:135). alena valterová, founder of the political party of women and mothers in prague, also asserted this, “in the past the woman’s question was of course debated in czechoslovakia but only superficially, and only in reference to their position as economically active members of the society” (castle-kanerová 1991:164). both of these statements focus on the shallowness of state sponsored emancipation and reflect the ulterior motives of the state, both economic and demographic, as well as the fact that women became doubly worked bodies in both the public and private spheres. the push for women in the workforce was necessary to the industrial plans of the communist governments; the state needed every worker it could get to fulfill its industrial, multi-year plans. later, women’s bodies were essential in terms of human reproduction as birth rates began to fall. in the 1960s, pronatalism was promoted in the form of family tax cuts, allowances based on the number of children a couple had, and extended maternity leave. alena heitlinger, a western scholar, affirmed that these policies were directly related to the fear of a future labor shortage (1979:177). furthermore, work came to be obligatory in the communist countries, making it hard to define work as a right. jirina šiklová, a womanist from the former czechoslovakia, wrote in an article titled “are women in central and eastern europe conservative?” that “the emancipation of women was reduced to the necessity to have a job” (1997:74). this common womanist statement reflects the fact that the actual incentive for women to work was low wages rather than women’s new accessibility to the public sphere. a. geske dijkstra, a dutch economist, has written that even though governments promoted women in the workforce, “in practice, the strongest motivation for women to participate in the labour market was the generally low wages for everyone, which required two income-earners to make a reasonable family income” (1997:120). the negative association of emancipation and work also reflects women’s poor working conditions. women generally worked undesirable jobs, such as light factory work, and rarely attained management positions. gender discrepancy in pay also negatively affected women.3 although women were brought into the public sphere, their duties at home remained as well. besides the fact that men assumed few household chores, the state did not prioritize the production of time saving appliances in its industrialization plans. few women owned timesaving appliances such as washing machines. a survey done in czechoslovakia in 1959 reported that 8% of women used communal laundry services, 40% used personal washing machines, and 30% washed their clothes by hand (heitlinger 1979:27). few people used the public cantinas, and childcare was far from adequate in most of the eastern european countries. thus, women resented the obligation of formal employment because they also performed the majority of household work. work was far from fulfilling and satisfying, and therefore hardly liberating, as it only doubled the total amount of work one had. in addition to promoting mass employment involving women, the communist parties also supported women’s organizations. alena valterová described the czechoslovak communist party’s women’s group, the women’s union, as a “social club comparable to a club of stamp collectors” (castle-kanerová 1991:162), inferring the organization’s inactivity. she also noted that these women were subject to “cadre screening,” and thus did nothing but what the party allowed. the women’s union survived the velvet revolution though, and in the early 1990s was still taking part in government discussions of women’s issues. valterová claimed that this group was not valued for its representation of women, but for “the manner by which they work, that is by rubber stamping the dominant views of government” (castle-kanerová 1991:162). a similar body existed in the ussr, called the soviet women’s committee, which changed its name in the post-communist period to the union of women. because the members were not elected and thus represented nobody, and were still organized by the state, russian womanists and women criticized them (molyneux 1991:136). posadskaya also spoke of quotas for women in the soviet parliament, and noted that this system discredited formal equality because, “in reality the state was more concerned to have obedient women in parliament than women representing women’s interests” (molyneux 1991:136). formal equality has become associated with women’s superficial presence in government, jen typewritten text 30 5 through institutions such as quota systems in the ussr and the communist parties’ women’s organizations. women representatives and women’s groups are perceived to have failed to represent women’s needs because of their obedience to the party and the state. furthermore, the communist state had been claiming since the 1950s that the woman question had been solved, leaving little room for these groups to agitate for women’s position because it was formally believed that women were socially equal to men. because the state offered institutions to promote women’s position in society, but did this superficially, womanists criticize the state sponsored, formal women’s movement that failed to qualitatively change women’s lives. alongside criticism of the formal equality of the state, there is a general dismissal of feminism in womanist writing. as in the united states and europe, feminism in eastern europe is a misunderstood concept that often evokes images of man-hating, militant women. although many eastern european women might embrace actual feminist beliefs, feminism is understood to be a “bourgeois trend” and is considered just another “ism.” in “women’s priorities and visions,” jirina vrabkova, a writer from the former czechoslovakia, wrote, “feminism here means just another ‘ism’ – one ideology replaced by another one – or a vision of a militant, frustrated, unsuccessful (usually ugly) woman who is hostile and man-hating” (1997:73). posadskaya commented on the immediate rejection of any ideology after a half-century of propaganda regarding socialism, egalitarianism, marxism, and leninism. she also asserted that many women might associate with feminism as a concept, but that women in the group that she had formed, the independent women’s democratic initiative, would never embrace the word: [f]eminism is like socialism – another label. it’s seen as a bourgeois trend and caricatured as selfish, and stupid. feminists are thought of as terribly worn and dreary women who look like men. most women who are in [our association] and who are presumably going to join do not know what ‘feminism’ is other than this stereotype. they could be feminists in our own particular soviet way. but they do not call themselves feminists, and it would be difficult to attract them with this name. we want our organization to be an open one; not the kind of so-called open organizations, which were imposed from above, and in which nobody was really involved or committed, and everything is planned from above. that is why in the title the key word is independent, which means independent from party control or state-organized control (molyneux 1991:137). posadskaya elaborated that feminism was misunderstood, and that calling her group feminist would have limited its membership and organizational possibilities. ostensibly, “feminism” would have linked the group to the old style organization that was directed by the state. in her interview with maxine molyneux, posadskaya speaks of “a real linguistic crisis” in regards to the language used to speak of women’s position in society: “the danger now, however, is that we cannot use the old language because it was discredited by hypocritical usage; wonderful concepts like equality, emancipation, solidarity, can no longer be used. they were used to describe a reality which was quite their opposite…we have a real linguistic crisis, and this affects our ability to communicate” (molyneux 1991:135). likewise, this linguistic crisis also extends to western feminists attempting to work with eastern european women, and to scholars studying women and gender in these countries. however, the dismissal of the formal women’s movement as imposed and artificially motivated must be recognized. because the state offered women certain opportunities understood to be egalitarian, but did not provide for equality within that environment, state directed emancipation became discredited. the double burden experienced throughout eastern europe further discredited obligatory, often unsatisfying work. however, feminism, as an ideology, evokes the former reality of an all-consuming state and is not acceptable as a means by which to criticize the transition state. perhaps it is inappropriate to call women who agitate for a better social position womanists, but they represent a distinguishable line of thought that criticizes the old state structure as well as the new. this linguistic crisis must be faced in order to define and describe this line of thought that reacts to the communist and transition experience. describing universal liberation as womanists look to their experience with communism, they understand men to have been their partners in state oppression: everyone was a victim of the state system. although many eastern european women have argued since 1989 jen typewritten text 31 6 that men are better positioned in society by virtue of their sex alone, womanists still contend that the whole of society would benefit from a revolution in gender, class, age, and ethnic relations. feminists as well believe this and rightly argue that the study of women necessarily reveals aspects of men’s experience, but they lack an explicit focus on men. womanism clearly argues for a universal liberation that will free women, men, and children from social constraints. the solidarity of victims before 1989 konrád and havel attested to the effects of living in a society so saturated with politics that personal autonomy was basically impossible (stokes 1991:167).4 ostensibly, their arguments referred to a state that was gender blind, causing all of society to be similarly robbed of civil and human rights. although womanism recognizes that different people differently experienced oppression, they focus on the common experience of a repressive state too. the feminist network of hungary, in their declaration of intent, described the effects of the communist state’s overwhelming presence, writing, “the former omnipotence of the state power, disabling or deforming all members of society, destroyed support communities and exploited the natural forces of human life, including human relationships. women, men and children have been forced to bear their burdens alone” (1993:172). womanism also identifies specific aspects of men’s oppression, resulting from their party positions and occupations. judit kiss pointed out that men’s bodies were particularly affected by the socialist system because men normally assumed the work offered by the second and third economy, which caused their health to greatly decline and their life expectancies to decrease (1991:51). the feminist network further divulged the specific damages done to men by the state: “authoritarianism and paternalism [of the state], in addition to [men’s] everyday burdens, have also made men vulnerable and distorted their personalities” (1993:172). here, a specific point is brought up that reinforces the common belief that society’s distorted situation resulted in distorted individuals who could not live normal lives. in other words, the state was to blame even for personal situations such as divorce, because even the personality could not be preserved from state influence. in this vein, šiklová, in her essay “mcdonald’s, terminators, coca cola ads–and feminism?” argued that women’s access to the private sphere protected them from the state: “women in socialism never allowed themselves to be manipulated to the extent that men did, which i regard as fortunate. women took refuge in their ‘double burden,’ in motherhood and in care for young children” (1997:79). slavenka drakulic offers several examples that eloquently show the solidarity created by common victimization. drakulic explains in an essay titled “the language of soup,” that eastern european women tend to not blame male partners for the demise of relationships because everyone lives “in the same mess”: “it would be so easy to put the blame on them; our lives would be so much simpler. but something stops us. maybe it’s the idea that in normal circumstances, things might have been different” (drakulic 1991:109). again, this statement reflects the abnormal circumstances to which socialism exposed people, and explains that individuals blamed the state rather than friends, lovers, and family for personal problems. drakulic elaborated on the common experience of personal repression and the group solidarity that it created: in these endless, ancient, kitchens [across eastern europe], while the soup is boiling, we talk of men – sorrowful talk, as old as the smell of soup, as warm as a fireplace and the feeling of intimacy we share. it seems it’s the same the world over, but there is a difference here [in eastern europe], because every such talk finishes with the system that shapes our lives. sometimes it looks like a minotaur, a monster we throw sacrifices to in order just to stay alive, a force larger than life, mythological and real at the same time, controlling us, dividing us, eating us up. that is what is uniting us in these kitchens, beyond the men, above them, this feeling of helplessness. and this is also what unites us with men. it’s hard to see them as an opposite force, men as a gender, hard to confront them as enemies. perhaps because everyone’s identity is denied, we want to see them as persons, not as a group, or a category, or a mass (1991:111). in a system that denied everyone autonomy, it was too much to see men as a homogenous group with similar agendas detrimental to women. the state was the ultimate enemy. when womanists reflect on the state they view it as patriarchal and paternalistic, but not for the benefit of men necessarily, as men too were jen typewritten text 32 7 oppressed. state patriarchy functioned to perpetuate the state, benefiting it and those who played by the communist parties’ rules (which were more often men). renata siemienska, a polish scholar, explained that anger about discrimination and repression was transferred onto the state because it dictated social circumstances: “where the state grants certain privileges and rights—in the socialist countries, this is perceived as the case— citizens hold the state responsible for improper functioning or lack of satisfying rights. this should receive due attention since in the citizens’ opinion it is not a better or worse employer, usually a man, who is held responsible, but instead the state, which is the basic employer and grants rights” (siemienska 1986:242). social solidarity was created against the state because the state was perceived to be so controlling. even in romania, where the fear of pregnancy was omniscient and overwhelming, where women had multiple abortions throughout their lives, men and sex were not the enemy. in the romanian case, we should think of the sexual act and the sexual body as resistance to communism. romanians preserved their sexuality and bodies from state control by continuing to have sex though their state was appropriating sexuality, through the outlaw of abortion and contraception, for its own demographic purposes. adriana baban, a romanian scholar, argued that ceaucescu’s policies affected both men and women: “so pervasive was its intrusion into the intimate lives and privacy of romania’s citizens that the first post-ceaucescu government, on the very day that it assumed power, revoked all prohibitions against abortion and contraception. this political act represented the ‘legal’ liberation of male and female sexuality, both of which had been significantly, if differentially, influenced by the ceaucescu policies” (baban 2000:225). in romania, the state was the obvious culprit in oppressing both women’s and men’s sexualities, and sexual privacy and freedom to contraception and abortion represent new ideals of the postceaucescu period. post-1989 in the post-communist period, womanists assert that men have more rights than women, a factor that incited womanism. one romanian woman tellingly explained her situation: “abortion is the only thing that democracy has brought us [romanian women]. men have gained the right to be involved in politics and business; we have gained the right to abort! what else have we gained with the change to democracy…? food and things that we cannot afford to buy?” (baban 2000:225). peggy watson, another western scholar, has described the loss of women’s rights as implicit in the transition process: ‘[t]he very uniformity of the eastern european experience indicates that the re-creation of the gender order in the transition to capitalism is in fact predicated on the rescinding of a range of rights accorded to women under state socialism” (watson 1993:71). in this vein, womanist thinking begins to diverge from its ides about state patriarchy of the communist period. when discussing the post-1989 period, womanists believe that state patriarchy directly benefits men. nonetheless, informed by their experience with common victimization, womanists still argues for the liberation of men in the post-1989 period, even if men have faired better in the transition period. womanists distinguish between real emancipation and state-sponsored, superficial emancipation, which mirrors their categorization of the informal women’s movement and the formal one. “real emancipation” is extended to men as well, creating a more holistic understanding of social liberation. the feminist network stated in their declaration of intent, “[we aim] to achieve…the realization of women’s and men’s real emancipation, and the abolition of all kinds of discrimination…through dialogue and public debates we wish to reshape the structure of interests so as to make possible a real, rather than a forced and false harmonization of interests” (feminist network of hungary 1991:171). they continue, describing their belief in universal liberation, stating, “the feminist network commits itself to the goal of extending to children, women, and men equal opportunities for selfrealization with regard to gender, religion, nationality, racial origin, or social class. from this it follows that our understanding of emancipation is universal and is directed toward the whole of society” (feminist network of hungary 1991:172). the feminist network also described several means by which universal liberation might be promoted: the concept of work must be redefined so that the work required to care for the family and children and the tasks needed to sustain everyday life should be included within the sphere of important activities deserving social and material jen typewritten text 33 8 recognition. men and women must be assured equal rights and obligations to participate in these activities. a highquality system of childcare institutes and family services must be created out of public funds. a free and high-quality health system, including a more enlightened women’s health network, is essential for the entire population. the availability of abortion must be legally guaranteed and contraception must become a responsibility of men as well as women (1991:173). many of these concepts were socialist goals and dreams, and the failure of the socialist systems to achieve them has not discredited these ideas with all social sectors. these concepts stress that the family is central to the happiness of both men and women, and are promoted in terms of creating universal liberation. thus, a belief exists within womanism that parts of socialism could be conducive to universal liberation. maria adamik, a hungarian womanist, poignantly pointed this out, noting the complete rejection of socialist ideals in the transitional period, “the marxist baby has been thrown out with the stalinist bathwater” (1991:166). anastasya posadskaya also agitated for men’s position in society, arguing that they were oppressed in certain ways within the family. for instance, an obvious detriment to men and children is the fact that women are almost always granted custody of children in the case of divorce; obviously not all women are more suited than men to raise children. posadskaya stated, “i wrote an article titled ‘invisible tears’, about men’s tears, which talked about the fact that men cannot realize themselves personally, particularly in the family. i thought that men would understand this and there would immediately be a men’s liberation movement” (molyneux 1991:139). a men’s liberation movement did not, however, emerge in russia. nonetheless, posadskaya’s ideas point to a possible amalgamated movement for men and women. judit kiss described the possibility of a women’s movement becoming the next universal movement for “freedom and democracy.” kiss first described the characteristics of ecological and peace movements that make them widely acceptable: “their issues appear as more general concerns. they have more ‘public places of battle’, dams, nuclear plants, tropical forests, which can serve as uniting, general symbols of confrontation, argument, and hopefully victory” (1991:56). on the other hand, although a women’s movement does have some general concerns, kiss explained that the predominant invisibility of the victories in a women’s movement makes it harder to keep alive as a movement. she described the real goals of a women’s movement to be in private life: “[t]heir ultimate scenario is in the realm of everyday personal life: how one feels walking down a street, traveling alone, going to public places, how difficult it is to find a place in the productive system or to express interests through the media, how natural it feels to communicate with others, known or alien, men or women” (1991:56). kiss pointed out that these goals, so embedded in personal, quotidian life, are exactly why all of society must be changed for them to be reached: women’s movements can hardly present anything like this [the general concerns of ecological and peace movements], but they still can represent the other side of any current coin, on behalf of the threatened, oppressed, and humiliated. they may also fight publicly, and might even win in certain cases, but at the end of the day they can only win behind the closed doors of their homes. and for that, the whole society has to change. that is the reason why women’s movements have the potential to become the new universal movement for freedom and democracy (1991:56). thus, a democratic, free society can be judged by women’s position in them, and all of society must be implicated in this movement in order to create a truly democratic society that benefits everyone. the liberation of essentialism within societies in eastern europe, there is an acceptance of essentialism on many different social levels. this acceptance includes advocates of women’s rights. i have argued elsewhere that various polish social and political groups utilized gender representations in order to garner moral capital for the post-communist sociopolitical system.5 these representations of gender stress essentialism in order to reject the communist system that supposedly warped both femininity and masculinity. additionally, catherine wanner has shown in her work on ukraine that the educational system has focused on gender essentialism in an effort to promote ukrainian nationalism. wanner reported that elite, private schools often promoted single-sex education, and jen typewritten text 34 9 that “several members of the faculty expressed the conviction that soviet society contaminated and vulgarized the essence of masculinity and femininity in the course of pursuing gender equality” (1998:112). these faculty members argued that the soviet system “empowered and masculinized” (wanner 1998:112) women. in an effort to counteract this, some schools implemented “psycho-training” to “reformulate gender-based conceptions of the sexes which, it is believed, will contribute to the strengthening of the nation and state” (wanner 1998:112). thus, the refeminized woman embodies the free, independent post-communist state, and many levels of society work to recast femininity and masculinity, believing that gender could not be expressed in the communist states. second-wave american feminism was partly characterized by its rejection of essentialism, which had been promoted by feminist foremothers like elizabeth cady stanton in order to gain various rights. “third-wave” american feminism however, is distinguished by its critical acceptance of certain aspects of traditional femininity and of essentialism. by severely criticizing communist versions of emancipation that ignored sexual difference, womanists go farther than american third-wave feminists in their acceptance of essentialism. womanism points out that state granted emancipation forced women to become like men in their public roles, and that because sexual difference was ignored, important feminine characteristics were suppressed and devalued. moreover, drakulic also shows us in her work that women used their gendered bodies to resist state control during the communist period. drakulic wrote in how we survived communism and even laughed that “the communist ideal was a robust woman who didn’t look much different from a man” (1991:23). in the same essay, titled “make-up and other crucial questions,” drakulic explained that gender expression through make-up and fashion marked resistance to the homogenizing state because make-up and fashion asserted individuality and thus political subversion. in the communist countries, women spent enormous time and money acquiring makeup, cloth, and other means by which to mimic western fashion. although many of these women looked overdressed and over-primped, they did it “to cheer themselves up in a grim everyday life…in fact, they [were] doing it to show difference; there [were] not many other ways to differentiate oneself” (drakulic 1991:27). drakulic described these women and their efforts to assert individuality: nothing is casual about them. they are overdressed, they put on too much makeup, they match colors and textures badly, revealing their provincial attempt to imitate western fashion. but where could they learn anything about a self-image, a style? in the party-controlled magazines for women, where they are instructed to be good workers and party members first, then mothers, housewives, and sex objects next, never themselves? to be yourself, to cultivate individualism, to perceive yourself as an individual in a mass society is dangerous. you might become living proof that the system is failing. make-up and fashion are crucial because they are political (1991:26). the distinctly gendered, badly made-up woman represented and embodied resistance to the state. she, in fact, removed herself from availability to the state and arguably lived within her own truth. although makeup and fashion are one type of feminine expression, womanists assert that there are many versions of the female experience, and they interpret essentialism in a specific manner that allows for variation. some womanists assert that there are fundamental differences between men and women, for instance, that men are naturally individualistic and competitive and that women are more community oriented and giving. however, womanists allow for a widely interpretable definition of the female experience— and argue for the right to express each version through the gendered body—specifically because they lived in a state that prescribed so many roles. for example, kicková and farkašová believed that the communist experience broke down the female experience, ignoring women’s essential aspects (1993:89). however, they never actually described what they felt to be the female experience. one example of such states: ‘emancipation’ over the last forty years meant a loss of dignity for women, who were reduced to a cheap source of labor that could be plugged in anywhere without regard to specific capabilities, prerequisites, and ambitions. it meant the loss of women’s identity, because women had to adapt themselves to the architecture of the ‘building’ [a metaphor jen typewritten text 35 10 for the masculine structure of the state] and had no chance to become aware of and determine for themselves what it meant to be a woman and to express it in their lives, their social roles, and their personal expectations (kicková and farkašová 1993:89). the lack of description regarding the female experience provides room for many different versions of what it means to be a woman. whereas there is a lack of description in womanist writing defining the female experience, there is ample description asserting that the universalizing principles of communism were based on masculine viewpoints. by “universal” womanists mean the state’s refusal to differentiate between individuals in terms of such factors as gender and occupation. kicková and farkašová explained that the state’s insistence on gender blindness when dealing with individuals was directed by more than just economics, demographics, and ideology. communism’s universalizing approach, ostensibly derived from the western tradition of enlightenment thought, was based on a masculine framework. they wrote: not only ideological and economic factors account for the ignorance of sexual differences, but the conceptual orientation of abstraction from particulars. tradition posits a humanistic universalism that elevates the universal qualities, rights, and needs of every human being to the greatest importance and posits that a better, more just world and all particular problems will be solved by the resolution of conflict at the universal level. the differences between men and women are regarded as marginal problems. but humanistic universalism veils the important point that the masculine principle is taken as the common human principle. the male value system, male thought patterns, and male ways of action become the patterns for the whole social structure (kicková and farkašová 1993:88). womanism’s tenet that the state universally approached its subjects from a masculine framework explains why women were still discriminated against in the workplace, in the party, and in the home. because communist ideology failed to deal with the woman question in a meaningful way, the resultant masculine-oriented egalitarianism benefited men as it dealt with both men and women. heitlinger defined this as “assimilation,” pointing out that “[a] predominantly masculinity-oriented equality may facilitate an increasing similarity between the sexes without a parallel change in, and restructuring of, social institutions, thus leading to a double burden rather than to equality for women” (1979:1). harsanyi also explained that traditional women’s work became devalued under such a system, although under communism all work should have been valued as socially meaningful: “equality did not imply equal affirmation of and respect for different values for men and women, but treating women like men. most women’s tasks were regarded as meaningless, legitimizing the inferiority of women; only paid work deserved respect” (1993:41). the “universal” approach to liberation promoted by womanists is misleading because it is specifically based on difference and individual need in order to free all individuals. implicit in womanism’s understanding of women’s emancipation and liberation is essentialism, which points out that there are different experiences for men and women, although women can have a variety of female experiences. in their declaration of intent, the feminist network stated that they aim to “achieve the recognition of specific female interests and viewpoints” (1991:171). to work for women’s rights in a patriarchal transitional state and to simultaneously ensure that the masculineoriented egalitarianism of the past is not presented as the model for gender egalitarianism, womanism seeks to describe women’s interests and viewpoints in order that they become socially recognized, accepted, and valued. social and gender differences are the basis of egalitarianism in womanism, distinguishing it from second-wave feminism and, to a lesser extent, third-wave feminism. judit kiss explained the essentialism implicit in her understanding of social equality: “the proclaimed social equality did not consider the basic emotional, cultural, psychological differences between men and women. they did not form part of equality, although precisely the recognition of fundamental differences of any kind of minority should create the basis for their incorporation in a genuinely democratic society” (kiss 1991:50). šiklová and farkašová echoed this, writing, “formal equality appeared in the form of the sexual neutrality of many social roles and in the form of universalism. real equality must start with sexual difference as a given; it should articulate the specific nature of female subjectivity and identity” (1993:93). this definition of equality is a direct result of women’s experiences with equality during communism. informed by this jen typewritten text 36 11 experience, advocates for gender equality envision a situation in which gender can be expressed in many ways and all forms are recognized and valued. conclusion although feminism and womanism have nonetheless influenced one another, it is crucial that we recognize them to be two distinct lines of thought that each criticizes a specific state structure and gender system. feminism and womanism, like gender, are historically embedded, and reflect their historical situations. womanism was incited by the post-communist, transitional state in which many rights granted to women by the socialist states were revoked, such as progressive maternity policies and liberal abortion laws, and in which women lost a certain level of access to work and politics. many different social groups have assumed the discussion of women’s identity and social position in order to attain power, money, legitimacy, or rights in eastern europe in the transitional period. womanists are another social group presenting another picture of and scenario for women, yet they are the only group to offer women real choices and control over their lives. western feminism unquestionably influenced womanism as it began to critique the transitional state, but as womanism began to argue for women’s rights it had to face a past in which egalitarian concepts were devalued. womanism’s redefinition of ideas such as equality, emancipation, and liberation are distinct from that of feminism. because of womanists’ experiences with the totalitarian communist states, womanism defines emancipation and liberation to be from the state and society rather than from the private sphere and individuals like husbands, partners, lovers, and fathers. ideas about emancipation and liberation include men and other social groups such as children. finally, womanism stresses the need to recognize difference, especially gender difference, in to order truly establish equality. both men’s and women’s experiences must become valued to achieve equality. eastern european women’s experience with communism also shows how different states manipulated women’s bodies through productive and reproductive labor. however, womanism importantly points out that women remained in control of their bodies and still expressed gender though the state tried to suppress and control it. thus the presence of the gendered body, decorated with fashion and makeup for instance, was a protest to the homogenizing state. in the end of history and the last man, francis fukuyama predicted that western liberalism’s defeat over communism marked the end of history. however, if we define “history” as change and acknowledge that there are many levels of history beyond political and diplomatic history, 1989 simply marks a new phase in gender history, women’s history, social history, and cultural history. the eastern european experience has shown that history will continue because gender continues to be a changing category. gender immediately began to be renegotiated after 1989 and it will continue to be redefined and resituated indefinitely. womanism marks the emergence of a new force in eastern europe that refuses to allow women’s identity and social position to be dictated by individuals and groups interested in legitimacy, power, and money rather than in women’s freedom and rights. state socialism in eastern europe was an informative albeit disappointing experiment in the reorganization of the public and private, the family, and gender. womanism is a direct result of this experiment, and both critiques and promotes certain aspects of that experiment. galvanized by a transitional state structure that rescinded women’s rights and questioned women’s social role and position, womanism emerged as an amalgamation of different ideologies, ideas, and experiences, and perhaps will finally offer a meaningful, inclusive solution to the “woman question” in eastern europe. references adamik, maria. 1991 hungary: a loss of rights? feminist review 39(winter): 166-170. baban, adriana. 2000 women’s sexuality and reproductive behavior in post-ceaucescu romania: a psychological approach. in reproducing gender: politics, publics, and everyday life after socialism. susan gal and gail kligman, eds. pp. 225-256. princeton: princeton university press. castle-kanerová, mita. 1991 interview with alena valterova. feminist review 39(winter): 161-170. jen typewritten text 37 12 connell, r.w. 1990 the state, gender and sexual politics: theory and appraisal. theory and society 19(5): 507-544. corrin, chris. 1992 superwoman and the double burden. toronto: second story press. dijkstra, a. geske. 1997 women in central and eastern europe: a labor market in transition. in gender and economics: a european perspective. a. geske dijkstra and janneke plantenga, eds. pp. 118-135. london and new york: routledge. drakulic, slavenka. 1990 in their own words: women of eastern europe. ms. 1(1): 36-47. 1991 how we survived communism and even laughed. new york: harper collins. farkašová, etela and zuzana kicková. 1993 the emancipation of women: a concept the failed. in gender politics and post communism: reflections from eastern europe and the former soviet union. nanette funk and magda mueller, eds. new york and london: routledge. feminist network of hungary. 1991 declaration of intent. feminist review 39(winter): 171-173. fukuyama, francis. 1992 the end of history and the last man. new york: avon books. goven, joanna. 1993 gender politics in hungary: autonomy and anti-feminism. in gender politics and post-communism: reflections from eastern europe and the former soviet union. nanette funk and magda mueller, eds. new york: routledge. harsanyi, doina pasca. 1993 women in romania. in gender politics and post-communism: reflections from eastern europe and the former soviet union. nanette funk and magda mueller, eds. new york and london: routledge. harvey, jessica. 2001 the legacy of the myth of state socialist gender equality in eastern europe. undergraduate honors thesis, department of history, pennsylvania state university. heitlinger, alena. 1979 women and state socialism: sex inequality in the soviet union and czechoslovakia. london: the macmillan press ltd. kiss, judit. 1991 the second ‘no’: women in hungary. feminist review 39(winter): 49-57. molyneux, maxine. 1991 interview with anastasya posadskaya (25 september 1990). feminist review 39(winter): 133-140. mrševic, zorica. 2000 belgrade’s sos hotline for women and children victims of violence: a report. in reproducing gender: politics, publics, and everyday life after socialism. susan gal and gail kligman, eds. pp. 370-392. princeton: princeton university press. scott, joan. 1986 gender: a useful category of historical analysis. american historical review 91(5): 1053-1075. siemienska, renata. 1986 women and social movements in poland. women & politics 6(4): 5-35. šiklová, jirina. 1997 are women in central and eastern europe conservative? in ana’s land: sisterhood in eastern europe. tanya renne, ed. pp. 76-81. boulder: westview press. stokes, gale, ed. 1996 from stalinism to pluralism: a documentary history of eastern europe since 1945. new york: oxford university press. verdery, katherine. 1996 what was socialism and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. jen typewritten text 38 13 vrabkova, jirina. 1997 women’s priorities and visions. in ana’s land: sisterhood in eastern europe. tanya renne, ed. pp. 72-75. boulder: westview press. wanner, catherine. 1998 the burden of dreams: history and identity in post-soviet ukraine. university park: the pennsylvania state university press. watson, peggy. 1993 the rise of masculinism in eastern europe. the new left review 198: 133-140. 1 for a discussion of the state as patriarch, see connell. 2 although the private sphere can be discussed as a “safe” place from state violence, research increasingly shows that domestic violence has been and continues to be a serious problem throughout all of the former socialist nations. see for example mrševic. 3 heitlinger reported that pay discrimination was apparent in feminized sectors of the economy as well. for instance, heitlinger pointed out that in education women only earned 70% of what men earned. see heitlinger, p155. 4 however, joanna goven argued that the gender roles implicit in anti-politics have undermined women’s abilities to defend their interests in the post-1989 period. see goven, p224-240. 5 see part 1 of harvey. jen typewritten text 39 “a lot depends on us:” discourses of individual and collective responsibility in polish women’s self-defense courses anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: alpicken@umail.iu.edu “a lot depends on us:” discourses of individual and collective responsibility in polish women’s self-defense courses abby drwecki, indiana university introduction many of the earliest scholars of postcommunist eastern europe detailed the ways that the transition to a capitalist, neoliberal economic and political system have highlighted or exacerbated the sexism of eastern european societies (e.g. gal and kligman 2000a, 2000b; watson 1993; einhorn 1993; gal 1997). building upon these analyses, several other social scientists have discussed the ways in which international feminist movements have sought to remedy women‟s situations and their success or failure in these goals (e.g. ghodsee 2004, hauser 1994, ishkanian 2004, matynia 1995). “violence against women” has become a buzzword for development and public programs in the region, and human rights scholars and activists have shown both that violence is a real problem in these countries (mrozik 2000, minnesota advocates 2002) and an extremely successful issue for ngo and activist organization (keck and sikkink 1999). more specifically, scholars such as julie hemment (2004, 2007), janet elise johnson (2002, 2005, 2009) and zorica mrsevic (2000) have written ethnographic accounts of ngos and the interventions they provide to help remedy violence against women in russia and serbia. these interventions have most often taken the form of “crisis centers,” battered women‟s shelters, and domestic violence hotlines. in recent years, however, women in eastern european countries have taken up what many see as an alternative solution to work against gendered violence: self-defense training for women. in urban centers of poland such as warsaw, for example, a growing number of women are choosing to take part in self-defense and martial arts courses for their personal safety, and often for recreation. my study of women‟s self-defense participation builds upon these previous works and others, to show how ongoing processes in the context of polish culture inform self-defense pedagogy and participation, and how participants construct identities based on their experiences in self-defense. in many cases self-defense for women is explicitly promoted as a way for women to become empowered, but the practice‟s ties to consumerism and individual self-improvement strategies may limit its efficacy. in other words, self-defense training‟s discourses of individualized responsibility distract attention from structural factors which disadvantage women in polish society. although self-defense training has positive effects for its participants, the framing of such training as a single “cure” for the problem of violence against women is problematic. as i discuss elsewhere, two main reasons for this are its positioning as a consumer choice and a way to assert a unique consumer identity 1 and its assignation of responsibility for anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 177 the prevention of violence to individual women. both of these limitations on self-defense‟s political potential are related to a neoliberal construction of personhood in postcommunist poland. when i use the term neoliberalism, i refer to a confluence of political and social forces connected with economic privatization and deregulation, and not the term in the strict economic sense. according to theorists of globalization such as david harvey (2005), neoliberalism as a moral philosophy deemphasizes the importance of community solidarity and government social programs, instead focusing on the importance of entrepreneurship and individual initiative and responsibility. this wider interpretation of neoliberal philosophy is useful in understanding the ways that self-defense participants construct individuated identities through programs of selfimprovement. tomas matza‟s 2009 article on russian radio talk show programs explains how individualizing and psychoanalyzing discourses of “self-help” reflect broader economic and political trends: “…[t]herapeutic idioms such as self-esteem, self-realization self-knowledge, self-management, independence, personal potential, and responsibility have articulated with consumer desire, capitalist self-fashioning, and careerism” (matza 2009: 492). in this article, i will show how polish women are increasingly incorporating and redeploying the discourses of individuation which are an important part of poland‟s postcommunist transformation. women who participate in women‟s self-defense courses overwhelmingly frame their participation, course preferences, and overall motivations for learning self-defense in terms of individuated self-improvement and the crafting of an agencycentered identity. 2 i will also discuss the implications that such discourses hold for polish women‟s subjectivities; in particular, how these subjectivities are constructed by self-defense participants and by the instructors who shape self-defense pedagogy and facilitate women‟s participation. several scholars of the social sciences in eastern europe have discussed the importance of processes of individuation in postcommunist transitions in that region. individuation is closely tied to economic processes of market formation, “privatization” and the promotion of consumerism (mandel and humphrey 2002, verdery 1996). evidence shows that in fields as diverse as government policy, advertising and education neoliberal discourse promotes empowerment and betterment at the individual level, encapsulated in language of self-help and personal responsibility (e.g. phillips 2008, haney 2008, matza 2009). in the case of self-defense participation among polish women, a logic of atomized individuality, in which women are completely responsible for their own circumstances, is preferred to a focus on collectivity and structural injustice. methods during a period of ethnographic fieldwork lasting from september 2007 to june 2008, i attended a variety of self-defense courses for women in warsaw, poland. my methodologies consisted of the ethnographic cornerstones of participant observation and interviewing which anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 178 allowed me to observe trends and behaviors from an etic perspective, as well as experiencing these self-defense classes and learning the opinions of their participants from an emic perspective 3 . the various courses i attended approached the task of teaching women selfdefense techniques very differently. some of the courses were based on martial arts methods and focused only on physical resistance against violence. others borrowed more from feminist theory and psychology, teaching participants through verbal discussions of self-esteem, confidence and “victim behavior.” for the purposes of this article, i will divide these different types of courses into those which take a “gendered” approach versus a “gender-blind” approach. although these two types of courses differ, they tend to approach the question of responsibility in a similar fashion, both in terms of the students‟ responsibilities within the context of training, and in terms of responsibility within society to resist and prevent violence. in most courses across categories, instructors employed discourses of individualized responsibility. in one instance when collective responsibility was introduced as a part of a course‟s pedagogy, the reaction of participants was negative. the role of gender in self-defense and martial arts pedagogy those courses that take a “gender-blind” approach are typically those that are based on martial-arts techniques and those that are mixed-sex, and therefore provide the same instruction to all their students regardless of whether they are men or women. those that take a gendersensitive approach are those that are for women only (although the instructors may be men) and select the teaching methods and the techniques taught in order to be specifically beneficial for women. however, there is one type of women‟s-only course i attended (two series of courses called unsafe woman and combat, respectively) which i will argue favored a gender-blind approach. gender-sensitive pedagogy one hallmark of courses that were designed especially for women was a portion of class time devoted to ice-breaking and relaxation activities. although these activities were not directly related to self-defense per se, they were designed to create an atmosphere of support and acceptance among the group of women, as well as improving self-esteem and a sense of calm for individual participants. the two gender-sensitive courses (called wendo and women‟s self defense program [henceforth wsdp]) also include some focus on visualizations, stability exercises and exercises designed to hone “intuition” about personal boundaries. while these two courses were similar in that they included some discussion of the psychological aspects of selfdefense, they had quite different structures. wendo is a self-defense course taught by women that aims to build women‟s assertiveness and change disempowering aspects of feminine body culture. wsdp shares many of the same psychological principles as wendo, but it includes the added element of a “padded attacker”—an instructor will “attack” one of the participants anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 179 wearing a heavily padded suit of armor, which allows the participant to defend herself physically at full strength, without worry about harming the instructor. wsdp includes discussion of the “psychological” principles that cause men to attack women and the cultural factors that cause women to be easy targets of violence. wendo focuses less on the psychology of the “rapist,” but still includes verbal exercises in which participants share stories of being bullied or harassed in everyday situations. during and after these exercises, the wendo instructors introduced some basic points of feminist theory, relating to the ways that women are conditioned to be self-effacing and to self-objectify, although they did not ever state these points explicitly or associate them with feminism. as one wendo instructor stated, “i want them to figure it out for themselves.” these segments of the seminar also included a discussion of the “philosophy of self-defense,” which was based in a discourse of individual human rights, rather than women‟s rights or feminism. both of these classes contain an atmosphere of relaxed conversation, community and even therapy rather than of training and discipline. “gender-blind” self-defense pedagogy i also attended two courses that were mixed-sex and were explicitly gender-blind. these were both martial-arts based classes. the first was karate, a traditional martial art which was not explicitly advertised as a means of self-defense, but which attracted participants who had some interest in learning self-defense techniques. the second was krav maga, an israeli fighting system that borrows from several martial arts and is designed to help its students defend themselves in practical situations. both of these methods had a relatively low proportion of women participating, and there was no women-only option available at the studios i visited. when i saw the low proportion of women in the first krav maga session i attended and asked the instructor whether there was a women‟s-only session, he made the gender-blind philosophy of the class clear. he stated: “we don‟t have training just for women, that is kind of senseless for self defense… but if you don‟t want to exercise with men, you can find a girl to partner with.” later, in an interview, this instructor made this rationale more clear: a closed group of women causes a lack of skill in getting away from a situation, without stress and without fear. training has to be very close to what is happening every day. if during training you exercise with a big guy, later it is not a stress to fight with such a guy in a real situation. finally, the courses known as unsafe woman and combat were funded by warsaw‟s straż miejska, or municipal police force, and were taught by martial arts instructors who also had experience teaching mixed-sex martial arts courses. although these courses were open only to women and taught techniques that relied on leverage and pressure points rather than muscular strength, they made no mention of the social factors relating to violence against women, anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 180 contained no discussion of domestic violence, and used very similar pedagogical techniques to the mixed-sex martial arts courses i attended. for these reasons, this women‟s only course is best classed as gender-blind, especially in terms of its training and disciplinary techniques, to which i will turn my focus in the next section. the role of discipline: motivation or denigration? in both gender-sensitive and gender-blind courses, individual responsibility was used as a motivating factor and as a strategy for applying discipline. although the gender-sensitive courses did not utilize discipline or formal etiquette as a part of their course proceedings, they nonetheless followed the standard that each participant was responsible only for herself, inside and outside the context of the course. the gender-blind courses tended to use forms of discipline reminiscent of sports or military training, expecting students to take individual responsibility for laziness or rule breaking. however, in rare instances, a principle of collective responsibility was introduced. karate and krav maga followed the classic model for discipline from martial arts and sports; an individual who broke the rules (i.e. being late to class, talking while the instructor was talking, answering a mobile phone, standing around instead of exercising) received a shout from the instructor and was told to complete a series of exercises (push-ups, sit-ups or jumping jacks) as punishment. this was seen by interviewees who participated in krav maga or karate as a method of discipline that was fair, and not overly harsh. it prevented chaos in the classroom without disrupting the flow of the training. wendo was a self-defense course that did not focus on discipline per se because it was designed to “build women up” and increase confidence and self esteem; therefore a rigid hierarchy or rules were seen as counterproductive. nonetheless, a rhetoric of individual responsibility and mutual respect was stressed. the course was based on feminist principles, but rather than framing its message in terms of women‟s rights or even “sticking together” as women, the course was full of phrases invoking individual integrity, making independent choices and protecting one‟s personal (bodily) boundaries. this strategy of training, advocated by feminist martial arts experts such as hoppe (1998), wiley (1994), and siegel (1992) is built on the assumption that because of cultural factors of subordination women benefit from different training regimes than men, a philosophy which i discuss below. unsafe woman (niebezpieczna kobieta), 4 which was offered cost-free to residents of warsaw, and combat, an ongoing, paid course taught by the same instructors are more complex in terms of their philosophies of discipline and the role of gender in self-defense pedagogy. these courses were heavily martial-arts based, including a small number of practical safety tips: as i have mentioned before, there was not much discussion of gender or the psychology of violence in this course. in a large class session, sometimes as many as 50 participants gathered inside a school gym. the atmosphere of the class was relatively lighthearted, and although most students took the courses seriously, talking and laughing could be heard throughout the room, anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 181 even when the instructor was speaking. at times, when the noise level was too high, or if some students were deliberately ignoring instructions, the instructors deemed it necessary to stop the flow of the class to chastise the group about hard work and discipline, or to have the whole class do calisthenics. such a disciplinary approach can also be reminiscent of military training or team sports contexts. part of the reasoning behind this type of training is to create a group consciousness or a form of solidarity among the members of a military group or a sports team. it teaches that the group‟s well being (i.e. surviving in the military context, winning in the sports context) is more important than individual feelings of tiredness or pain. some authors have criticized this type of discipline in martial arts training, since it may counterproductively lead to a sense of resentment for less-skilled participants, and can lead to an overly authoritarian position for the instructor of the class (schine 1995). the women i interviewed who were participants in unsafe woman or combat found enforcement of group responsibility in self-defense courses to be particularly unattractive. this may seem counterintuitive because of frequent attributions of relational and self-sacrificing thinking among women (gilligan 1993), discourses that have been replicated by conservative discourses in poland. however, the authoritarian implications of collective responsibility are the aspect that is most off-putting to the polish women i interviewed. in general, these women seemed to be intimidated by popular depictions of martial arts courses and instructors. in some cases, the use of collective responsibility as a disciplinary tactic seemed to imply to the participants that the instructor had a level of authority over them that some of them were not ready to concede. other participants in the combat course as well as the free unsafe woman courses complained about the approach of the trainers who tried to create a sense of accountability among the students through the use of collective responsibility. the participant who expressed this dissatisfaction most clearly was zosia, who attended the free saturday morning unsafe woman class. she stated: i mean this happened in one of the classes… some of the girls did not want to exercise and so then we all had to do push-ups…. i think that if somebody doesn‟t want to exercise, then she doesn‟t have to, she can leave and this will be enough motivation for the rest, that if they don‟t want to exercise, they can just leave, and that‟s all. statements such as zosia‟s reflect a conception of the participants in the self-defense course as atomized individuals, not as members of a cohesive group. the participants in this course might have attended the course together with one or two friends or acquaintances but aside from this, members of the course did not seem to socialize or mingle with each other outside of class. because of this lack of group consciousness or feeling of group solidarity participants felt anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 182 responsible for only their own performance and learning, and assumed that other participants would be responsible for their own. even participants in courses that did not employ tactics of collective responsibility expressed relief when their experience of the courses did not fit their expectations of harsh or intimidating discipline. “i thought it was going to be like a boot camp instructor. i thought there would be all this shouting. but the instructor is a very modern, very civilized guy,” gosia, a krav maga participant, said. however, none of the instructors i encountered in the course of my fieldwork could be described as using “drill sergeant” tactics, although some were harsher than others in their application of discipline and some implied collective responsibility by punishing the whole group for one student‟s negligence. these negative reactions of women in self-defense and martial arts to authoritarian/ collective approaches corroborate arguments by many scholars in gender studies who believe that women in martial arts and in self-defense courses respond better to less authoritarian training techniques. hoppe (1998), mccaughey (1997) and wiley (1994) especially state that because of the unequal status of men and women in society, most women do not benefit from the kinds of discipline that often appear in martial arts courses which assume a universal male participant or take a gender-blind approach. women’s overconfidence and discipline: polish discourses although most participants in combat and unsafe woman felt that the collective responsibility approach was unnecessary or insulting, one participant, alicja, felt that it was necessary for the discipline of students who were overconfident, arrogant or aggressive. alicja felt that such overconfidence and aggression was a common characteristic among young polish women. she felt that women interested in self-defense have to learn “to distinguish when we are too self-confident, because when it comes to that moment where we have to defend our actions, if we go overboard in self-defense we will not get the benefit of the doubt just because we are women.” although no other participants in unsafe woman or combat expressed a positive evaluation of the disciplinary techniques involving collective responsibility, several students included statements about women‟s overconfidence, aggression and their need to be discouraged from false confidence, perhaps by sparring with a stronger partner or having an instructor demonstrate how her self-defense techniques are ineffective. zosia stated “sometimes these things are embarrassing, but good, because it teaches you that you can‟t manage yourself in such a situation, that you still have more to learn.” jolanta, a krav maga participant, stressed the damaging effect of a halfhearted attempt at martial arts, because many women take krav maga or another martial art for a few months and gain too much confidence: “this can be damaging…because it seems like you can do something, you can defend yourself, but this is really artificial confidence and it can betray you.” anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 183 when i asked interviewees whether polish women are overall assertive, the most common answer was “no”, because most women were either passive, or aggressive. according to my interviewees, it was difficult for most polish women to find a middle ground, but that many younger women mistake aggressiveness for self-confidence. zosia, a participant in unsafe woman, stated that “a lot of women are in denial about their kind of physical weakness, that they don‟t have the kind of strength that guys have, they create this kind of fantasy that they will be able to defend themselves….” she went on to say that, teenagers [girls] in poland are often unusually aggressive, and sometimes at the school… they get into fights over who is prettier and things like that. they are fighting and clawing with nail extensions, pulling hair, and they just throw each other to the ground. according to sandra bartky, training centered on collective responsibility is based on the assumption that for the “universal male subject….emotions of shame and guilt…are indeed occasions for moral reaffirmation” (bartky 1990:97) and such techniques have been utilized by modern institutions such as schools and the military as teaching tools (see also foucault 1978). according to the philosophy of military and martial arts training, men are socialized to be individualist and to have large egos which would need to be broken down in order to work effectively as a team or to engender a respectful spirit an a sense of community. women, on the other hand, according to bartky and many other feminist writers, are taught in these same societies to be conscious of others‟ needs, cooperative, and to subsume their own will: therefore it is not helpful or necessary to break down their egos. although these assumptions seem to make sweeping generalizations about men and women, they have been adopted by many instructors of martial arts and other “masculine” sports. in light of this evidence, one may ask: why can‟t a gender-blind approach that treats men and women the same be applied to mixed sex martial arts courses as a way for women to gain empowerment and equality with men? authors such as mccaughey (1997) and mccormick (1995) answer this question by countering that many women, at some point in their lives, have experienced verbal harassment, degradation and punishment unrelated to any sports or military training. because of an inherent tendency in society toward the subjugation of women, training intended to break down the ego can be interpreted by some women participants as just another manifestation of this oppression. however, if the statements about “overconfidence” and “aggression” in polish women shared by many of my interviewees are true, training techniques involving collective responsibility in the martial arts courses might not be particularly harmful. 5 ideologies of individuation and personal responsibility the preference for individual rather than collective responsibility in their training is not the only way in which polish women participating in self-defense courses are embracing anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 184 neoliberal discourses of individuality and personal responsibility. many of the self-defense participants i interviewed shared narratives of discovery of their own personal “power” and “control” over situations in their lives through their practice of self-defense or martial arts. “i really liked that you can finally see that women do not have to be passive, and that they don‟t have don‟t have to agree to everything. you can apply this in every activity of your life…. this was the most important part for me,” says ania, a participant in wendo. wendo is a self-defense course based on feminist principles that focuses heavily on verbal self-defense and the development of self-confidence and assertiveness. ala, a participant in krav maga, discussed the more physical benefits of this self-defense method: i‟ve found some holds which i really feel that i can take advantage of in some way… like if somebody really attacked me…. i personally think that from lesson to lesson i gain more and more confidence. joanna, a participant in the combat courses, stated how a small physical accomplishment can become the basis for a greater sense of personal control: i have never been able to do push-ups. and here, in this course i had to force myself just to do one or two push-ups. now i can do a lot more…. this course has been a kind of an inspiration, because now i am trying to do something in my own life. finally, hana, a wendo participant, states that her training in physical and psychological selfdefense has given her a feeling of “…self-confidence, and a greater feeling of safety… i have this kind of consciousness, that i always have a chance to do something. i know that a lot of it depends on us, just this kind of safety, psychologically, i feel, let‟s say, calmer.” all of these women‟s narratives include a sense of empowerment and a greater amount of control over their lives where before had been feelings of passivity and fear. they see themselves as overcoming some of the more restrictive norms of outward feminine comportment and behavior (see brownmiller 1976, bartky 1992, young 1990). however, at the same time, none of my participants professed an interest in “feminism,” “women‟s rights” or “women‟s empowerment” as a political project. in fact, many of these interviewees had a very negative association with feminism or rather erroneous conceptions of what feminism and women‟s rights actually entail. the most common misconceptions about feminism among my interviewees were that feminism advocated a complete denial of gender difference (or even “getting rid of” men), or that it was no longer necessary because women‟s equality had already been achieved in polish society. in light of these negative associations with feminism among polish women, when beginning my dissertation research project i wondered whether participation by women in such anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 185 self-defense and assertiveness seminars could serve much the same function in women‟s empowerment in poland as political change and feminist organization has in other countries. through the ethnographic evidence i collected over the course of my dissertation fieldwork, i have concluded that women‟s embrace of individualized empowerment rather than empowerment for women as a group can have benefits for individual women but cannot replace women‟s political organization or feminism. assuming that problems of gender oppression will be solved through the individual empowerment of women through self-defense (or any other self-improvement regime) deflects attention from larger structural issues of women‟s oppression. it begins from the faulty assumption that all women are equally structurally empowered, and it is only their cultural proclivity towards weakness or passivity that prevents them from achieving. secondly, the rhetoric of self-defense courses dovetails with neoliberal conceptions of individualized personhood that place responsibility for the health of a society on the actions of individuals. although society is indeed comprised of individuals, much of the discourse of women‟s selfdefense continues to place responsibility for gendered violence firmly on the shoulders of women themselves. interviews with wendo instructors, as well as instructors of wsdp, a padded attacker self-defense course, indicate that they see their methods of self-defense as a vast improvement upon the previously available self-defense options for women in poland, which they describe as “lectures by policemen…they make women feel stupid. these policemen are telling women they should not do this, they should conduct themselves in this way…” magdalena, a wendo instructor, also said that martial arts courses for women are not sufficient for self-defense: “it is still chiefly men that go there, and if a woman is there she is still discriminated against…many women in such classes do not feel well there because they are overlooked. here [in wendo] they are raised up.” the courses i encountered during fieldwork in poland in fact do present women with opportunities to learn fighting skills and to gain greater control over their personal safety. however, the rhetoric of these courses by definition may result in placing sole responsibility for gendered violence on women, especially if these courses were to be taken by a large proportion of polish women. in the pedagogical language of both wsdp and wendo, there are many references to “patriarchal training” and “victim behavior.” the instructors use these terms in explaining the cultural factors that cause women to constrict their movements, make themselves physically small, and to be self-effacing in interpersonal relationships. in wsdp‟s self-defense publication always safe: the psychological aspects of self-defense (2003) the descriptions of “victim behavior” are explained in very great detail, delving into the “psychology of the rapist” and explaining how a rapist selects victims (it is helpful to note that the co-authors of this text and co-creators of wsdp have backgrounds in psychology). the book purports to give women “power” by making them aware of this psychological process, but the only real benefit they gain from this information is to know what behavior to avoid. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 186 on one level, the recommendations given in this book are interesting interpretations of feminist ideas—for example, “women in our culture are taught to have a completely flat stomach, so wherever you go, you stand there holding your stomach in. but the stomach is the center of your strength and it grounds you to the earth. by unnaturally constricting these muscles you put yourself off balance and place you out of touch with your strength” (70). however, some of the “safety tips” offered by this volume are similar to those contained in explicitly patriarchal self-defense discourses of decades past: “avoid clothing that makes you appear as a victim, such as childlike clothing,” “watch out for clothing that can be used as a weapon against you, like a scarf or a hood,” (104) and “avoid getting into an elevator with a strange man.” the book even includes a story from a former participant who was raped after getting into a car after a party with a male coworker (87). although this advice is presented as encouraging women to let go of excessive femininity, to be strong and capable and to trust their instincts, the content of the advice tends to focus more on what women should not do than on providing empowering solutions to violence. even so, the book states that, “women should not be blamed for provoking an attack by any means. we live in an unsafe world and everyone should do what keeps them safest” (9). this discourse is not gender specific but it still places responsibility on potential victims to prevent violence. piotr, a wsdp instructor, insisted that the content of the courses does not blame women for allowing violence to happen, and it is possible that the pedagogy presented in the in-person courses differs from the content of always safe. piotr‟s defense of wsdp‟s courses focused on comparing them to “courses run by the police” which, he stated, used to be the only form of self-defense available to women in poland. by focusing on the psychology of violence, wsdp seeks to place blame on the men who perpetrate violence. overall, he said, courses like wsdp and wendo represent a vast improvement over previous methods of teaching self-defense: …i disagree with such courses run by the police, they perpetuate a certain patriarchal stereotype and really they make women feel stupid….maybe there are some policemen who are really cool but in general they have to restrain their own aggression, they are often associated as perpetrators of domestic violence, so they are not a very good group to be teaching women. as this quote explains piotr believes that violence can be re-inscribed by the pedagogy of police-run self-defense courses, through a teaching style that tends to dismiss women‟s experience and continues to blame their behavior for incidents of violence. the source of this re-inscription lies in the patriarchal perspective of the instructors themselves, and by using instructors trained in feminist theory and psychology, his courses (as well as wendo) avoid such counterproductive teaching methods. conclusion anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 187 in self-defense courses in poland, instructors often deploy discourses of individualized responsibility and self-improvement as a part of the course content. in discussing their motivations for participating and evaluating the effectiveness of the courses, participants tend to use similar rhetoric. these principles of individualized empowerment embraced by polish selfdefense participants and instructors may reflect a broader societal shift from collective to personal responsibility, and trends toward atomized, neoliberal conceptions of personhood. these discourses of personhood flatten structural inequalities and discourage attention to the disadvantages of certain groups, because they create an illusion of equality of opportunity. for this reason some feminist scholars (e.g. bromley 1982, lorde 1984, mackinnon 1989) have been wary of programs which offer women empowerment on an individualized level, outside of feminist organization, as “macho feminism” which values personal achievement over the status of women as a whole. in the context of women‟s self-defense in poland, the application of concepts of individual responsibility and self-confidence are on one level beneficial. feminist organization is of limited use without individual empowerment, because organizations are made up of individuals after all. women without a strong sense of self-worth and confidence are unlikely to participate in activism to engage in helping other women. however, the ties of self-defense to processes individuation and concepts of atomized personal achievement are problematic upon deeper analysis of their effects on gender politics in the specific context of poland. the ethnographic evidence i have collected implies that self-defense training is perhaps beneficial but not sufficient to begin to unravel the problems of women‟s empowerment in poland. notes 1 for a theoretical discussion of polish women‟s practices of self-investment see marody and giza-poleszczuk (2000). 2 see giddens (1991) for a discussion of “body projects” as a symptom of late modernity. 3 my methods for this project consisted of participant observation in four beginning-level wendo seminars in warsaw, krakow and katowice, and of 13 in-depth, informal interviews conducted with wendo participants and trainers (4 interviews with participants; 9 with trainers). additionally, four other participants responded to an e-mail questionnaire. other aspects of my dissertation project involved participant-observation in self-defense seminars such as karate, krav maga, women‟s self-defense program and unsafe woman courses, and 25 interviews with the participants and trainers of these courses. in addition to participant and interview data, i collected magazines, newspapers and other cultural artifacts to provide context about polish culture and society. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 188 4 this title can be interpreted in one or two ways. the polish word niebezpieczna can have either the meaning “in danger” or “dangerous.” this title implies both that women are in some way “unsafe” or threatened, and also that by learning self-defense they can make themselves both “safe” and “dangerous” because they are learning to inflict harm and protect themselves. 5 nonetheless, aggression and overconfidence does not characterize the attitudes of the women the ethnographer observed participating in self-defense courses, so more research is needed in this area. references cited bartky, sandra 1990 femininity and domination: studies in the phenomenology of oppression. new york: routledge. bromley, marion 1982 “feminism and nonviolent revolution.” in reweaving the web of life. pam mcallister, ed. pp.143-55. philadelphia: new society publishers. brownmiller, susan 1984 femininity. new york: linden press/ simon and schuster. einhorn, barbara 1993 “cinderella goes to market”: citizenship, gender and the women’s movement in east-central europe. london: versa. foucault, michel 1978 discipline and punish. new york: routledge gal, susan 1997 “feminism and civil society” in 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bloomington, in: indiana university press. anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 60 in memoriam: william francis kelleher, jr. sarah d. phillips, indiana university abstract: a consideration of the scholarly and personal influence of the scholar william francis (bill) kelleher, jr. kelleher was a specialist in the ethnography of northern ireland who trained anthropology phd students studying eastern europe and thus played a role in the development of the anthropology of postsocialism. his passions were areas of ethnicity and conflict, labor, class, gender, narrative, and social justice. bill kelleher william francis (“bill”) kelleher, jr., a scholar of northern ireland, was not formally an anthropologist of eastern europe. yet bill was deeply interested in the anthropology of postsocialism, and he was passionate about the issues of class, labor, economics, and social justice that are central to the field. two of bill’s closest friends were prominent scholars of postsocialism— sociologist david stark, and the late anthropologist daphne berdahl, who first met bill when she was an undergraduate at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign. bill applied the insights of the anthropology of postsocialism to his own research and writing, and he mentored a generation of east europeanist phd students, among them the current and former editors of the anthropology of east europe review (andrew asher and sarah d. phillips). it is therefore fitting to recognize bill and his contributions to the field in this in memoriam article. bill kelleher died of melanoma on september 18, 2013 in syracuse, new york. bill was a native of west roxbury (boston), massachusetts. his father was a boston firefighter, and he grew up in a working class irish catholic family. bill graduated from catholic memorial high school and cherished his boyhood friendships throughout his life. he attended colby college but took time off after his mother died of cancer to help care for his younger brother and sisters. he went on to earn a b.a. in cultural anthropology from the university of massachusetts at amherst and a ph.d. in anthropology in 1990 from the university of michigan, where he studied with prof. aram a. yengoyan. during his years of study, bill worked an array of odd jobs. as a boy, he caddied at country club golf courses. later, on the anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 61 docks of boston, he scoured the tanks of ships. he worked as a hospital orderly. as a graduate student, he cleaned the offices of the student newspaper at the university of michigan. at the same time he was a head teaching fellow at the university, he was teaching inmates at michigan’s jackson state prison. from 1980 to 1982, he taught inner city high school students in boston, then spent a year teaching southeast asian refugees in washington, d. c. no doubt these experiences influenced bill to reflect on the workings of class difference and discrimination, and informed his life-long interest in identity formation, particularly among the working class. bill’s primary research and teaching interests were in labor and class relations, the anthropology of work, the effects of long term political violence on everyday life, the work of historical memory in reproducing such violent conflict (e.g. in northern ireland), and the ethnography of race in institutions of american higher education. bill carried out several years of ethnographic research in northern ireland where he studied a factory shop floor, the historical narratives of opposed communities, the boundary making processes of those neighborhoods, the networks that result, and the sectarian practices that mobilize them. bill published this work in his 2003 book, the troubles in ballybogoin: memory and identity in northern ireland (university of michigan press), and in a series of journal articles and book chapters (kelleher 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2006). bill joined the faculty at the university of illinois at urbana-champaign in 1990 as a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the unit for criticism and interpretive theory, then joined the faculty as a member of the department of anthropology, where he taught until 2005. during the course of his dissertation research in northern ireland in 1985, he had met and married jo thomas, then a correspondent in the london bureau of the new york times. they and their daughters susan and kathleen lived in urbana, illinois, for 19 years. in 2005, a year after jo took the position of associate chancellor and professor of journalism at syracuse university, bill followed jo to su, joining the department of anthropology in the maxwell school of citizenship and public affairs. he taught there until january, 2013. bill was widely beloved by students at both uiuc and syracuse, where he was recognized as an exceptionally gifted and dedicated teacher and mentor. former student matt reilly (syracuse) remembers, “i’ll never forget his commitment to teaching and how much pride he took in it.”1 on april 24, 2014 bill was posthumously awarded the 2014 excellence in graduate education faculty recognition award from syracuse university. this award honors faculty members whose dedication to graduate students and commitment to excellence in graduate teaching and mentoring have made a significant contribution to graduate education at syracuse university. anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 62 bill kelleher (center) with the author, sarah d. phillips (left) and sandra hamid (right) may 2002, university of illinois at urbana-champaign graduation. throughout his career bill taught undergraduate and graduate courses on anthropological theory; work, class, and culture; anthropology of neoliberalism; colonialism/postcolonialism; anthropological perspectives on ethnicity; race and racism; critical issues for the u.s.; modern europe; anthropology of ireland; anthropology of violence; culture, ethnicity, and conflict; ethnography of the university; and others. at uiuc and syracuse, bill made enormous contributions to raising awareness among students, faculty, and the community about the politics of exclusion and its detrimental effects for the marginalized and dispossessed. as a teacher, educator, and community activist he drew attention to the injustices perpetuated by racial, class, and gender inequalities on college campuses and the surrounding communities. for instance, at uiuc bill co-founded the ethnography of the university project, which involved undergraduate students in researching the institutions that surround them with a focus on dynamics of racial discrimination.2 as part of an interdisciplinary group of undergraduate students and faculty members, he completed a year-long ethnography of an intensive effort by the university of illinois to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the brown v. board of education supreme court decision. the project examined what types of educational events and cultural performances worked to get undergraduates to engage each other on the subject of race and what activities reproduced social distancing. the ethnography of the university project is just one example of what bill’s good friend and colleague alejandro lugo (uiuc anthropology) called his “genuine search for social justice in peoples’ lives and his politically and socially committed anthropology.” bill’s second book, a death on the irish border: a critical event and transforming subjects in war and peace, was under contract with the university of california press. the project examined peacemaking and healing among irish nationalists in the borderlands of northern ireland and the republic of ireland. bill’s study took account of the suffering that past political violence engendered and the processes by which both victims and perpetrators of violence attempt to heal, reestablish themselves as citizens, and construct civil society. anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 63 in syracuse bill did research among “diaspora” catholics, people whose churches have been shut down. this project connected politics and religion in the story of a displaced progressive community of senior citizens, and highlighted conflicts within catholicism and the politics of caring in syracuse. this research was part of bill’s long-term interest in dispossessed people’s social movements, and he was hoping to do comparative work on this topic in dublin, ireland. in syracuse, bill was a member of the peace and justice committee at saint andrew’s parish, and he was a member of the parish council at saint lucy’s church, in syracuse’s economically-depressed near-west side. bill was on the board of the syracuse model neighborhood facility, inc., the non-profit organization that manages the southwest community center and works to respond to the educational, social, cultural, health, employment, legal, and recreational needs of residents of the city. bill also was active in providing support to released inmates transitioning to life after prison—he was a visitor advocate making weekly visits to inmates at the justice center in syracuse, and he had plans to engage more actively in jail ministry. in his research, his teaching, and his service work, bill unfailingly spoke truth to power and challenged others to do the same. in the words of former student carolina vargas (syracuse), “whether it was about political theories or current political events, bill’s knowledge and commitment never failed to amaze and motivate his students.”3 in fact, he showed by example that, as articulated by former student katie wiegele (uiuc), “values, passions, and commitments can and must be part of one’s intellectual work and teaching.” put another way, bill encouraged his students to “build their academic commitments out of their passions” (carolina vargas). alejandro lugo called this “bill’s way of inhabiting the world,” and noted that it “became a bit contagious, particularly his generosity, integrity, and his belief in social justice in everything he did.” in other words, bill hated inequality. he sought to name it, and call it out (however gently and with that special mischievous smile of his). bill appeared mild-mannered and quiet, but he was also fierce: “when he cared about something, or someone, he did it fiercely. when he took a stand, he usually did it based on principle. and when he took a stand, he held to it. for bill was about justice, about what was fair, whether it was in the realm of politics, religion, treatment of students, treatment by colleagues, friendship—it was about caring for and about others, especially those who could not always care for themselves,” observed bill’s colleague at syracuse, anthropologist deborah pellow. that is probably why so many who knew bill recall his integrity: he practiced what he preached. as katie wiegele remembered, bill’s philosophy was “that there is nothing worth more than your humanity and your integrity. not a job, not a publication, not academic accolades and respect. we are humans in relationships with other humans first.” former student marsha brofka-berends (uiuc) similarly reflected: “more than most scholars i’ve met, bill genuinely connected with people.” indeed, bill pushed his students and colleagues to appreciate and really try to understand “people’s complexities and contradictions,” in the words of former student jonathan jackson (syracuse). indeed, those who knew bill describe him as a wonderful listener and an insightful observer. he cared deeply about his fellow humans and their stories. these qualities are all abundantly evident in his book, the troubles in ballybogoin: memory and identity in northern ireland (2003). the following is how bill’s good friend and colleague, sociologist david stark (columbia u), described bill’s book: anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 64 bill went to northern ireland at the height of the troubles. it was dangerous. there was violence all around, and some of his informants were killed. bill was courageous. he disguised the name of the town where he did the research to protect his respondents, and he thought deeply about the ethical challenges of the research and writing. but, however dramatic and troubling its setting, the book is not war reportage. it is a work of innovative social science. bill’s account of memory and identity in northern ireland hinges on the notion of telling. bill considered titling the book, telling identities. it asks the question: how do you tell? as we learn, bills asks that question in different ways and in multiple registers. part of the book is about “talk.” to be a member of this particular community of northern ireland catholics one needs to be able to talk – to narrate a story, to get a laugh, to have a comeback line. but telling is different from talking. in fact, it might be entirely nonverbal. this was bill’s insight. how do you tell? bill observed that this was a key, often unspoken, question that was on people’s minds and could be a matter of life or death. how do you tell whether someone is protestant or catholic? and how do you tell that at 100 yards or more away? about this, bill makes detailed observations – the turn of a collar, the cuff of the pants, the speed or length of a stride, depending on differences in locale sometimes from only one block to the next. correspondingly, there is another how do you tell? how do you tell others, whether you are catholic or protestant, and under what conditions and precisely when and exactly where might you want to make it now difficult and then obvious to tell. telling is not talking. it’s a reading of bodies. to understand what was going on, bill asked people to give him tours of ballybogoin. “take me around and show me what’s interesting,” he would say. and he recorded what they showed him and how they talked about it. these tours were his way of mapping memories. bill shows, for example, how the route of the typical protestant’s tour is different from that of the catholic’s tour. or how, when both include the same spot, the memory and the meaning of it can be different. and how, also among catholics, the memories and meanings of these moving narratives can differ. bill understood a tour as a moving narrative – a story told while in motion. because there is meaning in that motion, it is a moving narrative. and because bill’s gift as a writer is to grasp that meaning and to express the emotion in that motion, his book is a moving narrative.4 anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 65 bill kelleher's the troubles in ballybogoin (university of michigan press, 2003) as former student sascha goluboff (uiuc) noted, bill’s methodological and ethical commitments influenced his students and colleagues profoundly, and in our own scholarship we often ask ourselves: “how can i make other worlds intelligible to myself and my readers?” in his writing, his teaching, and everyday conversations, bill compelled us (read: he sometimes forced us, uncomfortably) to consider the workings of power. he wrote and said, explicitly, that differences in power matter – they make it more difficult for some people to tell their stories. he told us that this was an injustice. bill studied talk, probably because he was such an attentive and critically-engaged listener. (the best ethnographers are often quiet extroverts, which describes bill to a t). he believed that talk matters, and he did not let students or colleagues forget it. not only did he teach us to be attentive to the narratives of others, he taught us to watch our own talk, and reminded us to speak respectfully of others in the world and their situations. if bill did not like anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 66 how you were talking about others, he would let you know. i recall once i mentioned to bill that some “big wigs” would be on a conference panel in which i was participating. bill paused, and corrected me, “do you mean prominent, respected anthropologists?” yes bill, that’s what i meant. words matter. in addition to talk, bill also studied memory, gender, class, work, social worth, citizenship, and embodiment, and how power moves through all of these. bill was an astute observer of the effects of neoliberalism locally and globally, and his critical insights about neoliberalism benefitted not only his students whose research focused on postsocialist eastern europe, but those studying other world regions as well. as former student jesook song (uiuc) reflected, “i’m indebted to bill’s intellectual input and training…although my dissertation on the south korean national debt crisis during the asian financial crisis in the late 1990s and early 2000s was not directly connected to “postsocialist” contexts, bill was so insightful and right to point out the similarity of drastic political economic changes between late developing countries, such as south korea, and former socialist countries such as china and vietnam as well as many eastern european countries.” at uiuc and syracuse, bill was a member of phd dissertation committees for students studying diverse topics across the world. at the time of his death he was the primary advisor for several phd students at the university of syracuse. bill was the primary advisor for five students who received their phds in anthropology at uiuc during 1999-2005: sascha l. goluboff (1999). jewish multi-ethnicities in post-soviet russia: an eventful ethnography of the moscow choral synagogue. sarah d. phillips (2002). "civil" societies and "evil" states: ambiguities of women's ngo organizing and patriarchy in post-soviet ukraine. william h. leggett (2003). culture, power, difference: managing ambivalence and producing identity in the transnational corporate offices of jakarta, indonesia. sandra m. hamid (2005). engaging the center: on being indonesian citizens in lombok, eastern indonesia. margarita a. chaves chamorro (2005). "?que va a pasar con los indios cuando todos seamos indios?" ethnic rights and reindianization in southwestern colombian amazonia. bill was extremely intellectually curious, almost insatiably so. his close friend and colleague, anthropologist nancy abelmann, described how, even during bill’s last, uncomfortable days, “the world of ideas continued to grab him:” a couple of weeks before he passed away, nancy traveled from urbana to syracuse for a final visit with bill, where she found him at home on a sunny porch in a hospital bed reading two academic books. his breadth of ethnographic and theoretical knowledge was astounding. as former student jonathan jackson recalled, bill’s students learned to visit his office with an empty backpack, because chances are they would leave his office with a backpack full of books bill wanted them to read. i still have three of bill’s books on my shelf, which he loaned me about 15 years ago (i sheepishly admit that now i am glad i irresponsibly never returned them). they are, occasions of faith: an anthropology of irish catholics (taylor 1995); learning to labor: how working class kids get working class jobs (willis 1981); and class (joyce 1995). faith, work, and class. that, in a nutshell, was bill kelleher. anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 67 acknowledgements: many thanks to the loved ones, colleagues, and students of bill’s who shared stories of bill’s impact on their lives with me, namely: nancy abelmann, marsha brofkaberends, sascha goluboff, alejandro lugo, jesook song, david stark, jo thomas, and katie wiegele. 1 i am grateful to jo thomas for sharing with me materials to assist with this article, including correspondence from matt reilly. 2 http://www.eui.illinois.edu/, accessed april 25, 2014. 3 quotations from carolina vargas, jonathan jackson, and deborah pellow, as well as other details about bill’s history, are taken from a video recording of his february 28, 2014 memorial service in syracuse, ny. the video is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsswg4helpa, accessed april 25, 2014. 4 i am grateful to david stark for sharing with me the remarks he made at bill’s memorial service in syracuse. this description of the troubles in ballybogoin is extracted from those remarks. http://www.eui.illinois.edu/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsswg4helpa anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 68 bibliography joyce, patrick, ed. 1995. class. oxford and new york: oxford university press. kelleher, william f., jr. 1998 “understanding the irish conflict and the hope for peace,” in roger kanet, ed., resolving regional conflicts. urbana: university of illinois press. 1999 “putting gender to work on a northern ireland shop floor,” in marilyn cohen and nancy curtin, eds. reclaiming gender: transgressive identities in modern ireland. new york: palgrave mcmillan. 2000 “making home in the irish/british borderlands: the global and the local in a conflicted social space.” identities: global studies in culture and power 7(2):139-172. 2001 “surveillance techniques, memory, and history in a northern ireland town.” foilsiú: an interdisciplinary journal of irish studies 1(1):107-116. 2003 the troubles in ballybogoin: memory and identity in northern ireland. ann arbor: university of michigan press. 2006 “claiming the local in the irish/british borderlands: locality, nation state, and the disruption of boundaries,” in jaro stacul, christina moutsou, and helen kopnina, eds., crossing european boundaries. berghahn books. taylor, lawrence 1995 occasions of faith: an anthropology of irish catholics. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. willis, paul 1981 learning to labour: how working class kids get working class jobs. new york: columbia university press. driven women: reconceptualizing the traffic in women in the margins of europe through the case of gagauz mobile domestics in istanbul volume 21, number 2 driven women: reconceptualizing the traffic in women in the margins of europe through the case of gagauz mobile domestics in istanbul leyla j. keough, university of massachusetts, amherst © 2003 leyla j. keough all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in this paper, i suggest that undertaking ethnographic studies which are attentive to the subjective accounts of women migrants can help us to better assess and critique discourses regarding the traffic in women and to ask new questions about the agency and power of mobile female subjects. in the spring of 2001, i followed the lives of moldovan women of the gagauz ethnic group who travel illegally to work as domestics in middle class istanbul homes.1 here i will sketch the political and economic situation that prompts this unusual migratory pattern and detail the experiences of one mobile gagauz woman whom i came to know well. i contrast her case, and the agency and power she evidently holds, with the international organization for migration’s discourse that frames trafficking and women in very certain terms: young single women as victims forcibly trafficked and sold into prostitution by criminal networks. through her case, i point to the uncertainty of these terms, and some of the problems with this discourse for understanding trafficking and the situation of illegal migrants in the margins of europe. this example and others like it, suggests the need for us to re-conceptualize conventional and scholarly ideas of migration, of female subjects, and of agents and victims in trafficking. political and economic context dubbed the poorest country in europe by the european union, moldova is a leading example of the difficulty of political and economic transition in eastern and central europe. the hardships postsocialist states have suffered have left their populations in poverty and women have often been the hardest hit by these market transformations (koffman et al 2000; gal and kligman 2000; funk and mueller 1993). while part of the socialist agenda was to provide work for women, yukseker-yenal explains that “feminized” labor sectors such as communication, trade, and catering have been disproportionately downsized in post-soviet russia (2002). gal and kligman support this claim for former socialist states more generally (2000). these scholars also point out that in many postsocialist states, pro-natalist policies have created an environment where women are encouraged to stay home. the survival of the household in the soviet era traditionally relied upon women’s “reproductive” activities in the gendered division of labor. such activities involved women’s strategies of networking and bartering to secure goods and services formerly scarce under socialism. although now many of these goods are available, they are not less difficult to obtain and women continue to use their networks to get by. when women do work now, they are forced into informal, “flexible” work and small-scale trading sectors. yuksekeryenal argues that small-scale transnational trading, what she calls “shuttle trading,” was a natural extension of women’s entrepreneurial skills under socialism and of their roles in the gendered division of labor (2002:17-18; see also bruno 1997). such “flexible” transnational work involves not only small-scale trading, but migrant sex and domestic work -all done through trafficking networks (gal & kligman 2000). the situation in postsocialist states coincides with a wider global restructuring, which has prompted migrant flows of low-wage service-laborers from poor, peripheral, nations to “global cities” (parennas 2001). in the case of moldvans, while many women may want to go to western europe, where wages are high, the increasingly strict immigration controls in the eu have made it next to impossible to gain entry (see lutz and koser 1998 and koffman et al 2000). as a result, many find it easier to travel between and work illegally in places marginal to “fortress europe,” such as the other former soviet union states and turkey. jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 73 volume 21, number 2 known best as the provider of guest workers for europe, particularly germany, turkey has become a recipient of migrants from the former soviet union , especially women, in the past ten years (erder 1997). laleli, a russian neighborhood of istanbul from the early part of the 20th century, is the first stop and central meeting place of fsu women. this neighborhood is a veritable human bazaar where russian is the language of choice and dollars the common currency. in my visits here, i found what many scholars categorize as separate “types” of migrant women from former socialist states. the first set of fsu women to migrate to turkey were the small-scale traders identified by yukseker-yenal, who, beginning in the 1990s, came to buy goods from predominantly male merchants in istanbul and returned to sell them in eastern europe or russia (2000). limited to two suitcases in order to avoid taxation by states, this trade has been termed bavul ticareti, or the suitcase trade, in turkey. as yukseker-yenal notes, many have established long-standing economic, but also intimate and sexual relationships with their male turkish merchant counterparts (2002). the trust that was established between them helped to sustain this informal trade network and constituted an economic gain for turkey worth billions of dollars a year. the second type of fsu migrants are sex workers commonly known as “natashas.” the third category of migrant workers are domestics; in turkish they are termed using their national affiliation as moldavyali, moldovans, or ukranyali ukrainians, and so forth. most moldovans who work in turkey are members of the gagauz ethnic group, a turkish speaking community in southern moldova. they are hired to clean, cook, and care for children, the handicapped, or the elderly. this undervalued “dirty work,” is no longer fulfilled by upwardly mobile turkish women, the extended family, or the turkish state. moreover, such work is not taken up by men. despite the fact that women are increasingly working outside the household in turkey, the gendered division of labor within the home has remained unchanged. in istanbul, local turkish women who might fill these jobs traditionally have taken on other types of waged work. those locals that continue to do domestic work prefer not to work as live-in labor, as they have their own households to attend to, often close by. this raises the demand for migrant domestics, who seek live-in positions. the high demand for moldovan women in particular relies upon their reputations as upright people and good caretakers, “cleaner,” “more literate”, and “more civilized” than their turkish villager counterparts who usually fill such roles. this perception indexes a belief in the higher class and culture of a population perceived as more “european” than the turkish one. because they speak a turkic language, moldovans of the gagauz ethnic group are considered more appropriate for these domestic jobs because, compared to other eastern europeans, they are better able to learn turkish quickly. the uses and abuses of representations of migrants and the ambiguity of agency: maria’s case maria, a pseudonym, is one gagauz woman whom i got to know while i was in istanbul last spring. her narrative can give us a sense of some of the experiences of mobile women in the margins of europe. maria had come to work in istanbul several months before i met her. back in moldova, she had a husband and two kids. before the fall of the soviet union, she had worked part time as a bank accountant. when the economic situation in moldova began to decline in the early 90s, her husband lost his job, and they had trouble making ends meet. in soviet times, maria explained, even if there were no jobs, at least schools, medicine, or tractors were free. but since gorbachev, this had changed. although they were one of the lucky families who had acquired some land and could thus always put food on the table, they had little means to make the cash they needed for things like health care and education. maria and her family decided that she take an option increasingly available to gagauz women: go to turkey for six months to work as a domestic. six months in turkey has become a rite of passage in this community. after this time, state fines for crossing borders with an expired visa double. while maria's combined family income was about us$10/month in moldova, domestics in turkey earn about us$300/month. such a wage compensates for traveling costs, which include trafficker fees, customs official bribes, and state fines. as is typical for most of these women, maria used her kinship network to alert her sister, who was working in istanbul, that she was coming. jen typewritten text 74 volume 21, number 2 a considerable network of women from gagauzia has been established in istanbul, many of whom have traveled back and forth to turkey up to four or five times over the past five years. it was through this network in both gagauzia and istanbul, involving both moldovan and turkish traffickers and kinship networks, that maria acquired her passport, bus and plane tickets, onemonth tourist visa, and a temporary residence, and made it to her sister's side in istanbul. she was lucky: many others are bribed, raped, and/or sent back at the border. a few weeks after she had announced her availability for work in laleli, a friend notified her that she was returning to moldova and offered to have maria replace her in her current job. maria was to work as a live-in domestic and caretaker for an elderly woman, a victim of a stroke, who lived with her son. despite similarities in language, gagauz women are perceived in turkey to be generically christian and russian. thus marked, and seen as working class women, they are often conflated with so-called natashas and susceptible to being held as morally suspect assertive sexual predators and willing sexual prey. alternatively, as an integral part of a turkish household, and as women essentially alone in a foreign country, they are also seen as requiring the protection of their employers. these stereotypes and reputations often work to their disadvantage. for instance, employers may use these ideas to justify disciplinary actions that have little to do with cleaning, cooking, or caring, such as requiring women to wear conservative clothing or preventing them from leaving the house for extended periods of time, even on their day off for fear they are "running around with men." it also makes them subject to unwanted aggressive sexual advances. yet, at other times, these stereotypes may help the gagauz to gain opportunities for money, employment, and/or friendly allies. the women with whom i spoke were well aware of how these perceptions both hurt and could potentially help them in their already vulnerable situation as illegal migrants and workers. through their own practices, gagauz women resist these reputations, but they also seek to manipulate them, and thus often accommodate and confirm the constructions of migrant women workers -and russian woman -as sexually promiscuous or as vulnerable women in need of protection. through these practices conventional ideas of women, workers, and migrants, are reproduced, even if opportunities and power for these women are gained in certain contexts. i witnessed this dynamic in laleli, where gaguaz women gather on their days off to socialize, drink, eat and reminisce, with each other and with the local men they meet. after bargaining with street merchants for clothing, housewares, or toys, they send packages home to their families. a flirtation may help to lower the cost of a sweater for her husband, or secure a letter home, or make a local ally to rely on in the frequent police raids. they try to make some extra cash on their day off by selling goods or services, or, at least, they try not to spend their own money. maria secured the latter by finding a local boyfriend who paid for food, drink and goods, and compensated her if she was subject to extortion by the police. such relationships were not just a material exchange however. from what i could gather, many women developed sincere affectionate relationships with local men. this indicates how conflated these material exchanges become with affective ones. i should note also that i noticed this conflation of the material and affective in the relationship between women employers and their domestic workers within the household. the gagauz domestics acted as intimate companions to their charges, hard-working wage-earners, good wives and mothers, but also at times as merchants, and at times they had sex with men in exchange for affection, favors, or money. some of these women may participate in more than one type of work, others may not. some consider all of these things work, others don't. at this boundless bazaar, then, as well as in istanbul homes, and in gagauz villages, i found various intimate exchanges, legal and illegal, economic and affective. while clearly these women suffer because of their status as illegal migrant workers, they also hold a certain amount of power and agency in their households both in istanbul and in moldova. for instance, maria’s movements and actions were placed under excruciating scrutiny by her employers. yet, as a caretaker of an invalid, maria's mobility in the house, and her potential mobility outside it provided her with some power over her employer. in addition, her ability to move from job to job if she found one that paid more was a constant source of anxiety for her employers. also, acting as the "woman of the house" placed her at times in a position to trump the authority of her female employers in jen typewritten text 75 volume 21, number 2 the home. becoming a migrant worker also transformed maria's status in terms of her life in moldova. while she missed her family dearly, maria experienced a great deal of independence in istanbul that she had never held in moldova. for instance, she had some expendable income and was able to date without the social control of her community. and she could establish friendships with men unlike those available at home. maria was well aware that her mobility and cash-earnings gained her some leverage and status in her own household in moldova. her husband called to say "come home," but also to say "send money" – and she laughed, proudly asserting that he couldn’t have it both ways. as i witnessed when i went to visit her family in moldova, maria's home life there was relatively stable, but other women with whom i spoke indicated that they had fled abusive husbands. they explained that the family structure has changed in their villages. with many women gone, they claimed, men had turned into alcoholics, and children were left in orphanages. actually, some gagauz men leave too, finding work in construction in russia or other places. as a result, if not entirely dispersed from their homes in moldova, families are often never home at the same time. frequently the woman's absence is blamed for these conditions, even though her decision to leave is motivated by the desire to provide a better life for her family. whatever power and agency these women gain, then, often backfires. it is their very assertiveness as mobile "russian" wage-earning women that makes them suspect as a good mothers and wives at home in moldova and as good domestic laborers and companions among their employers in istanbul. there are several striking features about maria’s narrative that illuminate why such movements are different from migrations and trafficking traditionally conceived. women like maria do not want to move to turkey permanently. rather, they seek to remain easily mobile between turkey and their homes. the fact that they are women migrants traveling alone contradicts prevailing conceptions of migratory patterns, which often assume men first travel to work and later bring their families to settle in the host country. furthermore, from what i witnessed, many of these women do not easily fit local and academic categorizations of separate types of former soviet female migrants as merchants or prostitutes or domestics. most importantly here, however, maria's story clearly disrupts international organization for migration representations of trafficked women from moldova, which presents them as young victims of a illegal network of criminal traffickers who intend to use them as sex slaves. iom discourse on the traffic in women the iom, tied to the united nations, and one of the primary non-governmental organizations dealing with trafficking in women, began a campaign in moldova one year ago. the iom argues that the primary goal of trafficking is for sexual exploitation. iom material on moldova does not even recognize that some women really do go abroad to work as domestics. they assume that the traffickers are tricking them into thinking that domestic work exists, and that instead they will be sold into prostitution. one iom report states sarcastically in a side note: "judging by the number of women gone abroad to work, it looks like the whole of europe is full of disabled and old people who cannot wait for moldovan girls to come and take care of them..." (2002:13). using interviews with the 200 women repatriated from sex work abroad, the report constructs transnational criminal and victim profiles and goes on to characterize the mainstream of migration as unregulated and overwhelmingly negative for women. while this may be true for the cases they detail, maria's narrative indicates that there are other stories to be told. the iom represents trafficking as a clearly illegal activity, whereas i found that state laws subtly supported the traffic. it posits the traffic as spontaneous, while i found it informal, but fairly systematic. most importantly, it argues that those involved are clearly either criminals or victims, while i found these judgments hard to make. by putting this traffic in these terms, iom discourse forecloses other ways of conceiving of these movements and these women on the move. undertaking studies that are attentive to the subjective accounts of migrant women can lead us to ask new questions about the agency and power of mobile female subjects. in this case, while some women may be tricked into migrating and forced into work not of their choosing, maria and others decided to work abroad and negotiated the kind of work they did as strategies to secure the survival of their households. to assure traveling arrangements and jobs, they themselves sought out illegal traffickers as people worthy of their trust and jen typewritten text 76 volume 21, number 2 able to provide security against the legal representatives of states such as the police and customs officials. the traffic in women thus involves not only the "duped young girls" represented by the iom, but women who are knowledgeable about trafficking to varying degrees, mothers and wives, some old, some young, who use intimate networks of kinship, friendship, and even lovers to travel to work as domestics. in addition to their work as domestics, they may indeed, as the iom claims, prostitute themselves, as part of a number of strategies to get by, including buying and selling goods. yet, it seems important to note that this situation is not unfamiliar to many destitute women. even those women who choose to stay home in moldova may be forced to marry for money, clean, cook and care for free in their own households, to have sex with men (some their husbands) in order to provide for their children, or prostitute themselves to bosses to get ahead in their public life. if having an intimate male companion looking out for their interests helps to secure a business trade relation or a safe route home to their kids and husband, if it helps them to save money to send home, or just generally helps them feel safe in a hostile environment, should it be considered prostitution? is it sex slavery? or, is it just being a woman? in particular, is it one of the conditions of existence of being a poor woman in a poor country? what i am proposing here is that the iom concentrates on trafficking in women at the expense of focusing on the poverty and conditions of life for women in moldova, when they are actually inextricably linked. this situation is similar then to hemment’s point that the framing of violence against women promoted by international ngos and adopted by women’s organizations in russia “not only screens out local constructions of events, but it deflects attention from issues of social justice” (2003:2). in fact, from what i witnessed, trafficking serves these women who are trying to their conditions: with considerable effort and a lot of luck, the gagauz women's plans to make money and return relatively safely, works. their mobility and cash-earnings may even promote their status in their own households and in those in which they work. certainly, the family structure in moldova has changed significantly as a result of these movements, but this is not necessarily negative where many situations were abusive to women. in conclusion, we might better conceive of these women not only as victims, but as agents in traffic. they are driven by the political-economic situation in their countries which forces them to travel and work illegally to get by, but also driven and assertive mobile workers trying to better their family's lives as well as their own. this is not to deny that the victim profiles detailed by the iom are embodied in many real individual cases. it is only to suggest that people like maria who are illegal migrant workers in turkey do not fit neatly into these profiles. in fact, their situation demonstrates the difficulty with categorizing them as simply passive victims, trafficked by criminals and the trouble with presenting trafficking as entirely detrimental to their lives. this indicates that the focus of the iom on criminalizing networks of traffickers and informing women of the dangers of working abroad may be largely ineffective in stopping trafficking and even negligent in bettering the lives of these women. if we understand women as agents, attempts to alleviate the exploitation they suffer might begin by asking them what they need. for instance, information about passports, and traveling more generally, maps and cell phones can help to empower them and thus were very much in demand by the women i met. what may also better serve these women are campaigns to legalize this migration and work and efforts to ameliorate conditions within moldova. this new framework copes with what the iom ignores: the bigger picture that unless the economic and political situation in places like moldova improves significantly and the situation of women with it, women will continue to use illegal traffic and work as a means to support themselves and their families. references bruno, marta. 1997. women and the culture of entrepreneurship. in mary buckley (ed) post soviet women: from the baltic to central asia. cambridge: cambridge university press. erder, sema. 1997. kentsel gerilim (enformel iliski aglari alan arastirmasi). ankara: ugur mumcu arastirmaci gazetecilik vakfi. funk, nanette and magda mueller, eds. 1993. gender politics and post communism: reflections from eastern europe and the former soviet union. jen typewritten text 77 volume 21, number 2 gal, susan and gail kligman, eds. 2000. the politics of gender after socialism: a comparative historical essay. princeton: princeton university press. hemment, julie. forthcoming . “global civil society and the local costs of belonging: defining ‘violence against women’ in russia” signs 29 (3), spring 2004 international organization for migration. 2002. trafficking in women and children for sexual exploitation. republic of moldova. chisinau. institute for public policy. moldova. www.ipp.md. koffman, eleonore, annie phizacklea, parvati raghurma and rosemary sales. 2000. gender and international migration in europe: employment, welfare, and politics. new york: routledge. koser, khalid and helma lutz. 1998. the new migration in europe: social constructions and social realities. london: macmillan press ltd. parrenas, rachel salazar. 2001. servants of globalization. stanford: stanford university press. yukseker-yenal, hatice deniz. forthcoming. “on the embeddedness of economic action: gendered trading in a transnational marketplace in istanbul” in ethnic and racial studies. -----. 2000. weaving a market: the informal economy and gender in a transnational trade network between turkey and the former soviet union. state university of new york at binghamton dissertation. endnotes 1. this research was funded by the university of massachusetts european field studies program for pre-dissertation research. i would like to thank the director of that program, dr. jacqueline urla, and dr. julie hemment for their intellectual guidance and support throughout the various stages of this project. the transnational research upon which this paper is based would not have been possible without the assistance of dr. hulya demirdirek.. i am indebted to dr. ayse oncu of the university of bosphorus for the conception of “mobile” women i employ here. most of all, i am grateful to “maria” and the other gagauz, moldovan, ukrainian, and turkish individuals who shared their stories and their lives with me. a more extensive analysis of my research on this topic will be published in focaal, european journal of anthropology 2004 forthcoming. jen typewritten text 78 anthropology of east europe review vision impaired: the cultural politics of everyday life in croatia daphne winland york university the january 2000 elections in croatia produced an almost tangible (albeit short-lived) feeling of buoyancy reminiscent of the euphoria surrounding independence from yugoslavia in 1991. the processes that have characterized this recent political shift from the authoritarian and ultranationalist regime of the late franjo tudjman and the hdz, to the present center-left coalition are symptomatic of the political and socio­ economic uncertainty that has characterized the fledgling state since 1990.1 since the early 1990's ethnonationalism has been the prism through which much commentary and analysis on the former yugoslavia has been filtered. this comes partly in response to the selfevident realities of ethnic conflict and political rhetoric in the region, but more so, it marks the rush to fashion a new conceptual geography of eastern europe. the continual upheaval in the region has produced a large body of literature and commentary primarily focussed on or informed by concerns with (ethnic) nationalism in croatia. in croatia, much of the scholarly attention since independence has focussed on the numerous impacts of war (e.g. displacement and trauma, reintegration and minority issues), and on recovery and nation building (e.g. processes of democratization and civil society, political and economic integration into the eu). this paper draws attention to the need for more research into issues of emergent identities in croatia as well as the politics of representation by focussing on some of the nuanced ways in which croatians have been (re)negotiating the cultural logics of being and belonging in the face of socio-political changes in the rapidly transforming croatian state.2 the context: croatian independence and its aftermath croatian independence has, as in many post­ communist successor states, inevitably created the conditions for radical and often convulsive changes in the social, political and economic fabric of society. despite having emerged from the shadow of communist rule, croatia remains saddled with numerous problems, many of which have been exacerbated by a legacy of policy decisions of the late franjo tudjman and his ruling party, the hdz (uzelak, 1998). these "growing pains" have been characterized by a "democratic deficit" evidenced in documented cases of, for example, violations of human rights (karatnycky et ai, 1997), the suppression of freedom of the press (thompson, 1994, peruskoieulek, 1999), the expansion (and abuse) of constitutional and presidential powers (sekulire and sporer, 1997), and croatia's interventionist (and some even say, imperialist) pro-herceg-bosna policy. major discrepancies have existed between state rhetoric concerning guarantees of civic freedoms and minority rights and the actual development and/or enforcement of existing legislation in these areas.3 ethnonationalism quickly became the dominant rubric through which croatian identity was configured by the new state (malesevire and uzelak, 1997: hayden, 1992). this is epitomized, for example, in the exclusionary criteria of the law on croatian culture and citizenship (hayden, 1996): the acceptance of croatian culture, proficiency in croatian language and latin script, and exemptions for croatian diaspora returnees and their descendants. there are no similar provisions for those who are not members of the croatian ethnonation (defined as substance rather than citizenship ).4 cultural policies are generally neoconservative in orientation reflecting state commitment to those cultural activities that are considered to be supportive ofnational identity and cohesion. research institutes in croatia receive government grants to carry out research and offer programs on croatian cultural heritage and history and state-run television and radio also regularly broadcast programs featuring regional folklore, customs and religious celebrations. the rapid process of language fragmentation (ie. from serbo-croatian to serbian, croatian or bosnian) has meant calls for a return to croatian literary forms (reavakian, kajkavian and stovakian) and regional dialects. the vision for the new croatian republic promulgated by the croatian political leadership has blended ethnonationalist rhetoric with principles of social authoritarianism centered around the discourse of traditional (catholic) morality and the preservation of the croatian nation from the dangers of cultural decline. the essence of croatianess has thus been constructed as ethnically "pure," systematically eliminating references to the complex historical, socio-cultural vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 31 anthropology ofeast europe review and political conditions that have, over the years, marked the physical and conceptual terrain of croatian identity. metaphors of nation, catholicism, family and the "croatian way" have become the centerpieces ofcroatian political and religious programs. among the desired qualities of the new croatian are traditional family values, exalting motherhood as a vocation, espousing pro­ life values, fiercely attacking gay/lesbian lifestyles and relationships and vilifying feminism (personal communication, ela grdinire , judge, county court, zagreb and legalina project, zagreb and maja mamula, counsellor, legalina project) .5 for example, a recent headline (december 20, 1999) in the pro-government newspaper vjesnik laments the continued use of "abortion as a method of birth control." although contemporary political (and some intellectual) discourses on croatian identity often valorize croatian culture and heritage in the interest of promoting a distinctively croatian national identity, there is also a large body ofcommentary and research from vocal critics both within and outside the country. unlike the largely state-owned broadcast media there is a popular, often critical independent and sometimes irreverent press (feral tribune, novi list, globus, slobodna dalmacija). while the decidedly ethnonationalist project of the state (during the 1990's) provides an indispensable backdrop to the examination of identity and nation-building strategies. here however, i focus neither on the official perspectives of the state's numerous and often self-selected interlocutors nor on its detractors and critics, but rather on croatians i have worked with who have not been directly linked to political, academic, social justice, media or like institutions and interests. my goal here is to illustrate how identities continue to be socially constituted and contested through the gaps and silences of official (nationalist) discourses. croatian politics of representation on the ground quite apart from the plethora of measurable macro-level indicators of ethnic attitudes in croatia typical ofpolitical and economic analyses (both inside and outside of croatia), are the cultural politics of everyday life. for example, identity struggles have been based less on the most heavily cited ethnic and national criteria (i.e. self-identification as a croat, serb, etc.) than on a complex combination of factors reflecting the "hypermobility of postmodern capital and ideas" (mishra, 1996:424). these include the largely worsening socio-economic conditions, shifts in class boundaries and relations and the changing significance of regionalism and locality as well as the continuing and ubiquitous presence, involvement and scrutiny of numerous external interests (international economic, political and humanitarian agencies, croatian diasporas, etc.). these, combined with the devastating and disruptive effects of war, have had a tremendous impact on the politics of identity and representation for croatians in the new state. the examples below illustrate both reactions to elite­ directed discursive closure on croatian identity (e.g. the "good croatian") and the invocation of various cultural logics in the creation and reaffirmation of a sense of belonging. croatianess and/or locality what became almost immediately apparent over the course of this research was the centrality of cultural logics, forms and practices to croatian efforts to make sense of their lives and struggles amidst enormous changes. for example, although nationalism often stimulates the search for identity, it is often contained and mediated through subnational categories such as region and community and in local traditions and experiences. locality and memory and their contingent socio­ cultural manifestations and expressions have always been and continue to be central to croatian configurations of identity. being a trogirani, dalmatiani or even a "snob from zagreb" (the latter, a term of derision among dalmatians), has as much or even greater quotidian significance for croatians than the often strident nationalist pronouncements of politicians and others. the war in croatia and the former yugoslavia has irrevocably changed the demographic characteristics of many communities, especially rural ones, and has inevitably fomented and exacerbated the serb-muslim-croat axis of hate. however, i found that the rhetoric of ethnic homogeneity is not as widely accepted or practiced as croatian nationalist ideology would suggest. locally-specific cultural logics, memories and practices continue to inform and mediate responses to often chaotic changes and challenges faced by croatians. recent research on the integration of croatian refugees from bosnia and voivodina into communities in croatia confirms the predominance of regional over nationally­ constituted croatian identities and the problems associated with these efforts (see jeapo jemegare , 1999, grbire , 1997). the significance oflocality as the primary factor in assessing the past, present and the future was clearly evoked in numerous vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 32 anthropology of east europe review interviews. the use ofethnicity as a marker was in some cases used to underscore the similarities between people who would be, in the language of ethnic nationalism, bitter enemies, i.e. serb and croat. for example, while in knin, i spent some time with a local croatian and his serb friend visiting from england who had returned (after fleeing during the war) to visit his few remaining (elderly) serb relatives. in the time i spent with them, they were busy (re )creating a (familiar) cultural space built on shared experiences, memories and opinions. for example, on one occasion, the better part of several hours was spent discussing their disdain for the "ignorant" and "uncivilized" bosnian croats who had resettled in knin after the war in bosnia. according to the croatian: "we can sell them any old garbage and call it wine. they don't know the difference". this sentiment is clearly reflected in croatian opinions and attitudes concerning intraethnic relations in croatia. for example, some of the most negative comments i encountered concerned not serbs and bosnian muslims but bosnian croats from herzegovina and (overseas) diaspora croatians, the two groups most valorized by the tudjman government and by croatian nationalist elites for their ethnic "purity" and patriotic fervor. croatians, for example, have generally responded negatively to the huge influx of herzegovinian croats into croatia and to what is widely regarded as their corrupting influence on croatian politics and the economy. herzegovinian croats have been a major presence in croatia since the war, not just as refugees (from bosnia and herzegovina) but as new members of the political and business elite. but while complaints about taxation subsidies and corruption among them abound, most emphasize the deep cultural divide that exists between them. the croatian overseas diaspora also invites a certain degree of scorn and disdain from homeland croatians. what comes through in the responses of croatian nationals i have interviewed is resentment and ambivalence toward the diaspora for a variety of reasons. these include the purported retention by diasporic croats of a vulgarized and romanticized ethnic culture and obsolete political ideals, their exploitation of investment opportunities of questionable benefit to homeland croatians and meddling in croatian internal political affairs (winland, 1998).6 one informant asked: "are these returnees the best and the brightest that diaspora has to offer?" the "good croatian" since 1991, discourses on identity in croatia have often invoked the highly charged question: what is a "good croatian?" while several key indicators have been proffered (e.g. patriotism, (catholic) religiosity), the bulk of croatian opinions i have recorded point to a preoccupation with those characteristics that may label one as a "bad" croatian. for example, croatians who are not solidly behind efforts to reimagine the new croatian state in ways that valorize selected elements of the croatian past and present have been variously referred to by some as "unpatriotic," "uncroatian," "yugonostalgic," "yugo-zombies" or as "enemies of the state" (the latter two characteristically have been directed at vocal critics like siavenka drakulire and dubravka ugresire by official or elite circles). in response to my queries concerning views on state efforts to shape post-independence croatian identity, most either directly or indirectly mentioned the issue (of the "good croatian") and treated it either dismissively (as inconsequential in their day to day lives) or as a source of concern. for those who did not subscribe to these visions of the new ("good") croatian, they felt that, at some level, others may and this sometimes affected how they dealt with people (acquaintances, employers, coworkers, etc.). this was most often expressed as having to think about the consequences of publicly condemning nationalist discourses, for example, the possibility of being overlooked for promotions at work. it is, however, important to note that the croatians who commented on this facet of croatian identity politics pointed out that there is a distinction between the nationalist discourses and images promoted by the government and a more general, less political and arbitrary sense of patriotism and pride. most had been deeply and personally affected by the war and stated that they felt a strong sense of pride in being croatian quite distinct from nation-building rhetorical strategies. the state has thus expended a great deal of effort to provide fixed parameters for the discourse of croatian national identity. at the level of interpersonal communication however, the effects of this effort were manifested in a certain level of suspicion, caution or ambivalence for many who have rejected, been uncomfortable espousing these forms of self-representation, or who were concerned about the consequences of being viewed or labeled a "bad croatian." my current research focuses on the impact of the recent social and political changes on the emergence of new discursive spaces and forms. vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 33 anthropology of east europe review conclusion although croatian nation-building efforts have provided the conditions (through ideologically-driven discourses and policy measures) for the creation of a croatian national prototype, these efforts continue to have mixed results. ambivalence, disdain, resentment, patriotism, optimism and pessimism, as well as confusion are among the sentiments and emotions that characterize croatians' day to day reactions to the discursive strategies of nationalist elites. thus, while critics like dubravka ugresire (1998) acerbically denounce the political and cultural perversions of the new croatian regime and its elites (examples are plentiful, such as the fetishization of president tudjman and a lucrative industry in kitschy croatica), it is not clear that the success of strategies that have been unleashed in the name of croatian nationalism and statehood are as ubiquitous as has been suggested (or feared). while it is true that croatians have been inundated with nationalist ideology, many are still inherently suspicious ofor ambivalent towards state-driven messages and measures (through political, media, institutional and other channels), an attitude cultivated during the socialist era of yugoslavia and reinforced during the past the years under the hdz. while it is rare to find a croatian without strong political convictions or opinions, i have found few that expressed their views using the exclusivist and nationalist rhetoric of the state. most are concerned with the ways in which the war and changes since independence continue to affect their day-to-day lives. for example, many i spoke to are concerned about corruption, the collapse of the banking system, an unemployment rate (officially) hovering at 30%, the decline in the quality of health care and the high cost ofliving.7 the following observations made over the course of my fieldwork perhaps further underscores the need for research that focuses on identity as lived experience. the images i recall most from the train and bus trips i took between zagreb in the north and split on the southern dalmatian coast, were of the odd look of villages that had been under serb control from 1991 to 1995 in what was called the republic of serb krajina. the widespread looting and burning of, first, croatian (1991) and then serb property (when in 1995, the 200,000 strong croatian army captured serb-held krajina territory in "operation oluja" (storm)), left a strange patchwork of destruction. houses, some burned or demolished, stood alongside others that were unblemished, occupied and well maintained. these images invariably speak to a recent past of coexistence or, at the very least, mutual tolerance, reflecting histories, memories and locally specific logics that have been deeply shaken but can not be erased by the rhetoric of ethnic or national homogeneity. bibliography leapo megare, jasna. 1999. ""we are croats. it is not our goal to be set apart from our own people": a failed attempt at firmer incorporation of croatian migrants" in ethnologica balkanica (3):121-139. grbire , jadranka. 1997. "searching for the familiar, facing the foreign: dimensions of identity of the croats from bosnia­ herzegovina" narodna umjetnost 34(1):7-23. hayden, robert. 1996. "imagined communities and the real victim: self-determination and ethnic cleansing in yugoslavia" american ethnologist 23(4):783-801. hayden, robert. 1992. "constitutional nationalism in the formerly yugoslav republics" slavic review 51 :654-673. karatnycky, adrian, alexander motyl, and boris shor. 1997. "croatia" in nations in transit 1997. new brunswick, n.j.: transaction pub: 96-117. keams, ian. 1996. "croatian politics: the new authoritarianism" the political quarterly. magas, branka. 1993. the destruction of yugoslavia london: verso. malesevire, s. and uzelak, g. 1997. "ethnic distance, power and war: the case of croatian students" in nations and nationalism 3(2):291-98. mijatovire, antun. 1997. "democratic political culture as a prerequisite of multiculturalism" pp. 29-46, in vjeran katunari re (ed.) multicultural reality and perspectives in croatia zagreb: interkultura. perusko-leulek, zrinjka. 1996. "central european media policies: the context oftransition in the new democracies" the culturalldentity of central europe proceedings of the conference: europe of cultures: cultural identity of central europe (zagreb) 95-104, november 22-24. perusko-leulek, zrinjka. 1999. demokracija i medija zagreb: barbat. vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 34 anthropology of east europe review pusire, vesna. 1997. "croatia's struggle for democracy" revija za sociologiju 28( 1-2):95­ 110. pusire, vesna. 1992. "a country by any other name: transition and stability in croatia and yugoslavia." east european politics and societies (6):242-259. ramet, sabrina. 1996. balkan babel: the disintegration o/yugoslavia/rom the death 0/ tito to ethnic war boulder: westview press. dusko sekulire and .teeljka sporer. 1997. "regime support in croatia" revija za sociologiju 27(1­ 2):35-60. thompson, mark. 1994. forging war: the media in serbia. croatia and bosnia and herzegovina avon: bath press. ugresire, dubravka. 1998. culture o/lies: antipolitical essays university park, pa: pennsylvania state university press. uzelak, gordana. 1998. "franjo tudjman's nationalist ideology" east european quarterly 31#4:449-472. winland, daphne. 1998. "croatians 'here' and 'there': diaspora and the politics of desire". revija za sociologiju, 29(1): 49-59. woodward, susan. 1995. balkan tragedy: chaos and dissolution after the cold war washington: brookings institution. notes 'virtually all the recent attention has focussed on the national level political fallout of the election, assorted exposes and scandals and the disintegration of the ruling hdz (which, according to hrvoje sarinic, a close ally of tudjman, resembles "a pile of snow melting on the ground"). 2 the research on which this paper is based was conducted during three field trips to croatia beginning in the spring of 1997. 3 for example, during tudjman's regime, the government retained controlling interest (or influence) in several daily newspapers (e.g. vjesnik), some weeklies and the country's only news agency, hina. the most recent scandal in croatia concerns the discovery of discussions between tudjman and his domestic advisor, ivire pasalire involving control over vereernji list, one of croatia's largest dailies. the state-owned croatian radio and television enterprise (hrt) controls the only television source (htv) with nation-wide coverage. croatian media critics continually complain that political party interests influence the awarding of both radio and television licenses. journalists who take a critical stance are threatened with legal action (perusko.teulek, 1999). in the area of minority rights, the government's record has lagged behind officially stated goals and achievements. 4the return of serb refugees to croatia remains an explosive issue, particularly in the regions of krajina and eastern slavonia 5feminist critics of government policies have pointed to a general increase in the vulnerability of women to domestic or other forms of abuse (not directly influenced by the war) in post-communist croatia. see slobodanka bundalo "images of women in croatian daily newspapers" women's informational and documentation centre, croatia, 1997; silva me)narire "women in croatia and slovenia: a case of delayed modernization" in marilyn rueschmeyer (ed.) women in the politics 0/post-communist eastern europe (new york: m.e. sharpe inc. 1994) 153-170. 6 for example, in an interview with the independent newspaper, the feral tribune, in april 1997, a prominent croatian sociologist referred to the herzegovinian croats as "croatia's new serbs" referring to the vilification of these newcomers by croatian nationals. herzegovinian croats in bosnia-herzegovina, for example, are allowed to hold croatian passports and identification, vote in croatian elections, have croatian license plates, fly the croatian flag and use croatian currency (kuna). many attribute their meteoric political and economic rise in croatia to the influence of hard-line herzegovinians in key positions in president tudjman's government. one example of the influence of the now powerful herzegovinian lobby in croatia comes from the daily televised weather report, which displays a regional map demarcating each of the former yugoslav republics with distinctive borders and colours, all with the exception of bosnia­ herzegovina. although the official bosnia­ herzegovinian border (with croatia) is displayed, western and northern sections of bosnia are shaded in the same colour as the republic of croatia. 7 a recurring theme in newspaper and television coverage since the january 2000 elections concerns the apportioning of blame for the decline in the standard of living on the hdz and their vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 35 anthropology of east europe review allies, many of whom are seen as largely responsible for engaging in or condoning corruption and war-profiteering. government leaders and politicians endlessly point fingers at each other over their alleged corruption during the tudjman regime. vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 36 microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 64 from ‘public’ to ‘private’ markets in postsocialist mongolia morten a. pedersen university of copenhagen introduction this articlelxii is based on a research project concerned with mongolia in ‘the age of the market’ (zah zeeliin üye), which i recently completed in the capital ulaanbaatar and the two industrial cities of erdenet and darhanlxiii. there is no doubt that mongolia’s urban markets serve as a prime source of identity for the people trying to make a living there, and that many of these identities are infused with the perception of relentless movement associated with the opaque workings of late capitalism in postsocialist and postcolonial settings (burawoy & verdery 1998; comaroff & comaroff 1998). furthermore, as elsewhere in the postsocialist world – in particular russia and the former soviet republics (see e. g. mandel & humphrey 2002) –, making one’s living on the market still carries a range of negative connotations in ulaanbaatar, especially for those members of the former elite (military officers, academics, and the like) who did not manage to profit from the chaotic years following the onset of ‘the age of the market’. in spite of these similarities, however, the mongolian encounter with capitalism is not directly comparable to that of other postsocialist countries. as various policy makers and development consultants have lately noted, there seems to be something quite distinctive about the manner in which mongolians conceive of and act within market contexts. this is so, suggests alicia campi (1996: 92), because ‘mongolia’s command economy was a nomadic socialist economy, which operated in a cultural/philosophical world at odds with some of the basic assumptions of a free-market economy’. however, far from identifying the source of this economic cosmology within a monolithic nomadic culture (as campi to some extent does), the present article will seek to trace various shifts in the mongolian market (zah) concept over time, with special emphasis on the increasing monopolization to which the country’s urban markets have been subject over the last fifteen years. taking my lead from the growing literature on mongolian trade, barter and exchange (e.g. humphrey 2000; wheeler 2004; sneath 2006), the aim here is to explore the gradual transformation from the so-called ‘public markets’ (ulsyn zah) of the early 1990s to what is referred to as the ‘private markets’ (huviin zah) of ulaanbaatar today. in so doing i hope not only to contribute to ongoing debates about the market in the former socialist world, but also to problematize certain euroamerican assumptions of what the public and private might be. the market in mongolian history for some time now a strange assumption seems to have persisted among scholars and policy makers alike that markets and trade are fundamentally alien to traditional inner asian culture. consider, for instance, the following assertion from a recent survey of mongolia’s ‘informal sector’ conducted by the international labour organisation (ilo): [in mongolia], the informal sector is a fairly new phenomenon unlike traditional asian bazaars. some observers point out that mongolia differs from other economies in transition in that a “second economy” did not exist under the command economy. unlike some postcommunist societies there does not appear to be a legacy of non-compliant behaviour and destructive entrepreneurship (morris 2001: xii). leaving aside the hairy issue as to precisely under what circumstances and according to which authority entrepreneurship may justifiably be recognised as something ‘destructive’, the author of the ilo rapport is completely right in implying that, for a very long period of time, the great majority of mongolians were excluded from participating in market transactions. during the nearly seventy years of state socialism all private trade was forbidden by lawlxiv, although the mongolian peoples’ revolutionary party (mahn) did turn a blind eye to the accelerating barter and trade which took place during the 1980s at the semi-legal exchange sites located at the outskirts of every big city and provincial capital. as we shall see below, it was these semi-legal sites and institutions which in the early 1990s were turned into mongolia’s first capitalist markets. however, the protection or depending on one's viewpoint exclusion of people from the capitalist market goes back significantly longer than the age of socialism (sozialism üid). in the 18th and 19th centuries too, the large majority of mongolians were in no position to conduct any trade. outer mongolia back then was governed as a colony of the qing (or manchu) empire through an aristocratic, anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 65 feudal-like system of divide and rule specifically designed to keep the nomadic mongolians separate from their sedentary neighbours in china and, on a larger scale, from the expanding european powers which at that time were closing in on inner asia from all sides (see e.g. bawden 1986). one consequence of this isolationist policy was that, for several hundred years, only chinese – and later russian traders, who bought licences from the imperial administration in beijing, were allowed to set up trading posts in mongolia’s northern princedoms. as a result, the inhabitants of these remote colonial provinces came under growing economic pressure, as both the aristocrat rulers of each princedom and the corresponding buddhist clergy incurred enormous debts to foreign moneylenders, and as the commoners, of course, ended up paying for the formers’ frivolous spending through an ever-increasing burden of tax, alms and corvée labour (c.f. sanjdorj 1980; bawden 1986). needless to say, the mongolian peoples’ revolutionary party (mahn) did nothing to repress this particular aspect of mongolia’s pre-revolutionary history. not only did the image of the exploited nomad/worker fit neatly into historical materialist theory; the equally powerful image of the profiteering chinese moneylender also went hand-in-hand with the strongly sinophobic discourse of mongolian nationalism (see also bulag 1998). it is, then, quite understandable if many observers have been led to believe that there is no tradition of economic entrepreneurship in mongolia. understandable, yes, but nonetheless wrong. the ‘traditional asian bazaar’ is by no means foreign to the mongolian way of life. the only difference from the famous oasis cities of central asia is that in medieval mongolia (and, apparently, the middle east) markets were typically set up at the fluid borders between nomadic polities, or along the liminality between nomadic and sedentary society (lattimore 1962). in fact, trade blossomed in the mongolian empire. historians regularly credit genghis khan’s re-opening of the silk road as one of the most lasting outcomes of his campaigns (morgan 1987). it was only later, following the de facto loss of independence to first the qing empire and subsequently the soviet union, that trade became marginalised from mongolian social life – not, however, for internal reasons pertaining to nomadic culture, but, as i have tried to show, for external reasons arising from the political economy of empire. the black market in the early 1990s, following the legalisation of private trade and profit-making by mongolia’s first democratically elected government, a huge market evolved at the northern outskirts of ulaanbaatar, near the location of the old barter station from socialist times. up until 2000 this so-called black market (har zah)lxv or northern market (hoid zah) was unrivalled in mongolia in size and popularity. practically any grown-up in ulaanbaatar can tell you a personal and often highly amusing anecdote from the heyday of the har zah, which quickly became renowned for its claustrophobic, dusty and pickpocket-infested pathways, and, more generally, for its seemingly total lack of organisation. indeed, the har zah only had a few permanent fixed points. essentially, the market was created from scratch every morning, as vendors would scramble, argue and sometimes fight in order to pick the best spots to sell their wares. ‘the place was utterly crazy!’, as one former trader of vodka and distilled pure alcohol (spirt) explained. ‘there were no stalls or anything. we just stood there holding up the labels of the spirt, and sold (borluulah) out everything we had. people would gather around us from all sides, and buy like mad’. still, there seems to have been some measure of organization behind the ‘madness’ (galzuu). not everyone had to fight for a good place for his or her stand. on the one hand, there were the ‘big bosses’ (tom bossod), who through a creative combination of entrepreneurship, riches and connections (holboo) as well as on a few occasions downright physical coercion had secured themselves de facto ownership of the best trading spots from the early days. (to some extent, these ‘bosses’ or ‘leaders’ (liderüüd) were and still are today comparable to other and more well-known violent entrepreneurs who, in the name of mafia, have attracted so much attention across the postsocialist world (volkov 2002, humphrey 2002)). on the other hand, certain vendors were lucky enough to be related to, lovers of, or simply on friendly terms with such ‘big people’ (tomchuud) – or more precisely big men (almost all tomchuud were and still are male) – next to whose containers they would smugly line up their wares. (back then, as now, the minority of people in possession of a whole container as opposed to a smaller stall were treated with a great deal of respect by their fellow traders; and this is especially true if the type of goods transacted ranked high in the mongolian markets’ hierarchy of wares, see also below). it should further be noted that the northern market did not remain in a state of flux throughout its existence. in the course of the 1990s it gradually became more formalized in social, legal and spatial terms. an increasing number of permanent stalls were constructed and the spirt trade was made illegal, but the place was still unbelievably crowded since there was no room for anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 66 expansion due to the peri-urban slums in the neighbourhood. it came as no surprise to me, therefore, that people applauded the opening of a new, more ‘sophisticated’ (bolovsrongüi) and ‘specialized’ (töröljsön) market at a central urban site in the autumn of 2000. the naran tuul market, also known as the high market (deed zah), quickly assumed the role of mongolia’s leading market. unlike its predecessor, the new black market (for the naran tuul market is also known under this designation) is highly organised. there is ample police presence and numerous security guards, plenty of breathing space (at least outside the most crowded trading spots towards its midst), every stall is carefully numbered and registered with the administration, and imposing, panoptic watchtowers are positioned at each of the market’s corners. for the same reason, and as is also the case with many of ulaanbaatar’s gated community compoundslxvi, one is left with the impression of entering another domain of sovereignty, politically, legally and economically separate from the surrounding society. it is evident that the costumers enjoy this atmosphere of order, security and ‘modern’ (modern) professionalism. indeed, many ulaanbaatar residents, in particular those coming from lower class backgrounds, seem to take a certain pride in the naran tuul market, emphasizing, for example, how certain ‘chinese goods’ are deemed to be of too low a quality to be worthy of being sold there. still, its relative prestige dwindles in comparison with the many elite shops which have recently mushroomed in mongolian cities. indeed, ulaanbaatar is today home to a small but influential segment of rich people to whom the naran tuul and all the other black markets in ulaanbaatar are nothing but an embarrassing reminder of the country’s backwardness, where poor and unhealthy people are ‘forced to get their shoes muddy to obtain the goods they need, like during socialist times’. the har zah, to them, is an obscure, filthy and dangerous place which, fortunately, is located outside what is visible from the shopping avenues of the city centre or the marble balconies overlooking the rivers. however, this minority of ‘new mongolians’ (shine mongol) notwithstanding, there is no doubt that the naran tuul market is the ultimate trading venue in the country. it is, so to speak, the epitome of the market against which all other images of the market come into being. the ‘privatization’ of the market if visitors are positive about the naran tuul market, the people who work there are more ambivalent. in particular, there is dissatisfaction about the high tariffs and rents which vendors say they have to pay to the market owners. more generally, people at naran tuul and other markets in ulaanbaatar feel that they are subject to ‘all sorts of pressure’. very well, was my initial response, but this is just the kind of complaint one can expect such people to make. after all, who would not like to have fewer costs? surely, i then went on to ask, if you compare the new black market with the chaos of the old har zah, you would prefer this? here is what sara, a female flour trader in her early thirties, responded: back then the market belonged to the public (ulsiinh); it had not become private (huviin) yet. when i look around here in ulaanbaatar, i can see that many peoples’ lives are now getting better. but it is not like that here at the market, for it has become privatised (huviinh). there are many official people above us. it is not just [the owner of the naran tuul market]. he has many sponsors. there is a big conspiracy behind all this. a sort of mafia. the market is stripping us people who are working here. that is the big difference [from before]. we are paying enormous tariffs so we are forced to work extremely hard. some people are only just selling enough things to buy food. in the old days, the har zah was not like that. very well, i then asked, but clearly you were under ‘all sorts of pressure’ back at the northern market too, for instance from roaming gangs of atamans?lxvii ‘no’, sara insisted, ‘there was nothing like that at the old market’. although this particular trader does represent a somewhat special case (see below), it is still my impression that the majority of the merchants share the basic tenet of her experiences. quite astonishingly in the regional context, it really does not seem as if any racketeering was taking place at the old har zah or if it was, at least not in the highly organised form particularly familiar from many post-soviet markets (see nazpary 2002; volkov 2002; hohnen 2004). to be sure, there were arguments and fighting galore, and people were making recourse to virtually whatever means available (connections, threats etc.) to secure a good trading spot. but for sara and other veteran traders this only added to the overarching feeling that people were in a position to ‘do what they wanted themselves. no one was eating (ideh) us from behind’. quite paradoxically, it thus seems as if the old ‘public’ (ulsiin) market is remembered as having been more private (in the ideal liberal economic sense) than the new ‘private’ (huviin) market, for the former seems to have been characterised by a higher degree of entrepreneurial freedom, less regulation and lower fees, just like the textbook ideal of the free anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 67 marketlxviii. for the old har zah was perceived as ‘public’ not so much in the sense that it defined a moral and socially inclusive realm of a given collectivity, but in the more infinite, transformative and all-encompassing meaning, in the sense that this domain did not exclude any person or indeed any form of behaviour in the manner a given ‘private’ domain doeslxix. arguably, it is possible here to identify concepts and practices which can be traced back to inner asia’s medieval markets. consider the fact that the most popular mongolian term for a market zah also means ‘border’, ‘edge’ and ‘margin’: following wheeler (2004), this concept does not just refer to the relative or spatial margin of mongolia’s different city centres (töv), at whose outskirts the first markets of the contemporary period were located. zah also denotes a sort of absolute or liminal exteriority, namely the intermediate position occupied by male or female traders seen from the perspective of the patriarchal nomadic household (see pedersen 2006; c.f. vreeland 1962). it certainly is a well-established truth in lore and legend that, during their famous raids into enemy land, old mongolia’s warriortraders were known to venture into new, dangerous territories searching for spouses, wealth and glory at the very ‘social margi[n, where] a constructed world comes into being, mediated by objects along transactional pathways’ (gell 1999: 104). my point is that this absolute margin reappeared in the early 1990s. this, in fact, may be what the so-called immorality of trading in postsocalist contexts is all about. what is presented as a dislike of traders due to their perceived selfinterest may involve a more deep-rooted breakdown of ‘ontological security’ (giddens 1991), set in train by the new subjectivities personified by these economic actors. as was the case along inner asia’s medieval borders, the 'public market' until recently found in the ulaanbaatar suburbs served as a veritable exteriority, which encompassed irreducible multiplicity (deleuze & guittari 1999). all kinds of goods were sold in this liminal zone; and all kinds of people were selling these wares. for the same reason, it was impossible to remain the same, for people were tunnelled into a marginal realm, whose rules of engagement were defined in opposition to the conventions of the ‘private’ domains outside. market identities the world outside did indeed present a real obstacle back in the very first days when sara began selling spirt at the northern market. it was not only that her (middle-class) parents strongly opposed her newly found profession, which they viewed as a disorderly and vulgar activity. ‘it is making you careless, scruffy and mindless’, they complained, while conjuring up frightening scenarios of their youngest daughter ending up ‘drinking the very vodka she is supposed to sell’ like those ‘terrible speculator women’ (mohai damchin avgai) who in the early 1990s could be seen drinking all day long on markets, train stations and the like. the problem was also the hostile looks and remarks which sara received from visitors to the market, ‘especially from other girls of my age’. only the other traders at the har zah did not seem to mind; indeed, one boss in particular was impressed by the fact that a ‘girl like her’ was working there: no one could tell i was a trader. i was around 18 with a very pale face, not at all looking like someone doing business. girls from my background don’t like selling at the market. they hate it. but he [the boss] was both worried and curious. “i have observed you many times, selling the vodka tirelessly. you are very hardworking. are you from a very poor family?” he asked me. to which i replied “no, i just like this better than anything else”, and that left him very surprised. under the protection of her new boss, sara’s business began to thrivelxx. selling the vodka was just ‘so damn profitable’ (aigüi ashigtai) and, besides, the constant deal-making gave (and still gives) her an immense sense of ‘satisfaction’ and ‘fun’. it is evident that this feeling derives to a large degree from an awareness of being good at something that only a few people are cut out for: ‘not everyone can do market trading. it makes the head work a lot, it is hard. talking all day long. it is very difficult, very unnerving (nervnii)’. we are here reminded of rita astuti’s study of female fish traders among the veso of madagasgar, who also experience a ‘rarefied aesthetic pleasure from the calculations, the suspense, and the power of [the] imagination’ (astuti 1999: 93). indeed, as i did myself, astuti heard many complaints that the market had become an ‘addiction’ for the young veso women, distracting their attention from expected services within the household (1999: 92). today, with her parents’ blessing, sara runs a successful flour (and rice) outlet at the naran tuul market. as ‘white staples’ (tsaagan yum) that satisfy ‘natural needs’, selling these goods by no means carries the same negative connotations as her former spirt business did. what is more, she is now part of the so-called ‘flour people’ (gurilchinguud), who enjoy a high status in the market’s informal hierarchy (‘we are probably only surpassed by the electronics people’)lxxi. nonetheless, she considers herself to be an outsider, for she is one of the few flour people anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 68 who works ‘alone’ (ganz) in the flour business. the rest ‘all have relatives (hamaatan) and family (ah duu) here’, as this is widely accepted to be the only trouble-free way for traders to enter both the naran tuul and other urban markets. indeed, like practically every other vendor group on the ulaanbaatar market scene (the petty ‘matchbox and candle people’ aside), the gurilchinguud are renowned for using a highly effective cocktail of deception, bullying and corruption to keep newcomers away from becoming part of their ‘community’ (hamt olon). when, for example, sara first managed to buy herself a container with an associated slot (bairshil) at naran tuul by responding to a newspaper ad, she spent the first three months listening to constant verbal attacks, occasionally even having things thrown at her, and more generally trying to steer a course through a sea of lies and deceptions. no one at the market would tell her anything about how things were working (‘how to buy goods wholesale, how to arrange for transport, how to deal with the local bosses’), while at the same time all the established gurilchinguud were collectively selling their goods below the going rate to push her into bankruptcy. but, ‘as i always do’, sara somehow managed to persist, using her welldeveloped gift of the gab (am’ni figürtei) to strike unusually profitable deals with influential wholesale liders as well as a growing segment of customers. and ever so slowly, the hostile outbursts began to die out, as did the ‘artificial lowering of prices’, although it was to take a full year before the others completely accepted her by ‘opening a bottle of vodka and congratulating me on how stubborn i had been’. sara’s story is by no means unique. in fact, the ulaanbaatar market scene seems to have been colonised to a significant extent by informal ‘vendor corporations’, whose mode of organisation has been imported from the domestic sphere. in parallel to the nomadic household (ail), a typical vendor corporation may thus be said to consist of two or three stalls (languu) selling the same goods, many of which have also been acquired from the same source (whether this is a local wholesale lider or a distant supplier in china). while each stall/household constitutes a (semi)autonomous business, all its members share a number of costs (such as transportation and bribes), just as they tend to pool their labour and other resources when this is needed (notably to enter the market in the first place). all this is reminiscent of the various contemporary kinship and quasi-kinship arrangements in the pastoral economy (szynkiewicz 1993; humphrey & sneath 1999). it is important to stress that – and again just like in the rural context – such vendor corporations are deeply formal and hierarchical in nature, even if they are at the same time highly fluid and adaptable in terms of both size and composition. hence, although the personnel inhabiting these hierarchical positions may change rapidly, one will always find an ah (senior male) or an egch (senior female), who presides over several junior (and, typically, more recent) members. occasionally, such a vendor corporation can grow so influential that it is able to control the price of a given commodity (like, say, flour), in which case its figurehead will be known as the boss of the whole ‘people’ associated with it. thus, all the people selling a certain commodity tend to be conceived of as distinct collectives (such as the aforementioned ‘flour people’) which, in semiconscious mimicry of former state socialist forms, perform ceremonies and celebrate holidays (like the lunar new year and international women’s day) just as someone from the same ‘community’ would. in the same way as the ulaanbaatar market scene as a whole has become more monopolized and ‘privatized’, then, there seems to be a simultaneous development to the effect that, on a smaller scale, each stall ‘may be held by the same people or families for several years and [be] treated as [a] monopol[y]’ (konstantinov, kressel & thuen 1998: 733). conclusion as should be clear by now, ulaanbaatar’s markets have undergone significant changes over the last decade or so. in broad terms, the liminal exteriority demarcated by the ‘crazy’ markets of the early 1990s has gradually been colonised by the in their own right rapidly changing social, economic and political structures of mongolian society as a whole. what was once perceived as being a transgressive ‘public’ realm operating beyond the reach of any ‘private’ agenda now seems to be much more closely in step with the social and economic conventions of the extended household and the (neo)liberal nation state. it is probably due not least to the emergence of informal institutions such as vendor corporations and communities that the symbolic stock of the trader's role seems to be on the rise in contemporary mongolia, especially for those people belonging to a really ‘professional’ market like naran tuul and to a high-ranking ‘private community’ like the gurilchinguud. consequently, although working at the market is by no means the greatest dream (mörööldöl) of the urban youth, it does not carry an inescapable stigma either as it did just a few years earlier. having said that, one does find a plethora of social outcasts in this setting, especially around the less prestigious markets in the suburbs. all these types of persons can be observed right across the anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 69 urban space, but markets are one of the few locations where one encounters them all together. such dispossessed persons include, among others, the ‘exchangers’ (chenjüüd), the ‘dumpster people’ (hogiin garuud), the street kids (taranshaany hüühdüüud), the thieves (hulgaichuud), the pickpockets (karmanii hulgaichuud) and, most lowly of all, ‘the drunkards’ (övgöntiinhön)lxxii. by way of conclusion, let me now briefly compare the positioning of these marginal persons with the exterior position held by the people at the old har zah. contrary to the frivolous black market of the early 1990s, where practically everyone present seems to have been propelled into the same undifferentiated social and spatial multiplicity, there is a clear sense that the sociological stigmatisation of the above outcasts has today been translated into a spatial exclusion too. at the har horin market (ulaanbaatar’s second biggest), for example, an open waste ground adjoining its eastern wall has developed into a sinister visualisation of ‘the dark side of the market’ (as one of my local friends coined it). here, in the so-called valley of the drunkards (övgöntiin höndii), the people at the absolute bottom of mongolian society seems to have created a distorted mirror version of the old black market which is considered to be a strictly no-go area by the other visitors to har horin. as opposed to the latter, whose professional management and informal organisation amongst merchants are comparable to the naran tuul, the valley of the drunkards has no permanent fixed points. a steady flow of pickpockets and beggars arrive to exchange their latest spoils into directly consumable items obtained from the warring bands of street children and waste scavengers, who compete to service the former’s needs. meanwhile, the vendors steal occasional glances over the other side of the fence, exchanging comments that are strangely reminiscent of what was once said about the black market as a whole (e.g. that it is an ‘immoral’ place). as such, the valley of the drunkards can be said to perform a sort of purifying role with respect to the more established communities of vendors, spatially and symbolically affirming what the latter perceive as their closer proximity to the world outside. the valley of the drunkards, in a perverse sense, is thus the only genuinely liberal market in postsocialist mongolia, encompassing, as it were, the residual ‘public’ domain which has not been included in any ‘private’ community. notes 1 this article has benefited from comments received at the presentation of earlier versions at the department of anthropology, university of copenhagen; at the workshop ‘encounters of a postsocialist kind: the movement of goods and identities within and beyond the former socialist world’ held at the easa meeting in vienna; and at the mongolia and inner asia studies unit at the university of cambridge. special thanks are due to jenia boikov, signe gundersen, lars højer, kåre jansbøl, kimiko h. i. pedersen and alan wheeler as well as to the editors of this special issue, who have all contributed to the formation of the present argument. 2 i am grateful to the danish research board of the humanities for a two-year post-doctoral fellowship which made this research possible. 3 still, of course, practically everyone was engaged in barteror trade-like transactions by virtue of participating in the informal exchange of desired goods through private networks. 4 it is probably no coincidence that these markets are associated with the color of black. the same goes for a range of other phenomena which for political, economic or religious reasons have come to stand in a marginal relationship to more dominant arenas of mongolian life. the country’s ancient shamanist tradition, for example, is popularly known as the ‘black religion’ (har shashin) as opposed to the (since the 16th century dominant) school of gelugpa (or yellow sect) tibetan buddhism, which is widely referred to as ‘yellow religion’ (shar shashin). see also pedersen (in press). 5 like many places elsewhere in the postsocialist world, the demographic composition of ulaanbaatar’s urban landscape has undergone dramatic changes in recent years. propelled by a recent building boom (funded, a persistent rumor purports, to a great degree by a continual influx of mafia money from siberia), a number of gated communities have been constructed in the city’s southern suburbs close to the forested hills and the beautiful tuul river. while a significant proportion of this property seems to stand empty most of the year (owned as they are by russian and chinese businessmen or by western expatriates), the rest is inhabited by representatives of the most prominent members of mongolia’s new elite: business tycoons, politicians, and pop as well as sports stars). 6 atamans are violent entrepreneurs operating at the interstices of social and economic life. across mongolia, the term denotes a person, who is able and willing to transgress ordinary thresholds for violent behavior, and therein is imbued with the capacity to lead or (as people prefer to put it) ‘handle’ (bar'j baina) a band of persons, typically a mob of unemployed youths or a gang of prisoners. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 70 7 as carrier (1997) also notes, the ‘free market’ is a euro-western cultural construct, which is not necessarily supported even by mainstream economic theory. however, the mongolian concept of the ‘public market’ does seem to correspond (although it is not identical) to idea of the market entertained by the so-called ‘austrian economists’ (e.g. von hayek), for whom it is a ‘free nexus of impersonal communication and exchange’ (lubasz 1992). 8 as humphrey has convincingly demonstrated about the situation in moscow during the early 1990s, traders here ‘live[d] metaphorically in a different layer.. society was unprepared for morality, let alone legality, in this sphere’ (2002: 61). my point is that the same was the case about the ‘public’ spheres of the mongolian market during the same period with the only qualification that there was nothing metaphorical about this marginalization. 9 the unmistakably patriarchal form of such patronclient arrangements notwithstanding, it is a fact that women are increasingly dominating mongolia’s markets. accurate statistics are hard to come by, but the previously mentioned ilo survey suggests that more than 70% of the people working on ulaanbaatar’s markets are women (morris 2001: 65). these figures are supported by my own experiences, both in the capital and in rural areas (see pedersen 2006). apart from the fact that the vendor position is symbolically marginal, this development is likely to be related to the fact that the government’s structural adjustments seems to have made many femaledominated professions, in particular, redundant. as morris also notes (2001: 37), mongolia’s ‘informal sector’ is awash with highly educated people (25 % have a university degree), many of whom seem to be female graduates from obsolete marxist disciplines. ‘after all’, as one middle-aged female trader sardonically put it, ‘what use do i have these days for my doctorate from moscow in planned production?’ 10 a clear ranking of goods can be identified at every mongolian market. along with electronics and various wholesale products (such as flour and rice), both of which require a lot of capital to trade in, the upper echelons of this hierarchy are occupied by other expensive and/or symbolically significant goods like silver-lined saddles and antique silver knives. at the bottom end, conversely, one finds a range of goods which are considered to be cheaper and of an everyday nature, such as matches, cigarettes, kitchenware and so forth. 11 i.e. ‘the people of the övgön’. övgön means old man, but here refers to chinese vodka, whose small plastic bottles used to have the shape of an old man, complete with long beard and wooden stick. as the cheapest drink available, övgön was popular among alcoholics in the 1990s, but has now been made illegal as it supposedly causes blindness. references astuti, r. 1999 at the center of the market: a vezo woman. in lilies of the field: marginal people who live for the moment. s. day, e. papataxiarchis & m. stewart, eds. pp. 8395. oxford: westview press. bawden, c. r. 1986 the modern history of mongolia. london: kegan paul international. bulag, u. e. 1998 nationalism and hybridity in mongolia. oxford: clarendon press. burawoy, m. & verdery, k. 1998 uncertain transition: ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world. oxford: rowman & littlefield. campi, a. 1996 nomadic cultural values and their influence on modernization. in mongolia in transition: old patterns, new challenges. o. bruun & o. odgaard, eds. pp. 90-102. london: curzon press. carrier, j. g. 1997 meanings of the market: the free market in western culture. oxford: berg. comaroff, j. & comaroff, j. 1998 occult economies and the violence of abstraction: notes from the south african postcolony. chicago: american bar foundation. deleuze, g. & guittari, f. 1999 a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. london: the athlone press. gell, a. 1999 inter-tribal commodity barter and reproductive gift exchange in old melanesia. in the art of anthropology: essays and diagrams. pp. 76-106. london: the athlone press. giddens, a. 1991 modernity and self-identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. hohnen, p. 2004 a market out of place? remaking economic, social, and symbolic boundaries in post-communist lithuania. oxford: oxford university press. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 71 humphrey, c. 2000 an anthropological view of barter in russia and how is barter done? the social relations of barter in provincial russia. in the vanishing rouble. p. seabright, ed. pp. 7190. cambridge: cambridge university press. humphrey, c. 2002 traders, ‘disorder’, and citizenship regimes in provincial russia. in the unmaking of soviet life: everyday economies after socialism. pp. 69-98. ithaca: cornell university press. humphrey, c. 2002 creating a culture of disillusionment: consumption in moscow, a chronicle of changing times. in the unmaking of soviet life: everyday economies after socialism. pp. 40-67. ithaca: cornell university press. humphrey, c. & sneath, d. 1999 the end of nomadism? society, state and the environment in inner asia. cambridge: the white horse press. konstantinov, y., kressel, g. m. & thuen, t. 1998 outclassed by former outcasts: petty trading in varna. american ethnologist 25(4): 729-745. lattimore, o. 1962 inner asian in frontiers in china. boston: beacon. lubasz, h. 1992 adam smith and the invisible hand of the market? in contesting markets: analysis of ideology, discourse and practice. r. dilley, ed. pp. 37-55. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. mandel, r. & humphrey, c., eds. 2002 markets & moralities: ethnographies of postsocialism. oxford: berg. morgan, d. 1987 the mongols. oxford: blackwell. morris, s. 2001 the informal sector in mongolia. ilo: bangkok. nazpary, j. 2002 post-soviet chaos: violence and dispossession in kazakhstan. london: pluto press. pedersen, m. a. 2006 where is the centre? the spatial distribution of power in post-socialist rural mongolia. in mongols from country to city: floating boundaries, pastoralism and city life in the mongol lands. o. bruun & l. narangoa, eds. pp. 82109. copenhagen: nias press. pedersen, m. a. in press tame from within: landscapes of the religious imagination among the darhads of northern mongolia. in the tibetan-mongolian interface. u. a. bulag & h. diemberger, eds. leiden: brill. sanjdorj, m. 1980 colonial rule in northern mongolia. urgunge onon, trans. london: c. hurst and company. sneath, d. 2006 transacting and enacting: corruption, obligation and the use of monies in mongolia. ethnos 71 (1): 89-112. szynkiewicz, s. 1993 mongolia’s nomads build a new society again: social structures and obligations on the eve of the private economy. nomadic peoples 33: 193. volkov, v. 2002 violent entrepreneurs: the use of force in the making of russian capitalism. ithaca: cornell university press. vreeland, h. h. 1962 mongol community and kinship structure. new haven: human relations area files. wheeler, a. 2004 moralities of the mongolian ‘market’: a genealogy of trade relations and the zah zeel. inner asia 6 (2), 215-38. sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 17 economic and trade borders: the case of the reni district, ukranian bessarabia vsevolod samokhvalov research fellow at the international center for black sea studies, greece & oleg samokhvalov head of the socio-psychological service of reni district, ukraine the reni district (rayon) is situated in the southeast of the odessa region (oblast), at the juncture of three states (moldova, ukraine and romania) and just a few kilometers from the confluence of the prut and danube rivers. the district is part of the greater region of bessarabia that used to be an arena and object of conflict between the various powers that had been fighting for domination on the northern black sea coast over the period of many centuries. therefore, the whole course of the history of the reni district represents an odyssey for the border town of reni (the provincial district’s capital) in this disputed area. the aim of the present paper is to analyse how the history of bessarabia influenced the fortunes of the town, situated on a border of this region. the paper focuses on the main historical processes which have shaped bessarabia (changes in border configuration and inclusion and exclusion of bessarabia from different state projects), and in particular, reni; how these changes have influenced the character of the reni district, its production patterns and the trade activities of local entrepreneurs, as well as the ethnic and civic selfidentification of the district population. historical background the border nature of the area can be understood by providing a short historical overview of the region that in recent times has been known as ‘bessarabia’. the first references to this area are in herodotus, who visited the ancient greek colony of olvia and described this region (istoria moldavii, 1951). yet, the first written references concerning the region demonstrate that the wider northern black sea region, including the danube, was a border zone between the hellenic ‘civilization’ and the ‘barbarian’ scytian tribes in the 6th-2nd centuries b.c. the interaction between the two worlds frequently revolved around two traditional forms, i.e. initially trade, and later on, war. the scythians attempted to interfere in internal affairs and later on to conquer hellenic colonies located on the south black sea coast. they also clashed with the ancient thracian tribes and the macedonian kingdom in the south-west. in the first half of the first century b.c. a big area stretching from today’s czech republic to the black sea coast was dominated by a major union of tribes of gets and daci who were forced to join forces in order to resist the expansion interests of the roman empire (istoria moldavii 1951:29). the confrontation between the romans and daci continued until the second century a.d., when dacia became a roman province after two trojan campaigns (nakko 1875:478-479). the border character of the province was demonstrated by the construction of roman defense installations—widely known as trojan walls—in the lower danube region. later on, in the time of the goths’ domination of the area, a settlement, daciporta, was founded and after the romans destroyed the aforementioned settlement, they founded the armium settlement. in the middle ages the area of present day ukrainian bessarabia was a frontier of slavic space; it was part of the main old slavic state kievan rus and afterwards of the south-western slavic galytskovolynske principality (10-11th centuries). the southwestern area of the slavic space was actually a border zone between the slavs and the byzantine empire. later on, in the 14th century, bessarabia was incorporated into the moldavian principality that was in the 16th century conquered by the ottoman empire. the first written references concerning the reni settlement are dated to this period (1548). the etymology of the town’s name comes, most likely, from the old slavic word ‘ren’ – meaning wharf or pier. in the 16th century, reni belonged to the moldavian principality. in 1621, the ottoman sultan osman renamed the town ‘tomarovo’ (nakko 1875:478-479). the area of reni was actually a distant province of the ottoman empire bordering the expanding russian empire. the colonization of the region started in the period of the russian-turkish wars—under the reign of catherine the great—in the late 18th century. according to the articles of the kuchuk-kainardji peace treaty (signed in 1774), the protectorate of the russian empire was set over the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 18 principality of moldavia and valakhia. some of the orthodox and slavic subjects from the ottoman empire started to seek asylum in these areas. the inflow of bulgarian refugees came from the right bank of the danube river and in 1791, the village of anadol (since 1947-renamed dolinskoe) was founded by moldovan peasants. later on, in the times of the greek revolution, a large number of greek colonists made reni their final destination. however, during the 18th19th century reni passed from russian to ottoman sovereignty and back again several times. on the 27th may 1812, according to the bucharest peace treaty, bessarabia, and in particular reni, became part of the russian empire, thus becoming a border region of the russian empire. the colonization of the newly conquered and underpopulated region was set as a high priority in the agenda of the russian monarchy, which did not hesitate to invite a number of foreign peasants from the balkan areas of the ottoman empire and europe to settle the area. they were encouraged to do so through the incentive of being granted significant plots of land16. during this period several villages were founded in the adjoining areas. in 1812 immigrants from moldova founded fricatsey village (since 1947, limanskoye) while bulgarian colonists founded the village karagach (since 1947, nagornoye)17. in 1813 the village satul nou (since 1947, novosel’skoye) was founded by bulgarians, who were later jointed by moldovan settlers. in 1814 the village kartal (since 1946 – orlovka) was founded by bulgarian settlers and later on also settled by moldovans. in the same year another village, barta (since 1947, plavni), was established by bulgarian migrants18. the russian tsars paid special attention to the development of the town and port of reni to further develop the area and to ensure, via danube shipping, russian access to the balkan and european markets, as well as to trade routes on the black and mediterranean seas. the foundation of the port in reni in 1816 also boosted the economic development of the town. in 1821 the settlement received town (gorod) status. in 1827, it had 2,290 inhabitants, of which 12.6% (285) were russians, 22.4% (524) ukrainians (referred to as malorosy), 30.3% (688) moldovans, 13.8% (314) greeks, and 5.8% (133) jews. the inflow of jewish migrants took place after the russian-turkish war of 1806-1812. they controlled the major part of trading activities in the city19. ten years after the port was founded, 22 ships used port facilities. they flew the following flags: russian – eight, turkish – two, british – eight and ionian – four. in 1830 a customs service was established in the town. despite the fact that in the first decade the trade turnover was not considerable and consisted mainly of exports of tobacco, wine, cereals and spices20, reni started to acquire features of an urban centre. reni was not only a relatively large settlement surrounded by several villages, but also a significant trade, transport and production centre. the number of craftspeople in the town had increased from 40 to 150 (bakers, butchers, tailors, shoemakers, stove-setters, harness-makers, carpenters, dyers, soap-boilers) in the period 1828 to 1844. in 1856, three brickyards, four soap and wax factories, mills and distilleries operated in the city. according to the articles of the paris peace treaty, southern bessarabia was returned to the moldovan principality in 1856, which later united with valakhia into a political union and proclaimed the romanian state in 1861. however, in 1878, the border of the russian empire was partially restored in the aftermath of a russian-turkish war, and in this part of bessarabia the new izmail district (uezd)—a separate administrative and territorial unit—was established21. the return of the town under the aegis of the russian tsar had a certain impact on the economic development of the district. new efforts from saint-petersburg were aimed not only at encouraging the development of the district, but at further incorporating reni into the imperial economic complex. in 1877, a special railway line ‘renibendery’ connected the district with not only other districts in bessarabia, but also with other provinces in russia. that had a positive effect on the development of the port of reni. active trade with the black sea and balkan ports developed. the relatively small firm of duke gagarin which initiated river transportation was transformed into the major ‘black sea-danube shipping company’ in 1866. in the latter part of the xix – early xx century, southern bessarbia experienced an explosion in economic growth. according to the census of 1897, the town of reni numbered 6,941 residents. two thousand, five hundred and eighty six of them considered russian, ukrainian (referred to as malorussky) or byelorussian as their mother tongues, 2,612 – moldovan, 730yiddish, 650 – bulgarian, 103 – turkish, 75 – polish, 29 – german, 35 specified other languages22. in 1913, 100 trade enterprises were based in reni with an annual trade turnover of more than 200 thousand rubles. in 1913, the port of reni processed 105 thousand tones of cargo, of which 92 thousand were for export. in 1913, reni numbered 10,500 residents. however, the ethnic composition of the city had changed: moldovans constituted 38% of the total population, russians 37%, jews 10.5%, bulgarians 9.3%, greeks 9.3% , turks-tatars 2%, poles 1.1% and others 0.4%23. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 19 the vast majority of the population was employed in the port and accompanying enterprises (packing houses, shipping yards, coal and wood stores), the railway station, saw-mill and brickyards. a much smaller number were self-employed in gardening and track-farming. however, more than 400 of the latter had a supplementary salary (selfemployed), providing transportation services from the town to the port24. we can conclude that russian colonisation shaped the region of bessarabia, including reni. on the other hand the process of colonization of the russian south was closely connected with the balkan policies of saint petersburg. targeting an expansion into the balkans, the russian government officially encouraged trade with balkan nation states. in this way it not only shaped the region of bessarabia, but also its close economic and societal links with the motherland of the respective local populations in bulgaria, romania, greece. therefore, one could suggest that the ethnic mix of the local population in new areas of the empire served to weaken existing borders, with the silent approval of saint petersburg. after wwi, on the 12th of january 1918, reni became part of romania. this had a negative impact on the development of the port; for while the area remained predominantly a producer of agricultural products for the market of romania, reni could not compete with the larger and more closely situated romanian port of galati, which enjoyed preferential treatment by the romanian government.25 despite the fact that during romanian rule the region transformed itself from a priviliged borderland into a disadvantaged periphery, the local population supported close relations with their relatives in romania. thus while the port of reni declined, the incorporation of ukrainian bessarabia into romania siphoned off an increasing amount of local agricultural produce into the romanian market. as one of the witnesses states: “we always traded with galati, under the russian tsars and later when the romanians came”26. therefore, one could conclude that regardless of the official policies towards the port of reni, the local rural population maintained a unity in the region through strong economic bonds; this was possible partly as a result of a weak state and administrative border, partly through deliberate refusals to honour the borders. soviet rule and qualitative changes in the status of reni the arrival of the soviets in the town on the 26th of august 1944 flagged an epoch of qualitative changes in the status and nature of the town and district of reni. due to its location on the danube, the port was a crucial strategic transport link between the ussr and other socialist states. special attention was paid to increasing transport capacities of the railway station and the port, the latter upgraded to an “exceptional category”27. while in 1945 the port was processing 225 thousand tonnes of cargo, in 1963 the volume increased to 3985.5 thousands tonnes, 18 times as much as in 1945 and 2.5 times as much as in 1953. the level of mechanization of the embarkingdebarking process increased from 25% (1945) to 42% (1946), and reached 96% in 1977. the reni railway station acquired strategic importance as the town became the final transit point of soviet cargo into comecon states. in the height of its activity, the reni railway complex processed up to 40 thousand tonnes of cargo on a daily basis28. the railway complex included several railway terminals which extended to a distance of 20 kilometers: ‘renipassenger’ terminal, ‘reni-port’ (where the loading of goods onto barges took place), ‘reni-pouring’ (where tank-wagons were being filled with exported oil), ‘reni-locomotive depot’, ‘reni–wagon depot’, and three more auxiliary terminals as well as a number of special infrastructural supports. at the beginning of the 1960s steam-engines were substituted by diesel traction and reni was ranked as an exceptional complex for its capacities29. the incorporation of reni into the economic complex of the russian empire continued. reni changed from a provincial town into a cosmopolitan city: foreign seamen in the streets were a common picture, builders from bulgaria and yugoslavia, constructing pipelines or high voltage electric pipelines or building blocks of flats, became temporary residents of reni and the surrounding villages. together with the high frequency of foreign vessels, the number of marriages also increased between local women and bulgarian, yugoslav and hungarian seamen. in the period of 1961-1989, this number was 25 marriages annually30. another factor that contributed to the eroding of ethnic and purely local (bessarabian) identities amongst reni district residents was the integration of the local population into the soviet societal complex. most of the graduates of local primary schools left the city for studies in higher and technical education institutions in odessa, izmail and chisinau, where they were trained mainly in the spirit of the soviet intelligentsia—the language of instruction was russian. many of them found jobs in odessa and izmail establishing new patterns for career development that will be examined below. despite the fact that russians continued to constitute a significant part of the population of the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 20 district, this did not have a negative impact on interethnic relations. there are several reasons for this. first, soviet “national cadre policy” designated special quotas of communist party positions for representatives of the local population. “national cadre policy” was fully applied when filling reni district communist party committee positions. one of the three secretaries of the committee (as a rule the second secretary) was a representative from the local population. the same rule was applied in all the daprtments of the district party committee where 5-6 employees in each department were moldovan, bulgarian or gagauz (usually one or two were chosen from each group). however, this rule was not applied while filling vacancies in the port and the railway station, because these were strategic enterprises and top managers were nomenclature from the republican ministry of transport, which promoted russian or ukrainian candidates. since bessarabia was a part of the ukrainian soviet socialist republic, high managerial and district communist party committee positions were nominated from kyiv and filled mostly by ukrainians who numbered 16.5% of the total population in the reni district. while technical and engineering staff in the railway complex and port were usually russians (18.3% of the population of the district), the main managerial positions in rural areas of the district and middle rank managers in the town were filled by representatives of national minorities. middle rank mangerial positions, as well as small and medium enteprise manager positions were open to locals. moreover the image of “the russian man” held positive associations by virtue of the fact that russians lived as “next door neighbors” with the local population for centuries. furthermore, the official soviet policy that aimed at creating a new community of ‘soviet’ people, meant that ethnic differences were considered to be of secondary importance. with the inclusion of bessarabia into the soviet union the process of the collectivization of villages was launched and completed at lightening speed. while in 1946 only 2.7% of the district’s agriculture was collectivized, in 1949 this number increased to 91.3% (in 1947 it was 24.1%, and in 1946 it was 56.7%). in this period the stalinist measure concerning the transformation of all ethnic groups of the ussr into one “soviet people community” was also implemented—in part through the translation of all village names from their original names (which identified the ethnicity origins of their founders) into russian. the collectivization and integration of the district into the centrally planned economy resulted in the creation of new trade patterns. a significant volume of agricultural production—up to 70 thousand tonnes of cereals, 15 thousand tonnes of milk, 12 thousands tonnes of meat annually—meant that reni became a supplier of agricultural products for the odessa region and ukraine. moreover, the warm climate of the south odessa region allowed the reni villages to specialize and to produce agricultural products thart were rare in other parts of ukraine (e.g. the village of nagornoye had been producing onions for central and northern ukraine, while novosel’skoye– sweet peppers and aubergines). some of them exported honey, nuts and sunflower seeds abroad. the collapse of the ussr and changes in the economic and trade patterns of the district after the collapse of the ussr and in the course of the last 15 years, the general situation in the port of reni can be summarized as one of decline. the port—which used to be an important transit link between the soviet republics of central asia, russia and europe, and connect europe to the black sea and middle east—has lost a major segment of its freight. this is partly due to the collapse of economic ties between the ussr and its former satellite-states and partly as a result of romania actively promoting the operation of the chernavoda—constanta channel— the shortest artificial water way that connects the danube to the black sea. further, following the collapse of the soviet union, one of the most important elements of the reni transport complex, the railway connection with odessa, was cut off, since several kilometers of this railway crosses the territory of the new independent country of moldova. customs fees, delays due to prolonged bureaucratic procedures and a high level of corruption have all resulted in the decrease of clients using railway transportation from odessa and chishinau to reni. it should be mentioned that the port was mainly export-oriented in the soviet times. therefore, breaking off transport and trade routes with the rest of the ussr had resulted in a considerable decrease in the workload of the port. at the same time, the romanian port of galati has grown in importance because the navigable sulinskoye arm of the danube delta is situated in romanian territorial waters31. several years after the collapse of the ussr, ukraine attempted to address the railway isolation of the reni port. special ukrainian-moldovan negotiations on border issues resulted in a compromise according to which moldova made concessions to ukraine of several kilometers of the railway line ‘odessa-reni’ and ukraine in exchange provided moldova with several anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 21 hundred meters of the danube bank, where moldavia started the construction of its own port. this new project will provide moldova with access to the danube river while the port will provoke further competition between moldova and ukraine and make their cooperation less and less feasible. the yugoslav crisis also caused serious damage to the ukrainian danube shipping company due to the embargo of cargo from/to/through the yugoslav part of the danube river. for the same reasons, the operation of the reni railway complex faced a dramatic decrease in traffic and was forced to cut its operating capacities, mainly in terms of human resources. reni has not recovered from these events. according to some analysts, the port, as well as the railway complex, are using only 15% of their operational capacities. for comparison, the port once received huge inflow investments of more than 1 billion dollars. in the course of the last 15 years, reni has been reduced from a strategic transition centre at the crossroad of several routes, to a town/administrative centre of a rural district with little international activity. the social consequences of this process are reflected in table iv which reveals the population change in the reni district between 1989 and 2001. the main reason for the decrease in urban population—14% (3,186 people)—was the crisis in port and railway complex activities. the outflow of population, mainly of port and railway workers has led in turn to an increase in the township’s poverty. it has also negatively affected the rural areas of the district which used to supply agricultural goods to reni. the outflow of population from the rural areas is not that high but still noticeable—5% (1,026 people). the ethnic structure of the outflow demonstrates that since 1989 it is mostly russians who have left the area. the number of moldovans in the district has also decreased by 3.7%, ukrainians by 1.1%, russians 23.9%, bulgarians 12.2%, gagauz by 17.9%. however, russian intelligentsia and engineering staff constitute the largest percentage of those who have left reni. (see table v). this outflow should be understood as one based on economic, rather than political reasons. it is worth mentioning that those representatives of the russian-speaking intelligentsia or engineering staff who left the reni port or railway complex did not necessarily return to russia. many preferred to be relocated to other areas of the odessa oblast, where similar capacities provide more opportunities for employment—the port of izmail, odessa and so on. on the other hand, migration patterns of a number of local ethnic groups from rural areas present an interesting picture and are discussed below. migration patterns from the reni district during the last decade, the agricultural collectives in the reni district have also passed through a structural crisis. according to the head of the directorate for agriculture in the state administration of reni district, i.g. koval’zhi, the main reason for this crisis is the disintegration of the kolkhoz and sovkhoz. these were large, mechanized and well equipped agricultural producing complexes, which used to carry out the full circle of agricultural production. a further reason for the crisis is the disorganization evident in agricultural planning, in support and the production of agricultural goods32. for the time being, kooperativnye sel’skokhoziastvennye predpriatiya (cooperative agricultural enterprises), created to substitute the previous agricultural organizations, have not managed to establish efficient cooperation structures and ensure the effective management of the chains of production in ukrainian agriculture. on the other hand, the formation of farm enterprises has been delayed due to the lack of progress in the introduction of the private ownership of land. this delay stops the formation of fullyfledged farm businesses, at the same time prolonging the rudiments of the kolkhoz regime. institutional uncertainty in agricultural production, as well as obsolete equipment and techniques, restricts villagers’ commercial working of the land to the small plots of land attached to their houses (approximately 600 square meters in size), not allowing the development of the other 3.5 hectares that they own. in these small household plots, peasants produce dairy produce for the whole district population and one half of the meat foods for the whole district. however, to overcome the crisis the agricultural sector needs serious investment for the melioration of the soil, fertilizers, new techniques and equipment. as peasants have no means to achieve such capital, the trend for migration continues to be an important phenomenon in the rural areas (see table vi). migration is a response to economic conditions. immigrants leaving the villages of the reni district do not necessarily head for their historic motherland. of the 280 departures from the moldovan village of orlovka, 100 peasants left for russia (moscow, saint petersburg); 50 for italy, spain, and portugal; 15 for turkey; and 10 for france and germany33. most of the pupils who leave to study in romania insist that the main reason for this decision is the better economic conditions in anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 22 romania: scholarships, accommodation free of charge, and more opportunities for further employment34. at the same time, there is a steady outflow of youngsters to other urban centers—mainly izmail and odessa—for studies and employment. more than 70% of the residents of another village (kotlovina) have left for turkey and russia for temporary employment, while others are leaving for other areas of ukraine and frequently establish their residence there. more than 80% of moldovans leaving their villages, as well as bulgarians from nagornoye, migrate to odessa, kyiv and russia. a frequent visitor to russia narrates that “there is an entire colony of gagauz from kotlovina (in the reni district) now living in saint petersburg carrying out the most difficult jobs—loaders, layers, builders35. economic conditions, therefore, determine the migration of ethnic groups from ukrainian bessarabia to the west and to the east. the ethnic minorities of the southern odessa region, moldovan, gagauz or bulgarian, have found their economic and social niches in odessa, kyiv, even moscow. cooperation structures in ukrainian bessarabia and the participation of the reni district from the time that economic integration in post-soviet was suddenly destroyed and reni was marginalized from previous soviet trade routes, the new local and national leadership has been searching for ways to include reni in the complex of international cooperation. as a result, euroregion (er) “lower danube” was founded in 1998. the er “lower danube” includes the border areas of romania, moldova and ukraine. in the process of founding the er, experts identified the common problems faced by the “lower danube”: poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation, lack of adequate health care, illegal activities, trafficking and migration. several meetings that involved the heads of police and military structures were held in the framework of the er. the er has also launched a tacis project named “business infrastructure of the odessa region” which ran until july of 2005. a part of the project involved opening ‘the agency for trans-border cooperation’ in reni. it is hoped that a network of organizations will remain in reni to contribute to the development of democracy and market economy in the district. among the joint projects, the municipalities of reni (ukraine) and galati (romania) developed a program on the “joint study of social-economic development of galati and reni, the preservation of an environment and transport system”. the development of trans-border cooperation will include the construction of an 8-lane highway ‘galati-reni-odessa’ a constituent part of the european transport corridor № 7. its approximate value is 880 million usd. the project also foresaw the construction of an international airport and a power plant. in order to boost economic development in southern areas of ukraine, the local leadership lobbied for the founding of a special economic zone (henceforth sez) focused on the reni port. the sez was established as ukraine law on the 23rd of march 2000 “concerning the special economic zone, reni” foresaw the establishment of simplified customs and tax regimes for a period of 30 years. eventually, the main goal of the sez was to attract foreign investment, and boost trade relations and local entrepreneurial activities. with this goal in mind, containers that arrive at the port of reni are not subject to taxation and customs fees and all the income received from the investment projects on the territory is subject to 20% tax. also the ferry boat line ‘reni-ruse’ was launched which was part of four transport corridors. simultaneously, several investment projects were launched in the sez “port of reni” including the “proceeding soy” (25 million usd), a russian-ukrainian project “reni-forest” (2.4 million usd) and so on. millions of tonnes of sapropelic, marl, drinking water, and possibly natural gas and oil deposits are to become the raw material base for the implementation of future projects in the reni sez. the sez is incorporated into a triple special economic zone network which consists of three national special economic zones – those of reni (ukraine), giurgiulesti (moldova) and galati (romania). according to the mayor of reni (in 2005), serghey kolevich, the development of regional cooperation structures in southern bessarabia will demand the establishment of new opportunities for social and economic development, what he calls ‘sociopolis’. sociopolis is the close connection between social-economic structure and a certain territory. such a structure should contribute to the formation of a new socialized economy, bear special legal status and be targeted towards the promotion of advanced sustainable development. in the reni district the idea was realized in the project of “sociopolis reni-dolinskoye-limanskoye”. the concept of sociopolis, elaborated by leading ukrainian specialists, foresaw the production of electronic systems, attracting know-how and information technologies, and increasing labour productivity to ensure high competitive potential for the district, including it into a global production complex. the aforementioned trade initiatives, if properly realized, would produce positive effects on the border of ukrainian bessarabia. encouraging anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 23 business activities (if these prove profitable) would increase the general public awareness among the neighbors of ukraine across the danube, much like the situation in the early 1990s when the sovietromanian border was opened for free passage and thousands of soviet people from all the parts of the ussr crossed into romania. this mass crossing was accompanied by a boom in trade and other exchanges. these projects would gradually make borders more transparent for the three partner countries. the removal of administrative barriers at the border would lead to an increase in all kinds of trade activities (legal, semi-legal and illegal) and other exchanges. based on new trade links, informal contacts could grow into regular communication paths which in turn would facilitate the return of historical memories, the renaissance of a cross-border consciousness reflecting the cultural commonality between the two banks of the danube river. therefore, if succesful, those cross-border cooperation projects could turn around a region in decline. however, despite the best intentions, most of the designed projects did not produce the expected results either at the local or at the regional level. the aforementioned business projects launched in the framework of the trans-border cooperation “lower danube” euroregion and sez structures were mainly bilateral or even unilateral initiatives carried out by large-scale enterprises, which could hardly influence the structure and character of agricultural production at the local level. they could not hope to seriously boost trans-border trade since they involved specific producers frequently outside the district, and were aimed at taking advantage of the preferential taxation and customs regime which had nothing to do with cross-border trade. therefore, while structures for trans-border cooperation were established, they hardly influenced local production or the trade patterns of local farms or small urban enterprises. further, the major local enterprise of the reni district—its port—now has competitors on the romanian (galati) and the moldovan (giurgiulesti) sides. this situation does not contribute to the development of trans-border cooperation. amongst the reasons for the failure of transborder cooperation projects, local officials identify the lack of political will by the national and regional leadership to invest in such projects; the ukrainian political elite view trans-border cooperation in ukrainian bessarabia more as a headache or even as a potential threat for the integrity of the country, rather than as an opportunity for economic development. trying to reinforce the borders of ukrainian bessarabia, regional authorities prefer to encourage trade within the region, for example, with odessa. with such a goal in mind they promoted specific projects such as the “renaissance of the region”, which foresaw special treatment for agriculture producers who come to the odessa markets from distant districts. the lack of support for sez by the high level political elite of ukraine was evident in the decision to abolish the state administration of the sez in early 2004. following this, one of the first actions taken by the new president of ukraine, president yuschenko, was to abolish sez. he argued that it did not produce added value for cross-border trade and only served as a tax evasion for entrepreneurs. another serious hindrance to launching effective trans-border cooperation between the reni district and moldova/romania is the fact that productive relations in reni during soviet times were oriented towards different agricultural enterprises. peasants in local villages will hardly be able to start exporting meat or milk to moldova or romania, while they can easily sell it at the local market or transport their goods to odessa. a similar logic is valid for vegetable production which is profitable while sold in ukraine but less so when exported to romania or moldova. the level of rural production in ukrainian bessarabia has not been developed to such a degree that it could seek new markets and export opportunities. perhaps the only example of cross-border trade between moldova and ukraine is a regular (weekend) inflow of traders from the moldovan side of the border to various towns and cities in ukrainian bessarabia: reni, izmail and odessa. these shuttle traders try to sell their dairy, vegetables, fruits and other agricultural products in ukraine: a move resulting from the fact that the average income in the urban areas of ukraine—and so prices for agricultural production—are much higher than in moldova. such individual trading activities encourage the formation of cross-border trade. however, while agricultural production in moldova remains dependent on small individual plots, the supply of agricultural produce to the market in ukrainian bessarabia is negligible and often of an illegal nature. 36 thus all the aforementioned projects, while supported by local enthusiasm, have not changed local trade patterns or improved the economic situation in ukrainian bessarabia, which for the time being remains one in decline, a far cry from its once important geostrategic position as a major soviet port. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 24 conclusion bessarabia is a historic and cultural region, which has been a border zone between the russian and the ottoman empires from ancient times. due to this position, the area was either the arena or the object of numerous clashes between major forces, often from neighbouring powers. until the 20th century, frequent changes in border configuration due to power shifts, as well as massive population migrations, contributed to weak borders in the region. state borders divided bessarabia in various ways, including and excluding different parts, as for example, between moldova and ukraine which were administrative borders during the russian empire, then republican during soviet times and later on state borders in the post-soviet realities. moreover, policies by the russian empire aimed at the colonizing of its new areas encouraged mass migration across the rivers danube and prut. territorial conflicts, imperial expansionist policies, as well as the resulting and frequent changes in the border configuration, made the enforcement of the borders of the region difficult. the situation changed dramatically in the 20th century. the cold war was not primarily a conflict for territories, as much as a conflict of ideologies for the perception of nations. the “cold war” in europe did not result in serious and frequent changes in borders. in bessarabia, the internal conflict between the two socialist states, ussr and romania, made it difficult for any border crossing to take place and the respective states discouraged significant cross-border contacts. moreover, following the logic of communist ideology aimed at the creation of a single soviet people, the communist regime divided soviet bessarabia into two uneven parts, the moldavian soviet socialist republic (moldovan bessarabia) and southern districts of the odessa region (ukrainian bessarabia). despite the fact that the administrative border between the two parts was transparent, with no physical borders erected, an economic division was created by this administrative partition. while moldavian bessarabia remained mostly a rural economy with an assigned agricultural production for the ussr, ukrainian bessarabia was incorporated into the soviet industrial complex and was assigned a transport function. unlike many other border regions of the soviet union which preserved their historic integrity (e.g. western ukraine or the baltic states), bessarabians did not maintain associations with the totalitarian polity of ceausescu in romania. therefore, in the wars of ideologies, the bessarabian border town of reni (a town with its own ethnically rich character), lost its historic link to romania and associated itself more with moldova and even more so to the soviet union. after the collapse of the ussr, the administrative divisions resulted in the two parts of the single historic region of bessarabia becoming two different states, the republic of moldova and ukraine. this also initiated the decline of the port of reni and its railway station, so degrading mainstream economic relations. since the collapse of the soviet union one can witness a revival of trade patterns between ukrainian bessarabia and moldova. peasants from moldova ignore existing borders and try to sell their products at markets in ukrainian bessarabia – reni, izmail and odessa. these illegal traders, who cross the ukrainian–moldovan border and sell their products on the territory of ukrainian bessarabia, actually follow old trade patterns which existed in 19th century, reviving in this way the old notion of the bessarabian region. however, while in 19th century the local farmer could transport significant amounts of produce by carriage unhindered by any border, today the pauperized villager has to carry a dozen kilograms of meat or milk travelling by train or bus through the border between ukraine and moldova in order to survive. this is not an easy journey and it emphasizes more than anything else the economic decline of bessarabia since soviet times. the situation will remain grave while the local rural population is deprived of any opportunities to own considerable plots of land that would allow production to increase beyond survival levels. moreover, attempts to reunite the region met with the following obstacles: different economic and trade patterns by the two separate parts of bessarabia; lack of skilled and dedicated personnel; and the internal political agenda of the new leadership of ukraine, which tried to unite the new nation at the expense of regional unity. the division of bessarabia was not overcome after the collapse of the ussr. the division between ukrainian and moldovan bessarabia has in fact deepened. the same process is likely to unfold on the ukrainian and romanian border after the accession of the latter to the european union in 2007. the introduction of the schengen regime, single external trade tariffs and quotas, amongst other measures, which are likely to be applied by the eu in order to prevent illegal migration, smuggling and trafficking in human beings, will act to reinforce the existing romanianukrainian border. on the eve of its new enlargement, the eu should pay special attention in order to avoid creating new dividing lines in europe. to this end, special measures should be taken by the european institutions in the framework of the european anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 25 neighborhood policy of the eu towards ukraine. priority in future cooperation should be given to the establishment of: inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic reconciliation and cooperation; trans-border cooperation; raising public awareness and civil society development; and reforms to education. if properly implemented these measures can ensure not only the successful development of trans-border cooperation in ukrainian bessarabia, but also a successful transition for the societies of the region. notes 16 it is worth mentioning that the task of colonizing the northern black sea regions novorossiysky kray – was assigned by the russian tsars to their most outstanding russian empire dukes: gr. potemkin and m.s.vorontsov. 17 a village with the same name still exists in bulgaria, in the province of varna. 18 entsyklopediya bolgaria, 1986: 447-448. 19 batyushkov, 1892. 20 statisticheskoye opisanie bessarabii, tak bazyvamemoi ili budzhak (statistic description of bessarabia), 1899. 21semenov, 1899. 22 pervaya obschaya perepis’ naselenia rossiyskoy imperii, 1905. 23 iz donesenia pomoshnika nachalnika bessarabskogo zhandarmskogo upravlenia na pogranihnom uchastke v gorode reni (from the report of the deputy head of the bessarabia gendarmerie in the reni border department), f.297, d.1. 24 iz donesenia pomoshnika nachalnika bessarabskogo zhandarmskogo upravlenia na pogranihnom uchastke v gorode reni (from the report of the deputy head of the bessarabia gendarmerie in the reni border department), f.297, d.1. 25 one interpretation for the indifference displayed by bucharest towards its new territory is that the ussr never officially succeeded this region to romania (a point backed up by the soviet maps produced between 1918 and 1944 which did not recognize the area as romanian territory). other histories contest this interpretation, arguing that bessarabia was indeed important to romania and one of the main reasons the latter joined the war in 1941 against the soviet union. 26 interview with the widow of a major bessarabian farmer, elena syrf, 23 june 1998. 27 all the ports of the soviet union were ranked according to the volume of cargo they were processing. any port that processed more than 10 millions tonnes of cargo annually was considered an “exceptional category”. 28 interview with the engineer of reni railway station v.f.lobayev. august 1999 29 yunkevich, 1962: 275-275; annual report of the reni trade commercial port, 2003. 30 interview with an anonymous officer of the reni district registry office, may 1994. 31 this aspect of danube shipping is closely connected with the recent international dispute between romania and ukraine. kyiv launched a project designated to break the romanian shipping monopoly on the danube delta – digging works for a canal that served to deepen another of the danube’s branches – bystroye. this provoked harsh criticism from the romanians, as well as numerous environmentalist organizations, who argued that it had a negative impact on existing flora and fauna on the delta of the river. the european commission intervened with a call to ukraine to stop digging until a special independent review could be conducted on the possible impact of the project. ukraine has complied and postponed the project. for further information see the website of the delegation of the european commission in ukraine, www.delukr.cec.eu.int. 32 interview, 5 january 2005. 33 interview with a member of orlovka community council, 11 january 2005. 34 zerkalo nedeli (weekly mirror newspaper), 4-10 november 2000. 35 interview with the shuttle trader yuri kopeyko, 15 january 2005. 36 a regular observer narrates “each saturday morning, at approximately 10.00 am, moldovan peasants reach reni by the “reni-chishinau” train. each of them brings between 15 and 20 litres of milk or sunflower oil, brynza or 20 kilograms of grapes, peaches. they spread carrier bags in front of the entrance of the reni central market and sell their products to market buyers. they remain at the entrance because they can not afford to pay the fees for the market place, which can amount to one half of their daily profits. often we chase them away. many relocate to the crossroads a hundred meters away from the market place or move from one block of flats in reni to another offering their produce to local inhabitants”. interview with an officer of the reni militia department, 3 august 2002. http://www.delukr.cec.eu.int/� anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 26 references udaltsov, a.d. & l.v. cherepnina.(eds.) 1951. istoria moldavii, (history of moldova), chisinau, gosuchpedizdat, vol. i. “bessarabar newsletter“, edit. p.a.krushevannik, moscow, 1903. vladimir georgiev, et al. (eds.) 1986. entsyklopediya.bolgaria, publ. bulgarian academy of sciences, sofia, vol.v. 1899. statisticheskoye opisanie bessarabii, tak nazyvaemoi ili budzhak (statistic description of bessarabia), akkerman: akkerman local council. 1905. pervaya obschaya perepis’ naselenia rossiyskoy imperii, goda. iii bessarabsiaya guberniya (first general census of the russian empire 1897, iii bessarabian government), saint petersburg 2003. annual report of the reni trade commercial port 2003. reniysky vestnik (“reny herald” newspaper), 4 march 2003. 2003. reniysky vestnik (“reny herald” newspaper), 4 march 2003. 2001. odessa regional statistic directorate, all ukrainian census file. perstneva, n. 2000. “ukrainskie moldavane predposhitayut uchitsa v vuzah rumyniy”, (moldovans of ukraine prefer to study in higher education institutions in romania), zerkalo nedeli (weekly mirror newspaper), 4-10 novermber 2000. batyushkov, p. n. 1892. bessarabia. istoricheskoye opisanie (bessarabia. historic description), saint petersburg . nakko, al. 1875. istoria bessarabii s drevneyshix vremen (history of bessarabia from the ancient times), odessa, vol. i. semenov, p. p. 1899. zhivopisnaya rossiya (picturesque russia), part ii., saint petersburg. yunkevich, v. 1962. dunay i dunayskoye parohodstvo (danube and danube shipping), “sea transport.” table 1. population changes in reni district analyzed for each administrative-territorial unit1 population numbers decline in percentage 2001 1989 total population of the district 39903 44115 90,5 urban population 20481 23667 86,5 rural population 19422 20448 95,0 villages novosel’skoye 3583 3350 107,0 limanskoye 3190 3302 96,6 orlovka 2980 3083 96,7 nagornoye 2592 3063 84,6 kotlovina 2570 2854 90,0 dolinskoye 2552 2644 96,5 plavni 1955 2132 91,7 anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 27 table 2: dynamics of population changes analyzed for the main ethnic groups in the reni district2 table 3: migration from villages of the reni district3 1 reniysky vestnik (“reny herald” newspaper), 4 march 2003. 2 reniysky vestnik (“reny herald” newspaper), 4 march 2003; odessa regional statistic directorate, all ukrainian census file, 2001. 3 interview with the head of the department of internal policy of the district state adminsitration, v.i.diachenko, and with the heads of the community councils of the villages nagornoye and dolinskoye. number of residents in the district percentage of the total district population decline in percentage ukrainian census of 2001 ussr census of 1989 moldovans 19938 49,0 46,9 96,3 ukrainians 7196 17,7 16,5 98,9 russians 6136 15,1 18,3 76,1 bulgarians 3439 8,5 8,9 87,8 gagauz 3216 7,9 7,6 82,1 belarussians 164 0,4 0,6 66,9 germans 36 0,1 0,1 94,7 romanians 36 0,1 0,1 armenians 32 0,1 0,1 tatars 31 0,1 0,1 83,8 poles 31 0,1 0,1 96,9 other 425 1,0 0,7 147,8 village number percentage of village’s population kotlovina 209 8 orlovka 280 9 nagornoye 150 6 plavni 70 3,5 novosel’skoye 30 1 limanskoye 279 7 dolinskoye 469 18 75 god's russian experiment: hope in the wake of deconstruction of gender and religious identity clementine creuziger, us naval academy umom rossiiu ne poniat' arshinom obshchim ne ismerit': u neii osobennoya stat' v rossiiu mozhno tol'ko verit'. f.1. tiutchev (1864) at a recent gathering, in response to american tourists and businessmen complaining that russians just simply don't seem to care about helping their society as a whole to develop economically, elena f., an actress from st. petersburg replied: 'it's not that we don't care, but when it comes to making a difference, russians are ambivalent or fatalistic. our approach to life is guided by the maxim of "avos'"". when asked to define the term "avos'", elena said that she could only describe it by way of an example: 'russians don't worry about whether or not a certain number of people will fit into an elevator, they simply step in and wait to find out". not just elena, but scholars of russia since the 19th century have commented on this notion of "avos'". scholars have gone further to link "avos'" to russians' lack of sense of cultural or national identity and have faulted russians for taking on other nations' identities in search of their own. in this paper, i suggest that quite to the contrary of the view that russians lack a cultural identity, russians' common identity can be found in such notions as, for example, "avos", suffering and finally, victimhood. such concepts are not results of a lack of culture and national identity, but are rather linked to russia's deep-rooted sense of identity, an outcome of a series of historical events and socio-political climate. in the following pages, we will analyze the term "avos'" as more than simply ambivalence or fatalism. rather, we will come to view it as deeply linked to a feeling of victimization or even "victimhood", as an inevitable experience of russian life which entails the experience of "terpenie" (patience) and 'stradanie" (suffering). however, unlike previous 76 western scholarly examinations of "avos", "terpenie" and 'stradanie" which saw such notions as hindering russian social progress and development, we will find that these terms contribute to the development of society by evoking a sense of communitas, thereby liberating the individual in times of economic and political turmoil. this paper relies on information from the fields of history, literature and philosophy as well as ethnographic data collected from 1991 to 1997. a discussion of the background to the notion of "avos"' and common suffering will lead into a brief review of debates among russian philosophers and social thinkers on the subject of russian culture. these debates will ultimately help to formulate an understanding of the commonalities among russians in their belief in being a chosen peoples and on russian culture in general. a particular russian perspective on these themes will be depicted through personal memories of russians interviewed, poetry and prose. finally, this paper hopes to enlighten readers on the value placed on a common russian "stradanie" and notions of victimhood. background when asked to describe what is russian, citizens of the former soviet union inevitably will remark that russia has lost her identity, that the only russia one can speak of ended in the 19th century. men and women alike commonly enjoy describing the two centuries prior to the revolution as a period of high culture and education. yet, travelers and scholars have noted a general sense of fatalism even during the 19th century. travelers visiting russia in the 1800's commented on the fundamental attitude of "avos"'. dillon (1892) tried to define the term as a fatalistic attitude basic to russian behavior. he, like many people today (including elena, mentioned above), was not satisfied with a simple definition of the term, turning instead to proverbs for explanation. proverbs he used to describe "avos'" include: "if a dog is to be beaten, there will be no lack of sticks" or "what is to be cannot be avoided" and finally, "sin and sorrow overtake all alike" (dillon 1892: 102). this final proverb is just one example which demonstrates that avos' is more than just ambivalence or a fatalistic attitude, but incorporates a certain degree of suffering. western social scientific scholarship has often referred to russia's sense of common guilt and suffering which originally sprang from the judeo-christian theme of redemptive suffering 77 (billington 1992: 42). furthermore, it has been linked to the notion that russia has been chosen by god to be "the third rome" or arguably "the new israel' (rowland 1996) and that "russia is destined by her muscovite past to behave in certain ways' (rowland 1996: 591). while the socalled "expected behavior" of a chosen people remains unclear, the fact that 1. they need to embody spirituality and 2. they acknowledge being chosen, do appear as imperatives. it can further be argued that such common beliefs form one basis for a common sense of cultural and religious identities. the subject of russia as chosen remains fraught with inconsistencies and has been argued as counterproductive to understanding a culture due to resulting stereotyping of an entire nation.' nonetheless, the behavior of a "chosen peoples" has continued to be analyzed as a significant component of a nation's national character. berdyaev (1874-1948) is one such philosopher criticized by modem russian philosophers for his tendency to type russian personality (lossky 1951: 247). while in scholarship berdyaev is often denounced, among laymen berdyaev is widely read and seen as a conveyer of russian identity since the breakup of the soviet regime. according to berdyaev, russians hold in common a characteristic known as "yurodstvo" or "being a fool for christ's sake, accepting humiliations at the hands of other people... " (berdyaev 1948: 5). he explains this characteristic, along with others, as developing out of russians' double faith or "dvoeverie" which berdyaev simply defines as "a combination of the orthodox faith with pagan mythology and folk poetry" (berdyaev, p.5) dvoeverie allows for both the veneration of the motherland and that of god. yet, in the end, mother earth is strongest: "the image of christ, the image of god, was overwhelmed by the image of earthly power" (berdyaev, p. 7)'. men and women alike felt bound to nature's cycles and celebrated. 1. this argument is especially strong in the context of national character studies as conducted by anthropologists during world war ii and on. 2. western scholarship by such authors as hubbs (1988) explains more precisely that yurodstvo or "holy foolishness" originated in the north and northeast russia, where the "volkhvy" were in power with the varangian rulers. according to hubbs: 78 the fools assumed the kenotic role once occupied by the princes... the narod through its holy fools reminded both church and state of their lapsed duties... (hubbs 1988: 193) the yurodivye combined in their appearance and behavior "a christianized continuation of pagan shamanic practices" (hubbs 1988: 193). their deep connection with the earth's suffering through ritual songs and celebrations. petrov den', for example, was celebrated by women prior to the harvest. it was also called the stradnaia pora or "time of suffering' symbolizing "their own hard labor and that of the grain cut and "killed by scythes" (hubbs 1988: 79). earthly suffering is thus seen as part of fate bestowed upon russians, a fate which needs to be tolerated. berdyaev goes on to explain how tolerance of suffering lead to a "messianic consciousness" among russians, a consciousness which sprang form the ideas of a monk, filofei of pskov, who declared the russian tsar a christian tsar. moscow thus became known as the third rome (berdyaev, p. 8). beginning with the notion of "yurodstvo" and developing into the notion of moscow as the third rome, russians, according to berdyaev, came to see themselves as chosen to serve in the name of god (berdyaev, p. 10). while the fact that russians have in the past considered themselves a chosen peoples remains, berdyaev's particular analysis of how russians came to see themselves as chosen has been argued extensively (see rowland 1996). regardless of how russians view themselves as chosen, the notion that being chosen is somehow interconnected with russians' fives as at the mercy of fate, is reflected in much of 19th and early 20th century literature. this fatalistic attitude and "avos'" is fundamental to literary and philosophical portrayals of the russian character and soul. perhaps most accepted by russians as defining the russian persona is goncharev's novel oblomov (1859). in this work, the hero, oblomov, is depicted as dreamy and unable to cope with the harshness of reality (terras 1985: 178). he is a man who would rather let fate take its course than act in any way to change the state of affairs. russians reading this novel quickly came to see themselves reflected in this character and "oblomovism" became the term used to describe russians in general. oblomovism and the role of fate, while naively viewed as a hindrance to personal and social development, may also be seen as a positive force, for in russians common fate is embedded the russian life, the spirit of the culture. as tyutchev so eloquently describes, one can only believe 79 in russia, even if at times she seems incomprehensible. a belief in a russian soul, in mother russia, hope that she will not fail her people, these are the ideas that unite russian communities and give rise to a cultural identity. from avos to victimhood: the loss of religious and gender identity today, as russians are experiencing uncertain times in terms of social, economic and political development, russians find themselves returning to the ideas of 19th century russian philosophers. while in scholarship, notions of any one common russian character are generally shunned, among laymen, such notions offer a sense of security and one which unites russians from the most disparate backgrounds even as émigrés in foreign countries. while the russians interviewed do acknowledge a notion of avos' as perhaps one characteristic attitude, they are eager to support the claim that an acceptance of fate does not necessarily mean a blind acceptance of fate. as billington points out: 'in the soviet union, where both the guilt and the suffering have been greater and more long lived, repentance has provided a rediscovered theological dimension for freeing people to consider an altogether different future" (billington 1991: 42). on the one hand, what emerges among many russians is a social consciousness, an awareness of the harshness experienced as well as an overwhelming feeling of victimization. on the other hand, it is a feeling that furthermore unites russians, offering them an avenue for self-definition in a time when little else unites them. billington points out that: 'out of the shared suffering that resulted from the atomization of society and degradation of morality under totalitarianism has grown a sense of common opportunity in the reassertion of small human communities gathered around shared spiritual ideals" (billington 1991: 42). this common historical consciousness i call "victimbood”, is a notion which envelopes russian communities, allowing for the definition of a common identity and further providing ground for personal and communal development. victimhood in its purely negative sense, is not one which is easily accepted as a necessary part of life. rather, it is in its more positive sense of common suffering, of commonality, that it leads people to move on to political and social mobilization. in the following pages, i will show through excerpts from a collection of life histories, how victimhood is in fact felt, digested and expressed in contemporary russia. many of the accounts quoted 80 throughout this paper have been selected not simply for their factual renditions of experiences, but also for the mood they evoke. it is my belief that, deeply embedded in the experience of victimhood is a feeling, an attitude or a common way of expressing the actual events. much like geertz' notion of ethos (1973), it is the mood, created by the style of rendition that unites people in their self-definition. i begin with a quote by a leningrad blockade survivor: in front of me lie the photographs of my former days, dim and grey, yellow at the edges due to the years. on one there is a girl... she is eight.. on (her) feet the (girl is) wearing stockings and sandals. i look into the face of that girl in an awkward white hat which resembles half of an egg shell, and i cannot see myself in her. between us lies an entire life, but i pity her in a few days she has to go to school... and this school, to which their little girl oliusha will go, is not very good .. i feel especially sorry for her because she has to leave the countryside for the city, a city which is so new and frightening to her, as is the school. throughout her life, this girl will change, she will come to know her surrounding world, she will search for friends, she will learn to live among people and to work, she will grow up and grow old, and only then will we meet. can i really talk for her and about her? have we not grown apart in time? i close my eyes and i feel how my feet slide around inside those sandals due to the corns on my old toes; ... i'm already not so scared. i remember, remember everything about her! most importantly, however, i must not confuse where she is and where i am (creuziger, 1996: 2-3). in her memories of the leningrad blockade, olga nikolaevna and her peers describe the period under stalin and sovietization as marked by their losses. to olga, this period was not only a social change, but also a personal one; one in which her rural childhood became urban, individual freedom became social slavery and with that, her vision of the purity of human existence was transformed to an experience of human decay and war. the romantic novels and poetry that nurtured her intellectual curiosity in her country village as a child were to be abandoned in the new urban school she describes with contempt. paralleling these personal changes were changes in her environment and education. as she describes: 81 by september 1, my mother, my brother and i had moved to leningrad, having left our dog, kashtanka, and cat, vasya, with father at irinovka. in the city, there was a strange smell of strange food, smoke and metal. nights i was kept awake by the rumblings of carts on the cobblestone streets. with my head all wrapped up, i would cry, remembering irinovka. mother gave me valerian, but nothing could mitigate the hatred i felt for this frightening city. moreover, i had to go to school and get used to a whole new way of life... there was only one book for all subjects which was called "sssr na stroike” (the ussr under construction). it was very big, with thick pages in a red cardboard binding, and tied in the front with white ribbons. and oh, what it contained! wild poems by proletarian poets which we were forced to learn, such as: stuchu, stuchu la molotkom i strike, i strike with my hammer verchu, verchu trubu na lome, i turn, i turn the pipe i otgovarivaetsia grom at the crowbar/ and from v vozdukhe i v kazhdom dome it resounds thunder/ both in the air each home this went on for two pages of rhythmic idiocy.... and that after i had been used to pushkin, tyutchev and pleshcheev!…” (creuziger, 1996: 7-9). experiences like olga's of sovietization have been described in great depth by many survivors to evoke feelings of pity. contemporary poet natalya gorbanevskaya has, as have many other poets, memorialized the experience to further show the harshness of life under soviet rule: 82 we won’t argue. an extra million condemned, tortured, battered, is no more than a number. the million tears haven’t flowed together, haven’t caused a flood, and haven’t thawed the permafrost…(gorbanevskaya in smith 1993:109) in this poem, gorbanevskaya underscores the suffering and losses of an entire nation. she furthermore points out how these memories continue to live in the soul and tears of russians, much like a permafrost takes over land. indeed sovietization, while defeated in 199 1, continues to influence the lives of people to this day. the memories live on. to both the spiritual and secular, this period often seems inexplicable. to many, the suffering by far outweighs any potential social benefits of the soviet regime and war which, in the end were not obtained anyway. those who do not consider themselves religious may lament their godless existence as yet another loss experienced under the soviet regime. forced to ignore religious readings, these people were merely made aware of the existence of religion; enough to evoke curiosity and make them wonder whether they were being deprived. a woman remembers: “we did learn the prayer "our father” and occasionally we were taken to the village church at least to receive the eucharist... (my parents) did not dare totally renounce their faith. on this weak religious foundation, it was easy to accept later anti-religious teachings in school... ' (ibid., p. 5) whereas the secular feel deprived of potential spiritual satisfaction gained by religion, the religious have explained this depravity of not being allowed to revere god as part of the experience of a chosen peoples. rather than lament the lack of religious knowledge which prevents them from living out the teachings of the bible, they have come to perceive their forced ignorance as a possible message from god himself. to these people, the russian experience is a lesson to the world of the evil that subsides in all of us and of the potential harm that may come of such evil. as one man explains: "we are god's experiment to show the rest of the world how not to live" (creuziger, p.209).' to those who see the soviet regime as the victimizer, sovietization as a period, has come to symbolize more than suffering. from a wider perspective sovietization has come to represent the deep sense of victimhood felt by those who see their lives as stripped of their culture, their heritage, religion, education, and on a more personal level, their self. besides religion and education, people also feel deprived of fully experiencing their self: their individuality and even 83 their gender. women especially over the past few years, have voiced the perceived stripping of their feminine identity during and after world war 11. contemporary writer marina palei has been noted for her social commentary on the sexlessness that was imposed on women under soviet domination. for example, palei is quoted by one scholar, heaton, as evoking the "harsh soviet way of treating sex" (heaton 1997: 75). palei writes: "all these exemplary model wives and bashful housewives are just as intractable [...], cold and businesslike in their intimate lives as they are at the meat counter' (in heaton, p.75). under the soviet regime, sex appeared as a "social and civic duty" (in heaton, p. 75), women became subservient martyrs, as described by a.n. tolstoy in his "russkii kharakter' (1972) (in heaton, p. 75), thereby ignoring all sense of feminine pleasures. olga nikolaevna, like a.n. tolstoy, in her memoirs, ignores any mention of a coming of age, of a first love, or of any issues a young girl may encounter in her formative years. 3. even those who do not lament the loss of culture, religion or personal fulfillment under the soviet regime still feel victimized: their victimhood is now. these are the women and men who long for a return to the soviet lifestyle. while they do not identify with victimhood under sovietization, they do join the cultural lament that victims, they are-only for them it is under the "criminal regime" of capitalism. instead, she stresses the complete absence of gender differentiation among the children at that time: girls were not differentiated from boys, and the schools simply did not (observe) the difference in gender, even though the norms in sports were lower for girls. society now viewed femininity as an old (outdated) emphasis and unnecessary. brave, agile and fearless girls 'patsanki' were valued. to speak of or even dream about a family, marriage or children was considered improper (ibid., p. 44). contact with ones feminine side was felt to be an unfortunate occurrence. the natural thus seemed unnatural, the pure impure and the self one knew as a woman appeared as an ogre. such was the perception one group of children had of their teacher who came to expect a child. as one of the children, now a grandmother herself, recalls: 84 pregnancy slowly weakened her demanding formality and even her posture became "nonpedagogical": she would lounge instead of sit, holding herself up on her elbows, would walk with a heavy gait, like a duck. her hair hung straight. we noticed all this and were surprised at how she changed and (we) did not approve of her behavior. finally she hid for a long time. many of the memoirs collected completely ignore the transition of girl to woman. according to the accounts, girls during the blockade, for instance, experienced natural phenomena of womanhood such as menstruation and pregnancy as negative or burdensome. the sense of victimhood is perhaps strongest among women who share in the belief in fate. francine du plessix gray captures the gendered view many women hold which masks fatalism with a belief in biological determination. as one of her interviewees claims: 'for we are biologically determined to think about domestic issues, about nurturing others...' (gray 1989: 193). according to gray's subjects, because the soviet regime did not allow women to follow their predispositions, women cannot be happy (gray, p. 192). today, women feel that through their forced ignorance under the soviet regime, they missed their coming of age. it should be noted however that the strong sense of being deprived of ones femininity is a response by those who were able to, in fact, preserve a sense of femininity in the face of harsh times. ironically, the very circumstances to which olga attributes the deprivation of her femininity have forced her to reflect upon it in a way that a girl growing into womanhood under gender conditions might not have. this paradox extends to the relationship between russians and their 'lost identity" in general: the sense of a lost identity can only spring from a sense of identity (creuziger, pp. 63-64). bulat okudzhava, bard singer and poet, neatly condenses this russian ethos in his poem "to the memory of a.d. sakharov" (in smith, p. 37) in which he describes the hope that arises out of a peoples' willingness to suffer and die together: when a speech begins, saying that spirituality has been lost, that the way for people from now on lies through darkness, in their astounded eyes and in their souls, a holy readiness to go forth and perish trembles like a new flame. 85 and this is not delusion or error, it is the genuinely proud flame of a bonfire, and in this just flame a smile of hope comes over pale lips, and conscience is keen. their midnight silhouettes scare one with their enigma. of fortune you mustn't ask; she keeps her secrets. and it's too early yet to relish sweet victory, it's still a long way to dawn... and my heart aches. as people acknowledge their fate of common suffering, their plight inspires hope and fear in one. through a shared experience of victimhood, which is defined by its nature to inhibit personal growth, russians have found a venue for reflexivity and have arrived at a social consciousness that now allows for self identification both on personal and cultural levels. references berdyaev, n. 1948. the russian idea, new york: the macmillan co. billington, j. 1991. russia's fever break, washington, d.c.: the woodrow wilson international center for scholars. creuziger, c. 1996. childhood in russia: representation and reality, lanham: university press of america. geertz, c. 1973. interpretation of cultures. new york: basic books. hubbs, j. 1988. mother russia: the feminine myth in russian culture. bloomington: indiana university press. lossky, n. 0. 195 1. history of russian philosophy, new york: international university press inc. riha, t. ed. 1969. readings in russian civilization, volume 2, chicago: university of chicago press. rowland, d. 1996. "moscow the third rome or the new israel" in the russian review, ohio: the ohio state university press. smith, g. 1993. contemporary russian poetry. bloomington: indiana university press. terras, v. ed. 1985. handbook of russian literature, new haven: yale university press. 55 anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 interview with katherine verdery yuxin hou, city university of new york introduction katherine verdery is the julien j. studley faculty scholar and a distinguished professor of anthropology at the graduate center of the city university of new york. since 1973, she has conducted field research in romania, initially emphasizing the political economy of social inequality, ethnic relations, and nationalism. with the changes of 1989, her work shifted to problems of the transformation of formerly socialist systems, specifically regarding changing property relations in agriculture. from 1993 to 2000, she conducted fieldwork on this subject in a transylvanian community; the resulting book, the vanishing hectare: property and value in postsocialist transylvania, was published by cornell university press (2003). she then completed a large collaborative project with gail kligman (ucla) and a number of romanian scholars on the opposite process: the formation of collective and state farms in romania during the 1950’s. the resulting book, peasants under siege: the collectivization of romanian agriculture, 1949-1962, was published by princeton university press (2011). professor verdery’s teaching interests include contemporary and socialist eastern europe, and the anthropology of property, time and space. her most recent project takes off from her secret police file, which she received from the romanian government in 2008. using it, she has written her field memoirs from the vantage point of the police who followed her. the book will be published in 2018 under the title my life as a spy: investigations in a secret police file. family background and education yh: where are you from? kv: i was born in bangor, maine in the us but my parents moved from there when i was six months old, so it's not home for me. yh: how did your parents influence your academic life? who had the biggest impact on your personality and career choice? kv: when i was born, my father was working for a company called goodyear tire which made and distributed tires. then he went to work for a subsidiary of theirs, where he was basically a salesman/junior-executive, but he didn't like that. he had majored in music in college and he liked to play football, so he had initially arranged a job for himself teaching in a private boys’ school, and that’s what he should have done. he ended up as a real estate agent in massachusetts; that's what he did until he died. my mother didn't finish college initially: she went to radcliffe college for two and a half years but then dropped out to get married. when she was older (i was 8-9 years old), she went to college again to complete her ba and later became an elementary school teacher. she did that for maybe 10 or 15 years and then decided that she really wanted to stay at home and so she ended up as a housewife. yh: do you think that your mother or father had a greater impact on your future academic orientation, or do you think academia was just your personal decision? anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 56 kv: well, my mother's father was a college professor so she was always very respectful of that, and she placed a lot of importance on the intellectual life even though she herself had not chosen it. she was always reading books, a lot of nonfiction. so when i started being a good student, both of them encouraged me to keep that up and then go to college, and after that to graduate school if that's what i wanted to do. but my mother’s contribution was actually much more concrete because when she went back to school to finish her college degree, she had to take a distribution requirement in social sciences and she picked the introduction to anthropology. she loved it and she was always talking about these interesting things. she was learning and telling us all kinds of things and so i decided that i really wanted to find out more about this subject, so i took anthropology my first year in college and i never stopped. yh: so your mother had greater impact for the future? kv: correct, but my father was very appreciative of my interest in continuing in the academy as well. i mean he was not really a business man; he had artistic and intellectual interests. yh: how was the environment where you grew up in terms of diversity, politics, and culture? did your political and social environment make you think about society? kv: i don't think i thought too much about that at the time but i was impacted by my mother not being born in the us: she was a british citizen, born in trinidad. my family moved quite a bit—that's another characteristic of anthropologists—so you have to keep getting used to new people and you often don't get attached to one specific place. so those were important contributions towards my future. yh: as far as your education, which part had the most crucial impact for your future as an anthropologist? kv: when i was finishing high school, i had a teacher who talked about this reed college, which was a very progressive place without fraternities, sororities or a football team—i thought all of that stuff was pretty superficial. so, i decided to apply there and it turned out that they had a good anthropology major with three really good professors. and so i did my major and took some courses in sociology as well (i applied to other schools but reed was the one that i was most interested in because it was just quirky and i thought it would be interesting.) then in my junior year, i was pretty much thinking that i wanted to become a psychiatric social worker or a counsellor. i had an aunt who did this kind of work and i thought that maybe i could do that. my anthropology and sociology professors, however, were saying that i was good at this stuff and i shouldn't waste my time with social work but instead should go to graduate school. i never had intended to go to graduate school initially. i just sort of stumbled upon it through the encouragement of these professors. i didn't have any better ideas, so i applied to graduate schools and got into several and decided to just keep going and see where it leads. i think my intellectual formation was almost solely in graduate school as i didn't take the direction suggested by any of my undergraduate teachers but found my own way. one professor who was very influential on me was g. william skinner, who worked in china. in my first year, i had a core course with him which helped me decide that i wanted to think about politics in settings outside of the us. i've essentially been conducting political anthropology. i was also influenced by professor jane collier who had just moved from graduate school into her first job at stanford. she was and still is a brilliant thinker; i had many conversations with her. those two were the biggest influences on me. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 57 yh: pertaining to your phd work, how did you first become interested in romania? kv: when i look back on myself in graduate school, i really didn't know what i was doing much of the time. i had spent a summer traveling around in wales and scotland with some money that i got from the woodrow wilson foundation, and they seemed like interesting places. then i spent a summer doing research in greece on an island out in the aegean sea. it also seemed very interesting, but what i preferred about scotland and wales was the feeling of their being marginal to powerful political and economic centers in europe. based on this, i figured i would go to the side of europe between western europe and the soviet union, but i didn't really have a specific project that i wanted to work on. i just wanted to go somewhere less travelled and see what i could figure out. i had a colleague in graduate school who came into my office one day with a big map of eastern europe; we sat there looking at all these place names and trying to figure out how to pronounce them and wondering what was going on over there. somehow, i developed an affinity for these places and decided that i would go there. i picked romania solely because it was the only country that was actively welcoming to anthropologists at the time as the other east european countries—some of which were having internal problems, and some of which were much more closely aligned with the soviet union— didn't want americans coming in and seeing what they were up to. romania, however, said that anthropologists were welcome. the romanian government and scholars thought that americans would come and prove that romanians settled in that space since time immemorial, disputing hungarian territorial claims . anthropology and sociology yh: what do you think about the relationship between anthropology and sociology in the united states? kv: well, i have a problem with that because my first course in anthropology was a combined course, an introduction to anthropology and sociology, and when people were lecturing, i didn't always differentiate which field they were covering. i have always had a kind of sociological approach to anthropology, and that, i think, contributed to my relatively bad field work initially—i just wasn't all that effective at asking people questions. but what i most appreciated in sociology was the capacity for a broad sweep in thinking about history. two sociologists whom i greatly admire, norbert elias and charles tilly, do this particularly well. i think few anthropologists have that besides them or eric wolf, but for sociologists, that's a part of their stock-in-trade. i think qualitative sociology has being getting more attention than the method of questionnaires, which i really have very little patience for. i don't think that kind of survey research tells you very much. generally i have thought of the principal difference between anthropology and sociology as being a difference between capital-intensive and labor-intensive research. when you conduct a sociological survey; you have to pay more people— research assistants and so on. if you are an anthropologist, you get out there and talk to people, but it’s time-consuming. the original difference was that most anthropologists worked primarily in the third world and sociologists in the first, though that has changed. yh: in my research, i’ve found that globalization and modernization have greatly impacted anthropology. for example, some anthropologists choose to do fieldwork in cities on urban anthropology or other more specific tops and some sociologists now travel to remote areas to do fieldwork. do you think the relation between anthropology and sociology should be very close, or that should each try to find its own specificity or arena? anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 58 kv: a very old friend of mine is a sociologist named andrew abbott, who is now teaching at the university of chicago, and he has a book called chaos of disciplines (2001) in which he talks about interdisciplinarity and disciplinarity. he has a great deal to say in connection with questions about disciplinary identity and interdisciplinary cooperation. but the most basic notion is that in order to have interdisciplinarity, you have to have disciplines, and that having people come together with different orientations to the world is useful and productive but nonetheless requires specific disciplinary training in order to be effective. not everybody would agree with that but i thought it was an interesting perspective. yh: regarding methodology: most anthropologists conduct research using qualitative methods and sociologists using quantitative methods: how do you think about the two methodologies and interactions? kv i think some combination is good. i always find that it's helpful to frame my problem into a larger context, and that usually involves references to work in sociology and political science and to some form of quantitative results. on the whole, i think that the more useful kind of research product is one that develops a sense of how a specific social process or set of processes work themselves out in a specific setting or group of nested settings. fieldwork and academic research yh: during your academic life you have been to romania many times: do you think there are some differences when you go back to the field each time? tell me your feelings about revisiting your fieldwork. kv: the person who's done the longest fieldwork in anthropology is elizabeth colson, who consistently traveled back and forth for 60 years or so to certain places in africa. i made a number of friends in my first years of fieldwork and they seemed to be interested in my friendship and so, i would always be very happy to see those friends and to develop more friendships. in this village, everybody basically knew who i was and most of them would be welcoming if i showed up on the doorstep wanting to talk. in successive projects, i narrowed my circle of people but had nonetheless maintained long term relationships with people by the time i started working on property restitution. it seems to me that this was a great asset not to be squandered. i like these people and i was able to do more sophisticated work with them because they had given up trying to push me aside or tell falsehoods and so on. yh: during this kind of fieldwork, you must have encountered some challenges. how did you strive to be a part of the community where you worked? kv: i never thought i was just like them, but i certainly tried to narrow the boundaries separating us. the biggest challenge was one that i wasn't even aware of at the time: the presence of secret police surveillance, which i may have assumed was there but preferred not to dwell on. the rumour circulated that i was really a spy, and several years later when i returned for a longer visit, people would mention the secret police following me, or something of that nature. in 2006, at the suggestion of a romanian scholar, i applied to see my secret police file from the communist period and was granted permission. it's huge, almost three thousand pages, so i read through it and then considered challenges to my fieldwork that i hadn't understood at the time. for instance, i had never realized how closely they were following me or how much they were interfering with my friends. thus, in retrosopect, that posed a major obstacle for my continuing to feel this sort of warm and fuzzy feeling towards anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 59 romania and my romanian friends when it turns out that a number of them were reporting on me as informers. but i think aside from that challenge, the most significant one if i take a view from a distancewas that when i started out, i was mostly interested in theory and only scarcely interested in data. i was interested in world systems theory, in central place theory. thus there was always some kind of theory driving my research interests. but after the 1989 revolution in romania, i felt as if i had lost my tools because i had been developing an analysis centered around socialism. i thought that the best thing i could do would be to go back and study whatever was relevant to people on the ground and to not worry about theoretical relevance. my research improved because people were genuinely excited about what i wanted to discuss with them. letting myself be driven by my environment rather than by a theoretical agenda was really positive for my work. yh: i’ve noticed that you have published a lot of articles and books, most of them related to romania. which book is the most important for you, and what's the most important finding from your research? kv: i think my best book is the vanishing hectare (2003), which is about property restitution after socialism in a romanian village where i had previously worked. the fact that i had known people there for a long time helped me a lot with that book. i was much better at doing ethnography; i thought of interesting ways to approach problems, and i think it was partly because i went there with relatively few theoretical blinders to govern my research and instead got into talking to people about what was happening. i think that book is an important contribution to the anthropological study of property and to the study of the privatization of socialist property. when the book came out, this was not a widely covered subject, especially not in the countryside. i don't think in terms of “findings” there was so much, but i suppose if i had to just distill it into a short sentence, the most important lesson that i try to present was that all of the economists and politicians attempting to create private property were working with an ideological notion of property and hadn't a clue how to actually create private property. they thought that you could just create private rights and then have private property. what i found in my discussions was that having formal rights as property owners was practically useless if the government wasn't also making it possible for them to cultivate the land that they had received: they needed to have subsidies and agricultural credits, and they weren't being given either of those in any substantial measure. without those, working the land wasn't meaningful to them. for them, the idea of a meaningful relationship to the land was a relationship of what they call mastery—that one can organize production on their own field, that they can receive the inputs that are necessary for it, and that they can produce a result that is worthy—and everybody was having a lot of trouble doing that. so for them, that meant that private ownership was relatively problematic. it wasn't what they were expecting. yh: did you conduct any comparative research between romania and, for example, china? kv: i’ve always just gone back to romania, but i did read some things about china. i was interested in china because of bill skinner, a sinologist, who was one of my main influences. he wrote these fantastic articles about social structure and marketing in rural china that i found really fascinating. but i generally feel that you have to be able to speak the language well; i speak romanian very well but i wasn't going to start over again on chinese. i did try to learn some hungarian with an idea of going to hungary but then i decided not to. at the end of the 1980’s, i had written a second book about romanian national ideology, and it was pretty clear to me that it was not going to go over well with the authorities. so at that point i was considering where else i could go if i wasn't able to come back here. i was thinking about anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 60 the moldovan republic in the ussr, where i would have the basis for the language and the basis for comparison with a completely different state form. but, with the end of the romanian regime, i didn't do that. yh: so, language has been very important for your fieldwork? what do you think about multisited fieldwork? kv: i think linguistic competence is important and if you arrive already endowed with several languages, or manage to pick them up, you can do very interesting comparative work. in general, i think comparative work is useful; it's very important in helping us understand how something takes certain forms and not other forms. but i'm not really a fan of multi-sited ethnography that goes from one place to another, flitting here and there and settling down only for a few weeks and doing your questions with people wherever they happen to be. i think you have to spend a lot of time in one place to be able to say anything meaningful about it. in that sense, i tend to be a bit skeptical. yh: i know that bronislaw malinowski has been a major influences on your work. how do you think about his contributions and controversy about him? kv: when i first studied malinowski, i was really bored. and when i read argonauts of the western pacific (2014), i was concerned by its length, and i never imagined that i would be making any significant use of him in my life. but when i came to do this property book, i began teaching coral gardens and their magic (1978) and i became a big fan. i just suddenly realized how extraordinary brilliant he was (he was certainly very brilliant in argonauts as well but i wasn't interested at the time). i even have a quote from malinowski in the the vanishing hectare (2003), and would never have expected that earlier in my life. i think he was a very complicated person, as many of us are, and there were lots of ways in which he could have benefitted from a shrink. but he seems to have had a tremendous vital energy, which must have been appealing in some way to a number of the people he met in the trobriand islands, because he got such extraordinary material in such abundance and he was able to use this material in a remarkable way. yh: before his sudden death of a heart attack, he wanted do fieldwork in mexico. kv: yes. this was the second time that he had been displaced by world war. he had come here to be a visiting professor and wasn't planning on staying in the us, as i understand it, but he couldn't go back, so naturally, it was very hard on him. yh: what do you think about the publication of a diary in the strict sense of the term (1989)? kv: it was in 1967 and i was not yet in graduate school when that happened—i was barely in college. we didn't really talk about it in my college training. i was in graduate school from 1970 to 1977. it came up in our theory course, and the professor said any kind of fieldwork is extraordinarily draining on the fieldworker, especially when you are the first in a place where you don't have language and you don't know anybody and you're trying to make a space for yourself. you really don't understand yet that some people lose their composure and say nasty things about the locals. i certainly had my times of feeling extremely off-put in my excursions in romania. so my particular graduate training didn't place much emphasis on malinowski’s diary. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 61 yh: many critics of malinowski accuse him of lacking consideration for history. what do you think is the importance of history in anthropology? kv: all of my major monographs are a combination of history and anthropology. initially, i was mostly using history as a means of understanding the forces that shaped the situation that i was examinining in the field, and that is an important way consider it. but i also think that learning something about historical methodology helps one think more deeply about field work as a method. i think that anthropology and history should work in conjunction, and i have tried to make that my practice. yh: you have been teaching for many years. what do you think about the change in the academic training and the academic environment for anthropology? do you think are there significant changes in students’ training and in fieldwork methodology? kv: i've never taught courses on anthropological methodology, but when i was a graduate student we had no course like that. there was no course in field methods and i think that was a big mistake, so our program here tries to help students develop tools for understanding ethnographic methodology with a variety of courses. the program at michigan had something similar. at johns hopkins, where i worked before, we didn't really have a field methods course either. i think it’s important to undertake some degree of philosophical questioning of the nature of the knowledge that anthropological field work can produce, so that should be part of their training as well. interviewing as a style of work is not all that easy. i often will get emails from prospective students or somebody from another university saying ‘i'm going to romania next month and i want to do some work with the gypsies, can you give me some ideas about how to do that?’ and i often don't write back at all, because i don't see why i should be writing them a field manual. but it is also difficult to learn how to conduct interviews. i'm still not a great interviewer but it's really difficult. some people think that you can just interview without considering power relationships between the interviewer and the interviewee or whether the interviewer is pushing an agenda more so than hearing what the interviewee wants to say. it’s very important to reflect on these kinds of methods in an extended way and through course work. yh: some chinese anthropologists put their personal fieldwork stories together into a book to talk about culture shock. were there some impressive stories in your fieldwork? kv: well it's very difficult for an american to go do research in the third world just as it is for a person who is han chinese to go and work with minorities in china. i remember becoming friends with a peasant woman in the village i was working in. i used to stop by her house now and then just to say hi and to see what she was up to. one time i went there and her sister-inlaw was putting cups on her back. i didn’t know what this was; her back was exposed and the sister-in-law would take a stick with cotton at the end of it, dip it in some alcohol, light it on fire, and then run the stick around on the inside of a cup and place it on my friend’s back. i could see that this was producing huge bruises underneath the cups and i thought, ‘oh my god, this is so unbelievable!’ but the two told me that this was part of a tradition. i think about that often as an example of how persepective can assume positions of superiority and judgement. whilst i may have assumed myself to be “civilized” in a western sense, i knew perfectly well that american society could be criticized for a great deal also. feelings of superiority can be reinforced in field contexts like my own, in which the people that you are working with also see city intellectuals as in some sense their social superiors. i was once working on a project regarding the role and interpretation of romanian history in some romanian villages and asked anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 62 them to tell me about specific historical figures. one finally responded: “why are you asking me that question? you should be going to the school teacher.” i realized that i had better change my style to contextualize my lack of romanian schooling and knowledge of history, and then point to contemporary examples of historical names being used on television, in books, and more. i would use this basis to justify why i was asking my questions and i then had very good interviews. i had eroded ideas of social status by proving that i required their expertise and thus the style of work changed drastically. i learned an important lesson by making that shift. yh: in the villages or small communities, people seem to like talking and gossiping. did you hear gossip in your field work? how do you rate the importance of using gossip for anthropological study? kv: gossip is one of the great boons that anthropologists have for collecting information; lots of people really love to gossip. i always regarded it as a way of learning the types of subjects with which i could start a conversation. for example, regarding the history project i previously mentioned, i went to a different village than i had previously and i didn't know many people. i would sit in my landlady’s kitchen every morning while her neighbor came by to purchase milk and more. i would listen to to their conversations and occasionally contribute a thought or a question but i would mainly listen for starting points for other conversations. whether you can count on gossip as fact is a different question, but as a methodological tool, i think it's crucial. yh: after fieldwork we must decide how to explain our findings in writing. there is a book titled “writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography” (2010) which discusses interdisciplinary ethnographic writings. referencing this work, we have many different styles for producing ethnographies: poems; stories, novels; or traditional ethnographic workks. how do you think about the diversity of the writing culture of anthropology based in your personal experiences? kv: well the only thing that i have ever written besides ethnographies was a memoir that is coming out from duke university press this year, and i found it was much harder to write than my regular books. i tend to think that it's important to include something about yourself as the researcher and your experience to help the reader understand how your position in relationship to the research subjects. but i don't have a whole lot of patience with people who write primarily from their own experience without contextualizing their research outside of their own background; i prefer a style that's blends traditional writing with some personal touch. yh: what's your main focus now and what are your publication plans for the future? kv: right now, i've completed a memoir and just this morning i was talking with two colleagues about writing either a small book or a long article called ”what was postsocialism and what comes next?” we might do this as a way of discussing unexpected changes in governments with the rise of populist regimes and the transformation of what we might call liberal governmentality into something else. so, i might do that for a while but don't otherwise have a book project of my own in mind. to begin with, it always takes me a long time to go from one book to another, but more than that, i'm retiring next year and i may not do any more books. but, i'm sure i will become interested in some contemporary subject, so i might write a paper from time to time. references anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 63 abbott, andrew. 2001. chaos of disciplines. university of chicago press. clifford, james; marcus, george e. (edts). 2010. writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. university of california press. geertz, clifford. 1966. “religion as a cultural system.” anthropological approaches to the study of religion. pp. 1–46. london: tavistock publications. malinowski, bronislaw. 1978. coral gardens and their magic: a study of the methods of tilling the soil and of agricultural rites in the trobriand islands. dover publications. malinowski, bronislaw. 1989. a diary in the strict sense of the term. stanford university press. malinowski, bronislaw. 2014. argonauts of the western pacific. routledge; 1 edition. verdery, katherine. 2003. the vanishing hectare: property and value in postsocialist transylvania. cornell university press. methods and approaches in research on the changing gender system in the north and northwestern regions of the russian federation anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 186 methods and approaches in research on the changing gender system in the north and northwestern regions of the russian federation1 natalia pushkareva, institute for ethnology and anthropology, russian academy of sciences, moscow, russia abstract the paper is devoted to the assessment of regional transformations of the gender system in the russian federation, particularly, in the northwestern part of the country. operating with the notions of traditional and modern (in the process of modernization) gender contracts, the author analyzes the experience of the nordic (scandinavian) countries and speculates on its applicability in russia, or at least in the northwestern part of the russian federation. she provides examples, describes methods and approaches applied in the studies of the gender system, and draws attention to her personal observations concerning the challenges of genderprograms implementation in the russian federation, relying on her long-standing research on the history of gender relations. keywords: gender equality, gender system, academic androcentrism, russia, nordic countries the slow transformation of the gender system in the russian federation as a whole is an inarguable fact. the role of the northern and northwestern region in that transformation, and how to assess the transformations observed there is not yet clear. only the existence and recognition of a certain ideal-type model that can be approached or deviated from makes any comparison and evaluation possible, and provides an opportunity to assess what one observes in practice (cf. iarovaia 2006). in the first section of the paper, i would like to argue that gender equality, or, to be more exact, some of its elements observed in scandinavian/nordic countries can be used as one of such ideal-type models. it was those countries—sweden, norway, iceland, denmark, and finland—that in 2003 took the five top positions in the classification list of the countries with gender equality compiled by the international world economic forum. it is not surprising that the state structure of nordic countries, with their well-developed systems of social security, is aimed at supporting vulnerable members of the society. this system did not appear immediately but rather has been developed during several decades under the influence of different factors. the factors that facilitated the emergence of the system of women‟s social security and breaking of the traditional gender contract (characterized by pronounced polarization of gender roles, with the role of “breadwinner” and “defender” ascribed to the man and the child-rearing function performed mostly by the woman) included the following:  equal electoral rights acquired by women in the 1920s;  large-scale involvement of women in the labor market;  scientific and technological advances, which facilitated women‟s daily routines; anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 187  incorporation of women‟s rights into the system of human rights protection, which resulted from the second wave of the feminist movement, following world war ii (cf. tiainen 2007). among the above-mentioned factors, the last one is a factor that was lacking in the sociopolitical context of the former soviet union, where analysts (peacefully working within the marxist paradigm, with its conviction that all problems will be resolved by transition to a new society) considered the “women‟s issue” mostly to be settled. in the soviet union, it was this conviction that prevented discussion of the issue of providing equality in terms of not only rights but also opportunities to women across the country in general, and in the north-northwestern region in particular, earlier in the 1960 and 1970s. the sample model of scandinavia in the nordic countries, the issue of special support to the family was raised following the war; the debates on special laws providing equal opportunities to both genders were conducted, for instance, in norway and sweden, as early as the late 1970s and early 1980s, and necessary acts were ratified and used as a basis for regulation of the issues concerning actual equality (cf. yasmine 1996:530). in contrast, in the soviet union, until perestroika, the discussion on “certain shortcomings” was quite common, while positive assessment of presumably achieved gender parity predominated (both in the country as a whole and in the north and northwest of the russian federation). the events of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s have changed not only the political map of the world but also the mentality of the majority of humanities specialists in our country. perestroika, the dissolution of the union, and the disintegration of the whole apparently solid system of socialism opened wide the doors of state archives and private collections of documents, challenged the results of previous social surveys and changed the mentality of social and political scientists and historians in a decade. moreover, in the 1990s the government of russia, under pressure from the public, realized the necessity of the settlement of “the women‟s issue”: on 4 march 1993, the decree of the president of the russian federation “on highpriority tasks of the public policy in relation to women” 2 was ratified; three years later, on 18 june 1996, ratification of the decree “on the national action plan for improvement of the status of women and increasing their role in the society by the year 2000” 3 followed. based on these and a number of other documents, regional programs aimed at improvement of women‟s social status started to be developed (e.g., kudriashova 2000). it is not surprising that centers for women‟s and gender studies emerged in the last decade of the 20th century. these centers were often organized under the influence and with the support of western foundations in different regions and cities of russia. they included those of them that emerged in the north and northwest of russia, such as the karelian center of gender studies, established in petrozavodsk in 1995 (directed by larisa dmitrievna boichenko), and the congress of the women of the kola peninsula, established in murmansk in 1998 (directed by liubov‟ vasil‟evna shtyleva). research groups were set up to study women‟s history from ancient times to the present day, including one located in syktyvkar, under the leadership of andrei al‟bertovich pavlov, and another one, in the gender studies center at pomor state university, arkhangel‟sk, under the leadership of e.v. kudriashova. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 188 new approaches in the studies of the social status of women and men in traditional and transitional societies in these centers and beyond, and numerous meetings and scientific conferences where participants could exchange opinions, made people consider scandinavia as a sample model. it was there, in the nordic countries, where many ideas of actual gender equality were realized; the policy found in these countries is notably called the policy of state feminism, as a number of principles of the feminist theory were implemented there on the public level. the originators of the laws supporting gender equality ratified in the end of the 20th century in the nordic countries promoted several general methodological guidelines, such as: 1. demolition of gender stereotypes should entail not only free choice of occupation and having a right to obtain any professional training (in a number of cases it can lead only to introduction of women into “male” occupations, as was the case in the soviet union in the 1930s), but also growing social status and higher salaries paid at primarily female jobs (van der ros 1997, 2000:209). 2. erosion of the traditional (patriarchal) gender contract suggests not only a growing level of professional occupation and personal fulfillment of women but also increased participation of men in family life (in terms of taking care of both household chores and family members). 3. gender equality in the country‟s domestic affairs has a moderating influence on its foreign policy: the country becomes less aggressive (caprioli 2000:51). therefore, attention paid to gender problems at the legislative level and gender assessment of every law provide new visions of the general picture of labor and employment, demography, and family and cultural development and also demonstrate the widest perspectives in the spheres of internal and foreign policies. “state feminism” in the nordic countries, primarily in norway and sweden, was accompanied and characterized by growing female representation in the top echelons of legislative power, by reaching practically equal representation of women and men in parliaments (“fifty fifty” was a slogan of the last quarter of the 20th century), in governments, and in municipalities, as well as by designing special state programs aimed at equality of family and professional commitment of men and women (il‟ina 2001). it is no surprise that the strategy of “gender mainstreaming” or integration of true equality and equal opportunities in all spheres of the society, became an important part of eu activities after its founding, and an integral part of eu policy since 2001. a number of major achievements of true equality can be enumerated as results of implementation of “gender mainstreaming” policy. i will provide some of them below:  adequate representation of women at the decision-making level: in sweden, women constitute 40 percent of the parliament, in finland 33.5 percent, in denmark 33 percent, and only in norway are there relatively few women: 9.4 percent on the legislative level (isaev et al. 2000:48). note that in the russian federation there are so few women on the decision-making level that russia took the 120 th place in the list.  availability of committees on family policy in the government (in northern european countries since the mid-1960s).  the children-centered family model as an attainable ideal (hiilamo 2002:9-22), “new fatherhood” or “responsible fatherhood” as a part of family policy and a normative model. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 189  parity or joint custody (documented) in the case of divorce. in northern european countries, children stay with fathers in 30 to 40 percent of cases, and in the russian federation only in one percent of cases (cf. hobson and morgan 2002:2; gurko 2006:221).  “support of two breadwinners” as a principle of family support (korki 1999) instead of encouraging the traditional model in which the man, a breadwinner and a defender, ought to fully provide the family well-being, including the wife‟s well-being, and the woman, as a rule, stays home managing the household and bringing up children); prospective recognition of domestic work and care as equal to professional fulfillment.  all children, regardless, of their parents‟ incomes, receive aid until they are 18 or graduate from a secondary school (a working mother receives less, and one who quit her job receives more). in sweden, the situation is unique: a mother receives 100 percent salary during a year. in other countries the aid constitutes: 370 euros per month in norway, 270 euros in finland (until the child is three years old), and 230 euros in denmark (morgan and zippel 2003:54-55).  families with three or more children receive additional aid and additional days of paid leave (kamerman and kahn 1987).  paid maternity leave (in some countries it constitutes 450 days) is divided by the parents according to their choice, with one month reserved for the father. the obligatory paternity leave for fathers enables the woman to maintain her professional skills and the man to maintain his connection with the child. in iceland, almost all prospective fathers have an 80 percent paid leave from their jobs for three months. the new law was enforced in 2002. in sweden, maternity leaves up to one and a half years are complemented by additional days off allowed for adolescents‟ parents and by two paid obligatory days a year for “school attendance” (sorokina 1999).  a well-developed system of childcare services—for example, rooms for parents with children provided in all institutions, even in the building of the state parliament. in sweden, a considerable part of childcare services, up to 40 percent, consists of private businesses. in finland, where this system of private service is underdeveloped, the state pays a special bonus to mothers with children under four as a reimbursement of nannies‟ services (singh 1998:100);  a well-developed system of state support for surrogate mothers since the end of the 1980s (malin and burrel 2004:73-93), which made finland a country of reproductive tourism (people come here to conclude an agreement on surrogate motherhood because the donor‟s anonymity is not required, as in other northern european countries). it is interesting to note that female relatives (sisters, daughters, etc.), as well as close friends of the applicant, often agree to become child bearers. 4  care provided to family members (children and old people) defined by the term “service work” entitles women to a pension (van der ros 1997, 2000:212). “no need for orders from abroad”: the situation in russia the nordic countries that have formed the intergovernmental arctic council are implementing a concerted family policy. formally, russia has also entered the council, but in practice, the government of the russian federation tries to rephrase a number of decisions discussed at the council, since such legislative acts are effective not only in the north-northwest anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 190 region but across the whole territory of the russian federation. the introduction of maternity leaves in russia entailed establishment of a ceiling for the benefits paid: women in the russian federation can stay home with children for one and a half years and receive aid that, as a rule, turns out to be considerably less than the salary received prior to childbirth. (one exception is when a young mother is a student or a housewife without working experience.) the same problem is faced by nordic countries: the aid is less than the salary, whereas a leave from work during the most productive years can negatively affect subsequent professional growth. it is not surprising that such gender shifts result in more parents deciding to have their first baby at a later age (up to age 30 to 32, which is called “delayed parenthood”; cf. gurko 2008:327) and, as a consequence, in families with few children. in the nordic countries, an increasing age of primiparas (in contrast, for instance, to portugal, where it remains 24; cf. billari 2006:69) as well as the rapidly growing number of illegitimate children—reaching 64 percent in iceland, 56 percent in sweden, and 50 percent in norway—are considered normal. in russia, the number of families with few children and the age of primiparas are also growing, although not so rapidly: the age of primiparas was 22.6 in 2003. as for cases of illegitimate childbirth, they constituted approximately 30 percent before 2003, having increased by 20 percent since 1980. all this has resulted from a delayed arrival of the sexual revolution in russia, when new kind of contraceptives that turned out to be too expensive for many were thrown out to the pharmaceutical market, while the debates on and introduction of various topics connected with sex appeal in the mass media intensified (chernova 2008:248). moreover, speaking about the north and northwest russian federation, demographers note a high level of professional employment among women, which, according to them, has been maintaining “since the soviet times and constituting around 67 percent, with the index being impacted by a younger structure of the population” (zubarevich 2004:234). another difference between the russian federation and scandinavian countries is a lack of freedom for women to choose a prospective occupation. the issue of having a job is not a matter of free choice for mothers in russia: in the soviet union, labor was a duty, while in the present-day russian federation it is a requirement in order to provide the family‟s material wellbeing. there is a direct correlation with the level of education: women with a high level of education feel inequality in career development twice as often as women with incomplete higher or secondary education (75 percent vs. 43 percent; cf. roshchin 1996:43); the level of their complaints is twice as high. as for the north-northwest region, it is characterized by high employment among women and a medium level of gender-based disproportions in salary (zubarevich 2004:237-238). the third difference is preservation of the traditional gender contract—traditional family gender roles translated by the mass media as the ideal to be followed and the gender stereotypes reproduced by the mass media in russia (boichenko 2006). attempts to introduce separate instruction for girls and boys in order to teach girls in girls‟ school to be good mothers and wives are, indeed, an unpleasant “gender surprise.” in this context, the continued resistance of male officials to the establishment of any centers uniting women and strengthening women‟s activities beyond the domestic sphere appear to be natural in the region under consideration. when we just started implementing the idea of establishing a gender-studies center in 1997, we faced a lot of people, mostly men, whose attitude to the project was negative. we were told that it‟s none of our women‟s business to establish such an organization. male managers were afraid of women‟s activities and their anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 191 outcomes. they justified their point of view with russian national peculiarites (rossiiskie natsional’nymi osobennostiami): “there is no place for russian women in the government.” they were concerned with any proactive position taken by women… (kalinina 1999:95). fourth, the professional mobilization of women suits the interests of the state, which is always in favor of a woman being not just a mother but a working mother. thus, all kinds of slogans of the soviet era (“women, jump in the tractor! women, let‟s become shock workers!”) were most suitable for mobilizing women‟s labor potential rather than for meeting women‟s expectations and interests. even nowadays, russian women, in practice, cannot choose between a well-paid job and motherhood: the maternity aid is miserable and covers only unqualified workers‟ salaries. there are no women occupying high posts: women reach such status only toward the end of their reproductive age, when it is late to bear a child. this conclusion is true for many women and many professional spheres, including the academic sphere (surveys and indepth interviews with female scientific workers of different generations confirm this hypothesis; cf. pushkareva, in press). one more difference between women in russia and women in other european countries concerns divorces. formally, women in russia are granted the right to break family relations at will, and, in practice, many women initiate divorces. however, in the context of lacking housing, a divorce initiated by a woman will most likely lead to a sharp decline in living standards and in greater dependence of women on families and kin networks in order to survive (chernova 2008:188; see also hobson 1990:114). finally, it is no surprise that the general trend of ideological comments translated by the mass media can be described as neo-traditionalist. such a trend, in the end, leads to the perpetuation of the family model, with the man as a breadwinner and the woman as a housewife presented as a “time-proven” normative model. reasons for the prolongation of negative trends in russia what is the reason for the emergence and continued existence of this distinctive situation in russia? it is not the central administration but rather local authorities that are made responsible for implementation of virtually all programs of support to women and family policy as well as for changes (leading to increased importance) of the man‟s role within the family in the group of the nordic countries under consideration. on the local level, many ideas and innovations can go through the necessary approval even after initial rejection and resistance. redistribution of funds in favor of those regions with a negative fertility rate, few children in families, and women not following the advice to quit the job, but willing to achieve professional fulfillment beyond home and the family, allows for attempts of the introduction of new initiatives. the tools for alleviation of gender polarization tested in scandinavia and elsewhere (e.g., canada) are very likely to become suitable for russian conditions. i will draw attention to the fact that municipal and regional governmental levels are less desirable for men and, therefore, less competitive and more easily attainable for women (trimble 1995; vickers 1978). so far, most initiatives in the various regions of the russian federation have been initiated and controlled by the center. when programs are initiated at the local level, 5 they do not work for a very mundane reason—because of the lack of funds. and the presence of women‟s public organizations does not provide a solution, either. 6 (one such organization was established anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 192 in archangel‟skaia province back in the soviet period; since 1973 it has become the archangel‟sk branch of the union of the women of russia, presided over by tamara rumiantseva.) a low level of awareness and education concerning gender equality among the urban and especially the rural population challenges us with the task of not mere collection of information, as prescribed to us as historians and ethnographers, but rather with the translation of our knowledge to public organizations‟ activists, party members, social workers, deputies, and representatives of local and regional administrations, let alone students and young teachers. the first conferences funded by foreign colleagues in 1997-2000 were aimed at this task (cf. kalinina 1999). but even now, the organization of seminars and training still directly depends on the neighbor countries‟ financial support: the situation has not changed during these several years (cf. larina 2005; anon. 2006). for instance, one of the recent seminars of the school of women‟s leadership (northern legal information portal) on the topic “gender aspects of regional policy” was conducted in murmansk in 2007 with the financial support of the norwegian people‟s aid (mikhailova 2007). consideration of gender issues in future development strategies for the northern and northwestern territories and monitoring gender aspects of drafted and implemented programs and social projects are the means to avoid social, particularly, demographic downturns. overcoming academic androcentrism: the role of the present-day ethnography and folklore studies in the penultimate part of my paper i will come down from generalities (economic and educational factors) to particulars, from general methods (comparative historical, system, holistic, and others) to particular approaches—to studying the changes of the gender system in the north-northwest region of russia. i will discuss the issue of relevance and applicability of general principles and approaches of the feminist ethnology for present-day ethnologists gathering materials on the topic of the “gender shift,” or, rather, the contemporary gender revolution (by which i mean weakened polarization of traditional gender roles) in the region under consideration. first of all, i will stress that the main typical features of the women‟s and gender history of the region are not sufficiently reflected in the present-day academic and popular-science press. e.v. kudriashova, the founder of the center for women‟s and gender studies, pomor state university, remarked in one of her papers that the issues of socio-political activity of women on the regional level are determined by historical, cultural, and economic peculiarities of each region. the features that have traditionally characterized the pomor region included: (1) a high level of literacy among women‟s population. in the end of the 19 th century, 59 percent of northern women were literate (boichenko 1995:18)—this exceeded numbers registered in moscow and st. petersburg at that time). (2) a certain degree of independence on the labor market. more than 3,500 pomor women were engaged in different economic activities (17 percent of all sea hunting business was controlled by women, while 45 women were helmswomen and shipmistresses). (3) active participation of women in public life. charitable and educational activities of the nuns of surskii monastery of st. john of kronstadt anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 193 and the members of archangel‟sk “women‟s guardianship society,” established in 1857, were well-known across the whole of russia. pomor women were considered to be strong, independent, and freedom-loving. historical memory determines values, demands, and social and political expectations of present-day women… (kudriashova 2000) i will add to the above-mentioned that folklorists note that fairytales, sayings, and beliefs connected with female sorcery (love spells, searching for lost people and cattle, healing), as well as witchery practiced by sorceresses and female healers are especially widespread phenomena typical for the region (vlasova 2001). i would argue that in this context, large-scale involvement in the sociopolitical sphere demonstrated by present-day women in the northwest is not surprising (see the paper by meri kulmala on this thematic issue). whereas women were underrepresented (constituting less than 8 percent) in the third session of the state duma, there were many more women represented on the regional level in the north and northwest of the russian federation: women made up 13 percent of the provincial assembly and 39 percent in city and district assemblies (kudriashova and kukarenko 2003:91)—these figures are much higher than in russia as a whole. in other words, in the past as well as in the present, the women of the north and northwest of russia have been socially and politically active. we should aim at making them realize this fact. i think that overcoming of androcentrism in academic studies of this and many other issues suggests: 1. dismissal of “mixed” male and female narratives; individual approach to each one of them; 2. special attention paid to attempts to understand women‟s social experience from the subjective point of view and their life perspective; 3. ability to listen to internal emotional reactions, to compare one‟s own life experience with the informant‟s life experience (the problem of “relying” on one‟s emotions instead of eliminating them); 4. special consideration of case studies aimed at conscious subjectivization of the object of studies regardless of their uniqueness; 5. an interactive and even argument-provoking approach to collecting information rather than just a formal, affirmative description; 6. optimistic perspectives, improved self-esteem of both female informants and researchers, and overcoming of the tradition of women‟s victimization; 7. non-authoritarian nature of conclusions, or departure from the male research standards primarily aimed at persuasion. conclusion concluding my reflections on the topic of the methods and approaches to studying changes of the gender system in the north-northwest region of the russian federation, i once again would like to stress that analysts‟ theoretical assumptions predetermine all assessments provided in their works. while initiating any research project, they may find themselves biased by prefabricated concepts and the theoretical background as an integral part of the personality of every individual researcher, as well as by their socialization, education, and professional anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 194 experience. perspectives on collection of materials shared by historians and folklorists with a traditional academic background may lead to establishment and strengthening of various ethnic and gender stereotypes (shabaev 2007). a participant of the workshop “gender and models of creative behavior of male and female writers of the european north in the 1980s and 1990s,” held in june 2004 in martsial‟nye vody, located in the vicinity of petrozavodsk, made an interesting remark: “whereas earlier men acted as innovators and women were keepers of the tradition, now men have become bearers of traditional values and women create new moral imperatives” (krasavtseva 2004). it truly appears to be so: rewriting women‟s history of the region became one of the new moral imperatives. overcoming stereotypes, paying attention not so much to the complementariness of gender roles (with women taking the second position) but rather to their interchangeability, and aiming at truly equal opportunities for men and women in the world today are moral imperatives of today‟s ethnologists, regardless of their gender. acknowledgements this paper was prepared with the support of the department of historical and philological sciences of the russian academy of sciences, in the framework of the project “russian everyday life during ten centuries in the mirror of gender relations: trends, dynamics, perspectives for changes,” under the umbrella project “historical and cultural heritage and spiritual values of russia” (2009-2011). notes 1 translated by olga povoroznyuk. 2 in the original, “o pervoocherednykh zadachakh gosudarstvennoi politiki v otnoshenii zhenshchin” (translator‟s note). 3 in the original, “o natsional‟nom plane deistvii po uluchsheniiu polozheniia zhenshchin i povysheniiu ikh roli v obshchestve do 2000 goda” (translator‟s note). 4 in the countries oriented toward the traditional gender contract, such practice would be considered an expression of tolerance in relation to same-sex partnerships. from the point of view of many catholic leaders, partners of same-sex alliances should not be granted a right to continued reproduction, let alone the right to choose a child‟s gender and to provide for childbirth outside of “normal” family relations. (with children in same-sex marriages who are born by surrogate mothers, these options may become more likely in the future.) 5 decree of the governor of archangel‟skaia province “on the regional action plan for improving women‟s status and increasing their role in the society up to the year 2000,” ratified in 1997. 6 ibid. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 195 references cited anon. 2006 (28 april). “v petrozavodske stremiatsia uluchshit‟ polozhenie zhenshchin” [they strive for improved women‟s status in petrozavodsk]. karelinform news agency. http://karelinform.ru/?id=3799 (accessed 21 september 2010). billari f.c. 2006. “the transition to parenthood in european societies.” in policy implications of changing family formation, ed. l. hantrais, d. philipov, and f.c. billari, pp. 63-111. strasbourg: council of europe publishing. boichenko, l.d. 1995. “zhenskoe obrazovanie v karelii (konets xix—nachalo xx vekov)” [women‟s education in karelia (late 19 th —early 20 th centuries)]. in traditsii obrazovaniia v karelii, pp. 27-28. petrozavodsk. boichenko, l.d. 2006. “polozhenie zhenshchin i semei s det‟mi v respublike kareliia v sovremennykh usloviiakh” [the status of women and families with children in the republic of karelia in the present day conditions]. in rossiiskoe obshchestvo: gendernoe izmerenie, pp. 218-238. ivanovo. caprioli m. 2000. “gendered conflict.” journal of peace research 37(1):53-70. chernova, zh. 2008. semeinaia politika v evrope i rossii: gendernyi analiz [family policy in europe and in russia: gender aanlysis]. sankt-petersburg: norma. ergas,yasmine 1994. “feminisms of the 1970s.” in: history of women in the west, vol. 5: toward a cultural identity in the twentieth century, ed. g. duby and m. perrot, pp. 527547. cambridge, ma: françoise thébaud. gurko, t.а. 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intellektual’noi istorii 19:347-376. trimble l. 1995. “politics where we live: women and cities.”in: canadian metropolitics: governing our cities, ed. j. lightbody, pp. 92-114. toronto: copp clark ltd. van der ros, j. 2000. “realizatsiia politiki ravenstva polov na mestnom urovne: opyt norvegii” [the organization of equality policies at the local level: the case of norway]. in obespechenie politik ravenstva polov: opyt zapadnoi evropy, ed. e. mezentseva, pp. 208-212. moskva. van der ros, j. 1997. “the organization of equality policies at the local level: the case of norway.” in sex-equality policy in western europe, ed. frances gardiner, pp. 142-157. london; new york: routledge. vickers j. 1978. “where are the women in canadian politics?” atlantis: a women’s studies journal/journal d'études sur la femme 3:40-51. vlasova, m.n. 2001. “„znaiushchie liudi‟ v fol‟klore terskogo berga belogo moria” [“knowledgeable people” in the folklore of the terskii coast of the white sea]. in mifologiia i povsednevnost‟: gendernyi podkhod v antropologicheskikh distsiplinakh, comp. k.a. bogdanov and a.a. panchenko, pp. 166-173. sankt-peterburg. zubarevich, n.v. 2004. “sotsial‟noe neraventstvo v regionakh rossii: gendernyi analiz” [social inequality in russia‟s regions: gender analysis]. in gendernoe neravenstvo v sovremennoi rossii skvoz’ prizmu statistiki, pp. 233-234. moskva. about the author natalia pushkareva is full professor of history and head of women and gender studies department at the institute of ethnology and anthropology (russian academy of sciences), chief editor of the yearbook “sotsial‟naia istoriia” (social history), board member of the international federation for research in women‟s history, and president of the russian association for research in women‟s history. her research interests include the history of sexuality and everyday life, women‟s and gender history. she has published eight monographs, among them zhenshchiny drevnei rusi (women in ancient russia, published in 1989), women in russian history from the tenth to the twentieth century (1997), a se grekhi zlye, smertnye: liubov’, erotika i seksual’naia etika v doindustrial’noi rossii (these are evil, deadly sins: anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 199 love, erotics, and sexual ethics in pre-industrial russia, 1999), and gendernaia teoriia i istoricheskoe znanie (gender theory and historical knowledge, 2008). microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 1 suicide in post-socialist countries: examples from hungary and belarus jeffrey alyn smith debrecen university © 2002 jeffery alyn smith all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. when i first went to hungary, in 1993, i stayed with a hungarian family in the small town of karcag.1 they lived in a one bedroom flat in a rundown apartment building on the edge of the center of town. the entire family was unemployed. as luck would have it, the parents had just become eligible for retirement before they lost their jobs at the former soviet military factory in town and were receiving pensions. the first night i stayed there the neighbor upstairs committed suicide. he hung himself off the scaffolding erected along the backside of the building. his body beat against the window in the wind all night making it impossible for the father, lászló, to sleep that night. lászló got up in the morning, pulling back the curtains only to discover to his horror that his fellow worker and neighbor had chosen an easy way out. i never saw the body; lászló had called the police and they had removed the body before i, a deep sleeper and late riser, had bothered to wake up. when i heard what had happened i was shocked and horrified. i had read that budapest had the highest suicide rate of any city in europe and that hungary had the second highest suicide rate of any country in the world, but i had no idea i would ever come this close to seeing someone take his or her own life. i asked lászló, “why did he do it? what reason did he have?” lászló with great humor and tongue in cheek kept insisting that he had always been a pain in the ass, always imposing on people, always needing help, always bothering people with his problems. he continued to joke, "look even in his death he pesters our family. he kept me awake all night banging on the window. i had to take care of him and look after him...even in his death.” i could not appreciate lászló’s humor in this situation. i was seriously disturbed. i couldn’t understand how one could joke about a man’s death so easily. it occurred to me at the time that maybe i lacked the same experiences most hungarians shared, maybe they had gotten used to the idea that people, when faced with insurmountable problems, would resort to suicide. i insisted, “but why? what was wrong with his life that he felt he had to end it?” lászló explained that the man had lost his job and could not support his family anymore. he had lost all sense of purpose in life, all sense of honor, unable to fulfill his obligations to his family. what made things worse, explained lászló, was that the man had been having an affair with a young local girl and she had become pregnant. without a job and no other available source of income, the man could not support one family, let alone two. lászló concluded at least now his wife and children would receive social security benefits from the state, because she was now a single mother. similarly his mistress could also receive these same benefits, because the natural father could not be asked to support the child. lászló laughed, a rather ironic sad laugh, which seemed almost forced. then he smiled weakly, and said, “see, it all worked out in the end.” in the text that follows, i evaluate suicide in hungary based on informants’ or consultants’ comments, evaluation, and opinions. these people are largely middle-class, educated, young people—however some consultants were working class or farmers, their relatives etc. here after i use the term hungarians to refer to them, although this group is more complex and different than the text that follows might indicate. i simply reproduce what my consultants would call hungarians, lumping a 10 million-person diverse group into a unified metaphor, which represents a unique form of humanity, an imagined community, a nation of magyars, a product of imagination. when asked about suicide in hungary they usually started sentences with the words “we hungarians” or “the hungarian people”—i reproduce this style here without considering hungarians a jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 55 volume 20, number 1 homogenized and uniform group of like individuals, but rather as a historic imagined community, a cultural construct. since it is impossible to interview people who are successful at suicide, i have tried to understand why people might feel compelled to take their own lives. is it a rational calculation of how to solve economic problems with honor? is it a moral choice, which is a social psychological calculation of status, honor, respect, etc? is it something cultural, easy to point out as a social norm, a code of honor, or a rite of passage? what can you say on the subject, which isn’t speculation and guesses? in this respect i have only done what any ethnographer might do: i started asking people to explain what suicide means in hungary. i naturally asked those around and noticed when suicide came up in novels, films, song lyrics and other forms of public representation. however, i have not researched the scientific literature on the causes of suicide or performed any statistical analysis. i simply have looked at the cultural and psychological reasons given by informants, friends, and consultants in the field. what could best be said is that this sample is limited; however, i hope my observations still go a long way in suggesting why hungarians are one of the largest group of people in the world to commit suicide, and why postsocialist countries in general have had higher suicide rates in the 1990s. the statistical yearbook of hungary: 1995 shows that the most likely category of people in hungary to commit suicide are married men from 40-50 years old, living in villages in eastern hungary. the most often used methods are hanging and poisoning by medicine. when asked why people might employ these methods consultants said that hanging was quick, easy, silent, and effective. when asked why married men from 40-50 years old, living in villages in eastern hungary would be most likely to commit suicide consultants responded that these are people who are most likely to have lost jobs, be unemployed and responsible for their families incomes and economic security. one consultant said that hungarians are more likely to commit suicide because hungarians are more individualistic, isolated, silent, depressed, given to drinking, and always looking to the dark past or hopeless future, but never at the present. almost everyone interviewed said that they knew someone personally who committed suicide. in hungary, suicide is attributed to various causes: genetic, racial, politics, economic hardship, psychological, social, geographical location, etc. some consultants when asked argued that whole families have an unusually high rate of suicide. they argued that it must be because they inherit certain genetic material, which predisposes them to suicide. others argued that it was something in the genetic structure of the hungarian people. while these interpretations are interesting at best, they seem difficult to prove and are not within my competence as a cultural anthropologist to confirm or deny. however, others argued that families might teach the younger generations that suicide is a way of solving problems, or that there is something cultural which is passed on that encourages hungarians as a nation to solve personal problems by suicide. although no one could point to something like hara-kiri or seppuku in japan, several people simply said it was a tradition, citing as an example lovers killing themselves by jumping off the veszprém bridge together. “it’s a fad with young people” said one psychology student interviewed. another said that it is a selfish act because the person who commits suicide doesn’t care or think about his or her friends and family that he or she leaves behind. some argued that political changes brought economic hardship to many hungarians in the 1990s; there was greater unemployment and mass lay-offs at government institutions and factories. people felt hopeless or depressed, insecure and worthless; in a country with a strong work ethic, being jobless meant being a person without dignity, purpose, or honor. however, statistics show a decrease in suicide through the 1990s in hungary and an increase in suicide in the former soviet union (statistical yearbook of hungary 1996; brainerd 2001). a geography student argued that suicide might be caused by air pollution which gathers in the carpathian mountain basin because people who live in the mountains or by the sea don’t kill themselves as often as people who live in a country surrounded by mountains on the puszta a flat stretch of land in the center of hungary where the suicide rate is highest. these explanations, although they may be interesting and they may contribute to suicide, are not conclusive. i suggest that suicide can be explained by political, economic, and psychological factors and i suggest that bateson’s double bind theory (bateson 1972: 177-278) might help us to understand why some suicides might occur in socialist and post-socialist countries at a higher rate, which increased through the 1990s. most of the hungarians i interviewed, mostly jen typewritten text 56 volume 20, number 1 university students, teachers, and workers at debrecen university argued that hungarian history points to a series of defeats and problems where hungary as a nation is always losing, it is a nation of “losers.” they refer to the occupation of hungary by the turks in the 16th and 17th centuries, the failure of the march 15th revolution of 1848, the division of the country after world war i, known collectively as “trianon,” where hungary was invaded by the czech, romanian, serb, french, slovenian, and croatian armies in october 1918 and the country was dismembered and greatly reduced by the end of 1919. hungary was then subjected to defeat and dictatorship in world war ii, subjected to soviet occupation, an imposed communist government, and stalinism. the revolution of 1956, generally articulated as a fight for freedom and independence, or as a reform movement was crushed by the soviet army and led to kadar’s “goulash communism,” which continued to institute economic and political reform until the peaceful revolution of 1989 when communism came to an end. the period following 1989 was known as “the change,” which for most hungarians meant mass privatization, foreign buy outs of hungarian companies, americanization, capitalism, consumerism and a perceived devaluing of all things hungarian, an influx of wealthy foreigners and a revaluation of social relations based more on money. this history, as told to me over and over again in formal and informal interviews, shows a history of a nation, which repeatedly loses and thus my consultants’ evaluation of hungary as a nation of losers (see also konrád 1977). hungarians also describe their “mentality” or culture as pessimistic. they are in their own words a “pessimistic” or “fatalistic” people. they point to their history as a reason for pessimistic attitudes, and a mentality of expecting the worst from any given situation. ironically they are a hard working people with a strong work ethic, and hungary has enjoyed a higher standard of living compared with their neighbors. while hungarian history may have produced a culture of pessimism or a fatalistic mentality, expecting failure and defeat based on past experiences, i think that this explanation is only part of the picture. i would argue that no single factor can explain any social action, and that culture, history, and economics are strong influences on social behavior. what people do is dependent on personal situations, on psychological factors, on the specificity of the politics of a given period as well as the specific circumstances of individual people’s lives—there is something shared intersubjectively and something psychologically specific to people who take their own lives as a solution to “impossible” situations. when i first came to hungary, people i spoke with talked about impossibilities. in conversations people talked about their problems as “lehetetlen”—impossible. five years later in 2001-2002 the discourse about social and personal problems changed from “lehetetlen” to “bonyolult” or “borzasztó”—complicated or horrible, but not impossible. an impossible situation is one in which a person, regardless of what he or she does, cannot win or succeed where as a complicated or horrible situation holds out hope of resolution, things can get better. as the old hungarian socialist era joke goes, ‘the pessimist is talking to the optimist. the pessimist says, “things can’t get any worse than this.” and the optimist replies, “oh yes they can.” if the recurring use of the word “lehetetlen” signals the subjective or intersubjective evaluation of life’s circumstances as impossible, then it would seem to me that the more frequent use of the terms “bonyolult” or “borzasztó” in the 21st century signal a change in intersubjective and subjective evaluations of life’s circumstances as complicated and difficult, but not impossible. people who experience impossible situations might be, whether subjectively or objectively, be caught in a set of double bind relations. i will argue that double bind relations encourage, but do not determine a choice for one so trapped to commit suicide. while life under socialism produced a number of problems for citizens of hungary, economic, political, and psychological, not all hungarians chose suicide as a solution to their problems. i suggest that socialism as a set of social relations was founded on patterns of binding and bonding following michael urban’s concept of political power in the ussr (urban 1985).2 i also think that bateson’s theory of the double bind might go a long way toward explaining why some hungarians chose suicide as a solution to their problems. bateson argues that a situation constitutes a double bind when a person, no matter what s/he does, cannot win. “a person caught in the double-bind may develop schizophrenic symptoms” (bateson 1972: 201). the person caught in the double bind is often referred to as the victim, and the victim experiences the double bind as a recurrent theme in life. this double bind is not a single traumatic situation but is an on-going problem of which there seems to be no solution or way out. “such repeated experience” of the jen typewritten text 57 volume 20, number 1 double bind results in “habitual expectations” of losing, punishment, and absurdity. bateson argues that double binds are primarily a “negative injunction”—if you do not do such and such i will punish you. but this first negative injunction is always immediately followed by a “secondary injunction conflicting with the first at a more abstract level, and like the first enforced by punishments or something which will ‘threaten’ one’s ‘survival’” (bateson 1972: 207). in my estimation, a double bind is framed something like this; “if you do anything or if you do nothing, i will punish you. you are guilty and forever punishable, but i will hold off punishment for a price.” bateson goes on to argue that for the victim there is no chance of escape. the final aspect of the double bind is the absence of feedback loops, trial and error—a lack of pragmatic communication. when any attempt at meta-communication about the double bind situation is punished the double bind is complete. bateson argues that children are caught in and learn the meaning of double binds first and foremost from their parents as caregivers and authority figures—this process of socialization is continued in institutional arrangements—primarily in schools. as a cartoon from the soviet satirical periodical krokodil shows, the double bind is an every-day situation. a father scolds and punishes his son for lying, hypocritically saying; you naughty boy, telling lies like that. you're grounded! don't you dare go out anywhere. and if i get a call from the ministry, tell them i'm not back from the business trip yet. and tell mummy i've gone to a meeting at the ministry. have you got that? [(krokodil 1952, 23: 12) reproduced in ledeneva 1998: 80]. the child is simultaneously punished for lying and ordered to lie or else he will be further punished— he is punished for lying and threatened with punishment if he fails to lie. if the double binds persist long enough and if the victims of them learn that their universe is made up of double bind relations then, continual reinforcement of punishment may no longer be necessary to maintain the effects of double binds. bateson argues that when a person is caught in a double bind relationship s/he will react defensively. “an individual will take a metaphorical statement literally when he is in a situation where he must respond, where he is faced with contradictory messages and when he is unable to comment on the contradictions”—the victim is in doubt about how the information will be used and therefore responds literally (bateson 1972: 209). since it is foolish to resist the powerful, the only way to resist double binds is through foolishness. the fool asks no questions, makes no waves; “his brain is like a broken record, repeating the same phrase over and over” (konrad 1977: 37). as an answer to the double bind situation a person can shift to a metaphorical statement, which brings safety. “in an impossible situation it is better to ... become somebody else and insist that he is somebody else” (bateson 1972: 210). bateson argues that there are several alternative responses to double binds. one is to take all messages as literal. another is to pretend to be someone or something one is not, usually a fool, idiot, simpleton, or a psychotic. another would be to ignore all messages as unimportant or ridiculous. another would be to withdrawal into one’s own fantasy world away from the public. of course one might choose suicide … finally one might revolt and try to kill those who are maintaining the double bind for their own benefit at the expense of the victim. many hungarians i interviewed argued that suicide is a last and stubborn affirmation of one’s freedom, the freedom to choose and control one’s death, when someone can’t control his or her life. i argue that socialism as a lived experience in eastern europe was founded upon double binds. bateson argued that double binds are further characterized by the victim’s inability to distinguish between logical types. socialism was founded on incompatible and mutually exclusive imperatives stemming from mutually exclusive logical types of authority. while the regimes of central and eastern europe have been characterized so often as totalitarian or authoritarian, their authority principles or sources of authority have been articulated in mutually exclusive logical types. while i derive my theory of double binds from michael urban and gregory bateson, i argue that double binds are generated on a larger scale from diarchies. diarchies are regimes based on the idea that two persons or governmental bodies are jointly vested with supreme power—both nazi germany and the soviet union produced diarchies. these persons or bodies gain their authority from culturally constituted ideas of sources of authority. weber theorizes that all authority is traditional, charismatic, or legal rational (weber 1946). these types, he argues, are mutually exclusive; yet i argue that socialism was founded on the unique combination of authority stemming from mutually jen typewritten text 58 volume 20, number 1 incompatible imperatives, which are simultaneously traditional, charismatic, and legal rational. the ruling communist party’s authority was founded on the idea that only the party has exclusive access to truth, knowledge, and wisdom through marxist-leninist philosophy. the party’s exclusive access to truth, much like the church, gives the party the right to rule in the general interest of the working class—the charismatic authority of the dictator supplements traditional authority. the dictator by virtue of being lenin’s follower receives traditional authority vested in the party—he is the leader of the party—but also he is a hero of the socialist state, he and the party are heroic. charismatic authority comes from the leader’s personal strength and his personal power proven through deed—protecting the state from invasion, enemies within, and the hostile capitalist world, which seeks to destroy communism. he must perform heroic deeds and miracles. in addition, the socialist state was founded on the idea that communism would be a completely rational, legal, and scientifically planned society that through technological development would create paradise on earth—heavenly salvation, utopia, and progress not in a mythological other world, but here in the very real future. as weber correctly postulates, these three forms of authority and any injunctions or imperatives coming from the party, the leader, or the bureaucracy are mutually incompatible. any attempt at pointing out these contradictions was met with punishment. one must follow the dictates of the party without question even if the charismatic leader directs one to do the opposite. simultaneously, one must follow the dictates of the charismatic leader even if his directives go against marxist-leninist principles, the dictates of the party, or the bureaucratically formulated plan. one must at all times follow legal rational regulations and plans as well as scientifically sound principles with verifiable feedback loops— trial and error—even if they contradict the charismatic leader’s and the party’s directives. since the party and the charismatic leader are both the mutually exclusive sole source of science, truth, and knowledge, compliance with any one of the three is a violation of the other two. if anyone should fail to obey any of these authorities then one is subject to punishment—usually imprisonment or death. everyone is forever guilty of disobeying authority and subject to punishment. using weber’s theories of authority— traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational— combined with bateson’s theory of the doublebind, i suggest that socialism as a lived experience constituted a set of absurd propositions, impossible situations, and paradoxical political and economic relations. i suggest that most people in hungary muddled through life adopting strategies of patronclient relations, dissimulation, disengagement, metaphorical speech, stealing, cheating, rituals of resistance, and out right revolution or violence directed at the state, the party, the leadership, and bureaucracy (smith 2002). although suicide is a “solution” to double binds this in it self does not explain why a higher rate of suicide is found in hungary. is there something culturally specific to hungary, which might account for a higher suicide rate compared with other post-socialist countries? besides interviews with native consultants, other sources of data on culture include interpretations of literature. hungarian literature often includes accounts of suicides. in zsigmond móricz’s novel relations, the protagonist commits suicide after becoming caught in a web of corruption in the city of debrecen. although the novel is set in 1932, the language of the author still can be heard in the discourses of hungarians i met in debrecen 70 years later. the world of the puszta and towns of eastern hungary, in this discourse, is divided into the state-people and the hungarian nation where the state is the “full time scapegoat of public life” (móricz 1997: 149). most hungarians argue that, “the state isn’t organized for the benefit of the people,” it is a set of patron-client “oligarchies,” with “mystical power. an end in itself. human life isn’t important, what matters is for the state to flourish. the state devours its children. they say we live in a state. no: the state lives on us” (móricz 1997: 149). hungary is described by móricz and debreceni consultants in interviews as a nation of independent people who are like those condemned to death and locked up in a prison and the leadership of the state are “there for what they can get, but they never bring anything to the people. no roads, no protection, no enlightenment, no entertainment” (móricz 1997: 149). the problems móricz describes are similar to the problems of post-socialism, where many consultants describe a new sense of freedom, yet a nostalgia for the security of the socialist era—an appreciation for dependence under which subsistence was guaranteed, where one could progress in accordance with one’s abilities. but the unemployment of the 1990s was something that was intolerable and seemed impossible when coupled with extremely high income taxes, jen typewritten text 59 volume 20, number 1 business and work permits, value added taxes, rising price levels, and other new fees on every form of state business. as móricz puts it “everything that the official mind can think up” is used to tax freedom; “he has to pay for his family’s clothes and food, and then he is free”(móricz 1997: 150). but when he can’t live with the freedom of paying the rent, taxes due, the fees on everything needed in life, and can’t engage in moonlighting, and then there’s trouble. the economic problem in hungary for many people is not the gnp or other economic indicators but the fact that 30-50% of a person’s income is taken by the state in the form of taxes, social security, retirement, and national health care payments. the social democrats’ campaign 2002 promises that no one will pay more than 30% if they are elected. if one must forfeit on average of 40-50% of their income every month, but it is estimated that a person needs 100% of their total income to pay the bills, utilities, rent, telephone, food, clothing, and household repairs, then a high tax rate such as those currently paid by hungarians is too much. the solution to the high tax rates is simple: people engage in moonlighting and tax evasion. two jobs are typically needed, one official job with taxes paid out, social security, retirement, national health care payments, rent, utilities, etc. which can be recorded and submitted to the government on the books. another job is needed, under the table, to pay for food, cloths, luxury items, etc. if a person hasn’t got a job, let alone two jobs, then that person is caught in the bind of not being able to meet his/her needs in a capitalist, consumerist society based on money as much as patron-client relations. corruption is maintained because almost everyone is engaged in dissimulation over income and tax payments from the highest levels of the state to the lowest working-class citizen. in móricz’s novel, the protagonist commits suicide because he is caught in a set of double bind relations over large-scale profits being embezzled by the wealthy and powerful state agents, but as the elected official he is ultimately responsible for the situation. corruption is maintained and encouraged by a series of double bind relations, the most obvious being the tax laws that make it difficult if not impossible for anyone to actually pay what they owe the state and still pay for what they consume, use, or owe in rent. at the same time, those “in power” use their influence, “protekció,” to embezzle or cheat the tax laws and other regulations, policies, or bureaucratic procedures. it is impossible to be an honest man in politics and economics; you either play the game of corruption or lose. whether suicide is caused by psychological, political, economic, or social factors, it is hard to say what pushes someone over the edge. however, it would seem that a combination of factors come together and a person sees these factors collectively as a set of double binds impossible to solve, impossible to deal with without protekció. protekció means the exercise of personal influence on behalf of another in exchange for a favor done in return, which is immoral, illegal, or against the norm. silence about unreported income is a kind of mutual protection employers and employees engage in, silence between service providers and customers. those without protection are caught in what elemér hankiss calls társadalmi csapdák—social traps (hankiss 1979). hankiss writes that hungarians have more words for corruption than eskimos have for snow, because corruption is such an everyday part of the hungarian natural environment. if suicide can be explained at least in part by double binds—escaping an impossible situation in the freedom to take one’s own life— and if double binds are a characteristic form of persuasive power under socialism, getting people to do what they otherwise wouldn’t do, then it would seem that post-socialist power relations are a continuation of power under a new set of conditions, manipulated to form new sets of contradictory imperatives leading to new threats of punishment unless people continue to maintain patron-client relations collectively known as corruption. in the past, a double bind might be relatively simple. a person is reported to the police for antisocial or probourgois opinions and interned for a year. the guards or interrogators might torment him, offer him a chair and then slap him if he sat down, or slap him for disobeying an order if he remained standing. they might ask him a question and when he answered tell him to keep his mouth shut if he’s going to tell lies like that. they might tell him to be quiet and then ask if he understands. he can’t sit down or remain standing, he can’t speak or be silent without receiving verbal or physical punishment. george konrád describes such a suicide case in his novel the case worker. a man is so tormented by such requests that his mind became unhinged. he commits suicide in the end. orwell argues that double-think, similar to double binds, is a characteristic of classic totalitarian societies. but are double binds something particular only to jen typewritten text 60 volume 20, number 1 totalitarian, authoritarian, or socialist countries? have double binds been maintained in postsocialist regimes albeit hidden in new laws, regulations, and policies? is there a difference between postsocialist states such as hungary and belarus? in the examples that follow i draw on material collected from consultants and friends in belarus interviewed in 2001. in my interview material from belarus, consultants articulated the psychological double bind of growing up under socialism and a post-socialist dictatorship where young people feel that they need a university diploma in order to get a good job and access to connections for unrecorded income through moonlighting. where it simultaneously “doesn’t matter what you study or that you have learned anything, but rather that you have a piece of paper stating you have an education” yet in order to get a job you need to develop the skills of cheating, silence, dissimulation, engagement in patron-client relations etc. but often suicide is a social problem, perhaps encouraged by political and economic double binds people take out their frustrations by placing the less powerful into similar double binds—management to workers, teachers to students, parents to children.3 as one consultant, alexandra from belarus put it: i know that my problems are not that huge in comparison with some people – i am not starving to death, no one is trying to kill me but myself, i wasn’t raped, and there is no war going on, but fuck, it all doesn’t help…. i am going insane and that’s it. it might be just as well that i am just imagining my problems, and i am sick, but so what? even if it is true it doesn’t help me. they say that your parents should understand and support you no matter what happens, how sweet. which fairy tale is this one? what about you’re parents hurting you and driving you insane? my friend said that her mum found her birth control pills and there was a huge scandal, and now she is almost locked at home. she is almost 20, isn’t it stupid? she’s been with guy for more than a year, and her parents don’t like him. it would be really funny and amusing if it weren’t so painful. actually, i wish i could just die. why is it that a young person in a totalitarian society thinks so often of suicide and chooses instead to mutilate her body instead of taking her own life? self-mutilation and suicide are said to be the voice of a desperate person crying out for help, yet also this cry for help uses attacks on one’s own body as a way of drawing attention to one’s own plight—self mutilation as an attention getter. yet it also seems to be an attempt to control the pain by inflicting pain on one’s self. it might also be a threat to get people to help one solve a problem, which seems almost impossible or difficult. alexandra burnt herself in the arm with a cigarette after she told her parents she was having sex for the first time in her life— her mother called her a whore, “worse than a whore because a prostitute gets paid for sex and you were just used.” her mother slapped her repeatedly and disowned her. alexandra said that her mother always told her “you can trust me. you can tell me anything. i will understand” yet when she told her mother about her sex life her mother said, “you should have lied.” alexandra said that her psychological pain was so intense that the only way she could stop the thoughts in her head to distract herself was by inflicting pain on herself by cutting her arm with a kitchen knife. she said it helped her to forget for a few minutes but that wasn’t enough perhaps she should just kill herself and end all the pain once and for all. in post-socialism’s morality and sexual liberation, young women are simultaneously encouraged to be studious, puritanical virgins and yet openly sexual in dress conforming to current fashions—mini skirts, high heels and makeup and yet not be promiscuous party girls. alexandra’s mother asked her why she doesn’t dress up to attract boys, to look nice rather than looking like a boy. yet later, when she did “dress up,” she was told that all that make-up and those fashionable cloths made her look like a “slut.” as teenage girls, young women in belarus are encouraged to be sexual and yet “asexual.” as mothers, women are required to regulate their daughter’s sexuality, make sure their daughters are going to catch the right man, sacrifice for their families, and do the double-burden of domestic and wage labor. as mothers they must be both sexually liberated women employing the sexual fetishes of make-up, high heeled shoes, mini skirts and yet also remain asexual mothers who have no sexuality of their own—both passive sexual objects and active calculating agents of their own destiny and that of their families. women are said to be less creative jen typewritten text 61 volume 20, number 1 than men, based on their biology, yet must creatively balance work and family. most of all, a mother is often defined as someone who more than anyone else in life has the innate and natural ability to love, a love for her children, which is stronger than any other social relation. a child who grows up and falls in love with another threatens the authority, the role, and the value of his or her mother. the mother begins to question the child’s love for her and the child’s romantic love for another. since sex is a sign of love, a mother might try to “buy” her child’s love with gifts, indulgences, or favors. if a child doesn’t respond favorably, the mother might instigate a double bind relationship. alexandra was asked simultaneously to be a young sexual person and yet punished for her sexuality. she was asked repeatedly “why don’t you go out on dates, don’t you like boys?” when she told her mother about her boy friend she was punished for her sexuality. if you don’t have sexual desires then there is something wrong with you. if you have sexual desires then there is something wrong with you. if you have sex you are labeled a whore or prostitute. yet, contradictorily, parents tell girls to use birth control pills and condoms for protection, but if these materials are discovered the young girl or young woman is punished for having safe sex or planning ahead for the possibility that they might want to engage in safe sex behaviors. if a woman wants to have sex, feels sexual desires or expresses her sexuality in any form she is punished either physically or through stigmatization. sex is said to be an expression of love, yet the only proper place for sex is in marriage even if marriage is a loveless marriage. a mother might remind her child that love is the most important thing in the world and that no one can love you like your mother loves you. according to consultants in belarus, it is unnatural for a woman to feel sexual, yet it is natural for men to be sexual. one hungarian woman told me that men are naturally polygamous and women are naturally monogamous. a woman’s sexuality should be the central organizing factor in her life, yet she should sacrifice herself for her husband and family—she is asked to define herself by her sexuality and yet is punished for expressing her sexuality. she is asked to define herself as a loving person, yet love is reserved for only family. how can a young woman love her family and love another— boyfriend, husband, lover, partner, etc. young women are caught in paradoxical social, cultural, and moral imperatives, which act as psychological double binds whether clearly linked to political and economic factors or not. solutions to these double binds are difficult. either a young woman can run away from home, take drugs or get drunk to forget, lead a double-life of friends versus family, public expectations and private thoughts, or contemplate suicide as alexandra put it: when i feel too bad i am trying to hurt myself to keep the tears away and let the pain take me to another world where i can’t feel like shit and i am so tired from it. i am fed up with tears, with pain with all the bullshit in my life, i fed with all the crap that follows, with people trying to tell me what to do and giving shitty advise, you can’t even imagine. my life is like hell here. if suicide is a solution to the problems of double binds and these double binds persist in different forms under post-socialism then we would expect that suicide rates to decrease with economic improvement, as seen in hungary. if double binds are political, economic, and cultural then we would expect to see suicide rates go up if we look at post-socialist dictatorships like belarus, where the president lukachenko is said by independent observers, members of the small opposition movement and the western press, to be a dictator. psychological double binds as found in families might be more common and crosscultural, but not universal, but are based on cultural factors relating to such issues as gender, sexuality, and discipline of bodies. no matter what form double binds take, it seems clear to me that suicide is political; it involves taking power over one’s life, by taking power over one’s body, mind and soul—the power to destroy their own bodies rather than be disciplined and punished. when one is trying to control or influence one’s body this seems to be a form of power, which engenders resistance, even if resistance is ineffective or self-defeating. however, suicide is an effective way to keep one less body from being used for others’ benefit, one less person to be exploited, manipulated, punished, or abused. if attempted suicide is a cry for help, then help must come. one consultant argued that suicide is a solution to impossible situations, where someone feels isolated, alienated, stigmatized, but most importantly alone—a minority of one. she quotes orwell’s novel nineteen eighty-four, saying that, suicide is an option for someone who feels they are a minority of one. jen typewritten text 62 volume 20, number 1 suicide can be prevented, perhaps if they feel that they are not in a minority of one—socially defined as crazy, but that they have someone to talk to, someone they trust, someone who will understand, and talk to them honestly and show that the situation is not hopeless. all they might need is a friend who shows real human affection and tries to understand. that person needs to be consistent in their thoughts and actions, and propose a way out, an alternative. so many suicide cases here in belarus get referred to the mental asylum where the doctors give them drugs, lock them up, and perform experiments on them asking them to draw pictures and based on the color scheme used by the patient indicate in their records that the patient is better if they use more bright colors and worse if they use black. i told my friend in the hospital that she should just tell the doctors what they want to hear rather than being locked up in a mental hospital like a prisoner and taking drugs all the time which just make it difficult for her to think or stay awake. in conclusion i would like to point out that suicide can be traced to multiple causes and that no single factor determines or influences a person’s choice to take their own life. however, i would argue that bateson’s theory of the double bind might explain why some people might choose suicide, dissimulation, or duality in a situation of diarchical authority such as found in hungary under socialism and belarus under post-socialism. as urban suggests, socialist countries such as the ussr were composed of weak structures (1985). katherine verdery calls the socialist state a weak state (1996). double binds are used, then, when authority is weak and the person or persons employing double binds as a power relation use them because they are unable to persuade their subject to do what they would not normally do if not forced to do so. but a double bind often results in no action, which may serve the interests of the authorities. no action means no critique, no resistance, no revolution, no unorthodox behaviors, outward compliance with authority and thus the appearance of “normalcy.” suicide is often explained as a purely psychological phenomenon—a person who takes his or her own life is unbalanced, mentally disturbed, schizophrenic, or psychotic. perhaps people who have serious mental disorders such as schizophrenia might be less likely to commit suicide because they are detached from reality already and thus have escaped the problems posed by the real world, at least in their minds. what i propose is that double binds are a political tool in weak states. dictatorships display images of strength and power, but have little support from their citizens. in many dictatorships, diarchies are formed where there are two ministers of education, two ministers of culture, two supreme military commanders, etc. similarly, parents in the family might also form diarchies where the mother and the father tell their children to do opposite things—the mother might try to prevent their daughter from getting pregnant before marriage by preaching abstinence, while the father might do the same by preaching safe sex practices. control of one’s body, thoughts, feelings, and desires is a form of power, thus, in the famous feminist dictum: the personal is political. as katherine verdery has shown (1998), dead bodies can take on political meaning. following foucault (1977), i argue that suicide can be as political as the control of docile bodies, discipline, and punishment. control of one’s sexuality is political and the state in a kind of totalitarian project tries to control the sexuality of the population through sex education classes, advice to parents, talk shows on television, abortion, making condoms and other forms of birth control available, warning of over breading ethnic minorities—most often roma in eastern europe, and homophobic propaganda. in the examples given above, i have tried to show that suicide is not simply a psychological problem, but one that is linked to politics, economic, culture, socialization, gender, and sexuality. the stronger post-socialist states become, using the example of hungary, the more likely it seems that suicide rates will decrease. the weaker post-socialist states become, given the examples from belarus, the more likely diarchies and double binds will be used as a mode of power and thus suicide rates will most likely increase. strong states are built on each citizen’s freedom to control their own bodies, their own minds, and creative abilities to find alternatives and thus engage in politics as a persuasive performance of respectful arguments and counter discourses leading to consensus building rather than oppression. references bateson, gregory 1972 steps to an ecology of mind. new york: ballantine books. jen typewritten text 63 volume 20, number 1 central statistical office of hungary 1996 statistical yearbook of hungary: 1995. budapest: központi statisztikai hivatal. brainerd, elizabeth 2001 economic reform and mortality in the former soviet union: a study of the suicide epidemic in the 1990s. discussion paper no. 243. bonn: institute for the study of labor (iza). foucault, michel 1979 discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. london: vintage. hankiss, elemér 1979 társadalmi csapdák (social traps). budapest: magveto kiadó. konrád, george 1974 case worker. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich. 1977 the loser. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich. ledeneva, alena 1998 russia’s economy of favours: blat, networking and informal exchange. cambridge: cambridge university press. móricz, zsigmond 1997 relations. budapest: corvina. orwell, george 1948 nineteen eighty-four. london: penguin. smith, jeffrey alyn 2002 moonlighter’s paradise: from the land of iron and steel to the land of irony and stealing. ph.d. dissertation. anthropology department, university of california, santa cruz. urban, michael e. 1985 conceptualizing political power in the ussr: patterns of binding and bonding. studies in comparative communism 16(4): 207-226. verdery, katherine 1996 what was socialism, and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. 1999 the political life of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change. new york: columbia university press weber, max 1946 from max weber: essays in sociology. oxford: oxford university press. 1 acknowledgements: i would like to thank the international research exchange board for a language study grant, the anthropology department of the university of california, santa cruz, for a summer dissertation research grant, the english american institute at the debrecen university, and the civic education project for their support during my fieldwork research. i benefited greatly by presenting some of the ideas, theories, and interview materials that went into this essay at anthropology department of the university of california, santa cruz, vitebsk institute of modern knowledge, belarus, the centre for gender studies, european humanities university, minsk, belarus and at the ginsberg institute at harvard university. i would also like to thank krista harper and barbara west for suggesting the topic of suicide, anna yatskevich and vitali silitski for their useful comments, insights, and emotional support. i would also like to thank david m. schneider, daniel linger, donald brenneis, michael e. urban, and nancy chen for their support in preparing, analyzing and presenting my fieldwork experiences. i would also like to thank the many people in hungary and belarus who helped me more than anyone to understand many different aspects of life in eastern europe. thanks for being open, honest, and friendly. 2 michael urban in “conceptualizing political power in the ussr: patterns of binding and bonding” (1985) states that the double bind represents a power dynamic between the communist party and its subjects. he says the object of power can neither fulfill injunctions from authority nor choose not to fulfill them. the classic double bind situation in socialist eastern europe lies in the leninist formulation that the workers vanguard party acts to secure the interests of the workers, even when workers oppose the party’s course of action. since the double bind represents a dictate that one cannot follow, nor choose not to follow person or persons who receive the order cannot act, but jen typewritten text 64 volume 20, number 1 must act. no matter which they choose they are subject to punishment by the authorities. to avoid punishment they must fulfill some other task for the authorities, which defers sentencing indefinitely. since everyone in a socialist country is asked to do the impossible, each and every member is subject to punishment in the form of purges, they therefore must live in fear of punishment—this motivates them to do nothing. 3 bateson, in “toward a theory of schizophrenia,” argues that a double bind situation might exist in the family between a mother for example and her child. a parent might put a child in a double bind however the child might also put a parent in a double bind. there may be multiple overlapping and interlocking double bind relations between, parents, children, and others in society outside the family. anna yatskevich, in conversation, suggested to me that parents put children in double binds and visa versa perhaps unconsciously not as a feature of power struggle, which is not calculated to produce results, but as a psychological mechanism. it must also be pointed out that double bind relations might exist in any society in any context, however i argue that the weaker one’s authority the more likely they are to place their subjects in double binds. i also argue that not only love as bateson suggests is a major theme of double binds in family situations, but also evidence points to sex, sexuality, and romantic love. a parent’s familial love is put in question as well as parental authority when a young person becomes active sexually, falls in love with an age mate, or expresses their sexuality, all of which throws into doubt the previous definitions, of family, familial bonding, love, social status or boy or girl, man or woman. the child will always remain the mother or father’s child yet the child has reached adulthood with menstruation, marriage, sexual intercourse, employment, acceptance at university, or other signs of coming of age—rites of passage. the child will always remain a child for the mother and father, yet is considered by society and peers to be an adult and considers himself or herself an adult. this again is a confusion of logical types, contradictory social imperatives, and a threat of punishment—a double bind common in many modern societies. jen typewritten text 65 microsoft word 1aintrodef21x2021aeercorrected.docx anthropology of east europe review special issue 38 (1), 2021. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v37i1.33574 place-making, politics and borderscapes in southeastern europe davide n. carnevale university of padova thomas m. wilson binghamton university; state university of new york abstract this article introduces a collection of case studies on the politics of borders and the place-making processes in southeast european border environments. it opens with explorations of how the social analysis of borders oscillates between border studies and border theory, and between the study of borders as things and as ideas. the focus on the territoriality of borders, analyzed as dynamic social-spatial formations, is proposed as a meeting point between the two approaches. on this premise, this article examines some key elements in contemporary ethnographic research on borders in southeastern europe. 1 the anthropology of borders is inextricably tied to ethnographic research in borderlands and among border peoples, who live, or work, or play, or travel through border areas, and many of whom do all of these. it has roots in the earliest days of the discipline – dating to various interests in cultural diffusion, ethnic boundaries, and history – and it was most recently revitalized in the 1990s, in challenging but exciting times. among other changes, the cold war had ended, many new states and their borders were created, there were promises of peace where border disputes had long threatened continued violence, and the benefits and problems of globalization had fostered new scholarly interest in borders that for some were disappearing and for others were just being transformed. over the last decades, this anthropological interest in international and other geopolitical borders has gained momentum due to the apparent continuing vitality of international borders as sites and agents of state control, as demonstrated in the unpredicted and unprecedented numbers of economic and political migrants on the move from south to north and east to west worldwide. thus, it is not surprising that the anthropology of borders, which has been largely framed by the longstanding and influential scholarship on the mexico-us border, is now matched in volume and impact by scholarly studies of borders in, around, and beyond the european union (eu). a key theme in anthropological studies of these borderlands and border arrangements has been the examination of the many ways that institutional borders – the geopolitical ones, anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 2 recognized in laws and treaties that seemingly mark the territorial and political extent of state sovereignty and national security – are also defined, approached and negotiated in their roles as social and cultural boundaries (donnan and wilson 1999). this anthropological attention to the border as structure and the border as symbolic demarcation has been couched in terms that associate the former with ‘border studies’ and the latter with ‘border theory’. we will start to draw on this duality using two ethnographic anecdotes by davide carnevale. achilles, the wheeled tortoise in september 2018, a few days after the end of a brief research in the trilateral border region of prespa lakes, i was on the other shore of the adriatic sea, in the region of the italian peninsula which protrudes the most towards the balkans. i had reached a village near bari, which hosts a wildlife rescue center. i was carrying a young tortoise, which i had come across along a country road while it was slowly dragging its shell and paw, severely damaged by the tyre of a car. showing great endurance, the small tortoise, initially on the verge of death, had got in few days its energies, appetite and speed back, but not its ideal gait. my first-aid intervention – a paper-taped carapace – had been useful, but not enough for achilles – thus had the tortoise been christened – to have a full recovery. at the rescue center, when she heard the word ‘tortoise’, the vet immediately went into a tirade about people who take tortoises from their habitat, detaining them illegally as pets on their balconies and home gardens. examining achilles, she said they would try to restore the use of its unmoving paw, but if the operation was not successful another minor surgery would allow achilles to grow up on wheels. dismissing me, the veterinarian clarified that, as required by law, achilles would be returned to the wild, but ‘obviously only in the case of an italian turtle’. the vet assured me that the tortoise would, indeed, undergo a genetic test to ensure it was a local one. i discovered there are many smugglers who gather land tortoises throughout the rural areas of the western balkans – especially of the subspecies testudo hermanni boettgeri, and various subspecies of testudo graeca. they transport them illegally to resell them in italy, where, as the doctor says, the ‘black market of albanian tortoises is always flourishing’. illegally released or escaped from captivity, these ‘foreign turtles’ – in addition to the damage to the territories of origin – are feared for their impact on native species, already at risk due to the increasing shrinking of the rural landscape of the italian peninsula. in order to avoid inter-species competition, genetic pollution and transmission of pathogens, the center has its own special section that shelters non-native turtles, while they wait for the chance to cross the adriatic sea again. i was a little thrown by the idea that achilles could be prosecuted as a potential illegal tortoise, left to the judgment of this atypical border agent, the veterinary. devoted mainly to medical treatments and environmental safeguarding, she was in fact a representative of national sovereignty. achilles was probably little aware of international treaties, state demarcations, and national identities, but the political relevance of this demarcation, with its agentic power, remained present nonetheless. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 3 despite the arbitrariness and virtuality of any political divisions, social representations, and symbolic demarcations, on which so much ethnography has rightly focused, the border appeared in all its concreteness and importance, as a kind of givenness. was the veterinary not an agent of the washington cites convention, and an instrument of the governmental biopolitics of tortoises? how relevant might frontiers be to the life of a young wheeled tortoise? the twisted belly borderscape this same southern-italian region is characterized by karstic geology and little rain, yielding a rural landscape that appears burnt throughout the hot season, and rich in small ravines, sinkholes, aquifers and caves. several furrows cross the ground of the whole area, mostly facing the coast. not far from where the above-mentioned center is located today, one of these furrows splits a township into two villages, documented since the middle ages, and still connected by a single bridge. they were administratively reunified a century ago under the name of adelfia, a benevolent grecism meant to obliterate centuries of parochial disputes. still today adelfia is the only small municipality in the area to have two elementary schools, two post offices, and two cemeteries, one on each side of the gully, as well as two different patron saints and two dialects – plus a third, shared among the women of both districts. about a century ago, an imposing water system, the apulian aqueduct, was built, putting an end to the shortage of surface water that had so decisively influenced the socio-economic morphology and history of the area, and allowing greater industrialization of the agricultural sector and urbanization. among the canal and pipeline laborers were my great-grandfather and, occasionally, my grandfather as a boy. they worked in the countryside near the town of acquaviva, where the company had long been building the pipelines that connected the main conduit to the neighboring towns. there, too, lie small dips and crevices, although the landscape appears rather uniform due to sprawling fields of olive trees, vineyards and almond groves. the nearest village to acquaviva is about 2.5 miles away travelling along a country road. my grandfather maintained that they spoke a terrible dialect in this other village, and he humorously suggested me not to look for a wife there, because it was a well-known fact that the local women had u v'ddiche t'rciute: a twisted belly.2 it is now beyond my ability to determine the origin of this stereotype. i often thought to research the manual skills of the midwife of the village at that time, probably left-handed and a bit clumsy. my grandfather’s advice marked a boundary that is utterly rarefied and irrelevant for me today, but was well traced in his experience. he recognized and projected a meaningful demarcation between these two small towns, while his grandson sees no or little boundary and otherness, for what amounts to an almost indistinct part – politically, socially, geographically, linguistically – of the same agricultural southern area bordering the big city on the coast. where i could see nothing but a suburban environment, my grandpa had charted and crossed a borderscape. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 4 space to cross, place to stay geopolitical borders have increasingly attracted anthropological interest due to the roles borders play in all manner of issues related to transnational, national and regional politics, economics, social welfare, social justice, migration, refugees, smuggling, and many other formal and informal aspects that mark the changing nature of nation, state, and region in europe. the scholarship on borders over the last decades also grew in the former regimes in central and eastern europe, where new crucial issues about national borders arose rather suddenly. since the 1990s, anthropologists and ethnographers have recognized and embraced the need for studies of regional borders and their roles in the everyday lives of border peoples, both as physical apparatuses of the state and as social facts and cultural imaginaries. other evidence of the vitality of anthropological investigations of the changing nature of local, regional and national borders in the eastern reaches of europe has been the rise of regular conferences and schools committed to the training in ethnographic approaches to borders, as has occurred annually in the konitsa summer school since 2006. this special issue of the anthropology of east europe review is in large part a result of these initiatives. the contributors to this issue show in various ways how ethnographic research in borderlands cannot elide perspectives on the border as a varying material space through the exploration of the border’s lived dimensions and its facets of everyday life. intensive research at international borders – that have received the most attention from scholars, policy-makers, and social critics of all sorts since the arrival of the national states – has shown quite persuasively that the two dimensions in studying borders, which we have introduced anecdotally, require equal levels of epistemological attention and empirical investigation. metaphorical perspectives on boundaries as they are perceived and constructed, which treat the border as a device of definition and identification of the self and of social groups, cannot encompass all the dimensions of the existence of boundaries as things, as objects that concretely regulate the movements of goods, power, ideas, capital, people, and non-human organisms. at the same time, the opposite is also true: spatial delimitations exist as social and cultural configurations of spaces as much as they function as governmental and static entities. furthermore, borders exist as a mode of politics depending on how different, potentially divergent and contested practices and representations impact social patterns for bounding. with and because of their tangibility, borders are tied to symbolic definitions of order, belonging and memory. in fact, the anthropology of borders, and all other border studies across anthropology’s cognate disciplines, show how the processes of bordering, by local, regional, national and international actors, make what borders are and what borders do extremely dynamic (see, for example, paasi 1998; van houtum et al. 2005; reeves 2011; scott et al. 2018). in borderlands, cultural, economic, political and social boundaries can coincide, overlap, traverse and even subvert each other. in other words, the border is above all a place, a “distinct space where people live; it encompasses both the idea and the actuality of where things are” (donnan and wilson 1999, 9). consequently, it is widely held that the study of borders needs to combine, practically in terms of research design, and conceptually in terms of contributions to knowledge and theory, approaches to territorially-based political formations, often demarcated in laws, anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 5 with the many aspects of the social construction of borderlands, where demarcations gained function and significance. one of the crucial points in the anthropological approach to borders is thus the focus on territory, in the attempt to marry analyses of borders as objects, as subjects and as ideas. the research proposal put forward within this special issue stresses this focus, and precisely the focus on border territory as borderscape, meaning a space whose processes of socialization create configurations and features for the making of border as a place, through geographical, political, institutional and infrastructural profiles limiting and regulating material and symbolical fluxes. the search for meeting points between objectivity and subjectivation of the border is not new, nor is it the sole domain of anthropologists and ethnographers. numerous studies have aimed to explore how multiple borders and boundaries criss-cross all geopolitical territorial demarcations. thus, it is not surprising that the development of scholarship on borders, which has enjoyed a remarkable proliferation over the past three decades, has on several occasions revealed a fascination with the intersections of ‘border theory’ and ‘border studies’ (wilson and donnan 2012). however, its accomplishments in an ethnographic project remain challenging, often because of those criss-crosses, and the multiple interpretations of what the borders are, where they are located, how they work, and how to live with them. despite the evidence that emanates from borderlands about the border multiplicities (andersen et al. 2012), some critics might see that the gap between the study of borders as things and that of borders as ideas seems to have gradually widened rather than narrowed.3 border as institutional fact and political device a first broad approach to borders has focused primarily on their political dimension and the main political phenomena associated with borders and borderlands. ethnographic observation and anthropological analysis of borders have explored major changes in the forms of sovereignties, citizenships and social belonging since the fall of the iron curtain, changes that have called into question the neoliberal, counter-empirical, rhetoric of a borderless world. great repercussions on the functions and management of borders also affected the institutional realizations of international, state, and regional governance. border studies have engaged in the interdisciplinary analysis of the border as a political object, while dealing with the removal, strengthening, and transformation of borders as they intersect with other forms of political authority. for example, the topic has been approached by looking at the growing importance of cross-border governmental bodies, of transnational organizations, and of non-governmental actors and lobbies (bucken-knapp and schack 2001). starting from the fractures between ethnicity, nation and statehood, researchers of borderlands have dwelled on the new pressures of national assimilation and on renovated state-centristic logics (donnan and wilson 1998, 1999). anthropological studies, among many others, have also extensively explored the effects on state boundaries of the mondialization of market economies (heyman 2017), the intersection of humanitarian and environmental crises with border regulations and deregulations (paasi et al. 2019), the penetrations and exacerbations of security issues in the narratives of borders and mobility (cabot 2014), with borderlands designed by the proliferation of new walls (brown anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 6 2010; tsoni and frank 2019), as well as by new technologies for control, which still can also deal death and destruction (cunningham 2020; israel 2020). political analyses of borders have also dealt with what many have seen as the increasing ineffectiveness of twentieth-century state apparatuses. with equal visibility, the last decades of the de-democratization of the public sphere seemed to have eroded the function of borders to circumscribe and guarantee citizenship statutes and rights, at the same time increasing the claims about their universality (balibar 2010). contemporary social researchers, including anthropologists, often have to come to terms with political borders which have been recognized as weakened, more porous to forces which also shape the state institutions themselves. political borders also appear as multiplied, with the addition of airports, internal customs and immigration checks, which also function as borders, and some borders that have been outsourced to neighboring states in order to stem migratory flows, despite the popular perception that national borders are natural and relatively fixed. borders may be displaced, where they seem to oscillate or fluctuate, depending on often-changing personnel, policies or natural features. people often have a clear picture of where the border is or should be placed. but sometimes, these notions are ambiguous or “too lively”, like the “unruly currents” of the drina river, which ratifies a large portion of the border between bosnia-herzegovina and serbia, but keeps changing its course (brkovic and jansen, 2019). simply put, national and other geopolitical borders are no longer taken for granted in terms of their dimensions, location, and roles, paradoxically making narratives of border management looming more than before (anderson et al. 2002). as researchers along the internal and external eu borders may attest every day, these longstanding symbols of state power are persistently transfiguring rather than extinguishing. border peoples and border theorists must deal equally with local and regional claims of autonomy, but also with nation-states sometimes relinquishing, sometimes asserting, their dominant role in demarcating local identities and legitimate residencies. recent epidemiologic and geopolitical shifts, for example, are giving new resonance to crucial declarations of guardianship of the national interests, bolstering the power of bordered governmental bodies and their territorial margins. a wide subfield in the literature on borders as political entities approaches the political control of legal and illegal mobility and its relationship with the global labour market. the study of border regimes is mainly inspired by biopolitical theories, and by the concept of governmentality in particular. based on the idea that “immigrants embody the articulation of borders and boundaries” (fassin 2011, 215), this type of research finds fertile ground when dealing with policies, practices and representation of contemporary migrations and displaced people. in such cases, the border is mainly interpreted as a device for naming, classifying, and ordering human mobility (bigo 2007; de genova 2017), and as the site regulating human flows according to discretional categories of inclusion and exclusion (pallitto and heyman 2008; fassin 2019). the study of migration governance has also led to the analysis of borders as multilayered and multi-located. it confirms that borders are not the same for everyone, nor are they experienced in the same way. according to this approach, borders operate wherever political divides generate distinctions between norms and exceptions, shaping multiple forms of exploitation and segmented assimilation (ong 2006; cuttitta 2006). connected to the functioning of the global market economy, they are agents within assemblages of power that nonetheless reconfigure state territory and authority (mezzadra and nielsen 2013). anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 7 in addressing the political actions of borders, these studies shed light on their being part of a differential stratification of risks and (in)securities. this frame certainly shows them as more complex than a line drawn in terms of pure legal abstraction, and provides a valuable complement to much that passed in the past. however, biopolitical readings may also keep offering a markedly structuralist and functionalist understanding of borders, which are chiefly pictured through top-down procedures, with technology and institutions framing if not subjugating individuals and groups in borderlands and elsewhere in body politics. this allowed borrowing from realist politics to treat borders as theoretical abstractions and formal devices, thus limiting the understanding of borders as complex socio-spatial formations. while contemporary studies of the state and its borders would be likely to investigate various sources of power and control beyond the organs of government – through a much wider lens that included civil society, ngos, and transnational bodies – such studies would still benefit, in our opinion, by including more ideas revolving around the spatial reality of borders, their geographical and historical settings, the varying territorial and relational dynamics influencing their social life, such as those of who cross them. furthermore, ethnographic research on borderlands – including many studies dedicated to ‘sensitive’ border areas of the former iron curtain (paasi 1996; berdahl 1999; glaeser 2000; pelkmans 2006) – show two data points usually neglected by a body of literature that fundamentally analyzes borders as a mode of governance. first, the border works well, at least for the state, where there are fewer perceived exceptions, that is where it creates a naturalized order, a taken-for-granted space regulating flows and blockages, including gaps, gray areas, and the exceptions it creates. second, border regimes are not politically ubiquitous to the point of embracing the full spectrum of forms of social belonging, distinction and exclusion. borderscapes themselves are affected by many other ways of making place, that the perspectives mentioned above tend to detect only through limited political categories. border as representation and idea while much theorizing in ‘border studies’ before and since the 1990s utilized various theories of the state, governance, citizenship and sovereignty, ‘border theory’ has come to be known too for its view of borders as social constructions. the second approach that we will outline here is primarily engaged in the study of metaphorical boundaries that join and divide individuals and groups, as persons, cultures and identities, always dealing with the vicissitudes of space, place and liminality. in this approach, pioneered for so many by anzaldúa (1987), ethnographies are nourished by the complex connections between borders and patterns of social belonging. while political analyses put the border issue at the center of the workings of states and politics, this type of work focuses on bottom-up dynamics and on small-scale locations, looking at the cultural construction of everyday life in local contexts, and at the phenomenology of experience in border settings. a key theme in this approach to borders is human agency, with a focus on cultural representations, patterns of individual intentionality, incorporated memories of borders, bordering as part of signifying systems, spatial practices which give meaning to the boundaries (see, for example, van houtum et al. 2005; cozzi 2009; stokłosa 2019). where these studies aim at observing border landscapes, they often privilege material and symbolical traces of anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 8 people’s community-building and place-making. they show borders as viewed, negotiated, and reconstructed from below, associated with other elements of the cultural landscape. as a consequence, research shows social zones of varying meanings and sets of linkages, socially produced and reproduced between persons and with the environment. these visions of border shed light on vernacular landscapes (jackson 1984), and representational spaces filled with imaginaries and everyday practices (lefebvre 1991). furthermore, ethnographic research on cultural representations of borders usually adopts phenomenological theorizations of place. the landscape is thus intended as “a medium rather than a container for action”, as a space that “does not and cannot exist apart from the events and activities within which it is implicated” (tilley 1994, 10). boundaries lose their objective social salience, since space acquires meaning through and is defined by the subject experiencing it. this may be seen, for instance, in recent developments in sensory and aesthetic approaches to studying borders as cognitive or embodied maps (said 2013; schimanski 2015). among the findings of these anthropological studies is, first, that borders are made and remade in multiple ways by the subjects within the process of occupying and shaping the space. second, that the local representations cannot be entirely inferred from state delimitations and major identity narratives. border encounters, local traditions, and varying symbolic resources operate as cultural strategies not only in reproducing and establishing boundaries, but also in challenging institutionalized social differences. a relevant part of this literature has been influenced by and resulted in spatial deconstructivism, often based on the intention to create an epistemological break in the postulated correspondence between sovereignty, society and territory. this theoretical framework is epitomized by proposals to liberate the study of borders from the “territorial trap” (agnew 1994). it encourages the historicizing of maps, to read them as a medium expressing a social construction of the world. moreover, it usually offers a postmodernist reading of these, interpreting borders as a technology of power to realize or manifest the ideology they represent (harley 1989; cosgrove 2006). from this point of view, this body of research draws near the above-mentioned studies of governmentality, wherein local narratives are often traced as expressions of cultural resistance, social struggle and political creativity, or as independent agencies softening or threatening geopolitical structures and their narcissistic centripetism (van houtum 2011; scott et al. 2018; tyerman 2021). centered on narratives and counter-narratives of borders, this approach may tend to move far from an observation of the borderland as a territory. its political, historical, and geomorphological characteristics are considered to have little truth beyond their internalized presence.4 taken alone, this frame may become insufficient to analyze how borders keep embodying the functioning of modern states, which, as discussed above, stand as the primary institution of power and control requiring political, social and symbolical performances (salter 2011). furthermore, the single focus on experienced dimensions might conceal how borders as territory – with their physical environment, structures and institutions – have a generative function of political and social action. borderlands are populated and regulated by many barriers and bridges, which are often settled by legal and political definitions of sovereignty and citizenship, as much as by local identifications and social exchanges (donnan and wilson 2010). there is no doubt that these interrelations and matches are not mechanical expressions of the sole geography drawn by political structures, nor by other authoritative forces that draw the frontiers of laws, rights and anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 9 social recognition. however, once the mirror of mimesis is shattered, the border keeps revealing the dialectics between its political spatial performances and its cultural meanings. these being-in-the-world experiences interlock with the physicality, materiality, and political realization of border landscapes. social research on borders, then, still needs to find ways to steady these tensions. representations of the borderscape will need to be reconstructed as “dialectics at a standstill” (benjamin 1999, 462), in dialogue with everyday life and charged in its historical complexity. rendezvous points: borderscapes as negotiations of territoriality because of the very role of the border, and because of its considerable contemporary transformations, the two research directions we have sketched so far have both moved towards the study of the border as a process, looking at splintered spatial practices and at ideas in motion. in the same fashion, the problem of redefining territoriality arose in order to respond to the challenge of changes in the global political landscape (paasi 1998). these goals draw closer to arjun appadurai’s concept of scape, which involves the idea of cultural flows in movement and under permanent construction, which vary according to the point of view (appadurai 1994). however, the main drawback with this argument is that these problems and tensions often result in a programmatic de-territorialization of the politics of place. on the one hand, many studies disconnect the new politics of transnational flows and relational spaces from spatially-bounded processes and institutions, for instance by putting an emphasis on society in terms of interactional networks (amin 2004). on the other hand, most current ethnographic explorations of borders embrace the contested, subjective, and irregular nature of spatiality, by examining boundaries as socially designed artifacts expressed in imaginaries, thus emphasizing the dispersed, formless, placeless, and ultimately borderless nature of cultural fluxes. the term borderscape emerged within border research “allowing for a study of the border as mobile, perspectival, and relational” (rajaram and grundy-warr 2007, x). its use often stresses the dynamicity of bordering, oscillating between the ontology of borders and the politics of belonging and recognition. however, also this conceptualization is not without the risk of underestimating the role of territoriality. while interestingly stressing the importance of borders as an environmental ground for social interaction, rajaram and grundy-warr, for example, assume borders are not recognizable in physical locations, and must be read through a biopolitical framework. border scholars should thus be “not simply concerned with landscapes per se, but with landscapes of power” (ibid., xxvi). other reflections on borderscapes have sought to encompass the multiple social and spatial imaginaries linked to border place-making. here mainly intended as a symbolic, discursive construction, the concept offers insight on the imagined inter-textual reality of borders (strüver 2005). in studies giving to imaginaries an inherent resistance to state demarcations, the borderscape is “an ambivalent space of both power and resistance” (schimanski 2015, 37), and a concept supporting new counter-hegemonic forms of the political and of the social liberated “from the burden of the 'territorialist imperative' ” (brambilla 2015, 18). anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 10 without dismissing the important insights they provided, these proposals have revealed a tendency to reproduce the epistemological separation between border as an effect of political powers and border as zone of social interactions, contingent meanings, and discursive signification. the concept of borderscape may improperly suggest, especially if deprived of its spatial dimension, an innate contrast between the supposed rigidity of territorial sovereignties and the again supposed vitality and otherness of bodies questioning all legal and bureaucratic abstractions. we argue here that a more effective processual approach should not assert their de-territorialized and dispersed nature at the expense of other forms of bordering. on the contrary, the study of borderscapes should stress the fact that cultural flows also move across and are made of territories and material infrastructures, therefore exploring human relations as they intertwine with the structure and materiality of border institutions, as much of the anthropological research has done while drawing connections between the politics and the place-making of borders. all discursive knowledge, interpretive process and embodied experience also has territorial contexts that foreground as the existential ground of imaginaries, constituent powers, and their spatial effects. borders are the physical spaces in which these links become more pressing and ethnographically accessible. not by coincidence, theories about the deterritorialization of fluxes are here more visibly challenged. as interfaces between different states and groups, borders are often fields of dense political, social and cultural negotiations, mixing, and interactions. from this stems the inadequacy of methodologies for border research that reproduce a dichotomy between political and vernacular dimensions of borders. because of its liminal nature, border-zone institutions and constructs are constantly interactive, being “interstitial arenas” (donnan and wilson 2003) where different modes of territoriality are negotiated and performed. in debating the concept of borderscape, what is proposed here is thus a rapprochement to its territorial dimensions. the term borderscape should not be dissociated from the landscape, embracing its etymological dialectic between space as a – politically informed – thing and its – culturally expressed – representation. this can be a useful strategy also in testing dichotomies between power and resistance, as well as between border as a tool of governmentality defining the edges of the norm, and the lived and dynamic border as a site of struggles and exclusion. in this regard, it is helpful to implement the proposal of a processual geography wherein “flows can create, reproduce, and transform geographic spaces” (heyman and campbell 2009, 131). as border landscapes clearly show, relationships between mobility and spatial entities are usually not simply disordered or de-territorialized. the dynamics and disjunction of borders do not simply occur on the global flow of imaginary landscapes, nor in an abstract space of political operations. connected to social systems made of “concrete interconnections among places” (friedman 2003, 10), flows rearrange the territories that they cross becoming part of them (anderson and o'dowd 1999). on the one hand, flows are differentiated and polarized reproducers, creators and obliterators of organized spaces and of discourses interlocked with them. on the other hand, they are always situated within a “used territory” (santos 2021) inhabited, enacted, and traversed by historical processes. both as a political artifact and as experience, borderscapes are the material and conceptual result of multiple “border solidification” (harbers 2003), made of spaces other than by the projection of acts of imagination of the world (paasi 1996; fabietti 2011). reflections about borderscaping, then, anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 11 aim at inserting processuality directly into the material existence of political borders, correcting the paradox for which the spatial turn in social sciences hesitates in embracing geographical grammars and social theories based on territoriality. as a consequence, borders will not be limited to instruments of sovereign powers, nor to cultural products of textual, ideological and symbolical abstraction. being something more than the locus of an “invented reality, an appealing truth” (van houtum 2011, 51), they can be better observed as true and literal political artifacts, shaping and made by shaping spaces. structural dynamisms and multiple and contested definitions of otherness cannot be avoided in border ethnographies, these dealing with the “frontier effect” (donnan and wilson 2010) which contribute to borderlanders’ life. the changeability of border narratives is not, then, a denial of their historical and geographical reality, nor an affirmation of their dematerialization and arbitrariness. rather, they confirm the material, functional and symbolic presence of borders, thus their ability to forge complex cultural landscapes. borders could therefore be understood as a central object of social analysis precisely because they are central poles of interaction between the spatial production of society and the social production of space. a border operates both as a dynamic, though organized, political place, and as a dynamic medium through which border experiences are organized, classified and interpreted. as a place, it provides and expresses symbolic and functional markers of inclusion, exclusion or abandonment, which ethnographies observe as well in terms of social organization. as a medium, it comprises the complex conjunction between the varying morphological presence of borders, their bordering, de-bordering, and re-bordering practices, and their imagination. contributions to the anthropology of borders in southeastern europe this special issue brings together ethnographic research in borderlands and anthropological understandings on borders and bordering processes in southeastern europe. many characteristics of this region make it both an interesting ethnographic field for the research on border territories as connected to specific issues of place, identity, and citizenship, and a privileged site for tracing global dynamics in the contemporary political life of borders and borderlands. longue-durée and contemporary phenomena in southeast european terrains generate fascinating as much as crucial opportunities for ethnographic research on borders. foremost among these opportunities is the proliferation and continuous historical changes that have affected borders, political authority, and the organization of states and social groups in the region. since the ottoman empire, through the yugoslavian federation and the recent troubled and differentiated paths of european integration, the region experienced a political map of highly variable geography. if measured through the lens of the political categories of the modern nation-state, the history of the region stands out for the repeated large oscillations of the local demos/ethnos binomial. these are associated with shifting political representations and practices of borders, as well as with the complex articulation of social boundaries, both drawing borderscapes with multiple morphologies on different levels. the southeast european history has been intersecting and continually articulating modern forms of supra-ethnic citizenship, traditional and informal forms of social organization, and administrative orders and anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 12 rules that attempted to draw resources from religious, kinship, and ethnic affiliations. in particular, research on the balkans has extensively emphasized, and questioned as well, an aggregate of common regional characteristics. these include its predominantly peasant economy, its peripheral inclusion into a series of supranational systems, the multi-ethnicity and religious coexistence of its people. extensive coverage has been given to structural commonalities stemming from a shared legacy of byzantine, ottoman, and socialist eras, as well as by patterns in the post-socialist transition. another crosscutting trope is certainly that of being par excellence an area of contested powers. stemming from different perspectives, concepts such as “penumbral borders” (paasi and zimmerbauer 2016), “versatile borders” (darques 2017), “phantom borders” (von hirschhausen et al. 2019), and “entangled borders” (green 2019), highlight the fragmented sedimentation of borderlands, the multiplicity of border regimes, their highly contextual and selective significance, and the cohabitation and overlap of different bordering practices and arenas. the social analysis of southeast european contexts comes to terms with intricacies and border complexities, with the contested legacy of former socio-political patterns of territoriality, with mismatched interactions between contemporary regional blocs, states, administrations, and local communities. moreover, as it is known, the local political geography has an equally complex and painful contemporary history, expressed on a map forged by territorial struggles and fueled by old and newer leading powers, international pressures, imperial and national narratives. in few decades, many existing classifications of places and people have been eroded or restructured, others invented, established, or reinforced. a large and growing body of literature thus investigated the dramatic changes of border regimes, as well as the changing role of borders in ideologies and political practices. the articles collected within this special issue confirm southeastern europe as an interesting field of analysis of the impact that new ideological and power configurations have on political borders, on modes and layers of identification, and therefore on the everyday life of borderlanders. these contributions also describe the role of geo-cultural imaginaries penetrating both public and scholarly discourses. as notably argued by maria todorova, the study of the balkans appears marked by an “unhealthy obsession with distinction, difference, with otherness” that also manifests itself through “borders as a preferred object of analysis” (todorova 2002, 62-63). thus, the edge of the region is not only the result of historical legacies, nor it is only expressed in complex spatial issues. it is also embedded in mental maps that enshrine its definitions, normative presumptions, and conceptual systems of reference. rather than accountability of innocent definitions derived from alleged “unmarked categories” (ibid., 82), the study of the region as a “regime of spatiality” (mishkova 2018) can then better support the study and straighten it out of hegemonic narratives and essentialized geo-imaginaries. the first article following these pages engages the readers on the relation between borders and spheres of legitimate actions. robert hayden has relied on his extensive research activity on the balkans, brought together by the intent to look at how ideologies and bureaucracies enter the patterns of social life, in proximity with those local perceptions that drove social action in the region (hayden 2013). observing the wide variety of authorities and collectivities that define the legitimacy, values, and logics of borderness, hayden invites us to look at the southeast european context, and beyond, from this multipolarity of territorial and nonterritorial jurisdictions that affect territories, the politics of borders, citizenship regimes, and anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 13 ethno-national-religious identities. the article then poses one of the central problems in the study of international borders: many border arrangements crosscut and overlap sovereign political borders, offering both opportunities and challenges to ethnographers of borderlands who have to deal with the major narratives of state territory and sovereignty. as discussed above, territoriality is a shared key element in the examination of the borders, frontiers, and boundaries that delimit and define geopolitical entities, as well as material and human flows. confirming the importance of this focus, thomas wilson’s article offers a look at the palpability of the european union border. the european union presence, policies, and management of state borders and supranational frontiers are crucial to understanding the lives of several inhabitants of borderlands. the article focuses in particular on the relevance of what recently occurred in northern ireland with brexit, which illustrates the concrete influence that the process of european transnational integration has had on border contexts. brexit asks us to consider whether similar dynamics affect other areas at the edge of the union, where claimed regional and national identities overlap with the promise and seeking of eu benefits. the concept of ‘european borderland’, here associated to southeastern europe, supports the proposal to look at the borders of supranational entities in spatial terms, i.e. with an epistemology that does not necessarily need to distinguish them from how other political borders, such as those of nation-states, are observed. the text thus restates the idea of political borders as territories where state and belongings interact and intersect more vividly (wilson 2012). the topic of european integration – together with the disaggregation of the former and today’s border regimes – also offers lenses that have been little employed to date, which allows approaching the region as a whole case study with its many internal variations. the european dimension of these border regimes raise some conundrums. first, the eu influence is an issue involving the whole region, creating there new inter-regional differences and imbalances. among the key factors in the contemporary southeast european border regimes and internal borders, we certainly need to mention the differential progress of the european union integration and enlargement (taylor et al. 2013), as well as the growing influence of european policies beyond the eu borders (lavenex and schimmelfennig 2009). historical legacies are then not the only elements to be called into question in understanding the region today, which is, on the contrary, marked by a deep questioning of these legacies. the severe, sudden closure of the former internal boundaries within the yugoslavian and soviet federations triggered a long chain of political crises that precisely address borderlands and identity frontiers as a matter of international and geopolitical concerns. as darques (2017) illustrates, the growing disclosure and erosion of the federal perimeters, formerly under the harsh monopoly of military authorities, is counteracted by the dramatic exacerbation of their previous internal borders. new inter-regional and semi-federal agreements not only led these openings, but are changing the regional geography through infrastructures and facilities built from scratch, supported and financed by the new interests and geopolitical partners. a second conundrum concerns european multi-level governance, which is undoubtedly one of the main structural factors shaping local state-building projects and public debates. contrary to widespread assumptions, not only endogenous but also exogenous drives make southeastern europe illustrative of both a relevant degree of political and institutional porosity and of the trend to conceive of political borders as strong. while leading programs to boost transnational cooperation and to harmonize border regimes and border-crossing procedures, anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 14 the eu, among other international actors, has a decisive influence also in broadening the distance among variegated types of citizenship, unfolding local tensions and disseminating opaque policies. circumscribing the region as ‘a periphery of europe’ contributes in several senses to understand why “here borders still matter” (andreev 2004, 382). for instance, the prominence of european governance is exemplified by the regional agenda on ethnic and religious minorities, on refugees and migrant guest-workers, on terrorism and criminal trades. it stands out similarly while researching quasi-state entities or constituent republics, like kosovo or bosnia-herzegovina. finally, while confirming the insufficiency of the state framework in understanding regions and local borders, a european perspective allows at the same time to reflect on states and territories without resorting to essentialist assessments about national identity. the ethnographies gathered here authenticate the influence of past and present regional, interregional, intrastate, federal and semi-federal political borders, which are all shaping – together with other bounded forms of social organization – regional geography. for many of these border formations and transformations, the european patterns of multi-level governance have a prominent role. the concept of ‘european borderland’ then serves to illustrate, rather than an indeterminacy of european political boundaries, the co-presence of a complex of ubiquitous and multiple borders. as balibar has pointed out, these characteristics make the balkans “rather an epitome and an allegory of europe” (balibar 2009, 200). in this sense, current dynamics do not seem to undermine the possibilities of treating the region as a unit. rather they are creating new political, social, and historical features that will allow investigating the region altogether on many issues, those of borders included. the third contribution to this special issue is dedicated to an ethnographic exploration of zrnorsko, a village on the albanian side of the trilateral border region of prespa lakes. the research focuses on the interaction between productive activities and spatial practices in this rural landscape. research on the local social economy thus connects to two terrains on which the anthropological tradition on the region has long been trained: the transformations of peasant societies and the role of regional identities within the processes of place-making and boundary maintenance (byrnes 1976; halpern and kideckel 1983). both the history of productive activities and the local space-orienting elements offer insight into how place-making processes connect to the social economy and its historical changes. identity issues and macro-political phenomena thus become approachable as embraced to specific relationships with the environment and its inhabitants. as the introductory anecdotes to this article were intended to suggest, ethnography carried out in border territories pushes the analysis to tilt between space and place. in an attempt to draw connections among the two, the fieldwork team in zrnorsko adopted two approaches in particular, which stress this tilting as remarkably fruitful. on the one hand, fieldwork activities investigated how the productive history of this borderland intersected with the story of the village and of research participants. on the other hand, they drew an exploration of local spatial practices through a participatory mapping activity. this work contributes to scholarship that shows the importance of everyday practical and symbolical work in eliciting borders and boundedness (reeves 2011). material and symbolic boundaries jointly participate in ecological formations, where border logics appear to be constructed and operated, renamed or dismissed, like fields and streets. at the same time, empirical findings show how broader logics and power relations reverberate in local anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 15 environments and boundaries. global drivers of power and authority contribute to the drawing of polysemous and polymorphic borders, and the same border technology and standardized procedures deliver different performances according to the subjects and contexts involved. these logics influence imaginaries of both interstitial and core spaces (carnevale 2018), and – as widely postulated (green 2005; anderson 2012; zielonka 2017) – they tend to diversify more between central and marginal spots of the same broad social domain than to circumscribe binary westphalian political entities. in short, they give borders the capacity to differentiate the ability to live a normal life (cunningham and heyman 2004; dzenoska 2014). as studies of the post-socialist transition confirm (wolfe 2000), peripheral place-making strategies are far from being beyond the systemic changes in the political economy of states. nonetheless, in the case of znorsko and neighboring villages, these changes seem mainly to produce people, areas, and frontiers, not of concern. the article by theodoros kouros shifts the object of investigation beyond the balkan peninsula. based on his ethnographic research in nicosia, cyprus, he analyses the grassroots boundary-making that regulates the frontiers internal to societies. the article focuses on sidewalks, an urban element implicated in urban crossing regulations and in everyday bottomup bordering codes. this cypriot cityscape support thoughts of how boundary narratives are constantly fueled with claims and counterclaims, and how informality and transgressions of formal laws might become an integral part of border regulation. a substantial part of this special issue is dedicated to ethnographies of borderlands touching the issue of identity. the topic has a prominent feature in the social investigation of this region, and it has long been studied as a chief factor in unresolved territorial issues. these articles make several contributions to the question of how dimensions and sentiments of belonging contribute to structuring social, economic, and political relations, driving ethnographic connections between borders and boundary-making. for example, ethnographies of language, music and dances become ways to research the social life of political borders through externalization and internalization of cultural traits. on the one hand, code-switching, language strategies, and dance performances reveal the penetration of nationalistic standings and claimed ownership of regional traditions, set as “obligation to guard the frontier”. on the other hand, while internalizing state-sponsored linguistic and folkloric ideologies, research participants show practices renovating the sense and meanings of territoriality, through strategies of “subversive heteroglossia” that preserve and build spaces of cultural intimacy (hertzfield 1997), or establishing chances for creative use of identity traits. rachele bezzini, gilles de rapper, and ana-cristina irian follow ties, traces, and emerging patterns in the imaginaries about italy in gjirokaster, southern albania. symbolic boundaries, cultural differences, and new proximity through migrations are established on multiple poles – national, ethnic, religious, educational – influencing both the public and domestic spheres, the local infrastructures and souvenir photos. in the following article we are brought to koshovice, an albanian village a few meters from the border with greece and from other small mountain settlements of northern epirus, like aghia marina. while tracing the history of this predominantly orthodox and greek-speaking village, the researchers focus on how the memory of micro-local ties among border communities intersects with great historical changes affecting the frontier. legal and illegal cross-border movements, forms of economic cooperation, the mutual collaboration in organizing religious celebrations, weddings and anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 16 mourning, make the nearby greek village into “the other half of the village”, challenging the rigidity of the border between states. these ethnographies bring to the forefront the fact that, compared to the relatively fixed territorial boundaries of states, local markers of identification are many and ambiguous (manos 2010). national identity overlaps with other forms of social orderings and politicized differences, which regulate, blur, and partially relocate the borders. the multilayered nature of balkan borderlands compels the field activity to deal with mismatched forms of social structuring, institutional configuration, and individual experiences (theodossopoulos 2003; kaneff and heintz 2006; nitsiakos et al. 2008). drawing attention to marginal contexts, these articles thus support a less structuralist and formalist use of the notions of marginality and centrality. in the direction of what has been proposed here, they confirm that the mobilization of differences and connections are temporarily aggregated and locally exploited along with different principles and shared legacies, that could easily traverse new and old political borders. research on borderland communities and border-crossers confirms their daily confrontation with liminal and interstitial spaces, thus debunking nationalist essentialization, culturalist reductionisms, and myths of a territory perennially wounded by inter-ethnic and inter-religious enmity, and nonetheless questioning the contemporary bureaucratization of identities and multicultural relations (nitsiakos 2010). the fragmentation, which we have highlighted as a dominant feature in the debate on borders in southeast europe, is thus actually shown as an excess of relations. many forms of collective and individual identification can fill and transfigure the public sphere (verdery 1994), and religious and ethnic boundaries have the power to rephrase consistently national discourses (pusceddu 2018). whereas institutional apparatuses impose categories and practices of sharp separation – and political borders attempt to accumulate in one single institution the capacity of ordering, social functions, and symbolic authority – these border landscapes remain instead full of unfinished classifications and contested orders, and keep articulating their marginality and indeterminacy (green 2005). the article by sule can is inspired by her field experience among syrian refugees. dealing with the migrants and people massively forced to displacement, this work makes us go backwards through the process of externalization of european borders, which crosses the balkans and traverses turkey to reach the middle east. this is a key issue in understanding what happens in southeastern europe, uncovering the role of international organizations, ngos and global corporate players in today’s border securitization. it also unravels regional policies of migration containment and international requests of controlling and governing frontiers, which results in new technologies and old-fashioned militarized, impermeable, and exclusionary edges (walters 2002; zaragoza-cristiani 2017; del sarto 2021). using examples from the turkish-syrian border, can shows that this humanitarian crisis should be approached on different levels, from refugee vulnerability and expectations to local border policies and cultural negotiations, to geopolitical bargains and threatens to open the gates to europe. while referring to the political responsibilities of border agents and institutions, this article draws on the everyday social practices at the borders and across them. even bodies come to be mobilized as sites of border policing, showing the many existential implications this experience has in people’s lives, the researcher’ life included. the special issue concludes with a piece of research suggestively titled ‘don't tell me i don't exist’. the authors dwell on the performances of macedoniannes in bitola, inviting us to anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 17 evaluate the penetration of political discourses in the local sense of belonging, and vice-versa. together with other contributions to this special issue, the work validates the limited effectiveness of many local state frontiers, and the centrality of praxis in defining local fields of authority. on the one hand, these weakened borders reflect the political status of their states, which oscillates between the crisis of legitimacy and efficacy of the ruling systems, and the authoritarian tendencies of apparatuses in search of empowerment (bieber 2019). on the other, the research confirms that strong identifications can go hand in hand with the distrust toward the state, leaving place to the social importance of kinship, friendships, as well as to a multitude of local factors differently dealing with the polarization of national discourses and ethnic identities (malešević 2019). as the last article reminds us, narratives of national belonging remain an inescapable element in the contemporary understanding of southeastern europe. new readings of history and cultural heritage, as well as the rediscovery, redefinition or invention of antique national, regional, and supranational roots, are a problematic and necessary object of study of the transformations of many regions of the contemporary world, requiring them to be undertaken seriously as cultural agents of social change. anthropologists and historians often have a responsibility toward these issues, especially in regions where still burning identity statements also encounter a regional disciplinary tradition predominantly focused on folklore, ethnological collections, and local cultural heritage, often incorporating cultural essentializations, national ideologies, and touristic brandings. the anthropological research collected within this special issue confirms the heuristic value of the territory as the threshold where the political and geopolitical configuration of powers interacts – even when not converging – with forms of identification and metaphorical negotiations, creating discursive knowledge about the place. first, this approach shows that place-making is made of spatial and temporal processes, of simultaneous displacements and emplacements, of mobility and enclosures which “draw meaning from and give meaning to borders” (ballinger 2012, 390-391). research on borderscapes confirms that “the inverse of landed, bounded cultural phenomena is thus not just formless flux but the continual creation of geographic formations” (heyman and campbell 2009, 137). spaces offer a valuable point of observation of the dynamics of border identity, as responding to complex political balances and different place-making strategies. these shape new permeabilities and new divides, dialoguing with context-grounded material and symbolic concerns. second, this approach shows that there is a concrete space where institutional entities aim to provide social order, meeting and paralleling many other internal and external boundaries. border landscape is certainly not the site exclusively configured by sovereign powers, and therefore society does not correspond to states, nor identities to nations. in the same breath, the existence of political borders keeps contributing to the making of place in people’s everyday lives, pushing the meaningfulness of boundaries even underneath the lines designated and claimed by political powers. the focus on negotiations of territoriality lays a valuable groundwork for ethnographic research in southeastern europe in particular. the studies reviewed here indicate that local public spheres are increasingly marked by attempts to re-use available cultural traits to boost identity claims and legitimize new political polarizations. like every imagined community, these narratives have an impact far beyond imagination. the anthropology of borders in southeastern europe must reckon with renewed complexities and emerging asymmetries, new anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 18 border regimes and social boundaries, and the potential triggers to build new bridges and fruitful border-crossings. it is one more reason why social research should engage in looking at how the essentialization of borders and mobilization of border agencies represent sociocultural practices located in the field, and loaded to some extent with functions, symbolic meanings, and influence. acknowledgements the majority of the articles collected in this issue of the anthropology of east europe review resulted from the theoretical dialogues and ethnographic research initiated within various meetings of the konitsa summer school in the anthropology, ethnography and comparative folklore of the balkans. many of these took their preliminary form as team-based research reports resulting from the short intensive fieldwork projects the participants carried out in locations situated between albania, greece, and the republic of northern macedonia. the konitsa summer school has been organized by the border crossings network (bcn) since 2006, in collaboration with the department of history and archaeology of the university of ioannina and the municipality of konitsa, epirus. in these years, it offered a theoretical, methodological, and empirical training program in socio-cultural anthropology of southeastern europe, fueling this regional field of research with a precious body of fieldwork-based documentation and analyses. at the same time, the school provided a space for social researchers and local experts to advance dialogue on the current political, economic, and environmental issues in balkan border areas. davide carnevale took part in the 2018 summer school, while thomas m. wilson delivered a keynote address at the 2017 summer school. our special thanks thus go to the researchers of the border crossings network, and to the organizers, the academic board, and all the participants of the summer schools in konitsa. we offer particular thanks to vassilis nitsiakos and ioannis manos for their leadership and support in the summer schools which we attended. as editors of this special issue of aeer, we also thank all contributors and reviewers for their work and availability. thanks are also due to amanda krzyworzeka, emily channel-justice, and indiana university’s scholarworks, for their careful assistance throughout the editorial process. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 19 notes 1 this article introduces the special issue “place-making and politics of borderscapes. contributions to the anthropology of borders in southeastern europe”, co-edited by the authors for anthropology of east europe review, n. 37(1), 2021. 2 in the local dialect, the adjective is also used to mean ‘deformed’, ‘bizarre’, ‘indecent’. 3 the brief list of references provided is obviously neither exhaustive nor sufficient to account for the variability of approaches to the border as a political object and as a cultural idea. we do not presume to provide such a grand synthesis, not even for the english language literature to which the references are limited. rather, references are offered as examples of the main trends and trajectories of the latest years. 4 we can here draw further theoretical 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ashgate. wolfe, thomas c. 2000. “cultures and communities in the anthropology of eastern europe and the former soviet union”. annual review of anthropology 29: 195-21. zaragoza cristiani, jonathan. 2017. “containing the refugee crisis: how the eu turned the balkans and turkey into an eu borderland”. the international spectator 52, no. 4: 59-75. zielonka, jan. 2017. “the eu and the european neighbourhood policy.” in the routledge handbook on the european neighbourhood policy, edited by tobias schumacher, andreas marchetti and thomas demmelhuber, 142-152. basingstoke, uk: taylor & francis. 3 obituary: tibor bodrogi éva v. huseby-darvas, university of michigan tibor bodrogi, director of the ethnographic research institute of the hungarian academy of sciences, and professor of ethnography at eötvös lóránt tudományegyetem (elte), budapest, and at kossuth lajos tudományegyetem (klte) debrecen, died in budapest on march 6, 1986, at the age of 62. a man of prodiglous activity and accomplishment, bodrogi earned his doctorate in ethnography and archaeology at elte in budapest. he later became museologist, then director of the hungarian ethnographic museum (1961-1968). bodrogi translated to hungarian numerous western classics in anthropology (among others, morgan, frazer, and birket-smith) and conducted extensive ethnographic field research in indonesia, new guinea, and oceania. during the early 1970s, he directed the first social anthropological team research project in hungary, then edited and introduced the resulting study. (see bodrogi, editor, varsány: studies for the social ethnography of a northern hungarian village, budapest: akadémiai kiadó, 1978. unfortunately published only in hungarian, many of his major studies, particularly those exploring the relationship between society and folk art (art of northeast new guinea, 1961; the art of oceania, 1959; the art of africa, 1967, 1968, 1969; the art of indonesia, 1971; the birth of societies, 1962; the development of crafts, 1961) were published in hungarian, romanian and, by western publishing houses, in english, french, german, italian, and dutch. bodrogi was vice-president of the hungarian ethnographic association, and member of a number of other hungarian and international professional associations including the council of folkart in hungary, the societ'e des oceanistes, the pacific arts association, and the societe internationale d'ethnologie et de folklore. readers of the newsletter are likely to remember him most fondly in his role as generous host. he consistently provided official support and personal kindness for the many of us who have visited hungary. we thank him and we remember him. obituary: tibor bodrogi 71 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 religion in secular archives: soviet atheism and historical knowledge. by sonja luehrmann. oxford: oxford university press, 2015. xii, 229 pp. notes. bibliography. index. $87.00, hard bound. paper. jacob lassin, the melikian center for russian, east european, and eurasian studies, arizona state university jlassin@asu.edu in this book, sonja luehrmann offers some welcome new approaches to the challenges that arise from studying religion and religious practice in archives that were designed and maintained by government bureaucracies that were hostile to religious practice and belief. throughout this book luehrmann investigates a rich and varied set of archival, oral, and published materials and finds “that the richest narratives emerge when we allow these different sources to complement and challenge one another. a crucial step in creating such unsettling dialogues is to consider what each type of source was meant to do in a particular context (31-2).” while luehrmann’s focus in this book may be on the records of religious groups and their interactions with an officially atheist state, the ramifications of her arguments and methodology extend beyond the study of religion. her project’s ultimate goal is to “attempt to show how an awareness of ‘archival ecologies’ can open up documents as richer and more multi-faceted historical sources, especially in cases where the good faith and expertise of the authors in relation to the phenomena described must be questioned (3).” luehrmann fulfills this brief in spectacular fashion, providing lively examples that highlight the interactions and contradictions that emerge when considering different archival genres. 72 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 in chapter one, luehrmann explores the various types of documents housed in the official archives themselves and proposes that “we can gain a richer reading of past lives and a deeper understanding of how documentation sustains systems of power if we do not see archival documents as passive traces of actions and interests that played out ‘in real life.’ rather, processes of producing, exchanging, and compiling documents were integral to the ways in which administrative apparatuses acted on populations and in which historical change unfolded (36).” her focus on these different kinds of materials is especially useful in understanding the different paths that documents took within the soviet system, the audiences that they were intended for, and the types of narratives that we can piece together from them. luehrmann asks us not only to read documents as containing textual information but also as impetuses toward certain social actions. chapter two takes up the role of memory and oral histories in how we read archives. luehrmann warns against turning to oral histories as “a view of personal ‘memory’ as a morally pure alternative to official, ideologically biased ‘memory’ (73).” oral histories are contingent upon the time and place that they are gathered with a multitude of social and historical factors influencing them. how then should we think of the role of oral histories when studying soviet archives? luehrmann makes the important point that oral histories should not be seen as always offering an oppositional or alternative vision of history. indeed, within soviet archives, oral histories played an important role in the creation of knowledge concerning religion and also provided justification for the continued need of atheist activism. what she notes throughout is an important dialogue between archival sources and oral histories that point to a picture of a “late soviet society, that far from stagnant and monopolistic, contains surprising ideological diversity, and whose governing authorities are becoming less vigilant about combating it” (99). 73 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 in chapter three, she analyzes published sources from soviet academia. for many years, these were some of the only sources that western researchers, interested in questions of religion in the country, could access. their legacy still hangs over the field with some scholars still relying on them to give a picture of religious life in the soviet union while others largely ignore them due to their methodological issues and ideological biases. luehrmann advocates for an “archaeological vantage point plac[ing] documents and publications on the same plane and allows them to recontextualize one another within a contested field of knowledge production (103).” such an approach seems the most logical for the continued use of soviet sociology in research going forward that at once recognizes the provenance of these sources while also maintaining their importance in understanding the history of religion in the country. luehrmann moves to a rather different type of archive in chapter four. here she turns her attention to materials in the keston archive housed at baylor university in waco, texas. this archive is quite different than the russian ones that she draws upon in the rest of the book and constitutes an important counter-archive filled with materials that document the religious life in the soviet union and other socialist countries. she writes of how samizdat dominates the narrative present in the archive, leading to what she refers to as an “individualistic conception of religiosity” as primary throughout the archive (147). through her investigations of the keston archive she also finds that denominational distinctions become functional equivalents, the important aspect is not the author’s individual beliefs, but rather that they were all struggling to express religious sentiment in the face of an antagonistic and repressive state. in her estimation, “keston is not really an archive; it is a private collection of records accumulated by a group of users in the way that best served their immediate needs (153).” she proposes that future researchers think about the archival 74 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 categories present in the keston archive as “historical artifacts in their own right” which will allow for more interesting inquiry beyond the ideological preferences of the organizers of the archive (161). it is this systematic challenging of the structure and nature of archives and proposal for new approaches that makes luehrmann’s book so refreshing. anthropologists and historians of religion as well as anyone else who works in archives, soviet or other, will find that this book offers exciting theoretical provocations. luehrmann’s emphasis on different genres of archival materials and their relationships with each other in the construction of historical narratives opens new vistas for researchers to consider and explore in the future. ------iii 2 ••1.................................................' ii .. .. .. til til ill ~ -. iii iii iii iii " please address all requests for membership ill the east european anthropology group ($20/year), institutional subscriptions ($30), or additional copies ofany issue ($20) to the managing editor. the web page for the anthropology ofeast europe review/east european anthropology group contains links to most ofthe previously published articles. it can be found at: http://condor.depaul.edufrrotenbe/aeer/ managing editor: barbara a. west, school ofinternational studies, university of the pacific, stockton, ca 95211, usa. phone 209/946-3181; fax 209/946-3265; email: bwestcw,pacific.edu . web editor: robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore ave, chicago, lllinois, 60614. phone: 312/325-7460; fax 312/325-7452; email: rrotenbe@depauledu . new editors as of fall 2005: krista harper and julie hemment, dept. of anthropology, machmer hall 215, university of massachusetts amherst, amherst, ma 01003, usa . phone 413-545-2221; fax: 413-545-9494; email: kharper@anthro.umass.edu or jhemment@anthro.umass.edu. aeer 2005 issn: 1054-4720 call for papers the anthropology of east europe review guest editor for aeer's fall 2005 issue is looking for anthropologically informed papers based on ethnographic field research conducted in central and eastern europe. scholars recently returned from the "field" and those living in the region are particularly encouraged to submit their work. we're especially interested in papers focusing on the following questions such as: a. is "post-socialism" still a useful analytical category to apply in our studies? b. how could the anthropological literature be married to post-colonial literature with or without a divorce? c. how are central and eastern european societies impacted by the eu's eastern enlargement? d. does the eu act as a globalizing or a regionalizing force? we are expecting papers focusing on these themes and based on empirical research; however, all papers will be considered based on their merits. address all inquires to sara kaiser at kais0005@umn.edu or kisdobos@hotmailcom we look forward to working with you to continue to make aeer a cutting edge, research focused journal mailto:kais0005@umn.edu mailto:jhemment@anthro.umass.edu mailto:kharper@anthro.umass.edu http:bwestcw,pacific.edu http://condor.depaul.edufrrotenbe/aeer 3 co:'itents guest editors' notes irena sumi and hannah stannan ..... " .......................................... . hierarcwes of knowledge in central-eastert, european anthropology michal. 13uciiowski ..... ...... ... ........................... .............................. reckoning with the 'bosnia troubles':trauma, witnessi"ng, and poi.ltie's jasmina husanovic ....................................................................................................................... 15 . ........................................ .4 . .............................................5 vanisiiing nation: discussing nation's reproduction in post-sociallst slovenia duska knezevic-hoc'evar.............. . ......................................22 the roma"nlan slde(s) of postmodernis.'vl stefania mlllalacile....................................................... , ............. . .............................................31 multiculturalism in central and eastern europe: challenge or threat? ma.ia muwc' ..................................................................................................................................................•................37 a case of cultural colonization: leave our death alone! bogdan popoveniuc. ..................................................................................................................... .45 cultural and political construction of ro'.iani ethnic differences in romologic al discourse on roma in slovenia alenk/\ janko spreizer ............................................................ . ...................................................... 54 anti-semitism in postcommunist central and eastern europe hannah star~lan ........................................................... . ....... ......................................................65 postsociallsm, or what') domestication of power and ideology in slovenia irena sum! ...................................................................................................................................76 some notes on socialism and postsoclalls,vl:voices fro,l within theodor/\ eliza v acarescu ............................................................................................................. 84 preliminary reflections on the challenges of rethinking post colonial and post-socialist realities daniel r. wildcat.......................................................................................................................................92 ii correspondence: a response to brana muatovic ii andrei simic ....................................... . . ...................................................................... 99 correspondence: a response to andrei simic brana mijatovic ........................................................................................................................... 100 ••• • aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 115 explorations on the move: dance in the republic of macedonia gaelyn aguilar university of southern california the purpose of this writerly contribution is to encourage in studies on east european dance, particularly those pertaining to the former republics of yugoslavia, ethnographic and discursive explorations, which problematize commonly-held conceptions and paradigms surrounding these performance practices. the legs of my contribution, although centered on the republic of macedonia, stand on the assumption that in the parlance of north american academic anthropology “east european dance” operates as a gloss for dance of the “folk” variety. part one of what follows, an ethnographic essay entitled, “program notes for choreographing corporealities,” serves as the launching ground from which i address this gloss, and state my case for encouraging a new stage in the written representation of folk dance in eastern europe. part two, back-to-back performance texts, embraces this gloss while simultaneously reaching for ways to choreograph through paradigms of urban-based folk dance ensembles (a nexus of my research), which either dismiss these ensembles entirely, and/or frame them (that is, epistemologically freeze them) as examples of something else. i offer my comments not as critique of precursory projects. rather, i want to open the circle and expose the center of my own ethnographic and discursive movements toward remaining attentive and amenable not only to the instability of dance as an individual entity and to the circulation of traditional practices into new performance traditions, [1] but also to the ethnographic and discursive re-conceptualization of east european performance in our age of ever-widening and ever-deepening transculturation. part one program notes for choreographing corporealities in the pursuit of becoming more intimate with macedonian folk dance [2]—precisely the subject matter i spent many months researching in the republic of macedonia so that i could choreograph my course from abd to ph.d.— despite allowing myself to be taken to all of the places where one would expect to find something “folk”—villages and rural festivals—i spent a great deal of time exploring the city-based ensembles affiliated with kulturni umetnički društva (cultural artistic societies or kuds). ensembles began to form in macedonia as early as 1900, but the ones that exist today are descended largely from kuds which sprang up throughout the former yugoslav republics after 1945, [3] although—at least in the case of the republic of macedonia—their numbers have dwindled, and those that do remain operate under considerable financial duress. i mentioned above that in the parlance of north american academic anthropology, “east european dance” operates as a synonym for what might be characterized as “folk dance.” the roots of this annotation are planted firmly in what european ethnologists used to call volkskunde, the romantic celebration of the rural peasantry as the repository of a distinct national identity. [4] volkskunde fell into disgrace following what kuper (1994:545) calls “its apotheosis in nazi ethnology,” but its original intent of drawing upon the peasantry to shape, color, and contour the face of what were, at the time, emerging nations, persists to resonate in varying degrees and intensities in parts of eastern europe, bolstering and further entrenching the discourse of authenticity, and providing national institutes of folklore their abiding raison d’être. i was not alone as i visited društva throughout skopje. i was accompanied, in fact, by the specter of this very persistent research tradition. the gaze of the macedonian folklorist chastises those mining the field for folk dance outside of the “folk” context. “foreigners come to the društva and think that this is the real thing,” an ethnologist from the marko cepenkov institute of folklore in skopje once remarked to a crowd of ensemble artistic directors and fellow ethnologists. the group had assembled to discuss how the theoretical work of scholars could minister and nourish the perpetuity of macedonian folklore, the implication being, of course, that the “folklore” which needed to endure was not the highly-stylized, “unauthentic” kind that društva dance on stage. on several occasions i found myself cast as naïve by local ethnologists who questioned what i hoped to find by wandering into the rehearsal studios of urban-based kuds where people who call themselves igraorci [5] find pleasure and comfort in moving through the ambiguous territory of folk dance on stage. [6] i interpreted the questioning by my colleagues as a heartfelt concern that i was wasting my time; but i remained (in silence to myself) adamantly opposed to their conception of folk dance as a stable entity, and to their assumption that survivals of folk dance’s rural antecedents could only be found in rural environments. [7] allen typewritten text © 2004 gaelyn aguilar all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 116 gaelyn aguilar the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 this writerly contribution is a product of my opposition, meant: to resist habituses of conventional associations which incarcerate people in time and space, to borrow appadurai’s imagery (cf. abu-lughod 1991:146); to interpolate new thoughts and ideas into a region of the world where state and non-state actors continue to compete to define the relationship between “culture,” politics, and “identity” often in ways which languish in the rhetoric of the past; [8] and to expand the very locus of our investigations into territories where monikers such as “macedonian dance” or “dance in macedonia” evoke polykinetic images and interpretations. relishing essentialism and also trying to transcend it (cooper albright 1997), i move now through the corridor linking ethnographic and discursive reconceptualizations, following my muse into murkier terrain. terrain where i wrestle with the responsibility of remembering and re/(un)remembering, and of finding a way to write this dance into being. *** anthropologists have tended to neglect a performing practice such as dance, or at least treat it as what jane cowan refers to as the “icing on the cake of the harder structural realities” (1990:5). historically, dance was relegated to a category of cultural frivolity, albeit a frivolity replete with beautiful sights and sounds, and bodies in motion which surely captured the imagination of the iconic participant/observer. if anthropologists studied dance, it was as a repose from observing and documenting the structural realities of culture, to which dance seemingly had no relevance. fast forward to the here and now. despite the growing status of contemporary dance research, bolstered by the legitimizing presence of post-graduate programs in dance studies, and despite the up growth of literature which expands our awareness of the analytical departure points from which one can enter the dance, [9] experience and grapple with its complexities, and then re-emerge with a greater understanding of specific spatial and temporal corporealities, the reception can be chilly for those who venture beyond the interdisciplinary networks of scholars and artists transfixed on dance/performance/cultural studies. the climate is especially cool for those whose movement research does not readily foreground, highlight, or placate the current trends and concepts, which often fuel the academic machinery and define the political-economy of foreign interest with respects to the country or region under consideration. one does not go to the former republics of yugoslavia, for example, to study dance. one goes to investigate: post-socialist transitions; inter-ethnic relations; conflict resolution; reconciliation; minorities in the new nation-states, strategies of inclusion and exclusion; politics of identity and difference. if one insists on studying dance, then surely one means to address dance as an example of one of these more relevant topics. but even then, dance? folk dance? how relevant could this possibly be? [10] to what can we attribute this marginalization within area studies? i turn to a previous source to help me negotiate one avenue of exploration. lila abu-lughod, working out from under her concern over anthropology’s complicity in painting portraits of the other, crafts her argument for writing against the essentializing tendencies of culture. insofar as anthropologists are in the business of representing others through their ethnographic writing, then surely the degree to which people in the communities they study appear ‘other’ must also be partly a function of how anthropology writes about them (1991:149). i reference abu-lughod’s insight, reworking it so that i may interject my own observation. insofar as scholars of east european folk dance practices are in the business of representing the movement of others through their ethnographic writing, then surely the degree to which these practices and sites of interest appear anachronistic or irrelevant to those on the outside looking in must also be partly a function of how scholars are writing about them. “are there ways to write about lives so as to constitute others as less other?” abu-lughod speculates (ibid.). i follow her shadow closely and wonder. are there ways to write about macedonian folk dance practices and the lives of the people who animate those practices so as to constitute them as less anachronistic and less irrelevant? abu-lughod answers her question, providing us compelling reasons for writing what she calls ethnographies of the particular, which by replacing the homogeneity, cohesiveness, alterity, and timelessness of theoretical generalization with textual particularities, link stories of specific individuals in time and place with the theoretical points those stories and lives engender (ibid.:153). i match abu-lughod’s movement with an answer to my question. in doing ethnography we confront people as themselves, and thus secure their de-exoticization. but in our insatiable will to meaning, there is a tendency to flatten our material. we rush to the depths of interpretation too quickly (taussig 1991). dance as a facsimile of ethnic identity set into motion. dance as the vehicle by which people transform the intensity and/or direction of competing ethnic and nationalistic claims. dance as an instrument of the state—a reminder of a time when marshall tito deliberately forged a relationship between politics and aesthetics. these interpretations may be true, relevant even. but we rush, nonetheless. we rush too quickly for the comforting fit of a cohesive model when really we ought to be lingering around in the interplay of forms, bodies, and experiences in which we ourselves are positioned and implicated. explorations on the move 117 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 in her work on senegalese dance, francesca castaldi speaks eloquently of corpography, or “writing the body.” corpography begins as a commitment to practice “as both a form of engagement and dialogue, as well as a form of memory” (2000:288). but it does not end here. corpography extends vertically and horizontally through the written representation of dance and dance events; but rather than cowering to the cartesian mind/body split which would have us “imposing the mind of the writer on the body of the dancer,” corpography “imposes the mind of dancing on the hand of the writer” (ibid.:290). the shift in focus is quite elegant, powerful even. corpography reminds us that form is always present. it transmits meaning along with content. writing the body choreographically creates a resonance of multiple subjectivities, which much like abu-lughod’s ethnographies of the particular, works to transcend the essentializing tendencies of concepts such as “folk,” engendering in the process new words, explanations, and meanings which are in communication with the sights, sounds, and bodies that move and illuminate the worlds we seek to describe. [11] the performative texts which follow emerge as attempts to write the body choreographically. my use of dance scenes tentatively follows the form of marta savigliano’s “fragments for a story of tango bodies (on choreocritics and the memory of power)” (1996:199–232). [12] like savigliano, i have replaced my ethnographic persona with that of a choreocritic. [13] some will argue that by aping savigliano’s tango scenes i commit the very transgression i have just warned against above of not rushing too quickly for the comforting fit of a model. savigliano’s work does provide a compelling model toward which to rush, but it is not so much a fixed model as it is a model of engagement, which challenges both the ethnographer and the reader into becoming more alert and sophisticated in their roles as social critics. [14] as such, there is nothing comforting about savigliano’s model, for following it means coming to terms with the politics of interpretation, exposing the seams of ethnography, and shifting the focus away from answering “what do i know about ‘the thing’?” to “what is ‘the thing’ telling me that i should know?” [15] in the end, however, i am concerned less with how my texts ape savigliano’s form, and more with what i/we might learn from encouraging what susan foster (1996) calls “a rethinking of knowledge categories.” scene one of part two, “learning to limp,” seeks to engage the sights, sounds, and bodies which move and illuminate skopje’s folklore ensembles. i transpose what appears to be a simple, but nonetheless explicit reference to the limping rhythms which give both macedonian music and dance their character, into a foucauldian metaphor which gives salience to the idea that as one trains the body, one is also training the mind. that is, as one learns movement, one learns how to perceive—or rather how to think and feel—about that movement (tomko 1996). drawing from an interview with three female igraorci from the skopje-based kud, orce nikolov, [16] i attempt to deconstruct and interpret the socialization process, which initially calls a young novice to the dance, but then keeps her there, in the circle, over time, despite pejorative readings which devalue folklore ensembles and the labor of those involved. “learning to limp” mirrors the bodily presence of my own awareness that i, too, am part of a socialization process, learning to engage the specificity of what savigliano calls “the dance itself and the sociohistorical conditions it expresses and produces (1996:200). scene two, “a call to dance,” further foregrounds awareness and engagement, and allows me to end my contribution to this special issue of the anthropology of east europe review where the dissertation i am currently writing begins. part two scene one: learning to limp cast: choreocritic, 3 female igraorci, ensemble of musicians the back wall of a dark stage suddenly falls under dramatic lighting, revealing a gallery of photographs. not snapshots, but gorgeous, large-format portraits of dancers in motion from ten, twenty, thirty years ago or more. trophies are stacked on top of display cases filled with medals, letters of invitation, certificates of congratulations, and all sorts of other paraphernalia collected over the years from across europe, asia, and north america. the musicians enter upstage right and set up in the corner. the dancers walk onto the stage, dressed for rehearsal. workout pants, t-shirts, flat-footed, black chinese slipper shoes, etc. a tight plastic garment peeks out from underneath the heavier girl’s sweat pants. all three have cinched their waists with leather straps just in case they need to grab one another as they dance. the clarinet player trills the first few notes of a suite of dance songs, and the rest of the ensemble joins in. their playing is lively, quick, and merry. music up: clarinet, accordion, acoustic guitar, double bass, and tapan [17] the girls meet each other at center stage and go to join hands, but there is some confusion as to who will dance in which position. each has their favorite spot. the older, more experienced of the three enjoys the freedom of being last, keeping the line in check by curling the tail in and out. because she is a soft dancer, the others want to be next to her. they settle on an order. the long-haired brunette with the dreadlock draped delicately around the nape of her neck takes the lead. she begins circling the open line counterclockwise into a series of warm-up exercises. as they dance, the girls react to the choreocritic’s text. 118 gaelyn aguilar the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 dancers in chorus: yes, we are entwined… (as the girls repeat the word “entwined” they step across their hopping/balanced right legs with the balls of their left feet. they shift their weight and repeat on the other side). you could say that we are entwined…but we did not understand this at first. we began to dance without knowing. let us tell you where it begins. (the tapandžija [19] hears his cue to accentuate a different rhythm. the girls dig their heels one at a time into the ground in front). the more you learn! (dig right) the more you know! (dig left) (the girls release hands and twirl their bodies 360° without losing step with the music). the more you learn! (dig right) the more you know! (dig left) mmmmm…peasant…(the clarinet player shifts the mood into a new song. as they think over the word “peasant,” the dancers come down off the balls of their feet and start dancing flat-footed—village style). choreocritic’s voice on tape, “reading” her text: despite the idiosyncrasies of personal life histories, remarkable consistencies entwine the stories dancers tell about what led them to the dance. for some, encouragement came from a parent or grandparent who, remembering fondly their own experience as a dancer, gently prodded their child or grandchild to attend a folklore section for beginners. for others, the prodding was not so gentle nor necessarily directed to an involvement with ‘folk dance’ per se. the mothers of these dancers just wanted their child to escape the confines of their boredom, and get involved with something. so they signed up for ‘folklore’ because their first choice was already full. others came to the dance, encouraged neither by family nor by accident, but because they followed a friend. when you ask an igraorka [18] about her experiences with dancing in an ensemble, many things will come to her mind. she will remind you about the rehearsals and the friendships. this is where it all begins. she will tell you that she dances a lot, and that already the music is in her blood. something digs into her to dance when she hears it. by locating the origins of her kinetic impulse to dance in the bloodstream, she seems to be hinting at the suggestion that macedonians are pre-dispositioned to their music from the moment of conception. such a reading, however, would not be accurate. although she phrases her metaphor in the language of biology, she means to address a metaphysical process of socialization. this process, far from being inclusive, stable, or a given for that matter, begins at birth and continues through adolescence into adulthood (to various degrees, at varying intensities, or even not at all) through one’s exposure to music on the radio and television, and at weddings, village gatherings, parties, state-sponsored events, etc. an igraorka stands apart from others in this paradigm in the sense that her process of socialization is supplemented with years of participation in dance rehearsals and performances both set to live musical accompaniment. when she hears music, that “something” which digs in to her to stand up and dance is her additional experience with music. it has infected her with an almost innate understanding of how to respond to music when she hears it being played. the igraorka is loyal to her calling, especially amongst friends who laugh and tell her that folk dancing is “peasant.” despite the young age of these friends, their comments expose a lineage to a strain of thought, which had its genesis in the early ’70s as the communist system began to disintegrate, incapable of effectively or efficiently competing in the emerging global economies. faced with a flood of media communications, the easement of travel restrictions, and the encouragement of international explorations on the move 119 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 collaborations in the arts and sciences, many yugoslavs struggled with convincing themselves and the outside world that they were not—as their folklore suggested— villagers. almost overnight, folkloric practices and the people who animated them with their involvement were shunned as embarrassingly archaic, stupid, and uncouth. in a word, “peasant.” društvo membership declined. disco clubs held more allure than the dance halls of folklore ensembles. rock-n-roll superceded an interest in traditional music. the igraorka is aware that folkloric practices continue to be conflated with the pejorative usage of “peasant,” evidential in the remarks of others that “intellectuals are not interested in folklore,” “folklore is a venue for the lower and middle classes,” and “the kids who join [društva] are first-generation urbanites.” by deploying the word “peasant,” the igraorka references these connotations and conflations. but it is clear that she is uncomfortable not only with the suggestion that she is involved with something archaic and uncouth, but how such a suggestion positions her vis-à-vis her own socio-economic status. contrary to persistent stereotypes, a large majority of skopje’s ensemble dancers are not first-generation urbanites, nor—if their parents’ occupations as economists, lawyers, dentists, nurses, restaurant owners, and engineers are any indication—are they coming to folklore exclusively from the lower to middle classes. the igraorka is sure to divulge that the opportunity for travel, while not her sole reason for initially joining an ensemble, presents an irresistible incentive for her to stick with it, despite practicing the same handful of choreographies week after week, year after year. because of her involvement, she has been “everywhere” by her estimation, confronting the world outside of macedonia, developing friendships and crushes, and picking up (along the way) something to brag about to peers who question the importance of what she does. she is a consummate performer, drawn to the stage and to the ritual of preparation. she speaks of the pleasure she experiences applying makeup before a show. but it is clear that some stages are coveted more than others. she admits that performing for an audience of macedonians at home does not leave her with the same visceral reaction—“that feeling” she calls it—as does performing for an audience abroad. as a foreigner amongst foreigners, she uses her cloak of anonymity to inspire her dancing to a level where the audience is encouraged to look at her and her ensemble and say “wow! where are these people from?” this kind of reaction is hard for the igraorka to provoke from audiences back home, doting parents and grandparents notwithstanding. the deference that she expresses for macedonian folklore is in large part conditioned and (still not happy with the word “peasant,” the girls go back up on the balls of their feet, dancing faster and more intricately. they hardly notice the strain on their ankles and calves). lower class?…(they giggle). first-generation urbanites?…(more giggles). archaic and uncouth…(the dancers dismiss the barrage of insults with a wrinkle of the nose, a stomp of the foot, and a shake of the head. they continue to hop up and down, pivot right and left, unfazed). ah, the trips!…(the girls punctuate the choreocritic’s text, running after her words with the beginning step pattern of potrčano. bearing weight, shifting ground. trans-migratory moves not to be denied travel, geographic interaction, or history). we admit, a stage is not a stage. (on hearing the word “anonymity” the girls swell their chests, lift their heads, and smile). 120 gaelyn aguilar the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 bolstered by the admiration bestowed on her by audiences abroad. she implicitly acknowledges this when she divulges, “when people tell us they like our folklore and that our folklore is rich, that gives us strength to respect more what we have.” the igraorka imagines herself as more than a cultural ambassador. she stands as an intermediary. her body labors to legitimize the enduring existence of macedonians, and to provide sensuous ways of being which link the generations by keeping them in communication with one another. as she has trained her body, so too has her mind been trained. the igraorka knows that the red and black threads woven into the costume she wears are not colors of joy or happiness, but colors of blood and slavery, darkness and suffering. she speaks of what her ancestors bore in the past. she knows the names of her peoples’ old conquerors. she knows the shapes of those forces which threaten her now—and she can not remain indifferent. there is something that she can not explain. something there, deep within her diaphragm. simply she finds herself in a place, next to someone—a dancer like her—with whom she can share the secret. dance is an antidote to alienation. if not us, who else will continue the tradition? (the ensemble changes into a beautiful melody, full of longing. the girls are gliding across the floor, dancing as if on air, with their bodies fully efforted). we know, and yes, it is true… we can not remain indifferent. sshh…(the girls come to a halt) dance is an antidote to alienation. lights out/music out entire cast moves off stage scene two: a call to dance full darkness a lead zurla [20] player signals the call with a high-pitched cry over the doleful drone of another. the deep, short-pitched thwacks of a tapan cut through the nasal resonance of the horns. lights full up the three igraorci are center stage, in a crescent shape, encircling the musicians in a slow rubato. no longer dressed for rehearsal, but for a performance, they are indistinguishable; swathed in the heavy clothes of their ancestors. not light at all, but heavy, heavy clothes. eyes cast downward, stiff like icons, they are moving without seeming to move at all. like icons held up before the people. [21] from off stage, the choreocritic recites her text. she begins slowly, like the dancers, in a rhythm that is hard to detect: when the call to dance comes, you have no choice but to submit. even if it is not you there—in the circle—you can not remain indifferent. the dance beckons. with anticipation you wait for it to happen. and it does, almost immediately. that moment when memory’s leash yanks at your mind and floods your being with things that just can’t quite be explained. you are at once filled with unfettered happiness and a longing that aches. macedonian dance is sometimes calm and slow, sometimes quick and sure-footed, and sometimes both. it is light on its feet, proud in its posture. nimble, with nerves alive. there is a hesitation to it. macedonian dance moves with a limp—a sigh that seems to gesture that there is more to the story than what meets the eye. i am caught somewhere between the struggle to build cohesiveness, and the tricks i want to play to unravel it. i reach forward for firm ground, but leave the hesitation in place. the dance (about which) i write dances particular tales, and in its movement and form—and through the very act of witnessing it—reifies those tales. macedonian dance is not an example. it is the main ingredient, [22] a particularly apt metaphor for what it means and feels like to be part of a community. the very act of grasping hands to begin a dance signifies that one is committed to something larger than oneself. i humbly stake out a textual “i,” writing my body into a body of histories, knowing that there is never just one interpretation, but hoping that the one i have chosen is a responsible one. [23] from the legends of travel writers during the middle ages comes the warning that: explorations on the move 121 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 when you walk through bosnia, do not sing! you will be out-sung. when you walk through serbia, do not dance! you will be out-danced. when you walk through macedonia, do not sing nor play nor dance! you will be out-sung, out-played, out-danced. [24] many macedonians proudly conceive of their folklore as their patrimony—a treasure to be cherished, preserved, and passed along to the next generation. dance gives the folk tripartite of song, music, and dance its motion of swirling bodies laboring with controlled abandon to write themselves into being. for being means having. having a say in what stories you tell, having a place to tell them, and someone to tell them to. if only it were that simple. to start from this moment instead of the one(s) frozen inside all of those images that we have of ourselves and others. to rid ourselves of worn-out metaphors that just don’t seem to be working for us anymore. to recognize difference without being so different that we lose our capacity to feel together. this is the movement i am trying to perfect. don’t we all know what it is like to persevere and have hope, but fear that we are really just locked into some kind of dance that keeps choreographing itself right back to where it started? or worse yet to some point before? two steps forward, three steps back. it’s hard to progress this way. music out/lights out to be continued endnotes 1 i take my cue from francesca castaldi who conceives of her subject matter (“senagalese dance”) “not as a stable and individual entity, but rather an ensemble of relationships that mutually define each other and circulates across several times/spaces” (2000:13). 2 my use of “folk dance” follows standard translation practices articulated most clearly by dunin and višinski who write: “in the macedonian language the term “folk” (narodno) refers to those dances that are not the urban popular dances danced in pairs, that is, the “modern dances” (moderni plesovi or moderne igre) of the 19th and 20th centuries. a further taxonomy of terms to describe types of “folk” dance include: “authentic” (izvorno) usually meaning dances from the villages, and “town” (starogradsko) usually referring to the 19th and 20th turn-of-thecentury dances (and music) from urban centers” (1995:2). 3 those familiar with the yugoslav era know the story well. in the wake of world war ii, the socialist theory of communist yugoslavia called for a period of national self-expression as a way to deal with the problems associated with ethnic antagonisms. the yugoslav government, betting that national unification and yugoslavism would be best met and fostered not by discouraging the differences amongst yugoslavia’s various peoples, but by “relativising them and subordinating them” (cf. sutton 1998:44) to a larger political agenda, encouraged groups to speak their respective languages, and create their own newspapers, societies, theaters, and orchestras. it was hoped that by permitting ethnospecificity on a cultural level, ethnicallymotivated irredentism on political level would be assuaged. tied to this period of cultural intervention is the circulation of dance practices from villages and towns into the urban core, increasing the standardization of those dance practices, and the growing establishment of a community of amateur and profesional ensembles committed to theatrical presentation. i would add, although not entirely tangentially, that this historical narrative silences the cultural interventions shaped/crafted/exercised by people who danced dances out of their ritual and social contexts—on stage, for an audience—at least a decade before tito’s policies went into effect (see dunin and višinski 1995). 4 see obrebski (1976) for an account of native balkan ethnography prior to world war two, and kuper’s (1994) positioning and critique of the european nativist case within the context of a “cosmopolitan anthropology.” 5 literally, “dancers of ora.” ora is the plural of oro, which is the macedonian word for the communal chainlinked dances done by practitioners. in its usage, oro is the structural equivalent of the greek syrtós, the bulgarian horo, and the serbian kolo. 6 one veteran ethnologist from the marko cepenkov institute of folklore who has been researching the instrumental narodna musika (traditional music) sections of ensembles which were active in macedonia from 1900–1945, concedes that the post-1945 društvo environment does not interest him primarily because “it’s more difficult,” he confessed to me once. “i’m leaving that for the younger generation to work on,” he added, gesturing to an ethnologist from said generation whom i knew from our conversations harbored no interest in undertaking such research either. 7 when laurel kendall began researching shamans in south korea, she set her sights on a village which, although less than an hour’s bus ride outside of seoul, was sufficiently rural enough she reasoned “to vest my accounts of shamanic practices with ethnographic authenticity” (1988:6). only later did kendall realize the irony of her logic. “the very fact that my observations were made in a rural setting undercut my insistence on the contemporary vigor of my chosen subject” (ibid.). like kendall, by centering my sights on urban-based ensembles, i was choosing not to live exclusively within the landscape of the past. 122 gaelyn aguilar the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 8 i have borrowed this wording from keith brown who, writing specifically about the republic of macedonia, uses the term “parapolitics” to describe “the realm in which state and non-state actors compete to define the relationships between culture, politics and identity, and thus invest symbols with material consequence…” (brown 2000:123). 9 elsewhere, sally ann ness notes that the placement of the definite article “the” before the noun “dance”—as in “the dance”—signifies a theoretical conceptualization of dance “in which dance is understood as being essentially an institutionalized product of socio-cultural processes [rather than] primarily concerned with individual dancers and their dancing experience” (1996:267). my use of “the dance” envisions no such distinction, but rather serves to account for both. 10 at the risk of obfuscating the very definition of the word “current,” i would like to suggest that the current trends and concepts to which i intimate are, if fact, nothing new for the region. maria todorova, in tracing the rising specter of a balkan ontology, notes that following the second world war, due to the persistent belief of the balkans as inhabiting an “‘intermediary state somewhere between barbarity and civilization,’” the region was viewed as “‘a marvelous training school for political scientists and diplomats’ of the the first world preparing to perform in the third; they were utilized as a ‘testing ground’: ‘in the nonacademic world, for example, a signigicant proportion of american governmental and semigovernmental personnel at present attempting to cope with the problems of the afro-asian countries received its training, so to speak, for such work in the balkans, which have thus retrospectively become the original underdeveloped area’” (todorova 1997:130) {note} the above comments situated within single quotation marks are attributed to joseph rothschild, cited in roberts (1970:180). also noteworthy is the work of myron weiner (1971) who accessed balkan history from the latter half of the nineteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century seeking a descriptive model “that might prove useful for describing, explaining and predicting the patterns of political development and international behavior” of what were then recently-independent states of asia and africa (maleska 2000). maleska quotes weiner directly: “i have chosen…to call it the macedonian syndrome, named after the region of the balkans disputed by greece, yugoslavia and bulgaria, and that provided me with an almost pure case history with which to build the model” (ibid.:1). 11 i am not suggesting that we eliminate the word “folk” from our vocabulary. to co-opt the crux of james clifford’s “predicament of culture”—“culture is a deeply compromised idea that i can not yet do without” ([1988:10)—i concede that “folk” is a deeply compromised idea that i can not yet do without: “compromised” because the discourse of authenticity that the word references silences the vigor of present-choreographed “folk” dance practices done by people whose lives are displaced from rural roots, and an “idea that i can not yet do without” because, in the end, “folk” is the only word that signifies the forms and bodies i wish to reference and describe. 12 i humbly offer my modest interpretation of savigliano’s engagement with choreocritics and corpography, but urge the reader to consult her work as the ultimate example of the sophistication and rigor her provocative scholarly proposals necessitate. 13 my choreocritic, still in her infancy, operates more or less as a narrator. this is in stark contrast to savigliano’s choreocritic, who notes castaldi (2000:21) “relentlessly displaces the spectacle on the stage of the theater to the stage of world politics, inserting the moves of performers, spectators, and cultural critics into a larger choreography of power.” 14 see abu-lughod (1991) for an informative discussion on the advocation of new forms of writing in anthropology. 15 i have taken the liberty of reformulating questions first posed by marta savigliano on october 18, 1999 in a graduate course at the university of california, los angeles entitled, “ethnography on the move.” emerging out of a larger discussion on the politics of ethnography and the politics of a text, savigliano’s original questions (“is knowledge coming from you?” or “is the thing telling you what to know?”) evoked a landscape of binaries equally as provocative in the way they reorient one’s attention. for example, the similarly-paired binaries: what is the essence of a dance? or what is the essence of a dance for the people who dance it?; and what does a dance have that makes people want to dance it? or what surrounds the practice of a dance?/how are people taught to think and feel about it? work, literally, to rescue the choreocritic from the quicksand of metaphysics by shifting her focus and planting her, instead, upon the terra firma of description. 16 maria (21), vesna (18), and dafina (18) are igraorci with orce nikolov, a skopje-based kud, which was one of the first to form in the republic of macedonia after liberation in 1945. housed in barracks adjacent to the old bit pazar on the northern side of the vardar river, orce nikolov eclipses the city’s other kuds with an interior space that looks and feels like a museum. the whole place is a visual documentation of orce nikolov’s accomplishments as a world-class ambassador of macedonian folk song and folk dance, and in that sense, the documentation is also a testament to the ensemble’s respected position within the hierarchy of dance ensembles within the republic of macedonia. maria, vesna, and dafina come to this “museum” three nights a week to rehearse choreographies that they first learned as grade-school-aged girls, and have been rehearsing ever since. they are led by tofe drakuloexplorations on the move 123 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 vski, a retired dentist and former igraorec with tanec, the republic of macedonia’s professional folk dance and folk song company. with over 40 years experience as a teacher, tofe has played a commanding role in influencing several generations of dancers as they have evolved from awkward beginners to seasoned amateurs on the threshold of professional careers as folk dancers. orce nikolov dancers predominate the professional ranks of tanec, an achievement attributed in large part to the seriousness of purpose instilled in dancers under tofe’s leadership. “even though we are amateurs,” tofe once boasted to me, “we work even more seriously than the professional ensemble.” 17 the tapan is a cylindrical, double-headed, wooden drum. 18 an igraorka is a female “dancer of oro.” the male equivalent would be igraorec. 19 tapandžija is the specific word for a tapan player. 20 the zurla is a conical-shaped, double-reed horn. 21 i have adapted this passage from remarks made by a serbian poet to rebecca west, the famed british journalist and chronicler of yugoslav life (cf. west 1940:93). the original passage reads: “a woman must not spring about like a man to show how strong she is and she must not laugh like a man to show how happy she is. she has something else to do. she must go around wearing heavy clothes, not light at all, but heavy, heavy clothes, so that she is stiff, like an icon, and her face must mean one thing, like the face of an icon, and when she dances she must move without seeming to move, as if she were an icon held up before the people.” 22 i have borrowed this phrasing from marta savigliano who questions her own use of tango “as an example to describe the political economy of passion” by protesting that “tango is not an example; it is the main ingredient in this project” (savigliano 1995:16). savigliano’s simple declaration belies a rather complex semiotic malfeasance, which conceptualizes dance only as a signifier to something else. on the contrary, savigliano’s achievements in dance scholarship as a choreographer of what susan foster calls “complex and masterful textual performance[s]” (see savigliano 1995) signal that dance can stand front and center. 23 ann cooper albright (1997:120) writes about staking out a textual “i” in order to talk back to her audience. 24 this passage is referenced by duško dimitrovski in his written liner notes to the 2002 compact disc recording of the pece atanasovski orchestra. skopje: amanet music. references abu-lughod, lila 1991 “writing against culture,” in richard g. fox (ed) recapturing anthropology: working in the present. santa fe: school of american research press. brown, k.s 2000 “in the realm of the double-headed eagle: parapolitics in macedonia, 1994–9” in jane k. cowan (ed) macedonia: the politics of identity and difference. london: pluto press. castaldi, francesca 2000 choreographing african identities: negritude and the national ballet of senegal. dissertation awarded by the university of california, riverside. umi dissertation services. clifford, james 1988 the predicament of culture. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. cooper albright, ann 1997 choreographing difference. hanover: wesleyan university press. cowan, jane 1990 dance and the body politic in northern greece. princeton: princeton university press. dunin, elsie ivančić, and stanimir višinski 1995 dances in macedonia: performance genre. skopje: tanec ensemble. foster, susan (ed) 1996 corporealities: dancing knowledge, culture and power. london: routledge. kendall, laurel 1998 “who speaks for korean shamans when shamans speak of the nation?” in d.c. gladney (ed) making majorities: constituting the nation in japan, korea, china, malaysia, fiji, turkey, and the united states. stanford: stanford university press. kuper, adam 1994 “culture, identity and the project of a cosmopolitan anthropology,” in man (n.s.) 29(3), 537–554. maleska, mirjana 2000 “the macedonian (old-new) issue,” in new balkan politics, issue 3, online edition. skopje: new balkan politics (http://www. newbalkanpolitics.org.mk). ness, sally ann 1996 “observing the evidence fail: difference arising from objectification in cross-cultural studies of dance,” in moving words: rewriting dance. edited by g. morris, pp. 245–269. london: routledge. obrebski, joseph 1976 the changing peasantry of eastern europe. cambridge: schenkman publishing. roberts, henry l. 1970 eastern europe: politics, revolution, and diplomacy. new york: alfred a. knopf. savigliano, marta e. 1995 tango and the political economy of passion. boulder: westview press. 1996 “fragments for a story of tango bodies (on choreocritics and the memory of power),” in susan foster (ed) corporealities: dancing knowledge, culture, and power. london: routledge. sutton, david 1998 memories cast in stone: the relevance of the past in everyday life. oxford: berg. taussig, michael 1991 “tactility and distraction,” in cultural anthropology 6(2), 147–153. todorova, maria 1997 imagining the balkans. new york: oxford university press. tomko, linda 1996 “fete accompli: gender, “folk-dance,” and progressive-era political ideals in new york city” in susan foster (ed) corporealities: dancing knowledge, culture, and power. london: routledge. weiner, myron 1971 “the macedonian syndrome: an historical model of international and political development.” world politics 23(4). west, rebecca 1940 black lamb and grey falcon: a journey through yugoslavia. london: penguin books. , the anthropology of east europe review: central europe, eastern europe and eurasia volume 24. number 2 fall 2006 editors krista harper julie hemment robert rotenberg, web editor contents editorial: two hungarian uprisings: 1956 a:".'d 2006 ........................................ . ..................... .4 krista harper, university of massachusetts. amherst editors' previe\v ...............................................................................................................................................................6 krista harper and julie hemment. university of massachusetts, amherst call for papers .................................................................................................................................................................6 anthropology ofeas! europe review and the journal of the society for the anthropology of europe symposium: "cultures of consumerism" "shopaholic in eastern europe: a guest editor's foreword ...............................................7 kristen ghodsee, bowdoin new directions i:".' the study of postsoclalist consumption ............................................... 10 daphne berdahl, university of minnesota aerobics and self-asserting discourses: mapping the gendered body in post ·socialist romania ............................................................. 13 petruta mindru!, babe~-bolyai university. cluj napoca. romania of gloss. glitter and lipstick: fashion. femininity and wealth in post·socialist urban bulgaria .......................................25 ehtza ranova, rice university sakha pop music-a celebration of consuming ....................................................................35 aimar ventsel. estonian literary museum. tartu. estonia contentious discourses surrounding supermarkets in post-soviet bishkek ..................44 aisalkyn botoeva. central european university. kyrgyzstan innocence lost: cind-1atic representations of 1960sconsumptlon for 1990s hungary .......54 krisztina fehervary, dukc university. durham nc allfhropology oleast europe review open forum public duties and private obligations: networking and personalisation of relations in ukraine ......................................................62 alexander tymczuk, university of oslo, norway an ethics of hope: working on the self in contemporary moscow .............................................71 jarrett zigon, postdoctoral research fellow. max planck institute for social anthropology refugees as harbingers of political change in serbia .................................................................81 andrei simic. university of southern california ideology of consumption in soviet union: from asceticism to the legitimating of consumer goods .......................................................... 91 olga gurova, european university at si. petersburg, russia reviews book review: the red riviera., kristen ghodsee ...................................................................................99 oriol pi-sunyer, university of massachusetts, amherst book review: medfterranean ethnological summer school, bostian kravanja and matej vranjes (eds) ...................... .101 pam ballinger, bowdoin college book review: being goral: identity politics and globalization in postsocialist poland, deborah cahalen schneider ...................................................................................................................... 103 peter verrneersch, university of leuven. national fund of scientific research, belgium volume 24, no.2 page 2 anthropolory of east e/lrope re\'ie\\' · .... ·········· ....62 ············· ..... 71 ··········· ......81 ··········· ..... 91 ········· ......99 ......... .. 101 ........... 103 please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group (520/yr. for full-time faculty andprofessionals, $1o/)'r for students and part-time faculty; european subscribers should write for .\pecial rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($20), or additional copies ofa back issue ($20) to the managing editors. the web page for the anthropology ofeast europe review/east european anthropology group contains links to most ofthe previously published articles. it can be found at this url: http://lasj.depauledu/aeer/ editors-in-chief: krista harper and julie hemment, anthropology of east europe review, department of anthropology, university of massachusetts, amherst, ma 01003. phone: +1-4l3/545-222l; fax: +1-413/545-9494; e-mail: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com web editor: robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore ave, chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 312/325-7460; fax 312/325-7452; email: rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu . university of massachusetts, amherst 2006 issn: 1054-4720 volume 24, no.2 page 3 mailto:rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu mailto:anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com http://lasj.depauledu/aeer anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 69 czech political prisoners: recovering face. by jana kopelentova rehak. lanham: lexington press, 2013. 157 pp. bibliography. index. photographs. $80.00, hardbound. karen kapusta-pofahl ph. d. washburn university czech political prisoners opens with a series of twenty photographs of elderly men and women, sitting portrait-style, gazing straight into the camera lens with expressions that range from proud to weary to demure. with this introduction, anthropologist jana kopeletova rehak delves into the oft-overlooked experiences of the victims of the stalinist-era show trials in czechoslovakia in the 1950s. the political prisoners (mukls and muklyněs) experienced the highly publicized trials for alleged treasonous behavior in the wake of the soviet-backed czechoslovak communist party consolidation of power in 1948. in this period, hundreds of men and women were arrested, tried, and sentenced to time in work camps, or even death. then, in the wake of de-stalinization in the early 1960s, they were released back into society—freed, but still stigmatized. after the events of 1989, mukls continued to commemorate their experiences and searched for state acknowledgement of their suffering. rehak’s data comes from a variety of sources collected between 1995 and 2004. while the backbone of the ethnography consists of the life histories of sixty-seven mukls, rehak also incorporates participant observation of commemorative events and informal meetings, interviews with mukls’ spouses and children, archival sources; mukls’ own published reflections, and a set of intriguing photographic portraits of mukls and muklyněs1 she took herself. the author’s attention is focused on mukls living in prague. as the mukls’ narratives unfold, sites in and around the city take on a sinister cast as they become places of disruption of the fabric of social life and sites of what rehak calls “state violent ritual” (2013:14). state violent ritual, such as imprisonment, torture, and scripted, self-incriminating public trial, rehak argues, is a rite of passage from ordinary citizen to mukl, which entails new subjectivity and new social connections. the book is organized thematically into two parts: losing face and reclaiming face. in the first section, rehak frames the process of becoming a mukl through three stages: arrest, interrogation, and trial. the second section includes recollections of life in the labor camps in the 1950s, experiences of return to society in the 1960s, and the post-1989 politics of reconciliation, interwoven with ethnographic accounts of the annual commemorations of the confederacy of political prisoners at a former labor camp site. in addition to analyzing the creation of mukl subjectivities, rehak also argues for the centrality of the concept of kinship to mukls’ experiences and identities—in both the ties that are severed within the nuclear family through arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment, and those that are created through the forming of solidarity among mukls who survived torture and life in the labor camps, which was maintained long after being released. the narratives evoke the brutality and betrayals of being designated as a threat to the state in deeply personal ways. mukls’ accounts tell of being taken away, held in isolation, and anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 70 tortured until their captors were satisfied that they were sufficiently broken to stand trial. rehak makes connections between mukls’ social and physical isolation, within which prisoners were held with the notion of “nakedness and loss of the sense of vision” on multiple levels (2013:46). she argues that while the prisoners experienced giorgio agamben’s notion of “bare life” in the camps, they also recount having had a kind of freedom to associate with intellectuals and artists among their fellow prisoners that was ironically revoked upon their release. in the wake of the events of 1989, rehak discusses mukls’ attempts to have their suffering recognized by the post-socialist state, as well as their continued working to maintain and define mukl kinship. one element of this process that i found particularly fascinating was the use of the state police archives to define the criteria for official muklhood as represented by membership in the confederacy of political prisoners. rehak presents abundant information demonstrating that many mukls were forced to confess to activities they did or did not commit while being interrogated. in addition, they recount instances of their interrogators writing up falsified accounts and confessions to be placed in prisoners’ files. despite this, and despite a general sense of society-wide distrust for the communist party, when archives were opened after 1989, people looked to those files for the truth about who had collaborated with the regime and who had stood firm. rehak writes, “the archive, materialized in written form, remained the location of fictive political power in the 1990s, understood by the general public as a place of moral truth” (2013:43). as a result, rehak demonstrates, some mukls who had been considered part of the mukl family before 1989 were not recognized in the post-socialist era. in this work, rehak manages to weave the theories of heavy-hitters like gorgio agamben, michal taussig, and alan feldman into elements from mukl narratives in a way that both elucidates their experiences and lends depth and clarity to complex concepts. beside her ability to present mukls’ stories in a vivid and compelling way, this ability to engage ethnographically with these theories is a significant strength of this work. several themes introduced by rehak would have benefitted from further development. for instance, the concept of “gendered pain” (2013:51) addresses gendered approaches to coping with pain, gendered humiliation during torture, and sympathy for the pain of the opposite sex. the author presents descriptions of interrogation as de-feminizing and hyper-sexualizing, but an analysis that is more detailed would shed more light on these intriguing phenomena. while her approach to theory could make this work accessible to advanced undergraduate students, her organizational approach decentralizes information about political and social circumstances of the 1950s in a way that may make it difficult for a novice to follow. this makes the work less accessible to general readers and more geared toward an expert audience. anthropologists of politics, law, conflict, and post-socialism will find this ethnography to be a thought-provoking, empathetic, and poignant contribution to scholarship on political prisoners, suffering, and identity. 1 per author’s usage, i will employ the term mukl when referring to political prisoners of both genders collectively. salamander brandy: “a psychedelic drink” between media myth and practice of home alcohol distillation in slovenia volume 21, number 1 salamander brandy: “a psychedelic drink” between media myth and practice of home alcohol distillation in slovenia miha kozorog, university of ljubljana © 2003 miha kozorog all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in 1995 the slovenian weekly magazine mladina published a very interesting and prominent article, salamander brandy – hallucinogenic drugs made in slovenia, according to which slovenia is supposed to have its own indigenous hallucinogenic drink (ogorevc 1995). before reading the article i had not heard about this drug, but afterwards every chat about drugs necessarily touched upon this subject. salamander brandy was now known by more and more young people (or those interested in drugs) some read about it in mladina, others heard about it here or there, some even tried it. my colleague boris prinčič1 and i decided to follow the phenomenon in the anthropological manner. we wanted to try the proper salamander brandy, made by those who make it traditionally, and as students of anthropology at the same time practice communication with “the others.” we headed directly towards the region that was, according to the mladina article, the cradle of the beverage. 2 we asked for it once, twice, and so on, but remained empty handed, without “the psychedelic drink.” what we heard about it was completely different from what we read. the purpose of this article is to mirror the two discourses on the salamander brandy: the media and the indigenous one. by doing so i hope to introduce a different view of this supposedly hallucinogenic drug. working methods and dilemmas my colleague and i had many discussions on anthropological fieldwork, the ideal of participant observation, and staying within the examined community for a longer period of time. however, we handled the fieldwork in a little bit more of an “oldfashioned,” “slovenian,” ethnographic manner. this means the ethnographer does not live with the locals for a long period of time, trying to observe all the aspects of their lives, but walks from house to house and asks people about this and that subject. if the considered topic is food, clothing, religion, and similar everyday things, people are usually open and willing to give information. but when they are asked about their sex life, hygienic customs, ways of reducing the birthrate, in short taboo subjects, they behave completely differently. it was just this reaction that followed from our questioning about salamander brandy and it was soon very clear that finding it might be very difficult. if we had chosen a better anthropological method, i.e. participant observation, we might have solved the problem. nonetheless, we chose the method that seemed proper – we travelled through one valley in the region known for salamander brandy, met and questioned a number of people, made friends with many, and living at my girlfriend’s house, which is situated in the region, i had a good position for deeper observation. during the fieldwork, salamander brandy turned out to be an enigma. our problem was that the idea that we had about it from the article in mladina was something that did not fit into the indigenous discourse. in this article i would like to solve this contradiction. what i will write about the brandy will not be necessarily more true that what was written in mladina – it is just a different explanation and in my opinion a more likely one.3 what i can offer is a viewing of our enigma from different angles, and so i will try to demystify the phenomenon. salamander brandy as presented by the media4 the main information about salamander brandy that was given by ogorevc is the following: “slovenians have their own indigenous hallucinogenic drug and we have discovered recipes for its brewing” (ogorevc 1995). the writer added that we are dealing with the witchcraft legacy, which makes the jen typewritten text 63 volume21, number 1 phenomenon part of tradition. although we can understand this writing about witches as a literary appendage – as a part of mysticism which is, together with specific humor, the author’s way of making the atmosphere of his article5 – there is no doubt that we are dealing with a traditional phenomenon. although the author of the first media presentation on salamander brandy is known for his fictional journalism, he achieved his credibility by finding a person who makes this brandy. we can somehow talk about exemplary research journalism.6 when he managed to persuade the brandy distiller to sell him some of the mysterious salamander brandy, and wrote about the psychedelic feelings he experienced after drinking, all the secrets of the phenomenon were revealed. even more, he also discovered three recipes for the production of salamander brandy. the first, the most vulgar and also the least sophisticated method is, throw a couple of salamanders (one every ten litres) into a barrel with fruit (soaked before distilling), seal everything with a wooden cover and leave it to the will of the gods for a couple of months. these poor, in specific concentration camps captured amphibians, have nothing else to do in this situation, except to creep through the rotting fruit all day long and in their boredom softly excrete slime. finally, their soft bodies are cut by a shovel with which the peasant is loading fruit into a kettle… (ogorevc 1995: 30) during our fieldwork we were told about this method several times. further on, he writes, second, a more precisely controlled method, according to which you soak a sieve, the one which is usually used for seeding flour, in which you throw a few salamanders, let’s say five or six every thirty liters, into already made brandy. the salamanders, which can’t defend themselves in any other way except by excreting poisonous slime, are, in deadly fear of drowning in alcohol, foaming like bulls during bullfighting. when they croak, the procedure is finished and the dosage is appropriate. (ogorevc 1995: 30) during our fieldwork, nobody mentioned this method. the third method listed was the following: …during the distillation of brandy, when the brandy is dripping out of the kettle, and the expert carefully watches the fire, so that it doesn’t drip too much and that the brandy is not burnt, you hang a salamander, tied by its last legs, under a controlled flow of brandy, and the animal, threatened by the waterfall of brandy, is moving back and forth, suffering and of course defending itself by excreting its poisons, which are continuously washed away by brandy and taken away into …bottles… (ogorevc 1995: 30) this method was not confirmed by any of our informants. although ogorevc does not mention the next method, our informants quite often described it. some of them mentioned that dried salamanders are used in the process of distillation. salamanders are supposed to be killed, dried and, while the fruit is being cooked, hung on a wire in the part of the cooking equipment where steam accumulates. accumulated steam is supposed to extract the salamander’s poison from the dried skin. steam then runs through a distillation tube, liquefies in a chilling vessel, and pours out as salamander brandy. another thing is the hallucinogenic experience of the brandy. the mladina journalist wrote: and then it…started unnaturally, colorfully glittering around the treetops and trees, which were weirdly, hysterically rushing into the depths of gorges… it was as if i were totally unburdened by the biology of extraterrestrial beings from some other planet and watched everything, the grass, the insects or a grazing cow in the vicinity…and absolutely everything seemed new and strange, and i wished to fuck something, anything. and in this almost full absence from this world…i chose the beech tree. their trunks…seemed horribly erotic to me. …after this i finally crashed into the wet leaves and maybe even slept for a while. but damn, a few salamanders walked near by. and they said with their mysterious voices: look, look, who’s there, jen typewritten text 64 volume21, number 1 not a salamander for sure… (ogorevc 1995: 31-2) although the narration in this writing is humorous and artistically upgraded, we can understand that salamander brandy is a hallucinogenic drink7 from the author’s perception that the edges of things glowed and his perception of things that are not present at the moment of the hallucinogenic experience, as well as his sexual stimulation. researchers of hallucinogenic drugs report exactly the same reactions to hallucinogenic drugs as mentioned here (e.g. grlić 1989: 13, 16) and in a personal interview the writer of these words extracted just these three themes when commenting upon his fictional narration on the experience. salamander brandy thus became a hallucinogenic drug par excellence to the broader slovenian public. salamander brandy hallucinogenic? salamander brandy is, as we have noticed, a traditional slovenian means of attaining psychedelic feelings and, as we will see in this section, biochemistry can give some information to confirm this. but first, let us introduce salamandra salamandra to have an idea from which animal the supposed hallucinogenic drug comes. in short we can say that salamandra salamandra is an amphibian, and with its yellow spots on black slimy skin it is quite visible on a wet forest ground. although a visible being, and so quite easy to attack, it would be quite dangerous for a predator to eat it. if a salamander feels threatened it excretes some corrosive substance from its poison glands. having this in mind, we can imagine that the salamander’s poison can be gathered somehow with human intervention (action). how salamanders react to alcohol, we do not know, as we also do not know whether they retain poison when dried, and an experiment should be carried out to understand this. as we did not do it, we can only make this conclusion: salamanders contain a certain poison that can be gathered and used in various ways. what kind of poison are we talking about? a particular active substance of salamander’s poison is tetrodotoxin, from a group of neurotoxins. for these substances it is significant to react on na+ and for some also on k+ nerve channels. tetrodotoxin is a poison with a strong paralyzing effect, which is significant for salamandra salamandra, some species of frogs, octopi, and one type of fish. it affects the nervous system by blocking na+ nerve channels (voet 1990:1162-1163). with some reference to saksida (1997) i will try to explain the reaction to tetrodotoxin in a few simple words. if we want to move our legs, we have to send signals (electric current) from our central nervous system to a certain motoric surface. the journey of this impulse means a repeating chemical reaction, be it in the transformation of the impulse from one nervous cell to another or in the sliding of the impulse along one nervous cell. this repeating chemical reaction consists of breaking of na+ ions from the exterior of the nervous cell through the cell membrane into the cell (where there are no na+ ions when resting, although with a tendency to break in) and consequently of dislodging of k+ ions out of the cell interior (k+ ions are, when resting, numerous inside the nervous cell). tetrodotoxin, when affecting a certain part of the nervous system, blocks na+ nerve channels, which means that na+ ions will not force themselves into the cell any more and consequently the impulse will not be able to travel on. talking about moving a leg, we can conclude, that we would feel as if our legs are paralyzed. an expert in biochemistry, a researcher of certain poisons’ effects on the nervous system, igor križaj mentioned in our personal consultation that he doubts the existence of the same active substance in the poison of all the above mentioned animals: salamander, fish, frogs, octopi. at the same time, it is true that we are talking about similar substances with similar effects. these effects may be a partly and temporary paralysis and also hallucinations. because the chemical structures of these substances are very small, they can break through the brain membrane and affect certain parts of our brain, which causes hallucinations. as križaj concluded, a chemical reaction between alcohol and such substances in the process of making salamander brandy would be impossible and both substances would just mix together. the supposed drink containing both substances would affect human beings by raising blood pressure (alcohol) and so intensifying the effects of the other substance. the only scientific publishing on salamander brandy that i know of is the writing of ivan valenčič (1996), which can only confirm the jen typewritten text 65 volume21, number 1 mladina presentation of salamander brandy as a hallucinogenic drug. the problem with this writing is that it is too grounded on the experience and conclusions of the mladina journalist (together with the mythological dimensions added to this beverage) – somehow it is a scientific remake of the humorous mladina story, with some additional biological and chemical explanation. although the author names the active substance of salamander’s poison samandarin, he writes about the similar effects as the above-mentioned biochemists. the mucus of the salamander’s skin (…) contains many toxic substances that are biogenetically synthesized from cholesterin. the main steroidalkaloid whose action has been also most thoroughly studied is samandarin [altmann 1980; habermehl 1987]. it is soluble in most organic solvents, but practically insoluble in water. samandarin is an agent with strong central nervous system activity: its most important effects include cramps, high blood pressure, and localized anesthesia. (valenčič 1996:222) about the supposed hallucinations valenčič writes: i have come across only one reference [grof 1996] that the salamander’s skin has some psychoactive properties. it is to be hoped that in the not too distant future, research on the salamander’s mucus might reveal some hidden knowledge about an animal that has been endowed with mysterious and marvelous powers by the sages of the past… (valenčič 1996: 224) biochemistry can to a certain degree confirm ogorevc’s presentation of the brandy – as was the case with some of the recipes that got some confirmation during our fieldwork. the problem is that in the indigenous discourse on the topic there is no trace of hallucinations. on the other hand, we have to add the paralyzing effect to the hallucinations. a part of the indigenous discourse can be interpreted in exactly this way – “salamander brandy cuts off your legs.” indigenous discourse on salamander brandy as it turned out during our fieldwork, local people from the area treated in the mladina article knew about the salamander brandy. information about it was not abundant but sufficient to draw out a firmly structured discourse. our initial assumption that people are mysterious about salamander brandy because it is a hallucinogenic drug (or simply a drug as something people stigmatize) – as ogorevc presents it was wrong. salamander brandy could not have been demonized from the upside down (through media for example), because the phenomenon was publicly unknown before ogorevc wrote about it, and if it were demonized by the locals themselves, why would they pity the users of the drug and condemn the producers (a usual discourse on drugs is inverted – people condemn the users and overlook the producers). however, both producers and users of the drink play a significant role in the local discourse on this brandy. discourse on people connected with salamander brandy turned out to be extremely negative and we could sum it up in the sentence, “shame on those who cook salamander brandy and poor are those who accidentally drink it.” the mladina journalist could have recognized this as well, to whom one old woman said, “cooking salamander brandy is a disgracing act” (ogorevc 1995: 28); but he presented instead its expected “psychedelic function” and compared it with the abuse of a mexican toad. there is not a single trace of the usage of salamander brandy for hallucinogenic purposes in the indigenous discourse; on the contrary, “misfortunate are those who drink it, because salamander brandy cuts your legs off and you are sick for a few days afterwards.” as was clear from the people’s talking, nobody would drink salamander brandy on purpose and mainly the drinking would be accidental, and the narration about “cutting off the legs” can be understood in the context of the paralyzing effect presented in the preceding part. questioning about the brandy distillation and the production of salamander brandy gave another standardized answer: “we’ve always been honest brandy distillers; salamander brandy distillation is a deceitful act.”8 if somebody were accused of cooking salamander brandy, people would not buy brandy there. those accused of cooking it were publicly stigmatized as cheaters. in this context we can also explain the mystery that surrounds salamander brandy. the reason for the silence is not a question of psychedelic drugs but a question of fair and unfair brandy distillation. jen typewritten text 66 volume21, number 1 we can sum up this part of indigenous discourse in this way: “there are fair and good brandy distillers who cook pure and good brandy; there are also those who swindle with brandy and whose brandy is a fake one (and sometimes poisoned) and drinkers or buyers should be careful about this.” fortunes and misfortunes of brandy distillation the škofja loka and polhov gradec regions of slovenia are both well known for their brandy distillation. as the state of slovenia does not prohibit home brandy distillation,9 home made brandy is quite common in these parts of the country (and elsewhere too). the most common was brandy made of mixed fruit, less of juniper, plum, cherry and strawberry. beekeepers made ‘honey schnapps’. they also made ‘schnapps’10 from broad beans, potatoes and even from bought figs, ‘the green one’ they made from pure alcohol and absinthe. in ojstri vrh in the selška valley they made an excellent brandy made of cherries, which dr. rudolf andrejka enthusiastically named slovenian ‘cherry brandy’. (sterle 1987: 119) this is a rough description of the brandy distillation in the past in the škofja loka region by slovenian ethnographer meta sterle. concerning the present, the picture of brandy distillation is similar. the most common is brandy made of mixed fruit, mostly apples and pears. but another description from sterle gives us some idea that in reality brandy distillation is not as ideal as it may appear. concerning juniper brandy, it should be made from juniper berries but is in fact often made from fruit brandy in which they soak juniper tree branches, so that the common brandy gets a better aroma (sterle field notes 1982). potatoes and broad beans are not commonly used for brandy distillation any more. this kind of brandy distillation is associated with critical times, mostly times before and during the second world war, and into the same category people classify brandy made of sugar beets. people also mention the usage of pure alcohol (‘geist’), which is supposed to compensate the lack of fruit in times of crisis. with ‘cherry brandy’ the case is not as ideal as mentioned above. because of the aroma and easier process of brandy making, people distill it without removing the stones from the cherries. cherry stones bring a bigger quantity of methanol into the brandy than usual, which causes a different drunkenness as the usual ethanol. these last few passages open another view on home brandy making and many people’s attitude towards it – there is brandy made in a proper way and there is brandy that presents a deviation from this ideal picture and is often associated with crisis times or with cheating. this is not just the case of the škofja loka region and of present times. i came across cases of indigenous division between the good and the bad brandy and brandy distillation in other parts of slovenia as well.11 people use different fake methods for easier, faster, cheaper and greater quantity brandy distillation. such a brandy may not be the best but it might bring some economic benefits if the producer is able to sell it. the 19th century pamphlet against alcohol, “the brotherhood of the sober,” presented the deviations in common brandy distillation among slovenian peasants. the authors wrote they knew many excellent brandy distillers who would plant the whole field with potatoes so that they could make large quantities of brandy from it all year long (zschokke 1847:22).12 they also wrote that brandy is very popular because it is cheaper than wine and much easier to make, so that anybody can cook it at home. they say, “people use everything that can be used for brandy distillation and there are many things that can be used” (zschokke 1847:28). “the brotherhood” also mentions that cherry stones have their own poison that comes into brandy – although only in small quantities. and besides that, the tricky brandy distillers know many harmful supplements that they use to improve their brandy and in order to sell it easier (zschokke 1847:80, 81). brandy distillers use different methods to make more brandy or to make it more pleasant by improving the aroma. i will try to place salamander brandy in this very context. in the škofja loka region salamander brandy personifies a deviation from the fair, i.e. usual brandy making.13 salamander brandy is mostly associated with times of crisis and in local discourse it jen typewritten text 67 volume21, number 1 occupies the same position as the brandy made of broad beans, sugar beets, potatoes, pure alcohol and the similar14 – people say: “when there was a lack of fruit, as for example during the war, some brandy distillers used various tricks to make some extra brandy for sale.” the most common description of the reason for using salamanders in the process of brandy distillation is, “because then the brandy just flows.” as ogorevc wrote (but did not try to explain), “the experts assure me that brandy with this amphibian addition ‘flows more.’” what “the experts” want to say is that we can get a larger quantity of brandy from the same quantity of fruit, if we add some salamanders to the process of distillation. the question--"how is this possible?"--remains. as i have not participated in any salamander brandy distillation and have not done an experiment myself, i can only speculate on this question – salamander’s poison may to a certain degree compensate for the missing alcohol in the drink. our salamander brandy is far from being a means for hallucinations. the context is now far less romantic and media sensational then was at the start of this presentation. what i am presenting here about salamander brandy is merely cheating (by the producers) and certain negative feelings after drinking the wrong brandy (by the consumers). as one old woman remembers, her husband always blamed salamander brandy if he felt ill or just not right after drinking some brandy. salamander brandy in folklore slovenian folklorist marija stanonik came across an interesting piece of folk tale. while working with school children in škofja loka she asked them to write down some folk tales told by their grandparents and she got this story from a village in poljanska dolina. my grandmother still remembers how pleasant it was to rest on the devil’s rock (which is no longer there), at the place where a seat was made by the devil himself. here he sat when he was on his way to the village, when he had to frighten somebody there, or on the other hand when he was returning to the farm x.15 why right there? mrs. x was, that is to say, cooking special brandy, which was called salamander brandy. while cooking brandy she put a salamander into it; its poisons totally drove mad those who drank such brandy. and how terrible the rumbling down in the valley brebovnica when the devil was running from x to the village. it doesn’t come as a surprise, drunk as he was. (stanonik personal archives, n.d.) how to interpret such a story? according to mary douglas, interpreting “little red riding hood” (1999), the main problem with such interpretations is the lack of knowledge about the social context in which one story appeared or was changed. according to what we already know about salamander brandy's social image, we can explain the story in this way: x is a separated part of the community; using salamander brandy x cooperates with the devil who makes problems with the villagers; the position of x can be interpreted through its life at the margins of the society due to salamander brandy distillation. in fact the story is not a serious one. according to mary douglas the license for laughing comes from the social context (1999:17) and together with yvonne verdier she agrees that a big part of folk tales can be placed into a genre of little proverbs, games, sarcasms, nonsense and humorous moral lessons (1999:28). in contemporary culture she finds a parallel in slander, comments that occur as pieces of poems, sayings and the like. should not we understand our tale as village comment, sarcasm, slander, or joking? the story is told from the point of view of the village and in the village the story functions as a teasing story for the only one named – the x. the story in fact stigmatizes one of the farms in their midst. with this story we have luck, because the story is not too old and the names have not lost their social context yet. as the name of the brebovnica stream, which appears in the tale, is a real topographic name, i became watchful whether the other names in the tale (the devil’s rock and x) have some basis in reality as well. it turned out that both names come from the same environment – the rock is gone but the farm x and the neighbors can still tell us something about this tale. the story about mrs. x’s salamander brandy distillation is quite well known in the area among the old people, who can confirm the conclusion on the basis of reading the tale through the testified position of salamander brandy in the society. in fact people do not tell this as a folk tale, but as a comment on the life of mrs. x herself, who died soon after the second jen typewritten text 68 volume21, number 1 world war and is supposed to have produced and sold salamander brandy before the war. locals interpreted this practice of mrs. x in two ways. on the one hand, some people say that mrs. x was a salamander brandy distiller. the basis for this assumption is the fact that there was always enough brandy at x’s farm, even when there was little home made alcohol at other farms. she is supposed to have sold her brandy to drunkards for whom the farm functioned as a kind of illegal tavern. the brandy there was of low quality and could cause many health problems to those who drank it. on the other hand, other people denied the rumors about mrs. x’s salamander brandy distillation. they say that these stories are/were just gossip of those who want/ed to harm the woman. according to this interpretation, mrs. x was a poor woman with many children, which forced her to open her farm as a kind of tavern. the place was quite lively and that is what disturbed the people in the vicinity and thus caused the rumors. an example that speaks to mrs. x’s situation in an appropriate manner occurred in 1939 when a line of bunkers was being built in the area.16 mrs.’s place was open to “the masons from the south,” men of nationalities other than slovene, who came to work from other parts of yugoslavia to build this military complex. as somebody explained, the main problem was the fact that the masons sometimes invited young girls from the area, which caused the offence of some local youngsters, who wanted to punish the host. to harm mrs. x, who allowed such parties at her home, the locals produced the gossip about her cheating with brandy. as the lady who now lives at the farm x explained, the story about salamander brandy was a strong stigma, which lasted with the farm far after the death of the old lady. the tale is a slander story, a village comment. this case seems perfect for the understanding of what salamander brandy is about. our conclusion will again be different from the one provided by the media. salamander brandy was presented as something worthy of condemnation from those who defended mrs. x as well as from those who disapproved of her doing – and such discourse was not based on the supposed hallucinations but on a cheating business.17 at the end, it really does not matter whether x was distilling salamander brandy or not; the case is interesting because it shows that talking about salamander brandy could have been a useful way of stigmatizing those who withdrew from the norms of the society. media discourse and the birth of the salamander brandy myth ogorevc’s discourse on salamander brandy went like this: we slovenians have our own traditional hallucinogenic drug. though the journalist presented his discovery in a funny and fictional way, salamander brandy was presented as a discovery and not as fiction. the journalist is known for his writing on the basis of the first hand experience and the article was first published in mladina, a weekly known for its freshness, courage, credibility, which helped the success of this inventing of tradition (hobsbawm 1988). salamander brandy, as the slovenian public knows it today, is a media construct and it is a false, on the basis of analogy, simplification of the phenomenon. this invented tradition has its explanation in salamander brandy’s sensational potential. the discovery of a hallucinogenic drug in the slovenian traditional society was sensational news and especially among the slovenian youth got certain feedback.18 some people even tried to make it. i met and heard about a few. one of them said to me: “yes, z and i made salamander brandy. we did it just as it was written in mladina and even exaggerated a bit to be sure about the impressions. we drank it but it was nothing. we drank more but we were just getting drunk. we had to smoke some marijuana at least to get stoned.” then i asked him: “what about the journalist’s experience?” and the guy answered: “you’ve heard about the placebo effect – he was expecting too much!”19 references cited archives marija stanonik, n.d., sf isn, zrc sazu. bayer, istvan, 1990, psychotropic substances in europe: trend in licit use. new york: united nations. bohinc, pavle, 1992, koren lečen, koren strupen. ljubljana: dzs. douglas, mary, 1999, rabe vulgarnosti: francosko branje rdeče kapice, v miselni slogi: kritični eseji o dobrem okusu. ljubljana: *cf., pp. 13-32. jen typewritten text 69 volume21, number 1 fieldwork files museum of škofja loka: meta sterle files. grlić, ljubiša, 1989, svijet halucinogenih droga. zagreb: globus. hobsbawm, eric, 1988, introduction: inventing traditions. the invention of tradition, ed. eric hobsbawm, terence ranger. cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 1-14. huxley, aldous, 1993, vrata zaznavanja; nebesa in pekel. ljubljana: studia humanitatis minora macrae, r., ed., 1993, encyclopedia of food science, food technology and nutrition. london: academic press. milčinski, janez, 1972, prosta destilacija alkohola v sloveniji ter njen medicinski, družbeni in ekonomski pomen. ljubljana: inštitut za sodno medicino medicinske fakultete univerze v ljubljani. ogorevc, blaž, 1995, močeradovec (halucinogene droge – made in slovenia), mladina, št. 23, pp. 26-32. saksida, iztok, 1997, uvod v primerjalno sociologijo. ljubljana: filozofska fakulteta. sterle, meta, 1987, prehrana na loškem. loški razgledi 34, ur. dr. france leben. škofja loka: muzejsko društvo v škofji loki. šertel, andrej, 1989, domače žganje. ljubljana: kmečki glas. valenčič, ivan, 1998, salamander brandy: a psychedelic drink made in slovenia. yearbook for ethnomedicine and the study of consciousness, vol. 1996-5, ed. christian rätsch, john r. baker. berlin: vwb. voet, donald in judith g., 1990, biochemistry. new york: john wiley & sons inc. zschokke, heinrich, 1847, čujte, čujte kaj žganje dela! prigodba, žalostna ino vesela za slovence. celovec: joan leon. 1 i started this research together with prinčič in 1998 and conclusions we made on the topic are both of ours. after our joined work i did some more research on the topic and got more confirmation for our theses. this writing will change the subject from we to i according to whom a certain part of the research refers. 2 the škofja loka and polhograjsko regions are supposed to be the regions where from which salamander brandy comes. unsystematic questioning in other regions of slovenia showed that people from other parts of slovenia do not know the drink, except younger people who read about it in mladina. 3 i would not like to give a functionalistic explanation according to which one thing has just one and only function – in this view i allow the mladina presentation, but cannot confirm it. 4 the mass media discourse on salamander brandy is here abstracted from the writing in mladina, which was the first media (and public) presentation of the phenomenon. this presentation gave to salamander brandy its public image, which was later re-presented by other media, most stereotypically by commercial television pop tv for which the phenomenon was suitable as a scoop. 5 blaž ogorevc is a very special and quite famous mladina journalist. what makes him special is his vocabulary, and his rich, humoresque and fictional way of writing and the topics he is writing about – sex, drugs, personal adventures around the world, his associating with slovenian artists, memories of his “hippy” years and the like. one of his most famous (and remembered) articles is the one on salamander brandy. 6 beside the journalist’s investigatve approach to discovering the phenomenon, there is also the context of mladina as the most famous slovenian research magazine (although especially in the field of politics) which gives importance to his writing. 7 in personal consultation with the author he confirmed his hallucinogenic feelings and did not deny that this was his message to the readers. 8 that’s why people say: “we’d never make such brandy – but in the neighboring village you might find it.” 9 in the last few years there were some law changes in slovenia according to which home brandy distillation is now limited by quantity. 10 'schnapps’ is a local word for brandy. jen typewritten text 70 volume21, number 1 11 in one part of the tolmin region people talk of ‘laibn brandy,’ a word meaning ’toilet.’ people say that it smelled like feces and was actually made of it. 12 the usual brandy distillation from fruit is limited to the fruit season. 13 under the name salamander brandy our informants classified many different methods of fake brandy making, many of them without any relation with salamanders (the animals). 14 i spoke with one informant who clearly distingushed between the bad brandy and the poisoned one. as the brandy made of potatos, pure alcohol, sugar and the like was named the bad brandy, he refered to salamander brandy as the poisoned one. he classified salamander brandy into the category of quantity and economically beneficial brandy distillation (as brandy made of potatos etc.), but the problem with this one was that after drinking it you would feel sick. 15 i am avoiding the use of the name mentioned in the original text because it is a home name of a real farm. 16 the so-called rupnik’s line of bunkers was built as a borderline military complex for the defense against italy. 17 people were saying to me that they would not drink salamander brandy, which meant unwell, cheap, unsound brandy some people drank it because they only wanted to get cheaply drunk without being concerned about the usual sickness afterwords, but usually you would get such brandy by accident and without wanting it. 18 the feedback did not occur only among certain groups of youth who talked about it and were interested in drinking salamander brandy. some media found it interesting and pop tv made a scoop out of it last year – again their informant (an older man from the škofja loka region) was presenting the economic potential of using salamanders but the tv was rather showing the supposed consumer of the drug (a young guy who literally repeated the mladina description of the feelings after drinking it). and the same with the story with the scientific response towards the mladina writing – valenčič (1996) uncritically repeated the presentation of the media. 19 mladina's journalist ogorevc in his article admited that it took a long time to persuade one peasant to sell him some salamander brandy and not just the usual one, he finaly got it, but that in fact the brandy sold as salamander brandy was probably the same brandy as before. he writes: “…the price was then double, but i think that i drank the same brandy all the time. for ideology we always have to pay extra and the host is holy even if it's from the same material as cut offs which are for free.” jen typewritten text 71 75 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 informal nationalism after communism: the everyday construction of post-socialist identities. abel polese, oleksandra seliverstova, emilia pawłusz, and jeremy morris (eds.) london: bloomsbury publishing, 2018. 232 pp. notes. bibliography. £75.00/$99.00, hard bound. polina manolova, centre for anthropological and ethnosociological studies, university of plovdiv philipp lottholz, collaborative research centre/transregio 138 “dynamics of security” & institute of sociology, justus-liebig-university giessen traditionally considered the realm of anthropological inquiry and ethnographic methodology, informality and ‘the everyday’ can be said to have recently experienced a boom in studies of nationalism and nation-building, which has, however, not necessarily led to the development of more insightful accounts of this realm of life. the collection informal nationalism after communism: the everyday construction of post-socialist identities, edited by abel polese and colleagues, has set out to advance the study of informal practices of everyday national identity building, enactment and renegotiation in a diverse set of post-socialist countries. recognizing the importance of challenging the prevalence of state-centered approaches to the study of identities and nationalism in former socialist/soviet societies, the editors instead advocate prioritizing the role of individuals in the (re-) production, interpretation and contestation of markers of national belonging. the book deserves recognition for the wide range of empirical contexts, methodological approaches and disciplinary orientations brought together. however, in light of its insufficient ethnographic depth and embedding within important debates on recent developments in the region, as well as its narrow and uncritical conceptualisation of ‘everyday’ nationalism, it ends up serving as another example of how elusive attempts to analyse everyday post-socialism empirically can be. 76 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 thе main premise of this edited collection is that tacit, unnoticed and routinized performances of nationhood are not less significant for the process of nation-state building than governmental policies and official discourses. it is precisely the lack of certain activities, the non-reaction to certain upheavals, and the silent moments marking daily existence that can become the ‘loudest’ instruments for contestation of official ideologies of nationalism (4). the editors make the pertinent argument that qualitative methodologies are best suited for unearthing and scrutinizing the 'invisible' dimensions of identity construction and its affective, material and ideological expressions (10). the eight empirical chapters are organized into three thematic sections which aim to examine: 1) the role of educational institutions as platforms for the ‘renegotiation and contestations’ of statehood and identity categories; 2) the effects of portrayals of the nation in media production; and 3) the enactment and shaping of national identity in ‘everyday’ cultural practices. with its coverage of a variety of contexts ranging from the western balkans and moldova to russia and mongolia and with the wide range of materials and sources analysed, the collection presents interesting ideas and possibilities for forging ahead with the study of post-socialist everyday nationalism. at the same time, the research presented barely reaches the empirical depth and perspective that would allow for the uncovering of the ‘everyday’ and ‘invisible’ processes and practices – a task that the editors set for themselves in the introduction (11-12). the larger part of the chapters examines textual and visual material like school textbooks (chapter 3), corporate advertisements and branding (chapter 4), restaurant menus (chapter 6) or general public and social media discourses (chapter 5) and thus prioritizes (semi-) formal and institutional expressions of nationalism over the everyday ones. for example, in chapter 3, tamara trošt investigates expressions of nationalism in serbian and croatian textbooks in geography, nature and sports. beyond the unsurprising conclusion that the centralised national curriculum transmits established national symbols and ideologies, her claim that school textbooks can also 77 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 be considered ‘sites for contestation’ is not further explored or substantiated by considering, for instance, the reception and negotiation of the materials by teachers and pupils. half of the collection’s chapters approach the topic with a mix of interviews and at least some kind of participatory observation. however, especially in the case of rayna gavrilova’s (chapter 6) and timofey agarin and līga rudzīte’s (chapters 8) the high degree of synthetization and interpretation of data takes over more in-depth descriptions of contextual and procedural details and leaves room for alternative interpretations of the observed realities. agarin and rudzīte, for instance, cite interviews ‘conducted with an international development organisation’ (170) on merely one occasion while not providing further details on how their three months of fieldwork in several places feed into their generally compelling narrative. despite their stated intention to reveal particularities of regional dynamics of informal nationhood ‘idiosyncratic to the post-socialist region’ (184), the case studies presented are insufficiently, or at least not systematically enough, contextualized within trajectories of postsocialist neoliberal transformation and the political economies of nationalist consumerism that have emerged from them (especially chapters 3, 6 and 7). a more thorough contextualization could also have appreciated the rise of nationalist rhetoric, social movements and political parties, as well as increasingly authoritarian tendencies across the post-socialist region and globally. the racist and exclusionary language and sentiments that have become part of the everyday in post-socialist countries can hardly be dismissed as deviant or pathological expressions of nationalism but merit scrutiny as part of a more widely-defined inquiry into banal nationalisms. elizaveta gaufman’s analysis in chapter 5 points in this direction, as it reveals how homophobic, heteronormative and exclusionary discourses are part of russian social media users’ attempts to define their national belonging, identification and subjectivity. 78 anthropology of east europe review 37 (1), 2020 with its analytical restriction to a narrow, if not sanitized version of ‘banal’ nationalism, the collection creates the impression that national identities can somehow be extricated from the more regressive and violent dynamics and practices of nation-building. banal forms of nationalism are thus portrayed as voluntaristic and possibly emancipatory forms of selfdetermination or even expressions of agency (9; chapters 1, 2, 5), which have the potential to contest top-down nation-building projects. however, as michael billig (banal nationalism. sage, 1995), whose work builds a cornerstone of the volume’s approach, has admonished, banal forms of nationalism should not be mistaken as benign ones, let alone, as hannah arendt noted (eichmann in jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil. viking press, 1963), as harmless ones. instead, banal nationalism has to be scrutinized for its complicity and inextricable symbiosis with the more violent and exclusionary practices of nation-building. the problematic nature of this analytical choice is hinted at in gaufman’s and agarin and rudzīte’s chapters (5 and 8) and becomes most obvious in dilyara suleymanova’s contribution (chapter 1), which investigates the strategies of minority ethnic pupils in the republic of tatarstan to renegotiate, and at times to outrightly deny, their ethnic belonging in favour of a self-identification as part of the russian ethnicity conceived of in a wide sense. yet the author fails to appreciate the coercion and symbolic violence lingering behind such reconfiguring of one’s identity. in summary, while it points to valuable entry points and important aspects of the study of informal and everyday identity and nation-building processes, this collection ultimately falls short of its own ambition to provide a substantive – presumably ethnographically informed – analysis of the latter. "what are they writing about us blacks?" roma and "race" in russia. alaina lemon university of michigan what does it mean to be "black" (chernyi) in russia? here i will not attempt a history or genealogy of russian ideas about blackness; instead, i analyze romani accounts that reveal various ways "blackness" can be constructed in russia. this essay turns upon romani (gypsy)1 accounts of social interactions with russians in which being "black" was an issue. roma, besides themselves subscribing to and negotiating within many of the prevalent categories, also reverse the valence of blackness or make shifting alignments with other groups also defined as "black." a "black" complexion marks "race" in russia in the sense that it externally marks biologically essentialized identities. what complicates matters for racial purists is that color can not always serve as a criteria of boundaries crucial to them: not all roma, for instance, are actually very dark. "blackness," as many writers have already argued,2 is constructed culturally. the lines of race, with "blackness" as its cipher, are drawn with reference to many standards, cultural concerns, and political agendas.3 in russia, a "black" is, among other meanings, a person whom many north americans probably would describe as "ethniclooking" people with "olive" skin and dark eyes and hair.4 however, in russia as in many other places, "race" also is linked to categories that can be connected via tropes of generation or "blood" and thus mobilized in political arguments, as in this recent issue of one of the many nationalist newspapers in the capital: "the highest goal of the government must be to preserve that racial nucleus which alone can create culture, beauty and all the highest values."5 the russian words natsiya ("nation" and "nationality") and natsionalnost' ("nationality" or "ethnicity") indeed often substitute for "race."6 these concerns with race and nation also often are layered with economic and moral statements about the poverty of the russian people, who are said to inhabit a vast country rich in natural resources but tapped by foreigners. the issue of "blackness" first emerged as significant to my research in 1990. i had been riding the moscow metro with a romani man, the husband of a romani ethnographer, and had asked him why people were looking at us in a hostile way. he replied, "because you are white and i am black." his wife later denied that this was the reason, stating that categories of race or racism did not apply in the soviet union: "racism is something you have in america." this was several years after glasnost had begun, but the soviet press for so long had depicted the evil colonial forces of capitalist countries and commonwealths as racist, it was still difficult to deal with the issue at home. four years later, another russian scholar told me that the term "race" imposed a foreign category upon russian social life. it is not my intent to transpose histories of slavery and repression on the american continents to eurasia but to untangle how signs of "blood," "blackness," are used in russia in specific ways to explain behavior, culture, and social position as biologically determined. even relations of exchange thus become a matter of race. russian poetic and dramatic imagery fixates on the blackness of gypsy heroines and heroes. one of the most popular of "gypsy songs" is titled "black eyes" (ochi chiornie).7 the song was written by a russian but became associated with gypsies through performance. many romani performers are careful to point out that it is not a "real romani song" but one meant for russians, for the stage, although they all know the song and may be proud of their own rendition of it. but in public culture, the song stands for "gypsies." although many romanticize and eroticize the hypnotic black gaze, in other moments they implicate it as sinister. "do you know what dark eyes mean?" said a russian trying to dissuade me from talking to gypsies, "such people have sway over others they have more e.s.p. (extrasens)." in an extension of this allusion to gypsy power, another russian said of more mundane, economic "crimes" that "gypsies can make you hand over money without even realizing it it's like they hypnotize you." besides the visible signs of "race" complexion, eyes, even clothing, as we see below there are less visible natsional'nie cherty ("national traits") which are said to lie v krovi ("in the blood"). russians say of gypsies that "trading is in their blood," "stealing horses is in their mailto:amlemon@umich.edu� mailto:amlemon@umich.edu� jen typewritten text 34 blood," "metal working "(or "metal" itself) is "in their blood."8 "artistic talent," especially dancing, also is said to lie "in the blood," passed along through the generations. even communistera gypsy films and stage productions assert this: in the moscow romani theater adaptation of kalinin's novel, gypsy, a gypsy world war ii hero, budulei, searches for his family after the war. he stays at a collective farm and meets a boy who turns out to be his son. the boy's adoptive mother conceals his "true" identity and claims that a tatar grandfather gave him his "swarthy face." yet he reveals his blood when he learns "gypsy dance" from visiting gypsy youths he picks up the steps instantly, "instinctively." his father thereby recognizes his own "blood" just as immediately. the proof was in the performance, the irony here being that russians usually consider romani performers less genuinely gypsy than "wild" metal workers or travelers. many roma in russia, whether they are professional performers or not, have profoundly internalized that dance talent and musicality, the dances themselves, are "inherited." this seems selfevident because children of famous singers follow their parents into the profession, and ensembles are often familybased. through the proof of performance, and reference to that wellknown "gypsy song," one urban romani performer was able to escape misplaced antisemitism: discrimination there isn't any of that. haven't i told you yet how it saved me that i am a gypsy? i am on the bus, and a drunk, a russian was hovering near me. he said, "huh, here! kikes! jews! we should just kill them all!" and he came up closer he held his hand over me. and i look at him and i say, [she illustrates with a shoulder shimmy] "i'm a gypsy!" he fell on his knees then and started to sing the song, "black eyes..." and i answered him "passionate eyes..." and the bus stopped, and i ran away! in this telling, she denied "discrimination," the social asymmetries entailed by being black: having "black eyes" was useful, as long as she was not mistaken for another kind of nonrussian. roma in russia also speak of blackness as among the criteria of a "true gypsy." while they may emphasize that "we also have people with green eyes or pale skin," some tease such roma, calling them gazhe (nonroma).9 the blackness category is learned and was overtly taught in a romani sundayschool for children of urban, intellectual, and performing roma in moscow. the children had been assigned to draw "a gypsy girl." at the end of the lesson, the teacher picked up two sample pictures, one of a girl with a light face, the other dark, and asked the children which was better, then explaining: "of course the dark one [is better]. again why? because here we have a clear image ..." the romani children, themselves of varying complexions, did not all automatically draw darkfaced gypsy girls. note that, in this case, darkness was not necessarily negative; as i hope will be clear, there is room for ambivalence, especially among roma. applause for inherited talent and other positive valuations of blackness may not compensate, however, for the problems of actually being seen by russians as "black" in daily life. other roma, especially those who are not performers, are more cynical about the meaning of "being black." a keldelari10 welder noted that, once russians identify a person as "black," they expect a whole array of transgressions, especially economic crimes: all russians care about is whether you're black or white. and if you're black you are obviously a speculator. say i go in and i need to buy a lot of linoleum (he points to the new house he is building, and then at the ruined linoleum of the floor of his current house), say i need 30 sheets! they look at me and think for sure i'm just going to resell it, maybe they don't even give it to me. "we are blacks," he also told me, stressing that "we are treated like second class here, like your blacks in america." this phrasing may be considered the "importation" of a "foreign" category, but this man's way of describing his experience does not negate its reality to him. younger roma display a fascination with the music and dress of american "blacks" on mtv that rivals their fascination with russians. those of wealthier, merchant lovari 11 families, especially, trace their identification with american blacks not in terms of defeat or secondclassness, as did the keldelari metalworker, but in terms of an "attitude" that they say they can detect in expressions and movements of american musicians that renders them "like us." they also equate blackness with america (as in, "the statue of liberty isn't that where michael jackson dances in the video?") and see america as "better then russia." thus they reverse the valence of blackness and shift their own place in racial hierarchies: jen typewritten text 35 roma, if more like american blacks, and thus more like americans, must be better than russians. most russians do not share this positive equation between roma and america that roma create via "blackness." in an elevated mood, a russian might agree that roma are "like american negri"12 for their ability to "musically improvise." in daily life, however, blackness is a category loaded with suspicion, and gypsies are but another example of clannish "blacks" who inhabit the markets and survive by "shady deals." "black" is thus a shade of economic activity: a "black" can be one who participates in the "black market." it is probably commonplace to draw a connection between ethnic paranoias and images of exchange. however, in an article tellingly titled, "gypsies wander in volvos: their way of life as a mirror to our economy," the following citation from a russian newspaper illustrates how such paranoia unfolds in russia in connection with gypsies: mikhail sergeevich [gorbachev] made perhaps the greatest gift to the gypsy people with his antialcohol legislation. crowds of the thirsty in every city and backwood were drawn to their gypsy brothers: in moscow, for instance, to the train stations, in maloiaroslav, to the railroad bridge. here you could buy from these possessors of black eyes your favorite forbidden drink at any time of the day or night. if you will, this was when the capital of several families crawled into the first million ...13 to make a more general and graphic connection between images of exchange and racial outsiders in russia, i draw upon a vignette from the early winter of 1991. despite the talk of "democratic" and "free market" reforms, food was more scarce than the year before; even bread was hard to find. older muscovites who remembered the material hardships of the second world war said, "now times are as bad as during the blockade, as bad as during the war," and others described contemporary moscow with tropes of war: "moscow has been invaded; russia is being taken over." some meant music videos in english and foreign businessmen. however, more upsetting to many was an "invasion" by litsa kavkazkogo natsional'nosti ("people of caucasian nationality" and, more colloquially, "southerners" or "blacks"). "litsa" translates literally as "faces" and also means "individuals." litso (sing.), however, easily takes on derogatory shades from phrases such as zhidskaia morda, or tsyganskaia morda ("kike mug," "gypsy mug" ).14 at any rate, nationalist russians cited, as representative of this "invasion," the lines of peddlers with goods spread on card tables in the park next to the first moscow macdonald's, across from pushkin's monument. forgetting stories about pushkin's african grandparent (as well as his poems romanticizing the caucasus and gypsies), they described the hawkers as "desecrating" this emblem of the russian nation.15 these hawkers were georgian, armenian, romani, and other nonrussian traders who long had been prominent at the semiofficial and illegal markets. by 1991, the caucasian contingent had expanded their trade to include foreign cigarettes, liquor, cosmetics and clothing, and now seemed to sell on every street and in every metro station. certainly russians were just as active in informal trade. however, they had more access to the newly formed commodity exchanges in the capital and were better positioned to take over official stores and set up joint ventures. nonrussian nonmuscovites, however, had nowhere to set up shop but in the streets and kiosks lining them, and thus they also were more visible.16 that winter, the russian press seized upon an incident involving two armenians and an azeri taxi driver. in a dispute over fares, the azeri driver was killed. the articles reinforced russian constructions of hottempered and violent caucasians embroiled in endless feuds among "clans." these images substituted for real analysis or recognition of nonrussian demands for linguistic autonomy or statehood, which were in any case resented in association with the breakup of the former soviet empire. histories and cultures were submerged in popular discourses linking "blood" with trade and criminality. for some months after this incident, russian cabdrivers refused to pick up people who looked like "southerners." in russia, as in many other places, race is constructed culturally in a way that overlaps it with other categories of social life, and the visible signs of race and kind can be other than complexion. "blacks" also can be marked by style, by a certain kind of dress. in that year, traders and the new rich preferred silks and rayons cut into baggy pants or long slim skirts; such clothes, especially if worn with gold jewelry or teeth, also marked a person as "black" in both the market and racial sense of the term. because some roma, especially lovari, in addition to being "swarthy" do not dress in the fashion of gypsies in films but in these same rayons and silks, russians jen typewritten text 36 confused them with armenians or georgians. thus the taxidrivers would not pick up roma either. in the weeks after the original taxi incident, a teenage girl from a welltodo merchant lovari romani family recounted the following: ... since the azeri thing, taxi drivers don't want to take blacks. you can stand for an hour, and no one will stop. if you dress well not like russians it means you are black. once me and my cousins were going home at midnight. we finally got a car used our best gypsy accent, "we are gypsies!" ("my tsygane!") and reassured him, "gypsies always pay!" it was boring in the cab, so our brothers started joking, "you stupid russian we're really georgians, we're fooling you!" "get out of my cab!" he left us right there, and we stood for an hour! those girls cursed their brothers! to avoid being mistaken for the wrong kind of "blacks," they had to "pass" as a version of themselves. gypsies are described with great regularity as quintessential "tricksters," as always masquerading and disappearing. however, roma do not alter their outward identities because they have a peculiar cultural tradition for doing so. pragmatic shifting or masking is possible, even sometimes required, because blackness is itself already a "shifter."17 "blackness" is a slippery category. it is inescapable because supposedly unchanging features mark it, but it also is indefinite, both because it umbrellas so many "kinds," whose actual members may be aware of other distinctions, and because the meaning of "blackness" overlaps changing moral, market, and national identities and thus its definition changes with them. blackness also is first constructed as "they" (in line with say, national interests), and after that becomes a possible "we" and may become a powerful, if momentary, focus of weness. many have argued that roma are adept at "masking" in goffman's sense, with the qualification that because they are marginal they must do so. certainly the lovari teenagers found themselves, for once, less despised than another minority, and it was to their advantage to portray themselves not as caucasians but as gypsies. however, what alternative is there to "masking," survival or no survival, when the majority population can never seem to get one's identity "straight" in the first place?18 the roma in this case began with the social fact that they were misrecognized. when the romani youth claimed to be georgian after convincing the driver that they were gypsies, he was making a play on gypsy identity as nonroma imagine it, taking revenge on russians who did not recognize romaniness as any different from georgianness. at the same time, roma also do identify with other "blacks," both in irony and in earnest. what then does it mean to be "black" among other blacks? this is how the lovari girl continued her narrative: once we couldn't get a cab at all, so we took the metro. we saw how all the gazhe (russians, nonroma) were reading, and my cousin started saying, "what are they writing? what are they writing?" they thought he was crazy. all the other black people, armenians and such, were smiling; they knew. "what are they writing about us blacks, eh?" one old lady said, "they are writing that we need to kill you all, that you are robbing us, and we are becoming poor." then another black said, "we should kill you." my brother laughed and he said, "no, no, you don't have to kill her this is a good, fat, russian woman." we laughed so hard, we had to get off the train there! "what are they writing about us blacks?" the question less requested information than it referred to, indexed, the asymmetry of a relationship to the majority that was shared by "us blacks" at that time. that is, speaking of being shut out by print was a way of expressing how all the blacks on the train at that moment experienced a nonimagined anticommunity as nonrussians. this is of course a pun upon anderson's formulation of imagined communities (1983), only here denizens of the nationstate were watching the progress of print from the margins. this exclusion was not because these roma could not read what was written about them contrary to stereotypes of the illiterate gypsy, many roma in russia can read, and certainly many younger people of the lovari groups can read not only russian, but english. the point is more about the control of language, control of infrastructure, and exclusion from networks of bureaucracy, including print media. as another instance of language as exclusive, and thus constituting "kinds": after the lovari girl had told me about the taxi drivers, i recounted that a russian woman had seen me bargaining in the market with a georgian. she had heard both of our accents and rolled her eyes, saying, "they understand each other!" this jen typewritten text 37 story made her laugh heartily, "yes, you are like us a foreigner here too..." language here is a marker of common exclusion, as being written about was emblematic of other exclusions, in politics, in the market, on public transport. take then as well the rom who is said to have written his "name" down in his russian passport as "melalo kalo" which translates into romani as "dirty black." this joke had a double, disemic19 twist: the roma could name himself as stereotypically "black," but in a language that no russian bureaucrat could understand. at the same time, we have seen that roma do think of themselves as black but not in the way that one might expect. such irony, expressed in the control of language, is fiercely engaged, not detached: it is a statement about being bound, because of another's nonrecognition, to the anonymity of the being "black." textnotes research in russia for this essay in 19901993 was supported by a graduate training fellowship from the joint committee on soviet studies of the ssrc (funded by the soviet and east european research and training act of 1983, title viii); by a grant from irex, with funds provided by the national endowment for the humanities, usia, and the u.s. department of state, which administers the russian, eurasian and east european research program (title viii); and by a u.s. department of education fulbrighthayes doctoral dissertation research abroad fellowship. versions of this essay were presented at the fifth annual symposium on soviet and postsoviet cultural studies, 1995, columbia university, nyc, and at the spring meeting of the american ethnological society, 1994, santa monica. for this revised version (which is still under repair [na remont]), i am grateful to the participants of the 1995 ssrc summer workshop in anthropology and sociology of the former soviet states and also to paul friedrich, alicia gamez, hugh gusterson, michael herzfeld, stephanie platz, dan segal, michael silverstein, and miklos voros. 1. roma sometimes use names such as "gypsies" or "tsygane" (russian), even among themselves. the roma i know usually use such terms either ironically or else to cater to nonromani listeners who do not know the romani term. i try to preserve this sense here by using "gypsy" when the speaker is a russian or is a romani person speaking in the above senses. i use "roma" when the speaker is romani or when i am narrating. i hope this way both to keep the analysis clear and to give a sense of the shading of stereotype in discourse. this is not to say that roma never sincerely use the term "gypsy" to refer to themselves. however, it is clearer not to use the words haphazardly, as if roma made no distinction between them, even if that distinction may idealize oppositions of "true" vs. "ersatz" roma, a debate over which there is no space to describe here. 2. see, for instance, hall, 1992: "what this [cultural construction of race] brings into play is the recognition of the immense diversity and differentiation of the historical and cultural experiences of black subjects" (p. 254). hall here is concerned also with the politics and "relations of representation," taking part in an ongoing debate that in its wider trajectory has of course influenced the shape of this paper, although i am not able here to fully engage cultural studies or critical theory. 3. on ways criteria of racial boundaries align with national ideologies and notions of class (along with moral reputability and gender) see, for instance, ann stoler, 1992; joel strieker, 1995. 4. the terms temnyi ("dark") and smuglyi ("swarthy") may substitute as descriptors, and it may be that chernyi, ("black") only recently has become a common term describing complexion. however, rather than isolate it as a crucial keyterm, i use it only to begin to discuss its meaning in a social system in which some people experience a color bar. 5. shturmovik, 1995, (p.2). 6. as it did in another statement in the same issue from the russian national union (p.1): "... there are even people who ... rush to mix with the jewish natsia and expect all kinds of beneficial results ... a man and wife who are both russian and happen to want healthy, racially whole children are automatically labeled fascists ..." certainly this is only a faction among russians, but i have heard intellectuals and nonextremists express similar ideas about stalin's decimation of the russian nation and the need to rehabilitate the genepool with the best of russian intellect. jen typewritten text 38 7. the song is about dangerous, sensual magnetism, romantic and exotic: "black eyes, passionate eyes, burning and magnificent eyes, how i fear you, how i love you ..." 8. these are not metaphors for the ingrainedness of a long habit. this is clear in the way one russian judge in an interview transposed the popular notion of blood into a scientific register: "... it's in their genes ... do they understand their place in society? god found them useful, so they have a right to live. but their life is difficult ... and their genes make them unable to work." 9. one romani girl in moscow with auburn hair dyed it black, while the mother of another with blond hair was constantly explaining that the girl was indeed "truly romani." 10. there are at least ten different "dialect groups" or "nations" of roma in russia. space prevents me from describing them or their relations here, which i address in other papers. keldelari are among the vlachspeaking romani groups. 11. another vlach romani nation. 12. this is not necessarily a derogatory term. 13. rossiskaya gazeta, 2 june, 1995. 14. litso is the term for human faces, morda for animal. 15. see issues of den' in 1992 and 1993, for some of the more virulent public attacks on "blacks" and "speculators." 16. moreover, they had no residence permits, and thus no vizitki, the identification cards shoppers had to show to cashiers in state shops. the card was intended to limit the purchase of shortage goods to registered muscovites. cashiers often asked those with darker skin to show these cards, while they would hand a paler "russian" her receipt straight away. 17. not unlike the way deictic terms such as "here," "there," and "we" do not stand for some definite object but shift reference, depending on the speaker. see silverstein (1976). 18. humphrey (1993) describes russians who misrecognize tajik and other refugees at train stations, telling her that they were "gypsies." 19. of course, romani "selfknowledge" of themselves as "roma" and as "gypsies" is just as constructed and disputed as anything outsiders believe they see of "gypsies." the point is that while selfknowledge is not necessarily more true, it is supposed to be "known only by us about us," and that thus stereotypes that can be deployed in various, and sometimes ambivalent, ways. see herzfeld (1987) on disemia and the doubleedged and ambivalent possibilities of identity in greece. references: anderson, benedict 1983. imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso. hall, stuart 1992. "new ethnicities" in "race," culture and difference. james donald and ali rattansi, eds. sage publications, pp. 252259. herzfeld, michael 1987. anthropology through the looking glass: critical ethnography in the margins of europe. cambridge: cambridge university press. humphrey, caroline 1993. "mythmaking, narratives and the dispossessed in russia." a lecture presented at the sae section of the 1993 meeting of the aaa in washington, d.c. rossiskaya gazeta. shturmovik. silverstein, michael 1976. "shifters, linguistic categories, and cultural description," in meaning in anthropology, eds. k. basso and h. selby albuquerque: university of new mexico press. pp. 1155. stoler, ann 1991. "carnal knowledge and imperial power," in gender at the crossroads of knowledge: feminist anthropology in the post modern era. michaela di leonardo, ed. berkeley: university of california press, pp. 51 101. jen typewritten text 39 streiker, joel "policing boundaries: race, class, and gender in cartagena, columbia." in american ethnologist, vol.22/1: 5474. jen typewritten text 40 both war and peace in the ‘country of the soul’: the young people of abkhazia on war, tradition, and independence anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 51 both war and peace in the ‘country of the soul’: the young people of abkhazia on war, tradition, and independence guzel sabirova ul’ianovsk state university the future of abkhazia is in our hands. how we position it, how we build it, that’s how it will be. our parents, our grandmothers and grandfathers, are depending on us. …they’re looking to us because how we turn out will be how the country turns out. (focus group, sukhum/i) the self-declared, internationally unrecognised republic of abkhazia, or apsny ‘the country of the soul’ as it is called by abkhazians, exists in a state often defined as ‘neither war nor peace’. the complex social problems generated by its marginal status are almost physically tangible in a region still struggling to overcome the economic, social and psychological consequences of the tragic events of the military conflict of 1992-3.i it is in these difficult social conditions in a society that, for thirteen years, has resisted its territorial status that the young people of the destabilising effect of the conflict has been intensified by the impact of structural problems characteristic of post-soviet transformation in general: the change in status of regional government; the emergence of new economic relations; the intensification of ethnocultural conflict; and the clash between ‘traditional’ and ‘western’ values. despite the fact that de jure the state of abkhazia does not exist, de facto people not only survive there but manage to organise their daily lives, forge social bonds and attempt to construct a state infrastructure for the unrecognised republic of apsny. it is these contradictory moments embedded in the natural landscape, the architecture, the history and the everyday life of abkhazia that strike the visitor on arrival. abkhazia is a place of sea and mountains, of seaside town chic alongside traditional mountain village life, of grand colonial-style mansions and ruined buildings, of external political nonrecognition amidst fervent internal statebuilding, of traditional longevity yet high youth mortality, of widespread unemployment but expensive cars on the streets, of deep attachment to the homeland and yet, among some, a longstanding desire to leave. abkhazia attempt to manage the difficult process of their own transition to adulthood. evidence from expert evaluations commissioned by peace building organisations or other similar structures active in particular regions suggests that the process of growing up in societies that have experienced ethnically rooted war or military conflict has a number of distinguishing characteristics (sommers 2006). the humanitarian programmes developed on the basis of such documents aim to facilitate the psychological, economic or social rehabilitation of young people who have been drawn into military conflict or who simply find themselves in post-conflict societies. this overall objective means that they tend to gloss over the complexities and contradictions within postconflict societies as new national, moral and cultural markers are sought. it is these complexities that the sociological research outlined below has sought to uncover and understand. about the research the research upon which this article is based was conducted in march-april 2006ii as a pilot project and first attempt to conceptualise the youth problematic in abkhazia. the overall aims and objectives of the research were: to understand the dominant tendencies in young people’s attitudes including their perception of their place and role in abkhazian society; to evaluate the level of social engagement of youth and uncover their expectations of state structures; and to develop recommendations for the committee of youth affairs regarding the formulation of a youth policy. in this sense the project might be seen as having adopted an action-research approach.iii all research on ‘youth’ begins with the problem of defining its parameters. however, ‘youth’ as a social category is not satisfactorily delimited by reference to a specific age bracket; ‘youth’ has been socially constructed differently across time and space (omelchenko 2004). as a anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 52 caucasian, mountainous republic, abkhazian society has been characterised by the persistence of traditional generational relations which accord the older generation (‘elders’) a particularly important place. being ‘young’, in contrast, meant lacking experience, being free from family responsibilities and was accorded lower social status than that given to adults. at the same time, ‘youth’ was associated with hope, biological reproduction, the inheritance of traditions and protection from one’s enemies (krylov 2001). however, modernisation during the soviet period and the trauma of military conflict and its aftermath, as well as more general processes of globalisation, have changed the understanding of what it means to be ‘young’ in abkhazia. today two central issues dominate abkhazian society: the construction of war memories, and the reconfiguration of abkhazian traditions. this article focuses on considering how these two discourses configure the identity of youth in abkhazia today. the analysis presented below has been conducted by applying and adapting the notion of ‘narrative identity’. central to this concept is the understanding of identity as biographical, constructed, and rooted in social interaction. ‘narrative identity’ here, therefore, is understood as the individual’s understanding of themselves constructed in the process of recounting the story of their past, present and future at a specific moment in time, and in the context of a particular social interaction. however, although these accounts are, by definition, constructed, they remain constrained by external circumstances such as the range of possible interpretative models (‘ready-made’ narratives’), the presumption of structural organisation (ricoeur 1995) and a certain positioning in relation to socially approved and non-approved moral discourses (taylor 1989: 25-52). the analysis presented in this article is based primarily on oral testimonies; the findings of the quantitative research described above are used as contextual information only. such narrative-based work is made possible by the passage of time; thirteen years on from armed conflict the first shock of trauma has receded and traumatic experience can be articulated. moreover, such everyday storytelling in postconflict society reflects movement towards the establishment of new social orders and hierarchies of power. the youth of abkhazia has a very important place in this new narrative chain and the way in which young people define themselves in oral self-representational narratives helps reveal the dominant expectations of them on the part of adults. constructing the memory of war in abkhazia the peaceful routines of daily life are peppered with visual reminders of the war. in the urban landscape restored or rebuilt houses stand side by side with buildings destroyed by shells and abandoned flats and houses. war-time graffiti remain in public view and one still stumbles across warning notices about ongoing land-mine clearance. monuments and memorial plaques have been erected on the sites where people were killed in fighting (for example on entry into sukhum/i), but also in every town and village to honour local volunteers who did not return from war. memory of the war is also provided in textual form; books are published recording the memories of those who witnessed the fighting and no abkhazian celebratory occasion passes without a toast honouring the memory of those who died and the valour of those who fought.iv the war, and everything associated with it, is thus part of the everyday lexicon of young people and at least three stances by young people in relation to memories about the military conflict can be discerned. these might be classified as ‘victimization’, ‘heroification’ and ‘romanticization’, and ‘patriotization’. histories of the war and the post-war period are popular and focus on themes such as overcoming traumatic experience, explaining the current destruction (something that the population feels particularly painfully), and informing the ‘outside’ world about the problems abkhazia faces. ‘victimization’ the fact that young people perceive themselves often as the victims of war is evident from the way young people talk about themselves as a group. these include phrases such as: ‘we are psychologically disturbed’, ‘we never had a normal childhood and are incapable of living a “normal life”’, ‘we take death for granted’, ‘we have retained a desire for revenge’, ‘we are afraid of a new war’ and ‘we jump when we hear gunshot and the drone of helicopters’. the way in which the war is written into their lives is anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 53 central to the differences described between the lives of young people and of their parents’ generation. war is always stressful. if there had been no war, then everything would be different now. what our parents say, how we spent our youth, what we have seen in life that you couldn’t have seen that you will never see even. and what we couldn’t see and didn’t see. this is all as a result of the war. (abkhaz, male, 22 years, tkuarchal) ‘heroification’ and ‘romanticization’ the experience of war and the post-war period may also be viewed as an advantage; having lived through the war lends young people a particular maturity, experience and adult quality. for me abkhazia is embodied in the faces of abkhaz men and women. but i would single out those abkhaz women who, in peacetime, were weak, cosseted and defenceless but who found strength in themselves to defend their homeland. they were not afraid to look a cruel enemy in the eye. (from an essay by an abkhaz, female, 20 years) ‘patriotization’ the younger generation in abkhazia has a distinctive patriotic attitude characterised by a high degree of willingness to get involved in events that decide the fate of the country, including, if necessary, sacrificing their own lives. i see our youth, our generation, as a symbol of the fact that we won, are winning and will win. (from an essay by an armenian, female, 22 years) the strength of representation of the war in the narratives of young people is at least partially a consequence of the active way in which adults shape these narratives. the discursive inclusion of the war is important to the adult generation for two reasons. firstly, this generation shoulders the burden of guilt for the fact that its children had to experience the deprivations of the war and post-war period. secondly, through reference to the war adults cultivate and maintain the high level of expectation they have of the young, who are required to prove that they are worthy of the memory of those who died and be prepared to defend what has been achieved by their parents and brothers. narratives of war: generational diversity the events of 1992-3 are a key factor in distinguishing between distinct cohorts within the broader ‘youth’ population. the greatest connection to the war is felt amongst the oldest age group (25-30 years), who experienced the most profound psychological trauma. young people of this age may have been involved in military action and/or witnessed hunger and the death of relatives, killings on the street and bombing. for them stories about violence, deprivation or everyday military clashes are part of their own personal experience and biography. the tone in which they recount these stories ranges from the tragic to the humorous but all agree that they talk about such things frequently, whenever a group of friends gets together. remembering the war is also a mechanism for building solidarities with elders, who had survived the great patriotic war (second world war). it is a bridge that connects them when, as young people report, ‘before we only knew about war from the tales of our grandfathers’. at the same time memory of war is perceived to be immutable, unforgettable and an experience that will fade out only with the passing of the generation itself. we, our age group, we remember all of it, those who were younger maybe don’t remember. it all happened. everything that happened, we remember so many people were killed, so many people we were close to. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 54 everyone, in every family there were losses. and all that has a strong effect on your psyche. …maybe some people don’t feel it, but personally i think it has a profound affect on your state of mind. (abkhaz, female, 21 years, tkuarchal) memories of the war among young people now in post-compulsory education also centre on their own experiences. the majority of younger children were evacuated from the battle zones during the war to other towns, mountain villages or even beyond the borders of abkhazia. stories of these moves are told among the 19-25 year olds. in contrast, among the youngest cohort, the war is referred to in the context of describing the present. in their essays, young people wrote, ‘we are children of war, children who have known the burden of war and the post-war period, a post-war generation.’ and even those who were not directly affected by the war feel involved in the events of war and retell the stories they have heard from others. we talk about this often. we often remember what happened during the war. who didn’t leave, who stayed, what they experienced, what happened. we always remember. nobody has forgotten anything. even though i was only 3 or 4 years old, i remember a lot. [i remember] being in tkuarchal, how it was bombed, i remember a lot. (abkhaz, female, 18 years, sukhum/i) narratives of war: regional diversity of course memories of war differ also depending on where young people had experienced it. those young people who had been in sukhum/i had experienced everything from direct bombing to hunger and shooting on the streets. the memories of those from tkuarchal, however, are the stories of children caught in blockade – of hunger, of meeting and accompanying men at their posts and of playing with the spoils of war. in gudauta, although there was no military action, the shooting from sukhum/i was audible and they collected food and clothes and took in those injured in the fighting. in gal/iv people try to avoid talking publicly about that period altogether, although even teenagers generate their own images of what the war was like. politics is everywhere. two girls might be standing, talking about it. during the war they would have been little, they don’t know what happened, how it was. out of these conversations an image is formed of what the war was like. it’s all down to politics… why couldn’t abkhazia win? how could they have won? what did they do in order to win? you start thinking about this question and you sit, and think, this is about your town. (mingrelianvi , male, 15 years, gal/i) the war as turning point individual storytelling is often divided in abkhazia into life ‘before’ the war and life ‘after’ the war. before the war abkhazia is described as a prosperous region – ‘a corner of heaven’, ‘almost switzerland’. after the war, and during the first two post-war years, the republic experienced a surge of patriotism and unity. life after the war, however, is characterised by disunity and indeterminacy. implicitly or explicitly, therefore, memories and stories of the war are positioned in individual histories as significant. the fact that memories of war are not only memories of violence and humiliation but also of the rise of patriotism, courage and unity of the people, however, means that they form a symbolic and emotional reservoir, essential for the survival of the republic today and for the progression of ideas of independence in the future. the war is thus a collective as well as an individual turning point.vii one of the stages of nation building, elements of which are in evidence today in abkhazia, is the formulation of a national idea capable of anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 55 consolidating society and transforming people living within the borders of one state into citizens of their own country. the caution of leaders in promoting any such nation-building ideas in the complex situation in which abkhazia finds itself today is understandable. however, the current generation, growing up against the background of a strained perception of the past and the fostering of patriotic feelings, is desperately in need of a positive image of a national ‘us’ capable of uniting the citizens of abkhazia, and shared memories of the war plays an important role here. in response to a question about factors that could potentially unite all residents of abkhaziaviii, 44% of ethnic abkhaz youth and 33% of respondents of all other ethnic groups cited the ‘preservation of the memory of the 19923 war’ (see table 1)ix . table 1: what might unite all residents of abkhazia? (as a percentage of the total number of respondents) abkhaz all other ethnic groups preservation of the memory of the 1992-3 war 43.7 32.5 ‘apsuara’x 43.7 8.3 living on the same territory 37.7 36.9 strong government 31.3 31.2 equality of all ethnic groups 28.2 49.7 abkhaz language 25.8 5 mutual forgiveness of each other for past hurts by different ethnic groups 14.1 30.6 orthodoxy 3.8 10.2 islam 0.03 0.06 don’t know 4.3 7.6 total no. of respondents 419 157 memories of the war cement links between individual biographies and the historical process and connect people who lived in abkhazia in times past and those who live there today. memories of the war are a powerful mechanism for forming solidarities based on shared experience as well as for differentiating between those who directly participated in military conflict (war veterans), those who found themselves on the home front and those who were ‘evacuated’. however, at the same time, there is a danger that the powerful sediment of the discourse of war and tradition may come to fill the space left vacant by the absence of any consciously developed national ideology, encroach into individual areas of social policy, complicate reform and squeeze out discussion of current social problems. preserving traditions and defining ‘abkhazness’ the events of 1992-3 had ethnic roots and aggravated conflict between the abkhaz and georgians. since the war, the ethnic composition in abkhazia has changed significantly but this has not made the question of what constitutes ‘abkhazness’ redundant by reducing it to ethnic background. youth in abkhazia remains ethnically diverse including, among others, young people of abkhaz, armenian, mingrelian, georgian, russian, and greek origin. moreover, anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 56 ‘tradition’ is increasingly challenging ethnicity as a key marker of ‘abkhaz-ness.’ ethnicity remains an important factor in the social structure of abkhazia, not least in relation to the formation of new hierarchies in which the abkhaz occupy the leading position. however, today the ethnic factor plays a different role to that of the pre-conflict past. this is due to a number of structural changes that have taken place in abkhazian society, directly linked to the consequences of the war, including: a significant shift in relations between urban and rural populationsxi today the term ‘tradition’ is used routinely and interchangeably with terms such as ‘mentality’ or ‘apsuara’. adults consider one of the fundamental tasks of young people, if they are to prove themselves to be worthy descendants of the ‘elders’ who fought for the independence of abkhazia, ; the broadening of kin networks beyond the borders of abkhazia; and the formation of new boundaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (the nature of an individual’s participation in military conflict, for example, may be more significant in some instances than ethnic belonging). xii to be the preservation of the abkhaz ethnos, culture and language – broadly speaking the abkhazian ‘tradition’. young people reproduce this adult discourse, as was clearly evident in the essays they wrote. throughout its long history, abkhazia has had to struggle for its freedom and independence… and i believe that very soon my small and extraordinarily beautiful country will at last gain juridical independence. of course my generation in particular will have to invest great efforts to achieve this goal. my generation of course grew up after the post-war period and did not see all the deprivations of war, all the horrors of war, but we have been brought up on the example of heroism of our fathers, brothers, grandfathers, etc. unfortunately, today the youth of abkhazia (a small section of them) does not always meet the standards of the abkhazian code of honour and does not reflect seriously on the fate of the homeland. today even in the most difficult situation we must preserve ourselves as a nation, as an ethnic group, our language and culture. today in abkhazia almost half the population does not speak their native language. for me this is a minor tragedy. (from the essay of an abkhaz, female, 16 years) concern about the potential loss of the abkhaz language is not surprising given the competition from both russian (which provides access to quality higher education) and english (which promises the opportunity to study not only in the republic or russia but also in the far abroad). the above respondent’s pessimistic evaluation of the level of commitment to preserving the abkhaz language, however, was not borne out by the results of the survey, which, on the contrary, suggested that young abkhaz evaluate their command of their native language relatively highly. only one in five said they were unable to use it for everyday communication while 73.7% said they could not only speak abkhaz but also read and write the language. a minority of abkhaz youth (24.2%) were so committed to the preservation of the language that they would like to see abkhaz as the only official state language. the majority (almost 70%) of those surveyed, however, favoured the dual language option, whereby both abkhaz and russian are recognised as state languages. young people and ‘tradition’: preserving what ‘makes sense’ young people’s talk about traditions differentiates three types: traditions that are obsolete or moribund (for example, traditions governing relations between daughter-in-laws and father-in-laws); customs and ceremonial traditions (weddings, funerals, bride-stealing, etc.); and traditions that define ethnicity (language, ‘apsuara’). traditions considered to be obsolete by young people are often those that underpin the patriarchal regime. young people, for example, consider traditional constraints upon communication between a daughter-in-law and father-in-law to be wholly unnecessary today. the majority of these traditional rules concern anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 57 the behaviour and appearance of women and thus meet the disapproval of young women first and foremost. active topics of discussion, for example, are traditional dress codes, which prohibit women to wear trousers or short skirts (let alone cropped tops), the strict prohibition of smoking for women and the importance, for women, of preserving their virginity until marriage. the weight of public opinion is strong and, especially on issues such as abstention from pre-marital sex, may be unquestioned by adults and young people alike. …i’m used to it, our parents brought us up to think that a girl – a bride-to-be – must leave the house in a white dress. but in her case – she left [the parental home] – lived in [his] family for a year and then they go through a charade of a wedding. but i don’t think that is right. i think that a girl should marry in a white dress… (focus group, girl, college, sukhum/i) however, what happens in real life often diverges significantly from that which is postulated in public discourse. young women, especially those living in urban areas or in coastal villages, dress in line with contemporary fashions, do not follow a single rule on when they enter into sexual relations, and, in some cases, smoke. this situation leads to a logic of double standards. there are those that observe it, and those who don’t. it’s just that when we said that it’s not acceptable for a woman to smoke here, well that doesn’t mean that absolutely nobody smokes. but if they do smoke, young people anyway, they do it secretly… and nobody knows about it except for close (female) friends. it’s just considered shameful. (focus group, students, sukhum/i) there are a number of ceremonial traditions that young people consider to be rather artificial. for reasons of economic rationality young people sometimes even disapprove of lavish wedding and funeral ceremonies; in some cases they fall out with their relatives who insist on a grand wedding reception incurring huge debts that have to be paid of by the young people and their parents over a long period of time. traditions such as bride-stealing and revenge also appear outmoded, although in relation to the latter, opinions differ. in a society which remembers the spilling of blood so recently, revenge has not lost its significance. revenge – you know, once again, we have to come back to that postwar period. …let’s say, for example, a mother has lost her three sons, after that they killed her husband, her brother and so on and she may come to hate that nation. you see, although in any nation there are good people and bad people. …maybe she still finds a purpose in life, by watching others, but again, at any moment, given the opportunity, personally, i am sure that, if she got her hands on even one person involved in that, she would tear him apart, tear him apart alive, she would separate him limb from limb. again that’s revenge… time heals. (focus group, tkuarchal) however, other traditions, practices that already exist in society and appear to have some kind of rational basis, evoke a relatively neutral attitude. there is still an interest in traditional ethnic music and dance, for example. the custom of family meetings also remains widely observed; our research suggested that more than 80% of abkhaz families participate in such family gatherings with some degree of regularity (about 55% gather at least once a year). the categorisation of traditions as obsolete, ceremonial or ethnicity-defining is, of course, far from absolute and the boundaries between them are not rigid. however, such a differentiation helps explain some of the apparent contradictoriness in young people’s perceptions of ‘traditions’. thus, having noted anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 58 the skeptical attitude among many young people to observing the rules of the first two categories of tradition, attention now turns to the third category – traditions that are viewed as essential for the self-preservation of the abkhaz people. these traditions are encapsulated in notions of abkhazian ‘mentality’ and ‘apsuara’. traditions that shape ‘abkhaz-ness’: mentality and apsuara mentality and apsuara are what make a person abkhazian; they embody his/her ‘abkhaz-ness’. nevertheless, the term apsuara is difficult to define and operationalise. this is partially because it is less an everyday practice than rhetorical resource rooted above all in the conviction that ‘we mustn’t lose apsuara’. this is encapsulated succinctly by one of the participants in the focus group in tkuarchal who explained, ‘we support it [apsuara] but don’t observe it’. when asked directly about the significance of apsuara to them personally, 98% of young abkhaz surveyed said that it was undoubtedly important. analysis of responses to the question why apsuara was important, however, confirmed the suggestion above that apsuara has more symbolic than practical significance; just 4.5% of young abkhaz who took part in the research considered apsuara to offer a real way of ordering their lives (see table 2). table 2: why is it important to preserve apsuara? (as a percentage of the total number of respondents) abkhaz all other ethnic groups it is a sacred tradition 34.1 20.8 it is the main moral code 15.8 24.8 it is a distinguishing characteristic of the abkhaz people 34.9 20.8 it is a force uniting society 7.3 5.0 it is a real way of ordering life 4.5 1.0 other 0.6 1.0 don’t know 2.8 22.8 total no. of respondents 354 101 the research suggested that the most widely understood and shared elements of apsuara are those that conform to general human values: respect for elders, hospitality, and the code of honour and conscience (alamys). this might suggest that apsuara is not the unique preserve of ethnic abkhaz. however, this remains an open and contentious question. on the one hand, nonabkhaz who have lived in abkhazia for a long time are considered to be close to abkhaz customs. those of other nationalities who live here are already close to our customs. they kind of accept our actions… the russians who live here, they know our customs. (abkhaz, female, 18 years, sukhum/i) on the other hand, apsuara is seen to be a distinguishing characteristic of the abkhaz where ‘abkhaz’ is defined in exclusively ethnic terms and is not extended even to other citizens anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 59 of abkhazia. this ambiguity in interpretation confirms the proposition that there is, as yet, no consensus in society as to whether ‘abkhazian’ can be not only a marker of ethnic but also of a civically based national identity. young people deal with the tension created by the strong presence of traditional values in a modernised society rather creatively by introducing the notion of the ‘modern abkhazian’. what is meant by this is illustrated in the following excerpt from an essay by one of the participants in the research. the problem of ‘fathers and children’ has always existed and still exists today. our elders don’t really understand what we mean when we talk about a ‘modern person’. ‘modern’ [for them] means having lost apsuara. maybe i agree with this to some extent; sometimes young people do not behave in accordance with our mentality. but can’t you be a mix of everything?! this is what the term democratic, modern person means. i hope that those around me are able to call me a modern abkhazian, because i try to avoid doing anything that does not correspond to our mentality. (from an essay by an abkhaz, female, school pupil, 17 years) the discourse of apsuara that has formed and strengthened among the abkhazians over the last thirteen years is received positively among non-abkhaz ethnic groups in the republic. our research showed that 75% of nonabkhaz young people responded positively to the question about the importance of apsuara. however, many found it difficult to explain why and tended to characterise it as sacred tradition, moral code or a distinguishing feature of abkhazians. thus, although apsuara has become a discourse that encompasses all residents of abkhazia, young people of nonabkhaz nationality may perceive it as a national ideology, a peculiar cultural environment without which abkhazia cannot exist, or simply a tourist attraction. ethnic minority youth on ‘abkhaz-ness’ the ethnic identification of young people of nonabkhaz ethnicity in abkhazia is similarly complex. it incorporates ethnic traditions, language and legends of their settlement in abkhazia as well as justifications for their connection to the recent history of abkhazia and abkhazian traditions. undoubtedly events of the last few years have reconfigured existing ethnic hierarchies. as elsewhere in the former soviet union, russians have lost the social advantages guaranteed to them in the soviet period and, following the collapse of the ussr, many of them left the republic. russians often say that those russians remaining in abkhazia today are those who were unable to leave. the following excerpt from an essay illustrates the most critical position: … i really want to continue my education, but if i’m honest, to get a normal education, well our study here – it’s just a sham. …i don’t see my future in an abkhazian environment, i don’t understand these people, their traditions, customs and, of course, their favourite word over the last thirteen years – their ‘mentality’. (from the essay of a russian, female, 20 years) but this is not the only attitude towards abkhazia and abkhazian traditions. children, who have grown up in mixed marriages but identify as russians, in particular, see things differently. and for these young people it is important that they are recognised and accepted by the abkhazian community. this might be the result of their individual biographies but current attitudes in the republic where it is advantageous to be abkhaz and to speak abkhaz language are not insignificant. this is evident in the following opinion expressed by one of the participants in the research: although i am not an abkhaz i grew up here and speak abkhaz as well as i speak russian. i think i’m fully entitled to call myself anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 60 abkhazian because i was born here in abkhazia and live with these people, and it’s only in my soul, of course, that i recognise that i’m russian. (from the essay of a russian, female, 17 years) the armenians of abkhazia are a quite different case. young armenians consider abkhazia to be their homeland. they speak a dialect of armenian which differs from the armenian spoken in armenia; two thirds of those surveyed speak it relatively fluently. however, like the young russian cited above, young armenians prefer to see markers of ‘abkhaz-ness’ in a broad, rather than narrowly ethnic, sense. i can call myself an ‘abkhazian’ because i don’t see this as referring only to my ethnic belonging. being an ‘abkhazian’ means living in abkhazia, loving this country as your homeland, being the home of your ancestors. [it means] respecting, observing the customs and mentality of the country and accepting them as your own. (armenian, female, 22 years) the majority of young people of armenian nationality who took part in the research think that they should have some knowledge of abkhaz language and 35% of them would like to speak it fluently. one might hypothesise that this tolerance towards the abkhaz language is explained by their acceptance that abkhazia’s new statehood will centre on the abkhaz ethnic group. indeed, more than half of the young armenians surveyed thought that abkhaz should be a state language equal to russian. however, 30% maintain a cautious position in relation to the prospects of abkhaz as a state language. however, relations between the abkhaz and the armenians – the two largest ethnic groups in abkhazia – could become a potential source of tension. it is not something that is talked about openly but, in their essays, interviews and conversations with us, armenian youth expressed some concern about their future. evidence of latent tensions relate to criticisms of the position of the armenians in the 1992-3 conflict (despite the fact that armenians suffered as much as anyone else in the war and many even fought on the side of the abkhazians), and their experiences of discrimination when applying for jobs. of course the ethnic colouring of these problems may conceal what are, in fact, profoundly social problems shared by all ethnic groups; this is a complex issue that merits focused attention in further research. however, from this alone one can conclude that any illconsidered attempt to encourage patriotism among abkhazian youth in the absence of a nationalities policy could provoke a serious aggravation of inter-ethnic relations. the identity of georgians (including svans and mingrelians) now living in abkhazia, is, for obvious reasons, the most problematic. even the number of georgians in abkhazia remains disputed and their identity complicated by the fact that some of them (or their relatives) fought on the side of abkhazia in 1992-3. often today’s young people who identify as georgians are the children of mixed georgian-abkhaz families and, although they don’t conceal their ethnic belonging, neither do they have any desire to talk about it unnecessarily. this does not mean that they hide their nationality in tiny abkhazia everyone knows everything about everyone else – and even when young georgians (including mingrelians and svans) are well integrated into contemporary society, they are not allowed to forget the peculiarity of their situation: it was the period straight after the war. we had some arguments with our neighbours. i get on with them really well now. but i really had to try hard to get to that point. but i proved to them that i am my own person. if i am asked whether or not i would take up weapons if a war started, i answer that of course i would. they retorted that these are my brothers, they are georgians. but, i was born here. if someone comes here armed, he will die at my hands. i have reflected on the war a lot. i have always said that the georgians were wrong. they should have rebelled along with us here. then anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 61 we would have lived a lot better and everything would have been different. (georgian, male, 25 years, sukhum/i) the situation in gal/i region, where the majority of the population today are mingrelians, is tenser. young people project an image of themselves as marginal to both georgia and abkhazia. they belong neither here nor there. some speak neither abkhaz nor georgian. moreover, they cannot, or do not want to, define their nationality: this is the problem for all mingrelians because they say that, on the one hand, they are georgians but on the other, they are mingrelians living in abkhazia. i can’t decide. when my parents decide [who they are], then i will too, probably. (mingrelian, female, 16 years, gal/i) there are no open ethnic conflicts in abkhazia today but this does not mean that all ethnic tensions have been resolved. the image of the ‘enemy’ continues to be associated with georgia, georgians, and anyone who fought on the georgian side. the retention of such hostile attitudes (including anticipation of a new war with georgia) is facilitated by the recent memory of the war, and of those who died, but primarily by the unresolved problems of territorial status. the visible tension in gal/i is of course peculiar to that region and a product of its particular situation. the region remains under a military regime, is subject to curfew and is reached only by passing through a checkpoint controlled by peacekeeping forces. it is impossible to present a complete picture of gal/i based on the small number of interviews conducted in the region. however, these interviews do provide an insight into the depth of the prejudice both sides perceive to be mounted against them. the following two excerpts from interviews indicate, in the first case, the negative images of the abkhaz articulated by mingreliangeorgians and, in the second, the prejudice encountered by them. i don’t know how many years it will take. it could have been sorted by now if only these politicians could get on with each other. we could live peacefully with the abkhaz, not like they live with us now. here in gal/i there aren’t any pure abkhaz, only the dregs of the abkhaz. they make money, frighten us. they carry machine guns. a real abkhaz knows what a georgian is because he has sat around a table drinking red wine with him. (georgian-mingrelian, male, 16 years, gal/i) i don’t deny the fact that i am a mingrelian. i didn’t take part in the war. it’s just that here stereotypes have formed that all georgians are bad, that all mingrelians are bad. but there are people who understand us… [people] don’t really like us in georgia, but they are not fond of us in abkhazia either. it’s the same everywhere. (mingrelian, female, 16 years, gal/i) although the mingrelians of gal/i often look to migrate to georgia to resolve these problems, there is little positive incentive or support for such a move: the older generation (the generation of their grandparents) generally opposes migration; high levels of unemployment in georgia mean employment prospects are low; and further study is prohibited by inadequate knowledge of the georgian language. for this reason one of the participants in the research indicated their intention to take advantage of the quotas for gal/i inhabitants to go to university in sukhum/i.xiii the unresolved status of abkhazia makes it harder to move away from images of conflict and hatred formed during the war towards new relations more appropriate for peacetime. the views of young people of non-abkhaz ethnic origin about the events of 1992-3 are, of course, more diverse than that of their abkhaz peers. this is because, on the one hand, the conflict is narrated as ethnic and, in this sense, external to anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 62 them and something involving only the abkhaz and the georgians. on the other hand, ‘nonabkhaz’ young people feel involved because the issue concerns their homeland – abkhazia. this is evident from their narratives of the war and the post-war period which also contain a tragic element as they recount stories about the improper actions of both the georgians and the abkhazians. it follows that young people of nonabkhaz origin also envisage different solutions to the current situation. their responses to the question of what could unite people living in abkhazia (see table 1) show they rate ‘equality of all ethnic groups’ highest (49.7%), followed by ‘living on the same territory’ (36.6%) but see ‘preservation of the memory of the 1992-3 war’ as less important (32.5%). however, both abkhaz and non-abkhaz youth agree on the significance of ‘strong government’ in uniting all those living in abkhazia (around 31% of both groups selected this option). this suggests that young people attach significant importance to the role of government in stabilising the situation in abkhazia even though they are sometimes disappointed by its failure to live up to this role (see essay citation below, p.58). independence and citizenship the current situation of indeterminacy and nonrecognition lends itself to reflection on the future of the republic. at the moment the general mood might be described as one of ‘expectation’. the present is filled with various kinds of ‘ifs’ and ‘whens’, which are, above all, connected to the status of the republic (‘if there’s no war’, ‘when we are independent’, ‘when the issue of status is resolved’ etc). a whole host of questions related to everyday life as well as plans for the future oscillate around the resolution of the question of abkhazia’s status. the resolution of this question is seen to be crucial to fulfilling expectations, and hopes, for an improvement in the current economic and political situation. for young people these problems are particularly pertinent, even though during the years of uncertainty they have developed strategies of adapting to the situation. young people’s narratives suggest there are two key issues: how the situation is resolved (will abkhazia be independent or be part of another state?); and when. the question of time is not insignificant for young people. the majority of abkhaz youth live in hope of ‘getting independence’ for abkhazia and their most optimistic forecast is that the problem will be resolved within a couple of years: today we are in a situation when in a year, in two years, it is perfectly possible that our independence will be recognised, that our politicians, our public figures will make it into the international community, with the help of russian politicians, of course. they will achieve this because we have the right to independence and, how to put it, historically, well, historically, if you look at… if our independence is recognised then we have nothing to fear because then we will have global support. and then nothing can allow us to be enslaved or seized. (abkhaz, male, 29 years, sukhum/i) however, respondents do not rule out the more pessimistic scenario of living in long term expectation of independence and this is reflected in their somewhat ambiguous answers to the direct question in the survey about how they imagined the future of abkhazia. almost a quarter of abkhaz respondents wanted to see abkhazia become part of the russian federationxiv although gal/i region was not captured in the quantitative survey, interview materials suggest that the question of future political status is interpreted there rather differently. . doubts about whether it was worth insisting on the independence of abkhazia also resonated during discussion in the focus groups. such attitudes are most likely to be articulated by the middle age cohort of youth (22-25 years), among those who have no opportunity to leave abkhazia and among those who have already started families. however, the overwhelming majority of young abkhaz (74%) are in favour of independence. abkhazia staying part of georgia is not considered to be an option at all by young people in abkhazia. the opinion of young people of non-abkhaz nationalities was divided almost equally: 40.8% see abkhazia as independent in the future; 48.4% envisage it within the russian federation. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 63 it is not important who it [gal/i] is under. the main thing is that here there is kindness, justice and love. … i don’t know. [the future would be better] with the georgians, probably. i managed to feel the kindness of the georgians when they controlled this land. but i can’t say anything about the abkhaz really – [i don’t know] which is better. (georgianmingrelian, male, 16 years, gal/i) from this one might conclude that notwithstanding certain preferences, it is less important how the question of status is resolved than that it is resolved; young people are governed less by ideological or ethnic and more by practical considerations. the best government is simply the one that can sort things out most rapidly and make the region prosperous and successful again. the republic of abkhazia means also the current government – the president and other government structures. although the image of the president in general appears positive (indeed the first president of abkhazia, vladislav ardzinba, was spontaneously used as an example of a ‘real abkhaz’ in a number of anonymous essays written by respondents on this question), all other government institutions are talked about negatively. one young man used our invitation to write an essay to address the government directly: i don’t like that fact that we, that is the abkhazian population, given what we suffered thirteen years ago, given that we survived all this by joining hands, standing as one, we can’t accept it! how many have died just in the current year? many! and what are our police, the ministry of internal affairs, the administration of internal affairs and others, doing about it?... on behalf of all young people, i beg you to consider not only order on the streets but order also in our internal institutions! (from an essay by an abkhaz, male, 16 years) its indeterminate political status, and absence of an internationally recognised abkhazian passport, is not preventing abkhazia from developing its own state institutions, symbols and national identity; to its population it is a state. if you ask young people ‘of which country are you a citizen?’ in the majority of cases, the answer will be ‘abkhazia’.xv so what does it mean to be a citizen of abkhazia? in the opinion of young people citizenship is rooted, above all, in the fact of being born in abkhazia, in belonging to this territory. if an individual lives in abkhazia, if their ancestors lived in abkhazia, they are entitled to call themselves a citizen of abkhazia. a citizen of abkhazia – well, for example, i … well i was born here, grew up here, graduated from school here, studied here when they called us refugees. …and when we returned i worked here at my parents’. i am the sixth generation that has been born and brought up in this district… and citizenship, well, for me it is connected precisely to this place of birth. (mingrelian, female, 30 years, gal/i) being a citizen of abkhazia means: connecting your fate with abkhazia; getting involved in resolving its problems; having your own opinions; and being ready to defend that position. patriotism is deeply lodged in our youth. even if war was to break out, nobody would flee, well maybe some would save themselves, but here we are ready to risk our necks for freedom. (focus group, sukhum/i) of course, the question of citizenship becomes a rather different one when one actually anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 64 tries to move outside abkhazia. abkhazian passports are valid only within the republic. they thus play an important symbolic role – tangible evidence of the aspiration to an independent future for abkhazia – but to travel beyond its borders an internationally recognised passport (russian, or georgian in gal/i region) is required. i have a russian passport with which i can travel abroad, but there is no abkhazian one yet. when i receive our passport i will probably be proud that i am, like, a citizen. it signifies our statehood and is the most important document. citizenship of abkhazia without a passport – what’s that all about? (abkhaz, male, 24 year, sukhum/i) in and of itself this is not a problem, as long as there are no formal obstacles to the issuing of the document, and some young people enter adult life with three passports. when asked what passport he would have, one 16-year old from gal/i answered: ‘both. with an abkhazian passport you can’t enter georgia, with a georgian [passport], you can’t get in here. so you have to have both to live.’ the question of military service poses young people similar problems: i will definitely serve in the army. only i don’t know whether in the georgian or the abkhazian… i have five years before the army still. if anything changes then i’ll serve in the georgian army but if nothing changes then in the abkhazian. (georgian-mingrelian, male, 16 years, gal/i) the question of military service is one indicator of young people’s attitude to the state and the degree of loyalty they have to its institutions. in russia military service has ceased to be prestigious in recent times. in abkhazia, and especially among abkhaz, however, responses to the question of whether they will serve in the army are unambiguous: during the war i drummed it into my head that… when the time comes to defend the fatherland, even for a year, then i will defend it because i saw my older brothers, relatives and friends die. why, even in peacetime, shouldn’t i sacrifice a year, or a year and a half, after university, [to] pay my dues to the fatherland. (abkhaz, male, 27 years, gudauta) young people are forced to think about, and plan for, their future in the context of ongoing uncertainty about the political future of abkhazia. undoubtedly some are, rather sceptically, playing a waiting game. others, the majority of whom are young people of nonabkhaz nationalities, are critically oriented to the idea of sovereignty altogether. however, it is apparent that most young people already think about the republic in which they live as an independent state in which the absence of individual attributes of a state is only a temporary circumstance. conclusion the responsibility imposed on young people for the future of abkhazia results in a high degree of patriotism and readiness to participate in key events. these attitudes among young people are also sustained by policies of remembering the war, since memories of the war involve not only stories of violence and destruction but also the memory of unity and patriotic resurgence. young people are assigned a particular place here; those who take the baton must also accept responsibility for the future of abkhazia, for securing its independence at any price. the discourse of the preservation of tradition, apsuara and language is fostered by adults but finds resonance among young people not least because it is directly connected to the memory of the war and the struggle for independence. in effect it takes the place of a national idea. although discourses of ethnocultural tradition and war essentially evoke the past, they serve to carve out a time and place for anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 65 the present by connecting past and present through, for example, oral narratives that link the heroism of participants in the last war with the gallantry of the armed defence of the fatherland extolled in popular epic literature. the preservation of ethno-cultural tradition – language and apsuara – is portrayed as a direct continuation of the achievements of those who died in the last conflict. indeed, since it is the chaos of war that is blamed for the destruction of established moral frameworks, the revival of tradition in the search for new values appears to be a logical next step in rebuilding abkhazian society. conforming to the expectations of adults, young abkhazians declare a determination to preserve those traditions – language and apsuara – that are essential to the definition of abkhaz ethnicity. in essays describing their generation, young people sometimes complain that they are losing those traditions and forgetting their language. this negative comparison with the older generation induces a kind of guilt complex. although young people already think about abkhazia as a state, as yet there are no generally accepted and shared ideas which might become ‘national’. in the absence of such, our research suggests, abkhaz youth project ethnic ideals as shared, national ideas; this is perceived cautiously by young people of non-abkhaz nationality. ‘achieving independence’ is important to abkhazian youth; to let go of this would be to betray the memory of those who died. for the majority of young people, however, ‘independence’ is more an expectation than an action plan. the danger inherent in this is that if waiting for independence results in the postponement of life plans, then it may increase levels of dissatisfaction already tangible not only among young people of non-abkhaz nationalities. already today it is evident that the patriotic views of young people contrast significantly with the relatively high level of dissatisfaction with current government structures. without any real change in society, and in the absence of evidence that adults themselves are prepared to invest in pursuing the values of apsuara (including in the public sphere), support for the authority of today’s ‘elders’ cannot be guaranteed. moreover, although patriotism (whether spontaneous or cultivated) among youth holds great potential for driving forward social transformation, it may also foster nationalistic attitudes, especially among unemployed youth who have few educational or migration prospects. the formation of a new statehood presupposes the strengthening of the identity of the nation-forming people – the abkhaz. the common experience of the war has shaped new solidarities uniting people of different nationalities. however, relations between those who fought on opposite sides in the most recent conflict are not without their tensions and there remains a generalised image of the enemy as ‘georgians’ or, rather, ‘georgia’. the memory of who took up what position during the events of 1992-3 remains as significant today as before and sometimes influences interethnic attitudes. the basic perception that the enemy lies across the border still exists despite the development and maintenance of individual, personal or social contacts with those currently living in georgia. abkhaz youth develops its identity largely around the idea of language and tradition, which are strengthened through remembering the war of 1992-3. young people of other nationalities view this relatively empathetically although they are not prepared to fully adopt these identity markers. apsuara or abkhaz language, in their opinion, are insufficient to unite residents of abkhazia and, in contrast, they emphasise the equality of all ethnic groups and the mutual forgiveness of past hurts as unifying factors. thus, youth of different nationalities in abkhazia exist in a globalised space caught between discourses of the preservation of local traditions and modernisation and between confronting memories of war and the struggle for the right to a peaceful future. these tensions come together in a creative way to shape a new image among young people of the ‘modern abkhazian’ who, while retaining strong ties to abkhazian culture and history, consciously seeks to establish a stable everyday life in which education (including higher education), employment, the ability to support a family and to access decent healthcare, feature strongly. notes 1 the capital city of abkhazia is referred to in georgian as sukhumi but in abkhazia as anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 66 sukhum. the name of the region of gal/i is similarly disputed. 2 the republic of abkhazia, formerly the abkhazian autonomous soviet socialist republic within the georgian soviet socialist republic, lies in the north-western caucasus. it is washed by the black sea and has 210km of coastline. its territory covers 8,600 square kilometres of which 64% is mountainous although, to the south, hills and lowland predominate. more than 55% of the republic is forested (with oak, beech, hornbeam, chestnut, fir and spruce), while the coast enjoys subtropical vegetation. the political situation in the republic means there are no accurate demographic statistics; undp (1998) estimated the population in 1998 at between 180,000 and 220,000 although georgian sources often cite a figure between 150-200,000 where as abkhaz sources tend to cite figures approaching 300,000. more than half the population live in urban areas. the recognised state languages of the republic are abkhaz and russian and the currency used is the russian rouble. the republic has seven district administrations, seven towns and five urban settlements. the capital is the city of sukhum/i. in the perestroika period historically rooted conflict between georgia and abkhazia, that had been compounded during the soviet period, intensified and led to armed conflict in 1992-3 (cornell 2001). the main issue of contention was the political status of abkhazia (coppieters 2005). despite declaring independence in 1999 abkhazia remains unrecognised and according to international law remains de jure part of georgia. as a result of the conflict, more than 200,000 (approximate estimation) georgians fled abkhazia to georgia and the population of abkhazia was halved although some of those who fled, especially mingrelians from the gal/i region, have since returned. 3 the research was conducted by a group of researchers from the scientific research centre ‘region’, ul’ianovsk state university – elena omelchenko, ol’ga dobroshtan, evgeniia lukianova, guzel sabirova, elena starkova, andrei livanov, and natal’ia goncharova as part of the rime project (funded by the ec, ref: b7701 2002 rx 154). the research employed both quantitative and qualitative methods, including a survey of the youth population (based on a sample of 580 people aged 14-30); in-depth thematic interviews (fifteen in total conducted in sukhum/i, gudauta, gul’ripsh, ldza and gal/i); focus groups (five in total conducted with students of colleges and higher educational institutions in sukhum/i); and anonymous essays written by students of schools, colleges and higher educational institutions answering three questions set by the interviewer (ninety in total from schools, colleges and higher educational institutions in sukhum/i). these sites of research were selected in order to include abkhazia’s main towns as well as a number of rural districts although the choice was constrained partially by issues of access. the survey sample was generated on the basis of sex, age and place of residence and young people were surveyed in schools, colleges, universities and, in the case of the older cohort, at home. this sampling method has distinct limitations and was necessitated by the particular circumstances of working in abkhazia, where, for example, the large number of flats and blocks of flats left in ruins or uninhabited made it difficult to use the random route method. an additional problem was the lack of reliable, official socio-demographic data upon which to base the quota calculations. the quotas were calculated, therefore, on the basis of local expert estimates of the population’s composition. a particularly contested, and politically important, question relates to the proportion of ethnic abkhaz in the total population of abkhazia. because of the lack of expert agreement on this question, it was decided not to include ethnicity as a quota variable in the construction of the sample and, as a result, there is a relatively low number of non-abkhaz in our sample. thus, in presenting analysed data, a single figure combining responses for all ‘nonabkhaz’ ethnic groups is presented alongside the data for ethnic abkhaz youth. 4 the group despatched to abkhazia simultaneously conducted a month-long training programme for local activists. the programme introduced them to the fundamental principles of planning, conducting and analysing sociological research using both quantitative and qualitative methods. participants in the training were able to both observe and participate in various stages of the research. 5 toasting plays an important role in abkhazian society; it is, in effect, a kind of table-prayer. when abkhazians get together around the table the third toast is traditionally dedicated to those who have died. 6 gal/i is the eastern region of abkhazia and to this day remains the most problematic. it is anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 67 protected by cis peacekeeping forces and un representatives. lower gal/i remains outside the control of the abkhazian authorities. the population of the region is predominantly mingrelians who, in the soviet period, were not differentiated officially from georgians. 7 the majority of georgians living in abkhazia prior to the war belonged to a sub-ethnic group called mingrelians, though most mingrelians consider themselves to be georgian. many do, however, speak mingrelian, a language related to but distinct from georgian, see olson et al (ed) 1994: 471-4. 8 for more on the conceptualisation of war memories at the state, collective and individual level, see ashplant, dawson & roper (eds) 2000. 9 in drawing up the list of possible answers to the question about the potential consolidating factors in abkhazian society, we sought to include formal state-building symbols (such as ‘living on the same territory’, ‘strong government’), as well as ideas circulating widely at the time (such as ‘preserving the memory of the war’, ‘apsuara’) and some critical ideas (such as ‘ethnic equality’ and ‘forgiveness of past hurts’). this is, of course, not an exhaustive list of potentially unifying factors, but is the full list used in this particular research. 10 the second, and equally salient, factor cited by young people was tradition (apsuara). 11 ‘apsuara’ might be defined as a body of inherited cultural knowledge including an ethical system, a code of laws of national identification and norms of traditional abkhazian culture that incorporate wider caucasian and world values. 12 one of the main reasons why the issue of ‘tradition’ is so widely discussed in contemporary abkhazia is the significant shift in the balance of power from the urban to the rural population in the post-war period. rapid modernisation and detraditionalisation during the soviet period had led to significant social and cultural differentiation in abkhazia between the prosperous, tourist-oriented, black sea coast regions where the new national intelligentsia was concentrated and the partially ‘modernised’, but still largely traditional, patriarchal mountain settlements. in the period after the conflict, however, the population of the formerly rich seaside districts turned back to agriculture – the cultivation of citrus fruits and nuts – in the wake of the collapse of the tourist business. in the post-war period, connections between the towns and villages have strengthened further as residents from rural mountainous areas have occupied empty houses in the towns whilst urban residents have a renewed connection to rural areas as a result of the experience of evacuation or dependency on the villages for food. 13 ‘elders’ is a collective term that implies not only parents, older brothers and grandfathers but also ancestors who, in some earlier epoch, fought for the preservation of the tiny abkhazian nation and its traditions, or who died in pursuit of this cause. 14it should be noted that this is the exception rather than the rule. 15 the importance of russia in shaping horizons for the future for young people in abkhazia should not be underestimated. many of their hopes for the future are associated with russia: their prospects for study and work, not to mention that a russian passport provides the opportunity to travel abroad. however, attitudes are more complex than this suggests. while welcoming the development of relations with russia – the invitations extended to young people in abkhazia to attend youth rallies and events in russia for example – there is also an awareness of the dangers of becoming small change in russia’s pocket while young people who do travel to russia sometimes experience for themselves the anti-caucasian sentiments of some russians. for further discussion of the role of russia see: baev 1998 and kolsto 2006. 16 the exception to the rule, again, is gal/i where this question is not so straightforward: i don’t feel a citizen of abkhazia nor a citizen of georgia. i am in between. i can’t answer. (georgian-mingrelian, male, 16 years, gal/i) references ashplant, t., dawson, g. & roper, m. (eds) (2000) the politics of war memory and commemoration (london: routledge). anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 68 baev, p. (1998) russia’s policies in secessionist conflicts in europe in the 1990s, norwegian atlantic committee, security policy library no. 11. coppieters, b. (2005) georgian-abkhaz conflict in b. coppieters, m. emerson, m. huysseune, t. kovziridze, g. noutcheva, n. tocci and m. vahl (eds) europeanization and conflict resolution: case studies from the european periphery, (academia press) available online at: http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/1 2004chapter5.pdf cornell, s. (2001) small nations and great powers. a study of ethnopolitical conflict in the caucasus (richmond: curzon). kokejew, a. & otyrba, g. (1997) der weg in den abchasien-krieg (mannheim university) available online at: http://www.uni mannheim.de/fkks/fkks13.pdf. kolsto, p. (2006) the sustainability and future of unrecognized quasi-states, journal of peace research, 43(6): 723–740. krylov, a. (2001) religiia i traditsiia abkhazov (po materialam polevyh issledovaiy 1994-2000) moskva: institut vostokovedeniya ran. olson, j.s. et al (ed) (1994) an ethnohistorical dictionary of the russian and soviet empires (westport/london: greenwood press). omelchenko e. (2004) molodezh’. otkrytii vopros (ul’ianovsk: simbirskaia kniga). ricoeur, p. (1995) figuring the sacred: religion, narrative, imagination (anthology of paul ricoeur's religious thought) edited by m. wallace and translated by d. pellauer (minneapolis: fortress press). sommers, m . (2006) y outh a nd co nflict. a brief r eview o f a vailable literature (usaid/boston u niversity) av ailable online at http://www.crin.org/docs/edu_ youth_conflict.pdf. taylor, c. (198 9) s ources o f t he s elf (cambridge: c ambridge u niversity press). undp (1998) united nations needs assessment mission to ab khazia, ge orgia, unpublished p aper, u ndp, m arch 1998. http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/1-� http://www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/1-� http://www.crin.org/docs/edu_� ul’ianovsk state university the future of abkhazia is in our hands. how we position it, how we build it, that’s how it will be. our parents, our grandmothers and grandfathers, are depending on us. …they’re looking to us because how we turn out will be how the country turns out. ... about the research constructing the memory of war ‘victimization’ ‘heroification’ and ‘romanticization’ ‘patriotization’ preserving traditions and defining ‘abkhaz-ness’ the events of 1992-3 had ethnic roots and aggravated conflict between the abkhaz and georgians. since the war, the ethnic composition in abkhazia has changed significantly but this has not made the question of what constitutes ‘abkhazness’ redundant b... table 2: why is it important to preserve apsuara? independence and citizenship conclusion references the “nation-ing” of gender? donor policies, islam, and women’s ngos in post-war bosnia-herzegovina volume 21, number 2 the “nation-ing” of gender? donor policies, islam, and women’s ngos in post-war bosnia-herzegovina elissa helms, university of pittsburgh © 2003 elissa helms all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. feminist scholars have shown that national discourses are commonly gendered (e.g., anthias and yuval-davis 1989; gal 1994; mcclintock 1993; verdery 1994; yuval-davis 1997). but can gender discourses also be “nation-ed”? this paper demonstrates that such a dynamic takes place in the interplay between local women’s organizations and the western-dominated “international community” of donors and officials. western donors are virtually the only sources of funding for the many nongovernmental organizations (ngos) that have sprung up in bosnia-herzegovina (hereafter bosnia) since the end of the 1992-5 war. while these donors claim to promote a diverse and healthy civil society, in practice they focus much more narrowly on ngos that promote interethnic cooperation and reconciliation (belloni 2001; smillie 1996; stubbs 1995; and see hann and dunn 1996; wedel 2001). this underlies their ultimate goal: the establishment of a stable, multi-ethnic bosnian state which ethnic nationalists, especially croats and serbs, in various ways resist. in this way, international intervention policies in many ways reinforce the “communitarian” logic of ethnic categorization (bougarel 1996) even as they seek to dismantle it (gagnon 2002). through an analysis of the effects of donor policies on local women’s organizations, i argue that donor policies have forced a simultaneous “nation-ing” of gender discourses and an exclusion of religious and ethnic identities from those same gender discourses. from a practical perspective, this nation-ing has forced ngos to keep track of ethnic background among their membership and to alter projects in order to include people and groups from areas of different ethnic control. in the realm of theoretical approaches to gender questions, donor policies have excluded from discussion religious and ethnic identities, two vital aspects of social identities in post-war bosnia. this has also happened as a result of practical policies, through the exclusion from activities and funding of mono-ethnic and religious women’s organizations. i base my analysis of these questions on ethnographic data collected among women’s ngo activists during 1999 and 2000 in the bosniac (muslim) majority cities of sarajevo and zenica.1 the women i discuss belong to women’s organizations with contrasting ideological approaches to both gender and to religion/ethnicity: a self-described feminist and anti-nationalist ngo; a secular, all-bosniac group; and a smaller association of religious muslim women. as religion is the primary marker of ethnic difference in bosnia, religious groups were also perceived as nationalist. the religious groups i refer to are islamic, as my research was based in a bosniac majority town. though there are important differences, a similar dynamic exists in areas of serb and croat control (and majority populations) where orthodox and catholic groups, respectively, are viewed as adhering to nationalist politics. the “nation-ing” of gender discourses women’s ngos, like other kinds of groups, sprang up during and especially after the war. their activities cover various social services, mutual aid, income generating, religious education, and social and political advocacy. they cover a range of approaches to gender: a handful are openly feminist2 and challenge traditional gender roles; others advocate for “women’s rights” and increased participation of women in politics; and others work for the affirmation and dignity of women within their roles as mothers and wives. the range is equally as wide when it comes to ethnic relations, though it is difficult to gage the sincerity of organizations’ claims to favoring ethnic reconciliation and tolerance. in response to donor demands, all organizations that receive or hope to receive western funding espouse such jen typewritten text 85 volume 21, number 2 multi-ethnic ideals. as one longtime women’s ngo activist, put it: it’s hard with these organizations, whether they are multi-ethnic by composition or in terms of contact [across ethnic lines]. some of them do it out of deep conviction, because they really want to, while others do it because they will get money easier this way. so they grab hvataju (ethnic) others to make their composition mixed. it is this pressure from the international community and western donors which forces the nation-ing of gender discourses and concerns. even when women’s organizations strive to focus only on women’s issues, donor pressures oblige them to integrate ethnic concerns— towards ethnic reconciliation and communication—into their rhetoric and activities. this can be seen readily in the case of medica zenica, a self-proclaimed antinationalist, feminist women’s ngo funded by western and un donors. medica began during the war by providing medical and psychological therapy to women survivors of wartime rape and other traumas and has continued in the post-war period by aiding women survivors of domestic violence (see cockburn 1998). their public outreach section, infoteka, has thrown itself into projects to train and sensitize state officials who deal with victims of domestic violence, and to lobby government and international officials on issues of gender based violence and women’s human rights in general. infoteka maintained close contacts with other women’s organizations that worked on domestic violence issues, including several women’s ngos in the republika srpska (rs), the serb-controlled political “entity” which, with the bosniac-croat federation “entity,” makes up the current bosnian state. at gatherings and in all their dealings with each other, the women in this loose network consciously ignored ethnic cleavages. as i have detailed elsewhere (helms 2003), they were able to do this by insisting on their common goals as women concerned with women’s issues. they often pointed out that women had not created the war and could therefore work more easily together. they also shared a minimum rejection of nationalist divisions, though they did hold different views on some key political issues. thus, these women consciously worked at ethnic cooperation through what one activist called “strategic avoidance” (strateško zaobila〉enje) of sensitive “ethnic” topics. in other words, they attempted to address ethnic divisions by playing down their importance and playing up gender in its place. this enabled the women to build trusting, crossethnic working relationships of the kind that western donors seemed to be promoting. however, from medica’s perspective, donor demands undermined this goal. a common donor tactic was to insist on funding only joint projects involving ngos from different ethnic territories on the theory that this contact would increase inter-ethnic trust. this frustrated the women who had long been involved in cross-ethnic work on their own. nataša complained about a project that had brought together women working on medica’s sos telefon hotline for victims of domestic violence with women at a serb women’s ngo with a similar hotline it’s like other ridiculous demands the international community has. like crossentity cooperation, too. this was obvious with the sos project... the donors insisted we work together on this, as partners. and, yeah, the program was approved and i’m sure the donors will talk about this as a big success in cross-ethnic cooperation, but in reality we really didn’t do anything together. we had the same donor and decided together on some guidelines for making the reports, but we wrote each part of the report separately and did the work separately... after all of that [organizing] we would have done this [held joint activities] without donors and we’d started working together long before. she went on, giving examples of several projects in which medica had been compelled to collaborate with women’s ngos in other ethnic territories to satisfy donors. because the other women’s ngos were either not prepared, or did not have the same approach to the project as medica, those projects had not met their potential. donor scrutiny of ngo membership had also been a problem. medica’s ethnic membership mirrored that of the surrounding community: most were bosniacs but there were several serbs, croats, and women of mixed background at all levels of the organization. as i have indicated, they also maintained excellent jen typewritten text 86 volume 21, number 2 contacts with ngos in serb and croat controlled areas of bosnia, as well as in serbia and croatia proper. still, donors demanded they diversify their membership by ethnicity and undertake more joint projects with serb and croat ngos. again nataša, a serb,3 explained: we had problems... we said we were multiethnic but we never counted exactly how many members we had of which. donors insisted on having numbers or proportions by ethnicity and then they said we had a small number of non-muslim women. but medica is concerned with doing its work, with helping women, so let the ethnic makeup be like it is. i think we have a reasonable recreation of the ethnic makeup of the town... but it’s never been something we think about (my emphasis). d〉enana, a bosniac medica activist who has worked with many other women’s and youth ngos in bosnia, pointed to the contradictions this created: sometimes it’s impossible to have multiethnicity in an organization... sometimes you [as an ngo] don’t think about this because you think about what you need to get your work done, what kind of people you need. there’s constant pressure to include people from different [ethno]national groups, but you need certain skills, professional people. so sometimes members of other ethnic groups are just there for decoration. multi-ethnicity looks great but this loses its real value, the positive picture it could have... instead it’s something forced.4 because of medica’s opposition to nationalist ideologies, its approach toward ethnicity was to attempt to ignore it (or play it down as much as possible in a context like bosnia). their focus was on women. donor policies, however, forced ethnic categories back into prominence, even for ngos that were committed to opposing nationalisms and ethnic cleavages.5 one could argue that medica and the other organizations in their network were just caught up in a donor policy aimed more toward organizations that lacked an explicit nonnationalist stance. i now turn, therefore, to an examination of ngos that appeared to be working against donors’ multi-ethnic goals. religious and mono-ethnic women’s organizations western donors and international community representatives consciously evaluated local ngos on the basis of how “nationalist” they were and targeted them accordingly. the two main feminist donor agencies working in the country insisted on a “non-nationalist” stance from any women’s group they funded.6 in fact, they were stricter on this criterion than on how “feminist” a group was. while this approach was a logical extension of these donors’ ideologies, i want to ask how this policy affected groups perceived to be at the nationalist extreme of the spectrum. specifically, how did this situation reflect upon discourses of gender and on donors’ stated goals to build civil society and facilitate ethnic reconciliation? organizations of religious muslims and those organized around bosniac identity generally remained outside the circles of western funded initiatives, round table discussions, and training seminars. such groups did not use the buzzwords and concepts of standard “ngo-speak” that peppered the selfpresentations of other groups (see hemment 2000; ishkanian 2003; phillips 2002; sampson 1996). terms like “civil society,” “reconciliation,” “women’s rights,” “gender,” “project proposal,” “networking,” etc. were conspicuously absent from these organizations’ written and spoken rhetoric.7 even “ngo” was not used; these groups generally called themselves “associations” (udru〉enje), though they fit the definition of an ngo just as well as other groups that used this term (see bougarel 2001). clearly these groups would never win western funding or were not even interested in it. muslim religious groups were more likely to seek funding from islamic donors (in the case of all-serb or all-croat women’s groups, corresponding religious or ethnic sponsors abroad were solicited). many of them operated with very little or no funding at all. nor did western donors seek out such organizations. in fact, they did not fund many mono-ethnic groups at all unless they represented a minority ethnic group in their communities, or unless they operated in an area with few ngos and showed a strong willingness to work with members of other ethnic groups. zahida, the leader of one women’s ngo, told me how she advised another women’s jen typewritten text 87 volume 21, number 2 organization looking for funding. since the group did not have a multi-ethnic membership, zahida advised them to, “go with multi-ethnic cooperation. that’s what’s going now.” other organizations had trouble securing western funding because they were rumored (fairly or not) to have ties to nationalist causes. similarly, western donors generally ignored religious women’s groups because they were assumed to be nationalist and therefore working against the multi-ethnic state project. it is not that these donors ignored religious groups altogether. indeed, there were several donorsupported initiatives in inter-religious dialogue aimed at emphasizing common values of forgiveness, peace, and mutual respect among religious communities. yet, while all initiatives were about (re)establishing multi-ethnicity (return of refugees, ethnic reconciliation, functioning of multi-ethnic state institutions, etc.), little connection was made between religion and gender. in other words, women could be involved in inter-religious dialogue as muslims (catholics, orthodox...) but not as muslim women. similarly, projects and meetings aimed at improving or analyzing the status of women could be attended by women, but there seemed to be no need for muslim/religious women as the issue of religion was separate from that of gender. to be sure, many religious organizations tended to keep to themselves on purpose. the full name of the women’s organization kewser (arabic for spring/source) was the kewser association of muslim women (udru〉enja muslimanki kewser). its founders chose this name during the war out of principle. aiša, kewser’s president, explained: “this name was the result of the atmosphere and conditions of the time. it was war and a struggle for survival.” they wanted to make a statement about their identity as muslims, especially in the face of serb attacks on muslims and markers of muslim identity. the group’s members were also religious women. this made it even more important to declare themselves muslims in both the ethnic and religious sense, rather than the more ethnic connotations of “bosniac.” they chose an arabic word as their name. aiša was untroubled by the consequences their name carried for the kinds of donors they could seek: “we were rejected by some donors because of this but this is normal. we knew it would be harder to get funding from westerners and easier with islamic donors this way.” islamic donors, like the western ones, had their own agendas. kewser had refused funding from several islamic donors who, in the words of kewser member fikreta, would come and say they would give us money if we all covered ourselves from head to toe but we didn’t want to do this. we can keep the selam (muslim greeting) and those things that are in our foundation (of our tradition) but we don’t want anything that’s from outside forced on us. the religious women in kewser wore hid〉ab, or modest dress, but they did not cover their faces or hands. many islamic donors favored more all-encompassing traditions of women’s islamic dress and demanded that women’s groups they funded conform to these styles. this often meant covering the face with the nikab veil and wearing long black gloves to hide the hands. many bosnians, including religious muslims, rejected such styles as foreign, non-bosnian, and especially uneuropean. they insisted on keeping their own bosnian islamic traditions. aiša told me firmly, “we didn’t go looking for help from those who we knew would impose conditions on us that we couldn’t meet.” they were content to operate without funds, rather than bow to donor demands with which they did not agree. islamic feminism? the distance between religious women’s groups and secular women’s ngo circles meant that the issue of the intersection between gender and religion was not discussed. my point is not to fault religious women, feminists, or other women’s ngo activists in bosnia for not communicating with each other. feminist and other “western-looking” (phillips 2002) women’s ngos (generally staffed by less religious or atheist women) tend to hold very different views on questions of gender and ethnicity from members of religious women’s groups. there might be some areas upon which these groups might agree, however. indeed, in casual conversation women at the more civicminded and feminist organizations often discussed the impact of religious practices and ideologies on women’s lives, even if this was not often a subject of public debate. jen typewritten text 88 volume 21, number 2 furthermore, there are other religious women who might be receptive to such a dialogue if religion were made a serious element of the debate on gender. one such woman, halima, already works for medica, though she is not engaged in public outreach or networking with other women’s ngos. sadeta, is also a strong advocate for women and has been involved in projects for inter-religious dialogue. both halima and sadeta are critical of male interpretations of islamic practice in bosnia and have worked in various ways to educate women and men in a more gender-equal understanding of islam. sadeta even described herself as a “feminist, but an islamic one” in a local newspaper during the war (saralji 1993: 9). “the problem is that for centuries only men have interpreted islam and of course they’ve interpreted it the way they want to, to suit them... but islam determines rights for women, it says women and men are equal,” sadeta told me. halima held similar views: “my goal is to educate women in various problems and aspects, issues in islam, so they know their real status, so they can defend themselves from being humiliated, put on an inferior level, made to listen to men and not use their own brains.” the inclusion of religious women in gender debates would obviously not guarantee agreement and harmony among these women. yet such inclusion might open new channels of dialogue—precisely what western donors profess to advocate through their policies of multi-ethnic civil society building. conclusion in this paper, i have outlined some of the implications for women’s activism of donor policies that promote multi-ethnicity. for ngos like medica that attempt to privilege gender concerns over ethnic ones, donor policies force a nation-ing of gender discourses by reentrenching ethnicity and thereby detracting attention from the women’s issues these women are trying to address.8 western donors’ rejection of groups concerned with ethnic heritage or religious identity has removed ethnicity and religion from the arena of theoretical debate on women’s and gender issues. this has stifled dialogue among gender-conscious ngos about the intersection of gender with religion in bosnian society. as arkov argued in the case of radical serbian feminism during the debates on nationalism, war, and rape in the early 1990s, such discourses which privileged gender and excluded ethnicity effectively surrendered ethnic identity to nationalism: “radicalized feminism allowed nationalism to completely appropriate ethnicity, and thus missed an opportunity to engage in theoretical discussion about gender and ethnicity” (1999: 382). in the bosnian case, feminism has not been as radicalized as in serbia or among anti-nationalist croatian feminists, yet arkov’s warning is still relevant. i would add that this also relates to religion as a prominent component of ethnic identity in this region.9 yet ethnicity is not completely trumped by gender. women activists are forced to consider ethnic identities and territories and even to emphasize ethnic tensions in order to be allowed to pursue projects towards erasing ethnic cleavages in public life. ultimately, this separation of gender from religious and ethnic concerns works against the stated goals of donors and many women’s organizations: reconciliation and multi-ethnic civil society. it does so because it ensures that the rift between those advocating multi-ethnicity and those vocal about preserving their own ethnic identity will widen. in the words of azra, a medica activist who seemed to support donor policies despite acknowledging their problems, “maybe there are single-ethnic organizations that wouldn’t be so nationalist but they’re not funded and they should be part of society but no one includes them.” in any case, more inclusion might give “nationalist” organizations a chance to disprove their reputations for ethnic animosity or to consider more moderate views. references anthias, floya and yuval-davis, nira. 1989. “introduction.” in n. yuval-davis and f. anthias (eds.), woman-nation-state. new york: st. martin’s press. belloni, roberto. 2001. “civil society and peacebuilding in bosnia and herzegovina,” journal of peace research 38(2): 163-180. jen typewritten text 89 volume 21, number 2 benderly, jill. 1997. “rape, feminism and nationalism in the war in yugoslav successor states.” in l. a. west (ed.), feminist nationalism. new york: routledge. blumi, isa. 2003. “competing for the albanian soul: are islamic missionaries making another lebanon in the balkans?,” ees news (newsletter of the east european studies program at the woodrow wilson international center for scholars), january-february, 2003: 1-2, 8. bougarel, xavier. 2001. local level institutions and social capital in bosnia-herzegovina. washington dc: world bank. bougarel, xavier. 1996. “bosnia and hercegovina—state and communitarianism.” in d. a. dyker and i. vejvoda (eds.), yugoslavia and after: a study in fragmentation, despair and rebirth. new york: longman. bringa, tone. 1995. being muslim the bosnian way: identity and community in a central bosnian village. princeton: princeton university press. cockburn, cynthia. 1998. the space between us: negotiating gender and national identities in conflict. london and new york: zed books. de soto, hermine g. 2000. “crossing western boundaries: how east berlin women observed women researchers from the west after socialism, 19911992.” in h. g. de soto and n. dudwick (eds.), fieldwork dilemmas: anthropologists in postsocialist states. madison, wi: university of wisconsin press: 73-99. funk, nanette. 1993. “feminism east and west.” in n. funk and m. mueller (eds.), gender politics and postcommunism: reflections from eastern europe and the former soviet union. new york: routledge: 318-330. gagnon jr., v.p. 2002. “liberal multiculturalism: part of the problem?” paper presented at the seminar democracy and human rights in multiethnic societies, konjic, bosniaherzegovina, july 2002. gal, susan, and gail kligman. 2000. the politics of gender after socialism: a comparative-historical essay. princeton, nj: princeton university press. gal, susan. 1994. “gender in the postsocialist transition: the abortion debate in hungary,” east european politics and societies 8(2), spring 1994: 256-86. gal, susan and gail kligman. 2000. the politics of gender after socialism: a comparative-historical essay. princeton, nj: princeton university press. grunberg, laura. 2000. “women’s ngos in romania.” in s. gal and g. kligman (eds.), reproducing gender: politics, publics, and everyday life after socialism. princeton: princeton university press. hann, chris and dunn, elizabeth (eds.). 1996. civil society: challenging western models. london and new york: routledge. helms, elissa. 2003. “women as agents of ethnic reconciliation? women’s ngos and international intervention in postwar bosnia-herzegovina,” women’s studies international forum, 26(1)(jan./feb., 2002): 15-33. hemment, julie. 2000. gender, ngos and the third sector in russia: an ethnography of post-socialist civil society. ph.d. dissertation, cornell university. huseby-darvas, eva v. 1996. “‘feminism the murderer of mothers’: the rise and fall of neo-nationalist reconstruction of gender in hungary.” in b. f. williams (ed.), women out of place: the gender of agency and the race of nationality. new york, london: routledge: 161-185. jen typewritten text 90 volume 21, number 2 ishkanian, armine. 2003. “importing civil society? the emergence of armenia’s ngo sector and the impact of western aid on its development,” armenian forum 3(1). kesić, vesna. 1994. “a response to catharine mackinnon’s article ‘turning rape into pornography: postmodern genocide,’” hastings women’s law journal, 5(2), summer 1994:267. korac, maja. 1996. “ethnic conflict, rape, and feminism: the case of yugoslavia,” research on russia and eastern europe, vol. 2 (1996), 247-266. mcclintock, anne. 1993. “family feuds: gender, nationalism and the family,” feminist review 44, summer 1993: 6180. phillips, sarah drue. 2002. “civil” societies and “evil” states: ambiguities of women’s ngo organizing and patriarchy in post-soviet ukraine. ph.d. dissertation, university of illinois at urbana-champaign. sampson, steven. 1996. “the social life of projects: importing civil society to albania.” in c. hann and e. dunn (eds.), civil society: challenging western models. london and new york: routledge. saraljić, lejla. 1993. “rat je šansa za duhovno osvješ enje muslimana (the war is a chance for the spiritual awakening of muslims),” interview, ratna nova naša rije 18 june, 1993: 8-9 šiklová, ji⊆ina. 1998. “why we resist western-style feminism: defining equality for the post-communist culture,” transitions 5(1): 30-35. smillie, ian. 1996. service delivery or civil society? non-governmental organizations in bosnia & herzegovina. zagreb: care canada. star project. 1998. javno zagovaranje: ene za društvene promjene u zemljama sljednicama bivše jugoslavije (public advocacy: women for social change in the successor states of former yugoslavia). zagreb: star project, delphi international. stubbs, paul. 1995. “nationalisms, civil society and globalisation in croatia and slovenia,” research in social movements, conflict and change, 19 (1995), 1-26. verdery, katherine. 1994. “from parent state to family patriarchs: gender and nation in contemporary eastern europe,” east european politics and societies 8(2), spring 1994: 225-55. wedel, janine r. 2001. collision and collusion: the strange case of western aid to eastern europe. new york: palgrave. updated edition. (first edition 1997) yuval-davis, nira. 1997. gender and nation. london: sage. arkov, dubravka. 1999. from media war to ethnic war: the female body and nationalist processes in the former yugoslavia, 1986-1994. ph.d. thesis, center for women’s studies, university of nijmegen endnote 1. bosnian muslims were officially renamed “bosniacs” in 1993, from a name with religious connotations to a more ethnic and territorially based one (see bringa 1995). bosnia is currently divided into two ethnically defined entities: the serb republika srpska, or rs, and the bosniaccroat federation and, within the federation, into ethnically defined municipalities and cantons. 2. predictably, considerable debate exists among women in such groups over what “feminism” means. most bosnians who declare themselves feminists told me they are “feminist, but in a bosnian way.” as in other post-socialist societies, feminism in bosnia is associated with the west and understood in negative terms—as a campaign pitting women against men and aggressively advocating the domination of women over men (on bosnia see cockburn 1998: 189-92; on the rest of central/eastern europe see e.g. de soto 2000; funk 1993; gal jen typewritten text 91 volume 21, number 2 and kligman 2000: 91-108; grunberg 2000; huseby-darvas 1996; šiklová 1998). 3. i identify nataša’s ethnic background here to show that she was not part of the bosniac majority trying to make excuses for having few non-bosniacs. i do so, however, at the risk of reifying the same ethnic categories that were sharpened by the war and upon which donors insist. while a discussion of ethnic identities in bosnia is beyond the scope of this paper, i should point out that nataša was recognized by others as a serb and indeed came from a nominally orthodox family, yet her own sense of identity was more complicated (see cockburn 1998: 192-6; arkov 1999: preface). 4. i knew of several projects in fact, where participants of different ethnic backgrounds had been forced by donors to work together. at times this did create the desired breaking down of barriers, especially when youth were involved. just as often, however, such projects created more mutual resentment than reconciliation due to the forced nature of the projects. 5. what’s more, such policies actually created the incentive for some ngos to nurture ethnic tension in order to show donors that there continued to be a need for funding their projects. ana devi has also noticed this phenomenon in her work with women’s ngos in serbia (personal communication 2000). 6. these feminist donors were the kvinna til kvinna foundation from sweden and the american star project (strategies, training and advocacy for reconciliation). star’s mission statement describes it as a project which “offers encouragement, technical help and financial support to non-nationalist women’s groups that work toward social change in the successor states of the former yugoslavia.” (star 1998). 7. when these groups did pick up on a certain discourse of rights it tended to be in the context of the rights to express one’s ethnic and religious identity. some talk about tolerance was also present, though this was pointedly not directed towards other ethno-national groups in bosnia (serbs and croats) but beyond the borders of former yugoslavia. it was pointed out to me by several religious muslim women that the fact that they had agreed to talk with me, an american, was proof that they were not intolerant or ethnically exclusive. 8. much the same thing happened through debates among feminists in the former yugoslavia and beyond over how to characterize mass rapes in the war in bosnia (in a large literature on this topic, see e.g. benderly 1997; kesić 1994; korać 1996; arkov 1999). 9. in the bosniac majority areas, where islam is the religion in question, the danger is heightened by the presence of radical islamic groups that identify with the wider muslim world (see blumi 2003). (extremists in serb and croat areas have likewise used religion to promote agendas of ethnic intolerance, though in different ways.) while extremist islamic groups have so far restricted their political activities to the bosnian context, many in bosnia, including religious muslims, see these radicals as a potential threat. furthermore, the position and treatment of women among radical groups is held up as a marker of their extremism. this should provide even more reason for women’s organizations to engage in dialogue with religious women’s groups. jen typewritten text 92 microsoft word 3tw3wilson finalforaeereditors.docx anthropology of east europe review special issue 38 (1), 2021 / doi: 10.14434/aeer.v37i1.33576 european borderlands, beyond britain and brexit thomas m. wilson binghamton university; state university of new york abstract brexit, i.e., the united kingdom’s departure from membership in the european union, has posed particular problems for communities in the borderlands of northern ireland since the referendum which began the process. with reference to initial scholarly assessments of brexit effects in the uk and in other parts of europe, the article explores the possible impact of brexit on european borderlands. this article summarizes some of these problems in northern ireland in order to ask questions which may prove relevant at borders elsewhere in europe, particularly in regard to issues of political, economic, social and cultural integration and differentiation in national and transnational contexts. key-words: brexit, united kingdom, ireland, european integration, borderlands brexit, i.e., the exit of the united kingdom (uk) from the european union (eu), has largely occurred, but is still not complete. trade and other international relations between the united kingdom and the eu have yet to be finalized in 2021, as may be seen in the continuing debate about the customs border in the irish sea, and many of the effects of brexit in the uk, the republic of ireland (roi) and the wider eu will take some time to be recognized, let alone acted upon. nevertheless, there have already been ‘brexit effects’ throughout the uk and roi. while all of the peoples of the british isles will be affected by brexit, directly or indirectly, in the short and long-term, brexit effects are already apparent in the borderlands, i.e., the land border that simultaneously divides and conjoins the roi and northern ireland, a constituent part of the uk. this international border was first established upon the partition of ireland in 1921, and its 499 km (310 mi) separates the 26 counties of the roi from the six counties of northern ireland. county armagh, where i have conducted intermittent ethnographic research since 1990, is a county famous for its role in the armed nationalist struggle, known locally as ‘the troubles’, which lasted from 1968 to 1998. armagh, in northern ireland south-west of belfast (northern ireland’s capital), is divided between its protestant population, mainly residing in the county’s north, and its catholic population in the south. since the original uk referendum which initiated brexit, the plans and realization of the uk’s departure from the eu have presented many challenges, often perceived as direct threats, in south armagh, not only because of the latter’s longstanding support of irish republicanism in general and the ira in particular, but because of the many benefits which have accrued in the county from northern ireland’s membership in the eu. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 36 the general nature of these perceived challenges to the quality of life of the people of south armagh, challenges which affect the quotidian conditions of work, travel, health, and leisure in the borderlands, have been reviewed elsewhere (wilson 2019, 2020b) and are matters of considerable daily concern in ireland. less apparent are some of the reasons why brexit may resonate in other european borderlands, and among scholars of these borderlands beyond the uk and ireland, at, for example, international borders in eastern and southeastern europe. this article introduces some of the issues that are palpable in northern ireland’s borderlands today which may also be of concern, and thus worthy of more ethnographic attention, in european borderlands seemingly beyond brexit and the uk.1 brexit matters in ireland brexit has become, in its short five-year span, a matter of daily and widespread significance in ireland and britain. in general public discourse it has come to refer to the referendum of june 2016 which kickstarted the overall exiting process, but it is also a referent to the political, economic and regulatory processes needed to see the departure through to completion, and to the actual moment or event when the uk left the eu on 31 january 2020.2 in south armagh, however, many local people, when discussing brexit with me in my ethnographic research during the summers of 2017 to 2019, also opined how brexit was a shock to european integration in general, and thus also something sure to affect diverse populations across the continent. most often raised by my respondents, as examples of communities of particular vulnerability to the wider brexit effects in europe, were farmers, consumers, and political parties and movements seeking both the benefits of european integration and the strengthening of regional and national identities and cultures. the significance of many of these aspects of the local experience of european integration, as for example in seeking eu benefits and claiming and reinforcing regional identity, is something that is presumed in northern ireland to be shared with many areas which are on the edge of the european bloc. it was thus also not surprising to me that many of the discussions i had with local respondents in south armagh turned to a consideration of the brexit effects in other borderlands.3 in this regard it was clear to me and to some of my interlocutors in ireland that brexit either had or would become a symbol beyond ireland and britain of national constituencies and their continuing relationship to the eu, involving such matters as national austerity, sovereignty, authority and control. the irish nationalists of south armagh with whom i spoke about brexit, most of whom have been supporters of irish republicanism and opponents of british unionism,4 recognized that the general disgruntlement among the electorate in the uk seems to have parallels among other populist and regional movements across the continent. they saw that brexit, while clearly anti-eu in spirit, nonetheless reflects many similar political movements on the continent. thus, brexit also is a marker of many things about european integration that are somewhat contradictory. for example, in the uk some brexiteers seek less government control, through government downsizing, more anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 37 deregulation of the economy, and a return to the days of british insular sovereignty, while other brexiteers want greater control, as in the long-lost days when british, mainly english, elites controlled the centralized, hierarchical and bureaucratized state. one might be forgiven for viewing the calls for greater freedom to pursue the benefits of a free and deregulated market as potential support too for illiberalism, perhaps bordering on fascism. this was clearly on the minds of some of my republican respondents in south armagh, who were alarmed at the rise of illiberalism in places like poland and hungary, such as that described by kürti (2020). the contradictions of brexit in daily life in northern ireland are significant, and apparent to many local people. while brexit throughout the uk seems to have roots in the call to take back control from an undemocratic brussels, it has been that supposed distant and faceless eu that has helped northern ireland achieve unprecedented prosperity and social welfare over the last quarter century. as some local republican politicians have pointed out to me, a strong british state was a repressive one, and the de-regulation of the economy as desired by so many brexiteers may have the opposite effect of re-centralizing the british state and subverting decades of political devolution across the uk. this prospect also suggests to people in south armagh that a revitalized and resecuritized british state would mean a re-militarized northern ireland, and a possible return of ‘the troubles’ (wilson 2019). this is not a future that many in south armagh would welcome, because at the very least brexit may be a harbinger of a return to new or revitalized forms of nationalism, threatening the transnationalism that has become part of local border life for decades. unlike the multiple and fluid identities of migrants recognized by scholars of borderlands elsewhere (nitsiakos 2010), this transnationalism in northern ireland has arisen among its residents, who have embraced multilevel and supranational governance and shared sovereignty, established between the roi and uk in the belfast good friday agreement of 1998 (gfa) that began the formal end of the recent troubles. brexit in fact may eventually put an end to the transnational governance that was set up under the gfa, stopping at least some of the new forms of political cooperation between the two national governments that were created in the wake of the gfa. brexit will also certainly change cross-border relations of all sorts, including the disruption of an all-island economy that has taken shape over 50 years of cross-border community cooperation, trade, and legal integration under the umbrella of the eu. in addition, brexit is forcing the people of northern ireland to publicly reconsider how their national and european identities interrelate (wilson 2020b). over the last few decades this last consideration, of the brexit effects on identities in the northern ireland borderlands, has become more significant. this is because the people of the northern ireland borderlands have developed, or have begun to articulate, a new form of european identity that is less instrumental than what was once widely demonstrated and perceived (wilson 2000, 2007). local identity now seems to be much more affective, suggesting to me that a widespread “banal europeanism” (cram 2009) has taken root there (wilson 2020b). in the 1990s, in an earlier research project, i concluded that armagh borderlanders, like most people in northern ireland, demonstrated little affective identification with the eu (wilson 2000a, 2000b; mcgowan anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 38 and o’connor 2004), as their national identity was clearly primary and any related notion of a european identity decidedly secondary. today, there is a greater acceptance of european identity as a complement to national identity, at a level and intensity that may not match national identity but has risen in significance. while brexit may be a platform to perform or confirm a european identity, my respondents over the last four years have persuaded me that this is not exclusively strategic, but an accurate reflection of the changing conditions of borderland culture and identity, where for some even remaining within a uk within the eu might be acceptable, to people who for generations stumped and fought for a united ireland. contradictions aside, a few facts and figures will indicate some of the societal changes that have developed over the last few decades that have influenced the strong opposition to brexit to be found in the borderlands of northern ireland, as first seen in the 2016 vote to remain in the eu.5 politically and economically, the eu, through direct and indirect funding and political support, helped to broker the gfa, reinvigorate northern ireland’s infrastructure, revitalize the economy, and liberalize political culture across the whole island, leading to greater political empowerment and a more equitable justice system for groups who had long argued that the northern ireland statelet, established in 1921, was sectarian, racist and patriarchal. european integration has also allowed irish nationalists and republicans a greater presence and voice on the global scene, where they have continued their struggle for human rights and against the injustices which in their view they suffered at the hands of unionists in a british colonial state (wilson 2019). the gfa of 1998 helped to create new avenues for cross-border and transnational governance between the roi and uk and between northern ireland and other uk regions. these new lines of cooperation and communication have brought the relevant parties closer together on matters related to trade, business development, food safety, agriculture, health, transport, education, and the environment. the northern ireland borderlands have seen great improvements in tourism, agricultural efficiency and marketing, local community cultural programs, and local, regional and transnational networking (wilson 2000a, 2007). in the eu funding cycle of 2014-2020, northern ireland farmers alone will have received, through eu guaranteed prices, markets and subsidies, approximately €2.3 billion, and the eu was committed overall to investments of €3.5 billion, in a region of 1.8 million people (eurolink 2018). perhaps most important to the borderlands of northern ireland is the eu’s programme for peace and reconciliation, which from 1995 to 2013 injected €1.5 billion into the border counties of northern ireland and the roi (mccall 2014, 207), and in 2014-2020 was expected to have brought €229 million to the region. this peace dividend has been a symbol of the joint commitment by the eu, uk and roi to economic and social development in northern ireland in general, and to cross-community dialogue and cooperation between nationalists and unionists in northern ireland. it is safe to say that brexit has come to symbolize very different forms of political and economic pragmatism and realism in northern ireland, in moves that are sure to subvert so much that was accomplished over the last generation that has achieved some degree of greater integration of polity, economy and society on the island of ireland. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 39 brexit matters beyond ireland brexit has been perceived, feared and experienced in the northern ireland borderlands as a matter fundamental to future government, governance, economic development, civil and human rights, and national and european identity. as such it is also widely perceived there as being too significant to be bounded as a wholly, or even a mainly, internal affair, of importance in the uk and, perhaps to a lesser extent, in neighboring ireland. the people of the south armagh borderlands, including local community leaders, politicians, party activists, civil servants, business people and farmers, have also recognized brexit’s transnational and international dimensions, and have raised with me how brexit’s effects will have an impact in many european locales outside of ireland and britain. in this regard, and borrowing from the expressed critiques and concerns of brexit as a european phenomenon which i encountered in northern ireland, it is worth considering whether brexit will affect other european borderlands in terms of the neo-liberalization of the state, the rise of new neo-nationalists movements, the heightened sensitivity to issues regarding security, and the role brexit may play concerning changing issues of european identity. in regard to the last issue, and based on my research in northern ireland, it seems prudent to ask if brexit will have any particular salience elsewhere in europe when examining issues of political identity at and across international borders. this might be of continuing significance when matters of national identity, ethnic affiliation, social commensality and economic cooperation and competition are seen to play roles in integrating, differentiating and dividing borderland communities, both within nation-states and across borderlines. simply put, the question posed to me by south armagh borderlanders, and one i think has salience in other regions of europe, is: will brexit matter in the lives of many diverse peoples, from the urals to iceland, from iberia to karelia, including border residents, workers and travelers, in ways perhaps mirroring what brexit has wrought in the northern ireland borderlands? perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in areas of longstanding ethnic and national tensions, in regions such as eastern and southeastern europe, where, for example, constituent nations seceded from the yugoslavian union a generation before brexit (hayden 2020), and where today many historical and contemporary forces continue to revise collective notions of how hard and how soft international borders and border peoples can be. but what will kickstart or motor identity change, political allegiances and electoral and legislation support for european membership and integration, in any particular place in europe and across international borders? brexit is sure to have an effect on regional economic development across the continent, and the evidence for this is growing (henry and smith 2021). brexit has already had an impact on direct foreign investment into europe, with investors like japan moving out of the british market in favor of new continental opportunities, if the location and dimensions of japanese investment is an indication (cieślik and ryan 2021). many in europe will feel the impact of brexit on banking and other financial centers, with some apparent winners, such as amsterdam and dublin, at the expense of london, reflecting at least some fragmentation in financial services in the near future (heneghan and hall 2021). brexit has also highlighted issues anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 40 of exclusion and inclusion in regard to national and european identities. while in northern ireland there has been increasing evidence that, at least in irish nationalist areas, both national and european identities can nest easily with each other (wilson 2020b), supporting a growing atmosphere of “banal europeanism” (cram 2009), euroskepticism and a rejection of alleged eu interference in everyday life seems to be rising at a rate in some locales in central and eastern europe that may dwarf any pro-eu sentiments like those i have witnessed in south armagh. however, conclusions such as these, as reached by ethnographers such as me, even if based on a generation of research, must face the reality of the emotional impact and residue of events and processes like brexit, particularly on the dialogue between and among regions, nations, states and the eu. because it is apparent to many of its critics, whether nominal supporters or opponents, that the overall course of european integration is twisty and fragile, it is equally apparent that perturbations such as covid and brexit bear continuous and multidimensional surveillance. brexit may come to symbolize one aberrant event in the european integration process of ever closer union, or it may have greater, as yet unknown, significance. as robert hayden (2020) recently suggested, the impulse to leave the wider political union that was yugoslavia had many shortand long-term causes, some of which did not seem so significant in their first realization. at the heart of brexit is the continuing love and hate relationship europeans have with their own nationalisms and regionalisms (hedetoft 2020), all of which have related border dimensions. while the brexit negotiations between the eu and the uk have in many respects been concluded in 2021, many matters regarding trade remain outstanding. this became apparent in the emotional wrangling over the uk-eu deals on covid vaccine (landler 2021), an example of many other trading tensions that arose seemingly before the metaphorical ink on the agreements regarding the uk’s departure dried. while some matters seemed to have been agreed to the satisfaction of all parties, the trade dispute over vaccine highlighted too that even northern ireland’s status as a liminal borderland between the eu and the uk will be a constant source of debate and negotiation going forward. this leaves northern ireland in a state it is well used to, as a political football to be passed back and forth within and between the british, irish and eu governments, and various constituencies within northern ireland, as evident in the continuing social unrest among members of the unionist community in northern ireland over the single market border in the irish sea, established as part of the brexit deal between the uk and the eu. it is not surprising that my research, and a vast range of journalist and governmental assessment, concludes that brexit is a matter of significant daily concern in the borderlands of northern ireland today, and promises to continue as such for the foreseeable future. these concerns about brexit involve the potential if not probable decline in economic well-being, as part of the predicted changes in levels and types of governmental subvention and direct foreign investment, the diminishing if not the loss of the freedoms associated with the eu single market and customs union, and the mobility of labor as european citizens. brexit also threatens to transform the transnational governance that has for the last generation helped maintain the peace.6 anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 41 brexit is an irish and british crisis, not unlike other crises that have beset the course of european integration since its formal beginnings in the 1950s. brexit is also a signpost on that journey, highlighting for many people in northern ireland how the eu has been a palpable force in their everyday lives. brexit already seems to be yielding a sense of loss that borderlanders with whom i have interacted these past few summers fear will grow with time. in the northern ireland borderlands brexit is clearly perceived as a crisis for ireland, but also one for europe (wilson 2010). they are aware that brexit has become a sign of the times to many other european peoples, especially those who have become more euroskeptical, and more dissatisfied with the eu’s failure to reduce income inequalities in and among the member states, and raise their incomes and standard of living. this dissatisfaction has been intensified by the recent jolts to european integration delivered by the migration crisis, the covid pandemic, and brexit, which overall have greatly endangered many national and transnational notions of solidarity and democracy (hadjimichalis 2021). this distancing from the people, centers and tenets of european integration has obviously exacerbated some longstanding opposition to eu membership to be found in some more recent member states since their accession, such as in bulgaria (ilieva and wilson 2011), and in longer serving members, as may be witnessed in greek moves to leave the eu in their own version of ‘grexit’ (petrakos and sotiriou 2021), and in the current (october 2021) row between the eu and poland. the “exititis” about which hayden (2020) cautions us all may be catching, in the brexit political pandemic that has drawn many peoples and governments back to the perceived necessity of harder borders and even harder national regimes. conclusion in a recent publication i argued that brexit should matter to ethnographers and anthropologists elsewhere in europe, beyond the borders of the uk and ireland (wilson 2020a). less clear to me is the impact brexit will have on border and other communities in the eu and its neighbors. while brexit has caused a seismic shift in internal relations within, and external relations between, the uk and roi, the question remains as to its repercussions across europe, within and beyond the eu. while many specific brexit effects may be obscure at this stage, it is already certain that they will affect global geopolitics and geo-economics in a variety of significant ways. while the overall ‘brexit effects’ in the borderlands of northern ireland, particularly in south armagh, have been immediate, emotional, and deep, it is also apparent that in many if not most parts of the wider europe many people have been relatively unconcerned and unaffected, seeing brexit as largely a foreign matter internal to the uk and/or a matter for european elites. i wager that the people of the borderlands of eastern and southeastern europe, like many other peoples in southern, central and northern europe, do not see brexit as a matter of concern. but this notion reflects something a shopkeeper said to me in armagh in 2019, when he lamented the probability that brexit would lead to a return of a hard border, which in his words would ‘bring back the fences that will keep out the tourists.’ when i mentioned in response that i had recently returned from a research trip to anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 42 the finnish-russian borderlands, he opined that brexit was not the only source of fences going up, and he concluded that ‘even in a democracy you sometimes need fences, so why should anyone outside ireland worry about brexit?’ this article has cautioned against this skeptical stance, and calls for more vigilance outside the uk about brexit. brexit is part of a wider continental movement among many peoples of various political persuasions to take back control from ‘europe’ in order to regain or bolster a perceived loss of national sovereignty. these issues, related to national concerns about migration, citizenship and state roles in safeguarding security and national welfare, are the veritable stuff of borderland life, the lives of borderlanders, and the role the border plays in national imaginaries. at the very least the contradictions represented by the brexit process contribute to the already complicated contradictions of region, nation and state that bedevil all european borders (anderson and o’dowd 1999). with illustrations from northern ireland, this article has suggested some ways in which brexit may have significance beyond the borders of the uk because it has highlighted many of the forces which will infuse matters of national and european integration and division across the continent. while the eu has played a positive role in so much that matters in everyday life in the northern ireland borderlands, the eu as a capitalist generator of neoliberalization may be having an equally negative effect in borderlands elsewhere in europe. but the multiple dimensions of european integration are often in stark form in borderlands, and in this article i question to what extent brexit will be seen less as a british and more as a european phenomenon in the future. the irish border has for a century been a thorny issue for britain. brexit has now made the irish border an eu problem, and brexit an issue beyond britain and its borders. while brexit will now entail a ‘re-bordering’ of the northern ireland border region after decades of “de-bordering” (anderson 2018), it will also intensify the relocation of other european borders, continuing processes that predated it (green 2013). only time will tell what role brexit will play in rebordering or de-bordering the regions, nations and states of eastern europe. notes 1 this article considers some ways that ethnographers of european borders might benefit from a closer look at what brexit has done and what it means in the northern ireland borderlands. it and i owe a debt to the organizers and leaders of the konitsa summer school in the anthropology of the balkans, co-sponsored by the border crossings network, where i presented a first version of this paper in 2017. my sincere and warm thanks to all those who participated in that summer school, including faculty, administrators and students, but my particular thanks are due to professor vasilis nitsiakos and dr. ioannis manos for their guidance, patience and overall exemplary hospitality. my thanks go also to my co-editor of this special issue of aeer, davide n. carnevale, and to the journal’s referees who recommended changes to this article that substantially improved it. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 43 2 for a review of how brexit has been perceived among british people in the uk and elsewhere in europe, see macclancy (2019, 369). brexit also presents major problems to european citizens and other migrants in and to the uk (reed-danahay 2020), who have had many similar, and some dissimilar, ideas about brexit to those of their british neighbors. 3 this article is intended as an introduction to some of the issues that are of concern to borderlanders in northern ireland in regard to brexit. it is not a comprehensive analysis of my ethnographic research on brexit in the region, which is ongoing and at this point as open-ended as brexit itself. nonetheless, this essay is based on approximately 54 interviews i conducted, in semistructured and conversational environments in the summers of 2016 to 2019, with northern ireland elected representatives, party officers, activists and supporters of sinn féin (32 of the interviews conducted) and the democratic unionist party (8). these discussions also included other residents and citizens of northern ireland who did not identify with those two parties or support them in any formal or public role. this research relied too on contacts i made in previous projects in these borderlands. in 2016-2019 my research included elected government representatives, political party members, farmers and their families, shopkeepers/publicans, professionals in service-related positions (such as solicitors, financial advisors, clergy), the workers and managers of a major heritage/community center, and other residents of the border region, some of whom were blue collar employees or on the dole. i also acknowledge with thanks that the research on which this article is based was funded by a mileur fellowship of harpur college of binghamton university (summers of 2016 and 2017), and by the wenner gren foundation for anthropological research (summer, 2019). 4 the two principal communities (coulter 1999) in northern ireland are usually identified as irish nationalists and british unionists. the former identifies mostly with the roman catholic church and faith, the latter with various forms of protestantism. in south armagh most nationalists have supported in some ways irish republicans, some of whom in the past have used violence to attempt to achieve the political unity of the irish nation. the largest and most significant irish nationalist paramilitary group is the irish republican army (ira). british unionists want to keep northern ireland a constituent region of the uk. loyalists are those unionists who are loyal to the british crown and way of life, and their associated paramilitary groups also adopted violence, but in their case as a strategy to maintain the union of northern ireland and the rest of the uk. 5 on 23 june 2016 in a close vote the people of the uk in a national referendum elected to leave the eu. this vote for ‘brexit’, i.e., the british exit from the eu of 28 member states, revealed major regional differences in british responses to the ‘europe’ of the eu and to the forces of europeanization it has brought. scotland, northern ireland and the london capital region voted to remain in the eu while most of the rest of england and wales voted to leave. since 2016 northern ireland has been at the center of the debate on the shape of the uk after brexit. 6 for analyses of these developments in economics and politics in northern ireland that are linked to european integration, see o’dowd and mccall 2008; shirlow and coulter 2014; morrow and byrne 2017; mccall 2001, 2011, 2014; mcgowan and o’connor 2004; murphy 2018). anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 44 references anderson, james. 2018. “ireland’s borders, brexit centre-stage: a commentary.” space and polity 22, no. 2: 255-269. anderson, james, and liam o’dowd. 1999. “borders, border regions and territoriality: contradictory meanings, changing significance.” regional studies 33, no. 7: 593-604. cieślik, andrzej, and michael ryan. 2021. “brexit and the location of japanese direct investment in european regions.” european urban and regional studies 28, no. 1: 66-73. coulter, colin. 1999. contemporary northern irish society: an introduction. london: pluto press. cram, laura. 2009. “introduction: banal europeanism: european union identity and national identities in synergy.” nations and nationalism 15, no. 1: 101-108. eurolink. 2018. “eu funding in northern ireland.” accessed 10 october 2018. www.eurolink-eu.net/eu-funding-2/ green, sarah. 2013. “borders and the relocation of europe.” annual review of anthropology 42: 345-361. hadjimichalis, costis. 2021. “an uncertain future for the post-brexit, post-covid-19 european union.” european urban and regional studies 28, no. 1: 8-13. hayden, robert m. 2020. “exititis in europe? yugoslavia as the first european disunion.” ethnologia europaea 50, no. 2: 49-61. hedetoft, ulf. 2020. “brexit: a valediction. forbidding mourning.” ethnologia europaea 50, no. 2: 80-87. heneghan, martin, and sarah hall. 2021. “the emerging geography of european financial centres: fragmentation in the european union and concentration in the uk?” european urban and regional studies 28, no. 1: 40-46. henry, nick, and adrian smith. 2021. “europe and/or the uk: post-brexit urban and regional development futures. a special issue.” european urban and regional studies 28, no. 1: 3-7. ilieva, polya, and thomas m. wilson. 2011. “euroscepticism and europeanization at a margin of europe.” anthropological journal of european cultures 20, no. 2: 87-113. kürti, lászló. 2020. “orbánism: the culture of illiberalism in hungary.” ethnologia europaea 50, no. 2: 62-79. landler, mark. 2021. “johnson wins vaccine spat with e.u., but a struggle over northern ireland looms.” new york times, february 4, 2021. www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/world/europe/johnson-uk-eu-vaccine.html macclancy, jeremy. 2019. “before and beyond brexit: political dimensions of uk lifestyle migration.” journal of the royal anthropological institute (n.s.) 25, no. 2: 368-389. mccall, cathal. 2001. “the production of space and the re-alignment of identity in northern ireland.” regional and federal studies 11, no. 2: 1-21. mccall, cathal. 2011. “culture and the irish border: spaces for conflict transformation.” cooperation and conflict 46, no. 2: 201-221. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 45 mccall, cathal. 2014. “european union cross-border cooperation and conflict amelioration.” space and polity 17, no. 2: 197-216. mcgowan, lee, and julia s. o’connor. 2004. “exploring eurovisions: awareness and knowledge of the european union in northern ireland.” irish political studies 19, no. 2: 21-42. morrow, duncan, and jonny byrne. 2017. “northern ireland after brexit: a fragile peace put in jeopardy.” london school of economics brexit blog, january 11, 2017. blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2017/01/11/northern-ireland-after-brexit-a-fragile-peace-put-in-jeopardy/ murphy, mary c. 2018. europe and northern ireland’s future: negotiating brexit’s unique case. newcastle upon tyne: agenda publishing. nitsiakos, vassilis. 2010. on the border: transborder mobility, ethnic groups and boundaries on the albanian-greek frontier. berlin: lit verlag. o’dowd, liam, and cathal mccall. 2008. “escaping the cage of ethno-national conflict in northern ireland: the importance of transnational networks.” ethnopolitics 7, no. 1: 81-99. petrakos, george, and alexandra sotiriou. 2021. “grexit and brexit: incidents, accidents and wake-up calls on the bumpy road of european (dis)integration.” european urban and regional studies 28, no. 1: 20-25. reed-danahay, deborah. 2020. “brexit, liminality, and ambiguities of belonging: french citizens in london.” ethnologia europaea 50, no. 2: 16-31. shirlow, peter, and colin coulter. 2014. “northern ireland: twenty years after the ceasefires.” studies in conflict and terrorism 39, no. 9: 713-719. wilson, thomas m. 2000. “the obstacles to european union regional policy in the northern ireland borderlands.” human organization 59, no. 1: 1-10. wilson, thomas m. 2007. “europeanisation, identity and policy in the northern ireland borderlands.” in geopolitics of european union enlargement: the fortress empire, edited by warwick armstrong and james anderson. london: routledge. wilson, thomas m. 2010. “crisis: on the limits of european integration and identity in northern ireland.” in human nature as capacity: transcending discourse and classification, edited by nigel rapport. new york and oxford: berghahn books. wilson, thomas m. 2019. “old and new nationalisms in the brexit borderlands of northern ireland.” in cycles of hatred and rage: what right-wing extremists in europe and their parties tell us about the u.s., edited by katherine c. donahue and patricia heck, 25-51. london: palgrave macmillan. wilson, thomas m. 2020a. “anthropological approaches to why brexit matters. introduction to special issue.” ethnologia europaea 50, no. 2: 7-15. wilson, thomas m. 2020b. “fearing brexit: the changing face of europeanization in the borderlands of northern ireland.” ethnologia europaea 50, no. 2: 32-48. sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 28 border-crossing as a strategy of daily survival: the odessa-chisinau elektrichka abel polese (abelpolese@yahoo.co.uk) ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, paris, france introduction few things are more indicative of the drama of the post-soviet transition than the odessachisinau train, where a ‘separate’ world with its own economic system has developed spontaneous institutions for making up for the lack of state assistance. the elektrichka train travelling between odessa and chisinau is a microcosm that incorporates many relevant aspects of post-soviet societies; from the political struggle for power, corruption and ethno-political clashes, to shadow economy practices and border problems. the peculiarities of this train are numerous. first of all there is the geographic location of the railway line that unites moldova and ukraine passing through the separatist republic of transdnistria (not recognized at an international level but de facto a state between moldova and ukraine). secondly, the border crossing itself: apart from some administrative changes, at the time of the research moldovans still considered odessa the place to go for purchasing goods, as they did in the past, when odessa was the largest soviet port on the black sea. finally, there is the informal economy reigning supreme due to a lack of a strong state that cannot provide security to those needing a more reliable income besides their meagre or nonexistent wage. the aim of this paper is to show the socioeconomic function of the elektrichka and give an analysis of its hidden dynamics. the paper will focus on three of the most significant aspects related to this train trip: borders, economy/trade and corruption. after a general description of the train trip, the following section focuses on border problems between ukraine and moldova and on the ambiguity of the transdnistrian border. then the problem of trade and the shadow economy will be considered in the context of the elektrichka, using previous literature and my own analysis of fieldwork data. finally, the controversial issue of corruption will be described in its local forms, including its positive and negative aspects. i suggest that, before stigmatising corruption as an evil to eradicate, one should reckon with the fact that a “little” corruption may guarantee an equilibrium and an even distribution of money availing the theoretical framework given by rasanayagam (2003) who suggests that corruption has to be contextualised before being classified as a negative practice. in this case, it is argued, restricted illegalities make up for state failures, allowing people to survive. border management is viewed as a failure—of both national and international actors in carrying out negotiations to end an ongoing conflict. finally, petty smuggling will be presented as a market regulator able to elude the protectionist policy of local monopolists who operate to the detriment of consumers and prevent new investors from entering the market. at the end of each trading trip, a (relatively) positive effect is achieved: officers and traders make financial gains and consumers have access to better quality goods. the article is based on participant observation carried out in the spring of 2004, complimented by informal interviews with local informants. given the sensitivity of the issue, i have preserved the anonymity of informants and omitted any information that could be dangerous to the concerned actors. a running bazaar odessa railway station, 11.30 am. the sun is shining on people and trains while a crowd overloaded with luggage is gathered on the last platform, leaving the rest of the train station almost empty. despite the heterogeneity of the crowd, a main characteristic is immediately remarkable: the babushka.37 these old ladies jump back and forth with unexpected vitality carrying huge quantities of goods. bags full of coffee, flour, cucumbers and cabbages are tied down on improvised trolleys and thrown onboard. people cry, argue or even fight for a place. this unexpected phenomenon awoke curiosity in me as a casual observer (which i was at that time) that only increased as i discovered that it was the train i had to take: the elektrichka travelling from odessa to chisinau. an elektrichka, in soviet terminology, is a small train, with only a fourth class38, covering a short distance very slowly. in this case it covers the 180 km separating odessa from chisinau in about five hours. what was an internal train commuting between two soviet cities is nowadays, as a result of the collapse of the ussr, an international train that several hundred people use everyday. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 29 the train travels to chisinau via the transdnistrian republic. for this reason russian and romanian speakers are evenly distributed but hardly anybody seems to be travelling for any other reason apart from “business”. actually trade is the quintessence of the elektrichka whose function is that of feeding people on both sides of the border. hum, i am sorry…where is the border? “les frontières sont des structures spatiales élémentaires, de forme linéaire а la fonction de discontinuité géopolitique et de marquage, de repère, sur les trois registres du réel, du symbolique et de l’imaginaire.” (foucher 1991:38)39 less than two percent of the european borders determined during the 20th century are the result of a plebiscite, warns foucher (1991) and the ukrainianmoldovan border most definitely does not belong to this two percent. ruré reports that a “socialist soviet republic of moldova was born on the 2nd of august 1940 merging central bessarabia and a large part of the moldovan ssr. the other part was attributed to ukrainian rss, that incorporated the north and south of bessarabia, the hertza district and the north of bukovina” (ruré 1999:228, translated by polese). the line separating ukraine and moldova has few of the qualities of a ‘traditional’ border and it is much more imaginary than real, to recall foucher. i experienced the mobility of the moldovan border during my first trip on the elektrichka, in march 2004. on the ukrainian side control procedures are rather normal for a former soviet republic; the train arrives in razdelna, passports are checked, custom officers screen people40 and the train starts again. the question is: where is the moldovan border? after the ukrainian border the train stops again in kuchurgan, situated on the territory of the separatist republic of transdnistria. the republic pledges a soviet identity and strives to continue the soviet tradition of territorial continuity and open borders. many citizens still travel on soviet passports as the transdnistrian passport, if ever issued, would have no international value. no customs officer shows up and people literally jump out of the train and rush out of the station. i discovered the reason behind this during an informal interview with a border official in chisinau: to check on people entering the administrative territory of moldova would mean further official recognition of the separatist republic, something moldova is not prepared to do. nonetheless, in order to fight against the contraband problem, the chisinau government decided, on 1 june 1999, to establish 17 permanent custom posts and 30 mobile posts along the inner moldovan administrative border and also along the border with ukraine but, as neukrich (2001) reported, these posts did not seem very effective. the fact that various political groups/classes in chisinau profit from contraband and illegal trafficking might be an additional incentive for not having rigid customs controls between transdnistria and moldova. to complicate the whole issue, sporadic actions to regularize the situation were unsuccessful. the economic sanctions imposed by chisinau on transdnistrian goods for failure to respect minimal standards of quality resulted in a blockade of the railway, the closure of romanian schools in transdnistria and the cut off of gas and electricity supplies to moldova (the main supplier is the plant in kuchurgan in transdnistria (dogaru 2004)). a palliative faced by chisinau was to place customs officials along the train line to control, if not people, at least goods. from the first moldovan station, officials are liable to enter the train and check anyone, though they might not be officially allowed to carry out a complete border control and actually passports are not checked41. this broadly reminds one of the eu and schengen regime. no official border control is recognised42 between the schengen states; nevertheless fear of illegal migration often results in random controls, for example, on the movement of cars between states. a question at this point might be: how many borders does one have to cross on the route odessachisinau? the answer depends on the means of transport! the chisinau-odessa trip by coach43 shows a different version of the borders from that experienced when crossing by train. the fact that even fixed entities like borders are experienced in a mobile way is indicative of the weak role of the moldovan state after independence, as locals are able to manipulate it for their own benefits. no official control to leave the moldovan administrative territory exists but, to enter tiraspol, the capital of transdnistria, people have to pass an ‘imaginary’ border not recognised on any world map. then they will have their passport checked, but not stamped, because their country does not enjoy international recognition. however, people will be asked to buy a talon, in this case a piece of paper with an unofficial stamp on it, for the price of seven lei (half a euro) to be presented when leaving the ‘country’ as evidence that a ‘tax’ has been paid. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 30 a border official checks the passports44 and orders all those not living in the republic or travelling on a russian passport to buy a talon. the diligent traveller has to go to the nearby office, pay seven lei and get the piece of paper that is produced when passing the border again, be that the border leading to ukraine or the one back to moldova. failure to produce the talon might result in a ‘soviet fine’, or better still, a bribe. on the ukrainian side there is another paradox. ukraine has waived registration for foreigners45, a procedure still practiced in other former ussr countries, but it has introduced a registration (immigration card) at the border. according to the new rules of 2001, foreign passport holders must declare their destination and address of stay. i have witnessed several times the awkwardness of both border officers and passengers as the latter indicated the length of their stay at the train station as ‘a few hours’46. foucher (1991:47) states quite rightly: “...la frontière marque le point ou expire la compétence territoriale”47. if there is an exception to this statement, it is represented by the transdnistrian border. the starting point of transdnistrian and moldovan territorial competence is unclear or even mobile depending on several factors. any existence of territorial competence is challenged by the ongoing conflict48. the shock of the collapse of the ussr is still perceivable in the former bessarabian region. the repartition of power from moscow to local centres (kiev, chisinau) was not accepted by some elites, especially in the tiraspol region, where russian elites had been forming since the 1970s and more recently have proposed themselves as an alternative to the moldovan elites in chisinau. this resulted in armed conflict in 1992, as well as the presence of the russian army and an informal division of moldova, that boosted the economic crisis of postsocialist societies in the 1990s while generating new borders not recognized by the international community. it has also affected the life of locals who, despite the conflict, have to find the means to survive. the next section is dedicated to the way locals organized themselves to make up for the lack of state provision of security and stability. smugglers or traders? as papava and khaduri (1997) remarked, external border controls in communist countries were tight, but the controls were designed to detect primarily political and criminal activities (such as involvement in drugs and arms dealing). in countries that have undergone postsocialist transformations the type of smuggling has changed—increasingly including ordinary commercial and seconded goods49, which have plagued the soviet economy for many years. the result was a huge volume of trade between and inside post-soviet countries50. manifestations of illegal trade were often punished as individual asocial inclinations. sometimes they were given political importance, as in the khrushchev era when reports of corruption increased. illegal trade was also ignored as ‘beneficial’ for the economy, during the brezhnev era (werner 2002). few raised questions concerning the roots of the problem. odessa, the biggest commercial port in ukraine, has always provided its inhabitants with a strong local identity which was fostered by the economic opportunities offered by the city51 far superior to those of the rest of the country. for example, odessa was home to some of the most prestigious soviet champagnes (frantsuskyj bulvar, odessa), considered an elite present; it was also the place where the biggest open-air market in ukraine (sedmoj kilometer, seventh kilometer) operated. given its dimension as a port, and the presence of nationalities that are able to use informal networks to spot any kind of good52, at the end of perestroika it was common knowledge that anything, from meat to guns and bombs, could be found at the legendary odessa bazaar (privoz)53. odessa-chisinau has always been a route of intense, and not necessarily legal, trade and its importance has been developing in the course of the years as a result of the economic evolution (and involution) of the two countries. even though official figures are hard to find and, to my knowledge, no research on such a topic has been carried out, one can put together a picture of the evolution of the trade between the two cities from the history of odessa’s markets. for instance, sedmoj kilometer, was established as a local market situated in the centre of the city. eventually it was moved out to the moldavianka, one of the oldest parts of odessa and later, when its size reached the current one, was relocated once more, this time to outside the city. this allowed for expansion, enabling the trading of a larger quantity of goods, but also made it easier to escape strict state control. as a result, after 1960 sedmoj kilometer became practically illegal, but it kept active and functioned as the biggest smuggling market of the ussr (nikolski 2005). it is therefore conceivable that, given the short distance, moldovans have a long history of trading with odessa in order to obtain what was lacking in the rest of the region and what odessa sailors and traders were able to ship into their city through their networks54. in recent times, anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 31 two phenomena have increased the variety of goods purchasable in odessa: the opening up of ukraine to foreign imports, which started with perestroika, and the overproduction in some neighbouring countries, especially turkey, of clothes that could easily be shipped across the black sea. at the same time, as crowter (1995:328) remarked, moldova has suffered from a dramatic economic decline in the first half of the 1990s, partly because “...moldova is dependent on external sources for coal, oil and natural gas. as energy resources became scarce, industrial enterprises were forced to reduce production”. although nowadays ukraine cannot be considered an economic paradise by moldovans, the city of odessa is a completely different story. the market sedmoj kilometer, named so because it is situated seven kilometres outside of odessa, is by far the biggest trading centre in ukraine. it hosts 2,000 sellers and around 8,000 people buy goods there daily. it is open 24 hours a day; during the day time normal goods are traded while at night time the typology of goods traded is unknown to most. low cost goods are received mainly from turkey and china, but also from russia and poland55. the rental of a container to store goods can cost from 1,500 us dollars or upwards. as a result, although numerous people go to the markets simply to shop, there are others –and this is more relevant to this analysis who live on the daily export and smuggling of goods. the sedmoj kilometer market provides many of the wares that are transported by the elektrichka. from the first moment one climbs on, the train shows the features of a moving bazaar. at the odessa railway station the congestion is so bad that railway officials have to filter the passengers approaching the train and to divide them into several waves. everybody has at least one trolley overloaded with boxes filled with recent purchases. once people reach the train they run for the best places to put down their heavy luggage aggressive behaviour and even petty physical confrontation, sometimes culminating into a slap or a little more, are not uncommon at this time. as the train leaves, repacking procedures begin. from the departure of the train until it reaches the ukrainian border (the station of razdelna) most people mix up, hide and change the composition of their boxes. the aim is to hide valuable items purchased under food or socks. normally, people trade in clothes as they are easier to transport and allow a higher profit, given that the choice on the moldovan market is very limited. but in the boxes there might be any other item56. one of my informants, whom i met several times during my trips, spelled out some of the products he intended to buy in odessa—margarine, krabovy palochky [crab meat] and mayonnaise— because he could find them at lower prices in odessa. he used to travel every other day to odessa and had already a retailer in chisinau so that, once he returned, he could sell everything immediately and rest for the remaining part of the day. this activity is completely beyond state control but limited in size and, therefore, of little interest to moldovan officers57. nevertheless, the man took the precaution of getting off one station before the main chisinau station in order to avoid possible customs control officers. the types of goods introduced into a country varies according to which particular border is being crossed. the polish-ukrainian and polishbelorussian trains are opened like tuna cans as officials search for cigarettes. the buses running between ukraine and poland operate on a system of sharing out the goods, although also there are strategies for hiding items in the usual ways.58 in the ukraine-moldovian-transdnistrian case, neither alcohol nor tobacco is involved and trains are not searched. the system is much simpler and everything takes place during daylight hours. after passing the ukrainian border, as mentioned, there is no real moldovan border but officials are susceptible to jump on the train anytime. the first exodus happens in the moldovan (actually transdnistrian) station of kuchurgan, the first station after the border. here people leave the train and run out of the station, which is quite small (the street is some 30 meters away from the train). there is general concern that, should local officials have had a bad day, they might want to stop to check somebody; this is why the sooner one leaves the station, the better. at the same time, some other people without luggage remain seated in the train. most of them are relatives or simply partners of those carrying the goods. they pretend to be together and divide the quantity of goods being carried amongst four or five persons. from this moment until chisinau, it is a matter of negotiation. people will have to play ‘the poor’, ‘the ignorant’, and ‘the naïve’ and pretend that the quantity of goods they carry with them is fair – though there is no official definition of ‘fair’. otherwise they will be obliged to leave the train and negotiate with the officer59. it may be interesting to note that in this process, with several officials going around the train several times, neither i nor my passport were ever checked. the first way to categorize this phenomenon may be to see it as smuggling, but the situation is more complicated. recalling the concept of informal anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 32 economy used by keith hart (1973, cited in rasanayagam 2003) to refer to the irregular income earning opportunities of the urban poor in ghana, rasanayagam (2003) this warns us of the difficulty of making a distinction between state and shadow economies, particularly in the ex-ussr. this is because, depending on one another, the state and shadow economy form two aspects of a single economy and, actually, each operation may involve both legal and illegal aspects. indeed, it is impossible to operate completely within the law all of the time (2003:6). the boundary between legal and illegal is not sharp, especially in the former ussr. the perception people have of what is legal and illegal is determined by morality and often localized. therefore any such phenomena should be contextualized and western definitions avoided. to further complicate the picture, there is the political and economic function covered by the elektrichka. papava and khaduri (1997:30-31) remark that amongst those who call themselves entrepreneurs in post communist countries, many are former party figures and former directors in whose behaviour it is very difficult to find the merits possessed by western type entrepreneurs. they are able to carry out political lobbying to obtain favourable conditions for their work; and they are able to hamper competition in the country, aware that this would entail the arrival of quality goods on ‘their’ market, which is dominated by ‘their’ seconded goods60. smugglers address this discrepancy, making up for the low quality of goods and improving choices for customers, by breaking the circle of a seconded goods economy run by local entrepreneurs. in addition, trade-smuggling on the elektrichka has the function of making up for the failure of the state. the elektrichka is a breath of fresh air in the failure of post-mssr (moldovan socialist soviet republic) politicians to take care of their citizens. thanks to the elektrichka, people can still earn money despite unemployment. people can still find goods, despite shortages. barely legal actions have the function of cooling down the social climate and avoiding an extreme level of discontent that could cause further unrest. despite the fact that the shadow economy is negatively perceived by economists who see it as a loss for state finances, and by those who see it as fiscal fraud, contextualization shows the specificities of the elektrichka case. in this case, the shadow economy is the response of local traders to an imposed monopoly by local businessmen, characterised by a deficit of goods (especially quality goods), high prices and a lack of jobs. do you have a tomato? scenes of ‘legal’ corruption social scientists do not always agree on a definition for corruption. in anthropology there is the recent tendency to contextualize the exchange of goods or favours before labelling them as ‘corrupt’ acts, since in many non-western cultures gift exchange is basic to everyday relations and paves the way for economic networks. as werner (2002) has highlighted in her study on corruption in kazakhstan, it is not always easy to distinguish gifts from bribes, in whatever form they are presented. this is also the case with the elektrichka, which supports trading activities in the context of a moldovan state that is tacitly to blame for a lack of interest in the concerned regions and for living conditions that are so low that supplements to the salary or pension are necessary for survival. both state officials and ordinary people expect to benefit from the elektrichka. in examining widespread and explicit corruption it is useful to recall a case study analysed by temple and petrov (2004). they found that, contrary to the norm (where corruption is discovered, and people and institutions who are implicated are discredited), in russian educational institutions the “transparency” of the process of corruption, including sometimes even the setting of an official price list, is ‘not harmful’ for the corruption process. this is also the case with the elektrichka: the fact that everybody knows how things work is far from a hindrance. as wages are very low on both sides of the border, the situation is comfortable for the government and its employees: by tolerating widespread corruption, the ukrainian and moldovan states do not have to allocate large sums from the budget for the salary of state officials but, at the same time, as it is well known that the meagre salary will be topped up with additional “provisions”, it is still possible to recruit people to work on such a low wage. the ticket control is the first opportunity for ‘corruption’. the whole trip chisinau-odessa costs 13 hryvnia (around two euros) but one can get along with less by paying the ukrainian inspector and then the moldovan counterpart. the price varies according to the length of the route and for students there is a “special price”. on the ukranian side of the ukrainianmoldovan border, everything is relatively calm. if success in smuggling things into poland depends on the mood of the officers and the quantity of goods, here it is simpler, it depends on the price. it has been remarked that, whilst in the western world bribes are given for actions that the law does not allow, in the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 33 post-soviet case bribes in the great majority of instances are given for entirely lawful actions (papava & khaduri 1997:25). the customs officer goes back and forth handing out a customs declaration to those with luggage. the form will remain blank; its only function is to envelop the five hryvnia bills. a newcomer is rapidly integrated; he just has to ask what the price is and will be updated by more experienced colleagues. one bill for small luggage, more as the load increases. everybody hides most of the valuable goods under petty items such as paper or pencils. the trick here is to move objects around and convince officials that one has little (in value) in order to pay as little as possible. passport control moves along smoothly too but, as the holder of the only eu passport in the train, i had the honour of dealing with officers and speaking with them. normally they simulate a problem with the documents and expect you to offer money to ‘regulate’ the matter, but on one occasion the officer called over a colleague and they took me into an empty corridor and, while stamping my passport, asked for a present (prezent dlya pogranichnykh). i grabbed my stamped passport and returned to the carriage, not responding to the repeated requests that followed my retreat, a prezent? in a mixed tone of surprise and rage. the routine practice of “giving and taking” under communism has turned into often institutionalised, widespread corruption (temple & petrov 2004) reaching paradoxical levels in ukrainian society61 even though yushchenko, the newly elected president (2005), has promised to eradicate it. the moldovan side is more complicated. there is no checkpoint and people have to be ready to be checked at any time. boxes are distributed around the train with the hope that they remain unnoticed. another common strategy is to invite the whole family to share the purchases after the first moldovan station. the family beside me included: the grandmother, a relative who was not introduced to me and two nephews of around 16 years. they probably had different surnames in their passports in order to pass themselves off as strangers. nevertheless the officer in this case understood that they were together and, after long negotiations, directed them off the train. the elektrichka is, surprisingly, the safest and cheapest way to run this kind of business. transdnistrian officials are not involved in the process and this lowers the costs. the trip by car is perhaps more interesting as it opens different possibilities. several informants reported the level of corruption of transdnistrian officers as extremely high, this is why most of those going by bus to odessa come back by train, not wanting to risk travelling by bus with full bags. as suggested, institutionalised corruption helps to regulate the system. nevertheless, sometimes it may go too far, falling into a paradox and revealing the mere (and very human) wish to get easy extra money from the casual traveller. as one informant complained, border officers were capable of asking for anything they could take, and another reported the following conversation: “do you have, by chance, a dollar?” “no!” “a tomato?” “ ...no!” “a cucumber?” ... finally, i experienced, as have others, the threat of “pay or we will not let you pass”. in this game, is it possible to find out who is the victim and who is the perpetrator? using the threefold classification—victims, sources of corruption and accomplices—used by miller et al. (2000) and the observations made by temple and petrov (2004) concerning corruption in higher education institutions, citizens are not “victims.” rather, given the existence of a price list, they should be seen as accomplices. according to palmer (1983), we can define corruption as the “use of public office for private advantage”. temple and petrov (2004:86) have quite a radical approach to this. they refuse to acknowledge a grey area existing between legality and illegality; even ‘petty corruption’ is able to bring a nation to its knees. a more relative approach, that seems more appropriate to the moldovan context, is suggested by rasanayagam (2003) who reported for uzbekistan that, informally, some interviewees believed that a “little corruption” does not hurt anyone. moreover, we have a moral justification developed out of necessity, which is quite common to a number of cultures (some would argue to many cultures). in southern italian cultures, for instance, moral justification is given for all sorts of illegal acts on the basis that the concerned person has children to feed (chill й pat’ e’ creature, [he is a father]). this highlights similarities that putnam (1993) has also anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 34 explored.62 evidence suggests a fruitful comparison can be made with putnam (1993) who shows how the functioning of civil society may be hindered by preexisting kinship structures. to support this argument one can call upon harrison (1999), who reported that corruption in africa was considered by some social scientists as a mere infusion of a culture of traditional gift-giving into the bureaucracy following the logic of family, village or tribe loyalty. in the same way, corruption is not an example of the degradation of society, rather in the case of the elektrichka, it has a function of generating an independent, and uncontrollable, economic system in which all the actors are happy— with the result of limiting economic discontent and avoiding social tensions. the contextualization of ‘corruption’ leads to the understanding that the way the system is organized—informal exchanges, bribing, favours—is the best option given the national political and economic context, especially in the transdnistrian republic. in a country where the state and economic elites are more interested in the preservation and creation of their profits than in the welfare of people, where unemployment is high and wages are extremely low, condemning corruption has little meaning. in this case, where the state fails to protect its citizens, from (what in a western vision is labelled) ‘corruption’, such activities can be viewed as one way for a population to survive. ukrainian, moldovan and transdnistrian governments are unable to guarantee decent standards for their citizens who therefore have to work out their own ways to survive. conclusion in a situation of stalemate, where international actors are unable to intervene and local elites are glad to preserve the current status quo, the elektrichka may be understood as an example of “the best we can do given the current political situation”. in this respect, the elektrichka seems to be a theatre for a play with few losers. given the crystallisation of the moldovan crisis, when few people are willing, or allowed, to invest in moldova, goods are hard to find and money scarcely circulates, people have to find a way out. this situation is comfortable for political and economic elites concerned to keep control over the country or simply seeking new economic opportunities. border officers are also quite happy as they can receive some benefits and top up their salary, something they do out of necessity, living in one of the most depressed areas of the region. finally, ordinary people can break up the vicious circle of the crisis and introduce new goods and earn some money. nevertheless, as bovi (2003) remarked, the shadow economy is generally related to institutional failure. hence, in this case, there is a loser and this is the state itself. a weak state means uncontrolled revenues; no taxes paid on income; and, even more importantly, a distorted perception of the role of the state. the state is perceived as limiting initiative and activities and bringing no real advantage to the loyal citizen. as bovi (2003:67) notes, where the state is able to protect its citizens and offer some advantages and perspectives in exchange for loyalty, people would be more willing to act in the frame of legality. given the present situation in the region, this is still a faraway option in oldova and ukraine. in a region with strong emigration63, the elektrichka is to be seen as another strategy of survival for moldovans (as well as for the ukrainian officials) who cannot count on their state institutions. in transition countries such as ukraine and moldova, the dynamics hereby analyzed offer themselves to different interpretations. from the view of western political analysts, the weakness of the state (its inability to control economic and social processes) encourages the shadow economy, which in turn feeds corruption. this is viewed as problematic in that it brings no revenue to the state and prevents the state from securing decent life standards to its citizens. in an alternative vision, the weak state feeds a circle of smuggling and corruption, and can challenge its traditional responsibilities as welfare dispenser since it gives birth to a circle of functioning transactions where people themselves are the dispensers of welfare without passing through state channels; traders can earn what they need to eat; customs officers can round up their wages; and future purchasers can have access to goods that they would otherwise never get. given the delicateness of the issue it is up to the reader to avail which one of the two above mentioned interpretations reflects the realities of the elektrichka. notes 37 the literary translation of the word is grandmother, but in soviet terminology the word designates an elderly lady, normally over 50. after post soviet reforms such individuals have been struggling to make ends meet, living on the minimal pensions that are not sufficient for survival. often they have to invent other ways to top up their meager income. 38 in this train there are two kinds of fourth class. by paying one hryvnia (1 euro= 6,2 hryvnia in february 2006) people gained the right to sit in the tv wagon and watch old-fashioned action movies for five hours. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 35 39 ‘borders are elementary spatial structures of linear form with the function of geopolitical discontinuity and mark, reference, on the three registers of the real, symbolic and imaginary’ (author’s translation). 40 for a description of how this happens, see the section on corruption. 41 the first time i entered moldova i was shocked that as a westerner i was not checked. i had to run after the first official i saw to get my passport stamped and, even so, the result was a lazy glance at my passport and no stamp. failure to produce evidence of legal entrance into the territory can result in a fine in other former soviet republics whereas in moldova this does not seem to be the case. 42 the most common exception is a temporary state of emergency that one state can call upon. in such a case, the state is entitled to re-introduce border checks temporarily. one of the most recent cases is the border control which was carried out in portugal during the european cup, but random controls on cars and coaches often take place on route, for example, between bruxelles-paris. 43 i was informed that the trip by car is much more complicated as it involves police controls before and after the transdnistrian border. 44 in the case of a bus, the bus driver collects the money and hands it to a border official obtaining unofficial permission to pass the border. the impression i gained during my border crossings is that, even at the checkpoint, a sort of jungle law exists. those who are able to get the money from travellers will do it, regardless of hierarchies and role. i was once stopped by an official who did not want to let me pass as i refused to pay a bribe. then i met somebody less important who allowed me to pass for a much lower amount of money (8 euros). as he was starting the procedure, other people got interested and i heard a voice of another one saying “ya tozhe khochu babki” [i want the money too]. the translation of the word “babki” is not literally money but gives the sense). bribery has its specific rules in this part of the world; for instance officers never put the money into their pocket until they are alone so that they can always drop it on the floor if caught. 45registration in ukraine was required within three days of entering the country. the same practice is still valid in most cis countries. 46 it was also reported, a few years after the border was set up, that the situation was so unclear that a westerner could dare to go to ukraine from moldova and back without a visa. the number of westerners who used that means of transport from odessa is extremely small; therefore my attention is on the circulation of goods rather than persons. 47 ‘the border marks the point where the territorial competences expire’ (author’s translation). 48an analysis of the conflict between moldova and transdnistria goes beyond the competences of this paper. nevertheless it might be useful to recall that several scholars see the ‘artificiality’ of the conflict; kuzio (2004) wrote the conflict is not about ethnicity, as most russians do not live in transdnistria but in moldova. even in transdnistria, moldovans form the majority, although russian is the predominant language. as early as 1991 devetak (1991:130) notes that “ …the easiest way for some ethno or political elite to disguise its incompetence with regard to running the country is to create the stereotype that some other nation is the cause for all social, economic or other grievances of the members of their own nation, with the ruling elite being left as the sole defender of ‘their nation’ against the bad intentions of any kind of ‘other nations’”. in this case too, it appears that neither moldovan nor transdnistrian political elites are willing to give up part of the political and economic power obtained in an attempt to find a solution. this is also the opinion of an osce observer in the region, neukirch (2001: 131), who states that transdnistria has become a ‘black hole’ in the region from where organized crime can operate, goods can be smuggled and money can be laundered. he stresses the economic advantages of having an anarchic area in moldova and highlights the fact that “influential figures in the security forces might well dare shop in chisinau today, but they would feel much more uneasy should a political settlement be reached” (2001:133). he concludes that osce offers have “failed to capture the interest of the current transdnistrian leaders and to address certain elite interests in chisinau” and “…only an economic crisis might help out” (2001: 133). 49 papava and khaduri state “…[seconded goods] are inferior, substandard and even unsafe products...by offering these pseudoproducts for lower prices, they (businessmen) capture considerable segments of the market and receive significant incomes, to the detriment of consumers’ interest.” (1997:30) 50 moldovans are not the only people using travelling abroad as a strategy to survive. malinovskaya (2003) discusses the same phenomenon in ukraine in “poezdki za granitsu kak strategiya vyzhivaniya v usloviyakh perekhodnogo perioda: opyt ukrainy” [journeys abroad as a survival strategy in transition conditions: the case of ukraine] in trudovaya anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 36 migratsiya v sng. sotsiyalnie i ekonomicheskie effekty. moskva. 51odessa was the city of opportunities, where people could feel at home regardless of their status and nationality and odessians are proud of the fact that the city, even in its darkest moments, was the best refurnished city in ukraine. the expression ‘odessa mama’ indicates that the city would feed anybody living in it, like a mother, and the popular quote 'mama grechanka, papa turek, ya odessity' (my mother is greek, my father is turkish, i am odessian) highlights the fact that ‘odessian is not a status, it is a nationality’ (personal communication). for a more detailed description of the economic opportunities provided by the city see herly (1987). 52the city has a tradition of trading: from its foundation -when greek and italians imposed themselves as important trading groups to the incoming jews, armenians and moldovans (herly 1987) and, more recently, turks. but any inhabitant of odessa is able to get what he needs, regardless of his/her nationality. 53 evidence is the odesskyj vorovanyj chaj: during soviet times the black tea used by millions of people was the classic georgian tea [gruzinskij chaj], while at the beginning of the 1990s it was possible to find tea produced in odessa through mixing the popular georgian tea with some quality tea imported from the east. 54 odessa’s markets were, and are, the place where any item can be found for sale if you are willing to pay. i have heard of japanese cars and motorcycles shipped for a few dollars and this is just the tip of the iceberg. 55 clothes from “italy” and “slovakia” can also easily be found (nikolski 2005). 56 the typology of goods and the way of smuggling has changed over time. one of my informants reported “…we used to trade boots and there was a moment, at the border, when all the doors of the train got blocked [by us] (he smiles) so that officials were unable to come onboard to check us…then the train simply started again…” 57 we could even define it as a sort of legal, family trade. 58there is a sophisticated procedure of smuggling goods that changes from one border to another, from one means of transport to another, which could be the object of further investigation. it will be sufficient for the present analysis to mention that ‘sharing’ means that in order to smuggle ‘legally’ some passengers will ask other passengers not carrying alcohol or cigarettes to take a bottle and a packet of cigarettes and pretend it is theirs while crossing the border, later returning it to the real owner. 59 recently, given the popularity of the sharing method, officers started to be less tolerant and check not each passenger, but the family as a whole, limiting the amount of goods purchased per family, not per person. 60 papava and khaduri (1997:31) continue that competition and the welfare of customers is harmed by such entrepreneurs. in a ‘healthy’ market environment they should either lower the prices or improve the quality of goods produced. unfortunately, very few post socialist businessmen consider this option. it is much easier to persuade authorities to pursue a strong protectionist policy (erect a ‘great wall of china’), using calls to patriotism as a basis for justification'. 61 it is worth mentioning: the assistant of the gubernator [a sort of regional president] of kharkhiv, interviewed after his boss had to leave the post after being accused of corruption, complained about the new administration “they have not yet sent us any souvenirs”. the interview was transmitted on era, one of the main tv channels in ukraine on january 28, 2004. 62 further, wanner (2005) has also explored the shift – from state to subject – in morality in societies where the state is absent and the rule of law not respected. using life histories from ukraine she challenges the western interpretation of the word morality: is it immoral to pay a bribe to win a process when the man who sued you also bribed the city administration to produce evidence against you? for a more complete analysis, see wanner (2005). 63 experts say at least 20 percent of moldova's active population or about 300,000 people work abroad, although the real figure could be as high as 1 million (rfe, moldova: mass migration threatens the country’s future by eugen tomiuc, 29 october 2004). anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 37 references bovi, m. 2003. the nature of the underground economy-some evidence from oecd countries, jiidt vol. 7, pp. 60-70. crowter, w. 1995. “moldova: caught between nation and empire” in ian bremmer and ray taras (eds.) new states, new politics, cambridge university press. devetak, silvio. 1991. the nation-state, democracy, ethnic diversity, equality and progress; the european journal of social sciences, vol. 4(1). dogaru, v. 2004. moldova, and economic arm wrestle, transitions online, 8 september. foucher, m. 1991. fronts et frontiers, paris: fayard. harrison, graham. 1999. corruption, development theory and the boundaries of social change. contemporary politics, vol. 5 no. 3, pp.207-220. herly, p. 1987. odessa: a history. harvard university press. kuzio, taras. 2004. bumpkins vs. mafiosi, transitions online, 4 december. malinovskaya, e. 2003. “poezdki za granitsu kak strategiya vyzhivaniya v usloviyakh perekhodnogo perioda: opyt ukrainy” in trudovaya migratsiya v sng. sotsiyalnie i ekonomicheskie effekty. moskva. miller, w. l., grodeland a. b. and koshechkina t.y. 2000. “victims or accomplices? extortion and bribery in eastern europe”, in ledeneva, a. and kurkchiyan, m. (eds), economic crime in russia, kluwer law international, london. neukirch, k. 2001. transdnistria and moldova: cold peace at the dniestr, helsinki monitor, no.2, pp. 121-135. nikolskij, kirill. 2005. 7-j vykhodit iz teni. korrespondent, 4 june. palmer, l. 1983. bureaucratic corruption and its remedies, in clark, m. (ed.) corruption: causes, consequences and control, pinter, london. papava, v. and khaduri, n. 1997. on the shadow political economy of the post communist transformation, an institutional analysis. problems of economic transitions, vol. 40, no. 6, pp 15-34. putnam, r. d. 1993. making democracy work: civic traditions in modern italy, princetown university press, princetown, nj. rasanayagam, j. 2003. market, state and community in uzbekistan: reworking the concept of the informal economy, max planck working papers no.59. tomiuc e. 2004. moldova: mass migration threatens the country’s future. rfe, 29 october. rurй, a. 1999. ukrainiens et roumains, ix-xx siиcle, l'harmattan, paris. temple, p. and petrov, g. 2004. corruption in higher education: some findings from the states of the former soviet union. higher education management and policy, vol. 16, no.1, pp.83-99. wanner, c. 2005. 'money, morality and new forms of exchange in postsocialist ukraine'. ethnos vol. 70(3). werner, cinthia ann. 2002. “gifts, bribes and development in post-soviet kazakhstan”. in jeffrey h. cohen and norbert dannhaeuser (eds.) economic development: an anthropological approach. altamira press: walnut creek, lanham, new york, oxford. microsoft word iarskaia visualmethodsociologyrussia final april 27 2013 anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 21 visual methods in teaching sociology of public sphere in  russia  elena iarskaia‐smirnova, department of sociology, national research university  ‘higher school of economics’, moscow, russia  abstract: the aim of this research was to contribute to the discussion on the role of visual methods in improving student learning. visual methods provide means to understand the practices of representations as cultural texts, to develop interpretations of meanings in socio-cultural context, to decode images of social relations and individual experience. visual sources play a growing role in social studies as well as in teaching as they offer new routes to understanding the past and the present. it was anticipated that when students learn to interpret visual images of social issues as constructs and metaphors in addition to reading relevant literature they might develop critical and contextual imagination, namely connect individual incidences to historical conditions and social institutions, to link seemingly impersonal and remote forces with the lives of real people in concrete institutional and symbolic environments. the main data set included anonymous student journals and portfolio with assignments. the study documented student discourse around visual methods implementation and examined student identities as sociologists, their perceptions of academic expectations at universities, their views of the curriculum, and their identity claims. the results are concerned with the outcomes of teaching and learning considered not only in relation to visual methods but also to the public sphere and sociology. the more and less desirable identity for a sociologist was articulated, some tensions and biases were discovered but more research is needed in order to see more explicitly the role of visual methods and other pedagogical tools in overcoming these barriers. keywords: visual methods; scholarship of teaching and learning; public sphere; sociology; university; russia introduction the aim of this research was to contribute to the discussion on the role of visual methods in improving student learning. the methods of teaching sociology and other social sciences in russian universities till now have been closely related with old legacies and new challenges met by the teachers and students. as teachers and students were overloaded with hours spent in lectures or seminar room 1, little time was left for conducting valuable research, reading and producing useful scholarly literature, and developing effective teaching techniques (umland 2005: 222). the teaching has been usually conducted with heavy reliance on the traditional lecture method, and the course frequently ends with oral examinations on the content of the lectures or the main textbook. the lecturers had little motivation to use written homework or class assignments or when using such assignments, mark them quite anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 22 formally, without even checking them on plagiarism, while the students learn very well such formal ways of treating their obligations and behave accordingly (umland 2005: 225-226). in sociological education throughout russian universities the major emphasis was since 1990s and still is placed on teaching the theories and research process, mainly survey research, and statistical analysis. at the same time, not all university departments have well qualified staff to foster these competencies in the students. gradually more and more universities, individual departments and teachers have begun using active teaching and learning techniques, placing greater emphasis on reading and writing assignments and projects and creative activities, both inside and outside the classroom2. sociological education programs today more broadly include courses on qualitative research, and some programs have started placing emphasis on visual studies and participatory action research methodologies. visual methods provide means to understand the practices of representations as cultural texts, to develop interpretations of meanings in socio-cultural context, to decode images of social relations and individual experience. visual sources play a growing role in social studies as well as in teaching as they offer new routes to understanding the past and the present. by tracing the changes in students’ performance in homework assignments, oral discussions and their own self-reflection, i tried to see whether or not visual methods applied along with reading the relevant texts would drive student motivation, attitude, and interest in learning, and induce sociological imagination and criticality in reasoning and learning. it was anticipated that when students learn to interpret visual images of social issues as constructs and metaphors in addition to reading relevant literature they might develop critical and contextual imagination, namely connect individual incidences to historical conditions and social institutions, to link seemingly impersonal and remote forces with the lives of real people in concrete institutional and symbolic environments. the data were collected during teaching a course in the ma program in “sociology of public sphere and social communications” at state university – higher school of economics (moscow) during the 2009-2010 academic year. this two year master program was established in 2009 within the faculty of sociology, department of general sociology and enrols between 20 and 30 students annually. the course “sociology of public sphere and social communications” included several lectures and seminars on visual methods, film screenings and participation in a debate exploring social problems as they are presented in documentary films, and visiting a performance of the verbatim theater3. what are the current russian dominant images of social problems, what images of public policies do we have and where are they located, whether or not they are publicized? it was hoped that answering these questions would help students to recognize the constructed nature of social problems as well as ideology embedded in social policy and contradictions in the development of the public sphere. the research question was: what happens when students apply visual methods in addition to the traditional practice of reading the texts in learning sociology, in anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 23 particular public sociology? following michael burawoy (2005), by public sociology i understand an approach to the discipline which seeks to go beyond the academy and engage wider audiences, including the publics who are active in civil society. during the course and for their final essays the students were asked to visually document issues of public sphere and civil society as well as social problems in the life around them, while simultaneously learning what scholars have said about these problems in theoretical works and empirically-driven research. the data base includes anonymous student journals and electronic communication as well as visual data produced and/or selected by the students for their interim assignments and final essays arranged as portfolios (no.26). students had been encouraged to reflect (negatively or positively) on the course when writing their journals, and were explicitly given the opportunity to voice those views in public during the final oral feedback. all materials were scrutinized under the informed consent signed by the students. the study documented student discourse around visual methods implementation and explored student identities as sociologists, their perceptions of academic expectations at universities, their views of the curriculum, and their identity claims. the images selected by the students to represent issues of public sphere, civil society and social problems are scrutinized as well as the way students used these images in contextualizing these concepts; students effectively turned these images into research data to grasp the issues of public sphere. the results are concerned with the outcomes of teaching and learning considered not only in relation to visual methods but also to the public sphere and sociology. the signs of progress in learning sociology through applying visual methods are found in students’ journals and assignments. the more and less desirable identity for a sociologist was articulated, and some tensions and biases were discovered, but more research is needed in order to evaluate more explicitly the role of visual methods and other pedagogical tools in overcoming these barriers. methods and methodology visual methods in teaching social sciences in spite of the rapid growth of the literature on visual research throughout the social sciences and humanities (see discussion for example in wagner 2002), the use of visual methods to enhance the active learning process is not so widely discussed (except for a big array of literature on teaching and learning using specifically visual-based methodologies such as drawing (savoury et al. 2007: 31-43) and observation as a sociological method (have 2003), as well as a number of publications on teaching such subjects as photography, film, representation and broadly, visual culture (see: mitchell 2002). however, the following claim is relevant not only to the students learning arts but also for those who are in sociology: “the right-brained way of seeing coupled with a left-brain analysis of form and meaning leads to visual literacy” (savory et al. 2007: 32), which is a good part of sociological imagination. as glynis cousin (2009) states, “the relative ease with which we can secure text-based evaluating from learners in higher education had led to a neglect of the potential of visual research.” (214-15) anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 24 it is important to teach students recording techniques and electronic media in a way that encourages critical reflective thinking and ethical considerations (pauwels 2008), through applying group work techniques and participatory approaches to research and practice as a component of training. alice lai and lilly lu (2009) integrated feminist pedagogy with visual culture art education and online pedagogy to encourage students to challenge patriarchy in the history of art. peter taylor and pettit jethro (2007) explore learning needs of “social change practitioners” who are challenged to develop their capacities for learning through critical reflection on action and aspire to promote participation as a key element of social change. according to damon mayrl and laurel westbrook (2009), public sociologists often are working beyond the academy, and in order to achieve understanding with wider or specific publics, they need to include “a variety of voices from inside and outside academia, and a variety of media, from written to oral to visual communication” (2009:155). it is possible that the opportunities to seeing the citizen as a political force and the public sphere as a space and process of exercising democracy may be opened through the implementation of visual methods. arrangement of teaching and learning process as a research field the course “sociology of public sphere and social communications” comprised 15 lectures and 16 seminars. the lectures were used to cover the main theoretical ideas on the public sphere and included topics on the social history of the concept “public” in different national traditions, the main classic and contemporary definitions of public space and public sphere, public/private division in various theoretical paradigms, gender analysis of private/public divide, civil society, urban spaces, and social movements. the seminar format was used to stimulate debate among students on the topics emerging from their reading, observation, field visits experiences, and to exchange perspectives on various issues of public sphere. visual methods were integrated into the agenda of special lectures, several other classes and field visits, including screening documentary films on social problems at the university culture center and visiting a performance of the verbatim theater, all followed by discussions and short written individual reflections. in addition to the traditional reading and writing assignments focused around working with literature about public sphere and civil society, a number of assignments included visual components: to find published images and to make one’s own pictures of “public sphere” and “civil society”, to comment on images using ideas from lectures and reading materials, to read and discuss articles on visual research, and to conduct analysis of images for the final essay. for a few students, however, it turned out to be difficult to take their own photographs due to absence of photo cameras. given such circumstances, the production of one’s own images was not a mandatory task. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 25 the students were encouraged to assemble a portfolio where each element was followed by regular feedback. the chain of assignments for a course portfolio aimed to provoke in students an increased awareness of how and why visual methods can inform sociological imagination while the special selection of reading materials and the sites for field visits would have promoted understanding of and induce interest in studying issues of social inequality and civil society. on their very first day, students were made aware that the lecturer was conducting a study. each of them was given an informed consent form to sign their agreement or confirm their withdrawal from the research process. as it turned out, all students agreed to participate. from week one, students were asked to keep journals in which they recorded thoughts on their course experiences. all journals were anonymous: students used their secret nicknames or special signs to recognize them, while the lecturer numbered the journals for transcription purposes. students were provided with a structure for an entry for the journal almost every class meeting. the lecturer read every student’s entry and sometimes commented in the journal if the student asked a question or if the lecturer would like to clarify something. the idea was to make sure that the focus of the course was oriented to the difficulties and interests that the students were writing and reflecting about. throughout the course, the issues raised from journal-keeping were integrated into the teaching and learning process. the classroom meetings and email correspondence became forums where the insights gained from different sorts of field visits, classes, reading and meetings with special guests were re-contextualized in light of the theories presented in the lectures. data and findings applying visual methods: signs of progress in learning sociology after an introduction into visual methods the idea in general was welcomed by the students. according to the entries in their journals, many of them embraced enthusiastically the possibility of doing visual study of public sphere,. analytic competence and ability to apply knowledge and skills in the real world are highly valued by many students in sociology, and such comments are related to their aspirations and hopes to develop such capacities by using visual methods. few students expressed skepticism; they foresaw difficulties in finding relevant materials and were uncertain about the methodology itself “well, i liked it, but where is science? what about reliability?” (journal #1 of 6th october) these remarks are rather typical for epistemological debates on objectivity and validity in sociology, and these concerns are very important for the development of visual studies both in terms of method of inquiry and in their teaching applications. however, the majority of the students enthusiastically collected a wide array of posters, cartoons and photographs, which they looked upon as icons of political actions, public figures, civic initiatives, public spaces, means of propaganda, etc. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 26 after the first assignment was complete, we discussed the results in the class. for many students it was a rewarding experience, they got new ideas and inspiration. they committed themselves to this approach. to write a master’s thesis at the end of the two-year study program is a big concern for all students, and some of them obviously tried to use any opportunity offered to them to move further along this uneasy road to their graduation. but what actually happens when students apply visual methods in addition to reading texts? the first important challenge is related to the cognitive process of grasping an abstract concept. this process in teaching sociology often is completed through verbal means, and a perceptual symbol that designates a concept is usually a word (peikoff 1990:97–98). in a process of completing a visual assignment, for some students it was very important to grasp a concept of public sphere in their efforts to find words and images that would correspond with each other: the biggest complication for me was an assignment on finding visual material. i had to revise and look through a huge number of images before any were found that were the most relevant to my views on public sphere. (journal #9 of 6th october) it is possible that the students accelerated their reflection processes by engaging themselves in self-organized and creative work of searching for the visual metaphors of sociological concepts. further work on the second assignment and final essay stimulated in some students further reflection on visual means as a tool to literally see the concept “i noticed that assignments on visual methods help me better understand the focus of study.” (journal #10 of 13th october) indeed, “visual culture is not limited to the study of images or media, but extends to everyday practices of seeing and showing” (mitchell 2002:170), and the question on “how to look at some issue” became crucial for the students. the image-based work was supported by reading and discussion of literature. we discussed with the students the following grouping of theoretical explanations of “public/private” divide by jeff weintraub: (1) the public/private distinction as the distinction between state administration and the market economy; (2) the “public” realm in terms of political community and citizenship, analytically distinct from both the market and the administrative state; (3) the “public” realm as a sphere of fluid and polymorphous sociability, which is made possible by cultural and dramatic conventions; and (4) the public/private distinction (which is often gendered) in terms of the divide between the family and the larger economic and political order (1997:7). how did the students come to pick a particular perspective, and what does this mean? selection of images made by the students was structured by the theoretical ideas found in lectures and reading materials. however, the focus was chosen also by the students themselves depending on how they understood theories, as well as what explanation they preferred. important aspects of identity, belonging and memory are anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 27 often experienced and/or expressed through taking and looking at photos (tinker, 2008). although it is not possible to generalize from the small numbers, the overall picture can be drawn about how learning took place in this group. half of the students preferred the second explanation in weintraub’s scheme, which sees “public” close to collective action and civil society. they sent comments about posters and made their own pictures of public activity of civic organizations and political parties: [the] woman seems to be a member of a trade union meeting. in the background there are people, some of them in militia uniform, it might be that they belong to the security organs and are on duty during the demonstration. the poster demonstrates antagonistic relations between trade unions and militia due to the orange arrow and line that circle the object. (anna4, photo from the internet, 1st visual assignment, september 2009) people with umbrellas, and tanks. everything is calm. maybe there is confusion but not antagonism. this image projects the courage of public, the collective cohesion towards a common goal important for the country; this was the time when ordinary people came out to the street and stood to defend something that they hoped was for the best future. they were weaponless against the army. and there were victims… (irina, photo from internet, 1st visual assignment, september 2009) practically all comments showed that the students recognized the structure of representations of public protests, collective actions, and marches, as usually including two antagonistic sides –woman vs. militia, people vs. tanks, freedom vs. oppression, etc. some images presented further on under the second visual assignment were illustrative of the fake civil society, depicting events arranged by the party bureaucrats. the students used such words as “quasi-formal event” (anna, own photo, 1st visual assignment, september 2009), “one can dispute the real democracy of elections” (sonya, photo from internet, 2nd visual assignment, october 2009). some comments were rather descriptive and directive, repeating the slogans and ignoring the political nature of organization of many segments of the volunteer movement in today’s russia, “action on the international day of refraining from smoking. this photo depicts civil society, which fights for a healthy way of life among the youth.” (yana) however, such commentaries could have been produced in a traditional assignment as well. visual materials only helped to illuminate an uncritical nature of thinking and therefore discuss and revise the interpretations. students demonstrated concern with social inequality, dishonest politicians, threatened democracy, and growing civic activism, and tried to depict the state as a public domain and its responsibilities in relation to the issues of inequality and poverty. some of the comments show that a new social issue or a new side of a known social anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 28 problem has been exposed for a student: “i have never ever made such photos before” (sveta, 1st visual assignment, september 2009). it is also apparent that the state is chosen as the main actor to be responsible for poverty and homelessness, while the public should only be made aware of these problems: fig. 1, sveta’s 1st visual assignment, september 2009 if even the society would change its attitude… we won’t solve this problem. only the state should… the main point of this picture [is] – to attract attention of the public towards the problem and not passing nearby... (sveta) the choice of some other students was made in favor of political propaganda of the state endeavors and political caricatures. just as popular was the image of public sphere that relates it with sociability, the rules and conventions of communications in public places. the students selected and commented on images of celebrities, politicians and other public figures presented in various occasions of social life. to imagine public sphere in this sense was to think of it as of a spot for a dialogue, as a space where communication is going on. the fourth group of images was related to the private as an area of decisions made in the household, in contrast to public as a market economy, and this divide is easily interpreted in terms of gender. actually, almost all images selected for the assignments were possible to analyze from a gender perspective (in terms of unequal participation in politics, profession, religious sphere, etc.) but this aspect was not appreciated by the students. by the end of the course, not all of the students had proved the usefulness of visual data in their analytical work. at the end, all 26 master’s students had used visual images in their power point presentations of final works, while only 12 students included visual materials in the texts of the final essays, trying to integrate them into the discussion concerning such topics as participation of youth in political movements, social adverts, film club and café as a ground for public discussion, publicity of governing in north caucasus, civic activism of tv spectators, public art and football fans. for example, marina included a critique of mass media representation in her essay anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 29 on public policy in contemporary dagestan. six students chose production and consuming of visual information (e.g. cinema clubs, photo journalism, public art, social ads, animation, tv-show) as the primary subjects of their essays, but not all of them included visual data in their works. in her essay on protest actions of the spectators of tv channel 2x2, lena included several images of demonstrations as well as propaganda posters produced by the tv channel management. she showed that some participants of the demonstration wore masks because they were afraid of repressions. two students wrote final works that focused specifically on visual analysis: these were essays on civic journalism and visual means used by football fans. masha elaborated on such issues of civic journalism as professionalization, ethics, public reaction, etc. she considered photo reportage and exhibition, as well as types of public and peculiarities of perception: which photos do their authors consider to be good examples of civic journalism? one photo is made by an amateur photographer, a journalist a. kabatov during the dissenters’ march. he has photographed the helmet of a special forces officer with a sign of ss and published a post in his blog. this photo received a stormy resonance both in mass media (including internet) as well as among the officials who accused the journalist of photomontage [doctoring the photo]. the situation was resolved thanks to the photos of professional photographer oleg klimov who was present at the same march. these comments tackled several complex of issues, including institutional arrangements of production, distribution and reception of images, professional/lay hierarchy, vulnerability of photographers as well as their ‘objects’, ethical and political aspects of displaying the photos in public sphere, etc. the participatory approach was presented in a lecture and in reading materials, and the lecturer emphasized its importance in sociology, but nevertheless none of the students implemented this method in final essays. only in extra-curricular activities, photo-research as a version of participatory approach was conducted by a small group of students for a conference paper. the majority of the students appreciated assignments and instruction on visual methods throughout the course. the evaluations ranged from acceptance of visual data and possibilities of application to satisfaction with the entertaining nature of the classes. a few others were rather skeptical or uncertain, appealing to more “scientific” methods instead of or in addition to visual methods. when students were learning to interpret visual images of social issues as constructs and metaphors in addition to reading relevant literature, some of them demonstrated critical and contextual imagination, connecting individual incidences to historical conditions and social institutions, and linking seemingly impersonal and remote forces with the lives of real people in concrete institutional and symbolic environments. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 30 social issues in some works were interpreted not as objective conditions but as constructs created in certain discourse formations by various actors with use of verbal and visual means; these connections were made most successfully in class during group discussions. it became clearer for some of the students that one can deconstruct and reconstruct such concepts and intervene into the public sphere with new challenges and fresh ideas. this is seen in their reflexive writing and/or from the images they produced and comments they made about those images. a new quality of contextualising the abstract terms in students’ lifeworld as jeff weintraub (1997) mentions, visibility and collectivity as the main criteria of “public” versus “private” may blur into each other in specific cases, and can also be combined in various ways. such dialectics are present in students’ comments about the chosen images, and this is very important for the development of sociological imagination: public sphere penetrates us even when we are sitting home, in one’s own apartment and reading a magazine full of advertisements and even with style of expression of materials. we constantly communicate with the society through these magazines, getting signals-symbols on how to behave tomorrow… we can trace the changes in tastes and will be able, therefore, to correctly interpret actions of the others and to act ourselves. when we are walking through the streets, even with no one there but an advertisement board, we communicate non-stop with the society and still are in the public sphere. (inna) five students sent their own or found in the internet images of cafés. they commented on the ambivalent nature of these places – both public and private: conversation between two women, most probably in the café. they are sitting on a bed, which is an element of coziness here. it is like a part of the apartment where two friends met (the distance is short between them, personal). this choice might have been enhanced by the learning of jürgen habermas’ notion of coffee-house as a place of emerging public sphere. but looking at the content of comments, one can explain it due to the popularity of cafés as a communication site among the students, where they can feel free, speaking privately while being in public. especially exciting for the students was a discussion of several homework assignments of their classmates. indeed, this exercise served as a good vehicle for sociological imagination, “we have a possibility not only to tell what we see ourselves but also to see the picture through somebody else’s eyes.” (journal #21 of 6th october) as it is seen, a new quality of contextualising the abstract terms in students’ lifeworld does seem to occur, not always amounting to some sophisticated observation but pointing to a deep learning approach occurring and emotive investment into the learning process. this was supported further by the students’ enjoyment of looking at the pictures taken by/presented by classmates. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 31 increasing capacity to deconstruct the content/context of production and to appreciate the potential of visual sociology as more then illustration following marcus banks (2001), we shall adopt a dual perspective on visual media, which includes two dimensions of analysis: the content and the context. for some students, a really hard task was to accept and comprehend such a sociology that deviated from what they have been taught previously and aspired to deal with further on: visual assignments … many similarities with art criticism but it is far away from such sociology that i would like to do. (journal #16 of 6th october) a practice of applying visual methods is not yet understandable for me. i do not fully understand what image gives us apart from illustration, which helps to explain something but does not produce new knowledge. (journal #2 of 6th october) the students did not always realize that the source of the image they found is an important element of the context and it is not enough only to comment about the content of the picture, which is to be interpreted in a certain place and time, is produced by certain rationales, and is targeted towards a special audience. while commenting on social ads and documentaries, some students elaborated on the meaning of colors and wrote about the target groups but ignored the nature of the source and its ideology. for example, tatiana did not pay attention to the source of the image she acquired (it was a website of creative products of former combatants) and did not comment on the cultural specificity of the gender divide in public/private spheres. “time of the afternoon tea. muslim men during the afternoon tea. this photo shows the origins of the public sphere.” (tatiana) on the contrary, some of the students demonstrated increasing capacity to deconstruct the content/context of production and to appreciate the potential of visual sociology as more than illustration. this observation is supported by some of the comments in essays and journals, as for example, in the following revelation: all this is very new and therefore interesting. visual sociology, which turned out as something more than presentations at the conferences. (journal #15 of 25th november) those students who attempted analysis of visual data in their final essays demonstrated signs of mature visual literacy: their interpretation became multi-angled, images as well as inscriptions/titles were insightful, and comments revealed context as well as content of the images. for example, lena in her final essay takes into account the policy of production – she emphasizes the role of tv channel administration in governing of anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 32 this public when says that some of the posters used by the participants were previously published in the internet and were appealing to participate in the rally. some practices of communication in public spaces were captured by aleksandra and liza. they considered the ways that are used by people to communicate their thoughts and reactions: fig. 2, alexandra, photo in warsaw, 1st visual assignment, september 2009 the wall with announcements and ads. in the center – anti-advertisement of olympic games in china and sochi. black and white colors dominate. maybe they signify mourning and prohibition. this bulletin board serves as a public ground for liberal human rights advocacy ideas… there was an attempt to tear off this poster from the wall. therefore, this wall became a public ground for the faith of two opposite ideas. (alexandra) fig. 3, liza, photo in stockholm, 1st visual assignment, september 2009 it is a sign of pedestrian crosswalk with a lot of different stickers and inscriptions. this sign is a symbol of public space where people can express their opinions. one of the stickers depicts a man with a child. (liza) anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 33 both of these images are very important choices, and especially the first one, which was very successfully discussed in class and helped some students to overcome an understanding of visual as a simple illustration. visual methods provide means to understand the practices of representation as cultural texts, to develop interpretations of meanings in socio-cultural context, and to decode images of social relations and individual experience. it is important to remember that all visual representations are both produced and consumed in a social context (banks 2001), and to apply the constructionist perspective on social problems. this learning develops within the context of debate and competition and would provide students with the opportunity to acquire skills necessary for participation in policy arenas (fine 2000). the more and less desirable identity for a sociologist finally, there seems to be a very important point arising about the more and less desirable identity for a sociologist. some participants of the course felt wholeheartedly committed to the idea of use of creative means in studying the society: i liked very much the articles on visual methods that were given as reading assignment. a harmony with my inner feelings appeared concerning the idea that public sociology can and should be creative and not just academic. a wish appeared to arrange for a photo-exhibition or photo-competition devoted to some particular social problem. and to conduct a research “through smb’s eye’s” related with this competition. a wish appeared and became fixed to do visual sociology and to write a paper for a conference. (journal #4 of 13th october) the verbatim theater experience as well as documentary screening and debate were challenging for all students who participated: to me, such [activities] as visit to cinema club and watching the film or interview with a real representative of an ngo, are much more effective in understanding civil society and social responsibility than lectures and reading the books (but books and lectures are necessary, too). (journal # 10 of 17th november) at the same time, several comments were critical towards the course’s focus on the sharp issues such as social problems and civil society “the program is rather interesting but i would like more visual and public and less civic. it might be a consumerist position but anyway…” (journal #12 of 3rd november) the majority of the images (n=17) selected for the second assignment devoted to visualization of civil society pictured various practices, including rallies and demonstrations, among them 16 images depicting meetings of protesting nature. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 34 dissenters’ march. very dynamic picture. protesting people are being piled up. surrounding people are observing. some are emotionally reacting. journalists are taking pictures – is this an emotional act or just doing a job? militia man is videotaping the event. the attempt of civil society to give its voice is firmly suppressed but not very organized. (dasha) dissenters’ march. civil society is not easy to visualize. only public dialogue between the state and society and opposition of the opinion. it is a strong emotional photo. fighting for one’s own opinion is similar to war. (alina) at the same time, the majority of these images were taken from a distance – almost all of them are from the internet. compared to the choices of two students who decided to comment on the crackdown on the dissenters’ march (see above), the other images were less dynamic and more peaceful and many of them were a part of the students’ personal experience. this group of images was devoted to the activities of volunteers and charities and the ideas of mutual help. according to bourdieu (1984), photography as an ordinary cultural practice offers a way of understanding the aesthetics that dominate the discourse and the practices of different classes (see also bourdieu, boltanski, et al. [1964]1990). the selection of photos can be treated as ‘mirrors with memory’ reflecting what has mattered most in people’s lives” (weiser 1999/1993). it is possible that some students projected into the choice of images and into the comments their own biases and fears: often ideas of civic initiatives, means and goals of the citizens’ selforganization are understood quite aggressively and incorrectly. (liza) it is not necessary to take part in demonstrations and marches. (masha) for some of the students the difficulties of completing the assignments were associated with their lack of involvement with non-governmental organizations and/or local communities. it seems that conventional definitions of a sociologist shared by some students differ from an image of a professional who is engaged in public and political ways with issues stimulated by debates over political activism, social movements, and civil society. implication and conclusion many students appreciated the format of the classes (use of active methods, visual components of presentations and small groups activities, etc.). in the seminars students expressed their concerns and insights; they learned to work collaboratively as anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 35 well as individually. both in the seminars and lectures i had an opportunity to address some of the issues and difficulties expressed by students in their journals and email communication. some students expanded their research methodologies and started using photographs, films, and posters in their essays and further in course papers on the topic of their master thesis. students’ personal commitment became apparent at a number of points: they asked for further reading, for feedback on specific entries in the journals, they shared insights into their own reflexive experience from field visits and meetings with people. the portfolio and other relevant data made it possible to indicate several signs of the learning progress. by the end of the course deeper understanding of the chosen topic and contextualization of the issues of “public sphere” in general was achieved. some of the students’ assignments included signs of “visual literacy” – concepts of analysis, reference to the sources on visual methods, and interpretation became multi-angled. some of the images as well as inscriptions/titles were insightful, and comments revealed the context and content of the images. images selected by the students represented issues of public sphere, civil society and social problems; these images were used by some students in contextualizing these concepts, and for some of these students visual materials become research data in their final essays. it is seen from their reflexive writing and/or from the images they produced and comments they made about those images that the students’ perception of public sphere, social problems and civil society was enhanced. the ability to contextualize the abstract terms as well as the capacity to deconstruct the content and context of image production and to appreciate the potential of visual sociology as more than illustration were strengthened throughout the course. however, all this does not necessarily help to build up or strengthen their identity as organic public sociologists willing to study and participate in civil society. for a social scientist, it is important to challenge the ways images have mattered and continue to matter in the struggle for human rights (berger 2010; sliwinski 2006). images play a vital role in constructing social problems; therefore, in order to understand how potential troubles become recognized as matters of collective concern, it is possible to discuss with the students visual elements of the discourse on social problems and stories of visual enhancement of human rights movement in the works of documentary photographers who often collaborated with sociologists. it could be possible for future courses to enhance collaboration and dialogue between the students by making their insights accessible to—and encouraging comments from—each other. concrete proposals were made by some students concerning the organization of the learning process: maybe it would be a good idea for next time to make a list of topics, divide students in several groups by these topics, assign them to search for visual materials and then conduct the seminar – it might be bright, interesting and visual. maybe even arrange for some exhibitions. or at least such materials would be obvious proof of the students’ work and anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 36 development of their “participant understanding” of visual methods, their significance and peculiarities. thank you! (journal #6 of 25th november) another important self-advice would be to focus students’ search on some selection of topics, to make the focus more concrete and to enhance reflection based on comparison and connectivity. the majority of the students favored visual technologies and liked to discuss images but in order to be able to apply them to working with publics, to promote social change and advocate the interests of vulnerable groups, additional mechanisms are required. these mechanisms should be provided by civil society, the professional sociological community, and of course, the students’ own motivation. service learning may be used to integrate learning associated with the experience of participation in civil society and formal academic work (mcgoldrick and peterson 2009). according to jeffrey alexander (2006), it is inside the world of civil values and institutions that we develop our capacity for social criticism and democratic integration. it might be hypothesized that the students’ interpretations of the visuals, or their reactions to the assignments and the pedagogical approach, reflect something specific to the russian/educational/social context. students are ‘affected by the consequences of the above problems as learners, researchers, university members, and young citizens’ (umland 2005: 226). the conservatism expressed by some of the students is nurtured not just in sociology training programs. it reflects “substantive and symbolical transformation of the political climate” (hamburg 2005:108) as well as at the societal level in general. then, there is more reason to get the students engaged in challenging that conservative way of thinking. as caroline h. persell (2009) argues, the students “need to see a broader spectrum of the social world, especially those who have grown up in communities relatively segregated by color, class, or ethnicity” (2009:215). it is important to help students to get out of the sterilized conditions in the classroom to the real world and to engage with communities and groups in order to understand their issues (see mcgoldrick and peterson 2009). critical pedagogy (see development of freire’s ideas in shor 1992) should be fundamental to teaching sociology and one might refer also to the works by feminist writers such as bell hooks’s teaching to transgress (1994) and other publications (see for example: luke and gore, 1992; mayberry and rose, 1999) that could impress and move us and our students emotionally and morally. unfortunately, many university sociological programs in russia do not seem to fully appreciate the criticisms leveled at the classics of sociology; nor do they grasp their limitations for today’s sociology. a similar problem is pointed by decesare (2009:193) concerning the high school programs in usa. but it is not enough only to read these powerful texts. public sociology is a contested area in russia. possibilities for public sociology in russia are limited by the lack of democratic mechanisms in the political context, weak civil society, and controversial processes of institutionalization of sociology (zdravomyslova 2008). new generations of sociologists are prepared at the universities anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 37 to serve the state or the market. only a small community of independent sociologists— working under the support of international and some russian foundations—identify their research issues in relation to civil society and marginalized groups. at the same time, civil society and public sphere are in danger and the state treats civic initiatives suspiciously, selectively supporting some non-governmental organizations and scapegoating the others (zdravomyslova 2008: 407). intensive boundary work is going on among the various paradigmatic subcultures of sociologists, and the field discipline is sharply divided along several lines. one group of scholars sees the public role of sociology as helping define and promote the national idea and state policies. another group trusts in democratic reformist criticism of sociological consciousness (zdravomyslova 2008: 409). both groups argue that sociology should serve public interests, to help solve acute problems. for this they are labeled by a third group of sociologists as carrying ‘forms of postsoviet thinking’ (vakhshtayn 2012). after the decades of ideological pressure, many intellectuals justify their ‘disengaged’ position as the only way to emancipate themselves from the socialist past. engagement with critical thinking and civic activism is often understood as a soviet legacy, identified as non-scientific, state-dependent activity. many contemporary russian intellectuals would agree that ‘the sociologist is not on the public/political barricades whilst he or she wears the white robe of a scientist’ (pokrovsky 2011). at the same time, there are groups of scholars who associate themselves with public movements; work in civil society organizations (including human rights and advocacy groups); and engage in various kinds of public engagement through community creative activities, art practices, discussion clubs, etc. (e.g. projects of the center for independent sociological research in st. petersburg; see http://cisr.ru/en/). many intellectuals define the public role of sociology as a channel of providing important information to the mass media, while their opponents question what they call ‘pop-sociology’, accusing them of making non-professional and incorrect statements, and degenerating the public image of the discipline itself. in fact, many university instructors in russia have students do public sociology in a way that “gets students out of the classroom into a variety of public settings, where they can begin to talk with and hopefully understand the perspectives of a wider range of people than they have previously met” (persell, 2009: 216). some sociology teachers at samara, saratov, moscow, st. petersburg, yekaterinburg and other universities encourage students to work with local grassroots social movements, social services, and businesses. it is mostly an optional choice in relation with the topic of course project, diploma or thesis, but some sociology programs have instituted service learning. in burawoy’s words, service learning can be a prototype of such education: “as they learn students become ambassadors of sociology to the wider world just as they bring back to the classroom their engagement with diverse publics” (2005: 9). recently there is a rising interest towards participatory-action research projects that include photography or film techniques (see for instance: lykes 2001; wang 1999). using the idea from spence and solomon’s (1995) what can a woman do with a anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 38 camera? as a starting point and following claudia mitchell (mitchell & reid-walsh 2002), we can formulate the questions “what can a sociologist, a social worker or a student do with a camera?” and “what can a child do with a camera?” the photo voice is a participatory-action research methodology where researchers use photographs to elicit, bring forth, and draw out responses from participants on issues related to their health and community needs (wang and burris 1997). beth perry, janice dalton, and margaret edwards (2009) have turn the photo voice method into an interactive tool and report such positive effects (as stated by the students themselves) as capturing attention, stimulating creative thinking, and creating community. sociology educators may develop their own videos depicting their own and their students’ unique experiences, using the interdisciplinary, collaborative, problem-based approach. the reception of public sociology may be improved by applying visual methods in teaching and learning but the effects will depend on the motivation of the primary audience (the students) and the wider audience (the professional community of sociologists) to reflect and take on a public role of sociology. and vice versa: if sociology students can go out of the academy into various public settings where they can talk with and hopefully understand the perspectives of a wide range of people, they will bring more diverse social experience and observations to their study of professional sociology (persell 2009:215, 216). opportunities of the classrooms and various public settings can be used to build up motivation through practicing communicative knowledge. debate and consensus building skills in concert with visual methods may be useful in developing collaborative and cooperative projects. at the same time, the epistemological questions in terms of “knowledge for what” and “knowledge for whom” should not discourage students from studying carefully social theories and research methodologies (see brownlie 2009). as it turned out in our group, the young researchers were deeply involved in political debates about the choice of focus and role of research while their ability to comprehend differences in formulating research goals from different theoretical standpoints was limited. it was partly due to the assumption that students at the graduate level are fully aware both of the theoretical bases and methods of sociology, but this should not have been taken for granted. after the missing elements in the background of the group were discovered, one additional assignment was solicited: it was devoted to the ability to formulate research questions departing from different sociological paradigms, as well as two classes on discussion of theories and methods. acknowledgements the paper was written under the studies of teaching and learning fellowship program at the central european university, budapest, 2009-2010. the author thanks richard gale and joanna renc-roe from the program for their valuable comments. i am also grateful to the first cohort of students of the ma program ‘public sphere and social communication’. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 39 references alexander, j. c. 2006. the civil sphere. new york: oxford university press. banks, m. 2001. visual methods in social research. london: sage. berger, m. 2010. for all the world to see: visual culture and the struggle for civil rights. yale university press bonacich, e. 2005. working with the labor movement: a personal journey in organic public sociology. the american sociologist 36: 105–120 bourdieu, p. 1984. distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. bourdieu, p and l. boltanski, et al. 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(2008) ‘make way for professional sociology!’: public sociology in the russian context, in: current sociology, 56 (3): 405-414 1 30 academic hours per week, sometimes more spent in the lecture or seminar room. 2 higher school of economics is an example of a university integrating modern teaching and learning principles and techniques. 3 verbatim is a documentary theatre. the plays are written using the exact words of people from the interviews or words from the other sorts of documents. 4 the names are changed for ethical reasons. anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 55 performing aging in post-soviet latvia jekaterina kalēja, university of latvia ilze mileiko, university of latvia abstract: in this article we explore how people define, evaluate and explain aging in latvia after more than two decades since the end of the soviet union. our findings result from secondary analysis of 55 semi-structured interviews on the perception of the body and biotechnologies with informants from throughout latvia. judith butler’s concept of identity performance allowed us to interpret the experience of aging identity construction in latvia by interconnecting bodily experience and discursive categories, and is supplemented by marilyn strathern’s theories on the significance of relationships with others. aging identity in latvia and performance that is evaluated as (dis)respectful and (in) appropriate is defined through involvement in relationships with the self, the family, and the wider community. these findings open up opportunities to widen economicsand demography-driven conceptualisations of aging at the governmental level, and to adjust policy to effectively and respectfully meet people’s needs, as well as to encourage further research on gendered aging strategies, sexuality, local meanings of the morally-charged concept “rūpes” (care). keywords: aging, identity, performance, relationships, post-soviet, latvia introduction simon biggs and jason powell argue that, today, age and aging is very actively discussed in social policy and theory. they indicate that in the 21st century a debate on aging has been raised, even though “aging” has been relatively weakly developed as a concept in social policy and social theory (biggs, powell 2001, 1). they suggest critical analysis in aging discourse as a productive research perspective, which we employ in this article and in the research on which it is based. currently in latvia, aging is a visible part of the social policy agenda, but mostly from a demographic and economic perspective. for example, in the planning document “sustainable development strategy for latvia until 2030” (saeima [parliament] of the republic of latvia 2010, hereafter saeima), aging is mentioned as one of several aspects that influence long-term social development. in the terms laid out in this document, the aging of the population is constructed as threat to a society’s long-term balanced and sustainable development, especially in the countryside where aging is cited as one of the main reasons for depopulation. one of the objectives for the sustainable development of latvia is that “[i]n 2030, latvia will be a thriving country of active and responsible citizens.” (saeima 2010, 11) moreover, human capital (understood as “the average amount of the knowledge, talents and skills of inhabitants multiplied by the number of economically active people” (saeima 2010, 19) is seen as crucial in the achievement of the state’s developmental goals. aging is mentioned as a threatening factor able to reduce the base value of human capital and to decrease its productivity. (saeima 2010, 11) in this way, the authors of “sustainable development strategy for latvia until 2030” state that the “ageing of society is related to the loss of labour productivity and changes in the structure of the labour force” (saeima 2010, 20). in order to reduce the negative impact of the demographic load (formed mostly by the increasing proportion of elderly people) on economic growth and social security, several solutions are suggested. among these, an increase in social security contributions or a reduction of the relationship between pensions and work remunerations are seen as problematic: “the former increases the costs of the labour force, promotes unemployment and anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 56 reduces the competitiveness of enterprises, the latter reduces the standard of living of households and promotes poverty” (saeima 2010, 21). thus, the part of society that is aging is constructed as a burden accompanied by risks for the economy and the quality of life of its inhabitants. another strategic document, the “national development plan of latvia 2014-2020,” (cross-sectoral coordination centre [ccsc]) 2012) does not mention aging as such, but concentrates on healthy life expectancy and the working age population (mostly of 25-64 years old), while nevertheless stressing that sustainable development has no age limits. the disregard of the needs of elderly persons and avoidance of including them in strategic developmental political documents is also performed as a way towards discrimination and ignorance. analysis of these political documents allows the reader to conclude that aging is viewed as a risk at the political level. this perception is related to the neoliberal approach where economic justifications are the main arguments for (re)defining persons. but in some political documents in latvia seniors can be not included, and this also indicates a certain type of attitude from the state with regards to these citizens. the attitude where aging is problematized is also characteristic of demographic research that tends to view aging at the macro level and to associate the aging population with particular social problems. for example, latvia’s unsustainable population age structure is explained in terms of the relative percentages of the various age groups in the population. atis bērziņš, edvīns vītoliņš, and pēteris zvidriņš (2006, 5) point out that “[i]n latvia, as in most other european countries, the aging of the population has become a serious social demographic problem. among the most prominent manifestations of this problem, we can mention an increase in the average age of the population and an increase in the proportion of the elderly.” from the point of view of the authors, ignoring the aging population can lead to social problems considered to be serious, such as the inability of state institutions to influence population development. juris krūmiņš, another latvian demographer, points to latvia’s aging population in the context of population health and other social challenges which put the sustainable development of latvian society at risk (krūmiņš 2006, 11). since 1991, when the soviet union collapsed, aging in latvia has been researched in various ways, but primarily by economists and sociologists. as a socioeconomic group, senior citizens or pensioners have been studied through their economic activity and their consumption patterns in the context of economic development (grīnfelde 2010; ciemiņa 2009; grīnfilde, eglīte, korpa 2007). at times, where aging has been studied in relation to quality of life, the studied target group was described as “people above working age” (e.g. eglīte, grīnfelde 2007) as opposed to the categorisation mentioned above in demographic research. other perspectives used to inquire about lives have concentrated on the idea of healthy lifestyle (eglīte et al. 2009) and the experience of illness (mežinska 2009). until the mid-2000s, work on ageing among sociologists focused mostly on relationship between ageing and standard of living (e.g. ozoliņa, zepa 1999), but later topics such as quality of life and active aging became more popular (e.g. brants 2004; stepčenko, brants, bukovska 2007). the trend to relate aging to quality of life coincides with latvia joining of the european union. this was a major political and social change that also had an impact on sociological research. in 2012, for instance, social anthropologist agita lūse (2012) spoke about aging in the context of providing social services for seniors. previous research in latvia on was state funded and used for administration, thus adopting a mostly neoliberal perspective. today, an economic and demographic perspective dominates the common perception of aging in latvia. a healthy and economically-active population is part of the state vision aimed at developing a stronger economy and a higher standard of living. this kind of perception of aging in latvia anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 57 is often adopted at the level of policy planning and implementation. (ccsc 2012, saeima 2010) however, there is a significant lacuna in research aimed at discovering how aging is defined and explained by people themselves. the abovementioned demographicandeconomy driven perspective, if resulting from a desire to boost the economy and solve population issues, leaves the experience of aging and the challenges of this experience locked to the private, personal level; nevertheless, issues related to aging go beyond the purely individual and private capacity field. for example, the (in)availability of easily accessible institutionalised help to solve problems of work, family and private life balance for families with small children and family members suffering from illness. we see the need to change this situation. therefore, the aim of this article is to focus on how aging is defined, evaluated, and explained by people that allows for finding of new perspectives for research on aging in latvia. our research explores the current perception of aging while the latvian population is still regarded as in the midst of adjusting to the transition from a socialist to a capitalist economic system after the collapse of the soviet union. this gives us the additional opportunity to evaluate the influences of this transition on the perception of aging. the aging process is closely connected with bodily experience and identity. thus, the performance of aging is bound up with the idea of relationships. specifically, we see an individual’s performance of aging as based on the relational principle. further, we view aging in latvia as a performance, in judith butler’s terms. performance is a discursive body formed by of relations of references. our data show that the performances of aging in latvia are grounded in relationships with others. these relations of reference – embodied in the performance of aging – are linked to relationships. this means that relations of references used for aging performances are determined by the relationships between a person and other(s), be it oneself, his/her body, family, closer or wider group of people. 1. performing aging as performing relationships margaret a. perkinson and samantha l. solimeo (2013, 1) mention that discipline of anthropology cooperated extensively with the field of gerontology. lawrence cohen (1994, 137) indicates that from the from 1980s onwards, anthropology has given more systematic attention to the role of age, thus creating ‘gereoanthropolgy’. he also draws attention to the fact that at that point there were thousands of articles that included aging in their content and developed different perspectives exploring some aspects of aging: life history, life span, age stratification, grandparenting, a feminist perspective, and medicalization. (1994, 138). each of these anthropological perspectives debate and develop different positions on aging. our aim was to explore aging in a local context and to draw attention to meanings and definitions of aging. margaret clark and kaufman (1967) developed the concept of situated aging, which they explain as an interactive, embodied process that is experienced in certain social and cultural contexts. kaufman (1980) suggests aging in a cultural context forms a certain identity that is not linked to chronological linear time, but a person’s memory. aging in latvia also appears as a situated concept, set by the context of relationships, i.e. informants explained aging identities in latvia by switching evaluation of aging from one relationships context to another. judith butler’s concept of identity performance provides a frame for understanding aging as described by our informants. we combine this with marilyn strathern’s notion of the importance of relationships between people as basis for our analysis of aging in latvia. butler explains that the materialization of the body is performative: it is the result of anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 58 particularly strong social discourses of power (1993, 187-188). performance normalizes the body through multiple repetitions that create and establish a new set of meanings and embody a particular ideology that is present in the case of aging in latvia in the way the individual him/herself and society at large describes the body and aging. by multiple repetitions these ideologies become a part of each person’s identity. butler argues that ideologies are located in discourses and discourse categories, for example “old”, “not so old” and similar expressions that establish the principle of the references (1993, 231). in our case these are associated with the experience and manifestations of aging. these internal discourse categories are embodied and create aging practices as well as allow for an evaluation of other persons’ practices that create power relations. for example, informants expressed statements about how elderly persons should behave in order to take care of themselves and relatives. they also highlighted relatives with errant behavior such as those ate unhealthy or smoked tobacco. thus, age-(in)appropriate behavior can be viewed as a bodily creation which is the performance of the aging identity. in turn, strathern argues that the status of a person in a society is based on relationships with others (for example, family members, neighbors, lovers, larger society), that allows for the cultivation of certain types of the person’s behavior. she uses the concept of “cultivated persons” (1980, 90-92) and believes that not all socialization is based on a verbal text, but can be transferred by example. for instance, the role of parent can be learned by observing the behavior of others in the family. a cultivated person is someone who has been introduced into the order of things, thus taught norms which the individual will follow. this cultivation process results in persons’ self-definition and performances, which is also observable in our research in the process of aging and behavioral norms. strathern (2005, 127) also states that every action is a result of concrete choices between alternatives that are simultaneously based on the relationship and influence the relationship. she describes the responsibility of people for relationships through the analogy of copyright, wherein the author is responsible for the content of his book. she explains that as surnames for persons are the same as authorship on a book, it is family responsibility to create by cultivating its members, but also represents each family’s responsibility to act in a proper way. when seen from this perspective, it is not possible for any member of a family to act solely as a discrete individual because of their responsibility to the family as a group. aging experience also appears to be a part of such cultivated behavior. 2. methods this analysis is based on 55 semi-structured in-depth interviews with people from all regions of latvia, of whom 16 were male and 39 female. these interviews were carried out in 2011-12 by a group five social researchers within the esf (european social fund) project “capacity building for interdisciplinary biosafety research.” the aim of the project was to build a new, interdisciplinary research team, and to attract and train people to take part in interdisciplinary research. involving researchers in biology, medicine, social sciences and law, it aimed to advance research in biosafety and biotechnology management, to develop an interdisciplinary methodology for ensuring biosafety, and to strengthen its capacity at the university of latvia, as well as to promote public participation in science administration. the research conducted by the group of social scientists had the aim of developing biosafety criteria and methodology by evaluating social, ethical, and legal factors, and the management quality of modern biotechnologies. besides expert interviews, data were gathered through participant observation and other activities, including interviews with lay people to find out the needs of society and the degree of participation in the field of biotechnology. anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 59 interviews with people took place and were recorded with mutual informed consent of informants. the terms of informed consent, explained at the outset of their participation, including anonymity, information on main interview topics, rights not to answer and to skip questions or terminate the interview, as well as the usage of obtained data for scientific purposes. the interviews lasted between 30 and 150 minutes and were recorded and transcribed. the data obtained from these interviews were used in this paper for secondary analysis with the permission of project leader aivita putnina, an anthropologist at the university of latvia. interview questions were organized in blocks related to the perception of the body and biotechnologies. only one fifth of the interview was related to aging (other topics covered include questions related to health, bodily perception, assisted reproductions, stem cells, xenotransplantation and others). one of the question blocks included questions on aging and changes in the body. some data on aging had appeared in other parts of interviews, including those related to bodily experiences. a key informant was selected in five different regions in latvia. they helped in recruiting other informants who then participated in this research. the informants were aged between seven to seventy-seven. apart from one 7-year-old girl who had joined in an interview with her mother and had also responded to questions, all participants were older than 18 years. the selection of informants of different ages allows for obtaining the perspective of people of multiple ages in defining aging and growing old, both about themselves and others, and how they assign age-related designations such as ‘senior’ or ‘young,’ or perceiving aging as coming in the distant future. seniors (age 60 and over) in interviews were noted to more often explain their aging experiences. those who had defined themselves as not old or belonging to a younger age category gave a more social evaluation of aging or described when a person becomes old and how. we conducted secondary data analysis associated with aging using atlas.ti. to protect the anonymity of the informants, the interviews were coded designating only the age and gender of the informants. in the process of analysis, we were able to identify eleven key themes, including health, signs of aging, stages of aging, relationship with oneself, relationship with family, and relationship with the community. these eleven interrelated themes were later sorted into two major groups: bodily changes, and relationships. there are some points and clarifications that should be mentioned in respect to our study. first, in our analysis data on how females perceived aging dominates compared to males. secondly, the interviews were conducted without a focus on a post-soviet context; however, the transition period formed a living background for all of informants. those over age of 30 have had experiences of living during the soviet period. post-soviet traits were expressed directly only insofar as the informants mentioned them. only some of the informants, when they had been talking on issues that affect the changing of perception of aging, mentioned the soviet to post-soviet transition. however, in some interviews, informants of advanced years talked about their experiences during the soviet period, creating a comparison with the present. 3. findings 3.1. body and ‘language’ of aging to understand how aging is perceived in latvia, we first cover a body of references/discursive categories used by informants when describing aging. informants had defined aging using a combination of references: years lived, appearance, internal feelings, and occupation. these references were contrasted or used in combination to describe an aging anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 60 person. this was the way our informants created the various categories they used in interviews, such as “old,” “not so old,” and “not so young anymore.” often biological age expressed as the number of years lived was used as the unit of measurement to determine how old a person was. this view was related to the idea that human life is a string of connected, yet discrete stages: birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age, and death. this type of thinking formed life as a continuum that begins at birth and ends with death. however, death as the final liminal point on the continuum of life was never explicitly named when informants talked about the dynamics of the aging process. we discovered that there was no precise boundary that divides one stage of life from another. first, the perception of where the boundary is located between life stages depends on the age of the perceiver. for example, if the person who answered a question about when a person becomes old was 30 years old, he/she defined a person as old as 50 and above; for a 50-year-old the cited age was 70. aging was usually described as the stage following that the speaker was currently experiencing. for example, one informant described aging use a comparison between herself and her parents: interviewer: tell me, at what age does a person become old? does aging create obligations? informant: yes, because in youth we feel that everything is eternal. well now i am middle-aged and it seems to me that eighty is old. in midlife, i have come to understand that i need to spend more time with my parents, because we are not destined to have much more time together. (female, age 43) second, aging was also evaluated by informants individually in each case. for example, the fact that people belonged to the same age did not mean that they would be instantly defined as belonging to the same life stage, because the evaluation focused not only on separate references such as signs of growing old, but also on the performance of a person on the whole that became apparent through the complex of bodily condition, activities presented through the body, mental and emotional reactions and attitudes, as well as indicating directly or indirectly the difference in years between that person and the speaker. thus, a 70-year-old was not necessarily defined as old if they were active (dancing etc.) whereas a 60-year-old who was sullen, uncommunicative and often willingly remained at home could be. the aging of the body was widely discussed in interviews as a crucial part of the evaluation of the aging performance. it was described as a visible transformation of the body, such as changes in skin and hair—for example wrinkles on the face and around the eyes (“crow's feet”), or a greying beard and hair. informants expressed that aging was observed in bodily changes compared to some vague set reference point in the youthful past. for example, one informant referred to fact that he was not so fit as he was when he had been young. even our older informants (age 60 and over) mostly did not refer to themselves as being old. when our older informants described themselves, they explained their age as nonyouth, creating an opposition in their minds, where being young was often seen as being beautiful, agile, and healthy. in her article “age embodied,” cheryl laz states that when people speaking about aging, the “focus on bodies, body parts, and physical abilities and activities is striking” (2003, 503). this comes close very much to how people described aging in latvia, for example: it is difficult to say. the son says to me: your beard. yes, my beard is greying. it isn’t as if i feel old, i feel a number of different things; that i haven’t been anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 61 active, that i haven’t taken care of myself. but it’s not as if i am growing old. (male, age 37) you can never be as thin at 40 as at 20; this is not reason for any stress. (male, age 42) pain and illness appeared as bodily experiences that were used as references often associated with aging in our interviews. pain that had not been present in the past, but was now felt during common physical activities and seen as a bodily transformation was associated with aging. informants mentioned examples of physical aging, such as a deformation of the fingers, back pain, or other illnesses that they associated with years of heavy labor on the collective farms – a common occupation during the soviet period. here one informant expresses how work during the soviet period had impacted upon her aging body: what does it matter to the sovkhoz [collective farm] when you enter your life and have to work from morning to evening? that is why i have to walk around like this in old age. what about my hands? look! all of my fingers are twisted. that’s it. from the terribly heavy work. (female, age 70) the emotions and mental processes of an individual were also used as a measurement tool to determine how old or young that person was. according to our informants, the aging performance of young people was described using discursive references such as being interested in the world, in other people, and the processes around them, being mentally active and involved. further, being of a cheerful disposition was highlighted. the informants expressed the belief that changes in mental abilities are also related to the process of aging. when people grow older, these changes could be detected in the process of communication. changes in mental capacity (for example, clear thinking) were often used to characterize the aging progress. thus, informants specified the significance of mental health as a discursive reference in the performance of aging identity. some informants also used opposition between the mind and the body to describe older people. for example, e.g. the body of someone was seen as old, but the mind was not, thus indicating the perception of aging as being variable and unevenly distributed within the body. for example: well, thinking you can count the wrinkles on your face, but the most important thing is the way you think. some people are already ancient at thirty, so it isn’t about wrinkles. (female, age 33) the person’s mental capacity was seen by informants as being related to the ability to take responsibility associated with adulthood. the person who continued to maintain cognitive capacity was categorized as non-elderly, regardless of their age. sometimes informants explained that an old person could become “childlike.” this designation indicates the belief that when an adult person grows old, he or she is no longer able to take responsibility and make decisions, just like a child. thus, we can conclude that mental health functions as a crucial reference category that affects the evaluation of performance of aging identity. this is related to what is proper for an adult person or improper and therefore compatible or incompatible with social responsibilities and resources an adult person has. that means that if the evaluation of aging performance leads to the transition from adult person to an older one, this also brings changes in social responsibilities and set of available resources. in sum, we found that aging in latvia was described using lived years, bodily changes and mental capacity. these aspects were used differently – contrasted or in combination – anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 62 allowing the creation of age categories such as “old”, “not so old”, but also “not so young any more” and the usage of these to characterize a person as belonging to certain life stage. the boundaries that divide one stage of life from another were not so clear, depending on the speaker’s age and evaluation of each situation, which allows them to place emphasis on one indicator of aging and to ignore others or contrast this with some indicator of youthfulness. 3.2.aging and relationships when answering questions associated with the body and aging, the informants did not describe aging as something separate from the self, but rather as a changing process in reference to a previous self, or as changes in interaction with another(s). the perception and evaluation of aging was described making reference to some point earlier in a timeline or making references to relationships with other people. the process of aging was explained as being placed in the context of certain relationships and functioning as an integral part of their dynamics. the experience of aging could be perceived through various types of relationship: with one’s self, with a romantic partner, with family, and with society in general, lived through from the birth until death. 3.2.1. relationship with oneself, one’s own body analysis of the data shows that the type of relationship that most affected the perception and understanding of aging appeared to be the relationship each person had with oneself and own body. older informants (60 and over) explained that for them old age was coming at the moment when one begins to feel bodily sensations more acutely, and when control over bodily manifestations faded. the older informants expressed that the body produced signals that focused a person’s attention on a problem to make that person react. these bodily changes impacted a person’s relationship with themselves. in the interviews, they stated that one’s body may give pleasure, but at the same time in the process of aging it can remind them of its existence: it can “cry”, declare its disability, “can make one notice its presence,” for example through pain. through these signaling activities one’s body identifies itself as an active and independent agent that one “should listen to,” setting a relational context. informants explained that by building a relationship with their own body, an older person can strive to regain control over it: interviewer: “what do you think, when does a person understand that he or she is old? informant: again, the body declares that you can no longer do the things you could do before. (female, age 39). the building of a relationship with oneself was designated “looking after themselves” or “taking care.” persons over 50 stated that the level at which one looks after one’s own body works as an indicator of the presence and quality of a relationship between them. one should look after oneself-“take care of one’s self” --(“rūpēties par sevi”). this statement included the idea that all should engage in activities that slow down the aging process. many informants expressed the idea that it is important to act preventatively and “to take care” by being mentally and physically active. they explained that preventative measures can reduce or delay age-related bodily signals and slow the inevitable flow of time. “taking care” for them meant avoiding bad habits that affect health, such as smoking or drinking alcohol, engaging in regular physical activity, anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 63 using cosmetics, and maintaining an interest in what is going on in the world. a goodlooking older person was described in an interview as having tended to her body, while youth is seen as beautiful in itself: well it works if only you find the right one, then reactions are not wrong, then people... i am glad to see a person, who cares for her hands, who loves herself. but it is so that in the country it is difficult for me to take care of myself, but if you have good quality [cosmetic] cream, then of course you feel much better about yourself. (female, age 43) the older informants explained that self-care is the way in which people express the feeling of love and acceptance toward themselves, but at the same time one’s attitude towards oneself also affects relationships with other people. self-care was seen by informants as the key to maintenance of physical alertness, tone and activity, as well as everyday attention to one’s appearance, accompanied by preserving a sharp mind. other informants expressed respect and admiration towards older people who are both able and willing to take care of themselves. when a person can no longer manage self-care, they are described as “old” or “very old” in the interviews. therefore, self-care becomes as a required part of the aging performance. informants expressed the view that there were gendered differences in self-care. people pointed out that women care more about themselves, while men do not care enough. some linked this gender difference with the experience of the soviet past. informants also mentioned that, compared with the soviet period, there are many more opportunities to take care of oneself. in the past, there was little knowledge of self-care and cosmetics that would allow them to perform personal grooming as it is done today. one informant mentioned the soviet past in the context of self-care in this way: i think compared with the west, perhaps we (pause) have another experience, practice. i think our men do not care about themselves, they must think that things are fine as they are! (laughs) well, now i think there are more men, at least a part, who take care of themselves. but there are at least as many who don’t practice personal hygiene, i think. well maybe i am mistaken, but i think so. why? i do not know. i think when ... (pause) upbringing, perhaps ... maybe because of the soviet years. (female, age 56) therefore, in sum, our data show that aging performance is evaluated as corresponding to a person named as young while he or she does not sense bodily signals of tiredness, pain and refusal of the body to perform actions in anticipated ways, and when it is not necessary to take special care of one’s own body. informants expressed the perception that a heightened awareness of the body goes hand in hand with taking a proactive stance to lessen negative bodily signals or to delay their appearance by performing preventive actions. many informants indicated the existence of preference to youth, so distancing oneself from aging and maintaining the body in good condition representing a strategy used to sustain a person’s value in the labor market, where age discrimination was something to be reckoned with. a person’s relationship with themselves through their own body appeared to be an important component of understanding of the aging process, experienced by the person themselves and by people involved in different relationships with that person. 3.2.2. romantic relationships anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 64 romantic relationships appear to be another type of discursive organizing principles of aging performance constructing references, and another discursive context through which informants expressed perceptions related to aging. the interview data show that a romantic relationship was perceived as more appropriate to youthful persons. therefore, romantic love at advanced ages allowed informants to reinterpret their position on the youth-old age continuum, making people feel younger. some informants believed that love in older age becomes visible in a person’s body: so, not the growing older… but a person looks younger, and then his eyes are sparkling and ... well, that's another thing, it seems to me, that the face completely radiates light. it seems to me. (female, age 56) a 39-year old informant who works in a nursing home expressed this idea by noting she had been surprised when she had started to work there to discover that even the over-70s loved, kissed, and were involved in romantic relationships at various stages, just like young people. this care worker also explained that love relationships between seniors worked as a curative and had healing power. she stated that love is both an emotional and a physical phenomenon that makes people forget about age and illness and allows them to feel younger: love is important at all ages, and here (in a nursing home) i came to see that even people in their seventies become couples. and in the beginning it seemed so strange, to see old people love each other, the same kissing, the same hugging. but then i came to understand that they like each other. from the perspective of young person those bodies are old, old bodies. but the most important thing is that they have mutual attraction for each other and then their physical problems suddenly disappear. (female, age 56) this informant also observed frustrated romantic relationships that had broken the lovers’ hearts and even could be instrumental in causing death. the context of falling in love was also viewed by other informants as standing in opposition to death; it was a force for life that heals and renews both body and mind. in several interviews the context of romantic relationships is broadened by a process named “growing old together,” that was explained as an acceptance of partners’ bodily changes related to aging and the ability of partners/spouses to maintain emotional unity and love over time. emotional intimacy, mutual love and respect were emphasized by informants as factors that help people either ignore or confront their own physical changes and those of their partners, as emotional closeness compensated loss of physical capacity. this then made some difference in evaluating life stages with respect to aging, in contrast to growing old while being lonely – in other words while living without this romantic relationship. therefore, “growing old together” was seen as being especially beautiful; it was viewed as an ideal that can only rarely be realized. being old in this context became part of the life experience of the described body changes that are accepted by both partners and life events lived together: i think it is beautiful to grow old together. i think that is the ideal. it is not in vain that there are couples who have lived their lives and experienced their golden wedding anniversary and grown old together. they see their children, grandchildren grow up. i don’t know (female, age 56). anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 65 as defined by informants’, “growing old together” was seen as problematic in cases when partners have had a significant age difference between them. partners had been evaluated as being “too young”, “too old” or “just right” for each other in respect to this age difference. thus, age (commensurate with the age of the partner) was one way in which informants evaluated the compatibility of two people. through the process of assigning these discursive categories age became relative. creating a romantic and/or sexual relationship with a younger partner was perceived as an attempt to stay young, to prove that one has the abilities inherent in youth, and has not succumbed to the disability of old age. however, such attempts to stay young were not always evaluated as successful, and thus earned the critical and ironic remarks of peers: it is not for nothing that men over 40 look for younger women. they want confirmation... if he hasn’t fulfilled something in himself, something like that... i don’t really even understand why it seems to me that the opposite is true. to have a young man beside you would be further confirmation that you're old. but i don’t know what takes place in the minds of men. i do not know! (laughs). (female, age 57) in interviews a large age difference between partners was still perceived as an adverse factor affecting the quality of the relationship. informants believed that the older age of one partner highlights the youth of the other and vice versa; they are viewed as unequal. in contrast, long-term relationships between partners of similar ages was seen by informants as a factor that allowed them to view aging less critically, mitigating sad and tragic feelings about vanishing youth. nevertheless, during interviews it was more typical for informants to talk about old people in general, ignoring their sexuality and gender. both men and women were referred to as old people, old folks: “vecīši” or pensioners. this suggests that the experience of becoming a senior is often characterized by the experience of being deprived of one’s sexuality and gender. it was the way in which old people were described by persons who were younger than 30. the age of these informants could be the reason why they had a more distanced and critical attitude to older persons. there was not enough data to find a concrete explanation why old persons in latvia were described without mention of their gender, especially if a younger person talked about unknown, ‘generic’ older persons. this is interesting because in the latvian language the use of different grammatical forms to describe males and females is normal practice, but when people referred to seniors, most informants used a gender neutral grammatical form. 3.2.3. relationship with family in accordance with the interview data, family relationships provided a referential repertoire that was strongly associated by informants with gender roles. often, when an informant had spoken about aging in the context of family, he or she used kinship terms, (the latvian equivalents of mom, dad, grandmother, grandfather), and referred to the particular role in the family and the care that person provides. family and parent-child relationships served in interviews as a special context for how one perceives one’s own age. if someone referred to yesterday’s conversation with their own grandmother, their status as a grandchild could easily be inferred. the birth of a child and taking on the role of parent, encouraged others to see that person as an adult, sufficiently mature, and active and healthy enough to perform the taxing duties of parental care. we identified that the evaluation of one’s own position on the youth-aging continuum can be based on counting years, as well as on the anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 66 status of involvement in a relationship. this was beautifully reflected in the statement of a thirty-three-year-old informant: “i am already still a young mom.” in this self-definition “already” is used to reference to youth of a youngster in the past and while the simultaneously used “still” references the youth of adult person in the present. being a parent, having the opportunity to become a parent, or taking care of children diminishes the significance of age in years. the presence of children in the family served as a reference that indicated youth, not only for the parents, but also for the grandparents: people often say—my grandchildren don’t let me grow old. for example, i feel it in my own grandma. (female, age 20) age in years and the status of parent or caregiver influenced each other when informants evaluated the aging process. seniors were often described as people who provided help to other family members, but family members were seen as a key support network for seniors. consequently, care was characterized as an object of exchange that had been circulating within the family. in the interviews, informants stated that the care and love they received from their grandparents induced them later to take care of their grandparents in return. aging in the context of family relationships appears as a complex system of care exchange: a complex body of references that determined the formation of discursive categories and consecutively aging performance. yet not all family relationships work this way. if different generations of family members disrespected and disregarded each other, the quality of the relationship suffered, and that threatened the reciprocity of care relations. informants described family respect and support as especially important when people were growing old, because it was usually essential for providing sufficient living conditions and quality of life for seniors in latvia. the ability to take care of oneself was inseparable from the performance of care for others – especially children and parents. interview data suggested that if you are cared for, but don’t take care of others, then you are either too young or too old. robust references of youth/maturity included the need to care for others and engaging in partnerships, creating a family, giving birth, and bringing up children, as well as taking part in the labor market. informants argued that the relationships that people have with their families also affected the perception of the “honorable” way to perform aging. family relationships, as informants talk about them, set the context for realization of perceptions of how a “good life” should be lived in combination with the notion of how one should behave at a certain age. family members set the terms of aging performance and of age-appropriate behavior of a person who was growing old. one informant admitted that her grandmother was aging in an improper way that relates to strathern’s ideas on the cultivated person and its behavior in accordance with group-determined norms and acceptance: well, you know i have an eighty-year-old grandmother, [and she] both smokes and drinks. i say: don’t you know that it is harmful? she [answered]: you just live as long as i have. at that point our discussion stopped. i had nothing more to say. (female, aged 33) relatives controlled the aging performance, and in case of age-inappropriate behavior it could be directly related to a particular family member in conversation, with the aim of pushing him or her to a more ‘suitable’ way of acting and of representing their aging. 3.2.4. distanced, non-personal relationships anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 67 the repertoire of references for the performance of youth and aging of someone in contemporary latvia was not only determined by their relationships with a partner or spouse and their nuclear or extended family members, but also by their ability to work, to be useful to society, and to contribute to the wider community. davide torsello argues that “postsocialist transformation, encompassing overall change, has strongly highlighted the dichotomy between novelty and tradition” (2005, 197). he recalls that capitalist economics works as a kind of shock therapy, which can be mitigated by kinship and community ties. torsello recognizes that investment in social and personal networks can function as a personal strategy to help a person adapt to a new situation. work life is an arena where the social and the personal closely overlap. informants explained that, similarly to taking on the role of parent, active involvement in work not only provided group membership, which was associated with youth, but also intensively activated the physical and mental resources of a person, which were important for prolonging youth. the ability to take responsibility, a reference to youth, was also related to occupation. after retirement, a person was commonly described as old. in this context, the continuation of an active work life is a way to retain the status of adult without becoming elderly. informants perceived young people as being actively involved in a wider range of relationships. retirement was described by informants as a factor that narrowed one’s circle of relationships, switching one’s focus to family issues and allowing one to remain active within the personal network. one of the strategies used to avoid the transition into old age after leaving the labor market was to redefine one’s position from that of being an (economically) active person to being a support person for the family (and in many cases the work load does not change). aivita putniņa posits that family is the primary responsibility and the main point of identification for women in latvia (2006, 71). even when work life sets the structure for a woman’s daily activities, she identifies herself primarily with her family. the interview data allow us to conclude that, after retirement, women in latvia often switched the focus of their activity to care and support of their children, grandchildren, and other relatives as a strategy for remaining “young enough to be useful.” this might be also explained by the lack of tradition in talking about the involvement of men in caring practices. even their input could be significant, and also through the stereotypical view that men should not be as involved in the practice of care as women (putniņa 2006, 65). however, statistical reports (veģis 2012; csp 2012; csp 2014) show that after retirement men continue to participate in the labor market, working in full time jobs, more often than women do. this goes along with social research data concerning the social identity of a man being closely related with having an active working life and a position in the labor market (putnina 2005; putnina 2006, 71). in interviews informants make connections between the perception of aging performance in the context of wider social relationships and the investment that an elderly person has made (family, property, professional accomplishment) during their life. interviews show that the level of social contribution that a person has performed during their lifetime is interpreted and evaluated according to this context and reflected in the designations that are assigned to a person upon reaching a certain age. in the context of the family, the experiences of the older family members are often referred to and used as points of reference and/or support in evaluating one’s own point of view about various issues. in such cases, the older person is considered in their role as a relative: mother, father, or grandparent. that person’s experience holds a certain authority and elicits respect. if older people are seen as members of the general public, their contribution is not viewed as unequivocally positive. from the general context of public discussions in latvia comes the idea that there should be present res:////ld1062.dll/type=1_word=accomplishment anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 68 economic resources or professional achievements, or accumulated property to grant a member of a general public social respect. conversely, an informant in her seventies described the heavy physical labor she did during her years working on a collective farm that led to the deformation of her spine and the joints in her arms – an experience shared by many people living in the latvian countryside during the soviet period. the informant remarked that her work and life experience no longer count in present-day latvia due to the shift toward a capitalist economy after the collapse of the soviet union. the capitalist context that has dominated the following decades emphasizes an economic interpretation of work contribution of the different population age groups as demographers and economists refer to them. defining a person’s lifetime contribution to society in terms of social structure and welfare development has created a situation where seniors are perceived as a burden, not as people that have earned their rest after long years of heavy labor. the new retirement and pension system was skewed heavily toward work experience gained after renewed latvian independence, thus setting the context for neglecting the working lives of people who were economically active during the soviet period, as witnessed in the following interview excerpt: i think that aging is not respected in our society; i think it is perceived as a burden and even a threat, even you think about it that way. when you ask young people, for example, small children, what they think about the elderly, they often answer that the old are superfluous and utterly unreasonable people, and that they never want to be like that. (female, age 30) materials from other interviews confirmed the doubts expressed about whether any respect should be paid to an older person due only to fact they have reached a certain age and are referred to as old. informants mentioned that evidence must be found that the person has made a valuable contribution to society. informants remembered being taught that older people must be respected, because they have accumulated experience and one could ask them for advice, but fluctuated in their evaluations of the lifetime contributions that present-day seniors have made. for example, a 28-year-old female argued: interviewer: is aging honorable? informant: yes. my mother always said so, there are some memories... i suppose they have a great deal of experience. yes, certainly...” (female, age 28) when informants expressed the idea that one can/could ask an older person for advice they referred to the “experienced older people” using an indeterminate pronoun “they,” “he,” or “she.” in the context of having a relationship with the state, older people were referred to using the more definite and descriptive discursive category “pensioner.” this word was widely used as a particular term for an older person. to unpack the word “pensioner,” it appears to have additional connotations such as receiving a small pension, on the brink of survival, marginalized, neglected, and lonely. we suggest that in latvia the lack of dignity that pensioners experience and the lack of high quality living conditions in retirement reflects the way in which the value of having a job during working age and one’s contribution to the well-being of the state in the form of paid taxes could be put to doubt and undermine trust in relationships with the state. a lack of aid from the state also was viewed in interviews as evidence of disrespect. informants believed that the state maintained the low pension payments, at least partially due to the expense of paying for the needs of the younger generation, again reaffirming the opposition between young and old: anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 69 the attitude of the state towards older people is negligent. also, the situation in the labor market is tense, an upper age limit dominates. it may be that this is due to the economic crisis, but the public does not respect old people. i don’t know if it is upbringing or what, but my mother boxed my ears if i did not greet an old man. it was brought up with the understanding that there must be respect for the dignity of elderly people. i think that the younger generation does not have such reverence. (female, age 54) upon leaving the labor market due to low pensions, latvian “pensioners” land in an unenviable situation, unless they have family members who can support them. older informants see having a supportive family as crucial for survival, because behind the “pensioner” hides “my granny,” a designation that provides an entirely different and more positive understanding of a person’s position in old age and the level of empowerment that can be associated with it. switching from the context of relationship with the state or society in general to the context of personal relationships with family members gives older people the opportunity to use their entire repertoire of references. this allows them to perform aging in a socially-respected and appreciated way. 4. conclusions currently, an economic and demographic perspective mostly dominates the common perception of aging in latvia. discourses concerning that part of society which is ‘aging’ construct an image of a burden accompanied with risks for the economy and life quality of its inhabitants. these kinds of perceptions of aging are often taken at the level of policy planning and implementation, as a healthy and economically-active population is postulated as a part of the state’s aim to develop a stronger economy and a higher standard of living. yet topics of economic activity, health, and quality of life have also dominated in social research concerning aging. therefore, in our analysis of interviews we focused on how aging is defined, evaluated, and explained by people themselves. we believe that knowledge of this kind opens up opportunities to discover aging strategies practiced outside the frame of discourses of economy and demography and notice possible inequalities, challenging and problematic issues surrounding the aging experience in latvia arise. the results of our analysis allow us to conclude that aging in latvia is performed, explained, and evaluated through references to values and norms of relationships with the self, one’s relatives, and the wider community. these different levels or distances of relationships create the context and set the diverse repertoire of references for the construction of the discursive aging categories such as “old,” “not so old,” “not so young anymore,” and for the performance of aging identity. different relationships also serve as a controlling mechanism of evaluation of the appropriateness of aging performance and thus determine the opportunities for the experience of aging with dignity and respect. our analysis highlights that experience and understanding of aging in latvia is strongly associated with involvement in relationships of different kind and distance. this allow for the detection of gaps which results in disregarding and ignorance of needs emerging in association with aging process at the political and institutional levels brought about by the failure to include these needs in governmental and other regulating documents and implementations when these do not fit into the discourse of economics and administrative or institutional usage-driven discourses of aging. anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 70 in a latvian context, our findings provide a further set of perspectives and challenges, as well as widening the range of people involved when solving the same issues of economic activity, health and quality of life if, as our results suggest, aging is perceived in terms of relationships, for example, of parents growing old with their children and of children with aging parents, rather than if aging is addressed as merely a characteristic of a group of individuals of a certain shared age. if kin relationships are taken into account in respect to aging, it means that not only precise health problem of separate individual gets resolved, but solutions for the organization of working life and care activities of family members are urgently addressed. jessica robbins-ruszkowski (2014), on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork on aging, personhood, and memory in wroclaw and poznań, poland, found that polish informants actively used references to the socialist past when they talked about the aging experience. robbins-ruszkowski also suggested distinguishing the concept of post-socialism as a practical rather than as an analytical category, in order to escape dominant binary frameworks such as east/west or socialism/post-socialism, thus simultaneously appreciating its practical utility as helping to shape people’s expectations, hopes and imaginations. meanwhile our data on aging performance do not show usages of discursive references to the socialist, soviet past as a dominant element of meaning and identity construction associated with aging experience in latvia. however, at the governmental level a division between notions of soviet and postsoviet still is taken into account. this division in case of the present retirement and pension system is used as an argument to neglect the working lives of people who were economically active during the soviet period and grew old after the soviet union ended to exist. these data allow for the adding of a new aspect to the discussion of differing usages of the concept of post-socialism as a practical category. our data show that aging in latvia is not understood in terms of chronological age, and thus attributed as a characteristic narrowed to a certain, clear cut life period, for example to people aged over 60. an understanding of aging as attributed to the whole lifespan, as everyone is involved in aging, opens up an opportunity to redefine the discursive construct of old age as putting a burden and bringing risks to the successful development of society, existing in contrast to the ‘worthy’ youth. dignity and respect appear to be crucial for an experience of aging and an appropriate aging performance in latvia. when aging is seen in a context of a wider range of relationships it also suggests a wider range of involvement in activities which can ensure dignity and respect experienced with aging. that means an escape from the situation where respect could be gained only when a person is economically active and thus narrowing respectful living to participation in paid labor and associating retirement with losing this respectful status with assignment of a designation of ‘pensioners,’ or ‘elderly.’ here, activities of caregiving that are mostly performed as unpaid labor within a family could take their place in the social arena and bring additional moral value and sustain dignity. performed care activities taken into account when the aging experience is interpreted within a set of different relationships not only widen the frames in which respectful aging is defined, but also enhance the switching between discursive categories of age, not sticking to evaluating people as pitiable “pensioners” and/or the elderly. the opportunity to define aging through care activities realized within relationships with oneself, younger and older family members, and/or romantic partners increases the chances of an aging performance being evaluated as appropriate and thus experienced as meaningful. local meanings of the concept of “rūpes” (care) and “rūpēties par sevi/ citu” (to take care of one’s self/another), which comes to be associated with crucial moral values that change relationships of different levels, serve as a certain marker of well-being not only in a context of aging and seem promising for further research. anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 71 at the level of governance and general social relationships, the stress on economic activity as respectful and the disregard of unpaid care activities performed mostly in the context of family relationships, proposes another point worthy of discussion and further research. the moral values of economic activity and of unpaid caregiving appear as gendered categories affecting the lives of women and men both before and after retirement. an understanding of traditional gender roles in latvia links caregiving mostly to females and economic provisioning of family with males. nevertheless both genders are involved in both activities. a more pronounced connection of women with care restrictively affects opportunities for the reconciliation of work, family, and private life. a respectful evaluation of unpaid work for women before retirement, at the same time suggesting a more secure switching to a caregiver’s role after retirement, makes input in appropriate aging performance in the context of family relations, if economic activity becomes restricted due to the difficulties finding a job when being retired. for men, the role of family provider, even it brings a respect during an active working life, can lead to a frustrating situation and create risks of disrespectful status of the elderly after retirement. risks for respectful ageing performance for men stem from impossibility to continue active working life and to take the role of care-giver as seen as incompatible with performance of male gender identity. obtaining additional data on sexuality, gender and aging becomes especially interesting when the parallel existence of the ideal of “novecot kopā” (“growing old together”) in context of romantic relationships (which is seen as particularly beautiful and explained as an acceptance and overcoming of age-related bodily changes oneself and one’s partner) are taken into account. acknowledgements this paper was supported by university of latvia and ekosoc lv programme project no 5.2.4. “renewal of society thought reducing the risk of depopulation, through demographic development and strengthening links with the diaspora for the transformation of the economy in the latvia”. references bērziņš, atis, vītoliņš, edvīns and zvidriņš, pēteris. 2006. iedzīvotāju novecošanās dinamika un diferenciācija latvijā. rīga: lu akadēmiskais apgāds: pp.31. biggs, simon and powell, jason l. 2001. a 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http://www.pkc.gov.lv/images/lv2030/lias_2030_parluks_en.pdf torsello , davide. 2005. memory, space, and time perceptions in a postsocialist village of southern slovakia. in anthropology of east europe review 23(1): pp.169-177. available at: http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/aeer/article/view/255 vecāka gadagājuma iedzīvotāji latvijā” 2012 rīga: csp pp.87. available at: http://www.csb.gov.lv/sites/default/files/nr_15_vecaka_gadagajuma_iedzivotaji_latvij a_2012_12_00_lv.pdf. veģis, pēteris. „on key provisional results of population and housing census 2011”. prepared by the social statistics department of the central statistical bureau of latvia, january 18, 2012. available at: http://www.csb.gov.lv/en/notikumi/keyprovisional-results-population-and-housing-census-2011-33306.html 26 various news items and reports news from abroad: racism in bulgaria our colleagues in bulgaria have made the news. the following was published in the january 25 issue of the economist under the title, "anthroapologists": bulgaria has mobilised its scientists in an effort to support its government's claim that the country's 800,000 or so ethnic turks are in fact full-blooded bulgarians. an article in a national daily, otechestven front, has analysed the results of "anthropological tests" supposedly conducted over the past 30 years by anthropologists from the sofia institue of morphology in three districts which contain many members of bulgaria's turkish, macedonian and greek minorities. the scientists' finding: the bulgarian nation is pure and uncontaminated, and has remained unchanged since the middle ages. according to the anthropologists, the bulgarian people took shape in the ninth and tenth centuries as a blending of slavs, thracians, and asiatic tribes. this mixture evolved into a homogeneous entity, the people now called bulgarians. the foreign invasions of the past winter 1987-spring 1988 1,000 years left no racial mark, it seems. the implication is that members of the turkish minority are merely bulgarians who happen to speak turkish. experts at the bulgarian institute of brain research yugoslavia's tanjug news agency reports have meanwhile been studying the bulgarian brain. their preliminary findings, just released, show that it has been toughened by centuries of hardship and has developed its own peculiar way of thinking. but the researchers also found evidence to suggest that bulgarians are not using their grey matter enough. the institute's director is said to have called on "owners of bulgaria's 9m brains to keep thinking as much as possible". they might start by reflecting on the validity of the sort of research into racial purity which went out of fashion with nazi germany. bread in the ussr we only recently found the following news bulletin: in december of 1986, in response to complaints of poor quality and rapid spoilage, the soviets announced the introduction of standards for 6 new higher quality varieties of bread. the prices of these new varieties will be higher than those of existing types and reflect the better 27 quality flour, the increased yeast, and the reduced moisture and acid content. the moisture and salt content of existing varieties will be reduced, but without any price change. the new varieties will be introduced in measure as the bakeries can be geared up to produce them. no increases in government budgetary revenues turnover tax) are planned to be imbedded in the new prices. (planovoye khozyaistvo, january 1987.) does this mean that the soviets are also eating wonder bread these days? organizations the social science history association we wish to draw your attention to an organization which seems relevant to the interests of many eeag members. the social science history association is committed to the view that systematic inquiry into the past, using the tools of scientific investigation, is of central value to historians and historiography. . .and that the historical perspective is equally crucial to the scientific study of society. the association was founded in 1974 to bring together historians and social scientists those scholars who believe that interdisciplinary approaches are of vital importance to the understanding of societies, past and present. the association publishes a journal, social science history, and a series of books, "new approaches to social science history," co-edited by stanley engerman and john model. annual dues are $20.00 ($12.00 for graduate students) and include a subscription to social science history. to join, contact social science history, duke university press, 6697 college station, durham, nc 27708. the association will hold its thirteenth annual meeting november 3-6, 1988, at the bismarck hotel, 171 west randolph street, chicago, il. sessions are planned on migration and immigration, religion, family history and historical demography, rural history, women's history, economic history, political history, urban history, criminal justice and legal history, the history of education, labor history, and methods and theory. europeanist group organized at iu the department of anthropology at indiana university bloomington recently announced the formation of a europeanist group, which provides courses and dissertation supervision in european ethnology and archeology. europeanist anthropologists on the faculty include richard bauman, joelle bahloul, michael herzfeld, jerome r. mintz, christopher s. 28 peebles, anya peterson royce and k. d. vitelli. of these, herzfeld (an ethnologist specializing in greece) and vitelli (an archeologist specializing in greece) represent eastern europe. for further information, contact the chair, michael herzfeld, department of anthropology, rawles hall 108, indiana university, bloomington, in 47405, or telephone (812) 3351203. congratulations! we have just learned that in late july, during the 12th international congress of anthropological and ethnological sciences held in zagreb, linda bennett was awarded the order of the golden circle and star by the yugoslav federal government. congratulations, linda! the future of eeag response to our ballot mailed early this winter was very positive. we got 36 replies, all but two of them in favor of continuing the eeag and many of them offering to participate in the work of the group. in consequence, we feel justified in proposing arrangements for the future, along the following lines: 1) officers. on the basis of the activities each of you offered to participate in, we propose two slates of new officers. we ask that anyone who wishes to nominate him/herself or someone else for one of these positions write to david kideckel (central connecticut state university) or linda bennett (memphis state university) by september 1 (please do not write to katherine verdery, who will be in romania). also, if anyone nominated below is not willing to serve, please write to david or linda withdrawing your name. the positions are for members of the steering committee in charge of membership and program. the membership job will consist of keeping track of who has paid dues and of who has expressed interest in one or another activity; our ballot provides the basis for this, which will need only to be updated. the program job will consist of paying for the room for our meeting at the annual aaa convention and organizing or asking someone else to organize a session for the convention; responses to our mailed ballot show that many people are willing to organize such a session or give papers, so the program chair will have minimal work along these lines. neither of these jobs requires much work or any expense (costs will be reimbursed by the eeag). 29 we wish to emphasize that only some of those who expressed willingness to be involved in one or another task appear on our list of nominations; we will keep a record of your responses for future elections to office. (you may, of course, nominate yourself now if you wish to serve.) we very much appreciate the positive response that enables us to propose several people for each position and have some "in reserve." we will mail a ballot in early fall with definitive slates and will install our two new officers at the meeting in november. proposed candidates for membership are: stephen dunn (highgate road social science research station), mark forry (university of california at los angeles), shirley hauck (anchorage, al) and joel marrant (linfield college). proposed candidates for program are susan gal (rutgers university), eva huseby-darvas (university of michigan at dearborn), and judith rasson (pacific lutheran university). 2) newsletter. it is not yet certain who will take over the newsletter from bill lockwood. a couple of people expressed interest but cannot commit themselves until their job situations are clear. a gratifying number of you expressed willingness to contribute columns to the newsletter, so if we can come up with an institutional home, the new editor will have a lot to work with. we hope to be able to announce something definitive in november. since this is bill's last issue as editor, we wish to express our heartfelt gratitude to him for the energy and dedication he has given to the newsletter. everyone's responses to the ballot made it clear that the newsletter is the one thing we all want. thanks, bill, for creating such a valuable resource for us. linda bennett memphis state university katherine verdery john hopkins university from házi to hyper market: discourses on time, money, and food in hungary volume 21, number 1 from házi to hyper market: discourses on time, money, and food in hungary jeff smith, debrecen university © 2003 jeff smith all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. “we do not live to eat, we eat to live” (vladimir voinovich, moscow 2042) “we work to live, not live to work” (pete, a friend from debrecen) in the early 1990s one could still find what voinovich called communist food establishments, all across eastern europe. in hungary these önkiszolgáló (self-service communal eating halls) or menza (cafeterias) with long lines of office workers and manual laborers lined up to be served boiled potatoes and some evil looking stew which jokingly would be characterized as “vegetarian pork.” like orwell’s parsons, my fellows would joke, “it looks like meat, it tastes like meat, but i don’t think there is any meat in here. double-plus good!” the experience of eating mass-produced, but cheap food at cafeterias helped people develop an ironic language criticizing socialism and an almost sacred reverence for homemade meals. as a friend lajos told me he never eats at cafeterias: you never know what you are going to get. at home you know what is in the meal: you put it in. you cook it. if it tastes bad it’s your own fault. if it tastes good you can feel proud that you’ve made a good healthy meal for yourself. in hungary the word “házi” means anything homemade. in a worker in a worker’s state, miklos haraszti describes the significance of házi. making something for your-self is to defy the state, which claimed to provide everything needed in life—it means being a moonlighter in a state proclaimed a worker’s paradise. házi symbolized above all freedom. the freedom of házi comes from the freedom from state control, a sense of accomplishment, having agency, and being independent from, i.e. not being dependent upon, the state. with the transformation of the political economy in hungary have come more and more exotic ethnic restaurants, shopping malls with imported foods, fast food establishments, and improved diets. the significance of házi has waned in the face of a new consumer culture in terms of meeting the basic needs of citizens brought up in an economy of shortage. yet the significance of házi has increased in the sense of something harder and harder to find, since more and more people flock to various shopping centers and super markets to buy imported produce, goods, and services. házi meant a kind of moonlighting under socialism, not for financial gain as much as for generating self worth, while moonlighting continues, it is at odds with the object of labor, consumption of fetishized commodities available from retail chains or “hypermarkets.” házi is considered and was considered better because the products of one’s labor are made for the individual’s satisfaction; they are not made for sale; therefore they are not produced for money. they are something made at home, but are not so much required, but desired. the most common házi items are food and drink. this concept however is different than the peasant mentality of doing work on the farm or around the house because there is no alternative, food is grown, and household repairs are done because one must do the work for survival. házi is an alternative to that which is provided by the state, corporations, or similarly organized institutions that are necessary for survival and are bought with money. házi is different than what poor people do for survival growing vegetables in the garden and raising pigs and the like because the family can not afford to buy things at the market or in stores— this is a kind of low level subsistence agriculture. nor is this the same as growing fruits and vegetables and making handicrafts for sale at the jen typewritten text 179 volume21, number 1 market for extra profits. házi means making food for example, because one loves one’s friends, family, or neighbors. a person engaged in házimunka does so with them and for them. házi is not about productivity, profit, or any other economic gain it is about love and freedom. házi, however, has a political meaning; it is about cheating the state because the state cheats the individual. anything that is produced at home runs counter to the modernist projects of communism or capitalism, because the state is not involved. the communist state claimed to provide everything needed in life and therefore házi was an insult to the state. similarly in capitalism everything is in theory available on the market for consumption, and because capitalism is said to be more efficient, with better, cheaper, high quality goods and services, to do it yourself seems stupid and a waste of time. but házi is about dignity, creativity, self reliance, individuality, and self worth; it symbolizes the power to choose, to plan, to accomplish, to be a human being not a robotworker, backward peasant, or mindless consumer—negative sentiments attached to all things un-házi. házi thus is a moral concept, a cultural concept which flies in the face of rational actor models, valorization of communist work ethics, and advertising in capitalist commodity fetishism. házi food, grown in the garden, raised in the yard, harvested, tended to, slaughtered, cooked, and served with special care and attention by family members is praised as a kind of end in itself. it is functional only in that it brings people together in solidarity, enhances dignity, and produces individuality. it is not a way of organizing economic life like in the peasant cultures of the past, although it comes from a peasant mentality; it is an institution in opposition to the modernist state. the fact that many people make jam out of fruit, bacon out of their pigs, and pickled salads out of their vegetables to reduce their shopping budgets does not diminish the cultural meaning of házi foods. beyond a feeling of freedom and cheating the state, some forms of házimunka were forbidden under communism such as slaughtering pigs, people recognize individuals and individualism—my uncle joe made that, or auntie anna baked that. what is given is not commodifiable because it comes out of love. but also one sacrifices time to "do it yourself." it is more than a hobby, although it may be fun. it is more than calculated status-enhancing gift giving, although some might see it that way. it is a feeling of being human in a seemingly inhuman world of progressive modernist propaganda and work place discipline which tells a person that their only worth is in what they produce for the state and how much they earned for their hard work, time, and energy. while házi foods often were converted into subsistence, this is only in the context of socialism’s economy of shortage when people had difficulties procuring food. where házi has been given new meaning is in people’s shortage of time and energy under capitalist consumerism. but the meanings of házi having to do with individualism, dignity, and solidarity are under attack by the new generation’s celebration and enthusiasm for commodity fetishism found in advertising and hypermarkets—a utopian ideology of capitalism. what has time and money have to do with food? why was házi so important? why have people stopped growing, cooking, and eating their own food and instead flock to hypermarkets and fast food restaurants? there is a new generation of young people brought up on the notion that store-bought is better due to the proliferation of advertising, the new emphasis of the power of money and commodity fetishism. the new mentality around food and shopping is part of a new ideal of freedom. freedom before was in házi, doing it for yourself, being able to survive as long as one could produce everything needed in life not relying on the state, institutions and organizations, but on real people “known to you” as friends, relatives, neighbors. the change from doing it yourself to buying it from others involves a new sense of self. this new self-image has changed from independence to reliance on money and consumerist services. i want to use questions about food as a point of entry into questions of power and powerlessness, political economy and culture. similarly one can not understand food and people’s relationship to food without looking at work, pay, taxes, shopping practices, ideas about diets, self image, gender and sexuality. in order to understand the present mentality we must first look at the socialist past, which people place in stark contrast to the present. people surely fetishized all things házi, but this is not the same as commodity fetishism. jen typewritten text 180 volume21, number 1 discourses of time, money, and food under socialism: an economy of shortage q: what is one hundred meters long and eats cabbage? a: the line in front of a meat market. --a socialist-era eastern european joke. jokes provide valuable insights into the realities and frustrations of daily life and the jokes told under socialism often played upon the difficulties of trying to procure food. more importantly, these are joking laments that have to do with dignity, morals, logic, justice, equality or fairness, and how absurdity has replaced natural or normal ways of living and acting in the world. these jokes are about deficiencies. because of the cold war and the mutual separation between the capitalist world and the socialist world goods could only be obtained from other socialist countries, a circumstance that severely restricted the amount and availability of food and other commodities. soviet policy made hungary and the other occupied countries [like east germany] pay the cost of their occupation, which meant high taxes and sharing limited resources with the ussr. the post war period immediately lowered the standard of living, due to devastation as well as war debt payments, and many city dwellers turned to various forms of subsistence farming to stretch their food supplies. pork delicacies, which are a symbol of wealth and prosperity, a sign of the good life for most central europeans, normally integral to holidays and the feasts that accompany them became scarce. the communists after 1956 had to provide the population with pork not just on week ends, sundays and holidays, but for every meal—as a sign of how much better things had become since post-stalinist changes. similarly white bread freshly baked at local bakeries symbolized wealth and prosperity and was made available at low prices so that every family could obtain ironically a middle-class symbol of health and happiness under socialism. pork and white bread are perhaps symbols of social worth they are also unhealthy yet abundant and cheap in hungary. however even though there were times when pork was abundant, often political conflicts would cause pork shortages as well, as the peasant-farmer strikes would sometimes involve slaughtering pigs to prevent acquisition by the state. any way you look at it, even when there was pork, something else was surely defective of deficient. i heard many jokes [1993-1997 hungary] about how people can no longer afford meat; pork usually comes four times a year through the disnatures [pig slaughter] where blood sausages, smoked bacon, and other favorites are prepared. however these homemade pork products were considered like all other things “házi” better—homemade is the best, and store bought the worst. another endless source of jokes is the soviet era queuing. obtaining the materials necessary to conduct daily life was consistently difficult, with some serious improvement after 1989, however while queues were reduced significantly. today people argue that one can't get enough money to buy what there is, before anywhere people sensed goods were available, a line would form and people would wait for hours for a chance to buy. in the 1990s the shops were more abundant than under socialism, but you still had to wait. for example, there was only one chicken shop in the town of bérettyóújfalu [1995-1997]. they sold only chicken, and every monday they were closed, which meant that you had to buy more chickens saturday morning or wait till tuesday. some products were simply in short supply, one day you wake to discover that there is no cheese for two or three days, every shop is sold out. in the past, even more than in the mid to late nineties, workers would smuggle home food or agricultural products in their bags where people would cope with shortages through a barter or gift giving system. although shortages have disappeared in hungary and a new mentality or consumer culture has developed from 1997-2003 people still talk endlessly about where and for how much one can obtain goods and services, but what seems missing is the tales of heroic shopping that were so common under socialism and are still quite frequent in post-socialist belarus. socialist shopping: tales of the heroic mother an old lady enters a food store in budapest and asks for a dozen eggs. the vendor tells her: “you're in the wrong store, granny. here we haven't got any meat. it's next door that they haven't got any eggs.” --a joke told by a young female student. in response to the economy of shortage, rapid inflation, growing unemployment, and the reduction in real income arose a genre of story jen typewritten text 181 volume21, number 1 telling which i and nancy ries, in russian talk, characterize as “tales of heroic shopping”—a set of consumerist tales about braving markets and finding deals. while there is an equally masculinist set of tales about finding deals on cars, television sets, vcrs, computers, and other pieces of high priced hardware. here i will develop my description of feminine discourses about shopping first focusing on survival rather than luxury goods, stretching the household budgets to new heights, and morality induced sacrifices for the good of the children. people developed a genre of shopping tales, male and female, and used certain devices, such as dramatic tone, long pauses for suspense, and lists of impossible situations or obstacles, to produce narratives of ordeal and questing. these stories focused on a hard to obtain, or important item, which was badly, needed such as medicine, toys for children, birthday presents, or items in short supply, butter, meat, tea, or cheese. these stories follow v.j. propp's model of the folktale. they begin with the hero's (or heroine's) realization that there is a need or lack. in jack and the bean stock this is when jack' mother points out that the cupboards are bare. the hero then departs from home with a mission to find food [or some other crucial item]. the hero's journey represents the axis of the narration, during the course of which he must over come a number of difficulties, and survive a succession of trials or ordeals, usually with the help of some supernatural powers [even if the supernatural takes the form of “luck”]. the tale ends with the hero's return home with the goods or in the case of jack something far better than the original quest object. the female version of this tale, set in the present or recent past, represents a hungarian version of what ries calls the “babushka story”—the grandma story. while this discourse was highly important under socialism in hungary and in the 1990s, it is also still popular in post socialist belarus—with its continuing economy of shortage. ries argues that the babushka's ordeal is familiar to all: the long lines, the cold, the faith it takes to wait in line, not knowing if supplies will run out just as you reach the front of the line; the constant intrusions of “more important,” more aggressive or more sneaky persons at the front of the line, the bureaucratic wait for a ration card, or work-place discount card, and a valuable reward at the end— sugar for the family. one russian author, vladimir sorokin, wrote an epic poem of this quest story called the queue. his story while not technically a “babushka story,” is an epic tale, which parallels this everyday story, with exaggerations, strange twists, and a surprise conclusion. his story begins with a long line and a question, "what are all these people waiting for?" the moral of the story is that you join a line first and then ask what it's for. whatever's on sale, it's bound to come in handy, and who knows when you'll get the chance to buy it again? hours, even days in queues must be taken for granted; they are part of normal life. indeed, the queue might be seen as a perfect symbol for life in a society governed by an ideology without present tense for a society-in-waiting, kept in permanent state of slavery to the future. no matter that the man in the queue has as his goal, not some lofty ideal, but a pair of foreign shoes or some rare type of sausage. like communism or utopia, the thing on “sale” isn't bought as much as given, not chosen; shared, not individual—the citizen asks not “what shall i buy today?” but “what are they giving us today?” striving towards their future somewhere at the end of the line, the members of the queue are stuck in the endless present, stuck in the pleasant ignorance of time or horrified as other more important activities slip past them. queuing was not an obstruction to normal life, but the very basis of it and waiting in line became interminable. what both sorokin's story and the “babushka story” have in common are the obstacles or ordeals traversed by our hero, in the past long lines, in the present high prices and lack of funds. in both the inability to find certain items at all is the major obstacle, but now under post socialism there is the problem of finding an item only to learn that one can't afford to buy it. this requires even more searching, forever looking for a deal, a lower price, a seller who can be haggled down to a reasonable price. in the past shopping was a passive activity, you simply found a line and got in looking forward to getting something—anything—because there was literally nothing in the stories. in the 1990s there was a lot more in the stories and although shortages still occurred, they would only last a few days. now the problem is not finding a particular item as much as finding it at a low enough price to actually be able to buy it. in hungary [1993-2003] one must work for money more than ever before. in the past the government gave away food, clothing, housing, and other benefits through the patron-clientelism jen typewritten text 182 volume21, number 1 and paternalism of the workplace regime. now these social programs and workplace benefits have disappeared—there are a few exceptions. the money that a worker or pensioner gets has not increased at the same rate benefits have been lost, prices have gone up, and inflation has devalued currency, this amount of money for the average person is small—just enough to buy food, pay rent, utilities, taxes, etc. i argue that time and money have been seized by the regime as a way to make people feel powerless, but also to naturalize that powerlessness in time and money, not human agency. because stores were generally open only in the mornings and afternoons many could not earn money and spend money; they need to rely on someone to do the shopping for them while they are at work. food stalls sell their produce in the morning between 6am-1pm. these stalls sell the best quality food at the lowest prices. if one works a normal job, 7am 4pm, this means they cannot go to market and buy the best quality foods. they must go before work, or after work. but usually this time is spent waiting for buses, trains, and stuck in traffic. supermarkets, which are open later, don't really sell fruits and vegetables in quantity or quality and the prices are higher. this means one family or household member, usually a woman, wife, or grandmother, must spend their day in search of food—the cheapest, best quality goods sold during normal working time, 7am-4pm. it is possible to buy food at a non-stop [a convenience store open from 6am-12pm]; this food is of the worst quality and the highest prices. this forces one person to devote their time to finding good quality food to spend another family member's money on—that person must spend their time pursuing money making activities, but not accumulation or consumption. this forms a division of labor, usually highly gendered. dignity, shopping and poverty tales of heroic shopping mitigated some of these feelings of humiliation by valorizing personal sacrifice and humility and highlighting the overcoming of innumerable obstacles. the telling of the tale restores the dignity of the mother or wife more than actually acquiring anything, focusing on heroism, endurance, cunning, and good luck. here the mother or grandmother becomes the symbolic embodiment of the value of female dedication and sacrifice. her ability to acquire goods in an economy of shortage proves her intelligence, cunning, endurance, and desire to self-sacrifice for her family. these stories highlight how women, especially older women, should be appreciated, and not be taken-for-granted, and spared the double-burden. these tales played on the cultural constructed notion of women's natural abilities to manage the domestic sphere, and fetishize the magical abilities of women to endure suffering, to be faithful, self-sacrificing, and the ability to produce desired objects magically from impossibly meager materials or from a desolate environment. intertwined between magical appropriation and descriptions of endurance, are laments of how hard it was for others, citing tragedies. while shopping in the past was an adventure of trying to find something to buy, now one can window shop, looking at all the fancy, high priced goods, displayed in the windows, but the people with money don’t have time to window shop those without money can’t buy. in post-socialist hungary [1993-1997] there was a dual problem of ability to pay as a shortage and when and where one could make that small amount of money go for enough. often not enough of some particular good was available in the stores and food stalls of the open market, unlike now, where people have cars and can haul week’s worth of groceries to a large freezer or fridge. in 1990s hungary, most people had to carry their food in bags across town to their flat or house because everything one needed was not available in one place—like the 24 hour food warehouse, metro, tesco, etc. a hypermarket in 21st century hungary combines 20 different socialist/post socialist stores under one roof, one can find for example, fruits, vegetables, meat, cereals, milk, hardware, cloths, imported goods, flowers, candies, etc.— all conveniently located in one place. in post socialist hungary, all these products were located, without much variation in quality, all over the city or town. one had to travel on foot or wait for the buses to find what you wanted and prices varied greatly from shop to shop. one shop might carry one item at a low price, but the other thing one needs sells cheaper across town. at the second shop, other items will be more expensive, but one item will be low priced. this situation required a daily shopping routine, because even if one finds what one is looking for at a low price, one has nowhere to store food in a socialist-era flat. the socialist-era flat was heated from a central located heating plant building. there was no way to control the heat. year round the room temperature was jen typewritten text 183 volume21, number 1 between 70-90 degrees fahrenheit, spoiling fruits and vegetables. refrigerators are too small to store provisions for the week, so someone had to make more rounds to the market and stores. one was usually tired out by carrying all the groceries in their shopping bags, backpacks etc. back and forth across town from one's flat to various shopping centers, stores, and open air markets. commuting also took time. the person who is a wage earner might have to travel one to two hours or more everyday just to get to the wage-labor work place. this precludes hunting for food when shops close up when people get off work. some people will try to leave work to go shopping, but people like school teachers or factory workers had to add to already long working days the 2-3 hours required to get something “good” to eat. i emphasize good because in hungary you can find non-stop stores that sell lunch meat, cheese, bread, canned vegetables, etc. but this is of poor quality and expensive. another series of jokes are told about surrogate products, my favorite of which is surrogate coffee jokes. this a joke i heard while talking to high-school teachers in their break room in 1996: --”would you like a coffee?” --”why yes, thank you” --”would you like instant coffee or microwaved coffee?” --”ah...no thank you i'll just have the presso coffee” --”with saccharine and powdered milk?” after joking like this for a while someone invariably would pick up one of the hajdu-téj powdered milk packets and point out that the milk was powdered right there in town, which is the best thing “because you see we know its fresh, not like those other, ’imported’ powdered milk brands.” similarly the sugar was made from sugar beets, a substitute source for sweeteners. the joke about powdered milk was particularly ironic because the town and the surrounding area was the largest milk producing area in the country, yet people were “forced” to use powdered milk in their coffee, instead of fresh whole milk. these jokes highlight the problems with consumerism in post socialist hungary because despite the improved availability, quantity, and choice what one gets isn’t really worth it—everything is artificial, inhuman, undignified—the opposite of házi. everyone knows that házi is igázi—the real thing. but commodities are sold now in hypermarkets under the slogan—"the real thing" (coca cola) or symphonia cigarettes' "tiszta házai" ("pure homegrown"). people joke that hungary was a moonlighters’ paradise not a workers’ paradise and now ironically say hungary is a consumer paradise or a fools’ paradise—artificial, short of real choices, real freedoms, and real házi. hungary has perhaps in theory moved from a “moonlighters’ paradise” to a “consumer paradise.” yet like the concept of a “workers’ paradise” consumption is open to only those with access, the power to tap into the redistributive power of the state. with a shift from patronclient connections to money people have to seek work to get money to buy food. under the current tax regime approximately 50% of one’s official income is taken by the state’s tax office. 30-48% of one’s gross income is taken in the form of personal income tax, but another 12% is taken on every necessity, food, medicine, cloths, etc, while 25% is taken in value added taxes on luxury goods including such necessities for sociability such as alcohol, cigarettes, and mobile phones. when asked what people spend their money on the number one answer is food, yet upon further reflection and persistent questioning most conclude that they spend more money on taxes than anything else. food is primary matter, we cannot live without food and water, sleep and warmth—these are called basic needs and the meaning of life, in part is simple, we live to eat and eat to live. yet most cannot eat without buying produce at a supermarket and thus paying 50% of our income to the state in taxes. while one informant characterized hungary as a “consumer paradise” many other people have told me that before “capitalism” hungary had an economy of shortage—too much money and nothing to buy—now there is an economy of abundance—”you can buy anything you want if you have money.” commodity fetishism, consumerism, and shopping in the 1990s people would talk to me for hours about their dreams of shopping in the west where people could buy anything the wanted. this discourse has largely disappeared in 21st century hungary, but has not disappeared in belarus where people cross the border to shop in poland. voinovich describes such a dreamjen typewritten text 184 volume21, number 1 shopping trip in his satirical novel moscow 2042: i went over to one of the counters. uncertain at first, then getting into the swing of it, i began gathering groceries: two liter bottles of the swedish vodka absolut, a good length of cracow kielbasa, a long roll. a few pieces of trout, a package of shrimp, a bunch of bananas, and jars of pâté, caviar, evaporated milk, green peas, asparagus, [etc.] some items i shoved into my pockets, others i held under my arms, and the rest, a pile higher than my head, i carried in my arms. things started falling, and my pile was becoming smaller and smaller (voinovich 1980:170). the dream of abundance and ability to pay was fantasized again and again in dream like discursive-imaginary trips to austria where, my friends argued the people there in the west could buy anything at any time. the dream collapses into despair as the items slip through the shopper's fingers, evaporating before them as they dream of more and more abundance and realize that they can't buy, they can't hold onto these items which are placed before them. people pointed out how in austria “you get a shopping cart to carry all your stuff in, “ but lamented how in hungary “you get a hand basket, because you can't afford to buy more than a hand basket's worth of groceries from a store.” this discourse has evaporated too. from 1997-2003 the discourse involves getting money to buy, hungary is a consumer paradise, but a tax nightmare—the state appropriates one’s income thus shattering the dream of unrestricted consumption. when i ask friends, colleagues, students, and well to use the old anthropological term—informants what they think about food they usually respond that it’s a question of too much or too little, too much food or too little, good quality or bad quality, high priced or low priced. although young women, such as students at debrecen university, seem most concerned with eating too much, students are generally poor and very busy; they must eat like anyone else, yet they have very little time and thus spend their break time eating fast-food or going without. this is a general problem for young men and women who are students, but also people in general don’t have time to stop and eat a proper meal; they are too busy working two or more part time or full time jobs to eat properly. they must work overtime to earn enough money to pay high tax rates, usually working an official job with a registered income and a hidden “under-the-table” job to make up for the loss of about 50% of their income to the tax offices. similarly students are affected by the tax regime through its effects on educational institutions’ quota system. the universities, for example require students to take anywhere from eight to twelve classes a semester, sometimes more. this means a lot of time spent in-class listening to lectures. the students have little time to spend on reading, writing, research or debate and discussion, but also on shopping, preparing and eating quality foods. many students choose to go out drinking with their friends sometimes substituting beer for dinner. but why such a high number of required courses and required electives, and why such an emphasis on lectures and exams? the answer seems to be linked to the administration’s pay scales and remuneration system. teachers are paid not by salary but rather are paid by the amount of classes taught, by the number of hours spent in-class. every university instructor i have met works some kind of side job, extra hours, private lessons, or working for a private firm. the educational system then generates more easy to teach, easy to evaluate, authoritarian styled lectures so that teachers can make a living, sometimes avoiding taxes, sometimes generating large enough incomes so that after taxes, enough remains. students for their part receive a “free education” they are effected by the quota system inherited from the past, but which costs them more time than money. time is taken up by the state, time for thought and reflection, conversation and debate, time which could be spent on politics, civil society, and the arts. students often complained that teachers didn’t really read and respond to their term papers so why try, why care? sadly teachers told me they have no time to do a proper job they are too busy with too many classes to teach. on average a university instructor teaches 36 or more hours a week, not including preparation, exams, office hours, research, curriculum development, conferences, publishing, etc. all required to do quality scholarly work. too much work means that workers, teachers, students, don’t have time to eat properly. the new faith: commodity fetishism and power marx used the term commodity fetishism to denote the belief that particular jen typewritten text 185 volume21, number 1 objects have mystical powers, supernatural powers, magical powers. he argued that the religion of capitalism was commodity fetishism including hiding the whole production process and mental work of turning labor into profit, buying into salvation, money into more money. if hungary is imagined as a consumer’s paradise then it’s organizing principle is commodity fetishism. when you buy a commodity you not only get its use value, but rather it’s symbolic meaning. symbols do not have fixed and definite meanings they are context dependent, yet they have somewhat shared somewhat contested meanings. signs and symbols can be used to evoke shared histories, morals, cautionary tales, and have the power to persuade listeners to change their behaviors. similarly advertising and the mental life of shoppers rely on commodity fetishism—the belief that when one buys a product they are getting a magical power, which is not actually inherent in the object, but is associated and evoked by the object. for example, a mobile phone has certain use-values, it can be useful at certain times and places to call a friend for help, to arrange a rendezvous or similar meeting—it also might have a built in calculator, calendar, address book, digital camera, etc. but a mobile phone has a symbolic meaning; it is a status symbol. it has the power to help the possessor in less physical, more social-cultural ways. similarly, food and drink have the magical power to satisfy and please guests, improve one’s health and quality of life, prevent aging, etc. but diet foods are of course even more powerful in the discourses of advertisers; they are healthier and make you sexier, more desirable. advertising in general plays on the idea that a product will bring magical powers to the consumer. usually this involves sex and romance, however might include improved intelligence, better family life, extended life, good times, improved nutrition, etc. but foods bought at hypermarkets are sold with the promise of saving time and money. one saves time by not growing it, processing the food, preserving it, and looking through the market stalls. one saves time because preparation time is reduced as the cook can take the food from the wrapper into the microwave and then onto the dinner table. most of all the audience is promised, ease, fun, and “coolness”—being a better human being. in berger’s excellent short essay ways of seeing, he analyzes advertising, commodity fetishism, and political power arguing that capitalism has the illusion of democracy, free choice, and genuine happiness. i quote: “the pursuit of individual happiness has been acknowledged as a universal right. yet the existing social conditions make the individual feel powerless. he lives in the contradiction between what he is and what he would like to be. either he then becomes fully conscious of the contradiction and its causes, and so joins the political struggle for full democracy, which entails, amongst other things, the overthrow of capitalism; or else he lives, continually subject to an envy which, compounded with his sense of powerlessness, dissolves into recurrent daydreams.” házi meant personal power against the state under socialism. now commodity fetishism means sacrificing time and energy to buy food with an opposite symbolic worth to házi foods. while the social conditions in hungary are “improving” (usually meaning becoming more capitalist and consumerist), there is often a contradiction between improvements in the availability of goods and services and debilitating economic circumstances of multipleincomes, high taxes, and decreased purchasing power. when time is taken up with working, daydreaming, and shopping, people have little time and left for political action, critical thought, and sharing perspectives. when people are bombarded with contradictory ideas and images of who they are and who they would like to be, they reward and punish themselves for the contradictions—binge eating, starvation diets, self-abuse, alcoholism, drug use, over eating, etc— rather than seeking alternatives. while men and women i spoke to in the field are aware of these contradictions; between ideals and realities, theory and practice, representative democracy and freedom, capitalism and consumer choice, working to live and living to work; they feel they are caught in a trap and feel powerless to change the situation. they realize that commodity fetishism is an illusion, a lie, propaganda promulgated by a state that encourages consumption because buying means taxes and taxes mean profits. but commodity fetishism brings hope, hope in salvation from being uncool, escape from the realities of overwork, relief from frustration and meaningless daily routine, glamour and envy, sacrifice and duty. buying something makes one feel good. it is like a drug, it is addictive, it serves as a kind of medicine, it brings relief, but it also isn’t a cure, it relieves symptoms, it conjures up psychic energies, it keeps one going, but like dependency jen typewritten text 186 volume21, number 1 one needs it more and more and when one can’t get it one crashes. people reward themselves with a little treat, a magic fix: fast food, chocolate, a few beers, and a cigarette. at the end of the month, many people run out of money and go without the little treats and well-cooked meals. hungarians have embraced a new ideal of the magic fix, quick easily digested fast foods. at lunchtime the local mc donald’s restaurant is packed with businessmen, mothers and their children, eating quick food in a clean environment with plastic toys inside happy meal boxes. there are weekly specials and prizes to be won for frequent customers with “smart cards.” mc donald’s offers discount prices on mobile phones, digital cameras, and cd walkmans. all of this opportunity to eat quickly and win prizes, in a clean modern environment brings people away from home cooking, healthy, fresh fruits, and vegetables. more and more people use consumer services like restaurants for lunch, dinner, and ceremonies like weddings, graduations, and rites of passage. people have developed a split consciousness about knowing that homemade is better and that time and money calculations involving working multiple jobs, paying high taxes, and taking time to shop means eating out. pizza delivery places have sprung up quickly to serve the eating needs of students, single mothers, and the over worked. not only has mc donald’s colonized the eating habits of people living in hungary, but there are a plethora of hungarian fast food establishments, serving hot dogs, hamburgers, gyros, pizza, and sandwiches. in debrecen there is a 24-hour diner, route 66: american style, where one can come and eat anytime day or night —absolutely unheard of before 1995. while people lament these developments, they flock to fast-food establishments because they have no choice, they must eat after all and work like never before. within the context of fast food and loss of homemade dinners people have rewritten their ideal notions of family and gender. the new ideal again seems similar to the american ideal of the 1950s. ideally, a man should go out and hunt and gather money, which he brings home for his wife and family. the wife, free from working at the office, factory, or cooperative farm, goes shopping at her leisure, driving the family car to the hypermarket selecting the finest choice meats, cereals, cheeses, breads, wines, and other delicacies in a clean efficient environment where her car carries the bags home for her. everything is wrapped in plastic, standardized so as to prevent cheating, controlled so that one can see price by quantity and that the food is fresh—by examining the sell by date. the hypermarkets are ideally always stocked to the ceiling with the latest foods with interesting exotic names like mexican pizza, chinese noodle soup, and count chocula cereal. with frozen foods comes the need for larger refrigerators, larger cars, bigger parking garages, plastic debit cards, shoppers gold cards, and other tokens of consumerist status symbols. with this diets suffer as symbols of wealth increase in a zerosum game of keeping up with the escalation of consumption as social status. as people feel they need and want more, faster and faster, more efficient and plastic covered they need money and more money. this leads to more working hours, more hidden income to avoid taxes, less time for vacations, time to reflect on life, time spent with children, less time for quality time with their partners, less cooking, more shopping in hypermarkets—a loss of time and money, and an increase in artificial flavors and preservatives. the political economy and culture has radically changed from a do-it-your-self ethos to one of seemingly unrestricted consumption. conclusion what i have tried to show is a transition from an emphasis on házi to an emphasis on hypermarket in the discourse of hungarians in the last 20 years around the issues of food acquisition and its symbolic meaning and cultural significance. i emphasized jokes as a way of highlighting and evoking images of a socialist past which meant insufficient qualities and qualities of available food for consumption. although in the socialist period money was significant it was less significant than the ability to find food, grow, food, or steal food. with the end of socialism money has a new meaning and a new fetishized power: many say money can buy anything. with an emphasis on money comes a tax system that extracts lots of money from individual citizens and visiting workers. as the popular dictum states “time is money” an therefore a state which is seizing money in the form of taxes also seizes the time of its citizens and with this, energy and labor power is also seized; thus the citizen is working more for the state than for his/her self, family or community. with so much time in the past spent trying to find food and other necessities, less time was available to devote to other uses. long lines immobilized bodies in non-productive activities. jen typewritten text 187 volume21, number 1 but if these lines are bureaucratic in nature then what is to stop one from eating in line—bring a bag lunch from home. the problem today however is that people have less time for shopping, because they are working too long hours with double incomes required by families to keep up. this seems more and more normal to americans with double incomes the norm. with the americanization of hungary this seems natural, but the difference in hungary is that not two incomes are required, but four since half of one’s official salary goes to the state in the form of taxes. this leads to two significant problems for hungarians: the need for faster foods and hidden incomes. this leads to more stress, more corruption, poor diets, less time for healthy physical activities, a greater emphasis on házi, but a more nostalgic one. the young generation brought up on images culled from the tv see all things házi as backward, simple, old fashioned, a waste of time, and too difficult—why bother? they dream of making loads of money and thus living free. freedom means less doing it for yourself, organic, healthy living, in harmony with the natural environment, but rather a sexy, glamorous life style of the rich and famous— dining out, racing down the highway eating fastfood and talking on the ubiquitous mobile phone—a plastic world of credit with differed costs—worry about the effects later. it’s a new mentality of having next year’s model, today, at half the price. but what will the price be for hypermarkets, hyperinflation, hyperbolic ads, for some hypertrophy, for others perhaps hypersensitivity to body image and a rejection of consumption—when you have an economy of abundance not eating becomes a sign of distinction and prestige—even envy. hyper(markets) means both something better and something worse simultaneously. hypermarkets are better and yet worse than the traditional piac (market) and better than the socialist abc stores. hyper markets are beyond measure, better than anything dreamt of before, a shopper’s utopia— fresh fruits, exotic foods, quality control, centrally located with plenty of parking. but hyper also means excessive—too much plastic, too much control, too many security guards and surveillance cameras, too many preservatives, too many bright colors and advertising slogans. a move from házi to hyper, socialism to capitalism, time to money, nostalgia to sci-fi is like a move from orwell to a brave new world—globalization, standardization, and the belief in limitless consumption. it is not a better world; it is not more freedom. it is simply a gilded cage for a stuffed pig. references cited berger, john 1972. ways of seeing. london: penguin. haraszti, miklos 1976. a worker in a worker’s state. new york: universe. marx, karl 1967. capital. vol. 1. new york: international publishers. orwell, george 1948. nineteen eighty-four. london: penguin. propp, v. j. 1968. morphology of the folktale. austin: university of texas press. ries, nancy. 1997. russian talk: culture and conversation during perestroika. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. sorokin, vladimir. 1985. the queue. london: readers international. verdery, katherine 1996. what was socialism and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. jen typewritten text 188 the highs and lows of ethno-cultural diversity: young people’s experiences of chalga culture in bulgaria anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 85 the highs and lows of ethno-cultural diversity: young people’s experiences of chalga culture in bulgaria apostol apostolov university of birmingham introduction multiculturalism in the west, it has been argued, is characterised by the emergence of ‘new ethnicities’ (hall 1996), capable of crossing ethnic boundaries and overcoming racial barriers (back 1996; nayak 2003). hip hop and other types of black music have been seen to provide linguistic and cultural resources which construct for young people a forum for cross-racial communication and a ‘landscape of interaction and negotiation’ (back 1996: 51). indeed, hall et al. suggest that ethnically based cultural products in general hold the potential to break down interethnic antipathy (hall et al. 2003: 62). such arguments about the potential of western multiculturalism, developed in the context of post-colonial migration, have not been tested, however, in countries outside the global core and in national and regional contexts where interethnic exchange occurs primarily among indigenous or ‘indigenised’ ethnic groups or peoples. this article seeks to do just that by considering ‘regional’ forms of inter-ethnic exchange and their potential for fostering multiculturalism. as the article will suggest, based on a study of chalga music as a form of popular culture in bulgaria, multiculturalism in contexts outside the global core could perhaps be more adequately interpreted through focusing on cultural pluralism or preservation and enhancement of values and habits of co-existing groups, rather than on the emergence of radically new forms of ethnicity. young people in bulgaria use both global and regional resources in the production of local youth cultural forms. while global resources are appropriated primarily through western youth cultural styles and musical genres, such as hip hop, rock, popular music, etc., regional resources are available to young people in bulgaria via folk or ‘traditional’ ethnic music from other neighbouring balkan countries and turkey. chalga music, which appeared in bulgaria in the 1990s, is a widespread cultural phenomenon that draws on such regional ethnocultural musical traditions. chalga, sometimes also referred to as ‘pop folk’, consists of the production and consumption of a particular type of ethnically mixed music. it is a bulgarian modernised reworking of regional folklore, heavily influenced by a variety of regional musical styles. serbian, greek and turkish national musical motifs are used as a source of creative experimentation within bulgarian popular music, which also draws on sounds usually associated with the cultures of the roma or ethnic turkish minorities in bulgaria.i the multi-cultural diversity represented in chalga suggests that production and participation in youth cultural practice in contemporary bulgaria is moving away from a mono-white or a mono-ethnic rationale for cultural engagement, representative of the socialist past of bulgaria (silverman 1989: 147). in the socialist period, although cultural life in bulgaria was politically inclusive of ethnic minorities, in as much as they were allowed to participate in the production of ‘formal’ cultural activities, such as concerts and communal vocal groups, such activities could not be identified as anything but ‘bulgarian’ (kaneff 2004: 167). thus, the bulgarian dominant ethnic culture was the only ethnic culture available for mainstream consumption and production. it is suggested in this article that chalga music departs from such homogenous constructions of national culture in that it has become established in people’s minds as ‘turkish’, ‘roma’ or ‘oriental’ music. the fact that young people from different ethnic backgrounds use ethnic minority musical elements for the production of chalga also means that it has taken on something of a similar role to global forms of hip-hop as a popular medium for inter-ethnic cultural exchange. drawing directly on young people’s experiences and narratives of chalga music in bulgaria, this article explores chalga’s roots in ethnic musical forms from bulgaria and other cultures from the balkan region. it also considers the significance, or otherwise, of young people’s ethnic background and attitudes to their creation and experience of chalga as well as the actual and potential role of chalga in facilitating inter-ethnic cultural exchange between young people of different ethnic backgrounds in bulgaria. the article suggests that chalga as a specific type of music could both reveal and promote inter-ethnic anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 86 tolerance in the attitudes of young people from bulgarian ethnic background. the article is based on ethnographic research with young people in bulgaria, conducted in 2000-01 in the towns of targovishte and veliko tarnovo, situated about fifty kilometres from each other. the choice for these urban localities was partly determined by the fact that the study was concerned with provincial youth cultural scenes and was interested in the cross-site interaction between some youth cultural scenes in a relatively close regional proximity. ii both towns are also ‘hotspots’ outside sofia the capital city for a great number of youth cultural scenes, including graffiti art, skateboarding, chalga, heavy metal music, and skateboarding, which the study was keen to examine and ‘map’ in relation to each other in each town. the ethnographic process consisted of semi-structured interviews, fieldnotes, participant observation and focus group discussions. material from a total of thirtytwo people was gathered. the choice of respondents reflected the youth cultural scenes represented in the towns. thus, the views included in this article are either from members of the chalga scene or members of the other youth cultural scenes in evidence. although the research was based in the two towns, the pool of participants also included young people who were resident in the wider regions of veliko tarnovo and targovishte. while the research for the study was conducted in 2000-01 (and is therefore only a ‘snapshot’ of what was observed at the time), its findings remain pertinent to current debates. this is because, firstly, the findings speak to theoretical debates, which seek to understand the impact of, and engagement with, ongoing processes such as globalisation and europeanisation among young people in the region. secondly, the popularity of chalga in bulgaria has not diminished since the research was conducted, while, as evidenced by postfieldwork secondary literature cited here, the discussion of multiculturalism in the region has become even more topical. chalga as a multi-ethnic ‘national’ music one of the popular ways of describing chalga in bulgaria is to say that it combines re-worked bulgarian folk music with turkish and roma musical traditions. it is also known for attracting to clubs or private parties young people from all ethnic backgrounds in bulgaria, but primarily ethnic bulgarians, ethnic turks and roma people. iii chalga, therefore, appears to be a musical genre in bulgaria which, because (or in spite) of its associations with ethnic minority cultures, narrows the cultural gap between ethnic majority and minority participants in the chalga youth cultural scenes. unlike any other popular music genre in bulgaria, ethnic minority cultures are openly incorporated into the chalga scene. participants in chalga events were observed during fieldwork enjoying and encouraging interethnic cultural experiences by engaging in dances usually associated with the culture of the ‘other’. in particular, ethnic bulgarian fans play a major part in sustaining the roma and turkish elements in chalga.iv for example, dancing to ‘typically’ turkish or roma rhythms and belly dances is common and is practised widely by ethnic bulgarian participants in the chalga scenes in targovishte and veliko tarnovo (fieldnotes 10.01.2001, 12.01.2001, 23.03.2001, 25.03.2001). an ethnic bulgarian fan of chalga explained his attitude towards the amalgamation of turkish, roma and bulgarian folk musical elements in chalga thus: it doesn’t bother me that chalga contains a lot of turkish and gypsy melodies. i like turkish rhythms and i like the romantic character of gypsy music. but chalga is not only turkish and gypsy music; it also contains reworked bulgarian folk music. it is not traditional folk music, but a lighter pop version of it; it’s more dynamic. the combination is strange, but the music is great for dancing. [jana, female, age 24, targovishte]v the above quotation suggests that the combination of bulgarian, turkish, and roma cultures in chalga music is valued by the ethnic bulgarian participants in the scenes, especially because of the dancing potential chalga offers. although the use of re-worked bulgarian folk music is often resented by anti-chalga oriented young people (see below), the participants in chalga scenes seem to value the fact that traditional bulgarian folk music has been made more accessible and dynamic by bringing it closer to the trendier styles of pop music. a similar trend towards cross-fertilisation between ethnic minority music and pop music has been reported also in macedonia and bosnia and anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 87 herzegovina in the late socialist period (manuel 1988). in macedonia, such ‘modern’ roma bands employed electric guitar, bass, and other amplified melody instruments, which broadened their appeal to audiences beyond strictly roma populations. the music of such bands also drew on turkish rhythms and vocal styles. in bosnia and herzegovina, as the demand for popular folk music with a distinct roma flavour grew, roma and other minority musicians started producing ‘upbeat’ musical improvisations which reflected key elements of popular youth musical trends (manuel 1988: 139). turkish and roma cultural motifs have also become more accessible to ethnic bulgarian audiences because of their musical fusion with bulgarian folk music. an ethnic bulgarian chalga fan explains: i don’t normally listen to turkish or gypsy music because i am bulgarian, but chalga uses such music alongside bulgarian music and the final product is party music – i like it. [tonny, female, age 20, targovishte] chalga music therefore appears to provide its ethnic bulgarian fans with an opportunity to appreciate turkish and roma musical cultures within their local environments, something that is justified by reference to the fact that it creates a good party sound. as the above quotation suggests, however, the inclusion of turkish and roma musical elements into the dance scene does not automatically translate into including turkish and roma cultures into notions of ‘bulgarian-ness’. on the contrary, it was ‘unnatural’ for my respondent because of her understanding of what it means for her to be ‘bulgarian’ to associate herself with any notion of ‘pure’ turkish or roma music, which effectively excludes these types of music from the realm of ‘bulgarian’ culture. yet chalga music, and dance clubs in particular, provide venues where young people from the turkish and the roma minorities in targovishte and veliko tarnovo are welcome and are able to perform publicly ethnic dances such as kjuchek together with their ethnic bulgarian peers.vi it is established elsewhere (levy 2004) that the turkish and roma minorities in bulgaria fully enjoy chalga music. my participant observation and informal conversations with ethnic bulgarians from the chalga club scenes in veliko tarnovo and targovishte confirm this and suggest that it is the turkish minority in particular that is actively involved in attending public chalga events. the turkish minority is the biggest ethnic minority group in both targovishte and veliko tarnovo and maintained a constant presence at the nightclubs where chalga was played (fieldnotes 12.06.2001, 22.06.2001). although roma young people were also visible in the chalga clubs in veliko tarnovo and targovishte, my respondents told me that roma people in general listened and danced to chalga at home where they organise big chalga parties that sometimes extend out into the streets in front of their houses. this was particularly visible in the residential areas with dense roma populations in both targosvishte and veliko tarnovo the so-called roma quarters (fieldnotes 24.07.2001, 02.07.2001). the practice of roma people dancing to chalga music particularly in their homes seems to reflect the association of chalga with weddings and other festive occasions, traditionally taking place in the private sphere in bulgaria (buchanan 1996, see below). the enjoyment of inter-ethnic cultural exchange facilitated by the chalga youth cultural scenes is not necessarily shared by young people who are not fans of chalga. in fact, young people who reject chalga often do so because of its use of turkish and roma musical elements, which, in the minds of these young people, trigger popular associations based on stereotypical knowledge of, and attitudes towards, turkish and roma cultural traditions: what is chalga?...it is gypsy stuff (tsiganija). it originated from turkish music – some turkish girls doing belly dancing. and the people who make chalga are ‘peasants’. [plamen, male, age 18, targovishte] thus, young people from other cultural scenes, such as the above respondent who is a skater, are not attracted by the ethnic cultural mix chalga represents. for them, roma and turkish cultures are often undifferentiated, creating a single image of chalga as ‘gypsy stuff’ or ‘oriental stuff’. these associations mean that chalga is not accorded respect within the wider youth scenes in targovishte and veliko tarnovo. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 88 as a result, chalga is also associated with ‘village culture’, usually synonymous with ‘backward culture’. in fact, as noted by valchanova, in nineteenth-century bulgaria chalga music took on the role of an intermediary form between rural and urban culture (valchanova 1989). this is also suggested by buchanan (1996) who points out that the contemporary phenomenon of chalga might be linked to the existence in the nineteenth century of small ethnically mixed urban bands, called chalgadzii, who were hired by villagers to perform music of different ethnic and musical styles at local weddings, christenings and fairs (202). this association of chalga with village life and other typical festive activities in bulgaria is understood negatively by some young people as ‘anchoring’ bulgarian culture in a rural, primitive past. in contrast, other, more urban, youth cultural practices, such as graffiti or hiphop and rap, are said to epitomise a quest for a ‘modern’, more forward-looking future. yet, interestingly, chalga has sometimes also been vested with the opposite potential. it has been suggested that chalga might be a way of breaking away from the ‘backwardness’ of the past since chalga culture is associated with consumerism, technological advancement and expression of (male) success (varbanov 2002: 135), and thus it can be seen as a rebellious departure by young people from their socialist past (ghodsee 2003: 238). whilst to some extent these contrasting opinions are rooted in young people’s widely divergent attitudes to chalga, one could also argue that such views are not mutually exclusive since ‘re-traditionalisation’ is an integral part of modernity in its late-modern and ‘globalised’ variant (giddens 1994). thus, it might be extrapolated, the revival of a presocialist past through culture can act as a strategy for creating a post-socialist future.vii the potential of chalga to act as a temporal (between past and future) and spatial (between village and town) bridge, however, is not celebrated universally. thus, although chalga could be seen to ‘banish racial things’, in the words of back (1996: 112), within its own cultural parameters, resistance to chalga by nonchalga fans suggests that stereotypical attitudes towards the turkish and roma minorities in bulgaria limit a wider appreciation of chalga. as suggested by levy (2002: 199-212), this opposition to chalga, primarily among the bulgarian majority, may in fact reflect deeplying xenophobic or racist attitudes towards the roma and turkish minorities in bulgaria. viii these stereotypical notions of turkish and roma cultures are also embedded in particular practices or socio-cultural characteristics associated with turkish and roma ways of life in bulgaria. the links between chalga and turkishness, for example, are signified by associations with oriental and therefore ‘un-bulgarian’ culture, usually borrowing its repertoire from turkish tv programmes (fieldnote 03.08.2001).ix overcoming such societal or ‘national’ attitudes, however, appears to be easier at local level in veliko tarnovo and, in particular, in targovishte (where the ethnic turkish and the roma populations are larger) than in some other parts of the country where there are very few ethnic minorities. likewise, the popular links between chalga and roma culture are manifested in associations of roma communities with ‘rural culture’, ‘uncivilised’ behaviour, and involvement in illegal businesses (fieldnote 26.08.2001). x a young ethnic bulgarian from targovishte explains this: it is impossible not to listen to turkish music in targovishte. wherever you go, there is chalga or other types of turkish music. there are a lot of turks in targovishte and hearing such music is quite natural. you hear it in the clubs and in the pubs everyday and you get used to it. besides, the turks go to the clubs, too, so it is just normal to mix turkish music and chalga in targovishte. [petya, female, age 25, targovishte] thus, the infiltration of chalga into mainstream popular culture in targovishte and veliko tarnovo has enabled the scenes to become ‘normalised’. this process of ‘normalisation’, it could be suggested, has provided a rationale for ethnic bulgarian young people to accept the presence of other ethnicities in chalga venues, such as nightclubs and pubs, but also to legitimise the fact that chalga culture is bound to contain elements of turkish music. this means that participants in the local chalga scenes are actors in re-shaping the established attitudes or relationships between the majority and minority cultures characterising the social landscape in bulgaria. the chalga scene, it may anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 89 be suggested, can be seen as an‘organic bridge’ between the traditional perceptions of bulgarian, turkish and roma cultures and the emerging new ones among certain groups of young people. chalga music, in particular, is also a propeller of such new perceptions as it deliberately mixes musical elements from these cultures in order to create popular links between them, thus establishing itself as a dominant genre on the market. as the chalga scene expands and interacts with other youth cultural scenes, it is conceivable that these new positive perceptions of ethnic diversity might transfer into other youth cultural scenes in targovishte and veliko tarnovo, or further afield. at the time of the research, however, the youth cultural scenes unrelated to chalga music remained occupied predominantly by ethnic bulgarian young people. ‘pop folk’ as a balkan-bulgarian fusion the other defining characteristic of chalga music is its association with regional balkan cultural traditions, and when this aspect of the scene is emphasised the genre is often referred to not as chalga but as ‘pop folk’.xi pop folk is considered to be the most popular music genre among young people in bulgariaxii pop folk fans who value the links of chalga with other balkan musical styles tend to see chalga as a product of inter-balkan cultural exchange. they see chalga as a natural development of the influence of other balkan countries on bulgarian culture: and its association with balkan folk music is perhaps one of the reasons for its widespread success. like its association with ethnic minority cultures, however, this connection with balkan folk has proven also to be a source of contention; young people in targovishte and veliko tarnovo either strongly liked or disliked this association. chalga is quite simply a compilation of serbian and greek musical traditions on top of reworked bulgarian folk music. it is ‘modern’ folklore. a lot of people in bulgaria, who used to listen to serbian and greek music, now listen to chalga or pop folk. i don’t understand why some people are against it – as if there is something wrong with listening to this kind of music. if you don’t listen to chalga, you have to listen to other [pop or western] music of some sort. everybody listens to other music but pop folk is something many people find more familiar. [julia, female, age 22, veliko tarnovo] as argued by statelova (2000), chalga could be seen as ‘balkan-bulgarian fusion’, which is a genre within ‘world music’. the balkan association of chalga has also been noted by silverman, who notes that the term chalga used in bulgaria might be closely related to the macedonian term čalgija, which refers to an urban-based genre heavily influenced by turkish music (silverman 1996: 250). the above quotation suggests that chalga music has evolved from the interaction of bulgarian folk music with other types of balkan music. indeed, music from the neighbouring balkan countries, especially from serbia and macedonia, has traditionally appealed to bulgarian audiences due to the linguistic, cultural, religious and geographical proximities between these nations.xiii the cultural links between bulgaria and the other balkan countries, however, were overshadowed during communism by russophone soviet cultural propaganda that reflected the political bond between bulgaria and the soviet union. serbian music was less frequent on national radio broadcasts, while macedonian music was limited to popular folk songs.xiv the popularity of chalga music since the mid-1990s among young people in bulgaria, therefore, suggests that regional balkan cultures are a key factor in determining musical and cultural trends in bulgaria. this process of ‘rebalkanisation’ or ‘re-regionalisation’ of bulgarian culture must be seen in the context of the wider process of ‘re-traditionalisation’ of local cultures inherent in globalisation. occurring in parallel with processes of modernisation, it serves to consolidate balkan inter-ethnic links and foster distinct alternative youth cultural identities and lifestyles. thus, the choice young people make to appropriate chalga as a regional resource of cultural activity is rooted, albeit semi-consciously, in a desire to sustain a sense of ‘traditional’ balkan culture in the face of powerful infiltration of global ‘popular’ music in bulgaria. the acceptance or welcoming of the balkan associations of chalga, it could be suggested, is mediated or encouraged by the existence of general pro-balkan anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 90 sentiments in bulgaria. these sentiments feed directly or indirectly into young people’s sense of regional belonging, ethnicity, and nationality, or into their identifications with ‘imagined’ or ‘emotional’ communities, as some parts of the balkans and their cultures might be seen to represent (roundometof 2005). these sentiments, it could be suggested, evoke a kind of ‘collective’ balkan mentality and produce spontaneous cultural identifications with shared or common historical and geo-political developments. as noted by todorova, although one cannot talk of a common balkan identity – or a single balkan memory – there are, at times, instances of collective balkan-wide mentality (todorova 2004: 9). chalga, therefore, could be seen to foster the creation of alternative, regionally aware, youth cultural experiences or identities. through such alternative youth cultural identifications or lifestyles, young people are able to stand out or distance themselves from other youth cultural and musical scenes, which draw on global or ‘western’ trends and fashionsxv : chalga culture is so popular because there is something balkan in it, something ‘ours’. chalga is part of the musical wealth of the balkans, of who we are. we can’t escape our history. of course i like other music, too, such as disco, blues, etc., but i don’t fully immerse myself in these [musical] styles. what i can’t stand at all is hard rock and metal music – these are too alien to me, coming from another planet. [kalina, female, age 24, veliko tarnovo] musical identifications for the above respondent, therefore, are also historical and regional. indeed, as noted by peters (2005: 10), a number of scholars have pointed out that there are musical features, usually represented by turkish and roma musical characteristics, which are found in the urban musical traditions of all balkan peoples, and which, therefore, can be considered pan-balkan. xviiialthough in political terms, the ‘european integration’ agenda is not an anti xvi in addition, the above respondent’s notion of certain musical styles ‘coming from another planet’ reinforces boundaries between chalga and some other youth cultural scenes in targovishte and veliko tarnovo, such as the ‘hard-core’ scene, for example. these musical styles, it appears, are not considered sufficiently bulgarian or balkan by chalga fans. as well as fostering identifications with the balkan region and its collective, albeit selective, ‘self’xvii, chalga acts as a counter-force to other social or cultural processes which attempt to ‘leave behind’ any associations with a balkan past and adopt pro-western orientations. such processes reflect divergent responses to propaganda campaigns, led by the bulgarian government, calling for the forging of a ‘new’ european or western identity as part of the ‘european integration’ agenda (see below). indeed, for participants in most other youth cultural scenes in targovishte and veliko tarnovo, it is precisely the association of chalga with balkan culture that makes its acceptance problematic. chalga is seen as ‘stealing’ musical elements from other balkan cultures and not being ‘authentic’ or sufficiently bulgarian. its lack of ‘authenticity’ is often associated with lack of, or reduced, aesthetic value: balkan agenda in bulgaria, the popular association of bulgarian culture with balkan values is sometimes perceived as a barrier to becoming truly ‘european’. chalga is a total musical mixture – serbian, turkish, and a little bulgarian. maybe this is what i don’t like about chalga – the fact that bulgarian folk music has completely lost its original sounds. i also don’t like the lyrics of chalga music – in 99 per cent of cases they are dirty and vulgar. i simply can’t like music like that. if i want to listen to ethnic music, i listen to authentic bulgarian folk music. it is a pity that we [the bulgarians] don’t appreciate our own music enough. [anton, male, age 24, veliko tarnovo] the emphasis on aesthetics in chalga music plays a key role in the way the music is accepted culturally. it appears that some of the young people, who reject chalga’s association with balkan cultural messages, do so on the grounds of chalga’s aesthetically and ‘morally’ unacceptable lyrics. as noted by frith, it is important to bear in mind that identity, like music, is a matter of both ethics and aesthetics (frith 1996: 109). it could be suggested, anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 91 therefore, that these young people construct their youth cultural identities and their perceptions of national culture, ethnicity, and authenticity with reference to their own perceptions of the aesthetic and moral dimensions of the culture and society around them. they express, produce and re-produce their ethno-cultural associations through moral and aesthetic judgements of chalga music, formed in historical and contemporary contexts of social and cultural capital. indeed, one of the popular arguments about chalga music is that its low aesthetic qualities reflect the decline of moral values in bulgaria and the ‘backwardness’ of contemporary bulgaria as a society (stoyanov 1999). the way in which chalga’s aesthetic value has been fused in the popular mind with balkan cultural heritage and bulgarian societal developments, therefore, might be considered to exemplify how, in the words of gilroy (1997: 343), ‘the distinctions between art and life, artefact and expression’ are dissolved. the resentment towards the ethnic mix of music, described above by my respondent, suggests, moreover, that chalga might be seen as a threat to bulgarian national identity. perceptions of chalga as ‘dirty’ or ‘impure’ could also be seen as symptomatic of certain xenophobic attitudes towards the ethnic national or balkan ‘other’. xenophobia and racism are tightly woven into the structures of multicultural societies and can be manifested sometimes through opposition to cultural diversity. in postcommunist eastern europe, while the collapse of former monocultural regimes revealed the multicultural nature of these societies, the emerging models of multiculturalism were underpinned by various competing forces and processes within the new state systems (apostolov 2006: 2). thus, although it would be too simplistic to suggest that opposition to chalga’s ethnic mix by young people is a typical example of xenophobia, concealed behind aesthetic opposition to certain types of music, the possibility that such attitudes are deeply rooted in the dominant society’s nostalgia for a ‘pure’, or ‘monolithic’ bulgarian culture should not be ignored. in distancing themselves from chalga music, opponents of chalga are also conforming to the ‘european integration’ agenda noted above and, indeed, nostalgia for bulgarian ‘authenticity’ is accompanied by a search for european identity. thus, for some chalga opponents, being balkan was the opposite of being european: when i meet foreigners in bulgaria, i always let them listen to authentic bulgarian folk music. after all, this is what we are famous for in the world. but the foreigners love chalga…and they soon learn that it is not bulgarian but a mixture of balkan kinds of music. i try to tell them that they should not associate bulgaria with this oriental stuff. real bulgarian music is different… we will never become truly european if foreigners associate us with music like chalga. [milena, female, age 24, veliko tarnovo] maintaining an association between ‘real’ bulgarian music as perceived by the above respondent and balkan musical genres, therefore, is believed to hinder the process of the ‘europeanisation’ of bulgarian culture. remaining true to authentic bulgarian music is, on the other hand, seen as a way of fostering a distinct, un-balkan, bulgarian cultural identity, worthy of association with the cultures of ‘modern’ europe. as noted by rice (2003: 99100), many educated bulgarians, such as university students, intellectuals, business leaders, and politicians, think of chalga or pop folk as an affront because its use of balkan forms of music ‘harkens back to a benighted past that they would prefer to put behind them and forget’. such allegiance to authentic folk music could also be interpreted as a symbolic mechanism for protecting bulgarian national identity from being assimilated into an undifferentiated ‘balkan culture’, formed as part of the process of globalisation. this attitude might have its roots in the ottoman period when the bulgarian folk song was seen to serve an important role in preserving the bulgarian language and cultural traditions from extinction (statelova 2004: 206). more recently, this attitude might have been perpetuated by fears of stigmatisation or ‘balkanisation’ of the whole region by the west, following the inter-ethnic conflict in some former yugoslav countries in the 1990s. conclusion anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 92 young people’s attitudes in bulgaria to chalga music derive from its simultaneous association with ethnic, regional and national cultures. on the one hand, chalga is associated with turkish and roma ethnic minority cultures in bulgaria. this association invokes deeply divided attitudes among young people who either support, or resent, chalga music because of its connection to ethnic minority cultures. on the other hand, chalga music is associated with a mixture of balkan types of music, primarily greek and serbian. young people’s attitudes to chalga’s association with balkan cultures are also divided, however; some welcome these associations as a way of holding on to ‘traditional’ or ‘balkan’ culture, despite pressures from other global musical forms, while others reject them. these associations and attitudes are deeply infused by issues of ethnicity, nationality, and cultural identification. the attitudes of those who reject chalga might be seen as racist, xenophobic or nationalist since they see chalga as ‘dirtying’ the national. however, those who enjoy the ethnic and regional mix of chalga are more inclusive in their attitudes towards the cultures of the ‘other’, foster practices of inter-ethnic cultural exchange and develop positive ethnically or ‘regionally’ aware youth cultural identifications or lifestyles. a preference for chalga does not only reflect pre-existing dispositions, however, but chalga itself plays a key role in the way participants in the youth cultural scene construct their perceptions of the ‘other’. as argued by habenicht (1985, cited in bohlman 1996: 58), inter-ethnic musical exchange is not a discrete process of communication between two groups but takes place against a historical and international backdrop. in the case of chalga music this context is evident in the associations it evokes with the balkan region, its ethnic groups and their history. these symbolic associations between historical cultural contexts and contemporary musical tastes mean that chalga may provide a channel for the articulation of deep-rooted xenophobic and racist attitudes towards ‘the other’ among some sections of bulgarian society. at the same time, however, chalga allows its fans to openly embrace ethnic difference and foster inter-cultural exchange. moreover, the kind of transcultural dialogue facilitated by chalga is, in the words of malinowski (1991: xxxiii), ‘a process from which a new – compound and complex – reality emerges, a reality which is not a mechanical aggregate of characteristics, nor even a mosaic, but rather a new, original, and independent phenomenon’. participants in the chalga scene, therefore, contribute to the production of new multicultural experiences or realities, which are informed by their own subjective constructions of ethnicity and inter-ethnic culture. it is the constant give-and-take of different cultural messages, which facilitates the evolution of such subjective constructions. as noted by glasser (1995: 6), within any society, ongoing intraand inter-ethnic negotiation and re-shaping of cultural forms in dialogue with material conditions are the ‘stuff’ of which national and ethnic identities are made and re-made.xix indeed, just as african-american hip hop has been credited with the potential to hold ‘transformational power as a multicultural revolution’ in europe (baadqir 2003: 111), so chalga might possess a similar potential to influence inter-ethnic cultural relations in bulgaria. unlike the model of western multiculturalism, however, which tends to portray black music only as a manifestation of successful inter-racial co-existence almost in isolation from the histories of the ethnic peoples involved the use of chalga music in bulgaria has demonstrated that the contemporary manifestation of indigenous multiculturalism in a post-communist context is strongly underpinned by historically embedded processes, such as balkanisation, europeanisation, and globalisation; it is triggered or re-created through the popularity and visibility of chalga in the youth cultural space in targovishte and veliko tarnovo means that the scene plays a part in such historical configurations and reconfigurations of ethnic perceptions and identities. it does so, moreover, not only within its own youth cultural boundaries, but also, albeit indirectly, beyond them. thus, even though ‘outsiders’ to the scene may not understand or may resent the ‘orientalness’ of chalga, by articulating this perception, they too participate in the re-negotiation of the youth cultural and ethnic order in the youth cultural space. chalga, therefore, is a powerful vehicle for cultural change not only because it thrives on the growing mix of national and regional cultures, but also because it engages both its fans and its opponents in a cultural dialogue about ethnicity, national identity and the possibilities for imagining a future in which multiculturalism will be the dominant discourse in bulgarian society. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 93 a constant interplay between time and space. such kind of multiculturalism, this article has suggested, is also situated in an unambiguous ‘clash of mentalities’ between xenophobic attitudes and ethnic tolerance, inherent in the histories of the subjects both inside and outside the chalga scene. notes 1the associations of chalga with ethnic minority musical styles from bulgaria, on the one hand, and with regional balkan cultures, on the other, are two sides of a complex musical genre. although this article talks about these sides as two distinct categories, the distinctions between them are not neatly identifiable in terms of origins of melodies and lyrical content due to the hybrid nature of balkan cultures as a whole. thus, the distinctions that this article makes between local ethnic minority cultural influences and ‘regional’ balkan influences should not be seen as rigid and definitive. rather, they are made on the basis of popular perceptions of chalga music among my particular respondents who tended to categorise chalga according to how they felt about the music and what they thought its origins were. 2 the term youth cultural scene – respectively chalga scene – in this article is used to denote both the cultural spaces inhabited by youth cultural groupings (i.e. sites of gathering and performing cultural activities) and the collective cultural characteristics attributable to young people who share similar cultural tastes and interests. 3 the fact that this article focuses on inter-ethnic cultural exchange and young people’s attitudes towards chalga culture as an ethnic music should not be seen to suggest that ethnicity is the only denominator through which young people associate or dissociate themselves from chalga music. as an established popular musical genre, chalga attracts fans that simply enjoy being part of a common cultural environment and do not necessarily make ethnically related musical choices. for example, many young people refuse to listen to chalga music on the grounds that it is not of high intellectual standing or because it uses coarse, often highly sexualised, language. 4 all my respondents were ethnic bulgarians. although i was aware of the presence of ethnic turks and roma young people in the chalga clubs i visited, i was not able to establish contact with these young people for the purposes of the research because of the constraints of the snowballing approach i had adapted for getting access to my respondents. although i considered the fact that i interviewed only ethnic bulgarians a legitimate approach as long as i was clear that my analysis was going to represent only the experiences of the bulgarian majority i subsequently became aware of a further limitation of this approach. not only was i not able to ‘triangulate’ my analysis with perspectives from the turkish and the roma minorities in the two research sites which would have provided a fuller picture of chalga but i was also in danger of assuming the ‘voice’ of the majority by simply being an ethnic bulgarian myself. i can only hope that i have managed to keep that danger at bay as much as possible. 5 all quotations in the article are referenced by the use of a pseudonym assigned to the young person interviewed, an indication of their gender and age, as well as the town where the interview was taken. 6chalga music is sometimes also produced and performed in the turkish language. although during the research this was not something my respondents talked about, in recent years some chalga performers of ethnic minority background have been singing chalga songs both in bulgarian and in turkish. the pop folk singer reihan of muslim roma background – produced an entire album in turkish. this received a mixed response from ethnic bulgarian chalga fans, but was accepted on the whole as ‘normal’ by the pop folk musical guild. 7 a good example of a public phenomenon where a pre-socialist past in bulgaria has been invoked as a strategy for ‘creating’ a sense of a new future can be found in the events of 2001 when the bulgarian ex-monarch, king simeon ii, was elected to serve as a prime minister of the country. after the break down of communism (and its socialist version) and the following years of disillusion with the new ‘democratic’ rule in bulgaria, the general elections of 2001 suggested that bulgarian people needed to draw on the pre-socialist history of the country symbolised by simeon ii in order to begin to imagine a better future for themselves under his newly formed government. 8 although chalga culture is normally seen as a cultural mix drawing from bulgarian, turkish and roma cultures, this does not mean that other ethnic minorities in bulgaria, such as the pomaks for example, do not participate in consuming chalga music. although the turkish, the roma and the pomak ethnic minorities were all anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 94 invisible and marginalised during communism, the turkish and the roma minorities, unlike the pomaks, have managed to acquire a certain degree of visibility in post-1989 everyday life in bulgaria. the research reported here did not explicitly address ethnic turkish, roma or pomak communities’ perceptions of chalga and future research would benefit from such an inquiry. such new research might also usefully explore the political implications of chalga for the cultural representation of these minorities and the balkan region as a whole. 9 it is common practice in bulgaria for the turkish ethnic minority to subscribe to satellite or cable programmes broadcast by television channels in neighbouring turkey. 10 the district of targovishte has a population of just over 137,000 inhabitants, about 67,000 of them living in the municipality of targovishte. the ethnic bulgarian population in the district is 76,294; the ethnic turkish population is 49,495; and the roma population is 9,868. the district of veliko tarnovo has a population of just over 293,000 inhabitants, about 90,000 of them living in the municipality of veliko tarnovo. the ethnic bulgarian population in the district is 259,099; the ethnic turkish population is 22,562; and the roma population is 6,064 (national statistical institute 2001). 11my respondents, however, did not always distinguish between the terms chalga and pop folk. sometimes pop folk was referred to as a lighter version of chalga but the majority of my respondents used the two terms interchangeably. distinctions between chalga and pop folk can also be made on the basis of lyrical content and notions of aesthetics. thus, chalga often stands for songs with cynical or profane lyrics under more oriental dance-beat or rhythm, whereas pop folk denotes the more ‘benign’ and aesthetically acceptable spectrum of the genre. i am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for drawing my attention to the need to reflect further on the complexities of employing chalga as an analytic category. 12 a survey conducted by alfa research in a selection of big bulgarian cities in august 1999 suggested that young people (18-30 years) listened to pop folk more than any other music genre; 62.5 per cent of respondents in the survey said they listened to it (stoyanov 1999). 13 roundometof (2005) suggests that the strong links between some of the balkan counties, especially between greece, serbia, and bulgaria are rooted in the spread of eastern orthodoxy in the nineteenth century. at that time, the new semi-state-sponsored national churches provided a medium through which the traditional ties of orthodox balkan peoples could be strengthened and new national ties constructed. in this way, the balkan peasantry, roundometof suggests, was socialised into what he calls the emerging serb, greek, and bulgarian ‘imagined communities’ (54). 14 during the communist period state radio had a selective repertoire of musical tunes. bulgarian music was a mixture of traditional ‘authentic’ folk music and a considerable amount of bulgarian-made pop music (estradna muzika). international music from the west featured british pop music hits and other famous genres of the time associated with, french, italian and german singers. while soviet music was not the main music on state radio, its presence was considerable. although balkan music was available with a limited selection of nationaltype songs from the region, soviet propaganda meant that russian music and soviet-style estrada were among the most popular musical choices in bulgaria. many people who resented this propaganda tuned in their radios to serbian, greek and turkish radio stations, which broadcast new forms of popular music that bulgarians could relate to music of a balkan origin (rice 2003: 91). in the 1980s serbian music started to return gradually to bulgarian audiences primarily through state-controlled live concerts of the serbian pop singer lepa brena and in the mid-1990s serbian and macedonian cultural products re-gained their high status among bulgarian audiences. this was, to a great extent, facilitated by the release of two cult films which captured the interest of many young people in bulgaria: the serbian underground (palme d’or 1995) and the macedonian before the rain (1994). both films dealt with ‘balkan’ issues and had an immediate impact on bulgarian audiences who identified with a number of historical allegories portrayed by the films (cherrington 2000; iordanova 1999 and 2000). 15 this is consistent with evidence from the extra-urban youth cultural practices in targovishte and veliko tarnovo (e.g. hiking and informal gatherings in the countryside); participants in these practices also rejected some mainstream western experiences, such as clubbing. 16 for a comprehensive review of research on east european folk music, see elschek (1991: 91-112). anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 95 17 not all countries from south-eastern europe were included within the ‘collective’ balkan identity. while greece, macedonia, and serbia were commonly referred to by my respondents in relation to chalga, no references were made to other balkan countries, such as slovenia, albania, or croatia. 18 bulgaria has taken a pro-european course of development since the early 1990s and became a member of the european union in january 2007. as a result, social and political life in bulgaria has been dominated by the idea of ‘returning to europe’ and building a strong european identity. massive campaigns in this direction have been led by the bulgarian government in the last decade in the form of media propaganda, distribution of information sheets, etc. 19 in her argument, which she develops with reference to puerto rican music and identity in the usa, glasser draws on the work of the anthropologist frederik barth. in his book ethnic groups and boundaries (1969), barth pioneers a ‘constructionist’ approach to ethnic configurations. he believes that ethnic boundaries are not given, but constructed, subject to change, and situational. he is interested in the movement of individuals from one ethnic group to another and in the changes of whole ethnic groups from one identity to another over time (barth 1969). references apostolov, a. 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(2004) the contemporary sorbian choral movement: horizons of meaning by singing sorbian songs, in: u. hemetek, g. lechleitner, i. naroditskaya, and a. czekanovska (eds.), manifold identities: studies on music and minorities, 201-208 (london: cambridge scholars press). stoyanov, s. (1999) generation “ch”, capital newspaper, 14-20 august: sofia. todorova, m. (2004) (ed.) balkan identities: nation and memory (london: hurst & company). valchanova, e. (1989) instrumentalists (chalga musicians) from the middle of the 19th century: an intermediate form between village and urban musical culture, muzikalni horizonti, 12/13: 134-137. varbanov, v. (2002) bulgaria: mobile phones as post-communist cultural icons, in: j. e. katz and m. aakhus (eds.), perpetual contact: mobile communication, private talk, public anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 97 performance, 126-136 (cambridge: cambridge university press). microsoft word table of contents and intro formatted.doc 12 volume 26, no. 1 page 12 the “civilized trap” of modernity and romanian roma, 1918-1934 susan williams indiana university introduction konrad bercovici, a romanian-born american immigrant and self-styled author of “gypsy romances,” wrote in 1926 that, “instead of imitating the other peoples, [gypsies] are being imitated now by all those who want to snatch an hour’s happiness from the woefully civilized trap in which we live.” 1 this was not a new perception concerning the imaginations of europeans and americans; for centuries peoples identified as “gypsies” had been granted a position in discourses surrounding danger, liberation, freedom and sexuality. perceived as natural creatures who intrepidly rejected the rigors of modern life or conversely as enigmatic, dangerous figures lingering at the margins of civility, they alternately served, within the boundaries of the imagination, as both cautionary tales about the perils of rebuffing social norms and as an inspiration for rejecting the trappings of the bourgeoisie after the end of the great war, the latter discourse, as bercovici pointed out, grew in importance. yet, at the same time that travel writers began to use author’s note: portions of this paper were presented at the midwest slavic conference in columbus, ohio, march 2006 and the fifth international conference for romanian studies in constan!a, romania, june 2007. many people have helped me with this article and the broader conceptualization of these issues, and i would particularly like to thank maria bucur, michelle kelso, shannon woodcock, casey mumaw, ania muller, jack friedman, florin manole and the center for romani studies at the university of bucharest, the helpful and kind archivists at the romanian national archives, the editors of the aeer, and finally the fulbright program and the indiana university department of history for their financial support. 1 konrad bercovici, the story of the gypsies (new york: cosmopolitan book corporation, 1928), 14. for the purpose of this work, i am highlighting the juxtaposition between “gypsy,” a category imagined by western “gypsiologists” working within a romanticized discourse, and “"igan.” “roma” were a self-identifying group of intellectuals in interwar romania. these terms are used here to underline the conflict between the imagination and reality in this period. gypsies as a trope with which they challenged the burdens of modernity, intellectuals within romania, self-identifying themselves at first as !igani and later as romani, began to organize in order to guarantee a place for themselves in modern society. this conflict, between reality and the imagination, was challenged by nascent romanian romani organizations, which proposed a new image of roma as eager members of romanian society. this engagement with modern life was difficult to understand for those who utilized the imagery of nomadic gypsies to highlight the rigors of the “civilized trap” of interwar life. the juxtaposition of the works of two western european interwar travelers to the balkans, walter starkie and emil otto hoppé, with the platforms and publications of the two largest romanian romani organizations provides an opportunity to examine the struggle to create a modern romani identity in a period when critics of modernity desired them to remain firmly locked within the romantic imagination. in 1914, the cultural celebration of modernity in fin-de-siècle europe gave way to the raw, brutal face of progress in the trenches and forests of the continent. following the great war, the increasing sense of the alienation of the individual, the moral threat of sexual liberation, the failures of liberal democracy and the rise of political extremes, internal diasporas and economic hardships all worked to create a new breed of tourist who sought answers to society’s woes through travel to the peripheries of europe. for those traveling through the balkans after the war, romania’s perceived premodern charm was no longer merely enchanting, it was a last vestige of a simple community undefiled by the travesties of the modern world. “what is more important, both to roumania [sic] and the world, is the preservation of its true character…it has limitless possibilities from its untired human stock, who have come safely through the 19th century in their pristine state,” sacheverell sitwell asserted in his account of a four-week tour, roumanian journey. 2 many interwar travelers to romania sought out “encounters” with nomadic roma. 2 sacheverell sitwell, roumanian journey (new york: charles scribner’s sons, 1938), 4. 13 volume 26, no. 1 page 13 interwar fascination with roma stemmed largely from a legacy of gypsiology in europe and the united states. excited by what they perceived as a pure, undefiled, simple people who faced cultural extinction at the hands of modernity, gypsiologists, academics from a variety of professions and a range of ability, created organizations that sought to preserve traditions and languages they defined as “gypsy” from obliteration. men and women, encouraged by the adventures of the likes of george borrow and charles godfrey leland, their 19th-century forbears, traveled to camps throughout europe, armed with a few words of romani and the travel journals of their heroes. 3 george borrow, the subject of countless reviews, biographies, and responses over the past century, was the most well known of the 19th-century gypsiologists. 4 bored with his training as a lawyer and armed with philological skill, borrow wandered for months in the english countryside, a journey that would form the bases of his most fantastical, romantic works, the romany rye and lavengro. his legacies did not die with him in 1881. founded in 1887 in england by american and british academics, the gypsy lore society reflected a growing, but hardly nascent, popular interest in roma. concerned largely with philology and folklore, this organization sought to uncover the cosmos of the “true gypsy” in europe, who, wim willems observes, “were assumed in social, moral and racial respects to be far superior to other travelers, and in print had grown into aristocrats of the road.” 5 this pack of academics journeyed into the field, producing works of scholarship that mixed the reality of their interactions with roma with the 3 for more on early gypsiologists see angus fraser, “a rum lot,” in 100 years of gypsy studies, matt t. salo, ed., cheverly, maryland: the gypsy lore society, 1990, and wim willems, in search of the gypsy: from enlightenment to final solution, london: frank cass, 1997. 4 see, for instance, michael collie and angus fraser, george borrow: a bibliographical study, winchester: st. paul’s bibliographies, 1984. for a critical analysis of borrow’s life and works, see wim willems, “george borrow 1801-1881, the walking lord of gypsy lore,”in search of the true gypsy: from enlightenment to final solution, london: newbury house, 1997. 5 wim willems, “the heirs of george borrow,” in search of the true gypsy: from enlightenment to final solution (london: newbury house, 1997), 172. fanciful, romantic sensibilities of victorian gentility. by the interwar period, works by gypsiologists had influenced the perceptions of a number of travelers to the balkans. 6 one of the premier examples of this trend is walter starkie’s raggle-taggle: adventures with a fiddle in hungary and roumania. starkie, an irish academic, came across prisoners in italy some months after the end of the great war, and was entranced when he realized they were romani musicians. although he “made a blood promise” 7 to them that he would soon visit their transylvanian homeland, starkie quickly became absorbed in the banal return to normalcy that peacetime awarded him: “the dream would soon fade away before the grim realities of modern city life with its toga of respectability, its duties to the common weal, its self-conscious mediocrity.” 8 unsatisfied, starkie left his position as a professor of spanish at the university of dublin in 1929, in order to “try to live a vagabond life of a gypsy minstrel who has to rely for his livelihood on his fiddle…to investigate as an amateur, not as a scholar, the wealth of folk music and folk legend that was so essential a part of the lives of those peoples who still listen with rapt attention to the blind rhapsodist sewing together the old songs.” 9 travel to the east did not merely offer starkie the opportunity to observe roma. it also provided him the opportunity to become gypsy, at least for the duration of his travels. this added the same dash of panache that his forbears brought to their works: a sense of romance, adventure, and style. passing as a gypsy, however, was not easy. there were costumes to procure and travel plans to make. starkie borrowed clothing from his family’s 6 a number of new works concerning travel to the balkans were published during the interwar years, many of which highlighted “encounters” with nomadic roma in their pages. see, for instance, d.j. hall, romanian furrow, (london: george g. harap & co. ltd., 1939); maude rea parkinson, twenty years in roumania (new york, e. p. dutton), 1922; derek patmore, invitation to roumania (london: millan and co., ltd.), 1939; or sacheverell sitwell, roumanian journey (new york: charles scribner’s sons), 1938. 7 walter starkie, raggle-taggle: adventures with a fiddle in hungary and roumania, e.p. sutton & co., inc., 1933, ix. 8 starkie, 6. 9 starkie, ix. 14 volume 26, no. 1 page 14 gardener, for he wanted to make his new persona clear to other travelers. he felt self-assured, unselfconscious and capable in this borrowed clothing, a new man excited by the dangers awaiting him, unlike the overburdened, bourgeois men he criticized. clothing was not the only conundrum starkie faced upon the commencement of his journey. border crossings posed an issue, but luckily, he was a british subject: “i wonder do the vagabonds have passports?” he mused, “mine was perfectly in order.” 10 dangers abounded on the road ahead, but all, he declared, was worth it: now it is not so easy to follow the example of george borrow in a europe teaming with police and customs officials, where the vagabond is looked on with suspicion. nevertheless, there are compensations for the man who leaves the hotels and main roads to consort with waifs and strays, and the principal one is the sensation of complete freedom among the kings of nature as cervantes called the gypsies. 11 being a vagabond, to starkie, required both the structure of a well-ordered passport and the “sensation of complete freedom.” with both, one can became a “king of nature.” he apparently did not see any discrepancy between the two ideals. his costume and papers in order, starkie was ready to leave. freedom and excitement were just around the corner. when starkie arrived in transylvania, he immediately set out to play his fiddle and meet some gypsies. fortune, however, soon abandoned him. strolling down a rural road, he came upon a group of rather sinister looking characters, and was promptly mugged: there was a shout and from all sides there gathered a host of naked children, naked-breasted women, dogs and villainous men. they did not understand the words of romany i fired at them, but they thought i was a luscious object to prey upon and they felt me all over, thrust their hands into my pockets, pushed me about and acted generally like a pack of mangy dogs smelling a juicy bone. i felt helpless…the stench of their grimy bodies mingled with the smell of garlic 10 starkie, 10. 11 starkie, ix. stifled me, and i could feel on my neck the soft flutter of countless bugs and life that had forsaken the verminous gypsy rags. 12 starkie was stunned by such behavior, and completely unprepared for the event, regardless of his talk of the excitement and danger of the open road. suddenly his used boots and jaunty attitude were no match for his passport; for an instant, his faith was shaken, and he became one of the sweating, pale tourists he so despised. here were gypsies for whom borrow had not prepared him. these were not the romantic, aristocratic gypsies of his imagination, but the gritty, poor nomads of his nightmares. where was the nobility, where were the sensual girls, the campfires and music? he realized, however, that it was precisely because it was not the 19th century that he could survive such an attack with his ego intact: nowadays, it is very difficult to act the romantic part in tourist-ridden europe. to have been romantic i should have lain bleeding on the ground after my struggle with a great number of gypsies. then, gathering the pieces of my violin which had been broken in the fight, i should have crept to the nearest village and telegraphed for press reporters to take down my grim story which could be published in the papers the next day with the heading in capitals: “english professor mangled by gypsies after fierce struggle. professor acts the minstrel but fails to soften heart of gypsy amazons who leave him on the plains of hungary.” 13 starkie was self-ironic about his encounter and the romantic ideals instilled in him by the gypsiologist literature. his first contact with gypsies was an astounding failure; not only was everything he expected wrong, but he had been easily bested by the dangerous “amazons.” this moment becomes a crisis point between the modern, western man – intellectual, earnest, yet soft – and gypsies, whose natural strength and wiles can only be understood by relating the group to an organic, mythical tribe untainted by modern life. the fact that he chose to label them as “amazons” is quite important. here is a typical orientalist moment in the work: he utilizes female 12 starkie, 32-33. 13 starkie, 34. 15 volume 26, no. 1 page 15 imagery to understand a group. unlike early orientalists, however, he did not use this to weaken the roma, but rather to cast them as a formidable enemy. like the modern women in the cities of the west who had supplanted men and become masculinized, redoubtable creatures, so too were the roma an exotic, emotional, instinctual, and ultimately feminine group, starkie believed. he quickly regained his composure. within days, starkie was traveling with the roma throughout romania. “my journey, however, was not all raggle-taggle; occasionally, i mixed with high folk as well as low; sometimes i went straight from a hovel of gypsies to a cénacle of professors and artists,” he writes. “but all the time i felt that i was following on the heels of the wandering folk, picking up here and there odd scraps of their lore.” 14 there was a clear divide between the countryside and the city in his work. when he is almost robbed by a relative of his host, he scoffed that, “when the busnó goes on gypsy trips he leaves the bulk of his money and valuables under lock and key in the nearest big town, for he is superstitious enough to believe that one should not tempt providence.” 15 likewise, when he reached cluj, all his pretensions of vagabonding were put on hold. he took out his checkbook from the bank of ireland and cashed a check in order to maintain an urban lifestyle appropriate to his station. in western european cities, atavism was directly proportional to modernity; the simplicity of the countryside becomes a stage where actors fulfill their fantasy of a pure, undefiled, unburdened 14 starkie, ix-x. busnó means “non-gypsy” in a spanish dialect of romani. translating starkie’s romani is difficult. his frequent references to george borrow might indicate that he was using borrow’s works, or at the very least his dictionary, romano lavo-lil: word book of the romany or english gypsy language (london: murray), 1874, to translate romanichal during his travels. borrow, the most famous british “gypsiologist,” utilized a variety of romani dialects and created grammatical constructions for the language in his works. for a critique of borrow’s use of romani, see ian hancock, “george borrow’s romani,” in the typology and dialectology of romani, eds. yaron matras, peter bakker and hristo kyuchuko (philadelphia: john benjamins publishing company), 199-214. 15 starkie, 199. lifestyle, while the civility of the city forces the traveler back to a structured and stable reality. the vagabond’s carefree lifestyle ended, then, at the outskirts of paris or london. it was different in cluj. this old habsburg city offered the modern amenities starkie required while traveling and yet it was still possible to be a vagabond at night. romania offered travelers a sense of exoticism in an environment that was familiar and close to home. for an interwar traveler used to the speed and comforts of the modern age, this was an imperative. if starkie had such a horrible first impression, what made him stay, and travel with gypsies? primarily, he seemed sincere in his belief that vagabonding offered modern europeans a rare chance at freedom. the appeal of the gypsies and their lifestyle was built on their perceived spatial and emotional unpredictability. gypsies also seemed to him organically different from the tourists and the soft intellectuals in the west. these were “real” people, who lived by emotion and wits, who enjoyed life precisely because it was unburdened. by traveling with them, and writing about them, starkie not only thought he became like them, he believed he grew better than them; he believed that he acquired all the benefits of their lifestyle while retaining the civility of a european. starkie’s discussions of gypsy behaviors made this point clear. his virile, verminous, dangerous attackers and the other men in the work were all one-dimensional characters who confirmed starkie’s abilities and provided ethnic flare to his tales of adventure and travel. his discussions of gypsy women highlighted what he perceived as flaws in the moral fiber of the group. here were dark, fiery and petulant girls unburdened by honor and decency who reveled in their own sensuality. comparing them to their sweet romanian counterparts highlighted their raw sexuality: it is curious what a contrast those gypsy girls present to the peasant girls of the country: the latter is invariably subdued and modest even to excess in the presence of strangers. unless she is with girls of her own age she does not raise her voice; not so with those gypsy girls; they were full of boisterous, animal spirits. they skipped about the street, they climbed up lampposts, they chased one another like cats… as for female modesty there was not a sign of it. i found that certain words of the gypsy language were familiar to them such 16 volume 26, no. 1 page 16 as bashavav, mol, and lubnyi. as far as i could infer, both of them considered that to be a lubnyi, or whore, was the most satisfactory occupation for one of their sex. 16 gypsy women, according to starkie, saw themselves as sexual creatures at the disposal of men. this was an extreme version of the stories about the accommodating nature and availability of native women that ran through the colonial works of male travelers. these were less the fragile girls of the countryside and more the sexually ambiguous modern women of the city. the gypsy women in starkie’s book think nothing of adultery, of jumping from bed to bed, of earning money through sex. it is fascinating, however, that starkie only translated a single word for his audience: lubnyi. his translation fashioned this segment of the work into a conservative cautionary tale; here were immodest, sexually aware girls, who, much like their western european counterparts, had taken charge of their bodies and reveled in lewd pleasures and desires. starkie believed deeply in a “brotherhood of the road” where one needs only “a tiny spark of talent” to succeed: “you need to have some little individual trait of originality: if you can sing a song, juggle, play a tune on the fiddle, read fortunes from the tarot cards, tell fairy stories or explain magic charms, you will be welcome in any circle…walking alone is sad at times, but once you can get into your wanderer personality there is immense joy in conversing with yourself as you walk along.” 17 shifting quickly from organic assessments of gypsies he encountered to the rather positive assertion that talent was a means of inclusion in the society of the open road, starkie was asserting that any man could be a “gypsy” as long as he had the drive to cease being a tourist and the bravery to strike out on his own. gypsies, then, provided the impetus for a european to live by wits and emotion, at least for a week or two, to get out of the squalor of the city and strike out into the fresh air, to live a lifestyle free of consumer needs and modern burdens, where the pleasing danger of a fistfight and loose women always awaits. not all travelers to romania in the interwar years sought out such adventures. 16 starkie, 188. george borrow translates lubbeny as a “harlot,” mol as “wine,” and bashadi as “a fiddle”. 17 starkie, 206. traveling in much higher style, emil otto hoppé, a noted photographer of german origin who spent most of his life in england, published his own account of a journey through romania, in gipsy camp and royal palace. the work mixes the account of his short tour with photographs and sketches of the people and landscape of the country. hoppé’s social position was made immediately clear to the reader: the book’s preface was written by the internationally famous queen marie of romania, who idealized the romanian peasantry while reveling in modern, yet atavistic, comforts at her “authentic” romanian castle at bran. coming to romania with the eye of an artist, hoppé looked forward to seeing the bands of gypsies he had read about in the works of gypsiologists. after missing several opportunities to meet them, his traveling companions finally took him to a gypsy camp. he was enraptured by what he saw. “‘lavengro’ and ‘the scholar gipsy’ have poeticized such indigious [sic] savages, whom the average london ‘bohemian’ would not touch with a forty-foot pole,” he scoffed. “and yet, despite of their barbarity and uncleanliness, there is something defiant and untrammeled about these nomads, which is a kind of criticism, in its sheer vitality, of the languers [sic] of a tired civilization.” 18 immediately he viewed gypsy society and culture as a commentary on modern life. the author contrasted the emotions and essence of the nomad to the dull, exhausting nature of modernity. here was a group the writers expected to completely agree with critiques of modern society. indeed, they project the tacit agreement upon the actions of the roma they meet. yet, how can a group who had not experienced the “languer” of modernity be critical of it? hoppé’s descriptions elevated gypsies to the status of an ancient, noble culture that had decayed over the centuries: “easily the most picturesque wanderers by the rumanian countryside are the tziganes or gypsies. their camps are always on the waste ground, mostly on the outskirts of towns and villages. their habitations are of the most filthy and miserable description – which rather takes the gilt off the gingerbread of 18 hoppé, 43. he is referring here to the works of borrow. 17 volume 26, no. 1 page 17 sheer romanticism.” 19 this is quite similar to the reaction of 19th-century travelers who arrived in the balkans expecting to witness vestiges of ancient greek civilization in the peasantry and who left the region somewhat bewildered. 20 for hoppé, gypsies live on the margins between antiquity and reality. they were dangerously beautiful: “mahogany-skinned, with deep black eyes like the ripe berries of the deadly belladonna, and classically cut features of such perfection as one sees on greek cameos, they fight for the choicest morsels as their writhing fingers dive into the steaming pots.” 21 he was repulsed by the poverty of their camps, but entranced by the striking figure they cut. his assessment of gypsies was intrinsically linked to the lens of his camera: they were photogenic and visually stimulating yet pitiful in their beauty. he presented descriptions of the nature of men and women in the gypsy camps that detracted from the perfection of their visages. the men “loaf around, indolent, haughty, yet cringing,” he intoned. he went on with his critique: they are of medium height, very agile and muscular, and have more care than the old women for their heads…although they have little moral courage, and show, in some wise [sic] the abasement of slaves, they are insensately proud, and they refer to anyone not a gipsy as a gadsio (a boer or peasant), or parno, meaning white; whereas they speak of themselves as manush (human being). 22 his assessments of the gypsy camp – the feminized men lazing about the fire and the animalistic wretches crowded at the stewpot – resemble the typical orientalist discourse about native peoples. the nobility of their profile, he believed, was not matched in their psychology. here were childlike, petulant people who lived uncomplicated lives, unburdened by rationality, who saw themselves as the last humans in a world full of peasants. hoppé then quickly turns his acid 19 e.o. hoppé, in gipsy camp and royal palace: wanderings in rumania. new york: scribner and sons, 1924, 42. 20 see larry wolff, inventing eastern europe: the map of civilization on the mind of the enligtenment (palo alto: stanford university press, 1994) and maria todorova, imagining the balkans. 21 hoppé, 43. 22 hoppé, 43. pen to his own society. gypsies did have some merits. unlike modern europeans, they needed little to survive: the requirements of the tzigane are primitive and elemental. music and play, drinking and thieving, love and laughter are his sole passions. he is led only by his unrestrained instincts…he has a keen sense of humour, but he is violent and quarrelsome, although never vicious, and his actions are governed by momentary impulses rather than premeditated thought. he is very much like a troublesome child, and one can hardly hold him responsible for his actions. 23 emotional, dangerous and emotive, gypsies dwelled in an uncomplicated sphere, with no needs other than wine and song, and no expectations heaped upon them. gypsies were “never able to adapt to any settled mode of life,” 24 and chose instead to pick up odd jobs while satisfying their wanderlust. he was, then, completely different from his european counterparts and inspiring to those who wished to remove themselves from similar burdens. as with starkie, the image of women became central to hoppé’s interpretation of the group. the author found them fantastical: in her early youth, up to twenty years of age, the tzigane girl is wonderfully beautiful. she has exquisitely chiseled features of rich brown tint, and the glittering orbs of her almond-shaped eyes rival in blackness her ebon hair. she has smiling voluptuous lips, her waist is slender, her hands and feet are small, and her supple limbs move rhythmically in lithe swinging steps…in repose she is like a bronze statue, but like all romany women, she has the taste of a magpie, and she wears splinters of broken glass or cheap metal ornaments, albeit with the pride of an eastern queen.” 25 again, there was the classical imagery, again corrupted by animalistic, savage impulses – this time, it was the greediness of a bird with unrefined tastes. like the men, she was unburdened by wealth and civility; pieces of glass and metal adorn her, yet she had no idea of their worth. hoppé does not take this orientalist image as far as starkie, but there was, however, a 23 hoppé, 47. 24 hoppé, 48. 25 hoppé, 44. 18 volume 26, no. 1 page 18 recurring theme of raw sensuality in his discussion of younger women; here was the overtly sexual girl who awaits the british traveler. older women garnered more respect from the photographer. “the tzigane mother shows immense love for her children: the more little ones she has the prouder she feels,” he states. “it is returned by her children almost to the point of veneration. this mother-love is one of the finest traits in the character of a harried and despised people.” 26 earlier in this piece, when recounting the events of his first meeting with queen marie, he made a similar comment about the royal matriarch. 27 motherhood becomes an equalizing factor between the most disparate groups; it was such a primal instinct, such a primitive urge, that it made queens of gypsies. an admiring commentary, but it was nonetheless equally disparaging. women, to hoppé, were best and most natural as mothers. he was likewise impressed with the old women who functioned as fortunetellers. again he linked this skill to their primeval traits: “living in close contact with mother earth, knowing by intimate contact for centuries her secrets, the gipsy fortune-teller recognizes and diagnoses the symptoms of passion and love, hope and fear, which are betrayed by those to whom she tells the future.” 28 surprisingly, he was quite gentle on these women: “one cannot lightly dub her a humbling or hypocrite, and dismiss her undoubted powers of divination merely as ‘coincidences,’ or cases of ‘thought transference.’ after all, is there anything more surprising in this wood magic than in the marvels of modern science, like x-rays, wireless, and so forth?” 29 magic becomes a link between the modern and the unmodern; both were mystical periods where science and magic were conflated. these old women became links between the european past, present and future, giving hope that something remains of the premodern civilization now obscured by modernity. hoppé found the most positive application of what he saw as the organic nature gypsies to one endeavor – music. “they are wonderful musicians, entirely self-taught, and playing by instinct and ear alone,” he states, “if there is anything in the theory of heredity, they are 26 hoppé, 45. 27 hoppé, 70. 28 hoppé, 46. 29 hoppé, 47. probably born with fiddle-strings in them.” 30 it was precisely because of their nature that the gypsy musician was so capable, he believed: “fitful as is the rumanian gipsy’s character, so is his music. tempestuous and infuriated strains succeed sobbing and moaning melodies. weird hopelessness and languorous abandonment follow each other in quick succession.” 31 it was in their music that the gadje (non-gypsies) could hope to have a taste of such emotions, such freedom: “they have an extraordinary effect on their listeners, who frequently are almost crazed by eldritch notes as the children of hanover were by the witchery of the pied piper.” 32 it provided the same release for the british travelers as it seemed to do for the romanian peasant: “englishmen and women in a dancing-room, where one of these bands is playing, shed nearly all their reserve and approach as near abandonment as the anglosaxons can conscientiously go. it is surprising that none of the london producers and entrepreneurs have endeavoured to smuggle over to london a genuine tzigane band, but the difficulties in the way are almost insuperable as far as the real tziganes are concerned.” 33 hoppé never clarified whether they would have such an effect on patrons in london. music was a means by which the tired european could experience the vitality of a gypsy life, to live in such a moment for a brief time until the band stopped playing. while the basis for most interwar discussions of gypsy musicians is fueled by organicism, hoppé moves from a discussion of the nature of musicians to the remedy they offered the weary european. he promoted quite the sensual cure, which he guaranteed would rouse the premodern european from his or her static state. of course, this could only happen in the balkans – in london gypsies did not have the same effect, he asserted. while the works of hoppé and starkie seem quite different, the underlying themes each author explored were strikingly similar. each comfortably played the role of adventurer for the ready-made audiences of travel literature. it was a respected genre for eager middle class readers who generally accepted the authority of the author as a guide. the public traveled in their imaginations on a tour of exotic traditions, wild celebrations and romantic trysts, all while safely ensconced in the 30 hoppé, 48. 31 hoppé, 48. 32 hoppé, 50. 33 hoppé, 51. 19 volume 26, no. 1 page 19 warmth and comfort of their homes, trusting in the expertise of their guide. each author presented a unique voice that highlighted his experiences in romania. starkie offered stories that cast him as the new version of leland and borrow. unlike his gypsiologist predecessors, however, starkie presented himself as a modern intellectual who rejected romantic notions of the gypsies and instead set out to discover his inner vagabond while rejecting the impact of modernity on the bodies and souls of european men. gypsies, according to starkie, had something to offer europeans; by removing oneself from many of the burdens of modernity, a man could revert to his premodern, masculine, independent, sensual, yet, of course, always refined self. hoppé traveled through romania under vastly different circumstances. he was a wealthy, well-known photographer courted by the royal family upon his arrival in romania and who toured the country in a manner befitting his elevated social position. he described gypsies with the eyes of a photographer whose objective was to capture their essence while playing with his own understanding of civility and modernity. again, there was admiration for the group as a specimen of a culture whose emotional nature has not been obliterated by time and machine. the negative depiction of romanian gypsies as exotic, childish, slovenly, menacing and sexualized are unsurprising, and mimic many interwar interpretations of non-western cultures by travelers, and they, as travel writers, are catering to the expectations of audiences craving adventure and danger. when the works of starkie and hoppé are juxtaposed against the aspirations of nascent romani interwar organizations, a more nuanced understanding of the complexities of interwar critiques concerning the pitfalls of modernity, and just who is ‘allowed’ to be modern, emerges. these works initially seem to neatly fit into the scholarly understanding of orientalism. edward said’s work on european perceptions of the “orient” provided a foundation upon which many historians have deconstructed perceptions of those painted as “others” and their relation to how europeans defined themselves. 34 underlying the 34 edward said, orientalism (new york: pantheon, 1978) and culture and imperialism (london: chattus and windus, 1992). the terms “western” and “eastern” are problematic at best when used as homogenous categories, but work relationship of writer and subject is an elitist perception that profoundly objectifies – the biting, intentional commentary on modernity starkie and hoppé perceived in the lifestyle of gypsies, for example, was orientalist in form and function. the authors were unable to separate their own interpretations from the opinions of the roma themselves. these critiques nevertheless add to an understanding of how marginalized groups are utilized to assess as well as create. the “other,” that is, could be used to formulate one’s own identity and to censure one’s own society at the same time. the application of orientalism to the balkans, however, must be handled with caution. maria todorova notes that the balkans can be cautiously considered "semicolonial, quasicolonial, but clearly not purely colonial." 35 both todorova and katherine fleming insist that orientalism is concretely located within an actual colonial framework, therefore posing severe problems in its application to a region that was not colonized by the west. 36 the balkans’ “liminality, their status as an ‘inside other,’ their own claims to european primacy, their geographical location (on the borders of but nevertheless within europe), western europe's uncertainty as to where to place them — all make the balkans ripe with theoretical possibility,” fleming writes. 37 a strict focus on the imagination also creates the burden of re-marginalization by the very scholars who are attempting to approach the “other.” fleming acknowledges the importance of said to southeastern european history, while attempting to shift the focus away from studies that seek to locate the region strictly within the imagination: “in the absence of engagement with post-saidian cultural-historical concerns,” she writes, “the balkans, and their study, will … remain ‘remote,’ ‘inaccessible,’ and largely based on fantasy. with such engagement, however, the balkans may emerge as more central than we ever had imagined.” 38 likewise, by repeatedly examining minorities in the balkans, particularly well as essentialized foundations for the complex issues in this work. 35 todorova, imagining the balkans, 16. 36 k.e. fleming, "orientalism, the balkans, and balkan historiography," american historical review, vol. 105 n.4 (2000): 1218-1255. 37 fleming, ibid., 1252. 38 fleming, "orientalism, the balkans, and balkan historiography," 1255. 20 volume 26, no. 1 page 20 roma, within the frame of orientalism, scholars have unintentionally assigned them roles solely within the imagination. recent works focused on roma vis-á-vis the imagination slightly acknowledge this issue in their introductions, but continue this tradition. 39 the focus on the construction of negative binaries found in dominant discourses also discourages any attempt to include romani voices into the general historical narrative. it is well established that cultural identity is formulated through the construction of “others” found within and outside of groups. what is often left unclear is the issue of response. orientalist language can be utilized in a variety of ways by a multitude of players at different levels of society. while it is not so surprising that western european writers used orientalist discourses in regard to gypsies, romani intellectuals in turn utilized positive and negative perceptions of gypsies in order to gain some form of social and political agency. 40 a more intricate presentation of interwar romani identity and voice, when juxtaposed against the expectations and desires of interwar travelers, allows for a discussion of the how anxieties in the 1920s and 1930s about modernism were reflected in the western european response 39 see abby bardi, "the gypsy as trope in victorian and modern british literature," romani studies, vol. 16 issue 1 (2006): pp. 31-42; deborah nord, gypsies and the british imagination, 1807-1930 (new york : columbia university press), 2006, and claudia berger, "understanding 'the other'? communication, history, and narration in margriet de moor's hertog van egypte," in the role of the romanies: images and counter-images of 'gypsies'/romanies in european cultures, nicholas saul and susan tebbutt, eds. (liverpool: liverpool university press, 2004. 40 my analysis here draws on critiques of historiographical attempts (such as those undertaken by the subaltern studies collective) to restore the voice of the marginalized subaltern to the historical record. a number of theorists, most famously gayatri spivak, have challenged the representation of a unified subaltern voice that arises in such work and problematized the accepted understanding of empowerment. gayatri spivak’s “can the subaltern speak?” in cary nelson and larry grossberg, eds. marxism and the interpretation of culture (chicago: university of illinois press, 1988) p.271-313. to how “unmodern” peoples reacted to modernity and progress. while hoppé and starkie saw an implicit critique of modernity in gypsies, middleclass roma were embracing the promises of a more democratic atmosphere in order to secure a stronger position in romanian society. at the same time that hoppé, starkie and a variety of other travelers were publishing accounts of their tours through the country, romani intellectuals were beginning to push for greater acceptance and integration into greater romania. the gradual emancipation of roma in romania from slavery ended in 1861, and the lack of social and economic programs following manumission, the agricultural economy of the late19th century, as well as the decline in need for their traditional modes of employment, resulted in poverty and the stagnation of their position at the margins of society. 41 by the turn of the 20th century, this situation created a general atmosphere of discontent within groups of professionals who increasingly sought to identify themselves as a collective within romanian society deserving of protection under the law. after world war i, small groups of romani intellectuals began to meet to discuss the place of the roma in romanian society which, as historians have recently pointed out, was increasingly focused on creating a homogenous romanian identity for a newly enlarged romania. 42 although romanian roma were acknowledged as an ethnic group with their own language by the romanian government, they were initially marked as candidates for assimilation. 43 while the 1923 constitution guaranteed equal rights and freedoms for national minorities, roma, unlike romanian jews, were not officially 41 for example, the 1864 rural law specifically benefited peasants through land redistribution of boyar estates, yet the law wholly ignored the recently freed slaves. see mihaela murdure, "from the gypsies to the african americans," 62. 42 see irina livezeanu, cultural politics in greater romania: regionalism, nation building and ethnic struggle, 1918-1930 (ithaca: cornell university press), 1995 and maria bucur, eugenics and modernization in interwar romania (pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press), 2002. 43 this was not a new endeavor; the most brutal campaigns of forced assimilation against roma, intended to create “new hungarians,” were carried out under the habsburgs in the 18th century. see david crowe, a history of the gypsies of eastern europe and russia (london: i.b. taraus publishers), 1995. 21 volume 26, no. 1 page 21 recognized, a fact that was complicated by the high rates of assimilation of roma into romanian culture by the turn of the century. this, coupled with high rates of poverty, low rates of education, and their increasingly marginalized status in society, spurred on a small group of middle class romani intellectuals to attempt to improve their lot. 44 economic issues were the initial motivating factors for the creation of localized romani unions. musicians were particularly concerned with the influx of foreigners into the country; several complaints were lodged with local officials throughout the 1920s and 1930s asserting the rights of local musicians over those arriving from other cities. 45 by 1933, the agendas of these unions shifted; rather than operate as singular units consumed by the needs of individual trades, some leaders became convinced that more would be achieved for the romanian roma at large with the formation of a unified organization. this new focus on the creation of a general romani organization coincided with the harsher economic climate during the worldwide economic depression after 1929, as well as a shift in romanian nationalism from a more inclusive nature which sought to integrate minorities into greater românia to an exclusive ethnonationalism by the end of the 1920s. in march, 1933, n. niculescu, 44 the 1930 census recorded 262,501 people who declared themselves to be of romani descent (1.5 percent of romania’s population). of these, 221,726 lived in villages and 40,775 lived in cities: recens!mântul general al popula"iei româniei din 29 decemvrie 1930, vol. ii (neam, limb! matern!, religie), bucure"ti, 1938. by 1930, their population in romania was probably somewhere between the official estimate of 262,501roughly 3% of the total population of the countryand 600,000. coming up with an accurate number is problematic at best, given the fact that many had settled and assimilated by this point and had distanced themselves from a romani identity. likewise, nomadic groups were ignored. viorel achim discusses these statistics in his chapter on the interwar period in the roma in romanian history, budapest: central european review, 2004. 45 arh. st. cluj, prim!ria municipiului cluj, dos. 2705/1919, f. 1; arh. st. cluj, prim!ria municipiului cluj, dos. 2705/1919, f. 2; arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos.. 34/1922-1938, f. 1. the president of the musician’s trade union in romania, traveled to br#ila and a variety of towns in moldova in order to push for a general union for musicians in romania. during this period several romani associations sought to construct a concrete and usable identity while focusing the majority of the efforts specifically on cultural and social rights. these were not insignificant organizations; the largest and most important of them, the general union of the roma in romania, had, by 1937, 40 county branches, 454 local bureaus, and counted 784,793 members. 46 in september 1933, a romani intellectual emerged as the head of the first general romani organization in romania. calinic i. popp #erboianu, a theologian, was born in 1882 in arge$. a professor of french, greek, and latin, $erboianu was also a consummate traveler; he spent the 1920s in america, england, and finally france, where he published a general history of roma, les tsiganes: histoire-etnographiegrammaire-dictionnaire (the gypsies: historyethnography-grammar-dictionary), in 1930. after returning to romania and a gaining position in the orthodox church at the crasna monastery, $erboianu founded a new organization that would agitate for the betterment of roma as a whole. 47 this new organization, the general association of !igani in romania (a.g.t.r.), based initially on the membership of the trade union junimea muzical! (musical youth), presented its objectives in a pamphlet entitled “appeal to all !igani in romania.” 48 “for one hundred years we, roma or "igani, however we call 46 george potra, contribu"iuni la istoricul #iganilor din românia (bucure"ti: mihai dascal editor, 2002), 118. 47 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 60-61. the police and gendarmerie files provide a rich, although problematic, source of information about these organizations. every organization in interwar romania had to apply for official approval before they could become legal entities. part of this process was a full report from the police, and this police attention to minority organizations lasted until they proved non-threatening to the state. for romani organizations, this meant that they were watched by the police well into 1936, with sporadic reports on their activities filed in later years. 48 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 30-32. 22 volume 26, no. 1 page 22 ourselves, endured all humilities, were the most scourged, overlooked and wretched in romania,” they began. 49 the first segment of the pamphlet laid out the qualifications of the organization’s leader, #erboianu, as a man “of !igani origin…who understands the sorrow of his people, [who] wants to lead the people down the road to civilization, to aspirations free from political poisoning, and to see that the name “!igani” be used honestly and not scornfully.” 50 asserting that #erboianu was a great scholar who wrote valuable works about roma in german, french, and english, and a cosmopolitan traveler with connections to roma worldwide, the organization initially tried to capitalize on the intellectual prowess of its leader. the organization also detailed a twofold agenda focused on programs of assistance aimed at the social and cultural betterment of roma as a group. the cultural program delineated in the pamphlet included the establishment of a newspaper, adult education programs, museums and libraries, daycare centers, the publication of books that would counteract stereotypes, conferences focused on education and the recovery of traditional songs, stories, and dance, scholarships for worthy students, stores that would support traditional trades, and books, food and clothes for needy children. the call for social assistance programs in the following section presented a challenging course for the organization. they promoted free social and religious care, such as legal assistance; free medical care for the sick complete with home visits; homeless shelters; a hospital with an office for social assistance, and a children’s shelter. even more ambitious was the call for housing for the homeless in each county, city and village payable in the course of 20 to 30 years, and the establishment of an association that would encourage agricultural work in the countryside complete with a collective aspect that would supervise the legal and social responsibilities of its members, and a corresponding organization for urban workers and craftsmen. 51 the a.g.t.r. was also interested in guiding the morality and choices of roma. one segment of the pamphlet called for the 49 arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933, f. 2. 50 arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933, f. 30. 51 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 30-32. “colonization” of all “nomads,” which was to be supported by gifts of land that, the organization believed, would ensure both stability and the eradication of begging and theft. 52 they also called for the establishment of tribunals and supreme courts guided by tradition whose sole responsibility would be to “resolve moral questions” 53 relating to domestic issues. women were granted equal membership with men, and were to be accorded all of the social and cultural services offered by the organization, and educated women could be part of the councils. there would be separate groups for children, and boys and girls sections for children between eight and twenty-one years old. “hurry and immediately join the association, which is the only support for our lives today and tomorrow,” they wrote. “be strong, unified in heart and spirit, because we do not live only for ourselves, but for our children and for future generations. we welcome twenty-seven thousand new members today, from the country’s different cultures, to prove the high enthusiasm for our ideas.” 54 this is in stark contrast to the exotic flavor of starkie and hoppé’s “encounters” in gypsy camps. for romani intellectuals, the wagons and campfires, indeed, the freedoms with which starkie was so enamored, were symbols of poverty and degradation that must be reformed rather than coveted. this initial plea was effective; there are a number of records from a variety of romanian towns in the early 1930s about branch meetings of the a.g.t.r. or other romani aid societies. 55 two 52 the stereotype that all roma were thieves or beggars was one of the many misconceptions that these organizations battled. in the heterogeneous romani community, some people were either seasonally or always moving from region to region inside and outside of romania. due to the general belief that all roma were nomads, many newcomers to towns and cities were immediately labeled by the local population and the authorities as such. 53 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 31. 54 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 32. 55 for example, in 1933 mention is made of a meeting of the a.g.t.r. branch in craiova, arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938; f.34 and roma in corabia met to establish the mutual assistance society, arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f.35. trade unions created by roma 23 volume 26, no. 1 page 23 other major organizations emerged on the larger public stage, as well. the first, the neorustic brotherhood, established in f#gar#$ county in 1926, was the smaller of the two, but managed to publish two editions of a newspaper about the platform of the group and its position as a voice for transylvanian roma in 1934 and 1935. 56 the second organization, an ultimately the largest of these interwar organizations, was a splinter group from the a.g.t.r. gheorghe a. l#z#rescu-l#zuric#, born in 1892, a former member of the a.g.t.r., was a writer for romanian newspapers and literary journals such as universul (the world) and adev!rul literar (the literary truth). 57 he, like #erboianu, had strong connections to the west, and to gypsiologists there; police reports note his connections to the gypsy lore society in london and his regular correspondence with them. 58 after leaving the a.g.t.r., he formed his own organization, the general union of roma in romania (u.g.r.r.) located in bucharest. the organization’s social platform was similar to the a.g.t.r., but the language of the group was strikingly different. far from focusing attentions solely on their romanianness, the u.g.r.r. sought to create a new, and proud, image of roma in romania, as both stalwart romanian citizens and as integral members of society as roma. l#z#rescu-l#zuric# marked this pride in his civic and ethnic identities in the most obvious way he could; in the early 1930s he hyphenated his name in order to did not disappear from the scene; the l!utari unions continued to appeal to the government for protection from foreign musicians (particularly jazz bands) who encroached on their territory. see for instance arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f.21. 56 interwar romanian romani newspapers were always published in romanian. 57 universul was a daily newspaper and adev!rul literar was a journal concerned with literature and art; both were popular publications out of bucharest. 58 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 44. any international correspondence between a minority organization and a western european group interested in their welfare would have been of interest to the romanian police, but this issue was only mentioned in passing in a general report on the organization. highlight his romanian as well as his romani identity. 59 in october 1933, another pamphlet was published in bucure$ti, calling for the support of all roma at a meeting for the newly established general union of roma in romania. 60 “we address you not by the title of ‘!igani,’ for it is a false and derisive name, but by our word “romi,” meaning men who are lovers of liberty, life’s enjoyments and music,” they wrote. 61 taking the language of the a.g.t.r. to a new level, the union highlighted a combination of civic responsibility, social reform, and ethnic cohesion: we number around one million souls, scattered throughout this country from villages to cities, carrying out with sanctity all the duties of the citizenry: we pay our taxes, we serve in the army, we have jobs, we are assimilated into romanian society, we speak the language and practice orthodox christianity. we preserve romanian songs, jokes, ballads, and traditions, as industrious and passionate chroniclers and collectors. 62 far from seeing themselves as marginal, the u.g.r.r. perceived themselves as holding a special place in romania. as a group that presented itself as the archivists of romanian culture in a period when the country was desperately trying to create a cohesive national identity for a newly expanded greater romania, the u.g.r.r. was attempting to solidify its position at the heart, rather than the margins, of romanian society. it is also here that one can see an interesting link with, and a twist on, the work of gypsiologists and travel writers such as starkie, who for centuries had traveled to the region to 59 l#zuric# was a romani-ized version of his surname. arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 44. his ethnicity would later come under dispute, and he resigned from the u.g.r.r. because of the resulting scandal: arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933, f. 80; arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933, f. 93. 60 arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933, f. 3. 61 arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933, f. 3 62 arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933, f. 3. 24 volume 26, no. 1 page 24 “recover” works that spoke to the atavistically european soul. this did not preclude them from presenting their position as loyal romanian citizens as well. “we are patriots and supporters of the monarchy and the state; we are not disloyal, we do not desert our obligations, we do not make pacts with romania’s enemies nor do we allow ourselves to be influenced by extremism, which is damaging to the romanian state,” they insisted. the pamphlet goes on to decry the major problems facing roma in romanian society: “these are qualities which outweigh any human frailties and, recognizing this, our fellow citizens must acknowledge that we do not often fail ourselves in the face of the law. we are nevertheless scorned, blasphemed, and considered pariahs in society, lacking equal rights as men and citizens.” 63 the issue at hand was not to create a new political party, but to focus on spiritual and social welfare and legal rights that would take nothing away from their civil responsibilities nor cast aspersions toward the state. indeed, it was intended to change public perceptions of roma in general. 64 while #erboianu maintained some presence on the scene until his death in 1938, the a.g.t.r. had trouble getting even the most basic license to exist as a legal entity, a requirement for any romanian organization in the 1930s. this is partly to do with the enigmatic figure of #erboianu himself; there were rumors repeated in police files concerning the organization and in some editions of the romani newspapers that he had overstated his relationship with the orthodox church, and that he had, in fact, converted to the uniate or catholic church, a serious charge for the head of a group attempting to prove its “romanianness.” 65 he was also unsuccessful at gaining a larger romanian swathe of support for his organization. the u.g.r.r. proved much more adept at allying itself with important public figures in romania. in the first large meeting of the organization in 1933, a number of important romanians were noted as either present at the meeting or as “spiritual members” of the organization, including editors from adev!rul 63 arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei,, dos. 123/1933, f. 3. 64 arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei,, dos. 123/1933, f. 3. 65 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 60-61 arh. st. bucure!ti, prefectura poli"iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933, f. 80. literar, universul, ilustra"ia român! and cuvântul, the well-known writers mihail tican roman and adrian maniu, an ethnographer interested in roma named george potra, representatives from the romanian orthodox church, and corneliu codreanu, the leader of the ultra-nationalist legion of the archangel michael. 66 it is fascinating that they named codreanu, a far-right leader who based his organization on a platform of xenophobia, antisemitism, and anti-communism, as a spiritual member of their organization. codreanu even went as far as to supply them with 20 members of his paramilitary outfit to guarantee order at the first large meeting of the u.g.r.r. 67 the focus on social programs and continued assertions that the organization was apolitical aided in this type of support, and assured the organization of positive publicity in the press. 68 every interwar organization in romania was forced to register with the government, and many, including romani organizations, were monitored by the police. this was surveillance represented both a response by the state to the tensions created by the inclusion of new territories after the great war and nervousness about the growing power of ethnonationalist groups by the early-1930s. the organizations’ heavy stress on romanianness in a period in which the state was so focused on creating a strong national identity was the most important element in solidifying such a broad show of support by powerful romanians. publications by the u.g.r.r. emphasized romani allegiance to romania, and particularly to orthodoxy. 69 glasul romilor (the romani voice) not only provides an overview of the social and cultural platforms of the organization, but a glimpse of the greatest challenges romani intellectuals felt were facing roma in romanian society and how they perceived their position in 66 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 49. 67 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 46. 68 the organization was treated fairly in the mainstream press throughout the 1930s. it is not until after the 1937 election that, in response to the changing climate of politics in romania, a noticeable difference can be seen in romanian publications. 69 see, for example glasul romilor, i, no. 1, 1-15 november,1934, 1, which directly links itself to orthodoxy with news of a mass baptism of roma on the first page. 25 volume 26, no. 1 page 25 interwar romanian society, as well. the first edition, published in november 1934, firmly placed roma within the narrative of romanian history as an oppressed people who, once freed from slavery in 1854, were left to suffer at the margins of society in the country. the only recourse was to confirm their unwavering support of the state and their position as loyal citizens deserving of rights: we were and will remain supporters of the state and the throne until death. within our brother roma we have never found of traitor to the state. we were always good citizens. we deserve therefore a better fate. we also deserve to be heard on the governance of our dear country … and to request our rights. we deserve to be heard and helped. 70 the paper announced the social, cultural, moral, economic, and spiritual “emanciparea $i rede$teptarea tutorur romilor din românia” (emancipation and reawakening of all roma in romania) as a motto for the organization. 71 far from hovering on the margins as vital critics of the “languers [sic] of a tired civilization,” as hoppé wrote, romani organizations were challenging society to openly accept them. 72 editions of glasul romilor throughout the 1930s focused on the same three overarching themes of god, king and country. articles were written by a number of members, the niculescu brothers, who were later declared president and vice-president of the organization, as well as some of the non-roma “spiritual” members of the organization. smaller sections were saved for discussions of organizational meetings, the history of roma in romania, and the social and cultural objectives of the organization. on the front page of each edition was a series of articles celebrating the work of the union’s “spiritual” romanian members while giving due adulation to the king. each annual also included a letter from the president of the association, gheorghe niculescu that outlined the basic ideals of the organization and provided an assessment of the year’s actions of the u.g.r.r. inside the paper, articles centered on romani artists and writers shared the page with descriptions of the organization’s cooperative 70 glasul romilor, anul 1, no. 1, 1934. 71 glasul romilor, anul i, no. 1, 1934. 72 hoppé, 43. social efforts and the minutes from local meetings. 73 one of the most interesting articles in this first publication underlined an important facet of interwar romanian identity: religion. trumpeting october 14, 1934 as an auspicious day, the paper detailed the baptism of one hundred “nomads” by the patriarch of the romanian orthodox church in ploe$ti. accompanying the article was a photograph of the patriarch, several priests, and a nun interspersed with the leaders of the u.g.r.r. the baptized nomads are noticeably absent from the shot. reconfirming their spirituality and their commitment to romanian orthodoxy on the first page of the first publication by the organization declared to all who saw the annual that roma were participating citizens in the romanian state, and, perhaps more importantly, concerned with upholding many important facets of romanian interwar identity. 74 the nomads,through their baptism, are transformed through the efforts of the organization (and orthodoxy) from wild, uncivilized !igani to romanian roma. the intent to garner public support for roma rested in part on a plan to “colonize” the same nomads that starkie and hoppé used in their critiques of progress and modernity. indeed, the u.g.r.r. perceived nomads as a prime issue that negatively impacted romanian public opinion of roma. in their statutes, the organization made nomads a point of their agenda by planning to “entreat nomads to settle, in land on the periphery of villages or cities, that they no longer travel as vagabonds, nor will they be able to in the future to dishonor the romani name, as a pariah in society.” 75 as stated above, the a.g.t.r. likewise focused its attentions on nomads, calling for their colonization on parcels of land in order to ensure social order and ultimately to “civilize” them. 76 discussions about nomads were a means by which romani organizations could highlight their own modernness and distance themselves from the more negative stereotypes associated with the impoverished rural !igani. the gypsy lore society, the same london organization which influenced the travels 73 glasul romilor, anul ii, no. 4 (bucure$ti, 1 may, 1937). 74 glasul romilor, anul i, no. 1, 1934. 75 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 57. 76 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 31. 26 volume 26, no. 1 page 26 of hoppé and starkie and with which l#z#rescul#zuric# and the niculescus were linked, reacted negatively to the progressive and rational projects and concerns of these new organizations. 77 in an article that served as a rebuttal to the aspirations of romanian romani organizations published by the journal of the gypsy lore society, william john haley wrote a ten-page examination of the nascent movement. in it, he belabored the lack of focus on cultural preservation during the roma congress held by the u.g.r.r. in bucharest in 1934: the aims of the union are sweeping and varied, though i regret i cannot find the preservation of the romani language among them. indeed, the union possibly does not want to preserve it. gypsies, in the future, apparently are to be stamped into whatever national mould they happen to have for their environment, and to be stereotyped. 78 it was inconceivable to haley that roma would assimilate, let alone choose a national identity over their ethnicity. roma, too, it seemed, had joined the interwar “urge towards dull order.” 79 haley could not bear to think that roma were unconcerned with the same culture and traditions that the gypsy lore society had worked so hard to “preserve” for 60 years: “it would be a tragedy to romance, to lore, and to culture if the old romany strain were to be tamed, nomadism to give way to sedentarism, and if all the bikkomengroes were to become clerks.” 80 the idea that roma would choose to be participating members of civic society was so far removed from the romantic western interpretation of romani culture that it was inconceivable that the romani organizations could be motivated in such a direction to the author. he capped his article with a tidy statement about his hope that the perceived mercurial, emotional nature of roma would prove victorious over these modern, dull aspirations: 77 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938, f. 44. 78 william john haley, “the gypsy conference at bucharest,” in journal of the gypsy lore society, 3 rd series, vol. xiii (edinburgh: edinburgh university press, 1934), p. 184. 79 haley, “gypsy conference,” 184. 80 haley, “gypsy conference,” 185. this translation is unclear, but he may be using borrow’s dictionary for the term boshomengro, meaning “fiddler.” “but somehow our faith in the impenetrable destiny of our friends ‘out of egypt’ reassures us that the old romany characteristics will triumph over all such modern veneers in the end, and that things will never become quite so bad again.” 81 regardless then of how modern roma appeared, they were still gypsies at heart, haley believed. regardless of haley’s assertions about the inevitable “triumph” of “old romany characteristics” over the lure of “modern veneers,” the u.g.r.r. continued to exist, with a technical break during world war ii, through 1949. 82 haley’s article, and the writings of starkie and hoppé, serve to illuminate the avid interwar desire that some atavistic vestige of the european, premodern soul could resist even the most lurid calls of modernity. if gypsies, cervantes’s “kings of nature,” succumbed to these “civilized traps,” what hope did anyone else have? the idea that gypsies existed outside of their romantic imaginings did not strike these writers; gypsies existed for them solely as a running social and cultural commentary about the woes of modern civilization, and as such offered a promise of redemption for other europeans. for them, romani organizations merely highlighted the dangerous lure of progress, and as such could not be, and indeed discursively were not allowed to be, modern. at the same time, these organizations, particularly the u.g.r.r., utilized both the positive and negative stereotypes concerning roma in order to present a non-threatening romani face to the romanian public, an image that posited roma as intrinsic and valuable members of romanian society. rejecting the idea that roma were unable to be modern participants in civil society, these organizations positioned themselves in opposition to rural !igani and nomads and highlighted their modernness and their desire to actively participate in romanian society. references 81 haley, “gypsy conference,” 186. 82 many romanian organizations were forced to cease their operations during the war, so there is no official record of the operations of the u.g.r.r. during this period. there is some evidence that they continued to exist in an unofficial capacity during this period, and they began to reassert themselves in 1948-49 as a socialist organization. arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 87/1943 f. 392. 27 volume 26, no. 1 page 27 arh. st. bucure!ti, direc"ia general! a poli"iei, dos. 34/1922-1938. arh. st. bucure$ti, prefectura poli!iei capitalei, dos. 123/1933. arh. st. cluj, prim#ria municipiului cluj, dos. 2705/1919. glasul romilor. bucure"ti, 1934-1937. recens!mântul general al popula"iei româniei din 29 decemvrie 1930, vol. ii (neam, limb! matern!, religie). bucure"ti, 1938. achim, viorel. the roma in romanian history, 2 nd ed. budapest: central european review, 2004. bardi, abby. "the gypsy as trope in victorian and modern british literature." romani studies, 16.1 (2006): 31-42. bercovici, konrad. story of the gypsies. new york: cosmopolitan book corporation, 1928. bercovici, konrad. it’s the gypsy in me. new york: prentice hall, 1941. bucur, maria. eugenics and modernization in interwar romania. pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press, 2002. hall, d.j. romanian furrow, 2 nd ed. london: george g. harap & co. ltd., 1939. hoppé, e.o. in gipsy camp and royal palace: wanderings in rumania. new york: scribner and sons, 1924. sitwell, sacheverell. roumanian journey. new york: charles scribner’s sons, 1938. starkie, walter. raggle-taggle: adventures with a fiddle in hungary and roumania. e.p. sutton & co., inc., 1933. crowe, david, and john kolsti, eds. the gypsies of eastern europe. armonk, n.y.: m.e. sharpe, 1991. crowe, david. a history of the gypsies of eastern europe and russia. new york: st. martin’s griffin, 1996. fleming, k.e. "orientalism, the balkans, and balkan historiography." american historical review 105.4 (2000): 1218-1255. haley, william j. "the gypsy conference at bucharest." journal of the gypsy lore society, third series 13, no. 4 (1934): pp. 182-90. livezeanu, irina. cultural politics in greater romania: regionalism, nation building and ethnic struggle, 1918-1930. ithaca: cornell university press, 1995. nord, deborah. gypsies and the british imagination, 1807-1930. new york : columbia university press, 2006. patmore, derek. invitation to roumania. london: millan and co., ltd., 1939. parkinson, maude rea. twenty years in roumania. new york, e. p. dutton, 1922. potra, george. contribu!iuni la istoricul #iganilor din românia. bucure"ti: mihai dascal editor, 2002. said, edward. orientalism. new york: pantheon, 1978. said, edward. culture and imperialism. london: chattus and windus, 1992. salo, matt t. ed. 100 years of gypsy studies. cheverly, maryland: the gypsy lore society, 1990. saul, nicholas and susan tebbutt, eds. the role of the romanies: images and counter-images of 'gypsies'/romanies in european cultures. liverpool: liverpool university press, 2004. spivak, gayatri. “can the subaltern speak?” marxism and the interpretation of culture. eds. cary nelson and larry grossberg. chicago: university of illinois press, 1988: 271-313 . todorova, maria. imagining the balkans. oxford: oxford university press, 1997. willems, wim. in search of the gypsy: from enlightenment to final solution. london: frank cass, 1997. wolff, larry. inventing eastern europe: the map of civilization in the mind of the enlightenment. stanford: stanford university press, 1994. conjuring hope anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 conjuring hope: healing and magic in contemporary russia. by galina lindquist. new york: berghahn books, 2006. vi, 251pp. bibliography. index. $27.95, paper. maryna bazylevych, university of albany in memory of galina lindquist, who passed away in 2008 after an illness. conjuring hope could not have been a better work to present innovative scholarship on people’s search for healing strategies. from the very beginning of the book, lindquist sets her discussion of magic and healing in russia in the context of disorder in the society, or what she calls “bespredel… the limitlessness of the new lawlessness, ruthlessness and cruelty that appeared to reign everywhere” (xiv, 210). she discusses how magic helps people deal with this unpredictability and its effects on their health. the author argues that in russia – where the sheer physical being is not a given and the channels for materializing rational plans are often beyond the individual’s control, people develop alternative ways of gaining more reassurance in their present and future. lindquist uses bourdieu’s concept of illusio to analyze the intrinsic quality of humans to hope – or have a stake in the social game. her main argument is that contemporary russians use magic to change their subjective feeling of control and infuse their lives with hope, which the author refers to as present “pregnant with future” (8). lindquist presents to us an encounter of magic in “postmodern urban” russia (2). we learn of the transformative qualities of magic for both the charismatic practitioners whom she calls the “icons of power” (113), and their clients. the former are able to tap into their exceptional qualities and the cultural logic of practice (117) to relationally transform themselves into a “symbolic type… a person who no longer needs to modify her behavior in response to others” (127). when healing is successful, the clients are able to modify their perception, which in its turn then may bring material changes (72). just how exactly this transformation happens, we learn in chapter 2, where lindquist invites us to look at this process through the lens of charles peirce’s semiotic model (12-17, 70-71). his tripartite model looks at the sign in its three forms: representamen (form of the sign), object (referent), and the interpretant (the sense that people make of sign). such a system allows the anthropologist to use the representational mode, which goes beyond the discursive meaning (12), and allows her to focus on the native interpretations. lindquist presents the process of healing with the help of magic essentially as a process of naming: semiosis. the magus helps her clients by generating signs in their consciousness – a diagnosis. it becomes a piece of puzzle that fits – therefore connecting the broken semiotic chain, “providing representamina for the nameless state is a mechanism that forms the basis of healing” (87). throughout the book, the author deals with two main conceptual domains: emotions/affect and power. for lindquist, emotions are based on the socially accepted anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 261 patterns of language and practice. they are also embodied by socially and culturally constructed subjects (85). these body-mind states can therefore be influenced by the magus – providing the language to talk about the experiences of turmoil. the concept of power is unpacked by the author on both macro and micro levels. lindquist tackles the issue of legitimacy of magic healing, construction of charisma, and the power of consciousness to shape perceptions and bodies. at the same time, her focus on these micro-patterns opens the window into the macro-processes that govern people’s lives. we see how magic thrives where disorder and violence abound: “in the jungle of the brave new russia, magic can be seen as a way of lending illusion to those playing tough social games more akin to russian roulette” (199). lindquist’s careful discussion and ethnographic situating of the concepts of hope and agency deserve special notice. the author challenges the western concept of agency as inadequate for understanding the realities of life in russia. when people’s will is rarely sufficient for persevering, and the rules of the game constantly change, an anthropologist must look at “the cultural tools to change people’s subjectivity in ways that makes their lives livable” (4). the author argues that the western idea of agency conflates two notions: intention, desire or will to act; and the capacity to implement this desire. for some people, the constraining qualities of larger structures are predominant, and for others the enabling qualities are more salient (7). the book is ultimately about hope – “the existential and affective counterpart of agency that replaces it where channels for agency are blocked and presence in the world becomes precarious” (4). lindquist’s other great contribution is introducing the formative influence of culture into the peircean semiotic model. here she utilizes bourdieu’s approach to culture as practice, the logic of “accepted cultural order, logic of desirable” (117). while lindquist’s work focuses so prominently on the period of great transformations in russia, her tackling of the concept of culture is somewhat static, underlining some of its aspects such as being shared, being agreed upon, being accepted, rather than its dynamic qualities. after all, the “accepted” logic of practice is also subject to change. one might expect that this attention to the established cultural patterns would trigger more detailed historical excursions into the magic in russia, yet lindquist’s discussion of the roots of contemporary magic is quite succinct (30-43). she, however, returns to some of the historical aspects later in the book during her discussion of various cultural concepts that lack direct translations, such as obida, gnev, etc., even though these discussions focus more on linguistic aspects. lindquist’s work is theoretically rich and memorable. it will be a great thoughtprovoking piece for graduate students and scholars. it might not be accessible for the general audience or undergraduate students due to its very detailed theoretical excursions, although the topic of magic itself could certainly attract a broader pool of readers. all in all, it is an excellent, ethnographically rich and theoretically innovative writing. conjuring hope will enrich the horizons of the interested readers. 92 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 manele in romania: cultural expression and social meaning in balkan popular music. eds. margaret beissinger, speranţa rădulescu, and anca giurchescu. vol. 21, europea: ethnomusicologies and modernities, eds. philip v. bohlman and martin stokes. lanham, maryland: rowman & littlefield, 2016. xxiii, 311 pp. figures. index. maps. musical transcriptions. photos. song lyrics. references. website. $100.00, hardback; $95.00, ebook. donna a. buchanan, university of illinois, urbana-champaign buchana1@illinois.edu music, mafia, media, masculinity, and postsocialist (im)morality. as the eleven contributions to this edited collection elucidate, the syncretic romanian popular culture phenomenon manele conjoins these five topics in eclectic performances of music and social dance rich with regional, political, economic, ethnic, and social significance. manele (sing. manea), usually referred to in the plural, is a contemporary, urban, ethnopop genre blending aspects of romanian traditional and popular song and dance with stylistic components and influences originating in western popular culture or the ethnopop trends of other balkan states. performed largely by romani musicians (lăutari, manelişti), often in live venues at highly amplified volume, the genre first emerged during late communism beyond state-sanctioned channels, gaining widespread popularity under the moniker “musică orientală” (oriental music) after the 1989 romanian revolution as a symbol of democracy, freedom, changing markets, youth culture, and the escalating social power of the new political and economic elite. these nouveaux riches include politicians, businessmen, and mafiosos who became the patrons of manele performances and the acclaimed subjects of their song lyrics in the 1990s and early 2000s. embraced by the working classes, the genre’s association with romani culture, the criminal underworld, and political corruption, together with the gendered, sexualized quality of its song lyrics (especially during the 1990s) and middle eastern-influenced sound and suggestive dance style, caused intellectuals and white collar professionals to vilify it as foreign, tasteless, immoral, and plebian. in short, the authors show how manele has engendered for disparate audiences the greatest aspirations and most disturbing excesses of post-1989 romanian life. 93 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 manele in romania is the first book-length and english-language compendium to address this complex phenomenon, and it does so from varied disciplinary vantage points in an international framework. the collection’s three co-editors hail from different fields: margaret beissinger, the only american contributor, specializes in romanian folklore, while speranţa rădulescu is a romanian ethnomusicologist, and the late anca giurchescu (1930‒2015), to whom the volume is dedicated, an internationally celebrated romanian ethnochoreologist who worked in denmark after emigrating there in 1979. beissinger and rădulescu dominate the volume, together authoring or co-authoring seven of its chapters. the remaining contributors, all romanian, include sociologist and cultural anthropologist vintilă mihăilescu, musicologist costin moisil, anthropologist and journalist adrian schiop, and anthropologist and ethnomusicologist victor a. stoichiţă, who directs the center for ethnomusicology research at the cnrs, paris. every chapter is ethnographically grounded, comprehensively documented, and enhanced by many firsthand anecdotes, illustrations, and observations. readers will also appreciate the numerous musical transcriptions and excerpted song lyrics, which appear both in their original romanian and english translation. a companion website, created by sociologist florian iordan and rădulescu, features chapter summaries, color photos, and ca. 100 audio and video illustrations of manelişti in action; these are listed by chapter in the volume’s front matter and integrated into the authors’ discussions. as explained by beissinger (p. xxix), the volume is structured in three sections whose contents move generally from descriptive and contextualizing discussions to interpretation and social analysis along a broadly chronological trajectory. the first four chapters introduce manele in straightforward musical and choreographic terms. the initial chapter, by giurchescu and rădulescu, surveys typical manele performance contexts (life-cycle celebrations, restaurants, clubs, concerts, competitions), rhythmic and melodic structures, lyrical content, gender considerations, and choreographic models, drawing useful comparisons between manele and other regional and romanian dance styles. moisil’s contribution (chapter 2) provides a supplementary historical overview of the genre’s roots in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, exploring manele’s relationships to influential ottoman turkish repertories and music/dance practices conceived locally as “oriental.” these include scale types, rhythmic patterns, melodic ornamentation techniques, modal improvisation practices, and choreographic gestures or movements. chapter 3 (rădulescu) considers creative process, locating the composition of manele 94 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 songs in practices of borrowing, troping, variation, quotation, and improvisation. these techniques both speak to the genre as a manifestation of oral culture, and contribute to its balkan and romani sensibilities, as manele musicians incorporate tunes from neighboring repertories and accommodate them to the audience at hand. in the subsequent chapter, beissinger extends this discussion by outlining how manele compares with other balkan ethnopop genres (yugoslav newly-composed folk music, post-yugoslav serbian turbo-folk, bulgarian chalga and popfolk, among others) in music, lyric topics, performance forces, and associated dance styles. building on this initial foundation, the book’s second section (chapters 5‒8), takes up issues of manele performance and reception in an increasingly interpretive manner, while the concluding section (chapter 9 and the epilogue) repositions the genre’s significance on the eve of its decline. in “actors and performances” (5), for instance, rădulescu supplies a typology of indigenous occupational and consumer categories associated with manele production from the standpoint of an informed insider. but it is the remaining chapters that stand out as the most compelling and sophisticated reads in the book. stoichiţă’s “the ‘boyar in the helicopter’” (6) takes the discussion into fresh analytical territory, insightfully considering manele’s potential for irony and parody, how specific performance protocols (tipping practices, improvised praise song lyrics, protection rackets) and sonic properties actively enhance its association with emotional and social power, and tying its carnivalesque and liminal qualities to the revolutionary upheavals that prompted its popularization. the ensuing, groundbreaking exposé by schiop, “manele and the underworld” (7), courageously documents the genre’s ties to the hypermasculine realm of romanian mobsters: gangsters as clients and patrons, how manele bands and performances became instruments of mafioso notoriety, how the praise songs mobsters commissioned contributed to their status, and how manelişti navigated these aggressive circumstances. beissinger’s “village manele” (8) is likewise an ethnographic tour de force; rooted in her deep knowledge of romani musicianship gleaned over decades of firsthand work, she traces manele’s history through the artistry of a single family of rural lăutari, revealing how they altered their repertory, performance practice, and instrument technology to accommodate shifting demands in the village wedding market. in the book’s concluding essay (9), mihăilescu shifts the analytical focus from manele and manelişti to “manelism,” a discursive construction and even habitus 95 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 situated amidst the interplay of postsocialist desire, power, balkanism (after maria todorova), and what the author calls “turbo-authenticity” (a concept that i understand as the grassroots pursuit of who to be and how to belong in a manner true to one’s sense of self, one’s aspirations, and one’s internal moral compass in the post-totalitarian balkans). rădulescu’s epilogue reflects on manele’s ongoing decline, hypothesizing that, beyond logistical factors such as the current economic crisis or imprisonment of the crime bosses who were its main patrons, the genre is losing popularity because it has essentially accomplished its “mission” (p. 267), both as social commentary on a particular historical moment and as an emblem of global citizenship. despite the volume’s many obvious strengths, significant redundancy of information from chapter to chapter exists that, while reinforcing major points, also interrupts the narrative flow. (one example: nearly every chapter attempts to define and regionally or historically emplace manele.) however, this same redundancy allows each chapter to stand on its own, thereby facilitating the anthology’s utility in the classroom. overall manele in romania provides multiple perspectives on postsocialist romanian society enriched by an interdisciplinary counterpoint of local scholarly voices. it sheds new light on the social import of romani musicianship, the inextricable intertwining of music and gender politics, and the implication of music in criminality, shadow economies, and social marginality. english-language studies of romanian music are scarce indeed, making this collection a particularly welcome and valuable contribution. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 153 pictures from the margins: disability and difference in postsocialist art olia bueva, indiana university introduction the struggles for equitable and respectful representation have been at the center of disability movements’ efforts in post-socialist states, affecting disabled men’s and women’s experiences and encounters in society. in mass media and art people whose bodies deviate from the norm have remained largely invisible or marginalized through reductive social and cultural stereotypes. for women the struggle for respectful and inclusive representation has been especially urgent due to their more frequent subjection to stereotypes representing women with disabilities as deviations from particular sets of normative femininity (nead 1992:77). this analysis involves a study of a diverse body of works by east-european and some western artists that can be conceived of as examples possibly forming an inclusive representational system that acknowledges difference and creates representational space for women (variously identified and diversely socially located) whose bodies deviate from the cultural norm and who are rarely portrayed as beautiful, feminine or desirable. while much of the work discusses disability in the post-socialist context, the notion of disability here is conceptualized very broadly and includes diverse, differently embodied persons, who traditionally are excluded from representations conferring beauty and aesthetics. this paper examines diverse representations of various bodies’ transgressions of the classical ideal, including those bodies transformed by age, disease, excessive fat, as well as those “disfigured” by amputations or limited mobility. following rosemarie garland thomson’s (1996, 2000, 2009) approach to understanding disability, in the paper representations of persons that are classified as disabled (e.g. impaired or “handicapped”) share the discursive representational space with those “disfigured” by scars, deformities, age, etc., who were deemed in-valid for signifying aesthetically pleasing corporeality. this discussion draws particular attention to the activist potential of authoritative cultural spaces of display, such as the gallery or the museum, which as a critical space of social agency can and have been effectively mobilized in challenging medicalized and individualized ways of seeing disability and corporeal difference (sandell 2006) by subverting cultural assumptions of aesthetics, normative embodiment and hegemonic femininity. museums, as cultural sites possessing constitutive and generative power (i.e. the potential to shape, rather than simply reflect social relations and realities), have historically often reproduced and shaped dominant (negative) understandings of difference, by excluding and marginalizing (through elision) or by constructing representations that are reductive, essentializing, discriminatory or oppressive (sandell 2006:139). considering the productive potential of authoritative public spaces of display, a radical rethinking of museums and galleries as spaces for social agency would inform new activist strategies to employ exhibition-making and representation to construct new respectful narratives of disability as a meaningful element of humanity. thus, museums might also operate as sites of intervention that “confront, undercut, or reshape dominant regimes of representation that underpin and inform contemporary attitudes towards disability” (sandell 2006:139). acknowledging the importance and mediating power of images and the insufficiency of empowering artistic representations of female corporeal difference, this project attempts to anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 154 locate, analyze and contextualize art works from various post-socialist states that could potentially serve as a foundation and inspiration for a respectful and inclusive representational regime. representing disability in post-socialism representations of disability mediate the relations between people with disabilities and able-bodied people, affecting and shaping the ways that marginalized and structurally constrained persons with disabilities are able to negotiate their positions in society (see sandell 2010; barnes 1992). conceived as constitutive and reflective of the various ways of seeing and talking about disability (sandell and dodd: 3), cultural representations of difference and impairment are a critical site for activism and social advocacy for various actors invested in transforming social relations and cultural constructs that normalize the intricate mechanisms of exclusion pervasive in post-socialist societies. in a context of divergent competing interests between the state, market, people with disabilities community and other social actors, representations and cultural constructions of disability play a critical role in the ways that advocacy groups are able to legitimate claims and mobilize support for improving the economic and social status of persons with disabilities. the post-socialist collective archetypal image of a disabled person in popular media and collective imaginary was, to a large extent, informed by soviet portrayals of disability, especially in literature and film, which generally featured representations of men with impairments who, through moral virtue and stoicism, despite their physical deficiency, managed to overcome restricted mobility and social stigma associated with disability (iarskaia-smirnova and romanov 2006:229-230). in positive portrayals of persons with physical impairments, disability often rhetorically overlapped with the loss and subsequent recovery of acceptable masculinity, leaving women with disabilities at the margins of public portrayals of corporeal difference. the soviet representational regime—in which people with disabilities body was troped as deficient, but capable of transcending lack of mobility through moral virtue, physical endurance and political engagement—traditionally excluded positive or respectful representations of women with disabilities, since femininity and disability occupied the same discursive space, and both often were associated with pity, personal tragedy, pain and inadequacy (iarskaia-smirnova and romanov 2006:230). these stereotypical representations of persons with disabilities as either recipients of charity or venerable heroes (phillips 2011:152) have significantly informed the repertoires of disability in the post-socialist representational economy. analyzing the ukrainian media – one of the principle sites where people encounter representations of people with disabilities, anthropologist sarah d. phillips identifies four main, at times overlapping genres of portraying disability: the symbolic, which employs disability as a lens to shed light on social problems; the sensational, characterized by grotesque representations, focusing on the “shocking details” of one person’s physical and intellectual anomalies; the critical, articulating disability in context of social inequalities and wrongs which evidence the state’s inadequacy in defending the rights of marginalized groups; and the personalizing, using personal profiles of persons with disabilities to construct individual, yet relatable narratives of difference, marginalization or overcoming (phillips 2011:147-152). while these genres are not always negative, the sensationalizing visual rhetoric and at times melodramatic portrayal of disability, cutting across all registers of the representational idioms in post-socialist media, reproduce reductive and stereotypical cultural anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 155 constructions of disability that propagate and normalize dichotomous conceptions of corporeal normativity and difference. embedded in these diverse accounts of disability are contrasting visual tropes ranging from pitiable to heroic that populate the discursive space of people with disabilities body with at times contradictory and at times overlapping semiotic connections between disability and personal tragedy, failed masculinity or femininity, helplessness, immaturity and dependence on charity and benevolence of others. the gender dimensions of these representations are clearly rendered in iarskaiasmirnova’s and phillips’s discussions, which find that that women are more likely to be portrayed as recipients of charity and victims of personal or familial tragedy. while men are more likely to figure as activists or public actors that have managed to overcome the barriers posed by their limited mobility (e.g. disability rights activists or paralympic athletes), with few exceptions, representations of women with disabilities mostly dwell on personal misfortune and emphasize themes of lost or found love, failed or fulfilled motherhood (phillips 2011:151). positioned and examined primarily in the context of the private sphere or familial relationships, women with disabilities in popular media rarely figure as independent, politically involved agents–a feature that reifies the discursive overlap between popular constructions of disability and femininity, both associated with physical frailty and dependence. although this connection, constructed through media profiles of women with disabilities, in some regards alleviates the stigma of disability and the implied status of dependence on state welfare, it further delegitimizes women’s claims to employment and motherhood: gendered expectations and attitudinal and structural barriers translate into very limited job opportunities and concomitant questioning of their roles as adequate reproducers and care-givers (iarskaia-smirnova 2009: 71-72; phillips 2011:180-182). the overall disabling collective image of impaired women is also complicated by the increased popularity of nationalism and neofamilialism, which configure women primarily as reproducers of the nation, thus rhetorically placing women with disabilities outside the realms of acceptable citizenship. considering the politics of gender in post-socialist eastern europe, susan gal and gail kligman (2000a, 2000b) argue that constraints on reproduction (though in this case not normative, but rather symbolic) serve to define who is a proper member of the state’s populace: “citizens” are in many cases recognized as deserving of that title, and of the set of attendant “rights,” by their display of particular forms of state-sanctioned, legally acceptable, usually reproductive sexuality. and conversely, the reproduction of citizens is seen as beneficial, judicious and necessary for the future, while the reproduction of those not recognized as such is seen as dangerous, out of control and polluting (gal and kligman 2000a:23). thrust to the margins of society by nationalist, profamilialist rhetoric, in post-socialist states women with disabilities increasingly find themselves in a double bind: scrutinized as acceptable reproducers, they do not conform to the ideal model of proper citizenship; then they are further marginalized by an overall disabling socio-economic environment. the post-communist social politics—in part informed by marketization, the spread of neoliberal ideals and neo-familialism—bring the divergent interests of citizens with and without disabilities upfront, simultaneously complicating the gender dynamic in terms of access to social services and opportunities that people with disabilities have. globalization and neoliberal reforms in eastern europe and russia resulted in a radical rearticulating of state-citizen relations in post-socialist states, disproportionately affecting the more vulnerable segments of society, including people with disabilities. the neoliberal project in eastern europe led to a significant shrinking of social safety nets and the privatization of responsibilities previously allocated to the anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 156 state or other collectives, radically transforming the role of the state as the principal provider of goods and services and guarantor of access to healthcare, leaving citizens without support systems that were previously in place (phillips 2011:6). while practically all persons with disabilities were rendered vulnerable by the overall marketization and economic liberalization, women with disabilities in post-socialist states were especially adversely affected by the shift in social politics. iarskaia-smirnova’s analysis of the hardships and social stigma that women with disabilities encounter in russia demonstrates that the allocation of financial aid to persons with disabilities is informed by ideological presuppositions about the “worth” of disabled recipients of assistance and services: the system of economic redistribution in russia demonstrates a clear privileging of war veterans or those disabled as a result of work-related injuries (who are predominantly male), while women are systematically disadvantaged in the sphere of social security. according to the same study, women are also significantly discriminated against on the job market due to specific restrictions and systems of benefits that the employer has to contend with, as well as stereotypical perceptions of women with disabilities as unfit for work (iarskaia-smirnova 2009). the overall precarious position of women with disabilities in post-socialist contexts is further complicated and amplified by a pervasive and aggressive sexualization and commodification of female bodies and sex in popular media. discussing the emergence of pornography in post-socialist russia as industry and genre, eliot borenstein argues that the “pornographication of the mainstream” (term used by brian mcnair to describe the process of imagery once considered exclusively pornographic trickling down into everyday culture) in russia was simultaneous with the (re)appearance of pornography as a distinct category. since there was no time lag between the arrival of porn and the pornographication of culture at large, pornography became a privileged locus for worries about cultural change (2008: 56). in the context of the allegorical function of this genre in the national system of symbols and meanings as well as the traditional gendering of national(ist) discourses in russia, pornography in russia significantly reflected and overlapped with nationalist rhetoric regarding the country’s loss of superpower status. inherent to this gendered dynamic, “even a cursory glance at russian porn confirms an almost ritualistic objectification and subordination of women, but when the men who produced these words and images reflected on their work, it was the russian male whom they presented as weak and embattled. in the textual and visual two-dimensional world of the russian pornographic magazine, russian men saw themselves fighting back against national and sexual humiliation” (borenstein 2008: 63). embedded in the gendered distribution of social roles and functions, women, as meaningful social and cultural agents, and their individual experiences as citizens, are rendered contingent and ultimately irrelevant to the construction of the national narrative of self-perception and representation. the rise of nationalist rhetoric and this distinctly gendered function of female bodies in the post-socialist national imaginary have fundamentally impacted women’s (disabled as well as able-bodied) possibilities for meaningful agency as cultural and socio-economic subjects. the new post-socialist socio-economic, cultural and symbolic landscapes have increasingly created barriers for women’s opportunities for meaningful agency and full citizenship, oftentimes articulating normative femininity in reductive and highly traditional and prescriptive terms, positioning them as either embodiments of culturally acceptable (reproductive and desirable) femininity or metaphorical receptacles of social ills and anxieties (the broken, permeable body of the woman in a pornographic image). the relatively rigid configuration of the boundaries of normative femininity in the post-socialist context suggests a discursive overlap and anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 157 interconnectedness between issues of representation of femininity and disability, confirming garland thomson’s assertion that “a firm boundary between “disabled” and “nondisabled” women cannot be meaningfully drawn” (1997: 27). consequently, the issues of representation of disabled femininity have to necessarily address and question culturally constructed formations of gender and hegemonic femininity. the frequent discursive equation of women’s disability with the loss of acceptable femininity are evident in cultural perceptions of impairment or corporeal difference and the harsh socio-economic realities that women have to face in day-to-day encounters with society. in part constitutive of the pervasive inequalities characteristic to postsocialist societies, the gender dynamics in representations of female disability in popular culture often locate women with disabilities outside the realm of acceptable citizenship and femininity, compromising their position as social actors and negatively influencing their ability to articulate and legitimate their claim for recognition and access to employment opportunities, economic security and social services. disability and/as inequality: the violence of the margins the exploration of the potential collective archetypal image of a disabled body in popular media and collective imaginary in russia and ukraine, which locates people with disabilities on the margins of culture and society, marked by his or her insurmountable lack due to deficient corporeality, demonstrates that representation matters. the broader struggle of disability rights groups in eastern europe includes discussions around representations and public portrayals of people with disabilities’ bodies (see iarskaia-smirnova 2009; phillips 2011), which, while having diffuse and difficult-to-trace effects on the public discourse around disability, in many ways influenced people with disabilities’ lives and determined the ways in which they were able engage with the world. the struggle to influence dominant representations of disability as either a mark of deviance, personal tragedy or overcoming impairment, pervasive in post-socialist media (phillips 2011:147-154), is part of a larger initiative amongst disability rights groups and disability studies scholars to change popular cultural conceptions of disability. aware of characteristic oscillation between “enfreakment” 1 and utter invisibility of differently embodied persons in the spheres of representation traditionally associated with beauty and aesthetics, various disability rights advocacy groups strive to provide accounts of disability as typical or ordinary (phillips 2011:152-153; iarskaia-smirnova and romanov 2009:230-231), conceptualizing disability as a form of identity, and emphasizing the humanity and individual experience of embodiment. concerns about portrayals of disability are evident in the growing number of various public performances, art exhibitions, happenings and public commentaries, which by making explicit and meaningful the existing relations and deep similarities between the able-bodied and people with disabilities in experiencing life and embodiment, emphasize the individual worth of persons with disabilities and attempt to assert their worth as citizens. among the most prominent and publicized events are the international disability film festivals like breaking down barriers (moscow), which feature diverse visual accounts about disability through different genres and various cultural contexts; art exhibitions like photos that do not suffice (moscow) that present original, emotional and nuanced narratives of disability; and yearly beauty contests, sports and dancing competitions. an almost total absence of russian and east european artists from these cultural events and a pronounced marginalization and almost complete invisibility of women at these initiatives are some of the alarming features of the contemporary post-socialist art scene. with few exceptions, most exhibitions and festivals anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 158 exploring disability are dominated by foreign artists, while local representations of disability continue to be informed by old soviet films and literature and the contemporary media. the current politics of representation, constructed through the competing and mutually constitutive discourses of popular conceptions of disability and the awareness-raising work of disability rights groups, are, in part, informed by the previously mentioned shift towards marketization and spread of neoliberal ideals. the social model of disability, which defines disability in terms of social oppression, social relations and social barriers (shakespeare 2006, altman 2001, williams 2001), is in tension with neoliberalism and calls for meaningful social change and re-conceptualization of the role of the state and society in insuring equal access and providing equal opportunity for participation. while provoking significant resistance due to its ideological overlap with the soviet state-imposed functional approach (phillips 2011:83), the social model conceives of disability as socially constructed and related to pervasive and deeprooted inequalities, and normalized by social relations that articulate normativity and privilege by creating various taxonomies signifying difference and stabilizing the rigid boundary between able-bodiedness and disability. discussing disability as a rhetorical structure that sustains the intricate systems of exclusions and power relations that reify the able-bodied/disabled binary, rosemarie garland thomson argues that the disabled body, constructed as the embodiment of corporeal insufficiency and marked by insurmountable otherness, becomes a repository of social anxieties about such troubling concerns as vulnerability, control and identity (garland thomson 1997: 6). the various taxonomies created to define and describe corporeal difference sustain the dichotomy between normal and deviant corporeality by comparing individual bodies to a set of unstated, but determining norms, arising from cultural expectations of how human beings should look and act (garland thomson 1997:6-7). consequently, the meanings attributed to disabled bodies are informed by social relationships in which “one group is legitimated by possessing valued physical characteristics and maintains its ascendancy and its self-identity by systematically imposing the role of cultural or corporeal inferiority on others. representation thus simultaneously buttresses an embodied version of normative identity and shapes a narrative of corporeal difference that excludes those whose bodies or behaviors do not conform” (garland thomson 1997:7). the constructed nature and the embedded power asymmetry of dominant representational economies that conceived of disability in terms of deviance have been historically normalized and reified by the politics and poetics of museums’ exhibition practices, which articulated traditional old master representations of the body as a corporeal ideal, structuring popular understandings of what was perceived as beautiful, desirable and whole. in view of the ostensibly self-evident value of cultural ideals of body normativity, inclusive, diverse and respectful representations of disability must necessarily make legible the power dynamic and gendered components of classical constructions of aesthetics and ideal corporeality, engaging with the classical canon in a way that interrogates and subverts the normative nature of traditional aristotelian conception of beauty. the formation of evaluative frameworks of normative embodiment, based on cultural dichotomies, are premised on the articulation of the disabled body as inevitably marked and contrasted with the “normal” body, conceived as universal. this dichotomous articulation of difference reifies cartesian formulations of identity, where disability is emphatically corporeal and overwhelmingly defined by its lack while able-bodiedness transcends the limits of corporeality. the cartesian principle, characteristic to dominant ways of conceiving disability, is intrinsic to various traditional discourses of the body in western culture, especially classical anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 159 high art, where the nude (traditionally female) connotes “art,” symbolizing a representational idiom and cultural canon with distinct and clearly defined aesthetic parameters. in classic art, the body of the object of representation (typically gendered female) is rhetorically separated from the mind and personal character, the artist (traditionally gendered male) being the sole producer of meaning. the issue of corporeal norm in art is especially critical for investigating gender dynamics in representing difference, making classical representations of the female body a rich terrain for locating similarities and intersections between normativity, articulated through societal representations of corporeal deviance, and the classical female nude, which transcends corporeality and erases difference and diversity of embodiments of femininity. in the classical representational canon the articulation of notions of aesthetics and female beauty is concomitantly accompanied by an annihilation of female subjectivity, whereby individual experience of embodiment, personhood and character become irrelevant to the representation, the contours of a beautiful female body being continuously examined and evaluated against an artistic ideal. exploring the trajectory of the specific aesthetic norms structuring the representation of the female body in western art, lynda nead argues that the pivotal feature in the construction of the nude is corporeal containment, realized through strategic and canonized deployment of forms, conventions and poses that metaphorically regulate and structure the body (1992:5-12). modeled after the aristotelian aesthetic of classical ideals of symmetry and definite form, the western language of aesthetics articulates the nude as sealed and static, with fixed limits of corporeality, displaying and discursively reproducing the boundaries dividing the inside from the outside, the subject from the object, and the mind from the body (nead 1992:6-14). the neoclassicist representational canon (derivative from classical or old master art) and traditional art criticism is discursively rooted in the civilizational rhetoric of enlightenment, which stabilizes the distinctions between the cultured and the profane. intrinsic to that taxonomy, the neoclassicist aesthetic also distinguishes between nude and naked, where differences between the two categories are conceptualized in terms of lack and vulnerability versus containment and regulation, presenting the naked body as “huddled and defenseless” and the nude as “clothed with art” (nead 1992:14). nead argues that in classical art the nude transcends corporality by means of a unified formal language (ibid., 22), forming and solidifying the “frame” around the field of art, culture and acceptable artistic expression. the civilizational thrust and regulatory function of the classical representational canon results in the reproduction of pervasive gendered dichotomies that articulate civilization and aesthetics by means of constructing the inassimilable category of “other”—the unshapely unfeminine naked body, cast outside culture and artistic representation—thus propagating the exclusion and invisibility of those bodies marked as deviating from the ideal. by placing the naked body (marked by corporeal identity and individual experience of embodiment) outside the realm of cultural representation, classical art connotes difference and diversity as inassimilable and irrelevant to the project of art (nead 1992:19, 22, 27). in the context of the overwhelming resonance and authority of classical representational regimes, women with diseased, disabled or obese bodies are unfit for representation precisely because of their gender: by embodying difference, they transgress the acceptable and fixed bounds of femininity encapsulated by the nude. thus, society and the classical representational canon render the body of the disabled woman, marked by difference, doubly unfit, casting it outside the realm of acceptable femininity and subjecthood. in this context of normalized and entrenched mechanisms of exclusion embedded in the culturally accepted evaluative frameworks, the issues of femininity and disability have to be anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 160 considered and deconstructed in tandem. as mentioned in the previous section, garland thomson argues that cultural narratives of femininity and disability often discursively overlap, being “inextricably entangled in patriarchal culture, as aristotle’s equation of women with disabled men illustrates” (1997: 27). garland thomson suggests that, historically, practices of femininity have configured female bodies similarly to disability, in that the disciplinary regimes of feminine beauty often obscure the seemingly self-evident categories of “normal” and “pathological”: the nineteenth century ideal of upper-class female beauty – pale skin, emaciated body, wide eyes – strikingly parallels symptoms of tuberculosis, just as the cult of thinness today mimics the appearance of disease (1997: 27). related to this binary, the aristotelian female ideal overlapped with the nineteenth century scientific discourse of the body, which conceived the anatomical scale of beauty as simultaneously one of pathology: “the further a female body departed from absolute beauty, the more “abnormal” it became” (1997: 28). as one manifestation of the unbeautiful woman, the figure of the woman with disabilities disrupts the oppositional paradigms of disabled and nondisabled femininity. consequently, while experiences of disabled and able-bodied women in society can be vastly different and contingent (both within and outside/between the two categories), the discursive overlap of the two groups in the cultural vernacular suggests the paramount interconnectedness of issues of gender and hegemonic femininity with female disability, evidencing the pivotal role of interrogating representations and cultural constructions of gender in contexts of resituating and reconstructing portrayals of disability in empowering ways. of gods and freaks: women outside the gaze and bodies in transition the classical aesthetic ideal and the cartesian conception of the body are a fundamental component of the eastern european cultural episteme, informing the ways that concepts of beauty and normative embodiment are constructed. legible to across geographies on both sides of the phantasmal iron curtain, the defining elements of the classical and neoclassicist representational canon have been internalized and theorized as to a large degree constitutive of art in russia and eastern europe. forming a critical component of interpretational frames used in assigning value, aristotelian aesthetics and classical ideals of femininity significantly overlap with ideas of aesthetically pleasing, desirable female corporeality. in conjunction with relatively rigid configurations of hegemonic femininity, cultural ideals of beauty and aesthetics render women in post-socialist states particularly vulnerable to stigmatization and marginalization. according to sarah d. phillips, in ukraine, parallel to the revival of traditional norms of femininity, globalization and increasing emphasis on consumption as a marker of success and identity, barbie, as the embodiment of desirable standards of beauty and sexuality, has become a one of the most influential models of femininity. phillips argues that standards of beauty, which emphasize physical appearance and possession of a perfect body as a measure of women’s worth, are “especially problematic for women with disabilities, whose different physique and limitations in movement place them well outside the range of what is considered beautiful and desirable, or even acceptable” (phillips 2011:181). concomitant with the culturally normalized practices of marginalizing disfigured women and subjecting them to disabling and reductive stereotypes, the overt and emphatic sexualization of female bodies in the post-socialist representational landscape widens the culturally constructed gap between normalcy and deviance. as noted, analyzing the evolution of the anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 161 discourse of sex in post-socialist russia, eliot borenstein argues that after the fall of the soviet union, russian culture in all its manifestations has become thoroughly and overtly sexualized. while most evident in “lowbrow” media, sex and erotic imagery have become integral to print media, radio and television programming through advertising, where “scantily clad women moan the names of the latest indispensable consumer gadget” (2000: 55). blatant sexualization of the media along with commodification and normalization of erotic imagery in public discourse further problematize issues of disabled visibility, implicitly resulting in female disabled bodies’ symbolic oscillation between exclusion and “enfreakment.” traditionally viewed as not ideal reproducers or embodiment of desirable or even acceptable femininity, women with disabilities’ sexuality is either marginalized and excluded as unacceptable and deviant or, alternatively, fetishized and incorporated into the booming and rapidly expanding representational idiom of pornography. embedded in the operational logic of representational canons and gendered public perceptions of disability, women in post-socialist societies have been subject to multiple forms of discrimination, cast into the margins of society and public visibility by the multiple mechanisms of exclusion, these legitimated by ostensibly self-evident and naturalized assumptions about disability and gender embedded in post-socialist imaginings of the social contract. the fact that representation matters and that the dominant representational canons are gendered, disproportionally affecting women’s experience of disability and difference, speaks of the incommensurability of current representational regimes in post-socialist states and the urgency in transforming popular perceptions of women with disabilities through representations that make visible the constructed nature of disability and reductive articulations of femininity. by critiquing classical conceptions of beauty and asserting the volatility and constructed nature of gender, contemporary feminist art has the potential to subvert gender expectations, creating terrains for inclusive representational economies that recognize difference and conceptualize the body as inscribed by culture and in a state of continuous redefinition and change. thus, progressive representations of disability are inevitably concerned with gender as a social construct, challenging not only public perceptions of able-bodiedness, but also conceptions of normative femininity and sexuality, strategically deploying reductive and patriarchal articulations of desirable womanhood to subvert exploitative representations of women and to create spaces for difference, individual experience of embodiment and subjectivity. corporeal difference, conceived broadly, can constitute a distinct position and subjectivity that can be used to create alternative narratives of corporeality and femininity, opening cultural spaces for rethinking beauty and able-bodiedness (phillips 2011:168-169). in view of the intrinsic discursive connections between disability and femininity a radical rethinking of the representations of disability involves a visual re-conceptualization of issues of gender and femininity in the post-socialist cultural imaginary as a whole. the complex and often uneven effort of feminist artists in post-socialist spaces to transform cultural constructions of gender repertoires and social relations between men and women has to a large degree been informed by their resistance to cultural stereotypes produced by the overlapping and mutually constitutive influence of the previously discussed classical ideals of aesthetics and femininity and the pervasive commodification and sexualization of female bodies in popular media. for instance, russian feminist artist elena kovylina’s (b. 1971) performance pick a girl (2006), where viewers are asked to remove the surgical needles used by the artist to affix magazine images of pin-up girls directly into her body, can be seen as representative of the popular trends in post-socialist contemporary feminist art, which frequently anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 162 politicizes the sexualized and exploited female bodies in popular culture. 2 inspired by yoko ono’s cut piece, the title of the project (“snimite devochku”) implicitly suggests the action of “picking up” a prostitute. reacting to certain socio-political realities in russia, specifically blatant sexualization of post-socialist culture and commodification of sex, kovylina makes explicit the connection between representation and individual experience of corporeal pain: collapsing the abstract, gratuitously sexualized object of representation and corporeal pain of the artist’s performative body, she attempts to reconstruct the individual subjectivity of the cut-out pinups hitherto invisible and symbolically removed. evident in kovylina’s work and characteristic to many other feminist artists in postsocialist states, progressive gender-conscious art works react to and resist the power dynamics produced by classical aesthetics, local constructions of gender normativity, and sexualization of culture, thus significantly overlapping with western methodologies of feminist art. while pick a girl is in dialogue with yoko ono’s famous piece, it also reacts to the social and cultural realities of post-socialism: commenting on the social context of the piece, kovylina explicitly connected the piece with experiences of gender and sexuality in russia, suggesting that “the spectre of communism became a spectre of prostitution” (kovylina.com). despite the ostensible transnationalism of kovylina’s piece, pick a girl is semantically multivalent and diversely legible in different contexts. though it is reasonable to read the piece as another one in a series of critiques of prostitution and commodification of the female body, in view of the long history of symbolic and metonymical functions that the body of the prostitute acquired in russian cultural mythology, pick a girl can be interpreted as commentary on the new symbolic function that the figure of the prostitute has been burdened with. eliot borenstein argues that the symbolic post-soviet prostitute has become “a sign of russian national humiliation – of the desperation of a country forced to sell off its natural and spiritual resources to unscrupulous clients from other lands” (2008: 79). at the same time, “despite this pervasive feminization of the country on the symbolic level … the russian prostitute symbolized national humiliation as male, rather than female experience” (2008: 79-80). in the context of the pervasive objectification (real and symbolic) of the female body, kovylina’s work can be interpreted as an attempt to insert female subjectivity into the predominantly male national narrative. by juxtaposing the real, embodied girl and the inanimate cut-out girls for “pick up,” the artist calls attention to the fact that in the post-socialist representational landscape women, as agents, have been silenced and have become irrelevant to the narrative, serving as abject receptacles of national anxieties and fears of humiliation. similarly, the works and writings of the russian feminist artist anna alchuk (1955-2008) engage with the works and discourses of classical as well as contemporary feminist art, while explicitly calling attention to and commenting on the women’s social and economic positions and experiences in contemporary russian society. working from a distinctly feminist position and asserting the close interrelation between what is often labeled as western feminist discourse and real lived experiences of women in russia, her works avoid ghettoization by engaging with feminist art theory used across “eastern” and “western” art contexts, while actively calling attention to the local gender dynamics. 3 the artist’s photo series double game (1995), consisting of sixteen pairs of photographs of a man and a woman in identical clothing assuming identical poses, arranged in a particular order, show “a gradual shift from extreme ‘femininity’ via androgyny to extreme ‘masculinity’” (alchuk 2011:227). intertextually referencing cindy sherman’s representations (as well as perceptions and experiences) of gender and femininity as emphatically performative, alchuk’s project makes visible “how the photographic medium, anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 163 props, makeup, and clothing all helped to deconstruct the capital-f femininity and capital-m masculinity” (alchuk 2011:227), but by using distinctly post-socialist cultural markers, parodying the “chap and nasty pornography of the perestroika period” (ibid., 228). a precursor to double game, the artist’s earlier installation a maiden’s toy (1994), consists of six photographs of the torsos of six male authors of the moscow art scene, modeled after the famous image of venus de milo, and the sculpture of venus’s head, positioned in front of the images and contemplating the headless, armless male bodies. evident in the gendered repositioning of the viewer’s gaze and object of contemplation, the artist attempts to satirically reverse the gaze through a humorous gender inversion of the dynamic characteristic to the russian contemporary art scene. the artist notes that while the technique of self-“exotization” or self-“othering” was a typical trend in the 1990s conceptual art scene, which promoted cultural self-display “from the outside,” a similar deconstruction of the gaze involving gender reversal provoked significant resistance and unease from both the viewership as well as the male participants in the project (alchiuk 2011:227). while a maiden’s toy evidences the pervasive cultural authority of not only classical and neoclassicist ideals of feminine beauty but also the embedded and culturally internalized gendered dynamic of producing and consuming art, the project also serves as an important critique of the cultural constructions of and discursive overlaps between acceptable repertoires of femininity and disability. the intertextually referenced venus de milo, in alchuk’s work functioning simultaneously as a feminine ideal and amputee (in alchuk’s words “a defenseless female body with no arms to cover her nakedness”), in a situation of gender reversal reveals the hitherto obscured and ostensibly self-evident cultural construction of ideal femininity in art, where defenselessness and passivity have historically become a desired feature of the female object of representation. the rhetorical overlap between disability (a cultural construction here, alas, not scrutinized) and femininity, along with questioning the gendered process of consuming art, demonstrates the utter absence of female subjectivity and agency in the production of meanings in relation to art. echoing borenstein’s assertion that the female body in the postsocialist sexualized cultural imaginary functions exclusively as a symbol of male nationalist anxieties and fears of loss of masculinity (borenstein 2008:63), alchuk’s piece directs the viewer’s attention to the cultural construction of ideal femininity as defenseless, objectified and incapable of producing meaning. the reversal of the gaze, however, does not dismantle the voyeurism and exploitation; rather, it disrupts the previously normalized narrative ties: as liudmila bredihina notes, in the pseudo-museum space of alchuk’s installation, the “‘carriers of meaning’–women are not willing to, and ‘producers of meaning’–men cannot function in a traditional fashion. 4 ” by subverting the gendered dynamic of the representational canon, alchuk’s project scrutinizes the typical representation of women in the post-socialist context as abstract carriers of meaning, deprived of individual voice and subjectivity. the pervasive discursive and semiotic overlaps between disability and femininity in the post-socialist representational economy strongly suggest that socially engaged art needs to necessarily address issues of culturally normalized and socially reproduced constructions of acceptable femininity and disability and difference simultaneously and as mutually constitutive. asserting that mass culture is masculine by definition, aiming to “pervade our consciousness with the idea that its symbolic images are natural,” anna alchuk argues that the role of the artist is to constantly challenge that notion (2011:232). discussing the reductiveness and violence of the cartesian conceptualization of the body as explicitly separate from the mind, elizabeth grosz argues that developing alternative accounts of the body that defy its containment within the anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 164 spheres of biology and life sciences, would allow for alternative ways of thinking outside the binary frameworks that the knowledges of the body traditionally operate in (grosz 1994:20-24). a conscious departure from medicalized conceptions of normality is evident in veronika bromova’s work, which frequently employs transition and transformation as the crucial visual trope to destabilize assumptions of body integrity and portray embodiments of difference. bromova (b. 1966) is a czech artist who explores issues of gender and difference by using photography (which confers a level of realism) and computer alteration to create representations that are suggestive of a reality, but are not quite real. her work thus creates a visual world of a super-reality that does not exist parallel to the real world, but is produced by the penetrating gaze of the artist who sees beyond the visible. thus the super-reality constructed in bromova’s works is not an imaginary surrealist space, but a visual narrative created through deconstruction of social relations and stereotypical representations, the supernatural element functioning as a trope for defamiliarization. in bromova’s works, irregular bodies that challenge aristotelian aesthetics and ideas of body integrity subvert ideas of the unambiguous finality of transformation, thus opening new subjectivities, boundaries of physicality, corporeality, and widening repertoires of performance of gender. bromova’s girls too (1994) is an exploration of corporeality at the borderlines of containment, a discussion of the body as being non-orientable, like the mobius strip. the conical arrangements of color planes in the image suggest finite movement. this terminality is counterbalanced by the anti-climatic arrangement of bodies that form a separate integral structure, destabilizing the overall direction of the flux. the sensuousness and sexual tension produced by the all-engulfing clash of red, blue and black creates an ambiguous space where aristotelian containment is transgressed by multiple meshing of sexual, cultural and aesthetic signifiers, where sources of contamination are deliberately scattered. the source of trespass and nature of the transformation is unclear: is the starting point a woman or a man? instead the tension of the figures and the space they inhabit suggests an anti-progression, a continuous state of non-linear flux. mary douglas suggests that, the body’s boundaries cannot be separated from the work of other social and cultural boundaries. consequently, “any structure of ideas is vulnerable at the margins. we should expect the orifices of the body to symbolize its especially vulnerable points” (douglas 2002:121). the bodily deviation and ambiguity in girls too is a playful transgression of social boundaries, a troubling of a dichotomous conceptualization of the body, which articulates transition not as a teleology, but a state of being, a different kind of corporeal selfsufficiency and integrity. the clash of bodies and colors does not erase sensuousness and sexuality: the perspective that the figures form suggests movement and change, but the ambiguity and hybridity of the starting point defies the familiar teleology of transformation of anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 165 one defined form into its opposite or, alternatively, evolution from conventional “a” to “b.” the figure escapes polarity through flux without crossing over. while these works do not display disability as such, they are critical interventions in the representational landscape in eastern europe that push against the boundaries of accepted femininity. in bromova’s representation the body displays an awareness and tension with the classical canonic nudes, characterized by conventional, rigid and finite boundaries. the bodies in the discussed pieces, deliberately marked as inassimilable into the classical ideal, interrogate the supposedly “universal” and self-evident authority of aristotelian aesthetics of the sealed, finitely gendered and sexed body. the subversive and open-ended articulations of femininity and sex in these works, while invoking the formal features of classical art, interrupt its function of assigning aesthetic value. though the bodies portrayed in girls too are not mutilated or impaired, they occupy the same discursive space as the bodies of persons with disabilities, carrying the weight of reductive and violent cultural articulations of gender, beauty and worth. the attention to this discursive overlap does not mean to trivialize the experience of disability, but rather call attention to the gendered nature and breadth of mechanisms of exclusions embedded in the dominant representations of the female body. bromova’s work in this context functions on several levels, demonstrating subversive and strategic ways of using classical art to undermine the traditional aesthetics in post-socialist contemporary feminist art, emphasizing gender as a critical site of deconstruction, and creating new open-ended ways of seeing and conceiving of beauty and embodiment. the body of disease in the 1960s and 70s, the diseased female body, whose site of visibility was hitherto usually limited to medical atlases, became a popular and powerful subject in feminist art. reflecting on the rhetorical overlap between desirable femininity and health, lynda nead argues that the images of the “imperfect” or incomplete female body can only be managed within consumer culture by rendering them invisible, or by subjecting them to generalized stereotypical narratives (1992:77). aware of such stereotypes and omissions, feminist artists like mary duffy, jo spence and hannah wilke used body and performance art to confront issues of gender, ablebodiedness and representation. mobilizing the representational potential of body art, feminist artists in post-socialist states continue to use the body and performance to produce resonant, emotional and personal accounts of disease and difference. performance or body art, as a medium and genre, radically rethinks the traditional power dynamic specific to the production of the nude, where the artist and the viewer, both traditionally gendered male, create visual representations and examine the object of representation, usually gendered female. in traditional old master painting canon, the nude genre presumes the presence of a male artist as the principal protagonist who, though always missing from the painting, is manifest through the regulating and disciplining effect of his gaze (berger 1972). the classical painting also is structured around the frame, used to shore up the female body, regulating the process of viewing and display, disciplining the viewer gaze and contouring the body of the nude, determining its interaction with the objects surrounding it. invoking derrida’s discussion of the discourse on the frame, lynda nead argues that the definition of limits and frames determines not simply the meaning of art, but meaning as such (1992:7), where the frame symbolically fixes the limits of corporeality and acceptable femininity. in conjunction with style and convention, the frame functions to “seal orifices [of the body] and to prevent marginal matter anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 166 from transgressing the boundary dividing the inside of the body and the outside, the self from the space of the other” (nead 1992:6). in this context, the power relations specific to the process of creating and viewing the art, the regulating function of style and frame, and the clear distinction between the artist and object of representation determine the terms of engagement between the artist, the represented model and the viewer, establishing not only the style of representation but also what constitutes embodiment that is acceptable for public display. performance or body art became one of the most prominent mediums in feminist art precisely because it deconstructs and transforms the power relations characteristic to classical art production and viewing. amelia jones argues that body art practices “enact subjects in passionate and convulsive relationships (often explicitly sexual) and thus exacerbate, perform, and/or negotiate the dislocating effects of social and private experience in the late capitalist, postcolonial western world” (1998:1). for jones body art is a set of performative practices that through “intersubjective engagement, instantiate the dislocation of the cartesian subject of modernism” (1998:1). by transforming the relationship between the object of representation and the artist by collapsing the two categories and by allowing the performer/object of representation the possibility to stare back, body art can potentially create a space where the female body is in the position to produce meaning and assert its own subjectivity. similar to western performance/body art, the beginning of body art in eastern europe goes back to the 1960s. along with greater pan-european artistic influence, such as performative practices in the works of dadaists, duchamp and pollock, the development of east european body art was in part informed by the rich tradition of russian futurists and constructivists as well as the multiple local avant-garde movements from the beginning of the century (badovinac 1999:13-14). since levels of political repression and social isolation in communist states varied, the visibility of and access to body art in various states was to different degrees limited, remaining confined to spaces bordering between public and private. for instance, in the 1970s and 80s, in yugoslavia body art was relatively less isolated, and a significant culture of actions and rituals also developed in private apartments in moscow, particularly in its suburbs (badovinac 1999:14). while displays of body art in russia and eastern europe were generally confined to the local art scenes, the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 90s saw an introduction of eastern body art to the western art world, generally dictated by mostly male russian artists, especially erik bulatov, ilya kabakov and komar and melamid, the representative type of eastern art being formed in the general atmosphere of the transition of art from modernist universalism to post-modernist particularism and, inherent to it, cultural identity politics (badovinac 1999:14-15). despite the overall greater visibility of male artists in the landscape of east european and russian body art, body art became the preferred genre of feminist artists in the east during communism and especially after the collapse of the iron curtain. displaying embodiment contrasting with the asexual and androgynous body of socialist realism, the ritual body of marna abramovic, the cosmological bodies of natalia ll and teresa murak, the intimate body of sanja ivecovic, the erotic body of vlasta delimar, the body of egle rakauskaite, treated with honey and fat, or the disease-exhausted body of katarzyna kozyra, all represent the “liberation of the body,” pointing, perhaps indirectly, to “an active relationship with both society and nature” (badovinac 1999:16). the principal subversive function of feminist body art in eastern europe was the deliberate departure from the collective, abstract and ideologically burdened body, and anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 167 an emphatic favoring of representing autonomous and individualized accounts of personal experience of embodiment. body and performance art remains a preferred genre of russian and east european artists, creating important opportunities to establish a dialogue with mainstream dominant culture (kovylina 2000:30-31). in the “red stocking” feminist art manifesto, elena knovylina declares that in russia actionism and performance are the most adequate and resonant genres of art, requiring relatively little time and money investment, allowing artists to react to diverse situations and contexts with unparallel speed and precision, and leaving few traces and possibilities for documentation and incrimination. asserting that all material objects are subject to aging and have limited relevance across space and time, kovylina argues that in contemporary society the body is the principal representational tool in the arsenal of the feminist artist: “the performative image, created corporeally and procedurally, directly translates the particularity (individual corporeal experience) of the female view: the body, mediated through movement, and the gesture authentically reflects the subjective world of the woman… the body, transformed through performance into an art-body, simultaneously becomes the image and the representation, the inside and the outside, the object and the subject” (kovylina 2000:30-31). due to its unique power to reassert female subjectivity and individualize embodiment, and since the experience of illness is emphatically corporeal, body art frequently has been used to portray disease, pain and loss in feminist art across various geographies. hannah wilke’s (1940-1993) series intra-venus, a shocking and emotional visual narrative of her experience being treated for cancer that shows the artist’s body under the grip of disease, is an impressive example of the strategic use of what amelia jones calls “radical narcissism.” jones argues that in narcissism the distances between the artist and the object of representation are explicitly collapsed such that “the image is the self,” and the “borders of the frames of identity are imploded” (jones 1998:180). the images of wilke’s disease transform the traditional process of art production and viewing by transgressing the cartesian dualism between the body (object of representation) and the artist (the producer of the meaning associated with the represented body), strategically connecting, using neads’s terms, the “inside” with the “outside,” placing her own experience of embodiment center-stage. katarzyna kozyra’s (born in 1963 in warsaw, poland) series olympias (1996), where the theme of disease, body decay and putridity intersect with desire and sexuality, employs an approach similar to wilke’s narcissism, intentionally collapsing the division between the artist and the model. the project olympias consists of three large photographs accompanied by a video recording of kozyra’s lymphoma-inflicted body during a chemotherapy treatment. in the video the eye of the camera fluctuates from slow to neurotic, connoting fear, helplessness and violence; the artist’s body accepts the inflicted pain and violence in order to live. the first photograph portrays kozyra, bold and visibly affected by cancer, as manet’s olympia; the second shows her lying nude in a classical pose on a hospital bed with the figure of a doctor standing behind it; the third one depicts an old woman, sitting on an undone bed. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 168 the deliberate reference to manet’s olympia functions on multiple levels, invoking the modernist system of meanings to critique and ultimately subvert the modernist representational economy. manet’s olympia, a radically realistic depiction of a nude courtesan, was critiqued for blatantly displaying intersections between art, class and sexuality, which were scandalous for the expectations of the french salon in 1860. contrasting traditional classical nudes, which obscured and diluted sexuality and avoided any marks that would signify social status, manet overtly displayed the model’s occupation, making explicit her class and sexuality. however, the blatant commodification of sex and working class identity in manet’s olympia remain subversive only to the formal components of the classical art, leaving the position of the woman as lacking subjectivity and object of the viewer’s gaze intact. kozyra invokes manet’s work precisely due to its revolutionary role in transforming the western representational idiom, but does so to insert herself and her personal experience of pain and embodiment in the representation. olympia-kozyra, embodying the artist and the model, returns the gaze not as an object of desire, but as the artist, who makes explicit and visible the formerly obscured eye of the viewer, indicating reciprocity of staring. along with deliberate insertion of subjectivity, kozyra’s self-representation adds another layer of meaning to the sexualized and classed manet’s olympia: the concentration camp aesthetic placed in a visual context that has been historically interpreted to evoke desire and sexuality makes visible the seams on the modern construction of acceptable and desirable femininity. while according to critics manet’s olympia walks the thin line between nudity and nakedness, kozyra is blatantly naked, subverting the containment of cohesive classical style. by citing manet’s infamous work, the poses and the environment in the photographs clearly evoke sexuality and desire, which violently clash with the realistically displayed visibly and radically imperfect bodies. the rhetorical connection between the components of the project communicates an anxiety related to the loss of control over the body, as well as desire to face and interrogate the stigma of possessing a body marked by disease and decay. commenting on the experience of being a cancer patient, kozyra mentioned in an interview that she was bound to medical care, depending on it “like a dog.” becoming a patient required an utter release of all control over the body (olkowski 2007:14-15), resulting in a cartesian separation of the body from the mind of the individual person. kozyra’s careful documentation of experience of disease and treatment through creative reenactment of olympia in the hospital presents a wrenching performance of pain and struggle to regain control over her body through a public vivisection of self, which centers the embodied experience of the diseased woman in society, where a sick body ceases being an object of desire and is symbolically confined to and articulated through medicine. by interweaving the medicalized and objectified bodies of illness and decay with the sexualized body of olympia, kozyra makes visible the process of objectification occurring when the body becomes subject to medical classification or an object of sexual desire. if read against the pervasive “pornographication of the mainstream” and the concomitant denigration of women’s rights (e.g. ban on abortion) in poland brought about under the influence anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 169 of the political authority of the catholic church and nationalist ideology (all three based on the rhetorical exploitation of the collective and abstract figure under the guise of articulating popular narratives of national decay or rebirth), kozyra’s work evidences a deliberate politicization of the diseased and frail body. intertextually invoking histories of artistic vanguard andradical defiance as well as exploitation and patriarchy through manet’s olympia, and by positioning herself as both the subject and the object, the author reinserts herself in the narrative of femininity in art history and polish post-socialist culture. while in communist poland gender relations women were represented as “brave victims,” responsible for the care and wellbeing of the family, performing a balancing act between professional work and motherhood, the post1989 femininity was reframed to include ambitious and commodified sexuality (gal and kligman 2000b:12). discussing the transformation of the concept of ideal femininity in poland in the era of transition, marody and giza-polezczuk argue that women were confronted with conflicting and, in many respects, opposite models of womanhood: one dictated by the canons of the catholic church and the polish nationalist rhetoric, promoting women’s roles as mothers and reproducers of the polish nation and culture, and the other one related to the liberalization of the polish economy and based on the image of the “new woman” pervasive in advertising-based, capitalist mass-media which envisions the new feminine ideal as individualist, financially successful and a good consumer (2000:171-174). in both formulations of femininity (attained either through reproduction or consumption), attractiveness is recognized as a key factor behind a woman’s “success,” both with men and in the labor markets; thus, although presenting different models of desirable womanhood, both formulations fix the boundaries of acceptable gender repertoires (marody and giza-polezczuk 2000:169). echoing ukrainian ideals of feminine behavior (berehynia and barbie), polish stereotypes of the female ideal center on women’s roles as necessarily related to the needs and desires of men and the nation, symbolically excluding women who deviate from the norm of acceptable femininity and citizenship. while subverting the aristotelian aesthetic canon and transforming the subject/object relationship of the classical nude, kozyra’s project troubles the models of femininity characteristic to post-socialist poland. resisting the objectification of the sexualized media sound-bite as well as utter de-individualization and exclusion from patriarchal nationalist discourses, kozyra reenacts the trauma of disease, loss of control and acceptable femininity precisely to de-center the culturally normalized ideal of femininity promoted in polish nationalism by giving disease and undesirable femininity a individual face, and a controversial one at that (kozyra at the time of the project already had acquired the status of infamous, radical and controversial artist). kozyra’s olympias are a deliberate resistance to the collective “we” that both communist and nationalist rhetoric construct, as well as an overt defiance of the disabling “they,” under which all the diseased, deformed and impaired bodies are often grouped. the individualized account of kozyra’s experience of dying, the realist documentation of her willful selfobjectification and tacit agreement to being treated as meat in order to live, and her defiant stare back are evidence of her desire to find herself, to reassert herself in a body that is emphatically de-personalized and deprived of individuality in both medicine and society. issues of embodiment and control raised by the artist in the context of the olympias ostensibly acquire additional meanings if read against the post-socialist shift in gender roles, specifically the reinstitution of the polish mother, an essentially conservative construct, accompanied by the rapid development of capitalist relations that provoked significant insecurities and anxieties in relation to the role and status of women in society. as agnieszka graff’s analysis of the polish anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 170 mass media suggests, the discussions of economic development and accession to the european union in polish press were frequently accompanied by a vilification of feminist ideology as well as construction of rhetorical links between successful capitalism and the traditional family (graff 2008:202-203). in this new social context of harmonious coexistence of neoliberalism with conservatism, the “autonomous family,” resilient and capable of reproducing itself as capital became a metaphor for the desired state of the nation (ibid.). the diseased and frail body of the artist poignantly deviates from the culturally constructed feminine ideal, symbolically excluding her from acceptable polish citizenship. in response to that symbolic exclusion and effective loss of control over her body, kozyra, visually unattractive, frail and ostensibly non-reproductive, though emphatically gendered and sexualized, defiantly stares back, as if mockingly proving that even though not accepted as feminine as such, she is still a woman. theorizing disability in the context of social relations, garland thomson discusses kant’s aesthetic theory “critique of judgment” as an instance of antipathy towards difference, based on kant’s assertion that colors are beautiful only when they are “pure,” displaying a uniformity untroubled by foreign sensation. this abstract value system structures elements into pure and corrupt, legitimate and illicit, thus potentially legitimating ideologies that deem some people impure, unbeautiful, or unfit (1997: 33). kozyra’s olympias symbolically muddle the “cartesian” colors of aesthetics and gender normativity, troubling the hierarchical divisions imposed by classical representational canons as well as culturally constructed ideals of body integrity and femininity. on the meta-contexts of art history, gender and disability studies, kozyra’s work works to dismantle and challenge the aristotelian aesthetic ideal by creating visual narratives, consisting of the intertextually referenced nude, and the naked diseased body, often displayed and perceived as asexual, but here “clothed” with art and explicitly sexualized. embedded in the construction of the object/subject relationship in the triptych, the reclamation of female agency and subjectivity, in traditional representational regimes oftentimes marginalized and repressed, here becomes the crux of the work, centered on a strategic breakdown of artist/model roles and boundaries. following garland thomson’s argument about the frequent discursive overlap between femininity and disability in art and culture, kozyra’s project reveals the power dynamic and mechanisms of exploitation and exclusion embedded in the interpretive frameworks intrinsic to classical representational paradigms. olympia’s defiant stare and blatant sexuality disrupt the dichotomy between disability and able-bodiedness, sexual deviance and desirable femininity. grotesque and carnivalesque: worlds without fixed symbols discussing the complex semiotic transformation of the meaning of the body placed in the topsy-turvy of the symbolic system of the carnival, mary russo argues that a woman is especially vulnerable to public criticism and castigation for exposing her intimate self: “making a spectacle of herself” (1986:213). a blatant performance of unruly femininity and a deliberate display of an irregular body, while unacceptable and obscene in mundane social interactions, can gain currency and function in empowering and transgressive ways when placed in the context of contemporary art, which creates new parallel worlds that purposefully obscure and blur the line between reality and performance. constructing simultaneously capacious and flexible systems of symbols and meanings, art has the potential to subvert the modern semiotic systems that rigidly define normative corporeality and repertoires of femininity. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 171 jo spence’s (1934, london – 1992) series of photographs narrating her experience of corporeal deformity due to breast cancer and subsequent mastectomy borrow from the visual tropes of the carnivalesque, where the purpose of revealing and exposing the deformities of her body is to achieve the “catharsis of revelation,” to demystify and unmask the injured body (evans 2005:50). for jo spence the transgression of the boundaries of the private sphere, conceived as invisible to the public eye, involved the overcoming of persistent feeling of shame of her ugliness and being un-desired (spence 1995:158) and realizing that the roots of her shame lie in the perception of disability in a bourgeois culture that wants to “repress the disturbing and the dirty” (evans 2005:52). she exercises her agency by framing her socially and medically inscribed body as a space where she can “write back” (evans 2005:54). as rosemarie garland thomson points out, disability does not merely designate a form of physical inferiority of a body, but rather “is a culturally fabricated narrative of the body, similar to what we understand as the fictions of race and gender” (2000: 334). artistic representations of disabled women’s bodies are an important space for renegotiation of gender roles and redefinition of normalcy and beauty in post-socialist culture. in feminist art the exploration of women’s bodies affected by disease oftentimes is accomplished with the playful use of grotesque imagery. the reference to the culture of the carnivalesque in this case indicates the “loss of control and boundaries” (russo 1986:213), removing the images of disability from the realm of the private sphere. the grotesque and carnivalesque representation transposes the body into the new semiotic system, traditionally interpreted as playful and subversive, which in turn allows for a reinterpretation of traditional ideals, roles and hierarchies. naturalist depictions of the body contain powerful symbolism that can be employed in redefinition of concepts of gender and normality. when discussing body margins (bodily refuse) as symbol of danger and power mary douglas (2002) points out that the body is a model that can stand in for any bonded system, including society, and that body symbolism is part of the common stock of symbols. body orifices oftentimes symbolize the margins of society’s identity, systems of belief, and structure. since any structure of ideas is vulnerable at the margins, it is then logical that bodily secretions (which have traversed the boundary of the body) are framed within the same system of symbols and are coded as powerful and dangerous. in rabelais and his world bakhtin (1968:25) argues that the “grotesque image reflects a phenomenon of transformation, an as yet unfinished metamorphosis, of death and birth, growth and becoming.” the grotesque body is an oozing, secreting body involved in the transformational processes of birth, growth, copulation and aging. it stands in contrast to the classical body of the “finished, completed man, cleansed, as it were, of all the scoriae of birth and development” (bakhtin 1968:25). discussing bakhtin’s concept of the carnival, mary russo argues that the categories of carnivalesque speech and spectacle contain the “protocols and styles of high culture in and from a position of debasement,” the various tropes and disguises functioning to “resist, exaggerate and destabilize the distinctions that mark and maintain high culture and organized society. it is as if the carnivalesque body politic has ingested the entire corpus of high culture and, it its bloated irrepressible state, released it in fits and starts in all manner of recombination, inversion, mockery, and degradation” (russo 1986:218). the carnival, containing the elements of hierarchies of high culture, creates a semiotic space that echoes the dominant culture while simultaneously debasing and subverting it, by playfully transforming meanings and relations between the signifiers and the signified, placing cultural taxonomies on the shaky grounds of semiotic whirlpools. the fluctuating meaning in this context can potentially be employed to reanthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 172 evaluate the disabled body through the carnivalesque’s characteristic insurgency against normativity. while bakhtin’s concept of the ambivalent and fluid grotesque body and the subversive nature of the carnival do not incorporate the aspect of gendered representations of female bodies, according to tickner the images of transformations and processes specific to the female body as well as parody and role reversal are some of the main strategies of re-claiming and de-colonizing the woman’s body in art. in this context, the deformed, diseased and transforming body, distinctly different from the monumental sculpted classical nude, can have important effects on dominant articulations of gender normativity by gaining new functions in the fictitious world of art. the playfulness and unrestrained and fluid nature of the carnivalesque and grotesque can become crucial means of creating spaces of transgression of social boundaries, gender roles and assumptions of normalcy and beauty. y. solomko, “baba yaga,” 2001. placing representation of corporeal difference in the fluid topsy-turvy world of the carnival and grotesque, the ukrainian artist yuri solomko (b. 1962) engages with issues of disabled femininity and embodiment, redefining the hegemonic conceptions of the aesthetically pleasing and “able” body. 5 his realistic and yet stylized photographs de-center the ontological function of the “classical nude” by using the tropes of traditional aesthetics in a way that echoes classical conceptions of beauty and corporeal integrity but, through radical ways of articulating body mobility and function, interrupt and re-shuffle the hierarchies of hegemonic cultural representations of femininity and beauty. regeneration is a photographic series of portraits of elena chinka, a double amputee who lost parts of both her legs at the age of 23. the use of porcelain masks, mirror reflections and playful reversals of shapes and body parts suggests that the images draw heavily on the venetian culture of the carnival. at the same time the use of classical rules of composition, color, light and shadow in the photographs are all evidence that the artist portrays the body according in the old master tradition, using aristotelian aesthetics, but expanding, reframing and “clothing” chinka’s extraordinary body in the subversive culture anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 173 of carnivalesque with its characteristic articulation of bodies as in a state of perpetual motion and transition. indeed, chinka’s body finds and displays a new balance and mobility, signaling an alternative form of bodily integrity: in the photograph she is not presented as lacking or disabled; rather she expands the idea of body dexterity, function and shape. in the photograph of chinka facing the viewer but with her back to him/her, the body inversion does not lead to body disintegration: instead it creates an alternative sense of balance, harmony and proportion. using the tradition of carnivalesque which combines corporeal flux and deviation with aestheticism, solomko’s project redefines the traditional assumption of body integrity: the model is able to see with the back of her head, so her range of mobility and body function is expanded, rather than restricted. in solomko’s photographs chinka’s body and unruly femininity, displayed as extraordinary, beautiful and uniquely mobile, challenge reductive cultural articulations of corporeal normativity, beauty and integrity. while undermining limiting and disabling conceptions of beauty and body integrity, the strategic manipulation of the classical aesthetic canon and the genre of carnivalesque also succeeds in troubling binary and reductive articulations of acceptable femininity pervasive in post-communist ukraine. quoting oksana kis, phillips argues that gender expectations for women in ukraine are rooted in two fundamental images–berehynia and barbie. in the context of the ukrainian independence movement and the rise of popularity of nationalist and neofamilialist discourses, berehynia, a pagan goddess from ancient slavic mythology, is a symbol of ukrainian womanhood deployed to encourage women to engage in the natural and cultural reproduction of the nation, to devote themselves to the maternal role and foster the revival of the traditional ukrainian family (phillips 2011:180-181). yet in the context of a globalizing market economy and the increasing emphasis on consumption, berehynia competes with another model of womanhood: barbie–a beautiful, sexy, charming toy for a man. such rigid standards of femininity, focusing on either reproduction or outward attractiveness, are especially problematic for women with disabilities, whose different physique and limitations in movement often place then outside the range of what is considered beautiful or feminine (ibid.). while solomko’s photographs of chinka are far from berehynia or barbie, the subversive use of form and style as well as the intertextual reference of traditional ideals of femininity interrupts cultural narratives of femininity and disability, portraying chinka as sexual, beautiful, mobile and whole. playfully invoking the tradition of carnivalesque and grotesque, the regeneration series troubles conventional articulations of gender normativity and aesthetics through defemiliarization 6 (term coined by viktor shklovsky), making commonly encountered objects and phenomena, the value of which is hitherto interpreted as self-evident, seem unfamiliar and divorced from the fixed system of meanings of dominant culture. by controlling the process of perception through intertextuality and innovative use of style, solomko’s photographs present an alternative vision of beauty and bodily integrity that resists the stigma of the label “disability” and does not conform to the culturally accepted and normalized ideals of femininity. regeneration, thus, can be read as part of ukrainian feminists’ concerted effort to problematize and question the way that femininity and disability are conceived and represented. discussing the state of feminist art in contemporary ukraine, tamara zlobina considers the project “tenderness” (“nezhnost’”) curated by lesia ostrovskaia an openly feminist venture, and one of the more successful all-women, gender-conscious exhibitions that seriously engage with issues like hegemonic femininity and gender normativity in post-socialism (zlobina anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 174 2007:60). one of the principal goals of the exhibit, which consists of works by four artists (margarita zinetz and alevtina kohidze from ukraine, bogna burska from poland, and nicoleta markovic from serbia), was to problematize cultural stereotypes associated with women and femininity in order to reassert women’s positions as legitimate agents in constructing and interpreting culture, capable of articulating their subject positions (ibid.). the exhibit questions the associative semantics of coupling the words “tenderness” and “woman,” which is likely to suggest and produce certain stereotypical associations such as “female tenderness,” “tenderness and beauty,” and “motherly tenderness and love.” such characteristic trivialization results in normalization and stabilization of semantic and associative boundaries of the concept of femininity (zlobina 2007:60). especially interesting from the point of view of the interplay between aesthetics and disfigurement, the work algorithm (2002) by the polish artist bogna burska (b. 1974), a 12 photographs series that juxtaposes images of amputated limbs and flowers, produces a radically unfamiliar, yet visually striking and convincing associative narrative that disrupts the familiar semantic chains that blooming blossoms and bleeding wounds (viewed in isolation) would typically suggest. when read against the pervasiveness of reductive and disabling stereotypes that dominate the genderscape in post-socialist ukraine, the public display of bogna burska’s algorithm and yuri solomko’s regeneration in the authoritative cultural space of the gallery destabilizes the boundary between disability and able-bodiedness, and troubles the fixed and culturally normalized meanings of concepts of beauty and femininity. by placing chinka’s extraordinary body in the topsy-turvy of the carnivalesque, and by disrupting the semantic bounds of femininity and tenderness, solomko and burska suggest a new strategy for activism in art that is centered on transforming the reductive and disabling representational regime that places “disfigured” women outside the realm of acceptable femininity. in conclusion: towards a discourse of agency and empowerment, or, the potential of a benevolent and healing eye as discussed and seen in multiple cases, art can be a space of empowerment and renegotiation of gender identity. as sarah d. phillips (2011:165-169) points out, elena chinka’s embodied performance redefines traditional conceptions of beauty, normality and body integrity and can potentially generate an open-ended and nuanced discussion of disability and disability experience. the phenomenal power of artistic representations lies in their ability to subvert, anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 175 expose and contest stereotypes by engaging with the viewers on an individual level, encouraging them to experience and “live in” other people bodies. art can also serve as an important place for self-exploration and re-imagining of self. jo spence, whose work engages with various aspects of and intersections between disease, femininity and normative corporeality, discusses photography as a healing art that proved therapeutic for her dealing with the pain and shame related to breast amputation. she describes phototherapy as a collaborative process of self discovery where the photographer plays the role of a non-judgmental benevolent healing eye, while the photographed person enacts and explores his/her subjectivities through photographic self-documentation. jo spence and rosy martin discuss “gazes” as something that helps control, objectify and mirror identities. through internalization of powerful gazes people learn to see and differentiate themselves from others in terms of gender, race and sexuality. phototherapy reconstructs those gazes (e.g. family, medicine, fashion. education etc), allowing them to access “private” information about their own subjectivity. in other words, phototherapy is a form of “phototheatre of self”: a safe space where the person can re-enact various discursive “gazes,” like those of the family, society, etc., thus reexamining and recognizing personal areas of resistance (spence and martin 1995:164-168). photographs then become a space for personal redefinition, where the photographed person is an active subject of his/her personal history (ibid., 169). similarly, rosemarie garland thomson discusses the stare as a potentially empowering experience for persons with disabilities, noting that “portraits can provide their subjects with an opportunity to deliberately engage with their viewers,” where direct “eye-to-eye” contact can potentially restructure the relationship between the viewer and the displayed body of the “deviant” subject (garland thomson 2009: 84-85). thus, the viewer of kozyra’s olympias is locked in a moment of exchange, where the “abnormal” body on display stares back at the viewer, symbolically turning the eye on itself, demanding self-reflexivity of the voyeur. the collapse of the boundaries between the subject, object and viewer can transform the culture of viewing disability, reformulating the process of looking in terms of confronting personal assumptions and cultural norms. the analysis of various artistic representational strategies in the context of this paper also aims to uncover the social construction of reductive representations of disability and emphasize the activist potential of intertextual invocation of classical art canon to deliberately create visual aporias. these in turn force the text of the hegemonic representational economy to deconstruct itself, making visible the deep and violent mechanism of exclusion and power asymmetries sustained by the ostensibly self-evident and universal value of classical aesthetics. a new visual idiom cannot function on its own in a cultural vacuum, but must actively engage with the dominant representational economy. thus, the project of constructing inclusive and respectful representations of women with disabilities is a complex but critical project that acknowledges and interrupts the complex and mutually constitutive discourses and cultural articulations of disability, femininity, aesthetics and social hierarchy. discussing the politics of representation of east european body artists on the western art scene, zdenka badovinac quotes peggy phelan’s book unmarked – the politics of performance, which explores the significance and the force of that which is not signified and therefore cannot be codified within the borders of the ideology of the visible. critiquing the identity politics embedded in the post-soviet representational idiom and the politics of visibility of easteuropean art in the west, badovinac invokes phelan’s problematization of the connection between representational visibility and political power, which have been a dominant force in anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 176 cultural theory in the past decades: “the conviction that greater visibility also means greater power is false. such an observation could bring us to the rather comical conclusion that naked women rule the world. power is located precisely in the irrepresentable,” (i.e. something that does not figure within the borders of the institutionalized and controlled) (badovinac 1999:11). importantly, greater visibility of female disability does not necessarily imply rearticulating the representational canon in an enabling and respectful way: post-socialist media narratives suggest the opposite. rather a radical rethinking of the representations should involve an active and meaningful engagement with the dominant visual economy and culture precisely to destabilize it with a strategic and subversive use of authoritative places of cultural display in radically new, activist modes that encourage alternative and respectful ways of seeing disability as a meaningful component or facet of humanity. portraying shared and individualized modes of experiencing gender, corporeality, and difference, progressive representations of disability could potentially create alternative and diverse accounts of body integrity, beauty and normality, thereby broadening the dominant repertoires of femininity and able-bodiedness. 1 the term refers to the discursive construction of people with physical disabilities as well as “other people whose bodies could be made to visually signify absolute alienness” into icons of inassimilable physical otherness (garland thomson 1997: 17). having extensively used this term to investigate representations of disability in us art and culture, rosemarie garland thomson argues that enfreakment, as an intricate form of exploitation, reifies the difference corporeal “norm” and “aberration,” reinforcing the “onlookers’ common american identity, verified by a body that suddenly seemed by comparison ordinary, tractable, and standard” (ibid., 17). garland thomson uses the term especially to describe cultural meanings produced by freak shows and public spectacles involving people with disabilities and corporeal deformities. 2 see http://www.kovylina.com/projects.php?cid=155&pg=3, retrieved 4 november, 2011. 3 diana yeh provides an overview of alchuk’s work at http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?1301, retrieved 4 november, 2011. 4 http://www.owl.ru/win/books/visualnie15p.htm, retrieved 4 november, 2011. 5 see phillips 2011(163-169) for further analysis of solomko’s disability-inspired art. 6 a term coined by viktor shklovsky to denote a stylistic technique designed to remove objects and phenomena from the sphere of automatized perception. in art as technique shlovsky argues that the purpose of art is to lead the reader “to a knowledge of a thing through an organ of sight instead of recognition. by ‘estranging’ objects and complicating form, the device of art makes perception long and ‘laborious’” (shklovsky 6). thus, by taking objects, phenomena and behavior from the realm of the familiar, the literary text is able to enhance perception. http://www.kovylina.com/projects.php?cid=155&pg=3 http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?1301 http://www.owl.ru/win/books/visualnie15p.htm anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 177 references alchuk, anna. 2011. “the tactics and strategy of resisting masculine culture: a long-term artistic project.” gender check: a reader. ed. bojana pejic. koln: walther konig. altman, barbara m. 2001. “disability definitions, models, classification schemes and applications.” handbook of disability studies. eds. g.albrecht, k.seelman and m.bury. thousand oaks: sage. badovinac, zdenka, ed. 1999 .“body and the east.” body and the east: from the 1060s to the present. cambridge: mit press. bakhtin, mikhail. 1968. rabelais and his world. trans. helene iswolsky. cambridge: mit press. bredihina, liudmila. 2000. “reprezentatsionnye praktiki v zhenskomiskestve.” zhenshina i vizual’nye znaki. ed. anna alchuk. moscow: idea-press. berger, john. 1972. ways of seeing. london: penguin books. borenstein, eliot. 2008. overkill: sex and violence in contemporary russian popular culture. ithaca and london: cornell up. 2000. “about that: deploying and deploring sex in postsoviet russia.” studies in 20 th century literature. 24(1): 51-83. douglas, mary. 2002. purity and danger. london: routledge classics. evans, jessica. 2005. “agaist decorum! jo spence: a voice on the margins.” jo spence: beyond the perfect image. photography, subjectivity, antagonism. barcelona: museu d’art contemporani de barcelona. gal, susan and gail kligman. 2000a. the politics of gender after socialism: a comparative-historical essay. new jersey: princeton university press. 2000b. “introduction.” reproducing gender: politics, publics, and everyday life after socialism. ed. susan gal and gail kligman. new jersey: princeton university press. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 178 garland thomson, rosemarie. 1996. freakery: cultural 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indiana university press. sandell, richard and jocelyn dodd. 2010. “activist practice.” re-presenting disability: activism and agency in the museum. eds. sandell, richard, jocelyn dodd and rosemarie garland thomson. london: routledge. shakespeare, tom. 2006. disability rights and wrongs. london and new york: routlege. shklovsky, viktor. 1991. theory of prose. normal: dalkey archive press. spence, jo and rosy martin. 1995. “phototherapy: psychic realism as healing art.” cultural sniping: the art of transgression. ed. jo stanley and david hevey. london: routledge. spence, jo. 1995. “could do better’…towards a personal and political theatre of self?” cultural sniping: the art of transgression. ed. jo stanley and david hevey. london: routledge. tickner, lisa. 1987. “the body politic: female sexuality and women artists since 1970.” framing feminism: art and the women’s movement 1970-1985. ed. roszika parker and griselda pollock. london: pandora press. williams, gareth. 2001. “theorizing disability.” handbook of disability studies. eds. g.albrecht, k.seelman and m.bury. thousand oaks: sage. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 180 zlobina, tamara. 2007. “zhenskoe iskustvo v ukraine. formirovanie zhenskoi subjectivnosti v izmeniaiusheisia kul’ture.” gendernye issledovania 16: 50-67. www.gender.univer.kharkov.ua/gurnal/16/04.pdf. images of works by burska, bromova, kozyra, and solomko are reproduced here with permission from the artists. societal road to nowhere 76 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 ethnography, art and a societal road to nowhere: the tear dealer project tomasz rakowski university of warsaw introduction in this article i present an ethnographic description of the tear dealer socially engaged art project1 conducted by alicja rogalska and łukasz surowiec, in the town of lublin, southeast poland, in an urban area with high unemployment, full of pawnshops, and loan sharks. the main purpose of this paper is to interpret the project using an ethnographic approach and the experimental technique of “thick description” as related to quite artificial, and intentionally manufactured social reality. the important context is that socially-engaged art, even at present, first of all functions through conforming to the effects of the reality of action in order to generate palpable social change, even though in recent years a widespread critique of its practices, ideas, and also ideals has appeared (see bishop 2012). this was the case in the work of polish artist artur żmijewski, the controversial curator of the berlin biennale in 2012. in his manifesto, żmijewski (2012, see also żmijewski 2007) clearly says that art can demand for itself, much like the social sciences and journalism, the role of refurbishing minds, creating new conditions of social life, reaching toward what is efficient. in this way, art can be transposed into wholly new terrains, into places that offer very little safety for it, places not protected by the prestige of an art gallery or official artist institutions, and then art will be also harnessed so as to act directly on people—with all the risks such gestures entail. 1 the project was curated and commissioned by “the studio of socially engaged art <<the districts>> [rewiry tr],” a part of the municipal culture centre in the town of lublin, southeast poland. 77 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 this change in emphasis is stimulated by a broad understanding of art that grew out of the various traditions of collaborative art (frąckowiak, olszewski, rosińska 2011; see also bishop 2012, kester 2011) and out of the various movements within community arts (crehan 2012; de bruyne, gielen 2011). socially-engaged contemporary art, collaborative art, and the adoption of the tools of the arts in community arts, have in different ways strived to bring about social change: the starting point of the activities themselves is only the beginning. however, a parallel phenomenon is that for the last two decades anthropologists (and the social scientists in general) have also significantly moved away from the position of disinterested observers of events. these disciplines now absorb, with increasing intensity, the tools of the arts and in this way build up a knowledge that is both socially engaged and mutually created (wright, schneider 2006; 2010; leavy 2009, pussetti 2018). in addition, this has led to a situation where the artist and the ethnographer who work together in, for example, the new paradigm of collaboration, establish something like ‘refunctioning ethnography’ (holmes, marcus 2005, 2008), which means that they do not merely meet and register the layers of a closed or intimate cultural experience, but instead increasingly open up to strong and advanced interpretations flowing equally from the people and public with whom they cooperate. 78 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 in that context, i would like to present a quite unique project, the “tear dealer,” by alicja rogalska and łukasz surowiec, which took place in lublin, east poland, in july 2014; this text will present a particular ethnographic view of this project. this action was held within the larger artistic enterprise, conducted in lublin since 2012, and called the studio of socially engaged art “the districts”, where artistic works were realised in co-operation with the inhabitants of the neglected and underdeveloped parts of the town (see the studio of socially… 2012). originally, the project “the tear dealer” was located in an urban area of lublin, southeast poland, with high unemployment, full of pawnshops, and loan sharks, and was designed with the aim of discovering what would happen when people were offered money in exchange for their tears. according to the project description, people took their tears there to sell them, as if they were selling some precious treasures in a pawn shop or a gold dealer’s. the artists intended the project as a real, professional reality that provides employment, creates “some kind of a business” and pretends to be something typical and routine, such as a bank, a barber shop, or a beauty parlour. indeed, it was treated by customers just like venues in the neighbourhood, like the mobile phone repair-point or pizzeria. at the same time, the artists compared their venue to a waiting room, a chapel, and a para-religious space, where the social “bitter cry” can be bought. they created something that escapes definitions, a “shifted” space (they described it as a “mirage”). tear dealer was cheating – it was paying for something unreal and unbelievable with entirely real money. still, the situation demanded completion and thus forced participants to enter the improbable and to face their emotions: the lamentations, memories and even jokes that occurred there were also very much real. thus, the project simultaneously encroached upon the world of collaborative art experiments and the field marked out between ethnography and art. but here, on the crossroads between artistic action and ethnographic insight, the problem remains the same: it is that in this situation, all activities (both “action through art” and ethnographic engagement) can be unconsciously taken as a form of the process of “mobilizing culture,” preparation for “improvement” or even as a certain kind of cultural colonization. this is frequently connected to the fact that such activities lead not so much to any kind of “positive” or “critical” work, but rather into a “double colonization,” as posited by leela gandhi (1998)—the “recipients” of such projects are fitted into roles of stereotypical, incomplete, and very often economically and socially impoverished characters. how then is it possible to act through art in the face of all these burdens? is it at all possible to use art and introduce its elements into one’s life and the lives of others without 79 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 simultaneously erecting a position of colonization at some juncture? as hal foster (1996) asked, is reaching for experiences that are someone else’s, that is, of the other, the peripheral, not a necessary move of the avant-garde artist, who becomes something of an ethnographer? in this text, i strive to present the ways in which it is possible to act in such a situation as well as how the ethnographic is revealed and expressed in the action-oriented art experiment. thus, the methodological opening of an art-based ethnography is aimed here, which is means unfolding the processes that create the expanded field of both art and ethnography, at the same point, transgressing disciplinary limitations (see pussetti 2018). the experimental form of “thick description” comes here to the fore, based on fieldwork i conducted along with the subsequent projects of “the district” studio. i took on the ethnographic work, based on sharing time with all the parties engaged in the project, the artists and their collaborators, the people coming to the place, the inhabitants, or better to say, the users of the street where the tear dealer was anchored. thus, over the research i combined anthropological interviews with living and spending time together with the team, and the local inhabitants, and the users of the street and the neighbourhood of the tear dealer, in order to explore the social and cultural experiences that emerged at the crossroads between worlds of art experiment, ethnography and everyday life. in this sense the research resulted in a new, and prototypical fieldwork, crafted to unlock the emergent epistemic field what meant in this case pursuing the experimental collaboration through taking part in the artistic and social platform that may be considered as a kind of ethnographic device (see estalella, sánchez criado 2018; see also sansi 2013), not only researching detecting but also “co-producing” the analysed social forms. at the same i am trying to develop a new language for describing the meeting of various sides involved in the action, in order to reveal the hidden dynamic of the project, and the unique new logic of posing “appropriate questions” embedded in the action, and thus leading to new knowledge-formation. scandal it took the artists over a fortnight to set up the site for the tear dealer. they searched for the right venue using google street view, browsing through urban facades, old tenement houses, streets and crossroads. after an appropriate place had been found and accepted, they had laser-cut foam letters made in one of the businesses in lublin and placed them on the freshly painted front wall. the inscription, accompanied by tear-shaped symbols, read: “tear dealer.” inside, they created a spacious and modern interior, with mirrored walls and halogen lights. the refurbishment took many days and the overall effect is reminiscent of 80 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 a reception room in a spa or a beauty salon, and also a bit like a bank, or rather a shadow bank. the windows, just like in a proper bond or gold dealership, advertise, “100 pln for 3 ml of your tears*” (there is a caveat: “only cried on-site”). so we find ourselves in a business that buys, trades, sets up conditions: you can only cry on-site. the participants reported for example, that they would refrain from going outside, despite the july heat, because – as they were informed – there were cameras everywhere. “and outside,” they said, “you cannot cry. you could cheat.” suprisingly , tear dealer was treated like any new business, be it an exchange office, a mobile phone dealer or a pizzeria. the artists received multiple offers for flyers and advertising trailers that would promote the new venture throughout lublin. immediately after opening, they got a courier-delivered advertising package (the label read “tear dealer” and was addressed to 1 maja st., lublin). alicja and łukasz considered promoting their undertaking, so they made a video, something like a “tv ad”, and designed a flyer (one of the neighbouring businesses offered to distribute these, as did many other services in lublin). but most importantly, people arrived from day one – only a few at first, but soon, they queued out the door, and the next morning, before the shop even opened, they are waiting. hour after hour, the budget for buying tears was running out – tear dealer was supposed to last eight 81 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 days, but it only took four to drain the funds. the media caught on quickly, and every day there were more journalists from both local and nationwide papers, television and radio stations. the artists were exhausted with what was happening, with working with people (“i hope nobody gets hurt.”) as well as with endless interviews. tear dealer stirred emotions. its presence was soon known to almost everyone in town – as it turned out in fact neither flyers nor ads were needed. lublin people knew about it – for example, when i got off the train on a summer afternoon, entered 1 maja street and asked a random person for directions to the tear dealer, a 20-something woman immediately pointed: “oh, the tear dealer, it's not far from here, go straight there and you'll see it on the right hand side...” local newspapers featured the project immediately and it became a sensation that is hard to believe. for many, the fact that somebody is buying tears was entirely unthinkable. when the people arrived, they first wanted to make sure it was real and that you can, in fact, cry here for money. they showed up at the dealership even couple of days after closing. “is it here?” they asked, as i sat in the closed shop. “is it true? we've come from kraśnik, i'm such a wailer, that's just how i am. my husband drove me here today, and i found out about it on the internet. i wanted to check it out.” “i arrived today, i think someone found it on the internet. i wanted to see if it's real... it's enough for me to see a video about eye make-up, and something happens to me, tears... i'll start crying. so i thought: “i'm not leaving without a hundred.” “i'm thinking cigarette smoke, incense, onions...” even days after closing people still arrived. everyone i met did a double take upon discovering tear dealer, to make sure it existed. 82 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 tear dealer pretended to be something typical and routine: a bank, a barber shop, a beauty parlour, “a new business” that is socially acceptable and possible to imagine. but it also got under people's skin. why would anyone buy tears? many search for an answer, but many assumed that it is possible to find the real purpose: “to make cosmetics”; “i heard they make artificial tears with it.” but there was also a deeper problem. if it was not a new commercial franchise but an art performance, people started to wonder where the money to buy tears comes from. who paid for it? the unease built gradually. some of the press saw it as a “waste” or “mismanagement” of public funds. the project's budget was discussed in the media, but different costs appeared in different sources, sometimes significantly incorrect. some scandalized journalists wrote about tens of thousands of złoty instead of just couple of thousand, probably misled by the whole yearly budget of the “rewiry” (the studio of socially engaged art “the districts” [rewiry tr]), the organisation which commissioned the project. one could wonder though, why would they write about finances at all? “why do people only ask about the guts of this project?” the irritated artists were repeatedly asking, when i was staying with them, in a rented flat in lublin. “they ask what the rent on the shop was, how much we paid for the tears, what the budget was. why doesn’t anybody ask about the meaning of all this, about why we do it?” at the time, someone wrote a complaint to a 83 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 local public health office. the inspection started the very same day. every room was checked thoroughly and an almost three page report was produced, but in the end, tear dealer was allowed to operate. key factors included in the report were that the tears were not being sold and that they were intended for exhibition. art undefined actions, such as those often undertaken in modern art, incite aggression. when a fire broke out in london's momart, destroying most of the collection, papers and tabloids were quick to pronounce that “it's for the best,” that the pound sterling value of the works is “a joke” and “a mockery,” and that proper, hard-working society does not need such a luxury (crehan 2012:11). to some extent, tear dealer evoked similar feelings, at least in tens and hundreds of comments put in the web in response to the mentions about the project in the local (and also in national) press. the other part of the problem is that such actions – modern, socially engaged, relational – propose a certain vagueness; they only seemingly mimic reality in their “excessive” execution. sometimes, trivial activities, such as climbing trees (cecylia malik), peeling potatoes (julita wójcik) or perusing a deck chair (elżbieta jabłońska), gain a different, intense meaning and become disturbing. they appear devious and forged; they can easily form a strong impression of falsehood, fraud, and wastefulness. at the same time, though, tear dealer, as the artists intended, was real, professional, it provided “a moment employment”, for the people that came, created “some kind of a business.” after a while, the participants were the ones creating it no less actively than the artists; they filled the business with their presence and their action, they got accustomed to it, making it somehow natural, as any other business or service point in the nearby area. they calculates the amount of money they could get for a given volume of tears, competed to cry as much as possible, shared tips and tricks – rubbing onions, using camphor oil or nasal sticks, blowing into each others' eyes. kids from the tower blocks in the nearby bronowice district pulled on their neck hairs and cried on cue. everyone wanted to show me that they could do it, that it is entirely possible to collect the tears. 84 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 but tear dealer was still improbable. people i talked to always started with how they needed to make sure, to see with their own eyes that it was true. they were in disbelief. the workers from neighbouring offices and shops also had a problem trusting their own eyes (“what's that? do i smell onions? onions, here? so i go out and – my god, people are cutting onions, just standing there and crying...”). the dealership was therefore – as the creators intended – “a bit shifted”, something that was related to the real economic experience, but at the same time something that was in fact a fake business. it both was and was not a business, it was and was not a freshly refurbished shop. people sold something in there, but at the same time they sold nothing; they took up employment (“the pay is good, i'm satisfied”; “it pays three times better than construction companies.”) and did not work (“that's no work, just a couple of tears.”). it was professionally forged, but only pretending to be real. unbelievable from the beginning, the tear dealer project was aimed at creating something escaping definitions. the action was supposed to make no sense, but at the same time to be something very real, rooted in emotion, physiological – and as such, making perfect sense. “we do not want to cheat,” they said. “we do not want to sell a mirage or a service, we do not want anything with an agenda, ideals or values, be it religious, spiritual or just market value. ideals 85 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 and desires are being sold to people in shops, malls, galleries and churches. we want what is real and purposeless. what belongs to the people [their private, intimate affects – tr] – to give it back to them.” tear dealer was therefore engaged in a fight for relations that were only about to develop; it fought for artistic actions (indo-european *ar means action or synchronized action) that – as nicolas bourriaud (2002) has shown – are formed by relations, and that only exist when there is someone to participate in them. this is the kind of art that – as liam gillick (2000; see also bourriaud 2002) wrote, “is like the light in the fridge: it only works when there are people there to open the door”. but what opening of the door occurred in tear dealer? what did people do there? according to the project description and to alicja and łukasz, the people were taking their tears there to sell them as if they were selling some precious treasures in a pawn shop or a gold dealer's. such venues are plentiful in the neighbourhood and one can see them immediately after leaving the station. 1 maja street is full of old tenement buildings with hidden courtyards and outbuildings that are home to those offices where one can buy insurance for their family in case they suddenly die or fall sick, or where flats are pawned for a monthly pension. it's a place of an increased turnover, as the artists where fully aware of2, emotions – both precious and painful – are being traded together with used mobile phones, “no-licence” guns, tobacco, e-liquids, e-cigarettes and – reportedly – designer drugs, too. 2 that was their initial recognition, based on a short social research they carried out, which triggered in the end the whole idea of the action. 86 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 there was commotion in the dealership during the project. people would laugh and joke, couples looked into each others' eyes, some listened to music or called their long lost loves. everyone tried to invent the dealership for themselves, find a way to make it their own. the tear dealer was improbable, and as such had to be continuously upheld by action. but there was more to it, as my interviews with the participants have shown. a young man i talked to wanted to challenge himself, show that he was able to “reach for the gold” in the tear dealer; he was a strong man, living in a village near lublin, who used to work as a guard and at a construction site. “if,” he said “i don't have to hide from anyone in my village, then i can manage in lublin, too.” after a while it turned out his family had left its problems in the village and now they rent a flat on 1 maja street; he, a twenty year old, is actually a breadwinner who takes care of his younger siblings. he fixed the apartment and is now trying to pursue an it career. a young woman was also trying to support her husband and kids with her intern job at a candy factory. she got hired through a local public employment service. for a long time she carried her tears within. “i needed to get it all out. i think i cried it all out the first time.” a student at maria curie-skłodowska university says she was crying for herself, the music on her headphones and a nice spot by the window helping her isolate herself from the world and the chatter. “it's a difficult moment in my life,” she said. “i cry 87 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 every night because of what i've done... lately, i've spent time with my friends a lot, so i didn't have any opportunity to cry. i thought i could cry here undisturbed. that it's for me. and i can earn money to pay for retaking an exam at the uni.” people took their problems into the dealer just to be on their own. at the same time, the interviews exposed everyday life of this concrete part of lublin: the cheap flats on the way to the station, housing new tenants every week. language stretching the several days during which tear dealer operated were enough to leave the creators with a substantial collection of tears. they were later gathered into a glass beaker. the artists thought about what to do with the tears for a long time (a local archive? a museum? parliament? any other state’s institution?). they compared their venue to a waiting room, a chapel, a parareligious space, and, as they were saying, to “a place where the social <<bitter cry>> is to be bought”. tears, they said, make us unsure about how to behave, they make social forms disintegrate, and a weird kind of a community forms, bearing witness to the crying. they created something that escapes definitions, a “shifted” space (they described it as a “mirage”, something enchanting, and only pretending to be real). tear dealer was cheating – it was paying for something unreal and unbelievable with entirely real money. the lamentations, memories and even jokes were therefore also very much real. still, the situation was is created in a way that was forcing one in a search of even a provisional explanation or justification for the place and the action, forcing one to enter the improbable, and to enter one's own deposits of emotions, when starting to cry. an experience like this makes for a long interview afterwards, long and very dense, as it pertains to something that both, i, as an anthropologist, and my interlocutors were not used to; it was not entirely possible to grasp and express the experience we have been talking about. during our talks, everyone, that means also the researcher, had to give this feeling a name, which constituted a new experience and, in a way, through this struggle of finding appropriate expression, evoked the ability to partly re-create ourselves anew. nigel rapport (2010) has written about this extensively, as did andrzej turowski in his essay about “particular art” (turowski 2012). my talks were a mix of the biographical and the social; the criers' biographical perspective (individual action) and the perspective of social tensions (jobs, migrations, renting a flat, providing for a family). i was not trying to “discover” an individual perspective nor the very existence of individuals; it was rather about making the individual and his or her experiences, that were entangled in the project, an intermediary for common thinking about something as abstract and concretely 88 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 rooted in life stories as the act of “forced” or “provoked” cry. an individual is “in motion”, searching for his or her own way, which, paradoxically, evokes “the social” just like tear dealer did: all the structural and economic tensions, pressures that influence the lives of individual people: the market, work, migrations, and ambitions. what is more, while talking about tear dealer, we were stuck in the space – both me, conducting the interviews, and my interviewees, getting on with their lives with just a bit of tears. our long, unrushed conversations would not really provide an opportunity to simplify the experience they just had. what happened was hard to name or define for those people, but it also encouraged them to talk. every interview would eventually stretch the borders of their language, as it forced people to name their actions. similar questions would emerge from all the talks: why would i need a tear dealer? is it about the money? why did i cry? was it for real? this unstable situation seems to have opened an “appropriate” space, a space of questions appropriate, i think, to something like a tear dealer: where common, trivial thoughts and common language are made impossible, and all phrases like “well, that's how life goes” are eliminated. the situation that was created here could be considered by many an awkward one, a farce. it deviously offered money for sorrow, for the place you live in. 89 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 it made people do something that they might otherwise never have done before they could realize it – they cashed in on their emotional time and on a moment of at least momentary transformation of the self. this path, a kind of provoked (but also pretended or performed) emotional journey, was full of focus, but at the same time, it had no purpose, it led to nowhere; one might say it was s a path no one was ever ready for. curiously, people cried enthusiastically, treating this situation also as challenging, sometimes funny, or just requiring concentration. in certain moments the atmosphere in the tear dealer was also familiar, even a bit entertaining. notwithstanding, during interviews, their situation was revealed to be rather serious. cashing in on their tears opened them up to talk about what was important, thanks to the fact that the whole process was so undefined and impossible to express with common sayings. “i would like,” łukasz surowiec told me, “for the people to find themselves in a situation where the purpose of their action is neither ready nor specified. many would probably say that people are not prepared for such experience, that they would not understand it. i believe that as people we are never prepared enough. that everyone is allowed to enter such situation. that it is an act of courage, in which we have to figure out our goals ourselves.” tear dealer was a special invitation, in a sense, that effectively made it impossible to clearly label what happened here in regard to people's lives. although it created a difficult, even critical situation (not to say a deceitful one), it also opened up a path no one expected to find, a path one was forced to take. as a set of “appropriate” questions, it was also pure, because in any given moment it efficiently removed, at least for a while, everything that was safely real, what was common and what was possible to deal with even using the most mundane experiences. *this article is based on the research project the challenges of creative ethnography granted by the polish national science centre, no. 2012/05/d/hs2/03639. * photos by filip chrobak and tomasz rakowski references: bishop, c. 2012. artificial hells. participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. london:verso. bourriard, n. 2002. relational aesthetics, dijon. 90 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 de bruyne, p. and gielen, p. (eds.). 2011. community art: the politics of trespassing. amsterdam: valiz. crehan, k. 2012. community art. an anthropological perspective. oxford. estalella a., sanches criado t. (eds) 2018. experimental collaborations. introduction. w: experimental collaborations. ethnography through fieldwork devices, oxford: berghahn books. foster, h. 1996, artist as ethnographer in: h. foster, the return of the real. the avant garde at the end of the century, cambridge and london. frąckowiak, m., olszewski l., rosińska m. (eds) 2011. collaboratory. on participatory social change, poznań. gandhi l. 1998. postcolonial theory: a critical introduction. new york. gillick, l. 2000. renovation filter: recent, past and near future, exhibition catalogue, bristol. green, ch. 2001. the third hand. collaboration in art from conceptualism to postmodernism, minneapolis. holmes d. and marcus g. 2005. “refunctioning ethnography. the challenge of an anthropology of the contemporary.” in n. k. denzin, y. s. lincoln (eds.) the sage handbook of qualitative research, thousand oaks: sage publication. holmes, d., marcus, g. 2008. collaboration today and the reimaginiation of classic scene of fieldwork encounters, "collaborative anthropologies", 1. kester, g. 2011. the one and the many: contemporary collaborative art in a global context. durham: duke university press. leavy p., 2009, method meets art. arts-based research practice, new york. rapport, n. 2010. apprehending anyone: the non-indexical, post-cultural and cosmopolitan human actor, “journal of royal anthropological institute”, 1. pusetti, ch. (ed.) 2018, art-based ethnography. experimental practices of fieldwork, special issue of “visual ethnography”, 1. sansi r. 2013 anthropology, art and the gift, oxford: bloomsbury. the studio of socially… . 2012. the studio of socially engaged art “the districts”, [http://www.rewiry.lublin.pl/#pg=3379845295202168136&ver=en, accessed 12.09.2018]. turowski, a. 2012. art that sparks unrest. the artistic-political manifesto of particular art, warszawa. 91 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 wright, ch., schneider, a., 2010. between art and anthropology. contemporary ethnographic practice, oxford. wright , ch., schneider, a. 2006. contemporary art and anthropology, oxford. żmijewski a. 2012. forget fear. , in j. warsza and a. żmijewski (eds) forget fear. the berlin biennale for contemporary art, berlin. żmijewski a. 2007. stosowane sztuki społeczne/ applied social art, „krytyka polityczna”, 11-12. editor anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 1 editor sarah d. phillips robert rotenberg, web editor contents editor’s notes………….……………………………………………………………………………….4 sarah d. phillips, indiana university call for papers……………………………………….……………………………………….....…….6 articles layered encounters: performing multiculturalism and the urban palimpsest at the ‘gateway of europe’……………………………………………………….7 kristof van assche and petruţa teampău processions in the street: georgian orthodox privilege and religious minorities’ response to invisibility…………………………………………...……………...20 william eastwood politics of identity through school primers: discursive construction of legitimate image of state, nation and society in soviet and independent ukraine…………………………………………………………………………...……………………...29 olga filippova social pluralism in the postsocialist city: diverging consumer groups in the consumption landscape of stara zagora, bulgaria………..…………………………37 grant jude gartska from barakholka to shopping mall: transformation of retail spaces in st. petersburg……………………………………………………………………….....…………………..51 anna zhelnina who is responsible for our health? changing concepts of state and the individual in post-soviet ukraine………………………………………..……………………65 maryna bazylevych anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 2 the guest at the dining table: economic transitions and the reshaping of hospitality—reflections from batumi and odessa……………………………….…...76 abel polese erratum reprinted from volume 26 (2), spring 2008 serbia, betwixt and between: culture, politics and images of the west……..88 andrei simic book reviews tanya richardson, kaleidoscopic odessa: history and place in contemporary ukraine.......................................................................................................................................................99 (jennifer carroll, university of washington) edward snajdr, nature protests: the end of ecology in slovakia………...…... …101 (amy samuelson, university of wisconsin-milwaukee) xavier bougarel, elissa helms and ger duijzings, eds., the new bosnian mosaic: identities, memories and moral claims in a post-war society…….…………..………103 . (peter locke, princeton university) bohuslav salanda, ceska venice siroky dul…………………………………………….105 (zdenek salzmann, northern arizona university) anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 3 the web page for the anthropology of east europe review/east european anthropology group contains links to most of the previously published articles. it can be found at: http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/ editor-in-chief: sarah d. phillips, anthropology of east europe review, indiana university, department of anthropology, student building 130, 701 east kirkwood avenue, bloomington, in 47405, phone: +1-812-855-0216, fax: +1-812-855-4358, email: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com web editor: robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore avenue chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 312/325-7460; fax: 312/325-7452; email: rrotenbe@depaul.edu © indiana university 2009 issn: 1054-4720 please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($30/yr. for full-time faculty or other professional, $15/yr. for students and part-time faculty, $50/yr. for sustaining subscribers; european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutional or library subscriptions to the review ($50), or additional copies of a back issue ($20) to the managing editor or manage your subscription online at http://condor.depaul.edu/~rrotenbe/aeer/subscription.htm anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 79 rites of place: public commemoration in russia and eastern europe. eds. julie buckler and emily d. johnson. evanston, il: northwestern university press, 2013. illustrations. photographs. 338 pp. hard bound. julie fairbanks, coe college the editors of this volume, julie buckler and emily d. johnson, have compiled an impressive collection of articles concerning cultural memory and commemoration in a number of locations in russia and eastern europe. cultural memory, as the editors frame their subject, “is dynamic, always the product of dialogue and interplay” (2013:9). various views of the past challenge one another and shift over time; memories are diverse, and events are subject to multiple interpretations. points of divergence between perspectives and friction within commemorative rites are central considerations of many of the collection’s essays, which examine the uses of public spaces both by those making official declarations about the past and by those responding to such declarations. the editors refer to the writings of pierre nora, and the motif of sites and events as anchors for memory runs through the volume as a whole. it is not only the subjects of commemoration or its forms that these writers treat, but also the significance of claims and silences about the past. the strength of the volume lies in its success in drawing a diverse set of texts into productive dialogue with one another. each article stands alone as a rich analysis of commemoration in a particular context. at the same time, the shared themes among the contributions are many. the result is a conversation that reflects the editors’ care in compiling the contributions and individual authors’ engagement with one another’s texts. from moscow and st. petersburg in the time of peter the great to sighet memorial museum in contemporary romania, the subjects of the articles span a wide swath of history. most contributors, however, concentrate on the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, considering commemorations in relation to national sentiments, soviet ideology, and other types of collective and personal visions. a number of the articles examine past events through detailed readings of newspaper articles, official documents, memoirs, and other historical accounts. other pieces analyze works of literature, film, art, and architecture, at times juxtaposing examples from two genres. still other essays in the volume draw on survey research or narrate paths through memorial spaces, most in combination with another of these approaches. the first group of articles in the collection explores the significance of particular urban locales for commemoration. two focus on events in st. petersburg, one by michael s. flier on celebrations of the festival of the epiphany by peter the great and a second by emily d. johnson on the delayed festivities for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the city. prague, on the occasions of funerals for two czech poets, and odessa, as portrayed in the battleship potemkin and other works, are the subjects of two additional analyses of urban memory by marek nekula and rebecca stanton, respectively. together, these essays demonstrate various ways that the physical and anthropology of east europe review 32(1) spring 2014 80 social structures of urban centers make possible and lend symbolic weight to the rituals that take place within them. attention to the framing and style of memorial practices unites the articles in the second section of the book. luba golburt writes about portraits and poems honoring military heroes of the nineteenth century and earlier times, while julia beckman chadaga considers the glass structures of architects and designers memorializing lenin, the october revolution, and soviet ideals. the paintings, texts and structures, the authors demonstrate, variously embody past and present values. meanwhile, sculptures, exhibitions, and newspaper articles, such as those marking international women’s day in the early 2000s, offer opportunities to reflect on women of previous generations and the norms and practices that shaped their experiences. in each case, analysis reveals multiple memories of, and varied responses to, figures and images from the past. several articles specifically discuss memory of war. julie buckler traces changes to the borodino battlefield over time and under changing political regimes, while karen petrone analyzes changes to the moscow city fraternal cemetery. alterations in ideologies and political priorities, the works show, have rendered memorial practices uneven at both sites. a 1910 commemoration of the battle of grunwald in poland is the focal point of a third piece on war. this one, written by patrice dabrowski, illustrates the challenges of fitting the struggles of one time into the frameworks of another. the volume concludes with analyses of the ways that trauma is remembered at sites of massacres and incarceration: katyn, in russia, khatyn’ and kuropatyn in belarus, and the sighet prison in romania. as a group, these pieces suggest the power of memorial language and style for the shape of memory. choosing to frame a mass killing as genocide, james von geldern argues, both opens and closes possibilities for memorialization, as does transforming a prison into a museum, according to cristina vatulescu. serguei oushakine, meanwhile, argues that claiming victim status places the weight of blame for traumatic events outside the immediate collective. most of the articles focus on places and events in russia, with several pieces referring in distinct, but complementary ways to the same moments: napoleon’s nineteenth-century campaign into russia, world war i, and the great patriotic war. the contributions examining eastern europe (ukraine; bohemia, later to become part of the czechoslovak republic; poland; and romania) extend the discussion geographically while also revealing the extent to which themes, such as the pivotal role of commemoration in narratives of nationhood, are common across the region. the volume thus offers lucid and compelling analyses of a wide range of memory practices and memorial sites. readers interested in the history of russia and eastern europe, as well as those wanting to deepen their understanding of its literature, arts, and its current social landscape will all find value in this collection. students of cultural memory in other settings will also benefit from these clearly framed discussions. together, the articles offer a strong contribution to writings on memory, demonstrating the deep value ascribed to the past across the region, and the equally profound challenges that commemoration entails. on the formation of national self-awareness of the evenk one of the native peoples of the north on the formation of national self-awareness of the evenk one of the native peoples of the north. elena govorina republic of sakha (russia), yakutsk state university-central european university budapest the problem: perspectives for revival or demise? the present problems of native peoples are granted a great deal of attention, both on the part of the states which include these distinct national groups as a special type of minorities, and also on the part of different non-governmental agencies and organizations. the cause of such attentiveness is greater awareness of the harm done to indigenous cultures by rapidly modernizing, expanding and exploiting the land of native peoples’ societies. the disintegration of community, the degradation of family and kinship relations and, correspondingly, social organization; the decline of the cultural, material and spiritual spheres of the lives of the natives; the numerous social and psychological problems (depression, suicide, criminality, unemployment, social dependency, poverty), all these indicate a critical problem in term of not only the spiritual, but even the physical survival of indigenous peoples. a situation faced by a native evenk community, situated in iengra in the sakha republic, may be considered one of those illustrative cases which are a reflection of the universal problems of the loss and degradation of national culture under the impact of a major civilization of the western1 type. this native community is historically one of the most significant settlements of the evenk, who are scattered all over the vast spaces of siberia and the russian far east and are differentiated by peculiarities of local life-styles, language dialects and culture. the period of the most intensive industrial exploration of the territory of southern yakutia, where iengra is situated, occurred in the 1970s; bringing closer the “blessing and curse” of technocratic civilization, it strongly affected the social organization of this native community. one of the major industrial centers of the republic of sakha, neryungri, is situated close to iengra and is a center exercising administrative control over the territory of traditional evenk lands. the range of problems of this community is huge. first, there is the impact which exploration of the land resources has on reindeer breeding, which is traditional for evenk. the coal mining, but especially gold-mining companies, which were allocated plots of land close to iengra, have made a strong impact upon nature. the flora and fauna of the forest were damaged, and lands, previously used for reindeer breeding became a source for industrial exploitation. the community was pushed away from its native land. the economic problems accompanying transition to a market economy have affected reindeer breeding and hunting, and fur-breeding as well. collective farms and separate households do not have sufficient resources to maintain independent and selffinancing economic activities and need subsidies. unemployment is one of the most acute problems in iengra. correspondingly, there are high crime and suicide rates, and few opportunities for cultural and social development. however, the psychological and social problems are even more acute among those who live in iengra. these include depression, social dependency, a high level of jen typewritten text 81 anxiety, drug and alcohol addiction and abuse, consequent predisposition to suicide and crime (among other villages of the neryungri region their highest rates are in iengra). the sources of moral and psychological degradation, which condition the variety of social and economic problems among the evenk, are the absence of well-formed reference points, values and life perspectives, and the whole phenomena of anomie, which, according to emile durkheim, contaminates a community undergoing a structural transformation. in the case of the evenk it seems that the main problem affecting the social and psychological health of natives is the absence of the sense of community and, correspondingly, the national sentiment, which plays the role of a bounding element. it creates a sense of solidarity between the members of the community and protects them from deviant behavior. on the individual level it is expressed in the absence of well-formed worldview, beliefs and solid moral, social, and cultural convictions. while losing sense of national self-awareness, one loses the correspondent notions of what is normal and abnormal, standard and prohibited, encouraged and condemned (since a sense of national belonging implies one’s attribution to community and its values). the factors contributing to the loss of national identity were assimilation, erosion of language and culture, inflow of migrants and the whole functional inactivity which has struck the evenk community. however, it seems that on the level of social organization the causes of that are the destruction of traditional social institutions, which secured the perpetuation of the evenk before modernization. the evenk who are as other native peoples of the north presently called “peoples of the circumpolar north” or “circumpolar civilization,”2 possess unique national selfawareness due to the special character of values and worldview, in the core of which is persistence, care about nature, tolerance and respect for everything. this worldview was formed in unusual, extremely harsh environmental conditions, during a constant process of adaptation to this environment and accumulation of knowledge about it, elaboration of a special ethic in the treatment of nature, animals and human beings. the national selfawareness of the evenk emerged out of their awareness of belonging to a unique culture and community. the changes brought with modernization introduced splitting and confusion into the holistic worldview of native peoples. the evenk, who possessed a unique world-view and values, encountered values and norms of behaviour which are absolutely opposite to those to which they always adhered. the conflict of values and destruction of the “symbolic universe”3 or the meaningful image of the world, which was based on particular cultural knowledge which organized and regulated life, has resulted in anomie and the loss of a sense of social significance. national self-awareness and mechanisms of its formation that is why the national self-awareness of native people may be seen as one of the main meaningful aspects of self-awareness, which regulate one’s life and provide it with reference points, moral guidelines and, finally, psychological comfort. the problem is in the destruction of self-awareness and the mechanisms of its formation or transmission. these embody that common sentiment which unites a community and helps to mobilize it. national self-awareness is awareness on the part of an individual or a group of a fact of belonging to a community of people, united by common national sentiment. this jen typewritten text 82 notion assumes the presence of the collective, which is aware of its distinct culture, common present and past, and which distinguishes itself from other human collectives. the mechanism of the formation of national self-awareness is connected with its constituting elements such as national self-identity and values, national memory and national stereotypes.4 these are formed as a result of knowledge about the world obtained in socialization. being a main source for the formation of national self-awareness, knowledge is a very important condition for accumulation, checking and formulation of the content of national self-awareness. the character of knowledge of the evenk about the environment and ways of dealing with it were the source of their beliefs and ideas constituting a culturally determined model of objective reality, or a meaningful and conceptual framework of the world, in the terminology of thomas luckmann and peter berger “the symbolic universe.” the specificity of the knowledge passed on in the society of an indigenous people is conditioned by environment and cultural peculiarities. for evenk, as for other indigenous peoples, the practical knowledge of the environment, and the best ways of orienting and adapting to it were essential, as were their conceptions of the organization of the universe and the place of human beings in it. this knowledge was the source of the evenk notion of the origin of their own people and its code of behavior and culture. since it was primarily a knowledge of the environment, the attitude to it was one of respect and the evenk view of place was elaborated in terms of relations with the environment and its supremacy over the human; humans were viewed as a part of nature rather than its competitor. there followed an ethic concerning the proper treatment of the environment, tolerance and respect for nature and people. the language was one of the mechanisms for the familiarization of native people with an image of the world constructed over generations. knowledge of social regulations and the symbolic universe, which was transferred to children informally, legitimated the existing social order, although it was also subject to changes, additions and amendments. this did determine fluidity of the people’s everyday knowledge and the flexibility of the meaning of key notions. in this respect, the role and content of community memory was determined by collective practices, with regard to immediate or meaningful events and conditions; as goody and watt define it, collective memory was reflected in language and, correspondingly, a stock of knowledge, where the appropriate and inappropriate experiences were sorted out: language is developed in intimate association with the experience of the community, and it is learned by the individual in face-to-face-contact with the other members. what continues to be social relevance is stored in the memory while the rest is usually forgotten: and language primarily vocabulary is the effective medium of this crucial process of social digestion and elimination which may be regarded as analogous to the homeostatic organization of the human body by means of which it attempts to maintain its present condition of life (goody and watt 1990: 315). therefore, a native language is a very flexible mechanism for the transmission and formulation of knowledge. the practical character of knowledge and the oral mode of its transmission in non-literate societies conditioned the selective choice of the material, which constituted the stock of knowledge. language, which creates a “system jen typewritten text 83 of relevances”5 in the words of luckmann and berger, helps to organize the cultural stock of knowledge and socially distribute it according to this system. conceptualizing socialization as maintaining a culturally distinct “symbolic universe.” socialization is the basis of human adaptation to the environment and the elaboration of norms guiding behavior. essential to any culture as the necessary precondition for the perpetuating of a culture, socialization varies in its form and content from culture to culture, civilization to civilization. the agencies preoccupied with tasks of socialization are social institutions such as family, school, community, work, etc. the conceptual scheme of berger and luckmann presupposes that social institutions are the main repository of knowledge and all assumptions specific to a given culture, and are the main agencies preoccupied with promotion and transmission of the knowledge of everyday reality. a culturally conditioned system of relevance determines psychological comfort, as was emphasized by bernstein, when he emphasized that socialization processes limit the range of variants of possible social ordering and thereby protect individuals: …socialization is a process for making people safe. the process acts selectively on the possibilities of man by creating through time a sense of the inevitability of a given social arrangement, and through limiting the areas of permitted change (bernstein 1990:162). this aspiration of a human to put objective reality into subjective terms, to order and categorize it, is what luckmann and berger meant when they commented that the origins of institutionalization are in the habitualization of human activity. institutions are agents of power and functions of history: they decide which patterns of everyday activities are accepted as local models, but this deciding process is defined by the past experiences of a given society. in order to make the social ordering of reality meaningful there is a need to legitimize all the activities of social institutions. this is done through the creation of a “symbolic universe” which integrates all the activities of social institutions into a whole, explaining how they correlate with the world of meaning and the symbols dominant in a given cultural community. the process of socialization is concerned with obtaining knowledge of the range of possible social roles and culturally determined ways of behavior and corresponding elaboration of distinct cultural identity. a child, who gains knowledge about the world, acquires self-awareness as a representative of the distinct group to which he or she belongs. as b. bernstein put it, …the process of socialization is a complex process of control, whereby a particular moral, cognitive and affective awareness is evoked in the child and given a specific form and content. socialization sensitizes the child to various orderings of society as these are made substantive in the various roles he is expected to play (bernstein 1990:162). traditional and modern social institutions of evenk and alaska natives: a comparison. it would be of great help to contemporary specialists, who are occupied with the provision of practical relations between the social institutions of family, community and school, to define the positive resources of the social institutions which exist within a particular native culture: their functional success in educating children, providing them with norms, values, behavioral guidelines, psychological protection for the adaptation within the whole system of social organization. jen typewritten text 84 in order to evaluate this we need first to regard the roles played by traditional and modern social institutions in the maintenance of the symbolic universes of the native people, and to grasp the impact of these agencies on the transmission of knowledge and the worldview of these people. relative to the evenk community living in iengra, we need to consider first of all the role of traditional institutions of family and community. second, we must explore the dynamics of social change and the changing role of traditional institutions in the formation of national self-awareness. and finally, the activities of newly introduced modern institutions such as official educational institutions (boarding schools and kindergartens in iengra) need to be analyzed in regard to the involvement of national culture and knowledge in the process of education and the degree of their connection with community and family, as former basic social agencies promoting national values, culture and practical knowledge. the contradictory impact of these institutions on the formation of national self-awareness is due to: 1) the different “symbolic universe,” which was often behind educational programs, policies and content of education, built according to the western6 model of schooling and type of knowledge; 2) the weakening ties between school and community, and between children and the primary sources of their socialization, historically so important and indispensable in the performance of this task. the family and community socialized or educated, and supported a child during the whole process of community life. practically all social, economic, cultural activities of the family and community were socialization practices. this was the natural mechanism of promotion of national self-awareness and the transmission of cultural experience to younger generations. from the very moment of birth a child participated in the whole complex of religious, economic and cultural practices as a fully valued member of the community. in play activities children developed important skills for hunting or reindeer-herding. in communication with elder members of communities they acquired behavioral codes, spiritual values, occupational skills, rites and rituals of their national community. education was informal, based on oral tradition of narratives, told from one generation to another. in this way children were prepared for the independent lives of reindeer-herders and hunters, acquired traditional knowledge and skills, rules of treatment of nature and people. such education was an indispensable part of adaptation to the peculiarities of the environment. conducting nomadic mode of life with family and community, evenk children were included in economic life and gained a certain status among peers and the older members of the community. industrial development, extraction of natural resources, and railroad construction affected the natural environment and marginalized the evenk in terms of land management and economic affairs. they became more and more detached from their independent way of living and were intended to become part of the great national entity of the soviet people. traditional institutions of family and community deteriorated and structural changes brought on functional degradation. for example, the family almost totally lost its function of education and preparation of children for future, and could no longer teach them social roles, integrate them into the community, or pass on the language, occupational skills, traditional knowledge. jen typewritten text 85 a new type of specialized social institution, educational institutions, such as kindergarten and boarding school, which were introduced by the state, borrowed this function and monopolized it. boarding school was the most widespread practice of socialization of native peoples in the soviet era. children, educated there in the spirit of the abstract knowledge and values of the western type of civilization lost real and psychological attachment to their parents and their own national community. in this respect, a very important function of the family was not fulfilled by educational institutions: adaptation and preparation of a child to the real conditions of life. socialization of natives in family, community and school is not a continuous process any more, as it used to be. traditional institutions merged with the modern ones and the provision of the holistic “symbolic universe” has been disrupted with the advent of the western type of knowledge, values and logic of action. national self-awareness of the native people became fragmented, marginal, where the values and notions of the western type of civilization clashed with those of the civilization of natives. conflict of values and disorientation in everyday reality resulted. the evenk community iengra itself underwent degradation and disintegration. the arrival of migrant workers from the different republics of the soviet union to the huge so-called “building sites of the century” (bakal-amur railway, neryungri coalmine) situated near iengra, brought some assimilation of the evenk as a result of mixed marriages. the pattern of single mothers became widespread . correspondingly, the social structure of the community changed, as did its economic activities: collective farms for reindeer-breeding and fur-production, and gold-mining companies were introduced. the psychology of dependence and of seasonal work was adopted from migrant workers, whose attitude to nature was the carelessness of the consumer, characteristic of western civilization. in this way the gradual destruction of traditional social institutions and the content of their socialization practices meant undermining the mechanisms of the transmission of norms, values, worldview and mode of life of native peoples, e.g. of everything that contributes into the formation of national self-awareness, providing a “symbolic universe” for meaningful life. the impact of boarding schools was quite contradictory: on the one hand, they provided children with abstract knowledge and that kind of education was directed to adaptation in the dominant society. on the other hand, the boarding school in iengra was regarded as one of the most prominent due to the elaborated methods of teaching evenk language, introduction of the elements of national culture in the education. paradoxically, boarding school in many instances became the main source of information about evenk language and culture for the descendants of hunters and reindeer-herders. the situation with role of traditional social institutions in alaska in contemporary life of the native peoples and their potential for the transmission of native language and culture is different from that described above: in alaska the family, as the institution, preserved its role as the primary source of language and native culture for a child. however, there is the question of how many families have parents who still can speak their first (native language). the opinion of the famous alaskan linguist michael krauss is that while both parents speak native language with their child, the language is subject to consequent transmission; otherwise, the native language is under the threat of extinction. presently, almost all alaskan native languages are in such a danger. jen typewritten text 86 native communities in alaska also preserved their role in education and communication with children. this preserved role of traditional social institutions may be attributed to the different state policies applied in alaska, where traditional knowledge was not allowed a space in the western educational system and the boarding schools for natives were abolished, as institutions which harm native children. the model of small rural schools was proposed instead, with a perspective of a greater community involvement into the process of school education and the preservation of the natural place of a child in a family and community. the educational institutions are especially important for socialization, since in modern societies they are designed for a planned and officially approved socialization, providing children with knowledge and behavioral norms, moral guidelines and values corresponding with official state ideology. unlike in modern societies, education in traditional societies was not differentiated from community life; it was informal and rather practical (as opposed to the principles of rational organization and regulation of life in society, based on transformation of natural environment). it was rather a part of the whole system of practices, directed to maintenance of traditional social organization and its relation to “symbolic universe” of native peoples, transmission of practical knowledge and skills necessary for everyday life in community. being placed into boarding schools natives became detached from practical everyday reality, notion of principles which organized it, awareness of their own place in the community. at the same time, education within native family and community was directed toward elaboration of the awareness of belonging to a distinct community and a corresponding range of life choices for the realization of ones capabilities, wishes and callings. comparing the experience of the evenk people with that of the native peoples of alaska, it may be commented that the traditional role of the family and community in evenk socialization decreased because of their erosion as social institutions, while in alaska the very institutions of family and community stayed preserved, but lost that knowledge of the language and culture they possessed. in this respect, it is especially useful to regard what is taken as the grounds of the alternative educational institutions in alaska (there is still a lack of alternative education for native peoples in russia). all the models of alternative education currently proposed in alaska (community schools “gargi,” native language immersion schools) are assuming as their basis the whole native community as such, therefore, they are directed toward utilization of the positive resources existing on the part of the traditional institutions of native peoples. they are designed so as to place a child in conditions of communication with the members of community. “gargi” is the traditional informal community school in alaska, which was, nevertheless, distinguished as a separate cultural unit in a community. its task was to familiarize children with rituals, native arts, folklore, and rules of behavior and to teach them practical labor skills. the role of teacher is played by the most respectful and knowledgeable members of the community, usually, elders. simultaneously, this traditional school function as entertainment and includes arts and performances. immersion schools for the study of native languages is a relatively recent initiative, which was designed for native people of different ages: for either children and jen typewritten text 87 adults, who possess little knowledge of the native language, while regarding themselves the natives. alternative educational institutions in alaska are filling in the gap in transmission of the native language and culture, which is due to the negligence of these by official state educational institutions. formal schools for native peoples in the republic of sakha, particularly for the evenk, have to some extent introduced national elements into the educational system. contemporary educational policies for native peoples in the republic of sakha are directed to the promotion of the languages and cultures of the native peoples of the north, to greater representation of the content of culture in the educational programs and courses. correspondingly, these programs are more indulgent in terms of allowing independence and initiative. as one of the few examples of alternative education for native peoples there was a nomadic school project for the evenk, which is also seen as a part of the community, combining the natural acquisition of the practical knowledge of everyday life and the necessary skills of nomads with formal education. towards a conclusion: trends in activities and functional significance of social institutions and potential for future of the native communities. the purpose of the present article has been to discuss the institutional mechanisms for the maintenance of national self-awareness through the transmission of native language, culture, and knowledge of everyday life: the family and community of evenk and alaska natives may be regarded as examples of these. the tragic deterioration of the role of these institutions in the evenk case may be attributed to the increasing role of formal schooling, which usurped this function from traditional institutions. in the case of alaska natives traditional institutions managed to preserve their structure and maintain their potential to be primary socializing agencies, while formal schooling failed both in attempts to make native children conform to the demands and propositions of western life, and to provide them with practical knowledge. however, both experiences point to the insufficiency of formal, state-controlled schooling as mechanisms for maintening national culture and worldview; in this respect, alternative educational institutions are proposed as important supplementary socializing agencies, which model their activities on those of family or community. in the evenk case,the main positive development is due to the official policies of the republic, which is trying to create institutions more oriented towards local culture and local opportunities. as to the consideration of the perspectives, the utilization of all the existing positive resources is indispensable for preservation of the native culture and language, and corresponding transmission of national self-awareness. these resources exist within the realms of the social institutions and people, who provide connections between different social institutions. for example, there are specialists who currently work on the provision of real links between family and community, school and family, etc. the network of existing social institutions should be supported and reinforced, with close relations between traditional and modern social institutions and blending all the stages of socialization into one continuous process, as it was before modernization. however, the present task is more complicated: how to reconcile the different, almost opposite and incompatible values and orientations of the western, “technocratic” civilization and those of the native peoples of the circumpolar north? this question may be answered in accordance with the recently emerging model of so-called “sustainable jen typewritten text 88 development,” which is in accord with a holistic attitude to nature characteristic of native people and is based on the notion of homeostasis in relations between mankind and nature. references: abuladze, darejani givievna. 1998. national self-awareness: the essence, problems, contradictions. phd thesis. moscow: institute of youth. barnhardt, d. 1980. culture, community and the curriculum. fairbanks: university of alaska fairbanks. berger, peter and luckmann, thomas. 1991. the social construction of reality. london : penguin books bernstein, b. 1990. social class, language and socialization. in language and social context. london: penguin books. eley, geoff and suny, ronald grigor, eds. 1996. introduction: from the moment of social history to the work of cultural representation. in becoming national (a reader). oxford, new york: oxford university press. goody, j. and watt, i. 1990. the consequences of literacy. in language and social context. london: penguin books. kawagley, angayuqaq oscar.1996. yupiaq education revisited. fairbanks: university of alaska fairbanks. kleinfeld, j. 1970. cognitive strength of eskimos and implications for education. fairbanks: university of alaska fairbanks. kleinfeld, j. 1973. long way from home. fairbanks: university of alaska fairbanks. krauss, m. 1980. alaska native languages: past, present and future, alaska native language center. fairbanks: university of alaska fairbanks. krauss, m. 1995 language loss in alaska, the united states, and the world. alaska humanities journal, no.12. kryajkov, v. 1994 the problems of law in regard to the status of small-numbered native peoples of russia. moscow: gosudarstvo i pravo, 6. langdon, s.1993 the native people of alaska, anchorage: greatland graphics. mclean, e. 1986 the revitalization of the gargi, the traditional community house, as an educational unit of the inupiat community. paper presented at the symposium on jen typewritten text 89 policy and planning for alaskan languages. fairbanks: march 8. neustroev, n. and savvinov, t. 1992 the specific features in the organisation of work of the national school. yakutsk: the yakutsk state university. nikolaev, s. 1961eveny i evenk yugo-vostochnoi yakutii. yakutsk. sapir, edward. 1949 selected writings in language, culture, and personality. london, los angeles: university of california press. toynbee, a. 1976 mankind and mother earth. new york and london: oxford university press. vinokurova, u. 1995 the civilisation of the native peoples of yakutia. moscow: mezhdunarodnaya zhizn/international life. theme issue. yakutsk: sakha. zhirkov, e. 1991 the national school: the ideas are required. yakutsk: sovety yakutii. may 9. notes: 1 “western” in this context refers to the technocratic type of society, which is characterised by aspirations towards progress, an industrial model of development and corresponding features: mass education, division of labor, high level of development of science and knowledge, e.g. a society characteristically different from the traditional one. certainly, the soviet union was a modernizing country of this type and the psychological and social impact of its policies may be compared with those of the united states. this particular connotation signifies completely different, if not the opposing, (the western versus the native) moral values and norms in respect to nature, people and the whole worldview. 2 the term “circumpolar civilization” was created especially for purpose of signifying the people living in similar climatic, environmental conditions of the circumpolar north and having close spiritual and material culture and worldviews. arnold toynbee, referring to the features of environmental conditions and the special homeostasis maintained in the relations of these peoples and the environment, spoke of the “frozen” type of civilization ; contemporary scientists prefer to call native peoples of the north ‘the people of the circumpolar civilization” (for example, y. vinokurova). this name has become popular and is being used officially in international forums devoted to the problems of native peoples of the north, living in russia, alaska, and canada. 3 the notion of the “symbolic universe” derives from peter berger and thomas luckmann, who assert in the book the social construction of reality that every society legitimizes its social arrangement and controls the social order by creating a distinct conceptual framework of the world. 4 a more elaborated list of the elements of national self-awareness can be found in the phd thesis of abuladze, 1998. 5 berger and luckmann t 1991: 60. 6 the western type of education corresponds to abstract knowledge, based on logic of rational action and primacy of the human reasoning over nature, and, accordingly, to the different, if not the opposite values and worldview, characteristic for technocratic civilization. jen typewritten text 90 on the formation of national self-awareness of the evenk one of the native peoples of the north. elena govorina �republic of sakha (russia), yakutsk state university-central european university budapest microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 1 the embodied solution of ‘the woman question’ in postrevolutionary russia ioulia gradskova, moscow state lomonosov university © 2002 ioulia gradskova all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. at the center of my essay is the problem of woman’s representational changes in russia during the 1920-30s. on the one hand, this period could be characterized by the equality-discourse; it is a period when women were declared equal to men in juridical, social, and political senses. frequently this period is called the period of marxist feminism (bryson). on the other hand, the whole soviet period is well known as a period of “false equality.” thus, for an understanding of the significance and meanings of “equality” for russian women in that period, it is necessary to study more carefully what that “equality” was in the postrevolutionary era. the problem of body representations and experiences from my view point could put more light not only on the dark problem of the “false equality” of women and men in the soviet union, but also on the postsoviet gender problems seen by many women as exemplified by an unimportance of equal rights, antifeminist attitudes, lack of political activity, declarations of traditionalism, and no desire to be leaders. the analysis of body politics could help us to enter the microhistory of such a complicated phenomenon as women’s liberation in the soviet russia and its consequences. the sources for this essay are publications about the so-called “sexual question” and “change of the everyday life.” many books were written in russia and outside on this topic; however, the problem of women’s subjectivity and women’s identity was not the central theme of those publications (i.e. golod, lebina, etkind, engelstein, stites). my interest is on only part of this big problem. i analyze how the difference between femininity” and “masculinity” was constructed at that time. first i would like to mention briefly the participants in this discussion. they included bolshevik party and komsomol activists with different positions in the hierarchy of these organizations, including persons responsible for a “solution of women’s question” (trotsky, smidovich, kollontai, semashko) and psychologists, clinicians, and psychoanalysts (zalkind, nemilov, rubinstein). the future of these participants was different: while some of them in the next 10-15 years became victims of repression and were excluded from the soviet history, other participants entered the encyclopedias as prominent figures of culture and science (semashko, ketlinskaya). it was a time when the interdependent women’s organizations were declared bourgeois, and the prerevolutionary liberal feminists’ slogans were not mentioned. all the participants in the discussions were to follow strict “class” positions. the patterns of everyday life were changing dramatically at that time. all the participants in the discussion undoubtedly felt the “subversive influence of the transformation of intimacy on the contemporary institutions” (giddens: 3). they saw the solution of the sexual question as an important task. the name “sexual question” pretended to overcome sexual difference and presented the problem of sexuality as relationships “out of gender.” how did the participants view the human body? what parts of the old cultural canon were included in the communist one? what gender differences were declared disappearing and which ones remained? how did new ideas about women’s body influence everyday life and politics? the male/female oppositions from the view of social evolutionary theory all the participants in the discussion valued the scientific data, especially that coming from the “natural sciences.” “every marxist should be jen typewritten text 49 volume 20, number 1 biologist” (nemilov: 208). but, the human being, the “crown of the nature,” also had its natural part, which should be cultured. the declaration of “natural” as “correct” was bringing with itself an old justification of gender differences as “natural differences,” and thus, justification of different moral and social norms for male and female behavior. however, the social equality between man and woman was declared by the communist regime and could not be discussed openly. the attempt to critique the social equality could be qualified as a rupture of the fragile border between “our” and “alter,” revolution and counterrevolution, and mean an exit from the frame of legal discourse. the consequences of differences were presented as not connected to the “main” (social, collective) life of women and were presented as accompanying the description of everyday life or family relations. while the family life as a form of “private” had to die as the result of the cultural changes, all the polemic was accompanied by words aimed to stress the temporality of the problem: “while,” “till now,” “yet.” now and in some future years the young girl would be responsible for the home-keeping and family and not only may but has to make part of the homework. it would be very bad if she started to “liberate herself” by the price of the harder work of her mother, aunt, or other members of the family. (ketlinskaya: 51) “yet the state is so poor that it is not able to support your marriage, children, education, or care for parents”(semashko 1926: 27). the authors of many publications directly followed the enlightenment traditions describing “nature.” the main actor and recipient of the reviewed publications are constructed as the masculine subject. from the early childhood the child is growing in the conditions of renovated matriarchal society having women around him. the father among them is frequently an alien person. the first signs of the sexual life in man have impersonal character, he still did not elaborated the personal demands to woman. (tomilin: 29) it was considered that women, when they are adults, keep inside of them the vivid part of their nature the reproductive system. it makes her different from men, who are presented as not connected to the reproduction process at all. this part of “nature” is especially pictured in many schemas as signifying “otherness.” the structure of women’s reproductive system is responsible for the differences from men she is “less stable,” has a psyche exhibiting “less equilibrium.” this problem at the behavioral level should be compensated by the special moral qualities: shamefulness and restraint. “the long time sexual partner is the best solution for woman according to her psychophysiology” (zalkind: 53). “free love, casual connections and unstable relationships are against the nature of woman” (ketlinskaya: 64). the rise in women’s cultural level and the problem of personal choice “the sexual question,” which served as a frame for the discussion, did not take into account the sympathies, preferences, and desires of the concrete man and concrete woman. the discussion about the “sexual question” mostly had a global approach and was viewed as a consequence of the crossing of “nature” and “culture.” following the psychoanalysis of early freud, many participants claimed the necessity of sublimation, understood as a translation of the animal energy of human beings into cultural forms. the sexual instinct was presented as one of the most dangerous of instincts. thus, the most important problem was how to teach the masses the “new culture,” which would help them to translate the wild energy of the animal part of human beings into the energy of collective creativity. the bourgeois culture from this view point was seen as badly functioning, a wrong sublimation which covers the “natural” essence of human beings with “false culture.” among the biggest problems of the false bourgeois culture was sexual hedonism defined as sexual intercourse for pleasure. “the most unrestrained animal is a bourgeois who gave freedom to his spoiled essence” (smidovich: 28). the “new culture” had a meaning of connections with the victorious class and insisted on the limitations of joy for saving energy for social activity. “more frequently remember about science, the lessons of revolution: educate yourself collectively, ‘suppress’ low instincts, make open the social instincts. if you want to solve a sexual problem you should work for society, be comrade, not male or female” (semashko 1926: 53). jen typewritten text 50 volume 20, number 1 it is possible to suppose that negative attitudes toward hedonism and limitations on private, personal, and animal traits are genderneutral. but, the precise analysis of the texts does not give us the possibility to agree with this supposition. “an old tradition to see women as more moral, more modest in relation to sex person than men practically is not a ‘prejudice’ but an instinctive (unconscious) representation of the special features of male and female sexual life” (semashko, 1927: 11). behind commonly abstract categories of “nature,” “class,” “culture,” and “collective,” it is possible to see real differences only in works by l. trotsky and a. kollontai. these two authors, while discussing the “sexual question,” were mentioning “personality” not only instincts. “the main form of the fight for stability and culture of the family ties and relationships consists in raising of human personality” (trotsky in zukker, 10). in spite of the fact that these two authors were speaking about human personality only with the aim of enriching collective life, it is necessary to stress a. kollontai’s position, which supposed the possibility of a hedonist scenario of sexual relationships between men and women and the possibility of women’s initiative in these relationships. in spite of the tradition to see kollontai’s writings of the 1920s as “free love defense” (usually interpreted now in russia as an irresponsible attitude toward sexual relationships golod, aivazova), it is possible to see her writings as the creation of a theory of new personal and dialogical (in place of instinctive-reproductive or disembodied-friendly) relationships between men and women. this was a theory, unfortunately, that could not be developed. if the blind and demanding force would be weaker in the love relationships, if the feeling of love-property and desire to ownership over the lover for ever would dye, if the superiority of men and criminal self-negation of woman could disappear, then the other moments in love could be developed. the esteem to the personality of the other would be more strong, the mutual feeling would be developed, the desire to show love not only in kissing and touching, but also in common action, unity of will, in common creativity would grow.” (kollontai: 181) many publications at that time contained phrases about freedom and equality, new everyday life (noviy bit) and new morals, but they did not pay much attention to two other conditions of women’s liberation without which it is hard to imagine the western feminist revolution of 1960s. first, is the problem of contraception. as it is known, the feminist revolution of 1960-70s was directly connected with the sexual revolution and beginning of the massive use of contraceptives by the new generation the pill. the material discussed with regard to the “sexual question” in russia in 1920s paid little attention to this problem. even medical abortion frequently was declared to relate more to the issue of poverty than revolutionary gain (semashko, 1927: 10-11). it is necessary to mention that in prerevolutionary russian, as much as in foreign publications on the “sexual question” (including several times reedited in socialist russia work of german clinician a. forel), the problem of contraception was discussed. forel, for example, gives very detailed description of means of contraception which could be used by men and by women, especially stressing that women, for example, have the right to defend themselves from drunk husbands’ sexual aggression (forel: 250251). at this later time, soviet publications practically unanimously rejected every means of contraception, qualifying its use as perversion. having sexual intercourse with contraception was also classified as a “false culture.” s. smidovich, for example, writes that that french bourgeois have all the newest condoms” (smidovich: 124). thus, the same use of contraceptives that was welcomed before the revolution, was, in the 1920s, presented as a sign of bourgeoisness, counterrevolution, and violation of nature. the second absent topic in this discourse is the topic of equal distribution of parental duties. in the majority of the publications, women are presented as tied (staying in some kind of symbiotic connections) to children, while it is stressed that men “according to their nature” are free from the consequences of the sexual act. in spite of the declaration of bolshevik theory that private and closed bourgeois families should give a place to a collective education of children, as in the case of home duties, the texts are full of reminders that women are “still” responsible for children. the rise of the cultural level as a way of constructing differences jen typewritten text 51 volume 20, number 1 one of the most important problems discussed in the instructive literature at that time was the difficulty of control over the “natural part” of human beings as a whole. the majority of the participants who took into account the difficulties of changes in economic policy first of all insisted on educative measures. maybe it sounds strange, but as one of the examples of the “correct” regulation of the “sexual question” rousseau (“sofia”) is mentioned (rubinstein: 61). it could be inspired from these ideas that men and women should make similar efforts to control their instinctive natures. however, in the publications, it is possible to see multiple examples of the different, gendered requirements for control. according to the authors of the majority of the publications, the nature of women, which was different from men’s and as a consequence of her low cultural level and special natural structure that gave only her the possibility to bear, give birth, and educate small children, needs more strict control from society. “the class demand from woman the conscious selection of the father of her child” (zukker: 10). according to the ideas of many participants in the discussion, this kind of control does not limit the freedom of women, because in any case she has a different nature. trying to illustrate, v. ketlinskaya writes: “it is interesting such an example one of the followers of the ‘new everyday life moral’ who used to wear a leather jacket, and short nails and hair desired to be married to a komsomol member. … and to her red marriage party she brought shoes with high heels, panties, clear short skirt…” (ketlinskaya: 63). what conclusion did ketlinskaya, a komsomol leader herself, reach about the behavior of this komsomol member? that she should think more about ideology? that she is following “false culture”? no, the ketlinskaya remark was different: “when you try to throw nature out the door, it will enter through the window” (ketlinskaya: 63). it is possible to say that many participants it the discussion on the ‘sexual question’ used “natural differences” to rethink the declared equality with the aim of vindicating first sexual and then, in a hidden form, social inequality. the discussion shows the maintenance of the double standard and its previous form of justification: women’s nature would mean tragedy in the world of culture. “those few moments of happiness which brings to woman her service for the “genius of gender” can not reimburse all that suffering and problems which fill the life of every, even absolutely normal woman” (nemilov: 61). to make the tragedy connected to her nature smaller, woman should be more conscious or more controlled than man. “it is necessary cruelly to prevent a widely spread view, even among conscious women: “when man is allowed to do something (speaking about sexual life) why cannot woman as well? this is inequality, prejudice. the rule is “as man, as woman.” this view is very dangerous. the sexual life of woman is not equal with man’s. that is why woman is a woman and man is a man” (semashko, 1926: 79). thus, it is possible to say that the analysis of the discussion on the “sexual question” makes us suppose that the natural differences among men and women are so big, that the declared equality is practically annulled by them. conclusion on the basis of the material analyzed here, it is possible to say that the main condition of the definitions of “masculinity” and “femininity” in post-revolutionary russian discourse is of difference defined by nature reproductive system differences. this helps to divide gender differences, making part of them “the product of the old system” (which should be renewed) and the other part presented as simply “natural,” obvious. the “obvious” part of differences is constructed not on the basis of sexual differences, but on the basis of the social meanings of their consequences in the context of the new morality. thus, to the mid-1920s, doubts about the possibility/necessity of full equality are present. at the same time, it is possible to say that ambiguity and a nonarticulated border between “biological difference” and “social equality” in the field of cultural revolution could help in understanding the phenomenon of soviet and post-soviet gender problem formulations. “the biological tragedy,” the capability of bearing children, slowly is converted in soviet politics of difference, which undoubtedly made woman not simply different, but worse with respect to man. however, not only women, but men as well were lacking control over their bodies, which helped to convert the cultural differences among them in hidden and silent ways during the whole soviet period. references jen typewritten text 52 volume 20, number 1 aivazova, svetlana 1998 the russian women in the labyrinths of equality, moscow: rik russanova. attwood, linn 1990 the new soviet man and woman. bloomington: indiana university press. bryson, valery 2001 feminist political theory : an introduction. moscow: idea press (translated into russian) engelstein, laura 1998 the key to happiness: sex and the search for modernity in fin-de-siecle russia. (transl in russian). moscow: terra. etkind, alexander 1993 the eros of impossible, the history of psychoanalysis in russia. saint petersburg: meduza. forel, august 1928 the sexual question, kharkov: kosmos. giddens, anthony 1993 the transformation of intimacy: sexuality, love and eroticism in modern societies. stanford: stanford university press. golod, sergei 1998 xx-th century and traditions of the sexual relations in russia, saint petersburg: aleteia. kollontai, alexandra 1924 the way to an eros which has wings / the questions of the life and fight, moscow: molodaya gvardia. ketlinskaya, vera 1927 the girl and the komsomol. leningrad: priboi. lebina, natalia 1999 the everyday life of the soviet city: the norm and anomalies, 1920-30s. saint petersburg: neva. nemilov, alexander 1930 the biological tragedy of woman, the review of female physiology. moscow: seyatel. rubinstein, mikhail 1926 the sexual education from the viewpoint of the interests of culture. moscow-leningrad: moskovskoye akzionernoie izdatelskoye obszhestvo. semashko, nikolai 1926 new “byt” and the sexual question, moscow: gosizdat. 1927 against the alimony epidemic or believe in alimony, but thing what you are doing. moscow: okhrana materinstva i mladenchestva. smidovich, sofia 1925 about love / sexual question. moscow: molodaia gvardia. stites, richard 1978 women’s liberation movement in russia. princeton: princeton university press. tomilin, semion 1926 the sexual problem. kharkov: nauchnaya misl. zalkind, aron 1926 the sexual question in the conditions of the soviet society. leningrad: gosizdat. zukker, alexander 1928 introduction. in: the sexual question, by august forel. kharkov: kosmos. jen typewritten text 53 microsoft word document5 volume 20, number 1 gender in a performative depiction in tadeusz rozewicz’s drama white marriage: on the basis of judith butler’s theoretical text lilianna dorak jagiellonian university © 2002 lilianna dorak all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. introduction the role of women in polish culture today is defined by norms usually deriving from three traditions: the 19th century culture of the nobility, catholicism, and post-war communist transformations. the culture of the nobility produced not only the ideal of the mother-pole but also a new understanding of freedom. what the polish nobility always understood by personal freedom was poland’s independence and their own participation in government. so the picture of the polish woman of the 19th century consisted, on the one hand, of the ideal of the mother-pole, a symbolic model of an ideal wife and mother of a soldier fighting for independence, which, on the other hand, gave polish women duties going beyond the sphere of tasks referred to as feminine (household duties) and pressed them into becoming independent. at the same time, the development of industrial structures caused the transfer of women to a lower level on the social ladder. the model resulted in a completely unrealistic idealization and, in effect, in comparison with the ideal the woman, women had to become creatures unable to fulfill the criteria of an ideal. the other source of tradition – polish catholicism combined a traditional model of femininity with fundamental values: heroism and readiness to dedicate herself and sacrifice her needs became the norm. despite the lack of feminist organizations under the communist system, an official feminist organization called the polish women’s league (liga kobiet polskich) has been in operation in poland since 1913. its representatives made public declarations in which they supported martial law, and thus created a negative picture of woman as a passive creature, who adjusted to the norm and was hostile towards any change. a short period of activity of the women’s commission (komisja kobiet) should also be mentioned. this organization did not share the views of the ‘solidarity’ trade union on the role of women, and stressed that in poland the status of a woman is low and women themselves do not realize their rights or the degree to which they are violated. in the 1960s feminist ideology reached poland in the form of fashion, music, and press articles. it is at that time that hatred towards the word ‘feminism’ was born in poland. irrespective of this ideal, a modern woman became an ideal in the 1960s: an emancipated, independent creature, successful at home and at work. while in western europe after 1970 the women’s movement flourished, the political situation in poland made it impossible for formal women’s structures and organizations, independent of the communist authorities, to be established. at the same time, in the 1970s, the role of the catholic church in poland grew and therefore so did the place of the model of femininity advocated by it. all these traditions had one feature in common: an extremely passive view of the world of women and men, united by national issues, which did not allow for the creation of too strong a division between the sexes. therefore, as maria ciechomska argues: “the oppressor could only be the imposed political system and not patriarchal structures” (1996:317). the notion of feminism reached poland as early as the times of communism but only in the form of a description of western feminism, which, moreover, was very distorted: “characterizing the situations of polish women, anna titkow uses the expression ‘pressure.’ women’s adjustment to the requirements of pressure happens because of historical tradition (over the centuries polish women had little chance to be responsible for jen typewritten text 41 volume 20, number 1 their own fate), because of the early socialization of women and their life experience” (ciechomska 1996:318). with all society’s prejudices against feminism, in view of political changes, poland’s opening towards the west, and the initiatives of women’s groups we can observe traces of feminist ideas appearing in the consciousness of some social groups. as a result, issues like contraception, violence within the family, and the sexual abuse of children are no longer taboo. the example of poland shows that women’s progress from traditional dependence to freedom does not always happen in a linear manner, and it can be, to a considerable extent, conditioned by the complications of national history. in white marriage, a drama written by tadeusz rózewicz in 1973, we can see an attempt at diagnosing polish culture and the inter-human relations present in it, projected onto the backdrop of sensual life. but eroticism in rózewicz’s play is not an aim in itself; it is subjugated to the problem of the human condition through the deeply contemplated heritage of polish culture. in his interview with the critic józef keler, which took place at the premiere of white marriage in the royal theatre in stockholm on 23 april 1976, rózewicz said: “i’m not able to say why i wrote this play. i could give specious answers. for example: i could say that because of the rising wave of pornography in the world i was trying to stop it with this play, to restore a human face to eroticism and sex, because in pornography it has a not human face” (keler 1976:65). constructing gender in tadeusz rózewicz’s drama in rózewicz’s white marriage gender is shown in the context of polish culture and its customs at the turn of the century. the plot of the drama takes place at the turn of the 20th century, and the following motifs show references to polish culture: an old polish manor house, the life of the nobility, girls from the manor house growing up, and national symbols such as the polish mother, the insurgent’s wife, and elements of parody or literary allusions, e.g. young poland’s lust or the mask of a young poland poet. the characters of two young women are shown in the drama against a background of 19th century mentality and traditions. rózewicz seems to pay attention to contradictions resulting from the 19th century way of perceiving women. in the drama we have two adolescent girls, for whom their family has already written the continuation of their adult life. bianka is to ‘get married’ and paulina is to ‘devote herself to learning’. the 19th century ascribed a designated place in society to a woman; the position of a passive person, dependent first on her family and then on her husband. both characters, paulina and bianka, try to break away from female attributes which, like the institution of marriage, were to guarantee them a life in line with socially accepted norms. in order to find their lost identities and individualities, against commonly accepted social norms, the young women ostentatiously stress their physicality or, in bianka’s case, enter the realm of male activity. in contrast, we see the characters of older women, the mother and the aunt, whose words and behavior prove how illusory the revolt of the young girls is. these female characters’ passivity towards stereotypes causes these stereotypes to become normalized mechanisms governing the world. the juxtaposition of female characters with polish culture carried out by rózewicz in white marriage shows the way in which these characters initiate an argument with the roles imposed upon them. starting with simone de beauvoir’s famous statement in the second sex that ‘nobody is born a woman, we become women!’, a distinction has been made between biological gender and cultural gender or sex identity. cultural gender is partly resultant from the general importance that society places on its functional meaning. this means that gender determines our life not directly, but indirectly, through the rules of social relations. the body – as de beauvoir claims – constitutes a historical situation, is a way of making, dramatizing, and recreating any historical situation. as purposefully organized matter, it is always an embodiment of capabilities, both conditioned and limited by historical convention. therefore, being female is, according to de beauvoir’s differentiation, a meaningless fact, but being a woman implies the necessity of becoming a woman, forcing the body to coincide with the historical idea of a ‘woman’, convincing the body to become a cultural sign. in other words, the body realizes itself in obeying the historically determined range of abilities and in so doing as a recognized and repeated bodily plan. gender is a plan, whose aim is cultural survival, therefore, the term ‘strategy’ better reflects the situation of compulsion under which the making of gender jen typewritten text 42 volume 20, number 1 occurs constantly and in different ways (butler 1997). thus, as a strategy of survival cultural, gender is a presentation with obvious penal consequences. intermittent cultural genders constitute a part of what ‘humanizes’ individuals in contemporary culture and those who are not able to create their gender properly receive regular punishment. this is, as butler argues, because there is no ‘essence’ which gender expresses or manifests, or the objective ideal to which the gender aspires; because gender is not a fact, the idea of gender is formed by a variety of acts which create it. there would be no gender at all without them. thus, gender is a construction, which constantly hides its origin, a name we give to the language through which we reach the knowledge of our desires. according to judith butler, cultural gender, as an act whose incarnated subjects exist as much as they dramatically and actively impersonate and really assume certain cultural meanings, is not an individual act. and despite certain differences and individual ways of acting one’s own cultural gender, the fact is that it is done according to certain specified norms. “an act which somebody performs; an act somebody acts is, in this sense, an act which was performed long before this somebody appeared on stage. therefore, cultural gender is an act which is repeated, which, like a script, lives longer than the actors who appear in it, but which needs these actors to be updated and presented as reality again” (butler 1997:409-10). cultural gender as public activity and an act does not constitute a project reflecting an individual choice; on the contrary; it is imposed or ascribed to an individual. the body does not passively give in to the rules of the cultural code, but also the individual ‘i’ is not ahead of the existence of cultural conventions, which in principle mean bodies. “talking in terms of a performance, the actors are always already on stage. like a script can be performed in many ways and like acting requires both the text and its interpretation, the body, marked by gender, plays its role in a culturally limited bodily space and embodies interpretations within already specified limits” (butler 1997:410). when de beauvoir claims that a woman is a ‘historical situation,’ she stresses the fact that the body suffers because of a certain cultural construction, not only because of conventions, which sanction and order how to create the body, this ‘act’ or performance which it is, but also because of the silent agreement which creates the convention of its cultural perception. by inference, if gender is a cultural meaning, which the body endowed with its biological gender assumes, and if various acts and their cultural perception determine this meaning, it might seem that within culture one cannot differentiate between biological and cultural gender. at the turn of the century, the body was perceived as the ‘soul’s prison’ and, yet, at the same time, it was being discovered as a cultural taboo. physicality, which in rózewicz’s works most often amounts to a dimension of physiology, is close to such modernist visions. bianka’s psychology is shaped by shame and a constant sense of sin and waking desires, which are caused by attempts at overcoming conventional femininity. the body-object in rózewicz’s dramas seems to be an unquestionable certainty in view of the inconsistency of information about the characters brought to the audience. therefore, depriving female characters of their physicality results in their failure to find their own identity, and their submission towards the role means the rejection of their own gender, and lack of self-acceptance. the problem of poetic distortions of female images undertaken by rózewicz makes the characters of his drama the victims of their epoch. analysing gender in the context of judith butler’s theoretical considerations, i will try to show the ways the gender identity of stage characters constitutes a peformative act and what its meaning is for the theatre. the reality of cultural gender is performative; it is real only within the range in which it is presented. in her essay peformative acts and gender constitution, butler analyses the way cultural gender is created thanks to certain bodily acts and tries to present the possibilities of a cultural transformation of gender through these acts. according to butler, cultural gender constitutes a peformative act, induced by social sanctions and taboos. however, in the very character of cultural gender there remains a possibility of questioning the status ascribed to it. assuming, like butler, that ‘this’ body is constantly being transformed into a male or female body and that it is differentiated only through the appearance of the assumed gender, the starting point for my considerations on the problem of gender identity in rózewicz’s drama will be the analysis of the way in which cultural gender manifests itself. jen typewritten text 43 volume 20, number 1 in white marriage we encounter the conflict of gender and humanity, which has its reflection in social life as identity and role. cultural gender, referring to the cultural determination of identity, is the reason why the initiation into gender seems to be the same as the initiation into the role. being determined by gender means the acceptance of the socially imposed role, since finding one’s own identity is so uncertain for the characters in rózewicz’s drama. the dowry of the bride is a ready form that bianka has to decide on before she makes any other choice, before the process of individualization happens in her. the more she becomes a woman, the more alien she feels and thus the initiation into maturity turns out to be initiation into solitude. bianka’s confession shows her submission to the terror of stereotypes: “bianka: … i don’t want to be a girl, i want to be a boy and i would like to have a penis instead of an opening, i would like to be a soldier when i grow up, and now a priest, is this a sin … everybody at home laughs at me, so please tell me why i can’t be a priest. because i’m a girl and only a man can be a priest? which means everything has been determined, once and for all.” the pressure of two antagonistic orders concerning behavior which bianka gives in to are: on the one hand, the imperative of service to society (she wants to become a soldier or a priest), and, on the other hand, the social condition of a woman, or the terror of gender. rózewicz does not identify this gender only with nature; on the contrary, gender is the most marked social category. cultural gender, butler writes, cannot be either true or false, either real or apparent. we are forced to live in a world in which gender creates unambiguous meanings, in which it is stabilized, polarized and presented as essence and mystery. as a result, cultural gender must be in line with the assumed model of truth or falsity, which not only resists its own performative liquidity, but also serves the social regulation and control of gender. a ‘false’ presentation of gender triggers off a variety of punishments, both direct and indirect; its ‘correct’ presentation ensures the existence of some essence of gender identity. what is important in white marriage is not the conflict between nature and culture, but alienation from the literature of stereotypes and gender as parallel forms of violation: initiation into gender and the initiated human being. in white marriage, the idioms of characters and of gender become forms of theatricalization of the world and, at the same time, the alienation of an individual. so the problem in the drama is not the antinomy of a social human being and a biological human being but the opposition between the whole human being and the censored human being – or, in other words, the free human being and a circumscribed human being, or censored on the one hand by biology (which determines gender) and society (which accepts only social roles coherent with biological gender) and on the other hand by gender stereotypes. one of the main characters, paulina, finds freedom in her role, while bianka chooses rebellion in order to attain her humanity. despite the condition of a woman, she keeps asking about her own identity. the first act of bianka’s transgression is exposing herself. bianka sheds her female attire and stands naked in front of the mirror. bianka’s act can be interpreted as an attempt at transgression through a symbolic ‘suicide’, as an attempt at rebirth. a mirror reflection is doubling myself, ‘another myself’. her reflection in the mirror turns out to be the only proof of her identity, while the ‘bride’s dowry’ is her entire ‘biography.’ the next stages of bianka’s rebellion are at the same time advancing the process of alienation. the manifestation of the role rejection is destroying the ‘bride’s dowry.’ the change of roles in bianka’s case is the process of moving in turn from destruction to aggression (when, in a premeditated way, she uses the role imposed on her on her wedding night and manifests herself to beniamin, her husband, as a chimera/ghost – terrorizing her victim). the final attempt at liberation is more drastic in its effect. at the end of the drama bianka denies the imposed tradition, and brushes aside the woman’s role by the abolition of her own gender. from this state of aggression she moves to self-destruction, and from gender struggle she reaches reconciliation through the transgression of gender: “bianka takes big scissors and cuts her hair, close to the skin, unevenly. she puts the scissors away. she covers her breasts with her hands and says to her reflection in the mirror: <i am> and then after a while she shouts: <i am ready>” (wm. 81-82). jen typewritten text 44 volume 20, number 1 bianka’s act proves a conscious disposal of the attributes of femininity. bianka, in a way transgressing against gender, is only <free from …> free from the terror of gender but she also wants to be <free to …> free in an affirmative sense, also towards others, towards her fellowmen – to find her own identity in this inter-human relation. not being able to escape from her femininity or to regain her father’s acceptance, she is doomed to perform the symbolic act of mutilating her gender identity: “bianka: i am (she takes a step towards beniamin), i am … (she lowers her arms) … your (whispering) brother …” covering bianka’s gender by depriving the character of the attributes of femininity causes a symbol of androgyny, not in the meaning of lack of definitiveness or lack of gender or hemaphroditism, but as a manifestation of humanity despite gender – the human condition of a woman. the act of bianka’s and paulina’s transgression of social norms on the theatrical stage finds its counterpart in transgressing the rules of dramatic probability. therefore, bianka’s words: ‘i am … your … brother …’ may also mean: ‘be my brother’, or ‘i (the woman) am also a human being’. so the statement that bianka’s rebellion against her own gender in the name of the full human condition has all the traits of tragedy, does not seem exaggerated. indeed, zbigniew majchrowski says that “white marriage shows a tragic conflict at the most basic level of existence, ‘the return to the body’ in rózewicz’s work results in the discovery of a new antinomy: between the human being and gender” (1993:135). in this drama of the human condition, gender turns out to be a tragic privilege. and the fact that the reality of cultural gender is created thanks to confirmed social presentation means that the images of the essence of biological gender, the real or expected masculinity or femininity, also create a part of the strategy whose aim is to hide the performative aspect of cultural gender. that is why cultural gender cannot be understood as a role which either expresses or masks the inner ‘i,’ irrespective of whether it is marked by gender or not. as a performative representation, cultural gender is an ‘act’ which creates the social fiction of one’s own psychological interior. this model of selfhood is unlike that of erving goffman, who describes an ‘i’ that assumes and changes ‘roles’ within the framework of complex social expectations towards the ‘game’ of contemporary life. so the ‘i’ is not only unavoidably ‘outside’ as a creation of social discourse, but the very image of the interior is the socially regulated and sanctioned form of fabricating the essence of the human being. “the fact that this assurance easily substitutes anxiety, that culture so willingly inflicts punishment or pushes to the margin those who do not act the illusion of the essentialism of cultural gender, should be a sufficient sign that at a certain level there is social knowledge about the fact that the truth or falsity of cultural gender was socially imposed and does not, in any sense, constitute ontological necessity” (butler 1997:415). an american theatre phenomenologist, bert o. states, when writing about the function of dramatic art, enumerates four principal functions of dramatic art: as a means of objectivization of the subjective life of a community; theatrical reality experienced empirically; a perceptive function as watched during the performance; and the theatrical quasireality prepared from the substance of one’s own body. the theatre for states is the illusion of an unreal world, since the world on stage is never a full, complete, defined world, and it is in danger of constant incomplete-creation. according to states, the theatre should be examined in two ways: semiotically and phenomenologically, or in what way the objects of the real or fictional world are established in the spectator’s consciousness. gender and language are two parallel though different systems of human entanglement. i will therefore consider the problem of physicality of characters in rózewicz’s drama on the basis of the semiotics of their behavior and the ‘psychoanalysis of the confession,’ which, in my opinion, will show the functioning of stereotypes within the range of roles ascribed to gender. ‘confession’ here does not mean holy confession but the humanely human one, in which a human being stands in front of another human being, and the world of drama is a world without god. the confession of characters is the confession of their hidden fears and drives. thanks to this, the individual complexes of characters are at the same time the internal manifestation of stereotypes of a broadly understood culture. since particular characters of the drama become not so much the embodiment of the literary cultural model, e.g. of a 17th century nobleman, like grandpa (the cult jen typewritten text 45 volume 20, number 1 of a sabre and a horse referring to the knightly model), but rather a projection of group imagination of the nation dominated by this model. since group imagination loses the model itself, and it only keeps the gestures and props associated with it, in the theatre it finds its expression in both the characters’ behavior and their language. gestures and props in rózewicz’s theatrical work turn out to be remnants of old rituals and symbols, which have now acquired the status of stereotypes. the polish mother, or ‘whole life pregnancy,’ as one of the female characters confesses, is the resignation from one’s own personality, submission to the rhythm of biology, being the guardian of hearth and home. beniamin is a pastiche of a romantic poet, who almost does not talk at all, but recites, or speaks through somebody else’s poems. in paulina’s behavior the awareness of the theatricalization of life manifests itself – theatricalization through gender and literature; and at the same time the awareness of not being able to fit into both orders: of poetry and of life: “paulina: (…) i am not a nymph or goplana who lives on poetry and seaweed.” but it seems that paulina’s rebellion against the ascribed role has an infantile character and is doomed to fail. for, is there a chance of ‘freedom’ in the theatricalized world? paulina assumes the role of a director in a theatricalized reality since, as it turns out, she finds a substitute for freedom in the role. gender in white marriage is expressed through the position assumed in the arrangement of two powers of male aggression and female submission (father-bull and mother). “it is the attitude to power which makes some a <man> and others a <woman> irrespective of biological gender” (barthes 1970:105). hence beniamin, who declines participation in the gender game, seems to be a character undefined in terms of gender. in rózewicz’s drama, it’s not nature or biological gender that defines the characters’ identity but how others see them. so the arbitrary division between ‘male’ and ‘female’ is no longer valid, but only the gender of aggression and the gender of submission exist. rózewicz’s drama is not only entangled in literary contexts of polish romanticism and modernism. the parody of a polish manor house does not exhaust the problems of the piece. the playwright is looking for language beyond the canon of literature, since even if we find allusions to romanticism, they are not allusions to that of the great poets or of emigration, but to local romanticism. the young poland motifs are not like those from wyspianski’s tradition, but are an attempt at a dialogue in expressing the problems of a contemporary human being, gender and freedom, because the problem of gender in rózewicz’s work is related to the problem of a terrorizing society. the imperative to be the same as everybody else becomes a far greater danger for individual drives and individual existence. difference is treated in the drama as a stigma, and every departure from the ‘norm’ as a taboo. “the terror of society is practically expressed through the terror of gender. it is society that has alienated human gender beyond nature through connecting it with the system of social roles and behaviour models (…). androgyny is commonly believed to be a blasphemy cast upon a ‘normal’ human being” (majchrowski 1993:112-3). in view of which, if we agree with butler’s concept that ‘male’ and ‘female’ are only cultural constructs, the tragic character of human nature and human condition in rózewicz’s work is visible in the figure of being different, which is always stigmatized by society. phenomenological descriptions of the theatre allow for the analysis and differentiation of characters from among other theatre beings. we talk about theatre when the actor, endowed with a certain real character traits, creates the scheme of the role on the basis of instructions and presents the character on the basis of this scheme. and the spectator, watching a play in the theatre, creates an assumed character (presented on stage). the character then exists on various levels of concreteness, as a scheme of the role, as the character presented every evening, and finally as a character assumed by a particular spectator. contrary to the theatrical character, presented here and now and unique, the assumed character is the character which i, as a spectator, interpret, and in which the theatre performance attains its greatest concreteness. an assumed character is the subject of the spectator’s psychological acts, which remains the unique property of an individual spectator, who during the theatre performance or in the act of reading guesses the specific, quasi-real substantiality of the character. the assumed character differs from the real character in the degree of concreteness. the assumed stage character constitutes the spectator’s focus of attention, so if the assumed character is eliminated from the theatre, this means that the spectator stops reacting to the actor’s playing. jen typewritten text 46 volume 20, number 1 often, while perceiving the play in the theatre, the spectator diverts his or her attention from the assumed character, but when s/he stops reacting to it, this is no longer theatre. according to states, the aesthetic distance in the theatre gives spectators security. states enumerates three ways in which the theatre speaks to the audience: modus of self-creation or the presentation of the actor; modus of cooperation, or the audience; and the modus of representation, which he considers to be essentially dramatic. the difference between the expression and the presentation is essential, because if the features and acts of the cultural gender, different ways in which the body shows or creates its cultural meaning, are performative, then the identity ahead of them does not exist. true or false, real or distorted acts of cultural gender do not exist either, and the postulate of real gender identity turns out to be the regulating fiction. conclusion white marriage was considered a play questioning habits and beliefs related to the cultural division of roles imposed by the patriarchal culture of the time. however, rózewicz’s plays in which female characters appear reveal his fears of feminism. all his female characters are the embodiment of a gendered stereotype: a fat woman in files, the virgin hero in spaghetti and the sword, a demonic housewife in on all fours, silly girls, faithful wives, and fiancées. young and attractive women exist in rózewicz’s dramas mainly as sexual objects: fiancées from war time, the secretary and the journalist in files. characters like beniamin and bianka play a key role in the feminist reading of the play. the character of beniamin is built of literary quotations, so his identity, deprived of a permanent character and internal coherence, turns out to be problematic. bianka emerges as a literary construction to an even larger extent. one could even venture the statement – just as halina filipowicz suggests in her book (2000) that rózewicz’s play seems close to the feminist aesthetics through its resistance to the unifying power and the strict discipline of the logical mind, which is usually ascribed to male domination or power. nevertheless, such a conclusion would be based on the assumption that each gender has its own essential features, which would only strengthen the stereotypes of the cultural differences between genders, while the performative aspect of gender allows for the interpretation of gender in categories of variety, and also as a kind of ‘game‘ with the convention. references albert, andrzej 1989 najnowsza historia polski, [the newest history of poland, part iv], część iv 1956-1980, warszawa. second polish edition by polonia book fund, london. barthes, roland 1970 człowiek racine`a, [racine’s man] in: mit i znak. eseje. [myth and sign. essays]. selection and foreword j. błoński, p.105. warszawa. butler, judith 1997 performative acts and gender constitution, an essay in phenomenology and feminist theory, in: writing on the body. female embodiment and feminist theory, pp. 409-410., ed. by. k. conboy, columbia university press. ciechomska, maria 1996 od matriarchatu do feminizmu, [from matriarchy to feminism], poznań, p. 317. filipowicz, halina 2000 a laboratory of impure forms. the plays of tadeusz różewicz, translated from the greenwood press edition, published in the usa by greenwood publishing group, inc, westport, ct, usa. goffman, erving 1981 człowiek w teatrze życia codzinnego, [a human in the theatre of everyday life], warszawa. keler, józef 1975 na temat i nie na temat. z tadeuszem różewiczem rozmawia... w: “odra”miesięcznik społecznokulturalny nr 6 (184) [a conversation to the point and not to the point with tadeusz różewicz …] , in “odra” social and cultural monthly,, p.65-69. warszawa. jen typewritten text 47 volume 20, number 1 kubikowski, tadeusz 1994 siedem bytów teatralnych. o fenomenologii sztuki scenicznej. seven theatrical existences. about the phenomenology of the scenic art. warszawa. majchrowski, zbigniew 1993 pusty konfesjonał, czyli spowiedź stereotypów,[an empty confessional or the confession of stereotypes] in: <poezja jak otwarta rana>. czytając różewicza, [<poetry like an open wound> reading różewicz], p.135. warszawa. różewicz, tadeusz 1975 białe małżeństwo i inne utwory sceniczne, [white marriage and another plays], kraków. senelick, laurence 1992 gender and performance. hanover, nh: university press of new england. jen typewritten text 48 film review: “returning home: revival of a bosnian village” tone bringa (producer, anthropologist) with peter loizos (consultant) volume 21, number 2 film review: “returning home: revival of a bosnian village” tone bringa (producer, anthropologist) with peter loizos (consultant) reviewer: elissa helms, university of pittsburgh © 2003 elissa helms all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. tone bringa’s “returning home: revival of a bosnian village” chronicles the return of several muslim (bosniac) families to their homes in the once ethnically mixed village in central bosnia from which they were expelled in 1993 during the bosnian war. this is also the village where bringa conducted 15 months of field research in the late 1980's (bringa 1995). the film is a sequel to the 1993 granada television production, “we are all neighbors,” an excellent, though chilling account of the breakdown of neighborly relations and friendships between muslims (bosniacs) and catholics (croats) in the village as fighting between croat hvo forces and the (muslimdominated) bosnian army moves closer and the muslims are eventually expelled. in three visits from 1999-2001, “returning home” chronicles the process of return through the experiences of muslim returnees and some of the croats displaced by muslim forces who have taken temporary refuge in the muslims’ houses. nusreta, the wife of the couple bringa followed in the first film, reappears. she is unusually fortunate in that she has been working and saving money to supplement the rebuilding of her house by a foreign aid agency. the case of tifija, an older woman from the village, illustrates the lot of most displaced persons (dps) who are barely making ends meet and whose houses are not initially designated for reconstruction by the aid agencies. as we follow the would-be returnees, some of the enormous complexities and problems of refugee return come into focus. we see how each return is linked to the fate of a chain of other families; for one family to reclaim its house or flat, another must relinquish it, assuming the house of the second family is not being occupied by someone else or was not totally destroyed. the role of foreign aid agencies in rebuilding houses is presented as a blessing for those whose homes are rebuilt but a source of frustration for those denied such aid. unfortunately, however, no representatives of the aid agencies are interviewed, nor do we see them interacting with any of their would-be beneficiaries. this aspect is thus left insufficiently explored, as is the larger role of the international community in setting policy and influencing (or not) return in post-war bosnia. the main thrust of the film is to highlight the bonds of solidarity that have grown up between muslim returnees and the croat dps staying in the village awaiting the reconstruction of their own houses. although each group has reason to distrust members of the other group, these women express solidarity with each other on the basis of their common experiences as victims of ethnic cleansing. these bonds are reinforced through coffee hospitality and expressions of good will through the stressing of common values that transcend religious (read: ethnic) differences. despite these overtures, however, the narratives of those interviewed reflect a sense of unease. it is as if people are trying desperately to hold onto the possibility of living together with ethnic “others,” to reinforce to themselves and others that they have nothing to do with the nationalist politics that have torn their communities apart, even while they are consumed by the nearly inescapable “us/them” way despite these overtures, however, the narratives of those interviewed reflect a sense of unease. it is as if people are trying desperately to hold onto the possibility of living together with ethnic “others,” to reinforce to themselves and others that they have nothing to do with the nationalist politics that have torn their communities apart, even while they are consumed by the nearly inescapable “us/them” way of thinking about social relations and politics that has engulfed bosnia since the war began.. nusreta is clear that she would not return to the village if it were in “their” hands, meaning croat control. the joint muslim-croat police patrols are key to the returnees’ sense of security (and presumably also for the croat stayees). similarly, when tifija finally returns to the village, she giddily tells bringa that, with the help of the police, she “kicked out” the croat jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 119 volume 21, number 2 who had been occupying her house. the goodwill towards fellow dps of different ethnic groups is thus tempered by the continued mistrust between (muslim) dps/returnees and those (croats) who stayed or refuse to leave areas under croat control (and may have participated in the expulsions). in this light, there is a curious absence of attention to the croats who stayed in the village, even for those who have not seen “we are all neighbors” in which several village croats appear. we do get a few hints about the village croats when bringa asks nusreta about the reception from their croat neighbors: they only greet the muslims in the street but have not welcomed them back. aside from this exchange, however, the only interaction with croats in the film is with the croat dps. the film ends with bringa’s voice explaining that the muslim and croat communities have been brought back into proximity but remain socially distant. unlike the first film, however, it does not explore the dynamics of that distance. it is understandable, considering bringa’s long-term relationship with the muslim families she studied in the 1980's and all that has happened in the 1990's, for her to sympathize with the muslims, also the clear victims in this village and in the nearby market town of kiseljak. perhaps her relations with the village croats have thus become strained. this is a constant risk anthropologists take in forging relationships with those they study. yet it would have been more satisfying to this reviewer had this film sought to explain that absence or explore the consequences of the anthropologist’s positionality. the film also focuses heavily on women, although there is no mention of this fact or of specific issues facing women dps and villagers. (nor is there any reflection by the women themselves on women’s gendered roles as there was to a small degree in the first film.) again, this approach stands out most for viewers familiar with the first film which featured nusreta with her husband, nurija, and their children as a family. in the present film, we are introduced only to nusreta, though we recognize nurija in a few scenes; there is likewise no mention of the couple’s children. this is significant because, as one croat dp laments and as is obvious from the age of the returnees we meet (mostly middle aged to elderly), very few young people are returning to the villages. it would be interesting to know where nusreta’s son, who should be nearly 21 by the time she moves back into her house, lives and whether he intends to remain in the village. given what is happening elsewhere in bosnia in villages and small towns where dps are returning to areas of different ethnic control, it is likely that he is remaining in (bosniac controlled) visoko or sarajevo where he has some chance of finding work or continuing his education. furthermore, we are told at the end of the film that half a million dps in bosnia are waiting to return home. it should be remembered that not all dps do want to return, not only for (nationalist) political reasons but also for practical ones. indeed, though there are exceptions, it is mostly the elderly and unemployed who are returning to rural areas, subsisting on the products of home gardens and remittances from grown children abroad or in areas of bosnia under the control of “their” ethnic group. in this light, and given the social gulf which exists, at least for now, between bosniacs and the croats who stayed, this film does not exactly show the “revival of a bosnian village” promised in the subtitle. like “we are all neighbors,” then, the title gives an ironic edge to what is actually depicted in the film. finally, as a film production “ returning home” unfortunately does not reflect the quality of professional filmmaking apparent in “we are all neighbors.” to be sure, the film contains several moments of vivid ethnographic detail which is difficult to achieve in written accounts. yet the viewer has more a feeling of watching purposefully set-up interviews rather than following the normal interactions of people going about their everyday lives. some of the film’s shortcomings may thus be more due to production decisions rather than anthropological design. in sum, in its depiction of the perhaps unexpected sense of solidarity being forged between muslim and croat dps, “ returning home” is a thought-provoking look at the postwar return process from the perspective of those who wish to return. one can perhaps not expect an hour-long documentary to fully cover every element of this process, yet several relevant aspects remain unaddressed. getting at the wider picture would mean exploring the experiences and feelings of the village croats who stayedb feelings toward both muslim returnees and the croat dps in their midst, as dp populations are often resented even by those of the same ethnic jen typewritten text 120 volume 21, number 2 background. it would also be revealing to hear from villagers of all ethnic backgrounds who are not returning. likewise, it would be useful to have more on the role of the international community, both in its political and humanitarian aid roles (if these can be separated). supplemented with such contextual information, the film will be useful in teaching classes on the region, on ethnic reconciliation or the problems of post-war reconstruction. “we are all neighbors,” however, remains the better film, unfortunately for those of us who are keen to emphasize the cooperative and tolerant aspects of bosnian social life rather than the equally present divisive hostility which has been magnified and(re)produced by nationalist politics and war. jen typewritten text 121 the anthropology of east europe review: central europe, eastern europe and eurasia volcme 21. l'\umber,:2 fall,2003 editors barb west robert rotenberg eva huseby-darvas nancy ries lhatti bunzl laszlo kiirti special issue: ethnographies of postsocialism contents introduction to special issce: eth1':ographies of postsocialism ....................................................... 3 julie hemment, guest editor university of yfassachusetts, amherst ...................................................................... 3 departures from home: czech perspectives on difference ................................................................... 7 david altshuler. american bar foundation ............................................................................................................. 7 the new power of old men: priv atisation a;'!d famil y relations in mesterszallas (hungary) ......................................................................................................................................................................... 15 tatjanathelen, max planck institute ..................................................................................................................... 15 mapping the kingdom of plastic bags: the topography of fairytale cynicism in chelnochovsk-na-dniestre. ukraine ................................................................................................................ 23 diana r. blank, university of california at berkeley ............................................................................................ 23 the challenges of socialization in business education: the case of the school of management. st. petersburg state universlty ........................................................................................... 29 protecti1':g the young and sending of the dead: old belief and the politics of "religious drink, drank, drunk: a social· political grammar of russian drinking practices in a irina pshenichnikova. st. petersburg state university ........................................................................................... 29 revival" in the russian urals .............................................................................................................................. 37 douglas j. rogers. university of michigan ........................................................................................................... 37 colonial context ....................................................................................................................................................... 41 david koester, university of alaska fairbanks ..................................................................................................... 41 death and the desecrated: ~,mnuments of the socialist past it, post-1989 bulgaria ............ 49 nikolai voukov. central european university, budapest. ..................................................................................... 49 history, subversion and low-intei\sity conflict in the soviet union 1 ......................................... 57 robert owen krikorian, harvard university ......................................................................................................... 57 rethinking developtvlenttemplates:women and microcredit i;,! post·socialist southeaster;'! europe ................................................................................................................................................ 65 kristen ghodsee. bowdoin college ....................................................................................................................... 65 vol. 21, no.2, 2003, page: i r review driven women: reconceptualizing the traffic in women in the margins of europe through the case of gagacz mobile domestics in istanbu ............................................................... 73 leyla j. keough. university of massachusetts, amherst.. ..................................................................................... 73 nationalist tensions: tradition and modernity in discussions of kyrgyz bride-capture i81 ethan \viiensky-lanford, reed college ................................................................................................................ 81 the "nation-ing" of gender? donor policies, islam. and women's ngos in post-war bosnia­ herzegovina ................................................................................................................................................................... 85 elissa helms. university of pittsburgh .................................................................................................................. 85 establishing a public sphere in a croatian borderland ...................................................................... 95 dickie wallace, uni versity of ivlassachusetts amherst ......................................................................................... 95 queering civil society in postsocialist slovakia .................................................................................. 103 viera wallace-lorencova, university of massachusetts, amherst ...................................................................... 103 reflections on fieldwork with romani women: race, class, and feminism in bosnja­ herzegovina ................................................................................................................................................................. 113 jennifer erickson, university of oregon .............................................................................................................. 113 film review: "retcrning home: revival of a bosnian village" tone bringa (producer, anthropologist) with peter lolzos (consultant) ................................................................................... 119 reviewer: elissa helms. university of pittsburgh ............................................................................................... 119 errata: in the spring 2003 aeer, sharon hudgin's university affiliation was incorrectly identified on her article. "a trinity of siberian easter-season meals." she was formerly at the university of maryland, and is 1 now an independent scholar and researcher in texas. she was never affiliated with northeastern illinois i university. we apologize for the mistake. (, please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($15/yr. for full-time faculty and professionals, $1o/yr for students and part-time faculty; (european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($20), or additional copies ofthis special issue ($20) to the managing editor: f a fthe web page for the anthropology ofeast europe review/east european t anthropology group contains links to most ofthe previously published articles. it can be found at this url: http://las1.depaul.edu/aeer/ 1= c barbara west, managing editor, uni versi ty of the pacific, stockton, ca 95211. s bwest@uop.edu tl [i nancy ries (soyuz), anthropology, colgate university, hamilton, ny 13346. c nries@mail.co\gate.edu. ii h © uni versi ty of the pacific 2003 y s issn: 1054-4720 p a u s p vol. 21, no.2, 2003, page: 2 http:nries@mail.co\gate.edu mailto:bwest@uop.edu http://las1.depaul.edu/aeer correspondence: reply to michał buchowski chris hann, max planck institute though we have recently discussed some of the same issues at conferences, the published version of michał buchowski’s critique of western anthropological work dealing with central and eastern europe (cee) (hierarchies of knowledge in central-eastern european anthropology, aeer 22(2):5-14) contained some sharp surprises for me. this response is offered in the same spirit, and i am sure that our friendship will survive! 1. buchowski is obviously correct in most of what he says about ‘hierarchies of knowledge.’ world-wide it is the english language that dominates the discipline. even in cee, english tends nowadays to be the lingua franca (previously this role was played by german; almost half a century of soviet domination did little to establish russian in this role). as a result, anglo-american scholars such as myself enjoy advantages that we do not deserve. i have always been aware of this, and never more so than in recent years while working in germany and struggling to master the old lingua franca of the region. let me note here that the inequities of international scholarly publishing affect scholars in germany in the same way as those who struggle to establish journals in poznań, ljubljana, etc. we too, at the max planck institute (mpi), spend a lot of time and energy preparing camera-ready copy for subsidized publications which we then circulate in exactly the same informal ways described by buchowski. (my general plea to all fellow actors in this unsatisfactory market is simply this: please try to arrange for editing by a native speaker, and please take the trouble to include an index.) 2. having acknowledged this basic injustice, what can one do about it apart from handwringing? buchowski’s critique moves at various levels. at the general theoretical level, he suggests that ‘the field of postsocialist study’ is best seen as an invention of western scholarship. he is not the first to draw on said’s ‘orientalism’ as an analogy. but whereas i have argued (hann 1995) 1 that anthropologists can provide the corrective to such orientalizing tendencies, it seems that for buchowski we are among the main culprits. i find this charge highly exaggerated. 3. for buchowski the problem has roots in the works carried out by westerners in the socialist period. the problem with my monograph of a village in south-east poland (hann 1985) is apparently not that i failed to pay sufficient attention to polish scholarship but that only two authors listed in the select bibliography were ‘ethnographers.’ i can only plead that i found the works of rural sociologists and historians more relevant to my modest project than the works of ethnographers, whose general interest in the traditional ‘folk culture’ was not of much use to me in examining a community that was a product of 1940s ethnic cleansing. buchowski himself has told us (1997) that his ethnographer colleagues by and large ignored contemporary social issues in the villages. i cannot think of any polish ethnographers at the time of my project who combined an interest in western anthropology with serious fieldwork on socio-economic issues in their own society. this changed only in the 1990s, when scholars such as zdzisław mach, jacek nowak, and buchowski himself carried out important empirical projects. their studies would be highly relevant to my project, were i to begin it afresh. but in the 1980s, when i got to know michał buchowski in cambridge, he wanted to discuss rationality with ernest gellner and shamanism with stephen hughjones. he showed only a minimal polite interest in my project in his own country, and i never expected more. how could i possibly 1 this is one of those home-made publications typical of eastern europe, and it lacks an index. it was actually made when i was still based in britain and is available from the department of anthropology at the university of kent (canterbury). i am also open to ‘stone age’ direct-exchange offers of the sort described by buchowski. jen typewritten text 194 have asked him to read and criticize my work, when it was obvious that his own intellectual interests lay elsewhere? (others in michał buchowski’s department in poznań did express interest in what i might be doing in a carpathian village. i recall being visited in the field by two enthusiastic students of etnografia, as the discipline was still called; but they could not really understand my concern to document the prevailing economic and political structures, just as i could muster little intellectual interest in their project to photograph and catalogue the roadside religious monuments of the region.) 4. leaving aside such ancient personal history, i am more perturbed by the accusation that the mpi in halle, where i have worked since 1999, is discriminating against cee scholars and privileging the work of westerners. this charge needs to be placed in the context of the changing anthropological field in cee. as in other former socialist countries, the terrain is far from stable. there has been some opening up to western anthropological styles, and the entire issue of aeer in which buchowski’s piece was published is an example of the kinds of influence that appear to be spreading. for some cee scholars in anthropology/ ethnography, all change is unwelcome, while for others it has been taking place much too slowly. at the mpi we have made a point of inviting scholars with a more traditional orientation in ‘folklore’ as well as colleagues whose research orientation is closer to our own. we do not see ourselves as missionaries, and all our own researchers are encouraged to form non-exploitative partnerships with local scholars in the countries in which they carry out their research. 5. let me give some more specific data to illustrate what i am saying. buchowski would perhaps agree that nothing is more important for the future of our subject than the training of phd students. prompted by his critical article, i drew up a list of the students we currently support and those who have already completed their doctorates in my department. the thirteen students are divided equally between east and west: 4 west germans, 1 italian, 1 american, 2 romanians, 1 estonian, 1 slovak, 1 bulgarian, 1 pole, and 1 east german! among the ‘easterners,’ three are working primarily in their own societies, while all the others have had to face the same linguistic hurdles that i had to face in poland a generation ago. but regardless of whether they are in some sense working ‘at home,’ all students spend at least 12 months collecting data in the field before returning to the mpi for the ‘writing-up’ phase. it may seem inadequate to define a discipline in terms of its research methods but i suggest that this emphasis upon long-term immersion in the field is perhaps the main feature distinguishing our kind of anthropology from the usual practices of the colleagues with whom we work in cee and other postsocialist countries – including such innovative bridgebuilders as buchowski.2 6. this, then, might be the basis for an answer to michał buchowski. if he and other ‘local scholars’ wish to be as widely read as some of the outsiders who write about cee, then they need to put in the field time and write monographs of equivalent depth and sophistication. in this respect buchowski’s cahier of 1997, published by the centre marc bloch in berlin, which he himself describes as an essay, is thin in comparison with one of its sources of inspiration, nagengast (1991). it 2 it would be a retrospective rationalization to claim that such fieldwork was an explicitly formulated criterion for inclusion in my edited collections on socialism and postsocialism, criticized by buchowski for their imbalance; but he might bear in mind that the first of these volumes was the product of a conference of the association of social anthropologists of britain and the commonwealth; i had little control over the papers that were offered (including several on “african socialism”), though the organizers did go to a lot of trouble to raise funds to support the participation of russian and cee colleagues. the second volume was indeed the result of invitations issued to attend a launch conference for my department at the mpi in 2000. the aim was to give as broad a view as possible of the anthropological work that had been undertaken in the 1990s, both regionally and thematically. rural change was covered in this volume by western colleagues with a much longer record of fieldwork-based research than michał buchowski. jen typewritten text 195 can of course be argued that such ‘malinowskian’ fieldwork is but a poor second-best for the accumulated insider knowledge of the ‘native ethnographer.’ tamás hofer addressed these issues more than thirty years ago, arguing that the two perspectives were different but complementary (see the republication of this classic essay with a new preface by the author in hann, sárkány, and skalník 2005; note that all of the contributors to this volume apart from myself are natives of the country whose anthropological history they document!). even though much has changed in recent years, including new forms of fieldwork by cee scholars, it seems premature to speak of a full disciplinary convergence. 7. i would question whether such convergence is desirable anyway. why should cee scholars try harder to write books about cee that compete with the products of foreign scholars for publication by cornell, cambridge, or some other prestigious player in the market that is dominated by the angloamericans? is this the only career option open to them? the entire thrust of buchowski’s contribution is to complain that the voices of westerners who write about cee are louder than those of the local scholars. nowhere in his article does he consider the possibility that cee anthropologists might take advantage of postsocialist freedoms to embark on anthropological projects outside their home countries. this seems to me regrettable. it seems that virtually every contributor in the issue of aeer in which his article appeared is speaking from a national perspective; in this sense rather little has changed, the cee ethnographers/anthropologists are still confining themselves to their national frames. but michał buchowski is an internationally respected scholar who has spent many years conducting research outside his country. might he not consider spending a year in the field somewhere, anywhere, instead of doing his fieldwork at home and confining his foreign trips to academic institutions? if he were to do this, he might find himself having to develop complex working relations with the ‘local scholars’ – and feeling some of the same exasperation that i felt when reading his aeer contribution! i suggest that this experience would place him in a better position to undertake similar in-depth work in his own country, and thus to compete more effectively in that sector of the market. 8. of course one solution to buchowski’s problem is that we should all do our fieldwork at home; apart from visits to each other’s academic institutions! 9. my own view is that there is much to be gained from working elsewhere, especially early in one’s career. if linguistic and financial conditions can be fulfilled, i encourage all phd students to work outside their home societies (at present this is not realistic for us at the mpi, mainly because we are unable to offer more than 3 years funding). i believe this is the best way for theoretical as well as empirical progress to occur in our discipline. as an example i would cite the work of yulian konstantinov, the bulgarian anthropologist whose work on the informal economy has added significantly to our knowledge of postsocialist developments in his native country. nonetheless, his recent fieldwork has been mostly based on the kola peninsula of northern russia; following this research, carried out in cooperation with mpisa’s siberian studies centre, he and his student vladislava vladimirova have contributed the concept of sovkhoism to the anthropological tool-kit (2002). personally i find this idea, as it is developed in their ethnography, more inspiring than the intellectual pyrotechnics that appear to be suffusing some anthropology programs in some cee countries these days (the concept might also prove useful in analyzing buchowski’s own materials from poland). i have much sympathy with students who react to some of the new courses now on offer in cee with the sentiment that, “if that is really what socio-cultural anthropology is all about nowadays, then better to sign up for a traditional ethnography course and document the vanishing folk culture by making two-week excursions to the countryside, just as our predecessors have done since the nineteenth century!” jen typewritten text 196 references cited: buchowski, michał. 1997. reluctant capitalists. berlin: centre marc bloch. hann, c. m. 1985. a village without solidarity; polish peasants in years of crisis. new haven: yale university press. -1995. the skeleton at the feast; contributions to east european anthropology. (canterbury, csac monographs 9). hann, chris, mihály sárkány, and peter skalník (eds.). 2005. studying people in the people’s democracies: socialist era anthropology in east-central europe. münster: lit. konstantinov, yulian and vladislava vladimirova. 2002. ambigious transition: agrarian reforms, management, and coping practices in murmansk region reindeer herding. working paper no. 35. halle (saale): max planck institute for social anthropology. nagengast, carole. 1991. reluctant socialists. boulder, co: westview. jen typewritten text 197 xenophobic attitudes and new russian patriotism: a case study of youth in krasnodar territory anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 69 xenophobic attitudes and new russian patriotism: a case study of youth in krasnodar territory elena omel’chenko and natal’ia goncharova ul’ianovsk state university the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have been marked by major ethnic conflicts, fuelled by growing geo-political claims and the rise of nationalistic and xenophobic attitudes in the public consciousness. these phenomena are rooted in processes taking place both on a global level (moral panic over the growth in terrorism, fear of pro-islamic opinion, and reactions to anti-government protests about rising immigration across europe)i human rights and information centres are tackling this problem primarily by monitoring demonstrations of radical nationalism and racial intolerance by extremist groups and the use of hostile language by the central and regional media (see, for example: proiavleniia radikal’nogo natsionalizma 2007; kozhevnikova 2006; krasnodarskii pravozashchitnii tsentr 2002; riazantsov 2005). in contrast, the research upon which this article draws is concerned with concealed dislike or ‘everyday’ xenophobia. rather than examining systematized nationalistic or racist attitudes, therefore, the discussion focuses on relatively unstructured, irrational reactions on an emotional level to the presence of ‘outsiders’ and at a domestic level. in russia’s particular case, the spread of xenophobic attitudes has been aggravated as a result of inconsistent and ambiguous government policy and a constantly shifting media debate; new patriotic tendencies emerge in the wake of each new government resolution aimed at ‘combating’ the rise in publicly-aired extremist views or, conversely, fostering patriotism. ii in everyday life. this is not to suggest, however, that xenophobic attitudes in russia are developing in a social vacuum. such attitudes are closely connected to the history of xenophobia in soviet state policy as well as to distinctive features of russian mentality and culture and the current phase of national structuring in russia. thus, before moving to the more detailed discussion of how these attitudes are reproduced on an everyday level, a brief definition of key concepts and their political context are provided. a note on concepts the first distinction that must be made is between nationalism and racism on the one hand and xenophobic attitudes on the other. according to leading russian social scientists engaged in the study of russian and post-soviet nationalism, ‘our [russian]’ ideology can be clearly differentiated from both a xenophobic mindset and from all recognizable global models of nationalism (gudkov & dubin 2005; beseda s l. gudkovym i b. dubinym 2006; dubin 2006). gudkov and dubin define the characteristics of russian nationalism underpinning the presentday model of the rossiianin (the russian citizen), as consisting of: a confidence in the superiority of the russians above all other ethnic groups; a pride in the fact that russians are an empire-building race giving them an innate privilege to choose where they live and to occupy high-status positions in government, the economy and education; militarism expressed in the special role played by the armed forces in building the russian state, shaping national and ethnic identity and in the pursuit of geopolitical expansionism; and the idea of some organic unity of the russian people perceived to have been shaped by their historic fate. as a consequence, they argue, russian society has a tendency towards isolationism, anti-western sentiment and the negative, mechanistic integration of a heterogeneous population by means of repression and police control, carried out with the help of the ideologeme of ‘the enemy’ and ‘the hostile environment’. this is apparent both in the projection of negative ideas onto other societies and in the search for a ‘fifth column’ of non-russians, enemies within the state. however, the form of russian nationalism which is currently flourishing on the ruins of the country’s imperial culture is unable to provide any new political ideas or to designate the goals towards which society should move in order to modernise; indeed gudkov and dubin argue that present-day russian nationalism is notable for its persistently anti-modernist outlook, according to which everything ‘western’ is perceived as hostile. the growth of xenophobia and the search for an enemy are by no means peculiarly anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 70 ‘youth’ problems; they are symptoms of a disease afflicting the whole of russian society. the image of the ‘enemy’ cannot be successfully promoted and accepted if it is not supported by certain demands and expectations in the popular consciousness and if it does not correspond to already existing legends, stereotypes and myths. the idea of the ‘enemy’ (the ‘foreigner’ or ‘outsider’) is constructed simultaneously from both sides: by the interested ruling elite on the one hand and by various popular views, explanations, superstitions and symbols on the other. the situation of social tension is a convenient environment in which to form ‘social defences’ and the simplest of these is everyday xenophobia (gudkov 2005). in certain situations such xenophobia can become a deciding factor in uniting a nation against modernisation and thus it is a phenomenon that presents a real threat to the development of society. the growing interest in the youth ‘problem’ on the part of russia’s current state and political elite is clearly a matter of expediency. as a result of confrontations between the former ‘brothers and sisters’ of the soviet union, the threat of ‘revolutions’ (of various colours);iii the popularity of xenophobic, extreme nationalistic views among young people and the active, spontaneous search for a unifying national idea; public activists, politicians and social scientists have been forced to direct some of their attention away from the political elite towards society’s ground-level social agents (ordinary citizens). however, it remains unclear what is being labeled ‘correct’ (or conversely ‘deviant’) behaviour for young people while the spread of patriotic sentiment ‘from the top down’ encourages the growth of xenophobia. at the same time, not everything that takes place in the youth sphere is directly shaped by the discourse of politics and the state; young people who choose to become skinheads or join the national bolshevik party are making a cultural choice, which allows them to position themselves in relation to what is their ‘own’ and what is ‘foreign’. thus, any research of the kind reported below must consider both sides; it must examine the political/state discourse of patriotism on the one hand, and the characteristics of ‘patriotic youth protest’ on the other. the socio-political climate and xenophobic attitudes russia has always been a multi-ethnic state within which different ethnic groups have coexisted and interacted with one another. statistical data suggest that today more than twenty million people of non-russian nationality live in russia (malakhov 2001: 9) and moscow alone is home to representatives of 140 different nationalities. today, both in society at large and in the media, a vigorous discussion is taking place about the problems that have arisen in contemporary russian society in connection with spreading xenophobic attitudes, antipathy between national groups and race hatred. studies carried out by the levada centre show that there has been an increase in hostile, xenophobic attitudes. in 1989, when asked ‘do you believe our country has enemies?’, only 13% of those surveyed named particular figures or authorities and the most common response to the question was ‘why look for enemies, when all our problems are to be found within ourselves?’ ten years later, between 1999 and 2002, 65-70% of those questioned answered confidently: ‘yes, russia has enemies’. among those specified in descending order were: chechens, nato, islamic fundamentalists, democrats, and china. the search for enemies in russia is by no means a revelation of the post-soviet era. the foundations of a nationalistic mindset of a particularly defensive, imperialist nature were embedded at the state level and became more and more entrenched with each ‘stage’ of socialism reached. this tradition has continued throughout the post-soviet period. the crisis of 1998, when the total collapse of hope in a democratic future had an enormous impact on society’s moral state, is a particularly important turning point. over the years that followed, sociologists have observed a process of moral degradation and dramatic changes in the popular consciousness, including that of young people. these changes have included the expectation of authoritarian leadership and a general increase in compensatory chauvinism. in 1999, for example, there was an abrupt but short-lived outburst of anti-american feeling. then came a wave of revanchism in connection with the beginning of the second war in chechnya, shored up at state level by putin’s infamous quote in which he promised to ‘flush’ chechen guerrillas ‘down the toilet’; there followed a general increase in xenophobia and aggressive compensatory chauvinism. in 2004-06 the russian political elite and the media carried out an active ‘campaign’ against some of the country’s closest neighbours during which ‘official’ enemies were identified as the baltic states, georgia, moldova, ukraine and then all eastern european countries anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 71 entering the eu in 2004. in this climate, xenophobic sentiments may become central to ethno-national identification, turning the identifier ‘russian’ from a positive collective identification with particular philosophical or moral content into a purely negative defence against ‘others’. all these circumstances have heightened tension between the representatives of different ethnic groups. from the former members of the soviet union, a composite image of an enemy has been constructed, a scapegoat that could be blamed for the low standard of living of the ‘principal’ population because it supposedly hampered the development of the majority. ‘incomers’ (which is how members of minority nationalities are usually perceived) are blamed for polluting russia’s territory, taking jobs, and so on.iv judging by the numerous media publications on the subject, the attitudes and behaviour of the younger generation are causing particular concern, not least because a country’s youth is traditionally seen as indicative of its future. moreover, at present, young people are beginning to express their feelings of protest in rather menacing forms. the greatest threat is presented by so-called extremist youth organisations: the skinhead movement, russian national unity (rnu), the national bolshevik party (nbp), and others. these are the focus of particular attention from the authorities, public organisations and the media. in the first half of 2005, it is reported that there were around 200 victims of racially motivated crimes, including ten murders, in russia. current trends show that on the basis of official figures alone the number of such crimes is increasing by 30% each year (nekhamkin 2005). v it is generally thought that youth extremism is more chaotic and elemental than ‘adult’ extremism. however, analysts and some parts of the media have recently noted that acts by nationalist organisations are becoming more systematic and better organised. pickets and demonstrations are starting to be held regularly in major russian cities. there has also been a tendency for activists within such organisations to make their activities public. they have begun to claim responsibility for crimes committed out of nationalist motives and to make open threats towards representatives of the anti-fascist movement (kozhevnikova 2005: 3). young nationalists tend to target people of non-slavic appearance whether or not they are, in fact, ethnically non-russian. the findings of various sociological surveys suggest that the level of xenophobia in russia measured by the proportion of the population supporting xenophobic slogans fluctuated between 50-60% in the first half of 2005 (analiticheskii doklad moskovskogo biuro po pravam cheloveka 2005). the nationalities that provoked particular antipathy were all from the caucasus (azerbaijanis, chechens and armenians or, even more frequently, those ‘from the caucasus’ in general). the only non-caucasian group to feature high in this list were gypsies and, although significantly less frequently mentioned, jews. fear of immigrants in russia also remains strong. sociological surveys show that about 40% of the population doubt that immigration is good for the economy and more than 60% connect immigration with rising crime rates and increased unemployment among the local population. almost 70% were in favour of allowing russian-speaking russians to enter the country but of limiting the number of immigrants of other nationalities (ibid.). skinheads, the national bolshevik party and others: the official political view skinheads are recognised as the largest nationalist group in russia; official data from the ministry of internal affairs puts their numbers at around 10,000 (of whom about 1,500 are in moscow and st petersburg). however, according to the moscow bureau for human rights, a more accurate total estimate would be at least 50,000 (nekhamkin 2005) with 5-7,000 in moscow alone. the idea of the ‘purity’ of the russian nation is considered fundamental to the movement’s ideology and skinheads sanction all available means in the war against people of other nationalities which they see as part of a socially necessary ‘cleansing’ of their native town of ‘dirt’ or ‘scum’. however, it is important not to over-ideologise the movement, which is as much about young people ‘hanging out’ together as it is about politics. the russian ministry of internal affairs has declared the skinhead movement in russia to be unstructured with no well-defined leadership. however, when members of the skinhead collective are exposed to a ‘strong leader’, they are easily influenced (fedosenko 2004). thus, certain media reports have suggested that the former leaders of the now disbanded official youth organisation ‘idushchie vmeste’ (‘walking together’) and ringleaders of the skinhead anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 72 movement are actually one and the same people (shargunov 2002). the national bolshevik party (nbp) is another organisation that is causing concern. its activities are more systematic and ideologically informed than those of the skinhead movement. the nbp’s publication ‘general line’ (‘general’naia liniia’), formerly ‘limonka’, which actively promotes the views of the organisation, is popular across the country. the nbp cleverly positions itself as a patriotic political party opposed to the current ineffectual authorities. this advantageous position, combined with sophisticated propaganda, may, in the context of the country’s difficult economic situation, explain what attracts a considerable number of supporters, especially young people. according to mikhail sokolov, who has carried out research into youth extremism in russia, the nbp offers an example of ‘aestheticised’ politics that is particularly appealing to alternative, leftwing, radical youth (sokolov 2006). this aestheticisation is evident in the party’s stylised politics; the acknowledged leader of the nbp, eduard limonov, claims that ‘the nbp has its own unique style: striking and distinct. our people are not like those from the rnuvi youth extremism is a particular form of patriotism that fills in where other values are missing. today’s young people understand patriotism as the sense of belonging to a great nation, the desire to love and defend one’s motherland and, on a personal level, loyalty to, and protection of, one’s family and friends. this is why, for example, the campaign against certain ethnic groups promoted in the media as ‘enemies’, ‘foreigners ‘ and ‘invaders’ is perceived by extremists as the noble activity of ‘real patriots’. indeed, if the government fails to change its ‘patriotic’ political line, the skinhead movement may potentially develop some real political prospects. . rnu people are more ordinary’ (limonov 1998: 434). unlike the russian national unity party (rnu), the nbp does not engage in political moralising and its theatrical style is more appealing to sophisticated young people. thus, while the nbp continues to attract public sympathy, the ‘tough’ style of the rnu, which won support for that organisation back in the 1990s, has been barely visible since 2002, and the organisation and its followers have been thrown into crisis (sokolov 2006). vii it has been suggested that this might be prevented by engaging in various preventative measures such as organising activities for young people (youth clubs, sports facilities and mass events) and carrying out educational work promoting tolerance towards ‘the other’. at the same time, however, some sections of the media argue that it would be more effective to capitalize on current patriotic attitudes as does, for example, the movement ‘nashi’viii . despite numerous official declarations, the position of law-enforcement agencies with regard to the problem is not entirely clear. the head of russia’s ministry for internal affairs has spoken recently of the necessity to wage an active campaign against youth organisations, with particular emphasis on the skinheads. for all that, there are certain cases in which the law enforcement agencies have displayed sympathy for the skinheads, when organised assaults of a clearly nationalistic character have been described simply as ‘mass hooliganism’ or ‘public disorder’. researching xenophobic attitudes among young people a fundamental principle of the research described below was the importance of distinguishing between the apparent ‘concern’, which conceals the underlying political interests of government agents, law enforcers and political leaders and the real problems experienced by young people related to the increase of xenophobic attitudes. in august 2005-06 a study was carried out in krasnodar territory for the purposes of writing a background research paper on ethnic tolerance and xenophobia among young people for a meeting of rimeix partners. the aim of the research was to illuminate ethnic constructs and negative images related to specific ethnic groups currently circulating among young people as well as to understand how and why some young people move from the passive expression of ethnic intolerance to a willingness to carry out openly aggressive acts. the research was based on a case study of krasnodar territory and employed a range of qualitative research methods. the research devoted particular attention to the analysis of the relationship between ethnic stereotypes and style, or subcultural identities.x this approach to the study of discourses of xenophobia examines them in their dialogic aspect, as a product of social interaction. it presupposes that young people do not simply passively accept the manipulations of official or unofficial discourse, but rather, as they come into contact with, interpret, and compare alternative sources of anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 73 knowledge they produce their own discourses. thus, it is not only the question of how the discourse of xenophobia is created or shaped that is important, but also the question of how it is understood by people (in this case, by young people) and of how these interpretations determine their social behaviour. studying xenophobia among young people is extremely challenging. questions relating to national identity, language, religion, and the relations between members of different ethnic and religious groups are perceived by young people as profoundly meaningful and their responses can often be emotional. the methods used – focus groups and in-depth interviews – were chosen because they were sufficiently sensitive to enable an understanding of the complexity of the problems being discussed. the focus group method provided the possibility of capturing a group view of the problem and of collecting information on practices and existing stereotypes. the in-depth interviews, on the other hand, permitted the exploration of individual contexts, the motives behind certain acts, the reasons for particular attitudes, and the connection between practices described and reallife situations. the centrality of the researcher during the application of these methods brings its own challenges. it is important that the interviewer neither openly disapproves of the views expressed by a respondent, thus evoking a hostile reaction, nor demonstrates too much agreement with the informant, which might lead to key questions not being addressed. the specific nature of the problem demands an attitude of ‘cautious sensitivity’ from the interviewer, whereby he or she maintains a balance between dispassionate interest and supportive empathy.xi xenophobia and the politics of immigration in krasnodar territory in analysing the relationship between xenophobic views and immigration politics, it is essential that a clear distinction be made between the public image the region presents to the outside world (via the regional media and the public statements of political and administrative leaders) and the actual situations and real relations between groups of the population. in the public speeches and statements of its leaders, krasnodar territory is presented as a multiethnic region in which nationalities policy is a priority. however, the point of this policy is often reduced to the question of ‘whom we are against’ rather than ‘whom we support’ and public discourse reproduces the idea that the rightful owners of this ‘land’ are the russians and the cossacks and that the authorities should thus protect their interests in particular. in contrast to this public face, monitoring carried out in particular by the ‘sova’ centre, suggests that krasnodar territory is characterised by visible tension and antagonism between the representatives of various ethnic groups.xii according to the report ‘human rights in krasnodar territory’xiii (for the year 2002), a significant proportion of the region’s population is prone to xenophobia and propagates nationalism in various guises.xiv the policies of the regional authorities in krasnodar territory in relation to the nonrussian population as a whole, and illegal immigrants in particular, have become one of the most sensitive public issues. kondratenko’s successor as governor, aleksandr tkachev, has more than once spoken publicly of the dominance of illegal immigrants in the region. he personally headed the campaign to deport the meskhetian turks and declare them the ‘undesirables’ in the region’s territory. in 2002 a discriminatory law ‘on residency and domicile in krasnodar territory’ was passed, only to be repealed in 2004. in 2004 a further law was passed ‘on measures for the prevention of illegal immigration into krasnodar territory’ and the governor issued a decree of the same name. all these documents are overtly discriminatory in character and contravene the constitution of the russian federation. moreover, according to local civil rights organisations, the governor’s overtly in the opinion of civil rights organisations the former governor of krasnodar territory, nikolai kondratenko, played an important part in promoting xenophobic attitudes in the region. kondratenko successfully employed nationalist ideas in his electoral campaign and, during his term in office (1996-2000), stirred up antisemitic feeling in his public speeches and in publications with financial links to his administration. large-scale campaigns (such as city and regional festivals) ostensibly designed to unify the russian people and reinforce russians’ sense of their own ethnic identity, also had the effect of generating fear of immigrants. local politicians actively exploited patriotic (proslavic) ideas at elections, pointing to the threat of expansion of either western or armenian culture (see leibovskii et al. 2002). anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 74 nationalistic pronouncements have provoked a wave of ethnically motivated criminal acts on the part of the local population and have exacerbated the already antagonistic situation in the region (information agency ‘regnum’ 2004).xv human rights activists and journalists accuse tkachev of legalising nationalism and xenophobia and of demanding the deportation of immigrants, who, in his view, are preventing the local russian population from achieving a better standard of living. according to ‘sova’, an artificial division has been created between ‘our own people’ – that is, those russians and cossacks who have an incontrovertible right to live in krasnodar territory and ‘others’ or ‘deviants’, under which category are included all immigrants but particularly kurds, meskhetians, turks and armenians (centre for ethno-political and regional studies 2003). thus, the question of ethnicity is being fed to the region’s inhabitants in the form of primordial conceptions of ethnicity as an innate natural endowment that determines the character, lifestyle and manners of a given people. moreover, the political views of the governor relayed to the public establish a hierarchy between nationalities, determining which nationalities are ‘better’ and which are ‘worse’, which are ‘lawful’ and which ‘unlawful’ or even ‘dangerous’. immigrants are blamed for living illegally in the region, for being disposed to criminal activity and for displaying a lack of respect towards, and discriminating against, the russian-speaking population. both sociologists and human rights activists paint a discouraging picture of the region as one of the most xenophobic in the russian federation and declare the policies pursued by the regional authorities to be illegal, unethical and chauvinist. the question of immigration in krasnodar territory, therefore, has assumed an obvious political aspect, which is clearly in evidence in the political manoeuvring that takes place during election campaigns. xvi one of the aims of the research was to reveal the attitudes of the region’s youth to the existing ethnic situation. the comments of our informants rarely touched directly on the policies of the acting authorities; they were concerned above all with the everyday aspects of living in a multi-ethnic region. some informants (as a rule the more tolerant among them) referred to krasnodar territory (and especially sochi) as a multi-ethnic region where no one ethnic group held sway over another: i think that you can’t say that anyone here is better or worse off, that someone has the rights to ownership and someone else doesn’t. it’s not the case that russians are the proprietors and armenians are outcasts. everyone feels the way they should. if that’s the way they are, then that’s the way they’ll be. i think everyone’s equal here in that respect. (female, 20 years, sochi)xvii moreover, informants spoke, for instance, of sochi as a caucasian city, explaining this by reference to its history: i also think that we need to go back to history. there have been no rightful owners of this land for many years. they were deported from the area and cut off from it. and if there are no owners, it means that anyone can feel as if it’s their own land. and anyone who comes here can feel at home here. (female, 21 years, sochi) as far as situations of ethnic conflict are concerned, some are of the opinion that there is no actual conflict as such, merely an anticipation of conflict dictated by the ‘historical memory’ of the numerous wars that have taken place in the caucasus. this archetype is sustained in no small part by the chechen war and the conflict between georgia and abkhazia. the fact that krasnodar territory borders the caucasus region, however, generates a sense of vulnerability, defencelessness and the potential for threat: we are living in the caucasus, so this conflict situation russia and the caucasus has been forged by history. …it is this expectation that ruins relations… first of all there was the war long ago. if you remember, the war with chechnya lasted 60 years. then the war began again in 1990, that was the second phase…then there was conflict with abkhazia, so you see there’s a constant expectation of aggression. our city is a border anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 75 post. it is surrounded on all sides by caucasian republics. …we live in peace and there are no conflicts that would lead to war. but all the same there is an anticipation of something a feeling of anxiety. (female, 21 years, sochi) the actual cultural and social experience of young people, together with the influence of the media and of political discourse, prompts them to form their own ethnic constructs. this involves the construction of a hierarchy in which different nationalities are characterised as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘normal’, ‘peaceful’, ‘criminal’, ‘wild’ or ‘aggressive’. young people construct their own discourse and their own practices, in order to express their own attitude to the ethnic situation within the region and to the interaction between ethnic groups. understanding ethnic stereotypes analysing the narratives of young people involved in the study prompted us to devote closer attention to stereotypes. without a careful understanding of the forms these take and of how they are transmitted it is difficult to appreciate the persistence and durability of everyday xenophobia. stereotypesxviii another characteristic way in which stereotypes depict their object is to ascribe a particular type of behaviour to it: are formed by constructing an image of a foreign ethnic group and attributing to it various negative qualities (as a rule, the opposite qualities of those held to be typical of one’s own nationality). the results of the research suggest that these perceptions are concerned above all with the structuring of space (‘our’ and ‘others’’ territories). territorial space consists of the sites of everyday living; it is the perception of where the members of a given nationality spend their time or work, of where one can or cannot meet them and of where one may or may not go. these notions are not necessarily based on personal experience they draw rather on what ‘everyone says’ or what ‘everyone knows’ and they are concerned above all with: one’s place of work; one’s place of study; and places of recreation and leisure. abkhazians, caucasians, they’re almost all the same. any of them will invite you to their home, give you lots to drink, lots to eat they’ll virtually dance for you. but, then, when you leave, they’ll shoot you in the back. (male, 25 years, sochi) in fact both russians and representatives of other nationalities (such as armenians) have stereotypical ideas about each other. at the root of these negative stereotypes is the idea that ‘they are not like us’ they don’t dress the same, don’t look the same and don’t act the same. stereotypes can act as reference points in everyday life; a stereotype is a simplified plan of a situation that makes it easier for the user to perceive the object, to come to tangible conclusions about it and then to take action. examples of such stereotypes encountered in our research include: ‘it is better not to offend armenians’ or ‘it is better for russian girls not to socialise with them or make friends with them’. xenophobic attitudes emerge in the context of the struggle for power and the competition for resources (or the desire not to share resources). xenophobia arises when an attempt is made to encroach on ‘another’s’ space (or something that is perceived as such). this involves, first, the formation of an idea of ‘one’s own’ space and subsequently the idea of ‘foreigners’ or ‘outsiders’ within that space. in the wider sense, ‘one’s own’ space may be defined by russia’s national borders. in a narrower sense, it is the territory upon which a person spends time everyday and if ‘outsiders’ enter that space then they are expected to at least follow the rules and make no claims on any resources. the most common disputes and hence stereotyped perceptions arise around the claims on: ‘our territory’ (such as a café, a college, a bench, a table in the school canteen, etc.); ‘our girls’; ‘our jobs’; ‘our identities’ (when we are offended, threatened or humiliated); and ‘our’ language. the circulation of stereotypes within groups of young people creates a fertile environment for relaying xenophobic attitudes and maintaining feelings of ethnic tension and fear. it is this climate that is the basis for the spread of everyday xenophobia and hostility. however, such is the nature of stereotypes that, given any contact with real ‘others’, they often cease to be the focus of potential hostility. nonetheless, stereotypes relating to these ‘others’ may survive and may not even be subjected to criticism or questioning. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 76 overcoming stereotypes is thus a long process; that process is begun, however, precisely through communication on a personal level. the ‘youth’ dimension of xenophobia our research indicates that there is a specific youth dimension to xenophobia. despite the powerful impact of public xenophobic discourses, young men and women elaborate their own system of relations between ethnic groups based on their own system of values as well as their style and gender identity, cultural experience and individual and group practices. it is not unusual for young people to construct their own system of attitudes and values either within, or parallel to, the discourse of ‘adults’, some of which assume forms that adults find unacceptable. it would be rash to claim that young people constitute a passive, apolitical multitude that can be easily manipulated by politicians during election campaigns, or whose patriotic feelings can be exploited to create and successfully perpetuate popular political programmes. it is rather that young people are particularly acutely sensitive to the sociopolitical situation in russia, in which the national inferiority complex (the country’s perceived transformation from one of the world’s leading powers into a third world country) prompts them to look for solutions that they find in spontaneous or organised demonstrations, in unifying and patriotic movements. the gender dimension of xenophobia one of the most important conclusions of our research concerns the gender-specific aspects of xenophobia. young women appeared more tolerant, both in their attitude to the outward manifestations of other cultures and as regards personal contact. they declared that all cultures and peoples were equal and of equal value and spoke of the right of all nationalities to live in krasnodar territory. they condemned the persecution of immigrants and the contravention of their rights. i know one thing it is very hard for a non-slavic person to rent an apartment here, for instance. it’s very difficult to register. getting a propiskaxix is a real problem… if you take a paper like ‘obiavleniia’ [‘small ads’] you’ll see, ‘will rent to slavic family’ and if you ring up they ask straight away if you’re a slav or not, and that’s the kind of prejudiced attitude you get. (female, 21 years, sochi) in the view of young women, the cause of any discord within their own circles, however, is not nationality but individual character. young women alluded to their own experience of ethnically mixed friendship groups in which ‘the friendship of nations’ was not merely a soviet political slogan but a real practice. this type of personal communicative experience can foster a tolerant attitude to non-russian ethnic groups: i don’t know, maybe i’m just lucky, but i don’t see conflicts of that sort. maybe somebody might say the wrong thing sometimes, but about something personal. but in relation to nationality – no, i’ve never seen that. we live in a quiet and peaceful region, although there are armenians here, and georgians, and abkhazians and anyone else you care to mention. i think we have representatives of the whole of russia and all the outlying republics. i look around and i see that our group of friends is very multi-ethnic. we’re friends, and we have been for some time. we only argue about personal matters. (female, 17 years, sochi) young men, on the other hand, were more likely to suggest that the high percentage of immigrants living in krasnodar territory implied a threat to personal safety and had led to a decline in the material status of the russianspeaking population. one particularly important trope in the narratives of young men was the fear of physical assault from ‘non-russians’. they claimed that it was ‘armenians’xx (but also cherkess and turks) who provoked conflict between groups of young people and who acted like so-called ‘gopniki’ (‘yobs’). interviewer: who are the gopniki? respondent: the gopniki are – well, to put it crudely, the sort of armenians who wear these sort of black – well, according to people anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 77 from sochi – black shoes, black trousers, all in black. sunflower seeds in one hand, a rosary in the other, a cigarette in the third, something else again in the fourth. well they wander about until they come across some dumb-ass – someone who’s just here for the season. that’s the kind they like to pick on because they don’t know suspect anything. and then they’ll try to take their money or their phone, not using force, though, just talking and hanging on every word. it’s a complicated system though, it would take ages to explain. you have to walk in the shoes of the gopnik’s victim to really understand. (male, 17 years, sochi) an important theme in the narratives of (male) informants was the conflict between caucasian and slavonic constructs of masculinity. not uncommonly, this conflict can take the form of physical clashes, fights between young men and groups of young men. it is safe to say that it is men rather than women who translate latent xenophobia and xenophobic discourse into direct action. our research suggests there is a struggle for power (both real and symbolic) between russian and caucasian men. our young, male, russian informants accused caucasians of violating the code of behaviour for ‘real men’; they referred, for example, to the reliance on strength in numbers rather than physical superiority by armenians (but also adyghs and cherkess) during fights: there are a lot of immigrants. there’s armenia and georgia, and 5 km away, adygeia… although they’re ethnic minorities, the young people get together in gangs, usually starting from about the age of 14. and when they get together in these big groups they can hassle you, or even beat you up. of course they won’t hassle you if you’re in a big group. but they’re brave enough when there are lots of them against one or two people. they can be brave then. (male, 21 years, krasnodar) this perception has its converse form, when young armenians ‘pick on’ young russian men who, in their opinion, do not correspond to the image of the ‘real’ (acceptable) man. competition for the attention of girls is another vitally important factor in the hostility between young russian and caucasian men. the russians accuse ‘caucasians’ of a disrespectful and exploitative attitude towards russian girls. the girls themselves, should they associate with caucasian men, are accused of ‘treachery’ and of ‘prostituting themselves’, or of being ‘unwise’ and frivolous. any challenge to the discursively constructed notion of the russians’ ‘right of ownership’ over their ‘own’ girls is perceived as a direct threat to russian masculinity. another significant reason for feelings of dispossession on the part of russians was the material advantage real or imagined enjoyed by armenians. during interviews there was frequent reference to the armenians’ rapid accumulation of wealth, the specific economic component of their networks and their love of publicly parading their success and prosperity. in this particular instance, the economic status of ‘foreigners’ serves as an indicator of their status as men and is perceived by russian informants as an insult or threat. overt displays of nationalistic sentiment are generally typical of the younger age group. open conflicts such as fights or the ‘sorting out’ of one’s rivals tend to be associated in one way or another with the period of school, vocational school and to a lesser extent, college or university. informants recount how their use of free time changes with age; people start work, start families, new responsibilities appear and their circle of acquaintances changes. instances of overt displays of xenophobia recounted by informants were often connected with places of leisure and recreation, taking place in cafés, discos, in parks and on the streets. xenophobic attitudes were less apparent among adults, it seemed, although stories were told of employers who refused to employ people on the basis of nationality and of situations in which a slavic appearance was the deciding factor in finding tenants for rented property. xenophobia, ‘gopnik’ culture and subculture young people’s subcultural identity is one of the key factors in ethnic friction. russian informants, for example, had a tendency to make anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 78 ironic comments about the ability of ‘caucasians’ to belong to a subculture; all such displays were mocked as a kitsch imitation of the ‘authentic’ subculture. informants claimed that ‘caucasians’ lacked subcultural sensibility and taste and pointed out glaring mistakes in their dress and hairstyles. particular targets of criticism were the combination of tracksuits with smart shoes worn by young armenian men and what were perceived to be tasteless clothes and jewellery worn by the girls. in line with the recognition of dual ‘progressive’ and ‘normal’ youth strategies (pilkington et al 2002) informants tended to refer to the ‘caucasians’ as completely non-progressive and conservative. indeed, this was a key site of ethnic conflict between young people. in the course of interviews respondents noted a phenomenon they referred to as ‘armenian’ gopnik culture. according to informants, this reveals itself in an absolute refusal to accept subcultural practices per se. in their opinion, ‘armenian culture’ is conservative in nature, prescribing traditional modes of behaviour and codes of appearance (short hair, conservative clothes, no piercings or earrings). moreover, the way respondents described such individuals mirrors exactly descriptions of members of young criminal groups: i remember this one time, too, when i met some here at the disco. the discos here are all divided into russian and cherkess discos. after this cherkess disco (why the hell did i go there anyway?) i met this group of armenians. [they were] boxers or something. they came up to me and said, hey, you dirty non-russian, what you got earrings in your ears for? back then i had a piercing. i spent a long time talking to them, until late into the night. first of all, they told me to take out my earrings and i could go, but i was too proud to do that, of course, so i refused to take them out. then we went for a walk on the beach and had this long discussion about what a real man should look like, whether he should have long hair or earrings and whether or not he should use hair gel. (male, 23 years, sochi) different subcultures display a greater or lesser tendency towards xenophobia as a prescribed norm. certain subcultures (such as hippies, skateboarders and rappers) positively embrace tolerance, accept, empathise with and even imitate elements of other ethnic cultures. in contrast other subcultures observe strict boundaries between one’s ‘own people’ and ‘others’ or ‘outsiders’. of course the clearest example of the subcultural dimension of xenophobia is the attitude of skinheads towards the members of ethnic minorities and towards other subcultures. the skinhead movement is a movement with a unified political and subcultural identity. thus, skinheads direct their criticism and sometimes, physical aggression towards anything or anyone that appears to be ‘non-russian’.xxi subcultural lifestyles involve the recognition of common values and behaviour, which have a significant impact on whether young people construct a xenophobic or tolerant view of the world. however, as ‘pure’, homogenous subcultures come to be replaced by new, more fluid post-subcultural identities, where the absence of rigidly prescribed norms allows young people to map out their relations with members of other stylistic and ethnic groups independently, it is likely that young people will have more room to form tolerant attitudes, or, at the very least, have scope for individual choice as regards relations with other ethnic groups. apart from the ‘traditional’ targets of their hostility, they also single out rappers and rastafarians as subcultures that draw on afro-american and west indian music, texts and styles of dress. it is important to note here also that skinheads regard the majority of youth subcultures as a product of the pernicious influence of the west and present their own culture and practice as patriotic and pro-slavic. xenophobia and nationalistic youth organisations the attitudes of young people to the activities of youth nationalist movements and organisations are worthy of particular attention. the majority of informants were critical of the activities of the members of such organisations, though only a few of them had actually had any direct experience of them. most criticisms were directed at the skinheads, who were divided into ‘authentic’ and ‘inauthentic’ skinheads. in the former category, young people included those older members of the movement who were anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 79 ideologically engaged and less likely to resort to violence. informants regarded ‘authentic’ skinheads as ‘clever’ and said that they did not do things just ‘for show’. they were said to have their own philosophical code, which included respect for sympathetic youth subcultures (particularly punks) and an ideological rigour based on the idea of the russian population as sacrosanct. ‘inauthentic’ skinheads, however, broke all these rules and disgraced the russian nation. it is worth noting that in the opinion of our informants, there were no ‘authentic’ skinheads in krasnodar territory. in theory, who are skinheads meant to beat up? other nationalities. but this lot beats up everybody, even their own people. i don’t know they’re just idiots. there are skinheads in rostov, but they’re i don’t know, less stupid maybe, more genuine. they don’t just beat anyone up indiscriminately. (male, 17 years, sochi) an important distinguishing feature sometimes the distinguishing feature of a skinhead is the appropriate visual code (shaved head, turned-up jeans, heavy boots, athletic build, a threatening, masculine appearance). for both young men and young women, the image of the skinhead is associated with a strong, masculine type and can arouse envy and admiration: a real skinhead has, like, a shaved head, braces, a checked shirt, tight jeans like this, rolled up at the bottom three times… and they have tattoos: ‘skinhead white power’, pumped-up muscles, the lot. (male, 26 years, sochi) another indicator of an ‘authentic skinhead’, according to informants, is that they must be a member of the titular nationality (russian). informants spoke of the phenomenon of armenian skinheads with irony and scorn. this, they said, was the height of stupidity and turned the very idea of the skinhead upside down: you get ones here that don’t shave their heads, they wear leather jackets, or something else. armenians, basically. it’s ridiculous. i don’t know, are they idiots or something? i worked last summer selling kvass on the street. a skinhead comes up to me with a nose like this. so i’m like, ‘are you supposed to be skinhead or something?’ ‘yes’. ‘what are you fighting for then, for the purity of the russian nation? what’s your name?’ ‘garik’ (laughs). (male, 26 years, sochi) some informants sympathised with the ideology of the skinheads but only if it was outwardly expressed in the correct manner: in acceptable behaviour and the systematic and consistent implementation of specific principles and programmes. if this was not the case, informants argued that skinheads discredited the ideology they stood for and the entire russian nation. according to informants, it was the duty of skinheads and members of russian national unity to inspire fear in local caucasian young people and keep them under control. instead, however, they ‘laid themselves open’ and were subjected to beatings from their ‘enemies’. we don’t need skinheads here. they disgrace the russian people. just like the rnu disgrace the russian people. for instance, you know how they celebrate paratroopers’ day in moscow? well, it’s always a big deal isn’t it? the blacks [people from the caucasus] are afraid to go out. they shut down the markets. and the paratroopers go about triumphant, celebrating. yeah? well, here they just laugh at the paratroopers. on paratroopers’ day here they all just get drunk. our heroes. the heroes of different wars. and they get battered. because of their behaviour. just like the rnu lot, the skinheads here had some kind of festival and they all got battered. that’s why nobody respects the russians here, you understand? they sort of anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 80 make push a bit here, push a bit there, but they can’t actually do anything. you know? there’s no unity, no brotherhood. they’re just a bunch of sheep. (male, 25 years, sochi) challenging xenophobia the extensive discussion of intolerance among young people as part of a wider ethnocentrism typical of contemporary russian society has encouraged academic research to focus on revealing manifestations of xenophobia whilst often failing to examine the reasons behind it. this leads also to the tendency to ignore the ways in which young people oppose nationalistic attitudes and ethnic phobias on an everyday level. informants in our study acknowledged that there were many members of different ethnic groups among their circles of friends and acquaintances. this is partially the natural consequence of the fact that different ethnic groups have lived close to one another for some time, and that everyday practices involve mixing with other nationalities. another significant factor in creating such tolerant attitudes is the extent to which a given individual is, as it were, himself or herself ‘multi-ethnic’. my mum’s armenian, my dad’s jewish, and then there are greeks, georgians, moldovans, poles, all sorts. i naturally mix with all sorts of different people. one friend is a chechen. i have lots of armenian and georgian friends. i mix with abkhazians and gypsies, too. (female, 22 years, sochi) another way in which xenophobia may be surmounted is through marriage and shared activities. but, while prolonged contact with members of national minorities can help create tolerance, unfamiliarity can also encourage a tolerant attitude. this was particularly noticeable when informants spoke of their experiences in other towns or cities: there are no local russians in belgorod. you’ll see maybe three or so families, but that’s it. well, i was there for three days, passing through. i’ll be honest with you i met this really sound guy there, an armenian. these armenians offered me a room straight away. they said, ‘you can stay here as long as you want, you need to rest a bit before you carry on.’ i’d told them i was hitchhiking, and he was like, ‘come back to my place and have something to eat before you turn in for the night.’ so we went back to his place, they fed me and everything, even though i had money. (male, 24 years, sochi) perhaps most interesting of all, however, is the fact that feelings of hatred or antipathy towards an ethnic group as a whole in no way deter people from making friends with members of the group as individuals. communication within a social group initiates a particular reaction whereby an individual’s ethnic identity gives way to their social identity. in other words, the actual member of the ethnic group with whom one is socialising is deemed ‘alright’ as distinct from all the others. those who ‘grew up with russians’ are perceived as being the most ‘alright’ (male, 21 years, krasnodar). according to our informants, isolation from one’s own diaspora enables foreigners to gain a respect for russian culture and for russian people and to develop personal qualities that are ‘appropriate’ for life in russia. active condemnation of skinhead activities could also be considered a practice that challenges xenophobia. a young person’s personal attitude to other ethnic groups is often formed as a deliberate rejection of the skinhead ideology. at the heart of what is described as ‘hatred’ towards skinheads, however, is often a rejection of violence per se; individual perceptions of ethnic difference are thus not necessarily important. one of the most important suppositions of our research was that the style ‘supermarket’ has an impact on the formation of new identities, making it possible to see the question of ethnicity as being of secondary importance or, ideally, to forget it altogether. and now there’s this look that’s in, from the fashion magazines, so now most people, even young people of caucasian nationalities, they’ll go about in ripped jeans and like trainers and with their anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 81 fringes spiked up. it’s the norm there, already. (female, 17 years, sochi) when an individual participates in global style trends, they are seen first and foremost as a devotee of that particular style. thus rigid perceptual constructs are shattered and the notion of the difference between individuals can be realised; ethnic groups cease to be identified via a single semantic marker. for instance, an armenian punk is seen as ‘one of us’ by a russian punk, regardless of his ethnicity; this naturally serves as a counterbalance to xenophobia more widely. this is evidenced by the following statement by a seemingly aggressively intolerant punk: yeah, punks, too – there’s an armenian who plays in the punkomaniacs (pankimany) – a drummer. he’s alright, that guy, i think. (male, 26 years, sochi) style identities thus hold the potential at least for young people to identify themselves and their friends in relation to youth practices, independent of ethnic context. conclusion a joint research project on images of the west in russian youth culture carried out by the scientific research centre ‘region’ with the university of birmingham at the end of the 1990s (pilkington et al., 2002), drew a number of conclusions about the development of spontaneous patriotism among russian youth. the patriotism seen among russian youth at that time was a particular response to a concentrated attack by the media aimed at discrediting soviet experience, heroes and history. conflicting processes of national disillusionment gave rise to a mass inferiority complex among the nation’s youth producing a spontaneous wave of patriotism rooted in a huge sense of grievance felt by young people towards their origins, their history and their parents. and indeed since that time, no positive image of present-day russia, let alone the russia of the future, has been formulated. without such an idea it is almost impossible to envisage such a movement gaining maturity. yet, such elemental patriotism, existing outside any ethical system, is contradictory and dangerous a destructive rather than a civilised social force. one motivation behind xenophobic attitudes is the desire for self-respect. moreover, xenophobic attitudes in youth circles are very closely connected to the attitudes of the parent generation. the soviet past and soviet psychology, though ostensibly international in form and rhetoric, were in fact profoundly riddled with xenophobic and nationalistic sentiments. our research showed that, while much might take place as a result of interaction with friends and acquaintances, nonetheless, poverty, a low standard of living or a sense of dissatisfaction with life could sometimes be of primary importance (especially where a young person’s family had fallen into hardship during the perestroika period). the humiliation and degradation of one’s parents, and above all, one’s father, should he have lost his social status or grounds for self-respect, could seriously affect a young person’s general disposition. as a result, by way of compensation, a defensive basis for pride is developed: ‘i am proud because i am russian’. thus young people establish a new but contradictory and damaging system of values that enables them to feel self-respect. the narrow-minded, principle of material accumulation is becoming the foundation of a new system rooted in material values. a lack of moral strength is weakening national unity and, consequently, people are beginning to search for national pride based purely on the fact that one is russian and give primitive explanations of why war should be waged on ethnic non-russians. these are the roots of the ethical systems of youth movements such as the skinheads; they are simple and primitive but their capacity to provide an integrated value system appeals to young people. young people, in a variety of different contexts, seek something meaningful around which to construct their own view of the world. if the state and the political system of their country prove powerless in this respect, their only choice is to construct a system which allows them to isolate and defend themselves against the world of ‘others’ who are more positive and successful. xenophobic attitudes, especially where they demand no real demonstration or corroboration (i.e. no activism) are the most fertile soil in which to grow an irrational, simplistic system of argumentation that appears to demonstrate one’s own superiority whilst creating the illusion of a secure, non-threatening social order. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 82 notes 1 the extent to which events in paris in 2005 or in budapest in 2006 were actually linked to problems of migration is a separate issue and is not discussed here. 2 here and elsewhere in the article the word ‘chuzhie’ (‘foreigners’, ‘outsiders’) is employed not as robust theoretical concept but more loosely to reflect how respondents talked about the subjects of everyday antipathy during our research. 3 the term ‘coloured revolutions’ has come to be used to describe the wave of political protests in post-socialist states which led to a change of political regime in these countries – ‘rose’ in georgia in 2003; ‘orange’ in ukraine in 2004; and ‘pink’ or ‘tulip’ in kyrgyzstan in 2005. this ‘revolutionary colour coding’ has been represented as closely associated with democracy (manning 2007: 171) and, therefore, with the ‘west’. in the contemporary russian federation, in contrast, government sources present ‘coloured revolutions’ as examples of western intervention in the zone of russia’s strategic interests and thus as a threat to the russian political regime which is defined as ‘sovereign democracy’. it should not be forgotten, however, that the names of some of these revolutions (e.g. the rose revolution in georgia) originally signified flowers rather than colours. 4 it should be emphasised again here that what is referred to are not established patterns of youth consciousness but state and media-controlled discourses. 5 in addition to moscow and st. petersburg, particularly problematic areas are reported to be: krasnodar territory, the voronezh, nizhegorod, tiumen and novosibirsk regions and the primorsk territory (kozhevnikova 2005: 3). 6 the russian national unity party (rnu) is a russian radical right-wing movement that imitates the style of german nazism. in the 1990s, this movement appeared as a relatively powerful paramilitary-type organisation ideologically rooted in extreme russian nationalism. following a series of internal splits, the rnu exists today as a number of separate organisations. 7 see http://www.moscow.hrights.ru.etnic/data/etnic11 _03_2002-9.htm. 8 documents published by this movement to promote their political programmes actively exploit youth patriotism. in the manifesto of ‘nashi’ it is argued that the world consists of ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ nations and, in this universal scheme of things, russia is a world leader. global development is seen as the competition between different peoples in which ‘you are either a leader, you are driven, or you are a victim’. it could be concluded that the state, too, shares this view, while at the same time attempting to combat the growth in nationalism and xenophobic attitudes among young people (see http://www.nashi.su). 9 see introduction to this special issue for details of the rime project. 10 during research in krasnodar territory, seven focus groups and twenty-nine in-depth interviews were conducted. the project included the cities of sochi and krasnodar and the towns of golovinka and adler. young people were recruited to the groups on the basis of sex, age (16-25), occupation and ethnic identity. the focus groups attempted to reveal the sources of xenophobic attitudes and the mechanisms for their formation, as well as the way in which intolerant views might be expressed. in-depth interviews were directed towards analysing how various ethnic groups interacted in practice and how young people perceived aggressive, violent demonstrations of xenophobia. 11 of course, these methods also have certain limitations. in this particular case, the geographical scope of the research, the range of young people involved and the number of interviews and focus groups conducted were all limited. one might also argue that the subject of xenophobia as a problem for discussion was imposed on the group. this, however, might be said of any research of this kind and, throughout the course of the research, direct questions or prompts were avoided. 12 according to data published by the regional committee for state statistics for 1st january 2002, russians make up 86.5% of the population, armenians – 5.36%, adyghs – 0.31%, turks – 0.26% and kurds 0.10%. the accuracy of these statistics’ however, is doubtful, given that some ethnic groups living within krasnodar territory are not even mentioned. 13 a project carried out under the auspices of the moscow helsinki group and partly financed by usaid and the european commission. 14 to some extent, these findings demonstrate that the official discourse on xenophobia has been ‘normalised’ in the public consciousness or, anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 83 at least, some of its public arguments have found a degree of (uncritical) acceptance. 15 on 25th april 2003, a few days after a programme was broadcast on central television in which the governor of krasnodar territory, aleksandr tkachev, delivered a speech indicating he would not be swayed from his view on ethnic minorities living in the area, there were a number of physical assaults on people from various ethnic minorities (yesids, armenians, turks and lezgins) in the village of kholmskii. a year previously, in april 2002, skinheads vandalised armenian graves, also following an appearance by tkachev on russian television (according to data from the centre for ethnopolitical and regional research: see: http://www.indem.ru/ceprs/minorities/krasnod/ krasnod12.htm). 16 over the last decade, krasnodar territory has seen an increase in the influx of migrants who have been obliged to earn a living and have therefore presented competition to the local population on the labour market. our research revealed that this phenomenon has given rise to dissatisfaction among local people. however, such dissatisfaction is rarely the result of actual experiences of such ‘competition’. such opinions are, more frequently, superficial, contingent on the situation or simply reproductions of stereotypical judgments. this contradiction between xenophobic judgments and real life experiences was encountered quite frequently during the research and might be regarded as evidence of the unstable and artificial nature of everyday xenophobia. 17 for the reasons outlined above, interviewers did not ‘demand’ that informants declared their ethnic identity; therefore all quotations refer simply to the age, sex and place of residence of the respondent. 18 ethnic stereotypes are collective perceptions that shape attitudes and behaviour towards a particular ethnic group as a whole as well as towards individual representatives of it. 19 ‘propiska’ is an official registration document allowing an individual to live in a particular area or city in russia. 20 the term ‘armenians’ was frequently, though not always, used by informants as a synonym for ‘caucasians’, that is as a short hand to refer to all ethnic groups from the caucasus. 21 this is true of so-called ‘brown skinheads’ who profess extreme forms of nationalism and who are widely held by the public to be aggressive (‘mental’), given to acts of hooliganism and responsible for perpetrating ethnically rooted pogroms and other criminal acts. outside of russia, however, movements of ‘red’ skinheads such as rash (red and anarchist skinheads) and sharp (skinheads against racial prejudice), followers of which do not necessarily have to be from the titular nationality, are quite widespread. references analiticheskii doklad moskovskogo biuro po pravam cheloveka, available online at www.narod.ru/articles3033.html (16 august 2005). analiticheskii tsentr iurii levada (2006) rossiia dlia russkikh…? levada-tsentra, 25.08.2006, available online at http:/levada.ru/press/006082500.html (11 march 2006). beseda s l. gudkovym i b. dubinym (2006) est’ li perspektivy u russkogo natsionalizma? in: a. verkhovskii (ed.) russkii natsionalizm: ideologiia, nastroenie pp. 164-182 (moscow: tsentr “sova”). dubin, b. (2006) degradiruiut vse – elity, intelligentsia, naselenie, index. dos’e na tsenzuru, 24, available online at http://index.org.ru/journal/24/dubim24. html (11 march 2007). fedosenko, v. (2004) skinkhedov pereschitali, rossiiskaia gazeta, 03.03.2004, available online at http://www.indem.ru.ceprs/minorities/k rasnod/krasnod03.htm (13 march 2007). gudkov, l. (2005) ideologema ‘vraga’: ‘vragi’ kak massovii sindrom i mekhanizm sotsiokul’turnoi integratsii, in: l. gudkov and n. kondradova (eds) obraz vraga, pp. 7-80 (moscow: ogi). gudkov, l. and dubin, b. (2005) svoeobrazie russkogo natsionalizma, pro et contra, 2, pp. 6-24. information agency regnum (2004) proekt doklada ‘sistematicheskoe narushenie prav cheloveka v krasnodarskom krae podryvaet mezhdunarodnii avtoritet rossii’, 1.12.2004, available online at www.regnum.ru/news/369368.html (13 march 2007). http://www.narod.ru/articles3033.html� http://index.org.ru/journal/24/dubim24.%2509html%20(11� http://index.org.ru/journal/24/dubim24.%2509html%20(11� http://www.indem.ru.ceprs/minorities/k%2509rasnod/krasnod03.htm%20(13� http://www.indem.ru.ceprs/minorities/k%2509rasnod/krasnod03.htm%20(13� http://www.regnum.ru/news/369368.html%20(13� http://www.regnum.ru/news/369368.html%20(13� anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 84 kozhevnikova, g. (2005) radikal’nii natsionalizm v rossii: proiavleniia i protivodeistvie. obzor sobytii 2004 (moscow: informatsionno-analiticheskii tsentr ‘sova’). kozhevnikova, g. (2006) radikal’nii natsionalizm v rossii i protivodeistvie emu, in: a. verkhovenskii (ed.) russkii natsionalizm: ideologiia, nastroenie, pp. 8-94 (moscow: tsentr “sova”). krasnodarskii pravozashchitnii tsentr (2002) monitoring proiavlenii natsionalizma, ksenofobii i neterpimosti v krasnodarskom krae, available online at http:/www.hro.org/ngo/krasnodar/dnaci. htm (11 march 2007). leibovskii, a. kolesov, b. & kochergin, a. (2002) monitoring diskursa mezhetnicheskikh otnoshenii, kul’tiviruemim v krasnodarskom krae (krasnodar: tsentr pontiisko kavkazskikh issledovanii) available online at http:/kpd.nvrsk.ru/bib/monit01.htm (13 march 2007). limonov, e. (1998) anatomiia geroia (smolensk: rusich). malakhov, v. (2001) skromnoe obaianie rasizma i drugie stat’i (moscow: modest kolerov i dom intellektual’noi knigi). manning, p. (2007) rose-colored glasses? color revolutions and cartoon chaos in postsocialist georgia, cultural anthropology 22 (2): 171-213. nekhamkin, s. (2005) britogolovie est’ uzhe v kazhdom oblastnom tsentre, izvestiia, available online at http:/www.izvestia.r u.community/article251560. nits ‘region’ (2005) otchet po issledovaniiu v tatarstane, mai 2005, available online at http:/www.region.ulsu.ru (11 march 2007). pilkington, h., omel’chenko, e., flynn, m., bliudina, u., starkova, e. (2002) looking west? cultural globalization and russian youth cultures (university park pennsylvania: the pennsylvania state university press). proiavleniia radikal’nogo natsionalizma. analiticheskii doklad tsentra sova, no date of publication, available online at http:/sovacenter.ru (11 march 2007) rakachev, v. & rakachev, ia. (2003) krasnodarskii krai: etnosotsial’nie i etnodemograficheskie protsessy (vtoraia polovina 1980–kh nachalo 2000-kh gg (krasnodar: kubansk state university). riazentsev, s. v. (2005) migratsiia i migratsionnaia politika v period modernizatsii ekonomiki rossii, available online at http:/www.iriss.ru/att ach_download?object_id=00015007130 3&attach_id=000489. shargunov, s. (2002) hail vmeste, novaia gazeta, 23.09.2002, available online at http:www.yabloko.ru (11 march 2007). sokolov, m. (2006) natsional-bol’shevistskaia partiia: ideologicheskaia evoliutsiia i politicheskii stil’, in: a. verkhovskii (ed.), russkii natsionalizm: ideologiia, nastroenie, pp. 139-164 (moscow: tsentr ‘sova’). tsentr etnopoliticheskikh i regional’nikh issledovanii (2003) zakonodatel’stvo i praktika regulirovaniia prav natsional’nikh menshinstv v sub’ektakh rossii, available online at http://www.indem.ru/ceprs/minorities? krasnod?krasnod03.htm (13 march 2007). http://www.indem.ru/ceprs/minorities?krasnod?krasnod03.htm� http://www.indem.ru/ceprs/minorities?krasnod?krasnod03.htm� a note on concepts understanding ethnic stereotypes the ‘youth’ dimension of xenophobia the gender dimension of xenophobia xenophobia, ‘gopnik’ culture and subculture xenophobia and nationalistic youth organisations challenging xenophobia conclusion aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 125 signifying self in plural cultural contexts: subjectivity, power and individual agency in north-western greek macedonia ioannis manos department for balkan studies (florina), university of western macedonia this article [1] discusses processes of identification and categorisation during social situations related to dance in the district of florina, a border region in north-western greek macedonia. more specifically, it draws upon the narratives, actions and interpretations of several individuals involved in the practice of dance to examine the ways they construct and experience their identity. the florina district acquired its geographical status and political importance as a border region of the greek state in 1913 when the territorial boundaries of greece, bulgaria, serbia, albania, romania and turkey were fixed. until that time it was part of the ottoman empire. the coexistence in the area until the early 20th century of different religious and linguistic communities; [2] the emergence of nationalist movements in the late 19th century and their major impact on geopolitics as well as on the ways people perceived personal and collective identities; [3] the devastating consequences for the region of historical events in the course of the 20th century; the various inward and outward migrations that brought together culturally diverse populations, in certain cases forcibly, all have played their part in creating conditions for disputes among the local populations and between them and the greek state. floriniotes tend in their oral and written accounts to distinguish themselves by referring to population categories through designations which suggest ever-existing groups. dopioi, pontioi, vlachs, and arvanites are the most known. parallel to them, locals use the term prosfiges [refugees]. [4] this category usually includes the pontioi (populations from the black sea coastal region), the thrakiotes (from the european part of turkey) and the mikrasiates (from asia minor) who settled in the florina region in the 1920s. yet, there are further subdivisions within the mikrasiates and pontioi groups with regard to their place of origin. [5] as they describe themselves and are described by others in the region, there are two other categories of refugees. these are the vorioipirotes (populations from the city and the outskirts of korça, today in central-eastern albania) who settled in the region in the second decade of the 20th century and monastiriotes [6] (populations from the city and the surrounding villages of bitola, today in the southern part of fyrom). further differentiations exist in the monastiriotes category between those that declare vlachs from the city of bitola and those that declare dopioi or slav-speakers from the same area. [7] the disputed category is that of the dopioi. [8] the term stems back to political and economic conflicts over land use in the 1920s, between newly settled refugees and the existing inhabitants. during the process of nation building, state policy-makers, in their effort to homogenize the ‘nation,’ perceived the dopioi, due to the various slavic dialects they spoke and the choices of some of them to identify with the bulgarians during ww i and ii, as “potential identifiers with the neighbouring states” (cowan and brown 2000:11). suppression of their cultural expressions, as happened during the metaxas dictatorship (1936–1940), transformed their difference into a marginalised and stigmatised ‘identity’ based on political and cultural criteria. this process both distinguished them from and opposed them to the other putative categories of local society, and created a sense of community among those who felt they belonged to the same ‘culture.’ the overwhelming majority identify themselves as greeks and more recently as ‘dopioi ellines makedones’ (local greek macedonians) in contrast to those dopioi who identify themselves as ‘national macedonians.’ this last category consists of dopioi who claim to be members of the macedonian national minority; a separate category which they claim has always existed in the region. all these terms organise certain political and social relations within the local society. individuals, whole villages and groups of villages are ascribed to these categories. dopioi are supposed to constitute the majority of the inhabitants. the appropriation and exploitation of these terms are manifested in the fact that they comprise persons and populations with different places of origin, historical and cultural backgrounds to whom certain cultural characteristics are attached. in addition, these categorisations exclude or ignore those that are the offspring of mixed marriages between members of the supposed categories, or between other greeks who reside in the region but do not come from there. dance constitutes a central component of many public events, annual and private celebrations in the florina region and is accorded recognition as an element of the national culture and a symbol of national identity. local allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text © 2004 ioannis manos all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. allen typewritten text 126 ioannis manos the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 dances were appropriated as signs of regional variation within the greek national culture and used by the greek state, mainly after the 1950s, as a means of stressing commonality and consolidating the national identity. although this was not always a conscious and deliberately planned policy it led to the manipulation of culture for nationalistic and political purposes. [9] cultural associations and their dance troupes emphasised and performed what had been established as ‘hellenic’ dances or ‘hellenic’ features of the local dances. [10] however, the meanings of dances were multiple and ambiguous. they were associated with national (greeks versus separatists) and regional (floriniotes versus the inhabitants of other prefectures) differences, political divisions (rightversus left-wingers), population category distinctions (dopioi versus pontioi), intra-regional (plains versus highland villages, or villages versus town) and intra-category (one dopioi versus another dopioi village) contrasts, as well as pleasurable ties and expression of solidarity with kin, neighbours, and fellow-villagers of any population category. with the rise of the macedonian minority discourse, in the 1990s, participation in dancing became politicised in a new, more manifest way. a political movement, later transformed into a political party named rainbow, [11] and private institutions, whose members belonged to the disputed population category of dopioi claimed to represent the ‘macedonian people,’ a national minority which differed from other population categories in the region due to its distinctive cultural characteristics. [12] in contesting claims of national homogeneity, activists and members of the political movements constructed their own versions of national identity. they used the same means, that is, local dances, music and costumes, as well as others that did not originate in the region and were deliberately imported, to create difference as symbols of commonality or distinction. these actions generated counter-movements which promoted the state’s views and led to a period of extremely intense disputes between social groups in the region. the organisation of rituals that had a standardised and repetitive nature was used as efficient means through which all agents involved aimed to socialise the participants to the values and expectations of a ‘culture’. [13] dances were caught up in the polarisation of the two discourses, greek nationals versus macedonian nationals. where and what one danced, with whom and how he/she danced it were interpreted as expressions of national and political affiliations. this had many consequences for the individuals in the region who participated in the various dance events. individuals seemed unable to escape one of two options: either to perceive themselves as members of the greek national community or to adopt the alternative minority discourse in order to re-negotiate their identity (manos 2002). those identified with the greek project promoted the greek state’s version of national culture. others who felt excluded or oppressed by the greek national project were offered new opportunities for negotiating their position and status within the nation-state. some of them identified themselves as macedonians in the national sense and pursued recognition of a distinctive macedonian identity and culture. others were forced to choose between exclusive identities and contingent qualities. still others wanted only to assert their right to practise their culture apart from any national connotations. nevertheless, these interpretations were not completely pre-determined but contextual and shifting. people could take advantage of the multiple associations of dancing and use the ambiguity of symbols related to dance in order to justify and defend their or other peoples’ choices and actions. not all dancers could be exposed to the same degree of criticism. in many cases, peoples’ actions expressed different viewpoints based on their autobiographical reminiscences, fortunes of their family, the official view on history and the current economic and socio-political context. participation in specific dances and dance events could be seen as a public claim to and a marker of identity. however at the same time individuals who did this might not be expressing a fixed, unitary and mutually exclusive identity but a ‘statement’ that is contingent, contextually-defined and apparently ‘contradicted’ by identity statements expressed in dance and music in another context by the same or other individuals. in this article, i will direct my attention to specific individuals who are related to the practice of dance. my purpose is to give a sense of the more complex identities and affiliations of individuals, which may shift over time. [14] i explore the way individuals understand and position themselves in their social context and the ways they articulate these positions, as expressed in their stories about past experiences and statements on current events and political issues. i have opted for coherent accounts of five persons [15] in order to display a small sample of the range of opinions and perceptions on issues related to dance, culture and identity. the individuals chosen vary in terms of sex and age. they are three men and two women aged from the late twenties to the late seventies. all of them except the older woman consider themselves as belonging to the dopioi category. the older woman is supposed to belong to the arvanites category. i argue for the need to challenge the collective and uniform dimension of identity not only of the national but of the local population categories as well. that the majority of dopioi in the context of greek macedonia and more specifically in that of the florina region consider their greekness indisputable is a certainty. it is equally true that there are some who see themselves as national macedosubjectivity, power and individual agency in north-western macedonia 127 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 nians. however in my opinion, a large proportion of them, as well as members of other population categories, deal with the issue of identity in ways that escape the frameworks of both national and minority discourses. despite the struggle with two hegemonic discourses of difference, the constitution of individual identity can encompass elements of various notions of belonging which have been exclusively attributed to the existing population categories. the articulation of alternative individual identities through various modes of processing personal experiences has been a very frequent practice in response to the imposition of totalising national ideologies by various agents since the end of the 19th century. the specific perceptions of local social reality described here represent examples that have been neglected by existing anthropological accounts or have not been sufficiently studied. they demonstrate that individuals are aware, though not always, as we will see in kiriakos’s case, willing and able to reflect on and respond to the public, polarised and dichotomous meanings that have now developed around dancing. the examples also show that boundaries between the supposedly incompatible identities of population categories are blurred and the notion of the naturalness of fixed, mutually exclusive identities, claimed by its promoters, is rejected. kiriakos the case of kiriakos is an example of a person who got involved in the ‘hot arena’ of local cultural politics and had a harsh experience of the consequences of dealing with the dominant discourses of difference. in his early thirties, kiriakos became the chairman of the newly established cultural association in his village. the dance troupe was the very first section they created. he employed various means with the aim of gaining a place for his association in the local scene. following the usual pattern of cultural activity, he mainly organised dance events in the village and participated with the dance troupe at other events in the region. he also became a member of an associations group, which organised the three key events in his experience. [16] it was precisely this kind of commitment which, together with the impact of the events, generated various comments against him by members of his own family, covillagers and others. in the account that follows, i will describe the interaction that took place between him and me within a period of four months. i will focus on encounters, incidents and statements relevant to my account. although his family comes from a village, he grew up in the town of florina. during my fieldwork, he lived with his wife and little daughter and worked in a town very close to his village. we first met on june 30 1999 at his village’s panigiri [17] which was organised by the cultural association a month after its establishment. this was his first event as the new chairman. although he was pre-occupied with trying to supervise and solve any problems that would appear during the event he came to talk to me. he was very proud that they had organised it because it was only a month previously that they had created the association and it was many years since the last panigiri had taken place in the village. in the next few weeks we met again at various cultural activities which took place in the region. he seemed to be satisfied with the association and especially with the benefits he thought it would bring to the young dancers. talking to me about his initial thoughts on the association, he said we founded the association in order to bring the village out of oblivion and to help the youth to gain experiences, which they would never otherwise have the chance to have. in addition to this, to develop a stronger village representation would help us to oppose any claims against the village by nec [national electricity company], which was evacuating villages for its new electricity units. [18] i worked hard to convince the village to help us and i have made it although the panigiri contributed a lot to this success. we first organised a dance troupe; we intended to have other activities as well like photographic exhibitions, lectures and excursions so that ‘the youth could go out of the village.’ the members of the troupe were very happy with all the performances and the experiences they had. they were enthusiastic about the fact that they were participating in these activities as part of a group. in that way, they acquired a group identity through a dance troupe, which was watched and recognised by others. it seemed to me that kiriakos had tried somehow to keep himself away from any actions that would associate him with either the one or the other discourse. during our meeting at the wedding revival his association participated in, [19] he was very much concerned with the fact that he had borrowed costumes from the one of the associations who were actively promoting rainbow’s objectives. he did not consider the costumes as part of the local culture. he was concerned about it and said to me during the event they are so striking. you don’t need to be acquainted with this costume in order to recognise it. we will become objects of ridicule. they will stick a stamp and an identity on us. but on the other hand, if you do not to take part in activities, very few people will know about you. he also felt the need to explain this to the troupe dancers. he told them that: we don’t identify at all with the costumes you wear. first of all and most basic, they are not ours. not even from this place. you have to know where you stand in some 128 ioannis manos the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 things; to know what to say if someone teases you. we couldn’t borrow any other costume. but we have to participate in activities so we had to put these on. wanting to be more efficient as a chairman he was thinking of proposing the creation of an associations’ union whereby those included would offer both dancers and costumes. in this way, he meant that their objectives would be better fulfilled. in order to adopt a politically correct view on culture, they ought to agree to dance only the commonly accepted dances and have a costume which would represent everyone, one which would have signs, as he said, from all; that is, one that signified each group’s cultural background. that would entail a basic agreement on what would be danced in order to avoid any conflicts and misinterpretation. local cultural politics in the florina region is a central stage for the intersection of varied political interests not always apparent to those involved. kiriakos found himself to be a victim of such interests. the announcement of his association as a co-organiser of the book presentation and the flute competition entailed a great deal of politics. i met him and his wife on the 15th of august, the day on which the flute competition was taking place. i greeted them and asked why they were not at the flute competition they had organised. “oh, in skopiá” [20] he said. “no in skopós,” i corrected him. i realised from this mistake that he was not informed about the events, because nobody who comes from the region would mix the two villages’ names despite their similarity. i then asked him why he had not come to the book presentation and he said he had not been informed about it. he said he was feeling very disappointed and confused. problems had been created in the village in relation to his activity and the association’s performances. negative comments and thoughtless remarks and characterisations of him by his relatives had cut him to the heart. i asked to meet him in order to talk about these issues. we made an appointment for a few days later. i realised from the first moment of the subsequent discussion that he was very upset. his manner of talking expressed feelings of concern and insecurity. “there is a lot of discussion about me. i do not know yet who were those that talked about me.” i asked him if the book presentation and the flute competition had anything to do with this. [21] he asked me what happened at those activities and i said that i only attended the first. i briefly described who talked and what was said at the book presentation. he got more upset and complained that i had not told him about it in our meeting in florina. he was furious. i did not know about the presentation. i will publicly deny on the radio our association’s participation and will disassociate myself and the association from the group of associations. i did not even know about the flute competition. he then told me about a discussion he had had with his affinal uncle, a greek who came from central greece but lived permanently in canada. i described the activities of the association to him. my uncle got angry about what he had heard and categorised me as an aftonomistis. [22] he came to the village telling all our relatives not to support me and to be careful about what i did. he upset all our relatives and made us argue with each other about the objectives of the association and the activities with the other associations. then i asked him how the group of associations had been formed. he said that it was proposed and encouraged by a local doctor, [23] a member of the socialist party, who had told them that by organising activities as a group, they would be able to get access to subsidies. but, as he said, he did not know it would end up like this. he got angry with the other associations that his association’s participation without primarily informing them about it. “i lacked the experience to understand what is going on with these issues.” the agendas of the associations, the politicians who patronise them and single individuals with their own ideas compose, in this case, the complex network of actors involved in these incidents. the outcome was devastating for kiriakos, who felt threatened. recounting the family’s history in order to find an explanation or to defend himself was the next stage of our discussion. because various degrees of loyalty and different realities have to co-exist, the past has to some extent been re-defined. his family was mixed politically, including rightand left-wingers, who had gone through a lot in the past. some of his uncles had been exiled in makronisos because they were accused of being communists. somebody from the village had spread false rumours about his father. he concluded that a lot of people had suffered because of the villagers, who always collaborated with those who were in power and acted against their own relatives and co-villagers. our next meeting took place on the 27th of august. kiriakos was devastated. i was late and he said he had 5 glasses of whisky while he was waiting for me. this was the most critical point of the dramatic experience he was going through. he felt completely insecure. although he attributed no particular political meaning to what he said and did, his actions had been understood and categorised as either the nationalist or minority discourse. they were criticised and he was stigmatised. let us see how he narrated these issues. i will talk to you from my heart. i felt threatened from all sides. some people have called my boss and asked him to dismiss me. i found out that people in the village had accused me of acting against the state. i trust nobody. i feel hate for those who are involved in this situation. i am not sure if i can trust even you. neither do i trust subjectivity, power and individual agency in north-western macedonia 129 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 anybody from the other associations. i have to be cautious with them because i do not know their motives. during the free dancing in the wedding revival, i danced dances with songs in slavic, as you did, but i was almost stigmatised while you did not have this problem. i even had problems during the panigiri because of announcing the dances in dopia. but this is the right and i couldn’t say it differently. i was also accused because the troupe performing at amindeo in the beginning of august danced with melodies which were not greek. however, during a dance feast in lofoi the members of the troupe walked out when political songs in slavic against greece were sung because they disapproved of this attitude. i plan to write a letter of protest in consultation with a lawyer so that i cannot be persecuted by anybody. i was very romantic at the beginning of my involvement but now i have learned a lot from it. i was overwhelmed with sadness and disappointment after this meeting. i was thinking that the game of the manipulation of national sentiments had always existed in the region and that most of the people translated all actions according to the dominant ideological doctrines without really being able to transcend them. at other times lives had been lost; now reputations were sullied. kiriakos’ experience shows how every single person, independently of the degree of his/her involvement in public social life, starts to reflect on such events and develop a mechanism of manipulating ideas, symbols and behaviours. one soon realises that one has to be flexible and capable of presenting oneself accordingly. a socially accepted identity depends on the specific social context and situation in which one finds oneself. i met kiriakos again at the beginning of october. he was much calmer than on previous times. his relatives had revealed to him who had talked about him in the village. “some accused me of trying to ‘hellenise’ the village and others of being an aftonomistis. in the latter case, it was someone who during the village’s panigiri had wanted to dance a dance with a song in slavic. i do not care.” kiriakos concluded, “i have learned the rules of the game. everything i now do will be after deep thought and consideration.” savvas savvas is a 27-year-old man and the dance teacher of his village’s dance troupe. his association became widely known as the organiser of the village’s panigiri, an event broadly seen as a demonstration of the existence of an oppressed macedonian minority in the region. savvas played a leading part in the early 1990s as the first dancer and instructor of the troupe. most people would characterise him as a national macedonian. he studied for two years at the history and archaeology school of the university of thessalonica and then broke off his studies to do compulsory military service. now he works as a manual worker at the new electricity unit outside of his village. he is satisfied with the work and the money although he works 10 hours per day, 6 days a week. our first contact took place during the village’s panigiri in july 1999. among other things he stressed that, “we must disengage ourselves from politics. if not, we have no chance.” his statement surprised me. i told him i would very much like to talk with him about these issues and he accepted. although we met in many subsequent dance events that took place in the region, we first talked at the end of august. savvas grew up in a family “with contradictions,” as he says. “my father and half of our relatives are right-wingers and the other half left-wingers.” his family spoke dopia, which he calls makedonika [macedonian]. his mother tongue is greek. as he says, “it may be that our mother tongue is theoretically the other one but in my consciousness i learned to call the table trapezi [the greek word] and not masa [the slavic word].” savvas addresses an array of issues in his accounts. he talks about dance and politics, his activity within the association, his persecution during his military service due to his active involvement in the macedonian conflict, his sense of belonging and the need for a new approach to issues of identity in the region. he is very critical of the political use of culture as it occurs through dancing. getting involved with politics is inescapable when one is actively participating in a dance troupe. savvas reflected on this, expressing his disagreement with those who take advantage of culture. he used an example of a relative of his to demonstrate the way people are divided into opposing sides. dance is a means to practice politics and propaganda. this is how it is here, on both sides. i don’t like anybody who comes and tells us we need help and pretends to help us. this is a pure instrument of politics. because of such people we then argue against each other. i have a cousin who is the chairman of the other association in the village. his mother and my father are siblings. he tells me sometimes, “i will not dance poustseno [24] and the like.” and indeed he doesn’t dance poustseno or anything else. he does not want to be identified as aftonomistis. we are together at work and one evening when we left together he put a tape in with songs from aidonia [25] [nightingales] and started clapping his hands. in a moment of introspection, savvas reflected on his previous activity as a leading member of an association which is believed to be governed and run by the rainbow party. he also recounted that he was persecuted for his activity. a notion of self-criticism is evident in his words. 130 ioannis manos the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 i have been stigmatized for my activity. when i joined the army i first went to a training camp in peloponnes. the husband of my cousin-in-law was a member of the socialist party and was arranging for my transfer close to florina. for a person like me, who is a member of a family with 4 children, it is very unusual to have a second transfer. you only have one and remain there until the end of your service. i came to a camp close to florina, stayed for 20 days and was transferred to an island near turkey. i was supposed to stay 2 months there and remained 12 and ended my service. i expected this kind of treatment. but i have made mistakes as well. i have believed in persons about whom now i say how could this be possible. i don’t mean the persons themselves but their actions, their beliefs. until four years ago i was the first to offer myself for everything. he then turned to his own activity within the association. superficial or politically driven accounts about the region fail to see the internal conflicts and contradictions that arise from the different standpoints people have. savvas disagreed with the ways that members of the association’s board who were rainbow activists used the troupe to promote the party’s political agenda. he described events which illustrate the political objectives of certain agents, and the way he challenged those ideas and actions: when i finished my military service and returned to the village, i heard of some outrageous things they did with the dance troupe. we had big arguments. imagine that i was quoted as their good example! they went on a trip to sweden and the newspapers wrote about it. and they presented themselves as coming from greece but with a macedonian flag. i started shouting and they accused me that i once got money from the association. yes, they had given money to me once while i was in the army. another moment, four or five years ago, scenes from the association’s dance feast were shown on the state television channel in skopje. i was very annoyed. i do not want to dance and have someone else use this for his own goals. this is a basic democratic principle. so we decided that we would not allow cameras during the association’s feasts. savvas condemned the nationalist practices and sentiments expressed by certain persons to whose category he supposedly belongs. but he was also restrained by the social context he lived in. like every person in the region who did not conform with the ideas of the two dominant discourses, he has had to deal with criticism by the group he is deemed to belong to. i have to deal with people who criticise me. i told them i will teach the dancers greek dances. they reacted again to this. they said, “if they want greek dances they should go to the other association of the village.” i said, “what are you talking about? you will draw boundaries around your child and you expect it to talk about the human rights that you now speak of? isn’t it you who accuses the fascists? i am in the association and the domain of tradition and culture since 1983. tell me when rainbow was established and you started to be aware of these issues? you, the great macedonians who now give loyalty certificates.” in searching for an identity, savvas provided an account of a person who is struggling to find a place for himself in a social context that is often presented as simply divided into two opposing and mutually exclusive sides. he questioned notions of belonging and ideas imposed by nationalist policies such as that of the homeland and national symbols such as the flag. he certainly did not see himself as part of either of the two national categories. he felt connected with the place where he was born and grew up. who are you with? us or the others? and who is us and who are the others? i don’t know. i have thought about this a lot of times. i was talking with a friend when i was studying in thessaloniki about what we are and what we are not. what are our ideals? guys like me don’t really have a homeland. i regard myself as happy that i am different. i don’t belong either to the one or the other side. i am connected with my place but not with the idea of homeland. i am a macedonian from florina. neither from there nor from here. nationalism limits your ability to understand persons and situations. i voted for rainbow. rainbow as a party doesn’t make any territorial claims but as national macedonians they do have. they want to change the border and go to the other side. and i ask, “what flag are we going to have?” we will take one with blue, white, yellow and red. i do not belong anywhere finally. we were discussing once in thessaloniki what we would do if there were a war between macedonia and greece. this is still a fundamental question for me. we don’t want to be with greece. the others, we don’t really know. we finally decided we would stay in our houses. what should i do?, i asked myself. kill my pontios neighbour though we grew up together? at least, i should try to save myself. when i was in the army the commander called me and i told him, i am not ashamed to tell you that i am neither separatist nor nothing. i don’t believe in armies and flags. a flag is for me a commercial symbol. i am a citizen of the world. neither of macedonia nor greece. savvas stressed the need for a new approach to the issue, a new form of contact between people. the youth were for him the primary target group for the introduction of his ideas: it is necessary to let the youth think and give them space to decide and act. he argued for the de-politicisation of culture and the choice to stay outside the politics of culture. subjectivity, power and individual agency in north-western macedonia 131 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 efforts must be made between the people that will give the youth information. don’t let anybody say his bull shit from this and from the other side. i try to promote in the village the de-politicisation of dance and they keep on at me not to do it. there are young people in our villages who consciously don’t want to participate in politics. we need to help them understand why they argue. if they will understand they will not argue. they just don’t see the problem. we will probably be able to see that we don’t argue about the same thing and we only think we argue. kir-andreas kir-andreas who lives in the town of florina is a 70-yearold musician. he is one of the most prestigious representatives of a very famous family of musicians in the region. he is retired and occasionally plays music at weddings and dance troupe performances. his family comes from a village in the plain of florina, which comprises dopioi, pontioi and tsiganoi [26] in its population. his parents moved to florina where he was born in the early 1930s. in local terms, he could be characterised as a dopios although he himself never uses this term as a self-designation. i conducted two biographic interviews and further discussions during my fieldwork. the material that is presented is based on my overall knowledge about him and the interviews during my fieldwork. in my account, i present the way he perceived the supposed differences within and between the population categories in the region, his own experiences playing music during the 1940s and the years that followed, and incidents he recounted from that time. his perception of the dopioi category reveals internal differences based on cultural criteria. he brought to light a new contrast between villages in the plain and those on the mountains. he also mentioned differences in ways of speaking and dress, which were considered impediments to marriage between villages, attributed to the dopioi. the dopia villages in the plain did not give brides to the mountain villages. for example, a woman to go from idrusa to kalliniki? no. their way of speaking did not match with each other. we speak differently, in proti they speak differently, in kalliniki differently, in meliti differently. we call the spoon lazitsa and in kelli they call it bulela. our neighbour from kratero calls the towel riza while we say krpa. they call the stove kobe and we call it coba. their dresses as well were different. as regards the relations between the categories, he thought that the situation was not very bad even before the war. he saw a difference in the recent decades when intermarriages have increased and are now considered as a very natural phenomenon. he gave an example from his own family to show me this. at the same time, he used politically loaded terms such as ‘bugarka’ [27] and ‘turk’ [28] which are used by members of the categories against each other. there were not great problems between dopioi and pontioi and the others before the war. arvanites, in particular, had good relations with the dopioi. but it was not as it is now. do you know how many sons-in-law i have? one is vlach. at that time, it was inconceivable for a vlach to marry a dopia [female, singular]. i have a daughter-inlaw who is pontia [female, singular]. my other son-in-law is kiutachialis [male, singular]. we used to call them ‘turks.’ are you serious? a ‘bugarka’ to marry to a ‘turk’? my older brother got married in 1957 to a thrakiotissa [female, singular]. not only that. a friend of mine who is pontios [male, singular] married an arvanitissa [female, singular]. the two extremes. turning to the political situation in the last decades, kir-andreas saw the events in his account in terms of a succession of power holders. they tried to establish their power by persecuting their political opponents. a whole life through, the prisons were full. in the previous years it was the bulgarians; now it is the macedonians. during the civil war [1944–49] [29] it was the communists that had the power. after them the supporters of the king arrested the communists. one was coming after the other. he seemed not to identify himself with any one of them. the reasons for this become evident in the incidents he described concerning members of his family. they all were victims of the exercise of power. kir-andreas placed the initial point for the emergence of that policy in the metaxas dictatorship. he pointed out the state’s role in imposing notions of national homogeneity. he recounted an incident in which a member of his family experienced exclusion, persecution, and disappointment. yet he began by calling himself greek, maybe as a strategy to avoid any criticism that he was accusing the state and its instruments. it is our fault, the greeks’ fault. it all started in the metaxas time. we did not have problems before. during the metaxas period people started going to prison, to be arrested for language. but nobody knew greek. neither my grandmother nor my mother. my uncle pantelis was playing a melody in a coffee shop during the metaxas time. a rural constable split on him. he was arrested and beaten by policemen. can he forget this and be a friend of greece? the action of the rural constable highlights that although it is the state structures that create the framework for the exercise of power, it is individuals that interpret and exploit it. the role of individual agency is illustrated in the next passage as well, where kir-andreas moved on to the decade 1940–1950, describing the arrest of his father at 132 ioannis manos the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 the end of the civil war on the basis of information given to the police by one of his neighbours. in the late 1940s there were some people in our neighbourhood who were supposed to have been recruited by the police. people were accused by them of being bulgarians and were sent to prison. they did this to show the police they were doing their job. in 1949, my father was sitting at the door of his little store. a policeman came and arrested him and two others from our neighbourhood. we did not know why they took him. they put them in prison. they even did not give them food. then they interrogated them. as we heard afterwards, one of those i mentioned before had informed against him. this guy was collaborating with the germans when they were here, and the bulgarians and the greeks when they came. in the post-war period, kir-andreas was in the army and experienced the consequences of the previous turbulent decade. the dances of the region were called ‘bulgarian’ by the central state authorities and kir-andreas, together with local musicians and dancers, were denied the state’s help in organising a tour abroad. “do you know what they replied to us? we can’t present these bulgarian dances in public.” people that came from the areas that were the bases of the left wing forces were stigmatised. that posed further dilemmas to feelings of national belonging. i joined the army in 1952. during our basic training we were practising shooting. in these cases, two soldiers warn the people by standing with two red flags at the two edges of the shooting ground. one of those two came from the region of kastoria. before the shooting, the captain talked to us about the flag. he said, “the flag you hold is heroic.” and the guy from kastoria asked, “the red?” “come here,” the captain told him. he beat him so hard that blood did not stop running. “where are you from? kastoria? keep quiet you dirty bulgarians. i will all load you on a ship and send you to exile right away.” who could say anything? how could we then fight for the country? how can a person overcome fear and insecurity and deal with the dilemmas that are very often posed by changing political conditions? one has to find ways to overcome these problems ‘cleverly’ and painlessly. this is especially true in the case of a musician, who very often finds himself at the center of deeply politicised situations in which he is forced to do his job, that is, play what he is asked to play. kir-andreas cited some of these situations. i was always concerned not to play something which could be seen as either communist or nationalist. i was playing once in a village and a policeman came there and told me not to play gaida. then i started to play a song from ipiros that was as slow as gaida so that the people could dance it as gaida. at another time, i was playing at a wedding and three different persons asked me to play three different songs. one asked for the pavlos melas [30] song, the second for the sun of the eagle [31] and the third for u borba. [32] i said i do not play any of them and asked the father-in-law to sort things out. he told them he did not want any political songs because he did not want to spoil the wedding. imagine: one of them was the best man. at the time nea dimokratia [33] was in power, i was asked to play the samiotissa. [34] when pasok [35] came to power they asked for the sun [36] instead of the samiotissa. in the final passage, kir-andreas narrated an incident that took place during another wedding, this time in canada in the 1960s. he went there for a short period to work as a musician at various dance occasions. very important issues are addressed in this account such as the role of individual agency, ways of strategising, and perceptions and actions that do not fit stereotypical notions of collective identities. an instrumental element is evident in kir-andreas’ actions. he admitted he manipulated his cultural background in a strategic way to obtain access to situations from which he could benefit by earning money. the incident also demonstrates the fact that very often individuals do not follow the dominant patterns of belonging. although the main person in the incident seemed to stand against anything related to greece, at the most important moment of the ritual where he had to dance he asked for music that was identified as greek. it then becomes interesting to see kir-andreas’ reaction. he was very cautious about what he was going to play since he did not want to be accused of not doing his job. on the other side, he was puzzled in his effort to interpret the incident. he saw it as a contradiction in his behaviour, derived from past experiences and policies that had led people to argue with each other. i was in canada in the 1960s. there was a bus driver there who had left greece because he was sent into exile. he was working there as a shoemaker. i had heard his son would have a wedding. in canada, they have two churches, st klime for the makedontsi and st george for the greeks. i went first to the greek church. somebody from papayianni welcomed me and asked me if i wanted to register with their association. i told him i would only be staying for three months. after that, i went to the other church. there, another guy asked me there if i would register. i told him i would because i knew about the wedding and i wanted to play there. i finally did not register but i went to play at the wedding. the man from florina remembered me. talking about the feast he asked me in macedonian “ne ke slusnam grtska pesna. ako ne, ne ki gi zemas parite ke begas.” [i won’t hear any greek song. if not, you won’t get your money and you will have to leave]. i told him “all right.” subjectivity, power and individual agency in north-western macedonia 133 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 the dancing started after the dinner. the bride and the groom danced a waltz first. after that, they would dance traditional dances together with their parents. i thought about what to play in order not to be misinterpreted. i played them the paloma. after that, it was the turn of the father-in-law to dance. i leaned towards him and asked him what he wanted to dance. he said, “edno kalamatano.” i told him, “grtska e taa” [that is greek]. “abe sam taa snam da igram,” he said [this is the only dance i know]. you see? at the same time, i hate something and i love it. people were misguided and divided by the beating and the exile and came to hate each other. froso froso is a 40-year-old woman and lives in her husband’s village. in local terms, she is dopia. she got married before her twenties and has lived since then in the village. when she first heard about her husband’s village she did not know where it was located; but she likes it now. she played a leading part in the establishment of the village’s cultural association although she did not participate in the council. she is the instructor of the dance troupe. froso’s memories from her first years of marriage in thira, a village around 15 km away from her own, revealed the differences that existed within the dopia villages, as well as the peoples’ perceptions of patterns of behaviour identified as ‘greek.’ i grew up with my grandmother who did not speak greek and so i learned dopia first. during my first years in my husband’s village, although i spoke dopia, i couldn’t understand enough what my parents-in-law were saying because they spoke differently. so, i spoke greek. for this reason i was teased by my affinal relatives and told “you are too greek.” but in later years, i learned the dopia spoken in the village. the process of learning to speak dopia was different for her 16-year-old son however. like every teenager, he participated in many dance events where he was introduced to speaking through listening to the slavic songs sung by local bands. i did not teach it to my children but they listened to me and my husband speaking it. my son was complaining that he did not understand. as he grew up he started to learn it by going to every panigiri and listening to tapes from the local bands. then he started asking us to tell him more and to correct him. the importance of the youth’s participation in the activities of an association in order to gain experience and become socialised were the main reasons she worked hard for the establishment of the village’s association although she did not come from the village. she said that it was very important for the youth. she insisted that their association had to participate in as many activities as possible. she gathered the young dancers and prepared the troupe for the first performance they made, in the village’s annual celebration of its patron saint. describing the way she worked with the dance troupe, she said i don’t have any experience in teaching dances. at the beginning i only taught them by counting the steps. then they asked me to dance with the music and they spontaneously expressed themselves and ‘the feet danced by themselves.’ the only one that knew how to dance was my daughter who watched me dancing at home. of course, the teenagers were very stressed but they did well. froso seemed to be unaware of the dance discourse in the region and the potential political significance of the theatrical presentation of the dances. in her effort to introduce an innovative element she was thinking about presenting dances that did not originate in the region. i have a friend in skopje from whom i expect a videotape in order to select dances and elicit the way they are danced, and then teach them to the troupe. i want to present something new. i will give the dance a different name and that will be something novel. however, she was aware of the functioning of local cultural politics. relations of clientelism with politicians and everyone with political and economic power who might help are important. she wondered how she could get access to subsidies in order to have dresses manufactured for the troupe. she said she knew she had to establish contacts and acquaintances, although she was concerned that the local mp and current representative of the pasok wouldn’t want to meet them because they supported another future candidate of the same party. in relation to issues of identity, froso was seeing her children develop a sense of belonging based on elements which she couldn’t incorporate or express because they have been stigmatised or rejected. experiencing the current socio-political context created in the region since the 1990s, she seemed to be in the process of building a new form of subjectivity, which considered itself part of the dopioi category and attempted to acknowledge various realities without challenging the dominance of the greek national project. it strove however to occupy an equal position in relation to the other categories and get equal treatment from the state. everybody has to have the freedom to express him or herself the way one had been accustomed to do. just like the pontios, the arvanitis and the vlach dance and sing freely, in the same way must the dopios do these things freely. but she differentiated herself from those who promote an ideology against the greek state. she further asserted that if the state had not followed a repressive policy 134 ioannis manos the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 towards the dopioi and had let the language be spoken freely dopia would not have been preserved. those who created the problems with macedonia were very few and could mislead many others. they were also based on language and this is the way they “do their job.” if people could speak freely the language would become extinct. the past has also contributed to the problem. according to her, language and dancing must not be mixed with politics. but i do not want to mix culture with politics. i love to express myself in the way i am and what i learned to be without any other connotations. politics is one thing and cultural issues another. dance is joy and entertainment and should not be used to divide people. yiayia anastasia yiayia anastasia was born in 1924 and raised in the village of kato idrusa, or kotori [37] as she often calls it. the majority of its population consists of villagers who see themselves as dopioi and the rest as arvanites. in these terms, she is an arvanitissa. she moved to the town of florina in her mid-twenties during the civil war. her mother tongue is arvanitika but she speaks dopia and greek equally well. when she plays with her great-grandchildren she sings them songs in greek, arvanitika and dopia and she tells them to learn to dance beratse and poustseno. her views and perceptions of the years she lived in the village and her account of the relations between the two categories did not reveal a view of two opposing groups. on the contrary, she saw the community in terms of conducting a common life in the same social environment, participating in the same social events, going to school together and protecting each other in dangerous and tough periods for the village such as world war ii and the civil war. my account is based on my overall knowledge about her as well as on two biographic interviews i conducted during my fieldwork. in the stories and incidents she described, i try to trace her views on the relations between the categories, the degree of contact through dance events and common celebrations and her memories of the village during the critical periods of the metaxas dictatorship and the decade 1940–1950. recalling the years when she was a little girl, she said about the contact between the two categories earlier, i remember it very vaguely because i was very young, we had two distinct churches. we had st. dimitrius and they had st. nicholas. but after a while we all became the same. we, the kids, exchanged bread with each other at school. they ate a lot of corn bread and we had wheat bread. they made it very tasty and they ate ours, which they did not have. they also had strong livestock and we paid some of them to plough our fields. but we did not argue with each other. we lived together. we did not talk against each other or do anything against each other. and we did not marry each other, no, that did not take place. that started from the 1940s onwards. she presented two different examples from her extended family in which persons attempted to break the social norms. the first example concerned an arvanitis and a dopia who were in love but whose kin did not let them marry each other, and the second was about another arvanitis who married a dopia. the brother of my father loved maro very much. he was madly in love with her. but they couldn’t get married. everybody had objected to it. they did not let her marry him, neither did they let him marry her. she then got married to someone else and left for bulgaria. my uncle married an arvanitissa. but he still had his mind on her. he visited us recently from australia and he said he wanted to go to bulgaria to see maro. now, look at this bad thing. to love each other and not be able to marry. the only one who had a dopia bride was another uncle of mine. he was first married to another woman who died at forty-two. then he married a dopia and there were no problems. previously they did not marry each other. but from the war onwards we became one thing. in the 1940s, both categories seem to have begun to establish kin relations with each other. yiayia anastasia described being a bridesmaid at a wedding held in the village in 1946 where she also sang the wedding songs in dopia. alexandra, the bride and her ‘blood sister,’ was dopia. i was the bridesmaid at aunt alexandra’s wedding. we were very close. we were stavradelfes [blood sisters]. her mother put me in this position. i followed her and stepped wherever she stepped. and behind me there were others who were singing in dopia. i sang with them too. they played very sad songs and we all cried. in relation to other public occasions where the whole village gathered, she described big religious feasts at christmas, easter and august 15th that took place in the central square. people arrived there when they heard the sound of the music. the two first dances she mentioned are attributed to the dopioi and the others to the arvanites. they danced poustseno, gaida, beratse, mentris. some elders were saying in dopia, “gaidata sakam” [i want the gaida]. she also mentioned the school as a place for learning and performing dancing. her description reflected an important distinction. she explicitly differentiated between the dances she learned at school, which were related to greece, and those she danced in the village. it seems that even during that period, identification with the subjectivity, power and individual agency in north-western macedonia 135 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 state was not pre-given and school was definitely used as a means for the consolidation of national identity. at school we were taught the greek things, the greek islands, everything greek. we did demonstrations of co-ordinated gymnastic exercises. we learned the greek dances, kalamatianos, tsamikos; but not our own dances like poustseno or beratse. these we danced during the village’s feasts. the most difficult time for the village and especially for the dopioi, she remembered, was the metaxas period. people “were afraid because police persecuted them.” while she was talking about this she asked me to turn the tape recorder off. although she was talking to her grandson, she couldn’t overcome the fear very often expressed by people of her age that anything that is recorded is a documented evidence that can be used for any purpose. she described an incident in which one can see the role of certain state representatives in the application of state policy and its impact on people. but most importantly, one can see the ways in which the villagers dealt with it. during the metaxas period, i was already going to the housekeeping school in florina. one day, the prefect visited the village. it was sunday and i was there too. the local musicians played some music. then he gave a speech. i remember that he was saying to us not to speak bulgarian, not to do this, not to do that. he was shouting, fuming at the people. everybody was afraid of him. he said, “if i hear you speak bulgarian, you see that tree over there?” its like i see him now. “this is where i will hang you.” and he pointed at it with his fingers. the whole village was very scared. but we the young girls did not care. we continued speaking it. who could hear us? if we saw anybody we just stopped talking. the 1940–1950 decade was equally difficult. many dopioi from the village were happy with the bulgarian presence in the region. others collaborated with them. a celebration was organised on the occasion of the ilinden uprising. [38] it was difficult when the bulgarians came. many of ours [co-villagers] in the village got involved in the bulgarian propaganda. when the greeks came they left and joined the left-wing armed forces. while the germans were here, the partisans had killed a bulgarian in tropeuchos. [39] some of the partisans were wounded and were carried to the village. there was blood on the road. bulgarian troops came and gathered the whole village. the husband of my cousin pandora was a partisan. he was not in the village and the problem was what we should say about her. we agreed to say she was the wife of my uncle. when they came close to us they asked us, “ruski, ruski?” [“russians, russians?”] because we were blond. “no,” we told them. then, they asked about pandora and we said that taskos was her husband. they spoke to us in bulgarian. “so ste? ruski?” [“what are you? russians?”]. we responded, of course, “ne sme ruski. od tuka sme” [“we are not russians, we come from here”]. nobody from the village said anything though they all knew that they were not married. yiayia anastasia closed her account with one incident in which the solidarity expressed by her co-villagers, who in both cases were dopioi, saved her father’s life. when the germans left, the state appointed my father as the village’s mayor. but although it was the civil war, we supported each other. some of the left-wingers wanted to arrest my father but one of their high-ranking officers who came from our village said “if you kill him i will withdraw from the group.” that person left greece in 1947. after the war, we went to bitola to see him. conclusion the objective of the paper has been to show that belonging is a matter of negotiation and political manipulation related to the power dynamics that prevail at certain periods. examining the construction of identity at the individual level, i demonstrated that individuals consciously reject subject positions and identities assigned to them and shift from one possible position to another. within these contexts, social actors make choices and develop strategies through which they accept, manipulate or contest symbols and change their meanings circumstantially or permanently. in this process, they draw on local, national and transnational discourses and use cultural institutions as vehicles for promoting their agendas. regarding the accounts of the five individuals presented in the paper, kiriakos’ case demonstrates the deeply political character of local cultural activities. it also illustrates the struggle between the individual and the hegemony of both national and minority discourses. he found himself in the middle of them, and with the intervention of other contingent factors he experienced in an extremely emotional way an identity crisis. as a result of this process, he learned that fluidity of strategies and situational use of ambiguous symbols are the most effective tactics for maneuvering in the local context. savvas having been actively involved in the macedonian conflict from a position that promoted rainbow’s political agenda has shifted his views towards a distancing from of all exclusive identities and their respective restricting qualities. dealing with questions about his personal sense of belonging, he has adopted a new approach: he wishes to establish new relationships in which identity and difference are never predetermined but always negotiable. kir-andreas’ and yiayia anastasia’s accounts demonstrate that neither the boundedness of the dopioi as a consistent category nor the clear-cut distinction 136 ioannis manos the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 between population categories is valid; they depend on each person’s experiences and multiple other factors. in addition, they exhibit the individual’s capacity to manipulate and use for their own ends dominant symbols and ideologies. froso, like savvas, exemplifies a new type of subjectivity that emerged after the boisterous 1990 decade as a manifestation of deeper social changes in the region. she dismisses any kind of action that strives to implant a new socio-political order. she seems to be concerned with improving the terms of the state policy and de-stigmatising the category she belongs to. she also claims her right to practice ‘culture’ instead of politics of culture. individuals do not want to identify themselves in exclusive and absolute terms with any one of the national categories imposed on them by various totalisng projects. although such projects pose the dichotomies ‘we and they’ in the first place, it is the social actors who act within this cultural logic, adopting more fluid strategies in order to adapt to the social environment they live in. in the light of their current interests, they draw on various practices to work out how to organise their social relations. they operate in unpredictable political situations by appropriating symbols and practices, which do not have a closed and entirely coherent set of meanings but are polyvalent and fluid. focusing on the ability of individuals to create the meaning of personal and collective identities reveals that belonging is a matter of negotiation and political manipulation related to power structures existing in society. this process has its own limits which are posed by the wider context of local and national life in which the region is embedded. endnotes 1 the ethnographic material presented in this paper was gathered during fieldwork carried out in the florina region from september 1998 to april 2000. 2 local accounts from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century mention that residents of the region invariably spoke an array of languages. population movements, cultural interaction, economic transactions and multiple affiliations were also dominant patterns in the region during the ottoman period. 3 nation was imposed as the most significant category of belonging. until that time, religion, primarily, together family status, residence in a certain village and membership of a certain socio-economic class were other aspects of differentiation among the population. 4 these terms prevail in anthropological accounts and other studies about the region. yet, there are further categorisations that are neglected or even ignored by these analyses. by failing to acknowledge the existence of subgroups and the various intra-category cultural differentiations these works contribute to the essentialisation of these populations. 5 the kioutachialides are a subgroup of the mikrasiates. regarding the pontioi group, as karslides refer to themselves those who reside in the villages around the city of florina. yet, they differentiate themselves from the kafkasioi, other pontioi in the same area and those who live in the southern part of the district. 6 according to the records of the florina city council, 450 families of monastiriotes were settled in the city of florina until 1930 (iliadou-tachou 1995:74). 7 ll groups reported are represented in the local society with cultural associations, which, despite the decline of their activity over the last years, remain active and through their events reproduce the sense of community and the common origin of their members. 8 in the last years, they are also referred to as ‘bilinguals,’ ‘slav-speakers’ and ‘slavophones.’ i use the term dopioi, which is used by the locals in their interactions. 9 state representatives appointed by the state, locally elected politicians and members of the local elite contributed to the creation of dance troupes, the teaching of dances and the organisation of activities in which dances were performed on stage. 10 that is, step patterns and forms of dance performance that were thought to include only elements representative of the national culture and were ‘refined’ and ‘purified’ of elements thought to resemble those of neighbouring countries. 11 for more information on rainbow see its web site http://www.florina.org, for an analysis of the ‘minority discourse’ of the rainbow party’s official periodical zora (‘dawn’) until 1997. see chotzidis (1997), for an analysis of the political use of the minority rights discourse on behalf of the rainbow see cowan (2001, 2003). 12 as stated in the party’s political manifesto, “[the] immediate political objective in terms of developing national culture [was] the systematic participation of rainbow members in manifestations and cultural clubs— particularly in places where the macedonian song [had] positive impact in terms of national self-perception” (nova zora 1997:5). 13 there was a considerable proliferation of public occasions where organised dance troupes performed. 14 the construction of individual identities although initially pointed out (gounaris, michailidis and agelopoulos 1997) and recently stressed (cowan and brown 2000) as a fundamental element in the study of identity formation processes in macedonia remains, to a large extent, an unfulfilled quest. loring danforth (1995) has provided a rich and in-depth analysis of the construction of national identities at the individual level among transnational diaspora communities. in the only paper published so far subjectivity, power and individual agency in north-western macedonia 137 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 that deals explicitly with the identity of individuals in the florina region, piero vereni (2000) analyses the complicated attempts of a slavic-speaking villager from the florina region to justify the choices he made in identifying himself as a ‘greek macedonian.’ 15 pseudonyms, except yiayia anastasia, have been used for persons’ names. 16 the events were organised by six private cultural associations in the summer of 1999. all of them were located in villages around the town of florina that are considered to belong to the population category of dopioi. moreover, some of the associations were actively promoting rainbow’s political agenda. the first event was a revival of a traditional wedding ceremony. the second was a book presentation written in greek but entitled in the slavic language; its title was “makedontseto” [the macedonian boy]. the third, a flute competition despite the fact that it was announced as a co-organisation of the cultural associations, was already an established event held every year in the same landscape and organised by the writer of the makedontseto. 17 panigiri is called the celebration of the village’s patron saint. it is one of the most, if not the most, important days in the village’s communal life. 18 at the time, nec was expanding its activities in the region regarding the exploitation of lignite and production of electricity. 19 more than sixty male and female dance troupe members dressed in costumes performed as the members and friends of the supposed families involved in the wedding. the re-enactment included visits to the houses of the best man and the bride for the performance of certain dances and customs. the event finished with the choreographed presentation of local dances by the participating dance troupes. 20 skopiá, with the emphasis on a, is the name of a village 2 km away from the town of florina. 21 both events were attended by rainbow activists and received with suspicion by a great part of the local population. 22 the term aftonomistes (separatists) is used by floriniotes to refer to the rainbow activists and those who see themselves as members of the macedonian minority in the region of florina and implies that one of their objectives is the separation of part of the greek macedonia and its unification with fyrom. 23 he was speculated to be a candidate of the socialist governing party in the next national elections, which would take place in april 2000, that is, 9 months later. 24 probably the most popular dance of the region. 25 aidonia is the name of a famous local music band, which sings songs in slavic. 26 the term refers to gypsies. 27 ‘bugarka’ means ‘bulgarian woman’ in dopia. the terms ‘voulgaroi’ [bulgarians] in greek and ‘bugari’ [bulgarians], ‘bugar’ [male singular] and ‘bugarka’ [female singular] in dopia, were in use to refer to the dopioi category. the terms have negative political connotations because they highlight the collaboration and the identification of part of the the dopioi with the bulgarian forces in certain periods in the 19th and 20th century. after the rise of the macedonian minority discourse in the 1990s, those of the dopioi who see themselves as national macedonians have strongly denounced these terms since they challenge the claims on the existence of the minority. from those negatively disposed to the existence of the minority, it is elders that mostly use the term bulagrians while the rest have adopted the terms aftonomistes or macedonians. 28 turk is the term attributed by the dopioi and arvanites to some of the refugees who settled in the region in the 1920s coming from certain parts of turkey and speaking turkish. 29 the region suffered during the civil war from the conflict between rightand left-wingers. in order to promote control of the region, the greek communist party supported the idea of macedonia as an independent state and created guerrilla forces consisting exclusively of dopioi, who were referred to as slavomakedones. schools, newspapers, collective dance events and drama performances promoted the use of the slavic language and the creation of a macedonian national identity. this move was supported by the yugoslav socialist republic of macedonia, which had been established in 1944. with the defeat of the greek communist forces in 1949, thousands of dopioi, known as ‘political refugees,’ left the florina region and greece for yugoslavia and other countries in eastern europe. 30 pavlos melas is considered the most prominent hero of modern greek history and the period of the macedonian struggle (1904–1908). he was a greek army officer, son of an influential athenian family, that had long been committed to the annexation of macedonia into greece and its realisation. he was appointed commander-in-chief of the greek bands of guerrilla fighters in the areas of kastoria and bitola in august 1904 and was killed there by turkish troops in september of the same year. 31 the sun of the eagle is a song related to king of greece. 32 “u borba” is a slavic expression and means ‘join the battle.’ it refers to a song introduced during the civil war by the slav-speaking partisan groups created in northwestern greek macedonia and supported by the greek communist party. 33 the right-wing party. 34 samiotissa is the name of a very famous and popular song that refers to a beautiful woman who comes from the 138 ioannis manos the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 greek island of samos. it is danced with the step pattern known as sirtos. the song has acquired the status of a national song and dance. 35 the socialist party. 36 the ‘sun’ refers to a song identified with the greek socialist party and its ideology. it was widely used in its electoral campaigns throughout the 1980s. 37 the term kotori is the previous name of the village. the complete name was dolno kotori or kato idrousa today. the names were changed by the greek state in the 1920s. 38 on this day in 1903, the ilinden uprising against the turkish occupation took place in ottoman macedonia. the event is celebrated in fyrom national history as the highest expression of the liberating desires of the macedonian people. 39 this is the village next to kato idrousa towards the town of florina. references chotzidis, a. 1997 “arthrosi kai domi tou meionotikou logou: to paradeigma ton moglenon kai tis zora” [the articulation and foundation of minority discourse: the case of moglena and zora], in: gounaris, vasilis, michailidis, d. iakovos and agelopoulos b. georgios (eds), taftotites sti makedonia. [identities in macedonia]. athens: ekdoseis papazisi, pp. 143–169. cowan, jane k. 2003 “the uncertain political limits of cultural claims: ambiguous symbols and multiple audiences in contemporary minority rights politics in southeast europe,” in: mitchell jon and wilson richard (eds.), human rights in global perspective: anthropological studies of rights, claims and entitlements, london and new york: routledge, pp. 140–162. cowan, jane, and k. brown 2000 “introduction: macedonian inflections.” in: cowan, jane k. (ed.), macedonia: the politics of identity and difference. london: pluto press, pp. 1–27. cowan, jane, marie-benedict dembour, and richard a. wilson 2001 “introduction,” in: cowan, jane k., dembour marie-benedict and wilson, richard, a. (eds), culture and rights: anthropological perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press, pp. 1–26. danforth, loring m. 1995 the macedonian conflict: ethnic nationalism in a transnational world. princeton: princeton university press. gounaris, vasilis, d. iakovos michailidis, and b. georgios agelopoulos (eds) 1997 taftotites sti makedonia. [identities in macedonia]. athens: ekdoseis papazisi, iliadoutachou, sofia. 1995 “eidiko afieroma sta 83 chronia apo tin apeleftherosi tis florinas: florina mesa apo to archeio tou dimou tis periodou 1912–1936” [special edition 83 years after the liberation of florina: florina through the municipality’s archive from 1912–1936]. aristotelis, vols. 233–234. nova zora (bimonthly political review of the vinozhito) 1997 political manifesto of the vinozhito party. 1, p. 4. vereni, piero 2000 os ellin makedonas: autobiography, memory, and national identity in western greek macedonia. in: cowan, jane k. (ed.), macedonia: the politics of identity and difference. london: pluto press, pp. 47–67. aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 139 traditional dance in greece yvonne hunt centre for asia minor studies, athens dancing has traditionally been one of the most ancient forms of community entertainment and, indeed, has been true throughout the history of the greeks even as it is today. references to dance in ancient greece have come down to us through the writings of homer, lucian, plato and socrates as well as others. dance scenes are also depicted on many ancient ceramics. one should not assume, however, that the dances of the greeks today are the same as those of their ancient forefathers. as tsatsou-simeonidi states, “we do not have detailed descriptions of dances in archaic texts and the paintings which we see, especially on ceramics, cannot give us the rhythm or the movement of a dance.” [1] there is, nevertheless, a thread of continuity seen in the types of dances and occasions at which both ancient and modern greeks dance. dora stratou elaborates on that thread at length in her book but nevertheless concludes that, “when we say that our popular folk-dances embrace our entire history, obviously we do not mean that they are danced exactly as they were danced 2,500 years ago. one would be mad to even consider such a thing” (1966:13). as to the ancient greeks, lawler tells us “…the dance was a social activity in the truest sense of the word. by means of it the greek expressed his personal and communal emotions of joy and sorrow, marked all the great events of his own life and that of his city—and thoroughly enjoyed himself ” (1985:121). consider the events associated with dancing in the lives of the modern greeks: baptisms, betrothals, weddings, pre-lenten and easter celebrations, feast days honoring patron saints, national holidays, etc. all are occasions similar to those celebrated in antiquity, either personal or communal. anyone who has had the good fortune to observe greeks dancing, or better yet, to dance with them cannot help but understand that they are still thoroughly enjoying themselves! some of the above occasions require dances peculiar to that celebration that may not be performed at other times. many such are performed during the prelenten and easter celebrations. not all are “dances” in which the community as a whole takes part, but performances that may require dance movements usually connected with soil fertility rituals, rainmaking or the warding off of evil spirits. usually only a few take part in the actual performance, but the community as a whole participates as onlookers and beneficiaries of the particular ritual “dance” being performed. while it is true that greeks dance and on a variety of occasions, what they dance may differ greatly not only from one region to another but frequently from village to village even though they may be separated by only a few kilometers. particular dance names are heard over and over and some in every geographical region, i.e., syrtos, hasapikos, karsilamas, tsamikos. these are sometimes referred to as pan-hellenic dances. the assumption should not be made, however, that the same name is necessarily the same dance. the syrtos is a good case in point. the general concept is that the syrtos is a dance performed by all greeks and at all dance events. indeed, a dance motif exists which, with minor variations here and there, is performed throughout the country and which will be danced at least once on almost all occasions. some greeks, such as those from the island of crete, refer to that motif as kalamatianos. in some parts of the country the two names—syrtos/kalamatianos—are used interchangeably. however, when a syrtos is requested by cretans they will perform an entirely different motif. on another island, kythnos, couples, a man and a woman, always dance the syrtos although there may be many couples dancing simultaneously whereas in most of greece, the syrtos is an open circle dance for as many as wish to take part. the kalamatianos of kythnos is also a dance for couples, not particularly dissimilar to the syrtos of that island except in rhythm; the kalamatianos is performed to a ⅞ rhythm while the syrtos is danced to music of 2⁄4 rhythms. tsamikos is just as varied if not more so than the syrtos. in its most common form it is really a solo for the lead dancer even though there may be many more in the dance line. in the past in some villages, only men may have danced it. elsewhere men and women performed it in separate lines or in one line with the men first followed by the women with a handkerchief linking the last man and the first woman who were usually relatives. the first dancer does his/her variations as he/she feels it in the music and according to that individual’s particular skill. usually one person will lead for a time and then join the line of dancers while another person demonstrates his/her skill. because the tsamikos is such a personal dance for the leader with others in line taking a few steps right or left from time-to-time, it is often considered “boring” by non-greeks. not so for the participants, as those in the line are often relatives or good friends of the leader and allen typewritten text © 2004 yvonne hunt all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 140 yvonne hunt the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 vicariously experience his/her joy in the dance, knowing they will have an opportunity to demonstrate their own skill at another time. technically it could be said there are as many ways to dance tsamikos as there are dancers to lead it. in fact, there are more. inhabitants of some villages, perhaps in addition to dancing tsamikos in the free-style as described above, also perform a motif to music in a tsamiko-type rhythm (6⁄8 or ¾) that is executed by all. there are hundreds of tsamiko songs from which to choose, some quite localized others known throughout the country. at times it may be a dance for one gender only. in such instances it is often referred to simply as the women’s tsamikos or the men’s tsamikos. variety and improvisation are key words in describing the traditional dances of the greeks. from north to south, from east to west there are hundreds of dances in this relatively small country. because of the tendency to use the same names again and again it may seem like less but it should be remembered, as pointed out previously, that one name used in different places might mean several different kinetic motifs. the repertoire was considerably greater in the past but has been diminished by emigration from the villages to the cities, the rise of performing ensembles and dance teachers in the villages, as well as foreign influences via television and film. in addition to the previously mentioned pan-hellenic dances, included in the repertoire of most villages is any number of dances that may be done in only that village, in a few nearby villages or in several of the surrounding villages. within the various geographical regions of greece similarities in the dances are often found that allow them to be classified in fairly broad categories such as mainland, island, mountain, plains or urban dances. some are of the opinion that the geographical surroundings are reflected in regional styles or have influenced them: the stately steps with high leg lifts of inhabitants of the high mountainous regions, the running and stamping step with lifts close to the ground of the villagers of agricultural or plains areas as well as the undulating flow of island dances emulating the sea. there are exceptions, of course. where one region borders on another there will be definite influences in both music and dance as well as trading with or borrowing from one another. regardless of regional differences, they are, nevertheless, bound together by a common thread making them identifiable as greek. the majority of traditional greek dances are in open circular formation moving counter-clockwise. a few exist, however, that are open circular moving clockwise. they frequently bear the name “zervos,” meaning to the left. there are even a few dances that were traditionally performed in closed circles with no apparent leader; pontic greeks and some from eastern thrace mainly perform these. today most of those dances are now done in open circular formation. serpentine forms as well as free-form configurations (dancers placed wherever they choose on the dance floor) are also found. there are several dances throughout the country for couples. in most instances many couples perform simultaneously with each executing their own particular variations of the dance. while today most couple dances are performed with mixed genders, in many regions in the past members of the same sex mostly danced them together. the only exceptions were with immediate family or close relatives. a few solo dances exist and are almost always traditionally danced by men, although gender lines are rapidly disappearing. in most regions there were dances that were performed only by one gender or the other. while other dances may have been performed by both sexes, they were either in separate lines or with the last man and first woman joined not by their hands as with the other dancers but with a handkerchief. today throughout the country, both men and women usually perform the majority of the dances and it is acceptable for women as well as men to lead. exceptions to the above still exist in various villages. in olympos on the island of karpathos dancing must begin with the men. women gradually join afterwards to the right of a family member or close relative. a man must lead the dance as well as close it at the other end. this system also exists on several of the other islands in the dodecanese group. improvisation is one of the most characteristic features of greek dances. it is the option as well as the obligation in some instances of the lead dancer. the improvisations are a means of self-expression and executed according to the skill as well as the mood of the performer. because one’s mood is not always the same, improvisations may be more or less dynamic from one execution to another and may not always include the same variations. as drandakis writes in his excellent work on improvisation, each time the leader “…re-composes a pre-existing dance, but this recomposition also bears his own stamp” (1993:66). this “pre-existing dance” has been handed down from generation to generation, and while each lead dancer interprets it in his/her own manner the execution of variations must conform to local stylistic and kinetic standards developed by previous generations. “the performance of variations in the lead position is, along with the perfecting of different regional styles, one of the most difficult elements of greek dancing. the difficulty does not usually lie with the execution of the variations…most skilled dancers will be able to master these with a little practice. the problem is not so much what to do as when to do it. a good dancer is not measured by the number of variations he performs or by the difficulty of traditional dance in greece 141 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 the variation. rather it is how well it is executed, whether relatively easy or difficult, and, most importantly, how well it relates to the music” (hunt 1996:35, 36). the relationship between the dancer and the music is extremely important. using cretan dances as an example, it can be said that the variations of lead males may be quite spectacular as they execute high leaps, dizzying spins, foot slapping, etc. however, all of these sensational moves are merely gymnastics if not performed in keeping with changes in the music. these dazzling variations should be executed when the music has reached an exhilarating level, a “high.” if not, then what may appear to be spectacular dancing to an observer from outside the village or ethnic group may not be perceived that way at all by the dancer’s peers. cowan relates an interesting conversation among villagers of sohos in which they discuss the relationship between the lead dancer and the drummer (daoultzis) wherein the drummer tries to help an unskilled leader find and keep the beat (1990:127, 128). i have frequently observed musicians alter the tempo to conform to the leader’s movements and even verbally inform him/ her when he/she is off the beat. the lead dancer and the musicians share a special relationship when all are skilled. in this harmonious situation the dancer anticipates changes in the music while the musicians keep an eye on the variations the leader executes and attempt to foresee where he will make a break or stop as punctuation or for emphasis. in the very best of this type of situation, the musician and dancer literally become one, anticipating each other’s performance. variations are not limited to the lead dancer although certainly the most energetic and spectacular are reserved for that position. in many, if not most dances, dancers within the line are free to perform a variety of steps that fit within the general kinetic motif. in some instances one might think everyone in the dance line is performing a different dance because of the many variations being simultaneously executed. in one sense they are, and yet, they harmoniously fit within the dance motif. music is found in every region of greece and is an inseparable part of village life. many events, not just dancing, are accompanied by vocal or instrumental music. each region has its own peculiar style of music and particular instruments used to achieve that style. even though the same instruments are used in several areas, the combinations in which they are played create a distinctive sound in each of those areas. an instrument may play a dominant role in one region and a supportive or secondary role in another. an extensive assortment of instrument combinations represents the music of greece. there are two basic combinations: the ziyia (ζιγιά), composed of two different instruments and the kompania (κομπανία), an ensemble. at times an instrument will be played solo, but today for most there is some type of percussion accompaniment. some combinations are better suited for outdoor celebrations while others are more suitable for enclosed spaces. however, amplification has greatly modified their capabilities and several instruments initially used indoors are now also played in outdoor celebrations. while amplification has provided the opportunity for various instruments to be used in more settings than in the past, that same amplification is often so intense that it distorts the sweetness of sound made by some instruments in non-amplified situations. the geographical position of greece, being both a balkan and a mediterranean country, has played a major role in shaping its traditional folk music. within the country there are no precise musical boundaries; therefore musical styles and songs often spill over from one region to another as well as from one country to another in border areas. as the borders are more open now than they were a decade or so ago, especially with the former yugoslav republic of macedonia, there has recently been an influx of both music and musicians. rhythms for greek dance music are quite varied as in other countries of the balkan peninsula. many of those rhythms are familiar to the western ear: 2⁄4, ¾, 4⁄4. these are common in both the islands and the mainland. in addition there are many rhythms not often used in western music: ⅞, 9⁄8, 5⁄4, 12⁄8, ⅝, ⅜, 1⅛, 7⁄16. those rhythms are frequently referred to as “asymmetric”; aksak, a turkish word meaning to limp, is also often applied to these rhythms. this diversity of instruments and rhythms combine to form the unique sound that is greek music. an understanding of and a feel for them are basic to the execution of the dances. one of the most marvelous things about greeks and their dances is that they still perform them on most, if not all, celebratory occasions. shay, in reference to the dora stratou dance theatre, leads one to believe that the traditional dances of the greeks are a thing of the past, “the repertoire reflects, to the best of the company’s collective ability, the dancing of fifty years ago when it was a living tradition” (2002:186). fortunately for both greeks and non-greeks this is incorrect. it is still very much a living tradition, alive and well in villages throughout the country although undergoing changes. one change is the village performing group, now standard in many villages. this “necessitates” a dance teacher, all too often one who is a graduate of the physical education department of the university. in many instances the instructor is not from the particular village/region in question and either teaches “foreign” dances, i.e., from other regions, or stylizes the local dances. even when villagers, without external instruction, construct performing groups 142 yvonne hunt the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 utilizing only local inhabitants, someone becomes the “director” and almost invariably they “rehearse” the dancers until they, too, resemble the well-known ensembles of athens and other large cities losing the spontaneity and individuality with which they dance in their own village celebrations. not a great deal of information on the traditional dances of the greeks has been published in english. however, the works listed in the following bibliography will provide a basis for approaching the subject from various points of view. these divergent views will, hopefully, enable one to have a better grasp of the multifaceted subject of greek dance. one might note a definitive lack of “how-to” books instructing the dances. although several exist, mainly in greek, i have yet to find one from which anyone can truly learn to dance. the translation of lucian’s essay on the dance along with lawler’s book provides the best works to date on greeks and their ancient dances. while a few dance names and commentary regarding them are provided in both, no actual descriptions of the dances have remained. they are of great value, however, in understanding some of the types of dances and the occasions for dancing that were important to the ancient greeks and the role dance played in their lives. it may not come as a surprise to find that many occasions and events are not that far removed from modern greek society. stratou attempts to make the leap from the ancient to the more modern world of greek dance, not through kinetic motifs and the dance repertoire of which we have so little knowledge, but through “…their expression and movement and musical rhythm—we find the thread linking them with the ancient texts, the ancient musical scales, the ancient poetic meters, the vase-paintings, the byzantine frescoes and byzantine music” (op.cit: 14). the founding of her dance theatre in the late 1950s was her attempt to present this to both her fellow greeks as well as to foreigners (see op.cit: 16). the dora stratou greek dances theatre is the subject of the chapter on greece in shay’s work on state folkdance companies. while he gives an interesting account of his first encounter with the group in its very early years, he wrongly assumes it is a state ensemble in the sense of the other groups portrayed in his book (2002:167, 169). fortunately for the sake of its living tradition greece has no state ensemble. there are, indeed, hundreds of performing ensembles throughout the country and many of them receive some amount of funding from the ministry of culture just as does the dora stratou theatre. there are several inaccuracies in the account of the theatre, its operations and its presentations in this work. a more accurate picture of the situation in greece in general as well as the dora stratou theatre in particular might have been portrayed if mr. shay had not largely limited his interviews to the current director and his staff. nevertheless it does provide an interesting look into the organized performance of traditional dances in greece. a general overview of the traditional dances of the greeks, the variety and regional style as well as the role dance plays in the lives of the greeks is provided in hunt’s work. ethnomusicologist, markos dragoumis, director of the music folklore archives of the centre for asia minor studies in athens, writes in the foreword that the book “…shows a good balance between practical and theoretical information…” and “…whets the appetite of the novice to take the first step towards becoming a dancer and allows the knowledgeable to acquire a deeper understanding of the subtle art of greek dancing” (1996:11). essential to the understanding of greek dances is the role of improvisation. drandakis’ work on that subject is excellent. he leads us through the art of improvisation, the relationship between dancer and musicians, between lead dancer and others in the dance, even informing us how one’s ability to improvise influences his standing within society. understanding the intricacies of improvisation is indispensable to understanding the way greeks dance. dance and social experience are deeply examined in cowan’s work pertaining to the village of sohos in macedonia. although the work is concentrated on one particular village much of what is presented is true of greek village society in general. the accounts of the various types of dance events—weddings, formally organized evening dances, ritual events, etc.—present a good picture of the variety of occasions at which dancing may occur and the social interaction underlying the actual dancing. it is also helpful in understanding the role gender plays in village society and how it relates to dance events. there are many ritual events in greek culture in which dancing may play either a major or minor role. danforth’s book reveals several underlying aspects of one ritual event, the firewalking of the anastenaria. one such feature is the role dance plays both during the actual event and otherwise in the lives of the celebrants. to them it is both a form of suffering as well as one of joy. we are given the opportunity to view the ritual both through the eyes of the participants as well as those of the outsiders through this work. perhaps one’s view of what constitutes “dance” will be changed or broadened through the reading. music, sung or played, provides the accompaniment to the dance in most instances. a great variety of musical instruments and playing styles exist in greece. fivos anoyanakis’ work is the most complete and comprehensive on their variety and use throughout the country and is essential reading for one wishing to become acquainted with this rich assortment. information is included concerning instrument making, musicians and different types traditional dance in greece 143 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 of music. excellent color photographs of the instruments accompany the information. while there are disagreements among both scholars and greeks as to whether or not the music and dance known as “rebetika” are part of the traditional or folk repertoire, there can be little doubt that they are a definite segment of modern greek culture. two books provide a picture of the sub-culture from which they came. both works give several of the songs of this genre with translations in english. in the book edited by butterworth an article on the dances by petrides and one on the music by dragoumis allow us a glimpse into the music/dance associated with the world of the “rebetes.” holst, in her work on the subject, not only supplies us with music and dance information but also recounts the history of the movement and its beginnings. there are obviously many ways from which to approach a dance or dancing. multiple factors contribute to every dance and dance event, and the combination of those factors can create a favorable or unfavorable state. for a greek to give expression to his emotions via the dance he not only needs to feel the music, but also needs good parea (παρέα), his companions. the atmosphere of the moment plays a major role, including the food and drink served. most greeks do not feel the need to express themselves in dance until they have drunk several glasses of wine. when the parea, the music and other factors are all present in the right amount and combination, the situation may become electrifying, magical. at that point the greeks dance in an outpouring of joy that is virtually unstoppable until either the music ends or the dancers become too exhausted to continue. to witness such an event, or better yet to participate in it, is a great privilege and a look into the greek soul. the dances have a deep personal significance for the people who dance them as can be seen from the suggested readings. the history of greece and her people are written into them as well as into the music and songs. they have been perpetuated and preserved over the centuries because of the deep pride and spiritual attachment that every greek feels toward his country. the bond between the greek and his village is very strong no matter where he is living; it is the place that gives him his identity. his village dances, although they may not vary significantly from those of surrounding villages, are a vital and living element that helps to reinforce and perpetuate this identity. endnote 1 see p. 93 in τσάτσου-συμεονίδη δώρα, “ο χορός”, ελλάδα, ιστορία και πολιτισμός, vol. 10, athens, 1983. references anoyanakis, fivos 1991 greek popular musical instruments. 2nd ed., melissa, athens. butterworth, katharine, and sara schneider (eds.) 1975 rebetika. komboloi, new york. cowan, jane k. 1990 dance and the body politic in northern greece. princeton university press, princeton. drandakis, lefteris 1993 improvisation in the greek folk dances. athens. holst, gail 1975 road to rembetika. denise harvey & co., athens. hunt, yvonne 1996 traditional dance in greek culture. centre for asia minor studies, athens. lawler, lillian b. 1985 the dance in ancient greece. wesleyan university press, connecticut. ‘lucian 1972 “the dance,” p. 211–289, lucian v, tr. a.m. harmon, loeb classical library, harvard university press, cambridge. shay, anthony 2002 choreographic politics. wesleyan university press, connecticut. stratou, dora 1966 the greek dances, our living link with history. athens. microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 85 contested identity: encounters with kazak diaspora returning to kazakstan meltem sancak1 max planck institute for social anthropology, halle/saale, germany & university of zurich, switzerland introductionxcvi when the five former soviet republics in central asia achieved independence in 1991, many observers expected social tensions and inter-ethnic clashes would soon unsettle the region. a highly multi-ethnic composition, a quasi-colonial experience of suppressed religion and identity combined with an extremely precarious economic situation seemed to offer a perfect breeding ground for conflicts. fortunately, however, this has hitherto not been the case with the exception of the civil war in tajikistan. in contrast to other areas of the former socialist world, ethnic relations have for the most part remained calm and all the states in question have carefully avoided making any claims to each others’ territory. the new state of kazakstan had been envisioned as being particularly fragile due to its multi-ethnic demographic character. after the end of the second world war, kazakstan seemed to be the “most” international of all the soviet republics (dave 2004). hence, the government’s decision shortly after independence to invite ethnic kazaks from abroad to resettle within the new national borders seemed to confirm this image. this paper deals with some unexpected consequences of this policy. it presents a case of highly contested intraethnic differentiation and identity contestation. the relations between local kazaks (who had lived in kazakstan throughout the soviet period) and the socalled “repatriants”, recent immigrants of the same ethnicity, are characterised by strong feelings of envy, mutual suspicion and prejudices. this differentiation goes far beyond a low level of social interaction, and has turned into a debate about the definition of genuine kazakness. thus, in contrast to many studies on ethnicity which follow barth’s (1969) seminal work, it is not the boundaries that will be dealt with but the content that they should encompass. i argue that the case of kazak identity contestation revolves around the issue not of who a kazak is, but how a kazak should be. drawing on nationalism theories, one could argue that kazaks of different provenance are in many ways not part of an imagined community (cf. anderson 1983). they may believe themselves to be members of the same group, but they differ substantially in their everyday practices of media usage and school education or in their consumption patterns. thus, when faced with “really existing kazaks”, people are confronted with co-ethnics who do not share the same understanding of the world. even more crucial than different perceptions of historical events or educational backgrounds are everyday norms of conduct that differ between the two groups in question. this leads not only to misunderstandings, but also to reciprocal claims that the others are not behaving like proper kazaks. instead of an ethnic reunion as intended by the government, the policy of repatriating ethnic kazaks from abroad caused locals to think that it may be easier to get along with members of the other ethnic groups with whom they share a common history in the same state or republic than with the newcomers. kazak statehood and national identity worldwide, the number of kazaks is approximately 12 million. of these, eight million reside in the state that bears their name, kazakstan. another two million live in other parts of the former soviet union, mainly in border areas of uzbekistan and the russian federation. apart from this, the largest group with close to 1.5 million is settled in the people’s republic of china (cf. benson & svanberg 1988). in mongolia, kazaks account for the largest minority in the country with approximately 120,000 individuals. as in china they are settled primarily in the western parts of the country adjacent to kazakstan, where they often form the local majorities (cf. finke 2004). other countries with sizeable kazak minorities are iran, afghanistan and turkey. some kazaks, who have been living in turkey since the 1950s, also moved to germany, france and other western european states as part of the turkish labour migration in the 1960s (cf. svanberg 1989). in fact, the dispersal of these diasporas is the result of historical events that began in the latter part of the 18th century. by then kazaks had nominally accepted russian vassalship in exchange for protection against repeated attacks by the western mongolian kalmyks. the repercussions, however, remained limited until the military and administrative penetration of the steppe by the russian empire in the second half of the 19th century. one effect was a gradual influx of russian settlers who were granted anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 86 large tracks of the most fertile land, thus causing many kazaks to move eastwards into chinese territory in search of new grazing grounds. the situation continued to worsen and by the turn of the 20th century many kazaks were extremely impoverished. the first world war brought fresh turmoil when the tsarist government attempted to recruit the muslim population for the russian army. hundreds of thousands of kazaks fled to china again, while the number of people killed in the fighting and consecutive famines may have been even higher (cf. olcott 1987; pierce 1960). in china the arrivals settled in the northern steppes of what is today the autonomous region of xinjiang, an area which had been depopulated after the defeat of the western mongolian jungar empire in 1757 (cf. olcott 1987; benson & svanberg 1988). other kazak diasporas stem from these groups. from the 1860s onwards, in their search for new pasture lands kazaks started to move into western mongolia, which had been equally depopulated with the nearextermination of the jungars. they continued to cross the chinese-mongolian border until this became impossible in the 1950s (cf. finke 2004). in the 1930s and 1940s bloody turmoil in many parts of xinjiang and growing chinese interference in local affairs caused other groups to flee south towards india. on their way the majority of them perished from frost, hunger, and hostile attacks. only a small group survived, finally being accepted as refugees in turkey (cf. altay 1981; svanberg 1989). by that time, the situation in what is today kazakstan had worsened still further. animals were confiscated with the utmost ruthlessness as part of the forced settlement of nomads, and many herders responded by slaughtering their livestock. during the late 1920s and early 1930s almost 90 percent of the herds disappeared and an estimated 40 percent of the population (close to 1.5 million) died of starvation since the newly founded collectives were unable to provide them with a means of subsistence.xcvii hundreds of thousands again fled to china, wherever possible taking their remaining livestock with them. during the same period other kazaks fled south towards iran and afghanistan. a few years later, in 1936, the kazak soviet socialist republic was established and the steppes became more firmly embedded into the new state structure (cf. pierce 1960; olcott 1987). in the following decades the majority of kazaks increasingly came to an accommodation with the soviet system and learned to take advantage of its benefits. in 1991, when kazakstan gained independence after the dissolution of the soviet union, the diasporas abroad became an issue for state policies. besides political and economic challenges, a particular concern for the new state was its demographic composition. due to the tremendous loss of life among kazaks in the early 20th century and the ongoing immigration of european settlers, kazakstan had been the only soviet republic in which the titular group accounted for less than 50 percent of the population.xcviii by 1939 the proportion of kazaks had declined to 30 percent. in later years their percentage started to increase again due to higher birth rates. in 1989, shortly before independence, kazaks outnumbered russians for the first time since 1926 but still accounted for less than 50 percent of the population. since then the proportion of kazaks has further increased due to the out-migration of millions of europeans, in particular russians and germans responding to deteriorating living standards in kazakstan and the opportunity to return to a “native homeland”. according to recent estimations, kazaks became an absolute majority in 1997 (see table 1). at the same time, a steady process of kazakisation has begun. as in all newly independent central asian states, the search for national symbols and heroes is in full swing. the renaming of countless towns, villages, and streets is one visible expression of this. within this scenario a particular place was assigned to kazaks abroad, officially referred to as “diasporas”, who gained the status of “repatriates” (oralman in kazak) after their migration to kazakstan (cf. mendikulova 1998; diener 2005). there is little doubt that their invitation to resettle was primarily intended to increase the percentage of ethnic kazaks. most of them were settled in the northern provinces where kazaks form a minority, sometimes less than 20 percent of the population. a second role which it was envisioned they would play was to support the revival of traditional kazak culture, since this was said to be better preserved among the diasporas. a superior knowledge of the kazak language and familiarity with islam are the criteria most commonly cited in this context. the migrants were thus expected to play a key role in the process of nation building. so far, the resonance among the diasporas has been somewhat disappointing for the government. around 200,000 kazaks had arrived by 2002, the vast majority of them coming from mongolia and uzbekistan. smaller groups came from china, turkey, and iran. their integration proved to be more difficult than expected. the economic and social conditions facing the migrants in kazakstan were often worse than those they had left behind. the government found it difficult to provide them with the jobs and homes they had been promised. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 87 aggravating the already strained economic circumstances was the fact that most of them had only a poor knowledge of russian, still the dominant language in everyday life in kazakstan. many of the migrants, especially those from mongolia, decided to return. those who remained often sought refuge in other parts of the country populated primarily by kazaks (cf. finke 1999 & 2004; diener 2005). the village of aq zhol: a soviet model enterprise the village of aq zhol is one of the major settlements of oralman in south-eastern kazakstan. located some 120 km to the east of the former capital almaty, irrigated agriculture provides the basis for most people’s livelihood in the region. aq zhol was built as a model village in 1984 with the aim of establishing a small town in order to demonstrate to the world that in the developed socialist system there were no differences between urban and rural lifestyles. all the houses were exceptionally well equipped with infrastructure and had electricity, central heating and hot running water. houses were constructed according to different architectural styles attributed to various ethnic groups. a second aim of the village was to exemplify the multi-national character of the soviet system. like kazakstan in general, aq zhol was to become a parable for harmonious inter-ethnic relations. for this purpose villagers were recruited from all over the soviet union, and in its heyday the population included kazaks from all parts of kazakstan as well as russians, ukrainians, germans, koreans, moldavians, azeri and others. during the second half of the 1980s there were close to 400 families residing in the village. in spite of its small population aq zhol had its own separate state farm, a sovkhoz. its economy was based on the production of grain and tobacco, on the one hand, and a large dairy farm, on the other. the state farm was honoured several times as a prime producer of milk and tobacco. after kazakstan became independent economic reforms were launched with the aim of fundamentally changing people’s lives. the implementation of privatisation was, however, left largely to the individual state or collective farms and thus differed widely across the country. in many cases it was delayed for several years, leaving former managers sufficient time to take out much of the moveable property such as livestock and machinery. as in most of kazakstan, land in aq zhol was redistributed equally per head. what was left of the livestock was often promptly slaughtered or sold on very poor business terms because people had no other way to make a living. the economic collapse had special consequences for a village like aq zhol, designed as a model village in the middle of a desert steppe and more dependent than others on infrastructural inputs. since the early 1990s running water has been cut off and electricity, heating and public transport are at best irregular. the kindergarten, public bath, and other facilities have been closed. as a result the inhabitants began to leave the village. they had received land on lease but felt unable to make proper use of it due to high taxes and the lack of infrastructural support. most of those who came from other republics or distant provinces within kazakstan returned to their home regions or moved to almaty as they had only loose ties within the village. in 1996 only 150 of the formerly 400 families remained, mainly kazaks who originated from neighbouring villages and districts. the others tried to sell their houses before leaving, but due to excess supply prices were very low or the market almost nonexistent. in order to make at least some money the owners began to tear apart their houses and sell the parts. others destroyed or damaged the empty houses of their neighbours, either selling the materials or using them for their own ends. a period of decay set in, and by the mid-1990s the former model village had almost turned into a ghost town. the oralman: migration, motives and the economic situation at this time the first wave of oralman came to aq zhol. they had previously lived in mongolia, iran and uzbekistan, and after spending some years in ak zhol all of them left again for various reasons. subsequently, in 1997, a new group of oralman arrived in aq zhol, this time from the provinces of gansu and xinjiang in the people’s republic of china. both of these populations were descendants of the kazaks who had left the territory of the contemporary state in the 18th and 19th centuries. during the first half of the 20th century many of them left xinjiang, ending up in mongolia, gansu, and turkey (cf. sancak & finke 2005). in gansu some 4,000 kazaks had been settled since the 1940s in the district of aqsay close to the borders with xinjiang and tibet, an extremely arid and cold mountain region best suited to nomadic livestock rearing. once the reform process in china reached the western provinces in the early 1980s living conditions improved remarkably. pastoralists seem to have particularly benefited from this upturn. all those interviewed in aq zhol reported owning livestock holdings of 500 or more animals before their arrival. the situation in xinjiang is described as having been superior to that in ak zhol because the kazaks there benefited from the developed infrastructure and new trade relations across the formerly closed border. those kazaks who were anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 88 employed by the state or in local industry or who were active as small-scale entrepreneurs were also quite positive about their economic situation in china. in spite of this, in the early 1990s people started to make plans for leaving china. asked about their motives, they first cited kazakistan’s new independence and their desire to “return to the native homeland”. other reasons mentioned included health problems due to the high altitude in the gansu region, which was thought to cause heart, lung and other kinds of diseases. many also mentioned the proximity of the chinese nuclear testing ground at lop nor, situated some 300 km away from their settlement. political and economic motivations, although rarely mentioned, were apparently of great importance. in interviews people balanced the present hardships against their future prospects and hopes. the restriction of birth rates in china – two or three children in the case of minorities – was mentioned by most interviewees and seen as endangering the future of the entire community. what is more, while kazakstan may be facing serious economic problems at the moment, the future is considered to be relatively bright because of the sheer space available to the country. according to my informants, there is no land left in china on which to expand (e.g. if one had more than one son and wanted to acquire property for them). leaving china was described as being very difficult because there is no mutual agreement between the two states (as is the case for mongolia or uzbekistan). hence, people came as individuals and not on a quota system intended to assist with the organisation of returnees and provide financial aid. the exit permit was usually obtained only after several years and by no means all applicants were granted permission to leave. several families had to leave some members, i.e. married children, behind. upon departure the kazaks were allowed to sell their moveable and non-moveable property such as livestock and houses. state employees received their contributions paid into pension funds. in addition, as all migrants confirmed, they were transported free of charge to the kazakstan border. this favourable treatment was greatly appreciated and often mentioned during the interviews, especially in contrast to the difficulties experienced in kazakstan. on their arrival at the border the concessions made by the chinese state gave way to the rudeness and corruption for which officials in kazakstan have gained a sorry reputation in recent years. migrants not only had to pay for their onward transport but were also charged exorbitant amounts of money by private transportation owners (often in collaboration with custom officers). while the very first arrivals received some money or other support, the majority claim not to have been given anything. we came here after the president invited all kazaks to join their native country and promised us houses, work, and money. but we did not receive anything. rather, they wanted us to pay 1,000 dollars for transport, which should have cost like 100 or 200. so, i asked the customs officer: are you a real kazak? do you have any national feeling in your heart? we came here because nazarbayev had called on us and you are asking 1,000 dollars? (orinbay, 56-year-old kazak man from xinjiang) local officials are equally blamed by the migrants for being of very little help to them. it often takes years and endless documents and bureaucracy (as well as substantial side-payments) to obtain a kazakstan passport or get any other paperwork done. local kazaks, on the other hand, doubt the willingness of the migrants to acquire citizenship since they will then have to give up their chinese passport – thereby forfeiting their ability to engage in cross-border trade as well as the option to return if things should not go their way. patterns of interaction between locals and oralman on the whole, kazaks from china who ended up in aq zhol find that the place meets their needs: it has sufficient pasture areas and moderate enough temperatures to make livestock rearing a promising option, and it is in the vicinity of the markets of almaty. furthermore, there is a large stock of empty and cheap housing which provides space for all those willing to come and is well suited to their economic and social needs. in the beginning the villagers and authorities in aq zhol were equally pleased about the newcomers, who were expected to stop the process of decay. soon, however, things started to change. one of the reasons for this change had to do with the population composition of the village. its initial multi-ethnic character had already been lost earlier. the arrival of oralman heralded a new social divide which would turn out to be much more significant than the previous one. today, the village is almost exclusively kazak, roughly two-thirds locals and one-third oralman. between 1997 and 1999 approximately 70 families arrived in aq zhol. of these, 45 came from gansu, some 20 from xinjiang, and a few from the kazak diaspora in turkey. the latter are in fact related to the groups from gansu and some met family members here for the first time in their lives. together with the remaining locals, the anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 89 village population is thus approaching 230 families again. while relations with members of other ethnic groups are smooth on all accounts, the social distance between local kazaks and migrants (oralman) is quite visible and not concealed by anyone. the oralman tend to live in clusters within the village. some streets have become almost exclusively inhabited by newcomers, while others are still in the hands of locals. it was also stated that people tried to stay close together, and as long as there were enough houses available the choice was theirs. many of those who came later had their houses as well as livestock and other property bought in advance by relatives. this was, for example, true of most of the oralman from turkey. during our stay in the village people would sometimes walk on the streets in small groups, but these were never mixed. locals and migrants eyed each other upon passing with suspicion and hardly greeted one another, which is quite unusual behaviour in a rural central asian setting. people tried to restrict contact with the others to a minimum both in public and private. most ceremonies such as weddings and circumcisions were conducted separately. mixed marriages have not, to my knowledge, taken place as yet. this lack of interaction frequently gave rise to mutual irritation. funerals were a special case. according to the traditional kazak understanding, all people from the same village should express their condolences to the family of the deceased. in aq zhol, however, each side avoided visiting the other’s home. during our stay in 1999 an elder oralman had died and the whole migrant community as well as relatives and friends from almaty and other places had gathered in his home. from among the locals only the immediate neighbours came to pay their respects – something which was noted with strong disapproval by the oralman community. this was fuelled by the following incident: the migrants refused to bury their dead in the existing cemetery of aq zhol because a long time ago a russian had also been laid to rest in the graveyard. the migrants therefore established a separate cemetery, which in turn the locals perceived as being very offensive – having two cemeteries for ‘different’ kazaks. it was one of the prime examples cited by both sides to explain why it was so difficult to deal with the others. for the locals, it demonstrated the conservative and arrogant attitude of the migrants. for the oralman, it was yet another indication that the locals had given up everything that is central to the kazak culture and way of life by burying their dead with non-muslims. nevertheless, the arrival of oralman from china initiated a partial economic recovery. not only did they buy houses and renovate them (in this way also contributing to a renewed rise in prices), they were also considered to be more industrious and entrepreneurial. following the oralman, several investors also showed up in the village. among other things, they set up two wheat mills, opened shops and tried to reactivate the nearby sanatorium. this kind of entrepreneurship is extremely unusual in kazakstan and must be seen in the context of the arrival of the migrants: most of the investors are either chinese citizens or of chinese ethnicity, or both. the machinery for the mills had in fact been brought from china, as were the other tools (cf. sancak & finke 2005). the savings brought from china play an important role in the migrants’ investment power, but they hesitate to spend them for consumption or to pay bribes. some told us that their savings had been exhausted during the first few years in kazakstan because of livestock theft in their previous locations and their consequent move to aq zhol. the locals, however, doubt this and accuse the migrants of greediness, claiming that they still have substantial savings hidden “under their cushions”. all the villagers, however, agree on the poor state of politics in kazakstan as far as taxes, the lack of marketing opportunities and corruption are concerned. in adjusting to their new economic situation the migrants were not only able to draw on 20 years of experience with market-like systems in china, they also benefited from a greater degree of cohesion and mutual trust within their community in the former place of residence. the migrants have very tight-knit networks among themselves, building on genealogical and affinal relationships, some of which were created only after their arrival in kazakstan. during critical periods of the year, such as seeding and harvesting, families pool their labour force to cultivate fields in quick succession. this is not the case among locals, who have only very loose networks within the village. negotiating kazakness the low degree of mutual interaction within the village goes hand-in-hand with strong mutual prejudices. to some degree these are the outcome of successive misunderstandings that arose in their interactions with each other. the two parallel cultures – if we can refer to them this way – not only different ways of expressing themselves and their interests but were also often unable to communicate the behaviour expected in a given situation. this led to feelings of insecurity when they encountered each other and exacerbated the already existing trend towards avoidance. each side held the other responsible for this: anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 90 we kazaks are generous and hospitable. if you approach the house of a kazak and start to talk with him, he will inevitably invite you inside. he will serve you tea and give you food. this is not the case with the locals here. you come to their house. you stand at their garden fence and talk to them. but they do not invite you to come in! (beysen, a 45-year-old oralman) an almost identical remark was made by a local kazak, this time referring to the misbehaviour of the migrants. hospitality is a trait which is considered very central to the kazak character. a frequently heard phrase among all – local as well as migrant – kazaks is that one can travel all the way from the caspian sea to the chinese border and beyond without any money because one will always meet a kazak who will offer accommodation and food. after some time these mutual misinterpretations and uncertainties came to be the “custom”; now they are not only taken for granted but are even deliberate because neither side expects or wishes to be invited. since the others are seen as being non-hospitable, there is no need to invite them to one’s own place either. what these prejudices and misunderstandings gave rise to is a debate over what it means to be a kazak. this may be defined in different ways and in each case one group will be closer to the default image. in other words, the outcome of such a dispute is not neutral and each side tries to influence it in a way that will make them look the better match. hospitality and honesty rank very prominently for both groups and are commonly used to differentiate kazaks from other ethnic groups in the region such as russians or uygurs. other criteria, however, are less unambiguous and have become the object of intense contestation. the major accusation voiced by migrants against the locals is that they are russified (“oris bop ketti”; literally: they became russians). this is substantiated first of all by their ignorance of traditional culture and their poor mastery of the kazak language. during soviet times kazakstan had become the republic where russian influence penetrated most deeply into every aspect of social life. in the cities many kazaks were hardly able to speak their native language at all, and even in the countryside the mixing with the russian language was quite far advanced (fierman 1998). many of the locals acknowledged that even in the villages russian was spoken very widely before 1991. children had to be sent to a russian school in order to enhance their prospects. this state of affairs has changed since independence but many urban kazaks are still more fluent in russian, which also dominates the media. as many of them reported, for the migrants who are hardly able to read cyrillic this came as an early shock when they arrived. it also makes life difficult for them as soon as they leave the village. a variable of equal significance is religion. the locals, so it is generally claimed, have more or less abandoned the muslim faith and behave like “russians”. the consumption of alcohol and the neglect of fundamental religious prescriptions such as praying or fasting are key issues in this respect. nominally, all kazaks are sunni muslims of the hanafite tradition (except for a few christian converts in recent years), although it has always been claimed that islamisation was of a relatively late and superficial character (cf. krader 1966). traditionally, there had been few mosques in the steppes and these had been closed down in soviet times. the practice of religion was severely restricted, something which seems to have had a much more profound impact on kazak society in the soviet union than it had in china. the migrants from gansu, for instance, drink alcohol very rarely; even wedding parties were free of vodka. it became an important symbol, however, as an identity marker between locals and oralman. for the latter, it underlines a feeling of purity and superiority that allows them to demand a central place in village life. as an external expression of this, they converted an old café into a mosque. a major disappointment for the migrants was the fact that the locals showed no interest in the traditional kazak handicrafts that they had brought with them all the way from china. handmade felt carpets and decorated chests, they had heard, were difficult to find in kazakstan. the locals, however, are fonder of russian-style furniture and factorymade tapestries. in the eyes of the migrants this proves once again how far they have moved away from being “real kazaks”. the oralman thus view themselves as the sole preservers of tradition, language, religion and handicrafts. the argument of tradition and purity is countered with that of modernity and cosmopolitanism. the locals assert that they are “more civilised” and better educated. superior hygiene and modern clothing are prime indicators of this. this is seen as a positive result of the very same russian influence that the migrants identify as the source of cultural decay. russia is in europe. russians learned so many things from europe and we lived with them together. this means we learned so many things from russians, like civilisation and cleanliness. so, we also learned many things from europe. (patima, 52-year-old local kazak woman) from this perspective, openness towards the modern world as well as towards other cultures is a anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 91 fundamental trait of kazakness and can also be seen in the willingness to allow other ethnic groups to settle in kazakstan. we kazaks are keng [wide, open]. we allow everyone to come here and settle down. we are as wide as the land, as the steppe. as long as we act this way, it will feed us all. (qadir, 62-yearold local kazak man) many of the above-mentioned prejudices are acknowledged by both sides. the locals do not deny that the influence of russian culture on their drinking habits as well as their language use and religious attitudes has been tremendous. the migrants, on the other hand, accept that they may have to catch up in terms of what both groups call “civilisation”. the question, however, is whether traditionalism or modernity – when balanced against each other – constitutes the prime criterion for being a “proper kazak”. for the migrants, the emphasis on their superior kazakness has become a central part of their self-image and a means of self-defence in their position as newcomers. locals, in contrast, view their closeness to russian culture as part of their open outlook on the world, which they see as a fundamental kazak trait. after 70 years of socialist cohabitation they view the presence of others as a matter of fact and deny the migrants any rights that would conflict with those of others.xcix the dispute over appropriate behaviour and real kazakness does not, however, entail a mutual denial of belonging to the same group. the notion of kazak ethnicity is very much tied to ideas of genealogies and blood relations, which are reflected in a kinship system built on patrilineal clans and lineages. there can never be any serious doubt that someone whose father is a kazak will also be a kazak, whether or not they speak the language or exhibit seemingly uncorrelated behaviour. in fact, this has made it so difficult for both sides to accept the cultural and social differences. kazakness is believed to have a quasi-biological substance such that people assume there must be something wrong with others who do not behave “properly”. aq zhol in 2002 as mentioned above, the arrival of the oralman was initially welcomed by most of the locals. what is more, in spite of the social distance and mutual prejudices there is still a sense that the village might be even worse off without them. the economic and physical decay has been stopped and to some degree new perspectives have emerged. at least some job opportunities were created, which is more than most kazak villages can claim for themselves. on the other hand, people became more and more annoyed by the constant complaints made by the oralman about the state in kazakstan. in 2002 the migrants were still deeply disappointed about both the government and local society. corruption seemed omnipresent and laws appeared to exist only on paper. they hesitated, however, to call their decision a mistake and continued to hope for a better future for their children – the opportunity to grow up in a country that they can call their own, without fear of assimilation, and with sufficient land to expand on. the lack of land in china and strict birth control policies were mentioned as important factors for leaving china. they also shared with the locals some hope that the future of aq zhol might be brighter than that of other villages in the region. by that time, expectations and tensions had cooled somewhat. several families from turkey had arrived and were prominent in the establishment of the village mosque. the families from turkey whom i interviewed in 2002 described a feeling of “sitting on a fence”. personally, they felt more attached to their relatives from china, but they shared the locals’ judgements about their low “standard of civilisation”. the elders were driven by an almost missionary vision of reviving the importance of religion in kazakstan. the younger generation, however, is highly turkified and experienced their new home as anything but a desperate place. the daughters-in-law, in particular, had joined the migration only reluctantly. in relative terms, this group of migrants had probably lost more than any of the others after living in one of the world’s largest metropolitan cities something which they did not hesitate to express. other than that, relatively little migration had taken place. a few locals had left and some new families from gansu or xinjiang had arrived. some of the locals voiced their broad understanding for the hardships that migrants had gone through, but they felt that they should stop complaining. aq zhol in 2002 was still anything but an idle place, but the situation was less tense. interaction remained at a very low level, especially for those who had come later, and there had not yet been any marriages (or more precisely only one, by abduction, between an oralman and one of the kyrgyz female workers). one of the key areas of dispute, namely the muslim religion, had lost some of its intensity. by late 1999 construction of the mosque had been completed, and some of the locals had started to rethink their religious attitudes. yes, some of us started to pray once in a while. actually, we stopped praying again. but after all we should. let’s say it like this: we had a look around the corner to see what’s going on there, anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 92 but we didn’t really make a move. (aygul, 47year-old local kazak woman) the decrease in tensions certainly had a lot to do with the ongoing economic recovery in kazakstan. salaries had increased, new shops had opened and corruption had been reduced. everyone described their current situation as much better than it was three years earlier and, even more importantly, this increased trust and confidence in the future – which also seemed to have a positive influence on mutual relations. the oralman learned, to some degree, how to “behave” in their new social world and how to get things done, but this did not improve their perception of the village, state or local population. aq zhol is still a deeply divided place with restricted mutual interaction, a split over perceptions of proper kazakness, and locals who believe that russians or uygurs are far easier to get along with than migrants from one’s own ethnic group. conclusion it would be difficult to see aq zhol as a typical or standard kind of kazak village due to its particular history of being a fairly new centrally planned settlement and its recent population movements. the tensions described here between locals and oralman, however, seem to be characteristic of a more general pattern. according to some casual information obtained from oralman from mongolia, it seems that they have had very similar experiences with local kazaks (cf. finke 2004). this case may also provide some insights into general processes of identity construction and patterns of inter-group relations in central asia. in the course of several decades kazaks of different provenance developed partially different cultural and institutional patterns. as they now encounter each other, some have started to think that long-term common residence may be a better criterion for getting along than shared ethnicity. what distinguishes both groups and makes many local kazaks feel more comfortable in dealing with russians or uygurs is the lack of a common history and the mutually internalized “rules of the game”. the kazaks of different countries were in most respects not an “imagined community” in anderson’s sense. this is not only relevant on an abstract level of identification but also becomes apparent in everyday life. yet the experience of a similar mode of socialisation, which enables local kazaks from aq zhol to interact with russians or uygurs from almaty or northern kazakstan, differentiates them from their co-ethnics from gansu. this lack of established rules of interaction between locals and oralman creates social distance and mistrust.c ethnic as well as other social groups are not merely agglomerations of individual actors but entail systems of rules for interaction. ultimately, they are built on the individual experience of others’ behaviour. mutual trust can be based on norms or ideas of fairness, but equally important are expectations concerning the strategies of other actors and the probability of their fulfilment – since this facilitates predictability in social life. ethnic boundaries, then, are institutional frames that are constantly re-structured according to the diverging interests and experiences of the actors involved, in this case members of the same ethnic group with different concepts of kazakness. both the boundaries themselves and what is contained therein are the product of constant bargaining and (re-)negotiation. “pure” or “superior” kazakness can be regarded here as a cultural property that is keenly contested between locals and migrants. the struggle, therefore, is not who is a kazak, but how a good kazak should be. it is not that the locals question the migrants' superior knowledge of the kazak language and traditions. rather, they view their own closeness to russian culture as an indication of their open outlook on the world and “multi-cultural” attitudes, which in their view are central elements of kazakness. in a similar way, the oralman do not deny their “backwardness”, but for them the stress on traditionalism becomes an important part of their self-image and the main criterion that makes them appear superior to the locals. both sides thus have different cultural resources and each promotes those that put themselves in a better light. the issue of language is of particular importance in this context, partly because the migrants hardly speak any russian – which hampers their access to resources – and therefore have a strong interest in discrediting its use in public. since they experience themselves in a weaker position it is essential for them to portray themselves as “more authentic” and the locals as betraying the national heritage. in part, it is their respective bargaining power that will eventually determine will become the basic markers of kazak ethnicity, which in turn will influence their respective status in society. it is clear that this is not only a fight over status and prestige but also over economic resources. at this moment, access to land would not seem to be an issue because much of it is not used at all. economic differences are, however, observed and attract some envy. the migrants, as mentioned, display greater entrepreneurship, which may be attributable in part to their longer experience with market-like structures in china as well as to the fact anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 93 of migration itself. they see themselves as confronted with a situation in which they cannot afford to sit and wait. at the same time, the experience of migration has generated confidence in “being able to make it” (cf. sancak & finke 2005). state politics, obviously, play a highly prominent role in this scenario. it was initially the government that called the oralman to “come home” and promised them support. the disappointment of those who came is therefore understandable. their ongoing complaints, however, have become a source of annoyance for the locals because they are perceived as also being directed against them (as a part of that state). on the other hand, official statements about the importance of the diasporas for the revival of national culture give the latter a strong argument. the locals, however, seem not to be really interested in this revival. similarly, officials have not displayed any serious concern and the migrants do not feel appreciated for their “revivalist mission”. this results in a further distancing from kazakstan society vis-à-vis china as a point of reference. strong transnational connections had never existed between kazaks of different countries, but today it seems that if these are to be established it will not be along ethnic lines – as is commonly expected. rather than common kazak ethnicity across boundaries, it is shared citizenship that shapes people’s networks. notes xcvi 1 the case study presented here is based on field research conducted jointly with peter finke in a village in south-eastern kazakstan in the summer and autumn of 1999 followed by a return visit in 2002. most of the data stem from participant observation and life histories collected among locals and migrants in the village. in addition, we mapped the village in order to study settlement patterns and conducted interviews with key informants such as the local mayor. xcvii this figure does not include the victims of the stalinist purges in the late 1930s, which wiped out a whole generation of kazak intelligentsia (cf. olcott 1987). xcviiibesides russians and kazaks, kazakstan officially hosted more than 140 ethnic groups including ukrainians, germans, uzbeks, uygurs, tatars and koreans. some of these came voluntarily in search of land or employment, while others were deported by force during world war ii. xcix both sides regard the migrants from xinjiang as being closer to the locals and their notions of modernity than those from gansu. this is attributed to their higher level of education and greater degree of cleanliness and “civilisation”, which is nevertheless still rated as secondary to the locals. in everyday life, however, the kazaks from xinjiang feel closer to those from gansu, with whom they share their disappointment about kazakstan. c obviously, this is also a question of the time horizon. people believe that ultimately they will get used to each other. after all, the very concept of kazakness is fundamentally a genealogical one. judging from the fact that earlier “repatriates” who came back from china during the 1960s are still occasionally referred to as “chinese” right up to the present day, this may take some years. references altay, h. 1981 anayurttan anadolu’ya. ankara. anderson, b. 1983 imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso editions. barth, f. (ed.) 1969 ethnic groups and boundaries. bergen/london: universitets forlaget/allen & unwin. benson, l. & i. svanberg 1988 the kazaks of xinjiang. in the kazaks of china: essays on an ethnic minority. l. benson & i. svanberg, eds. pp. 1-106. studia multiethnica upsaliensia, 5. uppsala: almqvist & wiksell international. dave, b. 2004 entitlement through numbers: nationality and language categories in the first post-soviet census of kazakhstan. nations and nationalism 10 (4): 439-459. diener, c. a. 2005 kazakhstan’s kin state diaspora: settlement planning and the oralman dilemma. europe-asia studies 57 (2): 327-348. fierman, w. 1998 language and identity in kazakhstan. communist and post-communist studies 31 (2): 171-186. finke, p. 1999 the kazaks of western mongolia. in contemporary kazakhs: cultural and social perspectives. svanberg, i., ed. pp. 103-139. richmond, surrey: curzon press. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 94 finke, p. 2004 nomaden im transformationsprozess: kasachen in der post-sozialistischen mongolei. münster: lit. hoppe, t. 1995 die ethnischen gruppen xinjians: kulturunterschiede und interethnische beziehungen. hamburg: mitteilungen des instituts für asienkunde. krader, l. 1966 peoples of central asia. bloomington, den haag: indiana university press. mendikulova, g. m. 1998 istoricheskie sud’by kazakhskoi diaspory. almaty: gylym. olcott, m.b. 1987 the kazaks. stanford: stanford university press. pierce, a. r. 1960 russian central asia, 1867-1917: a study in colonial rule. berkeley: university of california press. sancak, m. & finke, p. 2005 migration and risk taking: a case study from kazakstan. in migration and economy: global and local dynamics. trager, l., ed. pp. 127-161. oxford: alta mira press. svanberg, i. 1989 kazak refugees in turkey: a study of cultural persistence and social change. (studia multiethnica upsaliensia 8) uppsala: almqvist & wiksell international. table 1. major ethnic groups in kazakstan, 1959–99 1959 (%) 1970 (%) 1979 (%) 1989 (%) 1999 (%) kazak 30.0 32.6 36.0 40.1 53.4 russian 42.7 42.4 40.8 37.4 29.9 ukrainian 8.2 7.2 6.1 5.4 3.7 belorussian 1.2 1.5 1.2 1.1 0.8 german 7.1 6.6 6.1 5.8 2.4 tatar 2.1 2.2 2.1 2.0 1.7 uzbek 1.5 1.7 1.8 2.0 2.5 uygur 0.6 0.9 1.0 1.1 1.4 korean 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.6 0.7 source: dave (2004, p. 442). iii anthropology of east europe review the effects of perceiving "weak health" in russia: the case of breastfeeding cynthia gabriel the state of russian health has declined dramatically since the collapse of the soviet state in 1991, according to both lay and expert accounts. this trend receives enormous attention; political, medical and everyday discourses often focus on the "weakness" of russian health and the demographic crises faced by the nation. doctor mikka vienonen, head of the world health organization in russia, claims that "russian medical figures show that only one baby in lois born healthy here, while pregnancy is around ten times more dangerous for a russian woman than for her british counterpart" (wyatt 200 i). an oft­ quoted statistic is the depressingly low ii fe expectancy for russian men. from a high of 64, this number plummeted to a low of approximately 56 in 1993 and is currently recorded as 58.9 (wi 102003; cockerham 2002). as birth rates have also fallen, most russians are keenly aware that russia is losing population. according to the conservative estimates of president putin, the death rate outstrips the birth rate by 750,000 persons per year (putin 2000). more poetically, in the words of one informant, dr. yakoleva, "russia is dying." concerns about a weak and dying national body intermingle with and help constitute another set of fears fears about food, including the earliest food of all: breastmilk. fears that post­ socialist food (domestic and imported) do not contain necessary, life-supporting nutrients arc especially acute among pregnant and lactating women. in this paper, i will examine the phenomenon of "low breastmilk supply," a problem that both russian women and russian medical workers find to be serious and widespread. official statistics support such fears that the post-socialist period has had negative effects on pregnant women's and infants' health. kulakov, et ai, claim that whereas in 1993,25% of babies were born completely healthy (already a drop from previous soviet times), in 2000 that number has dropped as low as 7-9% (kulakov 2000:9). kulakov warns that future generations could be even worse off~ since teenage girls today (the mothers of the next generation) are not eating well and generally have a weakened state of health (ibid). the purpose of this article is not to dispute these statistics directly, but to understand the cultural context in which, firstly, such statistics can be collected and, secondly, in which they can contribute to the adoption of particular medical practices. i will focus here specifically on the medical practices surrounding breastfeeding. by explicating some of the important cultural-medical factors in breastfeeding practices, i hope to open up a dialogue with both russian and international health professionals. in particular, i am addressing western professionals who are attempting to shape breastfeeding practices and policies in russia in the post-socialist period. in this cross-cultural context, then, i am also interrogating 1) how russian understandings of health differ from dominant, western, biomedical understandings and 2) how the culturally-appropriate treatments for weak health in russia, including weak health that leads to problems in breastfeeding. differ from western treatments. 1 found that a prevalent discclurse jbout "weakness" has profound and \\ idel: reach in:,' effects in russia today. whereas :\orth amer<"jrl and western european medical professionjls tcnj to talk about women or babies "at risk." russijn medical professionals tend to use the discourse and category of "weakness." a diagnosis or suspicion of weakness implies that the mother will have trouble breast/ceding, probably due to an inadequate milk supply, and that the baby will also have trouble breastfeeding, especially getting enough nourishment and nutrients to gain weight and thrive. the russian medical professionals with whom i worked emphasized, first of all, the need for rest (and concomitantly doing away with stress) and, secondly, the need for an improved diet in order for the women and babies to overcome their weakness. both the conceptualization of the problems and the treatments themselves are understood differently by most western medical practitioners. in the breastfeeding model adopted by the world health organization (who), for instance, most mothers and babies are assumed to be healthy -not weak. with this assumption, there is no need for "extra" rest or supplemental herbs/nutrition; instead, there is an emphasis on the mother-baby relationship and close contact. from this perspective, vol. 17. no. i 2003, page: 91 anthropology of east europe review "'rooming-in"" (the practice of leaving babies in the same room as the mother) is assumed to be a universal solution to breastfeeding problems. theoretical-practical approaches to breastfeeding here i will say afew words about my fieldwork and the theoretical-practical approach to midwifery and breastfeeding that i took with me into thefield. i conductedfieldwork primarily in two urban settings in european russia, nizhni novgorod and st. petersburg, during the year 2000 and on a month-long research trip in 2002. i also conducted some interviews and attended some classes in yaroslavl and moscow. in nizhni novgorod, i worked closely with valentina zakharova, a homebirth physician, attending classes that she taught, accompanying her on pre­ and post-partum home visits and attending births. ifialowed several families closely, including some families who gave birth at home with valentina und others who gave birth at a state hospital, both bejihe alld after they gave birth. in addition, i conducted interviews with over 100 russians about their birth experiences. 1also attended state­ sponsored and private infant care and childbirth education classes at various biomedical offices. 1n sf. petersburg, 1worked as a midwifery apprentice in a more orthodox biomedical environment: a maternity hospital or roddom, through the russian birth project. this project, run by an american midwife, molly, is designedfor american students to learn midwifery and gain experience at births. six interns participated in the summer of2000. the russian staffhad widely varying attitudes toward us, as a group and individually. some openly accepted our group and eagerly shared their knowledge and expertise; others appeared to resent our presence and interacted with us only begrudgingly. most of the interns in our group actively espoused a particular set offolk beliefs about birth that are relatively counter-cultural or alternative beliefs to hold in the united states, but that are more accepted internationally, for instance, by the who. (one intern did not; she was a biomedically-trained nurse). most ofus associated ourselves with the midwifery model ofcare, which stands in sharp contrast to yet anotherfolk medical system, biomedicine. 1use the term 'folk medical system" to highlight that all medical systems are cultural systems; that is, our understandings ofscience, bodies, illness and healing are culturally constructed (lock 2001). though the midwifery model ofcare differs greatly .trom the biomedical model in the united states when it comes to labor and delivety practices, they are increasingly harmoniolls, at least in theory, when it comes to breastfeeding. what we found in the roddom was a system that is certainly not oriented on this midwifery model of care, but that also differs from western biomedical practices in significant ways. i will first describe what we found to happen in the immediate post-partum period and then i will examine a particular encounter with a russian mother and physician. the practices we observed and participated in at roddom #2 may, in some particular ways, be unique to this field site. (for instance, babies at this roddom often wore a soft neck brace for several days to prevent and heal spinal trauma; this practice was not widespread at other roddoms.) however, i found that many of the practices that i relate below are quite common. they were described to me by dozens of women, in four different russian cities, when i interviewed them about their birth experiences. at roddom #2 in st. petersburg, i struggled to understand these beliefs about breastfeeding. as part of the russian birth project, i was learning midwifery and cultural practices from the russian staff, but also providing american-style labor support to the birthing women. after babies were born, i, along with other americans, often tried to get breastfeeding going early, based on our american folk medical beliefs that this is the proper way to establish breastfeeding. though we usually asked permission of the russian midwife or doctor on call that day, moving a baby from the examining table to the mother's gurney in the first hour or two after birth always felt like a transgression. we knew we were doing something counter-cultural. the new mothers did not seem to feel this same sense of transgression and this helped to embolden us; i am rather sure that they, themselves, were mostly unaware of what is considered normal practice in the hours after delivery. birth practices in a russian roddom normally, after the cursory "bonding" moments, newborn babies are separated from their mothers for the first few hours after birth. while the mothers lay on a gurney in the hallway with a weight on their stomachs (to help the uterus contract), the newborn babies lay alone in the birthing room, on the newborn examining table, underneath warming i ights (figure i). eventually, a pediatrician retrieves the baby from the birthing room and moves it to the nursery. this can take vol. 17, no. i 2003, page: 92 • anthropology of east europe rcvie\\ anywhere from 45 minutes to up to two hours. the mother, meanwhile, moves to her post-partum room sometime between one and three hours after she gives birth. depending on the time of day or night that the woman gives birth, she will probably see her baby again in the evening or in the morning following delivery. at this first meeting, the baby is tightly swaddled in warm blankets (figure 2). a nurse or pediatrician hands the well-packaged infant to its mother, who is usually laying or sitting in bed. only the baby's face is visible. the mother is given breastfeeding advice and help, but many women do not succeed in latching their babies on during these sessions. the advice that russian medical professionals give to new mothers about breastfeeding problems tends to focus on herbal and dietary remedies to promote breastmilk production as well as admonitions to rest. there is no breast pump in the roddom and i never heard medical advice about pumping or storing breastmilk. in the nursery, all the babies were given bottles of glucose water and/or formula. in general, there was acknowledgement on both the part of the russian women and the staff that breast feeding was a "problem," and, specifically, that many women were not producing adequate supplies ofbreast milk. the american midwife with whom 1 worked explained this problem one way; the russian staff explained it quite another. molly emphasized that the babies were being bottle-fed on a schedule, so they were not hungry when they were brought to their mothers. also, though swaddling helps calm infants, it made them too sleepy to breastfeed. skin-to-skin contact, she believes, helps stimulate the infant's sucking reflex. the russian staff: on the other hand, took this phenomenon that the babies had trouble latching on right away as an indication of the basic weakness of both mother and infant. the practice of giving glucose water and/or formula to newborn infants is so widespread that even in cases when new mothers specifically request to breast feed exclusively and on demand, they often find their wishes thwarted. for instance, in nizhni novgorod, i interviewed sveta immediately after she returned home from the roddom with her 6 day old baby girl on march 26, 2000. she already had one child, born at horne with valentina, whom she breastfed quite successfully. she had planned a homebirth, but because valentina was in moscow when she went into labor, she ended up delivering at a roddom and staying there for the standard five days. this time, she encountered breastfeeding difficulties that she attributed to the practice of bottlefeeding babies in the nursery. she relates, when they brought her to me, she was already full and asleep. i couldn't wake her up. not for anything. the pediatrician who came in the morn ings made a note that, 'marina has a lot ofmilk, please don't supplement this baby,' so one day the nurse came in and asked, 'whose baby aren't we supposed to feed')' 'mine~' but by the next day, they'd forgotten. in roddom #2 in st. petersburg, i also found that mothers who desired to breastfeed on demand had trouble communicating this desire effectively. they sometimes asked for our american help to intervene. i often found myself pleading with a reluctant nursery doctor or nurse for permission to take an infant to its mother for feeding. on the one hand, such requests certainly created more work for these medical workers (the reason that many new mothers gave for their reluctance). on the other hand, comments such as this one from the medical worker on duty july 20. 2000, made me realize that more than that is g(ling on: "sure, you can take her the bab:. but j don't understand. we're tahng care of her [the hab; j and she can sleep. \\'hy rush things' '\ext \\ eek [when she can't sleep throut'h the night] ,he'll understand things difterently.-i understand comments such as these to indicate that these requests also conflicted with medical workers' understanding of the proper use of maternal time in the roddom, which was to rest. ethnographic encounters: my breastfceding "success story" i will turn now to an encounter that helped turn around my thinking about these very different approaches to breastfeeding. in july 2000, i gave labor support, along with two other american interns, for eight hours to a woman named natasha. after the birth, natasha's baby (danil), was left alone in the same room where he was born, underneath warming lights, while natasha was wheeled to a separate room for suturing. when the suturing was completed, natasha's gurney was left in the hallway, outside of the room where her baby lay swaddled. one of the other americans, sara, and i decided to ask natasha whether she'd like to try breastfeeding. i felt comfortable and close to natasha, after spending so many hours with her throughout her labor and delivery. voj. 17. '\0. i 2003. page: 93 anthropology of fast europe rc\ il\\ it was already almost two hours after the baby's delivery (about 9 p.m.) when we approached natasha about breastfeeding. she was very tired, but agreed to give it a try. we retrieved danil from under the warming lights and brought him to her gurney in the hallway. we knew the russian midwife and doctor were just down the hallway and could hear us, but they did not make a move to intervene, and we continued. natasha lay on her back, with a weight on her stomach. and was reluctant to move from this position since the midwife had told her that the weight was very important. though this is not the optimum position for a new mother just learning to breastfeed, sara and i said we would hold danil so that he could reach her breast. danillatched on right away and sucked voraciously. we let him breastfeed for about ten minutes on one sidc and, as he seemed eager to continue sucking, moved him to natasha's other breast for another ten minutes. at this point, natasha indicated that she was tired, so sara and 1 brought danil back to his warming table. natasha was moved to her post­ partum room about hal f an hour later and saw danil again the next morning. sara and i happily shared our "breastfeeding success story" with the other americans the next day. they, too, were enthusiastic and thrilled that we succeeded in helping a new mother establish breastfeeding in the first post-partum hours. i did not think of natasha's story again specifically for some time. but one evening, about a week later, i found myself alone on the evening shift with the same russian doctor, dr. taglieva, who had attended natasha. she brought up the subject of breast feeding. dr. taglieva had, like everyone else at the roddom, expressed unequivocal support for breastfeeding. but during our conversation, it slowly dawned on me that she was reprimanding me-quietly and respectfully, but reprimanding nonetheless -for "pushing" natasha too hard. she explained that sucking took a lot of energy out of newborns energy that babies born these days do not have and cannot afford to lose. "it's easier for them to eat from a bottle. it takes less energy," she said. she gave me a demonstration with her own lips to show how different these actions are for the newborn and how much more difficult it is for a newborn to breastfeed. in the interest of giving a weak neonate the best start in life, giving a bottle for the first few days to help bolster their strength (especially after the exhaustion of being born) is much better for the baby than "forcing" them to suck. not only is the action of learlling how to suck harmful to a baby in a weakened state, the liquid they receive from the mother on the first day is not filling or nutritive, according to this doctor. colostrum is fine for healthy babies who can afford to lose weight, she said i. but most babies born in russia, she claimed, cannot afford to lose even a iittle weight. likewise, young mothers are usually very weak right after giving birth. they need time to rest and recover before they can produce milk. "pushing" breastfeeding on new mothers right after birth, in their weakened state, will probably make them have a "bad feeling" toward breastfeeding. she said. when i countered with my thoughts on the benefits of early breastfeeding, this doctor diplomatically agreed that 1 was probably rightin the case of "healthy mothers and healthy babies." but she clearly believed that, in russia, the vast majority of women giving birth in 2000 did not meet this criteria. she explicitly stated that, in her opinion, this is a change from soviet times, when women were strong and healthy and there were "far fewer complications in general." seeing that i did not seem persuaded, she suggcsted that, if i did help a new mother breastfeed. 1 should at least limit the amount of time to two or three minutes. she ended this conversation with the warning, "i would think very carefully about whether the woman [in the immediate post-partum period] i was pushing to breastfeed was strong enough to handle it and whether the baby was strong enough to handle sucking." through such encounters, 1 came to understand that these russian midwives and doctors did, in fact, "support breastfeeding," but that russian support looks very different from that of the support of the midwifery-model, americans, or who. the doctors and midwives with whom 1 worked perceive mothers and babies in russia today as basically unhealthy and weak, in need of special help and health-promoting strategies. first and foremost, new mothers and new babies need to rest and recover fi'om the strains of birth. secondly, new mothers need to give special attention to their diets to make sure they are getting enough vitamins and nutrients to support lactation. unfortunately, according to another physician, dr. lipinsky and many ofthe new mothers with whom i spoke, the realities of russian life in the beginning ofthe 2l't century make fulfilling both of these needs quite difficult. food itselfis considered unhealthy and lacking in nutritive qualities (gabriel 2003). and as another y01. 17, no. i 2003, page: 9~ • allthropolog) of east europc rcvic\\ doctor from the same maternity hospital complains, women lack the time and the resources to be healthy. due to the introduction ofjob insecurity and new, federal spending priorities that divert federal money away from maternity pay, many women must work until late in their pregnancy and go back to work soon after giving birth. "we used to have sensible leaves. women had time to take care ofthemselves. but now, no one can afford to take time off and take care of themselves," says dr. taglieva. "a few days here [at the roddom] is their only rest." weakness as a cultural discourse dr. taglieva is not the only one concerned with weakness in post-socialist russia. the statistics about weakened russian health, as i've indicated, are quite dramatic. i understand these statistics as paj1 of a larger discourse on weakness that pervades russian culture in the post-soviet period. not only are pregnant women interpreted as weak, so is general human nature, post-socialist domestic food (weak because of a lack of vitamins and minerals) and the political and economic position of the nation in the international arena (gabriel 2003). i see concern with the low quality and low production of breastmilk as consistent with overall concerns about low food quality in the post-socialist period. some informants have even told me that food quality is so bad that continued human life is threatened (gabriel 2003). this discourse of weakness, combined with concern about a "dying" population, underlies and constitutes interpretations of and treatments of breastfeeding mothers in russia today. food, from the earliest days of life, is broadly understood as inadequate. in an environment in which this discourse is so prevalent, i find a general expectation of weak health. in many instances where i (and other american visitors) saw no indication of illness, russian doctors diagnosed problems. however, two common western responses to these statistics and diagnoses seem problematic, from a cultural­ interpretative point of view. first of all, accepting these statistics on their face as an indication of the total "collapse" of health and the healthcare system-as some have done (see wines 2000 or massey 2002) does not take into account the possibility that certain health categories may mean different things in different cultures or that over­ diagnosing that may be taking place. on the other hand, simply dismissing the diagnoses of russian medical workers as misguided, as do many visiting physician observers and researchers, does not address the fact that these diagnoses are real and valid within their cultural context." [\sewhere 1describe the common practice of diagnosing health problems as a preventative measure that 1 found to occur at maternity hospitals, and, indeed, throughout the medical system, of european russia. one doctor at roddom #2 called this practice, "preventative diagnostics," but in common parlance, most russians call this practice peresrrakhovat, loosely translated as "diagnosing to cover all one's bases:' indeed, diagnosing diseases and pathologies in their early stages does help prevent serious complications, so my analysis is not intended solely as criticism; however, one side effect is that many more patients undergo treatment. i will give two examples of this practice here. in the first case are diagnoses of pre-eclampsia, which have nearly doubled since 1985 (kulakov 2000:5). at roddom #2 at least twelve women were confined to maternity hospital beds in the summer of 2000 for several weeks with the diagnosis of "early" or "light" pre-eclampsia. pre-eclampsia is a serious complication of pregnancy that certainly deserves serious attention; however, these women generally exhibited only one or two of several possible symptoms. whereas western practice limits diagnosis of pre-eclampsia to cases in which several symptoms (usually 3 or more. depending on severity) are present. in russia. after n, ent: weeks of pregnancy, a diagnosis of··light"· pre­ eclampsia is possible based solely on edema, or water retention. this obviously leads to much higher rates of diagnosis and higher rates of hospitalization -than in western countries. my second example shows how the practice of perestrakhovat can have a real and immediate impact on breastfeeding. in 1997, one of my informants kept a pregnancy journal in which she complains about not being allowed to breastfeed her son in the immediate post-partum period. on the first day after giving birth she writes, "the doctors covered all their bases (vrachi syebye perestrakhovali), they wrote down [that we had] all sorts of illnesses and didn't put [himj to the breast." though russian medical practitioners and western aid workers all decry the supposedly low rates of breast feeding in russia, i see this as, itself, part of the national discourse of weak health in russia and, internationally, as part of a discourse about russia's collapse. official statistics actually place russian breastfeeding rates above or equal (0 those of many industrial nations, including those of the united states. according to kulakov, et ai, vol. 17, no.1 2003. pag~: q, in managing safe motherhood, 44.lwo of babies are breast fed until three months of age and 32% or russian babies are at least partially breast fed until they are six months old (2000:433, 10). (bv comparison, the percentage of women wh~ breastfeed until six months of age has only recently reached an all-time high of32.5% in the united states) (pediatrics 2002). helsing, et ai, quote even higher russian statistics from archangelsk; their breastfeeding rates at 3 months are reported to be 74% and 36% at 6 months of age (helsing 2002:579). these statistics are at odds with the discourse, and indeed the practices [ observed, surrounding breastfeeding among new mothers i knew and among medical professionals with whom [ worked. 3 time and again, they told me that breastfeeding rates are abysmally low in russia and that, in the words of dr. yakoleva, there is "an epidemic of women with low milk supplies." russian medical support for breastfeeding certain maternity hospitals in russia have technically signed on to a world health organization/unicef project called the baby friendly hospital initiative (bfhi). [n st. petersburg, even doctors and midwives at maternity hospitals (in russian called roddoms) not atliliated with bfhi were aware ofthe program and some of its goals and criteria. the who program requires that, hospitals in participating countries promote breastfeeding and allow rooming-in of mothers and babies.4 russian maternity hospitals also operate with guidelines from the federal government dictating that mothers be shown their infants immediately after birth and that they be given five minutes of uninterrupted bonding time with their babies. de jure and de facto are not always the same thing, however, and these regulations i have described are not in mv experience nor in the experiences ofwom'en i ~ interviewed, well-adhered to. rooming-in continues to be uncommon even in most of the otherwise most "progressive:' or "western-style" maternity hospitals. and though the midwives and doctors i observed in st. petersburg almost always placed newborn babies on their mothers' abdomens, the required five minutes was usually, in practice, a matter of seconds. in my fieldnotes, i comment frequently on my own reaction to this. i worried that some of the new mothers did not have time to really assimilate what was happening and that the baby was often whisked away before the mothers could make sense of th i ngs and reach out to touch their newborn, much less breast feed. at first, i found mvself confronted with an inexplicable dichotomy between the words of russian staff at the roddom where i apprenticed and their actual practices. whenever we discussed brcastfeeding directly, russian doctors, midwives and other staff members expressed no ambivalence about the benefits of breastfeeding. "the best is breastfeeding," said one midwife, lena, on my second day at the roddom. "we encourage all new mothers to breastfeed" since i had been told repeatedly that breastfeeding rates in russia are low, i thought, at first, that this maternity hospital with its open endorsement of breast feeding ­ must be unusual. [n later interviews i found that in fact, most doctors and midwives i~ urban ' european russia openly extol the benefits of breastfeeding as opposed to formula. they also express, however, that it is "very difficult" for russian women to breastfeed. lena, the same midwife who claimed that "the best is breastfeeding," told me that russian mothers, these days, tend to have problems with their milk supply. maintaining an adequate milk supply, she explained, "is very difficult in these times." women's health is often too fragile and weak to allow for breastfeeding and the inadequate food supply in russia deepens the problem. indeed, one of the few questions pregnant women thought to ask at childbirth education classes that i attended throughout 2000 was, "how can i maintain an adequate milk supply?"s pregnant women even in their first trimester trade herbal advice for "keeping up milk." accounting for breastmilk culturally the question of how to best "keep up milk" is answered quite differently by russian and western birth professionals. i soon realized that importing western ideas such as "rooming in" or "breastfeeding on demand" (that have improved breastfeeding in western countries) does not solve the problems that many russians blame for low breastfeeding rates and unsuccessful breastfeeding. like dr. taglieva, most of the russians with whom i worked emphasize the importance of rest and physical recovery as well as diet in order to promote breastfeeding. [n their view, a new mother, in a general state of weak health that is weakened even further by the exertions oflabor, needs to rest for several days in order to build up her strength and her milk supply. the stress of taking care of an infant around the clock is, in this view, counterproductive. so is going home too vol. 17. no.1 2003, page: 96 anthropology of last fmope revic\\ early from the roddom. the who and most north american lactation consultants, by contrast, emphasize close physical contact between mother and baby (starting, preferably, in the first hour after birth) and frequent suckling as the most important contributors to establishing successful breastfeeding (helsing 2002: davis 1997). clearly, rooming in addresses these western concerns.6 but to my russian informants, rooming in can contribute to unsliccessjzll breastfeeding. this perspective is beh ind the advice of dr. tsaryegorodtsev and dr. tsaryegorodtseva, the authors of "be healthy, little one: how to care for a child from birth to three years." their easy-to read, widely-distributed, pamphlet­ like book sells tor five rubles (the cost ofa subway token) and is endorsed by the russian association of pediatricians and chi idren' s surgeons of the ministry of health. their advice about breastfeeding succinctly expresses some of these fundamental beliefs about breastfeeding: i) that successful breastfeeding depends on the robust healthy state of the mother; 2) that early breastfeeding in the hours after birth contributes most to bonding, not successful breastfeeding; and 3) that a low milk supply is best treated through rest and attention to diet. not anywhere do they emphasize a cause and effect relationship between the amount of suck i ing by a newborn and the amount of milk produced by the mother. in answer to the question, "when should you put the baby to the breast?" they answer, "it is most desirable to put the baby to the breast immediately after birth." their reasoning, however, is not explained in terms of establishing successful breastfeeding; rather, they emphasize "mother-child bonding": at the moment of the first latching on to the breast, all sensory organs of the infant are turned on: he [sic] feels himself to be safe, in warmth, he hears the beating of his mother's heart, with which he has already become familiarized in the womb, and he calms down ....eye-to-eye contact gives emotional nourishment to the baby, which is just as necessary for him as breastmilk. [the sense of] hearing is turned on: the baby hears the mother's voice and reacts to it... in this way, the first impression is made: the newborn takes as his mother the first person that he sees, hears, feels, smells, from whom he receives fi)od, in whose presence he feels protected this is a universal, biological law ( 12). the russian ministry of health's regulations are consistent with this interpretation of the first few minutes ofa baby's life. as i've indicated. the regulations governing the operation of russian maternity hospitals require that newborn infants be given to their mothers for five minutes immediately after birth for the purpose of bonding. there are few regulations designed specifically to encourage breastfeeding and this initial mother-child contact is not understood as a time to establish breastfeeding. treating breastfeeding problems in russia requires attention to general health and diet when i paid attention to the ways my russian informants discussed breastfeeding, i realized that most conversations about breastfeeding quickly turn to the topics of stress reduction and diet. these are prevalent concerns in everyday russian life, quite beyond the particular issue of breastfeeding. some of these concerns, such as the stress caused by unstable and unpredictable government and financial institutions, has been studied in some depth. other concems, such as fears about inadequate \itamins and minerals in russian food. hzi\ e been less \\ c'1! acknowledged (gabriel 2003). \ 1 an;. of 111:­ informants also worry that the introductic1n llf 'l'­ called capitalist economic practices (such as all emphasis on efficiency in the workplace at the expense, many argue, of sat is tying, deep human relationships between colleagues) has added unhealthy stress to russian lives. these cultural anxieties are significant, because they underpin any discussion of breastfeeding including cross­ cultural discussions. in general, i found physicians and medical professionals as well as lay russians ­ more willing to make explicit links between "stress" and ill health than i have tound alld experienced in the mainstream culture of north america. russia's work policies follow this more european attitude about the physiological and medical need for rest and relaxation. throughout soviet times, workplaces were responsible for providing workers with several weeks (usually six weeks/year) of time off of work specifically to promote health. workers who had to work in "unhealthy" conditions, naturally needed even more time off to achieve and maintain health (pondoev 1959). "vacations" from work were medical events; they were not understood or experienced as weeks of leisure to spend with vol 17. ",0. i 2003. page: 97 one's family. workers generally spent several weeks each year at resorts or sanatoria, where they adhered to specific, health-promoting regimens that included attention to diet and plenty of time for rest and relaxation. russian medical professionals also tend to emphasize a link between a general state of healthfulness, especially a healthy pregnancy, and successful breastfeeding, more so. i find, than western texts (davis 1997; sears 2000). the doctors tsarycgorodtsev(a) exhort women who desire to breastfeed to prepare as early as possible, during pregnancy. thc most imrortant factor in establishing successful breastfeeding, according to these doctors, is that the mother "be in maximum health." to attain such a state of health, they recommend that these women engage in "strengthening the immune systcm, tempering7 , healthful eating, and anti-stressful living. pregnant women [should] swim in a pool, do special exercises and relax to music'" elvira zakablukovskaya, a homebirth physician and author (who has interacted extensively with american midwives and subscribes to many international midwifery journals), also emphasizes, first and foremost "a healthy way of life and proper, rational nutrition" (1994:3). like the doctors tsaryegorodtsev(a), zakablukovskaya emphasizes early preparation for breastfeeding, during pregnancy. in the pamphlet­ like book that she produced with funds from the eurasia foundation, she claims that an unhealthy diet and stress during pregnancy will havc negatiyc effects on breastfeeding. she writes that "stresscs produce neuroses in the woman, that in many cases can lead to serious pathology in the unborn child and after birth to a reduction in the amount ofbreast milk" (1994:4). but most telling of all is the section in which the doctors tsaryegorodtsev(a) address the question, "what should you do ifyou have a low milk supply?" in this section, the doctors continue to emphasize the importance ofdiet and rest, to the exclusion of almost any other factors. they discuss at great length what foods promote the production of breast milk and how to prepare them. "the most effective food in the world" for this purpose, they claim, is honey. milk products, especially those with biologically active ingredients (such as yogurt), are also helpful. coffee and strong tea should be avoided. it is very important, according to these doctors, that the "breastfeeding mother sleep no less than eight hours a day. since it can be difficult to do this at night. \\e recommend a nap during the day for i 1:22 hours. it is also absolutely necessary to take a walk in fresh air no less than 2 hours a day" (28). in addition, they mention breast massage and a time-conslim ing rrocess to prepare hot compresses. if these compresses are used filleen minutes before breastfeeding, write the doctors, they can increase the milk supply. unlike american books about breastfeeding, such as the breasrf('eding book by dr. sears, this pamphlet does not suggest increased or improved suckling as a potential remedy for bolstering a low milk supply. zakablukovskaya's publication, on the other hand, while emphasizing diet and rest as key factors in successful breastfeeding, also incorporates these aspects that are usually more emphasized in western approaches. she specifically states, for instance, that "breatstfeeding consists of a mutual dependency of 'demand-supply': the more the baby demands, the more your breasts will produce" (1994:8). but zakablukovskay's approach, which gives attention to all of these aspects, is, in my experience in russia, exceedingly rare. even the highly scientific and western-informed book managing safe maternity, which gives many details about the physiology of breastfeeding that are not widely accepted or propogated among russian medical workers, does not state or explain this particular point: that breastmilk is produced in response to infant suckling (kulakov 2000: 432-448). it is the priority that the factors of diet and rest are given, either to the exclusion or the minimization of other possible factors, that, i argue, underscores many of the medical practices i witnessed regarding breastfeeding in russia.8 conclusion this article highlights that the effects of believing that the state of russian public health is weak are far-reaching. i have focused here on one particular case, breastfeeding, as an example of these effects. i hope that this article will contribute both theoretically, to medical anthropology, and practically, to cross-cultural breastfeeding promotion programs. though breastfeeding in russia, like in the united states, is medicalized to a large degree, russian medical advice and opinions about how best to establish breastfeeding differs significantly from western sources. i argue that the belief that all russians, but especially new mothers and babies, are weak underscores many medical decisions and diagnoses, especially about breastfeeding. i do not attempt to answer what i vol. 17, no.1 2003, page: '1x anthropology of east europe review think is an inevitable but unanswerable question, "is the health of russian women weak?" the answer to this question is actually different, depending on the assumptions and belief systems one brings to it. instead, i hope to redirect anthropological and medical inquiry to questions that are more pressing and, potentially, more answerable, such as, "how can we communicate about and act on issues of breastfeeding cross­ culturally, given this widespread discourse about weak health in russiat western aid workers and who officials who have emphasized rooming-in and breastfeeding on demand as the essential components of any pro-breastfeeding program have encountered strong resistance to the introduction of these practices in russian maternity hospitals (helsing 2002). i argue that the prevalent discourse of weakness in russian culture combined with culturally and mcdically­ appropriate approaches to dealing with weakness (emphasizing diet and rest) underscores this resistance. western and russian medical workers think about health and bodies in very different ways. these thoughts, discourses and belief systems have dramatic implications for medical practices and lived experiences. references cited cdc national center for health statistics, 2000, maternal and child health compared in u.s. and russia. www.cdc.gov/nchs/relases/99facts/99shee ts/russian.html cockerham, william c,m. christine snead and derek f. dewaal, 2002, health lifestyles in russia and the socialist heritage, journal of health and social behavior. 43 (i): 42-55. davis, elizabeth, 1997, heai1 and hands: a midwite's guide to pregnancy and bil1h. berkeley: celestial arts. davis-floyd, robbie, 1992, birth as an american rite of passage. berkeley: university of california press. douglas, mary, 1989, purity and danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo. new york: routledge. gabriel, cynthia, 2003, healthy russian food is not-for-profit. michigan discussions in anthropology. forthcoming. helsing, elisabct. 2002, breasttceding, baby friendliness and birth in transition in north western russia: a study of women's perceptions of the care they receive when giving birth in six maternity homes in the cities of archangelsk and munnansk, 1999, pediatrics 91 :578-583. ---------, 2003, breastfeeding: baby's right and mother's duty? international project on the right to food in development. forthcoming. kulakov, v.i., et ai., 2000, rukovodstvo po byezopasnomu matyerinstvu. moscow: uspyekh. lock, margaret, 2001, the tempering of medical anthropology: troubling natural categories, medical anthropology quarterly 15:4. martin, emily, 1994, flexible bodies: tracking immunity in american culture from the days of polio to the age of aids. boston: beacon press. massey, stephen m. , december 10,2002, russia's maternal & infant health crisis: socio­ economic implications and the path forward. http://psp.iews.org highlights.ctill'\ iew= detail&id=33 pediatrics, december 2, 2002, news digcst available at http://www.aap.org/ advocacy /releases/ dc cfeeding.htm. pondocv, gavriil sergeevich, 1959, notes of a soviet doctor. new york: consultants bureau. putin, vladimir, 2000, what kind of russia are we building? speech to federal assembly of the russian federation, 8 july 2000, printed in vostochno­ sibirskaia pravda, 13 july 2000, 3. ries, nancy, 1997, russian talk: culture and conversation during perestroika. ithaca: cornell university press. sears, william, 2000, the breastfeeding book: everything you need to know about nursing your child from birth through weaning. new york: little, brown and company. \. "i. 17. no. i 2003, page: 99 http:http://www.aap.org http:http://psp.iews.org www.cdc.gov/nchs/relases/99facts/99shee tsaryegorodtsev, alexander and larissa tsaryegorodtseva, 1999 be healthy. little one: how to care for a child from birth to three years. moscow: elite club. verdery, katherine, 1996, what was socialism, and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. vladimirov, aleksandr, 2000, how to avoid getting a cold. minsk: molodozhni mir. wines, michael and abigail zuger, december 4, 2000, in russia, the iii and infirm include health care itself in the new york times. ai, a8. wines. michael, december 22, 2000, capitalism comes to russian health care in the new york times. a i, a 14. world health organization, 2003 world health organization. january 13,2003. http://www . who. inti country/rus/en/ wyatt, caroline, january 3, 2001, russia struggles with population crisis at bbc website: http://news. bbc.co.uk/l /h i/world/europe/1 098812.stm zakablukovskaya, elvira, 1994, grudnoye vskarmlivaniye. nizhni novgorod: tet. notes i colostrum is the name of the liquid produced by women in the first 3-5 days after giving birth. in fact, many breastfed babies do lose weight in the first week of iife, which is ordinarily not considered a problem. in north america, for instance, medical professionals tend to worry about this only with babies who are considered underweight at birth (cite). 2 i observed this phenomenon personally when a delegation of physicians from iowa visited roddom #2 in st. petersburg while i was working there in july 2000. i found this same tendency in informal interviews with several doctors who have visited russia and ukraine through american international health alliance programs in 1998-1999. i note also that helsing, et ai, report that "in the course of the ... project we frequently observed the use of obstetric practices that were poorly justified, and often unhelpful, which had been developed over the years in the former soviet union" (2002:579). 3 among nearly 100 informants, i found, mostly through interviews, that both in families that gave birth at home and at roddoms, mothers generally only breastfed for 2-4 months, introducing solid foods around 4 months; those who continued breastfeeding beyond 4 months often limited breastfeeding during the day. throughout the breastfeeding period, most new mothers usually gave their children bottles of water and/or supplementary formula or cereal mixed with milk. 4 the roddom where i worked was not, technically, a participant in the who project, but doctors and midwives knew of the project and some of its goals and criteria. as i describe in this article, they expressed doubts that the who criteria were truly effective and in the best interests of mother and baby. 5 elsewhere, i examine the discourse of doctors and pregnant women during childbirth education classes in russia. in my ethnographic experience, pregnant women tend to limit their questions to a specific range of culturally-appropriate questions. the questions that they ask, and the format of the physician's answer, helps define what is appropriate lay knowledge and what is reserved for expert medical knowledge. breastfeeding is one of the topics (together with nutrition during pregnancy, what to bring to the roddom and when to call an ambulance for transport to the roddom) that women feel comfortable and are encouraged to ask questions about during these classes. other topics, such as the stages of labor, are defined as "medical knowledge" and are not often encouraged. 6 the concept of "rooming in" remains, literally, a foreign one, something distinctly"unrussian" as illustrated in a \ul. 17. no.1 2003, page: 100 http://news http://www anthropolog::of east lurope revic\\ russian-language brochure called ··one on one: about breastfeeding." in this two­ page brochure produced by hipp (a german company), new mothers are given ten tips about successful breastfeeding. everything is in russian, except the words "rooming in," which are printed in english. 7 tempering refers to the practice of exposing the body alternately to hot and cold, usually hot and cold water. g in fact, lactation specialists and biologists in the \vcst do not dispute that diet and rest playa large role in breastfecding. for instance, elisabet helsing, an academic who has also worked on the who baby friendly hospital initiative in russia, points out that the bio-chemistry of breastmilk production is seriously disturbed by stress. she writes, "should the mother be disturbed by for example someone using, or merely threatening to use, physical or mental force against her, her adrenaline level will rise, which in turn will block the action of oxytocin on the milk cells and make breastfeeding imposible (helsing 2003:5). the influential midwife and activist, elizabeth davis. also writes that "continued production of prolactin and oxytocin depends on frequent, relaxed nursing sessions. the more relaxed the mother is when she nurses, the greater the release of these crucial hormones" (1997: j80). photos figure j figure 2 vol. 17.no. 12003. rag.:: 101 passport troubles: anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: smoki_musaraj@yahoo.com passport troubles: social tactics and places of informal transactions in post-socialist albania* smoki musaraj, new school for social research passports, bureaucracy and uncertainty in january 2005, i traveled back to albania during winter break to obtain a new passport. i had inquired earlier about the application process through relatives living in tirana, the capital. as is often the case with bureaucratic procedures in albania, however, once there, i discovered the process would take longer than anticipated. there was, of course, no other way of finding out about these changes other than pushing through a crowd from behind the rusty iron-bar window of the dilapidated passport application office located at the back of a nameless alley near rruga fortuzi (fortuzi street). the crowd included other immigrants returning from italy and greece who, just like me, were also using their winter holidays to arrange documents and visas back home. through push and shove, my relatives and i finally managed to reach the window. we found out that after submitting my birth certificate and official request to the office of passports (zyra e pashaportave), my file would be sent to the precinct police station (komisariati i policise) for a routine criminal record check. next, the documents would be transferred to the regional police station (rajoni i policise) that issued the new passport. we were provided with no specific timeline or contact information for any of these offices, which are spread over different parts of tirana. my relatives had not known about the second stop at the precinct police station. it was a step recently added to the previous procedure. this meant that the process would take longer than we had anticipated. the extended procedure could take an extra two to ten more days. in the big scheme of things this was not such a big tragedy. however, i was also operating under a temporal constraint; i needed to have my new passport ready in a few days for my appointment at the american embassy where i was applying for an extension of my f1 student visa. 1 given the need to expedite this process and the lack of a specific timeline from the albanian authorities, we immediately felt a familiar anxiety in the face of bureaucratic uncertainty. having been on a student status in canada and the us since 1995, like many of my peers contributing annually to the national brain drain, i had experienced an endless number of complicated strategies of aligning embassy requirements with local bureaucratic procedures. i was by then used to the annual cycles of paperwork involving proof of identification and family composition, medical tests, criminal record, financial records, and proof of ties to the country of origin, among others. alas, despite all the years of practice shuffling between different offices, i still had not acquired immunity against the grueling sensation of anxiety that something could go wrong. i was only too familiar with this feeling of uncertainty in dealing with local authorities, foreign embassies and, especially, when trying to navigate between the two. it is a particular way anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 158 of feeling that i had learnt to embody throughout my childhood and teenage years. 2 in this article i explore the specific historicity and the social and spatial organization of this sense of uncertainty surrounding transactions with public officials in postsocialist albania. a country of 3.5 million, situated across the adriatic from italy and bordering greece, macedonia, kosovo and montenegro, albania has for many years occupied an odd geo-political space in the balkans. following the end of the second world war, the socialist republic of albania joined the warsaw pact embracing the former-soviet empire. for most of the communist period, authoritarian leader enver hoxha (who ruled from 1945-1985) led the country into total isolation not just from its socialist and capitalist neighbors—former yugoslavia, greece and italy—but also from all countries in the eastern bloc. in 1960, hoxha broke ties with the soviet union protesting its de-stalinization and, allying with the socialist republic of china, replicated the cultural revolution in albania in the 1970s, thus deepening internal divisions between regular citizens and the so-called “enemies of the people.” 3 breaking political and economic ties with china in the late 1970s, the country turned into one of the most isolated of the former communist world, matched only by north korea. throughout these years of increased isolation, albanians lived with a daily paradox: on the one hand, official propaganda boasted of overachieving the five-year plans; on the other hand, people were spending more of their time waiting in longer lines for basic subsistence items. part of the contemporary feeling of cynicism towards formality in general and bureaucracy in particular is a legacy of the cynicism cultivated through these never-ending lines. in 1991, following the fall of the berlin wall and the successive transformations in other eastern european countries, albania also experienced a remarkably peaceful political transition from monism to pluralism. it was not long, however, before the initial euphoria of opening up to the world after years of isolation reverted to the familiar cynicism as people now free to travel abroad found out that foreign embassies were not so welcoming after all. thus, the current skepticism towards public institutions also emerges from the more recent sour experiences of long lines, endless waiting, and flat-out rejections at the doors of foreign embassies. but how do people cope with this sense of impossibility on a daily basis? how do they navigate these situations of uncertainty? my three days of trying intensively to renew my albanian passport were a journey into an intricate space of formal and informal transactions with state authorities and intermediaries. the rules of these transactions, whether real or imagined, illustrate how a web of informal negotiations taking place in personalized public spaces mediates the postsocialist sense of uncertainty and distrust towards formal institutions. this journey explores different tactics used to mitigate this uncertainty. i focus first on the dynamics of connections and cash gifts in exchange for public services. further, i discuss the place that particular public-private spaces occupy in these transactions. i argue that given the multiple and unstable meanings of these places, they constitute one of the most trusted spaces for negotiating with state power in postsocialist albania. my reflections here focus mainly on what political scientists define as “petty anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 159 corruption”—that is, the exchange of public services for gifts, bribes, or favors. 4 the main story in this paper is based on my experience of participant observation with the passport issuing institutions in albania‟s capital, tirana, in winter 2005. the observations that follow refer to that particular moment in time. while no actual bribing or gift giving took place during this journey, i discuss the palpable presence of their possibility. further, i point to the multiple meanings of cash donations to public officers—as gifts, as bakshish (tip), or as bribes—depending on the temporality of exchange. revisiting this story after completing 15 months of fieldwork in tirana during 20082009, i also note some changes and continuities. most importantly, although there persists a general acceptance of “petty corruption” in everyday life, there is today an increasing local concern with “state capture.” in contrast to petty corruption, state capture is defined as the unfair process of privatization and procurement contracts. while local residents generally condone “under the table” exchanges of gifts, favors, and payments, they strongly condemn acts of appropriation or biased distribution of state property. although people still largely approved of social practices deemed corrupt (according to the definition of petty corruption), anti-corruption activists i spoke with during fieldwork stressed a decline in the sheer quantity of petty corruption. my own experiences in 2008-2009 leant some credence to these claims: as i still had to perform many bureaucratic procedures during my recent stay in tirana, i noticed that many of the public offices, especially those issuing birth certificates or other identification documents, had made an effort to become more presentable and more transparent. many had posted information online or in the public waiting rooms of their offices. nevertheless, i often experienced indirect refusals to provide service and access to public information in the form of non-availability of officers on duty, delaying meetings, or simply ignoring formal requests. after many attempts at getting things done through official channels, i often resorted to the network of acquaintances, often just to obtain the mere attention of a public servant. these experiences led me to conclude that everyday interactions with bureaucracy still retain some of the patterns of strategizing and networking described in the following ethnographic vignette from 2005. to illustrate this continuity, i end this article with an uncanny déjà vu “replay” of my journey through the passport issuing offices, captured by the hidden cameras of the investigative journalism television show, fiks fare, which originally aired in september 2008. who do you know? zeneli, tahiri, ‘i njohuri’ to mitigate the sense of uncertainty vis-à-vis state bureaucracy in albania, individuals engage in informal practices such as the use of connections, favors, gifts, and/or bribes. although i was quite aware of such “alternatives” before the 2005 trip, my efforts to expedite the process of issuing a new passport was my first direct exposure to this ubiquitous reality. anticipating the usual bureaucratic delays, my relatives had contacted zenel, 5 an acquaintance who claimed to “know” someone at the regional police station, the last stop of the new anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 160 passport. as someone “in the know,” zenel was our i njohur (connection). i njohur in albanian derives from the verb njoh (to know). to know someone at a given institution implies to have a connection, someone you can rely on, someone who can help you bypass official obstacles. often, when faced with uncertain bureaucratic procedures, people ask, “a njeh njeri atje?” (do you know anyone there?). “knowing” here implies trusting someone for help outside formal rules, having enough familiarity to ask for a favor. another word for “connection” or “pull” is miku, meaning a good and trustworthy friend. when talking about a third party that received a valued asset or service through a connection, people say they obtained it „me mik‟ (through/with a “friend”) or „me miqësi‟ (through/with “friendship”). the english word “friend” does not, however, capture the albanian meaning of mik. mik connotes both a trusted friend 6 and also a guest—be that one known from before or a stranger. both connotations command the highest form of respect. obligations towards miq and miqësi have occupied an important place not just in the traditional moral codes of kanun 7 but also throughout the socialist history. „i njohuri‟ and „miku‟ have been integral to the economy of favors not only in communist albania but also throughout the former-socialist countries (sampson 1987). these intermediaries have enabled a realm of distribution of goods and services as an alternative to the economy of shortage. hence, i reflect on my personal experience with të njohur in albania in conversation with two key ethnographic texts on the economy of favors during socialism. in her study of the chinese guanxixue (the art of using social relationships) mayfair yang (1994) explored the uses of kinship, friends, acquaintances, and neighbors in mediating a series of exchanges with state authorities. similarly, alena ledeneva (1998) underscored the importance of blat (pull/connection) in the former soviet union. both have suggested an analogy to marcel mauss‟ (1990[1924]) analysis of the gift, emphasizing the inherent elements of reciprocity and mutual help in the socialist economies of favors: “blat was embedded in intimate relations which resulted in mutual help, help which could prove crucial to the conditions of scarcity” (ledeneva 1998:16). both authors have also suggested that these social institutions received a boost during the time of the respective socialist regimes. so pervasive were these modes of exchange during socialism that, as one of ledeneva‟s informants describes, they had become a habit, a social psychology: these exchanges were inseparable from good relationships. i suppose one could actually arrange something formally but the habit of using contacts was so strong that one always asked acquaintances first. it was a specific psychology. i always rang a friend to ask him to ring another friend about me, about appointments or whatever. [informant quoted in ledeneva 1998:140] this particular habit, as the following story shows, is still very much a part of the daily engagements with bureaucracy in albania. having a të njohur mitigates the uncertainty of formal procedures. finding a të njohur is a psychological strategy for personalizing an unknown anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 161 territory. i njohuri/miku plays the role of an intermediary, a go-between. writing about a similar phenomenon in socialist china, yang states: the intermediary is often a friend who is familiar with the other person. since gunaxixue [the art of social relations] has to work through channels of familiarity, introductions by an intermediary are often much more effective than self-initiated acquaintance. [yang 1994:124] zeneli was one such intermediary my relatives had contacted to bypass formal procedures. he was a colleague of one of my relatives and claimed to know the regional police station from the inside since he had once worked there. further, he claimed to know someone directly involved in the process of issuing the new passports. the said transaction would then take place through a chain of intermediaries. primarily, we relied on the weak, yet, “known” relationship to zenel. at the same time, as i came to know later, it was well understood—albeit never articulated—that zenel would receive a cash gift. the expression “cash gift” might seem an oxymoron, especially for the extensive literature on the anthropology of the gift. 8 however, in contemporary albania, this oxymoron increasingly captures a reality that spans beyond the mere exchanging of favors for services; it includes also a broader range of social situations where cash has substituted gifts in symbolic objects. 9 the cash that my relatives planned to give to zenel constituted for them a gift rather than a bribe because the intermediary had never explicitly asked for money, nor were there any negotiations on the right price. at the same time, this was a classic case of the obligation to return, as outlined in mauss‟ analysis of the gift (1990:40-41). everyone i talked to seemed to think it was only fair to give something to the intermediary; the cash was seen as given out of (obligatory) gratitude. there was, however, one important difference in this gift from the classic one: this gift to the intermediary was supposed to be made in the form of cash. combining personal obligation and gratitude with cash is a distinct feature of the postsocialist economy of favors and connections. a number of important recent studies have explored the monetization of the socialist economy of favors arising from a replacement of the shortage economy with the market economy (see esp. humphrey 2002, ledeneva 2009). monetization does not, however, necessarily imply commodification. instead of focusing on the relative reduction of the economy of favors as a consequence of the monetization of relations in the postsocialist context, this journey through the network of intermediaries in tirana raises an alternate question: why are intermediaries necessary when cash is involved? given the legacy of the socialist economy of favors up to the present, it is worth revisiting some key findings from anthropological literature on this subject. these earlier findings provide us with an index of the organization of social relations in mediations through connections. in her account of the chinese economy of gifts and favors, yang (1994) emphasizes “familiarity” as the guiding principle of guanxixue. she concludes that using familiar intermediaries as a way of navigating through formal institutions indicates that people ultimately anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 162 trust personalized networks rather than formal institutions. this principle of trust and familiarity in informal networks, i argue, continues to mediate transactions in contemporary albania. but we must inquire further into the social dynamics of familiarity and trust. how does one cultivate a trusted network of friends? what counts as familiarity? how do people generate and sustain familiarity and trust? yang has provided us with an elaborate index of relations mobilized in the chinese guanxixue (the art of social relations). she differentiates between different levels of familiarity: family and kinship, neighbors and native-place ties, non-kin relations or equivalent status, and non-kin superior-subordinate relations (1994: 111). each type of relation also involves different expectations and obligations. this index is strikingly similar to the use of të njohur (connections) in albania. for instance, our initial intermediary, zenel, was a non-kin relation of equivalent status. in this sense, the relationship did not involve a “regime of affection” (ledeneva 1998:147) nor one of “status” (ibid, 150). yet, it was a relationship of necessity that relied on the principle of mutual help and obligation, with some benefits for both parties. given the distance with the intermediary, of the parties involved in this case, my relatives had taken a bigger risk. in fact, zenel did not turn out to be as reliable as we had initially hoped. when asked for help with the middle stop (the precinct police station), he claimed he did not “know” anyone there. later on, we discovered that even his connection at the last stop, the regional police station, was weak. this “connection” was his neighbor, a young woman who was a customer service employee at the regional police station. contrary to zenel‟s claims to familiarity and influence over her, the young woman refused to make any exceptions from the rules, stating accurately that she had no power over her superiors. in other words, zenel did not possess the social capital necessary to fulfill the promised mediation. this was an example of a failed mediation due to a series of misunderstandings and miscalculations for all parties involved. this scenario is not, however, an anomaly. relations of gift-exchange, as pierre bourdieu (1997) has emphasized, inevitably rest on unstable grounds. they follow shared informal codes of expectation and exchange. they also involve elements of calculation, risk-taking, and performativity. the threat of uncertainty, of miscalculation, and of failure is always already present. instead of forcing one to give up, however, any one of these failures sparks a new search for other intermediaries, just like the chain of phone calls described by ledeneva‟s informant. yang characterizes the tactics of working through intermediaries as a domino effect. in addition to using already existing familiar contacts, this search also contains a performative element—by seeking new connections, one also generates new relations: “the role of intermediaries,” says yang, “also shows that the art of guanxi is not restricted to ascribed relationships, but also depends on what can be called „achieved familiarity‟” (yang 1998: 125). it was precisely the principle of “achieved familiarity” that motivated my relatives to pursue someone who “knew” someone at the precinct police station. my initial instinct of bypassing this whole business and going directly to the precinct police station only intensified after zeneli‟s fiasco. yet, i was pulled instead into another search for të njohur despite my anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 163 protests. my arguments against this tactic were dismissed as naïve and as coming from a lack of experience with reality in albania. this situation left me at first with a sense of irritation and incomprehension. in time, however, i came to see this experience from a different perspective. it appears to me now that the element of “familiarity” necessary in these transactions is a form of intimacy not confined to private circles but opened to possibilities of forging new relations. further, these relations are not bound to a given social structure but represent a form of sociality in the making. in the middle of four streets for a moment, after discovering that we could not count on zenel, we felt at a loss. we were, as a local expression would have it, në mes të katër rrugëve (stranded in the middle of four streets). not only because we were literally standing at the intersection between rruga e durrësit (durrësi street) and rruga e fortuzit (fortuzi street), but also because we felt every bit as abandoned as the connotation of this metaphorical expression suggests. we felt hopeless, powerless, and most importantly, unconnected. the image of the street as the unknown jungle where one is treated like “a nobody” echoes a similar trope repeated in many of ledeneva‟s informant accounts. the contrast between the privileged treatment received when using a trusted connection and the dismissive response given to those who are merely “from the street” is a recurrent theme from these accounts. 10 yet, as i was soon to find out, the street is also a space of improvisation, a space where different tactics emerge, tactics that escape formal structures. 11 we were thus standing at the intersection. my aunt happened to work right on rruga e durrësit so she joined our brainstorming session about people we knew that could help. i, of course, was of no use, as i did not “know” anyone important given my years abroad. as we were talking, an acquaintance of my aunt, besnik, happened to be walking by. despite my resistance to sharing my personal problems with strangers, my relatives were quick to describe the situation to besnik in the spirit of asking as many people as possible in order to chance upon some dormant connection. even more surprising to me was besnik‟s response: he immediately exuded competency on the situation. very quickly, a name came to his mind. “tahir,” he said, was the person to talk to at the precinct police station. he was the person who processed the criminal record check before approving the new passports. he was the one to ask to expedite this routine procedure. besnik did not recall tahir‟s last name. “just go to the guard,” he said, “and ask for tahir.” that was sufficient for my relatives to regain confidence and proceed to the police station. the name “tahir” had injected new hope. i walked with one of my relatives, i‟ll call her manjola, towards the precinct police station. we argued on our way over whether this made sense or not. i was skeptical of this “tahir.” i argued that we did not even know him or anything about him, so how could we rely on his name? what i refused to understand was that in both cases, that of zenel and tahir, it was not so much the actual competence of the person that counted as much as the level of familiarity one felt towards them. the way besnik had named tahir, using his first name with confidence and anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 164 expressing a genuine desire to help, expressed a level of familiarity that generated comfort and trust. most importantly, naming an insider in an office with convincing familiarity is supposed to provide special access in an otherwise hostile institutional culture. the display of trust towards these intermediaries—one turning out to be false; the other still imaginary—was based on a very broadly defined notion of “knowing” but also on the performative skills of these intermediaries. both zenel and besnik spoke with extreme confidence, exuding an air of inside knowledge about these institutions so unfamiliar to us. in both cases, the actual connection was weak but their body language was quite convincing. further, the encounters occurred in places where the words said were trusted more than those said in formal places such as public offices. and that was what mattered most. private public places it was precisely my discomfort with the places where these informal interactions took place that led me to be skeptical of besnik and zenel. the brief interactions with both of them had taken place on the side of the road. i had not met either of them before, and a simple conversation on the street seemed very insufficient for my unquestionable trust. yet, for all other actors involved, the street seemed to be the most trusted space of interaction, certainly more trusted than the office. the relationship between these mediated transactions and the places where they occur demands closer observation. philosopher edward casey has put forth the notion of “cultural implacement” to suggest that place is “permeated with culturally constituted institutions and practice” (1997: 46). rather than existing prior to culture, casey argues that place is always already cultural. further, he describes how the anthropological notion of “local knowledge” is constituted both through an implacement of the body in the particular locality as well as an embodiment of certain cultural knowledges, reminiscent of bourdieu‟s “durable” and “embodied” dispositions. 12 it is through this perspective on place and its relation to the body that we need to assess how the interactions on the side of the road in tirana unfold. in addition to cultural implacement, i would also add the notion of a historical implacement, as places are also imbued with historically specific customs and practices that change over time. having lived abroad for a while, i had become somewhat foreign to the local knowledge needed to make sense of the interaction with besnik. however, everyone else around me seemed to be reading the same signs and speaking the same language. thus, my physical absence from this locality during the crucial years of transition (1995-2005) had made me an outsider to particular forms of local knowledge. the street is a paradoxical place. it is on the one hand utterly impersonal. in their interactions with state authorities people are often stranded in the streets, in long lines outside the offices. the experience of socialism has turned streets into a space of surveillance. one‟s individual behavior in the street was constantly under the gaze of the party. paradoxically, the street was also a space where people spent an enormous amount of time while waiting for milk at 3 a.m., in obligatory party celebrations, or at block cleaning days, among others. the constant anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 165 demand to be on the street out of necessity rather than choice contributed to what susan gal and gail kligman (2000) have rightly described as a fractal of concepts of public and private. these constant mutations and substitutions of public/private demarcations have been described as a main source of the systemic violence of socialism. 13 the street, however, can also be a site that offers more possibility for improvisation. the interactions with besnik and zenel speak of the advantage that informal public places have over formal ones. these spaces are places where personalized forms of transactions generate trust. ethnographers of the public/private divide during socialism also note the creation of “private publics,” trusted circles of friends and acquaintances mediating informal exchanges. these private publics constituted a parallel world for cultivating real friends and real trust. 14 when stranded in the streets, away from the centers of power, people sought inside information in those same streets of abandonment. our encounter with besnik was an example of the appropriation of the street as one‟s own private public. such appropriation of a public space as a prime source of reliable knowledge is part of a new repertoire of tactics of challenging and negotiating with official power. these conversations were, to borrow an expression from kathleen stewart, “a space on the side of the road” (stewart 1996:32), not just in the sense of the physical space they occupied, but most importantly in the distinct and palpable cultural place that they carved out. they constituted a social imaginary, a world very much felt and inhabited. these conversations and strategizing were thus part of the daily practice of imagining and engaging with power and the state despite its illegibility. 15 from the street to the café approaching the detention center around midday we did not aim for the main gate but for a backside window. a policeman was sitting behind the iron bars. with extreme confidence, manjola asked to speak to tahir. after some back and forth questions and negative answers, the policeman directed us to the guard at the public entrance. we asked the guard the same question and he also showed no knowledge of anyone by the name tahir. to our dismay, “tahir” turned out to be a fictional character. manjola, then, asked directly for the person who signed off on the passports. at first, the guard was hermetic and inaccessible, providing formal replies and anxiously trying to send us away, saying that everyone currently was out on inspection. all police officers would be on field-duty until 3 p.m. with only two days left to complete this procedure, our time was quickly running out. once again, our initial hope and enthusiasm withered away and we were both more aware than ever of the damp winter cold of tirana, penetrating our bones, despite the deceiving blue sky and a golden sunlight washing over the brightly colored low-rise apartment blocks. we kept lingering around the main entrance more out of despair than hope. eventually, the guard took sympathy on us and dropped the formal guise. speaking very inconspicuously and somewhat nervous about getting himself in trouble, he suggested that we go to the café across the street. “that‟s where the chief hangs out,” he said, and where we could possibly try to talk to anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 166 him about speeding up the process. the guard seemed to imply that if we were looking for a procedure that bypassed the formal ones, the café was our best hope, a place where anything “off the books” could take place. the suggestion also implied that this strategy—asking for a favor at the café—was a common routine, a kind of a public secret. only then was i convinced that the people i had encountered throughout this short journey had been playing by the same rules as everyone else, including public officials. they were very much aware of an alternate reality of getting things done and were simply seeking for the way to access it. the official authorities were likewise aware (and perhaps took advantage of) these informal places of transactions where the rules of the game were suspended and opened up to improvisation, where negotiation with official power was possible. informal socializing in cafés what is it about cafés that enables the different relations and negotiations with state power in contemporary albania? cafés are interesting in-between places of interaction and transaction. in albania, cafés are not transitory places where people stop for a quick shot of caffeine. (there are no “to go” cups in albania.) people in albania spend long stretches of time lingering in cafés. they are places for socializing with others, places that enable multiple kinds of interaction. many ethnographers of socialism, especially those studying the former soviet union, have also noted a different kind of sociality that had emerged in spite of the socially controlled places of the public. in the russian context, ethnographers speak of svoi (us/ours) as a separate public, a “privately public sphere” (vite, cited in yurchak 2006:118), which was neither the official public sphere nor the dissident one. this public was contained within the socialist state but it also functioned according to different rules and norms of interaction. further, yurchak discusses a distinct form of sociality that took place among svoi (public): obschenie, a form of sociality outside official realms of the public that created a separate trusted space of endless conversation amongst people. 16 yurchak observes that obschenie “was not limited to friends and acquaintances but could also include complete strangers” (2006: 148). in fact, by partaking in obschenie one became svoi, or part of a private public. thus, spending time together through deep conversation was a sort of a rite of passage into a private public. yurchak further elaborates on the intrinsic connection between obschenie and the economy of favors: soviet citizens also sped up time by cultivating networks of blat and arrangements such as those in the komsomol committees […] to avoid spending time in lines, on waiting lists, or on „pro forma‟ mandatory activities; turned time into an expandable and exchangeable resource; rendered time indeterminate by engaging in obschenie in all professional contexts (yurchak 2006:156). in albania also a similar kind of private public came into being through networks of të anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 167 njohur. it is perhaps this relation between trust and activities of spending time together that explains the double meaning in të njohur and mik as both connections and close friends. in albania today, cafés are a crucial place where these multi-purpose private publics continue to come into being. in addition to being culturally configured, the café as a place of creative improvisations also has a particular historicity. drinking coffee collectively has a long history of formal and informal interactions in albanian culture. taking after habits of coffee drinking from the ottoman times, all throughout the socialist period people continued to make visits to one another‟s houses për kafe (for coffee). on these occasions, homemade turkish coffee was served in a semi-formal manner, usually served on a tabaka (the turkish word for serving tray). these occasions ranged from informal daily meetings with close friends and neighbors to more formal occasions of making visits to distant acquaintances on occasions of celebration or mourning. the italian-influenced espresso drinking in public cafés or hotels was also present during socialism. however, such practices were also in tension with the socialist ethic of labor as leisure and of the café culture as bourgeois culture. 17 the latter ritual of coffee consumption was usually more limited to certain professions, such as bureaucrats or intellectuals, and to gender—men were (and still are) the major presence in cafés. after the 1990s, but especially during the pyramid scheme boom in 1995-1996, an explosion in cafés also took place. the boom had a visual presence. parku rinia, for instance, one of the only parks in tirana, was covered in cafés within one year. when i returned to albania during summer 1996 after my first year in canada, i could not recognize the once familiar landscape of the city. kiosks and cafés had mushroomed wherever there was free space. my high-school friends had changed their daily meeting spot from the outdoor site at blloku to one of the cafés in parku rinia. as i gathered interviews on the pyramid schemes in 2008, many of the informants recalled the mid-1990s as a period of decadence when everyone “spent hours in cafés rather than working.” 18 while the cafés at parku rinia have been demolished and the park restored, the café culture has only shifted locations to the more glamorous spaces of blloku, invading the once forbidden villas of the former socialist elite. cafés are currently such an embedded social institution in contemporary life in albania, and especially in tirana, that it is impossible to avoid spending time there on a daily basis. during my fieldwork, the cafés were often a place for my interviews. they constituted an appropriate neutral space for talking to people i was meeting for the first time. they were a necessity for conversation. cafés have also become places for conducting business interactions. in this circumstance, the generosity of giving someone a coffee also implies an act of persuasion and influence over the other person‟s decision. this aspect of cafés is equally well known by people with official authority and by those in need. it is because of this struggle for power over the other that cafés also have come to represent shady deals among exclusive groups. many complain about the lack of professionalism of today‟s bureaucratic as well as business transactions, most of which take place in cafés. during another trip to albania i was waiting at the lobby of the ministry of justice for a friend who worked there. an older man from outside tirana was talking to the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 168 receptionist, requesting to meet with one of the ministry‟s high officials. the receptionist told him the official was not in office at the moment, and added that he might be having his coffee outside the premises of the ministry. the old man exploded in anger making loud accusations about the degenerate official culture where most “deals” take place in cafés. in this context, cafés are also places of simultaneous inclusion and exclusion. thus, moving from the street to the café also implies moving from the outside to a possible inside. by pointing us to the café across the street, the guard at the precinct police station hinted at this possibility. yet, it was well understood that one either needs a connection to initiate a meeting with the authority in question or to be, in the local idiom, i/e shkathët, (skilled/entrepreneurial). manjola and i had neither of these properties. an unexpected opening despite all the run around, we eventually met the chief of police that same day, not in the café, as the guard had suggested, but in his office at the precinct police station. the mere explanation of why i needed the passport to be expedited sufficed to receive a positive response. in our interactions, the chief of police was very professional. manjola, however, still thought that we were expected to give a cash gift as a thank you. alas, she did not know how or how much. guessing how to give this gift with grace turned into a new kind of anxiety for her. in retrospect, her hesitation and guessing game recalls once again the discussion about the calculations and anticipation that goes on behind a challenge and riposte (bourdieu 1977). it highlights the risk that always lies behind such interactions and the constant possibility of failure or misunderstanding. in my later research and conversations with residents, i understood manjola‟s clumsiness in this situation not as an exception to the norm but as a common occurrence. talking in 2008 about bribing or gift giving for medical services, for instance, florian confessed that, although he thinks it was more than fair to give a gift of cash to a doctor for saving one‟s life, he personally does not know how to give it gracefully. he described a few situations where he felt it was necessary to give cash to the doctor who helped his mother. 19 like manjola, florian had acted with clumsiness and had failed to find the right moment or estimate the right amount to give. while everyone seems to think that it is necessary to bribe or give cash gifts to officials, not everyone has the necessary know-how. the rules are not explicit. while bribing and gift giving are supposed to establish a common ground, they always involve a process of speculation on the part of the giver. in this moment of confusion, i saw manjola making a gesture towards her purse. the chief understood and refused emphatically, almost implying that this was offensive to him. we were embarrassed to have misread the situation but were relieved to know that this did not cancel out his earlier promise. with the genuine help of the chief of police and other staff at the regional police station, i was able to expedite the procedure for the criminal check and receive my passport in time to apply for my u.s. visa. after the fact, i kept asking myself whether the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 169 anxiety that accompanied us all along was justified. was this anxiety an imaginary residue of socialism or were public institutions continuously generating uncertainty? later on when i became increasingly interested in the subject of corruption and legitimacy, my mind kept returning to this episode as a template for generating new questions. during my fieldwork i would often describe the story to friends to ask for their opinion and to elicit other similar or contrasting experiences. once, a friend suggested half-jokingly that perhaps the chief of police had refused to accept a bribe because the transaction took place in his office rather than the café. while i do not doubt the ethical stance of this particular police chief and i am certain that he would not even accept a coffee from us, i am interested in my friend‟s comment for other reasons. the comment suggests that local residents truly see different places as enabling different kinds of interactions. in fact, our own bodies act differently in these different places. thus, public offices still represent opaque nodes of power while cafés constitute a space of possibility and improvisation. as i repeated this story to other family and friends, the fact that i was able to get my passport in three days without the help of any intermediaries, bribes, or cash gifts seemed to have no consequence on the shared distrust of formal institutions. i had for a long time thought this response mirrored, perhaps, an exaggerated cynicism towards authorities in albania. my perspective changed, however, following many failed attempts at obtaining public information and services from government offices during my fieldwork in 2008. i also came to think of this journey in a different light after watching a sting operation by the notorious local investigative show, fiks fare, in september 2008. 20 watching the show i felt as if i was experiencing déjà vu. the episode staged a journey uncannily similar to the one i have described. the narrative of the television show, however, would have a different ending. a young woman working as an undercover journalist for fiks fare had appeared at the new offices of passports and later at the precinct police station. like other similar sting operations from the same show, the woman was carrying a hidden camera that filmed the interactions with public officials. the woman pretended to be representing an immigrant from italy who needed a new passport on short notice. while at the precinct police office, the journalist asked to expedite the process. on the other side of the counter and unaware of the undercover operation was an older policewoman who, at first, resisted the request claiming this was out of her competence. the young journalist insisted and requested to meet the policewoman at a café. the implicit message of this seemingly casual request was that the journalist was willing to pay a bribe to the officials involved. the next footage shifted to the café where the two women were negotiating the exchange. the policewoman had obviously agreed to the arrangement even though she was constantly nervous and unsure of the whether she could trust the journalist. she repeatedly stated that she was only doing this as a favor to the young woman and that “they”—hinting at her superiors— were very careful about these kinds of exchanges because they would get into trouble. in an unintended gesture of intertextuality, the policewoman even lamented about how difficult it was nowadays to do such favors for people in need given the constant provocations from fiks fare. 21 while talking reluctantly to the undercover journalist, the policewoman simultaneously anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 170 communicated through her cell phone with staff from her office that were helping her expedite the process. as per the cash, the trained journalist repeatedly asked how much she was required to pay. the policewoman once again was reluctant to name a price, insisting on this being a favor on her part but also implying that a cash “donation” was required for her superiors. the scenario was quite similar to the one i had experienced a few years earlier while renewing my passport, with the crucial addition of the café interaction. however, the temporality of giving the cash, its upfront presence prior to the completion of the service, and the explicit eliciting of cash from the public officer place this instance under the rubric of bribing rather than gift giving or bakshish (tip). fiks fare‟s intention was to create the conditions for this other realm of transactions to become visible. the episode forces me to reconsider the scenario of what would have happened if my interaction with the police chief had shifted to the café or if i had encountered another police authority. in the end, however, the episode helped me understand better the reproduction of the persistent cynicism towards bureaucracy in albania. conclusion exchanging favors and using connections to procure public services in postsocialist albania has certainly changed from the socialist days. one key transformation has been the availability of goods previously on shortage. another change involves what ledeneva describes in her more recent work as a displacement of the principle of mutual help in blat networking by a more exclusive form of market corruption (ledeneva 2006, 2009). in albania also i noted how public concern with corruption targets state capture while the use of connections and gifts in cash in exchange for social services is often tolerated as a necessary tactic of dealing with bureaucracy. based on my conversations with tirana residents who have to engage with public institutions on a regular basis, the story of issuing a new passport in 2005 belongs to a realm of the locally condoned exchanges. 22 in the said case, the whole network of connections was called into action because of a need to expedite the otherwise long but routine procedure of issuing a passport. similar tactics continue to be prevalent in procuring other forms of public services, especially medical services, licenses, or personal documents. my reflections about this journey speak to the realm of these transactions through të njohur and through exchanges of cash gifts during postsocialism. although there is perhaps a quantitative decline in the need for connections as some institutions have improved on the efficiency of their services, the need for the network of të njohur persists today. most importantly, people still are apprehensive of bureaucratic institutions and trust informal networks and informal transactions. i described this tendency as a legacy of the socialist informal network. but while the political and economic institutions in postsocialist albania have changed, what seems to persist is an illegibility of the power of state and public authorities. further, writing about this journey allowed me to reflect upon the changing nature of making and using të njohur. on the one hand, i focused on the tactics of socializing, of creating të njohur as a process of social creativity. the elements of obligation and gratitude, of existing or achieved familiarity are not to be understood as rigid structures but as sociality in the making. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 171 one important change in using të njohur in albania as in other former socialist countries is the increased monetization of these mediations. yet, the increasing use of money in these exchanges raises further questions about the ethics and legitimacy of such “gifts.” in a few of the instances described here cash given to the intermediary followed the temporal rules of a gift or bakshish (tip); it was meant to be given after the service, out of gratitude, and the amount was not subject to negotiation. as the scenario on fiks fare suggests, however, cash is often given as a bribe, negotiated and promised in advance rather than given voluntarily after the fact. in this case, there is a hierarchy of status that comes into play. in conclusion, i want to suggest that these two scenarios are not mutually exclusive because they both belong to the multiple possibilities of formal and informal interactions with bureaucracy in albania. neither of them is more representative than the other; instead, they both belong within the same realm of possibilities. finally, i drew attention to an aspect of these exchanges that requires further research and thinking: the role that space and place plays in enabling or disallowing alternative possibilities and outcomes of negotiating with state authorities. i argued that these multiple possibilities materialize differently in different places. my own awkwardness within some of these oncefamiliar places such as the street and the café, however, pointed to the specificities of cultural and historical implacement. in my journey through the different offices processing my passport, i became aware that particular places, such as the street and the café, present local residents with different possibilities for action. in contemporary albania, both places carry ambivalent connotations. they both enable actors to improvise, negotiate relations with power, and to reconfigure their own place within formalities. notes * this article builds on ethnographic research during preliminary fieldwork trips to tirana, albania in 2005, 2006 and 2007 and dissertation fieldwork from 2008-2009. research was made possible with funding from the society for the anthropology of europe and council for european studies as well as the social science research council, the national science foundation and the social science and humanities research council (canada). i thank diana blank for comments on earlier drafts of the paper as well as matthew rosen and the editor of anthropology of east europe review, sarah d. phillips, for their insightful suggestions. 1 at the time of my trip i had already started my doctoral studies in anthropology at new school university. while the focus of my dissertation research—when and what is corruption in postsocialist albania—touches on topics that i explore in this paper, during the 2005 trip i was actually in tirana not officially for research purposes but for personal reasons (renewing my visa and passport). i was born and raised in albania and have been studying abroad since 1995. 2 in trying to place this kind of embodied knowledge and familiarity with a particular way of feeling, caroline steedman‟s rich description of her knowledge of class through particular sentiments is exemplary. in landscape for a good woman (2003[1986]), steedman accessed untold stories of working class women through her memory of certain smells, dreams, and wants. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 172 childhood memories and sensations for steedman, are one form of unarticulated and „subjugated knowledges‟ (foucault 1980). 3 for political history of albania during communism, see miranda vickers (2001), misha glenny (2001) and berndt j. fischer (2008) among others. unfortunately, there are very few accounts of the social history of albania during the 50 years of the communist regime. among others, isa blumi (1999) emphasizes the cultural dimension of the so-called “class wars” of the late 1960s1970s. public intellectual ardian vehbiu (2003) also captures some of the social transformations in the social life of the capital tirana. 4 see heidenheimer (1989). 5 in order to protect their identities all names of tirana residents mentioned in this article are fictional. 6 the other albanian word for friend, shok/u/shoqe, is a closer translation to the english “friend.” the difference with mik is that the latter carries along more depth of sentiment and obligation. 7 kanun stands for common law, unwritten law. during the ottoman occupation, many parts of albania refused to abide by the law of the ottoman empire and followed instead these parallel legal systems that regulated relations of property, of blood feuds, marriages, etc. there were different kanuns in different regions. one persistent element of kanun was the law of hospitality and protection extended to mik where mik stood for friend as well as guest. see especially robert elsie (2001). 8 gregory (1982) articulates what has been a continuous trend in economic anthropology: gifts as “inalienable objects” mediating exchanges between subjects versus commodities as “alienable objects” exchanging amongst themselves in a realm that appears as independent from human relations. 9 this monetization of gifts permeates other areas of social life. for instance, during my fieldwork in 2008 in the cities of tirana and vlorë, i noticed on several occasions that people gave cash at funerals and weddings—two social institutions where, prior to the 1990s, giving cash was neither affordable nor ethical. 10 for instance, one of ledeneva‟s (1998:123) informants says: “you may have to pay anyway, but you won‟t be treated as someone „from the street‟ and you will know where to go.” 11 my notion of tactics here takes after michel de certau‟s (1984) use of tactics as creative ways of walking through the city grid. 12 see especially the chapter “structures and habitus” in bourdieu (1977). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 173 13 see for instance verdery‟s (1996: 39-57) description of the biopolitical power of the socialist state in romania as a seizure of one‟s body through the routine demands on personal time in queues. 14 for a review of the concepts of public and private during socialism and after, see especially gal and kligman (2000), in particular their analysis of the separation of moral space through public and private: “the private „us‟ and „them‟ was understood to operate according to different moral principles. the cultural imperative to be honest and ethically responsible to those who counted as private „we‟ contrasted with distrust and a tolerance for duplicity and interpersonal manipulation in dealings with „them‟” (gal and kligman 2000:51). 15 i am inspired here also by akhil gupta‟s (1995) approach to narratives of corruption as ways of understanding and engaging with the state in rural india. 16 yurchak translates obschenie as “„communication‟ and „conversation‟ but in addition involves nonverbal interaction and spending time together or being together […] it always involves an intense and intimate commonality and intersubjectivity, not just spending time in the company of others” (2006:148). 17 public intellectual ardian vehbiu captures a similar tension around koha e lirë (free time): “it was the time when, still under the influence of the chinese cultural revolution, free time was seen with suspicion, as a unnecessary remainder of a bourgeois conception of work as struggle” (vehbiu 2003:46). 18 from interview with fatmira, a woman in her late forties, vlorë, september 2008. 19 from personal communication, march 2008. 20 fiks fare, september 9, 2008, top channel, tirana. 21 given the cynical style of humor characteristic of the show, in exchange for this inadvertent publicity, fiks fare made an exception for the policewoman, camouflaging her face at broadcast, something that goes against their usual practice of shaming corruption. 22 this, however, goes against official definitions and indexing from international anti-corruption watchdogs such as transparency international. see transparency international (2009). references cited blumi, isa. 1999. “hoxha‟s class war: the cultural revolution and its state formation, 19611971.” east european quarterly 33(3):303-327. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 174 bourdieu, pierre. 1997. outline of a theory of practice. trans. richard nice. cambridge: polity press. casey, edward j. 1997. “how to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time.” in senses of place, eds. steven feld and keith basso. santa fe: school of american research. de certeau, michel. 1984. the practice of everyday life. trans. steven randall. berkley and los angeles: university of california press. elsie, robert, 2001. dictionary of albanian religion, mythology and folk culture. london: hurst and company. pp 146-150. fischer, berndt j. 2008 [2007]. “enver hoxha dhe diktatura staliniste në shqipëri” (enver hoxha and the stalinist dictatorship in albania). in diktatorët e ballkanit (balkan dictators), ed. bernd j. fischer. trans. virgjil k. muçi. tirana: albanian institute for international studies. foucault, michel. 1980. two lectures. in power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972-77. brighton, sussex: harvester. gal, susan and gail kligman. 2000. the politics of gender after socialism: a comparative historical essay. princeton: princeton university press. glenny, misha. 2001. the balkans: nationalism, war and the great powers, 1804-1999. penguin non-classic. gregory, christopher. 1982. gifts and commodities. london: academic press. gupta, akhil. 1995. blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagines state. american ethnologist 22(2):375-402. heidenheimer, arnold. 1989. “perspectives on the perception of corruption.” in political corruption: a handbook. ed. a. heidenheimer, m. johnston and v. le vine. new brunswick, nj: transaction. pp. 141-155. humphrey, caroline. 2002. the unmaking of soviet life: everyday economies after socialism. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 175 ledeneva, alena. 2009. “from russia with blat: can informal networks help modernize russia?” social research 76(1):257-288. _____. 2006. how russia really works: the informal practices that shaped post-soviet politics and business. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. _____. 1998. russia's economy of favours: blat, networking and informal exchange. cambridge and new york: cambridge university press mauss, marcel. 1990 [1924]. the gift: forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. london: routledge. sampson, steve. 1987. “the second economy of the soviet union and eastern europe.” annals of the american academy of political and social science 493: 120-136. steedman, caroline. 2003[1986]. landscape for a good woman: a story of two lives. new jersey: rutgers university press stewart, kathleen. 1996. a space on the side of the road: cultural poetics in an “other” america. princeton, nj: princeton university press. transparency international. 2009. “frequently asked questions about corruption.” http://www.transparency.org/news_room/faq/corruption_faq#faqcorr5, accessed september 16, 2009. vehbiu, ardian. 2003. kulla e sahatit, (the clock tower) tirana: k&b. verdery, katherine. 1996. what was socialism and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. vickers, miranda. 2001. the albanians: a modern history. london: i.b. tauris yang, mayfair mei-hui. 1994. gifts, favors, banquets: the art of social relationships in china. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. yurchak, alexei. 2006. everything was forever, until it was no more: the last soviet generation. princeton: princeton university press. http://www.transparency.org/news_room/faq/corruption_faq#faqcorr5 39 anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 “forgetting equals killing:” loss and remembrance of the missing children in post-war kosovo rozafa berisha, phd candidate, the university of manchester abstract the kosovo war of 1999 has had a devastating and enduring impact on individual and social lives of the civilian population. this article provides an in-depth understanding of the impact of wartime atrocities on community experiences, by examining the role of political memory construction in stimulating the production of various sites for recounting alternative memory. based on extensive ethnographic research, i particularly focus on the collective engagement and the mechanisms of reformulation and transmission of social memory among the parents of missing children. i argue that the pain of loss gets materialized, visualized and publicly asserted through various mediums in an attempt to cope with, as well as resist, societal forgetting. in this article, i refrain from giving a totalizing interpretation of collective memory in post-war kosovo, and argue instead that multiple and fragmented “acts of remembrance” co-exist, as moulded in collective action situated in the public domain. key words: acts of remembrance, political memory, societal forgetting, missing children, kosovo war introduction it is widely accepted among anthropologists that individual memories have a social dimension, and may be exterior or interior to the body as anchored in the private or public domain. as such, they are interactively constituted and integrated within social frameworks and narratives, which give them shape and meaning. collective memory construction in kosovo has mostly been studied through so-called publicly circulated signs, practices, and rituals, such as commemorations, memory texts or memorials (di lellio and schwandner-sievers 2006; ströhle 2012; luci 2014). however, memory as a scholarly field has been explored by anthropologists through different approaches: as moral knowledge and practice (lambek 1996; werbner 1998), as stored in the body and bodily practices (connerton 1989; sermetakis 1994; casey 2000; climo and cattell 2002; kidron 2009), and as a practice to cope with traumatic experiences (antze and lambek 1996). it is the last scope within which i wish to situate this article, due to the fact that i regard the traumatic memory of loss as an individual as much as a collective experience. in particular, i focus on its production, cultural shaping, and mediation in the public realm, and consider collective remembrance through social acts as a means to deal with the losses as well as to resist societal forgetting. this article is based on extensive fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016, mainly with two kosovar albanian parents’ associations: mother’s call from gjakova and parent’s voice from mitrovica. due to kosovo’s declaration of independence from serbia in 2008 following the war in 1999, kosovo and kosovar albanians themselves provide a unique and abundant terrain to disentangle the dichotomy of remembering-forgetting. dealing with the past has thus been a complex and multifold process, especially because the memory construction was adapted to the nation-state building agenda and national identity, respectively. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 40 when the law 04/l-023 of the missing persons was approved in 2011, it encountered strong opposition from some kosovar albanian parents. the missing, who were regarded as të pagjetur (unaccounted for/yet to be found—hence potentially recoverable) were now categorized as të zhdukur (disappeared, hence dead or lost/or possibly unrecoverable). by regarding them as the latter (të zhdukur), the issue was likely to be seen as an officially closed chapter, with parents being encouraged to accept their missing children as potentially unrecoverable. such official societal forgetting of select narratives, as paul connerton (2011) observes, is constitutive of the project of the formation of a new identity. for this purpose, forgetting becomes an intrinsic part of the process, with specific narratives being preserved in collective memory and others falling into abeyance or being discarded by officials as impractical in managing the current identity (connerton 2011). however, unlike the case of the victims of rape and sexual violence (predominantly women) who have been met with a humiliated silence, the missing are actively remembered on an individual and social level since their disappearance. as they would otherwise fall into abeyance, the burden of keeping them from a societal forgetting drew heavily upon parents. to remember and elicit their stories in the public realm was considered firstly to be an ethical responsibility towards the missing children from the parents who equate public forgetting with killing. parents are aware that children may have endured extreme forms of violence, and their bodies may be lying in inappropriate places without recompense. in lack of serious engagement from political authorities, remembering is considered a strong parental and moral obligation, which opens the door for a possible recovery of the bodies. on the other hand, the absence of religious, cultural, and political conventions to give meaning to these unresolved losses, or to provide a substitute to the death ritual, necessitates memorization in order to bear witness to the unaccounted for’s existence and individual stories. as a matter of fact, remembering becomes crucial to social justice to clarify their fate, but also to provide documentation of very recent national history for future generations ‒an endeavour often pondered in moral terms in individual imagination. the ways in which these memories are channelled is my exclusive focus in this article. a communal interpretation of the past animates alternative memory-works or “acts of remembrance” (winter 2006: 6). in order to avoid referring to memory as an abstract, vague and without-agency concept,1 jay winter claims that different collectives remember differently, whereas individuals’ remember in association with other people and engage in acts of remembrance together (winter 2006: 4). in line with his argument, i look at the creation of parents’ various acts of remembrance, their alternative spaces, and the means utilized to assert these memories in the public realm. while these acts of remembrance shape and influence memory at a national level, they simultaneously unpack memory’s manifold nature. a note on political memory in kosovo various competing narratives exist about the kosovo war, which have in turn forged contradictory interpretations of the past. the kosovo war was a result of intensified interethnic violence in the 1980’s, after josip broz tito’s death, when the new communist leader slobodan milošević introduced and promoted an extreme serbian-nationalist agenda. the oppression of the kosovar albanian population increased drastically and culminated in 1998, anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 41 when the kosovo liberation army (kla) openly confronted the serbian police forces. the war ended in june 1999 with a 78-day military intervention by nato, which forced the federal republic of yugoslavia to withdraw its troops from kosovo. during the conflict period as many as 863,000 people were forced to flee kosovo whereas 590,000 were internally displaced (independent international commission in kosovo 2000). the war left behind more than 13,000 victims (humanitarian law centre 2011), with the vast majority being kosovar albanians, while there is evidence of widespread, systematic rape and torture. as to this day, there are over 1660 missing persons (international committee of red cross 2016). after eight years under administration from the unmik (un interim administration mission in kosovo), the kosovo assembly declared independence from serbia on february 17th, 2008. the legitimization of the quest for independence and the reorientation of national identity fuelled the construction of a political memory, which consecutively produced a particular interpretation of the past. commonly, the process of political memory construction promotes particular memories which are “staged, used and abused for political action and formation of group identities” (assmann 2010: 41). in the kosovar context, the main fractures produced by this interpretation were the entities of martyr and victim, which, as contested and blurry as they are, have influenced the experience of violence and collective memory during and after the war. anthropologists anna di lellio and stephanie schwandner-sievers (2006), have observed that kosovar memory politics have been built around a master narrative of armed resistance and self-sacrifice. this narrative elicits contestations and disagreements, thus marginalizing contested memories that would destabilize this storyline. as they put it: the national myth making activity of albanian memory entrepreneurs in kosovo have used cultural scripts taken from the patriarchal tradition. they are based on the resistance until death and the transgenerational obligation to remember and complete the work of martyrs ... [t]he master narrative performs two functions: retrospectively it has shifted the focus from the “shameful” experiences of victimization/humiliation to imparting pride. prospectively, it provides an icon of national solidarity, strengthens albanian national political identity and makes claim to independence nonnegotiable. (di lellio and schwandner-sievers 2006, 526-527) a discourse of martyrdom and glorification of kosovo liberation army (kla) fighters, as built around local customary codes of honourable manhood2 and self-sacrifice, established a legitimizing potential for remembrance and commemoration employed in all lieux de memoire (see ströhle 2012; luci 2014). this, in turn, left little space for civilian victims to accommodate their experiences, attach meaning to their losses, and help them mourn publicly. much can be said about the fact that memory construction is never unitary, hegemonic or static, and that sharp divisions between history and memory, and individual and collective do not stand, due to memories being both shared and fragmented. however, at this point it suffices to say that this narrative which has produced a hierarchy of categories of the victims of war, has redefined the experience of loss and memory in post-war kosovo. unlike in the turkish-cypriot context, where being martyr or shehit means to be killed (cassia 2005), in the case of kosovo, being a martyr suggests self-sacrificing through armed resistance. hence, the missing persons did not belong to the category of martyr, because they did not fit into the narrative which implies that a sacred and honourable death was related to local codes of manhood and death for a bigger cause. this exclusion was translated into the social appraisal of these losses as individualized and private tragedies of a victim’s miserable fate. this attitude has resulted in parents feeling uncomfortable in the gaze of the others, due to public preconceptions that their loved ones’ “socially devalued death as wasted, destroyed lives proven to be of no importance, is humiliating anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 42 to the living” (rowlands 2001: 137). this observation came to be realized when parents asserted their feeling that others s’ta dijnë (have no sympathy) for their loss, which in albanian suggests refusing to know or give merit to something. an inconsiderate approach from institutions towards their loss came up many times while they were explaining how painful it was to be categorized as parents whose children “were killed by serbians” instead of “those who gave their life for kosovo.” this captures perfectly the lack of social and political recognition of their loss as honourable, which evokes a sense of useless loss, and by extension useless suffering. nevertheless, a lack of official discourses and practices to remember and commemorate the missing is generative of an alternative memory-work. it is this memory-work that will be elaborated upon in the rest of this article. public expressions of grief: the mothers of gjakova an existential collapse, fear, and hope were the unifying features of the parents’ experiences right after the war. when her only son was taken from her home, nesrete, who now is the head of mother’s call, found herself locked in the room, suffering from deep grief. this state continued until she was taken to srebrenica in bosnia by the war commission, the site of the largest genocide in europe after world war ii. there she met mothers of the victims, who after having gone through similarly horrific experiences, had somehow managed to rebuild their lives. nesrete was captivated by the strength and courage they showed and by the fact they had quit crying. they told her that she should also stop crying because the body of her son would “stand on water” and that she must be strong and knock on every door to find him. there was a widespread belief among the mothers that their tears would do harm to the bodies of their children as they will be standing on them. tears, mërzia (grief), and mall (a feeling of missing someone) were perceived as the cause of the children no longer appearing in their dreams, as well as stifling the indefatigability and the strength to look for their bodies. such beliefs, in which crying, apathy and grief are highly discouraged, should not be confused with the impassive and reasonable acceptance of death, or a lack of maternal love within a specific context of violence. this theme is brilliantly elaborated upon by nancy scheper-hughes (1993) in her ethnographic account on the infant death in brazil. she challenges the idea of motherhood as a universal biological instinct, arguing instead that in the context of material deprivation, different meanings of mother-love emerge. my aim is not centred on such an analysis. rather, i claim that these beliefs related to maternal love and grief, have primarily served to draw strength and subvert gendered ideologies in which women are bearers of the culturally ascribed role of mourner. this role was enforced by the marginalized position of the mothers of the missing within the kosovar post-war context. moreover, such socialization of grief turns into a collective action and political activism, leading to creation of associations such as mother’s call in gjakova, which organize various activities every year in order to “prevent their case from going into oblivion.” factually, engaging the public dimension of experience has turned into a vital part of the so-called “mothers of gjakova” lives. some of them keep photographs of their sons and daughters in their purse ready to be displayed within those demonstrations. as mihrije, whose daughter is unaccounted for, describes, “they [the government] thought and hoped that after a while we would get tired, but we did not, perhaps physically you do, but never otherwise, because only when i do something for her i feel happy.” nesrete, on the other hand, tells me that her life trajectory is limited to home, the association’s office, and one square-meter of the street to protest, because anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 43 only within those spaces she feels alive. public activism here becomes a successful method to cope with personal anguish. in the cypriot context, paul sant cassia (2005: 111) identifies such activism as “grief work,” which implies “the public statement of grief that could not be terminated naturally.” therefore, it forcefully creates alternative ways to be communicated and coped with. to receive public visibility of such un-narrated experiences, assert their demands for unity with their loved ones, and generate remembrance, mothers focus on the bodies as their main means. allen feldman (2003: 62) describes the body as holding a space for a social memory which gains visibility, collective resonance and publicness. in the case of traumatic memory, feldman (2003: 62) notes that the body serves as a vehicle through which power, history and memory becomes dramatized and visualized (see also: kleinman and kleinman 1994). the mothers, via protest and public bodily expression of grief, continuously visualize these tensions and further develop strategies for the survival of the memory. collective action is a reaction of social and political marginality that provides a means in claiming some degree of influence in the public domain. in doing so, they assert their memories and demands in a socially sanctioned, yet visible and to some extent effective manner. this public and dramatic re-enactment of private grief through bodies imposes upon the society the necessity to recognize suffering and to think seriously about the question of guilt (das 1995). the question of guilt relates to an event i witnessed during my fieldwork. in january 2014, the mothers succeeded in blocking a bus of serbian pilgrims entering the local church on the orthodox christmas while carrying the list of the accused serbian war criminals. larger protests were then sparked when the ethnically serb cabinet minister of kosovo, aleksandar jablanović, called the mothers of the missing "savages." he even claimed later that he was not aware of any war crimes committed by serbian forces in kosovo. i was, in fact, surprised by how fast jablanović, whose name i had never heard before, turned into a hot topic throughout january in prishtina. the fact that the mothers were considered “savages” did not come as a huge surprise due to an internal “nesting orientalism” in former yugoslavia (bakić-hayden 1995), a pattern of reproduction of eastern and western dichotomies whereby albanians were positioned as a contrasting, backward “other.” what was unacceptable for the kosovar albanians was the fact that by dehumanizing the mothers, he not only refused to acknowledge the pain of their loss, but also denied that the crime had happened at all. consequently, jablanović’s denial of serb war crimes in kosovo reawakened hatred among all war-affected albanians, with the mothers coming to stand as symbols of national suffering, and the living evidence of such crimes. thousands of people gathered in the biggest and most violent protest since independence in 2008, demanding the removal of jablanović. he was finally dismissed; an act, which the mothers said made them forget their pain for a while. to impose and legitimize the recovery of missing bodies, as well as the condemnation of war criminals, the mothers deploy what anthropologist maya todeschini has identified as “maternal trope” (todeschini 2001: 136). motherhood, among other discourses, is deployed to legitimize their demands and enable a passage of grief to emerge within the public realm. inside the office of the mothers’ call association in gjakova, there is hardly a span of wall uncovered by statement pictures, posters and other materials carried within all protests undertaken. the largest wall is covered with the pictures of killed and missing civilians alongside the phrase from one protest, saying: “let the tears of the mother be a demand and may gjakova never be repeated again.” other similar statements are likewise built on discourses of motherhood, yet add the language of universal parental love, as well as the medical one. among the hundreds of demands anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 44 directed to institutions and international leaders in kosovo, these discourses are depicted within one of the following “message of the mothers”: we turned our tears, pain, and anger into strength; we will turn this strength into morale, and we are determined to stay together as we did in the most difficult moments of our painful history … europe should do it [find the missing] on behalf of humanism, of which it speaks a lot, and must not forget that we love our children as much as they love theirs and that our children are as valuable to us as theirs are to them. do not play with the emotions of traumatized families, do not provoke the patience of the mothers and do not open the mothers’ bleeding wounds anymore, please solve this urgent problem (kumnova and efendija 2003: 35). in this text, we see a transformation of individual grief into powerful public idioms. it is framed within historical and cultural discourses of maternal pain and strength, feelings of universal parenthood, and the universally recognized medical discourse of trauma, since it is directed to the international community. drawing on these idioms, especially on motherhood, they create a position from which they speak authoritatively on their suffering, stories, and demands. lacking political power to directly influence the events and policies, and in the absence of an institutional framework to accommodate, contextualize and recognize their stories, the mothers use their bodies and such legitimizing idioms to assert their memories and make their claims publicly. by engaging in collective activities in a struggle for recognition and acknowledgment, they give voice to their lasting anguish, making public a traumatic memory that may otherwise be forgotten or kept within the body. memorizing loss: photographs the most enduring activity of parents’ associations such as mothers’ calls and parents' voice, is the placement of photographs of the missing on the front fence of the parliament building in prishtina. they returned even after a screen containing the missing person’s names was revealed in 2013, an object that for the parents was considered as a poor substitute for a decent memorial. the scepticism of the parents towards the screen was primarily due to its materiality and short durability. on a symbolic level, the screen differs from the conventional forms of memorials by which the martyrs are remembered, hereby excluding the missing from the existing war narrative. as such, it fails to remember and represent the role of the missing in the kosovo war, in a way that parents advocate for. therefore, it is not a coincidence that the photographs were returned and placed right in front of the parliament, a place where they cannot go unnoticed by political subjects and the wider international community, as they sit right in front of their work place. as photography is an object in context, there is a logical connection between the location displayed, its function, and the representational thought the photographs convey. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 45 photo 1 a photograph’s noeme, wrote roland barthes (1984), is its reference, meaning that the material carries the subject with itself; they are glued together. this instills photography with an aura of factuality, as it contains an undeniable reality of a past that, in barthes’ words, “has been” (barthes 1984: 77). starting from this assumption, the missing persons’ photographs within the public sphere serve two purposes. firstly, as something which “has been,” it projects the past into the present. in this sense, it enables a memorization and materialization of a loss in absence, suggested by the disappearance of bodies as well as a public memorial that serves to materialize that loss. hence, it is a potent cultural object to recall the missing persons, emphasizing their existence not as a unified category but as distinct personhoods with names attached to faces. secondly, they are placed into the public sphere in the same square of dozens of other memorials. this implicates precisely “what has been forgotten.” here photographs disturb the existing official narrative that seeks to contain war in the past, as they continue to speak of ongoing and unresolved questions. at this point, some reflection of richard werbner (1998) might be useful. the tensions around the interpretation of the past, he argues, create a suppressed, un-commemorated or “buried memory” which in turn produces “unfinished narratives”—“a popular history in which the past is perceived to be unfinished, festering into the present which motivates people to call again and again for a public resolution to their predicament” (werbner 1998: 9-10). photographs here exemplify this tension and are a means to call attention to unfinished narratives. they gain a performative quality, are directed towards an audience, and live public lives as unresolved questions and absences. as such, they question and invite the local and international community to pay attention, reflect and learn about the losses. in other words, photographs perform, testify, anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 46 and memorize the existence of the missing, while at the same time existing as a quest for transitional justice to clarify their fate. let us now consider the photographs in a different semi-public context, namely the mother’s call office. the front wall is covered by photographs coupled with the words: “my spirit is talking to you, do not trample on my blood” (photo 2). i asked nesrete about the significance of the wall’s photographs, to which she replied that they talk to us and that photographs utter more than a thousand words. similarly, at the parent’s voice office in mitrovica, next to the pictures is written: "have you done enough for us?” (photo 3) photo 2 photo 3 such numerous statements attached to photographs apparently voicing the sufferings and worries of the missing people themselves serve as a means to legitimize the parents’ own demands. one may ask why it is the photographs and not other objects that become the voices of the missing. here, i find the thoughts of an already classic work by roger scruton, “photography and representation” (1981) very illuminating. he uses the metaphor of a mirror to understand why a picture cannot be reduced simply to representation. as he puts it: “when i see someone in a mirror i see him, not his representation. this remains so even if the mirror is a distorting mirror and even if the mirror is placed where it is intentionally” (scruton 1981, 595). therefore, photography acts as a surrogate or mirror of the missing, enabling parents to speak and demand in their name without rendering this act as peculiar. in particular, in the case at hand, it charges a responsibility towards the living via an acceptable and authorizing voice made possible by the photographs. in addition to memorization and accusation, photographs have additional significance for parents. as mirrors or surrogates of the missing persons, they mediate communication as well as homage. since there is no body to mourn, photographs serve as miniature memento, thus opening new spaces and rituals to confront and cope with the loss. parents for some years paid homage and replaced old photographs with new ones in front of parliament, on the anniversary of children’s disappearance. such places have turned into concrete sites of memory and mourning (winter 1995), where parents channel their grief and pay homage to their loved ones. remembering through ritualistic action with others, as a form of commemoration, provides an instance where individual memories are made public; it creates and keeps alive a social memory mediated by photographs. anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 47 cemeteries given that disappearance leaves no body to bury, no definite moment of death, and no tomb, the role of burial to memorize and mourn the loss cannot be realized. commonly, in historical trauma and cases of massive loss, mourning customs have to be reinvented, as in the case of first and second post-war europe, where sites of memory and mourning in the form of large scale monuments have been constructed accordingly (young 1993; winter 1995). in the previous sections, i have discussed an articulation of social memory in public spheres through activism and photographs. here, i want to move to another form of memorization and remembrance that also marks an unfinished past: cemeteries. i remember the first time i visited krusha in 2015; the village was severely affected by the war, having endured extreme forms of violence and destruction. the head of the village accompanied me to the war cemetery, where the village’s victims had been buried. at that time, they were preparing charges against the war criminals, which he described to me via the jewish trope (živković 2000): “krusha had been an auschwitz of sorts in which all possible forms of crimes were committed.” as we walked around the cemetery he told me that the villagers had taken the initiative, with the facilitation of the ministry of environment, to build a memorial and commemorate the killed civilians, as inspired by the model of the vietnam war soldiers’ cemetery in america (photo 4). there were the graves of heroes, of the fallen – meaning civilians – and, right in the corner, the empty graves of the missing. i must confess that this came as a big surprise to me, especially when i realized that krusha was not the only place where empty graves of the missing had been built. in gjakova, within cemeteries for civilians, as well as in few private graveyards, the empty graves were aligned next to other dead family members. photo 4 anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 48 considering that the cemetery is a site in which the proximity and communication with the deceased person is conducted, empty graves served other purposes here. it should be noted that they were initially not built by the parents themselves; they are mostly part of collective graves which have left places open hoping to be filled with the bodies. through cemeteries, therefore, the locals have integrated these persons as members of the collective. in this sense, they are not a substitute for the body or ritualistic devices to help parents terminate mourning or alleviate grief. on the contrary, fetije in krusha, whose son’s empty grave is left in the cemetery, felt even more sadness seeing it empty and nameless. it is interesting, however, that for some parents these graves are appropriated, with some of them having the engraved names of their children. i noted that in several interviews that i conducted with the parents, there did exist an approval of empty graves, or at least they imputed logic behind them. in contrast to photographs, cemeteries have a permanent durability, which enables them a long-term memorization, whereby it prevents their children’s identities from disappearing. anthropology of absence would have considered these phenomena as present absences, whereas the empty graves can be seen as means by which absence is ordered, remembered and turned into matter (billie, hastrup, and soerensen 2010; hockey, komaromy, and woodthorpe 2010). like photographs, they provide visibility and draw attention to absences. unlike photographs, however, they are simultaneously impersonal yet durable, attaining a primacy for long-term memorization and remembrance. the obelisk although the photographs, empty graves, and protests overlap in an attempt to remember and resist forgetting, the version of the story i explore here is slightly different. in the midst of my fieldwork, i witnessed a substantial shift in the politics of memory in kosovo. for the first time in sixteen years, “the week of the disappeared” was dedicated to the missing persons. it was marked by numerous activities, including a session in parliament, homages, and commemorative ceremonies. on the last day—april 27th, 2015—which is also the national day of missing persons, nesrete and bajram, the heads of two associations, were invited to reveal a new obelisk dedicated to the missing, located only few steps further rom the photographs and the screen. the obelisk was comprised of white marble in an abstract, descriptive style, with which only an understanding of context may illuminate deeper meaning, as at the time there was no direct sign or dedication given (photo 5).4 anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 49 photo 5 seemingly, the perceptions of the past were being reworked. the obelisk, along with other institutionalized commemorations and activities, testified as recognition of the missing upon the national stage and was welcomed by the parents. at the same time, this attempt to bring in a new interpretation of the past made them sceptical, leading them to call this sudden remembrance and commemoration into question as serious support, or purely as a response to the formation of the special court. kosovo has approved the eu pledge for creating the aforementioned special court to deal with crimes, allegedly committed during and immediately after the war by individual members of kla, some of whom now hold high political positions. this court will investigate crimes, abductions and persecutions against civilians of all ethnicities, including albanians who were believed to be collaborators of the serbian regime. in that case, the master narrative of male heroic sacrifice needs a reorientation, with the attention shifting to civilian victims by publicly presenting the victimizing aspect of war. immediately after the announcement of the establishment of the special court in december 2014, former prime minister and former political leader of the kla, hashim thaçi (now president) for the first time accused serbia of genocide in the kosovo war, proclaiming that the war crimes should be documented. the missing, more so than any other war category, became proof of the pure, just, and sacred quality of the kla defence, providing evidence for a genocide charge precisely due to their absence. the use of the term “genocide” is the ultimate form of victimization, casting the role of passive victims, for which the missing stand as a metaphor.3 as missing persons were killed and then systematically taken to serbia to be thrown in the danube river, burnt, or buried in mass graves, they typify the brutal organized and institutionalized anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 50 methods used by the milošević regime. the missing therefore became a potential tool, rather than a hindrance, to the maintenance of the kosovar political elite’s legitimacy and authority. considering that the war ended 16 years ago, and that the missing have been unaccounted for since, this re-evaluation seems odd to most of parents, proving again that “the past is read from the present: when present changes, the past also has to change” (watson 1994: 1). after the revealing of the obelisk, kosovo parliament speaker kadri veseli took the opportunity to make a political statement claiming that regardless kosovo’s dedication for good neighbour relations with serbia, this cannot be achieved unless the spirits of the missing rested in their fatherland (top channel 2015). on the other hand, then prime minster of kosovo isa mustafa recalled that the war victims are the synonym of kosovar national pain and memory (koha 2015). the missing have turned into political symbols of ethnic victimhood, a mirror of barbarism of the other, and a barrier to reconciliation. katherine verdery refers to this repositioning and the associations of dead bodies with different kinds of values, as “dead body politics” (verdery 1999: 20). she argues that “dead body politics” has an important effect of inserting such revaluations into the lives of persons, families and groups (verdery 1999: 20); a claim i do not wish to contest. however, in the case of kosovo, this remains to be seen, as revaluation is done only in terms of remembrance without resolving the tension of the missing bodies. hence, right after the obelisk was revealed, a protest took place where a mother approached the head of parliament to remind him again that no matter what, the bodies’ absence should be accounted for. notwithstanding the weight of a social and political acknowledgement in helping parents come to terms with the loss, this act does not solve the problem of actually recovering the bodies. parents continue to engage in acts of remembrance in a daily struggle to come to terms with their losses. conclusion a politically motivated depiction of the past, as a tool of political elites, obscures alternative individual and collective memories of kosovar albanian war victims whilst simultaneously stimulating the emergence of various alternative memory-works. throughout this article i have explored the ways in which the kosovar albanian parents of missing children collectively engage in the transmission of their memories into the public realm through a wide range of acts of remembrance. these endeavours significantly alter the dominant narratives of the past, resist societal forgetting, and persist in resolving this tension. this article has uncovered publicly shared alternative histories of the violent recent past, produced amidst a backdrop of state-sponsored political memory, which has indirectly rendered these stories silent. my aim was to identify particular discursive practices, representations of the past, and the mediums through which they are channelled. i have particularly focused on public activism, photographs, and cemeteries, analysing the ways that these acts disturb the existing narratives while bespeaking of the multifold nature of social memory. the obelisk, on the other hand, proves that collective memory is never a static, but rather a dynamic process that continually adjusts to present developments and affairs. at a more personal level, for kosovar albanian parents, an alternative memory-work and acts of remembrance are sources for coping with personal loss as much as they are a vehicle for resolving the issue of the missing. by persistently materializing and memorizing the loss in public domain for such purposes, parents become agents of collective memory construction. this memory intrudes with but does not subvert the dominant one. the stories presented and actions undertaken anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 51 are caught around a definitive craving for social and political recognition, support, and accountability in their desperate need to know the fates of their loved ones. considering these stories to be cravings, i claim that they reveal the existential and social turmoil the parents are caught in, and are a way to cope with, amplify and publicize their demands. references antze, paul, and michael lambek, ed. 1996. tense past: cultural essays in trauma and memory. new york: routledge. assmann, aleida. 2010. " re-framing memory: between individual and collective forms of constructing the past." in performing the past: memory, history, and identity in modern europe, edited by karin tilmans, frank van vree and jay winter, 35-51. amsterdam: amsterdam university press. bakić-hayden, milica. 1995. “nesting orientalism: the case of former yugoslavia.’ slavic review 54 (4): 917–31. barthes, roland. 1984. camera lucida. london: fontana paperbacks. billie, mikkel, frida hastrup, and tim floh sorensen, ed. 2010. an anthropology of absence: materializations of transcendence and loss. springer: new york. casey, edward s. 2000. remembering: a phenomenological study. 2nd ed. bloomington: indiana university press. cassia, paul sant. 2005. bodies of evidence: burial, memory and the recovery of missing persons in cyprus. new york: berghahn books. climo, jacob j, and maria g cattell. 2002. social memory and history: anthropological perspectives. walnut creek, california: altamira press. connerton, paul. 1989. how societies remember. cambridge and new york: cambridge university press. connerton, paul. 2011. the spirit of mourning: history, memory and the body. cambridge: cambridge university press. das, veena. 1995. critical events: an anthropological perspective on contemporary india. oxford: oxford university press. di lellio, anna, and stephanie schwandner-sievers. 2006. 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press. sontag, susan. 2003. regarding the pain of others. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. ströhle, isabel. 2012. “the politics of reintegration and war commemoration: the case of the kosovo liberation army." sudosteuropa 58(4): 478-519. todeschini, maya. 2001. “the bomb’s womb? women and the atom bomb.” in remaking a world: violence, social suffering, and recovery, edited by veena das, arthur kleinman, and margaret m. lock, 102-156. berkeley: university of california press. top channel. 2015. “kosovë, dita e personave të pagjetur. mustafa: do ta kthejmë në ҫështje ndërkombëtare.” accessed january 20, 2016. http://top-channel.tv/2015/04/27/kosove dita-e-personave-te-pagjetur-mustafa-do-ta-kthejme-ne-ceshtje-nderkombetare. verdery, katherine. 1999. the political lives of dead bodies. reburial and postsocialist change. new york: columbia university press. watson, rubie s. 1994. “memory, history, and opposition under state socialism: an introduction.” in memory, history, and opposition under state socialism, edited by rubie s. watson, 1-20. new mexico: school of american research press. werbner, richard. 1998. “introduction: beyond oblivion: confronting memory crisis.” in memory and the postcolony: african anthropology and the critique of power, edited by richard werbner, 1-17.london: zed books. winter, jay. 1995. sites of memory, sites of mourning: the great war in european cultural history. cambridge: cambridge university press. winter, jay. 2006. remembering war: the great war between memory and history in the twentieth century. new haven: yale university press. young, james. 1993. the texture of memory: holocaust memorials and meaning. new haven, ct: yale university press. živković, marko. 2000. “the wish to be a jew: the power of the jewish trope in the yugoslav conflict” cahiers de l’urmis, march 6 2000. accessed august 15, 2015. http://urmis.revues.org/323. notes http://top-channel.tv/2015/04/27/kosove-%09dita-e-personave-te-pagjetur-mustafa-do-ta-kthejme-ne-ceshtje-nderkombetare http://top-channel.tv/2015/04/27/kosove-%09dita-e-personave-te-pagjetur-mustafa-do-ta-kthejme-ne-ceshtje-nderkombetare http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0300110685 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/asin/0300110685 http://yalepress.yale.edu/ http://urmis.revues.org/323 anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 54 1 assmann (2010), similarly dislikes the term because of its vagueness. she replaces it with three other different concepts: social, cultural and political memory. sontag (2003) on the other hand takes a more radical position by disregarding the term completely, noting that memory is individual and dies with each person. for her, what it is called collective memory is in fact stipulation as society cannot remember without a memory, which in her understanding is only found within the psychical structure of human brain. 2 collective memory in kosovo was built through a recycled patriarchal tradition based on local kinship relations and obligations where nation came to stand as a metaphor of kin. local concepts such as of besa (word of honor) and amanet (last will, ancestors pledge, a cross generational obligation sanctioned by the principles of honor and shame) lifted at the level of nation obliged faithfulness (besa) and duty to fulfill the martyrs' will (amanet), namely independence and unity. this narrative has built a ritually formalized memory around triumph and sublime sacrifice, see luci (2014). 3 concepts such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, and armed conflict are interchangeably used by different sides including kosovar and serbian authorities, and the international community. armed conflict and ethnic cleansing remain largely accepted terms among international organizations for the last kosovo war (compared to bosnia where srebrenica is internationally recognized as genocide), whereas the kosovar side insists on the occurrence of genocide. for anthropological discussions assessing the wars of 1990s in former yugoslavia, see the debate in anthropological theory 2005, 5(2). 4 a dedication was added to the obelisk later that year after parents’ request. pincézés: a drinking-related male social institution in rural hungary volume 21, number 1 pincézés: a drinking-related male social institution in rural hungary éva huseby-darvas, university of michigan/dearborn © 2003 eva huseby-darvas all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in this paper, i explore the social phenomenon of pincézés in a northern hungarian village, cserépfalu. pincézés, the cluster of social activities conducted by men in wine cellars in some parts of hungary, is a regular, important, and judging from all indications, an ancient pastime in many areas of the carpathian basin. at first glance it appeared to me that pincézés takes place impromptu: that, casually and whenever they can, men simply visit with one another in alternating wine-cellars, and talk, sing, drink wine, and discuss the affairs of family, village, and world. however, early on in my initial fieldwork 1 in the village, it became evident that the institution of pincézés has its own etiquette, with particular regularities, rhythms, functions, and inner structures. even a seemingly simple episode of pincézés that involves only two village men has its antecedents and consequences, organization and ceremony. each such occurrence, of course, can be studied both sui generis, and also as an integral segment of the system of village interaction. i suggest here that an examination of pincézés reveals the effects of social change and shows the relationship of the village men with one another and the rest of society, just as much as it depicts the lives, images, and circumstances of village women, who, as it is claimed in cserépfalu, never participate in this activity. certainly for some functional and other similarities, pincézés could be compared to the complex of tanyázás in the hungarian village of átány that is analyzed by fél and hofer (1969:98-99 ff, 1973: 787-801), and the kafana institution of the balkans discussed by lockwood. (1975: 188-189) a glance at the regional history of pincézés it is difficult to determine just how far pincézés goes back in cserépfalu and its region. obviously, it accompanied the development of viniculture; the well-known viniculture of eger began in the twelfth century, twenty kilometers from the village. 2 however, not until a couple of centuries later was there grape-growing and wine-making in cserépfalu, and some of the other villages of the foothills of the bükk mountain. as contemporary tithe-records reveal, 3 the golden age of viniculture in cserépfalu was in the 16th and 17th centuries. for example, between 1549 and 1576 wine production increased 415 percent, with 26.1 percent of the population growing grapes exclusively, while nearly 12 percent of the villagers cultivated them along with various grains. interestingly, early viniculture was mainly the domain of the poorest serfs, with only 20 percent of wine produced by the more affluent peasants. (kiss 1966: 215, ff) by the late 19th century, however, viniculture in the entire region declined. this was brought on in part by ineffective socioeconomic policies following the 1848 freeing of the serfs, and in part by the devastation of phylloxera in the 1880s. then, during the present century viniculture gained importance once again. 4 at the time of my research (through the 1980s and in the summer of 1990), the majority of the 482 households in cserépfalu were involved with viniculture. yet i discovered that it would be futile to try to estimate just how profitable and how extensive this industry really is. why? for many reasons, such as complications of taxation, it is impossible to get reliable data about the amount of wine produced or land cultivated. for example, in 1982, the villagers were greatly amused when i cited the official data about their annual production of 62,141 liters of wine. the only thing that is certain is that there is viniculture and it has a crucial place in the economic, social, and cultural life of cserépfalu. i believe that for the present endeavor this is what really counts, since here i have no intention of offering here a detailed and precise account of jen typewritten text 83 volume21, number 1 village wine production, per se. rather, as i have already indicated, i will discuss the complex of pincézés as a changing yet persistently crucial scene in the shared life of commuting and non-commuting village men, the central point of male social networks, and an indicator of relationships and stereotypes of gender in cserépfalu. the pince [wine-cellar] 5 the area’s more than 300 wine cellars are away from the nucleus of cserépfalu. they are some distance from the village dwellings, as well as from the household plots, gardens, and vineyards. actually, the rows of wine cellars form an irregular semi-circle on the northern, western and eastern peripheries of the village. these areas are called, in local parlance, fidóc, berezd, csecsláp, and pincevölgy. mizser (1977) found that it is possible to trace the etymology of some of these place-names as far back as the 14th and 15th centuries. the majority of the wine cellars are traditional, two-room structures that are dug into the soft stone of volcanic origin, the riolit tufa of the bükk mountain. in the outer cell, empty barrels, tubs, and tools are kept along with other assorted paraphernalia of wine production. the inner cell, which is a long, narrow, downwardsloping, rather cold and musty enclave, contains barrels filled partially with wine, pails and sampling tubes. here, at the farthest point in the cellar from the front door, candles, matches and two or three empty wine bottles stand on a shelf that is carved in stone. under this shelf, on a wooden table or a big unused barrel, there are glasses and sampling-tubes. the more wine cellars i have visited the more i have noted the order and symmetry in this area. for that matter, the arrangement on and around the shelf and the table gives the impression of a sacred corner. a note on the few non-traditional wine cellars is in order. these were built or reconstructed in the 1980s and 1990s and strongly resemble some of the summer cottages or weekend homes erected by affluent urbandwellers throughout hungary. for example, immediately north of cserépfalu in the fidóc area, the owner of a traditional wine cellar spent millions of forints for the total reconstruction of his traditional two-celled cellar. he added colorful stone walls, a stairway, a flat concrete roof and two rooms, one of which is a so-called vadász-szoba [‘hunter's room’] with a large terrace that overlooks the village ball-playing court, and a wine-cellar row. the inside rooms, dedicated to wine-cellar rituals, have electricity, tables, benches, and red brick walls with numerous hunting trophies purchased by the owner in transylvania. on warm sunday afternoons, the owner of this two-story, fourroom structure drinks wine on the porch while sitting and talking with about a half a dozen of friends and relatives, and periodically yells out to greet or call the attention of villagers passing by. in addition, much to the resentment, criticism, and open envy of fellow villagers, he often watches the various ball games primarily soccer matches from the terrace. at first glance, these multi-leveled, mosaic-laden, ornate wine-cellars appear to convey evidence of rural conspicuous consumption. more significantly, however, they reflect the radical socio-economic change of the last decade or two, along with a transformation in the values and preferences of rural people. they are elements of a general process, of what györgy konrád, iván szelényi, and others have called the embourgeoisement of the countryside which is also manifest in household furnishings or the recent crypt-cult, and in numerous other examples. even though the majority of village families own a wine-cellar, the questions of having or not having one, where it is located, and how it was obtained are still matters of status and thus of great importance in cserépfalu. the poorest villagers do not own wine-cellars and vineyards, as their parents and ancestors lived in the singleor double-celled cave dwellings on the peripheries of the cserépfalu, the ultimate indication of poverty in the area. (cf. bakó 1977; szabó 1936, 1937) the men from the poorest families rarely have the opportunity to participate in pincézés. rather, they frequent the few bögrecsárda, the village versions of underground ‘speakeasies,’ where they can get drinks for either money or eggs or produce. at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, some of the more affluent households own more than one pince, because, as i heard the boast, "the extra also came to us through inheritance.” still, in these cases, generally only one wine cellar is designated for pincézés and the preparation and storing of wines in particular, while the others are used to store vegetables, along with empty barrels, tubs and timeworn tools. jen typewritten text 84 volume21, number 1 pincézés as event the men taking part in this wine-cellar activity stand in a semi-circle around the table or sit on the so-called gantár-fa, a long beam placed across several barrels. they drink, talk, and sing. without fail, the cellar-owner, after making gestures imitating rinsing the glasses, pours the first glass of wine on the ground. scholars familiar with the gesture suggest 6 that this first glass of wine is offered to the forefathers' spirits. with the ancient rite of pouring the first glass of wine on the ground, the host of the event honors his ancestors. however, when asked why they poured that glass of wine on the ground, the men of the village answered with "my father [or grandfather] always did it just like this, so i do it too,” or "that is our way [in cserépfalu], that is just the way we always do it around here." another frequent reply was "i am just rinsing the glass." i suggest that these responses illustrate how traditional but still regularly practiced behavioral phenomena may lose their original "spiritual justification" or motivation over time, as well as how they can become associated with a functional custom having a hygienic or other pragmatic value. the key to the pince as significant status symbol regardless of their age, village men never tired of telling me about their pincézés, particularly about the first time they were allowed to use the family pince. it was a great event when the head of the family gave the son of the household the carefully kept wine-cellar key with the words na, fiam, itt van. menj oszt kináld [borral] a barátaidat. igyatok, de módjával. vigyázz! [well, son, here it is. go and offer wine to your pals. drink, but with moderation. be careful!] 7 according to some men, they got the key first right after their confirmation in the local calvinist church, around the age of fourteen. others connected it with enlistment in the army, another memorable event in the life of eighteen year old village men. as two brothers, jános and istván kocsis, born in 1926 and 1931 respectively, added, it was only [when we turned eighteen] that grandfather would hand over the key. up until that point we had stolen it from the mestergerenda [the main ridge-beam of the house], where he always hid it. 8 in both cases, whether following confirmation or conscription, the first authorized wine cellar activity is integrated with an important rite of passage: in the first case by becoming member of the village congregation, and in the second by entering what in the village would be considered the first phase of manhood. 9 even apart from these turning points that are so closely and overtly associated with getting their hands on the key to the family wine-cellar in the memories of village men, the key -both as an object and a symbol - was an entry into a much desired sphere, the wine-cellar, and thus began a highly coveted, lifelong, and exclusively male activity. pincézés in the life-cycle of village men indeed, pincézés has been and remains to be a life-long social institution among cserépfalu men. yet stories of informants made it clear that traditionally the male head of the household had not only the key, but also the actual rights to the use of the cellar. it was a rare and festive occasion for the unmarried and newlywed young men, and an even more unusual treat for one who, most often because of poverty, deviated from the traditional virilocal residency pattern after marriage by moving into his wife's parents' household. in the words of károly mohony, who was born in 1925, back when i was a kid, our elders did not give you the key just like that, as is the case nowadays. it was well hidden and the owner kept it either in his bootleg, or on the mestergerenda [main girder of the house]. he would go to the cellar whenever he wanted, but for the young it was mostly a forbidden territory. we were allowed to work in the vineyard, to help prepare the wine, and might drink in the spinning houses while courting. in the winter, you would get the key for the family wine-cellar for one occasional evening, but even that had to be deserved. but there were some young guys who would spy on their old men for the key and once they got hold of it, made a wax-impression and had a new key made.... if they were found out, of course they got the beating of their lifetime. for many centuries, the virilocal postmarital residence system was followed in cserépfalu. however, there were exceptions to this rule. imre csergő, born in 1914 as the seventh child of a landless family, moved in “as a son-in-law” vőnek mentem, as he told me jen typewritten text 85 volume21, number 1 with evident embarrassment when he married into a family with no sons. as imre recalled, a son-in-law had no pince rights, no pince privileges.... as long as my father-in-law was alive, there was no instance that he would give the key to anybody. if by chance the two of us were coming home together from the fields and he was in rare, i should say exceptionally good mood, then we would drop in together for a glass of wine. but he would rather send me on home while he drank with his koma [cogodparent, a fictive kin] and wine-cellar neighbors. traditionally, certain occasions served as opportunities for pincézés, and unwritten but apparently strictly-observed rules directed who took part, with whom, when, and in whose winecellar. like elsewhere in the area prior to world war ii (cf szendrey, 1938: 124-127), pincézés was mostly restricted to the period between the october grape harvest and mid-spring. the relative concentration in time did not mean that villagers did not have wine in the summer. for that matter, according to old informants, one important sign "of a responsible, thrifty, sober man was that he served last year's wine at harvest time." single young men engaged in pincézés mostly in age-graded groups, while for married men the activity meant more of a social gathering with kin, fictive kin, and neighbors. church presbyters, teachers, and secular community leaders got together at least once each week, as the former village magistrate, born in 1897, recalled, to visit each other's pince, drink a little wine and discuss village affairs in the pince. that way, you see, women folks could not get their noses into our serious business and could not gossip about what was going on. ...we took turns each time in going from cellar to cellar since much wine was consumed even though we never got drunk. drunks were not respected: back then, you had to know how to drink if you called yourself a real man. otherwise you would not be respected...still, we enjoyed drinking and had fun in the wine-cellar, but we did it moderately. nowadays many young people would walk about the village drunk even during broad daylight! we still drank old wine at harvest time, but these young ones they drink up everything, and their barrels are bone-dry by march. sex in the pince ? according to village women, the pince is male territory, and pincézés is an activity for men. during the day a woman may run out to the family wine-cellar, but most of them would rather ask their husbands, or fathers-in-law, or brothers-in-law to bring home wine, or -in those cases where produce are stored in or near these cellars -potatoes or vegetables. however, most informants, both men and women insisted that after dark "a decent woman from our village would not even look toward the wine-cellar rows, not to mention going there." thus, ideally, pincézés is exclusively male domain in this village. 10 there is, however, certain inconsistency between this ideal and actual behavior; for that matter, there are many indications of female involvement. for example, i found several notations in the local church archives dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries about local village women and men "having to pay public penitence for illicit intercourse in the berezd pince....” it was also implied in 1982 in the angry exchange of words between two village women, as one woman yelled, "you got knocked up with all your kids in the pince and you dare call me a whore!" as, among others, 91 year-old andrás barkó told me, the old men way back told me that on saturday nights some non-village women mind you not from our cserép[falu] - walked through the wine cellar rows and yelled in [for the men who were in the process of pincézés] three times to each wine-cellar: 'cserényi' [to exchange, barter, swap]. some men asked them in and megkamóták [village slang expression for coitus]. well, the next day or the following saturday these women came back and got their pay in grain or wine. (cited in huseby 1984: 266) the ideology that decent women do not go to the wine-cellar row after dark made my study of pincézés in cserépfalu most challenging. at the same time, i was convinced that i must get at least a first hand notion of what it looks and feels like. therefore, on some name-days and birthdays, on four occasions in three different jen typewritten text 86 volume21, number 1 wine-cellars, i observed and, as much as it was possible, participated in pincézés (husebydarvas, 1999). however, my presence in the wine-cellars made all of us present the participating men and myself immensely uncomfortable, and, without doubt, changed their behavior. later, rather than going myself, i asked a number of visiting male friends and colleagues to accept the villagers' invitations to the wine-cellars for these occasions and to study what was going on. while i am certain that their presence also altered the "natural state of cserépfalu pincézés," their visits were less intrusive than mine.1 pincézés during and after the second world war world war ii and the subsequent social and economic changes not only affected but totally transformed the social institution of pincézés. sándor bodrog, a villager who was born in 1937, recalled that the proper order of the world was all topsyturvy [during the war], so it was no problem for me and my pals to steal the wine-cellar key from under the head of my great-grandfather where he kept it in the straw mattress ...my age group and i stole out to the pince regularly from the ages of seven or eight.... aunt lenke dankó, born in 1911, recalled that in the forties, none of us had our men; all of them were away, on the front. my man fell at the don when i was thirty two. the same year i buried my father-in-law. there we were, women and children. we would have made wine, but did not have enough grapes and did not really know how...well, we ended up making beer from barley. it was good, but different. but everything was different [in those years] and nothing ever became the same as before ever since.... after my man died i had to go to the pince, then soon after my sons were confirmed they went to the city to study and then to work (ibid). since the second world war, three parallel and mutually reinforcing processes altered essentially all aspects of village life, including, of course, pincézés. first, forced industrialization brought about large-scale mass commuting between the village and industrial and mining centers, as well as permanent outmigration. approximately six-hundred people moved away from cserépfalu between 1949 and 1960. secondly, from the early 1950s on, the drastic reorganization of agriculture and its branch industries radically changed traditional relationships and hierarchy both within and between families. one result was that most households with extended families broke up into nuclear families after having been forced to join the cooperatives. also, atomization is evident in all generations and all strata throughout village society. thirdly, expanding mass communication has strongly influenced the views, values and aspirations of the villagers and accelerated the complex processes of embourgeoisement in rural communities during these decades. without doubt, these processes changed the traditional order, practice, and meaning of pincézés in cserépfalu. today wine cellar activity has an immense attraction particularly for men commuting to and from the village, for teenagers and for old men. rather than being more-or-less seasonal, today pincézés is potentially a year-round activity. of course, the key occasions for this gathering are friday and saturday evenings, sunday afternoons, the eves of all holidays, the village’s patron saint’s day, or the various male namedays. according to most accounts, today it is much easier for young men to get a key to the family cellar than it used to be: "these kids simply get it if they ask for it....for us it was not so easy...," remarked a villager born in 1921it is generally held by middle aged and elderly villagers that for today's youth everything is much more effortless and available than it was for previous generations of cserépfalu natives. the pince is still said to be primarily male domain, where, as men claim they can "get away from our women folk.” cit? in some sense, the local ideology about how "decent women must keep away from the pince rows after dark" still prevails. yet there are indeed generational differences: younger men and some returning former villagers take their fiancées, wives, or families with them to the wine-cellar in the late afternoons or early evenings to fry some bacon, drink a little wine, or talk and sing a little. but then they walk the women back to the village, returning at night for what they call the real pincézés. jen typewritten text 87 volume21, number 1 references cited bakó, ferenc. 1961.egri borospincék [wine cellars of eger]. eger. bakó, ferenc. 1977. bükki barlanglakások [cave dwellings in the bükk. borsodi kismonográfiák no. 3. miskolc: herman ottó muzeum. bakó, ferenc. 1989. ujabb eredmények és kérdőjelek a pincekutatásban [recent findings and queries in wine-cellar research], in népi épitészet a kárpátmedence északkeleti térségében [folk-architecture in the northeastern region of the carpathian basin], balassa m. iván, miklós cséri, and gyula víga, eds. miskolc és szentendre. fél, edit and tamás hofer. 1969. proper peasants: traditional life in a hungarian village. chicago: aldine. fél, edit and tamás hofer. 1973. tanyakert: patronage and factions. american anthropologist, 75, 3:787-801. gönczi, ferenc. 1910. szőlőhegyi mulatozások zalában [vineyard revelries in county zala]. budapest: uránia. huseby, éva v. 1983. pincézés cserépfaluban [wine cellar activity in cserépfalu]. múzeumi kurir, 1983 xxxxi: 73-79. imre dankó, ed. déry museum: debrecen. huseby, éva v. 1984. community cohesion and identity maintenance in rural hungary: cultural adaptation to directed social change. ph.d. dissertation. ann arbor: university of michigan. huseby-darvas, éva. 1987. elderly women in a hungarian village: childlessness, generativity, and social control. journal of cross-cultural gerontology, 1:87-114. the netherlands: d. reideldordrecht. huseby-darvas, éva. 1999. reconstructing my deconstructed identity? pp.145161 in: sex, sexuality, and the anthropologist, fran markowitz and michael ashkenazi, editors. urbana and chicago: university of illinois press. juhász, pál. 1963. az alkoholizmus kérdései egy falu életében [questions of alcoholism in the life of a village]. ideggyógyászati szemle, 26:262-268. juhász, pál. 1967. az alkoholizmus mint szociálpszihiátriai és egészségpolitikai probléma [alcoholism as a sociopsychological and health-policy problem]. ideggyógyászati szemle, 20:67-77. juhász, pál. 1971. a neurózis morbiditásának alakulása egy magyar faluban, lakói gazdasági megerôsödésének és az urbanizáció kezdetének fázisában (1960-1971) [the development of neurosis in a hungarian village during the early phase of urbanization and the village inhabitants' strengthening of economic life]. ideggyógyászati szemle 26: 14-26. juhász, pál. 1973. pathogenic factors eliciting neurosis in the inhabitants of a hungarian village in the years following the formation of agricultural cooperatives. international journal of social psychiatry, fall, 1973 vol. 19 (34):173-179. kecskés, péter. 1971. mezőgazdasági statisztikai adatgyüjtemény 1870-1970 [collection of agricultural statistical data 1870-1970]. budapest: ksh [central statistical office]. kecskés, péter. 1981. "pincézés." magyar néprajzi lexikon, 4:242-243 [hungarian ethnographic encyclopedia, volume 4]. budapest: akadémiai kiadó. mizser, lajos. 1977. a helységnévkutatás nehézségei [the difficulties of settlement-name research]. borsodi szemle iii: 82-85. jen typewritten text 88 volume21, number 1 n. kiss, istván. 1966. 16. századbeli dézsmajegyzekek (borsod, heves, bereg, bihar, és közép-szolnok megyék) [borsod, heves, bereg, bihar, and közép-szolnok county tithe-records from the sixteenth century]. budapest: akadémiai kiadó. szabó, zoltán. 1936. a tardi helyzet [the situation at tard]. budapest: cserépfalvi. szabó, zoltán. 1937. cifra nyomorúság [ornamented misery]. budapest: cserépfalvi. szendrey, åkos. 1938. a népi élet társasösszejövetelei [the social gatherings of folk-life]. ethnográfia, xlix:124-137. notes 1 the present endeavor is based on fieldwork that i started in 1982-1983, and on my annual visits to the village. in the summer of 1990, i returned to rural hungary and studied gender differentiated attitudes and behavior regarding both aging and the uses of alcohol. the fieldwork was made possible with the help of university of michigan alcohol research center’s grant no. p50-aa07378 from the national institute of alcohol abuse and alcoholism. in 1982-83, 1984, 1985 and 1987, field trips to hungary were supported by grants from irex [the international research and exchanges board], fulbright-hays, and the hungarian academy of sciences. the generous assistance of these institutions is thankfully acknowledged. 2 where, among other wines, the well-known "bull's blood of eger" is produced. 3 mezőgazdasági statisztikai adatgyüjtemény 1870-1970 [agricultural statistical data base 1870-1970]. budapest: ksh. 4 as the following figures illustrate, this tendency did not last long: area of cserépfalu vineyards between 1895 and 1966 year vineyards, in holds [1 hold=1.42 acres] 1895 27 1913 62 1935 116 1962 104 1966 131 (mezőgazdasági statisztikai adatgyüjtemény 1971) in 1982-83 the vineyards occupied just under 75 holds land that was privately owned, and 52 hectares [1 hectare = 2.41 acres] of land that belonged to the regional agricultural cooperative (data courtesy of jános hilóczky, president of the agricultural cooperative) 5 see, in particular, bakó, 1961, 1989; huseby 1983, 1984. 6 for this interpretation, along with general consultation about pincézés in this area of hungary, i am most grateful for the help of my dear friend and colleague, ferenc bakó. 9 i would define the second and third phases of manhood as marriage and fatherhood, respectively. an unmarried man, regardless of age or the amount of time he may have spent in the army, is still referred to in cserépfalu as fiú, meaning boy. (huseby-darvas, 1987) 10 elsewhere in the carpathian basin there were separate and clandestine women's pincézés on certain occasions, according to szendrey (1938) and ujváry (personal communication). jen typewritten text 89 microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 101 book review mediterranean ethnological summer school (piran/pirano, slovenia 2003 and 2004) volume 6. bostjan kravanja and matej vranjes, (eds.) ljubljana: filozofsa fakulteta, oddelek za etnologijo in kulturno antropologijo. pam ballinger bowdoin college volume 6 of the amusingly titled mess, the proceedings of the mediterranean ethnological summer school held each september in the slovene coastal town of piran, evidences the continued vibrancy of this annual meeting (simultaneously school and symposium) of senior anthropologists and students. launched in 1993, mess brings together scholars and slovene anthropology students for intensive discussion (as well as socializing) and, ideally, what editors bostjan kravanja and matej vranjes deem “the creation of anthropological and ethnological knowledge on the spot” (7). in the early years of slovene independence, the piran summer school also signaled the launching of a slovene anthropological tradition distinct from its yugoslav predecessors and in sustained dialogue with the international anthropological community. the school literally brought the international community to slovenia and, in turn, introduced many foreign scholars to anthropologists in slovenia and the ethnographic realities of slovenia, in particular the mixed border region of istria. in its origins, the summer school and subsequent mess volumes devoted considerable attention to scholarship on istria and the wider “balkans” region (including, of course, debates about the construction of the image of the balkans and attendant questions of orientalism, frontier orientalism, and balkanism). volume 6, which contains papers given at the 2003 and 2004 meetings, offers a much broader spread of geographical and topical coverage. with contributions arranged according to four themes—the anthropology of corruption; maritime anthropology; body, mind and the ‘authentic’ self; and views of religion and art— only natasa rogelja’s piece focuses on istria and the imaginings of the slovene sea by “local” and “regional” photographers. galia valtchinova’s actor-oriented analysis of religious transformations in postsocialist bulgaria represents the only other contribution focused on the wider balkans region. the other articles cover a range of places and topics, including the sicilian mafia and what jane and peter schneider characterize as the “predatory business elites” who ran enron; deep sea fishers (studied by reginald byron); the avant-garde art exhibition documenta held in kassel, germany (examined by thomas fillitz); the muhajir quami movement in pakistan (in marcin brocki’s article); and interactions between humans and ghosts/non-human subjects among amerindians belonging to the jivaroan language group (the topic of elke mader’s work). the articles also range from more extensive reviews of theoretical and topical areas (such as rob van ginkel’s “maritime anthropology: achievements and agendas” and marcin brocki’s “the clash of metaphysics and contemporary discourse of the body”) to exploratory pieces (such as the schneiders’ “the middle ground: intersections between high-level and low-level corruption”) in which the anthropologists develop a strand of their ongoing research. this mix sometimes makes for an uneven feel to the volume and may disappoint those scholars of the region (southeastern europe/the balkans/eastern europe, however defined) who would appreciate more work that takes advantage of the school’s setting in piran and delves into local and regional realities. the diversity of contributions, however, reflects the nature of the school/symposium format. the contributions of jane and peter schneider on the relationships between elite formations and corruption explicitly cite and build upon the work of their own graduate students, reflecting the kind of dialogue between students and senior scholars that also takes place at the piran meetings. the broad range of contributions also reflects the realization on the part of the mess organizers that the project needs to address explicitly the increasing tendency of europeanbased anthropologists to work “at home.” on one level, this has meant expanding the range of contributions to go well beyond the immediate anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 102 regional frame. on another level, this has also meant going beyond the “europeanist” frame. as the editors acknowledge in their introduction, “within ‘fortress europe’ there is little dialogue with ‘non-european’ potentials and creative voices, apart from the fact that the distinctions between the two are at least as much provisional as the distinction between east and west (europe) is turning out to be” (13). in reality, only two of the ten articles (those by mader and brocki) in volume 6 deal with “non-western” societies but they do signal a growing awareness among the mess organizers and european anthropologists more generally of the dangers of retreating to an anthropology that exclusively works “at home.” the experimental nature of the meetings and the resultant volumes offer a rich snapshot of current debates and trends in european anthropology and beyond. many of the articles represent early articulations of arguments that challenge scholarly thinking on a range of topics. the work of the schneiders, for example, pushes readers to consider what business elites like those at enron have in common with the mafia and to focus attention to a little-explored middle ground between high-level and low-level forms of corruption which, they argue, “interact and nourish each other through locally based extortionist groups or mafias” (29). rob van ginkel likewise highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the subfield of maritime anthropology, pointing to the need for more work on social structure (such as kinship) and in under-studied areas such as the european postsocialist states. oskar verkaaik and galia valtchinova argue against views of religious “revival” in islamic societies and bulgaria, respectively, which read these trends as a return of tradition and thereby neglect the key role placed by modernity and secularization. volume 6 of the mess should hold interest for anthropologists working in a range of geographical and topical areas. more importantly, it stands as a testament to the value of the school/symposium format. hopefully, more such venues will be created (and funding secured for them), particularly in those postsocialist societies whose anthropological disciplines have undergone dramatic transformations in the last decade and a half. allen typewritten text © 2006 pam ballinger all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. czechs in bosnia and herzegovina and their social activities zdeněk uherek and kateřina plochová, institute of ethnology of the academy of sciences of the czech republic © 2005 zdeněk uherek, kateřina plochová all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 19th century europe was a space of large-scale migrational movements. in the habsburg monarchy, which included the czech lands, four types of migrational movements can be identified. the first type was migration to western europe and overseas, chiefly to the american continent, which culminated in the czech lands at the turn of the 20th century (chada 1981; šatava 1989; polišenský 1991, 1996). the next type of migration was to the east, primarily to tsarist russia, which reached more significant dimensions mainly in the 1860s and 1870s (auerhan 1920; vaculík 1997). the third considerable migrational movement was an internal one, to towns within the austrian empire as a feature of the urbanization and industrialization of the empire. in the 19th century, the inhabitants of the czech lands migrated not only to towns nearby, but also to cities a long way from the czech lands but which were still a part of the habsburg empire. they migrated mainly to vienna (horská 2002:154-164), gratz, ljubljana, maribor, zagreb, rijeka, lvov, and other cities that are now located in other independent countries. another type of these internal migrations within the austrian empire was a so-called internal colonization. throughout the 19th century, the scarcely inhabited areas from which the turkish army had retreated were being populated. the new inhabitants coming from more populated parts of the monarchy could obtain cheap land there and run the farmstead; they also gained tax relief and other benefits from the austrian government or the local nobility. in the extensive areas of present-day northern romania, croatian slavonia, and serbian banat were thus formed areas with a quite diverse structure of inhabitants. it was possible to find german, czech, slovak, hungarian, italian, polish, and ukrainian villages and also villages of the other nations of the austrian empire side by side there (heroldová 1996; secká 1996). not before the second half of the 20th century but mainly after 1989 these areas gradually became ethnically homogeneous again owing to the re-immigration of minorities into the lands of their ancestors and owing to their gradual assimilation into the majority culture. the czech settlements in bosnia and herzegovina are a result of migrational movements that are similar to the internal migrations to the towns within the austrian empire and the internal colonization of the areas deserted by the turkish army. however, it is specific for them that bosnia and herzegovina was not an organic part of the austrian empire, but an occupied territory, which the austrian army did not enter until the last third of the 19th century. this text deals with historical aspects of the creation of the czech minority in bosnia and herzegovina, the life in urban and rural enclaves, and the current conditions of their existence.1 the arrival of czechs in bosnia and herzegovina bosnia and herzegovina is one of the balkan states whose cultural scene was considerably 1 this text has been drawn up on the basis of the results of field inquiries undertaken in 1996-2004. it is a contribution towards the realization of the project k9058117 / 17 of the academy of sciences of the czech republic. jen typewritten text 136 influenced by the expansion of the ottoman empire and its presence in the balkans. the ottoman empire took control of bosnia and herzegovina in 1528 after more than one hundred years of fighting on its territory and controlled it for more than 350 years. the first one hundred years of the ottoman supremacy in particular was a period of economic development for bosnia and herzegovina. the muslim state created a base here for further expansion into europe and brought order and stability to the country (lovrenović 2000: 83-94). the riches of the ottoman empire, however, were dependent on the success of its army on the fronts. starting in the second half of the 17th century, stagnation and decline were becoming evident, which were later accompanied by discontent among the local population (filipović 1997: 86). in the 1860s and 1870s, this discontent grew in the area of bosnia and herzegovina into a series of armed rebellions, which signaled that the ottoman empire was no longer able to govern the territory of bosnia and herzegovina effectively. internal problems of the ottoman empire and at the same time defeats at the fronts forced the ottoman empire to agree to a peace treaty with european powers and to begin negotiations on the current situation (malcom 1996: 119-136). at the congress of berlin in 1878, devoted to the situation, the austrian diplomatic corps succeeded in persuading the powers concerned to allow austria-hungary to occupy the country militarily, administer it, and thus establish peace and order here. following the istanbul convention, from 1879 until 1908, this administration was exercised on a foreign territory, where the turkish sultan remained its ruler; from 1908, the year of the annexation of bosnia and herzegovina, it was already administered on a territory that was a part of the austro-hungarian monarchy, subject to the austrian emperor. the acquisition of bosnia and herzegovina was an important success for austria-hungary in terms of politics mainly because it strengthened its position in the balkans, expanded its ability to enforce its policies towards serbia, and thus also indirectly toward serbia’s traditional ally, russia (hladký 1996: 40). therefore, the austrian administration paid a great deal of attention to the events in bosnia and herzegovina and strived toward bosnia and herzegovina becoming an integral part of the monarchy in all respects. apart from a military supremacy, what were concerned were strong ties in the areas of industrial activity, business, communications, state administration, the educational system, and also everyday life. the austro-hungarian ministry of finance was put in charge of the occupation government, which administered the territory of bosnia and herzegovina through the provincial government in sarajevo with a military governor as its head. subordinated to the provincial government were the occupation army, provincial police, and administrative government apparatus. noel malcolm and ladislav hladký mention that the ottomans governed the bosnian vilayet with only approximately 120 officials (malcolm 1996: 138; hladký 1996: 44). the austro-hungarian government of bosnia and herzegovina was employing 7,379 officials in 1897 and at the time of the annexation of bosnia and herzegovina in 1908 their number was increased to 9,535. in addition, there were almost 23,000 soldiers in bosnia and herzegovina in 1895 and more than 2,000 policemen in 1902 (hladký 1996: 44). the territory of bosnia and herzegovina became an area of rapid urbanization, europeanization, and basically also of colonization, which on the one hand threatened the identity of the local population but, on the other hand, brought european civilization’s innovations. the rapid development of industry, the road and railway network, the energy industry, military bases, and also schools, libraries, theaters, and concert halls or spa buildings brought an unprecedented amount of work opportunities. thereby, an opportunity for extensive migration was created, which was used by the croatians, austrians, germans, czechs, italians, hungarians, slovaks, slovenes, and other nations of austria-hungary. first it was jen typewritten text 137 migration into towns. only later were conditions created for migration to the rural areas. between 1878 and 1914, some 180,000 to 200,000 people immigrated to bosnia and herzegovina from other regions of the habsburg monarchy, whereas approximately 150,000 people emigrated, predominantly muslims to turkey. consequently, the percentage of the muslim population declined from 38.78% in 1879 to 32.35%; the percentage of the catholics, on the other hand, increased from 18.08% to 22.87%. the number of the orthodox christians rose by approximately 1% (conf. cf. enciklopedija jugoslavije 1982/2: 190; hladký 1996: 46). in urban areas, czechs lived for the most part spread among other nations and nationalities. however, even compact czech communities were created in several places in the country. during the census of 1910, the percentage of the people of the czech origin was 0.37% (7,095 people) of the total number of the inhabitants of bosnia and herzegovina and 13.05% of the total number of people from the austro-hungarian monarchy living on the territory of bosnia and herzegovina (46,859 people). based on the regions, the highest numbers of czechs were in the sarajevo region (2,350), in the banja luka region (2,297), in the region of travnik 825, tuzla 764, mostar 585, and bihać 224 (uherek 2000: 9). czechs could settle in towns soon after the austrian military occupation. in sarajevo, for example, the first czech tradesmen appear in 1879. however, migration takes place immediately after the military intervention even in some smaller towns. posel z prahy (prague courier) from 30th january 1879 informs us, for example, that a tradesman from jičín2, mr. wanzl, settled down in the small spa town kiseljak (west of sarajevo) and opened a “czech-style pub” there which he called “u města jičína” (by the town of jičín). already in late january early february 1879, his wife and hired servants 2 jičín – a town in eastern bohemia joined him in kiseljak. similarly, the first six colliers left for the coal mines in the vicinity of banja luka in december 1878 to follow a former expert of the company saxonia, mr. edelman, who had already been preparing conditions for black-coal mining (posel z prahy 1879, no. 5 from 7th january, p. 3). already then, however, there were czech state officials, soldiers, and policemen in bosnia and herzegovina, who were soon followed by judges, geologists, engineers, architects, doctors, and other qualified professionals, inclusive of pedagogical and cultural workers, teachers, actors, and musicians. nevertheless, both skilled and unskilled laborers, domestic servants, and cooks also had an important position among the immigrants to bosnia and herzegovina. all these had a considerable effect on the changes in the way of life, which then, mainly in the towns of bosnia and herzegovina, included the introduction of a number of advancements that had not been common there up until that time. in the period before world war i, the highest numbers of czechs were in sarajevo (1,702), in tuzla (415), in banja luka (409) (data from 1910 census) and also in mostar, brčko, zenica, usora and in bosanski brod. migration from the lands of the habsburg monarchy to rural bosnia was not as massive and easy as the one to towns. farmland was held by muslim beys and the land that could be leased required extensive clearing (the extractions of rocks, stumps, roots, etc.) before it could be cultivated. in order to attract new settlers from the lands inside the habsburg empire to rural areas, the austrian authorities initiated a goal-driven campaign in 1890. the campaign was finished in 1906 but had not evoked much of a response in bohemia. however, it had appealed to some czech emigrants from volhynia in the ukraine, which was a part of tsarist russia. czech peasants had gone to ukrainian volhynia at the end of the 1860s and in the 1870s to improve their living conditions (valášková et al. 1997:9-20). apparently, the most important reason for their departure from volhynia was pressure from the tsarist jen typewritten text 138 authorities on the new settlers to convert to orthodox christianity. for this reason, some of them decided to return to the protection of the austrian state and settled several agricultural districts along the sava river. from 1894 to 1896, these czech migrants created compact czech rural enclaves in the districts of nova ves, mačino brdo, vranduk, malica, and detlačski lug. contemporary eyewitnesses and independent observers agreed that the conditions for farming for the newly-settled farmers in bosnia and herzegovina were quite hard, and the creation of a prosperous farmstead demanded considerable effort and ingenuity (auerhan 1930). in some areas, for example in detlačski lug, the situation was so complicated that the immigrants left the allotted land and went back to volhynia. as a result, only four czech families stayed in detlačski lug. czechs often compensated for the low crop yields by earning extra money through various handicraft activities and parttime subsistence farming. it was their handicraft skills that made them beneficial to the other ethnic groups around them. the goal-driven campaign which took place in the area of bosnia and herzegovina in the years 1890 – 1906 was carried out according to the official statistics published in the work bericht über die verwaltung von bosnien und hercegovina from 1906 with the following result: a total of 1,817 families with 9,660 members settled in the area of bosnia and herzegovina and were allotted 21,893 ha of land. according to nationality, 830 families were polish, 365 ruthenian, 331 german and 107 czech. hungarians, italians and slovaks were represented among other nationalities. in this way, 23 czech families came originally to nova ves in 1894, 25 czech families to mačino brdo in 1896, 26 families to vranduk and 22 families to malica. (uherek et al. 2000:46) the life of czechs in the environment of bosnia and herzegovina before 1992 the life of an immigrant group in an occupied or colonized country that is occupied or colonized by the state from which the immigrants come has its own specific features. after the migration, specifically to towns, no signs of disorganization or uprooting were noticed, such as those described for instance by william isaac thomas or robert ezra park (park 1967:105110 [1925]). although the immigrants moved to a culturally different area, it was they who established the rules of interaction. particularly the towns of bosnia and herzegovina become rapidly europeanized. new christian quarters were created there, water mains were run into towns, canalization was built together with public lighting, public transport, parks, theaters, libraries, post offices, barracks, officers’ casinos, christian schools, and a new system of medical care was introduced. especially in towns the percentage of the christian population steeply rose. a notable example is sarajevo. until 1878, sarajevo was mostly a muslim city. in 1879, a total number of 21,377 inhabitants were living there, of whom 69.45% were muslim, 17.52% were orthodox (i.e. serbian), 1.9% were jews, and 3.26% were catholics (678 catholics in total) (kreševljaković 1969: 38). the census of 1910 lists 51,909 inhabitants of the city, which means that their number had more than doubled. there were 17,224 catholics there then, thus their number compared to that in 1879 rose 25 times. there were 4,703 orthodox christians in the city in 1910, and 4,320 members of the jewish community. the number of muslims in absolute numbers also grew owing to immigration and a higher birth rate, but their percentage in the urban population was only 48% in 1910. the habsburg monarchy took the cultural specifics of the muslim population into consideration, but only in the most urgent cases. for example, it introduced an institute of official female doctors, even though only men were allowed to practice medicine in the austrian monarchy, for muslim women had been refusing to be examined by male jen typewritten text 139 doctors; however, such measures were rather sporadic. immigration from the austrian empire to bosnia and herzegovina was not homogeneous in terms of language and culture. czechs were able to communicate in german in public, yet they had their own language and feeling of solidarity. therefore, soon after their arrival, they started to create informal institutions for meetings of compatriots and communication in czech in cities. these were primarily roundtable societies, which met in local restaurants. most of these societies ceased to exist without leaving precise records about them. the first recorded czech society in sarajevo was kroužek mládenců (bachelors’ circle) from 1885. from 1896 český vzdělávací spolek palacký (czech educational circle palacký) functioned in sarajevo. in 1898 český vzdělávací spolek palacký changed its name into český lidově vzdělávací odbor (czech union for the education of the people) and in 1900 kroužek mládenců took the name česká společnost (czech society). both institutions were free associations without approved regulations, and we have hardly any information about them.3 according to the minutes by josef liebecait, “…they had only a single aim in view: to maintain the czech spirit among the countrymen by various entertaining projects, common trips and lectures” (liebecait 1930:13). at the end of 1905, the český lidově vzdělávací odbor and the česká společnost together created the česká beseda v sarajevu (czech club in sarajevo), which was registered by the provincial government in bosnia and herzegovina on 16th november 1905. as it arises from the česká beseda statutes, it was an ethnically exclusive organization for the czechs living in sarajevo, which could, however, also be attended by czechs staying in sarajevo only temporarily or by citizens of “another slavic nationality.” they had a statute of “guests,” or rather 3 these free associations were mentioned in the second annual report of the czechoslovak community in sarajevo 1929-1930 (liebecait 1930). “permanent guests” (they differed from the members in that they did not have the right to vote and could not be elected to the beseda’s executive body). new members of the society were accepted by an elected committee of the beseda. the members paid a monthly fee and formed the highest executive body of the beseda, which was a general meeting. membership was annulled for those who voluntarily left the beseda or were expelled by the committee and those who “left sarajevo” (stanovy 1906). in addition to česká beseda, a branch of svaz českých turistů (federation of czech tourists) also functioned before world war i and společnost žen a dívek (society of women and girls) between the wars. in addition, there was a czech postschool4 here in the period between the world wars. the reason for the creation of the formal social institutions in sarajevo was that it was a large city in which informal mutual contacts could only affect a part of the group. in smaller settlements, where the members of czech enclaves lived, the individual families met face to face in everyday communication and did not need to create formal social institutions. the situation changed in 1918, when independent yugoslavia was created and the czechs became an ethnic minority on the territory of a foreign country not an austrian minority, however, but a czechoslovakian minority; for at the same time that independent yugoslavia was formed, independent czechoslovakia was also created. czechs in bosnia and herzegovina for the most part welcomed the state-formation process in czechoslovakia and openly showed their loyalty to the czechoslovak republic by creating a network of minority organizations called česká or československá besedas. these organizations functioned in a total of 12 towns and villages in the 1920s and 1930s. the first were formed in cities of sarajevo, tuzla, zenica, prijedor, mostar, and banja luka, where the population was scattered. in 4 on sundays the postschools organized teaching in the czech language. jen typewritten text 140 rural areas, czech besedas were only formed in two enclaves: in nova ves in 1921 and in mačino brdo in 1934. the czech besedas were primarily an institution of minority communication, but they also functioned as restaurants, libraries, and educational centers. additionally, concerts, dance performances, balls, shrovetide carnival processions, and feasts of st. catherine were held there. they furthermore welcomed in the new year, easter, celebrated harvest festivals, played theater, and the besedas even served as centers for dance ensembles and music orchestras. loyalty to their country of origin was shown by celebrating the birthday of the first czechoslovak president t. g. masaryk and 28th october, the day of the foundation of the czechoslovak republic. each beseda created a slightly different cycle of feast days and anniversaries to celebrate. the beseda in sarajevo had a civic character and this was reflected in their activity that czech opera singers and professional musicians stayed in sarajevo. the besedas in tuzla and zenica belonged to technical intelligentsia; the besedas in nova ves and mačino brdo had a rural character. obviously, not all czechs visited besedas in towns. we calculated that in sarajevo it was approximately 30% to 50% people of the czech origin in the town who did visit the beseda. a process parallel to the institutionalization of minority life in czech enclaves in bosnia and herzegovina was a decrease in the number of members of the minority and an assimilation of its parts into the majority culture. after the collapse of the habsburg monarchy, part of the minority gradually left bosnia and herzegovina and returned to czechoslovakia. it arises already from rawenstein’s laws that migration has a selective character. it may be supposed that it was mainly those who had prerequisites for integration into the bosnian milieu that stayed in the new environment. that means that they had gained a certain level of social position, property, had found good employment, they liked it there, or they just did not have anywhere to return. however, the process of assimilation into the society of bosnia and herzegovina was of a specific nature. there was no parity of the minority when compared to the majority population, but three large groups (i.e. muslims, croats, and serbs) who had higher or lower prestige in relation to the czech enclaves. much is implied by the question of intermarriages which has been studied in the czech population in sarajevo: the most complete data that we have about the czechs in sarajevo before world war ii come from 1910. in that year, during the official census, the česká beseda in sarajevo, or rather one of its members, an official in the provincial government for bosnia and herzegovina jan zapletal, made a register of the czechs in sarajevo. the česká beseda published this register in 1910, updating it continuously within the bounds of their possibilities and published it again in 1913 (zapletal 1913). the register from 1913 contains a total of 990 names representing individual czech families, or rather czech households, including the names of single individuals. the total number of the individual czechs, that is to say single or living in sarajevo without their spouse is 402 in the register. the rest, thus the other 588 persons listed, formed a household with someone, for the most part a family with children. based on this register, it is possible to determine that 1,702 czechs lived in sarajevo in 1910 and 1,986 czechs in 1913. it is also possible to calculate that from the 588 households having several members, there were 202 intermarriages already in 1913. these mixed marriages either were childless or had between one and six children. in a considerable majority of the intermarriages, it was the husband who was of czech origin, while his partner came from a different ethnic group. the reason for the exceptions being so rare may be that women who married a member of a different ethnic group stopped speaking czech at home, and the nationality was derived from the language of communication in the census. for this reason, they were not included among czechs. jen typewritten text 141 the authors of the register recorded the following types of mixed marriages. the most numerous intermarriages were czechcroatian, and there were 77 in sarajevo, i.e. 38%. the second place was taken by the mixed marriages identified as czech-german, namely with the wife speaking german. in the register, we have found 66 of this type, i.e. 33% out of the total number of intermarriages. another large group was formed by czechhungarian mixed marriages, the number of which in the register was 26, which formed 13% of all intermarriages. the other types of mixed marriages were already less common. 12 marriage contracts were signed between czech men and slovenian women, i.e. 6%. 8 czech men had taken marriage vows with serbian women, i.e. 4%, and 5 each with italian and polish women, thus 2.5% each. in three instances, the nationality of the partner was not listed. from our list, we can see that the number of marriages formed with partners from other ethnic groups does not correspond to their proportional representation in the locality. during the census of 1910, the official statistical data registered 36,400 inhabitants in sarajevo speaking serbo-croatian (70.1%), out of which approximately 18,400 were bosnian muslims, 8,400 were serbian, and 9,600 croatian (on the basis of the statistics of sarajevo inhabitants according to their language of communication, we have estimated the number of the muslims from other states to be 60, out of whom 31 were from turkey). the most frequently represented group of inhabitants of the town, the muslims, did not form a part of the existent intermarriages with czechs in 1910 at all. of the three most populous groups in sarajevo, only the croatian group can be considered as preferred in terms of the choice of a partner (the percentage of the partners selected for matrimony exceeds the representation of the croats in percentage in the town by twofold – 18.49%). however, if we wanted to make an order of preferences in the choice of partners in the intermarriages in 1913 in relation to the availability of partners, the result would be following [table 1]: _________________________________________________________________________________ table 1: marriage preferences of czechs living in sarajevo in 1913 order the type of the intermarriage with czechs share of the inhabitants of the nationality in the city share of the intermarriages with the czechs index1 1 hungarian 2.68% 13% 0.15 2 slovenian 1.52% 6% 0.25 3 italian 0.90% 2.5% 0.36 4 german (austrian) 10.1% 33% 0.30 5 polish 1.14% 2.5% 0.46 6 croatian 18.49% 38% 0.49 7 serbian 16.18% 4% 4.05 _________________________________________________________________________________ 1 the “index” is a quotient of the percentage of people of the respective nationality in the city of sarajevo and of the percentage of the intermarriages with the czechs. jen typewritten text 142 the resulting order of preferences (which, however, cannot have a completely definitive informative value since we do not know how many intermarriages had already been formed by czechs before their arrival in sarajevo) implies two realities. firstly, it points out the important part played by the affiliation to a creed in a more intimate communication between ethnic groups (a preference for partners of the catholic creed is evident), and secondly, it shows a preference for partners who were also foreigners in the given environment and consequently were not so strongly bound within relational, local, and other formal and informal ties created in the long term. a certain exception was made in the case croats here (catholic population), for these can also be included in the preferred group, because the number of the actually selected partners also here clearly exceeds the amount of partners that would be hypothetically chosen in a case of an accidental selection without being affected by ethnic, creed, property, educational, or any other barrier (that means index 1). on the other hand, it is necessary to bear in mind that there were also a significant number of foreigners among the croats in sarajevo. the obtained data do not confirm that an important part was played by a language affinity when selecting partners in intermarriages. not even slavic solidarity is expressed by the preferences (uherek 1998:135-136 based on the register from 1913, it was the ethnically endogamous marriages with czechs that were undeniably the most preferred. quantification of this data is, however, irrelevant, because it is not known who got married in sarajevo and who had come with their spouse. (admittedly, it may be similar in the case of intermarriages of czech and german speakers.) we can also read in the register of czechs in sarajevo that a total of 316 children had been born to intermarriages of the czech community by 1910, who were not counted among czechs by the authors of the register, but we may suppose that a part of them inclined towards czech language and culture and later declared themselves to be of czech nationality. the trend of creedal endogamy also continued after 1918. there is no information about a marriage with a member of the muslim faith between the wars (only the variant of a czech woman and a muslim man would be considered). marriages of this type do not appear until after world war ii. the activity of the czech besedas and other minority societies was interrupted in 1941 by the war. after 1945, it was only partially renewed. czech enclaves saw a decrease in the number of their members again owing to re-immigration to bohemia, which occurred between 1945 and 1948. in the 1950s and 1960s, most czech besedas disappeared and czech social life in bosnia and herzegovina developed only in rural settlements, primarily in mačino brdo and nova ves. the progress in the process of assimilation of czechs in the environment of bosnia and herzegovina is shown in table 2 based on censuses. table 2: czechs in bosnia & herzegovina year number of czechs 1921 5,886 1948 1,978 1953 1,638 1961 1,083 1971 871 1981 639 a decrease in the number of people claiming czech nationality in sarajevo also corresponds with the tendency suggested by the table. in 1981, only 129 people claimed to be of czech nationality, which made up less than 0.0003% of the total number of the inhabitants of sarajevo (448,500). jen typewritten text 143 in the independent republic of bosnia and herzegovina: the war years bosnia and herzegovina was declared an independent state on 5th april 1992, and the first years of its existence were marked by a civil war, which lasted until 1995. the break-up of yugoslavia and the formation of newly independent states were both accompanied by nationalist rhetoric. the construct of a south-slavonic nationality as an umbrella identity started to lose its credibility even before the break-up of the state. thus a way opened for the revival and establishment of identities that were connected to the ethnic arrangement before the creation of the communist state after world war ii. tone bringa, in his book being muslim the bosnian way includes testimony that implies that a number of children in bosnian schools in the 1960s and 1970s did not even know that they could declare a national identity other than yugoslavian (bringa 1995:4). their parents did not emphasize their serbian, croatian, or muslim provenance to them in any way. nevertheless, they gave them orthodox, catholic, or muslim first names. in several years, the situation had completely changed. not only could every member of a family be assured in a short time to which nation they belonged, but due to the dissimilarity of the first names was each local inhabitant able to deduce to which nationality someone belonged without even knowing them. people with a catholic first name were identified as croats, people with the orthodox one as serbian, and with a muslim one as muslims. “it was as if socialist yugoslavia was determined to defy the modern world and maintain pre-modern structures intact” (hann 1995:81). the descendants of czech immigrants to bosnia and herzegovina lived in intermarriages now and the greater part was either of the catholic creed or creedless with catholic names. for that reason, they could be identified as croats. of course, it was the idea of south-slavism that appealed to them most. since the term covered the ethnic identities, it could also be applied to them, and the czechs did not have to consider themselves as a minority. however, with the end of the yugoslavian nationality, many began to think more about their origin, and czech ethnicity for the czechs themselves within their own plurality of identities started to play a more important part. during the period of heightened tensions at the beginning of the 1990s, there were also other factors for the ranking of czech ethnicity among important determiners of identity for the people of czech origin in the area of bosnia and herzegovina. czechoslovakia became a democratic country, its world prestige increased, and the contacts between czechoslovakia and bosnia and herzegovina could be more intensive, that is not only personal, but also commercial relations. at the same time, during the period of heightened tensions and later even during the war, the inhabitants of the affected areas were looking for a point of support outside the area of bosnia and herzegovina where they could take refuge if need be or where they could ask for help. thus, foreign origin became a value in a country being shaken by war. however, this did not hold true for czechs everywhere. in the areas controlled by croatian and muslim armed forces, czech provenance and connections with the czech lands were prestigious, for the czech republic was sending humanitarian aid to muslimcroatian bosnia, czech doctors worked in sarajevo, and the czech president at that time, václav havel, was personally involved in the peace process. on the other hand, havel’s statements against serbian representatives were known, and czech enclaves existed not only in the areas controlled by croats and muslims, but also in the areas controlled by serbians. in the areas controlled by croats and muslims, it was then possible and prestigious to claim to be czech, but in the serbian areas it was dangerous. considering the fact that the czechs were also catholics and thus a group close to croats in the eyes of the other ethnic groups living in bosnia jen typewritten text 144 and herzegovina, they were in danger of being killed or under better circumstances merely banished in the so-called republika srpska (serbian republic). if they were identified as croats, they really were persecuted in several cases. having been persecuted by the serbs, the inhabitants of czech origin who had lived in derventa, for example, went to the czech republic. however, particularly in compact rural settlements, the local serbian population knew that those were czechs not croats, so it did not come to massive violence. however, the czechs in republika srpska did not emphasize their origin and tried to keep a low profile during the war. thus, while the ethnic difference of the czechs was suppressed in public in wartime republika srpska, it became valuable in the areas controlled by muslim and croatian armies. an external manifestation of this value was the restoration of the formal minority organizations that had closed twenty or more years earlier. the first of these organizations was restored in the besieged sarajevo. the společnost bosensko-českého přátelství (bosnian-czech friendship society) and sněžka, a humanitarian organization directly associated to it, were formed in 1993 based on a common initiative of the descendants of czech immigrants and several local influential muslim families. it is interesting that among the initiators of the foundation of the organization were only a few members of the old czech families that had immigrated to sarajevo at the turn of the 20th century. from the czech side, the basic stimuli mostly came from people who had immigrated to sarajevo from the czech rural enclaves along the sava river, in croatian slavonia, or in serbian banat during the existence of yugoslavian state. these people had never experienced life in the sarajevan czech societies during the period between the two world wars and just after world war ii, but, on the other hand, they knew the czech language and had knowledge of czech culture. one initiator who later also became the chairperson of the society was the director of the sarajevo transit authority. he was not of czech origin but had leanings towards the czech republic and also had good business relations with it, for trams bought in the czech republic were used in sarajevo. another initiator of the society was a muslim businessman who had once, under communist yugoslavia, been in czechoslovakia as a sales representative. another initiator was a muslim owner of a sarajevo travel agency and a retired officer of czech origin who had come to sarajevo from a czech enclave in serbian banat in the 1980s. a number of other people also founded the society. an important role for the formation of the society was played by a favorite sarajevo television presenter of czech origin who helped to gain the necessary publicity for the newly created social ties. descendants of the old czech sarajevo families, but also a number of muslim intellectuals who had nothing in common with the czech republic, but were merely sympathizers, were subsequently invited into the society. the society used the bosnian language and it had 219 members already on 30th august 1994, while in 1981, the number of persons in sarajevo who had claimed to be of czech nationality was 129. thirty-two percent of the society was of czech origin through at least one parent. the other members belonged mainly to the bosnian middle class, the intelligentsia educated either technically or in the humanities. already during the war, the organization managed to arrange several prestigious humanitarian and cultural events that had a wider, rather than local, impact. after the war, however, the organization ceased to be attractive for quite a few people who were not of czech origin. they stopped supporting it and were looking for a way of expressing themselves in organizations with stronger ties to the local environment. on the contrary, it was too undefined and cosmopolitan for a number of old residents of czech origin. it was not that old, jen typewritten text 145 ethnically closed czech beseda as they had known it from the time before the second world war. therefore, a part of the membership base of czech origin left the sdružení bosensko českého přátelství and founded a new organization, česká beseda, which is a more traditional organization, an ethnically closed society of czechs (uherek 1998: 134-143). both organizations have worked in tandem and form an institutional framework of a minority whose members are scattered all over the town and could hardly communicate with each other without a formal institution. not all formal czech organizations were formed during the war in the areas controlled by croatian and muslim armies only thanks to the activity of the local people. in tuzla, the impulse for the creation of a compatriot organization was given by a czech student of ethnology who was earning some money on the side as a journalist. during the war he also spent some time on the territory of bosnia and herzegovina and also visited tuzla, where families of czech origin live. he found accommodation with one of them, lived through a part of the blockade of the town, developed good contacts with the local military headquarters, and found out that a high number of families of czech origin, who had come here at the turn of the 20th century as coal miners, mine engineers, railwaymen, etc., lived in the industrial town. in an attempt to help his countrymen in a languishing town, he gave an impulse for a creation of a compatriot organization of the czechs in tuzla, whose task it was to arrange cultural events, organize humanitarian aid from the czech republic, make economic contacts with czech companies, etc. here, the ethnic principle of the czech organization was not based on the language and culture, but on their country of origin or the country of origin of a member of their family (anyone who had been born in the czech lands, anyone whose ancestors had been born in the czech lands, or whose spouse or one of their parents was of czech origin could become a member of the organization. udruženje gradjana českog poriekla – tuzla was founded in 1993 and soon it had about 500 members. it became actively involved in the social life of the town. the journalist and ethnographer who had helped to found the ethnic organization helped to organize a humanitarian project for it in the czech republic. the sugar, however, that was dispatched by truck from the czech republic for the besieged tuzla, got lost just before the destination. the cooperation of a czech citizen with the inhabitants of bosnia on the revitalization of czech ethnicity was also recorded in zenica. also during the renewal of the compatriotic movement on the territory of the former yugoslavia after 1945, an important part was played by impulses from the czech homeland. it points to an important fact. in a period when a society of formal immigrants has already been well integrated in the local environment, the motivation for the creation of an ethnic network can hardly only be the maintenance of old customs or cultural traditions for their own sake. people are usually too pragmatic for that. however, as in this case, the motivation can be the restoration of contacts with the country of origin and the creation of a network of people of similar interests in the local environment (uherek 1999). a solid institutional framework proved to be very important for the realistic existence of minorities in the urban environment not only in bosnia and herzegovina, but also in ukraine, in russia, in kazakhstan, and in other areas of post-communist europe. this does not apply only for the czechs. about 25 ethnic societies were created only in sarajevo in 1993.6 the need for such societies had not disappeared with the war. nevertheless, their function changed. they are a certain kind of social emancipation. when the political situation improved in 1998, czech ethnic societies were formed, even in the serbian republic, although the actual reasons of material want or 6 an evaluation by a secretary of společnost bosensko-českého přátelství. jen typewritten text 146 expectations of direct foreign help no longer existed. the present ten years after the cessation of the military conflict, bosnia and herzegovina is still a country whose future is uncertain. it is a multiethnic society in the sense that there are many ethnic groups living in it. the problematic point is that these ethnic groups are more able successfully to define what divides them rather than to determine what binds them within one state. in this multiethnic atmosphere of serbs, croats, and muslims, minorities are rather overlooked or seen by the major competing groups more from a pragmatic point of view as a potential ally or enemy. the czech minority in bosnia and herzegovina is not in conflict with any of the competing groups presently. its members mostly live in intermarriages and only a part of them use czech as their mother tongue; some of them cannot speak czech at all. cooperation with the country where their ancestors were born, however, offers certain opportunities to create a new local and international social network, enrich their spiritual life, and seek opportunity for cultural and educational activities. in 2004, there were eight czech compatriotic organizations with approximately 1,000 members registered to them on the territory of bosnia and herzegovina. it is an almost unbelievable number considering the fact that in the census of 1981 a total of 639 persons claimed to be of czech nationality and in the 1990s czechs emigrated from bosnia and herzegovina and not vice versa. on the other hand, the number is understandable if we take into consideration that not all organizations are ethnically exclusive, and that a number of their members come from mixed marriages and thus can select their declared ethnicity. four compatriotic organizations are in the territory controlled by croats during the war, and four are on the territory of the socalled republika srpska. all these organizations started to appear in republika srpska only after the war. between 1996 and 1998, the situation was gradually becoming stabilized and the fear of claiming membership in another ethnic group disappeared. a more intensive activity of the societies was first renewed in the compact rural enclaves of nova ves and mačino brdo, where czech has been actively used up to the present and where people had met regularly for celebrations of the anniversaries of the traditional catholic calendar regardless of whether they had a functioning czech organization or not. today, when people in the compact czech enclaves do not fear persecution, they meet regularly every week for an informal gathering. they arrange dance parties, sing together, and celebrate holidays. each enclave considers different celebrations to be of key importance. in nova ves, celebrations are organized on st. václav’s (wenceslas) day, a patron saint of the czechs (september 28) or on the feast of st. kateřina (catherine, november 25). they also celebrate christmas, new year’s eve, and easter. for the gatherings, they have been using a newly renovated czech clubhouse, a one-storey building the size of a family house, including a social hall, reconstructed with a contribution from the czech republic. after reconstruction, it was reopened in 2000 (plochová 2001). similarly, the czech republic currently has been reconstructing a clubhouse in prijedor. in mačino brdo, besides the major catholic religious holidays such as christmas, new year’s eve, and easter, there are also other opportunities for gatherings, such as annual masquerade rounds or shrovetide carnivals held in february, mostly on the saturday before ash wednesday. these are movable holidays that have the character of bacchic celebrations with singing, alcohol, pranks, and disguise. in the church calendar, they give space to unrestrained merriment before the long period of lent, which lasts from ash wednesday to easter. shrovetide is also celebrated this way in numerous villages in the czech republic, although hardly anyone jen typewritten text 147 fasts in the secularized czech republic from ash wednesday until easter. in mačino brdo, the local česká beseda has a relatively large continuously preserved society library where we can still find prints from the 1920s and 1930s. in towns, the exhibitions and lectures on eminent compatriots living and working in bosnia and herzegovina predominantly under austria-hungary are important markers of the society activity. minorities sometimes coordinate their activities, and thanks to this they can pool their means. in banja luka, they acquired a small hall with two adjacent offices, and each minority has the space available once a week. they also have several computers here and can offer a space for youth education. the compatriot organizations in banja luka, sarajevo, and mačino brdo publish their own newsletters which come out as often as financial means allow. also, minority language teaching takes place within the framework of minority activities. the czech republic also provides for improvement in czech by means of courses in the czech republic, so, paradoxically, it is the members of the oldest generation and surprisingly some young descendants of czech immigrants between 20 and 30 years of age who speak czech the best today. the czech side also offers scholarships for those who are interested in the study of the czech language at czech universities. however, only few persons from bosnia and herzegovina have used this opportunity. bosnia and herzegovina’s citizens are required to get a visa to the states of the european union and the neighboring countries. in the case of a journey to the czech republic, it is not only the processing of the visa for the country itself that is involved, but also of the transit visas for the countries on the way to the czech republic. this is often a very costly matter that exceeds the financial resources of the local inhabitants. in addition, granting a visa is preceded by providing various documents that are oftentimes hardly available or possible to find. the government of bosnia and herzegovina is anxious to please national minorities. in the near future, a law should come into force about the national minorities living on the territory of bosnia and herzegovina. within its framework, the education of the minorities should also be dealt with. this law introduces the right for the so-called “benefit,” which means the right for education in your mother tongue and lessons about the history and culture of the country of origin. pupils can request such complementary education if there are more than five pupils in the class who are members of a different minority. in the case of the czech minority, such a request will probably only be realistic for education in the two aforementioned rural enclaves, and even that is questionable, for young people of czech origin frequently leave the rural areas and move to towns not only on the territory of bosnia and herzegovina, but also abroad. a number of czechs from bosnia and herzegovina have also moved into the czech republic. although the interest of the czechs from bosnia and herzegovina in the czech language and culture has grown considerably in the last decade when compared with the 1960s to 1980s, it cannot be supposed that this would stop the processes of gradual assimilation into the environment of the local society. however, the activities of the enclaves may differ in a number of ways depending on the local political and social situation, which is so problematic that it is primarily those who have a support abroad who have a feeling of security. bosnian croats have it, serbs too, why could bosnian czechs not have it as well? quoting david chandler: “the overwhelming concern for bosnian people is security, … and the state itself has been established on very weak foundations and there is little guarantee that current arrangements, as they stand, will last past international withdrawal” (chandler 1999:195). jen typewritten text 148 the war, the feeling of insecurity, and ethnicization of the society have changed the priorities of identities. this does not, however, mean that the czechs in bosnia and herzegovina would have only one. many of them hesitate how to classify themselves in which situation, and many have reconciled themselves to the fact that they will no longer be able to answer this question, although it seemed so easy to answer fifteen years ago. references cited: auerhan, jan. 1920. české osady ve volyni, na krymu a na kavkaze. praha: dr. a. hajn. —— 1921. čechoslováci v jugoslavii, v rumunsku, v maďarsku a v bulharsku. praha: melantrich. —— 1930. československá větev v jugoslavii. praha: československý ústav zahraniční. bringa, tone. 1995. being muslim the bosnian way: identity and community in a central bosnian village. princeton: princeton university press. chada, joseph. 1981. the czechs in the united states. washington: svu press. chandler, david. 1999. bosnia. faking democracy after dayton. london: pluto press. enciklopedja jugoslavije, tom 2. 1982. zagreb: leksikograf. zavod. filipović, muhamed. 1997. bosna i hercegovina – najvažnije geografske, demografske, historijske, kulturne i političke činjenice. sarajevo: compakt. hann, chris m. 1995. the skeleton at the feast. contributions to east european anthropology. canterbury: university of kent. heroldová, iva. 1996. vystěhovalectví do jihovýchodní evropy. in: češi v cizině 9. stanislav brouček, ed. pp. 67-95. praha: ústav pro etnografii a folkloristiku. hladký, ladislav. 1996. bosna a hercegovina. historie nešťastné země. praha: doplněk. horská, pavla. 2002. klasická urbanizace v českých zemích 1830-1930. in: zrod velkoměsta. urbanizace českých zemí. pavla horská, eduard maur, and jiří musil, eds. pp. 119-236. praha: paseka. kreševljaković, hamdija. sarajevo za vrijeme austrougarske uprave (1878-1918). sarajevo: arhiv grada sarajeva. liebecait, josef. 1930. druhá výroční zpráva československé obce v sarajevě 1929-1930. sarajevo: československá obec v sarajevě. lovrenović ivan. 2000. bosna a hercegovina. krátký přehled kulturní historie. praha: institut pro středoevropskou kulturu. malcom, noel. 1996. bosnia: a short history. new, updated edition. london: papermac. park, robert ezra. 1967 [1925]. community organization and juvenille delinquency. in: the city. robert ezra park, ernest w. burgess and roderick d. mckenzie, eds. pp. 99-112. chicago: university of chicago press. plochová, kateřina. 2001. nova ves: integrace české migrační skupiny do bosenského prostředí. český lid 88 (4): 335360. polišenský, josef. 1992, 1996. úvod do studia vystěhovalectví do ameriky 1, 2. praha: karolinum. secká, milena. 1996. češi v rumunsku. in: češi v cizině 9. stanislav brouček, ed. pp. 96104. praha: ústav pro etnografii a folkloristiku. stanovy české besedy v sarajevě. 1906. sarajevo: knihtiskárna risto j. savić. šatava, leoš. 1989. migrační procesy a české vystěhovalectví 19. století do usa. praha: univerzita karlova. jen typewritten text 149 uherek, zdeněk. 1998. češi v sarajevu: menšina v městském prostoru. český lid 85 (2): 129-146. —— 1999. bosnian czechs: a lesson from the theory of ethnicity. ethnologia balcanica 3: 141-154. —— 2000. češi v bosně a hercegovině. úvod do problematiky s výběrovou bibliografií. praha: etnologický ústav av čr. uherek, zdeněk, petr lozoviuk, and marta toncrová. 2000. bosnia, bosnian czechs, and migratory bridges. praha: institute of ethnology. vaculík, jaroslav. 1997. dějiny volyňských čechů. praha: sdružení čechů z volyně a jejich přátel. valášková, naďa, zdeněk uherek, and stanislav brouček. 1997. aliens or one’s own people. czech immigrants from the ukraine in the czech republic. praha: institute of ethnology. zapletal, jan. 1913. čechové v sarajevě dle sčítání lidu v r. 1910 (doplněno). sarajevo: česká beseda. jen typewritten text 150 anthropology of east europe rcvic\\ whaling products as an element of indigenous diet inchukotka andrew /. koz/ov, "arctan-c' innovative laboratory, moscow and eduard v.zdor, chukchi association of traditional hunting, anadyr introduction nutritional traditions are an area where biology and culture are closest. in combination with specific environmental resources, nutrient requirements are responsible for habits and traditions that are fixed for centuries. an italian inviting someone to partake of a meal would propose to share "carbohydrates"; for him the word "pasta" does not only mean "spaghetti", or floury dishes, but rather food in general. an invitation by the russian reflects the ecological specificity ofthe middle-russian plain, poor in mineral substances. the russian would invite his guest to partake of"bread and sal!", i.e., "carbohydrates and microelements". for inuit (eskimo), food was originally considered the same as meat "neri". the inuit terms for eating are derived from this: to eat is "nerivoq. when dinner is ready one calls "nerisassat," often sh0!1ened to "neri .. ." a banquet is understood as a feast with large quantities of meat, "nerersuarneq" (larsen and oldenburg, 2000). the present communication addresses some aspects of human nutritional ecology as determined by biological and cultural adaptation to life in high latitudes. the indigenous populations of the chukotka peninsula are the chukchi and siberian eskimos yupik. according to the population census of 1989, the yupik population is 1,704, and that of the chukchi, 15, i 07 (funk and sillanpaa,eds., 1999). at the beginning of the first millennium a.d., some chukchi tribes moved from the regions ofthe chukotka peninsula to the shores of the ambient seas. there, the coastal chukchi came in contact with the eskimos, and partly assumed the cultural elements of the marine hunters. as a result, the coastal chukchi and eskimos developed almost identical systems of nature management and nutritional ecology. on this basis, we address the situation in the communities of marine hunters of chukotka as a whole, without dividing them into chukchi and yupik. at the same time, the traditional inuit (eskimo) strategy of nature management and lifestyle are virtually identical in all coastal regions of the arctic. the effect of present-day changes in the lifestyle and nutrition on the health of the arctic marine hunters is also similar throughout their entire distribution range (shephard and rode, j996; kozlov and vershubsky, 1999). the above makes it possible to compare the large body of data obtained in the area of the united states, canada and gn.:enland. nutritional diversity of "traditional" food present-day researchers are aware that one cannot underestimate the role of vegetative food in the traditional indigenous diets of the high latitudes (kozlov and vershubsky, 1999; berezovikova and mamleeva, 200 i). for the indigenous peoples of the north, such foods are of particular value in providing fiber tissue and vitamins rather than carbohydrates, the main source of energy in the diet of the majority of temperate zone residents. the readily-assimilated carbohydrate food is hard to find in the arctic, and absorption of carbohydrates in the intestine appears to be difficult in the high latitudes (kozlov, 2002). despite the low species diversity of the high latitude marine and terrestrial fauna, the animal protein food is available in the arctic in sufficient amounts. in addition, the nol1hem marine fauna makes it possible to obtain large amounts of fats, the most concentrated foods (fats exceed proteins and carbohydrates in calorific value per unit mass, containing less water). the relative species paucity of the nora and fauna of the high latitudes naturally restricts the range of diet of representatives of the groups of traditional lifestyle. marine hunters are characterized by exploitation of marine, littoral and terrestrial biotas. this provides notable expansion of the range of food compared with those consumed by tundra reindeer herders. but in this case, too, diet diversity is not great (damas, 1984; larsen and oldenburg, 2000). terrestrial hunting and gathering have been serving for yupik and coastal chukchi mostly as auxiliary diets. eskimos believe that those foods, no matter how "prestigious" they may be, are not nutritious enough. birds, fish, plants vol. 17, no. i 20(h, page: 127 anthropology of east europe review and eggs "all leave you feeling hungry" (robert­ lamblin, 1986). due to ecological reasons, the diet has traditionally been based oil marine hunting products meat and fat of marine mammals. to date, they alone are thought to be "true" food. marine hunting products acquire the significance of "cultural super-food", regarded as the gift of god(s) to become a symbol of ethnic identity (garine, 1994; freeman et ai., 1998). siberian yupik consume the meat of various marine mammals: the gray whale and bowhead whale, walrus, bearded seal, ringed seal, ribbon seal and harbor seal. however, the yupik treat whaling products as "cultural super-food". the traditional diet of marine hunters of chukotka comprises about 20 various dishes of meat, fat, skin, flippers, tongue, and entrails of cetaceans (bogoslovskaya et ai., 1986). the yupik and coastal chukchi clearly distinguish between the products obtained in the course of marine hunting. the gray whale is regarded traditionally as seasonal, summer food, since its meat cannot be stored for a long time. by contrast, the meat of the bowhead whale can be stored for a long time. generally, the coastal chukchi and siberian eskimos regard whale meat as "heavy" food, which is not to be consumed by sick people (bogoslovskaya, 200 i, personal communication). traditional norms of consumption tn the early 20th century, an adult eskimo consumed 1.8 2.2 kg of the meat of marine mammals (foote, 1970). a wide distribution of imported foods and an increasing tendency to consume "market food" bring about reduction in the proportion of meat in northerners' diet. in the early 1960s the central alaskan inuit of anaktuvuk pass provided up to 65% energy requirements (rennie et ai., 1962). in the early 1970s, the consumption of whale and seal meat by greenland inuit averaged 0.387 kg/day (bang and dyerberg, 1981). the mackenzie delta inuit consume mammal meat (primarily of the caribou and beluga whale) on average, 3 10 times a year, and various fish species another 21 0 times (wein and freeman, 1992). meat is not a single essential component of the northern diet. another vital element of the traditional arctic kitchen is animal fat. this is reflected in the saying by canadian arctic indians: "died of hunger, consuming rabbits". the lack of fats in the indigenous diet of high latitudes may prove disastrous. hence, numerous elements of the nutritional culture of arctic people involve inclusion of the maximum possible amounts of animal fats (lipids) in the diet. the greatest fat consumption is characteristic of marine hunters (review: kozlov, 2002). when the inuit of canada assess the advantages of different types of traditional food, they constantly emphasize fat content (wein and freeman, 1992): "can't live without it (fat)" (about the beluga): "gives us fat" (about the bowhead): "makes you get fat" (about the seal). the traditional diet of an adult male eskimo included about 100 grams of animal fat from meat and another 60 g of natural fat of marine mammals (krupnik, 1989). with such a diet, animal fats alone could provide daily intake of up to 1280 kcal (5363 kj) of energy, meeting 35-50% of energy requirements. adaptation to protein-lipid diet consumption of such a considerable quantity of proteins and lipids is impossible without considerable adaptive changes. they are manifested at different levels: physiological (gastric digestion), cultural (gastronomy), biochemical (development of "polar metabolism"). various versions of gastric digestion have been described for mammal meat consumers. they also occur in humans at different frequencies (kozlov, 2002). the so-called "wild-boar nutritional type" characterizes most humans. this type is the most pronounced in omnivorous mammals, which consume meat along with vegetative food (like bear and wild-boar). in them, digestion ofthe food ball in the stomach occurs mostly at the walls of the organ in close contact with gastric glands. the acidity of gastric juice is fairly low. an increase in acidity brings about irritation of the organ's walls, which may cause development ofgastritis and ulcer. indigenous residents ofthe arctic, whose diet includes, by european standards, an exceptionally high amount of protein and fats are characterized by the "wolftype" gastric digestion, similar to that of carnivores. in that case, chemical treatment ofthe food occurs in the central portion of the stomach, with high acidity of the gastric juice. the highly acid medium creates optimal conditions for the activity of the proteolytic enzyme pepsin, resistant only under ph within 1.0­ 1.5. in order to protect the organ walls from the impact of acid, its cells excrete great amounts of mucus. vol. 17, no. 12003. page: 128 personal communication). vol. 17, no. i 2003. page: 129 anthropology of east europe rn iew by the method of target endoscopic ph­ metry, we have revealed that indigenous northerners have different hydrochloric acid levels in different portions of the stomachs. near the stomach walls, acidity is lower due to the development of great quantity of mucus, wh ich serves as a protective interlayer between the gastric juice and the stomach walls (chernenkov, grozdova, kozlov and vershubsky, 1992, unpublished data). our studies have supported the reports to the effect that the above functional activity of stomach glands is manifested in indigenous northerners as early as they are ch ildren (orekhov, 1987). as a result, even under hyperacidity of the gastric contents eskimos and chukchi rarely develop peptic ulcer, although hyperacid gastritis is characteristic of the indigenous people of the arctic (pogorazdov, 1990; kozlov and vershubsky. 1999). in addition to the morpho-functional adaptation, cultural adaptation was also of great significance, brought about the development of the specific features of traditional "northern kitchen". the food that arrives in the stomach serves as a peculiar buffer, preventing an increase in acidity of the gastric content. assimilation of proteins can be facilitated in two ways: by additional increase in the concentration of the hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice, or by gastronomic pre-treatment of the foods. the former type appears to have been implemented by indigenous residents of the north to biological capacity. as to gastronomy, residents of the middle latitudes are more used to heat treatment of the foods containing animal proteins (frying, boiling). the above involves destruction of the quaternary and tertiary protein structures, which renders proteins more readily assimilable. however, partial denaturation of proteins (involving the secondary, and even the primary structures of the molecule) can be attained in a different way: via increasing the acidity of the product itself and exposing it to the impact of proteases. the above process provides the biochemical basis of cooking "fermented" food, widespread in the kitchen of the chukchi and eskimos. whaling products vary in terms of their suitability for the cooking of fermented food. yupik believe that only the meat of the bowhead whale can be fermented gray whaling fails to yield the product suitable for this method of cooking (bogoslovskaya. 200 i, the consumption of large quantities of fermented food is a method of adaptation to environmental conditions characteristic of the indigenous people of the arctic. the advantage of fermentation as a gastronomic method, sparing scarce arctic fuel, is self-evident. consumption of large quantities of fat and their utilization as the main energy substrate as determ ined by the ecological features of the environment required some specific re­ arrangement of the biochemical system of indigenous northerners. they are characterized by the high activity of lipolytic enzymes. upon breaking down in the small intestine and absorption. lipids form complexes with lipoproteins, some specific proteins ensuring transport of fats. the augmented activity of lipolytic enzymes permits the breaking down of enzymes arriving with food most econom ica ily. in addition, the fractions of transport lipoproteins with very low density (beta­ lipoproteins and chylomicrons) are utilized by indigenous northerners more completely with the !"llipoprotein lipase of the vessel endothelium of the peripheral tissues (pan in, 1987). the above =:reduces the risk of accumulation of fat substances t!1 in thc walls of the vessels, and, hence, the hazard of atherosclerosis. however, the main consequence is the possibility of rapid utilization offats, i.e .. switching ofmetabolism from the carbohydrate type to the lipid type. lipids in the traditional "arctic diet" in the course of evolution of the "high latitude" type of adaptation there has developed a specific type of "polar metabolism". this type of metabolism is characterized by an augmented energy role oflipids and proteins with a less impoliant role of the carbohydrates arriving from the ambient environment. accordingly, medical specialists define this type of nutrition as "protein­ lipid". the lack of exogenous carbohydrates (those arriving with food) in the indigenous people of the arctic is partially compensated by increasing intensity of the formation of carbohydrates from non-carbohydrate products in the organism (pan in, 1987). those endogenous carbohydrates ensure some of the body requirements for "rapid" energy. nevertheless, the basic human energy equilibrium in the high latitudes is provided by the metabo i ism oflipids, and the proportion of the anthropology of east europe re\ ic\\ energy obtained as a result of carbohydrate oxidation remains relatively small (krylov, 19s0; kushnerova et ai., 1990). in the residents of the temperate climate zone this type of metabolism is periodically used as a reserve type of metabolism; it is switched on when the body needs intake of augmented amounts of energy. in addition to the energy value, the fat of marine mammals, fish and waterfowl in the diet of the high latitudes performs some other important functions. according to the data of biochem ical studies, the requirements of indigenous northerners for fat-soluble vitamins (a, d, e, k) is somewhat higher compared with that in the residents of the temperate climate. northerners, who stick to the traditional mode of nutrition, use the "marine type" fats as the main source of fat-soluble vitamins, including vitamin d, ensuring protection from rickets in children and osteomalacia in adults. for ecological reasons, the availability of animal fats in residents of the mainland tundra and the seacoast differs. the usual food of reindeer chukchi is reindeer meat, whereas coastal chukchi consume "sea meat," i.e., the meat ofmarine mammals. [t should be noted that the latter is the favorite food of the entire chukchi people, probably, because it contains more fat. reindeer chukchi, who for a long time do not see whale fat, are very avaricious of it and ready to pay any price for it. in spring, when reindeer chukchi are visited by coastal traders, traditional treatment begins and whale fat is served. similarly, "the meat of marine mammals is offered to anyone as the best delicacy," testified w.g.bogoras in the early 20th century (1904). acquisition of the products of marine hunting by the communities of tundra reindeer-herders, trading of meat and fat of marine mammals remain to date an important element of trad itional subsistence of the indigenous population of chukotka (korf and khotimchenko, 1990; bogoslovskaya, 2001, personal communication). apparently, the input in the organism of vast amounts of fat, characteristic of the trad itional "arctic kitchen" should bring about an increase in the concentration of lipids in the blood serum. an increase in cholesterol level in the blood is particularly hazardous. that lipid does is not involved in metabolic processes in the arterial wall and directly damages it, which causes atherosclerosis. it has been found, however, that in arctic marine hunters consuming the greatest quantities of animal fats, the level of blood serum cholesterol is not higher, and frequently even lower, than that in other arctic dwellers: taiga hunters and reindeer-herders (review: kozlov and vershubsky, 1999). the level of cholesterol, beta-lipoprotein, and triglycerides in the blood serum of marine hunters is also substantially lower compared with that of urban residents (bang and dyerberg, 1981). accordingly, the incidence of atherosclerosis in northerners leading a traditional mode of life proves much lower than that in the "modernized" urban population. the studies performed in the last third of the 20th century explained the fact ofthe paradoxically low level of lipids in the blood serum of northern indigenous people despite their traditionally fat-rich diet. a major factor to prevent excessive increase in the concentration of lipids in the blood is input in the body of sufficient amount of polyunsaturated fat acids (puf a). similar to any animal, thc human body cannot synthesize puf a and has to obtain them from the outside. the equilibrium of food-contained saturated (sf a) and unsaturated fatty acids is responsible for the assimilation of the fat by the body and its nutritional properties. livestock products contain 3-11 times more sf a compared with those of whal ing (bogoslovskaya et ai., 1997). the polyunsaturated fatty acids are heterogeneous. particularly important for the functioning of biological systems are omega-6 and omega-3 polyunsaturated fat acids. omega-6­ puf a is contained in the majority of food vegetative oils and is also concentrated in domestic animal's meat and fat, primarily, in the pork. omega-3-puf a (mainly produced by marine algae) belongs to the so-called "marine type fats". their content is particularly high in the cod-liver oil and is considerable in the meat of marine mammals: seals, walruses, and whales. omega-6 and omega-3-puf a are involved in the synthesis of prostaglandins (jorgensen et ai., [986; salem, 1989). generally, prostaglandins associated with omega-6-puf a stimulate cell growth, initiate inflammatory responses, and also promote augmented blood viscosity. respectively, the consumption of large quantities of fats and oils containing omega-6­ pufa increases the risk of development of heart ischemic disease, and presumably promotes development of carcinogenic diseases. vol. [7, no. i 2003, page: 130 anthropology of east europe revie\\ prostaglandins, whose formation involves omega3-puf a, essentially reduce the risk of development of cardiovascular diseases, and presumably provide extra protection against malignant tumors. in the case of their traditional lifestyle, marine hunters are ecologically on the upper floor of the food pyramid. accordingly, the siberian yupik and chukchi accumulate the basic nutrients provided by algal producers and animal consumers of lower orders. due to the large quantities of meat and fat of marine mammals consumed, the composition of blood serum lipids in greenland inuit, siberian yupik and coastal chukchi is close to the respective indices of their food meat and food of marine mammals (dyerberg et ai., 1975; gerasimova et ai., 1991). in fact, the content of omega-6-puf a and the ratio of omega-6-puf a to omega-3-pufa in yupik are significantly lower compared to that in the "white" residents of the same built -up areas (young et ai., 1999). surprisingly, in a certain sense, the belief of canadian inuit is supported, according to which the blood of the consumed marine mammal becomes component of the human blood, lending the necessary properties to the individual (borre, 1991). it should be noted that the milk of inuit females that stick to the traditional type of diet also contains large amounts of omega-3-pufa (innis and kuhnlein, 1988). thus, immediately upon birth the infant organism starts receiving polyunsaturated fatty acids, "preparing itself' for transition to the "adult" diet. the consumption of "marine type fats" leads to a change in the balance of blood serum cholesterol fractions in favor of high-density lipoproteins (hdl). hdl shows less damaging effect on the vessel wall compared with low­ density liporoteins ldl. the low level of blood serum cholesterol in inuit, aleuts, and coastal chukchi is associated with prevalence in their diet ofomega-3-pufa (dyerberg et ai., 1977; young et ai., 1995; young et ai., 1999). changes in food composition due to "modernization" modernization of the inuit life style brings about natural change in nutrition. at the first stages, involvement of the "european" kitchen elements depended on the intensity of contacts with representatives of "western" culture primarily determined by geographical availability (mikkelsen and sveistrup, 1941). with expansion of the communication network and increasing "westernization" of the lifestyle of indigenous northerners, the proportion of ' 'market food" in the diet of eskimos and chukchi increased. in 1952 54% of daily intake of energy in the eskimos of nw greenland was provided by traditional subsistence food, and by 1991 that proportion decreased to 25% (pars et ai., 200 i). the food composition changed accordingly. table i presents the results of studies of the basic nutrients by the inuit of north­ western greenland in 1908 and 1972, and chukotka yupik in 1989, in comparison with danish population (krogh and krogh, 1913; helms, 1972; bang and dyerberg, 1981; klochkova et ai., 1990). the average amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrate (caloric %) in the diet ofnw greenland inuit in 1908 can be regarded as the baseline nutrition type characteristic of the traditional diet of the marine hunters of the arctic. in 65 or 70 years the inuit nutrition structure has undergone considerable changes. the ratio of basic nutrients clearly approached that characteristic of the danish urban population of early 1970s. for a number of reasons, the "westernization" of the lifestyle and nutrition changes in the indigenous people of chukotka have been proceeding slower than those in the inuit of alaska, canada and greenland. the analysis of the diet composition of siberian inuit performed in the second half of 1980s (klochkova et ai., 1990) revealed that the ratio of proteins, fats and carbohydrates in the diet of siberian inuit differs from that in the traditional diet, but has not yet reached the values specific for the "modernized" natives of greenland (table i). inclusion of the "market food" into the daily diet of indigenous northerners and utilization of the dishes of the ethnic kitchen varies with occupation, age and gender. the diets of representatives of different age categories of coastal chukchi and siberian yupik differ significantly. the members of the category comprising indigenous people aged 10-30-years mostly stick to the "european" diet, whereas the chukchi and yupik older than 30 years of age prefer the traditional diet (fomenko, 1990). the available data are also indicative of gender and social differences in the diet of modern inuit. judging from indirect evidence, male hunters of greenland consume more whale than female inuit (bang and dyerberg, 1981; robert-lamblin, 1986). however, it will be remembered that age roles of the traditional food are differently manifested in the indigenous people of the taiga vol. 17. no.1 2003, page: 131 anthropology of east europe rev ie\\ and tundra, on the one hand, and marine hunters, on the other. due to their team activity pattern and specific traditions of prey distribution between the members of the community, marine hunters show less differentiation in nutrition within the group compared with reindeer-herders and taiga hunters and fishermen. accordingly, the administrative restriction of marine hunting or its economical impossibility is harmful to the entire community. the health consequences of transition to "market food" urbanization and "westernization" of the lifestyle of indigenous northerners are combined with an increasing proportion ofthe market food in the diet (shephard and rode, 1996; kozlov and vershubsky, 1999; kozlov, 2002). accordingly, residents of big built-up areas of alaska and chukotka show higher levels of total cholesterol and cholesterol of hdl lipoproteins compared with those in indigenous n0l1herners dwelling in remote isolated northern villages of the same regions (maynard, 1976; voevoda et a!., 1987). more "westernized" inuit of canada show significantly higher cholesterol level compared with that of the population of chukotka (young et ai., 1995). the type of nutrition characteristic of modern urban residents and increasingly common in the communities of eskimos and chukchi brings about substantial lack of equilibrium between fats with different fractions of polyunsaturated fatty acids. the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3-pufa to the diet of modem urban residents ranges from 15: 1 to 10: 1, whereas that in gatherers has been found to range from 4:1 to 2:1 (weil,2000). with reduction of the proportion of meat and fat of marine mammals in the diet, the favorable ratio of fatty acids in the lipids of blood serum in the chukchi and yupik is disturbed (korf and khotimchenko, 1990). the consumption of fats and proteins in the diet of "modernized" indigenous northerners remains high by the european standards, but the traditional "marine type" fats containing omega-3-pufa are substituted by fats with a predominant content of omega-6 fatty acids. in fact, in 1997-98 female inuit of the buffin island used about 86 g of fat daily, 56 gout of which amount was accounted for by purchased fat, largely vegetative oil and margarine (kuhnlein, 1991). it raises the levels of cholesterols and triglycerides of blood serum and causes subsequent development of atherosclerosis. in addition to prostaglandins associated with omega-6-pufa,which increase the risk of heart ischemia, they seem to develop a favorable background for the distribution of oncologic diseases. during the last two decades an increase in the incidencc of cancer has bcen recorded in indigenous residents of the north, including chukotka natives (gaudette et ai., 1991; kustov et ai., 1991; shephard and rode, 1996). the relationship between the growth of oncologic diseases and lack of equilibrium between omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids in northern populations lacks thorough study. transition to the "european" nutritional style exerts a detrimental effect on the fitness of chukchi and eskimo children (prachin, 1982). due to lower input of fats they develop disturbances of vitamin equilibrium associated with lack of fat-soluble vitam ins and a decrease in the development of 0 vitamin. in that case hypovitaminoses are not always compensated for by an increase in the intake of daily doses of synthetic vitam ins. the hazard of development of hypovitaminoses remains in those cases where consumption of animal proteins and fats by indigcnous nol1herners rcmains high (by "european" standards), but the products of marine hunting are replaced by beef, pork, chicken. for instance, the content of vitamin a in the beef is 5.5 times lower than that in the meat of the white whale, (freeman et ai., 1998). accordingly, only 14.5% of the examined inuit women on a "mixed", partly "westernized" diet receive the recommended quantity of vitamin a with food (kuhnlein, 1989). "traditional" and "market" food consumption by marine hunters ofchukotka today as revealed by our surveys of2000-2002, today the pattern of nutrition of the indigenous people of the russian north is determined by two major factors. the first is the traditional kitchen of northern natives and its present-day natural evolution bringing it closer to the "westernized" type of nutrition. the second factor is economic, which impels many of the indigenous northerners to return to traditional food, since a market is not available. the above factors are directed differently, and differences in types of nutrition have been increasing even within a single community. better well-off northerners have increasingly preferred the "european" diet (in "russian" version). for the poor members of indigenolls communities, hunting, fishing and vol. 17, no. i 2003. page: 132 anthropology of east europe review gathering of wild plants again become an important element of life support. as shown by our studies of2000-2002, the diet of indigenous people of the russian north today is determined by two major factors. the first is the evolution of traditional kitchen of northern aborigines in the modern world, which leads to similarity with the "westernized" diet patterns. the second factor is economic, which forces a large proportion of northerners to "classic" traditional diet due to the fact that "market" food can hardly be afforded. these vectors are directed differently, and the differences in diet types increase even within a single community. the northerners who are better off financially, and particularly urban residents. increasingly prefer the "european" diet (in russian version). for poor members of indigenous communities, who account for the bulk of the indigenous population of the russian north, hunting, fishery and gathering becomes a vital element of their life support. the political and economic development in russia in the late 1980s early 1990s resulted in a dramatic decline in marine hunting for the needs of indigenous people. unfoliunately. the present communication can only provide official statistic data. and indirect evidence available suggests that these data are largely distorted. today, under the project "nutrition and health of northern indigenous peoples -interactions with ethnicity, social status and environment" (nuhip), we have been conducting research aimed to provide some more objective information. according to the department of agriculture, food and trade of the chukchi autonomous region, the year 1996 became critical, when the amount of food meat of the harvested cetaceans and pinnipeds accounted for only 58.5% of the indices of 1985: 964.0 against 164 7.7 tons. by the year 1998. the harvest of marine mammals increased to stay at a virtually stable level ever since (podgainy. zdor. 2001 ). in 2000 the harvest volume in terms of i ive mass was 2145, which yielded 1026.2 tons of food meat cfable 2). the increase in marine hunting in the late 1990s-2000s was essentially accounted for by intensification of the harvest of small pinnipeds. primarily ringed seal. and to a less extent, larger seals: (larga and the bearded seal), which was conducted by local people both in teams and on an individual basis. accordingly, some dramatic structural changes in the consumption of the products of marine hunting occurred. in fact, replacement of the meat and fat of the walrus by respective products of seal hunting results in decline of the resources of "fermented" food, whose importance for the health of indigenous people has already been mentioned. judging from the surveys conducted by other authors (ainana et a1.2002) and one of the authors of the present paper (e.z.), the indigenous people of the coastal regions of chukotka would like the harvest of marine mammals to be considerably increased. they believe that such an increase would permit them to substantially augment the food situation in the communities. and there are grounds for that. during the resent years, the quotas for the harvest of marine mammals in the chukchi autonomous region have not been completely utilized. judging from the number of harvested seals, walrus and cetaceans: in 1998 the quotas were utilized by 37.5'/;): in 2000. by 60.9% (podgainy, zdor, 200 i ). the attempts of some stakeholders of the international whaling commission (lwc) to ban or to sharply reduce the harvest of the gray and bowhead whales by the indigenous people of chukotka and alaska were neutralized parily because for the first time in the last decades iwc was ottered medico-biological substantiation of the need of whaling products for the health of the indigenous people (kozlov, 2002). for the period between 2003 and 2007 the quotas remained the same (for chukotka. 135 gray and 5 bowhead whales per year). thus. today. coastal chukchi and siberian eskimos are authorized to almost double their production of marine hunting. unfortunately. this opportunity has some negative aspects. when the environment is polluted industrially, the meat and fat of marine mammals become peculiar "accumulators" of stable toxic pollutants. in particular, northerners receive polychlorbiphenyls (pcb) with the fat of cetaceans and walrus, which may cause barrenness, congenital development defects. neoplasms and other serious diseases (revich, 200 i). even in the case of a modem, partly "westernized" diet, about 10% of women and 15% of male marine hunters among canadian inuit receive pcbs in quantities exceeding the maximum admissible level (i microgram per kg of the body mass per day). in a number of cases, the entry of pcbs with food is four times higher than the maximum allowable level (kuhnlein, 1989). vol. 17. no.1 2003. page: 133 in such conditions, an increase in the consum ption of meat and fat of marine mammals may lead to an increase in toxic effects in the communities of marine hunters. the pcb is only an example. heavy metals and chlororganic compounds are no less hazardous to the indigenous people of the arctic (revich, 2001; kuhnlein et ai., 2000). during the recent years the marine hunters of chukotka frequently recorded walrus and seals with various defects of development and "ill odor and texture" of meat and fat (bogoslovskaya, 2001, personal communication). the local people associate such deviations with possible impact of industrial pollutants, but according to danish researchers, only 1% of greenland marine hunters believe marine hunting products containing chemical pollutants may be hazardous to humans (pars et al.,2001). an increase in the harvest of marine mammals should be combined with measures on the hygienic control of the quality of the products obtained by each community. these hygienic measures are to be accompanied by adequate information support: the indigenous people should be fully aware ofthe possible risks. conclusion today, traditional types of feeding characteristic of the indigenous population of the north are exposed to substantial transforn1ation. the causes of that are both the complex changes associated with modernization and natural factors (environmental pollution, reduction in the areas of traditional nature management and depletion of resources). modernization effects include social, economic and ethnic heterogeneity of traditional communities. their consequences are formation of professional, age, and gender differences in nutrition in the communities of the indigenous people ofthe north. some specific consequences of modernization are theweakening and even destruction of the ancient medico-biological and cultural adaptations. such maladaptation involves various aspects of the life of indigenous northerners, but it is the most pronounced with respect to nutrition. the economic collapse of the infrastructure of the northern regions of russia has resulted in numerous indigenous northerners again addressing the traditional subsistence methods. over the last 3-4 generations they have been increasingly adapted to a modernized diet and lost numerous traditions. knowledge and skills as well as natural resources. no complete return to traditional subsistence is possible today, but it is necessary to seek equilibrium between traditionalism and modernism. references cited ainana a. i. blokhin sa, borodin r.g., yetylin v.m., et ai., 2002, a feasibility study for the harvest of gray and bowhead whales to meet the cultural, traditional and nutritional requirements of the indigenous people ofchukotka for the years 2003-2007. rf, 32 p. 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(eds.) circumpolar health 90. winnipeg, canadian society for circumpolar health. 468-469. larsen f. and oldenburg r.,2000, food in southern greenlandjor 1000 years. forlaget hovedland. mikkelsen e. and sveistrup p.p.,1944, the east greenlanders possibilities of existence, their production and consumption. lvleddelelser om gronlond, 134 (2): 245 pp. orekhov k.v., 1987, medico-biological problems of the health of peoples of the north. in: v.l. soiko, yu.p. nikitin. a.!, solomakha (ed.). prohlems ofmodern social development ofthe peoples olthe north. novossibirsk, nauka. 217-223. (in russ.). panin l.e., 1987, rational nutrition in the north the basis of primary prevention. in: v.i. boiko, yu.p. nikitin, a.!, solomakha (cd.). prohlems ofmodern social development ofthe peoples ofthe north. novossibirsk. nauka. 223-230 (in russ.). pars t., osler m. and bjerregaard p.,2001, contemporary use of traditional and imported food among greenlandic inuit. arctic, 54 (1): 22-31. podgrainy v., zdor e., 200 i, marine hunting in the chukchi autonomous region in the year 2000. some results of traditional harvest of marine mammals. anadyr, departmt ofagriculture, food and trade, chukchi autonomous region. 24 p. (in russian). pogorazdov y. y., j990. some peculiarities of gastric diseases in the indigenous people ofchukotka. in: peculiarities ol therapeutic disease incidence and their prevention in residents olchukotka. anadyr. 47. 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(in russ.). rennie d.w., covino 8.g., blair m.r. and rodah i k.,] 962, physical regu lation of temperature in eskimos. j appl. physiol., 17.326-332. revich b.a., 2001, ei7l'ironmental pollutio/l and human health. moscow., mnepu (in russian). robert-lamblin j., 1986, ammassalik, east greenland end or persistence of an isolate? anthropological and demographical study on change. jvieddelelser om gronland. man & society, 10. 168 pp. shephard rj. and rode a, 1996, the health consequences ol "modernization 1/: evidence from circumpolar peoples. cambridge university press. the small indigenous nations ofnorthern russia.,] 999, dmitry a.funk and lennard sillanpaa (eds.). abo akademi university: social science research unit. pub!. no 29. yoevoda m.l., astachova t.!. and filimonova t.a., 1990, intrapopulational differences at the level of blood lipids in indigenous people ofchukotka in: peculiarities of therapeulic disease incidence and their prevention in residents olchukotka. anadyr. 59-60. (in russ.). weil a.,2000, eating ~wellj()r optimum health. alfred a.knopt~ new york. wein e.e. and freeman m.m.r.,1992, inuvialuit food use and food preferences in aklavik, nwt, canada. arct. med. res., 51 (4): 159-172. vol. 17, no. 1 2003. page: 136 i anthropology of east europe review young t.k.. cien'ard j.m. and o'neil j.d., 1999, plasma phospholipid fatty acids in the central canadian arctic: biocultural explanations for ethnic differences. amer . .j. phys. anthropol., 109 (i): 9-18. young t.k" nikitin y.p., shubnikov e.v., astakhova t.l moffatt m.e.k. and o'neil 1. d., \995, plasma lipids in two indigenous arctic populations with low risk for cardiovascular diseases. am. .j. hum. bioi., 7: 223-236. vol. 17, no. i 2003, page: 137 anthropology of east europe rcvic\\ table 1 average amounts of protein, fat and carbohydrate (caloric %) in the diet ofnw greenland inuit inl908 and 1974 in comparison with siberian yupik in 1989, and danish population in 1972 ethnic group and year of investigation protein fat carbohydrate inuit, nw greenland, 1908 44 47 8 inuit, nw greenland, 1974 26 37 37 yupik, chukotka, 1989 32 42 26 denmark, 1972 11 42 47 table 2 consumption ofthe products of marine hunting by indigenous people ofchukotka, in the year 2000, in tons (source: ainana et al. 2002) marine mammals food meat entrails fat large bones cetaceans 293.3 139.6 160.8 419.5 pinnipeds (total) 583.0 179.9 138.7 79.9 out of which number: ringed seal 97.3 -­ -­ -­ bearded seal 72.2 -­ -­ -­ walrus 413.5 -­ -­ -­ jen typewritten text 138 75 a western body for the russian woman: shaping gender identity in modern women's magazines olga kalacheva european university at st. petersburg the unified character and image of "the soviet person" is a thing of the past. post-soviet society is characterized by changes both in values and social norms, and in cultural patterns of femininity and masculinity. a comparative analysis of normative gender patterns of soviet and post-soviet time has become of special relevance. in my paper i am concerned with a representation of the female body. in the last few years there have been many studies of the phenomenon of sexual difference in popular discourses in advertisements and in magazines ­ because it is very important for clarifying the social mechanisms in formation of gender stereotypes and gender identity. my task today is to argue about how western gender culture is related to the russian one, illustrating my arguments by examples from women's magazines published in russia nowadays. this paper is more a presentation of a research project than a presentation of the results. first, i will consider very briefly the theoretical framework to analyze gender representations in modern mass media. then i will describe the soviet woman image and the history of women's magazines in russia. further i will suggest some ideas on how magazine ads impact on shaping social identity and why the western magazines have been successful in russia. theoretical frame the research is made within the framework of a constructivist approach. in this case the formulation of a problem is connected with the ways and mechanisms in which a social reality, identities, and individual experience are constructed in different cultural contexts. it is arguable that the mass media playa significant role in the process. the significance of mass media in modern society becomes greater as they influence everyday life (i.e., carey 1989). it is the mass media that create and spread information and ideas on the society as a whole, on principles of its organization and functioning. it is the mass media operators who invent and reproduce standards and models of behavior and gender images to be appreciated and copied by the readers. the ability of mass media to react immediately to all kinds of contemporary events and processes or trends makes it particularly important for modern society. transformation at the gender level, establishment of new gender standards all these [md their expressions in new periodical publications oriented at different social groups. the ads in the mass media playa special role in the representation of social reality. all ideas on commodities and services are presented by mass media in the context of other ideas relevant to the structure ofthe society, such as contacts and relations within the social structure. thus, ideas on commodities and services form the primary discourse for the vocabulary and style of advertisements, while the ideas on a society represent the secondary discourse (o'barr 1994). in other words, the commodities are advertised against the background of certain role situations, and the situations, in turn, can be interpreted as basic social values. each commodity advertised is meant for one particular group (a goal group), while the situations, roles, and images depicted can be appreciated by every person reading about them and/or looking at the pictures. images and suggestions involving erotic motifs can be used in order to make the ads more attractive and their impact the stronger. it is possible to conclude that those who use the picture of female body in an advertisement transform the image of women into an instrument of advertising. as a rule, the image of woman in an ad is used to stress/show offmale power, although the image of a man need not be present in the same picture; the women's role is more often complementary or secondary. the ads make one think that the man in the ad uses the commodities advertised much more often than a woman does. on this symbolic market the woman is not unlike any other commodity because she is an object of trade policy. thus, the woman acquires characteristic features of a symbolic commodity. vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 75 i women's images in soviet times: historical context as the researchers of ads note (al'chuk 2000), women's images in mass media were defined by soviet ideology. in the 1920s and 1930s, the image of the liberated woman in publications was similar to that in the modem ads (films, posters, newspapers and magazines). they were all controlled and censored by the state and the party. the female images represented the social ideals of the time. it was characteristic of russian folklore and culture to represent the country in the figures of strong and beautiful women. a classical example of such a figure is the internationally known metal statue made by the sculptor vera mukhina for the world exhibition in paris before the second world war; it was properly titled 'the workerman and the peasantwoman,' and now stands in moscow. during the second world war and in the decades after 1945, the majority of women of the soviet union were employed in agriculture and the industries, as well as in research institutes and educational establishments. at the beginning of the 1960s, the soviet union took first place in the world with respect to the percentage ofwomen paid for their labor outside their homes (levinson 2000: 47). interestingly, women were employed in a manner typical of old culture in a patriarchal society. that is, the traditional roles in reproduction and education played by women in traditional families gave rise to typical feminine professions: nurse, instructor, teacher, librarian, etc. in terms of the state structure, these professions were included in the budget of the country as different public services providing medical care, education, pre-school education, various branches ofpublic service (postal, telephone, restaurants, hotels, shops, etc.) women's magazines in russia there were some women's magazines widespread in all parts of the soviet union such as the monthly magazines rabotnitsa (it might be translated as workwoman) and krestianka (countrywoman). it was assumed that rabotnitsa was more popular among the city population, whereas rural population preferred krestianka. that is why it is rabotnitsa that has now been chosen as an example to make a comparison with modem western magazines. rabotnitsa was set up in 1914 and resumed in 1924 after the revolution of 1917. in the late soviet time it had 76 huge editions. let me give only one example. in 1990, rabotnitsa had a circulation ofmore than 24 million copies. for referential use, in 1989, the population of the soviet union numbered about 286.7 million. the magazine published social and political information covering activities and meetings concerning women's life and work conditions, psychological and educational articles, advice on housekeeping and gardening, letters from the readers, etc. the materials, as a rule, were closely connected to the life of the soviet woman her everyday life, her family life and her work and that explains the popularity of the magazine. other magazines were set up in the 1920s, so that by 1930s there were eighteen popular women's magazines with a total number of monthly copies reaching 800,000. however, not all magazines were approved by the authorities. some were found to lack the proper ideological backbone and were closed, fashion magazines in particular ('dressmaking at home', 'fashion plates', 'fashions of the season', the fashionable world' and many other similar titles­ all in russian, of course) (dashkova 2001: 186). the modem western women's magazines such as cosmopolitan and elle are a phenomenon of the last decade of the post-soviet period. cosmopolitan was set up in russian in 1994, elle in 1996. some features distinguished them from the widespread soviet prototype. they were very expensive and very different from the former soviet magazines but they managed to fmd their own place on the market and their readers very quickly. the new magazines were set up to a high standard of typography and initiated their russian readers into the elements of consumer culture. there were many colorful advertisements with sexy suggestions and materials about sexuality, to which the russian reader had not been accustomed, but which, at the time, made the magazines quite attractive. however, the first impression of their strangeness and novelty was smoothed over by the russian authors' articles adapted to the post-soviet reality. to date, the editions of rabotnitsa and elle are not very different from one another. in 2001, rabotnitsa was printed in 228 thousand copies per month, while the number ofcopies of elle was around 1.800. it seems that the earlier women's magazines had to yield some of their readers to the new magazines. t7' vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 76 if women's images in magazines the prevailing soviet image of women was a rather archaic image of the mother andlor the workwoman. that was why her body was strong and far from being erotic or romantic. all soviet magazines supported 'the rule' ofrepresentation. things changed in the post-soviet period, when advertisements appeared on tv and in other mass­ media outlets. the earlier period of advertising was connected with the ads of western commodities, which opened the door to smuggling images typical of western representation. in the 1990s, an alteration of visual and conceptual woman's image took place from an archaic image of the mother, who was represented by a woman in her middle age, to the young woman with pronounced attractive feminine features. in the mid-1990s another image of woman appeared in the ads to make an excellent complement to the general idea of the modem woman. it is the image of a businesswoman. she is self-sufficient, for she is quite able to fulfill her own material and psychological needs without any help from others. she herself is the subj ect of her own actions. in the new ads the woman is not only a person who spends money earned for her by someone else (by her parents, her husband, her boyfriend, etc.); now she makes her own life, she is the creator of her mode of living. it is that type of woman who attracts the ad-makers, because the woman is now the purpose of an ad rather than the means or just an instrument of advertising all kinds of commodities. accordingly, new gender representations correct traditional cultural stereotypes that show women as passive, "as very feminine, as 'sex object,' as housewives, mothers, homemakers" (dyer 1982: 97). it is interesting to note that it is the western magazines (among women's magazines circulating in russia) that have been spreading the new image. there are hardly any ads in the modem version ofrabotnitsa. what i wish to stress is that only the so-called western magazines claim the right of image making of the young russian woman. the following question then arises: what do the russian women who read women's magazines think about them? . images as standards as for interviews incorporated in this paper, i have had six short interviews with young women who are regularly readers of women's magazines currently published in russia. every interview took about 20 minutes. as the interviews show, 77 hardly any young woman has ever read rabotnitsa. i regularly read elle. i believe that it is one of the quality magazines. i always buy it when i go shopping for new clothes or cosmetics. there is enough information there about commodities and shops where the cosmetics are sold. cosmopolitan i read also. but not so often. i never buy it. i read it only if i can borrow it from a friend. i think i have grown out of cosmo. interviewer: what about rabotnitsa? (laughing) it used to be my favorite magazine when i was a teenager. yes, it really was. but i haven't seen it for about ten years. i am not sure that it sells now (28, manager). it is really difficult to buy rabotnitsa now as it is distributed mostly by subscription. it is interesting to note that, although the quality of typography has improved considerably, the columns and their general contents have remained practically unchanged. as interviews show, the western magazines are gaining popularity. there is another quotation from an interview illustrating my point: i like women's magazines. it may be silly of me but i do like them. they help me forget my everyday troubles. i feel like the ad women. immediately, i want to buy a new lotion or a moisturizing cream ­ or something like that to be like the beautiful women from the pictures in the magazines. the other day i happened to read elle for the first time. it is a rather expensive fashion magazine printed on high-quality, glossy paper, with many photographs, colored illustrations and attractive advertisements. still, i like it (37, university lecturer). new standards of how to be a true woman manifest themselves in ad images. in their tum, commodities from the ads come to be means to achieve a desired image. as a rule, the commodities become a part of everyday life. however, they are often bought for some special occasions as presents and gifts. there are many things advertised in the magazines that seem to be used by western women in order to look perfectly groomed. i mean the magazines do not vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 77 advertise abstract western shops and goods but draw the reader's attention to the goods sold in our shops in this country. i will admit they may be on sale in major cities only. interviewer: do you often buy things advertised in the magazines? i do. but not always for myself. i think i usually buy such things as gifts for close friends or even for myself. if i happen to like something better than the things i used to buy for myself regularly, i may change my habit and start using the new stuff on an everyday basis. attentive friends usually consult the ads and my tastes when they choose things as gifts for me on some special occasions, for my birthday or new year, or something like that. i have a friend who earns a very good salary so she can afford buying extravagant things as gifts (33, office manager). a possibility to break from everyday arrangements and rules is the main characteristic of a holiday. it is a good reason and even an excuse to buy something unusual, luxurious, extravagant, and rather expensive. that is why it is the holiday consumption that creates new standards for everyday consumption replacing the old ones. understandably, the western magazines with their festive bright pictures featuring beautiful women, fashionably dressed, perfectly groomed, worth being imitated play the role of a guide in the world of consumption. conclusion the modem russian society consists of different social groups and, accordingly, has different life­ styles. in its turn, every life-style has its own markers. many of these are closely connected with the status consumption, such as the dress code, hobbies, and special places to go out. modem magazines (and other mass media) represent the markers of social identity by/through different ad images and relevant discourses. the ads show what one should wear; how one should look, what one should eat; what perfume one should buy to be successful. most ads are based on gender stereotypes, body images taking significant place/playing an important role among them. every modem magazine represents norms and images aimed at a certain social group. it is the russian version of western magazines that 78 distributes new images erotic and sexy for the young russian woman while she continues to be an active person. by opening a new world of new commodities and new life-styles, the magazines appear to be educational in a sense. in order to reveal the secret of success of the western magazines in russia we should remember the image of the soviet woman the image of an active, strong and self-sufficient woman. the modem western magazines preserve their content; at the same time, they invent new forms for the content, which make them closer to the russian reader and generally more popular. references a.ai' chuk (ed.) 2000 zhenschina i vizual'nye znaki (woman and visual signs). mowcow: ideia-press. carey, j.w. 1989 communication as culture: essays on media and society. london: unwin hyman. dashkova, t. 2001 "rabotnitsu v massy": politika sotsial'nogo modelirovaniia v sovetskih zhenskih zhumalah 1930-h godov in: novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. 50: 184~ 192. dyer, g. 1982 advertising as communication. london: methuen. levinson, a. 2000 zenschina kak tsel' i kak sredstvo v otechestvennoe reklame in: a.ai'chuk (ed.) zhenschina i vizual'nye znaki. mowcow: ideia-press. p. 43-64. o'barr, w. 1994 culture and the ad: exploring otherness in the w orid ofadvertising. boulder: westview press. vol. 20, no.1 2002, page: 78 microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 95 open forum slovenia and its national winter pastime: in pursuit of an anthropology of alpine skiing vlado kotnik institute for anthropological research, ljubljana introduction in the alpine countries of europe and in scandinavia, skiing has been developed as a distinctive and tremendously significant sport. according to otmar weiss, half of austria’s tourism is based on alpine skiing (1997: 571). also, the central role of skiing, particularly of its nordic type in norwegian, finnish, or swedish society is well noted (sörlin 1995: 147-164). compared to these examples, slovenia’s case is maybe less known but certainly not insignificant or negligible. this text therefore tends to reveal only a few aspects of how alpine skiing became a supposedly indigenous national winter pastime in slovenia. slovenia is a young nation-state situated at the crossroads of slavic, hungarian, germanic and romantic europe; neighboring croatia on the southeast, hungary on the northeast, austria on the north, and italy on the west. its contemporary political form is the outcome of turbulent events that infused the people of the balkans with nationalist aspirations in the 1990s and resulted in the disintegration of yugoslavia. the mere geographic and territorial situation provoked constant national struggles, which the inhabitants of this region have been facing ever since the concept of the nation and of national identity emerged and spread throughout europe in the late 18th and, especially, 19th centuries and was later, in the 20th century, incessantly reestablished (anderson 1991 [1983]; gellner 1987; hobsbawm, 1990; smith 1986; thiesse 1999). for decades, the slovenian public, from such elements as the cultural, political, and sports milieus to the media, has come together in the belief that alpine skiing had an important referential part in building the selfimage of the modern slovenian nation. alpine skiing, referring to the marvelous landscape of a unique land and remarkable natural monuments of national importance, thus perfectly fit the essentialist ideology of national sport. internationally recognized slovenian ski centers, particularly kranjska gora and maribor as two ski resorts hosting world ski cup races, are intensively involved during winter seasons in building glorified national sporting iconography.ci skiing as “anthropology at home” skiing is a quite new, unusual and “exotic” topic for anthropology. on the other hand, anthropology still seems to be a very strange, unusual and “exotic” approach to the ski imaginary. it is with these two initial ascertainments that we can well denote the current state of the relationship between anthropological discipline and ski sport. in the past, it was biomechanics, kinesiology, physiology, and perhaps psychology and sociology that dealt with ski sport and the issues related to it, such as equipment, skier anatomy, injuries, therapy, rehabilitation, ski techniques, development of ski industry and technology, typology of snow, ski tourism, etc. (fritschy & richard & leach 1994; müller et al. 1997; horek & spitaler 2003; yacenda 1992; lind & sanders 1996; howe 2001). the majority of this learn-to-ski literature deals more with the know-how aspect of ski imaginaire while social or cultural aspects are discussed less. however, this paper argues for an extension of these boundaries and research interests by bringing into this broad, eclectic field an anthropological perspective. traditionally, anthropologists perceived all kinds of sports as something outside their academic enterprises and “anthropological locations” (gupta & ferguson 1997). since anthropologists were longing to visit distant places and symbolically different, particularly non-western cultures, it was understandably not easy for them to meet sports as their potential terrain. given that modern sports emerged as part of a wave of invented traditions (hobsbawm 1993) in western centered cultures associated with nationbuilding at the end of the 19th century, it is not surprising that different disciplines have incorporated sports into their research agendas. although anthropology has perceived sports as a research object with certain disciplinary delay, today we know that it can contribute importantly to the sports issues by producing original and fresh understandings on sports whose significances can be best understood when we locate them through ethnographic enterprise. the appearance of a few anthropological works and articles on sports (blanchard 1995; sands 1999; special issue “anthropology and sport” of the the australian journal of anthropology 2002, edited by catherine palmer; philip moore 2004: 37-46) is promising in a sense that the link between anthropology and sport is possible and even productive. thus, anthropological studies on sport have noticeably widened the field, firstly, by anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 96 stressing the ubiquitous nature of sport (blanchard 1995), and secondly, by showing that sport is a culturally conditioned imaginary or social category that, along with material artifacts, social customs, and ideologies, is transported across cultural lines (sands 1999). also, by flavoring each and every national community, sport has become, as shown by richard lapchick’s volume (1996), its own medium of communication, and has important ramifications for national, international and multicultural relationships. my personal acquaintance with skiing goes back to early childhood and to the fact that i have systematically watched the world ski cup races on tv from 1987 onwards. as a child born in the mid 1970s, i was quickly, in a “natural” way, initiated into the mythical national imaginary of the slovenian national skiing story. as far as i remember, taking school courses in skiing, organized trips to local ski slopes, and watching television transmissions of world ski cup races were seasonal rituals performed almost on a daily basis during the wintertime. at first glance, it is to be understood as a pleasant family event or, at most, a socializing passion of the young generation. but beyond this social attire, such winter rituals actually educated people to be good national members. skiing was therefore an effective canal through which each and every individual felt invited into the egalitarian proletarian socialist community. it was a slip into the “good nationalism” of socialism. during the 1980s, skiing grew to such proportions that the successes of slovenian professional skiers were immediately turned into the feature inherent to all slovenians. slovenian ski wins and medals were celebrated with great public festivities and heated receptions of crowds. sometimes, some of them were, whether directly or in taped versions, presented to the broader television audience. in this way, the entire national community participated as one in the success of the nation. watching television images of these nation-gathering ceremonies and public festivitiescii was like a free entry into this enchanting world. i remember that on the day of important ski races, such as the olympics or the world ski championship, lessons in our school were interrupted and children were hauled into classrooms with television sets to watch the slovenian competitor ski. at the peak of the world ski cup season, it often happened that classes were dismissed so that pupils could watch the competitions. this phenomenon is well described by slovenian anthropologist gregor starc, who carried out a detailed scrutiny of slovenian nationalism and sport: having recently discussed this custom to people of my age from different parts of slovenia, they confirmed that the same ritual took place in their schools as well, especially when slovenian skiers, after the first run, stood chances to win medals in the second run. (starc 2004: 167) he sees this romantic practice as an informal part of compulsory education from the 1980s when skiing became so popular that office hours, as one of his informants stated, were stopped short whenever there was a skiing event on tv. some of my informants delivered similar experiences in interviews. the ritual of families' or friends’ arrangements sitting in front of the television every time it showed bojan križaj or mateja svet, both treated today as the two greatest legends of slovenian skiing, is proof of the successful, using irena šumi’s words (2004), “domestication of ideology”. consequently, the media, television in particular, turned audiences into fans which consumed not only successes of skiers but also products of the then slovenian ski industry (for instance, elan manufacturing skis or alpina manufacturing ski shoes), and, in the last instance, skiing culture as such (winter tourism, ski holidays). if a trobriand, hopi, nuer or aborigine anthropologist came to slovenia, he/she would most likely be amazed with the slovenian passion for skiing. when analytically pursuing these issues even i, myself, am amazed by this cultural congruity which i internalized and to which i was subjected so collectively. this finding was for me, as an anthropologist, additional evidence that practicing “anthropology at home” (peirano 1998: 105-128) is far from being entirely familiar with the society in which one lives. domestication of skiing history skiing has been represented in slovenia as the prototype of slovenianness, as the allegedly first slovenian skiers already existed as early as the 16th and 17th centuries. there is a documented legend, probably well known to all slovenians, which says that traditional slovenian downhill skiing was born in the region of the bloke plateau, a semi-forestall tableland region placed south-westwards of ljubljana’s basin. following this legend, the traditional bloke skier continued to be present in slovenia as the proto-skier of slovenian modern skiing since the 19th century, and got some new meanings and accentuations in media, particularly in daily press and on television in the last decades of the 20th century. particularly in the last decade, details of this legend were often summoned by television anchors, sports journalists, field reporters, studio commentators, sports analysts and play-by-play announcers with a perceivable attention and passion. they liked to mention that the baron valvasor wrote precise reports on skiing activities in slovenia as early as the 17th century. more concretely, the skiing of carniolanciii peasants – known as “smukanje” (an anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 97 archaic slovenian term for “down hilling”) – was described in 1689 in the nationally glorified book die ehre deß herzogthums crain [the glory of the duchy of carniola] written by the baron janez vajkard valvasor (1641-1693), a nobleman, scholar, polymath, and member of the london royal society. valvasor's book is a description of carniolan geography, nature, history, customs, and language. in this monumental work, he also described an “odd practice of sliding down snow-covered slopes” of the peasants on the slopes around turjak, the bloke plateau, and its surroundings (valvasor, 1977 [1689], p. 94). this famous part of the early documented ski history has been discussed just recently by slovenian sports scientists, ethnologists and chroniclers. their leading ideas such as “the slovenian origins of european skiing” (rajtmajer 1994: 97-101), “the bloke plateau as the cradle of slovenian skiing” (urbanc 1999: 412-413) and “the revived skiing on wooden skis” (dolžan eržen 2004: 124-125) show that the history of slovenian ski history is still strongly domesticated in the realm of homeland studies and ideology. if gymnastics was, on the one hand, the first sport that was institutionalized among slovenians in the 19th century nationalist gymnastic movement then skiing, on the other hand, represented an important point of slovenianness and yugoslavness, especially during the last two decades of the yugoslav socialist state (starc 2004:11). in this respect, skiing was used particularly to build divisions between ‘us’ and ‘others’ which usually varied according to particular historical periods and contexts. for instance, in the 19th century, the others were mostly hapsburgs and austrians, in the first half of the 20th century, the others were germans and italians, in the second half of the 20th century the others were sometimes serbs, sometimes croats, or both. modern skiing was introduced to slovenia at the beginning of the 20th century. early skiing enthusiasts united in a group called dren [cornel] and one of their members, rudolf badjura, who is today considered the main historian of slovenian skiing, wrote that the members of dren first started skiing in 1911 (1956: 7). however, this group, and especially badjura himself, were responsible for the dissemination of the belief that skiing is a slovenian national sport. rudolf badjura (1881-1963) was one of the most diligent skiing activists. he used ethnographic methods to prove that skiing was an ancient slovenian tradition. on the basis of his findings he invented the slovenian skiing terminology and eagerly defended it against foreign, especially german words. he was the author of the first documentary film about slovenian skiing (badjura, 1931, quoted in starc 2004:102). the first alpine slalom competition in slovenia was held in 1932 (slovenski narod [slovenian nation] 1932: 3). however, after the establishment of the kingdom of serbs, croats and slovenians, the slovenian/german opposition was turned into the opposition between the slovenians and the serbs/croats respectively. in that period, skiing as popular sporting practice also became, consequently, a signifier of slovenianness in new yugoslav relations and realities. skiing was therefore particularly perceived as a traditional slovenian sport that was revived after three centuries. because of its alleged long standing tradition and distant origin, downhill skiing was presented as an exclusively slovenian sport, i.e., a non-hybrid, original national sport. its reputation as the slovenian national sport was further legitimized by the fact that it was poorly practiced in other parts of yugoslavia. in the post-wwii socialist yugoslavia, skiing remained exclusively attributed to the slovenian people. the myth of skiing as the essence of “slovenian nature” had begun to circulate all over the yugoslav federation before the wwii. even in the discourse of brotherhood and unity that successfully united the yugoslav nations until the 1980s, skiing preserved its “slovenian character” and was posited as one of the most distinctive signifiers upon which slovenianness was built without much objection. the reasons for this are argued by a slovenian sport journalist, one of my informants, as follows: look, the myth on “yugoslav skiing” as the slovenian national sport has been built not only by the slovenians but also with the help of other yugoslav nations. it was not only the slovenians who believed in the ethnically determined talent of the slovenian nation for skiing. it is really interesting how people from the other parts of yugoslavia shared a similar belief on this. […] as far as i can remember, we, as slovenians, were named as skiers by other yugoslavs. since our competitors in skiing achieved better and better results, this perception of course created even bigger impression about us as skiing people … certainly, radio and tv direct broadcasts of skiing which became so popular during the 1980s, fortified the slovenian superiority in skiing. television in particular permeated enormous and multiple identifications with this sport. but at the same time, as gregor starc points out, the distinction between slovenianness and yugoslavness was preserved in the idea of national purity of skiing (2004:104). in late socialist slovenia, the social resonance and symbolic status of alpine skiing became also politically determined and anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 98 obtained a prestigious position among sports. especially when antagonisms between slovenianness and yugoslavness arose, alpine skiing fortified its position as the most purely slovenian sport, and, therefore, was used as a tool of socio-political and identity distinction between the “slovenian sporting identity” showing its closeness to the “western european identity”, and imaginings of the balkan communities of the other yugoslavs, nick-named “the southern brothers”. antinomies, such as “slovenians embody individualism”, “southern balkan brothers are better in collective sports”, paved the road from pre-yugoslav and yugoslav sporting body to emancipated slovenian skiing identity noticeably. in the turbulent late yugoslav political reality, skiing not only kept a privileged position in the national imagination of slovenianness, but growing international successes of slovenian skiers during the 1980s gave it epic proportions. alpine skiers, such as bojan križaj, mateja svet, boris strel, rok petrovič, jure franko and nataša bokal were the athletes who, by winning several world ski cup podiums and victories, small crystal globes for the season’s best runner in a particular ski discipline, world championships podiums or titles and olympic medals, materialized the myth of skiing as the slovenian national sport. their astonishing accomplishments were promptly transformed by radio broadcasting, the press, and particularly by television into a matter of national pride and cohesion, which reminded of the important social position of skiing (dnevnik 1984; mal 1983; delo 1987). during the 1980s, križaj and svet became slovenian as well as yugoslav heroes beyond all comparison. križaj became perceived as the beginner of the successful slovenian ski story and as one of the greatest legends of slovenian skiing who, in his best times, was one of the greatest rivals of the legendary and almost unbeatable swedish skier ingemar stenmark. svet was perceived as slovenia’s most successful female alpine skier by far. as one of the world’s best female skiers in the late eighties, she was one of the greatest opponents of the brilliant and infallible swiss skier vreni schneider (kancler 1987). both were also awarded the title “best yugoslav athlete”. one of my informants, a ski fan, elaborates: i take the 1984 winter olympics in sarajevo particularly important for the slovenian people because these olympics further strengthened the slovenian superiority in skiing. the entire nation, i mean the entire yugoslav federation, was forged on couch in front of tv sets during this event. after these olympic games, our southern balkan brothers related us to skiing even more. given the absence and bad results of skiers from other parts of yugoslavia and the successes of slovenian skiers, both the slovenian media and public embraced the belief that skiing talent must be an ethnically, i.e., genetically determined feature in the nation itself. the slovenian superiority in competitive skiing was fully confirmed on the international level. when turning into one of the most characteristic features perceived as naturally inherent to all slovenians, skiing became ultimately exploited by the blut und boden ideology. the national distinctiveness of slovenian culture found additional argument for its social necessity as the first political tensions appeared in the wake of tito’s death, and especially in the years that followed. after slovenia’s separation from yugoslavia, skiing immediately became a euphemism for independence. skiing was positioned as an all-encompassing symbol of the slovenian struggle for independence. all previous skiing victories were perceived as slovenian and were denied its yugoslavness, even though they were still accomplished under the yugoslav flag. thus, after the collapse of yugoslavia in 1991, slovenia was faced with a situation that called for a clear definition of the slovenian nation (starc 2004:75-76, 137-139, 165-167, 171). represented as a vehicle promoting the story of “small nation, great issues”, skiing saw a strengthened position as the slovenian national sport and as the signifier of the slovenian nation. thus, the nation-building process mobilized skiing as the “real slovenian thing”. the 1992 winter olympics were the first at which slovenian skiers competed as a team from independent slovenia. the presence of slovenian skiers at this highly recognized international sporting event was, in the slovenian press and television sports broadcasts, exposed as slovenia’s journey from “the balkans” into “europe”. live participation of slovenian audiences in this giant televised sporting event enabled national imagining in an enormous dimension. press and television discourses of skiing followed this omnipresent revitalization of affirmative nationalism in the 1990s while presented as a continuation of much earlier developments. culture, as the guarantee of national survival, and sport, as the guarantee of international recognition, were two essential domains walking together hand in hand constituting the new social reality labeled the “slovenian transition”. under the transitional political ideology, the myth of slovenian lady skiers as “slovenian golden foxes” and “devilish slovenians” was created by the anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 99 national media. this sexualized myth, also known under the slogan “the female slovenian skiers are flying”, was about four slovenian female skiers, urška hrovat, špela pretnar, alenka dovžan and katja koren who represented, after the overwhelmingly glorified skiing story in the 1980s, a new wave of “slovenian hope and success”. in those politically unstable times, such slogans had strong political connotations connected with the idea of a “small” and “endangered nation,” once pertaining to ex-yugoslavia; a nation no longer prepared to surrender to anyone else. since the plebiscite for slovenia’s independence from yugoslavia, the media embarked on an extensive recounting of the story “of how slovenians became the slovenians” due to skiing. the new country activated old traditions and symbols in order to provide a positive self-image and coherent national narrative. the successes of ski racers, which had, since the time of yugoslavia, been treated as the national sport became a significant catalyst in constructing the new nation-state identity. all in all, it can be established that people living in the territory of today’s slovenia developed their own sense of particular ethnic, cultural and national identity. we could say that this identity is the outcome of many contingent socio-historical events that influenced people’s communal imagining and consequently enabled them to build and fixate their specific homogeneous national feelings, belonging, and identity. commodifications of nationalism a great amount of literature, which has considered the topic of national sporting identities in sustaining national, regional, or group identities through different types of sport (archetti 1999; gruneau & whitson 1994; mewett 1999), confirms that sports have helped shape national identities and, further, that national cultures have shaped contemporary sports. many western centered studies focused on nation and sports often presuppose that the nation is a fixed, independent, ready-constituted and self-evident organizational form which exploits its social resources, sports among them, to achieve its national goals and unity. there can be found an inherent tendency to confirm the fact that great nations and well established national milieus, as historically long-continued and well fixed social categories, dominate in producing great national sports issues. however, this frame does not fit the case of the slovenian national milieu entirely. namely, the sustenance of the slovenian nation, as well as the nationalization of sports in slovenia, was never in its history dependent on its own independent social formation. as there was no such formation, both phenomena were more the outcomes of a complex but rather contingent and situational constellation. national sport focuses substantially on national unity and identity, championing the dominant values, ideals, and resources of the nations in which they originate. sports are a part of people’s everyday lives that allow national identification and nationalism to operate intensively without reflection. it is not surprising at all that this was also the case in slovenia. especially not if it is taken that the slovenians were a relatively small population that never in their history formed an independent state or any other kind of autonomous political formation. for centuries, the slovenian people were always subject to foreign rule and foreign bureaucracy. however, despite constant foreign rule, a population “on the sunny side of the alps” – the postindependence tourist slogan is in mind here– somehow managed to pursue a shared sense of history, even though it was poorly formed and predominantly based on language continuity. so, this population which was, for the last two centuries, collectively self-imagined as a “suppressed nation” always represented by or through other “nations”, or through different political formations (napoleonian, illyrism, hapsburg monarchy, austrian-hungarian empire, first yugoslavia – the kingdom of yugoslavia, second yugoslavia – the socialistic federal republic of yugoslavia), succeeded to develop both a nation and, more recently, a nationstate. it is therefore quite expectable that every activity within such a nation can quickly achieve national importance. probably this was also the case for skiing, as this particular practice has been documented within contemporary slovenia since the 17th century and, in the following centuries, it became repeatedly represented as the prototype for slovenianness. skiing practice therefore served not only as a tool charged with nationalist ideas, but also as an imaginary in which people produced knowledge of what it means to be a slovenian. due to this, in slovenia, any reflection of nationalism in sports is still negatively connoted and usually subjugated to ambivalence between shame and pride, justification and denial. in slovenia, national commodification of alpine skiing represented, in the last few decades, a means of national identification since skiing offered opportunities for the slovenians to develop a strong sense of being ‘one people’. this nationalisation of skiing in slovenia was formed by different cultural traditions and political arrangements that identified skiing as part of an integral cultural activity unifying slovenian national culture and life. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 100 ironies of indigenism the idea of national purity in sports confirms, as shown by david mayall’s volume (1998), firstly, that sport largely employs ethnicity, and secondly, that ethnicity matters in sport. eduardo archetti (1999), for example, found this process of hybridization one of the most crucial mechanisms that turned football, polo, and tango into argentinean national sports. however, as far as slovenia is concerned, i, along with starc, observed the opposite. namely, slovenian state-building discourse has always negated the hybridism of skiing and has tried to turn it into a ‘pure’, ‘non-hybrid’, ‘authentic’ and ‘autochthonous’ slovenian sporting practice (starc 2004: 12; 2005: 67). such politically motivated discourse has also affected the media. due to this ideological matrix, certain sports, for example, football or certain features of certain sports, for example, telemark skiing or cross-country skiing (also known as nordic skiing), were perceived as somewhat ‘alien’ to slovenianness. of course, this was not the case for alpine (downhill) skiing, which is treated as traditional slovenian sporting practice. the idea of downhill skiing as an indigenous slovenian sport is, in a way, in sharp opposition to the foreign literature on the origins of skiing. international encyclopedic knowledge (cf. articles on ‘skiing’ and ‘alpine skiing’ in encyclopædia britannica, encarta encyclopedia, the columbia encyclopedia, wikipedia) mutually agrees that skiing was born in northern europe, in scandinavia. alpine skiing was born when, at the close of the 16th century, nordic skiing was exported from norway and introduced to central europe where nordic techniques were adapted for the steeper alpine slopes. as early as the first half of the 18th century, alpine skiing was developed as a form of recreation to move down snow covered slopes. alpine skiing techniques that evolved during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the alps of central europe are ascribed to austrian ski inventors who pioneered the idea of competitive modern alpine skiing. in slovenia, this part of skiing history is ignored and removed from any potential confrontation with the slovenian version, which says that downhill skiing originated on slovenian soil. as a well-preserved isolated island in the middle of europe, the slovenian myth of the indigenousness of downhill skiing could go national without any objection, and thereby live vividly through media discourses until today. in the case of slovenia, the first irony is in the fact that the slovenians are not nearly as successful as other nations in professional competitive skiing – for instance, austria, germany, italy, switzerland, france, sweden or norway – which participate in the world ski cup races, some counting their wins in hundreds. the second irony is that the success of other nations and the lack of success of slovenian skiers always fortify nationalistic mechanisms that turn the sport’s disadvantage into the nation’s advantage with instantaneous magic power. in disadvantageous moments press, sports journalists, television commentators, sports news presenters, field reporters, and radio announcers immediately start delivering, between the lines, an explanation which would go like this if appropriately translated into our analytical language: slovenian skiing is a matter of the innate skiing talent of slovenians and not only the matter of forcibly learned competitive skills. this attitude is more fruitfully explicit in words of one regular consumer of ski telecasts, one of my informants, who enlightened me like this: look, i will tell you now what is the mystery and mastery of the entire slovenian skiing story. skiing is truly the ‘real slovenian thing’ not only because of our professional racers and their success but because it is in our blood. you see, the slovenian skiing is something that is beyond all wins and defeats of our skiers who compete for medals, wins and money. they are important but they are not all that. they maybe lose but slovenian skiing doesn’t … they can be beaten in the process but our skiing tradition cannot be. hence, the reference to blood and ground ideology, which persuades that slovenian skiing exists by nature and not training, is not difficult to see. the ideology that supports skiing as a genetic trait of the nation is usually explained by different essentialist and naturalist ideas of family as national treasure. or, to quote one of my informants, a slovenian sport broadcast director: you know, the essence of the slovenian alpine skiing is hidden in this simple sentence ‘let’s go ski on saturday or sunday’. don’t you agree that it seems fairly unusual if there is someone who can’t ski? it is naturally presupposed that all slovenians can ski. you know, i’d like to say that everything began in a family context. ‘let’s go ski on sunday’ was and still is a regular family ritual during the winter season in slovenia. so, without knowing this context you can’t understand the success of our skiers mateja svet, bojan križaj or rok petrovič. roughly said, their professional careers and successes began with this simple “let’s go ski” when they were children. […] look at the croatian family kostelić today, it is the same principle. it’s all about the family. you see, the father as the first trainer. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 101 this indicates how deeply this sport is rooted in the collective consciousness, and how vigorously it is determined by national ideology that teaches that slovenians are born skiers. if, in brazil, football is considered the national obsession and “opium of the brazilian people” (lever 1969: 36-43) then in slovenia skiing is considered the national virtueciv. probably the most reasonable explanation for the eminent social position of skiing is its longterm presence on slovenian soil and its privileged role in slovenian nationalist processes. besides having a long history of popularity, skiing has been throughout the second half of the 20th century tremendously reinforced by the rise of new media, particularly by the development of television, radio and the rise of press. problems with hybridism skiing took a significant part in the process of slovenian separation from yugoslavia in the early 1990s. in yugoslav multinational sports arenas it served as the field for expressing slovenianness in opposition to others, especially the croats and the serbs. distinctions between “we” and “they” were a product of complex competing political discourses. many decades before yugoslav disintegration, there were mythologies that divided the slovenians from the other yugoslav republics as well as from the neighbouring north-western alpine countries. but in the late 1990s, the sacred slovenian sport myth was seriously questioned, because the croatian skiers janica and her brother ivica kostelić began defeating slovenian skiers in the process in the world ski cup races (starc 2005: 76-78). the idea of slovenia skiing superiority was losing its persuasiveness at that time since croats began winning and challenging their superiority in skiing. the successes of slovenian skiers were now overshadowed by croatian skiers. the embarrassment was noticeable in the slovenian media, particularly on television, which has been traditionally skiing’s strongest ally (starc 2004:59, 208). consequently, slovenian skiing nationalism had to adapt its ideas to the new situation. because of the new situation, skiing provoked ambivalent feelings in the slovenian public sphere, all the more because the tradition was jeopardized by lack of success. radio commentators and television anchors have challenged a new explanation that would preserve slovenia’s skiing myth untouched as follows: the mechanism was simple, efficient and in accord with the prevailing nationalist idea that stigmatized hybridity as impure: the croatian skiing was branded a hybrid of the slovenian skiing school and a result of workaholic fanaticism on the part of the kostelić siblings. the alleged impurity of croatian skiing was the solution to the idea of purity of slovenian skiing. the dividing mechanism that is obvious in these media responses operated on the basis of various dichotomies such as slovenian skiing/croatian skiing = purity/impurity = nonhybridity/hybridity = authenticity/imitation, etc. these dichotomies sustained the idea that skiing was, is, and will remain a non-hybrid, pure, traditional and authentic slovenian sport regardless of its momentary lack of success. (starc 2004: 107-108) another mechanism to maintain the myth of slovenian skiing superiority over croatian focused on the slovenisation of croatian skiing. on the occasion of the final season’s (2001/02) slalom race where croatian skier ivica kostelić won and received the world ski cup small crystal globe for the season’s best slalom runner, slovenian television commentator igor e. bergant was trying to assuage the slovenian television audience by referring to kostelić’s statement in which he may have allegedly admitted: “i am the product of the slovenian school of skiing.” thus, as starc further explicates (2003: 923), his accomplishments were represented as part of the success of slovenian skiing; his bodily abilities for skiing and winning were contextualized as “imported” to croatia from slovenia: namely, since ivica’s early youth, his skiing trainer is vincencij jovan arriving from town celje [slovenia]. (said by bergant commentating men's slalom race on slovenian national tv 2, march 9, 2002) additionally, the media was the meeting point where the hesitations, embarrassments and problems with recent slovenian skiing superiority and inferiority in relation to “us” and “others” were highly contested, negotiated, and finally, transformed into a new national essentialism. by doing so, slovenian skiers were turned into the bearers of universally good slovenianness that transcends the particularities of individual members of the national skiing community. conclusions this article has provided data and results that can be summarized in a few final thoughts. while the majority of the literature on sport and national identity is based mostly on western european, north american, and australian experiences, this article concentrates on a nation that is seldom featured in international anthropological literature, but also entirely underrepresented and unknown to many western academic scenes whose anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 102 access to post-socialist worlds is usually taken from second-hand given information. i hope that this paper brings some interesting insights into the peculiarity and specificity of the slovenian case, and adds sufficiently to the existing literature. as we can see, the ‘slovenian skiing identity’ does not exist per se but as a mythical narration of a nation. it exists, therefore, in an imaginary of naturalist, organicist and nationalist slovenian ideologies of the 19th and 20th centuries which promote social phenomena being perceived as something purely natural, organic or national. in slovenia, alpine skiing has become the national sport not as an economic commodity influenced by commercial market constraints, but rather as a vehicle for the creation of meaningful discourse about national identity. this is why alpine skiing has been nationalized predominantly through purist ideology that presents skiing as a pure and autochthonous slovenian sport and the natural embodiment of slovenian national identity. consequently, good scores of slovenian skiers contributed to the economic status of alpine skiing by attracting more financial support and attention from the state. my focus was not the economic value of nationalized sport but it seems that the link between financial support, market, sports industry and nationalized sport can be confirmed. even more likely, individual accomplishments of slovenian skiers have not only served as points of collective identification but have also represented an effective social substitute for political and economic failures beyond the domain of sports. moreover, alpine skiing has played a distinctive role in the slovenian nation-imagining process, all the more because it was strongly regulated by the denial of hybridism. downhill skiing has been prone to be perceived as pure, authentic, and indigenous slovenian sporting practice. notes ci for a discussion about the 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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/history_of_skiing yacenda, j. 1992 alpine skiing: steps to success. champaign, il: human kinetics publishers. -.....------------------------------....' anthropology ofeast europe review issue editors: melissa caldwell and nancy ries robert rotenberg, managing editor barbara west, associate editor eva huseby-darvas, nancy ries matti bunz/, book review editor laszlo kart, media editor special issue: new directions in postsocialist studies contents a note from the managing editor ........................................................................................... 3 robert rotenberg depaul university introduction to the issue ........................................................................................................... 5 melissa l. caldwell harvard university discussant remarks: mobility, labor, and ties that bind ....................................................... 9 sascha goluboff, washington and lee university brain drain, bogus asylum seekers, and babies: conflicting discourses of mobility and fertility in bulgaria and the european union ......................................................................... 13 kristen ghodsee, bowdoin college between tragedy and reality: armenian women's labor migration in the post-soviet period ...................................................................................................................................... 23 armine ishkanian. capitalism and socialism as conflicting cultural models in nicaraguan politics ................ 31 bradley tatar, university at albany selling oneself, selling the nation: translating slovaks for the eyes of europe .................... 37 jonathan larson university of michigan living in truth: physics as a way oflife..............................................................................43 pal nyiri, joana breidenbach university ofoxford body-alterations and the creation ofthe other: a macedonian case ................................... .55 i1ka thiessen st. thomas university who would create a czech feminism?" challenging assumptions in the process of creating relevant feminisms in the czech republic ............................................................ 61 karen kapusta-pofahl university ofminnesota endangering masculinity in kosova: can albanian women say no? ................................... 71 nita luci university of michigan vol. 20, no.2 2002, page: i anthropology of east europe review after the folkloric movement: traditional life in post-socialist moldova ........................ 83 jennifer cas indiana university architecture and the state: moscow urban concepts after socialism ................................... 91 anna sokolina the life of baldan chimitovich gomboev:using personal narratives to approach buriat post-soviet music ................................................................................................................. 101 tristra newyear indiana university the role and development of shamanistic discourse among southern siberian ethnic groups in the post-soviet period ....................................................................................................... 1 09 andrei vinogradov university of saskatchewan (consumer) paradise lost:capitalist dynamics and disenchantment in rural bulgaria ... 119 gerald w. creed hunter college and the graduate school, city university of new york on the preferential treatment of hungarians living in neighbouring countries .................... 127 petteri laihonen and heino nyyssonen university of jyvaskyla nationalism, marxism, and western popular culture in yugoslavia: ideologies, genuine and spurious ......................................................................................................................... 135 andrei simit university of southern california please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($20iyr. for full-time faculty and professionals, $1olyrfor students andpart-timefaculty; european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($30), or additional copies ofthis special issue ($20) to the managing editor: the web page for the anthropowgy ofeast europe reviewleast european anthropology group contains links to most ofthe previously published articles. it can befound at this url: http://las1.depauledulaeerl robert rotenberg, (eeag) anthropology department, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore ave, chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 773/325-7460; fax 773/325-4761; email: rrotenbe@depauledu. barbara west, (eeag) department of anthropology, university of the pacific, stockton ca. 95211 email: bwest@uop.edu nancy rues (soyuz), anthropology, colgate university, hamilton, ny 13346; email: nries@mail.colgate.edu. eva huseby-darvas (eeag), behavioral science dept.,university ofmichigan, dearborn, mi 48128 email: evdarvas@umich.edu. matti bunzl, (eeag), department of anthropology, university of illinois at urbana-champaign, 109 davenport hall, 607 s. matthews, urbana, il 61801; email: bunzl@uiuc.edu. laszl6 kurti, (eeag), film editor, department ofpolitical science, eotvos lorand university, egyetem ter. 1-3,1056 budapest; email: lkurti@helka.iif.hu. © depaul university 2002 issn: 1054-4720 vol. 20, no.2 2002, page: 2 i mailto:lkurti@helka.iif.hu mailto:bunzl@uiuc.edu mailto:evdarvas@umich.edu mailto:nries@mail.colgate.edu mailto:bwest@uop.edu http://las1.depauledulaeerl tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 20 processions in the street: georgian orthodox privilege and religious minorities’ response to invisibility william eastwood indiana university taking to the streets on palm sunday, 2007, in tbilisi, georgia, i walked to church in an annual procession sponsored by the evangelical-baptist church of georgia [ebc]. around forty members took part in the morning trek through the city, including the ebc archbishop, the ebc president, the general secretary of the association of american baptist churches in georgia on a visit, tbilisi-based baptist pastors, lay leaders, as well as ministers from other regions. also making the procession were a few children and teenagers, and a handful of longterm foreign visitors including my wife and me. on a journey that would take us almost six miles, we walked on the outskirts of town in the district of didi dighomi at the church’s main office and senior citizen care facility, bethel center (beteli tsentri). we left in the morning around 10:00, led not by church leaders but by a donkey and a specially commissioned icon of christ’s entry into jerusalem. many of the ministers were dressed in their usual clerical vestments, the archbishop most noticeably so in his purple robe, hat, cross necklace, and shepherd’s crook. many of us carried palm fronds. the weather was clear and relatively warm which made for a good mood shared by all. the procession was far from austere, instead punctuated with our chatting and curious stares of frequent onlookers along sidewalks and from motor vehicles. we clogged the streets, often negotiating a place for ourselves among the passing traffic. while not deliberately disruptive, with a donkey and a gaggle of church folk, sidewalks could not always contain us, so we took our liberty in the street. we snaked our way through the bustling auto-bazaar, then across the river at the main marshrutka (minibus taxi) station into the didube district. a while further we reached the main baptist cathedral, renamed peace cathedral several months later, where the palm sunday icon was publicly blessed and the two-hour church service began in earnest with bell ringing, liturgical dancing, and the eucharist. it was a procession without protests or emotional performances, yet neither was it terribly formal or solemn. that same week, on april 6, “red friday” (the orthodox equivalent of catholicprotestant good friday), the ebc organized, for the fifth consecutive year, another procession through the streets of tbilisi. the baptists invited representatives and parishioners of the other christian communities to join them in a march commemorating christ’s crucifixion. armenians, roman-catholics, and lutherans all had a presence during the procession. the georgian orthodox church had been invited as well, but evidently had declined to participate. although the distances of both processions and the number participating were about the same, this second journey felt much longer. this was explicitly an ecumenical procession. it began at the armenian cathedral in tbilisi’s old town and proceeded across the downtown through the city center and eventually across the river, visiting roman catholic and lutheran cathedrals, and finally reaching the baptist peace cathedral. we entered each cathedral and read a small litany composed of a bible reading of one of the gospel accounts of the crucifixion, a homily prepared by a representative minister, and a collective recitation of the lord’s prayer (“mamao chveno”). in the streets, the procession was lead by a six-foot wooden cross. after exiting each cathedral that church’s leader would carry the cross with the baptist archbishop as a sign of christian unity. much like the palm sunday procession, the event was friendly, nonconfrontational, and not given to strong emotion even as we brought traffic to a standstill when we cut across busy intersections or blocked a lane. and like before, looks and stares followed us from place to place even as we walked and talked among ourselves. when we walked downtown, we bisected the famous freedom square (along with the automobiles circling the roundabout) and continued down rustaveli avenue, the main thoroughfare. at the parliament building, without fanfare, we paused, huddled together and prayerfully recited the lord’s prayer. then we walked on. although officially an ecumenical march, the majority of participants were baptist. other than the short anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 21 distances church leaders walked when they carried the cross, only a few from churches other than baptist managed the entire trek. the baptist archbishop said later that it was the most successful red friday march they had ever had. this article highlights the georgian baptists’ public struggle for equitable recognition. in particular i concentrate on the political ambiguity created by the current georgian government that, when working in tandem with other factors, acts as a formidable obstacle to keep baptists (as well as other nonorthodox religious groups) out of “georgian public space.” but baptists in both processions and together with other religious minorities in the second procession appear to challenge their marginalization through their own selfdisclosure. although for years non-orthodox christians have been disenfranchised through a lack of legal recourse and marginalization through intimidation and at times outright violence, baptists along with other christian minorities are now declaring their presence in the center of the city, their city. however, it is difficult to say who in power is listening. in georgia today, georgian orthodox christianity enjoys a privileged position in the politics of national identity. it belongs to the dominant discourse of the nation-state linking authentic membership in the national community with allegiance to the georgian orthodox church. whereas the georgian orthodox church has enjoyed a centuries-long presence in georgian history, the past several decades of political foment in the country have transformed adherence to georgian orthodox christianity into a litmus test for national devotion. in the later years of the soviet union, georgian dissidents began to mobilize against the soviet government, often using the orthodox church and its symbolic and historic resources to define ethnonational boundaries. they promoted the georgian orthodox church as a symbol of the authentic georgian community, marginalizing those outside of the church’s domain. even today, we see the georgian orthodox church receiving overwhelming support in the media and government even while ethnic minorities and native georgians who participate in nonorthodox religious traditions (including muslims, jews, catholics, and protestants) are swept under the carpet of public debate out of suspicion that they may be threats to the nation’s well-being. in this atmosphere of mistrust, over the past ten years, the evangelical-baptist church of georgia has initiated a series of internal reforms. based on my ethnographic fieldwork among georgian baptists, including extensive interviews with the baptist archbishop and the association president, these reforms were a conscious effort to root out the ebc’s selfascribed sectarian legacy and to bridge gaps between georgian baptists and the orthodox majority by transforming the ebc into what they deem to be more “culturally relevant.” these reforms aim to transform the church both in its relationship to itself and with society at large. the most provocative of these reforms has been the adaptation of orthodox symbols and traditions for ordinary baptist worship. in the processions, we see these visible changes, now standard issue, in the use of icons and the orthodox-like clerical appearances of the baptist archbishop and his retinue. these processions, however, offer an important glimpse into the public face of ebc reforms and their contestation of orthodox power in georgian society. the motivations for these processions stem from broader, “outwardly facing” reform goals that include giving attention to issues of social justice, building citywide ecumenical dialogue, and exercising a “prophetic role” of speaking truth to state power. ambiguity and invisibility these processions are part of georgian baptists’ efforts (and in the red friday procession a collective effort of many religious minorities) to address their own “invisibility” in public discourse. i use the analogy of invisibility to convey the kind of marginality that baptists and their peers have experienced in recent years, stemming from the ambiguity of politicians’ endeavors to reorganize the government according to western neoliberal norms. my study joins other anthropology investigating these public instances of ambiguity, which paul manning identifies as the result of a major thrust since the 2003 rose revolution “to create a new cosmology, a self-conscious ‘new reality’” (manning 2007: 173). turning his attention to the original, stage-setting student protests of 2001, their effect on the rose revolution, and the incorporation of their reformist values into post-rose revolution government policy, manning identifies highly effective rhetorical strategies that managed to assuage widespread popular mistrust in anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 22 government. a key objective of these strategies was to distance the protests from the discredited post-soviet governments of zviad gamsakhurdia and eduard shevardnadze (the 2001 protests took place during the nadir of shevardnadze’s rule). among other things, organizers reframed the protests as “a colorful mélange of political images and references from frankly contradictory political programs” (manning 2007: 179). manning highlights the juxtaposition of secular and sacred images at one point in these protests when popular television cartoon caricatures lampooning the discredited government were displayed side by side with icons of the virgin mary (the theotokos) and st. george (both patron saints of the nation-state). these images along with the speeches that accompanied them helped to distance the reformers from the dysfunctional and democratically incapable regime while embracing the “surety” of georgia’s sacralized nationhood. moreover, this re-emergence of national forms to promote state success legitimized saakashvili’s meteoric rise to power, even though such national gestures have acted merely “as a local veneer for a political product that is effectively neoliberal” (manning 2007: 176). coincidentally, despite international attention and investment, self-congratulatory fanfare, and pomp, very little has changed (manning 2007: 202, dunn 2008: 254). this political ambiguity can be found in other public sectors. elizabeth dunn points out the uneven nature of georgian neoliberal governance by focusing on the astounding rate of cases of botulism in georgia, the world’s highest. she explains that unlike the vogue sectors of prisoner health, education or law enforcement which have received the most international attention, the agricultural sector is a “nonstate space” that is “free from regulation or standardization” and “a zone uncontrolled by the state” (dunn 2008: 255). these nonstate spaces represent the failure of the reform-minded state to consolidate governmental power through policy and oversight. if agriculture is one blind spot in local governance because it exists outside the immediate concern of lawmakers, the religious sector represents not a nonstate space, but rather a “non-nonstate space”—where state power has adopted a clear protocol for securing the interests of one religious institution, the georgian orthodox church, but not others. religious minorities are left unrepresented, uninsured, and invisible as religious institutions, so that the religious sector is legislated and not legislated at the same time. this state-sponsored ambiguity of religious freedom results in the prevailing discursive “visibility” of the georgian orthodox church and the consequent invisibility of non-orthodox. the government’s uneven application of reforms points to its inability or unwillingness to create a truly innovative political cosmology. in terms of religion, the state’s failure to successfully governmentalize the expectations of non-orthodox citizens highlights a persistent national discourse in georgian affairs that refuses to link state success outside a narrowly defined ethno-religious membership. this kind of ambiguity underlies the public spaces of the city that religious minorities are negotiating in these religious processions. i approach the idea of the “city” as urban space embedded in and emerging from relations of (often hegemonic) power that, following zukin (1995), “shap[e] public space for social interaction and [construct] a visual representation of the city” (24). in this view, the city is more often a stage or a framing device for ostensibly more important matters and relations. yet the very fact that a city can stage or frame suggests that its unquestioned and unnoticed presence does indeed play a part in the discursive formations underlying the politics of the everyday. this is not to assign undue agency to the city, but rather to infer how urban areas contribute to the naturalness of hegemony in everyday life. while i am not trying to overdetermine the power of the orthodox church in the everyday lives of people living in georgia, i do contend that the advantages enjoyed by the georgian orthodox church in the politics of the georgian nation-state has real consequences, whether in government or in a public venue, say, simply walking down the street. one of these consequences is an orthodox monopoly of urban areas, analogous to what page and thomas (1994) have called “white public space” in the united states. they define white public space as any area that “may entail particular or generalized locations, sites, patterns, configurations, tactics, or devices that routinely, discursively, and sometimes coercively privilege euro-americans over nonwhites” (page and thomas 1994: 111). appropriating public space becomes a tactic of those in power to endorse that power in areas where all members of society frequently come together (page and thomas 1994: 113). in georgia, what emerges at the intersection of physical structures, legal anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 23 discourse, and national ideology is what we could call “georgian public space,” keeping in mind that the word georgian denotes the ideological limits of ethnicity, which includes affiliation with the georgian orthodox church. public areas of the city, in this sense, are not just georgian public space, but “orthodox georgian public space.” in the dominant national discourse, there is no admission of any other kind of georgian space. bradford martin (2004) found in his own study of public performance in the united states in the 1960s that artists of the counterculture attempted to bridge a gap between culture and politics, meshing their activism in the unexpected spaces of the everyday. by removing their contestation outside the museum, the hall, and the auditorium, activists sought to transform mundane spaces into impromptu stages with their various performances. “the street,” as it were, was transformed into a public site for contesting the status quo. of course, the street had always been public, but addressing the institutional chasm between the arts and the world outside politicized art and charged the ordinary with unprecedented import by incorporating ordinary public venues and unsuspecting onlookers into the artistic production. martin argues that this impact on the boundaries separating the public from the political [sic] stemmed from a desire to “‘reenchant’ and re-animate politics” by “democratize[in] culture by trying to communicate with broader audiences where the performer-activists encountered them, most often, in the streets” (martin 2004: 14, 10). it is martin’s notion of public performance for the purposes of re-enchanting and re-animating politics that concerns me here in making sense of georgian-baptists’ processions in the streets of tbilisi. the processions shake up the hegemony of public spaces because the participants defy their own discursive invisibility. in a sense, religious minorities stage themselves. they do this precisely by putting themselves literally in the center of things, showing themselves as religious persons in the public space of the street in full view of, well, anyone who happens to be there. the “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” blinders that discourse can cloak over social complexity fail as religious minorities reveal themselves irrefutably as being there. in what follows, i want to draw attention to three modes of interrelated political behavior that work to incorporate georgia’s public areas into the dominant discursive imaginary that i call georgian public space. taking as axiomatic michel de certeau’s notion that space emerges out of the practice of place (1985: 101), these political behaviors work together to constitute “the street” as de facto orthodox georgian space and perpetuate the kind of ideological dominance that marginalizes religious minorities. these include legal discourse, the spatialization of orthodox cathedrals, and the public rituals that orthodox believers frequently perform. the palm sunday and red friday processions, in response, represent a refutation of the ideological claims of the dominant discourse—that legitimate national belonging rests only on a confession of orthodox faith. the processions attempt to contradict the discursive meanings assigned to public space by attempting to carve out new spaces of public recognition through their public spectacle. in the eyes of government the political ambiguity promulgated by the georgian government is found in other postsocialist countries. a significant obstacle to making equitable laws is the longevity of soviet frameworks that institutionalized identification with a particular ethnonational community as the determining factor in state membership. as katherine verdery has said, “ethnonational identities were perhaps the principal form of ‘collective consciousness’ that socialism produced” (verdery 1998: 293). jiri priban argues that mutually exclusive political strategies appealing to the universal rights of individuals and to rights bestowed on ethnonational communities were equally reasonable solutions in forming new state ideologies, because they were not perceived as contradictory formations. ideas like civil society and civic membership had to be introduced to post-socialist societies as one of many viable traditions on which the government could base itself: “rebuilding national identity, in the sense of ethnic and cultural identity, was an important part of rebuilding political identity” (priban 2004: 416, emphasis in original). political actors could not afford to distance themselves or their agendas from the ethnonational interests of state constituents. national identity expressed in popular symbols, rhetoric, and legislation, was a powerful currency in winning popular support, so that “nationalism in the region’s politics became a anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 24 matter of degree rather than a distinct political option” (verdery 1998: 294). thus, the emerging “democracies” of the 1990s in post-soviet countries bore a decidedly ethnonational thumb print. in what robert hayden famously called “constitutional nationalism” (hayden 1992: 655), self-proclaimed democratic states wrote their constitutions guaranteeing full rights and freedoms for members of the ethnic majority while disenfranchising members of other ethnic communities, even those individuals who had lived in those countries all their lives (see also verdery 1998: 294-295). in georgia, the scant legislation on religion illustrates this kind of two-headed constitutional strategy, which grants token assurances of freedom for all while at the same time sanctioning the interests of the ethnonational majority. to date there are three items of legislation on religion: article 9 of the constitution, the 2002 constitutional concordat between the state and the georgian orthodox church, and an amendment on registration of non-orthodox religious groups passed in april 2005. the first of these, article 9 of the georgian constitution, simply states: the state recognizes the special importance of the georgian orthodox church in georgian history but simultaneously declares complete freedom of religious belief and confessions, as well as independence of the church from the state. while the article does make explicit the official recognition of the orthodox church, it does not declare it the “state church.” in fact it declares the separation of church and state along with the right to religious freedom for all. on october 14, 2002, the tables turned dramatically when then-president shevardnadze and patriarch ilia ii signed the controversial church-state concordat. like article 9, it does not recognize the georgian orthodox church as the state church, but it does legally cede some authority of the religious sphere to the georgian patriarchate. among other things, the concordat awards the patriarchate full ownership of all its church buildings, monasteries, and the land they are built on, as well as church treasures permanently held in museums. the agreement also gives the orthodox church the final word on which religious groups can legally call themselves churches, what items may be used in services, and what religious literature may be published. finally, it stipulates that the georgian orthodox church may veto construction or planned construction of new buildings for any religious group (rayeva 2002). whereas the concordat inscribes these privileges into law, the patriarchate had been exercising this kind of authority since at least a year before the agreement was adopted (keston news service 2001). on april 6, 2005, president saakashvili signed an amendment allowing non-orthodox religious groups to register as non-commercial entities. this means that religious groups are unable to own property as religious organizations. they can neither be represented in court as a viable community, nor open bank accounts in the religious organization’s name (forum 18 2005). the only church that has legal status as a religious organization is the georgian orthodox church, which officially secured this status in the concordat. non-orthodox religious groups have no legal presence. perhaps the lack of real political will to protect the rights of all religions can be understood by elizabeth dunn’s prescient observation that a lack of regulation indicates that “spaces and populations … are seen as not interesting enough, or not useful enough, to merit governance” (dunn 2008:255). dunn was linking failures in agriculture with the state’s uneven realization of neoliberal governance, but the observation could easily apply to religious legislation. the georgian government has sought to reform only those sectors that are most often used to measure international success (and thus to receive further international attention, aid, and investments). the religious legislation of the saakashvili administration underscores this position. the present administration has relegated religious minorities into non-nonstate spaces. while the georgian orthodox church is free to exercise its authority carte blanche, nonorthodox groups must claim to be something entirely un-religious in order to be “seen” in the eyes of the state at all. sacred space and the material world certainly, georgian orthodox cathedrals are not the only buildings crowding the tbilisi skyline. a glut of international hotels, western food shops, over-priced luxury european clothing stores, and japanese electronics retailers compete for space and the attention of potential customers. but as the legal “landscape” described above indicates, the georgian orthodox church enjoys guarantees for anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 25 maintaining a symbolic and material monopoly of georgian public space. orthodox churches exist in far greater numbers than other nonorthodox religious buildings. this abundance relates to three things: the legislation highlighted above, the theological motivations of orthodox christianity, and the theological and social outlooks traditionally held in protestant christianity. the georgian orthodox church’s theological motivation to fill terrestrial space with manifestations of heavenly glory easily reinforces the church’s ideological position as an ethnonational institution and its spatial monopoly. as glenn bowman (1991) explains, orthodox cosmology dictates a clear separation between the world of god and the world of humanity, with the sacred forms and practices of the (orthodox) church acting as conduits of god’s redemptive presence to the fallen world. the church’s traditional sacramental objects – sacraments, prayers, icons, holy persons, liturgies, even church buildings – sit in both worlds. to contemplate them is to enter into the real presence of god. these are not merely pedagogical tools. they are stages for cosmological encounters, bearing witness to god’s redemption and ushering of grace into the material world. by encountering these sacramental things, believers encounter the revelation of heaven amid the corrupted world: “within orthodoxy the divine liturgy as well as other vehicles of the sacred like icons or holy relics serve as means for allowing people to ‘step out’ of illusion and to see creation, as a whole, in relation to its creator…. [orthodox believers’] entry into holy space presages their entry, at death, into eternity” (bowman 1991: 104). whereas the christian traditions of the west found it necessary to rationalize such encounters with the sacred, which in protestant traditions has been especially true given the penchant for convincing the unconverted of their need for salvation based on logical arguments, orthodox christianity traditionally has relatively few stated doctrinal absolutes, preferring that the “logic” of faith show itself in the regular practices, postures, and prayers of worship. in this sense, religious practice conflates ritual and theology. it seems to insist that worship “speaks for itself,” or as timothy ware states, “lex orandi lex credendi: our faith is expressed in our prayer” (ware 1993: 205). orthodox christianity and western rites differ in their value of materiality. orthodox christianity requires material certainty, so that church buildings should stand out from their surroundings precisely because the sacred is separate from the mundane world. the typical protestant imperative, however, has been to liberate individuals from traditions and institutions that prohibit living freely and frankly before god, or in webb keane’s formulation, “to abstract the self from material and social entanglements” (keane 2007: 201). material objects words as well as things acquired new meanings and became potentially hazardous to faith because words and things might interfere with or replace sincere relationship with god with a befuddling opacity. the guarantee of god’s grace was not contingent on sacramental encounters in the world but rather on the inner condition of the individual believer. these theological presumptions together with current circumstances of public animosity serve to make the presence of baptists (and similar religious traditions) less visible. baptists in georgia traditionally have preferred functional minimalism to any (to their minds) distracting pomp or pretense. the exteriors of buildings, for example, often look no different from buildings next door. they were (and often still are) converted houses with no steeples, no crosses, and no ornamentation of any kind to distinguish them. the clergy, too, have traditionally worn shirts and ties so that they looked no different from other parishioners. perhaps such plain arrangements worked to camouflage or insulate baptist congregations from an oppressive government and the public suspicion they incurred in the soviet union (not to mention the fear of violence in the post-soviet era). the severity of this “separation from the world” can be measured by the extent of current efforts in the baptist church to encourage parishioners to engage collectively with social and civic issues. in my interviews with baptist archbishop songhulashvili, he explainedi: “i think the main thing that the reforms brought us was taking us from the ghetto and placing us in the market place.…we had been used to the idea for almost one hundred or more years, that we are…closed, that we should be confined with[in] these walls, [that] the space beyond these walls does not belong to us….it belonged to the orthodox world.” the reforminspired processions described above attempt to integrate the activities of the church with georgian society as a means of liberating the anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 26 baptist church from its sectarian legacy: “this is about affirming what we believe in. we believe in being fully involved in the life of the community. not being separated by the walls of the ghetto, but being a part with, being in the midst of the things that are happening everywhere where people are and working for transformation.” these words are not in response to discrimination, but rather to baptists’ previously self-imposed isolation. that is to say, previously baptists played a major role in cordoning themselves off from the rest of society by removing themselves literally from view. performing georgian orthodox space georgian public space, as i use the term, is not simply the result of legislation ceding the administrative authority of religious matters into the lap of the georgian patriarchate. it is also not merely the ubiquity of georgian orthodox cathedrals punctuating the skyline and the absence of religious minorities from public view. where it includes the law and the physical presence of orthodox buildings, it also includes individuals’ symbolic action that manifests public connections with orthodox faith. “georgian” space is not filled so much as it is practiced. speech and behavior activate that space and perpetuate it in time and place. take for instance probably the most common ritual among orthodox christians: making the sign of the cross on the chest with thumb and fingers. while making the sign of the cross occurs inside church buildings, for example during the liturgy or while venerating icons, it is also customary for believers to cross themselves while passing by church buildings. derived from an acknowledgment of sacred space, this type of genuflection is remarkably unremarkable for happening so frequently, whether on the street, in a taxi, or on public transit. for example, the largest georgian cathedral, sameba, itself a dominant religious symbol on tbilisi’s skyline, can be seen from freedom square, despite being located almost a mile away across the river and almost blocked by rooftops. it is not uncommon to see passers-by face sameba’s shimmering dome and cross themselves (although i will admit that it is difficult at times to determine if they are facing sameba or instead the over-sized, gilded statue of st. george that towers over freedom square). while even many georgian baptists have no problem identifying with many of these rituals (incidentally i have observed a few baptists crossing themselves during their own worship services), these ritual meanings share in multiple discourses that implicate the larger frameworks of national ideology and nation-state building. implicated in de certeau’s argument that social spaces emerge from the practice of place (de certeau 1985: 101), public performances help incorporate ordinary geographic places into discursive paradigms, so that performing even what appears the most forgettable ritual infuses particular place (even the street outside) with specific ideological meanings. a case in point is pelkmans’s (2006) investigation into the recent spread of (georgian orthodox) christianity into the predominantly muslim area of achara at the turkish-georgian border. in this borderland area the tension between religious affiliation and authentic national belonging has been similar. however, it is more acute than in tbilisi and has resulted in the increased, albeit uneven, construction of churches and mosques and other public symbols among both muslim and christian camps. pelkmans explains, “the christian clergy drew on financial as well as political resources generated through state structures. the activities of muslim leaders, on the other hand, were denied recognition by the media, were frowned upon by nationalist-oriented elite groups, and were subjected to state interventions” (pelkmans 2006: 120). he prefaces that section of his ethnography with an anecdote about an orthodox christian pilgrimage conducted in 2000, complete with bishop, priests, pro-orthodox intellectuals, and a special icon, snaking its way through a muslim village to commemorate the coming of the gospel message to the area almost two thousand years earlier. in an effort to celebrate the good news, pilgrims were also “reminding” onlookers of their georgianchristian origins with the hope that “local inhabitants would return to their original, native religion” (pelkmans 2006: 93). another example can be found in the event held in 2004 at the graveside of georgia’s most famous king, st. david “the builder.” here mikhiel saakashvili, then president-elect, swore a pre-inaugural oath in honor of the legendary king, siding with the king’s reputation as orthodox christian state builder and promising the soul of the departed king that he (saakashvili) would lead the country out of squalor and ineffective government into a new age. the oath-taking ceremony was anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 27 unprecedented. not only did georgian patriarchcatholicos ilia ii preside over the ceremony, but also the monastery where the ceremony took place was packed and covered by the major television stations and newspapers. whatever saakashvili’s personal motivations, his performance was saturated with georgian orthodox sensibilities and broadcast a statist agenda marked with orthodoxy’s stamp of approval. a response to invisibility tbilisi’s thoroughfares may be ordinary streets but they are not neutral sites. they are constant reminders of the authority of georgian orthodoxy. legal privileges, the physical and visual presence of orthodox places of worship, and the ritual performances of orthodox believers in public places contribute to a ubiquitous orthodox materiality in georgian society. the georgian street, in this light, mirrors the dominant national ideology linking specific ethnonational interests with state success. the palm sunday and red friday processions traverse through the politically charged public streets of tbilisi, illustrating that to engage public space in georgia is to engage space dominated by orthodox privilege. i mentioned that these events bear a similarity with what bradford martin described of counter-culture movements in the united states of the 1960s. counterculture groups went about “combining street-level politics and dramatic spectacle” (martin 2004: 164) in an effort to draw attention to the deficiencies of power and the status quo. by relocating their protest to public venues, artist-activists communicated “symbolic messages about social and political issues to audiences who might not have encountered them in more traditional venues” (martin: 4). as in the experience of the united states, which obviously continues to have its own kinds of “invisible” citizens, georgia’s religious minorities have sought to address their political invisibility with, if you will, the discourse of feet on pavement. they peacefully challenge the politically ambiguous status quo of their own religious identity-cum-state belonging by presenting themselves as non-orthodox religious persons in orthodox space, “join[ing] performers and audience on an immediate level, with minimal governmental, corporate, and electronic filtering, offering communion and transformation as tangible possibilities” (martin: 164-165). unlike in the cases described by martin, these processions are not artistic expressions. yet they embody an alternative possibility about public space by creating new spaces out of familiar places. the streets of the georgian capital become a template for a new politics that re-associates public life with religious diversity. processions signal a claim by religious minorities to equitable belonging despite differences, asserting that georgian public space is “multi-faith” space. the archbishop explained it to me as follows: it is very important that religious people…live harmoniously, without compromising anything, without compromising any religious principles. we are saying that we are under heaven as it were. we have our churches, our strategies, our missions, but it is still possible to cooperate….we do not agree with [other religious groups] in everything, but they are friends. it is up to the “boss” [i.e. god] how to handle them. but it is our call to serve anybody in the name of christ, to promote peace and reconciliation in the name of the faith, and be…friends with those who do not agree with us and whom we do not agree with their theology [sic] or in their understanding of god. i began this article by situating the holy week processions in the georgian government’s failures to consolidate a successful democratic regime. equivocal policies and rhetoric have created political ambiguity favoring the interests of the georgian orthodox church and at the same time ignoring non-orthodox religious groups. the root of this failure lies in what now must be the familiar shortcomings of soviet-bred nationalism to account for state loyalties that exist outside the ideology that links an objectified culture with self-determination. this situation is not only an obstacle to religious minorities. rather than securing its own independence, the georgian orthodox church has inextricably linked itself to the politics of nation-building. its otherworldly symbology, its discourse, its gatekeeper-status into heaven’s court, and indeed its ubiquitous presence street after street paradoxically justify state claims to a terrestrial dominion. while the marches are themselves commemorations of some of the anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 28 most important holidays on the christian calendar they also negotiate orthodox power. because religion is not divorced from the politics of the state, these processions actively engage, construct, and transform relations and the possibilities of new kinds of relations in public spaces. in this sense, i suggest that georgian baptists are not simply changing their place in the city. they are changing the discursive space of the city, as they have known it. endnotes 1 my interviews with the archbishop were conducted in english. the archbishop’s quoted speech in this article is not a translation from georgian, but is in english as it was originally recorded. references bowman, glenn. 1991. “christian ideology and the image of a holy land: the place of jerusalem pilgrimage in the various christianities. in contesting the sacred: the anthropology of christian pilgrimage. john eade and michael j. sallnow, eds. new york: routledge. de certeau, michel. 1985. the practice of everyday life. steven rendall, trans. berkeley: university of california press. dunn, elizabeth c. 2008. “postsocialist spores: disease, bodies, and the state in the republic of georgia.” american ethnologist vol. 35, no. 2, 243-258. forum 18 news service. 2005. “georgia: religious minorities still second-class faiths?” november 25, 2005. www.forum18.org hayden, robert. 1992. “constitutional nationalism in the formerly yugoslav republics.” slavic review, vol. 51, no. 4, 654-673. keane, webb. 2007. christian moderns: freedom and fetish in the mission encounter. berkeley, ca: university of california press. keston news service. 2001. “georgia: patriarchate veto on alternative orthodox construction.” october 2, 2001. <www.keston.org> manning, paul. 2007. “rose-colored glasses? color revolutions and cartoon chaos in postsocialist georgia.” cultural anthropology, vol. 22, no. 2, 171-213. martin, bradford d. 2004. the theater is in the street: politics and public performance in sixties america. amherst: university of massachusetts press. page, helan and r. brooke thomas. 1994. “white public space and the construction of white privilege in u.s. health care: fresh concepts and a new model of analysis.” medical anthropology quarterly, vol. 8, no. 1, 109-116. pelkmans, mathijs. 2006. defending the border: identity, religion, and modernity in the republic of georgia. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. priban, jiri. 2004. “reconstituting paradise lost: temporality, civility, and ethnicity, post-communist constitution-making,” law & society review, vol. 38, no. 3, 407-431. rayeva, lyuda. 2002. “georgia: church and state in tight embrace.” caucasus news update no. 151. international war-peace reporting. october 17, 2002. <www.iwpr.net> verdery, katherine. 1998. “transnationalism, nationalism, citizenship, and property: eastern europe since 1989.” american ethnologist, vol. 25, no. 2, 291-306. ware, timothy. 1993. the orthodox church. new york: penguin books. zukin, sharon. the cultures of cities. new york: blackwell publishing, 1995. http://www.forum18.org/� the anthropology of east europe review volume 14, numbers 1, spring, 1996 editors robert rotenberg eva huseby-darvas mary kay gilliland laslo kurti contents editors notes: ................................................................................................................................................................ 3 robert rotenberg depaul university mette nordahl svendsen university of copenhagen maj olsen university of copenhagen mari-ann herloff-mortensen university of copenhagen camilla rosengaard university of copenhagen reversed diaspora: russ[an jewry. the transition in russ[a and the migrat[on to israel34 tom trier university of copenhagen classics [n east european ethnography ser[es "mag[cal sitting" by veselin ca1kanovic51 translated by marko zivkovic university of chicago announcement: sending books to east european institutions and colleagues ...................... 4 eva v. huseby-darvas university of michiganldearborn announcement the aeer web page is up and running ............................................................................... 7 the post-communist body: beauty and aerob[cs in romania ............................................................... 8 pure relationships: the search for love among hungarian academic women ....................... 15 we are not us: intra-ethnic differentiation among latvians .......................................................... 21 the past [s a lost country fam[ly narratives among ethn[c russ[ans in latvia ................. 29 the conflicts of the former yugoslavia in the courts ....................................................................... 44 paull. magnarella university of florida ------;1 page: 2 please address all requests for membership in the east european anthropology group ($is/yr. for full-time faculty and professionals, $1 o/yrfor students and part-time faculty; european subscribers should write for special rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($20), or additional copies ofthis special issue ($20) to the managing editor: robert rotenberg, international studies program, depaul university, 2320 north kenmore ave, chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 312/325-7460; fax 312/325-7452; email: rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu . deadlinefor submissionfor vol. 14, no.2 is september 30,1996. send editorial correspondence, submissions, book and film reviews, news and other such information either to rotenberg or any ofthe following editors: eva huseby-darvas, behavioral science dept., university of michigan, dearborn, mi 48128 evdarvas@umich.edu. mary kay gilliland, university of arizona, tucson, az 85721 mkgill@ccit.arizona.edu. laszlo kurti, film and book review editor. department of ethnography and folklore, eotvos lorand university, pesti barnabas u. l h-1364 budapest, hungary. kurti@osiris.elte.hu: © depaul university 1996 issn: 1054-4720 please send in your dues if you have not already done so. the last year for which your dues were paid is indicated by the year next to y01tr name on the mailing label. mailto:kurti@osiris.elte.hu mailto:mkgill@ccit.arizona.edu mailto:evdarvas@umich.edu mailto:rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu microsoft word zychowicz.docx anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35337 zychowicz, jessica. superfluous women: art, feminism, and revolution in twenty-first-century ukraine. toronto: university of toronto press, 2020. illustrations. 424 pp. $85.00 (cloth), isbn 978-1-4875-0168-6. stephanie r. dvareckas, rutgers university in 1991, ukraine gained independence after the fall of the soviet union. what followed were two revolutions: the orange revolution in 2004 and the maidan revolution of dignity in 2014. focusing on the young generation of post-soviet art-activists “who actively resisted the unravelling of the reforms promised during the orange revolution by protesting where they believed the state viewed their particular interests to be dispensable” (5), scholar jessica zychowicz’s superfluous women: art, feminism, and revolution in twenty-first century ukraine considers the politics of the body during and after ukraine’s protest movements. this aim is reflected in the book’s title, superfluous women, which is derived from author ivan turgenev’s “superfluous man.” zychowicz states, “the title of this book is an ironic reference to the common sidelining of women’s needs and experiences evident throughout periods of uncertainty, including postcommunism” (4). from the outset, zychowicz sets an enormous task for herself, piecing together methodologies from multiple disciplines including “history, anthropology, literature, and art criticism” (7). the author utilizes self-conducted interviews as well as her own photographs to compile an array of original material that collectively spans over “…fifteen years of studying and traveling to ukraine, and over eight years of research on this specific project” (22). the author also incorporates postcolonial theory throughout the book, placing gender and sexuality as a stand in for postcoloniality and human rights more broadly. the use of postcolonial feminism stands to critique “intersections of nation and gender” (42), in consideration of the legacy of institutional injustices embedded within the post-soviet state as a site of postcolonialism. interpreted through a close reading of artists, art organizations, and arts collectives, superfluous women is linked by several key intersecting concepts including post-sovietness, nostalgia, and commodity exchange. the author places focus on the ukrainian feminist-activists group femen (chapters 1 and 2) and ofenzywa (chapter 3); curatorial collectives; hudrada and rep anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35337 (revolutionary and experimental space) (chapter 4), the visual culture research center (vcrc), artists alevtyna kakhidze and vlada ralko, and artworks responding to statues of lenin in public spaces (chapter 5). “young people in ukraine do not remember the fall of the soviet union. neither do i” (3). in her opening line, zychowicz points to the difficulty of the past’s relationship with the present. the past is something unknown, yet familiar; an inherited thing one is left to contend with. the author also reveals her own position and proximity to the material, as she counts herself among the young generation. self-identification can prove complicated and uneasy, producing moments when the author’s intimacy with the material reads as uncritical. however, personal recollection occasionally proves to be a welcomed addition, demonstrating the solidarity the author shares with the art-activists whose work she describes. while the author builds on an impressive collection of source material, there is a sense of discontinuity that leaves the reader to infer their own connections between the comparative cases. an example comes from the first chapter in which the author aims to “provide a better context for understanding these protest-performance scripts” (15), placing femen within the lineage of performance by drawing parallels between the group and “happenings” (absurdist performances popular throughout the 1960s and ‘70s) in the united states, poland, and ukraine. considering the number of avant-garde groups that used similar absurdist tactics and the author’s frequent reference to this period, the incorporation of happenings is opaque. despite this, zychowicz makes a compelling argument regarding femen’s commercial strategies with relation to their anti-sex tourism message, extrapolating on the role media plays. homing in on the virtual nature of femen’s performances and considering their relationship with commodity exchange in a transnational context, she uses a comparative method to discuss pussy riot, a feminist activist group who zychowicz suggests are comparable to femen in their protest-activistperformance approach. this juxtaposition generated several insightful observations about the “corporatization” of feminist protests, particularly with regards to how femen’s nudity rendered them both idiosyncratic and unviable in an international market. the author concludes that “…audiences worldwide were more willing to accept the corporatization of feminist protest in the case of pussy riot members who fed into the neoliberal sale of their brand, whereas femen’s anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35337 performance of nudity simply could not be assimilated into the capitalist marketplace in the same way” (83). a dominant discourse throughout superfluous women is post-soviet nostalgia, in which the soviet past is at times depicted as distinct from the present and, at others, portrayed as being one and the same. the slippages between the shared identity between post-soviet and soviet are evident in zychowicz’s analyses of two projects by photographer and former ofenzywa member, yevgenia belorusets. these include a photo series (32 gogol st) and exhibition (a space one’s own, 2018), with artworks and manifestos from the soviet avant-garde, demonstrating how the artist refashioned avant-garde strategies to critique nostalgic post-sovietness. the characterization of nostalgia, however, proves to be limited in its lack of engagement with diverse source material, omitting the possibility for a more nuanced interpretation. the two final chapters describe a state in perpetual transition, underscored by the implication that ukraine is unable to move past its own historical condition; a state in suspension. chapter four centers on two curatorial collectives; hudrada and rep (revolutionary and experimental space), both of which question institutional frameworks, challenging official state culture and censorship. this chapter proves productive in demonstrating how biopolitics disrupt institutional parameters, neatly tying in with previous chapters and expanding on the body as a locus for dissent. the final chapter describes artistic production in the post-revolutionary period. tracing the work of the visual culture research center (vcrc), artists alevtyna kakhidze and vlada ralko, and artworks responding to statues of lenin in public spaces, this chapter expands on the previous ones in its consideration of how artists and art organizations grapple with their inherited soviet history. the expansiveness of the material makes superfluous women a great resource for a less-informed reader interested in an overview of art and protest in ukraine. the book is thoroughly researched, as the author’s long-standing work with the material shines through. zychowicz does an excellent job defining the complicated nature of the term feminism in ukraine, underlining the fluidity of terminology across borders. superfluous women contributes an original cache of original source material and challenges a solely ukrainian context by demonstrating the tension between the local and the international, both bold and productive contributions to the field of slavic studies. guest editors’ notes special issue on ethnographies of czechs, slovaks, and sorbs timothy mccajor hall, university of california at san diego rosie read, university of glasgow this issue of the anthropology of eastern europe review grows out of a panel on recent ethnographies from the former czechoslovakia that was presented at the aaa meeting in 2003.1 in organizing the panel, and during the discussion afterwards, many researchers (particularly younger ones) noted their desire for a forum that would bring together a broad range of recent ethnographic research on the czech and slovak republics. we believe that this focus is timely for several reasons: firstly, these countries have tended to be underrepresented within the anthropological literature on central and eastern europe (cee). second, both native and non-native anthropologists and ethnographers of allied disciplines have developed a new interest in the processes taking place in these most central of central european countries. third, what little ethnographic research has been published in english on the former czechoslovakia has been scattered in various disparate fora for anthropology, folklore, linguistics, political science, and gender studies, to name but a few. in comparison with some neighboring countries, relatively little research in the ethnographic approaches stemming from the anglo-french-american tradition of sociocultural anthropology has been carried out and published to date on the czech republic or slovakia, and almost none of it available in english until the late 1990s. in part, this has been because of the different orientation of central european ethnographers, who until recently tended to concern themselves largely with folkloristic or sociological studies, attending on the one hand to cultural origins and survivals, and on the other to more 1 the editors wish to thank rebecca nash, co-organizer of the panel for the 2003 aaa, for help in developing the thoughts herein, and also kurt hartwig, ben hill passmore, and daniela peničková, who participated in the discussion after the panel. statistical and demographic surveys (cf. fojtík 1971; salzmann 1983a; lass 1988). czechoslovakian ethnologists did study ethnic czechs, slovaks, and related west slavonic groups outside of czechoslovakia (see uherek and plochová, and šatava, this issue), while a few studies were published on slovak and czech emigrants in western countries (e.g. chada 1981; stein 1974). the ethnographies that were available were mainly written by émigrés from czechoslovakia (e.g., salzmann 1970, 1983b; salzmann and scheufler 1974; holy 1996), most of whom did not primarily specialize in czechoslovak ethnography (see, however lass 1989). others wrote of slovak and czech issues mainly in passing or by way of example, though their work may have been profoundly shaped by their experiences in czechoslovakia (e.g. gellner 1983, 1987, 1998; salzmann 1993).2 the ethnographic literature specifically on slovak culture (as opposed to more general ethnographies of czechoslovakia) is extremely sparse in english, despite a number excellent studies published in slovak or czech (e.g. filová et al. 1990; for partial bibliographies see skalník, this issue, and torsello and pappová 2003).3 the few ethnographic studies in english include those by peter skalník (1979, 1993), juraj podoba (1999), and olga danglová (1995, 1998). these have tended to focus on village life and cultural survivals (e.g. podolák 1987, 1990, 1991; skovierová 1988, 1994), on the 2 we do not intend to slight anyone by omission from this list, particularly the many solid community studies carried out by czechoslovak or other european ethnologists, such as those reviewed by skalník in this volume. however, most of these were not readily available in english and are only now entering into dialogue with western sociocultural anthropologists. 3 a literature search by krista hegburg, together with an informal poll of several contributors to this volume, revealed very few ethnographic studies on slovakia or slovaks available in english. we particularly thank davide torsello for his help. 4 rusyn/ruthenian ethnic group in far eastern slovakia and adjacent ukraine and poland (see magosci 1995), or on the roma minority (e.g. hübschmannová 1979; scheffel 2004). while this is by no means an exhaustive list of ethnographies of slovakia, the studies cited here suggest the wide range of opportunities that remain largely unexplored, including gender relations, social change since 1989, and urban ethnography, among others. however, a number of recent developments suggest that this situation is changing. these include the growth in the number of new graduate and postgraduate programs in social anthropology within slovakia and the czech republic over the past five to ten years, the growth in the numbers of czech and slovak anthropologists, and the increased interest in and engagement with anthropological methods and theories amongst czech and slovak social scientists more generally. at the same time there has been a modest but consistent (and growing) stream of non-native anthropologists carrying out ethnographic4 research in the former czechoslovakia and on ethnic czechs, slovaks, and sorbs elsewhere since the early to mid-1990s (some of them published in previous issues of aeer). in drawing together some of the writing that has emanated from these processes, this volume seeks to contribute to the overall growth of ethnographic understandings of the czech republic and slovakia, and to raise the profile of research from these countries within the academic fields of central and eastern european studies and social anthropology more generally. the czech and slovak republics present particular challenges to the ethnographer seeking to understand the legacies of the socialist past in the context of present political, social, and economic realities. from the point of view of the periods before and after socialism, czechoslovakia often appears highly “western” and intrinsically “european” in comparison to many of its east-central european neighbors. following the first world 4 and ethnographically informed but non-anthropological studies, including social and cultural histories (sayer 1998; king 2002), and literary studies (pynsent 1994). war, czechoslovakia was the only industrialized country of the new states in the region, constituting over two-thirds of former austria-hungary’s industrial base, (although industrial production was largely concentrated in parts of bohemia and moravia). after 1989, czechoslovakia/czech republic/slovakia have been fairly consistently perceived (at home and abroad) as the more successful of the “transition economies,” and clear candidates for inclusion into western institutions such as the eu and nato. at the same time, czechoslovakia might also be seen as one of the most inherently socialist societies and economies in the eastern block: a country in which socialist ideas and principles enjoyed huge grass-roots support from the postwar period right up to the experiments at the reform and renewal of socialist society in the late 1960s, and in which classand wageleveling achieved its greatest success. after the warsaw pact invasion of 1968 and the repression of the reform movement, a period of social and political “normalization” was imposed by the political leadership. czechoslovakia emerged as one of the most orthodox marxist-leninist societies in the region, remaining firmly bound to the soviet union in economic and military terms until 1989.5 thus the czech and slovak lands historically occupy rather ambiguous and contradictory positions in relation to enduring distinctions between “east” and “west,” “socialist” and “capitalist.” these ambiguities present difficulties and opportunities to ethnographers, who, from the very outset of their research, find themselves grappling with apparently contradictory interpretations and perspectives on history. indeed, the problems associated with evaluating the past in the czech/slovak cases epitomize some of the broader issues at stake in the debate about the concept of “postsocialism.” scholars of the region have for some years debated this concept and questioned whether it continues to be intellectually useful, or whether it 5 we are grateful to rebecca nash, whose ideas we have borrowed in developing this point. 5 increasingly obscures more than it reveals (hann 2002). for in spite of a shared socialist past, east-central european countries are increasingly divided by more recent historical developments following socialism’s collapse and the social, economic, and cultural transformations that followed. as a result, the diversities that always existed between (and within) the countries of the region appear ever more visible and exaggerated. at the same time, however, it seems crucial not to lose sight of the ongoing legacies of the socialist past within this part of the world. whether we retain the term “postsocialism” or not, the broader challenge is to understand the increasingly diverse ways in which the socialist past is subtly but persistently incorporated into present social actualities and experiences. it is our view that these complexities are best captured by ethnographic study. in putting this volume together, we have sought to be as inclusive as possible. the ethnographic studies presented here reflect the variety and multiplicity of contemporary life in the czech republic and slovakia, as well as a diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches. we hope that this volume will help stimulate further debate and avenues of inquiry, and promote collaboration between scholars within and outside these countries. with this in mind, we offer a summary of what we see as the key issues and questions arising from each section of this volume. section one focuses on various dimensions of socio-economic transformation in the czech and slovak republics, particularly in relation to the activities of ngos and notions of “civil society” more broadly. june considers the role of the organization transparency international in generating apparently neutral and authoritative knowledge about levels of corruption within nation states generally, and the czech republic in particular. he examines how such knowledge is reconfigured and made meaningful in the czech context and its various impacts on the czech state’s own practices of knowledge-making and public perceptions of corruption. june’s contribution offers some insights into the changing ways in which citizens make active judgments about the relative truth or falsity of official, apparently “scientific” pronouncements, in a context where skepticism is an historically familiar practice. karjanen explores forms of social disenfranchisement and economic marginalization in south-west slovakia, and shows how these processes cannot be accounted for within certain theories of postsocialist economic change which conflate distinct forms of value and capital, thereby producing rather optimistic models of “transition.” karjanen shows how social mistrust and atomization – often associated with the socialist era – are more accurately understood as part of capitalist development in this area. kapusta-pofahl, hašková, and kolářová offer an in-depth discussion of the current political and socioeconomic contexts shaping the activities of a range of women’s organizations in the czech republic. they provide important insights into the way in which the eu funding priorities increasingly determine the internal structure and scope of these ngos, thereby informing how different forms of civil society and civic participation emerge. section two brings together a range of articles exploring themes of gender, family, and sexuality. as is common with such topics, these chapters make explicit the ways in which personal experience and private morality are inextricably bound up with public institutions, state policies, and broader historical narratives. nash analyzes how forms of social security provision for families have helped generate and maintain cultural notions of autonomy and dependency in czech society. she shows how the new eligibility criteria governing this form of state provision inform and are informed by values of self-sufficiency, which in turn help generate quite new economic dependencies. kozikowski provides a detailed account of the personal stories of women who have suffered breast cancer. she reflects on the frequent experience of social and emotional isolation in a context in which breast cancer has historically been highly stigmatized. her contribution touches upon the ways in which meanings and perceptions of illness associated with the socialist period (within families as well as medical contexts) are evolving in the present. 6 7 passmore explores changing working conditions for women within a moravian toy factory. he examines how the new forms of economic vulnerability contribute to existing gender inequalities in the workplace, but argues that, at the same time, the factory management has achieved a certain moral legitimacy in the eyes of the female workforce. his account, like that of nash, underscores how the economic and the moral converge in everyday life. finally, quin provides a case study on the contemporary production of slovak pornography. he examines the ways in which certain national stereotypes of slovak men are appropriated and queered within the work of a slovak pornographer. quin’s chapter draws on queer theory to contribute to our understanding of the ways in which the commodification of the sexual body and sexual relationships are important aspects of capitalist transformation in central and eastern europe. our third section pairs two traditional interests of czechoslovakian anthropology in their current reflexes: two studies of the roma/romani (gypsy) minority, and two studies of the cultural survival of slavic ethnic minorities. as krista hegburg notes in her essay, the roma have long been seen as a natural focus of anthropological attention in czechoslovakia because of their ascribed foreignness. however, their relations to the majority “white” society are problematic, fluid, and continually contested and negotiated, through both formal and informal channels. věra sokolová interrogates the involuntary sterilization of an unknown number of romani women that took place in the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when the czechoslovakian government was aggressively pro-natalist in policy — but only for certain kinds of czechoslovak families. how could an apparently ethnicity-neutral law be taken as an injunction to sterilize a particular ethnic group (and only the women of that group), and how could the practice persist after the policy was officially discontinued? zdeněk uherek and kateřina plochová discuss the migration of ethnic czechs from the czech lands to bosnia and herzegovina in the 19th century as part of broader movements of peoples within the austro-hungarian empire, and examine the rise, fall, and possible rise again of their fortunes with the political and social situation in the former yugoslavia. leoš šatava draws on his many years of research among the lusatian sorb minority in germany, a west slavonic group connected in medieval times with the czech crown, and explores issues of language survival facing small ethnic groups in europe today. section four examines the tensions and interactions between several kinds of history and memory in ethnographic work. haldis haukanes analyzes a set of life histories, narratives of czech villagers who lived through most of the major political events of the 20th century, and finds that practically none of her informants use these macro-events to structure the periods of their own lives. her findings complicate the relationship between memory as macro-history, as collective memory, and as personal life history, and shed light on the work of narrative in the construction of identity. davide torsello looks at the relationship between various kinds of official histories — land registries, maps, archival records from various periods in the past of a hungarianslovak village — and the ways in which the villagers themselves name, recount, and construct their histories and their memories, tacking back and forth between elements of habsburg, republican, and communist, slovak and hungarian, interpretations of their past. finally, peter skalník examines a number of classic community restudies in europe and elsewhere for their contributions to anthropological theory and method, and reviews the major community studies in the former czechoslovakia. he challenges our acceptance of the “ethnographic present” and argues for the importance of community restudies in european ethnography. we hope that this issue of aeer provides a useful resource for ethnographers from many traditions who are interested in the former czechoslovakia and western cee. we also invite interested readers to check out the resource site for czech and slovak ethnographers, národopis, currently mirrored at 8 home.earthlink.net/~mccajor/narodopis.html, and to make suggestions for further additions. references cited: chada, joseph. 1981. the czechs in the united states. washington: svu press. danglová, olga. 1995. rural communities in the process of socio-economic changes. collegium anthropologicum, 19(1): 129-144. zagreb. ——. 1998. the phenomenon of poverty in the slovak countryside. human affairs, 8(2): 193200. filová, božena, et al. 1990. etnografický atlas slovenska: mapové znázornenie vývinu vybraných javov ludovej kultúry. bratislava: spracovanie tematického obsahu národopisný ústav slovenskej akadémie vied; kartografické a polygrafické spracovanie slovenská kartografia. fojtík, karel. 1971. “fundamental problems encountered by czechoslovak ethnographers and folklorists.” [originally in: sovetskaia etnografiia, 1967, no. 4]. international journal of sociology, 1(1): 67-87. gellner, ernest. 1983 nations and nationalism. oxford: blackwell. —— 1987. culture, identity, and politics. cambridge: cambridge university press. —— 1998. language and solitude: wittgenstein, malinowski, and the habsburg dilemma. new york: cambridge university press. hann, chris. 2002. postsocialism: ideas, ideologies and practices in eurasia. london: routledge. holy, ladislav. 1996. the little czech and the great czech nation: national identity and the post-communist transformation of society. cambridge: cambridge university press. hübschmannová, milena. 1979. bilingualism among the slovak rom. international journal of the sociology of language, 19: 33-48. king, jeremy. 2002. budweisers into czechs and germans: a local history of bohemian politics, 1848-1948. princeton, nj: princeton university press. lass, andrew. 1988. romantic documents and political monuments: the meaning-fulfillment of history in 19th-century czech nationalism. american ethnologist, 15(3): 456-471. —— 1989. what keeps the czech folk “alive”? dialectical anthropology, 14: 7-19. magosci, paul r. 1995. the rusyn question. political thought, 2-3(6): 221-231. paul, david w. 1979. the cultural limits of revolutionary politics: change and continuity in socialist czechoslovakia. boulder, co: east european quarterly. podoba, juraj. 1999. “they have always known to knock on the right door”: continuity, modernization and transformation in one sub-tatras community. geographia slovenica (31): 201-7. podolák, ján. 1987. pastoral constructions in slovakia. ethnologia slavica, 19: 45-93. —— 1990. traditional names of sheep as part of the pastoral culture in the carpathians. ethnologia slavica, 21: 107-128. —— 1991. seventy years of ethnology at comenius university in bratislava (19211991). ethnologia slavica, 23: 221-241. pynsent, robert b. 1994. questions of identity : czech and slovak ideas of nationality and personality. budapest: central european university press. salzmann, zdeněk. 1970. a contribution to the study of value orientations among the czechs and slovaks. research reports no. 4, department of anthropology, university of massachusetts at amherst. —— 1983a. contemporary czech ethnography: theory, practice, emphases. newsletter of the east european anthropology group, ann arbor, mi, 3(1): 12-21. ——. 1983b. three contributions to the study of socialist czechoslovakia. research reports no. 22, department of anthropology, university of massachusetts at amherst. 9 —— 1993. language, culture, & society: an introduction to linguistic anthropology. boulder, co: westview press. salzmann, zdeněk & vladimír scheufler. 1974. komárov: a czech farming village. prospect heights, il: waveland press. sayer, derek. 1998. the coasts of bohemia: a czech history. princeton, nj: princeton. scheffel, david z. 2004. slovak roma on the threshold of europe. anthropology today, 20(1): 6-12. skalník, peter. 1979. modernization of the slovak peasantry: two carpathian highland communities. in: berdichewsky, b. (ed.) anthropology and social change in rural areas, (253-261). the hague-paris-new york: mouton. —— 1993. “socialism is dead” and very much alive in slovakia: political inertia in a tatra village. in: hann, c.m. (ed.), socialism. ideals, ideology and social practice, (218-226). london: routledge. skovierová, zita. 1988. contemporary neighbourly relations and their traditional xxpression in slovakia. ethnologia slavica. 20: 49-61. ——1994. ethnic consciousness and cohabitation in a slovak-hungarian village community. ethnologia europaea, 24(1): 5158. stein, howard f. 1974. envy and the evil eye among slovak-americans: an essay on the psychological ontogeny of belief and ritual. ethos, 2(1): 15-46. torsello, davide and melinda pappová, eds. social networks in movement. time, interaction and interethnic spaces. dunajská streda, slovakia: lilium aurum. microsoft word 6tw 6version2zheltovavaxevanoumanousopoulouhalogianni finalforaeereditors.docx anthropology of east europe review special issue 38 (1), 2021. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v37i1.32041 subversive heteroglossia: narrating greek-albanian language use in north-western greece ekaterina zheltova charles university, prague cefres, prague1 theodora vaxevanou university of macedonia, thessaloniki μariana manousopoulou university of graz despina kalogianni university college, london abstract in the research on borderscapes, particularly in the albanian-greek borderland, explorations of identities and fluidity of socio-cultural boundaries play a key role. based on several ethnographic interviews and participatory observation during short-term fieldwork in the konitsa region of north-western greece, this study aims to explore the metalinguistic narratives of the local people coming from albanian/arvanitikaspeaking families. we observe how albanian and greek language use is narrated across several generations of these families, shaping narratives of place-making and belonging. drawing upon the theory of cultural intimacy, studies of linguistic ideologies, and discourse analysis, we examine the multiple controversies in our research participants’ metalinguistic narratives and indexical signs such as code-switching. using an anthropological lens, we also trace how these people’s personal stories are affected by national discourses, and how the state’s discourses infiltrate local peoples’ metalinguistic narratives. as previous studies have shown, in a situation of heteroglossia, the low-prestige language is perceived “through the eyes” of the dominant language. nonetheless, when subversive heteroglossia occurs, the dominant linguistic ideology is also internalized by the speakers, but it is deviated and reassessed in the attempt to build spaces of cultural intimacy. key-words: linguistic anthropology, borderscapes, balkans, identity, cultural intimacy, subversive heteroglossia. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 80 our research team, consisting of three greek and one russian young female researchers, began their fieldwork in konitsa on a scorching summer afternoon of 2018.2 we took our notebooks and audio recorders and headed towards the house of zafer’s family. it was a twostory house with a cozy terrace on the ground floor. we walked in and were warmly greeted by an elderly couple, our friend and research participant zafer's grandparents. the terrace was small, we could barely fit around a patio table, and the situation was initially somewhat awkward. at a point, mr. selim said: ‘now, nobody can tell that my wife is an albanian woman. she speaks greek very well! but yeah...whatever... if we go inside [meaning: to albania], we can communicate!’ and he laughed. this small passage from our conversation with mr. selim reflects a widely circulated idea in social sciences that power relations are generated, reproduced, and revealed through language. in his theory on the symbolic power of language, pierre bourdieu (1991) has pointed out that an official language (in our case, the greek language) is inextricably linked with the state and its reproduction process. according to bourdieu, everyday language use, however mundane it may seem, is embedded within the social structure that it describes and helps to reproduce. this official language is used in all public and official domains, and all the other languages are compared to it as the only legitimate one (bourdieu 1991, 45). in this article, we focus on the narrations about albanian and greek language use among the local families with a history of family connections to the places that nowadays are located on the other side of the border, in albania. since linguist michael silverstein introduced the term linguistic ideologies and defined them as “sets of beliefs about language articulated by the users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use” (silverstein 1979, 193), the study of people’s accounts on their linguistic experience has played an important role in anthropology. kathryn woolard, for example, noted that a focus on linguistic ideologies “allows us to relate the microculture of communicative action to political economic considerations of power and social inequality, to confront macrosocial constraints on language behavior, and to connect discourse with lived experiences” (woolard 1998, 27). in the present case study, we use the lens of linguistic ideologies to explore the entanglement of identity and place-making on the nation-state’s margins. over the recent decades, borders and borderlands have attracted much attention among researchers in social sciences, anthropologists not being an exception. in these studies, borderlands are often described as complex geographic and symbolic spaces in which negotiations of power and sovereignty together with construction and reconfiguration of sociocultural identities and boundaries become particularly intense and revealing (wilson and donnan 2012) while the experience of people living in the borderlands is conceptualized as the one of exceptional uncertainty, marginality, and liminality (green 2005; agier 2016). the very concept of borderlands goes beyond borders as geographical and political phenomena but also looks into the construction of symbolic boundaries through social interactions and negotiations of power and deals with the problem of cultural borderlands – spaces of inconsistencies and heterogeneity which are often overseen or marginalized by the dominant categorizations (donnan and wilson 1999, 19-43). taking into consideration all three dimensions of borders and borderlands, in the present research, we draw attention to the role of the political border in anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 81 the narratives of our research participants, and we analyze how their identities are being shaped by the powerful state-induced categorizations and in the process of local-level social interactions. yet, an even stronger emphasis is being made on how our research participants’ stories and metalinguistic narratives represent a cultural borderland, embodying an experience of heterogeneity and inconsistency which the established cultural narratives fail to express. as bourdieu has indicated, monolingual communities are a product of imagination (bourdieu 1991). historically, in the region of today’s greek epirus and southern albania, the population was far from being monolingual. at least to an extent, this is also the case today. however, in the past, the categorizations used to describe the people living in the region were quite distinct from the ones that are used today when the international borders have long been present (hart 1999, 197-198). as sarah green noted in her book on the borderlands, it is striking how categorizations used in the region can often conflict. sometimes they can seem to make no sense, although people act as if everything is obvious and there is a distinct difference between those categories (green 2005, 59). according to vasilis nitsiakos (2010), people living on both sides of the border would cross it systematically due to kinship relations, business, or educational reasons. the regular trans-local communication was not affected by the albanian state's foundation in 1912 after the balkan wars. as nitsiakos highlights, the national border never coincided with the ethnic and cultural boundaries between populations. the ethnic mosaic was so complex that it was impossible to draw the border in any unambiguous way. regarding our case, it is worth noticing that the supposedly ‘objective’ marker of national identity, the language, was also inapplicable (nitsiakos 2010, 40). subjective self-definitions would always conflict with each other, with the social practices, and with the top-down categorizations, making it impossible to define any distinctive homogeneous groups (nitsiakos 2010, 55-56). the sealing of the border after the rise of the communist regime interrupted the communication between the two sides. besides, both areas underwent a national homogenization process, with pressure applied to every group identified as ‘the other.’ in 1990 with albania’s communist regime’s fall, two sides of the border re-connected, and the sociocultural flow was re-established. vasilis nitsiakos characterizes the border region as a zone of extreme intimacy, real and symbolic (nitsiakos 2010, 40). in the context of migration and intense cross-border cultural and social exchanges, the meaning of old and new categorizations is being reinvented, and various social and political actors creatively use them for their own needs (see, e.g., de rapper 2004, 2005, 2008). according to several studies (e.g., hart 1999, green 2005), in epirus and southern albania, speaking a language has never automatically excluded other identifications. thus, speaking albanian or arvanitika in epirus does not imply an identification with the albanian nationality, and vice versa. nonetheless, living in a modern state, where homogeneity is imperative, people get affected by its often-violent effects, especially in heterogeneous populations that live in the border zones (hart 1999, 204). as we observed, with the popularity of golden dawn3 growing in the past years, the lives of the diverse people in the area remain fragile and precarious, refugees from syria or elsewhere being the most endangered ones. as a result, people whose families once lived in a world where diversity was normalized are now entrapped between the competing nationalist imperatives (cowan 2011, 107). anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 82 in order to avoid the nation-state’s hegemonic discourse, in our attempt to describe the families with albanian roots in the konitsa area, we draw upon a deterritorialized approach, suggested by arjun appadurai (1996) and vasilis nitsiakos (2010), which allows us to consider the fluidity of identifications and boundaries. having given up the idea of ‘greek’ and ‘albanian’ classification, we have decided to approach our interviewees from the perspective of language use and its interpretation in the metalinguistic discourse. inspired by the sociolinguistic lens of identity construction, we, as ethnographers, ‘construct’ our research participants based on the powerful interface of language and subjectivity. entering our research field, we tried not to get biased by the national discourses’ preconstructed categories. how should we refer to our research participants? albanians? greeks? do they constitute a community? should we approach them as a minority? the truth is that there are no simple answers to these questions. what can be claimed is that our research participants primarily defined themselves as konitsiotes or the ‘locals,’ stressing their belonging to the place. according to potiropoulos, a strong local identity is a part of the collective self’s construction, establishing “unity and continuity in space and time, modernity and post-modernity” (potiropoulos 2014, 96). as we will demonstrate further, the local dimension of identity construction plays a key role in how our interlocutors perceive their ‘linguistic selves’ and make sense of the contradictions and gaps between their intimate experiences and the top-down categorizations of the nation-state. in other words, here we deal with place-making, namely the construction of space and identity, based on difference and sameness, identification and alterity (harrington 2004). our attempt to capture the interplay of language and identity in our research participants’ narratives, as micro-geographic as it may seem, follows the logic of multi-sited ethnography described by george marcus (1995). we explore how the shared agencies, symbols, and everyday practices are manifested in two different locations, following the cultural meanings and identities circulating in diffuse time and space. during our short-term ethnographic fieldwork, we interviewed in total eight people, six in the town of konitsa and two in the village of plikati, forty-four kilometers away. adopting marcus’s (1995) approach, we attempt to trace the logic of relationships, translations, and association among the sites. we focused on two locations belonging to the same border area. in both of them, switching between albanian and greek language has been, paradoxically, at the same time normalized and contested throughout different historical periods and among different social situations. in this 2018 project, we employed various ethnographic techniques such as semi-structured interviews, open discussions, observation, taking field notes, audio-recording, and taking pictures in our fieldwork. drawing upon the ethnography of speech perspective (hymes 1964), we specifically focused on noticing and recording the oral discourse and paid attention to the subtle nuances in language use. following our interest in linguistic ideologies, we paid particular attention to patterns of metalinguistic discourse, contextualizing those within our research participants’ life stories. our analysis of the data employed the perspective of qualitative discourse analysis based on interpretative logic, which avoids reification and essentialization of knowledge regimes (keller 2005). anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 83 picture no. 1 – semi-demolished bektashi turbe4. konitsa, july 2018 linguistic ideologies and cultural intimacy in his aspiring work on the arvanitika communities in beotia, the anthropologist and linguist lucas tsitsipis (1997) has offered to use the concepts of congruent and contradictory discourses to analyze the linguistic ideologies in the arvanitika speakers’ narratives. adopting the term from mikhail bakhtin, he calls the sociolinguistic situation in greece with the evident domination of greek over the minority languages a situation of heteroglossia, a relationship between languages when one language “is seen through the eyes of the other” (tsitsipis 1997, 106). in such a situation, the arvanitika speakers adopt the state’s ideology promoting the prestigious status of the greek language and produce congruent metalinguistic discourses. however, they also reflect on the community language’s, arvanitika, solidarity function, hence producing contradictory discourses. given the ethnographical and theoretical relevance of these ideas, they seem to present a perfect starting point for our analysis of the linguistic ideologies in the narratives of our research participants from konitsa and plikati. however, two crucial aspects differentiate our case from tsitsipis’s work. firstly, urbanization and bureaucratization processes developing during his research timeframe have now gone way further. subsequently, the division between people living in the local community’s inner world and having little to do with the nation-state’s outer world and those who have to intensively deal with the state institutions and the broader society has changed. among the local communities’ living members, a significant majority has experienced ‘dealing with the state.’ as a result, for them, the intimacy associated with the ‘minority’ language and belonging to the local community (as opposed to the imagined community of the nation-state perceived as homogeneous) has come into conflict with the ideas of social success and of being a ‘proper’ member of the (greek) society. besides, there is one more aspect that makes the cases of konitsa and plikati different from the arvanites anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 84 communities of beotia, with which tsitsipis worked. the closeness of the border, the translocal cross-border connections, and the history of separations and reunions have dramatically influenced how our research participants perceive the roles of languages in their family histories and personal biographies. thus, their discursive practices can hardly be adequately described merely in terms of coherent and contradictory discourses. although the concepts of contradiction and coherency might be quite helpful here, their meaning and function have to be revisited and reconfigured to better serve our understanding of the people’s stories. in the following parts of the article, we aim to show that while contradictions and discursive conflicts are characteristic of our interlocutors’ narratives about languages, they can also creatively employ elements of various discourses to make sense of these contradictions and maintain the coherency of their stories. to better understand these discursive strategies, we suggest approaching them in the context of michael herzfeld’s ideas about cultural intimacy and disemia as the basis of the nation-state’s life (herzfeld 2016). in the analysis that follows, we suggest interpreting the tension between the contradictory ideas in our research participants’ narratives as a discursive encoding of cultural intimacy on three levels: firstly, as a reflection of the disemia underlying the greek national narrative characterized, on the one hand, by the desire for homogeneity and historical continuity of the greek culture and statehood and, on the other hand, by the intimate spaces of diversity and ‘otherness’; secondly, as a part of the complex relations between the intimacies of the two neighboring nation-states, greece and albania; thirdly, as a discursive incarnation of the specific regime of cultural intimacy produced by the very border, which allows for the creation of intimate symbolic spaces where the contradictions and contestations between the elements of conflicting discourses reinforce the sense of intimacy and belonging in the local border communities (on cultural intimacy in the albanian-greek borderlands, see also zheltova 2019). while all three aspects of cultural intimacy remain equally essential, we will primarily focus on the first and the third ones in this article. while the conflict between the hegemonic narrative of the greek national ideology and the intimate personal histories of ‘otherness’ is present in all our research participants’ stories, the particular way of dealing with this conflict varies significantly from one interviewee to another. ‘how come we don’t speak!’: discursive shifts in adile’s and rekiye’s stories. in the first interview with adile (84 years old) and selim (in his 80s), such a conflict between the hegemonic narrative and intimate experience leads to our interlocutor’s mistrust and lack of interest. adile is quite reserved and rather seems to avoid speaking about her family origin from a border town that is nowadays a part of albania. she is also quite cautious about sharing her experience of dealing with the two languages throughout her life. although she provides us with some details about her mother coming to konitsa from albania and does not hide the fact that albanian was her first language, she seems pretty uncomfortable speaking about these topics. her husband’s comment about her being a proper ‘local of konitsa’ and ‘nobody being able to tell that she is not greek’ further facilitates understanding of her behavior. talking about her connections to the ‘albanian other’ could anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 85 endanger her social status as a ‘proper greek,’ a status she has been building up to throughout her life. our conversation with the other elderly female research participant from konitsa, rekiye (82 years old), demonstrates a different discursive strategy of dealing with this conflict. while she is generally much more open about her connection to the albanian language and her origins in leskovik, the normative greek national discourse is also present in her narrative. for example, she repeatedly mentions that ‘the life of minorities in greece has been good’ (even though she also describes the tragic outcomes of the population exchanges). simultaneously, her narration is full of emotionally charged references to her albanian relatives ‘left behind’ in leskovik, to their reunion after the opening of the border, and to the fact that she misses the albanian language. in contrast with adile, for whom constructing an identity of an ‘authentic konitsiotis’ meant silencing or at least being reserved and selective about mentioning her albanian origin, for rekiye, being an ‘authentic konitsiot’ and an ‘albanian’ or, as she puts it, a ‘turk,’ constitutes no contradiction.5 rekiye incorporates this perspective in the complex picture of the place and its history, resolving the tension between the narrative’s competing levels. the subtle boundary between the normative level and the intimacy level of discourse is even more evident when her son intervenes in the conversation. for example, when discussing the albanian language in the family, he stresses that the elder relatives mostly did not know that many songs in albanian and learned the greek ones. when discussing the albanian families’ rights in greece, he stresses that ‘there has never been any lousy regard towards the minorities from the state, and no severe ethnic conflict has taken place in the region.’ the son introduces a normative attitude, which contrasts with the more intimate perspective of rekiye. however, at these moments, rekiye switches to this discourse, too, agreeing, ‘how good their life in greece has been.’ she also says that she does not know any songs in albanian. however, when the conversation is over, and we are about to leave, she comes to us and in a low voice, but sounding very emotional, she cites several lines from a song in albanian coming from leskovik and praising its beauty. rekiye, in contrast with adile, had greek as her first language since she was born in konitsa. her father was a local greek speaker, and her mother, although an albanian native speaker, mostly spoke greek to her in her early years. in her childhood and teen years, she had learned albanian from adile’s mother, fadime, whom she became related to after her brother selim married adile. as we can assume, the fact that rekiye’s first language was greek made her feel more socially secure as a member of the greek-speaking society. that could explain why she felt more secure about openly expressing her emotional connection to albanian than did adile, who had to go through the process of linguistic resocialization in her childhood. this fact could also explain why rekiye eagerly switched to albanian during the interview when suggested doing so by the albanian-speaking interviewer, while adile never responded to the interviewer’s attempt to make a small talk in albanian. these code-switches in rekiye’s speech, among others, indicate the shifts between the different levels of discourse – the public normative discourse of homogeneity and the intimate discourse of diversity – and encode the disemia of cultural intimacy, as in the following examples: int 1.: [in greek] did your mother teach you albanian? r: [in greek] how come we don’t speak! we certainly do speak the language! anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 86 int 2: [in albanian] i also know a little albanian. r: [in albanian, enthusiastic] you know albanian? int 2: [in albanian] yes, yes, i do. r: [in albanian] but you are from russia, aren’t you? int 2: [in albanian] yes, i learned the language at the university. [rekiye laughs] r’s husband: [in albanian, laughing] she knows, she knows! furthermore, during a discussion in greek about tourism in albania, rekiye suddenly started speaking albanian to the albanian-speaking interviewer: r: [laughing, in albanian] we can talk albanian with you! int 2: [in albanian] yes, i like it a lot! r: [in albanian] yes, yes, i also like it so much... i like it... int 2: [in albanian] do you miss the albanian language? r: [in albanian] yes, yes, i do... of particular interest are several moments in the conversation when rekiye speaks about their relatives in leskovik and relations with them reinforced after the border’s opening. in the following example, the discussion on our potential research trip to leskovik serves as a trigger for the code-switching: /talk in greek about the relatives in leskovik and our potential research trip there/ r: they only speak albanian, they don’t know any greek. int. 2: well, i guess if we go, we will be able to communicate. r: [in albanian] speak albanian! int. 2: [in albanian] yes, we will speak albanian . r: [in albanian] when i went there for the first time, they would ask me, ‘how come you know albanian? where did you learn it?’ – i would tell them, ‘i learned it from one old woman.’ int. 2: [in albanian] yes… r: [in albanian] this is what i told them… while the discussion on our plans to visit leskovik is a structural trigger for the codeswitching, the change of code on its own seems to trigger a shift to a more intimate level of discourse. it makes rekiye remember the emotional moment in her life when she, for the first time, traveled to the place where her family originated from. her knowledge of albanian was crucial back then in forming a common ground for intimacy with her new-found relatives. at the same time, her particular language choice to narrate this experience helps her establish a connection between the content of her story (the emotional moment from the past) and the ongoing communicative situation (sharing advice on travel to leskovik with young researchers showing interest in this aspect of her identity). her switching to albanian mirrors the intimacy of the situation described (the signified) in the way it is being described (the signifier). anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 87 picture no. 2 – doing fieldwork on the border. saying ‘goodbye’ after our conversation with rekiye. konitsa, july 2018 speaking ‘clearly,’ speaking ‘heavily,’ ‘like in a city,’ ‘like in a village’: placing the local idioms in eleni’s and christina’s stories like in the interviews from konitsa, in the stories of our research participants from plikati, one can notice the tension between the greek state ideology of homogeneity and the intimate local experience of diversity. both eleni (in her 70s) and christina (in her 80s) have internalized this discursive conflict, which is visible in the way they discuss their linguistic experience. on the one hand, they eagerly tell us about the use of arvanitika in their families. on the other hand, they both remember how the schoolteacher used to prohibit the kids from speaking arvanitika at school, and they comment positively on this practice, saying, ‘it was a good thing that he did.’ our conversation with eleni naturally focused on the place of the local ways of speaking (both arvanitika and greek) in the context of other idioms of the two languages spoken in different regions. in her reflection, eleni attempts to trace the relations of the local idioms with the two ‘significant others’ – the greek and the albanian – and in both cases, she stresses the positive status assigned to the local way of speaking. in order to highlight the differences between the idioms, in both greek and albanian, she uses the greek terms kathara (clearly) and varia (heavily), which are closely associated with the sociolinguistic history of the greek language. these terms come from the greek metalinguistic discourse (kotrotsou-lontou 2004; mackridge 2009; archakis 2019) 6 and imply the relations of power between different regional and social varieties of greek as well as the two versions of the standard – katharevousa (the clear language) and dhimotiki (the people’s language): e.: our language is not albanian, it is arvanitika. arvanites exist in many places… however, i can’t understand them. we talked with one [arvanite] colleague [from a anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 88 different region], and he said that he didn’t understand me. they speak ‘heavily,’ we speak ‘clearly.’ int: what does it mean to speak ‘heavily’? e: well, there are some words, we say them one way, they say them differently. we have the same thing with greek. they speak one way in macedonia, another way here in epirus, and differently in crete. when i went to work [in athens], nobody could tell that i was from epirus. they’d say, ‘it’s impossible’ – because i spoke very ‘clearly’. e: albanians used the word uly to say ‘sit down,’ while we use uny. when i heard uly for the first time, i didn’t understand it. after some years, i did. this is our way of speaking, the ‘clearer’ one. here we speak ‘clearly’, both in greek and arvanitika. the idea of a language being ‘clear’ is, in this case, closely connected to the one of an ‘authentic’ language saved in time without alteration: e: when they started coming, they’d hear, for example, that we use the word lugё (‘spoon’), and they’d say ‘look, they have kept our old language here!’. they told us how they call it – i don’t remember now.7 and, by the way, the word was very varia (heavy). and they said ‘you are keeping our language clear!’. as one can see, eleni uses the terminology genealogically (foucault 1980) related to the greek national discourse to describe the local idioms, and she uses the same terms for the greek and arvanitika ones. such choice of words resolves the discursive tension and allows her to create a symbolic space of intimacy linked to the sense of belonging to the place and embed the idea of the local into the idea of the national. this example brings us back to the concept of heteroglossia, which tsitsipis adopted from bakhtin’s work and used to describe the relationship between arvanitika and greek and which he defined as a situation when “one language is seen through the eyes of the other” (tsitsipis 1997, 106). indeed, the way eleni uses the greek terms to describe and evaluate the arvanitika idiom seems a perfect example of a language “seen through the eyes of the other”. however, this situation’s peculiarity lies in the fact that ‘the other’s’ perspective is not used to undermine the arvanitika idiom’s status, but quite the opposite – to praise it as being ‘clear’ and ‘authentic.’ revisiting herzfeld’s concept of subversive archaism (herzfeld 2019), we introduce subversive heteroglossia. when such subversive heteroglossia occurs, the internalized dominant linguistic ideology is reassessed and used in ways that deviate from the original ideology. in contrast, the other interviewee from plikati, christina, uses a reverse version of this terminology when telling her story. she uses the term katharevousa (clear language) or protevousianika (the city’s language) to describe the way they speak in albania. on the contrary, plikati’s way of speaking arvanitika is characterized as choriatika (the language of the village), although, when using it, she points out the same peculiarities of the idiom which eleni described as ‘speaking kathara’ (clearly): anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 89 the language is the same, but they [the people in albania, the migrants from albania in plikati] speak it differently. they speak a clear language (katharevousa) while we speak as villagers (choriatika). many words cannot be understood. if you want to learn the language, you go to school, and there you can learn the clear language (katharevousa). i can communicate in arvanitika with people from albania, but they speak differently, here we speak as villagers (choriatika); they speak like people from the city (protevousianika). this difference in eleni’s and christina’s discourses may (at least to some extent) be explained by the differences in the two women’s life stories. christina represents an older generation with restricted access to education (she only had a chance to finish three years of school when world war ii broke out, and she was sent to evacuation). eleni, in contrast, had better access to education. she also lived and worked in athens for many years. it may be the case that she perceives her ‘linguistic self’ quite confidently and securely (in terms of social prestige), while christina’s perception of the way she speaks arvanitika is influenced by her self-perception as a ‘village person’ of lower status in comparison to an educated ‘city person.’ another aspect of eleni’s and christina’s stories is the way they stress the practical value of knowing a language, for example: some years ago, eleni travelled to the czech republic with several girlfriends of hers. they spent some time in prague and visited some other places around the country, including karlovy vary (carlsbad). when having a stroll around the town, they saw a small jewelry shop with many beautiful things on sale. it turned out that the salesman was an albanian-speaking guy from skopje, and eleni talked arvanitika to him. he was so happy that he gave away the beautiful rings that eleni and her friends had chosen for themselves for a much better price. eleni’s friends were delighted and surprised about this, and eleni concluded the story by saying, ‘by the way, this moment made me feel very proud!’. christina told another story regarding her ability to understand russian, which she had picked up in evacuation during the war: some years ago, three russian men came to visit the village. they spoke perfect greek, but once christina heard two of them discuss in russian that they would steal the most sacred and precious icon from the village church. christina revealed them, and the icon was kept safe in the village. ‘this is how’ – she concluded proudly, ‘the icon was saved by my language’. these two stories are both concluded by overt expressions of affective affiliation with a language other than greek, which is not typical for eleni and christina. however, the feeling of pride is not associated with the language on its own, but rather with the pragmatic role the storyteller’s command of this language plays in a particular social situation and how it positively affects the storyteller’s social self’s status. we assume that when the discourses of anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 90 homogeneity are dominant, and mistrust towards diversity expressions is shared, the pragmatic dimension of language use paradoxically becomes the safe space to express affectivity linked with language. picture no. 3 – albania is right behind the mountains. plikati, july 2018 conclusions through the micro-level analysis of personal narratives contextualized in the macroprocesses of the nation-state’s life, we have revealed the spaces of cultural intimacy created through such discursive tools as code-switching, use of specific terminology to describe languages, and storytelling. exploring such is equally essential for nation-states and borderlands’ anthropological theorization and understanding how everyday social reality is being constructed through language. cultural landscapes of the past have been strongly affected by the bordering processes. speaking with our research participants and walking around konitsa, we were able to trace the past processes of place-making in the physical landscape (e.g., the semi-demolished bektashi turbe) and the still present spaces of cultural intimacy in the metalinguistic discourse. today, the ruins of shared sacred places are the symbol of homogenization of the public space. however, the discursive patterns that we traced in our interlocutors’ personal stories construct a cultural borderland (donnan and wilson 1999), a symbolic space acceptive of all the inconsistencies and contradictions in the intimate personal experience. as we hope to have shown by our case study, a focus on discursive strategies of particular people in particular contexts and attention to the patterns of linguistic ideologies in their talk allows access to the otherwise hidden meanings of everyday linguistic practices. such practices anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 91 play a crucial role in constructing the people’s social reality and making sense of their connection to the place in the broader context of the nation-state. our case study has demonstrated how shared patterns of cultural imaginaries – with their specific terminology and ‘grammar’ of social relations between people and languages – can be creatively used and transformed for one’s unique life story. having demonstrated merely one example of how subversive heteroglossia works, we here suggest that further elaboration on the dynamics between linguistic ideologies and the social and individual dimensions of language use can enrich the field of anthropological research on social boundaries. notes 1 our engagement with the topic emerged within the framework of the 13th international konitsa summer school in anthropology, ethnography and comparative folklore of the balkans in 2018. the case study was supervised by paris potiropoulos (hellenic folklore research center), to whom we owe special thanks for his insightful comments and guidance throughout the research. also, we would like to thank the organizers of the summer school, the lecturers, and visiting speakers for the enlightening discussions. we thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of this special issue, davide carnevale and thomas wilson, for their valuable suggestions and comments. last but not least, we are infinitely grateful to our research participants who treated us with kindness, shared their stories, and made this research possible. ekaterina zheltova’s participation in the research was supported by the charles university grant agency (gauk, 2018; project #946218), the svv project of the institute of international studies, fsv uk, no. 260954/2021, and cefres (cefres, usr 3138 cnrs-meae). all photos in this paper are taken by the researchers and belong to the researchers’ personal archive. 2 this fieldwork activity was carried out in konitsa and plikati, in northwestern greece, on the border between the greek and albanian states. the town of konitsa is the economic and administrative center of the greek konitsa municipality. throughout the 20th century, a large part of the population participated in population exchanges (many ‘muslims’/ ‘albanian speakers’ left for turkey and albania, while the refugees from asia minor came to settle in the area). plikati is located in very close proximity to the border. it was historically populated by arvanitika speakers. until the 20th century, it was mostly inhabited by orthodox populations with some muslim families that left (mostly during the population exchanges). despite the language shift, the older residents still speak arvanitika, although greek is the predominant language. while our research participants from plikati define themselves as orthodox, our interlocutors from konitsa culturally affiliate with bektashism, a sufi dervish branch of islam. 3 the presence of golden dawn, a greek far-right political party, in the konitsa municipality is one of the factors increasing long-established racist and xenophobic beliefs, commonly found in this border area. among others, they have also been directed at the albanian migrants in konitsa. yet, years of neighborhood and proximity have made the dynamics of interaction more complex, bringing together in one space discriminatory ideologies and practices of neighborly coexistence. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 92 4 turbe is a spiritual leader’s (baba) tomb, an important sacred site in bektashism. 5 following the tradition dating back to the ottoman times, the term ‘turk’ is often used to refer to all muslim people regardless of their national, ethnic, cultural, or linguistic affiliation. in the case of albanian-greek borderlands, the term is sometimes used to refer to albanians in general. 6 the ‘language issue’ in greece, namely the discussion on the appropriate form of the official national language, arose several decades before the greek independence war at the dawn of the 19th century. the greek ‘national awakening’ started a debate between the archaists, who favored the reinstallation of a linguistic form inspired by the ancient greek, and the dhimotikistes, who advocated for the everyday spoken form of greek. the divide between katharevousa and dhimotiki, which intertwined within the county's major political and ideological questions, has been central to the public sphere for more than 150 years. 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oxford up. zheltova, ekaterina. 2019. “when confusion makes sense: micro-politics of categories and cultural intimacy in the albanian-greek borderlands.” in etnické komunity. neviditelní, přehlížení, zapomenutí [ethnic communities: the invisible, the overlooked, the forgotten], edited by dana bittnerová, and mirjam moravcová, 187-214. prague: vydání první. microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 103 book review being góral: identity politics and globalization in postsocialist poland deborah cahalen schneider (2006) state university of new york press peter vermeersch university of leuven, national fund of scientific research, belgium in this concise but fine-grained and carefully researched study of a regional identity movement in poland, deborah calahan schneider presents a small-scale ethnographic analysis that will, undoubtedly, not only interest anthropologists working in poland but also general readers who seek to gain a better understanding of more large-scale societal processes in contemporary central and eastern europe. starting with a description of the visit of pope john paul ii to the town of żywiec in 1995—a place in poland that is the home of one of the country’s largest beer breweries and known to be the heartland of góral identity— schneider tells the story of why, how, and in what circumstances specific population groups in żywiec have come to identify themselves publicly with “góralness” and have been active in promoting it as a label of ethnic identification. by using as the point of departure the figure of the pope, a public figure who has been claimed to be a góral by the townspeople of żywiec but has simultaneously been seen by many poles as a powerful symbol for the polish nation as a whole, schneider uncovers a complex political game of regional identity formation and capitalist transformation. instead of taking the existence of a unified góral movement for granted, schneider opens the black box of local identity politics and finds that there is more going on than one would be inclined to think at first sight. during extensive fieldwork in the żywiec community carried out in the middle of the 1990s, schneider discovers that góral identity is not equally important to everyone who is said to belong to the community. the idiom of góral identity, as it turns out, is not spontaneously used by the average inhabitant of żywiec, and it is hard to pin down the markers that members of the community consider as the objective basis of that identity. schneider claims that underlying various identity claims one can find another layer of social relations, one that is fundamental in determining the identity dynamics in the community; these are the social relations of economic transition. schneider hypothesizes the existence of a “class conflict” between, on the one hand, those elite groups who seek to attract foreign investors and, on the other hand, those who favor a more insular and region-oriented economic strategy. both elite groups invoke images of traditional góral identity to buttress their public action, but they do so in different ways and with different agendas in mind. schneider’s main point is that we can better understand the reasons why various actors seek to entrench a traditional regional identity by seeing their actions as a response to outside forces of economic transition. this way of seeing things indeed illuminates a number of developments in żywiec as well as in central and eastern europe more generally. while a stereotypical way of explaining the emergence of ethnic identity in central and eastern europe after 1989 is to argue that it is the result of ethnic affiliations that have always existed but were earlier suppressed by the presence of socialism, a more sophisticated interpretation is indeed one that considers it to be the result of contemporary social processes in the field of political economy. in poland, the economic transition of the 1990s distributed wealth unevenly. while some urban centers could attract capital, more peripheral areas, such as żywiec, did not get what they expected. according to schneider, this uneven economic transition has made many poles in provincial communities feel “abandoned or betrayed by the national government and new economy that had given them such high hopes in 1989” (p.6-7). one of the responses of local elites to this situation was a deliberate attempt to promote an idiom of local identity in order to (re-)gain political and economic authority. thus, besides being an intriguing thematically organized history of the town of żywiec, this elegant book is a useful contribution to the wider literature on identity politics in central europe, not only because it offers a view anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 104 into a relatively unknown case, but also because it shows that group identity is not simply a matter of “being,” that it is not simply the result of the prior existence of ethnic differentiation, but the result of the actions of contemporary economic elites deliberately promoting ethnic identity as a dominant political idiom. for this reason, the title of the book might seem somewhat misleading. this book is ultimately not about “being góral,” but about the social processes that lead to “becoming góral.” in żywiec, góral identity is used as a kind of currency to trade on issues that are in the end not so much about that identity itself. in the same vein, one can argue that this book covers more than the subtitle suggests. by examining not only the postcommunist period, but also the period of the austro-hungarian partitions, the interwar polish state, the nazi occupation and the communist period, schneider finds that such processes of identity politics as a response to outside forces also occurred before 1989. of course, the story of the górals takes place in a very unique setting, so one should therefore be careful with generalizing from this one case. nevertheless, schneider’s conclusion that class relations shape local identity politics is a plausible argument, and one that perhaps could help to shed some light on the puzzle of national polish politics today—in a country that has successfully applied for its “return to europe,” we find in 2006 a governing coalition that seeks to abandon the language of capitalist transition, is openly skeptic of the european union, and builds its support on a defensive language of national identity. allen typewritten text © 2006 deborah cahalen schneider all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. editors notes: special issue ethnographies of postsocialism volume 21, number 2 introduction to special issue: ethnographies of postsocialism julie hemment, guest editor university of massachusetts, amherst © 2003 julie hemment all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the essays gathered here are selections from papers presented at the 2003 soyuz symposium, hosted by the university of massachusetts, amherst and held at amherst college on february 7-8. this year we abandoned attempts to impose a theme, and invited scholars instead to contribute papers on the general topic of ethnographies of postsocialism. the symposium featured presentations by scholars based in the us, germany, the uk and hungary, drawing on research conducted across a range of locations from the former soviet union to cuba. the conference was sponsored by the dean of social and behavioral sciences, university of massachusetts at amherst, the five college lecture fund, university of massachusetts department of anthropology, amherst college russian department, amherst college political science department, smith college history department, smith college anthropology department and mt. holyoke college russian & eurasian studies program. this conference marked ten years of soyuz, the postsocialist cultural studies group, or at least that’s what i claimed. as i was pulling things together, there was some debate as to when soyuz actually started. as nancy ries, one of the original participants notes in her keynote piece, soyuz began as a series of informal conversations about socialism and postsocialism in the early 1990s. as organizer of this year’s symposium, i spent some time thinking about how best to mark this approximate anniversary. how too to respond to the challenges inherent in it, the challenge raised by a number of scholars and laid out most clearly by katherine verdery in her 2002 soyuz keynote address: fourteen years after the berlin wall came down and state socialism began to unravel, “whither postsocialism”?i has it outlived its usefulness as an organizing rubric? in the context of the uncertain regroupings and realignments that steven sampson has called the “post-postsocialist” phase (sampson 2002), what do we have in common, and what can be gained from bringing ourselves into dialogue? to my mind, these papers demonstrate the value of continuing the conversation, a conversation that is not exclusive to those working in the region. the papers gathered here deal with themes that occur in anthropological discussions of any part of the world: agency in the face of the processes of globalization, cultural explanations for new economic stratifications, memory, history and identity, yet they are distinctively inflected by the socialist past and narratives of the past. the postsocialism that emerges from reading this set of papers is not a unified thing, but a set of processes with considerable regional and local inflections. building on the best insights from the anthropological studies that preceded them, and which have contributed so much to the study of postsocialist change, these papers do not reify the during and after of socialism, but are instead attentive to continuities, flows and flux. this anthropology of postsocialism is attentive both to history and to the “broader political geography” (gal and kligman 2000:4) within which field sites are located: the shifting discursive and geopolitical parameters of europe (before and after the end of the cold war), the diverse set of forces and flows we call globalization and the reconfigurations of what some call empire. in sum, they make a strong case for anthropology’s role in the study of formerly socialist states and offer an occasion to consider what the postsocialist case offers anthropology more broadly. many of the papers addressed questions of transforming power relations, economic stratification, and the moral sense making that accompanies this. david altshuler and tatjana thelen examine the dilemmas of privatization and moral justice. althshuler turns to history to help make sense of debates about privatization in jen typewritten text 3 volume 21, number 2 the czech republic, examining narratives about property ownership and wealth during four key periods since the end of the second world war. his account reveals an interesting persistence that illuminates much about the political imagination in this locale. the diverse critiques of socio economic difference he examines – ranging from dissident accounts during the 1970s and 1980s, to contemporary property disputes amongst neighbors and discussions of corruption are all conducted in terms of czechness versus foreignness; they articulate disputes not only about class and morality, but ethnic and national difference too. tatjana thelen examines privatization from a different angle, looking at the reconstruction of rural society following decollectivization in hungary. focusing on gender and generation, she examines the ways that interpersonal relations are shaping the privatization of land at the same time as they are themselves transformed by this process. in her account, the “new power of old men” is testimony not to a straightforward reinstatement of patriarchal power, but also reflects the partial persistence of socialist gender arrangements. in their different ways, diana blank and irina pshenichnikova both examine the topic of transforming postsocialist power relations by looking at language. blank’s topography of fairytale cynicism in the ukraine focuses on the rhetorical devices that allow people to deal with social dislocation. the narratives she presents us with are at once sense making strategies and incisive commentaries on the postsocialist distribution of power. pshenichnikova’s study investigates the uneven process of professional socialization into international business norms and culture by focusing on language socialization. her case study of undergraduates in the st. petersburg school of management reveals interesting moments of contestation and slippage as students struggle to learn market economy values in the language of the global economy – english. a couple of the papers examine the theme of transforming postsocialist power relations through the lens of postcolonial studies. douglas rogers looks at a case of religious revival in the russian urals. drawing a comparison with studies of religious transformation in postcolonial contexts, he argues that the postsocialist world offers something distinct. in this case, a religious transformation intertwined through political economic change that is not routed through subjectivity or personhood. despite their ability to marshal diverse local and global resources, the belokrinitsy (priestly old believers) are only able to achieve a partial conversion amongst the local population, many of who still prefer to seek the services of old women to arrange funerals. david koester’s paper examines contemporary drinking practices in post-soviet kamchatka in terms of their colonial effects. he shows how beyond their ostensible role of enhancing social cohesion, drinking practices are instances where distinctions between ethnic russians and indigenous others are enacted and maintained – within drinking groups, not just at its boundaries. nikolai voukov and robert krikorian examine the intersecting themes of power, memory and identity by looking at the use of history in the present. krikorian examines appropriations of the past in the context of the azerbaijani/armenian conflict over nagornokarabakh. he traces the ways that history was claimed and used to mobilize and legitimize armenian struggles for national determination during the late soviet period, steadily eroding soviet legitimacy. voukov’s paper looks at these themes through examining the fate of state socialist monuments in bulgaria. in his account, acts of desecration, removal or reinstallation of monuments are forms of contestation about the meaning of death and the sacred, which were crucially entwined in state socialist symbolism. a striking number of papers this year looked at the architecture of transnational engagement in postsocialist states, that is, the local reception of international aid and policy interventions and the discourses accompanying them. contributors brought critical insights to the topic, drawing attention to the unintentionally homogenizing and exclusionary effects of ngos and “empowering” discourses of civil society, feminism and human rights. at the same time these authors critique international interventions, they are clearly invested in contributing to their improvement. kristen ghodsee’s paper makes the case for ethnography by discussing the problematic exportation of development models to postsocialist states, specifically the promotion of microcredit schemes in bulgaria. as she shows, the failure of these initiatives is testimony to the failure to pay attention to local, state socialist inflected constructions and meanings. leyla keough and ethan wilensky-lanford use ethnographic jen typewritten text 4 volume 21, number 2 knowledge to problematize internationally circulating discourses of women’s rights, highlighting the agency and power of women typically represented as victims. keough’s paper focuses on gagauz women who migrate from moldova to work as domestics in istanbul. her rich ethnographic account complicates policy discussions and discourses on trafficking by exploring the diverse motivations and structural factors that propel these mobile domestics. she argues convincingly that these women are better seen as “agents in traffic” than as hapless victims. wilensky-lansford’s account of bride capture in kyrgystan similarly challenges expectations. he explores local ambivalence about this practice that is deplored by us and european human rights groups and suggests that the practice itself is more flexible than outsiders allow. helms, wallace, wallace-lorencova and erikson discuss ngos, whose role and presence has been so important in internationally sponsored projects of social renewal in postsocialist states over the last decade. in her analysis of the bosnian feminist ngo medica zenica, elissa helms shows the bureaucratization associated with ngos undermines local strategies and alliances that have been painstakingly devised and works against the ethnic reconciliation ngos set out to achieve. this same theme peeps through in dickie wallace’s account of journalistic practice in the contested croatian borderland of kraijna. here, those who offer counter projects to the exclusionary ethnonationalist model of local radio ironically fall between the cracks and are not heard or recognized by agencies which only recognize the need for “minority media” projects. viera wallace-lorencova’s study of queer activism in slovakia deals with the intersection of ngos and the processes of eu integration. she examines the scope for agency of slovakian lesbian and gay activists as they stand at the complex juncture of eu integration and globalization. her paper demonstrates that despite considerable hurdles, queer activists have been able to use international discourses of human rights to political effect in slovakia. nested within these latter papers are rich ethical and methodological questions. in ngo-based research, the usual dilemmas of participant observation are intensified and especially transparent. researchers are intimately bound within the political economic relations that make ngo work possible. they are often funded by the same agencies; they may work as volunteers, evaluators or consultants at the same time as they conduct research in ngos and find themselves juggling to meet multiple objectives and agendas. jennifer erikson’s paper, based on research with the bosnian women’s group medica infoteka, specifically focuses on the ethical and methodological challenges of conducting research within ngos as she describes her attempt to forge a collaborative project that made little sense to her bosnian feminist co-workers. finally, a report. this year for the first time, soyuz participants began a productive and stimulating dialogue that i for one would like to see continue within the pages of aeer. under the theme of “teaching postsocialism”, a group of us came together in a working lunch to explore some of the particular professional and pedagogical challenges we face. the idea emerged from informal conversations with colleagues during the planning stages of the conference (thanks, michele rivkin-fish and marko zivkovic). some of us were recently hired as postsocialist scholars; we find ourselves regarded as specialists not merely of russia, or the balkans, but of “postsocialism” and “postsocialist studies”. what does this mean to us, what does it entail? what are the particular challenges we have faced in our teaching? as the years go by, we find ourselves teaching students who are not rooted in the area studies paradigm and for whom the cold war is increasingly distant. depending on our institutions, we may find ourselves teaching students who have little or no backgrounds in the history of the region. how to handle this? with which of our colleagues do we find ourselves in most productive dialogue? participants discussed readings that worked, films, as well as the particular pedagogical challenges of teaching postsocialism. we concluded the session by drawing up a list of suggestions that we hope to pick up on: the creation of a syllabus archive on the soyuz website, the publication of a special edition of aeer on teaching postsocialism, an edited volume or teaching text that includes theory, ethnography and fiction. my thanks to michele rivkin-fish, soyuz convener, who worked with me on the selection of papers and organization of panels and to nancy ries, who has worked with me in editing this volume. finally, i would like to acknowledge the indispensable role played by jen typewritten text 5 volume 21, number 2 leyla keough, who provided invaluable logistical and administrative support both before and during the conference and has worked closely with me in putting this edition together. references gal, susan, and gail kligman 2000 the politics of gender after socialism. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. hann, chris, caroline humphrey, and katherine verdery 2001 introduction: postsocialism as a topic of anthropological investigation. in postsocialism: ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. c. hann, ed. pp. 128. london and new york: routledge. sampson, steven 2002 beyond transition: rethinking elite configurations in the balkans. in postsocialism: ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. c. hann, ed. pp. 297-316. london and new york: routledge. endnotes i the text of this keynote was later published as part of the co-authored introduction to chris hann’s edited collection, postsocialism (hann et al. 2001) jen typewritten text 6 sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 51 continuity and identity in the local community: a long term perspective tanya boneva sofia university "saint kliment ohridski," sofia, bulgaria this paper is dedicated to the complexity of ethnic phenomena and focuses on the double interrelationship between ethnic identity and national policy in the russian empire and the ussr. it will present some results from the study of korten and tvarditsa78, two bulgarian peasant communities in the taraklia region of moldova, studied during the period 1994-2001. it will include some of my observations and interviews with the local people as well as documents found in the odessa regional archive, ukraine, and in some local and regional studies on the subject. according to the last population census in the soviet union, carried out in 1989, 233,800 bulgarians live in ukraine and 88,418 in moldova (naulko 1999:146). the bulgarian ethnic identity was registered in soviet passports79. both villages studied here are situated in southern moldova, where one can find other bulgarian, moldovan and gagauz villages. the villages were settled between 1830-1831 and took the names of the villages from which the migrants came in a forceful emigration after the russian-turkish war in 1828-1829 (novakov 1966:13-14, poglubko & zabunov, 1980:5-10). the ethnic identity of the two villages in the 1989 census was similar: in korten 94.4% of the 3567 inhabitants and in tvarditsa 94.3% of the 6382 inhabitants declared themselves to be bulgarians, and bulgarian as their mother tongue (novakov 1992). exploring the ethnic stability of the villages during their 160 year history in bessarabia in the context of changing social and political conditions was the main focus of my ethnological fieldwork in these villages. the interrelationship between power and identity is a problem discussed in different studies of ethnicity with respect to policy and the nation. (e.g. weber 1947; anderson 1983; anderson 1991; barth, 1969; gellner 1983:17-18; smith 1986; smith 1991; gossiaux 2002; gossiaux 2004). ernest gellner underlines the differentiation between classes through ideology in literate agrarian societies, where cultural differentiation is presented in the smaller communities (gellner 1983:17). max weber stresses the close relationship between kinship (descent) and ethnicity, and he defines the ethnic community as a group which believes in its common descent, real or imagined. (weber 1947:306). barth considers ethnicity in terms of the existence of recognized social boundaries (symbolic zones of contrast among members of different groups), marked by stable or changing cultural features of the community80. anderson studied the imagined character of nations. gossiaux described ethnicity as a complex objective reality that sometimes can be expressed in individual strategies, but is always a part of the social and symbolic order of the world. unlike barth, who focuses upon the analyses of individual ascription to a certain culture and ethnic identity as a personal choice, gossiaux underlines the determinism of identity. he considers marriage norms a condition for the existence of ethnic structure (gossiaux 2004:2528, 32). different markers of ethnic identity will be analysed in order to explore the continuity of ethnic identity in the local communities. i will focus on a number of identity markers: endonyms81 (or autonyms, as opposed to exonyms, gossiaux 2004:34-36), language, personal and family names (a universal ethnic marker), historical memory, marriage and descent, religion, cultural tradition and modernity. bulgarian migrants settled in the territory of the russian empire between the rivers prut and dnieper in a long process of forced migration out of the ottoman empire between 1801-186382 in the aftermath of political and economic crises and several russian-turkish wars83. most migrants were peasants.84 bulgarians were accorded a status as colonists alongside germans, greeks, jews, swedes and other emigrants. the russian authorities carried out a thorough registration of their ethnic or religious identity.85 many of the colonies were organised primarily on an ethnic basis, along with many cases of ethnic complexity86. settlers’ memories and documents provide evidence for local or regional names, which reveal the migrants’ place of origin87. some of the local communities such as tvarditsa, glavani, golitsa, vaisal and so on preserved the names of the villages from which migrants originally came. the authorities established a coherent system of governance and control in the newly colonized region. the system of land tenure was based on communal (mir) property. the colonists were granted state owned land for their eternal and incontestable hereditary possession, not for their personal ownership, but for communal use. the land anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 52 belonged to each colony. every colonist with a family was allotted a share (nadel) of approximately 50–60 dessetina88. such land could not be sold, assigned, pledged or otherwise disposed of in order to prevent its passing into alien hands. these shares of state land (nadel) were inherited by the youngest son in the family, but the father could appoint another heir among his children and relatives if he so chose. the colonists were entitled to buy private property outside the state-owned plots that they were accorded upon their settlement. the system of land tenure practiced was common tenure and redistribution was restricted to the commune (derzavin 1914:59-60). each colony was governed by an assembly (mirskii shod or communal convent) which included one land–holder from each estate (dvor). the assembly elected a standing executive body called a village (colonial) order (prikaz) and a mayor (starosta) who was elected by the share holders (hoziaini). individual farmers depended on the commune. agricultural life and consecutive stages of seasonal agricultural activities were regulated by decisions of the colonial assembly (shod or convent). the extensive three-field system of crop rotation was applied. (derzavin 1914:63)89 social life was regulated by the collective decision-making of the colonial assembly, which included only family share holders (hoziaini). at the time of settlement the assembly reflected relative social equality. the economic framework imposed by the state did not stimulate personal economic activities, but it confined economic and social life to the local communities. this social order promoted social conservatism and cultural stability for a long time. economic modernization started with the regulations of 1871 when the colonists were endowed with the rights of state peasants, but these were not put into practice until 1906-1910 when peasants were granted the right to personal land titles and to resettlement on free land (chervenkov & grek 1993:41). this long lasting institutional conservatism did not promote individualism in the local communities. a family unit economic strategy was based on demographic reproduction, mutual aid and seasonally hired labor. the ownership of a farm and house were the major life goals for the bulgarian peasants. social life was confined mainly to the villages and restricted the reproduction of social norms, world views, nominative systems, language, customs, songs and myths of the past all to the patterns established in the time before emigration. this was to a certain degree stimulated by the policy of stability, promoted by the russian administration. for a long time the empire authorities respected the local laws and institutions, traditions, religion and education in the mother tongue of the foreigners. everyday life and festivities in the villages were regulated by the ethnic and religious traditions of the settlers (mironov 1999:29-32). bulgarians in korten and tvarditsa settled in bessarabia at the time when the territory was part of the russian empire. today this region is divided between moldova and ukraine, with korten and tvarditsa remaining on the moldovan side. their ethnic identity was expressed in the designation of their villages which used the names of the old places they had left behind. in the official documents korten was registered kiriutnia and for a long time it preserved the same administrative name. these names reflect the use of two names: a turkish (kiriutnia) one in the official sources and a bulgarian (korten) one used locally at the time of emigration. in 1995 under the authority of the moldovan government, the village restored its bulgarian name of korten. in the imperial authorities’ official documents, and at the central and local administrative levels, the villages of kiriutnia and tvarditsa are registered as being inhabited by bulgarians and are bulgarian colonies. historical memories concerning old villages back home imprints ideal images of the bulgarian landscape onto the new settlement: green mountains; fruitful plains and rivers90; a pleasant climate; cold, sweet spring water; cultivated fields and gardens; vineyards on the slopes. this idealistic picture of bulgarian life is a contrast to other stories and songs describing religious and political repression by the ottomans. such memories also exist in contrast to the reality of their new land, the budjak: flat steppe, salt water, cold winters and hot summers. (novakov 1966:9; novakov & gurgurov 1995:14; poglubko & zabunov 1980:13,15). my field interviews and local studies record both the difficult decision to emigrate and the symbolic rituals carried out following this decision: people went to the cemetery where a service for the souls of the dead grandparents was performed. it was a forceful emigration that is reminiscent of the exodus of hebrews from egypt (novakov &.gurgurov 1995:13). part of the traumatic memory is recorded in a group of melancholic songs concerning the forced marriage of bulgarian maidens to the turks (muslims), the difficult times of political crises when uncontrollable military bands (kurdzalii) ransacked the villages. the main reason for the decision to migrate was religious discrimination. bulgarians left a turkish (muslim) state to settle in an orthodox slav state.91 of great importance to the peasants was the emigration of their priests. the new villages are situated in places designed to remind them of the old villages they had to leave behind, no matter how tenuous such parallels anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 53 were in reality. indeed it is impressive to see that the villages are surrounded by hills and small rivers—the markers of the habitat migrants left behind. bulgarians have orthodox and popular personal and family names in bulgarian forms. at the time of migration and in the first years of settlement, the russian administration registered the emigrants’ families. in a description of the population in the kiriutnia (korten) colony from april 1835, family names remain unchanged because bulgarian and russian families are formed by the same rules with the ending –ov. -ev. however, the list reflects the imprint of the russian nominative forms on some personal names and prenomes: georgii (georgi) ianiev-ich kalchishkov, ivan russev-ich (russev) kishkilev, zlati kurtov-ich petkov, deniu konstantinov-ich (konstantinov) tanurkov, dmitrii (dimitar) zlatiev-ich (zlatev) chumertov, petr (petar) dimitriev-ich (dimitrov) gurgurov and so on (novakov, s. n. chervenkov 1980:74-81). the giving of russian forms to personal names was gradually imposed by the church according to its nominative practice. at the time of baptism, girls and boys received a russian name: mara became maria, todora – feodora, russa – alexandra, pena – praskovia, todor – feodor, sava – savelii and so on. parents did not accept these names and so people adopted two personal names. the official names were used in formal contexts and remained in the church registers, while the bulgarian names were used within the families and in the local communities when communicating with other bulgarians. importantly, every personal name was given according to the strict norms of traditional bulgarian nominative practice (blagoeva 1999): the baby received the name of his/her grandfather/grandmother, of the god-parents or a symbolic name believed to maintain his/her health. the same personal and family names were preserved in families through the generations. this constituted a very strong link with the grandparents, kin and the past. a cardinal change in the nominative system of bulgarians and many other ethnic communities was promoted only after 1956 when peasants in the ussr received their soviet passports. from that time onwards the official name in its russian form became a representative one in all official contacts between the individuals in local communities and even more importantly, outside them. to the present day, bulgarian family names remain an official marker of ethnic identity. thus family names in the populations of korten and tvarditsa reflect the situation in bulgaria at the time of migration. most of them are formed by the bulgarian nominative rules with the end -ov (for males) and -ova (for females), but there are also family names formed by the turkish nominative rules karra, taukchi, arabadzi, etc. (poglubko, k. i. zabunov 1980:59-60, 88-95). the long term continuity of bulgarian names in both korten and tvarditsa was closely connected with the practice of local marriage, endogamy, which was observed until the 1960s. it was explained by informants from tvarditsa in terms of references from the books (holy scriptures): ‘‘one should not marry a russian or moldovan, because one is bulgarian and from tvarditsa. we are one nation and one blood must be maintained’’. it is written in the books: “the evil will begin when people mix their blood... the people have made a sin”. another influential idea in tvarditsa was that of the ‘guest’. emigrants always saw their move as temporary, believing that in the future they would return to their native land and village: “bulgaria is our fatherland...sooner or later we will return there. we are guests here. we are born here, but we are bulgarians. the blood must not be mixed... we must live according to our laws. we are born bulgarian and baptized in our village church’’92. ethnic endogamy facilitated the stability of agricultural and pastoral activities; the bulgarians combined corn, vineyard and wine production with husbandry, all well developed pursuits before emigration to bessarabia. they were developed in the new lands alongside the establishment of vegetables and fruits market production (novakov & gurgurov 1995:22-29). the most honorable social category in both villages was that of the middle class. hard working, the master (stopanin, hoziain) was expected to create wealth by his own and his families’ hands. the social and ethnic identity of bulgarians in the local communities and outside them was that of experienced workers. on the whole, the rural culture of the bulgarians preserved its ethnic features until the period of radical economic reforms which followed the inclusion of bessarabia in the ussr in 1944. the language of the local communities still remains an archaic regional dialect of the region of sliven in bulgaria, mixed with russian and moldovan words and phrases. for me (a native bulgarian speaker) it was not difficult to understand this old dialect form of the bulgarian language. today in official communications russian is usually used; even after the separation of moldova from ussr in 1991, russian remained the formal language of administration and is still a means of communication in interethnic relationships. it is a lingua franca of the region. the generations educated after 1950 are bilingual. in the 1990s russian was anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 54 still the language taught in the schools in both villages. the local population has decided to keep russian in the schools for the following ten years. education in the villages passed through different periods from early settlement onwards. local private and parochial schools in the bulgarian villages were opened in the 1840s; they were maintained by the colonists and the classes were conducted in russian. in 1842 and 1844 1st and 2nd class parochial and ministerial schools, organized by the ministery of education, were opened and in 1858 schools in tvarditsa and korten were established, supported by the local communes. a very small portion of village children enrolled in these schools (novakov & chervenkov, 1980:10,19; poglubko & zabunov, 1980: 20). modern education was the path to integration in the wider society. the central school in the bulgarian town of bolgrad in bessarabia was opened in 1859 and spread modern education among bulgarians (at that time this part of bessarabia, which had been returned in 1856 to moldova, belonged to the newly unified romanian state). the school syllabus included bulgarian, russian, greek, moldovan, latin, french and german languages as well as history, natural studies and mathematics. two libraries and a publising house were also established (radkova 1978:101-135). in 1869 in komrat a bessarabian-bulgarian central school was opened and it boasted 200 students. bulgarian was included in the syllabus. bulgarian language education was introduced in the bulgarian villages mostly through the alumni of these two schools. at that time bulgarian books and newspapers were published in bolgrad and odessa. in 1865 books and school textbooks were delivered in korten in bulgarian, published in komrat by a bulgarian teacher (novakov & chervenkov 1980:11, poglubko & zabunov 1980:27). until the 1860s the russian authorities showed tolerance towards the schools, newspapers, magazines and all forms of education and public activities of the foreign population in the empire. after the 3rd polish uprising in 1863, however, the official national policy changed. by the end of the 1860s the first acts of educational russification were evident through the closure of minority schools, newspapers and magazine presses (mironov 1999:3032)93. after 1878, when bessarabia became a part of the russian empire, the bolgrad school was transformed and in 1886 bulgarian language and history were dropped from the curriculum, marking a policy of large-scale russification. this happened in accordance with the new national policy of integration that was applied across the empire94. a desire for integration in modern science and culture was evident amongst bulgarians in 1865 when the new russian university opened its doors in odessa. the bulgarian community (from different villages) donated money for the creation of a slavic library95. local schools were attended only by a small part of the population in both villages. for instance, in 1897 in korten only 147 boys and 3 girls were enrolled while 330 children remained illiterate; in 1905 in the 3 schools in the same village 235 studied, but 131 remained illiterate; in 1915 in the 4th class there were 264 pupils but another 260 did not attend the school (novakov & chervenkov 1980:19). the situation was similar in tvarditsa, where between 1880-1890 the two 4th class schools contained 172 pupils, but 500 children did not receive an education (poglubko & zabunov 1980:27). after the first world war, when bessarabia was included in the romanian national state, bulgarians passed through a difficult period of intensive political pressure dedicated to changing their ethnic identity, through education in romanian schools and prohibition of the bulgarian language, customs and songs in public places. bulgarians resisted this policy. most of the children did not attend the romanian schools, especially girls. at that time only a small part of the male population and even a smaller number of females learned romanian and became bilingual96. a radical change in education occurred only after the second world war when moldova became part of the ussr. one of the first goals of soviet policy was to liquidate illiteracy. free primary education was established in moldova in 1944. in accordance with the proclaimed right of nations to self-determination, moldovans and russians in moldova studied in their national schools, but bulgarians did not have a national school. they studied in russian schools and did not learn bulgarian as a subject. in korten and tvarditsa after 1944 all the children entered primary school and gained seven years of schooling, and in 1966 a secondary school was opened. the teachers were russians, ukrainians and bulgarians (novakov 1966:40-41). education in russian schools integrated bulgarians in soviet society. but the bulgarian language continued to be spoken within the local communities. it was the everyday means of communication, but it did not undergo processes of modernization and preserved its archaic dialect and diversity, incorporating russian, moldovan and ukrainian words and phrases. free university education enabled youth to enter different universities and to change their social status and profession. a great part of the educated people left the villages and settled in towns and cities. they did anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 55 not follow the rules of endogamy and married russian, moldovan, and other women from different ethnic groups. the relative ethnic homogeneity of the villages remained, but a part of the younger population left the villages. peasant traditions and economic activity are an important part of the ethnic culture of bulgarians. traditional seasonal and life cycle rites and customs, local feasts and communications were organized and influenced by the orthodox christian church and closely connected to the economic life and social values of the peasants. bulgarian weddings, baptisms and funeral rites, as well as some rituals related to life cycle celebrations, were an ethnic marker in the villages. they contain specific elements in both villages— a sign of the long lasting local development of the culture in both the communities. they were organized by the rules of christian tradition, but most of them were a complex combination of official and popular beliefs and norms. religion was a very important part of bulgarians’ ethnic identity, indeed religious identity was one of the factors of migration in the first place. but it was strongly contested in soviet times. waging war on religion was a central aspect of communist ideology. in the 1950s many churches were closed and destroyed. closure was the fate of the church in korten. but in tvarditsa the church did not close and still remains a centre of religious life. but for the believers the times were very difficult. the communist party and komsomol organized atheist propaganda against attending church services, prayer, lent and christian rites such as marriage, baptisms and funeral rites. home icons were discouraged. bulgarians did not stop practicing, most of them kept their icons at home and baptised their children in the churches and monasteries far away from the villages. even members of the communist party and komsomol activists followed this practice. the marriage ceremony is central in the christian marriage; it is a part of a big complex of rites that complete the marriage contract (svatba). the impossibility of organizing a marriage ceremony gave the traditional wedding greater importance; it took over some of the functions of a marriage contract. the official civil registration of the marriage was not important. it could take place years after the actual consummation of the marriage and even after the birth of a child. similarly a specific form of crypto-christianity emerged in the celebration of christian holy days (christmas, easter, patron days of st georgi (st george), st. ivan (st. john), etc.), which was strictly confined to the family circle. all the holy days became a specific manifestation and mix between official and popular christianity. the socialist transformation began with economic reforms in the villages that changed the main productive organization from family farms into kolkhoz collective forms of production. soviet propaganda and local authorities used the social category of kulak (“rich peasants who exploited the labour of the poor”) to describe the enemy in socialist villages. in july 1949, 60 “kulak” families (most of them middle class masters) were expropriated and moved from korten. only some of them returned to the village in 1956, after an amnesty was given by the xx congress of the communist party of the soviet union (novakov & chervenkov 1980:39-40). it is important that the old communal form of property combined collective and individual activities. the independent peasant, free in his economic activity, emerged only after the stolipin reforms and developed during the first three decades of the 20th century. the kolkhoz was a new form of collective organization of the land in which the kolkhozy were granted land in “eternal and gratuity property”97 through official acts of the soviet state. in place of the middle class peasant, new social identities (kolhoznik) emerged and in turn resulted in the emergence of some more prestigious groups: “udarnik truda” 98, “geroi truda ”99, and “stahanovets (stakhanovite)“100 that were the ideal types of kholhosnitsi. in the soviet state, the social and ideological identity was more important than ethnic origin. for bulgarians in korten and tvarditsa, after the first difficult decade (the forceful kolkhoz organisation in 1946, the famine in 1946-47 and the first poor years of the kolkhoz), named “the time of stalin”, life took a more positive direction. it was the time of modernization of everyday life: electrification, better communications, medical care, free education in schools and universities, social mobility and social prosperity not only in the two villages discussed here, but across the soviet union. the quality of life changed with the construction of new modern houses, with financial assistance from the kolkhozy and mutual help from the villagers. new public buildings were constructed: the dom kulaturi (the house of culture) with a theatre, hall and a library, kindergardens, new schools and the kolkhoz administration, dom bita (the house of communal services) and stores became a centre for social life. the image of soviet man (sovetskii cheloviek) and soviet people (sovietskii narod), central in the soviet ideology and propaganda, closely reflected modernization trends in both villages and it gradually included positive connotations. although village life anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 56 stories convey the difficulties in the towns and cities (the need for a document proving citizenship – propiska), the shortage of many goods and the social control of life by the party and komsomol nomenclatura, the time of breznev was generally considered the height of socialist well being. “the time of breznev” in the 2nd half of the period 1965 – 1982 was described as the best time in their lives. “we lived in the time of communism, but we did not recognize it at the time”, said many middle aged people. this kind of statement was heard often during the difficult political, economic and social reforms of post-soviet times. today the official policy in moldova recognizes the rights of ethnic minorities to study their mother tongue. in 1993—in both tvarditsa and korten—bulgarian language kindergartens were opened, while in schools the language was introduced in the curriculum. a bulgarian secondary school was opened in chisinau. bulgarians from moldova and ukraine receive their education in bulgarian universities. bulgarians and their identity are in the process of change. modern bulgarian language education and free communications between the villages korten and tvarditsa in bulgaria and moldova will add new characteristics to their identity. historical memories, language, ethnic traditions, long term social stability and relative immobility were the main factors in giving relative stability to a bulgarian ethnic identity in both villages discussed. the russian empire provided a conservative social and economic stability for the foreign colonies; this policy did not inspire economic and cultural integration. the policy of russification was not realized through education because the cultural and economic integration of the foreign population in the empire did not include the peasants who remained largely illiterate. it was only with the national policy of the soviet union at the time of khrushchev and breznev that progress was made in terms of the integration of the nations in the soviet state. bulgarians were bulgarians, but also became soviet citizens. this double identity was a sign of integration of the communities both on the local and multiethnic levels. the disintegration of the ussr radically changed the political and social situation. today moldova is an independent state. a future field study on the ethnic processes in the bulgarian villages will add new insights to the relationship between continuity and ethnic identity. references anderson, b. 1983. imagined communities. reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: new left books. архив – государственый архив одесской области (оdessa regional state archive). атлас (1958) -атлас болгарских говоров в ссср (ред. с.б. бернщейн. москва). barth, f. 1969. “introduction”. in barth, f. ed. ethnic groups and boundaries: the social organization of culture differences. bergen/london, allen & unwin благоева, е.1999. личното име в българската традиция. изд. марин дринов. софия. (blagoeva, e. personal name in the bulgarian tradition. academic publishing house marin drinov. sofia. 1999) бонева, т. 2001. етничната култура на локалната общност. – в: изследвания в чест на чл.кор. проф. страшимир димитров, studia balkanica, 23, 761-783.( boneva, t. ethnic culture in the local community. – in: studia balkanica, 23, 2001, 761-783) бонева, т. 2002. миналото в локалната общност. – в: фолклорът и корените на съвременната култура. годишни четения по хуманитаристика. бургас. (boneva, t. past in the local community. –in annual readings in humanitarian studies. burgas. 2002.) бонева, т. 2004. социализмът и модернизацията, отразени в житейски разкази. –в: българска етнология, г. ххх, 2004, кн. 4, 79-98.(boneva, t. socialism and modernization, reflected in life stories, bulgarian ethnology, xxx, 2004, 79-98) gellner, e. 1983. nations and nationalism. london: basil blackwell госийо, ж.фр. власт и етнос на балканите. софия. лик 2004. (gossiaux, j.-fr. pouvoirs ethniques dans les balkans. presses universitaires de france. paris 2002) державин, н. 1914. болгарскiя колонiи в россiи. (тавричесская, херсонская и бессарабская губернiи. – в: сборник за народни умотворения, софия, кн.29, 1914. (derzavin, n. bulgarian colonies in russia: tavricheska, hersonska and bessarabska provinces. sofia.1914 anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 57 мещерюк, и. 1965. переселение болгар в южную бессарабию в 1828-1829 гг. кишинев, штиинца. (meshcheriuk, i. (1965) bulgarian emigration in the southern bessarabia in 1828-1829. chisinau. 1965) наука. (atlas of bulgarian dialekts in sssr. ed. bernshtein, s.b. moskow 1958) наулко, в.i. 1999. етнични процеси серед болгарскоi дiаспорi украiнi – в: украйна i болгарiя : вiхi iсторичнoi дружби. одесса (ред. в. станко) (naulko, b. l. ‘ethnic processes among bulgarian diaspora in moldovia and the ukraine’ – in: ukraine and bulgaria: stages of historical friendship. odessa 1999) миронов, б. 1999. социальная история росси . т.1-2, москва 1999 (mironov. b. social history of russia. v.1-2. 1999) новаков, с. 1966. степной родник. кишинев (novakov, s. steppe fountain. chisinau. 1966) новаков, с. 1993. проблемы языка, истории и культуры болгарской диаспоры в молдове и украйне.(ред. с.новаков) кишинев. (novakov, s. problems of language, history and culture of bulgarian diaspora in moldovia and ukraine. (ed. s. novakov) новаков, с. & н. червенков, 1980. прошлое и настоящее села кирютня, кишинев., (novakov, s. & n.chervenkov,1980 past and present of kiriutnia village, chisinau ). (новакав,с.&н.гургуров, 1995. страницы истории села кортен. кишинев (novakov, s. & n. gurgurov, pages from the history of korten village chisinau). поглубко, к. & и забунов, обновльоная твардица. кишинеу 1980 (poglubko, k. & i. zabunov, renovated tvarditsa.chisinau 1980) радкова, р. 1978. към историята на болградската гимназия. – векове, софия, 1978, 3 (radkova, r. on the history of balgrad school. vekove, sofia. 1978, 3) smith, a.d.1986. ethnic origins of nations. new york, basil blackwell, smith, a.d. 1991.national identity. london. penguin press. червенков, н. & и. грек 1993. българите в молдова и украйна. минало и настояще. софия. (chervenkov, n. & i. grec, bulgarians in moldova and ukraine. sofia. 1993) weber, m. 1947. “ethnic groups”. in parsons, t. ed. theories of society, new york. notes 78 i also visited the villages of viktorovka, valiaperza, and kirsovo in moldova and suvorovo, banovka and ternovka in ukraine. 79 in the same statistics 81.7% of bulgarians in the odessa region identified bulgarian as their native tongue, 16.6% russian, and 1% ukrainian (naulko 1999:146). 80 the cultural characteristics of the members may likewise be transformed… even the organizational form of the group and the cultural characteristics of the members may change—yet the continuing dichotomy between members and outsiders allows us to specify the nature of continuity and investigate the changing form and content. (barth 1969:13) 81 the name used by the locals to define themselves is an endonym or an autonym. 82 waves of migration peaked in 1801-1802, 18061812, 1829-1833, 1856-1858 and 1861-1863. 83 the reception of foreign emigrants was part of a deliberate imperial policy to populate the lands reclaimed from the ottoman empire. in 1844, 87,000 bulgarian colonists lived in the territory between the prut and dnieper rivers, along the cost of the sea of azov; by 1897 this figure had reached 170,000 (derzavin 1914:18-27). 84 their social composition changed slowly until the middle of the 20th century. in russian statistics of 1897, 90.4% of bulgarians lived in villages (derzavin 1914:51). in 1926, 6.4% of all bulgarians in ukraine were town residents. (atlas 1996:97); in 1959 the town population increased to 25,6% and in 1989, 42.6% (naulko 1999:146). by way of comparison, in moldova only 18% of bulgarians lived in towns in 1989 ( novakov 1993:3). 85 this related to bulgarians, swedes, greeks, slavoserbs, as well as luterans and menonites amongst others. ethnic names were used to indicate personal or group identity. bulgarians were described as bolgari (bulgar, bulgari) and turkish subjects, bolgari turkish subjects from rumelia or migrants from rumelia (archive, f. 6). 86 the administration received personal petitions for settlement where the applicants were, for example: bulgarian nikolai hristoforov, a turkish subject from rumelia, or bulgarian petar serbinov (odessa city archive f .6, a.u. 127, 1-6; f. 6, a.u. 194, 1-5). many other documents note the ethnic origin of the colonists. in the towns, ethnic identity became anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 58 associated with having a bulgarian family name: todor bolgar and petr bolgar in bolgrad were registered in 1826-1827 (oa, f. 6, a.u. 1914, p.3), malii buialuk was a “greco–bulgarian colony” and it remained ethnically mixed in the 20th century, when n. derzavin studied bulgarian colonies. he stressed the mixture of family names: some greeks used bulgarian names and some bulgarians, greek families’ names (derzavin 1914:101). 87 for example, in the document of 1st of april 1835 a colonist ivan ivanovich shop in kiruitnia (korten) village was registered (novakov & chervenkov 1980:74). shopi was and still is a famous regional group in west bulgaria. such regional and local names, reflecting the places of colonists’ origin in bulgaria are found in the ethnological study of bulgarian colonies in russia at the beginning of 20th century. in the village of ternovka , near the town of nikolaev, bulgarians divided and described themselves regionally as shopi, ruptsi, and by their local descent: turnovtsi, liaskovtsi, vaisaltsi and so on ( derzavin 1918:14), reflecting regional and local (village) names , preserved until today in bulgaria. 88 1 dessetina = 14.5 decare (decare = a quarter of an acre). 89 the entire community land was divided into three fields, and a system of crop alternation was applied: in the first field autumn cereals were sown, in the second, spring cereals and the third remained uncultivated for a season. 90 korten in bulgaria is a village situated under the slopes of the sredna gora mountain in the valley of the tundza river. tvarditsa is located on the flat slops of the same mountain in the same region of sliven. 91 it is significant to mention the memories of a migrant from the village of iserlia in south-eastern bulgaria: “in the vilaet, i.e. in turkey, we did not have churches. if somewhere a church was constructed, it was far from the village, like a hut. the priest delivered the service wearing a turban on his head, fearful of the turks-muslims, even the men attended the service wearing their hats, not daring to remove them (chervenkov & grek 1993:67-68). 92 this practice concerned the majority of bulgarian communities in the 19th century. its importance is underlined in the famous study of bulgarian colonies in russia at the beginning of 20th century: “in the berdiansky, bessarabsky, pheodossiisky and hersonsky uyezds mixed marriage is gravely repudiated by popular custom. here a bulgarian man never marries a russian girl, and vice versa. the only exception is made for widowers” (derzavin 1914:44). 95 at the end of the century public libraries were opened in shikirli kitai (suvorovo) village and in komrat (grek & chervenkov 1993:74-93). 96 during the same time the official national policy in the neighbouring ussr was controversial. the idea of the precedence of social over national identity and the proclaimed rights of nations to self-determination were implemented in different ways. in order to fulfil the goal of eradicating illiteracy in the local communities courses in native languages were organised in 1923. the aim of this policy was the education of the soviet people in communist ideology. later, between 1925-1938, national regions and national schools were also put in place. 97 in 1951 the soviet state granted the kholhoz in korten 5507 hectares of land (novakov 1966:29). 98 shock worker. 99 labour hero. 100 this symbolic identity bears the name of stakhanov, a famous russian miner, who in august 1935 over-fulfilled by 14 times the daily norm of work. a stakhanov movement developed to stimulate labour productivity in different sectors of the economy. the cultural mediation of transnational regulations: competing institutional forms for romanian mutual funds anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: nst4@pitt.edu the cultural mediation of transnational regulations: competing institutional forms for romanian mutual funds1 narcis tulbure, university of pittsburgh introduction most of the political and social changes in romania after 2000 have stood under the aegis of the european union (eu). as in the case of several other postsocialist countries in eastern europe, the intense process of europeanization has implied radical societal transformations which have stirred numerous forms of resistance to change. the extensive import of laws and institutional forms has not only occasioned frequent debates framed by the antithesis between acceptance and rejection but have generated continuous local adaptations of transnational regulatory practices. a strategy preferred by many of those involved in or affected by the process or legal harmonization has been that of the oscillation between and manipulation of competing regulatory frameworks. the capital market, one of the most prominent social arenas where the alchemy of economic value production has been filtered through shifting social values and moral registers under postsocialism, has been no exception to this social process. this article analyzes the disputes occasioned by the process of regulatory reform undergone by the romanian mutual fund industry. stirred by romania‟s accession into the eu in 2007 and prompted by the numerous financial scandals affecting the market right from its creation in 1994, the reform was meant as a reconfiguration of the investment philosophy characterizing the capital market. the emergent values here are intimately connected to and made visible by arguments about new forms of money and financial investment, altered understandings of risk, or changing roles for the state and its regulatory agencies. i take the contentions generated by this radical transformation as an opportunity to observe the shifting orders of worth (boltanski and thévenot 1991) and the changing notions of ownership and risk in contemporary romania. whereas formerly mutual funds were associative entities which, in spite of the ambiguous ownership, could be controlled by a collective of investors, the legal reforms attribute control over funds to asset management companies and do away with the premises for collective action by investors. the transition from a political order in which the premises for rights, action, and value were defined collectively, as part of a larger community of investors, to a polity in which criteria of worth are premised on the more abstract qualification of investors as actors able to choose among investment opportunities but no longer to influence the projects they take part in, generates numerous contentions with a direct impact on the legitimacy of the new institutional arrangements. by focusing on a particular instance in which the “laws of the market” (callon 1998) are negotiated by state officials, regulators, institutional and lay investors, my paper offers an interpretation of the ambivalent reception of contemporary capitalism in eastern europe and anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 135 suggests ways to evaluate such historical transformations in other former socialist societies. the disputes i analyze in my paper engender challenging questions about the promises and failures of finance: how do new types of investment dependent on the erratic behavior of the market fit with previous forms of monetary accumulation seen as something whose value was intimately linked to personal diligence (or any legitimate form of work)? should the state be concerned with the taming of generalized forms of social risk through direct intervention or should it limit its role to the adoption and enforcement of technocratic rules? such questions, raised already by scholars dealing with the postsocialist transformations in money and values in eastern europe, are made acute and gain global currency because of the financial crisis induced by the subprime credit instruments in the united states in 2007. money and financial practices in postsocialist eastern europe having a rather marginal role in the centralized economy of socialist societies, money and the diverse financial practices blooming in eastern europe during the 1990s have become an important object of scholarly investigation. the concern with monetary practices in the literature addressing postsocialist transformations has been has been centered either on monetary aggregates and the policies aimed to control them in the case of economists or political scientists, or on the role of money in market exchange and the social practices involving cash in the case of anthropologists and sociologists. anthropologists of eastern europe have studied everyday financial practices by focusing on the declining role of currency (woodruff 1999a, 1999b; clarke 2000; humphrey 2000; rogers 2005), the emergence of pyramid schemes (verdery 1995a, 1995b), the production of knowledge and capital (verdery 1995b, 1996), or the reconfiguration of moral categories (lemon 1998; ries 2002; mandel and humphrey 2002) in everyday transactions involving cash and barter. although more attentive to the details and diversity of social situations than their colleagues working with the tools of economics or political science, anthropologists of eastern europe have so far shied away from engaging the practices of financial elites. few anthropologists (working in eastern europe or other parts of the world) have focused on more abstract notions of money, on the social construction of financial schemes, or on the regulatory interventions aimed to govern the processes of monetary accumulation. the notable exceptions are bill maurer (1998, 2005, 2006), annelise riles (2000a, 2000b, 2001), hirokazu miazaky (2006) and caitlyn zaloom (2003, 2004, 2005) who focus usually on the speculative practices of financial traders and the activity of regulatory bodies in developed financial systems. this article addresses specifically these kinds of processes, taking them as an ideal context for the study of the concomitant reorganization of monetary practices and social values in a postsocialist context. i am particularly indebted to the literatures that try to understand the conventions grounding economic practice (juhem 1994; thévenot 2001; woolsey, biggart, and beamish 2003), the forms of sociality connected to finance capitalism (knorr cetina and bruegger 2002a, 2002b, 2002c), the types of knowledge supporting anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 136 contemporary financial markets (callon 1998; knorr cetina and preda 2004; beunza and stark 2004a, 2004b), as well as the abstract modalities of commensuration and risk management mediated by modern money (lipuma and lee 2002, 2004; maurer 1999). the distinctive aspect of my approach is the focus on a specific instance where the regulatory dimensions of capitalism are filtered through the local disputes over value, ownership, and the allocation of risk by those directly affected by the regulations. by trying to come to terms with a particular historical context – romania‟s ongoing integration into the european union, this article shifts focus from the production of knowledge in the heart of high finance (such as the investment banks of london and new york analyzed by many engaged in the social studies of finance) to the negotiation of institutional forms, regulations, and values taking place in a rather peripheral setting currently incorporated in the late capitalist system. not only it is in such settings that the most elementary ideas related to contemporary forms of money are continuously called into question, but, as the recent crisis of the subprime financial products shows, even the most abstract financial practices build on and directly impact the transactions making up everyday life: buying a house, saving for retirement, or investing in forms of money that promise not to be affected by inflation. the creation and regulation of romanian mutual funds investment funds were one the most promising areas of the financial sector during the postsocialist period, both from the perspective of institutional creativity and from that of the return on investments. created both as mutual funds and as risk funds 2 , they constituted a repertoire of practice altogether new, distinct from the few opportunities for investing money under socialism, being ambiguously perceived by the public in between the stock exchange, the newly created commercial banks (themselves something different from the sole state savings bank in communism to which lay investors had access), and ponzi schemes proliferating throughout romania during the 1990s. while public perceptions of the funds departed considerably from the institutional varieties adopted in romania as well as from the western models considered in the process, the promise of enrichment through financial speculation was implicit in such financial practices from the beginning. like in most of the former socialist countries of cee, investments funds were meant, at least by the romanian architects of the economic reform (vosganian 1999; anghelache 2000), to support the creation and growth of the capital market, to channel savings into investments for newly privatized companies, to give an opportunity to retail investors to diversify their portfolios, as well as to mediate the access to a promising arena of value creation for those having only a vague knowledge of the stock exchange. some of the weaknesses of the romanian investment fund industry were structurally integrated in its initial architecture. most of those knowledgeable of the history of the capital market in postsocialist romania appeal to one form of path dependency theory or another to explain the notorious failures of the investment fund sector. scholars familiar with romanian anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 137 capital market (vosganian 1999; markiewicz 2007) or investment professionals keeping track of the events generally consider that the creation of the first mutual funds before a supervisory agency (an independent securities commission) was in place, and prior to the development of an exchange for the quoting of transferable securities, was an institutional mistake that invited fraudulent practices. by the time the romanian national securities commission (cnvm) and the bucharest stock exchange were created in 1995, the private property funds initiated by the state and independently initiated mutual funds had been operating for several years. the private property funds (ppf) were financial investment companies concentrating initially about 30% of the shares of state companies that would undergo privatization. they constitute a peculiarity of the romanian strategy for privatization (other cee states adopted similar although not identical institutional solutions). resident citizens had the possibility to subscribe the vouchers received at various stages of the privatization process either directly for the shares of preferred companies of for the shares of the private property funds. what resulted were mammoths concentrating large chunks of the national economy and having a huge but dispersed ownership (over 3 million stockholders for the five ppf) that pose even today serious governance problems, especially in the areas of managerial structures, political influence of the leadership, and minority shareholder rights. these entities underwent several episodes of portfolio consolidation and restructuring and of institutional reorganization. they are currently classified as a particular type of closed-end fund regulated nationally and not covered by the pan-european regulation, illustrating one of the areas of “creativity” for the romanian securities regulator. the history of mutual funds is even more indicative in this sense. such undertakings were created after 1993 when a special government ordinance was passed to regulate the domain. as the creation of the stock exchange and the other institutions of the capital market was delayed for at least a couple of years (such institutional plans were subsumed by the imperatives of the privatization process), the funds created initially invested most of their portfolio in letters of trade, commercial bills, warrants, and loans extended to companies connected with the initiators of the asset management companies. furthermore, the administrators of the funds were using an evaluation formula that added to the current value of financial assets the present value of discounted cash flows (not a sound evaluation method in an inflationary transition economy, some claim) thus inflating the reported net asset values. the regulatory intervention by the recently established securities commission that enforced a new method for the calculation of net asset value in 1996 determined the dramatic reduction in the value of the funds‟ shares (by more than half in some cases). massive requests to redeem the shares followed by long suspensions of the redeeming process determined the nearcollapse of several of the funds in operation. the most notorious collapse at the time, businessmen‟s mutual fund (fmoa), did not only end in significant loss of money by most of the shareholders but was transformed several times and stripped of its most valuable assets by dubious administrators before being turned into a closed-end fund that operates under special provisions by the securities regulator and is currently listed on the over-the-counter market anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 138 (rasdaq). the way the securities regulator had managed the entire scandal triggered the reaction of many retail investors protesting against the manipulation of the situation by the asset managers and the infringement of their rights of exit granted by the securities law. the whole event is significant for the dramatic decline in the number of investors and in the value of net assets at the time, being one of the notorious financial scandals constantly given as an example and used to explain the lack of trust in investment funds and asset managers. the change in government in 1996 3 and the radical measures of reform adopted soon after created the prospects for a functioning market economy and for a rule of law regime in romania. although they took off once more capitalizing on the new opportunities offered by romanian economy, mutual funds were subject again to some of the most notorious collapses in postsocialist romania due to a combination of poor regulation, weak enforcement of rules, and fraudulent behavior of fund managers. thus, the national investment fund (fni) a mutual fund reaching a record level of investors (over 300,000 during the months preceding its collapse), very high reported net asset values, and a large share of the market for mutual funds, collapsed right before the general elections of 2000, leaving several hundred thousand investors without their life savings and retirement benefits. the reaction of the supervisory agency (cnvm) was typically late, unwise, and did more harm than good to the retail investors. the precipitated collapse of the national accumulation fund (fna), the twin fund of fni, a couple of months later generated massive requests to redeem the shares by retail investors; their attempts, however, were blocked by the repeated suspension of operations of the two mutual funds ordered by the cnvm. public nervousness at the time prompted the redeeming of shares in the rest of the mutual funds by many retail investors, the drastic reduction of the overall number of investment fund shareholders (from over 400,000 to less than 40,000 in a year 4 ), and the spread of the confidence crisis to the banking sector. 5 while the trials initiated by investors against those considered responsible for the financial collapse of 2000 are not over yet and the numerous audit reports by court appointed experts have been at best superficial, substantial information has been disclosed about the wrongdoings that provoked them. investors soon found out that the fund has functioned without a depositary for most of its life, that the caps on the proportion of the portfolio that could be legally invested in unlisted securities and other risky financial instruments have been constantly broken, and that members of the council of trustees have been bribed to ignore the illegal transactions of the asset managers. reported net asset values have been purposefully inflated, asset managers for the fund have been changed repeatedly to obscure responsibility for mismanagement, and the securities commission has chosen to take only last moment measures in spite of being aware of the situation all the time. acting to recuperate the money lost and for the conviction of those responsible, many of the investors affected by the collapse of the investment funds have gathered in civic associations that agitate for the protection of investors and the rights of minority shareholders. even more consequential than the actions for material and moral reparations have been the increasing calls by institutional and retail investors alike for the revision of the previous regulations governing anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 139 investment funds and for the improvement of the supervisory activity by state institutions. grounding their claims on the histories of deception lived during the first years after socialism and on the personal (trial and error) attempts to navigate in a universe of financial uncertainty, investors in mutual funds and financial analysts concluded that the need for a comprehensive reform of the field was pressing. the goals of the reform should have been to tighten regulations regarding investment funds and the activity of asset managers and to reorganize the securities commission (cnvm) in order to enhance its supervisory abilities. after the less successful adoption of a new securities law in 2002 (without public consultations and widely contested by the majority of market participants), the opportunity for a more comprehensive market reform was offered by the wider legal harmonization with the eu (the adoption of the acquis communautaire) in light of romania‟s prospective admission into the union in 2007. the capital market reform in romania: from american to european-type regulations the romanian national securities commission responded to pressures to harmonize its securities and financial investments regulatory framework with that of the rest of eu members and embarked on a massive exercise in legal reform. it promoted a new statutory law as well as a new regulation for investment management firms, collective investment undertakings and depositories in 2004. 6 a key role in this regulatory reform has been played by the council of european securities regulators (cesr) and its measures towards more integrated capital markets in europe. cesr is a consultative committee set up to help the european commission in its initiative to harmonize and integrate european capital markets with the aim of facilitating cross border investments and financial capital mobility in europe. its goals are not only to make national governments adopt harmonized regulations and to stimulate better cooperation among national securities regulators but also to promote new modalities for policy making and the adoption of regulatory measures regarding the capital markets. the new policy making mechanisms draws on broad consultations with all market actors (including lay investors) and is premised on the transparent adoption of new regulations. thus, the model for the regulations currently adopted in romania was provided by the eu directives and recommendations adopted by the european commission after having been drafted by the committee of european securities regulators. 7 according to annual reports published by the romanian securities commission (cnvm) 8 and to assessments by market participants, romania has transposed, even if somehow “mechanically” and without paying attention to the costs of immediate compliance by market actors, all the key eu directives and recommendations adopted before 2004. 9 subsequently, new legislative interventions by the romanian securities commission meant to transpose the post2004 directives and regulation adopted by the eu were made in 2006 and 2007. furthermore, new regulations are announced by the cnvm that are meant to address the requests by market participants to specify more clearly the procedural aspects of the new rules, to eliminate the overlaps between the law on the capital market, regulations covering banking services, and the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 140 company act, as well as to redesign the entire law regarding the capital market (with a possible institutional reorganization of the securities commission itself). as a consequence of the successive interventions to the regulatory framework, in spite of the efforts to transpose the best european practices through the recent regulatory reform and of the best intentions of all market actors, the results have failed to meet many of the expectations for improved rules and better practices. even though, based on laws regarding transparency of decision-making in public administration (adopted also under eu pressure) the cnvm has organized public meetings and has accepted suggestions from various interested parties (institutional investors, administrators, depositaries) including associations for the protection of investors, the results have been ambivalent. areas of improvement alternate with provisions that are either inapplicable or extremely costly when compared to the benefits in terms of market transparency and investor protection. not surprisingly, regulations concerning mutual funds and financial investment companies have received a mixed reception from asset managers, brokers, and institutional investors. 10 although they acknowledge the considerable improvements from the pre-2004 regulations (in terms of institutional clarity; better allocation of responsibility between managers, depositaries and distributors of funds; clear rules regarding prospectus; easier administrative procedures and registration of funds; simplified entry and exist procedures), such institutional actors claim that the existing regulatory framework was already left behind by the current developments in eu regulations and in management practices of european fund administrators (as reflected by efama recommendations and implemented indicators of fund performance/risk). 11 furthermore, the romanian securities commission has transposed many of the european regulations overnight, based on poor translations, and without paying enough attention to the practicalities of enforcing the new provisions. this necessitates a lot of “trimming” of the newly adopted laws meant to reduce institutional uncertainty and the costs of compliance with the rules. at the same time, representatives of retail investors and most of the independent financial analysts and journalists offer a more critical assessment of the recent legal provisions. thus, with regards to investor protection the new regulatory framework is less comprehensive than the pre2004 one (developed in the mid-1990s with support from the united state agency for international development [usaid] and modeled on the regulations of the securities and exchange commission [sec] in the united states) 12 , especially with regards to the rights of individual investors. the shareholders of mutual funds functioning according to the old regulations voted in a general assembly on issues pertaining to the activity of the fund and were represented by a council of trustees mandated to overlook the activity of asset managers. although the involvement of the trustees has been a fiasco in the case of the mutual funds that collapsed in the past, many consider this no reason to eliminate it altogether. the new regulations (in tune with those of european-type mutual funds) remove both the general assembly and the council of trustees, allocating the ownership and responsibility of operating investment funds to asset managers. the protection of investors is effected by the more clearly anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 141 written mandatory provisions of the prospectus and by specifying the entry and exit procedures for holders of fund units (shares) when major changes in management, organizational structure, or investment strategy are made. the attempts by the associations of investors and independent experts to provide more generous entry/exit terms for the shareholders, increased information provision requirements for the asset managers, the possibility for independent oversight of the asset management activity, and even to preserve some of the favorable provisions of the old regulations have met the refusal of the securities commission and the criticism of the asset management industry. the effect on the governance of these collective entities has also been ambivalent. asset managers seem to repudiate altogether the issues pertaining to corporate governance from the discussions about the eu harmonized investment funds. for them, corporate governance refers to relations inside asset management companies and, at the most, those inside financial investment companies. from such a perspective, the principles governing relations among the diverse stakeholders of investments funds (especially those among retail investors and asset managers) are obscured when subsumed by the prospectus provisions and the entry/exit provisions. this comes into direct contradiction with the demands of retail investors. the latter claim that, given the histories of deception on romanian financial markets and the poor record of law enforcement there, the concern of investors with the security of their money cannot simply be relegated to impersonal rules. retail investors claim that the existence of comprehensive rules did not prevent the previous collapses of mutual funds. in this sense, they do not trust the securities commission with enforcing existing regulations, given both its past record of ambivalent supervision and its current performance during public consultations. as a consequence, associations of investors accuse the cnvm of having organized superficial and formal consultations and of not having incorporated their suggestions meant to enforce the rights of retail investors or to improve corporate governance in investment funds, all to the advantage of professional investors and fund administrators. at least from the point of view of retail investors, so far the process of harmonization with the eu framework has led to deregulation, with ambivalent results and affecting asymmetrically various interested parties. this situation has stirred further public protests from the association of investors and has lead to court action against the romanian securities commission by market actors intending to force the suspension or modification of the new regulations. the mediation of european regulations by local disputes on the capital market the regulatory reforms described above have been prompted by and filtered through the disputes over the notorious financial collapses affecting the mutual fund industry. it has played into some of the very legal and institutional contentions that have made it necessary, complicating the situation further. such is the case with the two investment funds mentioned in the previous sections: the national investment fund (fni) and the national accumulation fund (fna). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 142 the disputes described here bring to the fore the implicit principles informing assessments of value and compensation as well as the transforming repertoires of justification used in such disputes. although assessments of value would seem to be straightforward accounting issues, they are not. not only do financial theories, legal codes, and securities regulations provide divergent interpretations, but the actors involved in disputes (including lay investors) suggest new and interesting ways of understanding ideas of wealth, monetary gain, profit, risk, and the role of the state. moreover, there is an intimate relation between arguments about economic value formation and the moral justifications for practices that generate value. those making a claim to specific commensurations of value use more than technical arguments, trying to manipulate (and even reconstitute) available moral repertoires and actively situate their more or less scientific claims in a moral perspective. their justifications are meant to present their calculations as not only technically accurate but as being in agreement with the already accepted moral values, something boltanski and thevenot (2006) call “orders of worth.” given the multifaceted contentions over value, it comes as no surprise that the consequences of these disputes are not limited to the recuperation of losses, but aim at redefining the rules of investment and influencing the conditions under which some of the existing financial organizations can be continued. as shown in the previous sections, at least as consequential as investors‟ actions for material and moral reparations have been their campaigns for the revision of the previous regulations governing investment funds and for the improvement of the supervisory activity by state institutions. such calls for regulatory interventions have been justified not only by examples of past financial defaults but also by the contemporary trajectory of the collapsed mutual funds. the most notorious such funds (e.g., businessmen‟s fund [foa/safi] defaulted in 1996, of national investment fund [fni] and national accumulation fund [fna] collapsed in 2000) have not been legally dissolved. rather, they have been repeatedly suspended from operation and later transformed into closed-end funds having increasingly rigid entry/exit procedures. while advocates of such organizational transmogrifications argue that the funds have been given a second chance, lay investors generally feel “trapped” in the new entities (as “serfs on financial estates”). they argue that they have lost control of their money and complain that such measures are meant to conceal the responsibility of those involved in the initial collapse of the funds, administrators and state officials alike. the legal reform has taken a hasty and chaotic character, as the most immediate goal was that of adopting the european regulations before the closing of the eu accession negotiations in 2005. the suggestions made by lay investors have been consistently neglected without justification from the romanian securities commission and in spite of the fact that no contrary position on most of the issues in dispute has been officially adopted by any other of the market actors. no wonder, then, that the most vocal contesters of the new laws have been the representatives of retail investors. they argue that the american-inspired regulatory framework was better since it attributed a more important role to non-institutional investors. to blame for the numerous financial defaults are not the rules themselves, representatives of retail investors believe, but different actors responsible for the sound functioning of the capital market. lay anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 143 investors argue that, lacking a proper “investment culture,” regulators, administrators, and investors alike have mimicked the american procedures of collective governance without adopting its basic values. according to them, the solution should have consisted of piecemeal regulatory interventions, improved supervision, and proper enforcement of regulations. 13 the new regulatory framework takes away investors‟ ability to voice their concerns (by eliminating the council of trustees and its attributions) and only leaves them the possibility to exit collective investment undertakings (hirschman 1970). more precisely, investment funds are now initiated and controlled by specialized financial companies and investors are allowed to redeem their shares for a very brief period of time when major changes to their articles of incorporation are made. 14 retail investors fear the new legal infrastructure of the market will become just another “form without substance”an institutional import devoid of meaning and functionality, if the regulators keep siding with institutional investors and ignoring lay investors. at the same time, state officials and fund administrators argue that the new regulations are “more modern and harmonized [with european directives].” 15 the emulation of the eu regulatory framework will not only create the premises for romania‟s incorporation into the common market for financial services but, its supporters believe, brings a “new philosophy” for the mutual fund industry. thus, the intricacies of collective ownership and action generated by the old legislation will be eliminated by a clear allocation of control to administrators and the protection of investors by more clear and transparent procedures. in the long run, romanian regulators hope the imitation of european institutions and the opening up of romanian capital market to european financial service providers will increase its soundness and will inculcate the “proper values” to romanian investors. while many investors and independent financial analysts would conclude that in romania mutual funds are a good example of failed institutional import, an attractive financial package that proved instrumental in deceiving lay investors rather than funding the growth of the capital market, a more nuanced account is necessary. a succinct description of the current state of the mutual fund industry in romania reflecting the diverging opinions of the various market actors (as attempted in the previous section) must integrate at least two perspectives. it might be true that the new regulatory infrastructure can facilitate the circulation of financial capitals (as the romanian securities regulators argue) but if not enforced properly they offer plenty of leeway to deceptive fund administrators. 16 from a different perspective, lay investors seem entitled to claim that the previous collective ownership provisions were closer to the principles of mutuality and offered better means of control over their money, but their persistence in refusing to accept any kind of change can make them anachronistic and can easily put them in a position to miss the opportunities of a more integrated capital market in europe. social change, capitalism, and transforming orders of worth in contemporary romania the attentive examination of the disputes over regulations briefly described above facilitates a better understanding of the processes at play in this situation, all of which are anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 144 accentuated by the postsocialist changes in economy and society. first, the dispute illustrates well the ways in which transnational processes involving the financial market (in this case, the pan-european harmonization of capital markets) are constituted locally and interpreted through the lens of disputes taking place at the national level. an eu driven regulatory process takes a diversity of forms in national arenas, the specific socio-political contexts that mediate it locally being to a considerable extent responsible both for the end result of the reform, for its practical consequences, and for its subsequent legitimacy. although the conflict over the new regulations is the conspicuous phenomenon, at play is a deeper process of mediation through which european regulations are transposed (rather than simply translated) at the national level. while romanian authorities have no option out of the pan-european harmonization of laws pertaining to the capital market, the process of mediation is visible in the negotiations between diverse institutional actors over the classification of funds in the newly adopted laws, over relations between harmonized and non-harmonized institutional forms, over the understanding of the basic categories and definitions of the new regulations, or over the specific ways in which the new laws are interpreted and enforced. all these elements indicate a process of mediation that is simultaneously more flexible, continuous, and open to an unknown resolution than a simple conflict over regulations. furthermore, what explain the particular interpretations and choice of legal categories are not necessarily rational arguments formulated in terms of the costs of compliance, long-term effects, or a means to ends rationality. rather often, issues related to symbolic power or the manipulation of ideologically charged notions (such as that of “europeanization” described further) are more efficient factors giving the whole process of legal reform a mimetic, non-pragmatic aspect. second, actors situated in local milieus manipulate such regulatory processes for their own ends, building in a diversity of meanings that often contradict the intentions of the initiators of the process. the rhetoric used by the actors involved facilitates our understanding of the ways “europeanization” and “european integration” become powerful argumentative repertoires in contemporary romania, although ones displaying a remarkable internal diversity. in a polity where the eu accession became the overarching legitimating discourse, hierarchies of power and the endorsement of particular institutional forms are realized through the pragmatic manipulation and the creative redefinition of the meanings of european categories. glossing over the distinct ways in which actors connect to the normative market models and the suppression of differently situated opinions on the reform by the actors responsible for its implementation, all in the name of europe, blatantly contradicts the purpose of public consultations (meant to encourage critical assessments of the new regulations in order to eliminate their problematic provisions in a timely manner and to build their legitimacy gradually) a policy making model on which the creation of cesr was premised. thus, the romanian securities commission capitalizes on the involvement of cesr and of the european commission in the process and uses the motive of europeanization as a self-understood reason to accept the reform. during the interviews i conducted, directors in the securities commission repeatedly claimed that the new regulations are “more modern and more harmonized” with the european framework, failing to specify what that anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 145 means exactly and in what respects that is an improvement from the previous situation, in spite of my repeated questions on the issue. 17 a similar rhetoric monopolizes the mass-media interviews and newspaper articles published by specialists affiliated with capital market authorities in romania. 18 the discourse about europeanization, insistently and superficially used by public authorities in romania during the last years, is performative 19 to the extent that it creates the appearance of unconditional agreement with reforms and de-legitimates alternative critical positions at the moment of their articulation. in this regard, the lay investors i interviewed are relegated to an inferior position characterized by ambiguity (although they know very well what their interests are). this hierarchy of discourses achieved in practice disfavors retail investors for a variety of reasons. thus, lay investors and actors adopting a critical stance towards the reforms introduced by the state find it hard to question the contemporary political consensus on the necessary europeanization of romania. even more, as the discourse about europeanization is monopolized by public authorities, it is almost impossible for the lay investors to ground their claims in an equally legitimate grand narrative. last but equally significant, lay investors appeal to “european values” such as the virtues of transparency and generalized public dialogue on reforms at the same moment they have to argue that the american model of the capital market was better as far as they were concerned. third, the situation described further illustrates the negotiations of the various moral/economic/legal criteria according to which a particular perspective on changes affecting the market is accepted as more relevant than competing ones. alternative regimes of value compete for constituting the legitimating basis for legal-economic disputes. as illustrated in the previous sections, the actors involved in disputes do not only struggle to put their claims in accord to one regime of value or another, but constantly argue over the relevant regime of justification for the new legal infrastructure of the market. in the process they actively renegotiate and reconfigure the prevalent “orders of worth” in which their disputes over value are dynamically situated. in spite of the effort to promote specific regimes of justification meant to naturalize their arguments, most of those i interviewed and observed seem to overlook and even conceal the situatedness of the process of reform. both critics of rapid institutional import and the advocates of modernization-qua-emulation of european political categories appear to neglect the diversity of the actors on romanian capital market, portraying them as passive and uncritical receptors of cultural forms, devoid of agency. consequently, both interpretations ignore the local adaptation of imported forms and, in spite of the numerous allegations of corruption and personal involvement, miss the pragmatics of this mimetic act (jayussi 1984, 1991). from a different perspective, the focus on the local process of cultural translation neglects the wider debates in europe over the varieties of capitalism more compatible with the aims and values of the union: on the one hand, the more individualistic, more efficient, yet “predatory” anglo-saxon model and, on the other hand, the better regulated forms of social capitalism dominant in many countries of continental europe. the over-simplifying dichotomy between the two main varieties of capitalism glosses over a situation that is more nuanced, more complicated, anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 146 and harder to classify then we are lead to believe. the intense debates within “the west” itself over the desirable types of capitalist formation or over the aims and forms of regulations are made more visible by the recent financial crisis of the subprime instruments and the reevaluation of the role of credit rating agencies. ironically, as various researchers of the phenomenon have shown, with regards to financial regulation and the infrastructures of the financial market, the “paris [pan-european] consensus” on the matter seems to enforce the neo-liberal dogmas more effectively than the “predatory” american regulatory framework based on self-regulation (abdelal 2007) and flexible innovation. 20 given the multifaceted disputes centered on the contemporary regulatory reform of romanian capital market, a different approach, one paying attention the diversity of actors involved in the process and meant to shed light on the pragmatics of the observed interactions, can render the entire process more understandable. in this sense, i regard the legal contentions stemming from this process as forms of action situated in context rather than simply as debates over cultural formations. moreover, negotiations over the social values and moralities permeating the various regimes of monetary accumulation in eastern europe play out in disputes over regulations. in this regard, i argue that values should neither be treated as the determinants of social action nor simply the result of it, but rather as constituents of action which themselves take a lot of effort to be negotiated and made to appear as taken for granted. 21 consequently, i suggest we should pay attention to the continuous renegotiation and routinization of values occasioned by arguments about new forms of ownership, altered understandings of risk, or changing roles for the state and the regulatory agencies. several issues seem to generate insoluble disputes among diverse participants in these debates and have consequently organized my approach. first, the (mis)fit between new forms of investment and monetary accumulation dependent on the erratic behavior of the market and the previous notions of money whose value was intimately linked to personal diligence (or any legitimate form of work) is a resilient theme that emerges in most of the scandals generated by financial collapses in postsocialist romania. 22 this theme becomes more acute with the emerging forms of social inequality based on the manipulation of money and financial practices. second, a resilient understanding of risk as a communal category whose effects can be mitigated by the collective action of investors comes into direct contrast to newer conceptions of risk (promoted by champions of the capital market) as a measure associated with a portfolio of previous personal choices, and as an assessment of the situation of individual investors rather than collective subjects. this theme emerges from disputes over the specific form a mutual fund should take as either a collective entity owned by the investors or as an abstract product (very similar to a bank deposit) that can be managed and marketed by an asset manager towards a diversity of individual investors. last but not least, this research highlights the ongoing arguments about the role of the state given the accentuated financialization of economic and political processes under late capitalism. on the one hand, critics of financial globalization and supporters of social capitalism argue that the state should be concerned with the taming of generalized forms of social risk anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 147 through direct intervention (e.g., bailing out bankrupt financial institutions whose collapse would affect many lay investors, offering compensations from the state budget to investors whose savings have been washed away by bank and investment fund managers). on the other hand, supporters of neoliberalism usually claim that the state‟s regulatory role should be limited to the adoption and enforcement of technocratic rules. the state should avoid and limit direct monetary interventions as bankruptcies and losses are part of the “natural selection” of viable businesses functioning under capitalism. 23 although the various forms of state intervention in the financial markets are hard to separate in practice, the above distinction between forms of political and regulatory intervention captures well the options available for state authorities during the postsocialist financial crises. conclusions the multitude of social experiences generated by the postsocialist change in central and eastern europe is the most important cultural factor accounting for the way apparently centralized processes are mediated locally. in specific contexts and building on histories of financial disputes, local actors appropriate pan-european initiatives, filtering them through local meanings of money and value and adapting them to their immediate goals. in the process, the very premises of social action get renegotiated. ideas of ownership, risk, and value are refashioned, generating new orders of worth that further constitute the medium into which new institutional imports are made. although specific moral judgments and appeals to certain values are implicitly negotiated in the process of arguing over concrete issues, what seems to have been reinforced over the years and with each scandal in romania is an attitude of chary (cautious) opportunism in which the appeal of new and risky financial ventures promising unprecedented monetary gains and the prudent option for collectivist institutional solutions known to have worked in the past are combined in creative ways. in spite of the contradictory appearance of such mixed attitudes, the description captures well the simultaneous lack of trust in any formal and abstract solution and the immediate copying of practices and attitudes that both proved to work in previous situations and are adopted by large numbers of those sharing similar experiences. it also explains the peculiar forms of social order and change witnessed in contemporary romania. what came out repeatedly during my research is the preference of small investors for a more collective form of action in connection to the funds and to their investments (i.e., something close to the american model of the regulations) at the expense of the more impersonal and individual relations suggested by the eu inspired regulations. such people know they have recuperated some of their money only when they acted collectively (through investors‟ associations and various ngos representing their interests) and believe that the worth of each investor and her monetary gain are premised exactly on the inclusion in such collectivities. 24 at the same time, they are afraid that behind the impersonal regulations and rules of transparency (which are poorly enforced by the securities commission which were brought about by the new anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 148 regulations), administrators will have enough freedom to defraud new funds since they will no longer be controlled by investors. such claims of lay investors reflect, in my opinion, a generalized sense of insecurity towards the abstract forms of high finance and the uneasy reception of and lack of trust in undertakings otherwise common in market economies. my claim is that the uneasy reception of the new institutional arrangement is related to the shifting premises for the formation of value and the deeper changes in the prevalent conceptions of worth (boltanski and thévenot 1991) associated with romania‟s economic transition. whereas formerly mutual funds were associative entities which, in spite of the ambiguous ownership, could be controlled by a collective of investors, the european promoted reorganization of investment funds attribute the key role to asset management companies. asset managers now have control over the funds, being simultaneously the initiators and owners of such investment vehicles. the premises for collective action by lay investors no longer exist as each participant to the fund now has an individual relation to the fund manager rather than one mediated by the general assembly and the council of trustees which were mandatory under the previous regulations. thus, the transition from a political order in which the premises for rights, action and value were defined collectively, as part of a larger community of investors, to a polity in which criteria of worth are premised on the more abstract qualification of investors as actors able to choose among investment opportunities but no longer to influence the projects they take part in, generates numerous contentions with a direct impact on the legitimacy of the new institutional arrangements. issues such as those addressed by this paper are urgent matters in postsocialist countries where most of the former state run social protection systems are externalized to the market and built on the infrastructure of financial arrangements (e.g. the implementation of private pension systems or the privatization of state ownership). in romania they are brought to the fore by the ongoing efforts to harmonize regulations as a premise for the better integration of capital markets in the european union. the connections between knowledge, risk assessment, and value, central for the practices involving money throughout the world, reveal some of the fundamental dimensions of social change in postsocialist romania. leaving behind a world in which most of the financial processes tended to be subordinated by central planning and having as an ideal the complete redundancy of money (although in the socialist second economy alcohol, cigarettes, or coffee plaid the role of money substitutes) my informants struggle to make ends meet in a world where money is the pervasive idiom in discussions about value. departing from a world of monetary stability (there was no inflation, no bankruptcies, only one single state savings bank, and regular payments of salaries in socialism) my informants now experience a world where goods are standardized and abundant, yet money is increasingly fluid, object of manipulation, uncertain, new and diverse, having a lot of possibilities for spending and investment. it is not always easy nor safe to accept reflexive forms of knowledge and value; that is, the logic of late capitalism where the success of financial ventures is as much premised on rational investing as on the mutual belief of investors in the future growth prospects of that enterprise. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 149 the sense of insecurity displayed by people i work with is all the more acute in a social setting where the episodes of deception have been numerous and have usually ended with defeats and losses for lay investors. it is particularly difficult to accept that the value of financial investments or complex forms of money is not necessarily dependent on god, gold, or the patronizing state but rather reflexively linked to the generalized trust of all those interchanging it. this specific outlook makes it easier to understand the ethos of my informants and the specific form of change it makes possible. change does not come as a result of stable preexisting configurations of value that make possible a new social order but more as a result of accidental arrangements of events in specific situations. previously tested routines are applied to new situations which often results in misappropriations generating mutations in social meanings and change as unintended consequences. thus, change happens while many are still looking backwards and the past enters the present not as continuity but as an instance replicated instrumentally in situations of radical uncertainty. the ongoing challenge is to understand how people accommodate such forms of persistent instability and how they routinze the continuous negotiation of values implicit in social action. the understanding of the practical negotiation of values is the key for the scholarly representation and ethnographic writing of processes of social change. notes 1 this research was supported by a grant from the cerge-ei foundation under a program of the global development network. all opinions expressed are those of the author and have not been endorsed by cerge-ei or the gdn. the paper also incorporates some of the results of a predissertation research grant provided by the council for european studies, a doctoral dissertation improvement grant from the national science foundation, and a fellowship from the new europe college (bucharest). this paper is based on observation and interviews among the representatives of lay investors involved in the drafting and evaluation of the new regulations, and interviews with european and romanian securities regulators, representatives of asset management companies, brokerage companies, and depositaries for investment funds. a focus group organized in july 2008 brought together representatives of all the significant organizations and addressed questions about the opportunity of the regulatory reform in 2004, the role of public consultations in the process and its effects on the governance of the mutual fund industry. the paper also draws on the study of case files of trials initiated by market actors contesting various provisions of the new regulations, and on a comparative analysis of laws and regulations for the capital market in romania. 2 of direct relevance to the questions addressed by this paper, mutual funds (open-end funds) are basically collective investment entities in which investors buy shares. theoretically, they have several advantages over alternative investment vehicles and especially over risk funds (closedend funds): 1) they allow people to pool resources and make more efficient and less risky investments with the help of professional administrators; 2) they allow the purchasing and anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 150 redeeming of shares (i.e., entry and exit) on an ongoing basis. administrators are supposed to implement the investments strategies and to calculate and declare publicly the current values of the shares (value of all investments less financial obligations divided by number of shares in circulation). money and other financial assets of the funds are kept by depositary banks which also keep a separate record certifying or not the public values of the shares declared by administrators. regulators (in romania the national securities commission cnvm) supervise the activity of administrators and depositaries and issue new regulations regarding the activity of these funds. mutual funds are in sharp contrast with closed-end varieties of funds characterized by stricter entry/exit rules, higher risk profiles, and a higher sophistication of investors. whereas in most of the western countries mutual funds would be considered relatively safe financial ventures with a passive portfolio administration strategy, in romania they became the epitome of financial hazards after several notorious collapses that washed away the lifesavings of hundreds of thousands of lay investors. 3 until 1996 romania was governed by a socialist party whose cadres were recruited mostly among the former communist elite. 4 data on the investment fund industry in romania from 1996 were generously provided by the romanian association of asset managers (raam). 5 rumors led to massive withdrawals from the romanian commercial bank (bcr) – the largest state bank in the system, which almost lead to the precipitate collapse of the bank in autumn 2000. the archival collection of the most important daily and weekly newspapers of the time (evenimentul zilei, adevărul, curentul, capital, bursa) accurately describes both the series of events that led to the near collapse of the bank and the panic of the mass of lay investors. 6 see law no. 297 of 2004 regarding the capital market and cnvm regulation no. 15 of 2004 regarding the authorization and functioning of investment management firms, collective investment undertakings and depositories. 7 see the website of the committee of european securities regulators for more details about the organization and activity of the institution: http://cesr.eu/index.php?page=home&mac=0&id=. eilis ferran (2004) realizes a comprehensive analysis of the policy making mechanism introduced with cesr from a legal perspective. 8 all the cnvm annual reports can be downloaded from the website of the institution at: http://www.cnvmr.ro/ en/raportanual.htm. 9 the most important directives adopted by the european commission through the co-decision procedure and after consultation of market actors by cesr are the prospectus directive, the market abuse directive, the transparency directive, and the markets in financial instruments directive (mifid). 10 many of the assessments and interpretations of the subsequent sections of the paper are based on the results of a focus group on “regulatory reform, public consultations and the development of the capital market in romania” organized in bucharest in the summer of 2008. the http://cesr.eu/index.php?page=home&mac=0&id http://www.cnvmr.ro/%20en/raportanual.htm anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 151 participants in the focus group formed a diverse group of stakeholders on romanian capital market, representing institutions such as: the romanian senate, the romanian brokers‟ association, rasdaq (the over-the-counter securities market in romania), the foreign investors council in romania, the central depository for the stock exchange, several asset management companies, law firms with expertise in securities law and investment fund regulations, journalists from financial newspapers and business dedicated tv stations, leaders of civil society organizations, and independent analysts. 11 the european fund and asset management association (efama). more information available at: www.efama.org. 12 research papers and policy reports written by usaid employees and affiliated researchers specify the objectives, practical measures taken towards, and results of the policies meant to create efficient capital markets in romania and other eastern european countries (deloittetouche 2002; fox 2000; lieberson et al. 1998). 13 such opinions were expressed by the leaders of the association for the protection of investors (anpi), the most prominent association representing investors in the penal trials against the managers of the defaulted funds and in negotiations with the cnvm over the form of the new regulations regarding mutual funds. they were documented during interviews conducted by the researcher in 2007 and 2008 and in the frequent opinion pieces published by the president of anpi in the daily financial newspaper bursa. 14 all of these are specific provision of law no. 297 of 2004 and of cnvm regulation no. 15 of 2004 cited above. 15 the evaluation of the new regulations was made by two cnvm directors during an interview conducted by the author in september 2006. 16 fni and fna were only the most notorious cases of mutual fund collapses in postsocialist romania. several other examples of funds that lost important amounts of their values when the fraudulent practices of asset managers were uncovered are less known outside romania although they feed into the concerns of the investors described by this paper. 17 see the interview from september 2006 cited above. 18 such interviews and opinion articles are published regularly by the financial newspapers in romania such as bursa, ziarul financiar, and săptămâna financiară or broadcasted on the money channel (a tv station dedicated to business programs). 19 the concept launched by john l. austin in his how to do things with words (1962) is adopted here to describe the effects of the manipulation if the idea of europe and of the process of europeanization by romanian authorities. for a good illustration of the way the concept can be used to describe the effect of financial theories on communities of brokers and their practices http://www.efama.org/ anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 152 see donald mackenzie, an engine not a camera: how financial models shape markets (2006). 20 in spite of the current events in the global financial markets, american regulations, at least those pertaining to the investment fund industry, are more comprehensive than the european ones. not only do lay investors have more means of controlling the activity of asset managers in the american fund industry, but the issues of corporate governance are treated as an integral part of mutual fund regulations. this is unlike in the european framework (for which cesr is the initiator) where corporate governance is a separate area of policy for the european commission. this conceptual and political distinction was underlined by carlo comporti, cesr secretary general in an interview realized by the author in paris on august 1, 2008. 21 i am indebted to the ethnomethodological literature on values, values-in-use and their social constitution (jayussi 1984, 1991). 22 various anthropologists of eastern europe have identified this motive in the case of many other financial scandals happening in most of the former communist countries in the region (verdery 1995a, 1995b; humphrey 2000; mandel and humphrey 2002; korovilas 2004). 23 an interesting inversion of positions could be witnessed in 2008 during the bank failures in the united states and some european countries. at the time, bank owners and managers called for the bailout of the troubled financial institutions while left-wing critics warned the public about the dangers of nationalizing losses without eliminating speculative financial practices and making management more responsible. the choice was framed similarly by state authorities having to decide on the most appropriate forms of state intervention in the banking industry with the purpose of preventing a general collapse of the financial system. the financial times is a good venue where various propositions for the reform of the financial system made by either political leaders or prominent academics are presented and compared. 24 this opinion was repeatedly recorded in interviews conducted by the author with lay investors struggling to recuperate the money lost with the collapse of fni and fna. it raises fundamental questions about the catalysts of social action in contemporary romania. thus, in spite of the simplistic explanations trying to link the unprecedented success and growth of the two mutual funds to the forms of institutional communication adopted by the asset managers and the banks involved, to the “impersonal” legal forms, or to the aggressive tv commercials at the time, ethnographic research indicates that action was rather situated in overlapping social networks. such networks of acquaintances, friends, and relatives constitute the medium through which practical examples, information, and knowledge are disseminated and the loci where the bases of collective action are set. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 153 references cited abdelal, rawi. 2007. capital rules: the construction of global finance. cambridge, ma, and london: harvard university press. anghelache, gabriela. 2000. bursa si piata extrabursiera [the stock 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publishers. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 156 _____. 1999b. money unmade: barter and the fate of russian capitalism. ithaca: cornell university press. woolsey biggart, nicole, and thomas d. beamish. 2003. the economic sociology of conventions: habit, custom, practice, and routine in market order. annual review of sociology 29:443-464. zaloom, caitlin. 2003. ambiguous numbers: trading technologies and interpretation in financial markets. american ethnologist 30(2):258-272. _____. 2004. the productive life of risk. cultural anthropology 19(3):365-391. _____. 2005. the discipline of speculators. in global assemblages: technology, politics, and ethics as anthropological problems. a. ong and s. collier, eds. pp. 253-269. new york: blackwell. youth, media, and subculture in post-conflict societies anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 114 lidová kultura: národopisná encyklopedie čech, moravy a slezska chief editors: stanislav brouček and richard jeřábek; scientific secretary: lubomír tyllner. vol. 1: biografická část, 286 pp. vol. 2: věcná část a-n, 636 pp. vol. 3: věcná část o-ž, pp. 637-1300. praha: mladá fronta, 2007. 1547 kč, hardbound. isbn 978-80204-1450-2 (3 volumes). reviewer: zdenek salzmann northern arizona university literature dealing with the folk culture of the czech lands is abundant, but most articles, carefully researched, are so specialized that their readership is correspondingly limited. there are also collectively written ethnographic monographs on certain regions, for example, moravské slovensko (1921), the region of southeastern moravia, moravské horácko (1930), a southwestern part of moravia, and plzeňsko (1934-1938), the area around plzeň in western bohemia. and then there are two works dealing with the folk culture of the czech lands as a whole—národopis (1937), a volume of the series československá vlastivěda, with contributions by three authors, and the more recent lidová kultura (1968), volume 3 of the unfinished new československá vlastivěda, with contributions by twenty-four authors. the work here reviewed takes another approach to the description of the traditional folk culture of bohemia, moravia, and silesia (a historical region overlapping southwestern poland and the northeastern part of the czech republic). it is a two-volume encyclopedic dictionary with wide-ranging coverage of ethnographic subjects (1300 pages of a 8¼ x 11½ inch format) and a biographical volume. sponsored by the ethnological institute of the czech republic’s academy of sciences and the institute of european ethnology of the masaryk university in brno (moravia), the encyclopedia is a monumental work. the subject dictionary contains some 2200 entries contributed by 122 specialists and supplemented by 1400 illustrations (line drawings, photographs, reproductions, and color plates). the biographical volume has well over 800 entries compiled by 41 authors. in planning the encyclopedic dictionary, the organizers divided the work into seven topical categories, each assigned to one or two specialized editors: theory and methodology of ethnography, the history of ethnography, ethnographic areas, material culture, folk art, folklore (oral traditions and folk dance, music and theater), and nonmaterial culture—all of these relating to the folk culture of the czech lands. that the boundaries of these categories turned out to be quite permeable can be easily shown by some of the entries: aphrodisiacs, archetype, cremation, ethnocartography, ethnochoreology, ethnodemography, eucharistic bread (host), functional structuralism, german folk music in the czech lands, infant mortality, kulturkreislehre (culture-circle concept), neofolklorism, schnaderhűpfel (german term for a one-stanza air originated in the alps), traditional jewish culture, traveling, working classes, and others. well represented are also entries referring to ethnographic magazines, academic institutes, and regional and local museums with ethnographic artifacts. the dialectologist will find dozens of local dialectal terms not found even in the large academic dictionaries of the czech language, for example, danaj (type of dance), engoba (type of glaze), huňa (type of cloth), jukání (embellishment of melody), percák (part of a plow), and suka (type of lyre). all such terms are carefully defined and supplied with other local or regional synonyms. the historian will find much useful information in the many entries in which a folk cultural item or behavior is discussed from its origin in the past to its usage in contemporary times. the biographical volume is particularly rich inasmuch as it includes non-czech ethnographers whose writings or research was tied to some of the ethnic minorities living in the czech lands (for example, germans, austrians, or poles) or who referred to the country’s data in their comparative studies. one may be surprised to find that the oldest biographee is so-called klaret (bartoloměj z chlumce) from the 14th century, who was the first source of proverbs, weather lore, superstitions, and fairy tales. this volume also includes a number of czech and moravian poets, writers, painters, and composers—for example, františek halas (1901-1949), who in his essays expressed his love for folk poetry; jan anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 115 neruda (1834-1891), the author of a brief but valuable study of czech folk dances; josef mánes (1820-1871), who included in his extensive artistic legacy drawings of folk costumes and folk architecture; and the wellknown composer leoš janáček (1854-1928), who not only was inspired in his compositions by folk songs but also wrote about them and actively engaged in collecting them. the entries are long enough to be adequately informative and each includes a chronological list of publications about the biographee. to make this volume very comprehensive, the editors have also included czech ethnographers (anthropologists) who have been living abroad for most of their professional lives, and those foreign scholars who at one time made the territory of today’s czech republic their home or place of extended visits and published in the field, for example, roman jakobson (1896-1982) and hacquet de la motte balthasar (1739?-1815). the encyclopedic dictionary is provided with thorough registers of subjects, personal names, and place-names as well as maps of ethnographic areas of the czech republic. such a wide-ranging compilation of data as this encyclopedia offers is likely to contain a few minor inaccuracies and even omissions (by virtue of its all-inclusiveness), but it would be petty to try to look for and then cite them. at a time when what little folk culture still surviving in the czech lands is rapidly disappearing, the editors must be congratulated for having produced a primary reference work that will serve those interested in the subject for decades to come. multi-ethnic society in georgia: a pre-condition for xenophobia or an arena for cultural dialouge anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 37 multi-ethnic society in georgia: a pre-condition for xenophobia or an arena for cultural dialogue? marina elbakidze caucasus institute for peace, democracy and development the aim of this article is to examine the extent and nature of xenophobic attitudes among young people in georgia. it asks how young people construct notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and of what is ‘their own’ and what is ‘foreign’ (or ‘other’). it considers also whether the young people of georgia simply reflect social trends inherent in the society around them, or whether they are more flexible, liberal and open to the outside world or, on the contrary, more rigid and critical than other members of society. research focused on youth, and on the expression of ethnic and religious relations among young people in particular, remains in its infancy in georgia. this paper thus provides an overview of that research on nationalism and ethnic and religious stereotypes current among georgian youth that has been published to date. it goes on to outline the findings of original qualitative sociological analysis research carried out by the caucasus institute for peace, democracy and development among students of higher education institutions in tbilisi and young representatives of the armenian ethnic minority in samtskhe dzhavakheti. any profound understanding of these issues, however, requires their contextualisation in the ethno-political situation in georgia and thus the article begins with a brief outline of the country’s political situation and traces a multicultural ‘map’ of the country today. georgia’s multicultural ‘map’ in order to examine georgia’s cultural diversity (and to delineate more precisely the markers of ‘us’ and ‘them’), it is useful to provide an ethnic, linguistic and religious ‘map’ of the country. according to the census of 2002, the population of georgia is around 4.3 million of whom 17% are ethnic minorities. this compares to 29% of a total population of 5.4 million at the time of the last soviet census of 1989. the territories of abkhazia and southern ossetia are both de facto independent but de jure counted as part of georgia. both have borders with russia and are populated by abkhazians and ossetians, who speak abkhaz and ossetian. the most important ethnic minorities in georgia in terms of their numbers are the armenians (of whom there are approximately 400,000 in georgia as a whole) who are clustered in the region of samtskhe dzhavakheti (in the southern part of georgia close to the border with turkey and armenia) and the azerbaijanis, for the most part muslims (of whom there are 250,000 throughout georgia as a whole), who are concentrated in the region of kvemo kartli (on the border with azerbaijan and armenia) (otchety pervoi natsional’noi perepisi 2003). georgia is characterised by religious diversity. for instance, in the region of samtskhe dzhavakhati, the vast majority of georgians are orthodox christians, and the majority of armenians belong to the armenian apostolic (gregorian) church. however, there is a small number of catholics among both the georgians and the armenians. another religious ethnic group is the russian dukhobors, a religious sect, which settled in the region after leaving russia in 1830-40. there has also been a small jewish community in the region and, until 1944, there were many muslims in dzhakavkhati – the so-called meskhet or meskhetian turks (iunusov 2000), who were deported in 1944 to central asia.i there are several other small religious sects in georgia: baptists, malakans, dukhobors, jehovah’s witnesses, seventh-day adventists, krishna-worshippers etc. there are also various groups that could be described as linguistic minorities (svans, mengrelians, tsova-tushin). however, the representatives of these groups consider themselves georgians by nationality, and are identified as such by the rest of the country’s population. resident in the mountainous region of georgia, in the pankissi gorge, on the border with chechnya, are about 7,000 kistin people (muslims, related to the vainakh peoples) who have also been assimilated into georgian culture; they speak georgian and have georgian surnames (tsulaia 2006). following the military action in chechnya, approximately 3,000 chechen refugees appeared in pankissi. another important part of georgia’s multicultural map is the region of adzharia the western part of the country on the black sea coast, bordering with turkey that is populated by georgian muslims. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 38 an important factor in the cultural identity of many of these groups is that they identify themselves on the basis of a combination of nationality, religion and language. for instance, it is generally thought that a georgian must be an orthodox christian who speaks georgian and an armenian must be a gregorian who speaks armenian, and so on. this stereotypical approach to cultural identity is expressed in the famous georgian slogan ‘language, fatherland, faith’, despite the fact that there are georgian muslims and georgian catholics in the country (nodia 1998). in soviet times, russian was the language of international communication in georgia, and to this day, it remains the country’s lingua franca despite the best efforts of the georgian authorities to instruct its citizens in the official state language of georgian, no matter what their ethnic origin. consequently, any ‘dialogue’ between cultures is frequently carried out in russian. the legislative structure in georgia is built on the principles of racial tolerance. the georgian constitution guarantees equal rights in social, cultural and political life to all citizens of the country, regardless of their ethnic origin or religious affiliation. media and cultural institutions schools, theatres, museums, newspapers -in the country continue to operate using the languages of ethnic minorities. there remain, however, certain problems in relations between national groups. since the break-up of the former soviet union, there has been a tendency in georgia, as in other former soviet republics, to construct a nationstate in which the titular nation dominates. the independent georgia of the post-soviet era, led by president zviad gamsakhurdia (1991), began to build a new state based on a mono-ethnic principle. the extreme nationalist position of the government and of certain sections of society is well illustrated by popular slogans of the time such as ‘georgia only for the georgians’ (dzhavakhishvili & frichova 2005). against the background of the drive for independence, chauvinist rhetoric and extremist nationalism led to tensions in relations between ethnic groups and later to armed conflict in southern ossetia. the vast majority of ethnic minority citizens who emigrated from georgia between the declaration of independence and the present day left the country at precisely this time. when eduard shevardnadze assumed authority in 1992, another armed conflict flared up in abkhazia. during the years of shevardnadze’s presidency, the georgian authorities did address the issue of ethnic minority rights and racial integration and the president’s state-building policies emphasised civic rather than ethnic principles. however, in reality, the process of integrating national minorities went no further than declarations and assurances. for instance, the number of ethnic minority members among the deputies of the georgian parliament in all its convocations and, likewise, in the administrative organs of its central executive committee is extremely small and in no way corresponds to the proportion they make up of the country’s population as a whole. in november 2003, there was another regime change in georgia, ushered in by a wave of public protests against the corruption with which shevardnadze’s regime had come to be associated and against the falsifying of election results. this time, in the so-called ‘rose revolution’, the opposition managed to take power without any violent clashes with the existing authorities. in january 2004, the majority of the country’s population voted for a new president, mikhail saakashvili, who had been at the forefront of the rose revolution. the new government also made an attempt to tackle the issue of ethnic minorities at an institutional level, introducing the new government post of state minister for the integration of ethnic minorities. with time, however, it became apparent that this measure had failed to bring about substantial change in the lives of people from ethnic minorities. arguably, despite efforts by the georgian authorities at various times during the country’s independent existence to create legal and institutional conditions which encourage the integration of ethnic minorities and the realisation of their rights, the country has yet to see real changes in the regulation of relations between nationalities. the general impression is that the state and the national majority do not trust ethnic minorities, suspecting them of separatist tendencies. for their part, minorities suspect the authorities and the national majority of intending, at best, to assimilate them, at worst, to force them out of the country or make them second-class citizens. it could be said that at the level of government, the relationship between those in power and the ethnic minorities fits perfectly into the ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘ours’ and ‘other’ template. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 39 tolerance and xenophobia in georgian society georgians’ own sense of themselves as one of the world’s most tolerant peoples is closely associated with the historically evolved multicultural character of the country’s capital city. tbilisi is a cultural space where for centuries the representatives of various national and religious groups have lived in a multilingual environment, enjoying the benefits of mutual cultural enrichment. the various monuments representing diverse cultures, which stand side by side in the city’s oldest district (the orthodox church, the synagogue, the mosque and the armenian church), are objects of pride for many georgians, who see them as proof of their tolerant nature. however, alongside georgians’ perception of themselves as tolerant, thrives the idea that georgians are the country’s ‘hosts’ (or owners) and all other peoples are ‘guests’, and that hosts and guests should behave accordingly. moreover the georgians’ notion of their own tolerance betrays a perceptible sense of forbearance and a certain condescension towards those (as it were, ‘less worthy’) who are ‘tolerated’. there are a number of ethnic stereotypes – partly a legacy of the soviet period – which still enjoy currency in present-day georgian society, in which specific social roles are ascribed to particular ethnic groups, either in jokes or publications. for instance azerbaijanis are typically identified as agricultural workers, kurds as street-sweepers and rubbish collectors, ossetians as policemen, armenians as traders and artisans and russians as employees in the service industry (dzhavakhishvili & frichova, 2005). obviously, these attitudes reflect an element of social reality, but as with all stereotypes, such roles are generalised to every member of a given ethnic group. it could be argued, moreover, that georgians remain tolerant towards representatives of other nationalities only for as long as they conform to the stereotypical social roles ascribed to their ethnic group. for a certain section of georgian society, if a representative of an ethnic minority steps ‘outside’ their prescribed role, and tries to ‘move up a level’, this tolerance gives way to hostility. this does not lead to the rejection of the principle of tolerance, but its reinterpretation; when a guest shows ingratitude it is acceptable to show intolerance. thus, although perceptions of the role in society of various ethnic groups have changed in many respects, the idea of the roles of ‘host and guest’ continue to dominate in the view of many ‘ordinary’ citizens. what then, is the basis of this ‘fear’ felt by native georgians? why are they so apprehensive of the minorities they perceive as ‘guests’? why do they suspect them of separatism? according to two population censuses carried out in the soviet era and in the era of independence, georgians make up the majority of the country’s population, 70% in 1989 and 84% in 2002. how far are the country’s inhabitants aware of this fact and how do they perceive it? according to the findings of a sociological survey conducted by the business consulting centreii despite a recent decline in the population of georgia, the proportion of ethnic georgians in the total population has increased. however, the fear remains undiminished that national minorities, particularly those that are compactly settled, present a threat to georgian society and independence. the reason behind this fear may be that certain territories have been , a significant proportion of georgians who responded to the survey (20%) consider that georgians are in the minority in the country and that other ethnic groups make up 60% of the population. accordingly, they perceive that there is a danger that georgian culture will be lost. only a small number of those who took part in the survey (15%) demonstrated an accurate grasp of the situation, maintaining that other ethnic groups make up no more than 20% of the country’s population as a whole. a large number of those who took part (among them a significant number of young people) were unable to answer this question and had no idea of the population ratio of the ethnic majority compared to that of the ethnic minorities. the survey also found that a small number of those questioned (8%) were of the opinion that georgia’s ethnic minorities should be assimilated. another group of respondents (18%) maintained that ethnic minorities should leave georgia and go back to the country of their historical origin. the majority of those questioned (70%) spoke out in favour of the peaceful coexistence of diverse cultures. the group of respondents opposed to the assimilation of ethnic minorities is likely to comprise both those who recognise the value of other cultures and those who are afraid of losing the ‘georgian genotype’. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 40 de facto lost to georgia and the prospects for their future return are unclear (nodia, 2003). the georgian majority fears that the close communities of armenians and azerbaijanis will, first of all, demand autonomy and then reunification with their historical homeland. similar fears are expressed regarding the repatriation of the meskhetian turks; it is thought that if they return to georgia they will settle together in a close-knit community in dshavakheti on the georgian-turkish border, demand autonomy and then unite with turkey. thus while the georgian majority fears the separatist tendencies of ethnic minorities will lead to the collapse of the state, ethnic minorities fear that the majority will either assimilate them or reduce them to minority groups with low social status whilst gradually curtailing their rights and repressing their cultures. the attitude of georgian youth towards other ethnic groups with this broader context in mind, the question of attitudes toward ethnic minorities among young people in georgia is now addressed drawing on evidence from existing academic studies of what informs young peoples’ concepts of their ‘own’ and ‘other’, of ‘us’ and ‘them’. how exactly do young people define the boundaries between ‘their own’ and the ‘other’? and of the various ‘others’, which are considered more acceptable or neutral and which pose a threat? how far have the stereotypes held by young people moved away from those held by their parents’ generation? according to the findings of a study by nata gabinashvili (2005) georgian students, when characterising members of their own ethnic group, experience significant ‘intra-group favouritism’. they envisage a minimal social distance between themselves and other georgians and attribute features, which they regard as positive to ‘their own’ people.iii asked to characterise the representatives of various other nationalities (armenians, azerbaijanis, abkhazians, ossetians, russians), georgian students painted a less appealing and sometimes negative picture. the social distance felt in relation to these groups clearly has increased. this is a consequence of the fact that young people’s knowledge of certain ethnic groups (such as the abkhazians, the ossetians and even the russians) has become poorer because there is so little contact with them. this suggests that young georgians tend to resort to stereotypes in evaluating other cultures and take as their starting point the domestic and global political situation, which they also generally perceive through prevalent stereotypes. thus, the statistically average young georgian believes that georgians are pleasant company, make the best marriage partners, are patriotic, strive to be first, value freedom and independence above all, place friendships above business relations, and are well disposed towards other nationalities. participants in gabinashvili’s survey emphasised the patriotic and traditional character of the georgian people, qualities that are generally associated with the older generation. at the same time, they did not regard georgians as characteristically law-abiding citizens, believing that they assigned greater significance to personal relationships and the need to uphold tradition. of course, there were some negative judgments of georgians by some participants in the study, but there were far fewer of these than there were positive comments. one example of how the political situation can inform stereotypes can be found in the attitude of georgian young people to russia and ukraine. a significant proportion of georgian society regards the policies pursued by russia today as a continuation of the imperial traditions of pre-revolutionary russia. russia, they argue, does not want to let go of georgia, but it wants a georgia without georgians. nevertheless, georgian citizens are far from unanimous in their views on georgian-russian relations. a large proportion of the population in georgia views russia as the instigator of the wars in abkhazia and south ossetia and therefore responsible for the country’s territorial losses. however, the socially disadvantaged section of the population in georgia, which includes many representatives of ethnic minorities, looks to russia to resolve the social problems that have accumulated over the last few years (this section of society is nostalgic for the ‘good old days’ of the soviet era). many georgians fall back on a compromise; georgia, they argue, should remain independent but retain strong links with russia. in parts of georgian society the past perception prevails of two russias: the russia of politics, which is perceived negatively; and the russia of culture, which is seen in a positive light. it is interesting to note the attitude of young people toward the question of equal status for different ethnic groups. according to anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 41 gabinashvili’s research, when asked whether the rights of citizens in georgia were affected by their ethnic origin, the overwhelming majority of respondents (83%) answered that this was sometimes the case. in response to the question of whether georgians should enjoy greater privileges than other ethnic groups, 48% gave a positive answer, 27% gave a negative answer and the rest were undecided. as these figures show, the majority of respondents acknowledged the fact that the civil rights of ‘others’ in georgia are sometimes violated because of their ethnic origin, but most importantly, half of the respondents stated unequivocally that ethnic georgians should enjoy greater privileges. the majority (71%) believed that representatives of other nationalities should not be appointed to positions of power (such as ministerial posts, heads of departments, judges, senior military personnel, management of large companies, etc.) (gabinashvili 2005: 81-3). this attitude was in evidence at the time of the election campaigns when one of main methods used to discredit political candidates was to indicate their nongeorgian roots. in contrast to the discourse of ‘ethnicity and citizenship’, georgian students were more liberal with regard to friendship and personal relationships. georgians claimed they felt no greater social distance from friends and neighbours of other ethnic groups than from georgian friends, and 54% stated that ethnic origin would be of no importance to them in choosing a future marriage partner. nevertheless, about a third of all respondents claimed not to support mixed marriages on the grounds that ‘the georgian race is a small one and no good will come of mixing with ‘foreigners’ (gabinashvili 2005: 83-4). the majority of the respondents (75%) thought that both georgians and non-georgians had an equal chance of getting a good education in georgia despite the fact that the reform of education begun in 2005 has put higher education beyond the reach of most ethnic minorities. this is because many of them have no knowledge of the new official state language, georgian, and are thus unable to take the examination in georgian language, a requirement introduced by the reform as part of common entrance exams. according to data from the ministry of education and science, only a small number of ethnic minority students entered georgian institutes of higher education in 2005, iv gabinashvili’s research shows that, in identifying what is ‘foreign’ or ‘other’, young people in georgia draw on traditional patterns of perception as well as the wider political situation and state policies on ethnic minorities. the participants in the study had little experience of contact even with those ethnic groups that live in concentrated communities on the territory of georgia (such as the azerbaijanis and armenians), not to mention those residing in conflict-ridden regions (such as the abkhazians) or in other countries (such as chechens and iranians). while, before the reform, the existence of a large number of fee-paying universities afforded anyone with sufficient financial means a chance of gaining a degree. the findings of gabinashvili’s study are valuable in demonstrating general trends in the attitudes of georgian youth towards ethnic minorities. however, the geography of the sample (three towns in georgia) and the narrow social segment (students) mean that the sample is not sufficiently representative to enable us to draw general conclusions with regard to georgian youth as a whole. it is also difficult to estimate (or predict) what likelihood there is of the attitudes uncovered in the study manifesting themselves in actual behaviour, while the use of closed questions to understand complex and often contradictory views on such sensitive issues has inherent limitations. social institutions and ethnic stereotypes: church and school in order to understand how ethnic attitudes among young people are formed it is essential to study not only the general socio-political situation but also how social institutions help forge and consolidate stereotypes about ‘other’ ethnic and religious groups. the division of society into ‘us’ and ‘them’ in georgia today has both ethnic and religious dimensions and it is thus important to examine the role of the church in setting the tone for the expression of xenophobic attitudes among young people. the growth in the number of believers and active churches in georgia in recent years has led to the deterioration in relations between different religious groupsv. statistical data indicate that, while the majority of georgians consider themselves orthodox christians, there are also a significant number of muslims and followers of the gregorian church in the country. according to the findings of a study by a group anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 42 of georgian sociologists (nizharadze et al 2004), 79.4% of georgian respondents hold the view that the social and national situation would improve if all georgians were orthodox christians. 50.3% believe that only the history of the orthodox church should be taught in religious history classes in schools. these findings reflect a tendency, which has become increasingly apparent in recent years, to identify georgian nationality with orthodox christianity. the same survey found that of all the country’s institutions (the government, the law-courts, parliament, police, the media), it is the church that is seen to be the most trustworthy (nizharadze et al 2004: 107-110)vi given that georgian youth have, along with the population of georgia as a whole, become more religious (or church-going) it is essential to consider the role of the georgian orthodox church in shaping the attitudes of georgian youth to other ethnic groups. the results of a study by anna chelidze (2006) are of interest here, as they demonstrate that certain aspects of ethnic nationalism in georgia today are both made manifest in, and actively encouraged by, religion. . chelidze’s research is based on expert interviews with members of the georgian intelligentsia and scientific circles together with an analysis of the texts of sermons and publications in the church press. the majority of experts questioned by chelidze expressed a highly negative view of the georgian orthodox church as one of the country’s least liberal institutions, encouraging the spread of extreme nationalism in georgian society. orthodox nationalism is apparent in the emphasis placed by the church on the unique character of the georgian language and people, who are regarded as god’s chosen people. faith is thus understood in a primordial manner, not as the free choice of the individual, but as a cultural legacy inherited genetically, passed on ‘in the blood’ of one’s ancestors. religious nationalism is also apparent in the opinion, widespread among church representatives, that religious minorities pose a serious problem for the georgian people and for the georgian orthodox church (chelidze 2006: 133-36). a study of sermons and church literature bears out the opinions of the experts. in the georgian church press and in the sermons of orthodox priests it is continually stressed that no country has had as many martyrs, as many worthy holy fathers or as many saints as georgia (143-44). the main enemy, according to the orthodox church, is liberalism. the bishop stefan, assures his readers, in one publication, that, ‘georgia is facing a great threat. the true faith of the georgian people is being taken away from beneath our very noses. unannounced, liberalism is starting to take root in georgia as the state religion’. the bishop was disagreeing with the fact that, according to the georgian constitution, the state has a duty to protect the interests of the followers of any religious faith and must not give priority to any one faith in the educational process (146-47). a study by irina sulkhanishvili (2005) looks at the relationship between the church and the school system, focussing on teachers and older school students. sulkhanishvili concludes that religiosity (or church-going) has become common among adolescents today and that they show low levels of religious tolerance and view those of other denominations or religions negatively. this, she suggests, is largely due to the positive attitude displayed by their teachers towards the church alongside the encouragement, by teachers as well as priests and other ecclesiastics, of negative attitudes and stereotypes towards those of other religions. teachers of history and georgian literature are particularly ‘effective’ at this, as ‘literature is taught as a guide to loving one’s motherland’ (sulkhanishvili 2005: 234). in almost every school there is now a chapel or meeting house, just as there was an obligatory ‘red corner’ set aside for communist study and activity during the soviet era. it has also become established practice to invite church figures to consecrate schools (mindashvili 2005). sulkhanishvili’s study includes extracts from interviews with teachers that show that the opinions held by the majority of orthodox teachers regarding the situation in georgia are formed exclusively under the influence of their spiritual mentors. to all intents and purposes, these teachers become mouthpieces for these spiritual mentors within the school and pupils often openly and aggressively condemn representatives of other religious denominations or non church-going orthodox christians. sulkhanishvili believes that this type of ‘collaboration’ between church and school encourages stereotypical thinking and conformism among school students. when they are under the influence of the church, religious youngsters learn to accept ready-made judgments and attitudes without making any attempt to anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 43 work things out for themselves (sulkhanishvili 2005: 233-44). the studies carried out by chelidze and sulkhanishvili also present the more liberal opinions held by some ecclesiastics who wish to encourage tolerant attitudes in society. however, it is difficult to judge from the data presented in the studies the relative weighting of these contrasting tendencies liberalist and fundamentalist within the church itself. do the views described above have a real impact on young people or are they simply rhetorical statements, confined within church walls? the role of religion and the school in the formation of ethnic stereotypes is a subject that demands further study. studying ethnic relations: the focus-group method the studies of ethnic relations discussed above provide valuable, but nevertheless highly fragmentary, information. in order to refine and ‘test’ certain trends evident in the research already discussed, further qualitative sociological research using the focus-group method was conducted. work was carried out with three focus groups, in which students from tbilisi state university (tsu) and tbilisi pedagogical university (tpu) took part (twenty-seven respondents in total). the members of one of the focus groups were humanities students, training to be teachers, at the pedagogical university. the second focus group was made up of those studying psychology and journalism and the third comprised students of political science. anybody interested was invited to take part in the focus groups, but in selecting participants, the researchers took into account both age (all participants were between 18 and 22 years old) and gender balance. the groups were made up of students from various years that had previously had little contact with one another. the focusgroup sessions were held at the caucasus institute for peace, democracy and development. given that the focus groups discussed questions of relations between religious groups, it should be noted that the majority of participants described themselves as orthodox, although only a few of them actively engaged in religious rituals (regular churchgoing, fasting, etc.). thus the religion of the respondents in this case cannot be taken as a variable for analysis. all the participants of the focus groups referred to themselves as ethnic georgians. the main subjects under discussion were: the relationship between different ethnic and religious groups; the relationship between the ethnic majority and different ethnic minorities; the level (or absence) of xenophobia in georgian society; and existing and potential ethno-political conflicts in georgia and their causes. due to the small number of participants in the focus groups this study does not allow us to draw wide-ranging conclusions. it does, nevertheless, offer the opportunity to discern a number of basic trends, which correspond to some extent with the arguments presented above. it should be noted that each of the participants engaged actively in the discussion of all the questions and that each focus group lasted for more than two hours; evidence of the participants’ interest in the subject in question. at the beginning of each focus-group session, after introducing the main subject of research, attention was paid to clarifying how respondents understood key terms used to describe relations between different social, ethnic and religious groups such as ‘xenophobia’, ‘chauvinism’, ‘discrimination’, ‘racism’, etc. in the course of discussion the concepts of equal rights, sovereignty of the law, human rights, etc. were also touched upon. the students were, for the most part, familiar with these terms although not always able to give strictly rigorous definitions of them. however, although active in their groups, students proved to be not particularly well informed about the issues under discussion and there was a tendency, albeit not quite as pronounced as in the nationwide survey noted above, to overestimate the proportion of ethnic minorities in the country. at the beginning of the focus-group sessions, speaking on the subjects of racism, xenophobia, chauvinism and discrimination in georgian society, students reiterated the celebrated assumption that the georgians are, by tradition, tolerant towards other nations. they claimed that georgians do not and never have oppressed members of ethnic minorities. the focus-group participants gave a positive assessment of the relations between ethnic groups in georgia, although during the course of discussion, they, as it were, ‘discovered’ problems in this area. to a certain extent the students were alarmed by the word ‘racism’. this is the comment of one student: anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 44 we’re not racist. we’ve never oppressed others or made them into slaves. how could we be racist? we don’t have any blacks in our country. (male student, 19, journalism faculty, tsu) vii the students found it difficult to admit that such a negative quality could be ascribed to georgians. nevertheless, a small number of participants dissented from the majority view. in response to the comment that georgians could not be racist as there were no ‘blacks’ in the country, for example, one participant remarked: according to this logic – ‘we’re not racists because there are no blacks in our country’, it follows that we will become racist as soon as blacks appear here. at the moment, black people visit georgia in connection with work and we, the georgians, are amicably disposed towards them. but what if they start to live in tbilisi? will that mean that we change for the worse and begin to treat them badly? (male student, 21, psychology faculty, tsu) most of the respondents declared that they would never treat anybody badly because of their ethnic origin and some noted that georgians did not treat badly those who were well disposed towards them. a student from the pedagogical university claimed that: georgians have never started wars themselves. historically, it has always been other countries that wanted to occupy georgia. for centuries, georgia has fought for independence and for the preservation of its culture and it has never attacked others. (female student, 18, tpu) some of the respondents pointed out that while georgians might not treat a ‘foreigner’ or an ‘outsider’ badly, nevertheless a certain distance exists between the two. the students attempted to classify ‘others’ or ‘foreigners’ on an ethnic basis. they observed that while the majority of young people in georgia have little or no experience of personal contact with the representatives of other ethnic groups from other countries, there is a distinct hierarchy of preference. foreigners from europe (italians, germans, english, spanish) are considered more acceptable and viewed in a more positive light than some other ethnic groups from the caucasus and from outside europe (the same tendency is noted in gabanishivili’s study of 2005). at the same time, the respondents stressed that they personally had nothing against any particular ethnic group, as they do not harbour aggressive feelings towards other nationalities, but at the same time they prefer to keep them at a certain distance. i don’t feel aggressive towards people on the basis of their ethnic origin. i get angry with people if they hurt or deceive me, but georgians might do that too. i’d like everybody to lead a normal life. no racial group should demean or humiliate any other. but i think we should preserve our national borders and that mainly georgians should live in georgia, so that our culture does not disappear. if non-georgians were to be in the majority, our language would disappear. (female student, 21, tpu) when asked if discrimination existed in georgia, the immediate reaction of the students was ‘no, there is no discrimination here’. in order to back up this argument they offered the following evidence: in georgia there are russian, armenian and azerbaijani schools, and there is an armenian theatre in tbilisi. nobody prevents them from speaking in their own native language. they live in the same way as everybody else in georgia. now there are many people who are badly-off in georgia and most of them are georgians. if georgians were better off than everybody else you could talk anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 45 about discrimination. ethnic minorities exaggerate their problems, they are more acutely aware of them. they think that people create problems for them on purpose, but that isn’t the case. (male student, 20, tpu) however, the students then gradually began to discuss various problems faced by minorities besides economic problems. it is true that they tended to attribute these problems to specific causes (such as ignorance of the georgian language) rather than a deliberate desire on the part of georgians to infringe the rights of other national groups. during the course of discussion, the students fixed on two useful criteria by which to judge the level of discrimination against a particular social group: the first of these was social status; the second was the presence of ethnic minority representatives in senior positions, in authority or in parliament. while they were not aware of the exact numbers of people from ethnic minorities in georgia, the participants decided nevertheless that there are only a minimal number of ethnic minority representatives in senior administrative posts in the country’s capital and central region. however, they suggested that in areas where there are concentrated ethnic minority communities, members of these minorities did occupy the main administrative posts. some participants sought to explain this lack of representation (or minimal representation) of ethnic minorities at senior level by the fact that minority members may not know the state language and the law now demands that all state employees have a knowledge of georgian. a significant number of participants took the view that it was ‘better and more reliable’ for the most important decisions in the country to be made by georgians and that therefore georgians should occupy the most responsible positions. those in favour of this took the view that representatives of other ethnic groups could never be such patriots as georgians and only a very small number of participants reacted critically to this notion. on the whole, we can conclude that the participants in the focus groups tended to express their views using the binary opposition ‘us’ and ‘them’ and showed a less trusting attitude towards minorities than towards members of their own ethnic group. when asked if this cautious attitude and mistrust of minorities was a manifestation of xenophobia, the majority disagreed, arguing that there were real reasons for this caution. the majority reiterated the statement that they had nothing against the minority nations living on the territory of georgia, and that their members should have the same rights as all other georgian citizens. however, they claimed that georgians needed to guard against minorities being used by russia to gain control of georgia and the caucasus. by way of example, the participants pointed to the conflicts in abkhazia and southern ossetia, which had led to georgia losing control of those territories. today, when the return of abkhazia and southern ossetia to georgia is a matter of dispute, we should be very careful that other forces don’t use ethnic minorities against us. (female student, 20, tsu, faculty of journalism) another example of russia’s ‘use’ of minorities cited by the students was the situation in dzhhavakheti, where a concentrated population of armenians makes up 95% of the region’s population. i’ve seen reports on television several times saying that the armenians in dzhavakheti are demanding autonomy. i don’t know for sure, but some say that once they are granted autonomy they will demand independence, just as the abkhazians and ossetians did. and russia will support them because russia still has a military base in dzhavakheti. (female student, 18, tpu) the focus-group members also levelled some criticisms at armenia, where allegedly ‘a book has been published claiming that almost all the georgian churches are actually armenian’ (male student, 22, tpu). against this anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 46 background, several participants felt that armenians living in georgia were the country’s least dependable citizens. by contrast, far fewer of the participants reacted critically to statements of this nature, pointing out that the causes of both currently ongoing and potential conflicts had their roots not only in russia’s political activity in the region in question but in the tense relationship between georgians and other ethnic minorities. they also remarked that certain mistakes had been made in the past in relation to the ossetians and the abkhazians which had led to armed conflict with those peoples, and that it was essential to take those mistakes into account in order to avoid similar problems and conflicts with other ethnic groups (armenians and azerbaijanis). as far as religious groups were concerned, a large proportion of the focus-group members argued that the orthodox church should be allowed certain privileges ‘as georgia is an orthodox country’. participants also remarked that the growth of various religious sects and the appearance of new ones reflected campaigns pursued by certain powers opposed to georgian independence who ‘want to control georgia through sectarians, whom they can buy off. after all, they are not true believers’ (female student, 22, tpu). with the exception of a small number of more critically inclined individuals, focus-group members did not consider georgians intolerant towards ethnic minorities. this fact in itself (that they wish to seem positively disposed) shows potential for the development of good relations between ethnic groups. at the same time, the perception georgians have of themselves as tolerant may remain little more than rhetoric that is easily combined with the unrecognised justification of discrimination. an example of this is the ‘explanation’ given by one focusgroup member cited above for the lack of ethnic minority representatives in top positions, ‘ethnic minorities do not occupy senior administrative posts because they are not proficient in the official state language’ (male student, 20, tpu). ethnic relations in georgia: the perspective of ethnic minority youth a number of informal discussions were conducted with young armenians from the region of samtskhe dzhavakheti, where the armenian population of georgia is concentrated. the meetings took place in the towns of akhaltsikhe and akhalkalaki during a series of seminars carried out throughout 2005. those taking part in the discussions were, for the most part, students from the universities of akhaltsikhe and akhalkalaki (about twenty people). also taking part were young people who had just graduated from higher education institutions who were still unemployed at the time of the discussion (about ten people). the young people who took part in the study were aged between 19 and 30 and there was approximately the same number of men and women in the groups. these young armenians made statements about georgia and the georgians that were critical but not offensive. participants said they maintained a friendly relationship with many of their georgian contemporaries but, on the whole, they had an ambivalent attitude towards georgians. in general, they expressed a greater degree of alienation from georgians in the capital and other regions of the country than from those who lived in their area, although one group of participants (students at the local university in akhaltsikhe where armenians and georgians study together) even felt alienated from those georgians who lived locally. on an everyday level this distance was apparent in the fact that young people tended to separate into groups according to their ethnic origin, although they claimed that this was not a conscious process. social events would be organised for members of both ethnic groups together, but more frequently they would meet separately in groups made up of members of their own nationality. all those involved in the discussions commented that they had little contact with georgians from other regions of georgiaviii the attitude of the armenian students to their citizenship was also ambivalent. they claimed that georgians accused them (the armenians) of a lack of patriotism in relation to georgia, but they argued that georgians themselves tended to distance themselves from armenians. . most of the young people, adolescents and children from dzhavakheti have never been to tbilisi, but they have almost all been on trips to yerevan or gone to visit relatives there. most armenians go to college or university in armenia and russia. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 47 if anyone becomes seriously ill, they go to armenia to be treated. how can armenians feel as if they are georgian citizens? (female student, 20, akhalkalaki)ix when asked why armenians preferred to study in armenia or russia rather than georgia, respondents replied that as they did not have a good knowledge of georgian, they felt more comfortable in an environment where the main language was armenian or russian. even so, a number of the respondents who had a good knowledge of georgian still preferred to study outside georgia as they were hoping to find work in either armenia or russia after they graduated, rather than in georgia. while they were aware that the law on civil service now demands that all civil service employees are proficient in the state language, they argued that this was simply used as a pretext by the georgian government and georgians to refuse to employ armenians: who is going to give an armenian a good job with such levels of unemployment in the country? it’s hard even for a labourer to find a job. they always hire ‘their own people’ georgians. there are people with a good education and a fluent knowledge of georgian sitting about unemployed. they’ve got diplomas, and now they’re sitting about with nothing to do. the government concocted this law-forbidding people who don’t know georgian from working in state institutions just so they could employ their own people. (male graduate, 27, unemployed, akhalkalaki) many believe that the distance between youth of different nationalities has increased over the last few years as a result of recent reforms to the education system that have made it almost impossible for minorities to receive higher education in georgia. seeing no prospects for themselves in georgia, many armenian students prefer to go to college in armenia, or, if they can afford it, in russia. many respondents maintained that representatives of ethnic minorities would always have less chance of finding employment than georgians, even if they were graduates and were fluent in georgian. some believed that the claims of equal rights for all citizens in georgia amounted to nothing more than words and that, in actual fact, nothing was being done to improve the lives of ethnic minorities. the armenian students were better informed than their georgian counterparts about the number of armenians occupying prominent positions in government and parliament, and showed greater interest in the issue. moreover, they were highly critical of the situation, arguing that the number of armenians in responsible posts ‘could be counted on the fingers of one hand’. they were of the opinion that many of these armenians were not ‘genuine’ armenians: they had become like georgians and were simply ‘working for the georgians’. if this were not the case, it was argued, they would not have been able to make such headway in their careers. the students involved in the discussions were highly sensitive to everything that was said on the subject of armenians in the media. for instance, they said they were irritated when, occasionally, georgian politicians or public figures would, while speaking publicly, refer to georgians as the ‘titular nation’ and consign ethnic minorities to the role of ‘guests’. they were very sensitive also to jokes told about them by georgian fellow-students. for instance, one female student remarked: when people tell jokes about armenians or laugh about them i feel uncomfortable. they tell me i can tell jokes about georgians, too, but i think that that would not offend them in the same way, probably because they are georgians and they are living in georgia, while i am an armenian. you have to be armenian to understand what i mean. (female student, 20, akhaltsikhe) while young georgians show a ‘suspicious’ attitude towards ethnic minorities, considering them insufficiently patriotic citizens, ethnic minority members themselves (in this case, armenians) are worried that the georgian authorities intend to oppress them to the extent that they are ‘driven out’ of georgia. at the same time, the armenian students who took part in the anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 48 discussions also offered more positive judgements of georgians. this perhaps indicates that deteriorating relations between ethnic groups are the result of a complex political and economic context in the country and that, if solutions are found to the country’s other problems, ethnic friction will recede. conclusion the study of ethnic (in)tolerance in contemporary georgian society in general and among young people in particular is extremely limited and what little research there is has been published only in georgian and/or russian. this article has thus sought to achieve three main objectives. firstly, it has provided a brief summary of the existing scholarship in the field. secondly, it has signaled the importance of addressing the issue of ethnic (in)tolerance in the context of the historical, political, cultural and socio-cultural transformations that have taken place in georgian society over the last two decades. thirdly, it has outlined the findings of two original research projects conducted among young representatives of both the ethnic majority and a minority (armenian) group in georgia. the original research drawn on in this article suggests a number of significant conclusions. the mistrust and suspicion felt towards one another by the georgian majority and by ethnic minorities, while it does not go as far as pronounced xenophobia, is a barrier to social integration. a significant number of the young georgians who took part in the research outlined here displayed stereotyped, conformist modes of thinking, influenced by the social and political environment. the same could also be said of the attitudes of armenian youth. however, the limited number of both georgian participants in focus groups and armenians taking part in (informal) discussions with researchers means that it would be unwise to generalise these conclusions in relation to the whole of georgian or armenian youth. despite declaring that georgians are tolerant, georgian young people (or at least, a significant number of them) have a tendency to construct relations with other ethnic groups according to an ethnic ‘hierarchy’ which permits and implies a positive attitude to other ethnic groups as long as they remain within a prescribed social role and space. the majority of young people formally acknowledges equal rights for all ethnic groups in georgian society on the level of legislation, but in actual social and political life, refuses to accord people of ethnic minorities a higher social status. for example, most georgians cannot accept that representatives of ethnic minorities should be allowed to take part in the governance of the country or take important national decisions. the established roles of ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ are clearly uppermost in the minds of georgian youth. a similar hierarchical attitude is apparent in relation to other religious groups. a significant number of those who participated in the research believed that the orthodox religion should have a higher status than other religious faiths and denominations in the country, although among georgians themselves there are a number of catholics and muslims. however, the data presented here do not lend themselves to the conclusion that there is any pronounced xenophobia among young georgians. during the research, a significant number of participants spoke out in favour of equal rights for different ethnic groups. moreover, it could be argued that present day georgian society holds the potential for developing a truly ethnically tolerant society; the ethnic minority respondents in the research, for example, believed the current deterioration in relations between ethnic groups to be a temporary phenomenon that would improve once certain social and political problems in the country were resolved. the fact that georgians openly profess themselves to be tolerant and the fact that some members of society (albeit only a few) declare it essential to accord equal rights to all the country’s citizens of georgia could serve as the starting point for change as regards the widespread intolerant attitudes in georgian society. it is important to emphasise that the approach employed in the research presented in this paper differs significantly from existing studies in a number of respects. firstly, the research attempted to understand ethnic tolerance and xenophobia as they are produced and reproduced through young people’s narratives at the grassroots level rather than at the official level of state policy or through critical interventions by experts (ngos, academics, lawyers, journalists, etc.). this focus led to the employment of qualitative sociological research such as focus-group discussions and unstructured interviews. thus, while on one level the findings generated from the use of ‘soft methodology’ simply confirm more general trends discernible from survey-based research (see gabinashvili anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 49 2005), the article offers additional insights that illuminate the complexity and ambiguity of young people’s understandings of such concepts as tolerance, race and citizenship. finally, the careful attention to narratives of interviewees and focus-group participants may be seen to have an empowering effect since the subjects of this research young people and ethnic minorities rarely have the opportunity to voice their opinions and have those views represented in mainstream discourse. notes 1 the question of the repatriation of meskhetian turks is the subject of political debate and profiteering. following the admission of georgia into the council of europe in 1999, the government committed itself to the repatriation of the muslim meskhetian turks over a period of 12 years. those opposed to the repatriation, however, claimed that the introduction of a new (‘other’, ‘foreign’) cultural constituency, with a different religion and an unclear ethnic identity, would lead to fresh conflicts (zaselenie ‘turkovmeskhetintsev’ est’ smert’ dlia gruzii 2006; arabidze 2006; nado otsenit’ meskhetinskuiu etnochistku 1918-1919? 2006; vozvrashchenie turkov-meskhetintsev vyzovet krovoprolitie 2006). 2 the findings of this survey are available via the ministry of education and science website at www.mes.gov.ge. 3 300 students from higher education institutes in tbilisi, kutaisi and telavi took part in the research. gabinashvili examines ethnic stereotypes and the criteria on which they are based with the help of the psycho-semantic method of ‘plural identification’ using a specially designed questionnaire. the respondents evaluated their relations to the following ethnic groups: georgians, armenians, azerbaijanis, abkhazians, ossetians, chechens, russians, ukrainians, jews, armenians, italians, germans, turks, iranians and japanese. 4 data on the results of the common entrance exam of 2005 have been published by the national centre for examinations and grades of the ministry of education and science of georgia; see www.naec.ge. 5 for instance, in recent years a polemic has developed between the georgian and armenian religious communities regarding the historical origin and rights to ownership of a number of churches. the discussion assumed the character of an ethnic standoff, which erupted in clashes between armenian and georgian youth in one region of georgia (the akhalkalaki region, 2005). 6 the survey was based on a sample of 1,000 people and was conducted in 2003 in tbilisi, kutaisi and gori. 7 quotations from focus groups are followed by details of the speaker’s sex and age and, sometimes, place of study. 8 despite the assertions of respondents it should be noted that in recent years (following the rose revolution of 2003) there have been several programmes organised by the state and by local and international ngos, designed to encourage the integration of ethnic minorities. summer camps have been organised for young people and adolescents both in the capital and in other areas of georgia. 9 quotations from informal discussions with young armenians are followed by details of the speaker’s age, sex, occupation and the location at which the discussion took place. references arabidze, d. (2006) opasnost’ gumanitarnoi katastrofy v meskhetii, akhali 7 dge, 5 11 may, pp. 11. chelidze, a. (2006) etnicheskii natsionalizm v dukhovenstve gruzinskoi pravoslavnoi tserkvi, in: e. gerasimova & n. lezhava (eds) iuzhnii kavkaz: territorii. istorii.liudi, pp. 132-147 (tbilisi: fond im. genrikha bölla). dzhavakhishvili, d. & frichova, m. (2005) nekotorie aspekty mezhetnicheskikh otnoshenii v gruzii, unpublished paper presented at workshop in kyiv workshop, 14-17 january. gabinashvili, n. (2005) izuchenie etnicheskikh stereotipov v srede gruzinskoi molodezhi (‘svoi-chuzhoi’) v obshchestve, in: n. lezhava (ed.), identichnost’, vlast’ i gorod v rabotakh molodikh uchenikh iuzhnogo kavkaza. sbornik statei, pp. 70-87 (tbilisi: fond im. genrikha bölla na iuzhnom kavkaze). iunusov, a. (2000) meskhetinskie turki: dvazhdy deportirovannii narod (baku: institut mira i demokratii) zaselenie ‘turkov meskhetintsev’ est’ smert’ dlia gruzii (2006) akhali taoba, 24 may, pp. 7-8. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 50 mindiashvili, b. (2005) perspektiva religioznogo obrazovaniia v gosudarstvennikh shkolakh, 24 chasa, 12 march, pp. a6,8. nado otsenit’ meskhetinskuiu etnochistku 1918 1919? (2006) khvalindeli dge, 6 may pp. 5. nizharadze, g., dzhgerenaia, e., kachkachishvili, ia., mshvidobadze, r. & khutsishvili, g. (2004) gorodskoe naselenie gruzii o voprosakh sviazannikh s religiei, in: n. lezhava (ed.), rol’ pravoslaviia v gosudarstvakh i obshchestvakh gruzii i rossii. sbornik statei, pp.104-121 (tbilisi: fond im. genrikha bölla). nodia, g. (1998) konflikt v abkhazii: natsional’nie proekty i politicheskie obstoiatel’stva, in: b. coppieters, g. nodia & y. anchabadze (eds), gruziny i abkhazy: put’ k primireniiu, pp. 19-67 (moskva: izdatel’stvo “ves’ mir”). nodia, g. (2003) polietnichnost’ gruzii: fakt, otnoshenie k nemu i politicheskaia strategiia, in: g. nodia (ed.), odno obshchestvo, mnogo etnosov pp.59-93 (tbilisi: kavkazskii institut mira, demokratii i razvitiia). otchety pervoi natsional’noi perepisi (2003) available online at www.statistics.ge. sulkhanishvili, i. (2005) pravoslavnii sindrom obrazovaniia v gruzii in: n. lezhava (ed.), identichnost’, vlast’ i gorod v rabotakh molodikh uchenikh iuznogo kavkaza. sbornik statei, pp. 231-244. (tbilisi: fond im. genrikha bölla na iuzhnom kavkaze). tsulaia, i. (2006) byt’ kistintsem: mezhdu gruzinami i chechentsami, in e. gerasimova & n. lezhava (eds), iuzhnii kavkaz: territorii. istorii. liudi, pp.169-189 (tbilisi: fond im. genrikha bölla). vozvrashchenie turkov-meskhetintsev vyzovet krovoprolitie (2006) akhali taoba, 22 may, pp. 3. zaselenie ‘turkov-meskhetintsev’ est’ smert’ dlia gruzii (2006) akhali taoba, 24 may, pp. 7-8. marina elbakidze georgia’s multicultural ‘map’ tolerance and xenophobia in georgian society the attitude of georgian youth towards other ethnic groups studying ethnic relations: the focus-group method conclusion microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 6 editors’ preview julie hemment & krista harper university of massachusetts, amherst we would like to extend our thanks to our guest editor, kristen ghodsee, for assembling such a fascinating set of articles for this special issue on consumption. ghodsee’s personal journey as a “shopaholic” in bulgaria leads the collection, and a preface by daphne berdahl lays out key issues of postsocialist bodies, social inequalities, and neoliberal ideology explored in the authors’ articles. in our open forum this edition, we include four articles that examine modern subjectivities and identities in the postsocialist world. alexander tymczuk examines the continued significance of personal networks in post-soviet ukraine. tymczuk is concerned to investigate both the persistence and transformation of blat relations; his ethnographic research reveals commonalities across quite different locations: both rurally-based and urban interlocutors, people who work in diverse locations (from the bazaar to ngos) routinely engage in the personalization of exchange relations. jarrett zigon explores the crafting of ethical subjects in contemporary russia, examining how muscovites “work on themselves” by integrating prayer and secular selfhelp practices in their everyday lives. andrei simic draws on interviews with serbian refugees to examine the ways the current and future prosperity of serbia is imagined. these narratives reveal a pronounced perception of anti-serbian bias on the part of the international community and a sense of betrayal and loss. finally, olga gurova examines official discourses on consumption in the soviet period, from the immediate postrevolutionary period to the 1980s. her analysis reveals the extent to which clothing, style and personal appearance came under the scrutiny of the state throughout the soviet period. we would like to extend our warm thanks to robert rotenberg for his ongoing work maintaining the aeer website at de paul university and to lisa hilt for her outstanding work assisting us with journal correspondence, administration, editing, production, and distribution throughout the school year. special thanks go to the center for public policy and administration (cppa) at the university of massachusetts for providing the resources for research and editorial assistance and to the department of anthropology for providing overhead support for the journal. call for papers fall 2007 special issue of the anthropology of east europe review “roma and gadje” deadline: 1 february 2007 special issue of aeer on roma and gadje, scheduled for fall 2007. we are seeking papers that consider the ways individuals and communities negotiate, resist and reproduce the places roma occupy in non-romani spheres, as well as sociological analyses of the lifeworlds and counterpublics of roma. interdisciplinary contributions reflecting sustained ethnographic or archival engagement with romani communities in eastern europe are particularly welcome. yasar abu ghosh, krista hegburg, and shannon woodcock, the guest editors, would especially like to encourage activists, scholars from the region, and junior scholars, including post-fieldwork graduate students, to contribute to this volume. interested parties should contact krista hegburg for further information at: kmh55@columbia.edu. papers should be 3,000-8,000 words (including all endnotes and references) and be sent as electronic submissions as a microsoft word .doc (or as an .rtf file) to: kmh55@columbia.edu. vanishing nation: discussing nation’s reproduction in post-socialist slovenia duška knežević-hočevar zrc-sazu, ljubljana © 2004 duška knežević-hočevar all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. introduction the mid-19th century historical debates on the political inception of the slovenian nation featured numerical “smallness”1 as the most indicative characteristic of the slovenian population. despite many other attributes, mostly described as “favorable” – e.g. cultural and religious homogeneity, language uniformity – the early builders of the national discourse understood this smallness as a “serious political disadvantage” (cf. cvirn 1995: 73; domej 1995: 87, 92). this assertion was further implicated in many historical attempts to reinforce the slovenian statehood, be it in the framework of politically differently conceptualised yugoslav states2 or finally in the 1990s, in the period of establishing an independent slovenian state. in this article i argue that the public interpretations of fertility behavior in the period of consolidating the slovenian independent state uncritically espoused a 19th century concept of national population. the classic concept was used mostly in 1 according to public censuses of the 1931 and the 2002, the numbers of declared slovenians are 1,397,650, and 1,948,250 respectively. 2 in chronological order, the yugoslav states were: the state of slovenians, croats and serbs, established in october 1918; the kingdom of serbs, croats and slovenians, constituted a month later; the kingdom of yugoslavia from 1929; the democratic federative yugoslavia from 1945; the federative republic of yugoslavia from 1946, and in 1963 established the socialist federative republic of yugoslavia. discussions on nationalism as a political philosophy and it referred to a people with shared linguistic, cultural, historical experience, material conditions, and descent; organic ties to peoples’ territory and environment were considered peoples’ natural rights to such places (kreager 1997: 155). the imperative that such “natural wholes” had to be “home-produced” (kreager 1997: 156) and re-produced is also characteristic for postsocialist rhetoric on production and renewal of “biological slovenians.” moreover, the ideological notions of the “ancient past of the slovenian nation” have corroborated those interpretations on declining fertility in slovenia that had adopted the central assumption of the classical theory of demographic transition.3 the theory was firmly grounded in the notion that each and every country successfully moves from a preindustrial to a post-industrial state of demographic equilibrium, i.e. from the state of the population’s high fertility and high mortality to a state of the decline of the population growth. evolutionary-designed demographic theory was also convenient for 3 szreter (1993: 661) asserts that demographic transition in its classic theoretisation was a general theory, stipulating that a strong population growth initially occurred in the period of industrialisation because fertility remained uncontrolled and at a high rate, while mortality declined due to improved food supplies and living standards. the latter were seen as the consequence of improvements in agriculture, transport, manufacturing, and progress of the medical sciences. jen typewritten text 22 commentators on the “transitional orientation” of the new slovenian state from the “primitive balkans” to the “civilised europe”. the “smallness” of the nation’s body a clearly conveyed idea of slovenian statehood, authored by a handful of slovenian intellectuals in 1848, considered of prime importance the project of constructing the slovenians as a “historical nation.” according to historian cvirn (1995: 73), after 1848, german political writings had successfully launched the argument that the slovenians represented only a minute particle of humanity which was doomed to extinction – i.e. to submergence in the sea of german-ness precisely because of its smallness, cultural backwardness, and notably because slovenians were obstructing germans in their spatial expansion towards the adriatic sea. the all-european “national revival” activated not only slovenian intellectuals in their efforts to bring into force the idea of slovenia as a political entity of the hitherto dispersed slovenian speaking population in the empire’s historical lands, but it also substantiated the creation of a new orientation in slovenian historiography – the construction of national history (kos 1985: 11). in their enthusiasm for bringing to light everything of the greatest significance for the slovenian national past, the heralds of slovenian longevity even developed a specific type of scholar – the patriotic historiographer who should not be preoccupied only with the national history, but also had to study the language, folk ways, and customs of the people, and who had to be a poet and a national agitator at the same time (kos 1985: 11). davorin trstenjak was the first who explicitly mentioned the numerical smallness of the slovenian nation: the slovenian nation is meagre in number. hundreds of years of inconvenience heavily disturbed it. all disasters notwithstanding, in the face of other bigger nations having vanished from the world scene, it still remains safe and sound.” (trstenjak 1863: 234; author’s translation) the size of the national population has been an unavoidable topic in most “domestic” studies on slovenian population and related themes ever since. the numerical smallness of the slovenian nation was not only a statistically verified fact in austrian censuses; furthermore, many slovenian scholars have focused on discovering the reasons for such an alarming national situation, or have even tried to invent measures for its improvement. according to the archaeologist niederle, the main reasons for such a seemingly precarious national situation were on the one hand, the slovenian emigration abroad, and on the other hand, the errors of statistical data collected in the empire. small numbers notwithstanding, slovenians should not fear radical decline if they only know how to strengthen the national consciousness in people, and improve their civilisation within their political territory – the carniola (cf. niederle 1911: 117-118). similarly, the argument of one of his contemporaries, mačkovšek, was that the slovenian lowest population increase among the austrian slavs was due to their alpine country, poor economy, emigration, and territorial losses. he argued for a just national struggle for the return of the lost millennial slovenian settlement lands (mačkovšek; in: niederle 1911: 246, 250). these first “slovenian” interpretations of the official statistics on the national populations within the empire were accompanied by appeals for eliminating such a threatening decrease of the slovenian population, propagated by medical doctors and eugenicists in the 1920s and 1930s. according to these scholars, the numerical smallness of the slovenian nation was not its only disadvantage; they considered that the quality of the “national organism” and the “national health” also needed to be brought under scrutiny. of particular concern was the alleged basic biological characteristic of a nation – its persistent “rebirth and replacement” (zalokar 1918: 6). the statistics on fertility, mortality, and migration were consulted and analysed with regard to various environments and areas settled by slovenians. the one single purpose of these efforts was to jen typewritten text 23 diagnose and improve the circumstances for the sake of a better “quality of national posterity” (zalokar 1918: 7). many questions pertaining to “reproduction” turned out to be worthy of study in the “nation’s perspective,” provided that they helped change the status of slovenian people into a sovereign nation. scholars in different scientific disciplines have systematically tracked the demographic movements in slovenia since the end of world war i. the first basic study on the historical development of the slovenian population since the 18th century was published in 1936. in his effort to determine and evaluate the proper number of slovenians in their scattered historical lands of settlement across different periods, fran zwitter assumed that the development of the population should always be studied as “an integral part of a holistic historical development” (zwitter 1936: 88). his appeal was of singular importance also in the context of the ensuing studies conducted during the period of socialist yugoslavia (e.g. šifrer 1963; vogelnik 1965), which uniformly interpreted the trend of fertility decline among slovenians in accordance with the paradigm of modernization, and the theory of demographic transition. fertility decline was taken to be a typical characteristic of the “developed”, i.e. “western” countries, and thus a positive sign of an ongoing “progress” of human civilization. yet the commentators of the population movement did not question the linear and evolutionary conceptualised theory of demographic transition; they uncritically and somewhat automatically applied the theory on “domestic ground.” national press on slovenian fertility the assumption that the public discussion on slovenian statehood of the 1990s adopted the anachronistic notion of the national population not merely as a historical and cultural phenomenon but as a “natural” fact was tested by reviewing and analysing pressclippings from the journalist documentation delo, the most extensive journalist archive in slovenia. i analysed 177 articles (the folder natality) published between 1970 and 2000. i first sought to find discernible time patterns in the press interpretations on fertility in slovenia, and consequently identify the constructed image of the national population. the hypothesis was that following the declaration of independence in 1991, the slovenian popular press paid more attention to the fertility issue then before, and that this issue was represented in a specific way. the decrease in the fertility coefficient was no longer interpreted as a statistical fact confirming the notorious assumption of the theory of demographic transition, according to which low fertility values of a given population are typical for the “developed european populations.” quite on the contrary, the slow population growth in slovenia was conveyed alongside the concern for the “biological threat to slovenians”. the reviewed articles show the following picture: jen typewritten text 24 figure 1: the percentages of articles on fertility in slovenia by the years and decades __________________________________________________________________________ there is every indication that the nation’s reproduction is the privileged topic of the consolidation of the independent slovenian state. nearly two third (66.6%) out of the total analysed material belongs to the 1990s in comparison with the 1980s (22.5%) and the 1970s (6.4%). yet, the characteristic interpretations of the fertility issue per single decade show the following observations. the 1970s: declining births a syndrome of “progress” the most salient characteristic for the reporting on fertility in the 1970s is the apparent small number (one per year) of articles compared with the subsequent periods. all articles focus on the decreasing fertility in slovenia and the reasons for it are explained in two significant ways: as a proof that the level of cultural and economic development that has been attained (i.e. responsible parenthood, legal abortion, increased number of employed women, etc.) in the socialist republic of slovenia is similar to that in the “developed europe;” or in the negative sense, stressing the shortcomings of such progress as the selfcentered and negative ideology of consumerism. typical observations were: regarding low infant mortality we are among the most developed countries in europe. (delo, 24 may 1969)4 we have sufficient evidence to be satisfied that with the cultural and economic level attained we created in people a higher responsibility for children: as it is in the countries of similar growth, parents decide to have one child only once they secure good living conditions. (delo, 24 december 1972) the “economic and cultural progress” also represented the main frame of interpretation of the fertility situation in slovenia within the yugoslav federation. it was pointed out 4 all quotations are the author's translation. jen typewritten text 25 time and again that the fertility decline in the most developed federal republic in yugoslavia leads to a smaller proportion of its inhabitants in the total population of yugoslavia. in this regard the typical comparison among the yugoslav republics usually took the following turn: the truth is that people from poorer regions have more children than those with higher incomes… in slovenia only 15.8 infants are born per 1,000 inhabitants, a reason for concern particularly because we are a small nation… regarding births, kosovo takes the first place in yugoslavia; here, the growth of population is the most noticeable: 25 infants per 1,000 inhabitants!” (tedenska tribuna, 21 february 1973) in the 1970s, the fear of the imminent disappearance of slovenians was only sporadically mentioned. more frequent and characteristic were references to surveys, or to research reports produced by individual experts (half of all the articles). in their reporting, the journalists usually emphasized those research results that showed optimistic projections: the slovenians with their low fertility statistics follow the economic trends of the “developed world” (delo, 27 october 1973); slovenians are not endangered because the gross reproductive coefficient still remains 1.1, which implies that the “biological reproduction” is more than secured especially when compared to vojvodina or croatia with coefficient value below 1 (delo, 27 october 1973). although some demographers stressed that slovenia had become an immigrant country for the first time in its history and that labor immigrants from other republics might contribute to the slovenian national body (tedenska tribuna, 21 february 1973), rare were those who addressed the “composition” of the population: “every fourth employed person in slovenia is not of slovenian nationality; for the first time in the history of slovenia, more people immigrate than emigrate” (itd, 15 january 1974). a similar reflection can be extracted from the proposed action programs for the improvement of fertility in slovenia that were reported on at that time; the proposed programs for the most part remained restricted to calls for separate and single measures. most frequent among them were appeals for improving women’s reproductive health care in general, and for providing more suitable living conditions for young families, in particular; yet a holistic population policy was not clearly elaborated (komunist, 24 november 1972; itd, 15 january 1974; delo, 7 june 1977). the 1980s: “we are a mere million” significant for this period is the transposition of issues: more attention was given to “catastrophic” consequences of the fertility decline in slovenia and strong appeals were voiced for urgent, holistic population measures. the reported reasons for fertility decline were assumed widely known and taken for granted as such. those that pointed out the historical achievements of economic growth in most european societies were repeatedly mentioned. fertility decline in slovenia was mostly interpreted as an inevitable consequence of the gradual restriction of planned births and was still consistently explained in two contexts, the yugoslav and the european. however, in comparison with the previous decade when the “side effects” of belonging to the “developed world” were particularly exposed, a series of new alleged reasons for fertility decline were invented including inappropriate attitude towards life (the nonethical right to abortion); labor immigrants from the other republics of socialist yugoslavia in the 1970s; and last but not least, the absence of a holistic population policy. these putative reasons were portrayed as the main culprits of an imminent national catastrophe and often exposed in headlines: “slovenians are aging” (večer, 14 july 1984); “simple reproduction is endangered” (teleks, 10 jen typewritten text 26 january 1985), “we are a mere million” (teleks, 10 january 1985); “we are a greying society” (delo, 26 february 1987); “is the nation passing away?” (nedeljski dnevnik, 19 april 1987); “the roots of the nation are seriously sapped” (nedeljski dnevnik, 7 may 1989); “euthanasia is unnecessary among slovenians” (delo, 12 december 1989). moreover, they were corroborated by the statistical evidence and population projections showing the declining number of births. the most salient newly identified reason for the low fertility in slovenia in the 1980s was the labor immigration from the yugoslav republics. the birth rates among the immigrants allegedly led the experts into underestimating the seriousness of the threat of the “vanishing of slovenians.” while at first the population experts cautiously pointed to the fact that the higher population growth in slovenia in the last two decades compared to the average growth in yugoslavia was attributable to the influx of immigrants (delo, 12 june 1982; večer, 14 july 1984), later on, at the end of the 1980s, they more and more openly conveyed their concern for the vanishing of “slovenian culture and identity” (dnevnik, 19 november 1988). a similar logic was incorporated into the very reasoning on the need for a population policy. the experts’ calls for a holistic population policy were not primarily founded on the paranoid notion of the “extinction of slovenians” but were rather in line with the social consequences of low fertility in slovenia. however, it seems that they could not completely avoid the slippery ground of defining the criteria for membership in the national population despite their appeals for urgent population measures, mostly as part and parcel of an entire socio-economic growth of the nationstate (nedeljski dnevnik, 19 april 1987). some journalists took nearly for granted the assumption that immigrants were not a solution because they would allegedly make the slovenian identity gradually disappear. some justified this thesis with allegedly “western reasoning:” considering previous experiences and reactions of western european authorities on immigration from the “south”, this solution is not popular at all. a majority of european countries tackle the low fertility problem with a calculated population policy. (teleks, 10 january 1985) it was reported time and again that for maintaining the natural regeneration of the slovenian population, every woman should give birth to 2.2 children. in this respect the majority of criticism and comments pertained to the living conditions in slovenia, ranging from the poor conditions for employment of young people, lack of suitable housing, day nurseries and kindergartens, to the calls for a prolonged maternity leave (one year), and financial rewards for families with more than two children. however, the reporting on both, the holistic population policies and the single measures for improvement of the living conditions for people in slovenia, increasingly, though implicitly, related to ethnic slovenians only. the 1990s: against the “reproductive laziness” of slovenians, and for the “efficient surveillance over migration” nearly seventy percent of press material accumulated was produced during the third decade under consideration, the period of consolidating the sovereign slovenian nation-state. of special interest is the year 1990 when the so-called professional bases for population policy were created and reported on. the measures addressed “autochthonous” slovenians, people born in slovenia, and immigrants who had worked in slovenia for at least five years and had obtained permanent residence permits (teleks, 1 february 1990). however, it was stressed that the policy was not intended to attract non-slovenians to come to slovenia nor to encourage so-called nationally mixed marriages (teleks, 1 february 1990). the policy proponents suggested that the expert jen typewritten text 27 reports that served as a basis for immigrant policy should also be articulated. as the president of the committee of experts working on the slovenian population policy in 1990, put it: “we anticipate measures that will not attract a major influx to slovenia but will stimulate increased reproduction of the slovenian population” (teleks, 1 february 1990). it was also reported that big families should become a norm again, therefore some authors of the expert documents proposed a special tax for nonparenthood, a measure allegedly well known abroad (jana, 14 february 1990). these propositions were met with substantial disapproval, particularly from the public. almost fifty percent of total press clippings in 1990 conveyed critical views. most critics openly pointed to the nonscientific, demagogic character of the proposed assumptions. the dilemma – why, for whom, and in what circumstances the fertility decline is a problem at all was exposed for the first time (delo, 5 april 1990). the majority of reviewers of the expert platform characterized its content as predominately driven by the electoral concerns. they insisted that the experts’ suggestions for the improvement of fertility in slovenia was a step back not only to some oversimplified notions of socialist ideology but also to premises clearly belonging to naturalism and mercantilism, and therefore “toward the middle ages” (mladina, 16 february 1990): emphasizing the quantity of people instead of their quality is typical for socialism, which is a society of goods exchange and therefore blind for fetishism of goods and also money as the specific good… such population naturalism cannot grasp that over two hundred years, four hundred thousand slovenians may be of more value than two or three million on this day (teleks, 15 february 1990). last but not least, surfaced the comments pointing to the anti-pluralist orientation of the proposed population measures: this project is clearly directed against the plurality of the society, against the different life-styles of communities, and therefore against the autonomy of women… the slovenian development will obviously rest on a kind of specific man-enterprising and womanhousekeeping” (večer, 24 february 1990). the 1990s were characterized by discussions on foreigners, which were represented in three significant ways:. firstly, as the likely candidates for filling in the imminently emptied-out slovenian territory; secondly, as the “old,” former yugoslav immigrants who came to slovenia before its independence and who were denoted as the main culprits (together with their descendants “in proliferation”) for the fact that the spreading “reproductive laziness” of the autochthonous population of slovenia was obscured (delo, 23 june 1993); and thirdly, as those belonging to the new wave of immigrants in 1993, mostly war refugees from the former yugoslav republic of bosnia and herzegovina. the latter provoked excessive fears, especially among the reading public. some individuals also voiced extremely alarmist tones: the late yugoslavia had the infamous role as an accelerator of this southern-style ‘multiplication’ [the kosovars], and it is justly the first victim of the modern plague on two feet. slovenians have renounced their own descendants to leave their territory to illiterate, uncultured, and lazy thieves” (delo, 2 july 1994). such individual letters to the editor were not met with the number of counter-views comparable to 1990. quite on the contrary, the key dilemma of whether to include the foreigners in the debates on population policy or not occupied the population experts throughout the 1990s. in line with jen typewritten text 28 the commonsensical notion that the old economic immigrants from the former yugoslavia enjoyed a wider range of rights than the slovenians themselves, some argued for an effective surveillance over immigration waves and called attention to the fact that foreigners cannot be expected to “take care of slovenians” (delo, 7 january 1995). a minority insisted that immigration is the solution for the fertility decline in slovenia provided that the newcomers prove themselves able to integrate into the system. yet nearly all, on cue with the xenophobic atmosphere in slovenia, insisted on an “easier” and “cheaper” solution: investing in “reliable natives” by means of stimulating their reproductive behavior. conclusion the promoters of the first slovenian political entity, to paraphrase šumi (2000: 121), had sought to arrange diachronic and contextually diverse phenomena ex aequo to construct the great mythic monads: “slovenian-ness,” “slovenian,” and “nation.” the creators of the new slovenian identity after 1991 adopted this romantic concept of the slovenian nation, and automatically equated it with the concept of the “fully fledged” (hroch 1996: 36) nationstate. the analysis of the media discourse on declining fertility in slovenia in the last three decades proves this observation. the review of the national press on fertility issues in slovenia in the 1970s showed that journalists discussed the fertility decline in slovenia within the framework of the theory of modernization and demographic transition. interpreting the low fertility situation within the yugoslav and the european contexts, the media produced a relatively autonomous image of the slovenian community, either as the most developed yugoslav republic or as sufficiently comparable to many already “developed” european countries. in the 1980s, however, the press represented the consequences of low fertility not only as a side effect of the process of modernization, but also as the result of an insufficiently conscious regulation of fertility trends in slovenia. the calculated statistical indicators were to “lull” the experts in their estimation of a still non-alarmist fertility situation in slovenia. in this regard, the press pointed to the labor immigrants from other republics of the former yugoslavia, the segment of population that compared to the romantic concept of nation was not “naturally tied” to the community in which they either temporarily or permanently resided. in the 1990s, the press rhetoric increased the menace of the numerical smallness of slovenians to the point that the “real national substance” was endangered. the repeatedly reported disclaimers, like for example: “i am not a nationalist, but i am concerned for my endangered nation” (slovenske novice, 17. 2. 1993), seem to have boiled down the official slovenian ideology of trans-national european orientation to mere nationalistic values. creating the positive self-presentation usually corresponded with a negative image ascribed to the others. illustrative were the reports, which in the period of the dissolution of socialist yugoslavia ascribed the low fertility in slovenia to nonslovenians, notably to former yugoslav labor immigrants and refugees from bosnia and herzegovina. irrespective of the political orientation of the daily newspaper under review, the xenophobic attitudes towards foreigners reached their peak with the assertion that “foreigners cannot solve the problem of the vanishing of slovenian population,” the diagnosis which also failed entirely to provoke any perceivable resistance in the public spheres. references cited: cvirn, janez. 1995. slovenci in nemški državnopravni programi (1848-1918) (slovenians and german state and law building programs; 1848-1918), in grafenauer, b. et al (eds.), slovenci in država (slovenians and the state). ljubljana: slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, 73-82. jen typewritten text 29 domej, teodor. 1995. slovenci v 19. stoletju v luči svojih lastnih oznak (slovenians in the 19th century in the light of their own labels), in grafenauer, b. et al (eds.), slovenci in država (slovenians and the state). ljubljana: slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, 83-93. grafenauer, bogo et al (eds.). 1995. slovenci in država. zbornik prispevkov z znanstvenega posveta na sazu (od 9. do 11. novembra 1994) (slovenians and the state. collection of papers from the scientific conference at the slovenian academy of sciences and arts; november 9 to 11, 1994). ljubljana: slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti. hroch, miroslav. 1996. nationalism and national movements: comparing the past and the present of central and eastern europe in nations and nationalism 2 /1, 35-44. kertzer, david i., and tom fricke (eds). 1997. anthropological demography. toward a new synthesis. chicago & london: the university of chicago press. kos, milko. 1985. srednjeveška kulturna, družbena in politična zgodovina slovencev. izbrane razprave (the medieval cultural, social, and political history of slovenians. selected papers). ljubljana: slovenska matica. kreager, philip. 1997. “population and identity”, in kertzer, d. i., and fricke, t. (eds.), anthropological demography. toward a new synthesis. chicago & london: the university of chicago press, 139-174. niederle, lubor. 1911. slovanski svet. zemljepisna in statistična slika današnjega slovanstva (the slavonic world. geographic and statistic picture of today’s slavism). ljubljana: omladina. szreter, simon. 1993. the idea of demographic transition and the study of fertility change: a critical intellectual history in population and development review, vol. 19/4, 659-702. šifrer, živko. 1963, razvitak stanovništva u poslednjih sto godina (the population development in the last hundred years) in stanovništvo, i, 3. šumi, irena. 2000. kultura, etničnost, mejnost: konstrukcije različnosti v antropološki presoji (culture, ethnicity, boundary: constructions of diversity in anthropological perspective). ljubljana: založba zrc, zrc sazu. trstenjak, davorin. 1863. iz celja (from celje), news, july 22, no 29, vol. 21, 234. vogelnik, dolfe. 1965. razvoj prebivalstva slovenije zadnjih dvesto let z jugoslovanske in evropske perspektive (population development in slovenia in the last twohundred years in the yugoslav and european perspectives). ljubljana: ekonomska fakulteta. zalokar, alojz. 1918. o ljudskem zdravju (on national health). ljubljana: tiskovna zadruga v ljubljani. zwitter, fran. 1936. prebivalstvo na slovenskem od xviii. stoletja do današnjih dni (population on the slovenian territory from the eighteenth century to the present). ljubljana: znanstveno društvo. archival sources: novinarska dokumentacija delo (the journalist documentation of delo): mapa: 312.1 (497.12) nataliteta (folder: 312.1 (497.12) natality). jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 30 anthropology of east europe review book review: engendering song: singing & subjectivityatprespa albanian weddings. sugarman, jane c., 1997. university of chicago press. $29.95. xix+395 (+20) + compact disk. victor a. friedman university ojchicago at the beginning of her excellent book, js asks what she refers to as "the most obvious questions" about prespa albanian weddings: "how is it that these families have developed such a strong sense of place? what is it about weddings that makes them so central to the life of the community? and why is it so important that everyone sing at such a celebration?" (7). her answer is a sophisticated monograph that combines anthropological theory, thick ethnography, musicology, and ethnomusicology elaborately interwoven like the different melody and drone lines of a pre spa albanian wedding song. her rich material will be of interest not only to scholars in these fields but also to linguists, balkanists, albanologists, students of macedonia, albania, and former yugoslavia, diaspora studies, folklore, and others. moreover, the book is accompanied by a 70­ minute cd with 24 tracks of the songs and music about which she is writing, most of them field or community recordings not otherwise available. the cd itself will be a valuable addition to the collection of anyone interested in albanian or balkan folk music. the result is a real tour de force. by situating her extensive data firmly in anthropological theory, js shows how pre spa albanian wedding songs -"the principal means through which individuals participate in a wedding" (3) -negotiate, inscribe. and reproduce social relations and identities in a complex society with a strong basis in tradition and patriarchy. the book is divided into eight chapters (1-345) followed by a glossary of about 60 items (347-51), notes (353-72), a bibliography of about 250 items (373-86), a discography of 12 items (386), and an index (387-95). there are also two sections of high-quality photographs that are integral to illustrating the text and beautifully capture different points in the wedding rituals (ten each from prespa [1980-95] and from north america [1985-94]), 23 musical examples (notations), six tables, and six figures. the first chapter (1-39), entitled "approaching prespa singing," provides the basic historical, ethnographic, and theoretical background. her fieldwork concentrates on families with connections to three villages in the former ottoman nahiye of lower prespa, currently (and also before the administrative reforms of 1996) a part of the resen administrative district in the southwestern part of the republic of macedonia, which is the area in this region where js regards the type of polyphonic singing she is studying to be more firmly established. although a large number of these families now live in north america and elsewhere, js quite justifiably frames her work in terms of "the musical practices of families living in two distinct locales who nevertheless regard themselves as part of a single diasporic community" (16). although never glossing over differences between the pre spa village and the north american city, it is not until the final chapter that she concentrates on changes wrought by the diasporic experience. each of the subsequent chapters begins with a description of a specific wedding event, including song texts accompanying it, followed by more general discussion and critical analysis, which also make use of illustrative song texts. her work thus creates its own polyphony of ethnography and theory. in this manner, js provides a complete description of the main part of a prespa wedding celebration over the course of seven days and also elaborates a description of prespa social life. the theoretical sections build on both foregoing and subsequent events, and therefore js suggests that the reader reread the initial section of each chapter after fmishing the entire book so that the analysis can have its full effect. the remaining chapter titles and the events they are built around are the following: 2. singing as a social activity (singing at the groom's) (40-78) 3. singing as a gendered activity (women's singing at the bride's) (79-119) 4. the "order" of weddings (the bride is adorned) (120-54) 5. the prespa system (men's singing at the groom's) (155-204) voi.17.no.11999. page: 65 anthropology of east europe review 6. singing and the discourse of honor (a men's konak at the groom's) (205-26) 7. singing as the practice of patriarchy (the groom is bathed and is shaved) (227-85) 8. emergent subjectivities (the bride is taken) (286-345) chapters two and three discuss pre spa singing per se: the structures of the songs, specifics of vocal production, repertoire, and differences based on gender. chapter four describes and analyzes the structure of prespa albanian social occasions in general and weddings in particular. chapter five presents the prespa "system", i.e. social order, notions of honor and morality, constitutions of personhood and identity. in chapters six and seven js moves from her interpretive focus on lived experience and the community's articulation of that experience to a critical analysis of how singing structures experience and engenders those who sing. her final chapter, which is both the climax of the wedding celebration and the locus where the disjunction between prespa and north america is fully articulated, investigates new forms of subjectivity emerging from pre spa albanian experience in north america. particularly striking is the tendency among the younger generation in the direction ofgreater similarity among men's and women's singing styles and topics and away from "constructing though their singing the image of two innately and profoundly different genders, inhabiting polarized domains of activity and concern" (339). also noteworthy, although only mentioned in passing, is the emerging hegemony of geg (north albanian) songs as symbols of albanian ethnicity among families from former yugoslavia (345), including those from pre spa, despite the fact that the promotion of tosk (south albanian) songs in pre-l 989 albania gave prespa albanians the sense that their songs were especially "albanian" (77). from a linguistic point of view, ]s has done an superior job of rendering the prespa dialect of albanian accurately and intelligibly. her translations are sensitive to nuance -out of literally thousands of lines of text, i found only one omitted word that i would have translated (temjera 'wretched, poor, unhappy' [9]) -and one grammatical error ('girl' is the subject and tambura is the direct object [54]), and i found only two typographical errors (kanhov 1990 should be 1900 [353], montenegran should be montenegrin [365]). there is one minor matter, however, that i would have preferred to see treated with greater consistency, namely that of etymologies, and, connected to that, the relationship of prespa albanian terminology and the usage to those of other ethnic groups in macedonia. although these concerns are entirely peripheral to js's central theses and by no means detract from the tremendous significance of her accomplishment and the solidity of her arguments, analyses, and conclusions, -she is, after all, concerned with prespa albanian wedding songs and their relation to gender and subjectivity -nonetheless, the lack of consistency in etymologizing and comparison with other balkan societies could give the impression of a purposeful distancing of pre spa albanian culture from its surroundings and immediate contacts, although this is not the intent. in general js does a good job of addressing regional commonalties (e.g., an excellent and detailed summary of shared musical styles among groups of albanians, aromanians, macedonians, and greeks (356 n. 5), and she is sensitive to the delicacies of articulating issues of convergence without jumping to unsupported historical conclusions (71, 357 n. 10). her comment on the role ofhistorical (men's) songs in socializing the various modem balkan peoples to their respective modem national loyalties in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is right on the mark (257). often she gives macedonian and other balkan and mediterranean (usually arabic) terminological and/or conceptual equivalents (e.g., 363 llll. 16, 17). nonetheless, the fact that js has gone to the trouble of supplying the arabic and persian etyma of many of the turkish words borrowed into albanian -in addition to the fact that these words are identified as turkisms in the first place -­ suggests that ]s is attempting to place these aspects of prespa albanian culture (or at least their terminology) in a broader context. this is admirable but not consistently carried out. thus, for example. bakllava (347), bereqet (247), and rama::.an (350) are etymologized directly from arabic with no indication that they arrived via turkish, while for the arabo-persian turkisms behar (136), daulle (i41, 348), gurbet (348), lafe (62), lokum (349), and siinnet (59) only the turkish etymon is given. the term sinitore (141, 351) is not etymologized, but it is based on turkish sini 'tray', itself from persian. the one word of slavic origin in the glossary, gosti 'evening gathering to honor relative' is not identified as a loan (348). on the other hand, vol. 17.no. 1 1999. page: 66 http:rama::.an anthropology of east europe review xhaxha 'paternal uncle or male first cousin' is mistakenly identified as "probably from slavic djadja." (174, 351). the slavic from djadja is east slavic and does not occur as such in the balkans, and the source is most likely turkish amca 'paternal uncle' (ultimately from arabic 'amm 'paternal uncle'; the appellative xha is probably original and not a shortening [180], and the etymological complications are probably due to a combination of expressive reduplication and taboo deformation that need not concern us here.) on a few occasions, js looks to turkish or arabic when there is a macedonian or turkish parallel right in the prespa albanians' own back yard, so to speak. for example, the use of kendoj, whose primary meaning is 'sing (both of humans and animals), in extended meanings such as 'be happy' and 'read' has an exact parallel in macedonian pee for both primary and secondary meanings (the fact that 'read' is now archaic is irrelevant to etymological considerations). although turkish okucan also mean both 'sing' and 'read', its other main meaning is 'call out', it does not have the meaning of 'be happy', and it is not used for animals (6tis used for that). the association between singing and reading is clearly connected with liturgy as the primary contact of peasants with literacy in earlier times, regardless of religion. thus, the pre spa albanian use of kendoj has an exact parallel in macedonian, not in turkish (cf. 68-70, 356 n. 7). the suggestion (183,362 n. 11) that the albanian use of mend 'mind', to mean '[human] reason, intelligence', is a translation of arabic 'aq! rather than turkish akv.1 or a native or shared balkan development, although not js's, is nonetheless cited by her and is completely unjustified in view of the turkish semantic complex and the fact that the turks and turkish were the vehicle for the importation of arabo-persian muslim culture and lexicon into the balkans. on several occasions (4, 23,135-37,370 n. 29) js comments on her "impressions from macedonia of the marked differences between albanians and the slavic groups among whom they live." (23). leaving to one side the thorny issue of ethnolinguistic terminology versus self ascription (js refers to "slavic-speaking muslims" [ii], although their language is the same macedonian as their christian neighbors, but "albanian-speaking roma" [9] although many such groups call themselves "gjupci", [etymologically cognate with english 'gypsies'], and consider themselves to be an ethnic group separate from the roma; also [pace 5] there are some orthodox albanian-speakers in macedonia), js's observation about turkish-speaking muslim families from prespa that "their system is virtually indistinguishable from that of prespare" (371 n. 9), suggests that the issue may be a basic muslim/christian rather than aiban ian/macedonian cultural opposition. moreover, it is arguable that at least some of the differences are related to the fact that as the state-forming majority, even rural macedonian christians have been subjected to more "modernizing" pressures of urban origin since world war two. in the early 1970's, i had occasion to observe that macedonian christians in plains villages were already considerably differentiated in their behavior from those in isolated mountain villages, and those from the mountain villages observed the type of gender/age based "system" described by js (185). this is not to say that prespa albanian society is not unique in many respects. the deliberate exclusion of singing from work activities and restriction to socializing (58) is a case in point, but js herself (194,337) points out differences between lower prespa albanians and those from albanian­ speaking villages in nearby upper pre spa that suggest complex processes of contact and accommodation which, while justifiably beyond the scope of her study, suggest many rich avenues of further investigation. none of these considerations detracts from the tremendous accomplishment represented by js's work. prespa albanian society is unique, richly textured, and inaccessible to outsiders, and js has made an immensely significant contribution to the advancement of knowledge in both her collection and analysis of a fantastically rich trove of data and insights. what emerges is a warm, sympathetic, and finely drawn presentation and analysis of a specific practice (wedding singing) that illuminates an entire society (pre spa albanians) and more (the balkan and mediterranean regions). js has demonstrated effectively that prespa singing does not merely express, reflect or articulate but rather itself constructs, constitutes, maintains, and transforms gender in particular and social formation in general. vol. 17.no. i 1999. page: 67 microsoft word document2 body-alterations and the creation of the other: a macedonian case ilka thiessen, st. thomas university © 2002 ilka thiessen all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in this article i discuss the discourses about the body that were used by a group of young female engineers in the city of skopje, macedonia, during that period of political turmoil in which yugoslavia fell apart and the republic of macedonia declared its independence. these discourses of body alterations juxtapose my informants to the notion of “balkan” that was introduced by members of the western media who were covering the yugoslavian conflict. when yugoslavia fell apart in 1991, my group of informants fell into a vacuum. as proud yugoslavian engineers who represented the elite of the country and the generation that would lead yugoslavia to unite with europe, they witnessed their country declaring independence and being denied the most fundamental aspect of nationhood by the international community: that is, a name. in this struggle to determine if they were yugoslavians or macedonians, and to make sense of what this distinction meant, my informants began to identify themselves by taking issue with the ways they were being presented in the western media: peasants, backwards, uneducated, and uncultured. instead they ascribed these characteristics to the albanian minority in macedonia, and especially albanian women. they depicted albanian women as draped in grey coats with headscarves, uneducated with many children to feed, sweaty, and following their husbands ten feet behind. my macedonian friends began to alter themselves in speech, body gesture, and clothing until finally they began altering the body images that had been introduced by western media. the timeframe of my research is from 1988 to 1996, a period in which dramatic changes took place in the lives of my informants. in trying to understand my friends’ motivations to persevere during the difficult adjustments to a new country and to new political and economic circumstances, i noted one central theme: the symbolic meaning attached to their bodies. their positions in society differ from the positions their grandmothers and mothers held, and it differs also from the expectations they had for themselves when macedonia was part of the former yugoslavia. in my conversations with these women, they often described their lives as lacking personal autonomy, a notion that derived from the american and western european television they viewed and which had become a part of daily family life. the changes in their country that affected them directly were beyond their control. consequently, after seeing on television beautiful “western” women who appeared immune from normal female bodily processes, my female friends gave a very specific meaning to these bodies on television. although these women are certainly not so naive as to believe that such representations are real, they do in fact accept the general idea that life in the west provides more perfect ways of concealing bodily processes and that it offers ways to alter the body to fit the images on television. for instance, when i arrived in the field with a set of “always” sanitary napkins, they provoked great interest and i was asked if i could spare one or two. the shortage in sanitary towels had, however, ended; and what women really wanted was the experience of a western – and therefore superior – method of hiding bodily processes. shortly thereafter a wide variety of western pads were available in the duty-free shops located around the city and in other import stores. in this article i will argue that the changes in the daily routines of my friends – changes that are directly linked to western images of the slender and fit body – suggest a way of managing their bodies. it is through this body management that the group of graduates i introduce here are making their inner intentions, capacities, and dispositions visible to themselves and to others (benson 1997:123). these intentions, capacities, and dispositions are directly linked to the image of “the other,” that is, the one they are not – the albanian woman. jen typewritten text 55 volume 20, number 2 1995 in independent macedonia silhouette is a “body sculpture studio.” prominent signs displaying the stylized black silhouette of a slim female body against a purple background guide you to this studio on the third floor of an apartment building reminiscent of the buildings located at the epicenter of the 1963 earthquake. the street is dusty; downstairs people sit in the café or go shopping in one of the old supermarkets that have only recently begun carrying western brands of yogurt. the hallway is dirty; the elevator squeaks and is full of messages written in the latin alphabet. there is no sign on the door, but the clientele show you the way. a loud doorbell announces your arrival, but they let you wait. eventually a beautiful and slim young woman opens the door. you might have seen her at the university faculty or in one of the cafés in the evenings. she recognizes you and smiles. inside the leather seats are inviting. the “goddess of the temple” sits behind her desk facing you and looking at you with her eyes half shut. she is sizing you up: how much do you have to lose? how could they tone those legs? those arms? she takes out some of her index cards and makes several phone calls on a cordless phone. glossy, shiny magazines from germany, france, and italy present the ideal: the women pictured in these magazines are very beautiful; they smile at you and measure you while you measure them. the owner is 50, but looks older. a tower of false blond hair is piled on her head, with escaped hairs surrounding her fake, dull face; she wears tights and a tight tshirt. you are given a diet plan in which you are instructed to drink only water and some soup for the next ten days. you are measured with measuring tape strung loosely around your too ample waist and thighs. you will pay the equivalent of an average monthly salary for the ten-day program. this program includes exercise on eight automatic exercising machines that force you to move your legs up and down and left and right. you sweat. the last bench is heavenly because you can lie there for three minutes as the machine gently shakes you. the next day you experience a different kind of shaking as electricity passes through your limbs and stomach. in the same room there is a big mirror and a pair of scales. every newcomer is weighed in this room, and her weight is announced to the girl who fills out the index cards. everyone lies there shaking together. at the same time, you are forced to look into the mirror, forced to face your own unwilling flesh. one treatment uses electrical current to cramp your buttocks so hard that for a few weeks you have a perfectly shaped backside. for ten days you are beautiful. then you are measured again, and this time the measuring tape is pulled as tight as possible, showing all the inches you have lost. but you could have lost more if only you had kept to the diet. every day you were reminded by the lady at the front desk: “stick to the diet.” the preceding passage describes my own experiences at the fitness studio when i accompanied my friend ina. during my research many more new body studios opened in skopje due to demand and the freedom of privatization. most studios are located in private apartments or in institutions like public swimming pools, and are often combined with activities such as bodybuilding and aerobics. these studios have come to replace the semi-private cosmetic studios that offered body hair removal and facials in socialist macedonia. the differences between these studios are explained by a cosmetician, an enterprising woman who had the first private cosmetic studio in socialist macedonia, perhaps due in part to her husband’s position as an important politician with the former socialist government: “women come to me to be treated nicely and with care, even the waxing. i do this for them. they come to me to be spoiled. those body studios make you work hard and they punish you, they put you down all the time, they look down at you.” in yugoslavia, the socialist system offered planned comfort and allowed for semiprivate beauty studios. in today’s macedonia, however, it is not comfort that is sought, but firmness and shape, in order to compete with the images from the west. this different objective is one of the central differences in the world of beautification between socialist and post socialist macedonia. yugoslavia offered comfort and selfconfidence. yet today’s body cult in macedonia offers more restraint than comfort, and it could be very much identified as an obsession that was beyond any rationality. for instance, my friends often spent their entire salaries on diet products, health food, body-treatment, or clothing – and all during a period of desperate economical need. it was this new obsession with altering bodies, often combined with excessive dieting, that drew my attention to the broader political discourses in which it was located. during the time of my research between 1991 to 1995, there were three main issues within macedonia: 1) the country’s exclusion from europe (there had been no jen typewritten text 56 volume 20, number 2 physical boundaries with west europe since independence; there was not an official yugoslavia passport that enabled people to travel; instead, people needed travel visas that were impossible to get); 2) the lack of recognition of a macedonian identity by greece, serbia, and bulgaria; the lack of recognition of independence under the name “macedonia” by the international community; 3) and threats of violent conflict with an albanian minority that had boycotted the referendum for macedonian independence, demanded independence, had pursued a union with albania and kosovo to form the independent state of iliria. 1988 in socialist macedonia in 1988 my friends were entering university. after they had passed the university entrance examinations, a group of these friends and i went to greece for a holiday. the days were hot, and at night we danced at the local disco to the songs of madonna. for some of my friends the singer represented what they wanted to be: “she does not care,” said one woman in complimenting madonna. susan bordo (1993:268) depicts madonna as a heroine who refuses to be constructed as the passive object of patriarchal desire. “nema gaile,” which translates roughly as “it doesn’t matter” or “i don’t care,” was the phrase used to express this sentiment in macedonia. it was this kind of sentiment that made my young female friends feel very much at the center of things. they felt that they did not need to care about old traditional ways of their grandparents or about the ideology of their parents. yugoslavia supplied them with everything they needed, both economically and professionally, and then gave them freedom to want more. life was interesting and revolutionary. many of my friends joined the prestigious engineering faculty in skopje. they also knew that they would eventually meet their ideal husbands and, in the not too distant future, they would have families. this family would not look like the families in which they had been brought up, however. instead these young women would have open relationships with their partners, and they would be friends with their children. they would have their own flats, and their friends would live nearby and would always be available for a quick chat. leisure time would not be limited by housework as housework would be shared equally with partners, and there would be less of it anyway as there would be microwaves and frozen food and a cleaning lady once or twice a week. then there would be careers, challenges at work, and occasionally travel abroad. there was much talk of such matters that summer in 1988 and in the following two years, and it seemed just a matter of time before these dreams would become reality. these women felt that they were defining themselves in terms of who they were and who they wanted to be. they were young women ready to face what life had in store for them, and they assumed that this future would be good. madonna, the heroine of mtv (music television) and youth culture, stood as a symbol of beauty and assertiveness for my friends. the world surrounding madonna gave them social clues as to how a world could be. by watching mtv, my friends experienced the world outside macedonia as one big television transmission; and as recipients of this transmission, they were part of this world. people from all over europe called in to mtv with specific music requests, and many callers were from yugoslavia. through television my friends, “us,” “we,” and “europe” intersected. according to these young women, the word that they most commonly associated with the years 1988-1990 is “freedom.” this period of time reached its peak in the summer of 1990, when ante markovich, then the finance minister of yugoslavia, tried to help yugoslavia’s economy through drastic economic reforms. the dinar was bound to the deutsch mark, and during that summer, people in macedonia felt closer to germany than ever before. yet by the very next year, people in macedonia felt that they had never been more distant from germany; and my friends had difficulty identifying with madonna and those like her. these symbols of the west became a subject of longing for things my friends felt that they once had possessed but was now lost to them. the body it was during my return in the winter of 1993 that i was first introduced to a tresnje, a “shaker” – that is, a person with a shaking machine, which was a new sort of private enterprise. the tresnje whom i visited with a friend had brought her “shaking machine” all the way from australia, where she and her husband had stayed for a while because her husband was a famous football star there. the woman told me, however, that she was happy to be back in skopje, because nothing was better than home. now, drawing from her experiences abroad, she had started a small business “shaking” fat off jen typewritten text 57 volume 20, number 2 people and assisting in the ongoing fight against cellulite. to my shame, i had not, until this time, ever heard of cellulite; but of course my friends had made me realize that my legs were in very bad shape. irina and i sat in the flat adjacent to vera’s, which she had turned into a beauty parlour. we were wrapped in blankets while electrical currents, conducted by wet towels, ran through our bodies; we itched terribly. we talked with vera throughout these sessions, and she told us about her life in australia, how hard they had worked, and how little time they had had for themselves. meanwhile we became slim and beautiful. we flipped through the western magazines available in vera’s parlour and imagined how it would feel to look like linda evangelista and to be able to afford all that we saw in these magazines. in 1993, prices and lifestyles were not very different from 1988, with the exception of shopping malls and beauty parlours. nevertheless, there was an important difference, and this difference was visible in the ways in which my friends sought to alter their bodies. foucault suggests that the body is directly involved in a political field in which power relations have an immediate hold upon it. these power relations invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, and force it to carry out tasks, perform ceremonies, and emit signs (foucault 1995:25). i am arguing that because my friends felt alienated and excluded after the break-up of yugoslavia, they acted out this alienation on their bodies. similarly, boddy (1989) describes sudanese bedouin women and their zar cult: in this ritual, the women fall into trances in which they often enact non-bedouins, especially europeans. through this kind of bodily experience, these women gain a greater understanding of their own society and their positions within it. in some ways, their ritual represents a comment on their society and gives those women a distant look at their society, when everywhere else such distance is restricted. following these examples, one could argue, in the broadest sense, that the boundaries of macedonian society have been altered, that the boundaries of the body reflect this alteration, and that in macedonia, as in the zar cult boddy describes, one can find similar problems of embodiment. susan bordo describes (1993) a similar point in her analysis of anorexia nervosa and bulimia in western societies, by linking these eating disorders to an idea of the physical body as alien, a not-self. in augustine’s formulation, the body is a cage that confines and limits and, as such, it is the locus of all that threatens our attempts for control (bordo 1993:144). my friends in skopje see their body as alien in the ways that bordo and boddy describe, so that experiences of hunger from dieting and pain from exercising manifest themselves as sensations that derive from the outside and invade their bodies (see bordo 1993:146). this resembles the ways in which spirits in the zar cult are experienced. hunger and pain are not experienced as forces that originate from within women’s bodies and, in order to master such “alienation,” women have to learn to deny their bodies. they refuse to eat and are, therefore, creating their body-shapes by winning over nature and, at the end, by hoping for the satisfaction of material transcendence. in her work, douglas (1966) has demonstrated how the body is represented in a particular culture and how the body can be read as a text. mauss (1979) discusses body techniques, and foucault (1995 [1975]) views the body as a passive object upon which external power is exercised. although i am considering how my informants see and treat their bodies in a particular moment of time, i wish to emphasize that it is they themselves, and not society, who are transferring messages that derive from their surrounding social world into their bodies. women’s bodies then, are not simply to be read as “texts of cultures” that passively reflect the values of their society. rather, it is the young women themselves who draw upon these ideas, who give them bodily form because such actions give them the appropriate expression for personal conflicts (benson 1997: 143). nevertheless, the precise motivations that drive young people in contemporary macedonia to obey specific body images and lead them to a hard regime of body exercise and starvation remains a question. conclusion essentially, the transformation of the body is an ongoing attempt by the young women in skopje to master their world. for some it becomes compulsive and extreme; how far it goes depends on an individual’s personality. for these young women, their exercising, aerobics, running, clothes, make-up, shopping, and body sculpturing bring a sense of achievement that, in turn, engenders a sense of empowerment. the source of this empowerment lies in the management of their lives, which they see as attainable through the transformation of their bodies. it is important to note that my friends combine their diets with aerobics, body jen typewritten text 58 volume 20, number 2 sculpting, and body building. these forms of transforming the body are linked through the extreme and excessive enactment of western culture’s fantasies of the “self-controlled body.” ultimately, it is through their bodily practices, which are constructed through their interactions with others and the larger cultural framework in which they live that my informants redefine the relationship between what they believe to be their true identity and the ways in which they are represented to their social world (benson 1997:125). moreover, my friends have adopted concerns about issues of health and eating that they feel are s not addressed in their society. through television, they come in contact with “modern” issues of healthy eating, health food, organic food, and herbal remedies. by following this popular discourse, they redesign themselves by having the same concerns as their peers in western europe. their image of the “healthy and beautiful self” is sustained, in part, through the creation of the image of the “unhealthy” and powerless albanian woman. this image is enforced by the european visualization of the balkans, especially during the war in bosnia. during my research many young macedonian women in skopje created “the other” (i.e., albanians, and particularly albanian women) by positing a “sameness” with the west through their bodies. as such, the bodies of these young women become a political statement whose importance should not be neglected. references benson, susan 1997. the body, health and eating disorders. in identity and difference. k. woodward, ed. london: sage, in association with the open university. boddy, janice 1989. wombs and alien spirits: women, men, and the zar cult in northern sudan. madison: university of wisconsin press. bordo, susan 1993. unbearable weight: feminism, western culture, and the body. berkeley: university of california press. 1997 twilight zones: the hidden life of cultural images from plato to o.j. berkeley: university of california press. douglas, mary 1966. purity and danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo. new york: praeger. foucault, michel 1995(1975). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. alan sheridan, trans. new york: vintage books. mauss, marcel 1979. sociology and psychology: essays. london: routledge and k. paul. todorova, maria 1997 imagining the balkans. oxford: oxford university press. jen typewritten text 59 microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 1 the interpretation of female bodies as a projection of identity: the orient, the balkans, or something else? simona cupic odeljenje za istoriju umetnosti © 2002 simona cupic all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. art is not a mirror. it mediates and represents social relations in schema of signs which require a receptive and preconditioned reader in order to be meaningful. and it is at the level of what those signs connote, often unconsciously, that patriarchal ideology is reproduced (parker & pollock 1981: 119). in the nineteenth century, the social climate and conditions that resulted from the political turmoil that divided the great powers and their minions into separate power blocs, plotted the coordinates of an artistic phenomenon, stereotypically referred to as orientalism. this term’s generally accepted and laic meaning, which was defined by the discourse of the moment of its creation, today is provoking the need for a different definition, one established on a new arrangement of political, economic, cultural and social circumstances. the term orientalism has mainly been criticized as indistinct, imprecise, and unclassified. i am suggesting that all of these criticisms together point to an essential problem that the term engenders: the problem of accepting/rejecting the imposed identity positions. the fact that the initial definitions exhibited a limited character, which went hand in hand with an exclusive model of cultural domination. this model was a projection of european colonial powers that were often quick to make pejorative qualifications based on perceptible differences. in accordance with the law of inertia, these qualifications took the political, social, cultural and economic orders of the states from which they emanated as the basis according to which all others orders were to be judged. in the manner of a “fluctuation of taste” and according to particular political interests, the orient has been changing its geographic, material, and cultural bounds, being more and more buried by myths that have been latently accepted, even in the regions whose images they have distorted. recent works on the topic have, in most cases, only highlighted the past inconsistencies and stereotypes, but unfortunately, they have not been well grounded on parallel practical experience that shows precisely how new readings are supposed to look. they are rather “a step towards an understanding of not so much the political culture of the west as much of the strength of the west’s cultural discourse, the strength which we so often take to be purely decorative or substructural” (said 2000: 39). they also point to “an amazing structure of cultural domination and, especially to those nations that were once colonial subjects, the perils and challenges of the application of such a structure upon themselves or others” (said 2000: 40).1 still today the inherent traditionalistic mentality of certain artistic and intellectual circles in serbia can hardly assent to the viewpoint according to which a strict positioning of the canonized center/artist can only lead to linearism and its negative consequences, such as unification, heterogeneity, supremacy of just one way of thinking. the challenge to this viewpoint is regularly legitimized with the following question: what would happen if we exclude/abolish the center; how would we then overcome the risk of losing ourselves in space? in practical terms the question may be restated in the following way: to what degree might the relevance of our conclusions be brought into doubt if we abandon the methods of “universally established models,” which are, in actual fact, the parameters of particular referential bounds that are artificially copied in regions where they did not originate? this redefined question might actually offer a potential answer: in reality, is the adoption of imported modeling an escape from one’s own identity, and if so, is this automatically placing the jen typewritten text 87 importer, that is the adopter, in an inferior position of being the follower, of being just the second? it seems to me that the answer is clear. the potential of anti-barrian thought2 is reflected in the abandonment of the imposed order, which was canonized in reverence by the initiator, while the others acted as his disciples, the more or a less successful epigones. the up-to-date practice has been based on two things: (1.) the quest for a collective unification established in accordance with the similarities of the formal foundations and (2.) the emphasis on the influence of the grand center as the guarantor of legitimacy in the wider european framework. the aforementioned arguments, however, seem to be insufficient, even secondary, in relation to the perception that holds art to be a result of social, often genderor class defined relationships. the realization of drastic or discreet differences, which are pedantically articulating the specific social identities of a region, is a precondition for unclassified valorizations and superficialities. this is so because every piece of artwork is determined by the social reality from which it emanated, even in the case when this has not been an explicit intention of its creator. it is precisely because of this that a discussion on orientalism in serbian art, or more precisely, the absence of this phenomenon, is preconditioned by the subject matter’s permanent attempts at identifying its own position in the realm of power politics and its interest spheres, as well as on the matter’s simultaneous tendency towards appropriating a clearly defined national identity. “with the formation of nation-states at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the manufacture of a new past and its consequential forgetfulness reached a state of frenzy: the new states had to invent new narratives so as to transfer the turkish culture from their nations’ recent past to the one which had reached a definite conclusion” (slapsak 2000: 55). in the cultural discourse, especially the one related to turkish heritage, the consequence of this often proved to be the abhorrence that precedes “a description of the residues of an enemy’s culture and way of life, that is those parts of the two which are most inherent, stable and omnipresent in everyday life” (slapsak 2000: 51). incorporated foreign elements that were not eradicated have programmed the inner belief of “being second.” in other words, they have imposed the frustration of never being able to reach an idealized and generally unattainable image of europe. “up until now, europe has been a symbol for progress, order, prosperity and radical ideas, with europe being a picture, an ideal, a time category (if time can be taken to mean progress), rather than a geographical entity” (todorova 1999: 81). for european puritans, the balkans have always been a part of the orient. the region’s character stemmed from unhidden sympathies, akin to those of an infant, and from a population of exotic, simultaneously kind and brutal barbarians, who, like a “live ethnographic museum,” possessed an authentic but at the same time distant past. in time, the balkan nations have quietly adopted this imposed role, and in that manner, have not managed to establish their individual stance in between the tensions and contradictions of an irrational idea of a unified european identity. this lack of orientation is a direct consequence of a crisis status that came about due to an ambiguous positioning, which in the years of cultural, social, and economic change was mirrored in the following dilemma: are we “just” a marginalized part of europe or a colony outside of it? the aforementioned historical, political, and emotional difference defines the way in which the west-european and serbian fine arts would represent the orient, and demonstrates the impossibility of a single, unified, and hegemonic conception, for how can that which stands for an exotic fascination in one place (the west) be the same as that which forms a harsh reality in the other (the balkans). the west has been allowed the freedom of imagination, while the balkans have been left with the actuality. the orient and the west have been connected by the colonization and de-colonization of the former by the latter, while the orient and the balkans have been bound the other way around. the works of artists from the west have been paintings of others, while the works of the artists from the balkans have been self-portraits. consequently, the viewpoints of the two groups have been slightly different: the first group has been closing their eyes to the true nature of colonialism, which, in part, was a product of their own nation-states, while the second has been doing a similar thing, but out of fear of assimilation. and even though everything that was turkish has been characterized as an opus of backwardness, “the line of nostalgic remembrance of oriental satisfactions is still clearly present: this line is not the same as the one of the west, since it possesses the unforged quality of domestication and since it places orientalism in the distant past and not in the geographically distant present” (slapsak 2000: 55). jen typewritten text 88 with this we have finally reached the question of the visual identity of the female body in oriental painting. in the context of the aforementioned historical codes, a stance towards a body represents a projection of the social, cultural, and power impulses. more precisely, this principle dictates that the person who is portrayed is primarily portrayed as a body, which, in fact, is not even that person’s body, but a social and phantasmagoric construction of the man who is observing it (brooks 1993: 95). the artist of the west has painted the woman of the orient as the one whom he could, through his social position of a colonizer, posses. on the other hand, a serbian artist could not do the same, since his social standing would not allow it. in the early 1880s, the serbian king commissioned a series of paintings by djordje krstic portraying life in “the southern provinces of the fatherland.” their surroundings, which lacked the typical bourgeois comfort and manners, and had a palpable, sedated, and non-western cast of mind, would place them in the wide oriental specter. the commissioner’s and the painter’s nationality (serbian) as well as the aim of the entire undertaking had determined the manner in which the motif was painted. the women were represented in accordance with the preferred canon of the moment, which stood in sharp contrast to the oriental stereotype. dressed in traditional, multi-layered clothing, their bodies were entirely hidden to prevent any disturbing thoughts. their fez and kerchief, both of which were decorated with ducats, and their embroidered vests and long sleeved blouses represented the attributes of womanhood. as symbols of gender belonging, they turned the observer’s attention away from the physical distinctions of the body. public nudity was completely inconceivable in this particular discourse. the dogmatic model of the orient, according to which a woman of the east spends her life in rest or leisure as she waits to realize her bodily function while sexually pleasing her men, was replaced in these paintings by active physical labor. carrying either a load of grain, a hoe, a jug, or a distaff in her hands or over her shoulder, she was not given a time for rest. the painted models were positioned in a particular kind of antagonism to passive, prolonged expectation. at the same time, those who were not working according to the rules would have children, which would in a similar manner show that they were morally in the right. in the role of a mother, their bodies would reveal their basic function. in these paintings, the serbian patriarchal mentality proudly triumphed. in my further analysis i shall approach the subject matter in the appreciation of a number of different methods of art interpretation, each of which is based on a particular position of identification which is equivalent to the following questions: who is the painter? is it a male or a female? for whom is the work painted? with whom is the work identified? with what other possibilities of identification does the work leave us? in the first case, the artist was a male commissioned by the serbian court to paint a series of paintings for the indigenous population and foreigners with the intent of each finding the work likeable. in turn, we can perceive a tendency to make the paintings universally identifiable. it is precisely because of this that the women were portrayed as modest, moral, and diligent, that is, in the manner in which both groups expected them to be. in the given framework, there was no place for indecent and potentially offensive content. simultaneously, one can clearly perceive the lack of authenticity in the painted images. this is a consequence of the aforementioned intention to make what is painted likable. even though the chosen theme is precise and simple (the hardship of everyday work), the costumes of the actresses are entirely inadequate. the formal dresses make them seem more like participants in a wedding procession than like women in their daily toil. hence, although krstic's paintings belong to a broad discourse of “peasant idyll,” his intervention on the reality is what makes him distinctive. instead of the voyeuristic painter’s position, which allows authenticity in a genre depiction, he used an acted out reality. in the end, we gained typical propaganda clichés in the nineteenth century manner. however, if we now take a different example, the one in which the answers to some of the above stated questions would change, the final result would change as well. paja jovanovic received his artistic and business stimulus from a famous vienna orientmaler, leopold karl mueller, who could understand that artistic expression, “from afar and through its method of transposing, is closely following the tendencies of politics, in the same manner as it follows the development of social and religious understanding” (celebonovic 1974:112). in a skillful manner, playing on the curiosity that the eastern question and the berlin congress had raised about the balkans, he managed to promote his art in westcentric europe, where his motifs found their oriental context. doing his research, he traveled throughout the balkans, making jen typewritten text 89 sketches and purchasing costumes, all of which he would take, together with the impressions he obtained, back to vienna. his paintings were dominated by empty description and as such, had no serious social connotations. he made illusions that the public expected to see. so, the artist was a male who painted for the audience of the “real europe” from the position of an identity alteration. in accordance with the social surrounding in which he made his works, he is forcing us to identify ourselves with those for whom the art was made, making a clear distance from the ones whom it was meant to portray. even a hasty look at a women in the oriental (c.1884) can clearly confirm that the iconography of the emphasized and exposed female bodies was the sole preoccupation of the artist’s interest, while those bodies that were covered and as such, most characteristic of the islamic and the post-islamic world, were entirely ignored. in front of us stands an obvious odalisque-interpretation of an imaginary and erotic orient, which selectively emphasizes the satisfaction of the needs of the body, while at the same time, it is marginalizing the martyrdom of the social prison to which the portrayed women were confined due to the incarceration of their bodies. even though he is absent in these paintings, the male is implicitly present as an observer, a position of domination which is reviving the “nostalgic” order. bearing a blazed glance, a pose akin to that of a model, the clothing which emphasizes her bosoms and an uplifted hand on which she is gently resting her head, the woman was made to be passively seductive and as such, she is simply luring the observer. ignoring the moral boundaries, she is offering a different type of sexuality, one that is unrestrained by the feeling of guilt. if we look deeper, however, we can see that the painting is actually a product of the vienna saloon society. paja jovanovic, who was bound by social limitations, could hardly be a part of such a scene in such a surroundings. in time, however, “oriental sex became a standard of comfort, like all the others which were made accessible with the emergence of mass culture, and it possessed the advantage of being accessible to both the novelist and the reader alike, without them having to visit the orient” (said 2000: 258). the logic of the costume ball’s self-sufficiency was all that the haughty middle-class society consumed together with cookies and tea, living with the belief that it could possess everything that came from the “primitive” world. in short, the aforementioned surroundings are akin to the cliched stereotype of the orient used in walt disney’s cartoons, demonstrating an obvious censorship of the content of the matter at hand. it makes the formula of non-authenticity the parameter of thought. no insight into the reality of everyday life of the region is offered: for example, how these women were of poor health, rarely went out for fresh air, smoked excessively, were rarely exposed to sunshine and were susceptible to long periods of depression which stemmed from their life of isolation. in 1897, jelena dimitrijevic, a feminist writer, scribed the following: their bedrooms are damp because of the steam baths that never dry. is it not because of this that their faces lack freshness? is it not because of the dampness of their social imprisonment and their early marriage that harems are plagued by tuberculosis? tuberculosis kills them all. i don’t recall that during the time i have known them, any young muslim women died from anything but tuberculosis. (dimitrijevic 1986: 92) moreover, she recorded: “not in one of them did i see white and healthy teeth” (dimitrijevic 1986: 103). on the paintings of young, healthy and firm female bodies, with pearl white teeth, this kind perception was unwelcome. that these paintings are nothing more then a purely folkloric phrase is confirmed by the lack of inventiveness of compositional models. in the same manner as the colonized peoples were photographed in accordance with the classical western iconography, that is, as wearing their traditional, indigenous clothing, the painted women of the orient could become europeans by simply changing their costumes. now, let us turn our attention to john henry bacon’s the morning before the wedding (1892) and paja jovanovic's the decoration of the bride (c.1886). in both cases, we can see the genre scene, a group of women in the interior and several objects that define the surroundings. both paintings are comprised of two segments, the left and the right portion of the canvas. in the left portion, we can recognize the bride, who is encircled by a girl, a middle-aged female, and an old woman, personifications of ‘the three stages of life,’ a composition that for centuries has been used to symbolize the cycle of life. in this manner, the painters placed an emphasis on the ceremony of marriage as a turning point in female existence. the biological function of her body is conditioned jen typewritten text 90 through the embodiment of the possibility to give birth, which in turn, is positioned in the figures of the elderly women and the youthful girl. the only way for a woman to satisfy her social role is to bear children. it is because of this that the moment of the wedding is, in traditional symbolism, represented as the key one. in the right portion, however, the artists painted the female guests of different ages, who held either flowers or parts of the bride’s outfit in their hands. they represent the surrounding in which the main actress would spend the rest of her life. public places, oriental or not, were structurally created on inequalities. the ideological order of the civil society had imposed regulations upon separate territories on the basis of gender. “for bourgeois women, going into town mingling with crowds of mixed social composition was not only frightening because it became increasingly unfamiliar, but because it was morally dangerous. it has been argued that to maintain one’s respectability, closely identified with femininity, meant not exposing oneself in public” (pollock 1988: 69). even though the european ladies would have been scandalized with this comparison, the fact of the matter is that their lives evolved in a magical circle which was not all that different from the scornfully observed oriental models. “immediately after the harem door had been closed and locked, all of them suddenly felt free, and quickly started to climb on the sofas and take off their clothes. in time the harem became colorful from the dresses that had been taken off, and permeated with conversations, laughter and shouts of joy” (stankovic 1996: 186). hence, it was only in closed places that the social practice shaped the paradoxical contradiction of female freedom. the aforementioned examples have been the works of the artists of a coherent gender identity. what would happen, however, if we again change the positions of art identification and take into consideration a female artist? babett bachmayer vukanovic was born in germany. she studied painting in munich and paris. after marrying a serb, rista vukanovic, who was also a painter, she moved to the fatherland of her husband. so, here we have a case that is different from the previous ones not only on the basis of gender, but also on the basis of nationality. in contrast to the paintings of krstic, which were created on the model of basic identification, and those of jovanovic, which were made on the principle of identity alteration, vukanovic fits mostly in the model of bi-polarity. in her works, one can notice the western concept of environment observation, personified in the morethan-anything conspicuous, romantic interest in the remnants of the orient, the very thing that at the time, the beginning of the twentieth century, started to slacken among the serbian artists, who were more fascinated with the decadent bourgeoisie of the west. her genre scene, filled with unhidden sympathies, selectively represents reality, with an obvious intention to cause a pleasant favor towards these “sweet folk motifs.” on the represented female bodies there are no signs of tiredness or hard lives in poverty, but there are also no signs that these bodies are just sexual objects in the expectation of a sexual act. her paintings are dominated by the timeless atmosphere of imaginary, exotic, fairytale-like beauties from an unrealistic, kitsch romance, who are, according to the rules, always saved in a fantastical manner from an awkward situation and with an unblemished moral reputation. her gender belonging had definitely made her abandon the lascivious perception of the orient, which, like a typical male cliche, had dominated the understanding of this phenomenon. and so, the overemphasized sexuality was replaced by overemphasized idleness. innocence, purity and naivete came to dominate the many representations of mothers with children or children on their own. i am looking at her decision to paint a young woman breast-feeding her baby as especially indicative in the context of her gender belonging. this is so because it is hard to imagine that a male artist would have done the same thing. naked female bodies could have been represented only in the context of a clearly expressed sexual allusion which was, at the same time, positioning the moral laxness of the portrayed woman: an imaginary odalisque or any other woman who was not a mother, a wife, or a sister. a nude mother, however, was unacceptable. here, it would be indicative to point out the fact that the iconographic cannon of the serbian orthodox church, as well as of other orthodox churches, forbids the representation of holy mary and christ in the moment of lactation, which is present in the sacred paintings of non-orthodox confessions. this i especially emphasize because of the obvious correspondence of vukanovic’s painting and the typical composition used in the portrayal of madonna: the additionally emphasized, semiarched golden frame that strengthens the sacredness of the image. it seems as if, having chosen this model, vukanovic is underlining the dual nature of her identity as well as offering a jen typewritten text 91 solid proof of the extent to which to paint of such a scene was unwelcome. in madonna’s iconography, she was actually looking for the alibi for the revelation of the portrayed personality, the timeless and limitless legitimacy of the very act that was painted. this returns us to the aforementioned problems of the lack of inventiveness as far as the solution of the composition is concerned and the theatrical nature of the costumes in use. the western artistic discourse, as well as its formal, canonized models, had dictated the manner in which the people thought. everything else was just a backdrop. so, the alleged respect of the female intimacy was, in actuality, based on the believed hideousness of female biological differences. lactation, menstruation, and pregnancy were only whispered about. in public, they often caused shame. for the sake of precision, however, we should notice that this freedom of expression was not solely based on the artist’s gender. some of it was made possible by her class belonging as well. the portrayed women were of an inferior social standing and as such, were easily accessible to the artist. vukanovic could offer the naked privacy of the lower social classes, while she could not do the same in relation to her own class. “nineteenthcentury bodies were classed as well as gendered” (pollock 1999: 47). i think it is obvious that these selectively chosen examples should be used only as a framework in the deconstruction of orientalism in post-oriental times, in the same manner as it could serve as a guideline in any other artistic phenomena. in a situation where “hierarchy becomes a natural order, and what appears to survive from the past because of its inherent significance determines the values of the present” (pollock 1999: 10), the traditional discipline of art history has to be expanded and challenged by new insights and by alternative perspectives. the complexity of the term “artistic” should not be reduced to exhausting biographical research and similar formal analyses. without any pretence to present this analysis of orientalism in serbian art as conclusive, my intention is to demonstrate how through a pragmatic approach, this and other artistic phenomenon can be explained, even without the above mentioned, canonized system of meanings. the suggested strategy is not based on a negation of the facts from traditional corpus, which are de facto analytically reliable. it is rather based on sophisticated nuance and some other modes of perception, during which the traditional becomes the anticipated but not canonic in the same time. the anomalies of conservatism, which are all the consequences of phallo-, class-, and racialcentricity, have all come to the surface with the use of a different theoretical discourse, pointing to the extent of the complexity of the phenomenon of art and its interpretation. the deconstruction of the latently ignored, age-old taboo terms, like the many different visual constructions of a female body, should only be taken as the starting point. reference brooks, peter 1993 the body in the field of vision. in body work: objects of desire in modern narrative, pp. 88-122. london: harvard university press. celebonovic, aleksa 1974 orijentalizam. in ulepsani svet: slikarstvo burzoaskog realizma od 1860 do 1914, pp. 112-119. beograd: jugoslavija. dimitrijevic, jelena j. 1986 pisma iz nisa o haremima. beograd: narodna biblioteka srbije. nochlin, linda 1994 the imaginary orient. in the politics of vision: essays on nineteenthcentury art and society, pp. 39-59. london: thames and hudson. parker, rozsika and griselda pollock 1981 painted ladies. in old mistresses: women, art and ideology, pp. 114-133. london: pandora. pollock, griselda 1988 modernity and the spaces of femininity. in vision & difference: femininity, feminism and the histories of art, pp. 50-90. london/new york: routledge. 1999 differencing the canon: feminist desire and the writing of art’s histories. london/new york: routledge. said, edward w. 2000 orijentalizam (orientalism). beograd: biblioteka xx vek. slapsak, svetlana 2000 haremi, nomadi: jelena dimitirijevic. in zene, slike, izmisljaji, pp. 49-73. beograd: centar za zenske studije. jen typewritten text 92 stankovic, borisav 1996 necista krv/kostana. beograd: bmg. todorova, maria 1999 imaginarni balkan (imagining the balkans). beograd: biblioteka xx vek jen typewritten text 93 volume 20, number 1 1 even though said made an attempt at pointing out the inconsistencies and imprecision of the terms themselves, he has failed to distance himself completely from the mentioned cliches. his decision to take the anglo-french model of observation as the principal objective of most theoretical discourses has not justified the exclusion of entire regions which have, quite often, been incorporated into the context of the orient in the period that is the subject of his analysis. with this i basically mean the utter exclusion of the turkish empire, especially its european segment. 2 a. h. barr made a schema for the exhibition “cubism and abstract art” at the museum of modern art, new york, 1936, in which artistic movements are placed in chronological way, following each other and connected by arrows that indicate reaction and influence. at the top are canonized initiators who are mapping modernist art. jen typewritten text 94 ------............................... the anthropology of east europe review: central europe, eastern europe and eurasia volume 21. number. i. spring, 2003 editors robert rotenberg barbara west nallcy ries el'll iiuseby-darvas iuatti bul1zl contents special issue: food and foodwa ys in postsocialist eurasia managing editor's notes: ............................................................................................................................ 4 robert rotenberg depaul uniyersity editors' notes: food and foodwa ys in food and foodwa ys in postsocialist eurasia ........... 5 krista harper. smith colil:gc. and barbara west. universi!: of the pacit1e part one--commensality, feasts, eating, and drinking "iake' take' take'"'iiost-guest relatigns and all that rood: uzbek iiospitality past and prr.sent ............................................................................................................................................................................... 8 russell zanca. northeastern illinois university a trinity of siberian easter-season meals ................................................................................................ 17 sharon iludgins. northeastern illinois university ciiristmas foodwa ys and ritual [n northern germany: distinctions east and west of tile former border ............................................................................................................................................................. 27 susan mazur-stommen. california polytechnic/pomona part two-food, meaning, and identity consuming the west but becoming third world:food imports and the experience of russianness ........................................................................................................................................................ ............ 31 knnifer patico. hayerford college taste and transformation: ethnographic encounters with food in the czech republic 37 ben passmore. southern methodist lniversity and susan racine passmore. independent scholar cuisine and cultural identity in balkans ............................................................................................ 43 cristina bradatan. pennsylvania state university "'eating our way back to goit: sl\cral nutrition and accul tcration in the krishna conscious ijfestyle """ ., .. ,.. ,.. , ...................... , .. ,... , ........ , .......................... , ............ , ... ,... , ........ , ............................... 49 judit farkas. european institute of food hi,tory (leba) si\lamander brandy: '"a psychedelic drink" between -"tedia myth and practice of home alcohol dist[lla tion in slovenia .................. , ............................ , ..... , ............................................................... 63 miha kozorog. uniyersity of ljubljana amthropology or eas! europe rcvie\\ part three-gender and food food. (,ender and representation ......................................................................................................... 73 margarita jankauskait. vilnius unih:rsi!) ambivalent tradiiions: transforming gender symbols and food practices l"l tile czech republic ................... .............................. .. ....................................................................................................... 77 ilaidis ilaukanes. l nhersity of bergen plvctzes: a drinking-related male social i"lstitution in rural hungary ................................. 83 eva iluseby-darvas. university of miehigan/dearborn part four-food, healtii, and culture the effects of perceivi"lg "weak health" in russia: the case of breastfeedi"lg ...................... 91 cynthia gabriel green carnivores. mad cows. and gene tech: the poll rlcs of food in hungarian environmentalism ................................................................................................................................................... 103 krista ljarper. smith college phd and pohod.i: the social conditions and symbolism of czech beer-drinking ................. 109 timothy m. liali. uni\ersity ofcatiforniaisan diego part five-the politic~l economy of food beer bottles an bar signs: brewing identity in postsocialist poland ...................................... 139 andrew d. asher. university of illinois! urbana-champaign from cow to customer: informal marketing of milk in albania ................................................. 147 beryl nicholson. newcastle upon tyne dachas and vegetable gardens in belarus economic and subjective stakes of an "ordinary passio"l .................................................................................................................................................... 159 ronan i krvouel university of bordeaux estonian food production ................................................................................................................................... 169 swart thorne. university ofsurre) from n4zlto hyper market: discourses on time. money, at\d food in hungary ...................... 179 jeff smith. debrecen university tile political and social life of food in socialist poland ................................................................ 189 kathy burrell. de montfort university .._______________________.i ronnl(),,, of fast '3 '7 ,~ ,j ,9 17 9 9 9 please address all requests for membership in the east europeal1 anthropology group ($20/yr. for full-time faculty and professionals, $1o/yrfor students alld part-time facility; european subscribers should writefor special rates.), institutional subscriptions to the review ($20), or adllitiollal copies ofthis special issue ($20) to the managing editor: the web page for the anthropology ofeast europe review/east europeall anthropology group contains links to most ofthe previously published articles. it calt be found at this url: htt{j:/lcolldor.depalll.edll/~rr()tenbe/(/eer/ robert rotenberg, anthropology department, depaul university. 990 w. fullerton ave, chicago, illinois, 60614. phone: 773/325-7460; fax 7731325-7461; email: rrotenbe@wppost.depaul.edu. barbara west, (eeag)school ofintemational studies, university of the pacific, stockton, ca 95211. bwest@uop.edu nancy ries (soyuz), anthropology, colgate university, hamilton, ny t 3346; email: nries({l'1nail .coi eate.edu. eva huseby-darvas (eeag). behavioral science dept.jjniversity of michigan, dearbom, mi 48128 email: evdarvas@umich.edu. matti bunzl, (eeag), department of anthropology, university of illinois at urbana­ champaignj 09 davenport hall, 607 s. matthews. urbana, il 61801; email: bunzl@uiuc.edu. © depaul university 2003 issn: 1054-4720 symphonic secularism: eastern orthodoxy, ethnic identity and religious freedoms in contemporary bulgaria anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: kghodsee@bowdoin.edu symphonic secularism: eastern orthodoxy, ethnic identity and religious freedoms in contemporary bulgaria kristen ghodsee, bowdoin college question: are you a christian? answer: yes, of course. q: do you believe in god? a: no. q: how are you a christian if you do not believe in god? a: i am [orthodox] christian because i am bulgarian. boris baptized the bulgarians to make a bulgarian kingdom. [so] bulgarians are [orthodox] christians. q: what about muslims and jews? a: they are ‘bulgarian citizens.’ they are not ‘bulgarians.’ -krassimir, a bulgarian taxi driver, in 2007 [w]e need to explore the assumptions underlying judgments made by historically constituted states regarding the proper place of religion. --talal asad, 2006 in 1998, bulgaria had the distinction of becoming the first country in the world where jehovah‟s witnesses and their children could receive blood transfusions without the threat of spiritual sanction from the new-york-based watchtower bible and tract society, the international body responsible for the official interpretation of jehovah‟s witnesses‟ dogma (watchtower 2007). the bulgarian government refused to allow the jehovah‟s witnesses to legally operate in the country unless they allowed their bulgarian members to receive blood in life threatening emergencies. eight years later, the government upheld a local decision that prevented two teenagers from wearing islamic headscarves to their secondary school (ghodsee 2007). in both cases, the bulgarian government stepped in and decided that these particular individual religious freedoms challenged the state‟s responsibility to protect the rights of minors, to uphold the principles of gender equality, or to maintain its commitments to secular public education. international observers (us department of state 2004, 2007) and human rights organizations (bulgarian helsinki committee 2004, 2008) were quick to charge the bulgarian government with violating its own constitutional clause guaranteeing the freedom of conscience. recent critical scholarship on western secularism would view the blood transfusion and anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 228 headscarf cases in bulgaria as evidence of a coercive secular state trying to relegate religion to the private sphere. furthermore, anthropologists of islam are keen to point out that secularist discourses are specifically derivative of protestantism, and that they ideologically privilege a notion of religion that prioritizes personal, private faith over collective, public practice, and are therefore inherently discriminatory toward muslims (asad 2006, 2003, 1993; mahmood 2006) this article uses the example of bulgaria to explore alternative definitions of secularism and religious rights in a part of the world that has largely been ignored by recent post-colonial debates about secularism and secularization (see for instance, jakobsen and pellegrini 2008, taylor 2007, keddie 1997). my first goal is to extend the valuable critical interventions of talal asad and others to an examination of eastern orthodoxy and its particular construction of the appropriate relationship between state and church. i want to try to pull apart some core assumptions about how concepts like “tolerance,” “pluralism” “modernity,” and “religion” are defined in scholarly debates and normatively deployed as measurements of democracy. the second is to ethnographically investigate the way that contemporary men and women in bulgaria collectively understand the concept of religion neither as a private personal relationship between an individual and her god nor as a spiritual commitment requiring daily public displays of piety. rather, religion is a core constitutive element of ethnic and national identity, one that is historically rooted in the distant past and which does not necessarily require belief in any form of divinity. this conception of religion is not unique to bulgaria (see for instance, van der veer 1994), but i will use the bulgarian case to explore how this conception of religion fits within larger debates about secularism, pluralism and tolerance as normatively defined by the west. this particular conception of religion shows itself most clearly in bulgaria through what i will call, “symphonic secularism,” or an orthodox ideal of state-church relations. symphoneia (symphony) refers to the eastern orthodox doctrine that asserts that the spiritual authority of the church should not take precedence over the temporal authority of the state, but rather that they should work together for the common good. compared to the roman catholic assertion of papal supremacy (or ultramontanism 1 ), symphoneia is often imagined to be an arrangement where the church is working in unity with the state, and it is historically the tsar who has the final authority to appoint or dismiss religious leaders or to convene ecumenical councils to alter or amend religious dogma. 2 this history of symphoneia is well known to modern bulgarians; the way that they imagine the legacies of symphoneia in their present society gives bulgarian secularism fascinating characteristics. it is not the purpose of this article to judge whether this specific understanding of secularism is right or wrong, but merely to explore the ideological underpinnings of the bulgarian society‟s desire to regulate religious groups like the jehovah‟s witnesses and the new, universalist forms of islam coming into the country from abroad. nor do i wish to make the claim that the wearing of headscarves and the refusal to give your loved ones life-saving blood transfusions are equivalent acts of piety, but only that they may seem equivalent in the local bulgarian context. finally, i recognize that western histories of secularism are diverse and that anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 229 individual states have rearranged the relationship between state and church in different ways. but the accepted ideology of secularization relies on an ideal configuration of these two institutions (as separate and distinct) and critiques of secularism and religious rights have reified this configuration. these conceptualizations of secularism, however, are themselves deeply rooted in a discursive field forged by either the embrace or rejection of the epistemological legacies of the enlightenment. genealogies of secularism often begin with the protestant reformation and often ignore any non-western historical antecedents (for instance asad 1993, taylor 2007). but there may be important alternative configurations of these concepts that are difficult to comprehend from the enlightenment worldview, especially if there are societies today that popularly imagine an ideal form of state and church relations that were forged in an earlier historical period, in this case, as far back as 1054 c.e. and the great schism that rendered christendom into its eastern and western halves. understanding different conceptions of secularism and religion is crucial today because international organizations and western governments are increasingly deploying religious freedoms as a normative measure of democracy. many orthodox nations such as russia, greece, romania or moldova have been criticized for violating religious freedoms. this paper will focus on bulgaria, one of the two newest members of the european union, which has been accused of religious intolerance by both human rights organizations (bulgarian helsinki committee 2007, tolerance foundation 1997) and the united states government in its annual religious freedoms reports (us department of state 2007, 2004). more recently, the european court of human rights (echr) in strasbourg found bulgaria in violation of article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion) of the european convention of human rights. in its january 2009 decision, the echr fined the bulgarian state 8,000 euro because the government had intervened to forcefully heal a schism in the bulgarian orthodox church (boc) by officially recognizing one church leader over another. the court declared that the government had overstepped its bounds by interfering in the internal affairs of a spiritual community. outraged, the bulgarian orthodox church and the bulgarian government lashed out at the echr, claiming that it was the court that had overstepped its bounds by challenging a one thousand year history of symphoneia, which requires the state to take an active role in regulating spiritual affairs. exploring the way that contemporary bulgarians embrace the legacies of symphoneia can help explain much about the state‟s seeming intolerance toward religious groups like the jehovah‟s witnesses and newly devout muslim girls who want to wear their headscarves to public school. although i have been studying bulgarian society and culture for over a decade, the research for this article is based specifically on fifteen months of fieldwork 3 spent in the country between 2005 and 2009 for a project looking at inter-religious relations between the bulgarian orthodox christian majority and its sizeable muslim minority. 4 in addition to living among this minority in a small muslim city in south central bulgaria and in the bulgarian capital city of sofia, i conducted official and unofficial interviews with muslim religious leaders, religious rights activists, government officials in charge of religious denominations, journalists, civil anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 230 society advocates and politicians. the article attempts to untangle the meaning of secularism, pluralism, religious freedom and tolerance from the point of view of my informants, with a particular focus on the way that individuals deploy popular understandings of bulgarian history to justify their personal comprehension of how far the state can go in regulating religiosity in every day life. asad’s critique the intellectual launching pad for this critical inquiry is the seminal work of talal asad (2003, 1993) and his 2006 call for a more historicized examination of the meaning of religion and secularism in different states (see epigraph). asad has critiqued secularism as an enlightenment-based political project that assumes a very limited view of religion. according to this critique, secularization projects, whether externally imposed or willingly imported, inevitably privilege a western european ideal of religion because they seek to subsume conceptions of religion that place an emphasis on embodied practices and rituals in the public sphere (such as islam). indeed, asad roots the creation of the contemporary (hegemonic) concept of religion in post-reformation western europe and emerging distinctions between the public and private sphere. he views the process of secularization as the “forcible redefinition of religion as belief, and of religious belief, sentiment, and identity as personal matters that belong to the newly emerging space of private (as opposed to public) life” (2003: 207). for asad, religion became “a new historical object: anchored in personal experience, expressible as beliefstatements, dependent in private institutions, and practiced in one‟s spare time” (ibid: 207). asad roots the production of this new understanding of religion to christianity and the struggles in western europe to replace faith and superstitions with science and reason in the public domain. other philosophers (taylor 2007, jakobsen and pellegrini 2008) and theologians (ratzinger and habermas 2007) have also argued that modern conceptions of secularism grew out of the protestant reformation and that the secular imperative of keeping faith in the private sphere is a smoke screen for establishing the hegemony of a distinctly eurocentric conception of religion (mahmood 2006, scott and hirshkind 2006). . expanding on this idea, partha chaterjee (2006) argues: “in all countries and in every historical period, secularization has been a coercive process in which the legal powers of the state, the disciplinary powers of the family and school, and the persuasive powers of government and media have been used to produce the secular citizen who agrees to keep religion in the private domain” (60). this critique of secularism has become the template for recent explorations of liberalism and secularization processes in the post-colonial context, 5 particularly those that wish to explore the inner logics of islam. asad‟s critical analysis of secularization in the muslim world demonstrates how the demands of western conceptions of church-state relations can amount to a form of ideological cultural (i.e. christian) imperialism. but this is a critique that is based on a very selective genealogy of christianity, a genealogy that excludes the eastern orthodox church and conflates christianity with western christianity. on one hand, it is an understandable exclusion given that asad‟s critical focus is the movement of secularist discourses from western anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 231 europe into its former colonies. on the other hand, it excludes an entire history of christianity that might have produced a very different conception of religion than the hegemonic western one, one that might have been more tolerant and inclusive of islam. exploring this alternative genealogy of christianity might reveal different collective understandings of the appropriate roles for the state and church. indeed, orthodox believers may not believe that “secularism” was imported from or imposed by the west, although scholars like chaterjee (quoted above) argue that it has been universally coercive in its application. instead, in the bulgarian case, the local version of secularism grew out of the nation‟s own unique historical trajectory. this history is distinct from the protestant and catholic histories of the west. it is a history that for most modern bulgarians begins in the ninth century when a medieval bulgarian king, boris i, christianized the slavs and when the bulgarian kingdom embraced orthodoxy and sided with the byzantine empire during the great schism of 1054. thus, if asad and other post-colonial scholars can be read as supporting a theoretical position that defends individual religious rights and individual desires for embodied religious practices against a western secularist imperialism that reduces religion to belief, this article pushes asad‟s critique beyond the muslim world to include orthodox countries such as bulgaria and other societies which might embrace a different notion of religion and secularism. although there are obvious theological differences, islam and eastern orthodoxy have traditionally been othered by the west – orientalized and essentialized as fundamentally non-modern. from the earliest days of the enlightenment, orthodox symphoneia was derided as a pejoratively byzantine form of government (wood 1967). in his 1689 “a letter concerning toleration,” john locke condemned state interference in church dogma, comparing henry viii and his selfserving heirs in england to the orthodox, “caesaro-papist” emperors in the east. more recently, samuel huntington (1996) relegated the eastern orthodox world to the status of a completely separate civilization from the west because the east did not benefit from, “the separation and the recurrent clashes between church and state” (70). in its 2009 decision, even the european court of human rights (2009) explicitly stated that “democratic societies” (4) should not have governments that interfere with religious communities, even if those religious communities have always been intertwined with state authority. if individuals in post-colonial societies have the right to resist a definition of religion that relegates faith to the private sphere, might not communities also have a right to defend conceptions of faith that root religious identity in the public sphere? this is a particularly salient question if the popular imagining of the category of religion is not about private faith, but rather about clearly defining the (often contested) boundaries of historically constituted ethno-national communities. if post-colonial scholars are pushing back at liberal secularist discourses for the sake of protecting the public spiritual commitments of non-christian minorities in europe or the non-christian majorities in the post-colonial world, why not take this same critique and examine an eastern orthodox christian society? although a truly comprehensive study of these issues requires an examination of more than one orthodox society, this case study deals with the bulgarian case in hopes that i might be able to put these issues on the table for further research anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 232 and debate. headscarves and blood transfusions the decision to force jehovah‟s witnesses to accept blood transfusions for themselves and their families was the result of a bulgarian law that required all religions to be officially registered with a national directorate of religious denominations. although initially registered in 1991, a change in the law forced the witnesses to re-register in 1994. at that time, the bulgarian government refused to recognize the witnesses as a real religion, making it illegal for followers to proselytize, distribute literature, organize services or perform religious activities of any kind on bulgarian soil. a complaint was immediately filed with the european court of human rights (1998) claiming that bulgaria had violated article 9 of the european convention protecting religious freedoms. the watchtower society claimed that blood transfusions were unsafe, unhealthy and against the scriptures; the receipt of blood was forbidden to witnesses and their families. the bulgarian government argued that this policy undermined public safety and that it violated the rights of others. in particular, the idea that jehovah‟s witnesses would willingly refuse a medically necessary blood transfusion that could save the life of their own child or incapacitated spouse in an emergency was deemed unacceptable. since the state was immovable on this issue, the christian association of jehovah‟s witnesses in bulgaria had to ask for a special dispensation from new york. as a result, the watchtower society has two official policies on blood transfusion, one for bulgaria and one for the rest of the world (associated jehovah‟s witnesses for reform on blood 2007). once the jehovah‟s witnesses conceded their position on blood transfusions, the bulgarian government allowed them to register, and the echr case reached a friendly settlement. unlike the jehovah‟s witnesses, bulgaria‟s muslims have been part of the fabric of society for centuries. yet it is only recently that muslims girls have started demanding to be allowed to wear their islamic headscarves when in attendance at non-religious, public schools. 6 in the bulgarian headscarf case, there were two girls who had been studying the qur‟an with a group of young bulgarian muslims recently graduated from islamic universities in jordan. the young bulgarians came back to bulgaria to promote a “purer” interpretation of their religion, an interpretation far more literal than that traditionally practiced. although few muslim women wore the headscarf in 2006, the two girls believed that head covering was mandatory for all muslim women; wearing the headscarf was a necessary outward sign of public piety. after the girls were banned from school, a new islamic ngo (formed in 2004 by the jordan-educated muslims) filed an official complaint with the ministry of education alleging a violation of the girls‟ constitutional right to religious freedom. the ministry responded that bulgarian education was secular and that conspicuous religious symbols had no place in public schools, particularly since secondary school education in bulgaria was not mandatory. the ngo then filed a complaint with a newly established national anti-discrimination commission (state gazette 2003). the commission (which was headed by a culturally muslim bulgarian anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 233 turk) also ruled that religious symbols were not allowed in schools. the commission argued that the islamic requirement that women wear headscarves amounted to a gender inequality because there was no similar dress requirement imposed on men (commission for protection against discrimination 2006). the islamic ngo hoped to appeal to the echr, but lacked the support of the chief muftiship in sofia, the spiritual authority of bulgaria‟s muslim community (us department of state 2007). in both the headscarf and transfusion cases, the bulgarian government invoked the idea that the state has the right to regulate religious activities in order to protect other (non-religious) human rights (e.g. women‟s rights or cultural rights), to ensure national security or to promote the public interest. but it also summoned the notion of secularism, a fascinating discursive move considering that the bulgarian constitution establishes orthodoxy as the traditional religion of the country and that the bulgarian orthodox church has always worked in symphony with the leaders of the bulgarian kingdom or state. furthermore, the 2002 law on religious denominations required registration of all religious groups excluding the orthodox church and the government openly provided resources for the upkeep of religious properties. so what does “secularism” mean in this context? and how might local understandings of secularism be shaped by bulgaria‟s eastern orthodox history? religion and ethnicity in bulgaria on the surface, modern bulgaria is remarkably similar to western europe in terms of a general decline in religious belief, despite its lack of state-church separation. for instance, in 2006, bulgaria ranked 17 th out of the 50 most atheist countries in the world, joining the overwhelmingly european top 20 (zuckerman 2006). the study found that 34-40 % of the bulgarian population was atheistic, agnostic, or non-religious. another study in 1998 asked a national representative sample of bulgarians: “would you like your child/grandchild to be religious?” only 13.7 percent of respondents wanted their children to regularly attend “church/mosque/synagogue.” however, 52.4 % of bulgarian christians and 52 % of turks living in bulgaria said that they wanted their children to be religious “just as a cultural identity.” another nationally representative survey conducted in 1999 (kanev 2002) found that 96 % of ethnic bulgarians said that they were christians and 98 % of the turkish minority declared themselves muslim. in analyzing these results, the bulgarian scholar petar kanev concluded that religion in bulgaria is “rather peculiar,” and argued that being “religious” and believing in god had little to do with each other (ibid: 84). kanev points out that religion is primarily about ethnic and national identity, a legacy of the state‟s long association with the boc and the fact that “bulgarian and orthodoxy were synonym concepts” (ibid: 84). my ethnographic fieldwork in the country confirmed this “peculiar” conception of religion. although other scholars of the balkans have observed this link between religion and ethnic identity (for instance, bringa 1995, todorova 1997), i was always intrigued to see how bulgarians discursively constructed the link in their own lives. there were numerous examples of individuals claiming a religious affiliation while also admitting that they did not believe in anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 234 god. in one conversation with a slavic muslim (pomak) in madan in 2006, a 49-year-old man explained: “i am a muslim because my grandfather was a muslim and i was given a muslim name. my father was an atheist and i am an atheist. i am a muslim, but i do not believe in god.” i later had a remarkably similar exchange with a twenty-something bulgarian taxi driver in sofia (recounted in the first epigraph at the beginning of this article), demonstrating that “christian atheists,” like their “muslim atheist” compatriots, also claimed a religious affiliation because it was an essential part of their cultural identity. 7 a 40-year-old lawyer in sofia, who called himself an “atheist fundamentalist” had no problem regularly going into orthodox churches to light candles. he explained, “the church preserved the bulgarian language during the time of the ottoman yoke. buying candles gives money to the church. i have to support it [the church], because i am bulgarian.” where i did my fieldwork in the rhodope, the way different ethnic groups named each other was also evidence of this slippage between religious and cultural identity. this was a mixed region composed of ethnic turks, ethnic bulgarian christians and ethnic bulgarian muslims (pomaks). the turkish-speaking minority in the region was referred to as “turks.” the bulgarian-speaking christians in mixed christian-muslim villages were called “bulgarians.” bulgarian-speaking muslims were simply called “muslims.” even though the turks were also muslims, the label “muslim” was used exclusively to distinguish between the christians and the pomaks. the exclusion of bulgarian-speaking muslims from the category “bulgarian,” however, did not go unchallenged. in one conversation with two high-school-aged girls in rudozem, one girl argued that: “we are bulgarians, too.” but her friend then defended the term “muslim” for pomaks by saying: “we are all bulgarian citizens (bulgarski grazhdani). but we are not “bulgarians” (bulgari) because we are not christians.” this distinction between “bulgarians” and “bulgarian citizens” was a very common way to distinguish between ethnic bulgarians (i.e. christians) and turks, roma and bulgarian muslims. in an oft-repeated national television advertisement for the 2005 parliamentary elections, the ethnic turkish party (the movement for rights and freedoms) overtly used this language by promising security and a better life for all “bulgarian citizens” rather than all “bulgarians.” in response, the campaign slogan for the nationalist party, attack, was “let‟s bring bulgaria back to the bulgarians!” (i.e. the orthodox christian, bulgarian-speaking majority). one of the ramifications of this equation of religion with cultural or ethno-national identity is that the question of apostasy or religious conversion is a very sensitive one. many bulgarians (and “bulgarian citizens”) believe that to change religious affiliation is to change ethnic and cultural identification. this concept was driven home to me by the deputy chief mufti of all bulgarian muslims in an interview i did with him in 2006: “when a turk converts to christianity, we do not say that he became a christian, we say that he became a bulgarian (stana bulgarin).” christian evangelicals from the united states, have also been warned that bulgarians, “equate being orthodox [christian] with being bulgarian. proselytism, then, is seen not only as a spiritual concern of the clerics but as an attack on national identity” (kostov 2000). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 235 american church of the nazarene missionaries who worked in bulgaria in the 1990s further observed that, “many bulgarians seem unaware that vital christianity can be authentically bulgarian. tragically, some believed the demonic lie that authentic [nazarene] christianity would hurt the fabric of bulgarian society. today, this makes bulgaria, according to many observers, among the globe‟s most difficult countries to evangelize” (church of the nazarene 2002). this deep resistance to conversion is not only a product of an allegiance to a modern ethnic community or nation state, but it is also linked to a particular collective imagining of bulgarian history. it is the deployment of these historical narratives, particularly narratives rooted in the middle ages that underpin bulgarians‟ ability to have a strong religious identity that can be devoid of spirituality. and these historical narratives are so pervasive, that even for those who do truly believe in the teachings of the bible or the qur‟an, faith is understood not in terms of individual rights and free choices, but rather as a personally embodied legacy of spiritual communities that have roots in the eighth or ninth century c.e. briefly exploring these historical narratives will help make sense of why religious groups like the jehovah‟s witnesses or spiritual communities clustered around new, universalist forms of islam from jordan and saudi arabia have difficulty being accepted in bulgarian society. again, i admit that other cultures may have strong links between religious and national identity, but orthodoxy is particularly interesting because these links are embedded in church dogma. furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that other orthodox nations (especially russia and greece) have a similar symphonic conception of religion, but this article deals specifically with the bulgarian case for reasons of space and in order to tease out some of the larger theoretical implications of accepting that orthodoxy, like islam, may have a different conception of religion that is worth considering when “we” in the west decide to use religious tolerance as a normative measure of democratic values. popular imaginings of state and church in bulgarian history in speaking with bulgarians about religious allegiances and cultural identities, conversations inevitably veered toward popular understandings of history. over and over again, i found that many modern day bulgarians viewed themselves as the living descendants of medieval populations that once inhabited the lands now occupied by the modern bulgarian state. unlike the members of the islamic ngo defending the girls in the headscarf case who defended their desire to cover their heads on the grounds that freedom of conscience is an abstract individual human right guaranteed to them by their state‟s democratic constitution, most of the newly devout bulgarian muslims following what they called the “true” islam invoked historical reasons to justify their re-emerging piety. the most common argument that i heard was that today‟s adherents to “saudi” forms of islam are, in fact, the direct descendents of arab muslims who settled in the balkan peninsula in the eighth century c.e. the claim to be affiliated with a faith that was represented in bulgaria over a thousand years earlier was a discursive strategy to legitimize their religiosity in a cultural context that views religion as constitutive of ethnic or anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 236 national identity, and therefore only recognizes those religions which can be demonstrably linked to some group of ancient inhabitants in bulgaria. for example, a man in the pomak village of chepintsi explained to me in 2006 that his fellow villagers were the proto-muslims of bulgaria. “we were muslims before the turks,” he said. “after the prophet – peace be upon him – died, he sent his followers out to spread the true words of god, and some of them came from arabia and settled here. we were already muslim before boris baptized the slavs in the eighth century. so we were forced to become christians, and then forced to be muslims by the turks, and then forced to become atheists by the communists. but we were muslims first. we are the true muslims of bulgaria.” hairaddin hatim, the regional mufti of smolyan, told a similar story. “islam in the rhodope came directly from arabia, not through turkey. that is why we follow the qur’an more correctly than the turks,” he said in a 2007 interview. when i asked him if the ancient thracian inhabitants of the rhodope had been muslims, he replied, “why not?” there have also been several books published since the late 1990s that endeavor to establish links between devoutly religious pomak communities and their alleged arab ancestors. “i believe that the pomaks are an arabic minority that settled in the rhodope because of byzantine policies responding to the increased strength of the slavs to the north,” mehmed dorsunski, the author of one such volume, said in a 2003 magazine interview. “byzantium had a long-term policy of settling arabs along its northern borders. … that is how the muslim community that lived in the rhodope in the seventh and eighth centuries was formed” (dorsunski 2003: 15). the aim of this type of book is to explain the current islamic resurgence among contemporary pomaks as the direct result of their being descended from arabs who lived on the same geographic territory over 1,200 years earlier. this tendency to use medieval history to explain current bulgarian attitudes could be found not only among muslim religious leaders and lay people, but also within the scholarly community. in a 2009 interview with dr. zhivko georgiev, the director of gallup international in bulgaria and a respected political analyst, i asked him why his country had such a high rate of atheism and agnosticism. i expected that georgiev, as a professional sociologist, would tell me about various demographic trends in bulgarian religiosity. instead, he opined that bulgarians’ relative lack of faith was a legacy of bogomilism, an anti-clerical religious movement which began in the mid-tenth century, about 75 years after king boris i of bulgaria had forcibly christianized the slavs in 863. georgiev speculated that bulgarians have always been independent thinkers, and that their skeptical attitude toward religious authority began in the tenth century and continues to the present day. here again was an example of an argument that linked the behaviors and beliefs of modern bulgarians directly to those of bulgarians living in the middle ages. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 237 conversations such as these led me to press further on the definition of “religion” in the bulgarian context, and how it might be operating differently than religion in western europe. in order to understand why the abstract western conception of religious rights and liberal notions of religious pluralism might have so little critical purchase in the bulgarian context, it is instructive to look at the way contemporary bulgarians are taught about the centuries-long marriage between the bulgarian state and the bulgarian orthodox church (boc). 8 one obvious place to find these narratives was in popular bulgarian history books. in particular, the trade books of the historian bojidar dimitrov, the director of the national museum of history and the host of a popular historical television show, were ubiquitous and consumed by all strata of bulgarian society (for instance, dimitrov 2005a, 2005b). from these books and history books written for children, there began to emerge a particular narrative about bulgarian history and the unique relationship between the state and the church. according to these historians, the first bulgarian state was formally recognized in a treaty with the byzantines in 681 c.e (ibid.). in order to bring cohesion and legitimacy to the rapidly expanding bulgarian state in a world dominated by christianity, boris i officially adopted the religion in the late ninth century in a calculated diplomatic move to consolidate his power by getting recognition from the patriarch in constantinople and the pope in rome (gyuzuzelev 2006; koev and bakalov 2006). one history text explains that: bulgaria‟s conversion to christianity was prompted also by external events. another unsuccessful war with byzantium in the autumn of 863 compelled boris to enter a peace treaty under which bulgaria…was bound to dissolve its alliance with the german kingdom, and most important of all, to adopt christianity. boris believed, even before the treaty that in his age culture went hand in hand with christianity. not the bloody sword, nor aggression, but only through a new faith could bulgaria become byzantium‟s equal (lalkov and dragonov 2003: 21). from the outset, bulgaria‟s embrace of the christian faith is presented as being far more about politics than spiritual considerations. at the time of boris‟s strategic conversion, christendom was governed by five autocephalous patriarchates based in constantinople, rome, antioch, alexandria and jerusalem. the rise of islam had compromised the power and influence of the patriarchs in asia, and there were increasing tensions between the two european ecclesiastical authorities. modern bulgarians are taught that boris i successfully played the developing rivalry between constantinople and rome to his advantage, and in 870 c.e., the eastern patriarch granted boris i an autonomous archbishop subject to constantinople‟s authority (popov 2004). bulgarians today are taught the idea that a unique bulgarian identity was forged in opposition to the greek dominance of the orthodox church through the creation of the slavic alphabet. boris sponsored the formation of a new bulgarian clergy schooled in this new alphabet and liturgy. in 893, he expelled all of the greek clergy, and the bulgarian vernacular replaced anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 238 greek as the official church (and therefore state) language (zhidovetz 2004). in 927, the byzantines gave the bulgarian church full autocephalous status, making it the first autocephalous patriarchate after the original pentarchy, and the first slavic church – a full 300 years before the serbian autocephaly and 600 years before the russian autocephaly (ganev, bakalov and todev 2006). boris i supposedly understood that his authority and legitimacy were intimately bound up with having an independent church and a clergy firmly under his control. in his exploration of ethnicity, religion and politics, the bulgarian sociologist, georgi fotev, overtly roots the modern bulgarian ethnic identity with the decision to embrace christianity: …[t]he act of conversion, the proclaiming of the christian religion as official religion of the first bulgarian state, a task that prince boris i had set himself, is an exceptional event which, after a dramatic development of consolidation of the bulgarian state, led to the constitution of a new ethnos – the bulgarian ethnos… through the adoption of christianity bulgaria determined itself in future as part of europe and entered the sphere of the emerging european culture” (fotev 1999: 24-27). thus, in both popular and scholarly rendering of bulgarian history, the adoption of the christian faith had almost everything to do with political consolidation and the creation of a new bulgarian ethnic identity out of the mixed populations of bulgars, slavs and thracians that inhabited the lands under boris‟s control. the concept of religion being produced here is one in which faith is understood as a political tool of the state and a constitutive element of ethnic identity, rather than a matter of private spiritual salvation. this specific understanding of religion as the tool of statecraft is presently taught as one of the defining conflicts between byzantium and rome, ultimately leading to the great schism of 1054. as mentioned earlier, byzantium embraced a political and ecumenical philosophy called symphoneia, which later came to be known pejoratively as caesaro-papism (which literally means “king-priest,” geanakopolis 1965). in western christendom, rome espoused the doctrine of ultramontanism whereby the spiritual authority of the pope took precedent over that of all temporal kings. because the roman pope tried to assert his authority over the four eastern patriarchates, the latter broke away, taking the fledgling bulgarian church with them (runciman 1955). bulgarian history textbooks assert that subsequent tsars would continue to manipulate both pope and patriarch, briefly embracing catholicism whenever constantinople tried to rehellenize the bulgarian church. gaining or maintaining the autocephalous status of the bulgarian patriarchate was a primary goal for all tsars before the kingdom became part of the ottoman empire in the late 14 th century. the historiography of the ottoman period in bulgaria is the most contested and inconsistent in the popular history books, and tends to be very critical of the turks and their islamic empire on the balkans. although some bulgarians did convert to islam (this is the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 239 popularly accepted origin theory for the pomaks), the majority retained their christian faith (inalcik 1954, deringil 2000). it was during this 500-year period that the boc supposedly became the most important repository of bulgarian learning, language and literature. many bulgarians today believe that orthodox monks preserved the bulgarian culture and provided political leadership to the bulgarian christians. when the ecumenical patriarch tried to hellenize the bulgarians by reintroducing a greek liturgy, the bulgarian clergy played an even more important role as linguistic dissidents, continuing to perform services in the slavic language. one imagining of this remarkable historical continuity between bulgarians of the middle ages and those in the 19 th century can be found in a popular illustrated history book for children, rulers of bulgaria: khans, tsars and statesmen. this book presents a view of bulgarian history that directly links khan asparoukh (who defeated the byzantine army in 680 and established the first bulgarian state) to georgi parvanov (the president of bulgaria in 2008) as if somehow parvanov was a direct descendent of asparoukh. the book, which had already gone into four editions by 2003 and was written by two of bulgaria‟s most distinguished professors of history, explains the 500-year leap from tsar ivan shishman in 1395 to prince alexander i in 1879 by merely stating: “during five centuries of slavery, the bulgarians cherished the memory of their regal medieval rulers” (lalkov and dragonov 2003: 48). 9 and it was the boc that kept this memory alive. literature and history written by bulgarian nationalists between 1878 and 1945 reified the idea that being a bulgarian required allegiance to the boc. when the bulgarian communists came to power in 1946, they too valorized the boc, and despite their commitment to state atheism they continued to produce historical narratives that celebrated bulgarian orthodoxy as the savior of the bulgarian nation-state. priests and monks became national heroes rather than spiritual leaders. churches and monasteries became cultural monuments to bulgaria’s history rather than houses of worship. what bulgarians learned about their country’s spiritual history had very little to do with faith and everything to do with national preservation. after the fall of communism in 1989, bulgarian nationalist parties continued to explicitly link “bulgarian-ness” with orthodox christianity. finally, the 2002 law of religious denomination, passed by a democratically elected center-right government, reemphasized the special status of the boc. article 10, paragraph 1 of the law states: eastern orthodox is the traditional denomination in the republic of bulgaria. it has played a historic role in bulgaria‟s statehood and has current meaning in its political life. its spokesperson and representative is the autocephalous bulgarian orthodox church, which, under the name patriarchy, is the successor of bulgaria‟s exarchate… it is led by the holy synod and is represented by the bulgarian patriarch who is a metropolitan of sofia. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 240 symphony and religious pluralism from its very inception, bulgarians are taught that the boc has been in a symphonic relationship with the bulgarian kingdom/state, and that secular leaders have always had authority over the organization and promotion of both temporal and spiritual affairs. but this historical importance of orthodoxy does not necessarily preclude religious pluralism. rather, it is widely accepted that throughout most of bulgarian history (and particularly during the ottoman period) there were jews, catholics, muslims, greeks, and armenians sharing the territory that is now bulgaria with the bulgarian orthodox christians. these medieval religious communities are imagined to be an essential component of bulgarian society. during my fieldwork, bulgarians were always quick to point out that they have always been tolerant of muslims, jews and catholics. in particular, when i asked questions about religious pluralism, i would often hear, “we saved the jews” or “what about the jews?” (this referred to boris ii‟s refusal to deport bulgaria‟s jews to the death camps despite his allegiance with nazi germany (todorov 2003, bar-zohar 1998, chary 1972), a decision that had been instigated and supported by the leaders of the boc.) one seventeen-year-old explained her country‟s historic tolerance of the jews by referring to “theodora,” popularly believed to be a jewish woman who married into the bulgarian royal family in the 14 th century and was the mother of tsar ivan shishman, the last great medieval king. 10 in conversations with more educated bulgarians, they would point to the long history of religious violence in western europe and compare this with the relative sectarian peace in their own county. the candle-lighting lawyer in sofia once explained in english: did we have an inquisition? no. did we burn witches? no. did we send knights off on crusades to murder infidels in the holy land? no. did catholics and protestants murder each other in our streets? no. how can you say bulgarians are intolerant? how many religious wars were there in europe? how many in bulgaria? indeed, even though the bulgarian state has had a symphonic relationship with the boc, historians have argued that there was relative religious pluralism and tolerance before, during and after the ottoman empire in the lands now occupied by the modern bulgarian state. there was only mild religious persecution under the byzantine and bulgarian empires (alexander 1977). eastern orthodoxy in bulgaria was and remains a non-proselytizing religion that does not actively seek converts outside of the country. furthermore, setting aside the “blood tax,” the ottomans were also relatively tolerant, building their empire on a foundation of religious pluralism despite the fact that muslims enjoyed greater privileges than the other millets (gawrych 1983, karpat 1972). even during the communist era, despite their strident campaigns against religion, there was a large mosque, a synagogue and an orthodox church within a 500meter radius of the main administrative buildings of the politburo and the central committee in the heart of sofia. in general, the lawyer was not wrong to point out that the kind of sectarian anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 241 violence and religious warfare that filled so much of western european history was relatively unknown in the bulgarian territories, where muslims, jews, catholics and orthodox christians have lived in close proximity for centuries. 11 this relative tolerance for established religious minorities could be explained by (rather than in spite of) the unique symphonic relationship between state and church. for some temporal leaders, the superiority of one religious dogma over another may not be a very compelling reason to go to war or to create the conditions of internal strife and rebellion within your territories. wars are costly and risky if you lose, and religious persecution creates divisiveness and the possibility of sectarian violence. 12 some level of religious tolerance and pluralism, even if there is an official religion of the empire (orthodox christianity in byzantium and in bulgaria and islam for the ottomans) might better serve the interests of elites who profit from trade and taxation. on the other hand, leaders vying for the favor of god and the pope in rome might be more willing to commit their resources, for instance, to liberating the holy land from the infidels. if one believes the u.s. government, the council of europe or the european court of human rights, state churches should be more conducive to intolerance than to pluralism. but what if having an established national religion (or a conception of religion that equates proclaimed faith with ethnic identity) makes a country more, rather than less, “tolerant” of established religious minorities? symphonic secularism this interpenetration of religion as being linked with imperial/national identity and kingdom/state sovereignty means that orthodox societies and bulgarian society in particular might have arrived at a kind of secularism by a very different path than either the western countries or their former colonial subjects, and therefore may have a different relationship to religious pluralism and tolerance than is expected of “modern democratic states.” symphonic secularism in bulgaria includes a constitutionally enshrined traditional church as well as government regulation of religious activities in the country. this encompasses the government‟s power to dissolve churches considered a threat to public order and national security, or who violate or compromise the rights of others, as defined and adjudicated upon by the state. “religion” in this context is not merely individual belief in the private sphere (a la john locke) but a public declaration of affiliation with historically, culturally, and linguistically constituted groups. 13 this religion is embodied within the material infrastructure of established denominations, including the houses of worship, the clergies, the holy sites, the holy texts translated into the local vernacular, the powerfully evocative iconographies of spiritual leaders, saints, prophets and god even when these material embodiments are no longer conduits to divine knowledge. more importantly, religion either explicitly or implicitly includes a dogma that subsumes the spiritual authority of the boc (or any other spiritual leadership) beneath the rule of temporal leaders. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 242 this symphonic tendency can also be found among bulgaria‟s religious minorities. for instance, the majority of bulgaria‟s turkish muslim community view islam as a cultural identity rather than a spiritual commitment, as best exemplified by the openly declared atheism of ahmed dougan, the political leader of bulgaria‟s turkish political party (palchev 2002). even the jewish community does not seem to have a problem with the symphonic relationship between the bulgarian state and the boc. when the parliamentary assembly of the council of europe passed a resolution in 2004 openly criticizing the 2002 law on religious denominations, it did not fail to note that bulgaria‟s jews did not oppose the law (parliamentary assembly of the council of europe 2004). in this context, religion is understood as a tool through which tsars, sultans, politburos or prime ministers have consolidated their power over ethnically or linguistically diverse populations, by promoting national identity through a church (or a mosque or synagogue) that instills loyalty to the state as part of its ecumenical dogma while also granting autonomy to other religiously defined communities. but religion is more than just a public institution that facilitates the production of the nation, because it also legitimizes the ultimate authority of the temporal leader over the community by producing subjects that believe that religious power and authority have been and should always be secondary to that of the state. a certain kind of religious pluralism may therefore be possible for religions that also act as containers for the preservation of the history and culture of the living descendents of ancient peoples, and whose theologies can accept the primacy of temporal imperatives over spiritual ones. public manifestations of religion may be acceptable for most of the older denominations; jews, muslims, catholics and orthodox christians are able to live together in peace as long as their practice of religion (whether in the public or private sphere) does not challenge the primacy of the monarch/government by placing religious laws or customs above the interests of the kingdom/empire/nation-state. this is admittedly a very limited form of religious freedom by western standards, but it is far from the supposedly undemocratic intolerance presumed inherent in symphonic societies by the u.s. or the european court of human rights. the old religions are also accepted because they are seen as the repositories for the culture of these communities, and although bulgarians have always feared the irredentist ambitions of turkey (especially after the partition of cyprus in 1974), even islam is embraced as an integral part of society. despite latent islamophobia and a deep-seated hatred toward the ottoman past, the post-1989 era did not see violent ethno-religious confrontations such as those in neighboring yugoslavia, nor was there a renewed persecution of the turkish minority. similarly, many of bulgaria‟s muslims accept that they will always be “bulgarian citizens” rather than “bulgarians” because they embrace the same concept of religion as the orthodox christian majority. the majority of bulgaria‟s muslims (whether turkish, pomak or romani) have traditionally shared the symphonic conception of religion, similar as it is to the ottoman instrumentalization of islam under the millet system. it is only members of new muslim groups, such as the young muslims returning from jordan, who believe that spiritual matters should be separate from and take precedence over temporal affairs, and are therefore willing to deploy the (ironically) western anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 243 liberal language of religious “rights.” orthodox societies like bulgaria may be less tolerant of relatively new religions such as the jehovah‟s witnesses that have appeared in the country since 1989. they are not seen as being rooted in a particular culture, and therefore lack the essential quality of a religion to be the vessel that preserves the past for the living descendents of ancient peoples. if the new religions are associated with a culture, it is generally with that of the united states, a country with few historical links to bulgaria. a brief examination of the international religious freedom reports for the country (which also report on societal abuses and discrimination) demonstrate that bulgarians are tolerant toward the established religions, and only discriminate against new religious groups or newer, more fundamentalist movements within the established ones. for instance, the 2008 international religious freedoms report for bulgaria noted the following “restriction on religious freedoms” which focused almost exclusively on newly imported american religions: on april 9, 2008, the city of burgas sent a letter to all burgas schools instructing them to warn students to be alert to the mobilizing of nontraditional religious groups such as jehovah‟s witnesses, the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints (mormons), and evangelical pentecostal churches, which the city described as the most prominent and dangerous sects. in the letter, authorities claimed that these groups attracted followers through manipulation, offers of money, clothing and food, as well as free movie screenings. they further maintained that the activity of these groups threatened the unity of the bulgarian nation and exposed it to religious confrontation (us department of state 2008). the bulgarian government was criticized for not allowing non-traditional muslim groups to officially register as a religious denomination. in the case of the ahmadis, however, it was the chief mufti of all bulgarian muslims himself who advised the bulgarian court not to allow the registration of the “ahmadiyya muslim community” (us department of state 2007). the u.s. report noted that, “the muftiship seemingly would not consent to any outside group registering as muslims. the directorate‟s expert statement held that registration of the ahmadis would „lead to the rise and institutionalization of a very serious dissent in the muslim community,‟ and to the spread of an interpretation of islam that is not traditional in the country.” although the ahmadis planned to file a complaint against bulgaria at the echr in strasbourg, it is important to note that the government was acting on the advice of the official leadership of bulgaria‟s muslim community. what unites these disparate groups beyond their “nontraditional-ness” is the fact that many claim a global community of believers and support a doctrine wherein their religion is not rooted in any one nation or culture. their concept of religion supersedes culture and attempts to unite a world-wide community of the faithful under one supranational religious authority (such as is olivier roy‟s (2004) concept of de-ethnicized “globalized islam”). in these cases, anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 244 obedience to religious authorities (such as the watchtower society in new york) or to religious texts (such as the qur‟an) is supposed to trump devotion to the nation-state. this can be viewed as the assertion of a form of ultramontanism that many bulgarians believe to be at odds with their own millennium-old symphonic tradition. suspicion will accompany any faith that places religious authority above the interests of the state, and bulgarians may always have a tendency to view these religions as literal threats to national security and public interests. more specifically, bulgarians will be suspicious of groups of believers who are not tied to a cultural identity and whose faith trumps devotion to the state. such groups of believers, viewed from the perspective of local history and culture, will not fall under the bulgarian concept of religion, and will thus not be worthy of the full freedom of religion that is applicable to “genuine” religions. again, from the western point of view this will always be seen as a form of religious intolerance, but it is important to point out that this is because the dominant conception of religion in western discourses is one which privileges private faith practiced in the private sphere. just as asad (1993, 2003, 2006) has convincingly shown that modern secularization projects devalue the islamic conception of religion that necessitates the public practice of faith, i want to ask what other conceptions of religion are being devalued and delegitimized by the western conception of faith embedded in international religious rights discourses. this reification of religion as a private relationship with divine forces that should be kept private allows bodies such as the echr to both uphold headscarf bans in turkey and switzerland while simultaneously criticizing orthodox countries for interfering to much in the internal working of domestic religious communities. in the case of the jehovah‟s witnesses refusing to have blood transfusions, the state determined that it should be medical doctors (who are state employees in bulgaria) and not religious authorities who determine the necessary treatment to save an individual‟s life. the rights of children and incapacitated spouses should not be violated on spiritual grounds. more importantly, the religious ban on blood transfusions is a jehovah‟s witnesses dogma produced by a spiritual authority based in new york city, a spiritual authority that has no history in the balkans and no cultural connection with the bulgarian nation. in the case of the two muslim girls and the islamic ngo that represented them, they were arguing that the religious dogma of the qur‟an should take precedence over the state‟s commitments to uphold gender equality or to maintain the secular nature of the public education system. selvi shakirov, the young pomak who argued the headscarf case in front of the antidiscrimination commission, explicitly deployed the discourse of liberal individual rights: the headscarf for the woman in islam is not a religious symbol; it is a religious dogma. and when a girl, a woman is convinced of the essence of the islamic religion, she makes the decision to put on such clothing with desire and conviction. and this right should not be denied to this individual whoever she is…. [this is] the personal freedom of the individual to choose for himself, to decide what is good, and when he is convinced [of what is good], to be given this anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 245 freedom (commission for protection against discrimination 2006). what this language of liberal rights and individual choice occludes, however, is the extent to which the interpretation of the qur‟an which requires women to cover their heads at all times is seen as being an interpretation that is foreign to bulgaria. bulgarian muslims have a wide variety of established practices regarding the headscarf (neuburger 2005). shakirov and the girls were asserting that their interpretation of the qur‟an was the correct one, and that “true” muslims should not be prevented from following its prescriptions once they individually accepted this “truth.” but the chief mufti of all bulgarian muslims did not support the islamic ngo in this case, because most muslims believe in a specifically bulgarian form of islam (ghodsee 2009), an interpretation of the religion that assures that spiritual imperatives remain secondary to temporal ones. by trying to turn the tables on this established symphonic hierarchy, the islamic ngo pitted itself not only against the eastern orthodox majority but also against the larger bulgarian muslim community. conclusion although both of these cases will be viewed by many in the west as instances of religious intolerance, the point i have tried to make is that the orthodox bulgarians are being intolerant in different ways and for different reasons than one might expect given existing western criticisms of them. bulgaria‟s supposed intolerance is not intolerance of all nonorthodox christian religions, but rather intolerance of spiritual communities that define religion in a certain way, a way that privileges a western conception of private faith to be practiced in the private sphere. understandings of religion that require believers to pledge allegiance to a spiritual authority that does not work in symphony with the state will be considered suspect in the local context. talal asad and others have aggressively questioned the definition of religion that underpins modern hegemonic understandings of secularism. in rejecting certain enlightenment discourses and privileging the importance of the local historical context, asad has produced a valuable lens through which to view the muslim world today and the need to make room for pubic displays of piety and conceptions of religion which include more than mere individual faith practiced in the private sphere. i have tried to extend this contextualization of different notions of religion beyond the post-colonial world to include alternative trajectories of christianity outside of western europe. might not other societies outside of the post-colonial context also resist, or at least try to regulate, the imposition of the same catholic/protestant definition of religion as private and individual faith, particularly if this definition of religion underpins certain normative prescriptions of “tolerance” and “religious rights,” which are enforced by western institutions such as the european court of human rights? just as the west imposes certain cultural ideals on the muslim world through its particular conception of religion, organizations such as the echr and the council of europe deploy that same liberal conception of religion when determining whether countries like bulgaria anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 246 are “tolerant.” my purpose is neither to challenge nor defend bulgaria‟s historically-bound understanding of religion, but only to point out that universalist discourses of “religious rights” and “religious freedoms” are themselves the product of specific western definitions of religion, and that it is not only the muslim world that has been judged and found lacking for its resistance to normative prescriptions that link modern democracy with the privatization of faith. of course, this case study is limited to but one orthodox country, and it is essential to expand this analysis beyond bulgaria to include other symphonic countries such as russia, greece, romania, serbia and possibly even turkey. obviously this task is beyond the scope of one article, and it has merely been my goal to engage the critical scholarship on secularism with evidence from the country that i know best from my previous research. clearly, this is a field in which much more research remains to be done. notes 1 ultramontanism refers to one who is “beyond the mountains.” for most of europe, the pope was beyond the alps in italy. 2 when choosing a new patriarch (the highest spiritual authority in the orthodox church), for instance, the leadership of bulgarian church traditionally submitted a list of three names to the tsar, and it was the tsar that appointed the patriarch for life (see, for instance: butsev 2009). 3 the author would like to thank the irex, acls, nceeer, wilson center, and the institute for advanced study for generously supporting this research. 4 this minority, at between 13 and 15 %t of the population, constitutes the largest muslim minority population in any european union member state, and is unique in that it is not made up of recent immigrants or their children. 5 in mahmood‟s (2006) rich study of the women‟s mosque movement in egypt, she demonstrates how western preoccupations with liberalism, self-hood, and agency mask the ways in which embodied religious practices can result in self-actualization for women. 6 beginning in the 1990s, bulgaria had three public islamic high schools in shumen, ruse and momchilgrad. 7 i am grateful to maria todorova and valerie hoffman at the university of illinois – urbana champaign for pointing out that many jewish and italian men and women have a similar conception of their religion as a cultural rather than spiritual identity. in fact, many ethnic groups have some link between religious identity and national identity, but the key in the bulgarian case is that the foundational moment of bulgarian national identity is explicitly constructed as being linked to the foundation of the bulgarian orthodox church. 8 i recognize that the “facts” of bulgarian history and the history of the important role of the boc are hotly contested. indeed, much of what is accepted as history was consciously anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 247 constructed during the bulgarian revival period in the late 19 th century as the country was trying to extricate itself from a declining ottoman empire and stake a claim to its own independence, or by bulgarian historians during the communist era, which were deliberately trying to construct closer historical ties with the slavic orthodox russians (neuburger 1997). despite this caveat, what is important for the purposes of this article is what most contemporary bulgarians believe to be the history of their state and church, even if the production of this history was and continues to be informed by specific nationalist ideologies. (see: skendi 1975, 1976; pundeff 1961; gavev, bakalov and todev 2006) 9 milcho lalkov and dragomir draganov, rulers of bulgaria. sofia: kibea publishing company, 2003, p. 48. in this popular view of bulgarian history, the country merely ceased to exist for 500 years and nothing that happened during that era of “slavery” can be legitimately included as part of the country‟s own past, despite the evidence that some bulgarians prospered during the ottoman era, and that the ottoman millet system did much to preserve byzantine symphoneia for its christian subjects (vyronis 1969-1970). 10 “sarah-theodora” was the second wife of tsar ivan alexander assen who lived in the 14 th century. 11 this is not to say that there were no instances of ethnic persecution. the pomaks were subjected to multiple assimilation campaigns both before and during communism, which forced them to change their names and discard outward symbols of their religion. interestingly, however, the pre-war rodina movement focused on making islam more bulgarian rather than on eradicating the religion altogether. rodina translated the first qur‟ans into the bulgarian language and were primarily opposed to “turkish” influences on islam rather that to the religion of islam per se. the communists were also heavy-handed in their assimilation campaigns against the turks of bulgaria. between 1950-1951, 140,000 were expulsed to turkey and again in 1989, upwards of 400,000 fled from the country. but even here, the turks were targeted more for ethnic rather than religious reasons (they did not speak bulgarian and were imagined as a “fifth” column for nato-allied turkey‟s irredentist ambitions in the balkans). furthermore, the expulsions were extremely unpopular among the ethnic bulgarians, and helped to hasten the demise of communism. 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the occupied territories, international religious freedoms report 2006, available online: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2006/71423.htm, accessed march 28, 2009. vyronis, jr., s. 1969-1970. the byzantine legacy and ottoman forms. dumbarton oaks papers 23: 251-308. watchtower. 2007. the official site of the jehovah‟s witnesses, ”www.watchtower.org, accessed april 16, 2007. wood, jr., j. e. 1967. christianity and the state. journal of the american academy of religion, 35 (3): 257-270. zhidovetz, v. 2004. bulgaria prez vekovete i dnes, sofia: sv. georgi pobedonosetz. zuckerman, p. 2006. the cambridge companion to atheism. cambridge: cambridge university press. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2003/24348.htm http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90168.htm http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2006/71423.htm http://www.watchtower.org/ queering civil society in postsocialist slovakia volume 21, number 2 queering civil society in postsocialist slovakia viera wallace-lorencová, university of massachusetts, amherst © 2003 viera wallace-lorencová all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the emerging visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-identified people is a contested story in slovakia’s postsocialist transformations, one that continues to be absent from contemporary academic examinations of eastern europe. my task is to disrupt dominant narratives of postsocialist transformations that efface the politics of sexual difference. based on data obtained via ethnographic research among slovak lesbian and gay activists from the nongovernmental organizations ganymedes, museion, altera, habio, ckkism, podisea, and the political initiative iniciatíva inakosť, my larger project is to articulate the political significance of emerging visibility of sexual difference. this paper considers nascent lesbian and gay activism as contributing to the shaping of civil society in slovakia, simultaneously benefiting from and contesting the hegemonic and homogenizing processes of european integration and globalization.1 magic cure in the summer of 2000, talk about “homocilín” began to spread around bratislava, generated by an inconspicuous postcard left on café tables, handed out in the streets, and distributed in mailboxes within the city’s first district. the postcard, designed by a lesbian activist bea gál and printed by the slovak advertisement agency “boomerang,” resembled ordinary junk mail. large letters superimposed over a drawing of enlarged white tablets, reminiscent of generic aspirin, spelled the following message: “homocilín. new! recommended by mudr. ján černokňažník. guaranteed to cure homosexuality.” a detailed explanation, printed in smaller letters, read: “lowers temperature. reacts within 1 minute. 10 tablets per package.”2 the card explicitly aimed to parody the call for medical treatment of homosexuality advocated by the minister of health, clinical psychiatrist alojz rakús. its sarcastic tone was amplified by the fictional name of its signatory, mudr. ján černokňažník (doctor wizard), a teasing pun upon the name of the minister of justice, judr. ján čarnogurský. his infamous statement – “while i am a minister of justice, the registered partnership of homosexuals will not exist in slovakia!”3 – in unison with rakús’ call for a medical cure for homosexuality gained the instant attention of the slovak print and broadcast media. in the months to follow, these assertions were echoed in parliamentary discussions of proposed legislative reforms that addressed the legal protection of individuals on the basis of sexual orientation. relying on parody and appropriation of the mechanisms of a market economy through a simulation of advertising, “homocilín” made a playful yet sophisticated political statement -a refusal of lesbian and gay activists to be silenced by antigay politicians. the email address of the gay and lesbian political initiative iniciatíva inakosť, the artist’s name, and the free boomerang cards logo printed on the reverse side precluded possible ambiguities about the card’s origins or its authors’ determination to talk back. i offer this vignette from the summer of 2000 to capture the atmosphere that characterized the early phases of my fieldwork, and to exemplify the culturally situated forms of political interaction initiated by slovak lesbian and gay rights activists. drawing on my ethnographic data, and a variety of print, electronic, and audiovisual sources of information, i aim to discuss the effects of lesbian and gay activism on the making of civil society in contemporary slovakia by interpreting various modes of interaction between lesbian and gay activists, other third sector4 activists, the slovak government and transnational institutions. brave new world a proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (ngos) and political initiatives advocating legislative recognition of the human rights of all individuals – regardless of ethnicity, jen typewritten text 103 volume 21, number 2 nationality, race, class, sex, religious affiliation or sexual orientation – is a prominent feature of the first decade of east european postsocialist transformations. civil society, a key signifier of the post-1989 brave new world5 in-the-making, has become a project embraced in slovakia by politicians, entrepreneurs, and thousands of civic activists, including gay and lesbianidentified activists of different ages, occupations, and socio-economic backgrounds. the first ngos concerned with the rights of sexual minorities in the slovak and czech republics were founded by a handful of gay men and lesbians only months after the velvet revolution in november 1989 brought closure to the totalitarian regime in czechoslovakia. 6 ganymedes, the movement for equal rights of homosexual citizens in the slovak republic, founded in bratislava in june 1990, was the first and for several years the only gay and lesbian organization in slovakia. as ganymedes crystallized into a contact place for a growing number of gay-identified men, in 1993 lesbian activists created museion,7 the first slovak nongovernmental organization facilitating contact between lesbian-identified women. in the following years, a small but growing network of lesbian, gay and bisexual activists developed in slovakia around nine ngos: ganymedes, museion, altera, and habio in bratislava, ckkism and podisea in banská bystrica, ganymedes and hab in košice, another branch of ganymedes in the town of handlová. upon learning about the activities of these ngos during my field research, i began to conceive of them as nodal points in a network of complex flows of power relations (e.g., between aid recipients and donors) and multiple trajectories of interaction (e.g., between local and supranational human rights organizations) that uniquely affect lgbt community formation in slovakia.8 in response to increasing gay and lesbian visibility, the slovak media and in the past three years, the government, have begun to pay attention to the status of sexual minorities in slovakia. despite the slovak parliament’s persistent rejection of the registered partnership statute (zákon o životnom partnerstve) and other activist-initiated anti-discriminatory legislative proposals, members of the emerging queer community perceive the last three years to have been a gradual move up from invisibility. in addition to the slovak government and national media, a number of transnational institutions became interested in the status of sexual minorities in slovakia: the european commission (ec), the international lesbian and gay association (ilga) and amnesty international (ai) have engaged in a careful monitoring of slovakia’s progress in the area of human rights, including the rights of sexual minorities. in the past year, these institutions have been paying close attention to the slovak parliamentary discussion of the equal treatment law (zákon o rovnakom zaobchádzaní or so called antidiskriminačný zákon). this has been repeatedly stalled by deputies from the christian democratic movement, who vociferously oppose the law’s inclusion of sexual orientation as a basis for discrimination. among the main arguments repeatedly presented by the slovak parliamentary deputies who oppose special legal recognition of the rights of sexual minorities are claims that the slovak constitution already guarantees equal treatment to all citizens. they insist that discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation does not exist, given that no cases of such discrimination have ever been brought to the attention of the national or the regional-level courts. some have even argued that sexual orientation is not an issue that belongs to politics. these arguments are neither new, nor surprising, given the legacy of the medical discourse on sexual deviance, the collective memory of the old anti-sodomy statutes, and the current revival of catholicism in postsocialist slovakia, which simultaneously reinforces the stigmatization of non-normative sexuality in slovakia. the legacy of religious, medical and legal discourses the effects of discursive construction of homosexual behavior as a sin, crime, and/or mental illness, theorized by michel foucault in his first volume of the history of sexuality, have historically had an important place in the formation and perpetuation of heteronormative and homophobic attitudes in the western world. condemnation of homosexual behavior by the catholic church has found a fertile ground in contemporary slovakia, where 69 % of adult citizens identify as roman catholics.9 it is not a coincidence that the key public figures reproving the non-discriminatory legislation on the grounds of sexual orientation are affiliated with the jen typewritten text 104 volume 21, number 2 christian democratic movement, a conservative political party with a significant representation in contemporary slovak politics. contemporary advocates of the medical cure of homosexuality represent a reminder that century-old medical discourses categorizing homosexuality as a sexual deviance continue to play a powerful role in the stigmatization of homosexuality today. during my research, i recorded personal narratives revealing that not only religious and medical definitions of homosexuality, but also the threat of punitive consequences of homosexual behavior are still alive in the collective memory of slovaks. the anti-sodomy statutes adopted in 1878 in the austro-hungarian monarchy defined homosexual behavior a “criminal act against morality,” and those found guilty of committing sodomy faced up to one year of imprisonment. 10 in 1918, anti-sodomy statutes were adopted by the legislature of the newly formed czechoslovak republic, and became known as paragraph 129(b) of the criminal code. for seventy-two years (1918-1992), slovaks shared the same territory, constitution and legislation with czechs and a number of ethnic minorities, and for more than four decades of “actually existing socialism” (1948-1989), the discursive construction of a proper citizen as monogamous, married, procreative, heterosexual and allegedly asexual beyond the spousal bedroom, effectively rendered invisible any form of non-normative sexual desire and behavior. in 1961, during the post-stalinist era of state socialism, the government’s revision of paragraph 129(b) resulted in the decriminalization of homosexuality in czechoslovakia, and stated that consensual sex between same-sex adults had no punitive legal consequences as long as both partners were eighteen or older. 11 while de jure homosexuality was decriminalized, de facto non-normative sexual desire and behavior continued to be stigmatized and thus invisible for the following three decades. on the surface, the public sphere remained desexualized, and the city’s landscape reflected the normative sexual politics fostered by dominant legal, medical, and media discourses. and yet, the discursively reinforced heterosexual imperative did not prevent men who sought sexual encounters with other men from frequenting the city’s regular cruising places. in my conversations with an older generation of gay bratislavans i learned about bars, parks and public bathrooms that have been, for a long time, the only public places of homoerotic desire and same-sex sexual behavior, simultaneously visible and invisible. among the popular pre-1989 cruising places of gay men was avion, a park near the town’s oldest bus station; the public bathroom situated nearby was one of three bathrooms known in the gay community as the bermuda triangle (bermudský trojuholník). the ganymedes fountain, situated in front of the slovak national theatre, and a small café in the nearby hotel carlton in downtown bratislava, were popular meeting places frequented by gay men and some lesbians until the first openly gay bars were established in bratislava in 1990, within a few months after the collapse of socialism. in 1990, the new postsocialist government lowered the age of consent between same-sex partners to fifteen, the same standard set for heterosexual partners. interaction with government the post-1989 relationship between slovak civic organizations and the government has shifted through several phases: from a period of shared enthusiasm and optimistic visions of civil society (1990-1993), to explicit antagonism between the government and the more progressive fraction of the third sector (1993-1998), to a period of renewed cooperation signaled by the government’s interest in building a partnership with civic activists (1999-2003). despite the government’s effort to tighten cooperation with and within the third sector, my interviews and observations reveal that many civic activists remained reluctant to associate with the government in any shape or form. similarly, the grémium tretieho sektora – g3s (gremium of the third sector), one of several ngo umbrella organizations established in april 1999 to foster third sector cooperation, has been met with caution by many grassroots civic activists. 12 the feeling of disillusionment with the g3s, echoed in many of my conversations with lesbian and gay activists, is clearly articulated in the following statement revealing the frustration by one activist: at the beginning, the g3s was quite a strong and healthy element but today, its strength has faded and i follow their activities only through a newsletter that they force on all ngos. […] i perceive them as being very formal. […] i often witness a strong resistance of ngo jen typewritten text 105 volume 21, number 2 activists towards their inclusion into a kind of formal centralized institution, because consequently, civil society becomes, in the eyes of public, reduced to a few individuals, and those who do not fit, who disagree, either disappear or become automatically associated with activities, interests and ideas of a big fish. 13 while many activists reproach the g3s for favoring certain ngos, my research also revealed that many have a limited knowledge of the g3s’s activities and/or avoid interacting with its representatives, preferring alternative strategies of communicating their message directly to government officials. among the first attempts of gay and lesbian activists to initiate direct interaction with the government were letters written by the coordinators of the ngo ganymedes, requesting the government to respond to the registered partnership statute draft (zákon o registrovanom partnerstve osôb rovnakého pohlavia) developed by gay rights activists with the assistance of a team of lawyers (who wished to remain anonymous). the first round of letters, addressed in may 1997 to the slovak government, and in january 1998 to the prime minister vladimír mečiar, together with the representatives of eleven political parties, was ignored. after the change in the political climate following the elections in 1998, gay and lesbian activists began a new phase of political lobbying. in november 1999, ganymedes was the first organization to publicly critique the discriminatory aspects of the draft of the bilateral treaty between the vatican and the slovak government. in february 2000, with regard to the government’s upcoming re-codification of the civil law, lesbian and gay activists from ganymedes, museion, altera and habio submitted a revised draft of the life partnership statute (zákon o životnom partnerstve osôb rovnakého pohlavia) to the chairmen of seventeen parliamentary committees formed by the new government, who responded with a prompt and polite reply that the proposal had been received and forwarded to the minister of justice, judr. ján čarnogurský. months of silence followed. on may 6th 2000, representatives of six gay and lesbian organizations – altera, ckkism, ganymedes, habio, h-plus, and museion – met in bratislava to discuss the legal status of sexual minorities in slovakia and to consider ways to increase acceptance of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transsexuals by the heterosexual and gender normative majority. the participants of this meeting agreed to draft a charter that would become a founding document of the political initiative iniciatíva inakosť – spolužitie bez diskriminácie sexuálnych menšín (the initiative difference – coexistence without discrimination of sexual minorities). this group undertook a series of activities which contributed to heightened gay and lesbian visibility in slovakia: they established initiative difference, circulated the inin charter (charta iniciatívy inakosť), launched the first gay and lesbian monthly periodical atribút g/l, lobbied the parliament, drafted letters to the government officials, organized press conferences, and sought access to the mainstream media. in spring 2001, ganymedes launched a campaign “je normálne byť iny” (it is normal to be different)14, that aimed to initiate a positive public discussion of homosexuality and to seek public support for the institution of the registered partnership of gay and lesbian couples, and legislative prohibition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. in march 2001, gay and lesbian activists, in alliance with activists from other marginalized groups, participated in the march of tolerance (pochod tolerancie), 15 the rally against racism, anti-semitism, fascism and homophobia. simultaneously, public antigay sentiments voiced by several prominent political figures (some of which i quoted in the introduction of this article) began to proliferate. heated debates in the parliament peaked in july 2001, during discussion of the amendments to the labor code and the laws on the civil service and public service. representatives from the party of the democratic left (sdľ) proposed that “the list of explicit bans on workplace discrimination be expanded to include sexual orientation…[and] that equal social benefits rights (i.e. “maternity leave,” bereavement leave after the death of a partner, etc.) be guaranteed to employees in homosexual partnerships.”16 it was in response to this proposal that the former minister of education, katarína slavkovská, voiced her discriminatory attitudes towards gayand lesbian-identified teachers. she was joined by another parliamentary deputy, víťazoslav móric, from the conservative right party true sns (pravá sns), who asserted that he “prefers to speak of faggots (buzeranti)”17 rather than gay men. after the members of the parliament refused to support the proposals pertaining to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, jen typewritten text 106 volume 21, number 2 the activists from the initiative difference drafted a letter to president rudolf schuster, requesting that the law be returned to the parliament for discussion. in august 2001, initiative difference organized three gay pride marches in the slovak cities of bratislava, banská bystica and košice. a street performance of a wedding ceremony performed by fellow lesbian activists during the gay pride march in bratislava in august 2001 attracted instant media attention. the wedding of a lesbian couple dressed up as brides, both wearing white veils covering up their faces, black shirts with the inscription “lesbian,” and white bell-bottom slacks, could be interpreted as a parody of the ritual of heterosexual marriage, as well as a parody of heterosexual subjectivity. while only several dozen gay, lesbian and bisexual activists participated in the march, the nation-wide media coverage helped to achieve the main goal of this strategic act of antiheteronormative contestation – to arouse public discourse about the proposed registered partnership law, which was scheduled to be discussed in parliament weeks later. also, gay pride in banská bystrica attracted considerable attention, thanks to a visual art exhibit titled “black-and-white statements about the pink world: different forms of homophobia”, a collage of anti-gay statements by slovak public figures installed in the local art gallery by two lesbian activists. the months of intensive lobbying resulted in a regular dialogue between gay rights activists and several progressive parliamentary deputies. however, most government officials were still reluctant to engage in interaction with gay rights advocates, despite the attempts of g3s to include civic activists in the ongoing legislative reform. in this context, the conference on the registered partnership statute in spring 2001 that brought together ngo activists, lawyers and government officials proved more productive then previous lobbying efforts. in october 2001, for the first time in the history of the slovak parliament, a group of eight parliamentary representatives presented a proposal of the life partnership statute pertaining to same-sex partners, calling for equal status of same-sex partnership and heterosexual matrimony in all aspects, with the exception of child adoption. in the following months, gay rights activists began to lobby also for the legal amendments of the constitution of the slovak republic,18 the labor code and laws about public and state service, pertaining to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. another example of government initiated interaction with gay and lesbian activists was a workshop organized in bratislava in the spring 2002. at this workshop, gay rights activists, along with the coordinators of antiracist, women’s rights, environmentalist, and other civic organizations were invited to comment on the equal treatment law. the purpose of the workshop was to develop a strong proposal to be presented in the upcoming parliamentary discussion, however, in june 2002, a majority of parliamentary deputies voted against the inclusion of the proposal. lesbian and gay activists who participated in the workshop were extremely disappointed, and after a prompt mobilization of supporters from various ngos, and with the help of a pro-active journalist, the daily newspaper sme published a petition, demanding that parliament hold a discussion about this important proposal. in addition to queer activists, many straight supporters, including some well-known writers and artists, signed the petition. the signatories of the petition organized a press conference, followed by a rally in front of the parliament. the events received national media coverage, yet no response from the parliament. the deputies voting at the parliament’s session in june 2002 against the proposal calculated that the next discussion would not be scheduled until after the upcoming elections in september 2002. while the deputies from the sdl (social democratic left) and smk (hungarian coalition party) attempted to bring the equal treatment law proposal back to the parliamentary discussion, no other political parties were willing to discuss this contested issue until after the elections. in february 2003, the proposal of the equal treatment law has been finally resubmitted for comments, and was expected to be included in the parliamentary discussion by fall 2003. from the perspective of lesbian and gay activists, the parliament’s compromise in the newest amendment of the labor code (instituting a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in employer-employee relations), its rejection of the life partnership statute pertaining to same-sex partners, its ongoing attempt to exclude sexual minorities from the equal treatment law, and its passing of a controversial “declaration on the sovereignty of eu member states and candidate jen typewritten text 107 volume 21, number 2 countries regarding cultural and ethical issues” clearly signal that while legislative reform continues to be in a state of flux, the slovak government continues to fail to improve the legal rights of sexual minorities. interaction with transnational institutions in slovakia, as well as other eu accession countries, a key point of reference in the area of human rights is “the treaty of amsterdam,” which came into force on may 1, 1999. 19 a subject of heated debates is a recognition of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, stated in the treaty’s article 13 ec: without prejudice to the other provisions of this treaty and within the limits of the power conferred by it upon the community, the council, acting unanimously on a proposal from the commission and after consulting the european parliament, may take appropriate action to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion and belief, disability, age and sexual orientation.20 the implications of article 13 ec for the needed legislative reform triggered a series of interactions between slovak legislators, politicians, and civic activists in national as well as transnational contexts. in the summer of 2001, slovak lesbian and gay activists participated in a public hearing on the position of lesbian women and gay men in the eu accession countries, organized by the intergroup on gay and lesbian rights, an informal body of the european parliament. they also initiated a meeting with a representative of the european commission directorate-general for enlargement (ecdge), in order to bring attention to the status of sexual minorities in the ecdge’s assessment of slovakia’s readiness for eu membership. in the fall of 2001, in coordination with the international lesbian and gay association (ilga), slovak gay and lesbian activists began to conduct the first community survey on forms of discrimination against gay men, lesbians and bisexuals. the purpose of the survey, already completed in many other european countries (eu member as well accession states), was to document the forms of existing discrimination against sexual minorities in slovakia, and to provide a basis for comparison of the status of sexual minorities across europe. 21 the findings of this survey were circulated among the representatives of the ep intergroup on gay and lesbian rights, ilga-europe, slovak government, media and interested ngos. in 2002, in compliance with “the treaty of amsterdam” and other ecdge guidelines and recommendations, the slovak government began to draft a proposal of the equal treatment law (the so-called antidiscrimination law). in june, after the parliament turned down the cabinet’s first draft with a request to exclude sexual orientation from protection, the coalition of gay, lesbian and other civic activists responded with the open letter to members of the slovak parliament, demanding a parliamentary discussion of the original proposal. “without us, you will never make it to the eu!” in june 2002, i had an opportunity to observe the impromptu formation of a coalition of activists fighting for the rights of sexual minorities, to attend a press conference that brought instantaneous media attention to the open letter, and to participate in the rally against discrimination staged in front of the slovak parliament, both organized by the newly formed coalition. as a participant in the rally against discrimination, i had an opportunity to observe grassroots activists’ awareness that strings attached to slovakia’s eu membership could work in favor of lgbt activists. as one of the key speakers put it in the conclusion of her speech addressed to the parliamentary deputies, “without us, you will never make it to the eu!” 22 this statement reveals the idiosyncrasies of the brave new world in-themaking: the contested nature of the interaction between transnational institutions, slovak government and civic activists, fueled by the awareness that successful integration of slovakia into eu is contingent upon its speedy implementation of anti-discriminatory legislation. despite the ecdge’s expectations that the slovak parliament will ratify the equal treatment law by the second half of 2003, christian democratic movement deputies continue to argue against the inclusion of sexual minorities in the equal treatment statute. and yet, slovak lesbian and gay activists expect that jen typewritten text 108 volume 21, number 2 the pressure to bring slovak legislation in line with eu standards will continue to trigger radical shifts in domestic legislative reform. i believe slovakia’s impending eu membership gives reasons for optimism, yet, it is important to caution that the adoption of antidiscriminatory laws, combined with a rechanneling of foreign aid to politically less stabilized regions, might potentially have a regulatory and even a numbing effect on the gay and lesbian ngo activism. however, the effects of unruly politics of sexual difference remain unpredictable. references after amsterdam: sexual orientation and the european union. a guide. 1999. brussels: ilga europe. cornwall, mark. 2002. “heinrich rutha and the unraveling of a homosexual scandal in 1930s czechoslovakia,” glq, vol. 8 (3): 319-347. daučíková, anna, bútorová, zora and wallace-lorencová, viera. 2003. “the status of sexual minorities.” in: mesežnikov, g. (eds et al). slovakia 2002: global report on the state of society. bratislava: institute for public affairs. demeš, pavol. 2001. “the third sector and volunteerism.” in: mesežnikov, g. (eds et al). slovakia 2000: global report on the state of society. bratislava: institute for public affairs. fanel, jiří. 2000. gay historie (gay history). praha: dauphin. foucault, michel. [1976] 1990. the history of sexuality: volume 1: an introduction. new york: vintage books. huxley, aldous. [1932] 1998. brave new world. new york. harpercollins publishers. jójárt, paula, marianna šípošová, and anna daučíková et al. 2002. správa o diskriminácii lesbických žien, gejov, bisexuálov a bisexuálok na slovensku/ report on discrimination on lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. bratislava, slovakia: q archív. mesežnikov, g. (eds et al). 2001. slovakia 2001: global report on the state of society. bratislava: institute for public affairs. endnote 1my data include drafts of anti-discriminatory legislative proposals, parliamentary discussions, media reports and commentaries, press and broadcast interviews with ngo coordinators, hybrid examples of media representation of non-normative sexuality published in slovak media, and a variety of visual and audiovisual artifacts. some of these artifacts are located in q archiv, documentary and information center, established in bratislava in january 2002. i am grateful for an ongoing support during my fieldwork to all people from the emerging slovak lgbt community who made this research project possible. 2 homocilín © bea gál, 2000. the original slovak text: “homocilín. spoľahlivo odstraňuje homosexualitu. znižuje teplotu. účinkuje už po jednej minúte. 10 tabliet. novinka! odporúča mudr. ján černokňažník.” 3 jan čarnogurský, the press conference of the christian democratic party, aug. 17, 2000. 4 the term “third sector,” commonly used by the development scholars, donors and activists, refers to the formally registered, non-governmental organizations (ngos), civil society organizations, foundations, and non-investment funds, mostly funded by the western european and northern american development agencies (the “first sector” refers to the state, the “second sector” to the market). 5 i appropriate the phrase “brave new world,” coined by william shakespeare in his play the tempest, in a sarcastic venue similar to aldous huxley’s novel brave new world, to refer to the vision of a new world-in-themaking, following the 1989 transformations in eastern europe. 6 in czechoslovakia, the first ngos concerning sexual minorities were ganymedes, the movement for equal rights of homosexual citizens in the slovak republic, founded in bratislava in june 1990, jen typewritten text 109 volume 21, number 2 and soho, the association of homosexual citizens in the czech republic, founded in brno in june 1990. 7 museion, established in bratislava in 1993, was officially registered with the ministry of the interior in may 1994. see hana f., www.lesba.sk 8 this paper is limited to the analysis of the effects of ngo-affiliated gay and lesbian activists on the formation of civil society in slovakia. an in-depth analysis of the emerging slovak lgbt community formation is the objective of my dissertation. 9 according to 2001 census, slovaks claimed the following religious affiliation: 69% roman catholics, 7% protestant, 4% greek catholic, 2% reformed, 1% orthodox, 1 %other, 13% atheist, 3% did not declare. see mesežnikov, g. eds et al (2001:17). 10 see jiří fanel (2000); also mark cornwall (2002:331). 11 the revision of the paragraph 129(b) was discussed as early as 1937. see mark cornwall, 2002: 345. the nazi occupation of czechoslovakia and consequent political development during and after ww ii disrupted the 1930s discussions about decriminalizing homosexuality in czechoslovakia. 12 in the year 2000, slovak ngo umbrella organizations included: g3s, regional gremiums, ekofórum, and the donor’s forum. see pavol demeš (2001:471). 13 monika c., february 2003. 14 the campaign “je normálne byť iný” had a financial support from the slovak foundation npoa (nadácia pre podporu občianskych aktivít), with funding from the ec program phare. 15 pochod tolerancie (the march of tolerance), a rally against racism, antisemitism, fascism, and homophobia, has been organized by the ngo ľudia proti rasizmu (people against racism) in bratislava on march 14, 2001. 16 see daučíková, anna, bútorová, zora and wallace-lorencová, viera (2003:751). 17 see nový čas, july 4, 2001. 18 the proposed amendment concerns the article 12, paragraph 2, of the constitution of the slovak republic, known as antidiscriminatory clause. 19 “the treaty of amsterdam,” article 13, covers discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, together with sex, racial or ethnic group, religion, belief, disability and age. see after amsterdam: sexual orientation and the european union. a guide (1999:6). 20 see after amsterdam (1999:16). 21 see jójárt, paula, marianna šípošová, and anna daučíková et al. 2002. 22 anna d., in her speech at the rally in front of the parliament, bratislava, june 27, 2002, paraphrasing the statement “europe will be europe for all, or it will be nothing at all” quoted in after amsterdam (1999: 8) and elsewhere. jen typewritten text 110 green carnivores, mad cows, and gene tech: the politics of food in hungarian environmentalism volume 21, number 1 green carnivores, mad cows, and gene tech: the politics of food in hungarian environmentalism krista harper, smith college © 2003 krista harper all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. anthropologists and sociologists, from levistrauss to bourdieu, have observed that consuming food is a profoundly social act through which people express relationships and perform concepts of social order. historically, food has provided a rich political symbol and rallying point, from the boston tea party to the sepoy rebellion of 1857 in colonial india, when muslim and hindu troops rebelled against their british officers upon learning that their rifle cartridges were greased with suet and lard - foods considered impure according to religious dietary taboos. food features in eastern europe’s history of political conflict; for example, the december 1980 solidarity strikes in poland were touched off by government announcements of christmastime food shortages (kubik 1995). since 1989, food and daily provisioning has become the most immediate medium through which eastern europeans experience the vast political and economic shifts following the collapse of state socialism in their daily lives. perhaps no other area of contemporary political action has as much to say about food as the international environmental movement. in the past decade, greenpeace activists have battled mcdonald’s and monsanto, the chemical agrobusiness giant. grassroots environmental groups in cuba, the u.s., argentina, and mexico have advanced the cause of organic agriculture. the slow food movement, which began in the mid-1980s as a neighborhood action against the construction of a mcdonald’s outlet at the spanish steps in rome, went on to forge connections between gastronomical and ecological survival and has established chapters throughout the globe (petrini 2003, stille 2001). food safety scares, from alar-coated apples to mad cow disease, have spurred alliances between consumer advocacy groups and environmental organizations in north america and western europe (james 1993, strydom 2002). how do environmental activists politicize foods, and how does this process differ cross-culturally? drawing from my ethnographic fieldwork among environmentalists in hungary in 1995-97 and 2000, i explore political discourses on food, diet, and risk. green carnivores? environmentalism and the political meanings of food one of the first things i observed during my fieldwork was the difference between north american and eastern european environmentalists’ orientation to food. shortly after my arrival in hungary in 1995, i discovered that many of my preconceptions about environmentalist practice were culturally specific to north america. looking for urban environmental groups where i could do fieldwork, i sought out natural foods stores and herbalist shops. i expected these shops to have bulletin boards with flyers for environmental organizations, as is often the case in the united states. as i found no such flyers in these bio-boltok (“bio-stores”), this approach bore little fruit, and i located research participants through other means. as i got involved in environmental groups and began socializing with activists following meetings and demonstrations, i soon learned that the vast majority of my research participants were not vegetarians, at a time when vegetarianism had become somewhat of a “litmus test” for environmentalist commitment in the united states. while the vegan diet—free of dairy products, eggs, and any other animal-based foods—was gaining popularity in the united states for ethical and health reasons, it was almost completely unknown in hungary, as in most of eastern europe. jen typewritten text 103 volume21, number 1 a small number of hungarian activists opted for a vegetarian diet in hungary in the early 1990s because of the ecological advantages to eating low on the food chain or because of an ethical decision to avoid meat out of concern for animals. these few eccentric souls endured countless restaurant meals of rice, frozen peas and carrots, and deep-fried cheese triangles served with tartar sauce or blackcurrant jelly—a meal that could hardly support any health-based arguments for vegetarianism. at home, they fared better, drawing from an array of meatless hungarian recipes traditionally prepared for lent, fôzelék (creamed vegetable dishes), recently introduced middle eastern and asian foods, and salads. initially, i was flummoxed by hungarian environmentalists’ apparent indifference to health and dietary practices that have been associated with environmental politics in north america for over a decade. this perplexity caused me to reflect on the different roles food consumption choices play in environmentalism in the two settings. there was no shortage of interest in the politics of food among environmentalists throughout hungary. activists railed against the spread of mcdonald’s and other fast-food chains and organized against nestle’s and pizza hut’s attempts to invade hungarian schools through ostensibly charitable contests (for detailed analysis of these issues, see harper 1999a and 1999b). the point to be taken is not that food is politicized in north american environmentalism and not politicized in eastern european environmentalists, but that food is framed in markedly different ways as a political issue. these contrasting environmental discourses on food are illustrated in the environmentalists’ responses to the “mad cow disease” crisis of 1996 and in the ongoing european debates on gmo crops and foods, cases i will examine at greater length in the sections that follow. responses to the mad cow crisis in the united kingdom, the united states, and hungary the british, americans, and hungarians all reacted differently to the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (bse) crisis. the case of bse illuminates differences in cultural perceptions of food safety and risk, as well as the political stakes of framing food as an environmental issue. bse was identified by officials in the united kingdom as early as 1985 (adams 1998). bse is a degenerative disease affecting the brain and central nervous system in cattle—hence its popular name, “mad cow disease.” by 1987, british scientists had made the connection between bse and the common livestock feeding practice of supplementing cows’ usual diet grass and grain with industrial feed containing offal and bone-meal from sheep and cattle infected with scrapies, another degenerative disease affecting ruminants. after over a year of debate, the british government put into place a ban on livestock feed containing animal offal, and the problem of mad cow disease receded from public memory. all this changed when ten cases of a new form of creutzfeld-jacob disease (cjd) in humans were linked to the consumption of bseinfected beef in early 1996. in other words, a highly transmissible disease affecting the brain had jumped species. the british public was gripped by fears about food safety, consumers across europe lost confidence in the meat and dairy supply, and hundreds of thousands of cattle were destroyed. responding to citizens’ anxieties, the european union imposed a ban on british beef, causing sales to plummet further. prior to the mad cow epidemic, environmentalists in europe viewed the nuclear industry as the primary technological threat to health and the environment. the bse crisis placed the industrial food complex at the center of british, and indeed european, public debates about technological risks. as sociologist piet strydom observes, biotechnologies quickly assumed a symbolic importance once reserved for the sites of nuclear disasters: previously, names such as marcoule, gorleben, windscale/sellafield, harrisburg, and chernobyl were regarded as the most embittered social conflicts in advanced modern history. at the turn of the millennium, this symbolic quality accrued to the biotech industry…(strydom 2002: 33) like the threat of radiation, bse poses an invisible, imperceptible, and latent danger to health. unlike nuclear power, however, mad cow disease poses new issues of transmissibility and traceability—meaning that it is even more difficult to follow the epidemiological trail back to its specific point of origin in the feedlot or slaughterhouse (torny 2001). individual consumers’ purchasing decisions, therefore, do jen typewritten text 104 volume21, number 1 little to protect them from contamination. many western european consumers realized their limitations as consumers and pressured the european union to regulate and contain the crisis. while british environmentalists, like other western europeans, continued to pose questions about the larger health and environmental risks posed by british industrial agriculture, the general public gradually lost interest in bse. british officials eventually succeeded in quelling public fears by reframing the issue in economic terms as the “beef crisis” and rallied citizens around the patriotic cause of supporting farmers who suffered from the european union ban on british beef (adams 1998: 185). the certainty of economic losses trumped the uncertainties of applying the “precautionary principle” to the industrial food complex. in the united states, media reports of bse were framed almost immediately as an economic issue affecting the livestock industry, rather than as a threat to health and the environment. nevertheless, a few journalists and public figures took a stand on mad cow disease. those critical of industrial livestock production framed the issue in terms of consumer safety. the consumers’ union published several articles on bse in the widely circulated magazine, consumer reports (“can it happen here?” 1997). oprah winfrey discovered the power of the american beef industry when she invited an expert on bse to appear on her show in 1996. upon hearing about the british epidemic, winfrey exclaimed that she would never eat another hamburger. texas cattle ranchers filed a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against winfrey on the grounds that her comments had harmed beef sales. winfrey later won the lawsuit, but the case revealed the high stakes of criticizing american beef producers (james 1998). what is interesting to note is that in north american discourses on bse, the media presented individual consumers and negatively affected corporations as the politically salient “stakeholders.” having already learned some lessons about food and environmental activism earlier in my fieldwork, i had the opportunity to observe hungarians’ response to the “mad cow disease” scare of 1996. once again, i was surprised by environmentalists’ reactions to the bse crisis that was riveting the western european public. more than one of my research participants responded to news of the mad cow epidemic by saying, “who needs british beef? we’ve got good hungarian kolbász (pork sausage)!” environmentalists’ faith in the traditional hungarian diet was not solely based on the simple fact that no link had been made between pork products and bse or cjd. environmentalists trusted in the safety of the domestic sausage supply because they believed it was produced in smaller farms and processing facilities and therefore had the credibility that eastern europeans more generally attribute to homegrown produce (see also hervouet, this issue; gabriel, 2003 and this issue; smith, this issue). in the case of pork farming by smallscale producers in east-central europe, this perception is largely borne out by fact—even as new european union harmonization policies favor the larger, multinational producers who, environmentalists believe, are more inclined to use the industrial feeding pactices implicated in the bse crisis (dunn 2002). gene-tech guinea pigs? the bse crisis of 1996 alerted consumers and environmentalists throughout europe to the risks posed by industrial agriculture. following the mad cow scare, environmentalists took a growing interest in the issues surrounding genetically modified organism (gmo) crops. in mid-1997, marta takacs,1 a student activist in the university-based environmental group etk, began a campaign to inform hungarians about genetically engineered foods. i asked her why she chose to work on this particular issue. she told me that hungarians knew absolutely nothing about the genetically engineered soy and corn products that were already entering the market. marta believed that hungarians should be informed so that they could examine the health and ecological risks and organize against growing and importing genetically engineered crops. she hoped that her campaign, which was kicked off by a public debate, would spur on public pressure for research and state regulations on gene technologies. an early product of the gene-tech campaign were postcards printed with stickers with biohazard symbols saying “genpiszkalt – ne vedd be!” – “genetically contaminated – don’t swallow it!” activists were encouraged to stick the stickers onto packages of food containing soy and corn products – the most jen typewritten text 105 volume21, number 1 common genetically modified foods on the market. i attended an international environmental conference with marta in june 1997 in amsterdam, where she shared news and information with an environmentalist from poland. the polish activist related a story to demonstrate how western european companies take advantage of the poles’ relative lack of environmental awareness. a german biotechnology corporation genetically engineered potatoes in the laboratory, but it needed to test the new potatoes in a field trial. the company planted a field with the biotech potatoes, but local environmental activists in germany kept digging up the potatoes at night and obstructing the field experiment. finally, the company leased a plot of land from a polish farmer just across the border. the biotechnology researchers were able to continue their experiment unimpeded because polish citizens had never even heard of genetically manipulated potatoes, let along developed opinions for or against them. upon her return to budapest, takacs shared this story with other members of the elte klub. gyorgy “piros” lajos, the editor of the club’s gaia sajtószemle (“gaia news review”), was especially fascinated by the polish environmentalist’s story. earlier that year, piros had begun a series of editorials in the newsletter, “reports on the colony.” these satirical editorials integrated current events into a dystopic science-fiction narrative in the style of orwell or huxley (two writers much loved by hungarian environmentalists). each piece in the series was presented as a corporate/colonial officer’s letter reporting to the home office on events in a new colony. piros’ next installment in the series included a commentary on genetic technologies: in parliament, three representatives of the opposition criticized the progress of beneficent gene technology. they argued for ethical regulations on scientific research and spoke of philosophical and moral questions. one of them even had the nerve to suggest that importing genetically manipulated foods means that poor countries have become the laboratory guinea pigs for the rich countries. (györgy 1997) the passage touches upon environmentalists’ very real anxieties about the changing political ecology of post-socialism: the devaluation of the 1980s dissident dream of grassroots political participation and the fear of slipping into the “third world.”2 in the following year, takacs and other environmentalists stepped up their efforts to raise public awareness of gmos. takacs was selected as a member of a citizens’ and experts advisory board on gmos. as a member of this group, takacs was able to forge an unusual alliance between the environmental movement and the agricultural lobby. while environmentalists framed the gmo issue in terms of biohazards in the early months of the campaign, the framing of the gmo debate shifted to two themes of “better living through hungarian science” and “wholesome hungarian food and farms.” the first theme emerging in the gmo debate was that of pride in hungarian scientific and technological achievements. since environmentalists are often worried about the possible hazards caused by new technologies, they run the risk of being labeled “anti-science.” piros, in his “report from the colony,” expressed the concern that politicians would dismiss environmentalist misgivings about genetech food would be dismissed as anti-progress: “the greens and the parliamentary opposition united to demonstrate their anti-science attitude” (györgy 1997). hungarians take great pride in the large number of world-renowned, hungarianborn scientists3, and so being labeled anti-science is tantamount to being branded as anti-patriotic. when environmentalists lobbied for a moratorium on nuclear power in the mid-1990s, they were particularly concerned that hungarianborn nobel laureate edward teller traveled to budapest to make the case for nuclear power. the case against gmos, however, benefited from the association of patriotic sentiment and scientific achievement. in 1998, hungarian-born geneticist árpád pusztai appeared on a bbc news program and stated that, based on his research on the health effects of gm potato consumption in lab animals, he would not eat gm foods. pusztai went on to say, “it is very, very unfair to use our fellow citizens as guinea pigs” (“fears erupt” 1999). two days later, pusztai was suspended by his research institute in scotland, and his lab was dismantled. as pusztai defended his decision to go public with his research findings in a popular forum, the jen typewritten text 106 volume21, number 1 hungarian general public gained interest in the gmo issue. the second theme, “wholesome hungarian food and farms,” drew from popular perceptions of homegrown hungarian agricultural produce as healthier and better tasting than imported foods. this pride in hungarian farming is neatly encapsulated in the saying , magyarország europa éléskamrája” (“hungary is the pantry of europe”). this discourse on food resonated with the general public and appealed to hungary’s prospects for economic growth in its large agricultural sector. having recently witnessed the european union’s ban on british beef, hungarian farmers feared a similar reaction to gmo crops. this fear was borne out as individual countries such as italy imposed bans on gmos, with the european union following suit with a moratorium on new gmo products put in place in 1998. instead of lobbying for the deregulation of agricultural biotechnologies, hungarian farmers allied themselves with the environmental lobby and pushed for parliament to regulate the introduction of gmos. with the support of both environmentalists and farmers, the hungarian parliament passed a 1999 gmo law that surpassed even the european union’s regulations in stringency. although the united states is currently challenging the european union’s ban on gmos at the world trade organization, at press time the eu and hungary are standing by the moratorium. naturalizing the market through unnatural foods: environmentalist responses in the preceding sections, i examined differences between hungarian, american, and western european attitudes toward vegetarianism, the “mad cow” scare, and gmo crops and food products. i believe that the differences indicate contrasting ideological deployments and interpretations of food in socialist, post-socialist, and western marketbased economies. in britain and the united states, contemporary environmentalism is framed in terms of individual consumer preferences as much as it is in terms of government regulation of industry. in this setting, dietary practices are considered a consumer-activist strategy: exerting freedom of choice by “voting with one’s pocketbook”--and stomachs. by choosing not to eat meat, british and american vegetarians demonstrate their ideological commitments, making the personal world of consumption political (james 1993). because of their experiences under state socialism, environmentalists in eastern europe tend to frame consumption issues in a different light. in marked contrast with british and american environmentalist lifestyles and strategy, hungarian activists resist “making the personal political” and “voting with one’s pocketbook.” they prefer instead to locate decision-making in a more collective, public arena and criticize the voluntarist underpinnings of green consumerism. hungarian environmentalists reframe food consumption issues (and in particular food safety) as complex social problems requiring collective, societylevel solutions, and not as consumption choices of rational, atomistic individuals. references cited adams, barbara, 1998, timescapes of modernity: the environment and invisible hazards. new york: routledge. can it happen here? the puzzle of mad cow disease, 1997, consumer reports, july 1. dunn, elizabeth c., 2002, “trojan pig: paradoxes of food safety regulation.” paper presented at the workshop on "oikos and anthropos: rationality, technology, infrastructure." social science research council, prague, april 26-27, 2002. fears erupt over genetically modified food, 1999, bbc news, february 12. accessed online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/278354.st m györgy, lajos, 1997, jelentés a gyarmatról, 8. rész: a függetlenség már elavult fogalom... (“report on the colony, part 8: independence is already an outdated notion”), gaia sajtószemle 312, june 13. harper, k., 1999a, citizens or consumers? radical history review 74: p. 96-111. jen typewritten text 107 volume21, number 1 --------, 1999b, from green dissidents to green skeptics: environmental activists and post-socialist political ecology in hungary, in anthropology. university of california, santa cruz: santa cruz. james, allison, 1993, eating green(s) : discourses of organic food. in environmentalism : the view from anthropology , kay milton, ed. new york: routledge. james, reggie, 1998, the jury verdict in cattlemen v. oprah winfrey, press release, southwest regional office of the consumers’ union, february 28. accessed online at http://www.consumersunion.org/food/oprah.htm kubik, j., 1994, the power of symbols against the symbols of power: the rise of solidarity and the fall of state socialism in poland. university park, pa: university of pennsylvania. petrini, carlo, 2003, slow food: the case for taste, william mccuaig, trans. new york: columbia. stille, alexander, 2001, slow food: an italian answer to globalization. the nation 273 (6): pp. 11-16. strydon, piet, 2002, risk, environment, and society, philadelphia: open university press. torny, didier, 2001, tracking mad cow, 1985-2000,” presentation to the center for public policy and administration, university of massachusetts, amherst, october 11. notes 1 i have assigned pseudonyms to protect research informants’ confidentiality. 2 for further discussion of eastern europeans’ discourses on slipping “out of europe” and “into the third world,” see jennifer patico’s excellent essay in this issue. for a more detailed analysis of post-socialist political ecology, see harper 1999b. 3 the list of hungarian nobel laureates is includes five chemists, three biologists, and three physicists, in addition to several economists and literary figures. jen typewritten text 108 tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 29 politics of identity through school primers: discursive construction of legitimate image of state, nation and society in soviet and independent ukraine* olga filippova v.n. karazin kharkiv national university national curricula and politics of identity narratives and discourses introduced in school textbooks have unprecedented influence in the process of socialization and social production. besides the obvious goal of imparting basic knowledge about society and culture, school courses also possess latent functions that are no less significant: by means of discourses introduced in the textbooks dominating ideologies, norms, values and behaviors are reproduced. school textbooks thus are powerful tools for the implementation of identity politics, and national curricula should be examined for their role as forms of “identity politics” (apple and christian-smith 1991). politics of identity as theoretical concept and social practice narratives presented in school curricula are symbolic tools that mediate shared experience within a community. in what ways is the legitimacy of the state, society and nation formed? how are their corresponding forms of identity reproduced? who and what are taking part in the process? how exactly does identity formation unfold: as a process of enforcement (imposition) or recognition of identity? i will turn to the concept of identity politics to find the answers to these questions. identity politics emerged on the agenda of western social sciences in the 1960s when many previously powerless and discriminatedagainst groups pressed on to claim their place in the changing world. cressida heyes (2007) argues: “identity politics starts from analyses of oppression to recommend, variously, the reclaiming, redescription, or transformation of previously stigmatized accounts of group membership. rather than accepting the negative scripts offered by a dominant culture about one’s own inferiority, one transforms one’s own sense of self and community, often through consciousness-raising.” identity politics may concern any type of identity – gender, race, professional, religious, ethnic, regional or national identity, etc. the content and forms of identity politics, as well as its implementation and expression, are diverse just like the existing social fields. it is important to note that in post-socialist space identity politics finds especially vivid expression in the fields of national and ethnic identity. despite the fact that “identity politics” is a term used rather frequently in scholarly literature on postsocialism, scholars of post-socialism have not treated the concept to in-depth analysis. the essence of identity politics is found in concentrated form when we consider the “core issues” that motivate this politics. if for any political process the core issue is that of “who receives what,” for identity politics the main issue is “who controls the meaning and concept of identity in the society.” this leads to a further question: what are the tools for implementing identity politics? different theories offer various visions of the main question or essence of identity politics. marxist and neo-marxist approaches emphasize state control over identity politics; structural-functionalists highlight the influence of the social groups that people identify with; liberal political scientists ascribe primary roles to individuals; and post-structuralists assign major significance to the discourses used in everyday communication and practices. clearly, the methods and instruments of implementing identity politics are diverse and include legal and educational systems, political movements and non-governmental organizations, literature and arts (cinematography and animation), and mass media, among others. to understand processes of identity politics it is useful to consider the classification of forms and sources of identity formation developed by m. castells (1997:8): 1) legitimizing identity – used by the governing social institutions to broaden and rationalize their rule over social actors; 2) resistance identity – used by the underappreciated and/or stigmatized actors; and 3) projective identity – used by social actors who are building a new identity on the basis of accessible cultural material that predetermines that social status and that is directed towards the transformation of the social structure. identity politics is the field where anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 30 these forms and practices of identity construction meet and interact. inasmuch as in the modern context dominant social groups promote a singular and hegemonic worldview that is most beneficial for his or her own interests, national identity becomes imposed and identity politics takes on a form of enforcement. researchers have noted that social scientists have tended to view national identity as something that the nation state endows or imposes upon the individual. in this view, it is logical to focus on the active role of the nation-state, since citizens are viewed as little more than “carriers” of national identity, albeit passive ones (bechhofer et al. 1999:531). postmodernism grows out of the principles of pluralism and multiculturalism, eschews the domination of any specific group, and speaks against social or ethnic based privileges and discrimination (шнирельман 1998:66-67). in this context, identity politics is conceptualized as the politics of recognition, and the circle of social actors who participate in the collective construction of this identity significantly broadens. education system as a tool for implementing identity politics any society employs a wide range of practices triggering construction of national identity, which in turn is variously implemented via identity politics. van dijk pays special attention to the discursive fields where discursive practices of national identity construction take place: scientific and popular literature, the public arena (speeches and performances, political documents), semi-public discussions (focus groups), semi-private discussions (qualitative interviews), school curricula, and mass media (including internet communications). not all types of discourse have equal value in the process of social reproduction. the national education system, which arguably aims to homogenize citizens, plays a particularly significant role in constructing national identity. school curricula create a so-called “matrix” in the students’ awareness that they then use as a reference point in their relationship with history and modernity, evaluation of self and the other. van dijk (n.d.:17) offers a scheme of mechanisms of conceptualization and operationalization of identity that can be useful in researching ideology, school curricula and identity politics. he suggests the following categories around which collective and individual actions create individual and group identities: membership criteria: who does (not) belong? typical activities: what do we do? overall aims: what do we want? why do we do it? norms and values: what is good or bad for us? position: what are the relationships with others? resources: who has access to our group resources? in any given society the educational system at the most basic level of school textbooks reflects these categories around which identity is formed, including national identity. in this way, education is involved in actively constituting national identity, and the education system is the instrument for implementing identity politics. at the same time, existing research emphasizes that “national identity should not…be seen as a fairly passive means by which citizens are bound culturally and socially to the state, but a far more interactive process whereby individuals have available the means for constructing who they are and who they want to be” (bechhofer et al. 1999:530). examination of school primers despite a recent surge in interest in the analysis of school curricula especially history textbooks in institutions of secondary and higher education in the post-socialist region this interest has been limited mainly to academic historians and history teachers in schools. the topic has not been taken up by ukrainian social scientists (филиппова 2007). however, western researchers of ukraine and russia have investigated various aspects of educational systems and the formation of national and ethnic identities among school students. nancy popson (2001) has discussed the conceptualization of the ukrainian nation in school textbooks, and a. portnov (2004) analyzed ukrainian textbooks from the first decade of independence (19912001), paying special attention to discursive practices of legitimization of the image of the national past and concomitant images of “the other.” also, i. snezhkova (2004) conducted comparative research between kyivan and muscovite school students that focused on understanding the process of formation of ethnic self-awareness; she argued that this process is anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 31 influenced by new humanities textbooks that promote the new national orientation of the ruling elites. my project presented here offers analysis of school abc primers – the very first school textbooks encountered by any primary school student – as visual images and texts with the most concentrated expression of the discursive practices that legitimize the image of the society, state, and the nation. research objects for the purposes of this project, i compare primers published in 1989 (горецкий et al.), 1992 (вашуленко et al.), and 2004 (вашуленко and гуздик). the publication of these editions corresponds to important stages of political and social transformations: in 1989 the ukrainian soviet socialist republic was still part of the soviet union; 1992 came during the first few years of independence; and 2004 came on the heels of the first decade of ukrainian sovereignty. in my analysis of the primers i will track changes in the system of social values and the content of national identity, as well as standardization of the school students’ skills and knowledge. for the purposes of this study, i refer to these three primers respectively as “soviet primer” (1989), “primer of transition period” (1992) and “ukrainian primer” (2004). political-ideological socialization the very first pages of primers unfold before our eyes the political-ideological socialization of a child. the 1989 soviet primer centrally displays a portrait of the proletariat’s leader vladimir i. lenin the main symbol of the soviet ideology opposite a picture of schoolchildren who stand with their teacher on the background of the map of the ussr titled “our motherland – ussr.” (illustration 1) illustration 1. soviet primer the 1993 primer does not display lenin’s portrait; however the symbols of the newly independent ukraine are not yet represented. instead, we are presented with a neutral picture representing school life without an ideological message. the accompanying text cites the lines from a popular children’s song: “the first textbook, and the first bell – this is how the school years begin.” the collapse of the soviet union and the emergence of new sovereign states created a situation where school textbooks (as agents of official discourse) no longer associate ukrainian society with the soviet union; however the new markers of independent identity are not yet clearly developed. (illustration 2) illustration 2. primer of transition period anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 32 in contrast, the 2004 primer displays state symbols of independent ukraine – the coat of arms (national emblem) and flag, as well as the text of the national anthem. (illustration 3) illustration 3. ukrainian primer clearly, school students are involved in the process of identity formation from the first pages of their first schoolbook. this emerging social identity forms via children’s education according to the dominating ideology (e.g. 1989 primer) or national patriotism (2004 primer). national identity educational systems use a wide range of meaningful symbols in the process of molding students’ sense of national identity: cities where significant historical events (deemed as such by the ruling elites) took place; events (symbols of “spatial” identity); and outstanding historical figures (personified symbols). the primers’ goal is first of all to introduce children to the capital city and the heroes of the state to which they belong as citizens. the soviet primer (1989) displays the images of moscow and leningrad; the transitional period primer does not offer an image of the capital; and the 2004 primer has a picture of kyiv. when ukraine was part of the soviet union, the image of the multinational soviet state was promulgated, with the capital city moscow symbolizing soviet unity. the 1992 primer’s lack of any capital city’s image speaks to the fact that kyiv at the time still had not acquired the meaningful status of the capital of the sovereign ukrainian state. the situation had changed by 2004 – when kyiv was presented in the primer as the national capital. personified symbols are agents of identity politics. therefore, it is important to analyze which agents are represented in the primers. the soviet primer contains information about such classics of the russian and soviet literature as a. pushkin, n. nekrasov, l. tolstoy, s. marshak, v. mayakovskyi, and k. chukovsky. the primer from the first years of independence introduces both ukrainian and russian classics – pushkin and taras shevchenko share the same centerfold. we see that russian and ukrainian cultural orientations are endowed with equal importance here. the 2004 primer presents classics of ukrainian literature as well as modern ukrainian writers, but includes almost no reference to the russian literature classics. transformation and representation of the ethnic and national symbols is also of research interest, as it serves as a basis for national identity construction. the soviet primer presents the images of children dressed in russian national costumes, while the ukrainian dress is shown only in the crowd of children from all other soviet republics representing their costumes, with a single soviet flag above them. in this way, the main idea of the soviet national politics was inculcated into students’ consciousness: any ethnic identity was considered only in the context of internationalism, and the school student was expected to identify first and foremost as a citizen of the soviet state. the 1992 primer contains a relatively large number of illustrations of children and adults wearing the ukrainian national dress, while representatives of other national groups are absent. this demonstrates the move away from the politics of soviet internationalism and a nascent foregrounding of the ukrainian roots. in the 2004 primer, the ukrainian national dress appears less frequently than in 1992, and when present it is usually worn by fairy tale heroes; however, more subtle (or even “hidden”) symbols of ukrainian national identity are presented: rushnyky (handembroidered towels), pysanky (decorated easter eggs), etc. a unique characteristic of the 2004 primer that distinguishes it from the 1989 and 1992 editions is the proliferation of illustrations with religious content. thus, kyiv – the capital of ukraine, is presented as a panoramic photograph on the background of orthodox church domes. we also see the images of kulich (an easter bread) with eggs as symbols of the important religious easter holiday. therefore, the anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 33 recent edition of the primer clearly connects the ukrainian national identity with christian orthodoxy. national holidays are an important clue into processes of identity construction. the primers described in this paper present national holidays in different ways which reflect corresponding social transformations. the 1989 primer displays celebrations of soviet holidays, the significance of which was defined by the soviet ideology: 7th of november (anniversary of the october revolution), may 1st (may day), and may 9th (victory day). no holidays unrelated to the state ideology are presented in this edition. (illustration 4) illustration 4. soviet primer: celebration of november 7 the transitional period primer barely engages with the topic of national holidays. there is only one illustration of a celebration; however we cannot clearly determine its theme. (illustration 5) the 2004 primer begins presenting religious celebrations (easter), personal celebrations (birthday parties), and commonly celebrated secular holidays (new year’s). (illustration 6) illustration 5. primer of transition period: unidentified celebration illustration 6. ukrainian primer: easter and birthday celebrations because the primers are the very first school textbooks that students use to learn reading, they use visual images more than text. readings are included only at the end of the primers. in this inquiry i focus on those texts that contain information about “events of pride.” texts devoted to the development of the space industry present an especially illustrative example of transforming ideas. the soviet primer introduces the topic of space exploration with a rhyme about pilots and cosmonauts. it is followed with text emphasizing that the first man to fly in space was a soviet man. (illustration 7): “soviet man was first to fly to space. […] the whole world knows the first cosmonaut – gagarin. […] i have a big dream – to be a cosmonaut. my father told me: ‘study well, exercise every day, and harden your body and mind. you dream will surely come true.’” illustration 7. soviet primer: soviet space exploration anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 34 the text in the transitional primer devoted to the first cosmonaut is entitled, “yuriy gagarin.” it does not mention the word “soviet”: “yuriy gagarin – is the first cosmonaut on planet earth. he is known and loved all over the world. […]he was the first to fly around earth on the spaceship ‘east.’ he saw it from the faraway space. many children also dream to visit space. the doors to this dream were opened by the first cosmonaut yuriy gagarin.” (illustration 8) the same section of the textbook also contains an assignment: students are asked to write down the phrase “yuriy gagarin – the first cosmonaut on planet earth” in their exercise books. illustration 8. primer of transition period: yuriy gagarin the ukrainian primer contains text entitled “the dream has come true:” “when the first astronaut on earth – yuriy gagarin – flew to space, the ukrainian boy lenya kadenyuk was 10 years old. at the time, he lived in a bukovynian village. lenya dreamed of repeating the heroic deed of yuriy gagarin. he studied diligently and played sports. leonid kadenyuk did make his dream come true. […]many children dream of flying to space. however, you must not only dream, but prepare for your dream. then your dream will surely come true.” (illustration 9) as an assignment for this section, students are asked to write down in their exercise book the phrase “leonid kadenyuk – a ukrainian cosmonaut.” illustration 9. ukrainian primer: leonid kadenyuk, ukrainian cosmonaut unlike the soviet union, sovereign ukraine does not have its own space program, and only one cosmonaut – leonid kadenyuk – has been in space during the entire existence of the ukrainian independent state. however, space exploration is a significant event of the recent past, and being a part of it invokes a sense of pride and promotes positive identification. the change in texts about space exploration is a clear example of “repossessing the past;” in this case, repossessing this past is accomplished via new ukrainian heroes such as l. kadenyuk. school as social institution the primers presented in this paper also employ different education strategies. children portrayed in the soviet edition are always shown in strict school uniforms, listening to the teacher who is explaining something to them. in this way, the norms and examples of the learning process are translated to schoolchildren. the soviet educational system was hierarchical with a standardized learning process where the teacher presented the information to students, and they were expected to internalize it. information was presented as brief ideological banners that children could easily understand and remember: “ussr – is the state of soviets;” “peace, mother, moscow.” studying was presented as one of the methods of molding a person for future construction of the communist society. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 35 the 1992 primer continues the strategy of the previous years – children are dressed in school uniforms, attentively listening to the teacher. studying is presented as a strictly regulated process with students as recipients rather than active participants of the learning process. however, communist ideals are no longer well defined in the 1992 primer. the value and significance of studies per se come to the forefront. activities unrelated to ideological moments come into focus: classrooms no longer have teachers writing communist slogans on the blackboards, and the illustrations often display rather mundane scenes from everyday life at school. students rarely are wearing a red pioneer scarf or an october pin. the 2004 primer is a major contrast to the previous editions. the school is represented as a democratic institution (which in its turn creates a corresponding transformation in the children’s awareness): children are relaxed at their desks, they feel free to turn around and speak to their neighbor, and they are not confined by strict discipline. through these images, school is constructed as a fun and interesting place to learn and receive knowledge. children are actively involved in the learning process. this evidence demonstrates how primers reflect the process of transformation of the social understanding of education as an institution – and school as its constituent part. previously, the school focused on imparting strict discipline and inculcating communist ideals in children. currently, schools have reoriented towards allowing children more opportunities for their activities and enticing more interest in the process. conclusion analysis of abc primers from three historical epochs demonstrates how each of them presents children with those values, norms, and standards of behavior that are prioritized in the society at a particular moment. via these media, we can trace not only the values and norms inculcated in children, but also a broader picture of the society at a given historical moment. thus, the soviet primer was faithful to the communist ideology. a child was brought up as a future builder of communism and a citizen of the soviet union. national identity was constructed within frames of the ideology of soviet internationalism. whereas the soviet primer had a clear ideological line running through it, the primer from the transitional period was no longer tied to ideology. the state that has already declared its independence had not yet created the mechanisms and strategies for implementing new values of this sovereignty. symbols of statehood are barely present, and the value system is not yet constructed. in contrast, the 2004 primer reflects qualitatively new characteristics of the ukrainian society. it is presented not only as a nation-state, but also as a democratic state, which also fits well into the worldview circumscribed by the orthodox christianity. in sum, the primer, like any textbook, is an agent of socialization. it also reflects the epoch and its dominating values and identity politics. *the author is grateful to maryna bazylevych for her assistance translating this article from the russian. references 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(eds.) 1991. the politics of the textbook. london: routledge. bechhofer f., d. mccrone, r. kiely, and r. stewart. 1999. constructing national identity: arts and landed elites in scotland. sociology 33(3):515–534. castells m. 1997. the power of identity. malden, ma: blackwell. heyes, c. identity politics. stanford encyclopedia of philosophy 2002. new edition 2007. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity -politics/ (retrieved may 14, 2009). popson n. 2001. the ukrainian history textbook: introducing children to the “ukrainian nation.” nationalities papers 29(2):325–350. van dijk т. n.d. ideology and discourse. a multidisciplinary introduction. english version of an internet course for the universitat oberta de catalunya (uoc), july 2000. http://www.discourses.org/unpublished http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity� http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity� http://www.discourses.org/unpublished� anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 36 articles/ideology%20and%20discourse. pdf (retrieved may 14, 2009). вашуленко н., гуздик і. 2004. буквар: підруч. для 1 кл. загальносовіт. навч. закладів з рос. мовою навч. – к.: освіта. вашуленко н., матвеева а., назарова л., скрипченко н. 1992. букварь – к.: освита. горецкий в., кирюшкин в., шанько а. 1989. букварь. – м.: просвещение. портнов а. 2004. terra hostica: образ россии в украинских школьных учебниках истории после 1991 года. неприкосновенный запас. дебаты о политике и культуре, № 36. http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2004/4/port 12.html снежкова и. 2004. формирование этнических представлений украинских и русских школьников. социологические исследования 11:83–89. филиппова о. 2007. «прошлое» как социальный капитал: школьные учебники истории и проблема формирования национальной идентичности. вчені записки харківського гуманітарного університету «народна українська академія» т.13 – с.138 147. шнирельман в. 1998. постмодернизм и исторические мифы в современной россии. в. шнирельман, вестн. омск. ун-та, вып. 1. – с. 66–76. http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2004/4/port� http://magazines.russ.ru/nz/2004/4/port� waiting for macedonia: identity in a changing world anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 waiting for macedonia: identity in a changing world. by ilká thiessen. peterborough, on: broadview press, 2007. 260pp. andrew graan, university of chicago ilká thiessen’s waiting for macedonia, based on research spanning from 1988 to 1996, considers how a group of young, female engineers in the macedonian capital, skopje, negotiated the vast social and political changes thrust upon them with the decline of state socialism and the violent disintegration of their erstwhile country, the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia. throughout the book, thiessen weaves together her powerful ethnography of her informants’ struggles in a world changed with a broader analysis of the cultural politics in independent macedonia. filled with insights that challenge received wisdom about globalization, nationalism, and the break-up of yugoslavia, waiting for macedonia is sure to intrigue. beginning in chapter 1, thiessen develops the book’s core argument, one well worth scholars’ attention. thiessen contends that it was post-1991 anxieties about macedonia’s relationship to “the west”—rather than the repressive nature of socialism or yugoslav state ideology—that heightened ethnic tensions in the country and encouraged practices more generally concerned with disambiguating the traditional from the modern, the balkan from the european. according to her analysis, most macedonians had viewed yugoslavia as their tether to global modernity and the cosmopolitan world of “europe.” the demise of yugoslavia and the concomitant proliferation of western depictions of innate balkan backwardness were thus experienced by young, urban professionals as an existential assault that mirrored the economic calamity and political uncertainty of the time. in this context, thiessen argues, new sets of practices that focused on asserting macedonians’ membership in the west thrived, including everything from the increased stereotyping of ethnic albanians as an anti-modern other to a desire for pirated movies, designer clothes, and the physique of a fashion model. thus, in contrast to much writing on ethnicity in post-socialist contexts, thiessen argues that it was not socialism that had pent up ethnic antagonisms, but a post-socialist context where macedonia’s place in the narrative of modernity was no longer settled that catalyzed a politics of difference. thiessen thereby uncovers a potent, but underappreciated, irony of macedonian cultural politics: as yugoslavia had offered macedonians a way to imagine themselves in europe, nostalgia for the yugoslav past was in part nostalgia for a european future. chapter 2 examines how imaginaries of the urban and the rural intersected in differing narratives of macedonian nationhood as well as in stereotypes of ethnic difference between albanians and macedonians. significantly, thiessen emphasizes that while macedonian narratives of an ethnically exclusive nation—rooted like so many european nationalisms in the celebration of an “authentic” peasant past—did thrive in the early years of independence, they were always countered by a yugoslav, socialist legacy that celebrated unity and cooperation as anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 254 the hallmark of modern statehood and which continued to offer macedonians a valued model of social life. as thiessen herself notes, this argument speaks against the tendency present in many studies of the former yugoslavia to ignore or erase the socialist past. the next four chapters zoom in on how thiessen’s core group of informants—young, female engineers in skopje—responded to the political and social environment of the early 1990s. the expectations for personal autonomy and career security, i.e., a “normal, modern life,” that these women had developed over their education were severely compromised in this new context. chapter 3 probes how shifting designations of modern and backward were employed by women of different generations to map out ideal household relations and sexual relationships as well as to “otherize” groups seen to contrast with these ideals. chapter 4 examines how young women negotiated the increased intra-familial, financial dependencies as well as the degradation of job quality and workplace relations caused by macedonia’s economic turmoil. chapters 5 and 6 analyze the young women’s desire for designer clothing and use of crash diet and body-sculpting services at this time of political, social, and economic vulnerability. these final two chapters forward an important point. thiessen argues that women’s practices of consumption and body modification should not be cast as imitations of western styles made available with the fall of socialism. such an argument erroneously assumes that such goods and images had been alien to life in late yugoslavia. rather, thiessen maintains that “western” clothing and taut bodies functioned as a political argument directed at an imagined “european” addressee. in response to orientalist depictions of the balkans circulating in western europe, these women made claims to their belonging in europe, to their “normality,” through an everyday politics of consumption and self-display. waiting for macedonia thus offers a commendable number of insightful arguments that could animate rich debate in courses addressing globalization, nationalism, gender, and consumption as well as in courses on postsocialism. furthermore, thiessen always uses ethnography to drive her theoretical interventions. along with her accessible writing style, this aspect of the book particularly recommends it for use with undergraduates. the book, of course, is not without some flaws. at times, thiessen is prone to generalizations and the work occasionally reads as social psychology on the scale of the nation. the fact that some patches of the text progress in a disorganized fashion and that some transcriptions from the macedonian are incorrect by any standard (e.g., skopjanici, instead of skopjani, and biznis joveks, which i assume should be biznis čovek [a literal translation of “business man”] despite the more common term biznismen) suggest that the book may have been rushed to press. nonetheless, thiessen’s book masterfully brings to life the everyday struggles young female students and professionals faced in the turbulent years of the late 1980s and early 1990s and frames them in rich analysis that attends to the larger geopolitical context and subtly challenges many of the unquestioned assumptions that haunt writings on globalization, nationalism, and “transition.” the result is a provocative ethnography that not only illuminates the recent history of eastern europe and the balkans, but also suggests how anthropologists can anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 255 study the everyday effects of economic tumult and changed life trajectories more broadly. to this degree, waiting for macedonia is not only astute, but timely. microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 1 cinderellas of europe: waste, food, and cleanliness in postsocialist politics zsuzsa gille, university of illinois, urbana-champaign © 2002 zsuzsa gille all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in the periodical of a hungarian activist group that concentrates on waste issues, a photo cartoon portrays a donkey stumbling towards an “eu” sign. the donkey pulls a trashcan from which piles of coca-cola cans and bottles have spilled; the caption reads: “we’re heading to europe. we are taking all we have.” this cartoon ridicules the belief that one can become european/western by accepting and generating western waste. while in hungary the goal of “becoming european” has been generally shared since at least the early eighties, what is involved in achieving that goal has only more recently come to be contested. in this light, the inkblot reading by many observers of the early 1990s in which they try to establish which of the two competing political identities will prevail in postsocialist eastern europe: nationalist totalitarianism or cosmopolitan democracy, seems increasingly irrelevant. restricting the outcomes of the postsocialist transition to a closure towards europe or an openness to it straitjackets reality. i find that the picture is far more complicated and that these complexities are increasingly visible now that a decade has passed since 1989. localities and distinct social groups with newly-found independence from the state and with new struggles for resources, face choices that are far more complicated and that do not map easily onto these mega-scenarios and megaidentities. furthermore, what is europe is increasingly up for grabs. you know that this sense of ambiguity is not just social constructivist babble when you find even the economist, after posing the question “what is europe?,” telling its readers to forget geography, forget culture, and calling europe a “work in progress.” the magazine also documents and ridicules a certain “desire to speak for europe, even when there is no merit in speaking for europe,” referring to the lack of political wisdom in the eu’s recent admonishments of austria (the economist 2000:2). indeed, the ascendance of haider’s party to power might just prove a turning point in the use of europe as a symbol in postsocialist politics. if europe is more a shifting ideal than a clear, pre-defined state to evolve into, what sense does it make to ask questions about whether postsocialist countries are really heading towards a european future--whether as members of the eu or not? we can propose more meaningful and empirically better grounded claims about postsocialist realities if instead we ask what the different uses of europe as a symbol reveal about these societies and economic and political changes underway.1 that is my purpose in this paper. europe, in the idiom of most easteuropean intellectuals, has meant an ideal of democracy, freedom, the highest level of civilization—if not an achieved ideal, as havel (1999[1996]) admits, then surely one that is cut out as a potential for europe to realize. indeed, this is the meaning that europe has most often been associated with in the most varied, even mundane, contexts, to such an extent that disapproved practices or behavior will be branded as un(or non-) european. europeanness as a feature has expanded its meaning, from the political and cultural domains (kundera 1984) to the domain of bodily practices. increasingly the implicit slogan of liberal intellectuals “i think in a european way, therefore i am a european” is being complemented with the everyday use of this europeanness as “i eat, drink, dress, behave, treat my body, move, etc. in a european way, therefore i am a european.” in this domain of the symbol’s prevalence, instead of historical trajectories and shared cultural legacies, the qualities emphasized are primarily cleanliness and certain civilized bodily practices, including jen typewritten text 67 volume 20, number 1 clothing, behavior in public places (not cutting in line or talking too loud), eating and drinking habits, and fitness. the enduring and proliferating trope of cultured, civilized and clean europe notwithstanding, i argue that tiny cracks have already appeared in this use of the symbol of europe in public discourse. these cracks are more noticeable in some contexts than in others, and here i will focus on one dichotomy with which europe as a symbol has resonated a great deal, at least in hungary. this is the clean/dirty dichotomy. i will analyze the various ways in which europe has ended up on one or the other side of this pair of oppositions and the kind of political goals these symbolic practices have served. i will use the examples of a local waste incinerator siting controversy and of an import food ban by the ministry of food and agriculture. in my conclusion, i will critique arguments that see nothing else in postsocialist politics but symbolic politics, and that reduce these symbolic practices to inconsequential and superficial debates among a handful of intellectuals. a european wasteland beginning in 1978, the budapest chemical works (bcw) dumped about 17,500 tons of tetrachlorobenzene--a highly toxic substance generated in pesticide production--in the vicinity of garé. garé is a small agricultural village in baranya county, a relatively underdeveloped and multiethnic region of southern hungary. for decades, residents complained that the dump contaminated groundwater and soil, and caused cancers in villagers, excessive numbers of diseases and deaths among domestic animals, and a constant foul odor. as the leaking toxic waste started to threaten the nearby spring and the health and livelihood of an entire region, bcw was ordered to eliminate this dumpsite. the company plans to do this by incinerating the accumulated waste in a facility that would also be built in garé, the imminent construction of which has, however, sharpened divisions between the surrounding villages. many fear that the facility would be perilous to their health. the incinerator will be financed with mostly french capital and thus many also worry that it would soon begin to burn toxic wastes imported from abroad. it has been nine years since the controversy began its path through numerous public hearings, demonstrations, petitions, resignations, and lawsuits. the siting controversy has become hungary’s most covered and most divisive environmental pollution case.2 after 1989, bcw, rather than throwing money out the window by paying for a one-time clean up only, decided to invest in an incinerator that could bring profit after the toxic wastes accumulated in garé were burned. the announced tender was won by a french company, which formed a joint venture with bcw, called hungaropec. the village where they proposed this facility, also in baranya county, successfully resisted the plan. garé’s leaders, however, offered their village as an alternative site. while the great majority of garéans voted for the incinerator, surrounding villages have been vehemently opposing it. if garé and bcw wanted to successfully deploy the global incineration industry in their own survival struggles, they first had to sell the idea of ‘cleanup-via-incineration’ to authorities and, most importantly, to those villages that now, thanks to democratization, had a say in such investments. interestingly, the pro-incinerator language applied in the west was much less utilized than a custom-fitted discourse about “garé’s insertion into the bloodstream of europe.” the pr campaign thus drafted a cognitive map that located hungary and garé in particular ways vis-à-vis western europe. let us see how this is played out in one of hungaropec’s brochures: hungary, like her eastern neighbors, was characterized by the dumping of the hazardous by-products of industry, that is by “sweeping the problem under the rug” due to the incorrect industrial policy of the past decades, while in western european countries with a developed industry and with an ever higher concern about the environment the most widely accepted solution has become the utilization of industrial wastes by incineration, which is already applied in numerous densely populated areas of western-europe (switzerland, the ruhr, the vicinity of lyon, strasbourg, etc.) (hungaropec 1993: 1—italics in original). in the east/west dichotomy applied in hungaropec’s cognitive map, the “east” becomes synonymous with the past; it is a wasteland that produces so much waste that it threatens us with “suffocating in garbage” (as expressed by one of the impact study authors), but it is not even jen typewritten text 68 volume 20, number 1 credited with having a developed industry. all the east has is an “incorrect industrial policy,” industrial by-products (the two thus tacitly connected in a causal relation) and authorities that designate locations and prescribe the technological parameters of waste treatment. the brochure thus deploys europe as a symbol in two senses. first of all, it lays out the correctness and progressiveness of the european way of dealing with wastes. second, it implicitly constructs bcw as a victim at the hands of socialist state authorities when dumping and as a hero when burning the waste it produced, by thus “taking garé to europe.” indeed, in 1993, hungaropec literally took villagers, environmentalists, and journalists for a visit to reference plants in western europe. that is, bcw posits itself as the one representing europe in a sea of non-european barbarism. as verdery (1996) points out, autobiographies told as this passage from victim to hero have been the key source of moral and political capital in central and eastern europe after 1989. what makes this move especially successful here, though, is that moral capital is coupled with a positive connotation of europeanness. hungary as the cesspool of europe: the green perspective building moral capital on either side of the case has been a critical strategy. the incinerator is viewed by most garéans as justified revenge against the neighboring village, szalánta, to which garé was subordinated administratively under state socialism. garéans think that, since administration was in szalánta’s hands at the time the permit was issued for the dump, and since it was szalánta that reaped all of its benefits, szalánta’s residents, more or less collectively, are responsible for the present situation. as a consequence, garéans believe szalántans have no moral right to have a say in the decision about the incinerator. szalánta, however, has been quite successful in presenting itself as the guardian of the district’s physical and moral health. in doing so, it is also able to redefine its leadership in the vicinity, which was shaken first by a 1990 administrative decentralization, and then by hungaropec’s plan to build the incinerator, which would make garé the most powerful economic settlement in the district. in resisting the incinerator, local villages, with the leadership of szalánta, have mobilized surrounding towns whose existence hangs on urban and thermal water tourism and wine production, and whose reputation can easily be ruined by the incinerator. they recruited a competing swiss-hungarian joint venture and a french incinerator in dorog into their ranks by positing them as alternatives to the incinerator in garé.3 in addition, they formed an alliance with hungarian greens, who provide the villages with information, contacts, suggestions for action, equipment, and publicity. furthermore, the antiincinerator agents were successful in inserting themselves in and benefiting from the international environmental movement, which is a key pillar of what some call the global civil society.4 however, it is not only funds, people, and information that cross borders in this green(ing) civil society, but also discourses. the green alliance draws on the global discourses of environmental colonialism and environmental racism. the charge of environmental racism is raised because of the large concentration of romani living in the region. the issue is twofold. first of all, a 1995 social-economic impact assessment study ordered by hungaropec (part of the environmental impact assessment study), argues that the populations of the region’s villages have consistently decreased since 1949, and that they will be ‘gypsified’ (elcigányosodnak), unless there is a boost to their economic development, such as the incinerator of garé. it is interesting to note, however, what bodies are counted as part of the population in these demographic data. when the study quotes decreasing population figures, it refers to the white (non-romani) population, and it neglects to mention that there has been immigration into the villages, because these new migrants have primarily been romani. obviously, only certain people are “populating” the villages, while others cause their demise. second, there is the issue of why this incinerator is planned in this district in the first place. while the impact study views the incinerator as a way to “keep gypsies out” of the district, the romani civil rights foundation and the greens think it is exactly the already large ratio of the romani population that attracts such investments. it is not only that some bodies are not part of the statistical population, that is, the desired white population, but that polluting, contaminating and poisoning these same bodies-already perceived as filthy by commonly held hungarian stereotypes--is more acceptable than that of white, pure, and clean bodies. the charge of ecological colonization is raised in relation to the future place of hungary in europe. greens make a great effort to discredit the jen typewritten text 69 volume 20, number 1 claim of hungaropec that the european methods and international conventions it follows and the european technologies it adopts are indeed superior, progressive, and morally clean. they argue that, however high the environmental standards it may have for itself, the eu encourages the transfer of waste-to-energy facilities to the eastern half of europe. they also call attention to the fact that the basel convention simply requires that toxic wastes are imported and exported with the mutual agreement of both countries, which, they imply, is not likely to be an obstacle in bcw’s case. europe is thus just another player in the toxic waste export game while keeping itself clean. what about the greens’ image of the east or the past? opponents of the incinerator try to expose hungaropec and bcw not as a break with, but rather as a continuation of, socialism. greens like to point out that the decision to have a permanent dump in garé was made under socialism. as one pamphlet said, “a decision made by the state committee of planning in 1980 cannot be realized against the will of the region’s taxpaying citizens” (pécsi zöld kör n.d.:4). they also see a parallel between the process of decision making about the waste dump and that about the incinerator. “once already, there was a bad decision made without us, let’s not let another bad decision be made again. . . . i hope . . . we can make a decision based on consensus” (pécsi zöld kör n.d.:5). democracy and especially local autonomy are the key arguments of the greens in the debate. what’s more, this is the only positive connotation of ‘europe’ they acknowledge. this value preference is so strong that it may even take precedence over their environmental principles. some greens, for example, would welcome the rival swiss-hungarian incinerator in the nearby kökény because that would be built from local capital, at least partially, and it would incinerate only local (countywide) wastes. one activist stressed to me that the head of the reference plant for this incinerator in switzerland was much more “open and more democratic” in his dealings with the local population than the leader of garé and the managements of bcw and hungaropec. in sum, the greens’ cognitive map has an opposite gridline: rather than taking us to that paradise-like europe, western firms bring europe to the local backyards, but this europe is different-it is a regressive and even criminal force. for the opponents of the incinerator, western european firms do not export solutions to local problems but export their wastes and their local problems--lack of domestic demand for their waste treatment technologies--and thus make these problems global. according to the greens then, rather than cleaning up, becoming european or western, in the idiom of agents like emc, the french incinerator company, and hungaropec, means importing waste in the form of western, high waste-ratio goods and in the form of actual waste to be treated in state-of-the-art western facilities. having an ample supply of waste treatment facilities, which usually means incinerators, has indeed been treated as a condition of joining the european union. as an american banker investing in the export of waste treatment facilities says: “if they [east europeans] want to become part of the greater european community, i don’t see they have much of a choice” (schwartz, koehl and breslau 1994: 41). hungarians might tacitly agree that they live in a wasteland that is in need of a cleanup, but by accepting western waste so as to run the incinerator facilities bought from the west for the benefit of western investors, they really end up as “the cesspool of europe,” as one local doctor put it, and thus reinforce their wasteland image. this catch-22, endorsing development via waste treatment and joining europe via waste incineration, is thus exposed by greens as a false transition consciousness. note, however, that this seeming closure to the west still holds dear a certain, idealized, meaning of europeanness, its democratic values, its “environmentalism,” and its resistance to any form of racism. purifying the body as part of the post-1989 struggles around political legitimacy, the question of not just who can distribute more goods among hungarians but also who can save the citizens of the nation from the distribution of ‘bads’ (such as shoddy products, health hazards, and environmental pollution) gained importance. this is not surprising given that among the events leading to the collapse of state socialism, demands for environmental and public health protection--especially after chernobyl--acquired a political salience, one that the party-state missed and reacted to too late. as in most of the region’s countries where environmental movements were spearheading the resistance (lithuania, bulgaria, and hungary), one of the appeals of such issues was their subtle nationalism. this was not the manifestation of the jen typewritten text 70 volume 20, number 1 pro-nature, post-consumerist, post-industrial environmental consciousness of the west, or at least not primarily. rather, it was an emergent concern over the health of the nation, a nation that was aging and increasingly sickly, and which was shrinking, both in terms of its population and in terms of its territory. this concern is evident in the case of the gabcikovo dam on the border of hungary and czechoslovakia,5 or in the more recent debate over foreigners buying up hungarian agricultural land. it is little wonder that marrying the cause of the nation with that of nature culminated in the emergent fascist green agenda of the hungarian green party (mzp).6 in sum, bodies in all their aspects--producing, reproducing,7 and consuming--acquired a new significance in postsocialist political discourses. the second part of the paper is concerned with consumption, more precisely the consumption of clean and european foods and drinks. the summer of 1999 was a bad year for the reputation of food and drinks from the european union: there were three separate food safety scandals. one involved dioxin found in chicken produced in belgium, another was about a mild poison found in coca-cola that was also produced in a belgian plant, and finally the hungarian minister of food and agriculture imposed a universal ban on the import of dairy products in july 1999 on quality grounds, which had a significant impact on imports from the eu, and which the eu vehemently protested. these scandals, just like in the case of the incinerator siting, eroded the all-powerful association of europe with cleanliness and created a favorable discursive environment for decisions that claimed europe’s dirtiness. indeed, liberal politicians, who are the most pro-european union, correctly sensed that in light of the public sentiment that the eu is ‘dirty’, hungarians’ support for eu membership might drop to a new low. the liberal media’s first reactions to the food scandals thus did not give in to this sentiment and tried to salvage at least the moral cleanliness of western europe. journalists in the liberal (oppositional) media kept praising the quick and democratic procedures with which those responsible in the dioxin case were investigated and removed, and contrasted them with the increasingly undemocratic practices of the nationalist/populist ruling party. europe as the civilized political model was upheld. similarly, the liberal opposition immediately criticized the food ban on dairy products, arguing on rational, factual grounds that the origin of those products in which antibiotics were found was in fact not the european union, and that therefore it was unfair to impose the ban on the eu as well. the ban was indeed lifted within two days, even though, as experts claimed, it was impossible to complete all the tests on all the goods involved in such a short time. this, however, does not mean that the minister of food and agriculture did not gain anything from the ban. prior to the ban, domestic dairy producers had increasingly criticized what they saw as the bowing of the hungarian government to pressure by the eu to open up hungarian markets. the representative of the extreme-right hungarian justice and life party (miep) hailed the decision of the ministry of food and agriculture to impose the ban, arguing that otherwise there was no way hungarian producers could compete with the western european dairy products enjoying a substantial export subsidy by the eu. furthermore, western european corporations have bought up many of hungary’s dairy plants to take over the market with their products. from the perspective of these food producers and rightwing, nationalist political actors, europe or the eu is a cheat, who is forcing hungary to observe the trade agreements while itself giving preferential treatment to its domestic producers. in their mind, it is only playing fair to impose a ban: the claim of physical dirtiness is just given the moral dirtiness of the eu. the previous food scandals, but especially the dioxin scandal provided just the right kind of discursive environment for making the public accept that despite what east-europeans generally hold about the superior quality of western european goods, foods from the eu can be unsafe and of low quality. while the ban was soon withdrawn, the minister of food and agriculture, who is the head of the smallholders’ party (a right-wing party governing in coalition with the ruling fideszhungarian citizens’ party), and self-nominated representative of hungary’s farmers, managed to achieve his goals. he showed that if it were only up to him, he would, without a second thought, break up all of the restrictive trade agreements between hungary and the eu if the interests of domestic farmers demanded that. knowing full well that the ban could not hold up under scientific and diplomatic scrutiny, he directed the criticisms of hungarian farmers and dairy plants away from his office to the liberal economists, who view the only chance for hungary’s salvation in jen typewritten text 71 volume 20, number 1 increasingly liberalized trade and in hungary’s eu membership. conclusion what sorts of claims are being made in these cases to contest the power of europe? in both cases, the claims have to do with europe, its disputed moral and physical cleanliness, and hungarians’ relationship to that europe. the claim in the food ban case is not so much that europe dumps shoddy and dirty products in hungarian, as in the garé conflict (after all, europeans themselves fell or could have fallen victim to those contaminations), but that europe treats hungarians unfairly and demands undeserved preferential treatment. hungarians emerge from these two cases as a poor, mistreated figure who is intentionally kept dirty and whose dirtiness is used as further justification for its mistreatment: the figure of cinderella. on the surface, the garé controversy and the two-day food import ban appear as symbolic politics obsessed with purity and pollution— whether physical or moral--and with europe’s ambiguous position in relation to that dichotomy. does all this mean that hungarian postsocialist politics is merely symbolic politics, that decisions are made to fit rhetoric loaded with transition symbols rather than being based on “real” interests, as many observers argue? it seems as if political actions are limited to “symbolic gestures” without “directly acting on the behavior of institutions,” (schöpflin 1995) as lacking real (economic) interests, (bunce and csanádi 1992) as irrational (schöpflin 1995). it seems as if concerns over the body are inherently irrational and fascist. i tried to demonstrate that we need to put these “symptoms” in a different light. a more historical and sociological analysis reveals that these two cases are indeed struggles for resources that could ensure a viable economic future for a village, a district, or for the country as a whole. in garé’s case, local actors were able not only to put the economic issues on the agenda but were also able to impact various authorities. today, as a result of years of struggle and legal battles, the chances for the incinerator to be built are close to zero. in the import ban case, pressure by domestic producers forced the government to stand up, even if very briefly, to the eu, to “demonstrate” that hungary reserves the right to subject eu products to quality scrutiny, that they are not going to just lie down and die, figuratively speaking. in sum, symbolic politics is neither the end product of local or national decision-making, nor is the use of powerful transition symbols, such as europe, restricted to intellectuals’ debate. rather, people from all walks of life and in varied political situations have learned to mobilize these symbols for very concrete economic goals. describing postsocialist politics as mired in the battle of icons, emotions, and symbols is not only to confuse form with content, but even more dangerously, excuses scholars from giving account of the sociological dynamics underlying symbolic politics. references bunce, valerie and mária csanádi 1992 uncertainty in the transition: post-communism in hungary. east european politics and societies 7(2): 240-274. the economist 2000 august 31 what is europe? editorial. gal, susan and gail kligman 2000 reproducing gender: politics, publics, and everyday life after socialism. princeton, nj: princeton university press. gal, susan 1994 gender in the postsocialist transition: the abortion debate in hungary. east european politics and societies 8(2):256-286. gille, zsuzsa 2000 cognitive cartography in a european wasteland: multinationals and greens vie for village allegiance. global ethnography: forces, connections and imaginations in a postmodern world. m. burawoy, et al. berkeley, ca: university of california press. pp. 240-267. havel, vaclav 1999[1996] europe’s mission. speech given before the european academy of science and arts on may 15, 1996. hungaropec 1993 tájékoztató a garéban tervezett ipari hulladékégetöröl. (information on the incinerator planned in garé). budapest: burson-marsteller. jen typewritten text 72 volume 20, number 1 kundera, milan 1984 the tragedy of central europe. new york review of books. april 26:3338. lipschutz, ronnie d. and judith mayer 1996 global civil society and global environmental governance: the politics of nature from place to planet. albany, ny: state university of new york press. pécsi zöld kör environmental affairs team n.d. a király meztelen. (the emperor has no clothes). pécs: pécsi zöld kör. schöpflin, george 1995 post-communism: a profile. the public 2(1):63-72. schwartz, john, carla koehl and karen breslau 1990 cleaning up by cleaning up. newsweek. june 11:40-41. staniszkis, jadwiga 1991 the dynamics of the breakthrough in eastern europe: the polish experience. berkeley, ca: university of california press. verdery, katherine 1996 what was socialism and what comes next? princeton, nj: princeton university press 1 this approach is inspired by anthropologist katherine verdery’s ethnography of the transition in romania (verdery 1996). 2 my treatment here relies on my earlier analysis of this case (gille 2000). 3 the swiss-hungarian joint venture is building an incinerator just a few kilometers away, while the dorog incinerator is an already functioning facility about 200 kilometers north, much closer to budapest. 4 i am referring to lipschutz’s use of the term (lipschutz 1996) 5 opponents of the dam argued already in the middle eighties that diverting the main flow of the danube gives up territory to czechoslovakia and is a violation of the helsinki accords predicated on the acceptance of the 1975 status quo of national borders of european countries. 6 1994 polls indicated mzp support as high as 10%. note that no hungarian environmental party has yet achieved the 5% of votes necessary to get into parliament. among the concerns and demands of mzp were racial purity, increasing male potency and fertility through improving environmental quality, banning the use of harmful salt products allegedly produced by “neo-zionists” around the world to poison others, and forcing aids patients entering the country to wear yellow tags. 7 on reproductive politics and the representation of women’s bodies as producers of the nation in postsocialist abortion debates, see gal (1994), kligman and gal (2000), and verdery (1996). jen typewritten text 73 reflections on fieldwork with romani women: race, class, and feminism in bosnia-herzegovina volume 21, number 2 reflections on fieldwork with romani women: race, class, and feminism in bosnia-herzegovina jennifer erickson, university of oregon © 2003 jennifer erickson all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. this paper describes differing notions of feminism, which arose during my fieldwork experiences in bosnia-herzegovina. it is based on research that i coordinated with romani women (gypsies) while working as a volunteer for medica infoteka, a local women’s ngo (nongovernmental organization) in zenica, bosnia-herzegovina from 1998-2000. the present analysis is an attempt to evaluate that research and the issues it raised regarding race, class, and gender. medica infoteka was established in april 1993 to provide psycho-social and medical assistance to survivors of war-related rape. during 1998-2000, medica consisted of a medical clinic, a team of psychologists, a daycare center, two separate accommodations for women and children, workshops in weaving, sewing, hair design, and furniture upholstery, a political and research wing (infoteka), and a hotline for women and children victims of violence (sos telephone). during this time, medica was shifting its focus from war-related issues to domestic violence against women. bosniac (or bosnian muslims), bosnian croat, and bosnian serb women make up the teams of medica infoteka.i i worked for infoteka, the team that establishes and maintains networks with other ngos and governmental institutions. infoteka invited me, as a volunteer, to design and coordinate a research project because of my background in psychology; they did not specify a topic but encouraged me to find something relevant to medica's mission of promoting women's rights. i was hesitant to undertake a project for several reasons. as a young american with limited research experience, i did not feel comfortable coordinating a project for a bosnian organization. i protested, but my colleagues repeatedly encouraged me and i ultimately accepted the challenge of leading the project after i learned about the alarming situation of roma, and romani women in particular, in bosnia. romani women are in a precarious position in bosnia. due to a multiplicity of factors such as lack of formal education, low socioeconomic status in a weakened welfare state, fierce competition in the destabilized service sector, and racism, romani women have been left at the margins of all aspects of life. romani women are present in the streets in bosnia but they are politically invisible.ii at the time i became interested in the roma in bosnia, nato was bombing the federal republic of yugoslavia. as a result of my interest in the intersection of race, class, and gender, in addition to my ambivalent feelings about the bombing, my colleagues and i had a number of defining in-depth conversations about feminism. for example, they were vehemently against domestic violence against women, but due to their intimate experience with war, they (unlike me) were not against violence in general. as a “liberal” american woman, i believed that feminism must include a supportive stance for women of differing races, classes, ethnicities, and sexual orientations and furthermore, i associated domestic violence with large scale or state-sponsored violence. my colleagues repeatedly reminded me that i could not understand their perspective of violence because i had not experienced war. i agreed. furthermore, all of my colleagues claimed they were against racism, but they believed racism was a phenomenon only in the united states or south africa; they believed that racism consisted of a clear dichotomy between “whites” and “blacks”. according to my colleagues, they themselves were not racist. i naively challenged what i believed to be their narrow understanding of feminism which included ethnicity (serbs, croats, and muslims) but did not include race; namely they did not include romani women in their dialogues about feminism. jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 113 volume 21, number 2 i worked independently for nine months to explore the possibility of a project with roma. as my bosnian language skills improved i was better able to explain my impression of the situation of roma in bosnia to my colleagues. my curiosity incited heated debates about the validity of romani history and the supposed discrimination against them.iii both educated and uneducated people believe in the stereotype of roma as dirty, lazy thieves, an “exotic” population. some of my colleagues asserted that roma deserve to be discriminated against because they chose their own lifestyle; they had only themselves to blame for their problems. others said that roma use their culture or music to gain sympathy. some bosnian teachers told me that the problem with romani children in school is that gypsy children “stink” (smrde). they explained that one solution to the “gypsy problem” would be to buy them soap. all of my colleagues assured me that racism was not a problem in bosnia. promoting roma rights was considered to be foolish and naïve but i was not forbidden to pursue my interests. i visited local romani organizations and spoke with romani leaders, all of whom were men, about their lifestyle, challenges, and concerns. they explained to me the lack of support for romani communities in bosnia and discrimination against them in general. for example, romani organizations were not invited to ngo meetings in bosnia regardless of the topics being discussed. because these men wanted more working knowledge about ngo development, i arranged a meeting between romani leaders and infoteka. this meeting was a turning point in my research and in my relationship with my colleagues. one of the romani leaders described common experiences with racism against roma in bosnia, which my colleagues had previously asserted did not exist. he had been a wellrespected supervisor, whom his colleagues called “maestro” before they discovered he was rom. when his colleagues discovered that he was not only rom, but also the president of a romani organization, they began calling him “cigo,” a racial slur for “gypsy.” the men spoke in depth about the need for higher education in romani communities and more knowledge of ngo development, especially in regards to funding. they did not specifically mention romani women. although we had requested that a romani woman attend this meeting, this did not happen. one woman later told me that she wanted to come the meeting but the male leaders had not allowed her to attend. she believed that sexism was the reason. in march 2000, with permission and advice from my colleagues, i received a grant from oxfam for a project with romani women. thereafter, i received almost immediate support from most of my colleagues and was able to fund three research assistants. my infoteka colleagues and i initiated a project on domestic violence with a semi-random sample survey of romani women in the zenica municipality. we gained support from the local romani organization in exchange for workshops on ngo development. three colleagues and i completed 114 quantitative interviews, which asked romani women about their socioeconomic status, prevalence of domestic violence, whom they turn to for help and for which reasons, and what they think about violence against women. i analyzed the data and compared it with the research completed by medica infoteka in 1999 with nonromani women and found that significantly more romani women experience domestic violence in the zenica municipality than do nonromani women (medica infoteka, 2001). forty percent of romani women had never attended school as compared to only 9% of non-romani women. thirty three percent of romani women said that their partner had abused them over a long period of time as opposed to 24% of non-romani women. my analysis included a summary about the intersection of race, class, gender, and domestic violence. i utilized w.e.b. dubois’ notion of dual identity (dubois, 1989) to explain the situation of roma. many of the romani women we spoke with considered themselves to be at once “bosnian” and “roma” but neither identity was fully acceptable to roma and/or non-roma. for example, some non-roma with whom i spoke negatively labeled all roma as stereotypical “gypsies” and questioned the roma’s loyalty to bosnia. another stereotype is that all roma left at the onset of the war; they did not stay to fight because they do not have strong nationalist ties to bosnia-herzegovina.iv some roma we interviewed did not want to be identified as rom at all but simply as a bosnian. the consequences of classism, sexism, racism and ambiguity in perceived identities created multiple levels of violence: individual violence against roma because they are roma (by, for jen typewritten text 114 volume 21, number 2 example, skinheads), state level marginalization, and finally, violence against romani women by romani men because they are women. the second part of our research included oral history interviews with romani women (medica infoteka, 2001). during the interview process, my colleagues revealed their blatant and latent racism and i realized the important distinction in motivation for the project between me and my colleagues. i was concerned about racism in bosnia and they were concerned about financial security for themselves, their families, and medica infoteka in general. the assistants were irritated by the time and concentration it took to complete and transcribe the interviews. i was frustrated that they were not as “excited” about the project as i was. since i had written the quantitative analysis, i asked the two assistants to write an essay about their perspectives of romani women as a result of the project. this provoked a great deal of anger in one of them. we had an intense confrontation in front of other colleagues about my expectations regarding this project. my colleague told me that her perception of the roma, before or after the project, was none of my business. no one else spoke. the silence in the room during and after our conversation was indicative of the contemptuous attitude of my colleagues towards the project and roma in general. when none of my colleagues intervened in the argument, it became clear to me that up until that point, the project had not been as collaborative as i had imagined or hoped it would be. my colleagues did not want to discuss racism in the context of bosnia; perhaps i was enforcing my attitudes inappropriately. they continued to support the project, however, due to financial incentives.v later, after the two assistants and i had resolved most of our differences, we began to choose which oral history interviews we would publish and how we would edit them. all of my colleagues in infoteka began to read the interviews aloud and comment on the importance of this project. many said that their opinion of roma had changed as a result of this project and the oral history interviews in particular. one young romani woman’s interview had a remarkable impact: i mean there’s no justice for us roma…i don’t want my kid going to the streets to beg. i don’t want my kid to be without work, without schooling. i don’t want my kid to be drugged up, to drink, to get messed up in anything in life. i want my kids…to finish school, to get a job, to have their own place…we all want that. now, they don’t understand, for example, the rest of them. they don’t think about that, that we, roma, how they call us, that we think about the future…they think we’re all like that, dirty, we don’t send our kids to school, we don’t like to work…it’s not like that…why don’t you come and see for yourself? come on over and say, “hey, i’ll think about that guy or that woman’s situation for a minute!? what would i do? how would i be if i was in their place?…(july 24, 2000). many of the romani women we interviewed did not explicitly acknowledge “prejudice” or “discrimination” (predrasude/diskriminacija). however, this young woman made a clear distinction between “us” and “them” and showed that she is aware of the stereotypes of roma. my colleagues and i noticed that many romani women did express discrimination, not only as roma, but also as women. my colleagues and i agreed that we did not want to speak for romani women or impose our notions of feminism upon them. after each interview, we explained the services medica infoteka offered and encouraged them to use medica’s services if and when necessary. we stressed that all services are free to women and children. because we were aware of the hierarchal power dynamics inherent in the interview process and did not want to capitalize on romani women's experiences by theorizing them according to our perspectives, we chose to print six of the interviews in their entirety. two assistants analyzed some of the oral history interviews, addressing common themes. we chose to include a brief analysis of some of the interviews in order to make the material more easily digestible to readers. anthropologist aihwa ong best summarizes our perspectives with regards to the oral histories: given our privileges, there is greater betrayal in allowing our personal doubts to stand in the way of representing their jen typewritten text 115 volume 21, number 2 claims, interests, and perspectives. the greater betrayal lies in refusing to recognize informants as active cultural producers in their own right, whose voices insist on being heard and can make a difference in the way we think about their lives. the most critical point is not that we reap material and social benefits from their stories but that we help to disseminate their views and that we do so without betraying their political interests as narrators of their own lives (behar and gordon, 1995, p. 354). at the completion of the research in 2000, we published a book and printed english, bosnian, and romani versions. the title, in english, “how we live(d)”, is taken from a romani woman's narrative. when asked how they learned how to make dishes and other crafts from tin, she replied, “no, that’s not what we learned, that’s how we lived” (medica infoteka, 2001). in summary, many scholars have focused on ethnicity and gender in bosnia; few mention the roma.vi in addition, ngos themselves, even feminist ngos, are subject to the prevailing racist stereotypes of roma. the roma are a marginalized group in a country focusing on hegemonic discourse related to bosniacs, serbs, and croats. romani women experience triple discrimination as roma, as women, and as members of a low socioeconomic class. i believe that the post-war transformation in bosnia allows room for ethnographers to bring race, class, and gender to focus in bosnia in new and different ways. including romani women in dialogue on bosnia offers a more complete picture of the intersection between race, class, and gender. references anthias, floya and yuval-davis, n. 1989. introduction. in nira yuval-davis and floya anthias (eds.), woman-nationstate. new york: st. martin’s press. barany, zoltan. 2002. the east european gypsies: regime change, marginality, and ethnopolitics. new york: cambridge university press. behar, ruth and deborah a. gordon (eds.). 1995. women writing culture. berkeley: university of california press. cockburn, cynthia with meliha hubić and rada stakić-domuz. 2001. women organizing change. zenica, bh: medica infoteka. crowe, david m. 1996. a history of the gypsies of eastern europe and russia. new york: st. martin’s griffin. dubois, w.e.b. 1989. the souls of black folk. bantam books: new york. fraser, angus. 1995. the gypsies. blackwell: oxford. hancock, ian. 2000. the consequences of anti-gypsy racism in europe in other voices, 2(1), text delivered to the joint seminar on roma (gypsies) in europe, warsaw, september 20-23, 1994: 5 pages. hancock, ian. 1997. the struggle for the control of identity. transitions, 4(4) september 1997: 36-44. hancock, ian. 1987. the pariah syndrome: an account of gypsy slavery and persecution. ann arbor: karoma press. kukić, slavo s. 1999. pozicija roma u bosni i hercegovini. center for minority rights: sarajevo, bosnia-herzegovina. medica infoteka.1999. (ne) živjeti s nasiljem. infoteka: zenica, bosniahercegovina medica infoteka. 2001. nismo naučile(i) tako smo živjele(i). infoteka: zenica, bosnia-hercegovina. memišević, fadila, (ed.). 1999. roma of bosnia and herzegovina: documentation of the bosnian section of the society for threatened peoples. society for threatened peoples section for bosnia and herzegovina: sarajevo. seferović, ragib. 1999. prošlost, sadašnjost, i budućnost roma. zagreb: unija roma hrvatska. jen typewritten text 116 volume 21, number 2 williams, brackette f. 1995. introduction. in brackette f. williams (ed.), women out of place: the gender of agency and the race of nationality. new york, london: routledge. yuval-davis, nira. 1995. gender and nation. london: sage. endnotes 1 during the 1992-1995 war, “bosniac” (bošnjak) replaced the term “bosnian muslims.” it is an ethnic and cultural term, not a religious one, as not all bosniacs are practicing muslims. 2 for a literature on the topic of the marginalization of roma in eastern europe, see e.g. barany, 2002; hancock, 1997, 2000. 3 for a literature on the broad history of roma, see e.g. crowe, 1996, fraser, 1995; hancock, 1987. 4 see memešević, 1999 for a more in-depth literature on the number of roma who fought in the 1992-1995 war. 5 for a literature on notions of feminism and a feminist movement in bosnia, see e.g. cockburn, 2001. 6there is a significant literature on gendered nationalism and the intersection of gender and sexuality with concerns about race, class, and ethnicity. for examples, see: anthias and yuvaldavis 1989; williams 1996; yuval-davis 1997. for a literature on the situation of roma in bosnia-herzegovina, see e.g. kukić, 1999; memešević, 1999; seferović, 1999. jen typewritten text 117 macedonia: a country in quotation marks jonathan schwartz university of copenhagen "macedonia," be it observed, is a conveniently elastic term." m.e. durham (1905:58). "are the macedonians serbs or bulgars? the question is constantly asked and dogmatically answered in belgrade and sofia. but the lesson of history is that there is no answer at all. if there are answers, they are decided on purely political grounds." h. brailsford (1906:l0l) introduction: two members of the british relief fund, edith durham (1905) and henry brailsford (1906), published their travel memoires soon after their services in the field were completed. both books concentrated on regions of macedonia which had been active in the ilinden uprising of august 1903, and which met with especially harsh reprisals from the ottoman turkish forces. the scenario is grimly familiar in 1992: burned villages, desperate refugees, and capricious executions. brailsford's work centers on the towns of florina (lerin) and kastoria (kostur) in northern greece (aegean macedonia). durham's work is of particular interest for this present essay, because her base was resen and its surrounding villages near prespa lake. it is the same region which i have been studying , over a fifteenyear span, with a double focus on migration (pechalba) and ethnic pluralism. if devastation and violence brought edith durham to prespa lake, it was their opposites, development and civility, which drew me to the region again and again. with nine visits to the region since 1977, ranging from one week to seven weeks in length, the field work resembled the periodic returns and departures of the pechalbari. my return to the prespa lake region in july and early august 1992 was of course affected by the current civil war. the route was different. this time i crossed the border from greece, thus avoiding the battle-fields to the northwest, although the relations between the greek state and the independent and unrecognized republic of macedonia were by no means cordial. "macedonia" is a word that has been placed between quotation marks throughout the modern history of the balkan. definitions of, as well as solutions to, the macedonian problem seemed invariably suspended in the tentative space of quotation marks. edith durham put the matter in the following way. these admonitions in 1905, once again, sound an alltoo contemporary note in 1992 albeit for a neighboring part of the balkan peninsula: theoretically, the plan to maintain order with a wellorganized police force is admirable....as for the alternative plan...that of appointing a christian european governor to a state to be arbitrarily mapped out and called macedonia--it might stave off for a time the partition of the territories that must ultimately take place, but as it would rest on no historical, geographical, or racial basis, it would do little more. for the crux of the whole matter is not turk versus christian any longer. the question now is, how much of the turk's land shall be occupied by serb, bulgar, greek and albanian respectively. (durham 1905:80). the partitioning of macedonia at the end of world war i into greece, bulgaria, and serbia accomplished much of what edith durham thought to be the essential task of a european realpolitik for that part of the balkan. the "historical, geographical, or racial basis" of macedonia, however, was shunted to the side, only to emerge in our epoch as fundamental questions of "identity" and "existence". representations of identity in our epoch inhere in the person's own voiced membership and affiliation (smith, a.d. 1990:179). the achievement of selfhood is the social value par excellence at the end of our century, though politically that value is usually advocated as "human rights." durham's "burden of the balkans," like kipling's "white man's burden," had the handicap of colonialist and evolutionist doctrine. as an adviser to western diplomats, she proposed a benign form of ethnic cleansing: "the various races (are) so entwined and entangled, (that) anything that sorts them out will help in the end." (durham, l905: 65). nevertheless, in her own observations of prespa lake villages, durham noted: "in the villages that were half mohammedan, there had, as a rule, been no fighting, and therefore little looting, and these were crowded with refugees." (durham 1905:107). jen typewritten text 110 at the local level villagers of different religions could keep a relatively peaceful co-existence. durham was no spokeswoman for an ethnic mosaic. her contemporary, brailsford, on the other hand, was fascinated by the plurality of languages spoken at a market-place in macedonia (brailsford: 1906:85). he also noted that emigration from macedonia was a method for the peasant population to solve its immediate problems: "over three thousand peasants are said to have left macedonia in the winter of 1903-04 for america (brailsford: 1906:39). with their houses burned to the ground, the peasants could not borrow money to rebuild them. a peasant could go to america as a pechalbar; that was the only purpose for which he could borrow money. the intention was to return to family and village with earnings enough to pay his debts and rebuild the family home. thus, the institution of pechalba in the region combines a variety of motives and interests. to reduce the institution to pure economic interest and rationality, that is, to make the pecalbar into a peasant homo economicus, is to neglect the salient emotional, cultural, and political qualities of the long duration in macedonia of pechalba. this essay is a modest, and hopefully a form of applied anthropology that is consistent with several years of observations and interviews in the prespa lake region. the civil war in other multi-ethnic regions of former yugoslavia makes urgent ethnographic reporting from regions that remain peaceful. the prespa lake region was ravaged after ilinden, in the balkan wars of 1912-13, during the second world war, and during the greek civil war that followed. the menace of still another war is on everyone's mind. that dread informs this essay. pechalba and apples: prespa lake (750 meters above sea level) is in the southwest corner of macedonia and borders on both greece and albania. the lake district, with its municipal center, resen, is the homeland for three speech communities: albanian, turkish, and macedonian. the turkish and albanian groups are moslem, the macedonian majority is christian orthodox. there is also a settled rom( gypsy) group in resen. they are albanian-speaking and work in the blacksmith and woodcutting trades. resen is a relatively small municipality with a population of about 25,000 persons, a third of whom live in the town itself. the majority, therefore, lives in the surrounding 40 villages that are situated on the lake shores and the rim of encircling mountains. mt. pelister on the eastern edge of the lake is at 2400 meters, macedonia's highest peak. it forms a ridge that has the affectionate name baba, or grandma. a good resource for the prespa lake district is the water which runs down the mountain slopes and through the villages. the streams are channeled deftly through pastures, gardens, and fruit orchards, so that very little water seems to reach the lake. cement aqueducts, constructed in the 1960's, provide water for areas that do not have direct access to streams. irrigation to otherwise arid sections of the landscape encouraged orchard cultivation by the village households. the local agricultural development coincided with, and was contingent upon, emigration into the international labor market. keeping the channels clear, and regulating the portions allowed to each orchard are major problems for intraand inter-village negotiation. the right to water one's orchards and gardens on a certain night is negotiated, but several men have told me that it helps to keep watch at the main junction of the channel, to see that another man does not redirect the water towards his orchards. in 1982 i took part in two such surveillances during the night. maintenance of ethnic affiliation and ethnic boundaries is surely a significant element in the culture and economy of the lake region, but there are until the present time enough common interests among the lake region's diverse ethnic communities to sustain a consensus and a civil concord. statistics obtained from a municipal officer in resen estimate the two moslem communities at 1/3 of the total, with the albanian group being slightly larger than the turkish. the turkish community is centered in the town of resen and in a few nearby villages, while the albanian community is in several outlying villages, between 12 to 20 kilometers south of resen. i surveyed three villages which are about half macedonian and half albanian: the very situation which edith durham described in 1903 as peaceable. such is the case almost a century later. i have not noticed any village in the region whose population is all turkish or all albanian, but there are many villages whose inhabitants are all macedonian. since the yugoslav legislation of 1974, every speech community in resen municipality has the opportunity for primary schooling in the family's mother tongue. the current economic and political crisis places strain upon the multi-cultural institutions of the prespa lake region, but thus far, they are intact and the atmosphere subdued. jen typewritten text 111 in regions of macedonia where the proportion of albanians is higher, as in tetovo, inter-ethnic conflicts are more intense. tetovo's proximity to kosova is no doubt a factor. many young albanians in recent decades have chosen prishtina university for their higher education, and not the university in skopje. i have not known any albanian students from the prespa lake region who attended the university in kosova. they have gone to the albanian technical school in struga or to the university in skopje. there is discussion about making the macedonian republic a bior trilingual society, with official notices to be in macedonian, turkish, and albanian. the minority groups, via their political parties, are currently pressing for that goal. albanians object to being referred to as a "minority," for the term has a pejorative meaning. in the tetovo region, albanians claim that they are indeed the majority. in any case, resen's turkish and albanian communities are bi-lingual, speaking their mother tongues among themselves and macedonian in inter-ethnic contexts. the common economic activities of the prespa lake region are migration and apple-growing. since the 1960's all three speech communities have sent members abroad and developed orchards at home. one of the additions to the town square of resen, since my last visit in october 1990 is a monumental sculpture of a red delicious apple. it is a work in copper plate set high on a pedestal in front of the town hall. the apple symbolizes the lake region's recent prosperity and well-being. to make the region's symbolism complete, there also ought to have been placed a sculptured suitcase next to the apple. since 1977, a resen-based cooperative, "agriplod," has managed apple production on a large scale. it has developed a relatively flat tract of land south of resen towards the lake shore, on which an estimated 1/3 of the region's apples are grown. in 1984 the cooperative opened an apple-pressing plant near the orchard. agriplod is by far the largest employer in the prespa region. the definite preference for the inhabitants is, however, to work for oneself, to be "privat". two or three households, of the same kin and ethnic group, pool their resources for an apple business. they share the costs, the labor, and the cash income. members of the family who lived abroad contribute towards the enterprise by remittances and/or with their labor when they are back home. until 1992 most of the apples were trucked north to the big urban markets of yugoslavia. exporting apples out of yugoslavia was a rarity, especially due to restrictions by the european common market. this is one reason why prespa residents urgently await macedonia's recognition and acceptance into the european community. pechalba, under its modern title, "temporary economic migration," was revived by the tito government in 1965. new legislation permitted and encouraged widespread emigration to the labor-importing countries of australia, canada, u.s.a., and western europe. resen and its surrounding villages had one of the highest rates of emigration in macedonia which was very high for yugoslavia as a whole. in 1981 8,270 (roughly 30%) of resen's population was living abroad (savezni zavod za statistiku 1239. 1981:22 and for a survey, baucic, i. 1977). the rate for pechalba was highest in the villages, and according to resen's municipal authorities, 70% of the families had at least one member living abroad. my interviews with members of the three ethnic groups (1982) indicated that a typical strategy was that half the siblings were in pechalba. for example, in one macedonian family with seven children, two brothers were in sweden, one brother and one sister in canada, while one brother and two sisters remained in macedonia. during the 1920's the father of those seven children had worked in detroit on a railroad crew, returning to his village during the depression with enough money to build a home and start a farm. asimilar account came from a man whose father had worked during the 1920's on the construction of the tunnel under the detroit river . he had likewise saved enough money over a sixyear period to build a house in his native village. in an albanian family from a nearby village, there were six children: one son in canada, another in australia (he later moved to canada) and one son at home (he had returned from australia). one daughter was in chicago, and two were elsewhere in macedonia. house-building and investment in family-owned orchards, professional training for the young, and expenses for air travel and weddings were the large items in the family budgets. the ethnic boundaries of the region were clearly drawn. marriages were usually endogamous, but always within the religious group. there is a variety of migration strategies, but they share the common goal of keeping a stable base at home. twenty years ago lockwood summed up the extensive functions of pechalba for yugoslavia, and his observations still apply in the lake prespa region: the existence of pecalbari also meant the incorporation of the peasantry into a cash economy and into the national, jen typewritten text 112 and even international labor market, while at the same time the workers maintained their primary social bonds within a village setting. (lockwood 1973:92). pechalba movements ought to be given the "thick description" they deserve. to "unpack" migration is beyond the scope of this essay ( see, halpern j. 1975, and schwartz 1989), but surely any discussion of the breaking up of yugoslavia should also refer to the roles of emigrant communities in western europe, north america, and australia. especially pertinent for this paper is the ideological conflict between greek and macedonian organizations over the name and identity of "macedonia." (thernstrom 1980 and danforth 1990, schwartz 1992). the civil war to the north and the renewed antagonism of the greek government to the south have already had their influence on the prespa lake communities. independence from belgrade means that ethno-national loyalties can take center stage in politics. the irredentist macedonian party (vmro) takes its name from the 1903 ilinden revolt against the ottoman empire. today the party harbors animosity to the two moslem communities in macedonia. the conflict with greece is prominent among all the macedonians i spoke with. there is less significance in this issue for the albanian and turkish communities. of common concern to the entire region, however, is the fate of the apple harvest, in which all the ethnic groups have invested their labor and capital. as with william lockwood's region in bosnia, "peasants of all three ethnic groups practice almost identical economy (lockwood 1975:83). normally the growers picked the apples in october, crated and stored them until december and january, when they had the highest prices in belgrade, saravejo, and zagreb. several families combined in the trucking and marketing work. the civil war has eliminated the possibility for marketing the apple crop. there are now problems at the serbian border and gasoline is difficult, if not impossible, to procure. the greek border is now closed. thus, with the promise of one of the best harvests ever, thanks to ample rain and sunshine during the summer months, the prespa apple-farmers are threatened with the likelihood that they will not be able to sell their apples. the european common market, pressed by the greek delegation, has not recognized macedonia, and therefore, cannot offer dispensation from its import restrictions. the economic problems of macedonia are enormous, but further exacerbatedby lack of international recognition. thus macedonia cannot borrow from the world bank. remittances from family members abroad have also slackened in the past decade. the labor-importing countries of the 1960's developed high rates of unemployment in the l980's . pechalbari returning from denmark, nevertheless, had the chance to further develop their homes and orchards. two turkish brothers and residents of resen, returned to their town in 1982 after 13 years in copenhagen. they had been demoralized after experiencing two years of sustained unemployment in denmark. with their savings they had built two adjoining houses, and had purchased a truck for marketing apples. they then remained in resen and cultivated the orchards. even with the inflationary crisis of the 1980's the returned pechalbari were able to make a satisfactory living. the price of apples generally kept up with the rate of inflation. the best-laid plans of pechalbari, however, could not include the contingency of the civil war in yugoslavia. as a last resort, the apple-growers in and around resen can take their harvest to the apple juice factory in one of the villages. built in the 1980's, the factory offers the lowest prices per kilo, one eighth of what the good markets bring. in 1987 there was severe drought in the region, so some farmers knocked the unripened apples from the trees and took them to this plant. for poor crops and windblown apples, the factory is definitely a help to the local growers. a good price for apples in belgrade (1984) was about 1 dollar per kilo. with about 400 trees as an average, the crop could amount to 40,000 kilos. when i helped with picking (1979, 1984, 1987, 1990), we harvested four to six crates per tree, each crate had 20 kilos. typically, a farmer in these villages would have three or four plots of land for orchard use. spraying the trees with insecticides and fungicides was one of the largest cash expenses, followed by trucking. many farmers cut down on their spraying, hearing of its hazards and aware of the costs. a good annual net return for this crop was about 25,000 dollars. adding remittances from a family member abroad, which from denmark amounted to on the average 2,000 dollars per year, a household in the village could enjoy a relative prosperity in the yugoslavian republic with one of the lowest per capita incomes. with gardens, a few chickens, a cow and calf, the families in the villages made few shopping trips to the town markets. thus it was possible for apples and pechalba to combine in the culture and jen typewritten text 113 economy of this lake prespa region during the last two decades. many of the houses have the initials of the owner and dates of completion under the front eaves. the building boom reached its peak in the late 1970's. it seemed to take four or five years for a house to be completed. even when finished, its owners might still be living in a small apartment in copenhagen. the ground floors of new, unoccupied houses were used for storing apple crates. this summer, walking through the villages, i and my wife noticed at least one thing that was very new. there were single, white-washed stones dotting the countryside and on nearly every wall in the villages. well up the mountain slopes we could see those white stones. we asked what they were for. in march 1992 aerial photos of macedonia were made for this country's first map of their own. the villagers were required to whitewash the boundary stones that marked their property. there apparently was no opposition to the idea. on the contrary, it looked like the job was done with enthusiasm. to paraphrase frost's famous line: "good maps make good neighbors!" in my several visits to the region, i always tried to get a good, detailed topographic map. it was not possible, and was told by the town officials, "we are too close to the border." friends and informants: the independence of the macedonian republic since september 1991 has given the border problem with greece a renewed significance for the prespa lake region. the eastern lake shore prior to 1918 was an open border. there was much contact between the villages via the lake shore or by trails over the baba mountain ridge. when the border was drawn after world war 1, a hellenizing policy gathered force on the greek side. during and after the greek civil war, 1947-49, this campaign was again pursued with renewed vigor. macedonians supported the greek communists, who promised cultural and ethnic freedoms if they won the war and assumed power in greece. refugees from the macedonian villages in greece near florina (lerin) and kastoria (kostur) escaped into yugoslavia and subsequently were also settled in other soviet bloc countries. several thousand detca belgaci (literally "runaway children") received immigrant visas to canada and australia during the 1950's. cold war politics in the united states restricted the immigration of children with a red stigma. toronto and melbourne are therefore the two major centers of the macedonian human rights movement, whose leaders are detca begalci. in toronto, the detca begalci connected with early pechalbari, who themselves had been refugees during the ilinden period. the aegi-makedonci have what might be called "charter group" status among the macedonian canadians. the vardar macedonians, many of whom come from the prespa lake region, are the "new arrivals" from the 1960's and 1970's. there is an understandable envy for the vardar group, because its members could fly to their homeland without any serious political problems. the aegean macedonians, on the other hand, could be refused entry to greece, if their names had slavic endings, or if they appeared in a listing of former partisans. many of the aegean macedonians, holding canadian passports, have been turned away at the yugoslavian border or denied entry at the airport in athens. thus even after the fall of the communist state in macedonia, the stigma of "skopje" communism remains cemented in greek policy. related is the fact that the greek government has been intensifying a campaign with the slogan: "macedonia is greek!" in order to prevent the macedonian republic from using the name. when crossing the border from greece to macedonia, i filled out an exit form that required my printing the word "yugoslavia," instead of "macedonia." macedonian friends and informants discuss their feelings towards greece and serbia more than any other topics. heady with their long-awaited independence from belgrade, orthodox macedonians are perhaps more willing to endure current economic hardships than are the two moslem communities. the latter have a reserved, wait-and-see attitude, hoping for an expansion of their ethnic and cultural freedom. identity politics is at the top of every group's agenda. turkish ethnics generally keep a low political profile in macedonia; with a past as the ruling elite, they do not celebrate their history in the region. turkish families in resen have organized relief for moslem refugees from bosnia, who are housed in the town's vacant apartments. albanians have taken a much more outspoken political position in the independent macedonia. their attention is often directed towards the fate of their community in kosova. some albanians suspect that macedonian nationalists will ally themselves with serbians should a war break out in kosova.thus, for the two large ethnic jen typewritten text 114 minorities in macedonia, the name "macedonian" is also in quotation marks. one misses in the current crisis of the country a sense that the different communities speak with one another about their interests and hopes. dialogue , across ethnic boundaries, is an essential requirement for the independent macedonia, essential, that is, for removing its tentative and hypothetical status. there are probably very few secrets about how the groups feel toward each other, but interviewing has, nevertheless, a quasisecretive quality, especially if it is conflicts that are being talked about. interviews in inter-ethnic contexts, seem to take for granted an intra-ethnic confidence. the researcher carries around the "hidden" feelings of the informants, thus repressing aconstant situation of irony. minimal peace-keeping apparently requires maximal secret-keeping. the interviewer is also tempted to tell those "secrets," because they are just as often based upon common interests and common fears, as on mutual suspicions. perhaps a task for applied anthropology is simply to mediate , not just the conflicts, but the bases for agreement. the current danger is that a centrifugal tempest may ruin the ethnic boundaries which have developed and functioned since in the region since world war ii. robert frost's defense of fences/maps again comes to mind. i was not completely surprised when one of my old albanian friends and informants told me this summer that the police had previously come by his house and inquired about my visits. "why does he come here?" the police used to ask him. "he's my friend" was the answer. the same thing happened to some of my turkish friends in resen. macedonians whom i know have apparently never been contacted by the police after i had been in their villages and homes. surveillance of researchers was keener when the researcher listened to members of the minority groups. the albanian was quite sure that now, after independence, the police would not ask about my visit. a loosening up of restrictions has occured and is experienced as such by members of the minority communities . this is an example of what sort of information can be gathered and communicated by visiting anthropologists in the interest of peace-keeping. now an active member of the albanian progressive party for democracy, my friend has a few concrete, workable proposals for macedonia: there ought to be tri-lingual passports and other official documents. albanian and turkish broadcasting time on radio and television ought to be expanded. his party, and a turkish party that is being organized, would like to form a coalition government with the macedonian social democrats and excommunists, and in that way keep the nationalist vmro relatively isolated in macedonian politics. the more sensitive to human rights the skopje government is, the more likely it will win recognition from the european community. that recognition is essential for alleviating the economic crisis. there is, i think, a wide base of support for a cosmopolitan,"open borders," politics in macedonia. pechalbari, regardless of their ethnic affiliations, appreciate the value of open borders and open markets. nation-making, however, demands a choice of symbols, an iconography for representing "the people" and its history. here the irredentist movements have a head start on the cosmopolitans and the spokesmen for minorities. an etched portrait of goce delchev, the martyred hero of the ilinden rebellion, is replacing photos of marshall tito. delchev was himself an advocate for an insurgent organization "open to all macedonians regardless of nationality" (banac, i. 1984:215). the celebration of ilinden took place on august 2, 1992. the municipality of resen did not hold festivities in the town itself; it sponsored a festival in an all-macedonian village near the greek border, twenty kilometers from the town center. there were no albanian or turkish people present. i asked a turkish friend the night before if he thought of going. "no, why should i? all they do is tell about how bad the turks were. they should tell about now." i had been fearful that the ilinden festival would be a rally for the vmro; actually the rhetoric was moderate. there were many references in songs and in speeches to pechalba, that is , to the distant communities of migrants.that form of experience is familiar to all of the ethnic groups in the prespa lake region and in much of macedonia.the celebration of ilinden, however, is felt as exclusive, not intended for the moslem populations. the current discussion of a new macedonian flag is framed with references to primordial macedonian symbolism. there are three variants on the motif of alexander the great. the most explicit is the gold lion on a red field, alexander's coat of arms. a second is derived from another alexandrian symbol: a gold sun and sunbeams on a red field. the flag-designers draw their inspiration from the archeological museums, precisely those sources which contend with the hellenist symbolic capital. a third proposal is an abstracted and slightly neutral variant: a gold sun on a red field. this would be a jen typewritten text 115 flag that resemble the japanese. in choosing red and gold as their colors, the macedonians are both drawing upon the ancient symbolism of alexander the great and contrasting with the blue and white of hellas. there are indeed gaps in the macedonian republic's symbolic vocabulary. the new currency for the republic, for example, has abandoned the term "dinar" as its base but has not yet found a substitute. one macedonian informant spoke amusingly of "marks" and then went on to praise his country as "makedeutschland." such wry humor is probably one of the saving graces for a country in quotation marks. a man from skopje spoke of the hasty withdrawal of the serbian army from macedonia in november 1991. ("serbian" and "yugoslavian" were synonymous terms in 1992). the army took all the hardware it could, "even the electric wiring," my informant said. "did you celebrate in the streets?" i asked. "no, we macedonians are a relaxed people," he answered, and added: "but we didn't shout, "come back again!". conclusion: one of the central preoccupations of ethnographers is that they have tended to study communities in, what are for most people, "remote areas" (ardener 1987). this remark pertains to the anthropology of eastern europe as well as to peoples of africa and the americas (halpern and kideckel 1983:378). it was not so much a fascination with cultural otherness, but rather a commitment to social equality that inspired many of us to study villagers in the former yugoslavia. that these villagers also lived more or less peaceably in an "ethnic mosaic" gave added meaning to their life histories and communities. we respected ethnic identity; we even partially adopted some of our friends' and informants' affiliations, assuming perhaps naively that the ethnic mosaic would not turn into the powder keg. we were simply and modestly listening to what peasants, peasant-workers and migrants were telling us about their life-experiences and how they turned those into survival strategies. knowing the virulence of nationalist and fundamentalist demagogues and the accessibility of the printed word, where are our responsibilities when we report from the field of tensions? to what use is put our local knowledge? the myth of remoteness for ethnographic research is shattered forever. the ethnographic present merges with, and even collides with, the actual present. we are today more dependent on journalists, whose coverage of the past two years has kept us in touch with our field sites. nevertheless, we trust in the durability of own experience in the field, just as we trust in the judgments of our friends and informants. the perspective of ethnography differs sharply from that of journalism and much of policy science. all the more reason for returning to the places which are still at peace. if representing conflicts and tensions can lead to dialogue and mutual understanding, then our reports from the field ought to be both open and reflective. as long as we are able, we can provide evidence that ethnic, linguistic, and religious plurality does not lead inexorably to civil war . in this essay i have wagered for hope and optimism in a corner of macedonia that bears "the burden of the balkans." references cited: ardener, e. 1987 "remote areas": some theoretical considerations" in a. jackson, ed., anthropology at home. asa monographs 25 . london: tavistock pp.38-54. banac, i. 1984 the national question in yugoslavia: origins, history, politics. ithaca: cornell university press. baucic, i. 1977 "regional differences in yugoslav external migration," in kostanick, h.ed., population and migration trends in eastern europe. boulder: westview. brailsford, h. 1906 macedonia: its races and their future. london. christowe, s. 1976 the eagle and the stork. new york: harpers. cvijic, j. 1918 la peninsule balkanique. paris. danforth, l. 1990 "the denial of macedonian identity at the first international congress of macedonian studies." paper presented at the american anthropological association meetings, new orleans. durham, m.e. 1905 the burden of the balkans. london. jen typewritten text 116 halpern, j. and hammel, e. 1969 "observations on the intellectual history of ethnology and other social sciences in yugoslavia," in comparative studies in society and history, 11,1: 17-26. halpern, j. 1975 "some perspectives on balkan migration patterns (with particular reference to yugoslavia," in du toit, b. and safa, h. eds., migration and urbanization: models and adaptive strategies. the hague: mouton.pp. 77-115. halpern, j. and kideckel, d. 1983 "anthropology in eastern europe," in annual review of anthropology 12:377-402. herman, h. 1978 men in white aprons. toronto: martin. lockwood, w. 1973 "the peasant worker in yugoslavia," in studies in european society. 1. 1975 european moslems: economy and ethnicity in western bosnia. new york: academic press. pekovski, m. 1974 "demographic situation and ethnic characteristics of the population of s.r. makedonija," in macedonian review. poulton, h. 1991 the balkans: minorities and states in conflict. london. minority rights. pribichovich,s. 1982 macedonia: its people and history. u.pennsylvania state press. savenzi zavod za statistiku 1981 "prvi rezultati po opstinama," nr.1239. beograd. schwartz, j. 1978 "vognmandsmarken: a copenhagen ghetto," in scandinavian review, nr.1, pp. 66 77. 1985 reluctant hosts: denmark's reception of guest workers. copenhagen: akademisk. 1989 "pechalbari remember their homes: notes on migration and identity in macedonia," in in defense of homesickness. copenhagen: akademisk. 1992 "the stakes in a statue: alexander the great in toronto." paper presented at the xv meetings of the nordic anthropologists, helsinki. smith, a. 1990 "towards a global culture," in theory, culture, and society 7, 2/3: 171-192. thernstrom, s. ed. 1980 "macedonians" in harvard encyclopedia of american ethnic groups, cambridge, belnap. tomev, f. 1971 a short history of zhelevo village, macedonia. toronto. jen typewritten text 117 cultural and political construction of romani ethnic differences in romological discourse on roma in slovenia alenka janko spreizer university of primorska, koper © 2004 alenka janko spreizer all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. “[gypsy ethnography] is wrapped in an embrace of “gypsiology,” which has presented and still partly presents itself – not so much as a cluster of interdisciplinary studies than a gypsy lumber room”1 (piasere 1994: 21). in the late 1990s, anthropologists discussed the concepts of culture, power, and place in the context of critical anthropology (gupta, ferguson 1997). the concept of culture, as rooted and territorialized, was subject to critical consideration several times, and the criticism of “naturalized” connections of people to places was raised again. whereas anthropologists underlined the importance of re-thinking the concept of identity as fluid and related to space and place, slovenian romology rooted romani people to demarcated territories. although it is generally claimed that slovenian romology is a “science on roma” (tancer 1994), i believe that piasere’s citation would serve as a better starting point for an anthropological debate on slovenian romological professional knowledge.2 1 “elle prit place au sein d’une “tsiganologie” qui se présentait, et se présente encore en partie, non pas tant comme un ensemble d’études interdisciplinaires que comme un “fourre-tout” tsigane.” 2 the analysis of romology in this text observes slovenian romology through concepts taken from the anthropological field of ethnicity and viewed as a “fourre-tout tsigane,” slovenian romology is more interrelated with archaic traditional gypsiology and its scientific racism than with contemporary theorizations in social anthropology, romani studies, or anthropology of gypsies, and studies on ethnicity and nationalism. one of these pernicious effects of romology is the construction of difference between autochthonous and non-autochthonous groups of romani people, which is analytically described in this paper as a case of a territorialization of romani people and culture. in what follows, i explore the process nationalism, or rather, the formalist model of ethnicity proposed by eriksen (1993) and šumi (2000) on the one hand, and romani studies (acton 1974, 1989, 1997a, 1997b, 1998, hancock 1979, 1987, 1997a, 1997b, 1999, acton and mundy 1997) on the other. the anthropological fieldwork and more recent theories deriving from the social anthropology of gypsies, as it is represented in contemporary anthropological writings from the 1970s and 1980s onwards, make up the framework for a critical reading of slovenian romology (gay y blasco, 1999, lemon 2000, mirga 1987, 1992, okely 1983, 1994a, 1994b, 1997, 1999, piasere 1985, 1986, 1989, 1994, stewart 1997a, 1997b, 1999, silverman 1988, sutherland 1975 [1986], van de port 1998, williams 1984, 1989). aside a simple verification of ideological statements about the grandeur of slovenian romology, one of my central interests in my doctoral dissertation was also the reproduction and transmission of romological knowledge. jen typewritten text 54 of the construction of cultural and political difference between romani people within the framework of critical anthropology (gupta, ferguson 1997). the crux of this article lies in the ways in which romological discourse shapes the territoriality into a form of cultural difference, which was in turn used as a political criteria for differentiation of romani communities. although the extreme importance and quality of slovenian romological production has often been accentuated (cf. tancer, 1994: 28, 30), i point out the pernicious consequences of this distinction for romani communities. slovenian romology was first defined by mladen tancer. following his statements, the very foundations of slovenian romology rest on the research project isolates of gypsies and calvinists in prekmurje (1962), when several researchers conducted a eugenically-inspired study on the romani population: the anthropological type or ‘ethnic types’ of the romani population were constructed by anthropologists (pogačnik 1962, 1967), as well as ethnologists (štrukelj 1964); genealogies were collected, and endogamy was more presupposed than it had been thoroughly studied and described by genealogists (dolinar–osole 1962); the samples of blood types were analyzed (hočevar 1962); an anthropo-medical research on the transmission of pathological genes was carried out (avčin 1962a, 1962b), and finally, ethnological as well as sociological studies on the gypsy population were also conducted (štrukelj 1964; šiftar 1962). however, a general methodological slip was made then and has been perpetuated since: on the basis of their own pseudoscientifically defined and constructed criteria, the researchers took it upon themselves to decide who was a gypsy or rom – or in more accurate terms: their decisions were made on the basis of the racial archetype of roma. after the independence of slovenia in 1991, the study of “isolates” is still considered as both fundamental and contemporary in the field of romology, since it has never been critically examined despite the fact that during the 1990s slovenian romology underwent a period of considerable revitalization, mainly within the institute for ethnic studies (hereafter ies). however, the social construction of the racial type defining ‘true gypsies’ was not discussed by romologists. quite on the contrary: the racial image of roma has remained practically intact until the present day. as tancer puts it: “roma are determined by distinctive anthropological characteristics, such as: darker tan, dark and naturally curled hair, dark eyes and smaller stature” (tancer 1994: 96). therefore, archaic and archetypal romological repertoire is perpetuated and the discourse of slovenian romology is inevitably veering to racism and the discrimination of roma. zadravec describes his racial images of roma in his book (medical culture of roma in prekmurje 1989), where he claims: “it is exactly this positive genetic basis, passed on from one generation to the next, that has enabled roma to preserve themselves as an autochthonous ethnic group!” (zadravec 1989: 88). furthermore, slovenian roma are also claimed to be unique mostly because of their language and their own specific ethnic culture. autochthonism3 –is it a concept belonging to the tradition of the “slovenian national 3 encyclopaedic and lexicographical sources usually offer two definitions of this term: firstly, it means indigenous settlers, original inhabitants, or native settlers; “indigenous, native, originating from the place where they live”, and secondly, the term may also relate to animals and plants. autochthonous in this respect may mean indigenous, original, and the botanical meaning would also be “wild, spontaneously grown, autochthon, being there from the earliest times” (dolinar, knop 1998; cf. javornik 1997-1998, verbinc 1994). furthermore, the dictionary of the slovenian language offers some additional exhaustive definitions, such as: “originating from the place where they live; native”. i believe that the illustrations proposed for the use of the defined terms express xenophobic fear of foreigners: “autochthons gave way to immigrants”; additionally, the use of the term is illustrated with explanatory terms, such as “native”, “original”, further explaining phrases as “autochthonous inhabitants, autochthonous nations and also jen typewritten text 55 question” and ethnic studies or is it a “practical criterion withstanding the vital test”? the professional knowledge of the ies, designated as the “slovenian national question,” has traditionally followed the nationalistic interests of the state. as a professional field, ethnic minorities have been a traditional topic within the “slovenian national question.” they are interpreted as “consolidated, historical, autochthonous or, not to say, primordial” (šumi 2000: 118). after 1990 conceptualizations have frequently implied notions of minorities, such as autochthonous, “natural,” “essential” entities. apart from the italian and hungarian minorities, which have traditionally remained close to the italian and hungarian borders, and the slovenian minority, which has remained “cut off” from the slovenian national body due to the newly established state borders after 1991, the so called “new minorities,” such as “the slovenian minority in the ex-yugoslav territories” or “the immigrants from the former yugoslav republics,” are also the subject of this professional field. the “reinvented german minority” and “ethnic community of roma” autochthonous plants and trees (sskj 2000). the etymological authority is rarely quoted. the slovenian etymological dictionary states that the term is of foreign origin and has been adopted from the german autochton or greek autokhthonos. autokhthonos means “native”, “indigenous”. only in few sources is the origin of the term clearly stated. the slovenian etymological dictionary only reveals that the term is of foreign origin, deriving from the german autochton, which, in turn derives from the greek autokhthonos, meaning “native”, “indigenous” (snoj 1997: 20). more particular explanations of “autochthonous” are given in older encyclopaedias of lexicographic institution: “autochthonous” or “autochthonism” derives from greek and means “to spring up from the soil”. the connection to the soil is therefore particularly emphasized. furthermore, the mythical notion of the term is also explained: some ancient cultures are said to have believed that they had sprung out to life from the soil. are the topics of ethnic studies as well (šumi 2000: 117-134). roma became the subject of research at the ies when a group of researchers from the institute devised the minority legislation regulating their status. moreover, the newly accepted categorization of roma as an “ethnic community” formed a new segment of the institute’s research program. however, given the traditional reciprocity of minority policies and the institute’s scientific research program, this fact was not surprising (šumi 2000). in the revitalized professional knowledge on roma, the definition of this “ethnic community,” equating the concepts of race, language, as well as culture4 was constructed as follows: […] it is necessary to keep in mind that they [romani people] are also determined by ethnic, racial, linguistic and cultural characteristics that at the same time bear their impact on the relations among various romani 4 barth (1969:13) expressed the generalization of traditional classification of people in human species in the equation of “race = language = culture.” siân jones (1997) explains, “that the conflation of culture and language with the notions of biological race in the 19th century was the combined product of a number of substantially different theoretical approaches: (1) the linguistic notion of race, which was central to the “ethnological” and comparative philological traditions; (2) the racial determinism of the physical “anthropological” tradition which assumed a direct, fixed correlation between physical form and structure, and mental and cultural capabilities; 3) the widespread adoption of the lamarkian proposal that acquired cultural characteristics could become inherited, which served to reinforce a vague correlation of race with national, cultural and linguistic groups; 4) the social darwinist conception of a parallel relationship between cultural and physical evolution. although all these theoretical approaches did contribute to dissolution of the boundaries between physical and cultural diversity in the classification of peoples, it is evident that the relationship between race, language, and culture in the 19th century thought was far from “straightforward” (jones 1944:43-44). jen typewritten text 56 groups, as well as the level of their respective integrations into wider society. (klopčič, novak-lukanovič 1991:12) the concept of autochthonism has not been defined as an analytical term by the ies researchers. it is understood “from the native point of view,” since the term is represented as a “natural,” “empirical,” if not even “objective” reality, or – to put it more accurately – “the fact withstanding the vital test.” consequently, the distinction between the concepts autochthonous (originating from the place where they live) and allochthonous (originating from some other place (jesih 2001: 35) is generally not perceived as problematic among the ies researchers. some of the researchers see difficulties in establishing criteria, such as three generation criteria: as a scientist i find such criteria somewhat contentious, since they are simply not feasible. if we only take, for instance, the situation in europe: here we already have a third post-war generation of immigrants from africa and asia, and these people are still perceived as complete foreigners. thus, it may be concluded (considering the three-generation criterion, observation by ajs) that this kind of autochthonism does not withstand the vital test in practice. (interview with jernej zupančič, ies, ljubljana, 6 february 2002) the initiation of the terms “autochthonous” and “non-autochthonous” in the slovenian romological discourse it seems that these terms have their history in romological discourses. a considerable turn in the romological discourse that could be noticed during the late 1980s, as well as during the period following the constitution of the new, independent slovenian national state in 1991 was brought about by the demarcation of boundaries between different groups of roma living in slovenia. the delimitation of autochthonous and non-autochthonous roma was defined by the minority “protective” legislation and regulations or administrative provisions. this distinction was uncritically accepted even by romologists who had not been directly involved in the drafting of the minority legislation, as if the delimitation of different groups was a naturalized fact. the romani activists also accepted the proposed distinction although they had most probably been driven by a different motivation. the allegedly up-to-date slovenian romology tradition thus restricted the research activities almost exclusively to the groups of roma that were perceived as “native” and as such also denoted as “traditionally” present in specific territories. the latter have been constructed as regions permanently colonized by the romani population (cf. tancer 1994, štrukelj 1980, 1996, 1999). this territorialization of romani people was based on the studies from 1960s onward (štrukelj, 1964, 1980, šiftar 1962, 1970), in which romani settlements were elaborately listed and described. however, before 1980, the explicit distinction between “our roma” and “foreigners” was made and “foreign” roma as well as roma who had been labelled “nomads” were subject to discriminative criminalization: the efforts that are being made by the lendava police are often wasted to drive the immigrant roma back to their “home municipality” of čakovec [i.e. town in croatia]. those immigrating to the towns of dolga vas and črenšovci have no permanent residence and often stir up fights and similar disturbances. in the murska sobota municipality, however, these unwanted guests are usually ‘forced into exile’ by other roma. on the other hand, there are also roma that are permanently non-resident or camp in some of the ‘settlements’ within the novo mesto and other dolenjska municipalities. (šiftar 1978: 427) also initiated was the territorial differentiation: “we have to differentiate among three territories [i.e. gorenjska, dolenjska, and prekmurje] inhabited by natives, and immigrants that have been settling them during the last two decades” jen typewritten text 57 (šiftar 1988:329). at that stage, groups had not been denoted as “autochthonous” yet, but three main groups of roma living on three different territories had been constructed and the term was used for “autochthonous, original in romani medicine” (šiftar 1989: 10). at the same time, poor knowledge of “groups of new-coming immigrants” in urban centers, such as ljubljana and maribor, was expressed: “there is not much data available on them and sometimes it is indeed hard to establish (since we have no knowledge either of their language or dialects) whether they are roma, albanians, or turks” (šiftar 1988: 331). the “romani ethnic community” became closely connected with two larger regions “inhabited by native roma: /which are/ the prekmurje and dolenjska regions”(šiftar 1994: 9). consequently, roma have become inseparably linked with these “autochthonous” regions (šiftar 1994: 11), while in other, non-specific, generally urban regions, they are characterized as “romani immigrants” (šiftar 1994: 11; cf. štrukelj 1991, 1999; tancer 1994). before 1989, neither legal nor political differentiation between the autochthonous and non-autochthonous roma was observable in the romological discourse, nor was the differentiation in the legal categorization expressed. what did take place was the criminalization of roma immigrants from croatia in the border areas of prekmurje (while the remaining romani immigrants to maribor and ljubljana were mentioned only in passing), their culture, however, was not a subject of in-depth romological studies. from 1991 on, however, a frequent use of expressions, such as “autochthonous minorities” and “immigrants” has become the main characteristic of the romological discourse. roma did not obtain special collective rights pertaining to minorities or specific groups. this turn occurred after the legal categorization had been imported into the discourse by a group of researchers at the ies. since then, they have been trying, together with the government representatives and slovenian romologists, to define roma as an “autochthonous ethnic community” (klopčič, novak-lukanovič 1991: 7, jesih et al 1994: 14, klopčič, polzer 1999) rather than a “national community.” when the distinction between “native” and “foreign” or autochthonous and nonautochthonous roma became relevant in the politico-juridical discourse, some romologists generally recognized and started reconfirming the feelings of hatred between the two groups. “especially problematic is the strong (and at times even hateful) sense of alienation among the autochthonous and immigrant roma” (šiftar 1994:11). the romological discourse has constructed the difference in the level of integration: it is evident, although more on the basis of a general evaluation than scientifically argumented findings, that the autochthonous roma have been more successful in settling housing and urban issues than educational ones (relating to both higher and permanent education). (šiftar 1994:11) first, romologists have not declared themselves as explicitly supporting or objecting to the minority legislation, although šiftar wondered whether special rights should also be granted to “foreign” roma (cf. šiftar 1994: 14). later mitja žagar (1998) added to the discussion by stating that it was only the autochthonous roma who were entitled to the romani protective legislation or, more accurately, special cultural policies: when dealing with the issue of roma and romani culture, we also have to consider the fact that the roma who have been ‘colonizing’ the territories in the vicinity of several cities (which lie, as a rule, outside the traditional colonizing zones of the autochthonous roma) and have for the most part arrived from various regions of the former yugoslav federation, cannot be considered as autochthonous in slovenia according to the established criteria. with respect to their status they have to be, quite on the contrary, jen typewritten text 58 regarded as one of the two (sub)categories of (im)migrants… (žagar 1998: 173-174) moreover, a socio-political construction of the difference between the groups of roma, introduced by the minority legislation, is widely accepted also by other romologists. when i conducted personal conversations with one of them, štrukelj often confessed that “our [slovenian, non-immigrant] roma require special treatment and the priority status when it comes to granting programs for granting aid to romani communities” (aug 8, 1999). the ethnography of discourse on autochthonism among romani activists since 1991, some voices of romani activists have made themselves heard in the field. at the first conference on roma in slovenia, some romani activists thus expressed their points of view. they made a considerable contribution to the political and legal recognition of roma as a national community, finally providing them with collective and not only individual rights. rajko šajnovič, a romani activist and poet from novo mesto, proposed his vision of the minority legislation in the name of “slovenian roma” (šajnović 1991:131). however, vlado rozman, a rom from pušča, was more poignant in his rhetoric, directly opposing to the legislation that defined them as “ethnic groups” (rozman 1991:135): “no one but the roma (ourselves) … has the right to make decisions in solving the issue of our civil rights.” in his opinion, only the status of a national minority could be acceptable: since slovenia is a state in which we have been living for thousands of years, we can only be treated as equal citizens or be, at the very least, recognized as a national minority, as is the case with the italians and hungarians living here. in my opinion, this is already our inalienable right since our children have been attending slovenian schools, and speaking the slovenian language beside their mother tongue, while we have been working in slovenian institutions and companies, and have been living for the benefit of the slovenian society, and the slovenian existence and time. (rozman 1991: 135) in the early 1990’s, they did not express the distinction between the political categories; they were, in fact, agitating for an option of obtaining the status of a minority group and they did not stress the cultural or territorial differences among them. later, during the 1990’s, it seemed that only one romologist accepted a similar viewpoint – her text espouses the idea of a “european romani nation,” while the denotation of the roma as “indian nomads” is also no less frequent (štrukelj 1999, štrukelj, winkler 1996). however, no analysis that would examine the political consequences of the protective policies for different groups of roma has been offered thus far. only one representative of the romani voices outspokenly expressed the consequences of the discriminative legislation and outlined the difficulties that roma are confronted with: there are two kinds of roma in slovenia: some of us are autochthones and others are immigrants who have lived here for more than 30 years, therefore we can be considered autochthones as well … and i have to say that the majority of us romani immigrants come from kosovo. i had many discussions with the ministry [of the interior], i was present at almost every meeting – some of them came to slovenia leaving their houses behind, and are now left with absolutely nothing, because they cannot obtain the citizenship. … there is this case – we often talk about our roma; the immigrants do not have the status of equal citizens. therefore our romani immigrants cannot lead a normal life; firstly, we are not treated as equal citizens. (statement given at a press conference ljubljana, april 2000) jen typewritten text 59 jožek horvat muc, a romani leader of the association of roma in slovenia, used the denomination “slovenian roma” or “roma living in slovenia,” which seems to affirm the denomination of autochthonous, typical of slovenian romology: “the majority of roma living in the prekmurje and dolenjska regions, as well as sinti in the gorenjska region are autochthonous” (horvat 1999: 21). it generally seems that horvat has accepted the romological representation of slovenian roma as tied to a particular region. however, horvat, who is also a cultural worker from murska sobota, cooperates with the romologist pavla štrukelj in organizing romani summer camps. nevertheless, he has recently distanced himself from the above mentioned distinction: the inclusion or exclusion of the distinction between autochthonous and immigrants in his discourse depends on the context. the ways in which this process of construction of the difference manifests itself among romani people is one of the future tasks in studies of romani culture and identity. conclusions the above-presented ethnography reveals several problems of romology. among them i would like to stress three possible interpretations: 1. scientific or professional racism is obviously present in the discourse on roma. it uses terms such as race, culture, and ethnicity as naturalized, rooted within territory, and biologically determined, facts. consequently, the notion of ethnicity as a process of social or cultural construction of differentiation between specific groups is not accepted, and ethnicity as a dynamic phenomenon in the political context remains ignored (cf. jenkins 1997, eriksen 1993). 2. there are different levels of exclusion of roma and evidence of a patronizing discourse on “slovenian” roma by romologists and slovenian minority policies. romologists have always automatically denoted roma as “indian nomads” (štrukelj). on the one hand, roma have been sedentary – and some of them nomadic – in slovenia for centuries. at the same time, they have also been highly mobile in their pursuit of “economic and social niches in which to make a living and maintain their way of life” (stewart 1997: 83, okely 1983). the orientalization of roma as “indians” or “asians” has thus always excluded them as “foreigners” and the representation of roma as a nomadic people could also serve as a political tool of exclusion. 3. one of the possible interpretations of the romological discourse lies in writings that discuss concepts, such as nomadology (deleuze, guattari 1980), anti-nomadism or sedentarism (mcveigh 1997: 7-25; shuinéar 1997: 26-53), sedentarist metaphysics (malkki 199), or in a “nearly mystical assimilation of territory, language and people” (stewart 1997: 83). liisa malkki wrote that the metaphorical concept of having roots involves intimate linkages between people and their place of living (malkki 1997: 53). “sedentarist metaphysics” is one of the characteristics of slovenian romology which expresses the “naturalized identity between people and place” (malkki 1997). roma are naturally attached to their mythical “original homeland,”india, while similarly, “native,” “autochthonous” roma are described as “confined” to specific regions on the slovenian national territory, e.g. to the prekmurje, dolenjska, or gorenjska regions. at the same time, some groups of roma who do not live there are depicted as “foreigners.” sedentarism is also present in the discourse of romani activists maintaining the dialogue with the slovenian national discourse, even though they have chosen it on behalf of every roma living in slovenia. references cited: acton, thomas. 1974. gypsy politics and social chang. the development of ethnic jen typewritten text 60 ideology and pressure politics among british gypsies from victorian reformism to romany nationalism. london and boston : routledge & kegan paul. ―――1989. oppositions théoretiques entre »tsiganologues« et distinctions entre groupes tsiganes, in williams, patrick, (ed.), tsiganes: identité, évolution. textes réunis et présentés par patrick williams. actes du colloque pour le trentième anniversaire des etudes tsiganes. études tsiganes, syros alternatives. ―――1997a. “mediterranean religions and romani people”, in journal of mediterranean studies, volume 7, number 1: pp. 37-51. ―――1997b. gypsy politics and traveller identity. a companion volume to romani culture and gypsy identity. university of hertfordshire press. ―――1998. authenticity, expertise, scholarship and politics: conflicting goals in romani studies. inaugural professorial lecture. university of greenwich. acton, thomas, and mundy, gary (eds.). 1997. romany culture and gypsy identity. a companion volume to gypsy politics and traveller identity. university of hertfordshire press. avčin, marij. 1962a. ciganski živelj murskosoboškega okraja v luči demografskih podatkov, in: marij avčin (head of research): izolati ciganov in kalvinistov v prekmurju (typescript). ―――1962b. učinki krvnega sorodstva na potomstvo. md thesis. medicinska fakulteta univerze v ljubljani. barth, fredrik, (ed.). 1969. ethnic groups and boundaries. london, allen and unwin. deleuze, gilles and guattari, felix. 1980. mille plateaux. capitalisme et schizophrénie 2, les éditions de minuit, collection “critique”. dolinar, ksenija and knop, seta, (eds.). 1998. leksikon cankarjeve založbe. cankarjeva založba, ljubljana. dolinar-osole, zlata. 1962. izsledki iz rodovnikov. ciganska skupnost pušča, černelavci, vanča ves, borejci, in: marij avčin (head of research): izolati ciganov in kalvinistov v prekmurju, typescript. eriksen, thomas hylland. 1993. ethnicity and nationalism. anthropological perspectives. london, boulder, colorado: pluto press. gay y blasco, paloma. 1999. gypsies in madrid: sex, gender and performance of identity. oxford: berg. gupta akhil and james ferguson. 1997. culture, power, place. exploration in critical anthropology. duke university press. hancock, ian, 1979, introduction, in hancock, ian f., (ed.), international journal of the sociology of language. romani sociolinguistics 19. ―――1987. the pariah syndrome, new york: karoma press, in http://www.geocities.com/~patrin/pariah ―――1997a. duty and beauty, possession and truth: lexical impoverishment as control, in acton, thomas, and mundy, gary, (eds.), pp.180-187. ―――1997b. “dom za vešanje – o vaxt e rromengo –time of the gypsies, in journal of mediterranean studies. history, culture and society in the mediterranean world, vol. 7, number 1, pp. 52-57. ―――1999. the struggle for the control of identity. http://www.ijt.cz/transitions/thestrug 1.html hočevar, miran. 1962. krvne skupine v naseljih ciganov in kalvinistov v pomurju, in marij avčin (head of research): izolati ciganov in kalvinistov v prekmurju, typescript. horvat, jožek – muc. 1999. položaj romov v sloveniji, in vera klopčič and miroslav polzer (ed.) 1999. javornik, marija. 1997 – 1998. veliki splošni leksikon: v osmih knjigah, ljubljana: dzs. jenkins, richard. 1997. rethinking ethnicity. arguments and explorations. london: sage. jesih, boris et al. 1994. ethnic minorities in slovenia. on the occasion of the 6th european conference of border regions in ljubljana, 13.-15. october 1994, institute for ethnic studies, ljubljana; 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– 12th april 1997. ljubljana: institute for ethnic studies. tancer, mladen. 1994. vzgoja in izobraževanje romov na slovenskem. maribor: založba obzorja. ―――1999a. bibliografija. in: klobčič, vera, and polzer, miroslav, (eds.), 1999, poti za zboljšanje položaja romov v srednji in vzhodni evropi. izziv za manjšinsko pravo. collection of contributions presented at the jen typewritten text 63 scientific meeting held in murska sobota on 11th – 12th april 1997. ljubljana: institute for ethnic studies. ―――1999b. komparativni prikaz učne uspešnosti romskih in neromskih osnovnošolcev v prekmurju. in: klobčič, vera, and polzer, miroslav, (eds.), van de port, mattijs. 1998. gypsies, wars and other instances of the wild. civilisation and its discontents in a serbian town, amsterdam: amsterdam university press. verbinc, france. 1994. slovar tujk. ljubljana: cankarjeva založba. williams, patrick. 1984. mariage tsigane. une cérémonie de fiancailles chez les rom de paris.selaf : l'harmattan. ―――1989. introduction. dans le lieu et dans l'époque. in: patrick williams (ed.). ――― (ed.). 1989. tsiganes: identité, évolution. textes réunis et présentés par patrick williams. actes du colloque pour le trentième anniversaire des etudes tsiganes. études tsiganes, syros alternatives. zadravec, jože. 1989. zdravstvena kultura romov v prekmurju. murska sobota: pomurska založba. žagar, mitja. 1998. “kulturna dejavnost italijanske in madžarske avtohtone narodne skupnosti, romske skupnosti, drugih manjšinskih etničnih skupnosti in priseljencev v republiki sloveniji”, in razprave in gradivo 33, journal of ethnic studies. ljubljana: institute for ethnic studies. jen typewritten text 64 multiculturalism in central and eastern europe: challenge or threat? maja muhić south eastern european universtiy, tetovo © 2004 maja muhić all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. an overview of the themes that dominate in the sphere of contemporary political philosophy shows a major shift in the basic area of interest. namely, instead of the concepts of political power, basic principles of societal laws, and the problem of sovereignty so characteristic of the political thought of the first half of 20th century, the political theory that emerged in the past three decades has focused primarily on the social ideals of political community, equality, justice, and cultural freedoms (which to a great extent entails the debates and dilemmas surrounding multiculturalism) taken to be the basic values and criteria in the evaluation of political strategies and institutions emerging from them. nevertheless, most of the contemporary political orientations systematized in the theoretical concepts of utilitarianism, liberal egalitarianism, libertarianism, marxism, communitarianism, and feminism are to a great extent deepened and renewed thematizations of the concepts formulated in the preceding theoretical political viewpoints. due to this important shift in the research interests of contemporary political philosophy, this paper looks at some of the theoretical frameworks dealing with multiculturalism. such an approach lays the foundation that would help further critically engage with some of these theories in relation to practical examples and case studies. in line with this, the major focus and inspiration for this paper stems from the frequently proposed presupposition that post-socialist and especially so ex-yugoslavian space has shown that any attempt to presume national homogeneity has resulted in violence and open conflict. some of the often proposed counter examples to this are countries such as the usa, canada, and australia, where, it is believed, many forms of multicultural solutions have been more or less successfully embraced. it is this critical comparison that triggers the interest for this paper with special focus on will kymlicka’s paper regarding the inapplicability of western standards of multiculturalism on the countries of postsocialist europe. the paper analyzes and compares anthropologically, historically, socially, and culturally the politics of cohabitation and the multicultural models employed by the countries from the region (with emphasis to former yugoslavia) and the proposed, supposedly successful multicultural models of the above-mentioned countries. the paper is a tentative attempt to check the validity of the generally accepted belief that a variety of functional multicultural solutions can be looked for outside our own setting, especially so outside the setting of the eastern and central european countries (hereafter ece), and hence, must be exported to or adopted by these states. the paper shows the neo-colonial pretension and perils of such an approach, especially for the countries that have been pressured to apply and adopt western models of multiculturalism. theorizing multiculturalism kymlicka’s contribution in the sphere of multiculturalism debates is unquestionable. he brings a number of novelties in his jen typewritten text 37 discussion of liberalism (1989) where he introduces a variety of convoluted terms such as political community, cultural membership, and collective rights and sets out to try to understand how liberals should respond to a situation of cultural plurality. he builds his argument on the presupposition that in addition to the political community composed of individuals who exercise rights and responsibilities required by the liberal justice framework, there is always and necessarily a cultural community within which people “share a culture, a language and history which defines their cultural membership” (kymlicka 1989: 135). it is kymlicka’s deepest conviction that liberal theory, even a traditional one, can accommodate this cultural membership. hence his blunt question: “why is it commonly supposed that liberals must oppose special status for minority cultures?” (1989: 137). in this sense, liberalism is seen as incapable of accommodating minority rights, and it demands equal rights of citizenship regardless of the consequences this may have for the existence of minority cultures. kymlicka, suggests that cultural membership has a much more important place in liberal theory than has actually been recognised. although very little attention and significance was given to it by liberals, cultural membership, he believes, is so important that it actually represents the primary good (kymlicka 1989: 162). while liberals stress individual autonomy, and that liberty matters because it enables each individual to actively form and revise his own life plan, kymlicka poses the question about what is the source of people’s values: how do people form their conceptions of good life? he argues that these beliefs are rooted in the structure of the cultural communities that people belong to. (kymlicka 1989: 65). when a person sets out to select a life plan, he/she does not start from nowhere, but instead selects from a range of options determined by his/her cultural heritage. with this presupposition, kymlicka clearly comes closer to the communitarian arguments whereby each one of us is constrained by the actions of others and by the social settings presupposed in their and our actions. he stands in favor of a dialectical principle reconciling the apparent incompatibility of liberalism and cultural membership. kymlicka’s major point of reference is canada’s aboriginal communities, which makes the applicability of his study on other regions even more difficult. nevertheless, his emphasis on the great importance of cultural heritage can successfully be applied in our later comparison of the multicultural circumstances and models of the ece countries, often referred to as countries in transition or postsocialist countries with the models of countries such as the usa or australia. what anthropological approaches find to be a very problematic issue in the multiculturalism debates, kymlicka included, is that fact that such theories “treat the community as a universalised abstraction, one whose scale is usually not specified” (cowan, dembour, and wilson 2001: 17). the radical insistence on cultural relativism within anthropology triggers major anthropological critiques of multiculturalism models, as models that presuppose that “cultures, like communities, simply exist” (2001: 18). anthropological approaches dealing with multiculturalism are primarily concerned with questions about how and through what social and political processes culture comes to exist. this again, will throw more light on our further comparative analysis of multicultural models. the same anthropological critique is directed to taylor’s complex study multiculturalism and “the politics of recognition” (1992), where he accentuates recognition as something that forges our identity in our interaction with others. he radically claims that “my own identity crucially depends on my dialogical relations with others” (1992: 34). taylor’s major standpoint is that of a promulticulturalist who stands in favor of the recognition of distinct cultural identities. he maintains that cultural recognition is an important and necessary constituent of the value of treating individuals with equal respect. in the light of this argument, he argues that cultural recognition is important jen typewritten text 38 because its “refusal can inflict damage on those who are denied it, according to a widespread modern view” (1992: 36). in accordance with this, taylor urges us to see that to withhold recognition from others, or to even impose misrecognition, “can be a form of oppression” (1992: 36). taylor calls on recognition of equal value, that is, the equal worth of other cultures (64), but at the same time appears to be very critical of the automatic, unquestioned assumption that noninclusion inevitably means exclusion and that as such, it can harm and is bad. to say that a culture has equal worth, according to taylor, is not necessarily equivalent to saying that everything in that culture should be endorsed unconditionally. while against prejudgments of cultural work, taylor remains wary of the fact that the presumption of equal worth is often conflated with the judgement of equal worth, without there being any judgement carried out in the first place. challenges and threats of adopting foreign multicultural models having discussed some of the major theoretical frameworks of multiculturalism, we now move to a comparative study involving critical application of some of the above-discussed theories. we take kymlicka’s article multiculturalism and minority rights (2002) as the major point of reference in arguing our case. it goes without saying that there are certain aspects of the existing western multicultural models and minority rights that proved to have positive effects for the strengthening of peaceful cohabitation and tolerance within culturally diverse societies. some of them are therefore a future challenge for the ece countries, which are at the initial stage or in the process of developing such models. nevertheless, it must be taken into account that in the group of paradigms of cultural values and multicultural standards that the ece countries should (or are pressured) to adopt, there are also those that can directly jeopardize the stability, integrity, and above all, the identity of the groups living in the region. hence there is a problem of distinguishing between segments of the western multicultural models whose future adoption can be a positive challenge for ece and those that can be directly detrimental for the society, if applied. kymlicka (2002) correctly notices that “countries in post-communist europe1 have been pressured to adopt western standards of multiculturalism and minority rights” (2002: 1) and that the respect for minority rights is a criterion that a candidate country must meet to enter the eu and nato. this, in itself, already reveals a neo-colonial attitude on the part of the western countries whereby the very acceptance of a candidate country in the eu is dependent upon agreeing to adopt the required multicultural standards. as mishra and hodge point out with regards to the meaning of post-colonialism, “it foregrounds a politics of opposition and struggle, and problematizes the key relationship between centre and periphery” (1994: 276). neocolonialism however, while clearly preserving and emphasizing even more the cultureperiphery relationship, seems to leave very little space for the opposition and struggle, which used to be much more defined and had more breathing space in the post-colonial period. this discrepancy between the two colonial models becomes highly visible precisely in that the latter is closer to inflicting an unprecedented threat to the stability, integrity, and cultural identities of people, by imposing models that can either be an incentive for conflict among those groups or can lead to utter cultural depersonalization. kymlicka rightly points out that many of the assumptions, including that western multicultural standards are working well in the west itself and that they are applicable to 1 kymlicka repeats what is a mistaken and frequently taken for granted assumption that there was a communist europe, and thus what followed was a post-communist europe. such labeling of countries as post-communist is contradictio in adiecto in as much as there can be no parallel existence of a politically organized unit, that is, a state and communism. in other words, where there is a state there is no communism, and vice versa. hence, we can only speak of socialism and henceforth, post-socialist europe. jen typewritten text 39 the ece, are controversial. his initial point of reference are the quebeçois in canada, scots and welsh in britain, the catalans and basques in spain, the flemish in belgium, the german-speaking minority in south tyrol in italy, and puerto rico in the u.s. which he defines at the level of substate/minority nationalities. a parallel could be drawn between these groups with, for instance, the albanians in the republic of macedonia2, although macedonia encompasses at least seven different ethnic groups. kymlicka emphasizes the recent shift in the attitude towards these substate nationalities from suppressing them to “accommodating them through regional autonomy and official language rights” (2002: 2). the only clear exception to this major trend in the western attitude is france with its refusal to grant autonomy to its main susbstate national group in corsica. interestingly enough, kymlicka does not bring into question that this shift in granting somewhat greater rights to the minorities in the above-mentioned western 2 the territory of what is today macedonia was until 1913 the last part of the balkans ruled by the ottoman empire. after 1919, macedonia entered the kingdom of yugoslavia under serbian jurisdiction and without administrative autonomy. this kingdom was defined as a kingdom of serbs, croats, and slovenians, without mentioning the macedonians. after 1945, macedonia was constituted as the people’s republic of macedonia within the framework of yugoslavia. after the break up of yugoslavia, macedonia was admitted to the un on 8 april 1993 as the former yugoslav republic of macedonia (fyrom) until an agreement could be reached with greece which claimed that some of the articles of the new macedonian constitution following the declaration of independence on 8 september 1991 made territorial claims on the greek province of macedonia. the issue regarding macedonia’s name has until recently not been resolved with turkey being the only state to recognize the country under its own constitutional name, i.e. the republic of macedonia. the controversies grew even larger after the very recent official u.s. recognition of macedonia under its constitutional name. macedonia is a land-locked country covering 26,000 km2 with a population of approximately 2 million and the capital is skopje european countries is about granting them a very limited, administrative, or so to say, formal rather than substantial equality. in his second example based on the case with the indigenous people from canada, australia, new zealand, or the u.s., he bluntly argues that “virtually all western states that contain indigenous peoples and substate national groups have become ‘multination’ states, recognizing the existence of ‘peoples’ and ‘nations’ within the boundaries of the state” (2002: 2). it seems that kymclika’s statement can rightly be considered an over-optimistic exaggeration. while the recognition of the existence of peoples and nations within the boundaries of the state may not be brought into question, one can argue that the recognition of someone’s existence does not greatly alter the status of being ignored. on the contrary, by recognizing someone’s existence, one establishes the primary foundation on which someone’s rights can be denied. while this may seem a sophist argument, following further, kymlicka’s line of argumentation can be used to prove our case. let us only briefly point to his statements that “land claims, customary law and self-government for indigenous people are all clearly affirmed in recent international documents” (2002: 3). it is obvious that such alleged developments in the treatment of indigenous people or substate nationalities are merely at the level of rhetoric or written documents. it would not take too long for one to realize that the real affirmation of land claims in resent documents, as kymlicka puts it, would necessarily need to, bluntly speaking, directly lead to a position where just about anyone who is not a “full-blooded ‘native-american’” should move out from the u.s., to use just one example. later on in his paper, however, kymlicka recognizes the fact that “substate national groups do not have a right to multinational federalism under international law” (2002: 3). moreover, he brings into light the fact that no international document has affirmed any principle of territorial autonomy or official language status for substate national groups despite the fact that many people in the west jen typewritten text 40 view this as the best response to these groups. it is true indeed that, as kymlicka argues, international law falls far beyond much of the multicultural practices of western democracies. nevertheless, it is also an omission of a key point when comparing these models to those in ece. namely, in all of the above-mentioned western democracies, the immigrant nation included (as peter kivisto, 2002, would like to refer to the u.s.) the realization of political interests through the matrix of national or even ethnical identities is absolutely excluded. in the post-socialist countries, however, ex-yugoslavia and/or macedonia being great examples, national political parties fully exist. in the u.s., on the contrary, though there exists an overabundance of nations, cultures, ethnicities, no single national ethnical party exists or is permitted. contrary to this, as previously mentioned in macedonia for instance, the government is made up of coalition parties of macedonians and albanians and not of republicans or democrats. such governmental structure is among other things, a requirement of the international community itself, but is nowhere practiced in the western democracies that kymlicka talks about. could the reason for this be the obvious risk that such political organizing can inevitably lead to fragmentation and disintegration? why then are we asked to practice multicultural to the level at which the western countries stop? moreover, even though kymlicka’s argument regarding present practices of multination federalism and official language rights in the western democracies cannot be denied, the dissatisfaction of substate nationalism and the all-too-frequent riots and terrorist attacks in those regions, prove that most of it is at the level of formal rather than substantial federalization, as was the case in former yugoslavia. in addition, it can easily be argued that former yugoslav republics, now fitting within the post-socialist scheme, had far greater minority rights than the ones kymlicka argues exist and are applied by current western democracies. to clarify this, we should point out that the yugoslav constitution of 1974 is widely believed to have been the most democratic and liberal regarding the treatment of ethnicities, guaranteeing them greater rights than they have anywhere in the balkans today.3 the republics were guaranteed rights of autonomy and secession. the idea of socialism as the cohesive ideological matrix of yugoslavia integrated the people to the extent of creating the ‘yugoslav’ as a nation, whereby 3.8 million people actually declared themselves to be yugoslavs as opposed to serb, croat, etc. thus, yugoslavia bridged all ww ii animosities by preserving the political ideal upon which the ottoman empire rested4, 3 this constitution, as far as the rights it guaranteed to the nationalities were concerned, was according to many authors and lawyers, the most liberal one in europe and even in the world. see more on this in janjic (1987). among other things, with that constitution, kosovo practically gained the status of a republic, although it was technically constituted as an autonomous province. 4 that the balkan region is imbued with tolerance existing within the ottoman empire system can be proved by various facts, especially with regards to architecture. as ferid muhić explains in his monograph on macedonia, there are still “churches dating from the time before the turks, as well as those, which were built during the time before the turkish occupation or were often renovated, and financially aided by the state” (muhić 1994: 164). an example of a financially aided church is st. joakim osogovski, damaged by fire in the nineteenth century, which received financial aid for reconstruction from the government of sultan abdul hamit (ibid., 164). there is also no authentic historical source of ottoman coercive conversion in the balkans. noel for instance (1996, 51-70), uses the term islamicisation instead of islamisation. he gives an example where he says that if the osmanli turks were ruling the balkan region over 500 years and if the islamicisation was coercive they would definitely convert more than 1% of the population per year, as they had all the means and power to do so. one percent is a very modest target for effecting a change of ideological regularity. so, if they were islamicising 1% of the population per year it would mean that after 100 years of ruling they would islamicise 100% of the whole population. yet, even after 400 years, only 50 to 70% of the population was converted. hence, the conversion jen typewritten text 41 that is, by promoting the principle of unification of all people into one yugoslav nation. frightened by these denationalizing processes, the republics strengthened their disintegrative measures, such as by insisting on the use of their own languages in the federal parliament. as nationalist tendencies undermined that concept of socialism in which the identity of yugoslavia had been forged, identity returned to national, ethnic, lingual, cultural, and religious spheres, with the result that separation became the project on which everybody became focused. needless to say, a great mistake in the concept of former yugoslavia, which led to its dissolution and fed the specific national, ethnic, and cultural passions was the very preservation of the separate names of the republics which clearly denoted a particular ethnicity. this brings into question even more the legitimacy of applying western multicultural models and minority rights in post-socialist countries, where allegedly, these rights and standards were only at a rudimentary level or never existed and thus must be ‘imported’ from abroad. even if we accept the presupposition whereby the u.s. can be used as a somewhat successful model of multiculturalism, it goes without saying that this model, as well as the nation itself have emerged on the basis of suppression/elimination of the native population. all cultural immigrant communities found themselves in the same position and thus, had very little ground for establishing a hierarchical relation of the type that exists in the ece countries, former yugoslavia or macedonia, to name one example. in macedonia, there is no ethnic group or nation, irrespective of size, which cannot, by the legal standards accepted in the world at large, be considered autochthonous. “the turks, the most recent arrivals and the smallest ethnic group […] have lived for 600 years on macedonian soil” (muhić 1996: 235). they have also exercised sovereignty was around 0.25% per year, which is an extremely low figure. the logical conclusion is that there could not have been any coercive conversion. over macedonia for many years. the albanians, as muhić further points out, have been here in the balkans longer than any of the slav nations. they are directly linked with the illyrians, trojans, thracians, dalmatians, and the ancient tribes of epirus. even if leaving illyrians to the side, according to muhić, they must have come earlier than the slavs in the balkans-about fifth century ad (1996: 236). this then creates the tension whereby for the albanians, they are the truly autochthonous inhabitants of macedonia. macedonians, on the other hand are now “incontrovertibly the most numerous nation on the territory of macedonia” (muhić 1996: 236), which on their part has certain advantages on the basis of which they also fall into hierarchical relations. this brief overview should help us understand that the multicultural models developed elsewhere, such as the one in the u.s., emerged from a completely different analytical and historical framework. it is therefore highly doubtful if not dangerous to try to apply these models in this region (in this case, the balkans). even models offered in places such as switzerland are nonfunctional if applied in the countries from the region. switzerland, just like the u.s. and many other countries as a matter of fact, has appropriated a name that no other group has. this in itself did not trigger the emergence of an advantaged-disadvantaged relation as it does in macedonia, where the very name of the state refers to the majority nation. we would also like to discredit the hypothesis whereby the hatred in the post-socialist countries has been suppressed for a long time due to the totalitarian character of the socialist rule. the fall of the regime then logically resulted in the explosion of these long suppressed negative feelings. the current situation with the flemish, basques, catalonians, or the case with corsica, clearly proves that weakness of such an argument. it is obvious then, that much of the supposedly successful models in the western democracies or immigrant nations are functioning because they had none of the difficulties that the ece countries have faced. jen typewritten text 42 they have, moreover, emerged through completely different practices, including the elimination of indigenous peoples. it would be very difficult then to try to apply these standards in other settings that have experienced drastically different historical constellations. conclusion this paper analyzed and compared anthropologically, historically, socially, and culturally the politics of cohabitation and the multicultural models employed by the countries from the region (with emphasis on the former yugoslavia) and the proposed, supposedly successful, multicultural models of the western democracies (as kymlicka refers to them). we critically engaged with the generally accepted belief that a variety of functional multicultural solutions can be looked for outside our own setting, especially outside the setting of the ece countries, and hence, must be adopted by these states. the arguments and examples used showed the neo-colonial pretension and perils of such an approach, especially for the countries that have been pressured to apply and adopt western models of multiculturalism with special emphasis to former yugoslavia and macedonia. forcing someone to accept standards of behavior, proves that today, the world enters into a worldly, planetary international capitalism. the contemporary states are going through the phase of liberal megacapitalism. their legal integrity and sovereignty is at the same time their key condition for their subordination in that they ask to be admitted in this or that organization while agreeing on a list of conditions, which in the final instance, utterly relegates their sovereignty and freedom. such is the case with ece countries that are pressured to accept western multicultural models and minority rights as an accession criteria for entering the eu. as muhić points out, the main target of the globalization processes are exactly the societies, that is, states, that maintained their cultural autonomy and that live actively through their own cultural traditions (2001: 240). this mondalization of the world seems to see direct opponents and victims exactly in those who preserved their cultural integrity. the main tactic of opposing them is the cultural depersonalization or alteration of the cohabitation models that stem from the specificities of their cultural, social, and historical constellations. hence, it is interesting to see that those western democracies that kymlicka points to developed their multiculturalisms up to the level of their political realization, where they then must stop. as was mentioned above, the u.s., for instance, does not permit the existence of national parties, which on the contrary, exists as a model in post-socialist countries, macedonia being just one example. finally, the historical complexities and the multifaceted layers of cohabitation in ece, may prove that the practices of post-socialist countries are far more instructive for the future theoretical understanding as well as practical application of multiculturalism than those proposed and imposed by the western democracies. references cited: cowan, j. k., m. b. dembour, and r. a. wilson (eds.). 2001. culture and rights. anthropological perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press. janjić et al. 1987. moderno društvo. drzava. nacija: prilog za bibiliografiju, 1869-1986. godine. (modern society. state. nation: contribution to bibliography, 1869-1986). belgrade: marksistički centar gradskog komiteta organizacije sk u beogradu. noel, m. 1996. bosnia: a short history. london: papermac. kivisto, p. 2002. multicutlrualism in a global society. uk: blackwell publishing. kymlicka, w. 1989. liberalism, community, and culture. oxford: clarendon press. kymlicka, w. 2002. multiculturalism and minority rights. in ecmi 4: 1-18. mishra, v. and b. hodge. 1994. what is post()colonialism? in colonial discourse and postjen typewritten text 43 colonial theory: a reader. (eds.) p. williams and l. chrisman. new york: columbia university press. muhić, f. 1994. macedonia: clasp of the world. skopje: tabernakul. muhić, f. 1996. macedonia – an island on the balkan mainland. in yugoslavia and after: a study in fragmentation, despair and rebirth. (eds.) d. a. dayker and i. vejvoda. london and new york: longman. muhić, f. 2001. logos i hierarhija (logos and hierarchy). skopje: krug. taylor, c. 1992. multiculturalism and ‘the politics of recognition’ (with commentary by amy gutmann, editor, steven c. rockefeller, michael walzer and susan wolf). princeton, nj: princeton university press. jen typewritten text 44 section iii: ethnic minorities "talking nicely": the bio-politics of social work in the ostrava roma community krista hegburg, columbia university late last year, the newly fonned roma parliament (parlamentromti) sent a delegation to meet with czech president klaus. the czech president's subsequent pledge to address roma concerns would seem like good news for a community in which unemployment sometimes tops 80 percent, money-lending is rife, and the majority of children have been educated in substandard 'special schools' designed for the mentally disabled. a year previously, klaus had gained a modicum of western notoriety for dismissing the suggestion that roma faced discrimination in the czech republic on the bbc world program hardtalk, announcing that it was "such nonsense and stupidity that i won't even react to it" (klaus 2003).1 but klaus's newfound willingness to react to the issues often grouped under the heading of the 'roma question' was not received wannly in all quarters. the meeting instead set off a tiff between the president's office and jan jarab, the government's out-going human rights commissioner, who complained in the newspaper lidove noviny that the parliament, as a non-profit organization representing a spectrum of local non-profits, was misrepresenting itself as a 'political subject' (politidy subjej.'1), and expressed his wondennent that the president would meet with an organization that was not even registered with the ministry of the interior (vokaty 2004). the leaders of the parliament have a standing quarrel with jarab, who is white and whom they hold does not share their "unmediated" 1 though klaus made his remarks in english, i am translating here from the czech~language transcript provided by the president's office, in which he is quoted as saying, "to je tako\')' nesmysl a hloupost, ze na to ani nebudu reagovat" (klaus 2003). access to the roma community (scuka and jano 2004). jarab's reaction to the meeting also reflected behind-the-scenes political wrangling, for his government office oversees the office of roma community affairs for the czech government that serves as the secretariat for the advisory board for roma conununity affairs (rada vlttdy pro zttleiitosti romske komunity). the parliament was making a claim to that advisory role on the basis of what the head of office of the president called its "authentic view" (autentickj pohled) on roma issues (vokaty 2004), jeopardizing the host of social programs run out of latab's office. thus the roma parliament launched itself headlong into the core of one of the debates that currently animates the post-socialist liberal landscape in the czech republic: who is to be taken as a representative of the roma community in what is known as the 'majority society'? this article is a brief reflection on how this question has become salient, and the multiple practical effects of the answers to it. though the fieldwork (conducted in 2004) on which this piece is based focused on holocaust reparations,2 i found that the tangled 2 in my research on holocaust reparations and the relevance of contemporary notions of race to their niimberg-era predecessors that surface in those reparations, i spent half a year in the field with roma social workers as they assisted elderly clients in claiming reparations from the czech state. i was constantly struck by how entangled the roma question was with the subject of my research: that the roma should make claims was deemed ludicrous by white acquaintances, because "they already take welfare;" failed claims, in tum, were chalked up by their non­ recipients to czech racism. it was even harder to ignore the ann' s-iength fascination that educated czechs have with roma. many czechs immediately assumed that, because i am an anthropologist, i worked on roma, who seem to offer themselves up as the proper subjects of the 124 contemporary nexus of race, culture, and politics that constitute the roma question surfaced unbidden in my research with a pervasiveness that made it hard to ignore. roma today are the focus of intense sociological interest: they are the subject of iimumerable publications ranging from academic and policy-oriented surveys and reports on the challenges roma present for cultural diversity to social-scientific tracts on their putative racial, and thus intellectual, inferiority. across this spectrum, there exists a preoccupation with roma cultural uniqueness, with what makes them not fit into czech society, and what should be done to redress their exteriority. these meditations address schooling, housing, criminality, hygiene, and poverty the laundry list of concerns that have reformulated themselves after the end of state socialism. they are made all the more crucial by the post-89 pogrom­ like violence that to this day is practiced by white czechs against their black'fellow citizens' (spo!uobcane),3 a reminder that in the czech context the dark side of cultural difference is racial violence. in their centrality to all these social issues, roma constitute an "imaginative surface" (hartman 1997:7) onto which czech society projects the anxieties and antinomies that adhere to the post­ communist reintroduction of a liberal state form. at stake, thus, in almost every public discussion of roma is not only its presumed subject but also the very form of the post­ socialist polity on whose margins roma hover. taking as the basis of my analysis michel foucault's notion ofbio-power, which practices itself on the level of population by optimizing the life of that population, i seek to explore how the dense discourse about roma participates in rendering czech society into a anthropological gaze in the czech republic. even though i work equally in communities of jews and fonner political prisoners, i am still introduced by czechs as "an anthropologist who works on roma." 3 the tenn 'fellow citizen' can be used, for example, by an elected official to address all of his constituents. it is also used, however, to refer to the not-quite-czech populations of the czech republic: jews, gennans, and, the largest ofthe three today, roma. population in which 'roma' becomes a special category of intervention. in order to take stock of the production of knowledge about 'roma culture' and how it circulates in political domains, we must resituate the question about the possibility of an "authentic view" into roma cultural uniqueness into the frame of the bio-politics that generates it. bio-power and governmentality many recent observers of the post-socialist condition frame their analyses in the vein of governmentality, examining the introduction of the liberal form of government (in the czech case, its re-introduction) in the context of new forms of knowledge that have begun to circulate in eastern europe and the technologies of intervention those forms of knowledge underpin (june this issue, chivens 2004, dunn 2004). it is fruitful because governmentality is wider than the practices of the government, encompassing not only "governmental apparatuses" but also the complex of knowledge that weaves through many domains (les savoirs) (foucault 1990). governmentality and bio-power are contiguous forms, each reliant on a population in which to intervene. for the case at hand, though, i find foucault's later musings on bio-power more useful, for he posits the problem anew, expanding it into the realm of racism (foucault 1997b:227, see also agamben 1999:82-86). by racism, foucault does not mean, as he says, an "ideological operation by which states, or a class, would try to divert toward a mythic adversary the hostilities that would be directed toward themselves," but rather the ominous inverse of the optimization of life (1997b:230). this addition to the notion of governmentality is crucial, for roma seem to provide a particular challenge to liberal governance; their difference is not easily subsumed into the population that government takes as its end. what distinguishes this racism in the framework ofbio-power is the danger it poses to the state's own, proper, citizens (propres citoyens), in effect to the constituents of the bio-political population (227). while the jacquerie violence against 125 roma usually associated with skinheads in the czech republic is one aspect ofthis,4 the recent instance in which three off-duty police officers burst into a roma household and attacked its members while shouting racist slurs is equally illustrative (truhlicka 2003). as the animating force ofbio-power, racism introduces the grounds for dividing the population into those who will live and those who may not. while foucault grapples with these issues in relationship to nazism, he does not limit his analysis to this extreme case. "i don't only mean direct murder," he says, "but also all that could be indirect murder: the act of exposing to death, of multiplying for certain the risk of death, or, quite simply, political death, expulsion, casting out, etc." (1997b:228-229). in this sense, we do not have to return to the period when roma were rounded up into the concentration camps of the czechoslovak second republic to imagine the impact bio-power has in the here and now. thus here i consider first an example of the spectrum of knowledge that exemplifies how the parameters of roma political subjectivity are constructed in the discursive frame of 'culture.' the reach of this knowledge, which has very clear roots in normalization-era czechoslovakia, today finds itself stretched between a production of multiculturalism that valorizes roma identity5 to a more troubling middle ground of social assimilation and on to racist rants with eugenic overtones. i then tum to the case of social workers who are hired by the government to function within the space of those parameters in order to promote roma social integration. in examining a combination ofknowing and the practices it 4 stories of skinhead attacks on roma feature in the czech press with saddening regularity. one of my infonnants related to me that for a period, local roma in his city fonned anned defense gangs in the mid-1990s; another told me that her all-roma suburb had its own roma police force fonned in response to the skinhead threat. 5 the most obvious example of this is the annual european union-funded khamoro festival, which celebrates roma music and traditional crafts. see http://www.khamoro.cz. makes possible, i hope to make an initial contribution to understanding the persistent racialization of roma, and to challenges the mechanisms of bio-power pose to liberal governmentality. integration and the culture of the minority the programs that jarab was trying to protect center around the social integration of roma and are typified by his office's roma field social worker program (terenni socialni pracovnik, henceforth tsp).6 the tsp program, through which i conducted fieldwork in 2004, hires (predominantly roma) roma social workers whom it trains to assist members of the roma community in their interactions with official administrative structures, such as the local town hall or the welfare bureau.7 many older roma cannot read and write in the czech language, so social workers work as their scribes. in my fieldwork, i often witnessed social workers sitting patiently in living rooills, pens poised, while elderly clients dredged their memories for the exact dates they spent in hiding from the nazis in order to fill in the myriad forms required to claim holocaust reparations from the czech state. the communicative gap between roma and the majority resonates on many levels, and renders roma into a seemingly silent population. no one is required to identify themselves as roma on the czech census (or as anything else for that matter), and few roma announce themselves as such on census forms. there are, as a result, no reliable statistics on how many roma live in the czech republic. one of the consequent problems the tsp program faces is the uncertainty over who actually is roma. in ostrava, a city of about 300,000, there are by most conservative estimates 10,000 roma; by 6 for a detailed view of the government's approach, see its roma integration plan (koncepce romske integrace) at http://wtd.vlada.czlscriptsldetail.php?=6206. though field social worker is thc official title of the position, they are often refcrred to as rolna social workers. 7 of my social worker infonnants, only onc was non­ roma, though she was married to a rom. 126 http://wtd.vlada.czlscriptsldetail.php?=6206 http:http://www.khamoro.cz i i i liberal estimates there are up to four times that number. according to the last census, however, there are exactly 691 roma inhabitants of ostrava (polackova 2004:2). these sorts of discrepancies make it difficult for the government's office of roma community affairs to justify the social programs it funds and oversees. after all, if there are only 691 roma in ostrava, why does the city need fourteen social workers just for them? on the other side ofthe relative muteness of roma in relation to govemmental forms of data collection is the appearance of excessive impropriety when roma do enter into the political provinces of the state. thus, for example, the arrival of the roma parliament onto the scene was accompanied by intimations of the taint of corruption, as if their crossing of the borders of culture and race locates roma improperly outside of their natural economies of exchange. the vice­ president of the parliament, petr jano, one newspaper suggested, was corrupt, having been 'judged (souzeny) for extortion,' though they refrained from noting that the case was ongoing and that jano has not actually been convicted (vokaty 2004).8 another newspaper ran an article devoted solely to the issue of the alleged illegal conduct of the parliament's leaders (blazkova and grohova 2004).9 s the term souzeny, unlike the related, and ~ straightforward, tcml odsouzeny (convictcd), is deliberately ambiguous. i thank petr kadlec for the , linguistic clarification of czech legalese. j 9 by the same token, my roma informants told me that the leaders ofparliament were degesi (see note 15), and then expanded this pronouncement to include all roma politicians, and then in tum, all politicians. by noting this focus on the alleged criminality of the parliament's i leaders, i do not mean to say that they are necessarily innocent, but rather that a larger discourse about roma criminality impels the particular form of these representations as corrupt. unlike the discourse about 'czech' corruption, which has been marked by struggles to criminalize practices such as 'tunneling' a finn's financial worth and is perceived as arising from and embedded in bureaucratic structures and the state's participation in the post-socialist privatization process (altschuler 2001, june this issue), the perception of roma corruption rests on the widespread assumption subsumed in all the hullabaloo about whether the roma parliament was the proper representative of czech roma was their proposal to address the fact that roma do not seem to register in any other mode but that of social pathology. one of the main planks of the parliament's proposal identities the most urgent task of their social workers to be a census of the roma population (vokaty 2004).10 since roma obviously have not revealed their identity to white census-takers, the parliament argued that their (presumably roma) social workers would be better placed to figure out who is who. they argued, in essence, that their "unmediated" access to roma allows them to constitute the proper roma political subject, identified and self­ identifying, and massify these subjects into a political constituency. the roma parliament and the czech government are not the only ones preoccupied by the question of the proper roma subj ect, nor is the census the only form of knowledge deployed to delineate this subject's parameters. the particular form of inaccessibility that roma appear to take ­ silent in such official registers as the census, yet legendarily responsible for street crime ­ has called forth a scientific-academic industry devoted to the reformulation of the non-roma public perception of roma. on one end of the spectrum there are characters such as petr bakalar, who though roundly denounced as a racist also managed to top the best-seller list for months in 2003 with his study of the relationship between race and intelligence (bakalar 2003, see also bakalar 2004). in his social-darwinist study of the that roma are the personification of criminality in the czech republic. altschuler quotes a letter to a czech ncwspapct as saying, "a normal praguer is someone who has [never] tunneled anything" (129). by way of contrast, consider the casual remark one stranger made to me at a tram stop when the ticket machine was not working: "it must be because gypsies have been stealing from it." 10 for an overview of the history of the representation of roma in the census, a long-standing issue in the czech republic and its predecessor state, czechoslovakia, see sokolovu (2002:23-24) and kuta (i 977). 127 http:2004).10 supposed evolutionary effects of harsh environmental conditions on certain racial groups, he argues that the history of roma has made them genetically weaker than whites, accounting for their "higher fertility ... lower parental investment [in children] ... lower life expectancy" and the like (2003:90). the social deviance of roma, evident in their low scores on intelligence tests, he concludes, arises from their racial(ized) heritage. occupying the other end of the spectrum, academics such as the the linguist milena hiibschmmlliova cast roma difference in a positive light, arguing that the perception of their social deviance is rather a failure of majority society to understand roma culture. for roma scholars in this vein, roma culture must be taken on equal terms with czech: its difference should be celebrated instead of denigrated, and roma claims to national status on the basis of this difference should be recognized. in the most recent salvo in this set of debates, marek lakoubek, an anthropologist from zapadoceska univerzita in plzeii, proposes that both these approaches are wrong-headed. roma, he holds, are neither a racial type nor a nation whose emancipation has been long denied by the dominant political structures surrounding it. il1stead, roma culture must be situated, through anthropological analysis, in the segregated roma settlements (osady) of slovakia where it is practiced in its most complete form. much of his analysis functions as the basis for his reflections on the fraught status of the individual political rom that so troubles larab and lano. in an argument demonstrative of the way in which the cultural and the political present themselves as inextricable, yet endlessly self-segregating, lakoubek reaches the conclusion that the organization of roma culture forecloses the very possibility of roma political representation (2003: 157-157). though lakoubek calls his contribution to roma studies a 'heretical essay' that deconstructs the term 'roma,' his analysis of what make roma 'traditional' shares the same basis as most standard czech ethnographic scholarship as well as the pseudo-scientific writings exemplified by bakalar, both of which rest on the premise that roma are descended from 'indians.' i i inlakoubek's reading, roma settlements in slovakia (where he conducted his ficldwork12) are relics of 'traditional society,' kinship-dependent and internally riven by concerns over ritual pollution and purity. 13 roma social structure, and the romany preoccupation widely noted by ethnographers throughout europe and in the united states (silvern1an 1988) with the pure (iuio) and the polluted (dege.sis), is understood by lakoubek as a preservation of a south asian caste system, replicated over and over in self-contained roma nodes inside the diverse european state forms of the twentieth 14century. ii roma are thought to have migrated to europe starting around the 9th century, and by the middle ages are recorded as widely dispersed around the continent (silverman 1995). i place the term 'indian' in quotes because at the time the groups that were to become european roma began their journeys, india was not a unified country. linguistic analysis traces rorna origins to contemporary rajasthan, which at the time of their initial dispersal, was the province of the rajput dynasty (columbia encyclopedia 2001-04). 12 lakoubek conducted his fieldwork while working as the research coordinator for thc slovak ngo nadacia inforoma's "monitoring of the situation of rom a settlements" project (lvfonitoring situace romskf;ch osad). one of the main goals ofthe project, which was supported by the slovak government, is to offer advice to the government on its integration policies. sec http://www.inforoma.sk/vyskum.htrn. though the settlements in slovakia are rural enclaves disturbingly reminiscent of1bird world poverty, lakoubek generalizes his arguments to czech roma, a largely urban population whose migratory patterns over the past fifty years have on czech soil fundamentally rearranged the original relations of these village's kith and kin. 13 i thank petr skalnik for bringing the debate surrounding lakoubek's book in lidove noviny to my attention. see barsa (2004), holomek (2004), budil (2004) and krcik (2004). 14 in my fieldwork, i found many roma for whom this argument was persuasive. usually, though, explanations offered in these terms were marked by hesitation as the person searched for the right academic term. one infonnant, expounding on the meaning of the word deges (which is used to mean anything from 'ritually impure' to 'complete asshole'), said, "well, you see, it's like in the, the, uhhh ... castes in umm, you know ... india." 128 http://www.inforoma.sk/vyskum.htrn ------------------------------------------------------------hiibschmannova, one of the main proponents of the indian origins theory, is also one of jakoubek's main antagonists. she reads caste as a 5,000-year proto-indian and indian development that has produced the array of 'anthropological' and 'ethnocultural' groups present today on the subcontinent (1999: 119). in her trips to india and around eastern europe she has amassed a veritable archive of ethnographic data detailing the persuasive similarities between contemporary indians and roma. regarding food consumption, for example, she remarks that "it is almost unbelievable to what level of detail [the] custom [of not consuming certain types of meat] has been conserved (udrioval) among many roma until very recently, if not today" (121). these sorts of observations are generalized in the academic discourse on roma, which describe roma social organization in terms of caste, a phenomenon jakoubek asserts, is "universal in india" (2004:95, cf. quigley 1998). though hiibschmannova views the indian origins of roma as the basis for their political emancipation,15 jakoubek eschews such politics as untenable in light of the nature of roma connl1unities as "relics" of traditional society. he describes the settlements as "unique islands oftraditional society which have survived ... until today and at the same time are the last enclaves ofa people without history in europe" (2004:291, emphases original). to buttress these claims, lakoubek relies on louis dumont's analysis of caste (dumont 1970). dumont's study details a system given over to concerns about ritual purity and hierarchy, manifested in caste and jajmani. jajmani is described by lakoubek as an economic system of reciprocity in which functions that in "modem, civil society" would be understood as economic are instead founded on (as lakoubek quotes dumont) "the implicit relationship to the whole, whose 15 hiibschmannova is noted for her political advocacy on behalf of roma, and particularly her opposition to the repressive communist-era attempts to integrate a population deemed by the regime to he 'socially deviant' (sokolova 2002:227-228). character is religious" (2004:95-96).16 for hinduism, which roma in east-central europe do not practice, 1 akoubek substitutes the preservation of "quasi-religious" ritual purity (96). conspicuously missing from analyses that rely on dumont's understanding of the caste system is the widespread critique of his ahistorcial analysis. nicholas dirks, for example, notes that caste in india was fundamentally reconfigured during the british colonial administration of south asia. 17 he argues that analyses of the present functioning of caste systems in india must account for the utility of the notion of caste to the british colonial project, and the way it underpinned and allowed forms of knowledge about natives that were inextricable from the political and economic projects the colonists were pursuing (dirks 1993,2001). dirks's critique is, in the mode of deconstruction, an excavation of what the discourse of culture effaces. he argues that dumont, by separating the internal workings of caste from the domain of the political, relegates its practitioners to a position outside of the realm ofpower and thus reinscribes the effects of colonialism. lakoubek's deconstruction of the term 'roma', however, does the opposite by positing roma as a people without history whose stubborn adherence to their 'non­ modem' social organization precludes the very possibility of their entrance into the contemporary czech polity. the historian vera sokolova sums it up nicely in her excellent study of the use of the notion of culture as a discursive strategy deployed by the state during communism in order to marginalize roma as 'socially deviant.' "the politics of romani studies," she writes, "despite its best intentions of trying to champion romani emancipation in a variety 16 here i am quoting dumont in translation from lakoubek's czeeh text. 17 it follows that south asian caste in its present formes) on any continent cannot be read backwards as the preservation of a cultural form from pre-colonial india, much less to a medieval period when india as such did not exist. 129 http:2004:95-96).16 of different ways, has also produced a set of knowledge claims that have tended to affirm, rather than reject, the politics of difference in the host society" (2002:43).18 sokolova argues that the tum in roma scholarship in the 1970s to the issue of origins opened up a space in which older notions of roma social pathology could circulate with a new impunity (40). for example, bakalar, who argues that the "quality" of the "negroid" race's genofond (in contradistinction to that of the "europoid race") has been environmentally and evolutionarily disadvantaged (nezryhodneny), is faced with the issue that in his terms, roma as indians are 'europoid.' he resolves the dilemma by asserting that their 'negroid' characteristics are accounted for because they were, in india, untouchables, responsible for sweeping away garbage (2003:90). his is a neat inversion of hiibschmannova's analytical frame, which attributes the mounds of garbage often resident in roma settlements to roma's originary high-caste status; contact with such filth would be, for them, impossible (fonseca 1996:103). thus analyses such as jakoubek's, far from heretical, are part and parcel of this larger epistemic apparatus that has long constituted roma as simultaneously culturally unique and socially marginalized. the inscription of roma to the margins has, in recent years, a complex history. sokolova traces its lineage through the communist era from its stalinist beginnings as a disciplinary civilizing project manifest in the anti­ nomadism laws of the period (2002:118) to its bio-political face ascendant in the sterilization legislation of the 1970s. this second period of communist assimilationist interventions was brought to bear primarily on roma women, who were the implicit targets of the 1972 sterilization decree (307). the czechoslovak regime was, at the time, strongly pronatalist, a 18 see sokolova (2002:314-319) for an insightful discussion of the relationship between these prejudices and the violence that has regularly claimed czech roma lives since 1989. silverman reports that, according to a poll in 1989, one-third of (presumably non-roma) hungarians would like to see roma forcibly 'repatriated' to india (1995:43). policy that would seem to be undercut by the practice of sterilizing women that became prevalent then. at the same time it offered czechoslovak newlyweds special loans for the first year oftheir child's life, the state was also paying roma women to undergo sterilization (262). recasting this question in the frame ofbio­ power offers us some insight into this problematic. along with the scholarly tum towards the question of roma origins, the 1970s saw an intensification of the biological study of roma. sokolova chronicles the production of knowledge about roma features such as skull size, skin color, and hormonal levels, which were perceived the basis of the presumed early onset of puberty in roma children (229-234). the pronatalist preoccupations of this period with, as foucault terms it, "making live" ifaire vivre), is characteristic ofbio-power (1997b:219). at the same time, he argues, bio-power establishes a second plane of intervention around the individual who "falls outside" of these processes (217). in this sense, bio-power folds in the disciplinary modes of power foucault analyzed (1995) before he recrafted his analyses to the level of comprehending the state's relationship to notions of population. and in the 1970s, roma women and their potential progeny became the target of its practice. as sokolova points out, the roma question post-1989 has deep roots in recent history. long before czechoslovakia (and eastern europe more generally) garnered international attention for the 'resurgence' of racism against roma, the stage was set. it should not surprise us, then that of the group of women who have recently filed a complaint with the czech govemment for their involuntary sterilization in state-run hospitals in the post-socialist period, the overwhelming majority are roma (kovalik 2004:4). the hand-wringing over the resurfacing of communist-era policies that has accompanied this revelation is somewhat deceptive, though, for the post-socialist practice of sterilization takes a rather liberal fonn. whereas roma women recall being paid to undergo sterilization during communism, they now 130 ~------------------------------------------http:2002:43).18 recount being thrust a welter of papers to sign as they were being wheeled into the delivery room, only to discover later that one of them authorized their sterilization. 19 in his defense, a gynecologist in ostrava accused of the practice remarked, "look, if a woman signs something, then perhaps she understands it (tak tomu asi rozumz). and i don't believe that a woman is so altered by giving birth that she doesn't know what she is signing" (kovalik 2004:4). sterilization today, that is to say, inhabits a landscape of contract and individual responsibility. to understand the lay of this land, and indeed for any analytically productive ethnography of roma (and of czechs), i suggest turning the anthropological gaze to the people who, instead of recognizing their roma-ness (romstvz) as a barrier to societal participation, use it as the basis of their engagement. in my experience, the people who were most aware ofbio-power's uses and abuses were the roma social workers whose daily work it is to reconfigure the social terrain ofbio-politics. the practice of social work social work is a practice inseparable from bio-politics. it concentrates its efforts on the margins of society, among the poor, the delinquent, the unemployed, the ill. in the czech context, all these categories are grouped under the term 'sociq{ne slam, 'the socially weak.20 it is also a term increasingly coterminous with roma.21 roma social 19 one woman recounts, for example, that she had been given a series of injections during a difficult delivery, and was led to believe she was signing papers authorizing a c-scction (kovalik 2004:4). 20 recently, several government ministries have put forth new terms to replace 'socially weak;' thus the minisuy of education, for example, commonly uses 'socioculturally disadvantaged' (sociokulturne zneryhodnujicl). the social workers with whom i worked, however, used only 'socially weak' to describe their client base. 21 when i asked lydia polackova, the ostrava roma advisor, why there was no vietnamese advisor to assist the burgeoning population of vietnamese immilo'tants navigate the labyrinth czech public administration, she replied (after she stopped laughing), "but they're not socially weak!" workers in ostrava spend much of their time seeking out these socially weak, walking house to house in ghettos, helping clients fill in forms, or accompanying them to official offices. much of their work, and the training that leads up to it, focuses on acting as a communicative medium between (roma) clients and (non-roma) bureaucrats. the brochure on cultural difference published by the ostrava roma advisor's office illustrates the problem communication poses between these two groups, noting that volume is used by roma to mark the level of their "involvement" in a given situation. czechs are exhorted to keep this difference in mind: "what non-romanies should be aware of is: if a romany shouts, he does not shout at us, he only tries to show his involvement in the problem. let him shout and wait!" (polackova 2004: 3).22 letting someone shout and wait, though, is not common practice among czech bureaucrats (urednici). to remedy this, roma social workers spend much of their time leading their clients through bureaucratic provinces. they usually pick up their clients at home, and on the way to government offices (denoted in czech by the hard-to­ translate word urad},23 social workers often offer a primer on bureaucratic interaction, instructing their client not to yell, not to get confrontational, to speak softly, to be polite to the bureaucrat. once in the office, the situation triangulates: the social worker often speaks to the bureaucrat on behalf of the client, and the bureaucrat responds to the social worker, who in tum repeats all the bureaucrat's questions to the client, who responds to the social workers and then has her response again repeated to the bureaucrat. i often marveled that, as a foreigner, i seemed 22 perhaps not surprisingly, the brochure locates the onus of 'difference' on roma, noting of non-rom a only that in situations of extreme duress that they "maintain an ice-cold facial expression and they are close to a heart attack." (polackova 2004:3). 23 there is no one adequate english translation ofthe czech work 'urad, 'which can refer to the welfare office, the town hall, the regional council (krajsky urad), and beyond. 131 to understand the bureaucrat and the client better than they seem to understand each other, even though they both spoke czech. almost all of my infonnants use the metaphor of a bridge to describe the fundaments of what they do. in a more candid moment, one social worker, katka,24 put it to me thusly: "you see, i have to both be a nonnal gypsy, and at the same time talk nicely." though it aright not seem to be a classic hallmark of professionalization, talking nicely is one of the fundamental skills of the roma social worker. at the same time, the flip side of this equation, 'being' roma, is something immanent and hard to define as ajob skill. in katka's formulation, her profession is hoth exegesis and a henneneutics of culture, a constant mediation of her unmediated access to roma culture. laura epstein's suggestive analysis ofthe american profession of social work is instructive for this case. she holds that social work must be understood in foucauldian tenns as a human science "constituted by [its] technologies of intervention: by observation, measurement, assessment, and administration" (1999: 14). in the american setting, she argues, the professionalization of social work, and thus its technologies of intervention, was heavily influenced the arrival of freudian psychoanalytic theory on the american scene in the 1920s and '30s (see also lubove 1965: 107). this accounts for the contemporary american configuration of the profession, which is composed of social workers and psychotherapists. the psychotherapeutic aspect of social work, epstein holds, dovetails with the american liberal discourse on personal responsibility. she writes: social work broadly dissenrinates the ideology of individualism in ways that make it appear believable. the thrust of social work's development of various types of psychotherapy has been to enshrine the values and 24 the use of flrst names only indicates the use of pseudonyms. properties of individualism, disseminating it through a multitude of individual contacts with all citizens, with the nrillions in all econonric classes who experience problems in living, and especially in populations that are impoverished and discrinrinated against. (1999: 1 0) one of epstein's goals is to uncover the way in which the feminized profession of social work sought to elevate its status through recourse to a social-scientific discourse that neutralized the gender of its practitioners and allowed them to interact with professions such as medicine and psychology from which they had been largely shut out on the basis of their sex. though sinrilar in the way its social workers address individual citizens, the tsp program does not spring from the same psychological well as american social work. roma social workers are not, as is common of social workers in the united states today, endowed with masters' degrees and training in psychological clinical practice. it is interesting to note, however, that the gendered component of american social work bears a certain resemblance to the fact that the roma tsp program specifically seeks to professionalize its cadres based on their status as roma. in this sense, though, being roma functions more as an inverse of being female: instead of necessitating a neutralizing discourse from without to efface their status, being roma is itself the very technology that legitimates the role of the roma social worker. in this capacity, roma social workers find their roma-ness has become one of the "technologies of intervention" epstein cites. during the time i conducted my fieldwork, i attended several social worker staff meetings at the roma advisor's office that were visited by czech social scientists. they came in order to solicit the help of the social workers whom they felt had the "unmediated access" the roma parliament claims it has to other roma, a sort of savoir-faire about how to approach their fellow roma that would allow them to 132 better administer surveys of the roma population. although the social workers duly took their forms and agreed on the number of clients they would survey, once the visitors left the room, they immediately derided the validity of the data the researchers hoped to collect. regarding a survey of money lending in the roma community, one social worker declared, "i would never talk to white people about that!" 1 often observed this uneasiness about the constant crossing of roma/czech boundaries that roma social workers are hired to perform. when 1 mentioned to lenka and marek, two roma social workers, the roma parliament's proposal to conduct a census to identify all the roma in the czech republic, they immediately perceived its bio-political potentiality. it was deemed a racist endeavor, a dividing of the social body not in keeping with their mission as agents of the state. lenka then recounted her experience with census-takers in the 2001 census. when he came to her door, her census-taker questioned her about her nationality, to which she replied that she was czech. "are you sure?" he said, to which she responded, "of course 1 am. why wouldn't 1 be?" and then, in a moment characteristic of roma interaction with things official and administrative,25 she took the form and, without the census-taker's knowledge, filled herself in as roma. it was a double triumph of sorts: requiring an agent of the state to recognize her as equally czech combined with a moment of private resistance never to be recorded by its obj ect. marek's response was staked on his inability to translate the necessity of a census across the communicative divide. "how should 1 explain to them that we need a list of roma 25 an example of the practice of evading the grasp of the state, noted in various roma communities, is the dual naming system in which people have one name recorded on documentation such as birth certificates and used generally for official interaction and a second name used by family and mends. silverman remarks on the utility of this arrangement, noting that if a truant officer shows up looking for a john miller, the six children who answer to the name are sure to confound his regulatory authority (1988:7). for official purposes?" said marek, "they would never understand. 1 couldn't explain it to them." both reactions illuminate the issues at stake in turning roma into government social workers in their own communities. the technologies ofbio-power, with its concurrent investment in the population and the relentless production of those who stand outside it, repeatedly reveal their racializing character to those who are asked to act as those technologies. the constant necessity of speaking across the bio-political divide, the difficulty of using the presumed separateness of being roma to bring fellow roma into a relation with the state, refracts the construction of roma difference in the very attempts to overcome it. this difficulty, i contend, has less to do with some immanent feature in roma culture presumed by commentators such as jakoubek that disallows its members from operating outside the communal confines of kinship, purity, and caste than it does with the straitened sphere of roma political interaction. it is the public circulation of constructs of roma culture reliant on the academic exegesis of the origins of roma difference that in fact narrows the political sphere, producing boundaries that can only be traversed by embodying that difference. the roma parliament would make its fellow citizens into political subjects by bringing them into the polity en masse; the social workers bring them is one by one. but they both operate along a frontier that marks the emergence of a new, liberal, modality of power, one shadowed by the specter of race. and until social work is deployed to address not only the roma question, but also the czech question that the former always erases, roma will inhabit a landscape fraught by the perpetual racializing of the boundaries of the czech polity. acknowledgements the fieldwork on which this article is based was conducted with the considerable assistance ofczeslaw walek, director of the office of roma community affairs for the czech government, and lydia pohickova, 133 z1 roma advisor for the city of ostrava, to whom i extend sincere thanks. this research was supported by a fulbright-hays doctoral dissertation research award and columbia university. an initial draft of this paper was presented in the democracy and education open seminar series at the international institute for the study of culture and education at the university of lower silesia. i would like to thank the participants for their comments. i also thank noa treister, karin zitzewitz and in particular raymond june for their comments on drafts of this article. references cited: agamben, giorgio. 1999. remnants of auschwitz: the witness and the archive. daniel heller-roazen, trans. new york: zone books. altschuler, david. 2001. tunneling towards capitalism in the czech republic. ethnography. 2(1):115-138. bakalar, petr. 2003. taboo in the social sciences (tabu v sociainich vedach). prague: votobia. -2004. the psychology of roma (psychologie romu). prague: votobia. barsa, pavel. 2005. the end of roma in cesko? (konec romu v cesku?). lidove noviny. january 1. electronic document, http://www.lidovky.cz. accessed january 24, 2005. blazkova, jana and joanna grohova. 2004. klaus received suspect roma bosses (klaus pfijal podezrele romske bossy). mlada fronta dnes. october 18. electronic document, http://www.idnes.cz. accessed february 26, 2005. budil, ivo. 2005. freedom of research and the existence ofrom a (svoboda badani a existence romu). lidove noviny. january 29. electronic document, http://www.lidovky.cz. accessed february 26,2005. chivens, thomas. 2004. democracy on the beat: the policing of domestic violence in poland. ph.d. dissertation, department of anthropology, university ofnorth carolina. dirks, nicholas. 2001. castes of mind: colonialism and the making of modern india. princeton: princeton university press. dirks, nicholas. 1993. the hollow crown: ethnohistory of an indian kingdom. ann arbor: university of michigan press. dumont, louis. 1970. homo hierarchichus. chicago: university of chicago press. epstein, laura. 1999. the culture of social work. in: reading foucault for social work. adrienne s. chambon, allan irving, and laura epstein, eds. pp. 3-26. new york: columbia university press. new york: vintage departures. fonseca, isabel. 1996. bury me standing: the gypsies and their journey. new york: vintage departures. foucault, michel. 1990. the history of sexuality: an introduction. robert hurley, trans. new york: vintage books. foucault, michel. 1995. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. alan sheridan, trans. new york: vintage books. --1997a. power: essential works of foucault, 1954-1984. new york: the new press. -1997b. 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lidove noviny. june 26. electronic document, http://www.lidovky.cz. accessed february 26,2005. silverman, carol. 1988. negotiating "gypsiness": strategy in context. journal of american folklore. 101 (401 ):261-275. --1995. persecution and politicization: roma (gypsies) of eastern europe. cultural survival quarterly. 19(2):43. sokolova, vera. 2002. a matter of speaking: racism, gender and social deviance in the politics of the "gypsy question" in communist czechoslovakia. ph.d. dissertation, department ofhistory, university of washington. truhlicka, ivan. 2003. village slept through police attack on roma (utok policisru na romy yes prospala). mlacla fronta dues. may 27. electronic document, http://www.idnes.cz. accessed february 28,2005. 135 http:http://www.idnes.cz http:http://www.lidovky.cz http://www.bartleby.com/65 http:http://www.respekt.cz http:http://www.lidovky.cz http://www.hrad.cz/scripts/detail.php?id=784 http:http://www.lidovky.cz departures from home: czech perspectives on difference volume 21, number 2 departures from home: czech perspectives on difference david altshuler, american bar foundation © 2003 david altschuler all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. in the second half of the 1990s, when i was living in the czech republic and conducting ethnographic research in olomouc and prague, property ownership and economic affluence more generally were widely recognized as morally charged indexes of difference. this of course is not very surprising. after nearly forty years of state socialism, the rapid transformation of the nation’s economic and property regimes produced unprecedented—if oftentimes opaque and mysterious—possibilities for private accumulation, at least for some citizens. czechs interpreted the re-emergence of a class of owners and private entrepreneurs in different ways. as would be expected in any period of social and economic upheaval, there was a good deal of anxiety around the sudden sense of insecurity and injustice felt by so many citizens, as well as a strong sense of ambivalence—on a personal and national level—about the meanings of the past, present, and future. some citizens certainly viewed the recreation of a private property regime as both a long anticipated and natural expression of czech belonging in europe. at other times, czech capitalism seemed anything but “normal” (normální). the proliferation of large-scale corruption scandals stemming from privatization, the absence of laws to protect property owners and small investors, an aversion to risk-taking, and a rise in petty theft were often viewed as evidence of the backwardness and even futility of czech capitalism. czechs commonly indexed such differences produced by the social and economic reforms with a dichotomy familiar across the (post)socialist world: ‘we’ (my) honest, moral, hard working but also economically disenfranchised, and ‘they’ (oni), individuals characterized by a lack of morals and presumed to be entangled in illicit webs of power, capital, and corruption.1 i will return to some examples of this dichotomy later. but first i want to draw attention to one theme in particular that i encountered in several different areas of my research: the critique of socioeconomic difference in terms of czechness and foreignness, and being “inside” and “outside” the nation. in my study of everyday conversation, popular media, and archival materials, i encountered numerous instances where ownership and affluence were imagined in spatial, territorial, and national terms: ethnicity, emigration, exile, being “outside” as opposed to belonging, and even as something tantamount to national betrayal; in certain situations, affluence was equated, to paraphrase the famous words of the czech poet viktor dyk, with leaving or abandoning the nation, and ultimately even death: “if you leave me, i shall not perish, if you leave me, you will perish…” 2 in other nations in the region, members of the propertied classes were also subjected to moralizing and speculation about the origins and legitimacy of their affluence but without, it seems, detracting from their national substance. in most cases, probably the opposite was true, since in many nations in the region, the established or emergent economic elite were commonly perceived to be the logical bearers of national identity. through the abbreviated discussion of several chapters taken from the narrative of twentieth-century czech property reform, the aim of this short essay is simply to explore some of the ways that class and nation have commingled and collided in the configuration of identity and value in czech society over time. the consideration of the cultural geography of difference may shed light on why it is that notions of property ownership, affluence, and national substance have endured as mainstays of moral critique in czech society before, under, and after socialism.3 national(ist) ambiguities treatments of socialist property reform are likely to begin with confiscation of property by the communist regimes, but in the czech case the period immediately following the second world war and preceding the communist coup in 1948 was equally formative to the construction of ideas about difference. jen typewritten text 7 volume 21, number 2 postwar retribution sought to punish ethnic german inhabitants of bohemia and moravia for their alleged support for the nazi regime during the war and, in so doing, transformed private ownership into an idiom for disputes over class, morality, as well as ethnic and national difference. national front offices staffed by “loyal” czechs oversaw the confiscation of property, and personal testimonials submitted to the national front by neighbors and colleagues were used to substantiate individual cases of confiscation. the time was governed by a general climate of lawlessness and the partisan and personal nature of retribution allowed for a great deal of individual discretion in the practice of confiscation. for example, historical records include cases where ethnic czechs were labeled “german,” charged with complicity with the nazi regime, and subsequently forced to vacate homes and work places. in both tone and content, the personal testimonials used by the national front suggest how rumor, envy, personal disputes, and class tensions were as influential, if not more so, than verifiable acts of treason. they also vividly illustrate how, in the absence of the rule of law, the ambiguity of national and moral subjectivities, such as mixed marriages between ethnic germans and czechs, facilitated both acts of personal vengeance and socioeconomic mobility. in one such transcript, entered soon after the end of the second world war, a czech property owner named benjamin baar lost his home and job on the basis of his alleged support for the germans. he stood accused by a neighbor of having a german wife; mixed marriages were quite common but alone not the basis for confiscation, but it nevertheless made the more damning allegation that he “danced around a picture of hitler when the german forces came” seem all the more plausible. in a letter of appeal to the central national committee in olomouc, baar explained: “...it was really my sister-in-law who had hugged and kissed the soldiers outside the town hall. i told her to quit it. during the occupation i was labeled a communist and now i’m called a german, but no one can soil my good name. i [as a czech] always followed the truth and the law.” the significance of material distinctions in the conceptualization of national and moral identities was revealed in other testimonials from the period. in 1946, mrs. vancnerová, also born to czech parents but married to a german, was charged with treason and ordered to relinquish her home and land to the national front. in her appeal, she argued that nazi officers forced her to “become german” during the war simply because she was married to one. her file, however, contained several incriminating testimonials, including this one, submitted by her neighbor, oldřich kvinta: my wife, anežka, went out to the fields and complained that she had to walk in wooden clogs, while germans got to wear leather shoes. vancnerová, who was standing outside, overheard the complaint and threatened to report my wife to the gestapo and have her locked up. mrs. pořízková...tried to persuade vancnerová not to do anything, but she replied that as a german she must report my wife. my wife is indebted to mrs. sedlaková that it didn’t happen. she worked as a farm maid, and bribed vancnerová with lard. although vancnerová was a czech before, during the protectorate she was a raging german. she went to the director of the gendarme station in hněvotin to stir up intrigue against czechs, cursing them as “dogs and bastards,” and at every opportunity she raised a flag bearing a swastika. while such testimonials were articulated in a rhetoric of national identity, they also gave evidence of struggles over class and power. the loss of homes and jobs, the envious reference to leather clogs, and the utility of bribes illustrate the inextricable link between signs of relative affluence and complicity with foreigners. the persecution of germans—both ethnic and alleged—created unprecedented possibilities for socioeconomic mobility. popular support for retribution was fueled by nationalist sentiment, but also perhaps by the envy of a higher standard of living enjoyed by ethnic germans. inventories compiled by national front offices reveal how deportees left behind all of the trappings of a middle class lifestyle: homes, businesses, and land, clothing, household furnishings, down to pairs of socks and wash cloths. many “loyal” czechs literally walked into these abandoned homes, professions, and social positions. while the structures of power shifted—nazi gendarmes, the postwar national front, and later the communist national committee—accusations of foreignness endured as an ever-present threat to property owners and were sufficient grounds for the confiscation of jen typewritten text 8 volume 21, number 2 property. building self and other while the czechoslovak communist party was wildly successful in eliminating economic differences among citizens, there were certain notable exceptions within this trajectory. for example, the period following the invasion of czechoslovakia by the warsaw pact troops in 1968, which is usually referred to as “normalization” to mark the return of totalitarian politics to everyday life after the brief period of the prague spring liberalizing reforms, is also remembered by czechs for the offer of unprecedented possibilities for material accumulation. the 1970s and 1980s witnessed not only the increasing availability of consumer goods, but the widespread financial and logistical support for do-it-yourself family house construction projects which made it possible for citizens to build relatively spacious and privately owned family houses. although opportunities for consumption and house-building were welcomed by many citizens, they were also the subject of various critiques. perhaps the most famous belongs to havel (1991: 58), contained in his letter to the general secretary of the czechoslovak communist party from april 1975: people today are preoccupied far more with themselves, their families, and their houses. they fill their houses with all kinds of appliances and pretty things, they try to improve their accommodations, they try to make life pleasant for themselves, building cottages, looking after their cars, taking more interest in food and clothing and domestic comfort. in short, they turn their main attention to the material aspects of their private lives. to havel, such banal domestic preoccupations were indicative of “the gradual erosion of all moral standards” and in particular of a silent contract between the state and citizens: “think what you like in private; as long as you agree in public, refrain from making difficulties, suppress your interest in truth, and silence your conscience, and the doors will be wide open to you.” his critique of this moral predicament and its symptoms—the widespread obsession with consumer goods, family houses, and weekend cottages—exposed the hidden dynamics of power operating behind the veneer of everyday life in normalization czechoslovakia. in this economy of shortage, he and other dissidents argued, the efficacy of state power lay not in the ability to exercise control through overt violence but rather to create “adapted” citizens willing to forgo public responsibility, resistance, and living “in truth” in exchange for otherwise scarce commodities and the maintenance of a more comfortable material and private life. also emerging from havel’s critique is a moral geography that became the basis for a more general imagery of the final decades of czech socialism. for example, the increasing availability of consumer goods was credited with fostering a state of “inner emigration” (cf. wheaton and kavan 1992), depicted in both spatial terms, such as the flight from public to private life and from cities to weekend cottages but also in terms of social responsibility, which was evident in an increased toleration of petty corruption and passive support for the state. this notion of “inner emigration” is especially significant because of the less than tacit reference to the thousands of czech citizens who emigrated abroad after 1948 and again after 1968, who were sometimes criticized for “abandoning the nation or running away… for a better life” [uteci (…za lepším)] or renouncing one’s birth [odrodit se] in contrast to citizens who “stayed” (holy 1996). while house builders viewed their projects as testaments, in mortar and stone, to positive and moral values such as diligence, thriftiness, and control of self and family, they were acutely aware of the rumors about them circulating in their local communities, especially among citizens who did not build—about the use of pilfered construction materials, or devoting official working hours to such private and selfish pursuits. accordingly, emigration “inward” and “outward” both constituted moral transgression, and, accordingly, the use of political connections, bribes, or illicit behavior to obtain building permits, labor, and materials in these domestic projects was equated to abandonment of the nation. both forms of transgression, it was argued, placed the possibility for relative personal enrichment over collective interests. returns moral critiques of ownership and national identity were re-introduced into public jen typewritten text 9 volume 21, number 2 debate with the passage of property restitution laws in 1990, which enabled the return of land, homes, and small businesses to presocialist owners. the legitimacy of private ownership established through czech restitution was particularly contentious due to the exclusion of certain categories of citizen from filing claims. first, restitution attempted to recreate the property regime that existed in 1948, when the communist party came to power, rather than to redistribute property. only so-called “original owners” could file claims to property, a category that excluded sitting tenants, lease holders, and other legal users of property under socialism. thus, while some citizens found in property restitution social justice as well as new financial possibilities, for others the program represented loss, negated contracts, and uncertainty. this omission was the source of anxiety and tension, not least of all because it charted a new moral divide between property owners and citizens without claims to property in a society that shared a deep sense of collective victimization by the communist regime. second, claimants were required to be both citizens and permanent residents, which effectively excluded the émigré who relinquished or was stripped of czechoslovak citizenship during the socialist period, often under conditions of duress. one of the fathers of czech privatization, in an interview several years later, described this omission as “one of the biggest and most flagrant errors...both a moral and pragmatic mistake” and explains that in parliament, “...an aversion towards émigrés won, and even a bit of envy, that they left and did well, while we had to live in this communist shit hole” (husák 1997). in my interviews with property owners in prague, i found examples where the legitimacy of private ownership was articulated in terms of this so-called aversion towards émigrés. eva, a middle-aged woman i met at prague’s civic association of homeowners, grew up in an apartment house perched at the top of a winding hillside street in the city’s smíchov district. soon after eva’s family’s house was confiscated in 1961, her parents emigrated to germany and she followed several years later, only to return to prague in 1990. her subsequent claim to the house was met with hostility among tenants, who either disputed the legitimacy of the status of private ownership produced through restitution, or were simply fearful of being evicted. on my first visit to the house, eva brought me to a room full cardboard boxes propped up against one wall, each containing files and papers documenting the legal disputes between her and the tenants in the apartment house. in one flat, a young couple had not paid rent in months; across the hall, a mother and daughter would not grant a repairman access to their apartment to fix a leak stemming from a rigged up shower that had already damaged the ceiling in the apartment below; upstairs, an elderly couple had “transferred”—or rather sold—their lease to a distant relative without eva’s knowledge or approval. eva’s attempts to reach out of court settlements with her tenants failed, and each of her numerous lawsuits had been tied up in court for years. she also faced both indifference and disdain in encounters with bureaucrats, police officers, and judges. “as soon as you introduce yourself as a homeowner, the conversation is over,” she told me. but in eva’s view, it was not simply her status as homeowner but as a czech who lived in germany that was the source of both suspicion and fear. one way that tenants and others challenged the legitimacy of her status as owner was through the interrogation of her citizenship and status as a returning émigré. eva recalled one instance when a judge, in the middle of hearing one of her lawsuits against a tenant, all of the sudden inquired whether eva happened to possess any citizenship other than czech. “what is it to them?” she wondered. and, during a subsequent meeting with me, she recalled this exchange between her and the elderly couple on the top floor: “i was discussing something with mrs. h., i don’t remember what it was about, maybe cleaning out the attic, and all of the sudden her husband said: ‘we’re not interested in hearing what someone who has lived for so many years in germany has to say about anything.’ so i said to them: ‘well, why don’t you go and travel yourself?’ and she replied, ‘we are happy here.’” the ambiguity of “we,” which included not just mrs. h. and her husband but “all tenants in the house,” and perhaps also “all of us who stayed,” was not lost on eva, while “here” directly invoked “the nation.” for eva, like for czechs who both left and stayed, emigration was a source of deep ambivalence. emigration was simultaneously a sign of moral superiority for not enduring or allowing oneself to be tainted by a corrupt regime and also of moral weakness for abandoning the nation. similarly, “staying” jen typewritten text 10 volume 21, number 2 evoked moral rectitude for withstanding socialism while also indicating, for most citizens, at least a certain degree of complicity with the communist regime. eva had expressed a sense of superiority over the tenants because of her experiences in germany, yet her fixation on two moments when her absence was brought into question suggest that such inquiries and comments might have also been perceived as challenges to her own sense of legitimacy as owner. corruption and difference in this last section, i want to turn to representations of corruption in the postsocialist czech media for a final set of images of foreignness tied to emergent differences in ownership and wealth. in the second half of the 1990s, the copious public discourse on corruption provided a useful lens through which to explore many salient issues in czech society, including debates about the meanings of europe, emergent socioeconomic differences, and social justice. topics included czech ties to international organized crime, real estate development scams, and the fraudulent privatization of state companies. here, i want to turn briefly to one particular mode of corruption known as tunelování (“tunneling”) the largescale liquidation of the capital and holdings of a company, bank, or investment fund and the tunneler (someone who tunnels) to consider how representations of tunelování engaged the more durable subjectivities that both united and divided czechs after socialism. 4 under socialism, czechs, like citizens of other nations across the region, commonly used pronominal dichotomies to express a broad range of morally based solidarities and distinctions: “they,” the factory directors, party functionaries, and politicians, and “us,” the honest, hard-working, “ordinary” people. after socialism, czechs were still divided along relations to power, but membership in these categories had expanded to include new social and economic conditions. in both vernacular and more analytic contexts, czechs drew upon these subject positions in their analyses of wealth, business, and corruption. one author put it this way: “czechs do not like wealthy people. they think that they got all of their money illegally, by abusing imperfect laws, or from tunneling. for three-quarters of the nation, ‘wealthy person’ and ‘criminal’ are synonymous.” the author stressed that tunnelers are not “ordinary” czechs, but “them,” big businessmen, commonly criticized for their arrogance, immorality, and illicit wealth. letters to the editor of the national newspapers also expressed the view that socialist privilege had been reproduced through privatization: “the nouveaux riche, who raked it in under the bolsheviks and today continue to accumulate more property, follow the slogan “rake in even more!” other readers stressed that tunnelers were not “normal,” in the sense of ordinary people without connections to politics and capital: “a normal praguer is someone who has neither restituted [property through privatization] nor tunneled anything.” tunnelers were not only portrayed as “others” but also as undermining national aspirations of joining europe by drawing international attention to the many pitfalls of privatization, the lack of adequate enforcement of laws, and to the putative tolerance for corruption in the czech republic, all of which have been major stumbling blocks to the eu integration process. yet like shifters in linguistic analysis, the values of “we” and “they” were not fixed and the capacity for reversing them was vividly expressed in this bifurcation of czech society: “one tunnels and the other complains...it’s like in the 1970s and 1980s, when one group emigrated while the other was making preserves and pickling vegetables.” here, “we” expresses the durable self-stereotype of czechs as politically passive and apathetic critics who emigrated “inward,” to their private lives and jars of preserves, drawing parallels between havel’s critique of post-1968 consumption and emigration “outward” to the west. “we” were also referred to as cechákové (a pejorative diminutive form of czech denoting small mindedness and provincialism). tunnelers were “informed, worldly, courageous, and risk-taking, and active agents in “the big world of finance.” as bearers of the coveted qualities thought to be lacking among more ordinary citizens, such as the ability to take care and demonstrate something of oneself, tunnelers were able to stand up to arrogant western capitalists and, in so doing, became naši [ours]. ultimately, these “positive” -albeit satirical and tongue in cheek— references to tunnelers suggest one possibility for transcending this entrenched moral divide. one author noted that the only difference between “us” and “them” is the amount one steals: “he who can’t steal in large amounts can at least steal in small ones...in a country where jen typewritten text 11 volume 21, number 2 theft works as smoothly as an assembly line, it is only logical that people are drawn to it. otherwise they are left feeling incomplete, like something isn’t right. it’s a national pastime and a rather convenient one, so why not join in?” in bringing together corruption and other forms of socioeconomic difference, i am not suggesting any sort of moral parity among them. rather, the aim of this paper has been to bring together, at least in a tentative way, historical and contemporary references to property ownership and wealth that have been depicted in terms of being “inside” and “outside” the nation through references to emigration, exile, and foreignness, which, taken together, represent something of a lateral perspective on socioeconomic difference. the cultural geography i have in mind is best put by sayer’s (1998: 320) description of the czech “home(land)” as “a place difficult to leave and still more difficult to return to, a protective family circle, outside which there is eternal fall and no redemption: a take-it-or-leave it, all-ornothing kind of place.” with issues of national belonging and substance at stake, we may better understand why socioeconomic difference has endured as such a moral problem in the czech configuration of identity and value. references altshuler, d. 2001a. tunneling towards capitalism in the czech republic. ethnography 2(1): 115-138. altshuler, d. 2001b. anchors of identity: property, morality, and difference in czech society. doctoral dissertation, department of anthropology, university of chicago. gal, s. and g. kligman 2000. the politics of gender after socialism. a comparativehistorical essay. princeton: princeton university press havel, v. 1991. open letters: selected writings, 1965-1990. paul wilson, (ed). new york: knopf. holy, l. 1996. the little czech and the great czech nation: national identity and the post-communist social transformation. new york: cambridge university press. husák, p. 1997. budováni kapitalismu v čechách. prague: volvox globator. sayer, d. 1998. the coasts of bohemia: a czech history. princeton: princeton university press. wheaton, b. and z. kavan 1992. the velvet revolution: czechoslovakia, 19881991. boulder: westview. endnotes 1 see gal and kligman (2000) for one study of the workings of pronominal dichotomies in socialist and postsocialist contexts. 2 these are the famous final lines of dyk’s 1917 poem země mluví (“the land speaks”). derek sayer (1998) provides a very interesting treatment of this and other works by dyk and their many resonances in czech culture. 3 due to limits of space, i can only provide a cursory overview of these periods, but each receives fuller treatment in altshuler (2001b). 4 for a more detailed discussion of corruption and tunneling in the czech republic, see altshuler (2001a). jen typewritten text 12 anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 332 ruling vs. dialogical relations: ngos, women, and institutional power in anti-trafficking campaigns in russia and ukraine1 nadia shapkina, kansas state university2 abstract in this paper, i discuss the nature of relations between anti-trafficking professionals and trafficking victims who receive assistance through reintegration programs administered by the international organization for migration and local ngos in russia and ukraine. first, i analyze “ruling relations” (smith 1999, 2005) within the anti-trafficking organizations, paying special attention to the processes of bureaucratization and institutionalization within them. second, i identify certain spaces within the hierarchal structure of ngos as institutions, where dialogical relations can take place and clients can participate in the ngos’ activities. lastly, i analyze how trafficking victims craft individual identities using dialogue containing institutional definitions. the paper is based on data collected during field research in russia and ukraine in 2004-2006. during this field research, i conducted multiple interviews with female victims of sex trafficking who received social assistance in non-governmental organizations in different regions of russia and ukraine. introduction starting in late 1990s, anti-trafficking mobilizations in the post-soviet countries have brought together non-governmental organizations (ngos), international organizations, state agencies, and other institutional actors. these organizations are responsible for raising awareness about the problem of human trafficking and setting up legislative and institutional mechanisms for combating this social problem. women’s ngos in russia and ukraine have become particularly active in prevention programs and providing reintegration services to victims of trafficking. previous research has demonstrated that women’s non-governmental organizations play an important role in the post-soviet social transformation. hemment (2004), johnson anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 333 (2007), sperling (1999) and others have described how these ngos work to politicize social problems, create spaces for democratic dialogue, lobby for legislative change, provide information, and deliver services. in addition, funk (2007), hrycak (2006), and other scholars of post-socialism have shown that the ngos operate in complex power-laden relations with other national and transnational actors. less is known about relations and interactions that are formed within the ngos, particularly between ngos’ professionals and ngos’ clients. in this article, i discuss the nature of relations between anti-trafficking professionals and trafficking victims who receive assistance through reintegration programs administered by the international organization for migration (iom) and local ngos in russia and ukraine. what is the nature of institutional politics of women helping women in anti-trafficking ngos? what does engagement with antitrafficking institutions mean for women who seek their assistance? in this article, i analyze “ruling relations” (smith 1999, 2005) within the anti-trafficking organizations, paying specific attention to the processes of bureaucratization and institutionalization. i identify certain spaces within the hierarchal structure of ngos as institutions, where dialogical relations take place and clients participate in the ngos’ activities. lastly, i analyze how trafficking victims craft individual identities using dialogue containing institutional definitions. methods and site selection the methodological approach in this study is institutional ethnography, with its goal to “explicate the actual social processes and practices organizing people’s everyday experience” (smith 1986:6). institutional ethnography seeks to reconstruct ruling relations or social organization from the actualities of women’s lives. dorothy smith explains that the “ruling relations” are objectified social relations: the ruling relations are text-mediated and text-based systems of “communication,” “knowledge,” “information,” “regulation,” “control,” and the like. the functions of “knowledge, judgment, and will” that marx saw as wrestled from the original “producer” and transferred to capital become built into a specialized complex of objectified forms of organization and relationship. max weber’s (1978) account of bureaucracy is an early specification, and indeed it is a anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 334 part of an examination of the historical differentiation of person and organization in the exercise of political power. but these developments are not confined to the state. knowledge, judgment, and will are less and less properties of the individual subject and more and more of objectified organization. they are constituted as actual forms of concerting and concerted activities and can be investigated as such. (smith 1999:77-78) reformulating this in relation to my research problem, institutional ethnography helps explore the social processes and practices impacting the lives of female survivors of trafficking in russia and ukraine. i study how anti-trafficking institutional actors and their practices affect women who have returned to ukraine and russia after being trafficked into the sex trade industry in foreign countries. institutional ethnographers seek to describe the institutional power of organizations and processes. they pay particular attention to the text-mediated nature of ruling relations. definitions, categories, standards, and legitimation strategies are the objects of institutional ethnographic investigation. applying this goal to ethnography of anti-trafficking campaigns, i analyze institutional power in several ways. first, i analyze documents that institutional participants of anti-trafficking campaigns have produced, e.g., procedures and categories. second, i focus on routine practices of the institutions (such as intake procedures or monitoring). third, i analyze strategies that experts use to legitimate their authority; this helps to discern how experts justify their claims of having institutional ruling authority. this article is based on data collected during multiple field research trips to russia and ukraine between 2004 and 2009. during this research, i conducted participant observation in anti-trafficking ngos, document analysis of ngos’ reports, forms, and published materials, as well as interviews with anti-trafficking activists and returned or repatriated female victims of sex trafficking who received social assistance in iom rehabilitation centers and non-governmental organizations in different regions of russia and ukraine.3 when analyzing interviews, i paid special attention to institutional practices and categories applied in relation to their clients, and institutional effects on women’s lives and subjectivities. i also recognized that women who have undergone a “reintegration” process with the help of an anti-trafficking ngo often use institutional terminology. institutional anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 335 ethnographers warn that “people in an institutional setting describe their work using the language of an institution” (devault & mccoy 2006:37). this concerns not only ngo professionals but also trafficking survivors. women often describe their experiences in terms of institutional definitions, standards, and categories—institutional grammars—and it is important to understand how women craft their identities in response to the institutional power. my sites of entry were offices of two large ngo networks, lastrada-ukraine and angel coalition (russia). i have located other relevant anti-trafficking institutions through these entry organizations. other sites included international organizations, governmental offices, academics, journalists, and local ngos in provincial cities in russia and ukraine. i first spent seven months in russia (september 2004 – march 2005) and later moved to ukraine, staying there between april 2005 and august 2005. i made my other trips to the field in summer 2006 and 2009 to follow-up on changes in anti-trafficking mobilizations. the non-governmental organizations that i visited are civic associations of individuals with various agendas: most of these organizations focus on women’s issues, while others work primarily on children’s issues or public health. all of them have achieved a certain degree of institutionalization – they have state registration, employ staff members, rent or own office space, receive grant funding, etc. staff members are local people; sometimes they are relatives of the organizations’ leaders. most of the ngos’ leaders are russian and ukrainian middle class women who at some point decided to establish a civic organization (with the exception of the angel coalition in russia where one of the founding leaders was an american female doctor). the funding that anti-trafficking ngos receive typically comes from foreign governments (e.g., u.s. department of state, swedish international development cooperation agency), international organizations (e.g., the organization for security and cooperation in europe), and private foundations. international organization for migration is another important social actor that participates in anti-trafficking campaigns in the region. usually, iom serves as an administrator for the programs of prevention of human trafficking and protection of victims. this means that iom receives funds to coordinate and supervise anti-trafficking activities, and subcontracts local ngos to deliver services. in addition, iom runs rehabilitation centers (one in moscow, and another in kyiv) that specialize in medical and psychological assistance to victims. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 336 ruling relations women’s organizations in russia and ukraine initiated anti-trafficking campaigns in both countries. in the early 1990s, many ngos had already had women’s issues as a part of their political agenda – some of them helped victims of domestic violence, while others provided business skills trainings or job search assistance for women. taking on the issue of trafficking in women has allowed them to participate in the global anti-trafficking campaigns and to raise funds for their programs through grants from foreign governments, private foundations, and international organizations. the donors were also interested in stopping the recent wave of trafficking victims from the post-soviet countries that affected the countries of destination. western donors such as the stv foundation (netherlands), the u.s. department of state, winrock international, and others have sponsored the newly established anti-trafficking initiatives in the post-soviet countries. often, initial anti-trafficking organizing began within a transnational contact. for example, st. petersburg crisis center for women was one of the first organizations that started raising the issue of sex trafficking of women. a representative of the center recalls: in 1994, i was terrified to read about a case of a woman being locked up in an apartment in st. petersburg. she was forced to serve tourists. when i have read this, i thought that this is some kind of hoax, a stupid joke. it seemed impossible that people could be locked up and made to provide sexual services. in 1994, this was something unimaginable. it is now that it is everywhere. in 1996, i went to berlin to take part in a conference on human rights. german colleagues told me such things about brothels – russian women are beaten up there, they are tortured. they told me that they [the colleagues] go to the brothels and try to get the women out. this is when we started saying that people in russia need to know about this. (interview with a representative of st. petersburg crisis center) st. petersburg crisis center joined transnational anti-trafficking mobilizations in the context of international collaboration with german women’s groups. in the late 1990s, the information about trafficking cases often came from foreign countries. the stv foundation from the anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 337 netherlands has contacted local women’s groups in ukraine. in 1997, several activists of women’s rights organized lastrada-ukraine. the organization used a model of similar to lastrada centers in poland and czech republic. the model included a central office in a capital city and a network of partners among regional ngos. in this way, lastrada-ukraine organized its own ukraine-wide network of anti-trafficking ngos. thus, local anti-trafficking ngos are embedded into complex institutional networks that span across national borders. anti-trafficking professionals employed by ngos and iom rehabilitation centers as well as their clients participate in a complex web of local and extra-local ruling relations. dorothy smith explains: “by the ‘ruling relations’ i mean that internally coordinated complex of administrative, managerial, professional, and discursive organization that regulates, organizes, governs, and otherwise controls our societies” (smith, 1999:49). the anti-trafficking expertise produces discourses: definitions, explanations, and solutions regarding the problem and trafficking victims. these solutions are based on information and input from specialists and groups of experts and have the effect of controlling those who lack the expertise. institutionalization of anti-trafficking initiatives involves creating institutional spaces where social problems are addressed. these institutions often have to satisfy requirements of donors that supply funding for their programs. the requirements include reporting procedures, standardized forms, professional language, formalized relations with clients (e.g., signed contracts), etc. for example, shelters for trafficking victims serve as spaces of temporary refuge and reintegration. ngo shelters take on different forms: in some places a shelter is a room in a hospital or sanatorium, while in others, it is a rented building. in the majority of cases, the shelter is a rented apartment that is used as a refuge. the shelters provide medical, psychological, legal, and social assistance to victims and their family members. each ngo establishes its own criteria for admitting trafficking victims. many require results of medical tests: blood, urine, hiv/aids, and std tests, as well as a gynecological examination. ngos’ workers discuss each individual situation and decide whether they can admit a woman. the goal of reintegration within anti-trafficking institutional discourse is defined as to sufficiently restore conditions for women to allow them to fulfill their “proper” roles as mothers, daughters, and workers. local and extra-local institutional actors participate in defining the women’s needs and their “proper” roles: state institutions, ngo experts, international anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 338 organizations, etc. nationalist, religious, ethnic, gender, and class discourses inform the social construction of women’s identities. depending on available programs, female clients can be eligible for the following reintegration services: medical care, psychological assistance, family therapy, material help, occupational training, educational or vocational courses, assistance with housing search, document recovery and other legal advice, as well as other forms of social support. this institutional definition of “reintegration” is often based on individualizing understandings of the victims’ circumstances women are positioned as individuals in need of change, according to institutionally defined criteria of progress. however, even though occupational training is an important part of women’s empowerment, it might prove to be fruitless in a community with a high unemployment rate. ngos rarely work to change social conditions (e.g., unemployment, state welfare cuts, etc.), or, as a representative of a ukrainian ngo explained, they “try to stay away from politics” because they can lose their funding. reintegration of trafficking victims often assumes that individual women “lacked” something (e.g., lack of skills, resources, knowledge, psychological qualities, “normal” relations within the family, etc.) and that this deficit prevented them from initially succeeding in socially appropriate roles and prompted them to migrate. ngos’ professionals often discuss trafficked women’s lack of rationality and self-confidence, as well as inability to make responsible decisions. r: there was this one case. a representative of a german ngo called us and asked to meet a victim. she was threatened [by the traffickers], so she was wearing a wig. identification happened in germany... in germany, they receive 200 eur. they use the money to buy food and personal things. in germany, she lived in the shelter and received money. here, we figured out that this practice will not work. you give money—$50—to every woman once a month. she goes and buys herself a facial cream for the whole sum of money. irrational use of money. she buys a piece of meat and a bottle of martini, and she has to eat something until the end of the month. she starts asking from other people. and then she is without money. (interview with a representative of faith. hope. love, odessa, ukraine) 4 anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 339 reintegration institutions, on the contrary, rely on rational principles. in order to develop missing skills and qualities, to “normalize” their clients, rehabilitation experts offer trainings to the women. professionals use the objective language of reintegration; they define physical and psychological conditions of women in scientific terms. for example, the client assessment/outcome matrix includes five categories for evaluation of a trafficking victim: in crisis, vulnerable, stable, safe, thriving (social work 2001:102). such concepts as “reintegration progress” and “degree of normalization” help to measure the conditions of the trafficking victims in relation to the “normal” lives. at a meeting of a working group that coordinates all countertrafficking activities in ukraine, a representative of the iom-ukraine argued for more professionalization in the work of ngos and adoption of result-oriented approaches. relying on rational principles enables shelters’ employees to claim professional status. bureaucratization is another aspect of ngo-provided assistance. ngos use standard documentary forms and often rely on routine procedures and practices. for example, organizational definitions predefine the needs of the women: meeting at the airport; accommodating in a shelter; transportation; consultation/information; financial support; vocational training; housing; medical, psychological, and legal assistance (social work 2001:142). for example, financial assistance for higher education is not a component of the reintegration process. ngo professionals interpret women’s stories with reference to a certain established pattern of need assessments and evaluations; however, this simplifies women’s stories and prevents full complexity of these stories from being represented. intake procedure typically involves one or several interviews. case workers record women’s circumstances in the form narratives. when iom started administering reintegration programs, a new intake form was introduced. iom standardized its procedures in country missions and distributed an interview template used by local anti-trafficking ngos. this interview form is very structured and consists primarily of closed questions which do not allow much description of circumstances. for example, the interview form includes question four in part six “exploitation” that asks if a person was forced to perform activities against his or her will. possible answers include only “yes” and “no” which limits the opportunity to fully describe the conditions under which women make decisions to migrate and perform different types of labor. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 340 ngos’ workers establish business-like relations with their “clients.” each assisted woman signs a contract and has to observe the rules of the shelter and reintegration program. even though the ngos’ specialists claim that they try to imitate family-like space in their shelter facilities, in reality, life in the shelters is often strictly regulated. violations of these rules lead to exclusion from the program. r: the main condition for girls is […] their freedom is not limited, they can go out, and they can get a job. the main condition is [obeying] the rules of the shelter’s order: to be back on time, not to disturb others, no drugs, no alcohol, help in cooking, in cleaning. not to be rude, observe personal hygiene. these are the rules. they have to attend the vocational courses that they have chosen. they have to receive their treatment. they work with psychologists. we created this according to the “family” principle—we don’t have limiting, strict rules. but these are the rules that women have to observe while living together. they should not tell anyone the location, not give out the phone number, not bring visitors, not tell anyone where they are. (interview with a representative of faith. hope. love, odessa, ukraine) the shelters also utilize timetables to schedule activities throughout the day. the regulation of time acts as another form of disciplinary power. timetable, shelter “sofia:” 7:30 am getting up; personal hygiene 8:00 am morning exercises 8:30 am breakfast 9:00 am general meeting 9:00 am cleaning in the rooms 11:00 am spiritual lessons 12:00 pm personal time 2:00 pm lunch 3:00 pm personal time anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 341 5:00 pm psychological therapy (individual and group) 7:00 pm dinner 8:00 pm tv time 9:30 pm conversations on spiritual topics 10:00 pm evening shower 10:30 pm night sleep labeling is also a part of the bureaucratization process. iom uses “vot” label which stands for “victim of trafficking”. using labels is an aspect of institutional space that depersonalizes the women who come there for help. another discursive strategy used by anti-trafficking experts is infantilization of women. ngo professionals often refer to the women’s young age, calling them “girls.” infantilization, naiveté, and lack—are the institutional concepts which describe the construction of a victim. framing beneficiaries of ngo’s services as victims is a strategy for the operation of the anti-trafficking institutions since they are primarily financed to support “worthy” or “deserving” populations. rescuing innocent victims of trafficking can be presented as an “honorable” thing to do. in this way, russian and ukrainian anti-trafficking ngos present themselves to donors as professionalized organizations able to deal with “problematic” populations. professionalism in provision of assistance is often a condition for receiving grants from donors. while professionalization helps ngo employees to gain expert status, it obscures the relations of power between professionals and trafficking victims. ngo workers use different legitimation strategies to justify their expert authority on the issue of trafficking. they often receive invitations to participate in public events, tv programs, and interviews, where they give advice to the public on the social problem of trafficking. official position titles and educational qualifications often emphasize their expert status: certified psychologist, professionally trained social worker, president of an ngo, etc. another legitimization strategy is the production of published work in collaboration with academic institutions. the merging of these institutions and their discourses is especially visible in texts on social work and sociology. for example, social work in prevention of trafficking in human beings and protection of the victims (2001) is a manual for social work and sociology students, written by representatives of ngos in collaboration with academics. anti-trafficking experts legitimate their status by referring to their collaboration with international organizations and anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 342 foreign ngos, as well as participation in international seminars. the “west” often serves as a reference point in expert legitimation. an illustration of this is the adoption of western terms: the concept “trafficking” became a new term—“трэффик” (traffik) in russian and ukrainian, which do not have such a word. further, ngo professionals learn the language of grant writing— english (silliman 1999; sperling 1999)—and anti-trafficking activists quote international documents (un trafficking protocol of 2000 and other un conventions) to support their claims. anti-trafficking ngos in russia and ukraine participate in transnational networks and raise funds for their organizational survival and provision of services. while doing this, the ngo workers often present themselves as professionals capable of organizing rational management of reintegration of trafficking victims. often, the efforts to professionalize their activities are related to grant application process or participation in iom-administered programs that require a professional, efficient, and results-oriented approach. for example, the u.s. state department in its 2010 call for applications for international programs to combat trafficking in persons specifies that “project outcomes, deliverables, and performance indicators” are essential for applications’ format and content.5 as anti-trafficking ngos’ activists rely on international funds, they experience the pressure to professionalize and orient their activities towards donors’ goals. dialogical relations even though anti-trafficking ngos demonstrate a hierarchical and discursive organization of ruling relations, there are certain aspects of their work that allow space for dialogical relations which take into consideration a client’s perspectives, priorities, and needs. the concept of dialogism (bakhtin 1986) helps to illuminate interactional (even if uneven) relations between the ngo workers and their clients. these dialogical relations concern trafficking victims being included as active participants in the workings of ngos. for example, st. petersburg crisis center for women defines its principle of interaction with clients as “equal to equal”: this means “come and participate.” we ask them [the trafficking victims], “would you read this prevention brochure? what would you add? how should we organize preventive work? what should we write?” they [the trafficking victims] anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 343 watch different films; they participate in different programs and interviews. we do not have many girls who have participated in film production, maybe four or five. we take them to different conferences. they like to participate and listen. (interview with a representative of st. petersburg crisis center for women) the workers at this center invite women to take courses intended for volunteers, and some women who have been referred to the center by police in relation to trafficking investigations, have become volunteers. a similar dialogical approach is used at another ngo in ukraine where workers have created a program called “school of volunteers,” through which trafficking survivors can participate in the ngo’s activities. dialogical relations also concern the manner in which interaction takes place. a psychologist from lastrada-ukraine argues that ngo specialists must practice active listening in order to understand their clients: n: what helps to establish trust? r: i try to ask questions about her current state—her health, her psychological state, but not about her trafficking situation. i try not to dig into this. with some clients, you should be silent. with younger ones, just hold hands, sit close. with women who have children, i talk about their children—this is important to them. i ask if their children wait for them; did she have an opportunity to write or call them. be attentive and watch her reactions. if she does not like the question, it is visible in non-verbal reactions as well; i don’t pressure her to answer questions. if she does not want to answer, she does not have to. (interview with a representative of lastrada-ukraine) an additional aspect of dialogical relations is when trafficking victims become employees of the organizations themselves. after undergoing the reintegration program, some ngos offer women the chance to join the organization as staff members. the importance of such dialogical spaces within ngos is that the migrant women can voice their opinions and be heard, while ngos’ activists can overcome what sonia alvarez calls “a growing chasm between the technical-professional and movement-activist faces of feminist anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 344 ngos” (alvarez 2004:138). without such dialogue strategies, anti-trafficking ngos risk to drift away from their grassroots functions of representation towards professionalized and bureaucratized agencies focusing on organizational goals. dialogical identities the dialogic approach emphasizes that selfhood is a product of social relations, of a dialogue between individuals and institutions. i use elements of narrative analysis (franzosi 1998; lieblich, tuval-mashiach, & zilber 1998; mcnay 1999; riessman 1993) to discuss how women present their experiences of reintegration. narrative analysis aids in understanding how trafficking victims construct their identities through a dialogue with institutional discourses and definitions. in particular, i am interested in how the ngos’ clients negotiate their identities within institutional spaces in between ruling and dialogical relations. i trace several stories of the trafficked women who are able to position themselves as anti-trafficking activists, however often using the terms of the institutional discourse. liza liza is a former trafficking victim and a current organizer for the school of volunteers at the ngo (ukraine). she describes how she became involved in the organization’s activities: liza: when one of them [a trafficking victim] arrived, [an ngo employee] told me to try and talk to her alone, and she was nearby to help me. and then she [the ngo employee] said that i managed so well that i could do it myself. so, when new victims come, i talk to them, check their passports, check their deportation status. we send them to kyiv. we contact police. if they were indeed abroad, the police check their records. one of them became my friend. now, she also wants to open a shelter in [city in crimea]. we will do this together. there are many victims there [in crimea]. many of them travel to turkey. her [friend’s] grandmother died and left her a house. we can have a rehabilitation center there, if i can find money to pay for utilities. she was the first person whom i helped. we became friends. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 345 liza’s story indicates that she is well integrated into the ngo’s activity, and she is thinking about establishing another anti-trafficking institution in a different region (crimea). liza explains that she works with trafficking victims because “this experience can only be understood by someone who lived through this” (interview with liza). talking to trafficking victims requires certain skills, and liza presents herself as an expert on talking to victims. she claims power by referring to the authenticity of her experience as a trafficking victim. she presents herself as someone who has direct knowledge of the problem and, therefore, can be a better helper: “i came through this, and i immediately see who lies and who does not, who was and who was not there.” here, liza refers to the problem of “false” vs. “true” victims and argues that she can distinguish between the two groups. i: how do you see this? liza: i see it when a person who was victimized does not talk much. she keeps everything in herself. you need to help her to open up, to approach her in such a way that she opens up… i came here by chance. when i came back home, i could not tell [my story to] anyone because they [family, community] would not understand, they would not be able to help. i came here and met [an ngo employee]. for the first time in my life, i was crying like a baby for three hours. i told her [the ngo employee] everything that was hurting me here [points to her chest, heart]. i also told my story to psychologists, but not what was here [points to her heart]. here [in the shelter], they understood me, helped me, sent me to get medical treatment in kyiv. then, we opened a center for volunteers. we are helping others. i have already brought about 30 to 40 girls here. i bring them here, we gather, we communicate, we talk about all the problems that we have. we talk about what they want, etc. all the women who were in the sex trade, and who had families, they don’t have families anymore. to put these families back together— this is not realistic. but at least we can keep mother and child together—this is what we are trying to do. when a mother does not have her needs provided, then her child is not provided for as well. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 346 liza’s identification with the school of volunteers is very strong. she uses “we” to include herself in the shelter’s group of employees and define the organization’s collective identity. liza’s narrative demonstrates how she gradually became involved in different aspects of the shelter’s institutional organization: she started working on a hotline, she was responsible for intake, and now she runs the school of volunteers. finally, she has plans to become an organizer of her own shelter. liza’s story demonstrates that ngos develop inclusive relations with their clients, although within the organizational constraints of bureaucratization and professionalization. natasha natasha does not work in the ngo that assisted her, but she aspires to become a social worker. her narrative further demonstrates how anti-trafficking institutions’ ruling relations influence clients’ identities. natasha: i was invited to kyiv to work as a social worker. i: who offered you this position? natasha: a psychologist. she said that i would be a good social worker. i actually like to work with little kids. i like to take care of someone. if i could work in a kindergarten, i would like that. even if children are spoiled, i still like to work with them. i: when can you become a social worker? natasha: next year, when i am 19. i need to understand first how to work, how to interact with the girls [trafficking victims]. i already know how to write a story [an intake story]. when girls are arriving, sometimes their stories do not get written because they are tired after the trips. [ngo director] asks me to write down the stories of the girls. we have special forms, and i fill out the forms. i: someone has shown you how to fill them out? natasha: when my story was recorded, i already understood how it was done. i like that. i would work like this with pleasure. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 347 natasha discusses how the ngo employees involve her in the work of the shelter: she learns the bureaucratic procedures and forms. she also seems to enjoy being associated with the professional status of a social worker. natasha: i could work here as a social worker. there was one girl who was working here as a social work. she did not manage [well] with this work. she was drinking at work. she was going out with the girls. she was friends with them because they had money. girls arrive from turkey with money, and she goes out with them. and now, they [the ngo employees] don’t hire social workers from [among] us [trafficking victims]. it’s an unofficial rule. i would like to work in such a sphere. i like to attend workshops. i would like to go to different workshops. natasha disapproves of the “girl” who failed as a social worker. her position reflects the institutional definitions of a good social worker. i: what else do you plan to do? natasha: i will finish another course of vocational training. i should stay focused; i will not get lazy. i often want to sit in a room, watch tv, and relax. but if i want to work in an organization like our center, i need to study. i like our center; i like communicating with the girls [trafficking victims]. i like to relate to them with attention. every girl comes traumatized; they all need care. people who work in this organization understand that these are women who have lived through difficult times. natasha has developed an institutional identity (“i like our center”); she identifies with the women who work in the shelter and wants to be one of them. she understands that this will require education, and she is willing to become disciplined (not “lazy”). i: would you change something in the way shelter works? anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 348 natasha: i would introduce a rule that girls should not give out our phone number when they meet guys. i don’t like when men call at 3am, and ask for alyona or oksana. [director] tells them not to give the phone number, but she is a kind person; she cannot scream at them. i don’t like it when they give out the number. my [boyfriend] knows that he can call only until 11 pm. i told him. then, they should not show up where we live. there were a few cases when men came under our windows. it should be quiet in the organization; we live here. i would like to see this introduced. not only has natasha tried to disassociate from those “girls” who violate the order of the shelter, but she also presents the director as too soft and too kind to discipline the shelter’s inhabitants. at the same time, natasha positions herself as a person who is capable of ensuring discipline. an important reason why natasha internalizes many institutional definitions and rules is that the shelter is her most significant source of social support. natasha has not told her boyfriend or her relatives about her experience of being trafficked. at this stage in her life, she can only have completely open relations with the ngo workers: the closest people to natasha are employees of the shelter. this partially explains why she develops a strong identification with the shelter, its workers, and its regulations. at the same time, she wants to become a part of the ngo institutional space because she recognizes it as a space of potential empowerment for herself. nina similar to liza’s case, nina gradually became involved in the life of an ngo (st. petersburg, russia). she describes this gradual process of transformation of statuses – from being a client to “one of us.” nina: in the shelter, they [the ngo employees] provided me with food; they bought me some clothes, a coat—a big expense. and the center conducted different interesting activities. volunteers accompanied me to different museums. i was also helping here, in the center; i did some work that is usually conducted by volunteers—distributing brochures, folding, unfolding them. in the beginning, everyone paid a lot of attention to me. then, when they understood that anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 349 everything was ok with me, i was accepted as “one of us.” i was not a “victim” any more, but a colleague. when i visit the center, they tell me what happened in my absence. i also went to a conference with them, and no one was introducing me as a “victim,” but it was written “an employee of the ngo.” nina describes how gradually she was included into the life of the ngo. she emphasizes how important it has been for her to become “one of us.” this has helped her to trust the ngo employees after her repatriation to russia from israel. nina: the people who met me initially looked very trustworthy. they behaved in such a way that i was not a victim, but an equal person, like we had known each other 100 years… i: do you maintain your connection to the ngo? nina: yes, sometimes there are some activities or some interesting conferences, trainings. also, there is material help provided by the ngo. after the last conference there was some food left, and i was invited to come get some food. sometimes there are tickets left; you can go to a theater for free—then they call me to come. i: how often are you here? nina: lately, not often, because of work. but, in general, i usually call to see how they are. like in the case of liza’s story, nina claims that she has a special commonality with other trafficking victims – this helps her to better understand them. this also helps the trafficking victims talk to nina. sometimes, she works as a volunteer at the shelter. nina: even after i had not lived in the shelter for months, i still came to the shelter. there was one girl, [name]. she is from germany [returned from germany]. and she was afraid to sleep alone at night. and i offered to help […]. yes, i, myself, offered [to the ngo employees] that i would stay at night with her. i had very nice relations with her; she told me everything. when you come to anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 350 such a shelter, you think about what you can tell and what you should not tell [to ngo employees]. it is easier for her [the girl who was afraid to sleep alone] to talk to me—we told everything to each other. i: hers was an especially difficult case? nina: well […]. it probably looked serious to them [the ngo employees]; i don’t know. for me, she behaved normally. naturally, after all the time she spent abroad, after one year or more of working without weekends […]. [traffickers] force [women] to work even during menstruation. so, no weekends, nothing. and this is painful […]. and i understand that this is just such the state at the beginning. this long rest is normal. you want to lie down; you want to do nothing. this is relaxation. we were sleeping there [abroad] six to seven hours. sometimes, we slept four hours. and it’s necessary to always be wearing makeup, with hair done, with everything. no traces of tiredness. and maybe she [the victim who was afraid to sleep alone] looked too sleepy to them [the ngo workers], but she was just sleeping, relaxing, from this […]. [the ngo worker] considered this a very serious problem. this was not that serious, as i […]. i am not a psychologist, but anyway [...]. i lived with her while she was there. i maybe spent two weeks there with her. nina makes a claim that she has a particular skill of understanding the trafficking victims because of similarity of experiences, even though she simultaneously affirms the objectified relations of ruling (“i am not a psychologist”). ngos’ professionals sometimes request nina’s participation in their intake or rehabilitation activities. nina was able to develop a very collaborative relationship with the ngo employees, and, because of this, they included her in the organization’s activities. nina was glad to participate and, at the same time, started taking on some volunteer responsibilities. nina continues her volunteering relationship with the ngo. anna after receiving reintegration assistance at an ngo in ukraine, anna became an employee of that organization. the ngo runs programs of hiv/aids prevention, and anna was anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 351 hired as an outreach worker. she works mostly with sex workers by distributing condoms, talking with sex workers, and helping them to solve some medical or other issues. i: tell me about your job. what kind of people do you work with? anna: i work as a social worker in a program of harm reduction. this is about prevention of hiv/aids among risk groups in [city]. the risk groups are drug users and women in the sex business. my group includes women in the sex business who consume drugs and work on highways. i: where do you meet them? anna: they come to meet me at a place of needle exchange. i’ve worked with them for more than a year. they come themselves. we have very trusting relationships. they know that if they tell me something, than no one will know. they started to trust me. before, they looked at me with caution. when i had just started my work, they studied me. now, they come to me as a friend. i: what helped you to establish trusting relationships? anna: my ears. they need someone to listen to them. this is such a closed group. they communicate most often with their customers. i give them different literature, tell them something new, how to avoid risks. if they have some problems, i tell them where to go. i: did you study to work in this position? anna: yes, i went through some training. through training, anna has developed a professional identity of a social worker. she uses her communication and active listening skills. she also uses some concepts from public health institutional discourse, e.g., “harm reduction,” “risk groups.” anna is proud that the ngo workers have trusted her to perform this work; she is satisfied that she can now support her two children. i: how do you see your future? anna: my children, first of all. my work. i don’t want to stop where i am now; i want to go maybe a little bit [further…]. in general, i like to work with people; i anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 352 like to give myself away. i would like to be a social worker—this is for me. i like my work a lot. i was lucky; i just got into the right place. maybe, there will be some professional growth, i don’t know. so far, i am satisfied to be a social worker. anna would like to receive additional education to become a “professional” social worker, as she recognizes that she needs professional certification to “grow” in this institutional space. conclusion anti-trafficking institutions are composed of asymmetrical power relations – ngos often exhibit objectified relations of power (“ruling relations”). anti-trafficking ngos and iom in ukraine and russia make efforts to professionalize their assistance activities. professionalization is often related to ngos’ efforts to attract donors. at the same time, ngos’ workers practice dialogical relations with the trafficking victims. in addition, some ngos make efforts to include trafficking victims in the process of their work and create possibilities for the clients to participate in the organizations as volunteers and employees. i argue that such dialogical relations that prioritize different forms of inclusion of women into the lives of the ngos as institutions are beneficial because they allow assistance to be directed towards the victims’ needs. they also enable trafficked women to have access to a support group. overall, the clients of anti-trafficking shelters benefit from reintegration services. they are able to receive valuable material and social resources even though often within the terms set up by the ngos. in the process of reintegration, trafficking victims develop dialogical identities that engage with, negotiate, and resist institutional definitions, norms, and categories. notes 1 many thanks to olga bueva for her editorial assistance with this article. 2 dr. nadia shapkina teaches sociology at kansas state university. a native of russia, she completed her undergraduate studies in social work at saratov state technical university. she continued her international education in sociology and graduated with a ph.d. degree from anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 353 georgia state university. her research interests are related to studies of gender, migration, social movements, and globalization. 3 the field work for this research was made possible with financial support from patrick stewart human right scholarship program (amnesty international – usa), georgia state university dissertation award, global supplementary grant (soros foundation), and horowitz foundation for social policy scholarship. 4 interview transcription lists “i” for interviewer and “r” or first name for respondents. 5 http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/other/2009/131238.htm references cited alvarez, sonia. 2004. the latin american feminist ngo ‘boom’. in feminist politics, activism and vision. local and global challenges. luciana ricciutelli, angela miles, and margaret mcfadden, eds. zed books ltd. bakhtin, mikhail m. 1986. speech genres and other late essays. translated by vern w. mcgee. austin: university of texas press. devault, marjorie, liza mccoy. 2006. institutional ethnography: using interviews to investigate ruling relations. in institutional ethnography as practice. dorothy e. smith, ed. lanham, boulder, new york, toronto, oxford: rowman & littlefield publishers. franzosi, roberto. 1998. narrative analysis – or why (and how) sociologists should be interested in narrative. annual review of sociology 24:517-554. funk, nanette. 2007. fifteen years of east-west women’s dialogue. in living gender after communism. j.e. johnson and j.c. robinson, eds. bloomington: indiana university press. hemment, julie. 2004. global civil society and the local costs of belonging: defining violence against women in russia. signs. journal of women in culture and society 29(3):815-839. hrycak, alexandra. 2006. foundation feminism and the articulation 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society 6(1):23-53. smith, dorothy. 2005. institutional ethnography. a sociology for people. lanham, new york, toronto, oxford: altamira press. ______. 1999. writing the social: critique, theory, and investigations. toronto, buffalo, london: university of toronto press. ______. 1986. institutional ethnography: a feminist method. resources for feminist research 15(1):6-13. social work in prevention of trafficking in human beings and protection of the victims. 2001. kyiv, ukraine. sperling, valerie. 1999. organizing women in contemporary russia. engendering transition. cambridge university press. where the bison still roam: wildlife preservation and animal welfare issues in poland and beyond where the bison still roam: wildlife preservation and animal welfare issues in poland and beyond tracie l. wilson i have had a long personal interest in animal welfare issues. during the winter of 1995, while spending a year in poland researching an unrelated topic, i arranged to meet the president of the society for the care of animals (towarzystwo opieki nad zwierzętami) at a café in warsaw. the president, a young woman in her twenties, showed up wearing a fur coat something i found a bit disconcerting. as we talked, she happened to mention that her coat was a fake. this intrigued me since it made me reflect on my own expectations about what an animal rights supporter should or should not wear. for example, many animal rights activists in the us choose not to wear coats that even resemble fur, especially if the fake is such that it could be mistaken for the real thing, as this might suggest that one supports the wearing of fur. this incident was one of the first indications to me that approaches to animal rights in poland were not necessarily the same as those in the united states. environmental and animal rights issues in poland have received a good deal of attention within poland itself, but also from western europe. these issues play an important role in the development of competing images of poland. in this paper i will discuss these issues with regard to the on-going tension between polish environmentalists and animal rights activists and more traditional segments of polish society, as well as conflicts between potential west european investors in poland and west european environmentalists. fur coats and kie≈basa: brutality or tradition? in nations and nationalism eric hobsbawm suggests that one attribute of the concept of nation is its ambiguity (hobsbawm, 1990). the images that the term conjures allow for considerable fluidity, making it possible for individuals to inscribe a variety of attributes to the category of nation according to their own worldview. my research addresses discrepancies in the image of the polish nation between mainstream polish society and a relatively small group of activists—although this movement is one that continues to grow. the animal welfare movement in poland is largely, but not entirely, a youth movement. the most vocal members of these groups—for example those that attend demonstrations—are in their teens and twenties. many of the tenets behind the movement—humane treatment of animals including livestock, vegetarianism, anti-fur positions—are the results of influence from organizations in the west. some of these positions challenge traditional polish attitudes toward animals. the polish diet is very meat-centered, and many people commonly wear fur coats and hats, especially those over fifty. fur is not seen necessarily as a luxury or as a sign of decadence, but as a practical solution to cold weather. for most poles—as for many people throughout the world—the use of animals as resources for human utility goes unquestioned. in general, young poles are very west-oriented, often rejecting cultural ties to their eastern neighbors, as well as distancing themselves from certain traditional polish ideals. this western orientation is apparent in their efforts to learn english and german, travel to western countries, and widespread interest in american popular culture.1 the jen typewritten text 73 attraction of young poles to western mass culture relates to a larger trend in polish society, an attempt to reassert poland’s connections—economic, political, and cultural— to the west. however, while many older generations of poles are eager to be politically associated with the west, they are often less enthusiastic about embracing western cultural conventions. older poles are especially hesitant to accept ideas that many westerners themselves continue to view as extreme, and find the burgeoning student interest in animal rights perplexing, irreverent, and the result of privilege. in the early nineties, older and middle-aged poles sometimes reacted with hostility when confronted with anti-fur demonstrations. some onlookers even doubted that the demonstrators could be polish. there were shouts to the young protestors to “go back to studying!” and suggestions that they ought to try working for a change. some older poles were angered by what they saw as the squandering of resources on a frivolous cause (chicago tribune, january 29, 1992). this strong reaction was likely compounded by the fact that many poles, especially in the early 1990s, were struggling to survive in the new market economy. some critics do not see this concern for animals as a worthwhile cause when many humans are living substandard lives. barbara kirshenblatt-gimblett asserts that behind discussions of identity and difference lurk issues of authenticity related to primordial claims (kirshenblatt-gimblett, 1994). this statement holds true when applied to the conflict between animal rights activists and those who consider their views offensive or misguided. as i mentioned above, such activists are attacking traditional conventions, and, in essence, are accusing society of immoral behavior. this assault is countered by others seeking to defend their “way of life.” the conflict, therefore, hinges to some degree, on notions of what is “polish” compared to that which some people view as derivative of values imported or imposed from the west.2 animal rights activists are attempting to reshape polish culture. this issue becomes especially sensitive when accusations of "barbarity" and "backwardness" are invoked. the animal activist movement in poland, like most places, is diverse, including groups focusing on environmental issues and wildlife preservation and those seeking more humane treatment of livestock and domestic animals. the movement also includes individuals who many view as being more radical—those espousing vegetarianism and condemning animal testing and the wearing of fur. although they do not fit the youthful profile, there are also significant numbers of elderly women (and perhaps some men) who feed stray cat colonies (kapucinski and kaemierczak). these varied interests are reflected in the kinds of animal-related groups that exist; in poland today there are at least thirty-eight organizations dedicated to animal welfare. they range from vegetarian clubs and other groups that promote earth-friendly lifestyles, to organizations that support environmental and wildlife causes, to more traditional groups who assist shelters designed to ease the plight of unwanted cats and dogs, as well as local chapters of the animal liberation front. one organization—the gaja klub of bielsko-biała—has been especially vocal throughout the 1990s. the group first became visible in the early 1990s when it launched protests against the use of wild animals in circuses and staged anti-fur demonstrations. in october of 1995 the gaja klub launched a public relations and lobbying campaign entitled "zwierzę nie jest rzecz" (an animal is not an object). this slogan was a direct jen typewritten text 74 response to the existing polish law passed in 1928 that described animals as "objects" and suggested that they were incapable of experiencing pain and emotions. according to this law they were to be treated as any other form of property (kapucinski and kaemierczak). exactly two years after this campaign was begun, parliament passed a new animal welfare law (gaja klub). previously, most animal cruelty cases ended in dismissal due to a lack of initiative and limited resources to investigate such cases (kapucinski and kaemierczak). the gaja klub and other groups with similar goals have continued to demonstrate publicly demanding better enforcement of the new laws. unfortunately, it is likely that a lack of resources and the relatively low priority given to animals will continue to be obstacles to protecting animals in poland from abuse. poland: a battleground for western interests aside from conflict between parties within poland, the status of polish animals has also received attention from westerners on both sides of the issue. since the reshaping of polish trade over the past decade, a great deal of polish livestock is now being transported to western europe. under the new market system, polish transport companies have had an incentive to pack as many animals as possible into transport cars. in some cases livestock from poland arrived at borders in such deplorable condition that it was refused entry (ratajczyk). horrid transport conditions were among one of the reasons that an animal rights tribunal in geneva designated poland as being among its worst offenders in 1993 (kapucinski and kaemierczak). poland is scheduled to be among the first east european countries to join the european union. in order to be admitted, its agricultural regulations must comply with union standards. however, the common agricultural policy that affects eu member states has itself been the object of criticism by animal welfare organizations who insist that animal transport standards and farm subsidies invite animal abuse and damage to the environment (european report, september 19, 1998). many inhumane practices exist within the agricultural industry. in some cases, western demands for certain luxury goods exacerbate the plight of polish livestock. one especially lucrative commodity is the fattened livers of force-fed geese used in the production of foie gras. this industry is especially gruesome, with pipes often being forced down the throats of geese who live in such a state of misery that their claws are removed to prevent them from killing themselves (ratajczyk). a number of international and foreign animal rights and conservation organizations have made efforts to impact policy within poland. over the past five years the world society for the protection of animals has increased its efforts to raise awareness about responsible pet ownership and improve conditions for companion animals in poland and other east european countries. in particular this organization has taken efforts to make people aware of the necessity of spaying and neutering their dogs and cats. in many countries throughout the world—poland included—spaying and neutering is often believed to be an unnecessary intervention into an animal’s natural reproductive cycles. the unfortunate result of such attitudes is millions of unwanted puppies and kittens that are drowned or destroyed by other means. an excess of unwanted animals also invites opportunities for other forms of abuse and neglect. in addition to attempts to improve the lives of domestic animals, some organizations also work to protect wildlife and their habitat. partial funding has come from international organizations like the worldwide fund for nature that, in 1993, helped jen typewritten text 75 to found the biebrza national park—poland’s largest nature park (aap newsfeed, april 6, 1998). the polish board of national parks in poland signed a cooperation agreement with the us department of the interior last year. similar agreements have been signed to establish sister parks in the poland and the us. for example, kampinoski national park and the indiana dunes national lakeshore park have established an agreement to carry out joint research and share information on ecological education (pap new wire, april 15, 1998). conservation organizations in germany and japan have also made contributions to improve national parks in poland. both international and local environmentalists and animal activists have made considerable efforts to raise awareness and increase the resources devoted to animal welfare. in contrast, agro-business investors from the west have begun cashing in on the comparatively low cost of land in east european countries such as poland and hungary. such investment trends anticipate the imminent expansion of the european union; landholders in these nations will be eligible for juicy eu farm subsidies. environmental groups in the west have been critical of their compatriots investments, suggesting that importing western agricultural practices, deemed as amore efficient,” will destroy the incredible biodiversity that remains in eastern europe. for example, the royal society for the protection of birds has expressed concern that species that continue to thrive in east central europe will meet the same fate as their western counterparts whose populations have been decimated over the last century (brown, 1998). such conflicts indicate that poland and other central european countries may become an extended battleground between western environmentalists and investors. in an earlier case in 1995, french actress brigitte bardot made a public appeal to president lech wałęsa to stop the planned culling of wolves in the bieszczady region. authorities believed that wolves were responsible for killing livestock, wild boars, and deer. in recent years hunting has been a very lucrative business in poland—with wealthy amateurs from austria and germany paying high premiums for the opportunity to shoot wolves--something strictly forbidden in european union countries (agence france presse, october 13, 1996). however, it is also true that in most european countries wolves have virtually disappeared. poland’s flourishing wolf population, though limited to two or three areas within the country, is quite unique.3 the circumstances surrounding the survival of wolves in the bieszczady region is in itself quite interesting. this area is found in the very southeast corner of poland wedged between slovakia and ukraine. in the years immediately following world war ii soviet forces fought the ukrainian resistance in this region of the carpathian mountains. after the insurgents were defeated, the survivors were deported to siberia and their villages were razed. the land in this remote region was allowed to revert to a more natural state—not through intent but by oversight. the fact that wolves were able to survive in this area, when they were considered a scourge and slaughtered throughout the rest of europe, was a fortuitous accident and an indirect result of ethnic cleansing (donkin). throughout the 1990s conservation scientists conducting research on the bieszczady wolves, have endorsed limited hunting of the species. they reasoned that the best way to ensure the future of wolves in poland was to maintain limits on uncurbed growth in order to prevent them from turning to livestock as a source of food. they believed that this phenomena would lead to a backlash among farmers and others who are jen typewritten text 76 already apprehensive about the presence of wolves (the financial times limited, december 9, 1995). local inhabitants and game wardens were also strongly opposed to a ban on the killing of wolves since hunting comprised a key mainstay of their income in this remote area. however, due to considerable pressure from polish and international environmentalists, in 1998 wolf hunting was banned in bieszczad the last region in poland where it was allowed (agence france presse, february 8, 1999). in 1979 unesco declared the national park in the bielowie⌠a forest a world heritage site. this forest on the polish-belorussian border is home to one of the last remaining herds of european bison—a species once believed extinct. in the 1920's polish scientists discovered a handful of surviving bison and undertook a plan to resurrect the species. the bison were reintroduced to the forest in the 1950s and now number in the hundreds. estimates of their numbers range between 250 and 500 (times newspapers limited, february 6, 1999). these rare creatures are fast becoming a tourist attraction. in fact, one proposed solution to meet the needs of both wildlife and local residents in remote villages adjacent to the parks in bieszczady and bielowie⌠a is the further development of an eco-tourism industry. presently there are several travel firms that offer tour packages to poland’s nature reserves. these tours are widely marketed to west europeans offering them an opportunity to experience a continent that is now lost to them. bielowie⌠a is often referred to as "europe's last remaining primeval forest" and is described in fairytale-like terms (woods). certain travel articles include the local human inhabitants in their rustic portrayals. for example, british travel writer lisa sykes describes poland’s bielowie⌠a and bieczszady regions and a handful of other sites in the following manner, “even in the crowded continent of europe there are still havens where the landscape takes your breath away, the wildlife is out of this world and the people’s lives are from another time. and the beauty is they are so close you can get there for a long weekend” (sykes). this image of polish nature reserves as one of the last vestiges of "unspoiled" european forest coincides with the rhetoric used by western environmentalists who see a need to protect eastern europe from the same mistakes that were made with regard to development in the west (brown). sykes’ reference to the close proximity of poland to western europe also underscores the vast potential that such places offer as sites of "ecotourism." this trend includes traditional types of nature excursions, as well as more experimental and participatory models. for example, one nonprofit organization— earthwatch—supports scientific studies and takes efforts to make projects accessible to volunteer researchers. such volunteers also make a financial contribution to projects, thereby funding research and the costs of travel and accommodations (donkin). other private organizations devoted to the protection of birds offer tours the price of which includes a contribution to local conservation efforts (marsch). however, while such possibilities for developing nature-related tourism may appear to be more ecologically sound than other kinds of tourism, this is not necessarily the case. deborah mclaren, the author of rethinking tourism and ecotravel: the paving of paradise and what you can do to stop it, warns against the "greenwashing" of tourism. she writes, “what is the difference between conventional travel and ecotravel? the overwhelming answer seems to be not much. ecotravel may involve more of a focus on getting out to see nature, but that doesn’t necessarily mean protecting the earth” (mclaren, 113). jen typewritten text 77 after reflecting on the situation of polish wildlife and their habitat, it becomes clear that hordes of tourists—even those with good intentions—could have a detrimental effect on species that thrive best in remote areas with minimal disturbance from humans. there are no simple solutions, and as is often the case with issues of animal welfare, there is also no clear agreement as to what is best for the animals in question. ************** like children, animals can illicit strong feelings because they are seen by many as innocent beings. the destruction of innocence can lead people to react strongly, even rabidly. such sentiment can be especially damaging when directed at members of another ethnic or cultural group. even seemingly benign organizations dedicated to improving the lives of animals in poorer countries run the risk of treating local inhabitants as misguided barbarians. such attitudes are possible even when the indicators of cultural difference are less obvious, for example between east and west european nations. animal activists within poland as well as in the west must be aware of the degree to which the status of animals is culturally defined. they must possess an understanding of the high levels of emotional intensity invested in the distinctions that people make between animals and humans. in calling into question such categories, one is essentially asking that people reconsider their own place and worth in the world. traditional attitudes toward animals are often validated by religion, and many individuals who have lived in accordance with this dichotomy may perceive challenges to it as a threat to their own identity. the sensitivity of this issue must be kept in mind along with other root causes of exploitation and insensitivity to animals including poverty, a lack of educational opportunities, and generally miserable living conditions. these issues will be the focus of my future research on the animal welfare and environmental movements in poland. in the meantime, the polish government appears serious in its efforts to amend legislation to comply with western standards. after a round of accession talks devoted to environmental regulations in january of this year, vice-minister of environmental protection jan radziejowski announced that poland should have no major problems adopting community legislation regarding wildlife protection as the relevant polish regulations are now stricter than the eu requires (polish news bulletin, january 19, 1999). however, legislation itself does not ensure that laws will be respected. in fact during recent decades many east european countries had very strict environmental laws. such laws, unfortunately, did not protect eastern europe from widespread environmental degradation as authorities made few, if any, provisions for enforcement. in other areas of animal welfare, efforts continue, with organizations pressing for more explicit legal provisions and improvement in regulatory agencies. in recent months animal rights activists in several countries have generated a good deal of attention, polish activists not least among them. animal advocates in poland have launched attacks on butcher shops, fur stores and fur farms causing extensive property damage. if earlier generations have overlooked the plight of animals, a small, but passionate segment of polish youth is now pursuing it with a vengeance. references agence france presse, september 24, 1996. agence france presse. "poland plans wolf hunt," october 13, 1996. jen typewritten text 78 agence france presse. "british police track polish wolves," february 8, 1999. brown, paul. "farmers' land grab: britons rush to reap eu cash in central europe," the guardian. april 18, 1998: 3. the chicago tribune. january 29, 1992 donkin, richard, "eager hunters cry wolf," the financial times. december 9, 1995. the european report. european information service, september 19, 1998. falczynski, przemysaw. animal rights: the protection project," the warsaw voice. march13, 1994. the financial times limited. december 9, 1995 gaja klub of bielsko-biała website, http://www.onet.pl/klubgaja/zwierze.htm.#antologia hemment, julie. “colonization or liberation: the paradox of ngos in postsocialist societies,” anthropology of east europe review. spring 1998. 16:1, 31-39. hobsbawm, eric j. 1990. nations and nationalism since 1780. new york: cambridge university press . kapucinski, grzegorz and kaemierczak, grzegorz. "animal abuse: beastly treatment," the warsaw voice, march 5, 1993. kirshenblatt-gimblett, barbara. "on difference," journal of american folklore. spring 1994. 107: 424, 233-237. klaffke, oliver. “the company of wolves,” new scientist. february 6, 1999. marsch, renate. "birdwatchers' polish paradise," aap newsfeed. april 6, 1998. polish news bulletin. "poland/eu: accession talks tackle environment," january 19, 1999. ratajczyk, andrzej. "cruelty to animals: beastly treatment," the warsaw voice. january 1994. sykes, lisa. "europe's last great wildernesses," times newspapers limited. june 21, 1998. times newspapers limited. february 6, 1999. woods, michael j. "deep in the forest something stirred," the financial times. september 19, 1998. notes 1 i should note that this motivation to learn english and german is at least partly driven by socioeconomic concerns as it often improves one’s employment opportunities. 2 similarly, julie hemment argues that negative perceptions of non-governmental organizations (ngos) in eastern europe have to do with their being seen as agents of imperial power that jen typewritten text 79 reinforce a kind of inequality in value between things labeled “eastern” vis-à-vis those that are considered “western.” from this perspective it is understandable why some east europeans perceive ngos as imposing alien values on them. hemment also suggests that people who are most suspicious and critical of ngos are those individuals who have been less successful at adapting to the new “code system” in post-socialist societies (hemment). the elderly are especially prevalent among this group. 3 however, in recent years wolves have begun to make a comeback in a handful of areas in western europe including the swiss alps. wolf populations have been in existence in northern italy, spain and portugal for a number of years. in germany there have also been occasional sightings of wolves believed to have passed over from poland (klaffke). jen typewritten text 80 where the bison still roam: wildlife preservation and animal welfare issues in poland and beyond tracie l. wilson the anthropology of east europe review central europe, eastern europe and eurasia special issue dance and music in eastern europe editors barb west robert rotenberg eva huseby-darvas nancy ries matti bunzl laszlo kurti volu.me 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 --------------------------------------------------.... call for papers anthropology of east eur()pereviewi:~ special issue: spring 2005 ethnographies ofczechs, slovaks, ruthenes,& lusatiaris, deadline december 15,2004 barbara west, a1anaging editor nancy ries (soyuz) university of the pacific anthropology stockton, ca 95211 colgate university bwest@uop.edu hamilton, ny 13346 nries@mail.colgate.edu please address all requests to the managing editor for the following: • membership in the east european anthropology group s15/yr. for full-time faculty and professionals slo/yr. for students and part-time faculty european subscribers please write for special rates • institutional subscriptions to the review ($20) • additional copies of this special issue ($20) the web page for ihe anthropology ofeast europe review/ east european anthropology group contains links to most of the previously published articles. please visit h ttp;/ icondor.depaul.edu/-rrotenbelaeer/ the anthropology ofeast europe review volume 22, number 1, spring 2004 © university of the pacific 2004 issn: 1054-4720 since the end of communism in czechoslovakia with the velvet revolution in 1989, huge numbers of\vestern­ ers-students, investors, tourists, and the descendants of emigres-have come to explore the czech and slovak republics. in contrast to many other parts of the former soviet bloc, however, western ethnographers studying the former czechoslovakia have had little in the way of an academic tradition to follow-primarily the work of three emigre anthropologists: ernest gellner, ladislav holy, and zdenek salzmann. despite the substantial interest in recent years, there has been no single collection of work on slovaks, czechs, and their diasporas in other parts of eastern europe and in the west. this special issue of the aeer aims to provide a forum for communication among ethnographers working in the former czechoslovakia, and with slovaks, czechs, and related groups in other parts of the world. we are soliciting submissions for our 2006 special issue on recent ethnog­ raphies of the czechs and slovaks and the former czecho­ slovakia, broadly understood also to include ruthenia (zakarpatska rus or podkarpatska ukrajina), lusatian serbs, and the diasporic communities of any of these four western slavic groups. the deadline for submissions is december 15, 2004. potential authors are encouraged to contact the editors in advance. articles can be any length, up to approximately 10,000 words, and should follow american anthropologist format for spelling and cita­ tions (http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_-!5uide.htm). reviews of books or films (single or multiple works) wiii also be accepted: interested reviewers should communicate with the editors for guidelines. guest editors: timothy 1hccajor hall, ph.d. u c san diego, school of medicine & dept. of anthropology thall@ucsd.edu rosie read, ph.d. university of manchester, dept. of anthropology msdssrjr@man.ac.uk mailto:msdssrjr@man.ac.uk mailto:thall@ucsd.edu http://www.aaanet.org/pubs/style_-!5uide.htm http:condor.depaul.edu 3 contents 5 introduction lynn mailers, guest editol; state university ~vest georgia 7 the last dance laszlo kurti, university ofajiskolc, hungary 25 from banning to commodity incorporation: binding, bonding, and banding in eastern european music jeffrey alyn smith, university of debrecen 37 dancing yourseslf, dancing for others: performing identity in a transylvanian-romanian folkdance ensemble amy c. mills, university of oregon 51 transylvanian dancing in the final hour wayne b. kraft, eastem washington university 61 reviving moldova: social and political dimensions of contemporary folkloric performances jennifer r. cash, indiana university 77 broadcasting ethnonational exclusion and inclusion: two musicians in two croatias dickie wallace, university of i'y1assachusetts, amherst 85 the challenges of applied ethnology in croatia tvrtko zebec, institute ofethnology and folklore research, zagreb, croatia 93 (com) passionately political: music of djordje balasevic brana mijatovic, university of california, los angeles 103 turbo folk and dance music in 1990s serbia: media, ideology and the production of spectacle ivana kronja, university o.farts, belgrade 115 explorations on the move: dance in the republic of macedonia gaelyn aguilar, university ofsouthern calffomia 125 signifying selfin plural cultural contexts: subjectivity, power and individual agency in north-western greek macedonia ioannis manos, university western maced01lia 139 traditional dance in greece yvonne hunt, centre for asia a1inor studies, athem 145 men and women dancing in the remembered past of podhale poland louise wrazen, york university 155 the mysterious voice! american women singing bulgarian songs jamie lynn webster, university of oregon -------------the anthropology of east europe review------------­ volume 22 • number 1 • sprillg 2004 youth, media, and subculture in post-conflict societies anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 98 youth, media, and subculture in post-conflict societies benjamin perasović ivo pilar institute of social sciences this article explores the extent of ethnocentrism, xenophobia and chauvinism among the younger generation in contemporary croatia. it considers what generates and maintains xenophobic sentiments and the potential for, and evidence of, resistance to them. the argument set out has three inter-related parts. the first concerns the general rise in levels of national affiliation among the majority (‘mainstream’) of youth and their social distance from ‘other’ ethnic groups. here the article draws on a series of sociological surveys that allow comparison before and after the collapse of the former yugoslav federation. such data indicate that, over the last two decades, croatian society has been characterised by a rise in religiosity and an increase in the importance of national identity (ilišin 2002). to explain this, sociologists have applied durkheim’s notion of anomie and accentuated the particular difficulties in generational transfer of experience in the context of the post-socialist collapse of values and institutions (županov 2002). this arises not only from the difficulty of socializing young people into a normative system itself only emergent, but also from the lack of authority accruing to the older generation who appeared, overnight, to switch from preaching brotherhood and unity to propagating war and hate. the second part of the article considers the role of the media in generating ‘moral panics’ and in constructing ‘folk devils’ (often in the shape of skinheads and football hooligans) that serve to distance such 'extremes' from 'normal', conventional, nationalism often dignified by the term 'patriotism'. the final section of the article draws on original empirical research by the author with youth subcultures that directly articulate ethnic intolerance and discrimination as well as those who oppose them. the analysis of their cultural practices suggests that such xenophobic practices are only the tip of the iceberg, beneath which lie deeper social processes of socialization, retraditionalisation and the maintenance of patriarchal relations that sustain not only practices of ethnic hatred and violence but also the conventional, unquestioned, moderate nationalism of the silent majority. ‘mainstream youth’: national affiliation and social distance a series of social surveys conducted by ilišin (2002), baranović (2002) and radin (2005) provide the opportunity to compare degrees of national affiliation and social distance expressed by young people before and after the socioeconomic transformation and military conflicts of the early 1990s (see table 1). in the first of three surveys (based on a sample of 2,000 15-29 year olds in croatiai the first real change in the ranking of statements is visible only from 2004. although the statement ‘i feel a sense of belonging to my and conducted in 1986, 1999 and 2004) exploring national affiliation, radin identified three basic positions among the population national realism, ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism. in 1986, in the context of the growing crisis of the one-party system, he found ethnocentrism to be articulated by a significantly smaller proportion of the population than either of the other two positions. the same survey was repeated 13 years later, in the aftermath of the war and radical change in the political and economic system. the statements that had received most support in 1986 ‘i feel a sense of belonging to my own nation and to mankind in general in equal measure' and ‘every nation must be open to the world and the influence of other cultures’ – remained the most popular (see table 1). evidence of a rise in national affiliation, however, can be deduced from the fact that a lower proportion of the population sample agreed with the statement ‘no fundamental human characteristics are rooted in national belonging’ (44.2% in 1986 compared to 33.1% in 1999) and from the rise in support for the statement ‘all members of my nation should always respect it over the nations of others’ (supported by 9.5% of respondents in 1986 but by 19.4% in 1999). nonetheless, more extreme statements such as ‘nationally mixed marriages are doomed to failure from the outset' continued to be supported by only a tiny minority of respondents. interpreting these data, baranović (2002) concludes that the national realism expressed in the first survey had, by 1999, turned into an uncritical national identification whilst cosmopolitanism had weakened and ethnocentrism had retained its marginal presence. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 99 own nation and to mankind in general in equal measure' remained popular (supported by 52.7% of respondents), it was pushed into second place by the statement ‘every nation should revive and promote its own national ideals’ (supported by 53% of respondents). what is most striking about the 2004 survey, however, is the rise in support for the statement that ‘all members of my nation should always respect it over the nations of others’ (to 30.7%) and even for the statement, deemed a measure of ethnocentrism by radin (2005), that ‘one should love even the weaknesses of one’s own nation’ (supported by 23.3% in 2004 compared to 17.8% in 1999 and 16% in 1986). agreement with more radically ethnocentric statements -‘one should always be cautious and reserved towards other nations, even when they are your friends’ and ‘nationally mixed marriages are doomed to failure from the outset' also rose. the fact that levels of support for neither exceeded 9%, however, indicates such positions remained marginal across the social spectrum. these findings – the simultaneous growth in the articulation of strong national affiliation alongside a retention of an openness to the outside world – has led radin to suggest that ethnocentrism and cosmopolitanism do not oppose but complement one another and their co-existence has allowed the development in croatia of a relatively moderate national affiliation alongside an openness to the rest of the world. this finding confirms the earlier study of branka baranović (2002), which noted a trend towards widespread support for the promotion of national belonging and a strong and rather uncritical emphasis of one’s own nationality, alongside an openness to the outside world and ‘other’ cultural influences. table 1 survey data on national affiliation statement ‘completely agree with’ (1986) ‘completely agree with’ (1999) ‘completely agree with’ (2004) ‘i feel a sense of belonging to my own nation and to mankind in general in equal measure' 46.3% 42.2% 52.7 % ‘every nation must be open to the world and the influence of other cultures’ 40.5% 40.6% 37.6% ‘no fundamental human characteristics are rooted in national belonging’ 44.2% 33.1% 39.4% ‘all members of my nation should always respect it over the nations of others’ 9.5% 19.4% 30.7% ‘nationally mixed marriages are doomed to failure from the outset' 3.7% 4.7% 5.4% ‘every nation should revive and promote its own national ideals’ 26.4% 32.5% 53.0% ‘one should love even the weaknesses of one’s own nation’ 16.0% 17.8% 23.3% ‘one should always be cautious and reserved towards other nations, even when they are your friends’ 6.3% 7.6% 8.9% baranović (2002) and radin (2005) also conducted research into social distance using the bogardus 7 scale. although comparing the data from the two surveys is complicated by the fact that the first, conducted in 1999, allowed multiple answers to the questions posed whilst the second, conducted in 2004, permitted only one answer, the two surveys reveal little change in the hierarchy of social distance between ethnic groupings. both surveys showed that croats felt closest to their own national group followed by a number of western european nations (italians, germans, french) as well as americans. other central and east european national groups featured mid-way through the scale. czechs, hungarians and slovenes were seen to be the closest from this grouping while at the bottom were russians, macedonians, montenegrins, anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 100 serbs and albanians. the only notable difference between the two surveys is that ‘bosniaks’ii what does this macro-sociological data tell us about croat youth today? it helpfully links changes in national affiliation with wider processes of transition in croatia and suggests that young people confronted by the challenges of survival, risk and uncertainty in the new capitalist arena seek protection, security and certainty in family, nation and the church. it is also extremely useful in indicating that although there are very real issues of xenophobia, racism and chauvinism among young croatians, these remain minority views and practices and thus that we should be wary of public discourse that exaggerates the social threat posed by ‘xenophobic youth’. , who were at the bottom of the scale in 1999, had moved towards the middle in the 2004 survey while slovenes had slipped down from the middle towards the bottom. it should be noted also that a significant proportion of respondents (one third) indicated that they felt distanced not only from other national groups but also from the croat nation. youth and the media world of spectacle the mobilising role of the media during military conflict is well established and the wars in croatia and bosnia and herzegovina provided further confirmation of the tendency of the media to emphasise, strengthen and reproduce stereotypes and prejudice at such times. a decade after the conflicts, however, the media in croatia have undergone significant tabloidisationiii tito’s or tudjman’s speeches on 'our' youth provide a good illustration of the first paradigm in its past socialist or nationalistic form. more recently, it has been used in the runup to elections. this is exemplified by the following excerpt from an interview with ivo sanader of the croatian democratic union party (hdz) party, but similar statements have been made by politicians linked to the socialdemocrats, liberals and other parties: and, today, are best understood as operating within the classic capitalist paradigm of ‘spectacle’ in which even stories and images related to national identification take on a hollywood hue. the discussion of youth issues in the croatian media takes place within one of two paradigms. the first is a political discourse, which employs ‘youth’ as an ideological notion in a way largely unchanged from the past except for a change of predicative from ‘tito’s’ or ‘socialist’ to ‘croatian’ youth. there is significant continuity also in the way young people are talked about as ‘our investment in the future’, the ‘pride of the nation’, ‘those who will inherit the world’, ‘the country’s most valuable resource’ etc. this paradigm is particularly prevalent during election campaigns when the serious, mature and responsible political world of adults chooses to remember youth, women and the environment. we know that our future lies in our potential to construct a knowledgebased society. that is why we are determined to stop the brain drain by providing conditions for our youth, especially young scientists and researchers, to ensure that they do not have to leave the country, to ensure that our youth stays in the country to construct our future. (prime minister ivo sanader speaking on croatian tv, broadcast 15th october 2007. the second paradigm constructs young people as agents of deviancy and persists regardless of immediate political events or the general political orientation of the media concerned. within this discourse young people are portrayed through a series of debates about moral decline as personified by young people who ‘take drugs’ and ‘start sexual relationships younger and younger’, who are ‘increasingly violent’, belong to ‘extremist’ groups, ‘terrorise’ the city on graduation day, ‘drink until they collapse’, join ‘sects’ in increasing numbers and surrender to various ‘gurus’ and ‘satanist’ or ‘goth’ movements. young people are criticised for being too ‘urban’ one moment and too ‘rural’ the next, for attending thompsoniv concerts, on the one hand, but listening to new serbian folk on the other. this second paradigm is epitomised by the moral panic over the rave scene in the second half of the nineties, an example of which is provided by the characterisation of ‘youth today’ in the daily newspaper slobodna dalmacija as wearing ‘their shirts and trousers two to four times bigger than they need be and carrying a bottle of alcohol in their hand and a tablet of ecstasy in their pockets…’(slobodna dalmacija, 17the may 1996). this labelling of youth culture as essentially ‘deviant’, however, needs to be read in the light of a parallel media glorification of the rich and famous (‘stars’, successful businessmen and the ‘jet set’) whose anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 101 material wealth could never be acquired by an average young croat. consequently, young people inhabit a media world in which an article about social policy to tackle drug use on one page is followed by a celebration of the return of ‘heroin chic’ and excessively thin fashion models on the next. of course such media discourse is not unique to croatia; it is a well-established phenomenon whose existence led to the development of the universally applicable sociological concept of ‘moral panic’ by young (1972), gusfield (1963), and, the most frequently quoted, stanley cohen (1972/1980). the key components of cohen’s theory – media exaggeration, distortion of facts, generalisation, prediction, symbolisation, and exploitation could be found also in the yugoslav media of the 1980s in their discussion of punks in ljubljana (slovenia) or ‘goths’ in zagreb (croatia), or what was dubbed the ‘nazi birthday party’ in sarajevov it is interesting to dwell a moment on the case of football fans since they are a classic example of how a set of constant practices, and in some cases, the very same people, are recast by the media in a way that reflects changes in the political direction of the government. thus, if we take as an example the football fans known as the ‘bad blue boys’ (bosnia and herzegovina), or football hooliganism across the region. moral panics typical of the 1990s concerned the rave (techno, trance, house) party scene, the use of drugs generally and, of course, football fans, while the most recent example of moral panic, especially in zagreb, concerns new folk music and its connections with the mafia. vi, we see that their media portrayal shifted considerably across the eighties and nineties. at the end of the eighties the bad blue boys were depicted as ‘hooligans’, ‘dangerous nationalists’, ‘anti-socialist elements’, and ‘mindless vandals’. at the beginning of war, however, they became ‘our boys’, ‘croatia’s defenders’, ‘croatian knights’, ‘heroes’, ‘croatian volunteers, fighters’ and, because some of the bad blue boys were killed in the war, ‘martyrs who gave their young lives on the altar of the homeland’. but, by the mid nineties, and as they waged a struggle to restore the name of the football club,vii the very same group of young men, were being described as ‘anti-croat elements’, ‘enemies of the croatian state’ or as being ‘nostalgic for yugoslav communism’, ’sponsored by george soros’, and, once again, ‘mindless vandals’.viii for the purposes of the discussion here, however, it is the media coverage of the thompson phenomenon, which is most significant. the croatian public became aware of marko perkovic thompson at the beginning of 1992, when he released the song ‘cavoglave’ based on the story of the armed defence he and his brothers conducted of his home village. the song with its macedonian rhythm, rock riffs and call for defence and revenge became very popular, almost an anthem of the first phase of the war in croatia. after the war, he began singing professionally and, in the period after the change of the government in croatia from tudjman’s croatian democratic union party (hdz) to a social democrat–liberal coalition in january 2000, and on the wave of nationalist protests against sending croatian generals to the hague, thompson came to epitomize for many the sufferings of the ‘wounded croatian soul’ as he successfully wove together post-conflict emotions, the vocalisation of national identification and a popular type of folk-rock music. the media crowned him ‘the first rightwing pop star in europe’ and he attracted 50,000 people to his performance at the stadium in split in september 2002. during his concerts thousands of people would chant ‘kill the serbs’ and it was not uncommon to see people there sporting ustasha ix it is important to recognise the ‘moral panic’ surrounding the thompson phenomenon. this is not to deny that a proportion of the thompson audience is ethnocentric and chauvinist. however, the superficial, campaignlike and sensationalist coverage and criticism of thompson conducted in the press has hindered genuine efforts to discuss and address the causes of nationalist and chauvinist behaviour. articles in the daily newspapers jutarnji list and vecernji list on the day after his big concert in split (17th september 2002), or those in the weekly papers globus and nacional in september 2002, for example, focused on the problematic issues at the concert while subsequent reporting centred on the iconography of some fans and the tendentious nature of the lyrics in some songs, and headlined with news of his concerts being symbols from the second world war on t-shirts or baseball caps. thompson has always denied any political links or overt political message and claims to be a patriot rather than a chauvinist; he sings, he says, about god, love and the homeland. however, the lyrics of his songs throw this defence into doubt and at some of his concerts open support was lent to individuals accused of war crimes. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 102 banned in amsterdam and rotterdam. the problem with this kind of reporting is that justifiable criticism of the use of fascist symbols and some of the slogans and chants of sections of the public is undermined by the generalisation of this minority behaviour into a descriptor of the whole ‘thompson phenomenon’. this is accomplished through the chain of signification established by journalists through their constant us of terms such as ‘right-wing’, ‘fascist symbols’, ‘ban’, ‘croatian nationalism’ in relation to thompson; in this way, as stanley cohen (1972/1980) argues, every symbol connected to the phenomenon becomes imbued with deviant status. such media sensationalism is ultimately counter-productive since headlines portraying every young person attending a thompson concert as wild ustasha ready to kill and slaughter serbs, jews and roma do little to disrupt ethnic stereotyping whilst providing a stream of images and headlines that often find their place on the walls of those same young people they seek to criticise. another example of the way in which media reporting on subcultures is used to explore the ‘unfinished business’ of the second world war rather than shed light on subcultural movements themselves can be seen in the media discussion of skinheads in the mid 1990s. for example, when a member of the punk scene in zagreb was stabbed several times in the stomach by skinheads, articles in the daily newspapers of 15th and 16th december 1997 labelled the incident ‘a war between skins and punks on the streets of zagreb’ (vecernji list), while one of the most popular tv shows, ‘latinica’ devoted a whole programme to the conflict between punks and skins in december 1997. this media discourse not only focused on fighting between skins and punks but also portrayed the groups as direct descendants of traditional enemies within their parent culturex – the ustasha and the partizani.xi it is important, of course, to recognise also the important role the media play in bringing to light social problems paedophilia, sexual abuse and harassment, violence against women and children, bullying and violence among the young that have been neglected up until the recent past. at the same time, it is vital that we recognise the danger inherent in allowing discussion of such issues to generate ‘moral panic’ that not only labels and stigmatises sections of the population but also diverts attention away from the real problem. in the case of the discussion of paedophilia recently, for example, one of the croat tabloids published an article on its front page warning against ‘daddies with cameras prowling our beaches’, effectively directing attention away from the family and relatives (the most common site of the sexual abuse of children) to ‘foreigners’, public places (the beach) and the ‘stranger’s camera’. in a similar way, this kind of spectacularisation in the media frequently misdirects the discussion of youth problems towards public debate about youth as a problem. this was particularly evident in the discussion of the symbols used within the two movements with advocates from one side claiming that ustasha symbols are fascist symbols and should be banned while the other side claimed that the red star was a symbol of totalitarian terror. even if the content of the media discourse is clearly more sympathetic to the punks than the skins and to multiculturalism than ethnocentrism, one of the problems of this kind of spectacular reporting is that it leaves a large amount of violence including domestic violence outside discussion. moreover, by talking about a ‘war’ between skins and punks and by linking the contemporary use of symbols from the communist and fascist past to the ‘origins’ of punk and skinhead movements, the media, to some extent, not only define but create this war, or, perhaps more accurately, re-create the unfinished business of the second world war. youth subcultures, xenophobia and violence it is tempting to assume that the small proportion of respondents with ‘marginal’, xenophobic views identified by the surveys cited above are precisely those people highlighted in media reporting of violent, xenophobic activities. in practice, however, young people’s articulated views and their behaviour in particular contexts cannot be presumed to be logically consistent; young people are not frozen bearers of generalised questionnaire responses but dynamic agents responding to particular contextual situations. thus, it is perfectly possible to imagine respondents ticking boxes in a questionnaire in such a way as to make them fit well within the ‘mainstream’ yet, in another time and place, finding themselves in a crowd throwing stones at coaches carrying the serbian football team or its fans. the only way to understand whether or not marginal attitudes are articulated by subcultural groups, therefore, is to conduct long-term, in-depth sociological observation, which situates young people’s anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 103 narratives within the context of their everyday life experience. the study of ‘marginal’ or ‘extreme’ youth groupings has taken place largely upon the theoretical terrain of ‘subcultures’. the understanding of youth via ‘subcultures’ first flourished in the mid-1950s (cohen, a 1955) rooted in structural functionalism albeit incorporating elements of chicago school thinking. through the 1960s it continued to feature – more as a recurrent theme than as a strictly applied concept – as part of a wider interest in theories of symbolic interactionism (becker 1963). it reached the height of its academic presence in the late 1970s and early 1980s within the neo-marxist paradigm of ‘youth subculture’ developed by the birmingham school (cohen, p. 1972, hall & jefferson 1976, hebdige 1980). in croatia, discussion of youth subcultures began with reference to 1970s phenomena such as the šminkerixii, štemerixiii the notion of ‘subculture’ to explain these cultural phenomena has a contested history in eastern europe, however. this is not only because subcultural styles have been encountered there outside of their original anglo-saxon context but also because the concept of subculture, in both its 1950s and its 1970s variant, was rooted in an understanding of social class as the primary site of socialisation. in croatia, however, determining the class base of any particular youth subculture is problematic and it has proven more appropriate to provide thick description of particular subcultural styles whilst using notions like traditionalism, patriarchalism or urban-rural to understand the everyday cultural practices of the individuals involved. this is not to say that social status and the socio-economic location of parents is irrelevant to the subculturalisation process in eastern europe but to suggest that its significance is not as great as studies rooted in subcultural theory of the 1970s and 1980s in the united kingdom would make it appear (perasović 2001). the research presented below thus understands the experiences and cultural practices of young subcultural actors in relation to their location on society's margins but, at the same time, explores how these practices are mediated by mainstream society including via the media and socialisation processes. and hashomani (hippies) and continued with punk and new wave. the rock-based scenes of the mid-1980s splintered into heavy metal (speed, death, trash), rockabilly, dark/gothic and hardcore and were joined, in the late 1980s, by hiphop and other music-based subcultures. the 1990s were characterised above all by the rave scene (house, trance, techno, breakbeat) and the revival of anarchist punk identity and its related network of fanzines. the most recent phenomenon has been a new folk wave, although in this case status as a ‘subculture’ is challenged by its closeness to the parent culture. it is argued here, therefore, that the macro-sociological approach reported above, which explains the rise in national affiliation as a response to the insecurities of ‘wild capitalism’, is important but insufficient. a sociological understanding of these tendencies needs to consider also the parent culture, which is characterised by nationalist exclusivity, xenophobia, prejudice and stereotypes and which, from the beginning of the 1990s, instigated a process of retraditionalisation in croatian society from both above and below. retraditionalisation is complex and cannot be treated in isolation from other major social processes especially demographic and economic taking place in croatia at this time. however, for the purposes of this article, it might be disaggregated into a number of key processes, including: the increasing influence of the church in society and the public arena; the rediscovery of ‘old ways’ of doing things; an emphasis on patriarchal norms and values; the idealisation of the ‘honest’, ‘simple’, ‘rural’, hard-working man with a historically rooted and strictly delimited role; and a high degree of social control. of course there are many progressive consequences of the process of retraditionalisation,xiv but it is also deeply infused with the re-assertion of patriarchal values. a notorious illustration of this is the claim of the minister of science and education, ljilja vokić that she automatically stood up whenever a man entered the room.xv this is particularly important because patriarchal society is based on relations of domination and subordination that are underpinned by violence and harassment; 25% of women in croatia have suffered some form of physical violence from a male partner and 33% have suffered some form of sexual violence (ažk, 2006). although these facts are discussed in public, they are treated in isolation from other social processes, which means that when youth violence (associated, for example, with skinheads or football hooligans) is discussed in the public, including academic, sphere no anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 104 connection is made between the reassertion of patriarchal values and the problem of violence in society in general. a final, but not unconnected, factor in the reproduction of ethnically rooted prejudice and discrimination is the ‘paternalism’ that continues to characterise croatian society. in a sociological survey conducted in 1999, ilišin (2002) measured paternalism via the level of support among respondents for three propositions: young people, above all, must obey their parents at home, teachers in school and employers at work; society can be maintained and developed only if young people respect everything done by the older generations; and young people should be allowed to enjoy themselves, study, work and earn money, but they should not interfere with decision-making about social issues. in this survey 40-70% of respondents either ‘completely agreed’ or ‘mostly agreed’ with these statements, suggesting that a significant proportion of young people are subject to traditional and patriarchal social models that facilitate the emergence of authoritarian consciousness and uncritical national identification. at the same time, however, the survey responses revealed a strong tendency towards recognising the ‘innovative potential of the young’, favouring the young over the old and supporting the abandoning of established habits and patterns (ilišin 2002). it is interesting to note here also that while support for paternalism was correlated with certain socio-demographic variables,xvi the survey revealed no statistically significant correlations between the eight key socio-demographic variables and views on ‘innovative potential’. unfortunately, however, despite the recognition of this potential among youth, in reality, such innovation is blocked by power relations rooted in age, gender, and wealth stratifications. moreover, for both economic and cultural reasons, young people in croatia move out of the parental home at a very late age. this delayed separation prevents the realisation of the innovative potential of young people and is just one example of the disempowered status of youth. a note on method in the remainder of this article the significance of ‘subcultures’ in the articulation of and challenge to xenophobia, violence, discrimination and hatred are discussed. the material drawn on comes from research conducted with subcultural actors and their leaders over a period of more than five years. the research was conducted primarily through participant observation in the rituals of punks, hippies, ravers, football hooligans and other groups with less stylistically rooted identities. as part of this study over 100 individual interviews and twenty group interviews were conducted. this research conducted originally for the purposes of a phd thesis was completed in 1999 but contacts with all key actors on the subcultural scene in zagreb, and with some in split, pula, rijeka and osijek, have been maintained and informal conversations as well as interviews in the post 1999 period are also drawn on in this article. since the focus of this article is ethnocentrism, xenophobia and chauvinism among the younger generation, the discussion here focuses on those subcultural actors football hooligans and skinheads who, in many cases, openly advocate nationalism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, and homophobia, and who carry out violent attacks on various 'others' (members of rival football crews, gay men, punks, hippies). of course, this is not to suggest that all football fans (or even all skinheads) behave in this way but it cannot be denied that these groups (for example the bad blue boys or torcidaxvii a central aspect to the research has been the testing of narratives of subcultural actors from multiple sources since anti-sexist or anti-fascist statements by a particular individual or group of people in one context may give way to quite opposite sentiments at another time or place. such dissonance in internal subcultural narratives can only be captured through sustained participant observation. another important characteristic of the research was the recognition of the researcher's constantly shifting status with relation to his research subjects. for some veterans of the scenes the author was known as a researcher, while for others those joining the scene later his observance of the ) have consistently exhibited such behaviour and values over the last twenty years. anarcho-punk and alternative movements, in contrast, are discussed because they constitute the section of the contemporary youth cultural scene in which anti-nationalist and anti-ethnocentric views are most strongly voiced. this article, in contrast to media reporting, also attempts to place both sets of subcultural movements in the broader context of croatian society. anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 105 rhythm of scene life made it hard to see him first and foremost as a sociologist. frequent appearances on television talking about subcultural practices also afforded the author the opportunity for dialogic feedback from respondents. members of various rock-based subcultural styles (hippies, punks, goths, metal fans) felt the author's public narrativization of subcultures lent legitimacy to their (often stigmatized) cultures. however, the same individuals were angered by his use of the term 'subculture' to describe, for example, football hooligans since, for them, the use of this term to describe such 'mindless violence', threatened to undermine the legitimacy afforded their own group. football hooliganism from the end of the 1970s until around the mid1980s football fans were less a distinct subculture than part of the parent culture; violence against the long-haired followers of rock subcultures was rationalised by recourse to widely held views about ‘dirty addicts’ whose right to walk the street should be challenged by physical attack or symbolic cutting of their hair. however, from the end of the 1970s, a clear process of subculturalisation began among football fans as they became aware of themselves and their media image. as part of this process they began experimenting with drugs, spray painting graffiti, paying attention to their outward appearance, which included adopting bomber jacketsxviii by the 1980s, the core elements of football fan groups – those calling themselves hooligans – had developed a number of subcultural characteristics including: a strong sense of masculinity; an inclination towards hierarchy and leaders whilst retaining an emphasis on spontaneity and unpredictability; a preference for alcohol over all other drugs (see plate 1); competitive practices and ritual confrontation; and the adoption of particular style attributes (see plate 2), symbols and iconography as well as the use of material objects such as flares and smoke bombs. and piercing their ears, giving names to their fan groups and forming affiliations with other such groups at home and abroad. they also began to borrow some rituals from other music-based subcultures and their music preferences began to diverge from the parent culture. the terraces became divided by age, and so, symbolically and partially physically, football fans began to desert their fathers who had, originally, taken them to the stadium. plate 1: ‘fans at hajduk-varteks match in split. the banner with the bottle reads “always thirsty”. photo by mate prlic, 26th october 2002. plate 2: ‘this photo is of torcida hard-core fans in the north stand of hajduk stadium in 2007. by this time, some fans had adopted the lonsdale t-shirts formerly associated with skinheads. photo by mate prlic, 18th april 2007. this identity was also articulated through strong local, regional and national identities and an ideology rooted in anti-communism, religiosity, nationalism and chauvinism. this is expressed clearly by the following two football fans: we are here to defend our city [zagreb]. if we weren't prepared to do this, outsiders, fans from other cities would come here and insult us, make jokes and take the mickey. but we have our pride and no one's going to come here and walk our streets as if they were at anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 106 home. (influential member of bad blue boys, male, 24 years, interviewed in 1988, zagreb) we are croats. we are proud of that. we'll sing croatian songs even if the police arrest us. we believe in god. we're not communists. we're not the police or gyppos like those from rijeka. (member of bad blue boys, male, 20 years, interviewed after the match dinamo-rijeka, 1988) but how, precisely, is nationalism, chauvinism and xenophobia related to the subcultural practices of football fans? based on a study of the split based torcida (see plates 1-3) lalić (1993) identified four basic types of fan: fan/fan; fan/trendy; fan/violence seeker; and fan/political activist. plate 3: ‘torcida fans at friendly match in maribor, slovenia. photo by mate prlic, 5th july 2002’ despite the fact that lalić conducted his research almost 20 years ago, this typology remains broadly relevant today. ‘fan/fans’, who are neither nationalistic nor violently oriented but become members of fan groups because of their fanatic devotion to the club and because they enjoy the ecstatic situations, travelling and friendships that develop within fan groups, remain clearly visible on the scene. the number of ‘fans/trendies’ varies according to the status of football fans on the wider youth cultural scene but also remains a relevant category. since lalić’s study, the major change has been the decline in the significance of the ‘fan/political activist’. twenty years ago, the socialist political system labelled all fans that participated in singing old (prohibited) croatian songs ‘political activists’ (nationalists) and any fan carrying a croatian national flag risked a few months in prison. this explains why this type of fan was important in lalić’s study. however, it should be remembered that these young fans were not always as politically active as the political system made them out to be. for example, fans writing ‘we love hajduk’ on a white piece of cloth that looked like a flag could result in being refused admission to the stadium by the police since the banner contained ‘no red star or other symbol of socialism’xix finally, lalić’s ‘fans/violence seekers’ also remain an important presence on the scene and such fans continue to feature in the headlines of media reports. there is a core element, often fans who no longer go to matches regularly, who attend special events charged with ritual hostility in order to participate in violence for their own adrenalin-charged enjoyment, however destructive it may be. the thrill of the ‘fight’ is articulated by the following fan: . today the situation is radically different since croatian national flags and symbols are part of mainstream culture. another change affecting political activism among football fans is the withdrawal of other politically engaged subcultural groups – such as the punks – from football stadium rituals and their replacement (by the mid nineties) by skinheads who had not featured at all at the time of lalić’s research. thus, changes in the broader political system means that political activism is not so present as it was twenty years ago but remains alive in the form of the skinheads and other football fans who use the opportunity of the stadium to express their support for croatian generals in den haag, or to emphasise nationalistic and ethnocentric, as well as anti-gay and similar values on the terraces. you know, if you really want to fight, your heart has to be in it. heart is the most important thing, not your size, training or skills... they help but they are not decisive, you know. look, you might be bigger than me, but if i have more heart, if i am mad, i will smash your face before you do anything. yes, you know, you have to be crazy in a way, and hit first, there's no point hanging back. (member of the core group of bad blue anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 107 boys, male, 25 years, interviewed in 1998, zagreb) such ritual fighting, however, is as much about friendship, bonding and empowerment as xenophobic violence or destroying the enemy. this is implicit in the statement of the following fan: those poor šminkeri. they might have money, they might have the keys to the motorbike their parents bought for them in their hand, but they don't know what real life is what passion, friendship, a fight, or anything real is. (member of the core group of bad blue boys, male, 23 years, interviewed in 1988, zagreb) it is undeniable, however, that a constant element in fan groups has been the presence of individuals with ethnocentric and xenophobic views. suggestions from initial research on football hooliganism in the mid-1980s (buzov et al 1989) that some fans were inclined to nationalistic and militant options of conflict resolution were confirmed a few years later by the massive participation of soccer fans in the war (although some read this participation as motivated by a simple impulse to (self-)defence). the proportion of politically active people on the terraces varies over time, however, and currently political activism involves little more than support for the croatian generals in the hague and disputes with the club management. nonetheless, terrace rituals, and the subculture of football hooligans in which they are embedded, remain a stage for chauvinistic and racist insults, protests and ritual conflicts on national as well as other territorial (regional, urban, district) grounds. skinheads the first skinheads appeared in the mid 1980s, although they were small in number and did not constitute a recognisable, cohesive group. they should not therefore be confused with a much larger group of football fans who because of their bomber jackets, very short hair, frequent use of the celtic cross, strong masculine identity, local, regional and national pride, and violent and exclusionary behaviour resembled skinheads. despite outward similarities, these young people remained essentially football hooligans; they identified only with their own fan group, were not informed about skinhead culture and were not interested in the nuances of skinhead style (braces, doc martens, white laces, lonsdale t-shirts, etc.). the first ‘real’ skinheads – those who identified themselves as such – in fact emerged both within and outside of the football fan scene. they listened to punk music, were part of the linked ‘fanzine’ network and were fully versed in the wide spectrum of political orientations among skinheads. thus skinhead subculture in the first half of the 1990s was united in maintaining a conscious distance from neo-nazi imagery whilst including both members of the sharp (skinheads against racial prejudice) movement and skinheads with moderate nationalist views. indicative of the constitution of the skinhead subculture at this time is an incident in 1994 when punksxx squatted a place close to the main bus station in zagreb and were joined by members of a skinhead group. one of the youngest skins painted graffiti including a swastika on the wall of the building. this enraged both the punks and the older skinheads, one of whom painted over the swastika himself. this is how one older skinhead explained the incident: you know, almost all skinheads go through a phase, when they are 14 or 15 years old, when they draw swastikas and go round saying 'sieg heil!'. but later, when they are 17 or 18 they realize it's childish and move on to traditional, or sharp, or some other branch of skinheads... (member of first generation of skinheads, male, 24 years, interviewed in zagreb, 1994) however, in the mid-1990s, a younger generation of skinheads appeared in zagreb that was more oriented towards the culture of the terraces than bands and fanzines. the second half of the 1990s thus saw the return of football hooliganism as a central element in skinhead culture. in sharp contrast to their predecessors, moreover, these skinheads cultivated a neo-nazi image drawing on attitudes they had heard in programmes about foreign skinheads but anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 108 adapting them to fit domestic ethnocentrism. they also reworked external skinhead symbols slightly; the colour black was preferred, for example, as a symbol of identification with the ustasha and the ‘black legion’xxi. the stylistic and verbal articulation of a xenophobic ideology was backed up by street politics; attacks on darkskinned tourists, members of the roma community, homosexuals, punks and accidental passers-by in zagreb began to be reported in the press. as noted above, however, most media attention was devoted to the conflict between skinheads and punks. this conflict was presented to the public as being between skinhead ‘young patriots’ and pro-serb or yugo-nostalgic punks, in the croatian nationalist press, while, in the left-liberal press, the same conflict was described but skinheads were relabelled ‘neo-nazi thugs’ and punks portrayed as ‘antifascist’, ‘selforganized’ youthxxii this media coverage created the impression that ‘it takes two’ to fight and diverted attention away from the underlying racist violence and abuse. the viciousness of that violence is articulated in the following excerpt from an interview conducted at the end of the 1990s with a 25-year-old skinhead who had been heavily involved in the fighting between punks and skins: . i have been a skinhead since i was 14 years old... you know, i'm a skinhead to the very core... and, if i were to see a punk on the street, with some anarchy symbols, or palestinian scarf or any other punk shit, you know, i'd hit him in the face, with my fist, or kick him. and when he fell to the floor, do you get me, when he was lying on the ground, i'd jump on his head, with both feet but only once, not two or three times, because i wouldn't really want to kill him... (skinhead, male, 25 years, interviewed in 2001, zagreb) skinheads (the active and visible ones) appeared late on the croatian youth scene and, partially due to police attention and partially because they grow up and change their ideas about society, they have undergone a number of image shifts. this produces generational rifts within skinhead culture itself, as indicated in the following comment, made by a moderate nationalist skinhead from the first generation about the new generation of skins in 1996: i don't like the spoiled kids, these new skins, you know. they don't understand what it's all about. they live with their parents... i work from time to time on construction sites, and there really are a lot of romanians... working there... and then i go to a football match and i find loads of new skins complaining that romanians are coming to croatia, that it's bad... but i don't see any of them working. why don't they come and work, as croats? if they did, they would be hired ahead of the romanians... but they just talk and wait for their parents to send them to university... (member of first generation of skinheads, male, 27 years, interviewed in1998, zagreb). while skinheads are notorious above all for their stylisation of xenophobia, it is the aggressive impulse (the desire for attack), which precedes its ideological rationalisation. this is evident from incidents when, failing to find a suitable ‘target’, skinheads attack simply the first person to pass by. the activities of skinheads (and the radical right-wing views that are used to legitimate them) are thus a kind of mirror to the parent culture, drawing on similar patterns of intolerance, chauvinistic discourse and violence as forms of communicating one’s views and frustration but in a particular, stylised form. central to the re-creation of elements of that parent culture is football, with its emphasis on masculinity, alcohol, competition and tradition. the vast majority of skinheads on the scene over the past 15 years have been active football fans, forming visible subsections of larger subcultural groups of football hooligans. thus, although skinheads can articulate themselves in opposition to dominant culture, or link themselves to music, fanzines and other political values, for most skins, football hooliganism has been a core part of their identity. in this way football hooligans use their ascribed identity (being croat, catholic, male etc.) as the basis for achieved identity (as ultras, casual, traditional hooligan, skinhead, etc.) anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 109 the hard-core/punk scene and alternative movements the hard-core and punk scene is not a breeding ground for ethnocentrism and xenophobia. on the contrary, it is a place that nurtures an enlightened form of radical opposition to nationalism, racism, sexism and domination in general. however, punks of the 1980s and punks of the 1990s in croatia are two quite different phenomena. punks in the 1980s shared many masculinist rituals with their peers, often as a result of sharing the terraces with them: i have visited many punk concerts, not only in our country, but also abroad. i have experienced many wild crowds dancing pogo, jumping, but the wildest pogo, the wildest and the most real, most authentic punk experience is at the football stadium. (member of torcida section zagreb, male, 25 years, interviewed in 1989, zagreb) their ideology was anti-systemic but borne of a deep disappointment in society as they encountered it. this is captured by the following respondent from the 1980s punk wave: i hate people because they are so hypocritical, they say one thing but do the other.. our system is meant to be socialist, on paper, but look at the reality. the west is also sick. the east is completely ill. the older generation are fucking liars. (female, student describing herself as 'inspired by punk', 23 years, interviewed in 1985, zagreb) in contrast, after a hard-core interventionxxiii, punks of the 1990s became increasingly aligned with a number of alternative movements (environmental, peace, feminist, vegetarian, squatter). at the same time they distanced themselves from stadium rituals and relinquished their space on the terraces to the skinheads. this shift in primary focus is indicated in the following statement of a punk from the 1990s: i don't like football... i might enjoy watching a match on tv once or twice a year, just to remind myself how stupid it is – all that national pride story. nationalism is shit. as disorder were saying fuck nationality... football is about war and hate, us and them, and we've had enough of that, haven't we? (punk and member of ngo 'attack', male, 22 years, interviewed in 1998, zagreb) the punk scene, in collaboration with various alternative movements, often creates its own autonomous zones, providing more space than in other subcultures for reflection on issues of chauvinism and racism. this mixing of punks with activists from new social movements, alternative theatre, spiritual movements and the anarchist movement has made this alternative scene a genuine cross-over between ‘subculture’ and ‘counter-culture’. the scene thus creates a space where views on respecting other people, animals and the environment can be turned into actions and applied in everyday life. this new ethos is summed up by an activist from the 1990s thus: punk is not about violence... people associate it with that because of the image of the first punks, you know all this chaos, english style punks who eat meat and drink a lot of beer. but punk has evolved since then... what crass started was something else, something with much more conciousness...who the fuck is sid vicious? if you still say 'sid is god', you are really stuck in time. those who preach sid could easily preach iron maiden. (member of fanzine scene, male, 23 years, interviewed in 1999, zagreb) in zagreb, the ngo ‘attack’ (autonomous factory of culture) created a space reminiscent of the squatter scene in western europe where peace, feminist, ecological, anarchist and vegetarian movements came together with groups involved in alternative theatre, music and action. the do it yourself anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 110 (diy) scene has long adopted the late-1960s slogan ‘if you want to change the world, try to change yourself’ to make explicit that revolutionary spirit and honesty are judged by everyday behaviour and cultural practices. thus, while punk of the 1980s in croatia was characterised by masculinity, in the 1990s, under the influence of attack, the scene became much larger, more diverse in terms of musical tastes and, probably for the first time on such a scale, open to women, to feminist discourses and to anti-sexist lifestyles. moreover, because of the emphasis placed on changing oneself and acting out the struggle in everyday life, members of the scene could not advocate openness towards others and yet hate their neighbours. nor could they talk about gender equality whilst continuing to use sexist language to talk about women. indeed, it was impossible to inhabit the alternative scene and judge people on grounds of ethnicity, religion, sex or sexual orientation. it is this that constitutes the real significance of the alternative scene and its autonomous zones and, long before the croatian media raised such issues, the scene provided access to information about how ethnic and other ‘minorities’ were treated both at home and further afield. under the auspices of the contemporary punk and squatter scene, groups such as ‘skinhunters’ and ‘for antifascist action’ also emerged in zagreb in the second half of the 1990s and began to conduct a form of organised opposition to skinhead groups. the importance of such direct action should not be underestimated; katziaficas (1997) documents how such anti-fascist groups were alone in providing protection to asylum seekers in germany after unification when neo-nazi skinheads hurled molotov cocktails on asylum seeker centres. punks in croatia too had learned the hard way that they needed to be able to defend themselves physically. however, for some individuals, masculinist, violent behaviour and constant engagement in physical conflict, became a pattern of behaviour from which it was difficult to abstain. it came to dominate over their leftist rhetoric and, in a small number of cases, expressed itself in violence towards women; katziaficas (1997) documents a number of cases of rape occurring in punk squats in germany. notwithstanding this, the croatian punk scene of the 1990s in general was characterised by an awareness of the importance of patterns of socialisation in the reproduction of xenophobia and they consciously linked their fight against racism and xenophobia to ecological awareness and gender equality. the fact that they are forced to defend themselves, and their autonomous zones, thus says more about the dominant culture than about the alternative actors themselves. conclusion sociological surveys and media reports have made visible the small minorities within croatian society who articulate ethnocentric views or participate in violent direct action against people of non-croatian ethnicity. it has been argued here, however, that the task of the social scientist is to look beyond the tip of this iceberg to identify not just the expressions, but the deeprooted causes, of xenophobia in contemporary society. in seeking to do this, it is important to recognise that the rise in the expression of xenophobic views in society from 4% to 8% of the population is, paradoxically, not as socially destructive as the tendency among a much broader section of the population to think of themselves as ‘mainstream’ whilst practising a high level of intolerance and lack of trust towards others. in the recent period this mainstream intolerance has been revealed in a series of public responses to social issues. in one such case, the parents of primary school children refused to allow two hiv-positive girls to study in the same class as their children. in another incident, parents protested against the inclusion of roma children in their children’s school. in still further cases, residents of, well-to-do neighbourhoods attempted to prevent recovering drug addicts from settling nearby or asylum centres being built in the vicinity. it is such ‘normal’ responses to everyday events that reveal the depth of fear of the unknown or ‘different’ among the population more widely and indicate the deep-rooted nature of social intolerance. when these attitudes go unchallenged, when public and political discourse infused with nationalist and intolerant sentiments is seen as ‘mainstream’, then xenophobic sentiments become legitimised. in another sense too, xenophobia, nationalistic and chauvinistic discourse is only the tip of the iceberg. beneath it lays a deeply embedded patriarchal system that socialises ’normal’ and ‘average’ individuals into patterns of domination and subordination in a way that complicates the task of achieving ethnic and religious equality. the patriarchal system and structures of male domination are even slower to change than prejudices based on ethnicity, anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 111 nationality or other collective identities. yet, without a shift in this respect, any real progress in moving towards equality, understanding and dialogue among individuals engaged in such recent conflict is impossible. explaining the phenomenon of football hooligans and skinheads without addressing the question of violence against women is to barely scratch the surface of the problem. patterns of socialisation into traditional gender roles provide a framework for the image of the masculine man and warrior prepared at all times for the violent resolution of conflict to be modelled and reproduced over centuries. the enormity of the task of unravelling these deeply embedded patterns of socialization makes it even more important to lend support to those young people who expose this system of domination that they have inherited from many generations of adults and who link questions of gender equality, environmental awareness and the need for nonviolent and non-authoritarian education to active resistance to xenophobia and violence. notes 1 these surveys were carried out on the same territorial space, first in the socialist republic of croatia within the yugoslav federation and subsequently in independent croatia. 2 in the former yugoslavia, the populations of muslim faith were deemed to be ethnically muslim. after the conflicts in former yugoslavia, the term ‘bosniak’ came into use, to denote bosnian citizens of muslim faith. however, as noted in obradović’s article in this special issue, muslims in some areas of serbia also chose to use the title bosniak to refer to themselves and, similarly, the term does not necessarily exclude bosnians of non-muslim faith. 3 today all croatian leading dailies include a degree of tabloid sensationalism even if the paper purports to undertake serious political analysis and investigative journalism. 4 the thompson phenomenon is discussed in more detail below. 5 this refers to the media coverage of a young person's birthday party in sarajevo reportedly themed around nazi dress and symbolica. the media referred to it as ‘the nazi birthday’. 6 the ‘bad blue boys’ is a dinamo zagreb fan group founded in 1985 along the lines of a classic ‘football hooligan’ subculture. the group became widely known following its struggle to restore the club's name, after it was changed by tudjman's government of the 1990s. 7 president tudjman, and the establishment, forced a change in the name of the football club ‘dinamo’, first to ‘hask-gradjanski’ and later to ‘croatia-zagreb’, arguing that the name dinamo was too linked to the communist past. the club's hard core fans – the bad blue boys – however, opposed the name change and vowed to restore the old name ‘by any means necessary’ since the name dinamo, for them, was associated first and foremost not with communism but with croatian national identity. 8 these labels were omnipresent in daily newspapers such as vjesnik, vecernji list, slobodna dalmacija and jutarnji list, weekly magazines, radio and television programmes in all three periods. some evidence of the glorification of fans in the war period can be found to this day on the monuments erected within or near to football stadia in zagreb and split, and the labels attached to the bad blue boys can be found in a wide range of public material, including the speeches of franjo tudjman, broadcast by croatian television in the mid-nineties. 9 ‘ustasha’ refers to the movement for an independent croatian state prior to the second world war and the armed forces of the so-called independent state of croatia during that war, which fought on the side of nazi germany and was responsible for the imprisonment and murder of its ‘ideological opponents’ (including jews, serbs, gypsies and croats opposed to the regime). 10 the term ‘parent culture’ is used here following scholars at the centre for contemporary cultural studies (cccs) and developed most extensively by phil cohen (1972) when he argues that youth subcultures work out, at a symbolic level, tensions in the parent culture in the process of which young people both distinguish themselves from, but also recreate, things central to the parent culture. the need, in the crotian context, to rethink the cccs understanding of parent culture as determined primarily by class is addressed later in the article. 11 ‘partizani’ refers to the anti-fascist guerrilla forces, which, at the beginning of the second world war, fought the german and italian occupying forces as well as their supporters in the form of the ustasha and chetnik. the partizani were mobilized and organized by the anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 112 communist party and, by the end of the war, had been turned into the yugoslav people’s army under the commandment of josip broz tito. 12 the term ‘šminkeri’ refers to ‘wannabe’ followers of fashion. their nearest equivalents are the ‘poppers’ in germany and ‘paninari’ in italy. 13 the term ‘štemeri’ refers to working class kids whose leisure time is spent largely hanging out on the street and fighting. they have a strong sense of normative ‘hard’ masculinity and often seek to impose these on those they perceive as not conforming to it (e.g. hippies). 14 these include: the revival of alternative medicine; the raising of awareness around environmental issues and the need to preserve the bio-diversity of croatian regions; and movements to preserve traditional cuisine and sports. 15 although vokić later claimed this had been intended as a joke (http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20020209/tjed an02asp), her statement had earlier been quoted by other politicians in parliament as if said in all seriousness (see: http://www.sabor.hr/download/2003/09/19/ihs_3 73_za_web.pdf). 16 the greatest support was among younger students, students with less education and those living in rural areas. 17 the most well-known and largest fan group in croatia after the bad blue boys. 18 the croatian term for this is spitfajerica or ‘spitfire jacket’. unlike in france, where anarchists or others of left-wing persuasian wore black jackets whilst neofascist skinheads wore green ones, in croatia the outside colour of the jacket was unimportant; what mattered was that they were orange on the inside. when fighting – with the police or other fans – began they turned the jackets inside out to display the orange colour on the outside, thereby marking the fighting ritual but also generating an 'alternative uniformity’ which was experienced as a challenge to authority by the police, especially in the socialist period. 19 this example is taken from the personal experience of the author. 20 these punks were anarchists and other activists linked to squatters and new social movements and inspired by hard-core interventions in music from crass to mdc. 21 the ‘black legion’ was one of the most wellknown ustasha units during the second world war. it was under the command of jure francetić and adopted a black uniform reminiscent of the italian fascists. 22 of course this portrayal broadly follows the self-identification of skinheads and punks. skinheads always presented themselves as croatian patriots and nationalists and, if asked to place themselves on a left-right political spectrum, would situate themselves on the far right. in contrast, most punks in the nineties presented themselves as anti-nationalist, cosmopolitan, environmental activists and would place themselves on the radical left of the political spectrum. 23 hard-core music is a continuation of the punk tradition whilst at the same time a protest against that tradition. hard-core was stylistically more diverse than punk, associated in dance terms with slam rather than pogo, and ideologically mobilised around the formula 'anarchy+peace=equality' rather than anarchy alone. although the british band 'crass’ and american groups like the dead kennedys were important at the start of the movement, hard-core quickly became highly decentralized and bands from finland, hungary, slovenia, italy, portugal and poland were significant on the international scene. in croatia, in the second part of the 1980s, hard-core was a quite distinct subcultural style and was often consciously shaped in opposition to ‘old punks’. thus, hard-core activists established an extensive fanzine network and linked up with environmental, pacifist, feminist, squatter, anarchist and vegetarian movements. from these small beginnings in the second half of the 1980s, emerged a much bigger movement from the mid-1990s that completely reshaped the whole punk scene; it became less masculinistic and closer to the tradition of 'new social movements’ of the 1980s in western europe. references ažk (2006) materijal objavljen kao letak, autonomna ženska kuća, zagreb. baranović, b. (2002) mladi u hrvatskoj – između nacionalnog identiteta i europske integracije, in: v. ilišin & f. radin, f. (eds), mladi uoči trećeg milenija, pp. 125-54 (zagreb: institut za društvena istraživanja u zagrebu / državni zavod za zaštitu obitelji, materinstva i mladeži). http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20020209/tjedan02asp� http://arhiv.slobodnadalmacija.hr/20020209/tjedan02asp� http://www.sabor.hr/download/2003/09/19/ihs_373_za_web.pdf� http://www.sabor.hr/download/2003/09/19/ihs_373_za_web.pdf� anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 1 page 113 becker, h. (1963) outsiders: studies in sociology of deviance and social control (new york: free press). buzov, ž., magdalenić, i., perasović, b. & radin, f. (1989) navijačko pleme (zagreb: rz rk ssoh). cohen, a. (1955) delinquent boys: the culture of the gang (illinois: the free press of glencoe). cohen, p. (1972) subcultural conflict and working class community, working papers in cultural studies no 2 (birmingham: cccs, university of birmingham). cohen, s. (1972/1980) folk devils and moral panics ( oxford: martin robertson). gusfield, j. (1963) symbolic crusade (urbana: university of illinois press). hall, s. & jefferson t. (eds) (1976) resistance through rituals (london: unwin hyman ltd). hebdige, d. (1980) potkultura: značenje stila (beograd: rad). ilišin, v. (2002) mladi i politika, in: v. ilišin & f. radin, f. (eds), mladi uoči trećeg milenija, pp. 155-202 (zagreb: institut za društvena istraživanja u zagrebu / državni zavod za zaštitu obitelji, materinstva i mladeži). katsiaficas, g. (1997) the subversion of politics: european autonomous social movements and decolonization of everyday life (new jersey: humanities press). lalić, d. (1993) torcida (zagreb: agm). perasović, b. (2001) urbana plemena (zagreb: hrvatska sveučilišna naklada). radin, f. (2005) nacionalna vezanost i odnos prema europi, in: v. ilišin (ed.), mladi hrvatske i europska integracija, pp. 173-95 (zagreb: institut za društvena istraživanja u zagrebu). young, j. (1972) drugtakers: the social meaning of drug use (london: paladin). županov, j. (2002) od komunističkog pakla do divljeg kapitalizma (zagreb: hrvatska sveučilišna naklada). ‘mainstream youth’: national affiliation and social distance table 1 survey data on national affiliation youth and the media world of spectacle youth subcultures, xenophobia and violence a note on method football hooliganism skinheads the hard-core/punk scene and alternative movements conclusion "value village" in my village: western ukrainians and overseas kin "value village" in my village: western ukrainians and overseas kin natalia shostak university of alberta based on my field work in hrytsavolia, a rural community in western ukraine, this paper addresses the main theme of the 1999 soyuz conference, the relationship between the center and periphery. placing an emphasis on local perspectives and looking at changes in local social structure in times of post-soviet transition, examining the connections between hrytsavolians and their overseas relatives in western canada, and their rediscoveries of each other after a long period of restricted communication, i offer a critical re-evaluation of the center/periphery perspective through studying so-called "small" or peripheral worlds. although i have little trouble identifying hrytsavolia with the spatial trope periphery, for economically and geographically it is located far away from wellestablished intersections of cultural and capital flows, i am less comfortable with the center/periphery model and its workings in the case of this community, for the counterpart idea of a 'center' is not easily 'located' in the space and history of hrytsavolia. it is from this discomfort my paper is born. during the time of the soviet union, with the center of moscow strongly regulating its peripheries, this regulation to a great degree defined social structures. of course, this controlling of the peripheries was not homogenous or perfect and was often appropriated by those on the peripheries in their own local terms. nevertheless, regardless of the modifications of the imposed social structures these were still definitive of the shape local actions took. with the demise of the soviet system, if the center/periphery model holds, the new center of kiev should take over moscow's role for village communities in ukraine. has this been the case? to address this question i examine the small village of hrytsavolia, located on the outskirts of lvivs'ka oblast in western ukraine. geographically, politically, economically, and administratively it is undoubtedly "peripheral," located far away from well-established intersections of cultural and capital flows. nevertheless, my findings have been that in post-soviet transition the residents of hrytsavolia locate themselves not on the periphery of any center but globally, by engaging in their own global networks that often bypass the center, be it kiev or the oblast center, lviv. this is partly due to historical factors, but it is primarily due to revived kinship connections with relatives in north america and religious affiliations. consequently, i prefer the expression "local world" and terms like global flows and networks as more appropriate, however the center/periphery model remains a useful one to employ to map changes hrytsavolia has undergone. although there are many ways to tackle this issue, for example by analyzing changes in rural economies, or by studying people's migration patterns, i focus on the overseas kinship connections of hrytsavolians. to situate this discussion i briefly outline hrytsavolia's dislocations in the history of the region, discuss the effects of the soviet system on its social organization, and examine the post-soviet transition that marks the breakdown of the center/periphery metaphor.i jen typewritten text 56 history collective memory holds a complex image of hrytsavolia's involvement in global cultural flows prior to soviet times. hrytsavolia was a periphery to at least four states within this century; the 'center' and what it represented for this community was always shifting. before the first world war the village belonged to austro-hungary (with the center in vienna). the western ukrainian people's republic ruled the region in 1918 (with the center in lviv). from 1921 until 1939 hrytsavolia was part of poland (with the center in warsaw). during both world wars, the village was consistently at the front lines. neighboring villages still bear names such as nimets'ka mytnytsia, german customs, pol's'ka mytnytsia, polish customs, avstriys'ka mytnytsia, austrian customs. these all point to a turbulent past of alternating powers. hrytsavolia and its vicinity often changed hands. within these years of wars and changing centers many hrytsavolians emigrated. they left 'the periphery' and caused those left behind to participate in global flows of ukrainian transnationalism. the hrytsavolian diaspora reflects all the major stages in ukrainian emigration from western ukraine spanning a century. there were families leaving the village for brazil in the 1880s and 90s. there were those who joined the cohort of so-called ukrainian pioneers at the turn of the century and became known as the fathers of ukrainian immigration to canada. in the 1920s and 30s some were commuting between the village and their place of employment in north america, and upon settling down contributed to the so-called second wave of ukrainian immigration to the new world. at the end of the second world war, hrytsavolian youth taken by germans to work in germany chose to become dp immigrants to canada and the united states.ii with the establishment of soviet rule in western ukraine in 1939, and of the new center in moscow, local social structures and individual actions experienced change. hrytsavolians became full subjects of the new center. there was forced involvement into collective production, either in the local collective farm (mainly women) or through work in state forestry or brick factories (mainly men). potentials for and perspectives on the future and the need to act within the system were surely different during soviet times when economic, political, social and cultural life on the peripheries in many aspects was structured, regulated, and controlled by moscow. part of the center's intrusion into local life was its control over people's religious practices and of their direct communication with the west. many had kin there as well as connections to religious communities, as in the case of hrytsavolia stundists. forgetting the overseas kin was enforced by the center's prohibition to communicate with the kin abroad. the 1960s were particularly bad years. as one of my informants confessed: "we were told that we will be sent to siberia if we keep writing letters to my father who lived in canada" (titka maryntsiunia, interview 1998). forced to cease such communication, which prior to the 1960s had included intensive correspondence, money transfers and the mailing of goods, hrytsavolians remained mostly out of touch with their relatives for almost thirty years. the community's spiritual, real and symbolic connection with the kin 'over there' diminished in its intensity. the overseas kin moved from the domain of reality into the domain of personal and collective memories, of imagination and conversation. jen typewritten text 57 the post-soviet era brought yet another structural transformation to the local world. since 1991 hrytsavolians' participation in kolhosp (collective farm) and in state forestry has almost ceased.iii in 1992, with the reorganization of kolhosp into a co-op, members of the former collective farm were each given 2 hectares of kolhosp land while those who used to work for the state forestry received no land. men started looking for and finding employment outside of the village, mainly as contract workers in the construction industry, while women remained to work on their private strips of land that had grown in size from an average of 0.26 hectares per household prior to 1992 to 0.9 hectares since then.iv local politics became more complicated due to the redistribution of new statuses within the locality. those who ruled the collective farm during the soviet time remained in power. they were joined by the local clergy and the newly established group of merchants that started supplying the villagers with food and goods brought from poland or warehouses in lviv. those who maintained interaction with the relatives in north america gained new status as well. like the rest of the ukrainian rural population, hrytsavolians are witness to the stagnant politics of the center to re-organize ukraine's agricultural sector with its ineffectual attempts to conduct economic reforms there. statistics services in ukraine have registered a steady decline in production in the agricultural sector of ukraine's economy. in 1996 there was 30 percent decrease in yield compared to 1990. production of such vitally crucial items like wheat and meat had dropped 50 per cent against the 1990 level while the production of potatoes, the traditional food of survival, has increased (zhovtaniuk 1998: 63). meanwhile the buying ability of the rural population had dropped 6-8 times against 1990 (shpychak 1996: 3-12). as one ukrainian economist said, the ukrainian village is just a card in the political game of those in power (diiesperov 1998). thus, hrytsavolians continue to work on the private strips of land that provide them with about 80 percent of the produce the family will consume during the year. a few families own horses: the best machinery, as the local saying goes. a few owners of small combines exchange plowing of someone else's land for skilled work they need in their households, for connections, or for gifts. the rest is done manually and when spring comes, working on the land takes twelve to fourteen hours a day, not to mention other duties around the household. with no money-based salaries or agricultural products supplied by the collective farm, as it used to be under the soviet rule, for many, life has become harder. logically, many hrytsavolians attribute the responsibility for the hardships people experience these days to the center. in failing to invent proper transitional mechanisms the center has been steadily losing its appeal to local people. the center/periphery relationship has significantly weakened. hrytsavolia today today's village community consists of some 147 'active' households with 577 adults.v there are two thriving religious communities. the ukrainian orthodox recently renovated their church. there are about 20 families of stundists. surrounded by the forest on three sides, the village is connected to the rest of the world by one paved road as well as by a number of small forest roads each leading to equally small neighboring communities. although the 110 km between the village and lviv may seem like a short distance, in reality a trip to lviv these days is a one day project for local people relying on one public bus a day and a transfer in another town. jen typewritten text 58 the symbolic distance between the urban and the rural has significantly increased, with a fast growing chasm between two social worlds with their different possibilities, orientations and newly emerging forms of action. if fully supported by parents, the village youth may still continue to go to the city to obtain their professional skills, but, as i was many times reminded in the village, it happens less and less. the local schoolteacher during one of our talks shared this thought with me: "what is the point of studying these days? there is no job for us in the city and there are no jobs these days in the village, the kolhosp has ceased to work, mechanical brigades and brick plants nearby are dead. so, youth stays in the village these days, at least there is something to eat here. girls are getting married right after high school or even during their last year of studying. boys drink, oh, what a life we have these days!" nevertheless, even if nostalgia for the secure life under socialism is still present, the necessity to act for themselves is more and more felt by local people. new perspectives on how to better one's life are emerging. with no ideological control by the new center over localities, the relationship with the world outside has revived. some active hrytsavolians regularly travel to poland, rumania, even turkey to sell and buy foods and merchandise. they bring these items to the markets and their village, providing villagers with supplies; a task formerly performed by the soviet center.vi in addition, hrytsavolians have resumed their global engagement by renewing connections with the overseas kin. the village and the overseas kin in the last two decades the contacts between the villagers and their extended kin overseas have revived. letters have started circulating more intensively, with more monies transferred and parcels with second hand goods sent to individual families.vii on my first day in the village, fresh from edmonton, while walking along the village road my eye caught in the dust something that i would first think didn't belong: a familiar looking little blue piece of paper with the sign "value village: $1.99." to come across a cloth tag from the canadian chain of second hand stores "value village" would be ordinary in any western canadian city, but i confess, i didn't expect this to happen to me so casually in a remote ukrainian village. on many occasions i have been shown pictures of brothers, fathers, cousins, grandparents, great cousins photographed against a background of cars, houses, fields in those remote unknown places like canada, ontario, pennsylvania, or colorado. titka (aunt) maryntsiunia, a local source of tradition and traditional wisdom, has also been a great collector of correspondence between her family and relatives in canada and the us including that of her father. she keeps hundreds of cards, letters and pictures from canada in one big sack in her chest. because her house is centrally located on the intersection of three roads, locals often stop by and engage in conversations that revolve around many issues. participating in these talks, i realized how interconnected people are to each other through the complex network of kinship as well as how related they are, in one way or another, to those abroad. as i understood from my talks with older people, incoming letters were often read aloud to an audience larger than the immediate family. all factors considered, correspondence remained responsible for the maintenance of imagery and the virtual presence of the overseas kin among the local kin. it provides people with rich topics for their discussions on the world outside of their own. jen typewritten text 59 by the 1980s, after decades of forbidden contact, the overseas kin had gradually taken up a significant place in the collective memory of the community. this was accomplished primarily through conversation, stories and shared relationship with the kin 'over there.' hrytsavolians, when one looks closer at their family relations, are for the majority related to each other though distant or direct links of kinship. when it comes to "sharing" the overseas kin, 'sharing' literally refers to the blood-based relationship between the hrytsavolia people and their extended kin spread across the world. in addition to letters, parcels and monies, canadian and american relatives also step down from the world of the imaginary into hrytsavolia reality, some regularly visiting the community. on the other hand, one by one, nieces and nephews, grandchildren, and even sons and daughters travel to canada or the states for a visit. some stay for a few months, others prolong their visit for a couple of years, yet others (younger women) marry into the communities they 'visit' and remain in the west forever. some do this legally, some illegally. those who return to the village gain a different status and in conversations they are often presented as one group, through reference to them as the collective noun amerykantsi (regardless of whether the person arrived from canada or the us). in 1998 there were five visitors from the new world and i have encountered at least another five villagers who were about to leave hrytsavolia to visit relatives abroad. my own presence in the village was perceived as another visit by someone related to hrytsavolians in canada. some of my informants wanted me to take pictures of graves of their relatives so i could pass these images to their kin in canada. others, before pictures were taken, dressed their kids in clothes from the parcel they received from canada so i could pass these photos back to canadian relatives. hrytsavolians' experience of and involvement in networks of kinship on the global scale has significantly shortened the symbolic distance between such spaces as ukrainian canada or america and hrytsavolia's local world, contributing to the on-going 'shrinking of the world,' or what appadurai calls "deterritorialization of persons, images and ideas " (appadurai 1991: 192). the exploration of the outside world and of possibilities to improve one's situation is fulfilled along kinship lines defined in global and transnational terms. together with exploration of the near abroad, the influx of ideas, goods, and money from the far abroad, from the 'land of milk and honey,' contributes to imagination in hrytsavolia about the world out there. it provides local people with fantasies about possible changes in their lives if only this "if" could be realized. these days this imagination is supported by growing penetration of western popular culture via the media. a typical day for teenager girls in my host family started with "melrose place." the girls once asked me whether women in canada are as beautiful as those in the states. the way they imagine female beauty, in this case north american style, informs their decisions on what 'to wear out.' young girls, ignoring the dust and sand of the village roads, when "going out to the street" prefer wearing nylons, high heels, short skirts, and elaborately laced, pompous blouses of predominantly polish origin that are available nowadays in the markets. ironically, these global imaginations are rooted in their local realities. conclusion in the growing complexity of people's interactions, new global orientations, and choices in localities like hrytsavolia, how productive is it to consider this complexity in terms of a center/periphery model? hrytsavolia, a small ukrainian village on the outskirts jen typewritten text 60 of the lviv region is exposed to many more cultural flows of meanings than just those which originate from the center. while the political center itself is under threat of being consumed by the aggressive expansion of a world system, those on the periphery are eagerly exploring their own ways of bettering their lives. they welcome new cultural flows from the outside, which are part of the expansion and penetration of western culture into their locality; many of these are brought in through their own kin. many of these promise opportunities and many bypass the 'center' entirely. within the local world new social structures and practices emerge, providing "the matrices within which an international flow of culture has continuously entered into varying combinations and syntheses with local culture" (hannerz 1987: 548). in times of social transition, in order to account for the changes in the periphery, or more precisely, in various local cultures, with their new practices and networks it is not enough to approach these local worlds with the center/periphery perspective. perhaps, the tropes global/local serve a better role here. while trading forays into the near abroad are a recognized practice among hrytsavolians, their connection with the far abroad is being organized along transnational/ethnic kinship links. in both cases, formerly significant links with the center are being challenged. references appadurai, arjun. 1991. global ethnoscapes: notes and queries for a transnational anthropology. in recapturing anthropology: working in the present, richard g. fox, ed. pp. 191-215. santa fe: school of american research press. diiesperov, volodymyr. 1998. selo stalo kartoiu politychnoi hry. viche 4 (73): 67-78. hannerz, ulf. 1987.the world in creolization. africa 57 (4): 547-559. shpychak, o. 1996. ahrarna reforma v ukraini ta rol' ekonomichnoi nauky v ii realizatsii. economika apk 8: 3-12. zhovtaniuk, ihor. 1998. ahrarne pidpryiemnytstvo. buty chy ne buty? viche 4(73): 6267. notes this paper is based on my dissertation research on transnational links and identities of ukrainians and ukrainian canadians, supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, canadian institute of ukrainian studies, and ukrainian canadian shevchenko foundation. i coming to hrytsavolia was not the beginning of my inquiry into ukrainian transnational connections and imaginations among lay people in ukraine and canada. i came across this particular village via the connections with hrytsavolian people mainly in the town of mundare, rural alberta, which is my primary field site. both communities are connected via kinship links formed though all four immigration waves. several hrytsavolians of the latest immigration (1980s-1990s) are actively building up their own cultural life in rural alberta. working with hrytsavolians in canada led me to explore their home village where i spent some time last may and to which i am heading again this year. jen typewritten text 61 ii as a result of this migration mundare, my primary research site in the canadian west, has received several hrytsavolian individuals and families during each wave of immigration which all helped me to engage with their home village. iii from conversations with local people, hrytsavolia, may, 1998. iv "pohospodars'ka knyha berezivs'koii sil's'koii rady narodnykh deputativ, 1996-1999,” vol. 6. v "zvit po naselenniu na 01.01.99 berezivs'koii sil's'koii rady," berezivka, lvivs'ka oblast. 1999. vi different foods are sold in different households. seventeen year old svitlana shared with me: "ice cream we buy from titka olena around the corner. ketchup we get from mykola who has little kiosk right in his front yard. rice my mother gets from titka henia on the neighbouring street." vii orbit, a shipping company in alberta, transfers annually up to 4.5 million us dollars to ukrainians like villagers in hrytsavolia and sends annually up to 10 tons of goods in parcels. this is just one of four shipping companies in canada (orbit, pysanka, karpaty, and meest) that targets the ukrainian canadian market with its half a million population and specializes in purely transnational transactions and services with ukraine. interview with the owners of the orbit company, edmonton, march 25, 1999. jen typewritten text 62 "value village" in my village: western ukrainians and overseas kin natalia shostak�university of alberta aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 155 the mysterious voice! american women singing bulgarian songs jamie lynn webster university of oregon over the past four decades, many of america’s women folk singers have explored the so-called “mysterious throat sound” attributed to contemporary bulgarian women’s choruses and village singers. currently, over 200 american ensembles either specialize in or include bulgarian and/or pan-balkan repertoire (lausevic 1998:492). this article explores the social and historical roots of the phenomenon of women’s balkan music in america, and its interpretations within contemporary american life. i will discuss some of the conceptual and musical changes that have occurred in the appropriation of bulgarian singing by american women, and provide possible reasons for these changes including a focus on the influence of the american women’s movement. finally, i will explore how conceptual and musical changes in the american movement of balkan singing have together influenced the dichotomous perceptions of bulgarian and “western” singing vis-à-vis the bio-cultural constructions of “head” and “chest” registers. in speaking about bulgarian singing in america, i will be exploring the phenomenon among non-bulgarian american women. i am not referring necessarily to those americans of ethnic bulgarian descent, those with interests due to family intermarriage, or close proximity to large ethnic populations, but rather to those who came to bulgarian singing through means largely disconnected from the immigrant communities. although i will focus on the phenomenon of bulgarian music interest in america, much of this topic expands to include pan-balkan/southern slavic singing traditions. i place myself, in part, within this community of american women, and a younger generation, drawn to this art form. musically, my background falls within both “folk” and “classical” boundaries. my musical education as a child came from my mother who was both a classically trained pianist, and an american-style folk singer from a very musical and matriarchal family. my interest in balkan singing started at the same time that i began my first formal bel canto voice lessons as an undergraduate studying for a bachelor degree in music. my growth as a classical singer paralleled my growing knowledge of balkan music— and/or vice versa. although i felt successful in both genres, the two styles of singing seemed more different culturally than their perceived musical differences. although i could feel similarities between the two styles, my teachers and peers were apt to convince me of the differences through easily perceived audible means—and in doing so, seemed to judge me and my singing by way of my participation in one genre or the other. although i place myself as an “insider” within the classical and folk singing worlds, it seems that members of both “camps” have sometimes perceived me as an “outsider” because of my claim of dual “membership.” my inspiration for this article is derived from my unique experiences as an “insider/outsider.” i’ve noticed that balkan singing in america is sometimes described vis-à-vis classical and/or “western” bel canto singing, and therefore i believe that my insight could prove valuable. as i explored this topic, i came to realize that differences between the two genres were more “perceived” than “real.” this is to say that each “camp” has a culturally constructed musical ideology that is often considered in opposition with the other “camp,” but is really extraordinarily similar. my literary information is gathered from articles on balkan singing, textbooks on bel canto singing, resources about the american folkdance/folkmusic movements, and constructivist theory as learned at the university of oregon. in addition, i conducted three one-hour individual interviews with american women who sing balkan music, and received e-mail responses for questions sent to four other american singers of balkan music. i also questioned two bulgarian women singers (who have taught singing to americans) by e-mail, and queried another bulgarian musician in person. i also received insight from two bel canto style vocal instructors for the purpose of this project. finally, i researched the topic of balkan singing in the eefc (east european folklife center) e-mail archives. introductions and early experiences with bulgarian singing one way that people have experienced balkan music is through the organization of international folk dance groups which gained momentum at american universities during the 1950s. john kuo, current director of chicago’s balkan dance ensemble, balkanske igre, speculates that interest in bulgarian singing began in this way—first through international dancing, then through balkan folk dancing (both recreational and performing groups), leading to refined interest in bulgarian dancing, that eventually allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text allen typewritten text © 2004 jamie lynn webster all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 156 jamie lynn webster the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 resulted in bulgarian singing and playing of bulgarian music (kuo 2002). my own experience is much like many others’ in that i began folkdancing with a community group while in college at california state university– chico in 1995. i felt an instant connection with musical aspects as much as the movement. bulgarian music, more than any other genre used for international folkdancing, seemed very different from my “western” experiences— both classical and folk. the music tugged at my heart and excited my brain. within a year of my first exposure to this music, i began singing with and leading a balkan folk ensemble, and taking bulgarian folksong workshops. the connection between dancing and singing is very important for some. “there is always the need to “spell” dancers with music or songs…as people find enjoyment dancing bulgarian dances, they find that they can enhance their enjoyment by extending it to playing the music and singing the songs” (kuo 2002). for this project, i asked members of my former singing group to describe their experiences with and attraction to balkan music through e-mail correspondence. at the time that our singing group rehearsed and performed together, all of us were dancing (at least once in awhile) with the local folk dance group, but each arrived on the “scene” at a different time, and had different stories to tell. judy was introduced to bulgarian/ balkan music in the early 1970s through a folkdance music show on public radio kpfk in l.a. later she joined folk dance clubs in l.a., ventura, and chico, and began singing balkan music. when i first inquired about reforming a singing group in chico, judy was my mentor—someone who had words and music to folk dance songs, and had experience singing them. judy wrote,“(when singing balkan/bulgarian music) i feel very challenged and i enjoy that…when the harmonies are really solid, i feel transported to another realm of experience and as i continue to dance it helps me feel even more connected to the music, rhythms, etc. “ linda joined our folk dance group in chico shortly after i did in 1996 or so, and also became quickly interested in balkan music through folk dancing. “i was dancing to these new and wonderful songs with novel melodies, harmony and meters,” she wrote, “i wanted to sing these songs as well as dance to them… bulgarian music and singing mesh beautifully with my enjoyment of bulgarian balkan folk dance…it means experiencing music, singing, dancing and life in a different and fuller way!” other american singers were introduced to balkan music by friends, teachers, or through “serendipity.” martha forsyth, a balkan singer in boston, told me how her music teacher, knowing how strange bulgarian could be to first time american listeners, said, “when you first hear this, you’ll probably just about ‘die,’ but eventually, it will grow on you, and you won’t be able to imagine life without it.” this perception of difference and exoticism within this non-western music genre was very attractive to some american women, while other women felt an unexplainable familiarity with the music. leeann, who was the newest member to my first singing group at the time i left chico, and whose smiling face “glowed” every time she sang wrote, “i don’t remember when i first heard balkan music, but i do know that i was attracted to it immediately, especially yugoslavian village music. i loved it. this music makes me feel ‘home.’ i do not get enough now that our group has quit for a while. i am really bummed. i need my daily fix. i could not live my life happily without it… this music is very much a part of my life. i sing it every day. i really wish i could sing it with other women.” researcher, mirjana lausevic concurs that “many women who have been actively singing have stated that the female bonding that comes as a result of singing together is one of the most beneficial outcomes of their involvement with balkan music” (lausevic 1998:333). this is an aspect of balkan singing that is shared by some balkan women also. iliana bozhanova, a bulgarian ethnographer of bulgarian folk music and dance writes, “in the group, i feel stronger between my friends—it is an interesting relationship. if i sing alone, i feel more responsible, but if i sing with other singers—i feel more free” (bozhanova 2002). enough time has passed, and children born since initial balkan music interest in the 1960s and 1970s, that a new generation of american balkan singers has emerged as the offspring of the first. second generation american balkan singer, amy mills wrote, “i don’t really remember (when i first heard balkan music). my mother was/is an international folkdancer, so there was always this kind of music around the house…in general, i feel at home when i am singing balkan music, especially bulgarian. i don’t ever remember the music sounding strange to me, so it was just like expressing a certain side of myself. i –love– singing balkan songs” (mills 2002). although her response mirrors some “first generation” responses, her experience is much like those experienced in bulgaria. iliana bozhanova wrote, “all my relatives love folk music…the most important thing for me and my family is that none of us is a professional musician or singer, but all of us love it and enjoy it a lot. folk music is part of our lives” (bozhanova 2002). similarly, amy wrote, “singing in performance is a great thrill, but singing from the heart is the point for me, so it will always be part of my life, as long as it’s legal to sing in the shower and whistle while you work” (mills 2002). whether singers were first attracted by difference, or familiarity, it is important to note that for most singers, the attraction to balkan music was “immediate and powerful” (lausevic 1998:429). as mentioned before, this study explores the phenomenon of non-bulgarian women, and therefore, each person drawn to this musical subculthe mysterious voice! 157 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 ture joined-in based on “choice and affinity rather than heritage or cultural proximity” (ibid.). mirjana lausevic synthesized several quotes that described perceptions of balkan music as “unique, strikingly different from familiar musical expressions, beautiful and powerful compared with some other kinds of music, and has specific musical elements such as drone harmonies, modalities, textures, and vocal production that people find aesthetically pleasing and fulfilling” (lausevic 1998:440). lausevic also lists several words that were among interview responses regarding first connections with balkan music. verbs and expressions chosen include, “i was shocked, hooked, addicted, obsessed, smitten, drawn, i latched on, i melted, fell in love, it captivated me, touched me, moved me, turned me on, it hit me, i got goose bumps, i got excited, my hair rose…” (lausevic 1998:433). lausevic further notes that these responses are physical, irrational and instinctive—felt “on a gut level.” in “western” society, these kinds of feelings themselves are considered “feminine,”—undesirable in a patriarchal system, yet desirable for the feminist resistance of the patriarchy. the ability to have a “feminine” response with this type of music may have enabled its popularity among american women influenced by the women’s rights movement, and seeking to explore their otherwise self-monitored emotions and systems of expression. some american singers explain that beyond merely a “physical” response to balkan music, they have felt a spiritual connection or bond. “bulgarian music is part of my soul…it’s as if i’ve found a niche in which my voice can thrive…” (mills 2002). it is important to them to have found a unique place in the world with which they connect on an unexplainable level. citing bourdieu, lausevic writes, “taste is what brings together things and people that go together.” lausevic continues, “what one ‘recognizes’ is a projection of one’s own world view rather than penetration or adoption of a different world view…what makes this experience for some people ‘familiar’ and ‘close to the heart’ or ‘harmonious with who they are’ is a certain resonance between their understanding and perception of what they hear/see with their value system. or, in some cases, a projection of the desired perception of oneself ” (lausevic 1998:437). when singers feel a deep spiritual love for balkan music, and sing with others who share this passion, these individuals may also feel this community as a surrounding of “kindred spirits.” later discussion on particular american singing groups and their performance treatment of balkan music will show examples of how american women have projected themselves and/or their desired perceptions of themselves onto the american balkan tradition. there were at least two different styles of bulgarian music that inspired american women to begin singing balkan music themselves. some were attracted to the “traditional” village-style singing, often consisting of one or two vocal parts. others were introduced to balkan music through “westernized” socialist constructed polyphonic choral arrangements of bulgarian songs such as those performed by “le mystere des voix bulgares.” each of these styles expresses an aesthetic of femininity different from those in western europe and north america. a typical american perception of “traditional” bulgarian village singers places the “village” women out in “the field,” singing in a shouting style so that they can be heard by the other harvesters. for some, this imagery represents the pastoral/earthy aspects of the music, and suggests community cooperation through musical collaboration. some categorize “traditional” village singing by other musical elements such as vocal quality, and arrangement. “village style,” as spoken about by americans, often means using an “un-refined” or “natural” voice” with singers creating a melody with or without a drone based harmony. the appeal of this kind of music often relates to perceptions of it as an “ancient” tradition, “dying” tradition, and/or “non-western” tradition. another pervasive bulgarian singing model for americans comes from the koutev-style performance choir tradition that began in bulgaria in the early 1950s. using traditionally monophonic or drone based bulgarian village melodies, philip koutev made arrangements with four and five part western harmonies, adding dynamics and tempo changes, while preserving the throat-placed vocal quality in order to “invent” a new genre of a cappella female chorus (silverman unpublished) hailed as “national music” of bulgaria, koutev’s choir consisted of women from specific and different regions of bulgaria singing homogenized versions of village music often outside of their original tradition. this new music tradition based on “village” style music ironically developed while the “original” village traditions suffered censorship from the communist government unlike the imagined scenario of the “village” woman singing in the field, many americans didn’t have a visual concept of who the singers in the bulgarian state choirs were, what they looked like, nor what their lives were like. this lack of information about such groups like the philip koutev ensemble forced listeners to engage in the music solely on an auditory level (buchanan 1997:136). people in bulgaria felt equally distanced from the state ensembles and their music. “perhaps because of its homogenized sound, its predictability, its removal from the ‘folk,’ and its association with socialism, ensemble music has been rejected by most bulgarians. bulgarians were certainly proud that the west admired bulgarian choral music, but at home, nobody listened to it” (silverman unpublished). nevertheless, first europe, then the united states “went wild” upon hearing the bulgarian women’s choral sound 158 jamie lynn webster the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 (ibid.). perhaps koutev’s most famous arrangement is of a love song entitled, “polegnala e todora,” (todora lay down). many people have said that it was this song that initiated their “conversion” experience to musical balkanism. marshall writes, “here is an example of a simple melody of limited range which gains expressive power through repetition, antiphonal choral spacing, a lilting, asymmetric meter, and, or course, pure timbral intensity…perhaps this is the ‘mystery of the bulgarian voice:’ that it manages to be both sweet and powerful, restrained and aggressive” (marshall 1987 in liner notes for “le mystere des voix bulgares). in marshall’s description, the “exotic” is romanticized and defined by “western” notions of a sexual feminine mystique—weak, yet strong, passive, yet feisty, “eerily beautiful” and “holy,” while manifesting a “carnal texture,” “worldly” yet “spiritual” (ibid.). with a certain sort of french “i don’t know what,” marshall’s kind of media representation orientalized and mythologized the women’s ensemble and their art by portraying them as both “timeless and timely, ancestral to contemporary life and cosmic in power” (buchanan 1997:136). while on tour in 1955, the philip koutev ensemble sold out their concert hall engagement for a month in paris. a live recording was made and released as a nonesuch album (later on cd), that introduced “polegnala e todora” to the rest of the world (kuo 2002). during the 1960s and ’70s, the first generation of americans interested in bulgarian music had a harder time learning how to learn the song words and music. there weren’t any balkan singing teachers in the united states during communism, nor was there an established balkan singing tradition necessarily available to american balkan music lovers. carol silverman, noted anthropologist on the balkans, also came to love balkan singing through participation in international folk dancing clubs and college groups while living in new york in the 1970s. although she enjoyed the dancing, the music was the “thing” that really attracted her—especially that of bulgaria, macedonia, and bosnia. “it was definitely the singing that drew me in,” she said. “i can’t remember any particular emotion i felt (at the time), other than just loving the music!” she was drawn to the drone of two-part songs, thought the melodies were beautiful, and the rhythms interesting (silverman 2002). she and a group of friends got together, wanting to sing the dance music, and “sounded” out texts from the record albums. with no one to teach them, they relied upon songbooks, and mimicking recordings. according to mirjana lausevic, “this learning situation, where all the information was gathered aurally, somewhat parallels the conditions of oral transmission, except that the corrective element provided by the traditional community was lacking” (lausevic 1998:323). silverman and a number of others began to travel to bulgaria to attend festivals and learn songs. in 1971, she went to the folklore festival in koprifshtitsa, bulgaria, and began making friends and contacts there. she began collecting recordings from bulgaria, as well as balkan songbooks. later, she learned about summer language programs offered in bulgaria, and so she attended these during three summers beginning in 1974 (silverman 2002). after a song-collecting trip to bulgaria, ethel raim, leader of the nyc pennywhistlers, released the first album containing bulgarian songs sung by (non-bulgarian) americans, and began giving classes in balkan singing (kuo 2002; silverman 2002). her albums stimulated interest in balkan singing among folk dancers because they contained printed lyrics. therefore, those who purchased the album could also learn how to sing the songs (kuo 2002; silverman 2002). carol silverman was one of ethel’s students in balkan singing, and told me about her experiences. although students paid for the class, it was really like a group of friends. as well, ethel raim didn’t really “teach,” but rather they all seemed to be learning together. one of ethel’s important contributions was the development of some vocal exercises that are still used today by american singers of balkan music. carol’s criticism of ethel’s teaching is that she never had the class listen to original recordings. instead, the students copied ethel’s interpretation of bulgarian singing, although most of the students were listening to balkan music on their own, anyway (silverman 2002). from the mid ’70s to 1980s, balkan vocal groups mushroomed all over the country. as the early dancers got older, many eased out of dancing and became more interested in music and/or singing (kuo 2002). balkan camps, that later evolved into the east european folklife center, were founded by mark levy on both the west and east coasts, and provided formal instruction in balkan music and singing. when communist states fell in eastern europe and the balkans in the late 1980s, bulgarian dancers and musicians began entering the united states with more frequency and ease. it became much easier for americans to learn bulgarian singing from master bulgarian singers such as tatiana sarbinska, donka koleva, svetla angelova and others. yves moreau notes that the “interest in balkan women’s songs became especially popular in the wave of the women’s liberation movement of the seventies” (lausevic 1998:329). “when you go to the balkans,” carol silverman explained to me, “you are struck by how much singing is done by women” (silverman, 2002). perhaps this is why american women are drawn to singing rather than other instrumental outlets in balkan music. the appropriation of music of different cultures creates an arena for “code the mysterious voice! 159 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 switching.” many amateur and professional american ensembles have adopted bulgarian and/or balkan singing and combined its musically strong sound with varying degrees of “western” feminist ideals. “american women recognized vocal power, the tightness and female bonding created through the performance of the (balkan) songs. however, they understood these qualities within their own cultural context, as aesthetic values opposed to those dominant in the american mainstream…it is ironic that music created in an extremely patriarchal society became a means of resisting patriarchy in another. the loud vocal polyphony of rural, balkan, female songs is not an expression of female freedom, or liberation…however, this does not mean that opposite meanings cannot be assigned to the music genres in american culture” (lausevic 1998:329). silverman, herself, helped organize a performance ensemble of women’s music during the 1970s called, “zhenska pesna,” meaning “women’s song” in bulgarian. as american women have adopted bulgarian singing, bulgarian songs, and to some extent, bulgarian culture, they have also altered content, concept, and/or style in order to fit their own new definitions of womanhood, beauty, voice, naturalness, sexuality, their own concept of identity, and their own cultural context. some have chosen to further exoticize, while others eroticize, some “educate,” and others “simply” subvert. zhenska pesna was interested in singing “village” songs, using very little, if any, instrumental accompaniment. the women gravitated toward 2-part songs from pirin, macedonia, bosnia, serbia, croatia, and the shope region. ideologically, the group didn’t want to “sell-out” to a commodified interest. society and media had seemed too aggressive in defining how folk music should be accepted by american audiences. instead, they wanted to create their own “market” using less “americanized” versions of the folk music. they were successful in developing a niche that provided regular engagements at cafés and other establishments. although the participants in zhenska pesna varied from year to year, three consistent members, carol freeman, lauren brody, and carol silverman, continued the structure of the ensemble. the group chose repertoire for its musical aesthetics first, and discussed texts in addition as a secondary criterion. they chose not to sing songs that they didn’t understand for cultural or linguistic reasons, and abandoned songs that were objectionable—such as those promoting domestic violence. they found sexist and patriarchal values in many texts, and were challenged to present these translations to their audiences. it was always important to them to explain the texts and contexts to the audience—they wanted to present the values of the balkan culture in addition to the music. the education of the audience was part of their mission—they wanted people to learn, rather than just romanticize about the balkans. thus, the women presented songs with both respect and criticism. for some americans, the possible patriarchal and sexist oppression of bulgarian women only enhanced their desire to practice balkan style singing as a form of empathetic agency. the extent to which women are truly oppressed in bulgaria is not necessarily important in this phenomenon, as much as the perception by americans that bulgarian women are oppressed. “oppression,” itself can be a problematic word, as it denotes a “western” standpoint of the balkan woman “other,” who exists, conceivably, in a social and political environment far too complex to be generalized in a single word. balkan specialist, mark forry wrote in an e-mail, “many individual (balkan) women, in some communities, might see their position as particularly hard or disadvantaged. but i sense that village women often see that life is hard, and that each family member experiences oppressive conditions in carrying out familial roles, not just them. they do often feel that they are subordinate: to husbands, to older adults. but often, they do not question that subordination, for reasons that are very complicated” (eefc e-mail archive, emphasis added). nevertheless, in america, women are prone to project their own sense of “western” feminism in order to align themselves in support of a romanticized image of the less fortunate, suppressed spirit of the “third-world” woman. a woman wrote to the eefc mailing list, after reading tim rice’s book, may it fill your soul, “their lives seem to have been very bleak as they had to leave their homes when they married, and work very hard in their husband’s homes. their music centered around singing so that their hands could be kept free to work—men could play the instruments because they didn’t have to do so much housework.” in my interpretation of this e-mail, the writer seems to project an american viewpoint of feminine oppression—getting the husband to share in household duties! as if in agency for herself and “bulgarian” women, the writer continued, “i’ve been doing a lot of bulgarian singing recently, practicing in the ‘chest voice’ that makes bulgarian music distinct. i find that after i sing for awhile in chest voice, i feel a tremendous release of tension and a sense of power…when i sing, i try to put myself in the place of bulgarian women, who used to sing this music in the villages. i think about how oppressed and tired they must have felt…” for some, this kind of perception of global unity among women is an important element of their understanding and appreciation for balkan singing. in the american patriarchal context, strong, loud women are neither the “ideal” nor the norm. lausevic writes how “singing loudly, in all women’s groups, in harmonies dissonant to the western ear, was rather a resistance 160 jamie lynn webster the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 and opposition to the norm. balkan singing provided, for some american women, an alternative singing style, and enabled them to make an empowering statement” (lausevic 1998:331). in addition, many american singers of balkan music perceive a great responsibility for the preservation of an otherwise “dying” tradition. this perception is sometimes revealed when american women visualize the women who used to sing this music in the villages. perhaps in my first singing group experience in chico, this perception of preservation took place in our diligent copying of old “authentic” recordings, and our “village” like costume choice for folk dance party performances (see figure 1). the group in a juxtaposition of organic-sexuality and naturalness, my favorite portrait of the women singers shows their made-up faces grouped together intimately, while a dark tuft of hair sprouts from one woman’s armpit, raised above natural-fiber eveningwear (see figure 3). while make-up, not shaving one’s arm pits, and organic clothing are not related to balkan music, they are related to a shared value system among some “communal,” “peaceful” american folk. among other things, these characteristics can express “natural beauty.” although this ensemble has traveled to eastern europe and the balkans to see the less conceptual representation of bulgarian music performance ideas of nature, sexuality, and female bonding derived from the “western” perception of tightly harmonized balkan music are attractive to some american women. for instance, kitka, a women’s vocal ensemble from oakland, specializes in “songs from eastern europe and beyond.” the cover art for their cd albums include “western” folk art renderings of colorful goddess-like women surrounded by flowers and birds (see figure 2). perhaps elaborating on the “feminine mysticism, ruralized authenticity, and cosmological phantasmagoria” of mystere marketing, kitka’s americanized album covers continue symbolic themes regarding the “procreative potential of young women” (buchanan 1997:133,134). describing the ensemble, inside covers of the albums “nectar,” and “voices on the eastern wind,” include words such as, “elemental, natural, diverse, beauty, evocative, passion, dazzling, exotic, lush, power, strength, and deeply rooted in women’s experiences of eastern european village life.” adding further “femininity” to figure 1 figure 2 the mysterious voice! 161 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 exotic (yet still fascinating) “reality” of musical life there, the ensemble romanticizes their own identity as musical vessels of the ancient, sexual, and feminized materialization of nature—a position commonly claimed among contemporary american feminists. in america, the strong, loud, singing is also re-coded as “liberated.” vida, a group of women in their mid and late twenties, hails from bloomington, indiana, and uses significant amounts of balkan music amid their global music repertoire. while kitka seems to draw on ideas of strength, beauty, and unity, vida falls into what i would call the “liberated, you go, girl,” category. the front cover of their album, “in bloom,” picturing a red, curvaceous, o’keefe-like poppy, with opening petals suggests a state of heightened sexuality, while the back cover features the four women casually attired in jeans and cotton shirts, in a very active and perhaps “primal” pose of expressive, aggressive singing, subverting the “western” notions of the “desirable,” passive woman (see figure 4). the first song on their album is notably, “dilmano dilbero,” a “modern” arrangement of a “traditional” bulgarian shope song that reportably compares the planting of peppers to copulation (silverman unpublished). just to be clear, the ideas expressed by these ensembles—of a naturalized, mysterious, sexual identity within bulgarian women’s songs—are uniquely american. this is to say that the function of and associations of bulgarian songs in bulgaria is completely different from the ways that some americans identify with bulgarian music. here are a few examples of how these changes can be insightful and/or problematic. while singing in bulgaria traditionally functioned as part of “everyday” work, entertainment, and ritual, americans sometimes view such singing traditions with over-appropriate reverence and mystery. when americans perform bulgarian songs, it is usually only in the context of recreation and/or performance. these outof-context aspects can distance bulgarian music from both american and bulgarian experience—helping to perpetuate orientalizing and “othering.” while bulgarian singers may choose to vary their performances of any given song, it is common for americans to learn songs by memorizing only one recorded version—thus never introducing variation. although folk singing certainly can have a communal and “sisterly” function within balkan societies, american women sometimes elaborate on this concept figure 3 figure 4 162 jamie lynn webster the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 to project feminist ideals of global women’s unity which can essentialize who “women” are, how they identify themselves, and what the meaning of “womanhood” is. in balkan countries, women’s singing exists within a categorical “patriarchy,” yet some american women choose to use balkan singing in resistance to patriarchal systems. recent generations of bulgarian citizens are less interested in “antique” varieties of local traditions, while americans excitedly embrace bulgarian/balkan music as both new/global and old/traditional. “motherhood” is rarely a topic in the performance of balkan music in america, but can be an important part of the singing tradition in the balkans. iliana bozhanova wrote, “i have two sons. i used to sing for them when they were babies. it was the biggest pleasure for me—during the day. holding the baby— swinging him and singing quietly. i criticized myself for trying to sing the ornaments in the right way, but it was a sacrament for me, and very intimate” (bozhanova 2002). most americans, i think, do not discuss bulgarian music with the possibility of singing “quietly,” nor would they necessarily choose their perception of bulgarian singing while cradling small children. “original” balkan singing traditions include many vocal placements, while americans focus almost exclusively on “chest” placement. this latter issue will be discussed later in more detail. in pointing out the ways that american women have conceptually changed bulgarian singing in america, i do not mean to criticize the phenomenon as a whole. since the rise of the women’s movement in the 1960s, american women have been seeking a new voice in society with which to deconstruct previous (and current) puritanical and patriarchal notions of femininity in order to create a modern identity independent of these notions. perhaps due to worldly conceptions of western “maleness,” and eastern “femaleness”, many women have looked outside “western patriarchy” to explore and appropriate “non-western,” “primitive,” or more “earthy” traditions as a means of reconnecting with “true” or “natural” femininity, and redefining self by seeking personal spiritual connection and awareness. by using a “foreign” voice, communities of american women singers of bulgarian music have been able to adopt new traditions as an expression of self-identification and cohesively help redefine the ways in which they and other women are viewed by “western” society. a balkan singer named cathy explained, “i do feel that women need to be heard, and i just don’t think they are heard often enough, loud enough, clear enough, or respectfully enough…and this music helps bring that out” (lausevic 1998:331). grass-roots women’s singing groups did not reconfigure balkan music’s “modern” feminist image completely on their own. media representation, especially those of balkan women’s choirs, had a lot to do with america’s perceptions about the “mysterious” voice. to begin with, americans had greater access to bulgarian mediated music after the fall of communism. marcel cellier’s recordings of bulgarian music as presented in “le mystere des voix bulgares,” reached american audiences in the late 1980s, and garnered a grammy nomination for the first album, and an award for the second. the choir toured the united states in 1988 to sold-out audiences. even though the choir was full of older women fitting normative middle-aged descriptions, media marketed the ensemble in youthful, sexualized terms (silverman unpublished). the television series, “xena, the warrior princess,” used an uncredited bulgarian couple, dimitur and zhivka konstantinov, performing gaida (bagpipe), and vocals (kuo 2002). although bulgaria’s socio-familial systems are patriarchal, the konstantinovs’ performance of bulgarian music was re-coded in juxtaposition with the “girl-power” of xena. english pop singer kate bush featured the trio bulgarka on her 1989 album, the sensual world. soon after, an arrangement was made for a fusion of bulgarian women’s choir with the kronos quartet. also in 1989, judith jamison used bulgarian choir music for her choreography, “forgotten time,” for the alvin ailey dance company. in the late 1990s, audi utilized cellier’s recording of polegnala e todora as a soundtrack for a car commercial. as well, chicago native irish dance champion, michael flatley, incorporated bulgarian dance and music into his first riverdance (kuo 2002). with increasing opportunities to experience bulgarian music, american listeners became less likely to associate the songs with bulgarian culture and “traditional” life. “the effect of these collaborations was not only to bring bulgarian music to the attention of wider audiences, but also to decontextualize it further and present it as pure sound, in the service of a greater art…whereas in village singing, the text is the most important musical element to listeners, in bulgarian choral arrangements, the text is secondary to the sound, reflecting western polyphonic aesthetics. in many collaborations of choirs with western artists, a further step is taken, the text itself is obliterated or rendered unintelligible, even to native speakers” (silverman unpublished). musical aspects in representation of bulgarian singing perhaps as a result of media influence, american women have made changes in the way the voice itself is represented in bulgarian singing. as mentioned above, text is often the most important musical element to listeners in the “village” setting, yet most americans are attracted to the “music” first, and learn about the text and context later on. this makes perfect sense—most americans don’t speak slavic languages. although many different kinds of music and learning take place in bulgaria, martha forsyth the mysterious voice! 163 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 theorizes that for villagers, ornamentation of melodic notes is thus a “by-product” of the words—both of their meaning, and phonetic sound. americans, however, tend to make the ornamentation itself most important. instead of trying to “sing” the songs, american singers try to “do” the ornaments (forsyth 2002). some american singers, whether consciously or unconsciously, clearly perform bulgarian songs outside of the original tradition. for instance, vida’s rendition of “dilmano dilbero,” (the “pepper” song mentioned earlier) uses a wide, lush vibrato that would be unlikely in the village setting. remarking on such alterations, martha forsyth confided that her “pet peeve” was the “american” habit of saying that “you have to make a song ‘your own,’” since this attitude often reflects an underlying ignorance or naiveté regarding the original tradition (ibid.). regarding such individuality, ethel raim commented that in america, some singers are valued for their ability to sound most “traditional, while others are valued equally for their ability to step outside the tradition (while still maintaining an excellent musical product) (raim 2002). by making a song “one’s own,” some americans are talking about trying to maintain an “authentic” performance of balkan music, while employing the vocal tools that they have available at that moment in the learning process. a possible difference between “folk” and “classical” styles is the ability of the folk performer to resist conforming behavior, and accept, to a great extent, whatever voice is “available” to them. donka koleva, an internationally known balkan singing teacher, wrote, “i think that in bulgarian singing the tie between the song and the singer is very tight and personal, singing is natural, and for every performer it is individual in style and liveliness.” one woman wrote, “i started singing balkan over 20 years ago, at balkan camp, and have had many years of classes with carol silverman and carol freeman. i spent the first 5 or so years pushing, pulling, and squeezing my own natural voice, trying to make it sound more “balkan”—whatever that was…i couldn’t believe that carol or carol’s voices could both be “right” since they sounded so different from each other, and neither one of them sounded like any of the recordings i had…i eventually decided, ‘to hell with it, i’ve got the voice i’ve got, and i’m just going to have to live with it…the next time i went to a class with carol f, she said, ‘wow, you sound so much better than you ever have before!’” others concur, that most important in singing women’s music, is finding one’s own voice. regarding the maintenance of tradition versus allowing new traditions emerge, lausevic theorizes that “the concepts of authenticity and preservationism are used to regulate the scene, to censor, and evaluate. people often fail to realize that grappling with issues of authenticity and preservationism is not about balkan culture, nor is it done for the sake of this culture. these concepts help people explain and validate their involvement with balkan music and dance” (lausevic 1998:455). american pedagogy of bulgarian technique with so little access to bulgaria in earlier years, and so many mixed musical messages later on, how did american women learn to sing, or come to believe they could sing bulgarian songs in a “bulgarian” style? carol silverman said that from the beginning, americans had a problem visualizing the “placement” of bulgarian singing. when they thought of “singing,” they would often end up with a light and airy sound. both ethel raim, and carol silverman had discussed how teachers needed to “trick” americans into thinking that it wasn’t singing. they two would do this by using various vocalizations, extending the length of speech using a speaking voice, or calling across a room—maintaining that support from the diaphragm is very important (raim 2002; silverman 2002). other balkan singers, participating in a discussion over the eastern european folklife center e-mailing list, described similar techniques for initially acquiring the “balkan” sound: (1) “bend over from the waist as if you were cutting grain or weeding or working in the garden, and sing. the first time i ever tried this,…i was astounded at the sound that came out, with no effort at all.” (2) “another person told me that “chest voice” (bulgarian voice) is like shouting ‘hey dog!’ across the street…since the best way to sing “chest voice” is loudly, one way i’ve been developing my chest voice is by singing songs over great bodies of water. i have a favorite place on a bridge overlooking the mississippi river, where i shout ‘heeeeyyyyy’ in different keys to a railway bridge a half a mile away. it’s great fun! and when you get proficient, you can wiggle the place just behind your tonsils to get all sorts of interesting ornaments” (eefc e-mail archives). there are many people, as represented above, who equate balkan and bulgarian singing with “shouting” or “yelling,” yet others more clearly define the art within terms of singing. as well, i will address the notions of “chest” and “head” voice as perceived by american singers of bulgarian music. but first, i will illuminate ideas of “naturalness” through discussion of tension, nasality, and the speaking voice. in my own experiences taking voice lessons from prominent bulgarian singers such as tatiana sarbinska, and jordanka ilieva, i have often asked where the voice comes from and where it travels on its way out of the body. in presenting this question, it is necessary to place myself within the context of “western” classical pedagogy. although i had spent twenty years singing american and western european folk music, my arrival into a vocal performance degree program as an undergraduate recontextualized my own notions of singing into concepts of breath support from the diaphragm, tension-free larynx, 164 jamie lynn webster the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 resonance in the cheeks, and sound that “swam” from the forehead. i had learned to feel resonance in different areas of my head and throat, and therefore wished to know where the sound resonated in the production of bulgarian singing. my balkan teachers were often perplexed, and sometimes annoyed. i remember jordanka ilieva saying something like, “you breathe in, you breathe out. on the way out, you make noise, and it comes out your mouth.” needless to say, i didn’t find this explanation very helpful at the time. her response did not line up with my “bel canto” expectation, yet seems very appropriate within the balkan singing tradition, and is more enlightening than i originally grasped. for instance, carol silverman, who is noted for her ability to teach americans the balkan style, said that she indeed thinks of the sound coming from her throat and straight out of the mouth. i asked her about resonances in any part of the face, but she said that at different times, in different ranges, she feels resonances in her cheeks. an e-mailer on the eefc list wrote that she had asked tatiana sarbinska, who is known for her “ bulgarian folk” and “western” capabilities, about similar placement and resonance. tatiana had told her that the sound resonated in the sinus cavities—the ones around the eyes that get involved with sinus headaches. she also spoke about how the air column follows a lower path than with classical voice—it comes straight out of the mouth, rather than looping up first (eefc e-mail archives). all of these ideas are easily converted into “western” classical rhetoric. when speaking of “lower” or “higher” placements, it is important to remember that the vocal cords are always in the throat, and sensations associated with the face are only conceptual ideas to motivate the vocal cords to do what the singer intends. when speaking of “western” and “balkan singers, it seems that they both breathe deeply, and let the air pass naturally through the mouth, allowing the cheekbone area to resonate. in addition, “western” classical singers allow the resonance, or ringing sensation, to progress to the top of the head, while it seems that bulgarian singing centralizes the sound in the lower face. this small difference is recognized by both balkan and “western” singers, but does not denote a “chest” register necessarily. carol silverman continued that she used to think of “tightening” the throat, but abandoned this instruction in her teaching because this idea often introduces tension, which is “bad.” instead, she thinks of the village sound as “concentrated,” though singers should avoid nasality. any good singing is relaxed, she said. although there are different timbres in different regions of the balkans, the difference is not an issue of relaxation or tension. it is more like a focused sound (silverman 2002). again, i must point out, that all these ideas of relaxation, focus and lack of nasality are congruent, and even essential in the performance of “western” singing. another eefc e-mailer wrote a different, yet insightful commentary; “to me what gives bulgarian women’s singing its sound is a certain narrowing or tightening of the throat muscles so as to make the voice as un-breathy as possible. the result is a very rich, resonant tone that produces strong upper partials (overtones)…that we often hear as “nasal” in this singing. and it is this efficiency of air that allows singers to sing such long phrases. it is very important to note that bulgarian singers are not yelling or trying to force their voices, or even thinking of what they are doing as trying to be loud. they are trying to produce a rich, vibrating tone that they then blend with other singing voices” (eefc e-mail archives). tatiana sarbinska’s student also conferred against nasality and forced timbre, offering tatiana’s suggestion to hold one’s nose while singing in order to avoid nasality (ibid.). essential to the american’s idea of singing is “naturalness.” many people on the eefc mail list wrote about the natural quality of song as compared with speech. evidently, both bulgarian, and american teachers have taught beginning balkan singers that singing needs to be as “natural” as extended speech. a woman wrote, “i wonder if what you say about singing the way you speak is more an issue of letting your voice do what it does naturally/best/most/ often. it (the voice) gets much more practice at speaking. those muscles are well developed, strong and flexible. thus they can handle the demands singing puts on them” (ibid.). others have qualified this by saying that “bulgarians” sing how “bulgarians” speak. a bulgarian woman wrote, “in bulgaria the folksingers come from a specific region where they talk and sing one specific style, typical for the region…once i asked the singer vesela ilieva how to sing balkan songs and she told me—you will sing unconsciously the style of your region naturally” (ibid.). although this idea essentializes bulgarian women’s voices, many people have perceived similar differences regarding what seems “natural” for bulgarians and “natural” for americans. when one woman asked about how her low speaking voice functioned for singing, another wrote in, “(mine is low, too,). on the other hand, the normal speaking voice placement for balkan women (if one can make such a sweeping generalization) is a little to a ‘lot’ higher than our normal american woman’s voice” (ibid.). lastly, another wrote, “i have heard some say that balkan singing is like speaking. i have also heard western teachers say that about good voice placement (ibid.). body parts associations with singing: “head” and “chest” one way that conceptual and musical issues in american balkan singing intersect is in the question of vocal production/vocal placement. central perhaps, to the binary of “western” and bulgarian styles is the question of difference the mysterious voice! 165 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 between “chest” and “head” vocal registers. although there are wide variations of vocal production throughout the balkans, there is a common misconception that “balkan” singing refers only to bright, strong, singing in the “chest” register, and that “western” classical bel canto singing refers only to “head” voice. i will take a moment to explain some terminology. most american women, and certainly american men, speak in the low part of their “chest” or “natural” register. some women who speak very low in this register include lauren bacall, and martha stewart. there are some american women who speak in their “head” or “falsetto” register, such as culinary chef, julia childs. the names of these vocal registers are metaphorical and cultural—both “chest” and “head” voice are made in the throat, and neither one is essentially “natural,” or “false.” i will argue here that the binary of “chest” and “head” voices is also cultural, and that many vocal possibilities exist in reality in classical music rhetoric, “chest” and “head” voice fall into discourse regarding vocal “register.” cultural constructs of vocal register are at least as old as the sixteenth century “western” classical systems and were identified by “breaking” points in the voice (alderson 1979:151). these “breaks” in singing sometimes sound like a “click” or “yodel” and are what one might hear in the stereotypical example of an adolescent boy’s changing voice. the “place” in sound where the break occurs between registers is known as the passaggio—a passage from one area to another. the best students in classical music training were those that were able to negotiate through the passaggio without a noticeable “break” (ibid.). to confuse the issue, register categories have not always been the same. in 1835, professionals changed their singing style from a “white” tone in which the larynx rose on each ascending pitch, to a darker, richer, mellower tone in which the larynx was consistently low (alderson 1979:152). the changes in larynx position altered perceptions of register categories. additionally, it was noticed that tonal “placement” shifted along with entrance into different “registers.” “various theories have been proposed which number the registers from none (registers do not exist) to pan-tonic (a register on every note)” (ibid.). commonly, contemporary bel canto singers speak of low/ chest, middle, and high/head registers. my following argument is not intended to deny that registers may exist (or might be useful figurative categories), but to remind that the concepts of registers are culturally constructed, and that change between “registers” may be negotiated in many ways. while “classical” singers train to pass through the passaggio effortlessly, balkan singers may use and develop the passaggio as its own “register.” one way that bel canto singers negotiate the passaggio is to “mix” their “head” and “chest” registers. i believe that many balkan singers rely on various percentages of that “mix” of “head” and “chest” register areas in addition to issues of nasality, tone, timbre and vocal “placement” in order to produce variations of the “balkan” folk singing “sound.” in short, although register “breaks” might exist in distinct places among individual singers, registers themselves might better be perceived as a continuum rather than a dichotomy. one manifestation of this vocal register dichotomy can be seen as a fear factor employed by some bel canto singers in the discussion of harmful vocal practices. many “operatic” teachers have warned their balkan singing students not to “belt” or use a “chest” voice when singing too high—“never belt, dear, belting is bad for the voice.” often, singers are frightened to try “chest” voice in fear that they will lose their “head” register. many people addressed this issue over the eefc mailing list. one woman explained clearly and eloquently that, “balkan singing can wreck your head voice only if you do it improperly. i have found that since i started balkan (singing) my head range has expanded and the tone strengthened. singing in head voice can also ruin your head voice, if you do it improperly. the danger lies in ignorance. the tension and “forcing” of tone and volume is what destroys your vocal cords…” (eefc e-mail archive). i have experienced the two genres (classical and folk/balkan) in similar ways—if i practice each with good technique, i am apt to improve at each without consequence to one or the other. another woman wrote, “when done properly, balkan singing is a very natural, relaxed, open-throated singing, and should not be harmful to anyone. it should not feel tight, tense, or in any way strained. if the singing doesn’t feel comfortable, then the technique is not what it should be and needs improvement.” she continued that the problems are often encountered by those who misinterpret the balkan sound as strained, and have no formal instruction in order to advise them otherwise (ibid.). others defined that bad placement and ignorance included, “struggling, choking, or repressing part of your sound.” instead, one should, “send your air high and free, let if flow high across your palate, focus higher, maybe even outside your body…imagine sparkling water in a narrow quick-moving stream, or a bright laser beam” (ibid.). hmmm, i thought, that imagery is an awful lot like the descriptive ideology of bel canto singing… my first real clue that these binaries existed in culture, but not in nature, came to me over this past year when a “bel canto” instructor disdainfully accused me of using my “chest” register, and a balkan singing teacher told me to “stop using my head voice.” i was truly perplexed. this is preposterous, i thought. i have sung for all of my life, and have a degree to show for it—surely i (ought to) know whether my own voice is using “head” or “chest” registers! 166 jamie lynn webster the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 i later hypothesized that the system of meaning between the two singing traditions might be disjunct. perhaps, i ruminated, the differences in opinions lie in the subtleties of where the boundaries of each vocal genre begin and end. i had been convinced in the past that possibilities outside the polarized concepts of “head” and “chest” voice existed, and maybe others accepted this through discussions of “mixing” ranges. therefore, i created and conducted an auditory survey presented to two “classical” vocal teachers at the university of oregon (dr. ann tedards, and jennifer bacon), one “authentic” bulgarian singer and researcher (kalin kirilov), and one american singer and educator of balkan music (carol silverman). for each, i sang six examples that combined a succession of varying degrees of “head” to “chest” voice, as well as nasality, and levels of resonance. each of the vocal “placements” (all on the vowel, “ah”) are among those that i have used, or been asked to use while performing vocal music in my career. i asked them to give written responses in order to determine how each defined the boundaries of both their own genre (self), and the other genre(s) (other), and to indicate where my examples fell within their own system. although not especially scientific, the test showed me something important—nobody really agreed on how to label what i was doing with my voice, and in doing so, also disagreed on where boundaries existed for each genre. my examples representing my own understanding of the voice, are presented as follows: (1) classical head voice—the register, timbre, tone, and vibrato used in my performance of classical music, as well as some anglo-american folk music. (2) “flattened” head voice—similar to (1), but no vibrato, and a more “centered” sound—focusing resonance on the middle and lower sections of my face. by “flattened,” i also mean that i allowed my mouth cavity to collapse instead of striving for a “cavernous” space. some vibration felt in throat. i have used this style to sing many styles of american folk, and northern slavic music. (3) further “flattened” head voice—vowel “ah” flattened/ collapsed further toward nasal sound. inside my head, this “voice” sounds focused and “pointy/strident.” i have used this placement to sing higher pitched macedonian and other balkan songs. (4) soft chest voice—speaking pitch range, somewhat rounded, but neither loud, nor pointy. i have used this for “pretty” balkan songs like some of the “stare gradski pesni” style. (5) hard chest voice—speaking pitch range with loud, direct sound. similar “centered” feeling of second example. i have used this for “village” style balkan singing. (6) hard nasal chest voice—loud, speaking pitch range, with forceful, nasal sound. i have used this for “hard-core” (very loud, seemingly nasal) “village” style balkan singing. table 1 above is a breakdown of how the aforementioned informants responded regarding their perceptions of my six examples. i have abbreviated their responses, in some cases, from the full sentence form. although all participants categorized my first example within the “western” classical traditional terms, there are immediate discrepancies in perception beginning with the second example. bacon claimed it within the “classical” tradition, tedards and kirilov neutralized it as an in-between, and silverman claimed it for folk style singing (although she didn’t specify any particular folk genre). in the third example, tedards and silverman are in agreement about the nasal quality, yet bacon and kirilov focus on the harder qualities. bacon, kirilov, and silverman placed #3 within the folk terminology, while tedards neutralized it again as a “mix.” although all four agreed that the fourth example was in the “chest”/”throat” register, each focused on a different description—closed, throaty, breathy, mixed. my fifth example seemed different to me compared with #4, yet was described by all of my listeners as simply “louder.” and again, while all were in “agreement” regarding example six, each used different modifiers. even more striking, were the different descriptions of recorded balkan singers. in addition to using my own voice, i also invited my participants to hear and comment on vocal styles used by artists, neli, radka koushleva, and the women of vida. neli is a young singer from the folk music conservatory at shiroka luka in bulgaria. her specialty is singing in the “rhodope” style, and she currently performs with an international bulgarian group named “bulgari.” radka koushleva is also a commercial singer of bulgarian music who is featured on a balkanton cd, “the magic of the rhodope mountains—100 kaba-bagpipes.” i perceive that she has a different vocal quality than neli, although the recording i used of radka koushleva was also of a rhodope song, “bela sum, bela, yunache”—albeit orchestrated in the “koutev” style. vida, as mentioned earexample: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) bacon head pushed/head hard/belt chest/closed chest/open chest/pushed kirilov classical closer close enough breathy/bulg. bulg. folk bulg. folk silverman classical folk/throaty nasal/throaty lower/throaty louder nasal/throaty tedards head mixed nasal/mixed chest/mixed louder nasal/louder table 1 the mysterious voice! 167 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 lier, is a young american women’s quartet from indiana. i used their “village style” version of the shope region song, “dilmano dilbero” for this test. slyly, one reason that i chose these three recordings in particular, was not only to show a diverse selection of “bulgarian” singing styles, but also because the bulgarian singers seem more “head” voice oriented than their american counterparts. my test wasn’t constructed in a way to find out how my selection choice affected responses, but i hope that it made a difference that my examples were not indicative of the “american” essentialism that “bulgarians” sing in “village style,” while “americans” struggle along with “head” voices. in any case, responses were mixed and “inconclusive.” jennifer bacon described both neli and radka koushleva as having pushed, mixed registers—airy on top, and chesty on the bottom. ann tedards also found similarities in these two singers, but described them both as using a “head” voice with strong nasality. carol silverman said that she believed that neli was using a nasal, high, throat voice. kalin kirilov, who appeared unimpressed with neli’s vocal production, declined to make any definitive statements about her voice. both bacon and tedards perceived vida’s lead singer as having a nasal, pressed, “chest” voice. silverman, on the other hand, commented that her voice was “nice,” but obviously not singing in correct shope style, because she used a wide vibrato. all this, perhaps, shows to some extent, that members’ meanings within groups of singers are not well defined, and perhaps contribute to a lack of understanding between classical and folk singers. for yet another interesting example, almost all participants indicated that neli had a nasal voice, even though balkan singers report that nasality is undesirable, and not authentic. from my understanding, neli is a very popular “traditional” singer in bulgaria—it is odd that her highly valued vocal qualities do not match up with “authentic” ideals. kirilov, however, stated that he had heard bulgarians sing anywhere from my example #3-#6. to refresh the reader’s memory, this does include my “nasal” examples. although there wasn’t any real agreement about what i was doing with my voice, or the bulgarian and american women’s recorded voices, i inquired further to see if there was agreement among american singers in defining the “balkan” voice. most often, american singers of balkan music used words such as “hard,” “strong,” “full,” “present,” “honest,” “grown-up,” or “natural,” to describe proper balkan singing. interestingly, the concept of these words was very often placed against “bel canto” singing which was described by the same women as “light,” “airy,” “high,” “destructive,” “fake,” “subservient,” “silly,” and “little girlish.” however, when i reviewed other technical and practical instructions for singing bulgarian songs, and compared these with the technical expectations of “bel canto” singing, the results were scandalous. conceptually, the metaphors and ideologies of both “bel canto” and “balkan” singing are very similar. common to both traditions are the expectations of good posture, good breath support, using a tension-free body, creating a relaxed sound, reducing nasality, increasing resonance, and using a focused sound. so what’s the deal here? i pondered. if these singing traditions are so alike, are there any “real” differences between them? why is the presumed opposition so important to (some) american balkan singers? the answer to the first question is easier given, yet really should be left to people with throat-invading pathology cameras, and other mechanical instruments that measure sound, nasality, and other “biological” things. simply put, there are differences between “bel canto” and “bulgarian” singing traditions. i’m sure that you can hear them. however, these differences have less to do with the dichotomy of “head” or “chest” voice, and more to do with other musical choices such as use of nasality, timbre/tone, vibrato and ornamentation. although the concept of opposition between the so-called “head” and “chest” registers can be useful as an analytical tool, in reality, there are many vocal placements on a continuum, in which register(s) is only one element, between these two perceived extremes. both “western” bel canto, and american balkan traditions are culturally motivated to accept a binary approach rather the discuss the many vocal placement possibilities in a multi-genre arena. among other things, image is at stake! the cultural significance of “head” vs. “chest” voice binary may intersect with gender issues, according to jane sugarman. she explained that in many places around the world, including the balkans, both men and women sing equally in “chest” register. in bel canto singing, men sing almost exclusively in “chest” register, while women sing almost exclusively in “head” register—thus polarizing the two genders and presenting them as fundamentally different (eefc e-mail archive). some american singers might reject “head” register singing because higher voices suggest women’s subordination and oppression. women often equate the bel canto/soprano voice with disney’s submissive servant girl, snow white, without realizing that there is also variation within so-called “classical” singing (i.e., whatever happened to wagner’s horn-helmeted, breastarmored brunhilde as the “poster-girl” image of operatic singing?). laying aside, for the moment, the dilemma regarding whether bulgarian singing takes place in the “chest” register, i also question american women’s choice of pitch range as did an eefc e-mailer who wrote, “from what i hear on the ‘authentic’ bulgarian voice’ on the resource tape i got from carol freeman a couple of years ago, they sound piercingly high and ‘little girlish,’ mak168 jamie lynn webster the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 ing me quite skeptical that we can refer to the ‘balkan voice’ as always in ‘chest placement,’ especially when singing high…” (ibid.). almost without exception, eefc e-mailers referred to the undesirability of high voices regardless of whether they spoke of “western” or “bulgarian” singing. for instance, a woman wrote, “my classical singing instructor tried to get me to talk the way i ought to sing—a sweet, high pitched girlish lyric soprano voice that made me feel utterly silly” (ibid.). the consistency of terminology suggests that some american women choose lower pitches in their “natural” voice as a way of rejecting the higher voice associations with “unnatural” patriarchal control. in doing so, they often embrace balkan singing and reject “classical” singing. the rejection of “classical” style singing by some american balkan singers is unfortunate because it denies the many vocal types accepted in the classical tradition, and the many “western” traditions (such as early english madrigals, liturgical music, etc.) that are considered “classical” yet bear resemblances to related folk traditions. higher voices, however, don’t “naturally” mean “classical,” nor does “classical” equal “little girlish.” marilyn horne is an example of a famous retired bel canto contralto who used to sing lower and richer than some balkan singers. opera singers in general do not reach vocal maturity until their late 20s or early 30s—hardly girlhood. almost all “mature,” “classical” singers are expected to have rounded, resonant, and rich voices. even those who play “pants-parts” (operatic roles in which women perform in the character of adolescent boys), such as cecilia bartoli, have strong, penetrating, “womanly” voices. some e-mail writers suggested that american women prefer lower register singing because they associate lower voices with the authoritative, sexy voices of women such as lauren bacall, kathleen turner, and other women public speakers who’ve accepted that “model.” balkan specialist, mark forry wrote in an eefc e-mail regarding american perceptions of voice and balkan singing, “we have been taught that low, smooth voices are sexy. many women whose natural-born speaking and singing voices might well have been high, light and perfect for lead on bulgarian songs have instead trained themselves to emulate lauren bacall. speaking in an artificially low, husky, ‘sexy’ range can permanently alter your singing voice.” forry also speculated that american women simply emulated the vocal styles presented on early recordings—those that reflected the (patriarchal) tastes of “academic organizers and judges of festivals who made the selections that eventually got to recordings” (eefc e-mail archive). others have defended that american women prefer lower balkan music because it is simply easier for untrained singers. the accessibility of using the speaking voice for singing generates feelings of competence and personal expression among those without “formal” instruction. “i loved singing music where i didn’t have to go into my head voice because i always had a problem with some of those transitional notes, and i felt less ‘honest’ in my singing when it was in the upper registers…somehow, certain kinds of songs seem more honest and heartfelt for me when they are sung with power” (mills 2002). i suspect as well, that recent generations of women reject the “formal” qualities of bel canto singing, in lieu of the informal and/or “subversive” aspects of balkan folk singing because women’s power has often operated “underneath” or “outside” of official american culture. in general, this folk sub culture has attracted people who did not feel at ease in most social circumstances, or amidst “popular” culture. “its value lies partly in the fact that it is not ‘force-fed,’ but actively sought. the fact that balkan music was not readily available, that it was not suggested for consumption through media advertisement, made it additionally attractive to the 1960s and 1970s counterculture, in which the act of resisting the media was, in itself, a valued action (lausevic 1998:450). most of all, american women choose the “chest” voice because of its voluminous power, strength, and ability to symbolically project gender equality in a patriarchal system. influenced by the american women’s movement, singers latched on to bulgarian singing as an expressive form of “modern” female identity. perhaps in order to compete in a man’s world, it is necessary to walk softly, and carry a big voice! in conclusion, the bulgarian voice, as used by american women, is a cultural construction stemming from “western” feminist ideology. the codes and symbolic meanings of “traditional” bulgarian music have been reframed in order to fit an american context. because of the perceived musical qualities of strength, naturalness, and sisterhood, some americans are particularly drawn to the “harder,” “folky,” or more “chest-like” quality of some bulgarian singing styles. despite a perceived dichotomy of “chest” voice/ balkan singing and “head” voice/bel canto singing, there are many intermediary vocal placements on a continuum between the two assumed binaries, and including many other elements aside from the notion of “register” itself. after all, if bulgarian singing merely meant “chest” voice, there wouldn’t be any mystery! references anderson, richard 1979 complete handbook of voice training. parker publishing co.:ny. appadurai, arjan 1996 modernity at large—cultural dimensions of globalization. university of minnesota. the mysterious voice! 169 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 bordo, susan 1993 unbearable weight—feminism, western culture, and the body. university of california. buchanan, donna 1997 “bulgaria’s magical mystere tour: postmodernism, world music marketing, and political change in eastern europe.” ethnomusicology winter 1997 vol. 41, no.1. kondo, dorinne 1997 about face: performing race in fashion and theater. routledge: ny. lausevic, mirjana 1998 a different village: international folk dance and balkan music and dance in the united states, dissertation. wesleyan university. umi microform, mi. ling, jan 1997 a history of european folk music. university of rochester press: ny. merchant, carolyn 1980 the death of nature—women, ecology and the scientific revolution. harper collins: ny. rice, timothy 1994 may it fill your soul; experiencing bulgarian music. university of chicago press: il. silverman, carol n.d. “move over madonna: gender, representation, and the ‘mystery’ of bulgarian voices.” unpublished. stevens, denis 1960 a history of song. w.w. norton and co.:ny. williams, jan 1998 “demystifying the balkan voice.” the kef times (east european folklife center. fall/ winter 1998. vol.4, no.2. eastern european folklife center e-mail archive, http://archive.iecc.com/article/eefc—keywords balkan/ bulgarian singing, 1994–2002. kitka website at http://www.kitka.org. interviews and e-mail correspondence with carol silverman (2002), ethel raim (2002), martha forsyth (2002), linda anderson (2002), judy keswick (2002), leeann shnayer (2002), donka koleva (2002), iliana bozhanova (2002), kalin kirilov (2002), john kuo (2002), jennifer bacon (2002), and ann tedards (2002). northern harmony. concert program, u.s. tour, 2002. discography: au dela du mystere. vol 1 bma-1001 au dela du mystere. vol 2 bma-1002 balkan voices—family, koleva family, 2000 wmg 305245 bulgari, “bulgarian folk music.” latitudes 50613 bulgari, “bulgarian rhapsody.” georgi doichev and owl’s head music, 2000. nc bulgarian polyphony [iv], “quartette slavei.” jvc, 1994. vicg-5344-2 kitka, “voices on the eastern wind.” diaphonica, 1992 092 kitka, “nectar.” diaphonica, 1998 098 le mystere des voix bulgares, vols. i, ii, and ritual, elektra, 1987 979165-2, 979349-2, 979201-2 folk art, “neli.” marko’s music ltd. 1995 pa 5 0514-1 folk rhythms from bulgaria. balkanton 060089 folk songs and dances “trakia ensemble.” gega new gd 110 philip koutev, “bulgarian folk ensemble.” gega new, 1998, bulgaria gd 119 song of the crooked dance. yazoo 7016 the magic of the rhodope mountains—100 kaba-bagpipes. balkanton. 060182 home is where the heart is. to the bulgarian folklore with love. ibld#* vida, “in bloom.” whim records bmi, 1997 wr-cd002 voluta vox, voluta vox, 1998 the return of refugees viewed through the prism of blood revenge paula garb university of california, irvine reaching a peace agreement in violent ethnic conflicts, which tend to be zero sum affairs, can be a long and arduous process which complicates the lives of refugees and prospects for their safe return home. this is a casestudy of the obstacles to peace in the refugee problems caused by the abkhaziangeorgian conflict. it analyzes abkhazian culturespecific thinking about conflict and conflict resolution that must be taken into account in negotiating a peace agreement and a workable settlement on the return of georgian refugees to abkhazia. the anthropologists kevin avruch and peter black point out the importance of the culture concept in conflict analysis, maintaining that the view of culture is often too "thin." they propose examining culture in a way that stresses local and indigenous ideas about human nature, personhood and self, and recommend the ethnographic casestudy method as a way to investigate these ideas (avruch, black 1991). marc ross (1994), a political scientist, stresses an understanding of what he calls psycho-cultural factors that hinder agreement in conflict management efforts, impediments that he complains are often overlooked or play an insignificant second to an interestbased analysis. my conclusions result from informal conversations and interviews in abkhazia in august and september, 1994, and september, 1995. my informants were abkhazian elders, war veterans and noncombatant citizens. i was not expecting what i discovered. i found that the theme of blood revenge was a constant in people's explanations for why they opposed the return of georgian refugees from the abkhaziangeorgian war (august 1992september 1993). i will go into this in more detail further. but first i would like to make a few more introductory remarks. when the importance of this theme started to become clear to me, i reluctantly admitted to an abkhazian official who had spent the war in moscow, but was now working in sukhumi in the national government, that i was embarrassed, that though i was an expert on abkhazian culture, until i actually came to abkhazia and talked to people i did not suspect that the culture of blood revenge would be so salient in the issue of refugee return. i had to come and meet people face to face and listen carefully in order to really understand the resistance to the massive return of georgians. my observation of representatives of international organizations is that they preach their universalistic guidelines more than they listen to the concerns of local populations. economic factors are also no doubt influential in considerations about the return of refugees. for instance, many families in the capital city of sukhumi, abkhazian and nonabkhazian, have taken over apartments abandoned by georgians who left the territory when abkhazian forces drove out the georgian army. some moved into these apartments out of necessity, their own homes having been destroyed or made uninhabitable, and others, for unjustifiable reasons. in addition, many jobs became available from the loss of the large georgian population. so i speculated that the benefits of newly acquired apartments and jobs might be the underlying motivation for resisting the return of georgians. however, these considerations were not expressed to me, and when i raised them informants were adamant in their denial. some people even told me that abkhazia could not rebuild its economy adequately without the former georgians, but that their safe return depended on a secure political status for abkhazia. i also do not know to what extent the abkhazian leaders and/or peace negotiators even raise the issue in the terms that ordinary citizens brought them up with me. i assume that they are aware of this approach at the grassroots, although they may not be completely conscious of it in these terms. at any rate, they know that their public would be outraged if abkhazian negotiators easily agreed to a large-scale return of georgians without first securing certain guarantees. how is the practice of blood revenge relevant to such a refugee problem? according to the theory of "refuge area warrior adaptation" (boehm 1983, 1984), an important factor in the survival of peoples threatened constantly by formidable neighbors is the high value placed on local autonomy and on honor befitting a true warrior. boehm is mailto:pgarb@uci.edu� mailto:pgarb@uci.edu� jen typewritten text 41 the author of a comprehensive study of blood revenge in montenegro and several other societies around the world where the traditions of retaliatory killing share striking similarities. these are cultures such as the nuer and nuba of north africa, the bedouins and certain lebanese villages in the middle east, netsilik eskimos, the jivaro headhunters of south america, some tribes in the new guinean highlands, and albanians, just to name a few. boehm concludes that the warriors in such societies tend to sharply limit the power of their own chiefs, except on the battlefield, where authority is needed. in these societies, some form of patterned vengeance killing is an integral part of conflict management. such societies adapted to their vulnerable political status and geographic location by developing strict codes of behavior that allowed for retaliatory killing under certain circumstances. the measures were so harsh that they prevented disintegration of the society in the absence of strong centralized government and law enforcement institutions. boehm maintains that feuding systems grow out of deliberate processes of problem solving and must be defined in such terms. so far in my attempt to compare different practices of retaliatory killing i see confirmation of boehm's hypothesis when looking at blood revenge as practiced in the caucasus. abkhazian traditions of blood revenge are typical of a refugearea warrior society. a central tenet of this practice is that all the adult male members of a family are held responsible for the actions of one individual and are therefore fair targets for retaliatory murder (see inalipa 1965 for more on abkhazian blood revenge). an understanding of these traditions and how they have shaped the people's thinking about conflict and conflict resolution is crucial to seeking solutions to the issue of the return of former georgian residents to abkhazia, which is a major obstacle to a final peace settlement of the georgianabkhazian war. these psycho-cultural factors are shaping public opinion at the grassroots level and are resulting in pressures on the government to resist the mass return of georgians. i first came across the phenomenon of blood revenge in the late 1970s and early 1980s in meetings with abkhazian elders who served on local councils of elders; they told me about how they prevented animosities from escalating into revenge killing. for instance, in 1980, members of a village council of elders told me of a case of blood revenge that they had preempted with their traditional negotiation techniques. a villager had killed a fellow villager in an automobile accident. the soviet court convicted the driver of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced him to a prison term. relatives of the deceased, believing that they needed to take their own action in accordance with the traditions of blood revenge, appeared to be preparing some retaliatory action against a member of the convicted man's family. the elders who told me this story said they did not really think a retaliatory murder was imminent, but that talk about taking action was the family's way of showing its high value of abkhazian traditions, a mark of honor in any abkhazian community, then and now. from these and similar stories i heard over the years, i concluded that these traditions were modified, in some cases, ritualized, but not eradicated in soviet abkhazia. during fieldwork in abkhazia in july of 1994, i was struck by the frequency with which the subject of blood revenge came up. i was told that members of families engaged in blood revenge with each other had reconciliations on the battlefield, and that some feuds have developed since the war. one case that occurred within the first year after the end of war involved members of two families, the ks and the js, who got in a fight in which one j was killed. members of the j family immediately struck back and killed a member of the k family. when some ks went into hiding in preparation for another counter attack, a delegation of high ranking government officials, including the minister of defense, the prosecutor, and a university official, went to the js to ask their permission to mediate the case and to suggest that they send a delegate with them to the ks. this was to give the js a chance to know everything that the mediator talked about with the ks. first the officials from sukhumi said to the ks, whose house was burned down by the js and who were preparing to bury their relative, that the mediators had come to express their condolences and offer assistance to end the conflict. after long, eloquent speeches by representatives of each side they agreed to have the dispute mediated. only after eight sessions over a period of time did the families agree to a "cease-fire." it was agreed by all parties that anyone who broke the truce would be exiled from abkhazia. in june of 1995 the council of elders in the village of otara told me of a recent case that had only been partially settled. a man killed another during a drunken argument. a member of the victim's family, believing that the jen typewritten text 42 killer's family did nothing in the spirit of an apology, killed a member of the other family. the council of elders, fearing a cycle of violence, approached the families to inquire whether they would accept the involvement of the council. the families agreed to let the dispute be mediated after several mediators caucused for about three hours with each family. the agreement that was finally reached was that the disputing families would be "neither relatives nor enemies." according to abkhazian tradition, complete reconciliation between two families requires that they become relatives so that blood revenge is no longer possible among the former disputants. the ritual, usually a banquet, that makes all members of both families relatives, is an agreement that is more binding than a modern legal contract. so, when the disputants in this conflict declared that they are "neither relatives nor enemies," they meant that they have not yet reached a final agreement, but are willing to cease hostilities, at least temporarily. they vowed not to pursue further vendettas, but also refused any formal reconciliation that would allow them to interact with each other. the mediators remain vigilant about the case, and their final goal is to bring about a reconciliation that will completely preclude any further revenge. they believe it is time and careful monitoring of the situation that will enable a final resolution. this story illustrates how bitter conflicts can be resolved one stage at a time. a legitimate stage is to simply ignore each other's existence, but this is carefully monitored by the elders who wait for an opportunity to bring about complete reconciliation, the ultimate goal. these traditions are increasingly salient today in the absence of strong law enforcement which is characteristic of postwar society and postsoviet successor states. another reason is that the abkhazians' military triumph provided a strong impetus for the reconstruction of abkhazian ethnic identity and, consequently, of cultural traditions. this is why i began listening very carefully when abkhazians explained why they were so adamant that georgians should not return under any circumstances, at least not for a very long time. it appears to be quite clear to abkhazians that vengeance will be taken against returning georgians, who are regarded as war criminals; abkhazians thus cannot comprehend why the georgians would want to return, knowing their fate according to the rules of blood revenge. thus, the only way abkhazians can understand the reasoning of such georgians who want to return is that their true intention must be to resume the fighting. this is a common theme that runs through conversations with abkhazians about the possible return en masse of former georgian inhabitants. in line with the logic that a whole family is responsible for the actions of one member, i heard stories of abkhazian soldiers who, immediately after liberating occupied territory, committed crimes against georgian families that resembled the crimes that were committed by georgian troops against their own families. this can happen after any war, but in abkhazian culture it is perceived through the prism of the rules of blood revenge and therefore condoned, or at least, not condemned and the perpetrators apparently are not prosecuted. this gives cause for further anxiety about the safety of returning georgians. at the same time there is evidence that abkhazians are also capable of protecting georgians from harm. i learned of several abkhazians who have shielded their georgian neighbors or friends from hostile abkhazians. have georgians preserved these traditions to the extent that the abkhazians have? can they genuinely understand how abkhazians think about these matters? without doing equivalent fieldwork in georgia it is not possible for me to answer these questions. i suspect that these practices have not been so well preserved in georgia, and that this may affect the ability of georgian elite or ordinary people to fully comprehend the fears of the abkhazians. i made a special point of asking abkhazian elders who have long experience resolving blood feuds within their own society how they, using their traditional skills, could help facilitate the process of reconciliation between abkhazians and georgians. they all maintain that their conflict management skills are inadequate to prevent or settle cases of retaliatory murder against former georgian residents of abkhazia, or to advise the government on such matters. in their minds an early resolution is hindered for two reasons. first, they say, the conflict is not between two feuding families, but between many families from two cultures. the diversity of the personalities of all the families and individuals immensely complicates mediation efforts that ordinarily involve a painstaking individualized approach jen typewritten text 43 of caucusing with all involved parties. this is timeconsuming and cumbersome even when the conflict is only between two families; for instance, eight sessions were required to reconciliate the ks with the js. the argument stated by elders is that mediation between so many families on both sides would be infinitely complicated, essentially impossible. a second argument made by abkhazian elders is that rape or other indignities to women (harm to women is forbidden by the rules of blood revenge) are acts that preclude any resolution between two families and therefore preclude resolution with the georgians since the abkhazians maintain that crimes were committed against women. looking through the traditional framework of settling cases of retaliatory murder, elders see time and separation as the only alternatives at present. the recent case in otara, when the two conflicting families agreed to be "neither relatives nor enemies," might be the best scenario for the georgians and the abkhazians for an unknown period of time. at this point the elders believe ten or more years are needed for healing before mutual relations can be resumed. if international mediators of a georgianabkhazian peace treaty are to facilitate a lasting settlement they must have a clear understanding of the widespread and passionate public opinion reinforced by a group survival mentality that draws on tradition for security. taking into consideration these psycho-cultural factors might assist in the development of ways to help lessen the fears that each side has of the other, and might facilitate eliminating the impediments to productive peace talks. references avruch, kevin and black, peter w. 1991 "conflict resolution in intercultural settings: problems and prospects," in conflict resolution theory and practice: integration and application, d. sandole and h. van der merwe, eds. manchester: manchester university press, pp. 13145. boehm, christopher 1983 montenegric social organization and values: political ethnography of refuge area tribal adaptation. new york: ams press 1984 blood revenge: the anthropology of feuding in montenegro and other tribal societies. kansas city: university press of kansas. inalipa, shalva 1965 abkhazy: istorikoetnograficheskiye ocherki (abkhazians: historicalethnographic essays). sukhumi: alashara publishers. ross, marc 1994 the management of conflict: interpretations and interests in comparative perspective. new haven: yale university press. jen typewritten text 44 microsoft word document2 volume21, number 1 vol. 21, no. 1 2003, page: 5 editors’ notes: food and foodways in postsocialist eurasia krista harper, smith college and barbara west, university of the pacific © 2003 krista harper and barbara west all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. warning: do not open this issue if you are hungry or if your pantry and refrigerator is not properly provisioned. make sure you have some of your favorite foods in the house and that you can sit down with them immediately upon completing your reading. you will need it! because food is both internal and external matter, the cultural contexts of what is produced, prepared, distributed, and eaten or drunk-as well as when, how, and by whom-are all vital for our understanding of any group of people. the papers in this volume attempt to begin answering some of these important questions for many of the groups of people living in the former socialist countries of eastern and central europe, the nis, and russia. from production to consumption, representation to distribution, brandy to breastmilk, this issue covers most every aspect of research related to food and drink that is currently being carried out in this region. articles range in time frame from a historical view of the socialist period to the many changes that have taken place in the region since 1989. this latter theme is particularly well developed and encompasses articles on consumption, production, and distribution from east and west germany in the west to siberia in the east, and most places in between. the intimate view these papers provide of the political, social, and economic changes that have transformed the region highlights the continuing importance of anthropological research. for it is anthropology, more than most other disciplines, that provides an understanding of what it is to experience these changes in the cultural contexts of the changing societies themselves. in addition to providing “thick descriptions” of the transformation from state socialism, anthropology’s attention to local meanings and everyday life practices contributes a special perspective to policy, public health, and other applied fields. while gabriel specifically notes the practical value of the knowledge she provides of the differences between russian and usamerican ideas about breastfeeding, many of the other papers in this volume could provide a starting point for changing aid programs, marketing schemes, and other externally-driven action to contribute more positively to the lives of individuals in the region. there are a number of different ways we could have organized this issue and put the papers together. in the end, we decided to begin the issue with the theme of commensality, followed by four other sections on “food, meaning, and identity,” “gender and food,” “food, health, and the body,” and “the political economy of food,” borrowing the schema used in counihan and van esterik’s excellent reader, food and culture (counihan and van esterik 1997). the study of “commensality,” or the social bonds formed through the sharing of food (smith 1907), was among the earliest themes studied by anthropologists in the late nineteenth century, and so it is where we choose to begin our special issue on food and foodways. in his article on uzbek hospitality, zanca paints a riotous portrait of host-guest interactions. hudgins compares three meals she shared with siberian friends in her fascinating essay, excerpted from her new book, the other side of russia: a slice of life in siberia and the russian far east (texas a & m university press, 2003). rounding out this discussion of meals and feasting is susan mazur-stommen’s article on christmas food rituals on germany’s former east-west border. part two, “food, meaning, and identity,” points to the symbolic aspects of food and examines how food consumption shapes identity and vice versa. writing of papua new guinea, robert foster states that the consumption of volume21, number 1 vol. 21, no. 1 2003, page: 6 nationally marketed commodities and brands is a crucial part of “materializing the nation,” or nesting national identity into quotidian habits and material culture (foster 2002). the articles printed in this section demonstrate that foster’s observation holds for the newly constituted and reconstituted nations of eastern europe and the former soviet union as well. patico’s paper examines how russians interpret imported foods in relation to russian identity. passmore and passmore reflect on the importance of food in czech national identity, from the burgeoning tables of the good soldier schweik to their participants’ fears that european union accession will result in a decline in the quality of czech beer. bradatan takes on the connection between food and regional identity in southeastern europe, posing the question, “is there such a thing as balkan cuisine?” farkas delves into the role of dietary practices in establishing religious identity, studying the krishna consciousness movement in postsocialist hungary. moving west to slovenia, kozorog discusses rural and urban identities at play in the contemporary folklore surrounding “salamander brandy,” a home-brewed drink from the countryside rumored to have psychedelic effects. the third section of this issue, “gender and food,” showcases the work of anthropologists who examine food preparation and consumption as a performance of gender roles and identities. jankauskaitė considers food imagery in lithuanian feminist art. drawing from research in the czech republic, haukanes studies how certain foods and food practices serve as symbols of masculinity and femininity. although women are often the main actors in food preparation, food and drink shape men’s social relations as well. huseby-darvas looks at the family winecellar as a key male social institution in a hungarian village. part four focuses on anthropological work on diet and health. gabriel’s paper on russian perceptions of diet, breastfeeding, and “weak health” begins the section, followed by harper’s article on hungarian environmentalists’ discourses on food, from the mad cow disease crisis to genetically modified organisms (gmos) in agricultural production. hall takes on the issue of alcoholism in the beer-loving czech republic. kozlov and zdor investigate changes in the health and diet of indigenous chukchi hunters in russia. the last section of the issue, “the political economy of food,” is a collection of articles that focus on the production, marketing, and distribution of food. these papers pay special attention to the ways in which the socialist and market economies shape peoples’ experience of work, gardening, farming, and grocery shopping. asher’s piece takes a close look at the social world of workers in a polish brewery. nicholson presents research on milk producers and vendors in albania’s informal economy. hervouet studies the role of dachas and gardens in belarussians’ economic and emotional lives. thorne offers a historical perspective on domestic food production in estonia. the final articles of the section look at household provisioning in socialist and post-socialist settings, with smith writing about his hungarian informants’ reflections on homemade versus store-bought foods and burrell presenting poles’ oral histories about life under state socialism. we invite readers to peruse the essays in different combinations in order to discover unexpected parallels and to savor the richness of comparative research on food and foodways. since 2003 marks the 500th anniversary of vodka’s arrival in russia (erofeev 2002), we would like to flag the articles on alcohol production and drinking throughout the region. although we decided to integrate these articles into the larger themes surrounding food, we encourage readers to study the articles by huseby-darvas, hall, asher, kozorog, and asher side by side. another cross-cutting theme is that of foodways in transformation following the collapse of state socialism. a number of authors discuss the introduction of new foods coinciding with the region’s entrance into the global economy. kozlov and zdor discuss changes in the circumpolar diet, as the chukchi of northern russia supplement their traditional diet of reindeer and sea mammal meat with foods bought at the market. articles by patico, gabriel, and hudgins examine how russians in different parts of the country ascribe meaning to imported foods. smith and burrell take a historical look at household provisioning in socialist and postsocialist east-central europe. essays by haukanes, hall, and passmore and passmore, taken collectively, give a highly nuanced account of czechs’ changing foodways. food teaches us how large-scale changes are experienced at the level of daily practice: harper volume21, number 1 vol. 21, no. 1 2003, page: 7 investigates how hungarian environmentalists perceive potentially risky food imports containing gmos, while hervouet examines belarussian gardeners’ perception of homegrown foods tainted by radioactive soil. in other words, these papers are all intertwined in rich, meaningful ways that will only become apparent as the reader devours the entire issue—so, prost! egészségére! guten appetit! and so forth… the editors would like to thank smith college’s committee on faculty compensation & development for providing generous support for research assistants who helped edit the articles in this issue. krista harper would like to thank michael ash, emily carpenter, molly o’brien, christina keating, tricia perry, and sarah macdonald for their assistance in editing, proofreading, and layout. call for papers: for a special issue of aeer on music and dance, scheduled for spring 2004. i am seeking papers dealing with any aspect of music and dance in eastern europe. lynn maners, the guest editor, would especially like to encourage post-fieldwork graduate students as well as recent phds to contribute to this volume, but all contributions are welcome. please feel free to pass this notice on and to encourage interested parties to contact lynn maners for further information at: lmaners@dakotacom.net or lmaners@westga.edu references cited counihan, c., and p. van esterik. editors. 1997. food and culture. new york: routledge. erofeev, v. 2002. "the russian god: vodka celebrates its five-hundredth anniversary," in the new yorker, vol. 78, pp. 56-63. foster, r. 2002. materializing the nation. bloomington, in: indiana. smith, r. 1907. lectures on the religion of the ancient semites. london: adam & charles black. editor anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 4 editor’s notes sarah d. phillips indiana university in this issue of the anthropology of east europe review we feature articles on topics as diverse as health care reform in ukraine, the evangelical-baptist church of georgia, and changing regimes of retail and consumption in bulgaria, among others. a few unifying themes, however, undergird these wide-ranging articles. several authors place under scrutiny the postsocialist city itself, and in particular ways that citizens variously navigate, narrate, and experience the city. multiculturalism is also a key theme, especially how multiculturalism is imagined, imposed, performed, and experienced in specific postsocialist contexts. finally, questions of morality are central here, whether in terms of the moral duties of the state and physicians in providing medical care, or as regards changing notions of hospitality and host-guest mutual obligations. i am very grateful to cordula gdaniec and tanya richardson, both of whom were instrumental in preparing the spring 2009 issue. in their article, kristof van assche and petruţa teampău present a fascinating exploration of the “local myth of cosmpolitanism” in the romanian town of sulina. the authors employ a clever metaphor of the palimpsest to describe the “layered encounters” through which sulina’s residents remember and narrate the city’s past, and also reach for a wished-for european (eu) future of multicultural populations “united in diversity.” similarly interested in imaginings and performances of diversity in the city, william eastwood examines how religious minorities (in particular, georgian baptists) engage in particular kinds of performance to navigate the de facto orthodox georgian public space in tbilisi. eastwood takes readers on two processions to examine how members of the evangelical-baptist church carve out a discursive and physical presence for themselves in the city. olga filippova investigates school abc primers as reflective of identity politics in soviet, transition-period, and independent ukraine. she analyzes how the primers’ images and texts reflect transformations in official state narratives of nationhood and national identity, national/cultural heroes, the behavior expected of citizens (especially schoolchildren), and the methods and purposes of education itself. in his contribution, grant garstka applies theories of urban consumption and postmodern urbanism to the postsocialist city to scrutinize new consumption regimes in stara zagora, bulgaria. he documents an increasing social pluralism of consumer groups. of particular interest here are the effects of apparently unregulated hypermarkets (mostly foreign-owned box stores) on consumption practices and urban spaces; garstka specifically warns of sharpening class inequalities and the formation of dual-cities. similar to garstka, anna zhelnina is interested in changing retail spaces in the postsocialist urban context—st. petersburg, russia. she examines the restructuring of urban retail spaces from two main perspectives: the everyday consumption experiences of shoppers, and the motives and actions of decision-making power brokers. zhelnina scrutinizes recent changes undertaken as supposed “civilizing” moves after socialism: standardization, depersonalization, and the consolidation of big business. whereas garstka finds increasing consumer diversity in stara zagora, zhelnina highlights the anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 5 decline in urban diversity that is occurring in st. petersburg as access to public space and participation in legal retail business are increasingly restricted. maryna bazylevych explores health care reform in ukraine from several angles; she focuses on official political discourse on the one hand, and popular interpretations and everyday actions of stakeholders on the other hand. she draws on interviews with health care administrators and physicians (two groups with a major stake in the reform process) to document the “multiple moral codes” that inform contemporary ukrainian medicine as patients, physicians, and politicians negotiate the meanings of “rights” and “responsibility” and struggle over redefining state-citizen relations. abel polese takes us on a comparative ethnographic exploration of changing hospitality mores and practices in and around odessa, ukraine and batumi, georgia. polese considers the effects of postsocialist temporal and economic constraints to argue that although the form of hospitality ideals, obligations, and rituals may be changing, the essence of hospitality in these spaces is actually very stable. he provides a rich symbolic analysis of hospitality in all its breadth and depth, allowing readers “to ‘taste’ the way economic development, marketization and urbanization have reshaped cultural practices and alliance building” in diverse postsocialist locales. finally, we feature an article by andrei simic that originally appeared in the spring 2008 issue of aeer, but was printed with one page omitted. we apologize for the error. with this issue i am pleased to welcome onboard neringa klumbyte as book review editor. books for review may be sent to dr. neringa klumbyte, department of anthropology, miami university, 164 upham hall, oxford, ohio, 45056. if you are interested in reviewing books for aeer, please e-mail to klumbyn@muohio.edu. this is the last issue that will benefit from the brilliant editorial assistance of abigail rich, who will receive her master’s degree in anthropology from indiana university this summer. congratulations, abi, many thanks, and best of luck to you. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 6 call for papers fall 2009 and spring 2010 issues of the anthropology of east europe review the editor solicits articles and conference review essays for the fall 2009 and spring 2010 issues’ “open forum,” “reviews,” and “teaching” sections. papers should be no more than 2,500-6,000 words (including endnotes and references) and conference reviews should be 300-800 words in length. please send electronic submissions as a microsoft word .doc (or as an .rtf file) to: anthroeasteuropereview@gmail.com papers and reviews for fall 2009 should be received no later than august 15, 2009. papers and reviews for spring 2010 should be received no later than march 15, 2010. aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 103 turbo folk and dance music in 1990s serbia: media, ideology and the production of spectacle ivana kronja university of arts, belgrade “media contents consolidate the mythological background of a community by producing metaphors which are to be used in the domain of the popular. for a totalitarian power the colonization of media space is the most effective shortcut to everyday life.” turbo-folk and dance music and sensibility significantly marked the era of war, chaos and despair in 1990s serbian politics, life and culture. [1] moreover, these musical genres and their total media presentation proved themselves to be one of the most powerful ideological weapons of milošević’s regime. forming a popular culture counterpart to the unscrupulous ideological propaganda of rts (radiotelevision of serbia), which used nationalist and chauvinist rhetorics to justify and support involvement of serbia in civil wars in croatia and bosnia, and later in kosovo, turbofolk and dance music promoted the life-style and system of values of the new serbian elite formed during the nineties: regime politicians, war-profiteers, criminal bosses turned into “businessmen” and glamorous turbo-folk stars, mainly highly eroticised female singers. this system of values aimed to establish the cult of crime and violence, war-profiteering, national-chauvinism and provincialism, together with the abandonment of morals, education, legality, and other civic values. it had also encouraged the war-orientated, retrograde patriarchy and the prostitution and commodification of women, while accepting the iconography of western mass culture, the values of the ‘american dream,’ ‘body culture,’ culture of leisure and consumption. all this, of course, had been available only to the new serbian ruling class, which supported the rule of force and violence, nationalism and political oppression, while the majority of people lived in poverty and isolation. this text shall try to explain some of the aspects of style and production that gave the music industry of turbo-folk and dance the power to shape lives and politics during the last authoritarian regime in the eastern europe. definition of turbo-folk and dance the name ‘turbo-folk’ originated at the beginning of nineties and it refers to both musical genre, subcultural —snježana milivojević, the nationalization of everyday life (nacionalizacija svakidašnjice), in: “serbian side of war” (“srpska strana rata”), samizdat b92, belgrade 2002, p. 230. style and, in a wider context, a worldview. ‘turbo-folk’ is a neologism created from two words: the word ‘turbo,’ which originally comes from the world of automobiles, where it signifies the type of cars whose motors’ power had been improved by a special turbine, turbo, turbo-diesel and turbo diesel injection cars, and the word ‘folk,’ which stands for the popular, people’s or folk music. [2] figuratively, ‘turbo’ referred to a challenge, speed, fearlessness and participation in the upcoming, fashionable trends, ascribed to turbo-folk artists and audience, while ‘folk’ signified that ‘turbo-folk’ represents one of the genres of serbian popular, folk music. popular music in 1990s serbia comprised three musical genres: ‘newly composed’ or new folk music, turbo-folk and dance, the last two being newly discovered and developed genres in the beginning of the ’90s. ‘newly composed’ or new folk music, [3] which achieved an enormous popularity in the ‘second,’ ex-yugoslavia since the early ’60s, is the predecessor of turbo-folk music. new folk music hybridly combined the influence of traditional serbian folk music melodies with many predominantly recent musical influences, from greek and turkish traditional and popular music, gypsy music, russian and hungarian romances, to western pop music and sometimes (particularly in the ’80s) of a rock-n-roll and disco sound. at the beginning of nineties, however, a large part of the new folk music is transformed into a much different sound: into a fusion of the folk musical matrix [4] and rap, hip-hop and dance of american and west-european artists, and even with a house and techno music. the third one among these genres of the new serbian ’90s music is the genre of dance, which is, just like turbo-folk, the exclusive invention of the 1990s. musical sources of serbian dance were pop-dance and r’n’b hits from all over the world, disco, techno, commercial rap and hip-hop. why is this domestic genre similar to allen typewritten text © 2004 ivana kronja all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 104 ivana kronja the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 turbo-folk music? the answer lies in their similar production and distribution techniques. the way in which turbo-folk accomplished a monopoly and a domination in all serbian mass-media since the beginning of ’90s served as a model for promotion of serbian dance. the hyper-production of turbo-folk cds and music videos, with very slight differences among the music and looks of its numerous singers, at the monopolized semi-private tv stations, controlled by the regime, inspired the managers of turbo-folk to create yet another commercial genre and produce a huge number of very successful, although unauthentic, dance hits for the local audience. a curiosity regarding dance music is that it existed almost exclusively within the medium of television, in numerous tv shows at tv pink and at tv and radio košava, whose owner was marija milošević, the president’s daughter. if tv pink was to establish the so-called ‘pink culture’ and worldview, based on sound, iconography and promotion of turbo-folk music, together with ruling politicians, ‘businessmen,’ fortune-tellers and similar regime promoters who participated in all tv pink entertainment programmes, radio and tv košava was to establish the accompanying ‘world’ and genre of serbian dance, which promoted similar values but with a more ‘contemporary’ ‘touch.’ turbo-folk and dance music had many more similarities than differences. therefore, those who were not fond of these genres considered serbian dance a ‘turbo-folk’ sound without ‘turbo.’ this was supposed to mean that, while turbo-folk combined dance and techno rhythms with a way of singing that originated from ‘newly composed’ or new folk music, a corrupted version of the oriental way of singing, called ‘thriller’ (in turkey, this characteristic kind of singing is called ‘arabesque’), dance used the same rhythms which were followed by a ‘normal’ way of singing, like the one in pop music. similar media promotion, iconography and system of values, and the fact that dance, being only a copy of western dance music, as well as, in a large part, a copy of the powerful style and music of turbofolk, never had the same persistent influence to serbian culture and life-style during the nineties, defining the ‘fashionable culture’ of dance only as an inferior branch of the phenomenon of turbo-folk. media, politics and instrumentalization of popular culture as in the more developed western countries, the former federal republic of yugoslavia experienced a growth of significance of both consumerism as a life-style and influence of mass-media during the 1980s. the process of transformation of a ‘mild communist’ country such as yugoslavia into a mass-culture society and a society where mass-media, particularly television become the key factor of political, family and social life [5] was, however, finalized at the point of break and civil war in ex-yugoslavia, at the beginning of the ’90s. during and after the breakdown of the former f.r. of yugoslavia, politicians of the nationalist option in serbia, croatia and bosnia and their ruling parties, elected at the first democratic elections as a result of merciless nationalist media propaganda and monopolization of media space, now (unlike tito) used mass-media, particularly television as the most powerful one, for a total disintegration of the idea of ‘brotherhood and unity’ once cultivated in former yugoslavia, and for the spread of national and religious hatred, intolerance, violence, war and fear. ‘newly-composed’ nationalist warrior folk music, with similar melodies but opposite lyrics of hatred (on all three sides), and local popular culture which represented the paradoxical fusion of national-chauvinism and provincialism with ‘beauties of consumerism’ and war-profiteering economy, fulfilled the picture and prevailing system of values of those troubled times. generally speaking, dominant popular culture in croatia had its expression in croatian dance music and ‘petit-bourgeois,’ neo-conservative patriotic songs, while its rough version spread among the majority of ordinary people included war-songs of hatred (in quasi-traditional style, with modern lyrics); [6] in bosnia, bosnian muslim forces also cultivated nationalist songs of hatred and religious songs of the islamic ‘holy war,’ ‘džihad,’ while entertainment scene in the region was marked by a pop-folk music very similar to new folk music and to serbian turbo-folk, with love lyrics that celebrated both patriarchalism and eroticism and melodies that contained strong arabic and turkish influences. at the same time, with the help of mass-media turbofolk became the dominant cultural pattern in serbia. in the first half of the 1990s, it took the shape of the nationalpatriotic, ‘newly composed’ ‘warrior’ culture and folk entertainment cultivated by tv palma, a populist tv station established in 1991 which was the first one to specialise as a ‘music television.’ still, the nationalist warrior songs could not penetrate too much into the official television programmes, since milošević denied the official participation of serbia in civil war in croatia, presenting the situation in the news as a spontaneous rebellion of croatian serbs, ‘our brothers,’ who experienced croatian nationalists’ political oppression. it did not stop him, though, from mobilizing a huge number of young serbs, not rarely taken almost by force by military representatives from their homes to be mobilized into still-called yugoslav army forces and fight for milošević’s state interests in croatia and later in bosnia. this partial official media censorship did not make serbian warrior songs of hatred less influential. the nationalist hysteria and warrior-enthusiastic moods were spread throughout the country and in turbo folk and dance music in 1990s serbia 105 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 the war-field, achieving an enormous sell on pirate audiocassettes and an outrageous promotion on new patriotic radio-stations, such as “radio-pride” (“radio-ponos”) from belgrade. [7] a very good analysis of the war-patriotic songs during 1990s civil ex-yugoslavian war is given by croatian journalist ivo žanić in his significant study “a deceived history” (“prevarena povijest,” durieux, zagreb, 1998). žanić is studiously following the history of serbian folk singers on a traditional musical instrument called ‘gusle,’ how it has become a sort of a show-business in its ‘newlycomposed’ version, how the cult of ‘hajduci,’ the outlaw serbian army which fought against turks until the 19th century, was spread and kept in folk culture until the 1990s and how it was manipulated and used as a speech of hatred and nationalist propaganda during the war in croatia and bosnia and herzegovina in 1990–1995. [8] the largest part of broadcast programme at tv palma, also called “serbian mtv” (being actually a sort of a comical counterpart of a famous “mtv” channel) in the first half of the nineties was given to music videos of the ‘newly composed’ folk music and turbo-folk music. the first music videos at “tv palma” (it also broadcast some of the old, rudimentary music videos, song performances in a tv-studio, produced in the ’80s by rts [9]) had a modest, technologically old-fashioned, naive and kitsch quality, as well as the music produced. production managers at tv palma did not care much for the quality: they were producing thousands of music videos and taking money from any anonymous talented or non-talented villager or city inhabitant who wanted to become a star for her or his tv-presentation. the musical hyper-production flourished, fulfilling both the need for escapist contents by impoverished, isolated, oppressed and manipulated serbian people suffering from the neighbouring civil wars, and the drive for enrichment of regime-controlled media and music producers of turbo-folk. [10] radio-pink, a populist radio-station which enthusiastically promoted the new folk music and turbo-folk sound for 24 hours, preceded the establishment of tv pink in 1994. financially superior to tv palma and all other television stations, tv pink, an omnipresent media giant which monopolized the media space being under financial and political patronage (and most probably ownership, at least in the first years of this tv station’s existence) of mirjana marković, spouse of slobodan milošević, and her party, jul (yugoslavian left), one of the two cooperating ruling parties in the country, [11] overtook the primacy in tv entertainment and turbofolk music production. the ‘carefree’ contents of tv pink were, in fact, highly ideologically shaped, promoting the above mentioned new serbian elite and its problematic values of war-profiteering, national-chauvinism, crime and violence, politics of robbery and oppression and pornographic sexuality. tv pink both produced turbo-folk music by its own music production company “city records,” and advertised it in its various entertainment music shows, together with music produced by two other ‘private’ music production companies “zam—entertainment for millions” and “grand production,” which together with tv pink had a monopoly for this ultra-commercial music branch production. no music alternative was offered to the audience. politically subversive and critical rock and pop music did not have any opportunity to be seen and heard at this mainstream popular culture promotion channel of the milošević regime. only the trash, kitsch but very ‘glamorous’ aesthetics of tv pink, characterized by a ‘pink’ view point, which included the dominant ideology of the regime and life similar to the one in music videos was pronounced. the political perspective of tv pink, as well as of the whole 1990s regime, was not clearly defined. it produced chaos more then a coherent economic and political system, in a process typical of all transitional countries of the former eastern bloc. the old financial system, controlled by the state, was destroyed, as well as the legal state and the rule of the law, and both state property, ‘social’ or ‘common’ property [12] and the new, private property co-existed, all of them controlled by highest officials of milošević’s authoritarian regime and of course his family. [13] therefore tv pink promoted both consumption of western goods and wealth as a life-style of local nouveaux riches, and political populism and nationalism, present in all its entertainers’ and speakers’ and presenters’ rhetorics. this was done in order to justify the illegal and violent enrichment of the mafiocratic serbian oligarchy as necessary, presenting them as ‘patriots,’ while ordinary people’s misery was explained as due to ‘corrupted western politics against serbia’ and ‘domestic traitors’ (oppositional politicians, journalists and intellectuals). the karić brothers, one of the most powerful families who enriched themselves serving milošević and using a monopoly on various economic businesses (some of them illegal) under the protection of his regime, established their own ‘private’ tv station, bk tv, which combined yuppie-styling of its news presenters with populist and kitschy nationalist rhetorics that promoted sentimental iconography and propaganda of orthodoxy and serbian orthodox church as the main backing of serbian people (in fact, a significant part of this church more represented a backing for milošević regime, believing its nationalist rhetorics.) but the most powerful tool tv pink used to support the regime was not direct political propaganda, but production of the entertainment programmes of an instantly recognizable style (style of clothes and total looks, of behaviour and of the studio) that glamorized and promoted the powerful criminal elite. 106 ivana kronja the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 eric gordy, american sociologist and the author of the prominent book the culture of power in serbia, explains the situation in serbia under the milošević regime as a constant destruction of the political, media and musical alternatives. “the story of changing of serbian musical scene during the war is actually the story of marginalization of popular cultures /such as rock culture/ and of popularization and instrumentalisation of marginal cultures” [14] /such as criminal, ‘warrior chic’ subculture/. social conditions for the development of turbo-folk and dance music the social conditions under which the success and massconsumption of turbo-folk and dance music was accomplished were the situation of disintegration and isolation of serbian /yugoslavian society, civil war, economic clash, poverty, fear, rule of force and violence, and nato bombing in 1999. the situation caused an enormous number of war victims and refugees, breakdown of social position and economic status of whole families and individuals, national currency hyperinflation and mass-unemployment, inadequate health care, pain and suffering for the majority of serbian and montenegrin population. [15] the regime used any available means to enlarge its wealth and influence and keep authoritarian control of the country and its citizens. it consciously produced national currency hyperinflation and a black market economy, in which the milošević family (his wife mira, son marko, and daughter marija) and their closest collaborators controlled all the major sources of income in the country, such as the trade of oil and tobacco, the trade in all massimported goods, medical supplies, the banking system, [16] and finally the mass-media. all these activities were black-marketed due to economic sanctions, strictly monopolized and coordinated with criminal bosses who worked for the regime, some of them being the leaders of paramilitary formations (such as željko ražnatovićarkan), as well as with other cooperating politicians, such as vojislav šešelj, leader of the serbian radical party, radovan karadžić, serbian political leader in bosnia, and milo đukanović, president of the republic of montenegro. state funds and political power were usurped to such a degree that the borderline between this regime’s state rule and organized crime was very slight, and sometimes nonexistent. “in order to prevent social revolt, government intentionally stimulated the so-called ‘grey economy’: black market, smuggling, street peddlers, etc.… as a result, ‘grey economy’ proved to be a good shock-absorber of social discontents. but it resulted in the decay of moral values and other objective social values. honesty became a vice, and dishonesty a virtue and a basic condition for surviving.” [17] these seriously disturbed social conditions then produced the flourishing of militant youth subcultures, much different from their 1980s predecessors: “as the sociologist of culture ratka marić puts it, the place of politically subversive and socially conscious urban youth music subcultures of serbia in the 1980s has been taken over by ‘new debutants.’ … the violent social environment, war, poverty, and decay of moral values define the narrowed horizon of the world of warrior chic subcultures and the similar world of turbo-folk music: they are characterized by the atmosphere of temporary, ‘fast’ and ‘dangerous’ life, if not on the other side of the law, then at least within the musical subculture of turbo-folk which glorifies all the symbols of crime and violence.” [18] a certain parallel in reaction to circumstances of war among youth subcultures can be found in croatia, where “soccer fans, punkers, speed metal followers and others brought their own aesthetics directly to the war zone and significantly contributed to the image creation of a croatian soldier in the first phase of war, as the ‘urban warrior.’” [19] and here turbo-folk enters the stage: these new militant subcultures of criminal youth, drug-dealers, war-veterans, thugs, ‘dieselmen’ (macho guys in diesel jeans, wearing large golden chains and tracksuits), ‘sponsored girls’, [20] and other desperate youngsters, were the main protagonists and the audience for production and consumption of turbo-folk sound, as, for them, a perfectly suitable combination of nationalist ideas, due to its national folk musical origins, and aggressive, macho and criminal attitudes, found in rap and hip-hop rhythm and its visual presentation. all these subcultures shared a common worldview, lifestyle, gender roles and iconography, and are therefore considered under a common name of “warrior chic subcultures.” the warrior chic serbian youth subcultures shared similar “warrior chic” style and iconography, based on specific gender roles and structure of sensibility. these symbols were then included into a mass-culture spectacle and also widely accepted among a subculturally ‘neutral’ audience. the production of spectacle: style, lyrics and structure of sensibility in the turbo-folk and dance era how did turbo-folk and dance music producers fulfill the above-mentioned aims of keeping the order and ideology of the milošević regime? they produced a massive, overwhelming spectacle which included intended ideological messages into style, iconography and visual presentation of turbo-folk music, as well as into its lyrics. in the first half of the nineties the process of appropriation and mainstreaming of these militant youth and criminal subcultures by the regime-controlled media took place, and the iconography and style of these warrior chic subcultures turbo folk and dance music in 1990s serbia 107 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 were included in the iconography of turbo-folk and dance music as a basic element, giving a sort of cultural background, moral excuse and spectacular promotion to the new, war-profiteering ruling class in serbia and montenegro. the main channel of promotion of the turbo-folk and dance image, which contributed to the creation and establishment of turbo-folk style as a dominant mass culture and popular culture style in serbian media during the 1990s, was the music video. erotically provocative photographs of turbo-folk female stars in magazines and the tabloid press, as well as all the entertainment tv-shows, many of them going ‘live,’ also established and celebrated the style which was widely accepted and imitated among serbian youth but also among representatives of the new ‘business’ class and ruling politicians. style “spectacle is a continuous discourse of the ruling order about itself, its uninterrupted monologue of self-praise, a self-portrait of the order in the phase of its complete domination in all the aspects of life.” [21] the rapid development of music video aesthetics in serbia during the 1990s happened when people in power noticed an incredible financial and manipulative potential and gave it a massive financial and media support. thanks to this new funding, the managers of turbo-folk music could employ the professionals with a good knowledge of culture, cinema, fine arts, technology, fashion and design who would enable turbo-folk to give up its previous local ‘newly composed’ style in favour of a contemporary, luxurious, cosmopolitan image. the authors of these progressive music videos (among whom the leading ones were s.ž. zli, a graduated director of photography and a former alternative rock-photographer, and dejan milićević, fashion photographer and stylist) gave the new visual identity to turbo-folk and dance music and its stars consolidating it as a first-rate urban phenomenon and dominant serbian mainstream popular culture. in the middle of ’90s zli included numerous aesthetic innovations into the language of domestic music videos: a highly dynamic editing, an interesting story, continual camera movements and a combined use of color and black-andwhite picture, also introducing rock iconography—black leather and motorcycles, sports cars, violence and aggressive eroticism. on the other hand, milićević dresses ‘folkdivas’ into hollywoodian dresses, applying a soft-focused camera lens and a make-up and hairstyle like those seen in most contemporary fashion magazines. while zli, with his prodigious talent for moving photography, marked the turning-point in transformation of street warrior chic subcultures and local folk singers, such as ceca veličković (later ražnatović) and dragana mirković, into dominant urban mainstream, creating the symbolic mass-culture match of the social process of establishment of the new ruling, war-profiteering class, [22] the glamorous, imitative style of music videos, trailers and promo-photographs of turbo-folk and dance stars created by dejan milićević gave the main visual identity to the leading promoter of fashionable ‘pink culture,’ tv pink in the other half of the nineties, as well as to ‘fashionable culture’ of serbian dance. zli also successfully formed the aggressive macho-image of the most profitable domestic pop-dance band, “moby dick.” the iconography of tv pink, created by milićević, also included and corrupted elements of style belonging to the serbian techno and ‘rave’ scene. serbian rave subculture, related to many sub-genres of techno music (techno, techno-trance, goa, goa-trance, etc.), was particularly vivid in belgrade during the other half of the ’90s, and it strictly belonged to independent, peace-making urban youth subcultures opposed to the regime (together with listeners of rock music), which continued the tradition of subversive ’80s youth urban subcultures even if their influence had been marginalized and reduced by the official mass-media. still, since it was a brand-new, fashionable subculture, preoccupied largely by a ‘happy narcissism’ and fascination with style and extraordinary ‘styling’ of its protagonists, the iconography of techno-scene was also successfully recycled and included into tv pink iconography and the iconography and visual style of serbian dance. it had been done as a part of typical turbo-folk strategies, to conquer, subordinate and include into itself all other urban subcultural styles, particularly those ones whose style had a powerful symbolic subversive potential, unlike the imitative turbo-folk and dance style, which firstly belonged to people from villages and suburbs, therefore frustrated by their own ‘non-urban,’ modest origins. it also freely used all possible visual sources of contemporary western pop-iconography, which was easy to do thanks to the country’s isolation. [23] following this pattern, dejan milićević very creatively carried out the transformation of the famous turbo-folk singer ivan into a fictitious protagonist of the serbian techno-pop music and rave scene in his music videos for the cd “i wanna dance with you” (“hoću s’ tobom da đuskam”), ivan gavrilović, 1996. in spite of all, these music videos remain among the highest achievements in serbian music videos’ aesthetics during the ’90s and in the expression of spirit of techno music and rave subculture. the dancing the way of dancing also expresses the ‘hybrid’ nature of turbo-folk and dance music and style. turbo-folk female singers in solo performance combine western techno and disco-dancing with dancing with oriental motifs—hold108 ivana kronja the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 ing their arms up and ‘twisting’ them, and even with the elements of belly-dancing. similar, but more reduced choreography is applied by turbo-folk male singers. still the most important accent in female singers’ dancing is stressing their erotic qualities, very often in a way which is too provocative and vulgar. this intention to ‘arouse’ and seduce the audience is more important then the dancing itself. if it is a group performance of several singers in the studio, as for example in new year’s eve tv show-programmes, then dancing to turbo-folk and new folk music may often include the serbian national folk dance, the kolo. serbian dance music is related to western techno and disco-dancing, but sometimes it can also include a little bit of the ‘arms twisting’ as an echo of orientalism, particularly when the very music combines western disco-technohouse music with some oriental melody. together with turbo-folk the ‘newly-composed’ or new folk music is also consumed, its way of dancing closer to national folk dancing with some oriental ‘twisting’ than to western discodancing. still, some modern singers of new folk music at the end of ’80s who later turned into turbo-folk stars, like a very popular singer dragana mirković, preferred the western way of pop or disco-dancing to traditional serbian folk dance. at the end of the nineties, both turbo-folk, pop-folk and dance singers and bends are almost regularly followed by a group of, most often, all-female and allmale dancers, and also sometimes mixed dancers, whose choreography represents an effective fusion of postmodern dance, erotic dancing, disco-funky and break-dancing, and some elements of oriental and local folk dancing in their tv and live performances at concerts. structure of sensibility the messages of turbo folk style are best described by a specific structure of sensibility that was formed during the domination of turbo-folk in the ’90s. this sensibility is in compliance with the values that a turbo-folk protagonist praises: tolerance toward criminal activities and involvement in them; agreement with war actions; the idea that the end justifies the means; expressing status by means of money, expensive cars and exclusive clothes; considering women just as sex objects and status trophies; and displaying uncritical delight towards fashion and consumption of western goods and towards the turbo-folk scene itself. civil values are looked down on with a feeling of superiority (education, respect for the law, morality and peaceful life are at the very bottom of this cultural model). this system of values is not surprising when it is remembered that turbo-folk functions as a product of the connection between show-business, politics and a criminal mafia during the ten years of war. the structure of sensibility which is the result of these values includes also the militant attitude, aggressiveness, vulgar eroticism, uncritical feeling of superiority (something like “i am ok you are not ok” from transactional analysis [24]), the desire for war challenges and dangers; and among women also for being well-evaluated by the others (men and other female ‘competitors’) as sex objects and goods. the desirable woman of turbo-folk culture takes all her energy from the acknowledgement that she receives from militant men and from her passionate surrendering to the position of dependence. the paradigmatic couple for this kind of relationship during the nineties were željko ražnatović-arkan (‘businessman’ and war criminal) and turbo-folk singer ceca, who, thanks to media propaganda, paradoxically stood for her audience both for a desirable sex-object and an exemplary ‘serbian mother’ and wife of a ‘patriot,’ a symbolic ‘mother of the nation.’ [25] these values and feelings can be best noticed in video clips which were the main visual representative of neofolk culture. in the era of turbo-folk music, drugs, murders, weapons, body-guards, luxury and ‘femmes fatales’ are among the main motifs of music videos. they express a new violent sensibility of the nineties. besides, the prime importance which turbo-folk attaches to the visual presentation and appearance speaks about its own strongly expressed narcissism. narcissism is defined as love towards one’s own picture, as self-love, falling in love with oneself. the name comes from the mythic character narcissus who was condemned to look at his reflection in the water for the rest of his life because he refused the love of nymph echo. sigmund freud used the term “narcissism” to mark all the manifestations that relate to investing sexual potential towards one’s own body. the failure in overcoming this early auto-erotic model leads to psychopathology. outside of psychopathology (in which it reflects psychosis, and especially schizophrenia), this term is used to signify certain ideological cultural and moral orientations which are marked with a strong narcissistic component. many prominent theoreticians understand narcissism as one of the main characteristics of contemporary culture and civilization, amongst others christopher lash, the author of the fundamental study “narcissistic culture” (1979). dr jovan rašković, a prominent serbian neuropsychiatrist, writes in his notorious study about the social dimension of narcissism, “narcissism” (1988) the following: “the modern society gave plenty of evidence for solid links between narcissism and the system of values. total communication, control of information and high publicity of mass media enables the narcissistic group of a very high level of expression. fame was never so easily sold as it is in the modern society. it is easy for a narcissistic person to appear on the cover of newspapers, magazines and in other forms of communication. auditorium is easily obtained. group narcissism is not just easing of maniputurbo folk and dance music in 1990s serbia 109 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 lation but it is also a removal of anxiety and fear. the weak ones in narcissistic group become strong, and the uncertain gain the feeling of higher level of value, while the unsettled ones become more relaxed.” [26] modern narcissism cannot exist without aggressiveness, and that is why it always needs an ideology. the narcissi from the myth is introvert, gentle, lonely, with no connection to life, while today’s social narcissi is “real, very direct, violent, keeps his feet on the ground and is strongly connected to life,” [27] concludes jovan rašković. this kind of interpretation of narcissism explains why members of turbo-folk (sub) culture are fascinated with force and violence. the obsession with ‘perfect’ looks (by the criteria established by mass-media from the west and in the country, particularly by tv pink) led to a trend of violent changes of one person’s own looks by the means of plastic surgeries (of nose, eyes, mouth and breast). turbofolk singers compete to see which one will implant silicone breasts first, thinking of it as a question of prestige and a way to sell a music cd and gain a show in well-paid disco-clubs. since the end of the nineties the bodies of ceca ražnatović and jelena karleuša have been leading as sex-symbols and trade-marks of turbo-folk style. their erotically aggressive images embody a specific ‘rhetorics of power.’ for example, the style of karleuša expresses a sort of mannerism of turbo-folk style, a combination of a ‘sponsored girl’ and a techno and gay-icon. her aggressive looks consists of wearing mini-outfits made of artificial leather and techno materials tight close to the body, underwear, high heels, overstressed breasts, artificial nails and vulgar make-up in a ‘vamp’ style. marina blagojević, a significant serbian sociologist, describes karleuša’s paradoxical image in the following way: “with j. karleuša ends the succession of creating image which destructs everything in front of its self. j. karleuša is not natural, nor is that her goal, because she has become more natural than the nature itself; she created herself and for that she needed no nature, no talent, no luck, but just the power to create herself.” [28] lyrics for the structure of sensibility of turbo-folk music, the lyrics are very significant. they underline the importance of the protagonist’s feelings—the masochism which includes self pity. the fact that masochism temporarily eases the individual’s conscience by freeing him or her from responsibility for his or her own life (“i am powerless”) probably explains why the authors and auditorium of folk and turbofolk music, as well as of the mass-culture in general, are so much attracted to the expression of masochism. women’s masochism is present in all great hits of the main neo folk star ceca raznatović. the lyrics of the song “the dead sea” go like this: “i sank a hundred times because of you / and a hundred times i washed up on a cliff / and i missed everything due to the beauty of that pain/ now i don’t have you any more / refrain: my life is a dead sea / without even one wave / only memories stay afloat following the trace of the old ads / you remained and will always be my guiding star / while my heart is fighting to get some sleep as if it were an old nanny. “ we can see the perfect explanation of why the heroine of the song gives herself in to masochism—she sees the beauty in the pain. this is the culmination of masochism connected with self-destruction. the heroine does not find any other meaning in life except to worship the man whom she (as it seems) loves no matter how he treats her, whether he loves her or neglects her. this kind of female masochism is really hard to understand unless we see it as a metaphor of woman’s giving in to her partner (where masochism would result in an orgasm), which is only one of its many meanings. it would be unfair not to notice that ceca’s position becomes perfectly erotic and not at all unattractive if seen in this context. but this is not the case with all her songs. most of them do not offer such subtle erotic metaphors of masochism, but include a masochism which is trivial and connected with militant ideas, for example in the song “if you were wounded”: “i would tie my desiring hands in a knot / before i let any other devil’s man hug and kiss them / i would sleep on doorsteps as a dog / through centuries i would burn for us / if you were wounded i would give you blood / both of my eyes if you were blind / but with no hope, without a soul you are ice.” next to women’s masochism stands the men’s masochism, which is connected with the idea of loss and death. a masochistic man still loves his fatal woman that left him, usually for another man: “light candles for me as if i were gone / as the soul of mine is long hers / my heart cracked as if it were made of glass / the path to her lips is a shortcut to hell-” (džej ramadanovski) the song “evil woman” from another singer gets its title after a very popular latin american ‘soap-opera’ tv series of the same name. “you evil woman, you live on my sadness / you are the same as all the others / you evil woman, i gave you my whole life / and i regret that i met you.” especially interesting is the case of a famous serbian new folk singer miroslav ilić, who cries over the masochism of his beloved, understanding the mentality of the balkans and its cultural necessities (men’s patriarchal domination) in his famous old song “to you, my faithful friend”: “to you who waits for me patiently throughout these long nights / to you who sits alone when i’m with another woman / to you, my faithful friend, my happiness, my 110 ivana kronja the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 sadness / to you i’ll give my crazy heart / i gave away everything / i have nothing else to give you.” still a man’s masochism fascinates us less than a woman’s—here we naturally come to feminism taking the shortcut. while the folk lyrics mostly express masochism as the characteristic of sensibility, the lyrics of dance songs describe aggressiveness, repression, machoism, jealousy and murderous moods: “tonight, that made me sin, baby / i killed a man for you / where will you go now when he was your friend / i don’t know what happened to make you go in to the darkness with him when you know it is easy for me to drag a gun for such a shame / boom boom bang, straight to the heart / boom boom bang, it should hurt you as it hurt me.” (pop-dance band “moby dick”) “musical police is a necessary thing—in every city to remove the damage / musical patrol to create the order / and compose some other sequence.” (pop-dance all-girls band “the models”) in the song “30 days” performed by a dance music duo called “twins,” the protagonist, i.e., the singer, is sorry because he wouldn’t be able to be with his girlfriend for thirty days and nights (i.e., because he wouldn’t be able to control whom is she sleeping with), whilst the jail punishment doesn’t worry him at all. “it is not hard for me because of thirty days but because my girl is sleeping alone / it is not hard for me because of thirty nights but because my girl is not coming to me.” military vocabulary and the system of values based on violence also penetrated into love lyrics of dance music from croatia, like the war song “friday” by vlatka pokos and the great hit “i am dying” by a very successful popdance band “magazin”: “when will the friday come, so i can see you, see you again / oh, you are like a bullet which i long for, i long for it” (vlatka pokos) “i am dying for you, my love / like a soldier on a night guard / like a man who is seeking happiness / i am dying for you / and i am only anxious about one thing / as i will admit everything to myself / when the memories kill me” (magazin) the lyrics of serbian dance music also include women’s masochism. it is found in love songs, in which a female singer is a sad love victim, used and abandoned by heartless men: “i was one in a hundred / i gave you my heart / you gave me pain / but i longed for love / and forgave you everything.” (leontina) “believe me, i would give you everything for one trace of your love / but that is not much / as you are never going to be mine.” (funky g) “why are my tears flowing now when you betrayed me / you took away the last trace of happiness / and all of my dreams, oh!” (energie) “only once is not enough / i feel moody / only once is not enough / for you to kiss me and touch me.” (focus) “each and every letter of your name hurts me / you are beside her and sadness is beside me / nothing new / when i become just a number on a wall / you should have in mind / that my tears your soul will be charged for.” (lidija) gender roles and male-female style the warrior chic subcultural style, soon after its appearance also incorporated into turbo-folk media style, implies different variations of male–female style, just like every other subcultural style. this male–female style is in compliance with previously clearly determined roles that male and female protagonists have in the turbo-folk subculture. woman is just a desirable object and goods. she is supposed to attract a man by her looks and to thrill him; her appearance has the aim of confirming the status of the man who has her around him, or to represent a potential status symbol in the man’s absence. the female looks in this subculture and later mainstream popular culture expresses the fascination with wealth and consuming—as a life style, and it consists of the evening dresses, tight black outfit, fashion designer’s clothes and worldwide spread logos, expensive shoes and jewelry or, in a more modest version of the style, sparkling kitsch outfits. at the very end of the 20th century (1999–2000), these looks also included silicon breast augmentation and effects of plastic surgery interventions, as the latest ‘hit,’ with the aim of gaining the ‘most perfect’ looks. this fashion was constantly present on television and it was followed by an incredible number of mostly young women, who by watching television hold the illusion of the ease of gaining rapid fame and status via sexy and ‘perfect’ looks, an idea they accept since they have no better identification model. this expresses another desire of a turbo-folk woman connected with her narcissism, that the other women shall admire and envy her, as a successful object that was well ‘sold.’ the man is supposed to leave an impression of a dangerous, robust male. he is a macho guy who drives an expensive fast car, has a mobile phone and, if necessary, can also carry a gun. he wears black and dark grey suits, black leather or the most expensive sportswear with a foreign trademark. his main preoccupation and his system of values are based on money, no matter how gained. he is a criminal or a so-called “businessman,” that is a tradesman or an entrepreneur who fits into the corrupted and monopolized grey and black economy controlled by the higher circles of the serbian political elite in the ’90s. women are there for him so that he can ‘spend’ them, or be fascinated by their vamp looks. he appreciates women who fought for their position in his circles thanks to their turbo folk and dance music in 1990s serbia 111 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 provocative looks and relationships with powerful men. since he doesn’t like any commitments, or any other sort of emotional intimacy, he chooses women easily approachable, but is thrilled by the ones that aren’t within his reach. in the woman he chooses for his life partner—and mostly he praises folk singers—he adores his own strength and power. drugs also stand for a status symbol of neofolk scene, as they naturally follow the world of criminal and show business. drugs are attractive as a new and tempting, expensive amusement; they are consumed to smash the boredom, fulfill the time of idleness, and also to reduce the tension, a result of stress which protagonists of the criminal world face all the time, aware of different life dangers. but it is also a ruinous follower of that life-style. as in the case of the newly composed style where the looks of a show-business star is this style’s culmination, and the ‘boors’ make its modest, street version, so does the described warrior chic represent the culmination of this style, which also has many elements of a street subculture. the street version of style during the ’90s implied cheap imitations of foreign trademarks and of local show-business stars’ looks. girls wore tight shirts and trousers, mostly black, they had long dyed hair, high-heeled shoes made of cheap materials (plastic, artificial leather), a strong make-up (the eyes and mouth often framed with black crayon), the “wonder-bra” is unavoidable—for pushing up and enlarging the bust, and it can easily be seen under short micro shirts: the logics of turbo folk demands that breast and body are in the foreground, as if a woman says: ‘here you are.’ the men’s version of the street style copies the luxurious criminal and business looks with the help of cheaper clothes: suits and black shoes or jeans are worn, just like shirts and sport shoes. the macho and criminal elements of the outfit are stressed, for example black sun-glasses, eye-catching leather belts, golden chains with a cross and similar; a mobile phone is the logo. even though stratification in style is present, the system of values remains the same. in order to be established as a woman and to confirm her female identity, a girl who wants to be a part of this subculture has to accept the role model. a young man also should accept this aggressive role model in order to confirm his masculinity. both men and women in this system stay deprived from emotions. the clear prostitution and commodification of women as a basic characteristic of the warrior chic style is supported by poverty, war, criminal expansion, the strengthening of persistent patriarchy, and also by the direct influence of western mass culture products where the woman is presented as a sex object. the prostitution of women is sometimes indirect or hidden, known as the phenomenon of ‘sponsored girls,’ while modeling can easily be the screen behind which procuring is hidden. the position of women within this subculture is precisely described in the lyrics of the song “bumble-bee,” performed by a dance singer, lina. the myth about a rich boyfriend, handsome as arkan’s football players (arkan himself was in his life time an ideal and standard of a handsome and attractive man in our society), whom all the girls watching tv pink dream of, here gets more realistic tones: “i went out that evening / i was alone and looking for my friends in a disco club / somewhere out of the dark he approached to me / with a tie around his neck, fat as an elephant / he told me he would like to take me across the pond / but first in the booth / when we sat down he asked me what i would like to drink / i saw it’s gonna go bad / when his hand started touching my waist / i understood it all and i was sick / bumble-bee, who wants a bumble-bee / full of cash, bumble-bee / i don’t need any / bumble-bee, who wants a bumble-bee / full of cash, bumble-bee / fat and old! this is one of the rare songs that openly criticize the sexual order in turbo-folk subculture, which is relevant even if you suspect that the lyrics are sincere. the song describes a fat, rich ‘bumble-bee’—a new serbian businessman, the successor of the powerful communist company directors, the so-called ‘lamb brigades’, [29] while searching for a young candidate for his own “sponsored girl.’ he wishes to posses her, pay for her drinks and maybe clothes, and that is the only thing their relationship should be based on, observing from this rigid warrior chic protagonist’s point of view. the video clip for this song [30] includes a new item (beside the ‘stupid’ fat, rich man with golden chain and mobile phone and besides lina, who revolts coquettishly— and the point of it is to be obstinate and so more attractive): a young man of model looks with long hair appears half naked in the video, while she pats him and talks to him. his looks are a combination of a macho style, strong body and feminine beauty. he is the sign of a hidden gay culture, imported from the west, whose influence can be noticed in turbo folk and dance video clips, commercials, fashion photography, magazines and tv announcements at tv pink. [31] this influence was particularly present in pink products created by milićević. although the scene is marked by an omnipresent masculine identity of the warrior cult, young feminized gay men are also present at the turbo-folk subcultural scene in some numbers, confirming again its hypocrisy. these young men are usually working in serbian fashion and show-business, while some of them only ‘hang around,’ wishing to attract some wealthy and powerful sponsors by their beauty. maybe the extreme crime—macho style needs no more a woman, who is anyway reduced to an object, to be used so that a man can prove his power and satisfy his needs. 112 ivana kronja the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 this unofficial, but recognizable tolerance of men’s homosexuality, [32] if it is working for the system, is one of perverted strategies of tv pink and other media managers of the milošević regime, which consciously produced all variations of representation of sexuality and commodification of erotic desire, together with the illusion of ‘belonging to the big world’ and simulation of all kinds of freedom, creating confusion and contradictory messages as an effective way of keeping power. conclusion starting from a street subculture of deprived and violent youth, turbo-folk developed into a mainstream pop culture which sophisticatedly promoted militant, criminal and immoral values of the regime, making them a part of the entertainment. tv pink completed the process of glamorization of the society of poverty, creating a ‘pink culture’ as a permanent spectacle of milošević’s power, based on a picture of glamour, eroticism, wealth and consumption which was framed by a nationalist, rigidly patriarchal and authoritarian ideology. the hyper-productive music and entertainment industry of turbo-folk, followed since 1994 by a similar and unauthentic genre of dance, their lyrics and style, represented a powerful machine for shaping the reality and promoting the political power and economic strategies which destroyed the country and impoverished its citizens, while at the same time consolidated the authoritarian rule and personal enrichment of slobodan milošević, his family and his closest collaborators, from war-criminals to media magnates. these musical genres also embodied a fascinating solution to the identity crisis of serbian society in troubled, criminalized transitional circumstances, by creating a controversial combination of different influences and ideologies in its hybrid music, way of dancing and visual representation: of its local, traditional serbian national characteristics, oriental and ultra-modern western influences. after the 5 october 2000 and the fall of milošević’s regime, with a short break in broadcasting tv pink continued its work, with changes in editorial politics of the news (now promoting new, democratic politicians in power) and very slight changes in its style towards a milder version of turbo-folk, folk-pop and pop-dance music. the tv pink satellite programme, which resembles the notorious heritage of the nineties, with fortune-teller shows and more aggressive turbo-folk sound, is extremely popular throughout serbia and montenegro and among serbs abroad, but also in bulgaria, macedonia, bosnia and even croatia. tv palma is regularly broadcasting music videos from the ’90s. tabloid magazines remain a persistent channel for the promotion of turbo-folk singers, stripteasettes and tough guys from sports and business (not completely separated from the criminal underground), as well as nationalist political rhetorics. in spite of many positive changes in the official cultural climate and media picture after 2000, the style and influence of turbo-folk and similar music genres is still very strong in serbia and montenegro in the circumstances of social and economic transition towards a democratic but also liberal capitalist society. endnotes 1 for a more detailed explanation of the political significance of the phenomenon of “turbo-folk,” see: ivana kronja, politics, nationalism, music, and popular culture in 1990s serbia, “slovo,” vol. 16, no. 1, spring 2004. also see: ivana kronja, “the fatal glow: mass psychology and aesthetics of turbo-folk subculture” (“smrtonosni sjaj: masovna psihologija i estetika turbo-folka”), tehnokratia, belgrade, 2001. 2 for a detailed description and analysis of serbian traditional folk music see: dimitrije o. golemović, “the folk music of yugoslavia” (“narodna muzika jugoslavije”), muzička omladina srbije, belgrade, 1997. good papers belonging to contemporary criticism of traditional serbian folk music can be found in the reader: “the exceptionness and the co-existence” (“izuzetnost i sapostojanje”), v international symposium “folklore–music–creativity” (v međunarodni simpozijum “folklor–muzika–delo”), belgrade, 1997, and in the symposium readers for the following years. 3 a very good analysis of new folk music and the accompanying ‘newly composed’ subculture—popular culture is given by milena dragićević-šešić in her book: “the neofolk culture” (“neofolk kultura—publika i njene zvezde”), izd. knjiž. z. stojanovića, sremski karlovci— novi sad, 1994. for a detailed analysis of a ‘newly composed’ subculture and particularly its style meaning, see the study of croatian ethnologist ines prica, “the belgrade youth subculture—symbolic practices” (“omladinska potkultura u beogradu—simbolička praksa”), etnografski institut sanu, belgrade, 1991, and other papers from prica relating to this topic. 4 this folk matrix included, beside the local folk sound, a lot of influences of turkish and arabic pop-version of their own traditional folk music. 5 the single-party political system in former f.r. of yugoslavia, under president tito and after his death in 1980, until 1990, also used television and other media as a political propaganda tool to establish and maintain the ruling ideology of socialism, but this ideology insisted on ‘fraternity and unity’ of all ex-yugoslavian nations and on equality of social classes (keeping invisible the fact that the ruling communist-bureaucratic social stratum, the so-called ‘red bourgeoisie,’ was already formed). this tv turbo folk and dance music in 1990s serbia 113 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 and press propaganda had, therefore, rather a ‘mesmerizing’ then a negative effect. besides, the origins of mass culture in former yugoslavia did not offer such a variety of programmes or such an ideology of pleasure, liberal values and free consuming as found in usual mass-media contents in the west, as well as in popular mass-media contents now present in ex-yugoslavian republics—newly formed states after 1990, that (even with many difficulties) adopted a democratic political option. 6 see, for example, the chauvinist lyrics of a popular croatian war-folk singer, marko perković -thompson, whose concerts are very popular and whose songs are issued by the biggest music production house in the state, “croatia records.” 7 in the reader “the anthology of turbo-folk” (“antologija turbo-folka”), skc, belgrade, 2001, in the paper named: warriors’ turbo/neofolk: new heroes–new poets (ratni turbo/neofolk: novi heroji–novi pesnici), journalist goran tarlać makes a successful comparative analysis of ‘patriotic music’ conceived during ex-yugoslavian civil wars by all three nations: serbs, croats and muslims. tarlać defines this patriotic war music and its poetry of hatred as following: “the show-biz war poetry sticks firmly to its quasi-patriotic discourse, leaving the ‘triviality’ of everyday life behind. her aim is to become a means for the approval of political theses. war patriotic songs, in their own way, also wanted to give a specific contribution to a military struggle.” (p. 61). ivan čolović, our prominent ethnologist, defines this war folk music as a “kitsch based in nationalist myths, without any sense of distinction between reality and fiction, whose ideas express both xenophobia and megalomania” in his significant study: “the warrior’s brothel” (“bordel ratnika”), xx vek, belgrade, 2000. 8 the only problem of this, otherwise fundamental, study is the fact that žanić is dividing serbian nationalist propaganda from croatian nationalist propaganda, defending the thesis that croatian propaganda of the same kind was ‘necessary for its self-defence,’ and therefore not a negative phenomenon. nationalist propaganda is always considered a negative, manipulative ideological tool in all the scientific literature and criticism of populism and war. therefore we believe that the study of žanić would have been more profound and theoretically valid if it included more comparison of these nationalist rhetorics. 9 until 1990, rts (radio-television of serbia) was a part of jrt (yugoslav radio-television), a very powerful and a single state tv-system in former yugoslavia. 10 milošević and his closest collaborators monopolized and controlled all financial transactions, state and grey economy, and therefore he also controlled all the media space, although he allowed the establishment of so-called ‘private’ tv-stations, which were actually raised with state and criminal money, and controlled by him. these tv stations were to simulate the ‘democratic spirit’ of the regime, while actually freedom of the media did not exist; oppositional independent radio-stations, such as b92, and newspapers were systematically oppressed, but not completely closed, so that milošević could simulate a parliamentarian and democratic society. the proclaimed ‘owner,’ actually the chief manager, of tv palma had been a high official in milošević’s party, sps. following the same pattern, the chief manager and also the official ‘owner’ of the later established tv pink was ž. mitrović, a high official of the party of jul, run by mirjana milošević, the president’s wife, today its real owner in large part. 11 the first one was sps—serbian socialist party, run by slobodan milošević himself. 12 in the ex-yugoslavian economic and political system this was called ‘društvena svojina,’ and it signified the property of people, such as enterprises and all their buildings, equipment, furniture etc., managed by people’s representatives. 13 “according to a transparency international report on the index of corruption perception from year 2000, yugoslavia had the largest level of corruption among all european countries. at the time serbia had been a typical example of a deviant transition, which during the ’90s functioned as a symbiosis between the state apparatus and organized criminal activity. structural criminalization of serbia during the former regime caused criminalization of all transactions carried out by its political elite.” —dragan jovanović, strategies and techniques of robbery (strategije i tehnike pljačke), journal “republika,” no. 320-321, belgrade, november 2003. 14 erik gordi, “kultura vlasti u srbiji,” samizdat b92, 2001. original edition: eric d. gordy, “the culture of power in serbia: nationalism and the destruction of alternatives,” ceu, budapest, 1999. 15 after sfrj—f.r. of yugoslavia—fell apart in 1990, milošević proclaimed serbia and montenegro for a third, s.r. yugoslavia (in translation: united republics of yugoslavia). 16 the phenomenon of ‘pyramidal’ banks, which took place also in some other transitional countries (such as russia), entitled as ‘private banks’ but actually installed by milošević and his closest cooperators, which used to give to masses of people a remarkable monthly interest rate, only to go bankrupt a year later and take the money away, into the pockets of the milošević family and the highest officials of his party. 17 mlađan dinkić, “the economy of destruction” (“ekonomija destrukcije”), belgrade, stubovi kulture, 1996, p. 247. 18 ivana kronja, politics, nationalism, music, and popular culture in 1990s serbia, “slovo,” vol. 16, no. 1, spring 2004, p. 7. 114 ivana kronja the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 19 benjamin perasović, “the urban tribes—sociology of subcultures in croatia” (“urbana plemena—sociologija subkultura u hrvatskoj”), hrvatska sveučilišna naklada, zagreb, 2001, p. 338. 20 sponsored girl—a girl who has a lover, usually a criminal or a so-called businessman, who is showing her around as his property and a status symbol, buying her ‘beauty requisites’: expensive clothes, perfumes and makeup, and paying for her drinks and food at fashionable city venues, such as shopping centers, cafes and restaurants. in the english language this kind of phenomenon may be called “having a sugar daddy,” but it mainly refers to a much older man, while the boyfriend of a ‘sponsored girl’ in serbia doesn’t necessarily have to be much older from her—but he must have lots of money (no matter how gained) and drive an expensive car. 21 guy debord, “the society of spectacle” (“društvo spektakla”), anarhija/blok 45, belgrade 2003, p. 23. 22 among the most powerful members of the class were also turbo-folk singer ceca and her spouse, arkan, a criminal boss and one of milošević’s closest collaborators. 23 for example, a ‘costumed’ photograph of two domestic dance music stars, ivan sexpress and ksenija pajčin, in which they are represented as a gladiator and an amazon queen, appeared in the music magazine “tv pink review” just two weeks after the world premiere of the film “gladiator” (2000), directed by ridley scott. 24 a movement in clinical psychology and psychiatry, established by eric berne and thomas a. harris, which understands human behavior through three conditions that exist in people: of ‘a parent,’ ‘a grown-up,’ and ‘a child’. the interaction among people is then executed through various social ‘games,’ in which individuals communicate through taking over one of these roles, sending the message ‘you are o.k.’ or ‘you are not o.k.’ and ‘i am o.k.’ or ‘not o.k.’ to another person, depending on the role they play. the ideal of healthy, mature communication, according to the theory, should be the attitude ‘i am o.k.–you are o.k.,’ that comes from the ‘grown-up’ element in human psychological condition (for more details see the books: “which game do you play” by eric berne and “i am o.k.–you are o.k.” by thomas a. harris). 25 ceca and arkan got married in 1995, and had two children until his assassination in 2000. her life story used to be presented in the media as a ‘fairy-tale,’ while the tragic outcome of her marriage ‘only made her stronger.’ 26 jovan rašković, “narcissism” (“narcizam”), nio– univerzitetska reč, nikšić 1988, p. 55–56. 27 ibid. 28 marina blagojević, the invisible body and powerful bodilessness—the media in 1990s serbia (nevidljivo telo i moćna bestelesnost: mediji u srbiji 90-tih), in the reader: “women, images, imaginations” (“žene, slike, izmišljaji”), centar za ženske studije, belgrade 2000, p. 197. 29 these high officials of state enterprises in ex-yugoslavian times were ironically called this way because they were eating large portions of lamb meat at ‘business lunches,’ as a sort of a ‘social ritual’ or better to say a ritual of hedonism and power, all of it on public expense. 30 the author of this music video is the above mentioned dejan milićević. both song and video clip were produced by the tv pink music production house in 1996. 31 see the text “controlling and procuring” (“nadziranje i podvođenje”) by miša đurković, magazine “republika,” belgrade, 2000. 32 tv pink entertainment creators, since they worked for the system of a rigid patriarchy, tolerated only men’s homosexuality, if it was hidden and included into entertainment—it was rumored for many popular male presenters at tv pink that they were gay, while women’s homosexuality was simply unimaginable. tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 22 tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others jelena obradović university of birmingham the cultural and public spheres of serbia today reveal little to suggest the country’s recent experience of civil war or conflict.i indeed, one of the most striking observations from fieldwork carried out between october 2005 and may 2006 in belgrade was the existence of a general ‘information blackout’ about the civil wars of the 1990s. there are only a small number of books on the topic, copies of which are not widely available. there is an absence also of films, plays, lectures and public dialogue that would raise awareness of the eventsii this information blackout is particularly important to bear in mind when considering young people’s identity formation, not least because the yugoslav conflicts themselves were intrinsically connected to ideas of belonging and identity (kaldor 1999). even the oldest of the respondents engaged in this study was too young to remember the conflicts of the 1990s for themselves. moreover, with a few exceptions, respondents knew nobody directly affected or involved in the wars while high school history books avoid discussion of the civil wars almost entirely. moreover, my ethnographic research suggests that the wars in croatia, bosnia and herzegovina and kosovo tend not to be discussed in families and, when reference is made to them, the subject is changed quickly or dismissed. in contrast, the nato bombing campaign in 1999 is discussed and widely referred to as ‘the war’. iii academic discussion of these issues is limited also. whilst some research has been carried out with serbia’s younger generations and they received little direct information about them. despite this, the research revealed that young people had concrete ideas about the ‘national characteristics’ of those involved in the conflicts drawn from ‘second hand’ and ‘retold’ understandings of, and information about, these conflicts. such ‘second hand’ stories are crucial to how respondents viewed ‘others’ – bosnian muslims, croats and albanians – involved in the conflicts and young people’s reliance on them is indicative of the fact that they are at the receiving end of information systems (education, media, parents) and enjoy very little opportunity to produce their own discourses about war. iv, it rarely considers young people’s interpretations of recent cultural trauma (alexander et al 2004) and/or constructions of selves and othersv. academic publications on young people in postcommunist eastern europe more generally,vi on the other hand, do not capture the unique situation in which young people in serbia (and the rest of former yugoslavia) find themselves; not only are they living through the profound social and economic changes initiated by postcommunist economic transformation but also those brought about by civil war. this post-war context also means that the identities of ethnic ‘others’ remain highly politicised and memories of ethnic conflict are still vivid. this article addresses this academic gap, drawing on material from interviews with ten respondents alongside extensive ethnographic observation conducted in belgrade (2005-06). methods discourses on identities often involve complex, and frequently self-contradictory, responses; identities are almost always created in relation to ‘others’ and in this process it is often the case that national, religious and ethnic groups are conflated. for this reason, where identities are concerned, it is better to think about the ‘politics of representation’ rather than seek ‘representational adequacy’ (barker and galasinski 2001: 19). the methods selected for this study in-depth interviews and observation are a particularly productive tool for this purpose as well as for uncovering the textual construction and articulation of specific opinions. the ten respondents referred to in this article are part of a larger study for which forty respondents from three different generations were interviewed in order to understand how ideas about identity, nationalism and ‘others’ vary between generations. the families were selected because they were ‘ordinary’ belgrade families, by which is meant, they were not involved in politics, were not public figures, or public intellectuals, and the young respondents’ parents and grandparents occupied ‘ordinary’ anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 23 jobs (in administration, accounting, teaching and similar) with no political influence. in this respect, they, and their families, do not stand out from the majority of belgrade’s population; their selection was in no way designed to capture conscious nationalists or xenophobes. rather the aim was to identify where feelings of prejudice, intolerance and nationalism emerged (if they did at all) in ‘ordinary’ young people’s discourses, and in what circumstances and contexts ‘others’ were discursively invoked. therefore, what is being examined are the constructs of others in language (see barker and galasinski 2001). the aim is not to uncover general or representative attitudes of the younger populations, but rather to expose a range of discourses and opinions concerning others. the research allows for an in-depth examination of a small number of cases, and provides a ‘snapshot’ of a particular cross-section of society and their opinions. it helps to uncover the compositeness of the narratives (see smith 2004) and demonstrates that not all constructs of others are ‘black and white’ or nationalist and nonnationalist, but that they encompass various, often opposing, notions of others. analysis of these narratives, moreover, helps illuminate the processes and cultural influences which lead to the formation of specific constructs, opinions and actions. importantly, even though claims of ‘representativeness’ cannot be made, such research helps create ‘from below’ understandings of post-conflict societies, and their youth. such research is highly dependent upon the context within which it is situated, and it is important not to stretch its validity. that is to say, young people’s constructs of others in societies after conflict cannot and should not be extrapolated to such issues as support for nationalist parties in serbia or young people’s views on kosovo, democracy or serbia’s political future. links between such political issues (so often the subject of social research on serbia) and young people’s images of and attitudes to others can be no more than tenuous given that the illumination of such links was not originally factored in to the research. the research was designed not to shed light on the political future of serbia as a whole but to explore the workings of systems of cultural production by investigating a social group – young people – who are located at the very end of such systems and whose position is one of relative powerlessness (in terms of parental or financial restraint) to generate their own meanings and experiences (for instance through travelling). the significance of their narratives is that they reveal, first of all, what kind of stories, information and ideas have filtered down from the older generations in a war torn society and, secondly, which of these are accepted and which are rejected. this facilitates an understanding of where leverage and potential for change and reconciliation reside. whilst from such research we are not able to recreate ‘representative’ attitudes and constructs, we can, nevertheless, gauge the limits of the acceptable (see bourdieu 1977). we can see, for example, that the responses of young people largely corresponded with those of their parents, grandparents and society more widely (on a cultural and political level, for instance). the apparent lack of deviation of their views helps further understand the dominant ideas that circulate in society and are (re)produced by the youngest generations. in the selection of respondents, i used a snowballing technique whereby the families i already knew in belgrade introduced me to their friends and family, and i approached those whom i thought were suitable for interviews. the only ‘criteria’ for the selection was that the respondents were neither politically involved nor a public figure and that they ethnically (self) identified as serbs. i selected ten respondents from each generational group: from a generation of those aged 60 and above; a generation aged between 40 and 60; a generation of respondents in their thirties and the youngest generation of those who were 18 to thirty. the idea was that each generation had experienced a different period of former yugoslav history, and thus their constructs of identity and ‘others’ were likely to be different (see meinhof and galasinski 2000). stereotypes, images and processes in the course of interview, respondents were asked what they thought of each significant ethnic minority in serbia propervii, i.e. the roma, albanians and muslims. the general trend in responses was one of tolerance. the interviews, for instance, revealed no evidence of ‘intolerant’ or ‘hate speech’ as defined by bugarski (2002:93) as a ‘vicious form of public defamation […] with the aim of satanising an ethnic, racial, confessional, social or political group’. this certainly did not occur in the anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 24 interviews. however, this basic tolerance was nonetheless underscored by a range of prejudices and misconceptions regarding others. when talking about ethnic minorities and their characteristics, the respondents, all ethnic serbs, saw all of the groups, including their own, as monolithic. moreover, when talking about ‘others’, all of the respondents had immediate answers that conveyed very concrete and definite opinions. in contrast, when asked to talk about the serbs as a nation, all the respondents were hesitant or vague in the way they talked about themselves as a national group. this indicates that they do not think of themselves as ethnically positioned; rather they take themselves to be the ‘norm’ against which other minorities are judged. given that the respondents belong to the dominant ethnic category in serbia, and are not directly threatened by other groups, this is, perhaps, not surprising. however, their ability to talk with confidence about other minorities was indeed unexpected given that it was not grounded in experience; none of the respondents had a close non-serb friend. roma by far the most (negative) opinion and ‘knowledge’ was generated in relation to the roma minority. this, i would argue, is because they are the most visible minority group in belgrade. this visibility stems from their socioeconomic status, their use of the roma language and a popular belief that they are physically distinguishable from the serbs. most respondents used the derogatory label ‘cigani’ (‘gypsies’) to refer to the roma, and their positioning vis-à-vis this group was clearly illustrated by the response of one interviewee when i asked what she thought of ethnic minorities; before i had time to elaborate which minorities, she replied, ‘you mean gypsies?’ (milena, 18viii prevalent opinion and discourse regarding the roma concentrated mostly on their lifestyle, perceived unwillingness to work and physical appearance. along with negative stereotypes of un-cleanliness, there was also a perception that they were visually distinguishable from serbs. the following interview extracts illustrate some of these ideas. ). to the respondents the term ‘ethnic minorities’ was synonymous with the roma, whilst other groups (albanians, muslims and croats) were viewed, rather, as political enemies and provocateurs. extract 1 my friend and i were…waiting to cross at the lights, and they asked me for money and wanted to spit on me if i didn’t give them money. well i’m not going to give it to them, if they ask for it, because they can work….and so i have that kind of negative stance [towards them] because most of the roma don’t go to school – they live where they can ….they live off other people’s backs, they beg and that’s it. and it annoys me that they really smell. ana, 18. extract 2 …they are a people who are damned, they are a people who have simply drawn the kind of genes that make them beg, never do anything, behave in the way that they behave and basically [they] have the kind of genes that make them literally barbarians. milena, 18. extract 3 well, i don’t really mind the roma, but i don’t like the fact that they don’t want to work or do anything. they don’t want to be educated. … at primary school, there were a couple of roma, but they all reach third grade and leave. where’s the desire to be a part of something? milan, 22. extract 4 i don’t understand what they actually are. i mean….they…i don’t understand them, i don’t know…you say there are orthodox roma. the ones that i see on the street are always called sheherezada or something and they don’t anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 25 communicate in serbian. …and i concluded, i mean, when i was little i had no idea what the gypsies were, only that they were darker people and i had no idea what they were, what religion or faith, and no one talked about it. i made the conclusion myself, based on their names, that they are muslim. kristina, 22. extract 5 a: what’s characteristic about the roma – at least what everyone says – is that they steal and always beg… q: and do you believe everything that is said about them? a: well i think even those who are not like that, become like that. danijela, 23. with the exception of extract 4, it is clear that roma are identified primarily by their socioeconomic status [‘begging’] rather than any perceived character flaws or physical differences. this suggests a general shift from seeing the roma as a group which can be identified through biological factors only and an awareness of the actual problems that the roma face as a group. this awareness, however, ends with the claim that ‘they don’t want to work’ and before any recognition of the fact that most roma are unable to get work, or are able to work only in certain low-paid jobs. the negative images and stereotypes the respondents had of the roma were not often perceived as a barrier to being friends with someone from this group. one respondent, milan, related a story of the last time he remembered roma children in his class in primary school, and recalled being really good friends with them even though ‘they were dirty, and people didn’t really want to spend much time around them because they were unruly’. indeed, paradoxically, there is more prejudice but less intolerance towards the roma than towards other ethnic groups (especially albanians and muslims); the roma are treated more as a social nuisance than a threat. this is probably explained by the fact that the roma were not involved in the yugoslav conflicts (although large numbers were made refugees) and thus there is no political or historical tension between them and the serbs. in contrast, the muslim, albanian and croat minorities have become politicised and seen in symbolic relation to the wars; this is especially true of the young, who have no direct experience of this historical period of time but are subject to recycled and largely negative stories. all respondents were conscious of the fact that the roma’s problems are rooted in their current circumstances and that their ‘unruliness’, and general standard of living, are not genetically determined, even though they believe that these conditions are socio-biological rather than socio-economic. the kind of belief and approach to the roma, illustrated in the extracts above, is interesting not least because of the way in which it differs from the expression of negative opinions regarding albanians and muslims. in the case of muslims and albanians no explanation for negative opinions was articulated beyond reference to stereotyping based on conflicts and historical issues which none of the respondents really understood. albanians expressions of greatest intolerance were leveled at the albanians as an ethnic group, although there were also some positive associations made by the young people interviewed. most opinions were based on, or influenced by, the conflicts in kosovo and concerns about the potential loss of the province. much like other ethnic groups, the albanians were seen as a monolithic entity and only in isolated instances did the respondents differentiate between albanians in kosovo and those in albania. the responses on the whole were varied: extract 6 my friend, this milena – well her dad is from kosovo and she told me what it was like for him over there….they say he couldn’t stay there because he had to run away. basically, from everything i’ve heard i’ve got a really negative stance towards those shiptars,ix because anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 26 we’ve fought for kosovo throughout our entire history. the same respondent continued: extract 7 when i hear ‘a lbanian’ i think o f kosovo and i immediately switch off and do n’t l ike them….kosovo i s ours… i t hink that serbs have t o go back t here because k osovo i s t heirs, serbian – i m ean, t he s erbs h ave t o go ba ck t o k osovo a nd w e h ave t o chase those shiptars out of there. ivana, 18. what is interesting in ivana’s response is that her stance towards albanians is wholly negative yet her friend milena whom she mentions as having been affected directly by the kosovo conflicts, noted in her interview that she wouldn’t have a problem with having an albanian friend or boyfriend. milena went on to elaborate that she believed that those young serbians who are unacquainted with albanians have the worst opinion of them while those, like her, who have experienced conflicts are more likely to be aware that an entire nation cannot be the perpetrator of violence and war. above all, the opinions of young people regarding the albanian nation illustrate the impact of politics and political events, especially conflicts, on the attitudes of the young towards other ethnic groups. however, when asked whether they thought that the serbs and albanians could ever live together that is, whether their problems stem from political reasons or from some more fundamental barrier to the two nations living side by side all of the respondents admitted that the problems were of a political nature, and that, as far as they could judge from the stories they heard from their parents and friends, the people themselves liked living together in an ethnically mixed kosovo. this kind of contention – on the one hand, understanding that politics and not ethnic differences were behind the unrest in kosovo, while, on the other, still cultivating strong negative prejudices – is symptomatic of the current situation in serbia with regard to albanians and kosovo. the information blackout, the lack of opportunity for communicative exchange with members of other ethnic groups and the influence of news and media propaganda leads to uninformed opinions being created and propagated uncritically. some respondents did comment to the effect that they did not know any albanians and were therefore unable to comment on the albanian nation, which demonstrates that some young people do refrain from making negative assumptions about ethnic others they have never encountered. furthermore, one of those respondents recognised the heterogeneity of the albanian nation itself, realising that the albanians in kosovo and those in albania should not be seen as one homogenous mass. extract 8 i have never talked to an albanian in my whole life. i don’t know, i really don’t have a ny ki nd o f o pinion. it ’s questionable how m uch t hose albanians from the south of albania know what their northern friends are doing…. milan, 22. extract 9 i’ve n ever b een f riends with them….so i can’t really say anything about them. danijela, 23. what makes some respondents able to comment with authority on minorities like the albanians, whilst others refrain from making any comment? all the respondents were from very similar backgrounds and the variance in age between them was not great. a more extensive study than this one would be needed to determine this, but it is clear that some respondents often made comments that they perceived to be acceptable at a general societal level (see section on external influences). comments on albanians were peculiarly coloured by the issue of kosovo, whose potential independence (as well as the 1999 conflict) still carried strong significance for many serbs, and was the only of the former yugoslav wars openly debated in many homes. thus the kosovo issue was invariably addressed along the lines of: kosovo is serbia; the anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 27 albanians have a wrongful claim on serb territory, and the 1999 nato airstrikes were illegal. in this way, kosovo, which has always had a symbolic and mythical significance in serbian society (anzulovic 1999; mertus 1999; popovic 1998), becomes the site and repository of identities, both collective and private. it should be noted here also that all respondents mentioned learning about kosovo in school; they confirmed the significance of kosovo for serbia and that their parents and grandparents also believed in kosovo’s status as an integral part of serbia. moreover, kosovo is one sphere of political life in which interviewees showed interest and, unlike the previous wars, the kosovo conflict was in their living memory. this means that, at a physical and symbolic level, the recent conflicts and the possible future loss of kosovo, threaten the idea of a collective serbian identity and thus those respondents who feel this threat as serbs develop more hostile constructs of albanians that immediately link the idea of ‘albanians’ with the idea of ‘kosovo’. muslims the constructs of, and opinions about, this group are marked by ambiguity and confusion. views are also very wide-ranging, extending from benign responses such as ‘muslims in serbia are a very pleasant people’ (danijela, 23) to more negative opinions. in the former yugoslavia, the populations of muslim faith were given the right to declare themselves to be ethnically muslim. after the civil war in bosnia and herzegovina, the name bosniak (bošnjak) came into use, to denote bosnian citizens of muslim faith. muslims in the sandžak region of serbia also use the title bošnjak to refer to themselves.x misconceptions about islam and muslims voiced in interviews included a belief that muslims can be distinguished from serbs physically and, sometimes, muslims were confused with albanians. the extract below illustrates some negative perceptions and prejudices held about islam and muslims, and also how the tropes of ‘muslim’ and ‘albanian’ become conflated in some respondents’ constructions: however, i asked the respondents specifically what they thought of muslims since i wanted to understand what they thought of ‘muslims’ as a larger group and whether the respondents would distinguish between muslims in serbia, bosnia and herzegovina, kosovo and albania. extract 10 q. do you think that serbs and albanians can coexist? a. no. come on, no, no, no…. q. but how – a: because they hate us, they…in fact their religion is like that, they don’t respect any other religion. islam is like that… kristina, 22. such attitudes demonstrate a trend also clearly identifiable in serb society as a whole; not only are others intolerant, goes this line, but they hate the serbs and actively engage in acts of intolerance, whilst the serbs are wholly passive in inter-ethnic problems (see obradović 2007). another misconception was that being muslim is a visually recognisable trait (although it should be noted that this was an isolated comment). extract 11 a: you can tell that she’s muslim, in some people you can just tell they are muslim. q: how? a: …some of them have this kind of …they are somehow so arrogant….i have this aunt who’s muslim, she’s not a blood relative, but she’s dangerous, she looks cunning, like she’s evil, she somehow looks at you out of the corner of her eye… milena, 18. such extracts, which distinctly define the muslims as ‘others’ based on their physiology, contrasted sharply with comments by other respondents who saw muslims in serbia and bosnia and herzegovina as ‘us’, as in extract 12 (below). there was also a difference in opinion anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 28 when it came to defining muslims. whilst a number of respondents uncritically accepted them as a national group, others had different ideas. the same respondent saw a very distinct difference between what he called ‘our muslims’ and muslims elsewhere: extract 12 i don’t even consider them a nation. they are people who believe in allah, but actually, they are croats or serbs, or bosniaks…personally, i don’t consider those from bosnia to be muslims. in fact they are serbs who have changed their faith...muslims are turks, those iraqis – they are the real muslims. but these, ours here, they are muslims who eat pork… milan, 22. very rarely was the discourse produced on muslims as a group connected to islam as a religion or its religious practices and beliefs, thus making this group, which is defined through religion, at the same time separate from it. as stef jansen argues, ‘…the label “muslim” fails to convey the ambiguity of the reference to islam, which was at once an indispensable and a negligible element’ (jansen 2003: 217). thus muslims, as a group, are seen more or less as ‘us’; they are seen as closer to serbs than either roma or albanians. this is evidenced in milan’s claim (extract 12) that muslims are in fact serbs who converted to islam. this is a commonly held view in serbia and many of the adults i interviewed saw them as ‘serbs of a muslim faith’ as one of my older respondents explained. this may help explain such widely varying opinions; respondents like milan subscribe to the view that they are ‘serbs of a muslim faith’ whilst others, like kristina, do not. this is perhaps best understood with reference to the respondents’ linked understandings of civil warsxi the complexity of young serbians’ attitudes towards muslims was revealed most clearly during a trip to republika srpska, the serb entity of bosnia and herzegovina. there, young serbs, without exception, viewed the muslim population as aggressors, as a threat, and as entirely different to serbs; in effect much the same way as serb youth in serbia views the albanian population. this can be accounted for by the fact that, in this part of bosnia and herzegovina, the link between negative stereotypes and conflict is absolutely clear while, in serbia itself, the lack of open conflict between serbs and muslims on serbian territory, tempered negative opinions and feelings amongst serb youth and bolstered the view of some respondents that muslims were not a ‘threatening’ group. in my experience, the respondents with this view are often those who have travelled to bosnia and herzegovina, had relatives there or who, or whose parents, have bosnian or muslim friends. these respondents often had an awareness of bosnian muslims as an ethnic group, based on personal experience rather than recycled narratives of the conflict. , where, if the bosnian war was understood from a primarily ethnocentric perspective (where serbs are the sole victims and muslims the sole perpetrators) then the respondents often also took on a defensive stance and projected all the negative characteristics onto the ‘offending’ bosnian muslim group identified as the single cause of ethnic tension. these ideas still prevail in serbia and it is unsurprising that some of the young people in this research had adopted negative opinions of (bosnian) muslims, as they are likely to have been influenced by parental attitudes whilst being unlikely to have ever met anyone from bosnia and herzegovina. xii serbs once respondents had adjusted to the idea of thinking about themselves as an ethnic group at all, their projection of their own nation tended to contrast directly their images of national ‘others’. serbs were perceived in positive terms. where negative characteristics were identified, the main one was a lack of unity as a people, a view shared across all three generations of respondents. moreover, the descriptions of serbs were distanced from conflicts and violence, unlike the descriptions of albanians, for instance. the clearest sense of how serbian identity is constructed by serbs themselves, however, emerged when it transpired that almost all respondents saw themselves, and serbs in general, as victims of media and other institutional misrepresentation and victims of anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 29 others’ intolerance (see obradović 2007). as a national group, they felt wronged and considered that institutions like the hague and the (undifferentiated) west were working against the serbs. extract 13 …on tv, it’s always serbs killed this many croats…. like now in kosovo. it’s alw ays s erbs th at a re to blame. according to the tv, the serbs have killed the e ntire w orld. a nd i f ind that really strange. ivana, 18. not only does the perceived victimisationxiii western and non-serbian media and scholarly work show that serbs as an ethnic group are stereotyped much in the same way that serbs stereotype other groups. my interviews with young serbs demonstrate that they suffer from, and are frustrated by, these stereotypes of themselves, and this drives some to react against them. this is especially important where young people are concerned because the negative stereotyping of serbs is a product largely of recent conflicts, in which the decision-makers were the older generations. young people, therefore, are additionally frustrated by being subjected to negative representations of themselves because of the actions of others. of serbs replicate discourses produced by the older generations, and the general consensus in serbia, but it also leads to growing resentment against ethnic others. this is especially the case in situations where serbs are perceived as the ‘real’ and unproblematic victims, for instance, in kosovo. the awareness of negative representations is reflected, perhaps, in a hesitancy and indecisiveness among respondents when asked what the serbs are like as a nation. extract 14 well i have to think about that – how do you mean what are we like?....we’re always ready to have fun…regardless of everything that we’ve been through…most of the serbs…we go through everything with a smile. ivana, 18. extract 15 i don’t know, wait, i never thought about what makes me a serb. well, i am a serb because i was born in serbia, because i love this country, because i will never be ashamed that i am a serb. milan, 22. extract 16 i think that our whole nation has been taught that way, it doesn’t wish anything bad on anyone, never causes harm to others and everyone returns our kindness with evil. i don’t know why. kristina, 22. this ambiguity and hesitancy demonstrates, primarily, the respondents’ status as the dominant ethnic group, and as such, one which has not had to think about its own defining characteristics. instead, they see themselves as the ‘norm’ against which all other groups are judged, and against whose values other groups’ values, traditions and customs are compared. serbs thus embody everything that is positive whilst ethnic others embody negative characteristics. consequently it is ‘they’ who are believed to be the ones that cause problems, not ‘us’. discursive strategies in interviews, the respondents often employed repetitive discursive strategies when talking about themselves and others. it is important to analyse the strategies used in conversation because it is often the syntax, a clause or a qualifying comment, which functions to ‘hide’ prejudice (see for instance van dijk 1987) or to deflect negative characteristics away from the serbs as an ethnic group. for instance, one of the predominant strategies used attempted to justify anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 30 negative opinions of other ethnic groups through the use of blame-shifting rhetoric. in this way, ethnic groups were made responsible for the prejudice against them through the implication that ‘they hate us’ or ‘they do things that make me not like them’. below are some extracts that illustrate this. extract 17 q: and [between] serbs and catholics, a re t here a ny t ensions there? a: well….yes, but it all c omes from their s ide. t hey h ate us , b ut i do n’t know w hy. t hey t hink w e’re abhorrent, t hey do n’t w ant to ha ve anything to do with us a nd i do n’t understand t hat…i h ave nothing against anyone if they don’t wish me any h arm…i can ’t f eel c omfortable in t he c ompany of s ome cr oat i f i know that he hates me, that he’d like to root me out…. q: but surely not all of them hate us? there are some – a: wel l, i ’ve n ever h eard o f a ny croat who likes me, to be honest. kristina, 22. extract 18 when i s ee on t v w hat t hose [albanians] a re doing in kosovo, of course i h ate them and i do n’t want to come into contact with them. ana, 18. treating others as the intolerant group, acts as an excuse for negative opinions whilst also shifting the blame for prejudice and ethnic tension onto others. this kind of rhetoric runs parallel to, and has echoes of, the general war discourse in serbia, which seeks excuses for killings and fighting during the civil war by relativising the violence committed by serbs and other ethnic groups. in these types of discourses, serb violence is rationalised with suggestions that it is ‘others’ that started the war, or attacked the serbs. serb wartime violence is only ever understood in this context, and war crimes are rarely spoken about or labeled as such (obradović 2007). this ‘conspiracy of silence’ (beč 2005) not only impedes any critical discussion of war crimes, but also of national others. likewise, instead of facing up to their own negative stereotypes, which they consciously elaborated, young people in this study were intent on silencing these negative actions through the same relativising logic which circulates in serbia’s public discourses today. furthermore, the respondents in the above extracts were unable to see ‘why they don’t like us’, because they see themselves only through positive, non-war related frameworks. since they also admit to not knowing much about the war, it is hardly surprising that they do not understand why other nationalities could possibly harbour any negative constructs or resentment against them even though they were fully aware of the negative images of the serbs present in all but serb media. continuing the trend of blame-shifting, most of the respondents knew someone whom they would accuse of intolerant behaviour or would label a nationalist ‘in the negative sense’ (milan, 22). in other words, the respondents believe themselves to be tolerant, whilst the prejudiced, intolerant or nationalist was always ‘someone else’ a friend, classmate or a parent. from this it is apparent that respondents are perfectly capable of recognising what they see as negative and intolerant behaviour in other people. however, because they recognise prejudice only as something extreme, as very visible acts of discrimination, they fail to classify their own constructs of others as prejudiced behaviour. extract 19 my brother [has] t wo g ypsies…. i n his class, a nd w hat they’re doing to them, it’s such awful mistreatment… i t ry t o p lay on h is conscience a bout what t hey a re d oing t o them…they’re ma licious t o th em and i a sk him why they do i t and he says ‘because they smell.’ milena, 18. anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 31 extract 20 i have t his f riend – suddenly s he became a p atriot…just b ecause she was in that kind of environment and when you’re in that kind of situation they i mpose op inions on you …now, suddenly, she’s a serb – a real patriot – she h ates a ll other people, h ates blacks, hates the chinese… ivana, 18. extract 21 i h ave on e fr iend, w ho i s, in my opinion, a huge nationalist but in the wrong sense…when w e g o o n holiday t o a nother c ountry he g oes with karadžić and mladićxiv milan, 22. tshirts…i s ay, w hat i f t here i s someone fr om c roatia on holiday [with us ], he s ays, h e can get lost…and w hen y ou a sk him w hy, what’s w rong w ith h im, he s ays i don’t know. whilst instances of behaviour elaborated in extracts 19, 20 and 21 were identified and problematised as intolerant, at the same time, respondents appeared unaware of the many ways in which prejudice and intolerance can manifest themselves and continued to express their own prejudices, often subconsciously, through comments such as ‘i don’t mind them but….’,. external influences: media, parents and peers several ‘external influences’ have a direct impact on respondents’ constructions of others. of particular significance are the media, parents and peers. in reflecting on this influence respondents were highly critical of parental and peer influence whilst, with the exception of the questioning of negative media representations of the serbs as illustrated in extract 13 above, media influence was normalised and naturalised. with regard to parental influence, respondents showed elements of criticism and resistance; they believed, for example, that their parents’ opinions were ‘imposed’ on them. whilst this element of resistance and criticism to parents’ and friends’ opinions was visible, so was the realisation that their parents’ opinions still limited their actions. extract 22 my friend asked me, ‘would you go out with a croat?’ i said ‘why not?’ but she said her parents would disown her. just as hers would disown her because of a croat, so mine would over a muslim…it really isn’t up to us, it’s up to our parents, they impose their will on us, and it’s because of them that we are not allowed to be friends [with ethnic others]. milena,18. similarly, the significance of peer influence is seen in the extract below. it seemed that, with the younger respondents, those around 18 years of age, peer influence was significant insofar as it caused them to make changes to their behaviour with regard to ethnic others. milena related a story of her friend sanja, a serb who had a roma boyfriend but had to pretend to another friend that she didn't know he was a rom: extract 23 she s aid s he d idn't kn ow but you can tell t he g uy is a g ypsy. i t w as because of t hat f riend. s he di dn't want to ad mit to her that s he k new [he was roma]. milena, 18. media influence was not questioned and problematised to the same (if any) extent. moreover, the media seemed to directly affect not only opinions but also the actions of young people towards others. when asked how she would react if she found out that one of her close friends was muslim, one of the respondents noted that the situation would feel ‘unpleasant’ and, when asked to elaborate why, went on to say that: anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 32 extract 24 it is probably because of everything that we see on tv and what our parents impose on us, probably because of that. ana, 18. she continued: extract 25 when i see on tv, what [albanians] are doing in kosovo of course i hate them and i don’t want to be in contact with them. ana, 18. interestingly, it transpired through the interviews that the older generations were also passive consumers and perpetrators of media representations, and often repeated the same stories of ethnic others as the media did, but their children did not seem to pick up on this. this passivity towards media coverage can perhaps be best explained through considering the content of the serbian media. today, print and tv media in serbia are not concerned with giving platforms to nationalist speakers, nor openly discriminating against any one ethnicity. however, at the same time there is a lack of criticism and reflexivity in the media regarding politics and current affairs. with the exception of the b92 tv station and the odd weekly such as vreme, the media avoids any critical stance. this was clearly seen in the case of fugitive war criminals, for example, where the media have been happy to report on the hunt for ratko mladić ‘as it happens’ but, on the whole, avoid commenting on his previous behaviour. similarly, when the media report on the kosovo situation, only reports of albanian attacks on the serbs make it into the public arena whilst serbian attacks on albanians are silenced. therefore, a discourse is created – without any kind of discriminatory language being used – in which the kosovo albanians can only ever be the perpetrators and serbs the victims. this is not to say that all generations of viewers are merely passively consuming these stereotypes – rather, this version of events fits with their own knowledge of ‘how things are’ and their own local ‘truths’ (mertus 1999: 7). in such local truths, especially where the kosovo situation is concerned, the serbs overwhelmingly understand themselves to be the victims (anzulovic 1999:12-12; mertus 1999). thus, rather than provoking reactions for their negative portrayals of the kosovo conflict, the media are much more likely to be supported for providing a historically and culturally ‘accurate’ way of understanding the situation. concluding remarks perhaps the most significant aspect of life in post-yugoslavia and ‘post-conflict’ belgrade is that young people are now, in most circumstances, cut off from their peers in the remainder of the former yugoslavia and the rest of europe. a significant number of those interviewed had never been to bosnia and those who had visited croatia had done so with parents before 1991. cultural exchange is also limited. therefore, not only do the respondents not know anyone of another ethnic background but most do not even have the opportunity to meet others through travel. countries of the former yugoslavia are now more inaccessible to serbian youth than other balkan countries as there is a belief amongst some respondents that serbs are not welcome in these areas. one respondent had been told by serb friends residing in croatia: extract 26 they told me that if i want to go to… croatia…i won’t come back alive …my dad told us that if they hear you speaking serbian they immediately turn their backs on you. if they see you are a serb they immediately distance themselves from you. ivana, 18. the kind of distance and prejudice about ethnic others outlined in this article is hardly surprising, considering that all of the respondents had grown up against the backdrop of past conflict but in a present characterised by information blackout and misrepresentation. however, despite the anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 33 prejudices, there is a strong desire amongst most of the respondents to visit other countries and take part in exchanges with ex-yugoslav countries. moreover, many realise that the negative views they have of ethnic others, and that others have of them, derive from politics, conflict and the general political mismanagement of the older generations. on a similar note, aleks related a story of travelling to sarajevo and feeling as though he had to speak in a bosnian accent whilst walking around the city because: extract 27 i had to...you just don’t know if someone on the street, if a serb has killed someone from his family or not…. aleks, 23. interview material collected indicates the willingness of young people to meet and interact with ethnic others, which also derives from the understanding that there are no essential or racial differences between them and their ethnic others. in this, young people demonstrate an ability to think beyond inherited patterns of prejudice – even if they sometimes (re)produce them. their ability to understand that most interethnic problems are caused by politics is combined with an inability to break away from perpetuating the stereotypes and prejudices with which they are surrounded because they have no other points of reference. generally, whilst there is resentment over kosovo, there is optimism in the discourses of my respondents, and willingness to move on and forget the recent conflicts; in this they differ from the discourses of the older generations in which these conflicts still feature heavily. what underpins the respondents’ narratives of selves and others is confusion; nowhere is this clearer than in the contradictions and conflicting opinions they voice and the experiences they recount. this confusion, it has been argued here, is a result of a number of factors affecting this generation of young serbs. of particular significance is the combination of, on the one hand, being exposed to a plethora of popular narratives in the context of media misinformation and information blackout regarding the wars and, on the other, the absence of young people’s own experience with national and ethnic others, itself a consequence of the conflicts of the 1990s. notes 1 of course serbia is not strictly speaking a ‘post-conflict’ country. no military conflict actually took place on serbian territory with the exception of that connected to the kosovo conflict (even this was not in serbia proper) and the nato air strikes in 1999. however, it remains a country profoundly affected by conflict through refugee flows, the exacerbation of economic decline and the general misrule of slobodan milošević. moreover, whilst serbia was not involved in the bosnian war officially, a (disputed) number of men volunteered for paramilitary service and a further group was mobilised for the 1991 croatian war. the situation faced by the younger generations of serbia is described by žarko trebješanin (2006: 46) thus: the situation is especially difficult for the young, those born in the 1980s and growing up in the 1990s…at a time of poverty, crisis, wars, hyperinflation, sanctions. today, they live in a state that is undefined, defeated, weak, poor and without hope that they will soon be able to have a stable job, decent salary, flat and the most basic living conditions. 2 ngos such as the centar za nenasilje (centre for non-violent action), women in black, centre for cultural decontamination, belgrade centre for human rights, humanitarian law centre, helsinki centre for human rights and others have run campaigns and actions to raise awareness and encourage dialogue. likewise, actors such as the independent daily danas, television network b92 and its publishing division, and the documentation centre for wars 1991-1999 have striven hard to talk openly about the conflicts. however, their activities have failed to break through what janja beč (2005) calls ‘the conspiracy of silence’ surrounding present-day belgrade. 3 that is to say, most of the respondents in the study had neither friends nor relatives who had fought in, or been forced to flee from, any of the wars. one respondent had a friend whose family had been affected directly by the kosovo conflict anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 34 but this incident had occurred when the respondent was 11 years old and they were unable to recall the event. 4 see for example: markovic & mitrovic 2004; mikić & cičkarić, 2004; volčić 2005; and todorović & bakir 2005. 5 see for example: yerkes 2004; volčić 2005; and malesevic 2004. 6 for instance: riordan et al 1995; pilkington 1994; and pilkington et al. 2002. 7 by this is meant ‘central serbia’, including belgrade but not the two autonomous provinces within serbia – vojvodina and kosovo – and the question was phrased in this way because of the very different ethnic composition of these two provinces. below is a shortened version of the population by ethnic or national group, census 2002 report summary, taken from communication no 295, issue lii, december 2003 ‘statistics of population: final results of the census 2002’ issue published by republic statistical office, republic of serbia. republic of serbia total central serbia ap vojvodina all % all % all % total 7,498,001 100 5,446,009 100% 2,031,992 100 serbs 6,212,838 82.86 4,891,031 89.48 1,321,807 65.05 montenegrins 69,049 0.92 33,536 0.61 35,513 1.75 yugoslavs 80,721 1.08 30,840 0.56 49,881 2.45 albanians 61,647 0.82 59,952 1.1 1,695 0.08 bosniaks 136,087 1.82 135,670 2.48 417 0.02 muslims 19,503 0.26 15,869 0.29 3,634 0.18 romanies 108,193 1.44 79,136 1.45 29,057 1.43 croats 70,602 0.94 14,056 0.26 56,544 2.78 all others 739,361 9.86 185,919 3.77 533,444 26.26 8 all respondents’ names are pseudonyms, with their ages given after the name. prior to the interview, all respondents were explicitly told that they will remain anonymous. although anonymity is widely practiced in social science and ethnography as ‘good practice’ in order to avoid recognition and visibility of respondents, most of the respondents in this study also expressed relief in remaining anonymous due to the sensitive nature of the questions. many admitted they would also feel ‘embarrassed’ if their friends came across responses attributed to them. 9 shiptars is a title which derives from the albanian word ‘shqip’ – meaning ‘albanian’ – but in serbia it is often used in a derogatory manner to refer to kosovo albanians. http://www.bnv.org.yu/� anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 35 10 see the bosniak national council (bošnjacko nacionalno vijeće, državna zajednica srbija i crna gora) website, http://www.bnv.org.yu/. 11 this issue is not explored in this paper but see obradović (2006). 12 it must be noted that the youth in question had travelled to bosnia proper, rather than the serb entity of bosnia, republika srpska. the entity has a majority serb population, whilst bosnia proper (‘the federation’) has a majority muslim population, and both are due to forced displacement during and after the bosnian war. the youth who had traveled to bosnia proper were thus not subject to discourses of intolerance of bosnian serbs in the republika srpska part of bosnia. 13 see, for example: jansen 2000; kuljic 2006; and obradović 2006. 14 the respondent is referring to radovan karadžić, former president of the predominantly serbian republika srpska part of bosnia and ratko mladić, a general in his army during the 1992-1995 bosnian war. both men have been indicted for war crimes by the hague tribunal. mladić remains fugitive, while karadžić was arrested in belgrade in july 2008. they are often appropriated as symbols of serbian nationalism and ‘heroism’ by some movements and factions. references alexander, j . et al (2004) cultural trauma and collective i dentity (berkeley: 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(1999) heavenly s erbia: f rom myth to genocide (london: h urst & co). barker, c. & galasinski, d. (2001) cultural studies a nd di scourse analysis: a dialogue o n l anguage a nd ide ntity (london: sage). beč, j. (2005) banalna ravnodušnost, danas, 12 july 2005, accessed online at: www.danas.co.yu on 10 january 2006. bošnjacko nacionalno vijeće, državna zajednica s rbija i c rna g ora a ccessed online at: http://www.bnv.org.yu/ throughout march 2006. bourdieu, p . (1 977) o utline o f a t heory of practice translated b y r . n ice. (cambridge: c ambridge u niversity press). bugarski, r. ( 2002) n ova l ica j ezika: sociolingvističke t eme b eograd: biblioteka xx vek. jansen, s (200 0) victims, u nderdogs a nd rebels: d iscursive p ractices o f resistance i n s erbian p rotest critique of anthropology, 20(4) pp. 392-419. jansen, s. (2003) why do they hate us? everyday s erbian n ationalist knowledge of m uslim h atred, journal of m editerranean s tudies, 13(2) , p p. 215–235. kaldor, m. (1999) new and old wars: organized v iolence i n a n ew g lobal order (stanford: s tanford u niversity press). kuljić, t. (2006) kultura sećanja: teorijska objašnjenja upotrebe prošlosti (belgrade: cigoja stampa). malešević, m. (2003) are there nations on planet reebok?: local vs global identity among young serbs, ethnologia balcanica, 7, pp. 181–194. marković, d. & mitrović, s. (2004) gde je (ne)stala omladinksa politika u srbiji? http://www.hajdeda.org.yu/08_downloa d/gde_je_omladinska_politika_spr.pdf accessed 10th july 2006. meinhof, u. and galasinski, d. (2000) photography, memory and the construction of identities on the former east-west german border, discourse studies, 2(3), pp. 323-352. mertus, j. (1999) kosovo: how myths and truths started a war (berkeley: university of california press). mikić, a. & cickarić, l. (1998) generacija u protestu: sociološki portret ucešnika studentskog protesta 96/97 na beogradskom univerzitetu (belgrade: institut za socioloska istrazivanja filozofskog fakulteta). obradović, j. (2007) victimhood discourse and denial of war crimes: serbian national mythology in narratives of ethnic conflict (university of birmingham: unpublished manuscript). http://www.bnv.org.yu/� http://www.bnv.org.yu/� http://www.hajdeda.org.yu/08_downloa� http://www.hajdeda.org.yu/08_downloa� anthropology of east europe volume 26, no. 1 page 36 pilkington, h. (1994) russia’s youth and its culture: nation’s constructors and constructed (london and new york: routledge). pilkington, h. ed. (2002) looking west: cultural globalization and russian youth cultures (university park ca: pennsylvania state university press). popović, m. (1998) vidovdan i časni krst: ogledi iz književne arheologije. (belgrade: biblioteka xx vek). republic statistical office, republic of serbia (2003) ‘statistics of population: final results of the census 2002’, communication 295 (lii), december. riordan, j. et al (1995) young people in post communist russia and eastern europe (aldershot: dartmouth). smith, a. l. (2004) heteroglossia, ‘common sense’, and social memory american ethnologist, 1(2), pp. 251–269. todorović, m. & bakir, a. (2005) inaudible noise: belgrade's academy club: legacy, old locals and new spaces, leisure studies, 24(4), pp. 415–434. trebješanin, ž. (2006) dezintegracija društva i duhovna i mentalna pometnja, zemlja, march, pp. 46–48. van dijk, t. (1987) communicating racism: ethnic prejudice in thought and talk (newbury park, ca: sage). volčić, z. (2005) belgrade vs serbia: spatial re configurations of belonging, journal of ethnic and migration studies, 31(4), pp. 639–658. yerkes, m. (2004) facing the violent past: discussions with serbia's youth, nationalities papers, 32(4) pp. 921– 938. alexander, j. et al (2004) cultural trauma and collective identity (berkeley: university of california press). anzulović, b. (1999) heavenly serbia: from myth to genocide (london: hurst & co). barker, c. & galasinski, d. (2001) cultural studies and discourse analysis: a dialogue on language and identity (london: sage). malešević, m. (2003) are there nations on planet reebok?: local vs global identity among young serbs, ethnologia balcanica, 7, pp. 181–194. marković, d. & mitrović, s. (2004) gde je (ne)stala omladinksa politika u srbiji? http://www.hajdeda.org.yu/08_downloa d/gde_je_omladinska_politika_spr.pdf accessed 10th july 2006. meinhof, u. and galasinski, d. (2000) photography, memory and the construction of identities on the former east-west german border, discourse studies, 2(3), pp. 323-352. mertus, j. (1999) kosovo: how myths and truths started a war (berkeley: university of california press). mikić, a. & cickarić, l. (1998) generacija u protestu: sociološki portret ucešnika studentskog protesta 96/97 na beogradskom univerzitetu (belgrade: institut za socioloska istrazivanja filozofskog fakulteta). riordan, j. et al (1995) young people in postcommunist russia and eastern europe (aldershot: dartmouth). todorović, m. & bakir, a. (2005) inaudible noise: belgrade's academy club: legacy, old locals and new spaces, leisure studies, 24(4), pp. 415–434. van dijk, t. (1987) communicating racism: ethnic prejudice in thought and talk (newbury park, ca: sage). volčić, z. (2005) belgrade vs serbia: spatial reconfigurations of belonging, journal of ethnic and migration studies, 31(4), pp. 639–658. page 35.pdf alexander, j. et al (2004) cultural trauma and collective identity (berkeley: university of california press). anzulović, b. (1999) heavenly serbia: from myth to genocide (london: hurst & co). barker, c. & galasinski, d. (2001) cultural studies and discourse analysis: a dialogue on language and identity (london: sage). malešević, m. (2003) are there nations on planet reebok?: local vs global identity among young serbs, ethnologia balcanica, 7, pp. 181–194. marković, d. & mitrović, s. (2004) gde je (ne)stala omladinksa politika u srbiji? http://www.hajdeda.org.yu/08_downloa d/gde_je_omladinska_politika_spr.pdf accessed 10th july 2006. meinhof, u. and galasinski, d. (2000) photography, memory and the construction of identities on the former east-west german border, discourse studies, 2(3), pp. 323-352. mertus, j. (1999) kosovo: how myths and truths started a war (berkeley: university of california press). mikić, a. & cickarić, l. (1998) generacija u protestu: sociološki portret ucešnika studentskog protesta 96/97 na beogradskom univerzitetu (belgrade: institut za socioloska istrazivanja filozofskog fakulteta). riordan, j. et al (1995) young people in postcommunist russia and eastern europe (aldershot: dartmouth). todorović, m. & bakir, a. (2005) inaudible noise: belgrade's academy club: legacy, old locals and new spaces, leisure studies, 24(4), pp. 415–434. van dijk, t. (1987) communicating racism: ethnic prejudice in thought and talk (newbury park, ca: sage). volčić, z. (2005) belgrade vs serbia: spatial reconfigurations of belonging, journal of ethnic and migration studies, 31(4), pp. 639–658. sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 38 bessarabian bulgarians: studying in bulgaria, searching for an identity alexander ganchev university of odessa the falling of “the iron curtain’’ and the onset of ussr reforms in 1985 had an important influence on structuring people’s lives in the soviet union. the democratization of society, the granting of freedom of speech, and the opening of borders have caused an increase in the ethnic consciousness of national minorities. bessarabian bulgarians, who did not have the legal right to communicate with bulgaria for approximately one century, or access to bulgarian literature or other media, now have access to the country and its literature. this, in turn, is bringing a change in their identity; a desire to know their history, literature, and something about their national heroes. bulgaria has catered to these wishes and in february 1991 the first group of bessarabian children were admitted to a language grammar school in sliven, bulgaria. since then, a commission formed by the ministry of education, science and technology from bulgaria has accepted approximately 100 students from ethnic bulgarian villages in bessarabia every year for training in higher educational institutions in the country. in this paper i explore the question: "how does studying in bulgaria influence the transformation of identity of youth from bessarabia?" it is necessary to note that an overwhelming majority of bessarabian bulgarians, who eventually study in bulgaria, were born and have grown up in villages rather than urban centres. about forty villages with a prevailing bulgarian population are located on the territory of south bessarabia. the average size of a village is 5,000, and the number of representatives of this ethnic community in the region is approximately 200,000. each bulgarian village in bessarabia represents an isolated entity, an endogamous circle which has maintained traditional bulgarian culture for over two hundred years. in such traditional small communities, identity is predetermined by the village and there is little opportunity for alternative identities. however, when youth move to bulgaria, they move into a completely different type of society64. considerably more egalitarian and mobile, the more industrialised bulgarian cities (in comparison with the rural villages of odessa province) provide greater freedom for a choice of identity. studying in bulgaria enables students to become anonymous and independent individuals, in other words, to rethink their personal identity. the present research is based on questionnaires, conducted by the author in 2002 among bessarabian bulgarians who were students in higher education institutions in sofia, bulgaria. a total of 60 students were interviewed: 10 from each year of the 5 year courses (ie those studying between the years 1996-2002) and 10 students who had completed their degrees and were working in bulgaria. this amounts to 10% of the total number of students studying and living in bulgaria at that time. the questionnaires aimed to highlight the dynamics and transformation of identity over the period of years of higher education. historical notes the formation of a bulgarian diaspora in bessarabia resulted from mass migration in the second part of the 18th and the first part of 19th centuries. at the beginning of the 19th century, after the eviction of tatars in 1807 from the budzak steppes, a small population of bulgarians, ukrainians65, russians66 and an insignificant number of moldovan autochthonous populations67 were established in budzak68. greek, armenian, and jewish communities migrated to the cities. in 1809 an intensive resettling of south bessarabia began by moldovan, bulgarian, ukrainian, russian, serbian and greek populations. in the period 1814 to 1817 there was also a resettlement of germans to budzak. the ethnic configuration changed along with population shifts, following the resettlement and migration of bulgarians during the period 1828 to 1835. other ethnic communities also moved, for example, serbs, greeks, roma and others; however, they migrated in far smaller numbers and were gradually assimilated into the bulgarian population. later, other migrants also settled into the predominantly bulgarian colonies (gagauz, greeks, moldovans, ukrainians, russians, roma and others). they were also assimilated gradually and eventually lost their ethnic identity. the reverse also occurred in the cases where bulgarian groups settled in villages where other ethnic groups predominated: bulgarians became incorporated into the other communities. in the first half of the 19th century, monoethnic, homogeneous colonies were formed which developed anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 39 their specific ethnic features over the following century. the cultural originality of each colony and interactions between villages of different ethnicities created an important basis for the maintenance of endogamous marriages within village boundaries. in this respect, family-marriage relations played a particularly important role. on the one hand, bulgarians were isolated from other ethnic communities in the region, on the other hand, language and cultural differences characterize the wider region and indeed one bulgarian village from the next. dialect differences between different bulgarian villages are a barrier for marriage between families from different bulgarian villages. the birth of the first generation of bulgarians on the territory of bessarabia generated a new social group of ‘bessarabian bulgarians’. such an identity was first evident in the first half of 19th century, and was probably determined as much in spatial as in other terms. at the beginning such an identity was not particularly strong: bessarabian bulgarians realized their difference from bulgarians from the mother country only gradually. firstly this was because the vast mass of the population during this period was born in bulgaria, and they carried certain ethnic markers, transferred to bessarabia and transmitted to the new generation. these markers were transformed only once the new generation was born. the new generation developed an alliance to the new land and developed a new identity. by the end of the 19th century the isolation of some colonies, in cultural and language terms, meant that each village developed its own autonomous identity, as village ’chijshijci’, ’chushmilijci’, ’troyanci’ and so on. language and cultural differences between ethnically bulgarian villages were recognised by the members of each community as well as by representatives of other villages. during the 19th century every settlement existed in local isolation, each representing a border based on a number of markers, especially in terms of language. during the 19th century the ethnic identity of bessarabian bulgarians was strengthened through direct communication with bulgaria. immigrants, even after the final settlement of bessarabia, continued to visit relatives in bulgaria (under ottoman empire until 1878) illegally. in parallel with this, significant numbers of bulgarian revival figures visited bessarabian villages, teaching at schools and in the bolgrad gymnasium, and conducted culturaleducational activities amongst the bulgarian population. however, the connections began to gradually erode, especially by the end of 19th century. on the one hand, this was a result of weak connections with bulgaria. on the other hand, the russification politics of the russian empire also significantly reduced the influence of the bulgarian revivalists in bessarabia. all this, in turn, led to the gradual disappearance of an ethnic identity focused on bulgaria. connections with bulgaria were only renewed again after 1985. far fewer studies on the bulgarians living in bessarabia were carried out in the 20th century. bulgarians lived through political changes which saw the area come in turn under the power of four different states: russia, romania, ussr and ukraine, while the local peoples’ ethnic identity remained relatively unchanged. both younger and senior generations of bessarabian bulgarians speak exclusively in bulgarian. the majority are bilingual (bulgarian, russian), while the younger generation is developing trilingual skills (bulgarian, russian, ukrainian). the russian language is still used for administrative purposes and in official activities. bulgarians from different villages, meeting in the regional centre, use the russian language at least as frequently as bulgarian. the exception is the senior generation which was brought up during the time that the area was under romanian rule (1918-1944) and are, therefore, less skilled in russian. the research the subject of research is the generation born in the 1980s, the young citizens of a newly independent ukrainian state. the questionnaire aimed to reveal the direct influences associated with the formation of identity of youth from bessarabia studying in bulgaria. the first-year students in autumn of 2002 had just arrived in bulgaria, so the information reflects their views at the moment of their entering the new country. the first general question concerned the way they identified themselves as either “bulgarians” or “bessarabian bulgarians”. the majority of the students chose the second, thus emphasizing the importance of their origin. it is necessary to note that these informants also specified ukrainian as their native language. the ethnic identity of a person is formed on the basis of a number of markers. the questionnaires allowed consideration of the most meaningful markers for bessarabian bulgarians themselves. the majority of respondents gave primary importance to ethnic traditions while a common historical origin was secondary and consciousness and language were equal in third place. psychology, religion and anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 40 appearance were determined as less significant. below i discuss how this initial valuation changed during the time the students spent in bulgaria. the formation of an ethnic identity and understandings of ethnic borders is rooted, above all, in the family, where the transmission of ethnic markers occurs. the environment is crucial in the formation of a personal identity. among the questionnaired informants, two were brought up in mixed families, where the language was russian. however, in both cases, bulgarian was spoken in the village, and this wider context influenced the individual cases. both individuals identified themselves as bulgarian. to continue with the language marker, in another two cases, ukrainian was specified as the native language. however, as in the above cases, in these instances too both informants identified themselves as “bessarabian bulgarians”. maybe the reason for this is that the young people were brought up in a mixed household and in such cases the wider environment has dominant influence. we are also presently witnessing an imposition or replacement of language identity due to government impetus. that is, under the influence of ukrainian mass media and the increasing ukrainisation of schools, a mixture of identities is developing amongst youth. it is necessary to note that most susceptible to these new enforced changes are individuals from mixed ethnic families. one hundred percent of the first year students spoke the ukrainian language fluently. in such a way, the characteristic identity of bessarabian bulgarians, who enter higher education establishments in bulgaria, can be summarized as: • people with a socially constructed individual and group identity that is viewed as part of a common bulgarian ethnic community; but they are divided in terms of a common history, culture or religion; • bulgarian language features prominently; • a territorial identity, based on bessarabia as a whole, and also particular places within the region. • a ukrainian identity, or a moldovan one in the case of bessarabians from the republic of moldova, is less developed and marks an opposition “us them” with respect to bessarabian bulgarians. it should be noted that irrespective of the mobility of the society at the end of 20th century, bulgarian youth in bessarabia were relatively isolated from the external world, so much so that a bessarabian identity represented a significant part of local identity. before considering further elements that are part of the identity of bessarabian bulgarians studying in bulgaria, it is necessary to also note the emotional factor. perhaps as a result of a long absence of communication with bulgaria, a nostalgia towards the native land has developed that praises its way of life and its landscape and that reflects a general nostalgia towards bulgaria as the ancestral home. the falling of "the iron curtain" and opening borders have renewed this nostalgia. the opportunity to study in bulgaria after the 1990s has caused a wave of interest. while motives for studying abroad vary, an important aspect is the emotional link to bulgaria. after completing high school and passing introductory examinations, students arrive in bulgaria. this can be viewed as a point of reference, the starting point for a transformational process where the identity of young bessarabian bulgarians will be exposed to change over the years of studying. young people who have never before lived independently, or dealt with administrative, financial or housing problems, face for the first time such challenges in the bulgarian capital. a relatively conservative bessarabian village life does not prepare youth for such challenges. in the village all is regulated by traditions, customs, common laws and moral foundations. in rural communities cultural frameworks are clear and restrictive. the city environment gives the individual an opportunity for greater liberalisation, a choice of means and methods of achievement of moral and financial satisfaction. a city, which is highly industralised, multiethnic, with high mobility rates, and with many structures and hierarchies, can often be indifferent and cruel to personal problems. the realities of such a life quickly destroy the nostalgic representations held about bulgaria in bessarabia. further, the young people recognize how they are different from bulgarians. this leads to a significant reappraisal of the existing system of values and often to a crisis of identity. to return to the findings of the questionnaire: data demonstrated the instability of ethnic identity. ethnic and territorial differences, as well as religious differences, served to remold the identity of the students. the questionnaire bears out that by the end of the study period the overwhelming majority of students continued to identify themselves as “bessarabian bulgarians” and only a very small percentage began to see themselves as ethnic bulgarians. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 41 data about self-identity in terms of the language of the students also confirms this position. among the questionnaired respondents, some people specified the russian language as their native tongue despite being ethnic bulgarians and identifying themselves as bessarabian bulgarians. at home in their native villages in bessarabia, everyone feels highly involved and valued by the community, giving him/her a sense of stability and protection. in bulgaria each student felt a necessity to replicate such a situation, in which he/she felt relatively safe in a community. for the students, other bessarabian students provided such a replacement community, even though they were not denied the opportunity to integrate into the bulgarian society. criteria that unite a group of bessarabian students in terms of culture, language and religion markers, define the ethnic borders of the community. these criteria are the mechanisms for the preservation and transformation of group identity and are key points in binding the given group while in bulgaria. the main uniting factor for the group as a whole was its origin: people born and raised in bessarabia. an identity on this territorial basis received higher priority than one based on ethnicity. a significant proportion of the questioned students specified their nationality as “bessarabian bulgarian male” or “bessarabian bulgarian female”. such a group identity also included students from other regions of ukraine, and even representatives from other states such as russia and moldova. the overriding factor in all cases is the socio-economic mutual support of members of the group, giving each other security and stability while away from home. support is expressed foremost in mutual financial aid, moral and physical help in different situations. the questionnaire also took into account changes over time, allowing us to see how specific elements changed in terms of importance during the years of study. while at the beginning the main marker of differentiation between bessarabians and bulgarians was language, by the end of their studies language, traditions and common historical origin were allocated equal value as inseparable in terms of importance. less important were religion and physical appearance. obviously, during the years the importance of these criteria fluctuated, but the generalization above holds and there was no important exceptions deserving special attention. not less interesting was the position of the group with respect to the “us” and “them” dichotomy (bessarabian bulgarians—bulgarians from bulgaria). while in the hierarchy of markers of difference, language was most important, during the study period the students changed their opinions significantly concerning the historical development of the migrants and in turn language became more and more important. by the fifth year of study, culture and other aspects also gained importance. the least important markers of difference between “us” and “them” were religion and the physical appearance of group members. in discussing bessarabian bulgarian group identity amongst students in bulgaria, it was not enough to focus on the ‘us’ side of the equation which included representations concerning the consolidation and attributes of the group. it was also necessary to recognize the society from the side of the other citizens – bulgarians – that is to look at the “them”. let us turn now to look at the researched group from the bulgarian side. firstly, it is necessary to note that our bessarabian bulgarians were nicknamed rusnaci (russians) by the bulgarian students. the reason for this is that the majority spoke russian, listened to russian music, read russian newspapers and books. statistical data concerning the language spoken in student dormitories is that from the first year bessarabian bulgarians, who on most occasions spoke to each other in russian. this is due to the fact that every bulgarian village in ukraine has its own dialect, which is not always understandable to other bessarabian bulgarians. russian is therefore the common language equally accessible and clear for all group members. at the same time local bessarabian boundaries between insider and outsider are also reinforced, since each village speaks bulgarian only to other village members, while russian is the language of inter-village communication in the region (as well as between bulgarians and the other ethnic groups represented in the region – gagauz, moldovans). thus local identity is reproduced in a ‘foreign’ bulgarian context. from the second year, students use russian for exchanges between themselves almost exclusively. this can be explained in terms of the expansion of the circle of acquaintances amongst the students. those students in their third to fifth year still communicated mainly in russian amongst themselves and it is only once they graduated from their educational institutions and made the decision to remain permanently in bulgaria or to enter postgraduate study that they were more likely to use the bulgarian language69. the same is true for russian music, films, newspapers and books. their popularity can be understood as a ‘natural’ process of socialization; from childhood, students are surrounded by modern russian culture. favourite anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 42 groups, actors, books and so on are taken to bulgaria where exposure to new culture adds to the previous foundation. the same is the case for ukrainian culture. many bessarabian bulgarians in bulgaria listen to “elzi ocean”, “vv” and other popular ukraine musicians. bessarabian students in bulgaria visit discos where russian music is played at “rusko party” events organized and run by bulgarian clubs. migrants interact initially with culture from the motherland through the music, food or art of the country of their origin and by associating predominantly with compatriots or fellow-exiles70. the social life of bessarabian bulgarians is complemented by established relations with native bulgarians. the ethnic border dividing one group from another is, first of all, a social border. groups enter into intensive cooperation with each other while not reducing identities with each other. the questionnaires show that the collective identity of bessarabian bulgarians is positive and not dependent on the “us” and “them” contrast. (a negative identity consolidates the community of “us” on the basis of a negative opposition to “them”71). a positive group identity is expressed, primarily, in the tolerance the two groups show towards each other72. questionnaire materials show that almost 100% of bessarabian bulgarians would agree to marry a native bulgarian. students attribute to the bulgarians such moral qualities as industriousness, economic skills, sympathy and generosity. alongside these positive qualities they also recognize some negative qualities: insolence, lack of punctuality, stubbornness and pride. conversely native bulgarians characterize bessarabian bulgarians as positive and cheerful, responsive, enterprising, hard-working, bold and honest; while negative characteristics include being envious, sly, hypocritical and unpunctual. such criticisms do not, however, have a deciding influence on the tolerance or acceptance of bessarabian bulgarians. bessarabian bulgarians in bulgaria maintain a position that is both inclusive and exclusive. members realize that they are “bulgarian” and thus belong to the community in terms of sharing the same language and a shared cultural identity. yet at the same time while living in bulgaria they often settle in areas separate from native bulgarians, the separate community being denoted in terms of a shared historical past, the use of the russian language and other features defined as distinct to “bessarabian bulgarians”. and in fact the community is officially acknowledged by state organs of the republic of bulgaria, both in terms of public organizations and in scientific circles. in this sense bessarabian bulgarians in bulgaria may be considered a subethnic group. naturally the group extends beyond the student population. graduating students often remain permanently in bulgaria, marriages are made and they become active in the life of bulgarian society. at the same time the majority of bessarabian bulgarians continue to support their close relationships with the representatives of their subethnic group. a topic for future research is to explore how this subethnic group, now becoming a permanent feature of bulgarian society, functions and changes over time. notes 64 гелнер, 1999: 38. 65 the settlment of ukrainians in budzak started in the third decade of the 18th century and over the following 80 years the settlement became relatively large. at the beginning of 19th century a significant number of ukrainians from podolia, volhynia and west-ukraine moved to bessarabia. for more details see бачинский, 1964 :328; кабузан, в. м. 1974: 23. 66 political events and reforms introduced by peter the great in russia provided the reason for massive migrations of russian old believers-necracovcy to south bessarabia. in the fourth to eighth decades of the 18th century they established a number of settlements in underdunabe. in the 19th century about 20 000 state peasants moved to budzak from the central areas of russia. for further details see: анастасова, 1998 : 17-44; пригарин, 2001 : 379; кабузан, 1974 : 23. 67 кабузан, 1974 : 24. 68 budzak is a historical-geographical region, that includes the territory of the contemporary south-west districts of the odessa region, ukraine. from the west the region is bounded by the river dnestr, from the south by the danube, and from the north and the west by the border with the republic of moldova. in 1818 the national structure was as follows: moldovans 36,98 %, bulgarians 21,46 %, ukrainians 17,93 %, germans 9,2 % and russian 8,94 % кабузан, century of m. the decree. соч., with. 36. 69 there are no statistics available as to how many students remain in bulgaria after completing their studies, but indications are that the vast majority do not return to ukraine. 70 bledin 2002: 99 71ачкасов в.а. этническая идентичности в ситуациях общественного выбора. // http://hq.soc.pu.ru/publications/jssa/1999/1/8achkas.h tml. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 43 references bledin, k. 2002. ‘migration, identity and group analysis’ in the group-analytic society, vol 36(1):99. анастасова, е. 1998. староообрядците в българия. с.anastasova, e. 1998. old believers in bulgaria (in bulgarian). ачкасов в.а. 1999. этническая идентичности в ситуациях общественного выбора. // http://hq.soc.pu.ru/publications/jssa/1999/1/ 8achkas.html.. achkasov, b.a. 1999. ethnic identity in social selections (in russian). бачинский, а. д. 1964. основные этапы крестьянско казацкой колонизации буджакской степи и низовий дуная в 18 – начале 19 века // ежегодник по аграрной истории восточной европы. кишинев bashinskii, a.d. 1964. fundamental stages in rural kazak colonisation of the budzakskoi steppes and lower danube, 18th to early 19th centuries. annual report on the rural history of eastern europe, kishenev. гелнер, э. 1999. нация и национализм. софия gellner, e. 1999. nations and nationalism, sofia. кабузан, в. м. 1974. народонаселение бессарабской области и левобережных районов приднестровья. кишинев kabuzan, b.m. 1974. ethnic populations in the bessarabian regions and the region of levoberedz. kishenev. пригарин, а. а. 2001. переселение некрасовцев из добруджи в бесарабию: 1830 – 1835. // культура русских старообрядцев в национальном и международном контексте. вып. 3, бухарест prigarin, a.a. 2001. migration of old believers from dobraja to bessarabia: 1830 – 1835. the culture of russian old believers in national and international contexts. bucharest, issue: 3. http://hq.soc.pu.ru/publications/jssa/1999/1/8achkas.html� http://hq.soc.pu.ru/publications/jssa/1999/1/8achkas.html� microsoft word aeer_final final 2007.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 105 veering toward radicalism: a case study on the increase of the popular support for organized radical movements in poland alexsandra skalska de paul university introduction after months of negotiations, which included some bittersweet coalition reshufflings, poland formed a new government in 2005. the newly established coalition was set up among the conservative law and justice [pis], the populist selfdefense [so], and the national conservative league of polish families [lpr]. since 2001, the so and lpr have been known for their radical rhetoric and confrontational direct acts. lpr’s political agenda has emphasized strong opposition to abortion and gay marriages, while self-defense’s lead efforts to maintain state-funded agriculture and increase in government social programs. also, both at some point addressed their disapproval for poland’s entry to the european union fueled by their hostility toward foreign investment and opposition to the selling of polish land to foreign nationals. unsuccessful coalition talks between the law and justice and the liberal civic platform [po], fueled by the discrepancies between the leaders of both parties, compelled the former to look for alternative coalition partners elsewhere. possibilities included some choices that were quickly deterred or never looked into like the former communist and the alliance of the democratic left (sld), much despised by the pis. the two radical parties, representing different sides of the ideological spectrum -lpr far right and so populist left -proved to be most compatible with pis’s political program. the three were already acquainted with each other when they signed the stabilization pact in 2006 to deter the polish president from the possible dissolution of the parliament. still, the newly established government alarmed the liberal circles in poland and abroad. the media stormed with comments about how the new coalition is “sending the wrong message,” or that the pis is “playing with fire.” was this coalition, after all, an unanticipated turn of events? five years ago nobody expected that the radical parties would even manage to get into the parliament. but as the course of events has shown, to the astonishment of many, this is exactly what happened. were there incentives behind the spur of popularity for the radical parties in poland? could one examine the rise to power of both parties through a prism of people’s opinions and motivations? i conducted five-month of field research on the increase of the popular support for the organized radical movement in poland.cv i began with the hypothesis that the spur of popularity for the radical parties happened because of the eu accession. both parties’ adverse position on poland’s accession to the european union and the increase in popularity of both during the final and most difficult stages of negotiations with the eu instigated my speculations about such possibility. the results of my research refuted this hypothesis. i was quick to learn that the rationale behind people’s voting for the radical parties went beyond a mere understanding of the accession process with the european union. i also learned that ever since the collapse of communism the political system in poland has experienced voter demobilization and institutional experimentation, which may partially explain why the political system in poland has been so unpredictable. gauging the possibilities political party preferences in poland change like a kaleidoscope. nevertheless, both radical fractions relentlessly maintain a strong position, ranking in the top five of the most popular parties in poland. in 2005 elections to the polish parliament the radical parties gained a considerate number of seats (so11.4% and lpr – 8 %), but lagged behind parties like the conservative law and justice -pis (27%), and the center-right civic platform -po (24.1%). unlike the two leading right-wing groups, both radical parties rely on a distinctive electoral support, that of the villages and small towns (selfdefense 35 % and lpr 38%). according to public opinion research in 2004, the largest social group supporting the two radical parties are farmers (so 44% and lpr 36%). they ardently sympathize with the populist, conservative, and the isolationist politics of both parties. additional supporting groups for both parties include unskilled workers (so 36%), people possessing elementary or middle-technical level of education, and those living in the rural areas. the declaration of support is also being widely heard among low-income people and among those who negatively rank their material status. the vast majority of enthusiasts of the lpr are seniors 65 and anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 106 up (27%) and people on welfare (20%). an important factor in support for the lpr is religiousness, which is measured by the frequency of religious practices. consequently, practicing catholics and people declaring right-wing orientation more likely express their support for the lpr (31%).cvi there are many explanations in polish popular discourse for the increase in popular support for parties of the radical right and left, such as the collective experience of stress, tension, and social/political crises.cvii scholarly opinion takes a macro view of these politico-cultural trends. for example, douglas holmes, an anthropologist who has studied radical groups in uk and france, sees it as a result of two interrelated phenomena, that of the political and economic integration of the sovereign countries into the european union project, and “fast capitalism.”cviii in his essay, elections and voting behavior, krzysztof jasiewicz, the polish political scientist, says that the key concept remains in the “democratic consolidation” of the cee where a rapid social economic change caused a rift in the society. he claims that the system changes produced societal divisions, which in turn generated the support for “political populism.”cix frances millard, an american political scientist with long experience in central europe, says that specific voting behavior in poles is an outcome of failures in government, which facilitated the initial breakthrough of the populist parties in 2001. cx because the region’s ethnic and cultural diversification could also tell us something about political preferences, i decided to focus on the aspects of regionalism to gauge specific voting behaviors. despite the assumptions made by journalists and political scientists about the rationale of peoples' voting, it is not certain that the full range of voting motivations has been described. in particular, polish voters, like american voters, are broken down into very large and all encompassing subgroups according to age, education, income, etc. missing from this equation is the heterogeneous provenance of the population of certain regions of poland. it could be speculated that a region’s reluctance or eagerness toward a specific political party may be influenced by that region’s ethnic composition. for example, if the inhabitants of the region indicate separatist inclinations or if their cultural and national interests vary considerably from that of the mainstream, it is anticipated that their vote will go to the parties that hold similar beliefs. moreover, the geographic location and the concomitant characteristics of a particular region could also determine the region’s voting proclivities. for example, in poland the predominantly agricultural regions in the east vote differently than the industrial regions in the west. given this complex and changing picture, it cannot be determined ahead of time that people of a particular provenance will vote one way or another. instead, people must be allowed to give voice to their social and political experiences. through my ethnographic fieldwork, i attempted to provide an outlet for the voters to tell their stories. i wanted to make sure that the voting voice of the people was not lost or neglected. it was an attempt to look at the phenomenon from the point of view of the voting population living in one particular region of poland in which the participants were to describe their personal experiences with the two radical parties, the self-defense (so) and league of polish families (lpr). by focusing on a single region and its case of enthusiasm toward the radical movement, i could establish a better knowledge and understanding of the emergence of this voting trend within other regions of poland. sample and selection criteria the subject region of this study -silesia - unites the cultural heritage of numerous people and countries. silesia is a metal and coal mining industrial region with a rich history of resistance and fight for independence before and during both world wars. the turbulent historical past plays well into the specific make up of the region. based on the silesian example, one may be able to understand how different cultures and ethnicities that managed to mix over years gave way to specific voting patterns. for example, the three dominant groups in this region, the silesians, germans and kresowianie have a different understanding of nationhood. to silesians it is their own region. the silesians want autonomy of their region. to germans, silesia is germany. the germans want poland to be part of the european union because it will help strengthened the connections with germany. to kresowianie – a population of poles who were expelled from eastern borderlands of poland that were annexed by the soviet union after world war ii -it is first and foremost poland. kresowianie support a stronger poland. while proceeding with this research i took upon two objectives, the first was to discover the movement ideologies and internal processes of the two radical parties in poland. for that i conducted interviews with silesian activists from the two radical parties. the second objective was to identify the voting tendencies and rationale for people's support for the radical parties. this part of the research was based on open-ended interviews with private individuals who are members of specific community anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 107 groups and organizations in silesia. these groups are organized around the regional origins of their members. all of the interviews were conducted in polish. the three community groups coincided with identifiable ethnic groups. these were 1) federation of expellees from the eastern borderlands of the second republic territorial association of silesia (związek wypędzonych z kresów ii rp), 2) silesian autonomy movement -raś (ruch autonomii śląska) and 3) the social-cultural society of the germans --dfk (towarzystwo społeczno-kulturalne niemców). my initial choice in selecting these particular organizations was based on their visibility in the community through services they have provided to their members and to silesian society. a total of forty-four private individuals cooperated with my research. for each organization studied there were approximately fifteen participants. only ten of them were women. from among the three organizations, one (silesian autonomy movement) had no female participants. for the other two, the number of female participants was five. in terms of age, the oldest participant was 78 years old, while the youngest was 33. the average age for the group of 44 participants was 55 years old. the society of the germans (dfk) had the oldest participants with the average age of 62. the youngest participants were in the silesian autonomy movement where the typical age was 44. the association of expellees fell right in the middle, but closely followed the society of the germans. there, the average participant was 60 years old. when recruiting my partners in research i paid attention to their place of origin. silesia is divided into 36 administrative districts, which are spread over 12 thousand square kilometers.cxi since the members of the organizations were not located in one particular district, i decided to limit myself to the four administrative districts: katowice, gliwice, tarnowskie góry, and bytom. even though this put some limitations on the number of the actual participants in this research, the criteria i used when picking my districts were based on high condensation of members of the three studied organizations and the proximity and accessibility to the sites. results political vacillation the results of this research demonstrated the respondents’ inability to clearly state their political preferences, and their lack of pre-determinated ideology or principled conviction for polish politics. supporting this point was evidence of a lack of coherence in responses to the questions that concerned the voting choices and the factors underlying these choices. the most viable distinction in political preferences was that between the supporters and adversaries of radicalism. but even these two groups experienced some incoherencies of their own. for example, respondents who did not support the tactics and practices of the radical parties nevertheless supported the parties’ political programs and vice versa. the respondents who condemned the acts of self-defense (so), like the grain-dumping protest, found the so reliable and trustworthy. the same discrepancies existed in the views of political trustworthiness of the leaders of both radical parties. there were respondents who despised both roman giertych (lpr) and andrzej lepper (so), and those who liked one but not necessarily the other. among all of the respondents, no one declared their support for both politicians. still, preferences about political figures did not necessarily correspond with the political party preferences. even people who strongly disliked both politicians declared their support for radical practices. some people who displayed liberal proclivities also admitted that giertych and lepper are the only politicians who might be able to tackle the challenges of polish politics. another factor in determining people’s indecisiveness about the political scene in poland was the prevailing attitude among respondents that neither radicals nor liberals are fit to govern. almost 60% of respondents thought that the liberal parties did not measure up to people’s expectations. some respondents admitted that liberalism had too many failures in the past and that it had worked better in other countries, but not necessarily in poland. a number of respondents thought that liberals are characterized by too much leniency, which makes them unreliable as political players. there were also those who brought up the positive sides of liberalism, such as that liberals have more political experience and are better educated. the majority of respondents asserted that the liberals are supported by the wealthy and educated, while the radicals by the poor and uneducated (63%). the arguments used by these respondents pertained to the fact that radicals are more appealing to the common people because they use simple language and populist slogans. also, poverty and lack of education compels people to look for easy solutions, and in the opinion of many respondents, this is what the radicals have to offer. some of the interviewees thought that the liberals are supported by the wealthy and educated since liberal ideologies were created by political and financial elites. anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 108 social denunciation of radicalism the social trends and the outcomes of this research show that there exists a general discontent with radicalism in poland. precisely, the society and politicians despise “radicalism” because of the stigma attached to this word. the scope of this repugnance is even seen among the radical activists who view the word as derogatory and offensive. in their opinion, people overuse the term to an extent when they begin to confuse it with words like patriotism. the radical party activists blame such perception on the media, which in their opinion portrays them in a negative light. an enduring activist and a senatorial candidate from lower silesia in 2005 parliamentary elections, bolesław grabowski said, “lpr is not a radical party. it has become a trend that everything that does not fall into the mainstream preached by the media is considered as radical.” based on the number of responses, the people i interviewed were not fond of the practices and tactics of the radical parties, like the road blockades or grain-dumping protest organized by self-defense. nearly 77% of respondents thought that the dumping of grain by self-defense was not done in poland’s best interest. nearly 23% called the practices “unethical” and “barbaric.” fifteen percent said that such event should have not taken place in the situation when so many people in poland struggle with hunger and poverty. those who said that the dumping of grain did in fact represent a protectionist act said that the grain should had not been imported to poland in the first place. they also said that poland has an adequate supply of grain. they saw importing grain from abroad as a loss of profits to the local farmers (14 %). additional evidence of the negative attitude toward radicalism is that 66% of respondents thought that andrzej lepper and roman giertych, the radical leaders, are not trustworthy. the respondents perceived them as xenophobic nationalists who use national sentiments and demagogy for their own political gains. almost 45 % of respondents believed that both politicians lack appropriate political conduct. those who approved of lepper and giertych said that what they admire in both are their candidness and bravery in speaking up about corruption in politics. even though the majority of respondents disapproved of radicalism, there were several individuals with liberal viewpoints who unconsciously approved of radical ideologies. these unwittingly expressed opinions produced a pattern i called the latent radicalism. i determined the nature of latent radicals based on the existing contradictions provided by the interviewees themselves. the latent radicals were a group of respondents who openly declared their disapproval of the radical parties but at the same time abided by the radical way of thinking. they supported liberal parties or any other parties different from the radical ones, but adopted and supported the radical ideals. for example, they were quick to make judgments about the political conduct of the individual members of the radical parties but admitted that, “poland needs to be ruled with an iron first.” the underlying nature of latent radicals was revealed in their own contradictions. thus, they could have supported the liberal parties and disapproved of lpr and so but were also for the restoration of capital punishment and for the condemnation of gay marriages and women’s rights to abortion. to gauge the respondent’s enthusiasm for radicalism, i asked them whether they would link the eu skepticism of the radical parties with patriotism. seventy percent of the respondents thought that the link did not exist. some compared the radicals’ skepticism with nationalism, xenophobia, or even fascism. others said that eu skepticism signifies the parties’ nearsightedness or even hypocrisy. a group of respondents who thought that the eu skepticism is in fact a patriotic act used arguments that spoke of the hurtful outcomes of the eu accession and the necessity to prevent similar impairments in the future. they also spoke about the role the radical parties play as the defenders of the national interests. in a notable contrast, almost 33 % of the kresowianie thought that eu skepticism could be compared to a patriotic act. the other groups of respondents were not as sympathetic to euroskeptics. for example, the silesians, besides two undecided voices, stated that eu skepticism is not in itself a patriotic act. the germans, while also voicing their disapproval, had only three positive responses. an interesting thing to note is that each group displayed its own political preferences. the kresowianie were more likely to lean toward the radical parties, although liberal voices were predominant. this group had the most supporters for the radical parties among the three studied groups. the germans, with a lot of voices leaning toward the former communists, had also few enthusiasts of selfdefense. nevertheless, the silesians displayed the most homogeneous political proclivities that were evidently liberal. the role of the eu in the support for the radicals seventy five percent of respondents were thrown off guard when i asked them to comment on whether the eu had something to do with poland’s political and economic failures, or that in fact, anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 109 poland’s accession to the eu might have lead to the increase of support for the radical parties. rather, a lot of people transferred all their frustrations concerning the malfunctioning of the political and economic systems from the eu to the polish government. they blamed the government for the lack of incentive in implementing and creating the necessary reforms and changes. despite a gloomy panorama of issues ranging from politicians to economy to radical parties, the european union was, in fact, the only thing that kept most respondents optimistic. people kept referring back to the technological innovations, developments in infrastructure, and the economy. the respondents believed that the european union will create opportunities for poland and will restrain the polish government from further misappropriations of public goods. others held high hopes for developments in job sectors. a considerable number of respondents believed that the situation would change for the better after eu accession; however, the changes will not happen instantly (45%). twenty-seven percent of respondents thought that despite the many opportunities the eu will create, it should take at least one generation for those opportunities to realize. there were also people who did not hold the same extent of optimism about the eu as the rest of the respondents. they believed that the situation would change for the worse (25%). the respondents’ most often quoted concern about the european union involved the allocation of the eu funds. the respondents feared that only particular sectors of the economy would profit from the eu accession. thirty-eight percent of respondents believed that it is in poland’s own competency to take care of things without constantly looking up to the eu. a group of respondents also believed that the eu cares only about the most powerful countries and their own interests. these respondents asserted that in order to fix the problems poland faces today, people’s mentality must change and poland must face possible changes in the government rather than rely on the eu. also, they stressed that poland needs the resources to conduct the required changes. nevertheless, the radicals lack a political plan to effectively carry out these changes. one of the guiding principles of this research was to discover the movement ideologies and internal processes of the two radical parties in poland. based on the conducted interviews with the silesian activists from the two radical parties lpr and so, the eu accession was not a determinant factor in the increase of the popular support for their parties. the representatives from self-defense claimed that the gain of popularity for their party happened because the party’s program aimed at solving the most troubling issues of the society. the second reason given had to do with the fact that the party abstained from supporting the unfavorable terms and conditions of poland’s entry to the eu. one activist admitted that people’s anxieties about problems with the social safety net, in which the fear was one of the essential elements, generated the support for the party. the party activists from lpr thought otherwise. in their opinion, other essential factors, such as political intricacies, aversion toward past governments, and a necessity for other alternatives, spurred the growth of the party’s support base. marek kawa, lpr’s deputy to the polish parliament said that the support for lpr happened because the party is acting naturally, and does not play the political games with the potential electorate. our party is talking about things that hurt, this is why the league is paying for it, by being referred to or thought of as radical. we talk about how the protectionism of our country is necessary. you can’t just sell out the nation’s most precious assets. to build a working economy, we cannot be stripped of national funds. when asked to comment on the issue concerned with the role the radical slogans played in generating the support for their parties, the activists of the so and lpr also provided different responses. the activists of self-defense acknowledged that their program aims at all social strata of the polish society, not only the poor and disadvantaged. although, one respondent admitted that it is true that the party targets the poor, because the poor react more spontaneously. “this is true, poor and unemployed people accept outrageous acts. they are tired of empty slogans and they want to see some action.” on the other hand, the representatives from lpr said that they simply strife for as many votes as possible. the party however wants to draw a distinction from other parties, because, in the opinion of their activists, the electorate of lpr encompasses people from different parts of poland, different social strata, drawing an immense interest of a young population. the activists from lpr also stressed that the party maintains its distinction based on the preworld war ii national movement, which was then supported by the aristocracy and intelligentsia. recognizing the factors for radical enthusiasm the underlying causes for the social support of the two radical parties became clearer to me as i begun exploring the topics on the economy, anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 110 specifically the questions that asked the participants to describe the relationship between the worsening of the economic situation and the increase of support for the radical parties. 77% of the respondents linked the two. what i found interesting is that people did not link the deterioration of the polish economy with poland’s accession to the eu. again, they blamed it on the ruling elites and their faulty governance. the respondents took two different approaches when explaining the support for the radicals. one group blamed the populist character of both parties and the heavy usage of demagogy to stir the emotions of the impoverished part of the population. another group predicted the external forces to be the agents behind the spur of popularity, such as people’s disappointment with the past governments. in the opinion of the first group, the radical slogans propagated by both parties are aimed at the poor and socially disadvantaged. the slogans appeal to basic human needs like hunger, and offer quick fixes to problems like unemployment and corrupted government. the second group thought that those who vote for the radical parties do it in an act of desperation. since there are no legitimate candidates to vote for, people vote for the parties that sound most appealing to them. some respondents argued that since there are no legitimate candidates, people look for a strong leader, someone they can look up to. in their opinion, the radical parties offer an appealing political program even though their solutions tend to be extreme at times. the potential voters then notice the ability of the radicals to be reliable advocates of the economically and socially disadvantaged. symbolism plays an immense role in framing the political preferences among different groups of individuals. the evident role in framing these preferences is played by the catholic church, which also remains to be an important political agent. conclusion nearing the end of this research, i realized that my initial speculations -that the increase of support for radical rightand left-wing parties in poland was related to the bargaining processes to enter the european union (eu) and the efforts to streamline polish infrastructure with the eu values and standards -were wrong. on the contrary, this research shows that people in silesia remain highly optimistic about the eu independent of their support for or opposition to the radical parties. i was able to confirm the claim that people’s diminished enthusiasm about political and economic reforms account for the radical voting inclinations of the electorate. fifteen years of reign by ineffective governments have increased public apprehension and social uneasiness with politics. this also led to the particular voting trends and provided incentives for the emergence and growth of the organized populist and radical formations. the results of this research confirmed that the increase of popular support for the radical parties in particular in poland related to the parties’ adherence to national and catholic symbols. during the electoral campaign to the polish parliament in 2005, the radical parties utilized national symbols like the flag, traditions of the solidarity movement, and the catholic church. some say that the parties’ appeal to these national symbols was motivated by other key events of 2005, such as the death of pope john paul ii or the 60-year anniversary of the end of wwii.cxii however, these national sentiments have remained at the core of polishness for years or even generations. the radicals appeal succeeded at a time when the national culture and identity were being jeopardized. in times when the outside agents, like foreign economic expansion, threaten national culture and identity, the electorate could be motivated to protect itself by voting for parties that adhere to similar sentiments and beliefs. they would do so out of the fear of being stripped of what remains to be the foundation of their sense of coherence for the national imaginary. another vital factor is the role political elites have played in shaping the popular perception about politics in general. people’s pessimism about the economic system transition has trickled down to the actions of individual political figures and their political parties. the slogans of the two radical parties, the self-defense and league of polish families, linked people’s desperate economic situation with the failed economic programs. some voters found the slogans a satisfying vent for their anger and frustration. they made retribution seem plausible by promising to hold the fraudulent politicians accountable. the people sought compensation for these embezzlements, believing that these perpetrations had a direct influence on their domestic economic situation. people embraced the radical programs because they sought quick solutions to intractable problems. ever since the infamous parliamentary elections of 2001, polish politics has fashioned a new outlook, one seen as more conservative and radical in its undertone. the defining characteristics of radicalism in poland are both cultural and political. it is a reemerging phenomenon that combines the distinct features of the old radical school with some new radical initiatives. polish radicalism transforms society’s sense of betrayal by the political elites by anthropology of east europe review volume 25, no. 1 page 111 offering the hope of societal integration in the fight for a common cause. this trend is likely to continue, considering people’s frustrations and growing insecurities with unemployment, public debt, inflation, and increasing taxes. nonetheless, the last seventeen years prove that the much despised and feared rise of the radicals could be one of many passageways through which poland travels in its transition to a more democratic consolidation. notes 1 this research was conducted between july and december 2005, shortly before and after the elections to the polish parliament. 2 centrum badania opinii publicznej (public opinion research center) –cbos. “report on the decrease in perceived representativeness of political parties,” (january 2004) http://www.cbos.com.pl/centrum badania opinii publicznej (public opinion research center) –cbos. “report on the political party preferences,” (september 2004) http://www.cbos.com.pl/ 3 wolf, eric. r. “envisioning power -ideologies of dominance and crisis.” berkeley: university of california press, 1999 (p. 274). 4 homes, douglas,r. integral europe. fastcapitalism, multiculturalism, neofascism. princeton: princeton university press, 2000 (p. 5). 5 jasiewicz, krzysztof. “elections and voting behavior.” edited by white, stephen, batt, judy, lewis, paul g. developments in central and east european politics 3, durham: duke university press, 2003 (p.183-184). 6 millard, frances. “elections in poland 2001: electoral manipulation and party upheaval.” communist and post-communist studies 36 (2003): 69-86. 7 dziennik zachodni, wydanie specjalne (silesian daily – special edition) bezpłatny dodatek specjalny gmin, powiatów i miast, no. 7531 (march 2005). 8 perzyna, łukasz. “z czym do wladzy startuje kampania wyborcza opozycji?” (what is the campaign strategy of the opposition?). tygodnik solidarnosc. may 2005. references centrum badania opinii publicznej (public opinion research center) –cbos. september 2004. report on the political party preferences. electronic document, http://www.cbos.com.pl/. centrum badania opinii publicznej (public opinion research center) –cbos. january 2004. report on the decrease in perceived representativeness of political parties. electronic document, http://www.cbos.com.pl/. dziennik zachodni, wydanie specjalne (silesian daily – special edition). march 2005. bezpłatny dodatek specjalny gmin, powiatów i miast, no. 7531. homes, douglas,r. 2000. integral europe. fast-capitalism, multiculturalism, neofascism. princeton: princeton university press. jasiewicz, krzysztof. 2003. elections and voting behavior. in developments in central and east european politics 3. white, stephen, batt, judy, lewis, paul g, eds. durham: duke university press. millard, frances. 2003. elections in poland 2001: electoral manipulation and party upheaval. communist and post-communist studies 36: 69-86. perzyna, łukasz. may 2005. z czym do wladzy startuje kampania wyborcza opozycji? (what is the campaign strategy of the opposition?). tygodnik solidarnosc. wolf, eric. r. 1999. envisioning power -ideologies of dominance and crisis. berkeley: university of california press. dachas and vegetable gardens in belarus: economic and subjective stakes of an “ordinary passion” volume 21, number 1 dachas and vegetable gardens in belarus: economic and subjective stakes of an “ordinary passion” ronan hervouet, university of bordeaux © 2003 ronan hervouet all right reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. do you plant potatoes? of course! it is like asking if there is the moon in belarus…” (conversation with alexandre k., smilovichi, april 20th 2002) why am i interested in such a question? the choice of this subject matter may, a priori, be perplexing. why be interested in such a mundane topic as the vegetable gardens in a country hit by the chernobyl catastrophe, under the yoke of a megalomaniac dictator, controlled by services of interior safety still called the kgb, whose monumental headquarters is set up right in the center of the town, and in front of which dzerjinski’s statue sits imposingly, a country which sells weapons to countries supporting international terrorism, passes through a deep economic recession, whose population, rare fact in the world, is decreasing, whose agriculture is weakened, where the housing problem and the familial ruptures make up first-rate “social problems” (goujon, lallemand and symaniec 2001)? it a priori appears that the subject matter “belarus” brings up numerous questions more “serious” and important as the question, a little bit exotic, nearly anecdotal, of vegetable gardens. nevertheless, it seems to me that this question of gardening in actual fact refers to these various tragic dimensions of life in belarus and that the study of this “ordinary passion” (bromberger 1998) allows one to explore from an original angle the problems of “power”, “public health”, “family” and “poverty”. 1 the starting point of my research is articulated with two central questions. from an economic point of view, how do the individuals hold out? from a subjective point of view, how do the individuals hold out? wages are decreasing, overdue wages are accruing, and the purchasing power is collapsing. how might individuals survive this situation? what strategies do individuals adopt in order to overcome the difficulties linked to the deep transformations of their environment? how to apprehend this nebula called “resourcefulness”? how to live with 50 or 100 dollars per month in minsk? admittedly the service charges for a flat, the price of gas, water, electricity, local phone calls, public transports, basic foodstuffs (bread, flour, eggs, milk, vodka), are very low. but without living a luxurious lifestyle, i realized, living in minsk, that i spent considerably more than the local inhabitants, even after changing my habits in consuming foodstuffs, adapting them better to the local products. therefore, this question did not cease to gnaw at me. then, through conversations and meals with belarusian friends, i became more and more aware of the importance of self-sufficiency: a large part of the foodstuffs eaten comes from dacha. to eat one’s own produce means not spending as much money on foodstuffs, fundamental budgetary item for the households with low incomes, and to be able to afford high-class clothes or a pirated cd from time to time. but the question of the post-soviet subject, formulated in exclusive terms of resourcefulness, seemed unfinished. in this perspective, the image of a disembodied individual is drawn, an individual who would adopt the logic of action but without experiencing anything. thus, the individual endures deprivation, a drop in status, and feels it. these first questions necessarily bring about some others. how do the people endure this situation? how is this necessity of multiple activities experienced? what work on themselves do the individuals carry out to bear this worsening of social status? how do they manage to maintain a positive image of jen typewritten text 159 volume21, number 1 themselves? the question of resourcefulness raises the problem of supports (castel and haroche 2001; martuccelli 2002) on which the subject leans to maintain a minimum of consistency. the question of de-subjectification is also asked (clement 2000; dubet 1994) for the “shipwrecked” people who do not have any support, real anchorages, that is expressed by self-destructive behaviors: suicide2, alcoholism, etc. in a perspective of subject sociology, the question is to analyze how, in a very restrictive system (in which the ideal type resembles goffman’s “total institution”), the individual mobilizes resources, sets up supports so as to manage to endure the deep tensions which distract him, draws in a limited environment the elements which are necessary for his preserving, the composition of an identity acceptable in his eyes and in the eyes of others. the question of dachas and vegetable gardens appears at the crossroads of these two interrogations as a favored subject of research. here i attempt, from one example, to show the economic and subjective stakes brought about by the question of vegetable gardens in belarus. piotr and maria, “tireless gardeners”3 in 2000 i met yuri’s parents. yuri is a student i met in minsk. his parents, piotr and maria live in babruysk, the seventh largest city in belarus, population 228,000. they are both about forty years old. piotr is a skilled workman, a metal worker, in a tire factory. he intervenes in the production line when there is a breakdown: “he does everything with the heart and the brain,” explains yuri. piotr studied in a technical school, then in a teknikum, in other words six years of post-secondary education, more than an education at university. maria was trained as a teacher in mathematics and physics but works as an accountant. their dacha is located in kirovsk, a little town of 10,000 dwellers, 25 kilometers northeast from babruysk. this dacha is in fact the former house of maria’s parents. in 2000 they harvested 750 kilos of potatoes. one half was eaten; the other half was kept to be planted the following year. they think that they gathered 50 kilos of tomatoes, but they are not sure. indeed it is “difficult to assess”, “we don’t count”, “we take our basket, we go there, we fill it with produce and we treat them” (weber 1996). they also cultivate green and red peppers, zucchinis, radishes, carrots, onions, peas, lettuce, pumpkin, cabbage, beets, garlic, cucumbers, green beans, strawberries and raspberries, red currants, grapes, herbs and spices. they make preserves, jam (from raspberries, strawberries, apples), tomato juice, apple juice (20 liters), and sometimes a bit of black currant liqueur and apple liqueur: but this is difficult because “to do that, you need a lot of time” and because the liqueur is made of vodka and vodka has to be bought. they don’t gather mushrooms because they don’t have any time. sometimes they pick medicinal plants in the forest, to be consumed during the winter. they still have some flowers but the flowerbeds narrowed: “there is no time for the flowers”. before maria’s mother fell ill, she used to do most of the work in the garden. she gave everything she did not eat to her family. at the time, maria essentially went to the dacha to rest. nowadays yuri’s parents do everything, and “there is not enough time to do it all.” piotr’s brother helps them. he lends them his horse for the potato harvesting. in fact, piotr goes to his brother’s and then brings the horse to the dacha; he covers 14 kilometers in his cart. he seldom goes to his brother’s (once a month during summertime). there he is given some produce: meat, potatoes, milk. but: “i don’t go there to get these commodities, but to help, in an effort of mutual aid.” yuri and his sister rarely go to the dacha. in september 1999, yuri went there “one week, or three days”, for the potato harvesting. maria and piotr tell me, laughing: “we are self-sufficient”. in fact, “we buy bread”. “it is sometimes said that dachas are not profitable, not worthwhile; but we couldn’t otherwise eat our fill of tomatoes.” in brief, even if they have to buy fertilizers, pesticides and bus tickets, their dacha helps them. they no longer have to buy fruit (with the exception of bananas and lemons) or vegetables. piotr and maria have been working in the tire factory for 25 years. maria earns 90 dollars per month. piotr gets 75 dollars, “because the factory is in stagnation… there is no demand.” yuri goes to a private university in the capital. tuition fees are high4. if yuri had no “social security”, he would have to pay 80 dollars per month. but the university council, in view of his parents’ incomes and his results, decided that he would have to pay only half of the tuition fees. consequently he has to pay 3540 dollars per month. in addition, he had to find a place to live in minsk. he rents a room in a flat owned by elderly people and pays 20 dollars per jen typewritten text 160 volume21, number 1 month. finally, his sister works at the university of babruysk but spends all her money, according to what yuri says, to buy clothes. when she was going to university, tuitions fees totaled 250 dollars per semester. she still lives with her parents and her parents have to feed her. in short, budgetary constraints weighing on the household are very heavy. the production in the garden allows the family to buy a minimum of foodstuffs in the shops and thus to save money. otherwise, yuri would most likely have to stop going to university. they sell their surplus production only in the case of grave economic difficulties. in 1999, they sold three buckets of cherries in the kirovsk market and earned the equivalent of “one tenth of a monthly wage,” that is to say less than 10 dollars. but maria seems to feel ashamed of that: “morally i can not sell [our produce]… my husband feels even more strongly about it than i do” (kaneff 1998). the surpluses are generally given to neighbors in form of “gifts”, “exchanges without counting”. from this example we can see that, for some households, the aid of the dacha is undeniable5. the produce cultivated in the garden plot allows them to better deal with financial difficulties, to improve the everyday. however, the economic stakes of the dacha should not be overestimated: the statistical analyses of clarke and his team (clarke and karelina 2000) are in this perspective revealing. they point out that the cost of intermediary consumptions (the cost of seed, fertilizer, tools and the like) is high, that the products cultivated at the dacha are those that are cheap in the shops and in the markets (potatoes, onions, garlic…). finally, they compared food expenses of those who own a dacha and those who don’t and concluded that those who have a dacha spend as much money for food as those who don’t. my fieldwork corroborates these two interpretations. for some households the economic role is real. but we cannot reduce this generalized phenomenon to this single dimension6. in fact, approaching the dacha phenomenon purely in economic terms precludes grasping other fundamental dimensions of the dachas. the biography of food: to make ties gardening allows at first to create, maintain, and reproduce social ties, sometimes with the neighbors7, but above all within the family. as a matter of fact, the “biography of food” (kopytoff 1986) reveals the symbolical and practical dimensions of household food production. the seed is sometimes bought but is often chosen, extracted from the best products of the previous harvest, then exchanged with neighbors and colleagues for other seeds. gardening is a subject of ceaseless conversations, of perfection; sometimes – though seldom – the neighbors propose a helping hand (for a bottle of samogon, for a service, sometimes without asking anything in return), the family members help to dig, plant, harvest; the whole family gets together for some occasions (potato harvesting…) (gessat-anstett 2001). gardening and the cultivated products have many meanings. among those are the condensation of family ties, the crystallization of familial solidarity. “the term ’work’ is in fact a metaphor covering a large range of social relations which are established during the process of household food production” (kaneff 1998). finally a vast system of gifts of cultivated products appears in every observed situation (smolett 1989). the harvested product is eaten within the family, circulates, sometimes onto hundreds of kilometers, to maintain, strengthen the ties. work for oneself maria and piotr’s story is about an ascending social trajectory, suddenly ruined. in a diachronic perspective, the vegetable garden takes on a new dimension: it is a place where work may be re-appropriated and where it is possible to restore a positive image of oneself. the familial story is characterized by a strong ascending mobility. the grand-parents lived in a rural environment where the living conditions were particularly trying: no running water, no electricity, painstaking work in the fields and in the private plot, this plot being necessary to ensure the feeding of the family; the grand-parents had no specific education and training and occupied the same place as their forefathers did in the social structure; and the status of kolkhozian was the lower in the scale of remunerations and prestige. the grandchildren had a good education and training, found a job in the city, a relatively enviable income, and got a flat in a modern building. it is to the tire factory that they owe this ascension. belshina tire factory. it is the city’s economic lung, its pride. it offered to its employees the possibility to enter the modern jen typewritten text 161 volume21, number 1 world, to leave the countryside, to get a flat with running water, electricity and the different elements comprising modern comfort. it is the factory that in 1987 “gave” to the young household the flat where they have been living until today. it is the factory that allowed them to leave the workman hall where they have lived for six years: they were four living in 12 square meters; two families shared the toilets and the bathroom, sixteen families were cooking in the same kitchen. the industrial complex employs 14,500 people and participates fundamentally in the development of the town, whose population has grown from 138,000 in 1970 to 228,000 in 1999. belshina, it is “the half of babruysk”. the factory built the half of the buildings …. the factory financed the kindergartens, the cultural center, the parks, the hospitals, and all these things. it is what we call the socio-cultural complex, which precisely functioned well in soviet days, and all of that was done for the workmen. at the factory, piotr’s work consists in intervening on machines when they break down. for thirty years he has been mending the same machines that he knows intimately. whereas the years elapsed, thanks to exchanges with colleagues, his successive makeshift repairs and patching, piotr acquired a know-how from which he derives a certain pride: he can mend everything, do everything, with the bare minimum. moreover, his son adds, “in thirty years, my father has never been late.” to the workman invested in the factory, the latter offered bonus in return. “socialist competitions” were organized; workmen were invited to propose solutions to rationalize the production. then the conscientious workman, punctual, invested and competent, was “sure to earn a surplus to the wage”, fair payment of done work well, performed with a concern for precision and efficiency: these bonus amounted to “10 % [of the wage] but sometimes the bonus composed 20 % of the wage.” of course there were constraints, at work and out of work. but they were not really weighing: for instance, in the participation of the “subotniki” (tasks to be carried out for nothing, in a nearly compulsory way, on saturdays – subota) there was “a part of enthusiasm”. besides, it is thanks to them that maria and piotr met. moreover there were unofficial bonuses. “pilfering” was practiced (haraszti); materials from the factory could be taken in order to make something, outside the factory. so piotr made knives. in the mid-1990s and overall from 1999, the factory experienced important difficulties. during soviet times the factory was prosperous, went flat out, made stock that the factory was sure to sell; henceforth exports were low, the factory works to order, and orders decrease. then the atmosphere at work altered in the different workshops. what’s the use of working? what’s the use of investing in the factory? the bonuses that were paid when the workmen were motivated for their work, are not paid anymore: propositions voiced by the workmen to rationalize the production have not been paid for ten years; since 1998 no bonus of any sort have been paid. piotr still works the best he can, however, even if his efforts are not remunerated. but in general our equipment lives only on that, innovations that we make, even if it is not written on paper. to maintain a machine, i try to add something; we still make innovations. piotr is bitter, he feels no more enthusiasm, but he can not tear himself away from his work, radically distance himself, even if his skills, his savoir-faire are not recognized anymore. the fact that i am not paid makes me feel uncomfortable, i am not stimulated, i have no real desire to work. and if i work until i fall or if i do nothing, i earn the same wage. i would like a better income, i would work with a lot of enthusiasm, and i would work ten hours per day, provided that i am better paid. the question is not only an economic one. as a matter of fact, to specifically pay certain practices means to recognize that a savoir-faire was implemented; not to pay them comes down to ignoring this savoir-faire, almost to deny them, and consequently to deny the essential attribute of this skilled workman’s identity - ingenuity. in this context, the managers of the factory try to dismiss employees but the room to maneuver is very small. indeed, no other economic sector offers jobs in this area and if the factory dared to dismiss too many employees, the social consequences would be disastrous. the political leaders are aware of it: jen typewritten text 162 volume21, number 1 our mayor forbids the factory’s managers to dismiss employees because there are no other jobs and there would be a social revolution. it is the mayor who does not authorize the dismissal of employees. at the factory general suspicion becomes firmly established. the factory’s managers, who do not want to give arguments to possible protesters, refuse that the faults may be attributed to them (clement 2000). then employees are not dismissed for economic reasons: the managers try to attribute firings to individual behaviors. the one who commits even the most minor theft will be automatically dismissed. the one who drinks in the workplace will not have his job anymore. “parasitism” and “laziness” are pursued. “to dismiss, they just have to find a nut, minus one person,” piotr laughs. to the usual guards, a new corps of surveillance was added composed of policemen, sometimes with dogs: there is one regiment of policemen that is henceforth included in the factory’s strength. they were hired in order to keep watch over the guards, suspected to let some thefts be committed, in exchange for a service or for a bottle of vodka. piotr, exemplary workman, always punctual, mindful of the orders from his superiors, sees himself hence, as the others, suddenly considered as a potential delinquent, a dishonest worker. he bares his heart to me, in a laconic way: “this frisking is a little bit frustrating because they look at you as a potential thief.” this negation of the worker’s value, straightaway subject to be stigmatized as a “parasite”, is intensified by the fact that the managers and the policemen, height of cynicism, misappropriate big quantities of factory’s materials. recently they succeeded in taking 16 tons of metals that don’t rust, noble metals. if they had not broken the crane, nobody would have noticed. the guard shut his eyes to it. all the thefts are committed on fridays. and on monday we come and we see that the crane is derailed. we saw that 16 tons of metal were lacking. it is said that it is not possible to steal that without help from the policemen. i am sure that a policeman went with the car because every policeman on the road should have stopped the car. there is no more metal. in this configuration the dacha’s uses take on a new dimension. the dacha becomes an essential refuge within which the recovery of the fragile self can begin. the savoir-faire implemented is naturally recognized in the product of the work. when i speak about such dacha’s use, maria and piotr’s faces suddenly light up, they look at me and approve actively. i had the impression to formulate something that had been ineffable for them until this moment. i wrote in my field journal (may 6, 2002): “the vegetable garden seems to appear as an important way to “hold out”, to keep as sense of personal dignity and a positive self-image. when i proposed this explanation to them, their faces opened up and they confirmed what i said, as if i had just expressed something that they felt but couldn’t articulate”. here is the extract from the interview. why do you still produce as much as you do, because planting potatoes is a difficult work? is there a pleasure that comes from being able to control a little bit of what you do? because at the factory piotr is a little deprived of what he does, he is not recognized, he is not paid… and there, at the dacha piotr can find a place where it is possible to be the master of what he does? maria: yes this is this feeling; you feel that you are the master of what you do. you do everything from beginning to end; you have control of the situation. it all depends on your own work. we plant and we harvest whatever we like, we sow the seeds of what we have created. is it important to see the tangible results of your work? maria: yes, it is very important. to be able to recover it, whereas at the factory, the product of your work is not always recoverable? maria: yes, to reach a reward is very important, you see the fruits of your labor.” it is not possible to leave the factory to find another job where these types of conditions exist. it is thanks to this gardening culture that the subject succeeds in distancing himself from the generalized degradation of working conditions within the factory. the implementation of certain competences outside the factory seems to make it possible to accept doing less at the factory. succeeding in doing something out of the factory jen typewritten text 163 volume21, number 1 helps these workmen to reconstruct a stable selfimage and helps them to avoid confusion of the factory’s weakness with a personal weakness. gardening has a role of “shock absorber” in the process of subjective self-destruction caused by the degradation of the working conditions, the drop in social status. in general are these people who own a dacha the best workers? piotr: at work we rest after gardening at dachas [piotr, maria and yuri laugh]. yes, because the one who doesn’t do anything still has strength and a lot of energy. it may seem to you to be a joke, but in fact that’s the way it is; we work during the weekend, we come back to the factory and we rest. whether you work or not, you earn the same wage. so everybody rests on mondays. but in general we work normally. it is almost the same rhythm for everybody. we work in brigades.” within the brigades, workmen no longer try to write down on paper projects for the rationalization of the production like they used to, which could allow them to share some extra earnings among companions. they speak about dachas, harvesting, and weather forecasts. gardening permits them to employ competences for themselves, to prove that in the order of natural fairness, it may be possible that the work they do would be justly rewarded. the fact that gardening takes on a collective dimension, that most of the friends, the colleagues own their garden, allows one to assume this picture of oneself decentered from the subjective pivot constituted until now by the factory: these talks about dachas within the factory certainly have a practical function, which is to exchange advice, to suggest experimentation, to share experiences; but they may also allow the workers to not feel guilty towards the least human investment in the factory, to assume more easily the distance instituted towards the work at the factory. time for oneself the factory is going under. wages are paid late. the factory’s directors set forced time off: in april 2002 this measure affected between 70% and 80 % of the employees. employees still have to be paid, though minimally, even if there is no work. for the employees the everyday is stamped with great uncertainty. every day we go to work but we never know if we are going to turn around and go back home, work two thirds of a day, if we are going to be paid for two hours of work. waiting to be paid, the uncertainty of which tasks to perform each day, make the everyday disturbing, harrowing. the projects brought into play some time ago might never disappear. piotr and maria are afraid that they might not be able to pay the tuition fees for their son any more. before, we earned enough money to bring up our children, buy food, we saved up a little bit, we bought the desk, the bed, and now we don’t have enough money to buy an overhead light [laugh]. we live from one paycheck to the next. what is difficult is to pay university for yuri. his fees take more than one whole paycheck. that leaves just one paycheck to provide for the three of us. the economic depression causes a transformation within the workplace with relation to time. broken, marked by profound irregularities, this artificially “heteronymous” time has an effect on the workers’ bodies and increases the individuals’ psychological tension. this displacement of everyday time at the factory is added to the system of small dispossessions of time characterizing the soviet city: distances between the shops, queues, shortages, water cuts (verdery 1996)… the vegetable garden is a place where it is possible to restore oneself. gardening is equivalent to composing with matter, organize elements, order a piece of the universe; this exchange with matter is done to the desired rhythm, the passing of time is no longer broken by external constraints (bitov 1999, schwartz 1990). moreover, in an uncertain economic environment, the existence of the garden and the fact that it is possible to feel like the master of a part of one’s own future resources (which is not the case for wages or pensions), can calm the subject. the dacha and the products that will be harvested can be relied upon. the couple restored the dacha is a different place; it presents an alternative. it offers the possibility of openness and consequently can soothe tensions that may exist within the household, or to strengthen the ties between certain family members. the scarcity of urban flats and the chronic lack of dwelling places creates a situation characterizing the soviet everyday life: jen typewritten text 164 volume21, number 1 different generations have to live together in a small space, endure continual constant surveillance by other members of the family, which limits the possibilities of safeguarding a sphere of intimacy (kehayan and keyahan 1978; messana 1995). it is difficult to question people about these types of difficulties. i sometimes succeeded, through discussions, in getting the points of contention that weigh on the household, but i never managed to open a direct discussion on these issues. through scattered anecdotes i succeeded in perceiving the dull threat that weighs on everyday life and on the fragile stability of the family, due to the chronic lack of personal space. in an indirect way the existence of dacha allows to feel more at home, when people are in town or at the dacha: the dacha allows, thanks to subtle displacements of the family members, to further the existence of a sphere of intimacy, room for oneself, where it is possible to be oneself. piotr and maria have been living for two years with maria’s mother who is suffering from an affliction of the brain. she hardly articulates and often groans to indicate to them that she needs something. greatly affected by the difficulties at the factory, piotr and maria furthermore have to bear this particularly burdensome everyday presence. when they go to the dacha they leave the old lady in the flat; their daughter, sometimes their son, takes care of her. at the dacha they rediscover a certain intimacy. they garden together, can be alone with one another, and together share this pleasure of gardening, relax at lunchtime, watching the fruit of their common labor. when i ask them the question: “at the dacha, do you rediscover intimacy, as a couple?” they answer with a honeyed tone, full of mischief, looking at each other: “of course”. in addition to the lack of occasions for intimacy, there is yet another threat that weighs on the stability of the couple – alcoholism. at first one might remark that the figure of the drunken man, even the blind drunk, is not systematically stigmatized in belarus, this is far from being the case. however, the non-regulated consumption of alcohol might cause an “unhinging” and the makings for an alcoholic’s “career”. the attitude admitted in certain circumstances (parties, feasts) and in certain places (at home) is that the consumption of alcohol to the point of drunkenness doesn’t seem to be in itself dishonorable in the woman’s eyes. however, the chronic, non-regulated consumption of alcohol, out of the home constitutes a threat to the stability of the couple. thus, in 1985, the first reason put forth by women applying for divorce was the husband’s alcoholism (kerblay and lavigne 1985). it seems that one of the attitudes of the wife within the couple is not to outright forbid her husband to drink alcohol but to bring him back home, to prevent him from running off outside (the street, the public bench, the kiosk) and to prevent him from drinking the entire bottle with a couple of his drinking companions: it seems to be a “struggle to territorialize the other” (schwartz 1990), notably in order to prevent him, as much as she can, from behaviors which could be destructive to the family. in may 2002 i was going for a walk with piotr and yuri around the buildings in their neighborhood. piotr wanted me to meet ivan for an interview (he is one of his co-workers at the factory and owns a dacha too). at a window, on the fifth story, piotr sees ivan and calls to him. he asks him to come down to talk and eventually to have a beer (we have already drunk two). ivan answers: “but i can’t, i am tied up!” he points out that his wife is keeping him in the flat and that he submits in this case to her authority. piotr cannot drink as much as he would like. he takes advantage of my presence to go for a walk and drink some beer, to drink vodka (with everybody) at dinner, or on the occasion of orthodox easter. would he be tempted by a more vast consumption of alcohol, as the temptation is great when the psychological tension caused by a drop in status and social prestige is intense, when he doesn’t know if he can still pay tuition fees for his son? is his wife not more capable, thanks to gardening, on one hand of keeping watch over him and on the other hand showing him, through the results and the satisfaction of their gardening together, the pride they get from it, that he is worth more than the man who drinks his life away? at the dacha people work, so occasions to drink in large quantities seem to be less frequent. gardening requires alertness, regular and consistent activity, as well as a physical investment. the alcoholic is rarely a very good gardener. moreover, when someone drinks, the structure of the “dacha massifs” infers a system of looks from the neighbours, which acts as a form of social control. it seems that it is more difficult to drink there, or if men do drink, it is on the margin of the domestic sphere, where the wife might intervene to “stow away” the man inside the home. jen typewritten text 165 volume21, number 1 thus, the analysis of this familial story shows that gardening doesn’t have to be only interpreted as a survival strategy. if, from an economic point of view, the garden sometimes aids, it is overall a space that allows for the individual, from a subjective point of view, to persevere. maria and piotr experience financial difficulties but also the degradation of their working conditions, their social status: their everyday life is marked by dispossessions of time and by a continual tension on the sphere of their intimacy; in this familial configuration, alcoholism appears to maria’s eyes as a threat on the stability of the couple, even if piotr consumes beer and vodka in moderation. the garden has an important role in maintaining an acceptable identity to him and to others. in effect, the garden may be considered as a “tool kit” (swidler 1986) of symbols, gestures, stories, representations: individuals draw from it disparate elements, adjust them in different ways, according to the configuration of their social and personal trajectory, and thus can resolve or soothe tensions which weigh on them. the garden is an index in which the individuals select some components, organize them in various geometries, in order to constantly negotiate and renegotiate their identity. gardening is also a symbolic conquest for the one who is the subject of it: it restores meaning to an environment that arouses anguish, it restores a model of fairness in a trajectory whose breakdown is lived as unfair, depersonalized, as a fatality. the garden reduces the field of possibilities, but makes a certain reality desirable. the garden opens up a space allowing an elaboration of the lines of action, and simultaneously closes or reduces the necessity to resort to other spaces implying other strategies. this ambiguity takes on a tragic characteristic in the situation of those dwelling in areas contaminated by the chernobyl catastrophe. one quarter of the country’s soil has officially been contaminated (essentially in the south and in the east). the nuclear catastrophe of april 26th 1986 caused disastrous health consequences in belarus. according to professor nesterenko, director of the institute of nuclear energy at the belarusian academy of sciences at the time of the catastrophe, (his professional standing diminished ever since and suffering the constant pressures of the kgb, ordering him not to spread panic among the population) two million people, among whom 500,000 are children, presently live in contaminated areas of belarus. “the children are the first victims of the radiation, and 80 % of the contamination comes from the food they eat. milk, game, mushrooms and berries are the most dangerous foodstuffs. in belarus most of the heavily irradiated soils (23 % of the national territory) are still cultivated” (nougayrede 2000). the importance of the dacha in the domestic economy, in family ties, its role in restoring the self submitted to difficult constraints (in the sphere of work, in the soviet urban environment) point out the tragic dimension of existence in contaminated territories. to give up gardening and consuming the products cultivated in a radioactive soil means preserving oneself from a risk of contamination, but it also means risking a form of social death (boceno, grandazzi and lemarchand 1997). in brief, a slow poisoning takes place. references cited alasheev, s., e. varshavskaïa, and m. karelina, podsobnoe khoziaïstvo gorodskoï semyi, 1999, in clarke s. and kabalina v. (eds.), zaniatost' u povedenie domokhoziaïstv: adaptatsiia k ousloviiam perekhoda k rynotchnoï ekonomike v rossii, rosspen, moscow. belarus today, ways to secure lukashenko's victory considered, december 5-11, 2000. bitov, andrei, 1999, dachnaia mestnost. boceno, laurent, guillaume grandazzi, and frédérick lemarchand, 1997, vivre dans les zones contaminées. gestion du risque radiologique. enquête de terrain en bélarus – décembre 1997, lasar (laboratoire d’analyse sociologique et anthropologique du risque), mrsh, université de caen. bromberger, christian (ed.), 1998, passions ordinaires. du match de football au concours de dictée, bayard, paris. castel, robert, and claudine haroche, 2001, propriété privée, propriété sociale, propriété de soi. entretiens sur la construction de l’individu moderne, paris: fayard. jen typewritten text 166 volume21, number 1 clarke, simon, and marina karelina, 2000, the myth of the urban peasant, work, employment and society, 14(3), pp. 481-499. clement, karine, 2000, les ouvriers russes dans la tourmente du marché. 19891999. destruction d’un groupe social et remobilisations collectives, paris: syllepse. colas, dominique (ed.), 2002, l’europe post-communiste, paris: puf. dubet, françois, 1994, sociologie de l’expérience, paris: seuil. galtz, naomi rozlyn, 2000, space and the everyday: an historical sociology of the moscow dacha, unpublished phd, university of michigan. gessat-anstett, elisabeth, 2001, du collectif au communautaire. a propos des réseaux familiaux dans la russie postsoviétique, l’homme 157. goffman, erving, 1961, asylums. goujon, alexandra, jean-charles lallemand, and virginie symaniec (eds.), 2001, chroniques de la biélorussie contemporaine, paris: l’harmattan. haraszti miklos, 1976, salaire aux pièces : ouvrier dans un pays de l’est, paris: seuil. kaneff, deema, 1998, "un jour au marché. les modes d'échange dans la bulgarie rurale", ethnologie française, xxviii, 4. kehayan, nina et jean kehayan, 1978, rue du prolétaire rouge, paris: seuil. kerblay et lavigne, 1985, les soviétiques des années 1980, paris: armand colin. kopytoff, 1986, the cultural biography of things: commoditization as process", in appadurai (ed.), the social life of things: commodities in a cultural perspective, cambridge, cambridge university press, pp. 64-91. kurkov andrei, 1996, smert postoronnevo. lovell, stephen, forthcoming, summerfolk: a history of the dacha, 1710-2000, ithaca, ny: cornell. martuccelli, danilo, 2002, grammaires de l’individu, paris: gallimard,. messana, paola, 1995, kommunalka. une histoire de l’union soviétique à travers les appartements communautaires, paris: jean-claude lattès. murard, lion, and patrick zylberman, 1976, le petit travailleur infatigable, recherches 25. nougayrede, natalie, 2000, les enfants de tchernobyl face à la "mort invisible", le monde, may 20, 2000 (a). pelevine, victor, 1992, omon ra. schwartz, olivier, 1990, le monde privé des ouvriers. hommes et femmes du nord, paris: puf. smollett, eleanor wenkart,1989, the economy of jars. kindred relationships in bulgaria an exploration , ethnologia europaea, xix (2). swidler, ann, 1986, culture in action: symbols and strategies, american sociological review, vol. 51(2). traven, vlada, forthcoming, la périurbanisation dans la région urbaine de moscou, phd in urbanism (in preparation), nanterre-paris x. verdery, katherine, 1996, what was socialism and what comes next? princeton, nj: princeton. weber, florence, 1996, réduire ses dépenses, ne pas compter son temps, genèses. sciences sociales et histoire, 25. notes 1 i thank stéphanie borderon and overall jennifer bee for their precious help in translating this article into english. 2 “in the middle of the decade of communist transformations (1994), the growth in number of suicides is quite tragic; then taking a basis 100 in 1989, starting line for the new political systems, the indexes are the following: (…) belarus, 140” (colas 2002). 3murard and zylberman 1976. 4 the tuitions fees in public universities, in some prestigious paths are also very high. jen typewritten text 167 volume21, number 1 5another example is revealing. a couple of pensioners were able to give me precise data, because all the results are recorded in an account book. they were both university professors. he is 82 years old, she is 78. their pension was divided in two during the last ten years, on account of the inflation. they gather (every two years) almost one tonne of apples. in 2000 they harvested 34 kilos of pumpkins, 45 kilos of courgettes, 32 kilos of cucumbers, 10 kilos of onions, 3 kilos of peas, 87.5 kilos of tomatoes, 15 kilos of carrots, several dozen kilos of cherries and plums, cabbages for the summer, celeriac, parsley, and other herbs… they make apple liqueur (40 litres), birch juice (200 litres), apple juice (76 litres in 1999), red currant juice (20 litres in 2000), tomato juice (5 litres in 2000)… they make preserves, sauces, jams. they also cultivate potatoes (250 kilos). the man fishes during the winter: in 2000 he caught 70 kilos. due to this, they never buy vegetables or fruit (except occasionally bananas and lemons). 6 other arguments may be found in support of this thesis. there are differences between regions which are difficult to explain in purely economic terms. those households who do not “need” dachas to survive devote as much time and energy to them as other people. also, a lot of people declare that the economic role of dachas is weak (even if it is difficult to trust some statements, notably because of the shame felt by some people in declaring and telling to themselves that they are reduced to the garden to survive) and that they don’t work in the garden because of economic reasons. so we can remark that the practices of households with upper-middle incomes are very similar to the practices of households with lower-middle incomes. if they cultivate in such quantities, it cannot only be for economic reasons. 7 during the food production process there may be exchanges between neighbours: exchanges of advices, of information, of recipes, dexterity, methods, exchanges of seeds, exchanges of products (seldom), exchanges of services (often limited), reciprocity in the work characterizes to a certain extent the relations with the neighbours. but these relations are also (and overall) characterized by recurrent tensions. “don’t choose your place, choose your neighbours”: this proverb mentioned during an interview conveys quite well the fact that, although it might be a source of mutual aid, the neighbourhood is more often a source of everyday tensions. jen typewritten text 168 anthropology of east europe review editors notes: robert rotenberg depaul university subscribers from the 1980s will remember that the fat, artic1e-filled issues of the last few years were never the norm for this publication. this issue is the norm. there are several reasons why i am retreating to a smaller issue. first, both nancy ries and i are on well deserved leaves this term. this made it difficult to develop a large scale editing project. bamb west did the spring issue and i can tell you from experience that two large issues in a row are more work than any volunteer editor deserves. the spring issue may bring us back to thje extraordinary efforts of the past few years. as i write this, the u.s. is recovering from the attacks on the w orid trade center and thre pentagon. the mood in the country is for retaliative violence instead of retributive justice. at my institution and in many other colleges and universities, calls for reason and long-sightedness seem to fall on deaf ears. ethnic intolerance toward asians is increasing. as anthropologists who were raised in different societies, we hold diverse views on the tragedy and appropriate responses. yet, there is one value that we hold in common: the more diverse and tolerant a society, the more mature its vision, the more stable its future, and the more protective of the potential of all of its citizens to reach their potential. the united states is sometimes a model of what such a society can be and sometimes an arrogant and insensitive bully. the radicals who attacked the innocents on september 11 do not offer a social future of more diversity and tolerance. in fact, they offer its opposite. those of us who are critics of conscience of uglier tendencies of the u.s. cannot embrace these enemies. nevertheless, great powers are judged by history in the way they deal with these challenges. in the hope of helping the subscribers of this newsletter to engage in conversation with peers on this issue, i am reprinting a letter from prof. jennifer terry at berkeley, together with a letter from eeag member hugh gusterson ofmit. i hope it is helpful. dear friends: i have been talking with some of you and with others informally around the us and overseas about the possibility of starting a group called something like professors for peace. perhaps there is such a group already but i am not aware of it. if any of you knows of such a group, would you please let me know? some of us may consider joining it or, in its absence, we may consider forming one. in any case, here is the impetus behind the idea i propose to you now. basic rationale: it seems obvious to many of us teaching college students right now that they have very little understanding of the history and possibilities of peace movements and that many of them are not so gung-ho about going to war yet they are nearly paralyzed and cannot think of alternatives right now. also many of them feel personally threatened by the unleashing of bigotry being done in the name of patriotism and national security. basic strategy: in addition to teach-ins and courses and public (on and off-line) demonstrations on waging peace in a post cold war world, professors for peace could work in affinity with other anti-racist groups fighting against the j vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 3 4 rising tide of hate crimes against people of islamic and/or middle east and south asian origins. i understand that a course on tolerance and hatred is being put together to be collectively taught this fall quarter at ohio state university. we could share syllabi and course materials about such courses and teach-ins. and we could form ad hoc watch dog groups to monitor the role of the university in funding and supporting defense contracts and the current mobilization for war. in other words, there is much to be done and we could decide how much we want to undertake and what our coordinated strategies might be. outreach to you is the first step. we might find that we should organize in local contexts, college by college, university by university. or we might want to think of other strategies for organizing, such as around particular foci and tasks. or a combo of these and other kinds of strategies and subgroups. i'm thinking outloud here folks, so please bear with me. beyond the campuses and into the public sphere: in addition to whatever we do on campuses, the group could show the larger society that the professoriate has a crucial (and neglected) role to play in shaping public dialogue and debate right now. this could also be an avenue for the voices of profs of color, women, and queers to be heard -we are almost no where to be found in all the pundit shows and "late breaking news" on tv right now. right now it's mostly the straight white men heroes' show. we need to be more organized, involved, and visible as this country moves toward some racist war. let me know your thoughts on this and please spread the word to others who you think might be interested. jennifer terry visiting associate professor of women's studies uc berkeley (2001-2002) associate professor of comparative studies ohio state university dear friends, i'm writing to tell you about a network of faculty and other educators called "professors for peace" that is crystallizing across the u.s. and canada in response to the attacks of last week and the gathering signs that the bush administration's response to those attacks may result in much more loss of innocent life and a further wave of resentment against the u.s. in other parts of the world. jennifer terry's message below is pretty self-explanatory. if you want to join this network send a message saying "subscribe" to professors for peace­ subscribe@yahoogroups.com. if that doesn't work, contact jennifer herself and she can add you to the group. in closing let me say that there has already been some discussion about the network's possibly elitist name, and jennifer has made it clear that she construes "professors" very broadly and is happy to include all stripes of educators while holding on to both the alliterative title and the cultural capital that still, fadingly, inheres in the title "professor." best wishes, hugh gusterson vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 4 mailto:subscribe@yahoogroups.com microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 4 editorial two hungarian uprisings: 1956 and 2006 krista harper university of massachusetts, amherst karl marx began his analysis of counterrevolution in nineteenth century france with the epigraph, “all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice… the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” (marx 1852). so it goes in twenty-first century central and eastern europe. this fall, international media coverage of central and eastern europe was dominated by images of hungarians fighting in the street—fifty-year-old images of the 1956 uprising and new images from mass demonstrations and rioting in budapest in late september. demonstrators and some media accounts drew parallels between the two sets of images (koranyi and peto 2006), but anthropology offers the tools to attend to situate meanings, images, and narratives in context—teasing out the differences between tragedy and farce in a region where people often use historical allegories to talk about current political events (rév 2005). although hungary is a small country of 10 million people, the hungarian revolution of 1956 was an historical event of global importance. idealistic citizens and political leaders rose up to break free from soviet dominance. the 1956 revolutionaries carried a diverse array of hopes in their hearts. they came from across the political spectrum—imre nagy, the martyred leader of the revolution, was a lifelong communist who became disillusioned with the party and wanted hungary to be a neutral, social democracy. his “new course” program sought to reestablish civil liberties, end the unpopular collectivization of farms, and move away from the soviet economy’s emphasis on centrally planned, heavy industry. what the 1956 revolutionaries had in common was a shared vision of hungarian citizens ruling themselves in a multiparty democracy, and a willingness to put their lives on the line to achieve that goal. following 1956, conditions in hungary worsened and then gradually improved, partially achieving some of the revolutions’ stated goals over time. immediately following the revolution, there was retrenchment and repression by the soviet-dominated hungarian state, and many people fled the country for their lives. by the mid1960s, though, hungary’s party had embarked on a process of gradual liberalization—a strategy that became known as “goulash communism.” this included the introduction of market-based economic policies that gave farmers more autonomy and made goods and services more widely available to hungarian consumers. this is why hungary rarely had the kind of food shortages that were experienced in other parts of the soviet bloc. trailing behind the economic policies was an easing of the more extreme forms of political repression like imprisonment of dissidents. the 1956 revolution was the invisible impetus behind these gradual changes, which immeasurably improved the daily lives of hungarians during the 1970s and 80s. these gradual changes also gave hungary an advantage in the run-up to european union accession. those hungarians who remained in hungary paid a high price for the 1956 revolution, but they and their children also eventually reaped some benefits from it—enjoying the fruits of market reforms alongside the security of a socialist welfare state. hungarians often express their views on contemporary politics through the use historical allegories (lampland 1990; sinkó 1989), and since 1989, the symbolic meaning of many historical events has been up for grabs. almost every year, there have been nationwide discussions of the significance of the 1956 revolution—it was a culmination of national morality and independence. but in a multiparty democracy, memories of 1956 are also highly politicized, with each party presenting itself as the legitimate heir of the revolution’s political ideals. a recent hungarian op-ed spoke out against politicians’ ötvenhatoskodás—which means “playing 56” (tóta 2006). the 50th anniversary of the 1956 revolution is especially politically charged this year because the international media is paying attention and because of the demonstrations that rocked the streets of budapest late this september in response to a major government scandal. a tape leaked to the press featured prime minister ferenc gyurcsány admitting that he and his socialist party-led government lied about hungary’s anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 5 finances and made completely untenable promises about social spending in order to win the spring elections. thousands of protesters from the political opposition gathered in front of parliament, stormed the hungarian television headquarters, and engaged in confrontations with the police. politicians from fidesz (the leading party of the right) instructed supporters to boycott any 1956 commemoration events with socialist party officials present and presented this fall’s demonstrators as successors to the 1956 revolutionaries. on the weekend of the official anniversary ceremonies, riot police used rubber bullets, water cannons, and tear gas to break up demonstrations, and the european union has asked for an investigation of police conduct. the media images of this fall’s protesters in front of the same buildings that revolutionaries stormed in 1956 are striking, but there are some important differences between 1956 and 2006: 1. in 1956, hungarians rose up against a state apparatus that was completely dominated by the soviet union. in 2006, demonstrators are rising up to protest the rhetoric and actions of an elected government in a multi-party system. 2. in 1956, revolutionaries built bridges between nationalists and social democrats because they had a shared vision of hungary as a multi-party system freed from soviet domination. in the case of the 2006 demonstrations, there is no such unified “other,” and no such bridges are being built between opposing political parties. hungarians today, however, are citizens in a pluralistic democracy, and they can vote officials out of office when they don’t like them. the main danger is that hungarians will be so disgusted by government scandals that they will become politically apathetic. 3. in 1956, many revolutionaries were behind imre nagy’s “new course,” which called for the end of unpopular communist economic policies like the collectivization of farms. in 2006, although protesters are largely from the right, the policies they oppose are the new socialists’ fiscal austerity measures and cuts in social spending. cutting state programs is politically unpopular, but the governments of the eus newest memberstates are under considerable external pressure to cut state expenditures or be excluded from the eurozone. the 1956 revolution changed political life in countries far removed from hungary because so many progressives around the world became disillusioned with soviet-style communism and sought more democratic strategies, leading to the establishment of grassroots social movements and (in western europe at least) social democratic parties. 1956 discredited the stalinist model, leading to subtle but far-reaching ripple effects in the political landscape of countries across the globe. the hungarian demonstrations of 2006, although they drew from a more limited range of the political spectrum, point to a central question facing citizens throughout the region today—how can citizens’ demands for responsive government and a social safety net can be reconciled with external pressures (from the eu and other transnational institutions) on states to cut spending and to toe the neoliberal line? references koranyi, balazs and sandor peto. 2006. hungarian anti-pm protests turn violent. reuters. 18 september 2006. lampland, martha. 1990. the politics of history: historical consciousness of 1847-1849. hungarian studies 6(2): 185-194. marx, karl. 1852. the eighteenth brumaire of louis napoleon. accessed online on 6 november 2006 at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/ 1852/18th-brumaire/ch01.htm rév, istván. 2005. retroactive justice: the prehistory of post-communism. stanford, ca: stanford. sinkó, katalin. 1989. árpád versus saint istván: competing heroes and competing interests in the figurative representation of hungarian history. in ethnologia europaea 19 (1): 6784. tóta w. árpád. 2006. jó reggelt, magyarország (“good morning, hungary”), index, 7 august 2006. accessed online on 6 november 2006 at http://index.hu/velemeny/eheti/horog/ tolerance and prejudice in belgrade: young people’s constructions of selves and others anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 7 layered encounters: performing multiculturalism and the urban palimpsest at the ‘gateway of europe’ kristof van assche, minnesota state universities – st. cloud state petruţa teampău, babeş-bolyai university, cluj napoca introduction in this paper, we will explore the performance of multiculturalism in sulina, a small town on the eastern edge of the romanian danube delta. similar to places such as odessa (richardson 2005, 2006) and trieste (magris 1989, ballinger 2003), sulina has a cosmopolitan heritage and a nostalgia for empire – a nostalgia for the glory days of hustle and bustle in the port, economic prosperity, political relevance, international networks, and cultural sophistication. sulina was the product of the european danube committee (ced), an international organization long defunct. yet images of the glorious ced period (late 19th century and early 20th century) pervade both local discourses about place and cultural identity and discourses emanating elsewhere that promotes tourism and the project of european integration (teampău and van assche 2007). a feature of the current imagery of cosmopolitan glory days under the ced is the peaceful coexistence of various ethnic groups –turks, greeks, armenians, brits, jews, romanians and others. this coexistence is not reflected upon and is unproblematically assimilated to present-day “european” ideals of multiculturalism. the local myth of cosmopolitanism long gone is, as usual, far removed from the historical realities of accommodations between various cultural groups (ballinger 2003, malcolmson 1998). what interests us more in this paper is the function of that local myth in everyday life in sulina, its appropriation in tourist and political discourses, and, finally, the response and reappropriation by the locals of a myth that is increasingly becoming an economic asset. during fieldwork conducted in 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2008, in sulina, and in tulcea, the regional capital, we studied discourses on sulina, its histories, and its cultural complexity. we attempted to unveil different versions of the local imagery of cosmopolitanism and contrast them with observed performances of multiculturalism, the present-day construction and use of ethnic/cultural categories, and categories of cooperation, coexistence, assimilation.i sulina’s modest size, its relatively modest stock of historical buildings, infrastructure and public space assist us in deconstructing the glorious ced narrative given that these things do not say much about the kind of multiculturalism that prevailed. interviews establish that few ethnic “neighborhoods” existed. in general, first and second streets were more urban, more expensive, and more greek/armenian/jewish. however, there were exceptions to this general pattern. older people who still acknowledge their lipovan (old believer) roots ascribe their quick assimilation to their scattering throughout the city, including the more urban streets (where some houses were vacated by the other groups). what emerged from our investigations was a highly complex picture. local identity (“i am from sulina”) was more relevant in selfidentification than ethnic/cultural identity while the unifying myth of cosmopolitanism, reinvigorated under tourism and under the european union, underlies this apparent homogeneity. simultaneously, ethnic identity still exists, and different versions of the myth together with other legacies from the past produce patterns of social interaction and performances of multiculturalism, where, depending on the occasion fragments of a multitude of discourses are actualized and integrated. it is, we argue, in the variety of everyday encounters that one can study the functioning of the local discourses on self, other, and cosmopolis, and, simultaneously, map out the diversity in discourses. while we did not originally envisage the use of the metaphor of the palimpsest, it emerged as an appropriate tool to analyze the layered and fragmentary potentiality of identity discourse in sulina (van assche and teampau 2008). palimpsest revisited according to recent developments in the fields of urban anthropology, postmodern human geography, and cultural studies, places, as objects of study, are no longer considered innocent, stable settings, but should be analyzed as social and political products and contexts of social interactions, always embedded in relations of power. this perspective upholds a new social “reading” of urban space, emphasizing its unique anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 8 polymorphy, as well as the plurivocality of citystories and, consequently, the richness of potential inquiry into the most “familiar” and closed spaces. urban places, as dynamic contexts of social interaction and memory, are not only ideology-informed, but also have the power to coalesce and sustain a community. recent discussions in urban studies and social sciences focus on the diversity of urban life, in viewing cities as “encounters, as spatial formations resulting from dense networks of interaction and as places of meeting with ‘the stranger’” and with his/her “difference” (simonsen 2008: 145). sulina, our site of observation, is located at the mouth of the danube, a region that has always been of political and economic interest. sulina covers a small limb of land inbetween the danube and the black sea. it can be argued that the landscapes of most romanian post-socialist cities are palimpsests with different layers of meaning, where stories and discourses collide to establish a new reading of the city that puts the communist past out of sight. new business networks, new places, new power relations, are being inscribed on pre-existing spaces, while abandoned industrial landscapes are being reinterpreted. in the case of sulina, memory plays a vital role in (re) inscribing the landscape with fresh meanings, erasing or obliterating other (and others’) denotations, and in giving a sense to “our” city. drawing on anthropological fieldwork (interviews with local people, authorities, decision makers, tourists, and extended participant observation) our paper describes the official strategies for marketing diversity and multiculturalism – an important local resource crucial for forging a local/global (european) identity. we also describe the gaps between, on the one hand, the official discourse on history and the urban palimpsest of the city, and, on the other hand, between the former and the day-to-day intercultural experience, as recalled by elderly people as part of their personal biographies (teampau and van assche 2009). “palimpsest” thus acquires a double meaning in our analyses. whereas the geographical literature of the 1990s (indebted to the investigations of swiss geographer claude raffestin in the 1970s) usually sees the physical landscape as the palimpsest, the manuscript with older layers of text shimmering through in fragmentary fashion, we also want to consider the landscape of social encounters as a palimpsest in sulina: a palimpsest of multiculturalism. in geography, the metaphor of the landscape as palimpsest is traditionally embedded in the metaphor of landscape as text, a metaphor that has generated an impressive amount of research (daniels 1988, barnes and duncan 1992). however, due to the limitations of the underlying semiotic model (interpretation as reading of text, discourse as text), the resulting palimpsest metaphor does not capture much of the complexity brought forth by the discursive construction of reality, as understood by foucault (as exemplified by foucault 1968). if we understand reality as discursively constructed, then every observable aspect of reality, including human actions and interactions, can be interpreted as discursively articulated (foucault 1968, barnes and duncan 1992, bowers and iwi 1992). this in turn implies that both communication and action can be the locus of observation for competing discourses, dissonant voices, for traces of older discourses shimmering through. in other words, the landscape of social interaction, consisting of communication and action, can be interpreted as a palimpsest, offering glimpses of the genealogy of concepts (like multiculturalism, ethnic categories) and glimpses of competing discourses, just like a physical landscape, or city space, shows us traces of older orders and competing orders. for the people in sulina, urban space and the urban palimpsest is always available as a source of identity discourses. for them, and not just for the researcher, as is often assumed in geographical research, city space functions as a palimpsest. for us, as researchers, this function of urban space as palimpsest for the locals was an integral part of everyday multiculturalism we were interested in. in our reading and reconstruction of the palimpsest of social interaction, the situational interpretation of the spatial palimpsest by the locals offered us valuable clues. urban space provides an indispensable substratum for the reproduction of the local myth of cosmopolitanism in all its variations. learning (from) the past of one’s city is part of the process of building an identity and of self-positioning in one’s environment, that “complex mental map or significance by which the city might be recognized as ‘home’” (bridge and watson 2002: 4). admittedly, this is not to say that there is a perfect coherence and integration of the individual in the texture and life of the city. on the contrary, there is no single city, nor one unitary narrative of it. people and anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 9 groups “live” differently the space of the city, they imagine and construct urban places in diverse manners, and in this process, memory and nostalgia have a special role in inscribing the city with certain meanings while concealing others. the narrative city: stories and the urban palimpsest stories people tell about places serve not only to position them in a desired location, but also, to delineate social boundaries, to assert who “belongs” and who doesn’t, to clarify who we are (bird 2002). in other words, “narratives make places habitable and believable, […] they organize the invisible meanings of the city” (simonsen 2008: 146). if we look at the discursive makeup of landscape, we can notice that contesting meanings of urban belonging and divergent stories and memories are crucial for local identity and for articulating the future of the city. since every city is a privileged space of diversity and heterogeneity, “collective memory” is just a rhetorical construction, while in fact “there is a plurality of social memories in every city – each particular to a different group and routed in the material and mental spaces it has experienced” (bélanger 2002: 78). sulina was originally built following a grid pattern of six streets paralleling the flow of the danube. its architectural mix of nineteenth century buildings (most of turkish and greek design), interwar buildings, modern terraces and socialist blocks of flats testify to different historical epochs and functionalities. passing from street i to the other five parallel streets of the city entails a unique gradual translation from urban to rural, each with specific architecture and routines. however, in sulina the urban palimpsest currently speaks the language of decay and transformation. yet it also stands as a witness to the city’s better epochs and to subsequent political upheavals. the ruins in the urban scenery of sulina (old damaged houses, sometimes just a façade still standing while on the inside vegetation has literally consumed the walls; abandoned shops still bearing “communist” inscriptions) speak different memories and evoke different stories and ghosts. they comprise a contradictory and heterogeneous urban landscape with restaurants full of lights and voices adjacent to a silent and dim empty house; hidden behind the former communist market deserted for years and suddenly transformed into the most fashionable open air restaurant for tourists are the unpretentious local taverns mostly frequented by lipoveni. this first street, paralleling the danube and full of sounds and lights in the warm summer evenings, overlooks the old shipyard and the prospect fishermen neighborhood across the danube, where life has a different rhythm, prices are lower and there are hardly any lights at night. this heterogeneous physical landscape is wrapped in multiple overlapping semiotic strata: stories of people born in sulina, whose lives are intimately intricate with its history; stories of people who came “to the city” from the deep of the swamp, for whom the space of the urban is a collection of ill-fated places and magical spots, of supernatural interdictions and witchcraft; stories of people who try to find the stories of the city; and the mainstream narrative about “how this city used to be,” a narrative that feeds the local pride and substantiates the identity of the place. stories people tell about place and their memories about it are neither innocent nor without consequences. the city is cut through by ethnic/group differences that sometimes translate into spatial differences; imagining the city involves also visualizing and enforcing boundaries, whether practical or discursive, material or symbolic and always delineate networks of inclusion/exclusion. this “politics of belonging” as daniel trudeau calls it, pertains to “the discourses and practices that establish and maintain discursive and material boundaries that correspond to the imagined geographies of a polity and to the spaces that normatively embody the polity” (trudeau 2006: 422). however, the imaginary map of the city and its symbolic construction does not only comprise boundaries between its communities, but also bears witness to another type of encounters. in the case of sulina, the constant influx of tourists (at least during the summer) has had an impact on re-inventing local identity and on re-enforcing local pride. as fiona allon argues, in such encounters, “the city is produced as a distinctive and marketable place with a particular myth of identity at the same time as it is being rewritten by global economic forces operating above and beyond its boundaries” (allon 2004: 55). sulina: diversity and local narratives for most of its history, sulina was a anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 10 pirates’ nest and a humble rural settlement. however, sulina’s golden age began with the establishment here of the european commission of danube (ced) in 1856. ced was a supranational organization composed of representatives of france, england, austria, prussia, russia, sardinia, and turkey (see teampau and van assche 2007 for more historical background). in addition to its role in dredging the danube and improving navigation, the commission was actively involved in the life of the town in a kind of beneficial colonization which included sponsoring all churches and building confessional cemeteries, hospitals and schools. by 1939, ced had transformed sulina into a modern city, a fashionable resort, and a flourishing porto franco of over 10, 000 inhabitants. proudly presented in the media as “the most cosmopolitan city in the country”, until the second world war sulina was the main romanian harbor on the danube and home to consulates of all the important european countries. before world war ii, the social and political landscape of sulina changed dramatically. most “europeans” disappeared with the dissolution of ced in 1939, while jews, armenians, and most greeks left shortly after world war ii. during the communist period, the population was heavily “romanianised” and efforts were made to erase all signs of “imperialist” prosperity in the urban landscape. while sulina possessed a prosperous local industry during communism, today it is characterized by decay like of many of romania’s small cities. in addition, sulina is only accessible by water; the local favorite catchphrase, “we are the first to see the light and the last to see justice” speaks both of the geographical and political marginality. local authorities try to conceal this disadvantage by arguing that sulina, the most eastern city of the european union, is not some long-forgotten place, but the very “gateway of europe.” this argument visibly follows from a nostalgic vision in which sulina, and the whole region, played a vital role in european trade and communication. however, they seem to ignore the fact that the political and geo-strategical relevance of the lower danube region has changed dramatically over the past century, and a more appropriate understanding of sulina’s role and place on the map of europe would have to look more closely at the interplay of global-local identities and interactions, in which the european union is just one actor (van assche and teampau 2009). according to the official website of sulina’s town hall, “the city of sulina has been characterized as a multiethnic settlement from its earliest documents, a ‘europolis’ in which inhabitants of different origins have lived together in a perfect harmony, a fact which has been passed down through centuries until today.” moreover, “the inhabitants of the city, whose geographical, cultural and especially financial isolation did not always favour them, have always had the feeling of belonging to the big melting pot named dobrogea (where we can meet greeks, turks, armenians, italians, aromanians, megleno-romanians, ukrainians, lipoveni russians, gypsies etc.). this was an internationally recognized example of peaceful multiethnic coexistence.” this self-presentation speaks, once again, about the complexity of local identification. while feeling alienated from a political system they do not really identify with (“the first to see the sun and the last to see justice”) and having changed, for that matter, several political-administrative authorities in the past two centuries (turk, russian, european, and finally romanian), since 1939, most people of sulina would rather identify themselves either as “european” (to which their unique history entitles them), or “sulinean” (again, as symbol of their peculiarity and marginality). however, they seem reluctant to identify as “part of the delta”, to which the urbanites refer as “the swamp” (and which is “out there”); this official presentation actually places sulina as part of the historical region of dobrogea, between the delta, the black sea and the danube, a region recognized as a multicultural area. after the communist demise in 1989, local authorities began recuperating the previously forbidden pre-world war ii history of the city and emphasized its multiculturalism and prosperity as part of the new “european” discourse. they presented a mythologized general narrative of urban history in which the city’s residents participated optimistically in constructing a city of incredible affluence with “over 40,000 inhabitants” (compared to 5,000 today), “27 ethnicities”, several confessions and ethnic schools. while the remaining buildings are a testament to this past and while the official discourse is attractive on tourist brochures and sometimes “sells” to uninformed visitors, there is clearly a gap between this official narrative and the local urban landscape. with a romanian majority, a minority of lipoveni (russian old believers) and less than two percent greeks left (not to mention only two armenians), local anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 11 authorities still try to present sulina as a city of diversity with a unique history and destiny as “the gateway of europe.” however, the historical sulina of official discourse does not match up with the urban landscape of the present. while history visibly lingers in the decayed walls of old houses we are not presented with information about those buildings but rather an abstract narrative of a once prosperous city that does not need “proof” or material remains to hold true. a local museum in a former lighthouse is primarily focused on the local hero and writer jean bart and the activities of ced, but does not portray the multicultural life of the prewar city. further, prewar multicultural life is reflected in neither the annual festival of minorities which attempts to showcase the ethnic diversity of the region (greeks, lipoveni, turks, tatars, armenians etc.) and retains the overtone of propaganda, nor the widely advertised “maritime cemetery” with its separate sections for christians, jews, muslims and lipoveni old believers. all these mnemonic places seem to be isolated items in the complex web of local history. there are almost no narrative links between the existence of this unique cemetery and the peculiar urban life of multicultural sulina that enabled it. one notable exception is the local legend of “the princess/dancer and her lover buried together” which is netted around two graves in the cemetery. while most nineteenth century tombstones with english, italian, french names on them offer no explanation and no inquiry in the collective imaginary; this local legend is in fact largely based on the fictional plot of the “europolis” novel by local writer jean bart. nonetheless, narrative interviews with elderly people can bring us a little closer to the specificities of everyday multicultural life in sulina. thus, some accounts indicate that while the city flourished, it was split symbolically, and even physically, between the spaces of the european employees of ced – usually temporary residents of western european origin – and local workers and merchants. what seemed to be a “big happy family” could have been a city in which symbolic and material boundaries delimited spaces of interethnic community life. baumann cautioned us about the peril of reification of cultures in discussions of multiculturalism, arguing “multicultural society is not a patchwork of five or ten cultural identities, but an elastic web of crosscutting and always mutually situational identification” (apud simonsen 2008: 152). developing this idea, simonsen advocates a “practical orientalism”, one that can “grasp how hegemonic ideas translate into everyday practices and infiltrate the ‘banal’ spaces of ordinary life, including everyday sociality and sensual experience” (simonsen 2008: 153). a number of analyses of the multicultural city connect the narratives of difference to “banal” everyday experiences, to everyday embodied practices and particularly to meals and food. in sulina, most biographical narratives are accounts of people growing up and playing together, learning each other’s language, participating in ethnic ceremonies and life course rituals (weddings, funerals), even attending the other’s church, mixed with anecdotes of daily interaction with so many “others”, all of which reconstruct a grassroots vision of intercultural city life. “well, the old ones are gone, now there are only lipoveni and haholi”: memory, nostalgia and community in sulina, people tend to recollect the past in the frame of two main intertwining narratives: that of prosperity and that of intercultural tolerance. in a forthcoming article (teampau and van assche 2009) we investigate the mutual relationship between collective remembering and personal memories by looking at how individual – autobiographical – accounts are socially and politically framed and shaped, and how the unique and particular context of each personal account is negotiated – through narrative – to comply with the official version of collective memory. sulina was a porto franco and a harbor where people came and went. there was indeed a unique blend of ethnicities, religious confessions and languages. nevertheless, nostalgia tends to even out the rough edges, facilitate the “forgetting” of conflicts and present the past through rosecoloured spectacles. the very ethnic groups that made sulina the “most cosmopolitan city in the country” are no longer there. the functioning of ced with its many representatives and employees of different ethnicities who worked together and communicated on a daily basis likely had an important role in generating the “cosmopolitan” outlook of the city. however, the french, the british, the dutch, italians, germans etc. are not “remembered” by contemporary residents (except for few cases where the informants’ anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 12 family had personal connections to them), perhaps due to the boundaries mentioned above. ethnic groups that remain in the collective memory are people who were part of the multicultural day-to-day life of the city and involved in its social networks and in the fabric of urban co-existence. jews, armenians, turks, and greeks were traditionally urban populations involved in commerce and trade (van assche and teampau 2009). their involvement in these professions had a significant influence on the built environment and forms of urban sociality in the city. similar to what amy mills has noted in the case of istanbul “the greeks, jews and armenians took the character of the city with them when they departed” (mills 2006: 371). most of the contemporary inhabitants of sulina are either romanians or lipoveni who came to “to the city” from neighboring villages. according to the last census, of a total population of 5140, 82.5% are romanians, 10.6% lipoveni, 2.14% ukrainians, 1.3% greeks, and 0.2% turks. very few are old enough to actually remember sulina before the war. since many of them learn anew about sulina’s glorious past, one would think that they would be less likely to long for a past they have no connection to (biographical and/or affective). nonetheless, as pine, kaneff and haukanes have made clear, conflicts over memory are not only about the historical truth, but also about identity claims and power (pine, kaneff and haukanes 2004: 3-4). in this case, divergence over memory can hide an underlying, tacit divergence between groups, who develop loyalties and memories of different times. after all, many of the lipoveni and romanians used to work for the greeks and armenians – the main characters in the nostalgic narratives – not infrequently as domestic servants. even when they participate in a common mnemonic account of sulina’s “good times,” details of their own biography locate them in different social strata and places. writing about a certain melancholy of remembering the mahalle in istanbul, amy mills argues that “the narrative of peace and tolerance embedded in the landscape of social memory obscures other, untold stories of the mahalle’s past: the traumatic events that pushed out the minority communities” (mills 2006: 379). very few people in sulina actually remember that greeks were forced to leave during the second world war, even without papers, while the absence of armenians from collective memory and the urban landscape has a peculiar explanation: “they left and took their tombstones with them.” in sulina, remembering “the old ones” and their absence in the contemporary life of the city is performed in a special frame: the narrative of the peculiar “ethnic” personality (as the quintessence of an entire community now gone). although there are some exceptions such as mr. zachis who has detailed knowledge of the cosmopolitan life of the interwar city, most respondents remember interesting characters. one example of such a character is mr. ardaşe, an armenian who owned a soda and lemonade shop and who married a former prostitute from bessarabia, a very beautiful woman. another example is zadik ervant, the uncle of the last armenian of sulina who was homeless and was the origin of the local saying about vagrants: “he is like zadik.” a third character is the greek camberis, the rich owner of an elegant hotel, still remembered as a man of his habits. a final individual is the armenian dentist, formerly a housepainter, who was a short fat man who smoked a lot and walked around with his dentists’ instruments, a pipe, and a little bag of tobacco. trauma historical trauma can mark a community long after the most affected groups have departed (antze and lambek 1996). in the community left traumatized, the coping mechanisms can be complex and manifold. sulina narratives speak of a strong desire for unity and harmony, for an absence of difference, in this case disguised as an unproblematic coexistence of difference. reconstructions of the narratives of group identity and place history imply systematic forgetting. a freudian therapeutic anamnesis in sulina is all the more difficult because the present inhabitants, even if they assimilated into older narratives of place, are so radically different. the halbwachsian “social frames,” conceptual spaces from which to remember, have vanished; the vantage points are gone. in referring to the absent armenians so prominent in prewar sulina, residents often said, “they even took their graves with them” which implies ungratefulness or even guilt. what remains of the armenians are characters like mr. ervant and mr. ardaşe. they figure in the dominant narrative of the prosperous ced sulina as sidekicks in a story that is driven by very generic characters and episodes: “the europeans” came; they developed the town; anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 13 sulina became prosperous; “everyone” lived together peacefully in close proximity without real tensions. in the stories of elderly residents, “the europeans” are not specified and the other groups are reduced to cartoonish individual characters while stories’ development and harmony are systematically embellished. after the second world war, groups that had previously worked for the now-vanished urban elites (greeks, armenians, jews) became the dominant groups in the city. despite this, it is still possible to trace the embellishment of these narratives, some old tensions, and some counternarratives. in longer interviews, sulina’s elderly residents refer to significant hardships, distrust, and class inequality partly tied to ethnic distinctions. autobiographical narratives that do not hide the negative aspects of pre-war life, dramatic family histories stretching back to the ced period, do clash frequently with the positive sulina myth of prosperous, tolerant cosmopolitanism. the tensions between the rosy sulina myth and more gritty stories are often not observed by the local storytellers who switch effortlessly from one register to another. anecdotes about the tragedies of the war reveal the quick dissolution of the social fabric of the ced period, a fabric that had been deteriorating earlier. as in many other places, the war brought simmering tensions, envy, and distrust to the surface. the sheer quantity of stories about the riches of the urban elites, their fate, and the enduring suspicions among sulinese regarding the appropriation of that old wealth betray, on the one hand, the power of the glorified cednarrative, and on the other hand, fissures in that same narrative. longer interviews reveal that few people had any objection to the departure of other ethnic groups. what happened to their assets was far more important. few stories acknowledged the role of the networks and geopolitics of western europeans, greeks, armenians and jews in the rise and functioning of sulina. as mentioned earlier, most of the present residents identify themselves as “from sulina” or “romanian” even though family histories reveal strong lipovan or ukrainian roots. the majority of the current residents moved to sulina from villages in the delta after the war or were resettled from other regions in romania. they did adopt the story of the glorious prewar sulina as part of their identity. we have noted only fragmentary and indirect resistance to the dominant narrative derived from ced self-representations, which portray the ced as a benevolent ruler that brought civilization, european values and prosperity. older counter-narratives to the ced selfpresentations, possibly held by under-privileged groups or their descendants, can hardly be traced. a historical anthropology of multiculturalism in prewar sulina would prove extremely hard because of lack of sources (the ced does have extensive archives but most of the archives of the other groups have disappeared together with the people) and the memories of the present do not allow for a reconstruction of the old positionalities or the complexity of the old encounters. historic ruptures and the legibility of the palimpsest: communism as stated before, we have scrutinized contemporary multiculturalism as a palimpsest where old patterns of encounters and localized identity constructions shimmer through in present relations and identifications. in order to understand contemporary forms of multiculturalism and its spatial forms, it is important to attend to the traces of communist histories and ethnic policies. the transformations and permutations of ced-era narratives and counternarratives might be extremely hard to trace (the reappropriation of ced propaganda is about the only clear issue) but much more is known about the communist narratives. consequently, the palimpsest of multiculturalism will more easily yield fragments of the communist narrative. the festival of minorities we observed from 2006-2008 still bears the mark of communist conceptions of ethnic identity – the notion of the peaceful coexistence of different groups that have entered a new era, leaving irrelevant differences and quarrels behind. ethnicities were reified and reduced to costume, dance, food, and music to be displayed on certain occasions (festivals) and in certain places (folklore museums). power differentials and differences in groups’ position within the romanian communist state were systematically ignored. more complex patterns of identification, and by implication, of multiculturalism, were not acknowledged or analyzed. in accordance with these ideas, the inscription of identity in urban space was either ignored or actively opposed. ethnic neighborhoods were ignored in scholarly analysis and policy-making or simply torn down. in sulina, the construction of communist apartment blocks deliberately anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 14 defaced the “imperialist” and “foreign” first and second streets, while simultaneously signaling the efforts of the regime to bring progress, order and rationality to this remote corner of the state. the policy of romanization minimized the presence of “minorities” effectively and propagated a folklorized concept of minority culture. local (sulina) and regional (tulcea) policy-makers continue to operate with very similar assumptions about culture, ethnicity, and multiculturalism. events such as the festival are meant to prove that the greeks and the roma have a place and that their rights are protected. however, although communist discourse may have transformed social relations and urban space, it did not replace other types of encounters, identifications, and spatial inscriptions in postwar sulina as if it were a blank slate. people like mr. zachis preserved and transmitted memories of cosmopolitan sulina. lipoveni, ukrainians and romanians from other regions brought their own memories to the city. therefore, the particular ecological location and material character of sulina produced patterns of interaction and identification that are far richer than the official communist discourse on identity and multiculturalism. in part due to sulina’s isolation, memories, and the urban palimpsest, people very quickly became “from sulina.” a local identity was revived. despite ongoing contact with the villages in the delta, the lipoveni and ukrainians, came to identify themselves as coming from the city. the “sulina” identity calmed lingering tensions and was used both externally (to distinguish oneself from “the villages” and from “bucharest”) and internally (occasionally overriding other categorizations). with its latent references to a more cosmopolitan and multicultural past, “sulina” served as a powerful synthetic image of successful multiculturalism. such an image, which is assumed to be shared by all participants in a social encounter, frequently simplifies the positioning in everyday interactions. this mechanism is still very strong today. at the same time, the synthetic image cannot replace all the complexity of identity construction in the presence of other identities. old labels, old prejudices, and old expectations return in certain situations while new ones are produced. although lipoveni were “from sulina” in a bar after a lot of drinking, people would still say “hey, lipovan” or “how’s your russian wife?” at weddings, fissures in the “sulina” identity come to the surface and accusation of witchcraft seem connected to perceived differences based on one’s former ethnic identity. language is still a marker but not in a monolithic manner. residents commonly refer to “the old sulina where everyone spoke four or five languages,” which stresses unity in diversity, peaceful communication and cohabitation, and the flexibility of ethnic boundaries. now few people speak more than two languages and non-romanian languages are largely confined to private spaces or one neighborhood, which is the liminal zone between city and swamp where sulina fades into a narrow strip of higher land – the location of a lipoveni neighborhood. the dominance of romanian operates as a sign of unity and practices at a different level, a nationalist unity also reinforced under communism. however, other languages are still present and do present barriers. minority languages are signs of otherness that cannot be completely reinterpreted under the banner of cosmopolitanism. under the ced people probably did not speak four or five languages except for the multilingual ced-administration (to which their archives bear witness) and some of the more cosmopolitan merchants (who had at the very least a working knowledge of the languages of various customers). yet many people did speak more languages than they do today while the fluidity and complexity of group boundaries was clearly greater. forces shaping contemporary performances of multiculturalism we argue that in sulina, the local performance of multiculturalism is shaped by communist policies and practices and the “sulina” synthetic image – the local myth of cosmopolitanism. the catastrophic episodes of war and dismantling of ced allowed for the present functioning of the sulina myth, since the systematic loss of connections with the ced past, its networks, and its people made it possible to alter the image of the ced era more freely. more recently, democratization, conversion to a market economy, tourism, and european integration have further transformed the performance of multiculturalism. these processes continue to influence how images of place, self, and other invoked and marketed. the rupture caused by the disintegration of the ced and by world war ii allowed for the anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 15 appropriation and transformation of the ced myth underground in postwar communist sulina and later in the open after the end of socialism. after the end of communist rule, romanians decided they wanted to be european again and join the european union. the marginal city of sulina represented an opportunity to construct and market a european past as a key to the european future. europe pushed actively for institutional reform, for the cultivation of democratic values including multiculturalism, and the protection of the heritage of various communities. in sulina, european grants and subsidies have been pursued by invoking a multicultural past and present that is based on a reified conception of cultural identity. the promotion of sulina in the city and region consistently refers to the ced myth, and contemporary multiculturalism, which is assumed to be similar to earlier forms. the city is presented as an example of modern european multiculturalism. one could say that the myth of ced sulina feeds off the modern european mythologies (including their version of culture and multiculturalism) and vice versa. both the localized myth of the past of sulina and the myth of a european common destiny in diversity reinforce each other locally. local and regional governments try to market the city in those terms. the local palimpsest of multiculturalism is therefore connected not only to images of a cosmopolitan past, but also images of a cosmopolitan future. ced and eu are conflated, and the local and temporal features of cosmopolitanism forgotten. the local tourist industry has been growing in recent years, and particularly in 2008. however, tourists do not seem particularly interested in local cultural diversity or the architectural heritage of the ced. rather, the remote location of the town and curiosity about its location in a place surrounded by sea, swamp and danube seems to be what attracts tourists. they were only secondarily drawn by the town’s special history and identity. the landscape attracts visitors more for the beach and the fishing opportunities than for its unique ecology. cooperation among people in sulina was traditionally fraught with challenges and suspicion was rampant. this continues to be the case. the more tourists come, the more they will reveal the limitations of the local tourist industry which is still deliberately marginal due to tax evasion, minimal investment, noncooperation, and which is marked by short-term thinking. marginality and multiculturalism the multicultural past and present that attracted some tourists also functioned as a sign of sulina’s marginality. we argue that the reading of the palimpsest of multiculturalism should be informed by the local history of marginality. an event like the festival of minorities does not reflect the everyday practices of multiculturalism in sulina, but it does reflect a feature of local culture that stems from a history of marginality: an us-them distinction that opposes “all this” (all these minorities, us) to the rest of the world (seen as homogeneous and in largely negative terms). the festival thus functions as a sign of the unity of the community in a world that does not understand them and is not well understood itself. we also argue that the success of other boundary-maintaining mechanisms such as the ced myth can be partly attributed to residents’ perception of isolation, neglect, and opaque, poorly enforced rules emanating from the center. the collective perception of being in the margin is fertile ground for the production of new signs of difference from the outside world as well as local unity. a similar attitude can also be observed in the dealings of local government in sulina with the regional (and national) governments. city hall prefers to develop plans and policies with minimal communication with the other levels of government because these other levels cannot be trusted and it is better to rely on oneself. policies developed at other levels are rarely implemented in sulina. older layers of the palimpsest of multiculturalism are fading quickly. the impact of recently intensified official rhetoric of unity and of diversity is high; discourse with locals and on locals is pervaded by standardized and repeatedly appropriated images of unity and diversity (provoking each other, provoking new images of unity and diversity) which makes it extremely difficult to observe other patterns of cultural encounters or multiculturalism. it is clear that although other more subtle and complex patterns that exist under the radar are not very old, they are nevertheless real. many local residents were ambivalent about the “revival” of the idea of a monolithic ethnicity, minority ethnic identity, as a result of the development of tourism, political and economic transition, and the influence of eu anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 16 policies and subsidies. residents often wanted to understand our intentions better before addressing the “minority” theme more than superficially. trust is scarce in sulina and is necessary in order to discuss ethnic and cultural identity and multiculturalism in everyday life. in our view, the political history of ethnic categories and the term “minority” has had a major influence on how residents speak about multiculturalism in the present. although being identified as a member of a distinctive group was of some interest and could bring rewards, many still felt it to be unsafe. when people do speak up, the official “sulina” narrative offers safe ground on which to talk about multiculturalism. belonging can be expressed and experienced through various senses. when experienced, it can be articulated or not articulated. sulina residents have many concerns; their ethnic belonging and interethnic encounters are not high on their agendas. this is partly the consequence of tragic histories, some of which are remembered and others of which are not. it is also the consequences of short-term thinking and short-term concerns in this harsh marginal environment, which means there is little place for excessive ethnic pride. it is also the result of a history of the mixing of identities through marriage, assimilation, and forgetting, however the “original” identities are conceived. conclusion: the palimpsest of multiculturalism and hybridism of the margin we believe that the reasons discussed above are behind the current, often-observed confusion on cultural identity. in positive terms, the hybridism of the margin produced blurred boundaries in most everyday situations. the groups that were clearly identifiable under the ced have either gone or merged in complex patterns with “romanian” emerging as the dominant identity. in prewar sulina, interactions between those groups and the patterns of interactions could be studied as performances of multiculturalism. today, both the discourses from above (tourism, policy, etc) and the truly hybrid/confused character of ethnic identity make the palimpsest of multiculturalism extremely hard to read. in the case of the lipoveni, the largest group that was identified as non-romanian, most young people are turning away from their religion, and no longer grow beards or speak russian. often they move to tulcea, bucharest, italy or spain. spanish is more popular in the danube delta (schools) than russian nowadays and the keepers of lipoveni traditions feel they are fighting a rising tide. in the case of the lipoveni, their long history of flight and self-styled marginality (being adherents of an ostracized faith in russia) makes it difficult to write their history. many of the villages in the delta where they lived before coming to sulina had short histories and an ephemeral existence. the variety of groups that filtered into the delta area all had different histories and reasons to move. the result is a confused history and a social memory that is extremely simplified (“we came when peter cut the beards”) and, for many lipoveni themselves, not entirely convincing. individuals often expressed their doubts after relating the story or told it with some hesitation. in this marginal hybridism, any clearcut representation of physical space and social space marketed as multicultural is bound to be remote from the experiences of most locals. at the same time, the new or reemerging discourses can be easily manipulated because of this distance from actual practice. moreover, those discourses might in time reshape the identities and the practices of people in sulina. revivals can be artificial at first and wholeheartedly felt and embraced later. our analyses might evoke cynicism among readers expecting a narrative of stable groups working together in a stable community, threatened by alien bureaucratic and economic discourses. we would like to counter that the patterns of multiculturalism were hard to read, not always important for the people themselves, and highly disrupted despite tales of continuity. yet we argue that “community” can be a remarkably resilient concept, that “sulina” is remarkably strong as a unifying myth, and that community ties can be present even if they are unarticulated adaptations to difference, visible in everyday encounters and unreflected practices. in the layered encounters we observed, reading the layers in the palimpsest of multiculturalism was difficult because of the hybridism of the margin and because of the ruptures and discontinuities in local history. the unifying myth of sulina brought continuity and structure to the palimpsest. our attempt to reconstruct the palimpsest of multiculturalism often had to take slight variations of the sulina myth as starting point. by dissecting variations of the prevalent myth, conducting a contextual analysis of its use, and juxtaposing the ced anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 17 myth with other circulating narratives, we were able to map out part of the terrain. a continuously reinterpreted sulina myth glosses over some difference and creates new differences in advocating a simplified ethnic identity marketable for tourism under the banner of the european future. sulinese interpretations of urban space in their readings of the urban palimpsest informed our interpretation of the palimpsest of multiculturalism. for most contemporary residents, the myth of sulina is anchored in urban space only in a very general sense. “the harbor,” “the danube,” “first street,” and the churches are markers of cosmopolitan sulina. other than that, few memories exist of the symbolic topography of ced-sulina. city space – the urban palimpsest – is interpreted freely, following the fleeting categorizations of marginal hybridism. it is thanks to this loose coupling of the urban palimpsest and the performance of multiculturalism that the reinterpreted ced myth can shape new encounters so profoundly. endnotes 1this research was part of a larger research project under the title ‘nature, culture, planning in the danube delta’, a cooperation of minnesota state universitiesst cloud, babes bolyai university, clujnapoca, leuven university, and wageningen university, investigating cultural and ecological complexity in the danube delta, and the potential for spatial planning to accommodate humans and nature. references allon, fiona. 2004. “the consumption and construction of tourist spaces and landscapes in sydney,” space & culture 7,1: 49-63 antze paul, michael lambek (eds.). 1996. tense past: cultural essays in trauma and memory. new york, london: routledge. ballinger, p. 2003. “imperial nostalgia: mythologizing habsburg trieste,” journal of modern italian studies, 8,1: 84-101. ballinger, p. 2004. “authentic hybrids in the balkan borderlands,” current anthropology, 45,1: 31-60. barnes, t.j., j.s. duncan. 1992. writing worlds. discourse, text and metaphor in the representation of landscape. london: routledge. bélanger, anouk. 2000. “urban space and collective memory: analysing the various dimensions of the production of memory,” canadian journal of urban research 11, 1: 69-92. bird, s. elizabeth. 2002. “it makes sense to us: cultural identity in local legends of place,” journal of contemporary ethnography 31,5: 519-547. bowers, j., k. iwi. 1993. “the discursive construction of society,” discourse and society 4,3: 357-394. brockmeier, jens. 2002. “remembering and forgetting: narrative as cultural memory,” culture & psychology 8,1 15-43. chang, t. c. 2005. “place, memory and identity: imagining ‘new asia,’” asia pacific viewpoint 46,3: 247–253. daniels, s. 1988. landscape, image, text. cambridge: cambridge university press. della dora, veronica. 2000. “the rhetoric of nostalgia: postcolonial alexandria between uncanny memories and global geographies,” cultural geographies 13: 207-238. fainstein, s. susan. 2005. “cities and diversity: should we want it? can we plan for it?” urban affairs review 41, 3. foucault, m. 1968. les mots et les choses. paris: gallimard. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 18 gottdiener, m., a. lagapoulos. 1986. the city and the sign. an introduction to urban semiotics. new york. guss, david m. 2000. the festive state: race, ethnicity, and nationalism as cultural performance. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. kasinitz, philip, david hillyard. 1995. “the old-timers’ tale: the politics of nostalgia on the waterfront,” journal of contemporary ethnography 24,2 :139-164 magris, c. 1989. danube: a sentimental journey from the source to the black sea. london: harvill. malcolmson, s. 1998. “the varieties of cosmopolitan experience”, in p. cheah, b. robbins, eds. cosmopolitics. feeling and thinking beyond the nation, minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 233245. mills, amy. 2006. “boundaries of the nation in the space of the urban: landscape and social memory in istanbul,” cultural geographies 13: 367-394. richardson, t. 2006. “living cosmopolitanism? ‘tolerance’, difference and local identity in odessa,” in c. hann, ed., the postsocialist religious question: faith and power in central asia and eastcentral europe. berlin: lit, 213 240. richardson, t. 2005. “walking streets, talking history: the making of odessa,” ethnology, 44,1: 13-33. rietbergen, p. 2003. de retoriek van de eeuwige stad. rome gelezen. nijmegen: sun. setha low, dana taplin, and suzanne scheld. 2005. rethinking urban parks: public space and cultural diversity, 1st ed. austin: university of texas press. simonsen, kirsten. 2008. “cities, cultures and everyday life,” european urban and regional studies 15; 99. simonsen, kirsten. 2008. “practice, narrative and the multicultural city’: a copenhagen case,” european urban and regional studies 15; 145 teampau, p., k. van assche. 2007. “sulina, the dying city in a vital region. social memory and the nostalgia for the european future,” ethnologia balkanica 13, 1: 257-274. teampau, p., k. van assche. 2009. ‘sulina, sulina. when there’s water, there’s no light. narrative and autobiography in a romanian town’, in narrative and culture. proceedings of the cluj conference, cluj napoca. trudeau, daniel. 2006. “politics of belonging in the construction of landscapes: place making, boundary drawing and exclusion,” cultural geographies 13: 421-443 van assche, k. 2004. signs in time. an interpretive account of urban planning and design, the people and their histories. wageningen: wageningen university. van assche, k., p. devlieger, p. teampau. 2008. “liquid boundaries in marginal marshes. reconstructions of identity in the romanian danube delta,” studia sociologia 14,1: 115138. van assche, k., p., teampau. 2009. “remembering and forgetting in the margin. constructing past and future in the romanian danube delta,” memory studies 2, 2: 211234. verdery, k.1996. what was socialism and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. verdery, k. 2003. the vanishing hectare. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 19 property and value in postsocialist transylvania. ithaca: cornell university press. wood, phil and charles landry. 2008. the intercultural city. planning for diversity advantage. london: earthscan. microsoft word document2 volume 20, number 1 transformations in embodied lifecourses: hungarian women in the 1990s barb west university of the pacific © 2002 barbara west all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. this paper brings together ethnographic data and scholarly material from three different areas of study: the effects on women of the political, social, and economic changes that occurred in hungary throughout the 1990s; nostalgic discourse as a tool for the creation of collective memory; and food ways as markers of identities. the site in which i explore this intersection is the food sections of the two leading women’s magazines in hungary in the 1990s, nök lapja and kiskegyed.i as women’s magazines have been shown to do in both socialist (attwood 1999) and capitalist (ballaster, et. al. 1991) societies, these publications served as socialization tools for women who needed to find their place in the new political, social, and economic systems that developed after the socialist period ended in 1990. one way these magazines performed this function was to provide a new set of memories for women to draw upon in situating themselves in a capitalist society. i argue that these magazines used food preparation as a primary historical event that women needed ‘to remember’ in order to properly situate themselves and their bodies in a consumer democracy. it has been said that hungary completed the transition from socialism in ten months in late 1989 and early 1990 (bruszt and stark 1991). this may be true from the vantage point of macro-political processes, such as the formation of political parties and governments, but it is almost meaningless from the perspectives of the people living through the transition. as all of the ethnography and sociology from hungary (i.e., west 2002; andorka, et. al. 1999) and the other post-socialist east and central european countries (i.e., borneman 1992; creed 1998) illustrates, many people enculturated into actually existing socialism have struggled with the transition to new systems. the reasons for these difficulties are multiple and include increased economic insecurities (van hoorn, et. al. 2000) and the disruption, and even abandonment, of the “ideal lifecourses” (borneman 1992) laid out by and begun during the socialist regimes. it is the acceptance of these socialist “lifecourses,” at least at some level, which has made the reconstruction of women’s memories a necessity in the post-socialist era. john borneman defines “the lifecourse as a series of transformations in experiential meaning” as they relate to the classification of demographic indicators within society (1992:340, n. 22). when he speaks of the ideal lifecourse, he refers to “state strategies, embodied in powerful legal and political commentaries” that “set the aesthetic and ideational framework in which experiences are categorized and periodized” (1992:32). of course, as borneman recognizes, these discourses “are never ... able to uniformize the lifecourse of their citizens” (ibid). rather, they provide a normalizing model against which individuals can, or are even expected to measure, evaluate, and name the experiences through which they define the self. in my exploration of women’s lives in hungary, i borrow from phenomenology to argue that changes in ideal lifecourses, as defined by borneman, are at best irrelevant, and at worst meaningless, unless they somehow enact a change in embodied experience, or what mauss first referred to as ‘les techniques du corps’ (in csordas 1990:7). while transformative discourse of the ideal lifecourse at jen typewritten text 79 volume 20, number 1 the social level is certainly important in this process, as borneman shows, without exploring the ways that this discourse is embodied by the population in question, the whole process of change is seen merely as a cognitive affair. women’s lifecourse in hungary ideal lifecourses in all the socialist countries were largely focused on the attainment of “socially organized work” (ferge 1979), so that men and women alike were considered societally (and socially) successful once they began contributing economically to the development of the socialist state. in both law and practice, the right to work in these countries became not only a privilege but also a necessity. in addition, in every venue, from school text books and activities sponsored by the young pioneers to women’s magazines and on-the-job training classes, several generations of ‘socialists’ were enculturated into this system that placed socially organized work at the core of both masculine and feminine personhood. while the “masculinization of hungarian culture, which rejuvenated industrial production and fostered the implementation of social policies” (kürti 1991:57), caused few problems for many hungarian men, when it came to women, the socialists were often seen to be imposing an alien lifecourse. in fact, because of the lack of choice (van hoorn, et. al. 2000) and double burden (corrin 1994), some hungarian women continued to resent the fact that socially organized work was the only key to moral participation in the socialist state, the only available ideal lifecourse. nonetheless, there is also some evidence to show that many women in hungary did take these prescribed lifecourses seriously and use them to guide their life choices. for example, martha lampland (1990) has shown in her analysis of a series of essays written by hungarian women under the banner “work is my calling,” that at least some women during the socialist era strongly identified with the idea of themselves as laboring for the good of the community in socially organized work. also, in her examination of the backlash against women in the latter years of the socialist era, joanna goven (1993) provides further evidence of the degree to which women in hungary had begun to see themselves as workers outside of the home with something valuable to contribute to society. with the demise of the socialist system in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the primary legitimating force captured by the new system and its representatives was anticommunism. this meant, among other things, the immediate elimination of the one-party political system with its limits on freedom of speech, religion and travel. it also meant the eradication of the hegemony of socially organized work, which saw the prompt demise of the moral necessity for women to work outside the home (although not necessarily the financial necessity). in place of communist work ideologies, the new state structure in hungary attempted to follow the capitalist reconstructive path of west germany forty years earlier (gedeon 1995:441). particularly in the first years of transition, the new structure fostered an “overall strategy aimed at the restoration of tradition” and the placement of citizens “into a hierarchically ordered, prosperous community held together by aesthetic appeals to a superior (traditional) authority” (borneman 1992: 203). part of the ideological baggage that accompanied this strategy was an essentialist view of gender that naturalized women’s position in the home. although hungarians willingly voted the hungarian socialist workers’ party out of power in 1990, over forty years of enculturation and memory building could not be destroyed by this event, no matter how monumental. in addition to changes in policy, the new system likewise needed to construct new ideal, embodied lifecourses for hungarian citizens, particularly women, prepare them for these lifecourses, and provide normative support for those who make the ‘ideal’ choices. as they did in russia at the start of the socialist period earlier in the 20th century (attwood 1999), women’s magazines in hungary in the 1990s played (and continue to play) an important role in these processes. one of the most important functions they fulfilled was providing women with a series of ‘invented’ memories upon which they could draw in both imagining and actualizing the ideal, embodied lifecourse of the capitalist housewife. through the use of nostalgic discourse these magazines attempted to create a collective memory of domestic, embodied labor that hungarian women could use to imagine their own bodies and lifecourses. of course, these magazines’ publishers were not self-consciously attempting to socialize jen typewritten text 80 volume 20, number 1 women into the role of the capitalist housewife; they were trying to make a profit. however, i do not believe the profit motive precluded this kind of socialization from occurring in this case. first, analyses of women’s magazines in other capitalist countries illustrate that this medium developed around pleasures that must “be taken in the privacy of one’s own home, and the bosom of the biological family” (ballaster, et. al. 1991:164). it is not surprising that in hungary these kinds of publications took on the role they had been playing in capitalist countries generally since the nineteenth century. second, hungarian women in the 1990s experienced tremendous social and economic changes. they encountered high-impact western advertising, new kitchen gadgets, new food items, inflation, unemployment, and a large number of other factors for the first time, often without any idea about how to use or make sense of them (james 1995). women felt insecure (west 2002) and pessimistic about the future (millar 1994) and about their roles as women in this new society (haney 1999). i propose that these magazines provided one familiar, comfortable place to which women could turn to try to make sense of the consumer democracy that developed in hungary in the 1990s. indeed, in my interviews with hungarian women, most said that they read these magazines in order to learn something. therefore, making a profit in this kind of publication was intimately linked with their ‘educational,’ or socialization, role. nostalgia before moving on to discuss the use of food images in these magazines, i need first to address the use of nostalgic discourse in the process of inventing collective memory. christopher lasch argues that nostalgia is the “ideological twin” of progress, and that while these two concepts appear to be somewhat contradictory, in actuality both entail the idealization of a time outside of an insecure, dangerous or otherwise difficult present (1990:18). therefore, while hungarians in the 1990s were imagining their future as full members of “europe” (west 2000b), with all the historical, sociological, political and economic ramifications of that term, the natural flipside of this ideology of progress is ‘to remember’ a history that can serve as the basis for this imagined future. i found that these two hungarian women’s magazines were locating this history in the kitchens of contemporary women’s grandmothers and urging women ‘to remember’ this time and place as they prepared themselves for ‘progress’ away from socialism. at the same time that nostalgia is intimately linked with progress, renato rosaldo reminds us that the memories constructed through nostalgic discourse are not neutral fantasies of an historic golden age, but fictions created by and for certain groups of people to justify, hide or smooth over a present set of power relations. rosaldo himself addresses the concept of imperialist nostalgia, whereby “people mourn the passing of what they themselves have transformed” (1989:69) through “a pose of ‘innocent yearning’” (1989:70) that “makes racial domination appear innocent and pure” (1989:68), as in the film out of africa. changing the terms somewhat from his original thesis, i posit that a form of domestic nostalgia makes gender domination appear innocent and pure. for example, contemporary hungarian women are being asked to abandon an ideal lifecourse focused on the attainment of socially organized work and to concentrate their energies on the private sphere of home and family. by providing a set of ‘memories’ of grandma’s home cooking for these women to draw upon, rather than laying out the pros and cons of the life of a capitalist housewife, these magazines make this kind of essentialized gender construct appear ‘innocent and pure’ rather than patriarchal and unfair. finally, as i have indicated above, it is important to note that nostalgic discourse does not necessarily rely upon actual memories of past events, but may actually create them. deborah lupton, in her discussion of the importance of food as “storehouses” of memories, reminds us that nostalgic discourse is “not dependent upon a happy childhood, but recreates the fiction of one” (1996:49-50). for most nök lapja and kiskegyed readers the feelings invoked by the recipes and food articles will not come from a memory of childhood treats from grandma’s kitchen, but will create a memory of perfect meals served up by the ideal grandma. at the same time, the creation of these food memories may not always entail what jean duruz calls the “good food myth” (1999:237). in her analysis of “remembered food cultures” from 1950s and 1960s australia (1999:231), duruz argues that both the “good food myth” and the “bad food myth” have their place in the creation of the past; jen typewritten text 81 volume 20, number 1 they “can both provide means to psychic comfort” in a difficult present (1999:238). in these two hungarian magazines both positive and negative memories are likewise available for women to draw upon in ‘remembering’ the past and evaluating and planning for their own lives in the present and future. the magazines in hungary in the 1990s, the two most popular women’s magazines did not unambiguously advocate women’s complete seclusion in the domestic sphere. many articles and some advertisements addressed the difficulties and rewards for women of working outside the home and finding a comfortable balance with domestic life. nevertheless, there was also a significant push in both publications’ food sections for women to focus their time and energies on the home and family. in both magazines, women were regularly urged to cook meals for themselves and their families and guests in traditional hungarian ways, rather than relying upon convenience and half-prepared foods (west 2000a). even in kiskegyed, where the majority of the articles relating to food and cooking concerned dieting (west 2000a), the diets always required women to spend a significant amount of time in the kitchen making homemade foods, rather than purchasing low-fat convenience and half-prepared items. in addition to home cooking, both of these magazines also employed a nostalgic discourse of ‘grandma in the kitchen’ to create for women a set of food memories to contrast with their own experiences. as in duruz’s australia, these magazines likewise created positive memories, in this case of an idealized time of homemade dishes, fresh ingredients, healthy bodies, and economizing. this is what i call the ‘good grandma myth.’ at the same time, these magazines also presented many articles and other features that focused on grandma’s life as being a difficult time of poverty, few kitchen appliances, and unhealthy eating habits and bodies. this is what i call the ‘bad grandma myth.’ i argue that both of these ‘memories,’ or more accurately myths, provide contemporary women with an understanding of their place in the particular form of patriarchy that has developed in consumer democracies. they learn that the ideal woman focuses much of her energy on home and family, as did the ‘good grandma,’ but at the same time she must work outside the home to allow her to purchase a wide variety of kitchen appliances and healthy and/or dietetic alternatives to their ‘bad’ grandma’s “sugar, lard and flour.” in the articles that recreate an idealized past, or good grandma myth, grandma’s food is presented as tastier, healthier, or cheaper than today’s fare. one example of this kind of discourse is in a 1994 article from nök lapja called, “does the world go further with potato noodles?” this two-page article discusses a teacher training college that offers a variety of home economics classes, in addition to the regular curriculum. the final two paragraphs of the article are solely in the (wistful) voice of the author, erzsébet schäffer, following her visit to this college. she writes: when i returned from békéscsaba, there was a surprise waiting for me at home. grandma had made hot food: it was potato noodles with cucumber salad. i adore potato noodles with cucumber salad. and i had never made them. grandma gave me the recipe and i wrote down what was good and what was cheap (no. 16, p. 9). another example of this kind of discourse is in a nök lapja article from 1997 called “to eat or not to eat?” (no. 28, p. 28), which addresses the dangers of industrially prepared foods. it says: in former times it was so easy. grandma cooked the spinach that grew in the garden, plucked the chicken under the mulberry tree and poured home made raspberry syrup into the grandchildren’s glasses. today’s dead tired mother comes home and prepares instant soup in ten minutes, mashed potatoes from a box, drinks from multivitamin tablets, and for dessert she defreezes a fruit cake. grandma’s lunch was made up of ten ingredients while a dietary chemist can only determine the content of modern, ready-made food. not only were grandma’s recipes used to invoke memories of tasty foods and healthy bodies from the past, as these citations depict, but they were also used to show the ways that homemade cooking can also be an answer to hungary’s decreasing standard of living in the 1990s. for jen typewritten text 82 volume 20, number 1 example, in a 1996 nök lapja article called, “what can we put in the basket?” (no. 13), several different families are examined as case studies of the ways hungarians are coping with increasing poverty. one of these families has turned to “granny’s recipes” to help them make ends meet in the present (p. 4). articles presenting grandma’s kitchen as an ideal time and place, and denigrating contemporary women’s abilities, were also published in kiskegyed throughout the 1990s. for example, in 1996 this magazine ran a long article entitled “cook something tasty” (no. 46, pp. 8-9), in which a number of famous women in hungary and their daughters or nieces talk about their experiences with cooking. the whole article is introduced with a paragraph that decries the cooking abilities of today’s women. it says: why don’t young women today cook? that is an easy question to answer. first, because they can’t. and if they can, they don’t have the time or patience. today’s mothers don’t cook either. today’s grandmothers (women born in the 1930s) could cook. ... a generation is growing up if they aren’t already grown who can’t remember homemade tastes. the interviews with the women and girls support this thesis. one of the daughters, a twenty-year old university student, says of her own abilities, “a young girl learns to cook if she sees her mother in the kitchen. i never saw this.” many of the mothers interviewed for this article likewise spoke of kitchen knowledge as embodied knowledge that they themselves had never acquired. one woman, a budapest actress, said: “i usually cook, although it’s not my favorite activity. my mother only made promises that later she would teach me certain meals. unfortunately, she took her secrets, her recipes to the grave.” finally, several of the women and girls described their grandmother’s cooking as an ideal they wish they could attain, but never will. one 21-year-old woman said, “i grew up on my step-grandmother’s cooking and became very picky because of that.” another woman said that her “pörkölt (stew) will never be better than her grandmother’s.” in addition to these women, hungarian men also provide testimonials of their grandmother’s cooking in these magazines and of embodied knowledge. for example, béla katona, a member of the hungarian parliament, says in kiskegyed (1998, no. 35, p. 26): “i learned my first [cooking] tricks as a child watching my mother and grandmother. since then, of course, much has changed; for example, we don’t kill chickens at home anymore. but some things never change.” in discussing why his teacher training college had introduced home economics classes into the curriculum, as addressed above, the male director of this school likewise pointed to today’s lack of role models in developing women’s domestic skills, such as making sour cabbage, other traditional foods and natural remedies and cosmetics. his students will not be lacking in this area, whether they have a grandmother or not. throughout the 1990s, kiskegyed also ran a fairly regular kitchen tips column which always began, “granny knows everything. you only need to ask her to receive her advice. we did.” the piece would then provide the answers to between a dozen and twenty questions concerning such topics as the use of vinegar as a cleaning solution, the proper way to prepare a particular vegetable, or the ways that leftover meats, vegetables, bread or other foods can be used to make other dishes. nök lapja likewise drew upon the authenticity and authority of the hungarian grandmother in some of its kitchen tips articles. for example, an article on making good pancakes begins with the definitive answer to this problem: “the good pancake comes from grandma’s old iron pan, in which no other foods are cooked” (1994, no. 28, p. 34). in another nök lapja “tips” column, grandma is said to have the “recipe” for cooking up a medicinal concoction for tired and aching feet (1994, no. 4, p. 31). while grandma’s cooking is the most common source of this kind of nostalgia in these magazines, for the older generation of hungarian women there are also articles that provide fond memories of mother’s cooking. for example, in 1994, nök lapja published an article entitled “true stories about stone soup” (no. 51, p. 37) in which four women tell stories from their childhoods in the 1940s and 1950s. one woman, true to the stone soup story, tells of her adventure in going round to each of the neighbors and gathering scraps of bread, vegetables and meat; her mother then put these ingredients together to make a delicious, homemade meal for the girl jen typewritten text 83 volume 20, number 1 and her seven siblings. another storyteller in this article tells of her mother’s difficulties just after the war in feeding her children. beans and vegetables were terribly expensive. flour was cheaper than cornmeal. ... [mother] felt that there was no choice. it’s possible to make many things with flour, bread and potatoes. ‘god helps those who help themselves.’ she became very excited: she planned what she would cook. potato soup, pasta soup, potato pasta, fried bread, pancakes, jam pasta, jam dumplings, fake goulash, fake meat soup (with squash instead of meat), french toast, potatoes cooked in their skins and everything else poor women of the 1950s served up. she flew up and set about to making lunch: it will be bread soup and fake grits pasta today. the article ends by saying that the response to this theme was extremely valuable, presumably for teaching today’s women how to save money and make due with cheaper ingredients in ‘traditionally’ hungarians ways, so the editors were inviting other women to send in their stories and recipes from difficult times in their lives. from among the best ideas and most beautiful stories the editors will choose a winner who will receive a number of kitchen appliances. although this particular article does in some ways create happy memories of good meals and clever hungarian women, it also begins to illustrate that the memories created by nostalgic discourse are not always of an idealized past. clearly, the time periods that are being recalled in these stories also include tremendous difficulties and hard work for hungarian women due to poverty and loss. the mother of one author had been left alone to care for two children when her husband fled to the u.s. ten years prior; he had never sent a penny of child support. even the families that included two parents were all desperately poor, as indicated by their need to “make due.” this is not the only article from these magazines that contradicts the idealism of the nostalgia for ‘good grandma’s’ kitchen by depicting grandma’s food preparation as more difficult than that of contemporary women. a nök lapja piece from 1995 (no. 17, p. 40-1), “housekeeping in the past,” argues that grandma worked “ten thousand times more” than today’s housewife. the article begins with a description of food storage in the days before refrigerators and freezers. the author says, “my own grandmother lived in the city and didn’t have a basement at her disposal, so she could only pickle raw meat and keep it for two or three days covered with a wet cloth.” the article also describes keeping the fires burning in the coal or wood stove and having to make every dish, and even every ingredient, by hand, among other difficult tasks. finally, another contradiction to the good grandma nostalgia appears in these magazines as an emphasis on the unhealthy aspects of traditional hungarian cooking. one such article, “half sweet holidays,” teaches women how to prepare delicious christmas treats without the “three basic foods that are on the forbidden list for today’s healthy living.” these three ingredients, “sugar, flour and lard,” formed the backbone of ‘bad’ grandma’s cooking, and thus the ‘bad’ grandma’s body as well. a similar message is given to hungarian women by julia kulik, a local television star who talks about how she shops, cooks and eats in a 1995 nök lapja article. she says that her own grandmother was “a round woman who was continually pestered by her family members for her weight” and that she herself has to exercise and watch what she eats to keep from suffering the same fate (no. 26, p. 40). conclusion at first it seemed very odd that the same magazine that could glorify grandma for her healthy homegrown spinach and freshly plucked chicken would, in a different issue, denounce her for her weight and her dependence on sugar and lard. however, this contradiction makes perfect sense when we remember that these narratives are not histories but “forms of myth-making in the present” (italics removed) (duruz 1999:232). they are like fairy tales in which mother figures are both wicked stepmothers and fairy godmothers; neither image is correct on its own but together and combined with many other images they serve to introduce their readers to the pressures and possibilities of a woman’s life. for hungarian women, most of whom are being introduced both to capitalism’s ideal housewife and the consumer society’s love of purchasable items for the first time, these stories both idealize jen typewritten text 84 volume 20, number 1 and denigrate ‘the past’ in order to situate women in the present. on the one hand, the myth of the ideal grandma provides a ‘memory’ of tasty, healthy, and economical food for today’s woman to compare with mcdonald’s and frozen pizza. on the other hand, the myth of the denigrated grandma provides an incentive for women to purchase new kitchen appliances, which are regularly advertised in these magazines, and go on a diet, which likewise often appear in these magazines, especially kiskegyed (see above). the woman under consumer capitalism must embody both these idealized positions, homemaker and salaried employee, if they are to realize the attainment of the ideal lifecourse. finally, why food? we cannot take for granted or shrug off as irrelevant the fact that both of these magazines use food and food preparation as the primary historical events women must ‘remember’ to thrive in the present. food articles are useful for the producers of these magazines, who want to make a profit, and for their readers, who want to learn something, for three reasons. first, food is a valuable tool to use in reconstructing identities because it is external matter that not only goes into the body, it literally becomes it. as such, the foods we eat must seem to be appropriate for the kind of person we are, or think we are. in hungary, a form of “culinary patriotism” (leblanc 1999:246), by which such foods as gulyás and anything else made from paprika are appreciated for their hungarianness (kisbán 1989), is important. having a tongue that knows what these dishes ‘really’ taste like is a sign of being a true hungarian. second, in hungary, as most everywhere else, daily food preparation is considered women’s work. having hands that can roll stuffed cabbage leaves that do not fall apart while cooking, or fingers that know what a pinch of salt feels like, are embodied markers of full female personhood. indeed, women who do not do have such bodies and use them appropriately at least occasionally are considered morally suspect (west 2000a), just as their grandmothers would have been. therefore, contemporary women reading these magazines would already have embodied experiences to which they could attach the emotions evoked by the creation of such nostalgic memories. finally, because of its appeal to all of the senses, food is often used to stir up and create memories through nostalgic discourse (leblanc 1999; duruz 1999; lupton 1996). while a clean, well-decorated home is certainly important to many hungarian women, and both of these magazines offered features on these topics, neither them nor any other domestic art would be as useful as food and food preparation for constructing memory because they are not used by hungarians to define themselves or others. food is not only good to think, it is also good to remember, and, in hungary at least, it is also good to think they are remembering. references andorka, rudolf, tamás kolosi, richard rose, györgy vukovich, eds. 1999 a society transformed: hungary in time-space perspective. budapest: ceu press. attwood, lynne 1999 creating the new soviet woman: women’s magazines as engineers of female identity, 1922-53. new york: st. martin’s press. ballaster, ros, et. al. 1991 women’s worlds: ideology, femininity and the woman’s magazine. london: macmillan’s. borneman, john 1992 belonging in the two berlins: kin, state, nation. new york: cambridge university press. bruszt, lászló and david stark 1991 remaking the political field in hungary: from the politics of confrontation to the politics of competition. journal of international affairs 45(1):201-45. corrin, chris 1994 magyar women. new york: st. martin’s press. creed, gerald 1998 domesticating revolution: from socialist reform to ambivalent transition in a bulgarian village. university park: pennsylvania state university press. csordas, thomas j. 1990 embodiment as a paradigm for anthropology. ethos 18(1):5-47. jen typewritten text 85 volume 20, number 1 duruz, jean 1999 food as nostalgia: eating the fifties and sixties. australian historical studies 30(112):231-50. ferge, zsuzsa. 1979 a society in the making. white plains: m.e. sharpe, inc. gedeon, péter 1995 hungary: social policy in transition. east european politics and societies 9(3):433-458. goven, joanna 1993 gender politics in hungary: autonomy and antifeminism. in gender politics and post-communism. nanette funk and magda mueller, eds. pp. 224-40. new york: routledge. haney, lynne 1999 ‘but we are still mothers’: gender, the state, and the construction of need in postsocialist hungary. in uncertain transitions. michael burawoy and katherine verdery, eds. pp. 151-88. boulder: rowman and littlefield. james, beverly 1995 learning to consume: an ethnographic study of cultural change in hungary. critical studies in mass communication 12:287-305. kisbán, eszter 1989 from peasant dish to national symbol: an early deliberate example. ethnologia europaea 19(1):95-102. kürti, laszlo 1991 the wingless eros of socialism: nationalism and sexuality in hungary. anthropological quarterly 64(2):55-67. lampland, martha 1990 unthinkable subjects: women and labor in socialist hungary. east european quarterly 23(4):389-98. lasch, christopher 1990 memory and nostalgia, gratitude and pathos. salmagundi 85-6:18-26. leblanc, ronald d. 1999 food, orality, and nostalgia for childhood: gastronomic slavophilism in midnineteenth-century russian fiction. the russian review 58: 24467. lupton, deborah 1996 food, the body and the self. london: sage. millar, carla c.j.m. 1994 attitudes and views of female consumers in the central and east european economies in transition. research in consumer behavior 7:15791. rosaldo, renato 1989 culture and truth. boston: beacon press. van hoorn, judith l., et. al. 2000 adolescent development and rapid social change: perspectives from eastern europe. albany: suny press. west, barbara a. 2000a personhood on a plate: gender and food in the construction of proper hungarian women. anthropology of east europe review. 18(2):117-23. 2000b segments of self and other: the magyar hungarian case. national identities 2(1):49-64. 2002 the danger is everywhere! the insecurity of transition in postsocialist hungary. prospect heights, il: waveland press. i i want to thank my amazing hungarian research assistant, réka monika cristian, without whom this project would have been impossible. she did most of the translations from the magazines; i did the rest. jen typewritten text 86 from cow to customer: informal marketing of milk in albania volume 21, number 1 from cow to customer: informal marketing of milk in albania beryl nicholson, newcastle upon tyne © 2003 beryl nicholson all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. the so-called transition in eastern europe has been, and continues to be, a time of constant change. researching east european societies and seeking to analyse the changes is like trying to photograph an object that will not stay still. nowhere is this truer than in albania. even recording it is a challenge. this study is a modest piece of ethnography constructed from observations made over several years and systematically checked against one another. it has its origins in data collected in southern albania in 1997, when an armed rebellion made it too dangerous for me to go to villages to do fieldwork (see nicholson, 1999a). instead i talked to women, and a few men, who came into the town i was staying in, gjirokastër, to sell their produce. in the course of further fieldwork in several villages in southern albania, i have expanded the data, added observations from other towns[1] and data on selling through intermediaries. for some months i participated in the milk trade as a customer. the origins of the domestic milk trade the fall of communism in albania was accompanied by a spontaneous dismantling of the agricultural co-operatives (world bank, 1992:60). in the chaos and violence, buildings, equipment and irrigation systems were destroyed, and output fell catastrophically (pata & osmani, 1994:95). production also declined drastically on state farms, whose role had been to supply towns with fresh food (world bank, 1992:3). much of the processing infrastructure was rendered inoperable (jaehne & segré, 1994:98) and systems of collection and distribution collapsed (world bank, 1992:82). urban milk supplies ceased in 1992 (world bank, 1995:17). at the same time a series of measures transformed the structure of agricultural production, and with it the way produce was sold. the right to keep their own domestic animals, which had not been allowed after 1981, was restored to individual families in 1989, and was formally legalised early in 1990 (wildermuth, 1995:319). private markets were also permitted again after having been illegal. after 1991 the co-operatives, and in 1994 the state farms, were privatised, and the land was distributed to the families who had worked on them. it was transformed into private holdings of, on average, about one hectare (in three or four parcels), and each received a share of the livestock. initially families sought to improve the quantity and quality of their own food. supplies to towns had consistently been prioritised under the communist system, a cause of resentment, and there was further deterioration during the agricultural crisis of the 1980s (wildermuth, 1991; pata & osmani, 1994:94-95; personal communications). however, the change to capitalism brought opportunities to buy goods previously not available, and hence a need for cash, so the newly privatised farmers were eager to sell their produce. every agricultural family i am acquainted with sells something they have produced specifically for sale (not merely surplus), and some sell a great deal. over time a whole series of small-scale trading operations has grown up (see nicholson, 1999b), but many producers, especially near to towns, simply went out and sold their produce themselves, and this informal trade has continued[2]. the most important and comprehensive trade of this kind is the direct sale of milk to consumers. it is probably the biggest single marketing operation in the country (nicholson, 2001, 2002). small farm families were quick to appreciate that selling milk would provide a regular flow of income, and began to sell regularly to customers in town as soon as they had cows of their own. in response to the evident demand, many increased the number they kept, most having started with one, and thus production (c.f. kodderitzsch, 1999:17). by 1995 the number of cows had doubled (vinçani, 1997:106), and it has risen further since. the families in this study have between one and five cows each, owner typewritten text 148 volume 21, number 1 which they mostly keep in sheds they have built themselves in the yards of their homes or nearby[3]. it has been estimated that half the milk produced is consumed by the producers, and the rest is sold (undp, 1998:5). according to the agricultural census of 1998, rather more than half of the latter is sold directly to consumers (instat, 2000:75). as most sheep’s milk (not distinguished from cows’ milk in the census) is sold for processing, or already processed, this means that a very large proportion of the cows’ milk that enters sale is sold directly. about one in six of agricultural holdings with one or more cows, almost ten percent of all holdings (ibid.), sells milk directly to consumers[4]. as about half the population lives in villages, it follows that a large percentage of all households get an income from selling milk. there are some sales in villages between neighbours (to the few who prefer not to keep a cow), and to small businesses such as the restaurants that have sprung up along main roads, but by far the most are to customers in towns (nicholson, 2002). production for the urban market is concentrated in villages within 10 or 15 km of towns (many on former state farms that supplied towns under the old system). in some communes adjacent to towns, between 40 and 70 percent of producers market their own milk (calculated from instat 2001a:181, 208, and instat 2001b:186). families have even moved to these areas from more remote villages, built houses and rented land, to participate in the milk trade. how the milk trade is organized a member of each producer’s family travels into the town to sell milk early each morning, or, more usually, on alternate days, “një ditë po, një ditë jo” (literally, “ one day yes, one day no”). they do not need to sell every day thanks to their acquisition, for the first time, of domestic refrigerators, which they use for storing milk. they leave home at 6 or 6.30am (having got up at 5am to milk) and return sometime between 10am and midday. in most towns more women sell than men. caring for cows is usually a woman’s task, though several members of a family may assist in harvesting fodder and grazing animals, and it is not unusual for a man to do the milking. however, the gender division of labour is pragmatic, and depends on available capacity in the household, the obligations and responsibilities of its various members, and the internal negotiation of allocation of tasks. a few men do not want their wives to sell, but agree because they need money, and men are more inclined to be shy about selling than women. however, some men deliver because they do not have jobs, others because they have jobs in town, so they deliver the milk too to save travel costs and time, or the milk is sent with a child who goes to high school (shkolla e mesme). thus different members of a household might deliver at different times. who delivers is also influenced by the mode of transport used to get to town. most travel by bus or, more often, by furgon, a van with windows and seats in the back that carries about a dozen passengers. they run back and forth on prescribed routes when there are passengers, but several drivers operate a regular service from their village at a set time each morning, or on alternate days, to take milk sellers into town. a few also operate a return service at an agreed time. otherwise, women take any furgon that is going, which might necessitate a wait till it fills, and may walk part or even all the way. rrugë (literally, road, the fare) costs between 50 and 100 lekë [5] each way, depending on distance. most drivers do not charge extra for milk (though they say they would for, say, a crate of tomatoes), but a few charge an extra fare. some women use donkeys, where there is a short and direct route from their village over mountain paths. still others have arrangements with people who drive to town in their own cars. both men and women use these modes of transport, but men also use bicycles (and motor bikes, which have become more numerous), with a crate for the milk on the back, and perhaps cloth bags hanging from the handlebars. this is the dominant mode of transport in the plains. as a consequence, in fier, which is low-lying and flat, 90 percent or more of those who sell milk are men. in lushnjë, also on the plain, men are probably in a majority, and they make up a sizeable proportion in tiranë and shkodër. in mountainous areas, such as gjirokastër, sarandë and pogradec a majority of sellers are women. each woman (or man) organises her work independently. they may travel into town with a sister-in-law (who is probably also a neighbour), a friend, or a daughter-in-law. they do this for the company, which is valued (c.f. svenningsen, 1997:179), but, though they might help one another out, for example, with empty bottles if one of them is short, and may even share a cowshed, they do not work together. with just one exception, cooperative forms of working are almost nonexistent. the exception is where two people who were once members of the same nuclear family, a parent and grown-up child or adult siblings, divide the work in the village and the work in the town between them. this is, in owner typewritten text 149 volume 21, number 1 effect, a continuation of co-operation within the household. as with much informal and apparently casual trading in albania, the sale of milk is not casual (nicholson, 2001). most milk is delivered directly to customers who have a regular order, often the same ones over many years (nicholson, 2002). the milk is sold in recycled 1½-liter cola bottles, bidonë (literally drum, or churn)[6]. a few producers also sell sheep's milk in spring when it is plentiful, as well as cows’ milk. when informal sale of milk started, a few producers who had relatives in town sold to them and their neighbours. likewise, people who had contacts in villages (such as the wife of a veterinarian who vaccinated cows) arranged to be supplied. this was as much a case of urban dwellers obtaining a basic food as of country dwellers seeking an income. other producers sought customers by going round the houses shouting “hajde, qumësht” (“come here, milk”), or knocked on doors in apartment blocks. in the beginning people were rather cautious, they would ask if “anything” (water or preservatives) had been added to the milk. if the people who bought milk were satisfied with the quality, they continued to buy. other potential customers sought out a man or woman who was selling in the street who looked decent and clean and bought off them.[7] if the milk was clean and fresh, and had not had water added, they would ask the vendor to deliver to them regularly. if they were not satisfied, they would buy off another person till they found someone whose milk they liked. each woman has between 10 and 20 customers. as well as private households, they sell to institutions, restaurants, bars, small ice cream factories and shops (for ice cream and to sell on), which saves time and effort. they are known as her “zënë”, which means literally “occupied”; other women will not try to sell there. she might also say they are the people with whom she is “e lidhure”, linked, with a connotation of being tied. a customer will say she has “a woman” (who delivers). the zënë rarely forms a coherent block, though a woman will try to find customers within quite a small area. in an apartment block where she has a customer she will often also sell to neighbours. if she has sufficient customers, she might stop selling to one who lives a long way from the rest of her zënë. occasionally a customer will move away and be lost, but she will find another to replace her. depending on how far she has to walk, it will take an hour or so for a woman who works quickly to deliver to her zënë. each one sells between 15 and 30 bottles, usually about 20. customers buy between one and three each. most pay on receipt, but some pay at specified intervals. no extra charge is made for the bottles, but customers are asked to return them. the milk is delivered to a customer’s door. in old towns built on mountainsides, such as gjirokastër or berat, the producers have to trudge up steep hills, and everywhere they have to climb up three or four floors in apartment blocks with no lifts. in fier some of the men who sell call to their customers on upper floors, who then fetch the milk or haul it up with a rope, but most deliver to the door. the producers park their milk on a step or in a corner and deliver to one or two houses at a time. some have built up relations of trust with shopkeepers, who keep it while they deliver. where several people sell from a particular street corner, as in fier and lushnjë, they keep an eye on one another’s milk. in gjirokastër there is just one focal point for the milk trade, at a narrow corner where two streets fork, known as farmacia (the pharmacy; there are, in fact two pharmacies there, and until recently there were three). women organize their deliveries there, and leave some milk behind while they deliver smaller amounts, then come back to leave the empty bottles and deliver the next lot of milk. though bottles of milk are not left unattended for long, there appears to be an unwritten rule that no one touches them. empty bottles, always in demand, are more carefully guarded. some sellers have arrangements with shopkeepers or market traders to look after their bulky bags of empty bottles while they do errands before they return home. some women have been selling milk since 1991, and many of the rest have sold for a long time. they and their customers will tell with satisfaction how many years (as many as ten) some of these arrangements have lasted. customers take care to maintain a good relationship by remaining loyal because they like to have a reliable supply of good quality milk from a source they know. if a woman whose milk is good stops selling, her customers might accept her recommendation of another woman to buy from. producers and their customers are on first name terms, and they get to know one another quite well. a customer might order additional items, such as eggs, and might even buy a producer’s calf (for slaughter), so they both get a better bargain than if it is sold to a butcher. some do small good turns for one another, such as the customer who allowed a woman whose children were in greece to receive calls from them on her phone. when someone in a owner typewritten text 150 volume 21, number 1 customer’s family dies, the milk seller makes a formal visit to give condolences. the agreement with customers is just a verbal understanding, but though seller and buyer may be on good terms, it is asymmetrical. a customer can change to another producer if she is not satisfied, or she may not buy what has been ordered if she is short of money or wants to buy something else. sometimes a bar or cafe will close for a day without warning (e.g. due to a family bereavement), and if the weather is cold shops do not buy what they have ordered to make ice cream. the women are left with unsold milk, but, reluctantly, they accept it as a risk they have to take. they are usually careful not lose customers. there are always a few women who do not have customers, or who would like to have more, and some who have previously not sold, because they have moved into the district, or they belong to a new generation of married women. so those who have a zënë can be relied upon to deliver regularly and punctually in all weathers. [8] only a woman who is very confident of the reputation of her milk and sure of the loyalty of her customers will risk being late occasionally (and then she will explain why). if a family crisis intervenes or they are unwell, they will arrange for someone else to deliver on their behalf. they maintain contacts with customers who temporarily stop buying. if they have insufficient milk to keep their zënë supplied they get extra from a close friend whose milk they know is of good quality. they may even, though rarely, buy extra bottles from someone they do not know well, though they check it for freshness first (nicholson, 2001), but this is new. a potentially critical time is when cows calve. some women with more than one cow maintain supplies by having them calve at different times. those who give up delivering tell their customers in advance. they explain that if their milk is of good quality, it does not cause problems (customers concur). the customers find a temporary alternative and resume buying when the producer has milk again. a producer may give up selling, perhaps because she finds other work, or her family moves to greece or italy to work. for others, delivering milk eventually becomes too much. it is heavy work. most of the women who sell are in their thirties or forties. men tend to be slightly older on average [9]. even for this age group, carrying large quantities of milk uphill in all weathers, or up many flights of stairs, is wearing. they return home tired, their arms, shoulders, and heads aching, and they still have work to do. as they get older it becomes more difficult. they get breathless climbing all the stairs. one described how she carried the milk up a steep hill on her shoulder. she would walk a bit, then put it down, walk a bit, then put it down, and so on, till she got to the top. so eventually she gave up selling. selling in the street a certain amount of milk is sold in the street and odd bottles are sold in some markets, but while this is the most visible part of the milk trade, it is only a very small part of it [10] and has declined over time. it has evolved through custom and practice, and unlike market traders and other street sellers, those who sell milk in the street do not pay a charge (usually about 30 lekë), they are said to be just waiting [11]. the delivery of milk is so efficiently organised that there is limited demand for casual sales. those producers who only sell in the street, who for any reason do not have a zënë, are very few indeed. a few more sell bottles they have left over after they have delivered to their regular customers, but most only deliver what is ordered (porosi) and take unsold milk home and make cheese with it. these include several women who in the past sold their surplus in the street, but no longer consider it worthwhile. they prefer to make more productive use of their time. a number regularly sell herbs and vegetables in the market after they have delivered their milk. when this research started, on any day up to a dozen women, and perhaps one or two men, might be selling at farmacia at any one time between early morning and about midday (nicholson, 1999b). when milk was plentiful (the early research was done in may and june) some would stay there for several hours. in winter, and in mid-summer when they came early to avoid the heat, there would be fewer. most would stand in a row extending for about 15 meters from a raised triangular platform at the intersection along the north-facing side of some shops. the shop building has a narrow shelf at arm height, just wide enough for a row of bottles. milk is also displayed on the raised platform (in other towns bottles of milk are set out along a curb). those who sold regularly often stood in the same places. more people would be on the raised platform, or at the far corner of it. another small group who came regularly sold across the street opposite the south side of the intersection. one man said, with a grin, he sold there because it was near a small bar, an explanation borne out by observations of his activity. on a good day all the milk would be owner typewritten text 151 volume 21, number 1 sold by 10:30 am, perhaps even sooner. on a bad day it took a couple of hours longer. when there was not much milk and trade was brisk, the atmosphere was cheerful. when there was a lot of milk and few people were buying, the women were subdued, knowing they would have to stand for a long time and might not sell all their milk. on any day, until the last bottle was sold, there was an underlying anxiety. even so, most stayed until they had sold out. only rarely did they leave sooner if by midday there seemed no chance of selling more. then they would take the remaining milk home, or get a shop or market trader to sell it. some women sell with a companion, especially if they feel shy about selling at first. women, and to some extent men, keep one another company. informal, but transient, alliances develop. they use pre-existing relationships and form new ones, though the latter do not extend beyond their immediate purpose (c.f. du boulay, 1974:213). a woman in gjirokastër referred to the woman who kept her company as a “shoqe në farmacia”, a farmacia friend, no more. between the women there are small acts of co-operation, such as helping one another with change, keeping money or watching milk for a woman who had an errand elsewhere, but they do not work together (c.f. horn, 1994:94). the people who sell at farmacia are not a “fixed group” (engelberg, amin & boening, 1995:130). there is a steady turnover, some coming, some leaving, and different people selling on different days. women (though not men) gravitate to farmacia when they finish delivering to customers, though some only stop by to collect their empty bottles, exchange a few words, or to wait for a friend to finish. each person sells for herself, and they eagerly try to persuade anyone who passes to buy from them (men hold back more). they will only sell another woman’s milk if she is not there, and someone they know to be a regular customer approaches them, but even then they try to persuade the customer to buy some off them too. the number of people who sell at farmacia and the length of time they sell have both declined, as has the amount of milk bought. now there are rarely more than 10 there at any one time, often there are fewer, and then only before about 9am, and they might not all be selling. sellers have grown more shrewd, they keep all but a few bottles concealed in bags so potential customers will think they have almost sold out (and so hurry to buy). very few still stay till midday, but rather they give up and go home. on some days there are none left by mid-morning. prices the prices charged to domestic customers are set by the producers, and vary from town to town. in towns adjacent to the myzeqe plain, where supplies are plentiful, it is 60 lekë for a 1 ½-liter bottle, in tiranë 80 lekë and in gjirokastër and elsewhere in the southwest, 100 lekë. [12] businesses that buy larger quantities negotiate a slightly lower price. these prices have been constant since 2000, in some cases longer. within each town producers operate an informal cartel; they do not compete against one another by lowering prices (c.f engelberg, amin & boening, 1995:130). when the price is raised, they agree beforehand through a bush telegraph that invariably operates, and they all do it on the same day. at times the street price may differ from the price for milk that is delivered, but rarely for long. prices in one town have little influence on those in another, though producers are quite well informed about them, as they are due to local conditions. in gjirokastër during the 1997 rebellion, when money was scarce, [13] cows’ milk sold for 50 or 60 lekë. in 1998 a 1½-liter bottle cost 80 lekë in the street and 100 lekë when delivered or bought from a shop (personal communications). the perception of the producers was that other prices had risen more than milk, which was probably accurate. [14] in 1998 the street price rose to 100 lekë in high summer, but by summer 1999 had reverted to its former level, only to rise again, and to stay at that high level. other prices also tend to be high in the southwest, which is attributed by some to the effect of emigrants’ remittances. what next? the men and women who engage in the informal milk trade demonstrate considerable practical ability and managerial skill. it is a major achievement that, by their own initiative, they have ensured that urban dwellers have been supplied with an important basic food (nicholson, 2001). the marketing structure they have built up has also been an important factor in enabling the growth in agricultural output. milk production is now the dominant enterprise in albanian agriculture, and accounts for half the total agricultural output (kodderitzsch, 1999:4, 17). the income from selling milk is an important component of the budget of many rural families. where prices are highest, families that engage milk production, if they have a further source of income, are reasonably well off [15]. some owner typewritten text 152 volume 21, number 1 individuals have even used selling milk as a means to raise small amounts of capital to finance another enterprise. the milk sellers also contribute to the livelihoods of others in the countryside by paying for transport as well as by their personal consumption. however, the various authorities and international organizations show disapproval of the milk trade, avoid recognizing its achievements and show little awareness of its true significance (see world bank, 1992:3, 61). they refer wistfully to the “regular supply” and “standard quality” under the communist system (world bank 1995:18), though the “standard quality” was poor, because there was widespread theft of milk, so it was diluted with water, and the “regular supply” was insufficient. there are also complaints that the women who sell in tirana are “unfair competition” for the processing plants (albanian daily news 9 february 2000; molldrem, unpublished: 7; c.f furre, 1971:45, 69) [16]. producers too are aware that they produce under less than ideal conditions, though most do their best to ensure that both milk and bottles are clean. they would tell me how they used to buy their milk from the shop, and they regard their present arrangements outdated. for them selling milk is a necessary expedient, which they do faute de mieux. given a choice, they would prefer work that was clean, and for them transporting and selling milk is an onerous chore that takes up time and energy. they do not contemplate transforming their micro-activity into a more formalized way of selling milk. nor does the prospect of some form of producers’ association, the current universal solution of the development establishment, elicit an interested response. there are also sound economic reasons for each household, and hence each producer, to maintain their autonomy. though they are serious about selling in an efficient and business-like way, it is a job, one they would gladly exchange for another. what they claim they would like to happen would be for a “big investor” (c.f. engelberg, amin & boening, 1995:133) to set up a dairy and collect their milk from a nearby corner, even though they would get a lower price. in practice, it might not be so simple. they may give up selling milk altogether if they have another source of income. for example a family that also kept sheep replaced their income from milk by selling more sheep’s milk, which fetches a higher price and does not have to be transported so far, to a small dairy. on the other hand, women from one village who sell in gjirokastër continued to sell in the town after a dairy opened nearby because it paid so much less than consumers, only 25 lekë a liter. [17] one producer complained it was less than the price of a bottle of water, implying that she thought milk was worth more. when the informal milk trade started, many people, producers and consumers alike, regarded it as a stopgap, and continued to do so for a considerable time. now it has evolved into the way they are accustomed to doing things. it is assumed it will continue into the foreseeable future, but no one knows for how long. neither do they seem to have plans for what they will do. in recent years manufactured yogurt (of poor quality compared with homemade yogurt) has begun to be on sale in several towns, which might presage further change, but it is happening slowly. women who sell milk express confidence that their customers will remain loyal because they prefer a good quality product. most likely, as has happened elsewhere, the informal trade will eventually be supplanted by dairies (c.f. halpern, 1968:305). what cannot be foreseen is when, or how, this will happen. it will probably take us all by surprise. acknowledgements an earlier version of this article formed part of a paper presented at the conference on gender and rural transformations in europe, wageningen, the netherlands, 14-17 october 1999. the initial data were obtained in the course of research done for the uk department for international development (dfid) in 1997 and 1998. this article forms no part of that project, and the views and opinions expressed are those of the author alone. further data were collected in 2000-2002 while doing fieldwork financed by a small grant from the british academy and a grant from the leverhulme trust, for both of which i am very grateful, and on short private visits. thanks are due to the women who shared with me the details of how they bought their milk, and to meriban alite, whose flat i used as a base during the initial fieldwork. most of all i am deeply indebted to the women who produce and sell milk. without my many conversations with them the research could not have been done. references cited albanian daily news. 9 february 2000. owner typewritten text 153 volume 21, number 1 kodderitzsch, severin 1999. reforms in albanian agriculture. assessing a sector in transition. world bank technical paper no. 431. washington d.c. deslondes, olivier & michel sivignon 1995. l'agriculture albanaise: de la coopérative à l'exploitation de survie. in revue d'etudes comparatives estouest 26 (3):143-160. du boulay, juliet 1974. portrait of a greek mountain village. oxford: clarendon. lerin, françois 1997. présentation: notes sur la “question albanaise”. in adrian civici & françois lerin ed., albanie, une agriculture en transition. options méditerranéennes. série b no 15. montpellier: ciheam:7-14. engelberg, w, k amin & f boening 1995. promoting self-help activities of albanian farmers: situation analysis and assessment of potentials: report on a research conducted in cooperation with the project “promotion of self-help organizations in vlora district”. berlin, vlora, albania: humboldt universität zu berlin. weikersheim:markgraf verlag. molldrem, phil undated. final report. gjirokastra dairy products association strengthening. unpublished report. nicholson, beryl 1999a. the beginning of the end of a rebellion. southern albania may-june 1997. east european politics and societies 13 (3):543-565. fao 1994. strengthening and developing voluntary farmers' organizations in east and central europe, agriculture in transition, central and eastern europe 6. rome: fao. nicholson, beryl 1999b. the informal marketing of milk in post-communist albania: two case studies. conference on gender and rural transformations in europe wageningen, the netherlands, 14-17 october. furre, berge 1971. mjølk, bønder og tingmenn. studiar i organisasjon og politikk kring omsetninga av visse landbruksvarer 1929-1930. oslo: det norske samlaget. nicholson, beryl 2001. when is an entrepreneur an entrepreneur? some thoughts on women's microenterprise. paper presented at an inter-balkan workshop on “women’s work”, gjirokastër, albania, 21-22 september. halpern, joel 1968. peasant culture and urbanization in yugoslavia. in jg peristiany, ed., contributions to mediterranean sociology. paris:mouton: 289-311. horn, nancy, 1994. cultivating customers. market women in harare, zimbabwe. boulder & london: lynne rieder. nicholson, beryl 2002. micro-enterprise in a “modern” economy: an underrated factor in the albanian transition, premières rencontres des études balkaniques en france “etudes balkaniques: état des savoirs et pistes de recherche” paris, 19 et 20 décembre. instat 2000. registrimi i përgjithshem i njësive ekonomike bujqësore 1-30 qershor 1998. tiranë: instituti i statistikave. instat 2001a. registrimi i përgjithshem i njësive ekonomike bujqësore 1-30 qershor 1998. prefektura fier. tiranë:instituti i statistikave. pata, kristaq & myslym osmani 1994. albanian agriculture: a painful transition from communism to free market challenges. sociologia ruralis 34 (1):84-101. instat 2001b. registrimi i përgjithshem i njësive ekonomike bujqësore 1-30 qershor 1998. prefektura gjirokastër. tiranë:instituti i statistikave. streith, michel 1997. cultivateurs du mecklembourg, survie d’un savoirfaire. etudes rurales 138-139-140, avril-déc 1995:185-194. jaehne, g & andrea segré 1994. the albanian agro-food system in economic transition. oecd working papers vol. iii no.21. paris:oecd. svenningsen, tobias f 1997. albansk kultur og samfunn i 90-årene. en del av europa?. bergen, norway:forlaget migrasjonslitteratur. tvsh (albanian state television), 27 june 1998. owner typewritten text 154 volume 21, number 1 4. the true proportion might be even higher. i know of three or four families who were selling in 1998, but were not recorded in the census. undp 1998. special programme for food security. project document. tiranë:undp. unpublished. vinçani, genci 1997. les produits animaux. in adrian civici & françois lerin ed., albanie, une agriculture en transition. options méditerranéennes. série b no 15. montpellier: ciheam:105-116. 5. in 1998 there were about 150 lekë (singular lek) to the dollar. by mid-2002 it bought only 135 lekë. 6. one source claimed that women scavenged rubbish tips for bottles (post, 1998:16). i have never known this happen. nor are this author's other comments about milk production consistent with my observations. the use of recycled (if hardly suitable) containers reduces pressure on the inadequate rubbish disposal system. by contrast non-returnable beer bottles used by multi-national breweries caused a litter problem for several years. albanian breweries use returnable bottles. wildermuth, andreas 1991. die albanische agrarkrise. ursachen und reformansätze. in k-e wädekind ed., agrarwirtschaft südosteuropas im wandel. münchen. wildermuth, andreas 1995. “sie stützen sich auf die eigenen kräfte” die wirtschaftspolitik albaniens nach dem zweiten weltkrieg. münchen:ldv. 7. to test for freshness women sometimes gently squeeze the bottles before buying. if milk from the previous day is put in a refrigerator overnight the cream separates from the water. the test is supposed to find out if this has been disguised by shaking the bottles. world bank 1992. an agricultural strategy for albania. washington d.c.: world bank & european community. world bank 1995. albania. agroprocessing development project. staff appraisal report. tiranë: november 15, 1995. 8. during the 1997 rebellion in south albania, women still came to town to sell milk each day, except when the shooting was at its height, though it was dangerous to travel and there were occasional outbursts of shooting in the street while they were selling (nicholson, 1999b:548). world bank 2001. project appraisal document on a proposed credit in the amount of sdr 7.85 million (us$ 9.9 million equivalent) to albania for an albania agriculture services project. report no: 22161 alb. tiranë: may 16, 2001. 9. data from informal interviews of 28 people selling milk in gjirokastër on two days of fieldwork in 1997, supplemented by observations over the whole fieldwork period. _______________________________ 10. reports, such as that by deslondes & sivignon (1995:150), of villagers who supposedly, sold in the market in fier, are based on a misunderstanding. as elsewhere, most of the milk sold in fier is ordered. that left over is sold at certain street corners, not in the market. in some other towns, notably tiranë, milk is sold in markets, but it too is just the surplus. the world bank appears to be under the same misconception about the milk trade in general (world bank, 1995:18; c.f. world bank 2002:17). 1. information was obtained in ballsh, lushnjë, fier, vlorë, kavajë, memeliaj, kelcyrë, pogradec, berat, shkodër and tiranë. in spite of early assertions that informal sales had ceased in the last named (lerin, 1997:9), a large proportion of the city's milk supply was still sold informally in 2002, even though it is one of the few places with functioning milk processing plants. 2. by “informal” i mean trade that is carried on without an organized structure. 11. this may be related to the fact that it is actually illegal to sell untreated milk, though the law is impossible to enforce. early in 200l the police cleared the milk sellers from farmacia a few times, but this appears only to have been a token gesture, and, so far, has not had a permanent effect. 3. building skills are widespread in albania; many people build their own houses. a claim that people had no housing for animals (world bank, 1992:61) was not true in the areas covered by this study. the international literature has consistently underestimated the capabilities of private farmers in albania (e.g. fao, 1994:8; jaehne & segré, 1994:25, 32, 98; engelberg, amin & boening 1995:143). as elsewhere in eastern europe (c.f. streith, 1997:191), they had much relevant experience. prices in 2000-2002 were: in lushnjë, berat, fier and patos 60 lekë, in ballsh, vlorë and shkodër 70 lekë, in pogradec, in 1999, 70 lekë, (100 lekë with no water in it), in tiranë and durrës 80 lekë, in gjirokastër, tepelenë, owner typewritten text 155 volume 21, number 1 sarandë and memeliaj 100 lekë. in villages close to these towns prices are similar or slightly lower. in those further away, fresh milk fetches only 25 or 30 lekë a liter, 40 or 50 lekë if bought by traders to sell in a town. in south albania banks did not function and state employees and pensioners were not paid for several months (nicholson, 1999a:546). 14. according to albanian television, inflation in the year to mid-1998 was 47 percent (tvsh 27 june 1998). a survey by european union monitors of prices of food and everyday items in gjirokastër suggested an increase of 40 percent in the first half of 1998 (personal communication). the highest retail price, 100 lekë, is about the same as the author pays in a british supermarket (but albanian milk tastes better). 16. the retail price for packaged pasteurised milk in tiranë is 60 lekë a liter, equivalent to 90 lekë for a 1 ½ liter bottle, 10 lekë more than producers charge. shops also sell imported uht milk for between 130 and 150 lekë a liter, so the competition thesis is a red herring. 17. this is not far short of eu price levels. in october 2000 the price to farmers in the uk was 16p (33 lekë) a liter. some dairies pay as little as 18 lekë. address: 12 lavender gardens, newcastle upon tyne ne2 3de, uk phone/fax +44-191-2812068 e-mail beryl1@research32.freeserve.co.uk photos photo 1: woman delivering milk in gjirokastër. mailto:beryl1@research32.freeserve.co.uk owner typewritten text 156 volume 21, number 1 photo 2. selling milk at farmacia, gjirokastër. owner typewritten text 157 volume 21, number 1 photo 3. producers who have delivered to customers selling milk in fier. owner typewritten text 158 cultural production and transmission of ethnic tolerance and prejudice: introduction anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 37 social pluralism in the postsocialist city: diverging consumer groups in the consumption landscape of stara zagora, bulgaria grant jude garstka miami university introduction the restructuring and increasing interconnectedness of the global economy over the last few decades result in the creation of distinct new urban spaces (knox 1991). closely tied to these global economic changes, the dual political and economic transition of south-east europe (see) since 1989 allows for the emergence of many new urban spaces in the post-socialist city. these emerging geographies have profound physical, cultural, and socio-spatial changes on the urban landscape. the everyday politics of retail consumption and the negotiation of new and old urban spaces are a socio-spatial practice visible through consumption related (im)mobility, retail consumption patterns, and shopping habits of city residents. additionally, our understanding of urban morphology and the production, reproduction, and transformation of cities (pred 1984) is also reinforced by individual attitudes, opinions, and actions that actively work to produce, reproduce, and transform the city. in this article, i show how individual consumer attitudes, opinions, and actions (i.e. (im)mobility) shift in relation to new and old places of retail consumption to argue that a) there is increasing social pluralism of consumer groups in the postsocialist city visible through everyday time-space geographies and b) urban residents actively work to support, produce, and reproduce changes in the built urban environment of see cities, specifically for the context of the postsocialist city of stara zagora, bulgaria. throughout this article, i primarily frame social pluralism or social diversity as a class based issue rather than an ethnic, minority, gendered, or other social issue. this article is structured as follows: first, i provide an overview of my research site and methods. second, i briefly review urban consumption theory and then link it with postmodern urban theory to outline how i deploy these concepts in this article. third, i discuss the changing retail landscape of the postsocialist city to further contextualize postsocialist urban consumption. next, drawing from the established theory, i present the empirical findings of this project by outlining different general profiles of urban consumers, such as the urban victor, the urban loser, and the new postsocialist shopper, and connect these general groups of consumers to larger urban trends in the postsocialist city to illustrate the increasing social diversity and socio-spatial segregation as well as consumer agency in re-creating the postsocialist city. research site and methodology the location of stara zagora is in central bulgaria at the foot of the sredna gora mountains. starting in 1944, at the end of world war ii, the socialist government took control over bulgaria and stara zagora, which had dramatic physical and social effects on the city. the socialist era of the city experienced rapid urbanization and industrialization. this is most evident by the widespread communist style pre-fabricated bloc apartments that comprise the overwhelming majority of stara zagora’s housing stock, much of which are reaching the end of their intended lifespan and are falling into a state of disrepair and obsolescence. another mark of this era is the large industrial quarter in the southern portion of stara zagora. the urban form of stara zagora is similar to the generic model of the socialist city established by hamilton (1979). this serves as only a rough model of stara zagora’s spatial structure and, like sofia, different districts and land types “are neither quite concentric, nor contiguously defined… rather [they are] closely intertwined with historic and new neighborhoods forming an intricate patchwork intermixed with industrial zones and open spaces” (hirt and stanilov 2007). yet, the city has several distinct zones that are useful to outline for understanding the spatial structure of stara zagora: 1) the central business district (cbd) comprised of both the pre-communist capitalist city center and the communist city center with mixed land use; 2) the compact city – a mix of historic housing and communist bloc housing along with a small-scale retail; 3) housing estates– communist era modern bloc housing estates and micro-districts; 4) low-density residential anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 38 – mostly single family homes on the edges of the city; 5) industrial quarter (figure 1, page 49). further, for stara zagora’s various consumption regimes (discussed in more detail below), hypermarkets are almost always decentralized and located on the urban fringe of the city; local shops are located throughout the city and mostly carry staple and household goods (with the exception being the city center); and the city center is host to the now privatized gum, fresh produce market, and higher end small-scale retail (boutiques) as well as many cafes, bars, and restaurants. the empirical data for this article are primarily based on 180 questionnaire surveys and participant observations conducted in the field. fieldwork was conducted in the city of stara zagora, bulgaria over two months during the summer of 2007. stara zagora provides the context for urban change in a non-capital and lower tiered postsocialist city in the see. the combination of the two research methods allows for a more qualitative and dynamic understanding of the physical and socio-spatial changes present in the city and an understanding of how individual attitudes and actions actively support urban change. by collecting written comments and qualitative data on changing individual consumption habits and connecting them to various consumption regimes in the post-socialist city, i am able to outline the pluralism of urban ‘postmodern consumers’ manifesting themselves in the postsocialist urban context. i collected the data presented here via a section in the questionnaire survey that asked research participants to provide written comments about relevant issues they would like to openly address. i used the qualitative data in combination with more quantitative data provided by each individual surveyed. in the written comments section of the survey, participants were able to express themselves however they felt appropriate. this method provided a means of collecting relevant data unattainable by an otherwise restrictive questionnaire survey and due to a language barrier that i had to negotiate while in the field. most of the 180 people surveyed opted not to leave comments. a hired translator translated all comments given by research participants from bulgarian into english after i completed my fieldwork. of those participants that did write comments, their comments were all generally positive about the changes in their consumption habits. this may mean that this method did not prove conducive for capturing negative attitudes and it is unknown if no comment means a negative comment. by collecting these specific comments in combination with the data provided elsewhere on the survey and in relation to various consumption regimes, i am able to outline various social profiles and timespace dioramas illustrating the pluralism of urban postmodern consumers manifesting themselves in the postsocialist urban context (see table 1 near the end of the article). postsocialist transformations have created winners, the urban victor, and losers, the urban loser, as well as other types of assorted urban shoppers that illustrate the increasing social diversity and the socio-spatial segregation of the postsocialist city. names presented in this article are fictitious to protect the identity of individuals and because they do not represent one single person, but rather groups of people identified by consumption patterns and habits. i present several consumer profiles by using several time-space dioramas (hagerstrand 1970) to help illustrate the diverging consumption and mobility patterns of consumer groups in the postsocialist city. the basic diorama places time on the y-axis and space (either home or various places of consumption) on the x-axis and z-axis (see figure 2, page 49). time is not specific. rather, time represents a rough period of time covering several weeks or one’s typical shopping patterns over the course of a couple weeks or a month. space illustrates the ideas of each of the various consumption regimes. the paths presented in each diorama are also general models of time-space paths. they are not calculated aggregates of field data that quantitatively illustrate time-space paths for the studied population of stara zagora. rather, they are qualitative paths that represent findings from field observations and field data collection. therefore, they may exaggerate certain patterns to highlight the changes and the diversity in consumption time-space paths among different consumer groups in the postsocialist city. while these models serve to outline the major consumption patterns, they fail to illustrate the necessary meta-data of time-space paths, such as the typical demographic data for each group or the mode of access to each location. however, this background data is discussed and contextualized as each profile is explained in the text. urban consumption theory consumption in its most common form is the acquisition and use of goods. more specifically, consumption is “the selection, anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 39 purchase, use, maintenance, repair and disposal of any product or service” (campbell 1995 in miles and paddison 1998: 815). in the past, consumption was considered a byproduct of production, relegating it as a collective form in which all of society mechanically participated. labelled as ‘public consumption,’ this is largely a thread of marxist social theory and modernism (clarke and bradford 1998). with the cultural turn in the social sciences, notions of consumption shifted to become a cultural and social act based on ‘private consumption’ habits of the individual and viewed consumption as a social experience and social process. consumption during this stage became an act independent of production (miller et al. 1998, jackson and thrift 1995), separating consumption and production. the present academic debate in urban consumption theory states that the distinctions between public and private notions of consumption are blurred and porous, as are the relationships between producer and consumer. this implies that consumption is a private act with cultural and social meaning as well as an essential duty or public act that connects individual people, individual needs and wants, and their private experiences to a greater mass consumer society (miller et al. 1998; jayne 2006a; clarke and bradford 1998). overall, the coming together of public and private consumption in a fluid relationship helps to conceptually understand how researchers can approach urban consumption (clarke and bradford 1998) because the analysis of consumption uncovers active human processes in urban environments (jayne 2006a; miller 1995). thinking of consumption as a process no longer means that consumption only exists at the point of purchase. instead, it allows us to think of consumption in terms of how we shop, why we shop, the experience of places of consumption, the objects we consume, and what we do with the objects after the point of purchase (jayne 2006a; miller et al. 1998; jackson and thrift 1995). for example, if we focus on how people shop, the idea of process allows us to incorporate ideas of mobility to and from places of consumption. furthermore, placing these processes on a time-line allows us to study changes in consumption-related mobility over time (such as socialist to postsocialist). consumption also links individual experience with the urban environment (miles and paddison 1998), helping to form the dialectic relationship between the built environment and social processes in the city. knox (1991: 184) argues that the everyday activity of consumption is “among the most powerful and pervasive processes within the socio-spatial dialectic,” between the changing built environment and changing social processes that produce, reproduce, and transform the built environment. postmodern urbanism postmodernism, as a theoretical approach to the city, combined with consumption theory, accentuates notions of consumption as a porous relationship and it intensifies the links between private consumption, public consumption, and emerging spaces of consumption that are centered on both the experience of consumption (private) as well as the utility of consumption (public). however, the postmodern perspective must be contextualized as an approach to understanding urban spatial and social processes occurring in the advanced stages of capitalism. in this manner, postmodern urbanism helps to understand urban change within an era of global economic restructuring characterized by the increasing interconnectedness of places, increased international competition and flexibility of global capital, the hyper-mobility of capital, and neoliberalism. urban spaces, in a postmodern perspective, shift from being places of production to places of consumption, which are further consumable by the experience of the spectacle of urban space (zukin 1991). thus, in the advanced stages of capitalism, as mccraken (1998) argues, consumption activities are a fundamental aspect of cities, urban life, and aids in the creation of an overall mass consumer society and, as miles (1998) and jayne (2006b) argue, everyday and individual meaning is found in emerging consumption spaces and consumption habits. further, when the “hypermobility of capital” in a postmodern era touches down in cities, it spatially re-organizes urban space as well as urban social and cultural practices (knox 1996) into new everyday geographies. the spatial re-organization and the close relationship of this ‘hyper-capital’ to mass consumption, “results in a sort of ‘global metropolitanism’ that is rooted in the materialistic culture-ideology of consumerism” (ibid: 116). this is significant because postmodernism creates a postmodern consumer that is recognizable by a growing variety of social classes evident by the “spending power and patterns of consumption” anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 40 of diversifying consumer sub-groups (knox 1991: 184; see also smith 1987) and is associated with the emerging pluralism in different types of places of consumption in the postmodern city. for this project, i draw upon these ideas of urban consumption and the postmodern city to address urban and social change in the post-socialist city. nagy (2001) states that for the postsocialist urban context, the period of transformation after 1989 – as the region began integration into the global economy – was a major catalyst for the restructure of retail and urban space in the cities of the region. in short, postsocialist transformations opened the doors for postmodernism and the hyper-mobility of capital. in addition, political and economic transformations in the region shifted concepts of consumption from public – a state sanctioned activity of the masses – to private – based on consumerism, individual choice, personal preference, increased range of goods and behaviors, and the experience of shopping. however, in the context of postsocialist transformations, nagy (ibid) argues that it is only a rough form of private consumerism because private consumption is highly dependent on the consumer’s ability to access various locations of consumption and the ability to access is uneven among different social groups in society. postsocialist urban consumption and the changing retail landscape recent postsocialist urbanization trends – such as integration into the freemarket, neoliberalisms, decentralized planning processes (bottom-up), and the processes of privatization – serve to place consumption at the center of postsocialist urban social life. neoliberal urban planning policy and privatization are both recently apparent on the landscape of eastern european cities (dingsdale 1999). a prime example of this change and hyper-capital on the postsocialist landscape is the “hypermarket” (or “big-box store”), a large-scale private retail store usually owned by foreign capital. these new urban forms of retail and locales of consumption exhibit the strongest spatial expression of postsocialist transformation on the urban landscape in central and eastern europe (cee) (kreja 2006). therefore, the presence of hypermarkets reveals how political and economic transition and the incorporation of global capital in the cee (allowable by the transformation of the region into the freemarket) alters the spatial form of the postsocialist city. this section outlines the changing retail landscape of cee from the socialist era to the present. retail shopping during the socialist era was of a low priority compared to more productive sectors of the centrally planned economy, such as industry and housing. therefore, retail had limited space in the urban fabric of the socialist city. three main forms of retail shopping existed, all largely state or cooperative owned: the gum (“grad universal magazine,” or city department store), in-company stores, and a limited number of less central retail stores in or near micro-district/housing estate neighborhoods. the gum was usually located in the city center and contained the highest level of goods. meanwhile, in-company stores provided the highest turnover of retail. all the while, retail outlets elsewhere in the urban landscape, such as in select housing estates or transit nodes, were few in number and contained limited and inferior goods. due to the low priority of retail during the socialist era, retail outlets in housing estates were not constructed until the final phase or they were completely neglected (kok 2007). the collapse of socialism in 1989 brought about immediate changes to the retail landscape of socialist cities. there is a general lineage of three major forms of retail that developed after 1989, culminating in the present situation of foreign hypermarket stores that are places of consumption for both retail goods and leisure time (kreja 2006; rudolph and brade 2005). shortly after the fall of communism, informal small-scale retail developed in the form of street vendors, with items displayed on the ground, table or foldout bed, and kiosk vendors to provide basic goods that were in demand but no longer supplied by the collapsed state system. these vendor types located on sidewalks, streets, and walking paths throughout the city – selling whatever goods they could sell, wherever they could sell them. with time, small scale vending began to organize into formal shopping areas (although still similar to informal kiosks) as agglomerations of kiosks with more permanent infrastructure – such as indoor markets (kreja 2006). similarly, small-scale retail and local shops moved into the first floors of apartment blocs or old industrial spaces of the city (riley 1997). finally, the present stage is the introduction of large-scale formal retail – the hypermarket. hypermarkets are usually enterprises from abroad that locate on the urban fringe or as large projects in the central business district (cbd) of the largest cities in anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 41 the cee (kreja 2006; garb and dybicz 2006; novak and sýkora 2007; kok 2007). for this project, i use the retail landscape of the postsocialist city, specifically the retail landscape of stara zagora, as a point of entry into understanding postsocialist urban transformations through ideas of urban consumption. i discuss different individual attitudes, opinions, and actions in relation to different consumption regimes located in the city. by the term consumption regime, i principally mean the typology of the different urban retail spaces outlined above (i.e. hypermarkets, local shops, and city center). however, this term also reflects the pluralism of urban consumption spaces in a postmodern city that have different meanings and operate in different ways for one’s various daily consumption habits and needs. time of day, perceptions of the quality and price of goods, cultural norms, and the experience of consumption all influence urban consumption practices and consumption (im)mobility in the city. for example, the cbd contains at least two separate consumption regimes. one is the movement of people during the day who access the city center to purchase produce at the central market. the second is the balkan social tradition of the evening promenade in the city center where very few market or retail purchases are made, but people consume the urban ‘spectacle’ of the cbd. this example of various city center consumption regimes also demonstrates that, at times, consumption regimes can be formal, such as the purchase of produce, or informal, the social consumption of the ‘spectacle’ of urban space. different consumption regimes, in combination with the specific consumer attitudes toward the consumption regimes, shapes the way people produce the city and it affects consumer (im)mobility in the city, which actively produces, reproduces, and transforms the city. social pluralism and the postsocialist city using consumer profiles, this section shows individual consumer attitudes, opinions, and actions (i.e. (im)mobility) in relation to various consumption regimes to illustrate a) the increasing social pluralism of consumer groups in the postsocialist city visible through everyday time-space geographies and b) how urban residents actively work to support, sustain, produce, and reproduce changes in the built urban environments of see cities. as a starting point, i return to the situation of shopping in the socialist era. shopping was highly centralized both in terms of store locations and administration. shopping in this time was largely conducted in state operated stores in the gum in the city center, the central market, company stores, or some nodal stores with inferior goods. this pattern can be recognized by the profile i call the socialist shopper (see figure 2, page 49). since the collapse of the bulgarian socialist state system in 1989, consumption patterns have begun to take several new forms and i present them below in the form of consumer profiles. together, these profiles outline increasing trends of class based social pluralism in the postsocialist city. the urban victor a small subset of the urban residents in the postsocialist city is the urban victor. this group of urban residents is middle class or higher. in the economic turmoil of the early years immediately following 1989, these residents managed to succeed and are classified as the economic winners. research shows that those who held higher positions during the socialist era readily moved into higher economic positions (gerber 2000; atkinson and micklewright 1992), but some entrepreneurs successfully made it through the early years of transition. like the urban driver (see below, and figure 5, page 50), the urban victor is able to shop at all three major scales of retail consumption (i.e. hypermarket, city center, and local shops). yet, they are most likely to shop at specialty stores in the cbd on a regular basis and they also drive to de-central places of retail consumption, such as hypermarkets, for much of their shopping (figure 3, page 50). unlike the urban driver and urban loser (again, see below, and figure 4, page 50), there is less of a need for them to walk to local shops further out from the cbd. in other collections of urban literature, the urban victor consumer profile is often framed as an urban gentrifier, or one who is able to access higher end consumption spaces and marginalizes or pushes out other groups in the area. in contrast, the urban driver, at times, has the ability to shop in places of specialized retail, but struggles to do so because they are of a lower class. the urban loser the increase in the number of specialty and high-end shops in the center of city greatly influences the consumption and shopping patterns of many center city anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 42 residents, especially the elderly and those with lower incomes (nagy 2001). the groups of people most affected by this process are the urban losers (figure 4, page 50). the rise of specialty shops pushes out “lower order services providing for ‘local’ people” (ibid: 343). while the center of the city was once the main area of consumption and retail activity for the urban resident during the socialist era, the center of the city no longer serves the daily needs for many urban residents who live in the center of the city. georgie, a 68-year-old male who lives in the center of stara zagora and who accesses most of his places of consumption via walking, states that, “there have been more opportunities for shopping over the last ten years.” when asked why his shopping patterns have changed the most in the last ten years, he responded that he mainly shops in new types of stores. as a consequence of the changes, he walks more and uses public transportation less. although he is not using a private automobile, this case shows that city transportation infrastructure is declining in its role in facilitating mobility, shopping is more accessible at the local level, or that aging populations have more disposable time that affects their time-space patterns. however, because georgie lives in the center of the city, the reason he is shopping in new types of stores and walking more may be because stores in the cbd are now of a specialized sort and no longer support his daily needs or everyday consumption habits. as nagy (2001) argues, those in the city center and elderly who are greatly affected by specialized retail in the city center are one of the biggest groups of losers of the changes to the retail landscape in postsocialist cites. georgie must adapt with a ‘new shopping technique’ by seeking out local shops that support his daily consumption needs. however, since georgie lives in the cbd, these local shops are not necessarily in his neighborhood of the city center (the local shops in his neighborhood are all specialty stores). therefore, as georgie stated, there have been more opportunities for shopping in the last ten years. however, in some of these places georgie cannot actually make a purchase due to his lack of ability to pay. further, the places he can make a purchase in are further away from the cbd. the urban loser appears elsewhere in the urban fabric, not just in the city center. one example is malina, a pensioner who lives in the kazanski neighborhood of stara zagora (refer to figure 1, page 49, for neighborhood locations). she states that she is “a retired person now, so [she] shops less.” this speaks to the fact that she is on a fixed income that is around 130 leva per month ($105 usd). compared to her shopping patterns prior to 1989, malina shopped more in the city center, but now she can no longer afford to shop in the new specialty shops and she rarely shops in the cbd. on the other hand, she walks on a daily basis to her local store for both staple and fresh food items and occasionally visits a hypermarket, again, mostly to purchase necessary food items. although she does not live in the city center, malina is an urban loser like georgie. the urban driver like the urban loser, the urban driver is being pushed out of central places of consumption because the types of stores present no longer fit their daily consumption needs (figure 5, page 50). however, the urban driver is not as destitute as the urban loser. they are less likely to be pensioners or on the lowest social rungs, but are more likely to be part of a burgeoning middle class strata which allows them the privilege of a private automobile, which in turn allows them the privilege of accessing de-central places of consumption such as hypermarkets on the urban fringe. yet, they are also advantaged enough to also afford occasional specialty or higher end items in the cbd. therefore, the urban driver is able to access all three major typologies of retail consumption. but unlike the urban victor, the urban driver is not fully able to participate in central city consumption of retail goods because they are of a lower class. desislava, a female pensioner between the ages of 56 and 65 who also lives in the city center and often walks to more local places of consumption says, “i am satisfied with the improved level of service.” desislava is also primarily shopping in new types of stores, which is a combination of local shops further out of the cbd and specialty stores in the cbd. however, the main aspect classifying her as an urban driver is the fact that she uses her own car to make low frequency trips to the hypermarket on the urban fringe. the local shops sustain her everyday needs between less frequent trips to the hypermarket. desislava’s comment about the improved level of service speaks to consumption practices at all scales of shopping in a capitalist era, which is in contrast to the socialist style of retail consumption practices where customer service was a lower priority anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 43 for store operators. improved service, daily needs, quality and price of goods all act as factors influencing various consumption regimes that pull desislava to one of the three main consumption regimes for her daily shopping. overall, her mode of transportation to places of shopping has most changed because she uses a car more, therefore she uses a bus less, which further stresses the decline of city transport and the increase in the role of the private automobile and de-central places of consumption in cee cities. the new postsocialist shopper the profile of the new postsocialist shopper comprises the largest number of consumers in the postsocialist city (see figure 2, page 49). they form the majority of the urban population and mostly live in the large bloc housing estates and surrounding neighborhoods that make up most of the urban space of postsocialist cities outside of the cbd. generally of a working class or low to middle class, some may – but most do not – have access to their own automobile or they only have one car in their household limiting their ability to use it. according to the new the postsocialist shopper, various consumption regimes have strong and varied effects that operate differently for different aspects of one’s daily consumption habits. in a postsocialist era, the new postsocialist shopper must develop ‘new shopping techniques’ to navigate a morphing urban landscape. sneshanka, a 56-65 year-old female from the neighborhood of kazanski, states, “i like the many ways we do shopping now better than when did ten years ago [sic].” it appears that sneshanka does not have an automobile of her own, as she walks to the hypermarket on a weekly basis from her flat in a nearby housing bloc. she utilizes a city bus when she shops for produce at the market in the city center almost everyday, but she does not visit the specialty shops. her comments show how attitudes and opinions actively change consumption practices in the urban landscape because she shops at a hypermarket more and more and she expresses her happiness for this style of shopping. yet, she still negotiates between two main consumption regimes – the central market for fresh produce only and the hypermarket for other goods. if in the near future the hypermarket is able to provide comparable prices or quality of produce as the central market then the reliance on city center consumption will decline. similar to sneshanka, kamelia, a 3645 year-old female government employee from the zhelznik neighborhood negotiates between different consumption regimes split between the central market in the city center and new places of consumption outside of the cbd. kamelia declares, “shopping in the center is mainly for vegetables – they are fresher, cheaper, [and of a] greater variety.” she travels by city bus to the city center on a monthly basis to access said produce in the central market; however she visits her local shop on a daily basis. meanwhile, kamelia accesses the hypermarket on a monthly basis via her personal car to acquire merchandise other than fresh produce. these two shoppers only use the cbd for produce. these two cases show how the center of the city operates as a consumption regime for produce shopping and that it maintains its dominance for this portion of retail consumption practices, but they also illustrate how the center of the city is declining outside the context of produce consumption. at the same time, riana from the kazanski neighborhood says, “billa and evropa [two hypermarkets], outside town, is very positive and people welcome it. saves time and money to younger generations [sic].” this statement illustrates how city residents welcome the consumption regime of the hypermarkets outside of the city center and how hypermarkets actively pull to increase the spatial extent of everyday geographies. at the same time, the comments show how city residents positively view these establishments which actively aid in producing, reproducing, and transforming the city in a de-central manner. however, this process is not finished, as one resident stated, “i hope our goods will soon reach eu standards,” demonstrating that the postsocialist city, in urban form and sociospatial processes, is still undergoing transformation. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 44 table 1 profile where they live demographic where they shop now changes in consumption related mobility urban loser • city center • compact city • pensioner • lowerincome • not in the city center • walking more • public transit less • little to no use of automobile urban victor • city center • compact city • young to middle age • middle to high income • mostly city center • all three retail typologies • walking in cbd • more use of automobile urban driver • city center • compact city • young to middle age • middle to high income • largely at hypermarkets and local shops • some shopping in city center • more use of automobile new postsocialist shopper • socialist era bloc housing • low-density housing • young to middle age • low to middle income • hypermarkets and local shops • produce in city center • more use of automobile • public transit use to city center anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 45 conclusion the retail landscape allows a point of entry into understanding changes in urban consumption and socio-spatial changes of everyday life in the postsocialist city. the consumer profiles i present in this article help to qualitatively understand individual attitudes of changing consumption habits and patterns in postsocialist cities; the role of individual shoppers in actively producing, reproducing, and transforming the city; the creation of emerging urban spaces in the postsocialist city; and the creation of new (and diverging) social groups in the city. this article exposes, via time-space geographies of consumption related mobility, urban diversity as class inequality of various consumer groups, which is increasing in a postsocialist era. this article states that since 1989, urban planning policy in the see became both neoliberal and de-central. the dynamics of the free-market and as ‘hyper-capital’ settles upon the urban fabric play a large role in creating new urban spaces and new social groups, yet little is being done by other forces, factors, or agents to manage this development in such a way that is does not result in a dual city or city with social exclusion between various social groups. in fact, new local policy makers and local urban planners (de-central) script a neoliberal agenda into local urban and land use policy. this is evident by the willingness of local planners to bring in foreign direct investment (fdi) or ‘hyper-capital,’ exemplified in the retail landscape as the hypermarket, by adapting policy to readily receive this investment (for more detail on this in a postsocialist urban context see kok 2007 and stanilov 2008; more generally see the pool of literature on the ‘entrepreneurial city’). to this end, local governments are doing little to deal with the growing class based social inequality, but rather, they support it in this context. this article demonstrates how urban residents are not solely victims of these urbanization processes, but that they play an active voice in the dialectic relationship between the built environment and social process once the free-market forces are set into motion and hyper-capital touches down. stara zagora, one among many lower tiered postsocialist cities, is not immune from this malady. diversity, framed as class inequality, leads to social exclusion, sociospatial segregation, and dual cities, which all undermine the richness of urban life. overall, the data presented in this article illuminates and exposes the class inequalities manifesting themselves in the postsocialist city through the lens of the urban consumption landscape. i hope this information will lead to more understanding of this social pluralism and urban planning policy in the postsocialist city that is conscious of class-based inequalities to help ensure the future vitality of urban life and urban culture that brings people together. acknowledgements i would like to thank dr. carl dahlman for encouraging me to further pursue ideas of consumption, time-space geography and, most importantly, ideas of different consumers profiles to help understand urban change. sara c. crangle, for reviewing a draft of this article. i also would like to thank miami university, department of geography for their financial support of my research in bulgaria. finally, i would like to thank green balkans, an environmental ngo in stara zagora, that allowed me to volunteer with their efforts and provided me housing while conducting fieldwork during the summer of 2007. references atkinson, a.b. and micklewright, j. 1992. economic transformation in eastern europe and the distribution of income. cambridge: cambridge university press. bulgaria: largest cities and towns and statistics of their population. (2008) world gazetteer. retrieved march 1, 2008 from http://world-gazetteer.com campbell, colin. 1995. “the sociology of consumption.” in miller, daniel (ed.), acknowledging consumption: a review of new studies. pp. 96-126. london: rutledge. clarke, david b. and bradford, michael g. 1998. “public and private consumption and the city.” urban studies 53 (5/6): 865-888. dingsdale, alan. 1999. “budapest’s built landscape in transition.” geojournal 49: 63-78. french, r.a. and hamilton, f.e.i. 1979. the socialist city: spatial structure and urban policy. new york : john wiley & sons ltd. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 46 garb, yaakov and dybicz, tomasz. 2006. “the retail revolution in post-socialist central europe and its lessons.” in tsenkova, s and nedovic-budic, z (eds). the urban mosaic of post socialist europe. pp. 231 – 252. new york: physica-verlag. gerber, t. 2000. “membership benefits or selection effects? why former communist party members do better in post-soviet russia.” social science research 29(1): 25-50. hagerstrand, t. 1970. “what about people in regional science?” papers in regional science 24(1): 6-21. hamilton, f.e.i. (1979). spatial structure in east european cities. in french, r.a. and hamilton, f.e.i (eds). the socialist city: spatial structure and urban policy. new york: john wiley & sons ltd hirt, sonia. and stanilov, kiril. 2007. “the perils of post-socialist transformation: residential development in sofia.” in k. stanilov (ed.), the post-socialist city: urban form and space transformations in central and eastern europe after socialism. pp. 215 – 244. springer. jackson, peter. 2002. “consumption in a globalizing world.” in johnston, r.j., taylor, p.j. and watts, m.j. (eds). geographies of global change: remapping the world. pp. 283-295. malden: blackwell. jackson, peter and thrift, nigel. 1995. geographies of consumption. in miller, d. (ed). acknowledging consumption: a review of new studies. pp. 201237. london: rutledge. jayne, mark. 2006a. “cultural geography, consumption and the city.” geography 9(1): 34. jayne, mark. 2006b. cities and consumption. new york: routeledge. knox, paul. 1991. “the restless urban landscape: economic and sociocultural change and the transformation of metropolitan washington, dc.” the annals of the association of american geographers, 81(2): 181-209. knox, paul. 1996. “globalization and urban change.” in urban geography, 17 (1): 115117. kok, h. (2007). restructuring retail property markets in central europe: impacts on urban space. in journal of housing and the built environment. 22: 107-126. kreja, karina. 2006. “changes in spatial patterns of urban consumption in post-socialist cities: new large scale retail development in warsaw.” in tsenkova, s and nedovic-budic, z (eds). the urban mosaic of post-socialist europe. pp 253-272. new york: physica-verlag. mccraken, grant. 1988. culture and consumption: new approaches to the symbolic character of consumer goods and activities. bloomington: indiana university press. miles, steven. 1998. “the consuming paradox: a new research agenda for urban consumption.” urban studies. 35(5 6): 1001-1008. miles, steven and paddison, ronan. 1998. “urban consumption: an historiographical note.”urban studies. 35(5-6): 815-823. miller, d., jackson, p. thrift, n., holbrook, b. rowlands, m. 1998. shopping, place and identity. pp 1-30. new york: rutledge. nagy, erika. 2001. “winners and losers in the transformation of the city centre retailing in east central europe.” european urban and regional research. 8(4): 340-348. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 47 novak, j and sýkora, l.2007. “a city in motion: time-space activity and mobility patterns of suburban inhabitants and the structuration of the spatial organization of the prague metropolitan area.” geografiska annaler series b human geography 89(2): 147-167. pred, allen. (1984). “place as historically contingent process: structuration and thetime-geography of becoming places.” the annals of the association of american geographers 74(2): 279-297. riley, r. 1997. “central area activities in a post-communist city: lodz, poland.” urban studies 34(3): 453-470. rudolph, r. and brade, i. 2005. “moscow: processes of restructuring in the post-soviet metropolitan periphery.” cities 22(2): 135-150. smith, neil. 1987. “of yuppies and housing: gentrification, social restructuring, and the urban dream.” environment and planning d: society and space. 5(2): 151 – 172. zukin, sharon. 1991. landscapes of power: from detroit to disneyworld. berkley: university of california press. anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 48 figure 1 figure 2 anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 49 figure 3 figure 4 anthropology of east europe review volume 27, no. 1 page 50 figure 5 introduction the restructuring and increasing interconnectedness of the global economy over the last few decades result in the creation of distinct new urban spaces (knox 1991). closely tied to these global economic changes, the dual political and economic transi... urban consumption theory conclusion acknowledgements references an!hropolog\ of ea,! euwrc rn le\\ ma;\agi:\g editor's notes: robert rotellberg. depaul cllil'ersi(l' i took over the management of th is ne\\sletter in 1993 after david kideckel had alread\ done everything to the special is~ue: \\ar amon n the yugoslms except to print it. after some mi~or editing imolving updates of articles. i had it printed ~n.d sl: i pped i.t to the m em bersh i p list. that was my imtjatlon to life as an editor. ten years later. i end my stewardship of these newsletters with another special issue. with this one as with the first. krista harper did all the heavv ' editing. i just compiled the articles, insured a ­ consistent format, and sent it to the printers. who says life doesn't have its little symmetries. i got my ph. d. in the late 1970s when anthropological interest in eastern europe was wholly concerned with updating an interest in folklore and national ethnography to more pressing questions of socialist political economy, the transformation of agriculture under central ized control, and the threat of the disappearance of minority groups. when this newsletter started at the uni~ersity of michigan in 1981 under the editorship of bill lockwood, there were no more than twenty american anthropologists working in eastern europe. at the meeting of the east european anthropology group at the annual american anthropological association meeting, everyone one of them would be in the same room. the newsletter served our needs in a different way then than it does not. we needed to know about the comings and goings of researchers, who had gotten what grants, who was working with which specialists in the east european museums and research centers, which granting agencies were earn1arking money for east europe research, and what books had recently been published. i think the last time i saw everyone in the same room was 1988 in washington d.c. and by then we had begun to sense that the breakup of yugoslavia was immanent. it was a heated session. there was a lot of arguing among the specialists about what would lead to a peaceful outcome and what would lead to a blood bath. the next year, the east german state ceased to function and the dominos began to fall. the hungarian, czechoslovak, polish, romanian bulgarian and cis states would all undergo relatively peaceful transformations in the next few years. in january 1992, yugoslavia ceased to exist. the division of that state among irs constituent regions was anything but peaceful. what happened to the [eag was that it ne\ er again would we all be in the same room. the older scholars began to retire and ceased to attend meeting. development money took several of us ou: of ethnographic writing and into policy work. a whole new generation of anthropologists entered the newly configured eurasian region as scholars of post-socialist culture. my tenure as editor has coincided with the period from the fall of yugoslavia to the recent by poland and the czech republic to enter the european union. we have had to change the name of the journal to include the emergent states of the baltic and central asia belt. a specialist group of russian -speaking scholars established their own annual conference and agreed to publish papers from that event in our autumn number. i am not so narrow as to think that aeer was in the forefront of post socialist student in the last decade. there were several refereed journals whose collections attract more attention even among anthropologists. our purpose was never to be the journal of record. rather we strove to maintain bill lockwood's original vision of being a journal of the community of scholars. i hope you have found that this effort served the community well. the mantel now passes to the generation of post­ socialist scholars represented by the new editor, barbara west and her associate editor nancy ries. if this issue is any indication of where the journal is going, then we can all rest assured that the community will continue to be well served. a special thank you to eva huseby-darvas, who more than anyone supported my efforts with the journal and organized the eeag meetings at aaa every year. special thanks go to michael mezey, dean of liberal arts and sciences at depaul, who supported the publication of the newsletter. thanks as well to nancy ries, barb west, matti bunzl and laszlo kurti for their contributions over the years. and to all my issue editors, authors, subscribers and fellow members of eeag, thank you for all your help. vol. 21. no. 12003, page: 4 3 5 reconstructing jewish identity in croatia: towards a refined symbolic ethnicity nita ginger hofman depaul university, chicago this paper has two aims. to begin, it examines whether the symbolic ethnicity model is relevant to identity negotiation among croatian jews. in symbolic ethnicity, individuals are not so much interested in the maintenance of traditional lifestyles as they are with choosing how to express cultural identity. in the past, scholars have either employed the model to discuss identity negotiation among ethnics in the united states and other core societies, or they have dismissed it altogether. the second aim describes the existing tension between the self-images of the croatian jews and those projected on them by others. both croatian "cultural diversity campaigns" and international jewish support organizations consider jewish identity to have an essentially religious core. programs sponsored by these constituencies have constructed pronounced cultural differences between croatian jews and non-jewish croatians. the symbolic ethnicity model has not been employed to analyze identity negotiation in cross-national comparisons. although the model's treatment of identity negotiation continues to be highly applicable to ethnics in core as well as post-socialist societies, i suggest that the model needs to be refined to include cultural forces that highlight temporal and political aspects of identity construction. community based, national and supranational dimensions of identity construction must be included in an application of symbolic ethnicity if the model is going to continue making a contribution to ethnic theory. extending the analysis of the model to include broader dimensions will also contribute to our understanding of ethnic identity negotiation in capitalist as well as post­ socialist societies. i argue, employing ethnographic and historic analyses, that the imposition of an essentialist view of jewish identity by national and supranational constituencies may ultimately have adverse effects on cultural groups such as the croatian jews who have embraced humanist and idiosyncratic versions of jewish identity since the mid-nineteenth century (goldstein 1988). ethnographic data reveals that despite a lack of strong religious commitments and highly idiosyncratic expressions of cultural identity, croatian jews are not on the road to amalgamation. i suggest that the disappearance thesis, put forward by the critics of symbolic ethnicity, is contradicted by the experience of croatian jews and that jewish identity negotiation in croatia reflects national and supranational dimensions of cultural identity formation without dislocating the importance of individual meanings. methods the conceptualization of this paper is based on ethnographic and historic information collected over the course of three visits to croatia between 1997 and 2000. library research and participant observation methods in the jewish community center zagreb (zoz) were used. jewish community life in croatia was examined prior to wodd war vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 5 6 ii and compared to contemporary expressions of jewish identity. during my research in croatia i kept abreast of local political events, conducted research at the libraries of the ethnographic institute in zagreb and the community zoz center. i participated in many organized social activities including religious services, torah study groups, seminars on jewish education and meetings with seniors, women and youth. i also spent a good deal of time in the company of friends discussing politics and the changing meaning of jewish identity over coffee in the recently kosherished cafe of the zoz. throughout my research i worked closely with two key consultants, an observant member who introduced me to the spiritual world in the zoz and his antagonist a consultant who defined herself as a secular jew. both were invaluable resources. they respected the neutrality ofmy position in the community as well as my social engagement in both religious and cultural activities though neither participated in both these spheres of activity. i took their views to be representative of the religious minority and the majority of croatian jews who define themselves as secular jews. while my key consultants viewed one another as antagonists they unknowingly shared many views pertaining to croatian politics. analytic context herbert gans uses the related concepts of symbolic ethnicity (1979) and symbolic religiosity (1994) to refer to a range of strategies associated with ethnic and religious identity negotiation in contemporary societies. symbolic ethnicity helps to mitigate the social and psychological upheaval experienced by cultural groups as they adapt to a (post)modern world in which interaction associated with mono locality is disappearing. gans argues that this explains why ethnic cultures do not experience the straight-line assimilation patterns that melting-pot theorists have proposed, but instead respond to social pressures with patterns of behavior in which ethnic and religious identities are maintained on an idiosyncratic basis. while gans applies his model specifically to ethnics in the united states, he clearly intends the model to have wider applications (baldassar 1999, bjorklund 1987, buckser 1999, levine 1993, sprott 1994). gans's model of symbolic ethnicity appropriately describes the importance ofnostalgia and sentiments to identity negotiation. gans argues that many ethnic cultures in the united states employ symbolic ethnicity rather than formal rites and religious-based cultural practices and values. a concern with jewish identity rooted in nostalgia and sentiment ("cultural judaism") as opposed to rigorous adherence to judaic practices and traditions, are paradigmatic examples of symbolic ethnicity. while nostalgia and sentiments are deemed relevant to the invention of tradition, his critics have viewed gans' s model as a precursor to the disappearance of ethnics. in response, gans has insisted that nothing in his model implies that groups employing symbolic ethnicity will dissolve within a fixed period of time. symbolic ethnicity is more accurately regarded as a social identity strategy that helps maintain individual allegiances to cultural (ethnoreligous) heritage. gans further claims that ethnicity is not "doomed to fade away before the irresistible forces of assimilation," but could instead "become a permanent source of identity" (gans 1992: 44-45). vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 6 gans's is not the only model that interprets the "post-traditional" terms in which contemporary identities are understood. alba (1990) and waters (1990, 1999) have proposed models which complement symbolic ethnicity. these scholars seem to share the view that ethnic identity negotiation in many post­ industrial societies greatly relies on individual expressions of identity. gans's critics, however, assume that symbolic ethnicity is a misreading of the communitarian basis of cultural identities (bershtel and graubard 1992, conzen et al. 1992, kivisto and nefzger 1993). like the critics of gans's model, a number of scholars writing on jewish identity construction have asserted that jews engaged in idiosyncratic expressions of jewish identity will ultimately disappear as a group. predictions that jewish identity will disappear are typically based on sociocultural processes such as the near absence ofreligious inclinations prevalent in many socialist societies. the view that a decline in jewish religiosity eventually results in a weaker sense of jewish identity or disintegration has been put forward by a number of scholars who have studied jewish identity maintenance in the united states (amyot and singelman 1996, bakalian 1993, cohen 1983). a similar view has been advanced by scholars studying jewish identity maintenance in europe (dellapergola 1994, keller 1966, schweid 1994) and is epitomized by harriet pass friedenreich's remark that: "[the] vibrant jewish communities of interwar yugoslavia, well adapted to survival in a multinational state, live on today as memories, not as realities" (pass friedenreich 1984:210). the linkage between the disintegration of jewish identities with a decline in religious observance is not 7 universally accepted. bershtel and graubard (1992) have disputed the thesis that non-religious behavior among jews will result in cultural assimilation. jonathan webber (1997) points out that an image of all jews identifying as members of an ethnoreligious group is no longer applicable since sociopolitical processes have impacted european jews in their respective countries differently. similar, chervyakov, gitelman and shapiro (1997) argue that jewish identity in russia has become fused with national identities to the extent that its no longer possible to divorce jewish identity negotiation from citizenship and the national political economy. building upon the views of these scholars, my analysis ofthe identity strategies employed by croatian jews expands the model of symbolic ethnicity to include historic and contemporary images, collective and individual meanings, local and global influences, and national politics as important variables in the process of cultural identity negotiation. i argue that the locus of an idiosyncratic or individual basis of identity construction must, ultimately, reside within larger-than-individual cultural forces. background most early jewish settlers in croatia were merchants from regions within the territory of the austro­ hungarian empire. speaking either hungarian or german as their mother tongue, they measured their success in terms of social acceptance in croatian society (svob 1997). the lack of a culturally unifying language reflects, as elsewhere within the empire, a natural desire to establish socioeconomic stability. the ambition to integrate into non-jewish society by marrying non-jews vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 7 j i 8 was an important by-product of achieving socioeconomic success. the eighteen­ century haskalah (jewish form of european enlightenment) helps explain why more devout forms of judaism, such as those practiced in other parts ofeurope (e.g. orthodox communities prevalent in russia and poland), never took hold among croatian jews (johnson 1988). in response, the nineteenth-century neologe movement, which was concerned with the modernization of judaism, did manage to attract some participants. but even with the reform-minded character of the movement, there was only one neologe synagogue (seating up to 300 people) in operation in the largest (11,000 members) jewish community in croatia (goldstein 1998). the reason that croatian jews managed to retain their identity, given their lack of a culturally unifying language, non-committal religious participation and growing rates of exogamy is because the laws within the empire were such that jewish participation in gentile social and political life remained limited. except for brief periods of time when rulers who advanced jewish emancipation rose to power, e.g. joseph ii (1780-90) and frans joseph (1847-1897) jews were forced to live in separate social worlds. jewish societies, which developed in response to de jure emancipation, can be organized into four overlapping categories: humanitarian, intellectual, political, and recreational. the common thread among the societies was that each provided a vehicle for members to become active in the jewish world and devote themselves to jewish social advancement, politics and culture without a commitment to jewish religious laws. parallel to the development of modem croatian society and the relative integration of jews in the mid-nineteenth century was the emergence of croatian national consciousness. the croatian language provided a focal point for national identity and thus a means for nationalist-minded croats to question their loyalty to the empire (buntak 1996:386). the nationalist movement in croatia developed largely in response to the rising tendency towards germanization within the empire and the fact that both the french and the hungarians had already begun to assert their national identities. the jewish response to croatian nationalism was threefold: croatian jews either exhibited compliance with croatian national ideals, a fierce alliance to zionist ideals, or a combination of these ideological positions. the first response, compliance with croatian national ideals, relates back to the willingness of croatian jews to participate in civil society and improve their social standing -a strategy that may be traced back to emancipation trends among european jews in the early nineteenth-century. an example ofthis is the use of croatian as the language of instruction in jewish schools and synagogues. the second response, a fierce alliance to zionist ideals, provided croatian jews with an alternative expression to jewish religious identity. by emphasizing the need to establish a jewish nation-state, zionism allowed for non-religious jews to affirm their identity as jews by supporting political or cultural aims. the zionists were organized through a number of societies such as the bar giora association of jewish students, young guard, a socialist youth organization, and societies that prepared jews for immigration to palestine in the early twentieth century. b'nai b'rith, an vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 8 9 international organization that attracted people interested in the advancement of jewish cultural, educational and political life, gained popularity during that time as well. these trends, which continued throughout the twentieth-century and have been reinvigorated in the last decade, were never regarded by the ruling powers as inconsistent with croatian nationalism. the third response, a combination of these ideological positions, was the most remarkable. croatian jews remained loyal to croatian national ideals whether or not they identified as zionists. this can be explained by noting that nineteenth­ century nationalism presupposed, and even encouraged ethnic consciousness and (certain forms of) sectarian patriotism so long as such sentiments did not threaten croatian nationalist efforts. in the twentieth-century croatian jews continued to embrace a worldview that is rooted in non-religious commitments that emphasized humanistic values. these sentiments would in time resemble brotherhood and unity, a slogan that came to symbolize the political ideology ofpresident tito's yugoslavia (who held office between 1945-1980). however, the newer meaning of "unity" that emerged after croatia's separation from yugoslavia would have very different consequences for croatian jews. high rates of exogamy are a continued reality. in modem times, exogamy patterns may be explained as a response to the diminished pool of jewish marriage partners after 1945. while the rates have remained stable in the last fifty years, since the 1990s the growing number of individuals who identify as jews has been on the rise, a statistic that reflects the desire of intermarried croatian jews to raise their children with a jewish consciousness. , another important social aspect of jewish croatian social identity is cosmopolitanism. early on croatian jews began to regard themselves as cosmopolitans. this response that can be traced to the ideological principles of equality and openness associated with cosmopolitanism as well as the standing tradition of croatian jews to blend into gentile society. the construction of a cosmopolitan identity was related to trends in urbanization that swept europe in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries, and secular ideologies prevalent among the emancipated jews of central europe. the promise of social advancement, opportunity and equality lies at the heart of the liberalism that produced intellectuals such as theodor herzl, one of the fathers of the zionist movement and sigmund freud. arising in opposition to cosmopolitanism were various definitions of nationhood and myths related to ethnic purity that prevail to the present. local meanings the use of cultural symbols is an important element of symbolic ethnicity. croatian jews use symbols such as ethnoreligious artifacts, foods, festivals and other social activities to express cultural identity. the importance of these symbols is reflected in the recent popularization of star ofdavid pendants, menorahs (a seven branch lamp used in religious services) and other judaica either worn or exhibited at home.! further evidence of the emergence of cultural symbols in croatia can be seen in the popularization of jewish cookbooks written by croatian jews, as well as the proliferation of various books, newspapers, lectures and radio programs addressing jewish themes. in addition to these, croatian jews can join a jewish folklore dance group, ceramics class, vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 9 i 10 soccer team and, with a little luck, participate in the makabiada (jewish olympic games). they can choose to study hebrew, jewish music, jewish history or torah in jewish community centers. all these pursuits (including torah reading) are regarded as leisure social activities and are not for the sake of practicing religiosity or living a "traditional" jewish life according to jewish law. rather they are an expression of "cultural judaism" or interest in jewish cultural history. since many of these activities are organized by jewish community centers, the basis of these types of identity enactment requires social interaction among group members. although an exact number was difficult to obtain, about 3000 individuals who identify as jewish reside in present day croatia. the largest and most vibrant jewish community is in zagreb, the capital of croatia. the zoz community center has about fifteen hundred members and has experienced a marked (14%) increase in its membership since the 1990s (sprajc, personal communication 1997). jewish community centers in croatia and elsewhere in central and eastern europe experienced revival during the late 1980s and early 1990s as jewish educators were brought in from abroad to teach hebrew, jewish culture and history. a cultural society that hosted lectures and events like jewish music and exhibits of jewish croatian artists was formed during that time, now referred to as "jewish community revival." while the society published a monthly paper covering events pertinent to the jewish world, the events themselves did more than educate the public about jewish life. partaking in activities hosted by the cultural society were seen as an important way of "being jewish" or "getting in touch with one's roots." participation in community events was considered central to the process of jewish identity maintenance in croatia. it is through participation in various social groups that croatian jews made sense of their world and made choices about all aspects of their cultural identities. community members did so at their leisure. they were less concerned with enacting culture through obligations as with living culture on individual terms. on the whole, community members seemed to be more concerned with day-to-day social affairs and a rise in xenophobia than with jewish religious laws or the high exogamy rates that continued to dilute the community. one consultant made the following comment when i asked how he understood the continuation of jewish community life in croatia: i don't think our community will die because we are intermarrying or not praying on friday night. in the end a community dies when people stop visiting the community. it is clear that the people here are coming to the community center for something. the center does not exist by itself. when asked directly, community members associated religiosity with doctrine, nationalism and non­ cosmopolitanism. indeed, many people i spoke with did not regard religious practice as an important part of their jewish identity. friday night services were practically empty while social events organized by the cultural society were well attended. as one consultant remarked: i believe that judaism gives us the freedom and the opportunity to choose how to express ourselves as vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 10 jews. i have chosen the way i wish to be jewish. i have met people who have chosen to keep kosher. a kosher couple visited me recently. i did not insult or asked them why they kept kosher. i don't keep kosher but i always make sure i have paper plates, plastic knives and forks at home in case they visit. the emphasis in these anecdotes was on individual and humanistic expressions of jewish identity. consultants believed that judaism or jewish cultural heritage gave them the "freedom and opportunity to choose" how they would want to express identity. the increased focus on choice and individualism may be read as endemic of post-socialism. other examples of identity negotiation were found in the continued allegiance to zionism. for many croatian jews, support for the state oflsrael is a significant expression of jewish identity. although active membership in various zionist organizations was the primary outlet for expressing allegiance to the movement, at the time ofmy research different means for supporting israel existed such as specialized seminars on topics related to jewish cultural history, "working vacations," private visits and study abroad programs, and the kibbutz experience. allegiance to zionism, which for economic reasons was strongly supported by the croatian government, continues to serve as one of the most important aspects of jewish identity in . 2 roatja. croatian nationalist politics and jewish identity life in a society undergoing social upheaval encourages feelings ofpride and ii belonging to one's ethnic group, particularly if the nationalism practiced in that society is exclusivist (verdey 1996). in this connection, anthony smith (1986) has argued persuasively for the view that nostalgia plays an important role in the construction of common goals and a sense ofbelonging to something larger than oneself. the croatian nationalist movement of the 1990s, which promoted croatian ethnicity largely by constructing non-ethnic croatians as outsiders and emphasizing ethnicity, has in some ways reinforced jewish identities. contemporary jewish identity negotiation in croatia reflects ways of coping with a de facto outsider status that has informed jewish identities in europe for centuries. although my consultants identified with national politics and the idea of building a democratic nation-state, they did not identify with the xenophobic regime that followed croatia's secession from yugoslavia. as the croatian right developed a voice, jews began turning to the jewish community for an alternative voice. indeed, involvement in jewish communal life in the recent past has provided a reasonable alternative to the changing meaning of croatianess. a renewed connection with the jewish community served the function of ideologically forestalling social isolation from croatian society. membership in the jewish community had other advantages as well. for example, during the war in croatia (1991-1995) community members were able to send their children to stay with families in the united states and israel. these temporary immigrations were sponsored by international jewish organizations and organized through jewish communities in croatia. as the right grew louder (although not larger), xenophobia began to be seen as a real threat to jews. the fear was vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 11 1 i c 12 r further reinforced by the croatian government's attempt to repress memories associated with the notorious ustashas, a fascist party which was supported by the nazis and held power between 1941­ 1945. this was accomplished by downplaying atrocities the ustashas committed against the serbs, gypsies, communists, non-compliant croats and jews during world war ii and constructing croatian w orid war ii criminals as the victims of the national liberation army revolt led by tito's army. an important response to these threats was the development of solidarity among croatian minorities who continue to gather and mark events such as anti­ fascism day and holocaust memorial day. an area of contention has been the number of victims who perished in j asenovac, a croatian concentration camp established during the ustasha regime. some have claimed that the number of lives lost in jasenovac is as low as 40,000 while others estimate the death toll around 700,000. in 1997, the late president tudjman proposed erecting a memorial for both victims and murderers at the site. the proposal was met with outrage and caused large numbers ofpeople to gather on holocaust memorial day in april 1998 to protest. among those who protested tudjman's proposal were individuals who identified as serbs, anti-fascist and fornler communists. speakers called for justice, the restoration of j asenovac and respect for the memory of the victims. they warned that the numbers of victims should neither be belittled nor buried along with the remains of their executioners. minority group members have been gathering to protest the renaming of the victims of fascism square in zagreb. as one consultant put it: "changing the name of the square [back to its original name] is an opportunity for croatia to begin the process of de-u stashazation." contested meanings the disassociation of croatia from the balkans, communism and southeastern europe more generally, along with her desire to be included among europe's "chosen nations," is well served by promoting non threatening minorities such as croatian jews. during my research in croatia, jews, who are the smallest minority group in croatia, were given far more media attention than other croatian minorities. the promotion of croatian jews not only served to obscure croatia's role in the holocaust, an issue that has recently received critical attention from the international media and from human rights organizations, but has also emphasized jews as "others." while the motives of the croatian government and the international jewish community differ substantially, both have attempted to impose a view of jewish identity that is at odds with the self­ images of the croatian jews themselves. the view promoted by the croatian government through the recent implementation ofcultural diversity programs, derives in part from croatia's desire to eventually join the european union and to stabilize the nation's economic crisis. the view promoted by the international jewish community reflects a commitment to secure the future of central and east european jews. the efforts of both groups embody the assumption that jewish identity revolves around an orthodox religious core or a notion of jews as separate from other croatian citizens. this view of jewish identity is in conflict with the multiple meanings of jewish identity and the humanistic and idiosyncratic terms in which croatian jews identify as jews. vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 12 the aforementioned constituencies regard cultural identity as essentialist or traditionalist. essentialist views of identity incorporate meanings associated with consanguinial ties and a sense of innate one-ness among group members. such views have the effect of strongly juxtaposing selves from others. for essentialists, identity construction is understood through presumed social characteristics defined through immutable customs and values. alternatively, in humanist terms identity construction is based on values of tolerance and liberal democracy. more importantly, humanists view identity as contingent on individual choice rather than rooted in blood-ties. the cultural diversity programs sponsored by the croatian ministry of culture are premised on the view that jews must be submerged in tradition and religion. these cultural diversity programs that advance jewish religious culture clearly exist not for their own sake or the promotion of an inclusive multicultural society. these programs have particular agendas that seek to promote croatian jews as exotic, religious and different from ethnic croatians. jewish religious practices, which are often misunderstood and regarded as curious by non-jewish croatians, have received an abundance of media attention. local journalists have interviewed the chief rabbi of croatia several times since his inauguration in 1998. the topics of these interviews have ranged from jewish religious practices to the future of the jewish community in croatia. television programs about jewish religious laws and practices as well as foreign documentaries, which depict the lives of ultra-orthodox jews, have been aired. other public displays of interest in jews and their religion include a course on judaism at zagreb university, a permanent installation of judaica in one 13 ofzagreb's main museums, sponsorship ofpublic art shows on jewish religious themes and radio programs featuring interviews with prominent members of the croatian jewish community. additionally, the ministry ofculture has provided funds for jewish education centered on jewish religious and cultural themes and invited the rabbi to the croatian parliament on several occasions. the view that croatian jews are essentially different from non-jewish croatians is supported through the cultural diversity programs. to discern these, however, it is important to realize that such campaigns have not focused exclusively on essentializing jewish identities. indeed, cultural diversity programs in croatia originated with matica hrvatska, an organization which sought to construct croatian ethnicity and croatian as a separate language from serbo-croatian, the official national language of former yugoslavs. thus the promotion of ethnoreligious consciousness among ethnic croatians originally served to justify croatian nationalism and secession from the former yugoslavia. such programs also helped construct ethnic croatians as categorically different from ethnic minorities living in croatia. this has contributed to a general atmosphere of xenophobia that has had negative consequences for minority groups such as serbs and bosniacs (bosnian moslems). the international jewish community has also been concerned with the promotion of jewish identity in croatia. emphasizing religious and cultural components of jewish identity, jewish support organizations have begun "rehabilitating" jewish community centers throughout croatia and the former yugoslavia by financing a full-time rabbi, the restoration of a small synagogue in • vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 13 14 [ dubrovnik (which has a community of less than 50 jews) and stressing jewish religious education. the rabbi of croatia has found sponsors among orthodox communities outside the country to finance young croatian jews religious education abroad. changes have been implemented in the community centers themselves. the rabbi has kosherised community centers and implemented various jewish laws therein, campaigned for group conversion to counteract high exogamy rates and provided opportunities for those interested in studying and practicing orthodox judaism. ill many ways, the rabbi has revolutionized the social organization of jewish communities in croatia. for the first time in some sixty years croatian jews can choose to get married in a jewish orthodox ceremony. moreover, they can have a local rabbi perform rites of passage (e.g. circumcision, bar mitzvah, marriage and burial ceremonies) and important jewish holidays. croatia's cultural diversity programs thus share with the international jewish support organizations the tendency to promote identity maintenance by reifying differences between cultural groups and exaggerating the importance of religious consciousness. both tendencies conflict with the humanistic and idiosyncratic worldviews of the croatian jews themselves. in reality, non­ committal religious participation and integration in croatian society are central aspects ofjewish croatian identities. summary the interplay between religious behavior and the stability of jewish identity may be far more complex than the disappearance prognosis implies. cultural identity, rather than an index of the disappearance of croatian jews, has been a relatively permanent feature of jewish identity negotiation since its inception in the nineteenth-century. cultural memory and the role of political and socioeconomic reform have been crucial in shaping and transforming cultural groups such as the croatian jews. i have argued that one way ofunderstanding the identity strategies of the croatian jews is to begin with an account of the historical context and the political culture in which they are situated. doing so should provide a rich framework for understanding jewish identities in croatia as constructed in response to pressure felt by all croatian citizens to identify as members ofan ethnic group. i have also pointed out that the effect of our increasingly interdependent world, in which many different images of cultural identity are projected, needs to be taken into account. even though individuals have always been capable of creating and transforming individualized meanings of cultural identity, cultural identity negotiation is never a completely random process that is meaningless to others. idiosyncratic expressions of cultural identity are at the same time a product of collective imagining, time and space. in light ofthis, croatian jews negotiate their cultural identities primarily through humanistic values and membership in social organizations. the organizations are important precisely because jewish community life in croatia was never confined to jewish neighborhoods or synagogues. jewish societies and organizations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries flourished in response to croatian nationalism. the same trend emerged again in the last decade when croatian jews were once again cast as outsiders. croatian nationalism has not only not threatened but also in some ways fortified jewish consciousness. this fact vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 14 j , implies a strong relationship between the construction of ethnic minorities as "others" and jewish identity negotiation. we have seen that even though the objectives of croatian cultural diversity programs and the international jewish organizations differ substantially, both aim to cultivate jewish religiosity by promoting an essentialist view of jewish identity. the former can be traced to ideas about ethnicity that serve to justify croatia's political agenda; the latter is a response to what is perceived as a modem world crisis in jewish identity maintenance. the emphasis on the religious aspects of jewish identity has had a polarizing effect both within jewish communities in croatia and between croatian jews and non-jews. contrary to the traditionalist views of jewish identity, jewish identity can never be understood as stable or incontestable. instead, its meaning is continually revised by individuals. the real crisis for croatian jews has been the fact that these outside institutions have ignored the multiple versions of jewish croatian identity that have coexisted for decades. despite this, jewish croatian identity continues to embody a commitment to humanistic ideals of tolerance, experimentation and contingency. the situation for croatian jews might improve if jewish communities in croatia were respected and allowed to flourish on their own terms. towards a refined symbolic ethnicity symbolic ethnicity is useful to the extent that it helps to interpret the social mechanisms through which individualized meanings of identity are negotiated in the contemporary world. factors that indicate the applicability of symbolic ethnicity to croatian jews include the consumption of cultural symbols and various social • 15 activities that enact these symbols. additional factors that are characteristic of jewish identity negotiation in croatia include high endogamy patterns, non­ committal religious practices and the abiding absence of unifying cultural language. it is clear from the foregoing discussion that involvement in zionist movements, humanitarian or recreational societies in jewish community centers enables croatian jews to interpret culture and negotiate identity in terms of a variety of different meanings. the fact that these factors continue to play an important role in jewish identity negotiation suggests that jewish identities in croatia are far from disappearing. symbolic ethnicity falls short of describing the case of the croatian jews because it does not account for the multiple social and political contexts in which groups are situated. it also falls short of describing ethnic identity negotiation characterized by our globalization. scholars who have employed the symbolic ethnicity model have not given enough weight to the role of history and national and supranational politics in their analysis of particular groups. as i have argued, jewish identity construction in zagreb is rooted in an historical trajectory and relies on the manipulation of cultural symbols, humanistic and idiosyncratic interpretations of jewishness. to better understand identity negotiation strategies among croatian jews, one must begin with a careful analysis of jewish croatian history, croatia's troubled political culture, which presently seeks to construct non-ethnic croatians as outsiders, and the influence ofjewish supranationals on the meaning of jewish identity. the deterministic claim put forward by scholars who assert that the decline in religious behavior of jews vol. 179, no. 2 autumn, 2001, page: 15 i 16 inevitably signals their eventual dissolution fails to acknowledge the contingency and cultural complexity of jewish (or any other) identity negotiation strategies. the idea that jewish identity is somehow divorced from national politics, or that it unfolds along a predetermined trajectory, is, as i have shown, simply inconsistent with the history and narratives of the croatian jews. failure to acknowledge the dynamic and contingent character of ethnoreligious identity negotiation is often due to plain inattention to the historical, political and international dimensions of identity construction. if we look carefully at the historical record, we can see the thoroughly contextual nature of jewish identity construction in croatia as well as its complex relation to the surrounding political and global environment. in pointing this out, i do not mean to advance an inversion of the straight-line assimilation theory, in terms of which the future of the croatian jews as safely insulated from the threat of being swallowed up by the larger community. in other words, i want to challenge this view without making the parallel mistake of supposing that the future of the croatian jewish community is secured. rather than prognosticating about the future of jewish identities (a temptation which the croatian jews themselves resist) we are better off trying to incorporate a view of jewish identity into gans's model that ultimately leads to a better understanding of the cultural factors underlying identity negotiation. a more thorough look at the historical and political context of identity negotiation among contemporary ethnics provides support for the extension of the model beyond core societies. symbolic ethnicity helps interpret individual and collective identity negotiation strategies among jews living in post-socialist societies irrespective of gans's original intentions. to sum up, many aspects of symbolic ethnicity can help to account for the identity strategies by clarifying the ways in which subjective meanings inform the nature of identity negotiation. a revised model for understanding the nature of identity negotiation in the modem world must relocate cultural trends in time and space and consider the role of national politics in shaping and transforming ethnoreligious cultures. such a model will enable us to regard symbolic ethnicity as strongly associated with the manipulation of sentiments and nostalgia, national and supranational politics, historical memories and other highly symbolic expressions of collective identity. references alba, richard. 1990. ethnic identity: the transformation ofwhite america. new haven, connecticut: yale university press. amyot, robert p. and lee sigelman. 1996. "jews without judaism? assimilation and jewish identity in the united states." social science quarter~v, vol. 77, no. 1, 177-189. bakalian, anny. 1993. armenian­ americans: from being to feeling armenian, new brunswick,new jersey: transaction publishers. baldassar, loretta. 1999. "marias and marriage: ethnicity, gender and sexuality among italoaustralian youth in perth." the australian journal ofsociology, vol. 35, no.l, 1-22. vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 16 bershtel, sara and allen graubard. 1992. saving remnants: feeling jewish in america, new york: the free press. bjorklund, ulf. 1987. "ethnicityand the welfare -state." international social science journal, vol. 39, no.l,19-30. buckser, andrew. 1999. "keeping kosher: eating and social identity among the jews ofdenmark. " ethnology, vol. 38, no. 3, 191-209. buntak, franjo. 1996. povijest zagreb a, zagreb: nakladni zavod matice hrvatske. chervykov, valery, zvi gitelman and vladimir shapiro. 1997. "religion and ethnicity: judaism in the ethnic consciousness of contemporary russian jews." ethnic and racial studies, vol. 20, no. 2,280-305. cohen, steven m. 1983. american modernity and jewish identity. new york and london: travistock publishers. cozen, kathleen neils et al. 1992. "the invention of ethnicity: a perspective from the u.s.a." journal ofamerican ethnic history, 3-32. dellapergola, sergio. 1994. "an overview of the demographic trends of european jewry." in jonathan webber, editor. jewish identities in the new europe. london and washington: published for the oxford center for postgraduate hebrew studies littman library of jewish ' civilization. 17 gans, herbert j. 1979. "symbolic ethnicity: the future ofethnic groups and cultures in america." ethnic and racial studies, vol. 2, no. 1, 1-20. gans, herbert j. 1992. "comment: ethnic invention and acculturation, a bumpy-line approach. " journal ofamerican ethnic history, vol. 12, no. 1,42­ 52. gans, herbert j. 1994. "symbolic ethnicity and symbolic religiosity: towards a comparison ofethnic and religious acculturation." ethnic and racial studies, vol. 17, no. 4, 577-592. gans, herbert j. 1994. "symbolic ethnicity." in john hutchinson and anthony d. smith, editors. ethnicity. oxford and new york: oxford university press. goldstein, ivo. 1998. "zagrebacka zidovska opcina od osnutka do 1941." in ognjen kraus, editor. dva stoljeca povijesti i kultere zidova u zagrebu i hrvatskoj. zagreb: published by zidovska opcina zagreb. goldstein, slavko. 1988. jevreji u yugoslaviji. zagreb: mgc. heilman, samuel. 1988. "jews and judaica: who owns and buys what?" in walter p. zenner, editor. persistence and flexibility: anthropological perspectives on the american jewish experience. new york: state university of n ew york press. johnson, paul. a history of the jews. new york: harper & row. vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 17 i 1 krauss, ognjen. 1996. "the jewish community in croatia." voice of the jewish communities in croatia, no. 1,4-9. keller, mose. 1966. "an historical and sociological survey of european jewry." in ann rose, editor. judaism crisis survival. paris: world union of jewish students. kivsto, peter and ben nefzger. 1993. "symbolic ethnicity and american jews: the relationship ofethnic identity to behavior and group affiliation." the social science journal, vol.30, no. 1, 1-12. levine, herbert b.1993. making "sense of jewish ethnicity­ identification patterns of new zealanders of mixed parentage." ethnic and racial studies, vol.l6, no. 2, 323-344. pass-friedenreich, harriet. 1984. the jews of yugoslavia: a quest for community. philadelphia: jewish publication society. schweid, eliezer. 1994. "changing jewish identities in the new europe and the consequences for israel." in jonathan webber, editor. jewish identities in the new europe. london and washington: published for the oxford center for postgraduate hebrew studies, littman library of jewish civilization. smith, anthony d. 1986. the ethnic origins ofnations. new york: basil blackwell. sprajc, dunja. 1996. "struggling for a new identity." voice ofthe jewish communities in croatia, no. 1, lo­ b. 18 sprott, julie e. 1994. "symbolic ethnicity" and alaska natives of mixed ancestry living in anchorage-enduring group or a sign of impending assimilation?" journal ofthe society for applied anthropology, vol. 53, no. 4, 311­ 322. svob, melita. 1997. zidovi u hrvatskoj: migracije i promjene u zidovskoj populaciji, zagreb: d­ graff. verdery, katherine. 1996. what was socialism, and what comes next? princeton: princeton university press. walters, mary c. 1990. ethnic options: choosing identities in america, berkeley: university of california press. walters, mary c. 1999. black identities: west indian immigrant dreams and american realities. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. webber, jonathan. 1997. "jews and judaism in contemporary europe: religion or ethnic roup?" ethnic and racial studies, vol. 20, no. 2, 257-279. acknowledgements research for this paper was supported by grants from the memorial foundation for jewish culture and the purdue research foundation. i thank daphne wineland, teri strenski, katie watson and john demoulpied for their suggestions. notes 1 i am using samuel heilman's definition of judaica which has a vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 18 19 number of meanings related to objects associated with jewish cultural and religious life (heilman 1988:268). 2 in contrast to former yugoslav politics, croatia has recently (1998) established diplomatic ties with israel. yugoslavia's official policy was pro­ arab and anti-zionist. even though yugoslavia was among the first nations to recognize the state of israel in 1948, its official policy supported the palestinian national cause (pass­ freidenreich 1984:208). during the yom kippur war in october 1973 and six years after the country's diplomatic break with israel in 1967, yugoslavia aligned herself with the arab world while publicly equating zionism with racism. despite yugoslav foreign politics, the jewish croatian communities continued to nourish its ties with israel. the recently established diplomatic ties between israel and croatia are viewed as desirable for several reasons. diplomacy is thought to improve trade relations, the tourist industry and perhaps to mitigate croatia's infamous role during world war ii. vol. 179, no.2 autumn, 2001, page: 19 • microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 10 new directions in the study of postsocialist consumption daphne berdahl university of minnesota in the years since the collapse of socialism, the topic of consumption has become a significant object of ethnographic study. there are many possible explanations for this: the ways in which consumption quickly became part of the triumphalist discourses in 1989; the politicized nature of consumption both during and after socialism; its highlighting of differences and disparities between the socialist east and the capitalist west; and its role as a rite of passage into the new society. in other words, consumption can serve as a prism that illuminates a variety of critical social, political, and economic processes. the essays in this issue of aeer build upon this recent scholarship and contribute new insights into the topic of post-socialist consumption. rather than addressing each essay individually, i have attempted here to tease out some common threads and themes. together, i believe the authors have pointed to some relatively new and exciting possibilities for further study. bodies like many studies of consumption, several of these essays focus on the topic of gender. the authors in this volume, however, pay particular attention to the question of women’s bodies: body types, fitness, fashion, make-up, etc. mîndruţ’s study of changing images of women’s bodies in post-socialist romania brings this issue into particularly bold relief. arguing that the backwardness of the socialist system— which had its own ways of disciplining women’s bodies as workers, mothers and reproducers of romanian citizens— was projected onto the bodies of middleaged and older women, mîndruţ shows how new disciplinary technologies of capitalism impact women’s ideals of femininity and body-types. in contrast to socialism’s attempt to erase “natural” differences between men and women, the new images of women’s bodies tend to affirm and naturalize these distinctions. she argues that aerobics has become a process of feminization and bodily discipline, different from the socialist emphasis on female bodies as perfected through sports. the new feminine body ideal, visible in glossy magazines or billboard and television advertisements is perceived to be a requirement for acceptance and belonging in the new society. many women, she argues, have discovered and deployed their appearance as social capital. ranova’s essay similarly calls attention to personal appearance and new ideals of feminity in her discussion of fashion and style among urban elites in bulgaria. focussing on women’s consumption practices, including clothing, media, and make-up, she shows how new categories and definitions of womanhood are inscribed upon the bodies of post-socialist bulgarian women. there are many more options for the expression of particular identities and identifications: the maitrizi, who represent the new ideal of feminity through their style and fashion sense but are most often perceived as deriving their wealth from men; the professional woman, like those associated with a group ranova studies called united colors; and women who value family and motherhood above all else and welcome the opportunity to devote themselves to this work rather than having to work outside the home, as during socialism. this upgrading of motherhood and domesticity, ranova argues, has also naturalized gender differences, similar to what mîndruÿ describes in her essay. in ventsel’s essay on the spread of popular music and mass culture in the republic of sakha, he also points to an emerging consciousness of the relationship between consumption and prestige. the local elite, he argues, feels pressured to dress fashionably. like ranova, he identifies the role of different forms of capital underlying social distinctions, suggesting in particular the ways in which fashion can function as cultural capital that can then be converted into social capital. we also see in ventsel’s contribution the familiar theme of the effects of western media – in the form of music styles, music videos, and glossy magazines – on local populations. it is apparent here that “westernizing” and globalizing processes become localized in culturally specific ways. social inequalities another major theme emerging from these essays is the reflection and constitution of new social inequalities through practices of consumption. one could argue that this observation is nothing new, of course, given the long tradition of viewing consumption in relation to status or class. however, in the post-socialist context the large (one could even say huge) disparities in wealth that emerged between central and eastern european citizens after socialism’s anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 11 collapse has been glaringly obvious to people on both sides of the unequal divide. whether termed the “new russians” (humphrey 2002) or mutri ranova (this volume), this new class of urban elites is most frequently defined by—and defines itself through— its consumption practices. in addition, this new class is often associated with corruption and, occasionally, crime. as humphrey has put it, the new russians “can be imagined as a cultural entity with a shiny face and shadowy underside” (humphrey 2002: 174). in stark contrast to this wealth are the majority of the postsocialist populations, ranging from a small middle class who struggles for its survival to the desperately poor, who have lost their guarantees of employment, housing and health care provided by the state—as well as, occasionally, their dignity. in the former soviet union and several of its former republics, forty percent of the population lives beneath the poverty line. ranova portrays a society of urban elites, for example, that define themselves through taste and consumption. what seems noteworthy here is that unlike bourdieu’s complex cartographies of social class based on the habitus and the accumulation of different forms of capital (bourdieu 1984), the distinctions reflected by taste here appear to be fairly superficial—relying primarily on a dynamic of imitation and resistance through different fashion styles. botoeva describes how the looting and destruction of supermarkets during a political protest in 2005 in bishkek, the capital city of kyrgystan, was transformed into an attack on the city’s opulent malls and department stores. according to botoeva, the looting and destruction of these “supermarkets” expressed a heightened consciousness and anger about the social inequalities represented by these new consumer spaces. funded by foreign capital or by former communist party leaders who were able to convert their social capital into economic capital, the protests were also about opposing the beneficiaries of the new system. these malls, full of elite boutiques with brand-name clothing and other expensive goods, were inaccessible to the majority of bishkek residents because they could not afford to shop there. ideologies of the market, neo-liberalism and the state while addressing the reasons for citizens’ resentment of the bishkek supermarkets, botoeva considers the issue from another angle as well, arguing that supermarkets also represent kyrgysztan’s development along a new path toward “civilization,” modernity and a market economy. even residents who cannot afford to shop at these elite and expensive stores are proud of their presence because of what they symbolize. underlying the simultaneous and seemingly contradictory feelings of pride and resentment, it seems to me, is an ongoing struggle between citizens and the state that has involved the politicization of consumption in both the socialist past and the capitalist presence. unlike the politicization of consumption under socialism, however, where consuming western products could also be viewed as resistance to state prohibitions, botoeva argues that the politicization of consumption today is related to the political legitimacy of the new post-soviet state, which rests in large part upon its ability to provide access to consumer goods. this is a critical point, especially when one considers the triumphalist discourses of western capitalist societies following socialism’s collapse. the failure of socialism to “deliver the goods” (quite literally) was perceived to be the main cause of its downfall. as ferhervary points out in this volume, the quaint and outdated products made during socialism came to symbolize the backwardness of the socialist system in hungary as well as throughout much of the former soviet satellites. this was particularly true in germany, where the relationship between national legitimacy and mass consumption was especially pronounced (berdahl 2005). like the naturalization of gender differences discussed by mîndruţ, ideologies of neo-liberal capitalism appear to be increasingly naturalized through contemporary post-socialist consumption practices. mîndruţ, for example, describes the ways in which a slim and fit body has come to represent new values of self-discipline and individual responsibility— many of the core values underlying the ideals of capitalism. according to mîndruţ’s argument, then, these ideals become, quite literally, embodied. ranova’s essay also highlights values of the new system in her discussion of the group, united colors. underlying these women’s resistant consumption practices and harsh criticisms of the maitrizei for their wealth, styles, and dependence on men is the liberal notion of the relationship between hard work and success as well as a sense of individual responsibility that counters the ideals of socialism. ferhervary’s analysis of a blockbuster musical comedy released in 1996 reflects hungarians' ongoing identification of consumer anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 12 goods with either western market economies or socialist systems. the popularity of the film, set in the 1960’s, can only be understood in the postsocialist present, she argues, because it both reflects the current younger generation’s preoccupation with western consumer goods and challenges western perceptions of socialist society’s backward products and empty store shelves. a coming of age story, the film also echoes discourses of the early 1990's about the transition as a passage to adulthood. the film achieves these multiple meanings by depicting this period as one of relative prosperity and portraying socialist citizens as savvy and fashionable consumers. according to ferhervary, the film capitalizes on post-socialist nostalgia in hungary, which, like other forms of nostalgia, recalls a past that never existed. in this sense, the film reminds viewers of an imagined "golden west" and the disillusionment following the transition. furthermore, ferhervary argues, the film's focus on consumption and consumer goods offers a parallel history of material culture, thereby both contesting and affirming a neo-liberal consumer-based market economy. this is a very significant point, it seems to me, because it highlights the complex and contradictory processes, experiences, and effects of these transitions. to what extent do post-socialist consumption practices both challenge and reinforce a new order? what kinds of continuities with socialism can we observe here? indeed, as humphrey has asked, does the category of postsocialism remain useful or presentative (humphrey 2002)? seventeen years after the fall of the berlin wall, these essays suggest that it is. references berdahl, daphne. 2005. “the spirit of capitalism and the boundaries of citizenship in postwall germany.” comparative studies in society and history 47(2):235-251. bourdieu, pierre. 1984. distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. humphrey, caroline. 2002. the unmaking of soviet life: everyday economies after socialism. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. humphrey, caroline. 2002. does the category ‘postsocialist” still make sense? in c.m. hann (ed.), postsocialism: ideals, ideologies and practices in eurasia. pp. 12-15. london and new york: routledge. allen typewritten text © 2006 daphne berdahl all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. allen typewritten text aeer.indb the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 145 men and women dancing in the remembered past of podhale poland louise wrazen york university i am going dancing you musicians play on; and you, my friends, can bring out a girl for me. [1] this dancing within a larger social context. this past will be constructed in conversation with others in a manner which aims to provide some sense of “immediacy and particularity” (kisliuk 2000) even though no single ethnographic moment, or performance event, will be recreated in its entirety. song texts and extracts from interviews and conversations will be freely interspersed in weaving this narrative in order to explore the significance that dancing played in life in podhale. this is consistent with an on-going concern with dance, and the performing arts, less as a product than as a process which is clearly situated within a larger social context (blacking 1984:5). the precise nature of this relationship has been the focus of concern in recent work. studies have shown not only that music-dance practice can reflect pre-existing social structures and cultural knowledge, but that it can challenge and contribute to redefining them (see for example, cowan 1990; rice 1996; sugarman 1989), thereby supporting john blacking’s earlier suggestion that dance, or expressive culture, can not only reflect, but also can help to make patterns of society and culture (blacking 1984:10). as jane e. cowan elaborates, expressive culture is not merely “a kind of epiphenomenal icing on the cake of the ‘harder’ structural realities of kinship, economics, and political organization” (cowan 1990:5). this article will discuss dancing within the framework of social life and gender relations in podhale in order to explore its central role in traditional village life in the past. as a forum for self-display and the negotiation of relationships, dancing provided access to behaviors otherwise not encouraged within the parameters of the home and village (as explored in the recent anthropological work by frances pine in podhale). this essay first introduces podhale, considering traditional gender relations and including a brief, normative description of a typical set of dancing po góralsku. it then explores the dance in more detail, first as a series of choices available to the man, then through the more limited options available to women. this song text is one of many which can be chosen by a man preparing to dance “po góralsku” (in the highlander way), and is rooted in the traditional expressive culture of the górale from the podhale region of southern poland. [2] the text makes explicit two characteristics of this dance which will guide the following discussion: the performative relationship among text, dance and music, and the social relationship among the dancer, his friend(s), and his partner. the góralski combines music, song, dance, gesture and text into a coherent whole whose ultimate design is determined by the man spontaneously in performance.. [3] although typically classified as a type of dance, this designation appears limiting given the range of expressive domains involved in performance. it might, instead, be considered as a “blurred genre,” to borrow a phrase from clifford geertz (1983) and as used by greg downey in relation to afro-brazilian capoeira (2002). in fact, highlanders’ own preferred reference to dancing “po góralsku” stresses the process of performing rather than the product (performance). in this article, i shall adopt this perspective in exploring the genre as it embraces gesture, movement, song and text meaningfully through performance. my discussion is based on the dance as it was found in podhale in the past. today, the góralski forms the backbone of most performances and festivals presented by górale living both in poland and elsewhere (see for example, cooley 1999; wrazen 1991). this staged representation is based on the practice of spontaneous dancing “po góralsku,” which remains firmly rooted in the memories, if no longer always in the practices, of many górale today. it was through the vividness of their recollections of these memories that i first became aware of the significance of this dancing in the past for the górale with whom i spoke. [4] most had left poland as adults in the 1960s and 1970s and had immigrated to toronto or chicago. as they looked back to the days of their youth in podhale, they spoke, sometimes with nostalgia, of the times spent singing and dancing. this study will use these memories in the reconstruction of an ethnographic past to explore the significance of allen typewritten text allen typewritten text © 2004 louise wrazen all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. 146 louise wrazen the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 podhale and dancing podhale is located in southern poland between two mountain ranges: the gorce (part of the beskides mountain range) to the north and the tatry (part of the carpathian mountain range) to the south. its eastern boundaries are defined by the białka river; its western boundaries lie between the towns of czarny dunajec (podhale) and piekelnik (orawa). it lies approximately 600 meters above sea level and stretches about 57 kilometres east-west and 26 kilometres north-south. villages are scattered throughout the region. nowy targ in the north is the capital of the administrative district while zakopane, nestled against the tatra mountains in the south, thrives as a tourist haven. most górale at one time practised a form of transhumant pastoralism supplemented by various degrees of farming. families would raise sheep (and possibly some cows), and grow potatoes, beetroot, oats, rye, flax and hay. the sheep were kept at home during the winter and given to a local shepherd (baca) and his assistants (juhasi) to take to the mountains to graze during the summer months. other animals, mainly cows, were taken to other pastures by the villagers themselves, who stayed in the chalets built on these communal pastures. [5] this traditional form of livelihood resulted in a socio-economic structure that encouraged contact and cooperation between individuals in what melcher ekströmer described as an “economy of affection” (after göran hydén) which promoted “a network of support, communications and interaction among structurally defined groups connected by blood, kin, and community or other affinities (göran hydén as quoted in ekströmer 1993:81). writing of more recent village life in podhale, frances pine continues to stress this spirit of cooperation, suggesting that reciprocal bonds “between kin and houses are strong, and a collective morality underpins village social and economic organization” (pine 1999:45). reciprocity is practised between households in organizing farm labor, construction, and in the division of labor between men and women. [6] a complementarity of gender roles ascribed in work seems to characterize rural life in podhale, where in general men are associated with the farm and productivity, and women are associated with the household and reproduction. although such long-established patterns of gender divisions are typical, a certain flexibility is practiced within actual household operations (where the central authority revolves around the oldest couple, the male gazda and female gospdodyni [or gazdzina]) [7]: men and women have clearly defined tasks within the domestic domain and within farming and house-based production, but the division of labor is not rigid; if necessary, women may drive tractors and lead horse-drawn plows, men may cook, milk cows, and plant potatoes, and nobody considers this inappropriate. (pine 1999:56). efforts to survive in economically difficult times may have contributed to such flexibility, as husband or wife may have searched outside the village and farm, even traveling abroad, for more lucrative seasonal labor. such conditions brought many to toronto and chicago. the górale with whom i spoke refer to the traditional pastoral/agrarian lifestyle of their youth when describing their life in the villages to the north of zakopane. typically they weave a narrative around life on their small farm in the winter months and visits to the pastures in the foothills to the south in the summer. although they are realistic in describing the hardships that they endured, they inevitably stress the freedom once enjoyed in podhale, together with the strong sense of community life. the word “merry” (wesoło) frequently is used in these narratives, and inevitably is associated with music and dance. dancing depended on the presence of a string ensemble of from two to five violins and a cello-like instrument (basy). [8] according to some, this occurred “almost every day except during lent and advent.” [9] the precise accuracy of this statement is here not under investigation, for as svetlana boym advises in her discourse on nostalgia: “one is not nostalgic for the past the way it was, but for the past the way it could have been…” (boym 2001:351). one highlander is more specific in her memories of life in the village of her youth: there was more music [i.e., instrumental] in the winter than in the summer. the most was during carnival, since in podhale lent was very strict; similarly, during advent no one partied or danced. only after christmas was there real partying—almost every saturday there was a dance, and feathers were pulled [poracki] during the week—almost every day (lh 12/4/86) evenings associated with pulling goose feathers for pillows and comforters, or preparing flax for linen, stand out in people’s memories, and are recalled with particular vividness. at one time in podhale unmarried young women and men had relatively few chances to get together. other than seeing each other at church, the market or church name-day fairs, these occasions provided an ideal opportunity for young men and women to meet. the events of the dance floor at such occasions could articulate feelings of attraction that had few opportunities for expression outside the parameters of the dance: it didn’t happen that a girl would go out with a boy for a long time like here. i would meet my husband, then only a boyfriend, at the feather-plucking evenings—that’s all. if there was music, then we would sing and dance, and then we would go home. but heaven forbid if we should have gone out with a boy as happens here…a boy wouldn’t come to ask you to go to a dance—the girls men and women dancing in the remembered past of podhale poland 147 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 would go separately and the boys would go separately (lh 12/4/84). these occasions were also a time when young people from different villages could get together, since many adventurous young men would search out these gatherings in villages other than their own. at such occasions as many as fifty to sixty people could congregate in a small wooden home during an evening. once the musicians arrived with their instruments, dancing would inevitably follow. to initiate the dance then, as now, one man approaches the seated musicians. [10] the dance space is clearly defined immediately in front of the string players. everyone else sits or stands around the perimeter of the dance space, watching, talking, eating, drinking. the man begins singing a tune to a short text, such as the one quoted at the beginning of this paper. the musicians pick up the tune and begin playing it while the man waits for his partner to arrive. she is brought either by the man’s friend (for the first figure), or by her friends or older women for subsequent figures. his choice of partner has inevitably been arranged by the man with a friend prior to the dance. at the right moment, the friend runs to the girl, leads her onto the floor and swings her in a manner not dissimilar to that found in square dancing (zwyrtanie). this may take a while, and in the meantime, the dancer must wait. he may do little, or he may dance sideways around the dance floor—in a sort of walking movement. after the friend leaves her, the woman is free to dance with her designated partner. the couple dances without any physical contact, the woman following the movements of the man. they dance to the accompaniment of the original tune for as long as the man chooses. when he has had enough, he stops and returns to face the musicians, leaving the woman to return to the side. the man then sings another tune and returns to dance with his partner. the sequence may continue (in principle) indefinitely. an entire set usually would contain from three to eight numbers or figures (this refers to distinct uninterrupted periods of dancing to one tune); most often there would be from three to five. different tunes are chosen for their association with different dance steps and highlight different skills. when he no longer wants to dance, the man signals to the musicians and concludes by swinging his partner. at this point, another man may come up to the musicians and a new set will begin. this sequence of events defines one individual set, or music-dance event. in her consideration of dance in northern greece, jane e. cowan identifies the “danceevent” as a “temporarily, spatially, and conceptually ‘bounded’ sphere of interaction” where individuals publicly present themselves in and through celebratory practices (cowan 1990:4). though the parameters of the present discussion are not as broad as those established by cowan, and do not include, for example, eating and drinking, her model provides a useful scaffold: i regard each dance-event as a site, both physical and conceptual, where celebrants perform in gendered ways and experience themselves as gendered subjects (cowan 1990:4). in podhale positive notions of masculinity revolve around physical strength, courage and endurance. femininity is tied to notions of stability, sustenance, grace and beauty. the gorale’s own self-image and representations of femininity and masculinity are not dissimilar from a stereotype depicting the woman as “strong and beautiful, with a kind of earthy sensuality” and associating the man with more colorful behavior, which includes “heavy drinking, fighting and blood feuding” (pine 1992:59). this is reflected in the dancing, where the man dances with flamboyant, exuberant gestures and movements. to show himself to best advantage, a good dancer must add individual invention and, as they say, “fantasies” to his dancing, just as a good first fiddler is expected to creatively elaborate a melody in his playing. in contrast, the role of the woman is primarily supportive; she is to mirror the movements of the man and provide an ornamental foil for his movements. she is judged by the way she dances in synchronization with the man’s movements, by her demeanor, expression and by her ability to move lightly, as this song text suggests: my partner dances so lightly; she has a small tummy potatoes don’t weigh her down. [11] the extemporization, or selection, of a text (as above) was a part of the man’s role in the dance. ultimately text, no less than dance, could serve as the foundation for acceptance or approval of the dancer. the extemporization of a song text was a test of the dancer’s intelligence, and, if accepted, could become a part of the public repertoire of texts (bachleda-księdzularz 1981:36). these song texts were never taken for granted, and górale have an uncanny ability to remember texts long after they have been sung in performance. the importance of text may by attributed to the possibility that singing functioned, at least in the past, as an important form of communication which allowed the expression of something otherwise difficult, if not impossible, through speech. as one highlander remarked: “if you don’t want to tell me, then sing it to me.” that songs could substitute for speech was demonstrated to me in an awkward domestic situation where a woman no longer spoke to her estranged husband. in a moment of bitterness, she sang a biting text obviously directed at him when she knew he was within easy earshot. one introspective, analytically inclined highlander considered the significance of dance and song in the following terms: 148 louise wrazen the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 dancing and singing are very important…górale dislike honesty—that is, they dislike an honest opinion or explicit revelation of true thoughts and feelings. therefore, it was through the music and songs that true thoughts and feelings were revealed. every song had a moral lesson—a meaning couched in the text. similarly, much meaning was attached to the style and manner of dance (ss 1/22/85). positioned within this dance-event, song texts could have a powerful impact, serving to reinforce what was otherwise expressed in movement. implicit intentions and feelings could receive explicit expression. at one time in podhale men and women entered the physical and conceptual space of the dance deliberately, presenting themselves to public scrutiny, positioning themselves within this community and knowing that they were being evaluated and judged. not infrequently, their intentions were misinterpreted. the following section will examine how dancing po góralsku was an essential part of life in podhale in the past. not merely a peripheral diversion, it was primary to social processes, where, through performance, participants could present themselves as gendered individuals to the community, and to establish, maintain or contest relationships. dancing in podhale: men’s choices dancing po góralsku provided a showcase, first and foremost, for the man, who chose the tune, text, steps and length of the dance. this allowed him to express himself and his intentions at two levels: at a structural level, it placed him unequivocally in charge of the dance-event, while at the more detailed level of aesthetic content, it provided him with an explicit public forum for the overt display of a gendered, masculine, self. an overt display of individual style was essential to the dance as a revelation of character and intent. this is clarified in the insightful writing of the highlander franciszek bachleda-księdzularz: through the dance, the man reveals his experiences and psychological state first to his partner, and secondly to the other participants, these often being the germs of very private/personal proposals. each wanted to do this in the best way possible, appropriately (bachledaksiędzularz 1981:36). dancing became a potentially revelatory statement of intent primarily through decisions regarding with whom to dance, and how to dance. in exploring these options with górale, it became clear that tensions often developed between the primary dancer and those present. this could have been the result of the man’s deliberate transgression of socially defined, appropriate dance behavior, or it could have been the result of a misunderstanding between intention (man dancing) and interpretation (other participants). not infrequently, this discrepancy between intention and interpretation led to explicit social conflict. inevitably it generated an implicit tension among those present. the following discussion will explore the decisions allowed the man (when, with whom and how to dance) and how these contributed to a variety of social responses. first, the man had to decide when to dance. once an opportunity presented itself, most often after the previous dancer had finished, the man approached the musicians. given that the very decision to dance and to claim the floor was significant, it was marked by a dramatic entrance: the man usually took large steps which could end with a leap to land directly in front of the seated musicians. (he could also come with a friend if he wanted some help with the singing.) given the sense of exclusive ownership that surrounded this dance-event, any interruptions or transgressions of form became potential contestations and the careful balance between individual expression and social propriety could be upset in the course of an evening. this could occur if the man dancing overstayed his welcome on the dance floor (recalling that dancing po góralsku entitled the man leading the set to sole occupancy of the dance floor for his (self-determined) period of dancing). as an exclusive opportunity for one man (or a single couple) to assume the floor, this form of dancing forced others to watch, and wait. this could become problematic if men were forced to wait for longer than necessary, or if their much anticipated turn was somehow undermined. [12] the need to keep his dancing time restricted to a reasonable period of time was reflected in the following song text: i only just started, to dance with this girl; the other lads are looking, it’s time for me to stop. [13] if he refused to stop within a reasonable period of time in defiance of others’ rights to the floor, the man was clearly overstepping his bounds. the patience of those waiting might well be put to the test, and open confrontation could result. misunderstandings also could occur if a man was inappropriately interrupted during his set. given the value placed on having an opportunity to dance, any interruption was potentially problematic. in certain circumstances, good-natured interruptions between friends were accepted, as suggested in the following song text: i wanted to interrupt you, my dear friend; because it appears to me that your feet are sore. [14] to some extent, this practice may even have been necessary at some occasions, when it was not uncommon for young men to outnumber young women. since each man wanted to dance, at least for a short time, it was possible men and women dancing in the remembered past of podhale poland 149 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 to interrupt someone while he was dancing and take over the floor for a while (przerenczenie). the original partner would wait at the side until the intruder finished. this was a particularly delicate practice, however, and one which could easily lead to serious misunderstandings, even between friends, if the interloper danced for too long. a prolonged or unwanted interruption was a potential threat to the man dancing. by usurping the space from the original dancer, the interloper was contesting the man’s ownership of the floor, his right to self-expression and, ultimately, his very essence as a gendered, male protagonist in the event. not surprisingly, this would inevitably lead to a fight. such an interruption also could provide a welcome excuse for open confrontation between men harboring unspoken animosities. ultimately, therefore, this dance-event could provide an opportunity for the public expression of feelings which otherwise may have been left unstated, or at least minimized, within a community life largely revolving around reciprocity and cooperation. a third possibility for confrontation appeared with the arrival of outsiders. if “strangers” from other villages arrived expecting a turn to dance in an already crowded schedule, tension inevitably would mount, especially if the outsiders presented themselves in an overly boastful or pretentious manner. although an unwritten rule existed that the boys from the home village should allow the outsiders their chance to dance, this was often done begrudgingly. temperaments, personalities and circumstances could all contribute to confrontations flaring between boys from the home village and the strangers. song texts, such as the following, could exacerbate an already sensitive situation: even though you are as numerous here, as pine cones on a fir tree; i’m not afraid of you, because i came with a friend. [15] unhappy that “his” girl had danced with a man from the neighboring village of czarny dunajec, one young man used the following to begin his song: why did you come here, one from czarny dunajec… [16] there being no ambiguity as to intent, i was told a confrontation quickly developed between the young men involved. clearly, therefore, the decision to dance was not always welcomed by others. given the high demand for the dance floor, the situation was rife with the possibility of misunderstandings developing and tempers flaring, either through deliberate intent or (mis)interpretation. ultimately, such variations in the dance constituted potentially serious transgressions to the understood codes of behavior dictating the unfolding of the dance-event as owned by the primary dancer, and as conceptualized by the community. returning to the examination of choices available to the man dancing, the next decision made by the man was with whom to dance, and also, how to dance. by his choice of partner, a man could signal much about his interest in girls and their relationship to the young woman herself, to other men present and indeed to the community at large. a number of possible intentions motivated a man to choose his partner: first, he may have felt compelled to fulfill his social obligations by paying respect to family members or certain members of the community; second, he may have wanted to acknowledge his interest in a particular young woman, possibly as a future wife; and third, he may have chosen to deliberately transgress social rules and expectations. repeatedly i was told through interviews that social decorum and propriety dictated who would dance, who would dance with whom, and how they should dance. one highlander suggested that it was a son’s duty to dance first with his mother, and a husband’s to dance first with his wife. in fact sometimes it was necessary for a man to dance with many different partners in order to give every girl and woman the opportunity to dance. at a wedding, in particular, this included not only the young, attractive girls who were unmarried, but also all the older women and aunts who may have been attending. one highlander explained that because of the cost involved in giving an appropriate gift to the young couple, in the past often only the wife would attend a wedding in an effort to minimize the expense. as a result, many married, older women attended alone, and were without a dancing partner. but it was important to their social position to dance. it was an honor to be asked to dance and if not provided with an opportunity they would be considered socially neglected. it was a duty of the men present at some occasions, therefore, to make sure that each woman had her turn to dance. one highlander jokingly complained that the man was then “like a social institution” because he had to dance with many different women, even if he had absolutely no desire to do so. bachleda-księdzularz also stressed the importance placed on ensuring that certain people had the opportunity to dance (bachleda-księdzularz 1981:37). given this responsibility, derived from his sense of personal duty and honor, together with social obligation and respect, a man may well have been faced with the need to dance with many women and girls in one evening. in order to clarify expectations, he may have had to resort to a text such as the following to quell unwanted gossip: neither am i yours, nor are you mine; that i danced with you, is my good will. [17] such good will and respect ultimately perpetuated, and reinforced, both social positions and relationships from within the context of this dance-event. 150 louise wrazen the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 most often, if possible, a young man chose a partner because he liked the girl. acknowledging attractions and promoting a desired relationship with a woman were central to dancing po góralsku. it provided an explicit opportunity not readily found elsewhere within village life. the final set of choices, the decisions regarding how to dance, and what to sing, ultimately were linked with the man’s choice of partner. a number of immediate decisions had to be made by the dancer as soon as he arrived before the musicians in anticipation of his first dance (these had to be repeated each time he approached the musicians for a new figure). [18] once facing the musicians, he had to prepare to sing. first, he had to choose a song text, then decide upon one of over twenty tunes which would match this text and be appropriate for the first figure in the set; or he could choose the tune first. then, he could incorporate some variations: he could alter the number of syllables in the text by adding “ej” or “hej” and so choose from another group of tunes, or he could vary the rhythm and accentuation of another tune to match the expanded text. [19] finally, when ready, he started to sing to the musicians, facing them all the time. he would be slightly bent and would move in time to the song, which would soon be accompanied by chords in the instruments. he moved his arms in the air, fixed his hat, and moved from side to side. once finished singing, he waited for his partner to join him on the dance floor and the sequence would continue to unfold. once his friend left the dance floor after bringing out his desired partner, the man was free to dance, ideally, with the girl of his choice. if a couple felt attracted to each other, it was “a joy to dance together,” and this was evident in the couple’s movements. [20] one highlander woman suggested that it was as though the man was “cuddling up to the girl.” the movements of the couple could take them around the entire dance floor in a metaphorical chase as the man approached the woman, and she coquettishly moved away. although some distance remained between the two, they may have become quite close—even occasionally brushing against each other. some górale have compared the movements of the man dancing to the strutting of a cock, moving back and forth, as though ruffling his feathers to impress and engage his partner in his advances. if she liked him, the woman would mirror the movements of the man, looking straight into his eyes, smiling. an intimacy of engagement provided a potential intensity to this moment recognized by górale: you would dance with a girl you like in a way you danced with no one else…with greater intimacy and contact between the two dancers than in any other dance–even in those where they hold each other (wg 6/10/86). bachleda-księdzularz also has described the intensity of this interaction as it occurred, he suggested, usually in the second figure of the set: this is the point of culmination of the dance…here, now, in this most important place in the dance of the highlanders, the dancer [male] must “reveal himself,” display the complete depth of his feelings through dance. he must forget that anyone else is watching the two of them, as though, to substitute with dance for the words: we are here for each other. look, how proficient, renowned and lucky i am. in this dance with you i have all the riches of this world and am thirsting to deliver them to you. he must establish with his partner a psychological contact so intense as to lead her to the dance, so as to penetrate her through and through (bachleda-księdzularz 1981:39). given the potential significance of dancing, it was not surprising that misunderstandings developed. bachledaksiędzularz has explained that there was a certain amount of responsibility involved in dancing—not only a responsibility for the artistic value of the dance itself, but also for the delivery of one’s essence in the public forum (bachleda-księdzularz 1981:36). who was dancing with whom and how they were dancing were always noted; much could depend on the manner dancing. overly provocative gestures while dancing with someone else’s girl, or wife, were not ignored. as one woman explained, a man might interpret the actions of another man dancing with his girl as offensive, or likewise, might consider the dancing of his girl as being too provocative, forward or encouraging and as a result would start a fight with the man dancing. when acceptable boundaries of appropriate behavior in dancing were deliberately crossed, reactions could be immediate. one of the choices open to the man, therefore, was that of deliberately transgressing social rules and expectations in how to dance with his partner. intentionally provocative dancing might well have been reinforced by a self-congratulatory text such as the following: my little sweetheart, i’ll tell you the truth; because i know what you’re all about in the light of the full moon. [21] one highlander suggested that the significance of dancing imposed restrictions on who could dance with whom: a married man, for example, could dance only with his wife, or if in a family circle, he could dance with a close friend—but never with a young girl. that such restrictions could still be considered, if not necessarily followed, was revealed to me when an older woman described an occasion where her (married) son danced with an attractive woman other than his wife. upon seeing this, his motherin-law immediately started making loud and angry inquiries about the woman with whom he was dancing. but, as many highlanders also explained, dancing with someone else’s girl (or wife) need not necessarily result in hard feelings or misunderstandings if done honorably and respectmen and women dancing in the remembered past of podhale poland 151 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 fully. an effort ultimately had to be made to prevent the dance from being misinterpreted. the potentially sexual connotations of the dancing had to be well managed for misinterpretations not to occur. this could be aided by the inclusion of a text making intentions explicit: i’ll have to finish now, this will be enough of this; it is necessary to respect, someone else’s girl. [22] one highlander explained the range of possibilities available to the dancer by returning to the metaphor of the embrace: just as there are different manners of embracing, there are different manners of dancing. you embrace your sweetheart, a member of your family, or a stranger in different ways. each embodies a different feeling. dancing has the same function—different feelings are shown and felt depending on the manner of dancing (sm 5/14/86). ultimately it was up to the man dancing to manage the range of choices open to him in a way that would express his intentions. if these were in any way ambiguous, they could in turn lead to misunderstandings, and subsequent confrontation. as shown above, the man was able to make many choices when he danced po góralsku, including when to dance, with whom to dance and how. by exploring the full range of these options, he was able to articulate his intentions to best advantage in the community forum. it now remains to be seen what choices were open to women in this genre. dancing in podhale: women’s options women had a clearly defined role in this dance with few opportunities to exercise any significant influence. a woman entered the dance by request and was limited in her silent (non-singing) role of providing a partner for the man. whereas a man had many choices before him, a woman had a limited number of options. three occasions within the dance provided her with an opportunity to exert some control. first, and most obviously, the opportunity to dance allowed her to decide how she should dance in relation to her partner. specifically, the woman could choose to dance in a manner which was in contrast to the clearly implied amorous intentions of her partner, thus showing her ambivalence or disinterest in his advances. propriety, however, still governed that she appropriately mirror his steps and directions. should she overstep her prescribed boundaries and dance in too disinterested a manner, she might be in danger of insulting him, and/or of being ignored as a partner by other young men. this was not a desirable alternative. second, the woman, together with other women, could occupy the dance floor for longer than expected at the beginning of a figure. as already described, a woman’s participation in the dance was circumscribed to the extent that she could not enter the dance floor by herself. at the beginning of the dance she was brought by her partner’s male friend; for subsequent figures she usually was escorted by one or more of her girlfriends or by several older women. the women first turned in one direction and then the other, using the same steps the male friend had used to bring the woman to the floor. this could continue, in principle, for as long as the women chose, and represented the one opportunity for women to exert complete control over the event. the man had to wait for the women to leave before he could dance with his partner. this could have been a potentially embarrassing, or at least annoying, wait for an impatient dancer who had presented himself onto the public arena in anticipation of promoting himself, only to find this opportunity thwarted (temporarily) by some imposing women. [23] finally, most exceptionally, and most seriously, a woman could refuse to go to the dance floor when approached by the man’s friend at the beginning of a set. unless the woman had a legitimate excuse, however (for example perhaps the man was too drunk to dance), this was considered a serious insult. the man fully expected events to unfold in the manner of his choosing. by taking the dance floor, he assumed a responsibility for his public actions, and with this some degree of vulnerability. such a refusal, therefore, would threaten his presentation as a gendered protagonist in the dance-event. it would serve as a serious humiliation which would strike to the very core of his pride and honor as a man. it was stressed that such a refusal was very dishonorable and very rare. if it occurred, however, it would not go unnoticed. the offended man would inevitably seek retaliation, possibly by addressing an insulting song text to the woman when he next approached the musicians: _____________, since you didn’t want to dance with me; i have had a good dance, and you just sat. [24] in addition, no one else would dance with the woman. even if an insulting text was not sung, this blatant neglect alone would disgrace her. such a damaging response by the man would cause most women to hesitate before refusing to dance, no matter how undesirable the partner. women, therefore, were limited in the options that they had when dancing po góralsku. furthermore, if they chose to exercise an option which could threaten the man’s intentions, they could suffer the consequences of their actions. the dance belonged to the man; the woman was largely supportive. this appears to be in contrast with traditional social and economic 152 louise wrazen the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 patterns in podhale, as outlined earlier, where men and women played complementary roles. women’s subservient role in the dance is in contrast with gender relationships which have been characterized as fluid, negotiable and apparently flexible (pine 1999). yet the significance of this flexibility, or complementarity, in work may ultimately be undermined by the suggestion that the merits of some (women’s work) are discredited in favor of others (men’s work). frances pine has found that the work and activities of women and men are not equally acknowledged. she suggests that whereas men’s work is given a high value, women’s contributions are largely unacknowledged. she notes that women are expected to be strong, hard-working and independent, and have a significant power base in their ownership of land and property. none the less, their work is both economically and culturally undervalued in relation to that of men, and they are subject to a series of gender-linked constraints (pine 1992:58). one of these constraints is manifest in the performance of dancing po góralsku where women assume a secondary, supportive role in a dance-event which ultimately underlines patriarchal authority. [25] conclusions the memories of górale living in the north american diaspora are easily stirred to recount anecdotes and incidents of dancing during their earlier years in podhale. these sometimes are recalled in a voice tinged with regret, suggesting a possible mourning of displacement and temporal irreversibility which returns with the vivid recollection of the past (boym 2001:xvi). that nostalgia may cloud their recollections, however, should in no way undermine our consideration of the narrative which they unfold. the temporal multi-dimensionality of past and present places the teller reflexively in the telling and in the told, creating an ethnographic narrative that we can then consider in a number of ways. in this article, i have focused on the events told rather than on the tellers in order to consider these stories as they reveal the central role of dancing po góralsku in social and cultural process in the podhale of the past. the clearly defined physical space of the dance was reinforced by a conceptual space which positioned the dancers as gendered performers negotiating within a dance-event determined as much by social expectation as by aesthetic/ stylistic criteria. located within a traditional socio-economic framework based on cooperation and reciprocity, dancing provided a strategy for articulating animosities and rivalries “outside” the closely-knit framework of village life between and within genders. the consideration of a dichotomy between inside and outside spheres has been explored by frances pine. analyzing górale society in terms of binary opposites, she suggests that for the górale the major contrast is not based on gender (male/female), but on marital status (married/unmarried) and self-definition relative to the rest of the world (inside/outside). pine contrasts the house and village community, where there is little place for the pursuit of individual desire or skills, with the outside space, where the performance of individualism, self interest, and “presentism” is appropriate. she notes also that the period before marriage similarly offers opportunities for individualism, in contrast to marriage, which emphasizes conformity and mutuality (pine 1999). the inside was associated with married life, the house/village community, conformity, mutuality and house/family interest; the outside was associated with being single, beyond the village community, autonomy, individuality, self-interest. within the framework of this analysis, dancing po góralsku created an “outside” opportunity “inside.” it provided an explicit opportunity for exhibitionism, individualism and potentially provocative behavior inside the community. but it also provided this opportunity to both the unmarried and married, and so to some extent bridged both worlds. it offered any man able to take possession of the dance floor an equal opportunity for self-display and the expression of intent. it was then up to the individual man dancing either to conform to the social conventions and expectations or to contest them. whereas dancing re-opened opportunities associated with being single and with the “outside” to men, it confined women to a supportive role which they were more able to transgress outside the conceptual space of this expressive form, thus here keeping them “inside.” far from being a peripheral diversion, or irrelevant epiphenomenon, dancing in podhale was therefore a socially indispensable site of meaningful action and contestation (see also rice 1996:176). as the opening song text suggests, by “going dancing” a man, together with a woman and his friends, initiated a complex process of actions and interactions, thereby accessing domains associated with both inside and outside the traditional community structures through performance. endnotes 1 kotonski 1955:38: jo se idem tańcyć, wy, muzycy, grajcie, a wy mi, koledzy, dziwcyne zwyrtajcie! all translations are my own unless otherwise specified. while attempting to be as literal in the translations as possible, i have taken certain liberties in an effort to maintain some of the poetic eloquence of these short song texts. men and women dancing in the remembered past of podhale poland 153 the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 2 “górale” (after góra=hill) refers to anyone living in hilly/mountainous areas. i adopt the plural “górale” as both noun and adjective, singular and plural. 3 górale tend to use the adverb form and say “to dance po góralsku” (in the highlander way) rather than “to dance the góralski,” as i do here. 4 my contact with the górale from podhale in toronto began in 1979. more intense fieldwork was undertaken between 1982 and 1986 in toronto; i visited chicago in 1983, 1985 and 1986, podhale in 1985, 1989 and 2002. i am grateful to tim rice for his comments and suggestions. 5 this pastoral life began to change in the mid-1950s when a large part of the tatra mountains was turned into a national park and grazing was forbidden (see ekströmer 1993). 6 the fine work by frances pine informs much of this discussion. see, for example, pine 1992, 1996 and 1999. though working predominantly in the ethnographic present of the 1980s and 1990s, pine’s observations are relevant here. 7 ties to home and family are traditionally strong; a history of partiple inheritance guarantees both men and women a right to property, though one son or daughter usually is the main heir to the core farm (see pine 1996). 8 for more discussion of the music, see cooley 1999a; wrazen 1991. for a collection of instrumental transcriptions of tunes, see mierczyński 1973/1930. 9 lent is the period of forty days immediately preceding easter, and advent includes the four sundays before christmas. 10 the following synopsis of a typical dance sequence is based on my participation and observation of both folkloric and spontaneous events in toronto, chicago and podhale. 11 sadownik 1971: no 676:moja tonecnica lekućko táńcuje, malućki brzusek mo, nie ciązom ji grule. 12 this contributed to the inclusion of an increasing number of general couple dances such as polkas and waltzes at such occasions. 13 sadownik 1971: no 433:dopiyrok se zacon z tom dziywcinom tońcyć, chłopcy spoziyrajom, trzeba bedzie skóńcyć. 14 sj 6/16/86: chciałem cie przerenczyć, mój kolego drogi, bo mi sie tak widzi, ze cie bolom nogi. 15 sj 5/16/86 interview: choć by wos tu było, jak na jedli szyszek jo sie wos nie bojem, bom z kolegem przysed. 16 m.f: poco ześ tu przysed, corno dunajecki… 17 sj 6/16/86: ani jo se nie twój, aniś ty nie moja, zem z tobom tańcował dobra wola moja. 18 see kotoński (1953:43–45) for a full consideration of this moment. 19 see mierczyński 1935, kotoński 1955, sadownik 1971/1957, szurmiak-bogucka 1959, for collections of vocal tunes. 20 for a full discussion of dance steps and movements, see kotoński (1956). an english language summary is found in wrazen 1988:137–159. 21 mf: moja kuochanecka jo ci powiem w łocy; bok cie wymiarkowoł przy misiącku w nocy. 22 sadownik 1971:no. 431: trzeba bedzie skóńcyć, bedzie juz doś tego, trzeba przysanować dziywcęcia cyjéguo. 23 folkloric representations of this dancing often include some of the features discussed above: a man interrupting another dancing and leading to a fight (bujka); a (humorous) prolongation of women swinging the girl before her dance. they typically are included for dramatic effect, to add to the narrative potential of the presentation. 24 lh 2/27/85: __________, kies tanćyć nie chciała; jo se juz wytońcył tyś sie wysiedziała. 25 pine notes that rituals involving men underline patriarchal authority rather than fertility (pine 1992:68). references bachleda-księdzularz, franciszek 1981 “prawda i fałsz w tańcu góralskim.” podhalanka 1(6):35–41. blacking, john 1986 [1984] “‘dance’ as a cultural system and human capability: an anthropological perspective.” in report of the third study of dance conference: university of surrey, edited by janet 154 louise wrazen the anthropology of east europe review volume 22 • number 1 • spring 2004 adshead, 4–21. surrey: national resource centre for dance, university of surrey. boym, svetlana 2001 the future of nostalgia. new york: basic books. cooley, timothy j. 1999a “ethnography, tourism, and music-culture in the tatra mountains: negotiated representations of polish górale ethnicity.” ph.d. dissertation, brown university. 1999b “folk festival as modern ritual in the polish tatra mountains.” the world of music 41(3):31–55. cowan, jane e. 1990 dance and the body politic in northern greece. princeton: princeton university press. downey, greg 2002 “listening to capoeira: phenomenology, embodiment, and the materiality of music.” ethnomusicology 46(3):487–509. ekströmer, melcher 1992–93 “cooperation and culture. on forms of cooperation in the gorale society.” ethnologia slovaca et slavica xxiv–xxv:79–93. geertz, clifford 1983 local knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology. new york: basic books. kisliuk, michelle 2000 “performance and modernity among baaka pygmies: a closer look at the mystique of egalitarian foragers in the rain forest.” in music and gender, edited by pirkko moisala and beverley diamond, 25–50. kotoński, włodzimierz 1953 “uwagi o muzyce ludowej podhala cz. iii—o tworczym sposobie wykonania,” muzyka 4(11–12):26–46. 1955 piosenki z podhala. kraków: polskie wydawnictwo muzyczne. 1956 góralski i zbójnicki: tańce górali podhalańskich. krakow: polskie wydawnictwo muzyczne. mierczyński, stanisław 1935 pieśni podhala na 2 i 3 równe głosy. warsaw: wydawnictwo zwiázku nauczycielstwa polskiego. 1973[1930] muzyka podhala. warsaw: polskie wydawnictwo muzyczne. pine, frances 1992 “uneven burdens: women in rural poland.” in women in the face of change: the soviet union, eastern europe and china, edited by shirin rai, hilary pilkington and annie phizacklea, 57–75. london and new york: routledge. 1996 “naming the house and naming the land: kinship and social groups in highland poland.” the journal of the royal anthropological institute 2(3):443–459. 1999 “incorporation and exclusion in the podhale.” in lilies in the field: marginal people who live for the moment, edited by sophie day, evthymios papataxiarchis and michael stewart, 45–60. boulder colorado: westview press. rice, timothy 1996 “the dialectic of economics and aesthetics in bulgarian music.” in retuning culture: musical changes in central and eastern europe, edited by mark slobin, 176–199. durham and london: duke university press. sadownik, jan (ed). 1971[1957] pieśni podhala—antologia. warsaw: polskie wydawnictwo muzyczne. sugarman, jane c. 1989 “the nightingale and the partridge: singing and gender among prespa albanians.” ethnomusicology 33(2):191–215. szurmiak-bogucka, aleksandra 1959 górale, górale, góralska muzyka (śpiewki podhala). warsaw: polskie wydawnictwo muzyczne. wrazen, louise 1988 “the góralski of the polish highlanders: old world musical tradition from a new world perspective.” phd dissertation, university of toronto. 1991 “traditional music performance among górale in canada.” ethnomusicology 35(2):173–193. film review: diamonds in the dark, by olivia lucia carrescia, first run/icarus films, 2000, 60 minutes joel marrant, linfield college in 1993, yvette biro described the geographical and psychological terrain portrayed in eastern european cinema as "a landscape after battle". such is the romania depicted in new york filmmaker olivia lucia carrescia's recent documentary diamonds in the dark, an insightful study of the devastation wrought by the ceausescu regime and the problems faced in the period of transformation since its fall. as she has done in previous productions about guatemalan immigrants to the us, carrescia has chosen in diamonds to illuminate textures of human experience rather than attempt to make cinematic sense in less than an hour of a highly complex and even chaotic reality. in ternls of biro's sadly appropriate metaphor, the effect is something like meeting casualties returning from the front. some are bloodied and bandaged, others intact and hopeful, all moving past with tired eyes and worn faces revealing and concealing to varying degrees the experience of war in the trenches. all are survivors of a struggle that has not ended but just shifted theatres. the eyes and the faces are exclusively female, more than a dozen women of diverse social and economic backgrounds who reflect on life under ceausescu's pseudo-communism and the decade of crypto-democracy that has followed. their words vividly convey the madness of the man, his wife, and their regime, the huge costs they exacted from a people to whom history has never been kind, and the mixture of confusion, disillusionment, and guarded optimism that has followed the 1989 revolution. carrescia's primary goal was to make a film about romanian women and the lives they have forged and are forging for thell1selves under tremendously challenging conditions. in this she has succeeded admirably. rural peasants, urban professionals, factory workers, and others speak of what they had to endure during the communist era: the brutally enforced pro natalist policies; the crushing material deprivation; the party' s distortion of language and truth; the daily humiliation of queuing to buy bread, to bribe, to grapple \vith bureaucracy. the varying responses of the women to such experiences defy our american inclination to line up all ducks in an ideologically seamless row, eliminate grays, and find at all costs a solution to the problems of history. romanian history, as mircea eliade has argued, is a "terror" that is endured rather than resolved, the scourge of reason and the happy ending-be it concocted by marxist utopians, disney enthusiasts or \vide-eyed venture capitalists. to represent the terror, carrescia does not overload the viewer with the now-familiar images of orphanages, street children, and tenements. rather, she effectively juxtaposes archival shots of a demoralized and impoverished population with surrealistic footage depicting aparatchik and fresh-faced pioneers singing the praises of wholly illegitimate leaders. these, in turn, are contrasted with contemporary images of revived romanian cities, the beautiful romanian countryside, and the women at work and home with their families. the narrative line is minimal and jumps freely between past and present, sub­ regions and speakers. clearer identification of the latter might have helped viewers to sort things out and see the close connections between individual biographies and overarching social forces. but carrescia's intention is not to provide an objective socio-political history of romania but rather to lay bare some of its fundamental problems and contradictions past and present and arrive at issues of universal significance: the difficulties of forging genuine social change and democracy, the control ideology can have over the mind, what constitutes human freedom. these issues are illuminated by quotations from the croat journalist slavenka draculic, one of the earliest feminist critics of the communist system in eastern europe. they help to stitch together the words and ideas presented by the romanian women who have, like drakulic, struggled with and survived a dehumanizing system, and yet face enormous challenges ahead. a baia mare factory worker in her forties intimates with a chilling pragmatism her \'01. 19, no.1. spring 2001, page: 153 decision to induce one or two miscarriages a year by techniques undetectable by gyllecologists. (periodical "checks" for pregnancy and illegal terminations of pregnancy were mandatory after the 1966 anti-abortion decree outlawing all forms of contraception.) her words are juxtaposed with those of a pentecostalist, among the most persecuted of populations under ceausescu, speaking proudly of following her faith's directive to produce "as many children as god will give us." bearing fourteen offspring earned this dedicated enemy of the godless communist state a medal as a "socialist heroine"-just another contradiction wrapped inside the larger paradox of a socialist republic that was neither socialist nor republican. others talk of the double shift borne by women working on collective farms, who also recall the benefits of full employment, cheap housing, and free education under the ceausescus. the "very good life" experienced then in the relatively few noncollectivized villages is described by a bixad peasant, who says they "had everything they needed." a retired schoolteacher uses the same phrase about the present situation, though she laments the fact that inadequate pensions require her and her husband to work harder now. these and other contradictions are not sorted out in the film, but left to the viewer to gnaw on and digest. underlying the varied experiences of past and present is a common sensitivity derived from the subjects' identity as women who overcame the communist regime's relentless war upon human relationships. "pre-revolutionary" romania was a society in which private interpersonal ties provided virtually the only dimension on which female social identities could be constructed. carrescia speaks bluntly and accurately of romania as a patriarchal nation where women have historically played no public role, and traditional social institutions radically restricted their gaining of political power. yet the communist regime boasted of an "egalitarian" system in which bourgeois sexism had beenjettisoned, and women shared power with males. the reality, of course, was quite different. everyone knew that the public women of romania, with one brilliant exception, were forced to be vapid and powerless place-holders, communist bimboane. it was as if "mother elena" had sucked all of the potential power for romanian women into her own bloated ego, leaving only a desiccated and insubstantial shell for others. traditionally restricted to the realm of human relationships, principally family, as the primary source of self-identity, women in romania were particularly vulnerable to a political regime that sought to devalue and undermine interpersonal ties. the women's comments about this assault on their humanity bring the true horror of two decades under ceausescu into focus. life was so very difficult, they repeat over and over, because the daily struggle to stay warm, fmd enough food to eat, keep body and soul together, resulted in what anthropologist katherine verdery has called "the erosion of sociability." people were forced to isolate themselves from each other, to "atomize." the universe of authentic engagement was constrained within the tiny kitchens of tenement apartments where, if one turned up the radio volume and spoke softly enough with the few friends and family members you really trusted, you could express what was really in your heart. developing anything like a public perspective on the world, a practice of civil engagement, or bonds relating women to each other, was a luxury that only very few could afford, or a risk that even fewer dared to take. one of the latter plays a key role in diamonds in the dark: tea luca, the long-time director and chief curator of the museum of art collections. speaking in french, luca tells of her dangerous tightrope walking without a net over the state's official policies on culture and aesthetics. since the first few years after the fall of the ceausescus, however, she has largely withdrawn from the political arena. other women, including dr. lucia briscan and madalina nicolaescu, a university professor, have moved into the front lines of a still embryonic women's movement in romania. perhaps one of the most important insights of the film is that women's rights there since 1989 have not so much advanced or regressed, as moved sideways. in the words of lucia briscan, women in romania have become publicly "invisible" since the revolution. while politically expedient bimboane have disappeared from the public eye, patriarchal structures have acted to keep authentic leaders such as briscan from stepping into positions of genuine political power. the film, however, offers evidence of alternative power-building going on. nicolaescu is shown teaching a class on feminist theory, and ngos such as the proeurope league, which briscan serves as head of the women's department, are depicted as providing pathways for community development and consciousness-raising outside vol. 19, no. 1. spring 2001, page: 154 traditional structures. looming large, ho\veyer, are sharp generational and urban-rural lines that inhibit the free flow of information and the making of common cause. the degree to which feminist grass roots efforts and the proeurope league can help to consolidate a power base for women in romania also depends on macro-level forces the film does not address: the post­ revolutionary government's ability to forestall a descent into economic chaos, the threat of a neocommunist resurgence, and the whims of eu ministers. the dominant ethos in romania, moreover, remains a self-interested concern with survival for oneself and one's 0\\11. with a gap widening between those few who are flourishing in the "jungle economy" and those being slowly strangled by the vines of a modern and unfamiliar capitalism. in the face of the challenge, a withdrawal from the warfare of public policy into the safe confmes of affirming personal relationships is held out as a reasonable option. perhaps the most disorienting voice in the entire film is that of a retired state filmmaker, wearing a headscarf of ambiguous symbolism, who asks rhetorically, "why would women ever want to get involved in that dirty world of politics anyway, with its turmoil and struggles, battles and plots? why ride the tumultuous wave that buffets you when you can just sink beneath the waves and breathe easily'?" diamonds in the dark does not aim to answer questions about what socialism/communism was or what comes next, or the problems of political economy in this "transformational" era in eastern europe. rather than sorting out the unsortable, the film shows viewers the tangled mess of a failed experiment in social engineering and invites debate, comparison, and deeper investigation into its implications. the title alone is worth several hours of discussion. carrescia derives it from a comment by a bucharest translator who survived ceausescu's regime by turning inward and reading voraciously. she refers to a phrase in one of arthur miller's plays, "it is dark here but full of diamonds", and suggests that this captures for her the experience oflife in her native country. the words call to mind polish filmmaker andrzej wajdas ashes and diamonds, and the metaphor of poland as a phoenix, or even the jesus christ of nations, rising again and again from the smoldering rubble ofhisrory. the young woman's image conveys the more human scale of the romanians' experience as victims of history. ceausescu portrayed himself as a brilliant sun god bringing "luminosity" to the people of his country, who in reality labored in mines lit only here and there by 40-watt bulbs. olivia carrescia's courageous film reveals the diamonds who provided the real source of illumination in the darkness, and their potential to shine when exposed to full and authentic sunlight. vol. 19, no. 1. spring 2001, page: 155 22 teaching east european anthropology katherine verdery, johns hopkins university katherine verdery (johns hopkins university) shares her ideas for teaching a course in east european anthropology. following her introduction and annotations written specifically for newsletter readers, we reproduce her syllabus in its entirety. we hope this is the first in a series on the subject. if you teach such a course, send us your ideas and syllabi. if-you don't teach such a course, why don't you? the course is designed to start students off with a fairly sympathetic view of the real problems faced in socialist transformation (i.e., ferge -supposedly but not actually available in paperback, it turns out). it then goes through a number of topics designed to raise obstacles to socialist "ideals," to present actual processes and variations in these, and to show attempted solutions to real-life dilemmas faced by the regimes and/or their citizens. it turns finally to assessing various forms of resistance or negative evaluation, asking how these vary in form and content for different social groups why we seize upon some forms more than others, etc., and emphasizing that much dissent comes from those who would not overthrow socialism far capitalism but would rather improve it as socialism. throughout, i argue against the categories in terms of which americans view socialist countries -my first assignment juxtaposes propaganda pieces from time a couple of remarks on the specific content of a few assignments. in the week on "family ties etc., i aim partly to show how problems in the official distribution system are variably mediated, depending on the degree of private agriculture, by rural-urban kin ties and movements, and i will also use these ties and movements to talk about cross-class relations and bases for solidarity. i will then pivot the discussion around, on the rural-urban-movement theme, to talking about the "double burden" of women and problems in reproducing the labor force. the discussion of "cultural homogenization" takes several realms in which state policy is clearly aimed to create new kinds of public response~ new "silences" and new foci of attention, via and the romanian press. given the sorts of things my students are so far offering as views, i think combating this is the first duty of the course, more than any coherent "organizing scheme" beyond an attempt to move toward a sympathetic and informed critique, from initial presentations of socialism's attractiveness as an idea. 23 appropriating folklore, censorship, minorities policies, etc.; two weeks later i take up the popular view of many of these things, with haraszti's book, my first aim is to get students to figure out what's wrong with it: why haraszti is a bad informant, and why his kind of factory is nonrepresentative. then i'll pick up the shreds that are worth keeping (work slowdowns, etc.). you will note that i have not used the only english-language anthropology book on hungary (c. m. hann)the main reasons are that students mostly didn't follow it in a different course in which i used it, and i have too much on hungary as it is. there are many reference works i am consulting to prepare lectures but have not included in the course bibliography. i will try to complete this longer bibliography for a later newsletter 7.335 . comparative socialist societies this is an exploratory course designed to investigate a range of issues concerning east european socialist countries. the course has several objectives; the most important are to emphasize the countries' differences from one another, to relate both the differences and some of the problems of socialism's "working" to facts of varying political and economic histories, to present the issues ant problems as much as possible from the point of view of east europeans rather than of western analysts, and to insist on a close investigation of actual social processes, rather than mere outlines of structure, as the basis for assessing how these societies run. the special contribution of anthropology, even though relatively little of it has been done in eastern europe, is especially evident for the last of these points. literature of the sort i wish to emphasize is very unevenly distributed, for english-speaking readers. to my knowledge, there is little for albania, bulgaria, and east germany; only modest amounts for czechoslovakia; more for some aspects of jugoslav and polish society; and by far the most for romania and hungary (hungarians themselves having produced much of the most useful and interesting work). to avoid overlap with other courses in the university and from limitations of my competence, i make only restricted use of material from the soviet union and include none from other socialist societies (china, cuba, etc.). assignments attached is an outline of topics to be covered, a list of assignments, and a reference bibliography. changes may be made in the assignments at any time: it is your responsibility to keep track of 24 any such changes. since many of the assigned items are available in only one copy in the reserve room, i urge you to begin reading well in advance the following books have been ordered for the bookstore. not all of them will be read in their entirety, but purchasing them will make life easier for you. the ones to be read more or less in-full are starred. of each week's class session. (this course will, if nothing else, expose you to the difficulties of working within economies of shortage like the east european economies!) • ferge, zsuzsa 1979 a society in the making: hungarian social and societal policy 194575. • haraszti, miklós 1977 a worker in a worker's state. okey, robin 1982 eastern europe: feudalism to communism. • sweezy, paul, and charles bettelheim 1971 on the transition to socialism. requirements the course will be run as a combination of lecture and discussion sessions. please come to class regularly, with assignments completed. i will give an occasional unannounced quiz, two short paper assignments on specific readings, and a final take-home exam. there will be no senior option for the final exam. your grade will be based on all of these, including your participation in discussions. week date outline of weekly topics i. preliminaries 1 jan 2728 introductory sessions. 2 feb 3-4 founding ideals: short introduction to marxism-leninism. 3 feb 1011 descriptive views from within. 4 feb 1718 descriptive views from within. ii. issues 25 5 feb 2425 divergent historical antecedents to a "unified" revolutionary model. 6 mar 3-4 macroeconomics organization: varying centralizations, collectivizations, ant articulations with capitalist and socialist economies. 7 mar 1011 local-level economic processes, emphasizing the rural sector. 8 mar 1718 family ties, migration, and urbanization. 9 m 31 a 1 cultural homogenization and the state: censorship, folklore, minorities, ritual. 10 apr 7-8 problems of legitimacy and forms of resistance. assessing "dissent." i. dissent in the factory. haraszti. 11 apr 1415 ii. other forms of popular resistance (counter-uses of folklores parades, emigration, loafing, solidarity, jokes). 12 apr 2122 iii. critique by the intelligentsia: djilas, bahro, medvedev, and others. 13 apr 2829 change and the future: possibilities for creating more-satisfactory socialism. assignments jan. 28 time magazine and romania's president on socialism's failures and achievements (handout) feb. 3-4 founding ideals... k. marx and f. engels, communist manifesto (available under this title or in feuer, ed., marx and engels: basic writings) e. fromm, marx's concept of man, pp. v-83, 163-163. feb. 10views from within.... 26 11 hungarian short stories (xerox, on reserve) zs. ferge, a society in the making (begin reading. you may wish to stip oo-6c, 98112) k. verdery, transylvanian villagers, pp.18-22 (xerox) feb. 1718 zs. ferge, remainder feb. 2425 divergent histories... r. okey, eastern europe, pp. 13-34, 47-83, map p. 85, 110-123, 138-15}, 151-180 (skim), 228-232. note that there is a glossary in the back of the book. begin next week's reading mar. 3-4 macroeconomic organization. a. abonyi, "dependent development: a socialist variant" (xeroxed portion) z. fallenbuchl, "the interaction of development strategy and economic system... in poland" (xerox) p. gregory and r. stuart, comparative economic systpm pp. 284-310, 318-20. k. nyiri, "toward an integrated international division of labor..." (xerox, also in current periodical room) n. spulber, socialist management and planning, pp. 28-35, 80-101. p. sweezy and c. bettelheim, on the transition to socialism, pp. 3-54. j. wilczynski, the economics of socialism, 1-14,23-41. (xeroxed) recommended: sweezy and bettelheim, 93-106 mar. 1011 local-level economic processes j. kenedi, do it yourself, pp. 27-43 (xeroxed) 27 e. preobrazhensky, "peasantry and...the early stages of industrialization," in shanin, peasants and peasant societies. s. sampson, "rich families and poor collectives" (xerox) k. verdery, transylvanian villagers, pp. 23-40, 45-47 (xeroxed) also read any two or more of the following: d. doder, the yugoslavs, pp. 78-93 m. hollos, "ideology and economics.." (xerox, also in current periodical room) m.c. nagengast, "polish peasants and the state..." (ditto) f. pine and p.t. bsgdascwicz, "pollcy, response, and alternative strategy." (ditto) z. salzmann, "komaorov revisited: from local cooperative to regional consolidation" (xerox) on one of these two days we will have the hungarian film angi vera. mar. 1718 family ties. migration, urbanization m. cernea, "macrosocial change, feminization of agriculture..." (xerox) j. cole, "patterns of daily life in southeastern europe" (xerox) g. ronrsd and i. szele'nyi, "social conflicts of underurbanization" (xerox7also in m. harloe, captive cities) w. lockwood,~ "the peasant-worker in yugoslavia" (xerox; also in faber, social structure of eastern europe) h. scott, does socialism liberate women? ch. 7 (xeroxed) a. simic, the peasant urbanites, pp. 112-125 (108-112 optional) recommended: m. cernea, "the large-scale formal organization and the fsmily..." (stacks). mar. 2425 spring break 28 mar. 31apr cultural homogenization and the state... c.a.p. binns, "the changing face of power," (xerox, also in man, stacks) r. king, minorities under communism (tba) j. kott,"controlling the writing on the wall," ny review of books 25(13): 16-18 (august 17) (this& item below are in audio-visual rm.) l. lifshitz-losev, "what it means to be censored,~ ny rev. of books 25(11): 43-50 (june 29) j. marrant, "a contextual view of romanian folklore" (xerox) c. silverman, "the politics of folklore in bulgaria," (xerox) apr. 7-8 dissent in the factory. m. haraszti, a worker in a worker's state. read all. apr. 1415 other forms of popular resistance... e. hauser, "multivocality of the may day parade message" (xerox) d. kideckel, "the socialist transformation of agriculture..." (xerox, also in stacks in american ethnologist) g. kligman, "poetry and politics..." (xerox) o. norgaard & s. sampson., "poland's crisis and east european socialism" (xerox) s. sampson, "why do they leave?" (xerox) apr. 2122 critique by the intelllgentsia r. bahro, the alternative in eastern europe (tba) m. djilas, the new class, pp. 1-69, 154-172 j. kuron & k. modzexewski, "revolutionary marxist students in poland speak out," pp. 15-41, 62-69. 29 t. long, "on the class nature of soviet-type societies." (xerox) l. trotsky, the revolution betrayed, pp. 234-256. apr. 2829 change and the future: possibilities for creating moresatisfactory socialisms i. berend, "hungary's road to the seventies," (xerox) interview with andras hegedus (xerox) sweezy and bettelheim, on the transition...pp 107-122. (other assignnents to be announced) reference bibliography for assignments • abonyi, a. 1982 dependent development: a socialist variant. ms. • bahro, rudolf 1978 the alternative in eastern europe. london: verso. • berend, ivan t. 1980 hungary's road to the seventies. acta oeconomica 25: 1-17. • binns, c. a. p. 1979-80 the changing face of power: revolution and necommodation in the development of the soviet ceremonial system. man 14: 585-606, 15: 170-i87. • cernea, michael 1975 the large-scale organization and the family primary group. j. of marriage and the family 927-936. 1978 macrosocial change, feminization of agriculture, and peasant women's threefold economic role. sociologia ruralis 18: 107-124. • cole, john w. 1979 patterns of daily life in southeastern europe. ms. • djilas, milovan 1957 the new class: an analysis of the co ~ lnsst system. ny: prneger. • doder, dusko 1978 the yugnslavs. ny: vintage. • fallenbuchl, zbigniew 1982 the interaction of development strategy and economic system as a source of periodic socio-economic crises in poland. ms. • ferge, zsuzsa 1979 a society in the making: hungarian social and societal policy 19451975. baltimore: penguin. • feuer, lewis s. 1959 marx and engels: basic writings on politics and philosophy. ny: doubleday. • gregory, paul r., and robert c. stuart 1980 comparative economic systems. boston: houghton mifflin. 30 • haraszti, mirlos 1978 a worker in a worker's state. ny: universe books. • hauser, ewa 1977 multivocaiity of the may day parade message. ms. • hollos, marida 1982 ideology and economics:cooperative organization and attitudes toward collectivization in two hungarian communes. dialectical anthro. 7 (2): 165-183. • hungarian short stories 1979 from 44 hungarian short stories. budapest: corvina. interview with andras hegedus 1981 in • kenedi, janos 1982 do it yourself: hungary's hidden economy. ny: pluto press. telos 47: 132-137. • kligman, gail 1982 poetry and politics in a transylvanian village. ms. • konrad, gyorgy, and ivan szelenyi 1977 social conflicts of underurbanization. in • kott, jan 1978 controlling the writing on the wall. new york review of books 25 (13) 16-18 ( august 17). captive cities, ed. michael harloe, pp. 157-173. london: john wiley. • kuron, jacek, and karol modzetewski 1968 revolutionary marxist students in poland speak out. merit publishers. • lifshitz-losev, lev 1978 what it means to be censored. new york review-of books 25 (11): 43-50 (june 29) . • lockwood, william g. 1976 the peasant-worker in yugoslavia. in the social structure of eastern europe, ed. bernard faber, pp. 281-300. ny:praeger. • long, tom 1981 on the class nature of soviet-type societies: two perspectives from eastern europe. (review of bahro, and konrad and szelenyi). berkeley journal of sociology 26: 157-188. • marrant, joel 1975 a contextual view of romanian fol kl ore. ms. • marx, karl, and friedrich engels 1848 the communist mp^ifesto. • nagengast, birian csrole 1982 polish peasants and the state. dialectical anthropolo&y 7(1): 47-66. • norgaard, ole, and steven sampson 1982 poland's crisis and east european socialism: structural, specific, and conjunctural implications. ms. • nyiri, karoly 1982 toward an integrated international division of labor: the place of the world socialist economy. review 6(1):15-24. • okey, robin 1982 eastern europe 1740-1980: feudalism to co ~ rnism. u. of minnesota press. 31 • pine, frances, and p. t. bogdanowicz 1982 policy, response, and alternative strategy: the process of-change in a polish highland village. dialectical anthropology 7 (1): 67-80. • preobrazhensky, evgenii (1971) peasantry and the political economy of the early stages oi industrialization. in peasants and peasant societies, ed. t. shpnin, pp. 219-226. baltimore: penguin. • salzmaan, zdenek 1982 kom4tov revisited: from local cooperative to regional consolidation. ms. • sampson, steven 1981 why do they leave? ms. 1982 rich f~'lies and poor collectives: some anthropological notes on romania's second economy. ms. • scott, hilda ig74 does socialism liberate women? boston: beacon. • silverman, carol 1983 the politics of folklore in bulgaria. ms. • simic, andrei 1973 the peasant urbanites: a study of rural-urban mobility in serbia.' ny: seminar press. • spulber, nicolas 1971 socialist management and planning: topics in comparative socialist economics. indiana university press. • sweezy, paul m., and cgarles bettelheim 1971 on the transition to socialism. ny: mee. • trotsky, leon 1972) the revolution betrayed. ny: pathfinder press. • tucker, robert 1965 philosophy and myth in karl marx. cambridge university press. • verdery, katherine 1983 transylvanian villagers: three centuries of political, economic, and ethnic change. university of california press. • wilezynski, jozef 1982 the economics of socialism. (fourth edition). london: george allen and unwin. selected monographic works and theses, for reference • beck, sam transylvania: the political economy of a frontier. ph.d. thesis, 1979, u. mass. amherst. • bell, peter d. social change and social perception in a rural hungarian village. ph. d. thesis, 1979, u. of calif., san diego. 1983? peasants in socialist transformstion. u. of calif. press. • denitch, betty s. social mobility and industrialization in a yugoslav town. ph. d. thesis, 1969, u. of ci if., berkeley. 32 • bloch, harriet household economy and entrepreneurial activity in a polish village. ph. d. thesis, 1973. • halpern, joel m. 1958 a serbian village. ny: columbia u. press. • hammel, e.a. 1969 the pink yo-yo: occupational mobility in belgrade, ca. 1915-1965. • hann, c.m. 1980 tazlar: a village in hungary. cambridge u. p. • kideckel, david agricultural cooperativism and social process in a romanian commune. ph.d. thesis, 1979, u. mass. amherst. • kligman, gail calug: ritual reversal in rompnia. ph. d. thesis, 1977, u. of calif., berkeley. • lane, christel 1981 the rites of rulers: ritual in industrial society--the soviet case. cambridge u. p. • lane, datid 1976 the socialist industrial state: towards a political sociology of state socialism. london: george allen and unwin. • lockwood, william g. 1975 european moslems: economy and ethnicity in western 30snia. sy: academie. • marrant, joel the idea of folk tradition in romania. ph.d. thesis, 1977, u. of oregon. • mcarthur, marilyn s. the politics of identity: transylvanian saxons in socialist romania. ph. d. thesis, 1981, u. mass., amherst. • ratner, mitchell educational and occupationi selection in contemporary romsnia: a social anthropological account. ph.d. thesis, 1980, american univ. • salzmann, zdenek, and vladimir scheufler 1974 komarov: a czech farming village. ny: holt, rinehart, and winston. • sampson, steven l. national integration through socialist planning: an anthropological study of a romanian new town. ph.d. thesis, 1980, u. mass., a_herst. • winner, irene 1971 a sloveniar. village: zerovaica. providence: brown u. press. • skreija, andris boguty: a village in poland. ph.d. thesis, 1973. teaching east european anthropology katherine verdery, johns hopkins university reference bibliography for assignments selected monographic works and theses, for reference aeer template towards and anthropology of governance thomas c. wolfe university of minnesota i. let me say first that the question posed by the panel’s circulated proposal, concerning the impact of the upheavals of the late 1980s in eastern europe and the soviet union on anthropological practice, seems both entirely appropriate and extremely complex.1 after all, one reading of the history of anthropology suggests that there is a close link between the internal state of the discipline, its reigning methodological and conceptual tools and practices, and the political and social upheavals experienced by those societies that became laboratories for the creation of anthropological knowledge. according to this reading, american anthropology, for example, while certainly underway during the first two-thirds of the 19th century, was thinkable and practiceable as a scientific enterprise connected to a specific theoretical agenda only after the destruction of native american societies as autonomous political groups in the 1860s and 70s. to radically historicize the culture concept in the united states, this reading revisits the early expeditions among the societies of the northwest coast, whose military pacification, economic impoverishment, and political domination “clarified” social life so that “culture” became both visible and theorizable. and as to post-wwii anthropology, this reading might link the undermining of anthropology as a scientific project to the decolonization process of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. for example, in 1947, a colonial government that operated through the mediation and manipulation of indian culture gave way to the self-rule of nearly 600 million people; the new rulers inherited a system of “domination without hegemony,” in ranajit guha’s words, which continues to shape the societies of india into the 21st century. given the upheavals on the subcontinent, it seems hardly surprising that it was a student of south asia who pointed anthropology in the direction of “scapes,” those fluid, juxtaposed terrains where identities overflow their geographic homes like streams overflowing narrow banks. given these upheavals, it seems natural that historians of india began to develop withering critiques of the epistemological assumptions of anthropology in the first decades after independence. of course there are other sources of anthropology’s contemporary fissioning than the flourishing democratic chaos in south asia, but the sub-continent certainly proved a key site for critics to proceed with anthropology’s self-dissection. the events in eastern europe since 1989 are certainly on par with these other upheavals; the collapse of socialism and the end of the cold war represent an historical watershed that will remain the object of discussion and debate for many decades. however, the suggestion made in the call for papers for this panel, that this upheaval will certainly reorient anthropological practice, seems to me to be a difficult argument to make for a variety of reasons. first there are the caveats provided by the sociology of knowledge, which remind us that the formation of new paradigms are events not only in the realm of ideas but also in the social realms of universities, colleges, publishing houses, and media; new paradigms depend on a convergence of intellectual and market interests to flourish. but in general, it seems to me that the multitude of events that made this transformation possible are too close to us in time, and too ambiguous in their significance, for us to be able to relate them easily to shifting kinds of anthropological paradigms. although i should add that the radically historicizing perspective referred to above might just see the collapse of socialism as doing more to hasten the discipline’s dissolution than to provide it with new energy and purpose. a radical and pessimistic reading of the future of the discipline might argue that without the threat of communism, the social sciences are finally free to assist marketing strategists and public relations experts in their pursuit of the only transcendental goal we have left, to provide comfortable, normal lives for the planet’s inhabitants no matter what their culture happens to have handed them at birth. we could easily jen typewritten text 37 dismiss such a polemic if the processes it describes were not already well underway. nevertheless, i take the question behind the panel’s organization as a compelling and disturbing one: what does anthropology have to contribute to understanding the political and social upheavals in eastern europe? in this paper i want to suggest the value of a framework built around the concept of governance for analyzing the transformation of eastern europe and the former soviet union.2 it seems to me that such a framework might prove useful to the discipline in the necessary task of helping anthropologists to place their ethnographic material within a discourse adequate to the discursive, experiential, and political processes that shape their own lives and the lives of their informants. the framework of governance suggests we think most carefully and deeply about the phenomenon of subjectivity, and to inquire into the interface between the cultural shaping of subjectivities and their political-economic production. the concept of governance does not admit of any kind transcendental subject or purpose in history, preferring to stay on the most mundane level of phenomenal time in which human beings continually become in their interactions with others and with the possibilities offered by the past. it conceives of any social site as being a knot of techniques that determines this shaping, or in foucault’s words, “the conduct of conduct.” if this sound too structuralist, this framework of inquiry fully accepts the argument that part of any subjectivity is agency, and that accounts of social sites that view individuals as merely objects upon which power operates are seriously wanting. equally problematic, however, is the view of agency as being the analytic category that provides the key to historical understanding, allowing us to retrospectively liberate the enchained actors of the past. governance suggests that the work of liberation is performed not in the inevitably frustrated gesture of reaching towards the oppressed figure in the historical mirror, but in the clarification of the conditions under which one lives in the present, conditions given to us in the dense matrix of historical traces. it assumes furthermore that many forms of conflict and contestation underway in the contemporary world can be usefully understood as conflicts over modes of governing, requiring us to focus on the centers of governance from which these strategies are disseminated; and it suggests that we consider how these strategies are changed as they become part of the mix of meanings by which individuals rule themselves. finally, governance presumes the centrality of the concept of freedom, though not in the sense of the narrow band of freedoms within which liberal subjects are allowed to act, but in the experiential sense of finding ourselves on new, more intricate terrains of understanding of our own making. we might begin to see the value of this concept if we first acknowledge the new conditions for doing ethnography in eastern europe that have taken shape in the last decade. ii. the collapse of socialism has presented anthropologists of eastern europe with a basic predicament not faced by their teachers and mentors. this predicament is such that it is possible to understand how some of our senior colleagues in the subfield might feel a twinge of nostalgia for the bad old days of socialism. not that they have any fond memories of the absurdities and oppressive paranoia of state socialist regimes, but their work disrupted cold war discourse about communism, countering ideologically justified ignorance. their work spoke to the experiences of individuals living under this radically different system of economic organization. these ethnographies were inherently powerful critiques of ideology, as well as disinterested analyses of places and groups. for most anthropologists, the circumstances of fieldwork have changed as a function of the change of governments in the countries of eastern europe and the former soviet union. as far as the reproduction of the discipline goes, this has been a positive change, as the last decade has seen a significant increase in the ethnographic work on formerly socialist states. it is now completely normal to see articles, panels, and conferences about groups living in the states of eastern europe, central asia, and russia. and yet what is absent from this new work is the sense of confidence i alluded to earlier, confidence that came from the certainty that scholarly work is itself concrete jen typewritten text 38 action and protest against ignorance. what confronts the ethnographer today is not only ignorance about suffering but also massive, pervasive, real suffering, no longer an oppressive socialist state but an incompetent capitalist one, not only a suspicious (post)cold war mentality but also a desire to make everything better. what has changed is the place of the west in these societies. instead of being that not so obscure, but certainly impossible object of desire, the west is now present in manifold ways. the ethnographer is no longer observing how “they” live, how “they” organize their economy, how “they” exploit their populace, or how “they” manipulate culture to stay in power. since 1989 the ethnographer records the presence of us as well them, we are present in the form of television, advertising, and automobiles; we are embodied in the legions of bankers, philanthropists, advisers, management consultants, and media personnel who handle the eastern european accounts. we are also present in a more abstract but no less important way in the institutions we have sponsored and introduced, like stock markets, parliaments, law codes. ethnographers must also now record the reaction to “us” on the part of them, like the 26,000 letters that mcdonald’s of canada received in response to their ad seeking 600 employees for their first restaurant in moscow. in the context in which the background is no longer secure, the problems of identifying an ethnographic site and of establishing an ethnographic purpose become a predicament because it is impossible to crop one’s “own” society out of the ethnographic picture. of course anthropologists of other parts of the world have been concerned with these problems for some time now. but the fact that socialist states constructed a social, economic, and political system that operated in stark contrast to that of the west helped to insulate anthropologists of socialist societies from the debates of the 1970s and 80s about the global system, as well as from the various epistemological critiques of the discipline that began to appear in the 1970s. socialist states existed in their own kind of isolation, not so much primitive as different. but today, ethnographers of post-socialist states have to ask themselves questions that anthropologists of other parts of the world have been asking themselves for a while now, what sort of sense to do we seek from studies that ultimately define their object in terms of a geographically defined space or territory? what sort of authenticity do we assume lies in our recordings of the voices of our informants? what kind of closure do we seek from the fieldwork experience? how do we know that the knowledge we produce about those people over there is really about “them”? these questions are certainly difficult, but there is a worse danger in not addressing them, that we somehow reculturize the societies of eastern europe by applying to them the methods and concepts that define an anthropology that is no more. the concept of governance, however, seems immensely useful in thinking through both these new conditions of study and the situations of millions of people in eastern europe who are struggling to make sense of their lives. like the concept of culture, governance offers us a kind of mental grip on the present, without having the disadvantage of evoking something bounded, distinct, and abstracted from history. borrowing terms used by armand mattelart in his discussion of the “invention of communication” we could say that governance is culture developing under the influence of interconnections, mediations, and flows. governance not only embraces but takes as its essential object operations of power, operations it describes with concepts like political logics, economic rationalities, practices of liberty, strategies of coercion and consent. finally, governance takes for granted the fact that all societies are in one way or another coping with the problems set out by “modernity,” with the erosion of the power that emanated from “what came before,” an erosion caused in part by the expansion of a global economic system that has for five centuries woven together a fabric of mediations managed by an immensely complex array of institutions, discourses, and practices. more and more societies are coping with the imperative of constant recalibration between liberty and coercion, law and decree, manipulation and management. jen typewritten text 39 but before we take up the work of describing where formerly socialist societies’ might be in the process of enframing by the west, it is crucial to begin with some idea of where “the west” is in this unfolding problematic of governance. iii. since the second half of the 18th century western societies have inhabited what foucault termed a “liberal problem-space.” he employed this spatial metaphor to stress the ways governance is not only a list of philosophical principles and a set of political institutions; equally important is that the field of liberal action is marked out by a way of talking, thinking, and feeling. the establishment of this way of talking was a momentous development in european history, for it is difficult for us to think about politics in any way that does not take for granted the central category of the liberal universe: the autonomy of the person and the safeguarding of liberty by right. it is impossible for us to resurrect the great chain of being as the basis for our political system. while this way of speaking has undergone significant changes since the 1750s, it still occurs within the space first marked out by the philosophers, officials, and professionals who argued for liberalism’s self-evident truths in the 18th century. foucault called this a problem-space because within it appeared the essential question, how to govern, or more specifically, how to manage the liberty necessary for what the classical liberal thinkers understood as the unconstrained expression of mankind’s natural tendency to truck, barter, and exchange. “politics” became the ever widening terrain where improvised solutions to the problems of managing freedom were described and deployed. foucault’s contribution to our understanding of this history was to point out, first, how private interests were themselves expressions of disciplinary discourses that had as their goals new ways of instructing individuals how to reflect on and manage their own conduct. and secondly he stressed the ways that conduct was guided at-a-distance, through the operation of expert knowledges that engendered an institutional matrix within which certain kinds of practices were encouraged and others discouraged. he showed how liberty arose in the midst of these two spheres of the disciplining of bodies and the discovering of biopolitical truths. if these were the basics of classical liberalism, then significant improvisations at the end of the 19th century created what we commonly refer to as the welfare state, which involved a deeper embedding of the individual in society by means of an expanding range of expertise that guaranteed “social security and social protection in return for duties of social obligation and social responsibility” (rose 1996:41). the welfare state grew in conjunction with a proliferation of discourses about the self, discourses that led to ever more ways of acting upon citizens through administrative, bureaucratic, and institutional channels. then after world war ii, there appeared another permutation in liberal rationalities of government, now based on criticisms of the welfare state as a vast and unwieldy institution that devalued and diminished liberty through its endless generation of supervision and controls. this “neo-liberal” rationality of governance takes many forms of state action as its target, although we should not take its call for “less government” as meaning “fewer policies” or “less governing”; what is at issue for neo-liberalism is the streamlining of liberty’s management, not the erasure of liberal space altogether. neo-liberals promote models of autonomy and enterprise as the best solution for both the dilemmas of managing the self and the problems of macro-social conflict. these versions of liberalism should not be thought of as completely displacing the one that appeared before it; 19th century classical liberalism, 20th century welfare liberalism, and late 20th century neo-liberalism are rationalities of government that act simultaneously within our liberal problemspace, diagnosing ills and prescribing solutions according to their own logics and favored techniques. iv. this perspective on the western present as being an unfolding site of a multiplicity of projects of liberal governance is an important starting point for turning to the transformations of the societies of ‘89. it helps immensely, for example, in thinking about the timing of the fall of communism. it is jen typewritten text 40 vital to recognize that perestroika took shape under the intellectual tutelage of neo-liberals reagan and thatcher, that it was precisely the neo-liberal rhetorics of entrepreneurial dynamism and “responsibilization” that attracted gorbachev to reform in the first place. it was as if reagan and thatcher were the true pioneers of perestroika, with their attacks on the coal miners and the air traffic controllers, so that by 1985 it was gorbachev’s turn to pick up the concept and run with it. gorbachev, furthermore, could agree with the two free world leaders that the problem was the intrusive state, a state which kept people from “enterprising themselves.” at the very least, we should examine how it wasn’t only the big stick of sdi that convinced soviet leaders of the foolishness of their faith in socialism, it was also the discursive carrot of neo-liberalism. the history of governance in the west summarized above provided both the context for the rise of socialism as an alternative form of governance in the 19th century, and it also offers itself today to eastern european reformers as a toolbox of policies with which to “fix” their broken societies. however the assumption that one could transit from one mode of governance to another as one glides between train stations has been proven deeply problematic, and in the rest of this essay i would like to explore this in more detail. if reformers have made one central mistake it lies in not recognizing that real socialism created a particular dynamic of governance that provided a dense and unpredictable context for the introduction of liberal institutions, values, and freedoms. the question of governance in the soviet union is a problem that historians have yet to really confront. we have studies of governmental institutions, we have studies of the use and effectiveness of propaganda, we have histories of the soviet union’s terror apparatus and how civil order was maintained, and we have works that address daily life in some fashion, but we are only beginning to make sense of soviet governance. nor is there any account of the degree to which soviet governance was both a departure from and a continuation of governance under the autocracy. we have only bits and pieces of the picture. marxists who in the 19th century speculated on the nature of a post-capitalist society presumed that another order of subjectivity would come into being under socialism, that socialist man would somehow be a new kind of person. indeed one conspicuous feature of early bolshevik culture was the immense work on the self demanded by the party in order to destroy one’s bourgeois habits of thought and feeling. yet this art-historical modernist remaking died out with the cultural revolution of the late 20s, when self-fashioning was reduced to obedience. stalinism demanded that one’s subjectivity be on constant public display, turned inside out as it were. this had the paradoxical result of opening up a space of privacy or interiority that was both a product of the state’s extension and intrusion, and at the same time a space of free of the state’s interference. the roots of the kitchen table public sphere of the 1970s and 80s lay in the public confessions of faith demanded and enacted in the 1930s. these events in the realm of the self occurred at the same time that a transformation occurred in the nature of state action. within the autocratic state, you will recall, governance operated both in terms of the immanence of a divinely designed social order, and the violence of an elaborate hierarchy of estates within which everyone had to display deference to the rank above them. the action at-a-distance that the liberal states of western europe and north america came to rely on during the early decades of the 20th century as they moved towards the model of welfare capitalism–namely the shaping of conduct through a multitude of official and semi-official agencies, each predicated on the creation and possession of a particular kind of expert knowledge–also began to appear in russia at the end of the 19th century, as professional associations and institutes were founded, dedicated to fostering particular kinds of expertise. however, most incipient institutions of civil society were all closed by the bolsheviks, and during the civil war coercive governance was put in place of this proto-form of political governance. but while the apparatus of coercion continued to operate on the party and intelligentsia in the 1930s, the party turned to other means of jen typewritten text 41 governance with regard to the great mass of the population. a stalinist kind of identity politics took shape, in which all soviet citizens were to identify as agents of socialist construction. as we turn to the post-stalin era, what stands out is how the soviet state, while renouncing mass coercion, did not produce any other truthful discourses through which to organize the experiences of their citizens besides the originary discourse of marxism-leninism. in the course of the 1960s and 70s, and ironically as a result of the significant progress that the soviet state made in education, other sources of governance came to exist parallel to but outside the official one. soviet society became more self-governing than ever. the soviet state could not transform itself into a western style welfare state that could act at-a-distance by means of expert knowledges, because this would mean relinquishing the unifying vision of socialism that was the sole property of the communist party. the state was thus dependent on only one kind of connection to its subjects, namely public and self-professed declarations of identity, while citizens increasingly looked in other places for sources and guides for self-formation and conduct. this sketch of the dilemmas of soviet governance suggests the key problem for the postsocialist liberal state: how does it operate on and through subjectivities, when the subjectivities of the newly “liberated” have never been trained to participate in liberal forms of state action? likewise, if we look from the point of view of individuals taking up the suggestion of post-socialist governments to create new lives based on new freedoms, we note that individuals have been able to take up a range of new discourses and practices with which to form selves, and yet they are not assisted in this process by any agency of the state that would contribute to the security and stability of the social field. what seems to us to be the lawlessness of post-communism is produced not only by the weakness and poverty of the state, but also because the social field is so weakly integrated into people’s lives. in such circumstances, enormous pressure is placed on a moral sense developed in the more or less accidental process of character formation to guide conduct. the social becomes a terrain that supports the isolated pursuit of fantasmatic objects, rather than a field of discourse where subjects formed. vi. in order to analyze this situation, ethnographers of post-socialism might productively combine two strategies. first, in order to understand the simultaneous presence of the west in the east, we might think of the process of eastern europe’s incorporation into foucault’s problem-space as the constitution of an immanent theater of (neo)liberalism. we might orient ourselves to the postsocialist situation by first identifying the characters, scenes, plots and subplots, that carry the neoliberal theme across and through the improvisatory spaces of everyday life. this means paying special attention to the interaction of media and publics, as the “transition” is plotted and re-plotted by experts who saturate public space with new forms and genres of knowledge, from the reporting of economic statistics to the expositions of the “philosophies” of finance ministers. ethnography is crucial in this project because this theater-space is located in the everyday experiences of individuals, and thus requires the interpretive skills and descriptive vocabularies anthropologists have struggled with to grapple with others’ experiences. using turnerian terms (1986), we might ask a variety of questions: how does the neo-liberal drama exist in the background of informants’ experiences, and when and how does it emerge into the foreground? how do individuals come to recognize themselves as participants in this drama? how do they insert themselves into these plots, or how do they actively embrace a certain kind of power by allowing themselves to become the subjects of certain kinds of knowledge? when do they seize upon “empowering” discourses, and how do these discourses accomplish their simultaneous subjection? but there is another necessary strategy, it seems to me, one that requires a very different analytic move. if understanding the theater space of neo-liberalism requires in depth analysis of the emplotment of subjectivities by liberal discourses, it also requires an equally rigorous examination of jen typewritten text 42 the historical factors that interrupt, deflect, and rewrite the performances of these psycho-social dramas. after all, post-socialist space in eastern europe is still dominated by monuments of many kinds that index the century-long struggle to develop socialist societies in the continent’s poorer half; the stage can never be cleared of the props left behind by the actors in the old dramas. therefore, it is too easy to interpret the decade’s worth of markets and elections as either the imposition of colonial or neo-colonial power, or the reassertion of powerful patterns of thought and action from the socialist or feudal (russian, hapsburg, ottoman) past. ethnographers are intellectually and methodologically equipped to take up a position at the place where these metanarratives intersect. what crosses there is the “reality” of post-socialism, and by integrating the analytic framework of governance into their work, ethnographers might develop compelling and effective representations of this crossing. notes 1 i would like to thank the organizers of the aaa conference for asking us to reflect on our work in eastern europe and the former soviet union, and particularly sascha goluboff, for pulling these articles and their comments together. the discussion of this paper at the anthropology department workshop at the university of minnesota was extremely useful in forcing me to clarify many points. i would especially like to thank bruce grant for his precise and invaluable comments on the earlier version of this talk/paper, which i tried, albeit not completely successfully, to incorporate into this draft. 2 i am using the term “governance” to encompass the meanings that foucault gave to the term “governmentality.” i do this because i want to adopt the opposite strategy that foucault chose: he wanted to stress the particularity and difficulty of this perspective on society by employing a neologism, while i want to expand the familiar circle of meanings that can emerge from an everyday term like governance. references barry, andrew, nikolas rose, and thomas osborne. 1996. foucault and political reason: liberalism, neo-liberalism, and rationalities of government. chicago: university of chicago press. burchell, graham, colin gordon, and peter miller. 1991. the foucault effect: studies in governmentality. london: harvester wheatsheaf. rose, nikolas. 1999. powers of freedom: reframing political thought. cambridge: cambridge university press. turner, victor and edward bruner. 1986. the anthropology of experience. urbana: university of illinois press. jen typewritten text 43 towards and anthropology of governance thomas c. wolfe�university of minnesota pivo and pohoda: the social conditions and symbolism of czech beerdrinking volume 21, number 1 pivo and pohoda: the social conditions and symbolism of czech beerdrinking timothy m. hall, university of california/san diego © 2003 timothy m. hall all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. “a czech never says that he’s going out to ‘have a few beers,’ and he never counts the beers while he’s having them. you go out for a beer. a beer is like a woman: when you’re with a woman, you never think of women that you’ve been with before, and you never think of the next woman. it would be disrespectful. it’s the same with a beer. you go out and you have one beer…and maybe, when the unfortunate time comes that you reach the end of your relationship with your beer, then maybe you’ll have another.”1 such was my first introduction to the importance of ceské pivo, at the start of a long night of drinking and pub-hopping in prague in 1998. as i learned, beer provides an entrée to many of the core features of czech culture. beer itself is an emblem of czech national identity as well as a major mediator of sociality and a key element in recreation and leisure time. beer and several czech liqueurs (becherovka and slivovice) play a key role in czech folk ideas of illness and health, while the etiquette around bar behavior highlights czech attitudes towards money, hospitality, and reciprocation, and also acts as a forum of contention between czech and slovak ethnic identities and values. the czech word for beer, pivo, comes from the same root as the verb to drink, pít, and is cognate with the english word beverage (from latin bibere, to drink). beer is such a common beverage among czechs that many do not consider it a form of alcohol: “it’s just beer.” at the same time, it is a nearly sacred substance, which demands respect and must be handled in clearly prescribed ways. the normative values of heavy beer-consumption and lenient attitudes towards inebriation both demonstrate some basic czech values, such as the importance placed on relaxation and comfort (pohoda; cf. kuras, 1999: 19-21, 32-33), and contribute to the substantial medical and social problems caused by alcoholism. history and economics czechs themselves refer to their country as lying in the “heart of europe” (srdce evropy) but benjamin kuras’ image is perhaps more accurate: a bridge between east and west, trod upon by both sides (kuras, 1999: 9). certainly the czech people have existed in an ambiguous state, geographically at the center of europe. the czech lands (bohemia, moravia, and part of silesia) were politically and culturally united during the middle ages under the přemyslid and luxemburg dynasties, but the czechs lost their political independence to the austrian habsburgs beginning in the sixteenth century. after the protestant hussite defeat at the battle of white mountain in 1621, most of the czech intellectuals and much of the aristocracy went into exile (cf. sayers, 1998: 45-50). by the time of the national revival in the 19th century, the czechs had nearly lost their linguistic and ethnic identity under centuries of habsburg rule. prague itself, the historic capital of the czech lands, was called the city of three cultures: czech peasants and bourgeoisie, german aristocrats, and jewish intellectuals. when the country achieved independence in 1918, little remained in the cosmopolitan cities of prague and brno, or the czech-speaking countryside, from which to build the symbols of a new czech nation, and after the devastation of the holocaust and the subsequent expulsion of the sudetan germans in 1945, two of the three cultures were gone. aside from the specifically historic sites and the famously difficult language, one of the single bestrecognized czech products abroad was beer. beer-making has a long history in the czech lands and the quality of czech beer and hops are recognized by beer-drinkers around the world (brewers journal, 1903: 692). czechs take their beer very seriously and have done so for a long time. in his history of czech identity, sociologist derek sayer quotes a passage from josef pekář, one of the great czech historians: “writing to ladislav pohrobek after his coronation in 1453, the pope suggests that the jen typewritten text 109 volume21, number 1 czechs will not let their new boy-king go ‘until he masters czech [language] -and beerdrinking’” (pekář, žižka a jeho doba. prague: odeon, 1992, vol. 1: 265; cited in sayer, 1998: 42). most czech beer is lager (ležák), as opposed to ale. lagers are brewed at lower temperatures with yeast that lies on the bottom of the vat during fermentation. the product is usually lighter than ales, which are brewed at higher temperatures with a yeast that rises to the top. czech lagers are generally highly hopped, which gives them a clean, bitter taste. they are slightly higher in alcohol than most western european and north american beers (especially the czech 12° beers; see below), and are almost exclusively made with barley, as opposed to north american beers in particular which often have a high content of rice or corn. two of the most popular types of beer in the world today originated in bohemia and are still sought out by western tourists. the recipe for pilsner-style beers originated in the west bohemian town of plzeň (pilsen in german) in 1842. the newly incorporated burgeliches brauhaus (now plzeňský prazdroj, a.s., a division of sabmiller, the world’s second largest brewer) adopted a bavarian style of lagerbrewing and modified it by increasing the content of hops and allowing it to undergo a secondary fermentation called krausening, which produced the foamy head desired by czech beer drinkers (brewers journal, 1903: 692; hernon and ganey, 1991: 36). the pilsen model was later copied by other brewers and exported from both germany and bohemia to western europe and north america. it has now come to indicate any light, lager-type beer, and pilsner beers are among the most popular in the world. the town of plzeň has been brewing beer at least since it received a charter from václav ii in 1290, and its pilsner urquell (the german form of the name, used for export, or plzeňský prazdroj in czech; both mean pilsner original source) is the single most popular beer in the czech republic and the most recognized czech beer abroad. the town of ceské budějovice in south bohemia gave the world the original budweiserstyle beer. brewing in the town dates at least to 1265. by the mid-19th century, several breweries in the town had been producing a particular style of slightly sweet lager for a number of years, marketing it under the czech name budvar and the german name budweiser and exporting it to western europe and even to north america. the name in the united states, however, was first registered as a brand name by one carl conrad, an american importer of wine and liquor. in 1875, german-american immigrant and brewer adolphus busch bought the rights to the name from conrad and began large-scale production. anheuser-busch ran into problems in 1907 when they attempted to trademark the name in the u.s.; they were challenged by a german brewer on the grounds that it was a geographical name and had originally been used in europe. in 1911, anheuser-busch reached a settlement with both the german brewer and budějovický budvar, under which anheuser-busch received the rights to use the name in north america but agreed not to market their product in europe; the czech brewer retained the rights to sell czech budvar in the u.s. under the label “imported budweiser.” in 1939, this agreement was modified and anheuser-busch obtained the exclusive right to market budweiser in the united states (hernon and ganey, 1991: 35-38). since the end of communism in czechoslovakia in 1989, the two companies have again been engaged in international trademark battles. the american version of budweiser (including bud lite) is the single best-selling brand of beer in the world and one of the most recognized trademarks. it currently accounts for one fifth of the u.s. beer market. anheuserbusch companies is the single largest brewer in the world, with an output several times larger than that of all the breweries in the czech republic combined and nearly one hundred times that of budějovický budvar (reuters, 2001). on the other hand, czech beers are famous throughout europe and many connoisseurs believe that bohemia produces the best hops in the world. anheuser-busch has attempted to resolve the matter by purchasing a stake in budvar, but the czech government has thus far refused all offers. budvar is one of the most profitable czech companies and the government are understandably reluctant to sell it to a foreign investor and long-time competitor. the czech government has petitioned the european union to designate “budweiser” and “budvar” as geographically specific names, like “champagne” and “roquefort”, which would be the first time that a beer has been so recognized. the matter is still under consideration. starting in 2001, budějovický budvar began marketing its beer in the u.s. under the name “czechvar,” a portmanteau of “czech” plus “pivovar”, which means brewery. jen typewritten text 110 volume21, number 1 czech beer is measured by “degree” (stupeň), which tends to confuse foreigners. degrees do not measure percentage of alcohol directly; rather, they indicate the amount of malt used in brewing.2 the degree does correlate with the amount of alcohol, a higher degree indicating a higher percentage of alcohol within the same brand of beer, but 12° beer from one brand can have a lower alcohol content than a 10° from another brand, depending on the strain of yeast and the brewing process. a higher degree beer also commands a higher price within a given brand of beer. the most common degrees are 10° (desítka) and 12° (dvanáctka), but the range goes from 6° to 19°. czech brewers produce both light (světlé) and dark (černé literally, ‘black’) beers, but the international repute comes from the light lagers. in britain, ireland, and north america, dark beers are typically more strongly flavored, heavier, more caloric, and are perceived to be higher in alcohol content -typical men’s drinks. among czechs, the gender stereotypes are reversed. though the darker beers are still more caloric, they are much sweeter than the highly hopped lighter beers, and are often dismissed by men as “women’s drinks.” beer is not only gendered, but also reflects ethnic differences. bohemians, inhabitants of the northern and western twothirds of the czech republic, are the most prodigious beer-consumers in the world, and bohemia produces some of the world’s best hops. the climate, however, is generally too cool and damp, with too short a growing season, to boast much in the way of wine. slovakia, on the other hand, produces and consumes more wine than beer, with moravia, the eastern one-third of the czech republic, somewhere in between. one can often identify the moravians and slovaks in a pub in bohemia by looking for the winedrinkers. under communism, czechoslovakians enjoyed a higher average standard of living than the inhabitants of most other soviet-bloc countries, continuing their previous position as the industrial heart of the former austrohungarian empire. while the inhabitants of the baltic states were deported to siberia or killed outright, czechoslovakia was in part bought off with a tacit social contract. although they were effectively forbidden to travel abroad or to purchase foreign-made consumer goods, and even staple foods were often of low quality or in short supply, czechs and slovaks could always count on inexpensive and available beer and liquor, and most czech and slovak families had a cabin or cottage (chata or chalupa) to retreat to on the weekends -where the main forms of entertainment were hiking, playing games, singing songs, and drinking high-quality, government-subsidized beer. bútora (1995) reports that beer prices in czechoslovakia remained practically unchanged from 1955 to 1980. even with the relaxation of the belated temperance campaign and the reduction of government subsidies in the post-communist period, beer has usually been the least expensive beverage by volume in czech bars and restaurants. in a society where free water is practically unknown except in a handful of tourist-oriented restaurants and where food prices are slowly but steadily increasing to approximate european union norms, the continuing low price of liquor and specifically of beer demonstrates the government’s reluctance to end subsidies for such a culturally valued commodity. beer and alcohol prices will rise over the next few years in preparation for joining the eu. it remains to be seen how the czech public will react, but people are already complaining. beer as the medium of sociality and leisure czech men rarely socialize without beer and czechs in general often relax with some form of alcohol. “dáš si panáka?” -“will you have a shot?” is a common gesture of hospitality when visiting someone’s home. however, czechs’ consumption of becherovka or rum by the shot-glass does not match the russian or polish consumption of vodka. the most famous czech opera by bedřich smetana (1824-1884), prodaná nevěsta (the bartered bride) praises beer with the following lines: “beer’s no doubt a gift from heaven, it chases away worries and troubles and imparts strength and courage to men…without beer we should cut a poor figure; there’s so much trouble in the world -that foolish is he who cares too much! (smetana, 1866: act ii, scene 1).” czech drinking establishments are divided into several categories, some far more common than others. the most basic of these and central to czech leisure time is the hospoda or pub, usually a fairly casual, neighborhood tavern whose customers drink mainly beer, though some may have wine or hard liquor. a basic hospoda serves some beer food as well, usually at least párky (steamed or boiled sausages like frankfurters), tatranky or oplatky (sweet wafer cookies with cream filling), pretzels jen typewritten text 111 volume21, number 1 and nuts. many also have other traditional “beer foods”: nakládaný hermelín (a brie-type cheese marinated in oil with onions, bay leaves, allspice and other flavorings), utopenci (“drowned ones” -small sausages marinated in vinegar with onions and spices), or sekaná (slices of forcemeat, similar to baked or fried bologna). all of these are served with slices of brown rye bread flavored with caraway (kmín -one can hardly escape the flavor of kmín in czech cooking), and if you’re lucky, the párky or sekaná will come with horseradish-enhanced mustard and a sweet gherkin. higher quality hospody have more extensive offerings of food, though it tends toward the fairly basic: sausages, soups and goulashes, and the kitchen often closes long before the last call. at the upper end, hospody shade into low-end restaurace. many of the traditional czech bar foods are threatened by european union (eu) regulations. utopenci and nakládaný hermelín in particular are both marinated foods which are normally kept at room temperature. even though both are cooked, and pickling is a traditional means of food preservation, they do not meet eu standards for food safety. new regulations passed in anticipation of eu accession require all establishments serving food to maintain certain standards, including refrigeration and a stainless steel food preparation environment. most small pubs and even some restaurants cannot afford to purchase new equipment and retrofit their kitchens. in the end, many will probably stop serving food altogether or go out of business, while many others will probably attempt to bypass the regulations by removing the offending food items from the menu but still providing them to regular customers who know to ask for them. the typical hospoda is a ground-floor or basement establishment with a number of long tables and benches, occasionally having smaller tables and chairs. ceilings are low and the air is smoky except in summertime when windows and doors are opened to admit cooler air. regulations call for separate non-smoking areas in places that serve food, but this is rarely enforced and comes as news to most czechs. approximately 70% of the adult population smokes, and the others are more or less used to it. seating, as in all but the fanciest czech establishments, is more or less do-it-yourself. the pub world has a certain camaraderie and a certain czech pragmatism: empty seats at one of the long tables are available to all comers, so long as they are not being saved or reserved. (an interesting and sometimes frustrating feature is that most czech establishments count on only a single seating in a night, so places that accept reservations will keep a table empty for hours while awaiting a party who called ahead.) one asks whether the seat is available “je tady volno?” and sits down. accounts in most pubs are kept on tallies of paper (lístek or učet), usually left on the table. beers are marked at the bottom of the tab with a “p” for pivo, and other items are listed at the top by their cost. at fancier nightclubs, one receives a konzumační karta or consumption card, which one pays before exiting. waiters assume that men will have half-liters of the light beer, and usually only ask whether one wants 10° or 12°-“desítku nebo dvanáctku?” women will sometimes be asked if they want a one-third liter “small beer” (malé pivo) or dark beer. most pubs have an exclusive contract with a single brewer for their draft beer, which provides them with a discount but restricts them from offering other brands; to order a pivo thus means a half liter of the draft beer from the brand that a given pub serves. sometimes other beers are available in cans, but czechs rarely order them and sometimes appear puzzled when foreigners ask for a non-draft beer. (tourists, used to the wider range of offerings in western countries and hoping to taste the two best-known czech beers, pilsner urquell and budvar, often attempt to order them in cans or bottles. i was never able to determine why czech pubs even stock beers in cans or bottles, except for the occasional non-alcoholic beer, usually the german near-beer clausthaler, which no one would order in sufficient quantity to justify keeping on tap.) this exclusivity is changing slowly as the brewing industry is privatized and restructured. some breweries have merged and their customers can now offer several brands of beer on draft, but a wide selection of beers remains the mark of a somewhat overpriced tourist bar. the camaraderie of the pub is somewhat mitigated by czech conventions of exact payment, however, a point about which slovaks occasionally complain. ethnographers in britain, ireland, and north america (cavan, 1966: 112-135; scheper-hughes, 1979: 54-55) have noted the practice of “standing rounds” or buying a round of beer for everyone at the table, everyone in the group of friends. similarly, in singles bars, buying someone a drink is a fairly innocuous gesture of flirtation and buying drinks jen typewritten text 112 volume21, number 1 for one’s friends is not that serious a statement of solidarity. in the practice of buying rounds, each person typically takes a turn, but in a larger group, not everyone gets a turn on a given night. ordinarily, as long as no single person gets out of buying a round too regularly, no one minds. the czech situation is rather different, however. except between extremely close friends, or late in the night when someone is very drunk, or when someone is celebrating a birthday or name-day, czechs rarely buy rounds of drinks for the table. this reflects a general pattern of precise accounting in restaurants and pubs, in which tabs are divided at the end of the evening down to the single crown (the unit of czech currency, koruna). buying a round for other than very good friends can engender some anxiety until the recipient has the opportunity to repay the buyer’s largesse. even switching pubs in the course of an evening can bring on some anxiety between acquaintances if one has bought a round of beers, because the beer in the next pub could cost more or less than the beers in the first pub, thus obviating exact repayment. slovaks comment on this point quite unfavorably when the topic comes up. while czechs are quite hospitable to their personal guests, hospitality holds a much higher ranking in the pantheon of slovak values. slovaks do each stand their round when drinking in a pub, and small items such as snacks or cigarettes are freely, even ostentatiously, shared among the drinking comrades. the greater czech emphasis on individuality and account-keeping strikes the slovaks as cold and calculating, and they often contrast it with slovak generosity and warmth of feeling. at the end of the evening, one of the headwaiters (not a busboy) comes and tallies up the marks on the card. individuals keep track of what they have, and waiters in pubs and more casual restaurants typically assume that customers will be paying separately, though they usually ask: “dohromady nebo zvlasť?”although people in pubs do not normally buy rounds for the table, each person usually drinks about the same amount, which makes keeping track easier. it is fairly unusual simply to divide the bill equally in a czech pub, unless the parties involved are quite good friends or the bill involves many items and individuals all consumed roughly the same amount. some of the tropes of the pub also reflect the pervasive discourse in czech society about how things “ought” to be, a picture of an idealized past under communism or in the traditional life of the village. as an example, one of my favorite pubs in prague had a wall covered with a collage of different kinds of playing cards. when i asked why, people invariably answered that it is traditional to play cards in a pub, and so they fit the décor. in more than three years of fieldwork, often in bars and pubs, i may have seen a deck of cards in a pub on a total of one or two occasions in which i did not actively seek them out. the traditional czech and slovak card game is mariáš, which is played mainly by men and mainly in pubs. as a further example, though most of my informants agreed that mariáš was a traditional pub game, i only met one person under the age of forty who knew how to play, and he was from ostrava, the least international of the larger czech cities and the one whose population has most recently moved to an urban setting.3 other types of establishments exist. in summer, many restaurants have outdoor seating (called a garden or zahrada, though often more like a patio or sidewalk seating). the czech republic does not have the sort of welldeveloped biergarten culture that germany has refined, but independent beer gardens operate in some of the larger parks during good weather. other types of establishments include the vinárna or wine-bar (which sometimes advertises itself as “moravian”, presumably indicating better quality wine) and the vinný sklep (literally “wine cellar”, usually smaller than a vinárna). a herna is a small gambling joint or casino, often open late or non-stop, with slot machines and possibly other games such as darts. a herna is rather seedier than a normal bar; while it may act as a neighborhood bar, it often serves as a stop-over for drunks whose bar has closed for the night. beer in a herna is often only bottled or in cans, and comes with a higher price tag. the disco or diskoteka is a dance club, where people may drink beer but also wine, spirits, and mixed drinks. a kavárna is nominally a café, but nearly all of them also serve alcohol and a substantial number of men in a kavárna in the afternoon or evening will be drinking beer. all of these can be described as podníky or establishments. the one establishment that does not serve alcohol to most of its customers is the čajovna or tea room, which also provides one of the few smoke-free public venues in the czech republic. čajovna patrons tend to be a younger, jen typewritten text 113 volume21, number 1 somewhat alternative crowd, who smoke pot and listen to various kinds of alternative music when not in the tea room. the čajovna scene itself represents the current czech (and more generally central and eastern european) fascination with elements of “eastern” mysticism -astrology, ayurvedic and traditional chinese medicine, vegetarian and other diets -as a replacement for both communist ideology and organized, western religion in a post-communist, postcatholic world. the etiquette of beer beer is a metonym of relaxation and leisure (pohoda), but it commands a certain respect and formality, and also points up a number of peculiarities in czech drinking behavior. the general rules of beer-drinking all express respect for the beer and for one’s companions. beer is not wasted, it is not mixed, and the good feeling and even the next day’s hangover mark a certain sense of communitas with one’s drinking fellows. it is, in a sense, both a sacral drink and a medium of liminality. one of the first rules that you learn in the czech lands is that you never leave a beer, though this is perhaps more a statement started by young men and carried into adulthood for some time, comparable to the “rule” among some young men in the united states that a party cannot end until the keg is finished. nonetheless, to leave a beer glass with a noticeable amount of liquid in it is to say that something is wrong with the beer. either it has gotten warm, or perhaps the glasses were not adequately rinsed and have been contaminated with soap. either way, it is a statement that the beer was not up to par. beer is treated differently than other beverages. if possible, beer is normally put on a coaster, usually provided by the brewer and bearing various advertisments for that brand of beer. sometimes the coaster is left out if the beer will be placed on a tablecloth, but even then a coaster is typical. a half-liter of cold beer does generate a lot of condensation in a humid czech pub, but so do other drinks not equivalently honored with a coaster (such as a half-liter wine spritzer -vinný střík -or even a cold soda). the first round of beer of an evening, or in a given establishment, normally calls for a toast (připítek). it also requires that one wait until everyone in the group is present and seated; to start without toasting or without waiting for someone else in the group is to show disrespect. to make a toast classically means to raise one’s glass while looking into the eyes of one’s companion, clink the glasses together lightly and say “názdraví” (to health). rather more informally, one can simply use the various salutations, most commonly “čau” but also the old sokol4 slogan “nazdar” which means much the same thing, or the informal greeting “ahoj.” a somewhat humorous pun is to say “nádraží”, which sounds like “názdraví” but means “train station.” (zíbrt, 1910: 65-71 et passim, describes a number of czech toasts and drinking lore from the 16th through 19th centuries.) a few rules must be followed. one must look into the eyes of one’s partner while clinking the glasses together, and clink the glasses one at a time rather than in a group. to do otherwise is to be insincere, not to give the other person the attention or respect they deserve (cf. zíbrt, 1910: 49 for the antiquity of this custom), and is occasionally attributed to germans, as this custom seems not to hold in germany. part of this general rule of toasting with a single person at a time, each in succession, states that one may not reach under or over another person’s glass in order to clink glasses with someone else. (at the other extreme, hungarians never clink when toasting. the clink of glasses during a toast was once the signal for a coup, and today no hungarian patriot will touch glasses while toasting. several neighboring cultures also require looking into one another’s eyes while toasting: austrians and slovaks do, but germans apparently do not. neither is it required in britain or the united states.) as is the case with many understandings of culture as prescriptive rules, many czechs think that foreigners take some of the toasting a bit too seriously. failure to look into someone’s eyes directly while toasting is grounds for reproach, but czechs sometimes say that foreigners concern for toasting with every last person is excessive. and then they proceed to do precisely that, and to express insult when they are overlooked. among students and young men, there is a more elaborate form of clinking glasses. the simplest elaboration is to tap the glass on the coaster or a wooden table top after clinking glasses and before taking the first drink. a slight variation on this is to clink the glass additionally against an ashtray or any other glass or ceramic item on the table that is not a cup. the idea in this is that it makes a different quality clink than either the glasses together or the tap against the jen typewritten text 114 volume21, number 1 table, but clinking one’s glass against another glass sitting on the table is either rude (to the person whose glass it is), or distasteful and in any case runs the risk, especially as the evening progresses and the tally marks on the tab increase in number, of breaking the target glass. the fullest variation is to clink the glasses together first top, then bottom, then angled to one side and the other, then to rub the glasses against one another, tap them firmly on the tabletop or coaster, and then to take a long drink. people see this as a deliberately humorous caricature of the toasting tradition and usually smile while doing so; as nearly a parody, it practically demands either the most formal “názdraví” in a tone of mock gravity or suppressed laughter, or something silly like “nádraží.” a beer should always be treated with respect, and a sign of this is that a beer is never mixed or poured from one container to another. czech beer is ideally served cold, with about two centimeters of foam on top. a holdover from the communist era is that all glasses are marked with a measuring point which should be reached by the meniscus of the liquid.5 bartenders can short their customers somewhat by serving greater amounts of foam; ideally, the beer should be level with the mark when the foam is nearly dissolved, and to fall short of this is to give bad measure. bartenders learn a complex art of drawing beer from the tap in order to achieve the right amount of foam (pěna or smetana) on the beer, involving several glasses and pouring foam off from the main glass into others, where it will settle into a few centimeters of liquid beer which is then topped off from the tap to serve a later customer. this process is most necessary for the first several liters of beer to come out of a newly tapped keg. the bartender, however, like other handlers of sacred substances, is the only person permitted to mix beer or pour it from one glass to another. once a beer has arrived in its final glass and been placed on the table, it should not be poured into another glass or mixed with anything. neither do czech pubs serve pitchers of beer; beer is always served in individual glasses straight from the tap (though sometimes people will carry home beer from a local pub in liter bottles if a party at home runs short - essentially beer take-out). on my first trip to prague, i discovered this rather painfully. i was sitting in a pub with a group of czech men, drinking and talking. the waiter had already brought the next round of beers, though we were only about halfway through our half-liters, but he had brought small beers. i thoughtlessly poured the small beer into the large beer, to cool down the large beer and clear some space on the increasingly crowded table as i might do in a bar in boston or san diego. conversation suddenly stopped and my companions looked at me as though i had spit into the beer. i have seen czechs occasionally split beers or consolidate beers, but it usually occurs late in the evening, among close friends, and rather surreptitiously, as it is considered more than a little gauche. there do exist a couple of mixed drinks involving beer, but none are common, and some czechs claim not to have heard of them. i have seen all of them served in bars at some point during my time in prague. one is beer with sprite, at a mixture of about half and half. most informants responded that this sounded like an abomination and was probably a german drink. (later research found that this is in fact a german and austrian drink called a radler, though some czechs drink it on rare occasion and call it pivo se sprajtem.) beer can also be mixed with fernet or becherovka, analogous to the japanese-american “sake bomb”, but this is equally rare. czechs generally demonstrate disgust at mixing anything else with beer, like lemon slices in german hefeweizen or lime wedges in mexican corona. wine, however, which most americans would balk at mixin, is often drunk mixed with soda or cola. there is one legitimate exception to mixing beer, and an exception to the rule that men do not normally drink dark beer. there exists so-called “cut” beer -řezeno pivo or řezák -which is a 50-50 mix of light and dark beer. this is not like a black and tan, in which guiness is floated on a lighter beer, but is in fact blended. one is not supposed to mix beers from different breweries in making this drink, but given that most pubs have contracts with a single brewery, that concern is more hypothetical than practical. the heroine of hrabal’s cutting it short describes quite lyrically: ‘half-and-half,’ i told myself into the can and then i sipped in and gradually, holding back the desire to pour down the whole measure at once, ever so slowly and sweetly i swallowed down that light lager mixed with dark garnet, that half-and-half, mutra the maltsters called it, i drank it ever so slowly and tenderly, just like when on a jen typewritten text 115 volume21, number 1 summer’s evening out there beyond the brewery, on the margins of the fields of rye, someone sits sweetly… playing for himself his melancholic song (hrabal 1976: 87). the healing powers of pivo beer and various czech herbal liqueurs also play a major role in czech folk medicine. many czechs swear by the healing powers of pivo. they say that it has “a lot of vitamin b” and that it’s very nutritious.6 the belief in alcoholic beverages as medicine extends to several liqueurs peculiar to the czech lands and slovakia which have reputations as “digestives” and “medicinal.” when translated through the models of folk biology, this effectively states that they have herbs in them. absinthe is a liqueur once popular across europe but banned in most countries other than the czech republic, slovakia, and spain since the nineteenth century. it is a decoction of herbs in grain alcohol, prepared from a combination of wormwood (artemisia absinthum), licorice, angelica, and other herbs, and has an alcohol content of some 70-80%. less potent but still strongly herbal and fairly alcoholic are becherovka, from the jan becher distillery in the spa town of karlovy vary (carlsbad) in western bohemia, and fernet from the stock plzeň-božkov distillery in plzeň. both belong to the same central european family of herbal liqueurs as the german jägermeister and the bitter hungarian cordial unicum. both becherovka and fernet are drunk straight as shots or mixed with tonic (beton is becherovka with tonic, bavorák is fernet with tonic). also common with local variations throughout central and eastern europe, slivovice or plum brandy carries a reputation for general but unspecified medicinal powers. (less common variations are made from a number of fruits, including apples -jablkovice, huckleberries or bilberries -borůvkovice, pears hruškovice, apricots -meruňkovice; and even pine needles -borovice). czechs believe with almost superstitious fervor that “mixing” drinks -in the sense of switching from one category of alcohol -beer, wine, liquor -to another in the course of an evening is bad. this does not stop them from doing it, of course, but doing so will often draw comment from someone in a group, especially if the sense is that the group is just out for a couple of beers. some czechs will actually show some nervousness -as in warning that “you really shouldn’t mix different kinds of drinks” -and some will even comment on switching different brands of beer, if one is switching pubs. i have heard this given as a mild reason not to switch pubs -presumably it was in fact being given as an excuse that was motivated by something else, but the fact that it could be given as an argument at all is suggestive. it was not that they disliked the brand of beer at the proposed pub, but rather that we had been drinking brand x all evening already and should not “mix” our drinks. slightly more common is the comment, if changing between pubs with contracts to the same brewer, “such and such a pub even has the same kind of beer, so we won’t be mixing.” a final consideration in the folk medical beliefs around alcohol strictly prohibits drinking while taking antibiotics. this warning is given in other countries of course, and has two major justifications from a medical viewpoint. alcohol can increase the risk of various side effects of antibiotics, including toxicity and carcinogenicity. it also can increase clearance of the antibiotic from one’s body and reduce its effectiveness, either by increasing urination or by stimulating metabolism of the drug by the liver. the czech folk belief holds a peculiar horror for mixing alcohol with antibiotics, however, as distinct from all other categories of medicine which might have interactions with alcohol, and also distinguishes two categories for the western category of antibiotic -true antibiotics and “chemotherapeutics” (chemoterapie). western medicine draws a technical distinction between bactericidal antibiotics, which actually kill bacteria, and bacteriostatics, which merely impede their growth and allow the body’s own immune system to clear them, but this does not seem to be the exact distinction represented by that between antibiotikum and chemoterapie, and the absolute prohibition on alcohol consumption in the public consciousness is reserved for antibiotikum per se. the dangers of drinking: alcoholism czechs consume more beer per capita than anyone else in the world, and have consistently maintained one of the highest rates of general alcohol consumption over the last century. total alcohol consumption has in fact increased nearly threefold since the 1930s, from 3.6 liters per person per year in 1936 to 9.9 liters per capita in 1999. beer consumption has increased two and a half times over the last seven decades, from 64.8 liters per capita in 1936 to 165 liters per capita in 2002 (see tables 1, 2 and jen typewritten text 116 volume21, number 1 3). most authorities suspect that reported alcohol consumption underestimates the true numbers (úzis 2001, 2002b). the world health organization numbers, for example (table 3), are substantially higher than the estimates by the czech institute of health information and statistics (úzis). many czech thinkers have discussed the problem of alcoholism in their writings and speeches. tomáš masaryk stated that “a nation which drinks more will undoubtedly succumb to one that is more sober. the future of each nation and especially of a small nation depends on…whether it stops drinking. each nation destroys itself by drinking and drinking injures everyone who does not resolve himself against it (masaryk, 1905a; see also masaryk, 1905b, 1912; beneš, 1915).” recognition by the general public, however, has been slow in coming. bútora describes how the phenomenon of alcoholism, like many other social and psychological ills, was either hidden or caricatured under communism. the communist press portrayed alcoholism as a degenerate behavior of the bourgeoisie, alien to the authentic, right-thinking, socialist czechs and slovaks (bútora, 1995: 39-40; 1980a). the image of a wild-eyed, dissipated counterrevolutionary clearly did not fit the more insidious problems of ordinary czechs: missing work or arriving late because of a hangover (kocovina), fights with spouses and neglect of children, or an untimely death from cirrhosis. as nancy scheper-hughes comments on the status of alcoholics in rural ireland, the existence of a notorious and well-known drunkard within a community or on its fringes reinforces the normality and acceptability of other community members’s behavior. only the one or two “town drunks” have a problem, and their flagrant dysfunction normalizes the less dramatic problems of ordinary people in the community (scheper-hughes, 1978: 83). most czech males begin drinking with friends in mid-adolescence, around the age of 15 or 16, and are regularly spending time with friends in pubs by the age of 18 or so. the drinking age is only loosely enforced, and 16 and 17-year-olds are often served if they are with a group of older friends or are not obviously under age. a series of studies have found significant levels of alcohol consumption among czech and slovak adolescents: a 1995 survey of 26 european countries found that 91% of 10thgraders had consumed alcohol in the last twelve months and 54% had been drunk at least once during that time (espad, 1997); a 1993 study found that 38% of 15-year-old boys and 18% of 15-year-old girls drink alcoholic beverages at least once a week (who, 1996); and another 1993 study found that 87% and 88% of 14-yearolds and 16-year-olds, respectively, had used alcohol in the past year (european commission, 1995). the general acceptance and availability of alcohol as compared with many western countries appears to offer a protective factor against teen drinking, as alcohol is not forbidden and offers less allure. my informants reported that they initially disliked the bitterness of beer. most czech teenagers manage to overcome this initial distaste by the end of high school, however, and males in particular often socialize in pubs by the age eighteen when they can legally drink. certainly by adulthood, drinking alcoholic beverages and especially beer has become the normal mode of socializing, and attitudes towards alcohol consumption and even frank inebriation are quite tolerant. czech women drink substantially less than their male counterparts, though still a considerable amount. women are more likely to drink wine than are men, are less likely to drink hard liquor, and drink smaller amounts in a single episode of drinking (úzis 2002b). women often drink with their male partners, husbands or boyfriends, but are less likely to go to a hospoda alone. the exception to this is that young women in the cities, especially single young women, do go alone or more often in groups of female friends to dance clubs, where they drink wine or mixed drinks. women in cities also often go out dancing with their boyfriends, and will of course drink alcohol at parties. the pub, however, is gendered as masculine territory to the extent that one will only rarely see groups of women in a pub by themselves. the typical crowd in most pubs comprises groups of men, or in pubs which attract a younger crowd, groups of men and mixed groups of young men with their girlfriends. in fact, the advertising campaign in 2002-2003 for staropramen beer bears the slogan “chlapi sobě” (“guys for themselves”) and shows groups of obviously working-class men enjoying themselves with cold half-liters of staropramen. (for further discussion of gendered aspects of czech drinking, see bútora, 1995; hall, 2003; kubička et alia, 1993, 1995; úzis, 2002b.) jen typewritten text 117 volume21, number 1 heavy drinking behavior and frequent consumption of alcohol are supported by cultural norms of drinking beer in most social situations and a concomtant tolerance for drunken behavior. drinking beer on a morning “coffee break” at work does not raise eyebrows from coworkers, and the equivalent of the threemartini lunch -the threeor four-beer lunch -is fairly common. alcohol is available in czech cities twenty-four hours a day. there are no official closing times for bars. although most pub owners do not find it profitable to stay open past 3:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. in the case of discos, small casinos are open near the central train or bus station all night long in the larger towns and cities. in the largest cities, such as prague and brno, kiosks on the main square or near the train station sell beer and liquor along with sausages and fried cutlets (řízek) through most of the night. czechs can and do drink alcohol in public: there is no prohibition of alcohol in parks or at beaches, and it is the rare restaurant that does not have a license to sell beer at the very least. even family-oriented establishments such as mcdonald’s and kfc have beer on the menu and cafés offer a selection of liquor-infused coffees (algerian with custardflavored egg-cognac, irish with whiskey, african with coffee liqueur, brazilian with rum, and others). in short, alcohol is easy to obtain and there are few if any sanctions for drinking alcohol in itself. drunkenness and the effects of drunkenness are also treated with a fair degree of leniency. czechs feel little guilt at calling in sick or showing up late to work when they have a hangover, and feeling under the weather due to heavy drinking the night before at one’s own or a friend’s birthday or name-day celebration is fairly common. in contrast to the united states or britain where intoxication is de facto evidence of culpability, czechs consider that overindulgence in alcohol reduces one’s responsibility for neglect of duties, at least up to a point. a colleague of mine spent a wintry weekend teaching english to businessmen on a study retreat at a hotel in the mountains. both nights, the caretaker stayed up late drinking with some of the businessmen. as a result, he allowed the furnace to go out both nights, leaving the hotel cold and without hot water, and was too hung over to prepare breakfast. not only did no one complain, but when my colleague remarked on this the second cold morning without breakfast, several of the businessmen defended the caretaker: “but he’d been up drinking all night.” similarly, several prominent celebrities and politicians are known to drink heavily on a regular basis, with minimal criticism in the press. a study by kubička et alia (1985) of young males in prague found that drinking five half-liter beers at a sitting was considered acceptable behavior by most respondents and 41% said that it was normal to drink 6-8 beers in an evening (3-4 liters of beer). preliminary results from my own research showed that males who had drunk beer on their last night out reported consuming an average of five and a half beers (2.75 liters). this does not count other sources of alcohol; my data suggests that czech men drink either beer or wine, but usually have a strong preference for one over the other. both wine-drinkers and beer-drinkers often have shots of hard alcohol in addition to the beer, particularly if celebrating something or later in the evening. actual rates of alcoholism, as of any psychiatric condition, are difficult to measure and in a cross-cultural situation particularly, must be considered against the prevailing social norms and the local effects of alcohol consumption. in her thoughtful study of alcoholism and depression among the flathead indians of montana, teresa o’nell (1996) makes a case for the prosocial functions of heavy alcohol consumption and occasional bingedrinking in a native american community. she argues that in the local community, drinking serves as a major mediator of social interactions among adult men, and a certain level of “excessive” or binge drinking is socially normative. in such a setting, teetotalling by itself was often a sign that healthy social relations were lacking and the threshold for diagnosing alcohol abuse or dependence should accordingly be raised above that which would obtain in a middle-class anglo-american setting. this compares to findings by shedler and block (1990) that adolescents who experimented with marijuana and alcohol but did not use them to excess, were in fact healthier on several measures of intraand interpersonal function than were either habitual users or total abstainers. simple application of norms derived from other societies, particularly norms for pure consumption of alcohol which ignore social context, may not adequately detect dysfunctional or harmful levels of alcohol consumption in the czech and slovak republics. however, it is clear even from the society-specific data that czechs jen typewritten text 118 volume21, number 1 do experience relatively high rates of alcoholrelated problems. table 4 presents data from the czech ministry of health for hospitalizations due to alcoholism. two patterns are apparent from the numbers: relative numbers of individuals hospitalized for alcoholism have increased over the last two decades among both men and women, and the number of women showing problems associated with drinking has increased at a faster rate than the comparable number of men. a consistent finding is that women’s drinking patterns, particularly among younger, more educated, and urban women, are slowly but surely becoming more similar to those of their male counterparts (úzis, 2002b). other measures of alcoholism, such as the number of deaths from cirrhosis and alcohol-related liver damage, are also high in the czech republic. bútora reports that the rate of cirrhosis rose 470% between 1950 and 1990, from 5.4 to 24.7 deaths per 100,000 population. who numbers show that the numbers have continued to rise throughout the 1990s (see table 5). overall, czech and slovak authorities have begun to recognize the deleterious effects of heavy alcohol consumption, but the general public still holds fairly tolerant views of social drinking and even of frank intoxication. exact numbers, both in terms of consumption and in individuals dependent on alcohol, are hard to determine, but the presence of the problem is indisputable. a culture of beer we can see then that if any culture in the world qualifies as a beer-drinking culture, it is the czechs. images of beer and beer-drinking pervade czech literature and film, from hašek’s drunken anti-hero švejk or the brewery which dominates hrabal’s little town where time stood still, to the scenes from the popular musical stařci na chmelu (the old folks in the hops). beer acts as a major mediator and occasion of sociality, and czechs are among the greatest beer-drinkers in the world. this set of associations and values, however, has a dark side. czechs have high rates of alcoholism and other health and economic consequences from their high alcohol consumption. so what happens now, as both communist-supported temperence programs and government subsidies wither away, as young czechs increasingly have opportunities to travel and study (cf. nash, 2003), and the czech republic increasingly opens itself to european and international influences? will the camaraderie of the hospoda go the way of mariáš lingering only in among pensioners in villages, or will beer and alcohol more generally maintain their hold on czech social life? it remains to be seen what will happen to czechs’ relationship with their beer as the nation “returns to europe.” acknowledgements this article would never have been possible without the help of karel vrbenský, my first guide to the world of české hospody and someone who takes his pivo quite seriously. many thanks also to vojtěch kostiha, dušan quis, bohdan ševčík, margaret rance, and the staff of stella bar, alcatraz, and angel. this article is based in part on my dissertation research in prague, czech republic, which was supported by the jacob k. javits fellowship, u.s. dept. of education; the mst program at uc san diego school of medicine (nih grant #5t32gm07198); a language training fellowship from the rotary foundation; the center for gender studies and the committee on human development at the university of chicago; and the melford e. spiro fieldwork grant from the dept. of anthropology, uc san diego. timothy m. hall is completing his m.d. and ph.d. at the university of california san diego with a specialization in psychiatric anthropology. he can be reached at mccajor@post.harvard.edu. references cited allamani, allaman; voller, fabio; kubička, luděk; and bloomfield, 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(1990) masarykova abeceda: výbor z myšlenek tomáše garrigua masaryka. prague: melantrich. --------, 1905b přednáška ve vsetíně, cited in dresler, jaroslav, ed. (1990) masarykova abeceda: výbor z myšlenek tomáše garrigua masaryka. prague: melantrich. --------, 1912 o ethice a alkoholismu. prague: tiskem a. reise. nash, rebecca j., 2003, re-stating the family: reforming welfare and kinship in the czech republic, ph.d. diss., university of virginia. o’nell, theresa d., 1996, disciplined hearts: history, identity, and depression in an american indian community. berkeley, ca: california. reuters, 2001, czech brewer budvar picks new name for u.s. exports, prague. 28 march 2001. sayer, derek, 1998, the coasts of bohemia: a czech history. princeton, nj: princeton. scheper-hughes, nancy, 1978, saints, scholars, and schizophrenics: mental illness in rural ireland. berkeley, ca: california. shedler, jonathan; and block, jack, 1990, adolescent drug use and psychological health: a longitudinal inquiry, american psychologist, 45(5): 612-630. smetana, bedřich, 1866, prodaná nevěsta [the bartered bride]. libretto by karel sabina. program notes by františek bartoš in english, french, and german and libretto in czech with translations. prague, czechoslovakia: supraphon, 1982. úzis (ústav zdravotnických informaci a statistiky české republiky -institute of health information and statistics of the czech republic. url: http://www.uzis.cz), 1998a, aktuální informace (ai) č. 67: psychiatrická péče v psychiatrických lůžkových zařízeních čr v roce 1995 a 1996. (prague, czech republic: 9.1.1998) --------, 1998b, aktuální informace (ai) č. 67: psychiatrická péče v psychiatrických lůžkových zařízeních čr v roce 1997. (prague, czech republic: 7. 12. 1998) --------, 2001, aktuální informace (ai) č. 41: zdravotně riziková konzumace alkoholu v čr (srovnání šetření his cr 1999, cidi 1999 a studie szú 1996) [healthrisking alcohol consumption in cr (comparison of results of his cr 1999, cidi 1999, and a study by the state health institute, prague)]. (prague, czech republic:10.7.2001) --------,2002a, aktualní informace (ai) č. 57: hospitalizování v psychiatrických lůžkových zařízeních čr v roce 2001 [hospitalization in psychiatric beds in cr in 2001]. (prague, czech republic: 3.12.2002). --------, 2002b, aktualní informace (ai) č. 9: šetření zdravotního stavu české populace (eurohis 2001) díl xi.: spotřeba alkoholu [results of the health status of the czech population (eurohis 2001), part xi: consumption of alcohol]. (prague, czech republic: 22.2.2002) who, 1996, health behaviour in school children study 1993/1994. world health organization regional office for europe. data supplied by dr. bente wold, who collaborating centre, university of bergen, norway. cited in: moser, j., memorandum to world health organization, (february, 1996). geneva: world health organization. --------, 1999, global status report on alcohol. geneva: world health organization. jen typewritten text 121 volume21, number 1 zíbrt, čeněk, 1910, řády a práva starodávných pijanských čechů a družstev kratochvilných v zemích českých (přiloha časopisu „sládek“ neodvislého týdenníku pivovarského, ročník druhý). prague: knihtiskárna v. kotrba. 1notes 1 karel vrbenský, hospoda u medvídků, praha, june 1998. 2 the degree system was developed by carl joseph napoleon balling in england based on earlier research density measurements and saccharometry. it was introduced into british and german brewing in the 1840s. each “degree” in the balling scale represents 1% sugar content by volume (in the mash, for brewing contexts) at 14° r (63.5 °f or 17 °c). the balling scale uses the rankine temperature measurement, an absolute temperature scale using fahrenheit degrees. the system has since been replaced in brewing by the plato scale and in wine-making and confectionary by the brix scale, which were developed later and calibrated to degrees celsius (brewers journal, 1903: 48-49, 80-81; goldammer, ted. the brewers' handbook: the complete book to brewing beer. herndon, va: apex publishers, 2002). 3 mariáš is normally a three-person game, though variants exist for four or two players. it ultimately derives from a french game called mariage and is related to other local games in central europe, such as the hungarian ulti. the game is played with a special deck of 32 cards, which look more like tarot cards than english playing card. there are four suits: hearts or red (červené), balls (kule), acorns (žaludy) and leaves or green (zelené); each of eight cards: ace (eso), king (král), over-knave (filek), underknave (spodek), and numbered cards 10, 9, 8, and 7. mariáš is played in tricks, one player against the other two, with a trump suit. scoring and bidding are quite complicated, which may partly explain why younger czech men less often take the time to learn the game. the complexities of mariáš probably also explain why most czechs who do not play cards regularly seem unable to name the cards or suits: the names of mariáš suits overlap partly but not completely with the names of suits in regular cards, which seems to generate some confusion. information about a number of obscure card games including mariáš and its relatives can be found at www.pagat.com. booklets of rules for czech card games are published in the czech republic and sold in gaming stores. cards are available in game stores and some pubs. 4 sokol is an athletic organization which began in the nineteenth century and played a significant role in the czech and slovak nationalist movements. nazdar! was one of its slogans and passed into the vernacular as a greeting. the organization still exists. 5 ordinarily 0.33-liter or 0.5-liter glasses for most beers. velvet, a relatively new beer with a wheat-beer taste, semi-opaque consistency and small, descending microbubbles like guinness, is served in special 0.4 liter glasses. some expensive tourist-oriented bars also serve beer in 0.4-liter glasses. 6 beer probably constituted a relatively healthful beverage in a pre-industrial setting. turning barley into beer preserves the calories through the winter, reducing the chance of spoilage or loss from mold and rodents, and also provided a source of sterilized liquid in an era when most water was probably contaminated with bacteria. beer does contain small amounts of b-complex vitamins, but not of nutritional significance. beer contains amounts of b-vitamins comparable to the vitamin c content of potato chips. jen typewritten text 122 volume21, number 1 table 1: total beer consumption per person per year, in liters of beer year czechoslovakia czech republic 1936 51.8 64.8 1955 79.1 89.2 1960 100.1 109.0 1965 130.0 140.7 1970 139.9 154.1 1975 143.4 157.3 1980 137.8 148.5 1985 130.8 146.9 1988 131.7 149.7 1989 131.8 151.0 1990 135.1 155.2 1995 --156.9* 2000 --159.9* 2002 --165† (adapted from bútora, 1995; statistical yearbook of czechoslovakia; úzis, 2002a; *data directly from úzis; †lidové noviny, 06.01.2003. data for the czech republic was tallied separately within czechoslovakia; the czech and slovak republics separated in 1993.) table 2: total alcohol consumption per year, in liters of pure ethanol per person over 15 years of age year czechoslovakia czech republic* 1936 3.4 -- 1949 3.9 4.2 1955 4.3 4.5 1960 5.4 5.7 1965 6.7 6.5 1970 8.2 7.8 1975 9.0 8.3 1980 9.6 9.0 1985 9.4 9.0 1988 8.5 8.1 1989 8.7 8.2 1990 9.3 8.9 1999 2001† --9.9 (adapted from bútora, 1995; statistical yearbook of czechoslovakia; úzis, 2001, 2002a. *data for czech republic before 1993 was provided separately by czechoslovakian sources. †data for 1999-2001 provided directly by úzis: same amount each year.) jen typewritten text 123 volume21, number 1 table 3: consumption of alcohol calculated as liters of ethanol per person over 15 years of age in the czech republic, who estimates. year liters of pure ethanol liters of ethanol as beer calculated liters of beer† liters of ethanol as wine liters of ethanol as spirits 1961 10.04 6.36 141.3 2.34 1.35 1965 11.94 7.66 170.2 2.86 1.41 1970 13.58 7.99 177.6 2.60 3.00 1975 14.95 8.30 184.4 2.94 3.71 1980 15.54 8.10 180.0 2.84 4.60 1985 15.24 7.70 171.1 2.93 4.61 1990 15.73 8.89 197.6 2.64 4.20 1995 15.25 8.67 192.7 2.65 3.93 1999 15.33 8.62 191.6 2.74 3.97 (adapted from who global alcohol database. data compiled from faostat united nations food and agriculture organization’s statistical database, world drink trends, regularly published by produktschap voor gedistilleerde dranken [the netherlands] and direct government data. † liters of beer calculated by the author using who conversion rate of beer as 4.5% ethanol by volume.) jen typewritten text 124 volume21, number 1 table 4: hospitalization due to alcoholism, czechoslovakia 1980-2001. absolute numbers hospitalized for alcoholism hospitalizations for alcoholism per 100,000 population year men women total men women total 1980 6,628 813 7,441 132.3 15.3 72.1 1981 6,785 968 7,753 135.9 18.2 75.2 1982 6,462 1,020 7,482 129.2 19.2 72.5 1983 6,711 1,224 7,935 134.0 23.0 76.9 1984 6,709 1,363 8,072 133.9 25.6 78.1 1985 6,586 1,394 7,980 131.3 26.2 77.2 1986 6,694 1,386 8,080 133.3 26.1 78.1 1987 6,920 1,471 8,391 137.8 27.6 81.1 1988 6,784 1,543 8,327 134.8 29.0 80.4 1989 6,970 1,811 8,781 138.4 34.0 84.7 1990 6,713 1,861 8,574 133.3 34.9 82.7 1991 5,473 1,720 7,193 109.4 32.4 69.8 1992 5,130 1,835 6,965 102.4 34.6 67.5 1993 3,915 1,278 5,193 78.0 24.1 50.3 1994 6,536 2,146 8,682 130.2 40.4 84.0 1995 6,821 2,340 9,161 135.9 44.1 88.7 1996 7,262 2,602 9,864 144.8 49.1 95.6 1997 7,564 2,624 10,188 151.0 49.6 98.9 1998 7,280 2,717 9,997 --97.1 1999 --9,511 --92.5 2000 7,082 2,896 9,978 142 55 97.1 2001 7,291 2,885 10,176 146 55 99.1 (adapted from úzis 1998a, 1998b 2002a. individuals counted in this table received a diagnosis of alcoholism: icd-10 diagnosis f-10, and were treated in a hospital setting.) jen typewritten text 125 volume21, number 1 table 5: deaths from cirrhosis and chronic liver disease (icd-10 diagnoses k70,k73-k74,k76), absolute numbers and number of deaths per 100,000 live births. 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 m total 1192 1234 1188 1218 1314 f total 537 533 512 546 594 m / 100 000 23.1 24.6 23.7 24.3 26.2 f / 100 000 10.1 10.0 9.7 10.3 11.2 (adapted from world health statistics annual, geneva: who.) jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 126 4 anti-semitism and victimhood in waldheim's vienna robert rotenberg, depaul university i 1988 was an intense year for the viennese. kurt waldheim was in the third year of his presidency. it was the one hundredth anniversary of the burgtheater. and it was the fiftieth anniversary of the anschluss, the annexation of the austrian state into the third reich. while living in the city for six months in the latter half of that year, i had the opportunity observe the internal debate on the experience of the war, particularly the experience of viennese jews. i came away from this experience with a heightened awareness of the continuing insecurity of the gentile majority fifty years after the start of world war ii. i have spent quite a bit of time in vienna over the past fourteen years, but never was i as aware of the undercurrent of antisemitism as i was this time, an anti-semitism without significant numbers of jews. altogether, there are an estimated 10,000 jews in a population of 7.5 million austrian, with about 8,000 of these living among the 1.2 million viennese. among viennese jews, just over 4,000 are registered members of the religious community. in effect, the jews are an all but invisible minority. most austrians of the wartime generation have avoided complicity in the holocaust because of a foolish declaration made by the allied foreign ministers at moscow (october 30,1943) that the austrians were the first victims of hitler's policy of aggression and that the german occupation of austria was null and void. the purpose of the declaration was to encourage austrian defections from the wehrmacht. this tactic failed. however, this declaration is interpreted by the wartime generation as exculpating austrians from responsibility for the nazi horror. a second clause concerning austria, that austria must remember that it carries the responsibility for participating in the war on the side of hitler's germany and that during the final reckoning its contribution to its own emancipation would be taken into account, is conveniently forgotten. after the war, the negotiators for austria were able to prevent the inclusion of a war guilt clause into the austrian state treaty. 5 thus, if any fraud is perpetrated on history through the myth of austria as the first war victim, the responsibility for it is as much that of the allies as of the austrians (richard mitten: personal communication). throughout the 1950s and 60s, as the federal republic of germany was engaged in numerous efforts to come to grips with its fascist experience and searched for ways to compensate its victims, austrians did nothing. they were, after all, not to blame for the terrible things that happened. there were austrian nazis who committed heinous crimes, to be sure, and they should be punished as criminals and as traitors to their nation. but ordinary austrians, even those who served in the wehrmacht as officers (they say under conditions of terrible organizational discrimination owing to their dubious germanness), were victims. it is true that the viennese population did suffer at the hands of the nazis. workers in defense related transport and industry were reduced to virtual slaves in the final year of the war. also in the final days, the wehrmacht turned their cannon onto the city, now occupied by russian troops. it was during this nazi bombardment that the supreme cultural landmark of the city, st. stephan's cathedral, was set on fire and destroyed. americans bombed vienna's transportation centers and heavy industries in the last year of the war. this bombing was incredibly sloppy, destroying housing far more effectively than the intended targets. on one square behind the opera house, albertinaplatz, a large commercialresidential building, the philliphof, with hundreds of people in the bomb cellar beneath it, was destroyed during one of these raids, burning the building and suffocating the people in the shelter. their bodies were never removed. a small monument was erected to their memory, and the square, planted over with grass, was primarily used as a dog toilet. there are pictures from 1938 showing hitler saluting the in-marching wehrmacht from the gate of the imperial palace in the center of vienna. on all sides of the open, expansive square known as heldenplatz, the square of heros, there are tens of thousands of people with arms raised in the fascist salute. in order to reconcile their view of themselves as victims, the viennese refused to believe that the people saluting hitler in these photographs were themselves. either they were germans trucked in for the purpose, or they were salzburgers or tyrolers. both heldenplatz and albertinaplatz continue to be significant sites in the collective memory of the war. 6 the mythology of victimization quietly sustained the wartime generation until the election of waldheim. there were those uncomfortable conversations with their children in the 1960s about what they had done in the war, conversations that had led to very strained relations between the generations. these were all private discourses. with the waldheim campaign, the private became public. from the beginning waldheim was a stronger candidate than his opponent, steyrer, a physician and former minister of health. as a former secretary general of the united nations, he was considered perfectly suited for the largely ceremonial post of bundespresident. for the austrians, the election was not based solely on the assessment of personality or even of political resume. instead, it was a referendum on a decade of parliamentary domination by the spo. waldheim was the candidate of the historic rivals of the socialists, the christian democratic osterreichische volkspartei (ovp). the spo had something to fear from such a referendum. since the retirement of bruno kreisky (1983), the national party had displayed clumsy and uninspired leadership. they had become involved in a number of financial scandals with the result that this staunchly working class party was viewed as increasingly corrupt by their own natural constituency. they seriously mishandled a popular "peoples occupation" of a section of danube wetlands targeted for development as a nuclear reactor electricity generating plant, sending in the police and army to clear the demonstrators and leaving themselves open to charges of political heavy-handedness. most importantly for the waldheim election, they were also tarred by their association with former nazis. since losing their parliamentary majority in 1983, the socialists had ruled in a coalition with the freiheitliche partei (fpo). this party is often labeled liberal in the western press. it was liberal, but this is no longer the case. today, it is german nationalist, increasingly reactionary, and increasingly successful in provincial elections. one year into this coalition, the socialists were embarrassed by publication the leader of fpo, a mr. peter, had been an ss officer. afraid of being labeled as sympathetic to fascists, the socialists sought ways to diffuse this as a campaign issue. as the election heated up, the candidates backgrounds became favorite topics for journalists. working on his own, hubertus czemin an investigative reporter for the austrian news magazine profit, got access to waldheim's military identification card and entries from his military service record in his personnel file in the ministry of foreign affairs. on march 3rd, 1986, he broke the story of waldheim's military activities. on march 4th, john tagliabue filed a summary of czernin's story with the new york times. soon after that, the world jewish 7 congress (wjc) accused waldheim of war crimes based on information from the same documents used in the profil story. how and when the wjc got these documents is still not clear. one possibility is that the spo leaked the personnel file materials to members of the wjc in order to increase the pressure on waldheim and to preempt the peter issue in the campaign. the effect of the accusation was to internationalize the election. now it was no longer austrians who were criticizing other austrians, but outsiders, jews and americans, who were criticizing austrians. the evidence against waldheim was easy for the conservative austrian press, such as the mass circulation neue kronenzeitung and the establishment die presse, to dismiss. most of the charges were guilt by association. a smoking gun was never found (mitten 1988: 68-76). this same conservative press then took the lead in a xenophobic backlash that took the form of a barefaced defense of the victimization myth. the role of the wjc was immediately interpreted conspiratorially as abetting "eine gruppe amerikanische juden (v. reimann, neue kronenzeitung 3/30/86 cited in gruber 1988)," a special interest group composed of "judische journalisten und politiker (karl seinitz, neue kronenzeitung 3/15/86 cited in gruber 1988)," believed to control "amerikas massenmedien" through "die propagandamaschinerie des weltjudenkongress (thontas chorherr, die presse 3/30/86 cited in gruber 1988)," and to have harbored a grudge against waldheim from his days as at the un.' jews were portrayed in these accounts as seeking revenge by embarrassing austria and waldheiin, who was the most prominent austrian on the world scene since franz josef (gruber 1988: 175-184). before the accusations, waldheim would have easily carried a majority of voters. the press-inspired populist xenophobia only created another reason to vote for him. the moral issue of having a president who was potentially a war criminal, which was so important to americans in the election, was probably less important in making up the minds of the austrian electorate than the referendum on the socialist leadership. of course, we can never know the weight of such factors on the final decision of individual voters with any certainty. more importantly than how waldheim won the election is the fact that through these stories in the national media anti-semitic language returned to political discourse. waldheim probably never did anything that could be labeled a war crime. he was too clever and too much of an opportunist to take that kind of chance. his real failure was a failure of leadership. he could not bring himself to say, "in my youth, i was an enthusiastic supporter of 8 national socialism, as were many of my countrymen. i now recognize that experience as a grievous error and dedicate my presidency to help my fellow austrians exorcise the ghosts of nazi complicity that have haunted us all these past years." instead, he continued to uphold the lie that had fed his own personal sense of exculpability throughout his career in government. because he could not now transform that belief into one of personal and generational guilt, thousands of austrian men and women who had the same experience, continue to feel justified in their victimhood. the waldheim presidency forced austrians to re-examine the past. the first and most pressing question was whether the new president was a war criminal. it took two and half years to decide he was not, during which time every new piece of evidence damaged his credibility. by the time i arrived in vienna in june, 1988, the war criminal circus had died down. commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the anschluss had taken its place. ii in 1983, the city of vienna commissioned a professor of sculpture at the institute of applied art in the city to design and build a monument to the victims of fascism to be placed on albertinaplatz. just as i arrived, his designs were made public and the date for completing the monument was set as an event of the commemorative year for late november. the monument was to be not merely a memorial, but a mahnmal, an admonishing monument to all future generations never to descend along this path ever again. to this purpose, the sculptor designed four elements: an element depicting the depravity of fascism (two narrow granite blocks through which the visitor must squeeze with marble reliefs sitting on them depicting death figures holding people by the throat or stepping on their necks), a second depicting the insult to the human spirit that fascism created (a jew, in bronze, on his hands and knees scrubbing the street with a toothbrush), a third element, also in marble, remembering the victims of the bombing raids still lying under the square, and a fourth element, a marble stele, which recites the words from the contract granting a return of sovereignty by the allies to austria in 1955, in which the permanent neutrality of the austrian state is announced. the german nationalists and conservatives reacted by attacking the monument's artistic value, the sculptor, and the site. of these, the attack on the site was the more durable, requiring the mayor of vienna to reaffirm publicly the city's intention of erecting the monument on 9 albertinaplatz. the finished memorial was unveiled last november. like the viet nam monument in washington, d.c., it has become the kind of memorial that people need it to be. t'here are fresh flowers laid at the base of the bronze jew every day. another bouquet is often placed in the e of the relief of the death's head holding victims by the neck. people walk quietly around the elements in silence. there is always a crowd, and always a policeman watching to make sure that no one tries to deface the pieces. while one can objectively conceive of a more grandiose scale for the elements, a more effective frame for the square to symbolically sacralize and separate it from the street, or a different organization to the elements themselves, the monument has already become an attraction among the winter tourists (italians!). lots of commemorative and provocative events culminated in november, as if everyone wanted to get the difficult issues over with before the december frenzy of christmas buying began. the month started off with the fiftieth anniversary of the november pogrom, known to the fascists as kristallnacht (the night of november 9-10), during which synagogues and shops owned by jews were burned and thousands of jews were killed by nazi party members. this day was commemorated in vienna by members of the austrian student union assembling at important subway stations and transportation links throughout the city and reading the names of the murdered jews through a loudspeaker while others passed among the crowds handing out leaflets describing the actions of the viennese nazis fifty years earlier. in late october, a newspaper leaked highly inflammatory lines from the upcoming november premier of a play, "heldenplatz", by one of austria's leading playwrights, thomas bernhard. the piece had been commissioned by the government's culture ministry to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the burgtheater. from the purloined portions published in the press, it was also viciously critical of austria and the viennese. several lines from the play were quoted out of context to the effect that austria was a sewer and all viennese were fascists and anti-semites. the play was quoted as saying that 1988 was worse than 1938, because in 1938, at least, you knew with whom you were dealing, but in 1988, everyone pretended to be someone who they were not. waldheim redux. the revelations unleashed a firestorm of protest. conservative and german nationalists in parliament called for the withdrawal of the play. the socialist minister of culture stood firm. there were calls for the removal of the director of the theater, who himself had made news the previous summer by calling the austrians uncultivated provincials and the bureaucrats, with 10 whom he had to deal, arschl6cher (assholes). the director was not removed. it seemed as if the conspiracy of foreign hate-mongers would never leave poor austria alone. everyone seemed to be acting as if they were part of the performance. that this was precisely the point the playwright seemed intent upon making was not missed either, and everyone involved felt sadly used. the play premiered with only one incident: a disgruntled pair of viennese dumped a truckload of horse manure in front of the theater on opening night. the critics declared the play a success and in the best tradition of satirical self-parodies of raimund and nestroy of 19th century vienna. satirical self-parody maybe, but the amount of criticism hurled at the audience from the stage for over three hours was remarkable. the play is the story of a viennese jewish academic who emigrated when the nazis annexed austria, returned in the mid 1980s and committed suicide because he felt that the 1988 austrians had barely changed in their attitudes towards jews. the dead professor's wife spends more time in an insane asylum than in her apartment because the apartment her cantankerous husband chose overlooks heldenplatz, the scene of the hitler's salute to the in-marching troops fifty years earlier. her insanity takes the form of constantly hearing the cries of "sieg, heil" from her fellow viennese beneath the window. when she begs her husband to move, he replies that hitler was not going to force him to move twice in one lifetime. the professor is already dead when the play opens, so bernhard decries the state of viennese arts and intellectual life through the characters of the dead professor's daughters, one of whom represents those contemporary jews who see their neighbors as all closet fascists, and the other who represents those who excuse even the most blatant affront (she is spit on in the street) in the name of assimilating and fitting in. but the best lines go to his brother, also a professor, who attacks every institution of government and culture in the city, accusing the viennese of importing provincials to fill the positions in cultural leadership left vacant after the jews, who had made vienna a center of cultural power, were murdered, and observing repeatedly, so that point will not be missed, that the current state of viennese culture is sheer mindlessness (stumpfsinn). this was not a message, coming as it did from their leading playwright, that the viennese could ignore. for a metropolitan society whose self-image is one of cultural ascendance and primacy, this is blasphemy. the audience actively cheers or boos, often times at the same line. people sitting around me could be heard to mutter, "that's not true." or "how can he say that about us." every performance was sold out. for two months, the politicians, journalists, and intelligentsia 11 talked of nothing else. a political cartoon from one of the most anti-semitic dailies shows a caricature of bernhard urinating on a map of austria, while a formally dressed theater critic, looking suspiciously jewish, cheers wildly behind him. what the non-theater goers read were the excerpts and news stories of how politicians, whose ideas they often found appealing were upset over this piece of theater. public opinion dismissed bernhard as a black sheep austrian who had always hated his countrymen and was now taking one more opportunity to insult his land. the jewish community was split over the value of bernhard's play for improving community relations. the pro-bernhard faction was excited that the gentiles were finally being confronted with their waldheimian perfidy. the anti-bernhard faction pointed out that it too easy to ignore the play especially since it was a jew on stage doing all the complaining (again). the leading jewish culture critic in the city labeled the play as ultimately anti-semitic itself because of the unattractive qualities of the jewish characters. iii both factions agreed with bernhard, however, that anti-semitism is a fact of everyday conversation in vienna. "in the bakery, at the cleaners, at the drugstore..." is the way the professor's daughter describes where she hears anti-semitic comments in the city. "it’s true," replied a jewish acquaintance of mine who lives an assimilated life in one of the more exclusive parts of the city, where, theoretically, there are no jews. "they talk freely because they don't expect a jew to be standing there, and they don't expect a gentile to contradict them. it's all there: the hatred, the conspiracy theories, the stereotypes. bernhard is absolutely right about them. they haven't changed." the return of anti-semitic expressions in the public media of press and theater has coincided with a resurgence of these formulas in private speech as well. we can be confident about this thanks to a study by the sociolinguist ruth wodak and her co-workers at the institut fur sprachwissenschaft and published in their study of anti-semitism in the public discourse of austria since 1986 (seifert and wodak 1988). they analyze taped remarks as people reacted to a set of placards in the plaza directly in front of st. stephan's cathedral. the speakers did not know their remarks were being recorded. the placards, inspired by the election of waldheim, were erected by the city to describe in provocative words and pictures its fate under fascism. the remarks were taped for twenty-four hour periods between june and july in 1987. 12 what is clear from the analysis of these remarks is that a gentiles-only language has wide currency among the population. as such, it serves to shore up the majority against the current threats to its vulnerable self image. it is a language that created a gentile in-group that continues to excuse the wartime complicity as no mistake ("unsere manner waren alle eingeruckt! die musten alle verbrecher sein ."2 ),that reverses the historical relationship between victim and victimizer ("sie treiben es soweit, das wir dort sind, wo wir waren. der judenhapist da!"3), that denies the responsibility of current generations for historical oppression ("wir sind unschuldige tater! die schuldigen sind eh aufgehangt worden."4), that relativizes the jewish experience to reduce the level of actual harm suffered by jews ('...in der gaszelle umzukommen, ist noch angenehmer, als von partisanen ermordet zu werden.";”ich kenn nur einen juden, der nachher nicht wieder da war."), and that rationalizes the appearance of anti-semitism ("schaun sie, es sind nur jetzt die emotionen aufgeschaukelt. auf der einen seite sind die emotionen gegen waldheim, aud der anderen seite sind da eben andere emotionen."") (wodak and seifert 1988:112-114). armed with the capacity to identify the anti-semitism of such expressions as a result of this study, the jewish austrian student union is waging a billboard campaign to boycott austrian newspapers that employ anti-semitic language. so far, their efforts to educate the public to the inappropriateness of this language in the public discourse has not been effective. the most virulent of the offending dailies has had no change in its circulation. it took a entire generation before the gentile-only speech lost its power as a symbol of gentile solidarity in the united states. it will probably take decades before the anti-semitic language of the viennese also loses its social potency, along with the various myths that sustain the underlying sense of threat. but after the waldheim presidency and the anniversary year 1988 with its symbolic transformations of heldenplatz and albertinaplatz, things will never be the same again. the persistence of a language of anti-semitism in a society in which there are so few jews suggests that contemporary anti-semitism has, in fact, evolved from the anti-semitism of 1938 into a new form. today it has more to do with the very local and highly sensitive belief of austrian victimization and the perception that foreigners and jews are repeating that victimization against contemporary austrians by forcing them to confront, through waldheim, their support of fascism. this is what the tales of the two squares, heldenplatz and albertinaplatz, are all about: complicity between living viennese and the nazi horror. it is a past 13 that is so threatening to contemporary viennese images of themselves ("when can we go back to being the austria of the "sound of music," one frustrated informant asked.) that even skilled politicians would rather be seen as weak liars than adn-dt to any wartime complicity. notes 1. "nur vodergrunding um eine vom judischen weltkongress begonnene, von den medien des eastern establishment der vereinigten staaten ubernommene and von manchen parteistrategen aus guten grunden genuslich zitierte ha kampagne gegen einen osterreicher, der bundesprisident werden mochte ... hier word abrechnung gehalten, aber nicht mit dem osterreichischen kandidaten, sonder mit den vereinten nationen (thomas chorherr die presse 4/26,27/86)." 2. "all our men reported for duty.they must all be criminals." 3. "they play it up so much that we are right back where we were. the hatred of the jews is there!" 4. "we are all innocent actors! the guilty were all hung." 5. "...... to die in a gas chamber is still pleasanter than to be murdered as a partisan." "i only knew one jew who didn't come back." 6. "look, now it only builds up the emotions. on one side is the emotion against waldheim, and on the other side there are just other emotions." references gruber, hehnut 1988 berichte und kommentare in "kronenceitung" und "presse." in: de cillia, r., h. gruber, r. mitten, j. pelikan, k. seifert, and r. wodak, "wir sind alle unschuldge titer!..." antisemtismus im offentlichen diskurs osterreichs seit 1986. materialanalysen des projekts. wien: prjectteam "sprache und vorurteil." pp. 136-219. mitten, richard 1988 der presidentschaftswahlkampf 1986. in: de cillia, r., m. gruber, r. miitten, j. pelikan, k. seifert, and p, wodak, wir sind alle unschuldige tater!..." antisemitismus im offentlichen diskurs osterreichs seit 1986. materialanalysen des projects. wien: prjektteam "sprache und vorurteil." pp. 55 107. seifert, katharina, and ruth wodak 1986 antisemitismus in alltag: gesprache bei der mahnwache. in: de cillia, r., h. gruber, r. mitten, j. pelikan, k. seifert, and p, wodak, "wir sind alle unschuldige tater!..." antisemitismus im offentlichen diskurs osterreichs seit 1986. materialanalysen des projects. wien: projectteam "sprache and vorurteil." pp. 108 137. (address: institute fur sprachwissenschaft, lichtensteing. 46a, 1090 wien, austria). sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 44 step across the border: transnational encounters and nation-making hülya demirdirek university of victoria, british columbia, canada a soviet national of gagauz ethnic origin from the moldavian ssr might have crossed borders to visit gagauz villages in bulgaria, greece and turkey. in each location the aspect(s) of "brotherhood" to be celebrated would have varied: a common language, religion, historical territory, shared genealogical ties, similar forenames or family names, amongst others. today, a moldovan national of gagauz ethnic origin can do the same but with an altogether different positioning. the redrawing of borders and the creation of new entities after the break-up of the soviet union has had profound implications for the formation of gagauz national identity, especially now that the minority status of the gagauz has been transformed with the establishment of the gagauz autonomous territory. the gagauz population engages in cross-border travel and temporary migration to neighbouring countries alongside other moldovan citizens, but they also travel abroad as representatives of gagauzia/gagauz yeri. by looking specifically at gagauz-turkish encounters, i illustrate the symbolic and instrumental significance of borders and the way in which they shape the definition of gagauz national identity (cf. donnan and wilson 1999). turkic and not turkish, turkic and not muslim the gagauz are a turkic-speaking christian minority in moldova. they make up approximately 3.5 percent of the total moldovan population which exceeds four million. since 1995 there has been a legal autonomous territory within the borders of the republic of moldova which is called gagauzia/gagauz yeri. here i provide a brief overview of the conditions of the gagauz minority status in moldova so as to fill in the background for my exploration of turkish and gagauz cross-border movements and the corresponding maintenance of ethnic boundaries. the mutual intelligibility of the turkish and gagauz languages and notions that the two peoples share a common turkic origin and geographical proximity are key to the special relations between turks and the gagauz. yet it is not so long ago that the gagauz were one of many double minorities within the soviet union without any political autonomy. the story of the "open" gagauz struggle for autonomy, and even for an independent republic, goes back to 1990. in august 1991 moldova proclaimed its independence (declaring the soviet annexation of 1940 to be illegal) and the communist party was banned. the moldovan language law (enacted in august 1989), which became a turning-point for the region, led to an increased polarization of ethnic relations. under this law the cyrillic moldovan alphabet was replaced with a latin alphabet and moldovan was defined as the "state language". the rise in moldovan nationalism was also accompanied by increasing ethnic clustering and by political divisions along ethnic lines. this ethnic polarization seems to have driven many non-moldovans in the region to support the soviet system, and, to some extent, drawn them into an "internationalist" solidarity movement directed against moldovan pressures for reunification with romania and against the new nationalist policies. the gagauz activists who had already begun to organize themselves in the late 1980s became more prominent political players in the following decade. they were initially engaged in a struggle with moldovans against the repression of the soviet regime, but the increasing strength of the nationalist voices in the moldovan popular front resulted in them splitting away from this movement. this separation marked the start of a long process of political struggle that achieved stability with the granting of autonomous territorial status to gagauz yeri in 1995. the origin of the gagauz is still a contested issue. considerable controversy surrounds the period before the beginning of the nineteenth century, but there is general agreement that the gagauz lived in the dobrudja region of bulgaria and fled to bessarabia at the turn of the nineteenth century. those who seek to explore the earlier stages of gagauz history connect them to other peoples (such as uz, oğuz, and cuman) by proposing genealogical ties. such details concerning a turkic origin, the question of conversion to christianity from islam or directly to christianity before acceptance of any other monotheistic religion, are issues which preoccupy historians as well as gagauz and turkish nationalists. yet in daily life gagauz national identity is reformulated around much less lofty concerns. downsizing of soviet identity indeed, it is mundane forms of interaction— reinforced by the activity of border crossings—that anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 45 have become a major source for the construction of gagauz national identity. while making a somewhat different point in his discussion of banal nationalism, billig highlights the significance of ideological habits through which nations are reproduced.73 he further argues that these habits are not removed from everyday life, asserting that they possess a reassuring normality.74 for me, then, billig brings out the need to analyze mundane/banal forms even when there are perhaps more eye-catching instances of "the flagwaving nationalism" (billig 1995). behind the flag-waving, for example, i have pointed to examples of bricolage in areas such as language and history that take place in "an arena of social interaction through which the extent of aggregates of collectivities are defined as one unit in relation to others" (demirdirek 2001). national brokerage, as i describe it, covers various arenas of display and interaction, some of which i shall illustrate here, and it is here that symbols of collectivity are activated and utilitarian concerns are articulated in the discourse of particular identities. sometimes nation-builders take on the role of "brokers," and sometimes others who are involved in activities related to self-representation assume this role. it is also in this field that responses to changing social and political circumstances can be observed. ordinary people take part in the field of national brokerage with concerns that do not necessarily overlap with those of the active producers of nationhood, but in the last instance they still contribute to the discursive construction of a nation. nevertheless, the success and the speed of this process vary in different settings, and one important factor here is a process to which i refer to as a "downsizing of imagination" (demirdirek 2000). what i mean by a downsizing of imagination is the process of deconstituting the already existing imagined community. in this case, the unit that is to be downsized by the nationalist movements is, of course, former soviet society. the gagauz population, which shared the soviet miniature global system with its common references, is introduced to a much smaller entity to which they have to relate. yet, in their case, the struggle to downsize the imagination is more complicated. this is because gagauz nationbuilding takes place in the context of the moldovan downsizing process, in which moldovans try to reinforce moldovan language use and recreate a moldovan national imagery. in this context, both the nation-builders and ordinary people, while trying to create a gagauz supranational unit and a gagauz imagination, have to highlight gagauz imagery mainly through language and its products. yet, they have to accomplish such a task through the medium of the russian language and against the backdrop of moldovan language dominance. when they proclaimed the gagauz republic, the nation-builders first declared the official language of the republic to be russian. in this way, their struggle is a double one, in that they resist moldovan downsizing by embracing the russian language and soviet heritage on the one hand, while on the other hand they have to create their own elaborated discourse in gagauz so as to establish a gagauz national imagery. this starts with the language, and the gagauz—already literate in russian—are now invited to acquire literacy in gagauz. there are thus many areas of daily life within bureaucracy, education, and the mass media where language becomes both a source and object of collective struggle in the nation-building process. hence, national brokerage is generated with a number of different actors; turkey, for example, is a good partner for reinforcing the gagauz imagination, and non-moldovans who similarly use russian as a lingua franca are also viable partners in resistance to moldovan nationalization in public space. transnational encounters between turks from turkey and gagauz from moldova can be seen as another arena of national brokerage in which mundane forms are more effective than flag-waving nationalism in the (re)creation of ethnic or other boundaries. this is clearly reflected in the complex system of alliances created for various ends such as establishing businesses, obtaining grants for certain projects, sending "delegations" across borders for sporting/artistic purposes and so on. a more in-depth exploration of the dynamics of this particular arena of national brokerage reveals the existence of a certain ambivalence, which nevertheless contributes to the creation of a flexible system of significance in relation to the construction of ethnic and national units. in my assessment, this is where the complexity of the turkish/gagauz case rests. turkey as the ambivalent other turkey plays a unique role in gagauz social and political life in moldova. it is, of course, important to note that turkey cannot be treated as a single consistent entity, nor can one forget the arbitrariness of some of the turkey-related symbols that enter into the life of other turkic peoples. the influence of turks on the gagauz and on other turkic nations or ethnic groups within the former soviet union varies. furthermore, turkey as "the west" (or westernized turkic space) should be seen as an emic category among these groups inasmuch as it is not an objective unit. yet, although it manifests itself in different ways, there is a certain idea of turkey in circulation that represents a higher form of turkicness as a transnational identity. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 46 similar to many former soviet republics, moldova is an attractive destination for turkish tourists and entrepreneurs and an interesting potential political and economic partner for the turkish state. the latter, represented by its officials, as well as people from turkey with their various interests are sources of ideas, objects, jobs, money, education possibilities and new sets of relationships for the gagauz. both private and more official meetings between turks and gagauz mark their similarities and differences in various ways. by illustrating two cases (a public event and a journey), i argue that meetings with turks – despite varying motivations – lead to the reproduction of a common discourse of turkicness as well as of gagauz collectivity. the efficacy of this discourse can be questioned on various levels, yet it is significant in fashioning a widely accessible metanarrative in the public domain. public events like many other concepts, "ritual," "ceremony," and "public event" are all terms that are subject to debate in anthropology. anthropologists question which types of events can be classified as rituals and whether the phrase "secular ritual" is a contradiction in terms; not least, they ask what these events "do" (i.e., whether they reflect social relationships or help to create them, etc.; e.g., handelman 1998; moore and meyrhoff 1977). i do not intend here to engage in a discussion of these larger issues. i find it appropriate, however, to refer to all these events as "public events" because for me such a classification only presupposes the public character of the events without attributing a general function and meaning to particular kinds of events. i concur with sally falk moore's assertion that "ceremony [or public event] is a declaration against indeterminacy" (moore and myerhoff 1977:16). yet, whether their mandate is to engage in the ordering of ideas and people (handelman 1998:16) or "to work against indeterminacy" (moore and myerhoff 1977), i would argue that any evaluation of the success of public events should not be limited to their "operational efficacy" (social/psychological effectiveness) (moore and myerhoff 1977). 75 the types of public events that are directly related to gagauz identity politics are syncretic gatherings—events that are inspired by what handelman calls events-that-model and eventsthat-present. they are occasions for performance that introduce connections between units of identification and concomitantly generate a discourse of national collectivity. as i shall illustrate below, their success lies in their capacity to open up a space for continuity (i.e. the reproduction of elements of such public events elsewhere outside of the ritual). event-that-reformulates—the olympiad a language olympiad was held in chişinău with the participation of many pupils from different parts of gagauzia. the pupils were supposed to read poems and write essays in gagauz. the main sponsor of the olympiad was a turkish high school (t: lise) run by fetih company. an azeri businessman also contributed by providing some of the presents for the children who took part in the competition. the audience included reporters from komrat tv, representatives of the gagauz-language service of chişinău radio and tv, the head of the turkish agency for cooperation and development, organizers from the moldovan ministry of education and several teachers. at the end of the competition, some teachers and students were invited to speak. sveta, who chaired the event, is a russian native speaker with a fairly good command of gagauz; she can also speak turkish and makes translations for various turkish businessmen. having also worked as a civil servant, she has had regular contact with turks. trying to make her gagauz more easily comprehensible to the turks who were present, sveta used words like bey (sir), kadın (woman), okul (school) and turkish suffixes like "–yorum." she refrained from using the gagauz word for woman (karı) because, like other gagauz who are in close contact with turks, she knew that turkish speakers prefer not to use the term because of its vulgar connotations in turkey. she consciously tried to use turkish words and to avoid russian loan words in gagauz. not being fully competent in gagauz, however, she mistakenly used some turkish words that were incomprehensible to the gagauz audience (e.g., bayram, meaning "holiday," where the gagauz term praznik is loaned from russian). the children, in particular, did not understand what this meant. later, one of the teachers said "if turks do not like each other, who will like us? nobody should laugh at the fact that we turks found each other." a pupil commented in russian that this was the first time she had participated, and one of the teachers told her to say it in gagauz. then the girl began to speak in gagauz, saying that she liked her mother tongue (ben pek beeniyrim ana dilimi). the girl said: "we are drawing on our native land and talented people are appearing among us too." she used the word talantlı for "talented," which is a rendering of a russian word in gagauz. the teachers sighed again. later, a poet (tudor zanet) took the microphone and anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 47 said, "i would like to see storytellers among us, our language is also beautiful and rich." after the speeches, all the participants were given plastic bags full of clothes apparently donated by a turkish clothing firm related to fetih company. the children seemed very happy. we, the adults, went to the teachers' room to celebrate the occasion by eating and drinking. the sponsors had ordered kebabs from a turkish restaurant, and there were fanta and coke bottles on the table along with fruit. while we were sitting and eating, one of the gagauz men whispered in my ear "you see that this is not exactly how the gagauz celebrate something, can you imagine a celebration without wine, you live in the village, you know [how things are], anyway we are showing respect to these turks." while i was talking to people at the table in a mixture of gagauz and russian, one of the teachers who did not know me asked which city i came from; one of the turkish men answered her by saying condescendingly "she is turkish but she speaks in a local manner." the same man had told me earlier that he found it strange that the gagauz said that they were gagauz (i.e. not turkish) and that they spoke incorrect turkish. by making such comments, he was both denying and confirming the independent gagauz identity. the occasion drew to a close; we, the women, had a chance to gossip while clearing up while the religious men from the turkish high school carried away the tables. according to the female teachers, the muslim sponsors were very kind and had very good manners, unlike some of the turkish businessmen who sometimes treated the gagauz women who went out with them as prostitutes. one of the teachers said that she was surprised to see religious men respecting women more than others. another commented that it seemed there were different types of turkish men, but that these who did not drink were boring: she wondered how one could have fun without drinking. then we talked a bit about different types of turkish men. in the event described above, the indeterminacy that was being "fixed" was gagauz identity in general, and the diffuse gagauz language experience in particular (with its turkic connection). i approach this occasion as an event-thatreformulates because it redefines gagauzness in relation to turkishness and turkic units in a postsocialist context. language was both a symbol and a communicative tool in this event, which repositioned the gagauz language in relation to turkish in particular and turkic languages in general (as evidenced by the presence of the azeri sponsor). through the use of gagauz alongside turkish during the event, the former was enacted as a sister language to the latter. this enactment served both communicative and purposive ends. the "message" that was given to the children was that as gagauz persons they were part of a turkic unity. russian was absent from the event in general, but its absence was "present" in that it had to be avoided. in their efforts to maintain linguistic purity, gagauz speakers were aware of the presence of russian in their language practice (and they would have been aware of it even if one of the girls had not spoken russian). as in many other public events with national dimensions, the sense of belonging has to be achieved through membership of smaller units such as villages, schools and families. the event also reformulated the meaning of "how the gagauz celebrate" in the sense that it could not be modeled on conventional gagauz celebrations that typically involve heavy alcohol consumption. i would assert, albeit tentatively, that this event did not bring about a significant emotional– perceptual transformation among the participants, especially for the children. the children embraced the event as an exciting part of their school experience, all the more so because of the trip to the capital city and the presents they received. a comparison may be drawn with the celebration of norwegian constitution day (17 may), which many children enjoy as a day for eating lots of ice-cream and hot dogs without necessarily being transformed emotionally. still, an ontological connection with the everyday has been established (cf. blehr 1999:39). in this sense, although the event might be considered to have been designed for the purposes of flag-waving nationalism, its effect is felt through the channels of banal nationalism. the language olympiad can be regarded as a successful event because it went on to be repeated in the future and it achieved its goals; namely the perpetuation of the gagauz language and gagauz national identity. although it may seem that i am claiming the existence of this collective abstraction without showing that there is any emotional attachment to it, this language-based event shows how a discourse or arena can be created for the cultivation of such an identity through the inclusion of participants with differing motivations. the comments made during the less formalized parts of the event served a complementary function in that – while participating in the creation of a common discourse of turkicness and taking the role of national brokers – the gagauz participants were also asserting their gagauzness by pointing out the differences between turks and gagauz in relation to anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 48 gender relations and drinking habits. this event was a temporary conjunction of persons who represented larger identities. the constellation at subsequent gagauz language olympiads would undoubtedly change: the most stable group represented would be the gagauz pupils, perhaps together with the same people from the ministry of education, whereas the sponsors and other important guests would be different. it is the "others" through which gagauz identity is expressed that change, and the temporality of the conjunction does not diminish the power of each event in perpetuating gagauz collectivity. there was a double ambiguity at the olympiad inasmuch as, first, the gagauz language was promoted by welcoming turkish loanwords and suppressing russian elements, and, second, alcohol was omitted from subsequent celebrations because of the presence of religious turks. the gagauz were "being themselves" by not being themselves. this can be seen as an example of what herzfeld refers to as "cultural intimacy" (1997) in that the gagauz habit of speaking russian constitutes a source of external embarrassment for the gagauz when meeting turks, yet it forms part of their sense of gagauzness. this, however, shows how a public event can accommodate a multiplicity of alternatives that can be situationally adjusted. this is exactly what happens at many public events, where, depending on the audience, aspects of the ideology of nationness are expressed differently. here, through the depiction and enactment of language as common ground, turkic brotherhood was cultivated. the discourse of turkicness can be seen as a container that is filled with whatever is available at the particular moment, depending on the temporal conjunction of participants. on another occasion, the force behind an event's operation could be religion or a common soviet experience. travel as a marker of national identity a gagauz children's dance group and an adult ensemble from uzunköy (pseudonym) were invited to perform in turkey. i was involved with the preparations, including providing letters in turkish, formulating visiting cards for some of the adults in the delegation, answering their questions about potential presents, et cetera. i was also asked to give turkish names to the children. one of the adults said that turks preferred to call them by turkish names. he explained that turks found it difficult to learn and pronounce gagauz names, while for their part the gagauz were simply fond of changing them, for example, sevgi for lübov (both based on words for "love"). this was a very difficult moment for me, and i argued calmly that if they wanted to do this they could do it themselves; but since i did not approve of it i was not willing to cooperate. i added that turks did not change their names when they came to gagauzia (although i realized that in fact people referred to me as julia stepanovna ([the daughter of stepan, patronymic through reference to my "honorary father" in the village] and i liked this). the person who asked me to change the names told me that i was too strict with my principles and took life too seriously. i think, in an ambivalent way, he both respected my standpoint and, on the other hand, he did not approve of my "principles" in this particular case. the group was led by some local officials. the bus in which they traveled was provided by someone outside the dance group who acted as a sponsor from the district's administrative centre and provided the transportation in return for a role as a delegate on the trip. a villager who owned a video camera also accompanied them with a friend—they were, so to speak, the "tv team". the composition of the delegation was the product of a combination of factors such as closeness to the organizers, professional status in the village as well as one's individual financial situation and ability to pay some of the expenses. the members of the delegation took various steps to prepare themselves for the journey, including finding contact persons in turkey so as to enhance their chances of establishing business links or connections for further cultural events. the leader of the dance group said that he had been warned that when he met a turkish nationalist, whose address had been given to him by someone in the village, he should not make positive comments about communism or russians. the delegation had plans to organize a subsequent similar festival in gagauzia and wanted to establish further contacts for the future both with a view to cultural events and small business activities. the organizers wanted to get one of the turkish villages in the area they were visiting to be their sister village, an idea which appealed to turkish officials. on the other hand, these same organizers also wanted to twin with a bulgarian village—a plan which they did not reveal to the turks. when the group was back, they said that they had enjoyed the company of "social democrat turks" because they were rather jolly and drank wine, vodka and champagne with them. they had also made friends with nationalists, although the latter did not participate in drinking and merrymaking. in fact, the members of the group all had good memories of turks from different backgrounds. at the same time, one of them said to me that they felt closer to the members of the polish dance group anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 49 delegation who had attended the same event because they shared the same drinking habits and sense of fun.76 journeys are meaning-creating experiences (turner 1967, 1974). the outer and inner borders of communities and places are established in an active way through travel. even when traveling alone, a person is marked by his/her national identity most of the time. in the above-mentioned case where there is a delegation of people representing a country or a region, ethnic markers become much more relevant to the experience of travel. in particular, both on the individual and collective level, the crossing of borders is an occasion for reconsidering ideas about home and abroad. the notion of home was expressed more in terms of webs of relationships and associated activities. in the context of the dance group's visit to turkey, eating and drinking were again used to represent "home'. the sense of "kinship" with the polish group in this respect underlines the situationality of what is inside and what is outside, what is "us" and what is "them". the name-changing encounter during the preparations for the journey is interesting in that it shows the relaxed approach towards selfrepresentation in relation to new interaction partners. i displayed a conservative and rigid attitude in my resistance to changing the children's names as opposed to those who did not see it as something troublesome. their ease was due not least to the fact that in their eyes the children whose names were to be changed "belonged" to them (not all the village children had gagauz parents, yet in this context they were all gagauz children, they were "theirs").77 they were representing themselves in a communicative and doubly inclusive manner. by making the names of the children more accessible to turks, they were being accommodating towards the turks while trying to encourage them to be more inclusive (towards gagauz). the adult members of the delegation were aware of the various discourses of turkishness and they were able to adjust to different turkish political positions. in each case they were able to establish collective abstractions of both turks and themselves which were highly negotiable and broad enough to accommodate interactions with nationalist and social democrat turks alike. the utilitarian aspects of the journey were clear before the group set off since everybody planned to buy things in turkey for themselves and with the aim of selling at a profit back in moldova; they were also hoping to establish business contacts. these utilitarian concerns do not diminish the symbolic dimension of interaction, yet the gagauzness that is constructed is not necessarily as romantic as the expression of it which comes out during interactions. conclusion travel, like public events, is a medium which highlights concentrated images of personal and collective identities. journeys are acts of performance in which the crossing of borders as a group adds to the sense of collectivity. this sense of collectivity does not necessarily imply cohesion, but it fosters the reproduction of self-identity in opposition to various "others". the members of the gagauz delegation represented themselves formally and informally as gagauz, and merely through this act they contributed to the perpetuation of the gagauz people as a separate entity. at the same time they cultivated the gagauz as part of a turkic collectivity. in this case the members of the delegation were the national brokers: they "performed gagauzness"—by being there and displaying their dances and music through a folklorized identity. their representation of gagauzness also served utilitarian purposes (business and cultural contacts, etc.), as was the case during the language olympiad. while it may have been situationally lucrative for them to emphasize the turkic part of their gagauz identity for various ends, i would not suggest that the reproduction of national categories and units can be explained only in terms of instrumentalist attitudes. such motivations simply add to the already emerging symbolic common ground between gagauz and turks. it is my contention that turkey, in its representations, stands as a reflection of the ideology of a meta-turkic identity, and that encounters such as those described above only invoke selected aspects of this ideology. thus, it is possible to find a range of real-life situations in which the manifestation of this ideology can give rise to multiple and apparently contradictory meanings and understandings. in the context of interactions with other turkic peoples, the presence of turks contributes to the fostering of a collective "turkic feeling" while at the same time underlining the differences between turks and the various turkic populations. these feelings of both similarity and difference coexist and are fundamental to the shaping of the resulting interactions and alliances. being gagauz through connectedness to and separation from a turkish identity is just one dimension of gagauz identity. not unlike the repertoire of other ethnic groups, a gagauz repertoire of identity can also access and play up links both to moldovanness and russianness. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 50 notes 73 billig argues that nationalism is commonly located on the periphery, pointing out that it is those who are in, say, quebec or brittany who typically come to mind as nationalists rather than president bush senior who initiated the first gulf war. he writes that banal nationalism covers “the ideological habits which enable the established nations of the west to be reproduced” (1995:6). 74 the concept of nationalism has thus often been restricted to exotic and passionate exemplars (1995:8). for billig, there is a crucial distinction between flag-waving nationalism and banal nationalism. in this respect he argues that “the metonymic image of banal nationalism is not a flag which is consciously waved with a fervent passion: it is the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building” (1995:8). 75 moore and meyerhoff correctly argue that when rituals fail to reach their ultimate goal in the sense that symbols do not fuse and give the sense of an undifferentiated whole, they may still be sufficiently viable to provide a sense of continuity and predictability (1977: 14). as they point out, rituals may have significant effects without inducing emotional-perceptual transformations. the authors add that although it is possible to capture the immediate effects of ritual through participants’ behaviour and statements, it is difficult to assess the long-term consequences (ibid.:14). 76 after their return i had a chance to talk to a couple of the children from the group. their narrative of the journey was mainly centred on the families who hosted them and the things they could buy or eat. 77 on this occasion the adults did not change their names, yet in many other cases prominent figures of gagauz cultural and political life were referred to and written about in right-wing turkish newspapers (e.g. kültür ve sanat 1995, yesevi 1994) with modified names (e.g. dionis tanasoglu as deniz tanasoğlu, maria maruneviç as meryem maruneviç, dimitri savastin as mete savaşan, dimitri novak as dimitri novak dost or mete ayoğlu, dimitri kara çoban as mete kara çoban). references billig, michael. 1995. banal nationalism, london: sage publications. blehr, barbro. 1999. "on ritual effectiveness: the case of constitution day", ethnologia scandinavica, 29, pp. 28-43. demirdirek, hülya. 2000. "living in the present: the gagauz in moldova", the anthropology of east europe review: central europe, eastern europe, eastern europe and eurasia, 178 (1), pp. 67-71. demirdirek, hülya. 2001. (re)making of a place and nation: gagauzia in moldova, department of social anthropology, university of oslo. unpublished doctoral thesis. donnan, h. and t. m. wilson. 1999. borders: frontiers of identity, nation and state. oxford: berg publishers. handelman, don. 1998 [1990]. models and mirrors: towards an anthropology of public events, new york and oxford: berghahn books. herzfeld, michael. 1997. cultural intimacy: social poetics in the nation-state, london and new york: routledge. moore, sally falk and myerhoff, barbara g. 1977. "introduction: secular ritual: forms and meanings", in s. f. moore and b. g. myerhoff (eds) secular ritual, pp. 3-24, assen and amsterdam: van gorcum. turner, victor. 1967. forest of symbols. aspects of ndembu ritual, ithaca: cornell university press. turner, victor. 1974. dramas, fields and metaphors. symbolic action in human society, ithaca: cornell university press. through another europe – an anthology of travel writing on the balkans anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 through another europe – an anthology of travel writing on the balkans. ed. andrew hammond. oxford: signal books limited, 2009. xxiv, 265 pp. notes. index. paper. blaž ilc, university of ljubljana the balkans, with their dynamic history, geographical position, and diverse mixture of ethnic and religious groups, have been—and still are—represented as a liminal space which is neither european nor oriental. this specific „otherness‟ of the balkans has been, to a great extent, established and perpetuated through the representations of the peninsula in the books and articles of western european and american intellectuals, diplomats, journalists, travel writers etc. who are both captivated and appalled by the balkans. andrew hammond has taken upon himself the difficult and ambitious task of compiling a representative sample of such writings in his book through another europe—an anthology of travel writing on the balkans. the book begins with an introductory study in which the editor addresses the history of the british and american fascination with the balkans, its causes (the attraction of the reputed combination of savagery and mystery), its implications (the opening of the peninsula for imperial penetration), and its consequences (the transformation and persistence of specific representations of the inhabitants). this introductory study is followed by more than 50 passages from travelogues chronologically organised into three parts. each of the three parts is introduced by a short passage addressing the general historical context and the prevailing representations of the balkans and its peoples during the specific period. the editor also provides a short introduction to each extract, drawing attention to specific representations and themes present in the passage. furthermore, the table of contents indicates the national and regional focus of each extract. the first part covers the period between the 17 th and early-20 th century, when much of the peninsula was under the administration of the habsburgs and the ottoman empire. the selected extracts demonstrate that british travellers, as well as long-term british residents of the region, found little to admire in the native populations. the predominant representations of the peoples and lands of the balkans establish them as backward, violent, barbaric, bloodthirsty, and savage. although some writers did express sympathy for the balkan peoples and for their national liberation struggles, they also portrayed them as child-like and bucolic noble savages from a long-forgotten age. the representations change quiet substantially in the second part, which covers the period between 1914 and 1939. according to the editor, the main cause for this change is that “the vilification that dominated travel writing for centuries now seemed inappropriate for a region that the allied forces sought to conscript against the central powers” (p. 77). the denigration prevalent in the 19 th century was exchanged for a complimentary style of representation, which anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 257 endured after the first world war. after the war, the balkans became a sort of romantic, pastoral alternative to western modernity, a region full of music and dances. this romantic vision of the balkans begins to wane in the extracts from the third part of the anthology, which covers the period between 1939 and 2005. the majority of the passages from the cold war period paint a quite sympathetic and respectful picture of the peninsula. as hammond observes, “the balkans were perceived more as a source of humour than a source of fear” (p. 194). after 1989, and especially since the wars in the former yugoslavia, the representations of the balkans in travelogues return to the same kind of denigration common in the 19 th century. the balkans are once again portrayed as an insecure region of barbaric, bloodthirsty people, devoured by ancient hatreds which endanger not only themselves but also the presumably peaceful peoples of western europe. considering the wealth of the material available, the particular strength of this anthology lies in the painstaking selection and well-considered organisation of extracts that are representative of travel writing from the specific period in history. furthermore, the introductory study and the short introductions accompanying the passages address important questions regarding the epistemological status of travelogues, their embeddedness in the ideological structure of their home countries, and geopolitical implications of these writings. by addressing these issues, the editor avoids perceiving travelogues as factual documents that offer actual truths about the balkans. despite this perception, the main shortfall of the anthology is actually its lack of a well-developed systematic approach which would be necessary for comprehensively addressing the above issues. the consequence of the editor‟s approach is an unclear understanding of the complex concepts of truth and reality. on the one hand he is talking about how our perceptions about the region are mediated by the “cultural baggage” present in the travelogues, and on the other he is talking about the possibility of writing about other cultures in an unimpeded way in the sense of perceiving them as not so different from our own. but the question remains if this perception of sameness can be considered as non-ideological. moreover, the editor‟s implicit understanding of the west as homogenous and reducing it to great britain and the united states (although simultaneously warning against the pitfalls of homogenising representations of the balkans) can also be attributed to the lack of a comprehensive approach. additionally, the relationship between the representations and the historical context is sometimes given too little space, and some of the historical context provided is rather unsettling. i find it very disturbing, for instance, to reduce the complex causes of the yugoslav wars to years of underinvestment. despite its shortcomings, through another europe—an anthology of travel writing on the balkans can be seen as required reading for anyone interested in the british and american representations of the peninsula, and especially how these representations persist and transform through the ages. due to its wealth of material, the book also offers many possibilities for further research and could be of particular interest to scholars interested in the subject of the historical development of representations of non-western regions and peoples, as well as the historical development of travelogues. 1 editors’ notes sam beck, cornell university david a. kideckel, central connecticut state university as we go to press the germanies are moments away from unification, the soviet union is about to embark on a five hundred day experiment of free market expansion and everywhere in the region (with hungary possibly an exception) tendentious signs of political stagnation and conflict-both latent and manifest-are rending the fabric of the east and central european states. suddenly, too, the conflict on the arabian peninsula has shifted the world's attention away from the east european transformation, just when those states could have best benefitted by an infusion of energy, assistance, and patience to complement their own people's struggles to fashion new societies on the still warm remains of the post-war system. the romance of the west with the region's revolutions lasted about eight months; not bad considering the prevalence of the "fifty second sound bite," in our contemporary political culture. welcome to the nineties! new to this issue are two "reports from the field" which we hope to make a regular feature of subsequent numbers. thus, as both aeer editors (beck and kideckel) have recently returned from romania they, hopefully along with others recently there, will contribute a groupthink piece about that society in a future issue. we hope, too, that jan kubik will continue his meditations on his polish fieldwork. we strongly encourage any of you who have recently been to east europe to contribute your thoughts and analyses about the on-going transformation. such contributions can go beyond 'both the analytical limitations of journalism as well as the time limitations of scholarship. given the region's fluidity, we see few other options left us. finally, it is sad to note the passing of lajos vincze who died unexpectedly this past may. lajos was active in east european research and contributed a number of interesting articles on pastoralism in the region. a more complete obituary submitted by eva huseby-darvas can be found in the current (annual meeting) issue of the aaa's anthropology newsletter. eastern europe at the aaa there are a number of meetings and symposia at the upcoming annual meeting of the american anthropological association which deserve your attention. first, the east european 2 anthropology group will meet friday nov. 30 at noon to 1:30 and the society for the anthropology of europe meeting will also be the same day at 5:30-7:00 p.m. the hungarian research group will meet thurs, 11-29 at noon. sae network meeting for the anthropology of germany is also scheduled to meet friday at 5:30 but that may well be changed due to conflicts with the sae business meeting. notable symposia include "germany between perestroika and european integration” (we, 9-28), "the european melting pot: national ideologies and ethnic minorities' (fri a.m., 1130), "communal life and collective action" (fri p.m., 11-30) and "author meets critics: ernest gellner on the structure of human history" (sat p.m., 12-1). a number of other sae-sponsored sessions are devoted to europeanist themes. a tout a l'heure! anthropology of east europe review book review: political culture in east central europe, fritz plasser and andreas pribersky, editors, 1996, brookfield, vt: a vebury. krista harper university ofcalifornia, santa cruz for many cultural anthropologists, the concepts of "political culture" typically used by political scientists suffer from impoverished theories of both politics and culture. often, political scientists use the term "political culture" as a catch-all to describe all those aspects of institutional ized political life which are not readily explained by an analysis of economic performance or political elite. alternatively, the "civic culture" approach to political culture tends to rank countries in a unilinear developmental scale (pa). according to this approach, a given country's political culture may be judged according to its similarity to the american model of civic culture. pribesky and plasser, the editors of political culture in east central europe, attempt to bring a more historically and culturally nuanced approach to the question of political culture, producing a volume with numerous essays of interest to cultural anthropologists working on east-central europe. the editors bring together sixteen essays by political scientists from austria, croatia. hungary, czech republic, slovenia, and slovakia. the first section of the book discusses definitions of political culture and qualitative and quantitative research methods. gregor mat jan's chapter on lifestyle concepts builds upon the work of michael thompson and aaron wildavsky. andreas pribersky's essay on symbolic dimensions of political culture offers a brief but informative treatment of "paternalism" as a key political concept in hungarian politics. his essay is refreshing because it maps the use of paternalistic discourses in party statements and slogans across the political spectrum, rather than simply taking for granted the role of paternalism in east central european politics. the second part of the book consists of sections on croatia, hungary. czech republic. slovenia, austria, and slovakia. many of the essays treat questions of political culture with a great deal of sensitivity to historical context and meaning-making processes. i will highlight those chapters which are most interesting to cultural anthropologists. igor luksic's essay, "political culture in slovenia" begins with an articulate critique of the "civic culture" approach. his analysis of slovenian pol itical culture touches upon metaphors used to describe government and society, as well as the role of religion and state socialism in forming contemporary slovene's political imagination. the two chapters on hungarian political culture likewise combine anthropological approaches with empirical political science research. attila agh's essay considers the tension between "europeanizing" and nationalist discourses in party politics from 1989 to 1994. mate szabo's piece draws extensively from sociological theories on social movements and tracks changes in the aims, structures, and strategies of protest actions over the course of the transition from state socialism. gregor meseznikov's chapter investigates populism and nationalism in contemporary slovak political debates, making an interesting contention that political oppositions such as "paternalism vs. liberalism" cut across right/left distinctions and bear further inspection. karin liebhart's "political culture in austria" highlights the need to study silences in political discourses. citing the example of postwar politicians' denial and suppression of austria's nazi past, liebhart criticizes political science research which focuses solely on attitudes articulated in opinion polls. in the last chapter in the collection, hans-georg heinrich compares russian and east central european political cultures. while the author points out numerous contrasts between the two regions' historical experiences and cultures of government, he cautions those who champion "central european­ ness" a key factor influencing political life in east central europe: "the elite and masses of today were formed during the fmal stages of real socialism" (p. 233). despite the editors' defmition of political culture as "historically informed and historically variable attitudes, evaluations, and practices of politics" (p. xi), quite a few of the chapters report on public opinion research in a relatively uncritical manner, without significant historical analysis or cultural context. some of the opinion poll questions, such as "on the whole, are you very satisfied. fairly satisfied, or not satisfied with democracy in your country?" (21), appear vol. 17.no. i 1999. page: 63 anthropology of east europe review immediately ridiculous to anthropologists. as david anderson points out in his ethnographic analysis of siberian villagers. postsocialist political culture quite often revolves around wildly contested interpretations of such concepts as "democracy" (anderson. in hann and dunn. eds .. 1996). while opinion polls can be useful researchers using this method would be well­ advised to pay closer attention to questions of meaning and interpretation when composing and analyzing surveys. despite these faults, political culture ill east central europe suggests many possible points of contact and exchange between cultural anthropologists and political scientists working on political culture. the explosion of interest in matters of political culture in east central europe in both disciplines means that political scientists and anthropologists will enter into discussion with one another. the many thoughtful essays in this collection suggest that such a discussion may even prove enjoyable. references cited hann. chris and elizabeth dunn, eds., 1996, civil society: challenging western models. 1\ew york: routledge. vol. 17. no.1 1999. page: 64 31 the romanian side(s) of postmodernism stefania mihalache mircea cristea technical college, brasov and still ... postmodernisjil at the gates ofthe orient. hoi\" beaurifiil if sounds.' what a rem ole. li-!/(/r all ill/possihle sron. frankness is sad, lidos. ullci j hun'il'r read a!! the books' 1.~/l'.yalldru musina) postmodcmism in literature 5taned around the 60's with names such as beckett. "'abokov, calvino. saul bellow. but also le no\cau roman fran9ais, tel quel. txt. it seems like its signs emerged both in the states and in western europe. one work that has been extensivelly quoted in refference to postmodemism is john barth' s the lirerature ofexhaustion, an essay that pretty much suggested a crisis of the "real." a cri sis in representation, a crisis in the relationship between self and object, or a stronger necessity to motivate the construction of the narrative, and to rethink the ontology of the act of narration. at the same time. france was talking about the death of literature. postmodernism happened in several \\a\es. it happened with the beat generation and the "language poetry," with poststructuralism. new historicism, feminism, meta fiction. surfiction. it all had to do with the distrust in the text, in the narrative, in the discourse. the manipulation through media added a lot to the problem; the capitalization of the text brought literature and arts into a different era. raymond federman draws attention to the scene behind postmodemism in the states: thus when kennedy smiled it meant that he was happy, and america was happy. when he spoke in a grave tone of voice and announced that the country could be destroyed by an atomic blast coming from cuba, the entire nation changed mood. there existed at the time an element of trust on the part of the readers for the fiction written at that time. that discourse presented itself as a personal friend. this is why the assassination of john f. kennedy (public and televised as it were) had such a traumatic impact on the american consciousness ( ... ). suddenly there was a general distrust of the official discourse whether spoken, written or televised. for indeed, if the content of history can be manipulated by mass­ media, or by literature, if television and the press can falsify historical facts, then the unequivocal relation between the real and the imaginary becomes blurred. (federman 1993: 61) in stuttgart in 1991, postmodemism was declared dead. some of its younger creators gathered there to bury it. there exist written records from the seminar: people talking about what postmodemism meant for them, why it was important, why it died, and they even tried to foresee what its legacy might be. the stars were: john barth, malcom bradbury, raymond federman, william h. gass, ihab hassan, but also a few prominent eastern european intellectuals, among them a few distinguished names from romania: ion bogdan lefter, mircea cartarescu, florin berindeanu, pia brinzeu, tiberiu paskuy. ion bogdan lefter and mircea cartarescu are the founding and loving fathers of romanian postmodernism. they both wrote books on the subject. being there in stuttgart with postmodem figures of a more recent wave, they were absorbedly interested in what the distinguished guests had to say. moreover, bogdan lefter decided to make several interviews with them in order to get a clearer view. ihab hassan declared that he was not that i much interested in postmodernism any longer; i malcom bradbury said it is just a name for certain aesthetic happenings and that other aesthetic changes are about to come. both hassan and bradbury prefer to draw more on the content of literature, on its substance i rather than on its varied forms and faces. however, in the written interview (lefter 2002), bogdan lefter proudly announced his i personal interpretation of the conclusion from the seminar that "postmodernism is fully alive" and that, at the end ofthe meeting. everybody praised the romanian postmoderism which was to them brand new, i two weeks old (which is to say, they only found out about it at the beginning of the seminar). the question i will address in this article is: i why are some of the post-1989 romanian i intellectuals so fond ofpostmodernism0 why can't they accept its death even when looking at its dead body (as the stuttgart seminar was called to pronounce it dead)? to answer this question one needs first to see i why postmodernism died in the first place. i let us not leave the stuttgart seminar just yet. raymond federman (1993) had quite a few reasonable answers: postmodernism was an exercise in discontinuity, rupture, break, mutation, transformation, therefore doomed from the beginning ... (154) when something completes its intellectual and moral journey it is enshrined within sealed cases in the various sorbonne, like the relics of saints, and is venerated in much the same way ( ... ) and so it is with postmodernism ... (155) now that the effects of postmodernism are evident in sectors as diverse as dress, food and lodging, 32 and are in those forms understood the end is not so far. (155) his summing up is even more enlightening: the general sense one gets from these replies (some quite fascinating, i think) is that postmodernism is indeed dead, finished, on the one hand because it was swallowed and digested by the economy and eventually excreted and disseminated into the culture, on the other hand because it was stifled by academic bickering and consequently turned into a futile debate (especially 111 america). (federman, 1993: 157) under these circumstances, one wonders why postmodernism is still fully alive in eastern europe, in romania for example, and what kind of posmodernism that can be. the answer is not easy because postmodernism occupied a big part of the scene of post-1989 literary debates and was extremely controversial. the toughest question that was asked was whether romanian postmodernism is possible or not; could it be authentic? many voices rejected it as an imported concept; still others drew many similarities in the themes and literary experiments that were, after 1989, more obvious than ever. the debate became painful because it was very soon read as but a form of the well known, haunting complex of the retardedness of romanian literature, its need for synchronization with western literatures. throughout the history of romanian literature, this dilemma divided the critics into "modems" and "traditionalists," those who embraced new literary trends and those who opposed them as unspecific, superficial, and alien to the "true" spirit of romanian culture. the debate around postmodernism had to follow a similar route even if spiced with more complications, because after 1989, romanian culture was in an unmediated relation to the "free world." the spicy bits­ concepts like democracy, pluralism, liberalism, transition, human subject were 33 sprinkled all along the way to make the discussion about postmodernism really hot. to make things clearer, it is perhaps necessary to elucidate how the concept got into romanian literature in the first place. talk about postmodernism was possible first of all because the interwar avant-garde (tzara, barbu, de trost, lonesco) left a legacy in terms of experimentation with the language, while modernism before communism refined the possibilities of the language. romanian literature froze under communism and socialist realism very nearly paralyzed it. it was not until the late 1970s when glasnost allowed for moderate visibility of the young generation of literary theoreticians inspired by the school of post structuralism (mircea mihaies, loan buduca, radu g.teposu, loan holban).1 postmodern inspiration is said to be, in poetry, the anti-lyricism ofn. stanescu, m. invanescu, ileana malancioiu, dorin tudoran, or the oneiric prose of the targoviste school (highly influenced by borges and cortazar). needless to say, these artistic languages were merely underground impulses in a still harsh and cold communist cultural landscape. much closer to postmodern concerns is the generation ofthe 1980s, by far the most intense and coherent underground literary movement in the socialist republic of romania. textualism was one of the main theoretical standpoints for the generation of the 1980's while "tel quel," "txt." russian formalism, r. barthes, r. jakobson. and n. chomsky were among the father figures for these restless intellectuals. of special importance was the overlap of two kinds of readings that they performed on the \vestern texts that nourished postmodernism. on the one hand, the realization that signs and discourses are arbitrary, that they are constructed systems, providers of false realities, was naturally connected to the discursive power of the socialist regime: a narrative experiment would mean "articulating kinds of social consciousness 1 see comis-pope 1996. other than authoritarian ones" (clowes, w. edith, cited in cornis-pope, 1996: 9). on the other hand, it inferred with the occidental critique of the system of knowledge (foucauldian style) and of the "coercive" inner nature of capitalist political liberalism. this double reading made it possible for the romanian "textualist" authority, gheorghe lova, to write: to read means to know you are being ruled. the citizen must be a reader, he must know he is being ruled, that is not a secret, he is being ruled in his name for his own wellbeing, he must participate in this ruling. (lova 1999: 293) reality cannot be found in the sign, in the language; on the contrary, textuality represents the site ofpower. in communist romania, however, theory about text and power could not exist without subtle reference to dictatorship, censorship, and distortion of reality through discursive powers of totalitarianism. therefore, the circulation of "postmodern" themes and concerns is clearly discernible, and maybe even an authentic experiment with the narrative. still, if this is to be called postmodernism one needs to acknowledge that the meaning of the tenn was changed: coming from the west, postmodernism is seen as the very symbol of a freed cultural space, the freedom of expression, the freedom of the creative spirit, the freedom that every artist longs for. moreover, read in this key, the postmodem experiment is no longer a movement that problematizes the possibilities of knowing the real, but is instead the very guarantee for it: for the real is the freedom of the free world, the freedom of liberal capitalism and liberal democracy. marcel comis-pope (1996: 10) reads romanian postmodernism along similar lines: many of the ideas which animated the 1989 revolutions (cultural pluralism, "civic society", a democracy of participation) had been prepared over the years in the theoretical laboratory of dissident thinkers and writers from 3-l i i i i i the best western and eastern traditions. the postmodern grafts have been useful to a number of intellectual and artistlc groups involved 111 articulating an alternative model of intellectual interaction, tolerant, pluralistic, reformulative. adding to this postmodern sense of romanian underground cultural production were the works of philosophers like noica and his followers (liiceanu and plesu) to produce what is called the "cultural resistance" or "ethical engagement." postmodern theories were (not necessarily uncritically) imported as novelties from the west; however, the sense of post modernism was altered. ironically. it became the symbol of pluralism and democracy while in the west, it was pern1eated with distrust in precisely the mechanisms of western liberalism. and born out of fear that the real is being manipulated, albeit in different ways and for different reasons than in eastern europe. however, it was only after 1989 that postmodernism could come out in the open, meeting different challenges and dressed in new clothes. after the revolution, there \\cre massive translations of western books. a beginning of a cultural revival and re\i5ion. and a direct dialog with the western \\orlj. ex-socialist eastern european countries were (and still are) undergoing transition against an uneasy backdrop of the remnants of socialism and reemerging nationalisms, under these circumstances the voices ofliterary crilics were polarized in reference to postmodemism; each side came up with its own distortion. or reinvention, of the concept. to a great majority that equated it with dissidence under communism" postmodernism is a solution for the transition too; it is no less than the most effective pill, the infusion of democracy and market economy: the input of a critical intelligentsia is especially needed in such periods of transition, tom between trans formative and restorative trends. innovative literature and criticism can now play the role of a "democratic laboratory": rethinking divisive sociocultural issues and exposing the vestiges of totalitarianism in whatever guise they may appear, ( ... ). the process of post-totalitarian restructuring must begin, in cristian moraru's suggestive phrase, with a theoretical-deconstructive "reeducation", "a night from red." (cornis-pope 1996: 10) in the teleological thinking of these voices, flight from red clearly means getting closer to western capitalist liberalism. to this end, postmodernism can be a great tool. to reiterate, there is a fault in this type of reasoning, however, for in the western world postmodernism meant an avant-garde movement which had its roots in doubt and dissatisfaction with the capitalization of language, the turning of culture into commodity, the standardization of the narrative, and so on. postmodernism emerged as a distrust within societies that had been liberal democracies for a long time, therefore it could not stand for the glorification of its object of distrust. for ion bogdan lefter, however, postmodernism is synonymous with a western style of life all the way down to rock music and jeans: ( ... ) portions of our lives, areas of our societies became postmodern as early as communism! remember that at the end of the 1970s, forms of western civilization in its way to postmodernism would reach us too: books, rock, movies of a certain kind, forms of culture in the largest sense, behaviors and mentalities ( ... ) even the jeans and other goods sold in the black market ( ... ) or brought by our more evolved relatives from the free world. (lefter 2002: 320) this quote should be contrasted with raymond federman's (1993:168) statement: though no one ever felt really comfortable with the ternl .. 35 pustmodem, nonetheless for several decades it served to define a certain a\'ant-garde activity played out on a high intellectual and artistic level, at times even accused of being elitist, until that activity was absorbed into mainstream culture by the economy and quickly tumed into pop-art. and so now it is time perhaps to abandon the teml postmodem. this is how far apart the two images of postmodemism really were. there is both a time gap, and a content gap between the two. it is important to note, however, that both these statements coexisted at the same time and place, that is, at the stuttgart seminar. lefter's concept of postmodemism is heavily politicized and his arguments immersed in old fashioned evolutionism which is displayed in his favorite dichotomies: the pair modemismlpostmodemism equates \\'ith the pair communismlpostcomrnunism: \yestem world means evolution, eastern world means retardation, a state of semi-barbarism from which we slowly emerge, postmodem fashion. other labels dear to bogdan lefter arc: traditionalism, eurocentrism, phalocratic power vs. multiculturalism, tolerance, anti­ canonical society (lefter, 2002: 32-.tjl-iis distinctions between the old and the new, the strong dichotomization of his argumentation, and the passionate air of his language read as an inverted discourse of the prolerklllr. his dogmatic approach inscribes the future in the same manner the promoters of socialist realism used to do: what would be our general orientation? we could briefly describe it in terms such as postlllodemism, pos[structuralism and cultural srlldies, european ism, pro-americanislil. llnti­ nationalism, anti-fundamenralism and anti-ortodoxism, liberalism and multiculturalism, pro-dell/ocme,.and political correctness. (lefler 2002: 125) indeed,flyingfom the red on the carpet of postmodemism is easy once we master the game of anti and pro. lefter is a good representative of pro-postmodemism in the latest debates in romanian cultural space after 1989. the other stream distorts postmodemism in a different way. these are the voices who consider that there cannot be a romanian postmodernism. i selected only the strongest in the choir. this perspective mayor may not be accurate, but it is certainly charmingly argued. the voice is that of the promoter of the 1980's generation, a prominent poet and intellectual alexandru musina. the problem for us would be whether (and to what extent) our society has entered postindustrialism. i think we still have a long way to get there. what of it? should we fear that we are not within the occidental time? well, how can we be when we are not? ( ... ) for us, postmodernism cannot be anything else but a "digression", a beautiful, far away story. (mus ina, 1999: 436-7) as it can be understood from the broader context of his theoretical approach, postmodernism is equated with the product of consumerist, highly technologized society, characterized by a certain lack of spirituality and authenticity, thus allowing for postmodem games, artifacts, the simulacra. the eclectic manner, the skepticism towards "simple" communication, the return to the past, the attempt to charm the public through "simulation", the borrowing and, ultimately, acceptance of the "forms" (and rules) of consumerist literature are (the talent of the writers notwithstanding) si1:,'11s of a certain spiritual exhaustion. (musina, 1999: 437) again, this perception is explained with the fact that romanians had a more clear view of postmodemism when it was already digested by the economy of consumerism; that is to say, as raymond federman puts it, when it was at its very end. postmodemism died when i 36 clothes, department stores, buildings etc. i i i i i i became postmodern. it is this phenomenon that musina calls spiritual exhaustion; it is not, however, postmodernism itself. interestingly, musina' s perception leads him to a speculation that is perhaps unexpected and slightly polemic: since western culture seems to have lost a certain sense of the real it is perhaps eastern europe with its enthusiasm stemming from recent liberation ­ that will be the agency to switch the pendulum (in foucauldian sense) to\\"ards a new humanism: my conviction is that. after modernism, we should be witnessing a return to the things "humane"as modernism was a "de-humanization"­ to a new classicism, a new anthropocentrism. the obsession with the language, with secondary \\"orlds, has reached a dead end; furthennore, the humanities are now scattered in a multitude of languages and specialized approaches which at,l lllize and alienate the human subject. (musina 1999: 439) it is therefore the east that needs to re­ evaluate the human subject and the path to reality while the western world lost the power of representation and took refuge in cyberfiction and other literary enterprises that are the very proof of the definitive alienation of the human being. of course, eastern postmodern reality is but partial and localized; nevertheless it may be the place for re-shaping and re-framing the real, on the grounds of the preserved human authenticity. having presented these perspectives on postmodemism with brief reference to the circumstances before and after 1989, it is still difficult to say whether a distinct romanian postmodernism is possible or not. there might be similarities in the narrative experiments, but caution is needed when cultural concepts are transplanted from one cultural context to another. there is much room for misunderstanding, as it seems that at a closer look, what was thought to be a clone is merely a half-brother. it is clear, however, that postmodernism is a concept with a range of different meanings and interpretations, a looking glass for different cultural agencies. it is for this reason that, in a former socialist country such as romania, postmodernism can be a story of transition, a story of evolution, a story of the real, a story of a new humanism, and a story of former resistance. a buzz word, a concept, a belief, a nuisance, a career, all at once: how postmodern indeed. references cited: cornis-pope, marcel. 1996. the unfinished battles, romanian postmodernism before and after 1989, iasi: polirom. craciun, gheorghe. 1999. competitia continua, generatia '80 in texte teoretice, pitesti: paralela 45. federman. raymond. 1993. before postmodernism and after in ziegler, heide, 1993,the end of post modernism: new directions; proceedings of the first stuttgart seminar in cultural studies. o-l03­ 18.08.1991, m und p, veri. fur \\·iss. und forschung. iova, gheorghe. 1999. cititoml, in craciun. gheorghe, 1999, competitia continua, generatia '80 in texte teoretice, pitesti: ed. paralela 45. lefier, ion bogdan. 2002. postmodemism, din dosaml unei "batalii" culturale, pitesti: paralela 45. musina, alexandru. 1999. postmodemismul, o frumoasa poveste in craciun, gheorghe, 1999, competitia continua, generatia '80 in texte teoretice, pitesti, ed. paralela 45. ziegler, heide. 1993. the end of postmodernism: new directions;proceedings of the first stuttgart seminar in cultural studies, 04.08-18.08.1991, m und p, veri. fur wiss. und forschung. anthropology of east europe review 33(1) spring 2015 99 romani routes. cultural politics & balkan music in diaspora. by carol silverman. oxford: university press, 2012. xxvii, 398pp. notes. bibliography. index. photographs. figures. hard bound. cătălina tesăr, museum of the romanian peasant romani routes by carol silverman is a journey across time and space which straddles north america and southeast europe and oscillates between past and present state regimes and their socio-economic slants, in quest of the driving forces of production and consumption of the balkan music. in this work, silverman details the processes and actors which lie behind the present craze for gypsy and balkan music in the u.s. and western europe. the book seeks to demonstrate that balkan music, a fusion of balkan beats and gypsy music, is not merely an art. it is a product of the workings of global market forces and state politics against the backdrop of romani people’s struggles for recognition and visibility. the balkan music making draws on stereotypical representations of roma as exotic and sensual and their internalization by the romani people. the phenomenon of balkan music merges appropriation of romani music by non-roma celebrity patrons with social marginalization of the roma. it thus maps onto relations of exploitations which convey the idea of roma being “powerless politically and powerful musically” (2012:241). combining approaches from ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cultural studies, the book draws on ethnographic research among roma and non-roma musicians and music producers, managers and festival organizers who have ties to countries such as bulgaria, macedonia, serbia, romania and who reside there or elsewhere, as well as on analyses of mass media materials. the main actors, however, are macedonian and bulgarian musicians with whom more extensive fieldwork was conducted in the new york city neighborhood of bronx, where a sizable community of macedonian roma resides. fieldwork was also conducted in šutka, the large romani community located on skopje’s outskirts, as well as in diverse bulgarian locales, where carol silverman has been travelling since the 1970s. covering almost three decades, the richness of this narrative derives from the complementary roles of the author as an anthropologist, a folklorist, a singer of balkan and romani vocal genres, and as an activist of romani issues. as a collaborator of the ngo voice of roma, carol silverman has been involved in grassroots advocacy for the romani voices and in bringing an educational component to the entertainment industry. the book is organized in four sections, comprised of thirteen chapters. part one acts as an “introduction” to the uneasy history, rich culture, and social marginality of balkan roma with a focus on bulgaria and macedonia. it also considers the paths of their recent migration to the u.s, sets the historical context of the development of music as a romani profession (2012:18), and gives an overview of the balkan styles and genres. a theoretical framework is outlined, which emphasizes the challenge romani populations pose to the common understandings of notions of diaspora, hybridity, transnationalism, and performance. the author wonders about her role in the context of increasing discrimination against the anthropology of east europe review 33(1) spring 2015 100 romani people in europe, mushrooming popularity of the gypsy music in the us, and the rise of the romani movement. part ii, “music in diasporic homes,” considers the role of music and dance in forging links within transnational families with origins in macedonia who now live in western europe, u.s. and australia. relatedness is created and experienced through the movement of people and goods, such as tape recordings, especially during wedding celebrations and other life cycle events. central idioms of romani cultural figurations are also explored in this section: the virginity and the demure behavior of women, their association with the private space, and their predicament of living within an overarching patriarchal ideology. these themes are readdressed throughout the book, in relation to romani women stage performers. the female belly dance, the macedonian čoček and bulgarian kyuchek in particular bring about a sensitive discussion as to how women navigate their divergent representations, both as members of a community that values the containment of their sexuality, and as stage performers for an audience that consumes them as eroticized objects. part iii, “music, states, and markets,” looks at how state socialism and post-socialism shaped balkan romani music in bulgaria. while music produced by roma was at odds with the official cultural politics of ethnic sanitization during communism, it nonetheless left a legacy of resilience. the best example of this is the endurance of the genre wedding music in spite of its official prohibition. not only did bulgarian wedding music proliferate in the privacy of people’s home celebrations, but it also crept into the informal musical market. in post-socialist era, although gypsy music became exceedingly popular, it also became prey to exploitation by both non-romani entrepreneurs and those romani people who were lured by the tunes of the market logic. the fact that romani musicians and roma people did not overcome marginality is best epitomized by the phenomenon of chalga, a pop-folk genre that attracted moral criticism on the part of the cultural and political elites despite its overwhelming popularity among the working classes. in part iv, “musicians in transit,” the author poses the question, “how did romani music become the hip commodity labeled gypsy music that is now found in world music festivals, in urban clubs, and endorsed by movie stars such as johnny depp and madonna?” (2012:241). she presents a tentative answer: this happened by the synergy between economic and political power disparities, marketization and commodification of gypsies’ orientalized images, and appropriation of gypsy music by the non-romani entertainment industry. however, silverman hints that romani musicians have not been passive actors in these processes. the evolution of stars such as esma redžepova and yuri yanakov shows how romani musicians not only adopt self-exotization as a market strategy but also adapt to the market demands. this raises a question: should we consider the collaboration of roma musicians with the driving forces of the world music scene inherently exploitative? i would appreciate further discussion on this issue, given that at times i felt unsure about the extent to which roma people themselves felt exploited versus it being the authors’ interpretation. this observation aside, the book is an instructive reading both for the scholars of romani studies, identity politics, post-socialism, or transnationalism, and for nonprofessional readership with a taste for balkan music. microsoft word aeer_fall2006_ final.doc anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 7 “shopaholic” in eastern europe: a guest editor’s foreword1 kristen ghodsee bowdoin college the idea for this special issue on “cultures of consumerism” did not arise from a purely scholarly interest, but rather from a personal one. my fascination with how consumption patterns and practices have changed in the former socialist countries since the early 1990s arose because i have lived through the radical changes that have dramatically reshaped consumerism since bulgaria’s insertion into the global capitalist economy in 1989. in short, it is not as a researcher of consumerism that i proposed this special issue, but rather as a participant:2 i am a shopper. and i have watched bulgaria evolve from a veritable retail wasteland where procuring essential goods and services was a himalayan feat requiring all of the perseverance and tracking skills of a louisiana bloodhound into a country brimming with luxurious retail oases where opulent, new shopping malls spring forth from the earth like magic beanstalks, and compact orgies of consumerism are surrounded by deserts of abject poverty. it is therefore from my own ambivalence about the development of modern capitalist consumer societies in eastern europe that this volume has sprung, and each of the contributions in some way speaks to these tensions and contradictions. since daphne berdahl, one of the pioneers of ethnographic research on consumerism in the postsocialist context, generously agreed to write the introduction to the fascinating pieces that comprise this special issue, i will use this brief forward to reflect informally on the topic in order to evoke the myriad of complexities for those who are not already specialists in the region. in 1997, when i first started researching bulgaria, the country had just experienced a total economic meltdown that precipitated a sudden change of government as disenchanted voters demanded immediate new elections in what amounted to a people’s coup. during my first few months of fieldwork in 1998, i was happy to subsist on the fresh fruits and vegetables that are so abundant in the summer months in a largely agricultural county. i lived with a family in a furnished apartment and had no need of procuring any essential household items. it was only when i returned for the fourteen months of dissertation fieldwork in 1999-2000 that i began to understand the difficulties one faced in the acquisition of almost anything beyond the bare bulgarian basics of bread, beer and white and yellow cheese. it did not matter if you had the money to spend, there was very little to buy. the choice of most goods was miserably limited, and the price points were either ridiculously expensive or embarrassingly cheap as mobsters and the nouveaux riche glutted themselves on pricey, western european designer imports while the rest of bulgarians made do with whatever random goods were shuttle-traded or smuggled into the country from turkey and sold in large outdoor markets. the concept of “one-stop shopping” was as elusive an idea as the unified force theory. stores were segregated by the type of goods they sold; only in the smaller villages were there single shops that sold bread, rakiya (bulgarian brandy), nails and fertilizers over the same counter. in most “food stock” stores, you were not allowed to examine any of the goods before purchasing them. instead, you waited behind a counter and pointed at the things you thought you wanted while the grouchiest grandmother in the country reluctantly took them down from the shelves and decided (using some unknown criteria) whether you were worthy enough to have these crackers and tea bags sold to you. even tzum (tzentralen universalen magazin), the “central universal store” in the capital city sofia, was full of random booths selling a sparse selection of inferior goods. the strangest thing about all of this, however, was that most people i spoke to seemed to think that the shopping scene was pretty good, at least compared to what it had been before. although i never lived in bulgaria during the communist period, i felt i needed to understand how shopping had worked during that time if only in order to make sense of how difficult it was for me to get used to the relative deprivations of postcommunist consumerism. in fact, it was through my own hopeless search for a bottle of calvin klein “eternity” eau de toilette in 1999 that i began to understand the consumer past of bulgaria during the command economic period. after the many conversations with women selling cosmetics during my quest for my “signature scent” (which, by the way, turned out to be as successful as the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 8 search for the holy grail), i thought i began to understand the process of producing consumer goods under bulgarian communism, and the many pitfalls of having central planners make cologne. i imagined a committee of communist central planners who used advanced statistical methods that included the square root of the number of gray hairs on stalin’s mustache in 1951 to determine the precise number of bottles of rose perfume which would be produced in a given year. after arriving at the scientifically socialist figure and coordinating with all of the necessary production enterprises, they would set aside at least a fifth of the bottles for their own families and friends and would allow the rest to be haphazardly distributed to women throughout the country who would hate having to wear only rose perfume but would buy it anyway because there was nothing else available. i realized then that it was absurd for me to be picky about which type of perfume i bought in bulgaria. i was lucky to have a choice at all. a nice middle-aged woman with orange hair in tzum convinced me to buy anais anais by cacharel instead, a perfume i did not even like very much. it was only later that i realized that most bulgarians still “ordered” goods such as perfume from friends and relatives who traveled abroad. most women just stuck with the familiar rose scents that they were used to and which were still readily available and relatively inexpensive. eventually, that enigmatic bottle of “eternity” perfume became a metaphor for the many frustrated shopping experiences that i was to be subjected to in the course of my fieldwork. part of the problem was that bulgaria was slow to develop out of its central planning past compared to its socialist brother countries to the northwest. the bulgarians democratically reelected the communists back into power in 1990, and it was not until 1997 after the economic collapse that the state began to dismantle its almost total control of the domestic economy. in 1999, when metro, the first german “cash and carry” opened in sofia, it was like a small consumer revolution even though there was a whole panoply of rules that had to be followed in order to shop there: you had to be a member (which seemed to require blood samples and the proof of a recent liver biopsy from your maternal grandmother), had to spend a minimum amount of money on each visit, were not allowed to shop with children under the age of seven, etc. slowly, other foreign stores entered the market and miraculously you could then buy fresh fruits and vegetables in the winter months and there were more than two types of cheese available in the store. if you had the money. the new plethora of retail opportunities in bulgaria threw into sharp relief the economic disparities arising in the country. in particular, there emerged a vast rural-urban divide. it is a sad irony that at the exact moment when bulgaria actually began to have a functioning market economy, there were many families who removed themselves from the market altogether – returning to subsistence agriculture as a strategy to survive the desperate consequences of high rural unand underemployment. the growing choice of new goods was always contrasted to the shrinking number of people in the country that could afford to buy them. furthermore, consumerism had become acutely gendered, and society’s ideals of successful masculinity and femininity were increasingly being defined by ownership of the right material accoutrements for your given sex (cars, watches, laptops and cell phones for men; clothes, purses, jewelry, high-end cosmetics and silicone implants for women). fast forward now to 2005-2006 when new research on international islamic aid and bulgarian muslims brought me back to the country for eight more months of fieldwork. the capital had become a consumer wonderland. in the spring of 2006, two huge new shopping malls opened in the capital: the mall of sofia and sofia city center. in addition, tzum had been completely remodeled and they were all full of relatively expensive western brands such as stephanel, triumph, palmers, nike, and sisley. in these stores one bra costs the equivalent of a month’s salary for most bulgarians. many visitors are empty-pocketed window shoppers who stroll around inside for the air conditioning during the oppressive sofia summer heat. in early august 2006, as i meandered through the sofia city center i could hardly believe that this was the same country i had lived in, in the late 1990s. there were shoes and clothes and cell phones and mp3s and tvs and stereos and household appliances and imported foods and the latest hollywood movies and even an imax theatre showing a 3-d dinosaur film. curious about the new retail possibilities, i wandered into a cosmetics shop. having just spent the last few months living in a tiny town in the most rural parts of the rhodopi mountains where many families of six or seven somehow manage to survive on 60 leva ($40) a month, i was initially shocked by the prices anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 2 page 9 of the seemingly endless variety of western facial creams, nail polishes, lipsticks, blushes, eyeliners, mascaras and perfumes even though i desperately wanted to buy something. i could live in the rhodopi for a month for the price of one clarins self-tanning sunscreen. i felt a sudden rush of revulsion as i watched two young bulgarian girls obviously from the upper-middle class spend close to $300 on cosmetics when the average monthly per capita salary in the country was still about $155. i turned to leave, feeling the leftist righteousness of a berkeley graduate swell up in my chest with pride as i abandoned the temptation to purchase something new and expensive just because i had the money and had been deprived of real shopping opportunities for the last 90 days. and then i saw it. there on the shelf across from me, like a monument to a past wish that had long remained unfulfilled, sat a 100ml bottle of “eternity summer.” long after i had abandoned the original scent as too heavy and far too 1990s, good old calvin had redesigned the fragrance as something lighter and more airy, something more appropriate for the mid-naughties and for my new, more “serious” identity as an academic and a mom. after one generous test spray against the inside of my wrist, i grabbed a box and went straight to the counter to pay. after all these years, i finally had my “eternity” perfume in bulgaria – as if somehow the history of the country had conspired to meet my basest consumer desires. i left the store feeling that familiar rush of instant gratification, but there was still a voice inside me that wondered if bulgaria and bulgarians were really that much better off because the five percent of the population that could afford to shop in that store and acquisitive american researchers like me could now purchase expensive western perfumes in sofia. as i walked out into the bright and burning sunshine, i thought i heard whispered curses of communist central planners condemning me to a capitalist purgatory where i would swim in a stew of my own terrible hypocrisy of privilege. and although i had the smug assurance that they were equally as guilty as i, something about that bottle of “eternity” perfume has never quite smelled right. kristen ghodsee sofia, bulgaria, august 2006 notes 1 i would like to thank barbara west, julie hemment and krista harper for all of their work in putting this issue together, and daphne berdahl for agreeing to write the introduction. in particular, i want to extend my deepest gratitude to genevieve creedon, my wonderful intern at the woodrow wilson center, who in many ways was a silent coeditor of this volume. she was an invaluable assistant throughout the whole editorial process. 2 although this interest has also compelled me to seek out the scholarship on consumption in the former socialist world, for instance: adele marie barker, consuming russia: popular culture, sex and society since gorbachev, durham: duke university press, 1999; by susan e. reid and david crowley, style and socialism: modernity and material culture in post-war eastern europe: oxford, new york: berg, 2000; david crowley and susan e. reid, socialist spaces: sites of everyday life in the eastern bloc, oxford, new york: berg, 2002; jennifer patico and melissa caldwell, “consumers exiting socialism: ethnographic perspectives on daily life in postcommunist europe,” in ethnos: journal of anthropology, vol. 67, no. 3, (2002) 285-295; susan e. reid, “cold war in the kitchen: gender and the de-stalinization of consumer taste in the soviet union under khrushchev, ”slavic review, vol. 61, no. 2 (2002), 211-252; krisztina fehervary, “american kitchens, luxury bathrooms, and the search for a ‘normal’ life in post-socialist hungary,” ethnos: journal of anthropology, vol. 67, no. 3, 2002, 369-400; david crowley “warsaw’s shops, stalinism and the thaw” in style and socialism: modernity and material culture, 25-48: jennifer patico, “chocolate and cognac: gifts and the recognition of social worlds in post-soviet russia,” ethnos: journal of anthropology, vol. 67, no. 3, (2002) 345-369: daphne berdahl, where the world ended: re-unification and identity in the german borderland, berkeley: uc press, 1999; gerald creed, (consumer) paradise lost: capitalist dynamics and disenchantment in rural bulgaria, anthropology of east europe review, vol. 20. no. 2, autumn 2002; kristen ghodsee, “potions, lotions and lipstick: the gendered consumption of cosmetics and perfumery in socialist and postsocialist urban bulgaria,” forthcoming in women’s studies international forum, vol. 30 no. 1, 2007. allen typewritten text © 2006 kristen ghodsee all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review is retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights to the text. please email the managing editor for details on how to contact these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. aeer template after capitalism: soviet construction of the state of nature in sub-artic siberia nikolai ssorin-chaikov max planck institute for social anthropology in 1921 lidiya dobrova-iadrintseva, an ethnographer and economist, took a steamer that headed down the yenisei river from the central siberian city of krasnoiarsk. the steamer was to supply the indigenous population of the lower part of the basin with flour, sugar, and hunting equipment — all badly needed after the russian revolution (1917) and civil war (1918-21) shut down most of the northern fur trade. dobrova-iadrintseva used this occasion “to make a complete population census and collect data on indigenous economic life” (1925:1). the book that she published, based on this survey, was quickly recognized as seminal in early soviet anthropology. contrary to 19th-century ethnographic accounts which analytically separated aboriginal societies from colonial relations, dobrova-iadrintseva argued that practices of russian indigenous administration and fur trade were crucial in the social production of local communities. thus, instead of looking at the survival of stateless, kin-based communal structures, she analyzed larger systems of inequalities, tax-collecting “districts,” and administrative “clans” constructed by the russian state. her project was not just an academic expedition, however, and its anthropological value proved inseparable from its administrative results. the expedition was part of a celebrated (in soviet literature) emergency food supply delivery to northern aborigines, and it was overseen by the siberian office of the soviet ethnic politics ministry (the people's commissariat for nationalities) where dobrova-iadrintseva worked. yet, it is interesting to note such a combination of ethnographic and administrative value of this trip underscores not merely its larger context but also its microorganization. it is the latter that makes it, in my view, symptomatic of the soviet power/knowledge operation in the indigenous north. at this level we can see the use of the existing state structures for the purpose of the survey and, more importantly, expansion of these state structures through practices of knowledge. dobrova-iadrintseva enclosed her questionnaire with accounting books of the state fur trading co-ops which kept the financial balances of indigenous families and channeled early soviet help. as nomadic reindeer herders and hunters turned up in trading posts to collect the food rations, these books added information about “the native's family members, his economic wellbeing, and the migration routes” to the trade balance of each family (dobrova-iadrintseva 1925:3). these survey cards formed one of the first post-1917 regimes of residency for indigenous “tents” (chumy).1 standardized by the polar census (1926-27), they became a matrix for local soviets and collective farms. in a few years after dobrova-iadrintseva's trip, “to keep the lists of tent holders [chumovladel'tsev], with a detailed accounting of the reindeer herds” became a task not of the social scientist, but of the new local council — “clan soviet” (rodovoi soviet),2 and the social categories employed by this registrar — “administrative clan,” “genealogical clan” and, most importantly, “class” — became the terms for soviet social construction. the ruling class “elements” and their ideologues (shamans) were first accurately listed, with extensive details about their territorial location and lineage connections, then “alienated” (that is, deprived of their voting rights), and eventually purged (“liquidated,” likvidirovany) — while ethnographers looking at the same collected data engaged in debates over whether the genealogical clan, recovered in its evolutionary purity from the colonial and capitalist yoke, could provide a primitive-communist soil for the soviet culture. this essay attempts to theorize the operation of soviet governmentality in siberian north. in 1988-89 and 1993-95, i conducted extensive field research among evenki of the podkamenaia tunguska, a tributary of the lower yenisei river basin. this particular group was not encompassed by dobrova-iadrintseva's survey, but its identities and social structures were deeply effected by soviet jen typewritten text 45 construction for which such expeditions provided a matrix. households and local soviets, reindeerherding “brigades” and collective farms — all these institutions present a microcosm of an ambitious project which makes the soviet case an example, if not an epitome, of fundamental tendency in modern history and, particularly, modern colonial history — of remaking the state order after science. for james scott, for example, the soviet marxist gaze exemplifies “seeing like a state” — a practice of governance through creation of “legible” units which are structured “in a manner that permits them to be identified, observed, recorded, counted, aggregated, and monitored” (1998:183). i would like to point out that james scott's concept of modern “legibility,” as well as other influential insights into operation of such modern governance are not informed directly by historical or anthropological studies of soviet-type societies. instead, they draw on cases of continental state modernity, exemplified by modern france and foucauldian reading of it, western colonial modernity exemplified by european oversees empires, and western natural sciences. the continental state provides a model for understanding of modern “political technologies” which operate “by taking what is essentially a political problem, removing it from the realm of political discourse, and recasting it in the neutral language of science” (dryfus and rabinow 1982:196, rabinow 1989). in turn, the colonial situation illuminates how such a “neutral language of science” is constitutive of reified cultural differences. the argument is, briefly, as follows. to the extent that these differences were written out of the context of modernity and appeared as timeless givens, they were themselves products of modernity, which both universalizes human nature and, at the same time, ranks its particular manifestations on the evolutionary scale. they are no cultural differences per se but differentials in the modern western chronotope of domination, which is sustained politically by taking its own cultural contingency out of the picture (e.g. fabian 1983, comaroff and comaroff 1991, cohn 1996). finally, sciences studies — and, particularly, the work of donna haraway — provides a vision of how the western chronotope of domination operates in making facts of nature, rendering its own vision not simply “natural” as in “true” but also as in “natural law,” that is, as what simply exists, as opposed to being a result of theoretical discourse (haraway 1989, helmreich 1998). the soviet case is, on the one hand, an example of such an operation. after reformers/scholars like dobrova-iadrintseva, the soviet reforms proceeded from the assumption of salience of the russian state and colonial trade for indigenous social structure and identities. yet the more aboriginal lifestyles were integrated into the soviet administrative regime, the more evenki were identified by the state as existing as if outside the boundaries of the russian/soviet society. the more the state administration shaped aboriginal identities, the more it put them in terms of pure “ecological” constraints and structural properties of stateless social formations. the post-soviet reforms in the north start with an opposite assumption that the ones of dobrova-iadrintseva et al., namely, that indigenous cultures are forms of adaptation to natural environment (e.g. pika and prokhorov 1994, khrustalev 1993). and in more recent soviet/russian scholarship, the early soviet contribution to anthropological understanding of colonial situations is considered almost irrelevant, if not at all forgotten. on the other hand, the soviet reforms (and, particularly, their early stages) significantly differ from other cases that inform theoretical debates on reification. soviet social construction is an example of modern power/knowledge regime which driven to its logical and political extreme — to social constructivism. this constructivist drive of the projects like dobrova-iadrintseva's presents, therefore, not only an example but also a challenge for these “naturalization” models. first, the soviet social organization was not a realm of specific social forms simply “found” by anthropologists. rather, it was a constructivist social field of underlying principles — of abstract notions, categories of analysis that didn't exist in the past but were made explicit, and real, by practice of soviet construction. secondly, the soviet reforms were set in an opposition to the operation of western practices of rule as well as practices of knowledge. bruce grant, in his study of jen typewritten text 46 the soviet policies toward nivkhi of the sakhalin island, provides perhaps the best formulation of this difference, quoting early soviet ethnographer and reformer karl luks: we are not doing ethnography in the old sense of the word. all words that end in “—logy” or “—graphy” are bound up in a process or activity, call it what you like, that divides subject from object, “us” (the scholar or researcher) from “them” (the studied, our wards), who in the best instance we “feel for.” we want to erase this line between subject and object, between us and them. the process of serious native work is really the nativization [otuzemlivalie] of you and me, in keeping with the ideas of the party. and gradually, from the first few natives who come over to the soviet way of life, there will be dozens, even hundreds, and then thousands. the objects of study must become subjects (grant 1995:77). similarly to this project to overcoming the analytical separation of subject and object, the soviet social construction proceeded through practices of de-reification, that is, through attempts to overcome commodity form that dominated siberian colonial economy, and reified kinship and gender forms that were seen, by scholars like dobrova-iadrintseva, as being implicated in maintaining administrative and capitalist inequalities in siberia. if current anthropological models of naturalization focus on the operation of power and knowledge in the context of reification, where the embeddedness of this process in social relationships and hierarchies was consistently taken out of the picture, the soviet power/knowledge regime was built by making precisely these underlying social inequalities explicit. in doing so, the soviet construction was supposed to move beyond both the old imperial identity regimes and “bourgeois” practices of knowledge. in this regard, the notion of sovietization as a practice that going beyond objectivist scientism is striking in comparison with western anthropological manifestoes of that time. what is equally striking is, however, that long-term effects of this vision did not diminish at all but, in fact, reinforced the authority of science in soviet society and in soviet indigenous policies. and, similarly, cultural differences as objects that are simply found made a remarkable come-back during late socialism. indigenous social units that were results of a very deliberate social construction acquired features of “natural” entities — such as, for example, “primordial” ethnic groups and other units as if already-existing prior to the russian imperial and soviet regime. my purpose in this article is, first, to outline a structure of scientific authority in soviet reforms, and, secondly, to explore relationships of this structure to the proliferation of naturalized identities throughout soviet period. my main argument is that the difference between constructivist and naturalizing drives in soviet society forms a relationship, that is, that there is a historical and cultural connection between the two, and naturalization proceeded not by rejection of the constructivist paradigm but, in a large extent, through the constructivist paradigm itself. the soviet project was “after” reified and naturalized identity regimes in a similar fashion that the 20th-century english kinship was, according to marylin strathern (1992), “after nature” in the double sense of being “after” as “moving beyond” and “replication.” i will argue that “capitalism” and “nature” formed two related modalities of “wilderness” that the soviet construction was supposed to overcome, and that these modalities operated as “othering” political technologies within the soviet society. of course, the soviet vision was written over the russian imperial chronotope of differences, but it also radically displaced it by introducing a boundary of “socialism” and “capitalism.” in this vision, the “bourgeois world” ceased to be an invisible and universal “self” which structures “other” cultures as visible differences in space and time (fabian 1983). rather, the “bourgeois world” itself became one of the modalities of the “otherness” which included inside it the rest of the realm of reified identities (feudalism, “primitive society,” orient, etc.), to which “socialism” was opposed as a regime of the explication of the “social.” i argue that this boundary worked both ways: as de-reifying and reifying in the same go. to use the famous formulation of frederik barth, here regimes of differences are constituted by cultural properties of this boundary and not by “stuff” that this boundary encloses (barth 1969:15). in this essay, i elaborate this further, first, by providing a background regarding indigenous and state identities in the area where i did jen typewritten text 47 field research; then, by outlining my theoretical vision of reification and de-reification in the soviet context; and, finally, by reading the practices of soviet social construction from this point of view. background: meanings of state and indigenity in the russian north the name of the podkamennaia tunguska river is russian for “the stony river of the tungus.” the “tungus” is an older colonial name for a siberian hunting-gathering and reindeer-herding people who call themselves evenki (pl. evenkil), or ilel/orochil — “people,” or “reindeer people.” “stony” colloquially refers to the rapids that separate most of this “river of the tungus” from the rest of the yenisei basin. i did fieldwork in villages of the upper part of this river basin in 1988-89 and 199395. these villages are a relatively isolated part of the evenki autonomous district. a winter truck route links them to the regional center baikit, but this route melts with the snow. river boats sail up to the settlement over the rapids only during spring flood; and the only regular, year-round access to the villages is by air. located within the northern permafrost zone, the area cannot sustain grain agriculture. remote as it is, however, this region is no “isolated” site of classical modern anthropology. long before cossack bands exerted muscovite rule over this area in the 17th century, it had been already integrated into tributary conglomerates that thrived on sable fur — the sub-arctic currency that still remains in value. the water and sleigh routes of these tributary allegiances gravitated to the south and the south-east — towards the upper yenisei river and lake baikal. the cossacks switched these allegiances westward, along a thin line of fortresses and winter blockhouses that connected yeniseisk, turukhansk and other russian posts in the yenisei basin to moscow and to the european market. like other indigenous groups of the sub-arctic, under russian rule tungus formed a social estate of “tributized subjects” (iasashnye), that is, suppliers of fur tribute to the russian tsar's coffers (bakhrushin 1955). owing to this close interdependency of administration and trade, settlements of the podkamennaia tunguska river basin grew from small trading posts of the early 20th century — most of them storages with no permanent residents — into villages of between 300 and 600 inhabitants. as the soviet “primitive production units” (1920-30s) was re-organized as “collective farms” (1930s-60s) and “state collective farms” (1967-present), their hunters, herders and other “workers” became state employees. under the current economic crisis, however, state employment no longer provides sufficient monetary income. this crisis illuminates how dependent this area's inhabitants had become on the state sector. the story of this area is, on the one hand, the one of the russian/soviet statehood as a site where meanings of being “indigenous” are culturally produced. it is the story of proliferation of state institutions, infrastructure, and symbols. within this expanding framework, indigenous identities undergo a transformation from being russia's “tributized subjects” to soviet “primitive communists” and “numerically-small people of the north” (see slezkine 1994 and grant 1995 for discussion of these categories). on the other hand, however, and the other way around, here “indigenity” is a site where cultural meanings of “state” and “governance” are produced. in this regard, the evenki case that i examine illustrates a much broader process of change of meanings of siberian governance from “tribute” to “science.” for much of the tsarist period (from the 17th to the early 20th centuries), russian statehood in indigenous siberia was defined in tributary terms. aboriginal groups formed a social estate distinguished by a peculiar form of tax — the fur tribute (iasak). the term iasak belongs to the older turkic and mongolian vocabulary of power in which it signifies “tribute” but also “punishment,” “law,” and “state” — cf. the term for the chingiskhan's empire, and for its legal code, iasa, comes from the same root the word iasak (bakhrushin 1955:49 and further). after some 19th-century reforms, but largely in the course of soviet construction, the meaning of governance changed as new connotations of “law” as “science” — specifically, marxist social science — replaced the older usage of “law” as “tribute.” soviet social jen typewritten text 48 construction classified its subjects after the marxist version of “natural history” (the modes of production model) and, also, in accordance with an increasingly institutionalized primordialist view on ethnicity. by looking at how state meaning of being “indigenous” were constructed in the course of the 20th century, i explore the displacement of older tributary and social estate hierarchies of the tsarist old regime with the global narrative of “scientific” and, therefore, “natural” units of humanity. imperial and soviet order and their forms of knowledge anthropological understanding of such displacements draws on an analysis of distinctly modern discursive and politico-economic reification which is elaborated by classical marxism and, particularly, by georg lukásc (1971) in his treatment of parallels between commodity fetishism in capitalist economy and objectivity in modern “bourgeois” science. commodity is a social relationship fetishized as a relationship between things; and modern objectivism is a vision in which properties of things that this vision encompasses are seen as “objective,” that is, independent of social relationships that enable it. as this vision naturalizes facts that are socially made into facts that appear simply found, it also makes a capitalist order of things into a natural law. perhaps most succinctly this analysis is summed up by a 1875 formulation of engels: ...the darwinian theory of the struggle for existence boils down to ...an extrapolation from society to animate nature of hobbes' theory of the bellum omnium contra omnes and of the bourgeois-economic theory of competition together with the malthusian theory of population. having accomplished this feat ...these people proceed to re-extrapolate the same theories from organic nature [back] to history, and then claim to have proved their validity as eternal laws of human society (marx and engels, collected work, vol. 45:107-8). there are important differences (both in emphasis and epistemologically) between politicoeconomic and discursive readings of this transformation. but it is sufficient to reread lukásc to see how the two are connected. in commodity form, he writes, “relation between people take on the character of a thing and thus acquires a ‘phantom objectivity,’ an autonomy that seems so rational and all-embracing as to conceal every trace of its fundamental nature: the relation between people.” in a similar fashion, science “is... debarred from comprehending ...the social character of its own material base” as bourgeois scholars “divorce these ...manifestations from their real capitalist foundation and make them independent and permanent by regarding them as the timeless model of human relations in general.” and just as labor appears as commodity under capitalism, so “the contemplative nature of man makes its appearance” (lukásc 1971:83, 105, 94-5, 97). this vision entered western anthropology in the 1970s, marking a merge of a long-standing anthropological concern with specificity of western cultural notions on the one hand and a newer interest in effects of these notions had on regimes of differences under western colonial/nation states on the other. it has proved very productive for understanding a number of contexts (such as, for example, continental state, colonial situations, and cultural studies of science). what unites further elaboration of this vision is a concern with invisibility of social relationships that enable reification, although this concern is restated with theories of power that significantly modify the classical marxist paradigm. for example, after foucault, hubert dreyfus and paul rabinow (1982) see this invisibility as a feature of larger political transformation from absolutist system, which operates through display of power center, exemplary punishment, and religious sanction, into “the modern condition” in which power is decentered in technologies of “self-discipline.” jean and john comaroff describe a similar transformation drawing on gramscian notion of hegemony — “that order of signs and practices, relations and distinctions, images and epistemologies” which is “drawn from a historically situated cultural field,” but which “come to be taken-for-granted as the natural and received shape of the world.” this transformation is a political process in which “ideology,” a form of power relations that jen typewritten text 49 “is directly supported by, [and] in fact, hinges on, the agency of dominant social groups,” is made into hegemony that “derives, as if naturally, from the very construction of economy and society” (comaroff and comaroff 1991: 23). for comaroffs, the prime site of this transformation is an expansion of the western (particularly, british) colonial regimes. in this context, the intended ambiguity of the expression “as if naturally” evokes both a sense of being unnoticed (bourdieu 1991) as well as the modern western categories of “nature” as an implicit referent of things that go without saying. in turn, carol delaney and sylvia yanagisako take the notion of naturalization as far away as possible from this western (and, indeed, foundational) case for this theory. in their broad vision, naturalization appears almost as a cultural universal: they seek to understand how and why “differentials of power come already imbedded in culture,” and how “power appears natural, inevitable, even god-given.” this is a vision of culturally-specific “domains” which “usually come with claims of universality” and “with prohibitions against reading across them.” nonetheless they acknowledge embeddedness of this problematic in the modern western transformation “from order of creation to the natural order,” that is, “from religious to scientific sanction” of power inequalities (yanagisako and delaney 1995:1, 12, 3-6). now neither lukásc nor more recent theorists render the processes of naturalization ever completed. nevertheless, in this discourse the point of visibility of power relations for a theorist coincides with invisibility of the same relationships for subjects under study. understanding hegemony (with hegemony not necessarily being historically stable) requires a closure of the field of power relations within the analytical gaze of a theorist. for example, in paul willis' (1977) celebrated ethnography of socialization of english working class children into working class culture, hegemonic field of power relations appears when readers see what “lads” don't, namely, that their “resistance” to authority is exactly what propels them to subaltern position in class structure. in such a closure of the field of power relations within the analytical gaze of a theorist there is an important theoretical turn. it distinguishes more recent approaches from classical marxism — a “romantic view,” in the words of paul willis, “of the working class cultural forms” which asserts that workers “are experimenting with some kind of future” and “provide concrete outlines for living for when capitalism is overthrown.” “if anything,” he argues, it is the very “elements” of working class culture “which act... to prevent precisely that” (willis 1977:122). this approach abandons marxist teleology of subject, that is, the notion that workers or other subaltern groups are socially positioned to understand how the system works and rebel against it, and that critical theory itself is nothing more than a vanguard of this process. theoretical impossibility of such a “subject” is an enabling assumption of understanding how the hegemonic reproduction is accomplished — how “becoming subject” turns into a mere “subject effect” in a hegemonic power field. ontologically, this vision makes power relations into a deep structure which in its most important moments of operation is accessible only to a theorist. epistemologically, however, effects of this vision are quite different. it demonstrates how historically-contingent moments of reification lead to a rapid proliferation of hegemonic political frameworks. jean and john comaroff show this, for example, by examining a conversation of a tswana rainmaker and an english medical doctor, recorded by levingstone. the conversation was about a question if the rain comes due to divine intervention or due to the “medicine” of the rainman. comaroffs argue that in this argument there was no “european” point of view formally imposed on colonial subjects. however, the conversation shows — and, in fact, provides a medium for expansion of — a hegemonic discursive framework in which “it was precisely the things that marked the africans as distinct that made them and their world as inferior”: “to argue over who was the legitimate rainmaker or where the water came from, for instance, was to be seduced into the modes of rational debate, positivist knowledge, and empirical reason at the core of the bourgeois culture” (comaroff and comaroff 1991:244, 213). the argument installs this discursive framework, which comes with an already-embedded assumption of hierarchies of reasoning. what happens as a result jen typewritten text 50 of this conversation is a reification of ahistorical “european” and “non-european” ways — with their hierarchical relationships to one another understood at that historical point of colonial expansion as “natural.” a moment of such an ahistorical reification is, at the same time, a moment of historically-specific expansion of western hegemony. this is how comaroffs formulate this expansion in more general terms: hegemony is a product of the dialectics whereby the content of dominant ideologies is distilled into shared forms that seem to have such historical longevity as to be above history... ...and hence to have a capacity to generate new substantive practices along the surface of economy and society. ...[these forms] do not however appear to have any ideological content. they belong to the domain of fact, not value (comaroff and comaroff 1991:30). for comaroffs, who employ the concept of hegemony as a broader social equivalent of the fetishized commodity form, the tension between ontology of “substantive practices along the surface of economy and society” and epistemology of “construction of economy and society” is not resolved, and intentionally so. this tension allows readers ethnographically inhabit this colonial situation — and thus achieve its interpretive understanding. the question of how the theorist is situated in relation to this process remains important, however, particularly once we think of the soviet case. in contrast to capitalist and colonial expansion of “fetishized” relationships, the soviet order expanded by creating political hierarchies out of the practices of “de-fetishization” through attempts to understand fetishization processes. as marylin strathern (1992:5) puts this in another context, in addition to “describing a process of construction” of reified identities, we need to understand “describing a process of construction” as “itself a construction of sorts.” in her book after nature, strathern sets out her argument by contrasting her project and david schneider's american kinship (1968), a classic account of “nature” as a cultural category underlying kinship studies in anthropology as well as western folk categories of belonging. schneider's “explication of the folk models of biology ...laid the groundwork for analyses which link ideologies of the ‘natural’ to systems of inequality” (yanagisako and delaney 1995:10). however, strathern points out important limits to schneider's approach to naturalization. in her view, schneider's approach overlooks ways in which practices of “explication” — of “constant opening out of the conventions upon which human endeavor is seen,” central to western discourses — are situated in naturalization processes. what is visible in western kinship for anthropologists after schneider, she argues, is visible from the point of view of this kinship's previously taken-for-granted assumptions. the analytical closure of the field of taken-for-granted assumptions serves, therefore, a double purpose. it provides a model for understanding of how “natural” facts are made in an unreflected milieu, and, in doing so, it also provides “an auto-proof of social constructivism.” naturalizing and social-constructivist viewpoint are achieved simultaneously. this dialectics pervades strathern's account of a cultural production of english kinship “after” nature in a double sense of moving beyond and replication — of constructivist movement beyond “nature” and replicating it in the same go (strathern 1992). i argue that the soviet social construction is also after “nature” as it was after capitalism, in this ironically-double sense of movement beyond and replication. we cannot simply assume that in “staging of the eurocentric mode-of-production narrative as history,” marxist discourses and political projects “should be seen as an analogue of nineteenth-century territorial imperialism” (prakash 1997:496). this analogy takes place, but it cannot be pushed too far. rather, i contend that the soviet construction was a process of inculcation of categories of “bourgeois culture” through practices that were aimed at a movement beyond them by making the “social” explicit. this break constitutes a new chronotope of differences which is mapped over the imperial old regime. the soviet displacement as well as replication of the russian imperial regimes of differences went precisely through “describing a process of construction” of indigenous social organization in the context of russian administrative and mercantile inequalities. jen typewritten text 51 indeed, soviet institutions in siberia were to account for indigenous social organization. however, i argue, this was to happen not by incorporation of reified “siberian ways” into local soviets and collective farms, but through the use, in the soviet construction, of underlying structural principles of these communities which were not necessarily clear to members of these communities themselves. the boundary between “capitalism” and “socialism” is between specific social forms, which were mere “objects” of imperial knowledge and governance, and underlying principles — abstract notions, categories of analysis that were made explicit, and real, by construction of soviet “subjects.” for example, soviet aboriginal institutions in the 1920s were not indigenous clans but groups formed by genealogical grids and formulas of exchange that were drawn by anthropologists and reformers (ssorin-chaikov 1998:126-32). but how was this explication practice justified? ready-made socialist forms did not exist within the capitalist political economy as capitalist ones did within the feudal formation from the marxist point of view. socialist social forms were made real by practice of explication. this practice starts with discerning, in the words of marx, in “commodity fetishism... a purely social relationship of producers to their collectivity,” but it proceeds by positing this purely social relationships as an explicit principle of a new society. socialism constitutes, therefore, a second historical break with nature, which is the break with the “second nature” in its most naturalized form of market capitalism. leap forward into new stage does not happen in this case, therefore, as it happened under transition from feudalism to capitalism, that is, by quantity of emerging new class relations turning into quality. bourgeois revolution, from this point of view, only inaugurated the power of the bourgeoisie which was already gained financially if not politically. movement beyond commodity is a theoretical movement which makes real out of the most abstract (alienated) development of commodity form. we can see here a double movement. on the one hand, it is the development of commodity form — to an extent it appears, as marx put this, as “something completely natural” — that enables the movement beyond it as a recognition of “purely social relationship of producers to their own collectivity.” on the other hand, it is this very recognition that completes the making of capitalism into the realm of “blind forces of [second] nature.” if in darwin — as in an intellectual manifestation of the “bourgeois culture” — “the animal kingdom figures as civil society” (marx and engels, vol 48:381), then, as engels put this, the “conscious organization of social production, in which production and distribution are carried in a planned way, could lift mankind above the rest of the animal world as regards the social aspect, in the same way that production in general has done this for mankind in the specifically biological aspect” (ibid. vol 49:331). it is useful here to invoke barth's formulation here once again: identities of “capitalism” and “socialism” are defined here by the boundary between them. “blind forces” of the second nature here constitute a jungle where, “in the midst of contingencies,” there stand “plans” as “rational and poetic monuments,” as the architect le corbusier (1964) put this. the soviet and “the other” now i will briefly summarize the implication of this argument for siberian indigenous politics. for the purpose of my argument, let me point out three related ways in which the state expanded as a political framework in the indigenous north. the first can be summed up in the words of caroline humphrey (1994:24): in the soviet-type command economy, the structure of domination does not consist of a focal nexus surrounded by a subordinated mass; rather, domination resides in a series of equivalent positions in nesting hierarchies [italics are mine, n. s.-ch.], such that a similar domination may be exercised at each level. even at the bottom, in the remote enclave of some herding collective, the brigadier could subordinate his workers by the same principles, and with the same equivocal relationship to the ideology of “discipline,” that obtained at structurally higher levels. jen typewritten text 52 the 20th-century story of the podkamennaia tunguska area is to a large extent a story of the proliferation of state collectives and herding and hunting brigades as forms of such nested domination. in addition to this (secondly), the state expanded also as a framework which “ascribes” local identities. the soviet meanings of being “indigenous” are a case in point that historian sheila fitzpatrick recently made about class identity under soviet socialism. similarly to the system of russian imperial social estates (soslovia), she argues, class differences in soviet society were defined (“ascribed”) “in terms of their relationship to the state rather than, like marxist classes, in terms of their relationship to one another.” identified in this way as “workers,” “peasants,” “intelligentsiia” — and, i add, “indigenous peoples of the north” — people had different forms of residency, different access to education, consumer goods, and other “rights and privileges” (fitzpatrick 2000: 39, 37). to put this the other way around, in such everyday practices as work, exchange, consumption, and so on, the state expanded as such an “ascribing” framework. yet (thirdly), both these disciplinary ideologies and ascribing practices were products of the soviet deconstruction of the russian old regime in terms of marxist political economy. the soviet state frameworks also expanded as a means of “rational” management of the economy (if not a complete de-mystification of the commodity form) and making “the social” an explicit principle of new society. it is at this point that the boundary between “capitalism” and “socialism” can be seen as enabling the state expansion. for example, soviet ethnographers argued that indigenous kin-based communities were constituted within the larger mercantile and administrative frameworks of the imperial old regime. therefore, the soviet construction was not merely to overcome the fetishized commodity form in the strict capitalist sense of the word, but also kinship and gender inequalities which were mutually constituted with capitalist class relationships (dobrova-iadrintseva 1925, maslov 1934, nikul'shin 1939). hunting and herding “brigade” of the soviet period, therefore, is not merely a work unit, or a soviet term for nomadic forest camp. it is a social form that replaces older kin-based units, but it does so by substituting an overt kinship form with an explicitly social relationship which leaves the kinship form behind: brigade is a production unit of “socialized” indigenous labor. contrary to the naturalization processes in western and colonial contexts, which operated by depolitization of the hierarchies, the soviet state and the soviet episteme expanded by politicization of the boundary between capitalism and socialism. sheila fitzpatrick (1999) rightly points out that population by and large saw marxist sociological method discredited by the violence of the soviet construction. it was quickly accepted not as a matter of fact but as pure politics, and very important politics. if political authority was gained by de-fetishization, it was much better to de-fetishize, rather than to be de-fetishized. stalin's insight that class struggle expands together with the progress of socialist construction put this boundary inside every individual and social setting. but this did not mean that the totalitarian state control successfully penetrated all society from top down. on the contrary: “to the extent that stalin's state appeared all-powerful,” argues katherine verdery, “the reason was a pervasive ‘privatization’ of the instruments of coercion, which — far from being concentrated somewhere at the top — were made available to everyone, through the mechanism of the denunciation...” (1991:83). recent, mostly historical scholarship on stalinist denunciations supports this argument. this work demonstrates a relative weakness of the state and, at the same time, a relative strength of the culture of statehood, which could be used not simply to govern subordinate groups but also to challenge “the authorities” (kozlov 2000, kharakhordin 1999, fitzpatrick 1999, kotkin 1995). mechanisms of denunciation point not only to a more fact of proliferation of the soviet governmentality, however, but also to political technologies that construct socialist identity through ascribing “the other.” the art of stalinist identity politics was in “unmasking” this other side, and this art expanded at a very micro-level of soviet social fabric. in doing so, it presented a microcosm jen typewritten text 53 of the marxist macrocosm — of its narrative of world history of fetishization and de-fetishization. i argue that it is at the point of visibility of this otherness that “nature” makes its appearance both as an object of the soviet reforms as well as a result of the soviet identity ascription. it is this other side of the boundary between “capitalism” and “socialism” that suddenly reveals features of “animal kingdom” in opposition to which the soviet order acquires legitimacy and meaning. a well-known example of this is sergei eisenstein's portrayal, in his film strike, of sleuths who pretend to be proletarians but in fact report on them for factory management. for a brief moment in this film, they are transformed into what their nicknames say they are (“fox,” “owl”) at the very same time as they dress up as workers to take up their assignment. at that moment they seen by no other characters in the movie — only by the early soviet audience (the movie was made in 1925). i argue that a similar installment of “nature” occurred in indigenous siberia, and naturalized identities proliferated along-side with soviet social construction. let me discuss examples of at least two ways in which “nature” enables the vision of the other side of this boundary, and in which one can also see processual dynamics of identity formation “after capitalism.” one is the stalinist screening of social origin which becomes increasingly loaded with biological metaphors as “the long 1917” of soviet construction gets further away from the actual year of october revolution of 1917, and political economy of class relations are increasingly substituted with a question “what did your parents do before 1917?” for example, a file on one evenki states that “he sucked the capitalist ideology with the breast milk of his mother” who happened to be from a rich family. it is this symbolic boundary with capitalism that here makes use of a genealogical method, and indeed the files on the rich evenki read like a kinship study (ssorinchaikov 1998: 176-81). the other example is the construction of space. if we look at soviet documents in the north, we can see that for a good half of this century every new wave of reforms, and almost every new trip of reformers to the north, are staged as “the first” sovietisation. indigenous north goes through standard phases of soviet history such as establishment of soviets in the 1920s, collectivization in the 1930s, purges, etc. but this way of writing about the north undoes the presence of the soviet state by identifying forest and tundra on the other side of the boundary with the old regime. it was indeed a very long 1917 if a wife of a russian official, who came to the north with her husband after the second world war, told me: “evenki didn't know any soviet power until the 1950s.” what i outlined so far is a dialectics of “origin” which became one of the central symbols of soviet culture — notwithstanding the fact that (and indeed perhaps because) the soviet system identified itself as an entirely new society. constructed as a radical break with the past, soviet society built, however, a systematic technology of accounting and surveillance of “past” social identities. these technologies play a critical role in shaping exactly what this “past” refers to throughout the soviet period. but i also argue that these technologies are themselves a product of the explication of the “social” as a process rather than an achieved state or a stable condition. proliferation of techniques of unmasking, denunciation, and reporting “the other” meant that the soviet construction was not completed. the soviet society resembled, in this regard, an everlasting construction site in which the frameworks of construction were more important than what was constructed. in fact, we see that throughout the 20th century the “soviet order” is reality in absentia. systematicity of political economy of socialism is that of a future-oriented plan. systematicity of political economy of capitalism is the one of reconstruction. actually-existing socialism, as a transformation of capitalist political economy into socialist one, is an underconstructed building of sorts which actual mess reproduces the boundary between things “as they should be” and things as they “have been.” it was easy to freeze this boundary, as the soviet institutions were anything but le corbusier's “rational and poetic monuments.” furthermore, it is precisely the failure of actuallyjen typewritten text 54 existing socialism to fit its own design on paper that was one of the powerful discursive means to inscribe this boundary. above, i gave some examples that show the persistence of naturalized identities was attributed to survivals of russia's capitalist past. after the 1950s, islands of the old regime were transformed in soviet discourse into “nature” empty of the presence of soviet “civilization” altogether; the mess of the soviet social construction has transformed from exemplifying persistent “enemies of the people” to the evidence of incorrigible and, hence, universal “human nature”; and indigenous identities underwent a similar transformation from victims of capitalist exploitation to “endangered species.” this vision takes root as the soviet construction expands and as it leaves more and more marks of its presence on north-siberian landscape. my main point is that what makes this space into “state of nature” is not absence of the soviet state but its politics which inscribe the boundary with “nature” through failures to normalize control over its northern subjects. vis-a-vis these failures, soviet social order retained its beauty and coherence on paper by being constantly deferred. yet — precisely because it was deferred — the problems that development created were constantly taken out of the framework of construction, and identified as social reality that existed before the construction has started or before it was completed. to use the terms of derrida, the deference of social order is constitutive of discrete differences within the framework of construction, and it is this process of deferral that makes its residue into distinct life forms. notes 1 see also gosudarstvennyi arkhiv krasnoiarskogo kraia (the state archive of the krasnoiarsk province), f. 1845, op. 1, d. 156, 43. this article uses the russian abbreviations for archival references, such as “f.” for fond (“collection”), “op.” for opis' (“inventory”), “d.” for delo (“file”) and “l.” or “ll” for list or listy (“page” or “pages”). 2 gosudarstvennyi arkhiv rossiiskoi federatsiii, (the state archive of russian federation), f. 3977, d. 23, l. 40. references bakhrushin, s. v. 1955. “iasak v sibiri.” in nauchnye trudy. pp. 49-85. vol. iii, part 2,. moscow: izd. an sssr. barth, fredrik. 1969. “introduction.” in ethnic groups and boundaries: the social organisation of cultural difference. barth, frederik, ed. pp. 9-38. boston: little, brown and company. bourdieu, pierre. 1991. logic of practice. stanford: stanford university press. cohn, bernard. 1996. colonialism and its forms of knowledge: the british in india. princeton: princeton university press. comaroff, jean, and john comaroff. 1991. of revelation and revolution: christianity, colonialism, and consciousness in south africa. volume one. chicago: university of chicago press. corbusier, charles-edouard jeannaret. 1964. 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press. verdery, katherine. 1991. national ideology under socialism. berkeley: university of california press. willis, paul. 1977. learning to labor: how working class kids get working class jobs. new york: columbia university press. yanagisako, sylvia, and carol delaney, eds. 1995. naturalizing power: essays in feminist cultural analysis. new york and london: routledge. jen typewritten text 57 after capitalism: soviet construction of the state of nature in sub-artic siberia nikolai ssorin-chaikov�max planck institute for social anthropology aeerspring08 teaching participatory action research: a hungarian experience eszter kelemen and bálint balázs, st. istván university, gödöll!, hungary participatory action research was offered as an elective course for graduate students of sociology by the environmental social science research group (essrg) at the eötvös loránd university, budapest, hungary. participants were fascinated by fieldwork, however classwork activity and end of course feedback was contradictory which raised several dilemmas, extending from how par classwork activities and fieldwork should be balanced, through how much freedom should be given to students during fieldwork, to how the par course could be adapted to a specific university culture. the aim of this paper is to share our personal reflections upon the first par elective course in hungary in the light of the par literature on teaching and learning integrated into the wider context of hungarian higher education system. introduction participatory action research, a methodology incorporating subjects in the research and evaluation, results to transformation in the lives of those involved. the approach is gaining recognition in academic circles but is usually limited to specialised learning environments (levin, m. – greenwood, d. 2001). one semester’s experience teaching this approach for human ecologists and sociologists are described, focusing on challenges encountered in planning par courses. traditional forms of classroom education and academic research are in change. teachers/researchers (as doers) and students/stakeholders (as subjects) are getting closer and sharing roles, as it is being recognized that better understanding of phenomena necessitates discovering and grasping the different perspectives (roth w-m. et al. 2002; felt et al. 2004). critical and action oriented approach gains growing importance in both education and research, and under the umbrella of participatory action research, these two strands can be integrated. teaching action researchers acknowledge that “the road to action research also required changes in our teaching practices” (brydonmiller, m. et al, 2003. p. 19) in order to disseminate the core values and assumptions of this methodology; and in the same time applying par methodology in higher education can transform universities into real learning organizations in contradiction to recent teaching structures based on one-way communication and separation between teachers and students (levin, m. – greenwood, d. 2001). this paper presents the first attempt of a hungarian research group (essrg) on teaching par – the methodology to which researchers are committed to using during their fieldwork. the aim is to share and discuss the reflections of the lecturer team upon the course in order to provide useful experiences to others interested in the topic and simultaneously to improve our teaching activity. the first part of the paper presents the hungarian traditions of participatory research and its recent situation in the higher education system. in the second part, we describe the methodology of the course, which is followed by a short summary on how the semester passed. the third part of the paper discusses the most important questions raised by the semester, while in conclusion we attempt to connect our experiences to the special characteristics of hungarian higher education system. hungarian context: traditions and recent changes central european societies always fostered a specific approach in understanding social life or depicting society and this persistent feature of central european culture could often and easily be identified as an exotic flavour by western social science. the insistence on the difference of social experience, as wessely claims, was the social problem-oriented pursuit of social science which did not let a discipline prescribe the problems and acceptable methods of research, but attempted to respond to the challenges that reached it from the social environment (wessely, a. 1996). during the socialist regime facilitating a solution to social problems was an exclusive reserve of politics without any chance of public participation. the ruling party attempted to use social science to contribute to the renovation of socialism, thus scholarly effort focused on alternative problem definitions. the par approach was not possible in hungary or in the socialist countries, since the political system tried to hide the 30 anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 2 page 30 weaknesses of its programs and to repress public participation. the regime change facilitated the adoption of western paradigms and research patterns, but did not require the wholesale redefinition of the social sciences (némedi, d. – róbert, 2002). fifteen years after the system transformation it appears that the breakthrough for action research in hungary is yet to come: starting points are sporadic, thematic orientation is narrow and the funding for a decisive institutionalization is not available. oriented towards academic or business excellence the structures of hungarian higher education are still rather exclusive and rigid, favouring a conservative pedagogical culture, lacking social responsibility, thus participatory action research is rarely available in hungarian higher education as an elective course. a recent review of the literature on the hungarian higher education system revealed that there is very little relevant information, or observation on service learning, action research, or community-based learning in this literature (kozma j. – galambos, r. 2005). the structural changes in the hungarian higher education system attempting to modernise and adapt to the changing social and economic environment (mass education, financial problems, and the privatization and internationalization of higher education) resulted in an expansion (the number of students in higher education has doubled, and new higher education institutions and programs were developed). still, within this changing socio-economic and cultural environment there remained several favourable factors within the hungarian higher education initiating an action research and learning environment (kozma j. – galambos, r. 2005): • there is a growing awareness of new collaborations between universities and social actors in their surroundings which provides possibilities for students to engage in community based or action research activities (volunteering and civil activities of students); • this is more and more often realized through new higher educational programs especially in the social science education (migration studies, action anthropology, cultural anthropological gypsy studies, environmental social science) with a curriculum focusing on learning by doing and reflective action learning; • courses use previously lacking effective teaching methods (such as action-oriented approaches, problem-based learning, experiential learning, active learning, etc.) in professional education and training. against this background the course offered in the social science faculty of the eötvös loránd university, budapest, hungary aimed at engaging students of the human ecology educational program in a community based research project with a strong experiential learning approach in developing the knowledge and skills required to be an effective action researcher. the shared expertise of teachers (with a background in economics, sociology, history) and students coming from diverse disciplines (from sociology, economics, political science, through human ecology, biology, to media studies) required a special balance in experiential and lecturing presentation as well as the mix of training to academic analytical requirements and to the use of experiential learning and self-development exercises. the next section presenting our teaching methodology built on classroom exercises (research skills, interview techniques) and fieldwork exercises (developing selfand other-awareness) attempts to offer some valuable insights for teachers of action research. teaching methodology participatory action research was offered as an elective course for graduate students of sociology within the human ecology major at eötvös loránd university, budapest by members of essrg research group as visiting lecturers. the lecturing team consisted of one senior lecturer and four ph.d. students from which two were men and three women. all members are experienced (although to a different extent) in field research and engaged in participatory methods. the diversity of the lecturing team offered good opportunity for co-teaching through which daily tasks were shared and continuous (self) reflection became possible. the initial structure of the seminar was designed in a way that matches researchers’ professional commitment to the characteristics of the faculty and the university. as being visiting lecturers at a research seminar, we could choose the methodology to teach – this means that there was not a specific need for participatory, critical research, but the subject of the course (par) was only our choice. the main goal of the course was to introduce students into participatory research in order to widen the palette of known methods of beginner sociologists/researchers and thus to offer them the possibility to apply a different approach than usual. adapting to the university culture and curriculum, we did not want to omit the theoretical background for research methodology, the preparing for fieldwork by discussing techniques and the fieldwork itself and the possibility for reflection. however, we had to divide these activities into two semesters because of the shortness of time. based on these principles the structure of the seminar was initially designed as follows. the course started with the discussion of the main concepts of and philosophy behind the par methods (e.g. participation, deliberation, community studies). this was followed by developing a toolbox for participatory research – 31 anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 2 page 31 techniques for collecting, recording and analyzing data (observation, interviews especially appreciative inquiry, field diary and interview summery, coding etc.) – and by discussing the traditions and limits of the methodology. in the third part, students were offered to take part in a real par process on community development in a marginalized small region of rural westhungary. this part of the course was designed in a way that in the first phase students do desk research in teams exploring the ecological, economic and social characteristics of the site, present their results and engage in class discussions in order to participate in designing the research project. in the second phase, after the desk research, two weekends were offered to students to go to the research area and conduct interviews. during their fieldwork, students worked in pairs and they were asked to make notes and interview summaries as inputs for data analysis. because of the shortness of the semester, two restrictions were applied. the first two parts of the course (discussing concepts and developing a research toolbox) and research itself ran in parallel to some extent; while the next phases of fieldwork (planning and organizing community forums in the site after analyzing data) remained to the next semester. this also means that the spiral of learning could not be fully completed during the first semester as students and teachers did not have the opportunity to see the results and reflect upon the whole research process. teaching methods and techniques were selected in a manner that provides possibility for participation and empowerment of students. the course was designed to create a learning community in the class by decreasing the distance between (traditionally separated) student and teacher roles. various teaching techniques were applied. students were encouraged to actively participate in class debates, work in groups and share reflections on their work. although some short blocks of lectures were built in the course, theoretical immersion was offered through readings. members of the lecturer team provided also the possibility for continuous consultation. how the semester ran… during the semester, the lecturer team had to continuously adapt to the given situation and change the structure of the course according to feedback from students and personal self-reflection of lecturers. students seemed to be interested in the topic and eager to take part in a participatory research from the beginning of the semester. however, it became clear soon that they had only little time to prepare for class and even to come regularly and in time. during the class, they were quite inactive, and encouraging them to participate in class debates or group work was difficult. as neither home readings nor class engagement achieved their initial function, the proportion of lectures has to be risen (instead of discussions) in order to provide students the most important concepts and techniques. we also tried to figure out playful exercises (such as mock interviews in pairwork) to motivate them to actively contribute to the class. nevertheless, for this modification the course lost its originally planned character of decreasing the distance between lecturers and students. the relatively weak interest shown by students in theoretical questions motivated us to emphasize more the practical side of the subject. this change in the proportion of conceptual and practical issues was also reasonable from the aspect of students’ preparedness: as students came from different specialties and years (from the 2nd to the 5th years at university), their research experience and skills varied largely, which required balancing the knowledge level of the group. during the desk research, it also became clear that students were not accustomed to working in teams. to explore the present economic, social and ecological situation of the field and to find interconnections between particular problems, they were asked to form three groups (one for the economic, the social and the ecological analysis), to study the relevant literature and to present the results of their desk research in the class. every group had a personal consultant from the lecturer team, who provided the basic literature for the group. however, students were unable to share the tasks equally, to manage time and to form a common standpoint on the topic – the groupwork ended in partial results and personal frustration on how to punish free riders and reward hard-workers at group level. these experiences about students’ engagement forced us to continuously reduce class requirements on the one hand, and make the fieldwork optional on the other (initially fieldwork was included in the end of term evaluation). although we think the most important part of the semester is the field research through which students can undergo experiential learning, we believed also that successful participatory research necessitates commitment and taking responsibility on behalf of the researchers. hence, the option to skip fieldwork functioned as a filter: only those students could come who assumed to work on weekends and to cover a small part of the costs (that is, made sacrifices for participate in the research process). students who participated in field research were completely fascinated by that. long discussions started every evening during our stay in the site that referred to the local problems, the interviewees, the used methods (appreciative enquiry) and the role of the researchers. students were enthusiastic not only in the field but also in the class after the weekends spent by interviewing – they were ready to share their experiences with others who had not come, which gave the opportunity for real self-reflection. 32 anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 2 page 32 after these good experiences on field research and the former difficulties in discussing conceptual issues, students’ end of term feedback was quite surprising, as they missed the theoretical introduction and the grounded exposition of the used methodology. among other reasons this forced the lecturer team to redesign the course to the next semester – to focus on theoretical background and take away fieldwork from the class (make it completely optional and independent from course attendance and offered only committed students), to reduce the lecturer staff, and to strengthen further the role of community learning. raised dilemmas in order to improve our teaching skills we have to go further in self-reflection and try to understand the reasons for the dilemmas raised by the course. in this section, we mainly focus on issues closely related to teaching practices instead of personal questions. teaching efficiency for the research team this was the first occasion when five of us collaborated in a course. this situation had many advantages like sharing tasks, being flexible consultants, designing classes together or reflecting upon every lesson, however we also had to develop an adequate division of labour. we hope to have avoided the danger of confusing students through unclear roles by defining one senior lecturer while naming the others supporters. nevertheless, one question remained open: to what extent the course can be efficient – that is, whether the energy input of five lecturers is used efficiently. our semester resulted in four committed students (from appr. fifteen), which does not seem to be an outstanding proportion – this was the reason for reducing the lecturer staff to two person in the following semester. however, in general the answer to this question must be context dependent. motivating students the description of the course indicates that motivating students was a central question during the whole semester. we experienced already from the very beginning that students had a completely different culture of work (always being late, free riding, cramming etc.) which stemmed from the characteristics of the faculty and the university (no community places in the university building, chaotic schedule, disappointed professors). it is not surprising, that students embedded in this environment could not utilize the possibility for challenging authorities provided by participatory teaching methods because at the same time they should have taken responsibility for their own learning and also the quality of their knowledge (levin m. – greenwood, d. 2001), which is an unfamiliar phenomenon in this system. we think that the extent of students’ involvement depends on their personal interest and critical approach towards existing structures, and that those students who live an active civil life are more responsive to the par methodology than others are. freedom of students the question of students’ independence in class/research decisions refers to the former topic on motivation. without taking responsibility for their own learning we cannot expect them to be responsible for others (e.g. locals) participating in the same action research process. nevertheless, in a field research conducted in a small marginalized rural community researchers play the important role of initiators and mediators, thus the success of the action (in our case a community forum) but sometimes complete relationships depend on them. when students do not seem to participate in former discussion of research design and show only a few signs of awareness, a much stricter monitoring of their fieldwork (for example interviewing in pair with a supporter) can assure the quality of the research process. adaptation to the education system we also had to cope with the dilemma of how to adapt our par course to the specific hungarian education system and university culture. during the semester, we faced the difficulty that fieldwork is basically unknown in gradual sociology education, students did not develop a rudimentary knowledge on qualitative research methods, and are socialized to the traditional formal teaching system (professors on the pulpit). in these circumstances lecturers really have to “expect the unexpected” (glanz, 2003 – cited by dick, b. 2004. pp. 433) and to be ready for continuously modifying the curriculum. it is clear that theory, techniques and fieldwork cannot be condensed into one semester and that the recent education system does not really support continuity in courses. however, every small change in teaching methods can contribute to the slow transformation of the higher education system through changing students’ attitudes. ethics standards in a participatory action research process consecutive steps of the research cannot be fully planned as a wide range of suprises can arise in any moment. therefore, it is hard to create an overall code of ethics and standards that contains solutions to every problem (collins, s. 2004). based on this idea, we determined only the major principles to pursue during the semester: challenging the traditional roles of teachers and 33 anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 2 page 33 students (giving the possibility of contributing to the whole research process through independent decisions); learning by doing (students’ active participation in field research); reciprocity (each party can contribute to the learning process and gains different proceeds); and create an open atmosphere to encourage community learning. however, the above described unexpected events and involuntary changes in the curriculum made difficult to follow these principles. it was hard – and remained an unsolved question – to redefine power relations between students and teachers as most of the students focussed on end of term credit scores instead of real learning, and as we did not recognize that by becoming mentors or coaches (which would have been possible as five of us participated in the course) we may have solved this problem. conclusion we conclude that the presented par course was successful in using the experiential approach for teaching the people side of action research. of course, the lecturer team could not redeem the world during the semester, but could achieve personal changes and action learning with a small group of graduate students. four committed students from the class applied for new courses in the spring semester led by members of the essrg team. two of the graduate students participated in the field research further on, which indicates their engagement in participatory research and acknowledgment of participatory teaching methods. in this sense, our par course seems to comply with one of the most important aim of participatory research and learning – the empowerment of participants (even if just a few of them). however, this also implies that teaching par – at least in hungary – can be built on mainly individuals’ special abilities. members of the lecturer team have the impression that teaching par methodology effectively in the chosen university was a bit premature. the contextual factors strengthening this assumption can be grouped in four: 1. the context of higher education in hungary: institutional frames of teaching participatory methodology using participatory teaching methods are not yet formed; 2. the context of the chosen university: there are significant differences between hungarian universities in teaching social science methodology, but some are unexpectedly conservative in their pedagogical culture without recognizing its failures; 3. the teacher/lecturer team: without the commitment of teachers nothing could happen in the teaching system, however teachers in themselves are not enough for transforming universities into reflective learning communities; 4. the graduate students: can well afford to engage into a community based or action research if they take responsibility for attending the class, if not, teachers will fail in applying participatory teaching methods. teachers and students together can be the initiators of participatory learning at universities, while the higher education structure and the university itself can make this kind of bottom-up reform only more difficult, if not impossible. acknowledgements we would like to thank barbara bodorkós, ágnes mér! and györgy pataki (members of the lecturer team) for their valuable contributions to this paper. references brydon-miller, m. – greenwood, d. – maguire, p. (2003): why action research? action research. vol. 1. no. 1. 9-28. collins, s. (2004): ecology and ethics in participatory collaborative action research: an argument for the authentic participation of students in educational research. educational action research. vol. 12. no. 3. 347-362. dick, b. (2004): action research literature. themes and trends. action research. vol 2. no. 4. 425444. levin, m. – greenwood, d. (2001): pragmatic action research and the struggle to transform universities into learning communities. in: reason, p. – bradbury, h. (eds): handbook of action research. london. sage. 104-113. némedi, d róbert, p (2002): sociology – hungary. in: max k. – vera s. (eds.), agnieszka wenninger (co-editor): three social science disciplines in central and eeastern europe: handbook on economics, political science and sociology (1989-2001), berlin/bonn/budapest roth, w. m. – tobin, k. – zimmermann, a. (2002): coteaching/cogenerative dialoguing: learning environments research as classroom praxis. learning environments research. vol. 5. no. 1. 1-28. wessely, a (1996): the cognitive chance of central european sociology, in: m. hadas (ed.), colonization or partnership? eastern europe and western social sciences. budapest, 11-19. 34 anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 2 page 34 world wide web pages felt, l. f. – rowe, p. m. – curlew, k. (2004): teaching academic dogs and cats new tricks: ‘retooling’ senior academic. paper presented sept. 1-2, 2004. researching the voluntary sector conference. sheffield, england. retrieved m a y 4 , 2 0 0 6 f r o m http://www.envision.ca/pdf/cura/ dogscats.pdf kozma j. – galambos, r. (2005): a critical review of the hungarian literature on service-learning and civic education in hungarian higher education. retrieved march 12, 2006 from http://www.civicus.lt 35 anthropology of east europe review volume 26, no. 2 page 35 http://www.envision.ca/pdf/cura/ http://www.envision.ca/pdf/cura/ http://www.civicus.lt http://www.civicus.lt sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 59 ‘we are bessarabians here’: identity, tradition and power in southern bessarabia ekaterina anastassova bulgarian academy of sciences, sofia, bulgaria in the last three centuries the multiethnic101 area between the dniester, the prut and the danube rivers, formerly called bessarabia102, has been incorporated in different states (the moldovan kingdom, the russian empire, romania and the ussr). its peripheral location, the lack of a longlived state continuity, and the failure of policies directed towards uniting people under a national paradigm, have undoubtedly determined the manycentury stability of ethnic (and religious) communities103 in the area. this was illustrated by the fact that after the disintegration of the ussr, when the region was divided between the two independent countries moldova and ukraine some of these communities demonstrated their ‘otherness’ by seeking different ways of self-definition within the national paradigm. it suffices here to mention the autonomous regions in the republic of moldova: the gagaouz republic (gagaouz yeri), and the bulgarian tarakliiski region, or the aspirations for a special “bulgarian” status of the bolgrad area in the ukrainе in the early 1990s. the present paper concerns southern bessarabia, which, after fifty years of soviet domination (ending 1991) as part of the odessa district in ukrainian ssr, has remained within the borders of the independent ukraine, thus changing its state membership once more. as a border area of the russian state for many centuries (reflected in the etymology of the name as “near the end”, “at the end”, “at the border”), ukraine itself today faces new geo-political realities and the need for a new national policy. despite the previously indecisive geopolitical choice (russia or eu), which seems to have finally been made towards eu after the orange revolution, ukraine took an ‘intermediate’ road in the field of national policy. on the one hand it carried out an aggressive national campaign, related to the revival of national symbols and institutions, and the establishment of ukrainian language, history, culture, etc. on the other hand, ukraine guaranteed cultural rights, cultural centres and state funding to ethnic minorities, thus ensuring considerable state control over their activities. the successful realization of these policies is a real challenge for the independent post-soviet state against the background of the difficult transition from authoritarianism to democracy and from a socialist to a capitalist type of economy. how did these processes influence the ethnic and religious situation in the agrarian multiethnic region of southern bessarabia? the question is worth asking, bearing in mind that nationalism (or ethnicisms) is shaped and directed by elites (gellner 1983). these elites, through national (or respectively ethnic) institutions are able to manipulate the identity of the so-called ‘masses’ by using arguments of real or mostly invented traditions (hobsbawm, 1983). how did the distance from the centre and the agrarian nature of the area, which suggests a lack of well grounded elites who are needed for the new national paradigm, affect the national, ethnic and religious situation in the region? how are the identities of residents in the small, local multiethnic communities in the countryside of southern bessarabia modeled, after decades of soviet international conception? how much have they been influenced by the new national paradigm? have the traditional ethnicities104 and religious identities been preserved? are new local identities being created out of the changed situation and the centuries-old multiculturalism, as well as from common economic and social interests? i shall try to answer these questions on the basis of data from a field survey conducted in one of the southern bessarabian settlements in 1999105. this survey, as well as a more recent one carried out (on the same subject) in 2005, offers enough material for some theoretical considerations and conclusions. thus the dynamic processes in ukraine can be followed in all aspects of the social and cultural life that are inevitably affected by “transition” and globalization. the village of mirnoe in 1999: the era of the bessarabians a small (1670 inhabitants) multiethnic bessarabian settlement offers an interesting example of the theory of ‘multiplying’ nationalisms and ethnicisms. in the village of mirnoe live 70% russian old-believers106, 21% ukrainians and 5% moldavians, gagauzi, tadzhiks, byelorussians, chouvashes and others (prigarin, 1997). the village is well known for its prosperity in an area that nevertheless experiences the vicissitudes of the transition: poverty, insecurity, lack of law and no real optimistic perspectives. most of the villages we visited were failures: damaged roads, non-producing collective farms (kolkhoz), closed libraries and anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 60 cultural centres, worn out and ugly looking houses and public buildings. in contrast, everything was much better in mirnoe: sufficient food production, a number of social and cultural activities; even new buildings were under construction. the success of mirnoe, was attributed by the local people to the activity of the head (predsedatel) of the village collective farm (kolkhoz). the legendary head – mihail ivanovich derevencha was only too happy to speak to his old friends from the university and their “colleague from bulgaria” (the author). as a local “nationalist” he was interested in history and had already promoted and funded a cultural and historical study of the village that was carried out by university colleagues. naturally, one of the first questions that i asked him concerned the ethnic and religious groups of the village. the answer was significant: “we are bessarabians here”. the explanation of this neoethnonym107 provides a complete conception, typical of local post-soviet folklore. this folklore is based on myths from the time of the cold war and was particularly prominent in bessarabia during the troubled summer of 1999 when the news about the bombings of ex-yugoslavia, accompanied by the poisoned water that flowed down the danube river, meant that people were particularly angry about global politics. the world conspiracy the head of the kolkhoz explained: “everything started during the talks between gorbachov and the americans. the design came from the cia: “how to destroy the ussr?’’ the answer: ‘‘from the inside”. the rich countries always create military conflicts and use individual leaders to bribe and discredit. they threw gorbachov to us and we destroyed everything. what was happening before in lebanon and in iraq is now happening in the ussr and yugoslavia. the americans are inciting individual countries against each other and then interfere to pacify them. the usa is a world gendarme. who will be the next one? such a conflict as in kosovo can be stirred up everywhere. separatism, however, will help nobody; the hope that we shall be better independently is never justified. it is the same case with ukraine trying to operate outside the ussr, crimea with its separatist aims in respect to ukraine, the conflict in chechnya, the case of kashmir between india and pakistan and the situation between north and south korea. that’s why we are bessarabians here.” this ‘post-soviet’ nationalism, filled with an anti-american rhetoric, prevailed among village residents. ethnic and religious differences were viewed as a potential cause for future conflict, provoked from outside, and were overcome by the means of ethnonymy, even in a wider, “unifying” perspective. “we are slavs… the slavs are gypsies…they cannot manage separately. russia, ukraine and belarus must live together…. the ukraine shall be sold. the same will happen here as in yugoslavia”, explained a 30-year-old half oldbeliever, half ukrainian (an atheist), who added in disgust, ‘‘and our people want to enter nato …”. where does this call for unity as bessarabians, so untypical for countries in transition as well as for the other villages in the area, come from? why is a non-traditional ethnonym (bassarabians) used, an ethnonym based on a historical term which has long since been absent from the modern geo-political maps? where does this devotion to a common slavic and socialist past and to meta-ethnic terminology come from? what does this pathos aim at? no doubt, the reasons are many and complicated. the manager and order in the political, economic and social life of mirnoe an explanation offered by the ‘bessarabians’ and their head was centered on two words: ‘manager’ (hozyain) and ‘order’ which they set up against the chaos of the transition. the latter is assessed as a period lacking in statehood (in this respect the comparison between the slavs and the roma is appropriate, as the latter are a people with no state) and a time of negligence and total insecurity. it is on the basis of the opposition ‘manager/no manager’ that the ethnic communities in the region are characterized: “the bulgarian is a manager. the russian old-believer is clever, but is no manager at all. with the bulgarian everything is beautiful. the bulgarian is a very good house lord: his horse is clean and groomed; the fence of his house is of metal. the bulgarian villages are the richest in the region. the old-believer does not care: he loads his cart, and then he might get drunk and lose it all. that is why the bulgarian is an owner, the old-believer is “so and so”, and the ukrainian is the worst manager”. both ‘order’ and ‘manager’ are synonymous with the head of the local cooperative farm named ‘friendship’ (very symbolic), without whom, according to the local people, the village would not be the same: “there was no rule in our village: robberies, killings, and the plundering of the churches. two people were murdered and no one was punished. it is good that the head of the cooperative anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 61 farm returned: he is a manager and a man of order. he can hit you and shout at you, but the field will be okay, people will be well, the work will be done”, most of the people of mirnoe told me. the cooperative farm and its head, derevencha, have a long history. derevencha, born in 1935, is an ethnic ukrainian and a typical ’soviet personnel’. he is an engineer, a pilot and a reserve major; he graduated from the higher communist party school; and at the beginning of the 1970s he wrote a ph.d. dissertation “material stimulations of labour in the cooperative farms”. in addition to that, he is a creative personality: a poet, a writer and a singer and, as i was able to witness personally, an eloquent storyteller. he has a long career in the village of mirnoe (dating back to 1961): he started as the principal of the school, after which he became the deputy head of the cooperative farm. from 1966 until perestroika he was the permanent head and secretary of the village communist party. a known innovator, he received 47 “severe party punishments” (“at that time initiatives were punished”, he told me), but since the 1980s he led “friendship” to first place for productivity in the ussr and then “they could not touch me”. after “the changes”, he was “removed from office” and returned to his native village in the region of kiev, where he became a successful independent farmer. in mirnoe, as in most other places, the first years of transition were chaotic: characterized by the plundering of the cooperative farm, a drop in production, and a sharp decrease in incomes. the anxious peasants discussed the crisis and a consensus decided to send a delegation of wellrespected old-believers who would ask derevencha to return to head the kolkhoz. he accepted. the event, according to the old-believers’ tradition, was celebrated with a prayer for his health. this started the ‘revival’ of mirnoe. the economic problems were resolved: production was restored and the debts accumulated during his two-year absence were paid back. however, his return saw not only a restoration of the previous ‘socialist’ situation, the challenges of post socialist political and religious pluralism were also met. all party biases were eliminated and a depolarization was chosen: “why do we have problems in ukraine? because all is divided; there are many parties: communists, green, nationalists, and several socialist parties. also a democratic party, a party of revival, agrarian and peasant parties and so on. there are more than 50 parties… it is the same with the church: several russian orthodox churches, several old-believer churches, several ukrainian churches, and sects, as many as you wish! here the old-believers also wanted to be separate, but the people did not allow it …”. the religious situation was solved in a democratic manner: the oldbelievers remained united around their traditional church, while the head was personally involved in the construction of an ukrainian orthodox church (no building existed before the changes). he also found a priest for the church. derevencha summarized his economic credo in this way: “the ukraine used to be in the first place in the world in the export of wheat, milk, butter, etc. today a clever person sells processed products, the less clever natural raw resources, and the stupid one, the land! now destruction is to be seen everywhere, because there is no manager! robberies are the greatest curse. i have managed to restrain them. my concern is first of all for the people and their welfare. it is also my welfare.” derevencha explained the successes of the village mainly in terms of his dominating role in the social life of the village: “everything in mirnoe comes from me. i am a wall and i offer protection and aid. i distribute everything: money and products. i offer products instead of salaries; but my prices are not the same as those on the market. weddings, saint days, any celebration, the punishment of thieves and lazy men: i am everywhere”. of secondary importance is the communication network, established by him: “i communicate with the people, everybody knows how to find me. my official visiting hours are on tuesday, in my office, where there are 38 seats. these are the official visiting hours, when everything is shared openly in front of the others. however, i have also secret visiting hours, on wednesday, when people come one by one. you can hear everything, people lay bare their souls”. the public and personal cases solved by him are of a varying nature. the most frequent appeals are for the request for money for a variety of problems. the members of the cooperative receive goods in lieu of salaries. thus there is a lack of cash in the village. yet it is curious that the scarcity of money does not stop people saving and, after having met their subsistence needs, they give funds to the local library for the buying of books, mostly adventure and romance novels, which are read by all in the village from cover to cover. the competency of the head covers everything, from public needs to the most intimate problems: “when there is a graduation ball, i give everything for the feast.’ and in a show of particular fondness for his villagers he added that all of the guests are in beautiful dresses and smiling with happiness; “here comes a young woman. she could not get pregnant. she needs money for treatment in the town. i gave her money. this same afternoon her mother came to see me: she anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 62 needs money for an abortion. i gave her money too. we have many cases of sterility. and there were many successes: new children!” one of the interesting cases the head told me about concerned the solving of a ‘supernatural problem’. “one fisherman, an alcoholic oldbeliever, once, told me, when we were together fishing: ‘you must help me. each night the devil comes to me, then sits on my legs and tortures me, it hurts awfully’. (actually, the old man was suffering from rheumatism due to regular emersion in cold water of the river). i explained to him that when the unholy comes in the night he must put a cross on the devil’s neck and then submerge him in a bucket of water. then he must tie him down in the basement and then the devil will fulfill all his wishes. the old man promised he would do this’’. derevencha continued to explain that together, they prepared the bucket but the old man fell asleep. on the following day, ‘‘i told him that everything is okay, i had caught the devil but then felt sorry for him and had therefore let him go, on the condition that he would not torture the old man anymore’’. since then the old man has stopped complaining about his rheumatism. ‘‘and he keeps telling me: you have well scared off the devil!” the head boasted about his pedagogical skills, which he calls “non-traditional educational methods”. they include not only protection and help, but also control and punishment. the latter generally take the form of public reproaches, but, according to witnesses, sometimes physical punishments were used. derevencha told me: “an old man was stealing planks from the cooperative farm. i warned him that i shall make a sudden check in his house, and if i find stolen goods, he will have a hard time! i pretended that i was going to the town, but actually returned back after half an hour! as i had already guessed, the old man was groaning under the load, taking the stolen material out of the house. i caught him red handed with the goods. he admitted his crime and never dared to steal again”. another story shows the influence of derevencha in family matters as well: “a young man comes to me during the “secret visiting hours”. and he complains that whatever he does, he cannot “please” his wife. ‘i’ (derevencha) ‘responded: she is simply making fun of you. you have to beat her’. the young man made an offended face and left. one day his wife invited me for a visit. they had prepared a wonderful table, food, drinks, and a full meal. and both of them were thanking me, i could not stop them. it turned out that the wife had fallen under the influence of her neighbour – a feminist and was listening to her advice. after speaking with me, the muzhik108 went home and his wife started making fun of him again. then he gave her a beating with his belt. then both of them started weeping, embraced each other, confided in each other and forgave each other. till now they are blessing me”. many others can supplement these ‘instructive’ stories, reflecting views held by both the head and the residents of the village. it is obvious that the small community was organized in a comprehensive concentric structure, and at the centre was the cooperative farm head. authoritarian, harsh, but fair, he represents the ‘happy past’ not only of socialist times, when their cooperative farm ranked first in the powerful ussr, but also a certain mythical time when the ukraine was “first in the world in the export of wheat, milk and butter”. no doubt, the head is also an embodiment of ‘the happy present’, bringing economic stability and social security to the village. he is a sympathetic and generous ruler, ready to respond to all, even to the most eccentric demands of his fellow villagers, because he knows and understands the local traditions (recall the case of the “devil”). his prognoses for the future was also optimistic, even though based on mystic sources, which nevertheless appealed to the ‘masses’ more than explanations grounded in political studies: “nostradamus has foretold that world war three shall start in the balkans. new york shall disappear from the face of the earth. moscow shall become a village, but the black sea area shall remain”. thus the village of mirnoe is presented as a happy oasis, where traditional power mechanisms and socialist conceptions are harmoniously intertwined with postsocialist reality. in the transitional chaos of the region, one representative of the elite puts forward a model of local ‘nationalism’109 – based on being bessarabian. this model unfolds in a ‘far away’ and imaginary state110 whose problems are foreign to the common people. it offers an opportunity for an appropriate selfidentification of people with confused identities who were formerly proud citizens of ussr. based on the sense of community, security and order (considered as the dominating ‘ethnic markers’), a bessarabian identity establishes a stable, small society with an “invulnerable” ethnicity in an irresistibly disintegrating world. undoubtedly, this identity is the result of a centuries long tradition, dominated by various forms of authoritarian power, and an ethnicity in stress, which loses its support in the new changing situation. the selected ethnonym is not casual, nor is its expression in front of a foreigner from the ex“sister bulgaria,” an accident. we can recall that anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 63 bulgaria was fighting for its membership in nato at the time of the study (1999)111 and so, officially, a supporter of the nato bombings. on the one hand the term is “unifying” and maintains the soviet idea of a “strong, multinational community”. on the other hand, the ethnonym, as well as the absence of bessarabia on the political and administrative maps, conceals the multiethnic nature of the area, presenting a peculiar guarantee against ethnic conflict that might be triggered by the outside, by “a world conspiracy”. a danger (evident from the recent transnistrian conflict) which, according to the local people, becomes a real threat with the interference of nato in ex-yugoslavia. a bessarabian identity can be viewed as a nostalgic (boym, 2003) ‘nationalism’ (equally true for slavic nationalism mentioned above), while democracy was a synonym for disorder, lawlessness and poverty (at the moment of the study) provoking the wish for a “strong hand”. however, a “bessarabian” identity, as any other identity, supposes not only unifying elements but also a differentiation, as is demonstrated in the following statement by one of the old-believers in mirnoe, where bessarabians are clearly seen as distinct from the new independent ukraine: “bessarabia is not the ukraine. the real ukraine is up to kiev. there are no steppes in ukraine, only woods and beauty. but there is no asphalt, nothing is arranged, lazy people are the ukrainians…” an anti-state nationalism and anti-globalization alternative? undoubtedly, these processes are directed against unification tendencies of the new ukrainian state, which aims at a homogeneous ukrainian nation. thus the bessarabian identity is the answer to the aggressive state national campaign launched by the independent ukraine.112 bessarabian identity is a form of nostalgia, while its formal characteristics qualify the bessarabians as indigenous peoples of the region. this is attested to by an appeal to ‘bessarabia’, as a historical place, as well as by the major bessarabian markers: attachment to the place and its traditions (social, economic, cultural, religious, etc.) and focusing on immediate social needs113. besides, indigenous cultures usually define their identity by calling on their historical attachment to place (dirlik & prazniak, 2001). thus, mirnoe suggests an alternative to globalization if the popular definition of globalization is to be accepted: “the free movement of ideas, investment and capital, people and industrial processes over the borders all over the world” (o'neill & purushothaman, 2003). the conservative bessarabian identity is based on the socialist experience, on the re-creation of traditional economic, social and power mechanisms, as well as on the denial of the changes that have taken place since the 1991 reforms in the ukraine. a bessarabian identity represents an escape from the dangers of the global world, a retreat into a world of its own which lives under its own rules and logic of development, thus creating a new regionalism, a bessarabian one, which ignores ethnic and national borders. bessarabian regionalism shapes historical borders through inherent social, economic and (multi)cultural traditions. the “bessarabian” concept preserves and develops religious borders, to which the population has always been intimately attached (it is worth mentioning here the old believers’ success in resisting centuries-old religious harassment114). the above considerations give us grounds to understand bessarabian nationalism as a regionalism115 opposing both capitalist expansion and global policy. it can be considered an alternative to state nationalism and globalization process. the conservative ‘local cultures’ inevitably tend to be marginalized in a global world. a local fear of global processes (evident in their discourse which is still shaped by cold war vocabulary) and recent attempts at creating an alternative social and economic model that draws on traditional and regional arrangements suggests an interesting destiny for this bessarabian village. they maintain a conservative lifestyle that rejects modern global influences. the village of mirnoe in 2005 the next utopian alternative… in the summer of 2005 i visited mirnoe again. unfortunately, the dreams of an alternative to globalization and ukraine state nationalism had not come true. instead, it appears that the revolutionary events in mirnoe followed those of the orange revolution. in january 2005 the head of the cooperative farm was overthrown by the village general assembly. a meeting summoned after an audit initiated by the local agronomist (who replaced derevencha) revealed huge financial losses and abuses in the cooperative. stories relating to the behaviour of members of the kolkhoz and of derevencha were quite controversial: ranging from the decisive speeches of “the revolutionists” and “the pushing out of derevencha through the back entrance” to “derevencha’s solemn withdrawal with dignity, his last words being: “preserve the kolkhoz!” none of the people to whom i spoke (15 in total) admitted to have been present at the assembly: anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 64 everyone stated that they didn’t attend this important meeting! (i wonder who were the bold individuals who dared to oppose the authoritarian head? i could not find them either among the kolkhoz members or among the cultural and religious authorities of the village). obviously mirnoe did not escape globalization ‘vices’ (corruption, financial abuses) or democratic virtues (such as the election of political leaders). it is a pity, however, that “the bessarabians” were completely forgotten and that the ethnic and religious116 borders again play an important role: the people constructing the ukrainian church that gained a prominent place during derevencha’s rule, are now complaining that they cannot finish building the church because the new chairman, an old-believer, “is helping only “his” people”. on the other hand, old believers were more interested in discussing the new ukrainian state leadership and the country’s unclear future, than supporting local religious and other institutions. to conclude, hopes for constructing a new paradigm, reflecting a new local identity, have not completely eventuated – the era of bessarabian nationalism was short lived. but it is relevant that the term became appealing, and was revived, at a particular moment in history when a particularly high level of chaos meant that there was a need to unify and counter possible divisions (political, religious etc). such a period is usually characterized by intensive identification activities, preceding the appearance of a new identity (maybe a ukrainian one) in response to the changing circumstances beyond bessarabia. the history of the village of mirnoe exemplifies a possible way of moving from totalitarian regime to democracy, where the intermediate stage includes more or less authoritarian regimes (zhelev, 1990) the dreams of the “strong hand” in the years of turmoil and chaos. authoritarian regimes consolidate the society at a time of extreme social and economic problems. but the hope that local cultures and regional identity are an alternative to globalization still exists. maybe my next field research in bessarabia will prove that. i would like to conclude by returning to the image of derevencha. despite all the events, he was still a legendary figure in mirnoe in 2005. people recalled his support for the construction of the ukrainian church, for the order and security during his time, his encouragement of cultural activities in the village, and his voluptuous feasts. some mentioned with regret his last dream that could not come true: to celebrate his 70th anniversary in the kolkhoz before retiring. unfortunately, the last two volumes of the history of mirnoe that had been commissioned by the former head are now waiting for a new sponsor in order to be printed. the controversial figure of derevencha, an ambitious regionalist, will continue to be a subject of mirnoe folklore. notes 101 the multiethnic nature of the area resulted from russian imperial colonization of the desolate borderlands from the mid-eighteenth century untill the 1830s. the region has mostly been settled by balkan populations (bulgarians, gagauzi and others) seeking refuge from the ottoman empire. 102 as the name of an administrative unit, bessarabia was lastly used in romania (1918 1944). 103 these processes match the typology of escalation of nationalism after the disintegration of socialist multinational state unions (the ussr and yugoslavia). ethnic nationalism as a state policy (which replaced the socialist ideas concerning internationalism) caused a chain reaction leading to the development of new nationalisms and ethnicisms (neologism, defined by j-f. gossiaux in 1996, characterizing the nationalism of ethnic minorities), based on the convenient presumption of the guilt of the ‘other’ for the problems, misfortunes and failures of the society in crisis (gossiaux, 2002). new nationalisms laid different claims, ranging from demands for independent states (which were often followed by dramatic events) to autonomy claims and the foundation of minority institutions. 104 i understand ethnicity as a dynamic process of identification/differentiation between groups of people based on the fundamental opposition ‘self’ – ‘other’. this opposition is defined by means of an unlimited and mobile set of markers evaluating otherness (mostly negative) against the background of one’s own culture and creating specific ethnic borders (barth, 1969). the ongoing existence of the ethnic groups depends on the existence of ethnic borders. 105 by invitation from the chair of archeology and ethnology, odessa state university, and with financial support from the international center on the problems of minorities and cultural interactions foundation, i participated in a field survey in the odessa area together with other lecturers, postgraduate students and students from the odessa and kiev universities. my theme was “multiethnic coexistence – history, problems, perspectives”. during my stay i observed the daily life of ten settlements with various ethnic and religious backgrounds in southern bessarabia. anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 65 106 the old believers are a specific russian religious community, which appeared after the 17th century church schism (razkol) in russia. after being excommunicated from the russian orthodox church the old believers were persecuted by the state. in response, the church and many of its members emigrated abroad. nowadays the old believers diaspora is to be found in europe, asia and america; they have an independent church. the old believers culture is extremely conservative, still sharing many medieval concepts. cf. anastassova, 1996. 107 ethnonym is a term defining the name of an ethnic community. there are two types of ethnonyms: endonyms and exonyms. endonym means a name given by the community itself (self-designation), while exonym is the name given to the community by the “others”. “bassarabians” in this terminology is a neo-endonym. 108 a traditional russian term for a strong and stout villager, a man. 109 here it is worth remembering that nationalism precedes the creation of a national state. the latter shapes the nation (an “imagined community” – anderson, 1983) through national symbols and institutions. 110 it is not coincidence that it is the black sea region that will survive world war three and not ukraine. 111 bulgaria is now a member of nato and presently (2006) on queue to join the eu. 112 during my 2005 field survey i still felt an opposition to ukrainian state nationalism among the non-ukrainian population, especially among russians. 113 undoubtedly a problem during the transition period of the region. 114 the old believer’s religiosity undoubtedly stimulated a revival in ukrainian religiosity, partly in response to, the soviet atheistic period. it is instructive that the ukrainians in mirnoe had no church of their own before the changes. construction began only under derevencha. 115 i am indebted to deema kaneff for conceptualizing bessarabian nationalism as a form of regionalism. 116 this is quite different from derevencha’s time, when religious balance was very important. in a personal communication associate professor alexander prigarin, university of odessa, informed me that derevencha was not only a member of the ukrainian church but also joined the old believers (!), obviously to balance both confessions. references anastassova, e. 1996. the russian old believers in bulgaria: myth, history, identity. (in bulgarian) sofia: bas. anderson, b. 1983. imagined communities. reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: new left books. barth, f. ed. 1969. ethnic groups and boundaries. the social organization of culture difference. bergen/london: allen&unwin.boym, s. 2001. the future of nostalgia. ny: basic books. dirlik, a.& r. prazniak.eds. 2003. places and politics in an age of globalization. lanham, md: rowman and littlefield publishers. gellner, e. 1983. nations and nationalism. oxford: basil blackwell. gossiaux, j. f. 1996. « un ethnicisme transnational. la résurgence de l’identité valaque dans les balkans ». in : fabre, d. (sous la dir.). l’europe entre cultures et nations. paris: maison des sciences de l’homme, pp. 191 – 198. gossiaux, j. f. 2002. pouvoirs ethniques dans les balkans. paris: puf. hobsbawm, e.& t. ranger. eds. 1983. the invention of tradition. cambridge: cambridge university press. hobsbawm, e. 1997. nations and nationalism since 1780. programme, myth, reality. (in bulgarian), sofia (first edition 1990): obsidian. o'neill, j. & r. purushothaman. 2003. “the challenge of the century: getting globalization right”. in: goldman sachs global report 89, 24th january 2003. prigarin, a. a., t. a. agafonova, a. i. ganchev, s. a. kurchoubash, d. g. ludvenko. 1997. the material culture of slavic population of danube river: village mirnoe, kilya district, odessa area. (in russian), odessa: a-profit. zhelev, tz. 1990. fascism. (in bulgarian), sofia: izdatelstvo bzns. microsoft word table of contents and intro formatted.doc 121 volume 25, no. 2 page 121 revitalisation of diverging rituals in eastern europe: the case of roma and gadze in a transylvanian village lászló fosztó martin luther university this study addresses the postsocialist transformations of rituals in the regional and local public spheres of romania. i argue that the ritual transformations can be differentiated according to the ethnic groups involved. my analysis is based on fieldwork carried out in the transylvanian city of cluj, and in a nearby village gánás.1 gánás is a polytechnic settlement where roma coexist with hungarians. the village has around 1,300 inhabitants, a third of whom are roma,2 with the remainder primarily hungarian, though there are also a handful of romanian families. i carried out fieldwork between june 2003 and september 2004. the ethnic pattern is characteristic for the surrounding region known as kalotaszeg in the hungarian ethnographic literature. fifteen years ago jeremy boissevain (1992) in a seminal volume directed attention to the process of revitalization of european rituals, however the revitalization of east european rituals was addressed sporadically since. here i am concerned with the revitalisation of existing rituals author’s note: this study is based on a chapter of my phd dissertation defended in july 2007 at the institute for ethnology, martin luther university, halle-wittenberg. the research was part of the ‘religion and civil society’ project of the postsocialist eurasia department at max planck institute for social anthropology, halle. i owe thanks to chris hann and all the participants of the writing up seminar organized at the mpi for commenting on an earlier draft of this study. i also benefited from the aeer editorial comments by yasar abu ghosh. 1 the research was supported by the mpisa. the name of the village and all personal names are pseudonyms. 2 these roma belong to the romungro group also called “magyarcigány” meaning ‘hungarian gypsies’. most of the local roma are trilingual: in addition to their native dialect of romani they are proficient in romanian and hungarian. throughout this study i refer to this group simply as ‘roma’ following the in-group usage of the term. and the invention of new celebrations. my primary argument is that, while an intensification and diversification of ritual practices can be observed in all segments of the romanian society since the fall of the socialist regime, not every group is equally affected by a collective revitalisation process. based on the ethnography of a village i argue that some local roma are more receptive to rituals focusing on moral personhood, while local ethnic hungarians tend to be more involved in revitalisation, focusing on village traditions and folklore celebration symbolically connected to their broader ethno-national community. religion plays important role in revitalisation rituals in both cases. herein i develop an analysis of transformations observable in the local public sphere; analysis of the national level is subject for another study (see fosztó 2007). recent sociological research on the relationship between religion and ethno-national identities in the east europe confirms the continuation of well known pre-existing historical connections between churches, states, and identities in eastern-central europe. this has been well documented in the case of the hungarians living outside of hungary in neighbouring countries.3 one hungarian anthropologist (papp 2003) similarly argues that historical churches confess ‘ethnic religions’ in former yugoslavia. indeed, in regions where the possibility of institutional support of ethnic mobilisation was more limited, in some cases ‘historical churches’ are the most important actors involved in the construction of ethnic identity.4 it is understandable that these churches excel at mobilising ‘national’ identities amongst ethnic minorities in regions neighbouring the ‘external homeland’. in such situations one often finds ‘triangular’ historical connections (brubaker 1996) between the minority group, its institutions (e.g. churches), and the neighbouring ‘homeland’ (i.e. hungary). 3 for the case of transylvania see gereben (2000). 4 for a case study of subcarpathia see zoltán fej!s (1996). 122 volume 25, no. 2 page 122 roma nationalism, however, seems to have a very limited appeal in post-socialist romania. the handful of attempts at ethnic mobilization based on conventional ethno-politics, which in eastern and central europe usually involves the politicization of a narrow slice of an ethnic group’s expressive culture (e.g. folklore), have remained fragmented and restricted to particular roma groups, failing to engender a wider base of support. these observations have led political scientists to conclude that roma have a low potential for ethnic mobilization (barany 1998; 2002: 49-80). but even if one accepts that this claim accurately reflects roma involvement in conventional forms of mobilisation, it must also be pointed out that alternative forms of mobilisation (e.g. religious revitalisation) have rapidly emerged among roma following the fall of the socialist regime. there are various patterns of group identification on the ground, and it is important to analyse the emerging forms of identities and the resources they draw upon let these new identifications be either ‘religious’ or ‘secular’, ‘civic’ or ‘ethnic’. in the following i deal with two forms of revitalisation. first, i consider pentecostal missionary rituals which have intensified in the region and can be seen as a distinctive form of revitalization. pentecostal assemblies mobilise the support of church members, attract adherents, and contribute to the expansion of the religious movement through the incorporation of new recruits. the second form of revitalisation i address is the revitalisation of ‘village traditions’. these rituals and celebrations are organised in rural communities, and their focus is on local traditions, though they also reinforce the metonymical link between local traditions and the nation. in the postsocialist period there have been many instances of these rituals in villages inhabited by hungarians throughout transylvania. ‘gánási village days’ is a relatively recent development. the structure of the study is the following: first, i discuss the centrality of the role attributed to the holy spirit in pentecostal rituals for religious mobilization. i then describe and analyse a large mission event in the city to demonstrate how this form of revitalisation works in practice. in the third section, i turn to a parallel (though much more modest in terms of resources involved) example of pentecostal ritual revitalisation efforts in the village. the fourth section provides an overview of the main aspects of the revitalisation of village traditions through a case study of ‘village days’. the holy spirit as a source of mobilisation if conversion was limited to only transformations of individual personhood, and if the practices of born-again selves remained narrowly contained within the bounds of the assembly, there would be little expansion of the religious movement. but pentecostalism is a growing movement in romania and in the world.5 the role of missionary work cannot be underestimated, nor should the involvement of material resources be ignored. institutional and logistical aspects of missionary activities influence growth of the pentecostal church. however, herein i limit myself to a discussion of the preconditions and outcomes of the pentecostal mission and conversion in terms of ideas and identities. in order to understand this dimension it is useful to look at conversion as an example of religious mobilization (i.e. politicisation of identities). religious movements create networks and public rituals which provide an alternative space in which identities may be constructed. but the movement also encourages members to participate in outreach activities and requires them to do missionary work. pentecostal assemblies are endowed with resources and religious ideas which create and maintain member loyalty. the bible, the written word, provides the primary inspiration for pentecostal revitalization, as is the case for most protestant denominations. the holy spirit and the idea of spiritual gifts are another source of revitalizing power unique to pentecostals. strictly speaking, pentecostal views on the manifestation of the holy spirit are scripturally based (particularly acts 2, hebrews 2:4, mark 16:17-18, and matthew 3:16, amongst others). therefore one could argue that there is a strong connection between the word and spirit, but the distinction i rely on here is not alien to pentecostal conceptions of conversion and mobilisation inside the church. a well-known american-romanian pastor argues: if the holy spirit and the word of god realize the act of conversion and they make us born-again, the emphasis on one or the other will separate us sometimes antagonistically. the best way to illustrate this is the example of the “christian steam 5 for a brief historical overview of the pentecostalism in romania see fosztó (2006). 123 volume 25, no. 2 page 123 engine”. in order to run the engine you need two elements: the rails and the steam. there are some christians who value just the rails that would be the guideline offered by god for the life of the faithful, in this parabola. (…) but the engine is not running although the rails might be polished admirably. the other extreme faction values only the steam. the engine is under pressure, in power, but making a lot of noise, since most often their steam engine is running onto the tillage. both the rails and the steam are needed: word and spirit. (lasc"u 1998: 179) harvey cox (1995) has labelled the extreme poles of this opposition as ‘fundamentalist’ versus ‘experientialist’ approaches in pentecostalism. it is beyond the scope of this study to go into the details of this opposition, but the term ‘experientialist’ points in the right direction to a practical religious attitude oriented toward direct religious experience and the main source of these experiences: the holy spirit. destiny conference i attended many services among the roma in which some of the ‘gifts’ were practiced. glossolalia, prophecy, and healing are usually attributed to the spirit. i describe an exceptional event below; a rather large conference organized by a local pentecostal assembly in the city. i choose to analyse this event because it displayed many aspects and problems connected to pentecostal revitalisation. the conference was organized in a large ‘house of culture’ in the centre of the city. the ‘destiny conference’ was well advertised in public spaces as a faith healing event. i came to know about the conference through roma converts from the city. the conference lasted three days, and it had two sections, as one pastor told me. morning sessions were designed for training church workers, pastors, deacons and presbyters; while evenings were reserved for public meetings. a large banner declaring “god is healing today!” was placed over the entrance advertising the evening services. in several other parts of the city posters were put up and flyers distributed. i attended two of the evening events. as i passed through the main hall of the building on the first evening it was evident that this was a well-organized event. new arrivals were guided to the main room and offered seats by young hosts. entrances and access paths were kept open and the main stage was arranged. a band was stationed at one side of the stage, on which a pulpit stood in the middle, and in the background banners were hung baring the names of the pastors and promises that “god will heal you everywhere you hurt”. beyond the pulpit two large flags were placed: one romanian and the other american. as the service started the main orators (two pastors from america) alternated preaching, and musicians and vocalists led the singing. the lyrics of the songs were projected on a large screen next to the stage. towards the end of the night one of the pastors announced that all those who needed help from god and who were ready to open their hearts and receive jesus should raise their hands and come to the front. the organizers walked between the chairs and encouraged volunteers to approach the main stage. after a few minutes around 30 of the more than 200 people in attendance had lined up in front of the preacher. he asked them to repeat a short prayer after him. he spoke the prayer slowly, pausing at the end of lines, allowing his interpreter to translate from english to romanian. the people repeated the words of the prayer, which started with a confession of being a sinner, then expressed repentance, and ended with a ritual invitation addressed to jesus asking him to enter the hearts and lives of and save the people reciting the prayer.6 after this prayer, the participants were invited to recite a common prayer for the newly converted, and singing started. the names of the newly converted were written down. this list of names was later used to distribute the newcomers in “groups for growth” at assemblies that would best suit each person in terms of place of residence, needs, and age. this scene may be familiar to anybody who has attended a missionary event in other contexts. these sorts of events are not unique to pentecostalism and are practiced by evangelical and other born-again christian movements. the ritual summarizes, in a nutshell, the main themes of conversion, but is only the beginning of this process. the person who opens his or her heart to god must go through a long process of transformation in order to become a full member of an assembly. i witnessed similar rituals many 6 “jesus, i invite you to come into my heart and my life. please, be my lord, and be my saviour. i thank you jesus for saving me. i am born again; i am a child of god.” 124 volume 25, no. 2 page 124 times during my fieldwork among the pentecostals, mainly during services, conferences, and other performances that were addressed to the larger public. these events provide individuals with an opportunity to take their first step from being a non-believer to a believer. further personal development is aided by the network of assemblies, which are sensitive to social differences, unlike the ritual described herein, which symbolically diminishes social categories. the motivations of each convert and background channels for recruitment are of course diverse; organizers usually draw on kinship, friendship, and other networks of insiders, but the events are also widely advertised. in this ritual the social relations or group-memberships which are meaningful for the individuals outside the ritual context become insignificant in the revitalization ritual, which emphasizes a single real link: that created between the individual and god, between jesus and the open heart of the person. the salience of this direct connection makes the ritual capable of penetrating ‘intermediate’ social structures, downplaying status, ethnic, racial, and language differences. the main requirement for initiating conversion is the idea of an open heart and this is equally achievable by every person. the second requirement, the presence of the spirit, is produced in the ritual context. after almost two hours of preaching and singing one of the pastors started to speak in tongues. he pronounced foreign words slowly and with a rhetorical tone. i had the impression that some words resembled spanish, but on the whole it was not a language i had ever heard. after several sentences spoken in tongues the speaker reverted to english in order to interpret the glossolalia. it was a prophecy. the english sentences were then translated into romanian. i rephrase some of his words below: this place tonight, says the lord, there is a spark of new beginning in the life of many of the people here, and the spark and fire of my spirit descends upon you and i come to invade your life, says the lord, with my presence and my anointing. i come to change you for the good, i come to change this region for the good, i come to change your churches for the good, i am come to invade this city, and the surrounding regions, because in days gone by this was a place of oppression, but the future is brighter than the past, and my plans will be realized in this place. the doors open wider and wider. for these emanations of the spirit that have transpired in many third world nations shall soon be done in the capitals of the world. the other pastor later took up a similar line of reasoning when he spoke about how “spiritual walls are coming down” and the spirit has spread to nearly every corner of the earth. ‘third world nations’ and ‘developing countries’ were mentioned again, and examples were given of how people’s lives had changed for the good following conversion in these places. the vision of the spirit ‘invading’ the city and the region is a radical promise of renewal formulated in the language of dominance and liberation. the event continued with an offering of anointment for those who wished to receive it. the anointment ritual was performed on the stage. the first round was offered to pastors and other church workers, followed by others. the two american pastors joined forces to offer a blessing of the spirit to the volunteers. one touched the foreheads of the people and placed his hands on their necks just below the ears. the other pastor stayed close by, placing one of his arms on the shoulders of his colleague and holding the microphone with the other in order to let the blessings be heard by the entire audience. some people collapsed after being touched. helpers were prepared to hold them, and they were laid down on the ground and covered with blankets. after a few minutes of silent rest they recovered and left the stage. when i later asked a rom i knew from an assembly in the city what it was like to receive the spirit, he simply said: “he is powerful!” (rom: zoralo). the prophecy and blessing are inspired by the same idea: the empowering divinity. though i was aware that there is usually a large social and cultural distance between pastors and those receiving the spirit, during this event that gap was bridged by the ritual. as i attended other services, most of which were more modest and less spectacular, i came to realize the uniformity of this ritual for mobilisation. there is an ideal unity of discourse, which is connected to experiences inspired by the spirit. the ritual is deeply universalistic: its mobilising power is seen as unique, and ideally everybody can have access. the discourse that emerges from this experience is built on ideas of inequality and liberation. 125 volume 25, no. 2 page 125 testimony with reference to gen 9: 20-25 the ritual described above is so widespread that it can be viewed as clear evidence of a global charismatic christian culture (robbins 2004). the ways in which this global form meets and intertwines with local elements and conditions can be shown through comparative studies. in this section my intention is to consider one such local context in the case of roma who convert to pentecostalism. the conference described above was attended by many roma. there i met members of assemblies i knew from the city, and during the performance a pastor from bucharest was also called on stage. although no convert from gánás was present i attended rituals in the village with similar underlying ideas and comparable practices. though there was a sharp contrast between the well-funded destiny conference and these village gatherings in the houses of poor roma, similarities in the discourse of the preachers and involvement of participants in both cases were striking. i interpret these similarities as evidence of the force of and capacity for pentecostalist revitalisation to reproduce its rituals in disparate conditions and contexts. in spite of their scarcity of material resources and the hardships of everyday life, some of the gánási roma nonetheless preached and experienced the empowering effects of the spirit. on a sunday in early 2004 i attended a pentecostal assembly in the village. one of the members of the assembly hosted the gathering in his home. twenty roma participants crowded into the small room. the men took turns testifying and preaching while the singing was more dominated by the women. intense collective prayer connected the different stages of the event, and dani led the service. the dominant language was romanian, though some of the songs were in romani and some exchanges in hungarian also occurred. with the consent of the preacher i recorded the event, and i later gave a copy of the tape to the assembly. the following testimony is from a transcript of this gathering and was performed by a middle aged roma convert, jani: i want to say a few words, and then we will come to a conclusion. brother dani said a word that is spoken by the whole country. and not only in this country, but all the nations say this word. but this word is not true. they say: “look at the gypsy [rou: #igan], he is converted and he is going to... he will reach the kingdom of god.” but this is not right, it is not true. there are no gypsies in this world. the holy scripture does not say this. it does not mention that there are gypsies. there are no gypsies, my dears, we are not gypsies, and on this earth wherever there are gypsies they are not gypsies. this people that is called by all the nations in this way is named this way as a mockery. but why it is mocked in this way, this people, that they are gypsies? because it is the lowest nation and people [rou: neam $i popor] of all the nations and peoples. because wherever a gypsy goes he cannot say that this is my country. if he goes to hungary, when he returns he cannot say i am going home to my country, because romania is not his country. and this is the same in all countries. but if a hungarian goes, or a romanian, or a german or a slovakian… all the nations can say i am going home to my country except the gypsies. he cannot say “i am going to my country” because he has none. but the basis is this: in the times of noah, noah got drunk and he completely disrobed. he showed his nakedness. and his brother… his eldest son, reproved him: “aren’t you ashamed to stand in front of the peoples and nations, letting them see your nakedness?” because of this reproach noah became furious and cursed his son. but the curses he spoke did not fall onto his children, because god blessed his children. [praise him!] so his grandchild was hit by the curses. he said: “cursed be the children of your nation [rou: neam], and the children they beget… let them be the lowest nation and people of all in this world…” and the gypsies came from them for sure, those who are called gypsies, as a nation of the lowest of all. but the scripture later says that god will return and will take and he will raise… therefore, the scripture says: “i raise you from the dirt and i will put you among the great men…“ [so the scripture says.] today we already see how many gypsies have converted. before there were no gypsies to be converted, you rarely saw them in the church, because “he is a gypsy, part of the lowest nation…” even today they are not looked on favourably… but the scripture says: “i raise you from the dirt and i will put you among the great 126 volume 25, no. 2 page 126 men… and i will put the nations and people in your hand…” and now we are coming close to this, that the gypsies in this country have risen and are supported. they attend schools, go to church, receive a university education, and so on… god is showing that he will raise his people from the dirt, and he will place them among the great men.7 jani spoke freely without looking at the biblical texts, encouraged by the preacher that he was correctly quoting. later when i was visiting jani in his home to discuss other issues and asked about the exact reference he had difficulties finding it in the book. he insisted that he had read the story in the bible and had not heard it from somebody else. as i was not sure myself about the verse i later checked and realized that it was almost perfectly quoted (gen 9:20-25). the other quotation (god’s promise to raise his people) can be found in exodus 3:17. some minor differences though are important for the interpretation of the biblical story as an origin myth of the roma and as an evocation of scriptural authority to reject stigmatisation. even though the rhetorical performance is at one point logically self-contradictory (“on this earth wherever there are gypsies, they are not gypsies”), the moral element of the claim stands undamaged: the holy scripture does not say this; this is “mockery”. this rejection of social stigmatization marks the first step in clearing the ground in order to lay a basis for a more positive social identification. the explanation for the ‘mockery’ provided in the second paragraph of the testimony focuses on the fact that ‘gypsies’ lack a state. this interpretation supports a claim that those people labelled and stigmatized as ‘gypsies’ are, in principle, on equal footing with other nations. this should not be exaggeratedly read as a sign of nascent ethno-national mobilization amongst these roma. it would be farfetched to theoretically link the story of the canaanites to the history of roma slavery if the social actors do not take this step themselves. the third paragraph offers a narrative explanation of the origins of the population labelled as gypsies, and attributes the group’s present subjugated social position to a past injustice. it also asserts the common origins of both the roma and all other nations (and therefore equal rights) through the genealogical relatedness 7 sermon in romanian recorded in february 2004. of humanity (i.e. other nations came into being as descendants of the other children of noah). it is important from the perspective of collective identity construction that this scriptural interpretation bases its explanation of present inequalities and the low status of ‘gypsies’ not on the divine order, but instead explains it as a consequence of the curse brought on by the original patriarch noah. the cause of this curse is not clear in the original scripture8, but jani’s interpretation attributes the plight of the ‘gypsies’ to the fury of a drunken father who felt his son had defied his authority, even though noah himself had not been behaving properly (standing naked in public). the divergence from the original text here is significant because in the biblical version noah was asleep in his tent. the version presented in jani’s testimony permits the insertion of another important deviation from the original text: noah’s attempt to punish a morally superior person, who, according to kinship relations, is socially inferior, but who is nonetheless protected by god’s blessing. the biblical version is not without ambiguities: it is not clear why noah curses his innocent grandson rather than his son who is guilty of “seeing his nakedness”. in jani’s testimony this problem is solved by the blessing attributed to the son, and through changing the scene in order to introduce a public gaze that legitimizes the son’s actions. the origin of inequality is in this way shown to be deeply unjust in religious terms. the presentation of the story is consistent with the moral world of the roma community: a person usually considered inferior because of age, sex, or prestige can gain moral superiority if he or she can attract public notice of misbehaviour. the hierarchical ideas embedded in kinship, gender, and other social relations can be either ignored or reversed by this practice. this strategy can be used only inside existing local relations calling for public judgement. one cannot criticize somebody if the accuser cannot claim any common personal or communal obligations existing between the two parties. it is a resource of the relatively powerless. one can find examples of this strategy in the loud quarrels that happen between women. sometimes wives use this forum as a source of authority in family arguments. i observed teenagers teasingly 8 first i found edmund leach’s interpretation of the story (2000: 38) as a homosexual incest committed by the son rather farfetched, but i realised (reading bergsma and hahn 2005), that this interpretation is not unknown in the exegetical scholarship. 127 volume 25, no. 2 page 127 training each other in this practice while sitting outside on summer afternoons. when the strategy is successful, the targeted party feels ashamed and thus feels stripped of his or her power. hence, noah’s fury is understandable in local moral terms. the divergence from the canonical text introduced in this interpretation indicates how roma rework scripture in order to adjust the message to their own needs in constructing a social identity. theological authorities might accuse jani’s interpretation of being heretical, while some social analysts would expect “ethnicity” to emerge from this discourse. i am more reserved here: in my view this ‘reading’ of scripture is a rather universalistic and creative attempt to make the narrative comprehensible and credible through a shared sense of humanity and morality. the closing part of jani’s testimony provides a strategy for collective liberation from noah’s curse, and this day of reckoning seems to be imminent. the redemption of the gypsies is based on a divine promise of liberation, and the second coming of christ: “god will return”. the signs foreshadowing the fulfilment of this prophecy are by no means apocalyptic: ‘gypsies’ have converted and attend churches, schools, and universities. from a secular perspective, these advancements could be read as signs of social emancipation. god’s promises to place the gypsies among great men and to deliver peoples and nations into their hands are more like the sort of visionary mobilisation present in the example of the destiny conference. what is remarkable about the power of this form of ritual revitalisation is that although it is rather simple (promising a reversal of social positions), it is nonetheless exceedingly efficient in deeply penetrating social structures without relying on additional resources or preconditions (e.g. hierarchical social structure, common cultural features etc). the cultural requirements for this form of ritual revitalisation are basic; ideas of an open human heart and the spirit that can fill this heart. before turning to another form of revitalisation observable in gánás i would like to introduce a series of questions, which i seek to answer: to what degree may identities forged in these new religious movements be performed outside the boundaries of the revitalized religious establishment? in other words, is there space for newly emerging (‘born again’) public identities? these questions do not provoke simple, concise answers. i suggest that it is likely that such religious identities will be squeezed into the local and national public spheres as soon as those who participate in their construction are able to ameliorate their social position and decide to claim these identities publicly. in gánás there are no signs that the rituals of new religious movements are being incorporated into representative local public rituals. nor are the converts assertive in claiming their share in the village public sphere beyond their own rituals. pentecostal rituals are marginal, when not totally ignored, by local hungarians. village days a celebration called ‘village days’ (hun: falunapok) is one form of local revitalisation of traditions involving village fairs, folkdance performances, and competitions, accompanied by feasting, dance, and disco. this form of local celebration appeared throughout transylvania after the fall of socialism. it is more common in some regions like szeklerland, but several villages in kalotaszeg have also initiated their own ‘village days’ over the last decade. village days involve ritual forms that have not been invented completely anew. various forms of community festivals continued in rural areas throughout the socialist period. the most common form of local celebrations was pilgrimages (hun: búcsú) held on religious holidays in villages or regions where catholic hungarians lived. orthodox romanians continued to celebrate the holidays of the patron saints of local churches (rou: hramul bisericii). in gánás, whose inhabitants belong mainly to the reformed church, although there are no such religious pilgrimages, there is a traditional ritual connected to shepherding. in this ritual the local reformed pastor does not play a role. the celebration is connected to an annual measurement of the quantity of sheep’s milk before the sheep are taken to the summer pasture (hun: juhmérés). the total quantity of milk provides the basis for the milk products the owner will produce over the summer. this ritual is organized each year in late april on saint george’s day, and is followed by a popular celebration with music and dance. these events were discovered and attended by the urban intellectual public from the city and from hungary in the late socialist period. these rituals were perceived as expressions of ethnic and local identities. the main organizers and sponsors are local sheep owners (hun: juhosgazdák). they hire shepherds for the whole summer and pay musicians for the celebration. although the number of the sheep has decreased (there are less than 300 in gánás nowadays), the ritual continues 128 volume 25, no. 2 page 128 to be organized and remains an important attraction for locals and visitors alike. in 2004 an american tourist group arrived to the village on this day. they were guided by two ethnographers from budapest. village days are tied to a particular point in the agricultural cycle in early summer. in 2004 they took place on a weekend in late may. the organisers (a group of local intellectuals and a church related-foundation) built on some features of the traditional spring shepherding ritual, as village days incorporates an animal exhibition, local economic activities, and traditions, which are all are connected to a community celebration and folklore performance. the programme also includes a local crafts fair, traditional local food, a walk in the village to visit the local museum (hun: tájház), and ‘a traditional clean room’ (hun: tisztaszoba)—a room reserved for depositing and exhibiting folk textiles, costumes and furniture in the traditional houses of kalotaszeg. during the festival there were several competitions for children and a coach race for the men. farmers’ wives competed in a cookie contest, and the program also featured a farmer contest in which animals were paraded. village days attracted locals and a large number of visitors alike in spite of the rainy weather. the farmer contest is usually rather well attended by the gazdas. traditionally there is not a milk measuring ritual organised around the spring departure of the buffalo to the pasture because buffalo are milked individually by their owners, and the milk is processed separately by the households. nevertheless, buffaloes are a source of pride for hungarians, and owners are attentive to the body-shape and appearance of their buffaloes (kós 1979: 265-267). before i attended village days, misi, who had been herding buffalo with papu outside gánás in the summer of 2003, told me that most of the local ‘stars’ (hun: sztárok) came from his herd. seeing my incomprehension he pointed out some of the buffalo, explaining that these animals were appreciated by the villagers, and received awards in the ‘buffalo beautycontest’ organised for the occasion of previous village days. the differences between the buffalo are hardly discernible to an outsider, but villagers and good herdsmen know each animal by its name and character.9 9 papu ridiculed some of his fellow herdsmen who were unable to recognise the buffaloes by their ‘faces’ and particular ways of movement. the public exhibition of animals and presentation of local food strongly connect the ritual to material aspects of village life. the ritual is also intended to attract outsiders who can touch and taste bits of local life. the second element of the village days ritual is the presentation of local costumes and a folklore performance. the presentation of costumes was organised on the stage of the local house of culture, and was directed and commented upon by a local expert on regional folk costumes. the local group of reviatlisers of folk traditions (hun: hagyomány!rz!k, literally ‘those who retain/preserve traditions’)10 prepared a gala spectacle, which was performed saturday evening, followed by a ball with local music. one commentator on a similar celebration that signaled the opening of the local museum (which happened some years before i started my fieldwork) remarked how the local folklore intertwines with national significance: the dancing group is not only a representative of the national tradition, but sons, daughters and grandchildren of the locals dance in this group. they, together with the local museum, become part of the production of tradition, a process which is organized locally but represents elements for construction of the cultural nation. thus, in this case the national and subnational levels complement and reinforce each other: the identity performed locally integrates the national and local, moreover it seems that local contents are organised as part of the ritual practice in a way that elevates them into the national level. (szabó 2006: 68) religious rituals also frame these celebrations. the opening of village days is preceded by a religious service on saturday morning. this is followed by an official opening speech given by the director of the christian foundation, which co-organises village days. the regular sunday service is also integrated into the program. during this service the reformed church hosts and features a guest choir from hungary. in knowing the buffaloes is a basic skill of a good herdsman, and he can distinguish easily between the animals. 10 ‘hagyomány!rz!k’ groups in transylvanian villages are often organized by local intellectuals (schoolteachers, priests etc.) and their role is to revitalize and ‘retain’ local folk songs, dance, or other folklore traditions. 129 volume 25, no. 2 page 129 this way, religion is intertwined with local traditions and the celebration is thus linked to the broader national community, emphasising the national significance of local practices. the interweaving of local folklore and religion creates a context for celebrating the nation in the village. local hungarians and roma attend village days and engage in conversations with visitors over beer. there are no public signs of tension or frustration from the side of the roma who are barely represented in the public rituals of village days. some disgruntled voices could still be heard, particularly among those who felt that their talents or abilities could have contributed to the celebration and from those who believed they could have provided a better performance than the actual performers who were chosen to dance. one young roma man commented to me that he ‘could cut down’ all of the male solo dancers (hun: levágnám !ket a táncban) if only he wanted to do so. but he was not in the mood for dancing, he resigned. another rom, less self-assured, murmured to me that the old famous roma dancers and musicians taught their skills to the non-roma (hun: a gázsokra hagyták a tudást), teaching them all they knew leaving the present generation of roma without those skills. there is an element of truth to this claim. the hagyomány!rz! dance assemble is composed by hungarians exclusively. instrumental music was increasingly taken over by hungarian youth from the village and neighbouring localities after the well-known roma musicians died. the preparations for the farmer contest were also disturbed by a minor altercation: an elder rom drove his horse and cart down the main street into the middle of the preparations. after arguments were exchanged between the man and one of his relatives, he turned his horse around and disappeared. another rom noted that the man had been trying to show off his coach-driving skills. such incidents were exceptional; most roma accepted that hungarian villagers would dominate the event, and they remained passively in the background. conclusion: nation in the village / spirit in the heart as ethnic and religious identities overlap in transylvania, like in other parts of eastern and central europe, one might expect the revitalisation of rituals to result in an intensification of intertwined ethno-religious sentiments and social tensions. while this may be the case under certain conditions, this study demonstrates that ritual revitalisation has no uniform effect on different groups. segments/strata of a local society can opt for divergent forms of rituals. some groups are more receptive to communitarian rituals, which focus on the revitalisation of local traditions and symbolically connect the ‘local’ to the ‘national’. in the case of local hungarians, village days provided an instance for such a revitalisation. on the other hand, pentecostal rituals are distinctive in symbolically separating the individual from his or her social identity and relationships, as the significance of ethnicity and social status are diminished in pentecostal rituals. pentecostal revitalisation creates and emphasises a direct and intimate connection between the open heart of the person and god. the religious ideas and communicative practices involved in revitalisation rituals are important resources for the construction and mobilisation of collective identity. roy rappaport distinguished between the selfreferential and canonical messages as two aspects of ritual communication (1999: 52-54). he argues that canonical messages, which are not encoded by the performers, but transmitted by them during a ritual, are invariable and more intimately linked to an order other than social. “the self-referential represents the immediate, the particular and the vital aspects of events; the canonical, in contrast represents the general, enduring, or even eternal aspects of universal orders” (p. 53). i would add that the border between these two aspects can be subject to manipulation. those in control of rituals have the power to change the borderline between the self-referential and canonical by either enhancing or de-emphasizing the canonical side of a ritual. the boundary between canonical (i.e. connected to putatively eternal orders) and selfreferential messages (i.e. connected to the social order, and expressing the social status of the participants) of the rituals can be shifted or modified in order to: (1) either canonise previously non-canonical elements of a ritual or institute new rituals relying on existing patterns; or, (2) to ‘cleanse’ rituals of most self-referential content. in this respect, village days can be interpreted as an example of the first process (canonizing local social order), while pentecostal revitalization rituals are of the second type. the impacts of these divergent forms of revitalization on collective identity are opposite, though not necessarily in conflict. those revitalizations that canonize features of the local social order arguably contribute to a consolidation and reinforcement of particularistic identifications. the case of village days demonstrates that these identities are not 130 volume 25, no. 2 page 130 encapsulated in the ‘village traditions’ they mobilise, but are rather connected to broader collective ideals and ideologies, most notably, to the nation. on the other hand, ‘rituals of the spirit and of the open heart’ such as those found in pentecostal revivals appeal to people for whom direct access to ritual empowerment and a symbolic bracketing of the social order can produce and reinforce a universalistic orientation of the self. universalistic symbolism promises a radical reversal of status hierarchies and immediate access to resources and social mobility. here i provided evidence that these different forms of revitalisation do not appear to produce open social conflict in gánás, but i would not want to imply that revitalisations in general cannot or do not generate conflict. rather, i argue that in this particular case no such tensions emerged because these rituals are separated by the divisions of the local public sphere. in other transylvanian villages not far from my field site hungarian rituals, which canonise dressing and musical codes (i.e. folk-dresses and folk-songs), clash with the universalistic orientation of the converted segment of the same group: adventist parents refused to dress their children in folk dresses or to allow them to sing folksongs, thus scandalizing the local hungarian community which sees this gesture as disloyalty to the ethnic group (kiss 2005). in gánás social divisions are tacitly agreed upon and masked by a homogenous appearance of ‘local community’. the local public sphere is not disturbed when different identifications are created and practiced in the alternative public forum of an assembly of relatively lower status. in gánás the two forms of ritual reinforce extant status and ethnic divisions of local society. these divergent revitalizations would serve to challenge local ‘homogeneity’ only if the different rituals were performed in a unified local public sphere, or if high status members of the local community were to refuse to take part in revitalization rituals that create and maintain the homogeneous appearance of the local community. references barany, z. 1998. ethnic mobilization and the state: the roma in eastern europe, ethnic and racial studies 21(2): 308-327. barany, z. 2002. the east european gypsies. regime change, marginality and ethnopolitics, cambridge: cambridge university press. bergsma, j. s. and hahn, s. w. 2005. noah's nakedness and the curse of canaan (genesis 9:20-27), journal of biblical literature 124(1): 25-40. boissevain, j. 1992. introduction: revitalizing european rituals, in j. boissevain (ed.) revitalizing european rituals, pp. 1-19, london: routledge. brubaker, r. 1996. nationalism reframed: nationhood and the national question in the new europe, cambridge: cambridge university press. fej!s, z. 1996. kollektív emlékezet és az etnikai identitás megszerkesztése magyarságkutatás. 1995–1996, pp. 125–142, budapest: teleki lászló alapítvány. fosztó, l. 2006. mono-ethnic churches, the ‘undertaker parish’, and rural civility in postsocialist romania, in chris hann and the “civil religion” group, the postsocialist religious question: faith and power in central asia and east-central europe, pp. 269-292, berlin: lit. fosztó, l. 2007. királyok, papok, újságírók és az angol bárón!: romániai romák a posztszocialista nyilvánosságban, regio 18(1): 25-50. cox, h. 1995. fire from heaven : the rise of pentecostal spirituality and the reshaping of religion in the twenty-first century, cambridge, mass.: da capo press. gereben, f. 2000. az identitástudat és a vallásosság kapcsolta, in f. gereben and m. tomka (eds.) vallás ás nemzettudat. vizsgálódások erdélyben, pp. 53-107, budatest: kerkai jen! egyházszociológiai intézet. kiss, d. 2005. a szemet szúró tabu, transindex (04.08.2005), http://lektur.transindex.ro/?cikk=3454. kós, k. d. 1979. a bivaly a kalotaszegi parasztgazdaságban ezköz, munka, néphagyomány: dolgozatok a munka néprajza köréb!l, pp. 197-277, bukarest: kriterion könyvkiadó. lasc"u, p. 1998. biserica în asediu, oradea: shalom. leach, e. 2000. genesis as a myth, in s. hughjones and j. laidlaw (eds.) the essential edmund leach. volume ii: culture and 131 volume 25, no. 2 page 131 human nature, pp. 29-40, new haven and london: yale university press. papp, r. 2002. történlmi egyházak a vajdaságban: szakrális-etnikai stratégiák?, in n. kovács and l. szarka (eds.) tér és terep. tanulmányok az etnicitás és az identitás kérdésköréb!l, pp. 163-193, budapest: akadémiai kiadó. rappaport, r. 1999. ritual and religion in the making of humanity, cambridge: cambridge university press. robbins, j. 2004. the globalization of pentecostal and charismatic christianity, annual review of antropology 33: 117-143. szabó, á. t. 2006. van-e a gazdaságnak identitása? az identitás megjelenítése és a (második) gazdaság, in b. bakó and s. szoták (eds.) magyarlakta kistérségek és kisebbségi identitások a kárpát-medencében, pp. 66-76, budapest: gondolat kiadó mta etnikainemzeti kisebbségkutató intézet. i /\nlhropologv of fa~;t furope revic\\ beer bottles an bar signs: brewing identity in postsocialist poland andrew d. asher, universi~v (~r illinois/ urbana-champaign introduction since 1990, poland's industrial sector has been gradually transforming from a socialist to a market-based system through all extended period of industrial privatization. this dramatic changc in economic orientation fundamentally altered the nature of the relationship between management and labor. causing corresponding changes in the organizational structures of poland's manufacturing industries. the problem for these industrial organizations was literally how to survive this change, as relationships that were once predetermined by nearly fifty years oftradition and governmental control became economically impractical. the survival of an individual industrial organization, particularly in the context of the broader european economy, required an extensive organizational adaptation, an adaptation that precipitated the reinvention of both institutional and individual identities. within contemporary polish society, the redefinition of social identities is profoundly influenced by the history of socialism and the juxtaposition of capitalist and socialist ideologies, making the conceptualization of identity a product of renegotiating the reality of the past with a vision of the future. this study examines the effects of privatization on the organization and social identity of bruwar kos tru va 1 , a medium sized regional brewery located in the village of kostrova in western poland. initially, this article examines the historical construction of the organization as a background against which to compare how old company structures have been realigned during the privatization process to form a new organization. in order to understand this realignment, this study utilizes a series of ethnographic interviews focusing on work history narratives to examine how dynamics of organization, technology, prestige, and age interact to produce social identities not only for individual workers, but also for the surrounding community and browar kostrova as a corporation. following a growing body of ethnographic work dealing specifically with understanding the restructuring of polish industry and production after the end of socialism (nagengast 1991, ouit 1998, dunn 1998 & 1999), this article explores how individuals and organizations respond to the crises caused by the privatization process. using the case of browar kostrova, this study investigates how symbols are appropriated and negotiated to inform and create individual and group identities. here, i focus on how symbols, such as consumer goods or durable objects (e.g. machines, buildings, etc.), are employed as "incarnated signs" (appadurai 1986: 38) to indicate membership in specific social groups, and how these symbols are reinterpreted and renegotiated within postsocialist contexts (verdery 1996 & 1999, berdahl 1999, yurchak 1999). "shock therapy" in 1990, poland's adoption of the balcerowicz plan initiated the transformation from state socialism to market capitalism, deregulating foreign trade and legalizing private enterprise. the balcerowicz plan introduced a dramatically different economic system, throwing poland's industrial organizations into a state of crisis. dubbed "shock therapy" because of its speed and radical nature, the plan's techniques invalidated old management methodologies. and neither management nor labor could reliably define their relationship to one another. a process of redefining social identities ensued, during which time the patterns of action developed under socialism manifested themselves during the construction of capitalism (buechler 1995: 1), thus producing hybrid social forms. sztompka (1992) calls this constraint, which the lived history and experience of socialism places on organizations and institutions developed during the socialist period, a "burden of liabilities" that profoundly influences their postsocialist paths of development. this hybridization is apparent at browar kostrova as ideologies developed under socialism are incorporated into its new structure, particularly in the way workers view the company's role in the community and their roles as a participants within the organization. at browar kosfrova, institutional identity was renegotiated around the old brewery brand, significantly impacting the social construction of the brewery in the surrounding community as it fulfills a role as a community leader not only by providing a stable place of employment but also vol. 17. no. 12003. pagc: 139 anthropology of east europe rcvie\\ by bringing prestige and recognition to both its employees and kostrova itself evel), bottle of beer browar kostrova produces is an enduring artifact, bearing the name of the city and acting as an advertisement for the community. because of this high profile, the way the brewery chooses to define itself is integral to the identity of the community. the two places are inseparable and each acts reflexively on the other. shaping the future through a complex and dynamic dialog that negotiates new identities based on the common experience of the community. investigating work histories in december 1999, i conducted intensive fieldwork at rrowar kostrova and in-depth interviews with fourteen of its employees. these interviews were supplemented by internal documentation (court records, labor agrecments, organizational charts, etc.), which helped detail the history and structure of the brewery rcferenccd by participants during the interviews. the sample is comprised of twelve men and two women, a distribution that is typical of browar kostrova's blue-collar "shop-hoor" positions. the "shop­ hoof" remains an almost exclusively male world. most women working at the brewery fill white­ collar positions in human resources and accounting or work as support staff (e.g. assistants and secretaries ). approximately half of the interviews represent relatively low-level workers, while the remainder are members of all levels of management ranging from mid-level supervisors to high-level directors. middle management is emphasized sl ightly in the second half of the sample, but since many of these individuals began as entry-level workers at the brewery, i believe they provide an extremely important perspective of change in the brewery over a long period oftime. interviews followed a "work history" fonnat consisting primarily of open-ended "descriptive" questions designed to elicit a narrative of the individual's experience at the brewery, with the goal of understanding how the individual views the brewery's social organization over the history of the institution and the community, particularly during the time since the brewery was sold to a private investor. however, because 1 was only able to interview workers that remained after the brewery was reorganized, this article focuses primarily on how the brewery's employees are reinventing the company in the present. rethinking the individual ccntral to understanding the implications of poland's transformation from state-sponsored socialism to market capitalism is the unraveling of how actors in society are forced to redefine their own personal identities and thc identities of the social groups to which they belong. these various institutions and organizations act upon one another and on individuals. who in turn contribute to the self-definition of the institutions by participating within their structure. formed through these interactions, identity is malleable at all levels and derived from the summation of many individual cultural factors, including the dynamics of modernity, age, technology, and history. kondo explains, "identity is not a fixed 'thing,' it is negotiated, open, shifting, ambiguous, the result of culturally available meanings and the open-ended, power laden enactments of those meanings in everyday situations" (1990: 24). one of the most powerful examples of this negotiation of identity in contemporary society occurs when an individual participates within the institutionalized microculture, power dynamics, and control structures of a corporation, forming what giddens calls a "locale," or a place "within which systematic aspects of interaction and social relations are concentrated" (1987: 13). "the brewery older than america" ilistory weighs heavily in kostrova, a town of approximately eighteen thousand people located in silesia, a region of southwestern poland comprised of gently rolling plains bordered on the south by the sudety mountains and the czech republic. small shops flank kostrova's town square, while the towers of the two cathedrals and the town hall dominate the skyline. the old town section is surrounded by remnants of the ancient city walls, and browar kostrova owns and occupies remnants of the town castle. the entire length orthe old town, from the city gate to the castle, is a distance of about half a milc. symbolically, the castle and the brewery represent the community, and the two are inseparable, even to thc point that they share one name. browar kostrova is an ancient fixture in the community, and on a number of occasions employees remarked that it was "older than america" a fact they found al11using given the brewery's new american ownership. beer has been officially brewed at the site continuously since 1538, but the management ofthe brewery claims to have traced historic documentation of the brewery's existence to 1321. vo\. 17, nu. i 2003, page: 140 anthropology of east europe review by owning and partially occupying the town castle, browar kostrova controls the ultimate symbol in kostrova for the town's transition ltom the "old" to the "new" economy. nearly as old as the city charter, the castle has acted throughout history as the symbol for the town, signitying the seat of leadership and the place of protection for the surrounding countryside. because of browar kostrova's importance to the community's economy and identity, this symbolism is easily enlisted in the brewery's effort to lead kostrova prosperously into the market economy. in addition to the brewery's offices, fourteen families currently reside within the castle compound, but they will soon be evicted as it is remodeled as the brewery president's personal residence, symbolically representing the loss of communal ideals in the wake of the individual. this literal trans/ormation symbolically underscores the process of collective socialism giving way to individualistic capitalism. while the castle itself represents the birth of the city, its renovation represents the rebirth of the brewery and community into the new economy. communities in silesia identity directly with their local breweries. nearly all of the local bars, restaurants, and liquor stores in kostrova display the bright green browar kostrova sign indicating they sell either draft or bottled piwo kostrova. all manner of brcrwar koslrova promotional items, ltom posters and calendars to beer glasses can be seen throughout the town, keeping the brewery in the foreltont of people's minds (indeed, when returning late one evening on the train from wroclaw, and somev,hat unsure of my location, i knew i was nearing kostrova when i saw the browar koslrova signs in the distance). silesian beers are generally pale lagers, and over the years have varied widely in quality. traditionally, there has been little interest in other types of beer, but this is gradually beginning to change. i was told that people in the mining regions of silesia drank "their beer" tor generations, even at times when there was dirt film inside the bottles. while 1 am unable verity this story, it gives some indication of how strongly the people of the region identify with a particular beer as well as the exceptional importance of brand loyalty and product image recognition in an extremely competitive market. browar kostrova produces four main beers, light, full, strong, and porter (ranging ltom 5.5 percent to 9.5 percent alcohol respectively), each labeled with a "k" and a crown. a number of specialty and seasonal beers are also brewed, such as the 1999 christmas beer, gwiazdka piwo ciemne c'star beer"), a beer similar to those brewed in scandinavia. piwo kostrova is distributed throughout the local region and in lesser quantities nationally, but currently has i ittle international presence. as proof of the national presence of the brewery, one of the brewel) accountants recalled an anecdote about her son finding a browar kostrova bottle cap in the woods around poznan, a city about 150 kilometers north of kostrova (171299-12). any place where a beer bottle is found is an advertisement for the brewery and the city, and for better or worse, even litter can be a form of advertising3. the dynamics of a distributed product make anecdotes such as this powerful evidence to brewery employees and kostrova residents of the status and prestige of browar kostrova as a national brewery. by distributing thousands of small pieces of itself, the brewery literally puts kostrova on the map in terms of a broader polish consciousness and its residents feel that the beer connotes a progressive view of the town through beer's association with a prosperous, young, and modern middle class. gradually, this young, highly educated and socially mobile middle class is asserting greater influence over poland's economy, and their consumption habits have driven a 39.0% increase in beer production and 32.4% decrease in spirits (primarily vodka) production between 1995 and 1 998(glowny urzad statystyczny 1999: 438), a change that represents a symbolic replacing of old polish traditions. this trend is expected to continue, with polish beer consumption eventually reaching a level comparable with germany, or about three times its level in 1998. paradoxically, the history and traditions of the brewery are central to the construction of piwo kostrova as a progressive and modem brand. in the life of the town, virtually nothing existed before the brewery, impal1ing on it an almost mythical quality as a point of origin for kostrova, and making the community's entire history fundamentally tied to the brewery, because of its age, the brewery is associated with an ancient feudal past. therefore, the imagery provided by the traditions of the brewery can be enlisted to "create... identities based on rejecting the immediate past" (verdery 1999: 52), and can be deployed as a marketing devices in the market economy without fear of being associated with social ism. this strategy is evidenced by two of browar kostrova's specialty beers, "knight beer" and "castle beer". voi.17.no.12003,pagc: 141 anthropology of east europe rcvic\\ through its reinvention as a private capitalist company, the ancient brewery has been reborn as a youthful business legitimized by the wisdom of its ancient traditions. like the rising middle class, the brewery is coming into its own, demonstrating its individualism and modernity through new technology and products. within the dichotomy of age versus youth, the old and new are subtly, yet inseparably, bound together. without the experience of its past and the efforts of its workers in managing it during socialism, browar kostrova would have no history from which to produce identity within the present. however, in order to reinvent itself in the present, the brewery must fully reconstruct its past. likewise, without the rising middle class driving an increase in beer consumption, neither the brewery nor the older generation that saw it through the tumult of privatization could continue to thrive in the new economy. without one another, neither generation can survive, and the two coexist in an uneasy balance. although actors in the "new" economy, whether companies or individuals, may rebel against the socialist system, and perhaps, in order to achieve success, they must rebel against that system, it seems virtually impossible to escape its shadow. organizational history after the end of the socialist system in 1989 all of poland's breweries remained under the cont:ol of the government until 1994, when it began to sell them to private investors. at this time, many breweries, including browar koslrova, were leased to their employees as workers' companies. the leasing process began with an estimate of the company's value and a detailed description of its assets. workers were then free to take over control of the brewery and create a limited liability company. shares in browar kosfrova were distributed amongst the workers, and the appraised value of the company was to be repaid with profits from the brewery over the next ten years at five percent interest. after fifty percent of the debt was paid, these leasing payments changed into equity for the owners (i.e. the workers), at which time the brewery could be sold at the discretion orthe shareholders to a new investor. unfortunately, in 1994 poland remained in a severe economic recession and as the workers quickly ran out of funds for capital investment they had no means to secure the amount of money required to modernize and remain competitive. after it was realized that outstanding liabilities incurred for investments in the marketing department and general development could not be met4, two options became apparent; either accept an investor or accept more loans. since the company was already overextended, banks were reluctant to extend the required credit to the brewery, placing the company in a precarious financial position. according to one manager in the production department, two primary factions formed, one supporting immediate change through outside investment, meaning the sale of the brewery, and one supporting loans. finally, the banks refused to make loans available at an interest rate the brewery could afford and the company was quite literally forced to choose between life and death, a choice that produced a crisis point that marked the beginning of organizational transformation for the brewety and the renegotiating of its institutional identity. before relinquishing their position as controlling shareholders, the workers were forced to choose whom they believed could best lead them in the capitalist economy. browar kostrova was courted by a series of investors and two firms were quickly shortlisted, one polish investment company and the american illinois-poland investment group. on 10 march 1999, illinois-poland investment group purchased 100 percent 0 f the shares from the workers. the sale orthe brewery gave the banks the guarantee they needed, and capital was again made available to continue the modernization process. the brewery's legal status remained the same, a limited liability company, but illinois-poland investment group provided the brewery with credibility, the first step in the self­ determination process. reorganizing the workforce after the sale of browar kostrova, the overall workforce was decreased by between forty and fifty people to 253 employees organized into a hierarchical system of four divisions; sales & marketing, finance & economics, production & maintenance and general business. the number of white-collar jobs doubled with the addition of a "western-style" sales and marketing division. the blue-collar workers disproportionately shouldered this "small difference" (141299-2) ofa fourteen to seventeen percent reduction in the workforce. furthermore, a total reduction of about fifty people indicates that more low-level positions were eliminated to make room for the new white­ collar positions. blue-collar workers bore the brunt of the organizational overhaul, as modern vol. 17, no.1 2003, page: 142 anthropology 01' east europe review technologies replaced many older workers. the reasons provided for dismissals were that fewer workers were needed since "uneconomical" departments were being closed, while others were "unqualified" to run new machines. instead of training these workers in the new production processes, management chose to replace them with younger workers either from within the company or newly hired. thus, in some cases managers explicitly chose who would be unable to make the transition to the new system. the difficulty for workers on the shop floor to understand the reasoning behind these dismissals was explained by a maintenance worker. but even he admitted that not all could be saved. i observed a rotation in the staff that didn't make much sense to me. some ofthe workers were dismissed and new ones were employed in their positions. ifthere had been a need to reduce the number of workers it would have been understandable, but if you dismiss some workers and employ others in their place you still have to pay ... additional money to those workers who were dismissed (i.e. severance pay). so it doesn't make sense. of course there were some cases where workers--unqualified workers-­ couldn't accept the new situation. [in this case,] it was somehow understandable. but still, lots of workers were d ism issed (15 1299-1). while the production department was shrinking in human terms, the sales and markcting department was developing, including the hiring of new sales representatives, district directors, and regional directors. this increase in marketing is typical of the restructuring of a company toward a more "modern" market system and is considered a fundamental element in the "new" economy, especially in the beverage industry. "kostrova will be famous" resulting from the privatization process at browur koslrovu, technological change and modernization quickly became one way the brewery defined itself as its own company in relation to its competitors. the brewery now operates what it claims are the most advanced laboratory and bottling facilities in poland (151299 a -1), with what one accountant described as "a disciplined staff which has a tirm vision for the direction of the company, and places an emphasis on modernization" (171299-1). december 31, 2000 underscored the scale of the new management's development strategy, with yearly production reaching roughly six hundred thousand hectoliters, doubling 1998's production. browllr koslrovll produces about three percent of poland's total beer output of20.926,000 hectoliters (glowny urzad statystyczny 1999: 438), making it a mid-sized brewery in a highly fragmented market. production goals for 2000 increased the brewery's production by about sixty-seven percent to approximately i million hectoliters per year. additionally, at the time the worker's company was created, only about sixty percent of the brewery's product was bottled in-house (14 i 299­ 1). the amount of in-house bottling gradually increased until recent modernization of the bottling facility finally drove the figure to 100 percent, making the brewery self-contained and therefore self-defined. the new management of the brewery has thus continued the vision for modernization begun by the workers, who laid the foundation for the brewery's current success. through its association with success in the market economy, new technology increases the prestige ofthe brewery in relation to its peers, which in turn increases the prestige of brewery workers and the community. a brewer proudly asserted, "the brewery is [mentioned] more often in magazines devoted to the brewing industry ... in this way not only the brewery, but also myself, are being recognized" (141299b-i). another maintenance worker explained, "we used to go to other breweries ...and we admired them ...now other people will come here ...and will admire [us]. kostrova will be famous in the country because of the brewery" (i41299ai). incorporating technology is a vitally impotiant contributor to the workers' acceptance of the new investors. technology is synonymous with prestige and success, and the visibility it brings through media attention enhances prestige for everyone associated with the brewery, from its customers to its employees. technology is used both to increase the volume and quality of the beer produced and as an important marketing tool. at browar kostrol"a, the workers appear to be satistied with the brewery's current level of modernization, tin ally realized both through new investments and personal sacrifice by the workers as a group. of course, because technology is constantly progressing, it is unlikely that the brewery will remain on the cutting edge indefinitely. and the desire for prestige must be balanced against pragmatic concerns of cost efficiency. it is unclear how the workers will react if the prestige they currently enjoy gradually fades away, especially when viewed in terms of how much the implementation of new technology has actually cost. vo!' 17, no. 1 2003. page: 143 anthropology of east europe review technology's catch-22 a ithough one accountant asserted that the "brewery is more prestigious now, because it employs people with high qualifications, and demands these qualifications" (171299-1), the cost in human terms of redefining the workforce is high. adopting cutting edge technology precipitates the loss ofjobs, especially for many older workers, making the realization of their desire for prestige also their downfall. ironically, the position of the older workers is being subverted by the very technological innovations and social changes they worked so hard to make a reality. under the new management, the modernization of the brewery is no longer created by the workers collectively, but rather, it is applied to them individually. new technology destroys positions for older, less highly trained workers, while opening positions for young, technically educated workers. because this process occurs at the level of the individual worker, there is little opportunity for a worker to change his perceived skill set and social position within the company. unfortunately, there is no viable way around this issue, and those that remain have little choice but to go forward and enjoy the benefits even at the cost of their former coworkers. most workers seem to accept some dismissals as an inevitable side effect of the choice of private ownership, and in the long run will benefit both the brewery and its employees. one warehouse worker summed up his opinion saying, "it's a good way that has been chosen, but it simply must go forward" (131299­ 2). in the case of browar koslrova, when it comes down to the choice between the collective of one's fellow workers and the individual rewards of enhanced prestige, it appears that prestige, as achieved by innovation through technological modernization, usually wins. asserting the individual the workers at browar kostrova fiercely assert their individualism and personal contribution to the whole of the brewery's organization, especially in response to the perceived threat of modernization. one maintenance worker said that while he was once indispensable, now he sometimes feels useless. he recalled, "ten years ago, before going to bed i asked god that no one would come at night to ask me to come to the brewery because something was broken. now, sometimes 1 ask that someone would come and ask me to do some work." he counterbalanced this statement with the assertion that ""[his] knowledge is quite vast" and he is still valuable to the brewery because he can make things work even in poor conditions. he argued that hc helpcd build the company, saying, "nothing would exist without me"( 141299a-i). the brewery workers seem to share the perception that only through individualistic action can a person prove his or her worth in the market system, causing them to defend their individual part in the past construction of the brewery as a socialist company. the ways in which individuals experience the change in management at browar kostl'ova varies widely by the location of a particular worker in the company, and it appears the often cited "human understanding" of the management has been unevenly applied. middle-age workers whose retirement is still distant and workers in positions ranking low in the company hierarchy see themselves as particularly vulnerable. because those who fail to prove their individual worth in the modernized brewery are often dismissed, a sense of fear is pervasive among older workers, who feel their jobs are constantly in danger. a transportation worker remarked on his lack of security, "i have three children. i am 45, but the age limit is 35. everyone asks your age and younger is better" (131299-2). age is an overt aspect of nearly every social interaction, and one key to how an individual is defined in the social system. even a member of management remarked, "i'm over fifty years old and i cannot say that i feel very secure because i know that in the present situation highly educated people are more valuable--people who know foreign languages...so no, [i don't feel secure]. 1 don't a have high education" ( 141299 a-2). because the young middle class has made beer an emerging market in poland, the success of browar kostrova is fundamentally tied to the success of this group. therefore, the social group that drives the growth of their industry simultaneously erodes the older generation's power in the "new" economy, a destruction that is directly linked to the characteristics of self-deternlination and individualism the younger generation is perceived to possess. "we are partners" many workers at browar kostrova individually see themselves as participating in a partnership with management rather than with their fellow workers. the idea of partnership acts as powerful force in defining a cooperative mental ity for the company and creates a place where workers can assert their individual vol. 17, no. i 2003. page: 144 anthropology of east europe review contribution to the success of the brewery. one maintenance worker spoke of a partnership between the management and the union, noting that the president listened to the union's opinions and even his own personal opinions. the two are no longer adversaries, but share a common self­ definition. he continued, saying of the union, "before if a manager did not agree with a proposal from the union, [the workers] would take up the flags (union banners) and go out into the streets, so that the manager was forced to agree if he wanted them to go on with their work. now i think i can put my flags in a museum ...the flags are relics now" (l41299a-l). the shared history and knowledge of the workers that once gave them a common bond and a group identity is now gone. flags are only needed to identiiy groups, not individual persons. and should be put away as relics of the old system. he concludes, "[i am] glad someone treats this brewery seriously ...and 1 can say we are partners"( 1 4 1 299ai). a shipping and warehouse worker outlined the importance of partnership when reorganizing hruwar k()stro\'cl as a capitalist company. lie explained, "it's a very impottant thing fi.x a worker to feel that he is part of a company, that somehow he not only works for the company. but also builds it with the management. [such aj relationship is very positive, and it is so here" (131299-2). curiously, although they retain no shares in the company, the brewery workers still see themselves as owners through this partnership mentality. the self is viewed as part of the brewery as a collective entity--a unique hybridization of social ism and capitalism. one manager explained. "when working for the brewery. one identifies with what the company achieves and works for the success of the company" (131299-1). these assertions of the self within the company's achievements indicate the intersection ofpersonal identity with commitment to collective goals. a brewer also demonstrated the binding of personal success to the success of the brewery saying, "i see a [successfulj future fix this brewery, and somehow i hope the company and 1 will have success together" (l41299b-2). at hrowar kostmv([, the workers view themselves as collectively building the company while also acting as a host for the company in the community. this atmosphere is extremely important to the community. one worker observed that as the transformation from socialism progressed, "people look after the town now, people feel the town belongs to them" (14 1299a­ 2). this feeling appears to be counterintuitive to one's expectation of socialism. although socialism promoted public ownership, it appears that at browar kostrova an individual's personal assertion and self-direction is a more powerful force. because browar kostrovds workers identify themselves as participating in an enterprise that is larger than they are capable of alone, the goals of socialism are finally completed through the capitalist system--a situation that appears to be a unique creation within their company, as old and new ideologies are renegotiated and combined to produce a hybrid social reality. part of the feeling of partnership requires that brmrar knstmra give something back to its community. a tradition that began during socialism when companies were overtly public institutions. dunn explains the repositioning of the public alima fruit and vegetable processing company in rzeszow after it was purchased and privatized by the gerber baby food company (renaming it alima-gerber s.a.): people had a livelihood because of alima, -­ it gave them life. it fulfilled multifunctional roles in meeting social needs. not only consumer needs, but also employee and supplier needs. however, as alima-gerber fired managers. laid off shop floor workers. outsourced jobs, and cut back agricultural contractors. it was clear that the firm existed only to fulfill one function: to make a protit (1998: 122). the workers at hruwar kostronl worry that the brewery will end its support ofthe community in social terms. one transportation worker remarked that in order to prosper the brewery must be integrated with the community. he suggests the brewery must continue to take a proactive attitude toward the commlmity, providing more jobs and more job security (151299-2). a brewer, who had recently been hired by the company spoke ofthe brewery's place in the community: "a lot of people living in this region come here because they want to work for the brewery. [th is j means that the company is respected... because it provides jobs. and people want to work for the brewery" (141299b-2). simi larly. another young filtration worker asserted that he "knew where he was going to work since he was fifteen" and that the hrowar i\ostrova sponsored his study at a brewing school "with great traditions in brewing" (141299c-2). since most employees are from kostrova, the brewery provides stability for the area, but many workers believe its responsibility goes further. one accountant reflected, "i have a vision. vol. 17. no.1 2003, page: 145 anthropolog) of enst europe rc\ ic\\ ..that finally the castle will serve the people who live here."" in one statement she summed up not only the history of the city, but also the idea of individualism combined with socialism. as a symbol of community leadership, the castle and whomever controls the resources it represents, whether noble lords, the socialist government, workers in common, or finally american businessmen. is responsible as a community advocate, at least in the eyes of the population. furthermore, because of the brewery's unique ability to export the community's image to the rest of poland, this responsibility weighs especially heavy as it acts as the voice of a social group much larger than its own employees. within this community, responsibility and idealism from the socialist era lives on, and its employees judge the brewery socially and morally against this model, even though the workers' participation in a capitalist system provides the new definition of the company. gurr remarks of this process, "workers [use] the past to critique the present, by which i do not mean that they [recur] to an idealized past­ they [have] lived through and in communism and [are] astute critics of communist practice ..." (1998: 240). thus, in every aspect of evaluating the new economy, the past is integral to the construction and evaluation of the quality of the present. this is one legacy of socialism. conclusion as browar kostrova continues to adapt to the realities of the "new" polish economy, the definition of individual and institutional identities are driven by the interplay between tensions and dynamics unique to the present state of polish society and to the history of its individual communities and institutions. at browar kostrova, social dynamics. technology, prestige and organizational structure interact with tensions produced by the juxtaposition of age with youth, history with modernity and collective action with individualism, to produce an institutional identity delicately balanced between seemingly contradictory social positions and formed through the reinvention of the individual identities of its workers. defining identity is not necessarily a conscious process. it is created and negotiated by the relationships between individuals and institutions within the social order of a society, and the power exchanges involved in these relationships. new capital investment has brought technology and considerable prestige to the brewery, subsequently producing a new feeling of partnership amongst workers and management and making social pressure. modernization and sel r definition the only control processes necessary. the worker's desire for both personal and community success in the "new" economy makes producing change its own justification. as a symbol of the community, the identity of browar kostrova as an institution is fundamentally caught up in the community's history. because of the intense identification of the community with the brewery, it is viewed as both a community leader and advocate, and is expected to fulfill expectations of social responsibility developed during socialism. as the brewery's financial success in the market economy grows, so does the expectation of its responsibility to its workers and to the community. ultimately, the identity of browar kostrovcl is neither entirely socialist nor entirely capitalist. i nstead, it is a hybridization of both ideologies. in the "new" polish economy the brewery must act as a capitalist enterprise, but within its community it is judged by the standards of socialism. as the browar kostrova progresses through the construction of its new identity, workers meet the future with hope and apprehension. one worker spoke wistfully, "!t's going to be alright--it's the only attitude you can have. this is what i am doing" (131299-2). one kostrova resident (not a brewery employee) to whom i spoke, summed up his view of the position of polish workers by quoting the proverb, "hope is the mother of fools, but it is better to have such a mother than none at all." at the intersection between socialism and capitalism, the fate of the workers at browar kostrova is unknown, but in the end this fate lies in the construction of new individuals and new identities, negotiated by the workers' interaction with the complex social realities of the brewery and its community. acknowledgments i would first like to thank my colleagues in poland, bartosz waszczuk and magdalena podeszwa, without whom this research would not have been possible. i would also like to thank matti bunzl, helen schwartzman, and lisa anne guit for their advice and encouragement in writing this article. this study was funded by a grant from northwestern university's college scholars program. the responsibly for any errors or misinterpretations in this article is my own. vol. 17, no.1 2003, pagc: 146 anthropology or east lurope review i, \!.,~ w: iii! references cited appadurai, arjul1, 1986 introduction: commodities and the politics of value. in the social life of things. arjun appadurai, ed. pp. 3-63. cambridge, uk: cambridge. berdahl, daphne, 1999, where the world ended. berkeley, ca: california. beuchler. judith-maria, 1995, work shift/system shift. anthropology of work review 16(3&4): i. dunn, elizabeth, 1999, slick salesman and simple people: negotiated capitalism in a privatized polish firm. in uncertain transition. michael burawoy and katherine verdery eds. pp. 125-150. lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. --------, 1998, privatization and personhood: transforming work in postsocialist poland. baltimore: johns hopkins university graduate school dissertation. giddens, anthony, 1987, the nation-state and violence. berkeley, ca: california. glowny urzad statystyczny (central statistical office), 1999, rocznik statystyczny rzeczypospolitej polskiej (statistical yearbook of the republic of poland). warsaw: zaklad wydawnictw statystycznych (zws). gurr, lisa anne, 1998, the unmaking ofthe polish working class: reform and protest in the ursus machine works, 1991-1993. evanston,il: northwestern university graduate school dissertation. kondo, dorinne, 1990, crafting selves: power, gender, and discourses of identity in a japanese workplace. chicago, il: chicago. nagengast, carole, 1991, reluctant socialist and rural entrepreneurs: class, culture, and the polish state. boulder: westview. sztompka, p., 1992, dilemmas of the great transition. sisyphus. vii 1(2): 10-27. verdery, katherine, 1996, what was socialism and what comes next? princeton, nj: princeton. --------, 1999, the political lives of dead bodies: reburial and postsocialist change. new york: columbia. yurchak, alexei, 1999, gagarin and the rave kids: transforming power, identity, and aesthetics in post-soviet nightlife. in consuming russia: popular culture, sex, and society since gorbachev. adele marie barker, ed. pp. 76-109. durham, nc: duke university press. vol. 17, no.1 2003. page: 147 untitled.pdf.pdf untitled.pdf.pdf anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 86 the socialist sixties: crossing borders in the second world. ed. anne e. gorsuch and diane p. koenker. bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press, 2013. vii, 338 pp. index. illustrations. paperback. kathleen hiatt, indiana university in gorsuch and koenker’s co-edited volume, the socialist sixties: crossing borders in the second world, the authors challenge the western-dominated view of that decade “by approaching the sixties from inside socialism and looking out.” (2013:17) in doing so, they see the dissemination of goods and ideas within the societies of 1960s soviet union, eastern europe, yugoslavia and cuba as part of a “global moment in an expanding socialist world” (2013:16). their periodization of a socialist sixties questions earlier historiography on the eastern bloc that progresses from khrushchev’s thaw to prague spring in 1968 to stagnation under brezhnev. the work “seeks to use the second world, socialist societies of the 1960s…as the springboard from which to explore global interconnections and…patterns of cultural crosspollination” (2013:2). these “flows” of people, goods, and ideas illustrate the extent of cultural interaction among socialist countries as well as within them. one sees, for example, how cubans developed a taste for soviet watches after being exposed to them at a 1960 exhibit in havana. although historians have the lion’s share of its chapters, the socialist sixties readily incorporates a wide reach of neighboring disciplines including comparative literature, area studies, communications, visual culture and film studies. the first section, “socialist modern,” engages with the emergence of modern socialist societies in the soviet union and cuba. the first two chapters address state efforts to modernize the lives of post-war soviet citizens through increased appliance consumption (susan e. reid, 2013), and the architectural ambition in the urban planning of factory town of tol’iatti (lewis e. siegelbaum, 2013). whether its market research or strategic allocation of public space, state experts in both chapters integrate foreign models into a socialist ideological context in order to shape the new soviet consumer and urban resident. state actors also take center stage in the third chapter, which contends that the 1960 soviet exhibition in havana validated socialist achievements in not only technology, but also consumer products, and played a role in escalating the development of socialist rhetoric in cuba (joão felipe gonçalves, 2013). in “contact zones,” the authors utilize cultural interpenetration, global developments, and transnationalism as a way to capture global flows within the socialist world rather than depict it as merely a recipient of western influence. they cover: the translation and marketing of soviet literature and its reception in britain and the us in the early 1960s (polly jones, 2013); the limits of transnationalism in the global rise of “guitar poetry” in both the socialist east and capitalist west (rossen djagalov, 2013); the development of the tourist song movement in the soviet union (christian noack, 2013); the competing understandings of internationalism anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 87 revealed at the 1968 world youth festival in bulgaria (nick rutter, 2013 ), and the often disjointed cross-cultural interactions between soviet tourists in czechoslovakia before, during, and after the prague spring of 1968 (rachel applebaum, 2013). jones stands as the sole author to address the penetration of socialist culture into the west; although she also looks at the soviet censors who were unable to control literature once it left the country. djagalov offers an excellent example of parallel development across the west and the socialist east, where guitar poetry failed to transcend national boundaries due to cultural specificity, risk-averse western music companies, and state censorship under socialism. noack’s work on the rise of soviet tourist songs illustrates the paradoxical development of cultural expression through institutionalization as music enthusiasts sought sponsors, such as the komsomol, to support their outdoor festivals and song clubs. rutter challenges the perception of the sixties as a period of generational conflict by focusing on how a shared socialist vocabulary masked internal disagreements among participants of the 1968 world youth festival in bulgaria. with exceptional clarity, appelbaum delineates state attempts to manage cross-cultural exposure by regulating tourism between the soviet union and czechoslovakia even as those interactions grew increasingly hostile and politically-charged in the wake of the soviet military invasion of prague in spring 1968. the third section, “popular media and culture”, uses film, television, and sports media as a lens to assess cultural developments in the soviet union, yugoslavia and cuba. clearly in dialogue with recent scholarship on consumption and everyday life in socialist societies, this last section looks at topics such as thaw-era film (lilya kaganovsky, 2013), yugoslav television (sabina mihelj, 2013), soviet soccer hooliganism (robert edelman, 2013), cuban youth consumption of foreign music (anne luke, 2013), and rise of the soviet television miniseries (stephen lovell, 2013). kaganovsky draws on marianne hirsch’s notion of “postmemory” in order to analyze how thaw-era films depicted the younger generation attempting to cope with the traumatic cultural legacy of the second world war, particularly in terms of absent masculinity. mihelj looks at popular television programs to chart the rise and fall of humor as a form of public engagement in yugoslavia, which had only relatively greater freedom of expression than other socialist countries. illustrating the potential that history of sports as a subfield has to offer, edelman uses the soviet exposure to western soccer hooliganism via livebroadcast matches in the 1960s to explore the cultural impact of greater european interaction via media. luke claims that the vibrancy with which 1960s cuban youth culture blended western music, such as the beatles, with latin elements in a socialist context created “new hybrid cultural expressions” (2013:287). in a thought-provoking dissection of the hugely popular television miniseries seventeen moments of spring, a soviet espionage thriller, lovell argues that the consolidation of a mass culture following in the mid-1970s marks the end of soviet sixties experimental culture. as part of the cultural turn, the socialist sixties delves into the complexities of lived socialist experience, exposing both the cultural developments these societies shared with their capitalist counterparts and the unique local challenges that emerged to shape everyday life under anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 88 socialism. this book differentiates transnational from parallel developments of the 1960s, arguing that cultural context matters just as much as censorship in the dissemination and reception of new ideas. for example, guitar poetry may have developed on both sides of the iron curtain, but the songs themselves were limited to specific political and linguistic contexts. the volume’s incorporation of cuba encourages future research, which could address the experience of emerging socialist countries in asia, africa and latin america vis-à-vis the soviet union and eastern europe. the socialist sixties is highly recommended for students and scholars interested in the vibrancy of post-wwii socialist societies, a broader understanding of 1960s cultural change, and a transnational, cross-disciplinary historical approach in action. seeing past the barricades: ethnic intermarriage in yugoslavia during the last three decades nikolai botev population studies center, university of pennsylvania richard a. wagner smith college introduction: ethnic intermarriage has been a frequent focus of social research for several decades, bringing together scholars with backgrounds in sociology, anthropology, demography, and economics. especially productive has been the sociological treatment of intermarriage in the context of understanding intergroup relations. the basic assumption underlining this line of research is that intermarriage is both the main indicator of, and a principal factor in, assimilation and acculturation (e.g. merton 1941 [1972]; blau et al. 1982, 1984; labov and jacobs 1986; pagnini and morgan 1990). while there is still no comprehensive bibliographic review of the literature on this subject, there are a few partial reviews limited in either in cultural scope or in the period they cover (e.g., barron 1972 [1951]; shepard and jeffery 1982; cottrell 1990). the purpose of this paper is to extend this line of research to the former yugoslavia in a way which utilizes nuptiality to explore the interethnic differences now tearing the country apart. as a microcosm of social interaction, marriage patterns provide a dynamic example of what ethnicity can mean when discussed in a broader social and economic context. central to any discussion of nuptiality in a european context is the identification of two broadly defined marriage patterns in europe (hajnal 1965). first, the 'european' pattern itself, characterized by late marriage and high celibacy. this pattern was evidenced by western and northern european countries. the second pattern, the traditional, was marked by relatively early and universal marriage and characterized the countries of southern and eastern europe. hajnal drew a dividing line between the two patterns extending approximately from trieste to st. petersburg. later authors have suggested the inclusion of a third mediterranean pattern defined by early marriage for females contrasted with later marriage for males, resulting in a substantial age gap between spouses (smith 1981; laslett 1983). specifically, we will focus on two main issues. the first concerns the popular notion that the rates of intermarriage in yugoslavia had been increasing during the post-world war ii socialist period, and that interethnic marriages are therefore proportionately well represented. this notion, in accord with prevailing official government positions, claimed that a process of ethnic integration had been facilitated by the socialist transformation. this perspective has been tacitly reinforced by the american mass media (and its focus on mixed families caught in the current conflicts) and by some social science works. an example of the later is a study by two soviet ethnographers (bromlei and kashuba 1982). they maintain that during the period 1953-1974 ethnic heterogamy (a term borrowed from biology to refer to the mating of 'unlikes') in yugoslavia had been growing steadily. to support this assertion, the authors quote the officially reported national percentages of ethnically mixed marriages in 1956, 1963, 1971 and 1974 (9.3%, 12.4%, 13.5%, and 13.5%, respectively) (bromlei and kashuba 1982:61). technically more sophisticated, but in concurrence, are the studies on intermarriage by the yugoslav demographer ruza petrovic (1970 [1966]; 1986a; 1991). ethnic heterogamy, according to petrovic, is "very high and it is permanently growing" (petrovic 1986a:239). a number of other authors (see e.g., flere 1988) have also implicitly or explicitly suggested that ethnic heterogamy within yugoslavia has been increasing. the second foci relates to the idea that yugoslavia falls on the very border between the european, traditional, and mediterranean marriage patterns. for example, the population of slovenia exhibits nuptiality patterns consistent with hajnal's european pattern. in contrast, montenegro and kosovo are better classified as showing the mediterranean pattern. elsewhere in yugoslavia the pattern is best termed traditional. it might be expected that these differences have repercussions on ethnic intermarriage, and vice versa. for example, men from early marrying populations are presumably less likely to intermarry with women from late marrying populations if the social norm is that men should marry women younger then they are. another important aspect of the jen typewritten text 29 interrelationship between ethnic intermarriage and nuptiality patterns stems from the fact that intermarriage may produce behavioral assimilation in the form of converging marriage patterns. this has already been noted by anderton (1986:343) with regard to age at marriage itself. general background: although the history of yugoslavia has been well documented, a few points bear re-emphasizing here as context. the republics which constituted the former yugoslavia emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries after a long period of foreign domination. as a result, nationalism tended to play an important role in social and political life. further, foreign domination left a diverse and mosaic ethnic pattern reinforced by centuriesold feuds and tensions. (for a discussion of the roots and manifestations of ethnic rivalry among the yugoslav nationalities see banac, 1984.) the disintegrative tendency stemming from these rivalries was historically counterbalanced by integrative forces based in linguistic similarities and historical commonalities, particularly with regard to a sense of 'us' against 'them'. this 'commonality of experience' nurtured the idea of pan-slavism and the so called yugoslav movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. after world war ii, however, the country was dominated by a communist ideology emphasizing 'proletarian internationalism' and the idea of a future society without classes and boundaries. two opposing forces have thus been shaping societal processes in yugoslavia: 1. the attempts of the communist regime, as expressed in the doctrines of egalitarianism and internationalism, to create a uniform society, and 2. the efforts of the population groups to preserve their individual, ethnic, and national identities. these opposing concepts of ethnicity carry with them disparate, and often antagonistic, cultural traditions. these include a 'western' tradition among slovenes and croats, which had been subject to austro-hungarian rule and are predominantly catholic; a 'near-eastern' cultural tradition among serbs, montenegrins, and macedonians, which had been part of the ottoman empire and are predominantly eastern orthodox; and a 'middle-eastern' cultural environment among most of the muslim populations (albanians, turks). the schisms engendered by these splits are no where so evident as in religion. the anti-westernism of the orthodox church, which had its roots in the protracted conflict between pope and patriarch, still persists. for example, george arnakis writes that "when a balkan christian referred to himself as a 'christian' he meant 'eastern orthodox christian', because all other kinds of christians (with the possible exception of the croats as seen by some of the orthodox south slavs) were commonly called 'franks' with much the same feeling as it did the turks." (arnakis 1974:131). another author, l. stavrianos, quotes the greek folk-saying: "better the sword of the turk than the bread of the frank" (stavrianos 1974:186). the so called 'moslems by ethnic identity' or 'ethnic moslems' occupy a special position in this scheme. most of them are of slavic background (mainly serbs and croats), and had been converted to islam during the ottoman domination of the balkans (see e.g., dyker 1972). it is difficult to over-emphasize the extent of the political, economic, and educational differences defined by ethnicity in this setting. in 1981, a moslem was 20 times more likely to be illiterate than a croat, and was likely to have less than one-half the income. by 1975, the per capita gross social product in bosnia-hercegovina was barely one-third that of slovenia and, in kosovo, less than one-sixth (zimmerman 1977:36). data and methods: the data analyzed included vital statistics on marriages, published by yugoslavia's federal statistical office (savezni zavod statistiki 1961-1988), as well as census data on the distribution of the population by marital status. these data sources pose two important obstacles. the first is the varying ethnic definitions employed, which in turn create fluctuations in the ethnic group size and distort the measures of intermarriage. these definitional differences are well documented (petrovic 1973; hoffman 1977). in the early post-war censuses (1948 and 1953) members of many smaller ethnic groups (albanians, hungarians, gypsies, germans, etc.) tended to give their nationality consistent with the regionally dominant ethnic group. this was due both to pressure from the authorities, and to other temporally specific circumstances. during the 1953 census, for example, many albanians chose to declare themselves as turks in an attempt to benefit from the permission given to the turkish population to emigrate to turkey. ethnic moslems posed an even greater problem (see dyker 1972). in 1948, as in the pre-socialist censuses, 'moslem' appeared only as a religious category. citizens religiously declaring themselves as moslems nonetheless had to identify themselves as ethnically serb-moslem, croatjen typewritten text 30 moslem, etc. only a small number were classified as 'moslem undeclared'. in the 1953 census this category was abolished and the moslems of yugoslav ethnic origin were classified as 'yugoslav undeclared' -a group which also contained people of other nationalities. the 1961 census was the first to include the category 'ethnic moslem' while simultaneously retaining 'yugoslav undeclared' as an option. while this spirit and methodology were preserved in the subsequent 1971 and 1981 censuses, debate over the ethnic categories employed has not abated, particularly with regard to the inclusion of 'yugoslav' as an option. in short, only the period after 1961 offers data comparable enough for a study of intermarriage, and we have therefore limited our analyses to this period. in addition, to avoid inconsistencies in the registration of the smaller ethnic groups, we considered only the eight largest groups slovenes, croats, hungarians, serbs, montenegrins, macedonians, moslems, and albanians in our analyses. the second potential problem is that the data refer only to officially registered marriages, excluding other cohabitation arrangements. clearly, if cohabitation had been on the rise during the period under study (as it has been in western europe and the united states), and if people who cohabited differed systematically from the rest of the population, our results would be biased. while there is evidence of common-law marriages, especially among the rural 19th century orthodox population (see e.g., culinovic-constantinovic 1976), ethnographic evidence suggests that these were limited to special circumstances and numerically unimportant. more recent evidence of pre-marital cohabitation in yugoslavia also suggests it has never been a viable alternative to marriage (see sardon 1991), and therefore not likely to have reached levels which might compromise the results of this study. table 1 presents the percentage of heterogamous marriages in yugoslavia by republics and autonomous provinces. to avoid biases due to difference in the definitions of the various ethnic groups, we have (as noted above) restricted ourselves to the period between 1962 and 1988. in order to further reduce stochastic fluctuations, we have used three year periods (1962-64, 1970-72, 1980-82, and 1986-88). the data, although only crude measurements, immediately make evident the fact that mixed marriages were not as common as expected, remaining at about 12 percent over time. there is, in fact, also no clear trend in their proportion over time. by comparison, lieberson and waters (1985:51) report that according to the 1980 census the percentage of ethnically mixed marriages in the united states was over 20 percent for american born couples. the 1979 soviet census revealed 14.9 percent of families in the former soviet union involved spouses of different nationalities (volkov 1989:12). these data, however, should be interpreted with caution since, the proportion of mixed marriages is strongly affected by ethnic group size and sex ratios. in order to control for group size and sex ratios, as well as to present a more comprehensive picture of the patterns underlying intermarriage in yugoslavia, we used log-linear models. in all, we tested over three dozen log-linear models in analyzing patterns of intermarriage within yugoslavia (botev 1992). while these techniques are described in detail elsewhere, it remains important to note here that they provide a more sophisticated approach to complex data by permitting controls for group size and sex ratio and revealing a more detailed picture of the patterns of intermarriage than more conventional indices (mccaa 1989; jones 1991). these latter indices are generally based on proportions, while in log-linear models, odds are the basic form of variation to be explained. resultant answers can be re-expressed in terms like 'ten times more likely to ...'. the model implying perfect intermarriage, i.e. who marries whom is not affected differentially by the ethnic background, proved to fit the data very poorly. more adequate was the class of models which allows marriages to be considered as an outcome of two separate tendencies a homogamy tendency, in accordance to which people marry within their own ethnic group, and a heterogamy tendency, where people marry irrespective of their ethnic background. two important assumptions are embedded in these models: 1. that intermarriage is not affected by social or physical distances -i.e., those who intermarry are equally likely to choose a mate from any of the other ethnic groups irrespective of cultural background or geographical location (proportional to the other group's marriage pool), and 2. heterogamous marriages are quasisymmetrical -i.e., males and females of a given ethnic group are equally likely to intermarry with persons from the other ethnic groups. further improvement of the fit between data and models was achieved by using the so called crossings models. they relax the assumption that intermarriage is not affected by social or physical distances -intermarriage between persons from different ethnic groups is modeled jen typewritten text 31 as requiring crossing both social and spatial barriers (distances) separating these two groups. the crossings models were introduced first in social mobility studies (see hout 1983) and presuppose ordinal measurements in which values can be rank ordered (e.g., more than, larger than). although ethnicity is a nominal variable, we have assigned ordinal properties based on the place of a specific ethnic group in a 'cultural continuum' (in the case of yugoslavia we assume that the 'near eastern' cultural tradition occupies the midpoint, while the western and the middle eastern traditions occupy the two divergent poles). johnson (1980) has already used this logic in examining religious intermarriages, employing an order based on the 'cognitive social distance' among religious groups. further, pagnini and morgan (1990) have also used a form of crossings model to account for the social distance between first and second generation immigrants in their study of ethnic intermarriage in u.s.a. at the turn of the century. the results which follow below are a summary of the findings from the different models. in general, however, all the models pointed us in the same direction. results and discussion: intermarriage the major finding from examining the resultant homogamy parameters is that endogamous, rather than exogamous, marriages remain the norm in yugoslavia. people are between 7 and 20 times more likely to marry within their own ethnic group than outside of it. in some cases this endogamy is even more pronounced. croats in bosnia-hercegovina and in kosovo (two regions with sizable muslim populations) are between 55 and 245 times more likely to marry within their own ethnic group. similarly, hungarians in croatia and slovenia are 37 to 134 times more likely to find a spouse of the same ethnic background. albanians are an especially 'closed' group - they are 365 times more likely to in-marry, than to outmarry. the least homogamous groups are the serbs and the montenegrins. in fact, this finding supports the properties of intermarriage as a measure of social integration since, as the recent events in yugoslavia have shown, the serbs and the montenegrins were the groups most likely to support the preservation of yugoslavia as a multinational state. in general, it is usually assumed that dominant ethnic groups are less homogamous. another important conclusion is that no clear tendency in the homogamy parameters emerges during the period under study. clearly there are ups and downs in the levels of homogamy, varying by republic and ethnic group, but there is no secular trend. this refutes the earlier findings that ethnic intermarriages had been increasing in yugoslavia, at least as regards the period after 1962. the barrier between the 'western' and the 'near eastern' cultural traditions tends to be more permeable than the barrier between the 'near eastern' and the 'middle eastern' cultural traditions. intermarriages between people from 'western' and 'near eastern' cultural background are between 1.2 and 2.5 times less likely than intermarriages between people with the same cultural background, while there is between 2.7 and 20.1 times smaller likelihood of intermarriage between people from near eastern and middle eastern cultural background than of intermarriage between people with the same cultural background. significant is also the fact that in bosnia and hercegovina and especially in kosovo (the two regions with sizable muslim populations) the barrier between the 'western' and 'near eastern' traditions is almost non-existent. this indicates that in these regions the two cultural traditions based on christianity (the western and the near eastern) tend to stick together. conversely, this barrier is most pronounced in slovenia the most 'westernized' republic in yugoslavia, and in vojvodina, where sizable hungarian and croatian minorities live among the serbian majority. another important finding is that the social distances between the three cultural traditions, have remained unchanged despite the efforts of the yugoslav leadership to create an integrated society. also important is that the social distance between the ethnic moslems and the other ethnic groups has been diminishing fast and by the end of the period under study the ethnic moslems had joined the 'mainstream'. however, there are no clear trends in the social distances between the three cultural traditions described earlier. the physical distance barrier remains more or less unchanged, and for most republics is relatively comparable. this was expected, since physical distance is an objective barrier. nuptiality differentials tables 2 and 3 present data on the timing and prevalence of marriage in the former yugoslavia by republics and autonomous regions. the differences in marriage patterns are well evident. as noted above, the nuptiality in slovenia bears the features of hajnal's european pattern. jen typewritten text 32 in the beginning of the study period, the mean age at marriage for females was 24.3 years, and 17 percent of women above age 50 were single. since the early 1960s, however, there has been a tendency in slovenia toward earlier marriages. by the mid-1980s the mean age at marriage had dropped to 22 years, and the percent of single women above age 50 had fallen to 12 percent. this trend is in accordance with hajnal's findings supporting the 'end' of the european marriage pattern. in regions characterized by mediterranean marriage patterns (montenegro and kosovo), the mean age at first marriage reached 28 years for males, while for females it hovered around 22 years. celibacy in kosovo was very low (less than 1.5 percent of females, 3 percent of males, remain single past the age of 50), and moderate in montenegro. the general trend over the study period for these populations is toward later marriages, especially among men. in the rest of the republics and autonomous regions, nuptiality was relatively early and celibacy low for both men and women. in the early 1970s there was a tendency towards earlier marriages for women, after which a plateau was reached. among men the tendencies are less clear. in bosnia-hercegovina, macedonia, and serbia proper, the mean age at first marriage increased slightly, while in croatia and vojvodina it decreased. however, in all republics and autonomous regions celibacy declined. the primary question for our discussion here is how these differentials might affect the frequency and patterns of ethnically mixed marriages. as noted earlier, the timing of marriage has potential implications for the choice of a marriage partner. yet, as nuptiality differentials are intertwined with cultural differences, it is difficult to capture their net effect. attempts to account for these differences in the log-linear models did not improve their fit, and suggested that timing considerations did not influence significantly interethnic marriage rates. a second important question is the effect of ethnic heterogamy on nuptiality differentials. as suggested earlier, interethnic marriage may produce behavioral assimilation in the form of converging nuptiality patterns. an important point here is how 'convergence' should be defined. as demonstrated by a number of authors, there has been a general tendency of leveling off differences in marriage patterns across countries and cultures (see e.g., hajnal 1965, dixon 1971, and watkins 1981). the question remains as to whether the convergence demonstrated falls short of the general trend. table 3 juxtaposes the variation in mean age at first marriage within the republics and autonomous regions of the former yugoslavia with variation across the east european countries. as can be seen, the extent of the convergence within yugoslavia does not go beyond that for eastern europe in general. conclusions: the major finding of this study is that the popular notion of a yugoslav population characterized by increasing rates of interethnic marriage is highly erroneous. our results show that ethnic homogamy has been, and remains, the norm in what was yugoslavia. further, over the study period there is no clear trend, either in terms of increasing intermarriage or decreasing social distance between the various cultural traditions. so the reputation of intermarriage as a measure of social integration is saved in this case. yugoslavia was never really integrated, and the concept of a yugoslav ethnicity within which people could jointly operate, never attained. but the question remains -what of those few who have chosen a spouse from an ethnicity now on the opposite side of the barricade? references cited anderton, d. l. 1986 intermarriage in frontier immigrant, religious and residential groups: an examination of macrostructural assimilation. sociological inquiry, 1986: 341-366. arnakis, george g. 1974 the role of religion in the development of balkan nationalism. in: c. and b. jelavich (eds.) the balkans in transition. hamden, cn: archon books, pp. 115-144. banac, ivo. 1984 the national question in yugoslavia: origins, history, politics. ithaca, ny: cornell univ. press. barron, milton l. 1972 [1951] an appraisal of research until midcentury. in: m. l. barron (ed.) the blending american. chicago: quadrangle books (originally published in american journal of sociology 57, 3: 249-55 under the title 'research on intermarriage: a survey of accomplishments and prospects'). blau, peter m., terry c. blum, and joseph e. schwartz. 1982 heterogeneity and intermarriage. american sociological review, 47: 45-61. jen typewritten text 33 blau, peter m., carolyn beeker, and kevin m. fitzpatrick. 1984 intersecting social affiliations and intermarriage. social forces, 63, 3: 585-606. botev, nikolai 1992 "where east meets west: ethnic intermarriage and nuptiality differentials in former yugoslavia, 19601990" paper presented at the annual meeting of the population association of america, denver, co, may 1992. bromlei, yu. v. and m. s. kashuba 1982 brak i semia u narodov yugoslavii. moskva: nauka cottrell, ann baker 1990 cross-national marriages: a review of the literature. journal of comparative family studies, 21, 2: 151-65. culinovic-constantinovic, vesna 1976 tradicionalni nevjencani brak u nasem selu. sociologija sela, 14, 1-2: 125-137. dixon, ruth b 1971 explaining cross-cultural variations in age at marriage and proportions never marrying. population studies, 25(2): 215-233. dyker, david a. 1972 the ethnic muslims of bosnia some basic socioeconomic data. the slavonic and east european review, l, 119: 238-256. flere, sergej 1988 nacionalna identifikacija i preferirana nacionalna identifikacija kod mladih pitanje jugoslovenstva. migracijske teme, 4, 4: 439-453. hajnal, john 1965 european marriage patterns in perspective. in: d. v. glass and d. e. c. eversley, (eds.), population in history. london, pp. 101-143. hoffman, george w. 1977 the evolution of the ethnographic map of yugoslavia: a historical geographic interpretation. in: f. w. carter (ed.) an historical geography of the balkans. new york: academic press, pp. 437-500. hout, michael 1983 mobility tables. beverly hills: sage. johnson, robert a. 1980 religious assortative marriage in the united states. new york: academic press. jones, f. l. 1991 ethnic intermarriage in australia, 1950-52 to 198082: models or indices? population studies, 45: 27-42. laslett, peter 1983 family and household as work group and kin group: areas of traditional europe compared. in: wall, r. et al. (eds.) family forms in historic europe. cambridge: cambridge univ. press, pp. 513-563. lieberson, stanley, and mary waters 1985 ethnic mixtures in the united states. sociology and social research, 70, 1: 43-52. labov, teresa, and jerry a. jacobs 1986 intermarriage in hawaii, 1950-1983. journal of marriage and the family, 48: 79-88. mccaa, robert 1989 isolation or assimilation? a log linear interpretation of australian marriages, 1947-60, 1975, and 1986. population studies, 43: 155-162. merton, robert k. 1941/1972 intermarriage and the social structure: fact and theory. in: milton l. barron (ed.), the blending american: patterns of intermarriage. chicago, il: quadrangle books (originally published in psychiatry, 4: 361-774). pagnini, deanna l., and s. philip morgan 1990 intermarriage and social distance among u.s. immigrants at the turn of the century. american journal of sociology, 96, 2: 405-32. petrovic, ruza 1970 [1966] ethnically mixed marriages in yugoslavia. sociologija, (selected articles): 185-200 [originally published in sociologija, 1966, 3]. 1973 nationality structure of the yugoslav population. yugoslav survey, 14, 1: 1-22. 1986a ethnically mixed marriages in yugoslavia. sociologija, 1986 (suppl.): 229-239. 1986b regionalne razlike u rasprostranjenosti celibata u jugoslaviji. sociologija, 38, 3: 373-383. 1991 the ethnic identity of parents and children. yugoslav survey, 32, 2: 63-76. sardon, jean-paul 1991 mariage et divorce en europe de l'est. population, xx, 3: 547-598. jen typewritten text 34 savezni zavod statistiki 1961-1988 demografska statistika. belgrad: szs shepard, laura a., and jonathan b. jeffery 1982 guide to reference sources for intermarriage. in: g. a. crester and j. j. leon (eds.) intermarriage in the united states. n.y.: haworth press, pp. 101-104. smith, richard m. 1981 the people of tuscany and their families: medieval or mediterranean? journal of family history, 6, 1: 107128. stavrianos, l. s. 1974 the influence of the west on the balkans. in: c. and b. jelavich (eds.) the balkans in transition. hamden, cn: archon books, pp. 184-226. tonnies, ferdinand 1988 [1887] community and society. new brunswick: transaction books. volkov, a. 1989 etnicheski smeshannie sem'i v sssr: dinamika i sostav. vestnik statistiki, 7/1989: 12-21. watkins, susan c. 1981 regional patterns of nuptiality in europe, 18701960. population studies, 35, 2: 199-215. zimmerman, william 1977 the tito legacy and yugoslavia's future. problems of communism, 26, 3. jen typewritten text 35 table 1: percentage of heterogamous marriages in yugoslavia by republics and authonomous regions, 196288 196264 197072 198082 198688 yugoslavia 12.4 11.4 12.7 12.7 bosniahercegovina 11.2 9.3 12.1 11.9 montenegro 17.8 14.4 12.9 12.4 croatia 15.3 14.9 16.5 16.9 macedonia 1 3.4 9.7 8.2 7.5 slovenia 7.6 7.8 10.8 11.7 serbia 11.9 11.4 12.5 12.6 proper 8.2 7.4 9.3 9.8 vojvodina 22.3 24.2 26.4 28.0 kosovo 9.4 7.6 5.9 5.0 source: savezni zavod statistiki. 19611988. demografska statistika. belgrad: szs jen typewritten text 36 table 2: percentage never marrried in yugoslavia by republics and autonomous regions, 1961 and 1981 women men age: 2024 2529 50+ 2024 2529 50+ yugoslavia (total) 1961 41.9 16.2 5.6 70.7 25.6 4.5 1981 43.0 16.0 5.2 76.5 33.9 3.1 bosniahercegovina 1961 42.7 18.4 3.5 67.8 22.8 4.3 1981 44.2 17.1 5.7 75.1 32.5 3.1 montenegro 1961 48.7 22.5 7.8 83.7 36.9 5.1 1981 58.4 25.8 9.3 86.1 50.6 3.5 croatia 1961 42.6 18.3 7.5 76.0 28.1 6.0 1981 43.2 16.2 6.6 79.5 36.1 3.8 macedonia = 1961 42.9 8.7 1.9 65.9 17.8 2.7 1981 41.3 13.7 1.3 71.7 28.4 1.5 slovenia 1961 60.2 27.6 17.0 87.0 39.9 9.0 1981 43.4 17.5 12.5 77.5 35.2 6.3 serbia (total) 1961 37.3 13.1 2.5 67.5 23.4 2.9 1981 41.6 15.0 2.0 76.0 33.2 2.0 proper 1961 39.4 13.3 2.0 63.8 22.0 2.3 1981 42.2 15.0 2.5 76.0 33.0 2.0 vojvodina 1961 37.5 15.5 4.2 71.8 26.9 4.6 1981 41.3 15.1 4.7 77.0 34.3 3.8 kosovo 1961 27.0 7.5 1.3 64.3 22.9 2.7 1981 40.0 11.6 1.4 75.3 32.4 2.0 source: petrovic 1986:378379 jen typewritten text 37 table 3: mean age at first marriage in yugoslavia by republics and autonomous regions with comparison to eastern europe women men 195961 196971 198486 195961 196971 198486 bosniahercegovina 22.0 21.1 21.3 24.2 24.7 25.5 montenegro 22.0 21.9 22.5 26.7 27.3 28.0 croatia 22.6 21.6 21.5 25.7 25.4 25.2 macedonia 22.1 21.7 21.8 24.5 24.6 24.8 slovenia 24.3 22.4 22.0 27.3 25.8 24.7 serbia proper 22.1 21.3 21.9 24.7 24.9 25.9 vojvodina 22.6 21.8 21.6 25.8 25.3 24.8 kosovo 21.8 22.4 22.9 25.7 26.7 28.0 median 22.10 21.75 21.85 25.70 25.35 25.35 albania 21.1 21.5 22.4 26.3 26.5 26.9 bulgaria 21.3 21.4 21.2 24.4 24.5 24.3 czechoslovakia 22.0 21.7 21.7 25.2 24.4 24.3 east germany 22.7 21.9 22.6 24.3 23.8 24.9 hungary 22.1 21.5 21.5 25.4 24.5 24.4 poland 23.2 22.9 22.7 26.1 25.4 25.0 romania 22.2 21.8 22.3 25.1 25.1 25.2 median 22.10 21.70 22.30 25.20 24.50 24.90 notes: the yugoslav data for 19841986 are estimates. east european data are from sardon (1991). sources: demografska statistika 1960, 1963, 1970, 1989; sardon 1991:554555 jen typewritten text 38 anthropology of east europe review "new russian" sightings and the question of social difference in st. petersburg jennifer patico new york university "they have money, so they think they can do anything they want." so commented a st. petersburg art teacher in the fall of 1998. that day, i was talking with a group of his colleagues about what they thought of the new russians: the nouveaux riches of the 1990s, dubbed "new russians" in the russian media and in the popular imagination. new russians were characterized by money and stupidity, one teacher had said, while yet another colleague said that they were involved in "speculation," which had been illegal under socialism and has since become legal. "they have their own fashions. we laugh at them all they aren't worth envying," one of them went on, as listening teachers murmured their agreement. new russians aren't simply wealthy, someone clarified, for wealthy, smart businessmen do exist. rather, the new russians are people who are "limited:" security guards (oxrana), for instance, and people who wear not black jackets, but green or raspberry-colored ones. these comments are representative of the characterizations of new russians i heard over the course of my year (1998-99) of fieldwork on consumer practices and ideologies in st. petersburg, and are by now well familiar to any scholar of contemporary russia. imputed new russian traits typically include lack of intelligence, "culture," and education; immodest and conspicuous taste, often represented by the brightly-colored (especially "raspberry" or maroon) jackets they are said to favor; and lack of proper respect for others. such stereotypes are mirrored and co-produced by the media (e.g. peterburg-ekspress 1998, 1999) and are the subject of myriad popular anekdoty or jokes (krylova 1999). yet perhaps the most telling moment of the conversation that day came a bit later, when an elderly teacher entered the room and was invited to sit down with us for tea. someone told her that i had been asking about the new russians. how would she define them? the answer: "i would say, not ours" (i.e., "our people" ja by skazala, ne nash i). the remaining teachers commented in agreement, seeming to find this last definition the most concise and accurate one offered so far. that final word suggests just how significant are the criticisms less privileged russians lodge against their "new" compatriots. for in defining these others, the teachers were also articulating some of the social standards to which they felt they adhered, highlighting values that were salient in their daily lives. that is, by distancing themselves from the behavior and choices they described as characteristically "new russian," they were also, predictably, constructing an idea of their own social value and cultural legitimacy. nancy ries (1997) identified a similar phenomenon in moscow in the early 1990s, observing that [a]lthough new ways to be russian have developed in the post-soviet environment, these are still widely disparaged by those who identify themselves with a mystical concept of russianness. in part, of course, this is because such discursive strategies allow people to defend, justify, and extol the value of their own identities and their lower socio-economic status in the face of the self-valorizing stories of the moscow nouveaux riches. (27) this disparaging attitude towards the wealthy, expressed in anecdotes, epithets, and stereotypes, is still an important practice of selfhood and social critique in st. petersburg today. but rather than looking further for the essence ofor even an aggregate definition of the "new russian" as my informants presented it, i focus instead on the fact that precisely who should be called a new russian was not always clear in their everyday application of the term. was an intelligentnyi, or relatively intellectual, cultured person, who had become a successful businessman truly a new russian? was it possible to gain much material wealth without engaging in the morally suspect, often criminal activity usually assumed of new russians? here i discuss how these questions were addressed by one family in s1. petersburg, and suggest that their disagreements and uncertainty about what or who constituted a new russian might best be understood in terms of their ambivalence about vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 73 anthropology of east europe review their positions in contemporary society, and in relation to the connections they understood to exist between material prosperity, morality, and their own future possibilities. the n. family the n. family lived in a former communal apartment in the petrograd side area of st. petersburg. (1) ivan and larisa, both in their early 40s, had lived there since their marriage about twenty years ago; but only recently (just before the financial crisis of august 1998 and after their neighbor in the apartment had died) had they finally been able to buy the last room of their four­ room apartment. their children, a fourteen year­ old boy and sixteen year-old girl, attended the same english-language specialization school where both parents worked. ivan was an english language specialist by education, who had worked in other capacities before coming to work at this school several years ago. larisa was a chemist who had come to work at the same school after jobs in her specialization had dried up, teaching public safety and other courses and holding class teacher responsibilities. though their salaries were low especially after the ruble depreciation of august 1998 they were stable and paid on time. (2) also, the fact that their school was a very good one with high-quality english instruction gave ivan and larisa incentive to continue working there: for though it was technically a public school, entrance was not exactly open, and ivan had told the administration that he had two children whom he would like to bring with him before he accepted the job. though their daughter vera had recently graduated and was entering university, son misha had one year left before he would take the comprehensive exams that were the condition for continuation into the tenth grade; and since he was not an exemplary student, his parents felt that at least one of them must remain there on faculty to ensure his admittance. though many english teachers at that school earned extra money through private tutoring (often significantly more, in fact, than their official salaries), ivan attracted few such students. as the financial crisis dragged on, with only meager salary raises that did not keep up with inflation, the material situation of the n. family worsened. one evening, ivan recounted having recently seen a new russian at the market (rynok) buying some expensive fish. he asked to buy all of the fish the merchant had, and then inquired whether it was possible to buy the very crate in which all the fish were displayed there. the merchant agreed, and the man took the fish away to his car. though ivan seemed to present this as a striking example of the excessive luxury of the new russian, who could buy so many fish for his own consumption (to be cooked, probably, by his wife), larisa suggested that perhaps the man worked at a cafe or restaurant. no, ivan said, he obviously wasn't that kind of person. rather, he was someone who, say, worked at a bank; it was visible from the kind of face he had. i asked him how he could see this, concretely, and larisa remarked that she didn't how he could either. ivan cited his clothes: he wasn't wearing a raspberry-colored jacket, but a black raincoat. "and not one of chinese manufacture, like the one i have," ivan went on, but a very good one. (3) also, he finished, the man was well shaven, and looked like he did some kind of relatively intellectual work. while ivan had on previous occasions referred to new russians as mainly "bandits with primitive thinking, guns in their pockets, and raspberry-colored jackets," he had also acknowledged (then, and again in this story) that not all of them were bandits or stupid-­ though he had been quick to point out that he believed that a really "pure" business that completely avoided mafia connections was an impossibility. (4) now, ivan apparently referred to such a relatively intelligent, respectable new russian, whom he nonetheless represented as a type of person clearly set apart from himself, by virtue of their differences in profession and consumer possibilities if nothing more. on another occasion, ivan called upon similar criteria of profession and wealth, but he and his wife were not altogether agreed on where the term "new russian" could be legitimately applied. their daughter vera had started dating in the past year, and one of her boyfriends had come to the apartment to meet the family. his father is wealthy, a pilot, larisa explained to me over tea one night. he has an expensive foreign car, she went on, and when his son, vera's boyfriend, had come to visit them, he had brought a "gentleman's set:" sausage, champagne, bananas, and chocolate. but when larisa then called the boy's father a "rich new russian," ivan took issue: a new russian, he said, is a banker or a businessman. (5) he (the boyfriend's father) is a pilot, which, ivan claimed, just happens to be a profession in which people have earned a lot of money in recent years. larisa did not contest this argument; and though the label "new russian" is usually construed pejoratively, i knew from previous conversations that the boyfriend had made a favorable enough vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 74 anthropology of east europe review impression on her. his family's undeniable prosperity, as concretized by the expensive foreign car and the "gentleman's set," seemed to be enough of a reason for her, in this case at least, to call the boy's father a new russian, though her husband disagreed. in a third and final example, the family argued about an alleged new russian even closer to their family. daughter vera spoke happily of how her aunt tanya was planning to take her along to england the next time she went. turning to me, ivan asked: have i told you about my cousin who is a new russian? he reminded me of this relative, a moscow doctor who had established a pharmaceutical company with colleagues a few years ago and was now starting a second company. vera quickly objected to her father's choice of words: he shouldn't call aunt tanya a new russian, she insisted, because that meant someone who was daft and had a lot of money, while aunt tanya was smart and had made money through her hard work and efforts. besides, vera and her mother pointed out, tanya and her husband owned just a zhiguli (i.e., a russian rather than an imported car). this time it was ivan who did not protest, but let this objection to the attribution of new russian identity stand. in the stories above, as in new russian anekdoty, wealth, business, criminality, stupidity, and extravagance are persistently interlinked. yet while these connections can be clear, exaggerated, humorous, and unequivocal in jokes, they may not be so inextricable in everyday life. in the n. family's conversations, acknowledgment that wealth and material success do not necessarily imply moral transgression and lack of culture coexists with "new russianness" as a pejorative and persuasive, if somewhat vague, category of social difference. from one perspective, the n. family seemed more or less to agree that new russians were wealthy, sometimes but not necessarily businessmen and bankers, sometimes but not necessarily stupid and/or immoral. yet it is significant that they found it worthwhile to identify new russiansjustly. for labeling people "new russians" involved a certain degree of denigration and distancing, and was debated with particular care when specific individuals (including, but clearly not only, those known personally to the family) were implicated. in the course of these discussions, family members highlighted particular elements of the loosely agreed-upon constellation ofnew russian traits and de-emphasized others. in the process, they were exploring the nature of the links between wealth, labor, and honesty, among other aspects of social life. i propose, then, that recognition, or rather articulation, of new russianness constitutes a sort of ongoing social question that is never quite decided. in its most archetypal expression, the new russian is clearly an object for ridicule and derision: the raspberry-clad, dim-witted bandit of so many anecdotes. the teachers of whom i spoke in the beginning of this paper claimed that such people were "not worth envying." yet was ivan's cousin a new russian? was she to be admired and/or envied, or did her success automatically make her morally questionable? and what of the fish buyer in the black raincoat, pegged by ivan as a new russian and a banker? was their wealth in and of itself, or their involvement in business, enough to set them firmly into a different category of persons, one into which the n.'s never imagined they would fall? ivan, in his "raincoat of chinese manufacture," had the cultural capital of high education, knowledge of english, modesty and good manners on his side. however, the connections his family envisioned between material capital and the lack of such cultural capital, crystallized in their contested new russian sightings, were rather uneasy and inconclusive. perhaps they point to the family members' ambivalence as they assessed their own places in society, identifying reasons for their material disadvantage and looking into an uncertain future. by the fall of 1999, larisa's status at the school was declining. most of her previous courses and responsibilities had been taken away from her. though she had been told the previous spring by the administration that these activities simply were no longer going to be conducted at the school, a new employee appeared to fulfill those roles in the fall. meanwhile, larisa had been assigned a new set of classes with which she had little experience, as well as fewer hours, both of which reduced her salary considerably. she felt that she was being pushed out of the school, and resented how the matter had been handled. over the summer, she had looked for a new job, but she had not found a more attractive option. ivan took on extra work that fall, teaching several hours per week at a second school and giving lectures at the state university. he had also done some translating work over the vacation. yet by the middle of october, ivan still had not received any payment for most of these new jobs. now larisa had a new idea for a job scheme, formulated with a friend and former colleague who vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 75 anthropology of east europe review was similarly unsatisfied with his work situation. they had realized that the key was to identify an unfilled niche in the market that would draw on their specific qualifications, and they had several friends who were all teachers with various areas of expertise. what if they were to create an after­ school daycare group, where children would be given decent homemade food, there could be clubs (kruzhki) such as drama and music, and the teachers would see that they completed their homework, with ivan providing english tutoring, and so on? nothing of this sort existed, larisa said, and there was a need for it since people who worked at banks, for example, worked until about 8 o'clock at night. of course they would need a space right away, and finding the capital to start would obviously be a problem; but they could get some children of new russians, and she thought it might even be possible to go directly to a firm and offer the service to their employees, setting things up right on the premises. ivan had heard the idea before, and listened with some interest; but in the end he dismissed it, saying again that he did not believe that it was possible to get into business honestly. i had heard statements similar in spirit from larisa, more than once in the previous year ofour acquaintance; she had spoken of the "spiritual rules" (duxovnye pravila) that were inevitably overstepped by anyone who had acquired significant wealth. but she did not echo the thought this night. instead, she and i briefly discussed the idea that by working through another firm, one might be able to avoid direct involvement with criminal protection (falling under the firm's "krysha" or protective "roof' instead of acquiring one's own). conclusion in his study of the new russian man and woman as imagined by youths in siberia, serguei oushakine (1999) has pointed out that such representations do not necessarily have much or anything to do with first-hand experience; nonetheless, they are significant because they "define, frame, and finally constrain the social, political, economic and cultural expectations of the young generation and its perception of available options" (5). similarly, i have argued that everyday references to new russians inform and inform us about speakers' evaluations of the moral content of particular lifestyles and life paths, shedding light too on the type of people they understand themselves to be. larisa and ivan's discussion of a prospective job plan was part of this greater, ongoing conversation about what morally acceptable and personally worthwhile paths might, after all, lie before them ....or might not, as when larisa's new idea was challenged by ivan in one more application of the business = dishonesty formula that is part of the logic of new russianness. in other words, constructions of social difference such as the insistent but unstable category of the new russian are part of the framework through which people will continue to contextualize, legitimate, and sometimes question their own positions and trajectories. as such, the image of the new russian constitutes a critique of post-soviet society as well as undercutting that very critique. in reference to anekdoty, anna krylova (1999) has cogently described how new russian discourse decries systemic injustices. the post-soviet shutnik [joke teller] implicitly counterpoises hisfher civilized behavior, moderate spending habits, and erudition in history, geography, literature, theater, and music to the new beneficiaries of the post-soviet economy... [and] ... implicitly [offers himself] as much more deserving of the benefits of the new society (261-262). however, as the n. family's deliberations illustrate, the indetem1inacy of the new russian category (or perhaps more accurately: its extremity in its most classic and condensed form, which limits its applicability to daily realities) leaves open the ongoing question of to what extent less privileged subjects may be, by their own reckoning, personally accountable for their circumstances or at least capable of ameliorating them through means yet to be explored, such as larisa's envisioned daycare program. this is an important aspect of what we can get at ethnographically about emergent structures of material inequality and social distinction in the former soviet union: how individuals, families, and other groups engage in conversations -and ultimately decisions -about what should reasonably be expected of them, how responsible they are for their own statuses, and the moral implications of types of activity, often perceived concretely through material wealth, its expenditure, and its display. acknowledgements research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the intemational research and exchanges board (irex), with funds provided by the national endowment for the humanities, the us department of state, and the us information agency. additional vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 76 anthropology of east europe review research and write-up support was provided by a peo scholar award and a james mccracken fellowship, new york university. none of these organizations are responsible for views expressed here. references bezgodov, a. and n. sokolov. 1999. "biznes v zerkale svobodnyx vyskazyvanii peterburzhtsev," in "teleskop": nabl 'udenia za povsednevnoi zhizn 'u peterburzhtev. no.1: 19-25. krylova, anna. 1999. "saying 'lenin' and meaning 'party': subversion and laughter in soviet and post-soviet society," in adele marie barker, ed. consuming russia: popular culture, sex, and society since gorbachev. durham: duke university press. pp. 243-265. oushakine, serguei. 1999. "the quantity of style: imaginary consumption in the new russia." paper presented at the conference" 1989-1999 transformations: triumph or tragedy?" annual graduate student conference, february 26-27, 1999. organized by the harriman institute and east european center, columbia university, new york. peterburg-ekspress. 1998. "sdelano dl'a bogatyx." september 9 34/88: 16-17. ----1999. "novye russkie otsy i ix deti." june 9 211125: 6-7. ries, nancy. 1997. russian talk: culture and conversation during perestroika. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. notes l. all informants' names have been changed. 2. the teachers' 1998-99 official monthly salaries averaged in the area of 1000 rubles per month. the purchasing power represented by this amount changed drastically when the exchange rate fell from about 6 rubles to the u.s. dollar in august 1998 to 24 rubles by early 1999. 3. goods produced in china are among those many people in s1. petersburg consider shoddy. clothing and other items from china as well as korea and turkey are widely felt to be of lesser quality than both domestic (russian) and european ones, but they are generally more accessible by price. 4. this is a common association, as demonstrated by the results of a survey published in a st. petersburg market research journal (bezgodov and sokolov 1999). respondents were asked to complete the statement: "to be successful in business in russia, it is necessary to ... " among the most common answers were "break the law" (14.2%) and "violate moral norms" (10.9%). the only more popular answers were "money, start-up capital" (16.6%) and "connection, acquaintances, patronage/protection (pokrovitel 'siva)" (15%). other responses included: 9.7% have a good mind, creative abilities; 7.6% knowledge, skills (navyki), experience; 6.7% change life in russian society; 5% adjust, "krutit's 'a"'; 4.7% work; 3.5% strength, boldness, energy; 2.7% honesty, decency (por 'adochnost '); 2.7% desire, will, determination (tseleustremlennost '); 2.3% power, patronage/protection of power; 2% cleverness; 1.8% commit a crime; 1.3% luck/success (udacha). 5. though it can not be fully explored here, it is significant that the "new russian" as a stereotype was almost always represented as a man, as many of the informant descriptions noted in this paper attest. in a recent study of the "new russian man" and "new russian woman" as they were constructed in essays by 178 young people in bamaul, siberia in 1997, serguei oushakine (1998) found that new russian women were understood to be either successful businesswomen or the wives of new russian men. in the course ofmy fieldwork, i seldom heard women referred to as themselves new russians, but rather as the wives or girlfriends ofnew russians (an exception is described in this article, however). this may be related to the fact that being a new russian implies not only wealth, but also particular activities (including crime) and displays (raspberry jackets, shaved heads, heavy gold jewelry) that are associated more with men than with women and very strikingly differentiate new russian men from other russian men. vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 77 microsoft word muhic spiritual assistance april 12 2013 final anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  75  spiritual assistance during two refugee crises in the republic  of macedonia  maja muhić* department of languages, cultures, and communications, south east european  university, tetovo, macedonia  this paper offers an analysis of spiritual assistance offered in times of crisis. it is based on research and interviews conducted in the early months of 2009 and provides insights into the role played by both ngos and publishing houses during two refugee crises in the republic of macedonia. their motivation to intensely engage in helping the refugees was greatly due to their religious convictions and was imbued with spiritual connotation. based on a number of interviews conducted with the engaged parties, this paper also includes the religious discourse of the imams1 during these two major refugee crises that happened in the balkans. through various means of action, both the organizations and the imams attempted to convey a religious message that would provide psychological strength to the victims of these crises in the region, as well as to restore their faith in keeping their community alive and returning safely to their homes. much of the religious messages and the religious discourse in general, aimed at giving both spiritual support and teaching patience, as well as giving the victims a sense of belonging to a community, and therefore triggering their awareness to preserve it. some aspects of the 2001 conflict in macedonia, which bring in the questions of nationalism, nationalist agenda and patriotism, are also be brought into focus, especially as it can shed some further light on the different agendas of both humanitarian and spiritual assistance in times of crisis. keywords: spiritual assistance, refugee crisis, islamic literature, piousness, religion, sense of belonging some anthropological perspectives on religion and their relevance to the current case study discussing any aspect of spiritual assistance in times of crisis opens a vast array of questions, the first one being clearly related to defining spirituality, but from the delicate lens of someone going through a crisis. much of the literature touching upon crisis and spiritual help starts from the crisis in meaning that one undergoes. this crisis has been probably most lucidly brought to the fore by heidegger (1962), who described the “constant lack of totality” that we experience in this lifetime as uncompleted, unfinished modes of being, which achieve full meaning upon death. carroll (2001) advises us of the burning need of understanding spirituality if we are to offer any kind of spiritual assistance and care. she points to murray and zentner’s (1989) somewhat broad definition of spirituality, which places it beyond religious affiliation, and describes it as a quality that strives for inspirations, reverence, awe, meaning and purpose, even in those who do not believe in any god, but instead wish to be in harmony with the universe. this brings us to the understanding that spirituality has often been defined in terms that reach beyond religion and move into the realm of existential meaning (saunders, 1988; carson, anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  76  1989; kellehear, 2000). yet, working with the narratives of nurses and patients with advancedstage cancer seeking spiritual care, carroll illuminates both the strong link drawn between spirituality and religion (cassidy, 1988) and the lack of it. additionally, in their study of spiritual support in coping with the september 11 national crisis, ai et al. (2005) emphasize the fact that the concept of spiritual support mostly centers on “an internalized resource derived from the perception of an intimate relationship with a higher power” (2005: 765). they go on to note that “only recently, psychology has formally recognized the faith effect on health as ‘a genuine frontier’ for research” (miller and thorensen, 2003, p. 33 cited in ai et al. 2005: 765). although by no means overshadowing the fact that the importance of spirituality existed before the emergence of institutionalized religion, this paper predominantly focuses on the religious modes of search for meaning in times of crisis. building upon this dominant, but in no way sole correlation between spirituality and religion, the first question this paper considers is the problem of defining religion. through an analysis of the activities of several publishing houses, ngos, and individuals, it then tries to see if possible other patterns in the assistance offered come to the fore. melford e. spiro (1966) makes an interesting point when arguing that the definitional controversies concerning religion do not necessarily stem from the controversies over the meaning of the term “religion” as much as they stem from the “disputes over the phenomenon or range of phenomena which are considered to constitute legitimately the empirical referent of the term” (1966: 87). anthropologists have strongly disagreed precisely on the phenomena that could be brought into relation with whatever would be considered religion or religious. coercive rituals, ethical codes, reference to supernatural being/s and so forth, are but a few of the phenomena on whose religious status anthropologists agree or disagree. spiro observes that these controversies are often a result of bringing in personal attitudes of the scholars to the study of religion. he defines religion as “an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction with culturally postulated superhuman being” (1966: 96). the dominant element put forth in this statement is that of the cultural/social construction of things that would otherwise be rendered transcendent and ineffable, i.e. of faith. this argument bears importance to our case study, as it relates to a number of socially constructed modes of expressing religion, i.e. nation, and nationalism, which played a crucial role in tailoring the spiritual assistance offered to refugees from both bosnia, and later, kosovo. geertz’s interpretation of religion as a cultural system can also be illuminating for this study. geertz reminds us that for a long period of time four men have dominated the discourses on religion. these figures are durkheim, weber, freud, and malinowski (geertz, 1966: 2). no doubt, durkheim’s insights into the nature of the sacred, weber’s verstehenden methodology, freud’s parallel between the personal and collective rituals, and malinowski’s distinction between religion and common sense are inevitable points of departure in any fruitful anthropological discussion of religion. yet, geertz contributes a fresh perspective with his proposition to explore, in empirical terms, how the otherwise taken for granted notion that religion tunes human actions to an envisaged cosmic order and projects images of cosmic order onto the plane of human experience, comes into being. in his essay religion as cultural system (1998) geerz defines religion “as (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (124). the second aspect of this definition will be the important point of departure in anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  77  this article’s analysis of the effect religion and piousness played on the refugees. in addition, geertz offers an informative analysis of the role that symbols and religion have as a source of consolation and meaning in situations where people are brought to the limits of their analytic abilities and durability. his conclusions on this matter reach beyond the realm of religion in that the thinks that the chronic uneasiness in life often comes as a result of our inability to understand certain aspects of nature, of our personality, and of organizing phenomena in clusters of facts, which can be culturally formulated. important to our study of religious/spiritual assistance in times of crisis is also geertz’s conviction that as a religious problem, the problem of suffering is not about how to avoid it, but rather, about learning how to suffer—that is, learning how to make physical pain, personal loss, and agony, bearable and sufferable. thus, he argues that religious symbols, for those willing to accept them, can serve as a cosmic guarantee not only for comprehending the world, but likewise, of rendering it bearable, be it reluctantly or joyfully, with burden or ease (1998: 144). regarding the events such as war, famine, natural disaster and so forth, where there is a lack of interpretation and interpretability and can therefore be rendered a state of chaos, it is interesting to look at geertz’s observation about the three points where chaos threatens to break in upon man. these points are, “at the limits of his analytic capacities, at the limits of his powers of endurance, and at the limits of his moral insights” (1966: 14). those are the challenges with which any religion must attempt to cope. concerning the first point, geertz bluntly states that considering people’s religious beliefs as attempts to potentially explain anomalous events or experiences (death, dreams, etc.) seems like tyloreanism or even worse. however, he does agree that there is an undeniable tendency among people to use beliefs in order to explain phenomena which, if left unexplained, can cause deep disquiet (1966: 15). regarding the second point, geertz offers an interesting observation that may shed further light on the particular case study analyzed in this paper. the opacity of certain events, the pain and suffering that one may be put through, raise the suspicion that there is no genuine order in the world. yet, the effort of religion in such events, as geertz understands it, is not to deny the undeniable, but to deny that there are inexplicable events, that life is unendurable, and that justice is mirage (1966: 25). undeniable events (pain, suffering, etc.) are then normalized, accepted not as ambiguities, but rather as rational and logical outcomes of the moral structure of reality. at the same time, through its symbolism religion should deny that these irrationalities are characteristic of the world as a whole. many of these arguments, pointing to religion as a logic-making mechanism in a world that has lost its meaning, find their reification in the narratives of the people engaged in providing support for the refugees in macedonia during both refugee crises. modes of spiritual assistance during the kosovo and bosnian refugee crisis this paper predominantly covers issues related to the kosovo refugee crisis in macedonia2, which happened in the spring of 1999, but also draws on the religious rhetoric and assistance offered through the bosnian refugee crises in macedonia, which happened during 1992-1995. another interesting area of research opens up when we consider that most of those people who helped the bosnian refugees later also helped the kosovo refugees. their experience with the bosnian refugees prepared them for yet another crisis that came later. moreover, the refugees coming from kosovo were similar both ethnically and linguistically (and in most cases religiously) with those who assisted them. it is worth noting that a future anthropological comparative study of this case could find rich ground for future research, considering the fact anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  78  that it was predominantly the same people who offered their assistance to different clusters of refugee populations. in the case with bosnia, they were helping people who were ethnically and linguistically different from them (though coming from what used to be one and the same country – former yugoslavia). in the case of the kosovo crisis, they helped people who came from another territory, but were ethnically and linguistically the same as those offering the assistance. this creates a fruitful ground for a comparison of the effects of assistance and support given to those who share much of their ethnic, religious, and linguistic background, and the assistance given to people who differ in many respects from those who assist them. the former crisis was marked by refugees who came exclusively from kosovo, whereas the latter was marked by an influx of bosnian refugees from bosnia and herzegovina, as well as from parts of montenegro and serbia (sanjdak) – regions populated with muslims. the bosnian crisis brought approximately 38,000 refugees to macedonia. the kosovo crisis brought some 360,000 refugees to macedonia (tantamount to around 20% of the population of macedonia)3. in the bosnian refugee crisis that brought a huge influx of refugees to macedonia, it was predominantly the ethnic bosnian4 muslims who were the target of ethnic cleansing. it was predominantly the muslims of macedonian (albanians being the dominant group since they constitute 25% of the population and are predominantly muslims) who helped those refugees. of these, at the outbreak of the crisis in april 1999, about 65,000 refugees remained stranded in a mud-covered no-man’s land at blace (the macedonian border point with kosovo), without adequate food and in extremely unsanitary conditions. “this place was hell. birth and death happened simultaneously there,” recalls one of my interlocutors from the ngo who helped alleviate the tragedy of those people. around 14 refugee camps were opened in macedonia to accommodate the refugees, although many (approximately 170,000 people) were accommodated in private houses across the country, sometimes as many as 50 refugees per house. in what follows, i analyze the types of assistance offered to the kosovo refugees who fled from the serbian military campaign in the country.5 in my analysis of the religious/spiritual assistance that was offered to the refugees i conducted interviews with members of the two most active ngos during both refugee crises el hilal and the wheat of goodness (a title inspired from the sura 2, 261 ayat of the qur’an), as well as with two publishing houses, logos a and furqan (a name given from the 25 sura of the qur’anwhich means the criterion, or the standard; that is, distinguishing between good and bad). they published spiritual literature in the form of pamphlets and magazines tackling the complexity of themes regarding the cause of the ethnic cleansings. i bring into focus the types of spiritual assistance these organizations offered, but also the ideological agendas permeating aspects of the spiritual support, thus bringing in themes of patriotism, national awareness, and a long term national strategy. the material support (shelter, food, medications) has by no means been the central form of aid to the refugees; these organizations have also been active in providing lectures in the mosques and the refugee tents, as well as in distributing literature. according to my interlocutors, the literature they provided did not have an ideological content, but was rather spiritual support to the muhajirs.6 its main aim, they claimed, was to give moral strength to the victims, offer explanation for the otherwise anomalous events in the lives of those people, preserve their sense of belonging to a community, and subsequently give them hope that their lives and their community can and will be reestablished. this clearly brings into question the likelihood of the ideological niche that such publications could launch. anthropologist wendell schwab (2011) analyzes the proliferation of islamic literature in kazakhstan and the musylman publishing press, which became an influential islamic press in anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  79  the country and published islamic magazines, pamphlets and books, as something that was tailored towards becoming a “model of the conscious establishment, expansion and consolidation of a niche for the piety movement in kazakhstan” (2001: 228). schwab’s interlocutors claim that the zeal to re-establish the piousness of the nation stems from the rigidly atheistic structure of the state for more than 70 years. these arguments shed important light in understanding the multilayered approaches to interpreting the proliferation of religious publications. yet, in the particular case of the religious literature provided to many of the refugees in macedonia, in addition to tracking and possibly diagnosing the presence of a (possible) ideological niche, i am also prone to an interpretation that stems from studies which treat religion in the delicate context of traumatic experience. some of these studies show that religious belief may have a major influence on the psychological well-being of adults, and that the subjective experience of spiritual support may form the core of the spirituality-health connection (mackenzie, rajagopal, meibohm, and lavizzo-mourey, 2000). levin (2001) looks at the connection between health and a number of spiritual beliefs, which include prayer and some kind of faith in god, claiming that there is a certain definite level of optimism and hope among those professing some kind of faith as a result of their connection with some kind of higher power. hence, the weight of the analysis of the publications of several publishing houses in macedonia active during the two above-mentioned crises is placed on seeing faith as a source of emotional recuperation and building of self-esteem for the victims of military actions in bosnia and herzegovina and kosovo. logos a distributed some 5,000 qur’ans to the kosovars and another 10,000 to the bosniaks, yet the bulk of the literature published and distributed during the crisis was written by various muslim thinkers. among some of the distributed works there were also pieces by the famous muhammed al-ghazali, an islamic cleric and scholar who attracted a broad following with works that sought to interpret islam and its holy book, the qur’an, in a modern light. a number of other books (largely by bosnian thinkers or in the bosnian language) were distributed to women and children. in addition, i conducted an interview with the imam dr. zekirija bajrami, from the mosque of sultan murat ii in skopje, who preached in the mosque every friday throughout the kosovo crisis, trying to, as he said, offer strength to the victims as well as a sense of communal values as an incentive for patience and hope. refugee crisis and the modes of assistance: the islamic publishing proliferation, individual and ngo assistance the effects of the spiritual assistance are predominantly analyzed through the views of those who offered their help. much of the discourse of my interlocutors opens up an impressive perspective on the role that religion also plays for the psychological strength of those offering the help. namely, much of the inspiration for the support given to the refugees by these organizations stems from their religious persuasion. on a number of occasions, i was told by these people that they were inspired by the belief that it was their mission to help, and that they identified themselves with the ansari (originating from ansar, the people of medina who helped the islamic prophet muhammad when he migrated from mecca to medina). the literal meaning of ansar is supporters. they found in islam what they believed to be their spiritual mission. what follows are my analysis of the interviews i conducted with representatives of the publishing houses, ngos, and individuals who assisted in the recuperation of refugees. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  80  in his detailed analysis of the emergence of the islamic publishing trend in kazakhstan that eventually evolved into a strategy for the creation of self-sustaining piety movement in the country, schwab (2011) traces the early beginnings of such activity after the dissolution of the soviet union. similar patterns can be noticed in the macedonian case, where both publishing houses i discuss were roughly established before and soon after the dissolution of yugoslavia. schwab’s argument that the islamic publishing activity was a conscious and moreover, strategic move towards the establishment of a piety movement in kazakhstan, also could apply in the case of the publishing houses i discuss. this becomes especially visible through a number of their publications, which bring forward the basic introduction into the qur’an, the duties (ibadat) of the muslims, the key components of a prayer, the role of the muslim woman and modest dressing, as well as the muslim ethics (ahlak). yet, my main point of departure in my interviews with the ngos and publishing houses was to rather trace the logic of what, according to them, meant spiritual assistance for those in great need. detecting if there might have been an ideological background to it, similar to the one schwab diagnoses in the kazakhstan case is rendered problematic inasmuch as the narratives of my interlocutors were charged with emotions, which conveyed the message that they truly aimed at offering hope rather than solidifying the islamic practice. yet, in the rest of the text, i trace what i believe is a nationalistic/patriotic narrative in some of the modes of assistance offered to the refugees. additionally, a more “stereotype-challenging” literature about islam can be tracked in the decade following 2000, which saw the backlash against multiculturalism in europe and the negative sentiments towards much of the muslim community7. the islamic youth forum published a book in 2006 by ajni sinani called islam through the eyes of the others8. the foreword written by baskim aliu makes reference to the appearance of certain extremist fractions, which, as it is explained further, caused a lot of harm to muslims and islam. it also resulted in the waste of enormous energy in persuading this world that the “message and platform of islam transferred by mohammed (pbuh) […] calls for peace and understanding, creativity and positive energy, holistic human evolvement and progress, instead of calling for fanatic behavior and ignoring the true values” (2006: 5). logos a is a publishing house in macedonia. it marks its beginning in 1989 under the name mehmet akif ersoy, only to be officially established in 1990 under the current name, logos a. they consider themselves as the pioneers of independent publishing in former yugoslavia and present day macedonia. they have so far managed to publish around 500 titles (more than two million volumes) from various fields. more than half of the titles have been translations from english, french, bosnian, turkish, arabic, and macedonian languages (into albanian), while the rest are original works. during the kosovo and bosnian refugee crisis, logos a published a great variety of islamic literature in order to support those refugees in overcoming the calamity they experienced. in my conversations with the director of logos a, i was told that their primary intention has not been the distribution of books with ideological content, but rather, books that would give spiritual support to the muhajirs. logos a has distributed approximately 5,000 qur’ans to the kosovars and another 10,000 to the bosniaks, but the bulk of the literature published and distributed during the crisis was written by various muslim thinkers and translated into albanian9. “most of the books were distributed during the lectures held in the tents of the refugee camps and people were free to take as many as they wanted, or none”, recalls adnan ismaili, the director of logos a. “all the books that we published during both the bosnian and kosovo crises, were meant to provide moral support and anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  81  spiritual tranquility, as well as to provide an introduction into the basics of islam”, recalls one of the employees of logos a. it is striking to note that some of my interlocutors came up with similar insights on the “spirituality of kosovars”. in other words, much of the contemporary rhetoric about albanians (including those from kosovo and macedonia) maintains that religion plays a secondary role in their lives, whereas their feelings of belonging to a particular ethnicity and nation are of utmost importance. building upon this point, and taking into account kosovo’s complicated history, its recently gained status as an independent state, and the general attitude towards religion in the settings of the former socialist yugoslav republic, my interlocutors maintained that the kosovars have been “de-spiritualized”. hence, many of them found a compelling dimension that they were quite unfamiliar with before in the islamic literature and religious teachings offered at the time of crisis. this again, nicely correlates to some of the diagnostics that schwab offers, in what his interlocutors called “an atheist nation for 70 or 80 years” (2011: 228). yugoslavia might not have been that radical in its agenda of erasing religion from people’s lives, but its overall policy was clearly aimed at the constitution of concepts of brotherhood and unity, far beyond any religious identification. the publishing house furkan ism10 was established in 1994 and throughout the decade it has been predominantly involved with the kosovo crisis. the name is inspired by the 25th sura of the qur’an which means the criterion, the standard; that is, distinguishing between good and bad. the director of furkan ism is muhamed murtezi. mr. murtezi is also the president of the community of albanian publishers. during the crisis, they organized a number of lectures held in the refugee camps across macedonia. furkan ism is best known for the publication of a magazine called vepra, a journal for scientific, educational, and cultural research, which largely covered the events taking place in kosovo in 1999. vepra also published extensive articles related to the relationship between mother and children, the ways of preventing divorce, and the nurturing of the mother-child relationship in accordance to islamic values.11 furkan ism has also been engaged in publishing diverse materials ranging from more complex literature about islam, to books about the treatment of children, as well as about the role of a pious, muslim woman. they have mainly published translations of books from arabic, english and bosnian languages.12 during the kosovo refugee crisis, furkan ism also participated in organizing lectures in the refugee camps focused on explaining to the victims that the current state of affairs was due to the ambitions of certain people, but that there is a way out, and that god will help those to whom injustice has been done. among the titles, there are muhammed hamza sa’savi do you know who i am?; muhhamed gazali the faith of the muslim; jusuf kardavi patience; muhammed gazali a muslim’s character. their activity is still visible. the annual report of 2010 of the ngo el hilal mentions the marking of the 7 march – the day of the teacher (emphasis is made on male teachers). it is explained that this event is part of the program activities of el hilal aiming to enrich the school libraries as well as to reward the teachers who helped and supported the spreading of the humanitarian cause. as part of this activity, el hilal contacted several publishing houses for book donations, and fuqan ism donated the largest number of books. furkan ism also recently published a special issue of the magazine vepra, marking the 100th anniversary of albania.13some of the lines in the opening text of the editor and director of furkan ism, muhamed murtezi, make reference to the commitment, dedication, sacrifice, sweat, and blood, that went into it, and also laments the misfortune of the tearing apart of the nation.14 murtezi also points out that there has been an accentuated violence, terror, and destruction anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  82  against albanians (most likely referring to, among other events, the kosovo crisis). these activities throw light on the dedication of furkan ism to the albanian national cause and their politically-infused agenda. during my visit to the ngo wheat of goodness, (kalliri i mirësisë in abanian, klasje na dobrina in macedonian). i interviewed the director of the organization, mr. muhammed ismaili. the interview took place in macedonian language. i rang at the door of a house located in the albanian-populated part of the city. a bearded man wearing a palestinian style black-andwhite scarf around his neck opened the door with a big smile. i took off my shoes, and although it is a must when entering a muslim house, the men (employees at the ngo) gathered in the room, seemed quite worried about me, because they had no slippers there and the house was very cold. they took me to the warmest room where, obviously, some 15 minutes before my announced arrival time they had turned on the electric heater. they immediately served me some black tea and asked me what they could do for me. i told them what my interests were, and explained that i wanted to write a paper about the religious support in times of crisis. the talk began. mr. muhammed immediately told me that although the primary focus of the ngo is humanitarian assistance, the motivation for launching the ngo was the desire to do something in the name of allah. their hope is that allah will take into account all the help they provided for the people in crisis, he said. he even considered his participation in my interview as a good deed that shall not pass unnoticed from allah. essentially, then, the foundation of the organization lies in the qur’an. the ngo was established on 15 april, 1991. the title was inspired by the sura 2 the cow, 261 ayat of the qur’an). 2:261 he that gives his wealth for the cause of allah is like a grain of corn which brings forth seven ears, each bearing a hundred grains. allah gives abundance to whom he will; he is munificent and all-knowing. the ngo began with providing humanitarian aid to the bosnian refugees in macedonia during 1992 – 96. according to muhammed ismaili, very often the buses carrying bosnian refugees (sometimes even 200 of them in a single bus), would take them to the mosque first, to attend a lecture or pray to allah to someday return back to their homes. this ngo also gave its unreserved support to the kosovo refugees in 1999. muahmmed told me that 98,000 refugees are registered with their ngo as recipients of humanitarian aid. the kosovo refugees have been arriving to macedonia from all parts of kosovo, including prishtina and poduevo. a large portion of them arrived by train, others by car or on foot. the refugees come in mostly through the blace border crossing (macedonian-kosovo border), but some also used jazhince (another macedonian-kosovo border) and tabanovce (macedonian-serbian border), and they were being transported to the refugee camps. the biggest refugee camp was the one located in the nearby surroundings of skopje, called stenkovec. this camp accommodated approximately 50,000 refugees at one point. the wheat of goodness placed a tent there that served as a gathering point for the refugees; they also held lectures and distributed books. as muhammed recalls, “it served the function of a mosque.” most of the humanitarian aid (medicine, food, clothing) (approximately 70%) arrived from organizations in turkey, especially the humanitarian relief foundation, ihh. the rest of the aid arrived from various arabic organizations. i tried asking muhammed if he could give me his general impression on the effects that the spiritual support had in those times of crisis. i was curious to see if he could pinpoint cases of a different discourse, of agony and confusion among the victims themselves as to why such terrible things were happening to them, and if they have maybe fallen out of the favour with anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  83  god. “evil deeds do not come from allah. people harm each other,” replied muhammed. talking about the inspiration for doing noble deeds and helping the ones in need, muhammed clarified to me that they believed that it was their mission to help, and that they identified themselves with the ansari (originating from ansar, the people of medina that helped the islamic prophet muhammad when he migrated from mecca to medina. the literal meaning of ansar is supporters). they found in islam what they believed to be their spiritual mission. moreover, he said that doing good deeds for the needy ones fills them with joy and brings joy to allah as well. the modes of material and spiritual assistance that were offered during the crises do not stop here. moreover, the modes and motivation and/or inspiration behind some of the assistance provided especially during the kosovo crisis, is brought into question in the light of the conflict, which happened in macedonia. while the bosnian refugee crisis saw a versatile population (ethnically) in offering support and shelter, during the kosovo crisis, it was predominantly the albanians in macedonia who helped the kosovars. the kosovars are linguistically, ethnically, and in most cases, religiously extremely similar to them. they therefore believed they were helping their brothers. this political dimension of the nation unjustly torn apart, mentioned previously in the discussion of some of furkan ism publishing activities, hence seems to come to the surface in both the spiritual, as well as material, assistance offered during the kosovo crisis. although it was generally accepted that macedonia was a unique former yugoslav state due to its peaceful and bloodless secession from the yugoslav federation, in 2001 macedonia was struck by an ethnic conflict, which brought eight months of unrest and calamity to the region. the conflict started on 17 february 2001, when paramilitary albanian groups (nlanational liberation army) entered the border village of tanusevci (macedonian-kosovo border). the conflict lasted until the ohrid framework agreement was signed on 13 august 2001, finally putting an end to the insurgencies and working towards the improvement of the conditions of the albanian population in macedonia. in a statement for the magazine civic world, on 13 february 2002, saso klekovski, the director of the ngo mcms (makedonski centar za mulkulturna sorabotka – macedonian center for multicultural cooperation) offers several interesting insights about the humanitarian situation in macedonia. klekovski recalls that during the 2001 crisis in macedonia ngos were active on several fronts: providing humanitarian support, promoting multicultural cooperation, and peaceful conflict resolution, as well as civic decision making. several dilemmas were raised in the public and among the ngos themselves as to the sufficiency of the humanitarian aid provided. it was frequently claimed that the humanitarian aid for the kosovo crisis was more extensive than the one for the crisis in macedonia. one reason for this is the moral and political support during the kosovo crisis given by the international community. in the case of macedonia, there was a lack of such support, as things were not fully clear regarding the conflict. most of the media argued that the humanitarian aid was partial. it is worth looking at one more argument concerning the very complex political aspect of the humanitarian aid, opened by ibrahim mehmeti in his article “a tv story”, published in aim press on 15 march, 1999. mehmeti clearly notes that the most active ngo during the kosovo crisis was el-hilal. often during the crisis, the president of the organisation, abdurauf pruthi complained that his attempts to provide assistance from echo of the office of the european committee failed. hence, the bulk of the assistance provided for the refugees came from individual volunteers, who were almost without exception of albanian nationality. the most interesting point brought by mehmeti is his observation that unlike the albanian population in anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  84  macedonia, who directly experienced the kosovo crisis as a crisis that also happened to them and in their homes, the macedonians experienced it as a “tv/news story”. there was, as mehmeti observes, an aura of tacit agreement among macedonians in macedonia that the refugees were an “albanian problem”, and that the macedonians (both the citizens and the government) were included only in the “political part of the problem”, that is, the effects that such a refugee influx can play on the demographics of the country. this will bear further importance in claiming our case whereby the nationalistic and patriotic discourses came to the fore in much of the assistance offered to those in greatest need. in the somewhat short, but rich list of interviewees, h.m.i (hereafter referred to as h.m., from the initials of her name) provided me with her perspective on the assistance in the refugee crisis. h.m was a young woman in her early thirties. she has worked for the ngo merhamet since 1999 focusing on helping women and children in the refugee camps in macedonia. she was a representative of the women’s sector of the ngo. she spoke about her intensive work in the camp stenkovec, where she regularly brought clothing, food, etc. to women. she focused most of her assistance on the spiritual dimension carried out through lectures and private talks/counseling with women. thus, she held a number of lectures, mainly teaching them about patience. she taught the children various quotations from the qur’an as well as the arabic letters, an activity that according to her words, filled them with joy and brought them content in an otherwise desperate time. h.m. taught in the refugee camp stenkovec for three months, three times a week, to children and women individually. h.m. drew several points in her religious discourse. she taught women about patience and pointed out the importance of shahid (witness or martyr in islam) to the numerous women whose husbands were killed during the serbian military attacks on kosovo. in her talks to the children, she focused more on the joy that will come once the war is over, and once they return to their homes. much of h. m.’s discourse dealt with erasing any skepticism among the people that god is not on their side. she sought to make their suffering bearable by teaching that none of the events taking place at the time were a result of allah’s punishment or lack of allah’s mercy. rather, her interpretation of the events took on the line of argument whereby this would bring them freedom in the future – freedom from the serbian occupation. the following suras are some of those that h.m. used in her lectures during her visits in the refugee camps. the imrans: sura 3: 142 did you suppose that you would enter paradise before allah has proved the men who fought for him and endured with fortitude? you used to wish for death before you met it, and now you have seen what it is like. mohamed is no more than an apostle: other apostles have passed away before him. if he die or be slain, will you recant? he that recants will do no harm to allah. but allah will reward the thankful. no one dies unless allah permits. this sura was used by h.m to bring comfort for the lost ones. the first lines bring into focus the concept of the shahid (martyr), referring to muslims who give their lives defending their faith, country and family. the reward for the patience and ability to cope with the critical situation is also brought into focus. the inability of finding meaning behind the loss of the loved ones, is anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  85  also rendered bearable and meaningful, with the words that state that no one dies unless allah permits. the imrans sura 3: 179 allah was not to leave the faithful in their present plight, but only to separate the evil from the good. nor was he to reveal to you what is hidden. but he chooses those of his apostles whom he will. therefore have faith in allah and his apostle; for if you have faith and guard yourselves against evil, your reward shall be rich indeed. this sura correlates with the above-mentioned discussion on the anthropological understanding of religion. geertz brought to the attention the fact that the opacity of certain events, the pain and suffering that one may be put through, raise the suspicion that there is no genuine order in the world. yet, the effort of religion in such events, according to geertz, is not to deny the undeniable, but to deny that there are inexplicable events, that life is unendurable, and that justice is mirage (1966: 25). undeniable events (pain, suffering, etc.) are then normalized, accepted not as ambiguities, but rather as rational and logical outcomes of the moral structure of reality. this sura likewise, was used by h.m to argue that the plight the victims were going through, were a normal process of allah’s separation between good and evil as well as plans that will not be revealed to most, except a few. i also conducted an interview with the imam, dr. zekirija bajrami, from the mosque of sultan murat ii in skopje, who preached in the mosque every friday throughout the kosovo crisis, trying to offer strength to the victims as well as a sense of communal values as an incentive for patience and hope. similarly to perelman (1965: 51), who argues that in order to awaken the feeling of belonging and sharing of a community, the speaker “tries to establish a sense of communion centered around particular values recognized by the audience”, the imam informed me that he centered his lectures around four key points: to not be afraid and therefore flee the country; all things come to an end; the aggressor will be punished; and kosovo will gain something in the end. the last two points bring the attention to the nationalist, patriotic, and ideologically infused element that i will discuss later on. while his lectures focused around particular ayats of the qur’an (a verse in the qur’an), it is illuminating to find that some of the key points brought about in his lectures were dressed in nationalist layers, which makes the observation regarding the ideological connotations stronger. this becomes clear when taking into account the specific demographic picture of macedonia, where approximately 25% of the population are albanians and have thus identified with the kosovo refugees as their brothers. among the major messages the imam conveyed to these people the message about not being scared and not fleeing the country, thus leaving it to the serbian aggressor stood out the most. according to the imam, even the recently gained independence of kosovo is a reward of allah jale shanuhu15 for the patience of the refugees. bajrami is an imam at the sultan murat’s mosque in skopje. he has been there since 1985. his lectures also stretched over a period of three months during the biggest influx of refugees who fled from kosovo to macedonia in 1999. one of the key points on which his lectures focused was to convince the refugees that they should not flee the country and go to distant countries, thus threatening to leave kosovo empty of albanians and taken over by serbs. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  86  this certainly carries both religious and national overtones. he would regularly have around 4,000 5,000 refugees in the mosque during his lectures. all his lectures were tailored around a particular ayat16 that he would then put into relation with the situation in the region. the chronic failure of the explanatory apparatus of people to map the empirical world and to find explanation for the calamity was explained by the imam in two ways. according to him, he tried to balance out the approaches whereby, on the one hand the evil, pain and suffering come from the aggressor-that is, from among people-but at the same time, the circumstances in which the victims were placed are also a form of god’s test of their faith. these are some of the suras he used in his teachings. the imrans sura 3: 141 if you have suffered a defeat, so did the enemy. we alternate these vicissitudes among mankind so that allah may know the true believers and choose martyrs from among you (he does not love the evil-doers); and that he may test the faithful and annihilate the infidels. he did however, find the final outcome of the kosovo crisis, that is, the return of most of the refugees back to kosovo, to be a result of allah’s mercy, and being faithful to allah just as the infidels, and those who have caused suffering and pain shall be punished or annihilated. sura 3:160 if allah helps you, none can overcome you. if he abandons you, who then can help you? therefore in allah let the faithful put their trust. the call for patience is explained through the religious prism and mercy is something that should be deserved. possible skepticisms and questioning of one’s faith and the existence of god in critical moments is fought against with suras that one must endure persecution patiently and not doubt allah. sura 14: 12 and why should we not trust in allah, when he has already guided us to our paths? we will endure your persecution patiently. in allah let all the faithful put their trust. zekirija addressed his listeners as his brothers, which is mainly a result of the fact that during the kosovo crisis, the albanians in macedonia helped the kosovars, who are linguistically, ethnically, and in most cases, religiously extremely similar to them. in many of his lectures (including the one i have a transcript of) he reiterates that they have opened their doors to their brothers. conclusion this study shows that the forms and effects that spiritual assistance can take in times of crisis are highly versatile. it goes without saying that one can clearly notice several layers in the religious help offered during the bosnian and kosovo refugee crisis. the ones that can be clearly anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  87  brought to the surface are the psychological, sociological, and political aspects. hence, in retrospect the structure of the religious support appears to have been much more complicated than it might have appeared at the time, given the chaotic circumstances and conditions. similarly to what stone et al. (2003) argue, there is clearly an element of social support, which, as they put it, can be “conceptualized as the tangible or intangible assistance provided in times of need by family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, selfhelp groups, and others” (2003: 330). this social support according to them, may come in the form of instrumental aid such as financial or physical assistance, similar to the one offered by the ngos discussed in the paper, as well as emotional aid such as empathic listening, information and advice, or appraisal. in addition, there is what stone et al. call the intangible support, which manifests itself as the nurturing of the feeling of security, which comes from being loved and cared for by others. the social support, according to them enhances the self-concept as well as the self-esteem, but also plays the role of a stress buffer balancing the effects of stress on the mental and physical health of the individual. pargament (1990) argues that religion is a stress-buffer in that it offers people a framework for understanding a stressful event. similarly, geertz’s definition of religion accentuates its importance as a meaning maker through some of the elements of his otherwise long definition of religion. here, i point to the third and fourth element of his definition. whereas the former states that religion helps people formulate conceptions of a general order of existence, the latter points out that it clothes these conceptions with an aura of factuality. religious participation provides a sense of belonging as well as additional social support resources (stone et al. 2003: 330): “individuals who attend church frequently also report having larger social networks, more interactions with network members, and more satisfaction with the quality of those interactions” (bradley, 1995 as cited in stone et al., 2003). the several modes of support in times of crisis (ranging from material, through ngos, to mental, psychological, and at some level ideological) analyzed in this paper can lead us to several rough conclusions. firstly, it appears that the psychological layer aimed at giving mental support and regeneration of mental strength to those whose lives were ruined and whose future was completely unpredictable, was the initial, key point of those who offered their support. the prayers in the mosque, the books distributed, and the individual talks with women who were raped or whose husbands were killed all played the role of first aid, thus satisfying the most urgent needs of those people, i.e. of giving precisely that stress-buffer religious assistance. at a more permanent level, it seems that those offering support aimed to bring back the selfconfidence and self-concept to the victims, that is, to strengthen the effects of the first aid through a religious component. the aim of this layer of assistance was to teach them patience and endurance mainly by teaching particular verses of the qur’an. hence, if the first, psychological point was about bringing comfort and providing first aid at a very basic level, the second layer was more focused at regaining hope and opening up a perspective for the future rescue of the community. this segment however, brings in certain layers of ideological components, which were visible also in the short overview of the macedonian conflict in 2001. the ideological layer is brought in by the fact that the kosovo refugees came from a set of very specific circumstance that most of those who helped were familiar with. many of the people from the ngos who helped the kosovars actually have relatives in that country and have therefore been indirectly involved in the tragic events of 1999. taking into account that the refugees came from a concrete setting that those who were helping were familiar with, in their assistance they also brought up elements that are ideological, that is, that tackle the concepts of anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  88  patriotism, national awareness, and a long term national strategy. an illustrative example of the ideological aspect of the support offered through the lectures in mosques and books delivered to the victims, is the recent independence of kosovo, which has been interpreted by dr. zekirija as allah’s reward for all the patience and endurance of the people of kosovo during the serbian military campaign. his discourse during the crisis and before the independence of kosovo was always bringing these points in focus: that they should not flee to distant countries thus leaving kosovo empty and at the mercy of serbs, and that eventually something good for kosovo would come out of all the calamities its people were thrown into. hence, this ideological element was something that both the assistance-givers and assistant-receivers have shared – a hope for autonomy, that is, sovereignty of kosovo. this fervor did not exist in the case of the bosnian refugee crisis, where there was either a general disinterest among the macedonian public as a crisis that is happening somewhere far away, or else, the support was offered to those religiously identical, i.e. mainly the albanian population in macedonia. although geertz disagrees with malinowski’s insight that religion helps one to endure emotional stress by opening up escapes from such situations that offer no empirical way out but through rituals and belief, it seems that much of what has been done during the crisis on the part of those giving the assistance has been precisely aimed at that. religion played precisely the role of the “theology of optimism”, the disqualifying term that nadel used to refer to malinowski’s understanding of the role of religion. still, this also made the pain more sufferable, and that was one of geertz’s insights into the paradoxical role of religion. most of the lectures and books provided also show another interesting point. namely, instead of just teaching that the reward in this or the next life will come for all the patience and endurance that they showed during the worst moments of their lives, the point that they should be worthy of their hope and that they should deserve the mercy and the reward has also been brought up. based upon their research among a group of christians in the u.s., stone et al. (2003) conclude that “support resources, including religious beliefs, participation in religious activities, such as praying and reading of scripture and relationships with church leaders and members, clearly play an important role in helping people through difficulties in their lives” (339). they also pointed out the crucial effect religion and social assistance can play in the self-concept and enhancement of self-esteem. similarly, the inspiration and effects offered through religious assistance in this study show elements of distribution in three different spheres of life: 1. in the individual-psychological sphere, enhancing the self-concept; 2. the communal sphere (bringing the sense of belonging to a community, and of experiencing care and love from others); 3. in between, that is, in the reality of social human life where people function as both individuals and as political and national units. it is in the third segment that much of the ideological aspects infused with the motifs of nationalism come to the fore even in the forms of religious support. this study, similarly to some of the works cited, captured several segments of the religious dimension in unusual/extreme circumstances. these range from the individual-psychological level (helping one to regenerate his vitality), the distilled religious aspect (the destiny of a person faced with the perspective of eternity and god) and the social dimension, which brings in the agendas of ideology, strategy, and the concepts of nation and nationhood as well as the friction and labeling of victims and victimizers. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  89  references: amy, a. l. et al 2005 prayers, spiritual support, and positive attitudes in coping with the september 11 national crisis in journal of personality, vol. 73 no.3, pp. 763-792. balalovska, krisitina et al 2002 minority politics in southeast europe: crisis in macedonia. etnobarometer working paper no. 2. rome. brand, jeffrey, d. n.d. religious discourse in times of crisis: declaring “victory: after the grand forks flood of 1997. http://www2.edutech.nodak.edu/ndsta/brand.htm carroll, b. 2001 a phenomenological exploration of the nature of spirituality and spiritual care in mortality, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 81-97. geertz, c. 1966 religion as a cultural system in anthropological approaches to the study of religion. m. banton, ed. pp 1-46. london: tavistock publications. 1993 the interpretation of cultures. selected essays. fontana press. klekovski, saso. n.d. ulogata na nevladinite organizacii vo krizata vo makedonija: humanitarnata pomos i krizata at http://civicworld.org.mk/default.asp?itemid=03fea24d87baab41a99d384be 1122c93 koening, harold g. 1994 religion and anxiety in aging and god: spiritual pathways to mental health in midlife and later years. harold, g. koening, ed. pp. 247-79. new york: haworth pastoral press. levin, j. 2001 god, faith, and health: exploring the spirituality-healing connection. ny: john wiley and sons. mackenzie et al. 2000 spiritual support and psychological well-being: older adults' perceptions of the religion and health connection in alternative therapies in health and medicine, vol. 6, no.6, pp. 37-45.   mehmeti, ibrahim. n.d. “prica sa malih ekrana” at http://www.aimpress.ch/dyn/pubs/archive/data/199903/90315-002-pubs-sko.htm anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  90  schnittker, j. 2001 when is faith enough? the effects of religious involvement on depression in journal of the scientific study of religion, vol. 40 no. 3, pp. 393-411. schwab. w. 2011 establishing an islamic niche in kazakhstan: musylman publishing house and its publications in central asian survey, vol. 30 no. 2, pp. 227-242. синани, ајни, ed. 2006 другите за исламот. скопје: исламски младински форум. spiro, m. 1966 religion: problems of definition and explanation in anthropological approach to the study of religion, m. banton ed. london: tavistock publications. stone, h. w. et al. 2003 a study of the benefit of social and religious support on church members during times of crisis in pastoral psychology, vol. 51, no.4, march 2003, pp. 327-340.                                                              *email: m.muhic@seeu.edu.mk 1 a priest in islam. 2 the territory of what is today macedonia (fyrom) was until 1913 the last part of the balkans ruled by the ottoman empire. after 1919, macedonia entered the kingdom of yugoslavia under serbian jurisdiction and without administrative autonomy. this kingdom was defined as a kingdom of serbs, croats, and slovenians, without mentioning of the macedonians. after 1945, macedonia was constituted as the people’s republic of macedonia within the framework of socialist federative republic of yugoslavia (sfrj). after the breakup of yugoslavia, macedonia was admitted to the un on 8 april 1993 as the former yugoslav republic of macedonia (fyrom) until an agreement could be reached with greece which claimed that some of the articles of the new macedonian constitution following the declaration of independence on 8 september 1991 made territorial claims on the greek province of macedonia. the issue regarding macedonia’s name has still not been resolved with turkey being the first state to recognize the country under its own constitutional name, i.e. the republic of macedonia. while a lot of international institutions and countries still use fyrom as a reference for the republic of macedonia, a large number of countries have gradually recognised it under its constitutional name, as the republic of macedonia. macedonia is a land-locked country covering 26,000 km2 with a population of approximately 2 million and the capital is skopje. the macedonians constitute approximately 64.17% of the population (this includes the macedonian muslims as well – 5.86%, since the macedonians are dominantly christian orthodox believers), the albanians constitute the second largest group with 25.17% or more, the turks constitute approximately 4 % of the population, and the rest are roma, serbs, boshnjaks, vlachs as well as other nationalities represented in minor percentage. 3 more detailed insight into the precise number of refugee influx in macedonia during both crisis can be found in the u.s. committee for refugees world refugee survey 2000 – macedonia retrievable from http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/country,,uscri,,mkd,4562d8b62,3ae6a8cb44,0.html anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  91                                                                                                                                                                                                   4 officially after 1995, they adopted the old ethnic name as boshnjaks (originally, the singular was bošnjak, plural – bošnjaci). the decision made in 1993 put into force the old historic name, mentioned at first as bošnjani. the reference to bošnjani is already made in documents dated from the charter of ban kulin, the first ruler of the independent kingdom of bosnia (august 29, 1189). with the arrival of the turks in 1453, the name has been gradually transformed into bosnjaci referring to all autochthonous inhabitants of bosnia and its territory as a common ethnic name until the end of 19 century. ilija garašanin, in his best-known text “nacertanije” (“načertanije”), published in 1844, explicitly writes that in bosnia there are mohammedan (muslim), orthodox and catholic bosnjaks, without making any reference to serbs or croats. hence, the traditional name of the autochthonous population of bosnia is bosnjak, and until the 19th century it was applicable for the adherents of muslim, orthodox, and catholic faith. the decision made in 1993 is a decision about the renewal of the original traditional, national name. 5 the military atrocities committed in bosnia have often been blurred under a vague terminology that ranges from military campaigns to serbian attack. however, this vagueness in the diagnosing and description of those events became all the more problematic with the publication of čekić (2012) genocid i istina o genocidu u bosni i hercegovini (genocide and the truth about the genocide in bosnia and herzegovina), where details, including documents taken from the archives of the institute for the research of atrocities committed against humanity and international law at the university of sarajevo, are published. among others, an order by the chief of staff of the army of republika srpska, ratko mladić calling on the eradication of bosnian muslims as well as a number of other documents are brought to light. 6 muhajir or mohajir – an arabic word meaning emigrant. my interlocutors have spoken of the refugees as muhajirs and not as refugees, clarifying that while the word “refugee” has a passive connotation referring to someone being scared and thus, escaping from somewhere, while muhajir brings into focus the meaning of someone being expelled from their country. the literal translation then, of the word muhajirs, would be, the expelled ones. 7 see more on the backlash against multiculturalism in europe in vertovec and wessendorf (2010). their analysis clearly shows that many of the narratives that emphasized the backlash against multiculturalism, pointed to the immigration policies of european countries, which resulted in the creation of a so-called “heaven for terrorists”. 8 this is my translation. the original in macedonian language is другите за исламот, which roughly comes down to meaning “islam through the perspective of others” and it combines the sayings of great thinkers throughout history about islam. 9 these included haki sharofi, hasan, cengic, sejjid kutub, taha mudevver’s andalusia and the ottoman empire – given to the public as a historical account of andalusa and andalusinas, that would or could be used as an incentive for the kosovo refugees to stay strong throughout the crisis. 10 for further information about the activities and literature published by furkan ism, please go to http://www.furkan.com.mk/index.html 11 see more in http://www.furkan.com.mk/vepra%2098.pdf 12 this includes authors such as: jusuf el-kardavi, muhammed hamza sa’davi, muhammed gazali. 13 the online version of this issue of vepra can be retrieved from http://www.furkan.com.mk/vepra%20100.pdf 14 this statement coincides well with the general belief among the albanian elite that the starting point of their continuous calamity can be traced back to 1912, after the balkan wars. the london conference and its final decisions brought on july 29, 1913, divided albanian lands by giving kosovo to serbia, peja and gjakova to anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013  92                                                                                                                                                                                                   montenegro, and janina and epirus to greece. although austro-hungary argued that all albanian inhabited lands should be included in the newly established albanian state, serbia’s protector power – russia, as well as france opposed this idea. (see more on this in malcolm 1999: 256.) 15 there are a number of phonetic versions of translating this arabic expression ه جل with reference to allah in جالل english language. these vary from jalla jallalluhu, xhele shanuhu, jalla jalaluh, jale shanuhu to zelleh shanuhu. while often conflated with a reference made to the prophet muhammad (pbuh-peace be upon him), jale shanuhu has no reference to a deceased allah or god, as god cannot decease nor be late. the closest translation of the expression would be sublime, glorious or transcendent. 16 ayat refers to the smallest unit of the qur'an, otherwise known as 'verses' or 'signs'. anthropology of east europe review 29(1) spring 2011 16 the privatization of the georgian healthcare system kate schecter, american international health alliance introduction during the soviet period, georgia was one of the more affluent republics in the soviet union. the shores of the black sea and the abundant agriculture drew tourists to the popular republic. despite the draw of the fresh fruit, tea plantations, and the mediterranean climate, health care in georgia during the soviet period was the same as in the rest of the soviet union— underfunded (field and twigg 2000:43), inadequate, and of low quality. the centralized socialist system strove to provide comprehensive, free, and accessible health care for everyone, and initially made huge strides in improving life expectancy and curbing the spread of infectious diseases. by the 1950‘s, however, the health system started to fall behind western europe, and by the fall of communism, mortality and morbidity rates were much higher than western europe, and the health system had been on a steady decline for thirty years (trages 2003:9). low funding and isolation from medical advances and research in the rest of the world all contributed to an inadequate system. 1 even though the republic of georgia produced revenue from wine, agriculture and tourism, the population, like the majority of soviet citizens, remained relatively poor. the collapse of communism, the rapid transition to a market economy, civil war in the early 1990‘s, and political upheaval all had a severe impact on the health care system and the country‘s ability to address a large, impoverished population. the inadequate system in soviet times became even more dysfunctional following the collapse of communism and the end of subsidies from the central government in moscow. throughout the 1990‘s hospitals and policlinics struggled to serve their patients with even less state-funding and continued deterioration of the health care environment. in addition to isolation and under-funding, the soviet system produced an oversupply of hospitals, doctors, and nurses. the glut of manpower, while touted as a great achievement of communism, actually led to redundancies and once the system collapsed, resulted in hundreds of unemployed healthcare workers. the health care system relied heavily on in-patient care in hospitals where perverse incentives developed encouraging providers to hospitalize patients for long periods (marquez and lebedeva 2010:1). it was common practice to hospitalize pregnant women for two to three weeks before they gave birth and another two to three weeks afterwards. while there were preventative efforts such as a comprehensive vaccination system, there was little to no emphasis on healthy lifestyles 2 or taking responsibility for one‘s own health. while most patients visited a policlinic first for most health problems, the majority of physicians were trained in narrow specializations and this led to patients being referred to specialists even for common ailments such as a cold or flu and frequently being unnecessarily hospitalized for lengthy periods. 3 when international organizations entered the scene in the 1990s hoping to help rebuild the broken health care system, they focused on creating primary health care (phc) capacity, eliminating excess hospital space, reducing hospital stays and training doctors and anthropology of east europe review 29(1) spring 2011 17 nurses in various areas that had been neglected in soviet medicine. generally, these organizations tried to implant a broad base of skills and knowledge among the healthcare work force and create a more streamlined, rational health care system. incremental health sector reforms started under shevardnadze in the 1990‘s with the main focus on phc, and these efforts were successful initially (gotsadze, a. zoidze and o. vasadze 2005). this article will examine the dramatic changes that have occurred in georgian healthcare since the rose revolution of 2003. what were the motives for the abrupt privatization of the georgian economy, including the healthcare sector? the research for this article draws on interviews with georgian physicians and healthcare administrators, the few reports that have been written about the attempts at privatization, lectures by georgian politicians who have come to the us to explain the reform processes in georgia, and my own observations working for the american international health alliance in georgia over the past decade. the rose revolution shevardnadze helped lead the country through the tumultuous years following the collapse of communism, but by the late 1990s the government had rampant corruption and many people were hopeful that a new government would usher in a less corrupt and more democratic era. by 2003, when the rose revolution occurred, the georgian population was restless and disillusioned with shevardnadze and the slow pace of improvements in their lives. the rose revolution was an exciting, bloodless turnover of the government. it promised change and a new era for georgians. while the rose revolution does not qualify as a revolution on the scale of the great revolutions of the 19 th and 20 th centuries, the sweeping economic reforms that the new regime has attempted to institute have been revolutionary in their scope, and health care has been no exception. in 2007, the georgian government declared that the entire health care system would be ―privatized.‖ until these radical reforms were announced, the georgian system had been limping along in a post-soviet mix of centralized, state-funded health care with some privatization on the periphery for citizens who could afford better care. during the shevardnadze period, privatization had begun both in health financing and health services delivery in a very incremental fashion mostly to accommodate the needs of a small middle class and the few very wealthy georgians. nascent health insurance companies began offering policies developed to provide access to new technologies and services not otherwise available in the government hospitals. the policies procured access to selected providers as well as covered certain costs related to services in private facilities, such as specialized diagnostic centers even within existing governmentowned facilities. these incremental and small steps towards privatization were occurring at the same time that the government was trying to systematically improve the primary health care system and shift services from hospitals to ambulatory clinics. the radical 2007 privatization reform was a sweeping shift in government policy. the institutional infrastructure, both the insurance industry and healthcare providers, was not fully in place or equipped to handle a new environment devoid of government support. anthropology of east europe review 29(1) spring 2011 18 the privatization reforms sent shock waves through a country where much of the population still lives in poverty (chanturidze et al. 2009) and cannot pay even small insurance premiums. during communism there was neither a need for, nor a structure developed for private health insurance. the concept of insurance as a protective mechanism was beginning to become established in 2007, but health insurance was practically nonexistent. hospitals were suddenly faced with the need to enter into a complex system of reimbursement, but the infrastructure did not exist. skilled physicians, nurses, hospital administrators, and managers who can manage in a privatized setting were and remain another gap in the health care environment. while the idea of allowing free markets to energize and push health care delivery forward might have seemed appealing in theory, there were very few people who had any experience with managing private health care institutions or with creating and running health insurance companies. one of the central reformers who returned to georgia after the rose revolution was kakha bendukidze who had been directly involved in the ―shock therapy‖ reforms that were implemented in russia in the 1990‘s. he was able to make a fortune in post-soviet russia and was well known as a ―russian oligarch‖ (the economist 2004). tapped by the new president of georgia, mikhail saakashvili to help reverse the many years of post-soviet decay and to follow the mandate of the rose revolution by infusing the georgian economy with new life, bendukidze took on his new role with relish. an extreme libertarian, when he was appointed state minister on reforms coordination in georgia in 2004, he famously announced that georgia ―should sell everything except its conscience‖ (udensiva-brenner 2010). the motivation for the privatization of health care was the same as for all other sectors of the economy. this was not a reform that aimed to improve efficiency, access, or quality in health care – the primary goal was to let market forces take over and relinquish the government‘s responsibility for the health sector. bendukidze‘s philosophy was that the government did not have a purpose in being involved in health. critics have voiced concern that bendukidze sold too many assets to russia while supporters credit him with ―georgia‘s economic miracle.‖ during bendukidze‘s tenure (20042009) 4 the saakashvili government was able to reduce bureaucracy, cut taxes, and radically institute wholesale privatization of all sectors of the economy (including healthcare). while the initial reaction to the rose revolution was enthusiasm and hope for a better life, the contradictory and slow progress of reforms has led to extensive criticisms (tatum 2009). relations with russia have soured since the rose revolution‘s early days, and tensions erupted into full-fledged war in august 2008 over abkhazia and south ossetia. the government remains unstable with continued shifts in ministerial posts (much like the previous government). in addition, health care funding remains inadequate for the majority of the population. the radical reforms instituted by bendukidze are now left for others in the government to manage or replace. anthropology of east europe review 29(1) spring 2011 19 master plans and reform efforts one of the main problems with the reform process in health care is that the government rushed to privatize and transform from a partially state-funded system to a completely insurancebased system practically overnight. the infrastructure was not in place, and the human resources were not prepared for such an abrupt change. in fact, to this day many citizens, especially in rural areas, remain uninformed about the insurance reforms and they are puzzled by the complexity and lack of clear guidelines for how to proceed in the new system (transparency international 2010). the continual nature of the reforms—every year since 2004 the government has announced sweeping health care reforms—makes evaluation or assessment very difficult. in 2004, the government issued the primary health care (phc) master plan for 2004-2006. this dramatic policy change was implemented with minimal consultation with civil-society groups, donors, or other stakeholders. it prompted concerns from donors like the european commission that their recent investments will be undermined. the european commission in georgia and armenia has invested significantly in primary health care services in recent years, and is appropriately concerned about the fate of its newly trained medical personnel and renovated facilities. ownership of the newly renovated facilities and management of primary healthcare services are of less concern to the european donors than the familiar question of whether or not the new infrastructure will retain a healthcarerelated function in the long-term future. [hauschild and berkhout 2009:31-32] in january 2007, recognizing the remaining gaps, the government announced a new strategy, ―main directions in health 2007-2009.‖ affordability, quality, access, and increased efficiency were the strategy‘s primary objectives (ibid.). another plan, the hospital master plan, was enacted the same month, calling for near complete privatization of the hospital sector. the plan enabled investors to buy old hospitals on prime real estate in tbilisi or regional centers and although they had to renovate and keep the hospitals as health care facilities for seven years, after this time has elapsed, the investors can do whatever they want with the valuable land. already investors are falling behind schedule with the hospital renovations (partially due to the global financial crisis) and there is ―growing evidence that the plan is failing‖ (ibid., p. 33). in march 2008, the government announced yet another plan for 2008-2012 with similar objectives to the previous plans. more recently in 2010, a new hospital masterplan was issued requiring that any insurance companies participating in the state insurance financing schemes must also be involved in helping to build and operate hospitals throughout the country. while the size of the georgian population is not known definitively, official statistics estimate a population of 4.4 million. the population has been shrinking since independence in anthropology of east europe review 29(1) spring 2011 20 1991, and the proportion of people over 65 has grown from 9.3% in 1990 to 14.5% in 2008 (chanturidze et al. 2009:3). the insurance system is starting to take hold and the number of insured people has reached 1.5 million. 5 however, problems persist for patients and their families with high out of pocket payments and very high, nonrefundable pharmaceutical costs. two reports, one by oxfam and the other by the european observatory of the world health organization, have attempted to assess the impact of these reforms (hauschild and berkhout 2009). these two reports are the most comprehensive assessments of the shifting environment to date. the oxfam report lists the following main concerns about the privatization reforms: 1) coverage—the current system covers the poorest of the poor but leaves the low income population with no state coverage and unable to afford health insurance. in addition, the private insurance policies offer very limited coverage. 2) monopolies: much like the result of the shock therapy economic reforms in russia in which bendukidze was involved, monopolies have formed quickly. 3) lack of a regulatory system: this is a problem for health insurance to work properly as mentioned earlier, but with the political fluctuations and new plans continually emerging, there is also concern that there are not adequate regulations and oversight of clinical practice (ibid., pp. 34-36). the who assessment argues much of the same points as the oxfam review but stresses the dangers of the current approach: the government has recently decided not to develop an accreditation process for healthcare facilities in the medium term, arguing that the very low quality of facilities means that priority should be given to ensuring minimum standards rather than focusing on quality measures...however, many fear that the ministry of labor, health and social affairs (molhsa) currently lacks sufficient regulatory capacity to ensure that even minimum quality standards are met and there is no policy on the quality of medical services… in addition, there is also a lack of reliable data with which to benchmark or assess the quality of care. [chanturidze et al. 2009:102] conclusion the privatization reforms instituted by the georgian government following the rose revolution are still taking shape and the verdict is still out on the efficacy of these changes. each year since 2004 has brought new attempts at regulation, distribution of scarce resources, and further privatization of state-funded health care. the haste with which the state made decisions and the contradictions in reforms have all undermined the many good intentions of the reform efforts. as georgia struggles to make health care equally accessible, of high quality, and anthropology of east europe review 29(1) spring 2011 21 affordable for all its citizens, more regulation and oversight must be implemented and there is the possibility that some back-tracking on the radical privatization path may be necessary. there are signs that the ministry of health (moh) and the government want to adjust the reforms to build more consensus within the medical community. the moh is currently working to gain consensus on various national strategies for dealing with broad public health issues such as the possibility of influenza or another contagious disease outbreak, which would require a centralized response. during a recent conference on georgian health care held in washington, dc, many georgian physicians complained of not being consulted about the reforms and abrupt changes that have profoundly affected their work environment. they asked the moh representatives to consult them and to try to gain consensus before attempting further reforms. in an environment where the state has historically determined the course of health care, the new decentralization and privatization process is an abrupt change from the past, but the fact that the state representatives and the private practitioners are working together and the physicians can air their grievances is a step in the right direction. 6 1 there is a large and varied literature on the problems and inadequacies of the soviet socialized health care system. two works by doctors who worked within the system include golyakhovsky (1984) and knaus (1981). 2 while soviet propaganda emphasized healthy life styles and the development of the ideal soviet man and woman, in reality, the health care system did little to inform patients about the dangers of smoking and drinking alcohol or to encourage more healthy diets. 3 in interviews conducted for a comparative study of russian immigrant physicians in three countries, we found that this issue of narrow specialization hindered doctors from practicing or retraining in their new country. see shuval and bernstein et al. (1997). see also, field and twigg (2000:54). 4 ibid. bendukidze was dismissed from the government in 2009. 5 national health account data, moh. gov.ge. 6 georgia health care 2020: medea 2011, a conference in washington, dc, february 1-2, 2011, that was hosted by the first lady of georgia and the georgian embassy. references chanturidze, tata, et.al 2009 ―georgia health system review.‖ health systems in transition, the european observatory on health systems and policies 11(8). the economist 2004 ―a different sort of oligarch; having got rich in russia, kakha bendukidze now wants to be the world‘s most capitalistic politician,‖ july 29 th , 2004. field, mark g., and judyth l. twigg, eds. anthropology of east europe review 29(1) spring 2011 22 2000 russian’s torn safety nets; health and social welfare during the transition. new york: st. martin‘s press. golyakhovsky, vladimir 1984 russian doctor, new york: st. martins/marek. gotsadze, g., a. zoidze and o. vasadze 2005 ―reform strategies in georgia and their impact on health care provision in rural areas: evidence from a household survey,‖ social science and medicine 60(4):809-821. hauschild, tobias, and esme berkhout 2009 ―health-care reform in georgia; a civil-society perspective: country case study,‖ oxfam research report, may 2009. knaus, william 1981 inside russian medicine. boston: beacon press. marquez, patricio v., and nadezhda lebedeva 2010 europe and central asia knowledge brief, the world bank, october 2010, vol. 32. shuval, judith, and and judith bernstein, et.al. 1997 immigrant physicians: former soviet doctors in israel, canada and the united states. westport, ct: praeger press. skocpol, theda 1979 states and social revolutions: a comparative analysis of france, russia and china. cambridge: cambridge university press. tatum, jesse david 2009 ―democratic transition in georgia: post-rose revolution internal pressure on leadership,‖ caucasian review of international affairs, 3(2). trages, e., ed. 2003 health care systems in transition: russian federation. copenhagen, european observatory on health systems and policies, 5(3). transparency international 2010 ―‗one hundred new hospitals‘ for georgia: how long will they last?‖ transparency international, august 3, 2010, p. 5. udensiva-brenner, masha 2010 ―kakha bendukidze analyzes georgia‘s economic strategy: how georgia handled its economy after the war and the economic crisis,‖ at the harriman institute, april 7, 2010. i constructing the “non-estonian”: the policy and politics of ethnic and european integration in estonia gregory feldman syracuse university introduction this paper examines how the politics of european union (eu) accession inform the design of estonia’s main policy for ethnic integration entitled state programme: “integration in estonian society 2000-2007.” this policy exists in the the context of estonian-european1 relations, particularly on the issues of regional stability, preserving the estonian language and nation, and expanding markets across the baltic sea region. the case of ethnic integration in estonia is not simply a matter of the global (europe) meeting the local (estonia) in which a fiercely nationalist eastern european state yields to the demands of western europe. rather, a delicate political relationship exists among european officials, liberal estonian officials, and conservative estonian officials based upon conflicting and common interests. as a result, a process of nation building through ethnic integration is occurring in tandem with, rather than as resistance against, eu accession. in brief, i argue that the politics of eu accession enable estonian officials to appropriate a liberal discourse2 of the self-motivated individual to legitimize ethnic integration policy, a tool for nation building. i first clarify my theoretical and methodological approach, and provide a background sketch. next, i draw on ethnographic evidence to demonstrate the estonian officials’ strong position in negotiations with european officials on the issue of ethnic integration. i then discuss european officials’ interest in this issue. finally, i examine how estonian and european relations enable the construction of the “non-estonian”, and how the administrative organization of the state programme renders its full implementation vulnerable to delays. policy and discourse this paper contributes to an anthropology of policy largely developed by shore and wright (1997). they argue that anthropological studies of policy can show how neo-liberal ideas and practices are used “as instruments of power for shaping individuals – or, to use foucault’s term, as a political technology.… (p.4)”. policies, a central concept in the organization of contemporary society, are unequivocally anthropological phenomena since they can be read as cultural texts, classificatory devices with various meanings, and rhetorical devices that empower some people while silencing others (p.7). the case of ethnic integration in estonia highlights the conditions under which officials can appropriate neo-liberalism to serve ethnic integration policy. this appropriation becomes apparent in the construction of the nonestonian in the state programme. i take discourse to be “a question of what governs statements, and the way in which they govern each other so as to constitute a set of propositions which are scientifically acceptable, and hence capable of being verified or falsified by scientific procedures” (foucualt 1980: p. 112) [italics in the original]. while i will examine the role of science in legitimizing the state programme in future research, that which “governs statements” about ethnic integration is revealed in officials’ routine utterances and in key passages in the state programme itself. one can rely on foucault’s notion of genealogy to understand how the given political forces pervading ethnic integration make possible the discursive strategies deployed by european and estonian officials. the problem is at once to distinguish among events, to differentiate the networks and levels to which they belong, and to reconstitute the lines along which they are connected and engender one another. from this follows a refusal of analyses couched in terms of the symbolic field or the domain of signifying structures, and a recourse to analyses in terms of the genealogy of relations of force, strategic developments and tactics (p.114). as will be discussed below, the “relations of force” involve a political alignment of european and liberal estonian officials pitted against conservative estonian officials. this genealogical approach to ethnic integration illuminates the link between the politics and discourse that “account for the constitution of the [non-estonian] subject within a historical framework. (p.117).” background the estonian republic was re-established on august 20, 1991. in october of the same year, the 1938 citizenship law was re-instated which established a command of the estonian language as the major condition of naturalization. as a restituted state, all inhabitants who were either citizens of the republic prior to soviet occupation in 1940, or their descendents, automatically acquired citizenship. eighty thousand non-estonians fell into this category. in 1993, the estonian parliament passed the alien’s law which classified everyone else (immigrants to the estonian soviet socialist republic and their descendents) as non-citizens. these individuals were now required to obtain a residency permit if jen typewritten text 93 they wished to legally remain in the country. furthermore, they had to choose whether to become russian citizens, estonian citizens, or remain as temporary or permanent residents. by june 1998, permanent residence permits were issued to 310,584 people while 19,742 people obtained temporary residence permits. residence permits were issued to 89,348 legal residents of estonia who are also citizens of the russian federation (estonia today: 1999) 3. estonia’s current ethnic composition differs dramatically from that of pre-soviet estonia largely because of the emigration, deportation, and execution of ethnic estonians between 1940 and 1953, and the immigration of nonestonians to estonia during the soviet era. in 1934, ethnic estonians accounted for 991,000 (88%) out of 1,126,000 people living in the country (raun 1991: p 129). ethnic russians numbered 90,000 (8%) and ethnic germans accounted for 16,900 (1.5%) (ibid: 247). now, ethnic estonians number roughly 942,000 (65%) out of 1,445,000 people living in the country. non-estonians make up the remaining 35% (or 505,000 people) with the vast majority of this group consisting of ethnic russians (406,000), followed by ukrainians (37,000), byelorussians (21,000), and finns (13,000) (statistical office of estonia: 1999). roughly 330,000 non-estonians do not possess estonian citizenship (estonia today: 1999). citizenship exclusively provides the rights to belong to a political party, to vote in national elections, and to run for any political office. despite these factors, estonia has experienced political stability and rapid economic growth over the past decade. it was invited to begin accession talks with the eu that commenced on 31 march 1998. economic growth was fueled by the nordic countries’ extensive business interests in estonia, which the estonian government courted by introducing radical market reforms in the early 1990s. thanks to the nordic countries, estonia received the highest amount of foreign direct investment per capita among all central and eastern european countries in 1998 (eia 2000). while european officials and conservative estonian officials have differences of opinion concerning ethnic integration, both sides cooperate closely in linking estonia’s economy to europe’s. however, the language act requires the use of estonian in state agencies, local governments, companies, and foundations whenever it serves the public good. this legislation restricts the full participation of many non-estonians in the public and private sectors. throughout the 1990s, estonia’s accession to the eu has been conditioned upon a moderation of estonia’s ethnic legislation. yet, the estonian government holds the legal right and political will to establish estonian as the only state language. its moral justification for this position is that the estonian republic is the only state in the world that can guarantee the preservation of the estonian language. the government’s responsibility is made even more pressing given that only 1.1 million speakers of estonians exist world-wide. one hundred sixty thousand ethnic estonians live abroad and lack an environment where they can routinely speak estonian (kulu 1997: 280). many officials argue that if estonia would recognize russian as a second official language, it would become the sole state language, de facto, since there are proportionately more estonians who speak russian than non-estonians who speak estonian. by 1997, liberal estonian officials were in a strong enough position to argue that eu accession would require estonia to design a comprehensive policy to facilitate the naturalization of non-citizen non-estonians. conservative factions in the government and parliament have long argued that the state has no moral obligation to provide language training for people, and their descendants, who arrived as a consequence of the illegal soviet occupation. for analytical purposes, liberal estonian officials can be defined as those who push to erect a institutional framework through which non-estonians can be naturalized, and conservatives, viewing naturalization as the non-estonians’ burden, who passively approach establishing this framework. both groups are committed to asserting the dominance of the estonian language4. liberals accept the notion that non-estonians can be “competent” members of estonian society as long as they demonstrate a command of the estonian language. this condition is not in place entirely for the sake of enabling communication between estonians and non-estonians. instead, a feeling exists that appreciation of estonian culture and history and loyalty to the estonian state are tied to one’s knowledge of the language. conservatives, however, are wary about the morality of integrating non-estonians. even if non-estonians speak estonian, their perceived fundamental differences jeopardize the process of rebuilding the estonian nation. mart nutt, a conservative member of parliament and author of much of estonia’s citizenship and minority legislation, expressed this sentiment in article in estonia’s leading daily newspaper eesti päevaleht. commenting on nato airstrikes in the kosovo war, he wrote that it is “a ruthless fact” that a russian considers a serb a brother while an estonian will remain an alien. “blood is thicker than water...and this holds true also for the russian who, according to some sociologists has been integrated” (nutt: 1999 cited in m. feldman: forthcoming research). naturalization is a state-designed rite of passage in which a non-estonian individual is discursively transformed into a citizen by the acquisition of the knowledge necessary to uphold “socially accepted” values. the bulk of this knowledge comes in the form of language training. at the end, the individual must swear an oath of loyalty to the estonian state. he or she is then prepared to assume greater responsibilities commensurate with the new status (turner: 1979). in foucauldian terms, the rite of passage aims to purify the body politic by means of an extensive administrative apparatus involving educational reform, estonian language teacher training, publication of language textbooks, jen typewritten text 94 production of audio-visual teaching aids, and the launching of a large-scale public awareness campaign to name just a few of the “political technologies” deployed under the state programme. the state, under the influence of liberal officials, offers language learning to the non-estonian population in its attempt to regain full control over its territorial space by ensuring the omnipresence of the estonian language. though not usually expressed directly, conservatives prefer to regain territorial control by marginalizing non-estonians, which they can accomplish by impeding or delaying the administration of language learning. europe has supported liberal estonian officials’ efforts to institutionalize the necessary administrative channels for naturalization. the bulk of their efforts appear in two major programs: the european union-phare language training programme and the nordic/uk/undp project “support to the state integration programme”. the two programmes, initiated in 1998, conform to the state integration policy, also approved in 1998, which established the basis of the state programme: “integration in estonian society 2000-2007.” the state programme, approved by the estonian government on 14 march 2000, is the state’s long-term plan to incorporate non-estonians into the body politic. the existence and final approval of the state programme is largely a function of international pressure from the organization for security and cooperation in europe and the european commission (ec) in combination with the cooperative political efforts of liberal ethnic estonian politicians and ethnic russian politicians. without this pressure, conservatives in the estonian government would have been content to ignore the issue altogether or simply let it sit in a state of indefinite formulation. indeed, the state programme had been promised by the autumn of 1999, but, according to one ec official, people in the diplomatic community were wondering if it would come at all. the retreat in november 1999, officials from the estonian government and administrators from the united nations development programme (undp)5 organized a retreat in the estonian countryside. the retreat was held in a renovated nineteenth-century classicist manor house once inhabited by baltic german landlords6. like many manor houses, this one is now a tourist attraction featuring guides and hostesses dressed in colorful, estonian national costumes. much of contemporary national identity is constructed upon estonian peasant life, connoting the purity of nature and the estonian language, and the virtues of self-reliance and rustic living. the retreat’s planners considered this setting to be a relaxing environment to discuss ethnic integration. the planners invited, among others, european officials whose governments are major donors to ethnic integration projects in estonia. the ambassadors of finland, denmark, norway, and sweden were all in attendance with their first secretaries. the ambassadors of france, the united kingdom, and the united states were also present as well as a diplomat from the german embassy. the first, and most important, item on the agenda was a discussion of the current draft of the state programme. ostensibly, this retreat would help to maintain transparency in formulating the state programme, to receive input from european donors, and to assuage fears among the european officials that it was being shelved. after a welcome reception in the foyer, the participants gathered in an elegant second floor hall with parquet floors, chandeliers, elegant white draperies, and ornate window trimming. the director of the integration foundation7 escorted the ambassadors of finland, denmark, sweden, and norway, and the resident representative of undp to the front row of chairs which was informally deemed “ambassadors’ row”. these particular officials, of all the guests, are the most involved in ethnic integration in estonia. the minister without portfolio for ethnic affairs (hereafter the minister) greeted the audience and gave brief introductory remarks. she spoke of an older ethnic russian man living in ida-virumaa8. though the old man cannot speak estonian, he is still contributing to ethnic integration in two ways: by working as a small merchant, and by sending his daughter to take estonian-medium courses at tartu university, the country’s premier institution of higher learning and main study center of the estonian language and literature. the old man’s situation conveys the government’s approach to ethnic integration by allegory. having concluded that the older generation of non-estonians is too lethargic to learn estonian, and thus acquire citizenship, efforts at language training are aimed mainly at the younger generation. yet, the old man’s employment in small business connotes neoliberal economic self-reliance. moreover, his daughter’s attendance at tartu university signifies the connecting links between one’s command of the estonian language, appreciation of estonian identity, enhanced career potential, and economic growth for estonia. this representation brings to life the rhetorical mix of nationalism and liberalism, in which the non-estonian individual can achieve personal fulfillment simultaneous to preserving the estonian language and nation. next, the minister reviewed the draft of the state programme. she explained that ethnic integration should occur through a division of three spheres: the linguistic-communicative, the legal-political, and the socio-economic. the first ensures a common estonian sphere of communication across the country without forcing cultural assimilation. the second clarifies the relationship between the state and the non-estonian population which was vaguely worded in earlier policies. the third addresses social problems and aims to stimulate economic growth9. by fostering ethnic integration jen typewritten text 95 through these spheres society will harmonize while also preserving ethnic differences. the result will be an “estonian model of a multicultural society, which is characterised by the principles of cultural pluralism, a strong common core and the preservation and development of the estonian cultural domain (estonian government 2000: p.5).” the minister concluded her introduction lamenting the lack of national identity in estonia. “when you ask people in narva where they are from,” she explained, “they simply respond ‘narva’, not ‘estonia’.”10 her lamentation echoes the fundamental way in which ethnic relations are problematized. the state programme posits that separate estonian and russian-speaking societies are forming in the same country. this bifurcation “may become dangerous both socially and from the point of security policy. (estonian government 2000: p.17)” the state programme emphasizes that language training will unify the country into a common sphere of communication. thus, people in narva will identify themselves as estonians, not ethnically but as members of estonian society. the minister then opened the floor for questions. ambassador #1 raised a hand, and prefaced a question by supporting the long-term goals of the state programme. the ambassador then noted that the programme has no subtargets to help implement it in a step-by-step process. “where are the stations on the road map?” the ambassador asked, adding, “the linguistic side is there but not the social and economic aspects. these are not quite as developed.” the minister concurred that specific activities had not yet been delineated. ambassador #2 spoke: “[my capital] would support it, but it needs more specifics. it needs a budget. how will it be funded from estonia? it should also address how the programme will be administered. it’s such a cross-cutting issue.” the minister replied, “this is an extremely important issue.” ambassador #3 had also expected greater stress on the social, legal, and economic aspects. the ambassador also called for yearly progress reports, interjecting that “you, madame minister, are the privileged interface with the outside world. this would help clear up many political problems.” the minister commented that the latvians have focussed more on labor and economic issues, but noted that other policies addressed these issues in estonia. ambassador #4, expressing frustration, inquired, “have we evaluated what has been done before…are you ready to take over, and make lasting work in estonia?” the minister responded that evaluations are needed, and that “this is a learning process.” the above turn of events signifies the minister’s strong position. the minister controlled the setting. the retreat’s very location embodied estonian nationalism in the form of the rural manor house and the traditional maidens. this venue symbolically reinforced the estonian nation at the expense of minority cultures in estonia and to the neglect of european input. the minister also controlled the pace of the discussion. her introduction took thirty-five minutes away from a discussion scheduled for seventy-five minutes enabling her to reduce the number questions and comments. when questions were asked, she answered them in a terminal manner. the minister could even gain rhetorical control over the pace of the ethnic integration process. her response to ambassador #4, “this is a learning process,” allows her to distance the government from criticism for hesitating on ethnic integration on the pretense that estonia is not yet a fully mature civil society. the minister used europe’s stereotype of estonia to her own advantage. other comments reflected concern toward the estonian government’s commitment to implementing the state programme: “where’s the road map?”; “it should also address how the programme will be administered”; and “are you ready to make lasting work?” the audience, in the words of ambassador #3, had to push the minister to communicate with europe: “you, madame minister, are the privileged interface with the outside world.” significantly, the ambassador’s frustration is that of the european official wanting to learn more about the applicant state rather than the applicant demanding the attention of europe. despite the ambassadors’ reservations, their governments still provided, directly or indirectly, fifty-two percent of the state programme’s budget for the year 2000. now that it exists, european officials want it to stay. a member of the expert committee to write the state programme explained why foreign funding is easily secured. “to other issues, it’s comparatively easy because they think it is bad to have conflict. they’ve been watching yugoslavia. they are ready to pay because they are afraid.”11 capturing the ambiguity of the power relationship between europe and estonia, one estonian official noted that the “[state programme] is only good for raising money. we can show it to whomever.” the individual then lifted a hand in the air with an open palm facing outward. the gesture carried a double meaning. it symbolized both the presentation of a transparent policy worthy of foreign support as well as an order to “stop! don’t look any further.” indeed, european officials respond to both meanings. the european politics of ethnic integration in estonia judgements about political stability and economic growth in the baltic sea region, made in reference to liberal and nationalist discourses, make possible the discussion at the retreat and the premise of the state programme itself. interviews with participants after the retreat provided further elaboration of the discursive strategies involved in ethnic integration in estonia. a senior nordic diplomat explained the importance of ethnic integration in terms of regional stability. “its an advantage that the baltic area have a positive development as well as russia...it adds security to us all. the human side, the altruistic side [is that] all countries have the right to determine themselves. the basic fact is that the countries are jen typewritten text 96 now independent...but in a good neighborhood.” following this logic, the best way to guarantee regional stability is to accept nation building as the estonian government approaches it, through linguistic expansion across the non-estonian population. also, who is able to define “country” and how a non-estonian becomes a member of the country is not this diplomat’s concern. the “neighborhood’s” social contract, so to speak, permits an ethnic majority to morally define the country. closely following the concern for stability comes economic interests. “the first concern when the ussr collapsed was certainly stability” another diplomat added, “stability is one area but also building a market economy is important….there aren’t many controversial issues in the current text [of the state programme].” however, the diplomat made no mention of how this program facilitates labor mobility and market growth when it imposes a linguistic hurdle between the non-estonian and their full participation in the economy. the diplomat must be content to wait for non-estonians to master the estonian language before the estonian market can reach its full potential. another diplomat also stressed the economic dimension of stability by highlighting the importance of trade, investment, outsourcing, and knowledge transfer. “anything we can do to expand our networks across the area must be a plus for everyone in the region...the goals are market economy, democracy, and environment....” market economics is the metaphor through which nordic participation in ethnic integration is understood. explaining these countries’ role in the nordic/uk/undp project, which funds several ethnic integration projects, the diplomat said that “we monitor the process and give advice. we are like the major, strategic stockholders with interest in the company. the governing board of the integration foundation is the board of directors. we step in when our interests are threatened.” nordic business activities across the baltic sea require a population with as much access to jobs, training, and purchasing power as possible. yet, since non-estonians’ economic participation is contingent upon knowledge of estonian, the nationalist discourse trumps the liberal discourse which would privilege individual pro-active participation in the market. the state programme presents the lack of knowledge of estonian as the principal impediment to the career potential of non-estonians and economic growth in estonia (estonian government 2000: p.20). by premising economic potential upon language ability, the state programme reverses the logic of market economics: the labor market does not adapt to the capabilities of one-third of estonia’s labor force, rather the latter must adapt to the former by learning estonian. the above claims to geopolitical security, nation-building, and economic growth help explain why the nordics accept the limits on liberalism. foreign donors, liberal estonian officials, and non-estonian leaders view the mere existence of the draft of the state programme as a hallmark achievement. interviewees interpreted this achievement as progress compared to the early 1990s when radical nationalists called for the expulsion of soviet era immigrants. now, in great contrast, a programme exists to incorporate them into the body politic, and europe does not want to risk losing it.12 as such, european officials are wary of making their criticism of ethnic integration too explicit lest they themselves trigger a reversal the progress in ethnic relations. the ec’s most critical recent statement of the government’s efforts to provide language training is simply that “progress in this area is handicapped by lack of financial resources” (european commission: 1999). the ec must be aware not to overly favor estonian or russian nationalism. the perception of eu encroachment upon estonian cultural identity, by applying too much pressure to integrate non-estonians, would jeopardize the relationship between the eu and estonia. furthermore, european officials are careful not to fan flames of russian nationalism by highlighting the slow rate of naturalization. this would encourage nationalists in the russian federation who exploit the conditions of the ethnic russians living in estonia. one ethnic russian on the expert committee to write the state programme explained the ec’s muted commentary. he said, “they don’t want to put it at a higher level because moscow and russian extremists in estonia will react. they want a stable estonia for the european union.” ethnic integration policy: appropriation and administrative organization in this context, the genealogical link between the politics of eu accession and the construction of the non-estonian subject becomes intelligible. the above “relations of force” enable the authors of the state programme to appropriate13 a liberal discourse of the self-motivated individual and places it in the service of estonian nationalism. the document’s chapter entitled “main aims” asserts that a “focus on the individual means that ethnic integration into society is the result of the free choice of the individual, not a decision dictated from ‘above’” (estonian government 2000: p. 20). later in the document, non-estonians, though constructed as lethargic and apathetic, should be redeemed through self-motivation. “the diffident and passive attitudes widespread among non-estonians must be replaced by the understanding that each person’s prospects for a secure future in estonian society depend above all on his own activeness and co-operation” (p. 21). indeed, the non-estonian individual is required to uphold estonian nationalism. the direct subjects of integration are individuals. integration on the level of the individual shapes the common core in the public sphere of society, and that common core operates on the basis of the estonian language, common social institutions and democratic values. integration grounded in the principle of individuality is jen typewritten text 97 supplemented by the recognition of the rights of ethnic groups, which are expressed in the principles of cultural pluralism and the preservation of the estonian cultural domain (ibid). in the end, non-estonians are only able to fulfill their political and economic ambitions after they have done their part to preserve the estonian nation through language training. while liberal estonian officials authored much of the state programme’s text, conservatives can threaten its implementation, precisely the move that european officials want to avoid. the document clearly states that the “overall guarantor of the state programme is the minister for ethnic affairs” (p.27). however, the minister holds no authority over the other ministries responsible for implementing the specific activities of the state programme, specifically the ministries of education, culture, social affairs, and internal affairs. the minister can neither force her counterparts to implement the activities if they should stall nor dictate how they should allocate the money in their budgets. she can only try to persuade them through political gamesmanship. only the prime minister holds the undisputed the authority to ensure state programme’s full implementation, and this decision depends upon ethnic integration’s perceived political payoff. the state programme’s administrative organization and discursive premise reveals the compromise among european officials, liberal estonian officials, and conservative estonian officials. estonia’s economic integration into europe is rhetorically strengthened by constructing the non-estonian as a transforming, self-motivated actor preparing for participation in a market economy. estonia also wins favor by hinting that estonian society is a democratic civil society built by the activity of “average” people. however, full economic and political participation is contingent upon knowledge of the estonian language. estonian officials see linguistic hegemony across the estonian territory as the basis of nation building, yet they disagree as to whether an estonian speaker’s ethnicity is a relevant factor in rebuilding the nation. the state programme’s existence is a victory for liberal estonian and european officials. however, the full implementation of the administrative apparatus that would help naturalize non-estonians is dependent upon the tenor of estonian-european relations. conclusion ethnic integration in estonia illustrates that the process of nation building does not mutually exclude the process eu accession. it does, however, force a reconsideration of the notion of estonia as local and parochial, and europe as global and liberal. europe continues to make political and economic inroads into estonia, which liberal and conservative estonian officials greet as necessary preconditions for the viability of the estonian republic. in this context, europe supports the liberal officials’ version of nationalism which involves integrating the non-estonian on the condition of language acquisition. partly motivating their support is the goal of political stability in the baltic sea region, which forces european officials to balance estonian nationalism against russian nationalism. conservative estonian officials see a fundamental incompatibility between estonians and non-estonians, and, therefore, resist ethnic integration. for them, nationalism is a process of exclusion. the current construction of the non-estonian subject is a logical consequence of european and liberal estonian officials attempt to gain control of the ethnic integration process from conservatives. the resulting compromise is a nationalist appropriation of liberalism. references estonian government. 2000. state programme: “integration in estonian society 2000-2007.” estonian government publication: tallinn. estonian investment agency. 2000. “investment guide”. http://www.eia.ee/en/s_investments.html. estonian investment agency publication: tallinn. estonia today. 1999. “integration statistics.” www.vm.ee/eng/estoday/1999/02cits.html. estonian foreign ministry publication: tallinn. estonian translation and legislative support centre. 1996. “preamble” constitution of the estonian republic. unofficial english language translation. http://www.rk.ee/rkogu/eng/epseng.html. estonian translation and legislative support centre publication: tallinn. european commission. 1999. regular report from the commission on progress towards accession. http://europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/estonia/rep_10_99/b12.htm. european commission publication: brussels. foucault, m. 1980. power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. pantheon: new york. kulu, h. 1997. “the estonian diaspora”. trames: a journal of the humanities and social sciences. no. 3, vol.1, (51/46), p. 280. nutt, m. 1999. “tsivilisatsioonide kokkupõrge?” [the clash of civilizations?] eesti päevaleht. 4 august. cited in feldman, m. forthcoming. “european and ethnic integration in identity narratives in estonia: a search for security.” raun, t. 1991. estonia and the estonians. stanford, california: hoover institution press. shore, c. and s. wright. 1997. anthropology of policy. routledge: london and new york. statistical office of estonia. 1999. “ethnic composition of the population”. http://www.sta.ee/wwwstat/eng_stat/contents_fr.html. statistical office of estonia publication: tallinn. thiele, c. 1999. “the criterion of citizenship for minorities: the example of estonia.” european centre for minority issues, working paper #5. http://www.eia.ee/en/s_investments.html http://www.vm.ee/eng/estoday/1999/02cits.html http://www.rk.ee/rkogu/eng/epseng.html http://www.sta.ee/wwwstat/eng_stat/contents_fr.html jen typewritten text 98 turner, v. 1979. “betwixt and between: the liminal phase of the rite de passage” in reader in comparative religion: an anthropological approach. eds. lessa, w. and e. vogt. new york: harper and row. notes 1 in this paper i use the terms “europe” and “european officials” to refer to the european commission and to the countries, mostly european union (eu) members which have been most involved in ethnic integration in estonia. the “nordic countries” specifically refers to denmark, sweden, finland, and norway. although, norway is not an eu member, all four nordic countries share common objectives in supporting ethnic integration, which are compatible with estonia’s accession to the eu. while i do not personally subscribe to a discursive distinction between “europe” and “estonia”, i employ it here to facilitate the paper’s narrative. 2 in the case of estonia, nationalism is the effort to elevate the status of a linguistically-defined ethnic group over others with respect to its relationship with the state. liberalism refers to a political philosophy which, in principle, affords all individuals equal status with the state and equal chances to maximize their own political, economic, and social goals, regardless of demographic characteristics. 3 it is important to clarify that estonia does not violate any european treaties and conventions in terms of the definition of a minority, the rights of minorities, and the requirements which non-citizens must meet to obtain citizenship. for example, requiring that potential citizens demonstrate proficiency in the language of the ethnic majority is practiced internationally. however, the degree to which the language must be commanded and the opportunity to learn the language are vague and contentious issues that weigh heavily upon the success of the state programme. see thiele (1999) for an explication of estonia’s citizenship policy in the european and international contexts. 4 some liberal estonian officials have claimed that the state programme is not a nationalist project because establishing the dominance of the estonian language should result neither in cultural assimilation or the marginalization of non-estonians. they argue that the state programme should create social harmony by 1) facilitating communication across ethnic groups; 2) improving non-estonians’ political and economic status through language learning; and 3) preserving ethnic differences by providing funding for non-estonian cultural activities. many non-estonian leaders argue that the state programme is nationalist because it will either marginalize or assimilate non-estonians by placing them in situations where they must speak estonian. i maintain that the state programme is nationalist, because it explicitly asserts “the development of the estonian cultural domain” as the context in which ethnic integration must occur. however, even though the term “nationalist” carries negative connotations, i attempt to avoid passing moral judgement on the state programme itself. 5 undp has been providing administrative assistance to the estonian government’s integration projects as the government has lacked the capacity to run these projects alone. their role will phase out during 2001. 6 the notion of teutonic/german occupation and the servility of the estonian peasantry for 700 years does not enter into this construction. 7 the integration foundation is a government-chartered non-profit organization assigned with the task of administrating most integration activities in estonia. though not formally a government ministry, the minister without portfolio for ethnic affairs chairs the governing board of the integration foundation. 8 ida-virumaa, a county in northeast estonia, is a main geographic focus of the state programme. it is an economically depressed area faced with the challenge of revamping its soviet-era industries. the population is ninety-percent russian-speakers (over 125, 000 people), mostly blue-collar workers who immigrated to ida-virumaa during the soviet era to work in the expanding industrial sector. the estonian soviet socialist republic was a desirable place to live for workers since its standard of living was among the highest in the ussr. 9 although the state programme asserts that socio-economic development is one of three spheres of ethnic integration, it relegates this task to currently existing development programs that have yet to bear fruit. the lack of commitment to economic development in ida-virumaa is challenged by the county’s state-appointed governor. he has repeatedly argued that the state’s commitment to socioeconomic development must match its commitment to language training. 10 narva is the largest city in ida-virumaa. 11 i hasten to add this individual does not think that estonia should blackmail the donors with violent ethnic conflict in estonia to receive funds, or cut off estonia’s nose to spite its face. rather, this individual is keenly aware of the donors’ aim to gain hegemonic control over an area that is situated uneasily between the western and russian spheres of influence. 12 one could argue that the state programme is a also device to marginalize non-estonians rather than incorporate them by installing a linguistic requirement for citizenship acquisition. valid as this argument might be, the state programme is still a more moderate strategy of manipulating non-estonians than expulsion. 13 by “appropriation”, i mean bringing the potency of one force into the service of an opposing force. in strict terms, nationalism and liberalism are logical opposites as the former privileges the “culture” of a group over the “will” an individual from any “culture”. in estonia, therefore, individual “will” can only be fulfilled after learning estonian which furthers the cause of nationalism. jen typewritten text 99 introduction policy and discourse the european politics of ethnic integration in estonia ethnic integration policy: appropriation and administrative organization conclusion wine mafia and the thieving state: at the crossroads of capitalism and authoritarianism in 21st century macedonia anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 2 wine mafia and the thieving state: tension and power at the crossroads of neoliberalism and authoritarianism in 21st century macedonia justin otten, university of kent, canterbury abstract: in addressing notions of opposition, disruption, and inside privatization, this paper calls upon fieldwork research conducted in the transitioning countryside of the republic of macedonia. through an investigation of the country’s large tikveš wine region, the paper concurs with the systematization of authoritarian rule put forth by borneman (2011) and linz (2000), yet illuminates it using ethnographic vignettes which help explain the particularities of the post-socialist transition from state to privately owned wineries there, and the casualties that have come along with it. keywords: privatization, neoliberalism, post-socialist transition, wine, macedonia introduction if any single characteristic defines authoritarianism in all its forms over time, it is hostility to opposition. by contrast, a central feature of democracy is that is must incorporate difference and opposition…in order to legitimate itself as political form. –john borneman, princeton university1 in discussing the “oppositions” with which we’re familiar from the 20th century, such as those which ended the cold war, john borneman stated in his keynote address at the soyuz conference on post-socialist forms of authoritarianism at columbia university in march 2013 that “(o)pposition today is different…less coherent, more diffuse, and perhaps more various in its forms, as are the kind of authoritarian movements and regimes which it opposes.” borneman proceeded to give examples of current “disruptions” which stand in contrast to notions of opposition against nation-states and their ideologies in the 20th century, but through which the authority and legitimacy of a ruling government is brought to the fore. these include the russian female rock group pussy riot and the protest they have waged against the ironclad rule of vladimir putin (and the consequent persecution they have faced), as well as the syrian children whose graffiti in early 2011 sparked the ongoing civil war in that country. in attempting to theorize the relation of opposition to contemporary authoritarianism, borneman calls upon the work of juan linz (2000), whose systematized work on the topic references similar interrelated criteria. these include a concentration of power at the top, maintained through repressive means; submission to authority; unaccountable if not unchecked exercise of power; and intolerance of meaningful opposition. yet borneman admits that both his and linz’s work is based on a top-down, political science perspective and that “if seen phenomenologically or ethnographically…our analytical perspective might change, especially if we want to account for the variability in forms of authoritarianism, the modes of relating what they foster in everyday life, and the diverse ways in which groups of people depart from authoritarian rule and introduce more democratic rule.” in this paper, i thus call upon doctoral ethnographic fieldwork to illustrate the forms of disruption and opposition at work in one region of the republic of macedonia. through research conducted in 2010-11, the cataclysmic effects of neoliberally guided economic policy (beginning with privatization in the late 1990s and early 2000s) have radically transformed the tikveš region and its famous wine industry in the south-central of the anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 3 country. however, in discussing developments, oppositions, and disruptions around authoritarianism in macedonia, it must be stipulated that opposition is in fact key to democracy and state legitimacy (borneman 2011)—only without it or when it is oppressed do we see the tendency toward abuse of authority. therefore, in this paper it must be considered how forms of opposition both exist and are subject to abuse, and what tensions if any exist. authoritarianism in contemporary macedonia in october 2011 the new york times published a story titled “concerns grow about authoritarianism in macedonia” (brunwasser 2011). the times’ article discussed the increasing concern by the international community over “growing authoritarianism” via insufficient protection of the rule of law and media freedom in the country. citing an international crisis group (icg) report from two months prior, the worry was the result of the ruling nationalist government’s state capture, and their role in rising ethnic macedonian nationalism. given as an example of media suppression was the shutting down of one of the country’s main television networks (a1), allegedly due to tax evasion, and three newspapers owned by its parent company—all known for their vocal opposition to the government. an eu report was then cited, claiming that journalists were being intimidated and that political, governmental, and business interests reign supreme. although the times’ article raised legitimate concerns about freedom of expression in macedonia, bullying the press there is nothing new. during the yugoslav era the media was run from belgrade by “tanjug2” which strictly regulated the production of national news. and as levitsky and way (2010) point out in their book, such authoritarianism emerged soon after macedonia’s transition to multi-party rule in the early 1990s, as the press were subject to intimidation then under the present political opposition party sdsm, just as they are now under the ruling nationalist party, vmro-dpmne.3 what has occurred though in the last decade in particular is the monumental shift in economic policy and governance with the transition to a “free-market” and all that entails. one acquaintance who works for a large media network in the capital explained to me how the shutting down of the a1 news network was due to that station’s reporters calling up ruling party members in various towns around the country, posing as party officials, and asking how much they had bribed various individuals and how they had convinced others to vote for the party. when they got immediate responses, they of course had proof that this was occurring and reported it, to the prime minister’s chagrin. therefore, not only have economic and political policies changed in the past decade, but so have the citizenry’s awareness of and response to them. while on the one hand there has been the promotion of 20th century liberalism—regulated markets tied to the state—on the other hand, the implementation of largely neoliberal, “crony capitalistic” policies has resulted in a paradigmatic reorientation of government economic priorities. as i address further below, such policies reflect a particular form of economic ideology—one which prizes private growth and development over state led opportunity. for the majority of people, this has meant a relative reduction in their income, purchasing power, and thus life opportunities. consequently, one could say that democratic tendencies have been fostered among the media and people, creating disappointment and dissent. yet at the same time connected individuals have successfully created new enterprises and through privatization, taken control of those which were formerly socially owned and managed. the contradiction and conflict in this paradigm is evident: the combination of neoliberalism, including privatization, with democracy cum political nationalism and media suppression has led to what andrew graan (2013) claimed in his article on nation-branding in macedonia to be a “counterfeiting the nation.” although graan uses this term to primarily describe the process anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 4 of re-historicization and identity development occurring at present in macedonia, i borrow it in order to help illustrate the extent to which it demonstrates a conflict between the state and its people. i discuss further these developments in regard to the privatization of the tikveš wine industry, established in the yugoslav era as the federation’s largest wine region, and do so in relation to the so-called “wine mafia” (vinska mafija) behind the process. the wine mafia is a label frequently used by the region’s independent grape growers (lozari), who have suffered the wrath of manipulative winery owners who, since the financial crisis of 2008 in particular, have been able to get away with taking a grower’s grape harvest and not paying the grower for anywhere from one to two years, and sometimes not at all. therefore, the wine mafia are the owners of the wineries, as well as politicians who seemingly profit off of the region’s wine production (such as one of the most notorious winery owner’s brother, who is a member of parliament). there are thus shifting notions of legitimacy of the state, private enterprise, and notions of corruption. i allude to these here in describing privatization’s ongoing manifestations and the opposition and reaction to it in the form of street and café conversations (muabet), protests, and local government as well as political party town-hall like forums. this article therefore includes content from interviews and conversations with a variety of actors—winery owners, the grape growers (lozari) themselves, and a local ngo representative, among others. from these conversations a discussion emerges on the role of neoliberal, free-market capitalism and various manifestations of the democratic transition and change at hand in tikveš, such as—whether intentional or not—the development of authoritarian governance in the region and the country as a whole. untangling the terroir-izing transition: neoliberalism, privatization, and power although the word has not been adopted in the local wine lexicon, there is essentially a move towards terroir in macedonia’s wine industry. that said, there is a seeming “terroirisation” occurring in tikveš—growers are falling victim to modern wine standards and a government intent on seeing such standards “bear fruit” as the country undergoes a neoliberal privatization process and moves toward the eu wine market, a most challenging foe. for it is through both the potentially illicit, post-socialist privatization project and then more recently, the eu’s pre-accession measures, that the industry has been subject to a variety of regulations and limitations on the names of its wine, how much of it can be exported, and most of all, the power over the country’s industry. indeed, the wealth and profit-seeking of oligarchs and other businessmen who have either acquired formerly state-owned wineries or created entirely new ones, along with the eu’s measures, support a consolidation of wealth among the already connected elite, and a double-edged sword for the growers who work their own small plots of land in order to supply the wineries.4 given the significance of privatization, the challenge is to understand what the meaning of the process is for different communities and individuals, and how its implementation affects life in general (kideckel 1995). several anthropological ethnographies, mostly from the 1990s, offer insight into the process of neoliberal privatization and its societal undoing during the era of post-socialist transition.5 yet chris hann’s 2006 text, “not the horse we wanted!” postsocialism, neoliberalism, and eurasia (2006), clearly laid out the connection to post-socialist neoliberalism in its title. hann argues that the spread of neoliberal economic principles and identity politics alongside private ownership, multi-party politics, and the proliferation of non-governmental organizations (ngos) are poor compensation for a decline in the substantive material and moral conditions of post-socialist citizenship. stephen collier’s reworking of neoliberalism with social anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 5 modernity and biopolitics in post-soviet social (2011), takes the analysis one step further. collier, however, steers away from the focus on the 1990s privatization of the post-soviet sphere and its effects, and instead draws upon foucault’s lectures from the 1970s on biopolitics, examining neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. i see rational explanations of neoliberalism in the work of both scholars, in the sense that i find various micro and macro level manifestations of neoliberalism’s effects touching and shaping every level of human experience and society. i therefore take neoliberalism to be a particular set of phenomena—political, economic, social, and historical—and consequent lived experience, which on the one hand are strategically implemented within a unique set of circumstances, and which on the other hand emerge in random manifestations. given the nature of today’s interconnected, global markets and the resulting competition, i see neoliberalism as a reaction to and function of this economic structure and strategically speaking, as a particular way of organizing these markets in order to benefit particular interests—all in the name of “rationality.” i thus turn to hann’s (2006) conclusion, where he decries the drastic changes in standards of living throughout the post-socialist world and emphasizes the specificity of local history in viewing these on-the-ground transformations. i also move forward with collier’s vision of neoliberalism as a tour de force in the early stage of the 21st century which must be examined in regard to its specific form of political rationality—how within a society it can be rationalized and supported through political systems and their actors. because neoliberalism is undergirded by arguments of such logic and systematicity, an ethnographic examination of its valorization and permutations in practice, such as borneman suggests, contributes to problematizing its claims. understanding the overarching circumstances of the transition in tikveš —namely privatization in the wine industry as the country prepares for eu entry—is essential to better examining the on-the-ground reworkings and negotiations linked to the neoliberal privatizing, yet eu development-oriented, transition at work in macedonia. indeed, a series of steps designed to supposedly streamline markets and create opportunity for workers at all levels has actually led to a more stratified society. this has been characterized by the shift from government-owned wineries and purchasing, to the creation and distribution of subsidies paid to both grape buyers (wineries) and sellers (grape growers). what we find in tikveš, then, is similar to what scott uncovered in his fieldwork where “we are dealing…with the undramatic but ubiquitous struggle against the effects of state-fostered capitalist development in the countryside: the loss of access to the means of production (proletarianization), the loss of work (marginalization) and income, and the loss of what little status…the poor could assert before” (1985: 241).6 such development and privatization have been implemented in a variety of ways in post-socialist spaces, though in many countries beginning with a “decapitation of the state” (chavdarova 1999:186) alongside the infamous post-socialist “shock therapy” experienced in russia and elsewhere.7 macedonia, however, largely averted such an experience; the country and its economy slowly privatizing while being used profitably as a staging ground for military, aid, and other deployments to the north during yugoslavia’s violent dissolution. yet with an end to the large balkan conflicts of the 1990s, the country then had its own conflict in 2001, and was subject to the effects of a greek economic embargo followed by the more recent eu accession mandates, privatization, and job losses in the last decade. as bartlett (2007) observes of privatization legislation in macedonia, it was not introduced until 1993, was not enacted until 1995 and the ‘financial deepening’ of it was not evident until 2003. nonetheless, over one-thousand enterprises were privatized by 1997 and 1,678 by 2003, with the main method being management and employee buyout. the most profitable though—234 with assets of €705 million to be precise—were “sold at substantial anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 6 discounts, often on the basis of severely undervalued asset valuations”, and were then bought out by management: “managers had acquired by far the most valuable part of the privatized company base” (204). further, there were just 155 companies with assets of only €25 million which were sold to foreign owners, meaning that only the connected elite in macedonia were benefiting from the privatization process. as a result, the majority of macedonians have become worse off financially, less trusting of one another and the government, and uncertain of the future. indeed, the “transition” seen a decade prior elsewhere in the post-socialist world began to pick up speed in macedonia in the first decade of the 21st century, and in tikveš and elsewhere what has occurred is a transformation in the basis of the growers’ domination. control and power, once based on the dependencies of government production, are now far more the subject of law(s), coercion, market forces, and political patronage. the concurrent reality is thus the seeming inability of individuals to make plans given poor and uncertain economic conditions, and an even higher rate of distrust in the government and politicians, not to mention fellow citizens who—being in a similar situation—are looking out for their own interests. for the most part though, the rich have violated the social contract and it is they who now have all. borrowing from chavdarova’s research (1999) on bulgarians suffering from externally imposed governance and rules combined with local, informal relationships in the wake of rapid privatization in the 1990s (and later eu entry in 2007), i put forth that there are two post-socialist “games” (kideckel 1995) going on simultaneously: one of rural, peasant survival as a result of “pro-market” government policies, and one of “inside privatization”— the process through which such policies are created. i focus here on the latter, whereby “inside privatization” refers not only to the privatization of former socially owned enterprises, but the power play and shifting of responsibility from the state to the private companies which increasingly control it. as i seek to illuminate throughout this paper, such inside privatization affects not just the market but the democracy the country claims to be, and thus its judicial system, rule of law,8 and legitimate governance. conversations in tikveš i had several interviews and more often conversations during my fieldwork about the transition and its effects, ranging from a neighbor who ranted (as many did) that with privatization “things were given away—our winery, factories, jobs for thousands of people,” to a seller at the town market who, in discussing why live chickens are no longer sold for home butchering, replied that “we lost that somewhere in the transition to democracy.” yet , there was also a local historian who claimed, on the note of graan’s “counterfeiting the nation,” that “our history has been privatized,” meaning that it had been co-opted and was being re-written. thus, such “inside privatization” has unequivocally been the predominant form of not just industrial ownership transition but an alteration to how people see themselves—their identity, livelihoods, history—and many are aware of how these aspects of their daily lives have been and continue to be hijacked. i discuss such details because, since the dissolution of yugoslavia, the standard of living, pay, legislation and protection of labor, created under decades of socialism, have decayed. given decreasing government assistance (despite the introduction of subsidies9) alongside increasing debt, this has been a reactionary process. yet combined with privatization and market forces, it is proving devastating to many. as one acquaintance, a young man named vane who works in a nearby wire factory explained: privatization has meant people work six days a week, and with worse pay. and some people aren’t paid for months at a time. fortunately i get my pay anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 7 regularly, but it’s hardly enough to live off of. if i go out for an evening in town i’ll spend several days’ pay! his salary was the equivalent of 230 eur per month, though this was an improvement from the tiling job he had before, where he earned just 170 eur per month. as a woman who works at a local ngo confirmed, “these are the rights macedonian workers have lost with the transition: companies can more easily fire people; hire without contracts, benefits, retirement, insurance; and they force employees to work more hours than they’re paid for.” yet, it was being in tikveš and seeking out the experiences of the region’s grape growers that i received the greatest insight. that said, it must be stipulated that i came to realize how their opinions were affected by personal experience, as well as political and economic views, among other things. some were members of the ruling party (vmrodpmne) and others of the opposition (sdsm); some bought into the notion of privatization and/or benefited from it, others (most) did not. despite the many conversations i had with such individuals, the situation did not immediately become any clearer for me. for, as one individual below said, “it’s not black and white” and one cannot say precisely who is to blame. in fact, the flurry of activity and fluid discourse makes deducing such a conclusion difficult. a prime example of this came at the start of the 2011 grape harvest in late august of that year. after several years of delayed payments or unpaid debts, the ministry of agriculture and its inspectors announced that three of the larger wineries would not be allowed to export their wine unless they paid off their 2009 debts to the grape growers by september 22, 2011. this announcement naturally set in motion a sense of government intervention and assistance on behalf of the growers, and thus temporary faith in the system. it was also, of course, a time to express their discontent, disbelief, and disapproval (at best) of how the wine industry was being run. the conversations10 i proceeded to have brought forth the following comments: it’s a fact that something smells (smrdi) and it’s not like it should be. but don’t just blame the wineries. ask why in the time of sdsm11 there was a higher price and the grapes were paid for by the new year? and today with vmro it’s the other way around! the government, not the wineries, is controlling agriculture (zemjodelstvo). today if you don’t appreciate the state, they don’t appreciate our product, no matter the quality! the minister should help, not fine us. if they want to keep fining, they need to find those government promoters (promotori) who spend tens of millions of euros for nothing. they haven’t opened any new markets or done any deals, so they might as well enjoy the people’s money! such as the above, who accused the state of inefficiency and corruption, other growers induced notions of lawlessness, fraud, theft, and trust: a: this is a clear criminal example of theft—the wineries took something and didn’t pay. i don’t know how that the inspectors are napping and then you’re supposed to have trust in them and the police. with these double standards?! and then if some little shop doesn’t give a receipt12 they’ll seal it shut right away (plombiraat odma)! b: only with a million fines (kazni) for the wineries will the problem of paying for the grapes be solved once and for all. better is the complete confiscation of their whole property. a winery can’t have a business worth millions of euros and yet have three years of unpaid grape harvests. the grape anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 8 growers can’t finance the buying of their grapes—but only in our country does that exist! c: how are they not ashamed? they still make out the people (narodot) and agriculturalists to be illiterate and naïve (neumni). by september 22nd the grape-picking (berba) will be done. after that there’s no paying. nothing functions in this state of ours—only fraud (izmami). a disagreement between a local businessman (a) and a grower (b) about how the growers should respond illustrates different perceptions and knowledge of the situation: a: why are the growers crying? because they must pick the grapes, for two reasons: to take the subsidies from the government, and to take money from the grapes handed over. that is, they must give the grapes to some winery. why don’t they sell them instead for cheaper but in cash on their own scale (na vaga) instead of waiting for the “determined” (utvrdeni) prices which they’ll be lucky to receive in a year or two? isn’t that more logical and easier? they don’t do so though because it’s not black and white with trade, not here nor in the eu—it depends on how they market it, and are they satisfied. from the other side, the wineries set conditions for the quality of the grapes, because however greater the quality and the richer in sugar, then it’s better for them and they’ll make better wine. i guess because of the global economic crisis, importers aren’t buying the wine like before, with that kind of intensity, which is filling up our wineries with wine to be exported. everything just coincided in a period of a few years (since 200813) and the crisis (kriza) is felt by all of them, unfortunately. the grower’s heated reaction to the above comment: b: maestro14, you probably don’t know anything about the grape industry. first, if grape growers give their grapes to random buyers in cash then they can’t get subsidies. second, last year the price of those grapes were only around 4-6 mkd (0.07-.10 eur) a kilo while the prices the wineries were giving were 6-8 mkd (0.10-.13 eur) and sometimes more, and of course you get the subsidy. you do the math! and something else: go work in the vineyards for a few days in temperatures of around 40 c without any shade and then ask whether you’d give away your grapes for those prices! some were even more vocal and descriptive than others however, such as the following: since 2009 my grapes aren’t paid for. i gave them to the winery for three years and i still haven’t received a denar. how do i live, does anyone ask me? this government needs to tell the wineries: if you have money for purchasing, deposit it in the bank and start with your buying. don’t take our grapes for three years and not give us any money! well, from where do i eat? my kids and i burned in the fields (izgorea po nivite) for those…they should open the borders and allow for the export of our grapes, and give the subsidies to those buyers. don’t please our wineries anymore—they’ve already got some thousand hectares of vineyards; because of that they’ve cooled it (se ladat) with us. i don’t know how much [debt] i owe, i’ve already started to sell off some fields (nivi). anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 9 another commented: am only i to ask whether this year we lozari need to buy the rope for hanging (jažeto za besenje) ourselves on our own or will the wineries again give it to us for free? so the last couple years of harvests were difficult for the wineries? where there is this kind of situation, where you can take raw material and not pay for it? not paying for grapes is a black hole for the entire industry (stopanstvo) in which we’re all falling if something’s not done right away to save us. take and don’t pay? everywhere else that’s called theft, and here— business? they know nothing’s going to happen to them. the courts are disputing? i’m suing (tužam) a company for a small debt and still after three years there’s no decision (presuda)…there wasn’t money for the wineries to pay me? ‘blink asan’15, look in the parking lot and you’ll see—those who owe the most drive the most expensive cars. all of these comments help illustrate the situation, tension, emotion of the wine region’s transition, yet the latter testimony is one of the more gripping. it hits home the reality of several years of unpaid grape harvests, the “mafia” rule, the incurred debt, and the ineffective legal system. however, the others touch on the depression, suffering, and anger with the powers that be for not assisting the growers and their livelihoods. in hindsight though, the likely reason for the entire announcement from the ministry to withhold the licenses of the wineries had to do with the grave concern in the inner circles of winery owners and government officials that the growers might in fact revolt as they had done the year before, and not pick their grapes, as many had been threatening up to that point. having lost faith in the system, why would they bother to invest in the labor (their own and hired) that it takes to complete a seasonal harvest? with the ministry’s announcement however, the growers were back on their feet and feeling, although obviously bitter and skeptical, also invigorated. i recall vividly that week because the tension had become so palpable, and then there was the outpouring of commentary in homes, gardens, cafes, and on the streets as the government apparently shifted its weight behind the growers. while this saw most of the grapes harvested, the “game” of privatization was merely being played out one day at a time. punishing the privateers: a “special selection” the wineries that had come under fire—though there were, as many informants stated, more wineries than just the three who should have been included in the ministry’s actions—owed debts from two years’ prior and were forced to pay them off. but those wineries then proceeded to withhold 2010 harvest payments and collect grapes in 2011, not paying the growers for them until mid-2012 at earliest for those who received payment—and par for the course, not at all for some growers.16 at the same time, the wineries themselves began complaining that they were being unfairly treated, were being selectively chosen and blamed for the crisis, and were in unenviable positions (as one informant above testifies). in fact, an individual down the street from where i lived, who owns a winery outside of tikveš (in the city of štip) but sources grapes locally, said in august 2011 that they were still trying to empty two large cisterns which held some 50 tons of wine. further, he commented that he felt the laws must be respected but that some sort of “emergency decision” (vonredna odluka) needed to be made to assist with this crisis, which in his opinion had to do with the inability of wineries to export freely. the whole situation is thus a seeming return to a pre-socialist way of living: the government does little to control prices or assist with exporting the country’s second largest export (after tobacco), relying on the often variable and anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 10 unpredictable nature of the market instead, and only intervening sporadically and through mediocre subsidies. this came up in an interview with the head of one of the region’s newer but successful luxury wineries, who diplomatically stated “(i)t would help if there was an international campaign to promote our wines.” however, in discussing the problems of exporting to the large, sought-after markets of russia and china, the owner, g. kolev (pseudonym), then commented that it is best to go it alone: i don’t think there’s any sort of problem, we follow all government laws and we don’t have trouble getting it from here to there. but in financial terms we have to show that we have good wine for the money and we have to deal with the fluctuating price of wine. we and the markets set the price, not the government. this statement collided with the reality for growers. although kolev repeatedly stated that cooperation with the growers was of great importance, what his winery has done is increasingly cease their sourcing of grapes from individual growers and instead create their own vineyards. these vineyards in fact comprised 90 percent of their grapes in 2011, and is the model for most of the world’s wineries, as it allows for better regulation of the grapes— their growth, maintenance, and harvesting. such regulation is therefore the pivot point in the tikveš wine industry: regulation has shifted from the government’s once socially-owned wineries, where grapes were largely bought from individual grape growers working a few hectares of vineyards on average, to private wineries who must compete with one another in both the domestic and international (primarily eu) marketplace. sympathy for the region’s famous independent grape growers is thus political—the wineries cannot merely dismiss them, as it would negatively affect their reputation in the region and the country as a whole (as much sympathy has been extended to the growers’ plight, particularly by other agriculturalists in the country). as kolev stated: we need to maintain good production and partnerships domestically with grape producers for the sake of the quality of the wine. but this situation, such as what happened last year, must not continue and it must be regulated. however, we have here 60 ha of vineyards which provide 90% of our needs. looking at the situation though, it has a negative effect on the industry, yet we have quality wine at a good price. what remains is for us to work together and bring positive results. the government needs to play a role in making this happen, investing in the marketing and promotion of wine, and regulating the industry so that the lives of the growers and those involved with wine production improve. kolev implicitly admitted to the benefits of cheap (if not free) labor in the statement “we have quality wine at a good price.” yet he alluded as well to the tension between not just the growers and the wineries, but the latter two and the state: both seek the state’s assistance in improving their business, either in terms of marketing (wineries) or earning a living (growers). therefore, what constitutes the crisis in the tikveš wine industry differs between the growers and wineries; now it is the growers and buyers who must play a game with the state. but the love for the state of yore has been replaced by the bitter resentment on the part of growers, as the state’s lack of support and regulation, not to mention interference, leaves growers baffled and the game one-sided.17 as the comments from the growers illustrate, they anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 11 feel manipulated and used—that they are giving their grapes away, subsidizing the wineries, and being taken for fools. what lies underneath this mix are changing perceptions of moral and political economy, including power relations as well as buying power. similar to what hann (2006) noted in his work in hungary, enthusiasm for privatization coupled with a weak state unconcerned with equality and a healthy standard of living has left many in post-socialist countries concerned. it is as if “the community must give way to the sovereign individual” (13), and as i add—the powerful sovereign individual then goes unchecked as he and his friends accumulate wealth and assets on the backs of others. further, even if there is increased production and wealth in a country, people will point out that prices—particularly for food and energy—in the era of a market economy are far less stable than they were during socialism and are more expensive overall, and that many have lost the security of employment and a regular salary (hann 2006). in hungary, for example, hann discovered that property and laws passed requiring farmers to account for every liter of wine produced resulted in bankruptcy, abandoning vineyards, producing for self-consumption, and/or decreasing production altogether. strong anti-eu sentiment ran among them, as they felt they were not benefiting from eu subsidies and were seeing land privatized and exploited by austrian interests. in tikveš, the same could be said but the private interests are largely domestic. socalled “euro-skepticism” though runs high given the crisis in nearby greece18, and few even consider or debate the merit of joining the eu. the effects of the union’s policies (or lack thereof)—not only in terms of grape and wine production but in acceding to greece over macedonia’s name issue19—leave many pushing forth on their own accord. then again, some would say that the powerful in macedonia prefer to keep the country out of the eu. as one acquaintance asked: “they control everything here and have all the power, so why would they want to destroy that with competition from the eu?” regardless, one example of the contrast between the daily lives of tikveš villagers and the national (macedonian) and international (eu) focus on industry is that of a village on the eastern side of the vardar river north of the region’s second largest town, negotino. just 200 meters from the country’s main e-75 motorway corridor, the village was made inaccessible when the bridge to it was washed away by floods in november 2010. the locals went a month without being able to cross the river, and only after materials were locally collected was a foot bridge built, over which they were able to haul all of their groceries and other goods. however, it was washed away in march 2013, and the village has now gone without a proper bridge for several years. thus, the state has proven itself unreliable and unsupportive at best, and this situation merits the question: when a bridge is washed away and the people have to build themselves a footpath over the country’s main river, yet hundreds of millions of euros are taken from the state budget for identity building projects, subsidies, and state building (largely in the capital), what are the people to think? this situation and question encompass much of the sentiment toward the state: that it is “thieving” (apaška) and unreliable, with politicians just wanting to enrich themselves (se zbogatat). village visits, protests, and the thieving state in this section i discuss further the perceptions of theft as experienced by grape growers, and the protests they waged as a result. my fieldwork was riddled with experiences that strengthened my resolve that such change as i have discussed was at hand. in town or village, i spoke with individuals whose lives were undergoing an uncertain transformation. i have discussed thus far a handful of these events, but i attempt below to use additional ethnographic vignettes to relay the experience and observations of growers from a couple of anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 12 tikveš villages, so that the reader may better understand the ambiguity, uncertainty, and overall difficulty surrounding this era of life in country’s premier wine region. begnište in late august 2010, just at the beginning of that year’s grape harvest, i biked with a friend, ilija, to the small tikveš village of begnište. nestled five miles down a dead-end road up in the hills above lake tikveš, the village has been acutely subject to the effects of the wine industry’s privatization: except for the school and a couple of shops, the inhabitants of begnište are nearly all grape growers who have until recently brought their carts or tractor drawn-trailers of grapes down into town upon harvest. upon arrival at the village center, ilija and i stopped to rest and converse with the mostly older men who were staring curiously at us. we sat near them to drink some water and in macedonian fashion, be brought into the conversation. speaking about the lack of payment for their prior harvest, one individual exclaimed “hell, the price of grapes is so f—king low and we’re not even paid! fifteen years ago, five years ago even, they’d give us 15 denari (mkd, equal to eur 0.25) per kilogram; now it’s seven or eight!” the grower was literally up in arms, orchestrating his monologue through gestures, but eliciting responses from those around him. when i confirmed that they were grape growers (lozari), one replied “we all are, but we’ve not seen one denar of last year’s crop, and have no money at all. we can’t pay bills, so the electric company (evn) turned off our electricity. it hasn’t been so bad since turkish times (tursko vreme)!” this was not the first or last time i would hear such a comparison, but the suffering and uncertainty were clear. from privatization of the wineries to the electric company— which has become both more expensive and stricter in severing service if payments are not made—the process of privatization has cast the state into the realm of the burdensome, uncharitable, and seemingly thieving.20 this trope of “thieving state” (apaška država) was uttered frequently when the behavior of the state and its functionaries was inferred. thus when i asked growers why they thought they were not receiving more attention from the state and why the wineries were not being condemned, they always lamented the vinska mafija, privatizacija, and politicians’ connections to them both. indeed, it is believed that the attention of the general public and the media is intentionally focused elsewhere, as nowhere in the countries main daily newspapers will someone find reference to the “wine mafia” who are so commonly blamed for the crisis. further, as many grape growers retorted: “what do the politicians care about us? they just want to get rich.”21 through such statements, and with the most notorious wineries taking the lion’s share of subsidies22 (up to €2 million each), the situation slowly became clear to me while in the field: media suppression and focus on government dictated issues—from economic development to eu entry to national and international politics—meant the country’s primary wine region was undergoing a neoliberal, privatization process whose effects were only known to those living there. an older couple in begnište who i came to know during my fieldwork, vesna and pero, condemned both the political parties and state for corruption and theft, saying that they see little interest by the government in their village. whatever they get is left-over, they claim: “if they’re building something in town—new sidewalks—and they have enough bricks they might bring them here and fix part of our street.” this comment n fact followed the recent laying of a mere 20 meter stretch of road in front of their and a neighbor’s home had been recently laid in brick, as previously it was only cobblestone and dirt, and much of it remained as such beyond their property conversations such as those in begnište were had on several occasions, yet every grower was affected and reacted differently. for the many who work elsewhere and grow grapes on the side, or who have a spouse, sibling or parents with a job (rabota), or pension anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 13 (penzija), they are able to get by better. but for those such as the older men in begnište, they are isolated in many senses of the word—in terms of geography, political affiliation, economic standing, and gender.23 “the state doesn’t do anything for us,”24 they claimed that day. they only respect the state so long as it benefits them, otherwise they tend to reject it— there is not the mindset nor desire to support and be a part of the state structure. this is understandable though from a rural perspective—as vesna and pero testified, the state does little in terms of reaching out and developing infrastructure, improving schools, education, and livelihoods. all the while the government spends hundreds of millions of euros on renovations to the capital city, skopje, not to mention lining their own pockets. “left hand, right pocket” (leva raka, desen dzep), many say in lamenting such corruption. indeed, to the average rural macedonian, democracy is a farce. a close friend commented on this when he quipped that the word democracy in macedonian, demokratija, where demos is people (in greek), and krati is “to cut” (in macedonian) is in actuality a cutting [off] of the people from the system. the grape growers’ protest and revolt having reached a meltdown after two years of unpaid harvests, the tikveš grape growers reacted in september 2010 by “striking” (štrajkuva) at first, and then revolting. at the so called strike, protestors placed signs making a variety of political statements, from directly addressing the prime minister, nikola gruevski, by saying “we’re grape growers (lozari), grujo, come see us,” to “we’re bringing our grapes to skopje without money.” but when that did no good they realized they were at a turning point. for although the government was involved in quelling their three days of protests through a compromise, and peacefully breaking up the blockades they had setup on the region’s roads, the growers were left to deal with the situation and adapt in the end. that is, none of their demands—for set grape prices, timely payments, and the exclusion of sugar content levels (brix)—were met. in symbolic revolt, an estimated fifty-percent of growers left their grapes to rot on the vines, unwilling to even consider putting forth the labor and costs associated with harvesting them. others began using their grapes to produce vast quantities of the region’s famous brandy (rakija), or replacing vineyards with other cash crops or tradable produce. the production of mass quantities—a “flood” (poplava), as many said—of the local rakija brandy could not have come at a worse time though, and serves as an example of the state’s increasing control at the behest of business interests. whereas rakija making for personal use was tolerated and its distribution little regulated before, the leaders of the private wineries—who also produce brandy—have lobbied hard to reign in on such bootleg production. i was made aware of this through an informant who translated at a meeting with the multi-millionaire head of the conglomerate which now owns the region’s formerly largest, state-owned winery (as well as the rights to coca-cola, among other ventures). at the meeting, the company’s head claimed that private brandy production was detrimental to the sale of the winery’s own brandy, and that he was doing all he could to pressure government mps to implement restrictions on it. his efforts were fruitful, as police checkpoints on the country’s main roads have become commonplace in recent years, and are used to flag down suspicious looking cars which might be hauling the brandy, whose license plates indicate their origin to be in tikveš. in the context of my own research, i therefore have seen authoritarianism in terms of the state’s hands-off approach as the “wine mafia” has taken hold. grape growers are being subjugated and subject to a process they have no say in, but of which they experience the lobbying, closed-door decisions, and consequent policies. laws made in the capital such as those which regulate the sale of homemade brandy but which fail to regulate the wineries anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 14 themselves, make it clear to growers that the state has in fact become not just authoritative, but authoritarian. rather than work on behalf of its citizens, it works on behalf of the winery owners in this case, and other private interests. furthermore, there is a spread of disinformation to growers, and a constant use of a national and international financial crisis (kriza) in the discourse surrounding (inconsistent) grape purchasing. these do as they intend, to instill fear and uncertainty and prevent due payment for growers’ grapes. conclusion a subtle form of authoritarianism has taken hold in macedonia. accompanied by the shift to neoliberal economic policy, this form of governance works alongside and within the democratic system. indeed, neoliberalism is malleable in the sense that its implementation depends little on the political-economy in which it is being realized. thus it should not be seen as a rigid institution through which 21st century “free-market capitalism” functions, yet it is an institution and system of governance in the sense that it manifests itself with unique effects. citizens may vote, but both businessmen and politicians—wine mafia in the case of tikveš—seek profits and the freedom to dictate the country’s path. as a result, the state’s authority may continue to increase, but so do its notoriety and questions of its legitimacy as it becomes an enforcer of policy created elsewhere. therefore, by using macedonia as an empirical case to illustrate the neoliberalising process, the latter’s promotion is thus revealed to be a causal factor in the country’s inability to consolidate democracy during its transition. brought about under the neoliberal rhetoric of economic development and growth which should benefit all, this preoccupation serves as a smokescreen behind which lay the interests of political and other elites—such as the “wine mafia”—who stand to profit at the citizenry’s expense. individuals such as the tikveš grape growers may fiercely contest these particular interests in a quest for the democracy they are so incessantly offered, but observations from outside the spheres of power such as the ethnographic vignettes in this paper yield insight into the illicit and opaque activities surrounding the region’s transition. to return to the paper’s introduction with linz’s and borneman’s systematicization of authoritarianism, we can see in the transition in tikveš and the power play at work (“inside privatization”) that indeed, there is a concentration of power at the top (the winery owners and government), maintained through repressive means (withholding of payments and an ineffective judicial system usually unwilling to prosecute winery owners); submission to authority (the growers being forced into submission—unable even through strikes to exact change); unaccountable if not unchecked exercise of power (again, the “wine mafia”); and intolerance of meaningful opposition (from the grape growers). through the growers’ opposition and disruptions, from striking, protesting, leaving their grapes unpicked, and making demands on the wineries and the shield of state power which protects them, they are on the one hand participating in a democratic system. but on the other hand, largely due to the oppression they face and lack of success they have in advancing their case, they are subject to a subtle yet modern form of authoritarianism. it is one which, unlike the nationally touted, explicit draconian measures of the 20th century socialist era—where in the case of yugoslavia, political prisoners were publicly denounced and locked up on the croatian island of goli otok (naked island)—today’s opponents, disruptors, and “prisoners” are left as they are: to continue to play the “game” of privatization whereby they are fed with disinformation in the media and otherwise largely ignored. instead, the government and its global, free-market oriented ruling class litter the media with stories of the country’s seemingly ceaseless and certainly questionable advance into the european union, euro-atlantic integration, and the growth of its gross domestic product (gdp). anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 15 indeed, both the grape growers of tikveš and the country’s thousands of other agriculturalists are largely being shunned, with the knowledge that they have virtually no power to change the rules of play. 1 this quote was taken from the manuscript which, with slight modifications, was presented as the keynote address at the soyuz conference at the harriman institute, columbia university, on march 22, 2013. 2 telgrafska agencija nove jugoslavije 3 sdsm stands for socialdemokratski sojuz na makedonija (‘social democratic union of macedonia’) and vmro-dpmne stands for vnatrešna makedonska revolucionerna organizacija—demokratska partija za makedonsko nacionalno edinstvo (‘internal macedonian revolutionary organization— democratic party for macedonian national unity’). 4 see otten (2013). 5 these include works from countries such as bulgaria (creed 1997, kaneff 2002, etc.), romania (kideckel 1995, sampson 1995, and verdery 1996, 2003, etc.), and hungary and poland (hann 2003, 2006; lampland 1995). 6 scott found in his groundbreaking text, weapons of the weak, that it may appear that the peasantry (or agriculturalists such as the grape growing lozari) often waiver between an unquestioning deference and violent outbursts. but, in fact, there is a massive middle ground that is the partial/hidden “transcript”—various layers of deference to authorities and those who wield greater power in society. according to scott, the exercise of power nearly always drives the full transcript underground, and it is only when we compare—if we can—the unedited transcripts of the elites versus the subordinate classes that we uncover the extent of mutual dissimulation that prevails in the context of power relations. 7 sampson (1995) wrote of the transition in romania though that there was “shock but not much therapy” (p160). 8 as one us diplomat stated, “there’s not rule of law, but rule by law,” in referring to the selective implementation of laws, such as against political or other opponents. 9 the distribution of subsidies began in 2010, but have in terms of net income been a drastic reduction for grape growers. when the government bought grapes, as it did throughout the yugoslav era and into the 21st century, growers could pay for all of their inputs, hired labor, familial needs, and some claimed, “buy a new tractor every year if needed.” this is no longer the case. 10 these conversations were held mostly in the town center around its main square (ploštad) and in cafes, as well as with neighbor acquaintances. such individual diatribes are quite common in tikveš, and establish a competitive and at times contentious form of conversation. 11 sdsm, as the reformed communist party, governed macedonia throughout much of the 1990s and until the current prime minister and vmro-dpmne came to power in 2006. anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 16 12 the government enforces the use of receipts and the machines which produce them, in order to ensure tax payment and ultimately collection. 13 author’s insertion. 14 majstore—said sarcastically. 15 this is a local turkish-macedonian saying, which in full goes ‘blink asan, so i can trick you’ (miži asan da te ba’am) and which is used when one suspects they’re being lied to. 16 this information was collected through personal correspondence and return visits to tikveš in may 2012 and may 2013. 17 as one informant sarcastically quipped, “(t)he government is like a church here. people must respect it, they pray it will give them something for doing so, and if they question it they’re a heretic!” 18 the greek crisis has directly affected many individuals and families in macedonia. from severing the rail line on the greek side to the macedonian border, which was used by many laborers to head into greek macedonia, to the shrinking of wealth and opportunities, macedonians—as cheap labor—have been nudged out of the picture. 19 the “name issue” refers to the fact that greece refuses to recognize macedonia by its constitutional name, claming the name “macedonia” to be hellenic in origin and the propriety of greece. the result has been macedonia’s inability to join nato, and stalled eu accession talks. 20 this is not only in macedonia, however, as the resignation of neighboring bulgaria’s prime minister in february 2013 came on the heels of fierce protests about their privatized energy costs, and there are regular protests in kosovo over energy prices as well. 21 ne im e gajle za nas, samo sakaat da se zbogatat. 22 both grape producers and purchasers receive subsidies, with the wineries collectively taking the majority of the subsidies available. this is meant to be encouragement for them to purchase from growers, but on top of unpaid “purchases” it appears to grape growers to only be further evidence of the wine mafia at work in business and government, the latter enriching one another on the backs of the growers. 23 to make matters worse, the village is three-quarters men, as young women are more likely to go to university, receive low-wage work in towns, and/or marry elsewhere. men, who work predominantly in agriculture, face the added inability to attract a bride as a result of their low income due to crisis and privatization in the wine industry. 24 državata ništo ne pravi za nas. notes justin otten is a doctoral candidate in social anthropology at the university of kent, canterbury (uk), as well as a visiting research associate in the department of anthropology at indiana university, bloomington. his interest in macedonia and the region anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 17 began while he was a peace corps volunteer there from 2002-04, with his doctoral fieldwork funded by an american councils title viii research grant. references bartlett, will. 2007. the western balkans. in lane, d. and myant, m., eds. varieties of capitalism in post-communist countries. palgrave macmillan. borneman, john. 2011. political crime and the memory of loss. indiana university press, bloomington. brunwasser, matthew. 2010a. “after political appointment in bulgaria, rage boils over.” the new york times, june 28, 2010. 2010b. “standoff in bulgaria with organized crime.” the new york times, november 10, 2010. 2011. “concerns grow about authoritarianism in macedonia.” the new york times, october 13, 2011. burawoy, michael and verdery, katherine, eds. 1999. uncertain transition: ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world. rowman & littlefield publishers, inc. chavdarova, tanya. 1999. market developments in bulgaria: the problem of trust. in wirtschaftethik in mittel und osteuropa. iv chemnitzer ostforum, 5 marz 1999. collier, stephen. 2011. post-soviet social: neoliberalism, social modernity, biopolitics. princeton university press. creed, gerald. 1998. domesticating revolution: from socialist reform to ambivalent transition in a bulgarian village. pennsylvania state university press. graan, andrew. 2011. “counterfeiting the nation? skopje 2014 and the politics of nation branding in macedonia.” cultural anthropology, volume 28, issue 1, pages 161–179, february 2013. hann, chris. 1985. village without solidarity; polish peasants in years of crisis. yale university press. 2003. the postsocialist agrarian question: property relations and the rural condition. münster: lit (with the “property relations” group). anthropology of east europe review 31(2) fall 2013 18 2006. “not the horse we wanted!” postsocialism, neoliberalism, and eurasia. lit verlag: munster. humphrey, caroline and verdery, katherine. 2003. property in question: value transformation in the global economy. wenner gren foundation for anthropological research: berg publishers. kaneff, deema. 2002. the shame and pride of market activity: morality, identity and trading in postsocialist bulgaria. in mandel, r. & humphrey, c. (eds.) markets & moralities: ethnographies of postsocialism. berg publishers. kideckel, david, ed. 1995. east european communities: the struggle for balance in turbulent times. westview publishers. lampland, martha. 1995. the object of labor: commodification in socialist hungary. university of chicago press. levitsky, steven and way, lucan. 2010. competitive authoritarianism: hybrid regimes after the cold war. cambridge university press. linz, juan. 2000. totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. boulder, co: lynnne rienner publishers. otten, justin. 2013. utopia europa? transition and responses to eu rural development initiatives in the republic of macedonia’s tikveš wine region. kroeber anthropological society papers 103(1): 76-92. sampson, stephen. 1995. all is possible, nothing is certain: the horizons of transition in a romanian village. in kideckel, david, ed. east european communities: the struggle for balance in turbulent times. westview publishers. scott, james. 1985. weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance. yale university press. verdery, katherine. 1996. what was socialism and what comes next? princeton university press. 2002. the vanishing hectare: property and value in postsocialist transylvania. published by cornell university press. the worlds of russian village women: tradition, transgression, compromise. by laura j. olson and svetlana adonyeva. the university of wisconsin press, 2012. 368 pp. notes. bibliography. glossary. index. photographs. $39.95, paper. elaine mackinnon, department of history, university of west georgia it has never been easy for outsiders to penetrate the closed communities of the russian peasantry. consequently, certain elements of rural life and culture remain shrouded in a veil of mystery and misperceptions. understanding gender in the russian villages is particularly elusive, because women tend to perform their various roles in not readily visible domestic spheres, and patriarchal norms prohibit women’s interactions with strangers. two scholars, laura j. olson, an american, and svetlana adonyeva, a russian, have joined forces to overcome such barriers to study the lives of russian village women. the result of their three-decade long research project, the worlds of russian village women: tradition, transgression, compromise, opens a valuable window into the lives of three generations of russian women and the history of their communities set against the backdrop of the twentieth century. this richly detailed and comprehensive work portrays women both as individuals and as social agents, and makes a compelling case for the preeminence of gender and age as major factors shaping rural communities today. the book challenges previous scholarship on russian folklore and ethnography. the authors contend that because rural women have not traditionally sung or told stories in public, but rather did so in private spaces, often to exclusively female audiences, they have been ignored or misinterpreted by folklorists. looking at women solely through the lens of patriarchy contributed to scholars minimalizing of the significance of culture as a realm within which women find agency and even empowerment. women possess their own traditions, and these play a significant role in the ways they exercise power within a patriarchal order. olson and adonyeva depart from previous researchers in that they focus primarily on recording and analyzing women’s own thoughts and explanations for the songs, stories, and rituals that they perform. from 1983 until 2009, they conducted interviews with women born prior to 1950 in rural communities in northern and central russia. this created personal channels of communication, observation, and interaction that then offered access to the domestic spaces of women’s cultural and social agency. the interviews also afford the authors scope for analyzing the important interplay between individual motives and community norms. they show how women either transgress or make compromises with social customs and thereby shape the interpretation and transmission of tradition. their long term commitment to the project also enabled them to observe women at different phases of the life cycle, and during different seasons of the year, providing a clear sense of how women’s roles change over time. both authors bring to their analysis a shared interest and training in folklore, gender, and cultural studies. seven of the nine chapters explore women’s engagement in various cultural and social activities, including storytelling, singing, performing chastushki (short four-line lyrics that are often satirical and challenge social norms and hierarchies), witchcraft, gossip, superstitions, courtship, marriage, and death rituals. their analysis of songs, stories, anecdotes and fables anthropology of east europe review 32(2) fall 2014 105 anthropology of east europe review 32(2) fall 2014 demonstrate the resiliency of traditional beliefs and customs. village women still construct identities through folk singing, and in particular romantic odes that reflect the patriarchy of the past rather than the norms of the present. the authors also illuminate more modern rituals such as soap opera watching, which has become a means of social cohesion and moral agency. women are revealed to be major contributors to the corpus of rural folklore, though they tell stories and practice magic in ways decidedly different from men. women use cultural forms such as folk singing to tell their own stories and unlike men, seek less to entertain than to transmit values. the authors also show how women act as primary spiritual guardians of their households and their communities, which is empowering even within a still prevalent framework of patriarchy. due to its interdisciplinary approach and content, this book will be of interest to scholars in multiple fields, including history, folklore, gender studies, cultural anthropology and sociology. the book is particularly useful for students because of its discussion of methodology for social and cultural analysis, including using gender identity as a means for gaining access to rural women’s domestic spaces. they engage in critical dialogue about their use of interviews, and thoughtfully analyze moments where they believe cultural misunderstandings may be occurring. most beneficial for students is the fact that this book is not simply a compendium of interview transcripts, folk songs, and other cultural texts. the authors provide a lively and insightful narrative, through which they contextualize and interpret these source materials, and compare their analyses with that of other researchers from both russia and the west. though panoramic in its portrait of women’s lives, the book has limits, especially with the size of its sample. it relies primarily upon subjective statements of self-selected women from only a small number of rural communities in one region of russia. some may contest the authors’ claims for the significance of subjectivity in determining the exact nature of what women’s lives are like, and of how power is exercised. despite these limitations, however, this is a groundbreaking study that not only broadens our understanding of women’s lives in the russian countryside, but also tells an important story of how rural communities weathered the twentieth century’s upheavals of war, revolution, collectivization, and the collapse of soviet communism. the book is, moreover, a testament to the fruitfulness of collaborative research between russia and the west. it offers a unique and intimate glimpse into the world and mindset of these village women, the stories they tell and the songs they sing. it is an engrossing book to read whether or not one specializes specifically in russian cultural studies and history. the authors draw readers into these women’s lives in a meaningful way, by making the women as familiar to the reader as they are to the authors themselves. it illuminates the essential role of culture as a medium for the negotiation of social and political power in rural communities. the hope is that this will inspire similar multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of gender and peasant life in other regions of russia and the world. 106 microsoft word 9tw9vlachaki, vasilaki, koutsourakis finalaeereditors.docx anthropology of east europe review special issue 38 (1), 2021. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v37i1.31951 border and memory in the village of koshovice1 nicos koutsourakis panteion university of social and political sciences stefania vasilaki vrije universiteit amsterdam maritina vlachaki panteion university of social and political sciences abstract this article focuses on the village of koshovice, albania, where its residents are part of the officially recognized greek minority. the local perceptions of the community are discussed as linked to the albanian-greek border and its presence in the collective memory. after the borderline creation in 1913, local residents were divided between the two neighboring countries. the ethnographic data collected underline the experiences and the everyday practices of the villagers of koshovice, especially during the period of the albanian socialist state between 1945 and 1991, when the border became almost impenetrable. the article then discusses the changes after the fall of socialism and the opening of the border in the early 1990s, especially showing how the local borderland communities are still connected nowadays to each other despite the inter-state division. key-words: borderscape, minority, community, collective memory, southeastern europe. the village of koshovice is located on the albanian side of the borderline between albania and greece. this village belongs to the area of dropull (deropolis), which is a municipality and a predominantly greek-inhabited region of the gjirokastër county, located in southern albania. the region’s villages are part of the greek ‘minority zone’ and are officially recognized by the albanian government. in 1913 albania became an independent state and the borders were created between albania and greece. thus the local community of koshovice was divided between the two states. nowadays, there are two independent settlements: koshovice on the albanian side, and aghia marina on the greek side. until 1944, the communication between the two villages was open and thus, the borderscape had no security surveillance. during that period of time people regularly crossed the border mostly for working reasons and this mobility was a typical feature of the local population regardless of the different ethnic, religious, and linguistic identities (de rapper 2004, 6). anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 130 when world war ii ended, albania was transformed into a socialist state under enver hoxha’s government, and the national border between the two countries closed. as a result, the local communities that had developed several relationships such as economic trades, cultural events and bonds of kinship between the residents of the two villages, became separated and isolated (nitsiakos and mantzos, 2008, 257). furthermore, the socialist government inflicted strict restrictions on the movement of people, both abroad and within the country. in that way, the authorities imposed the immobility of the population as one of the state’s principles (gregorič bon 2017, 303). under this premise, the communication between the two villages evolved to be stricter and more limited than before. this article focuses on the concept of the border and its social consequences through the prism of koshovice. to this end, we discuss how the people of koshovice interpret the meaning of the border.2 this research aims to explore two points: first, how the locals have challenged the strictness of the border through everyday practices, and second, how the border presence has affected the divided communities throughout the years. these two aspects will be evaluated within the analytical frame of the collective memory of the community. koshovice our ethnographic field site lies about 500 meters away from the borderline. as mentioned above, the demarcation of the border between albania and greece in 1913 split the village in half and cut it off from most of the agricultural and livestock areas, which in turn became part of the greek territory. according to voula, one of our interlocutors who lives and works in athens, koshovice and aghia marina were considered as two neighborhoods belonging to the same village.3 the area of aghia marina, formerly called vatsounia, was a natural continuation of the main settlement and included the arable land of the village. gradually, an independent settlement in the vatsounia region was created by koshovice’s residents who chose to settle permanently in greece and keep contact with their relatives that were living on the other side of the border. meanwhile, with the passage of time this new settlement was renamed by the greek authorities to aghia marina. according to takis, a 40-year-old resident of koshovice, the specificity of this new settlement reflects the allocation of the houses that are quite far from each other: ‘koshovice was the center of the village. in aghia marina, there were only sheepfolds and agricultural fields. over the years, villagers from koshovice settled permanently in aghia marina and built their homes where their fields used to be. for this reason, the houses are far from each other.’ this arrangement was overthrown with the establishment of the albanian socialist state in 1944. during this period the supervision of the greek-albanian borderline intensified, and the military was guarding the border on both sides. as maria, a 60-year-old woman who lives in koshovice and athens told us: ‘after world war ii, the border was guarded by the army, while barbed wire was placed on the paths that connected the two settlements.’ thus, during the socialist period most of the villagers continued to work as land workers, but the agricultural production and the arable land in the albanian side was controlled by the local state-owned agricultural cooperative. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 131 according to the collected interviews, the majority of the village infrastructure collapsed after the fall of the socialist state in the early 1990s. the agricultural cooperative was disbanded, while the community’s school and the cooperative’s stores ceased to operate. furthermore, most of the village’s population migrated to greece due to the reopening of the border. today, koshovice is a small and isolated village. the road that connects the village with the main highway is poorly maintained and the bridge that was located at the entrance of the village has collapsed, making the road very dangerous for vehicles. in koshovice there are a few residents during the winter, most of whom are elders. in the summer, the village population increases due to the return of the villagers who have migrated abroad, for their summer vacations. photo no. 1 – the stone that defines the borderline between greece and albania is located 500 meters from the village.4 border and the collective memory of the community the concept of the border is a key point of our research, and provides the basis for this article. anthropologist sarah green (2018, 67) argues that the concept of borders, as straight lines on the map, is a result of specific political and historical perceptions, which ignore the complex reality that exists in border areas. for many theorists, borders represent powerful political spaces in which there are possible cracks in homogenizing discourses based on ethnicity, gender, race, and sexuality. therefore, they conclude that borders are counters that anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 132 have the ability to consolidate power or to challenge it through the existence of hybrids and crosses (cunningham and heyman 2004, 291). following the approach of donnan and wilson (2010), we conclude that it is not possible to exclude the political context of the meaning of the border or to assume that its dimensions are shaped in a passive way. although such dimensions are actively shaped and often visible, there are always some implicit and invisible aspects that underline the concept of the border. for those who live in the borderlands, it is a common practice to assume the border as something invisible (donnan and wilson 2010, 5). borders can also be understood as ‘gates’, temporarily and selectively open or closed. despite the main condition of its penetrability, populations from the two sides of the border are often related and manage to communicate with each other. for this reason, an anthropological analysis of borders and borderland areas must consider people and institutions from different ethnic groups and nations while also take into account actions that lead to border managing decisions either by the state or by the local residents. in the end, it is important to remember that people living on the borders are often agents in the construction, negotiation and maintenance of the border, and thus influence social, financial, and political changes, beyond their locality and sometimes beyond their state. collective memory is the second term we employ for our analytic frame. this research focuses on how the local community remembers its past, especially the separation period. the term collective memory was introduced by the french philosopher and sociologist maurice halbwachs (1992), who argues that individual memory is a part or even an aspect of collective memory. in this view “memory is not just about the person, but about the community and the collective as well” (abrams 2010, 114). at the same time, it is evident that memory does not remain unchanged throughout the years, but it is a “dynamic process of reconstruction, through which the traces of the past interrelate, to tell a story” (abrams 2010,114). for marie-claire lavabre memory is a “space of communication” (todorova 2014, 7), while szacka (main 2014, 98-99) considers that collective memory is a representation of a collective past, which is built on individual and personal memories. these personal memories are transformed within the framework of the common cultural perceptions shared by a community. community “is symbolically constructed as a system of values, norms, and moral codes, which provides a sense of identity within a bounded whole to its members” (cohen 2001, 9). the community of koshovice is geographically well defined because the people consist in a small social group located at koshovice who, as keesing puts it, “recurrently interact in an interconnected set of roles” (amit and rapport 2002, 14). however, at the same time its members also belong to the imagined community of the greek nation, which “is imagined because the members will never know most of the fellow members, yet in the mind of each, lives the image of their communion” (anderson 1983, 6). identity “can only be understood as a process of ‘being’ or ‘becoming’” (jenkins 2008, 17). it is not fixed, immutable, or primordial, rather utterly sociocultural in its origins, negotiable, and flexible (jenkins 2008), while it is produced through the “interaction between relationships of similarity and difference” (jenkins 2008, 200). it is also important to mention that “collective identity” – the one that we are discussing in this article – “is as much an interactional product of ‘external’ identification by others as of ‘internal’ self-identification” (jenkins 2008, 200). anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 133 historical frame albania was recognized as an independent state in 1913, after the london conference that took place in the same year. before this period, albania was part of the ottoman empire, and ethnic albanians or other ethnic groups such as vlachs, macedonians, armenians, and greeks resided within this area. however, the greek minority was the most compact ethnic group in political terms (pettifer 2001, 2). the greek minority lived mainly in the south of the country, and the greeks call this region ‘northern epirus’. this region was the locus of discord in the early 20th century. the greek state was able to gain independence from the ottoman empire after the first balkan war of 1912-1913 and incorporated a substantial part of the region called ‘epirus’, but not the entire area (baltsiotis 2010, 2). although the greek forces failed to integrate all parts of the epirus area, greek irredentists occupied the city of gjirokastër and its surrounding areas, proclaiming these lands as part of greek territory. in 1914, after some clashes between the albanian forces and the separatists, a provisional government was established in gjirokastër, which declared the region of southern albania as autonomous under the name of autonomous republic of northern epirus (baltsiotis 2003, 53). the outbreak of world war i and the political situation in greece made the greek government unable to support the newly established autonomous republic and thus, it was later overthrown. the whole area was returned to albanian territory in 1925 and the newly formed borders were based on the same borders as were set in 1913 (pettifer 2001, 5). the greeks of the area were naturalized as albanian citizens, but at the same time they were officially recognized as members of the greek minority by the albanian state. during that period, the term ‘northern epirus’ was used by greek nationalists to describe the areas greece had failed to prevail upon. this term was heavily politicized and invested with irredentist meanings. in the consciousness of the lower greek social classes, the region of northern epirus had transformed into an ‘enslaved sister’ and the term ‘northern epirotes’ signified a separate part of the greek population living in albania (nitsiakos, 2013, 245). in 1944, the partisan movement managed to liberate albania from the occupation forces of the axis and established a socialist republic under the strict rule of enver hoxha. the socialist regime was of benefit for this ethnic minority for two reasons: firstly, because of the residents’ attitude during the war in the minority zone, who sided with the guerrilla movement against the occupation forces, and second because the greek minority was the regime’s alibi regarding the respect for human rights5 at the international level (baltsiotis 2010, 4). however, the socialist government was suspicious of the greek minority, and under its overall rhetoric of respect for minority rights, existed the desire for the subordination of the minority to the regime (nitsiakos 2013, 247). the conditions for the minority in southern albania changed radically, once again, in the 1990s. in december 1990, the socialist state collapsed, and in march 1991, the first free elections were held. because of intense financial problems, the political situation of the country remained unstable throughout the decade. as a result, the change in political power led, to the anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 134 revival of bilateral relations between albania and greece at the intra-state level. this was accompanied by the massive inflow of economic migrants from albania to greece, leading to the rising of nationalism in both countries (valden 2019, 21). during the first years of the transition, nationalist sentiments were observed within the minority and were supported by political and religious circles in greece. in regard to the relationship between the minority and the border, the fall of socialism in albania sparked waves of excitement. the boundary that separated for 50 years the two communities was now open. according to anthropologist sarah green (2010, 309), this enthusiasm reveals the belief that socialism was a parenthesis in the history of the area and now that the system has collapsed, things could return to their previous state. but this belief obscures the fact that the national borders were already established 30 years before socialism. an important factor that shaped the history of the minority in post-socialist years is the experience of mass migration to greece and the depopulation of villages. the migratory tendencies of these communities were a familiar strategy even before the socialist period. however, this phenomenon mainly focused on the male population and was temporary, without affecting the social balance of the community. instead, after 1991, migration came to concern the whole population, especially the productive age, regardless of any gender criteria. the collective memory of koshovice’s residents about the border in this section, we explore a different angle regarding the meaning of the border, the collective memory, and the everyday life in the village of koshovice. such concepts will be discussed from the spectrum of before and after the collapse of the socialist state. firstly, we will take a look at how people who live on the border formulate their memories regarding this subject, during the socialist period and in which ways the border’s definitive closure has affected the local communities. secondly, we will explore the attempts of the greek minority to renegotiate their greek identity after the opening of the border. our research data reveal that until 1991, the memory of the border, according to the residents of the community, was intertwined with the separation of the two communities. after 1991 the local population’s concerns were focused on the social phenomenon of migration and especially on the migration of the greek minority to greece. through the conducted interviews, it was highlighted that the residents of koshovice kept in their memory only the definitive closure of the border in 1945 instead of the establishment of the borderline in 1913. for the residents of koshovice, the definite closure of the border symbolizes their exclusion from the greek state, which they recognize as their homeland. therefore, such an action also refers to their separation from their greek identity. during the socialist era, the albanian state was trying to incorporate the greek minority into the central state. this phenomenon occurred through continuous controlling and surveillance strategies, especially in the greek communities located near the border, like koshovice. as a result, the residents affiliated the values and habits which were enforced to anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 135 them under the actions of hoxha government. further, the collective memory of the residents about the border is formed in a variety of ways through everyday practices. the supervision of daily agricultural work is one such example. due to the geographical location of the state fields, the farmers worked under the strict supervision of border guards, and they were obliged to show their identities in order to enter and leave the workplace. as a woman from koshovice, voula narrates: one day, there was a boy in kastaniani who yelled ‘grandma-grandma it’s me, kostakis!’ but the soldiers did not allow us to answer, not even to raise our heads because we were going to work in the fields, where they were located just before the neutral zone on the fence. there, there was a door that the soldiers were opening every morning for us. we had to show them our identities, and they were counting how many people were there. when we were finishing our work at night, we had to show them our identities again. we didn’t have the right to leave the working field; we had very specific working places. the collective memory concerning the permeability of the border was another important issue that has to be taken into account. the border of albania opened officially in 1991, however, the border was already permeable since 1989. one interlocutor confirmed the fact that some residents from koshovice (including her) started crossing the border secretly, by paying off the border guards. this secret crossing was conducted in order to visit their relatives in aghia marina from which they had been separated for the last 50 years. she also told us about an event where many residents from the greek minority who lived near the border one day tried to cut down the fence that separates their communities from the villages in greece. this action manifested as a symbolic gesture to express their intention to acquire their greek identity. after the opening of the borders in 1991, many residents from the communities near the border made a number of symbolic gestures that indicated their desire to affirm their greek identity. for instance, in a short period of time, they established the institution of the greek orthodox church in the area. the symbolic aspect of such an action is not only considered because the religious practices were banned during the previous system, but also because the christian orthodox religion is integral to the greek identity (nitsiakos, 2010). owing to this, the local women from the area organized massive christenings for many children of the greek minority. the interviews conducted reveal that, for the residents of koshovice, their relatives who live in aghia marina play a significant part in their lives nowadays. according to their point of view, this role is established not only because they had not seen each other for 50 years, but also because the relatives from the greek part are the living proof that the residents of koshovice (and the other communities of the greek minority) have greek identity. in this sense, such relatives represented their connection with the greek state. according to the previous work of van boeschoten (2003), in the course of the socialist state, the collective memory of the residents was related to the fact that the border was closed anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 136 and impermeable. as a result, the residents were not able to meet up with their relatives from the greek side. when the border opened in 1991, another issue influenced the collective memory of the village of koshovice: the phenomenon of migration to greece. although the work of van boeschoten (2003) does not refer to koshovice, her assumptions apply to this case. according to nitsiakos (2010), migration was a common practice in albania not only after, but also before the opening of the border, although before the border opening only the male members of the community would migrate. therefore, the local community kept having social cohesion and productivity as the migrants provided financial support to their families who left behind. after the opening of the borders and the fall of socialism, many infrastructures collapsed, and most of the cooperatives closed. hence, many residents from koshovice were forced to migrate. during this period, both men and women participated in such migratory practices. at this point, many communities from the greek minority – including koshovice – became depopulated. it is also important to take into account that the remittances which were sent by the migrants to their relatives, who remained in albania, were very valuable. however, the financial problem was irreversible because the entire productive workforce migrated from the community. as nitsiakos (2010) mentions, owing to this workforce migration, after 1991 the community's cultivations were unseeded. as a result, the land could not be assigned utility value anymore, and its signification changed. more specifically, land possession was then related to the property acquisition and to ‘rooting in place’. owing to this situation, many residents of the greek minority started feeling nostalgic about the previous order. in their narrations during our research, we observed that local people did not keep in their memory the previous political situation, but they kept the fact that under socialism there was a sense of unity and productivity in the community, as previous work also elaborates (kasimis and nitsiakos 1996, 131). another prominent part of the collective memory was the migration, as it was perceived by the residents of koshovice who migrated to greece after 1991. following the opening of the borders, the greek minority was in a liminal condition because they were accepted neither by the greek state nor by the new albanian state. under this premise, the aforementioned facts can be verified both from our fieldwork and from the previous work of nitsiakos (2010). while they were considered as greeks by the albanians, the greeks addressed them as albanians. according to the collected interviews, we noticed that it was notably important for the greek minority to take greek citizenship and to be identified as members of the greek minority. through the obtained research data we conclude that this was a bureaucratic process that required many years. when they migrated to greece, the majority of them became workers undertaking precarious forms of labor, and they were called ‘northern epirotes’. this political naming assigns a negative meaning which also reflects on another issue of collective memory, concerning the difficulty of integration – as residents of the greek minority from albania – in the greek society. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 137 photo no. 2 – the collapsed bridge that is located outside of the village. the relations between koshovice and aghia marina throughout the years it is clear that the relations between these two communities across the border are influenced by the ever-changing nature of that border. as nitsiakos (2010) has shown, the border can be considered a geographical entity, but a pure geographical perception would be insufficient regarding its symbolic aspect emerges, and the identities of the local residents. liminal groups can be geographically marginal, but often their symbolic role is pivotal. that happens because the boundaries are usually a place where unity with the ‘same’ set is found. additionally, the inhabitants of koshovice and aghia marina are connected with bonds of kinship, which is crucial to their relations throughout the years. therefore, if we consider the historical changes of the region, the significance of the border and kinship in the perspectives of local people becomes more apparent. despite the official establishment of the border between albania and greece in 1913, the residents of koshovice did not perceive it as a strict border, or at least not as strict as the one set by hoxha. as takis, a 40-year-old permanent resident of koshovice, and his mother maria, detail, ‘the border was open. [...] there were paths, but in each one of them there was a gatehouse with guards. from there, you could receive an official document that testified that you were from koshovice.’ using that, locals could cross the border to visit their lands in today’s aghia marina, then vatsounia. according to another informant voula, ‘aghia marina was the other half of the village. it was our village’s fields; it was the huts where people held their sheep. and one day, the church bell was ringing, and people were asking who died. and then other people responded it was the village that died because they took it from us’. vatsounia was growing, little by little. as a result, when the border was utterly closed in 1945, a fact no one could have predicted, aghia marina was already developed according to our interlocutors. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 138 as a result, many local families never saw their relatives in koshovice for approximately 50 years. this leads us to the question, ‘what happened during hoxha’s time as leader of albania and how did all these relatives lose contact or keep in touch across the border?’ there were ways to communicate, not without struggles, but there were also cases in which communication was almost impossible. regarding the first case, according to takis and maria, some people from aghia marina were writing letters to their relatives, which frequently arrived open in koshovice or did not arrive at all. as voula says, the same thing was happening with packages, from which things were sometimes missing. on the other hand, the case of thodoris, a teacher whose mother was from koshovice and whose father from aghia marina, is different. before 1945, his father was working in greece and often visited albania for brief periods of time. after the establishment of the border, he returned to his job and the albanian government considered him a fugitive. as a result, thodoris could not communicate or see his father for 40 years. this changed in january 1985, with the opening of the customs in kakavia. this first border opening was arranged between the two countries, in order for some selected locals to see their relatives. according to voula: some people came from greece and selected […] those who had relatives in the village over there [aghia marina]. maybe 20 – 15 people from all the villages of the area. they went there [kakavia] to see their relatives, but the border remained in the middle. at first, they wouldn’t open the fence, and the people could only see each other from a distance. then, they realized they couldn’t continue like this, so they opened the gates, and people started crying. that is when thodoris saw his father for the first time. generally, around 1985, the state adopted a looser border control, and people from koshovice could travel for the first time to greece and meet their relatives in aghia marina. nonetheless, this trip was not possible without specific state documentation, which of course was hard to obtain. this was the reality for those who chose the legal way, but there were other options as well. voula told us a story about her brother, giorgos, crossing the border from koshovice to aghia marina. there, he visited his aunt, who told him to return immediately. she knew that back in albania if they realized that he had escaped, there would be severe consequences upon his family. voula, as a pregnant woman, also crossed the border, following the path to aghia marina. it was december of 1989 when, with three other people, they bribed the guards and after a demanding walking route, they arrived in aghia marina. there she visited her aunt and her cousins and then she returned to koshovice. we should note that the border crossing during this period of time was much easier compared with the era her brother decided to cross the borders. although the official opening of the border was in 1991, local residents started to challenge its premises long before that date by making numerous symbolic actions, such as the illegal border crossings or the slow but gradual ripping off the border fences, as voula mentioned. nevertheless, it was a specific symbolic action that signified the definite opening of the border. this re-signification occurred with the first grand festivity that included collective christenings. according to voula, the festivity took place in koshovice, after the anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 139 collapse of the socialist state (around the summer of 1991) and it was organized by the women of epirus association. many villages, such as llongo, kastaniani, sotira, and of course aghia marina, took part in this activity. the aim was to christen the minority’s children and establish bonds of friendship between koshovice and aghia marina. the women of epirus association brought orthodox priests from the villages of the greek territory. they priest baptized around 70 kids, and the people celebrated this with food, dance, and polyphonic music. as voula tells us: ‘now, we keep organizing fests and people from the other half of the village, which is aghia marina, are coming to our fests and we are visiting theirs. we celebrate together.’ today, the relations between the two villages are very close, and kinship plays an important role to this. as we have heard from the people of koshovice, they keep visiting their relatives in aghia marina, and also voted there for the last greek elections6. according to vlahaki, tsintsirakos and kokkinou “the politics of culture are practiced by members of the greek minority in albania in an effort to construct and represent a minority identity which manifests its national affiliation with the population on the greek side of the border” (manos 2016, 7). these people were cut off from their relatives and the greek identity with the closing of the borders. now, as they emphasize their kinship with the residents of the other half village in greece, they approach once more their ‘lost’ greek identity. conclusion since the opening of the border, the residents of koshovice and aghia marina have coorganized religious festivities during the summer period. this atmosphere of cooperation belies what has been a complicated past, as we have discussed above, when the border arbitrarily separated ethnocultural groups who share similar social characteristics (nitsiakos and mantzos 2008, 255). however, this new air of cooperation is now being threatened by other forces. in recent years, many elderly residents of koshovice have passed away. as a result, the community fears and mourns for the social death of the village and all the religious festivities have recently been cancelled, thus prolonging the feeling of desolation among villagers. besides, in regions like epirus, where the borders are contested, cultural identities can be considered notably dangerous for national cohesion (green 2010, 300). similarly, the identity of the ‘northern epirotes’ before the collapse of the socialist system was considered ‘dangerous’ for the albanian state. on the other hand, after the opening of the borders and the following massive migration to greece, the name ‘northern epirotes’ was assigned a negative meaning in greece. as a result, ‘northern epirotes’ were considered a threat to the greek national homogeneity. as for the collective memory of such communities, we must take into account that local narratives about the past are influenced by the experiences of the present (van boeschoten 2003). therefore, it stands to reason that collective memory is a dynamic procedure that can combine fragments from the past and the present, which means that it can construct a desirable future. that is why nostalgic feelings are clearly noticeable among the members of the community. in this sense, the desirable future for them is the revival of social life in the village of koshovice. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 140 regardless of the harsh conditions that were elaborated above, the people of koshovice did not necessarily call for the complete dismantling of the community, and those who live abroad have found associations and organize traditional fests in greece. as our interlocutors told us, the people of koshovice in greece manage to distribute their time between their current residence in greece and the village, engaging themselves in the preservation of a sense of community. many communication bridges with koshovice have fallen down, but many others persist. notes 1 we would like to express our gratitude to the anthropologists from the border crossings network, who organized the konitsa summer school and provided assistance to us during our first anthropological research. in particular, we want to share our appreciation for professor vassilis nitsiakos. his companionship in the field and his expert guidance taught us valuable lessons on how to conduct anthropological research. we are also thankful to aliki angelidou and zeliha nilüfer nahya. with their remarks, they supported us through this research, and encouraged us up to the final form of the essay. finally, we are much obliged to our interlocutors, that shared with us their deepest thoughts and feelings with courtesy and hospitality. 2 the team – consisting of three undergraduate students at that time – had the opportunity to visit the village of koshovice during the short ethnographic research within the konitsa summer school, taking place from the 26 to the 30th of july in 2019. our ethnographic data are based on unstructured interviews in greek, on field notes, and on photographs. furtherly, we had the chance to carry out a structured interview in athens with a former resident of the village who lives and works in the greek capital for the last 20 years. 3 all the names of the interlocutors in the article are pseudonyms. 4 all photographs in this article were taken by maritina vlachaki. 5 in the context of minority rights, the teaching of the greek language was introduced in the villages of the minority area but not in the cities where a greek-speaking population was also located (baltsiotis 2003, 47). 6 the residents of koshovice are officially recognized members of the greek minority located in albania and, for that reason, voting rights in greek elections have been provided to them. the aforementioned information turned out during the interviews, and while such a premise is interesting, any further elaboration on this topic is outside of the scope of this work. anthropology of east europe review 38 (1), 2021 141 references abrams, lynn. 2010. oral history theory. new york: routledge. amit, vered, and nigel rapport. 2002. the trouble with community: anthropological reflections on movement, identity, and collectivity. london: pluto press. anderson, benedict. 1983. imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso. baltsiotis, lambros. 2003. “η ελληνική μειονότητα της αλβανίας: μια προσπάθεια 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a local case.” in balkan border crossings: first annual of the konitsa summer school, edited by vassilis nitsiakos, ioannis manos, georgios agelopoulos, aliki angelidou, and vassilis dalkavoukis, 248-273. münster: lit verlag. pettifer, james. 2001. “the greek minority in albania in the aftermath of communism.” south slav journal 22, no. 3-4: 13-32. todorova, maria. 2014. “introduction. similar trajectories, different memories”. in remembering communism. private and public recollections of lived experiences in southeast europe, edited by maria todorova, augusta dimou and stefan troebst, 1-25. budapest: central european up. valden, sotiris. 2019. “το βαλκανικό ‘1989’” [the balkan ‘1989’]. αρχειοτάξιο [archeiotaxio] 21: 180. van boeschoten, riki. 2003. ανάποδα χρόνια. συλλογική μνήμη και ιστορία στο ζιάκα γρεβενών (1900-1950) [inverted years: collective memory and history in ziakas grevena (1900-1950)]. athens: plethron. sarah d anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 66 open forum science, cynicism, and the greater good: identity and environmental discourse in poland tracie l. wilson indiana university, bloomington if it’s not clear what’s going on, then what’s going on is about money. -jacek więckowski (polish saying) one similarity that communist regimes shared with their capitalist rivals was the great promise their leaders saw in the role of science to forge a better world. science was embraced as a cornerstone in the progression toward a more equitable society. this promise remained unfulfilled with living standards in most eastern bloc states lagging behind those of their western counterparts. in addition, in an atmosphere where serious environmental standards were often overlooked and not enforced, environmental problems and related health concerns became increasingly visible. in poland in the years leading up to the fall of the communist regime, environmental issues played a large part in undermining the state’s legitimacy (hicks 1996). however, in the post-communist era, environmentalists have become increasingly marginalized. this process has also occurred within a broader context in which civil society institutions have been slow to take hold. anthony giddens connects modern experience to doubts about knowledge and science. he suggests that the constant potential revision of knowledge is a source of existential angst for many people, pointing out that, “change does not consistently conform either to human expectation or to human control. the anticipation that the social and natural environments would increasingly be subject to rational ordering has not proved to be valid” (giddens 1991:21-28). one result of this failure of science to predict outcomes is disillusionment. in fact, the need to stem or halt the rapid pace of development is supported in the findings of the world’s most distinguished scientists (manes in killingsworth & palmer 1996:26); for example, human actions are now widely attributed to increasing rates of global warming and to diminishing the planets biodiversity. this paper examines the role of science within the polish environmental movement. my analysis is based on fieldwork that i conducted with polish environmental groups in 2000/01, with the influential organization pracownia na rzecz wszystkich istot (workshop for all beings, hereafter pracownia) as a central focus. the group is based in bielsko-biała, a city in the beskid mountains in south central poland and an important environmental center in poland. my observations are based on daily participant observation with the organization, focused interviews with members of pracownia and other environmental and conservation leaders and scholars affiliated with research institutions, as well as analysis of the group’s environmental monthly (dzikie życie) and internet materials. pracownia’s main mission is to spread knowledge of the philosophy of deep ecology which stresses humanity’s status as part of nature, rather than as separate from it. this perspective places the organization’s members in a complex relationship with environmental scientists. many deep ecologists reject scientific approaches to the study of the natural world due to the emphasis on impartial observation from the perspective of the detached outsider.117 one the other hand, in practice the organization has close contacts with several scientists, in part because they realize the important role that such scientists play in conveying legitimacy on the environmental movement, and in making a case for the organization’s specific campaigns. in the following pages i examine attitudes toward science within the polish environmental movement: first i consider general comments made about the role of science and how certain individuals within the movement assess the role of science in modern society. next i explore depictions of science in the more specialized context of one of pracownia’s key campaigns. in line with deep ecology’s commitment to respect other species, pracownia was a central force in organizing a campaign to protect wolves. i draw from discussions of approaches to wolf protection below in examining attitudes toward specific scientific procedures, most notably telemetry or the practice of applying radio collars. the arrogance of science like many of their western counterparts, environmentalists in poland are often strong critics of modernity and science. in the case of the individuals that i interviewed, this tendency also existed among anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 67 environmentalists who had scientific training. halina dobrucka, a trained geologist and one of the few environmentalists that i interviewed who was retired, described her attitude toward science in the following way, during the time when i was still an active scientist, it was still science then, you know, something, very important. but at this time i see that scientists work … for diverse firms. at this point i don’t believe scientists very much...one (scientist) says that margarine is healthier, another says that butter is healthier. what does this mean? …this (scientist) is in the pocket (of some company), this is a polish expression that one of them is being paid by the producer of butter, right? …a dentist says that this toothpaste is great. …some doctor says that this pain reliever is great. at this point, i have lost my trust in science (interview, may 18, 2001). to some extent, halina’s comments point to a continuous reviewing of science and its conclusions, supporting giddens’ assertion that the constant revision of information causes malaise. however, her comments about scientists being bought out to make statements that benefit certain industries reveal another kind of deep-seated doubt about science and what she sees as the cause of this inconsistency. this is a sentiment that i often encountered in my interviews, more often with activists, but also with some scientists. for example, when i asked jacek więckowski, a doctoral student in zoology, about a scientist in krakow named bobek who was an outspoken critic of legislation protecting wolves, he responded with the following comment, “there’s a polish saying, ‘if it’s not clear what’s going on, then what’s going on is about money’” (interview july 5, 2000).118 this comment suggests that jacek believes that bobek has taken advantage of his role as a scientist to make money from groups which profit from the hunting of wolves, (which pay him to make such statements). jacek’s comments, like halina’s suggest attitudes that stress the deleterious impact of money on science in the post-communist era. in her analysis of hungarian environmentalists’ narratives about chernobyl, krista harper also addresses the role of science. she suggests that the chernobyl accident led to a questioning of the authority of scientific expertise and state bureaucracies. harper interviews several individuals involved in the environmental movement in hungary, including one radiobiologist turned environmental activist, who concedes that the chernobyl accident and the authorities’ response to it led her to a sense of great disappointment in science. while she does not declare an outright rejection of scientific methods, she is wary of the politicization of scientific inquiry. it is this realization that galvanized her activism (harper 2001:119-120). in many ways chernobyl marked an important turning point within east central europe when the destructive potential of science demonstrated a chasm between official rhetoric on industrial progress and science and reality. among those environmentalists that i interviewed, distaste for the practices of scientists also leads some individuals to activism. joanna matusiak a central figure on pracownia’s staff, was one of a handful of young activists with a background in scientific training. her attitudes were informed by experiences at the university of łódź, where she studied environmental protection and biology and worked for a time with university scientists. for several years, she has worked with environmental and animal rights nonprofit groups. her assessment of scientists was especially negative, as is indicated in the following passage. for a long time … i worked at the university, but actually, i didn’t care much for being a scientist, in fact, it was rather antienvironmental…the things that took place at the university. so, i quit my job there… i don’t consider myself to be a scientist in this sense, the way most scientists are. at least based on what i saw at the university in łódź, and from conversations with colleagues there, this viewpoint is really pretty strong there. scientists in the biology department, they approach it, maybe not the majority, i don’t want to over generalize, but at least those who i knew, had a very utilitarian approach to nature. …i took part in research on fish…and this research consisted of putting an electric current into the water which stuns the fish and they float to the surface. and these fish were collected, and you know, weighed, measured, and released back into the water. and some of them survived and some of them didn’t….to kill an animal or rip up a plant, to take it and do some kind of research on it, for me this was completely unacceptable. i didn’t want to do this, because if researching nature, is simply conducting research or observation… i don’t know, but not, darn it, extermination...all this killing everything to do research. and this approach is very important. and besides, in the field of biology they do a lot of experiments on animals, and often these aren’t experiments that serve humanity, they’re done simply to anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 68 complete a doctoral degree, to write an academic article, simply to publish something. it’s not that they have noticed some problem and want to research it, they just think, “oh, i have to write a habilitacja119 thesis, i have to find a topic.” so, they think up a topic, which will work more or less, and they do the experiments. and later this sits unused in a folder, or in a publication, no one reads it, and in general … it’s completely senseless, because (this research) is rarely used. after all, the quality of science in poland is pretty weak, it’s, not very, i don’t know, somehow it’s not very modern, it’s not in touch with the world, also not many people make use of it. and there are, there is a lot of destruction that it causes… really, sometimes, scientists are greater enemies of nature than ordinary people from outside the academic world. and yet these scientists’ positions are supported by this concept of science, that this is the highest goal, in the end, they consider themselves as somewhat better because of this, that they are scientists, that they… are allowed to do anything, for example they can go into a protected area, and tear out or cut down something there, because they are scientists, because they are doing this for a higher purpose…it’s not at all true (interview, march 31, 2001). like halina dobrucka, joanna matusiak expresses strong doubts about the motivation of scientists. she sees them as motivated by self interest, not necessarily by direct financial interests, but rather by the desire to advance their careers.120 she also suggests that many scientists feel entitled to damage nature in the name of science, since they are encouraged to consider this quest for knowledge the ultimate goal. in her view, the poor quality of scientific research in poland also meant that this damage to plants and animals served no one, except the scientists whose advancement was dependent on the completion of research projects. in her research with environmental activists in germany, eeva berglund observes a similar frustration toward scientific experts expressed by activists. she writes, “it is a lack of professionalism and a deficit of humility, not inability to know the truth, which irritates activists about experts” (berglund 1998:192). berglund also stresses that a fundamental component of human-environment relationships is their connection to human interests and issues of power (berglund 1998:184-87). this concept is significant in relation to joanna’s claims that scientists undertake research to further their careers, rather than to advance human knowledge or protect nature. science, careerism, and environmental identities the issue of career advancement was a topic that i often encountered in my fieldwork. the expression “żeby robić karierę,” (in order to make a career) was often used in a negative way among several people that i encountered. in fact, the term kariera (career) at times carries a negative connotation that it does not generally have in english (aside from the term careerism). two doctoral students in zoology used the above expression in rejecting the designation of “scientist” for themselves. when i asked aleksandra kraśkiewicz if she was a scientist or an activist, she responded in the following way, “i don’t feel like a scientist, although i am a scientist” (interiview, july 6, 2001).121 jacek więckowski, another doctoral student in zoology at the research station, responded even more decisively that he was not a scientist. i am certainly not a scientist, i don’t want to be a scientist. . . . i think i am one who is passionate,122 if it has to be classified, right? . . . that’s to say… i don’t completely trust scientists, although i am constantly in their midst. they are often very nice people, . . . but they are people who make a living off of this, they have an obligation in this regard, meaning they get paid because they are doing something . . . and if someone is doing something for money, this already influences it…in general, if someone is doing something for money, well, it doesn’t always have to be in accordance with their views… according to their beliefs (interview, july 6, 2001). these comments reveal ambivalence about, even distrust of science, as well as the degree to which identities can be problematic and conflicting. aleksandra and jacek both resist the label of “scientist” for themselves, though they acknowledge that on some level this label is associated with their status as doctoral students in zoology at the poznań academy of agriculture.123 they reject this classification, not because they lack the specialized technical knowledge that scientists are expected to possess, but because of a perception that to be a scientist often involves compromising one’s principles. alberto melucci argues that environmentalists are the products of disillusionment with modernity, industrialism, and technology (melucci 1996:165). the above examples suggest that scientific specialists are sometimes among the anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 69 most disillusioned, and that their disenchantment, in some cases, leads them to identify with more assertive environmental causes. other individuals, especially those holding more senior positions, did not see a conflict between their role as scientists and their collaboration or identification with advocacy organizations such as pracownia. two biologists suggested that in their minds, scientists and environmental activists had similar goals, but that they played different roles in promoting these objectives. they saw activists as serving a vital role in calling public attention to cases of environmental destruction. their own role, as scientists, came in providing research that often backed up the claims of activists. a host of opinions, approaches, and orientations contribute to the polish environmental movement, resulting in varying levels of cooperation. bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia provides a useful framework to examine environmentalist identities. he writes, at both the individual and social levels, productive vitality and creativity derive from a continuous dialogic struggle within and between discourses. language . . . is perceived as stratified through and through into multiple social discourses each representing a specific ideological-belief system, a way of seeing the world (bakhtin 1994: 73). this concept can be utilized to demonstrate the manner in which various voices contribute to environmental discourse. environmentalists often enlist the voices of scientists and other experts in discussions over controversial issues to lend legitimacy to their causes. other contributors include international figures within the activist world, as well as the voices of tradition (or environmentalists’ appropriation and adaptation of traditional culture). the latter is especially evident in areas of symbolic production where groups can benefit from “reelaborating” codes that are identified with dominant groups in mainstream society (della porta and diani 1999: 76). for example, many poles identify with polish folk culture which played a significant role in the awakening of national identity in the nineteenth century. polish environmentalists often lay claim to folk traditions, in the form of traditional festivals and folkways. a prominent example of this tendency is the important role that summer solstice celebrations play within environmental circles. this incorporates elements of folk culture such as a central focus on the bonfire which has its roots in slavic pagan culture. more recently some groups have made efforts to demonstrate a connection between environmentalism and christianity. articles in pracownia’s monthly dzikie życie (wild nature) included interviews with pro-environmental christians. another article examined the polish folk tradition of creating and maintaining roadside chapels (kapliczki), arguing that a decrease in their numbers was linked to increased development in rural areas (okraska). polish environmentalists’ use of folk culture and religion illustrate ways that they draw from and reshape codes embraced by mainstream polish society. the competing voices of heteroglossia are also manifest in the individual. pam morris describes this connection in the following way, what is the case at the macro level of ‘destinies of human discourse’ is also the case at the micro level of individual consciousness. self-consciousness is arrived at dialogically by an inner polemic with the social voices which inevitably first structure our inner being (morris in bakhtin 1994:16). the issue of identity within the environmental movement is complex. terms such as “activist” and “scientist” can also prove to be problematic.124 very few of the people i interviewed appeared comfortable with the label of “activist,” including environmentalists who had participated in numerous demonstrations; i have already mentioned my encounter with doctoral students in zoology who rejected the designation of “scientist.” in both cases, the reason for the rejection of such labels is a perceived negative connotation which the designation carried. one scientist indicated that he had a negative association with the term “activist,” due to its use by the communist regime to designate party loyalists. the previous section demonstrates that at least some individuals associate scientists with self-serving career advancement or other pursuits of self interest. discussions of identity and its relationship to modernity and globalization offer useful insights. in recent decades scholars have observed the complex nature of identity and the important role that it plays in structuring social relations. among these is stuart hall’s observation on the utility of examining identity, as “strategic and positional,” rather than “essentialist.” he writes, identities are never unified and, in late modern times, increasingly fragmented and fractured; never singular but multiply constructed across different, often intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions. they are subject to a radical historicization, and are anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 70 constantly in the process of change and transformation (hall 1995:3-4). elliot oring makes a similar point when he argues that ethnic identity is situational. he writes that, “rather than being something constant and immutable, the recognition of a group or the sense of an identity may change with situation and circumstance” (oring 1986:28). identity is the product of social interaction and is, therefore, not static, but under continuous negotiation (goffman 1959); individuals employ performative devices in the on-going project of self (bauman 1986). because identity is itself under constant revision, identification with a movement or group often fluctuates, based on feelings of belonging and the degree to which one’s ideas correspond to those officially recognized by the group at a given time (della porta and diani 1999:100). in reality most individuals identify with a number of social identities ranging from those based on organizations, social movements, and community (stoeker 1995), as well as national, ethnic and religious identities (smith 1991, hobsbawm & ranger 1987). such multiple identities demonstrate a “polycentric rather than a hierarchical structure” (della porta and diani 1999:100). some environmental activists are strong critics of rationalism and its effects on humanity. however, they are also products of the reflexivity that modernity engenders. for example, proponents of deep ecology have largely rejected traditional religion, which they often blame for promoting anthropocentrism. instead, they often seek to reinvent human awareness based on eco-centric thought, feeling, and lifestyle choices. this search for a new way may be the product of another aspect of modernity. zygmunt bauman suggests that a lack of belonging is a prominent feature of modernity, describing modern man as “man without essence.” he argues that this is the result of a society built upon networks rather than situated within stable communities (bauman 1999: 160-61). in contrast, in her study of latvian immigrant groups, inta carpenter, argues that in certain contexts, networks foster stable communities (carpenter 1996). these two perspectives illustrate divergent perspectives on whether networks foster a sense of community or provide a poor substitute for it. environmental communities such as that which exists around pracownia are themselves based on a system of networks, though stability may be rather precarious. however, it is clear that such communities often emerge from the type of alienation that bauman describes. according to bartłomiej szymczyk, many young people in poland are dissatisfied with mainstream culture and turn to alternative or countercultural lifestyles (szymczyk 2003). in some cases, such individuals look to new religious movements, as well as to the environmental movement. giddens argues that in the post-traditional world, “the self becomes a reflexive project.” within this context, the self has to be derived from a source of exploration and innovation relating to social relations (giddens 1991:33). the cultivation of new religious and spiritual identities by environmentalists and others can be interpreted as an example of such innovation. perceptions that damage the legitimacy of environmental activists include the notion that they are radicals, perhaps even terrorists125 and promote non-christian traditions. one young scientist at the polish academy of sciences in krakow told me that he avoided referring to himself as an “ekolog” (environmentalist/ecologist) even though his research centered on ecology, suggesting that to many people the term connoted extremism. i have a doctorate in biological sciences with a specialization in ecology, so…my profession is ekolog (ecologist),126 right?...but i would never tell anyone if they asked me what i did that i was an ekolog, because everyone would think that i am some kind of dangerous guy. i say that i am a zoologist, an evolutionary scientist, or a naturalist, or something like that, but i don’t say that i am an ekolog…because everyone would start to treat me like i was touched in the head (interview with p. adamski, february 18, 2001). he reveals his own reluctance to use the term ekolog to describe his work. in his mind, most people view environmentalists (ekolodzy) as abnormal and perhaps dangerous. such images are major reasons for the negative sentiments that some people express toward environmentalists in poland. it is also worth noting that his attitudes toward environmental activists were the most negative that i encountered among the scientists that i interviewed. contrasting perspectives among wolf advocates the controversy over the status of wolves in poland provides a useful site to examine different perspectives among scientific and activist communities. the powerful symbolic value of the wolf also contributes to the significant differences that exist among wolf advocates. one division lies in disagreements over acceptable levels of intervention. many scientists who are involved in studying wolves also engage in research that includes trapping wolves, conducting various tests, and sometimes applying anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 71 radio-collars to track their future activity. in contrast, some environmental activists, particularly those who subscribe to a philosophy of deep ecology, object to such forms of intervention. they believe that trapping wolves, even with the intention of releasing them in a short time is unnecessary and causes great stress to the animals. some environmentalists also suggest that wearing radio-collars may actually cause wolves harm and inhibit their movement, perhaps even making it easier for poachers to hunt them. such activists claim that enough research has been conducted on wolves; they insist that no further studies are necessary to know that wolves require strict legal protection to ensure their survival. janusz korbel, a founding member and key leader in pracownia, described his feelings about research on wolves in the following way, . . . personally i think there is no need to research wolves, it’s enough to protect them … because it seems to me that there are already very few wolves. i have the impression that if there was only one wolf left in poland, only one, that all the scientists would do research on him. you know, he would be the last wolf! i think that we know, in general, i believe that on the subject of nature we already know quite enough, but we’re doing too little. and research is of course necessary, in the sense that, maybe not necessary, but research is justifiable…if the motive of the research is to ask questions about the truth…but at this moment research is usually supported by money, and encourages the kind of research that brings the greatest profits, even more money. this is one bad tendency in present-day science…these aren’t practical questions… they’re not deep questions, they’re just questions about how to develop, how to increase finances… scientists only research a forest, (to ascertain) how to get the most wood, lumber, and furniture from a hectare of forest, and keep this forest so that it will continue to survive. that is the subject of scientific research. this kind of research isn’t necessary for the sake of nature. and that’s what present day science looks like, in order to work at a university, in order to build a career, one has to write a thesis. in this regard, scientists have to research everything and complete another doctorate. sometimes these things have, well, already been researched many times …. the situation in poland is such that, in northeast poland, in białowieża there are two groups of wolves and a lot of scientists who are researching them and they hate each other, because there’s competition, and the wolves are constantly observed, they follow them with telemetry equipment, they have radio collars. it’s not normal. but i would not say this publicly to the polish media, because many of these scientists want to help wolves when the occasion arises (interview, april 6, 2001). janusz asserts that scientists who study wolves often undertake invasive research, not because it is necessary, but because their livelihoods require it. in order to receive funding for their work (usually in the form of grants), they have to continue with research. in many ways his statements echo those of joanna matusiak recounted above. szymon ciapała, a botanist who worked for a time with pracownia, also expressed a similar view. most activists are not opposed outright to all kinds of research, but rather that which is seen as unnecessarily intrusive. a frequent criticism among activists who oppose invasive research on wolves is the assertion that science is allied with economic interests, which subverts efforts to make science benefit nature for its own sake. instead, science becomes a tool to determine how to more efficiently exploit the environment. in his response, janusz shifts from speaking directly about research on wolves to research on forests. this supports observations that stress the importance of the wolf as a representative creature of the forest and “wildness” in general (warner 1994:182). this association also has a practical connection, insofar as wolves live in forests and require large, healthy forests to thrive.127 in janusz’s critique of current research on forests, he indicates that one problem is that scientists fail to ask “deep questions.” this suggests that his response to current research practices is informed by deep ecology which advocates protecting nature and asking oneself deep questions as a means of improving oneself (and the world). janusz’s critical perspective on research on wolves contrasts with that of many scientists. those who study wolves maintain that further research is necessary for a more persuasive basis for protection. biologist sabina nowak of stowarzyszenie dla natury “wilk” (wolf-the association for nature) asserts that most scientists do not conduct research for its own sake and that their efforts are focused on information that will contribute to the protection of wolves. for example, she told me that the tracking of wolves in the silesian beskid mountains and bordering areas with slovakia makes it possible for her to assess how many “polish” wolves were killed by slovak hunters, and then to present this information to member of the slovak parliament.128 with regard to radio-collars, many scientists maintain anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 72 that these devices are especially helpful in controlling poaching. according to nowak, there have been cases of poachers being caught when they killed wolves wearing radio-collars (interview, february 7 2001). wolf biologist wojciech śmietana takes a similar position with regard to the role of telemetry (the procedure of applying radio collars). i think that telemetry is very necessary. however, it should be used in moderation. a lot of things can be done without using (it). it’s not necessary for all kinds of research…we should limit telemetry as much as possible, so that it’s applied to the fewest number of animals possible (interview, july 29, 2001). śmietana believes that telemetry is essential in collecting certain kinds of information. however, he also stresses that it should be undertaken on as few wolves as possible since the experience does stress the animals involved and put them at risk. in 2001, biologist simona kossak, who works at a research institution in białowieża, received attention for her public criticism of the use of telemetry. during our interview, i asked about her thoughts on telemetry. she replied in the following way, telemetry itself as a means to send signals, and from this information the ability to learn something, what (animals) are doing, where they are, if we can’t follow them, it’s a very good method. however, experimental telemetry, that’s something completely different …the results of one researcher will show that all or almost all the animals survived,129 and in the case of another researcher that no animals survived, they’ll all have died…because he used incompetent methods, and he doesn’t care about what happens to the animal, etc., a lack of skill in working with animals…it’s like the difference between a good doctor and a bad one (interview, august 3, 2001). kossak stresses that she is not against telemetry per say, that it has its advantages and is a good method for maintaining data when other means are not available. her objection centers on what she believes to be the indiscriminate use of telemetry, and the fact that, in her view, some researchers engaged in using the procedure were poorly trained and are indifferent to the fate of the animals they work with. for example, if collars are not applied properly, or if the animal is too young when a collar is applied (so that it becomes too tight as the animal grows), this can result in injury and death. kossak is outspokenly critical of other researchers who she believes are conducting unnecessary experiments on animals, especially in cases where such research has already been done.130 in this sense her objections are similar to some activists that i interviewed. this may not be surprising since simona kossak was on pracownia’s advisory board and has worked with the organization in the campaign to protect białowieża forest. i also interpret the objections of many deep ecologists to research interventions on wolves as having much to do with the great value they place on the concept of “wildness.” in addition to the fact that many deep ecologists believe that such research is unnecessary, direct scientific intervention compromises the wild status of the wolf. the act of placing a radio-collar on a wolf brings it a step closer to the domesticated dog. within such circles, it is generally the mystery and beauty of the wild animal that is valued over domesticated animals, which are tainted by their connection to humanity. the wolf is valued over the dog precisely due to its wild nature. this attitude is not unique to polish environmentalists, but is also seen in western environmentalist materials. in fact, the newspaper published by earth first! (based in the u.s.) had a regular section entitled “wolves and poodles” in which it called individuals and groups that made a positive contribution to the environment the “wolves.” on the other hand, those who demonstrated disregard for the environment were described as “poodles” (the epitome of the decadent, pampered, domesticated dog). such dichotomies demonstrate the symbolic nature of human associations with specific animals. canines, in particular, possess rich symbolic value since the dog occupies “the threshold between wildness and domestication and all the valences that these two ideal poles of experience hold” (white 1991:15). polish environmentalists have successfully employed key symbols in the name of specific causes, for example in their successful campaign to ban wolf hunting and to expand protection to a larger part of the primeval białowieża forest. however, these accomplishments were made in the mid to late 1990s; since this time environmentalists have faced increasing obstacles to attaining their objectives. one problem has been significant internal disputes within the environmental movement, including differences over the appropriate role for scientific methods and perspectives. conflicts also stem from differences over which tactics are viewed as acceptable in bringing about change. some activists reject engaging with the political party system and are very critical of globalization and free market policies. this perspective has led to a split with those environmentalists who were involved in reconstituting poland’s green party in 2004.131 anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 73 another challenge has been the predominance of discourse which implies the inevitability of east and west integration, and which assumes this will follow a “correct” course based on neo-liberal policies (dauphinée 2003), making it increasingly difficult to successfully oppose development projects. dominant ideologies also stress the important role that developing civil society institutions should play in the transition to westernstyle democracies. however, many scholars have observed that civil society remains underdeveloped in many post-communist societies, especially regarding its ability to engage citizens (celichowski 2004:77). one reason that civic participation in the post-communist period has remained disappointingly weak in the region may be that mandatory types of participation required under communism continue to poison attitudes toward public engagement (howard 2003). for some, such involvement may also appear suspect; a notion exists that individuals who take part in civic initiatives must have ulterior motives (i.e. the desire to make money). in line with this thinking, it appears that some poles doubt environmentalists’ sincerity, and believe that they use protest as a means of extorting money from potential developers. in some cases there is considerable negativity directed at environmentalists. in the climate surrounding recent decisions to allow increased tourist development in the tatra national park, there were declarations that this decision demonstrated that “the eco-fascists will not rule poland!” such declarations reflected the perception that environmentalists interfere with the efforts of ordinary poles to get ahead.132 there are also accusations that they are under the influence of actors outside of poland. according to these arguments, environmentalist opposition benefits competitors in other countries by undermining polish economic productivity. this assertion is significant in light of poland’s recent entry into the european union and rising concerns about how businesses will fare in the european market. within the polish environmental movement, many environmentalists express distrust and cynicism toward science and see it as a tool serving private interests. at the same time, many activists realize that science plays an important role in providing legitimacy to a movement which has been rendered marginal in polish society. the distrust that many non-environmentalists express towards environmentalists suggests that there is a need to employ more effective communication strategies, and to demonstrate the relevance of environmental issues to the lives of polish citizens. poland’s membership in the european union introduces another element to environmental discussions, offering new possibilities and constraints on the role of science, development, and concern for the greater good. notes 117 in a pamphlet produced by pracownia to articulate the organization’s mission, there appeared two drawings side by side depicting this distinction. in the first drawing a stick figure sat on the sidelines and observed nature from a distance; in the second the figure dove into a lake, suggesting the emphasis that deep ecology places on first-hand experience of nature as an engaged participant. 118 “jeżeli nie wiadomo o co chodzi, to chodzi o pieniądze” (polish original). 119 the polish educational system is similar to the german model. in order to advance within the academy, individuals possessing a doctorate must complete a habilitacja thesis, usually five to ten years within the academy. generally, one must have completed it to be considered an independent scholar or one who has the power to determine her or his own areas of research, although in recent years the system has been somewhat more flexible. 120 of course, advancing one’s academic career often improves one’s earning potential. however, academics in poland do not generally make large salaries, prompting some to work at two or more institutions. as halina dobrucka indicates in her comments above, some scientists use their credentials in commercial pursuits. 121 “ nie czuję sie naukowcem.,..chociaż naukowcem jestem” (polish original). 122 jacek uses the non-standard noun pasjonata to describe himself, i have not been able to produce a direct equivalent in english. 123 however, this issue is somewhat complicated by the presence of the habilitacja—a higher degree of doctorate in poland. some scholars feel that only after attaining this level can one undertake independent research. this concept may allow for some to view the doctorate alone as a more technical kind of training, rather than as a guarantee that one has attained the status of scholar or scientist. 124 i devised a series of twelve, mainly open-ended questions to structure my interviews. one question asked “do you consider yourself an activist or a scientist.” in retrospect a more open question, or at anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 74 least adding a third undefined category would have been more useful. in fact, most respondents, to some degree, rejected both labels and choose to define themselves in more abstract terms. however, i have yet to find satisfactory replacements for these categories beyond the more general term “environmentalist.” 125 the image of the environmentalist as “ecoterrorist” is not unique to poland, but is also a prominent depiction in the west, particularly in u.s. media representations of environmentalists and opponents of globalization (deluca 1999). 126 in polish the term ekolog can refer to both specialists in ecology as well as to environmental activists. interview with paweł adamski, february 18, 2001. 127 in my interviews with scientists, they explained that wolves require large amounts of wooded territory. this is one reason why preserving small pockets of forest is not adequate to protect the species. large terrain is necessary to ensure a healthy gene pool. wolf populations suffer from the introduction of highways and other inftrastructure which separate packs and individuals (and are otherwise hazardous). in response to this need, some scientists are attempting to create and gain support for migration corridors (interviews with krzysztof szmidt 8/7/01 and wojciech śmietana 7/29/01). 128 in 1998 wolf advocates were successful in promoting legislation eliminating the hunting of wolves in poland (at least in most situations). however, the practice remained legal in countries bordering poland , such as slovakia, ukraine and belarus. this situation is especially problematic because most of poland’s wolves live in border areas. 129 here kossak refers to studies that show how many animals survive after being radio-collared, such results are sometimes calculated after a 6-month or 1 year period. 130 simona kossak’s criticism of fellow scientists is part of a larger dispute between two groups of scientists affiliated with different research institutions in białowieża and which janusz korbel mentions in his statement above. 131 this tendency was likely exacerbated by the rapid demise of the nascent green party in the early 1990s. in addition to internal divisions, the party’s integrity was compromised when key green party members were accused (apparently accurately in some cases) of having ties to the communist secret service and neo-fascist groups. however, in anticipation of poland’s entry into the european union a new polish green party was established, partly funded by west european green parties. jacek bożek, the head of klub gaja, another organization from bielsko-biała and artist/philosopher magda mosiewicz were elected to chairs the new party. however, it remains to be seen whether or not it will continue to function as a viable party. 132 such comments can often be found in internet responses to newspaper articles, such as those at the following sites: http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/72,2.html?f=410&w=22 852018&a=22859953 9/5/05 and http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/72,2.html?f=53&w=182 04967&a=19177535 9/5/05. references bakhtin. mikhail. 1994. the bakhtin reader: selected writings of bakhtin, medvedev, and voloshinov. new york: e. arnold. bauman, richard. 1986. story, performance, and event: contextual studies of oral narrative. cambridge: cambridge university press. bauman, zygmunt. 1999. culture as praxis. london: sage. berglund, eeva. 1998. knowing nature, knowing science: an ethnography of environmental activism. cambridge: white horse press. carpenter, inta gale. 1992. from lecture to debate: generational contestation in exile. in selected papers on refugee issues. pamela a devoe (ed.). committee on refugee issues. celichowski, jerzy. 2004. civil society in eastern europe: growth without engagement. in exploring civil society: political and cultural contexts. marlies glasius, david lewis, and hakan seckinelgin (eds.). new york: routledge. dauphinée, elizabeth. 2003. faith, hope, neoliberalism: mapping economies of violence on the margins of europe.” dialectical anthropology. 2: 189-203. della porta, donnatella, and mario diani. 1999. social movements: an introduction. malden, ma: blackwell. http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/72,2.html?f=410&w=22852018&a=22859953� http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/72,2.html?f=410&w=22852018&a=22859953� http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/72,2.html?f=53&w=18204967&a=19177535� http://forum.gazeta.pl/forum/72,2.html?f=53&w=18204967&a=19177535� anthropology of east europe review volume 24, no. 1, spring 2006 page 75 deluca kevin michael. 1999. unruly arguments: the body rhetoric of earth first! act up, and queer nation. argumentation and advocacy 36(1):9-21. giddens, anthony. modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. stanford, ca: stanford university press. goffman, erving. 1959. the presentation of self in everyday life. garden city, ny: doubleday. hobsbawm, eric and terence ranger (eds.). 1983. the invention of tradition. new york: cambridge university press. hall, stuart. 1995. the west and the rest. in modernity: an introduction to modern societies. oxford, uk: blackwell. harper, krista. chernobyl stories and anthropological shock in hungary," anthropological quarterly 74(3): 114-123. hicks, barbara. 1996. environmental politics in poland: a social movement between regime and opposition. new york: columbia university press. howard, marc morjé. 2003. the weakness of civil society in post-communist europe. new york: cambridge university press. killingsworth, m. jimmie and jaqueline s. palmer. 1996. millenial ecology: the apocalyptic narrative from silent spring to global warming. in green culture: environmental rhetoric in contemporary america. carl g. herndl and stuart c. brown (eds.). madison: university of wisconsin press. melucci, alberto. 1996. challenging codes: collective action in the information age. new york: cambridge university press. okraska, remigiusz. 2000. coraz ich więcej coraz ich mniej…refleksje o krzyżach w pejzażu. dzikie życie 12. oring, elliot. 1986. ethnic groups and ethnic folklore. in folk groups and folklore genres: an introduction. elliot oring (ed.). logan, utah: utah state university press. smith, anthony d. 1991. national identity. reno: university of nevada press. stoeker, randy. 1995. community, movement, organization: the problem of identity convergence in collective action. sociological quarterly, 36(1):111-130. szymczyk, bartłomiej. 2003. private conversation, 6/28/03. warner, marina. 1994. from the beast to the blonde: on fairy tales and their tellers. london: chatto and windus. white, david gordon. 1991. myths of the dog-man. chicago: university of chicago press. mythical vision of the city: kraków as the ‘pope’s city’ anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 author email: a.niedzwiedz@iphils.uj.edu.pl mythical vision of the city: kraków as the ‘pope’s city’1 anna niedźwiedź, jagiellonian university introduction in april 2005, john paul ii, the pope of the catholic church passed away. immediately after broadcasting the news from the vatican, all the important international news agencies sent live broadcasts from streets and squares of the city of kraków, poland. despite the late night hour, hundreds of inhabitants of the „pope‟s city‟ as it was called were gathering in front of the local bishops‟ palace and in other places, lighting candles, praying and singing, many of them with tears in their eyes. with the death of the late pope a new dimension of the urban space of the city of kraków was born. the legend of the „pope‟s city‟ magnetized crowds who gathered there to pay tribute to the deceased pope „in the city of his life‟. in this article i will sketch the broad context which led toward the creation of the myth of kraków as the „pope‟s city‟. i argue that the appearance of this new layer within the urban space of the city of kraków expresses a “mythological dimension of tradition”, which: “…is related to the fact that tradition is shaped by emotions. tradition is always close, direct, does not need rational explanations. tradition at the same time contextualizes the past and the space” (robotycki 1992: 43). following robotycki‟s thought in my analysis, i will emphasize the role of emotions shared by the community, as well as popular visions of the past (kraków‟s history, the pope‟s biography) and the space (urban space of the city of kraków), and will show how these three elements mingled together, thereby creating a new symbolic landscape of the city. i argue that long-lasting mythological constructions attached to the popular vision of the city of kraków in polish culture combined with the popular image of john paul ii as a national hero and contemporary christian saint brought about a specific development of the city‟s symbolic landscape, which manifested itself during a ground-breaking moment immediately after the death of the late pope. to illustrate these contexts i will summarize the mythical discourse about the city of kraków as the old polish capital and a cradle of sainthood. i will then point out how john paul ii himself recalled and revived the mythological dimensions of kraków. finally, i will present how the figure of the pope became incorporated into the urban space of the city and its tradition. i will focus especially on the events that took place in kraków right after the death of john paul ii. it should be stressed that space is treated here not only as one of the “everyday elements of a human existence” but first and foremost as “a matter of imagination, a constituent of human consciousness, which is inhabited by images produced by a human being. it is ordered and named” (karpińska 2000: 9). the urban space in that sense will be understood as a symbolic landscape and „lived space‟, which includes “living space (territory, activity areas), social space, and the values attached to both” (rodman 2003: 206). it will be treated as a structure mirroring anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 209 and expressing feelings, emotions, values and stereotypes shared by inhabitants and presented to visitors. space which is „lived‟ is dynamic: it adopts new symbols which merge with the old ones adding new layers to a symbolic landscape. stories about kraków as the „pope‟s city‟, already present in kraków during the pontiff reign of john paul ii (1978-2005), developed rapidly at the moment of the pope‟s death, spectacularly transforming the city into the „place of remembrance‟ and the „pope‟s place‟. the liminal experience of „communitas‟, intensely shared by the city‟s inhabitants during the socalled „white week‟ after the death of john paul ii, freed the emotions that were attached to certain places within the urban space. a mythological dimension of tradition confirmed a common conviction that kraków‟s space is „gifted with a spirit‟. this idea follows the pattern described by jerzy mikułowski pomorski, who stated that: genius loci is a cultural phenomenon. the conviction that a place can evoke unusual acts and events is deposited in the social structure of beliefs. strong widespread emotion is necessary for such a conviction to exist and preserve its vitality. people not only take into account such a possibility, but strongly believe it is true. they expect it to happen, and, as this is usually a self-fulfilling prophecy, they see it happen. (mikułowski-pomorski 1996: 30-31) in my analysis i will show how the most mythologized urban space in poland, associated with national and sacral dimensions, was elevated to the status of a symbolic landscape intertwined with the myth of the most popular polish contemporary national hero. myth of the city kraków, today the second largest city in poland , is known among poles as their old, historic capital. important monuments, historical mementos, and symbolic buildings are located here, as are the graves of polish kings, queens and national heroes. warsaw, on the other hand, was completely destroyed during the second world war and then rebuilt as a new, socialist capital for a new, socialist state (crowley 1997). obligatory school excursions, as well as large numbers of private tourists visit kraków every year, paying homage to the glorious past of the polish nation and learning about its history by way of the historic monuments. in contemporary polish public opinion, kraków holds a unique position among the polish cities and towns. it is seen as a special place, a „magical city‟ 2 gifted with its genius loci. today‟s popular opinion is based on long-standing historic roots. kraków has been described as a special and unique city since at least the fifteenth century, when it gained unquestionable international recognition as a thriving financial and political center. however, even in later periods, when the city started to decay, and the official seat of the royal court moved to warsaw (1609), the importance of the symbolic dimension of the city of kraków within the polish-lithuanian commonwealth remained stable. officially, until the end of the anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 210 first polish republic the most important symbolic state events, like royal coronations and funerals, were associated with kraków cathedral on wawel hill and the royal and state insignia were stored here. as jacek purchla points out, those facts reveal that from the formal and legal point of view, kraków held many features of a capital city even after the royal court moved to the city of warsaw (purchla 1996: 27-38). even today, this symbolic and metaphorical capitalcity status of kraków is present in popular discourse, and names like the „historic capital of poland‟ and „cultural capital‟ are still broadly associated with kraków. the contemporary official name of the city, „royal capital city of kraków,‟ also recalls its glorious past. the collapse of the polish-lithuanian commonwealth brought partitions and the disappearance of the polish state for an extensive period (1795-1918). paradoxically, that time re-enforced the symbolic dimension of kraków as a special historic place of importance for the polish people and nation. during the period that official polish statehood did not exist, poles perceived the space of the city of kraków as a condensed symbolic manifestation of polish history and national ideology. recalling a tradition of royal burials at wawel cathedral, a new national polish pantheon was created. public funerals of national heroes, soldiers fighting for polish independence, as well as burials of famous polish artists and poets were performed within kraków‟s urban space. even relics of those who died in remote places were supposed to be transported to kraków and buried there after vast, pompous public celebrations recalling the schema of historic royal funeral processions through the whole city. the city started to be recognized under symbolic nicknames like „national temple‟, „heart of poland‟, „a bastion of polishness‟, „slavic rome‟, and „treasury of relics and mementos‟ (grodziska 2003: 67-80). growing mythologization of the urban space brought an appearance of „national pilgrimages‟ performed by poles living in different parts of partitioned poland who started to visit the city of kraków searching for the monuments and symbols of the old, glorious past of the bygone polish state. local politician and patriotic activist, jakub bojko, very passionately expressed his love to the city in 1897: the walls of kraków‟s churches and houses are witnesses of the great past of our nation, as well as witnesses of our national defeats and misfortunes….who does not love kraków and its monuments, who has not visited kraków at least once in his life, for whom it does not matter what is the fate of its monuments, he cannot be a member of the polish nation. (as cited in ziejka 1994: 27) the city began to be perceived in a sacral-mythological context. kraków and its buildings and churches, streets and markets were described as an „open book‟ which could be „read‟. stones, pavements, towers, bells, smells, sounds, and landscapes were recalled not only as mementos but also as relics and witnesses of the national past. this emotional discourse described the city space as a whole. particular city buildings, as well, were attributed subjective features, as in this description of wawel cathedral from the mid-nineteenth century by a famous local archivist and bookseller: anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 211 wawel cathedral with its towers climbs into the sky… i enter its doors and can recognize the forgotten histories which are alive here in old, cold marble stones… i can see an immense book made out of stone, here each stone speaks about ancient times… the walls grayed with the oldness are like the sheets of this old antique book about our history… altars, pictures, treasures are a joy for the eyes… and those who walk in are reminded by the stone statues about the old fame and glory of our forefathers and ancestors. (grabowski 1852: 17) there are countless examples of texts written in the nineteenth century that describe kraków in a similar manner: as a symbolic landscape where space, past and emotions mingle together in a mythological discourse of the city. the cradle of sainthood parallel to the growing mythologization of the urban space and the development of the city‟s symbolic landscape, a mythological discourse recalling famous and great figures connected with kraków emerged. in this discourse not only kings, knights, poets and scholars appeared but also an impressive group of christian saints. popularization of these saints‟ cults inspired yet another nickname to be attached to the city: „the cradle of sainthood‟. the first, and probably the most significant local christian saint, was the eleventh-century bishop of kraków named stanislaus, who was killed by the polish king. stanislaus‟ cult has been connected with kraków for centuries and the liveliness of his legend confirms a „mythological dimension of tradition‟ attaching a vision of the past to kraków‟s symbolic landscape. even though the historic and political context of stanislaus‟ death and his conflict with the king is not clear (kleszczowa 1997, labuda 1996, plezia 1999), the legend describes the bishop as a victim of a cruel ruler. the canonization of stanislaus in 1253 made him a patron saint of the city of kraków and all polish lands, merging his legend with a mythological vision of poland and its history. relics, exhibited in a central hall of wawel cathedral, as well as a shrine connected with the place of the bishop‟s martyrdom, were involved in the most important political events. each polish king whose coronation was celebrated in the city of kraków was supposed to perform an expiatory peregrination to the skałka church – the legendary place of stanislaus‟ martyrdom. bishop stanislaus appears to be the first „original krakowian‟ saint opening the row of other local saints. the following centuries brought numerous saint figures living there and usually buried in the city. kraków, with its stories about saints and their relics, and with other memorabilia connected with exemplars of catholicism, became an attractive pilgrimage center offering various loca sacra. the relics displayed in churches were shown to the faithful as visible, touchable signs of the presence of sacred figures, as well as a means to sanctify the space. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 212 the growing popularity of kraków as a pilgrimage center was mirrored in the publication of the first city guidebook in 1603, describing krakowian pilgrimages routes and religious shrines. its original title, guidebook, or a short description of kraków’s churches, was soon replaced by a new metaphorical one: the jewels of the capital city of kraków, recalling the idea of the city as a sacred treasury for relic jewels. interestingly, at the time of political and economical decay of the city, this popular, oft reprinted publication appeared, recalling in its title the capital status of kraków in the context of its religious significance. the discourse on the urban space of the city of kraków continued to develop. it was described as a sacred space touched and shaped by the presence of pious men and women, and as a space generating sacredness. in the nineteenth century, with a growing national mythology attached to the symbolic landscape of the city, the tradition incorporated new national heroes into the vision of kraków‟s sacredness. in the city known as a „reliquary on the bust of poland‟, relics of national heroes „new jewels‟ found their final resting place next to kraków‟s saints, enforcing the religious-national dimension of the city. kraków’s myth in john paul ii speeches karol wojtyła – kraków‟s archbishop – was elected pope in october 1978 taking the name of john paul ii. during his pontiff reign (1978-2005) he visited the city of kraków several times. probably the most significant was his first visit in 1979 which illustrated a very deep and lively relationship between the mythological past of the urban space of the city of kraków, and the new pope, his image and his biography. the main celebrations in kraków were connected with the 900 th anniversary of the martyrdom of bishop stanislaus. despite its religious dimension, the celebration performed in communist poland turned into a political protest confronting the communist government, with the catholic church and its enthusiastic followers gathering in crowds during open-air „pope‟s masses‟. the visit of the pope, who celebrated a mass at the spot of the martyrdom of a former kraków bishop, immediately revived associations with the political and social situation of poles and the conflict between secular power and the ecclesiastical authorities, seen by the society as spokesmen of freedom. the mythology of kraków‟s space, kraków‟s legends, kraków‟s saints was very strongly recalled in a vision revealed by the pope himself in his pastoral letter written before his pilgrimage to poland: in this year in which the church in poland celebrates the nine-hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom and death of saint stanislaus, kraków‟s bishop, the bishop of rome, saint peter‟s successor cannot be absent. too significant is this jubilee, too much related to the history of the church and the polish nation, which for more than one thousand years of its history united with this church in a particular deep way. this voice [the pope‟s] cannot be missing, particularly at this moment, when to saint peter‟s capital, by the mysterious working of divine anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 213 providence, the pope was called, who until recently had been saint stanislaus‟s successor in the bishop‟s capital in kraków. (as cited in kubik 1994: 136) beginning with that meaningful first visit by john paul ii to his „home city‟, all subsequent visits evoked an immense public reaction. open-air masses on kraków‟s błonia meadow drew millions of people, including inhabitants of kraków and pilgrims from around poland who came to meet with the pope. during the communist and post-communist periods, the texts of the pope‟s official and non-official speeches, as well as the texts of sermons and prayers preached by john paul ii during his visits to kraków, recalled the mythical vision of the city. in this vision, the medieval, baroque and romantic traditions mingle together with the emotional and private attitude of the pope and the krakowian part of his biography. the urban space of kraków was seen as a synonym for anything that was „truely polish‟ and a synthesis of anything national: i am looking at kraków. my kraków, the city of my life. the history of our nation. (kraków-błonia, june 10 1987) 3 kraków appears to be a symbolic space, a lens through which the whole of polish history and the whole of poland might be seen: before i leave, i want to look from this spot, once more toward kraków this kraków, the city in which each stone, each brick is precious to me and from this city, from this place i want to see the whole of poland… (kraków-błonia, june 9, 1979) it is also a subject with a voice, a place where stones and bricks are not mute but are able to speak: kraków, since i was a very young boy, since i was a child, meant for me a special synthesis of everything polish and everything christian. kraków always represented the great history of my fatherland. it always has been expressing its history in the most complete way. (kraków-błonia, june 6, 1979) this subjective relation „to‟ and „with‟ the city was confirmed in many other statements: we are united by kraków, by its great history, its royal history, its burgher history. wawel cathedral and wawel castle, the market square, the st. mary‟s basilica, the cloth halls all those buildings we can see here are witnesses of this history. all this was given to me in this city, i took it all from this city, and i am anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 214 thankful for that to you my brothers and sisters, my compatriots you who are heirs to this big millennium. (kraków-market square, august 13, 1991) kraków in the pope‟s speeches, similar to the nineteenth century writings, appears to be a text, a city-book, which can be read and interpreted by a visitor or a pilgrim. it also receives human features and is treated as a human subject to whom emotionally loaded dedications are directed: “my dear kraków! i am saying good bye to you!”, or “i am recalling you kraków”, and “i hate to leave you”. characteristic buildings (e.g. wawel cathedral) and places (e.g. market square) symbolize mythological dimension of kraków. they are witnesses of the past, witnesses who are not only objects, but also subjects possessing their own life and their own soul. the city – as depicted by the pope is filled with spirits, symbols and myths. “city of my life” pope john paul ii, the past archbishop of the city of kraków, a former student at jagiellonian university, a worker in a quarry and a chemical plant and a cleric in an underground seminary in the city during the second world war, emphasized his emotional attachment to krakow every time he visited. “my beloved kraków”, “kraków – my home city”, “my kraków – the city of my life” – these quotations are eagerly and proudly recalled by many inhabitants. however, it must be remembered that karol wojtyła was born not in kraków but in the town of wadowice 4 , around 50 km southwest from kraków, and moved to the city at the age of 18. still, the constant manifestation of a very emotional relationship to the city, as well as the mutual response of the city‟s inhabitants as proud of „our pope‟, created the image of kraków as the „pope‟s city‟, recalling the long-lasting tradition of the mythologization of kraków urban space. this stereotypical image was present during all of john paul ii‟s visits to kraków, but was popularized especially at the moment of his death. since that time, countless guidebooks, leaflets, tourist-pilgrim information materials, popular movies and documentaries have been produced depicting kraków unquestionably as the „pope‟s city‟. a typical introduction to one of the guidebooks published in 2006 informs the reader: there are three cities in the world which could have been called by karol wojtyła – john paul ii as „his city‟: wadowice, kraków, rome. but it was only kraków among them which was called by him „the city of my life‟. this is the most beautiful name which kraków could have received after a thousand year history. (jakubczyk and tekieli 2006: 4) „the pope‟ and „his places‟ started to be promoted as a special krakowian tourist attraction. the fame and mythology of the city “that captured the heart of pope john paul ii” (cnn.com 2005, april 6 ) – usually not known and not easily understandable for non-polish anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 215 visitors – is revealed through the popularized biography of wojtyła. short descriptions often simplify and mythologize historic events, mixing places and times, as happened in a short internet advertisement of an „eastern european trip‟ published by an american tour-operator: krakow – the pope‟s city the two greatest figures in the modern polish pantheon are lech walesa and the late pope john paul ii. and while walesa is forever associated with the gdansk shipyard where he sparked the solidarity movement, the pope is inseparably linked with krakow. here, the young karol wojtyla labored as a priest during the nazis‟ brutal occupation. when he donned the red hat of the cardinal, he administered his sermon from the hilltop complex of wawel castle. following his elections as the first non-italian pope in four centuries, an estimated one-third of still-communist poland congregated for his sermon from the ramparts of wawel castle. here, among gothic masterpieces, churches beyond count, and medieval rynek square, you‟ll feel the impact of faith and history once embodied in the late polish pope. (eastern europe trip 2006) discourse about the „pope‟s city‟ is based on long-lasting myths and powerful symbols. kraków, the most mythologized of all polish cities, is connected with legendary stories like no other urban space in poland, possessing centuries-old mythologizing structures enriched during the nineteenth century by nationalism. kraków is thus seen in popular discourse as a place „naturally‟ connected with the most famous, contemporary popular national hero, whose biography is seen by the polish people as a fulfillment of romantic prophecies about the savior of the nation (łozińska 1992). 5 on the other hand, the urban space seen as sacred and interpreted as the „cradle of sainthood‟, „center of christianity‟, „polish rome‟, „treasury of relics‟ is strongly attached to the vision of john paul ii as a popular saint. 6 as previously mentioned, the genius loci of the urban space – which is a cultural phenomenon – once more has worked following the pattern of a self-fulfilling prophecy. the connection between symbolic urban space and a popular biography of contemporary national hero as well as popular saint revealed the mythological dimension of tradition. construction of tradition from the very moment of john paul ii‟s death in april 2005 a spontaneous mythologization of kraków‟s urban landscape developed. the whole week between the public death 7 of the pope on april 2 nd and his public funeral in the vatican on april 8 th revealed the symbolic meanings of kraków as the „pope‟s city‟. 8 the spontaneous public reaction of people, who gathered in specific places, brought flowers, candles, images of the pope, and flags of the vatican, poland and kraków, prayed, cried, sang and meditated, and created „places of remembrance‟. this period, spontaneously called the „white week‟, 9 opened locals and visitors to anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 216 a liminal phenomenon and an unexpected experience of „communitas‟ (turner 1977:96). even fans of two opposing soccer teams – usually infamous for their animosities – gathered united in front of the bishops‟ palace and took part in an open-air mass celebrated at the stadium of one of the teams. during the „white week‟, emotions, myths and symbols mingled together. rumors about a funeral for the pope at wawel cathedral, instead of the vatican, reflected the tradition of burying national heroes in kraków. when church officials denied such rumors, new gossip about the possible donation of parts of the body to wawel cathedral immediately spread. one person interviewed in april 2005 said: the heart of the pope should be brought to poland, to kraków. here we can find so many relics of famous poles, for instance at wawel. john paul ii was so much connected with kraków and its vicinity. his heart would suit this place… 10 the idea of receiving „relics‟ of the body of john paul ii has constantly reappeared in local rumors, which significantly increase whenever any news connected with the beatification and canonization process led by the vatican are discussed. the other local idea that spontaneously appeared during the „white week‟ recalled kraków‟s tradition of memorial mounds. kraków is a city where two prehistoric soil mounds are preserved, as well as two mounds built in memory of national heroes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. due to that local tradition, kraków is known among poles as the „city of mounds‟. the idea of a new mound construction, dedicated to the memory of the deceased pope, appeared after his death and was regarded as „the most krakowian monument‟ which could be constructed within the urban space of the „pope‟s city.‟ 11 even though the image of kraków as the „pope‟s city‟ had been promoted years earlier, it was certainly the liminal time of the „white week‟ when the urban space of the city of kraków gained its new dimension. the tourist route of john paul ii, signed by the city council in year 2002, started to be visible only after april 2005. initially, people did not pay much attention to the route‟s signs. after the events connected with the „white week‟, when the community needed symbolic places that recalled its mythological hero, spots connected with the „pope‟s route‟ received special significance. probably the most meaningful „place of remembrance‟, which evoked strong emotions and led toward the creation of a new significant place on a mythological map of urban space of the city of kraków, was the „pope‟s window‟, known now as “the most famous window in kraków” (skowrońska 2008: 5). 12 this is a window on the second floor of the bishops‟ palace, the building where wojtyła was living when he was an archbishop of kraków‟s archdiocese. however, the fame of the window is connected with his visits to kraków during his pontiff reign. whenever john paul ii was visiting kraków, he stayed overnight in the bishops‟ palace. in the evenings, after the official part of his visit, when people were still gathered in front of the bishops‟ palace waiting for his blessing, he used to appear in one of the windows on the second anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 217 floor, talking, singing, joking and finally praying with the crowd, which applauded his appearance. those unofficial meetings became a local, krakowian tradition. after the end of the pope‟s visit, the window in the bishops‟ palace would return to normal. and except for a monument to the pope, which appeared in the courtyard of the bishops‟ palace, and was not visible from the street, nothing special appeared in that city space. the place changed dramatically in april 2005: a few days before the death of john paul ii people spontaneously started to gather and pray together in the evenings in front of the palace window. during the night of the death of john paul ii, crowds gathered for hours-long vigils. the „pope‟s window‟, as it started to be called commonly, was decorated with white and yellow flowers (vatican colors) and with a crucifix with a red stole – the symbol of the death and resurrection of christ. what happened to the window during that time was significant. crowds literally occupied the vicinity of the palace, and brought so many flowers and candles that city officials were forced to close off the entire street. private traffic, as well as public transportation, including a very popular tram line, were prohibited on the street for a week and special detours were signposted. the walls of the bishops‟ palace were covered with posters, stickers, and banners expressing love, gratitude, and remembrance of the deceased pope. candles put on the windows of the first floor of the palace started to burn the walls and candle wax stuck to the nearby pavement. soon a special fence appeared to keep the crowd a few meters away from the walls of the building. but still people brought candles and lit them in a nearby park. after the funeral of john paul ii, the area by the bishops‟ palace was finally cleared and traffic and trams returned to their regular routes. but the „pope‟s window‟ remained the central „place of remembrance‟ connected with john paul ii. the window, seen as something very human and familiar, recalled the idea of „home‟, which perfectly suited the popular concept of john paul ii and his presence within the urban space of kraków. the window now possesses a life of its own: there is a portrait of john paul ii in the middle of the window‟s frame, and fresh flowers often appear next to it. but the most important part of its „life‟ appears on the street and pavement in front of the window. every day, individuals, as well as tourist groups, turn from the main route, leading from the market square to wawel hill, and stop in front of the bishops‟ palace, taking pictures of the „pope‟s window‟. almost every day new candles and fresh flowers appear on the other side of the busy street, where one can best view the window. various „pope‟s anniversaries‟, like wojtyła‟s birthday and name-day, the anniversary of his papal election, the anniversaries of the pope‟s parents‟ deaths, as well as the anniversary of the pope‟s death are celebrated in front of the window. during christmas, easter, all saints and all souls days, the number of candles, flowers and handmade greeting cards deposited in front of the window significantly grows. the window has begun to be treated as a sacred relic. during the 2006 restoration of the windows in the bishops‟ palace, many people were concerned about the restoration or possible replacement of the „original pope‟s window‟. church officials publicly assured krakowians that after the restoration the original frame would be put back at the „pope‟s window‟, only covered with additional glass protection, as “no-one in kraków would dare to replace the old frame” (skowrońska 2008: 5). anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 218 it must be emphasized that few other places gained similar public attention during the „white week‟. certainly błonia meadow and wawel cathedral attracted crowds and have been seen as the „pope‟s places‟. however, the example of the window reveals the most spontaneous creation of a „place of remembrance‟ and a new local tradition. 13 conclusion the story of kraków as the „pope‟s city‟ is still open, still alive and still being written. a few elements are already enshrined, like the meaningful space in front of the „pope‟s window‟, while a few are still under debate. after the liminal experience of the „white week‟, emotions calmed down and the city went back to its normal life, in the same way as the fans of two competing soccer teams returned to their brutal fights. on the one hand, the image of the pope and his myth has been used in official marketing city strategy. on the other hand it often appears in the political discourse of the catholic church in post-communist poland. last but not least, it is present in popular imagery and religiosity, involving new places within the city and popularizing parts of the krakowian biography of karol wojtyła – john paul ii. 14 this article has pointed out the mechanisms of the mythologization of a contemporary urban space in the specific case of kraków. the successful creation of myth involved longlasting mythological structures and traditional discourses attached to the city space (including the idea of genius loci and the cradle of sainthood), the mythical biography of a significant contemporary public figure, as well as spontaneous and emotional actions generated by the city‟s community. the example of kraków‟s story shows that urban space is socially and culturally important and loaded with meanings. it is seen by the community as granted with genius loci and is a dynamic structure generating mythological dimensions of tradition. the symbolic landscape of the city adopts new stories, new figures, new events and emotions, mingling them with old discourses and adding more layers to the city‟s meanings. tradition, which is strongly shaped by emotions, is perceived as obvious and an objective part of reality that is quickly adopted by the community. it seems that kraków‟s new name the „pope‟s city‟, received acceptance as part of a local tradition and symbolic landscape. when asked in 2008 about the feelings he associates with the term „pope‟s city‟, one young krakowian answered, “there is nothing to be emphasized in any special way […] it is something being felt, simply it is the way it is”. 15 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 219 in front of the „pope‟s window‟ at the bishops‟ palace, april 2005 in front of the bishops‟ palace, april 2005 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 220 a closed amusement park and national and city flags decorated with black ribbons, april 2005 “you always have been and you always will stay in our hearts, your krakowians”, poster at the market square, april 2005 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 221 the badge with an emblem of royal capital city of kraków with a black ribbon. the badges were worn by the people of kraków during the „white week‟ tourist and pilgrims at the pope‟s window, june 2006 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 222 candles left in front of the pope‟s window, june 2006 kosciuszko mound decorated with national and papal flags, people gathering there are observing błonia meadow where the mass dedicated to the pope is celebrated april 2005 anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 223 in front of the bishops‟ palace, october 2007 notes 1 the author would like to thank sarah d. phillips, cordula gdaniec, and tanya richardson for their helpful suggestions in developing this article. i am also grateful to lauren butt for her generous editorial assistance. 2 one of the most popular internet websites about kraków is titled „magical kraków‟. 3 all quotations from john paul ii speeches are quoted after: jan paweł ii (1999). 4 the town of wadowice has built its own mythology as a „pope‟s place‟ and „pope‟s hometown‟. see pochłódka (2008). it is also worth adding that in 2006 a special „papal train‟ line was opened connecting kraków and wadowice. 5 john paul ii has been seen by the poles first and foremost as the “polish pope,” and this national context is one of the most characteristic features shaping the popular image of the pope in poland. anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 224 6 in popular religiosity john paul ii has been seen and described – even during his life – as a saint. his popular hagiography mingled together with stories about him as a polish national hero. see zowczak (1987) and owczarek (2006). 7 in poland and in kraków the news from the vatican during the last days of john paul ii was followed by people very carefully. crowds gathered for vigils and prayers, literally assisting the dying pope „publicly‟. 8 the mourning for john paul ii was publicly manifested not only in kraków but also in other polish cities and towns. an anthropological analysis of the mourning of the pope in the streets of warsaw is given by ewa klekot (2007). 9 the name „white week‟ recalls the traditional name known in christian liturgy and attached to the week following easter (john paul ii died on the saturday after easter). however, in popular discourse, the name „white week‟ was recognized by people as recalling the white color of the pope‟s robe and his popularly accepted sanctity. 10 interview conducted as part of a research project on popular polish religiosity conducted by the institute of ethnology and cultural anthropology, jagiellonian university. 11 currently, the idea of constructing the pope‟s mound is under discussion and it is unclear if it will be realized. 12 the source i use here (skowrońska 2008) was a special supplement edited by a daily newspaper in kraków on 16 th october 2008 (20 th anniversary of the pope‟s election). the supplement was dedicated to “kraków of john paul ii”. the cover of the supplement featured an archival picture of john paul ii appearing in the „pope‟s window‟. 13 it is worth mentioning that in 2009 an interactive internet web site and portal was created under the address: www.franciszkanska3.pl recalling the address of bishops‟ palace in kraków (franciszkańska street 3). 14 an interesting example of „a new krakowian tradition‟ is a pilgrimage „in the footsteps of karol wojtyła – the worker‟ initiated in october 2005 and since then repeated yearly. this onfoot, one-day pilgrimage follows the places connected with the period of the second world war when karol wojtyła was a worker in a krakowian quarry and a chemical plant. 15 interview conducted as part of a research project on popular polish religiosity conducted by institute of ethnology and cultural anthropology, jagiellonian university. http://www.franciszkanska3.pl/ anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 225 references cited cnn.com. 2005. (april 6) pope‟s heart may rest in poland. electronic document, http://www.cnn.com/2005/world/europe/04/05/pope.heart/ accessed november 2, 2006. crowely, d. 1997. people‟s warsaw / popular warsaw. journal of design history 10 (2): 202223. eastern europe trip. 2006. krakow – the pope‟s city. electronic document, http://www.gct.com/gcc/general/default.aspx?oid=115850&linklocation=trip_leftnav, accessed june 9, 2006. grabowski, a. 1852. starożytnicze wiadomości o krakowie. z dawnych rękopiśmienniczych źródeł. kraków: józef czech. grodziska, k. 2003. “gdzie miasto zaczarowane…”. księga cytatów o krakowie. kraków: wydawnictwo znak. jakubczyk, m. tekieli r. 2006. kraków, miasto mojego życia. przewodnik śladami jana pawła ii, kraków: jan paweł ii. pielgrzymki do ojczyzny 1979.1983.1987.1991.1995.1997.1999. przemówienia, homilie. wydawnictwo znak, kraków 1999. karpińska, e. g. 2000. miejsce wyodrębnione ze świata. przykład łódzkich kamienic czynszowych. łódź: polskie towarzystwo ludoznawcze. klekot, e. 2007. mourning john paul ii in the streets of warsaw. anthropology today 23 (4): 36. kleszczowa, i. 1997. świadectwo wieków ( z dziejów kultu św. stanisława). studia claromontana 17: 27-27. kubik, j. 1994. the power of symbols against the symbols of power: the rise of solidarity and the fall of state socialism in poland. university park: pennsylvania state university press. labuda, g. 1996. korona i infuła. od monarchii do poliarchii. kraków: kaw. http://www.cnn.com/2005/world/europe/04/05/pope.heart/ http://www.gct.com/gcc/general/default.aspx?oid=115850&linklocation=trip_leftnav anthropology of east europe review. 27(2): fall 2009 226 łozińska, k. 1992. john paul ii – a hero of popular imagination. in in search of paradigm. a. zambrzycka-kunachowicz ed. pp. 79-96. kraków: wydawnictwo platan. mikułowski-pomorski, j. 1996. the city and its genius loci. in the historical metropolis. a hidden potential. j. purchla, ed. pp. 21-37. kraków: international cultural centre. owczarek, p. 2006. karol wojtyła – jan paweł ii. podhalańska opowieść o świętym. od historii do mitu – studium antropologiczne. kraków: wydawnictwo avalon. plezia, m. 1999. dookoła sprawy świętego stanisława. studium źródłoznawcze. bydgoszcz: wydawnictwo homini. pochłódka, a. 2008. „tu, w tym mieście, wszystko się zaczęło‟. znaki papieskości w otoczeniu wizualnym wadowic. polska sztuka ludowa konteksty, no. 3-4 (282-283): 86-100. purchla, j. 1996. kraków prowincja czy metropolia? kraków: taiwpn universitas. robotycki, cz. 1992. etnografia wobec kultury współczesnej. kraków: uj. rodman, m. c. 2003. empowering place: multilocality and multivocality. in the anthropology of space and place. locating culture. s. m. low, d. l. zúñiga, eds. pp. 204-223. malden, oxford, carlton, berlin: blackwell. skowrońska, m. kraków jana pawła ii. spacerownik papieski. specjalny dodatek do gazety wyborczej, 16.10.2008. turner, v. 1977. the ritual process. structure and anti-structure. ithaca, new york: cornell paperback, cornell university press. ziejka, f. 1994. krakowscy pątnicy. in klejnoty i sekrety krakowa. teksty z antropologii miasta. r. godula, ed. pp.9-35. zowczak, m. 1987. jan paweł ii – narodziny legendy. literatura ludowa, vol. xxxi, no. 1: 312 soviet body politics petra rethmann mcgill university in this paper i attempt to decipher soviet colonialist policy towards indigenous populations within russia.1 conventionally, soviet policy is understood as a system of political assumptions, established practices and institutional arrangements which regulated national relationships within the state. as forsyth (1993), pipes (1991) and kappeler (1992) point out, in contrast to tsarist policy, the soviet state chose to force its political agenda on the state's indigenous populations. internal colonialism, dependency theory and imperialism are the most common approaches used to address state dynamics in the former soviet union. all these are valuable attempts at conceptualizing center/periphery and dominant/subordinate relations. soviet policy is understood as the eradication of "traditional" culture enforcing a hegemonic cultural order on its indigenous populations.2 particularly the role of terror and repression, institutionalization of ethnicity and societal integration manifest the items employed by the coercive stateapparatus. while all these factors have and continue to merit serious investigation, there is still significant room for an expansion of vision. the interpretation of soviet policy as the imposition of a dominant ideology on a culturally diverse group and as a form of cultural management that transforms culture according to state doctrine does not account for the mechanisms by which power was employed in a modern state. the explanation offered here will be a different one. i want to argue that the soviet state, in contrast with the tsarist regime, employed new methods for monitoring and surveying kamchatka's indigenous populations and that it attempted to acquire a hold upon the bodies and minds of the population. these techniques are best examined and explained within the larger context of a modernity marked by the exercise of power in the form of discipline and bodily corrections. my example will be the koryak community of tymlat. tymlat is a small village at the north-eastern shore in the karaginskij rajon in kamchatka. it was erected in the beginning of the thirties, in the course of the establishment of villages in the north of the far east. tymlat's population is a mélange of koryak, russians, ukrainians, and armenians, the latter who came as migrant workers in the 1950s to work either in the then still existing fish factories or as carpenters. the koryak population is a conflation of different villages that had been closed in the course of the last thirty years because the soviet government did not consider them economically viable. the koryak used to be a pastoral people migrating with their reindeer over a vast territory that was too hard to survey. even the groups that are treated in the literature as the maritime koryak who settled at the eastern and western shore possessed reindeer and split in summer to move to richer fishing grounds. ethnographic accounts (jochelson 1908; bogoras 1904-1909) describe extensively the migrating life-cycle of the koryak who aligned their activities to the migratory rhythm of the animals. but, movement in itself is elusive and haphazard, volatile bodies too hard to control. communication is uncertain amidst a dispersed population and the presence of state authority at best intermittent. on this scene the soviet state introduced new methods of military control, architecture, and school systems intended both to define and confine "koryak space." these representations of soviet power not only sought to transform what was perceived of as koryak culture but tried to conform the koryak life-world to soviet ideas about social and economic progress. from the start, the new methods explicitly counter-acted what had been the experience of koryak life.3 the ethnographic literature on the far east is classically divided into a "pre-revolutionary" and a "revolutionary" period (antropova 1971). prerevolutionary descriptions of the far east evoke images of a backward and feebleminded native living in tents, hunting bears, geese and raccoons, catching fish, seal and whale, gathering berries and other tundra plants. the innocent native roams in the wide, wild tundra and does not yet know about the sparkling light that the revolution will shed on her or him. with the dawn of the soviet power and the proclamation of the finally successful revolution in the soviet union the civilized native is introduced to the examiner. in the 1920s a modern and industrialized far east comes into mailto:rethman@mcmaster.edu� mailto:rethman@mcmaster.edu� jen typewritten text 45 being. from this time up to the eighties the native exists only in statistics, tables and ratios. in the 1930s koryak culture is perceived strictly as the ratio of the number of reindeer per owner, but later on measurement is taken of their productivity and fulfillment of the five-year-plan (gurvich and dolgikh 1970). the native is aligned with the soviet citizen. koryak culture is marked by its productive and "industrial" efficiency. the arrival of the soviets in the mid-twenties in northern kamchatka brought with it a new model of the individual, or better, the non-individual. the individual ceased as the focus for social and political attention. collectivity and social components depicted the cornerstones of an ideology that sought to submit social and cultural groups to a hegemonic order of cultural conformity. the marxist vision of the state proclaimed ideas of sameness and equality for all of its members. social distinctions based on diverse cultural background, gender, and class differences were supposedly removed and abolished. my main concern, however, is to inquire into the colonizing nature of symbolic representation of discipline that tried to seize hold of the koryak body and mind. implicit in such an analysis is a critique of attempts to analyze the establishment and the manifestation of soviet power as one of subjugation and suppression by means of authority, violence and force. i try to go beyond an understanding of soviet policy as the imposition of a dominant ideology and a form of cultural management as a ubiquitous form of political manipulation in order to transform culture according to state ideology; instead i propose an analysis that puts an emphasis on an understanding of power as a ubiquitous phenomenon that floods all spheres of cultural and social life. with the introduction of the foucauldian understanding of power into cultural and social analysis, the body has slowly moved into the limelight of intellectual attention (foucault 1978, 1979). a recently growing interest in the body can be attributed to the deconstruction of what are perceived to be false dichotomies governing western philosophical, political and social thought since "modern times" (featherstone, hepworth and turner 1991; o'neill 1985; turner 1984). body/mind, nature/culture, rationality/emotionality are only some of those ambiguous pairs that signified the project of modernity to a large extent. it is to the merit of authors who refocus attention onto bodily matters again, that analysis of the body is no longer confined to an individualistic volition or the government of the self. neither is it just a question of understanding the body as socially constructed and shaped. it is also the fact that social orders have been concerned with bodies and their control and surveillance. thus modern societies were and are increasingly concerned with the mapping and counting of populations and the threats represented by those defined as aliens or outsiders. one of the factors in this procedure, foucault states, is exactly the colonization of cultural institutions as new "centers of observation." his example is the "charitable associations" of 18th century paris. these members had to visit their respective areas regularly. they strove to eradicate places of ill-repute, tobaccoshops, life-classes, gaming houses, public scandals, blasphemy, impiety, and any other disorders that came to their attention. this is an example of a societal organization so successfully colonized by state ideology as to function as a state apparatus.4 the emergence of the body as an object of disciplinary measure takes us first through the cartesian separation of body and mind which gave a modern blush to the traditional regard of the body as the seat of untamed emotions and savage desires. in descartes, unlike the medieval or classical world, the mind was not merely to control or direct the body to its proper aim (telos) but to displace the body as the center of rationality. the body was the site of inchoate phenomena whose unstable, emotional attachment to the world interfered with the task of forming "true" and sound judgments about the world. certainty was related strictly to cognition, to the capacity to bypass the senses, by means of "intuition" (descartes 1985). the senses, i.e. the organs of the body, were not merely suspicious but actually untrustworthy. if any judgment was to be "true" since descartes one was obliged to solve this problem. and the effort to do so continued to mark commentary on the body through condillac until the time of phenomenology. even merleau-ponty, whose thorough examination of the problem of the body stood out from those of his contemporaries, remained determined to reduce the body to a center of primal synthesis of unspoken, unperceived intuition. the body as such, at face value, is not "real" but rather like a mediating point between the "real" (mind) and the world. it is not until foucault that the modern binary relationship is achieved. granted, foucault is heavily in debt to nietzsche's genealogy (foucault 1977, lash 1991), but it jen typewritten text 46 is the popularization of foucault's work that has made the break possible. foucault ably points out, in the second and third volume of the history of sexuality, how in the ancient world the body was not problematized as in modernity but was distinctively "customized" according to specific moral and very public ideas. the body did not get in the way of the true intuitive experience but rather demonstrated publicly the moral achievements of individuals. by contrast, the modern experience is not one of customizing but rather disciplining the body. modern institutions such as schools, factories, and prisons regulate the body in time and prescribe its gestures, sitting habits, and the space it can occupy. the body is the location produced by relationships of force that train it to submit to the deliberations of the (public) mind. the arrival of the russian revolution in kamchatka in the mid twenties not only brought a new policy seeking to administrate and rule the koryak but sought to establish regulations of hegemonic control as well. villages were erected at points that were thought to be strategically smart. the preferred location of their construction was at the shore close to the ocean in order to facilitate transport to the mainland. the local population was coerced to live in villages, mostly without agreement and in spite of attempts at resistance. to the soviets the villages offered the opportunity to gain control over koryak movement. collective farms [sovkhozy] were established and they not only changed the entire production process but also redefined "traditional" koryak ways of production. with the expropriation of the reindeer the koryak were crammed into brigades of up to seven men and one or two women. this meant that women became more and more confined to the household and forced to perform tasks that in the soviet mind were becoming of women.5 the migration routes for the herds were determined by the sovkhoz and every brigade had a well defined route from which it could not detour. sovkhoz helicopters patrolled constantly to ensure that action was executed according to the rules. the sovkhoz and village soviet were erected in the middle of the village and stood as the proud and central display of soviet rule. the kgb was represented by the presence of a village policeman safe-guarding the order of the village. the boarding school was attached to the building of the village soviet and the children lived there throughout the year. and while these factors controlled, manipulated, and governed the conduct of the adults, the children wore identical uniforms and learned from school books that emphasized the abolition of cultural difference and the conformity of individuals. school children in tymlat were taught to sit straight and quiet in hard benches. their days were determined by time rhythms that administrated the hours for school work, homework, and one hour for playing in the evening. having talked to adults that were boarders in their childhood i heard of several attempts by pupils to break out and run away. most often these attempts met with little success since, after all, there was only the tundra to run to or an old shed or dilapidated building to hide behind. the punishment for such minor crimes was the deprivation of food, the curtailment of play time, or mandatory assignments such as washing the toilettes and scrubbing floors. in his compelling analysis of british methods to seize control in egypt mitchell (1988) takes recourse to foucault's discipline and punish and his understanding of the panopticon as the model institution for the exercise of power. mitchell argues that such a form of power constructs its object as the reunification that was formerly divided into two main concerns, namely mind and body. mitchell understand this form as the main characteristic of modern methods of power. although foucault's analysis is rooted in europe's eighteenth century and is not at all concerned with marxist regimes his analysis is translatable into different contexts. the object of the soviet system, in my opinion, was to establish, in this case, the koryak mind as a replication of the mind that surveyed it. the ultimate form of control was to recreate koryak space, which meant to control the possibilities of koryak experience. new forms of upbringing and schooling in the former soviet union were intended not only to regulate the physical lives of the koryak but to shape and even colonize individual morality and values. rituals and celebrations signified yet another space to be colonized for the dispensation of the new ideology. the celebration of culture had to be turned into signifying events for the public affirmation of imagery and ideas of equality and unity. what could not be accommodated provided the opportunity for practicing suppression and the eradication of "undesirable" expression. in the panopticon writing, foucault asserts that "a real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation (1979: 202)." and it was precisely the new soviet fiction that would give, if necessary by force, the koryak their remade eyes. several techniques to accomplish the task were introduced. the movement of kamchatka's jen typewritten text 47 population came under strict observance and control. obtaining a special "kamchatka visa" became a requirement even for the local population. travel to the mainland was aggravated, and therefore often delayed or canceled, by the ponderous bureaucratic process one had to undergo in order to receive a visa. visits of relatives or friends from village to village were prohibited if one was not in possession of a visa. soviet helicopters were in constant action patrolling the reindeer herds in the tundra. every koryak working as a herder was required to carry her or his passport constantly with her or him to be able to show it to kgb representatives upon request. nonpossession of a passport, or its invalidity, had serious consequences such as prison. in short, territory that had been defined as "koryak land" was transformed into a soviet "general formula," a set of regulations. textnotes 1. this article is the rewritten version of a paper given at the 4th annual meeting of the postsoviet study group at columbia university. i want to thank igor krupnik and bruce grant for their discussion of my paper and the participants of the symposium for their remarks and comments. 2. this is not only true for the soviet experience but applies to most colonial contexts as well. canada's north, india and tanzania are only a few examples that merit such consideration. see timothy mitchell's detailed and elaborate investigation of british colonialism in egypt (1988). 3. i am aware that there is no monolithic reality that can be defined as 'true' koryak life. authenticity is a highly contested concept in recent anthropological discussions. this concept evokes holistic imagery that is textually constructed rather than historically founded. (see clifford and marcus 1986). 4. see comaroff (1988) on this point. jean comaroff understands ideology as an coercive dimension of culture through which relations of domination become inscribed on the body and in the mundaneness of society and culture. 5. slezkine (1994) describes indigenous women as a social target group to introduce soviet policy in chukotka and in kamchatka. this valorization of women changed with the manifestation of soviet power. women were torn out of their 'traditional' context and had to conform to an soviet image of female duties and tasks. references antropova, valentina 1971 kul'tura i byt korjakov. leningrad: nauka. bogoras, valdemar g. 1904-1909 the chukchee. the jesup north pacific expedition 7, memoirs of the american museum of natural history. leiden, new york. (reprinted 1975: new york, ams press). clifford, james and george marcus 1986 anthropology as a cultural critique: an experimental moment in the human sciences. chicago: university of chicago press. comaroff, jean 1985 body of power, spirit of resistance: the culture and history of a south african people. chicago: university of chicago press. descartes, rene 1985 "rules for the direction of the mind." in the philosophical writings of descartes (translated by john gottingham et al.). cambridge: cambridge university press. pp. 9-78. featherstone, mike 1991 the body: social process and cultural theory. london: sage. forsyth, james 1992 a history of the peoples of siberia: russia's north asian colony, 1581-1990. cambridge: cambridge university press. foucault, michel 1978 the history of sexuality. vol. 1 (translated by robert hurley). new york: random house. 1979 discipline and punish. (translated by alan sheridan). new york: vintage books. jen typewritten text 48 gurvich, i.s. and k.g. kuzakov 1960 korjakskij nazional'nij okrug. moscow: akademia nauk. jochelson, valdemar 1908 the koryak. the jesup north pacific expedition 6, memoirs of the american museum of natural history. leiden/new york. (reprinted 1975, new york: ams press). kappeler, andreas 1992 russland als vielvolkerreich: enstehung, geschichte, zerfall. munich: c.h. beck. mitchell, timothy 1988 colonising egypt. cambridge: cambridge university press. o'neill, john 1985 five bodies: the human shape of modern society. ithaca: cornell university press. pipes, richard 1991 the russian revolution. new york: vintage books. slezkine, yuri 1994 arctic mirrors: russia and the small peoples of the north. ithaca: cornell university press. turner, bryan 1984 the body and society: explorations in social theory. oxford/new york: basil blackwell. jen typewritten text 49 anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 93 russia’s arctic strategies and the future of the far north. by marlene laruelle. armonk, new york & london, england: m. e. sharpe, 2014. xxvi, 251 pp. maps. notes. bibliography. index. $47.95, paper. ilya vinkovetsky, simon fraser university russia’s arctic strategies and the future of the far north by marlene laruelle was written before russia’s annexation of crimea and the subsequent related events. so it may strike some readers as particularly appropriate that a historian is writing the review. much indeed has changed for russia since the spring of 2014, in arctic strategy as in everything else. nevertheless, a surprising proportion of the material included in laruelle’s book remains prescient. the author’s stated aim is to present “a comprehensive assessment of russia’s strategy in the arctic” (xxiii) and the book’s eight brisk chapters provide a well-rounded brief on russia’s recent approaches to the far north. the source base for the book is heavily derived from (primarily english-language) policy literature. this material can be tedious but the author arranges it judiciously, resulting in a narrative brimming with interesting connections and compelling insights. laruelle strives to flesh out the various contexts in which contemporary russian visions have been formulated. she recognizes and emphasizes the intimate relationship between the agendas of russia’s political class in the arctic north with the country’s overarching geopolitical ideas, economic goals, demographic realities, and domestic politics. she devotes much attention to conditions in the russia federation as a whole. the presentation of this wider context, engaged with some depth, displays the breadth of the author’s analysis. in this sense, russia’s arctic strategies provides more than just another viewpoint on russia’s positions in the global arctic “debate”. it props open a wider window on russia’s north-oriented policies in the early 2010s –as they stood before the fast and furious change of priorities in 2014, when the crisis in ukraine pushed the development of russia’s north further down moscow’s agenda. reconstructing this recent past, laruelle shows that even before the shift, russia’s vision for the arctic was already riddled with contradictions. as this book is aimed at an audience of non-russian arctic scholars and policy-makers, the plans and agendas vis-à-vis the arctic of the actors and decision makers of post-soviet russia are contextualized alongside the strategies of other northern countries, with understandable emphasis on canada, the united states, and scandinavia. laruelle emphasizes, for example, that russia’s sovereignty claims to continental seabed north of eurasia are not only analogous to, but even derivative of canada’s claims to the sea bed north of its territory. canada’s position was worked out earlier than the legal arguments for the ussr and russia over the northeast passage, and provided a model. thus, dual contextualizations –within contemporary russia and among international players – constitute this book’s strength. laruelle also presents a nuanced view of the push and pull in moscow’s arctic strategy. on the one hand, as is well known, moscow’s putin-era arctic policy is “centralized” – and, as anthropology of east europe review 34(1) fall 2016 94 such, dominated by the president (and the presidential administration and security council). yet, on the other hand, it is “plural” in a sense that rival military and economic agendas vie for supremacy. laruelle contends that, in spite of the media attention lavished on the military, it is the economic interests that have been repeatedly prioritized by the kremlin. yet the focus on the economy does not necessarily translate to competence in executing policy. in russia’s national economy, in the north as elsewhere, oil and gas is the dominant sector. and yet, the economic strategy of pre-2014 russia is shown to be surprisingly short-sighted. essentially, the country’s decision makers simply “assumed” that oil and dry natural gas “will continue to be in high demand in the decades to come” (146). because of these assumptions, they made little tangible investment to find new resources or make meaningful technological improvements. this approach seemed good enough when the world oil and gas prices were high. but all the while the infrastructures of the oil and gas industries, developed in soviet times, were eroding. gazprom, the country’s flagship natural gas conglomerate, made profits, but, according to laruelle’s account, was able to increase production “solely by buying the shares of some of its privately owned competitors” (141). the kremlin’s interventionist oil and gas policies vacillated between overtures to foreign investors aimed at attracting capital and upgrading technology and bouts of “resource nationalism” that scared off foreigners and intimidated the country’s own private producers. all this is to say that even in this crucial sector – the bedrock of russia’s economy – and well before the financial crisis of 2008, let alone the political crisis of 2014, the strategies of moscow’s policy-makers failed even on their own terms. since 2014, the weakness turned into disaster, as russia effectively lost a virtual natural gas war with ukraine, bungled pipeline plans to bulgaria and turkey, and incurred sanctions that have scared off investors. the energy industries in the russian north are in worse shape now than they were when laruelle’s book was written, but it is to the author’s credit that she provides ample evidence that the prospects were far from bullish in 2013. yet, whatever their past miscalculations, russia’s policy makers continue to present the arctic as the key to the country’s brighter future. they put a hopeful gloss on russia’s prospects even in the face of the global apprehensions about the effects of climate change, anticipating, among other benefits, that ice-free arctic will “open up” russia’s north, giving it lucrative connections to both europe and east asia. they seem to hope that the ample natural resources of russia’s north will somehow compensate for other factors and trends, however dire, and obviate the need to adjust strategic thinking to ecological realities much less economic, demographic, and geopolitical ones. an important accomplishment of russia’s arctic strategies is that it patiently demonstrates not only that such reasoning is overoptimistic, but how and why this is so. russia’s political and economic elites have failed to align their visions with the real world. this book is essential for those in search of a guide to the context in which russia’s arctic strategy was shaped in the early 2010s and continues to be shaped today. scholars and policy makers who specialize in the arctic and need basic information on russia will find it particularly useful. a case of cultural colonization: leave our death alone! bogdan popoveniuc university stefan cel mare, suceava © 2004 bogdan popoveniuc all rights reserved the copyright for individual articles in both the print and online version of the anthropology of east europe review are retained by the individual authors. they reserve all rights other than those stated here. please contact the managing editor for details on contacting these authors. permission is granted for reproducing these articles for scholarly and classroom use as long as only the cost of reproduction is charged to the students. commercial reproduction of these articles requires the permission of the authors. a world like no-world is possible uninterrupted by other order of things each people has an unique manner to relate to their surroundings, a vision of the universe (that becomes ‘its own’), a weltanschauung, a mentality (or however one chooses to call it), a bond that ultimately defines the way that being is intuited within a particular cultural space and this feature can be detected at different cultural levels as the one that confers the unity beyond the heterogeneity of its manifestations and creations. this article is an attempt to grasp this specific way of perceiving ‘being,’ ‘the relationship with being,’ ‘the romanian spirit of being,’ or a vision of the ‘nature of things. having to rely on outside views to talk about itself, instead of drawing upon its own words and feelings, seems to be the romanian folk destiny. since michelet until now, discussions about the romanian attitude towards death remain locked in a dichotomy, formulated as a question: are romanians resigned to death or not? this is an obvious injustice inflicted upon the romanian soul. nobody says that the danes are hamlet, the americans are tom sawyer, or the russian are ana karenina. no culture can be understood through a single prevalent feature. the complexity of a people’s soul cannot be understood through a single creation or author (no matter how representative), but only through juxtaposition of emblematic creations (popular or cultured) that sprang from its bosom in time. what is most worrying in this example is the fact that michelet’s understanding of the representative romanian folk ballad miorita, became ‘the official interpretation’ of the issue and, as such, it has been taught in all romanian literature classes as the ultimate truth about the romanian soul. in the class or in the national assessment exams, michelet’s interpretation represents the ‘the correct answer.’ every new generation of romanian pupils learns this about themselves and their culture. they are forced to learn about themselves in terms that do not belong to them and that create an identity alien to their own. and this is definitely a form of cultural colonization: a group whose self-description is imposed by others. it is not surprising that many romanians demand that this ballad be removed from textbooks because they deem it inappropriate for the education of their children. at the same time, miorita1 has always been understood as the embodiment of the (folk) romanian spirit. “in miorita’s inflections was perceived something from the pride and serenity of the free dacians, disdaining death paratissimi ad mortem”2 and the plaintive singing echoing that of the bondwoman whom 1 miorita is a diminutive for a ewe lamb under two years of age. an english translation of this ballad is available online at: http://spiritromanesc.go.ro/miorita%20-eng.html 2 “entirely ready to die” the geta’s description of pomponius mela, the history of romanians, vol. i, bucharest, academy print house of rpr, 1961, part ii, par. 5. jen typewritten text jen typewritten text 45 bishop gerard3 met in the middle of the xiith century in the banat region. the shepherd’s silent silhouette was gliding over the ballad – legibus et reliquis et consuetitudine vitae dissident… – evoked in ruinae pannonica (bezdechi 1926-28: 448-449)4 by the erudite humanist christianus schesaeus four centuries later (pavel 1964). aside from trivialized interpretations, unreflective contempt, and unilateral exaggerations, what can this ballad offer us by way of understanding the soul of the romanian people? with eliade (1995: 264), we too do not want to say that miorita synthesizes the whole features of the romanian nature. but the ’adhesion’ of the entire people to this folklore masterpiece remains significant and the history of romanian culture cannot be conceived without the exegesis of this solidarity. the designation of miorita as the most representative depiction of romanian soul thus seems to be confirmed. but the question remains as to which exact part of this romanian spirituality is being transmitted in this ballad and how deep can we delve into this mentality? as eliade put it: three orientations can be observed when studying miorita: firstly, one that could be called historical, because it had strived to reconstruct the ballad’s origin and history; secondly, the approaches adopted by the folklorists who engaged in fieldwork, multiplying the number of variants and following the ballad’s analysis within the general context of the romanian folk culture; thirdly, the exegesis of certain poets and 3 legenda maior sancti gerardi, in scriptores rerum hungaricarum, budapest, 1936, vol. ii, the romania’s history, academy print house of rpr, vol. ii, part i, 1962, chapter 4, par. 1. 4 and here is the translation of the lyrics, according the same author: “different by the people around it by living and law.” philosophers that identified in miorita as the foremost expression of the national spirit and thus considered as an accurate depiction of the romanian people’ way of being in the world. (eliade 1995: 239) however, in the presence of “many methods,” everybody is believed to possess the key to the essence of the phenomenon in question. therefore, the followers of the first two directions – let us call them, the ‘ethnofolklore directions’ (c. brăiloiu, d. caracostea, a. fochi, o. densusianu, i. diaconu) – consider that ‘in situ research’ is the only legitimate way of presenting ‘the true face’ of the romanian people because it allows them to establish a direct and close connection between the ballad’s themes and socio–economic conditions and transformations, in which it was created. however, is this not just the peak of an iceberg? is it not more important to explore what lies behind? thus, h.h. stahl (1938) regretted the fact that the monopolization of the readers’ attention on alecsandri’s variant of miorita produced the following situation: a person who wants to understand the romanian nation, instead of visiting the villages in order to gather information that would be methodically analyzed afterwards, ponders the text of the ballad and analyzes it philosophically and literally. as stahl put it elsewhere (stahl 1983: 161): if out of the entire romanian folk only miorita were to survive, the next centuries throughout their literary analysis would be faced with nothing but a splendid and tempting question mark. but we live amidst the romanian people, still full of life. and without trying to upset anybody it seems somehow ridiculous to me to limit ourselves to a ‘literary analysis’ of miorita in order to discover the romanian beliefs about death… when all we need to do is to go in the field and collect the infinite (sic! n.n.) jen typewritten text 46 quantities of material offered by thousands of villages in romania. the researchers’ conclusions based on field research lead us to believe that miorita is far from being a story about “death as a sacramental act” and “nature as church,” “two grievous and essential visions of orthodox transfiguration of reality” (blaga), of the “nuptial death” related to the “death’s nostalgia,” “within its thracian sense” or a “mystical solidarity between man and nature, inaccessible to modern conscience” or a possible answer to “history’s terror,” an imposition of “a meaning for the absurd itself” (eliade), but as stahl put it: the lyrics of miorita are basic paraphrases of those songs (funeral rituals, n.n), in other words, clever quotations from the class of ritual dirge, used sometimes in ballads and sometimes in carols, so that they would load in the mind of the one who understood the theme of the ritual with all the meaning expressed in it. (stahl 1983: 161) he wrote furthermore that the verses of miorita do not at all describe the unique miracle of art, but a common place of romanian lyric” (stahl, 1983: 163) and that, finally, the poem addresses only one of the basic themes of our entire folk philosophy (the wedding with the death), something that we could call “the danger born by the life’s inexhaustibility” meaning the fear of wraiths (specters, phantoms). not even eliade’s attempt to strike a middle course between scientific research and the phenomenon’s theorization was spared criticism from this camp. its ‘cosmic christianity,’ in which, in his vision, the ballad is grounded, is considered a hypothesis unsupported by the sociological facts. also, it seems exaggerated that the theory that sustains the miorita is an expression of prehistoric rituals turned into contemporary folklore. the fact that “he (the shepherd n.n.) succeeds in transmuting a desperate event into a sacramental act, taking into account the fact that the death of the young shepherd turns into a bridal celebration of cosmic amplitude” (eliade 1995: 261) seems to involve many assumptions belonging to the history of religions. in other words, only the epical fact is presented in the ballad, “all the remaining interpretations of ‘cosmic liturgies’ or ‘historic terrors’ are well-learned additions of some scholars that can not break away from the habit of burdening reality with their erudition” (stahl 1983: 173). the fact that the ballad extends into the universe of beliefs and funeral practices is unquestionable, and, of course, neither dan botta nor lucian blaga presume to possess the competence and the scientific responsibility of the ethnographer and of the folklorist (as historian of religions, eliade is an exception here) that would entitle them to consider, however, their approach a legitimate one, as long as it was decoding deeper significations of the ballad, distinguishable only at a certain speculative level.5 blaga’s or dan botta’s conclusions can be criticized or completely rejected, yet the fact that they are discovering new meanings and introducing personal values to an archaic spiritual universe they cannot be attributed to their method” (eliade 1995: 244-45). this also applies to mircea eliade, but only to a certain degree and from a certain perspective, despite the fact that sometimes his endeavour to interpret all historical events according to his ‘own’ interpretive framework leads to forced interpretations, although his status of historian of religions would oblige him to show more restraint. as we shall see, ethnography can bring us only to a certain point in our attempt to interpret the attitude of the mioritic shepherd, unless we accept the variant of pessimism and fatalist resignation, proposed by michelet (which was followed by counter-reactions that surpassed in number those who accepted 5 it is somehow the position that opposes nietzsche to willamowitz and, more recently, walter otto to nilson in interpreting the greek religious spirit. jen typewritten text 47 michelet’s interpretation without a deeper analysis). however, three evidences challenge this interpretation. firstly, it cannot be argued that the shepherd is not defending himself, only that such a gesture is not recorded. the young ewe advised the shepherd to call for a loyal and stronger dog, but the poem also does not narrate whether or not the advice was followed. therefore, we notice an aspect that indicates the lack of cohesion in the epical structure. secondly, the whole reaction of the shepherd is determined by a hypothesis and not by reality. he did not say: ‘and when i die (i will die)’ but ‘and if i to were to die (if i am going to die).’ this hypothetical feature allows openings to epical alternatives, but none of them will be replayed in the continuation of the poem.6 the ballad in this variant has no epical ending; the entire narration is reduced to the initial frame, the decision for murder, the plot’s disclosure and it stops in a moment of tension.the rest of the poem remains essentially lyrical. the text represents a succession of gradual change of moods from serenity to tragic feelings. the third counterargument is represented by the presence of this tragic feeling. (pop and ruxandoiu 1978: 340) moreover, we could examine the ballad from the aesthetic angle, “the only way that would not alter the meanings of our folklore masterpiece,”and thus it becomes “clear that [it] is nonsense to ask the mioritic hero for a gesture of defense or struggle when the ballad 6 pavel apostol considers that the ‘scholar’ composer of the ballad succeeded in taking away any ambiguity of the conditional (and when = if) in the phrase where the subordinate clause is placed before the main clause “and if i were…” with no consent of the logical subject and thus remain only the objective possibility (see pavel apostol 1964: 75 – 76). takes the step from epic to lyric and to understand his attitude as a fatalistic acceptance of death as some exegetes did – represents a grave error of artistic logics (sic! n.n.); the aim of this folklore work thus ceases to be an epic one” (olteanu 1994: 25). for the purposes of our discussion, the interpretation suggested by eliade, that is, “the capacity to cancel the consequences apparently irremediable of a tragic event, loading them with values, unknown until then,” by a “religious outlook that does not engage pessimism, nor resignation or passivity,” as it is the case in re-interpretation of christianity, where moments that are assumed as moments belonging to christ’s drama and, finally, transfigured (eliade 1995: 263), does not seem to reveal a better account about the mioritic vision over life (death) either. and if in his characteristic style emil cioran wrote that “the passive abandon to fate and death, the unfaith in the efficiency of individual and in the strength, the minor distance from all the world’s aspects created that national poetic curse called miorita that, next to the chroniclers’ wisdom, represents the unhealed wound of romanian soul” (cioran 1990: 66-67); what seems more important is that a philosopher like constantin noica probably irritated by the multitude of dithyrambic and trivial exegesis – has not distanced himself enough not to attach every thought to this work, saying that under the spell of miorita, we have not distanced ourselves enough from it and we have looked for the romanian vision over the being in it (and good for us ! – n.n.). anyone in possession of an insight into the modulations of the being cannot do to the romanian soul the injustice of considering it from a single angle, that of miorita, and the resignation in the face of death. miorita can be a unique success of our folkloric creation, but cannot stand as the sole measure of the philosophical sensitivity of a spirit for jen typewritten text 48 which to be or not to be appears much better orchestrated.” (noica 1976: 60)7 it seems that “noica was not warned about the fact that the shepherd’s locking into resignation is only a hermeneutical problem, one of the several possible readings of the myth” (codreanu 1991: 1-2). codreanu continues that “only a shallow reading could insist upon the error of perceiving the mioritic shepherd as ‘resigned’” (1991: 2). that would do the romanian soul “the injustice of considering it from a single angle (an outside one) of miorita” (ibid). it is obvious that this endeavour can not be successfully pursued unless two implicit premises are precisely stated. firstly, the capability of the language to circulate contents (not necessarily on the conscious level) with a grade of depth greater than the pragmatic level, contents that belong to the cultural affiliation of individuals and reflect the mentality specific to its social-cultural area, all the way to the ontological level of world ‘settlement.’ basically, “each language is (also, after all) the wisdom of the world, in one of its versions” (noica 1978: 48). depending on its language, each people can have a different level of access to its own being. “reality has more or less being, and being, in turn, has degrees of accomplishment in the bosom of reality” (noica 1978: 64). and language being the vehicle of being, 7 noica addressed the motive in many other writings: “the misinterpretation of vision over being by focusing solely on miorita” (noica 1978: 58-59), therefore, reducing the conception of being to the unilateral vision of miorita is a graceful but innocent renunciation of the ‘gravity’ of being from other ontological conceptions, the idea of such a diverse and ‘easy-going’ being could give someone the sentiment of ‘neglect’ and thus lead him / her to attribute to romanians the mioritic pattern of ‘fearlessness’ in the face of death. the ‘lightness’ of being is just the expression of freedom, almost of the exuberance captured in romanian vision. but our fairy of the being says more than the gravity of other gloomy and overwhelming traditional ontologies. and such a fairy is obviously different from the one mostly artistic of miorita” (noica 1978: 61 – 62). each people gives the dimension of its being according to its language. in our case, “the experience of the being registered in our language would be (…) a kind of the essence rather than a certain and immediate existence” (noica 1978: 63). in other words, language represents one of the best ways of accessing the depth of the spirituality of a people and it is also the language that takes part in shaping this spirit and comforts its historical continuity. “[t]his spirituality that had put its seal on the language, crystallized into tropes and figures of speech, will continue to impose itself through the language, moulding the thinking and the vision for the next generations” (del conte 1990: 280-281). the vision was shared by ‘the most representative’ inhabitant of the ‘dwelling of the being,’ mihai eminescu. identifying with a very modern intuition the spirit and the language – ‘spirit and language are almost identical’ – he will insist on saying that language is not only a spiritual treasure but also the guardian and preserver of some own treasures. no matter how premature would be to express the abstracts of the reason, there is no language that would not be able to express and communicate the life of the feeling; the proof is the fact that a man can fully understand and interpret his heart only in his own language. (del conte 1990: 281) secondly, the existence of a ‘common’ mentality, proper to each culture, something that lucian blaga calls “stylistic matrix” that “can be the permanent substratum for all the creations from a lifetime of an individual, this stylistic matrix could be, at least in its essential features, common to many individuals, to an entire people or even to a part of a humankind living in the same epoch” (blaga 1969: 107). this matrix is accountable for the ‘unity’ of a cultural community’s outlook, without which it is improbable to find the same weltanschauung, the same cultural agreement, as it has to be ascertained only by natural, psychological, and social conditions whose variations in space and time are jen typewritten text 49 significant even within the same community. “the existence of an unconscious stylistic matrix itself explains such an impressive fact as the obvious stylistic consistency of some creations. the stylistic ‘unity’ is often achieved through miraculous purity” (blaga 1969: 112). it is present especially at the unconscious level and what happens on the unconscious level has a more anonymous and collective character than what occurs on the level of consciousness. usually, a stylistic matrix varies from individual to individual, in a certain place and in a certain period, not only by secondary and accidental determinations […] but this stylistic matrix is shared by the whole community. (blaga 1969: 112) the existence of the matrix does not involve a bland ‘monotony,’ an endless replication, ‘different masks in the same play.’ it only inspires the works marked by the same seal, but loaded with other horizons, attitudes and accents. it represents the attire that covers the being of that people, the first feature that differentiates this being and brings it from the status of immutability to manifest itself. miorita seems to be the dimension of this stylistically matrix of the romanian people, which would explain the reasons behind its vast popularity and high reputation among the folk songs. “miorita drew everybody’s attention from the beginning, and this has happened in the subconscious of our people, indissolubly connected with its cosmic space as a matrix space that lucian blaga called mioritic” (husar 1999: 81). the language plays an important role in its set up and communication: the human thought is not a phenomenon that is independent of language, a heritage from uncounted past generations; it indicates the path of thinking and forces it to follow up the meaning, materializing, after all, the underlying spiritual endowment. (del conte 1990: 288)8 the problem raised in this ballad is that of the relationship with death, a relationship that is structured by the feeling of the being, the perception at the unconscious level of the structures of being in its full materialization. the way in which the being is intuited in romanian culture is masterfully summarized by eminescu’s concept of archaeus9, which posits the being not as abstract rationality or immobile vastness (as the western philosophy has taught us), but as a deep structure of ‘that which could never have been,’ but whose existence is possible because it exists, that can only be intuited or perceived in its development, “the archaeity does not have just a philosophy and an aesthetic, but also an ethos, consisting in the effort, in the powerful will of embodiment, of materialization” (tiutiucă 1994: 20). it seems to us that the distinctiveness of the romanian feeling of being lays in the possibility of grasping the modulations of the being through language. “the romanian feeling is different from its last certainty, but only in appearance and status and not with regards to people’s acknowledgement” (noica 1978: 63). thus, archaeus appears to be an entity from the pre-being category that always calls for existence and that cannot be perceived until it is realized. “archaeus is conceived as a set of structured possibilities, ready to pass the heart of reality if favorable conditions are offered for its realization. and what needs to be emphasized is its force to be in a certain way and only in this way” (noica 1992: 439-440). let us explore the ways in which the archaeus concept informs the attitude of the mioritic shepherd. the place that draws our attention is the passage from epic to lyric, when, after 8 apud e. romanidad oriental y romanidad occidental, in cahiers s. puşcariu, 1953, vol. 2, no. 1, p. 4. the quote is also in the original quoted work in rosa del conte . p. 288. 9 i analyse this concept in my article “mioritic archaeus” (in press) in romanian philosophical review. jen typewritten text 50 revelation of the conspiracy ‘the story’ ends. the interruption point offers access into the horizons of being. the imminence of death confronts the mioritic hero with the existence of the no-world. the no-world (in this case death) belonged – paraphrasing noica – to ‘will be being’ but, suddenly (as the news comes through) it passes to the register of ‘is to be.’ in other words, a ‘common’ order is hastened by flaming one level (it would be), will be being – would to be – is to be. we can observe that the shepherd still reacts at the level of ‘it will be being’. ‘if i were to die’ (if i am doomed to die) is an uncontrollable probable, but more remote than the imminent ‘is to be.’ the ‘shock’ that encloses a moving ontological ambiguity, as i mentioned before, is the ‘cutting-off point’ that will allow the leap to ‘fantasy.’ but this fantastic reality does not aim at “what is circumscribed in universal prose of this style that often forms the keystone of the entire narrative endeavour: ‘the game’ between normal and abnormal, of ‘the break’ between these states within the order of phenomenal existence” (ciobanu 1984: 33-34), because the no-world belongs to him as much as does the world. the way that things are determines the meditation over his life. the hasty closeness in time of death draws him closer to this unknown in the imagination. since the occurrence of death before the wedding would prevent the fulfilment of his life, the shepherd tries to prevent it by imagining death as a wedding. he realizes his life by melting the two crucial events for him, the wedding and death. and his life is completed through his wedding to death. as noica put it: it is certain that this man’s destiny of being unable, but trying to act, represents at the same time his misery and his greatness: man cannot find unless he has to seek for and cannot seek without trying (or being tried, as in this case n.n.), but while he is trying, he imagines and invents so that what it is found, is in fact, invented. (noica 1978: 66) the no-world that is ready to erupt is the one that impels our hero to imagine and to invent. it is as possible as it ‘is to be’ and the shepherd invests in it everything that is more intimate: familiar environment, customs, experiences, and own opinions. it is a notably romanian vision of being able to conceive the being with no abstract determinations, intuited in the real. as noica wrote: the romanian experience of being shows that something can be expressed even when it is conceived with no other determination, as being itself enters into ’situations‘ that are determined. […] being reveals and lets itself known by its situations. the romanian feeling of being is something close, accessible, and meaningful. being has nothing to do with the absolute, the irrational and the ineffable that would become accessible only by sensitive or intellectual intuition. being has a foundation and can be understood in its making […]. (noica 1978: 66) the mioritic hero discovers it exactly in this moment of creation of being and accomplishes it. the form that reveals the unfulfilling of the being is death. and since the “no-being is only the cessation of the being, but not a reality to keep it in balance” (noica 1978: 67) and death is identified only as a moment of archaety and is projected within the order of what is, as he is intuiting it. according to a romanian tale ‘death has a single name and it can be only one.’ “given that the being, which in the romanian vision of the world is not unique and monolithic, does not exist at a single level of subsistence and carries more than one face (but a single model and archetype), death is everyone’s destiny and measure” (noica 1978: 141-142). confronted with his death, the mioritic shepherd knows that he has the possibility to make it at the measure of his soul. he is not planning to rebel because this is where he stands. death is understood as part of life and does not stand in opposition to it. death fulfils life because without death life cannot be considered consumed and completed. without death, life has not jen typewritten text 51 exhausted its meanings and is therefore not complete. death is the only thing that could accomplish the passing of the individual being from a state of insignificance to the sphere of meaningfulness. and at the same time, with the spectrum of death, that reveals the unforeseen, the entire life can be observed in its plenitude, a vision that allows the perception of the general, and thus the individual intuits the existence of the general, which makes him peaceful. he has the breathing space to imagine and create his own no-world that would not exist without him and without which he would not be complete. “the essential element is comprised by the ability of cancelling the seemingly irremediable consequences of a tragic event, loading them with values unknown before” (eliade 1995: 263).10 “it is certain that his soul, a traveller under the sweet-bitter stars, does not let him be overwhelmed by any ferocious fatalism, but does not wildly assert the trust in front of the powers of the nature or destiny where he does not see final enemies” (blaga 1969: 127). because, as noica put it: the man does not reveal only the being but everything that surrounds it, as himself is prior to the being, because he is not simply in something but is in it for a reason. man tries, sees his own limits and the limits that exist in the world, he enlarges the real to the eventual, re-makes it as possible and then sees it in the eminency of its accomplishment as something real, and afterwards contemplates it in its accomplished reality. (noica 1978: 65) therefore, he will create a no-world according to his measure without being interrupted by other order of things. this is the reason why any echo from the surrounding world cannot and is not allowed to enter this no-world, created according to his image, his hopes, 10 eliade continues “we will never get tired of saying that such a process is far from showing a passive resignation but, on the contrary, it illustrates the unreachable creative force of the popular genius.” dreams, and disappointments, a no-world where he realizes, accomplishes and completes the trial of the archaeity of reaching out the existence. “miorita therefore does not represent a shelter of resignation (in poetry, in fantasy), but the wise and the wellreflected resort to the reality of a splendour often occulted to those kept in the whirl (or rather in the morass) of a deaf and blind life” (steinhardt 1986: 105). it represents, as we hope we succeeded in showing, the way in which the romanian relates to his entire existence. the romanian option of the destiny is the archaeity. it is not the unlimited trust in the total freedom of the human being, its ability to do everything, independently from the universe in which he was socialized and where he has lived, but nor is he an actor obeying destiny’s inexorable scenario that sooner or later, in one way or another, has to unfold. it is the attitude of the man that takes things as they are, not because he knows he can not change the flow of events, but because he understands it. because he intuits that beyond them there is an order that wants and must come to an accomplishment, an order that he himself belongs to, but also an order than is meaningless without him, an order that gives him a reason but is only endowed with reason through him. only by him the order can come to life and only he can give it meaning. he is the part that justifies the whole and gives it existence at the same time. it is obvious that in this case to speak about resignation or fatalism regarding the mioritic shepherd signifies a total misunderstanding of an entire culture, of an original mode to relate to the world. references cited: apostol, pavel. 1964. the mioritic motive in romanian culture, introductive study in fochi adrian, 1964 miorita: tipologie, circulatie, geneza (miorita, typology, circulation, texts), bucharest: academy print house of rpr. bezdechi, stefan, christian schesaeus about romanians, in the annals of the national institute of history, cluj, vol. iv, 1926-1928. jen typewritten text 52 blaga, lucien. 1969. trilogia culturii ( the trilogy of the culture). bucharest: editora pentru literatura universala. botta, dan. 1968. scrieri (writings), vol. iv. bucharest: editura pentru literatura. cioran, emil. 1990. schimbarea la fata româniei the change of romania’s face, bucharest: humanitas. codreanu theodor. 1991. noica and the separation from miorita, in “miorita” magazine of folklore culture, câmpulung, bucovina, year i, no. 2/23 september. del conte, rosa. 1990. eminescu, sau, despre absolut (eminescu or about absolute). cluj: editura dacia. eliade, mircea. 1995. de la zalmoxis la genghis-han (from zalmoxis to ghingis han).. bucharest: humanitas. husar, al. 1999. miorita : de la motiv la mit iaşi: university “ al. i. cuza” publishing house. english edition husar, al, 1999. miorita: an icon of romanian culture. portland : center for romanian studies. noica, constantin. 1976. for a better detachment from miorita’s spirit, in “ the star”, 3, 6 march. noica, constantin. 1978. sentimentul românesc al fiintei (romanian feeling of being. bucharest): editura eminescu noica, constantin. 1992. introducere la miracolul eminescian (introduction to the miracle of eminescu), bucharest: humanitas. olteanu, a. gh. 1994. miorita, in romanian language and literature, no. 1/1994, year xxiii, no. 1, (january – march), bucharest. pop, mihai and pavel ruxandoiu. 1978. folclor literar românesc (romanian literary folklore). bucharest: editura didactica si pedagogica. stahl, henri h. 1983. eseuri critice despre cultura populara româneasca (critical essays on romanian popular culture). bucharest: minerva publishing house. steinhardt, n. 1986. trough others about self. bucharest: editura eminescu. tiutiucă, dumitru. 1993. mihai eminescu – cumpănirea întru archaeus. galaţi: porto franco publishing house. jen typewritten text 53 anthropology of east europe review 33(2) fall 2015 96 blind spot: how neoliberalism infiltrated global health. by salmaan keshavjee. oakland: university of california press, 2014. xxxviii. 240.pp. notes. bibliography. index. $29.95, paperback. jennifer j. carroll, division of infectious diseases, the miriam hospital, providence, rhode island salmaan keshavjee’s blind spot is an attempt to chart the effects of global development efforts on local communities at the world’s economic peripheries. based on his experience as a health officer for the aga khan foundation (akf), a non-governmental organization (ngo) in eastern tajikistan, keshavjee provides first-hand knowledge of the results reaped by healthcare development efforts and the economic regulations that accompany them. keshavjee argues that neoliberal financial and managerial schemes play a defining role in global health today and are transmitted worldwide through ngos and their largely quantitative metrics of program evaluation, such as patient adherence, rates of referral, and overall cost efficiency. the end result, according to keshavjee, is the growing specter of “neoliberal programmatic blindness,” or “blind spots,” wherein “the original aims of projects…get lost or ignored” (15). in other words, the humanitarian goals of development efforts become lost in the flurry of attentions paid to neoliberal modes of governance. the first of blind spot’s four sections provides historical context for the badakhshan region of tajikistan, where the ethnographic portions of this book take place. keshavjee provides a sound review of the soviet health care system, relying heavily on the work of medical historian mark field, who has arguably produced more first hand accounts and analyses of the soviet medical system than anyone, to outline the ideological underpinnings of soviet medicine. this is followed by a discussion of public health in tajikistan after independence. keshavjee presents akf as a paradigmatic example of the ngos, which flourished in post-soviet tajikistan, bringing with them the financial support—and exigencies—of global development institutions. the second section offers a closer look at healthcare reform efforts in badakhshan, where hospitals are grossly underfunded and most of the population lives in deep poverty. during keshavjee’s tenure at akf, the organization established a revolving drug fund in badakhshan to create a self-sustaining pharmacy network, a project that keshavjee argues was designed specifically to cater to the economic mission of the united states agency for international development (usaid), the fund’s primary donor. the fund itself would be sustained by charging patients twice or even three-times the market value of pharmaceutical drugs, ignoring the fact that residents’ reported willingness to pay for drugs “meant little in the face of being completely unable to pay” (p.81). this project, keshavjee claimed, reflected the tendency to blame negative health outcomes on individual ignorance and apathy (i.e. unwillingness to pay), rather than the structural barriers (i.e. inability to pay) faced by the region’s population. anthropology of east europe review 33(2) fall 2015 97 the third and fourth sections of the book offer the most intimate look at the neoliberal ideologies that made a revolving drug fund in tajikistan’s poorest region. in chapter 6, keshavjee provides a concise yet cogent history of neoliberal economics, grounding the birth of this economic philosophy squarely in western european and north american efforts to weaken the appeal of communism to developing nations. in particular, it was thought that if neoliberal infrastructures could be successfully developed in economically vulnerable nations, soviet influence would be unable to follow. in chapter 7, keshavjee traces the footpath of these ideologies from powerful international agencies like the international monetary fund (imf) and the world bank through funding requirements and recipient ngos to the local communities where they work. the fourth and final section argues that neoliberal reforms shift the cost of healthcare from government institutions to local communities based on the premise that these patients should be transformed from recipients of healthcare to consumers of healthcare services. these programs are enacted despite existing data, cited in the book, which indicate that access to healthcare plummets following their implementation. nevertheless, such reforms proliferate where neoliberal thinking “overrides both qualitative and quantitative data” (p.135), because neoliberalism, itself, is hegemonic. it proliferates not because it works, but because it is accepted as ‘common sense.’ while keshavjee’s purpose in authoring blind spot is abundantly clear, the book leaves a number of questions unanswered. for example, how do the perspectives of the individual actors who work for global financial institutions (like the imf or even usaid) inform their efforts in places like the badakhshan? ethnographic research conducted among the global health elite (such as that of paul geissler and james pfeiffer) indicates that the ideological balancing act these individuals perform is much more complex and nuanced than the lock-step mental subjugation to neoliberal logics that blind spot seems to imply. to this end, the book fails to address the complexity of neoliberalism as a practice in a satisfactory way. a discussion of the current anthropological literature on global health in eastern europe and central asia is also noticeably absent from this text. erin koch’s ethnography of tuberculosis control in georgia, michelle rivkin-fish’s analysis of the world health organization’s (who) involvement in women’s reproductive health in russia, jonathan stillo’s critiques of the work of the global fund in romania, and michelle parson’s deconstruction of epidemiological trends in russia all come immediately to mind as works that could have added significant depth to keshavjee’s analysis if they were brought into the conversation. consequently, it is also difficult to discern what lessons the reader can take away from blind spot about the central asian region. though he introduces the text on page 13 as an ethnography, the sparseness of ethnographic data and the complete absence of discussion about keshavjee’s research methods and protocol raises questions about how ethnographic this analysis really is. in the end, blind spot fails to provide a new perspective on global health in the post-soviet sphere due to the sheer scarcity of organized ethnographic analysis. tajikistan appears predominantly as a foil against which keshavjee articulates inconsistencies that exist anthropology of east europe review 33(2) fall 2015 98 between the aims and the methods of neoliberal healthcare reforms, not as a unique locale with a generative culture. nevertheless, keshavjee’s blind spot is a cogent and readable account of the institutionalization of neoliberalism and transmission of that ideology through healthcare reform efforts. chapters 6 and 7, in particular, offer an extraordinarily concise and well-written account of the history of the imf that simply begs to be taught in either undergraduate classrooms or graduate seminars. this book would serve as a wonderful introduction to the complex realities of global disease burden, international monetary policy, structural adjustment programs, and global health. the writing style is smooth and engaging, and keshavjee excels at rendering these complex ideas extremely intelligible. scholars and students, alike, who wish to enter into contemporary conversations on medical anthropology and global health will find themselves well-served by adding this book to their arsenal. microsoft word hann.docx anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35398 hann, chris, repatriating polanyi: market society in the visegrád states. budapest: central european university press, 2019. cloth, $95.00. mary n taylor, graduate center, city university of new york months after russia’s full-on invasion of neighboring ukraine and the election that handed victor orbán’s fidesz party a fourth consecutive two-thirds majority in hungary's parliament, there is much need for the kind of understanding of “postsocialist europe” that anthropologists construct from the combination of long-term fieldwork and theory. chris hann’s 2019 volume repatriating polanyi seeks to apply insights of vienna born hungarian socialist karl polanyi (1886-1964) to understand current conditions in the region. as attila melegh (2019) pointed out in an earlier review in intersections, there is a long and active tradition of drawing on polanyi in hungary. hann, however, seeks also to repatriate polanyi, that is, to bring this thinker back home to the broader region as well as to anthropology itself. polanyi never quite had a disciplinary home, and hann argues that despite his rise in popularity since 2007, polanyi remains “unfashionable” among anthropologists. he thus seeks to stress the relevance of polanyi’s thinking to anthropology and specifically the anthropology of the region. bemoaning what he sees as the continued lack of attention to polanyi’s work despite his “critique of market economy” and “razor-sharp tools for incisive critique into” the new order brought about by the collapse of socialism, rapid privatization and marketization implemented according to neoliberal orthodoxies (7), hann writes that “the guiding thread of the book is a polanyian interpretation of market society after socialism” (3). the introductory chapter details the tools on offer, which go beyond the list of forms of market integration that hann refers to as a “special toolbox” (10). he lays out polanyi’s substantivist position that understands the economy as integrated with other institutions, a position that asks us to investigate what forms of integration are present in any given society as well as those processes of disembedding that have led to the emergence of the “fictitious commodities” land, labor, and money. drawing particularly on the analysis found in polanyi’s 1944 book the great transformation, hann goes on to argue for the utility of polanyi's concept of the “double movement”—the dialectical process of the disembedding of the market and attempts to re-embed it by countermovements, through which people defend themselves (or society) against the market’s anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35398 effects—for understanding the region's “passage through socialism and postsocialism” (14). it should be noted that in the region, polanyian references, most particularly the language of countermovement, are widespread in social scientific and activist analysis. while the introduction offers a useful introduction of polanyi and his work, including a critique, the connection to polanyi is not equally apparent in each of the 11 chapters that follow, most of them previously published and which the author “resisted” rewriting (xvi). the reader must also constantly keep in mind that temporal references in each chapter are oriented to the moment of writing/original publication, not the volume's publication date in 2019. when reading the chapters on poland, they may also benefit from looking at maps reflecting centuries of changing borders where poland, ukraine, slovakia, hungary and romania meet today. focusing on the economic transformations and privatization that characterized the region after the demise of state socialism, the first half of the volume draws largely on insights from 5 decades of fieldwork hann has conducted in the hungarian village of tázlár in conversation with scholarship on the region. the last chapter in this section, updated in 2016 and tying this section together, he argues that the precarization of agrarian workers or peasants—whom hann refers to as “the awkward class” (133)—has contributed to the “most malign aspects of the double movement” in the region, including “populist intolerance towards minorities and immigrants” (28). the second half of the book continues to explore the stuff of such countermovements in the postsocialist period. hann organizes this section around questions of “civil society” (at this point a well-critiqued term that was once central to opposition movements in the 1980s as well as the western organizations that landed in the region to “democratize” or “civilize”; see gagyi and ivancheva in funding, power and community development, 2019), “(un-)civil society,” and ethnicity. beginning in hungary, the bulk of this part of the volume draws on fieldwork conducted in southeastern poland, in a border region that reflects the ethnic diversity that defies neatly drawn borders of nation states, showing in nuanced ways how the freedom associated with “civil society” after state socialism has often been used to pursue ethnonationalist politics. written for this book in 2017, chapter 11 deserves special attention, as it offers a synthesis of hann’s thinking on how polanyi's insights can be of use in analyzing the current conjuncture, characterized by questions of migration and mobility. the chapter focuses on the cluster of countries known as the v4: czechia, slovakia, hungary, poland (once the v3 before the split of czechoslovakia) that entered into the visegrad cooperation agreement in 1991 and subsequently anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35398 joined the european union in 2004. the puzzle hann seeks to answer is why these countries, once expected to continue on a path characterized by liberalism and prosperity, have become, instead, leaders of “illiberal” politics in both the region and in europe. the infamous example of the v4's shared rejection of the “quota allocations” by the european commission in the context and aftermath of the 2015 “migration crisis” (295) binds these countries as a region while illustrating their “reneging on principles of eu solidarity of which they are massive net beneficiaries” (295). arguing that the “dislocation of the 1990s (the disintegration of central planning, the loss of comecon, the introduction of ‘shock therapy’ and the subsequent mass unemployment and increased inequality) was an “irruption of karl polanyi’s ‘market society’ that made the ‘disembedding’ accomplished by 19th century liberalism seem mild and gradualist in comparison” (297). the triumphant growth in v4 countries—led by foreign direct investment—was accompanied by the growth of regional inequalities and new class structures (298). returning to tázlár, hann points to the choice rural hungarians face between labor migration to (richer) parts of the eu and workfare at home. he links the antimigrant and antiminority attitudes of hungarians with those of precarious workers in england (many of whom may have voted for brexit precisely to keep migrants like the former out) and to the slogan of the hungary’s rightist jobbik party that “everyone should be able to prosper in their native land,” illustrating how these and other forms of “populism” are, tragically, the dominant forms of countermovement to “neoliberal forms of europeanization and globalization (316).” the concluding chapter stresses the scale of eurasia and the importance of a more expansive temporality when looking at the processes of embedding and re-embedding and forms of integration. the scale on which he presents the “short run: after brexit” the “long run: after speenhamland” (ie-the laws polanyi wrote about in the great transformation) to illustrate the processes of market intensification and countermovement in england) allows us to see how events in hungary and the g4 are far from isolated. adding in “the very long run: after the bronze age” he argues that his temporal allows us to see “marxist-leninist-maoist socialism” as a dramatic example of the dialectic of a double movement originating as far back as the emergence of markets and differentiation in societies in prehistory (327). in addition to applying polanyi's important insights on the market's integration with other institutions and the double movement, and drawing on decades of the author’s own fieldwork, hann’s book draws on the rich source of anthropological and social scientific anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35398 knowledge production in the region while engaging various social scientific thinkers in unique ways. while he mentions the interdisciplinary karl polanyi center for global social studies in budapest and the fact that alterglobalization activists are drawn to polanyi’s ideas, the stark line he draws around the discipline and his dismissal of “token references” to polanyi’s “best known title” (7) might have led hann to fail to capture the meaningful circulation of and engagement with polanyian thought —especially in analyses about countermovement/double movement— among social movement thinkers on the left in the region to explain the current conjuncture in post-state socialist europe. contributing to and taking part in a broader trend of using karl polanyi’s ideas to shed light on the region in which he was born and raised, repatriating polanyi will be useful to anthropologists and sociologists of socialism and postsocialism, of central and eastern europe and the balkans, those working in the realm of economic anthropology and studying capitalism. it will be interesting to those seeking to understand the rise of “populism” and “illiberalism” more generally in the neoliberal age, and to those trying to understand the possibilities of non-capitalist mixed economies, as well as to those wishing to know more about the region. 55 new legends in the rebirth of khakass shamanic culture kira van deusen khakassia is a land of majestic mountain and steppe beauty, full of fresh and salt-water lakes. located near the geographic center of asia, it is thought by many to be the birthplace of turkic culture. the khakass call their land "the sunny world,” and their ancestor a white wolf. the sayan mountains separate khakassia from tuva in the south and west, while its northern reaches connect with the forests of the krasnoyarsk territory. during the communist period there were major changes in the traditional way of life, which became divorced from the cycles of nature. a large hydro-electric dam (sayanoshushenskaya ges) has made for significant change in the climate. especially damaging to khakass culture was the rapid rise in the non-native population. today's most important problem is that the ethot in terms of prejudices and policies against native culture, poverty and ill health. unemployment and the influence of the mafia and rapacious religious cults make new additions to khakassia's social problems. as in many parts of russia today, a powerful revival of native culture is going on. three lines contribute to this revival: consultation with hereditary tradition through the voices of the elders and ethnographic and historical literature, elements left from the soviet era, and contacts with the outside world. central to this revival are the ancient khakass philosophy and practice of shamanism, and their long and rich oral tradition. to illustrate these three lines, i would like to introduce briefly the practice of one contemporary shaman, and then go on to some new legends which have been appearing in the last few years, building a bridge from the past to the present. in the words of one khakass philosopher, “new legends are a serious factor in the revival of the ethnos (anzhiganova 1997).” a contemporary shaman's practice tatiana kobezhikova is a hereditary shaman. as in most siberian traditions, the gift can pass down either the female or male line, and shows up in childhood. in tania's case, her parents were distressed when she began to predict what was about to happen, and could see auras around people. since shamanism was forbidden and severely persecuted in the soviet period, they tried to dissuade her from developing her talent. since the fall of the soviet union she has practiced 56 more and more openly, with support from her family. recently she sought consecration from hereditary shamans in tuva and mongolia. she has made a costume and drum, and her practice involves traditional methods of soul retrieval and divination. kobezhikova received a western-style education in soviet institutions, including fluency in the russian language. she now uses knowledge gained during post-graduate work in archaeology together with her psychic ability to help archaeologists locate and interpret sites. she also runs a clinic (which for funding purposes is called a laboratory of traditional medicine,) in two rooms in an obshchezhitie, or dormitory/hotel in the city of abakan. this setting has limited her in terms of drumming and long ceremonies, but at the same time opened her practice to a wide spectrum of clients. kobezhikova has contacts with the west through reading the works of michael harner and carlos casteneda. meetings with foreign psychiatrists and anthropologists result in exchange of ideas and methods. it is possible that contacts with the outside world may lead to financial support for her efforts to revive all methods of traditional healing in khakassia. at least she is receiving publicity (van deusen 1997:1-15; 1998:22-29). what emerges from the union of these three lines is something unprecedented in the history of shamanism. (it is worth noting that the shamanic tradition has always been extremely flexible, adapting to changed conditions and the influx of new ideas.) tania practices traditional soul-retrieval and divination, as well as healing through energy channels, massage, and herbal medicine which are not typical of traditional shamanic practice. she has also developed a practice which i am calling eco-tourist shamanism, in which she guides people through the many sacred sites in khakassia, helping them to feel the energies of the earth, and developing rituals which contribute to personal growth and ecological awareness.1 her practice adapts tradition to today's largely urban conditions and needs. cultural revival the revival of shamanic tradition fills important needs in the spiritual life of the khakass, and also serves as an inspiration to their artistic, political and ecological movements. more even than individual healing, today's shamanic practice focuses on healing the ethnic group as a whole. in khakassia the revival of culture involves individual inspiration and creativity rather than the setting up or imposing of new authoritarian structures. individual creativity is honored 57 in the arts as well as in shamanic practice—all are seen as evidence of the shamanic gift. some of the people i was introduced to as “shamans” are actors, singers, philosophers and musical instrument makers, as well as traditional healers. politics is considered a valid arena for creativity, and also for competition and trickery, time-honored parts of shamanic tradition. life stories are being told in reference to traditional beliefs, giving inspiration and warning to those who follow. khakass scholars like larissa anzhiganova and alexander kotozhekov are reconstructing ritual and legend, and they have played a central role in raising the consciousness of rural people during the formation of the new republic (anzhiganova 1997). scholars and shamans consult each other regularly, if somewhat uneasily. khakass music and epic now appear in the national theater, carrying spiritual and ecological messages, while just a few years ago they were viewed as quaint remnants of a primitive past. an important focus of today's movement is clan ritual, with attention to genealogy, ancestry and especially to the importance of specific places sacred to families and clans, and to others that are power points on the earth. many of these places are in the mountains, home of ancient spirits who appeared in the past as helping spirits of shamans. mountains appear in epic and tale as the meeting place of heaven and earth, and a route for approaching the upper world. contemporary legends people have begun to make direct contact with these ancient mountain spirits, and their experiences turn into new legends that are inspiring the rebirth of culture. today's legends involve survival, rebirth, initiation, creativity including the interaction of male and female energies, the vital role of music, and most importantly, respect for nature and the land. certain people have changed the focus of their lives entirely as a result of the experiences and visions that result in these legends. they have begun to concentrate on helping their people. others tell of how they were offered the shamanic gift in soviet times, how they refused it and what happened as a result. in the past the singer of epics, or khaidzhi, enjoyed a position similar to that of the shaman. these storytellers, who performed in a type of throat singing called khai, came from their own ancestral lineage and underwent initiation like shamans. they showed talent from childhood, and were respected for their clairvoyant abilities. storytelling was understood as a 58 healing art. today's legends are told by new khaidzhi, and also by folklore collectors, philosophers, actors, and even elderly people speaking on the radio. like shamans, the legendtellers work toward healing the people as a whole. one contemporary story connected with singing is that of an elderly musician named itpekov. he was sitting at home one evening playing his chatkhan (zither) when a little old woman with snow-white hair and a bright face appeared unexpectedly before him. the chatkhan is the sacred instrument of storytellers, and he had felt compelled to take it up after his retirement. “the old woman's clothing amazed him with its former wealth, being made of satin and silk. but it was in a pitiful condition: all torn, with threads pulling out. after they had drunk tea in silence, she told him she was chir ine, the mother spirit of all the turkic peoples. `i am the mother spirit and i am dying,' she told itpekov. `you need to help revive your culture and the people themselves, so that i won't die. you, the khakass, are my eldest son among the turkic peoples.' not at all long ago chir ine had been young and beautiful, she said, because the khakass people were living according to their customs and traditions. they worshipped her because she was the soul of the people. when the people is alive and blossoming, she too is well. but now the khakass have stopped worshipping the spirits of fire, water, mountain, and taiga. they are forgetting their language, losing their culture. if this continues further, the people will die—the khakass will hang themselves, drown themselves, kill one another (anzhiganova 1997).” chir ine taught itpekov her song, which he often sang and now others sing too. itpekov's story and song are eloquent statements on the shamanic themes of rebirth, initiation through meeting with spirit, and respect for the land. they point the way to contemporary action by combining shamanic philosophy with politics and ecology. another story with similar themes of initiation through meeting the mountain spirits is that of the sculptor slava kuchenov. the specific spirits he met were khai eezi—the spirits of singing khai, which leads to the art of the khaidzhi, or epic singer. kuchenov had received his formal education in leningrad and returned to his homeland with no sense of traditional culture—torn off from his roots. he went to visit an aunt in a faraway village, walking a long way to get there through the mud. when he arrived, he cleaned his boots and went to bed. in the night someone woke him and took him out through the steppe to the mountains. something happened to him there, a deep transformation based on meetings with 59 spirits. he was told he must learn five musical instruments, including the chatkhan played by khaidzhi, the khomus (a bowed string instrument2 ), and demir-khomus, a kind of jaw harp played by shamans. some of the things he was told were to remain secret. then he returned to his aunt's and went back to bed. in the morning he woke up and thought it had all been a dream, until he saw that his boots were muddy again. after this experience he began to play music and became an adept khaidzhi. he now composes his own poems similar to heroic epics, using classic and contemporary themes. he has become a professional actor and singer, although he had no previous background or education in those fields (anzhiganova, kotozhekov, kazachinova 1997: personal communication). the instrument maker from whom kuchenov commissioned his instruments, petya topoev says that the meeting with the khai eezi happened at the confluence of two rivers, a meeting place of the physical and the spiritual. the instruments he made had unusual shapes, designed according to the instructions of the spirits that kuchenov met. the same instrument maker told me a story of his own meeting with spirits—this time with the spirit of a warrior who sleeps in the mountains. topoev went out to the mountains with a newly finished drum. an instrument gets its soul from being played outdoors, consecrated by the spirits of nature. only then does it find its own voice. his brother had played the new drum and said it would be a warrior's drum. topoev went up to a place where he could see five peaks, and there he played. beside one peak a big sleeping warrior appeared. another warrior was trying to wake him. topoev stopped playing and the two warriors disappeared. when he began to beat the drum again, they reappeared and the sleeping warrior moved around, as if he were about to awaken and get up. at this, petya was frightened and ran away! (1997: personal communication.) his story relates to an old legend about a sleeping warrior of the past. in the sixteenth century a hero named tadar-khan (or amyr-sama in tuvan) jumped the mountains into khakassia from tuva and became a great leader. he was defeated by the mongols and went away to sleep in the mountains. legend says that he will come to life when the time is right, and save the people. another view on this story is that the warrior, also known as khoorai-khan will return when the material world ends and people are spiritually reborn. v. ya. butanaev thinks it 60 is possible that buddhist shambhala is located in the sayans and that this legend refers to that tradition (butanaev 1996:13).3 topoev says that it is possible to see things like the sleeping warrior near places on the earth with a strong geo-magnetic force. many of the kurgans and standing stones are located at such places. once when he was sitting near one of the stone figures, near the confluence of two rivers, he saw the stone start to emerge from the ground. he saw the stone take the shape of a yurt, then a face. he thinks it was the face of a legendary female warrior (akh kyz) who vowed she would not marry until she drove her enemies from the land. when she died she was buried near that place. he also ties this into the idea of the sleeping warrior who will come to life and save the people. female warriors are not at all unusual in turkic and mongolian epic tradition, where many if not most of the heroes are women. khakassia's greatest epic is about several generation of female warriors, among them the beautiful and powerful altyn aryg. she and her ancestress pis-tyzykh were born in a white cliff. they had many adventures, involving talents for shapechanging and the ability to bring the dead to life. when i was in khakassia in 1997, altyn aryg was the subject of a new battle—in the theater. a children's theater company called “skazka” had produced “altyn aryg” using puppets and masked actors. many local people were horrified that the masks were so truly frightening. children were crying at the show. colors were dark. one side of a heated discussion said that altyn aryg should have been shown as beautiful, while in this production she had the qualities of a witch. others feel that since the masks were made according to the visions of the actors and artists, it was acceptable to portray the characters as truly horrifying. the argument continued about interior and exterior beauty, whether the concept of female beauty should be seen through male eyes only, and about goddesses who carry destruction within their beauty. but the main thing seems to be the political question of khakass culture being shown in its ugliest, scariest side. also involved are issues of how the theater uses imagery and traditional culture to make money. the consensus in that room held with the idea that altyn aryg should be shown beautiful, not only as a woman but as a representation of the highest in khakass culture. the sleeping warrior is waking up! 61 references anzhiganova, larissa. 1997 “renaissance of a culture: how khakass shamanism survived and flourishes today” active voices: the online journal of cultural survival. www.cs.org. _____. 1998 “khakass shamanic recovery” shamanism 11(2). butanaev, v. ya. 1996 traditsionnaya kul'tura i byt khakassov [traditional khakass culture and way of life]. abakan: khakasskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo. kharatidi, olga 1996 entering the circle: ancient secrets of siberian wisdom discovered by a russian psychiatrist. san francisco: harper sanfrancisco. van deusen, kira 1998 “shamanism and music in tuva and khakassia” shaman's drum, no 47, pp 22-29. _____. “the voice of the mountain spirit: contemporary shamanism in siberia” 1997. active voices: the online journal of cultural survival. www.cs.org. _____. “shamanism in khakassia today” 1997. shamanism vol 10, no 1: 11-15. notes 1. i have also seen a similar practice in buriatia, where shaman valentin hagdaev runs spiritual excursions on olkhon island through the baikal parks service. 2. this can be confusing, since in tuvan the word khomus refers to the temir-khomus or jaw harp. a khakass stringed khomus made by topoev has the shape of the sacred swan. 3. russian psychiatrist olga kharatidi also believes that shambhala, in russian called belovodia, is located in this area---she says in the altai mountains. thanks to: larissa anzhiganova, galina kazachinova, tatiana kobezhikova, alexander kotozhekov, petr topoev. section i: social change and civil society measuring perceptions qf "corruption" in czech society raymond june, university ofcalifornia at berkeley for several years now, the czech and inter­ national presses have been awash with unrelenting stories of political and economic corruption scandals in the czech republic that have deeply wounded national pride. often accompanied by unflattering statistics and international polling data that routinely place the country in the bottom rung of world governance and corruption rankings, i was somewhat amused to find taxonomies of another sort when i opened the czech daily, lidove noviny, on february 15 (2001 :l3-15). in a three-page spread, the paper published an informal statistical ranking titled "in what are we the best ... and in what are we the worst" ("v cemjsme nejlepsl..a v cemjsme nejhorsi") that measured how czechs fared in 26 categories of social life compared to other european countries. the czech republic topped the rankings in the annual consump­ tion of beer, while it ranked last in religious observance, thus reaffirming long-harbored and intuitive national self-stereotypes. flanking the results were several images of the fictional soldier svejk, the titular prot­ agonist ofjaroslav hasek's classic early twentieth-century novel beloved by most czechs, who served in the austrian army during world war one. over the years, the image of svejk has been resignified and mobilized for different purposes. for many, he is a folk hero who embodies pragmatic common sense that enables him to subvert (habsburg) authority and discipline. yet others view him as an embarrassing reminder of czech incompetence and amateurishness. it seemed entirely appropriate, however, to find him juxtaposed in an ironic, tongue-in­ cheek manner with the newspaper's enumer­ ation of national rank. for the "omni­ present. .. specter of the good soldier svejk" (cervinkova 2003:91) haunts the country's landscape after socialism, implicitly pointing out the comic and grotesque effects of measuring national character and opinion, as well as the shadow of foreign domination, that have assumed different fonns in the new world order. this article is an inquiry into one such quantitative practice opinion polling ­ which has come to objectify current perceptions of czech corruption and bureaucratic dysfunction. i take as my focus the influential corruption perceptions index (cpi) of the berlin-based global anti­ corruption ngo, transparency international (ti). specifically, i address how this technology of democratic governance has been instrumentalized and made symbolically authoritative in the global imaginary of certain local and transnational elites by the key mediating labors of a particular segment of czech professional anti-corruption crusaders. i contend that the reification of this prominent transnational opinion poll was made through a form of "boundary-work." as socio-cultural explorations in anthropology and science studies have suggested, the formation of political and scientific rationality is a process that significantly involves the making and re­ making of dualisms between science and non­ science (e.g., gieryn 1983, lave 1988, nader 1996). creating hierarchies of scientific knowledge is a strategy that actors often use to augment their professional and intellectual authority. this article engages with these insights by examining how cultural intermediaries at the czech national chapter of transparency international (tic) helped to reify the representation of foreign expert opinion, thereby casting the cpi as superior to the knowledge practices of the czech state at a moment of weakness in the local bureaucratic machine. implicit in my argument is that these dichotomizing practices were often unselfconscious attempts by my 10 • interlocutors at manufacturing and enhancing • pre-existing uncertainty and a sense of crisis (e.g., czech "corruption,,).l in other words, instead of simply responding to the crisis, •• they also actively created the perception of a crisis by interpreting and "translating" (latour 1987) it as one about corruption, transparency, and accountability for their own • purposes and the interests of outside actors. tic workers thus offered their practices2 • oriented to abstract international forms like the cpi as a tautological solution to the crisis of legitimacy in the state and capital markets. • this is not to say that boundary-maintenance • was a seamless, conflict-free process. on the contrary, i hope to show they were constituted in ambiguities and daily struggles within and among ngo professionals at tic, czech bureaucrats, and the broader public. • this article is based on ethnographic materials culled from sixteen months of dissertation fieldwork (2000-01, 2003) at tic and • elsewhere, examining why and how an indigenous, globalized "governance intelligentsia" mediate and configure the trnth-defining professional idioms of • transparency and accountability which together underpin our notion of good governance in the czech republic. the • analysis derives from my participation in the daily life of the tic office as a volunteer for various projects. • • j as y chouda shcnhav (1994) argues, "uncertainty" is not always located outside rational orders but is oftcn exploited to strengthen scientific and political authority. • 2 herc i am less concern cd with the more familiar critiques of polling's design and construction (e.g., • bourdieu 1990, paley 200 i) than with its performative deployment by internationalized governance specialists and state officials in mass media and public rclations circuits. i find myself in accord, then, with susan • herbst's (2003:587) reminder of the constitutive links bctwcen polling tools and institutions of publicity that are too often lcft undercxamined: "thc close rclationship of opinion measurcmcnt to the diffusion and heterogeneity ofthc mass media is often overlooked. without an extcnsive mcdia infrastructure for manipulation ofpublic opinion print and broadcast -­ • as well as a keen understanding ofthat complex infrastructure, survey research data are not particularly useful." my argument unfolds in five sections. first, i sketch the present disunity of government bureaucratic knowledge in the czech republic that has enabled the governance experts to achieve presence in the political­ cultural field. i then critique the salient features of international indices in governance, especially the cpr and its valorization of foreign professional opinion. in the third section, i discuss the everyday narratives and actions that contributed to constrncting the index's trnth in representation by analyzing the dialectics between openness and secrecy embedded in the stories and practices of publicity among transparency professionals. the fourth section briefly examines one example of the cpi's reception among local citizens. finally, i analyze how this global socio-technical intervention that stands in privileged opposition to conventional state knowledge practices has been contested by the czech government. the "state" of statistical knowledge and its discontents to provide a context for the role and uses of opinion polling in recent czech governance, it is worth exploring how authoritative estimat­ ions of the population have been framed and received more generally before moving to the specific case of polls and their tracking of public opinion. in the czech republic, as in many other societies, the census is the most familiar and pervasive form of government knowledge. like polls, the census is a technology of trnth that is central to national states and large-scale organizations.3 this 3 one important diffcrence, however, is that while thc census targets bodies and populations, public opinion polls "aim to chart desires and graph interiorized states. in this, thcy operate less by serializing, sorting. and identifying discrete individuals than by cstablishing averages and norms that, in effect, constitute an aggregate. moreover, the aggregatc that polls constitute is not a population that can be regulated and monitored by the statc, but rather 'public opinion' which, by claiming to express preferences of respondents, can act as a powerful legitimating mechanism for political democracy and public policies" (paley 2001: 137). ii ii d raises the question of how effective the czech government has been in enacting this power. the 2001 census controversy is instructive. from february through march ofthat year, i was in the field on the occasion of the biggest nation-wide census conducted by the czech statistical office (csu) an official statistical agency and arm of the state every ten years (coinciding with a broader continental european-wide tabulation of census data). the state required its citizens to provide detailed personal information that ranged from their professional and educational to religious and marital status. even foreigners were emolled in tllls comprehensive govermnent information­ gathering activity, as i discovered when a friendly census worker dropped off the questionnaire forms at my prague apartment one afternoon. from the start, however, the state's attempt to classify and count the national population was marked by controversy. many people objected to its lack of anonymity: information provided on the forms could be traceable to individual citizens based on their security identification number (rodne cislo). tms sparked fears that confidential information could be abused, especially by a bureaucracy that was widely viewed by the public as comlpt, inefficient, and unaccountable. public rumors and tales of conspiracies that the census would be outsourced to a small private firm (where one of its employees stood accused of being a former secret police collaborator) fanned public concerns. in addition to circulating in informal conversations, people's fears and antipathy toward the census were made visible by the print and electronic media. perhaps the most sensational public representation critical of the govermnent's enumerative practice was a provocative internet image that was also widely circulated over e-mail, with a grapmc photo of an ossuary and the tongue-in-cheek message: "do not be afraid ofbeing subtracted~!! ,subtracting people, houses, and bunkers. csu czech sadistic office" (see figure 1). figure 1. 12 ----~.-' i i the state found it difficult to mount an effective response to the accusations of i bureaucratic mismanagement and corruption i circulating in the public and official spheres. the chair of the statistical office (and co­ founder of tic), marie bohata,l appeared in i daily media reports for more than two weeks and tried to assure the public that the process would be transparent and above board. but by then, the public's ire and fears had super­ ceded marie's good intentions: many citizens refused to fill out the census, much to the i state's embarrassment. despite a massive public relations campaign to persuade the populace, the hollowness of statepower was i revealed. in effect, the public ridiculed the state and its efforts to gather comprehensive statistical knowledge. in so doing, they i signaled the profane and fragile qualities embedded in the official machinery of truth. this is not unlike the fetishism of the state i and ineffective character of political authority analyzed by michael taussig (1997) and achille mbembe (2001) in latin america and i africa respectively. the language of i enumeration was inserted into a discursive, socio-political, and historical field where quantification has long been penetrated, translated, and usurped by various social groups in struggles over who has the power to represent the truth of the body politic (uri a i 1993, lampland 1995, paley 2001). the skirmish discussed above is but one instance of the czech state's precarious hold i on administrative rationality and public trust in recent years. the ongoing indeterminacy of political reason has created a fissure in the i i field of power and encouraged new modes of technocratic knowledge and its agents to insert and energize themselves, to which i now turn. honor, shame, disrepute: international i opinion of the czech republic the saturation and essentialization of czech pathology and difference in the public sphere i i all full names cited for the first time are real, while i first names that are introduced arc pseudonyms. can be indexed by the numerous academic as well as investigative, often sensationalistic, media accounts of bank failures, political corruption, and privatization scandals (altshuler 2001). it is worth noting, however, that this discursive landscape is routinely accompanied by international polling and survey data that ultimately entrench these stereotypes as objective facts. so, what precisely are these opinion surveys? perception-based indices of governance and corruption have become a veritable cottage industry across the globe. the opinions of foreign experts, in particular, are the most frequently deployed diagnostic in assessing various levels of wrong-doing, disbursing aid funds, or shaping domestic political outcomes by the international governance policy, business, and development communities. a partial1ist of the enornlous and astonishing range of international indices to monitor and assess good governance in the public and private sectors would have to include the following:2 • transparency international's corruption perceptions index and bribe payers index (bpi) • pricewaterhousecoopers's (pwc) opacity index and economic crime survey • world economic forum's global competitiveness report • world bank's world business enviromnent survey (wbes) 2 there are also regional opinion surveys of governancc, including those that cover central and eastern europe, such as merit research's corporate governance risk projcct (organizcd and run by students at charles university's institute of economic studies), the new europe barometer, and more recently the joint tic-gtk index v4 (the city corruption propensity index covering the four visegrad countries). a fcw international survcys have reccntly launchcd studies of domcstic general public opinion, including ti's global corruption barometer, pwc's european fraud perception survey, and a gfk-tic survey of the corruption climate in the czcch republic in 1999. furthennore, some surveys combine perceptions ratings with "hard" cconomics data, such as pwc's opacity index. i 13 • world bank institute's govemance research indicators • world bank's and european bank for reconstmction and development's business environment and enterprise performance survey (beeps) • united nations development programme's intemational crime victims survey and country assessment in accountability and transparency (contact) • freedom house's nations in transit survey • economist intelligence unit's (elli) country risk service and country forecast • business environmental rusk hltelligence (beri) • the heritage foundation's index of economic freedom while these surveys measure and rank weak or strong governance in comparative and cross-cultural perspectives, the massive intemational taxonomies are clearly aimed at developing and transition societies that are perceived by the transnational community of academics, investors, and aid agencies to have weaker and less transparent regulatory infrastmctures. but these indices are not just technical diagnostic tools; they are also an altemative form of moral accountability to the state. for in conjuring up the expertise of self-appointed global guardians of good govemance, the new moral science of intemational polling also serves as a shaming mechanism by legitimating and authorizing censure of the state constituted in global ethical standards. thus it is corruption and governance as surveyed in "intemational opinion," rather than its domestic public counterpart, that is privileged by the intemational development and govemance elites. their judgment is cmcialnot just to investment and aid decisions, but also to the making of new and durable hierarchies of values and structural inequalities in the post-cold war global order. marking the convergence of business, govemment, and academia, these polls are also a novel technology of accountability in which foreign expertise and sentiment have become a new global moral authority on and social scientific knowledge about the czech republic. as an example of the new ethico-scientific nonns that govem these polls, let us consider transparency intemational's aruma 1 cpi. ti views itself as a leader in the global spread of corruption and governance surveys. in particular, the iconic index has acquired an increasingly powerful and pervasive presence in the public sphere, although its meanings vary considerably across social groups, institutions, and individuals. the cpi's stated purpose is to measure and assess "levels" or "frequencies" of political economic malfeasance by ranking countries from the lowest to highest levels of perceived corruption. it aims to serve as a policy instrument in strengthening professional anti­ corruption strategies, infonning investment risk analysis, monitoring govemance performance, and generating public debate and government action through the news media. designed and led by a german economist at gottingen university specifically for ti and originally launched in 1995, the cpi is considered a "poll of polls." that is, it is a compilation of several intemational surveys drawn from organiz­ ations like gallup international, the world bank, pricewaterhousecoopers, and the economist intelligence unit. the index is overseen and reviewed by a ti steering committee composed of various academics and professionals from across the globe. so as to substantiate its scientific precision, ti justifies combining these disparate data sources (roughly fifteen per year) into a single composite index by claiming it increases the cpi's reliability and independence. for example, a minimum of three to four surveys based on the past three years are used to produce a country's annual average score and rank. hence a bias or anomaly in one index can be balanced by other more representative and accurate surveys. this will supposedly minimize the possibility of misrepresenting a 14 i i i country. in fact, ti constantly seeks to refine serves the purpose of the global anti­ and perfect its methodology in order to corruption and good governance industry (see strengthen its scientific validity. it has been also sik 2002:112-113). remarkably open about its methodology by but these perceptual ratings are about more publishing it on its website and in other media than just consciousness-raising, allocating aid, i outlets (kotkin and saj6 2002:28). in or pressuring national governments to reform. addition to revising and incorporating new they also concern the making of a country's sources into its data base so that the surveys moral worth and integrity in the global i "correlate well," the cpl has also expanded fraternity of nations. in press releases and the number of countries into its annual reports, ti consistently throws out dire ranking list, from an initial count of 50 warnings that national governments risk countries to more than one hundred today, to i ignoring the cpi at their peril (eigen 2001). ensure the robustness of its comparisons. it proudly cites how diverse polities from results are routinely cited in influential pakistan and malaysia to argentina have used international and domestic publications, such i the index as the basis of reform, even as the wall street journal, the new york eradicating corrupt administrations and times, and the financial times. entrenched political malfeasance. the cpi more significant and controversial is the has even affected election outcomes in i cpi's reliance on international expert opinion countries such as nigeria. to ignore the to discipline national governments. rather index, the ti director warns darkly, "means than elicit the views of citizens and the more impoverishment, less education, less i general public, the cpi pools the results of health care" (eigen 1997). new rational i surveys based on expert evaluations by instruments and prescriptions ofbetter expatriate and foreign residential business behavior are now twinned with a liberal executives, risk analysts, and political humanitarian concern for human rights and analysts. (ti discontinued the incorporation good citizenship. of general public surveys in 2001 in order to however, for those countries that fare poorly i "streamline" its methodology. since 2003, ti in the index and they tend to be and gallup international have collaborated in disproportionately from the global south} developing a new, though less visible and their objective representation instills a new i well-publicized, study of general public and powerful sense of dishonor and shame. in opinion in 47 countries called the global so doing, durable racial and national divisions corruption barometer.) officially, the are recast along new hierarchies of belonging solicitation of foreign expert opinion is meant i in the international moral community. to to focus on influential players in investment earn their castigation by performing poorly on and trade who presumably have greater the cpi is to suffer new forms of exclusion, authority and legitimation in the global and i stigmatization, and asymmetrical power regional economies. that the cpi valorizes relations based on "universal" moral and free the perceptions of elite decision-makers, market grounds. stated baldly: the index is however, also suggests something of a i embedded with the neocolonial tropes of reversal in the logic of opinion-formation: the western moral superiority and expertise that model "expert" citizen has rapidly crowded underwrite the production of east-west/ out the statistically average citizen in i democratic governance. sounding out the opinions of foreign knowledge makers thus 3 in response to intense criticism that the cpr unfairlybecomes something of a tautological exercise targets and stigmatizes countries from the ~iobal s~uth, i as they are the primary group that uses the ti inaugurated a bribe payers index (bpi) m 1998 m results to make aid and investment decisions. order to focus attention on the predominantly advanced in this way, the recursive, reflexive quality of industrial and capitalist countries that give bribes. however, the bpi has received significantly less i (polling) numbers, and the cpi in particular, publicity than the attention-b'tabbing cpl i 15 north-south hierarchies, the ranking of peoples, and the re-invention of eastern otherness (wolff 1994; for an examination of relations between public opinion research and scientific racialization, see monis-suzuki 2000). in conflating the multiple socio­ cultural meanings of "corruption," the cpi therefore reduces ethics to individual choice, personalizes blame in a given country, and often creates or exacerbates the problems it is supposed to solve. and so despite the strenuous claims by ti that the perceptions index is not necessarily an accurate measure of actual incidents of corruption and "notwithstanding the fact that perceived corruption is a one-sided indicator, once the powerful perception index is presented as an objective indicator of a country's comparative moral value, the index acquires its own dynamic" (kotkin and saj6 2002:29). the tarnish to the czechs' "civilized" and "velvet" reputation has brought about dubious and unwanted attention from the international conununity. this should lead us to consider how and why these polls have granted international expert opinion such symbolic power over and within the contemporary czech republic. hlternational indices of good governance in czech society have contributed to fixing the perception of pervasive corruption and its entrenchment in everyday life among many foreigners and some locals by frequently accompanying sensational and serious investigative reports. that is, the media produces and reinforces the world and phenomena that they construct through the hard social facts of international polling that saturate popular and scholarly publications. table 1: transparency international cpi (2003). rank country 1 finland 2 iceland 3 new zealand denmark 43 cuba jordan trinidad & tobago 54 czech republic bulgaria brazil 133 bangladesh score 9.7 9.6 9.5 9.5 4.6 4.6 4.6 3.9 3.9 3.9 1.3 in what has become something of an annual rite of passage, the czech public reads about their country's latest free-fall in the cpi surveys used 8 7 8 9 3 7 6 12 10 12 8 standard deviation 0.3 0.3 0.2 0.4 1.0 1.1 1.3 0.9 0.9 0.5 0.7 rankingsl finding themselves invariably i the czech republic's relative standing in the cpl scale has steadily fallen, from a rank of 37 in 1998 to 54 in 2003, while the overall coverage of countries continues to increase annually. 16 i i i grouped alongside or even below countries such as bulgaria and cuba in technical, reified form (see table 1). the perhaps not­ i so-subtle suggestion is that the czech republic is similar to a third world country. tabloid journalism and unsubstantiated i studies are thus granted greater legitimacy by virtue of their proximity to authoritative knowledge. i this objectification is further strengthened by the fact that foreign and comparative opinion polls behave implicitly as a tribunal of the international community and symbol of a higher rational and moral order "above" local i politics. given the on-going struggles of czech state and national intellectuals to administer retributive justice and accountability over the past decade, the moral i and juridical authority of local governance has been displaced to some degree on the exterior body of international polls and surveys. from i this perspective, independent surveys carried out by translocal institutions can be seen through the eyes of many global elites as i acting as an impartial and moral agent of the international community by putting the state on trial and meting out its own forms of i punishment. evidence of the indices' power to reprimand can be found in their wider impact on i normative macro-economic indicators. for i one, they have affected foreign investments in the country since partners and grant agencies frequently draw upon studies commissioned by organizations like transparency inter­ national when making their decisions i (altshuler 2001: 117). the czech republic i has also suffered the rebuke of the european dnion (ed), which, in taking into account the cpi among other barometers of opinion, has made specific (sometimes unreasonable and hypocritical) demands for institutional and structural reforms as the country seeks i european integration. we would do well to recall the pragmatist dictum ofw. i. thomas that if a social situation is perceived as real, it i is real in its consequences (thomas and thomas 1970[1917]). on a broader level, then, instruments of governance knowledge like the cpi can have a more dynamic locutionary force than the state, producing what michel-rolph trouillot (2001: 132) calls "legibility effects," or techniques deployed by translocal, non-state agencies to aiiiculate public sentiments and regulate populations more successfully than the national bureaucracy. daily narratives and publicity work polling numbers, however, do not speak for themselves. they need to be mediated, interpreted, and codified through an institutional circuit or what dominic boyer (2000:461-462) calls an "epistemic feedback system" peopled by various professional experts who link the academy to market research organizations, international ngos, and the media. not surprisingly, the public representation of foreign opinion is de­ contextualized and reified in the process as journalists and policy-makers finally append and reproduce selected aspects of the opinion poll results to their press coverage. to investigate the authoritative production of the cpl, it is therefore worth examining how the poll was mediated and disseminated in routine everyday practice among the tic staff. the construction of bounded, factual representation, as i show below, was reinforced through the mutual elaboration of openness and concealment that was integrated into the ngo's practices ofpublicity. indeed, despite the professed transparency of polling, it was dependent on its constitutive other­ secrecy to perform its power (see geschiere 2002). as the centerpiece of transparency's professional agitation efforts, the cpi was primarily woven into the textures of daily life at tic in the form of paper and electronic documents. during my fieldwork, i was constantly struck by how the cpi and other international polls were silently filtered and deployed through an extensive documentary apparatus and paper trail:2 grant proposals, 2 the dense circulation and dissemination of documents have some interesting continuities with the unofficial communication activities ofczechoslovak dissidents and their refotin efforts during the 1970s and 1980s. i thank kiista hegburg for this point. 17 annual reports, and print media sources. my like faceless conduits. in an interview, he e-mail and office mailboxes were frequently explained: bombarded with articles and memos focusing on recent quantitative surveys of corruption and good governance. one electronic message that i received, for example, contained an attachment that summarized forthcoming international newspaper surveys "in case it helps [the national chapters] in their dealings with the media." another time, the tic director distributed without comment a one-page photocopied article on the latest mathematical models for quantifying overseas country investment risk. more generally, my interlocutors found the cpi an easy shorthand to highlight the gravity of corruption in the czech republic for donors and the public. many of them told me they found the index an efficient tool that reduced a complex social phenomenon like corruption to information, thus making it simpler for them to communicate with various constituencies. "it's easy, if someone from the media calls me to ask about how deep corruption and bribery really are in the czech republic, i can just refer to the cpi without having to go into great detail," one tic professional told me. the cpi and my interlocutors' role in deploying its results, however, also proved to be a deep source of ambivalence. the more concrete and frequent critiques that i heard in corridor talk or kitchen-table conversations as well as interviews was how the index discounted their role as producers of knowledge. they often expressed feelings of being non-persons, as if cogs in the marketing and public relations machinery who merely transmitted information to the public. in addition, my interlocutors critiqued the index for being shot through with secrecy (a charge made with particular forcefulness by the older generation of tic professionals). as such, the cpi served as a screen for debates about and expressions of ambivalence toward their work more generally. martin, the tic project manager of the police project, often remarked on the sense of feeling we are not experts; we are just managers at transparency. so any project that we do involves coming up with an idea, getting the money, and bringing people together who know something about the issues. we can do press conferences and publicize the work of the experts like the cpi. i think that transparency is not doing anything else but putting this issue in the newspapers. it can do something more than just publicize things like the cpi, but it doesn't. ... the cpi and all those press conferences do not try to solve the problems of corruption. it's just mapping out the problem, and that is it. the disavowal of expertise and ambivalence towards managerial authority were familiar laments that i captured throughout the course of my fieldwork. it conveyed some of the tensions that pervaded the workplace. the management and dissemination of the cpi were imputed to be mechanized and disembodied labor. in this account, they perceived that their contribution was devalued or insignificant in contradistinction to the generation of data and hard numbers by "real" experts, whose work they merely publicized as appendages. martin's colleague, dana, echoed his sentiments. like tic's director, michal burian, dana had previously worked at the prague branch of the global advertising agency ogilvy and mather. she had a no­ nonsense demeanor and performed her work with great efficiency and minimal fuss. her criticism of the cpi was expressed clearly to me one day over coffee: one of (tic's) main target groups is the public. and we have to do something about this. we can't work as a scientific organization (vedecka organizace) and do some surveys, such as the cpi. i don't think we are mentally equipped for this, and educationally equipped for this. we 18 • ••• ii ••••••••••• can actually initiate some surveys, but not done by us. i think we can collaborate with some institutions, but we have to think about the project: how we are going to use the surveys, whatever it is, for the project that would be useful because the survey has to be the first step, and the results of the survey have to be the project. the disappearance of claims to expertise from their self-portrayal seemed to me an expression of some of the conflicts and uncertainty that attended their work. even though my interlocutors were endowed with impressive professional credentials and work experience, they were often beset with uncertainty over their epistemological authority. this tension manifested itself in the wildly oscillating stories i heard. most tic professionals expressed tremendous pride in their professionalism as a sign ofintegrity and self-discipline. they held that this made transparency a highly respected and trustworthy institution, especially in comparison with their local counterparts. but a few others i spoke with also adopted more troubled expressions when talking about the technocratic orientation to knowledge. a number of them voiced concems that the cpi evacuated their sense of efficacy and expressed resentment that they could not engage with more participatory forms of research and organizational work with citizens and allied social organizations. i sensed that portraying themselves as non-experts spoke to this fundamental tension at tic. frequently articulated in tandem with the denial of self-agency were their feelings of mystification at the index itself. despite the professed openness and transparency of the international polls, they often claimed that the cpi and its sources appeared cloaked in secrecy. iva was a particularly vigorous commentator on this point. a middle-aged woman of mixed czech-slovak-hungarian descent, she presented herself as a open society fund in bratislava (slovakia) before assuming her current post as a tic project coordinator for the 10lh international anti-cormption conference (lace) held in prague in october 2001. she stated: the cpi has to show you what is necessary to do in the field. the survey can show us what are the weak points, what are the strong points. but the cpr is problematic because it is very difficult to compare the development in peru with the development in the czech republic. this is nonsense!. .. that's why for me it's a little bit scary. that's why i'm keen to know who will use this. maybe some consultancy institute and some media opinion researchers, i don't know. i really don't know (ja opravdu nevim). i would love to know who is really producing the cpi, too, and who is able to compare it. although they were well-informed and intelligent, people like iva frequently claimed that they did not know much about the index and often "black boxed" its sources of production and its uses. and yet, their distance from the index seemed more a critique of professional knowledge rather than an expression of sheer ignorance. the daily narratives that i heard about the cpi's obscurity made it visible as an object of critical ret1ection and debate. what, then, do such statements about the opaque workings of the cpi suggest? in some ways, it is not surprising that many of my interlocutors gave critical responses such as iva's. much of their service work relied heavily on secondary polling research conducted by different international and western agencies, which the ti secretariat research staff then cobbled together to make average composite scores for each country. furthermore, these comments revealed the broader tensions between the ti head office in berlin and its czech national chapter that became increasingly visible in their long­ •• standing differences over the organization and cosmopolitan professional, having worked for a number of years in germany and the financing of the 10lh lacc. i witnessed or overheard complaints on both ends about • 19 undue expenses, miscommunication, pr excess, and managerial conflicts, in addition to the usual personality clashes. all of this fueled the sense of remoteness and discolmection from the cpi and its forms of knowledge. what must be stressed, however, is that by minimizing their intellectual authority and ceaselessly pointing out the cpi's hidden dimensions in their everyday narratives, they cast a veil over their own interpretive labors in translating and disseminating the cpi for the media and public. in their stories that i heard almost daily, making the ambiguities of their labor and the index's secrecy the targets of scrutiny ironically deflected attention away from their own active work processes and suppressed my interlocutors' recognition of the daily mediating praxis in which they participated. as a result, they became implicated in the index's master representation and reinforced the invisible hand of its authority. the backstage contingencies behind the index were further modulated by the objectifying practices of what jiirgen habennas calls "publicity work," which "is aimed at strengthening the prestige of one's own position without making the matter on which a compromise is to be achieved itself a topic ofpublic discussion" (1991 :200). indeed professional techniques, such as public relations, have become increasingly central to the production of techno-political and moral authority by international ngos and civil society organizations. as andrew barry reminds us, the art of politics is constituted by its technical and material features, with social and often "anti-political" effects: devices such as press conferences, parliamentary debates, public demonstrations, public opinion polls, political analyses, electoral registers and so on are not incidental to politics. they play a critical role in making it possible for politicians, trade unionists, activists, lobbyists and citizens to act as political agents. the political actor does not come isolated into the political arena any more than the consumer comes isolated into the marketplace. he or she comes with a whole array of material devices and fornls of knowledge which serve to frame political action. there is a physics to politics .... [however], what is commonly termed politics is not necessarily or generally political in its consequences. politics can often be profoundly anti-political in its effects: suppressing potential spaces of contestation; placing limits on the possibilities for debate and confrontation. indeed, one might say that one of the core functions of politics has been, and should be, to place limits on the political ... such skills .. .in creating arrangements where consensus can be reached and in managing the press and public relations and so on, are often extraordinarily technical. .. [w]e might consider the importance of political science, political theory and public opinion research in justifying and informing the conduct of anti-politics and reproducing particular forms of anti-political action. (barry 2002:269­ 271) my ethnographic example comes from the 2001 cpi press release, focusing on the highly fetishized and carefully scripted press conference that was the primary technical mechanism by which the index was conveyed to the public. by adhering to the instrumental and rationalist ideals ofpublicity, my interlocutors' construction ofthe cpi and its representation contained local contingencies and suppressed attempts at public debates of the index itself. in the czech republic, tic and its pr apparatus were extremely important nodes within the entire range of relevant institutions and techniques that granted the cpi the status of representational truth. but conflicts over the cpi became increasingly visible during the week preceding the june 27, 2001 press 20 ~i • release date in prague over the content of the vaclavske namesti (wenceslas square) where • message they wanted to comey to the media the press conference would take place that and public. on the one hand, marie bohata afternoon, i asked him how he would address wanted to stress less the importance of the this issue. he responded, "i think it's •• cpi results than the encouraging news of important to show different sides to the index continuing foreign investment behind them. and how it can be read in different ways. if too much emphasis was placed on the however, we also have to send a clearly negative aspects of the czech republic's poor defined message through the media, otherwise • • standing, she feared, then this would have a it will be confusing." snowball effect and business investment and michal's testimony suggested that the primary confidence would drop off precipitously. the task of the press conference was not framing central question for her was how to spin the and managing the definition ofthe cpi, but results to reflect this meaning. • rather the aesthetic and performative tasks of on the other hand, there were others in the publicizing the index. my initial suspicion organization who felt that this strategy would was confirmed when michal reached into his undermine the cpi and evacuate its larger briefcase and pulled out a one-page • message. as i was helping martin alert handwritten document that he had various media outlets a few days before the photocopied ofpr tips suggested by ti. as i press conference, for example, we talked skimmed the document, i found no reference • about how marie wanted to manage the to the meaning or content of the cpi. for • message during a momentary lull in their instance, the first suggestion was to "find a routine. martin put down his phone receiver good location for the press conference good and said to me: "i know that the cpi is means convenient for the press." other major problematic, but to achieve a meaningful tips included making "sure the conference is outcome, we can't just say the picture is not at a convenient time that it does not clash as bad as portrayed by the polls. the cpi with other major events and it is not too close • should be used as a way to encourage people to media deadline" and to "have good, clear to improve by showing them that the copies of all documents available to hand corruption climate is not good. i raised this out." in order to ensure the clarity of the • with michal (burian), but he remained message, they were encouraged to "write a noncommitta1." another tic professional, five to eight minute press conference opening jaroslav, interjected by calling the cpi and its statement. introduce tl. explain the • methodology, "an embarrassment." cpi. ... ( and to) close with a short statement nevertheless, he felt the press conference repeating your key points." by the time we should be an occasion to discuss both the reached the hotel entrance, michal explained • problems and efficacy of the index without that tic's strategy was to run a pr media necessarily projecting the positive image that blitz in order to sell and heighten public marie advocated. awareness of the cpl. as we approached the hotel, he said, "we only have enough time to • the challenge, then, was how to reconcile say so much. so we have to stay on message. many of these discordant perspectives that i want to include both sides, and maybe that were voiced throughout my fieldwork and will come up when the journalists ask • particularly during the week leading up to the questions. but the main goal for us is just to press release. what seemed to be at stake was get the results out and raise public how best to make the right judgment and awareness." with these comments and his • interpretation of polling statistics by framing treatment of the tip sheet as a canonical and communicating the cpi with a unified document, michal clearly cast his professional and coherent message. michal, while more role as that of a managerial technician who sympathetic to martin and jaroslav, wanted to • did not (at least overtly) question the ontology balance competing demands. walking with the director to the downtown hotel on • 21 of the index and its pr apparatus.3 to him, the cpi press conference was a technical site whose main purpose was to disseminate and saturate the public sphere with a statistical model of expert opinion as if it were an infonnational product. it is no surprise, therefore, that the press conference shaded into an intense infonnation lobbying session and pr offensive that depoliticized the public representation of the cpi. the conference began with marie and michal briefly reciting their prepared statements, outlining the czech republic's comparative rankings, and drawing attention to tic's own activities in combating corruption. marie then invited questions from journalists. a few journalists wanted to probe more deeply into the methodology of the index, such as the sources of infonnation used to rank the czech republic and the problems associated with quantifying subjective perceptions. but such perfunctory questions were already addressed in the press packet that was distributed to journalists (and posted on the organization's website). bored looks registered on the faces of most participants. towards the end of the q & a, marie noted in a fonnal bureaucratic manner: "i do not want to impeach this index, but i find it striking the degree in which foreign investments continue to flow into the czech republic despite the negative evaluation of corruption here." when no one responded, the press conference ended swiftly, approximately thirty minutes after it had started. whence the banality and purpose of the cpi press conference? for one, the incoherent and disconnected attempts to negotiate the numbers' ambiguity dissipated under the strain of publicity and its remarkable ability to flatten serious messages and multiple voices through sound bites. (indeed, when i read the local newspapers later that week to track the media reporting, all of them except lidove 3 kimberley a. coles (2004) charts a similar process of technicization in the democratic electoral techniques (ballots, polling stations, rule of law) and sc\f­ perceptions of international officials and electoral workers in postwar bosnia-herzegovina. noviny [june 28, 200 i :2] failed to provide critical commentaries or generate significant debate on the cpl. rather, the stories mechanically reproduced the results without reflection and were accompanied by brief, often decontextualized, passages on the country's continuing corruption crises.) furthern10re, the reification of the numbers as trustworthy and objective was not self-evident by virtue of their proposal and design alone. they also had to be brought into existence by being corporealized, dramatized, and confinned through the fonnal presentations of reports, tables, and statistics, thereby intensifying the decontextualization of the cpi and its representation of foreign opinion. in so doing, the press conference operated as a feedback loop by putting czech "corruption" in the limelight and raising the profile of the anti-corruption agency in the czech republic through eye-catching results. hence it would not be an exaggeration to say that the existence of the index depended significantly on perfonnative publicity in order to heighten and objectify the "crisis" in czech governance. representation in dispute the public reception of the cpi, of course, was more unpredictable than the seductive, scientific representation of czech/eastern alterity. while tracing the effects of professional communication with any precision is elusive, i did witness one occasion in which the polished sheen of public relations was disrupted when the czech weekly newspaper, respekt, hosted a public debate in prague's avant-garde theater archa (divadlo archa) on october 29, 200 i. in one of the rare instances when the public made its voices heard vis-a-vis my interlocutors' practices, the governance intelligentsia lost some grip over the mass-mediated representation of survey research. the civic discussion of corruption and the cpi showed how professional henneneutical control could 22 i i be derailed when put into direct public circulation with citizens.4 i the october debate on "'the greatest bribers in europe,' or 1,000 faces of domestic corruption and its efflorescence in the i oppositional agreement years" ("'nejvetsi uplatkafi v evrope,' aneb tislc tvan tuzemske korupce a jeji rozkvet v letech opozicni smlouvy") was part of a year-long series of i i public events sponsored by respekt. key local personalities from the world of politics, journalism, civil society, and academia were invited to converse and spar with the newspaper's editors and public on topical domestic and global issues ranging from i freedom of the press to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the united states. the intimate theater, which was packed with i i some two hundred people in the audience, provided a forum that was desif,'1led to break down the barriers between technocrats and citizens. facing the audience were four panelists and two moderators for the evening's program, all of whom were seated i on the stage. the setting was informal and resembled a town hall meeting. after some brief opening remarks, the chief editor of i respekt, petr holub, asked the panelists if any of them had dealt with corruption on a personal level. everyone demurred with i nervous jokes and laughter about corruption, as if it were the outer limit of human comprehensibility and knowledgeability. 5 i 4 many tic professionals, including the director, often i yearned for more direct contact with the czech citizenry. yet, as these ngo workers would often remark, the public was too diffuse and incoherent for them to address their citizen-audience directly, thus forcing i people like michal to speak through the media. and so i while several tic activities did circulate in public, they were highly mediated, with mediatizing effects. thanks to krista hegburg for this clarification. s krista hegburg, who also conducted (preliminary) dissertation fieldwork at tic while i was in the field, was often struck by how almost everyone in the tic i office would admit to her, in confessional mode, that thcy did not know how to go about bribing people. one professional told her that she would not know how one could even signal that you want to enter a bribe (personal communication, november 30, 2004). it was at tlus point that the discussion became more heated when the editor then asked them, "what is the worst part of corruption in the czech republic? and why are we descending in the world charts and rankings?" transparency's director was the first to respond. in a carefully orchestrated performance, michal turned and pointed to graphs and tables ofthe cpi results that were projected on a large screen belund the panelists. in a dry, matter-of-fact tone, he commented: "this is a comparative index of perceived corruption across the globe by businessmen and investors. the results show that we have performed worse than many other countries, and we're not far from the ukraine, romania, and bulgaria." before michal could continue, he was interrupted by tomas sokol, a prominent lawyer, who rebutted: "there are not enough facts to make this index accurate. i don't want to denigrate it, but i think that there are many actions and behaviors that may be caused by reasons other than corruption, which the index can't capture. corruption certainly exists here, but as a lawyer and citizen, i camlot say whether corruption is increasing or not. so how can the cpi measure its level?" sokol's response was greeted by loud claps and cheers of approval from the audience. clearly flustered, michal responded predictably by acknowledging that the index should be read with some reservation: "in every country, corruption is read in different ways. in hungary and poland, corruption in the health services is not considered corruption there." "nevertheless," he continued, "the cpi is necessary to make the topic less taboo in public discussion." his defense was b'teeted by a few whistles from the audience. a middle-aged man rose and retorted with anger, "we have seen in many cases of self­ enrichment that people, including our senators, have escaped facing consequences when in fact they should have been prosecuted. we need penal responsibility, not pseudo-scientific moralizing from the cpi!" more enthusiastic clapping and a smattering ofjeers followed before the raucous discussion turned to other issues. i 23 i this ethnographic illustration reveals how the tightly scripted public representation of international polling could easily be unraveled. while michal packaged the cpi professionally so that its public framing and choreographed message would screen out external "noises," some members of the public and panelists exposed the internal debates and ambivalences by resignifying the cpi and rendering it suspect as a technical mechanism of accountability. in short, they penetrated and critiqued the index and its image makers for partially constructing the sense of crisis. we can perhaps see more clearly, then, why institutions like transparency international were so vigilant in managing their messages in order to suppress such surfeit meanings in the public sphere. state anxieties over representing the vox populi the ascendancy of international indices, such as the cpi, has forced the czech state to acknowledge and respond to the new transnational technique of democratic governance. some background notes on czech public opinion research, however, are necessary in order to grasp the relation between international agencies and the state as one that significantly involves boundary disputes. the embrace of public opinion polls by the postsocialist czech government, to date, has been rather uneven. part of the reason is historical: although polling enjoyed a brief renaissance during the 1968 prague spring, the official practice of scientific polling surveys (tied, primarily, to developments in the discipline of sociology) moved into a different, perhaps more subterranean, realm after the warsaw pact invasion.6 since the end ofthe cold war, social scientists have struggled to rejuvenate empirical sociological research. in 1990, the institute of sociology was re-established as a branch of the state academy of sciences after a 20-year absence. for the remainder of the decade, public 6 for a more extensive historical discussion of polling and its precursors in the czech lands, see june (2005). opinion surveys sponsored by the sociology institute and the newly formed institute for public opinion research began to increase and even flourish at times. nevertheless, they were limited to predicting outcomes through exit polls in general election campaigns (although studies of other socio-political issues were periodically carried out). moreover, the fluid post-1989 electoral landscape and the unstable multiparty coalitions and realignments made it difficult to cultivate government accountability and "predict" results through polls (leff 1997: 1 04). finally, the awkward institutional arrangement that separated the institute of public opinion research from the sociological institute made systematic research on behalf of the government difficult. it was not until 2001 when the newly named center for research on public opinion (centrum pro ryzkum verejn<?ho mineni [cvvmj) was reorganized and integrated into the institute of sociology (illner 2002). specific government surveys on czech public opinions of corruption and governance did not emerge until 1997. initial results then showed a high level of ongoing distrust among the public, especially after a series of political and privatization corruption scandals felled the government led by the technocrat vaclav klaus. however, it was not until international indices of good governance cast the czech republic in a particularly poor light during the late 1990s that officials decided to commission a large-scale study of czech public opinion on corruption as a riposte to international misrepresentation. according to my conversations with the cvvm's director, adela seidlov<l, ministers and other high-level politicians were extremely critical of international organizations in several closed-door meetings that she attended. they leveled charges of social and cultural ignorance, even western arrogance and condescension. after the cpi's public release in june 2002, researchers from the center for research on public opinion met with the czech office of government (urad vlady) to discuss the international survey outcome. despite supporting more 24 ---------i i systematic research on czech public opinion as a tool of accountability, the government ­ i now dominated by the new left realized that they could not advance their own agenda and refute foreign expert opinion without i integrating polling data collection with a i complex infrastructure of public relations and mass media techniques. by the late 1990s, the increasingly dysfunctional character of state statistical knowledge had come to • overlap with the rise of multinational and local market research firms. although market research in general is still in its infancy, surveys of public perceptions of corruption and governance have been a particular growth i industry. •• more recently, the czech state has tentatively lent greater support for specific public opinion research on local attitudes towards corruption and transparency in response to international measures of government transparency and accountability. having ceded part of their representational and epistemic authority to professional managerialism, intellectuals tied ii to certain government agencies have • discreetly begun to patronize private market research institutes. although not articulated publicly, the state's tacit goal has been to repair perceived distortions in international indices like the cpi by yielding evidence from i public opinion that demonstrate "corruption" and the czech republic are not naturally aligned. more than just an electoral campaign strategy, the commissioning of these polls by the state is also about the power to effect credibility. the government has been disturbed that its fragile hold on representational authority has been laid bare by its troubles in establishing epistemic legitimacy and effective publicity vis-a-vis international institutions and market organizations.7 consequently, the state has i 7 market surveys of governance by new commercial bodies have appropriated many conventional features of i statecraft like the census and public opinion polling. take, for instance, pwc's european fraud survey. ba~ed on interviews with ordinary citizens in 15 european countries (including the czech republic), the i inaugural survey results were released to the public just weeks before the 2002 czech parliamentary elections. =-' tentatively acquired the assistance of spin doctors from the world of market research. and yet, because professional marketing is the symbol and tool of a new social order and rationality that threatens to displace state power on to new loci of governance, their allegiance and power must be bought and concealed by the state. independent market research organizations thus operate as a silent partner with particular sectors of the national bureaucracy. despite the state's official disavowal of market research, then, the reality is that marketing strategies have begun to be incorporated into governmental agencies like the cvvm that create policy knowledge, thereby disrupting state fantasies of a purified sphere and eliciting a type of public secret. consider the statement of the cvvm director regarding marketized cormnunication as a threat to state jurisdiction over knowing and governing the population: "we don't have any relationship with private organizations like stem [the center for empirical survey]," she sniffed, when i asked her about recent, private surveys of good governance. "the government feels that we are the most reliable source of statistical data. and, frankly, i think it's quite disturbing for the government or international ngos to rely on commercial agencies because they are not necessarily working in the public interest and there is a danger of results getting distorted. it depends on who their clients are." she then asked me rhetorically, "who can best represent what czechs actually think about corruption or the transparency of our institutions but us?" adela's defensive response revealed that she wanted to insulate the government from the commercial world of market surveys. in this view, the state, not market and public relations professionals, according to the survey, 57 percent of czechs believed that fraud had increased and that their government lacked focus in efforts to curb economic criminal activity. pwc officials denied that they had timed the survey's release to coincide with the local elections, but whatever the reason, it was clear they had asserted themselves in the local political scene as a significant player. 25 should articulate national opinion. and yet, in the same conversation, she later admitted that stem had occasionally conducted polls and surveys on behalf of various government ministries (although the results were circulated internally rather than disseminated to the public). a more concrete illustration of the state's growing engagement with primarket research was stem's role in the 2001 czech census. in discussing the challenges that the czech statistical office faced when conducting the nation-wide survey, the chair recounted to me in an interview a key interpolation by the private organization: another strategy we pursued after the (census) controversy first broke was ordering a study about our initiative from a professional organization, stem. this was a new, but i think, very fruitful strategy. we wanted them to ask the public on our behalf, "do you trust the czech statistical office?" the results showed that while our public reputation was quite high, we still have lots of room for improvement. but until then, nobody was willing to ask people this difficult question in such a politicized atmosphere, so having stem help us was quite helpful because they were a reliable professional partner in tracking our public reputation. i also think they effectively conveyed the message that we are an organization with integrity because of their independence and professionalism. with stem's assistance, government efforts to legitimize and depoliticize the census took the form of a political marketing campaign: ordinary citizens were polled in order to craft and disseminate a persuasive image of the csu back to the public through a reflexive loop. the intervention of stem perhaps signals the beginnings of a new hybridized and reflexive institutional configuration with csu and the state more generally. cvvm itself has contracted the services of an outside private firm, statistical consultation and computing (sc&c), in order to refine and disseminate its polling data more effectively. in so doing, the center has made some concessions to marketing and public relations. how this will affect practices of public opinion surveys to improve governance remains to be seen. to be sure, the potential for misrepresentation is applicable to almost any kind of statistical survey. but as julia paley observes, the convergence of politics and marketing science what she calls "marketing democracy" ­ signals an emergent neoliberal move towards constructing the citizen as a consumer with agency and choice. the state is presumably interested in listening to the voice of its citizens, thus producing an ersatz sense of participation in democratic governance. in bringing novel marketing techniques to bear on politics, then, the state and other institutions that sponsor such surveys "position respondents as part of a feedback mechanism: by asking questions of potential consumers of their messages, politicians know how to publicize themselves and their issues, and business people know how to sell their products" (paley 2001: 146). here too, however, the incipient emergence of market polling surveys as a tool of the czech state is not likely to be a unified and predictable development. these techniques are surely locked in wider competitive disputes over the boundaries of authority between czech and international institutions (as well as various publics) in a period when the nation-state faces some uncertainty over its sovereignty and fears of superannuation. conclusion in this article, i have argued that the production and transmission of universal governance knowledge in the form of international polls involve a process of boundary-work that has put the czech state on the defensive. the cprs representation of the czech republic has a charisma among a distinct class fraction of the czech intelligentsia (the governance experts) and transnational elites that has enabled the index, as a significant form of expert knowledge, to 26 • --­ • compete with and partially displace the raison whom matter because they have profound •• d'etat. independent polling agencies and practical and political implications. while market research firms, usually at the request assessing the moral integrity of individuals, of clients like ti, have in some cases populations, and nations by governments is encroached upon the state -s jurisdiction by certainly not new, the recent growth industry • becoming more effective in exercising of international polling in governance signals representational power through publicity and a novel socio-technical intervention that now media strategies. although the klaus-led aligns economic and civic virtue with foreign • government was able to instill its authority expertise (cf. ong 2005). the creation of new quite effectively when mass voucher global-local boundaries, however, is not privatization proved to be a powerful tool of preordained but ongoing and therefore invites • governmentality during the early years of the further critical engagement. transition (eyal 2003), the methods of acknowledgements administrative rule have recently frayed against the onslaught of global capital and the wenner-gren foundation, acls, and enduring public skepticism that have created university of california at berkeley funded an opening for international intervention and the dissertation fieldwork and write-up on •• the governance intelligentsia. i have argued which this article is based. i wish to thank the more extensively and explicitly elsewhere editors of this special issue as well as (june 2005) that by positioning themselves as elisabeth cutler, susan jurow, nalini gatekeepers of authoritative knowledge, kotamraju, susan lee, susan shepler, maria transparency professionals and their allies stoilkova, and especially krista hegburg, for have actively stimulated the perception of their comments on earlier drafts. • crisis, a crisis imagery that these professional references cited: intellectuals have often found useful as a resource to break into the local field of power altshuler, david. 2001. tunneling towards and carve their own niche within it. but while capitalism in the czech republic. transnational bodies, such as ti, have cast ethnography 2(1):115-138. 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in the age of globalization. current anthropology 42(1):125-138. urla, jacqueline. 1993. cultural politics in an age of statistics: numbers, nations, and the making of basque identity. american ethnologist 20(4):818-843. wolff, larry. 1994. inventing eastern europe: the map of civilization on the mind ofthe enlightenment. stanford: stanford university press. 29 june.pdf untitled.pdf.pdf anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 388 why polish sobótka , palant and jawor remained only local polish traditions:preserving national heritage through the traditional games małgorzata bronikowska, university school of physical education, poznan laboratory of olympism and ethnology of sport a good way to explore other cultures and learn more about one’s own is through play.1 lorrain barbarash, (1997:vii) the historical development of national identity and patriotism of polish people in the last two centuries poland has had to overcome hardships of foreign domination, when it was deprived of its identity and divided between three powerful empires – russia, austro-hungary and germany. before it re-gained its independence, poland had to face several insurrections (with the famous kościuszko’s uprising and wielkopolska’s insurrection shortly after world war i), which resulted in the liberation from occupation and re-establishment of poland on the maps of europe. the period between the world wars was not long enough to reconstruct polish identity. then immediately after world war ii communist terror and regime from stalin’s social and economic “revolution” took over and most of the cultural heritage was lost or destroyed as it was in opposition to the political doctrine. the situation lasted until the late 1980s when the berlin wall came down and a new political order was introduced in most of the east european countries. this difficult situation, which lasted approximately two centuries, caused damage to almost every sphere of human existence. the occupying forces tried to extinguish polish culture, polish language, art, music; anything which would remind of polish historical and cultural heritage. some of the most prominent intellectuals were forced to leave the country or were kept in captivity until they died. but various sectors of culture managed to preserve polish spirit in their work wherever they landed. in literature it was adam mickiewicz, whose plays and poems made an enormous impact on understanding of polish heritage and identity and together with world anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 389 famous pianist fryderyk chopin; they managed to keep the spirit of polishness alive in paris. it was also juliusz słowacki in switzerland who, through his poems, reminded others what being polish meant and władysław reymont, a nobel-prize recipient who, in his epic epopee, described rural polish traditions. there were also scientists among them, like the double nobel prize-winning polish chemist, maria skłodowska-curie, not to mention numerous emigrants in the times of harsh communistic regime. this very brief overview on the development of national identity and patriotism among the polish population is necessary before taking a closer look at the role of physical culture and sport in this process. it is here that the question could be posed as to how it was possible that polish art, music and even science managed to convey the message that there was a country in europe with a long and distinguished history and that this country had its own cultural traditions and scientific achievements. yet why was this same country unable to do the same in one of the most fundamental of all spheres of culture, namely physical culture? the initiative of preserving national heritage through the traditional games when in 1788 the polish sejm issued a decree on introducing physical activity into schools, poland was one of the first in europe to have physical education as a part of mandatory education. it was then believed that physical education should be more concerned with the hygienic side of human upbringing and the theory came from the medical perspective, for example from jędrzej śniadecki, a polish doctor of medicine who published the book o wychowaniu fizycznym dzieci [about children’s physical education]. he claimed that “ we need to make our children learn by playing and having fun, and it is our duty to give them such toys, to engage them using different tools…[…] educating the body in this way, we educate also their mind (śniadecki 1990:50). 2 nonetheless, some time later polish society tried to cultivate the sporting tradition by following the czech idea of the sokol (falcon) movement (a youth movement and gymnastics organization founded in prague in 1862 by miroslav tyrš and jindřich fügner). in 1867 in lvov and then in 1885 in krakow some prominent figures in polish physical culture managed to establish the first sokol associations (among them was wenanty piasecki – the father of later this view was turned into a more pedagogical perspective; however there was little emphasis on preserving polish sporting tradition. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 390 eugeniusz piasecki). sokol was primarily a fitness training center, but it also held lectures, discussions, and group outings that provided physical, moral, and intellectual training for the young polish intelligentsia. though officially an institution “above politics,” the sokol played an important part in the development of polish nationalism, providing a forum for the spread of mass-based nationalist ideologies. but at the same time, poland (like the czech republic, slovenia and even russia), was flooded with western originated sports (particularly of english origins) introduced to polish society by specially hired foreign instructors. it was a matter of societal prestige to have such an instructor and to attend classes or private lessons of horse riding or lawn tennis run by one of these instructors (lipoński 2004). lipoński (1999: 230) states that “in general, in the slavonic countries, modern sports, based on the british or indeed any other cultural model, have been important to national aspirations during the era of foreign domination or on independence,” and he goes on: “the appearance of modern sport was responsible for the gradual elimination and virtual extinction of traditional sports,” at least in that part of europe. and such situations remained similar until today, as lipoński (1999: 207) has reviewed in the edition of encyclopedia of world sports written by david levinson and karin christensen (1996) where he regrets “no wonder that there is nothing about russian narodnyie gulanya, kulatshanoie boi, polish old sports like rochwist, czoromaj, łapa, browar, or kwadrant (which is similar to polish palant). nothing about bulgarian djilyak, djangur, butanista or pouplyak.” 3 but frankly speaking, the situation could have been identified earlier if the influential work of one significant university professor, eugeniusz piasecki, had been recognized and taken into account. he was an outstanding figure for his position in the history of physical education and sport sciences in poland and his work is still very important today. his enormous collection of traditional folk plays and games came to public light long after he died. it was only in 1959, 12 years after his death when his findings, titled tradycyjne gry i zabawy ruchowe oraz ich geneza [origins of traditional games and activity plays] were published in the monograph 40 lat od katedry wychowania fizycznego up do wyższej szkoły wychowania fizycznego w poznaniu. [40 years of the department of physical education of poznan’s university…]. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 391 so what precluded it from happening earlier? it was in the late 19th and early 20th century that eugeniusz piasecki received an extensive medical education, which he combined with his previous life experiences gathered in his family. he had grown up in a health related atmosphere, due to his father taking over ‘wanatówka’ – a physiotherapy center in zakopane (the most popular polish mountain resort), where he ran physiotherapy based on gymnastic exercises in the open air. this experience played a fundamental role in furthering the interests of young eugeniusz. helping his father he gained more and more knowledge and practical skills in medicine, becoming aware of the healing and prophylactic power of a healthy life style and physical activity in particular. as a young man he also finished various gymnastic and physical education (pe) teaching courses, which later led him to develop his intellectual potential, allowing him to become one of the most exceptional figures in the history of polish physical culture. on the 23 rd of december 1896 he graduated as doctoris universae medicin (doctor of medicine). piasecki’s professional training as a doctor of medicine and his interests in physical activity and traditional plays pushed him towards combining both areas into physical education teaching. as a health related professional piasecki had numerous experiences from his visits to other european countries, where he delivered lectures and presentations on the most important issues for physical education in europe. his fluent command of a number of european languages helped him present his views on physical education and health and the upbringing of children through national and traditional plays and games at conferences in france, belgium, germany, england and scandinavia. as an official delegate of the hygiene section of the league of nations in geneva he was also asked to visit several european countries to observe and compare physical education systems all over the continent. after this work, he published his well known document la science de l’éducation physique dans les différents pays de l’europe [state of physical education in different countries of europe, 1928]. his foreign journeys also had other, political and national, dimensions. but his probably most remarkable achievements were firstly, the development of the first polish university faculty and degree in physical education (1st of april 1919) and secondly, his monumental collection of traditional sport games and folk play activities of polish origins (and also other slavic nations). anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 392 in the spring of 1919 piasecki arrived in poznan; his arrival coincided with poland regaining independence. but before that on 5th of february at the meeting of sekcja medyczna międzyuniwersyteckiej komisji stabilizacyjnej w krakowie [medical section of inter-university committee in krakow] eugeniusz piasecki was offered a position as an university professor at the university of poznan, and was charged with the mission to develop a master degree course for physical educators (toporowicz 1988). he was granted a full professorship in school hygiene and theory of physical education on the 20th of september 1922 and on the 7th of march 1924 became head of an autonomous faculty of physical education (archives of department of olympism4 but long before the above achievements (from the early 1900s) piasecki started to collect old folk plays and games, mostly from polish areas that currently make up modernday poland, but not exclusively. he gathered them also from other parts of europe and the world. with his passion for polish traditional plays and games piasecki began his ‘life research’ on ludic and sport ethnology). 5 however, during the war, when he was forced to move to kyiv, in 1916 he prepared his first nationwide survey on plays and games called ‘ankieta kijowska’ (the kyiv survey). having recorded hundreds of regional plays and games he published his first book zabawy i gry dla dzieci [plays and games for children] in 1916. it was mainly directed to teachers to provide them with resources and practical examples for transmission of national and cultural heritage into the educational system. the book was unique in this sense, as it was published at the time when poland was still struggling for its independence. pieces of polish cultural heritage. he believed in the long-term reform of physical education based on regional and traditional folk plays and games and supported by the medical authorities, pedagogues, psychologists and philosophers as the only way to create a healthy society. this creative and fruitful period of his scientific career was interrupted by the outbreak of world war i. the second national survey (the poznan’s survey), carried out in 1922, brought much more evidence and data on the survival of national plays and games, despite the previous 123 years of foreign dominance. in 1928 piasecki started to publish a scientific journal “wychowanie fizyczne” [physical education], where he announced his third research project, which helped him collect even more unique information on culture and traditions of different, but slavic nations. he wrote: anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 393 we are a nation of rich traditions in all areas of culture. we have, however, little inclination to research such traditions and certainly little interest in nursing these elements which can be assimilated in contemporary life. one of the most striking examples of blameworthy indifference pertaining to the treasures of native civilization is our attitude toward old polish play and folk games. among many western nations serious scientific works have been made part of national education. not in our country (lipoński 1999: 230). following his analysis, piasecki was able to revive several hundred original folk activities, describing them in articles and a series of books. he sacrificed almost a quarter of a century to collecting material for a monograph on polish origins of folk plays and games. traditional folk plays and games cultivating local and regional customs and strengthening the sense of national belonging were to be a fundamental part of that program. it was supposed to be published in 1939, but the outbreak of world war ii ruined his plans. the monograph contained findings and conclusions of an analysis of 2,800 responses from polish originating and re-settled citizens from ukraine and belarus. the majority of returned questionnaires indicated the common origins of same kind of plays and games with very similar structures or plots, differing only in name. piasecki was strongly convinced that physical education should serve everybody in the same way: as an educational tool supporting health with joy and satisfaction. piasecki claimed that the reform of sports education in schools should be carried out through the introduction of plays and games common for different cultures and traditions thus combining and strengthening international understanding and exchange of cultural traditions. according to piasecki, plays originated in four ways, they could be: – self-originated; – based on traditional rites, legends and fairytales; – mimicry and imitation of human habitual activities; – based on movement expression inspired by the human natural environment. following his exceptional and unique international survey of 1922, he established that some folk plays were rooted in the tradition of several nations, and that they originated simultaneously in different parts of europe. although they had different names, it seems that anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 394 their plots were the same. the most characteristic plays from piasecki’s archives were sobótka, palant and jawor and since he (piasecki) never had a chance to popularize them in the international context, here are the descriptions of those games, which evolved from folk and religious rituals. genesis – origins of sobótka sobótka is a type of annual ritual connected with the cult of fire and water, combined with making fires and, frequently, with ritual baths. its origins go back to pagan feasts and celebrations. in central european countries in particular, the phenomenon of summer solstice was of crucial importance to the summer ritual cycle, although there were places where it did not fall on the eve of st. john’s day. its form also varied depending on the region of europe; the difference consisted in occurrence or lack of an element of this ritual. one example is the ritual bath, which was less typical of polish sobótka, whereas among germanic and eastern slavic peoples, the name of this ritual, kupało, kupalnocka (kupala day), clearly points to the existence of this element. another example of dissimilarities between the forms is the existence of the important role of evil powers among anglo-saxons and germanic peoples, which could not be observed in polish rituals. on the contrary, “dairy” magic or beliefs, connected with seeking the fern flower in the light of the moon, were a rather common occurrence. however, in all its forms, regardless of origins and ritual sites, a characteristic role of women in this rite should be emphasized. it is difficult for researchers in the field of these rituals to determine the historical beginnings of the festival. polish written records, such as sermons, chronicles or documents issued by the king kazimierz iv jagiellończyk [casimir iv jagiellon] from 1468, who banned folk plays and games performed on the eve of zielone święta [pentecost], and a number of other literary sources dated back to the 16th and following centuries, allow for the conclusion that this ritual was vigorously and regularly performed in the middle ages. this resilience was maintained constantly until the end of the 19th century, when it started to decline gradually. according to helena kapelus (1984), with the exception of the wielkopolska region and a part of the silesian region, sobótka covered almost the entire area of poland. it has been reported that a particularly great importance was attached to this celebration (kapelus, 1984). sobótka has survived into the present day in southern poland, anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 395 where remnants of this tradition are still evident. here is how franciszek kotula described the sobótka celebration in rzeszów region: dir sir, i wish you’d arrived here on the eve of st. john the baptist day and saw it all...! on that night, as far as the eye can see, bonfires are set here, there, and everywhere, but in chełm! there they set sobótkas before the forest. here come flames of thousands of bonfires, from the very chełm and reach the sky! you would think it’s the huge forest that is on fire or as if it was the whole village. also, the puffs of smoke are swaying so much, as the men add fresh cut pine trees, as though the mountain itself was shaking and vibrating. you can’t help gaping. yes, dear sir, every year since i remember!”(kotula, 1974: 131). this ritual must have been firmly set in collective consciousness, seeing that it has survived through the centuries, albeit only in residual form. a considerable role in maintaining the tradition of sobótka was apparently played by jan kochanowski, a polish poet of the era of the polish renaissance, who, in his pieśń świętojańska o sobótce gave this celebration an importance of a festive custom. it is in the initial part of this poem where the reader encounters clearly prominent scenery of sobótka, where twelve “maids, clad alike, tied around with ‘altamisa’, form a circle who, holding hands, spin around the burning fire to the rhythm of the music” (piasecki 1959: 114). a similar circle moved around the bonfires according to the direction of the movement of the sun in celtic ceremonial. it is also likely that shakespeare, inspired, among other things, by this ritual, referred to the folklore of st. john’s night while creating his midsummer night’s dream. referring back to what was mentioned before about polish sobótka, it is a pity that kochanowski did not leave anything like ethnographic descriptions of the ritual in question, and that in his poem he passed over such elements as: the ceremony of striking sparks, jumping over the fire or setting the candlelit wreaths afloat in the river. yet, oskar kolberg, a polish ethnographer, folklorist and composer of the nineteenth century described a sobótka celebration he had witnessed in radom region in 1886 with these words: “maids then hold their hands and circle around the fire singing (...). let me mention that when one of them holding hands is to begin singing, all the circle stand so that the singer gets before the fiddler anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 396 who strikes up the tune. the singer sings a suitable song and then, when she’s finished, all the circle starts spinning again”(kolberg 1887: 111-112). finally, we learn from piasecki about the ancient nature of this ritual play. occurrence of this ritual was explained by the author in two ways: firstly, it might prove a long lineage of the procession, while the author emphasizes that this event occurs exceptionally rarely. secondly, the primitivism of sobótka could somehow result from retarding or slow disappearance of this ritual as the years went by, which might have been caused by a failure to maintain tradition, which had led to the decline in any activity, however maintained in the area of poland to different extent. furthermore, piasecki found some analogies to sobótka in a number of foreign folk plays and games. for instance, the russian hailki, as an ancient pagan vernal cult, has survived into the present day since it ‘took shelter’ in the orthodox church. this ritual is celebrated in all three afternoons of easter. other examples include slovenian zeleni jurij or english jack in the green (piasecki 1959). also in poland, remnants of this activity, celebrated during st. john’s day, can sometimes be observed. however, its rite is considerably impoverished. it is mostly limited to setting the candlelit wreaths afloat in the rivers on st. john’s night. genesis – origins of jawor undoubtedly, jawor is a play of ritual origins. the first mention of this play appeared in italy in 1328 and its long history is proved by numerous examples. one of them is a shape of bridge formed by the participants, which partially resemble bridges of southern europe. therefore folklorists focused on studying the course of the play and its words. in consequence, it was proved in their studies that this play has strong relationships to ancient beliefs and rituals. according to piasecki: the oldest pagan layer is formed by ancient human sacrifice during laying foundations of new buildings, a propitiatory offering for ghosts who could be harmful to people who dwelled in them. with bridges, it is all about a bloodthirsty ghost of the river. these rituals have been observed among a number of nations and tribes throughout the world, from remote antiquity, through the middle ages [...] until primary peoples of contemporary times. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 397 other reminiscences are awoken through the creation of two enemy camps that fight between each other. although angels and demons are not always present among italian alterations, in one of them children choose between guelphs and ghibellines. nevertheless, the predominant impact of the medieval christian cycle of eschatological beliefs can be observed [...]. fighting between two camps is a very popular motive in pagan rituals, which embody the fight between forces of nature and which are supposed to have a beneficial effect on the result of this struggle. in this aspect, these eschatological motives would be a reworking of something much older. numerous folk beliefs referring to the bridges between the world of the living alive and the dead also should not be neglected, the more so because there are many alterations (also polish ones) where a motive of ‘weighing’ of the participants of the game appears, similarly to weighing of spirits of the dead by michael the archangel typical of the most popularized folk beliefs. (piasecki 1935) the first polish description of the play can be found in the texts by łukasz gołębiowski, historian and folklorist. later its existence was also noted by kolberg in poland. further research on jawor was provided by successive surveys conducted by piasecki, where nearly 300 descriptions of this play were collected from the studied area. the collected material allowed him to conclude that, due to a variety of reasons, considerable deviations were introduced into the play and into the words themselves; however, the plot remained unchanged with minor exceptions. there are a number of examples which originate from the ritual, and have relationships to the above mentioned play. in some regions of poland on easter tuesday, for example, girls carry a ‘gaik’ or ‘maik’ (decorated pine branch); in other parts, they walk around the neighborhood with a maiden clad in green, flowers and ribbons, called ‘princess’ as a manifestation of transition from winter to spring season. a similar ritual exists in germany and the czech republic and its occurrence was also observed in england as shrovetide rituals, where holly boy and ivy girl are symbols of good and evil nature. there is also a ritual celebrated at the beginning of may, where a character clad in green (jack in the green) appears. in northern and western europe, summer rituals are reported (around st. john’s day, pentecost, trinity sunday) similar in its form to the abovementioned. in the anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 398 former yugoslavia, ukraine or in the balkan peninsula, girls, being on the lookout for rainy days during draught season, walk around the village wearing only green and are sprinkled with water by village housewives. thus, as indicated above, this ritual, being a framework for future plays, was popularized throughout europe at that time and most probably it has changed insignificantly in the process of migration, adopting a variety of names and forms. piasecki argued that: …the collected facts should be sufficient to justify the hypothesis that poland also had rituals similar to (slovenian) zeleny jurij, (yugoslavian) dodola, topola or holly boy and ivy girl – rituals connected with sycamore, which, being connected with the bridge-play, produced the form characteristic of poland. according to this hypothesis, the play of jaworowi ludzie, with a couple of ‘sycamore people’, who fought similarly to slovenian zeleny jurij and rabolj, would be the only trace left after the rituals in poland that have declined throughout history. this similarity of actions in old rituals and ‘fresh’ play that was adapted from abroad could have allowed for integrating them into one. (piasecki 1959: 170) in his study on the genesis of traditional movement-based plays and games, piasecki provides evidence that this game has been among the best analyzed. the authors attributes great merits of this to henning frederick feilberg, the danish priest and folklorist, who was the author of a study in 1905 which contained the vivid description of nearly 1,500 games and plays from different countries of europe (feilberg 1905). despite so many previous descriptions, the number of recorded games and plays has considerably risen, which is proved by the results of all three surveys conducted by piasecki. the play of jawor, more popular as jaworowi ludzie is likely to have originated from rituals which died out in poland, but were more frequently observed in spring and summer rituals in many european countries where boys and girls, clad in green and being typically called by tree names, personified a spirit of vegetation. thus, this would be the only trace left after these ancient rituals, which, according to people’s belief, beneficially affected the course of natural phenomena (rada naukowa wychowania fizycznego 1936). anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 399 genesis – origins of palant game piasecki devoted almost a quarter of a century to investigating the genesis and development of the game of palant around the world. the material collected in this way allowed for the proposal of a number of surprising hypotheses and theories. one of them is a theory concerning the area where the players of this game were found, with insignificant ‘scatter’ in remote places all over the globe. according to piasecki, palant extended its range over the area from france to persia (now iran) and pamir (high and vast mountain range in central asia), even reaching regions of japan and hawaii. throughout the area which was covered by the occurrence of this game, the most fundamental rule of the game is to hit the ball as far as possible in the air, using a bat or, less frequently, with the palm of the hand (piasecki 1932: 1-3). the technique of hitting with the palm of the hand, though easier, did not necessarily exist in its primary form. the most probable hypothesis is that when this game came from the west to the regions of the caucasus – the area of vast steppes and grassland, it was hardly possible to find a suitable material to make a bat. this could have caused the decline of this tool (piasecki 1932: 6). nevertheless, hitting the ball gives a player some time to cover a marked distance, which means that the team scores a point, if the opponents do not catch the ball while it is airborne or the running player is not ‘handcuffed’ during their run. another typical rule present in the oldest descriptions of palant is catching the ball hit by the opponent team. it determines chances to win, combined with the change in roles of both teams. this rule can still be observed at present in other games and plays, starting from the simplest forms, such as łapanka, koło, and świnka to more complex individual and team games, played long before the advent of palant among the nations and tribes all over the world (piasecki1932: 6-7). there are also games and plays which use this easy hitting technique, such as świnka and golf. at the early stage of development of the game, stones or fruit were supposedly used, with its form resembling the present ball. piasecki tried to find traces of the game in the oldest sources reported in antiquity. following the traces, he came across an excerpt which described two young people playing with a ball in the court of the king of phaeacians in homer’s odyssey: “then alcinous told laodamas and halius to dance alone, for there was no one to compete with them. so they took a red ball which polybus had made for them, and one of them bent himself backwards and threw it up towards the clouds, while the other anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 400 jumped from off the ground and caught it with ease before it came down again” (homer 1953: 114). the hits also had other forms than the present ones. hitting an item probably usually was performed from its ground position. this is confirmed by a greek bas-relief mentioned by piasecki in his study focused on the genesis of palant. it depicts a group of young people engrossed in the game resembling hockey (piasecki1932: 4). in his belief, palant became a germ of a variety of successive games, such as cricket and racket games. he tried to prove this with the shape of bat (palant stick) which has changed throughout history. it underwent a number of transitions, from the simplest cylindrical form to the form of flat beater as in england (cricket), then extending hitting surface (getting closer to present rackets), which, according to piasecki’s hypothesis, was supposed to make the hitting technique easier (piasecki1932: 5). apart from instincts that appear in palant, there is also a unique symbolism of this entertainment, manifested in characteristic terminology, typical of particular regions or countries and favored position of the team of the player who strikes the ball. there is a rationale behind calling the place of hitting the ball a ‘kingdom’ or ‘heaven’ while the places occupied by the opponent are referred to as ‘pigsty’ or ‘hell.’ it is caused by the mechanism of symbolically distinguishing between the better and the worse, e.g. chiefs, fathers, mothers, who, through the ability of throwing, feel the power and ability to ‘conquer the space’ as they ‘reject’ the ‘herdsmen’ or ‘swineherds.’ however, the latter, using their best skills, also have their strengths as they can attack by ‘handcuffing’ or catching the ball. the world of the culture of european middle ages is deeply embodied in the game of palant through allusions, resulting from local traditions, to fighting between social classes for supremacy. according to piasecki, this supports the hypothesis which found medieval university students in krakow in 15th and 16th centuries to be first participants of this game, later spreading around the whole country and rus (piasecki 1932: 7-9). through piasecki’s historical records, one can learn that h. schnell, german chronicler, had attempted to find evidence of german origins of palant, however, his findings were insufficient to support the thesis. according to westfall chroniclers, as early as the 11th century, junior high school students played hitting balls on tuesday before st. john’s day. in the 13th century, u. lichtenstein also mentions a ball being hit by players. later, johann gutsmuths, german educationalist, assessed palant as the most attractive entertainment throughout germany, termed ‘german ball game.’ anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 401 the occurrence of palant in england was confirmed by two medieval drawings, dating back to 1344 (reproduced by joseph strutt), which undoubtedly represented this game. however, piasecki proposes a hypothesis that palant is most likely to have originated in france, then popularized by parisian masters and students (piasecki 1932: 10, 29, 36). the first references to the existence of palant in poland can be traced back to 1427 in album studiosorum in jagiellonian university. the excerpts contained in this text reported on assault and battery of one of the inhabitants by krakovian students who used palant bats (pylathiky). in 1610, a description of the game of palant, written by hipolit guarinoni, italian physician and educationalist, said: …the ball game i have seen before in czech lands, yet never in italy, is a leather hard [...] ball, between two parties who spread around the field, in the middle and across at the distance of 70-80 and 100 steps and wait for a ball flying in the air on the lookout for catching it. second party hits it up towards them with a four-feet long stick; the stick is cylindrical, with its handle thinner, thicker at the tip to hit the ball even stronger and set it off to the sky. there are two of them to hit the ball up: first, who skillfully throws it up for the striker, and another one, who, if he hits correctly, hits the ball up and away. this ball, if caught in the air by opponent party, strikers take their hand off striking, turning into catchers. this game is one of the most demanding exercises as you should not expect any agility or variety of movements but just pure running... we found this game nice in prague and we would practice it all day long. poles and silesian people used to be best at it, thus i guess this game would have originated there. (piasecki 1932: 3) another evidence of the existence of palant in poland can be provided by the description by f. falibowski in 1625, who employed behavior of the players as a metaphor to depict the problems of education those days: “this is where to find the examples to follow; these children, when they play the ball, one of them hits the ball, then another passes it or throws and runs after it like a crazy while others laugh heartily” (dowgirt 1966: 58). in encyklopedia staropolska ilustrowana [ illustrated encyclopedia of old poland] by zygmunt gloger, a citation can be found where the author proves that all ball games have been popularized in the area of poland in king sigismund’s iii days. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 402 the eighteenth-century sources by jędrzej kitowicz report, for the first time, on palant, giving a detailed description of the game played on the courts of that time: the ball was a woollen or oakum ball bundle, spun on the outside with threads and then sewn with leather or colorful thread net; some put a fishbone into it to provide better springiness. this ball was used in two manners: .... second time during resting in the fields to throw it in the air as far as possible and chase it with the whole group. first ball game... the second gave the body some flexibility, speed for running and agility to catch it in the air, which, thrown by one of the players in the air and hit aslant from the side, went up so fast that it could not be seen for some time. then, all the players, toward whom the ball was thrown, watched the ball with their eyes wide open and hands ready, while it was flying down; as soon as they saw it, off they went stampeding to catch it in the air. if the ball, uncaught by any hand, fell onto the ground, the game was over now; there were no bets, no stakes, only the merits of winning or laughing at the losers. the game was named palant, played by children with their schoolmasters and professors, for pure amusement. (kitowicz 1950:95) there are a number of other sources to prove the existence of this game in the area of poland. the richest material and studies on palant was delivered by eugeniusz piasecki in his theoretical considerations of the genesis of traditional games and plays and in a master’s theses supervised by piasecki as a professor. based on the above-mentioned excerpts and the cited description of the game, piasecki concluded that palant was an old polish game. his hypothesis was supported by the obvious influence of the west on life in prague those days. this must have related to fashionable french and italian games; however, as proved by guarinoni’s excerpt cited above, poles and silesian people were the best palant players. yet, piasecki treated this information only in terms of hypothesis rather than theoretical argumentation. based on materials collected for over 12 years, piasecki could easily name a number of palant modifications, played in europe, asia, africa and north america. therefore, the game spread around the world, although not always as a pure form of palant. it might often provide a background for similar games, such as franch rounders, north american baseball anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 403 or english cricket, which piasecki found to be a ‘brother game’ of palant (piasecki 1932: 112). palant was also popular in poland for a very long time. it was one of the most admired team games during the interwar years, being implemented into school curricula as a form of physical education classes. after the second world war, regular games between different sports clubs were organized, with most of them in the region of silesia. the development of the game was so dynamic that, as early as in 1952, the first unofficial polish championship was held, which apparently mobilized the interested persons to establish pzpp (polski związek piłki palantowej – polish federation of palant ball). under the auspices of this association, the first official polish championship was played in 1957. sadly, despite the dynamic development of this polish traditional discipline of sport, one thoughtless press campaign, which strongly discouraged doctoral theses of ethnographical studies of palant in poland, aimed at ridiculing the game marred it for many years, leaving it devoid of due respect. despite official neglect for development of the game in poland, some milieus (especially in villages) did not give up the game, giving it the distinction of a celebration (grabów near łęczyca in wielkopolska region). the most sensitive to tradition and national culture physical education teachers are implementing palant into their curricula, thus opening up opportunities to the younger generation of being in touch with tradition. final remarks perhaps it is high time we – as the laboratory of ethnology of sport at the university school of physical education, poznan – share our cultural heritage and exchange the most valuable elements of our traditions in physical culture. the latest publishing effort by wojciech lipoński, edited under the unesco logo, namely the encyclopedia of world sport (2003), contains over 3,000 traditional sports and games and plays from most of the regions and cultures around the world and is an example of a cultural masterpiece on a unique scale. it is not simply the collection of different sports. each sport and each game and play comes with a careful, ethnologically supported background, rooted in various historical sources from antique vases, through paintings, sculptures and literary sources. it is our ambition at the laboratory of olympism and ethnology of sport at the university school of physical education in poznan to reconstruct and re-introduce as many sports from that anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 404 encyclopedia as possible. one of the successful examples is certainly the case of polish pierścieniówka (ring-net ball), which, having been reconstructed from the literary sources dating to the 1930s, was recently introduced to the program of the iv world traditional games festival in busan (south korea) in 2008. it has been gaining more and more popularity ever since all over europe. the description of the game may be found in the abovementioned encyclopedia. it is hoped that more details on its reconstruction process will follow in one of our later papers. notes 1 play in this sense means a form of physical, playful activity, and a very first variety of game and sport. it refers to a range of spontaneous, voluntary, frivolous and non-serious activity. some plays exhibits no goals or rules and are considered to be “unstructured” in the literature. for more information on play see the book of c. garvey, (1999) play, published by cambridge, ma: harvard university press. 2 this quotation was translated by author of this paper. 3 there are some russian games like narodnyie gulanya (name for all folk games), kulatshanoie boi (kind of traditional fist fight), polish old sports like rochwist (folk kind of horse racing), czoromaj, łapa, browar (different varieties of ball games), kwadrant (which is similar to polish palant and current american baseball). 4 olympism has its roots in the beliefs of the ancient greeks. in modern times the frenchman pierre de coubertin established the olympic movement in 1894 and is recognised as the father of modern olympism. he modernised ancient greek ideals and introduced them to the rest of the world through the staging of a modern olympic games. today, the festival celebrates the ideals which remain at the heart of olympism. by blending sport with culture and education, olympism promotes a way of life based on the balanced development of the body, will and mind, the joy found in effort, the educational value of being a good role model, and respect for universal ethics including tolerance, generosity, unity, friendship, nondiscrimination and respect for others. 5 the term ludic derives from the latin word “ludus,” in english “play.” it means literally “playful,” and refers to any philosophy where play is the prime purpose of life. ludic connotes anything that is “fun.” one outstanding publication, homo ludens (1938) [“man the player”] by johan huizinga, a dutch historian, cultural theorist and professor, was mainly dedicated to play as a prime source of man’s culture. references cited archives of department of olympism and sport ethnology, piasecki’s personal and professional documents. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 405 barbarash l. 1997. multicultural games, human kinetics, champaign, illinois. dowgird, zofia. 1966. formy gry w palanta na obszarze polski, praca doktorska, wrocław. feilberg henning, frederik. 1905. bro-brille-legen, en sammenlignende studie, stockholm. godycki, michal. 1959. 40 lat od katedry wychowania fizycznego up do wyższej szkoły wychowania fizycznego w poznaniu, poznan. homer. 1953. odyseja, (translated by j. parandowski). spółdzielnia wydawnicza „czytelnik”, warszawa. kapelus, helena. 1984. ludowość w twórczości kochanowskiego. in jan kochanowski w epoce renesansu w 450 rocznicę urodzin poety 1530-1980, teresa michałowska ed. pp. 250-262. warszawa. kitowicz, jędrzej. 1950. opisy obyczajów za panowania augusta iii. wrocław. kolberg, oskar. 1887. radomskie, cz. i. in dzieła wszystkie. t. xx. kraków. kotula, franciszek. 1974. po rzeszowskim podgórzu błądząc. kraków. levinson, david, christensen, karin. 1996. berkshire encyclopedia of world sports. santa barbara, ca: abc-clio. lipoński, wojciech. 1999. sport in the slavic world before communism: cultural traditions and national functions. in the european sports history review, 1. pp. 203-249. _____. 2003. encyclopedia of world sport. atena poznan. _____. 2004. sport, history, tradition and nation. in between two cultures. poland and britain. peter leese ed. pp.217-232. london: british council – motivex, poznan. piasecki, eugeniusz. 1932. dalsze badania nad genezą ćwiczeń cielesnych: palant polski. „wychowania fizycznego” 9, 10, 11. _____. 1935. jaworowi ludzie, studium z pogranicza folkloru i pedagogiki. „lud” t. 33, lvov. _____. 1959. tradycyjne zabawy i gry ruchowe oraz ich geneza. in 40 lat od katedry wychowania fizycznego up do wyższej szkoły wychowani fizycznego w poznaniu. michał godycki, ed. pp. 89-303.poznan. rada naukowa wychowania fizycznego. 1936. czwarte plenarne posiedzenie rady naukowej wychowania fizycznego. warszawa. anthropology of east europe review 28(1) spring 2010 406 śniadecki, jędrzej. 2002. o fizycznym wychowaniu dzieci. maciej demel ed. (based on publ. viii 1990). kraków. toporowicz, kazimierz. 1988. eugeniusz piasecki (1872-1947) . życie i dzieło. państwowe wydawnictwo naukowe. warszawakraków. section iv: memory, history, and the ethnographic present telling lives. autobiography and history after socialism haldis haukanes, university ofbergen in 1991 i visited a photo exhibition in strakonice, south bohemia, at the museum belonging to a big factory, which had previously produced weapons and now produced motorbikes, among other things. i visited the museum together with a man from the village oflipinaj, who was foreman of one ofthe factory's departments. this man was one ofthe few proclaimed communists left in the village, a candidate for the communist party in the local elections in november 1990. we were shown around the photo exhibition by a female employee, obviously the person in charge ofthe museum. she told us about the founding ofthe factory in 1919, its time as a weapons producer, and the situation during the second world war. the exhibition also had its "communist" section, i. e. pictures showing the founders of the factory's first cell ofthe communist party, leading party members and, ofcourse, "victorious february" in 1948. when we came to this section she addressed the foreman directly: "well, this i believe we don't tell anymore, " she said. "no, we don't" he agreed, and a small moment of embarrassment passed. this article is concerned with recollections of the past in post-socialist czech republic, with the delicate balance between what can be told and what should rather be left out when recounting one's memories of the recent historical past. i'm building on material collected during fieldwork in the first half of the 1990s (1993 and 1995), a period when the public concern with rewriting the nation's history was great, resulting in concrete actions such as the removal of monuments and i lipina is the pseudonym of a village in south bohemia where i spent 8 months of fieldwork in 1990-91 and to which i have returned continuously for longer and shorter periods. refashioning of museums' exhibitions, as well as the provision of funds for a wide range of research projects documenting and reinterpreting the recent past. this preoccupation with the past was to be found all over post-socialist europe and is well reflected in the anthropology of post­ socialism. in the last 15 years we have seen a flourishing of works on history and memory from the region (see for example watson 1994; wanner 1994; skultans 1998; pine, kaneff, and haukanes 2004). while some authors have mainly been preoccupied with documenting the voices silenced by communist censorship, many have analyzed the complex interplay between official versions of history and local/personal accounts under and after socialism (borneman 1992, lass 1994), demonstrating both how the latter are being shaped by the former (haukanes 2004) but also how personal and! or local accounts resist being absorbed into a dominant narrative framework (watson 1994, richardson 2004). in the following article i seek to analyze the relation between autobiography and the history of the "great czech nation" (holy 1996). particular focus will be addressed to the structure and periodizations of the autobiographical accounts and questions to be dealt with are: which, if any, of the major national events serve as landmarks and!or keys to people's periodization, (the founding of the republic in 1918, the munich agreement in 1938 and the subsequent german occupation, the communist takeover of power in 1948, the prague spring and warsaw pact invasion in 1968, and the fall of communism in 1989) and in which terms are they talked about? if such events are not mentioned, how do the persons interviewed periodize their life-histories? i would also like to examine the presence and eventual agency 160 of the communist "state" or the "authorities" in the accounts, by examining the way people represent their relations and dealings with the local and/or central powerholders. the accounts were collected during fieldwork in 1993 and 1995 in several different villages in breclav okres, south moravia and strakonice okres, south bohemia. five of the persons interviewed were men, five women.2 the youngest person interviewed was born in 1944, the oldest in 1909; the majority were between 60 and 75 years old when interviewed, hence born between 1920 and 1935. the majority ofthe interviewees were or had been manual laborers, either in agriculture or in some kind of craft, but there are also two teachers, a clerk and a postman among these informants. periodization and landmarks in the life­ histories considering the structure of the accounts, most of them have a lineal direction, i.e. they are sequentially and chronologically ordered in time. nevertheless, they coincide with the periodizing of the nation's history only to a very limited extent. the period that stands out as most clearly delimited in the accounts, is the second w orid war. 'za va/ky , during the war served as a reference point in many of the accounts, and several of the south moravians talked about the final days of the war, when battles were being fought in or near the villages where they were living. with regards to the other major turning points in the nation's history, only one inforn1ant (the oldest person, born in 1909) mentioned the founding of the republic in 1918, which is, of course, natural as he is the only one who was old enough to remember the event himself. it is more peculiar that virtually none of the informants related their life-histories to the communist coup in 1948 and the soviet invasion in 1968. not only were these events rejected as keys to periodization of their own lives; they were hardly mentioned at all. the 2 one of the women did, in addition to presenting her life-history during interview, wlite down some major events in a book whieh she gave me on my departure. r 161 year 1 948 was mentioned by only one informant, a woman who talked about her family losing their pub after 1948. the year 1968 was made a point ofby two infonnants. the first was a woman, hana, who grew up in a small south bohemian town. at the end of our conversation, when talking about particular events that she remembers well, she commented: "well, there is of course 1968," and mentioned that people had been afraid that war would break out. in the same breath she added: "you know the really bad memories one has, are first and foremost if something happens to your family," thereby indicating that she did not want to exaggerate the importance of 1968 for her own life. "i was not interested in politics at that time" she concludes. the other person who mentioned 1968, was jan, a teacher at a south moravian village school, who chose to leave the party in 1969, and who had a tough time afterwards. "my hair turned grey after that," he said, indicating the stress he must have felt. however, like hana, jan did not want fear and pain to be main themes in his life-history. when i tried to get him to elaborate on the difficulties of the 1970s, there was a long pause before he finally answered: "you know, i would like to forget the bad things, and prefer to remember the good ones. all in all, i believe that i have lived a happy life." 1989, or the period after 1989 (represented through terms such as "today," "in today's time") was explicitly commented upon by most of the informants. however, only three (two of whom had also mentioned 1968) integrated 1989 or "today" into the stories of themselves, as a breaking point in their own life. the others commented on the post-1989 changes in very general terms, either by expressing their happiness over the newly won freedom to travel and talk openly about politics or by complaining over more unfortunate developments such as increase in prices and criminality. thus, the key years in czech national history did not emerge as turning points in my informants' stories, nor were they referred to extensively as events in themselves. there were no differences between people in this respect; it did not matter whether the person telling the story had been a party member or an opponent to the communist regime, a man or a woman, old or relatively young. how could tilis be? let me concentrate on the events of 1948 and 1968, and start by saying that i have no reason to believe that these events in themselves were not considered important in villages or small towns, nor that they did not make an impression on village people when they happened, both indirectly, through the mass media, and directly as "local" experiences. in my exanlination of local chronicles,3 both in south bohenlia and south moravia, i found that the events of both 1948 and 1968 were thoroughly described and presented as disturbing to the villagers. the chronicles also listed various kinds of local action triggered by the events, such as changes in the local politicalleadersmp and the establishment of local action comnlittees in 1948, and the hoarding offood for fear of war in 1968. these events must therefore belong to what maurice halbwacs (1981) would call the collective memory of the villagers. one explanation for the marked absence of these events may lie in my informants' conception of life-mstory as a genre. the crucial question is: what does one get to know when listening to people telling about their lives from a to z? life mstories are , of course, reconstructions of lived lives and therefore limited as sources of info~ation a~out :vhat. "really" happened (rudie 1995). llfe-mstones or autobiographies constitute a genre in their own right, at least in european soc~eties. thus, most people probably have a nohon of what belongs to tms genre and what does not. the interview may therefore become a search for the genre itself, or even worse, as paul connerton has argued, for the interviewer's image of what a life-history , : all c~ech municipalities are obliged ~ by a law issued iii 1920 ~ to appoint a chronicler who, by the end of each year, shall write down major events in the municipality. i have studied the chronicles of tour different villages in south bohemia and south moravia (see haukanes 2004). should be like (connerton 1989:19). i sometimes had the feeling that this was the case in my interviews, to the extent that i sensed a search going on for the proper things to tell me. on several occasions my informants made meta-comments on the endeavor they were about to embark upon. frantisbi svobodova, a woman from lipina, started the account ofher life with a question and a little laugh: "oh, so you want me to talk about how i got married and all that?" in another case it was not the person interviewed (a man in ms 80's) who had opinions on what belonged to the story, but ms wife, who was present during most of the interview. for example, when the husband described a ?icycl.e accident at length, his wife interrupted nnpahentiy: "why talk so much about that? tell her about the life; what it was like." later he told some rather dirty stories taken from his nlilitary service. "tilis is not what the lady (pam) wants to hear" his wife objected, and continued: "why don't you tell her about our life together our marriage; 50 years together. these are the tmngs that belong to such a story." the lack of "grand dramas" in the life­ histories nlight also be related to education and class. anthony giddens argues that the reconstruction ofpersonal biography is a central aspect of the reflexive self, and increasingly so in the age of late modernity. working on one's own identity becomes an ever more crucial task to perform, as the self is now seen as a "reflexive project, for wmch the individual is responsible" (giddens 1991:74). nevertheless, the degree to which persons have a narrative experience of telling their own lives and thereby a "verbalized" distance to what they have lived through varies greatly, both within and among social strata (frykman 1992). narrating lives within a certain structure requires experience in self­ presentation, wmch nlight not be so well developed in a village context where "everyone knows everyone" (bringslid 1996). in the present case, it is noteworthy that the informants employing the most "external" contextualizations are those with the highest level of education, and the widest general 162 interest in politics and history. another indication that class and education are significant is obtained by comparing "my" stories with life-story material from intellectuals in prague, who, when asked to reflect upon their lives, made the macro­ political events of 1948 and 1968 central in structuring their self-presentation. they explicitly explained events in their own jives by referring to these dates (leviatin 1993, cf. also pefinova 1994). another and perhaps more important explanation for the absence of macro-events in these life-histories may be that, although the events were undoubtedly known and experienced, their consequences in terms of changing peoples' lives made themselves felt only gradually. this may have been particularly true following the communist seizure of power in 1948. even though the year 1948 is only mentioned by a single informant, the 1950s as a period is identified by several as a particularly difficult time, or in one case, as a period when the post-war supply situation started to improve. so if it is not macro-political events that structure the accounts, what is it? as mentioned in the introduction, all the stories have an element of linearity or chronology. these features probably belong to my informants' conception of a life-history, and i may have contributed to this tendency by encouraging people to proceed chronologically. when an informant lost the thread in his or her account, i would ask questions like "what happened then ... ?" and "who was your next employer after the baker in brno?" in addition to being lineally told, the life-histories were structured and periodized not by external events, but by the content of the accounts themselves, which concerned work and family life. all the informants reported something about their childhood and about parents and siblings before they moved on to schooling and working lives, marriage, and own children. almost all focused on their youth and the early phase of their working lives, and many returned to their childhood when they felt they had nothing more to tell about their adult lives. the accounts vary with respect to what the person telling put the most stress on; some spent a lot of time on family life (mainly women), others on their working careers (both women and men). pride in their identities as professionals and as decent, hard-working individuals, often lay at the core of the stories. in addition to telling about their own lives, some considered aspects of change in the village community, such as the decline in social activities and weakening of bonds between people. "people stuck together more before" (drieli vic spo[u), a teacher from south bohemia commented when remembering her childhood herding goats together with other children of her age. "nowadays everyone just sits in the front of their own television." a phenomenon that appears either as an event or more often as a period in most of the stories (7 of 10), is "the time when we were building" (kdyijsme stavili); i.e "when we built the house in which we live," which in most cases meant reconstructing an inherited building. for many this was a complicated endeavor that took several years to complete and coincided with the raising of small children, so it was referred to as a difficult and exhausting period. for example, a man of 70 related how he and his wife lived in the house of his parents-in-law for seven years while saving money to build their own home. it took him three years to complete the endeavor, and since his wife was at home with small children they had very little money and had to be extremely careful with their budgeting. a woman of the same age related in detail the construction process of their home: how she first resisted her husband's suggestion to reconstruct and expand his parent's house, but had to give in; how she had to work day and night for several years while her husband worked on the house; how she took care ofthree small children in addition to holding a full time job. three of my informants had particularly traumatic experiences, which shaped their accounts and constituted a major element. one man, born in 1913 and a baker by trade, became ill when he was only 30 years old and 163 l was left partly disabled and with a limp for the rest ofhis life. this event was identified as a key to understanding almost everything else in his life, including his working life, his quarrels with his wife, and his current small pension. a woman born in 1929 had lived all her adult life with a jealous, drunken, and violent husband and his very demanding mother, and this fact shed a light on most events in her account. a third person, frantiska svobodova, had two major traumatic events that constituted the content of most of her story; the first was the loss of her new-born daughter due to an irresponsible mid-wife in the late 1940s, and the second was the trauma of her family being classified as kulaks, i.e. wealthy farmers.4 she told me how her husband had been betrayed by his best friends; how the regional court had convicted him and sentenced him to prison; and how the next generation her children ­ didn't receive any education because they were of kulak descent. she laid out one particular event (which i had heard her recount several times before this interview took place) in great detail. it concerned the loss of a huge amount of meat and lard from a newly slaughtered pig. the night after the slaughtering had taken place, some party officials came to take it away from them; "it was vaidis [a local communist] who came, together with one from the regional office [party office]." "they say that we should forgive," she says, "and my son tells me that i always go on about these old things, and that 1 sound like a gramophone record. but 1 cannot forget it, cannot forget lard and the nice meat. ... by the way, 1 saw vaidis at the funeral ofms cerna the other day. he was walking right in front ofme and suddenly he turned around and smiled at me. but i didn't return his smile, and i really wanted to say to 4 the word kulak stems form russian, and its iitcral meaning is 'fist.' bcfore 1917 kulak was used to denote the larger, leading peasants in a community. after 1929 (the year when the collectivization of agricultural land startcd in the soviet union), it became a term of abuse, used against those who resisted collectivization. during collectivization in thc "new" communist states of eastern europe in the 1950s, the word was adopted in this derogative scnse. him: "where is my pig and all the lard? give it back to me!" the absent state in frantiska svobodova's account "the authorities" are represented as violent intruders in her life. however, the authorities that enter and change her life are not so much an abstract "regime," but rather concrete persons, very often locals, whose actions destroyed the life ofher family. referring to the 1950s, it is not only frantiska who represents the state as an invader; most of the informants who talked about these years made a point of this state intrusion. the grandfather of one had his factory nationalized; another had to give his smithy to the agricultural cooperative; the father of a third was persecuted because he didn't want to give up his land. only in frantiska's account, however, is this loss and penetration really dwelt upon and made a major issue. some of the informants did not make a point of their experiences dealing with the state at all; if they referred to "the authorities" or "the communists" at all, it was to provide some background information. for example, "i started to work in brno in the year so and so; the communists were already here then." even a person who was sent to a kind of work camp in ostrava in 1949 reported this simply as a step in his working life, rather than as a violent act on the part of the authorities: "well then i spent half a year in ostrava, you know the communists didn't like those who said anything against them .... when 1 returned, i went back to work in the factory in brno." only on my further interrogation into his stay in ostrava, did he reveal that this was a kind of work camp, where he was displaced due to some kind of rebellious behavior. in one account, that of the woman with the difficult husband and mother-in-law, the "communist regime," "the state," or "the authorities" (local or central) were not mentioned on a single occasion. the only sign that there had been transformations in her life due to political changes was when she said that her father had become chairman of the first cooperative in the village in the early 1950s. 164 all in all, the period when the state appeared to play the most active part in my informant's lives was in the 1950s. this is not very surprising, since the 1950s was the decade when agriculture was collectivized and very brutal and radical social transformations took place in the czech countryside. in later stages of the life stories, the "authorities" emerge only very sporadically, for example, as the agency from which money was borrowed, from which a new job or pension originated or for the two teachers, by which they were fo~ced to take part in political meetings. three of my informants had themselves been party members, and a fourth was married to the party leader in her village. all of these infomlants talked overtly about their relations to the party, although none of them made this a major point in their story. jan, the south moravian teacher who left the party 1968, said that he had entered the party at the age of 18 (in 1953). "i was so naive; i didn't realize what they were up to." vaculik, an old postman, reported that he had been elected three times to the municipal council, "but 1 was always in opposition. people in the village said so too; vaculik is always in opposition." the wife of the communist leader in south moravia told about how she had managed to remain faithful to her religion and god under communism. she defended her right to wear a cross around her neck, even when serving "big communists" from the regional party organization who visited her husband. the female teacher from south bohemia explained the political activities implicit in her role as a teacher: "it was expected that teachers take part in all kinds of activities" and "that they were active in the community." when she showed me her medals and diplomas she added, by way of excuse: "they all have the five-pointed star on them, but some of them 1 really appreciate. for example, this particular one was for my work in the fire brigade... or this one was for being the best teacher of the year. i really appreciate it, since it was for my work that 1 received it." others she claimed not to appreciate so much, "they are more like a reward from the party." history, narration and avoidance with some exceptions, 1 found that my informants seemed to avoid relating important macro-historical events to their own lives, and to represent the communist state as an agent affecting the course of their lives. this was the case in spite of the fact that the recounting took place not so long after the 1989 in a time when the public sphere of media and politics was still rather obsessed with . rewriting history and denigrating everything to be associated with the communist regime. looking at the life-histories as a whole, i am surprised how little "the new order" manifests itself directly in the stories. i would have expected more details about the hardships under communism, more "tales of suffering." 1 would also have expected more excuses from former party members. those who had a close relation to the party explained their decisions to engage in party activities as a matter of necessity or related to a desire to be oppositional from "inside." they thereby tried to separate "themselves as persons" from "party activities," but it seems remarkable that they did not make more out of this. the telling of life-histories is, of course, the result of the infomlant's relation to the interviewer, genre, and society. one of the explanations offered for the lack of "politicization" of the narratives may lie in the first of these three, i.e. their relation to me as a foreign researcher whom they did not know particularly well. the rather forceful attempts of the communist regime to achieve standardization of language and discourse (verdery 1991), in particular that of historical accounts (haukanes 2004, see also below), made people careful about how they expressed themselves about their own experiences in life. in the early 1990s this carefulness was still very much a part of public behavior. the wife ofmr. vaculik, the postman, expressed a direct fear about her husband's accounts: "don't talk about that," she said to her husband when he mentioned his party membership, "it's all over now." when he later started to criticize the current government, she became even more worried. "stop," she pleaded, "i'm afraid." the genre of life-history, or rather, my informants' 165 i i i j j j expectations of the genre, also influenced the degree of "politicization" of the accounts: "i don't exactly know what lies in a life-history, but it is undoubtedly about when 1 got married and all that." as for the lack of interest in talking about 1948 and 1968 in particular, 1 have already suggested a number of explanations: the fact that people are not familiar with narrating their lives in relation to macro-political events; that the events themselves, although important for political leaders in the village, were not immediately felt to have consequences for the daily life of people; and so forth. nevertheless, 1 still feel that there might be an additional explanation to the omission of these particular grand dramas from the life-histories of these people. this feeling is supported by the fact that in my conversations with people more generally 1 heard very few "local" versions of the events of 1948 and 1968; stories about "when the communists took over power here," or when "the russian tanks passed by" (as they literally did in south moravia in 1968). lutz niethammer (1992), conducting life-history interviews in 1987 among east germans, observed that virtually none of his infonnants talked about 17 june 1953 on their own accord when telling about their lives. (june 17 was the day of a large demonstration and spontaneous anti-stalinist uprising of workers, which was brutally put down and immediately denounced by the sitting regime as an attempted coup by fascists and western imperialists). only on further interrogation, did it appear that all of them remembered the events very well, including where they had been and what they had been doing. the politicization of the events, niethammer argues, made the majority of those who had lived through them put their experiences at a distance "relegating it to the niche of uninvolved knowledge" (niethammer 1992:68). a similar explanation might pertain to 1948 and 1968 in "my" stories. although these events in themselves are very different, both in their courses and consequences, they have one thing in common: their status as (symbolic) events in official history writing changed dramatically with the overthrow of communism in 1989. history writing under communism was a carefully controlled and ideologically determined activity. the ideological legitimation of the regime itself was grounded on a specific historical development in the relations of production, leading to socialism. or, as rubie watson has noted: "under state socialism, marxism-leninism was not one ideology or political economy among many, but rather was the inevitable and glorious outcome of a discernible historical process" (watson 1994:1). to maintain control over the accounts of key events such as those occurring in 1948 and 1968 was of great importance for the regime, and great effort was put into supervizing even local history writing (see haukanes 2004a and haukanes 2004b:66ff). in every "western" publication dealing with post-war history, the two years of 1948 and 1968 of course stand out as key moments, the first being read as the year when socialist rule in czechoslovakia went from being legitimate and democratic to being enforced and totalitarian and the latter seen as the year when the hope not only of the czech people but of the whole of leftist europe to have a humane socialist society was brutally crushed. in official history writing under communism the status of these events was very different. the year 1948, celebrated annually all over the country, was dealt with in detail. it was of course not termed a coup, but appeared under the label "victorious february," "the victory of the workers (vitezstvi pracujiciho lidu) and working class" (delnicka tfida), or "the moment when the working people under the rule of the communist party of czechoslovakia won over the reactionaries, and definitively decided on the socialist development of our motherland." the year 1968 was passed over rather roughly, and if mentioned at all, it is described as "an attempt by right-wing and anti-socialist forces to get rid of communist rule." the warsaw pact invasion was described as "help from friends in a time when socialism was threatened," and 166 the years 1968-69 as "years of crises" (krizova leta) (llfibek et. al 1982, pubal and robek 1963, janda et. ai1963). with the fall of the old regime, these "communist" versions of the events completely lost their validity. this process had started long before 1989 (see haukanes 1999), but after the change in regime they disappeared from the surface altogether and were substituted with readings similar to the ones that we know from "western" history writing. the events of 1948 and 1968 are still vested with national symbolic meaning, however, although the opposite to the one that the fonner regime tried to give them. this combination ofpersistent symbolic importance and radical change of meaning is, i will argue, part of what make the events problematic for people torelate to. stories from the second world war are much easier to deal with since they have not changed so much with the change in regime, and are therefore told much more often. final remarks the early 1990s was a period when the czech( oslovak) nation, as it appeared both in public discourse and through state-initiated actions such as reartangements of public space, was working intensively on its relation to the past. new lines of break and continuity were established. in the overall picture, it is clear that much "discursive work" was done to set apart the communist period as an "artificial" and undesired episode in the nation's history (haukanes 1999:25ff). at the level of politics, an attempt was also being made to collapse the genealogy of the nation and that of the state's politicians into one, so that the new leaders appeared to be the heirs to the "good" traditions of the first republic, and to be totally dissociated from their communist forerunners (ibid:58ff). the life histories of my infonnants hardly reflect this tendency to reinterpret and rewrite history at all. with one or two exceptions, they all read as stories about "nonnallives," having a focus on family life and not the least on work. what i find in the life histories is thus a lack of engagement in the grand dramas of the nation. by avoiding mention of the big turning points in the nation's history, people detach themselves from what has happened to the nation. i have chosen to interpret this detaclnnent as a deliberate and actively chosen strategy on the part of my infonnants. it represents an attempt to protect oneself ­ one's dignity and integrityfrom official versions of history: not only those of the fonner regime, but also those of the present power holders. this habit of distancing oneself from everything that "comes from above" may not only be seen a result of people's experience with communist censorship and "enforced" history writing. it may also be understood against the background of historical experiences accumulated over a longer period oftime, a defensive strategy developed by a people who have always been in the middle of the political turbulence of europe and whose destiny always has been in the hands of someone else (simecka 1985, holy 1996, see also sayer 2000). references cited: borneman, john. 1992. belonging in the two berlins. kin, state, nation. cambridge: cambrigde university press. bringslid, mary-bente. 1996. bygda og den framande. ein studie av det lokales deog rekontekstualisering i ei vestnorsk bygd. unpublished phd thesis, department of social anthropology, university of bergen. connerton, paul. 1989. how societies remember. cambridge: cambridge university press. frykrnan, j. and l0fgren, o. 1994. det kultiverte menneske. oslo: pax forlag. giddens, anthony. 1991. modernity and self­ identity. self and society in the late modern age. oxford: polity press. halbwachs, maurice. 1981. the collective memory. harper colophon books. haukanes, haldis. 1999. grand dramas­ ordinary lives. state, locality and person in post-communist czech society. unpublished 167 1_..............___----.......-------­ doctoral thesis, dept of social anthropology, university of bergen --2004a. the power of genre. local history-writing in communist czechoslovakia. in: pine, kaneff, and haukanes (eds.) religion, politics and memory. the past meets the present in contemporary europe. munster: lit verlag. -2004b.velke dramata, heme zivoty. postkomunisticke zkusenosti na ceskem venkove. prague, sociologicke nakladatelstvi slon holy, ladislav. 1996. the little czech and the great czech nation. national identity and the post-communist social transformation. cambridge: cambridge university press. hfibek, bruno et al. 1982. zapasnik agitatora. praha: nakladatelstvi svoboda. janda, j., kotrba, m. and moravec, b. 1963. nova vesnice a podil akce z najeji vystavbe. praha: statni zemedelske nakladatelstvi. lass, andrew. 1994. from memory to history. the events of november 17 dis/membered. in: r.watson (ed.) memory, history and opposition under state socialism. santa fe: school ofamerican research press. leviatin, david. 1993. prague sprung. notes and voices from the new world. london: praeger. niethammer, lutz. 1992. where were you on 17 june. a niche in memory. in: l. passerini, ed. memory and totalitarianism. oxford: oxford university press. pennova, ida. 1994. j6, tak to bylo, milanku. unpublished thesis for the bachelor degree in sociology, prague agricultural university. pine, f., d. kandi, and h. haukanes. 2004. memory, politics and religion. the past meets the present in europe. munster: lit verlag. pubal, v. and robek, a. 1963. piseme kroniku. praha. richardson, t. 2004. disciplining the past in post-soviet ukraine: memory and history in schools and families. in: pine, kandt, and haukanes, eds. religion, politics and memory. the past meets the present in contemporary europe. munster: lit verlag. rudie, inger. 1995. livsl0p som dimensjon i kulturell reproduksjon. norsk antropologisk tidsskrift 6 (1): 53-69. simeckl, milan. 1985. de svarte hull. om den historiske hukommelses forvandlinger. samtiden, 3. sayer, derek. 2000. the coasts ofbohernia. a czech history. princeton: princeton university press. skultans, vera. 1998. the testimony of lives: narrative and memory in post-soviet latvia. london: routledge. v erdery, katerine. 1991. theorizing socialism: a prologue to the "transition." american ethnologist 18(3): 419-39. watson, rubie s. (ed.). 1994. memory, history and opposition under state socialism. santa fe: school of american research press. wanner, c. 1998. burden of drearns. history and identity in post-soviet ukraine. university park: penn state press. 168 110 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 shock therapy. psychology, precarity, and well-being in postsocialist russia by tomas matza. durham: duke university press. 2018. 305pp. notes. bibliography. index. $99.95, cloth. $26.95, paperback. grégoire hervouet-zeiber, the johns hopkins university ghervou1@jhu.edu shock therapy is an ethnographic study of the revitalization of psychotherapy in russia which has taken form “at the intersection of market forces, biopolitics, and the desires of the expert” (198). anchored in fieldwork undertaken with psychologists, the book describes how psychotherapy circulated in response to the changing political and ethical landscape after the fall of the soviet union. furthermore, from this specific perspective, it offers a rich critical engagement with literature on the relationship between “psy-ences,” governing projects (governmentality) and processes of subject constitution (subjectivation). its most important insights are that: 1) psychotherapy in post-soviet russia reproduces class and gender differences; 2) the biopolitics and the “precarious care” the author describes are engaged in negotiations of (in)commensurability; 3) psychotherapeutic work is political in ways the author elucidates ethnographically. chapter 1 offers a historical overview of applied psychology in the soviet union and in postsoviet russia. the subjective (understood here as a “psychologized interior”), matza shows, “existed in a tricky relationship to soviet power” (38), but continued to “haunt” the soviet psyences, reemerging in different forms and at different moments of their history. consequently, matza goes on to characterize the late soviet and post-soviet periods as that of a “reactivation (rather than introduction) of interest in the subjective” in psychology (61-62). matza orients himself skillfully on this “vexed terrain” (31) offering a classical chronology but avoiding the pitfalls of an authoritative historical narrative. he does so by pinpointing the tensions in this history and by reflecting on his informants’ own historicizations and dismissals of soviet (even latesoviet) psychotherapy which come to interrupt matza’s account. as he puts it, the ethnographic vignettes of his informants’ historical reflections are, “first, (…) opportunities to interrupt historicization in the name of a history of the present, and, second, they are performances in the 111 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 present” (64-65). by drawing on the past, matza’s informants “constitute themselves as postsoviet actors” and “as agents in the face of soviet constraint” (65). the second part of the book is an ethnography of different psychological services for children: regeneration, an organization geared towards providing elite children tools for success and a psycho-pedagogical medico-social (ppms) center, a municipal service helping struggling children identified through the school system. chapter 2 argues that “psychotherapeutic practices were made commensurable with the aims of putin’s political-economic agenda,” including the “biopolitical aims of pronatalism and modernization” (86). the types of discourses circulating at planeta detstva, “a large expo for family products and services” (87) and documents produced by regeneration and ppms lead matza to one of the central insights of the book: that one of the main effects of this work of commensuration is that psychotherapy has become engaged in the reproduction of class and gender difference. whereas regeneration’s work produces children with emotions and a deep psychological interior and is focused on creating the conditions for their success, the ppms center’s work sees children as “a brain with memory problems” (155) and focuses on control and intervention (99). in the following two chapters, the attentive ethnography of the work of regeneration and the ppms center both confirms and complicates this first evaluation of biopolitical commensurability. matza goes on to describe the “tensioned relation” (108) between the biopolitical and the ethical. he shows how incommensurabilities also emerge in these sites. chapter 3 complicates notions of “neoliberal subjectivation” by engaging with regeneration’s experts and by taking part in their zaniatii (lessons). rather than simply involved in the production of an elite, of subjects fit for a market democracy, experts understand their work as one of educating and transforming this elite to the benefit of all. in chapter 4, matza turns to the strained work of the ppms center in the context of the structural constraints of putin’s “modernization.” working with “those getting left behind russia’s oil-fueled boom” (141), the psychotherapists are frustrated by bureaucratic exigencies. notwithstanding all the risks entailed, they improvise care in spaces of “institutional indeterminacy” (156). negotiating this uneasy relationship between the biopolitical and “precarious care,” psychotherapists in both sites cannot be easily framed as conduits for a “neoliberal governmentality.” 112 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 the third part of the book presents the work of psychotherapists as “loosely political.” focusing on the work of “verity,” the fifth chapter describes what matza calls “psychosociality.” the invocation of certain terms, such as energiia (energy), garmoniia (harmony) and dusha (soul), allows for new social forms to take shape. however, this psychosociality is itself precarious as it can be “captured by capital” (186) and is threatened in a context where fear is prevalent. the last chapter focuses on the radio talk-show for adults about adults, where host labkovsky, drawing on psychological technologies, namely samootsenka (self-esteem), helps his listeners deal with quotidian problems, for example, around property. analytically, one of the book’s forces comes from the fact that its engagement with the postsocialist context and its attention to the practices of “precarious care” enriches and challenges some of the ways the concept of (neoliberal) governmentality has been taken up. matza pays attention to what he calls the “and yets,” the complexities entailed in life. we are left to wonder, however, what happens when psychological knowledge and practices circulate outside the therapeutic spaces investigated by the author, in schools, in the workplace, in the family, in the apartment building. we get a sense of an answer from the last chapter when listeners resist labkovsky’s (the talk show host) interpretations. the family also enters the scene at multiple points in the book as a site of tension, but always fleetingly. to use the author’s language, the (in)commensurabilities which probably emerge in this circulation of knowledge should also be investigated. could we imagine, as a follow-up to this project, a study where the family, for example, is not approached from the point of view of experts, of different organizations, but through an ethnographic attention to the way knowledge and practices are folded into kinship relations? how is psychotherapy itself stretched or permeated by these relationships? what forms of the subject, of care and of precarity would emerge? beyond readers interested in psy-ences in the post-socialist world for whom shock therapy should become a central reference, this book’s theoretical insights and ethnographic attention will be highly informative to all those interested in the practice of psychotherapy as well as to all interested in neoliberalism and governmentality. thanks to the clarity of its style and its ability to be rigorous without being obscure and because, through psychotherapy, the book gives an account of how 113 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 people have been ethically and politically engaged in the post-soviet world, i would also recommend this book to all who are interested in post-soviet russia. 43 colonization or liberation: the paradox of ngos in postsocialist states julie hemment cornell university the stimulation of civil society has been central to the efforts to democratize postsocialist states and has been regarded as a crucial dimension of transition. however, recently criticisms have been made from both east and west. some of those who were once most in favor of the notion of civil society and its promotion in eastern europe and the former soviet union have become disaffected with the emergent structures, while others question why concepts and terms are exported with such enthusiasm at a time when their salience is challenged in western countries (carothers 1996). even george soros, the high priest of the "open society" has distanced himself from some of the processes that are underway in eastern europe today (soros 1997). in order to ground this discussion i shall consider a central plank of the democratization process, the non-governmental sphere. non-governmental organizations (ngos)1 are a striking feature of the post-communist landscape. their role in transition is crucial as they serve as conduits for the distribution of material, technical and intellectual resources international agencies such as the world bank and donor governments frequently send funds directly to internationally recognized ngos rather than to governments. equally important is their symbolic function. perceived by their advocates to be a vital component of civil society, the existence of ngos has been encouraged and stimulated by international agencies and western governments accordingly. discourse about ngos is strikingly polarized. i have been struck by an apparent paradox, that while they are seen to be tied to democratic and emancipatory movements and concerns, ngos are also perceived as part of the attempt by western states, external to these societies, to control, civilize and discipline post-socialist states. in this paper i will present both positive and negative evaluations of ngos and explore some of the contention about this new sphere. i shall then provide an historical analysis of the concept of civil society as it has been used in the context of eastern europe and the ussr, from the late 80’s and early 90s when it 44 was much in vogue,2 to the more recent backlash against it. i shall then consider how the contemporary non-governmental sphere has apparently failed to meet these expectations and reconsider the binary colonization/emancipation. why does civil society continue to be viewed in such polarized terms and what does this tell us about the processes of transition? ngos as salvation some positive views of ngos are as follows: first, let’s take the self representation of an international ngo, taken from an announcement of an internship position advertised on the internet: isar is a non-profit organization that supports the growth of the nongovernmental sector in the countries of the former soviet union….our mission is to empower grassroots activists to address local social, political, and environmental challenges by providing them with grants, training and other forms of technical assistance. this rhetoric suggests a progressive form of democracy-building at its most grass-roots and people friendly. a second, similar type of language is found among scholars who celebrate ngos as progressive forces in the context of transnationalism and see them as key players in an emergent "global civil society". in a recent article, anthropologist terry turner (n.d.) provides a positive reading of the new networks of ngos, environmental and rights activists and sectors of the media and public opinion, "an emergent transnational community of movements and groups has begun to coalesce as a new, global extension of civil society, in complementary opposition to the longer-established sector of global civil society comprised of private transnational corporations." this type of rhetoric is also pronounced among feminist activists and scholars, particularly in the aftermath of the fourth world conference on women.3 finally, a third constituency that celebrates the emancipatory potential of ngos is found at what is traditionally considered to be the opposite end of the political spectrum, among promarket liberal democrats. until his recent turn around, george soros, international financier45 turned-philanthropist and promoter of civil society in the former communist states has epitomized this trend. with western governments, soros’ open society foundation has promoted ngo development as part of the agenda to stimulate the development of an independent pluralistic "civil society" in post-communist states and has set up independent media organs, think tanks and academic institutions accordingly. in these positive evaluations, ngos are progressive bandits that work to protect people against the incursions of evil states and/or international forces. the symbolic order around ngos is predicated on a series of binary oppositions, most fundamentally between state/society. in all cases, the "non-governmental" sphere is seen to lie outside the state/society dichotomy, and ngos are seen to represent a third realm that is apparently free from particularistic interests. they transcend politics, particularly the politics of the cold war, they are non-aligned and stand for universal values, mere facilitators of local empowerment. in the first example, the isar announcement is inflected with christian notions of voluntarism and charity and contains a set of oppositions based on the pair sacred/profane (not-for-profit/for profit, charity/business) at the same time as it draws on an international development discourse of entitlements and rights. in the second case, the "global civil society" discourses replicate the same binaries state/society (or "community"), profit/not-for-profit at a global level. in the third example, the soros-type discourses rest on the same binary state/society, but are expressed slightly differently, as "open society" vs. the totalitarian state, or "dictatorship." it is important to note, however, that this is a (good)state/(bad)state binary, as the designation "open society" is modeled on the liberal democratic state. far from transcending politics, this last position smacks of liberal triumphalism at the "victory" of liberal democracy over communism. in this discourse, "ngo" becomes a metaphor for "civility," "freedom," a concrete referent for "civil society" which is the desired end of "transition." the denouncers as i have noted, there is a new trend toward critiquing the non-governmental sphere and its role in the "democratization" process. here ngos are perceived to be an arm of a generalized western colonizing project. these arguments (which are directed at various types of ngo, but broadly at the whole ngo-ization process) rest on the same binaries we have already seen 46 expressed in the other arguments (state/society) but here ngos are perceived to have a distinctly "political" function and to be aligned with the "west". soros foundation initiatives have been met with rage and distrust by some actors in postsocialist states. soros is frequently represented as acting in some "western" identified plot, either of his own or of u.s. devising. president tudjman of croatia recently denounced him as the "linchpin of a global plot" and the soros foundation was recently forced to close down in belarusia following the seizure of its bank account. although both these cases are at the extreme end of the hostility spectrum, they can be situated as part of a general anti-soros trend. whether labeled "hungarian", "jew" or "cia agent", soros is cast as the consummate "outsider" by hostile publics in russia and eastern europe (traynor 1997). charges of "imperialism" have been leveled at ngo activity from several quarters. a recent article in replika, a hungarian social science journal, denounced "western intrusion in to eastern europe on the field of social science research" as "colonization" (csepeli et al 1996). though explicitly leveled at academic collaboration, this critique takes aim at the entire ngoization project: the ideological aim behind these efforts can be summarized as ‘project democracy’, conceived as something to be implemented from above, following and copying western models (csepeli et al 1996: 114). here, the authors do not oppose the processes of privatization and decentralization of east european institutions that they describe; their main criticism is that the terms of "eastwest" engagement are asymmetrical and unfair. east-west boundaries are patrolled and reinforced by agencies that constitute citizens of "western" nations as "experts" or "primary investigator" and those of "eastern" nations as recipients or junior collaborators. ngos are thus perceived to perform a kind of missionary function on behalf of the "west". far from transcending politics, ngos are perceived to be part of a strategy to further cement inequality and difference. the "reconstruction of eastern europe" is read as a reinforcement of the east/west binary, where projects which ostensibly prevent seepage, escape, the "drain" of best resources from the area in order to protect east european economies and permit them to gain strength, actually work to keep east europeans "out" in the interests of west european security. in many cases, they are perceived to actually drain the wealth of the east.4 47 once again, ngos are "outsiders", but this carries different inflections. they are not considered outside or above politics, but to be the agents of outsider political interests. not surprisingly, those who see ngos as liberatory are "western" (or western identified, as in the case of elite corps who work within ngos and who have access to the frameworks and resources they offer), while those who view it as colonizing are "eastern" or eastern-identified (as in western scholars who have in some way "gone native", or who are drawn to the position of the underdog). it is easy to write transition this way, particularly when resources are so clearly stacked on one side. in order to avoid replicating these polarities, i will side step to illuminate the issue from another perspective and question some of the concepts that are commonly taken for granted in these debates. ngos and the "civil society" debates it is important to situate the emergence of the concept of "ngo" in the post-state socialist context. as i have shown, today many scholars and actors in the non-governmental sphere view ngos as an index of "civil society" (which is regarded as a key signifier of "democracy"). however, this is according to a very different conception of "civil society" than was envisaged when the term first entered discourse in the soviet union and eastern europe in the mid-1980s. this shift is significant in so far as it suggests that much of the bitterness expressed toward ngos is a result of disappointment in "transition" (among western scholars as much as postsocialist subjects). in order to trace these themes, it is necessary to historicize the concept of "civil society" as it has been used in the context of the former soviet union and eastern europe. there has been a huge amount of discussion among political scientists and my aim here is not to provide a summary, but to trace some of the themes and metaphors running through the discussions, and to consider how they relate to politico-economic events. as i have noted, the term "civil society" experienced something of a renaissance in the 1980s, stimulated by events in eastern europe and the ussr. it appeared to represent a means of breaking out of the polarities of the détente period (capitalism/communism, east/west), and was used by western intellectuals of the left as a means of articulating internal opposition to state socialist regimes whilst still critiquing capitalism (arato 1981; garton-ash 1983; habermas 1989; ost 1990). the term was used similarly by some east european dissidents as a means of 48 articulating a "third path" between the two systems.5 if this was the original meaning, usage soon became more sloganistic, and the subtleties became less important than its performative and symbolic function. "civil society" became a rallying cry and was the gloss on any kind of resistance to the regimes to the degree that "it" was broadly considered to have been efficacious in bringing down the regimes. as one political scientist put it, "it was highly effective in bringing about the demise of communism" (schopflin 1993: 262). the term is now comfortably used to justify the turn to capitalism and the west, and is deployed descriptively to describe the processes of "transition" and "democratization" with "ngo" as its concrete referent. the first "non-governmental organizations" that appeared in the soviet union (though they were not thus named) were loose groups of friends and colleagues who united around specific issues, for example to campaign for broadly defined religious or political freedoms, or for the state to acknowledge past crimes.6 groups perceived themselves and were perceived to be oppositional to the state; accordingly the soviet state attempted to suppress them, while western states lauded them as evidence of "society’s" natural resistance to the totalitarian state. these groups began to understand themselves and to be read by those outside in terms of "civil society." the concept was used in the soviet/east european context to describe a movement from bottom up. it was frequently presented as a natural life force, as one prominent civil society theorist put it, "civil society tends to swell rapidly from below" (keane 1988: 5), as suppressed social interests gathered together to form alliances. "natural" society here is pitted against the "unnatural" impositions of the state. the metaphor of naturalness is pervasive according to pelczynski, solidarity, the quintessential "ngo" of this period, had an "evolutionist strategy," it did not strive toward any "political" goals (it neither intended to establish capitalism or to destroy the state) but sought the establishment of a plurality of self-governing civil associations (ibid.). "civil society" then is seen as a universal stage of development. habermas captures this well in his characterization of the east european revolutions as "rectifying revolutions," which are distinctive due to their lack of ideas that are innovative or oriented toward the future (habermas 1990). here, there is something artless about the emergence of groups and organizations, which appear as a natural corrective, the result of civil society’s inevitable resurgence. why did this notion have such currency and appeal among scholars and members of these groups, what did it resonate with? it seems to me that the yearning for "civil society" 49 represented a desire to bring "public" and "private" together and can be attributed to a desire for "completeness" and "normalcy" that the socialist state denied its citizens. the state socialist system rested on a rigid division between public and private, where people were required to submit to the state in their public lives but perceived their private lives to be free. the home then became the repository of all that was deemed most authentic and valued.7 todorov (1991) has characterized this configuration as constitutive of "social schizophrenia"), and the system was certainly perceived thus by many state socialist subjects. "civil society" seemed to offer a way out, a means of mending this apparent fracture it was a repository of dreams, "a utopia, the solution to all the problems accumulated by "real socialism" (kumar 1993) and appeared to represent the chance to be "civil," "civilized," "normal," in so far as it signified honesty and authenticity in public life. this yearning for completeness is also a desire for an egalitarian kind of togetherness, which expresses itself through the east/west binary. "civil society" suggests horizontal connections, rather than the vertical integration between society and state and is thus apparently egalitarian, fraternal, and unconstrained by borders and boundaries. it appeared large, expansive, unbounded (as evident in talk of a "global civil society"), but at the same time conveyed a specifically european flavor. the yearning seems to be all about a reunion between east and west, a means of reasserting a common european-ness, a shared culture and intellectual heritage that eastern europe perceived it had lost touch with and was outside of. these discourses have much in common with the emancipatory discourses around ngos that i have examined both point toward a post-ideological world, and a transcendent "public" space. given these similarities, why was there so much disappointment with what transpired? why can’t ngos serve as the vehicle for these dreams? what are the similarities and differences between the intellectual project of revolution and the contemporary ngo order? the contemporary ngo order i shall now return to the contemporary non-governmental sphere to see how it matches up to these expectations. i shall argue that firstly, it is a far more formalized space than what was desired and secondly that, far from diminishing the boundaries between east and west in an equal, fraternal forum, it is perceived to be the preserve of a western or "westernized" elite. 50 at a glance, the "non-governmental" space of the "transition" is a far cry from what was desired. despite the similarities in rhetoric, it is a less "political" seeming space, its participants are less often dissidents and politicos, the intellectual architects of the anti-communist revolutions, but young people intent on developing their careers. involvement in the civil society of ngos can be seen to represent a form of entrepreneurial activity and for some it is very lucrative. the land of projects, funding applications and trainings is a world of task-oriented, bureaucratically orchestrated activity rather than utopian strivings. ironically (in so far as they appeared to be diametrically opposed to all that "civil society" stood for), some of those who thrived under the old regimes have also proven to be equally adept at mastering the symbolic order of ngos and projects (sampson 1996). this has given rise to a great deal of cynicism among some people who regard the ngo sector as just another corrupt mafia, evidence of business as usual. ngos are a far cry from the spontaneous and loose groupings of the late ‘80s. in order to be perceived as authentic by international agencies, an ngo has to be "autonomous, voluntary, legally registered and non-profit" (sampson 1996: 129). no church or nationalist groups are recognized, nor are political parties. what’s more, to be credible (that is, fundable) ngos have to meet very strict criteria, they have to name a "target group," must have a "mission statement" and provide indices for "evaluation" and "sustainability" (ibid.). while the early groups were based on principles of "openness," "solidarity" and "living in the truth" (keane 1988: 4), "transparency" is a recurrent metaphor of project-speak (sampson 1996: 129), which illustrates metaphorical continuity across these changes in civil society. however, in the projectspeak usage "transparency" now suggests clarity of affairs, bureaucratic precision, economy and rational planning rather than an expansive dream of a post-ideological world with no walls or boundaries. crucially, the non-stateness of this space is illusory. note that the designation "nongovernmental" is an official categorization, that is, it is dependent on governmental recognition. while historically ngos identified themselves and were identified as oppositional to states, they are now used by governments as conduits to distribute material and intellectual resources both nationally and internationally. organizations have to be officially recognized by governments in order to win tax exemptions and in order to practice legally, and by international bodies in order to win grants and have access to international networks. 51 a second major cause of frustration with the non-governmental sphere is that ngos are also perceived to be "western" and hence inaccessible to most post-socialist subjects. it pays to spend a little time here to consider the significance of the designation "western" in this context. in the context of "transition," "west" signifies a set of political and economic values and standards, a stage of development rather than a geo-political location.8 "transition" is always posited as a process whereby the "east" becomes more like the "west," by way of a series of prescribed economic and political steps. in theory, if it follows these schema, it too can joint the western clubs (eu, nato, as well as commercial "joint ventures" and ngos). the west is the donor, the modernizer, the site of "know-how" while the east is cast as beneficiary, recipient in a relationship of structural inequality, an "outsider" who wants "in." actors in the "east" have accepted the designation "lesser" to some degree, because this acceptance backed up their victimhood as citizens of states annexed (in the case of east european subjects), or as individuals oppressed (in the case of soviet subjects) by the soviet regime. this discourse becomes part of a strategy for resistance. habermas points to this in his description of the "rectifying revolution." the east european revolution of the late ‘80s "presents itself as a revolution that is to some degree flowing backwards, one that clears the ground in order to catch up with developments previously missed out on" (habermas 1990). this has the effect of primitivizing the "east" and serves to legitimate western-identified development projects as a means to an end. it is important to note that, although it posits "east" as lesser, the east/west binary as it expresses itself in the context of "transition" is premised on the assumption of a kind of filial relationship. "east" is coded as explicitly less than "west," but in so far as it took a wrong turning along a path that they shared. as a result of that wrong turn, "east" is constituted as arrested in some way, but this difference is not irremediable. the oriental "other" is irredeemably other, and denied voice and subjecthood by orientalising discourses (said 1979), but as david kideckel has put it, "the devaluation of eastern (european) life is not because ‘they’ are totally different, but rather because ‘they’ have fallen into difference over time" (kideckel 1996: 30). the logic of the binary (which kideckel calls "categorical orientalism" to distinguish it from said’s "orientalism") "holds out the possibility of redemption for the fallen through capitalism, democracy, civil society, privatization and the like" (ibid.). 52 it is this relationship that causes "the east" to expect to eventually gain admittance to the western club, however, this expectation is consistently thwarted. once they had embarked on the western prescribed path of economic and political development, many "eastern" actors called for the dissolution of the east/west binary and argued for a return to the designation "central europe." timothy garton-ash, citing prominent east european intellectuals havel, michnik, konrad, laid out the qualities of the desired central (as opposed to eastern) europe, "skeptical, sober, anti-utopian minds and rational, humanistic, democratic and tolerant societies" (ibid.), terms that are associated with "west" rather than "east." however, the designation "central europe" has proven slow to catch on and the perception of many actors (we can include the authors of the replika article here) is that they are still stranded as "outsiders." "west" also signifies universal standards of civility (rights, values) to which eastern subjects appeal and which are ostensibly available to all. disappointment comes when the "east" is made to feel its own specificity, and learns that these values are not universally applicable, but are jealously guarded. thus far i have traced the expectations that preceded the development of civil society and shown how they contrast with perceptions of the actually existing non-governmental sphere. ngos are highly formalized structures that operate under constraints imposed by governments and international agencies, and are linked to a development project which is perceived to originate "outside". where does that leave us? is transition all about colonization? we can disrupt this view by questioning the fixity of the terms "east" and "west," "inside" and "outside" and by returning to "transition" to recharacterize it. we need to get away from seeing the east and west as hermetically sealed, fixed locations. it is important to see that the east/west binary is constitutive of identity on both sides (here i draw on the work of scholars like said, etc.). the inside/outside polemic helps to conceal the mutual dependency within the relationship, that is, that the "west" needs an "east" as other, both in order to be and to know itself and vice versa. in this sense, it is impossible for the east to ever really "westernize" (in the sense of joining the west), in so far as the sides of the binary pair need each other to keep on rolling.9 this points to a different reading of the end of the cold war. as many scholars have noted, the collapse of the state socialist regimes, though hailed as a victory of the west and liberal democracy, actually resulted in an identity crisis for "western" nations as much as for the teetering socialist states. as turner (n.d.: 19) puts it "the removal of 53 the threat of war between these two power blocs removed the major non-economic political and ideological basis for the hegemony of nation-state as the organizing frame of global politics." "transition" in post-socialist countries then is just as much about the west as about the east and is not reducible to a relation of domination/subordination. scholars such as carothers have pointed to the irony in the fact that the notion of civil society continues to be enthusiastically exported at the very time when these institutions are most under threat in western states. i suggest that it is precisely when it fails in the west that its export becomes most important. it is in the context of this identity crisis wherein western "civil society" itself begins to break down that proclamations about the necessity of civil society to post-socialist states grew louder (hann 1996). as diana fuss (1991) puts it, "the greater the lack on the inside, the greater the need for an outside to contain and defuse it, for without that outside, the lack on the inside would become all too visible." the post-socialist "other" was re-constituted as disadvantaged and in need of "development" and assistance, thus legitimating all kinds of interventions and maintaining the identity of the "west." it is in this light that we can read the new sets of oppositions that emerged (donor/recipient, expert/trainee). this explains why projects that ostensibly diminish the difference between east and west are perceived to cement the division still further. let us then return to characterize the ngo order. "transition" in the former socialist states is conventionally understood to be part of a unidirectional process, a stage of politicoeconomic development, part of a movement from state socialism (or "communism") to a marketoriented democratic-type economy. however, i see "transition" as a complex discursive field of ongoing transactions, explicitly, the re-drawing of boundaries between spheres (state/society, public/private, east/west). there are multiple different perspectives on this redrawing and interpretations of the emergent configurations, depending on the social, cultural and economic capital actors bring to it. "transition" is not something that only happens in "east european" countries, "it is also a strategy being implemented by international development agencies, western financial institutions, foreign aid programs and humanitarian or other non-governmental organizations (ngos)" (sampson 1996: 121). it is a flow of resources that is not unidirectional and which (despite the rhetoric) does not signify a particular pattern of development. its participants are international and there is no homogenized "western" or "eastern" participant participants are 54 representatives of the world bank, the imf, the soros foundation, government ministers, varieties of "experts" (human rights activists, feminists, evaluators, scholars) of different nationalities as well as teams of staff, interpreters, translators and "target populations." it is important not to over-emphasize the role of ngos. after all, they are but one of the new channels that opened up in the post-socialist landscape and have spawned much less public contention in russia than "business" and "mafia," for example. it is also important to note that it is not just the "east" that gets recast and that the "west" is also transformed"transition" stimulates a diversification of both "east" and "west" rather than simply reinforcing eastern lesser-ness. to reduce the relationship to one of "emancipation" or "colonization" is to vastly simplify the relationship. how then to employ the effects of ngos in post-socialist society? their presence brings about shifts in discourse, they introduce new structures and a new symbolic order to the russian scene, and bring new technologies and types of human service provision, which gives rise to the perception of new needs. however, in this they are not unique; "transition" brings a whole new set of powerful operators to russia powerful in the sense that they have material and intellectual resources that will impact the "socio-cultural means of interpretation and communication" (fraser 1990). it makes no sense to see this development in terms of the imposition of a "foreign" order, or to interpret the ngo order as the depoliticization of the nongovernmental sphere; instead, ngos signify a new kind of politics with which we need to come to grips. different interest groups are created through the projects that characterize "transition," and compete with one another over resources. the concepts and agendas that ngos bring are not stable or constant, but are subject to redrawing; "as they pass across boundaries of states, political economies and gender regimes they are decontextualized and recontextualized, fitted into other discourses which may change the meaning of arguments" (gal 1996). hence, regardless of the intentions of actors engaged in the process, the outcomes will be uncertain, and there is no replicating the models upon which they were based, no matter how intense the desire to do so. the more interesting questions to pose are, what are the interests behind the use of designations such as east/west, inside/outside, state/society? what are the effects? denunciations of ngos as "western" or "outsider" are often made by those who are baffled by the symbolic order of "transition," or who are left behind resource-wise. contemporary russian society is increasingly polarized, and the ability to learn these new codes 55 (what sampson calls the "magic" of the transition) is an important component of survival. those who are in a position to master and manipulate these codes flourish, while those who do not see it as a form of black magic that originates "outside." however, these denunciations can also be made as part of a political strategy, in the context of a savvy bid for resources. it is in this light that we can re-consider the replika article. csepeli et al represent the east/west relationship as one of domination/subordination. however, at the same time, the article and the authors’ collaboration itself contradicts the rigidity that this model suggests. entitled "colonization or partnership? eastern europe and western social science," it is published in a special english language edition of a journal funded partly by the soros foundation. as they write of the insurmountable differences facing "eastern" scholars, the authors betray their own familiarity with "western paradigms" and literature, and with the mores of both "sides." in addition, it is co-authored by a "western" scholar. this polemic represents a move by a savvy young generation of scholars who are at home in both worlds. it certainly sells copy, especially to western scholars, some of whom (including this writer) are frequently only too ready to breast-beat themselves for having too much power, cultural capital, and to constitute themselves as colonizers. it appeals to the desire for a "moralizing narrative," as opposed to the liberal democratic "heroic narrative" that celebrates the western role in the creation of a post-socialist non-governmental sphere (todorov 1997). this amounts to a fetishization of the "outside," which is deemed to be a more radical space in diana fuss’ (1991: 4) terms, it is "in" to be "out," there is an "avant-garde affinity for the liminal space of the marginal" amongst those whose location is secure, or central. notes 1. the term encompasses a wide range of organizations, including media organs, think tanks, human service organizations and pressure groups (environmental, women's rights, gay and lesbian rights, professional). 2. while at the end of the socialist regimes and in the early days of transition, east european intellectuals and scholars of eastern europe coincided in their enthusiasm for the idea of civil society, today however, many regard it with suspicion. 3. as noted by aihwa ong. 56 4. this kind of perception has been encouraged by a series of scandals that have broken around development projects, revealing that a large proportion of funds earmarked for development go to pay the salaries of western specialists (see for example janine wedel's editorial, moscow times, june 3 1997). 5. see for example adam michnik. letters from prison. (berkeley, 1985) 6. in russia, they emerged out of the dissident "kruzhki" (circles) of the 1960s-70s. 7. here i am arguing against those who have argued that there was no separation between public and private in "totalitarian" regimes. 8. sampson has noted that the actors involved in "transition" are of various nationalities and that development programs in albania are as likely to be funded by islamic agencies as by "western" ones, "the social life of projects", p.125. 9. reinhard kosselleck asserts that "the linguistic usage of politics, like that of everyday life, is permanently based on the fundamental figure of asymmetric opposition". in this case, "west" cannot be maintained without its counterceoncept in, "the historical-political semantics of asymmetric counterconcepts," in futures past: on the semantics of historical time (cambridge, ma, 1985). references arato, andrew 1981 "civil society vs. the state 1980-1981." telos 47, spring 1981. borneman, john 1995 "introduction," subversions of international orders: studies in the political anthropology of culture. carothers, thomas 1996 "promoting democracy in a postmodern world." dissent spring 1996. csepeli, gyorgy and antal orkeny, with kim lane scheppele. 1996 "acquired immune deficiency syndrome in social science in eastern europe." replika., special edition 1996. gal, susan 1996 "feminism and civil society." replika, special edition. 1996 fraser, nancy 1990 talking about needs interpretive contests as political conflicts in welfare-state societies, in cass r sunstien (ed.), feminism and political theory. chicago and london: university of chicago press. 57 fuss, diana 1991 "inside/out," in diana fuss (ed.) inside/out: lesbian theories, gay theories. new york and london: routledge. garton-ash, timothy 1983 the polish revolution. new york: routledge. habermas, jurgen 1990 "what does socialism mean today? the rectifying revolution and the need for new thinking on the left," new left review 183. 1989 the structural transformation of the public sphere. cambridge, ma: mit press. hann, chris 1996 "introduction: political society and civil anthropology," in chris hann and elizabeth dunn (eds.) challenging western models. london and new york: routledge. keane, john 1988 "introduction," in john keane (ed.) civil society and the state. london: verso. kideckel, david 1996 "what's in a name? the persistence of eastern europe as conceptual category." replika special edition 1996. kosselleck, reinhard 1985 "the historical-political semantics of asymmetric counterconcepts," in futures past: on the semantics of historical time. cambridge, ma: mit press. krishnan, kumar 1993 "civil society: an inquiry into the usefulness of an historical term." british journal of sociology 44: 3, september 1993. matlock, carol 1996 "helping the russian mafia help itself...tax exemptions have become a gold mine...for gangsters." business week december 9, 1996. ong, a. 1996 "strategic sisterhood or sisters in solidarity? questions of communitarianism and citizenship in asia," indiana journal of global legal studies, fall 1996, 4:1. ost, david 1990 solidarity and the politics of anti-politics: opposition and reform in poland since 1968. philadelphia. 58 pelczynski, z.a. 1988 "solidarity and 'the rebirth of civil society'," in john keane (ed.) civil society and the state. london and new york: verso. said, edward 1979 orientalism. new york: vintage books. sampson, steven 1996 "the social life of projects: importing civil society to albania" in chris hann and elizabeth dunn (ed.). civil society: challenging western models. london: routledge. schopflin, george 1993 politics in eastern europe 1945-1992. oxford, uk: blackwell. soros, george "the capitalist threat." the atlantic monthly, february 1997. todorov, tsvetan 1991 facing the extreme. new york. 1997 "history and ethics," lecture delivered at cornell, march 1997. traynor, ian 1997 "soros buys hatred in east." the guardian, monday january 10, 1997. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 1 editor’s notes sarah d. phillips, indiana university it has been an honor and a pleasure to serve as editor-in-chief of the aeer for the last five-anda-half years. my scholarly and personal life has been enriched beyond measure by the opportunity to work with and learn from colleagues in anthropology and related disciplines from all over the world who are deeply committed to understanding the complexity of social forms, social change, and experience in postsocialist eastern europe, russia, the balkans, and central asia from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives. i am grateful to the marvelous previous editors julie hemment and krista harper for trusting me with the journal editorship, and for their continued support of the journal. the breadth and richness of scholarship contributed by aeer authors to socio-cultural anthropology and related research fields is evidenced in the impressive line-up of special issue sections published since 2008: cultural production and transmission of ethic tolerance and prejudice; global socialisms and postsocialisms; gender in postsocialist eastern europe and the former soviet union; gender shift in the north of russia; health and care work; and memories, commemorations, and representations of chernobyl. the publication of these special issues was possible only thanks to the initiative and commitment of a fine team of guest editors, and i extend thanks to the following: melanie arndt, maryna bazylevych, ema hresanova, joachim otto habeck, olga povoroznyuk, virginie vaté, narcis tulbure, hilary pilkington, anton popov, and the graduate seminar students who assisted in guest editing the issue on postsocialist gender (vol. 28, no. 1). articles in the “open forum” sections of the journal similarly attest to the range of research approaches, topics, and analyses that are moving the field of postsocialist anthropology forward. from exploring the historico-socio-political meanings of the lithuanian national dish called zeppelins (diana mincyte, vol. 29, no. 2) to critically examining patriotic youth education in russia at multi-ethnic summer camps (giorgio comai, vol. 30, no. 1) to untangling the complexities of feminist movements in ukraine (jessica zychowicz, vol. 29, no. 2 on femen), aeer authors are exploring ethnographically the complex landscapes and nooks and crannies of postsocialist experience. the journal has benefited from numerous transformations during the last few years. first, under the enthusiastic editorship of neringa klumbyte, the book review section has expanded considerably. neringa oversaw the review of 42 books during her tenure as book review editor. i am extremely grateful to neringa for the energetic service she has provided the journal and the field by soliciting and editing so many excellent reviews of anthropologically-oriented books published on the region. starting with vol. 31, no. 2 (fall 2013) the book review editor will be maryna bazylevych, assistant professor of anthropology and gender studies at luther college. a specialist in health, health care professions, health system reform, and gender in ukraine, anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 2 maryna is an active member of soyuz and the society for medical anthropology, and we welcome her to the aeer editorial team! the second major change has the transformation of aeer from a print journal to an online journal through the open journal systems. the open access format dovetails ideally with the ongoing mission of aeer—to disseminate fresh work on the region in a timely and efficient manner, and to provide broad exposure to current research by both east european and western scholars. open access means the journal content is freely available to anyone, anywhere, via the internet, and the aeer content is now searchable by all kinds of search engines, since ojs uses a standard format that is compatible with google, google scholar, and others. additionally, ojs serves as a permanent repository of the journal’s archive, providing a permanent preservation mechanism. i am grateful to jennifer laherty, digital publishing librarian at indiana university libraries for her generous encouragement and assistance in helping aeer “go digital.” i am delighted to introduce the new editor-in-chief of anthropology of east europe review, andrew asher. a specialist in citizenship and border studies in poland, germany, and the european union, andrew received his phd in sociocultural anthropology from the university of illinois at urbana-champaign in 2008. during the last several years, andrew’s work has also focused on scholarly communication and the anthropology of information, and he recently joined indiana university as the assessment librarian at the herman b. wells library. it has been an honor and a pleasure serving the aeer community for the last several years, and i look forward to many more years of collaboration with the journal. i especially look forward to reading each and every future issue! the first day that we met, alexei alexanderovich had made a toast, quoting the well-know words of russian writer fyodor dostoyevsky: ‘beauty saves the world’ anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 3 nature, narod and emotion: engaging socialist realism and the arts in kyrgyzstan maureen pritchard the school of oriental and african studies (soas), london. abstract: in aiming to rethink the project of socialist realism while shedding new light on the arts in kyrgyzstan, this article highlights the project of the pre-soviet russian avant-garde as it morphed into that of soviet socialist realism and the way in which this project changed alongside the conditions of post-soviet kyrgyzstan. in presenting continued engagement with the soviet project through the persona of a single artist and composer, alexei alexandrovich agibalov, this article offers a glimpse of the ongoing historical circumstances within which contemporary artists live and create. the affective experiences, memories, and engagements with the natural world presented in this article offer a rare glimpse into the individual world of soviet and postsoviet artists. they also provide insight into the larger histories and social processes from which art extends. the same soviet cultural policies which brought about the concept of narod and the resulting constructions of ethnicity and nation have also formed a distinctive artistic tradition – socialist realismwith which contemporary artists, knowingly or unknowingly, remain closely engaged. keywords: socialist realism, russian guitar, music, soviet composers, shostakovich, ethnonationalism, kyrgyzstan art as dialogue mikhail bakhtin has demonstrated that art must be seen as a polyphonic dialogue, spanning time and space: the term polyphonic makes use of a musical metaphor eliciting the sonic image of countless and often contradictory voices resounding simultaneously. likewise, the word ―dialogue‖ evokes a rich and animated process of mutual engagement enabling ongoing change and growth (bakhtin 1982). applied to the arts in kyrgyzstan, this theoretical frame enables illumination of the interactions between russian and kyrgyz artists and arts wrought by joint participation in the soviet union. within this analysis clear distinctions between presoviet, soviet and post-soviet dissipate: the lives of artists span these political periods even as their art continues into eras and contexts unimaginable to their original creators. in aiming to rethink the project of socialist realism while shedding new light on the arts in kyrgyzstan, the first portion of this article highlights the project of the pre-soviet russian avant-garde as it morphed into that of soviet socialist realism. when the soviet union dissolved in 1991, engagement with the soviet project did not cease; rather, it changed alongside the conditions of post-soviet kyrgyzstan. in presenting continued engagement with the soviet project through the persona of a single artist, alexei alexandrovich agibalov, the second portion of this article offers a glimpse of the ongoing historical circumstances within which anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 4 contemporary artists live and create. the information presented on alexei alexandrovich is a synthesis of informal conversations held between october 2011 and june 2012 as part of a larger research project. the conversation with alexei alexandrovich is illuminated through an impulse towards social transformation that gained force among russian artists even as society pushed towards revolution (1917) that would dismantle the tsarist system, replacing it with that of the soviet union. the russian avant-garde and the soviet project of social transformation according to boris groys, socialist realism as advocated by the soviet union arose from the interplay of numerous and often divergent voices within two interwoven threads of thought: the notion of the artist as shaman, prophet and visionary and the notion of art as a means of social transformation (groys 1992). these ideas grew in part from an eastward looking russia that conceptualized itself as irrational, primitive, and driven by the unconscious. these constructions were made in opposition to western rationalism and in an attempt to overstep the west by overcoming history and progress: in casting an oriental gaze and embracing an orientalized self, russian intellectuals and artists were seeking an alternative to the dominant ideas of ‗modernity‘ modeled by europe. prior to the bolshevik revolution artistic and intellectual encounters with the ‗other‘ brought an influx of new imagery amidst the building push for transformation. the nature of such encounters, and the ways in which they came to be incorporated into emerging revolutionary identities, calls into question any notion of a one-way flow of culture between russia and its subaltern, among which the caucuses, siberia and central asia are included. for instance, the idea of artist as shaman was prevalent in the work of wassily kandinsky (18661944). kandinsky had become fascinated with the idea during his work as an ethnographer among the finno-ugric, lapp, and siberian people of imperial russia (weis, 1995). kandinsky was also inspired by persian miniatures (daftari 1992). the futuristic poet, velimir khlebnikov (1885-1922), imported a messianic nature to his concept of the artist from iran where he served in the russian imperial army (khlebnikov 1990). likewise, the composer alexander scryabin (1872-1915), deeply engaged with the myth of dionysus, maintained the view that ―the artist, as a microcosm, could affect the macrocosm of human activity‖ (morrison 1998: 287). many scholars have attributed scryabin‘s interests in combining sound with light and sense to synesthesia, a neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory pathway leads to experience in another, such as the perception of numbers as having color. i argue instead that synesthesia was a symptom of the times: not only were russian artists beginning to collapse the barriers between mediums, they were moving from art as a means of representing the world to a means of transforming it. according to groys the most articulate of these transformative voices was kazimir malevich (1897-1935) who postulated that god could be replaced by the artistanalyst. in this process, all art would cease and the entirety of the material world including anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 5 mankind would be built according to a single artistic plan, a plan that eventually came to be dictated by joseph stalin (d. 1953) (groys 1992). groys observes that socialist realism brought with it a new definition of mimeses or ‗imitation‘: unable to imitate the internal spiritual reality of medieval art or the externally observable reality of the renaissance, art came to imitate the essence of the utopian future; the artist carefully selected those aspects of history and art which could bring that vision into being (groys 1992). through multi-directional flows of cultures, these reinterpreted myths came to coexist and even mix with those that predated them. in kyrgyzstan today a continued impulse toward the incantation of society is exemplified in the current push to rename bishkek, the capital of kyrgyzstan, ―manas‖ after the epic hero who is said to have founded the current nation by uniting 40 tribes. in renaming the city it is hoped that repetition of the hero‘s name will channel the ―cosmic energy‖ of the kyrgyz people, enacting positive change in kyrgyzstan. 1 this hope is connected to longstanding beliefs that position manas –and epic recitationas an active spiritual force (aitpaeva 2009). soviet elevation of the manas epic, however, has enabled indigenous beliefs and practices to intermingle with soviet ideas of art (prior 2002). the inseparability of the political and the aesthetic in russia as well as the five autonomous regions of soviet central asia the project of social transformation was supported by the discipline of ethnography (hirsch 2009). in creating the soviet union (1922), party leaders and activists sought to define, solidify and dispel the backwardness of the many ethnicities and nations that comprised it, a project that occupied much of the 1920s and 30s. in doing so, bolshevik leaders were joined by local reformists such as the jadids who, in the late 1920s, hoped to promote nationalism, education and socialist reform without abandoning islam (adeeb 1998). for khalid adeeb, the soviet union‘s and party‘s embrace of the equalizing force of marxist theory separated it from the colonial projects of great britain, france and the netherlands. still, the bolsheviks were faced with the question of what different national groups will look like when they arrive at their final destination: ―the answer,‖ adeeb writes ―was deceptively simple: all groups will remain national in form but will acquire a universal socialist content‖ (adeeb 2006: 238). in stating this adeeb repeats the same phrase uttered by stalin in defining the principles of socialist realism: art should be ―national in form, socialist in content‖. indeed, drawing upon soviet interpretations of boris asaf‘ev (1884-1949), theodore levin asserts that otdalenie or ―divergence‖ of peoples into different narody or ethnonations and their sblizhenie or ―drawing together‖ and sliianie or ―merging‖ through socialism begun in the 1920s, is precisely what communist party leaders hoped to ―intone‖ through the project of socialist realism (levin 1984). in the soviet union, the careful creation of narodnaia muzyka, a term referencing music of folk and ethnos-nation, was directly tied to the creation, maintenance and progressive cultivation of various narody. joseph stalin defined narod as ―a historically formed and stable community of people which has emerged on the basis of common language, territory, economic anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 6 life and psychological make-up, the latter being manifest in a common shared culture‖; as the soviet scholar julian bromley writes, narod is inclusive of sub-categories such as ―tribes, nations, small populations, large populations, people who have vanished from history, people who are territorially compact and people who are dispersed over widely separated areas‖ (bromley and kozlov 1989). tied to stalin‘s definition of narod is the notion that ―human history is not only a history of states, outstanding personalities and ideas, it is also the history of people-ethnoses‖ (tishkov 1998: 4). music was just one of the many mediums through which ethno-national identities were formed and solidified and transnational socialism built. according to marina frolova-walker this project began with an attempt to recreate in central asia the musical nationalism of nineteenth-century europe, beginning with the systematic collection of folk material upon which operas and symphonies would be based. party activists did not consider that unfamiliarity with western styles and genres might result in awkward, unrefined and aesthetically disinteresting compositions. mass orchestras of ethnonational instruments were developed, even as indigenous musical instruments were altered and refined to suit the needs of western style music and associated performance contexts (frolovawalker 1998). jean during has presented these changes as a ―poison‖ doled out by soviet authorities (during 2005). similarly, levin has observed that this has led to the canonization of musical form and loss of virility in performance (levin 1996). ali iğmen, however, presents the possibility of active, creative partnership through his examination of kyrgyzstan‘s cultural houses (iğman 2002). i too suggest that through these projects local musicians learned to slip between different musical systems and related worldviews, thus gaining the ―bi musicality‖ discussed by mantle hood (hood 1960). i assert that the project of socialist realism was not merely imposed by the state; it was a project in which individual artists, musicians and audience members became actively engaged and through which many continue to define, claim and negotiate identities within a changing post-soviet world. creativity in the kyrgyz context in post-soviet kyrgyzstan, this engagement has resulted in continued interest in the ―ethno-national‖ arts, which are experiencing a rich, diverse and multi-faceted renewal. even as the myth, custom and ritual practice of the kyrgyz people are being (re)interpreted, their forms and contents are also being transposed into alternative genres and mediums, providing new meanings and new purposes. this proliferation has made the ―national‖ arts a source of much beauty, and yet julia kristeva reminds us that beauty and suffering are two aspects of the same phenomenon. in bishkek, i found this captured in a decaying sculpture of a ―rhinoceros turned to stone‖: the fore and hind legs of the beast mark the space where the body has crumbled; the head however, remains intact and a frozen tear has formed under one eye. kristeva defines beauty as ―an imaginary‖, a representation of the ―self‖ that is pure whole and stable which can restore hope and enable creative pleasure (lacan 1977; julia kristeva 1989). as i have discussed anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 7 elsewhere, such beauty can be found in performances emerging from koshok or ritual lament performed by ethnic kyrgyz (pritchard 2012). yet with a recent rise of ethno-nationalism and inter-ethnic tensions, the constructions of ethnicity that fuel the arts have also become a prominent source of social suffering: arthur kleinman defines social suffering as the ways in which structural tensions press down and leak into everyday experiences creating narratives of pain, sorrow, alienation, marginalization and loss (kleinman and good 1995). figure 1: ―rhinoceros turned to stone‖, bishkek, 2012. photograph by author. in june 2010, violence between (ethnic) kyrgyz and uzbek communities erupted in the city of osh, bringing back the memories and the bitterness of 1990 when tensions over land and language rights brought rioting and bloodshed. according to official reports, approximately 470 people were killed, 1,900 were hospitalized, 111,000 fled the borders and 300,000 were internally displaced. in addition 2,800 properties were damaged. 2 although ethnic uzbeks comprise 44% of the southern population, since 2010 there has been an increased political push in favor of speakers of the kyrgyz language paired with unofficial discrimination. if in imagining a national community questions are asked concerning who we (the nation) are now, were in the past and will become in the future (anderson 1992), in kyrgyzstan these questions are being framed only in regards to the kyrgyz who hold the status of titular nationality granted by the soviet constitution. this brings a sense of urgency to my research: whereas individuals whose art is deeply engaged in kyrgyz folk tradition may see their practice thriving, others find the emphasis on kyrgyz folk motifs limiting, even as they perceive these limitations as spreading into all other aspects of life. as one artist of kyrgyz ethnicity with whom i spoke in the course of research said, ―there are some people who would prekloniat or kneel before [the epic hero] manas, make all kyrgyz art folk art and have the entire world speak kyrgyz, but it can‘t be like that. my genre [oil painting] came from the west, after all (author, field notes). ‖ in the pages remaining, i hope to illuminate this through conversation with a single artist who takes material and inspiration not only from land and people of kyrgyzstan, but also russia and europe, engaging closely with the project of socialist realism without being bound by it. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 8 nightingales and folk artists ―there are so many nightingales in our garden. i don‘t know why they come to us,‖ alexei alexandrovich said, speaking of the family dacha or summer home just outside bishkek. ―there are many more luscious gardens there, but it is ours that they have chosen (author field notes)‖. born in tashkent in 1940, alexei alexandrovich is a guitarist, composer and metal artist of russian ethnicity. his kind, patient eyes sit above a rounded nose, and he has a welltrimmed white moustache and beard. delighting in the sights, sounds, scents, tastes, textures and movements of the natural world, alexei alexandrovich sees an intimate relationship with nature, engagement with the traditions of a given narod, and the experience of deep emotion to be the guiding principles of good art. according to alexei alexandrovich, these nightingales were his equal in composition. he loved their vocal richness and melodic complexities, calling them ―mozarts of the natural world‖. as a child, he had taught himself to catch and keep wild birds, becoming particularly fond of a red-feathered finch, which he described as a folk singernarodnyi pevets. echoing the description of any musician drawn forth from the folk-become-proletariat, alexei alexandrovich praised the bird for its ―beautiful yet unrefined‖ voice, and its creativity. he fondly remembered a captured bird who shared his apartment for seven years, until it was freed by a friend of his wife. alexei alexandrovich had been crushed by its departure: he affectionately recalled how the bird had been audience to his guitar practice: ―when i played the low notes, he didn‘t pay any attention, but as i moved up into the higher pitch range, he would cock his head and begin to sing.‖ as illustrated in the description of narodnyi pevets, alexei alexandrovich‘s views had been formed through the experience of soviet life and in close connection with soviet education and ideology. the depth, richness and complexity of his individual world, however, presents a challenge to long-standing concepts of unthinking adherence to ideology, lack of individual creativity and a one-way flow of culture. (un)bordered land; (un)bordered art having taught in the bishkek music conservatory (1969-1975), alexei alexandrovich set the structure for our meetings in an informal pedagogical style: after a lengthy informal conversation that inevitably slipped into a light meal with tea, vodka and toasts he chose a portion of his work for us to listen to together. the first piece alexei alexandrovich played was a portion of a symphony entitled ―fresco‖. making certain that i understood that a fresco is a painting made on plaster with pigments that dissolve in water, the composer offered me images of constantinople, byzantium and michelangelo, expressing uncertainty whether these images were whole, in ruins or fragmented within the music. the composition began with an evocation of a bell whose ringing historically heralded the events of russian life, followed by a string section, and then drums. somewhere in the resonance of bell, string and drum a guitar began playing. since its appearance in the european renaissance (14 th to 18 th century), guitar has anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 9 primarily been a chamber instrument, played within small ensembles and intimate performance settings rather than with an orchestra, making the guitar‘s role in this work of interest. early in our conversations alexei alexandrovich stated that understanding russian guitar requires understanding russian music, especially music within the russian art tradition. at the same time, the pairing of guitar and orchestra arose from a soviet model which set folk instruments in a western style ensemble or orchestra. alexei alexandrovich takes pride not only in his knowledge of and skill in seven-stringed russian guitar, but also in ―opening russian guitar up to the world‖ through the development a new genre. for alexei alexandrovich, however, these innovations are inseparable from the trajectory of history that has captured him and his guitar: asked how his parents had come to tashkent, alexei alexandrovich answered ―theirs was a tragic story intertwined with the tragic history of the state‖. after the bolshevik revolution came civil war, followed by hunger and famine. his grandparents starved to death and his parents became orphans. hearing there was food in tashkent, ―the city of bread‖, the villagers relocated. alexei alexandrovich moved from tashkent to bishkek because he ―married a woman with an apartment and family in kyrgyzstan; it was the soviet union so it was just like moving between states in the usa.‖ recounting his family‘s story, the composer became visibly agitated, saying he‘d ―like to visit some graves there in tashkent, but now there is a border‖. indeed, the sudden rise of borders within a formerly borderless world is one of the most striking aspects of post-soviet reality. the closing of the kyrgyz-uzbek border has affected not only the flow of people and goods but also musical life: for example, uyghur musicians living in kyrgyzstan reported having to change their route, traveling to urumchi rather than tashkent to buy instruments. this post-soviet reality is also captured in the following poem written by leonid borisovich diadiuchenko in praise of alexei alexandrovich, and quoted by alexei alexandrovich in a memorial piece about his friendship with the writer: таков уж наш хх век – such is our twentieth century сплошной поток «девятых валов». the constant flow of strong waves[of change]! вдруг заграницей стал бишкек all of a sudden bishkek became over-the-border и семиструнник агибалов. as did the seven-stringed agibalov. но у искусства нет границ, and yet, art is without borders виват талантливым и умным! long live the clever and talented! уральцы дружно пали ниц together the urals have prostrated themselves перед талантом семиструнным! before the talented seven-strings! (agibalov 2009) that these borders were not only social, political and economic but also linguistic, cultural and ideological was highlighted by a kyrgyz artist and instrument-maker who referred to the soviet period as ―the time before borders‖. although he felt estranged by these borders, alexei anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 10 alexandrovich replied ―i have not yet received a [cosmic] sign that it is time for me to run away from here.‖ the composer‘s attention to signs is part of a strong belief in destiny: ―we live in a prewritten script, simply we don‘t know what has been written,‖ he claimed. ―my coming to kyrgyzstan was part of a plan.‖ without mentioning god, alexei alexandrovich indicated a supreme force by pointing up at the sky. he explained that sometimes in his own mind he plays out another scenario: what if he had lived in moscow? how would the difference in place have affected his life and art? for alexei alexandrovich the answer lies in the historical status of the guitar in russia and its relocation to soviet kyrgyzstan: ―for russians,‖ the composer said, ―the guitar is the instrument of serfs, not kings; it is a low status instrument and due to that status, what could be done with it was very limited. in kyrgyzstan there were no preconceptions about guitar; i had the freedom to do things i could never do in moscow, like write symphonies for guitar and orchestra. ‖ although perhaps a marxist-leninist repositioning of an instrument once played in the courts of european noblemen, this view reveals how alexei alexandrovich found creative freedom in a new [soviet] time, space and audience. shostakovich as vagabond alexei alexandrovich‘s relationship to socialist realism is illustrated by his views on another russian composer about whom frolova-walker, richard taruskin and esti sheinberg have written: dmitri shostakovich (1906-1975) (sheinberg 2000; taruskin 1997; frolovawalker 2007). according to alexei alexandrovich, ―shostakovich is a bomzh.” bomzh is a shortened form of bez opredel’ ionnogo mesta zhitelstva, used to reference a person ‗without fixed abode. ‘ in the soviet union all residents were required to have propiska, a residency permit and fixed address, the lack of which made gaining regular employment impossible. being a bomzh was associated with parasitism or sharing in collective benefits without participating in collective responsibilities. in calling shostakovich a bomzh, alexei alexandrovich drew upon imagery of a useless, deviant and potentially dangerous vagabond. in doing so he created a metaphor for a perceived disconnect between shostakovich‘s work and his narod. according to alexei alexandrovich, shostakovich‘s work was not grounded in the art of the people or the work of prior composers and was therefore incomprehensible to audiences. this was decadence in music. decadence, alexei alexandrovich explained, is epitomized by a certain poet who erroneously wrote ‗my empty heart is my homeland‘. shostakovich‘s art was ‗without a national home‘ making both the composer and his work as useless, deviant and potentially dangerous as a vagabond. the better art was exemplified by georgy sviridov (1915-1998) who ―built a bridge over shostakovich from pyotr tchaikovsky (1840-1893) to the present day,‖ exemplified in his recreation of alexander pushkin‘s well-known short story ―metel‘‖ (1830) or ―blizzard‖ as it is known in english. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 11 despite advocating music rooted in a people, place and tradition alexei alexandrovich did not support nationalism as ―small music created by nationalistic musicians‖. he decried ―those [that] would make kyrgyzstan an island by saying our language, our culture, our music, are enough for us. this is absolute idiocy! during the ussr, kyrgyz people‘s level of civilization increased due to the intermingling of peoples and the friendship between nations [ethnicities]: great artists and great art were coming out of kyrgyzstan. but after the dissolution of the ussr and the (re)separation of peoples, culture in kyrgyzstan fell ―to the level of the yurt‖. implicit within the composer‘s statement is a perception that soviet progress—which sought to bring the nations and peoples of the soviet union to a single unified point in marx‘s historical trajectory—has been reversed. although the image of the yurt is evoked often and in differing ways within kyrgyzstan, in this particular instance, the composer presents the nomadic home as a site of patriarchy and feudalism which, according to soviet historians, had once plagued the kyrgyz proletariat. for alexei alexandrovich the reversal of progressive history was signaled by post-soviet chaos. this was as much exemplified in new year‘s celebrations where men, women and children shot noisy fireworks off in every direction as in the crowds of unruly protestors who had twice overtaken the kyrgyz white house. in 2005, these crowds had forced president askar akaev to flee from office and usurped president kurmanbek bakiev in 2010. likewise, an unsuccessful attempt to oust president almaz atambayev was made in 2012: ―playing guitar is all that saves me from this life,‖ the composer concluded. indeed, the affective, intellectual and creative pleasure of performing and composing seemed to counterbalance the social, economic and political instability that surrounded him. kyrgyz land; russian music one afternoon, alexei alexandrovich commented ―even the best of kyrgyz music is no more than twelve years old; at my age [seventy two] a twelve year old has nothing to offer.‖ evoking victorian theories on social evolution prevalent in the soviet union (grant 1995), this is a statement of musical taste and values: despite an astute musical ear, alexei alexandrovich cannot draw upon the kyrgyz language and its associated stories, histories and traditions in the same way a kyrgyz musician can. the nuances of timbre, so essential to komuz [kyrgyz: three stringed lute] performance, are lost upon the classically trained composer who does not know what it takes to be a virtuoso on the komuz. reduced to pitch and rhythm, komuz melodies are not complicated for a virtuoso guitarist and he prefers to hear them on the guitar, an instrument which he finds more sonorous. more importantly, these words are a statement of artistic identity. claiming that his ―umbilical cord went straight to russia‖ alexei alexandrovich established his music as part of the russian tradition, not the co-existent kyrgyz one. still, the russian composer had dedicated an evening‘s performance to kyrgyz and kazakh melodies. more so, he used kyrgyz melodies in his work. according to alexei alexandrovich this was a means of showing respect and thankfulness: ―i live on their land, in their country, and they help me every anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 12 time i need an orchestra or a radio.‖ in making such a statement alexei alexandrovich acknowledges his ethnic difference alongside the status of the kyrgyz as the khoziainy or rightful owners of kyrgyzstan. such statements disguise alexei alexandrovich‘s intimate relationship with kyrgyzstan as a place captured in the image of beauty, a bronze relief portrait of a nomadic woman whose beauty lies not only in her face framed by a hat and long beaded earrings but also in her skill on horseback, her courage in battle and her strength equal to that of a man. likewise, much of alexei alexandrovich‘s art has been formed from the stone, wood and clay of kyrgyzstan: one such piece is featured on the cover of a published version of his sonata no. 1 (agibalov 2010). while verbally distancing himself from the kyrgyz ethnicity and claiming an interest in kyrgyzstan‘s natural world alone, land and people are as inseparable in alexei alexandrovich‘s imagery as in stalin‘s definition of narod. the interest of a russian composer in kyrgyz folk motifs, however, stretches the concept of socialist realism so that the artist is free to draw upon more than the motifs of his own land, tradition or people. this play of ethnicity in image and in music is further displayed in the following conversation: ―what are they singing?‖ i asked in reference to three oval stones, each delightfully painted to resemble a singing kazakh. alexei alexandrovich responded with a laugh: ―once a person saw these and said ‗domingo, carreras, pavarotti‘ [a group of three operatic tenors formed in the 1990s]. it hadn‘t crossed my mind until he had said it. ‖ the imaginative incongruity of pastoral nomads pouring forth an operatic sound in unison paired with the ironic portrayal of world famous opera stars as central asian peasants amused the composer, and yet this image perfectly encapsulated soviet aspirations for central asia and its music. raising up the nation through art the first day that we met, alexei alexandrovich made a toast, quoting fyodor dostoyevsky (1821-1881): ―beauty saves the world‖. many months later, i attempted to use these words to illustrate how playing the komuz had helped dispel the effects of surgery, chemotherapy and melancholia for a kyrgyz musician with whom i was working simultaneously. alexei alexandrovich responded: ―that‘s not what dostoyevsky meant at all! do you think that the komuz can save the world? it cannot even save russia. do you think your kyl kyiak [kyrgyz: carved fiddle] can save america?!‖ in alexei alexandrovich‘s interpretation, dostoyevsky had been referring to the total transformation of the human race exemplified by ―indigo children‖. popularized on russian television, indigo children are bright, sensitive and precocious children with extraordinary memories and psychic powers. 3 alexei alexandrovich‘s assertion of their existence illustrates a belief in the possibility of human transformation, echoing the project of the russian avant-garde. after all, art in the soviet union did not exist simply for its own sake. according to alexei alexandrovich art served the purpose of ―raising the status of the human being above that anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 13 of skotina‖, a domesticated farm animal that tramples everything underfoot: ―music, like books, has the ability to raise a person‘s consciousness or destroy it. books can fill a person‘s mind with false information, foolish ideas or true information, good ideasit is the same with music‖. alexei alexandrovich asserted that ―globalization‖ had brought ―cancerous‖ ―american‖ genres such as rock, pop and rap into formerly soviet spaces such as kyrgyzstan, causing people to listen to ―bad music‖ and music, as well as society, to be ―destroyed in the process.‖ for alexei alexandrovich the existence of these genres and their influx were the very effects of global capitalism and cultural imperialism which, due to its dissolution, the soviet union could no longer strive to counteract. commenting on rap music, alexei alexandrovich asked rhetorically: ―how can the descendants of slaves, uncultivated people who have received no educationproduce great music?‖ in saying this, alexei alexandrovich was not directly referring to ideas of racial inferiority propagated in europe and the americas, but to soviet constructions of africanamericans as an oppressed people and potential proletariat (fikes and lemon 2008; matusevich, 2008). like his evocation of the image of the feudal and patriarchal yurt, the composer‘s use of the image of the oppressed and uncultivated slave placed african american people and their art in a particular point in marx‘s trajectory of history. perhaps in an effort to find an example relevant to his american listener, alexei alexandrovich turned to the pop star, michael jackson (1958-2009), using the performer and his music to further illustrate the negative effects of capitalism on musical life. according to the composer, when compared to the love poems of mikhail lermontov (1814-1841) or alexander pushkin (1799-1837), jackson‘s lyrics fell short, serving only to objectify and commodify female sexuality. more so, the composer claimed that jackson‘s rise to fame resulted not from genuine artistry but rather from ―the development of a new technology of dance‖. thus, just as the capitalism encouraged slavery and stunted the development of people, so did it reduce sexual encounters to market exchanges and artistry to technological innovation. although such attitudes may seem strange to the generally educated american reader, they are the views of an educated man whose intellectual life was formed through soviet experience and yet who has lived to see a completely different time. alexei alexandrovich is acutely aware of his existence in a shifting reality: speaking of his publisher and friend, matanya ophee (b. 1932), alexei alexandrovich marveled that he had found an american—a person of the nation to whose politics he had always been opposed—so knowledgeable about russian guitar. not only had he discovered this person to be one of his long time listeners, but after the collapse of the soviet union this american had also became an important patron of his art. alexei alexandrovich‘s consideration of american culture, music, economy and politics has much to do with the composer‘s negotiation of shifting social, economic and cultural paradigms in a new post-soviet reality. it is much to the composer‘s horror that the music and dance style of jackson has become popular even in kyrgyzstan where the pop star is seen as an icon of american culture, celebrated, mourned and memorialized like any soviet artist. lacking an appetite for popular anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 14 music that might allow exploration of the nuances of these genres, alexei alexandrovich finds little difference between kyrgyz, russian or american versions of pop, rock or rap. at the same time, the composer‘s negative observations are not anomalous. his kyrgyz counterparts also attribute changes in folk forms to the influence of popular music, citing a generational difference in the quality of voice or the use of more song-like melodies in ritual performance. indeed, within my own observation audience impatience and misreading of performance cues were indicative of shifting musical values and changes in standard performance practices arising alongside a new economy. for alexei alexandrovich these changes were crystallized in the persona of jackson as the transformative power of art gone wrong, furthering all that is oppressive, dysfunctional and hideous. in claiming that when jackson ―began to change his lips, his nose, the color of his skin, he became a demonsomething frightening to behold‖, the composer demonstrated a perception that such music is the very antithesis of soviet dreams for the creation of a new society and a new kind of person. ―but when you were young there must have been music which older people hated and younger people loved,‖ i argued. ―when i was young, all music, all poetry and all art was screened by a board of professionals before it was let out into the public,‖ alexei alexandrovich stated. this served as a startling reminder that even 22 years after the dissolution of the soviet union there are those who believe soviet censorship of the arts had benefited the greater good, as unchecked music could potentially reverse the flow of history and soviet progress. an internal world, one of unbelievable wonder one afternoon, alexei alexandrovich offered a brief history of american imperialism: it had begun with the conquistadors, the expansion of territory and the development of slavery. it could still be seen in the occupy wall street movement beginning in new york on september 17 th , 2011. through protest of corporate influence on politics and income inequality in the u. s. ―the american people have gone the way of marx and lenin!‖ referencing leon trotsky, harry truman, and u. s. intervention in iraq, afghanistan and libya, alexei alexandrovich painted a picture of ideological wars and the games of superpowers. ―and amidst all this,‖ the composer commented wryly, ―agibalov plays guitar.‖ ―and why does agibalov play guitar?‖ i inquired. ―it is an internal world, one of unbelievable wonder,‖ he replied. alexei alexandrovich‘s internal world was indeed filled with wonder: the living room in his simple two-bedroom apartment featured a series of well-lit shelves filled with cut and polished stones, crystal, bone, petrified wood and fossils. all of these were artifacts from his journeys throughout the soviet union and abroad. these shelves were a museum of memories. showing the plain and uninteresting exterior of an ordinary rock, alexei alexandrovich flipped the object to reveal a beautiful crystal interior. for the composer these were the secrets and treasures of a beloved natural world, whose discovery brought him happiness. anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 15 asked how he had learned to recognize them, alexei alexandrovich answered, ―i learned over time, going places, looking at things…also people know. if they trust that you are not a thief and believe you can keep a secret they will take you to the places. ‖ alexei alexandrovich commented that working with stone helps with guitar: one has to be careful –accuratewhen opening a stone; one also to be careful –accurateplaying something new. for him both arts involved a similar process of opening and refining that which was already present in stone, wood or music. just as the stones had their internal ―hidden‖ beauty, so did places and people. although he never said it directly, alexei alexandrovich was just as interested in the emotional world ―hidden‖ inside the individual person as he was interested in the beauty locked inside of a seemingly plain and ordinary rock. unlocking deep emotion as a musician alexei alexandrovich was keenly aware of art‘s ability to inspire deep emotion as illustrated in a nightmarish account of a performance in a soviet women‘s prison: upon entering the prison, the musicians were led through eight rows of female inmates, ages 17 to 90, into a concert hall seating 300. dressed in long sleeves and skirts, with grey woolen shawls tied over heads and around hips, the women had done up their hair, making ornamental pieces from rags. the performance began with romances, a lyrical genre of sung poetry. as the guitarist played members of the audience cried out, moaned and wept. feeling choked and threatened by pent up passions, alexei alexandrovich anticipated a riot. when the performance was over, he vowed never to do it again. likewise alexei alexandrovich touched upon these deep emotions in remembering a dear friend and writer, leonid borisovich diadiuchenko, whose poetry is quoted above. according to alexei alexandrovich, diadiuchenko was killed by the restructuring of the soviet political and economic system known as perestroika. on his deathbed, the writer barely had strength to listen to the guitarist. after hearing only three pieces, he told alexei alexandrovich ‗it‘s enough‘. he died the next day. in recounting these sad memories, the composer commented that ―out of the millions who had died [from perestroika] this one had wanted to leave with the sound of seven-stringed guitar‖. these memories are also recounted by alexei alexandrovich in an essay whose title references ‗poema de la siguiriya gitana‘ by federico garcia lorca (1898-1936) (agibalov 2009). on another occasion the composer had the opportunity to hear lorca‘s poem read in its original language, spanish. the reader had wept, opening a new aspect of his friend‘s lichnost’, or person, for the audience present. although a well-documented aspect of audience-performer interactions, affective response remains little explored in soviet and post-soviet contexts (schieffelin 1976; feld 1982). anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 16 conclusion the internal world of an artist glimpsed through affective experiences, memories, friendships, engagements with the natural world and creative acts is a little touched upon topic in discussions of socialist realism, especially in central asia. at the same time, individual worlds such as that exemplified by alexei alexandrovich are entangled in larger histories and social processes of which art itself is an extension. the same soviet cultural policies which brought about the concept of narod and the resulting constructions of ethnicity and nation have also formed a distinctive artistic tradition –socialist realismwith which contemporary artists, knowingly or unknowingly, remain closely engaged. if for stalin this had been the pairing of a people to territory, for alexei alexandrovich this had been the pairing of an artist, as representative of a people, to a landscape. likewise the transformative aspects of this project initiated by the russian avant-garde have not been lost. for better or for worse, its aims are changing as kyrgyzstan and its citizens navigate shifting post-socialist realities. references cited abdeed, khalid 1998 the politics of muslim reform: jadism in central asia. university of california press: berkley. 2006 backwardness and the quest for civilization: early soviet central asia in comparative perspective. in slavic review vol. 65, no. 2, pp. 231-25. accessed through jstor: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4148591 aitpaeva, gulnara 2009 sacred sites in kyrgyzstan: spiritual mission, health and pilgrimage. in nature, space and the sacred edited by s. bergmann, p. m. scott, m. jamsdotter samuelsson, h. bedford-strohm, 249-257. surry: ashgate publishing limited. agibalov, alexei 2006 plach guitary. in literary kyrgyzstan. bishkek. march 2009: http://www.literatura.kg 2010 sonata no. 1 for russian seven-stringed guitar. columbus: editions orphée, inc. anderson, benedict 1992 imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verso. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4148591 http://www.literatura.kg/ anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 17 bakhtin, mikhail 1982 the dialogic imagination. austin: university of texas press. bromley, julian and kozlov, viktor 1989 the theory of ethnos and ethnic processes in soviet social sciences. in comparative studies in society and history vol. 31, no. 3: 425-438. cambridge university press: accessed through jstor. http://www.jstor.org/stable/178765 daftari, fereshteh 1992 the influence of persian art on gauguin, matisse and kandinsky. new york: garland publishing, inc. during, jean 2005 power, authority and music in the cultures of inner asia. in ethnomusicology forum vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 143-164. accessed through jstor: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20184516 feld, steven 1982 sound and sentiment. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. fikes, kesha and alaina lemon 2002 african presence in former soviet spaces. in annual review of anthropology vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 497-52. accessed through jstor: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4132890 frolova-walker, marina 1998 national in form, socialist in content: musical nation building in the soviet republics. in journal of the american musicology society vol. 51, no. 2. pp. 331-372. 2007 russian music and nationalism from galinka to stalin. yale university press, new haven. grant, bruce 1995 in the soviet house of culture: a century of peroistroikas. princeton university press: princeton. http://www.jstor.org/stable/178765 http://www.jstor.org/stable/20184516 http://www.jstor.org/stable/4132890 anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 18 groys, boris 1992 the total art of stalinism: avant garde, aesthetic, dictatorship and beyond. new jersey: princeton university press. hirsch, francine 2005 empire of nations: ethnographic knowledge and the making of the soviet union. cornell university: new york. hood, mantle 1960 the challenge of ‗bi-musicality.‘ in ethnomusicology, vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 5559. accessed through jstor: http://www.jstor.org/stable/924263 iğman, ali 2012 speaking soviet with an accent: culture and power in kyrgyzstan, pittsburgh: university of pittsburgh press. khlebnikov, velimir 1990 the king of time. paul schmidt, trans. harvard university press: cambridge. kleinman, arthur and byrom good, eds. 1995 culture and depression: studies in the anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry of affect and disorder. berkley: university of california press. kristeva, julia 1989 black sun: depression and melancholia. new york: columbia university press. lacan, jacque 1977 ecrits. alan sheridan, trans. london: tavistock publications. levin, theodore 1984 the musical tradition of the bukharan shashmaqam in soviet uzbekistan. ph. d. dissertation, princeton university. 1996 the hundred thousand fools of god. bloomington: indiana university press. matusevich, maxim 2008 black in the u. s. s. r.. in transition, no. 100, pp. 56-75. accessed through jstor: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20542544 http://www.jstor.org/stable/924263 http://www.jstor.org/stable/20542544 anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 19 morrison, simon 1998 skryabin and the impossible. in journal of the american musicological society, vol. 51, no. 2, pp. 283-330. accessed through jstor: http://www.jstor.org/stable/831979 prior, daniel 2000 patron, party, patrimony, notes on the cultural history of the kirghiz epic tradition. papers on inner asia, 33. bloomington: research institute for inner asian studies. pritchard, maureen 2012 creativity and sorrow in kyrgyzstan. in journal of folklore research. vol. 48, no. 2. bloomington: university of indiana press. sheinberg, esti 2000 irony, satire, parody and the grotesque in the music of shostakovich: a theory of musical incongruities. burlington: ashgate publishing. schieffelin, edward 1976 the sorrow of the lonely and the burning of the dancers. st. martin‘s press: new york. taruskin, richard 1997 defining russia musically. princeton: princeton university press. tishkov, valery 1998 ethnicity, nationalism and conflict in and after the soviet union. london: sage publications. weis, peg 1995 kandinsky and old russia. new haven: yale university press. 1 reported by irina rudakova in a news article entitled ‗zamira muratbekova: renaming the capital manas helps awaken kyrgyz talents‘ published august 9, 2011: http://www.knews.kg/ru/society/1574/ 2 for more detail see the report of the independent international commission of inquiry into the events of southern kyrgyzstan (june 2010) at http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/full_report_490. pdf and the kyrgyz http://www.jstor.org/stable/831979 http://www.knews.kg/ru/society/1574/ http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/full_report_490.%20pdf anthropology of east europe review 31 (1) spring 2013 20 government‘s response to this report at http://www.fergananews.com/archive/2011/kg_comments_english_final.pdf 3 the term ‗indigo children‘ was first coined by american synesthete and psychic, nancy anne tappe: http://www.nancyanntappe.com/home http://www.fergananews.com/archive/2011/kg_comments_english_final.pdf http://www.nancyanntappe.com/home anthropology of east europe review 33(2) fall 2015 101 nila ginger hofman. women and capitalism in the croatian hinterland. the practice of labor and consumption. lexington books, 2015. 174 pages. bibliography. index. $xxx, hard bound. elena gapova, western michigan university/ european humanities university (belaruslithuania) consumption as a social and cultural practice and a form of economic behavior is often overlooked in research of socialism and post-socialism. nila ginger hofman makes an important contribution to the topic with her “women and capitalism in the croatian hinterland,” where she seeks “to examine how women remembered the socialist era and how they participate and negotiate the capitalist present focusing on the spheres of earning and spending” (117). hofman, whose evidence comes from interviews and participant observation, employs a “blended approach” of examining production and consumption together, rather than segregating them. this perspective, she argues compellingly, helps to reveal the normative forces that mediate women’s participation in the social spheres of labor and consumption, and to make sense of the experiences and worldviews of those who lived both in socialism and in the croatian new capitalism. as a part of former yugoslavia, whose socialist regime was rather open and allowed travel and some free enterprise, croatia enjoyed a rather comfortable life style, and hofman captures “yugonostalgia” for the good part of socialism with its paid vacations, generous benefits (especially for women), and the feeling of comradery at work. her informants fondly recollect “shopping trips” to neighboring italian and austrian border towns, as the consumption of western goods, which were believed to be of better quality, was a way to express status, individuality, and group identity. at the same time, mass-produced things could be found illfitting and not made for “croatian bodies,” and women who belonged to the rising urban professional class developed a desire for personal attention and boutique-style consumption. thus, as hofman explains, one of the peculiarities of “yugoslav consumerism” was a “do it yourself” (diy) approach. for example, customers worked together with their tailors on creating outfits, had things made to their order, and felt involved in the production process, rather than alienated from it. another shopping trend that defined the era was “buying fresh” daily at a local downtown market. diy, “buying fresh,” and some other consumer practices were aligned with domestic economy and a particular sense of (national) self. hofman argues that contrary to socialist practices, “the rhetoric of capitalist consumption is focused on the availability of choices, thereby enabling a consumer model associated with “individual choice” (38). in independent croatia, this pattern stands for being european, as it came to life amidst debates and hopes for accession into the european union, and alongside the advent of capitalism and globalization. as big supermarkets were ousting traditional grocery stores that used to sell locally grown food, women’s work schedules also changed to be in sync with capitalist business efficiency. those shifts affected food shopping habits, meal preparation and eating rituals, as less time for family and leisure leads to different consumer experiences, e.g. on-the-go consumer practices, and the waning of “slow food” and café culture. at the same time, as it was discovered that ready-made clothes are tailored for “the young, tall, and very thin” (70), some dissatisfaction with western mass-produced goods arrived, and many of hofman’s anthropology of east europe review 33(2) fall 2015 102 informants started missing things made specifically for them. the current capitalist market as it exists in croatia, provides fewer options for individuation (compared to tailor services), while in the new liberal economy, diy practices take the function of survival skills. thus, as hofman demonstrates persuasively, gender, labor, and consumption mutually shape and reinforce one another. hofman’s book excels in demonstrating the change in the texture of society through emerging class differentiation on both ends of the production/consumption continuum. as masses of women moved from paid employment with state-guaranteed benefits into cottage industries (like the production of soft cheese and cream on a family farm) and service jobs, many struggle with the feeling that the old system might have provided them with more respect. looking back, some tend to think, if realistically, that their life had a purpose and they were making a difference; having lived through a painful period of privatization and growing unemployment, they may see business as another word for stealing and think of their work as catering for the rich. new work cultures offer less community and are described as focusing on efficiency and calculability, and hofman conceptualizes these changes as the beginnings of the mcdonaldization process, as it was described by the american sociologist george ritzer. in the new context, “buying fresh,” which demands more time and effort, becomes a form of patriotism and may be associated with standing for traditional and nationalist values. a feeling of nostalgia for the past is a form of dissatisfaction with and a way to criticize neoliberal power structures and economic disparity on the part of certain generational cohorts, who resist them through diy and local consumption. the younger generation, though, who did not experience socialism directly, may see international shopping malls as a great convenience, as “mass produced-goods are created and marketed with the younger generation in mind” (124), and serve as a resource for looking modern and european via a particular consumption pattern. “women and capitalism in the croatian hinterland” provides an insight into the often neglected connection between consumption and production as a meaning-making process linked to identity construction and marking social status. in doing so, the book contributes to important debates about the nature of post-socialist nostalgia for the “old system” and the ambivalent consequences of trade liberalization, modernity and the inclusion in the eu. it can be appropriate for both undergraduates and graduate students, as well as social scientists researching the post-socialist region. anthropology of east europe review 33(1) spring 2015 93 politicized justice in emerging democracies: a study of courts in russia and ukraine. by maria popova. cambridge: cambridge university press, 2012. 197 pp. notes. bibliography. index. tables. monica e. eppinger, j.d., ph.d. saint louis university, school of law and department of sociology and anthropology some works are a credit to their craft. such is maria popova's politicized justice in emerging democracies, a treasure of qualitative research. the target of her inquiry is judicial functioning in post-authoritarian states. to investigate what factors promote the development of independent courts and what factors undermine it (2012:2), popova conducts what anthropologists will recognize as controlled comparison of courts in post-soviet russia and ukraine in the late 1990s and early 2000s. going beyond high-profile cases--the khodorkovsky, the tymoshenko-popova selects two kinds of politically sensitive cases, electoral registration and press defamation, to focus on the lower courts. digging further, popova collects background information on litigants in over 1,000 disputes. in this research and through her interviews with officials, lawyers, and litigants, the qualitative richness shines. among studies of "law on the books" versus "law in action," a staple of law and society research, popova's work will stand as a valuable contribution. chapter 6 alone, on informal practices, breaks compelling new ground in our understanding of post-soviet judicial work, detailing from the standpoint of participants some of the "backstage" mechanisms that determine "front stage" judicial holdings. popova is a political scientist, and qualitative method is only a co-star of her production. outside of chapters six and seven--on politicians' capacity and willingness to pressure the courts-qualitative data are used in service of quantitative analysis. anthropologists turned off by reductionist-seeming number-crunching will appreciate her herculean efforts to use qualitative data to understand the 800 defamation suits and 252 electoral registration disputes she sorts and analyzes. the resulting calculations of victory probabilities for pro-government litigants lead to her counterintuitive finding: a pro-government litigant is less likely to win a suit in electorallyuncompetitive russia than in electorally competitive ukraine. she formulates a "strategic pressure theory" which states that political competition "hinders rather than promotes the maintenance of independent courts" (2012:3, emphasis in the original). to professional rule-of-law promoters, popova offers three conclusions and one suggestion. first, although "legacies"--"telephone justice," ex parte communications, and other practices alleged of soviet times--matter, the disparity between russia and ukraine shows that the past informs but does not control the present (2012:173). second, an independent judiciary cannot be created through institutional engineering (2012:173). the implication is that the rarity of the rule of law outside of "old consolidated democracies" is not merely due to post-soviet recalcitrance or incompetence in adopting institutional innovations. third, struggle between anthropology of east europe review 33(1) spring 2015 94 political factions does not necessarily have positive effects on rule of law, which she equates with judicial independence. political competition "eggs on, rather than restrains, power-hungry politicians" and their use of the courts (2012:173). this is the kind of helpful dissociation popova offers, here de-coupling "rule of law" from "democracy," if the latter means competitive, unpredictable elections. her closing suggestion is that rather than focus on the judiciary per se, rule-of-law promoters attend to fostering "democratic institutions" such as institutionalized parties and free press (2012:174). this strong normative bent, the quantitative analysis, and taking terms at face value square with the aesthetics of her home discipline. however, popova's scope--looking at interrelationships with non-judicial institutions, looking into details of control over judges' pay and symbolic capital like invitations to conferences--avoids the compartmentalization that sometimes frustrates anthropologists with political science. while some of the qualitative data are reminiscent of what an anthropologists of law would expect from a good courtroom ethnography (for example, sally merry's getting justice and getting even (1990)), this work is not a courtroom study, nor does it use extended case method, ethnography of speaking, or other analytics familiar to anthropologists of courts. in fact, a commendable strength of this work is that it looks beyond the dynamics of a single court to patterns across a national jurisdiction. anthropology could stand more of this. the anthropologist often wants more context and inquiring into categories, and this is where popova leaves room for anthropology to do its work. the book might be seen as thin on analysis of historical context. its cases come from a time of attempted strong-arm presidencybuilding by kuchma, and domestic critique thereof, in ukraine and stealth takeover of multiparty democracy by the intelligence services and other social formations behind putin in russia. how popova would characterize these processes--as anomalous, straight-line trajectory, oscillating, or what have you--are important because she is interested in using her results to understand the present and future. popova calls the period "post-authoritarian" and these polities, "emerging democracies." both of these characterizations seem off. continuities carry through her description of the courts; whether the u.s.s.r. was authoritarian or not, whatever time it is now, it is not post-. likewise, neither an "undemocratic" past nor a democratic future are obvious. so emergent, yes; but "emerging democracies," perhaps not. the major omission from her conceptualization of the state is what ukrainian and russian observers of the 1990s called "financial-industrial groups" [figs] or "clans" (klany). what about oligarchy? she mentions oligarchs but leaves out oligarchic formations. assumed categories of public and private arising out of the epistemic background of liberalism frame her inquiry. these categories seem particularly suspect in light of the formative milieu of state socialism, shaped as it was by their erasure. in her vignettes of small-potatoes electoral manipulation in out-of-the-way places, the reader recognizes an aspiration to thoroughness and monopolization that marks klany. the cases also point to the importance of the "rule of law" in the minds of persistent violators: they strive, in a post-rupture period of re-making fundamental rules, to control the seats of the rule-makers. if rule of law is conceptualized as both ideology anthropology of east europe review 33(1) spring 2015 95 and practice, perhaps popova would have found ukrainian or russian office-holders or judges lacking on only one score. in other words, popova has left room for an epilogue. rich fields await: an exploration of parliament in the case of ukraine and the executive branch in the case of russia; an expanded vision of fields of competition in the former and self-censorship in the latter; and an inquiry into general categories like "ukraine" and "russia." disciplinary aesthetics assert themselves: the anthropologist is left wishing for an ethnography of justice in the context of rupture. one would be lucky to have as thoughtful and thorough a researcher take on that task as maria popova. that is the challenge her work leaves anthropology. larisa kurtovic anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 242 what is a nationalist? some thoughts on the question from bosnia-herzegovina larisa kurtović, university of california, berkeley this short piece offers an ethnographic analysis of political dynamics in a small, divided town in central bosnia 1 , while also reflecting on some recurrent assumptions about the nature of nationalist politics and belonging in the balkans. when it comes to this country, researchers and political reformists face a serious conundrum: despite 16 years of internationally sponsored reconciliation and rebuilding purportedly aimed at creating a unified state, the country's voters continue to give their preference to rival nationalist parties. subsequently, many analyses suggest that bosnian croats, serbs and bosniaks (muslims) remain convinced of the saliency of nationalism, its categories and the forms of political organization it offers. the conclusion that seems to follow is that because the majority of country’s citizens choose nationalists as their “legitimate” representatives, they are themselves nationalists. even some anthropologists, such as hayden (2007), argue that electoral numbers in the region reflect the “true” native's point of view—that of a nationalist—which may make us uncomfortable but will also give access to some kind of a "real" that must be a starting point for both analysis and political intervention. on the other hand, international “humanitarians” and liberal reformists in bosnia will make abundant use of the same conundrum to insist that nationalism is a form of false consciousness that can be eradicated through education, increase in political literacy, and confrontation with cold, hard facts (about corruption, inefficiency, poverty, etc.) i want to complicate this view of nationalism as a “matter of conviction” by narrating the story of zlata 2 , a young woman in town who was rumored, despite her repeated rebuttals, to be a member of a nationalist party. in the course of this move, i turn towards the processes whereby people come to enact, reproduce and make real nationalist frameworks irrespective of their values or intentions. in my analysis, the very figure of the nationalist becomes a theoretical, ethical and political problem rather than an empirical reality. 3 one snowy february morning in 2009, after seesawing on a small brown bus for over a half an hour, i made my way to a village adjacent to the bosnian town of jajce where i had been living since early fall. i journeyed up the hill and through the thick snow to meet my new friend and informant, zlata, a land surveyor in her mid-twenties, who was working in the field. at that time, zlata was an employee of the local government agency; on this particular day, upon learning i had not spent much time in the villages, she had invited me to tag along while she was doing some inspections. on the way back to the town in the municipal vehicle, she began telling me how fortunate she felt to get this job after returning to her hometown with a college degree earned in the capital city. she proudly recounted to me that at the time of her applying for the position, she was the only candidate with the degree specified in the job announcement. this unique convergence of circumstance helped her secure a coveted government job that provided security and a guaranteed paycheck not many of her neighbors could boast in the declining town economy. my contact with zlata provided me with a unique perspective on the political life of the town i was studying that had over the course of the previous 20 years gone from being a symbolic heartland of yugoslav socialism 4 to becoming one of bosnia’s infamous ethnically anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 243 divided communities. zlata’s story of impoverished exile and return to her hometown made specific the general chronology of events. during the war, jajce underwent two separate military takeovers, the first in 1992 by serb and the second in 1995 by croat armies. this wartime experience had, at one point or another, made refugees out of almost all of the town’s residents, whose composition according to the 1991 census consisted of 28% serbs, 14% croats, 38.9% bosniaks and 16.3% of yugoslavs. due to the war, jajce lost an estimated 55% of its original inhabitants, who today live scattered around the world, with a large number in diasporic communities in northern europe. because of this wartime history, its microgeography and the very character of the dayton peace agreement (upon which i subsequently elaborate), in the postwar period jajce became an ethnically divided town administered by cadres from croat and bosniak nationalist parties and privatized by patrons loyal to them. while the majority of returnees are bosniak and croat, very few serb families have returned; meanwhile, other refugees from elsewhere have replaced some of the exiled population. after returning to their hometown, people like zlata had to make a life amidst these ruins and according to new rules of the game. during the initial postwar period, this process was especially difficult for bosniak and serb returnees, who had to face an unfriendly and unyielding postwar government controlled by the croat nationalist party hdz (hrvatska demokratska zajednica—croatian democratic community) 5 . croat nationalists emphasized that croat fighters had “liberated” jajce by defeating the serb army and because of this, laid claim to it. meanwhile, bosniaks were prevented from returning, claiming their property and taking their jobs back. hence, new conflicts and new sorts of resentment between bosniaks and croats in jajce became possible in the early stages of the postwar period. over the next eight years in light of pressures exerted by international overseeing organizations, the population of returnees grew and political and demographic balance shifted. in 2004, residents of jajce elected their first postwar bosniak mayor. when i arrived in the fall of 2008, the town had been “recovering” from another round of local elections, which gave another mandate to that same mayor, a cadre of the largest bosniak nationalist party, the sda (stranka demokratske akcije: party of democratic action) 6 . his reelection was not without controversy. many people i talked to in those early weeks said very critical things about the mayor’s penchant for favoring his kin and neighbors in distributing resources, jobs and perks. such criticism was widespread among bosniaks, some of whom confided in me that they personally preferred the croat candidate as an individual but chose to invalidate their ballots rather than vote for a croat nationalist party that had victimized them. indeed, when it came to the ballot box, residents of jajce, as many other citizens of bosnia i talked to during my fieldwork, did not simply “vote for” candidates but engaged in many other alternative practices including “voting against,” partial voting, ballot invalidation, drawing and writing profanities on the ballot, adding names of absurd candidates and so on 7 . moreover, it was thanks to zlata that i first learned of various types of organized political intimidation in town, such as that of “terrain teams”—pairs of nationalist parties’ members who paid townspeople “reminder visits” on election day. through such stories and encounters, i began to question the tacit link between the continued electoral successes of nationalist parties and questions of political convictions among the town’s residents. but a few weeks after my visit to the villages, i mentioned zlata’s employment history casually in a conversation with a mutual friend, who quickly declared that zlata had gotten her position not on account of her qualifications, but as a member of the sda, which had just secured a majority in the town council. i protested at this accusation, explaining anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 244 that zlata already told me she did not belong to any political party, and had expressed views that in my mind made her sda affiliation unlikely. nevertheless, my friend insisted that zlata was lying to me and everyone else, concealing her party affiliation from the public, because she wanted to eschew criticism. her reluctance to admit where she stood in relation to sda testified to the fact such an affiliation posed a problem in this context, irrespectively of whether the primary motivator was personal concordance with sda’s political program and nationalist ideology or opportunism. notably, my interlocutors in jajce often conflated the figure of a nationalist with that of an opportunist, underlining the fact that both orientations were morally compromising, socially undesirable and seemingly constitutive of each other. over the next few days, i asked several of my other informants whether they thought zlata belonged to the sda, and all of them told me that she was almost certainly a member, citing as evidence her job and her allegedly close working relationship with the nationalist mayor. zlata’s structural position and the work she was doing provided all the necessary proof for turning a rumor into fact; in this context holding a public sector job was understood to be the ultimate index of one’s political affiliation. but there were other things to consider as well: one informant told me zlata herself was a member of one of those terrain teams formed to “encourage” people to vote. in light of these conversations, i too began to wonder whether i had been duped. when i eventually asked zlata about all this, she briefly denied the rumors, and quickly changed the subject. a few subsequent interactions that i examine here produced more doubt over whether my informant was indeed concealing a part of the story. to this day, i cannot say with certainty whether or not zlata had been telling the truth in rebutting others’ accusations 8 . in what follows, i dwell on the case of this puzzling ethnographic interlocutor, not in order to ascertain whether or not zlata was deceiving me 9 , but to consider what her ambiguous situation may help us understand about the conditions under which one comes into being as a political subject in post-war bosnia. while asking questions about zlata’s unclear position with respect to sda, and everyone else’s investment in resolving it, i suggest that in contemporary bosnia, a person’s nationalist (or otherwise political) stance should not be thought simply as a reflection of ideological conviction and intention. as these forms of interiority remain both publicly inaccessible and possibly also internally fraught with inconsistencies, it may be more productive to study political positionality in terms of what people actually do. my informants evaluated political stance of others in terms of concrete behaviors; these behaviors in turn made sense only in relation to structural position of these persons in the context of specific activities. the conscripting, disciplining character of this context which sets the conditions of possibility for action often remains invisible to those who believe loyalty to nationalist elites is a product of indoctrination, trans-historical group attributes and deeply held beliefs (which may be seen as either justifiable or irrational). resisting the urge to label zlata merely an opportunist, in closing i suggest that her ambiguity is both a reflection and a product of unfinished consolidation of nationalist order of things and people. with that point in mind, i show how some forms of uncertainty create ambiguous forms of politics and personhoods that are at once sites of surrender and room for maneuver in modern day bosnia. by focusing on zlata and the rumors that followed her, i provide a more analytically rigorous view of how some residents of postwar bosnia negotiate limits and possibilities of political belonging. ultimately, i seek to both problematize the notion of the “native’s point of view” and facile representations of bosnian political subjectivities as completely caught within the matrices of “old” and “new” nationalisms. in the first part, i describe the political grid anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 245 created by wartime campaigns of ethnic cleansing and postwar efforts to create an ethnic democracy, showing how efforts to clearly demarcate difference, political loyalty and belonging produce their own contradictions and ambivalences. next, by considering notions of ethical personhood deployed by my informants, i look at how political ambiguity, and purposeful incoherence of political actions and motifs, enables one’s simultaneous existence in multiple worlds, and leaves open the possibility for multiple personal and collective futures. political subjectification in post-war bosnia: from violence to the dayton accords and back since the early 1990s, bosnia-herzegovina has become a place defined by narratives of ethnic persecution, which in turn helped shape understandings of politics and notions of loyalty among bosnian citizens as being primarily defined in ethno-nationalist terms. the dayton agreement, signed in november 1995, ended the war and preserved the bosnian state, while also partitioning the country into two large ethno-territorial units 10 : the federation (controlled by bosniaks and croats) and the serb republic. as a result of wartime population expulsions and the unrealized process of refugee return and post-war informal exchanges of real estate property, for the first time in history, ethnic difference was clearly mapped onto territory, with serbs, croats and muslims now living in ethnically homogenous communities (see ćurak 2002). the uneasy alliance brokered by the us in march 1994 between muslims and croats (following military confrontations in herzegovina and central bosnia during ’93-’94) was mitigated by further administrative division of the federation into ten cantons, seven of which are dominated by a single national group, and another three which are “mixed.” because of their complex governance, these mixed cantons and their towns and municipalities, have in the post-war period come to represent the immoralities, contradictions and absurdities of ethno-nationalist politics. while patterns of ethnic identification have a complex and much longer history in bosnia than i can examine in this paper, contemporary serbs, croats and bosniaks face a new set of institutional and legal arrangements. the nationalist grid, its forms of belonging, legitimation, and claims to truth are not just a product of war, but of postwar transformations enforced through the dayton accords. by inscribing ethnic difference in the law, and mapping it onto territory, the provisions of dayton helped preserve the power of nationalist elites who organized the bloodshed in the first place. this power became especially salient in small towns like jajce, where the mixed character of the population and limited resources in turn create the perfect conditions for reinforcement of ethnic difference. clientilist networks, party patronage, careful distribution of resources and job assignments further reinforce these divisions 11 . my informants in sarajevo, who blamed the population “in the provinces” for the continued electoral victories of incompetent and corrupt nationalist parties, often remained blind to these dimensions of political life in towns like jajce. while underscoring alleged political ignorance, lack of sophistication and inherent nationalism of these “provincial,” small-town populations, sarajevans were ignoring the distinct ways in which these spatialized communities were offering themselves to exercises of power 12 . in jajce, like in many other divided towns in mixed cantons, the dominance of nationalist “elites” and the echoes of experienced traumas, have since 1995 led to the emergence of social segregation among muslims and croats, most powerfully illustrated in the case of ethnically segregated schools. yet from the very beginning, up until today, such forms of separation remained incomplete and contested. a number of my informants proclaimed that that jajce was not like mostar, never having become segregated to the same extent, ostensibly due to the fact anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 246 that no actual wartime fighting between muslims and croats took place in the town proper. moreover, material limitations stood in the way of realization of ideological projects. for example, while schools were indeed ethnically segregated at the k-8 level, croat and muslim children were generally placed back together during high school, because there simply were not enough students or funds to keep in place a parallel system of ethnic gymnasiums and vocational secondary schools. by the time of my arrival, all cafés in jajce were being frequented by both croats and bosniaks, which had not been the case in earlier years. private firms hired workers from both “groups;” bosniaks worked during croat (catholic) holidays and vice versa. as i discovered in the course of my research, divided towns, despite being demonized in the eyes of the sarajevan cosmopolitans and foreign emissaries, produced unique sites for interethnic intimacy, which were becoming less available in the ethnically homogenized, non-divided communities. moreover, the proximity of “others” shaped the desired forms of belonging in distinct ways. ethical personhood and the trouble with being a nationalist although wartime and postwar experiences dramatically altered political and social conditions in jajce, individual actions also remained subject to long standing ideas about how one ought to act in relation to the realm of official politics. such normative understandings of proper forms of personhood, i argue, are not only a product of unique socialist era histories but are also at the heart of discussions surrounding zlata’s alleged affiliation with the bosniak nationalist party. in the bosnian context, the act of entering the realm of official politics tends to be seen as abandonment of personal ethics and a resignation to becoming a jaded and morally corrupted subject—a point well captured by elissa helms’s (2007) discussion of bosnian politics through the metaphor of the whore. what is more, entering a nationalist party that was seen as responsible for the ongoing political crisis meant one was not only abandoning moral values, but doing it either out of nationalist conviction or opportunistic desires. in the context of post-war jajce, such decisions were scrutinized with particular force, given the robust presence of nationalist parties in everyday life and the forms of intimacy characteristic of a small town. upon my arrival, many residents of jajce told me that yes, indeed, jajce was a divided town: divided by the line between those who had a party membership and those who did not 13 . some older residents were particularly worried about recruitment of the town’s young people into these parties, a process they felt had already begun by placing children in ethnically exclusive or divided schools where they were learning languages, literatures and histories as defined by nationalistic interests. their fears rendered visible the existence of surviving ethical sensibilities that had been shaped by a different era and politics of difference particularly significant in jajce, which bore the honor of being the birthplace of socialist yugoslavia. although interethnic conviviality has a much longer history in this area of bosnia, during the socialist era it gained a new articulation through policies of socialist multinationalism, known officially as “brotherhood and unity.” despite the violence of war, most residents of jajce remembered this period fondly; many also lamented the destruction of interethnic trust that had helped make possible “a shared life” (zajednički život). as a consequence, being (seen as) a nationalist inevitably painted a person in negative moral hues. dijana, a social worker in her early thirties, observed that for those reasons no one admits in public that he is a nationalist, even though people say and do other things that make them appear as precisely that. erol, a bosniak coffee shop owner, was himself very critical of people who make inflammatory nationalist anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 247 statements in public, without thinking about how such words will impact muslim-croat relations. as a small business owner, he was particularly critical of members of the bosniak diaspora who were calling for the removal of the nationalist monument to croat liberators, which had been erected in the center of the town by hdz in the early years following the war. “it is easy for them in diaspora to be critical, nationalistic and demand such things, but i have to live and work here…these people [i.e. croats in jajce] are my neighbors and customers.” publicly making nationalist demands was seen by many residents of jajce as socially undesirable and threatening to the repair of social relations between croats and muslims. “turncoat” nationalists and opportunists posed an additional problem in jajce. nusreta, a muslim woman in her fifties married to a local croat, told me she was disgusted by the speed and willingness with which some of her neighbors had adopted nationalist colors. speaking of one former neighbor in particular, she exclaimed: “give me a break! yesterday, he was an avid communist, and today, he is prancing around with the nationalists. i’d understand it if he were from the village, where they have always thought of the world in this way, but he knows better!” in nusreta’s terms, what was problematic was not the nationalist affiliation itself, but the sinister way in which her “urban” friend acted in order to seize new opportunities 14 . indeed, narrations about strength of character and moral consistency were at the heart of postwar imaginings of ethical personhood. in this idealized picture, remaining the same despite cataclysmic shifts in one’s surroundings was the condition of being seen as a moral individual. for example, a moral resident of jajce did not stop greeting, standing up for or helping his fellow citizens after the war just because they were of different ethnicity from him. in times of uncertainty, when on the ruins of one political system another one was being built, a person had to pick a side, and stick to it. yet these idealized perceptions obscured the fact that for a young person like zlata, jajce offered few opportunities, as was evidenced by the mass out-migration of youth from the town. opting to return to one’s hometown with a college degree often did not yield employment. while older residents of jajce lamented in passing that jajce was a town “without a future,” others were looking for pragmatic ways of improving their circumstances. this pragmatism was in part driven by a perception that a) one had to carve out a place for oneself in this context and b) that nationalist parties had the means of distributing scarce resources and opportunities. katarina, an unemployed schoolteacher in her late twenties, hoped that becoming a member of the croat nationalist party, the hdz, would help her find a job. alma, another college graduate from an adjacent village, told me she had no problem joining the sda, since “if she did not seize the opportunity, someone else would.” although incentives to join political parties seemed strong, some of my younger informants held strong convictions against such decisions, opting to instead work in the nongovernmental sector or at least join one of the non-nationalist parties, like the social democrats 15 . yet, social democrats, though non-nationalists, were also not exempt from scrutiny. rumors abounded in town that one of their key cadres hired her under-qualified brother in a position that should have been filled though a more thorough job search, based on expertise. yet residents of jajce sympathetic of social democrats were also the most fearless critics of clientilist networks. tanja, a small business owner in her early thirties, openly expressed criticism of several of her friends who had joined the muslim nationalist party in hope of obtaining a job. yet she was even more critical of those among her friends who joined out of political naiveté, such as her friend mirza, a professor of music, who wanted to make a difference in the sda by offering a youthful and forward-looking perspective. whatever anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 248 progressive ideas mirza had, tanja said, had been silenced by the party internally, turning him into a mere serf. ironically, tanja was one of zlata’s best friends. both were children born out of ethnically mixed relationships and had ethnically ambiguous names. while tanja did not claim to belong to any “community” in particular, zlata was during my stay in jajce becoming increasingly interested in islam and in this way asserting her bosniak identity 16 . moreover, tanja was extremely outspoken about her criticisms of the town’s mayor, who she believed was a crook, a chauvinist and a hillbilly. zlata, on the other hand, repeated a mantra i heard a lot among the mayor’s supporters, insisting that, as the first bosniak mayor of jajce after the war, he had succeeded in “returning bosnia to jajce” by removing croat nationalist insignia and flags and replacing them with symbols of independent bosnia. such proclamations made tanja suspicious of zlata’s political position; despite being her friend, she too believed zlata was lying about the true status of her relationship with the sda. and yet, the two of them, as i discovered, rarely talked about this. it was precisely this silence, the unspoken nature of their political differences, and the uncertainty of zlata’s status with regard to the sda that made their friendship possible. moreover, despite being aware of rumors, zlata never bothered to once and for all resolve the dilemma among her friends and acquaintances, because revealing her possible relationship with the sda would most certainty taint her image among her antinationalist buddies. instead, she too took part in critical conversations about the political situation over coffee, often providing empirical proof for their suspicions of misdoings in the municipal government and agencies 17 . and yet, by also partaking in the activities of the local government, holding on to her job, and fulfilling her duties as a municipal employee, she seemed to be exhibiting loyalty to the nationalist mayor and his party. the fact that zlata was reluctant to publicly announce where she stood proved that she not only understood the unique advantage of her ambiguous position but that she also was aware of the moral caveats which made everyone else suspicious of her. one evening, as we walked home together, she came as close as she ever did to coming clean, explaining to me that she understood why some young people were joining the party. “it’s not like the nationalists are ever going to leave. perhaps the best we can hope for is for a new generation to take over, and reform it from within.” in listening to her words, i realized she might have been talking about herself, present or future, and her own motivations to become part of something that in others’ eyes turned her into a jaded, corrupted person. i return now to the claim i made in the beginning: that certain forms of ambiguity like the ones displayed in zlata’s indecipherable political positioning made for forms of politics and types of personhood that were at once both discouraging and hopeful about the future. the fact that zlata possibly willingly became part of a group engaged in problematic and at times quite destructive forms of politics testified to the growing hegemonic power of nationalist projects to co-opt and integrate even the best of political intentions. undoubtedly, the war had made this nationalist order possible; dayton legalized it, and everything that has come afterwards continues to reinforce it. today’s nationalist divisions do not simply supply proof that residents of bosnia have always seen themselves as having irreconcilable political goals—increasingly throughout bosnian and herzegovinian towns, these divisions form the grid for allocation of access to resources, jobs and desired private futures. they organize life in such a way that almost invalidates the question of whether or not they are based in deeply held convictions. in that sense, telling people in cities or in provinces just how corrupt their nationalist representatives are won’t make much difference. chances are they already know it, but that knowledge does not anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 249 liberate them. instead it further convinces them of the immutability of the new layout within which they must make their lives. this fact alone will be a cause of despair to some bosnians and some anthropologists alike. however, nationalist projects, like all other world-making ambitions, never fully subsume the forms of life which they produce thorough their own contradictions. if the very possibility of being a political subject in bosnia is predicated upon having to engage with this figure of the nationalist—as i argue above—this political subjectivity is also caught in the ethical conundrum emergent in the same figure. as we see in the case of zlata, the trouble arises when those new types of political subjectification, repeated each day through disciplinary institutions, the work of government and distribution of resources, encounter residual normative prescriptions and forms of affect, i.e. commitment to moral consistency, skepticism of party politics, and even the virtuousness of certain forms of interethnic conviviality. zlata for a period of time cultivated (among at least one part of the public) her own ambiguity with respect to the sda affiliation, which in and of itself provided proof that there was nothing normal or naturalized about taking part in nationalist politics. the risk and possibly shame that seemed to be a part of being associated with the governing nationalists (which may or may not have been codified through party membership), suggested that her political positionality was a product of complex negotiations, tactics, and desires, which had a stake in multiple loyalties. certain inassimilable excess lies in this space of ambiguity, marked by a tension between complex historical experiences and the acute exigencies of the present. while uncertainty and risk fill this space, (which may well have already been co-opted by post-dayton politics), its very existence also points to just how fragile this new order is. indeed, ethical conundrums like the one i describe here make known that rival forms of political imagination still exist, even if there is no framework in which they can be fully realized. 1 throughout this text, i will use bosnia-herzegovina and bosnia interchangeably. 2 the names of informants and other identifying markers have been changed to protect confidentiality. 3 the same kind of a claim could be made for the figure out the “antinationalist.” in that sense, i fold mine into stef jansen’s argument (2005) that nationalism as well as antinationalism form sets of discursive practices that become enacted by but also remain unevenly available to different people. 4 jajce gained its socialist era significance as the birthplace of second yugoslavia, owing to the fact that it hosted the second meeting of the antifascist council of national liberation of yugoslavia (in bosnia referred to as avnoj) during which the new yugoslav federation was created on november 29, 1943. after wwii, jajce developed into an industrial town with a burgeoning tourism industry and a well integrated, ethnically mixed population. this is not jajce’s only claim to historical fame: in the 14th century, it had been a site of coronation of bosnian kings. 5 owning to the postwar factionalism within dominant political parties (which has brought into existence a number of new parties, both nationalist and “social-democratic”), there are now two hdzs in bosnia-herzegovina: hdz bih and hdz 1990. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 250 6 in 2008, the mayor won 52% of the vote as a representative of the coalition of bosniak nationalist parties, headed by his own party, the sda. his opponent, the representative of croat coalition lead by hdz bih won 44% of votes. even though sda received the largest number of votes, it still had to form a government with the croat nationalists, social democrats and a few other, smaller bosniak parties. the municipal government functions on the account of this delicate balance. 7 these practices are familiar to anthropologists working in many postsocialist and postcolonial contexts, and have gotten some public attention in the press (recent example of russia). these alternative forms of voting that have been sprouting up across the globe can perhaps serve as a starting point for thinking critically about the limits of formal politics in the contemporary era. 8 and as i will subsequently argue, whether or not she was lying or being truthful made little difference. 9 in framing my focus in this way, i sidestep for a moment the conventional methodological debates regarding claims of objectivity and validity, which also form a part of my ethnographic puzzle about an informant that may not be telling the truth. i follow charles briggs (1986) in arguing that focusing only on such concerns tends to obscure the inherent dialogical, relational and contextual character of ethnographic encounters. the only thing i learned for certain during my fieldwork, was that uncertainty was a constitutive part of doing research, not only because— to deploy the language of erving goffman (1990 [1959])—my informants would put up fronts, attempt to mislead me or evade my questions, but also because they themselves were hesitant, self-contradicting and unsure about their claims or outcomes of their actions. so, instead of becoming alarmed over the possible “corruption” of my ethnographic interlocutor (a figure invested among anthropologists still with a great deal of significance, desire and hope) i confess i secretly relished in the possibilities this mystery could provide for thinking through methodological and epistemological problems. what made zlata interesting to me, moreover, was the fact that i did not seem to be the only person she was willingly deceiving. if she was indeed lying, she was lying to the entire town. 10 in addition to creating a high degree of territorial and administrative fragmentation, the legal provisions of the dayton agreement also served to further entrench ethnonationalist identities and peg them to political representation. citizenship remains to a large extent defined in terms of ethnic membership through the notion of “constitutive peoples”; in practice, modern bosnians are first and foremost defined as primarily serbs, croats or bosniaks (bosnian-muslims). the national category “bosnian” does not exist internally as a political identifier, while political representation remains tied to the ethnic identity of the majority group. although the bosnian presidency is tripartite, with a representative from each of the three “nations,” muslim and croat representatives must be elected from the federation, while the serb must be from the serb republic. jews, roma and other ethnic minorities are barred from taking these positions, something that has recently come to the attention of the eu court for human rights in strasbourg, which ruled the bosnian constitution to be discriminatory. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 251 11 other anthropologists and field researchers in bosnia report similar findings in various parts of the country. there exists a growing literature on national relations in bosnia based on ethnographic research, which illustrates the complexities of identification and belonging, and in so doing supports the claim i am making here. unfortunately, i do not have the space here to adequately engage with this work. a good starting point is the edited volume the new bosnian mosaic (bougarel et al., 2007). 12 ironically, the nationalist grid and the redistributive networks i describe here also operate in the capital. access to high-ranking positions in business, government, higher education and many other fields in the capital is also tied to party membership or protection. however, as the largest and most prosperous city, sarajevo simultaneously seems to offer more opportunities to create lives outside of these networks, making urban elites less cognizant of the economic and social constrains in small communities. 13 in a personal correspondence, elissa helms reports that her informants in zenica often talked about whether or not someone was in a political party, without mentioning which one, helping render more visible the continuity between the socialist and postwar period. yet, i would suggest important differences exist between the role of league of communists in distributing access to opportunities and perks during socialism and what is happening today. the communist party in its early postwar years faced a growing economy, whereas the size of the “cake” available for redistribution has become smaller today. before, a person had to enter the party in order to become a manager (direktor) or to take some other prestigious position. in jajce today, owing to the recession and the sheer number of parties, one has to have an affiliation to get a job as a custodian, a driver or an administrative assistant. 14 the discourses that frame the war and “return” of nationalism in terms of “revenge of the countryside” (see critique by bougarel 1999) abound in former yugoslavia. i do not have the space to adequately analyze them here, except to say that they fit nicely into the understanding of nationalist loyalty as a matter of false, unenlightened consciousness. nusreta herself replicates this view, arguing that nationalism in the village is to be expected, and proposing it is only a problem and aberration in the urban area where people are supposed to be better educated. 15 interestingly, i got to know among this group several bosniaks and croats that regularly attended the mosques and churches, taking part in the religious ceremonies while being outspoken in their opposition to nationalist parties in power. 16 in her comments to me, sabrina perić has suggested that one could make an argument that zlata’s decision is a form of strategic essentialism and structurally related to the underlying dayton principle where everything is “ethnically” determined. significantly, as a person born out of a “mixed marriage”, zlata had to pick a side, and she picked the “dominant” one; part of her effort to reassert her bosniak identity then may have had something to do with the fact she was not simply and “organically” a bosniak. but as perić persuasively put forth to me, zlata’s case renders visible a paradoxical aspect of dayton that is already part of its makeup: ethnic identity is not proscribed by birth and descent (blood) and so one can, in some cases “choose” one’s ethnicity. in that sense, ethnicity and national belonging is determined through one’s anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 252 declaration of oneself as belonging to a nation (perić brilliantly points out that the problem with finci and sejdić is not that they are a jew and a roma but that they were unwilling to declare themselves as serb, bosniak or croat). the question is: what are the limits of this selfdeclaration in practice? 17 of course, i have to acknowledge the possibility that she was also performing in front of me, in order to appear more critical (and hence more cosmopolitan) in the eyes of a researcher who had come from sarajevo and from the u.s. the question of to what extent our informants give us—and to what extent we hear—what we want, is an important and open one. references bougarel, xavier 1999. yugoslav wars: the “revenge of the countryside” between sociological reality and nationalist myth. east european quarterly 32(2):157-175. bougarel, x.,e. helms and g. duijzings. 2007. the new bosnian mosaic: identities, memories and moral claims in a post-war society. ashgate. briggs, charles 1986. learning how to ask: a sociolinguistic appraisal of the role of the interview in social science research. cambridge: cambridge university press. ćurak, n. 2002. geopolitika kao sudbina, slučaj bosna : postmodernistički ogled o perifernoj zemlji. [geopolitics as destiny, case bosnia: a postmodern essay about a peripheral country]. sarajevo: fakultet političkih nauka. goffman, erving. 1990 [1959]. the presentation of self in everyday life. new york, ny: doubleday. hayden, robert m. 2007. moral vision and impaired insight: the imagining of other peoples’ communities in bosnia. current anthropology 48(1):105-131. helms, elissa. 2007. “politics is a whore”: women, morality and victimhood in post-war bosniaherzegovina. in the new bosnian mosaic: identities, memories and moral claims in a postwar society, x. bougarel, e. helms, and g. duijzings, eds. pp. 235-54. ashgate. jansen, stef. 2005. antinacionalizam: etnografija otpora u beogradu i zagrebu (transl. by and a. bajazetov-vučen). beograd: biblioteka xx vek. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 253 i wish to express my profound gratitude to damir arsenijević, alexandre beliaev, elissa helms, stef jansen, sabrina perić and alexei yurchak, who provided comments on the draft of this text at various points along the way. even in light of their excellent feedback, the shortcomings of this piece remain my own responsibility. an earlier version of this material was presented at the graduate conference “uncertainty in knowledge production” at stanford university in 2009. anthropology of east europe review personhood on a plate: gender and food in the construction of proper hungarian women barbara a. west university ofthe pacific introduction i this paper examines the ramifications for hungarian women of the introduction into the hungarian market since 1990 of convenience and what hungarians call half-prepared (jelkesz) foods. my primary interest in these foods is the way they may be interrupting a discourse of household­ based female personhood and its requirement of an ability to cook proper meals for men and children. as a window onto this discourse, i analyze the food articles, images and advertisements in the two most popular hungarian women's magazines (with readerships of about two million each), nok lapja and kiskegyed, between 1994 and 1999.2 in addition, i draw upon 20 months of participant observation fieldwork in hungary during 1993-4, 1996 and 1999 to discuss women's reactions to these magazines and the introduction of convenience foods and ingredients generally in that country. 3 cooking for hungarians requires one of a set of standardized hungarian dishes be prepared in recognized ways; it is not enough to create warm food for yourself and! or others to consider the practice to be cooking. the warm food must be named and prepared in a way that is familiar to other hungarians, with little or no improvisation. for example, preparing foods such as stuffed peppers, palacsinta (crepes), andfijzelek (cooked vegetables prepared with a sauce of sour or fresh cream, lard, salt and usually paprika) is cooking, while scrambling eggs and adding sauteed vegetables, cheese and herbs, is not. this is not to say that all or even most food preparation in hungary is necessarily cooking. in fact, in my experience in the country, much of the food preparation at home is not realiy cooking at all but quick meal preparation, called in hungarian osszeiit valami! (throwing something together) or jalatkozik (snacking), comparable to my scrambled eggs with sauteed vegetables, cheese and herbs. nonetheless, i argue that cooking contributes to the social and moral evaluation of full female personhood in hungary, while throwing something together does not. in judging a hungarian woman's personhood, or "moral career" (harris 1989:604; and 1978), marriage and childbearing are the primary criteria, but cooking, both as service to the family unit and as a moral activity in and of itself, is likewise evaluated. as a result, the married woman who does not cook is considered socially and morally deficient by other hungarians. for example, in 1993, a female acquaintance of mine who was engaged talked about how she would have to learn how to cook for her husband, despite her lack of interest in it and his skiii in food preparation. she assured me that her husband would continue to put together (not "cook"!) his own meals while she was at work but that on weekends or when relatives came to visit she was the one who was expected to cook for them. it would look bad if she did not do it, she said, and besides, she would not feel good about serving snacks to her guests or letting her mother do the cooking for her. in preparation for the inevitable, she was in the process of learning from his mother how to cook her fiancee's favorite dishes. hypotheses upon realizing the importance of"cooking" to the social and moral recognition of women as fuii persons, i became curious about the effect that the influx of convenience foods and ingredients hungary had experienced since 1990 was having on women's personhood. as in russia (see sheffield and liapis 1996), hungary has seen a tremendous increase in both imports of hvp (high-value products) (ibid) and of domestic production of convenience foods and ingredients. in 1988, when i first visited hungary, it was difficult to find any convenience food items, with the exception of powdered soup mixes and some canned meat products.4 by 1994, when i was in my second calendar year of residence in the city of szeged, i could occasionaliy find uncle ben's pre­ made sauces in jars and the rare frozen pizza or entree. however, i knew no hungarians who used these products regularly and only a few who did occasionaily. by 1999, hungary had experienced such an influx of products, stores and ideas from the west that there were few convenience foods i could buy in the united states that i couldn't find with some searching in szeged. there were also convenience hungarian foods, such as frozen fruit­ filled dumplings that are not widely available in vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 117 anthropology of east europe review the us. by this time, too, i found in my discussions with hungarians, my inventory of grocery stores and my observations that hungarians had begun to accept these products for regular use. this anecdotal evidence is also supported by the preponderance of convenience food advertisements in nijk lapja and kiskegyed in the late 1990s, the significantly smaller number of advertisements in the mid-1990s, and the lack of them altogether in 1989, with the exception of a walnut substitute made from sunflower seeds (deja). some of the questions that guided my initial thinking with regard to this influx and its meaning for women's personhood were: what kind of reception have these convenience foods had in hungary? are hungarian women using them to save time, regardless of the ramifications for personhood? have hungarian evaluations of personhood for women changed with the new political, economic, social and consumer contexts? are hungarian women's magazines, as a major (but certainly not only) source of gender ideologies, pushing women to continue cooking from scratch or advocating a more "modern" approach to cooking? how is the high value hungarians place on their children being used in the discussion regarding the acceptance of convenience foods? how strong is the state's paternalism regarding women (see corrin 1994:225) and the general antifeminist feeling (see goven 1993) in the country in defining women as homemakers, wives and cooks rather than as agents outside the home? finally, i decided to approach this material largely as a question of ideology. i began with the hypothesis that, because of rising unemployment and the new paternalism, hungarian women's magazines would largely be telling women to spend time in the kitchen preparing real cooked meals. this hypothesis is also supported outside the hungarian context by both historical and sociological analyses of women's magazines in capitalist societies generally as developing around pleasures that must "be taken in the privacy of one's own home, and the bosom of the biological family" (ballaster, et. ai., 1991:164; see also beetham 1996 and mccracken 1993).5 i hypothesized further that the magazine articles would largely focus on the service aspect of cooking for husbands and families in order to encourage women to spend significant amounts of time on this kind of work. therefore, i believed that i would find in these magazines many articles on the necessity for men and children of home cooked meals. i did not think that the magazines would focus heavily on women's work for themselves because, during the socialist era, it was largely believed that women were selfish and cared only about themselves at the expense of men and children (see goven 1993). in reaction to this belief, to the new paternalism of the state, and to women's continuing definition of themselves as mothers (see haney 1999), i expected significant emphasis on women as housewives and mothers. magazine content after looking at every issue of kiskegyed between 1995-1998, nijk lapja between 1994­ 1997, and some issues of each from 1989 and 1999, and keeping track of all food-related articles, images and advertisements, i found both similarities and differences in their approach to food and cooking. almost every week, both magazines provided between one and six recipes. these recipes, while not all for standardized hungarian dishes, would for the most part count as cooking in hungary because the foods were all named and had specific recipes for people to follow. in addition, most of these recipes made no allowance for the use of convenience ingredients such as frozen or canned vegetables or "half prepared foods." in addition to these recipes, both magazines often contained some kind of article with helpful hints for the kitchen, from spicing up food with (homemade) sauces to how to shop in hungary's new "hypermarkets." other kinds of articles that appeared at least three times during the five years from 1994-98 concerned dieting, health, household and personal uses for food items, the cooking habits of some hungarian celebrities (including recipes), how to use a microwave oven, and using food and cooking to improve your love life. other articles were unique, such as preparing food for an overweight dog, statements by eleven different hungarian women on how and when they learned to cook, and weighing the good and bad features of hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza and other fast food items. despite these similarities between the two magazines there were also important differences. i begin with a discussion of food and cooking articles in kiskegyed, since they diverged most from my initial hypotheses. i found in kiskegyed that the majority of articles were directing women to spend significant amounts of time in the kitchen; however, the reason only rarely concerned the welfare of husbands or children. from 1996 vol. is, no.2 autumn 2000, page: lis anthropology of east europe review through 1998, kiskegyed had articles that focused on cooking or food preparation for husbands and children only seven times, and for guests twice, while in 1995 there were no articles on cooking or preparing food for other people. in addition, in 1998, kiskegyed ran a test on being a good mother and there was not a single question concerned with food or cooking! however, in 1996 and 1997, the same magazine ran a weekly contest on being a good housewife, in which they published a recipe with a component missing and contestants had to name the missing ingredient. some examples of the kind of articles on cooking for children and husbands in kiskegyed include how to cook a good weekend breakfast a day in advance, how to prepare for a child's birthday party by cooking and baking at home, two articles on how to cook meals that children can enjoy, and one on foods that increase male potency. the articles on cooking and preparing food for guests included preparing a good summer barbecue and making up your own sandwich spreads6 to have on hand for drop-in guests. during the same time period (1995-98), there were twenty-six articles in this magazine on women's diet and health-related cooking and food preparation, usually including recipes. most of the diet-related articles were fairly straightforward and focused solely on weight loss, but some articles provided justification for the diet, such as losing a few kilograms before summer or after the christmas holiday, and many provided a set menu for women to follow. the health-related articles provided cooking and eating tips for giving women more energy, helping them to sleep better, and staying young. there were also four articles on cooking and food preparation to improve a woman's love life. one such article argued that men are not attracted to women who are too thin or do not eat a full meal, which seemed very odd juxtaposed with the large number of articles on dieting, while two others talked about attracting a man through his stomach; one of these articles even argued that the woman who does not like "to cook" but instead serves soup from a package or frozen dinners is "the spinster type." finally, what surprised me most were the thirteen articles on how women should prepare their own cosmetics, lotions, cleaning supplies, medicinal and herbal teas, and spices rather than purchasing these items. while the majority of kiskegyed's food and cooking articles were largely focused upon women themselves, i found that n6k lapja's were not. rather than articles on dieting and health for women, of which there were only three from 1994­ 97, most food and cooking articles provided women with tips for how to use, prepare, buy and/or cook a particular food or ingredient; potatoes, carrots, bread, vinegar, pickles, garlic, mayonnaise, ketchup, soup, chicken, melon, chestnut puree, fish, mushrooms, and salad were all the focus of a "kitchen tips" article during this time period. in addition, there were also tips on making homemade baby food, wedding cake, fruitcake, pasta sauces, pancakes, and mayonnaise. while few of these "kitchen tips" articles specifically said that they were helping women to cook for families, when juxtaposed with the overtly self-focused articles in kiskegyed, the service aspect of this work is manifestly clear. the inclusion of recipes serving 4-6 people also shows that these "tips" are concerned with cooking and food preparation for others. in addition, duling these four years there were also fourteen articles on cooking for other people, which highlights the assumption that cooking and food preparation are service work for women. examples of service­ oriented food articles in n6k lapja from 1994-97 include two on preparing and cooking for a children's party, three on making snacks and foods children will enjoy eating, one on cooking for children's health, and a variety of descriptions of cooking for families, holidays and guests. just as there were a variety ofdifferent kinds of food and cooking articles in these magazines, there were also quite a few advertisements from a wide variety of food companies. kiskegyed averaged two advertisements per issue in the mid-1990s and four in the later 1990s. many of these advertisements were for convenience foods, such as uht milk, yogurt, candy, ice cream novelties and sandwich spreads; fewer were for half­ prepared foods like frozen chicken entrees, dried pasta and sauce packages, or plain sauce mixes. the vast majority of food-oriented advertisements were for ingredients such as sour cream, margarine and other fats, sugar, spices and uht milk.7 however, this same pattern does not hold for n6k lapja, which had a relatively stable average of around 2.5 food related advertisements per issue for the entire period covered. the content of these advertisements also differed from kiskegyed's with few ingredient advertisements, some convenience food advertisements, and a large number of half-prepared food advertisements. despite these differences, the argument presented in almost all the advertisements in both magazines is the same and related to food preparation and cooking as part of women's service to other people. whether the advertised vol. 18, no. 2 autumn 2000, page: 119 anthropology of east europe review product is a convenience food, such as pre-made pastry, a half-prepared one, such as a frozen entree, or an ingredient, such as sugar, the argument is almost always that women need these items to help them serve their families' food needs better. in kiskegyed there was only one exception to this rule, an advertisement for muesli which depicted it as diet food for women. n6k lapja had a few more exceptions, such as a series ofoil advertisements, a yogurt ad, and a soy products ad that addressed women's health specifically; nevertheless, the vast majority of advertisements in both magazines were focused on the health, tastes, or convenience of people other than the woman herself. nonetheless, there are some interesting differences in the arguments of different kinds of advertisements regarding women's food service work. when the advertisement is for an ingredient, such as margarine, fat, milk or spices, the message is clearly that women should "cook" for their families regularly. for example, one margarine company ran a series of advertisements telling women they are responsible for their husband's health and that by using this margarine in their cooking they can perform that service well. one slogan in this series says, "the minutes you spend on this page can lengthen your husband's life;" another argues that cooking with this margarine just might be the secret to a good marriage; yet another says that by using this margarine "you can help your husband become a grandfather." a series of advertisements for uht milk likewise uses women's responsibilities towards their families as their main selling point. one advertisement in this series has a woman talking about how she discovered the necessity for keeping uht milk around the house; she wanted to bake something for her son because she wanted him to grow up big but could not because she was out of milk. a neighbor introduced her to uht milk, which does not need to be stored in the refrigerator until it is opened, and she has kept some on hand ever since so that she can bake for her growing son at a moment's notice. as might be expected, when the advertisement is for a convenience or half-prepared food rather than an ingredient, women's need to provide food for others is played off against their lack of time for this work. an advertisement for a soup mix tells women not to waste time in unnecessary work when the packaged soup is just as good. a series of advertisements for a brand of packaged pastries has a woman present a predicament similar to the woman from the milk advertisement; she wants to provide pastry for her family. instead of being out of a key ingredient, however, she has no time to bake. this brand ofdoughnuts and filled croissants is just the thing she needs since she can keep a relatively large number of them for when her life is very busy. despite the argument in both the milk and pastry advertisements for shopping ahead of time and in larger quantities than can be done with fresh goods, the reasons for this shopping differ. while the milk woman's emphasis is on cooking for her son to help him grow up big, the pastry woman's emphasis is on providing something tasty for her children and husband. nonetheless, the advertisers of almost all food products in these magazines, from ingredients to convenience foods, rely upon the taken-for-granted status of women as cooks, or at least food providers. discussion as my presentation of the articles in these magazines shows, the editors, writers and advertisers do advocate a large number of activities requiring women to spend a significant amount of time in their homes and kitchens, as i hypothesized. however, i did not expect the magazines to have such different frameworks for their arguments, with kiskegyed focusing on women's bodies and feelings and n6k lapja on women's service. rather than telling women that men and children need them to stay home and cook proper meals, not just throw things together or use a half-prepared dish, the articles in kiskegyed are telling women that they need to cook or be in the kitchen in order to improve their own looks (assuming, as they do, that thinner means better), health, home or love life. n6k lapja is more straightforward, for when the food articles do not focus on particular items and their preparation, they focus on preparing meals for family, friends or children or on improving the appearance of the meals women already serve. nevertheless, in examining the articles, images and advertisements in both magazines, i argue that i was correct in my initial hypothesis regarding hungarian gender ideologies as continuing to define full personhood for women as achievable only in the private sphere and of cooking as an important facet of this evaluation. this conclusion may seem surprising in light of the content of the majority of articles in kiskegyed. nevertheless, even in these articles women are being encouraged to work at home during their free time, rather than to join clubs or organizations, meet other women, or advance their careers or education. in calling upon women to vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 120 anthropology of east europe review cook elaborate yet dietetic meals, prepare their own medicines, herbs, cosmetics and cleaning products from their gardens, and improve their love lives through cooking and baking, i argue that kiskegyed is doing far more to define women's personhood as private than perhaps even the overt cook-for-your-family kind of articles do. the articles on dieting are unanimous in their advice "to cook" lean meals at home; not one article recommends using "lite" convenience or half-prepared foods for lunches or dinners, although muesli was a common component of the dieter's breakfast. the helpful hints articles are similar in that if women prepare their own cosmetics or cleaning supplies they may be able to save money or make better quality products, but they will definitely spend significant amounts of time at home and in the kitchen. finally, the articles on food and love are somewhat more ambiguous; one of them advises that women who can't bake may use a pre-made cake base to prepare a cake for a man she would like to attract. however, this ambiguity is easily explained in light of the argument that unmarried women do not need to be able to cook, yet. in all of the articles in kiskegyed that address food and love for married women, the article and accompanying recipes do not allow for the use of convenience or half­ prepared foods. i argue that there is an illusion of independence being offered to women in kiskegyed in the guise of dieting advice, household hints and love tips. as one acquaintance said when i asked her about why kiskegyed might emphasize dieting over family cooking, "women buy these magazines because they want to know how to do things for themselves, they already know they have to work for others." unfortunately, what they are learning is that remaining busy at home is the key to being a successful and complete woman. this message is likewise presented to women in the images of food and cooking in both magazines. almost without fail, quizzes and articles in both magazines regarding relationships and marriage show photographs of men and women eating a home-cooked meal together or women serving food to men, even when there was not a single word in the article or quiz about cooking or eating. i was less surprised to find these images in n6k lapja, given the content of most cooking and food articles, but i was surprised by the great number of images in kiskegyed showing women in a service role when it comes to cooking and food preparation. nevertheless, if, as i argue, marriage, children and cooking remain integral to women's personhood in hungary, then these familiar images might serve as a bridge between women's service expectations of themselves and others and their desire to do something for themselves, as evident in their purchase of kiskegyed. i argue that the "good housewife" contest that ran for nearly two years in kiskegyed, in which contestants had to name the missing ingredient, likewise provides a way for women to do something for themselves, such as show off their skill and perhaps win a prize, at the same time that they are doing what is expected of hungarian women with regard to cooking for their families (the recipes were usually for fairly standard hungarian dishes, such as stuffed peppers or chicken stew with paprika). in addition to the articles and images, i argue that the majority of advertisements in these two magazines likewise reinforce an image of women as responsible for cooking and food preparation for others. despite the fact that a focus on women themselves in the articles in kiskegyed has made that magazine the number one women's magazine in hungary, most advertisers do not seem to believe that hungarian women will purchase items purely out of self-interest. indeed, more advertisers in n6k lapja than in kiskegyed (3 versus 1) focused their advertising campaigns for food items on women themselves. what these few exceptions show is that it is entirely possible in hungary to focus an advertising campaign for a food item on women's diet, health or taste, and thereby appeal to the same desire in women that moves them to purchase kiskegyed in great number. however, most advertisers choose to appeal to women's service role instead and thereby reinscribe this role as central to the evaluation of hungarian women generally. finally, i need to discuss the way hungarian women are reacting to the onslaught of convenience and half-prepared foods they have experienced in the past ten years, the related messages in these magazines, and the connection with female personhood. this is a very difficult issue to address since differences in class, age and residence (urban or rural) play such an important role in determining people's consumption habits. nevertheless, in speaking with a variety of women from different backgrounds and ofdifferent ages, although all from the southern border city of szeged, i did find some similarities. first, almost all women do use convenience or half-prepared foods, at least occasionally. vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 121 anthropology of east europe review one older woman (77 years old) living on a very low fixed income said that she uses these products when they are cheaper than it would be to make the food from scratch; for example, she uses pudding mix in the winter when eggs become very expensive. several other retired women and stay-at-home mothers likewise said that they use these foods occasionally, when it is cheaper to do so. many women who work outside the home and have school-age children use these products fairly regularly during the week when they have little time for cooking. many women also told me that they were curious about these new food items and have tried some of them; most both rejected some foods due to cost or taste and continued to buy others because they were different from things they could make at home, were easy to prepare or serve, and/or because their family really liked it. the second similarity i found is that married women with children and widows try to avoid convenience and half-prepared foods in favor of "cooking" at least once per week. what this means for most women in this category is cooking a real meal for themselves8 or their family on either saturday or sunday.9 even younger married women, who may eat a weekend meal cooked by their mother or mother-in-law, will often cook on the other weekend day. the reasons hungarian women give for cooking at least once per week indicate that it remains an important category for the social and moral evaluation of women as full persons. for example, one woman said that her family would be disappointed in her if she didn't have something cooked for them on sunday. another said that she felt badly about taking her child to mcdonald's or just throwing together a snack for dinner throughout the week and liked to cook sunday lunch when she had time. a widow who cooks every saturday for her son, daughter­ in-law and two grandchildren had to pause for a moment when i asked her why but finally said that it's what mothers do and just because her son lived in a different neighborhood, he was still her son. conclusions i believe that convenience and half-prepared foods have made significant in-roads in hungarian ideas about eating, but not cooking. indeed, an article that appeared in nok lapja in 1997 made the claim that a quarter of the food eaten in hungary is industrially made (editor, no. 28, p. 28), a figure that i believe has probably gone up in the subsequent two years. my own observations in grocery stores in szeged, my conversations with women about their cooking and food preparation habits, and my reading of food advertisements on billboards and in women's magazines all indicate that these kinds of time-saving products have been embraced by hungarian women when cost, taste, convenience and/or curiosity are taken into consideration. nevertheless, i argue that cooking remains an important category in the social and moral evaluation of hungarian women's personhood, despite the relative importance of convenience and half-prepared foods in most hungarian households. many articles in both kiskegyed and n6k lapja continue to advocate "cooking" over snacking, throwing something together, or using convenience or even half-prepared foods, even if that cooking is only for the woman on a diet. also, most images of food in these magazines, when they aren't of raw fruit, support the ideas that eating well and proper service to husband and family imply home cooking. even the majority of advertisements for food ingredients in the two magazines direct women to cook properly for their husbands and families. i also found in talking with hungarians that a married woman who can't or doesn't properly cook for her family at least occasionally is deficient. she both feels like she has failed her family and is evaluated as having done so by others. finally, and perhaps most importantly, women's personhood in hungary today remains ideologically circumscribed by the context of the household, despite the relaxation of some cooking rules. while some sources of hungarian gender ideologies may be encouraging women to pursue more public domains of recognition, almost every feature of the two leading women's magazines in hungary (with a combined readership of two-fifths of the hungarian population) is clear on the view that a complete woman is a woman at home. indeed, new household tasks, such as dieting, making homemade cleaning supplies and cosmetics, and cutting vegetables into the shapes of flowers are being advocated by these magazines to keep women from using the spare time created by convenience and half-prepared foods to engage in activities outside the home. references attwood, lynne. 1999. creating the new soviet woman: women's magazines as engineers of female identity, 1922-53. new york: st. martin's press. vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 122 anthropology of east europe review ballaster, ros, margaret beetham, elizabeth frazer and sandra hebron. 1991. women's worlds: ideology, femininity and the woman's magazine. london: macmillan's. beetham, margaret. 1996. a magazine of her own? domesticity and desire in the woman's magazine, 1800-1914. new york: routledge. corrin, chris. 1994. magyar women. new york: st. martin's press. editor. 1997. enni vagy nem enni? [to eat or not to eat?]. n6k lapja, no. 28:28. goven, joanna.1993. gender politics in hungary: autonomy and antifeminism. in gender politics and post-communism. nanette funk and magda mueller, eds. pp. 224-40. new york: routledge. haney, lynne. 1999. 'but we are still mothers': gender, the state, and the construction ofneed in postsocialist hungary. in uncertain transitions: ethnographies of change in the postsocialist world, michael burawoy and katherine verdery, eds., pp. 151-88. boulder: rowman and littlefield. harris, grace gredys.1978. casting out anger. prospect heights, il: waveland press. 1989 concepts of individual, self, and person in description and analysis. american anthropologist 91(3):599-612. mccracken, ellen .1993.decoding women's magazines: from mademoiselle to ms. new york: st. martin's press. sheffield, sharon and peter liapis. 1996. will the surge continue in russia's hvp imports? food review 18(2): 30-36. notes '. i would like to thank maryanne dever and the women's studies and gender research centre at monash university in melbourne, australia for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper and the organizers of the first annual conference on consumption and meaning at the university of plymouth, uk for allowing me to present the paper. i would also like to thank the faculty research council at uop for the eberhardt summer research grant that sponsored this research. finally, i must thank fran murphy for reading, listening to and commenting upon every draft of the paper. ofcourse, all remaining shortcomings are my own. 2. i wanted to look at a wider variety of magazines and for a longer span of time; however, these were not available in szeged. indeed, my collection of kiskegyed is missing all of 1994, of nok lapja all of 1998, and most of the issues from 1999 were unavailable for either magazine. in addition, while in szeged during 1999, i purchased and looked at a much wider variety of women's magazines and discovered that they did not differ significantly from nok lapja and kiskegyed in their focus on food and cooking. at the time ofwriting, kiskegyed has nudged out nok lapja as the most popular women's magazine in hungary. 3. i was aided in my research in 1993-4 and 1996 by fellow anthropologist michelle landers and in 1999 by my fantastic hungarian assistant reka monika cristiano while i was in hungary she provided tremendous help in dealing with a sometimes-unwilling library staff, helped me to sort through all the magazines, and provided interesting insights into hungarian cooking. she also spent a very long time summarizing or translating all the magazine articles and advertisements. i would like to express my gratitude to her for these efforts, and to her and robbie for their hospitality. 4. there were a variety of locally produced sweets, sodas and chips for snacking; i am referring here to meal items rather than snack foods. 5. for an interesting comparison with socialist societies, see attwood (1999). 6. sandwiches in hungary are generally not the two slices of bread with filling in the middle that they are in the us. they generally consist of one thick slice of bread covered with a thin spread of margarine, butter or a flavored topping with cheese, sour cream or yogurt as its base, and then topped with thin, decorative slices of yellow pepper, tomato, meat or cheese. it was this kind of flavored spread that women were being instructed in how to prepare, despite the preponderance of advertisements for this very product in the same magazine. 7 i include uht milk as both a convenience food and as an ingredient because its advertisements clearly focused on both these uses. 8. some widows do this cooking for themselves, though many have their adult children over for a weekend meal. 9. some advertisers are aware of this trend in hungary. for example, one knorr soup mix advertisement uses a bold font to create a word play in their text that illustrates that knorr is soup for weekdays. they, like their female audience, are fully aware that weekend soup is homemade. vol. 18, no.2 autumn 2000, page: 123 social continuity in a western.hungarian village mdrton kemdny, eiitvtis lordnd university, budapest, hungary this paper suntmarizes nry preliminary ethnographic findings ofmy phd research project; l) what extent hungarian village society has preserved continuity in terms of social relations (kin. neighborhood. friend, work, patron-client, etc.) and communal character, 2) what sort of social network and shared sets of norms establish relations among vil lagers today, 3) what the nature of trusted and mistrustful relations are, and 4) what kind of patterns can be followed today. these issues are investigated through an analysis ofthe drastically changed structure of20'n century local employment (obs carried out at workplaces. small-scale farms and in the households). therefore, the main question concerns the relationship between local socier,v and its economy in relation to present national and transnational economies. the relationship between local norms and the ideology of macro-economic polit ics and policies is sometimes in opposition in postsocialist countries and, therefore, emerges as a quite relevant research topic for economic anthropologists (cf. e.g. hann 2003). the collapse ofthe socialist state and cooperative paternalism (guarantee forjob, pension, health service, agricultural acquisit ion, and sell ing etc.), a 'great transformation' ( polanyi | 9 44) to use polany i' s term. draws attention to transformations that take place in local norms. i had been c4rrying out my ethnographic fieldwork in a hungarian village. soml6vdsiirhely, since the summer of 2004. the fieldwork is based on semi-structured, qualitative (biographical and topical) interviews and participant-observation. appfying the concept of 'ethnographic present' (cf . k<ist l in, k. l99l ; sanjek. r. l99l) , in the course of my fieldwork, i determined the temporal framework of the collected material as follows: besides contemporary. current phenomena such data are to be analyzed that the menrbers ofthe local community are able to recollect in addition to historical sources available in archives and libraries. the settlement soml6v6siirhely is situated in a small transdanubian (western hungarian) wine-region, which includes only one hi l l ( 'som16') . l ts informal designation is'the capital of sornl6', because it was the largest seftlement around the hill, and it was a market town (mez_vltros) during fbudalism. in l87l soml6viis6rhely lost its municipal rights and became a vil lage again. the number of local population rose unti l the end of the l9'n century (in 1890 the settlement had 1920 inhabitants), and since then it has been decreasing. especially in the inter-war period, quite a lot of vil lagers emigrated, for example, to the u. s., whereas later, in socialism, people moved to towns within the country. the rate of immigrants was never lr igh. in 2001 the number of local residents was l, l2l. as far as religious and ethnic identity is concerned, almost all villagers declared themselves hungarian and roman catholic, and one percent ofthe inhabitants, professed that they are gypsy. the village demonstrates the characteristic features of continuity and change (tradition and modernization). in the post-socialist era, the decline of the micro-regional industry and the unfavorable alteration ofthe structure of agriculture have forced several villagers to continue or revive traditional strategies. on the other hand, favorable cond itions of transportation and vine growing, as well as the relative closeness of towns. provide opportunities fbr survival: employment, trade and enterprises. ln 2004 the rate of local unemployment was under four percent. the cultivated land of the vil lage comprises 2,321 hectares. wine growing is the most important source of income locally, whose roots go back to the roman era (csoma 1986; miirkusne 200 l). about two thirds of the owners are extreneous (i.e. their place ofresidence is not in soml6v6siirhely), meanwhile a lot of local inhabitants are part-time or full-time employees in these vineyards. the significance of agriculture in other sectors (field plant growing, animal husbandry) is fall ing; in 2001 there were 425 households but in 2000 there were only 189 private farms in the settlement. the socialist cooperative was transformed into a private corporation at the beginning ofthe i 990s; at present these successor organizations 2005. paee:47vol. 23. no. 2 fal l cultivate landed properry of those village people who leased theirs. the rrearby town (ajka) had been the center of mining and heavy, processing industry since the second half of the l9'n century. the building and light industry of the other neighboring town (devecser) was centrally devef oped in the socialist period. ln2001 73.5o/o (census 2001) of the employees were commuters, who work, in most cases, in these two towns. in the local community, which has permanently undergone transformations ow in g to the profound socio-economic as well as polit ical changes ('changes of systems', rendszervdltdsok) of the 20''' century, (i.e. nationalization, industrial ization, urban izat ion, re-privati zation, capitalization), continuity is observable in social status, economic and employment patterns, occupations both in the local economic relations, the whole social networkins and hierarchv of this vil lage community. status groups they are the descendants ofthe one-time local, wealthy families that launch the most significant (agricultural) enterprises and who are the most important landowners nowadays. in this vil lage there were a lot of families that became the members of the nobility (arndlis nemes) in late feudalism, in the l7-18"' centuries (m6rkusnd 2001: 152'_166). most of them received the title and the rights owing to their fbrmer military service and merits in war against the turks, but they were not given estates. as a consequence, their lifestyle usually remained similar as that of peasants, but they acquired anew noble identity. in hungary, this was a typical way for social rise at this if l the l7t" and l srr' centuries. this new noble group was more or less endogamous. according to historical sources on the influential families of that time, the same names can be found later in the era ofthe'half-feudal' capitalism (l 848-1949, wherein social structure and hierarchy remained similar to the former one), or as nowadays. the same families had the most important roles in the local economy regardless of the actual polit ical-economic setting (i.e. either before or after socialism), and these families are the descendants of those noble families. their social capital had persisted through all political systems: there is a strong reciprocify among them, they have a considerable number of patron-client relations, and in some cases they hold an office in the local administration or in the wine-resion. the economic capital that they lost during the socialist collectivization was an important basis for them during re-privatization in the 1990s; they are selfreliant, are able to found enterprises, and they operate a local paternalist system. in socialism they had usually non-agricultural workplaces combined with some household plot farming as an auxiliary source of income, which was made possible by introduction of the new economic mechanism of hungarian govemment after | 968. at present the most considerable entrepreneurs are the men in general, while women work at public institutions of the vil lage such as local council, vineyards' council (hegtkozsdg), primary school, and kindergarten. to demonstrate my observation, i wil l describe two families who have high socialeconomic position in this settlement. the first family i wil l discuss here is the one whose members followed entrepreneurial patterns in each socio-polit ical systenr of the 20'l ' century and occupied several positions. their ancestors were vineyardists on the large estates of the church; they had several shops, large plots of land (8l0 hectares), a threshing-machine, and they were also enga_eed in animal husbandry. in addition. they practiced some cultivation, and employed villagers as servants and seasonal workers to work form them. after socialist nationalization, one of the descendants graduated from a university in budapest. and later in the 1970-1980s, he fulf i l led several leadership positions (appointed managing director) of the hungarian airlines. later, in postsocialism. he became the first leader of the communify of wine-growers (heg,bi16; and of the vineyards' council. he was the first in the vil lage to establish a company of viniculture together with his brother using 5 hectares ofre-privatized land of their family. his nephew had several enterprises in late socialism, and later. he set up another company for viniculture including wine-growing on 4 hectare-rented land, wine bottling and winetourism. presently, he employs quite a lot of villagers. altogether, the family has been one of the main local integrators of labor in pre-socialism, socialism and post-socialism, too. another local group of collateral families that i wil l depict is those who owned the largest landed property (10-15 hectares) and livestock in the vil lage before socialism. in the first socialist period (1949-1953) one of them was stigmatized vol. 23. no. 2 fal l 2005. pase: 48 i as kuldk. later, since the subsequent period of socialism, three lineages of the descendants had followed quite similar strategies; they became agricultural entrepreneurs in thel970s. they bred livestock and owned tractors. at present, after decollectivization andlor re-privatization, they have some of the largest farms in the village again (8-12 hectares). and they sell grain and livestock home and abroad. they are private entrepreneurs, but the complexitv of their farm structure with a lot ofagricultural branches rooted in peasant nornrs (cf. fel and hofer 1972). they have strong co-operations not only between the l ineages. but also with other influential agricultural entrepreneurs. they have also become local integrators in the vil lage; one of them cultivates almost all lands in the vil lage and in the micro-region for capital; another descendant sells pigs to most of the local families every year as most of the families abandoned fattening pigs the past years. in addition, they also unofficially provide credit to poor vil lagers. the non-agricultural entrepreneurs [loiners, builders, carriers, etc.) have different social backgrounds; they are the descendants of former nobles, or other 'genuine' vil lagers or settlers (newcomers). they have no family farms or auxil iaryjobs. and they do not occupy posts in the vil lage. they are indeed successful, but it is based on their cultural capital (education) or on their individual entrepreneurial facil i t ies and skil ls. they have strong econolnic connections with the previous described group. they are. in essence, the descendants of the former lower and middle strata who are at present industrial workers or employees of the third sector. pluribctivite is a key concept in this case as these people have workplaces, a little vineyard or other sorts ofdecollectivized land, but they also have seasonal agricultural or other types ofjobs. as far as their survival strategy is concerned, they act often exactly in the same way as their ancestors did. they already had more income sources in pre-socialism. in hungary, in the socialist era (since the new economic mechanism in 1968) it was a typical way to work in the 'second economy.' which means that villagers following peasant patterns (an altered version of mentality desoibed by chaianov, ( 193 l) self-exploited themselves, since they worked not only at their official places of work but also in their household farms (haztitjl) for selfsufficiency and trade. this pattem subsisted after the socialist regime collapsed with moderated possibil i t ies (no cooperative paternalism any longer). recently, however these small plots (usually under i ha) and small-scale farming units in general, lost their importance due to price cuts. the most common auxil iary job has been seasonal day-work (napszrim) in these vineyards in each and every socio-economic system. it can be also noted that thesejobs. carried out in the informal economy were/are often the same in each polit ico-economic era. for instance, if the male members of the family were carpenters in the second economy under socialism, it is very l ikely that the male nrembers of this very family take up carpentry in post-socialism besides having permanent jobs. this can be observed with female members of a family, too. however, these auxiliary jobs are often more secure than the ones in the fornral economy, since several factories and other workplaces had been shut down recently, and their future depends on investments of the swiss and french owners. due to the supranational tendencies of the global economy, vil lagers and urbanites already suffer the consequences ofthe shut-down of the sewing factories in this microregion. their explanation for all these changes, however, is the chinese over-production and import. ethnic minorit ies have great economic impact on the social-econonric structure of the vil lage. from the middle of the l8'h century unti l the 1920s, a large jewish community l ived here. generally. they were wine-sellers by profession, but most of them moved away from the village a decade before the holocaust. until the beginning of the year 2000, there were only few gypsy families in this vil lage, however, the number of gypsy families had increased due to the lack of employment in the cities. the differences in social and cultural views of the vil lager community and the newcomer gypsy families, various social conflicts emerged; the presence of gypsy families raised issues about land ownership and competition fbr employment. gypsy people have no landed property and therefore they are engaged in the sale of cleared-out junk(lomizdk), something that is not well-appreciated by the local community. these cypsy families regularly go to western countries, especially to austria, at the time of annual clearings ofattics, and then they transport nearly everything they find (furniture, clothes. electric 2005. pase:49vol. 23. no. 2 fal l ware, sports ware, garden decoration, etc.) either to their home settlement. where they sell it at a very lou, price, or they go to the cify markets to make some money. social networking all these groups are set into a complex interconnected network of relations; within the various status groups in order to ensure the operation of the small-scale farms and households, some forms of co-operation have become into existence based on either reciprocity, redistribution or market interests. 'ihese relations resemble sorne of the fbrmerly existing hierarchies such as employer-employee or patron-client relationship of the past. policies and mistrust this local 'society of continuity' is connected to a strong conservative political identiry. but in spite of these characteristic features, the villa-eers do not have a strong sense of solidarity, as they say. they, in general, mistrust any authorities. after the fall of state socialism. the majority of the villagers voted for a local inhabitant to fulfill the position of the mayor both in | 990 and 1994 (a man from a family of high prestige, whose ancestors were the owners of a water mill in the vil lage). however, since 1998 the mayor had been sonreone who never lived in the settlement but he worked in the village as the director of the local primary school. similarly, when the vineyards' council was orsanized in 1994. the first elected leader was u run i.or orle of the local families with the highest prestige (see my description of the first family above), but since 1999, this post is fulf i l led by a new-comer entrepreneur. who lives in the outskirts of the vil lage. lack of co-operation characterizes not only the settlement, but also the whole wineregion, which has a negative impact on wine sell ing. civil organizations of viniculture cannot fulfill their function, because people's everyday life is basically determined by their political beliefs. the number of different organizations had doubled; there are organizations for right-wingers just as well as for left-wingers. consequently, more or less connected to this dichotomy, there is another opposition between local and non-local owners of vineyards. having a vineyard in this region is not only the outcome of an economically grounded decision, but it has also become a matter of social prestige. thus, most owners of these vineyards are townspeople. for instance from the capital of hungary. most of the time, these people have neither social nor cultural connection to the local sociefy. the lack ofco-operation retards the developing market for locally'produced wine of high quality, thus it is quite diff icult to find a bottle of wine from this micro-region in a supermarket. although, few entrepreneurs' bottled wine can be found in some expensive restaurants. conclusion 'community norms' were more or less rcsi l ient unt i l the middle of the 20' l ' century in hungarian vil lages (cf. fel and hofer 1969), but the radical polit ical and economic changes resulted in the parallel existence ofthe antagonistic patterns and life strategies (cf. e.g. the theory of multi l ineal embourgeoisement by szeldnyi, 1988). in addition. in a globalized postmodern era, even these models of biographies are exceeded. pluriactivitd of adjusting to the transformations is a common wayl mixed elements of peasant-like, entrepreneurial. worker and/or intellectual nrentalit ies (cf. e.g. hann and sdrkdny 2003). but even though in post-socialism, cultural flows and neo-liberal economic ideologies globally determine the new walk of life. differences are maintained and shaped by the local norms and historical roots. it is difficult to point out what the consequences ofhungary's eu accession (2004) will be in this vil lage. economic conditions are worse now than before. the vil lagers know almost nothing about the eu, about their own roles in the eu, not to mention the possible opportunities they may have. altogether, changes in the structure of the local society. just as well as the improvement ofthe living standards, are not to be expected. references chaianov. a. v., 193 l. the socio-economic nature of peasant farm economy, in: sorokin, p. a.: zimmerman, c. c. and galpin, ch. j. (eds.): a systematic source book in rural sociology il. minneapolis: the university of minnesota press: i 44-l 47. csoma, zs., 1986, nrlszdjszakdk bora: a som lai. budapest: mez=gazdasirg i kiad6. 2005" page:50vol. 23. no. 2 fal l fel, e. and t. hofer, 1969, proper peasants. traditional life in a hungarian vil lage. budapest/chicago: corvina press. f6l. e. and t. hofer, i972, biiuerliche denkweise in wirtschaft und haushalt. eine ethnograph ische. untersuchung liber das ungarische dorf at6ny. gottingen: otto schwartzyerlas. giordano. ch. and d. kostova.2002, the social production of mistrust. in: hann, c. m. (ed.): postsocialism. ldeals, ldeologies and practices in eurasia. london,new york: routle dge:. 7 4-9 | . hann. ch. ed., 2003. the postsocialist agrarian question. properfy relations and the rural condition. halle studies in the anthropology of eurasia. miinster: lit verlag. hann, ch. and m. s6rkdny. 2003, the great transformation in rural hungary: property. life strategies, and living standards, in: hann, ch. (ed.): the postsocialist agrarian question. property relations and the rural condition. halle studies in the anthropology of eurasia. mi.inster: lit verlag: l17-141 . kdstl in, k.. 1991. der alltag und das ethnographische priisens. ethnologia europaea, 21 ( l ) : 7 l -85. m6rkusn6 vtjr0s, h., 2001 , soml6viisi irhely. budapest: szaz magyar falu kdnyvesh6za. (english summary: 220-22\) polanyi, k., 1944, the great transformation. boston: beacon press. polanyi, k., 1957, the economy as instituted process, in: polanyi, k.; arensberg, c. m. and pearson, h. w. (ed.): trade and market in the early empires. glencoe: the free press: 243-270. sanjek. r., 1991, the ethnographic present. man, n. s.26 (4): 609428. szelenyi, 1.. 1988, socialist entrepreneurs. embourgeoisement in rural hungarv. cambridge: polity press. thelen, t., 2001, post-socialist entrepreneurs in rural hungary: social continuity and legal practice in mesterszdll6s. acta ethnographica hungarica, a6 ( 3-a): 31s-342. vol. 23. no. 2 fal l 2005" paee: 51 r 1 editor’s notes robert rotenberg depaul university this issue is full of remarkable papers. i am very pleased that janine wedel has agreed to let us publish one of her papers on east european cliques. this papers have attracted a lot of attention the last few years, both in anthropological and policy circles. anatoly khazanov brings us up to date on the atmosphere in moscow today. hugh gusterson raises some interesting issues about the way in which russian scientists are perceived by american scientists and the press. julie hemmert provides a novel view of ngo’s in east european states. antonia young offers a fascinating account of albanian women taking on life-long male roles as so-called "sworn virgins." bob minnich brings us up to date on the development of civil society in slovenia. karl kaiser and joel halpern analyze the contemporary serbian myths surrounding kosovo. maja povrzanovic unpacks the contemporary discourse on returnees in croatia. mirjana prosic-dvornic offers her views of the student and civil protests in belgrade in 96-97. sanja kalapos gives us an account of contemporary youth issues in zagreb. we also have a review of kürti and langman’s collection of papers on remaking cultural identities, by alexandra bitusikova. i think this is the first time that half of the papers were produced by authors resident in north america and half were produced by authors in eurupe. a note from bulgaria: our society has been conducting anthropological research in eastern europe since 1989. in this regard i would like to invite you to visit our web site http://www.cit.bg/home/bsrcs and if possible to suggest it to your readers. we also organize a field course "mountain pastoralism: a field-course with a muslim community in the balkans (bulgaria) 15 july -10 august 1998", http://www.cit.bg/home/bsrcs/announce.htm that might be of interest for some of you and your readers. yours sincerely, petia mankova 40 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 natural born farmer. rural childhood and farm work in eastern poland julia harasimowicz, university of warsaw abstract the goal of the article is to analyze the attitude of parents towards their children’s work in one of the contemporary podlasie voivodeship villages. presenting the context of anthropological study of kinship allows to see that rural families, especially those who undertook farming, are subject to numerous cultural and economic influences, the most important of which is the problem of inheriting the farm. despite the expectations of the parents, in recent years a falling number of children (sons) wish to remain in the countryside. women, who participate less and less in the lives of the farms, are encouraged to get higher education. based on ethnographic research conducted in the sokoły commune in 2016-2017, the author looks at the current situation influencing the upbringing of children in rural families. she takes into account the changing emotional conditions of the family, specific treating of boys (between giving them free reign of choosing the profession and the expectation that they would stay on the farm), methods of arousing farming interest in children, and the contemporary attitude towards farming education. the result of the analysis is the description of the differences between the cultivated traditional family model and the upbringing, as well as the resultant incompatibility of masculine and feminine models. additionally, contemporary rural parents increasingly often take the choices of their children seriously. key words: rural childhood, kinship, child labour in farming, rural upbringing. introduction the interest in the role of children in contemporary agriculture is the result of my observations of the daily life of the inhabitants of one of east poland’s communes during an ethnographic project i conducted as part of my student’s practice.1 one of the most remarkable features of the community is its aging, caused primarily by the emigration of the younger generations and their reluctance to work the field. many of my interviewees feel the threat of 1 i undertook 4 research fieldtrips, each lasting from 7 to 10 days. i conducted deep interviews as well as participant observation. i spent some time living with the area’s farming families. 41 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 the land not being taken over by their descendants, so that in consequence the owners will need to sell or rent it. farming is still the most important part of the region’s economy and is the central hub for the region’s tradition and identity. working the land was, and still is, mostly a family endeavor, despite numerous transformations. from the point of view of an anthropologist, it seemed extremely important to research what the upbringing of children looks like in such uneasy times, in the face of deeply-set customs and identities. during my interviews, a recurrent subject of the children’s activities was, as the interviewees worded it, “help” on the farms. the issue seemed interesting to me because of the prevailing journalistic discourse on children’s labor as a decidedly morally negative situation associated with social underdevelopment (j. 2017; józefiak 2017). field experience made me realize that such children’s activity in family practices is a complex and ambiguous phenomenon. the main subject of my interviews was the upbringing of children in the agricultural families with special attention paid to the upbringing of boys. this is the result of my observation from my interviewees’ opinion that actually working the field, physical activity on the farm, has become more of a masculine feature than in the past. women’s participation in farm work is on the fall; they rather turn to bookkeeping and the bureaucracy of farming efforts. they may even be totally disengaged from the daily life of their farms in favor of their professional development, although the situation depends to a large degree on intra-family relations. because of this, the attitude of parents towards the upbringing of children in relation to work, something that still dictates the daily rhythm and duties of a farming family, was of special interest to me. in order to understand the importance of non-adults’ work in the countryside, an anthropological analysis of the phenomena which form sokoły’s current situation, is necessary. child labor in contemporary polish farming is a subject which is not easily found in subject literature. maybe one of the reasons behind this gap is the complexity of the issue. detailed description of the subject area requires a combination of a few sub-areas which are the topic of interest of contemporary ethnology: anthropology of labor, countryside, family, gender, childhood. this article is therefore initiated by a methodological part that brings forth the most important concepts related to those notions. the second part is related directly to the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the sokoły commune in 2016 and 2017. 42 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 rural family – anthropological reflections and the perspectives of sokoły in my research, it was important to separate a group of farming families from the wider community of rural families. the first group is characterized with strong mutual dependence of family members / people from one another, a specific micro-economy, and the permeating of professional and family roles with one another (cf.. king elder jr. 1995, 165). during the research, the priority was to study the relations within farming families and so they constitute the research group. however, i am also quoting from the rural people who do not take care of a farm in their everyday role. their testimonies are a supplement of the researched phenomenon. for the purpose of this text, a few issues related to the contemporary rural family need to be noted. we need to draw the attention to the associations of economy and family. in accordance with the majority of current concepts, i am abandoning the definition of a family (cf. rappaport, overing 2000, 217-229) in favor of the situation and relations within the family. in the words of frances pine, the family, once treated as a natural being, is increasingly often seen as the effect of symbolic or ideological actions (pine 2002, 340). gerald w. creed describes the modern form of the family as the mutual relations of economic and cultural conditions (creed 2000, 333). the late 20th-century research shows that homesteads appear in varying versions, depending on the social and economic situation. the previously promoted model of a nuclear family as a model social unit in the industrial era was undermined by researchers who show varied relations within the closest kin (pine 2002, 344). therefore, in this text i am assuming a family to be a social group based on different ties across generations, partners, cooperating individuals (winthrop 1991). contemporary rural family, as well as the community of polish farmers as a whole, is considered a heterogenous group, therefore some similarities can be pointed out, but no common features. for decades, anthropological subject literature analyzed the issues of the family, blood kinship, habitation, and homestead as interconnected. as frances pine says, people have been using the notions of “family” and “home” for centuries, with intuitive understanding thereof, so they find it problematic to actually define the notions when pressed (pine 2002, 340). therefore, during the study i did not attempt asking questions related to meanings, although we jointly recognized some characteristic features of rural communities. among others, as indicated by other researchers of contemporary countryside, the inhabitants of sokoły indicated important and close relations between community members even when there were no blood relations between them to speak of (cf. krzyworzeka 2013, 2014, yanagisako 1979). 43 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 a contemporary sokoły family is undergoing economic and cultural changes. the tension is perfectly reflected in gerald w. creed’s quote: “the concept of the family farm, with the emotions it evokes and the policies it has provoked, constitutes definitive proof of the relationship between family culture and economy” (creed 2000, 336). currently, family farmsteads are an area filled with uncertainty as to the future of polish countryside, an unbreakable negotiation of the conditions of the group members participation. according to danuta markowska, the author of rodzina wiejska na podlasiu 1864-1964 [a podlasie rural family, 1864-1964], establishing a family in a rural area is an economical and social necessity. markowska writes that the offspring serves to legitimize the marriage and to introduce actual joint property (markowska 1970, 189-191). this is a symbolic consent for the younger generation to take over the farmstead. even though these words were written almost half a century ago, in many aspects they are related to contemporary sokoły. a family, understood as at least two generations living under a single roof, is first and foremost the guarantee of the farm surviving in the nearest future. fears of lack of family and the resultant uncertainty as to the future of the farm are embodied by the figure of a “confirmed bachelor”, an antithesis of a rural family and the hope of the future of farms. the improvement of economic situation in the recent decades and the pressure of gaining education changed the approach of the young generation towards duties and work itself. my interview participants see the lower interest in work, furthering the farm, and they grieve the changed perspective of the young. at the same time they see the growing autonomy of their children’s will. the cure for the possible unruliness of the offspring, in their opinion, lies in gaining respect to farm work. however, it is often remarked how unstable contemporary life of a farmer is. for this reason, many interviewees declare their support of their children getting into careers. work and gender – masculinization of farming anthropological research of gender in the context of farming is underlined, in a cultural way, by the masculine character of the profession. in the last few decades, however, researchers show that the current face of farming is more complex than previously described, and the role of women is not that obvious2 (cf. brandth 2002, 182). a farmstead is associated with a masculine domain, although, naturally, in practice it is often ran commonly, by a married 2 the role of women in the contemporary rural areas is described also by the second participant of my research group, joanna dąbrowska. 44 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 couple or another extended group. however, the binding with the cultural patterns is translated to legal and institutional activity – the legal owners and inheritors of farms are men. “family farming is patriarchal; the male farmer is head of the farm family and the family farm and makes the relevant decisions. he is the farm’s public face, and he participates in agricultural organisations and forums. family farming is based on the labour force of family members with the allocation of tasks being fundamentally gendered. women are responsible for care and household tasks and this task allocation has been regarded as a’ natural’ distribution of work on the basis of certain gender specific attributes.” (brandth 2002, 184). women are responsible for the home sphere but they also perform major work on the farm. “(...) are adaptable and flexible as work force and for this reason are often regarded as the farmer’s helper or assistant. women on farms have a great workload, a ‘double burden’, with little return” (brandth 2002, 184). sometimes the activity of mothers, grandmothers, and daughters is identified as altruism (cf. stanisz 2013, 255). what is important, and is the consequence of my research in sokoły, is that women often find it problematic to describe their role (cf. brandth 2002, 184). a lot of research stemming from the feminist paradigm shows a patriarchal character of farming. according to this research, it serves as a tool for women’s oppression. as jo little indicates, contemporary role of women in rural areas is definitely more discursive, therefore it is also subject to larger negotiations (little, 2002, 667). i have the impression that such rhetorics is also present in polish rural areas, where women stress the heaviness of their work on the farm; however, it also serves to underline the changes, thanks to which women are increasingly often free to choose their profession. it definitely does not perceive women as the “victims of the system”, though, as it used to be stated before (cf. brandth 2002, 186). it needs to be stressed that the strategy of women, and all farming family members, is loyalty (brandth 2002, 186). an extremely important term for the approached perspective lies in the phenomenon of masculinization of farming and the related analysis of the contemporary role of men in the rural areas. technology is commonly associated with the masculine sphere, and the dominant stereotypes of a rural man are based on physical (or, as in this case, technological) control of the nature (cf. little 2002, 666). with the progressing mechanization of farming, even tasks that used to be performed by women were taken over by men. thus, mechanization allows women to gradually retreat from farming (brandth 2002, 188). as a consequence, women turn gradually from farm workers into housewives or, as i was able to observe in sokoły, they enter the job market, become increasingly independent economic entities (brandth 2002, 189-190). 45 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 from a spatial-social perspective, women, specifically wives and daughters of farmers, are becoming much more dynamic in comparison to static men-farmers, who in turn are closely bound to a place that they can leave only for a few hours at one time. brandth (in perhaps somewhat defeatist words) diagnoses: “not only has farming turned into a male occupation, but connected to the ‘crisis in masculinity’, remote rural areas are turning into male bastions with recruitmentand bachelor problems” (brandth 2002, 191). granted, in sokoły one can also see divergence in roles and expectations, with the majority of heteronormative relationships, however, models of masculinity and femininity seem incompatible. when taking into account the division of labor at the farmstead, the described area is no different from the majority of other polish rural areas. the role of the main caretaker and boss is reserved to a man, while women are assigned the areas of the house, the garden, food, and bringing up children, even if women go outside of the farm to do paid work. tasks are assigned based on age. if the custodians of the farm do not live in a multi-generation house, but e.g. in two houses on the same lot, division of tasks may still apply and e.g. grandmothers are tasked with taking care of children. it seemed to me that the division of “masculine” tasks in sokoły was not that diversified, but the distribution of feminine tasks depends on a number of economic, class, etc. factors. my interview participants perceive a major change in the tasks of women in a farmstead, which is confirmed by e.g. by the abovementioned and recurring statement of “women used to have a harder time in the countryside.” my interviewees tended to stress that the clear division of tasks in their families is the result of tradition only. repeatedly, the anachronous character of sorts of the assigned roles was brought up – a man taking care of the farm and a woman taking care of the house and putting food on the table. children and labor: analyses and consequences children’s labor is a subject undertaken by social sciences mostly in the context of historical division of labor and in the area of anthropology of development. subject literature hosts the dominant voice of condemning child labor, interpreting it as the effect of poverty, low education levels, and social inequalities. when reading the literature, a dose of criticism is required, though. child labor needs to be interpreted from the socio-economic perspective but also in the wide context of contemporary family studies. interdisciplinary childhood studies show that the current interpretations are based on beliefs and constructs which are culturally associated with childhood. agency is often denied to the researched group, and a child is often perceived as abstracted from market mechanisms or introduced into the said mechanisms by force. olga nieuwenhuys, a dutch anthropologist, 46 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 indicates that the contemporary approach to the activity which attempts to eliminate children’s labor is the result of the social policies introduced in europe, mainly in the then imperial states of the second half of the 19th century. it is above all related to the propagating of common education, with the shifting role of the child and the status of the family (nieuwenhuys 1996, 238-239). the reform of law defined the acceptable duties: house chores, care of the older children over the younger, helping parents in a family business, etc. unlike labor, the duties were to socialize children and prepare them for adult life (nieuwenhuys 1996, 239). western law defined what is considered labor and chores in administration but also in collective consciousness. anthropology described child labor in two contexts: its importance in family structures and the aspect of the relations between labor, socialization, and school (nanjuda 2010, 46-47). many researchers, however, focus on the meaning of the figure of a child and their activity in the context of the family, not on the economy (nanjunda 2010, 47). from the perspective of the research of relations it shows that both paid and unpaid labor become forms of tightening the family bonds. it could be an important goal of anthropology to show the role of children in the economic mechanisms. because of the complicated symbolic connotations, their role is marginalized or not seen. the perception of the labor of poorer children as only socializing equals marginalizing its economic meaning (nieuwenhuys 1996, 246). at the same time, as d. c. nanjunda shows, child labor is always the result of some defined and hierarchical family structure. child labor and the involvement of children in economy is proven by the dominant models of family and marriages (nanjunda 2010, 55, 57). rural child labor has long been an exception to the prohibition of the youngest people doing work (cf. effland 2005, 281). for a long time this phenomenon was associated with the created image of the countryside, where farming life was to be a kind of ideal of pre-industrial community (effland 2005, 285). in most contemporary families, children do not accompany their elders at work until they say they want to join in. it may turn out to be never, as well. in this aspect, i see the similarity between sokoły and anne solberg’s description. the norwegian researcher analyzed the involvement of rural children in their parents’ activities. according to her, contemporary children are not pressed to act anymore, they are perceived, both by themselves and their parents, as aware social actors. therefore, they decide whether they want to engage in an activity, what activity they want to engage in and for how long (in: liebel 2004, 123). also, the rural parenthood model is changed, with the new one considered middle-class (brandth, overrein 2012, 102). this means that children more rarely accompany their parents 47 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 at work, and that increasingly often rural parents spend their free time on pastimes chosen by their sons and daughters. changes in agricultural production were supposed to bring changes in approach towards teaching labor, and thus the inheriting of farmsteads. children hope for one of their offspring to be able to take over the farm but still they leave the freedom of choice to their children (brandth, overrein, 107). i was able to observe a similar attitude in the families of sokoły. even though the norwegian research was conducted in completely different conditions than mine, my observations are strikingly similar. if i was to define the general character of relations between generations in the researched villages, i would say it is characterized by cooperation and support. the latter is not understood here as an altruistic gesture but rather as an arbitrary cultural requirement. this may be the most perceptible change in a sokoły family within the recent decades. it has become the compulsory duty of a parent to enable the development and education of their children. relations of the parents with those children who chose to stay in the countryside are mostly based on cooperation on the farm. the character of such a relation is often more formal and associated with institutional and legal regulations. older farmers tend to set up their offspring as farm owners – in almost all the cases those being sons. child labor and child-parent relations household duties of the youngest are the result of the abovementioned rule of support. almost all the interviewees from rural families state that children ought to help their parents with minor or major tasks. whether a parent urges a child to work depends on the nature of their contact. the tasks performed by children also differ in reference to the internal family relations. i was able to observe that in contemporary villages, the main and fundamental activity of this type is keeping the house tidy (cf. lachowski 2008/2009, 95). in some families, a division of tasks between children is apparent: one vacuums the floors, another uses the mop on the tiles. even if the cleaning is not as effective as that done by their mother, this is a type of learning and discipline. even when children do not participate in the farm’s activities, keeping the surroundings tidy is an unquestionable duty, because of its educational dimension. according to my interviewees, working for the household and lending a hand to the parents in daily chores are a kind of a lesson in life. it forms a foundation for future skills mostly related to living in a community and in a family. work is a means to order coexistence with others, therefore it is of 48 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 socializing character. it is the most important value of children’s work at times when a shift from “economically useful” towards “emotionally priceless” has occurred (cf. blair 1992, 243). the commune’s inhabitants declare that it is therefore best to introduce a child to farming, even when the children’s activities are supposed to be plays, and the effects are meager (or even become a burden to the custodian rather than actual help, cf. blair 1992, 244). one of the older female farmers told me the story of her few-year-old grandson trying to help her with the animals. she said it openly that his help was tiring for her but such activity could not be overestimated. when is the right time for the offspring to have their parents actually appreciate the effects of their efforts? most parents indicated at the age of 14-15 (end of elementary school, beginning of secondary school) because of higher trust towards the children (“you need to keep an eye out for the small ones”, i heard). cases when children are involved in farm work at a younger age are usually caused by special situations of the families. for my interviewees, earlier taking up “serious” work is considered a burden and its difficult character is stressed. in such special circumstances, as the inhabitants of the village frequently say, even girls work the farms. in his text on motivation to upbringing in the ethos of work, sampson lee blair wrote that the socializing aspect always contains a safeguard for the parent in itself. instilling altruism, willingness and eagerness to do work may “become activated” with a child exactly in critical family moments, when one of the family members is not capable of performing their duties (blair 1992). we may set a hypothesis that the sokoły inhabitants see the difficulty of such work precisely in its changed status. it is no longer a socializing element but rather real cooperation. boys’ upbringing to work in farming families, division of work according to the gender of the offspring is especially visible. the differentiation comes at time when the child’s activity starts bringing an economic result, (i.e. when the child is ready to perform major work with lower supervision of the parent). the children of the sokoły farming families have traditionally designated duties, which are still realized in most of the families. the conclusion from my interviews was that tasks related specifically to the farmstead and helping at the farm were mostly assigned to boys, not girls. helping a mother or a grandmother with typically feminine tasks (gardening, daily animal care, cooking) are considered a fancy excess. according to the majority of my female 49 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 interviewees, true interests are gender-bound and boys are naturally inclined towards their fathers. as a mother of a preschool child and her mother-in-law told me, the boy was eager to follow his father at all times, so that he could ride the tractor with him, or his grandfather so that he could assist in heavier farming work. my interviewees point at the socialization of rural boys through mimicking their fathers. i have possibly not heard of such a relation between girls and their mothers – daughter-father relations were also rare. the observations show that with no girls in a family, boys tend to help their mothers around the house more frequently, although relieving a mother from her house duties is generally desirable, regardless of the circumstances. the tasks assigned to gender roles are treated through priorities. one of my female interviewees, at the time graduating from secondary school, and living in a boarding house in a nearby town, returned home for the weekends to e.g. perform her assigned tasks, in this case cleaning the house. when i asked her if she did not have too many duties related to the upcoming exams, she said she did not consider cleaning the house a major duty. she explained that it was not about the willingness, but rather about the feel of needing to support her parents in their daily work, in her case related especially to her mother. nevertheless, in many cases where there is no daughter at home, mothers need to handle things on their own, as the major duty of the son is to support his father. one of the mothers of three adult sons told me, with regret in her voice, that her sons helped her with her duties, in this case milking the cows, until their father assigned them a different task. interest in the farm parents declare that their children are free to choose their duties. just like with every other childhood activity, first signs of fascination with farming are taken with a pinch of salt. i heard humorous stories of boys pretending to be their fathers when playing construction or machine repair. my interviewees see the individual tastes of children. not all children want to help their parents but each spark of interest they show in farming is accepted with enthusiasm. apparent distance in these stories conceals large joy and hope. a good example is that of zofia’s family, where one of the school-aged sons shows no interest in helping out in the field, while the other, of similar age, is eager to work, including replacing his father completely at harvest time. i met the opinion that boys’ fascination with the farm is the result of the “masculine” character and seeing their fathers as authority figures. 50 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 there are numerous methods for arousing farming interest in children. in the field, i was able to observe a few examples of socialization through play. during my visit to a szepietowo pig show (june 2017) the largest attraction for children were cowand tractorshaped balloons, toy tractors, possibility to go onboard one of the presented machines. i see expediency in encouraging children to play which pretends to be work. in a few houses i saw building block barns (with both boys and girls), i heard preschool tales of digging up buildingblock potatoes. such observations seem to confirm the theses from the research of farmer children play. social researchers, including hermann bausinger, showed that because of the closeness of their parents’ daily tasks and daily lives, rural children choose toys that resemble tools more often than city children pretending to be parents (in: liebel 2004, 187). my interviewees stress that mainly boys are interested in farming machines and farming in general. one of my female participants, a teacher, told me about gymnasium-level boy fascinations, who subscribe farming-related magazines and hold lively discussions about the published information. their girl peers ought to “take care of themselves” to a larger degree. my interviewees say, however, that for many young people the farm is a kind of hobby which may be only temporary. early interest in farming work may change under the influence of the city, new media. parents of five told me that each of their children knows how to sow and reap but not all do so with equal passion. these words confirm the testimony of a twentysomething farmer who has just received the deed to a farm: “sometimes there are little kids that are interested in things, they walk all around the barns, play with toys, they have these little toy tractors. and then a few years go by, they grow up and they lose interest. they don’t want to. life has mysterious ways.” an interesting phenomenon which i was able to observe in the field is assigning a sort of mystical vocation to farm work. tales of predestination and choosing the life of a farmer at a young age are full of tender emotions. i feel the distance of my interviewees towards childhood fascinations of the farm’s affairs is but illusory. some participants romanticize this lifestyle, and this is especially visible in those whose choice of this lifestyle was not that obvious at first. in one of the larger villages, i met tomasz3, with a university diploma in social sciences, who became an owner of land only after his studies. he told me about the supernatural force of attraction of the field, if working it “is in the blood”, as he feels. the farmer also explained that you cannot tell immediately if a child will become a farmer but you can search for specific character traits. the conversation with tomasz had specific character, naturally, as 3 the real name of the interviewee was changed by the author. 51 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 his words did. however, i perceive in it the common idea of farmers which says the interest in farming is independent of the external factors and parent attempts. they may encourage their children, show them the most attractive sides of being a farmer, but they never know what the final decision of their offspring will be. the choice is the grand unknown, independent of knowledge and attempts. maybe this is why it arouses so much fear in adults. farming as a hobby – machines and animals in the collected testimonies, there were numerous references to specific interest of the youngest in animals and machines. these two elements are also an attraction for the children that spend their daily lives in the city. it was a truism for my interviewees that children enjoy an almost supernatural empathy with animals. the youngest are said to be especially sensitive, patient and fond for livestock but also cats and dogs, equally in boys and girls. i heard stories of children who, for instance, were the only ones to correctly recognize individual cows, naming them. some showed special relations with smaller animals, like cats or dogs. a similar fascination, but reserved to boys, lies in the abovementioned machines: farming equipment and cars. i heard many humorous stories about getting your driver’s license at the age of 18 in the city, and at the age of eight in the countryside. moreover, some people perceive higher machine-handling predispositions in rural area boys – they handle well not only personal cars but also tractors. machines and animals are those elements of rural life that are especially fascinating for the youngest. the older see the attractiveness, so i would say that through reacting to this attractiveness they arouse the interest of the children in farming. as farms grow and become more mechanized, the most attractive elements become also threats. children in the face of threats the largest fears of rural parents are related to the security of their children and a sudden shift in their interest, resulting in abandoning the rural areas. the first fear is primarily associated with the age of their offspring. children are encouraged to help as soon as possible. however, in the first years of their lives, parents need to divide their attention between doing their work properly and looking out for their children. in consequence, their work is less effective with a child in sight. this problem appeared in the interviews as early as my first field trip. parents were afraid of a cow, being a wild animal, acting in an unpredicted way and doing harm to a child who is too small to be aware of the danger. the unpredictability is related to 52 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 both the livestock and child. both sides are treated with mistrust and their uncontrollable urges are taken into account. practically the same situation is visible with children’s contact with machines. many contemporary parents do not let children go near machines because with the progressing mechanization of farming, an increasing number of machines can drag or pin down the child. some even go as far as to blame mechanization of farming for abandoning upbringing through labor. a parent cannot distinguish a shout of play from that of fear and harm, so they do not allow children to play in the field, let alone work independently there. as contemporary research of the european rural communities shows, technological development and improvement of farming efficiency caused the presence of the child not only to be unnecessary but also dangerous. changed interest focus of the youngest can become a relief for their parents (brandth, overrein 2012, 105). rural children are considered more cautious than their city peers. marta, a mother of three school-and preschool-aged children, told me about a situation when her children rode their bicycles near large machines borrowed from their neighbor. one of the family’s older people cautioned her not to let the children so close to the machines. marta replied: “they know they are not to go too close.” “they’re just kids” – her neighbor said. “but these kids know” – marta returned. the category of threats also contains all elements that distract the child from the matters of the farm. they are mainly computers and mobile phones, considered “city” amusements. according to some of my interviewees, it is popularly believed that work socializes and teaches life, but a computer distances one from the traditional rules and disturbs the functioning of the young in the society. a parent needs to introduce regime, as the interest in computers almost always wins against farm work. rural parents who are not farmers say it is more difficult to control the children without family work on the farm. the young are therefore faced with many more threats: not only computers but also “bad company” of the visiting children who introduce non-internalized (but not necessarily absent from the communities) threats of alcohol, cigarettes, and possibly even drugs. the above factors cause a neverending fear in the rural parents. it is caused by the daily lack of trust, a care in the parent-child relationship. what is typical of the rural areas is on one hand fear of the dangerous character of farm work and on the other, of each stimulus that can 53 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 divert the attention of the child. agency, the responsibility of the child for their own actions, changes depending on the situation. helping versus education getting good education is treated as a priority in the life of the young inhabitants of the rural areas. daughters are especially encouraged to take up general education. learning in a city is more important than daily assistance to their parents, so children living in dormitories and boarding houses, as the abovementioned secondary school graduate, are relieved from most duties. the situation of the youth, primarily boys, who decide to stay in the village, is becoming increasingly complicated. parents often feel torn between encouraging children to get into careers outside farming and encouraging them to take over the farms. currently, however, taking over a farm is complicated by the need to get farming education. i have repeatedly heard that small boys do not like to go to school and are instead interested in the daily life of the farm. despite this, getting at least secondary education at a decent level has become the main task of a child. education is needed to reach for the desired future: taking over the farm or finding a well-paid job outside the rural areas. parents sometimes willingly give up encouraging children to help, especially if they have problems at school or many extra-curricular activities. some children, in terms of a sort of compromise, help on the farm only in the summer when they are free from the primary obligation: school. parents care about additional education for their children. in response to the interest in extra activities, the local culture center offers a wide range of activities for the younger and older generations. some parents drive their children to villages located several kilometers from the commune’s center for extra activities. english is especially popular. learning languages is considered especially important; parents repeatedly said knowing english makes it easier to find a job and possibly stay abroad. a different approach is offered in reference to farming education. according to the law, a farm can be signed over to anyone. financing, however, can be obtained only by a person with education in farming. young people who consider staying on the farm need to graduate at least from secondary school with a farming profile. until recently, many farmers in sokoły graduated from the area’s main technical secondary school in krzyżewo, currently named after stefania karpowicz and established in the early 20th century. the locals are eager to tell stories of the place’s finest times, high level of education in the past. currently the school hosts classes in a few majors but that of the farming technologist remains the main one. almost all students are young men from the area’s 54 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 villages: “some come and you see they are really into it, they are farmers who have been in the flow since they were kids” (interview 2.8). also, increasingly often, courses are joined by teenagers who, as the teacher interviewees suggested, do not have a vision of the future for themselves or were encouraged to enroll by their parents. girls are still a rarity. even after graduating, their social status as female farmers is uncertain. they do not work but merely “help”. in the recent years, the school has been in serious financial and attendance problems. teachers told me the technical school fights for every student – even those with unsatisfactory marks are promoted to higher grades. the local inhabitants consider the future of the school to look bad. in their opinion, the school, while getting poorer, cannot provide practical knowledge to students. as one of the teachers told me, school used to be a model which was carried over to homes. currently, also because of mechanization, anachronous methods are taught using old machines – the ones actually used on farms are too expensive for the school to purchase. the words are confirmed by the school’s graduates who mostly value the education from their parents. they stress, however, that theory, especially at times of unified laws, differs from daily practice. as a consequence, school holds no authority among the students. this is not improved by the fact that practical subjects are mainly taught by women, whose competences in this area are not respected as a rule. people who want to become farmers are determined, they possess knowledge they have been collecting for years of practice while working since their early years, or they gain education through the experience of their parents. i see a striking difference in the attitude of parents towards elementary education, secondary education, and farming education. getting good education is an unquestioned priority which currently cannot be replaced by education through work or family socialization. the former two types of education have a leading role: they allow to get prestige and a pass to future career outside the rural area. the farming technical school is treated not as a seat of knowledge and broadening of the competences, but rather as an institution that allows for formal privileges to be gained after an at least initial decision regarding one’s future has been taken. summary sokoły is full of contrasts between traditional division of roles and the contemporary approach to upbringing. as i showed in individual sections, most young women are relieved from their parents expecting them to take over the farms. young sons are an uncertain figure, 55 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 though – on one hand, according to the contemporary approach, they are free to choose their life path, on the other – it is expected they will show interest in the farm. the attitude translates to the way sokoły children are brought up towards work. parents’ attitudes shift between encouraging and persuasion on one side and giving total freedom of choice on the other. within the commune, we see fewer and fewer families with an authoritarian (cf. lindberg, nyberg 2006, 1475) approach that bears no resistance. parents’ attitudes change: within farming families, the attitude of being close replaces the approach of only physical closeness (brandth, overrein 2012, 102). work is still an important element of upbringing. it is, however, less often mirrored in teaching how to become a better farmer. practical work, the basis of farming, should be, according to the parents, knowledge in itself, making it easier to live in the world. berit brandth’s and grete overrein’s words seem apt here: “manual work is seen as indispensable knowledge for later (work) life, which connects to rural masculine values. working hard and a lot, to be able to do almost everything themselves – such as repairing tools and machinery, carpentry and building – and to be self-sufficient is honourable and the sign of a good farmer/man” (brandth, overrein 2012, 102). if sons, or sporadically husbands of daughters, do not want to take over the farm, it needs to be sold. children have the right to their own informed decision, they are not forced towards anything, even if their decisions result in their parent’s living circumstances to deteriorate. earnings of children are most important and they determine their actions. parents understand or at least declare their understanding of their children’s motives, explaining that the life of a farmer is not easy (cf. brandth, overrein 2012, 107). understanding does not, naturally, mean lack of emotional reaction to abandoning of the countryside. i have heard numerous parents voice the sentiment “there is no one left, time to get going ourselves.” free choice also means lack of certainty, even at the time of taking over the farm. i have heard a few “warning” tales of a farmer abandoning the land, with a woman usually being the motive of such decision. mordernization of the rural areas has been progressing for decades, also on the level of changed lifestyles and behaviors. dynamics of inheriting and freedom of choice remains in close relation with the way children are brought up. from the necessary individuals of family farm support, the young become, as the norwegian researchers would put it, children in themselves, an intended point of pride for reasons different from all the previous ones (brandth, overrein 2012, 107). the changing dynamics of farming and major breakthroughs in the recent 30 years also make it difficult to 56 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 predict the future of the rural areas (cf. brandth 2012, 108). it is therefore no wonder parents are not that highly motivated to encourage their children to stay in the countryside. references: brandth, berit 2002 gender identity in european family farming: a literature review, “sociologia ruralis”, vol. 3, pp. 181-200. brandth, berit and grete overrein 2012 resourcing children in a changing rural context: fathering and farm succession in two generations of farmers, “sociologia ruralis”, vol. 1 (53), pp. 95-111. blair, sampson lee 1992 children's participation in household labor: child socialization versus the need for household labor, “journal of youth and adolescence”, vol. 2, pp. 241-258. creed, gerald w. 2000 “family values” and domestic economies, “annual review of anthropology”, vol. 29, pp. 329355. effland, anne b. w. 2005 agrarianism and child labour policy for agriculture, “agricultural history”, vol. 3 (79), pp. 281-297. king, valerie and glen h. elder 1995 american children view their grandparents: linked lives across three rural generations, “journal of marriage and the family”, vol. 57, pp. 165-178. j. 2017 na wsi dzieci ciągle są tanią siłą roboczą, letter from the reader, “wysokie obcasy”, february 4, vol 5, accessible online, http://www.wysokieobcasy.pl/wysokie-obcasy/7,127763,21320981,na-wsi-dzieci-ciagle-satania-sila-robocza.html [accessed on december 3, 2019]. józefiak, bartosz 2017 wakacje dzieci na wsi: „mogę poprosić tatę o dzień wolnego, żeby pograć na orliku”, “gazeta.pl weekend”, july 28, 57 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 http://weekend.gazeta.pl/weekend/1,152121,22159284,wakacje-dzieci-ze-wsi-mogepoprosic-tate-o-dzien-wolnego.html [accessed on november 7, 2018]. krzyworzeka, amanda 2013 decision-making in farming households in eastern poland, “focaal journal of global and historical anthropology”, vol. 65, issue 3, pp. 129-144. krzyworzeka, amanda 2014 rolnicze strategie pracy i przetrwania. studium z antropologii ekonomicznej, warszawa. lachowski, stanisław 2008/2009 obciążenie pracami domowymi dzieci w rodzinach wiejskich, “roczniki socjologii rodziny”, vol. xix, pp. 91-108. liebel, manfred 2004 a will of their own. cross-cultural perspectives on working children. london, new york. lindbeck, assar and sten nyberg 2006 raising children to work hard: altruism, work norms, and social insurance, “the quarterly journal of economics”, vol. 4, pp. 1473-1503. little, jo 2002 rural geography: rural gender identity and the performance of masculinity and femininity in the coutryside, “progress in human geography”, vol. 5, pp. 665-670. markowska, danuta 1970. rodzina wiejska na podlasiu 1864-1964, warszawa. nanjunda, d. c. 2010 can there be an anthropology of child labour? [in:] d. c. nanjunda, contemporary studies in anthropology. a reading, new dehli, pp. 45-64. nieuwenhuys, olga 1996 the paradox of child labour and anthropology, “annual review of anthropology”, vol. 25, pp. 237-251. pine, frances 2002 dealing with money: zlotys, dollars and other currencies in the polish highlands, [in:] markets and moralities. etnographies of postsocialism, r. mandel et al (eds.), oxford, new york, pp. 75-97. rapport nigel and joanna overing 58 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 2000 social and cultural anthropology. the key concepts. london-new york. winthrop, robert h. 1991 dictionary of concepts in cultural anthropology, westport. yanagisako, sylvia junko 1979 family and household: the analysis of domestic groups, “annual review of anthropology”, vol. 8, pp. 161-205. anthropology of east europe review 30 (2) fall 2012 112 masquerade and postsocialism: ritual and cultural dispossession in bulgaria. by gerald w. creed. bloomington: indiana university press, 2011. xi, 217pp. notes. works cited. photographs. index. $70.00 cloth; $24.95 paper. heidi bludau, monmouth university masquerade and postsocialism examines globalization and alternatives to modernity in post-socialism through the folk performance of kukeri (mumming). masquerade in the form of mumming originates in bulgarian ancient history, has survived ottoman rule and socialism, and is thriving in post-socialism. creed successfully argues that although largely neglected in postsocialist research, rural rituals provide the perfect site for inquiry into community, social networks and global processes. this analysis of mumming offers an alternative approach to a euro-american vision of modernity, challenging the notion that pre-modern activities and rituals cannot represent modernity. cold war opposition set up a global postsocialism that creates barriers to local alternatives and the practical use of indigenous cultural resources. when foreign development plans fail, the blame is placed in the local context. creed challenges this development-by-design assessment by suggesting that applying local, familiar alternatives to problems leads to greater potential for success. he uses kukeri to illustrate that the cultural options and alternatives available to rural bulgarians are “eroded and reformed before they can even be recognized” and consequently utilized (4), what he calls “cultural dispossession.” creed bases this book on 20 years of ethnographic research in rural bulgaria. his countrywide selection of 24 villages representing different regions provides a breadth of examples which allows the reader to see the local alternatives that create this national tradition. the bulgarian case with its idiosyncratic elements also illustrates a development context familiar across the region. the ensuing discussion of productive alternatives to western modernity and development enables comparison with other ritual traditions and makes the bulgarian case part of a broader conversation on social relations. creed starts with a rich description of the mumming season (chapter 1). related to the agricultural cycle, mumming activities typically take place in connection with the new year or lent. traditional characters in the motley band include a central female transvestite virgin/bride figure, a priest, groom or other male escort, and an “‘arap’—a darkly blackened figure” (43) glossed as a gypsy or middle easterner. mumming is locally perceived as distinctly bulgarian and linked to one’s ancestral village. motivations for mumming are identity-based and run like a thread from the local village to national representations of global modernity, but center on a personal desire, or need, for participation. the most well-argued section of this book is creed’s analysis of the ways mumming represents global frameworks of masculinity (chapter 2). creed states that the engagement with mumming is more closely linked with male subjectivity than it is with ritual activity and anthropology of east europe review 30 (2) fall 2012 113 supernatural belief. increased participation in global production emasculates men. while women work in hazardous factory conditions, men are largely unemployed and ashamed at their inability to fill the role as provider and protector. mumming confirms masculinity through various elements of the mumming performance—the ability to carry heavy costumes, endure bitter cold, or drink heavily the entire day; costumes with phallic and scrotal representations; lewd or violent behavior. most interesting in creed’s analysis of gender is the paradox of female participation in mumming. as a rural activity, kukeri is a symbol of backwardness and including women is a sign of gender equality or progress in modernity. realistically, migration has led to an insufficient number of men in the village. creed also suggests that an increased awareness of the global gay culture has turned transvestism into a transgressive element. men no longer want to play the transvestite with the fear of being labeled homosexual. in chapter 3, creed questions why ritual acts are not interpreted as civil society, stating that mumming fits almost all definitions of civil society while constituting the popular conceptualization of the term (110). participation in kukeri creates a subset of villagers with common interests who work to maintain the activity over time. other than 20 years during socialism when the state supported kukeri, it has been largely removed from the state. finally, mumming acts as a “socioeconomic barometer” that shapes villager’s political and economic experiences and provokes political action (121). creed next challenges the model of (post)socialist atomization, stating that the scholarly concentration on the lack of village cohesion and a fascination with informal networks misses the complexities of social networks in bulgaria and obscures “a cultural resource that could have been exploited for a different constitution of democracy and political participation” (138). he uses the violent behavior in kukeri to demonstrate that conflict and tension are paramount to community relations and that despite atomization villages created workable communities. mumming sheds light on alternative ideas of community where conflict and cooperation live together, a concept that is difficult to capture in western social models. mumming also heavily draws on negative roma stereotypes, making their participation another paradox (chapter 5). unlike women’s participation as a form of modernity, creed suggests that roma participation is a demonstration of community. even negative characterizations demonstrate that roma are part of the community. although bulgarian-roma racial tensions become conflated with american racial issues through a range of globalization processes, discourse surrounding the inclusion of roma in mumming opens the door for improved ethnic relations. creed concludes by urging the reader to consider the possibility of culturally grounded modernity (216), reminding us that socialism was an alternative to modernity that left multiple post-socialist options for modernity in its wake. he notes that kukeri is wanting in the poorest, de-developed regions of bulgaria where villagers are not in dialogue with modernity. in closing, this book is not merely an analysis of what contemporary rituals in rural bulgaria can tell us about post-socialist life and studies. it is an innovative ethnography of anthropology of east europe review 30 (2) fall 2012 114 global processes in local context. in this regard, masquerade and postsocialism would be of interest to anyone in globalization or development studies, as well as european studies. creed’s emphasis on the role of ritual and performance broadens the audience. in a time when many anthropology departments are fighting to prove relevance in academic and public spheres, creed demonstrates that ritual, a long-standing topic of anthropology, not only serves as a useful site of analysis but can also challenge teleological ideals of western modernity. 66 briefing on the current conditions for human rights in romania congressional human rights caucusmania congessional laszlo kürti, department of anthropology, the american university note: this briefing took place on april 6, 1990 and the report reflects the nature of the events accordingly. it is reprinted here with the permission of its author and any subsequent usage should be consulted first with him. first, i would like first to express my appreciation for the opportunity to join you in today's session. as a cultural anthropologist specializing in ethnic conflicts and nationalistic movements in eastern europe, i feel i can best contribute by addressing my remarks specifically to the intersection of these areas; my colleagues here from the human rights organizations and other institutions will cover the areas of their expertise. as a scholar i am deeply distressed by the violent aftermath of the revolution that deposed the ceausescus. the extraordinarily vicious hostility between hungarians and romanians in transylvania calls for the combined expertise and urgent efforts of scholars, human rights activists, legislators and other concerned citizens, as represented by our meeting today. with a view toward taking such steps, it seems especially important now to suggest several historical causes that may help to account for the prolonged and seemingly pathological hatred between these two groups. a brief recapitulation of the salient points at issue will, i hope, be useful as a basis for further informed deliberations. what we are seeing now is, i think, a complex mosaic of interethnic strife whose roots run very deep. i will touch upon seven interrelated primary areas in my remarks: economic, political, educational, religious, mythical, administrative and international. to begin with, let me point out that the manifold grievances of hungarians and romanians against one another are not of recent vintage. some-such as the historical dislocations of populations and feudal privileges-date back as far as the eighteenth century; others are the result of the mismanaged economy and ideologies of the ceausescu and kadar 67 regimes. nonetheless, many of these sensitive points were severely exacerbated during the past decade of economic setbacks, official curtailments of human rights, and a consistent lack of basic consumer goods in romania. 1) economic: we must remember that more than forty years of dictatorial stalinist rule yielded irrational, if not downright perverted, policies of forced collectivization and widely uneven development. industrial complexes were constructed in locations lacking energy sources or available potential labor, one important consequence of which was an unwanted influx of laborers into previously ethnically homogeneous areas of transylvania. as might be expected, such dislocations caused enormous resentment in both populations, giving rise to ethnocentrism, superiority/inferiority complexes and racist prejudice. 2) political: under ceausescu's tyrannical rule, hungarian, german and serbian institutions, publications and rural home-based industries were strangled, and the use of their mother tongues prohibited. ethnic schools and press were eliminated as were newspapers and other media; intellectuals and community leaders were intimidated, jailed and tortured, under the assumption that minority issues would thus eventually cease to exist. the outrage experienced by hungarians at these most egregious violations of human rights cannot be underestimated, for they cut into the heart of the very meaning of culture. 3) educational: after the revolution, hungarians felt-from their perspective justifiably-entitled to re-open their own elementary, secondary and higher educational institutions. the very first slogans to appear in demonstrations in february and march, for example, demanded the reinstatement of schools under hungarian control: they were met with immediate resistance and even provocation. for these actions were perceived by romanian local leaders as threatening to their own established educational system and policies. 4) religious: let us also recall that religious devotion on the part of minorities was seen by the former regime as tantamount to a declaration of nationalist sentiment. accordingly, parishioners and leaders of hungarian protestant and catholic churches (as well as those of the german lutheran churches) were targeted for constant harassment. these wounds are, obviously, far from healed; in fact, they are in danger of giving rise to more of the fanaticism and violent confrontations we have already begun to witness. 5) mythical: the ceausescu government, as you well know, promoted a state propaganda that intensified the historical myth of daco-roman continuity, according to which 68 only romanians are entitled to take their rightful place in transylvania, as the true heirs to 2,000 years of habitation of that much contested terrain. hungarians, on the other hand, have defended their own equally powerful claims of entitlement to that land-during world war ii with fascist and chauvinistic propaganda-by asserting their primacy, considering the romanians to be usupers. because of this historical controversy, both governments felt entitled to seize regions in transylvania, twice realigning its borders sinceworldwar i. survivors of these realignments and believers of these myths on both sides share a sense of grave injustice, each seeking to rectify the perceived abrogation of their 'historic rights.' 6) administrative: the county administration system under ceausescu favored romanian-inhabited areas while diminishing the importance of ethnic areas, a reversal of what happened during world war ii under hungarian control. and in 1967 the last strong foothold of hungarian autonomy-the maros autonomous region-was eliminated. it is clear that the lack of indigeneous administration representing the interests of the local group leads in many instances to violent outbursts. 7) international: the current crisis should not be dismissed as a simple historic border dispute; rather, it represents the plight of the largest ethnic minority in eastern europe. and, although directly it involves hungary and romania, we must realize its potential for drawing the united states and soviet union, as well as their allies, into an international arena whose volatility may undermine the future of democracy in that part of the world. why the current conflict? as i hope to have shown, the legacy of fascism and, subsequently, stalinism is endemic to the present conflict between hungarians and romanians in romania. toward an explanation of the outbreak of recent violence i would like to suggest the following: 1) the institutionalization of violence--either through militarization or with the dismissive sense of "well, it's the way of life here"-intensifies the escalation of conflict. 2) ethnic polarization-that is, a deeply rooted tendency to see all experiences in terms of "i'm hungarian, you're romanian"-during a crisis heightens as the conflict intensifies. 3) hungarians see romanians as enjoying all economic and political power, a status achieved under ceausescu's state nationalism. consequently, they view the post-ceausescu state 69 as an opportunity for instant reversal of prior griefs. the disparate allocation of power and resources between ethnic groups occupying the same territory is perceived to be an advantage to the group in the leading position due to general shortages, the lack of strong leadership and economic deprivation. 4) ethnocentric perception is a major contributor to group hostility resulting in a "mirrorimaging" ("we see them as bad; they see us as bad" and, subsequently, both see each other in negative terms through such hostile images and myths). i should emphasize, however, that stereotypes themselves do not necessarily force ethnic groups into violent confrontation but they may be an important catalyst in separating groups from each other as well as reinforcing aggressive tendencies and conflict. rational dialogue between the adversaries can not be forthcoming while such extremist, "tribal" perspectives persist on both sides. 5) it must be realized that most hungarians favor some form of autonomy, but differ considerably in their view of the urgency of the situation and the methods that to be used to achieve it. these differences form the basis for the rapid formation of hungarian political organizations-such as the christian party, szekely party, madisz, and rmdesz-following the romanian revolution. party leaders-as well as the hungarian state-are, i think, responsible for the lack of a unanimous and unambigous declaration of their goals for autonomy, for democratic renewal and the rejection of separatist and irredentist claims. 6) the military amd the police (as well as the former securitate) are both a cause of and object for ethnic clash. let us recall that the dictator nicolae ceausescu (who in 1980 received the "man of peace of the year" award from india) made certain that no officer with ethnic connections would be elevated to higher rank. since the army and police are an integrating force of romanian ethnicity, they favor romanian claims, and subsequently generate ethnic resentments. thus, the current militarization of romanian society both reflects and promotes ethnic divisions in the society at large. 7) as indicated by the current emergence of political factions-many of extremist nature such as vatra romanesca, peasant, and christian democrats-party differences reflect distinctions in the hierarchical ethnic configuration of romanian society. the preponderant ethnic cleavage in romiania has created a multiparty system that exacerbates conflict by mirroring that ethnic division. 70 recommendations as a strategy for conflict resolution, third-party involvement is, i believe, necessary. while there are many ways to offer assistance-for example, through mediation, arbitration, facilitation, monitoring, adjudication and direct involvement-a combination of mediation and direct economic assistance may be useful on the part of the united states government. for these reasons, then, i would like to urge you to consider the following recommendations: a) the establishment of a fact-finding mission of independent researchers to conduct a thorough investigation of the status of ethnic minorities in romania. its aim should be to discover those local-level political, economic and cultural factors that contribute to the escalation of interethnic conflict and regressive nationalistic propaganda. b) an on-going dialogue among targeted groups to take place on a regular basis under congressional auspices, funded through independent sources to investigate minority rights in eastern europe. the establishment of such a task force, under united states congressional support, may facilitate the adequate protection and representation of civil and human rights of minorities there. c) the assistance of the u.s. congress in the creation of a ministry or department for nationality affairs in each country, coordinated directly by the parliament, to work closely together to resolve these and other aggravated issues. these ministries, then, could be directly responsible to international organizations such as helsinki watch, amnesty international, and the congressional human rights caucus. d) that the united states press the provisional romanian government to seek out and bring to justice remaining securitate (former state-secret police) members as equivalent to war criminals, many of whom may well be implicated in current ethnic violence. this act should be also extended to those who encourage violence and manipulate ethnic conflict. to facilitate conflict resolution and to reduce potential ethnic conflict in the future, the following points should be urged immediately upon the involved parties in hungary and romania: 1) such ubiquitous and deep-seated ethnic conflict cannot be neutralized simply by rewriting the constitution. the new romanian state must provide autonomous status to a minority administration and culture; 71 2) equal status must be guaranteed to all minorities and their respective regional selfgovernments. such regional representations might provide arenas for stating and resolving grievances and ethnic rivalry as well as aiding the decentralization of the bucharest government; 3) the ‘great romanian’ and local nationality chauvinisms should be strongly opposed; 4) conflict should be solved through democratic discussions and self-criticism, through public discourse and the media.; 5) the government should utilize the services of ethnic leaders and specialists into state mechanisms to enable implementation of policies concerning these groups; 6) opportunity for social, economic and political mobility should not be tied solely to ethnic group identity or ethnic party membership; 7) introduction of government reforms, preferential programs and an increase in public expenditures are needed to meet the needs of ethnic populations in, such areas as health, education, saving and loans, businness opportunities and land allocation; 8) identification of ‘superordinate goals' requiring collaboration among ethnic groups should be encouraged. the role of regional and ethnic parties should be enhanced to pave the way for greater cooperation among competing ethnic groups; 9) hungarians and romanians must be persuaded that transylvania as a region has no future as a separatist or totally independent federalist state; 10) both sides must acknowledge that successful negotiation requires moderation and self-criticism, mutual respect and the desire to consider a rational, middle-road solution in tandem. in closing, it is evident, of course, that the foregoing recommendations cannot succeed unless individuals realize the importance of education-both formal and informal-in combatting prejudice and racist stereotypes at home, in the schools and at the workplace. parents and educators should be encouraged to teach children tolerance and respect for each others' culture, emphasizing similarities rather than differences. such efforts would go far towards countering john stuart mill's 1861 prediction that "democracy is next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities." with the unfolding spirit of democracy, the new powers in budapest and bucharest must, i believe, discard the dangerous myths of the past and consider their common future together if they truly wish to signal an end to their historic and current controversies. in order to convince each other of a desire to establish genuine democratic relations, both countries must demonstrate 72 an understanding of present realities. the united states and the soviet union may be potential partners in enabling the participants to find a "cure" for the pathological strains of reactionary nationalism and support efforts toward a peaceful mitteleuropa for 1992 and beyond. 89 anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 the return of ancestral gods. modern ukrainian paganism as an alternative vision for a nation. by mariya lesiv. montreal & kingston, london, ithaca: mcgill-queens university press. 2013. 244 pp. notes. glossary. index. photographs. $67.50: cloth. marian rubchak, valparaiso university ukrainian paganism and its “multiple modernities” (166) interact to create a bold new spiritual paradigm that also serves the cause of validating ukrainian nationhood based on prechristian ancestral traditions and practices. applying her excellent control of an imposing volume of research, mariya lesiv has produced an engrossing narrative about modern ukrainian paganism in all of its complexities. it is about a people who rejected the dominant christian religion and nationalist political ideology in favor of a two thousand year old past for validation of their historical ethnic identity. she examines in meticulous detail paganism’s emergence as an alternative religion during a time of the people’s rising national consciousness, its adaptations to modernity, its place in the global community of pagans (à la arjun appadurai, modernity at large, 1996), its potential for becoming a lasting belief system in ukraine, and its direct involvement in forging a modern spiritual paradigm. known as runvira (native ukrainian national faith), this modern pagan tradition was established in chicago in 1966 and began to filter into ukraine in the 1980s, at a time when history was being redrafted and “collective memories of the past were being restructured” (7). expansion of this alternative to the christian faith advanced dramatically after ukrainian independence in 1991 (64). together with runvira, two additional officially registered communities—native faith, monotheistic like runvira, emphasizing native traditions and a nationalist orientation; and ancestral fire, a polytheistic faith that accentuates magic, orients itself toward a pan-slavic community, and exhibits little interest in nationalist ideology—rose to dominance in ukraine. common to the three is an aspect unique to ukraine. they all revere a spiritual hero who symbolized for them their native values, and provides an important connection to ukrainian pagan claims for a heritage of pre-christian beginnings. he is the nineteenth-century poet, taras shevchenko, valorized in ukraine as a spiritual giant with a reservoir of compelling symbols with which they could identify. the first four chapters of lesiv’s book help us to better appreciate the ways in which the newly converted pagans related to this spiritual phenomenon as their pursuit of a national identity took them away from, not toward engagement with, the mainstream orthodox religion or easternrite catholicism that defines the religion of most western ukrainians. the connection to paganism furnishes for ukrainians irrefutable evidence of the reality of their being a discrete ethnic nation with a well-established history. native folklore tied to rural settings, a perceived connection to an ancient trypillian culture originating in the dnipro-dnister region around kyiv, and a connection to the bygone scythian tribal culture, coalesced to strengthen their avowal of authenticity as an ethnic-nation. the following four chapters advance the narrative beyond the founding and organizational structure of paganism to convey important insights into its inner workings, goals, shared beliefs, attraction of its aesthetics, and its kinship with western pagan communities. although the west anthropology of east europe review 35 (1), 2017 90 and ukraine are united in their fascination with the past, over the course of their respective developments they have also diverged in a number of critical ways. the author’s explanation of their differences is also part of this segment. she argues persuasively that western pagans focus on creativity as opposed to “authenticity” and have come to terms with the fact that their religion is new, whereas ukrainians argue against being seen as modernist in favor of adherence to traditionalism. those rituals and symbols, the sacred ceremonies performed near shrines, the wearing of native dress, and artifacts replete with ancient, frequently stylized, symbols are all products of “imagined achievements of their imagined ancestors” (99). they offer important insights into the making of a modern pagan identity in ukraine. the last two chapters include an examination of the network of conflicting beliefs adapted to the very modernity that ukrainian pagans decry, even as they employ its technology to promote their re-imagined faith. here, lesiv also raises important questions about the role of western ideas in helping to chart a course toward the creation of a new spiritual paradigm and religious discourse for those ukrainians seeking an alternative to mainstream christianity, as well as their rejection of the nationalistically charged political ideology to which so many ukrainians turned to claim irrefutable nationhood. in addition, this segment boasts an in-depth discussion of its aesthetics, aspects of which are found in the many symbols and sacred rituals, features that make conversion so appealing. finally, the author contemplates the potential for the survival of ukrainian paganism as it engages the process of creating a “new indigenous face” for ukraine (166) and reflects on its place in the extended global community of pagans. lesiv’s impressive work is solidly rooted in wide-ranging fieldwork that takes into account the folk songs and sacred rituals witnessed during her many years of on-site research in ukraine and its diaspora; personal interviews; use of archival documents, scholarly and popular publications, and the internet. in sum, not only is this an excellent example of scholarship, it is also a mine of information for scholars and students alike—especially at the graduate level, although upper-level undergraduates can profit as well. the casual reader will find it an appealing and edifying read. 33 strategies for interethnic conflict prevention in transylvania joel marrant, linfield college thus far in the session, inter group conflict has been explored in two regions, the former yugoslavia and the three country region of the southeastern alps. gene hammel and bob minnich have called our attention to the extremely complex historical background to conflict there, and suggested ways underlying tensions might have been mitigated and interethnic clashes prevented. i would like to build on this by introducing to the mix a third region that is equally dogged by a history of hostilities. our previous speakers built for us a clear framework for locating not just the historical roots, but the structural requisites for inter group conflict in this part of the world. much of what they have proposed about their zones applies directly to this other "land between" that i will be talking about, so hopelessly misunderstood and misrepresented in the consciousness of outsiders: from bram stoker to henry kissinger. in contrast with the other two presentations, however, i will be spending much less time on how inter group tensions in this region have developed historically and focusing more on specific suggestions regarding the prevention of future conflicts. in doing so, i am building upon the ideas and inspiration of numerous scholars who have sought to both untangle the knots of history in the danubian basin and to build a foundation for peace and justice in the region. among them is laszlo kurti, whose briefing to the congressional human rights caucus on human rights in romania in april, 1990 (kurti, 1991) provides us with a baseline view set in the early post-communist era of the roadblocks hindering the development of peaceful relations between hungarians and romanians. given the often dismal prognosis regarding interethnic relations, it is worth noting that events that have taken place in central europe in the last two years offer hope that the potential upsurge in hostilities forewarned by kurti seven years ago may be averted. yet rather than be lulled into complacency by such positive developments, we should redouble our efforts to design and implement localized proposals for action*. transylvania is located along that fracture line, partially real, partly perceived, that runs from the baltic sea through the north european plain, across the carpathians and then, at the 34 drava-sava-danube line, explodes across the former yugoslavia to emerge somewhere in the adriatic. the region is one of those quintessential hot zones of contention scattered like land mines across the european continent. it can be characterized as such today, primarily because of past efforts on the part of imperial states (ottoman, habsburg, austro-hungarian, russian, soviet), their pre-feudal predecessors and their nation-state successors, to consolidate control over territory and resources, to the advantage of one group over others. one result has been longstanding tension among populations, particularly magyars and romanians, and open hostility over the past century between the two modern nation states that have sought to encompass all of their children within their own political borders. as has occurred in so many other regions, vertical cleavages, such as class, have reinforced horizontal ones, such as ethnicity, with religious and cultural differences being constantly exploited as well to serve the interests of states and their ruling elite. the twin prongs of romanian-magyar conflict in transylvania have been incessant argument over historical rights to the territory and its resources, and state policies towards minority populations. from the codex triparticus in 1515 that proclaimed the three privileged nationalities (and excluded romanians) to the early post-communist anti-magyar noisemaking of iliescu and funar, no political state governing transylvania developed fair and consistent policies for dealing fairly with all of its constituent populations and promoting civic institutions that would deflect ethnic politics from playing out their ugly course. ethnic nationalism has been the default key in the 20th century for social mobilization and identity formation, struck again and again, because of the absence of compelling alternatives. given this history, it is astounding that the states of hungary and romania have actually taken substantive steps to create a new context for dealing with these problems. there is now nearly in place the first comprehensive treaty between the two states that addresses issues of minority rights and border guarantees. this was signed in timisoara on september 16, 1996 and depends only upon the approval by the magyar parliament for full implementation*. the document is far from perfect. there are certainly significant holes and ambiguities in the treaty that will require concerted effort to repair. there are also large numbers of romanians and magyars, in and out of transylvania, who opposed the treaty and will continue to demonstrate against it. there are also other peoples in the region, most notably the roma, whose abuse and repression remains unaddressed politically and economically. without social justice 35 and genuine citizenship available to all populations, a truly civil society has no chance of emerging in romania. and as long as the economy of that country remains dysfunctional, any movement towards ethnic reconciliation will be fighting upstream. given all of these cautionary notes, we must recognize that at no point in history have the two nations of romania and hungary had at the diplomatic level anything close to this opportunity for fostering the growth of civil infrastructure that might lead to an easing of tensions over transylvania. we may find it hard to believe that some of the leaders involved actually possess the wisdom to see the potentially positive consequences, but life is strange, and sometimes the most human among us-even an ion iliescu-actually stumbles in the right direction. given the political past of romania and hungary, and the headlong charge in wrong directions that has for so long characterized the diplomacy of those two nations, we should not allow our professional cynicism to dismiss the significance of this event, and the opportunities it presents-particularly now, with the election in november 1996 of emil constantinescu as romanian president. the relatively high level of approval given the treaty by peoples of both nations, in concert with their political representatives, indicates the ground, though filled with stones, may be as fertile for proactive efforts at peace as it will ever be. as a romanian friend told me: "we don't have real caviar. we probably never will. but we have cabbage; so let's make cabbage soup". but what in that cabbage soup can serve as a glue to hold people together in ways that coopt, overcome, outcompete the deeply rooted bonds of ethnic nationalism that have held hungarians and romanians in their grasp for so long? in bogdan denitch's words: "what is to bind complex multiethnic states and communities into polities that could be legitimate parameters within which to make political decisions?" (denitch, 1994:80) to push the balkan culinary metaphor: who will be the cooks, what will be the ingredients, who will supply them, and what will be the recipe? the task, as in all of those other zones of contention in europe, is monumental. and as eugene hammel mentioned in regards to the tragic case of the former yugoslavia, the "underlying structural problems in the achievement of peace... could have been overcome only with the most extraordinary luck and diplomatic skill." yet i am compelled to ask what might have happened in yugoslavia had a comparable breakthrough occurred when there was in place an international and academic community actually poised to respond? u.s. and western 36 european foreign policy-makers at least have their attention now drawn to the region. international ngos, such as the international crisis group and irex, are currently prepared to participate in the process of building that elusive civil society of havel's moral imagination. and there are plenty of social scientists with the knowledge and expertise and local connections to help guide programs of tension reduction, if they possess the will and persistence-and are given the opportunity. i would like to offer here two very concrete, very local proposals regarding conflict prevention in transylvania. underlying them are some simple concepts fundamental to mediation work. one is that the focus must be on the future and not just on the past, on addressing current needs of individuals and social groups, and not only on determining historical truth. if thousands of academic reports, hundreds of academics, and a century of argumentation over theories of daco-roman continuity cannot resolve that historical question, it is unlikely we will have much greater success in the millenium to come. we should neither abandon the task of inching closer to an understanding of "what happened", nor allow academic convictions to seal off pathways towards healing the consequences of those events. i hear elie wiesel's cry that history cannot be forgotten, but for east europeans (who have an overabundance of it) it must not be remembered too much. another fundamental principle is that the benefits accruing to those playing the roles of brokers must be made secondary to the primary goal. if we as anthropologists privileged to know what we know about these peoples and their cultures are driven by potential personal and professional gains, the "stuff" that we carry with us can contaminate the process. so we must do something that does not come easy to academics, be prepared to dissolve egos and competition in a common effort in which the anonymous contribution ultimately will pay more dividends than just another item added to the resume, so that the best possible programs for conflict prevention can emerge. that being said, here are two of my ideas proposed for implementation in transylvania. they may well not be original nor entirely practical, but they might at least provide a starting point for discussion. as i describe them, i hope you will do two things: first, critically evaluate their potential to actually work , and second, think about other alternatives that might work better, in transylvania or elsewhere. 37 in the capital city of transylvania, cluj-kolozsvar, a multitude of non-governmental organizations have sprung up over the past seven years. as bob minnich, steve sampson, and others have so correctly pointed out, it has unfortunately been assumed by many in the west that any ngo-as an expression of civic awareness-is as good as any other in terms of fertilizing the soil for pluralist democracy (sampson, 1995). of course this is not the case. in the past, many voluntary organizations of cluj, as those documented by minnich in the three country region, have been manipulated by secular and clerical authorities (sometimes in competition with each other) in order to further ethnic nationalist agendas. indiscriminate support (however innocent) of such groups by outside agencies, may therefore actually promote interethnic tensions and strengthen ethnic divisions. oftentimes exclusivist groups, supported by elites with superior authority and resources, have sufficient funds to develop active and growing memberships. the current hyper-nationalist mayor of cluj-kolozsvar, gheorghe funar, epitomizes how power structures can divert scarce resources to such organizations that perpetuate ethnic antagonisms. in contrast to such groups are those voluntary associations that transcend, because of the common interest that unites them, ethnic and religious divisions and political partisanship. one such ethnicity-transcending ngo is the group called dao. founded in 1990 and formally registered by the cluj municipality as a civic association in july 1991, dao's formal name is "the association for initiation into traditional oriental spirituality". the process of organizing dao began almost immediately after the revolution. the founding group was composed of nine individuals: three physicians, three professors, a student, a writer, and a translator-poet. three were women, one magyar, one jew, one frenchman. the original membership list consisted of seventy individuals: twelve physicians, six nurses, nine university professors, six lyceum professors, eight lyceum students, twenty-five university students, nine engineers, nine other professionals. seven magyars, one jew, thirty-seven females. in their original petition to the municipality, the founders of dao stated that the association is guided by the following principles: "a) being organized on the basis of the free consent of its members; b) to propagate respect for human dignity and freedom; c) to stimulate fundamental research into the principles of traditional eastern spirituality; d) to militate for access to the authentic literature of this field and for the knowledge of traditional oriental spirituality through the offering of courses and symposia with the participation of specialists in the field." (i:4) 38 since its founding, dao has provided hundreds of clujeni with a multitude of occasions for participating in activities that enlarge and expand their social identities-thus weakening what eugene hammel identified as those "links between easily identifiable and traditionally marked social categories (like gender and ethnicity) and particular loci in the socioeconomic system." the group's activities have been viewud, not surprisingly, with suspicion and official concern. one member, a 39 year-old magyar professor of chemistry at a cluj lyceum, recounted how some residents of the city have misunderstood the intent and character of dao, dismissing it "in a hostile tone" as an exotic religious cult. she says "in our association each person embraces the belief that his or her conscience dictates... our association is not a sect, is not a religious association...the fact that over the last three years i have had the opportunity to be among people with similar interests has made me have greater patience and to accept more easily my fellow creatures as they are." these are precisely the kinds of ideas and cultural ties that can buttress other kinds of social bonds (such as between neighbors, age mates) that have proven too tenuous in themselves elsewhere (such as in the former yugoslavia) to resist pressures towards polarization in times of crisis. perhaps most notably, dao has managed to mobilize members of one of the most alienated segment of the transylvanian population-the youth-and fill the vacuum in ideas, noted by bogdan denitch (1994:96), "about how society should be organized... and about how people should live their lives" . voluntary associations have long been the subject of study of social scientists, who have distinguished different types, identified their functions, and understand their internal dynamics. certainly we could play a role in identifying and securing support for those, such as dao, that have such a potentially important role to play in regions such as transylvania. as both of our earlier speakers noted, it is clear that one of the most critical tasks in building civil society in eastern europe is how to couple economic development with the emergence of civil infrastructure. in even more specific terms: how can power and control of resources be shifted away from local exclusivist elite into the hands of new social networks whose members would not immediately benefit from exploitation of ethnic nationalist animosities. a key is to prevent this from being perceived as a direct attack or threat, and to craftily "co-opt" thu leverage from those power elite. to offer a suggestion on how this might be done, let me shift the venue north to the provincial town of sighetul marmatiei/maramarosszighet. 39 part of the post-1989 opening to the east has been seized by western entrepreneurs who have seen opportunities for considerable short term profit. much of this activity, and the formulation of relationships with east europeans, has gone unregulated. in the private sector this is not surprising, but it is disconcerting that there has not been m�re careful scrutinizing of joint venture partners and business grant applicants for qualities other than entrepreneurial aptitude. in the same way that "any ngo is thought to be as good as any other", so too is there the mistaken idea that "any talented venture capitalist" is as good as any other. for one thing, the playing field is hardly level. much of the domestic capital currently available for investment is in the hands of those few who benefited materially from the centralized economies of the communist era, i.e. members of the nomenclatura . not surprisingly, the latter typically assume the highest profiles in international business contacts. they or their family members are most likely to develop these contacts and gain access to grants for developing skills in accounting, marketing, computer use, and so on. furthermore, such individuals are quite likely to remain closely linked to entrenched power structures that more often than not, can be counted on to play ethnic nationalist cards in a pinch. the problem is how to develop new kinds of socio-economic networks that both contribute to economic development and ethnic reconciliation, without jarring extant power structures and ruling elite into destructive reaction and defense of their interests. one option is to encourage the development of multiethnic business ventures by the simple strategy of giving them special advantages in gaining access to loans, training, and information. in multiethnic sighet, there currently exists a cut-throat atmosphere regarding business development-and a deep resentment of the advantages monied former nomenclatura have. although interest in business development is high, capital is insufficient to support all but a small number of business enterprises. modest amounts of venture capital, training programs, and information could be made available to enterprises composed of people of mixed ethnic backgrounds (magyar, romanian, ukrainean)-tapping into the many mixed marriage partnerships that lack almost any other means of socioeconomic and community support. entrepreneurs i know there tell me that the multiethnic criteria should not be based solely on the identity of the owners, but also on the makeup of their workers. this would shift some leverage away from the upper management echelon to the working base, and also be more likely to promote maximal diffusion of interethnic cooperation within the community. 40 a perfect example of such an enterprise is a small but flourishing photography studio in sighet currently owned and operated by a magyar couple, who have four employees-two magyar, two romanian. the owners, hardworking and honorable people, are genuinely interested in building a sense of community citizenship that overarches ethnic bonds-and are realistic enough to know that profit sharing is a crucial spur to that process. identifying such enterprises and offering them modest financial support seems a simple but effective way of nourishing a healthy sense of civic identity. the owners of the photographic studio tell me that the most difficult problem to overcome in such a program is the local administration and supervision of the enterprises. any local person, however honorable, selected to serve as coordinator for such a program (with discretion to nominate candidates for grants), would be put in a nearly impossible situation, with immense pressures to support family and friends-and therefore likely to reinforce ethnic lines and entrenched local power relations. one way to resolve this might be the buildi~g of "integrity networks" connecting individuals in neighboring cities and towns. these multiethnic networks would be made up of respected and trusted individuals living in different communities, who would serve as program administrators in communities other than their own. such people tend to know each other, and the network could build itself, with minimal interference from the outside, and serve as a counterbalance to entrenched, exclusively ethnic power structures. these are just two, admittedly tentative, proposals for action that might, if implemented broadly, contribute to the reduction of ethnic-based tensions in transylvania. in devising them, i have drawn on knowledge gained over almost a quarter century of involvement in the region. thousands of other social scientists, including many of you in attendance, possess comparable insights into the local conditions of dozens of other zones of potential conflict in europe. what remains for us to do is to pool that knowledge, share local strategies, and refine the theoretical frameworks that illuminate specific processes. *in december, 1996, the hungarian parliament ratified the hungarian-romanian bilateral treaty, and since that time a number of other agreements have been signed. relations have continued to improve, led by diplomatic cooperation in efforts to incorporate both nations into nato and the european union. since the decision in july to admit hungary (along with poland and the czech republic), but "delay" the admission of romania, the hungarian government has continued to champion romania's eventual inclusion. a joint communique from 41 prime ministers horn and ciorbea issued in march, 1997 spoke of a "new chapter" in hungarian-romanian relations, a sentiment echoed in june by romanian president emil constantinescu's depiction of "relations between the two countries" as a "model" for other central europeans to follow. progress continues to be made in the area of educational reform and civil rights regarding minority populations in transylvania (e.g. bilingual signs, minority language instruction, opening of provincial consulates) in spite of incidents provoked by extremists. one must wonder how this extraordinary movement towards interethnic reconciliation might have been further strengthened and consolidated had there been in place established mechanisms of harm reduction in local communities. references denitch, bogdan. 1994. ethnic nationalism: the tragic death of yugoslavia. university of minnesota press kurti, laszlo. briefing on the current conditions for human rights in romania congressional human rights caucus. the anthropology of east europe review 10:1:4649) sampson, steven "romanian political culture and 'ngos'" the anthropology of east europe review 13:1:6165, spring 1995 manakan and andaki: gender distinction and personal autonomy among evenki of baikal region anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 120 gender distinctions in an egalitarian society: the case of evenki people of the baikal region tatiana safonova, centre for independent social research, st. petersburg, russia, and istván sántha, institute of ethnology, department of social anthropology, hungarian academy of sciences, budapest, hungary abstract in this article we present the case of the evenki people, siberian hunter-gatherers that share some traits of egalitarianism with other hunter-gathering people of the world. using the cybernetic approach, proposed by gregory bateson in social anthropology, we describe the circular logic of interaction between genders and study the strategies that evenki use to solve contradictions between personal autonomy (manakan) and dependencies associated with intergender relationships. the scope of our interest covers such situations as flirting, conjugal unit establishment, promotion of business contacts with strangers (andaki relationships), everyday violence and aggression, as well as ecstatic states. the presented analysis of the episodes of interaction in everyday life shows that evenki social organization is based on a situational approach to the distinction of genders. the research is based on several fieldworks conducted in the baikal region (russia), but the core materials relate to a two-month stay with one evenki community in spring 2006. keywords: hunter-gatherers, egalitarian ethos, gender distinctions, personal autonomy, cybernetic approach, contacts with strangers introduction human cognition is organized in such a way that one tends to ascribe some characteristics to an isolated object, although in practice these characteristics exist and show themselves only in interaction between the object and other objects. stone is hard when it resists our attempts to crush it; its hardness is a quality of our relationship and the relationships between it and other objects, or the relationships between its molecular parts. “language continually asserts by the syntax of subject and predicate that “things” somehow “have” qualities and attributes. a more precise way of talking would insist on the fact that the “things” are produced, are seen as separate from other “things,” and are made “real” by their internal relations and by their behavior in relationship with other things and with the speaker” (bateson 1988 [1979]:64). the same problem is with the notion of roles, ethnicities, and stereotypes, which are usually the results of the same ascription of the quality of the relationship to only one particular side of it. the study and experience of gender distinctions are vulnerable to the same mistake of attribution—there are no men and women isolated from each other. the only possible way to be socially recognized as a woman, for example, is to be in social relationships with other men and women. and all the female characters that are shown in the course of such being are the constituent parts of these relationships. to continue this logic, we can assume that differences in gender distinctions observed in various societies are not the results of the production of different types of women and men, but the results of different patterns of organization of the relationships between them. and here we come to the focus of this article, which will be on the way gender is anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 121 produced in the frames of egalitarian social organization of modern siberian hunter-gatherers, in this case the evenki people. in this chapter we will describe how the relationships between men and women are integrated into the system of egalitarian ethos and will show exactly how different they are from the way gender is produced in hierarchical societies, for example in our own “western” cultures, such as russia and hungary. returning to the citation from bateson that we used in the first paragraph, we cannot pretend that the description we present here is neutral, but it is itself the result of an attribution mistake, because everything we have observed and noticed about the system of gender relationships in evenki society are not qualities that this system has, but are parts of the relationship between this system and us. the basic hunter-gatherer skills of evenki ethos are not for establishing, but avoiding hierarchical relationships. (for example, these skills are important for changing the behavior.) there are no such crystal-clear things as egalitarian and hierarchical ethoses, which exist distinctly from each other in practice. but the result of their systematic relationship can be described by the production of such a schematic model. the main claim for carefulness here is in the need to keep in mind the difference between life and model. the relational epistemology of the cybernetic approach, which we use in this chapter, requires us to always keep in mind the distinction between different logical types. the map that we draw here is not the territory that we experienced. the only conceivable way to reduce the possibility of the confusion of information from these different levels is to build one more abstract level on which to describe how the experience of the territory has changed us so that we came to produce this particular map, and how the production of the map will influence our perception of the territory. and then the reader herself/himself has to undertake the same exercise concerning the chain of changes that happens in the course of their own interaction with this text. ascription of the qualities, familiar or different from own experience, is the process of relationship in which these differences or commonalities exist. and scientific generalizations are inevitably products of such unconscious processes of attribution. this process was described most accurately by bateson himself in the epilogue to the second edition of his book naven, which he wrote in 1958 (bateson 1958:280303). there are also some features in our description that will look very familiar to western readers, and this will mean that either the system of organization of relationships among evenki people shares the patterns with the system in which the reader lives herself/himself, or the reader’s system shares some patterns with the systems of the authors. we suppose that the assumptions are true and could provide us and readers with an incentive to continue the study and comparisons. the following description is based on our fieldwork experiences among evenki of the baikal region. in the text we outline the episodes from the particular period—two months that we lived in one evenki family in spring 2006—to present congruent materials and save the contextual connections as far as it is possible in the frames of one single article. the outcomes of gender relationships that we observed in the life of this family resonated with our other observations made during subsequent periods of fieldwork among evenki people of the same region. because the designation “evenki people” is artificial (and like all scientific designations has its own rather complex history of development), we use it for identification of people we study with caution, supposing that people living in other regions that are also called evenki can practically be involved in different systems of relationships and concerned with other forms of presentation of egalitarian and hierarchical elements of their cultures. this trap is unfortunately unavoidable, as every such system is alive, changing, developing, or disintegrating. at the same anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 122 time the representation of the system can also be framed differently by different researchers. but these are old confusions that are necessarily part of scientific discourse and have importance for its generation and advancement. nadia: the trajectory of patsanka when we met nadia, we had already heard that she was the only evenki in the region living in the taiga, and that she struggled alone against poachers who tried to enter the nature reserve. having studied nature reserves, we were amazed that she was the only female ranger we had met, and as such nadia is an exception. one might speculate whether she is an emancipated woman holding a man’s position in a state organization such as a nature reserve, or one of the “last evenki” (ssorin-chaikov 2003) maintaining the traditional hunter-gatherers’ way of life. her complex biography and position in the evenki community demonstrate that dichotomies such as female/male or emancipated/traditional do not apply in her case. among ourselves we called nadia by the russian word patsanka, which means “tomboy,” a girl that looks and behaves like a boy without contesting her female identity. nadia is a heavy smoker, like most evenki men. when she goes to the village, she drinks vodka like other evenki. while generally being very calm, she can be very aggressive, like when she confronts poachers. she has a knife and a gun, and uses both as hunting and self-defense instruments. she once cut her brother after he had tried to shame her for having sexual relations with a russian geologist. nadia is the middle daughter of an elderly couple—grandfather irgichi and grandmother katia—and lives two kilometers away from their winter camp at the post (kordon) of the nature reserve, situated in the taiga. she has a 15-year-old daughter who lives in the village with nadia’s cousin vasia. nadia is not married, but has sexual relations with a colleague, a buryat man from a nearby village who has a family. she also likes to flirt with strangers and sometimes has romances with men visiting the nature reserve as workers (geologists and scientists from the city). she is rather handsome and attractive in her army-style clothes. nadia went with her father to the taiga in her childhood. while at the boarding school she received a male nickname, “volodia,” because she spent so much time with male mates. she rode horses, hunted, and drank. in a way, she was not very different from her female friends; all evenki girls who had regularly lived in winter camps did the same. however, nadia retained her habits and tried to enter college to become a sports instructor. she failed (partly because this was a male-dominated profession), became pregnant, and returned to her parents. she worked with a local ranger and became responsible for the part of the nature reserve situated near her parents’ winter camp after the ranger’s death. nadia was not very talkative with us, but shared little stories about her trips and experiences. she always entertained us with something like sweets or cookies, which are rather precious and rare in this rather remote region. she once gave us meat, pretending that it was beef, but we later discovered that it had been game. her intention to share this meat was inconsistent with her official position as an inspector who had to prevent hunting in the taiga. she performed her hospitality in a very reserved manner, without any expectations of reciprocity. nadia had a dog with two puppies and a pregnant cat living in her house. she also had a cow and several horses that were freely let to graze. her salary allowed her the personal freedom of movement between the taiga, the village, and her kordon, and her household was small and simple enough not to hinder her from moving around. nadia was constantly on the move and anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 123 knew the latest news about the conditions of roads and rivers and about events in the village. on her way back from the village she sometimes went to her parents’ winter camp, where we saw her drunken, passive, and asocial—unable to speak or hear, only to continue moving. manakan: the feeling of personal autonomy evenki 1 cherish the feeling of personal autonomy. after they were forced to abandon their hunting lifestyle, they experience this feeling today, paradoxically, through alcohol. for evenki, the state of intoxication is predominated by the feeling of freedom from, or absence of, commitments to other people. nadia once participated in a male ritual performed in accordance with the custom of the local buryats (during which a sacrifice was made to obtain the right from ancestors to stay in this formerly evenki land). other evenki participants did not comment on the fact that nadia participated in this male ritual. intoxicated after the drinking session, nadia persistently repeated that she was “manakan” (“bi manakan bihim!”). in evenki, manakan means being autonomous and self-reliant. what was she expressing in this manner, and why was she the one who experienced it? these questions will help us to study the dilemmas of interpersonal relations from the evenki perspective and look at the impact of “gender relationships” on evenki selves. the first point to be discussed here is the connection between nadias’s lethargic expression of a manakan experience and her image of patsanka. nadia’s constant resistance to building close partnerships both in professional and intimate spheres assured her single status. she spent a lot of time in the company of male colleagues and relatives, and could not have kept such a lifestyle if she had been married with children. working in the forest and picking up her salary at the post office, she seldom saw her supervisors. she formally contacted the main office of the nature reserve twice a day, but usually her messages were incomprehensible due to the poor radio connection. this suited both sides for different reasons. nadia’s independent position was her own achievement, and she deliberately chose her solitude. she could rightfully be called manakan. as far as nadia embodies the ideal state for an evenki, she is associated with the old evenki traditions by strangers and evenki representatives. this makes her vulnerable to mythologization, like that which affected the minds of irish bachelors in scheper-hughes’s description of family myth (1977). nadia’s position as the “last evenki” (free from commitments and a settled way of life) becomes acknowledged by others as exceptional, and as such it captures her in a new commitment as representative of a certain idea of the old, traditional evenki culture that non-evenki have. this contradiction appears to be a constant challenge for nadia, and she does everything to avoid contact with people who would associate her status with evenki culture. for example, she did not go to the annual ritual in which evenki relatives from the city participated. she was suspicious about us and did not want to become our informant or guide. nevertheless, she was already a heroine of local evenki myth; pictures of nadia riding a horse were exhibited in the main nature reserve office, nearly 70 kilometers away from her kordon. in the context of the local evenki community, her position aroused no controversy and was generally accepted. though she maintained a lifestyle very different from that of others, she was not regarded as an exception. she was like others and she was among others, as determined by two rather similar circumstances. first, the manakan experience, which is highly valued among evenki, presupposes that everyone has his or her own way, so that there can be no general anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 124 norm and no exception. second, as far as the manakan feeling is part of evenki reality, everyone who shares a common socialization has the potential to experience it. this means that nadia’s situation was familiar to all evenki, though they could not experience this state themselves. every local evenki, we suppose, has the same wish to avoid commitments and wants to experience a feeling of autonomous lethargy in heavy drinking. therefore, she was not in any sense exceptional. personal autonomy and relationships between genders nadia’s participation at male rituals was a common and everyday practice. we think that only we noticed this, and failed to collate it with previous narrative descriptions of the ritual as a secret not to be shared with women. we have already stated that her single status was the condition of her participation in male activities. thus, we can suppose that female or male roles in the evenki community could be the result of marriage, and that gender distinction correlates with the labor distinction within this frame. figure 1: nadia with other rangers. jirga, spring 2006. photo: t. safonova, i. sántha looking at the socialization process and at the appearance of evenki adults, we can also see that gender identification changes throughout life, and at some biographical points it is much more articulated than at others. for example, prior to entering school, children hardly express any difference in behavior. we met a widower with two small children who was doing all the household duties, including milking, cooking, and washing. his male activities, such as fishing and hunting, were possible only when his elder daughter took charge of the household. the division of labor within marriage changes in time. there is an impression that this division is accumulated over time, beginning with young couples much closer to nurit birddavid’s description (bird 1983) of the conjugal units among nayaka of south india, in which anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 125 spouses carry out household tasks together, without specialization as to male or female work. the appearance of young evenki spouses reflects this equality; their clothing very often looks similar. elderly couples look different; elderly ladies wear skirts and scarves, and elderly men wear quilted jackets. young adults wear more practical things, but as labor distinctions develop, they begin to introduce in their appearance elements linked to their specialization. for example, women who fish with their husbands wear rubber shoes, whereas women who do not have the opportunity to wear something more elegant. the distinction of labor between spouses begins at marriage and escalates when they have children. with the birth of children, spouses do fewer tasks together and their roles as male and female become more articulated. lena, one of irgichi’s youngest daughters, and her husband, bair, lived several kilometers from irgichi’s winter camp and presented an example of such a conjugal unit. lena and bair were seen everywhere together. they lived on the bank of the main river. for fishing, they needed to put out nets and float in a boat. they did this together and shared the risk of drowning in the fast and dangerous river. the other couple we witnessed, ivan (the youngest son of irgichi) and natasha, had three children and tried to spend all their time together. grandmother felt sorry for natasha, who was always very tired from trying to help ivan in his duties while also performing her own. she was known as a bad cook, as her sister once told us, but that was the price for assisting her husband. natasha and ivan worked together all day and looked like two peers, but a split had occurred in their relationship because they avoided doing particular things in the presence of each other. for example, natasha did not smoke with ivan, and never took drinking water from the river—that was ivan’s duty. ivan never milked cows when natasha was home, though we saw him doing it when she was away. the rationality and the efficacy of the division of labor started to challenge their relationship, which may have ended like that of grandfather irgichi and grandmother katia. grandfather and grandmother were rarely seen together unless they were quarreling, watching tv, taking a trip, or drinking together. grandfather pretended to be deaf in grandmother’s presence and acted as if he did not hear her orders and remarks. she attacked him for that. they looked like constantly fighting strangers 2 who had to live under the same roof. we had the impression that among the evenki, many people were very eager to participate in new, fresh relationships rather than do something with a permanent partner. growing division of labor was effective but unpleasant in the context of egalitarian society, and damaging to long-term relationships and communication between spouses, parents, and children. the sharpest conflict we witnessed was the quarrel between irgichi and his son ivan, who shared a household but could not talk to each other. they avoided each other’s company and nearly turned their boat over when crossing a nearby river. the division of labor between them (the son did demanding, physical jobs, and the father made decisions about the stock) prevented them from communicating and accomplishing any common tasks. they also looked like strangers who did nothing together. this process of estrangement among intimates and family members, according to our western interpretation, is an important concept to articulate here, in order to understand the place of so-called strangers in the evenki community. as far as long-term relations are gradually damaged by accumulated division of labor, only short-term encounters can bring emotional pleasure and satisfaction. this means that evenki prefer to build relationships with a concrete task in mind—not as a result of (inter-)personal development. if relations have a history, then they are socially problematic, because there is less potential to do things together without distinctions and specializations. if this is so, then our western concept distinguishing between anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 126 close people and strangers is not suitable within the evenki context. the idea of trust that evolves in the course of a long-term relationship is totally neglected by evenki. they do not need trust and predictability (as we do) to establish pleasant relationships. on the contrary, they need unpredictability, risk, and the feeling that partners do not know each other very well. this condition of communication is helpful for maintaining the manakan feeling. if your partner cannot pretend to know you and to anticipate your actions and thoughts, then you have less commitment to him/her, which is pleasant and important. in these contexts, the success of mutual efforts is very vulnerable and appealing, leaving the participants feeling amazed and satisfied with their success. they split immediately after the job is done to continue their independent trajectories. we previously called these situated partnerships, or companionships (safonova and sántha 2007). roles are commitments, and as such they spoil the ecstasy of spontaneous and unpredictable success. in such situations gender distinctions are not appreciated, and as long as spouses can secure their relationship as the accomplishment of concrete tasks without attribution of male and female roles, they save their love and affection. the same is true of other long-term relationships. wherever evenki can, they prefer to involve new people in their undertakings. this strategy also presupposes the constant change of company and place. from this point of view, nadia prefers to protect her relationships with other evenki from the accumulation of commitments and anticipations. she organizes her life to drift from one partnership devoted to the accomplishment of concrete tasks and the resolution of concrete problems to another. according to the evenki ethos, she chooses a lifestyle that is less effective from the westerner’s perspective but much more pleasant and social in frames of evenki social organization. nadia is open to a wide range of possible companionships and does not restrict herself to female roles. from the evenki point of view, she is much more integrated into the society than the married schoolteacher with several children (the ideal, emancipated, soviet-type female career). the personal autonomy that evenki experience as the manakan feeling enables them to enter a variety of companionships and short-term partnerships and remain free from long-term relations and roles. following these considerations about relationships between genders, it is interesting to return to the scene during the performance of the male ritual when nadia repeated, in drunken lethargy, that she was manakan. during this drinking session, men and women were not differentiated, as usually happens when women and men drink together. people did not react to sexual provocations and did not split into those who became easily drunk (usually women) and those who control the situation and use it according to their interests (usually men, to start the seduction). the participants of this session were drinking without such distinctions in mind, and the mutual relationship between weak and strong consciousnesses did not develop. all participants were involved in a rather different configuration in which gender played no role at all. they were partners in the companionship that was devoted to the accomplishment of one concrete and particular task—to drink all the bottles of vodka that the buryats had supplied for the ritual. there was no other frame that could be associated with the participants’ intentions. nadia’s expression of manakan came about through intoxication and individual experience, not through provocation. and none of the participants regarded it as a sexual provocation or a communicative gesture. nobody was interested in such gestures because the focus was on the bottles and not on individuals. people even told stories to fill the pauses usually filled by food between rounds of drinking. these narratives were relevant not for their content but for the rhythm and coordination of collective drinking. the participants’ main goal was to drink no less than the others, and synchronously with them. this competition was balanced so that no one anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 127 could pretend to be a winner—the ideal social form for evenki. drinking as a concrete situation in which everybody is a winner and is manakan is very pleasant for evenki, while the vodka lasts. nadia, as a participant in this activity, contributed to the common experience of individuality shared between genders. but when this stabilized competition between nongendered individuals was over and the task completed, nadia switched to another regime in which she was a flirtatious woman. the observations presented can be interpreted in a rather unexpected way. as far as nadia’s ability to conceal her female identity and the ability of her partners not to articulate her female identity in the frames of common drinking are the conditions for the collective action that provides the experience of evenki individuality, the possibility of gender distinction appears as a threat to the situational cohesion and integrity of the evenki community. we have already described how the division of labor between spouses and the differentiation between male and female jobs led to the collapse of communication between partners. the same processes endanger all companionships in which men and women are involved. patsanka and social integration of the evenki community patsanka is not a role for nadia, as she is not expected to maintain a tomboyish appearance and is quite free to change her look whenever she wishes. however, this appearance is connected with her feeling of manakan and the personal autonomy she has maintained throughout her life. other evenki women who feel manakan, either as a result of intoxication or as a sign of freedom from concrete personal commitments, also look patsanka at these times. this appearance is connected to a witty gaze and cunning hooligan’s laughter and tricks. but if it is not a role, then what is it that is so much cherished, and so much concentrated in nadia? to an outsider she looks different from the others, like big men and great men appear to be outstanding to the researchers of melanesia (strathern and godelier 1991). this parallel makes us think that patsanka is a result of indigenous reflection and analysis of the relationships that bind the society. nadia is different because she accumulates the traits that are typical and important for everyone, and this makes her different from the evenki perspective. she never pretends to be different, only independent, like others. she drinks, smokes, laughs, flirts, and shouts threats when she feels able to express her autonomy in the same way as others. because she has evaded the establishment of long-term partnerships, she is open to the wider variety of short and fresh new relationships, which do not threaten the loss of her autonomy. nadia is a person who can form a companionship with everybody, and as a result, she is different. this difference is pleasant for others and highly appreciated, especially when coordination is needed. risky situations and emergencies demand cooperation and consolidation. for westerners, this means somebody has to take control and responsibility for others’ actions. but this position is impossible for the evenki community because no one can tolerate commands from observers. the observer who does not participate is excluded from evenki communication, and he or she will cause anger and irritation because his/her dominant position will disturb the people involved in the situation. besides, such a position is difficult to maintain in critical situations. there is always a threat that the commanding person will pretend to secure his/her authoritative position afterwards, which means that the success of the situation would be attributed to the actions of one concrete person and not to the contributing participants. there can be a division between tasks, but not between levels of organization. evenki people use this cooperative strategy, which is different from the western directive one and does not suppose a division between the anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 128 observing coordinator and the executors of his/her directions. the evenki strategy does not rely on verbal communication, but it is ostensive so that messages and actions are not separated from each other. here we can describe the critical moment when a forest fire came very close to irgichi’s winter camp. a strong wind drove the fire toward the winter camp. it was impossible to stop it by simply trampling the dry grass, which could have helped during calm weather. a complex and rather elaborate strategy was needed to organize a contrary fire that could drive it to the river in the opposite direction. there was no time to think; people simply did their tasks. people like nadia became coordinators without saying anything. nadia had experience working in collaboration with everyone on the winter camp. she switched from one kind of common execution of a task to another. by drifting from one companionship to another one, she was a connector between people. she was not an observer and did not show any sign of authority in the moment, but her actions and movements between different jobs were coordinating the whole process. she was present when the contrary fire was started, participated in extinguishing the fire at the other side, and appeared at the place of the contrary fire and controlled its direction. then she was in other places where bushes started to smoke. she had embodied knowledge of which jobs should be initiated with which people, and integrated everyone without direct commands. after the fire was extinguished, everyone had a short rest and went on with their business. nadia also returned to her kordon without anyone’s acknowledgment of her outstanding role. from a long-term perspective, she deserved the unpretending sympathy of others that would help her to maintain her personal autonomy, rather than concrete appreciation for this specific coordinating role. it is very difficult to identify whether nadia’s lethargic experience of manakan is related to her gender. it seems that drunkenness gives the illusion that such distinctions as male/female do not matter, that the self is so autonomous that it is free from any kind of identity that presupposes relationships with others (strathern 1988). this sounds like an asylum, or isolation, which in western society can hardly be associated with pleasure. we think that for evenki, this state of consciousness has emotional potential because it is incorporated into their lifestyle, which presupposes such periods of solitude. for evenki, manakan means the ability to live alone without losing the ability to participate in occasional companionships. this solitude is very social: it is framed by the constant possibility to establish contacts with others. in this sense, nadia feels manakan, and this feeling is not gendered—it is equally shared by other evenki men and women. and, like others, she can always establish new, gendered relationships. she can behave like a flirtatious woman when she wants to. her autonomy is endangered by her only addiction—the feeling of freedom and of manakan. vodka, which produces this feeling, determines the main paradox in evenki life. evenki are involved in strong and addictive relationships with the substance that provides the feeling of freedom and the absence of commitments. alcohol becomes the way to experience manakan, and nadia, like other evenki, is not free from the contexts in which alcohol plays a crucial role. for example, she must behave like a woman when she is expected to do so by the males who supply her with vodka. she is not free from them and has to establish relationships on a gender scale. these situations are different from the spontaneous companionships so appreciated in the evenki community. this paradox splits the evenki self between the experience of freedom and the addiction to it. it could also be integrated into the evenki way of life to overcome other paradoxes generated by the introduction of new relationships into the evenki community (for example, it could be useful in balancing the autonomies of spouses who abandon nomadic hunting in favor of settled cattle breeding). anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 129 the endangered autonomy of the conjugal unit according to our observations, evenki social organization shares a great deal with other hunter-gatherers, for example the nayaka of south india described by nurit bird-david (bird 1983). in her phd thesis, bird-david argued that two main elements operated in social organization: an individual and a conjugal unit. these are constantly floating between each other and never establishing a stable relationship, retaining their autonomy. according to bird-david, a conjugal unit, though consisting of two people, constitutes a single unit, in the frame of which spouses share everything (and spend all of their time together) equally. our observations among evenki also supported such social organization in which children, until the age of seven (before school), live with their parents and are part of the conjugal units. after the age of seven and until approximately 20 (the age when they start building their own conjugal unit) they are single, drifting persons without strong attachments to other conjugal units. nadia’s status could be compared to that of such drifting individuals. nadia’s dilemmas are connected with her individual strategy, and her feeling of personal autonomy. here we seek to analyze the complexities that endanger the autonomy of the conjugal unit and, as a result, its integrity. we argue that the influence of the outer world, especially the social environment of hierarchical societies, tears the conjugal unit apart through gender distinction, particularly in frames of labor differentiation and behavior in foreign contexts. labor differentiation happens as a result of the growth of the household and cattle stock (we discussed this problem elsewhere; see safonova and sántha 2007). but because this differentiation is inconsistent with the evenki ethos of avoiding long-term interdependencies that contest individual autonomy, economic rationality is always destroyed by the logic of emotional patterns. evenki cannot accumulate and manage wealth, partly because this requires the transformation of the conjugal unit into a family enterprise with differentiated roles and duties. in encounters with outsiders, behavioral patterns also tend to demonstrate differentiation between genders; for example, drinking alcohol in the village (the place where buryats or russians live) is accompanied by differentiation between male aggressive behavior and female flirt ing. this distinction will become the subject for our analysis below. there are several questions that interest us, especially why this differentiation happens in encounters with outsiders and how it influences relationships among evenki. the survival of the evenki conjugal unit may seem surprising, considering that it faces two disintegrating forces. if it faces only one force, such as the need to keep a large household and stock of cattle, then it splits into two individual persons who cannot do anything together, like grandfather irgichi and grandmother katia. but if from time to time the spouses rid themselves of their household obligations and become involved in outer-world contexts, such as searching for alcohol, then they can secure the integrity of their conjugal unit. what could be seen as irresponsibility from the western point of view is a way for evenki to maintain their social relationships and mutual love and affection, the feelings on which the conjugal unit is based. switching from hard work in cattle breeding to hard drinking and back (all of these spheres are dominated by external—either buryat or russian—cultural patterns) helps them to maintain moments of unity. when new circuits are started, evenki are very enthusiastic and comfortable. these moments are full of novelty and fresh potential for possible companionships independent of distinctions such as gender. the moment of crisis in terms of one circuit becomes the initial point for other circuits. for example, when spouses are too tired and bored by their anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 130 monotonous farm work, they go drinking in the village and stay until they lose the sense of fun and adventure, and return home to start a new cycle of housework. drinking in the village balances working on the farm and vice versa. the differentiation between aggression and flirting reflects the division of labor between genders in the household. these distinctions are not consciously recognized, but emotionally experienced as uncomfortable and imposed by others. they start when the task of finding vodka becomes a source of competition between spouses. evenki culture can be described as a poverty culture (scheperhughes 1992; turnbull 1972), with no accumulation of resources and with absence of solidarity in situations when scarce supplies are to be distributed. when people search for something rare and important like alcohol or gasoline, they prefer to behave as individuals to avoid sharing. it is important that people know that others do the same, to prevent any sense of guilt or shame. people are organized not by commonly shared ethics or morale but by the synchronism of their strategies and individual efforts. in other words, they are united not by the knowledge that they do the same things based on specific rules, but by the feeling that they do this because of similar interests. this kind of understanding does not need verbal expression, but is based on individualistic competition. for example, we witnessed this synchronized awareness when we traveled by car with grandmother katia and grandfather irgichi from the village to the winter camp. we had a bottle of vodka that we opened just at the end of the village. we had an accident, and all the men went to fix the problem and change the tire. grandmother katia immediately proposed to tatiana that they drink the vodka together. when the women went to the bridge and the men tried to cross the river by car, grandfather irgichi proposed to istván that they drink the vodka. they initiated the same acts secretly from each other, but were both in the same frame of logic; grandmother katia was very suspicious about what the men were doing while she was on the bridge. this parallel and synchronized behavior is very typical for evenki spouses in the village. we witnessed ivan (irgichi’s son) and his wife, natasha, go to the village to drink. usually, they are always together on the farm, but in the village they were separately searching for different company. they were competing over who could find and drink more. natasha was much more successful, because as a woman she could find more hospitable company with other women. but ivan drank longer, coming home three days after natasha. natasha was in a very good mood in the village; she was laughing and “flirting,” though with no concrete target or intention. ivan, on the contrary, was very aggressive, acted threateningly, and looked for a scandal or a fight. they did not stay in each other’s company in the village, yet they provoked each other, perhaps with the other in mind as a partner in the competition. it seemed that natasha and ivan’s relationship was maintained with their synchrony and parallel coordination. it was important to destroy this synchrony to achieve a new cycle of working in the taiga. natasha and ivan needed to break their mutual coordination to feel manakan, their personal autonomy, instead of the autonomy of their conjugal unit, which they experience every day in the course of shared work. when ivan came home, he was still very aggressive and quarreled with natasha; he expected her to be waiting for him with hot soup and tea. the breakdown in communication was so severe that even grandmother katia feared this would be the end of the relationship. however, several days later, ivan and natasha migrated together to the summer camp and a new circle of seasonal jobs started. regarding the expression of aggression and flirting, we searched for examples outside of drinking to understand the context of these emotional experiences. evenki children expressed a mixture of aggressiveness and flirting toward us, and sometimes we could not clearly distinguish anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 131 between the two. there was no gender distinction; girls and boys equally expressed this attitude, which (according to our interpretation as westerners who clearly distinguish aggression and flirting tenderness) was an intertwined affection and roughness. for example, children treated their dogs with great affection, and simultaneously beat them heavily. the main scheme incorporating these emotions was a game we called “catching and holding.” children played with their dogs by catching and holding them in their hands. then, depending on the reactions of their prey, they struggled fiercely against the dogs’ attempts to get away, or tenderly held them close. the problem with the game was that children needed a new focus to forget the dog and let it go away. it was fun for the children to simply catch the dog, but holding it was full of ambivalence—between the happiness of possession and the need to lose it in order to create new excitement. as we have observed, this scheme and the emotional ambivalence were incorporated into nearly all the interpersonal interactions between children, adults, and dogs. we also suppose that aggression and flirting are parts of the same phenomenon and the signs of the second stage of the game, when partners feel the need to destroy the relationship to have the opportunity to start a new one. all the emotions we witnessed in the village were part of the same play, involving adults in social interactions of “catching and holding” with people from the village. natasha and ivan experienced the same circle of emotions as are seen in this game. but if children experience this ambivalence fully, without gender differentiation, then why were ivan and natasha so dramatically different in their expression? children’s emotions depend on the reactions of their play partners. this observation leads us to the problem of the position of outsiders—or strangers, as we call them. as far as strangers (buryats and russians) are involved in the process of aggression and flirting, and as these emotions are mostly addressed to strangers with whom evenki men and women drink, the strangers’ reactions define whether evenki behave aggressively or tenderly. these reactions depend not on the gender distinction of evenki but on the gender distinctions that exist within the strangers’ societies. russians and buryats would expect men rather than women to be aggressive. a buryat woman once told us it is very important not to be afraid of evenki men, or show fear of their aggressive behavior, as this would only support their anger. instead she suggested seeing this as a kind of play. resistance arouses anger and aggressiveness in evenki men. in contrast, evenki women are treated kindly and without suspicion of being dangerous and demanding. this leads to a tender reaction from evenki women. the presence of a person with a background different from the evenki could affect the dynamics of the occasion by generating and supporting gender distinctions that otherwise would not appear in evenki interactions. for example, natasha and ivan needed external help to shear the sheep. the only person free at that moment was the wife of ivan’s cousin, oksana. oksana is a buryat woman, and because among buryats shearing of sheep is acknowledged as women’s work exclusively, ivan was excluded from the task and nadia was called to help. natasha, oksana, and nadia worked together and behaved as they would in the village. they laughed, smoked, and chatted. it became a women’s occasion, although natasha said that she would otherwise cut sheep with other people, regardless of their sex. thus, we can assume that this gender distinction becomes relevant among evenki only in the presence of strangers. likewise, the history of cultural contacts between evenki and outsiders is a history of gender distinction. this assumption allows us to study the historical material on andaki partnerships (trading contacts with russians, buryats, or chinese), which we are going to do in the next section. we discuss them not so much from an economic perspective but rather with a focus on interand cross-gender interactions. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 132 gender distinctions and andaki relationships the works of ethel john lindgren contain the most detailed and expressive descriptions of andaki—“trading partners,” in the evenki language (lindgren 1936). lindgren conducted her work in manchuria in 1929, 1931, and 1932, before the japanese invasion. she reported that trading partnerships were established mainly between evenki hunters and russian cossacks who had escaped from the communists to the chinese frontier. lindgren’s thesis was never published, though she defended it at cambridge when gregory bateson (bateson 1958) was there, and when shirokogoroff’s works on evenki had already been published. her methodological perspective was close to that of bateson (lindgren 1938), who was not popular at the time, which is partially why her works were neglected in favor of shirokogoroff’s functionalist monographs (e.g., shirokogoroff 1929). she was also one of the first feminist researchers in this field, devoting most of her time to women, especially one female evenki shaman named olia. lindgren was very sensitive toward gender issues and the procedural development of relationships. she was less involved in the popular kinship studies of those times, and her description of andaki partnerships lacks structural modeling. for her contemporaries, her papers were incomprehensible, due to the amount of detail concerning social and emotional aspects. this seemed chaotic and unscientific. thanks to her materials, we can now reconstruct how andaki relationships proceeded and exactly how russians and tungus (evenki) were involved. for example, she wrote that evenki people not only traded with russians but could also stay in their homes during their short visits to russian villages. they named their children after their russian andaki, who sometimes served as godparents. in some cases russians adopted the evenki children of their andaki. we see that economic activity, which was conducted mainly by russian and evenki men, also included women as hostesses and foster mothers. lindgren describes quite a few examples of inter-ethnic marriage between russians and evenki, while shirokogoroff tended to associate such marriages with andaki relationships. lindgren insisted that evenki used andaki partnerships not as strategies of integration into the outer world but, on the contrary, as a way of avoiding contact with the chinese, who represented the state in this region. russian andaki were paying taxes to the chinese on behalf of many evenki, and helped them to hide unregistered arms. russians practically acted as patrons, collecting furs and distributing goods necessary for hunting. lindgren also wrote that aggression and flirting were common behaviors at bagjur (an annual fair), during which major economic transactions were conducted. she suggested that these outbursts of sexuality and anger happened only at such bagjurs and were not common in everyday evenki life. lindgren said that although russians organized such bagjurs, and that they supplied vodka, they quite rarely were involved in such episodes. aggressive behavior and sexual provocations happened between evenki from far-distant places who met each other only at these occasions. russians acted as observers and suppliers, using the chaos and emotional tension to their benefit. we can assume that at that time the autonomy of evenki was much stronger and that the gender distinction in emotional expression, which (as we argued above) is a sign of a crisis and a way of resolving controversial situations, happened only at these concrete occasions, and only a few times (i.e., three to four times) per year. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 133 figure 2: flirting with the shaman after a ritual. samahai, spring 2006. photo: t. safonova, i. sántha lindgren’s materials are unique because they describe a special situation wherein evenki could escape involvement in hierarchical relationships (or could reduce them to contacts with russian business partners, avoiding direct contact with bureaucrats or state executives). in this context, andaki relationships were instruments for maintaining personal autonomy and did not endanger the egalitarian social organization. for example, vodka was accessible for evenki only during such rare meetings, and was absent from everyday life. as a result, alcohol addiction was rare and the experience of being manakan was not controversial. the analysis of western buryat epic materials presented by roberte hamayon is also focused on the relationships called andlyata (exchange of sisters between equal men without any bridewealth, or kalym), a word close to the evenki andaki (hamayon 1981). she stated that western buryats were former hunters, and that their social organization was based on the same relationship patterns as those of evenki. she reconstructed the role of wedding ceremonies, during which people from faraway places gathered. aggression and flirting were essential parts of these occasions because of the articulation of unresolved controversies such as property or inheritance. although these categories refer to buryat cultural patterns, the emotional intensity of such weddings is reminiscent of lindgren’s description of bagjur. the analysis conducted by hamayon presents a very accurate reconstruction of the emotional aspects of hunter-gatherer behavior, reflected in our fieldwork materials. shirokogoroff (1929) and arsenev (2004) conducted expeditions among evenki prior to the october revolution. their missions were only half scientific and strongly connected with the anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 134 political interests of the russian empire. as a result, they were both interested in the processes of integration of the evenki into state institutions and the colonization of siberia, which is why they paid attention to inter-ethnic marriages as mechanisms of evenki integration and local political and economical balances between russians and the chinese. in their interpretation, andaki relationships were based on inter-ethnic marriages through which strangers gained the rights and possibility to use evenki territories. from this perspective, evenki women acquired the position of intermediaries between russians, chinese, and evenki. andaki relationships, according to shirokogoroff and arsenev, were not based on concrete, short-term interests between partners, but rather were structured relations that anticipated russian or chinese norms of gender distinction. they both underlined that among the evenki, strangers could only be single men. the fact that colonization was accomplished by russian or chinese men predetermined the construction of a special position for indigenous women. later, in soviet times, indigenous (evenki) women were associated with progress and civilization, and men with conservative and patriarchal customs (slezkine 1994). heonik kwon worked among oroch (one of the manchu-tungus people, close to evenki) in the beginning of the 1990s, at a time when the colonization process was completed and most indigenous people had lost their autonomy and the way of life specific to hunter-gatherers in this part of the world (kwon 1993). kwon also studied andaki relationships, which in his interpretation had taken on quite a new form. young women were trying to exploit their previously acknowledged position as inter-ethnic marriage partners to move away from their communities. but at the time of kwon’s fieldwork, these women’s strategies failed because russian men working in the neighboring oil bases were no longer interested in establishing longterm relationships with indigenous people. oroch girls who flirted with those men usually returned to their parents unmarried, and frequently pregnant. the community was split between men as non-prestigious matrimonial partners and women searching for very insecure possibilities to move out. the aggressiveness of oroch men was a common explanation as to why oroch women preferred to flirt with russians. but as far as we can assume on the basis of our own fieldwork, both reactions were part of one process, mutually supporting and enhancing each other. summarizing the cases described above, we can say that there is a correlation between the level of dependency of evenki (and also other hunter-gatherers of siberia) on hierarchical societies and the intensity and frequency of differentiation between aggressive men and flirting women. this gender distinction is a symptom of dependency of evenki on other cultural patterns. yet like the women who are not stigmatized for failure in kwon’s description but on the contrary are recognized as autonomous persons, such situated distinctions can also help evenki to overcome their dependency and mobilize their skills to be, or feel, independent. this is a kind of homeopathy, when the distinction resolves another distinction endangering the egalitarian social organization. nadia’s manakan trajectory is close to the strategies of oroch women. manakan and andaki turn out to be different phases of the same process of expression of personal autonomy. conclusion the cybernetic approach gives us the opportunity not only to describe the characteristics of egalitarian social organization (such as the absence of hierarchical social groupings or weakness of authoritative institutions like chieftainship), but also to describe the patterns of its anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 135 self-correction. in the frames of this approach, the egalitarian social organization of the society is distinct from other forms of organization not because of its divergent appearance, but because of the specifics of its self-corrective processes. in other words, egalitarian social organization exists differently but does not look different. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 136 process form manakan (feeling of personal autonomy) male/female identities (gender distinction) conjugal unit (autonomy of a family bond) andaki partnership (distinction between evenki and strangers) et cetera (cf. text) figure 3: dialectic between form and process in evenki social organization as gregory bateson showed, it is possible to describe social events as cybernetic processes as well as in biological terms, and this gives us the opportunity to use such exploratory instruments as logical typing. “when we take the notion of logical typing out of the field of abstract logic and start to map real biological [and social] events onto the hierarchies of this paradigm, we shall immediately encounter the fact that in the world of mental and biological systems, the hierarchy is not only a list of classes, classes of classes, and classes of classes of classes but has also become a zigzag ladder of dialectic between form and process” (bateson 1988 [1979]: 211, original emphasis). self-correction is a quality of the system to turn from a formal and digital way of information transfer to an analog one. egalitarian social organization as a model shows this quality in practice. in egalitarian social organization, social distinctions and experience of these distinctions are related to each other and are organized like the zigzag movement from one to the other. if we look at the everyday life of evenki we will see that hierarchies are rather strongly present in their everyday life (the asymmetrical relations between evenki and strangers, or between men and women in family lives, etc.), but the experience of these distinctions is mediated by the very impressive state of personal autonomy, which is based on the idea that an individual is free from any distinctions that presuppose relationships with other people. the feeling of personal autonomy, which is experienced as manakan, is important for establishing relationships with other people. for example, to be able to go with somebody, a child has to be able to walk without assistance. nadia’s example shows that the more independent and autonomous you are, the larger is the repertoire of social relationships that you can have with other people. to find a marriage partner with whom you can establish a family, you need to feel yourself free from other obligations, because life in a conjugal unit presupposes that you share all the duties and contexts with your partner equally. because personal contexts cannot be identical for two persons, the only possibility of such equality in involvement in family life is the ability to deny these contexts and feel yourself free from any other obligations. gender distinctions once more appear in the context of culture contact with strangers. the structure of andaki partnerships, described by many researchers, shows that for evenki to be able to establish a continuous relationship with non-evenki, it is important to feel freedom from commitments (for example, to be free to promise things that are not going to happen, to be able to escape from the relationships when they become too demanding, or to lose yourself in alcoholic intoxication so as to not to be responsible for anything). evenki business partners need to be prepared for such escapism from commitments, because in the frames of egalitarian social organization, only the short-term situational exchanges and distinctions are possible. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 137 there are two important aspects that the model outlined above says about egalitarian social organization. the first is that social distinctions (including gender distinctions) are inevitable and they generate the internal dynamics of self-correction of the system. this means that egalitarian social organization in practice does not have much in common with the idea of primitive communism, in which all people are supposed to be equal all the time. the second point is the interrelation between various kinds of social distinctions. in this chapter we showed how male/female relations are interwoven with the relations between evenki and other people. the cell in the model that contains “et cetera” indicates the potential direction of the research, which can be devoted to the study of the processes that are evolving in the course of inter-ethnic collaboration. notes 1 here and below we use the ethnonym “evenki” in the sense explained in the introduction, i.e., we use a necessarily general label for the people with whom we lived and shared experiences during our fieldwork. 2 on the notion of “strangers” and evenki relations to them, see the last third of this article. references cited arsenev, v. 2004. “kitaitsy v ussuriiskom krae” [chinese in the ussuri region]. in v. arsenev and f. nansen: kitaitsy v ussuriiskom krae. v stranu budushchego. moskva: kraft+. bateson, g. 1958. naven: a survey of the problems suggested by a composite picture of the culture of a new guinea tribe drawn from three points of view. stanford: stanford university press. bateson, g. 1988 [1979]. mind and nature. a necessary unity. new york: bantam books. bird, n. 1983. conjugal families and single person: an analysis of the naiken social system. phd dissertation, university of cambridge. hamayon, r. 1981. “tricks and turns of legitimate perpetuation.” in fragen der mongolischen heldendichtung teil i, ed. walter heissig, pp. 156-216. (asiatische forschungen, vol. 72.) wiesbaden: otto harrassowitz. kwon, h. 1993. maps and actions: nomadic and sedentary space in a siberian reindeer farm. phd dissertation, university of cambridge. lindgren, e.j. 1936. notes on the reindeer tungus of manchuria: their names, groups, administration and shamans. phd dissertation, university of cambridge. ———. 1938. “an example of culture contact without conflict: reindeer tungus and cossacks of northwestern manchuria.” american anthropologist 40(4/1):605-621. anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 138 safonova, t., and i. sántha. 2007. companionship among evenki of eastern buryatia: a study of flexible and stable elements of culture. working papers of the max planck institute for social anthropology no 99. halle/saale: max planck institute for social anthropology. http://www.eth.mpg.de/pubs/wps/pdf/mpi-eth-working-paper-0099.pdf (accessed 15 october 2010). scheper-hughes, n. 1977: saints, scholars, and schizophrenics: mental illness in rural ireland. berkeley: university of california press. ———. 1992. death without weeping: the violence of everyday life in brazil. berkeley: university of california press. shirokogoroff, s. m. 1929. social organization of the northern tungus. shanghai: commercial press. slezkine, y. 1994. arctic mirrors: russia and the small peoples of the north. ithaca: cornell university press. ssorin-chaikov, n.v. 2003. the social life of the state in subarctic siberia. stanford: stanford university press. strathern, m. 1988. the gender of the gift: problems with women and problems with society in melanesia. berkeley: university of california press. strathern, m., and m. godelier. 1991. big men and great men: personifications of power in melanesia. new york: cambridge university press. turnbull, c. 1972. the mountain people. new york: simon & schuster. about the authors tatiana safonova defended her phd at saint petersburg state university, department for sociology, in 2009. she works at the centre for independent social research (cinsr, st. petersburg) and is an associate member of the siberian studies centre at the max planck institute for social anthropology (halle, germany). her research topics include problems of nature and culture conservation, indigenous peoples in post-soviet russia, anthropology of siberia and ethnomethodological studies. currently she is visiting scholar at the institute of ethnology, hungarian academy of sciences (budapest, hungary, 2007-2011). she was visiting anthropology of east europe review 28(2) fall 2010 139 scholar at the institute for advanced studies on science, technology and society (graz, austria, 2008), the department for anthropology of aberdeen university (scotland, 2007), the baltic and east european graduate school “södertorns högskola” (huddinge, sweden, 2006), the max planck institute of social anthropology (halle, germany, 2006) and bielefeld university (germany, 2003, 2004, and 2005). tatiana safonova conducted collaborative fieldwork among evenki in eastern buryatia (2008-2009) and has published several articles about evenki. istván sántha defended his phd at the department of inner asian studies, eötvös loránd university, budapest, in 2004. he is a postdoctoral researcher at the institute of ethnology, department of social anthropology, hungarian academy of sciences (supported by the hungarian scientific research fund in 2009-2012). his research topics include problems of modern hunter-gatherer peoples in siberia and culture contact strategies with hierarchical societies. he was a member of the siberian studies centre at the max planck institute for social anthropology (halle, germany) in 2003-2005. he participated a collaborative project with nikolai ssorin-chaikov (university of cambridge) and tatiana safonova (cinsr, st. petersburg) on power and emotions in russia (2008-2010, supported by the wenner-gren foundation). he conducted long-term fieldwork among western buryats (since 2000) and evenki in eastern buryatia (2008-2009) and has published several articles about buryats and evenki. 59 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 farming means headache. everyday challenges of dairy farms in podlasie mateusz sarnacki university of warsaw abstract do external regulations imposed on podlasie milk farmers limit their agency? this article addresses the issue of economic and social aspects of running milk farms in the west podlasie region in east poland. i am trying to answer the question whether farmers from the sokoly commune and the neighboring areas are agent actors, intentionally functioning within their daily reality and in the face of challenges posed by the said reality. i consider the professional awareness of farmers and what really motivates them to work. i analyze the problem through descriptions in the area of economic anthropology and such notions as informal lease, investments, eu grants, loans. i also explain the paradox of enlarging cow herds and the arable land, which does not necessarily result in the growth of farms. key words: agency; economic anthropology; agriculture; dairy farms; investments; credit; eu donation; land lease; poland. introduction this article is the result of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the villages of sokoly and surrounding areas in 2016 and 2017.1 during interviews with the local inhabitants i did not use a ready-made questionnaire. thanks to this, i was able to reach those issues that were important for my interviewees, by touching on the subsequent threads of the ethnographic interview until my research topic has clarified. i was determined to reach people of varying age and gender, but also practicing different ways of running milk farms. meeting the farmers at their homes or on the farms was usually done with no prior appointment. regardless, i was accepted and willingly talked to. when conducting my first field interviews, it was hard for me not to notice the testimonies to the hardships of farming life. the emotional load emerging in the testimonies 1 all field research material is stored in the archives of the institute of ethnology and cultural anthropology, warsaw university (the article’s interview references are related exactly to those materials). names of interviewees have been altered. 60 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 suggested on one side resistance and rebellion against farmers’ domestic situation, and on the other hand helplessness as to the state of affairs, an attitude that was summarized in the sentiment: it is as it is. the issue was the basis for formulating my research problem – attitudes and activities of farmers in confrontation with problems of milk farms. my starting point was a series of questions about the state of individual farms which was frequently confronted with the description of the larger, neighboring, foreign ones. initial interpretation of the collected material, still at the stage of conducting the field study, drew my attention to the limitations that the podlasie milk producers, the largest group among my interviewees, needed to face. for this reason, i analyzed those aspects of farmers’ lives which were referenced in a negative way or at least ambivalently. the categories within this group are: loans, advisory agencies, profitability – they are often analyzed in the rural context not only by anthropologists but also sociologists and other social science researchers (see: jaworska and pieniążek 1995; krzyworzeka 2008; gibson and gray 2013). i quickly became convinced of the multi-aspect character of the problem by listening to conflicting and mutually exclusive opinions on the same issues. the existing friction and incoherencies proved to me the potential hidden in the chosen research area. it was also the starting point for a closer look at the agency of podlasie farmers in the ethos of “working for oneself” and in the face of free market mechanisms, often making specific decisions necessary over others. during my research, i often wondered whether podlasie milk farmers need to constantly adjust themselves to the imposed requirements or whether they can find themselves in the multitude of regulations and be aware and active players on the free market for farming goods. agency is a research category which is important to me. as an important aspect of individual subjectivity, agency became deeply rooted in the post-colonial and post-structural reflection of anthropologists and sociologists. they saw its traces in ideology, language, discourse, therefore all actions of an individual were seen as a sort of consequence of the three areas of life (aschcroft, griffiths, tiffin 2007, pp. 6-7). the issue of individual autonomy and freedom of choice is stressed by elizabeth dunn. in her book privatizing poland: baby food, big business, and the remaking of labor she shows the impact this area of individual life receives from macrosocial order (dunn, p. 167). the testimonies of my interviewees do not allow me to simply accept the assumption that their behavior and ways of running their farms reflect state regulations. elizabeth dunn’s remarks allow me to see the tension between the practices of the individual milk producers and the imposed legal regulations. the practice, the daily work, more precisely narrations related to it, are where i see potential traces of agency. i think that in the case of podlasie farmers this 61 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 is the most important one, unlike susana narotzky sees the traces of agency in patterns of consumption with their meaning-creating potential, shaping the identity (narotzky 2005, p. 83). expressing one’s agency does not need to be spectacular or even open. daily means of resistance, such as commenting, using proverbs, telling jokes and legends, practicing rituals, may be an efficient answer to submission. these practices were described by james c. scott, who researched malaysian farmers. weapons of the weak (1985) is a monograph in which the daily tactics of farmers are described as symbolic resistance against the ideological hegemony of the dominant groups. granted, i find it difficult when trying to consider the situation of podlasie farmers as the result of scott’s class conflicts. nevertheless, stressing the role of the individual social actor as the foundation for anthropological analysis is close to my methodological point of view. the recurrent metaphor of a vicious circle that my interviewees voiced, used to look at the farm as a whole, brought to my mind the limited goods theory presented by the american anthropologist george foster. his peasant society and the image of limited good (1965) is the effect of field study among the farming communities of western mexico. foster saw that having some good at the disposal of a member of the community (these goods being means of survival, love, prestige, power, influence) in larger amounts than those at the disposal of others causes the belief of limited character of resources. similarly, many of my interviewees, when speaking about land lease, treated the land as insufficient good that serves some to accumulate large capital, so that others do not have the full potential for developing their farms. hunger for the land cow specialization, a polarized activity of a farm based on raising milk cows comes with the consequence of the need to have ample land where mainly corn is grown (used for animal feed). the best conditions for growing corn are where the arable land is in one section; then, there is no need to travel to additional plots which saves time and fuel. additionally, meadows situated in the vicinity of the farm allow the possibility of letting the animals graze in the summer season, which is beneficial for the cows’ hooves, allows access to daylight necessary for the organisms to produce vitamin d and lowers the risk of udder inflammation.2 one plot also makes it less problematic to book allowances and helps avoid conflicts with the owners of neighboring fields. 2 http://www.farmer.pl/produkcja-zwierzeca/bydlo-i-mleko/wypas-na-pastwisku,35935.html [accessed 3.12.2017] http://www.farmer.pl/produkcja-zwierzeca/bydlo-i-mleko/wypas-na-pastwisku,35935.html 62 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 falling prices of milk induce farmers to increase the count of their herds so that the current financial situation of the farms does not deteriorate. this is always associated with the need to increase the land area so that the farm animals can be fed. following my interviewees, we assign the description of “hunger for land” to a state where the demand for additional area surpasses the supply. this creates the belief about the land being a limited accessibility good.3 during my ethnographic study it was but all impossible to avoid the recurring metaphor4 of a vicious circle, appearing in the interviews in the context of the factors that influence the functioning of their farms. the words “the circle closes” create the image of a closed system, within which the cow owners can function and make decisions. such hermetic character is not mirrored in my observations, which show an image of rather free circulation of knowledge and material resources, creating varied possibilities for action. the belief of limited availability of natural resources (here: land) assumes a specific determinism of this limitation which influences specific farming practices reflected in the competition for extra area. a family, creating one farm, may in such a model improve their situation only at the cost of others (foster 1965, p. 297). purchasing land in the sokoły commune is problematic for a number of reasons – high prices, higher popularity of renting. above all, increasing the number of cows in a farm, mentioned above, is irreversibly associated with the needs to farm additional areas of land. it is interesting that farming additional areas of land does not need to be followed by accumulation of goods. in the words of the farmers, lack of stability of prices of milk is what causes farms to grow so that they receive additional funds to pay off loans and maintain the status quo. also, polarized specialization of farms towards milk production, which causes all the podlasie area to be called “the milk field” causes each piece of land to be worth all the money. the value of one hectare of land reaches – according to my interviewees – even a hundred thousand zlotys and this is not necessarily land of the highest agricultural land classification.5 those who – for whatever reason – decide to sell their land set the highest 3 we may refer this belief to a wider spectrum of notions, such as health, honor, status, agency, safety – these have been brought up by e.g. george foster in his article peasant society and the image of limited good (foster 1965, p. 296). in anthropology, the theory of limited good means that land, money, and other resources are treated as being available in finite amounts. therefore, if one person gains, someone else loses. 4 following kirsten hastrup, i am treating this metaphor as an “extension of reality” (hastrup 1995, p. 13). 5 according to the classification of arable land in poland, there are nine classes of soil, among which first class is the best. according to the 2016 integrated program for the revitalization of the sokoly commune, i found the following record related to the soil structure in the area: “according to the condition study, the sokoly commune is characterized by very good properties of farming quality of production areas (indicator of 53.7 as opposed to 50,8 points in the powiat of łomża and 54.3 points in the podlasie voivodeship). higher classes, iii-iv, can be found in arable land, making 55.3% of the areas, green areas are weaker, as the soil of class ii-iv encompass only 33.4% of the area.” 63 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 possible prices. the negotiating party is usually at a losing position as the demand for the land surpasses the supply. yet another factor which makes the purchase of the land problematic is largely a result of petite gentry descent of the majority of the sokoly commune (see: biernacka 1966, drozdpiasecka 1991). the land which has been inherited over generations is assigned the emotionally-loaded name of “patrimony”. it is inherited from the ancestors, not easy to sell but rather to sell out – betray for one’s own material gains. possessing land in itself also provides a sense of security, so the monetary transaction of selling the land would result in lack of safety for the future. the amount of possessed land limits the free choice of farm specialization. my research experience shows that some farmers would eagerly change their farming profile towards crops if the whole endeavor was profitable and if they possessed enough land. oral contract difficulties in purchasing land are associated with the lease, popular in the sokoły commune. expiration of farms and their eventual liquidation, often resulting from lack of successors, cause retired farmers to frequently lease out their land. i would like to focus on a specific form of lease, which i will call – mirroring my interviewees – an oral contract. it is an informal activity which brings varied possibilities and threats. contrary to appearances, the subject is discussed openly, with no specific discretion or lowering of the voice. this is most likely due to the popular character of such strategy. the very fact that the phenomenon is referred to in a colloquial way mirrors the informal character of the lease, understood as “mutual coming to terms”. this is yet another example of the agency of my interviewees who express their lack of acceptance for legal systemic solutions in the area of unofficial practices. a notarial act is, as a rule, signed for specific time, often counted in tens of years, and needs to be paid for. from the very definition, leasing the land does not make it owned by another person. what is interesting, in poland lease can also be effective in spoken form, with exceptions. profits of a farmer from leasing the land are also subject to income tax, as specified by the polish legal system. notrial lease “on paper” does not enjoy popularity, as – according to my interviewees – it does not provide security from unexpected termination by the leasing party. tomasz told me about a half-year notice period of such a contract. if, however, he planted the field with “expensive crops”, he would be able to prove in court that he busied himself with a special area of farming which would make it impossible for the owner of the land to terminate such lease. 64 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 i became interested in how one may get to know that someone wants to lease out the land. anna, with a spontaneous smile on her face, referred to “the grapevine” (interview 45). with this response, i understood that the declared apathy towards the situation of the neighbors’ farms is all but illusory. i got the impression that farmers know a lot about who owns which field. rumors about leasing, which are definitely not printed in press or online, create opportunities for competition, conflict of interest, negotiations. this is exemplified by a farmer who, following a major accident, was no longer able to run his farm. he did not decide to lease the land but to sell it. when an acquaintance farmer got to know about it, he offered some advance payment. he also asked not to spread the news about the owner’s intention to sell the land, as competing farmers would raise the price. however, potential buyers with the intention to double the advance payment, appeared. reacting to this, the initial buyer discredited the competitors in the eyes of the seller, claiming they will not be able to pay the declared amount, as they are inclined to abuse alcohol. finally, the seller remained loyal to the initial buyer, despite further attempts to raise the price. an oral lease contract brings mutual duties. usually, the agricultural subsidy land allowances are collected by the owner, while taxes are paid by the lessee. that latter also pays the lease, reaching – according to some – even a thousand zlotys per hectare annually. there have been rare declarations that instead of paying the lease, the lessee may work the field – e.g. reap the crops if the owner does not have a harvester (and if some land remains with them). then, the value of the performed work is the result of the number of hectares reaped or the number of hours spent on rendering services. tomasz, who agreed on such a form of repaying lease, took into account prices which were consistent with a price list of contractors offering similar services. when i asked him whether he used higher rates on occasion, he replied that he tended to use lower rates for friends (interview 34). the character of such service is different from mutual help and cooperation described by kazimiera zawistowicz-adamska, who claimed: having common goals, the same possibilities of offering and reciprocating assistance, introduce a factor of balance of services to the institution of neighbor help, besides the factor of reciprocity. today you help me, tomorrow i will help you – until recently, this has been a popular domestic (and not only) justification of neighbor assistance (zawistowicz-adamska 1951, p. 24). the author of pomoc wzajemna i współdziałanie w kulturach ludowych [mutual help and co-activity in folk cultures] defines the title notions of her monograph in the stream of 65 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 bronisław malinowski’s functionalism, treating neighbor assistance as an institution, a cultural phenomenon serving an important function to the social system as a whole. i would like to point at the fact that the singularity of such lease payments as the one indicated by tomasz is not the consequence of its unpopularity among my interviewees. lease is paid with money because the owner gives up further running of the farm, so they do not work the fields anymore. oral lease contract, because of its informality, causes a sense of uncertainty among my interviewees. i am not using the word “risk” here on purpose, as according to frank cancian, a person making a decision in the condition of uncertainty is not capable of defining its consequences, even with low probability, unlike with risk that can be initially assessed (cancian 1980, pp. 163-164). a farmer who leases the land is therefore faced with unpredictable future, often depending on the whim of the land’s owner. the uncertainty is also related to the free will of the leasing party who may terminate the agreement at any time. therefore, it is so important to maintain good neighborly relations. the need to maintain good relations with other farmers was also mentioned by sutti ortiz. she writes about access to land as the effect of interacting with others (ortiz 2005, p. 68). a young farmer told me about his neighbor, who worked the leased land for ten years running, enriched it and sowed grass for the next year; he selected a more expensive cultivate of grass, paying a sizeable amount for the seeds. after the meadow has been sown, the owner terminated future lease, disregarding the input of the farmer who was forced to submit to the will of the owner. he commented on the whole situation in the following words: “if you’re on your own, you’re free to do as you please but if you sow another’s land, you know how it is. on your own, you’re sure.” (interview 34) owning land does not only bring security from the abovementioned precedent but also builds one’s position among other milk farmers. my attention was also focused on the motive of enriching the land, fertilizing it and lack of potential to use thus fertilized land by the dismissed farmer who invested their capital but has no possibility to cash on it in the future.6 excessive land fertilization is a counterargument to lease out the land short-term. halina questioned this practice also because of its lack of profitability (interview 29). 6 i found a similar case in an article in culture, agriculture, food and environment. the journal of culture and agriculture. namely, a farmer from kansas, in the usa, selling seeds, declared he would not lime the leased land so that the ph level of the soil was changed in order to achieve the optimal conditions for the growth of the crops, if the owner of the land does not extend the contract for another year. he motivated this by potential gain that the invested funds would bring to the new lessee (gray, gibson 2013, p. 92). 66 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 not only the neighbor of my interviewee met the fate of being dismissed from the leased land. konrad and his wife agnieszka faced the same problems. they stored bale-pressed and foil-wrapped silage – cow feed – on a narrow strip of land. one day, the owner of the field informed them that he was planning to sow it, so he forced them to move the silage to a new location. no free space on which to store the feed caused the couple to have to buy additional land area. there is yet a larger potential problem when a contract with the agency for restructuring and modernisation of agriculture specifies a piece of land which is orally leased out. based on the declared area of farmland, a farmer may purchase a farming machine suitable to work the area – e.g., the assistance program does not allow the purchase of a high-power tractor to work the farmland of a small area. during the contract, the declared land area cannot change. if the owner discontinues the lease, the farmer needs to buy or lease out missing hectares, if they do not want to face penalties from the agency. cows – if not, what else? jacek has been breeding cows for almost twenty years. he started off by running a multi-specialization farm. diversification of farming production was an economically justified method of running the family farm. openness to eastern markets made large-scale potato crops reasonable, the existence of a sugar refinery in the nearby łapy made sugar beet crops a good option, low season in the pork cycle made the prices of pork rise. unfavorable market conditions, embargos placed of farming produce, the closing down of the łapy sugar refinery in 2008, restrictions on raising cows and pigs in one cattle shed, repeated emergence of contaminated zones – the area within three kilometers of animals declared diseased, in this case caused by african swine fever strain that the local farmers called “business disease” – all this caused farmers to transform to cow raising. the path of jacek is a common experience of my interviewees. the decision to produce milk is largely a consequence of profit and loss calculations. despite the fact that cows are time-consuming livestock, this area of production is chosen most often. changeability of milk prices is an unwanted phenomenon but because of lack of influence it needs to be taken into account. the key argument lies in monthly profits which are practically impossible to achieve with other types of farming production. therefore, crops of chokeberry or currant which additionally require large areas, despite accessibility of purchasing centers in poświętne or białystok as well as the possibility of farmers to enjoy time 67 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 off, are not seen often and are additionally treated as ecological farming, with ambivalent approach of the community. “mlekovita” dairy cooperative, “mlekpol” dairy cooperative, and the łapy dairy cooperative are the main buyers of milk from the sokoły farmers, although it is the first one that enjoys the highest popularity. as we can see, farmers that i was able to speak with do not function within a monopolized market. despite this, in the villages of the sokoly commune, next to the plaques with house numbers we can most often see mlekovita tags. the fall of the dairy cooperative would therefore mean the downfall of the farms, as testified by anna. farmers were faced with lack of alternatives as to the choice of a more secure and more profitable area of production. sometimes, even the question about a hypothetical change of the area of farming if circumstances warranted such change was met with consternation. “there will be nothing to live on, no livestock, nothing to live on” (interview 46). quite often, however, farmers expressed the possibility of ceasing to raise livestock if another, equally profitable, branch of farming arose. i also encountered testimonies expressing lack of agreement to the current state of affairs and calling for the possibility of running a farm with any specialization, equally profitable. the abovementioned lack of alternative is a metaphor to a degree, although it does not mean that external factors, such as price, sales market, economic situation, made farmers from the sokoly commune raise cows. the conditions offered them no choice. specializing in milk livestock opened the possibility of using the services of feeding specialists and milk examination from the polish federation of dairy livestock and milk producers [polska federacja hodowców bydła i producentów mleka]. most of my interviewees makes use of lactagogue feed and some practice inbreeding among their cows. even though such mating system may raise objections, its sensible use is, in my opinion, a sign of knowledge and awareness of genetic fundamentals of animal breeding and is thus an expression of drive towards professionalization of farming activity. unfortunately, higher efficiency is often achieved at the cost of the animals. ideas also arose to introduce additional sales of dairy products – cheeses – apart from totally reorienting the production. my interviewee said, however, that this possibility depends on the appearance of a daughter-in-law on his farm – she would be able to take care of the additional activity. 68 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 investments an investment is a term that was inflected by all the possible cases in my interviews. it is understood in many ways – as doubling one’s ownership or purchasing extra machines (interview 39), taking a loan (interview 28). farmers invest not only when they raise new buildings but also when they finance the education of their children (interview 23). i had the impression that for many farmers from the sokoly commune farming is neverending investment in their workshop. it is bound with daily life, so the aging of machines is compared to the aging of farmers. constant building, purchasing of machines, is for the 45year-old marek a chase in which the human element is only in the background (interview 28). locating one’s capital in farming is also motivated by competition, perceived as the force which finishes off “dying” farms – where farmers do not invest in anything, rather wanting just to reach retirement age. over twenty years ago, when the results of grażyna jaworska and witold pieniążek’s research were published, competition was rather conceptualized in the categories of injustice, making lives harder (jaworska, pieniążek 1995, pp. 34-36). one can therefore see a shift in the definition of this notion from the ethical and moral sphere into the economic sphere, associated with market forces the goal of making investments is to develop the farm, and seeing the return on investment. for this reason, many of my interviewees, most of them young farmers, gave up the lump sum tax in favor of submitting vat forms on each level of goods exchange. while investing is a sign of creativity and entrepreneurship of farmers, some milk producers told me about the unnecessary phenomenon of over-investing. michał, while trying to explain to me what the mechanism of the phenomenon was, drew my attention to a vicious circle, which one can enter overestimating one’s capabilities and losing liquidity (interview 35). when conducting my research, i have not met a single farmer who would talk about their own farm in terms of over-investing. maybe this is a consequence of the applicability of this term only to those farms that were subjected to execution sale. until 2015, when farmers needed to abide by the so-called milk quotas – milk production limits whose exceeding resulted in a financial fine – many of my interviewees were forced to pay a few thousand to a few hundred thousand fines for oversupply. however, even in this context, no mention of over-investing could be heard, most likely because my interviewees associated increased production of milk with the increase of monthly income. 69 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 only once did i encounter a testimony of milk quotas stabilizing prices. in other cases, the quotas were considered an injustice and limitation of capabilities. marek appreciated the freedom of choosing a farming machine when he applied to eu’s sapard farming program. currently, other programs make it an obligation to purchase a machine whose parameters and size result from the farm’s area. marek, aware of the changing technologies, considers the predefined parameters for his target tractor an incomprehensible supervision that does not allow for running farm prospectively. it is difficult to seize progress if investment is neglected. spending thousands of zlotys on a new farming machine may be called an “invisible” location of funds. therefore, such outlays or sunk costs are often considered wasted, impossible to gain back, but necessary. this is also one of the reasons why the purchase of a corn harvester is rarely considered – such a machine will be used only once a year, so a question as to the number of years when the investment provides a return is raised. donations – free money the issue of donations, in case of a sturt-up gran7 (100 thousand zlotys) but also other means of external financing is conceptualized in a special way. the farmers from the sokoly commune, my interviewees, used the category of “free money” in reference to external funds. additionally, spending of this money, requiring matching invoices that confirm the funds have been well spent, is a blow to the independence and freedom of activity of those podlasie milk farmers who agreed to give me an interview. therefore, such “gifts” are seen in negative light. i also consider it important that the voluntary character of applying for extra finances is becoming a necessity because of fluctuation of prices of milk. therefore, some decisions of the farmers may seem obligatory, resulting from the current situation. “free money” from the eu, transferred to the farmer’s bank account as allowance per hectare or per a piece of livestock, build unhealthy dependence in the eyes of the farmers. receiving funds from an external source causes in my interviewees the need to reciprocate or at least the feeling of gratitude. according to aleksander brückner’s słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego [etymological dictionary of polish language] the word “darmo” meaning free, is derived from “dar” – a gift. mauss’s observation that a gift made out of a certain thing always retains in itself an element of the gift-giver (mauss 1973 [1924], p. 227) makes it easier to understand my interviewees’ reluctance to accept external finances. receiving finances may 7 intended to help young farmers et up and develop their business. 70 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 provide them with a new identity – that of a beneficiary of international economic-political structures. paradoxically, the voluntary character of applying for eu funds is not a counterargument here. i have met no farmer who would declare their opposition to the eu by giving up reimbursements. many were actually eager to get the funds into their bank accounts. thanks to them, they were able to pay for fertilizers, oil or pesticides. eu funds were therefore used to invest in things needed to work the fields. submitting for eu reimbursements is not a problematic issue. even when there are difficulties, farmers use the support of the personnel of the local ośrodek doradztwa rolniczego [farmers’ advisory center] who assist in filling in the necessary forms at a fee. a farmer is not left with no assistance – if they are unable to fill in the forms themselves, they can count on the support of the experts from szepietowo. yet another issue is the “injustice” with handing out allowances. it is often a topic of ethical and moral dilemmas among my interviewees. anna, who, with her husband, signed over their farm to her son, supported the granting of allowances only to those farmers that actually produce something (interview 45). there may therefore arise a situation in which a farmer only owning land which they do not farm is able to get money from the eu. it is a possibility which receives pejorative assessments, with negative emotions. therefore, anna sees the solution in financing milk production, not only owning land. money would be granted only to those who actually produce a specific good, such as milk, on their farm. currently, milk producers can submit for allowances not only according to the hectares owned but also according to the herd count, if it is sufficiently high – in 2017 from three to 20 heads.8 injustice is also seen in the amounts of allowances, in comparison to french and german farmers who – according to one of the farmers – receive even 50% more money than poles (interview 41).9 this undermines the rule of equality and support of the eu to less developed member states. also, farmers from the western member states are described as having guaranteed prices for their products, even at times of natural disasters, while in poland during storms and hailstorms the farmer can only “blame god for low crops and less income.” 8http://www.tygodnik-rolniczy.pl/articles/pieniadze-i-prawo/zmiany-w-doplatach-w-kampanii-2017/ [accessed 10.1.2018] 9 according to the data from the: https://www.pb.pl/w-18-z-28-krajow-ue-doplaty-bezposrednie-dla-rolnikow-sawyzsze-niz-w-polsce-813145 page [accessed 13.1.2018], the average rate of area allowances was ca. 50% lower than in germany and ca. 30% lower than in france. http://www.tygodnik-rolniczy.pl/articles/pieniadze-i-prawo/zmiany-w-doplatach-w-kampanii-2017/ https://www.pb.pl/w-18-z-28-krajow-ue-doplaty-bezposrednie-dla-rolnikow-sa-wyzsze-niz-w-polsce-813145 https://www.pb.pl/w-18-z-28-krajow-ue-doplaty-bezposrednie-dla-rolnikow-sa-wyzsze-niz-w-polsce-813145 71 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 debt when i asked my interviewees about the possibility of borrowing money from their neighbors, the answer was usually negative. a need for extra funds usually causes farmers to visit a bank. the attitude towards borrowed money is shaped somewhat different from that towards free money, as described in the previous section. there have been testimonies to the necessity of getting a loan, without which the development of the farm was impossible but at the same time the interviews are characterized by fear and reluctance to go into debt. a debt of a farm is grounds to reevaluate the work ethos “on one’s own”. a farmer looks differently at things purchased from their own money versus things purchased on credit, making it obvious that they will be forced to use not-their machines that will need to be paid off in the next years or tens of years so that the farmers “come out on top.” the risks offered by the loan agreement are more often taken by young farmers. those who are approaching retirement age were often fearful of something going off wrong. the most significant persona in those testimonies was that of the court executive officer, auctioning insolvent farms – the heritage. the older generation of milk farmers values a credit-free situation of their activity. i have heard numerous testimonies of parents who, having signed off the farms to their children, spoke proudly of signing over a debt-free work environment, additionally stressing their strategies of farming that did not require a loan to prosper. initially, i associated the need to take a loan with limited agency of farmers. however, tomasz, and later bogdan, drew my attention to the individual character of decisions in this regard (interviews 32 and 46). it would be unfair to say that a credit controls farming activities. it may even stimulate the development of the farm, seen through its modernization. those who pay a visit to the bank make decisions based on their individual situation. i would even go a step further and claim that a credit, in many situations, shows the professional awareness of the farmer. the fairness of the decision can be verified through appreciability noticeability of payments. if the amount deducted from monthly milk income is nothing to worry about, it means the financial situation of the farm is stable, so the credit is not additional burden. the situation looks somewhat different if the decision to get a loan is the result of wanting to purchase a better machine than that possessed by a neighbor. none of my interviewees associated themselves with the situation, they offered this example to stress the greed of farmers or their propensity to fall into temptation; farmers who over-invested in their farms with no right to exist in the nearest future. 72 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 the loan is usually the domain of those who decided to enter the path of modernization and development. my interviews also contained a motive of “catching up” with another farmer, associated with the feeling of competition (interview 29). conclusions the goal of this article was to take a closer look at the degree to which daily practices of the podlasie milk farmers are the result – according to their declarations – of conscious consideration informed consideration, based on reflection, and to what degree they are the result of habits and feeling of lack of control over the changing farming situation. for this reason, agency became an important research category, expressed in action through intentionality and consistency towards undertaken activities. from the methodological viewpoint, i consider the analysis of farmer testimonies a much more measurable method of getting to know the volitional aspect of their actions than observing them would be able to reveal. my initial remarks were the reason for my thinking that the social structure and legal institutions limit the milk farmers, or even that they determine the farmers’ activities. however, with the progress of my study and deepening analysis of the collected materials, i concluded that farmers from the area of sokoly do not only focus on coping with the limitations but are also able to find, in the widely understood farming policy of poland and the eu (legal regulations, financing, loan terms) a stream of possibilities for creative activity. therefore, speaking of the determination of podlasie farmers by forces outside their control seems a harmful, reductionist simplification that does not explain much. the research shows that profit is one of the largest motivators to running a farm in a specific way. naturally, many other factors come to play, such as having a family, market situation (prices of milk, the free market game of supply and demand), having an adequately modern machinery. farmers calculate, even when they declare they do no bookkeeping and balance sheets. they see the profits from purchasing a new tractor, they try to forecast when an investment will bring return, they consider profitability at practically each step of their activity, starting with purchasing or leasing land, through decisions to cooperate with feeding experts. the selection of production specialization on a farm is not a necessity, but rather a wellthought-out decision, based on profit and loss calculation. additionally, farmers often factor into their decision the individual preferences. therefore, in the villages of the sokoly commune and the neighboring łapy commune, apart from the dominant model of activity – dairy production – there are also chicken farms, swine farms, ecological farms and sellers of aronia. 73 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 increasing the farming area and increase of the herd count are, above all, a specific answer of farmers to unstable prices of milk, a strategy that allows them to maintain financial liquidity in their home budgets. my research shows that building one’s prestige among other farmers in this way is of secondary concern, or at least difficult to assess because of my adopted method of ethnographic study. however, taking a loan in order to modernize their farms is, in my opinion, an informed decision, an expression of professionalism, rather than mindless mirroring of the activities of neighbors. therefore, in my opinion, young farmers are more prone to taking a risk associated with loans than older farmers. the former may rely on receiving a non-returnable premium of 100 thousand zlotys, and the loans they take are on preferential terms (e.g. with lower interest). many of my interviewees expressed their willingness to change the profile of their farms, if the new setup was as profitable as selling milk. i did not hear testimonies to abandoning milk production only on the grounds of workand time-consuming character of the specialization with perspectives of lower income. when asked about the potential of transforming the farms, one of the farmers compared the farm to a ship, whose course is hard to alter, as this activity requires the reconstruction of the barn, reaching for knowledge about the target specialization, and passion. as can be seen, resisting change is not a good explanation, also in this respect. the expert character of my interviewees is also evidenced in them ridiculing eu regulations and requirements. it is the farmer who knows what machine is suited to their farm. therefore, my interviewees do not agree to tractors being sized for the area of land owned, which is the case with eu farming programs.10 similarly, rules of the notary-confirmed land lease – the necessity to pay taxes, paying the notary, duration of lease – are unfavorable and inadequate to the reality of farming to the degree that my interviewees make oral arrangements. in this practice, i see a form of farmers defending themselves from limitations on their freedom of work, rather than drive at avoiding extra costs, although this can be a reason for some. maybe this is also a modern form of mutual help, as the informal transaction benefits both sides – the lessee has an area to grow e.g. corn, and the owner receives annual rent (and does not run a farm themselves usually). 10 the rules of selecting farming machines within the 2014-2020 rural area development program can be found at https://www.arimr.gov.pl/fileadmin/pliki/wnioski/prow_2014_2020/mgr/2015/zasady_doboru_maszyn_pr ow_2014-2020.pdf [accessed 17.2.2018]. https://www.arimr.gov.pl/fileadmin/pliki/wnioski/prow_2014_2020/mgr/2015/zasady_doboru_maszyn_prow_2014-2020.pdf https://www.arimr.gov.pl/fileadmin/pliki/wnioski/prow_2014_2020/mgr/2015/zasady_doboru_maszyn_prow_2014-2020.pdf 74 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 references: aschcroft, bill, gareth griffiths, helen tiffin 2007 post-colonial studies: the key concepts, usa, canada: taylor & francis. biernacka, maria 1966 wsie drobnoszlacheckie na mazowszu i podlasiu. tradycje historyczne a współczesne przemiany [petite gentry villages in masovia and podlasie. historic traditions and contemporary changes], wrocław: zakład narodowy im. ossolińskich. brückner, aleksander 1927 dar [gift] [in:] słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego [etymological dictionary of polish language] kraków: krakowska spółka wydawnicza. cancian, frank1980 risk and uncertainty in agricultural decision making, [in:] agricultural decision making. anthropological contribution to rural development, peggy f. barlett (ed.), new york–london–toronto–sydney–san francisco: academia press, pp. 161–176. drozd-piasecka, mirosława 1991 ziemia w społeczności wiejskiej: studium wsi południowo-wschodniego mazowsza (koniec xix i xx wiek) [land in rural community: study of the rural areas of south-eastern masovia (late 19th century and 20th century)], warsaw: instytut historii kultury materialnej polskiej akademii nauk. dunn, elizabeth c. 2004 privatizing poland: baby food, big business, and the remaking of labor, ithaca: cornell university press.foster, george m. 1965 peasant society and the image of limited good, “american anthropologist”, vol. 67, pp. 293-315. gray, benjamin j. and jane w. gibson 2013 actor-networks, farmer decisions, and identity, “culture, agriculture, food and environment. the journal of culture and agriculture”, vol. 33, issue 2, pp. 82-101. hastrup, kirsten 1995 a passage to anthropology: between experience and theory, routledge. jaworska, grażyna and witold w. pieniążek 1995 konteksty ekonomicznego myślenia. wolny rynek na wsi z punktu widzenia antropologa [contexts of economic thinking. rural free market from an anthropologist’s viewpoint], warsaw: instytut ekonomiki rolnictwa i gospodarki żywnościowej. krzyworzeka, amanda 75 anthropology of east europe review 36 (1), 2019 2008 two plus two equals… not enough: numbers and counting in the household strategies of polish farmers, [in:] exploring home, neighbouring, and distant cultures, l. mróz, a. posernzielinski (ed.), warsaw: dig, pp. 59-72. mauss, marcel 1973 socjologia i antropologia [sociology and anthropology], transl. by marcin król, krzysztof pomian, jerzy szacki, warsaw: pwn. narotzky, susana 2005 provisioning, [in:] a handbook of economic anthropology, james g. carrier (ed.), cheltenham, uk-northhampton, ma: edward elgar, pp. 78-93. ortiz, sutti 2005 decision and choices: the rationality of economic actors, [in:] a handbook of economic anthropology, james g. carrier (ed.), cheltenham, uk-northhampton, ma: edward elgar, pp. 59-77. scott, james c. 1985 weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance, new haven: yale university press. zawistowicz-adamska, kazimiera 1951 pomoc wzajemna i współdziałanie w kulturach ludowych [mutual help and co-activity in folk cultures], łódź–lublin: polskie towarzystwo ludoznawcze. microsoft word grama.docx anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35338 grama, emanuela. socialist heritage: the politics of past and place in romania. bloomington: indiana university press, 2019. 247 pages maria cristache, justus liebig university, giessen, germany a central theme in critical heritage studies is the political nature of heritage definition, exhibition, and management. instead of reducing heritage to things or places with inherent and "objective" value, this field engages with topics such as the role of knowledge and power in heritage production and preservation. in her book, socialist heritage: the politics of past and place in romania, emanuela grama presents the fascinating case of the old town in bucharest, raising similar questions about heritage regimes during communism and after 1989. her analysis of power negotiations, criteria for belonging and practices of exclusion revealed by "heritage making (and unmaking)" (p.2) does not lose sight, however, of visual and material factors such as archaeological sites, ruins, building facades and scripts. drawing on archival and ethnographic research, the book is a detailed examination of the power negotiations between politicians, various professional groups, and state tenants as reflected in the valuation and devaluation of buildings in the old town. the introduction places the aim and objectives of the book into a wider historical context, starting from the emergence of the old town in the 19th century and until the beginning of the communist regime in romania. it also outlines the conceptual framework consisting of the link between heritage regimes and state making, ethnographic approaches to aesthetics, and "heritage as the propriety of property" (p.20, emphasis in original). the introduction ends with a presentation of the research methods and the organization of the book. the rest of the book is structured into five chapters and a conclusion. chapter one focuses on the plan for urban development in postwar bucharest as an arena for the assertion of power and state formation. the case of the old court discussed in chapter two sheds light on the conflict between architects and archaeologists during the 1960s and on how the latter advanced from "the periphery of the political agenda" (p. 67) by helping the socialist state strengthen its legitimacy. the next chapter examines the attitudes and practices of architects, state officials, and residents towards the old town—seen as a potential historical district—between the late 1960s and the anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35338 1980s. in chapter four, the author focuses on the state authorities' neglect of the old town, a political and economic strategy they used in order to present themselves as democratic politicians removed from the communist past and to exploit the district as a source of cheap capital during the 1990s. chapter five delves into the privatization of bucharest in the early 2000s, as romania sought eu integration, with the old town playing a role in europeanizing the city at the expense of the social relations and community within the district. the conclusion successfully brings together the two heritage regimes, underlining temporal and spatial dynamics as well as postsocialist gentrification and privatization. the author captures and presents the intricate relations between heritage regimes, knowledge production, political orders, and power in a captivating way. she skillfully integrates observations about architecture as an indicator and tool of modernization, archaeological valuation of objects as "raw matter" (p.90), forms of political communication between competing professional groups, and ruined buildings in the postsocialist privatized city into a convincing analysis of heritage production, preservation, and manipulation. the discussion about projects that never materialized—such as the proposal to redesign the facades of houses in the supposed architectural style of the 18th century (chapter three) and the proposal of a british team of architects to renovate the old town (chapter four) —as indicators of political visions is particularly intriguing. chapter five explores the link between privatization and heritage as romania started to pursue eu integration. the author juxtaposes the efforts to transform "the old town into the historical center of a european capital aimed to cater to the aesthetic sensibilities of a neoliberal middle class" (p.208) to the erasure "not only of houses but also of social relations, of empathy, of connections, and of community" (p.210). this is an important point for understanding people's experiences in the fragmented postsocialist society. however, the author doesn't dedicate much space in the book to the points of view and experiences of people living in the decaying buildings of the old town. focusing more on the perspective of residents would have helped understand the impact of heritage definition and management on the everyday lives of people. a more in depth exploration of how the (crumbling) material environment affected people's routines, social interactions, feeling of belonging and exclusion, quality of life would have led to a more convincing combination of ethnographic and historical perspectives. anthropology of east europe review final issue 39 (1), 2022. doi: 10.14434/aeer.v39i1.35338 this book contributes to the field of critical heritage studies with a perspective on the rather unexplored context of romania. giving more prominence to the voices of those who inhabit the buildings of the old town would have helped readers better understand how the abstract notion of heritage translates into everyday struggles in a polarized postsocialist society. still, socialist heritage provides a complex and thought-provoking account of the changing meanings of heritage within different political regimes, power structures, and modes of knowledge production. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 22 the gendered feast: experiencing a georgian supra laura joy linderman abstract: the supra is a traditionalized feast in post-soviet georgia characterized by abundant food and ritualized drinking. it is extremely common in social life, especially in rural georgia. secular rituals, social occasions, national and religious holidays and life cycle transitions are accompanied by the ubiquitous supra. the supra has been examined by anthropologists as a site for macro level analyses that put forward structural or cultural theories for the underlying meaning of this ritual-for-all-occasions. women’s experiences of and roles in the supra have often been overlooked or misrepresented in these studies. in this thesis i investigate women’s varied roles at a supra and problematize the idea that the supra demonstrates a model of society, with a paragon of masculinity at the center. i question the static image of an idealized supra that is only capable of reproducing a particular cultural model and argue that the supra is flexibly employed with a great deal of social life being oriented around preparing and participating in supras. women’s experiences of the supra (like men’s) is different depending on the type of supra, the other participants involved, the age of the woman, her class and her particular geographical location. keywords: post-soviet, georgia (republic), cultural anthropology, feast, banquet, ritual, gender introduction the supra was the worst and best experience i had in georgia. georgians have supras about 3 times a week to celebrate different things, whether it be a wedding, holiday, etc. in this case, the supra was for us. there were about 10 people at this supra; my sister's host parents, her host father's boss, kakha1, her host mother's sister and brother in law, a couple work friends, and the director of the school my sister works at (and maybe a few others). on the table there was a veritable orgy of food. types of food on the table: tomato and cucumber salad, suckled pig, lines of beef, spicy green beans, potato/meat pie, baklava, khajchapuri (georgian cheese bread and 1 of 2 national dishes), grape gelatin, rice and meat filled crepes, bread, potato salad, pickled vegetables, eggplant, chicken, chocolate coconut cake, smoked and regular cheese, gritesque white substance, fatty pork, pizza, shish-kebobs, and lots and lots of homemade wine. there were three or four plates of each type of food. they filled up our wine glasses and we picked food for ourselves and it was underway. here's the thing about supras: they're celebrations, and because of that everyone toasts to different things often. the most important word at these supras is "gaumarjos" which is the georgian word for cheers. what would happen is this: someone would cheer to something, say gaumarjos, and pound2 their wine. the next person would cheer to the same thing, etc., until everyone had cheered to it. we cheered to families, relationships, friends, georgia, american visitors, safe travel, peace and harmony, etc. etc. etc. after a short while i started taking sips of the wine instead of pounding it. if you thought college was filled with peer pressure, you have no idea what it was like to be at one of those supras. every time your plate was empty, people demanded you re-fill it. every time you took a sip of wine, people demanded you finish it. it was very stressful and harrowing. my sister had anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 23 told me about the pressure, but i didn't imagine it would be that bad in my wildest dreams. after a little while longer, a couple of the guys brought out a drinking contraption which was a straw like hose put into a cup full of wine and lifted above your head. there, with the hose pinched between your index and middle finger, you were expected to drink the whole cup (~12-15 oz.). now, here's the problem -i had had 2 hours of sleep the night before and my body was wracked with jet lag. that mixture, coupled with already having drunk lots and lots of wine, led to me feeling weirder than i ever have before. i was not in the right state of mind. i really wanted to supra to end (it had lasted 2.5 hours already) but there is never a set time for these things. my sister said they can last from 2 to 10 hours, and there's no way to predict how long they'll last. an hour later, i was so out of it that i almost lost it. but i surprised myself and kept my composure and politely asked my sister if i could go to bed (which she said was ok, and the georgians would understand because i had been traveling so much). thankfully, i finally was able to go to sleep. --lee linderman, september 2006 this colorful description of a supra is from my 19 year old brother, lee. lee’s trip to georgia in the summer of 2006 was his first time abroad. i included the description here to give a sense of what an unsuspecting, young american male experienced at his first supra. while he did not understand the ritualized facets of a supra or its greater social and political meaning in georgia, the sensory and emotional aspects come through quite clearly. ask any non-georgian who has spent time in georgia to describe his or her experiences there and without fail the supra will appear at or near the top of the list. there was one important aspect of the supra my brother did not comment on, the gendered nature of the supra. we are left wondering how the food got prepared and who prepared it. were there servers at the table? who was pressuring lee to drink and who decided it was acceptable to dismiss him from the table? were men and women drinking equally? he says a couple of guys brought out a drinking contraption; did any women take part in this drinking feat? this paper seeks to address questions about the roles men and women play at the supra and the way gender is portrayed in scholarly and popular accounts of the supra. anthropological and ethnographic studies that deal specifically with georgia are relatively few; however, within this marginal field the supra is a topic that has gotten quite a bit of ethnographic attention. this occurs for obvious reasons: ethnographers or any visitors to georgia are always subjected to it; its rule governed and consistent form is compelling to anthropologists analyzing ritual; and its ubiquitous nature makes it a ready site for macro level analyses that put forward structural or cultural theories for the underlying meaning of this ritualfor-all-occasions. a brief review of ethnographic examinations of the supra includes several sociolinguistic studies by helga kotthoff (1995, 1999), who focuses primarily on the speech act of the supra toast. florian mühlfried has written on gender attributes of the toastmaster (tamada) in a cognitive anthropological study and on supra-ing as a means to preserve nationhood (2006, 2007). paul manning has written about the supra as a metaphor for consumption in the private sphere under the soviets (2007b) and more broadly on the way wine mediates between the spheres of the political and the everyday in georgian life in a forthcoming book (manning n.d.: intro, 19-20)3. kevin tuite investigates the social and political attitudes which the supra is said to encapsulate, focusing on the way civil society and public space is understood (2005b). so why attempt another study of the supra? because women’s experiences of and roles in the supra have been overlooked or woefully misrepresented. there are anthropological studies of gendered aspects of the supra, which explore the supra as a site for the reproduction of masculinity anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 24 (mühlfried 2006, 2007; tuite 2005b, jgerenaia 2000). however, there are no studies that focus specifically on women. if women are mentioned in the analyses, they are dismissed as the workhorses, relegated to the kitchen where they prepare the meal (tuite 2005b, kotthoff 1995) and certainly never considered to embrace or enjoy the supra. an investigation of women’s roles in the supra is also useful as a means by which to investigate gender roles in georgia more broadly, as there is also a lack of scholarly studies on the topic. in this study i will review the main components of the supra ritual beginning with food preparation and presentation. next i will examine the role of the toastmaster and toasting, including a description of specialized toasting procedures. i will then include a brief study that examines the supra as a site for (re)producing political messages. the bulk of the rest of the paper will be a close reading of aspects and perspectives that are missing in contemporary examinations of the supra, namely women’s roles and experiences of the supra. in order to investigate the gendered aspects of the supra i will situate the discussion by providing a brief and broad examination of work done on gendered attitudes in georgia today. the basis for this study was fieldwork done in ozurgeti, georgia from 2005-2006, when i was a peace corps volunteer at the ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college. additional fieldwork was completed in the summer of 2009. having had previous fieldwork experience and having been to georgia before, i approached my time in georgia as a peace corps volunteer from an ethnographic perspective, integrating myself as much as possible into local networks. ozurgeti is the capital of the western georgian region of guria. guria was one of the wealthiest regions in georgia under the soviets but now is one of the poorest.4 it is a rural area located in the south caucasian mountain range and its boggy lower valleys (see fig. 1). the population of ozurgeti is between 10,000 and 15,000 and it is the capital of the region. studies of the supra have generally been geographically located in the georgian capital of tbilisi or nearby villages. manning and tuite have both investigated the ritual in the mtskheta-mtianeti region located high in the north caucasus mountains to the north east of tbilisi (manning and upliashvili 2007, manning 2007b, tuite 2002, 2004). however there do not seem to be any studies of the way the ritual functions in western georgia. political map of georgia. shaded portion is guria (fig. 1) most of the employees at the ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college were women, including the director, and so most of the supras i attended were heavily dominated by women. unsurprisingly, this is rather a different case from representations of the standard or idealized supra. commentaries on the macro processes and structural meanings behind a supra are important and valuable and i will give an in-depth review of the work that has been done thus far. however, i hope to add a fuller ethnographic perspective, which situates theoretical analyses anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 25 in daily experiences. while i will engage with some generalizable commentary on the supra and the way the ritual works, i will also focus heavily on the lived experience of the supra, noting that this experience will be different depending on individual perspectives on the ritual. the ethnographic material comes from my journals, letters and emails to friends back home. written accounts from other american peace corps volunteers about the supra are included as supplementary materials. finally, i draw on observations from my visit to ozurgeti during the summer of 2009. these observations are not part of formal fieldwork and i do not claim that they represent the same type of rich material that i would have obtained through that process. however, the experiences i had during this time are still salient and provide a starting point from which to expand the current anthropological work on and analyses of the supra. the supra: a ritual feast for all occasions before we can ask about gender in the supra, we must first ask: what is the supra? broadly, it is a traditionalized feast or meal. paul manning describes it as a feast ideally characterized by extremely abundant display of traditional foodstuffs (manning n.d.: chap.1, 7). the supra is also an occasion for ritualized imbibing. drinking wine or liquor at a supra is accompanied by ritual toasts, which are directed by the tamada (toastmaster), who combines the consumption of alcohol with specialized, emotional and articulate spoken word (manning n.d.: chap. 1, 8). the term supra means tablecloth in georgian. it is from the arabic sufratun, which is the cloth spread on the floor for eating (chatwin1997:181). supras include formal and festive meals. all secular rituals, social occasions, national and religious holidays and life cycle transitions are accompanied by the ubiquitous supra (manning n.d.: chap. 1, 9). every supra follows the same set of rules, but the level of formality depends on the occasion. supras can be held almost anywhere, including restaurants, gardens, schools, graveyards and, perhaps most commonly, at homes. most often, guests sit at a table, which is covered with small plates of food that continue to be brought out and refreshed as the supra continues (see fig. 2). a supra table in ozurgeti, georgia (fig. 2) anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 26 as florian mühlfried says, “no major step in the life of a georgian would be complete without a banquet. on the macro scale, then, the supra functions as a rite of passage” (mühlfried 2007:2). the ubiquity of the supra makes it a powerful synecdoche for georgian society and thus favorable for meta-level commentary. manning writes that georgian social life presents itself as an endless series of supras (manning n.d.: chap.1, 10). the supra expresses the image the georgians believe is especially characteristic of themselves, which is that of carefree lovers of wine and the wine ritual (manning n.d.: chap.1, 19). a close investigation of the supra is useful in order to examine how this ritual reproduces norms, values and conceptual schemes for the participants. as durkheim theorized, societies maintain their coherence through independent and objective “social facts” (durkheim 1982). this emphasis on social facts made the examination of ritual particularly important. individuals come to embody the values and norms of their culture through rituals. the focus is similar to practice theory that succeeds this earlier form; however the durkheim group focused on specific instances or highly intentionalized moments of practice (ornter 1984:157)—such as ritual or festival. ritual became one of the primary matrices for the reproduction of consciousness (ortner 1984:157). in this paper, i am interested in the supra ritual as a form of practice, something people do and a way to reproduce and transform consciousness. however, i am cautious about upholding a strict boundary between “the ritual” and the “everyday” in the case of the supra. bourdieu, for example, emphasized not just ritual, but ordinary habits and practices as ways to reproduce the system or social forms (bourdieu 1977). ortner points out that “to study the reproduction of consciousness, mystified or otherwise, in the processes of ritual behavior is to study at least one way in which practice reproduces the system” (ortner 1984:66). the supra is both ubiquitous and flexibly employed, with a great deal of social life being oriented around preparing and participating in supras. while one can say that a particular supra is over, there is leftover food that is often prepared the next day in a kind of smaller, less formal supra. similarly, at any given supra the majority of guests may leave after the formal toasting procedure has finished, but other guests may stay on, continuing to eat, talk and toast in a more intimate and free setting. therefore it becomes difficult to find a definitive place where the ritual ends and the everyday begins. the supra ritual form itself is highly visible and certainly reproduces habits, making it “good to think” as a representation of georgian society (manning n.d.: chap.1, 12). manning argues that the supra is conceived of as having a strictly determined structure that does not leave anything to chance and thus produces moments when the normative categories for everyday life are performed (manning n.d.:chap.1, 10). “the supra is a traditionalizing form of discourse, it performatively creates that which it presupposes to be immutable. because it is a traditionalizing and yet very visible aspect of the social life, it presents itself as an ideal and idealized reduced model of the social available for meta commentary on the broader social totality of which it is a part” (manning n.d.:chap.1, 11). similarly, beverly stoeltje argues that performing grief at asante funerals (re)constructs cultural identity and political hegemony. she notes that “the practices of culture offer an opportunity to glimpse the performance of symbolic acts of political import” (stoeltje 2009:3). she then thoroughly dissects the ways in which power is “displayed, claimed, challenged, and negotiated” in ghanaian popular culture and specifically the funeral (stoeltje 2009:18). funeral rites, like supras, are sites from which to examine the cultural and political phenomena that undergird powerful ideological formations and cultural logics (stoeltje 2009:8). here, i will investigate the lived experiences of the supra that are left out of popular anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 27 reproductions of this meta commentary. what do women’s experiences of supras performatively create and what does that say about georgian cultural logics? the culinary art of the supra: preparing, displaying and consuming food after a cursory reading of many academic texts on the supra, one might assume that food preparation and consumption is the informal and rule-free zone of the supra ritual. often the food and presentation has been glossed over in descriptions of the supra in order to give more time for intricate descriptions of oral performance. european writer alexandre dumas deemed food to be a “very minor consideration” in his early description of a georgian supra, claiming that the ability to drink large amounts is instead far more important (manning n.d.:chap.1, 19). unsurprisingly, many anthropologists have been the honored guests at supras and therefore have not had much experience in the behind-the-scenes aspects of the ritual, such as food preparation and display. also, food serving and preparation is almost exclusively the province of women, so male anthropologists may not have had the chance to investigate this realm. examination of the food of the supra often is limited to saying that supra guests serve themselves and pass dishes around the table, similar to what might be called “family style” dining in the us. while this statement is not inaccurate, it does not present the full picture. manning makes the argument that food consumption is the “democratic” aspect of the supra, in stark contrast to the “autocracy” of the formal rules governing toasting and wine consumption in the supra (manning n.d.: chap.1, 25). this is a useful binary in manning’s nuanced examination of the “metapragmatic” commentary on the supra (manning n.d.: chap1, 31). however, when examining the lived experience of the supra, especially from the women’s perspective, one needs to reconsider such a clear cut dualism. at first glance the set up of the supra table may seem chaotic (see fig. 3) but the service is actually designed both to be visually impressive and to pique the palate through contrasting colors, textures, and flavors (goldstein 1999:27). as figure five demonstrates, much of the table is already laid out with food dishes before guests even arrive. many of these foods have been prepared well in advance and are served at room temperature. often vegetable dishes, bread, beverages and place settings are set out ahead of time and meticulously placed on the table. even though i participated in preparing for many supras, i was not allowed to place dishes on the table because of my perceived lack of understanding of the aesthetics of dish and food placement. instead, i was relegated to rinsing and drying the dishes that my host aunts, elza and tamar, placed on the table. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 28 a supra table in western georgia (fig. 3) the preparations for a supra are time intensive. food processors and other kitchen aids are still extremely rare. peace corps volunteer jennifer mcfann describes the intense effort and creative resources that are put into cooking for a village wedding: when i came downstairs yesterday evening…there was cake everywhere [see fig. 4 and fig. 5]. cake covering the sink, the washing machine, the counter space, the woodstove, and the fridge. i count 24 layers in all, and considering that a) there's only enough space in the oven to make one layer at a time, and b) they don't have baking powder here so they have to churn air and fluffiness into every batch of batter with raw arm strength [this is an insanely impressive feat]. few expressions stick in my mind like the stare of intense concentration and strain on my host aunt's sweatbeaded face as she mixed cake batter for new year's…[in order to speed up preparations] someone had the inspiration to jam a blender fork into a drill. since it was clearly jammed in and not part of some new line of culinary power drill accessories, i steered clear, but my host mom took the opportunity to drill her cake icing like nobody's business. large groups of women will come together to prepare for larger supras. for example, wedding supras are often prepared with the aid of neighbors and relatives, as in mcfann’s example. neighborhood families are expected to contribute money, foodstuffs and labor to the preparations for a wedding supra. female neighbors, friends and family members get together to cook for several days in advance. during one particularly large wedding supra preparation period, i grated carrots for 8 hours and was only able to go home hours before other women because i was considered a guest and a fragile foreigner. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 29 cakes being stored in the laundry room and on the counter (fig. 4 and 5) the visual appeal of individual dishes is also very important. on another occasion, i was allowed to cube a boiled potato for salat olivie. however, my cubes were not quite square enough and the salad i had prepared was relegated to emergency backup so that no one would be subjected to my visual disaster. it took six more months of peeling potatoes before i was allowed another chance at cubing tubers. this attention to detail and perfectionism remains despite the copious amount of food that is prepared for a supra. supras can easily last eight hours and are sometimes prepared for hundreds of people. the supra must seem “eternally fresh and young,” so no dish may be allowed to run out. the task of refreshing and refilling dishes is generally performed by women, who constantly bring out new dishes and clean plates for guests. in addition, as the evening progresses, new foods are brought out to supplement, not replace, the old (goldstein 1999: 27). by the end of the evening, the table is covered with plates on top of plates (see fig. 6 and 7). the hostesses of the supra also continually refresh individual plates to keep different flavors of food from mixing and to get rid of uneaten pieces of food. supra table with many plates (fig. 6) supra table with plates (fig. 7) anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 30 there is an unspoken rule against finishing the end of a dish unless a hostess specifically gives it to you. because the supra must continually be in the full and fresh state, one does not want to risk finishing off a dish in case the hostess does not have another one to bring out. this practice has become more common after the economic hardships that georgia experienced following the break up of the soviet union. restraint in eating is of critical importance. new dishes, such as the important “national dish” khinkali, are brought out as the evening progresses. given the time and effort that the cooks put into preparing the food, not sampling a dish is offensive. respectful and savvy guests at a supra show restraint and pace themselves, ideally praising specific dishes that are particularly savory. drinking and poetry: the tamada and toasting rituals from the under-discussed and feminized arena of food, we move on to the investigation of the heavily researched and masculine realm of toasting, alcohol and poetry (manning n.d.: chap.1, 8). the institution of the tamada, or toastmaster, is critical to the definition of a supra. wine is not consumed at a supra (or in general in georgia) unless as toast has first been pronounced by the drinker. these toasts are directed, proposed, and presented by the tamada. tuite states that, “in principle, at every occasion where wine is to be consumed, even if only two men are present, one of them is selected to be tamada” (tuite 2005b: 2). each round of drinking begins with a toast on a particular topic, introduced by the tamada, after which only he drinks. after the tamada finishes, the other guests, one after the other, give toasts on the same topic and then each of them drinks. after everyone drinks, the merikipe (assistant to the tamada), who is responsible for keeping glasses of wine filled, will refill everyone’s wine glass. at particularly large supras more than one person will be named merekipe. if someone does not drink a toast or has abstained from drinking several toasts, the merekipe will still symbolically place one or two drops of wine into their already filled glass before each new toast. it is bad form to make a toast with a half-empty glass. if the tamada decides to drink all of the wine in his glass after a toast, then the rest of the guests attempt to follow his lead. this action is called drinking bolomde, which literally means “until the end.” once the tamada proposes a toast and drinks all the wine in his glass, he must continue to drink bolomde after each subsequent toast. it is bad form for the tamada to drink a toast bolomde and then go back to drinking only half glasses of wine for subsequent toasts. the decision to begin to drink bolomde is therefore an important and strategic move on the part of the tamada. drinking a toast bolomde symbolically represents the drinker’s strong affirmation for the subject of the toast. not drinking bolomde to certain, especially emotional, important or powerful toasts is looked down upon. although the tamada leads the toast for each round, he does not have free reign in choosing his toasts. he is governed by a strict sequence of toasts that depend on the occasion and the region of georgia where the supra takes place (for a review of toasting sequences see holisky 1989). the minimum amount of toasting rounds for a supra is three, although this is uncommon. three dozen or more rounds of toasts may occur in a single supra (tuite 2005b: 25). a typical evening supra in a private home might go on for three or four hours, though supras lasting much longer are not at all rare (tuite 2005b: 25). the tamada has a preeminent role in controlling the direction of the drinking occasions. the role is taken very seriously and only certain people are qualified for it. tamadas should be knowledgeable and witty, able to recite poetry, sing and tell stories. the tamada must also be able to drink large amounts of wine without showing any signs of drunkenness. mühlfried writes, anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 31 “the tamada must have excellent rhetorical skills. this implies fluency in the language of humour (so as to entertain the guests and make them feel at home) and the language of honour (to rekindle traditionalised notions of education and pride)” (mühlfried 2008:2). leading the supra as a tamada is difficult, requiring the ability to improvise, understand the mood of the table and entertain. it is simply a matter of memorizing a bunch of toasts and reproducing them in order. there are certain toasts that must come at the beginning of the supra, after which is a period of fairly free toasting and then several toasts at the end of the supra that signify it is finishing up. manning explains that the early toasts might be conceived of as a block of obligations that must be paid by those present before they are free to engage in “free toasts” or “personal toasts” (manning n.d.: chap.1, 34). during the period of free toasting in the middle, the tamada shows his true genius. he uses these special moments to propose emotional and bonding toasts. often participants will drink “vakhtangurad,” where participants lock arms, drink wine from special drinking vessels, drink the wine bolomde and kiss three times on the cheeks. other qualities of a good tamada include eloquence and poeticalness. he must speak loudly, clearly and with good diction and also must be articulate. a certain poetic cadence should be evident in his tone and his presentation of toasts. additionally, he must be receptive to the rhythm of the table, proposing toasts in a timely and appropriate manor. he must be sensitive to the mood of the table, trying to get everyone involved and slow down or speed up the toasts according to the level of inebriation. in general, the speed of toasts is faster at the beginning and slows down towards the middle of the supra as people become tipsy. the tamada also needs to keep people interested in the toasting. he must be able to drink large amounts of wine or liquor while still maintaining control over his faculties. by remaining at least somewhat sober, the tamada maintains his position and is able to direct the flow of the evening. the manly tamada: an introduction to gender and toasting we have not yet directly examined gendered aspects of the tamada, other than to use the pronoun “he” when discussing the ideal form. mühlfried examines how gendered aspects of the institution of the tamada serve to construct concepts of masculinity. using quantitative and linguistic methods, he considers the themes of toasts, their sequences and the words uttered by participants. mühlfried is particularly interested in the semantic fields that surround the terms tamada and vazkacoba (manliness), arguing that an ideal tamada represents and presents particular masculine virtues. he writes, “some of these [virtues] are visible in the toastmaster’s performance, in the form of eloquence, sense of humor, drinking capacity, singing ability, and knowledge of georgian history, poetry and lore. other virtues are not so much seen as presumed: expected to instantiate, simply by being who they are, a certain essence of georgianness” (mühlfried 2006:2). mühlfried does not ignore women in his analysis. he notes that women are sometimes tamadas, though this is rare. mühlfried mentions that the public performance of pride and honor via the institution of the tamada is normally attributed to men. however, “in the post-soviet urban context of tbilisi a few women are famous tamada too” (mühlfried 2006:5). the famous female tamadas in tbilisi share certain characteristics. they are well educated, well known and seen as manly women (vazhkacuri kali or kacuri kali) (mühlfried 2006:8). it is acceptable for women to perform a man’s role during a supra, but it is “unthinkable for a man to perform the cultural role of a women” (mühlfried 2006:3). mühlfried explains that calling a woman “manly” is complimentary. however, calling a man “womanly” is an insult (mühlfried 2006:8). anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 32 according to mühlfried, this is how the supra enforces and demonstrates the characteristics of georgian gender relations. i concur with some of mühlfried’s conclusions about gender relations in georgian society. however, his analysis and experience of gender relations in the supra does not provide a full picture. mühlfried, a man, would have only rarely experienced female-led supras. it is unsurprising, then, that mühlfried underestimates the ubiquity of the “women-only” supra. similarly, as a young female i was not involved in much of the manly bonding rituals of the traditional male-dominated supra, so i would not be well equipped to analyze them in depth. while the women-only supra does not get much attention in popular reproductions of georgian “cultural” traditions, female-dominated supras in my experience were quite common. i attended many women-only supras or supras where the majority of guests were women. while i have not done in-depth analysis on the enacting of so-called “manly” virtues during these supras, in my experience, they are not merely reproductions of the male-dominated supra, but instead are modified in interesting ways. i will examine women’s experiences of and roles in supras in the second half of this paper as way to deepen the scope and understanding of previous studies of the supra. special toasting procedures: alaverdi and tamadobit before discussing gender, however, there are a few more features of the idealized supra procedure that should be mentioned. there are two types of special toasting procedures, alaverdi and tamadobit. alaverdi is derived from turkish and means “if god wills.” in some cases, it designates a toasting competition and in other cases it is simply a form of toasting. the second type of special toasting procedure is called tamadobit. tamadobit is used when a general toast, for example, “to children,” is made into a personal toast recognizing a particular child. manning explains, “the two metapragmatically opposed kinds of toasts, general and personal, can be combined, linking the type of other recognized in the general toast to a specific token of that type who is present at the supra” (manning n.d.: chap. 1, 46). manning likens the role of the tamada to that of a dictator. he explains that, according to a georgian proverb, the toastmaster (tamada) who leads the feast (supra) is “the dictator of the table” (manning n.d: chap.1, 1). this notion is reproduced in literary texts, such as fazil iskander’s novels about abkhaz sandro of chegem. sandro’s legendary abilities as a tamada at the table are frequently compared to stalin’s abilities as leader of the ussr (manning n.d.: chap.1, 1). unsurprisingly, both the current government and western-funded, non-governmental organizations see the institution of the tamada as representing the source of georgia’s political backwardness. manning explains that these groups argue that the key to reforming georgian politics is to reform everyday life, by abolishing the supra (manning n.d.: chap.1, 4). indeed, we see less rigid conformity to supra norms in the capital. i went out for a birthday celebration with friends who work for the government and powerful non-governmental organizations in tbilisi. i was surprised when we went out to eat and did not have a supra or any formal toasts. in fact we did not consume alcohol at all. instead, we had chinese food and chatted. this type of birthday celebration would be unheard of in ozurgeti. clearly class, geographical and perhaps even political differences play an important role in when and where the supra occurs. performing the supra: political and social identity in ritual several authors have argued that the ritual of the supra serves to cement georgia’s political identity because the country so long been dominated by powerful invaders. in the face anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 33 of globalization, the supra is a reassuring example of true georgianness. first, as the participants repeat the particular toasts and actions that the supra requires, they are affirming the ritual and historic aspects of the performance. this is where tradition and continuity emerge (mühlfried 2006:5). however, the specific toasts and actions are intentionally modified. the supra must combine improvised (modified) forms of each of the toasts in order to make this particular supra (moment in time) meaningful. for example, the first toast in guria is usually to peace (mshvidobis gaumarjos), but the following statements about the importance of peace and the recitation of poetry related to peace contained in the longer toast must be improvised. mühlfried argues that this intentionalizing ritual process “knits individual and collective identities together so closely that they can no longer be held apart.” (mühlfried 2006:6). he also explains that every supra is a performance where the speaker is on stage while speaking a toast. through this performance, aspects of georgianness are ritually enacted. within the framework of shared meals like the supra, groups and identities are formed and social categories like kinship and friendship are performed. this display and performance is one important reason that the supra is so popular. it not only serves as a ritual for major rites of passage, but also is a means of preserving nationhood in a country that has been long been controlled by outsiders. the gendered supra: identity beyond binaries if we agree with mühlfried that performance of the supra ritual displays not only political identity but social categories and aspects of “georgianness,” then a close reading of the ways in which gender is understood and performed during the supra is crucial to expanding our understanding of how the supra functions on both the level of structure and the level of individual lived experience. georgia is a rather conservative country, with firm gender roles. gender equality, as it is understood by western scholars, is considered an idea imported from abroad that does not connect to local concerns, especially in rural areas. gender discourses in georgia generally posit women as rulers of the private realm, while men are controllers of and engaged in the public sphere. analyses of the supra usually agree with this division, as men are in control of formal toasting and public discourse. thus only their speech is heard and reproduced; only the men have the right to speak. on the informal level of dinner conversation everyone has the right to speak. however, the formal is of higher value than the informal (the public subsumes the private) and can confine it (kotthoff 1995:376). supras have therefore only been explored as a site for the reproduction of masculinity. i would like to argue that, as abulughod said, by “presupposing some sort of hierarchy of significant and insignificant forms of power, we may be blocking ourselves from exploring the ways in which these forms may actually be working simultaneously, in concert or at cross purposes” (abu-lughod 1996:48). with a close reading of women’s roles at the supra we can expand this rather simplistic and binary view of gender roles and relations in georgia and open ourselves to a more nuanced and expanded view of the way the supra functions. gender in society: current and historic discourses lela khomeriki (2003), tamar sabedashvili (2007) and nana sumbadze (2008) argue that the conventional view in georgia is that gender discrimination is not a problem or an issue. surveys, focus groups, and investigations of media and popular discourses reflect the idea that georgian culture offers “exceptional respect for women” (khomeriki 2003:29). gender discrimination is viewed as a pseudo-problem imported from the west (khomeriki 2003, sabedashvili 2007, sumbadze 2008). sumbadze interviewed over 1,000 georgians from all over anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 34 the country for her study, gender in society: georgia. she found that a majority (45.4%) of the surveyed people believe that men and women are equal in georgia and 42.1 % disagreed (sumbadze 2008:21). fifty point nine percent of the men she surveyed and 41.1% of women believed “in the existence of equality” in georgia. sumbadze conducted 47 in depth interviews with scholars, government officials and business professionals from tbilisi. one third of interviewees stated that gender equality is not a reality in georgia, although they did not necessarily consider it a problem. for example, a male notary said, “equality is not good. god made world by hierarchical order [sic]. the artificial equality of women and men makes women unfortunate [sic]” (sumbadze 2008:21). irakli pachulia, a male director of a vocational school, problematized the terms equality and oppression: what we call equality has different meanings, if it means that women and men have to perform the same kind of physical work, then this is not right. even in the context of family, men and women compliment with each other [sic], and the question of equality is quite ambiguous. men and women have their own obligations which they have to fulfill. if inequality means that women are oppressed, then in my opinion they are not (sumbadze 2008:22). sumbadze concludes her study stating that “society in general views gender equality as something imposed, rather than being real or a necessity” (sumbadze 2008:21). in general, people had a favorable view of sexually segregated realms for men and women. according to sabedashvili, the reason for the gender attitudes in georgia is historically situated and directly traces back to the soviet legacy (sabedashvili 2007). the relationship between gender equality and the state under the communist regimes of eastern europe has been extensively explored (for example ghodsee 2004, kay 2007), with some scholars claiming that gender equality was a significant achievement of various communist systems. in the soviet system, the constitution guaranteed equal rights for women and men in economic and social life. discrimination was prohibited, women were encouraged to work for equal pay and retirement pensions were guaranteed. specific policies were implemented in order to realize these constitutional provisions. for example, citizens were guaranteed a long maternity leave, childcare benefits and high minimum wages (spehar 2008:1). childcare was available widely and used extensively. women’s presence in communist parliaments was ensured through a quota system (spehar 2008:1). unsurprisingly, these policies were not uniformly carried out and had contradictory outcomes. political scientist andrea spehar explains the situation in eastern european state socialist systems in general: “in spite of the heavily propagandised gender equality in the sphere of paid employment, the reality of the labour market was far from gender-neutral. for example, the state socialist system did not manage to challenge gendered job segregation and wage gaps” (spehar 2008:1). because women’s emancipation was tied to the state’s economic interests and it was forced from the “top down” the results were highly ambiguous. sumbadze argues that the goal of women’s equality was imposed from above by the state and thus was not chosen by georgians (sumbadze 2008:22). many people in the post communist era reacted by rejecting the goal of gender equality itself because the state had appropriated the political project of women’s equality and forced citizens to deal with its uneven implementation of regulations and requirements. khomeriki (2003) and sumbadze (2008) provide a compelling discussion about the general view of gender relations in soviet and post-soviet georgia. sumbadze explains the anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 35 soviet and “traditional” functioning of the family unit. the family unit “was of a patriarchal character, where [an] extended family with three or even four generations living together was the most wide-spread type of family” (sumbadze 2008:79). this situation remains common today, especially outside of the capital. after marriage, a wife moves into her husband’s house, where the eldest male is considered the head of the family and has “undisputed authority” (sumbadze 2008:79). the wife of the head of the family has direct influence over her daughter-in-law, who is supposed to follow her directives (sumbadze 2008:79). the transition to an independent post-soviet georgia and a subsequent series of civil wars caused massive unemployment in the country and changed the traditional functioning of the family. during the years of hardship, “women happened to be more flexible and better adapted to the new economic conditions” (khomeriki 2003:32). in particular, they were able to utilize economic opportunities offered by the trade and service sectors, which are considered particularly difficult and non-prestigious domains to work in. thus, women began to support their families financially, usurping the bread-winner role normally occupied by men. men increasingly turned to alcohol and drugs as a means to relieve their depression at being unable to care for their families (khomeriki 2003:32). the new economic conditions did not, however, lead to the sharing of duties related to family affairs and the raising of children. the state scaled back social services, which had disproportionately been utilized by women as a means to relieve their double burden, so postsoviet georgia saw a dramatic increase in the work women undertook (see rivkin fish n.d., gal and klingman 2000, phillips 2008). women had to raise children and complete housework as well as work to provide for the family. according to a sociological studies of young families carried out in georgia, russia, poland and the usa, the georgian couple showed the most negative attitude to the view that if both spouses work they should share family responsibilities equally (khomeriki 2003:33). the transition to a free market, neoliberal and capitalist economy has aggravated gender inequalities in eastern europe (see gal and kligman 2000). tatiana zhurzhenko writes in “free market ideology and new women’s identities in post-socialist ukraine” that “the essence of the problem of women’s social and economic marginalization in transitional society is that free market ideology perfectly corresponds with the patriarchal gender ideology construction of women as marginal and the conviction that this socio economic marginality is due to a ‘natural’ division of labour between the sexes” (zhurzhenko 2001:35). in the case of georgia, it is unclear how much of what we see regarding gender dynamics and roles is unique to the post-soviet period. tamar dragadze’s study of “rural families in soviet georgia” from 1988 suggests that rural georgians were less affected by soviet equality policies than those in the capital or in other places in the soviet union (dragadze 1988). dragadze argues that rural georgians have powerful discourses about innate and immutable gender attributes and corresponding sex roles for men and women and they did not alter their daily patterns or division of labor based on soviet mandates (dragadze 1988:156-160, 203). thus it is difficult to argue zhurzhenko’s point that the free market has greatly contributed to women’s social and economic marginalization in post-soviet georgia because powerful discourses about “natural” divisions of labor functioned throughout the soviet period. however, georgia’s difficult recent history, characterized by civil wars, economic turmoil and massive numbers of internally displaced people, does seem to have had some effect on gender discourses and roles (see buck et.al 2000, doliashvili and buckley 2008). more research is needed to understand how gender discourses functioned in the past and how they may have changed over anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 36 time in order to say something definitive about the effect of the market on gendered divisions of labor in georgia. a dominating discourse in georgia values women’s roles as mothers and wives, who should ideally not have to work or have a career (khomeriki 2003:32). khomeriki continues, “women are constrained by the mentality in which freedom, power, independence, success and the right to choose are regarded as prerogatives of men” (khomeriki 2003:32). the popular ideal in georgia is that of a traditional family, where the man is the head of the household and inheritor of family property and wealth and the woman takes care of children and the household (khomeriki 2003:32). gender discourses in georgia today, especially from conservative groups, often argue that the way forward would be to liberate women from their “forced” participation in the labor market and allow them to retreat to domesticity (spehar 2008:1). improving economic conditions will enable men to return to work and their bread-winner role. social problems heavily afflicting men, such as drug addiction and alcoholism, will naturally lessen when men and women can return to their traditional roles. the notion of specific and strict gender roles is reproduced through a public/private dichotomy as well. sumbadze argues that in georgia overall the attitude “supports the division of male and female domains, assigning men to public and women to private domains” (sumbadze 2008:77). she includes quotations from her in-depth interviews on the topic. member of parliament kakha kukava says, “there should be biological and psychological characteristics, at least in our culture determining that women should look after the family and men see to the country. women in our culture are not asked to defend the country and fight enemies” (sumbadze 2008:78). another participant in a focus group said, “woman is a pillar of the house [sic], she should defend the sanctity of the family, men do not have so many responsibilities in this regard” (sumbadze 2008:77). women in the “idealized” and the “real” supra the supra reproduces and challenges gender divisions and discourses in georgia in interesting ways. representations and analyses of idealized or standard supras miss a discussion and close reading of women’s voices and experiences. furthermore, analyzing and describing only idealized supras ignores the variety of ways that the supra actually functions in society. the supra form is easily recognizable and describable with clear, definable rules. these easily reproducible aspects of the supra may obscure the important point that while the supra is a ubiquitous form, used for secular rites, social occasions, national and religious holidays and all life cycle transitions, it has different meanings in each context. so if we talk about a “standard” georgian supra and analyze how it reproduces ideological frameworks and cultural logics, we are analyzing merely a particular version or type of supra. i will show how this particular version of the supra privileges the male perspective and when it includes women’s perspectives it only asks about women’s perspectives in a particular type of supra, a male-dominated supra. this version of the supra also reduces the symbolic categories of “woman” and “man” to two homogeneous groups. in representations and reproductions of idealized supras (meaning male dominated supras) by kotthoff, manning, mühlfried, and tuite, women are portrayed as preferring to remain exclusively in the kitchen. the space of the kitchen is considered a gendered female space and issues around food preparation, presentation and consumption are governed by women. manning writes that women’s participation in the supra is irrelevant after the food is served (manning n.d.: chap. 1, 21). he also claims that the supra can be separated into the anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 37 visible masculine realm of toasting, drinking and poetry and the private feminized realm of the food (manning n.d.: chap. 1, 8). manning argues that “the aspects of the supra that are normatively salient for georgian men may be of little interest to georgian women” (manning n.d.: chap. 1, 18) but discusses only the aspects that are of interest to georgian men, essentially marginalizing georgian women’s experiences. the segregated gender spaces in an idealized supra are an important reason for the lack of research on the female sphere; four of the five anthropologists who studied the supra were men, so they would not have access to this female arena. abu-lughod argues that women often embrace prohibitions and restrictions and that in their support for a system of segregation, “they fiercely protect the inviolability of their separate sphere” (abu-lughod 1996:43). as a young woman, i learned about the bonding time women spend in the kitchen, the importance of pacing oneself when at a supra and the painstaking effort that is put into the food at a supra. the following is an excerpt from a letter i wrote my mother about one of the first supras i ever attended, a birthday supra in surami for a friend of my host family. please keep in mind that i was 22 at the time of the writing and very hungry. the events in question occurred when i had only been learning georgian for 3 weeks, so my understanding of what was going on was very limited, since the people at the supra spoke only georgian (and perhaps russian). i will call this supra “supra in honor of keti” to have a convenient way of referring back to it. supra in honor of keti: so we finally make it and say hi to nino [supra hostess and birthday girl’s mother] and the birthday girl, keti, [who is turning 10] and her small siblings and we chat awhile. i’m enjoying myself but i’m getting a little hungry and wondering when she is going to offer us tea or snacks or something. then nino’s daughter, the birthday girl, and son get dressed up in traditional georgian dance outfits, so then i think we must be getting some performance from them and then we’ll eat cake, but instead the kids just leave. i guess they were going to actual dance class… so nino excuses herself from conversation and is away for like 20 minutes and i am sure she must be fixing some tea. after awhile tea [my host sister] asks me if i would like to see how a cake is made. i’m bored and starving so i say “sure.” she leads me to nino in the kitchen who has just pulled out a monster pound cake from the oven. so i’m looking at this cake and wondering if we are going to get any of this cake. but then i remember that the birthday girl just left for dance class so we certainly won’t be getting any cake until she gets back—would we? would they serve the cake without her? how long is dance class? are we going to get any food at all? nino proceeds to take 25 minutes whipping up frosting – really?! i timed it, then she obsessively cuts the cake in half and slowly puts strawberry juice in the middle, then a tad bit of frosting, i mean talk about being obsessively slow with the frickin cake, then she pulls out the decorative frosting dispenser machine and spends 30 minutes fiddling with it and decorating the cake. i seriously am trying not to watch or to think about food at all because i’m so hungry and over an hour has passed messing with the f***ing cake—that i’m not even sure i’m going to get to eat because the child is not there….i wonder if we are going to go home so my host dad and brother can go to work, it is already 3:30… the cake certainly isn’t finished, for all i know we need to spend another 2 hours obsessively adding sprinkles. so i figure we could anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 38 leave at any time, really i have no clue what is going on. at 4:10 the cake is finally finished (yes they obsessively added chocolate sprinkles) and the birthday girl is not around and i forlornly watch as nino moves the cake to the corner of the kitchen, “out of the way” certainly not to the position of “ready to be served at any moment because laura is gonna pass out from starvation.”so now the grandmother brings out some bread dough and starts kneading it and says she is gonna make some khajchapuri. i’m like g*****, do i have to watch more food be prepared? my second thought is, “this better not take as long to make as that cake” because the cake took over 2 hours to be frosted—that doesn’t include baking time. but the grandma making khajchapuri gives me like a sliver of hope that they’re gonna serve us food food, like dinner and then cake. but that thought also worries me because i don’t really see much dinner food around and so who knows how many more hours it will take for dinner to be prepared. at this point i’m like, it would just be better to leave and eat at “home” because my host mother is certainly faster at preparing meals. we could be served dinner at 9pm if we keep up this rate. we all spend the rest of the hour watching grandma make khajchapuri and nino clean up. at 5pm birthday girl comes home and dad moves a table into the dining room. laura is unable to stand and has a pounding headache but is finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnelat least now there is a table, a cake and some khajchapuri. maybe laura will get to eat at least one of these items. by six pm, somehow more food has magically appeared on the table and there are chairs. we sit down and dude!! what a feast, cheese, bread, cheese bread, pickles, tomatoes, cucumbers, chicken, pickled salad, peach soda etc. i eat a great deal and feel very good finally. in georgian tradition i give some toasts. i am definitely stuffed. well then grandma comes out with a hot, fresh plate of khajchapuri and tells me to eat it. i am stuffed but i want to be polite, so i take the smallest piece and eat it. now, of course, when i’m full nino brings out the cake and gives me the biggest piece, i mean mom, i have never in my life eaten a piece of cake as large as the piece she cut me. i just looked at it in shock, dumbfounded for several minutes. somehow, in some great feat of will power, i finished the cake. i don’t know how i did, then, unfortunately for me, the birthday girl brought out chocolates and picked out one for me to eat, well i obliged her because she is turning only 10 and i didn’t want to hurt her feelings. nino served coffee with the cake, so i had that too because i love cofffeeee and was very tired. but as i almost burst, nino brought out cherries and peaches. i was not gonna eat any more because i seriously was gonna puke, the grandma and nino kept putting cherries on my plate, so i ate one cherry. then awkwardly they kept handing me knives and peaches and yelling at me to eat. i kept refusing for fear of vomiting, but yeah, it was awkward. note how more and more food continued to be brought out as the supra progressed, something i had no idea was going to occur. also, most of the food had been prepared ahead of time and only the cake and the khajchapuri was prepared the day of the supra. food for supras is often prepared beforehand and stored in cupboards or the refrigerator until the day of the supra. for this fairly small supra, probably only nino and her mother joined together to cook the food. in the above example, the painstaking time and attention to detail that is put into preparing supra food comes across quite clearly. nino spent almost two hours frosting and decorating the cake. anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 39 what may not come across in my letter is that the time we spent in the kitchen before the beginning of the supra was heavily gendered. only my host mother, aza, tea, nino, nino’s mother and i were there. as i learned later from spending time in the kitchen before supras, women often discuss recipes and baking techniques as well as the menu and food placement or, in the case of eka’s mother in an upcoming example, “supra in honor of eka,” thoroughly criticize and critique the supra preparations. sometimes the perfectionism involved in the culinary art of supra food preparation is taken to frustrating levels, as is demonstrated by the cake frosting in “supra in honor of keti,” as well as in the previous examples of cubing potatoes and dicing carrots. in these situations, i was being socialized to join the women’s sphere in the kitchen before the supra. european writer alexandre dumas could not have been more wrong when he deemed food a “very minor consideration” in his description of the supra (manning n.d.:chap.1, 19). he would have been far closer to the reality of the situation if he had instead deemed it a “very gendered consideration.” another, perhaps gendered, pressure i felt during this supra was to sample all of the food. i had not anticipated that it would be considered bad form if i did not try all the dishes and comment positively on the taste. this expectation was complicated by the language barrier. many authors have commented on the intense pressure that is put on men to drink heavily (see manning n.d., muhlfried 2003, tuite 2008) and this comes across quite clearly in lee’s description of the supra at the beginning of the paper. however, there has not been as much attention paid to the related pressure exerted on guests to partake from food dishes and whether or not this pressure is gendered. the issue of forcing food and drink on people is certainly related to discourses about host and guest relationships, but it may also have a gendered component. discussing the taste and presentation of food is something that women spend much time engaging in, because they are the ones that spent hours preparing and presenting the food. thus the hostess often encourages people to eat. manning explains, “the presentation of the food is absolutely presupposed… and its consumption, unlike wine, is theoretically unregulated (just as the tamada orders his guests to drink, the hostess will sometimes enjoin a guest to eat more)” (manning, n.d.: chap.1, 25). the relationship to food more generally may also be gendered. david sutton describes returning to greece for fieldwork writing, “[my] visits to kalymnos always were accompanied by mentioning [my] dislikes and likes, the were not only noted…but…remembered…and brought up again on return trips” (sutton, 2001:2). my experience in georgia was similar. eka would often brag to the professors at the college, saying, “i know what food laura likes,” and was sure to prepare my particular favorites for supras. by saying this, she was not only making a statement about my food preferences but also about our relationship. she would emphasize that i was part of the family, an adopted daughter. sutton remarks that when kalymnians urge him to eat, they are also telling him to “eat in order to remember kalymnos” (sutton 2001:2). i quickly realized that emphasizing my love for georgian food and hospitality endeared me to my host family and allowed for a quicker adoption into village life. being interested in and paying attention to food taste, presentation and culinary arts baptized me into the “invisible women’s world” that seems so elusive to supra scholars. more generally, my love of georgian food and supra rituals was equated with a love for georgia. utilizing binaries in examinations of the “metapragmatic” supra (the kind of supra described when people talk about supras in general) can be fruitful. however, authors who utilize these binaries, which often posit separate spheres for men and women, have often ignored or under analyzed the female sphere. i have described a number of sites where further investigation anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 40 of women’s roles and experiences would be useful in order to expand these types of analyses. these examples illustrate that gender is a salient category of analysis and allow us to glimpse what a female experience of a supra in certain contexts might be like, which broadens our understanding of the way in which supras function in general. i want to move now to the lived experience of a person at a supra, paying particular attention to what gets left out of popular analyses of the supra and noting also that the experience of the supra will be different depending on the perspective it comes from. undertaking an examination of the lived experience of the supra entails unsettling various binaries, strict dualisms and structuralist arguments that are often used in analyses of the supra. even the notion of separate spheres for men and women will be questioned and deconstructed. by looking at an idealized version of the supra that reproduces standard cultural logics and gender roles, we are neglecting the reality and complexity of actual practices and confining ourselves to a static image of an unchanging supra reproducing unchanging cultural mores. before i begin i want to clarify the categories of my analysis. women-only supras or supras dominated by women occur within specific groups, not as some generalized resistance to male domination by a united voice shared by all women. gal explains: if we understand women's everyday talk and linguistic genres as forms of resistance, we hear, in any culture, not so much a clear, autonomous and heretofore neglected 'women's voice', or separate culture, but more ambiguous, often contradictory linguistic practices, differing among women of different classes and ethnic groups and ranging from accommodation to opposition, subversion, rejection or reconstruction of reigning cultural definitions (gal, 1989: 4). two salient categories of women engage in women dominated and women-only supras: young, unmarried women in the capital and middle age to older women in the regions. i have not experienced any of the first case, but mühlfried alludes to them in a footnote, “there are exceptions [to male dominated toasting], most notably young unmarried women in tbilisi who use the ritual of toasting to reinforce the peer group identity of their female ‘posse’” (mühlfried 2007:10). in my experience, in rural guria, middle aged and older women engaged heavily in toasting and drinking at supras. here is an excerpt from a journal entry that demonstrates this quite clearly. mzia, etuna and nino were all younger teachers with school aged children at home: 2/22/06 i was at the college for tika's birthday party and i was at the table that was being lame and not drinking, with mzia and etuna and nino. and the other table was full of marina and eteri and tsiuri, tsatsa and sonja, all of my old friends and they were totally having a great time. eka had left to talk to her sisters and i had no one to talk to and i’m not good friends with the other women who were sitting there, i really wanted to be at the other table. finally i moved over there and told them that it was better at their table. tsatsa thought that was great and hysterical. she was really trashed so she was pushing food in my face and hugging me and making me say toasts (or shushing everyone and making her own toasts). i have no doubt that there are many other categories of women that have experienced or engage in women dominated supras. more research is needed into this particular aspect of women anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 41 dominated supras in order for us to understand how significant this category of analysis is, to understand its historic specificity and to investigate any other constitutive reasons for its being. i will closely examine kotthoff’s reproduction of supra gender divisions in order to expose what is missing in her analysis, the complexity of actual practices. kotthoff, like manning, argues that women are universally relegated to the kitchen during supras. she writes, whereas to be a tamada is a great honor for a georgian man, it is the women's job to prepare and serve the meal. most georgian men and women regard this division of labor as unproblematic. as for the women, it gives them the opportunity to retreat from the formal dinner atmosphere into the kitchen, where they immerse themselves in their own informal talk (kotthoff 1995:375). kotthoff’s reproduction of supra gender divisions does not convey the entire picture, much like the discourses that assign men and women to binary, opposed realms such as public and private. gal and klingman (2000) have pointed out that the private/public dichotomy works more like a fractal distinction that constantly reframes aspects of the public as private and vice versa. they write: activities, identities, and interactions can be split into private and public parts, and each of these parts can be split again, by the same public/private distinction. the result is that within any public one can always create a private; within any private one can create a public…. another way to say this is that everyday public and private distinctions –whether of activities, spaces or social groups—are subject to reframing and subdivisions in which some part of the public is redefined as private, and vice versa (gal and klingman 2000:41). this idea is more comprehensive because it can account for diverse experiences and discourses. gal and klingman, like bourdieu and other researchers, stress the dynamic nature of the relationship between the public and the private. we can use this insight to see that a close examination of any particular supra reveals that masculine and feminine roles are not simply reducible to two unchanging and distinct realms, just as public and private are not separate and bounded. while it is true that women prepare and serve the meal and do not generally regard the division of labor as problematic, there are complex social rules that govern which women prepare and serve the food. women do not simply retreat from the “formal” dinner to the “informal” kitchen whenever they feel like it, leaving men to continue toasting and eating without them. it is important to know the reason for the supra and the particular social make up of participants in order to understand who serves and prepares the meal and who is able to leave the supra table and join the women in the kitchen. there are many instances when it would be highly inappropriate for women to leave a supra. for example, in december of 2005 eka prepared a supra at her home, in celebration of her birthday. i will call this supra, “supra in honor of eka.” i was asked by the family to be tamada for several reasons. first, i am a close friend of hers as well as a foreign guest who had participated in many supras at the college where we were colleagues. secondly, i am considered a member of the household where the supra was being held. third, i had memorized several georgian poems and the family wanted to show off my georgian language skills. during this supra, eka was the host, so she did not sit at the table for the anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 42 majority of the formal part of the supra. eka’s sisters and mother arrived from a nearby village to help serve the supra and prepare the meal. eka and her sisters were constantly refreshing plates and bringing out new dishes. her colleagues and friends from the college, the majority of whom were women, attended the supra and sat through the entire meal, without getting up to join eka in the kitchen. several men were also present at the supra: eka’s husband giga, giga’s brother-in-law and eka’s uncle. all of the participants in the supra toasted, regardless of gender. while there were no toasting or drinking competitions, the supra replicated all of the ritual aspects described earlier. the ritual speech of both women and men was reproduced at this supra. after the formal part of the supra and the usual cycle of toasts finished, eka’s colleagues from the college left. at this point there was a freer toasting and conversing and the supra became more intimate. here are excerpts from my journal entries regarding this supra. supra in honor of eka 12/2/05 well the concert is finally over – it went off quite well, the english students’ section was almost flawless and i didn’t mess up the technical at all. i left the dancing a bit early [we had a supra followed by dancing after the concert] and i hope i didn’t hurt my students’ feelings … the supra was sort of okay… i was ½ glad i got to leave early to help eka at the bazaar [open air market] and later… like for four hours, grinding nuts…. tomorrow is her birthday supra and i am so excited! 12/4/05 so yesterday was eka’s birthday. i was tamada. i got up at the normal time and had a small breakfast, later tamar [eka’s sister, who arrived a day early to help with supra preparations] got up and we did a bit of cleaning and cooking, finally she and nino [host sister] left for the bazaar to get last minute supplies…. then we did a lot more cooking, but basically i was sitting around a lot. no one would let me help too much, probably because my carrot slices aren’t symmetrical enough… elza came over and eka’s mom too, who seems to be one of those people who has serious perfectionism issues. anyhoo they came over and my mood continued to sour… all that bickering… about not having enough food, the placement of the plates, the cilantro and everything else about the supra! i blame grandma’s perfectionism, easy for her to criticize… i don’t see her putting on any supras! then when the supra time finally arrived… eka, elza and tamar kept jumping up and down the whole time (getting things). i can’t remember the last time they were so jumpy, rushing around, back and forth to the kitchen. thankfully, later things improved, when the ladies from the college left and tamriko arrived and then asmat showed up and eka was able to talk with us. she sat down and ate and drank a bit. then things were much cozier, i felt more included and eka’s uncle was chatting me up about the farm and our ostriches back home. similarly, in the summer of 2009, there was a small supra in honor of my return to georgia. this supra will be called “supra in honor of laura.” eka again hosted the supra, assisted by her sisters. eka no longer works as assistant director of the college, but instead works as assistant anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 43 manager of a private company. attending the supra was giga, erekle and his wife tamuna (erekle is eka’s current boss), davit (the current director of the college and friend of the family) and asmat (eka’s best friend and erekle’s sister). giga was tamada because he is the male head of the household. during this supra, only eka got up to refresh plates and bring out new foods, with occasional help from her sisters who did not sit at the table. it would be completely inappropriate for tamuna to attempt to help out in the kitchen as she is not close with eka. under different circumstances it would be acceptable for asmat to help with refreshing the supra, but on this occasion, since the supra was in my honor, she stayed at the table to enjoy the meal and pay her respects to eka’s family and me in the form of ritual toasts. this was a smaller, more intimate supra so there was more free conversation between toasts. eka felt less like she had to constantly be bringing out new foods to preserve the supra’s “eternally fresh and young” form. the supra was in my honor, so my closer friends, eka and asmat, made sure to drink and toast to me as a way of showing friendship and love. thus in the cases described above, “supra in honor of eka” and “supra in honor of laura,” the binary of the public realm of male toasting and the private realm of the women in the kitchen was disturbed. we could rethink these two examples using gal and klingman’s fractal distinctions (gal and klingman 2000:41). the supras were at eka’s home and thus she and her sisters performed the role of the “private,” preparing and serving food and mostly hanging out in the kitchen. the public orators in the above examples were generally women, although there were a few men. kotthoff might argue that the supras i describe above are somehow less public and formal. in her study, she argues that having women tamadas or frequent poetical toasts by women deformalizes the context (kotthoff 1995:355). formal speaking, she explains, is in the domain of men and toasting is a ceremonial way of privileging male speech by placing it in the realm of oratorical, public and admired talk and assigning women’s speech to the realm of private talk (kotthoff 1995:355). women stay in the kitchen during supras to “talk about private matters” (kotthoff 1995:376). their speech thus remains situated in the background, in the private, informal realm (kotthoff 1995:376). women’s activities remain screened from outsiders and inaccessible to foreigners (kotthoff 1995:376) and are overlooked in anthropological studies of the supra. i find kotthoff’s analysis adequate in terms of standard reproductions of the “ideal” supra, the stereotypical supra image that is “good to think” and dominated by men (manning n.d.: chap.1, 12). what kotthoff’s neat structuralist argument obscures is the actual way that supras unfold. it ignores the plethora and variety of women’s speech acts that occur in ritualized supras that only women or a majority of women attend. but most importantly, kotthoff’s argument ignores the point that the supra is a ubiquitous ritual form and therefore is extremely flexible in order to fit a multitude of occasions. any time groups of people share a meal together and consume wine or spirits (toasting with beer is forbidden), a supra takes place. even if the gathering is simply two friends who “share a bottle of vodka and nibble nuts,” the participants will still elect a tamada and structure their conversation around a series of toasts (mühlfried 2007:7). women’s experiences of and use of the supra ritual form changes depending on the occasion, the age of the person, and even their geographical location. by dismissing women’s talk at supras as informal, private and inaccessible, we overlook a large swath of supra experiences. another supra i will call “supra with kakha” demonstrates mühlfried’s description of a small gathering of friends who will still structure their conversation around toasts. in this example eka, kakha and i sat down to eat food that had been prepared earlier by eka’s motheranthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 44 in-law, lamara. we decided to have a drink and thus began a “supra.” here again the public/private dichotomy breaks down. supra with kakha 11/10/05 yesterday eka, kakha [eka’s husband’s male cousin] and i sat down at 2:30pm to eat. we started drinking and at lots of points we thought about stopping but we didn’t. we kept on toasting; eventually kakha said that i should be tamada. well i did the whole official series of toasts, beginning with the toast to peace and then some; i really got creative with the free toasting part. eka was definitely beyond tipsy and she commented many times how i was a magari gogo [strong girl] because we had done the same amount of toasts and i wasn’t as toasted as her. eventually giga and his sister rusiko and her husband elguja all came and joined the supra. and then even kelly came by (i think just to chat) but she ended up joining the supra. i was feeling overwhelmed with my job as tamada and thinking of new and innovative toasts, luckily kelly helped me out and i did alright. eka and i continued a friendly banter throughout the night and …. i was the beloved center of attention and doing well with my georgian and toasting. the night was really great. i was pretty happy and by the time i stood up six hours later i was in a great mood… i joined the masses later to clean up and just enjoy their company. at the supra kakha told my favorite poem, the one that begins with “hoi da nana, oh hoi nana.” that poem has great cadences that just sound unbelievably beautiful when spoken. i want to learn at least part of it. … so today eka told everyone at the college how i was tamada and bragged about my great poetic abilities. in the examples above, i describe three supras that do not conform to kotthoff’s dichotomy. the “supra in honor of eka” was populated primarily by women and could be considered a “standard” birthday supra, with all the traditional foodstuffs and traditional toasts. does the fact that the tamada was a woman and a foreigner automatically disqualify the supra from analysis? in the second case, “supra in honor of laura,” the tamada was giga, a rather unexceptional orator and a lukewarm tamada. asmat’s toasts to me and our friendship were far more poetical. she used toasting as a way to show our closeness and her respect and love for me, in exactly the same way male tamadas are said to confer honor in idealized supras. in the third example “supra with kakha,” i was again tamada and neither eka nor i was involved in any sort of food serving role. are all these supras merely more exceptions to the rule? i wrote a letter to my mother in 2005 where i described two different supras that occurred in one day. these supras were differently gendered. it illustrates the point that if we talk about a “standard” georgian supra and analyze how it reproduces ideological frameworks and cultural logics, we are unwittingly analyzing merely a particular version of the supra that privileges the male perspective. speaking of supras, the other day i finished class as usual and went down to the teachers’ lounge where there was a huge supra in progress (now this in itself isn't unusual because we have a supra maybe once a week at the college, cause it is always someone’s birthday or someone’s kid just got married or someone died or it anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 45 is some georgian orthodox holiday or something). this supra was for the marriage of one of the teacher’s daughters. the old ladies were toasted! boy can they drink! they were toasting and partying it up and i was just not able to keep up. after enjoying myself for about 3 hours, i was ready to go home. i made some excuse and got out of sitting there for much longer and returned home, how many more toasts tika5 had left in her no one knows. well it turns out that my host mom's uncle was walking home when he ran into a friend of his from his youth whom he hadn't seen in several years--so of course that means supra. since he lives in a nearby village he came to our house and ordered huge slabs of meat and bought some bread and cheese and we all [women of the house] had to frantically prepare all the food while 30 of his friends descended on our house. they feasted from about 5pm until 12pm and yes, it was a weeknight, and no, i wasn't invited because it was all men. all i got to do was try to hide or refill the wine jugs or the food plates... not my favorite night ever. by investigating women’s varied roles at a supra we have opened ourselves to a more nuanced and expanded view of the way gender roles are performed in georgia. if the supra is to be “good to think” as an image of georgian society, then it must reflect all of georgian society, women included (manning n.d.: chap.1, 12). instead of claiming, like kotthoff, manning or mühlfried that the supra demonstrates a model of society, with a paragon of masculinity at the center, representing the pinnacle of significant power and public representation (manning n.d.: chap.1, 29), we should question the static image of the idealized supra that is only capable of reproducing a particular cultural model. the supra is both a ubiquitous ritual and flexibly employed, with a great deal of social life being oriented around preparing and participating in supras. we should not ask how the supra uses participants, forcing them into strict gender roles and bounded categories, but instead ask how participants use the supra. by assuming that all women or all men experience the supra in similar ways, we assume that these symbolic categories are homogenous. as i have shown, a woman’s experience of the supra is different depending on the type of supra, the other participants involved, the age of the woman, her class and her particular geographical location. in order to further the work of this thesis, the particular gendered history in georgia or guria more specifically must be investigated. where and why have these particular types of women’s supras arisen and how do they relate to and interact with masculine histories of toasting and feasting? stoeltje’s analysis of gender representations in the rodeo has undertaken this charge (stoeltje 1998) by examining the history and transformation of the barrel race and how the race interacts with the circulation of power as it operates in the rodeo more generally. she shows that through the acting of the barrel race “ritual” and its subsequent transformation, women acted upon their positionality (stoeltje 1988:237). using this type of historical inquiry to study the supra will elucidate power structures and bring forth changing concepts of gender as they are salient for women and men of certain ages and social classes, situated in particular geographical locations. appendix 1 list of people giga: the author’s host father in ozurgeti. eka’s husband aza: the author’s host mother in surami anthropology of east europe review 29(2) fall 2011 46 elguja: rusiko’s husband. giga’s brother-in-law elza: eka’s sister eteri: professor at ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college etuna: professor at ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college erekle: eka’s boss from 2007-present. asmat’s brother kakha: giga’s cousin and next door neighbor kelly: peace corps volunteer living next door in ozurgeti keti: (i) nino’s daughter from surami. the birthday girl jennifer: peace corps volunteer john: peace corps volunteer mayvala: giga’s mother laura: the author lee: author’s brother tea: the author’s host sister in surami marina: professor at ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college lamara: eka’s mother davit: director of ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college (fall 2006-present) mzia: professor at ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college nana: professor of english at ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college (i) nino: keti’s mother. hostess of “supra in honor of keti.” (ii) nino: professor at ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college asmat: erekle’s sister. eka’s best friend. rusiko: giga’s sister. elguja’s wife sonja: professor at ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college eka: the author’s host mother in ozurgeti. giga’s wife. assistant director of ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college (1994-fall 2007) (i) tamuna: professor at ozurgeti pedagogical industrial college (ii) tamuna: erekle’s wife. 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