The article argues that the post-Soviet youth construct their migratory projects as an effort towards social distinction vis-a-vis post-socialist imaginary. We argue that their migration can be ...understood as a search for distinctiveness and for what is perceived as a ‘better’, that is, more western, lifestyle. Analysing their narratives through the prism of imagination, we demonstrate how young Russian-speakers vision the position of the post-socialist condition within the global coloniality of power and claim their belonging to the western project as educated young people with global cultural capitals. The article brings the case of Russian-speakers’ migration within debates on global coloniality and offers a contribution to the theorising of post-socialist imaginaries in the context of global coloniality and sociological imagination. The analysis is based on a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in 2014–2016 in Helsinki, Finland.
In this article, we bridge the analytical gap between transnational anthropology and the anthropology of post‐socialism to explore the transnational family lives of Russian and Polish women in ...Finland. We point to three interrelated aspects of the post‐socialist legacy – (1) an inclusive understanding and practice of family that involves the interactions of immediate and extended family configurations; (2) intergenerational solidarity among women; and (3) feminine subjectivity built on the socialist ideal of a working mother. Our ethnographies illustrate that Russian and Polish women maintain their transnational families through networks of transnationally dispersed extended families. In women's lives and selves, traditional gendered motherhood and the liberal idea of a working woman are combined and supported by women's intergenerational companionship across borders. Our case studies show that such concrete, informal relations of affection and care provide women with a sense of security and self‐worth amid transnational change.
The article contributes to understanding of how collective life in post-socialist mass housing is ordered by discussing the ambiguous relations that exist between sound, privacy, and home. It ...demonstrates how residents of Severnaya Dolina, a large housing estate in St. Petersburg, Russia, experience certain neighborly sounds as nuisances and calls to action to react to and prevent sonic intrusions. Privacy at home is a collective achievement: Residents assemble complex combinations of materials, regulations, relationships, and practices to achieve privacy in their apartments. Analyses of sources, circulation, articulations, evaluations, and contestations of sound in Severnaya Dolina demonstrate how residents, who can hardly rely on the local authorities to create and regulate privacy, employ various sound politics. They define who and what is accountable for sound circulations and evoke various means to create privacy.
In the course of 2016, housing prices in Prague started to grow rapidly, as a result of long-term pressure generated by stagnation of construction industry, a constant influx of newcomers, ...speculations, shared economy platforms, etc. These globally embedded processes brought to light almost forgotten urban vulnerables: the non-owners. Prague’s current housing situation emerged from the post-socialist way of ownership liberalization and deregulation, often labelled as a regime of privatism (Hirt 2012). After the 40-year period of state-driven socialist ownership, 1990’s and 2000’s privatization transformed approx. 90% of housing stock into private property. Private ownership was thus rediscovered as a component of social status while simultaneously both city and the state abandoned any pro-active housing policy. Based on fieldwork conducted on peripheries of Prague, my paper focuses on various forms of housing vulnerability in Prague. A situation of non-owners, who have to cope with danger of displacement, will be confronted with the strategies and practices of the “newcomers” – post-Soviet region immigrants who are moving in and buying apartments in similar suburban housing estates. Examined through individual spatialities, temporalities, and hybrid regimes of in/out and local/global the paper will discuss the post-socialist housing market.
The recent discourse on overtourism and anti-tourist attitudes has opened up the space to reimagine tourism development and planning. Employing an interdisciplinary approach we combined research by ...design methodology and rapid ethnography in order to problematise Dubrovnik's overtourism. The research turned for inspiration to the ex-Yugoslavian resorts and integrated planning. The paper advocates a praxical, socially informed and environmentally aware perspective and proposes interventions that offer the potential of practical applications in Dubrovnik's urban planning. Focusing on the need for connectivity and continuity the interventions address issues of segregation and marginalisation of local groups, such as students and seasonal workers. Inspired by the utopian ideals of socialist resorts, the research developed an urban armature that aims to connect the different parts of the old and modern city, reclaim tourist spaces for locals, and create open spaces in local areas.
Research on the post-socialist city remains weakly connected to global urban debates. This contribution argues that a comparative research agenda can help the post-socialist city to overcome its ...isolation and to engage with urban theory (rather than simply supplying case studies for such). New comparative urbanism suggests that mechanistic, "genetic" comparisons may fail to offer new avenues for research, while "generative" comparisons that involve cities from across the globe can create spaces for conversation. Following this, there may be at least three areas of dialogue around the research on the post-socialist city. Firstly, protean post-socialist processes offer a harsh test for urban theories if they seek to claim global relevance. Secondly, the diversity of transition outcomes challenges the variegation of the liberal capitalism thesis because the latter has geographic limits. Thirdly, the emerging new state capitalism requires analytical scrutiny of its variants, including state-led and illiberal forms currently dominant in China and Russia.
Recent debates on informal economic activities have partially switched away from a pure monetary logic towards a more complex one, embedded in long term relations and reckoning with non materialistic ...paradigms. The role of informality in certain aspects of people's lives has however, remained largely unexplored. This article uncovers what happens when the state retires from (providing benefits and social services to) a geographic area and what kind of mechanisms, practices and institutions are created to make up for this. We suggest that, in the face of de facto abandonment by state welfare, and the absence of a private sector alternative, a myriad of transactions and actors can make up for this by replacing these forms of welfare informally. Our case study focuses on the nuclear landscapes around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in north–central Ukraine as we reveal the ways the excluded and abandoned, which we frame as post-nuclear “bare life” (Agamben, 1998), have created a mechanism of social security that is independent from the state and yet complements it. Informal, local and unofficial understandings of nuclear spaces are central to survival in this marginalised and risky environment.
In this Commentary, I bring together the findings of the articles in this special issue, and advocate for an expanded temporal and spatial application of the concept ‘post-socialism’. My focus is ...also on the ongoing political and ideological value of the concept as a useful emic and analytical means for critiquing capitalism.
This paper discusses, with the help of a CDA-based, historically comparative multiple case study, how news media portrayals of domestic violence have shifted in Hungary as the country's ...sociopolitical structure has changed between 2002 and 2013, and how the aspect of gender has been gradually introduced and recognized as a structural element of violence, in line with shifting constructions of victimhood. It attempts at illustrating how domestic violence was brought into public attention in a Central-Eastern European country that, for political-historical reasons, has traditionally been hostile to feminism, and also delineating an alternative trajectory for issue-formation and -development, one that was characteristically different from how the domestic violence originally emerged into public attention in Anglo-American societies in the 1970s.
Scholars have raised concerns about the social costs of the transition from state socialism to capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe, and geographers are particularly interested in the spatial ...expressions and implications of these costs, including apparently increasing residential segregation. Applying a range of segregation measures to 1992 and 2002 census data, this contribution studies socio‐occupational residential segregation in Bucharest. The conclusion is that Bucharest was relatively socio‐spatially mixed at both times; in fact, a modest, yet fully legible, decreasing overall trend is observable. This is at odds with many popular assumptions of the past 20 years.
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