The Russian ‚middle class‘ has been heavily researched since the end of the Soviet Union, which is mainly rooted in its attributed socio-political functions as a catalyst of democratic and ...market-economic transformations in post-socialist Russia. This book abandons these transitological, sometimes one-dimensional, one-size-fits-all approaches by not reifying a priori defined categories but rather approaching it by long-term ethnographic fieldwork and thus the book takes a look behind the façade of a much-cited concept and allows for a deeper understanding of Russian society.
Die russische ‚Mittelschicht‘ ist ein seit dem Ende der Sowjetunion viel beachtetes Forschungsthema, was sich v. a. durch die ihr zugeschriebene gesellschaftspolitische Rolle als Katalysator demokratiepolitischer und marktwirtschaftlicher Transformationen im postsozialistischen Russland motiviert. Bernhard Braun löst sich in seinem Buch von solch eurozentrischen Entwicklungsnarrativen und nähert sich der Moskauer ‚Mittelschicht‘ durch ethnographische Forschung an. So wirft das Buch einen Blick hinter die Fassade eines viel zitierten Begriffs und ermöglicht ein tiefgreifenderes Verständnis der russischen Gesellschaft.
As marriage is defined in post‐socialist Romania as the union of two spouses and not specifically between a man and a woman, the legalisation of homosexuality in 2002 created the possibility for ...legal same‐sex marriage and for a more inclusive sexual citizenship. By 2018, a political alliance mobilised a referendum to redefine marriage in a way that would make families headed by same‐sex couples impossible. LGBT rights organisations and others who promote a more tolerant society urged Romanian citizens to boycott the vote. Eventually, due to a missing quorum the referendum was invalidated leaving the definition of marriage as it was – between two spouses. With a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, we analyse the way that this referendum functioned as a test of the re‐definition of family within the post‐socialist Romanian political space. The failure of this legislation then leads to our central question – were Romanians acting to promote a more tolerant and inclusive definition of family or were they merely reacting against the politicians, religious, and other influential groups who initiated the referendum? First, discourse analysis presents the various sets of ideas employed by actors involved for and against the referendum. Then we conduct a spatial analysis to reveal the territorial articulations of obedience to vote (voter turn‐out) and the results of voting along with other demographic characteristics. Even though the majority of the population with the right to vote preferred to boycott the referendum, our research demonstrates the spatial articulation of attitudes towards LGBT families showing that in Romania there are five overlapping discourses: the tolerant, the politically conformant, the homophobic, the passive rural, and the homosexual.
As marriage is defined in post‐socialist Romania as the union of two spouses and not specifically between a man and a woman, the legalisation of homosexuality in 2002 created the possibility for legal same‐sex marriage and for a more inclusive sexual citizenship. By 2018, a political alliance mobilised a referendum to redefine marriage in a way that would make families comprised of same‐sex couples impossible. LGBT rights organisations and others who promote a more tolerant society urged Romanian citizens to boycott the vote. Eventually, due to a missing quorum the referendum was invalidated leaving the definition of marriage as it was – between two spouses.
Infrastructures from different time periods, installed for different purposes in often discordant political and economic systems, function alongside one another in contemporary cities. While ...infrastructures attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the “East” of Europe has still largely been left out, as the studies mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper, thus, takes on two challenges by intersecting an infrastructural lens with the re‐conceptualisation of post‐socialism. First, following calls from comparative urbanism and the postcolonial turn in urban studies and geography to work beyond usual suspects, the paper expands the territorial scope of infrastructure research. Second, the paper takes the critical edge of the aforementioned calls by offering new ways of attending to infrastructures through relations to the (socialist) past. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more‐than‐North/South perspective, this paper analyses post‐socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good. Instead of centralising the present or the “Western” best practice, the paper investigates to what extent it is possible to take elements of the (socialist) past and develop them into forward‐looking measures. The paper shows the need to incorporate questions of social justice and equity – perspectives which were more central for infrastructural provision under socialism – into the ways in which infrastructures are planned, made, and used today.
While infrastructures have attracted a great deal of attention in geographical research, the “East” of Europe has still largely been left out, as studies have mostly focused on the global North and the global South. This paper intersects an infrastructural lens with the re‐conceptualisation of post‐socialism. Taking a threefold approach of expanding, learning, and challenging from a more‐than‐North/South perspective, this paper analyses post‐socialist infrastructuring by highlighting inequalities, such as the introduction of individual measuring of heat, using green spaces as boosterist urban governing, and turning transport to a consumer good.
: This paper seeks to build on ongoing work in east central Europe and the former Soviet Union—in geography and beyond—to think through the conceptualisation of post‐socialism. The rationale for ...this is threefold. Firstly, we see a need to understand post‐socialist conditions as they are lived and experienced by those in the region. Secondly, we seek to challenge the persistent tendency to marginalise the experiences of the non‐western world in a discourse of globalisation and universalisation. Thirdly, we identify a need to ask how the conditions of post‐socialism reshape our theorising more widely. Centring our analysis on history, geography and difference, we review a wide range of perspectives on the socialist and post‐socialist, but argue for a strategic essentialism that recognises post‐socialist difference without eclipsing differences. In outlining how we might understand history, geography and difference in post‐socialism, we draw on key theorisations from post‐colonialism (such as the articulation of the post‐ with the pre‐, the relationship to the west, the rethinking of histories/categories, the end of the post) and outline post‐socialisms that are partial and not always explanatory but nevertheless important.
Rural regions in East Germany have been characterized by strong age- and sex-selective outmigration since 1990, which has resulted in unbalanced sex ratios in the age group 18–35 with pronounced ...surpluses of men. The East German countryside is unique in Europe in two respects: (1) the spatial and numerical extent of the overrepresentation of young men and (2) the missing equalization of sex ratio imbalances for groups in the age of forming a family. An analysis of statistical data shows that structural conditions, especially the situation on the labor market are important determinants of unbalanced sex ratios and sex-selective migration. However, in order to understand why rural East Germany stands out with an especially high surplus of young men, it is necessary to take the specific historical context – the legacy of the German Democratic Republic and the gendered and economic consequences of unification into account, notably the continuously high work orientation of East German women in an economically difficult environment.
This article presents an ethnographic study of politics of waiting in a post‐Soviet context. While activation has been explored in sociological and anthropological literature as a neo‐liberal ...governmental technology and its application in post‐socialist context has also been compellingly documented, waiting as a political artefact has only recently been receiving increased scholarly attention. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at a state‐run unemployment office in Riga, this article shows how, alongside activation, state welfare policies also produce passivity and waiting. Engaging with the small but developing field of sociological literature on the politics of waiting, I argue that, rather than interpreting it as a clash between ‘neo‐liberal’ and ‘Soviet’ regimes, we should understand the double‐move of activation and imposition of waiting as a key mechanism of neo‐liberal biopolitics. This article thus extends the existing theorizations of the temporal politics of neo‐liberalism.
Suburbanisation in East Germany Bernt, Matthias; Volkmann, Anne
Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland),
07/2024, Letnik:
61, Številka:
9
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Rampant suburbanisation is one of the most visible changes evidenced in cities throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the past three decades. In this paper, we analyse how suburbanisation unfolded ...in East Germany after reunification. We do this against the background of ongoing debates about the usefulness and meaning of the term post-socialism that have questioned the self-enclosed spatiality of the concept and suggest giving the concept of neoliberalisation a more central role in analysing the changes experienced in this part of the world. We show that the suburbanisation process in East Germany rested on three neoliberal policy orientations: (1) extensive investment stimuli for the construction of new rental housing, (2) promotion of home ownership and (3) the privileging of suburban locations through planning gaps. Since all these policies are based on neoliberal ideas, we argue that neoliberalisation and post-socialist reform agendas have appeared as two sides of the same coin. Against this background, we advocate putting the developments that came after socialism at the centre of the research and call for a new generation of studies on post-socialist neoliberalisation.
Comăneşti, a small town in Romania's Moldova region, has been significantly affected by migration to Western Europe over the last decades. Yet, the development of the city cannot fully be grasped ...with the notion of 'shrinking'. As migration is often temporary and as migrants maintain multiple ties with their place of origin, they rather forge a specific temporality of urban development that is shaped by rhythms of absence and presence; that is oriented towards future returns; and that echoes the cycles of transnational labour markets as well as immigration policies of destination countries. This paper, on the one hand, shows how the temporality of Comăneşti is constituted and stabilised by temporal facets of labour migration practices. On the other hand, the paper illustrates how Comăneşti's temporality infra-structures the economic and social life of the city and materialises in its urban space. In so doing, the paper does not only seek to contribute to the debate on time, urban development, migration and peripherality by turning to the 'departure cities' of transnational migration, but also seeks to advance the idea of 'time as infrastructure' by illustrating how it is maintained and reproduced in practice.
In this article, I examine how migrant women make sense of their new positions in the labour market while drawing on and negotiating past meanings and experiences. I explore the individual ...biographies of legally privileged co-ethnic women repatriates from the former Soviet Union to Germany through a gendered perspective of work. These women found that the ethnic promise of being 'real' Germans given to them proved insufficient to access the labour market on equal terms, while their past Soviet socialisation led to struggles for recognition and marginalisation into low-status jobs. Although their labour-power is oftentimes devalorised, these women actively operationalise different memories of socialist work to reinvent themselves in a new context as worthy, resilient, and adaptable members of a capitalist society. Their stories of work reflect their present- and future-oriented life strategies and demonstrate how they relate different ideologies and systems of value, distant spaces and times in an attempt to challenge dominant discourses on human worth. By exploring individualised life strategies and gendered invocations of the past, this paper contributes to the discussion on post-socialist subjectivities, how they intersect with ambiguous socialist experiences and dilute the neoliberal project.
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