ABSTRACT
In Latvian towns and villages, post‐Soviet capitalism has produced a palpable change that locals describe as “emptiness.” People point to empty houses and apartments, and they list friends ...and relatives who have left. They fear school closures and the cancellation of transportation routes. They imagine the future as an entirely different world, one in which they will play no part. As a social formation, emptiness consists of (1) an observable reality wherein places rapidly lose their constitutive elements (people, infrastructure, services, social networks, and the future); (2) a way of life that emerges in response to such changes, which seem irreversible; and (3) an emic interpretive framework for making sense of the new reality. Emptiness in Latvia is symptomatic of post–Cold War spatiotemporal arrangements of power wherein capital and the state increasingly abandon people and places.
emptiness
,
capitalism
,
the future
,
postsocialism
,
Latvia
,
eastern Europe
Abstrakts
Latvijas pilsētās un ciemos pēc‐padomju kapitālisma radītās pārmaiņas vietējie dēvē par “tukšumu”. Ļaudis norāda uz tukšām mājām un dzīvokļiem, kā arī stāsta par draugiem un radiem, kas aizbraukuši. Viņi baidās, ka tiks aizvērtas skolas un atcelti autobusu maršruti. Daudzi iztēlojas nākotni kā pilnīgi citu pasauli, kurā viņiem nebūs vietas. Tukšums kā sociāls veidojums sastāv no: (1) novērojamas realitātes, kurā pilsētas un ciemi zaudē savus sastādošos elementus: cilvēkus, infrastruktūru, pakalpojumus, sociālos tīklus, nākotni; (2) dzīves veida, kas rodas šķietami nenovēršamu pārmaiņu rezultātā; un (3) ēmiska interpretatīva rāmja, ar kura palīdzību vietējie piešķir jēgu jaunajai realitātei. Tukšums Latvijā norāda uz pēc‐Aukstā kara pārmaiņām laikā un telpā, kuru rezultātā kapitāls un valsts atkāpjas, pametot cilvēkus un vietas savā vaļā.
tukšums, kapitālisms, nākotne, postsociālisms, Latvija, Austrumeiropa
Абстрактные
В городах и деревнях Латвии постсоветский капитализм привел к переменам, которые местные жители называют “пустотой”. Они показывают пустые дома и квартиры и перечисляют уехавших друзей и родственников, рассказывают о закрывшихся школах и автобусных маршрутах и описывают будущее, в котором им нет места. Пустота здесь состоит из: 1) реальности быстрoго и по всей видимости необратимого исчезновения базовых элементов жизни населенных пунктов (людей, служб, социальных сетей, образов будущего и инфраструктуры); 2) способа существования, возникающего в качестве реакции на эти перемены; и 3) эмической формы интерпретации новой реальности. Латвийская разновидность пустоты отражает пространственно‐временную организацию экономической и политической власти после Холодной войны, при которой государство и капитал теряют интерес ко все большему числу людей и населенных пунктов.
пустота, капитализм, будущее, пост‐социализм, Латвия, Восточная Европа
InSchool of Europeanness, Dace Dzenovska argues that Europe's political landscape is shaped by a fundamental tension between the need to exclude and the requirement to profess and institutionalize ...the value of inclusion. Nowhere, Dzenovska writes, is this tension more glaring than in the former Soviet Republics.
Using Latvia as a representative case,School of Europeannessis a historical ethnography of the tolerance work undertaken in that country as part of postsocialist democratization efforts. Dzenovska contends that the collapse of socialism and the resurgence of Latvian nationalism gave this Europe-wide logic new life, simultaneously reproducing and challenging it. Her work makes explicit what is only implied in the 1977 Kraftwerk song, "Europe Endless": hierarchies prevail in European public and political life even as tolerance is touted by politicians and pundits as one of Europe's chief virtues.
School of Europeannessshows how post-Cold War liberalization projects in Latvia contributed to the current crisis of political liberalism in Europe, providing deep ethnographic analysis of the power relations in Latvia and the rest of Europe, and identifying the tension between exclusive polities and inclusive values as foundational of Europe's political landscape.
After European Union expansion in the 2000s, Danish farmers went eastward in search of cheap land. In Latvia, they encountered indebted farmers and impoverished rural residents who readily sold their ...land, while at the same time harbouring resentment towards 'the Dane' for undermining Latvia's sovereignty. In the view of significant segments of the Latvian public, ownership of land and territorial rule were intricately linked. In the view of 'the Dane' and the European Union, refusal to separate ownership from rule - or property from sovereignty - was a mark of 'not-yet-mature' liberal democratic subjects. While European Union institutions monitored and disciplined the Latvian state's attempts to juridically restrict foreign land ownership, the Latvian state sought to use financial instruments to limit land sales to foreigners. Drawing on ethnographic analysis of the tensions surrounding the Danish presence in the Latvian countryside and on historical analysis of the shifting regimes of ownership and rule since the beginning of the twentieth century, this article traces the emergence of 'good enough sovereignty' as a form of political practice aimed at ensuring continued existence of the Latvian state and Latvian farmers.
Liberalism in the breach Dzenovska, Dace
Social anthropology,
20/May , Volume:
29, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This afterward draws together insights from the articles in the special section on liberalism and points to a growing disjuncture between the liberalism of those who claim to represent liberalism and ...the liberalism of those who are accused of illiberalism even as they engage in a variety of liberal practices. The articles suggest that it is important to look for capillary liberal practices in the shadows of the current liberal battlegrounds. This might require a renaming exercise to distinguish the currently dominant form of liberalism from its more subtle manifestations.
In the past 25 years, rural Latvia has become notably emptier. This emptying
is the result of post-Soviet deindustrialization and large-scale outmigration,
enabled by EU accession and exacerbated by ...the 2008 financial crisis. It is accompanied
by lack of political protest, leading many to conclude that migration hinders
political mobilization. Such conclusions derive from viewing leaving and staying
as actions in relation to the state. Instead, leaving and staying should be viewed in
relation to transnational forms of power. The people leaving the deindustrialized
Latvian countryside to work in the English countryside are seeking futures past,
namely, futures of stable employment and incremental prosperity. Those who stay
in the emptying Latvian countryside create the future as a little bit more of the
present.
Between loss and opportunity Dzenovska, Dace; Artiukh, Volodymyr; Martin, Dominic
Focaal,
06/2023, Volume:
2023, Issue:
96
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
Many places in the post-socialist world undergo emptying: a loss of their constitutive elements—people, infrastructure, services, and futures past. Some people see this emptying as a loss, ...others as an opportunity. We argue that the shift from loss to opportunity—or vice versa—is a site of the political, that is, a moment of decision about the place of the present in a framework of meaning that gives form and direction to life. Drawing on contributions to the theme section, as well as on literature on hegemony, the political, and Anthropocene, we identify a potential tension between re-politicization on the scale of geopolitics and de- politicization on the scale of the planetary.
This paper considers how nation branding is thinkable as a response to a particular problematisation of nation and self in the new Europe. It is written from within the disciplinary terrain of ...anthropology and thus adheres to certain scholarly practices of the discipline. These pertain to research methods, analytical frames and textual representations. Research for this paper involved extended semi-structured interviews with the staff of government agencies, representatives of the private sector, academics and nation branding experts/practitioners; review of theoretical and policy material and of media coverage; and media coverage of image building or nation branding in Latvia. The aim of this paper is to trace the discourses and practices of those who are (or were at the time of the research) actively involved in nation branding or were identified as supportive or critical of nation branding efforts. The paper focuses on the ways of thinking and acting that nation branding presupposes and constitutes rather than representative views on nation branding. The analytical frame and style of writing correspond to anthropology's attempts to recognise the positionality of the author which is never entirely neutral, but rather always already situated in the world. The boundaries between a knowing subject and the object of their knowledge are not strictly enforced, but rather constitute a site of reflection on how both subjects and objects are (re)made through production of knowledge.
Emptiness DZENOVSKA, DACE
American ethnologist,
February 2020, Volume:
47, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
ABSTRACT
In Latvian towns and villages, post‐Soviet capitalism has produced a palpable change that locals describe as “emptiness.” People point to empty houses and apartments, and they list friends ...and relatives who have left. They fear school closures and the cancellation of transportation routes. They imagine the future as an entirely different world, one in which they will play no part. As a social formation, emptiness consists of (1) an observable reality wherein places rapidly lose their constitutive elements (people, infrastructure, services, social networks, and the future); (2) a way of life that emerges in response to such changes, which seem irreversible; and (3) an emic interpretive framework for making sense of the new reality. Emptiness in Latvia is symptomatic of post–Cold War spatiotemporal arrangements of power wherein capital and the state increasingly abandon people and places. emptiness, capitalism, the future, postsocialism, Latvia, eastern Europe
Abstrakts
Latvijas pilsētās un ciemos pēc‐padomju kapitālisma radītās pārmaiņas vietējie dēvē par “tukšumu”. Ļaudis norāda uz tukšām mājām un dzīvokļiem, kā arī stāsta par draugiem un radiem, kas aizbraukuši. Viņi baidās, ka tiks aizvērtas skolas un atcelti autobusu maršruti. Daudzi iztēlojas nākotni kā pilnīgi citu pasauli, kurā viņiem nebūs vietas. Tukšums kā sociāls veidojums sastāv no: (1) novērojamas realitātes, kurā pilsētas un ciemi zaudē savus sastādošos elementus: cilvēkus, infrastruktūru, pakalpojumus, sociālos tīklus, nākotni; (2) dzīves veida, kas rodas šķietami nenovēršamu pārmaiņu rezultātā; un (3) ēmiska interpretatīva rāmja, ar kura palīdzību vietējie piešķir jēgu jaunajai realitātei. Tukšums Latvijā norāda uz pēc‐Aukstā kara pārmaiņām laikā un telpā, kuru rezultātā kapitāls un valsts atkāpjas, pametot cilvēkus un vietas savā vaļā. tukšums, kapitālisms, nākotne, postsociālisms, Latvija, Austrumeiropa
Абстрактные
В городах и деревнях Латвии постсоветский капитализм привел к переменам, которые местные жители называют “пустотой”. Они показывают пустые дома и квартиры и перечисляют уехавших друзей и родственников, рассказывают о закрывшихся школах и автобусных маршрутах и описывают будущее, в котором им нет места. Пустота здесь состоит из: 1) реальности быстрoго и по всей видимости необратимого исчезновения базовых элементов жизни населенных пунктов (людей, служб, социальных сетей, образов будущего и инфраструктуры); 2) способа существования, возникающего в качестве реакции на эти перемены; и 3) эмической формы интерпретации новой реальности. Латвийская разновидность пустоты отражает пространственно‐временную организацию экономической и политической власти после Холодной войны, при которой государство и капитал теряют интерес ко все большему числу людей и населенных пунктов. пустота, капитализм, будущее, пост‐социализм, Латвия, Восточная Европа
In the past 25 years, rural Latvia has become notably emptier. This emptying is the result of post-Soviet deindustrialization and large-scale outmigration, enabled by EU accession and exacerbated by ...the 2008 financial crisis. It is accompanied by lack of political protest, leading many to conclude that migration hinders political mobilization. Such conclusions derive from viewing leaving and staying as actions in relation to the state. Instead, leaving and staying should be viewed in relation to transnational forms of power. The people leaving the deindustrialized Latvian countryside to work in the English countryside are seeking futures past, namely, futures of stable employment and incremental prosperity. Those who stay in the emptying Latvian countryside create the future as a little bit more of the present.
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