Uncertain Transition: Ethnographies of Change in the Postsocialist World

Reclaiming Socialist Space, Caricaturing Socialism? Urban Interventions and the Cleansing of Political Content in State‐Socialist Public Housing After 2008

“…The concept of postsocialism as an ideology of socialist obsolescence at the same time opens up possibilities for deterritorialising and pluralising (Atanasoski and Vora 2018; Tuvikene 2016) the study of various attempts to discredit the resurgence of new socialist ideas (Birch 2020). Such an approach builds on and departs from the literature around postsocialist institutional hybridity (Bohle and Greskovits 2012; Burawoy and Verdery 1999), to focus on the use in different contexts of different socialist pasts as foils against which to justify capitalism, delegitimise socialist demands and naturalise social inequality and injustice. Theorised as neoliberal capitalism’s hegemonic frame (Appel and Orenstein 2018), the concept of postsocialism sheds light on the significance of socialism as an “other” in great many different circumstances, whether they be the ideological affinity that Hong Kong activists and Chinese liberal intellectuals feel for Donald Trump (Lin 2021), Silicon Valley’s techno‐utopian culture (McElroy 2018) or the nexus in Russia between Soviet nostalgia and imperialism (Tlostanova 2012).…”

“…Like Stenning and Hörschelmann (2008) and many other scholars (Bohle and Greskovits 2012; Burawoy and Verdery 1999; Humphrey 2001), this article departs from teleological narratives of postsocialism‐as‐transition to focus on heterogeneous, multifaceted and contested practices of undoing socialism. However, it places more emphasis on introducing materialist conceptions of culture and ideology to postsocialist theory than on “hybridising” the latter and aligning it with postcolonial theory.…”

Working Through What Is. Depression and the Predicament of Reality in Poland

“…… These people do not know how to make sense of the new symbolic order and cannot fit into the new institutional design in which "civilizational competence" is king! (2006: 469-470) Supporting Buchowski's criticism, several authors have shown that the pathologized and orientalized "losers" of the transformation continue to engage with their circumstances in meaningful and apt ways (Aronoff and Kubik 2012;Burawoy and Verdery 1999;Rakowski 2016).…”

“…Importantly, in the envisioned model, care would rely in part on mobilizing the patients' own resources-the support provided by family and local community, without cutting the patients off their social environment, which may be beneficial, though it may also result mainly in conveniently relocating the burden of care away from the state and is not recommended in cases where temporarily removing the patient from their surroundings is exactly the relief that is needed. In other words, the passing of mental health services to local entities suits two quite different approaches: a community-based logic of care and a market- The notion of transition and "transitology" have been critiqued by anthropologists of postsocialism (see, e.g., Burawoy and Verdery 1999). Here I am using the term in a colloquial sense.…”

“Бирократските Интеракции И Колективните Сеќавања За Социјалистичка Југославија”

“…Социјалистичките концепти на јавната сфера каде што луѓето се морално поврзани со државата преку нивните права (Verdery 1996: 63) се споредуваат со новите претстави за "јавното" -јавните институции што ја претставуваат државата и преку кои се одржува силно чувството за сопствените права и очекувања на граѓанинот од јавниот сектор. Овој трансфер ја потврдува поентата на Вердери и Буравој за "употребата на веќе познати форми, иако на нов начин и за други цели" (Burawoy, Verdery 1999: 2) во однос на замислата на социјалната држава. Во оваа смисла, важно е да се избегнува есенцијализацијата на постсоцијалистичката држава преку тврдењето за некаков социјалистички менталитет (Prica 2007: 32-33), особено таков каков што се употребува за објаснување на неуспесите на транзицијата и растот на коруптивните практики и бирократизацијата, или, пак, поедноставените објаснувања за комунистичкото создавање на регионот (Тисен 2010: 17).…”