-
Title
-
Postsocialism
-
Author
-
Cullen Dunn, Elizabeth
-
Verdery, Katherine
-
Research Area
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Social Institutions
-
Topic
-
Government Systems
-
Abstract
-
Postsocialism is not just the study of the period after the end of Communism. Like postcolonialism, it is an analytic, a way of looking at societies in both East and West that were shaped by state socialism and the Cold War. Focusing on capitalism's alter ego, postsocialism looks at how production, consumption, identity and sovereignty were shaped by the experience of one party rule and central planning, and it reflects critically on the enduring effects of socialist ideas about the role of state and market in social life. While the countries that were once grouped by their affiliation with Communism are now diverging, future research focuses on the reorganization of the “Second World” into donors and receivers within a new international order based on humanitarianism and development, on the role of bureaucratic governance in integrating former socialist countries into the EU, and on the crucial standpoint that socialist ideologies continue to provide outside neoliberal capitalism.
-
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Identifier
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etrds0261
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extracted text
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Postsocialism
ELIZABETH CULLEN DUNN and KATHERINE VERDERY
Abstract
Postsocialism is not just the study of the period after the end of Communism. Like
postcolonialism, it is an analytic, a way of looking at societies in both East and West
that were shaped by state socialism and the Cold War. Focusing on capitalism’s alter
ego, postsocialism looks at how production, consumption, identity and sovereignty
were shaped by the experience of one party rule and central planning, and it reflects
critically on the enduring effects of socialist ideas about the role of state and market in social life. While the countries that were once grouped by their affiliation with
Communism are now diverging, future research focuses on the reorganization of the
“Second World” into donors and receivers within a new international order based
on humanitarianism and development, on the role of bureaucratic governance in
integrating former socialist countries into the EU, and on the crucial standpoint that
socialist ideologies continue to provide outside neoliberal capitalism.
INTRODUCTION
Postsocialism, some might say, is a concept with a half-life. If it only refers to
the countries released in 1989/1991 from the hegemony of the Soviet system,
it has increasingly less analytic purchase. The trajectories of postsocialist
countries are so diverse that the socialist past has ceased to have significant
patterned effects. Although the consequences of the socialist period are
not completely ended, they are becoming ever less explanatory of policies
decided upon and practices engaged in, in those countries as a set. This is
especially true as Russia redefines its sphere of interest and as countries in
the former Soviet sphere reorient themselves toward it, or not. Therefore,
whereas many common features once united the countries of Eastern Europe
and the Caucasus, for instance, by the early twenty-first century this had
become much less true (and even less so of socialist countries outside Europe
and Eurasia, such as Cuba or China). If postsocialism is no more than a
chronological designation referring to what comes after socialism, then we
can only usher it toward the exit. After all, no one now refers to western
Europe as “post-feudal.”
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
But what if we instead conceptualize postsocialism not just as a chronological concept, but also as an analytic notion, on the analogy with “postcolonialism” as a critical standpoint (see Chari & Verdery, 2009). Postcolonialism
is not mainly about what happened after colonialism but constitutes a critical reflection both on colonialism’s ongoing presence in post-independence
projects (involving national identity, sovereignty, accumulation strategies,
democracy, etc.) and on the possibility of knowledge itself. Postsocialism, too,
could be a critical standpoint from which to reflect on the socialist past and
possible socialist futures, on the ongoing intrusion of neoliberal programs
concerning markets, property, democracy, and so on into former socialist
spaces, and on the social and spatial effects of Cold War institutions upon
the possibilities for knowledge. Although the chronological sense necessarily
lurks at the edges of the concept (especially in expressions such as “postsocialist societies”), we use it rather in this analytical sense.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
As an analytic concept, postsocialism rests on a broad base that includes
anthropological research on socialism and on the transformation of socialist
societies beginning in the 1990s (see review articles by Buyandelgerin, 2008;
Rogers & Verdery, 2013). It also includes other work on changes in the global
capitalist economy as well as post-colonial texts that might provide models
for the direction we propose (e.g., Harvey, 1989; Trouillot, 1991). Starting
with Verdery’s work (e.g., 1996, Chapter 1), the anthropology of socialism
clarified how the social organization of socialist societies was distinctive
from other kinds of social orders, despite some superficial similarities
to them (such as the commodification of labor [see Lampland, 1995] or
citizens’ interest in consumption [see Fehérváry, 2009]). An ever-expanding
literature on post-1989 transformation chronicled the effects of dismantling
the characteristic features of socialism, and incorporating the formerly
socialist states into capitalist markets. Many of these works saw their task as
responding to the over-simplifications and distortions inherent in a literature
dominated by political science and economics, which usually presumed
western-capitalist and liberal-democratic forms as normal or even natural
(see, e.g., Dunn, 2005).
Among the themes treated in postsocialist anthropology are “civil-society”
building and the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
(e.g., Hemment, 2007); changing notions of citizenship (Petryna, 2002;
Phillips, 2008); privatization and property restitution (Dunn, 2004; Verdery,
2003); market formation (Collier, 2011; Rogers, 2005); environmental politics
(Gille, 2007); changing welfare policies (Caldwell, 2004); “corruption” and
“mafia” (Humphrey, 2002). Much of the anthropological work on socialism
Postsocialism
3
and postsocialism began by asking how the distinctive structure of the
socialist economy of shortage shaped everyday practice. How socialism
shaped time and space (Schwenkel, 2013; Verdery, 1996, Chapter 2) and how
both time and space were reworked during the “transition” period of the
1990s and early 2000s were central questions. Another important issue was
how people’s identities—including gender and sexual identities, national
and religious identities, and class status (see, e.g., Gal & Kligman, 2000;
Hann, 2006)—were formed under state socialism and reworked during the
subsequent massive upheaval in social structure. Changing consumption
habits, framed by both changes in political economy and new social identities, became important loci for seeing changes in the region (e.g., Ries, 2009;
Shevchenko, 2009), as did new forms of religious practice (Rogers, 2009).
Along with this, understanding how people dealt with the negative effects
of social change, including hunger and poverty and the decay of social
networks, became key topics.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
What was state socialism, what forms of sovereignty did it invoke, and
how did it shape identity and daily practice? Questions about how people
consumed in economies of shortage, how labor was structured and valued,
how property was organized, and even what made people laugh are all still
under investigation. The early postsocialist period also still poses significant
intellectual and historical problems. Specifically concerning postsocialism’s
critique of western forms, we mention our own work on privatization in
Polish industry and Romanian agriculture, which revealed the difficulties
of importing “private property” ideas wholesale into postsocialist contexts
and exposed the weaknesses of these ideas as models for human sociality.
Similar conclusions emerge from other research such as Greenberg’s (2011)
on democratization in Serbia, or Rivkin-Fish’s work (2005) on medical
“technology transfer” in Russia (see also Rogers & Verdery, 2013). All this
work serves to clarify the forms of imperialism underlying the “transition
from socialism,” while, at the same time, illustrating how contingent, partial
and complex the transfer of Western ideas and forms has been.
An increasingly significant field of inquiry concerns two emerging modes
of power in postsocialism: bureaucracy, on the one hand, and state violence on the other. Bureaucratic practice was revealed to be a particularly
important form of power during the process of EU accession, especially
once the unanticipated consequences of the currency union began to emerge
more clearly in 2012. Although discussion of whether the EU is yet another
imperial form has become commonplace (Böröcz & Kovács, 2001), useful
work continues on the effects of the hardening of borders between EU
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
members and their neighbors (Allina-Pisano, 2009). Research in progress by
Holmes (2014) on the policies of the European Central Bank and the euro
crisis will prove essential in understanding the effects of the intersection
between global finance and people’s life conditions in the various parts
of Europe. Additional innovative research focuses on the globalization of
“standards” that has accompanied EU membership as EU requirements for
handling food, for instance—standards developed for the industrialized
agricultural practices of western Europe—are imposed on the postsocialist
East, where such practices are more rarely found (e.g., Dunn, 2005; Gille
2011).
Ethnographic research has shown that state violence is an equally significant mode of power in the postsocialist world. Work on the secret police
(Verdery, 2014) and the long-term effects of war (Tishkov, 2004) have shed
light on a form of state power that relies on intermittent and unpredictable
violence. Understanding this form of sovereignty has become particularly
significant given rising authoritarianism in Russia under Putin, as well as
new forms of authoritarianism in Hungary, Romania and Georgia, all of
which claim to be democratic states. How and why these new forms of
domination are correlated with EU accession is a question that remains to be
researched.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
As an analytic optic, postsocialism reveals profound transformations in the
nature of global sovereignty and new forms of organization in the international system. For example, beginning with the crisis in Bosnia and continuing on with Kosovo and various countries of the Caucasus, the postsocialist
world became the target of so-called humanitarian intervention. Under the
banner of “the responsibility to protect,” Western countries have increasingly
overridden the sovereignty of other states and legitimated interference in the
affairs of countries in the postsocialist world. Using NGOs and intragovernmental agencies such as the United Nations agencies, the United States
and Western Europe have taken over the functions of government in the
former Yugoslavia and the South Caucasus. Like the effects of other Western “capacity building” projects in which Western forms are supposed to
be imported wholesale, humanitarian projects have effects their proponents
cannot predict (Dunn, 2012), but the long-term effects of dividing the world
into “humanitarians” and “victims” have yet to be seen.
One effect of the humanitarian imperative has been to reorganize the countries of the former Eastern Bloc within the framework of international development. Countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia are actively seeking
Postsocialism
5
to build development agencies, to learn the practices of international development, and in so doing, to secure their places in an international hierarchy
that divides the world into donors and recipients. Far from being straightforwardly altruistic, the language of development and humanitarianism has
allowed for the United States to engage in the “humanitarian bombing” of
Serbia during the conflict with Kosovo, for Russia to give passports to residents of South Ossetia and then to defend the resulting “Russian citizens”
during the war with Georgia, and for Poland and the Czech Republic to
request NATO intervention in the Russo-Georgian War. Using postsocialism
as an optic reveals how some countries on both sides of the Cold War international divide are deemed incapable of self-governance and cast as passive
geopolitical actors, while others are vying to realign global politics, claim
new geographical spheres of influence, and extend their political reach using
new forms of international military, economic, and charitable action.
A postsocialist analytic also directs attention to key debates over the role
of the state in domestic economies and politics. While research on nostalgia for the socialist past is now declining, there are new opportunities to
study debates in postsocialist countries over state-led redistribution, social
safety nets, and the value of labor. The crisis of the Eurozone has made these
debates particularly incisive, as some of the postsocialist entrants into the
EU and the Euro currency union ask what the effects of joining were, and
whether it was more prudent to stay out of international organizations once
seen as the prize for democratization and marketization. These debates have
led to the re-emergence both of an extreme right (e.g., in Hungary) and of
new post-communist leftist movements (e.g., in Poland). We need research
on why Left and Right have become more polarized in the wake of the Cold
War, and why the language of the Cold War about socialism has become even
more significant in both “East” and “West” after state socialism has disappeared.
Finally, the emerging temporal horizons of postsocialism—both in the
former Eastern Bloc and in the West—invite exploration. Postsocialism is
characterized by a future orientation different from the Western industrial
notion of never-ending progress and the Marxist-Leninist vision of socialist
utopia. In East and West, citizens are now bearing risks once borne by the
state, to build futures without resources such as education and healthcare
once provided by governments, and to strategize in markets and polities
that are less regulated, or differently regulated, than before. Postsocialist
citizens, however, bring to these experiences distinctive repertoires of
skills and expectations—approaching the new temporal horizons of the
household mortgage, for instance, from within specific forms of social
embeddedness and affective engagement. As new financial instruments and
new forms of indebtedness expand both the risks and the scale of economic
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
activity, as new religious ideologies (such as Salafism, for example) link
the postsocialist countries to other global movements, and as new forms of
domination engender new forms of adaptation and resistance, the study of
postsocialism promises to cast light not only on a world region but on global
processes.
REFERENCES
Allina-Pisano, J. (2009). From iron curtain to golden curtain: Remaking identity in
the European Union borderlands. East European Politics and Societies, 23, 266–290.
Böröcz, J., & Kovács, M. (Eds.) (2001). Empire’s new clothes: Unveiling EU enlargement.
Shropshire, England: Central Europe Review, Ltd.
Buyandelgerin, M. (2008). Post-post-transition theories: Walking on multiple paths.
Annual Review of Anthropology, 37, 235–250.
Caldwell, M. (2004). Not by bread alone: Social support in the new Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chari, S., & Verdery, K. (2009). Thinking between the posts: Postcolonialism, postsocialism, and ethnography after the Cold War. Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 51(1), 6–34.
Collier, S. J. (2011). Post-Soviet social: Neoliberalism, social modernity, biopolitics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dunn, E. C. (2004). Privatizing Poland: Baby food, big business, and the remaking of labor.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Dunn, E. C. (2005). Standards and person-making in East Central Europe. In A. Ong
& S. J. Collier (Eds.), Global Assemblages (pp. 173–193). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Dunn, E. C. (2012). The chaos of humanitarianism: Adhocracy in the Republic of
Georgia. Humanity, 3(1), 1–23.
Fehérváry, K. (2009). Goods and states: The political logic of state-socialist material
culture. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51(2), 426–459.
Gal, S., & Kligman, G. (2000). The politics of gender after socialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gille, Z. (2007). From the cult of waste to the trash heap of history: The politics of waste in
socialist and postsocialist Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gille, Z. (2011). The Hungarian foie gras boycott: Struggles for moral sovereignty in
postsocialist Europe. Eastern European Politics and Societies, 25, 114–128.
Greenberg, J. (2011). On the road to normal: Negotiating agency and state sovereignty
in postsocialist Serbia. American Anthropologist, 113(1), 88–100.
Hann, C. (2006). The postsocialist religious question: Faith and power in Central Asia and
East-Central Europe. Berlin, Germany: LIT Verlag.
Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Hemment, J. (2007). Empowering women in Russia: Activism, aid, and NGOs. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Holmes, D. (2014). Economy of words: Communicative imperatives in central banks.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Postsocialism
7
Humphrey, C. (2002). The unmaking of Soviet life: Everyday economies after socialism.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lampland, M. (1995). The object of labor: Commodification in socialist Hungary. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Petryna, A. (2002). Life exposed: Biological citizenship after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Phillips, S. (2008). Women’s social activism in the new Ukraine: Development and the politics of differentiation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Ries, N. (2009). Potato ontology: surviving postsocialism in Russia. Cultural Anthropology, 24(2), 181–212.
Rivkin-Fish, M. (2005). Women’s health in post-Soviet Russia. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Rogers, D. (2005). Moonshine, money, and the politics of liquidity in rural Russia.
American Ethnologist, 32, 63–81.
Rogers, D. (2009). The Old Faith and the Russian land: A historical ethnography of ethics
in the Urals. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Rogers, D., & Verdery, K. (2013). Postsocialist societies: Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In J. Carrier & D. Gewertz (Eds.), Handbook of social and cultural
anthropology (pp. 439–455). London, England: Bloomsbury.
Schwenkel, C. (2013). Post/socialist affect: Ruination and reconstruction of the nation
in urban Vietnam. Cultural Anthropology, 28(2), 252–277.
Shevchenko, O. (2009). Crisis and the everyday in postsocialist Moscow. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Tishkov, V. (2004). Chechnya: Life in a war-torn society. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Trouillot, M. R. (1991). Anthropology and the savage slot. Recapturing anthropology, R.
Fox (pp. 17–44). Santa Fe, NM: School of American research press.
Verdery, K. (1996). What was socialism, and what comes next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Verdery, K. (2003). The vanishing hectare: Property and value in postsocialist Transylvania.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Verdery, K. (2014). Secrets and truths: Ethnography in the archive of the Romanian secret
police. Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press.
ELIZABETH CULLEN DUNN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn is Associate Professor of Geography and International Studies at Indiana University. Trained as an anthropologist, she has
focused on bureaucratization and new forms of management after socialism.
Her first book, Privatizing Poland, which looked at the transformation of firms
and workers after 1989, won the Orbis Book Prize and the Ed. A. Hewett
Book Prize. She has also written about food, agriculture, and public health
in postsocialist Eastern Europe. Her article “Trojan Pig” won Environment
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
and Planning A’s Ashby Prize. Her current project focuses on humanitarianism and the management of displaced people in postwar Georgia. Her work
has also appeared in American Ethnologist, Humanity, Antipode, and The Iowa
Review.
KATHERINE VERDERY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Katherine Verdery is the Julien J. Studley Distinguished Professor of
Anthropology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Since
1973 she has conducted anthropological research in Romania, on ethnic
and national identity, cultural politics, the socialist system, postsocialist
transition, the state, and property transformation. Her books include:
Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic
Change (1983), National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics
in Ceau¸sescu’s Romania (1991), What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next?
(1996), The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (1999), The Vanishing Hectare: Property
and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (2003), and Peasants under Siege: The
Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949–1962 (2011, with Gail Kligman).
Among her professional activities, she has served as Director of the Center
for Russian and East European Studies (University of Michigan), member
of the Boards of Directors of the American Anthropological Association and
American Ethnological Society, and President of the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Currently she is writing a field
memoir, based on her Romanian Secret Police file.
RELATED ESSAYS
Political Ideologies (Political Science), Edward G. Carmines and Nicholas J.
D’Amico
Neoliberalism (Sociology), Miguel Angel Centeno and Joseph N. Cohen
Gender, Religion, and State in the Middle East (Sociology), Mounira M.
Charrad and Amina Zarrugh
Domestic Institutions and International Conflict (Political Science), Giacomo
Chiozza
The State and Development (Sociology), Samuel Cohn
Varieties of Capitalism (Political Science), Peter A. Hall
The Future of Employment, Wages, and Technological Change (Economics),
Michael J. Handel
Regime Type and Terrorist Attacks (Political Science), Kara Kingma et al.
Why Do States Sign Alliances? (Political Science), Brett Ashley Leeds
Domestic Political Institutions and Alliance Politics (Political Science),
Michaela Mattes
Postsocialism
9
Political Psychology and International Conflict (Political Science), Rose
McDermott
Participatory Governance (Political Science), Stephanie L. McNulty and Brian
Wampler
Why Do Governments Abuse Human Rights? (Political Science), Will H.
Moore and Ryan M. Welch
Intervention and Regime Change (Political Science), John M. Owen IV and
Roger G. Herbert Jr.
Why Do States Pursue Nuclear Weapons (or Not) (Political Science), Wilfred
Wan and Etel Solingen
Constitutionalism (Political Science), Keith E. Whittington
-
Postsocialism
ELIZABETH CULLEN DUNN and KATHERINE VERDERY
Abstract
Postsocialism is not just the study of the period after the end of Communism. Like
postcolonialism, it is an analytic, a way of looking at societies in both East and West
that were shaped by state socialism and the Cold War. Focusing on capitalism’s alter
ego, postsocialism looks at how production, consumption, identity and sovereignty
were shaped by the experience of one party rule and central planning, and it reflects
critically on the enduring effects of socialist ideas about the role of state and market in social life. While the countries that were once grouped by their affiliation with
Communism are now diverging, future research focuses on the reorganization of the
“Second World” into donors and receivers within a new international order based
on humanitarianism and development, on the role of bureaucratic governance in
integrating former socialist countries into the EU, and on the crucial standpoint that
socialist ideologies continue to provide outside neoliberal capitalism.
INTRODUCTION
Postsocialism, some might say, is a concept with a half-life. If it only refers to
the countries released in 1989/1991 from the hegemony of the Soviet system,
it has increasingly less analytic purchase. The trajectories of postsocialist
countries are so diverse that the socialist past has ceased to have significant
patterned effects. Although the consequences of the socialist period are
not completely ended, they are becoming ever less explanatory of policies
decided upon and practices engaged in, in those countries as a set. This is
especially true as Russia redefines its sphere of interest and as countries in
the former Soviet sphere reorient themselves toward it, or not. Therefore,
whereas many common features once united the countries of Eastern Europe
and the Caucasus, for instance, by the early twenty-first century this had
become much less true (and even less so of socialist countries outside Europe
and Eurasia, such as Cuba or China). If postsocialism is no more than a
chronological designation referring to what comes after socialism, then we
can only usher it toward the exit. After all, no one now refers to western
Europe as “post-feudal.”
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
But what if we instead conceptualize postsocialism not just as a chronological concept, but also as an analytic notion, on the analogy with “postcolonialism” as a critical standpoint (see Chari & Verdery, 2009). Postcolonialism
is not mainly about what happened after colonialism but constitutes a critical reflection both on colonialism’s ongoing presence in post-independence
projects (involving national identity, sovereignty, accumulation strategies,
democracy, etc.) and on the possibility of knowledge itself. Postsocialism, too,
could be a critical standpoint from which to reflect on the socialist past and
possible socialist futures, on the ongoing intrusion of neoliberal programs
concerning markets, property, democracy, and so on into former socialist
spaces, and on the social and spatial effects of Cold War institutions upon
the possibilities for knowledge. Although the chronological sense necessarily
lurks at the edges of the concept (especially in expressions such as “postsocialist societies”), we use it rather in this analytical sense.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
As an analytic concept, postsocialism rests on a broad base that includes
anthropological research on socialism and on the transformation of socialist
societies beginning in the 1990s (see review articles by Buyandelgerin, 2008;
Rogers & Verdery, 2013). It also includes other work on changes in the global
capitalist economy as well as post-colonial texts that might provide models
for the direction we propose (e.g., Harvey, 1989; Trouillot, 1991). Starting
with Verdery’s work (e.g., 1996, Chapter 1), the anthropology of socialism
clarified how the social organization of socialist societies was distinctive
from other kinds of social orders, despite some superficial similarities
to them (such as the commodification of labor [see Lampland, 1995] or
citizens’ interest in consumption [see Fehérváry, 2009]). An ever-expanding
literature on post-1989 transformation chronicled the effects of dismantling
the characteristic features of socialism, and incorporating the formerly
socialist states into capitalist markets. Many of these works saw their task as
responding to the over-simplifications and distortions inherent in a literature
dominated by political science and economics, which usually presumed
western-capitalist and liberal-democratic forms as normal or even natural
(see, e.g., Dunn, 2005).
Among the themes treated in postsocialist anthropology are “civil-society”
building and the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
(e.g., Hemment, 2007); changing notions of citizenship (Petryna, 2002;
Phillips, 2008); privatization and property restitution (Dunn, 2004; Verdery,
2003); market formation (Collier, 2011; Rogers, 2005); environmental politics
(Gille, 2007); changing welfare policies (Caldwell, 2004); “corruption” and
“mafia” (Humphrey, 2002). Much of the anthropological work on socialism
Postsocialism
3
and postsocialism began by asking how the distinctive structure of the
socialist economy of shortage shaped everyday practice. How socialism
shaped time and space (Schwenkel, 2013; Verdery, 1996, Chapter 2) and how
both time and space were reworked during the “transition” period of the
1990s and early 2000s were central questions. Another important issue was
how people’s identities—including gender and sexual identities, national
and religious identities, and class status (see, e.g., Gal & Kligman, 2000;
Hann, 2006)—were formed under state socialism and reworked during the
subsequent massive upheaval in social structure. Changing consumption
habits, framed by both changes in political economy and new social identities, became important loci for seeing changes in the region (e.g., Ries, 2009;
Shevchenko, 2009), as did new forms of religious practice (Rogers, 2009).
Along with this, understanding how people dealt with the negative effects
of social change, including hunger and poverty and the decay of social
networks, became key topics.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
What was state socialism, what forms of sovereignty did it invoke, and
how did it shape identity and daily practice? Questions about how people
consumed in economies of shortage, how labor was structured and valued,
how property was organized, and even what made people laugh are all still
under investigation. The early postsocialist period also still poses significant
intellectual and historical problems. Specifically concerning postsocialism’s
critique of western forms, we mention our own work on privatization in
Polish industry and Romanian agriculture, which revealed the difficulties
of importing “private property” ideas wholesale into postsocialist contexts
and exposed the weaknesses of these ideas as models for human sociality.
Similar conclusions emerge from other research such as Greenberg’s (2011)
on democratization in Serbia, or Rivkin-Fish’s work (2005) on medical
“technology transfer” in Russia (see also Rogers & Verdery, 2013). All this
work serves to clarify the forms of imperialism underlying the “transition
from socialism,” while, at the same time, illustrating how contingent, partial
and complex the transfer of Western ideas and forms has been.
An increasingly significant field of inquiry concerns two emerging modes
of power in postsocialism: bureaucracy, on the one hand, and state violence on the other. Bureaucratic practice was revealed to be a particularly
important form of power during the process of EU accession, especially
once the unanticipated consequences of the currency union began to emerge
more clearly in 2012. Although discussion of whether the EU is yet another
imperial form has become commonplace (Böröcz & Kovács, 2001), useful
work continues on the effects of the hardening of borders between EU
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
members and their neighbors (Allina-Pisano, 2009). Research in progress by
Holmes (2014) on the policies of the European Central Bank and the euro
crisis will prove essential in understanding the effects of the intersection
between global finance and people’s life conditions in the various parts
of Europe. Additional innovative research focuses on the globalization of
“standards” that has accompanied EU membership as EU requirements for
handling food, for instance—standards developed for the industrialized
agricultural practices of western Europe—are imposed on the postsocialist
East, where such practices are more rarely found (e.g., Dunn, 2005; Gille
2011).
Ethnographic research has shown that state violence is an equally significant mode of power in the postsocialist world. Work on the secret police
(Verdery, 2014) and the long-term effects of war (Tishkov, 2004) have shed
light on a form of state power that relies on intermittent and unpredictable
violence. Understanding this form of sovereignty has become particularly
significant given rising authoritarianism in Russia under Putin, as well as
new forms of authoritarianism in Hungary, Romania and Georgia, all of
which claim to be democratic states. How and why these new forms of
domination are correlated with EU accession is a question that remains to be
researched.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
As an analytic optic, postsocialism reveals profound transformations in the
nature of global sovereignty and new forms of organization in the international system. For example, beginning with the crisis in Bosnia and continuing on with Kosovo and various countries of the Caucasus, the postsocialist
world became the target of so-called humanitarian intervention. Under the
banner of “the responsibility to protect,” Western countries have increasingly
overridden the sovereignty of other states and legitimated interference in the
affairs of countries in the postsocialist world. Using NGOs and intragovernmental agencies such as the United Nations agencies, the United States
and Western Europe have taken over the functions of government in the
former Yugoslavia and the South Caucasus. Like the effects of other Western “capacity building” projects in which Western forms are supposed to
be imported wholesale, humanitarian projects have effects their proponents
cannot predict (Dunn, 2012), but the long-term effects of dividing the world
into “humanitarians” and “victims” have yet to be seen.
One effect of the humanitarian imperative has been to reorganize the countries of the former Eastern Bloc within the framework of international development. Countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia are actively seeking
Postsocialism
5
to build development agencies, to learn the practices of international development, and in so doing, to secure their places in an international hierarchy
that divides the world into donors and recipients. Far from being straightforwardly altruistic, the language of development and humanitarianism has
allowed for the United States to engage in the “humanitarian bombing” of
Serbia during the conflict with Kosovo, for Russia to give passports to residents of South Ossetia and then to defend the resulting “Russian citizens”
during the war with Georgia, and for Poland and the Czech Republic to
request NATO intervention in the Russo-Georgian War. Using postsocialism
as an optic reveals how some countries on both sides of the Cold War international divide are deemed incapable of self-governance and cast as passive
geopolitical actors, while others are vying to realign global politics, claim
new geographical spheres of influence, and extend their political reach using
new forms of international military, economic, and charitable action.
A postsocialist analytic also directs attention to key debates over the role
of the state in domestic economies and politics. While research on nostalgia for the socialist past is now declining, there are new opportunities to
study debates in postsocialist countries over state-led redistribution, social
safety nets, and the value of labor. The crisis of the Eurozone has made these
debates particularly incisive, as some of the postsocialist entrants into the
EU and the Euro currency union ask what the effects of joining were, and
whether it was more prudent to stay out of international organizations once
seen as the prize for democratization and marketization. These debates have
led to the re-emergence both of an extreme right (e.g., in Hungary) and of
new post-communist leftist movements (e.g., in Poland). We need research
on why Left and Right have become more polarized in the wake of the Cold
War, and why the language of the Cold War about socialism has become even
more significant in both “East” and “West” after state socialism has disappeared.
Finally, the emerging temporal horizons of postsocialism—both in the
former Eastern Bloc and in the West—invite exploration. Postsocialism is
characterized by a future orientation different from the Western industrial
notion of never-ending progress and the Marxist-Leninist vision of socialist
utopia. In East and West, citizens are now bearing risks once borne by the
state, to build futures without resources such as education and healthcare
once provided by governments, and to strategize in markets and polities
that are less regulated, or differently regulated, than before. Postsocialist
citizens, however, bring to these experiences distinctive repertoires of
skills and expectations—approaching the new temporal horizons of the
household mortgage, for instance, from within specific forms of social
embeddedness and affective engagement. As new financial instruments and
new forms of indebtedness expand both the risks and the scale of economic
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
activity, as new religious ideologies (such as Salafism, for example) link
the postsocialist countries to other global movements, and as new forms of
domination engender new forms of adaptation and resistance, the study of
postsocialism promises to cast light not only on a world region but on global
processes.
REFERENCES
Allina-Pisano, J. (2009). From iron curtain to golden curtain: Remaking identity in
the European Union borderlands. East European Politics and Societies, 23, 266–290.
Böröcz, J., & Kovács, M. (Eds.) (2001). Empire’s new clothes: Unveiling EU enlargement.
Shropshire, England: Central Europe Review, Ltd.
Buyandelgerin, M. (2008). Post-post-transition theories: Walking on multiple paths.
Annual Review of Anthropology, 37, 235–250.
Caldwell, M. (2004). Not by bread alone: Social support in the new Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chari, S., & Verdery, K. (2009). Thinking between the posts: Postcolonialism, postsocialism, and ethnography after the Cold War. Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 51(1), 6–34.
Collier, S. J. (2011). Post-Soviet social: Neoliberalism, social modernity, biopolitics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dunn, E. C. (2004). Privatizing Poland: Baby food, big business, and the remaking of labor.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Dunn, E. C. (2005). Standards and person-making in East Central Europe. In A. Ong
& S. J. Collier (Eds.), Global Assemblages (pp. 173–193). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Dunn, E. C. (2012). The chaos of humanitarianism: Adhocracy in the Republic of
Georgia. Humanity, 3(1), 1–23.
Fehérváry, K. (2009). Goods and states: The political logic of state-socialist material
culture. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51(2), 426–459.
Gal, S., & Kligman, G. (2000). The politics of gender after socialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gille, Z. (2007). From the cult of waste to the trash heap of history: The politics of waste in
socialist and postsocialist Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gille, Z. (2011). The Hungarian foie gras boycott: Struggles for moral sovereignty in
postsocialist Europe. Eastern European Politics and Societies, 25, 114–128.
Greenberg, J. (2011). On the road to normal: Negotiating agency and state sovereignty
in postsocialist Serbia. American Anthropologist, 113(1), 88–100.
Hann, C. (2006). The postsocialist religious question: Faith and power in Central Asia and
East-Central Europe. Berlin, Germany: LIT Verlag.
Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Hemment, J. (2007). Empowering women in Russia: Activism, aid, and NGOs. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Holmes, D. (2014). Economy of words: Communicative imperatives in central banks.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Postsocialism
7
Humphrey, C. (2002). The unmaking of Soviet life: Everyday economies after socialism.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lampland, M. (1995). The object of labor: Commodification in socialist Hungary. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Petryna, A. (2002). Life exposed: Biological citizenship after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Phillips, S. (2008). Women’s social activism in the new Ukraine: Development and the politics of differentiation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Ries, N. (2009). Potato ontology: surviving postsocialism in Russia. Cultural Anthropology, 24(2), 181–212.
Rivkin-Fish, M. (2005). Women’s health in post-Soviet Russia. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Rogers, D. (2005). Moonshine, money, and the politics of liquidity in rural Russia.
American Ethnologist, 32, 63–81.
Rogers, D. (2009). The Old Faith and the Russian land: A historical ethnography of ethics
in the Urals. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Rogers, D., & Verdery, K. (2013). Postsocialist societies: Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In J. Carrier & D. Gewertz (Eds.), Handbook of social and cultural
anthropology (pp. 439–455). London, England: Bloomsbury.
Schwenkel, C. (2013). Post/socialist affect: Ruination and reconstruction of the nation
in urban Vietnam. Cultural Anthropology, 28(2), 252–277.
Shevchenko, O. (2009). Crisis and the everyday in postsocialist Moscow. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press.
Tishkov, V. (2004). Chechnya: Life in a war-torn society. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Trouillot, M. R. (1991). Anthropology and the savage slot. Recapturing anthropology, R.
Fox (pp. 17–44). Santa Fe, NM: School of American research press.
Verdery, K. (1996). What was socialism, and what comes next? Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Verdery, K. (2003). The vanishing hectare: Property and value in postsocialist Transylvania.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Verdery, K. (2014). Secrets and truths: Ethnography in the archive of the Romanian secret
police. Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press.
ELIZABETH CULLEN DUNN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn is Associate Professor of Geography and International Studies at Indiana University. Trained as an anthropologist, she has
focused on bureaucratization and new forms of management after socialism.
Her first book, Privatizing Poland, which looked at the transformation of firms
and workers after 1989, won the Orbis Book Prize and the Ed. A. Hewett
Book Prize. She has also written about food, agriculture, and public health
in postsocialist Eastern Europe. Her article “Trojan Pig” won Environment
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
and Planning A’s Ashby Prize. Her current project focuses on humanitarianism and the management of displaced people in postwar Georgia. Her work
has also appeared in American Ethnologist, Humanity, Antipode, and The Iowa
Review.
KATHERINE VERDERY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Katherine Verdery is the Julien J. Studley Distinguished Professor of
Anthropology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Since
1973 she has conducted anthropological research in Romania, on ethnic
and national identity, cultural politics, the socialist system, postsocialist
transition, the state, and property transformation. Her books include:
Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic
Change (1983), National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics
in Ceau¸sescu’s Romania (1991), What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next?
(1996), The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (1999), The Vanishing Hectare: Property
and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (2003), and Peasants under Siege: The
Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949–1962 (2011, with Gail Kligman).
Among her professional activities, she has served as Director of the Center
for Russian and East European Studies (University of Michigan), member
of the Boards of Directors of the American Anthropological Association and
American Ethnological Society, and President of the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Currently she is writing a field
memoir, based on her Romanian Secret Police file.
RELATED ESSAYS
Political Ideologies (Political Science), Edward G. Carmines and Nicholas J.
D’Amico
Neoliberalism (Sociology), Miguel Angel Centeno and Joseph N. Cohen
Gender, Religion, and State in the Middle East (Sociology), Mounira M.
Charrad and Amina Zarrugh
Domestic Institutions and International Conflict (Political Science), Giacomo
Chiozza
The State and Development (Sociology), Samuel Cohn
Varieties of Capitalism (Political Science), Peter A. Hall
The Future of Employment, Wages, and Technological Change (Economics),
Michael J. Handel
Regime Type and Terrorist Attacks (Political Science), Kara Kingma et al.
Why Do States Sign Alliances? (Political Science), Brett Ashley Leeds
Domestic Political Institutions and Alliance Politics (Political Science),
Michaela Mattes
Postsocialism
9
Political Psychology and International Conflict (Political Science), Rose
McDermott
Participatory Governance (Political Science), Stephanie L. McNulty and Brian
Wampler
Why Do Governments Abuse Human Rights? (Political Science), Will H.
Moore and Ryan M. Welch
Intervention and Regime Change (Political Science), John M. Owen IV and
Roger G. Herbert Jr.
Why Do States Pursue Nuclear Weapons (or Not) (Political Science), Wilfred
Wan and Etel Solingen
Constitutionalism (Political Science), Keith E. Whittington
Postsocialism
ELIZABETH CULLEN DUNN and KATHERINE VERDERY
Abstract
Postsocialism is not just the study of the period after the end of Communism. Like
postcolonialism, it is an analytic, a way of looking at societies in both East and West
that were shaped by state socialism and the Cold War. Focusing on capitalism’s alter
ego, postsocialism looks at how production, consumption, identity and sovereignty
were shaped by the experience of one party rule and central planning, and it reflects
critically on the enduring effects of socialist ideas about the role of state and market in social life. While the countries that were once grouped by their affiliation with
Communism are now diverging, future research focuses on the reorganization of the
“Second World” into donors and receivers within a new international order based
on humanitarianism and development, on the role of bureaucratic governance in
integrating former socialist countries into the EU, and on the crucial standpoint that
socialist ideologies continue to provide outside neoliberal capitalism.
INTRODUCTION
Postsocialism, some might say, is a concept with a half-life. If it only refers to
the countries released in 1989/1991 from the hegemony of the Soviet system,
it has increasingly less analytic purchase. The trajectories of postsocialist
countries are so diverse that the socialist past has ceased to have significant
patterned effects. Although the consequences of the socialist period are
not completely ended, they are becoming ever less explanatory of policies
decided upon and practices engaged in, in those countries as a set. This is
especially true as Russia redefines its sphere of interest and as countries in
the former Soviet sphere reorient themselves toward it, or not. Therefore,
whereas many common features once united the countries of Eastern Europe
and the Caucasus, for instance, by the early twenty-first century this had
become much less true (and even less so of socialist countries outside Europe
and Eurasia, such as Cuba or China). If postsocialism is no more than a
chronological designation referring to what comes after socialism, then we
can only usher it toward the exit. After all, no one now refers to western
Europe as “post-feudal.”
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
1
2
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
But what if we instead conceptualize postsocialism not just as a chronological concept, but also as an analytic notion, on the analogy with “postcolonialism” as a critical standpoint (see Chari & Verdery, 2009). Postcolonialism
is not mainly about what happened after colonialism but constitutes a critical reflection both on colonialism’s ongoing presence in post-independence
projects (involving national identity, sovereignty, accumulation strategies,
democracy, etc.) and on the possibility of knowledge itself. Postsocialism, too,
could be a critical standpoint from which to reflect on the socialist past and
possible socialist futures, on the ongoing intrusion of neoliberal programs
concerning markets, property, democracy, and so on into former socialist
spaces, and on the social and spatial effects of Cold War institutions upon
the possibilities for knowledge. Although the chronological sense necessarily
lurks at the edges of the concept (especially in expressions such as “postsocialist societies”), we use it rather in this analytical sense.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
As an analytic concept, postsocialism rests on a broad base that includes
anthropological research on socialism and on the transformation of socialist
societies beginning in the 1990s (see review articles by Buyandelgerin, 2008;
Rogers & Verdery, 2013). It also includes other work on changes in the global
capitalist economy as well as post-colonial texts that might provide models
for the direction we propose (e.g., Harvey, 1989; Trouillot, 1991). Starting
with Verdery’s work (e.g., 1996, Chapter 1), the anthropology of socialism
clarified how the social organization of socialist societies was distinctive
from other kinds of social orders, despite some superficial similarities
to them (such as the commodification of labor [see Lampland, 1995] or
citizens’ interest in consumption [see Fehérváry, 2009]). An ever-expanding
literature on post-1989 transformation chronicled the effects of dismantling
the characteristic features of socialism, and incorporating the formerly
socialist states into capitalist markets. Many of these works saw their task as
responding to the over-simplifications and distortions inherent in a literature
dominated by political science and economics, which usually presumed
western-capitalist and liberal-democratic forms as normal or even natural
(see, e.g., Dunn, 2005).
Among the themes treated in postsocialist anthropology are “civil-society”
building and the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
(e.g., Hemment, 2007); changing notions of citizenship (Petryna, 2002;
Phillips, 2008); privatization and property restitution (Dunn, 2004; Verdery,
2003); market formation (Collier, 2011; Rogers, 2005); environmental politics
(Gille, 2007); changing welfare policies (Caldwell, 2004); “corruption” and
“mafia” (Humphrey, 2002). Much of the anthropological work on socialism
Postsocialism
3
and postsocialism began by asking how the distinctive structure of the
socialist economy of shortage shaped everyday practice. How socialism
shaped time and space (Schwenkel, 2013; Verdery, 1996, Chapter 2) and how
both time and space were reworked during the “transition” period of the
1990s and early 2000s were central questions. Another important issue was
how people’s identities—including gender and sexual identities, national
and religious identities, and class status (see, e.g., Gal & Kligman, 2000;
Hann, 2006)—were formed under state socialism and reworked during the
subsequent massive upheaval in social structure. Changing consumption
habits, framed by both changes in political economy and new social identities, became important loci for seeing changes in the region (e.g., Ries, 2009;
Shevchenko, 2009), as did new forms of religious practice (Rogers, 2009).
Along with this, understanding how people dealt with the negative effects
of social change, including hunger and poverty and the decay of social
networks, became key topics.
CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH
What was state socialism, what forms of sovereignty did it invoke, and
how did it shape identity and daily practice? Questions about how people
consumed in economies of shortage, how labor was structured and valued,
how property was organized, and even what made people laugh are all still
under investigation. The early postsocialist period also still poses significant
intellectual and historical problems. Specifically concerning postsocialism’s
critique of western forms, we mention our own work on privatization in
Polish industry and Romanian agriculture, which revealed the difficulties
of importing “private property” ideas wholesale into postsocialist contexts
and exposed the weaknesses of these ideas as models for human sociality.
Similar conclusions emerge from other research such as Greenberg’s (2011)
on democratization in Serbia, or Rivkin-Fish’s work (2005) on medical
“technology transfer” in Russia (see also Rogers & Verdery, 2013). All this
work serves to clarify the forms of imperialism underlying the “transition
from socialism,” while, at the same time, illustrating how contingent, partial
and complex the transfer of Western ideas and forms has been.
An increasingly significant field of inquiry concerns two emerging modes
of power in postsocialism: bureaucracy, on the one hand, and state violence on the other. Bureaucratic practice was revealed to be a particularly
important form of power during the process of EU accession, especially
once the unanticipated consequences of the currency union began to emerge
more clearly in 2012. Although discussion of whether the EU is yet another
imperial form has become commonplace (Böröcz & Kovács, 2001), useful
work continues on the effects of the hardening of borders between EU
4
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
members and their neighbors (Allina-Pisano, 2009). Research in progress by
Holmes (2014) on the policies of the European Central Bank and the euro
crisis will prove essential in understanding the effects of the intersection
between global finance and people’s life conditions in the various parts
of Europe. Additional innovative research focuses on the globalization of
“standards” that has accompanied EU membership as EU requirements for
handling food, for instance—standards developed for the industrialized
agricultural practices of western Europe—are imposed on the postsocialist
East, where such practices are more rarely found (e.g., Dunn, 2005; Gille
2011).
Ethnographic research has shown that state violence is an equally significant mode of power in the postsocialist world. Work on the secret police
(Verdery, 2014) and the long-term effects of war (Tishkov, 2004) have shed
light on a form of state power that relies on intermittent and unpredictable
violence. Understanding this form of sovereignty has become particularly
significant given rising authoritarianism in Russia under Putin, as well as
new forms of authoritarianism in Hungary, Romania and Georgia, all of
which claim to be democratic states. How and why these new forms of
domination are correlated with EU accession is a question that remains to be
researched.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
As an analytic optic, postsocialism reveals profound transformations in the
nature of global sovereignty and new forms of organization in the international system. For example, beginning with the crisis in Bosnia and continuing on with Kosovo and various countries of the Caucasus, the postsocialist
world became the target of so-called humanitarian intervention. Under the
banner of “the responsibility to protect,” Western countries have increasingly
overridden the sovereignty of other states and legitimated interference in the
affairs of countries in the postsocialist world. Using NGOs and intragovernmental agencies such as the United Nations agencies, the United States
and Western Europe have taken over the functions of government in the
former Yugoslavia and the South Caucasus. Like the effects of other Western “capacity building” projects in which Western forms are supposed to
be imported wholesale, humanitarian projects have effects their proponents
cannot predict (Dunn, 2012), but the long-term effects of dividing the world
into “humanitarians” and “victims” have yet to be seen.
One effect of the humanitarian imperative has been to reorganize the countries of the former Eastern Bloc within the framework of international development. Countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia are actively seeking
Postsocialism
5
to build development agencies, to learn the practices of international development, and in so doing, to secure their places in an international hierarchy
that divides the world into donors and recipients. Far from being straightforwardly altruistic, the language of development and humanitarianism has
allowed for the United States to engage in the “humanitarian bombing” of
Serbia during the conflict with Kosovo, for Russia to give passports to residents of South Ossetia and then to defend the resulting “Russian citizens”
during the war with Georgia, and for Poland and the Czech Republic to
request NATO intervention in the Russo-Georgian War. Using postsocialism
as an optic reveals how some countries on both sides of the Cold War international divide are deemed incapable of self-governance and cast as passive
geopolitical actors, while others are vying to realign global politics, claim
new geographical spheres of influence, and extend their political reach using
new forms of international military, economic, and charitable action.
A postsocialist analytic also directs attention to key debates over the role
of the state in domestic economies and politics. While research on nostalgia for the socialist past is now declining, there are new opportunities to
study debates in postsocialist countries over state-led redistribution, social
safety nets, and the value of labor. The crisis of the Eurozone has made these
debates particularly incisive, as some of the postsocialist entrants into the
EU and the Euro currency union ask what the effects of joining were, and
whether it was more prudent to stay out of international organizations once
seen as the prize for democratization and marketization. These debates have
led to the re-emergence both of an extreme right (e.g., in Hungary) and of
new post-communist leftist movements (e.g., in Poland). We need research
on why Left and Right have become more polarized in the wake of the Cold
War, and why the language of the Cold War about socialism has become even
more significant in both “East” and “West” after state socialism has disappeared.
Finally, the emerging temporal horizons of postsocialism—both in the
former Eastern Bloc and in the West—invite exploration. Postsocialism is
characterized by a future orientation different from the Western industrial
notion of never-ending progress and the Marxist-Leninist vision of socialist
utopia. In East and West, citizens are now bearing risks once borne by the
state, to build futures without resources such as education and healthcare
once provided by governments, and to strategize in markets and polities
that are less regulated, or differently regulated, than before. Postsocialist
citizens, however, bring to these experiences distinctive repertoires of
skills and expectations—approaching the new temporal horizons of the
household mortgage, for instance, from within specific forms of social
embeddedness and affective engagement. As new financial instruments and
new forms of indebtedness expand both the risks and the scale of economic
6
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
activity, as new religious ideologies (such as Salafism, for example) link
the postsocialist countries to other global movements, and as new forms of
domination engender new forms of adaptation and resistance, the study of
postsocialism promises to cast light not only on a world region but on global
processes.
REFERENCES
Allina-Pisano, J. (2009). From iron curtain to golden curtain: Remaking identity in
the European Union borderlands. East European Politics and Societies, 23, 266–290.
Böröcz, J., & Kovács, M. (Eds.) (2001). Empire’s new clothes: Unveiling EU enlargement.
Shropshire, England: Central Europe Review, Ltd.
Buyandelgerin, M. (2008). Post-post-transition theories: Walking on multiple paths.
Annual Review of Anthropology, 37, 235–250.
Caldwell, M. (2004). Not by bread alone: Social support in the new Russia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Chari, S., & Verdery, K. (2009). Thinking between the posts: Postcolonialism, postsocialism, and ethnography after the Cold War. Comparative Studies in Society and
History, 51(1), 6–34.
Collier, S. J. (2011). Post-Soviet social: Neoliberalism, social modernity, biopolitics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dunn, E. C. (2004). Privatizing Poland: Baby food, big business, and the remaking of labor.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell.
Dunn, E. C. (2005). Standards and person-making in East Central Europe. In A. Ong
& S. J. Collier (Eds.), Global Assemblages (pp. 173–193). Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Dunn, E. C. (2012). The chaos of humanitarianism: Adhocracy in the Republic of
Georgia. Humanity, 3(1), 1–23.
Fehérváry, K. (2009). Goods and states: The political logic of state-socialist material
culture. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51(2), 426–459.
Gal, S., & Kligman, G. (2000). The politics of gender after socialism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gille, Z. (2007). From the cult of waste to the trash heap of history: The politics of waste in
socialist and postsocialist Hungary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Gille, Z. (2011). The Hungarian foie gras boycott: Struggles for moral sovereignty in
postsocialist Europe. Eastern European Politics and Societies, 25, 114–128.
Greenberg, J. (2011). On the road to normal: Negotiating agency and state sovereignty
in postsocialist Serbia. American Anthropologist, 113(1), 88–100.
Hann, C. (2006). The postsocialist religious question: Faith and power in Central Asia and
East-Central Europe. Berlin, Germany: LIT Verlag.
Harvey, D. (1989). The condition of postmodernity. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Hemment, J. (2007). Empowering women in Russia: Activism, aid, and NGOs. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Holmes, D. (2014). Economy of words: Communicative imperatives in central banks.
Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Postsocialism
7
Humphrey, C. (2002). The unmaking of Soviet life: Everyday economies after socialism.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Lampland, M. (1995). The object of labor: Commodification in socialist Hungary. Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press.
Petryna, A. (2002). Life exposed: Biological citizenship after Chernobyl. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Phillips, S. (2008). Women’s social activism in the new Ukraine: Development and the politics of differentiation. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Ries, N. (2009). Potato ontology: surviving postsocialism in Russia. Cultural Anthropology, 24(2), 181–212.
Rivkin-Fish, M. (2005). Women’s health in post-Soviet Russia. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Rogers, D. (2005). Moonshine, money, and the politics of liquidity in rural Russia.
American Ethnologist, 32, 63–81.
Rogers, D. (2009). The Old Faith and the Russian land: A historical ethnography of ethics
in the Urals. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Rogers, D., & Verdery, K. (2013). Postsocialist societies: Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. In J. Carrier & D. Gewertz (Eds.), Handbook of social and cultural
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IN: Indiana University Press.
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police. Budapest, Hungary: Central European University Press.
ELIZABETH CULLEN DUNN SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Elizabeth Cullen Dunn is Associate Professor of Geography and International Studies at Indiana University. Trained as an anthropologist, she has
focused on bureaucratization and new forms of management after socialism.
Her first book, Privatizing Poland, which looked at the transformation of firms
and workers after 1989, won the Orbis Book Prize and the Ed. A. Hewett
Book Prize. She has also written about food, agriculture, and public health
in postsocialist Eastern Europe. Her article “Trojan Pig” won Environment
8
EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
and Planning A’s Ashby Prize. Her current project focuses on humanitarianism and the management of displaced people in postwar Georgia. Her work
has also appeared in American Ethnologist, Humanity, Antipode, and The Iowa
Review.
KATHERINE VERDERY SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Katherine Verdery is the Julien J. Studley Distinguished Professor of
Anthropology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Since
1973 she has conducted anthropological research in Romania, on ethnic
and national identity, cultural politics, the socialist system, postsocialist
transition, the state, and property transformation. Her books include:
Transylvanian Villagers: Three Centuries of Political, Economic, and Ethnic
Change (1983), National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics
in Ceauşescu’s Romania (1991), What Was Socialism, and What Comes Next?
(1996), The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (1999), The Vanishing Hectare: Property
and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania (2003), and Peasants under Siege: The
Collectivization of Romanian Agriculture, 1949–1962 (2011, with Gail Kligman).
Among her professional activities, she has served as Director of the Center
for Russian and East European Studies (University of Michigan), member
of the Boards of Directors of the American Anthropological Association and
American Ethnological Society, and President of the American Association
for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. Currently she is writing a field
memoir, based on her Romanian Secret Police file.
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