A 2016 fire at a landfill near the western city of L'viv instigated a political crisis around the issue of waste management in Ukraine. The ensuing debates among the L'viv city government, the ...national government, and local stakeholders show how waste management becomes a mechanism through which to interrogate questions of state‐citizen relations and what it means to be part of Europe. This article argues that processes of Europeanization rely on the arbitrary application of standards and result in a hierarchy in which countries such as Ukraine are considered not‐yet‐fully European. However, this does not prevent pro‐European Ukrainians, who ground their vision of Ukraine's European future in the 2013–2014 Euromaidan protests, from advocating for Ukraine to adopt European standards. This article homes in on the shifting relationship between citizens and state representatives and the development of ecological consciousness as key points by which interlocutors measured Ukraine's path toward Europe, showing how the crisis around waste management in L'viv allows for the contestation of Europeanness itself. While not all Ukrainians have adopted these ideas about European Ukraine, in the context of Russia's devastating invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainians have become increasingly united around the idea of a European future.
We’re Not Just Sandwiches Channell-Justice, Emily S.
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society,
03/2017, Letnik:
42, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This article discusses Ukrainian feminists’ attempts to “vernacularize” feminism, to use Sally Engle Merry’s term, in the context of the 2013–14 mass mobilizations in Ukraine. Based on extensive ...participant observation during the entire span of the protests as well as on interviews with feminist activists, I suggest that feminists’ attempts to intervene in the mobilizations faced major challenges because of their consistent marginalization in Ukrainian political society since independence in 1991. While these protests began in order to show support for the idea of Ukraine as part of Europe, they eventually became focused on establishing an idealized, sovereign Ukrainian nation. Feminist activists presented their political discourses as more reflective of a progressive European reality than the majority of protesters did. However, because feminism has long been seen as a threat to national ideologies thanks to its grounding in both socialist and Western development, feminists were unable to make their position relatable to others in the mobilizations. As evidenced through ethnographic explorations of the protest camp, participants drew on specific narratives of historical, militarized masculinity that would support an idealized Ukrainian nation. This notion relied on gender roles that forced women to participate only as either the supporters of men or in militarized women’s self-defense brigades that mirrored those created by men. Ultimately, these limitations meant that feminists shifted their attempts to vernacularize feminism away from Europe and onto more localized initiatives to make feminism and women’s activism legible to contemporary Ukrainians.
Based on ethnographic and interview data from the 2013‐2014 Euromaidan mobilizations in Ukraine, I use the example of the “secondary city” of Cherkasy to show that protest participants used shifting ...scales to participate in the protests in Cherkasy and in the capital city of Kyiv. This participation showed national unity across Ukraine at the same time that it refocused Cherkasy residents’ attention to local political issues. These processes call into question protesters’ definitions of Europe, democracy, and national identity, all contested across Ukraine during Euromaidan. This article argues for greater attention to secondary cities in the context of mass mobilization, as local instances of protest participation redefined notions of community at multiple scales.
This article situates feminist research and activism in the post‐socialist world. Focusing mainly on Ukraine and Russia, but drawing on research from around the region, this genealogy explores the ...unique contributions of feminist and gender‐based activism before, during, and after state socialism. It is organized around the tension between feminism and nationalism that has been present in Ukraine from the 19th century to the present day, and it asks how this tension has generated a vibrant feminist discourse despite backlash. The article highlights the overlap between feminist scholarship and activism, treating both as essential to the development of a regional feminism.
This article argues that heterogeneity among leftist political activists in Ukraine creates new spaces for investigation of social movements in post-socialist spaces. It suggests that the ...researcher's positionality impacts how this diversity is seen, interpreted, and analyzed. Drawing from scholarship on engaged anthropology and ethnographic research during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan mobilizations, I show how fragmentation among leftists had a dual influence, sometimes encouraging leftists to move beyond difference to avoid alienation, and other times creating greater fractures that limited the creation of alternative social projects.
Anna Fournier. Forging Rights in a New Democracy: Ukrainian Students Between Freedom and Justice. U of Pennsylvania P, 2012. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights, edited by Bert B. Lockwood, Jr. x, ...214 pp. Illustrations. Notes. References. Index.
What kind of letter would one write to those who live in peace and freedom and do not know what war is? Forty Ukrainian women between the ages of 10 and 72 have answered this question by writing ...letters that are now available in all their power. Heartbreaking, but also passionate, surprising, and inspiring stories about parents who desperately drive for days to get children to safety. Couples split by the war hug one last time at the border in heart-wrenching goodbyes, wondering if they will see each other again. Young women decide to fight at the front against the invaders. These are the voices of a people ready to do anything to protect freedom and democracy.
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